robertnealan

Build more housing where driving a car isn't the default mode of getting around and people will naturally start to demand better public transportation services and local spots they can get to via bike or walking. This housing won't suit everyone's needs but there's a significant part of the population who wouldn't mind being carless even in southern California.

Changing LA's car mentality isn't going to happen overnight but it has to start somewhere.

Zoning restrictions are far more restrictive in the United States than in a city like Tokyo, where the government has largely only enacted laws preventing specific cases that would be considered very harmful (opening a heavy industrial businesses in a residential neighborhood for instance).

In most of the US most land in smaller cities are zoned for single family housing only. This often means you can only build a house for one family (no duplexes) with arbitrary restrictions on a variety of other things (minimum lot sizes, maximum house sizes relative to lot size, required setbacks from property lines to the house, etc).

In the event you are able to build a du/triplex it's rare you'd be able to convert any part of it for business use unless the land was already zoned for multi-use, where they allow mixing of residential and commercial uses.

Several years ago I asked my mom why she lived so far from where she worked (Vallejo, CA to San Ramon, CA), and she claimed they were saving money on cheaper rent. Five minutes of napkin paper math later I pointed her and her partner were spending roughly $700/month commuting in gas, bridge toll, and basic wear+tear on their vehicles (based on ~$0.45/mile).

It seems like most people don't account for vehicle costs when accounting for cost of living. Why I'm not positive, though it seems to just be the general abstractness of the cost spread out over time, and the assumption in America that you're going to drive everywhere anyway so it doesn't matter.

Even worse we see this with numerous Uber/Lyft/delivery "contractors" who are putting endless miles on their personal vehicles without accounting for the inevitable cost of replacing them.

Before buying my car I test drove a Mercedes that had what I assumed was a touchscreen. Upon trying to tap it the person working at the dealership said none of their cars have touchscreens because they don't make sense to operate when driving, and instead had a easily reached dial in the center console that controlled everything on the screen. Seems to be the case with any other German car I've been in.

Takes some getting used to compared to just old fashioned knobs & buttons, but far and above better than all the cars we test drove with touchscreens.

Seems environmentally unfriendly to rely 100% on electricity in one of the sunnier places in the country — you'd think there'd be a way to pipe in daylight via fiber optic cords during the day, and transition to LEDs as the sun begins to set and during the night.

That said I'm really excited to see vertical farming grow as a market, ideally in denser cities like SF or NYC where proximity to the nearest farms can be a few hours away depending on what you want to buy.

Aha! I remembered seeing something a year or so back but thought it was just a proof of concept by an individual, not officially baked into Google Maps. Just took a look and it's definitely there, though unless you know where to look it's a bit buried in the interface.

That's actually from the Bay Bridge heading into San Francisco — tower on the right is 1 Rincon (there's already a few more next to it going up now). Curious if this was a case of "just throw up something that looks halfway decent" or if they're intentionally trying to appeal with the US car culture?

As someone currently using (aka fighting) the web audio API, there's definitely a market for better, clearer information out there, but I'm curious how successful targeting a such a niche market has been?

Hosting at Github with Jekyll is essentially self-hosting. Github Pages has automated deployment, but at the end of the day it's just another hosting option with no (current) ulterior business motives other than to increase exposure of their GH Pages product.

This. Current static site generators aren't good for non-engineers, but I'd be willing to bet that doesn't need to be the case. Every instance I've seen requires some sort of technical know-how, or integration with Dropbox/Drive/etc (which many non-technical/older people won't necessarily be familiar with).

Has anyone ever tried building a standalone desktop writing app that handles everything for you? I'm just imaging an app where I can buy a domain/hosting, give it my user creds if needed, and it automatically sets everything up for me in a clean interface without needing to know anything about servers/DNS/etc.