youngButEager

You underestimate things.

Is Tokyo a destination city? Yes. Total urban population? 38 million people.

I don't think you realize how attractive a beautiful city really is to the people of our planet.

While I'd agree that 38 million people is not 'infinite' -- it's a lot of people. Palo Alto is at 66,000 people right now.

Did Tokyo's decision to allow high density housing solve their 'housing is too expensive in Tokyo' problem?

NO. Tokyo is one of the most expensive cities on the planet to reside in.

Again, adding supply to a Destination City will NOT bring down housing costs. The crybaby lawyer failed to factor in the difference between Palo Alto and Stockton.

And it will be a big surprise to her -- Santa Cruz is very pricey. And won't be getting any cheaper.

The east coast of the USA was settled first, recall. What did they do back east to 'solve' this problem of "we're running out of space"? They increased the density of occupants per unit of land -- they built UPWARD.

That will have to happen here too. It's already happened in LA.

There will always be crybabies like this attorney during the growing pains of a popular 'destination city.'

For now, think of turning the Peninsula into tall buildings, concrete and asphalt. Think how the picturesque drive up highway 280 to San Francisco from the South Bay will be affected.

Everyone wants the nature. Not the tall buildings, concrete and asphalt.

Crybabies need to do precisely what this gal chose -- LEAVE. There's the door. That's how markets work -- when the price of a good or service is too high, demand drops. Well, she's a living example of a smidgen of demand disappearing.

People who don't like markets should move to Venezuela or North Korea or Cuba.

Maybe this type of FB behavior will finally kill that awful web site.

Sites like this have become a 'punitive tease' -- it's hard to know when the rug will be pulled out from under you, yet you're lured into using it because "all my friends are on it."

There really is a need for a neutral Twitter, a neutral FB. It won't happen though due to entrenched network effects.

I suspect the only way FB and Twitter could be killed off is if they:

1) listed all the banned users and the reason each was banned

2) disclose the current "reasons to ban" list

3) and freely admit that banning is a subjective choice for these websites, that the "reasons to ban" list is not fixed.

It's only anecdotally we hear about someone being banned, we have no idea the numbers of users, the scope, involved.

If you were invited to a dinner party but were given a list of reasons why you'd be asked to leave ('talked down about person X', etc.) and also told "our list of reasons to kick a person out of our dinner party is evolving and is subject to change without notice" -- hey no one's putting up with a manipulative, baiting host like that, no one's going to that party.

FB and Twitter, were they to be transparent about the scope of their banning, their DAU would crash.

No. No error.

Pot smokers make bad decisions MUCH more frequently than sober non-users.

I am in a position to observe that -- lots of non-users and a few users, at our properties

It doesn't matter if 100,000 non-experienced people tell me my opinion (based on personal experience across 23+3 years) about pot smokers is wrong.

I actually have THE EXPERIENCE.

But, as I've said, and as I tell prospective tenants, it is not for me to tell you how to behave. My job, if you are a fan of repeated intoxication, is to keep you out of my apartments. That's all I do.

And in the past year and a half, 18 people have slipped under the tenant screening radar -- and got evicted for smoking on the premises.

We go to so much trouble to help people realize "hey, these people are really serious about this 'no pot' rule, this place isn't for me"

18 people in a year and half. Despite the fact we TOLD them, UP FRONT, no pot smoking (or cigars or cigarettes) on the premises. Before we even take a deposit.

Think about that. 18 pre-warned-and-now-evicted pot smokers. THAT'S THE POT. That's the bad decision making.

And you don't see or experience that. So I understand it's hard to grok, these pot smokers.

'DGAF' is not always evident in the short time we meet, interact with a new tenant. Unlike a job interview process (several stages of contact: phone, in person several times, etc.) it's not practical for landlords to spend that much time with each prospective tenant.

The 18 tenants I've evicted in the past year and half -- they ALL slipped 'under the radar.'

My "cues/indicators" list above is 100% NOT all inclusive.

Until you've dealt over many years with pot smokers, in quantities, you really, really have no idea how defiant/grouchy/uncooperative/troublemaking they can be, behaviors you can only witness over a period of a lease.

Here's another example. 31 yo male, he should know better, right? About the useless 'crutch' of drugs and alcohol as the foundation for personal recreation?

Smoked up a storm. He befriended surrounding tenants, and so no one complained. NOTE: in our non-smoking properties, keeping in mind that very few people smoke these days and make an effort to only live in non-smoking apartment properties, if a non-smoker is exposed to 2nd hand smoke, do they complain to Management? Oh my god. Especially pot smoke. We get complaints like "the person below me is smoking pot, you said this was a non-smoking property, I don't want to get high from their 2nd hand smoke" -- we get COMPLAINTS. It's understandable, very few people smoke or want to be in close breathing proximity to smokers these days.

Well, I had to catch him in the act, he chummed up with the surrounding tenants "in range" and somehow got them to not complain. It wasn't easy. Caught him over the course of 2 weeks on our security cameras.

We didn't tell him "Joe, we have video evidence you're smoking" we just served the 3 Day Notice. He refused to stop. Went to eviction court, he lied to the Judge. HE'S UNDER OATH. "Judge, I stopped smoking weeks ago." Lied to the Judge while under threat of perjury. DEFIANT.

Then my attorney brought forth the photos and entered them in the record. The Judge looked at Joe. I'm thinking 'it's perjury, is Joe going to jail?' The Judge must have been in a good mood. He looked at my photo evidence for 20 seconds, BAM the gavel dropped, "judgment for the plaintiff."

Pot smokers are T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

It depends on how long they've been smoking. Those 3 years I smoked it as a teen, it was in the final year I started with bad behavior, and bad experiences I finally realized were not me.

So I don't really care how much a pot smoker says "it's fine, I'm fine, it's harmless."

My philosophy with ANYONE who uses pot, and this is solely because of my 3 years personal experience and the screwed up behaviors from pot smokers over 23 years of landlording:

get away from me. Stay away from me. I don't care if you compromise your personal life by thinking intoxication is a good foundation, just don't do it around me.

That stuff is a disaster in many ways BECAUSE the damage is so incremental, that the build of up negative consequences is invisible to the user.

I have personally walked the path and I now also have 23 years of screwups, pot smoking tenants causing weird problems no other (sober) tenant causes.

Let me say, I feel deeply sorry for anyone who leans on drugs and/or alcohol for 'recreation.'

If you find yourself frequently intoxicated for 'recreation' - from pot, alcohol, whatever -- MOST people are going to have problems from it. You can throw the dice with it over the long term if you want.

Imagine showing vacant apartments to prospective renters since 1993 -- for 23 years. Lots of units, lots of prospective tenants.

In 1993 I had no pool of 'before move-in/after move-in' experience with tenants. 23 years on, I have a large number of 'before move-in/after move-in' tenant experiences.

So when a tenancy went bad, over time I started making a mental note of

1) the social cues the tenant made when I first met them

2) what their behavior was after move-in

I started seeing patterns. After 23 years of "before move-in/after move-in" experiences, I developed predictors.

In my mind, I suspect that Judges, teachers, cops, hiring managers, any profession where you have a lot of "before/after" experience with lots of people -- have developed similar wisdom, similar predictors.

It's probably a survival skill humans have -- if you get burned over and over, you start connecting "is there any way I could have used this person's before behavior to protect myself from their after behavior?"

Here are some of the screening-out cues I use:

1) during the initial showing of the unit and meeting, does the person forget something I just told them ("It's a one year lease")? Did they exhibit more than one memory lapse like that?

2) was the person inarticulate in writing (on the application), or in their speech?

3) on the continuum of demeanor (behavior and body language) from "street people behavior" to "my professional peers" -- was the prospective tenant closer to "street person" demeanor or closer to "professional peer"?

4) does the person smoke cigarettes? Over 23 years most of my pot-smoking tenants smoked cigarettes. It makes sense I guess, smoking cigarettes for nicotine, smoking pot for thc.

The list of 'cues' I have is not perfect; people are still moving in and smoking pot inside my properties in violation of the lease.

INSIGHT: Being in a position to observe the behavior of users -- MANY users -- over a period of time, and non-users in the same settings.

Most of you probably don't have that experience.

- Parents do. Ask parents "how did your kid change after commencing use of pot?"

- Teachers do, if they know a student imbibes. These days teachers have a great chance to see the difference between regular students and those who smoke it.

- Property managers of apartment properties do.

I'm the latter. I made my Silicon Valley startup bucks and have been buying and operating apartment properties since 1993, 2 years out of college.

Here's what I experience:

1) my pot using tenants do not like following rules compared to other tenants.

2) they are defiant in their attitude to varying degrees, challenging things they initially agree to ("no smoking", "new occupants must pass the same tenant screening you did and must be added to the lease", "no guest parking", "no loud parties/noise after 10pm", etc).

RECENT EXPERIENCES - tenant moves in, it's a no smoking building, they begin smoking pot in their unit EVEN THOUGH there are 'no smoking' signs everywhere and the lease clearly calls for 'no smoking cigars/cigarettes/marijuana'. THAT'S HAPPENED 18 TIMES (18 different tenants) IN THE PAST year and a half.

- tenant moves in, gets a warning for their car blocking other tenants in the parking lot, they kept blowing it off, parking and blocking others. FIVE TIMES over a 2 month period until they were evicted.

- tenant moves in someone without adding them to the lease (a requirement), we catch them, the added person does not pass the normal tenant screening process and they have to leave, the original tenant keeps them there anyway, we catch them, gave them a final warning, they ignored the final warning, and got evicted

Just a very small set of examples.

IF YOU SMOKE, you are the LAST person to know if your pot use has changed you, added some negatives to your behavior. "A doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient."

I myself imbibed for 3 years as a teen. WHAT AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER. Normal recreation time was clouded by intoxication.

If you prefer being intoxicated in your leisure time, how would you feel telling people that?

"I like being intoxicated. It's my recreational activity."

OR

"I like being intoxicated during my leisure time."

OR

"When I spend free time with recreational pursuits, I like being intoxicated."

VERY FEW pot users will admit that to arbitrary others. Deep inside, we know to ourselves "I shouldn't need intoxication to enjoy myself."

You should not need to live in an altered state, intoxication, and if you are frequently choosing intoxication from pot as 'recreation', something is wrong.

Money. Money as motivator.

Was building hardware devices for musical pursuits (guitar effects) and my 1st degree was in EE. You can graduate with an EE degree, having taken a course or two or three in basic programming but it falls out of use and the depth was never really there anyway, more of a "here's programming" intro.

When I tried to change jobs as a 'hardware guy' I had limited options, unlike my software engineer friends who had a gazillion options it seemed. Makes sense, hardware is built once, but a piece of hardware can have an infinite number of programs written for it; thus one hardware engineer and an infinite number of software engineers for one piece of hardware.

They (my software engineer chums) also made A LOT MORE MONEY than me.

Went back to school, focused solely on software. Best decision I ever made.

Money as a motivator to learn to code is questionable but I got lucky as I learned to love it after becoming engrossed in it.

EDIT: Point being -- if you have a big enough "Why" you simply will learn to code. If you can't make money or have an enjoyable hobby doing coding, your motivation will be to do something else more enjoyable. Everyone saying "I couldn't figure it out so I quit" -- BALONEY. You can figure anything out, really.

No it's actually true, and everyone knew from the context I meant commerce monopolies in capitalist economies, such as Microsoft, IBM (in the early days of computers you apparently could get fired for writing a P.O. for a non-IBM machine), etc. Not talking about utilities. I meant commerce monopolies in a competitive market place, a monopoly that develops with 'network effects', 'switching costs', etc.

Here's all it takes for a monopoly to fail:

(switching costs become low enough) + (current monopoly has become a pain/overpriced/etc.) = get thee down satan and the monopoly is gone.

Friendster, Myspace lost their market as we all know. SO WILL FACEBOOK. There is no 'secret sauce' there, just network effects, and minor switching costs of transferring/losing the data you've put on your FB account.

Switching costs for desktop operating systems are dropping incrementally for obvious reasons.

Lloyds of London has been around a long time but that doesn't mean they're a monopoly.

Arrogance from a seller of a good or service alienates/pisses off their customers.

SCENE: You walk into a large retail TV/tech/stereo store. There are monitors displaying ads. NOT in a ubiquitous way; in an annoying ubiquitous way (ie. every 5 feet you walk in the store aisles, a monitor drops from the ceiling and displays an ad and you get used to counting your steps and every 5 feet you have to duck around the ad-bearing monitor).

You find a device online that disables the 'monitor drop' and bring it with you to that store.

Staff notice this and tell you "either turn off your device or leave."

What will you do? Phucking leave and never come back, that's what.

What if Best Buy was the dominant seller of TV/tech/stereos and the only place to get the Best Buy experience?

Monopolies don't last. Especially arrogant monopolies. It might take a while but if Best Buy was forcing people to view ads every time they visit the store -- and their customers started not showing up after being harassed by staff to 'stop using your monitor-drop blocker device' --

Best Buy would either

1) stop annoying their customers and find other ways to monetize

2) go out of business

The thing that people may forget here is the arrogant belief of this particular monopolist (Zuckerberg et al). That belief is "we got them locked, they can't get this experience anywhere else, we're #1"). Well that's a mistake on their part.

Can you imagine Jeff Bezos saying "effective immediately we're employing a FB ad model and stopping our users from ad-blocking -- I want more money."

Bezos is 100% opposite Zuckerberg. - Bezos knows Amazon is the monopoly - and yet he still he busts his bauls to make the site as non-annoying as possible; read a case study of how much attention Jeff pays to no-friction interaction for users of the Amazon site

Arrogant monopolists die. Zuckerberg needs to find a different way to monetize.

The mere fact that the dummazz thinks so little of his users that he comes up with "we'll force them to consume ads" instead of a Bezos "make users as happy as possible" shows Zuckerberg is an azz.

But then we all knew that because he stole the FB idea from someone else. NO FREAKING RESPECT. No respect extended from the guy -- so NONE GIVEN.

Here's an interview question I might pose to candidates (for a coding job):

"Which torrent site with access to popular songs and movies over the past 5 years has been the best, meaning the one you use most?"

My candidate responds and says "Pirate Bay" or "Kat".

If I have several candidates, this guy will be the last possible choice if every candidate is qualified because I'm assuming he's okay with using copyrighted works without paying.

Consider these scenarios -- stealing in your opinion?

- go to a restaurant, eat a meal, then leave without paying (you enjoyed something you were supposed to pay for but you did not pay)

- use public transit and not pay for the ride

- hail a taxi then run away when you arrive at the destination and not pay

If I asked a candidate "would either of these 3 scenarios above be okay?" -- would they expect me to hire them if they said one or more would be acceptable?

If I asked the candidate "how many times have you enjoyed a copyrighted film or recording -- and not paid?" -- 99.99% sure that every candidate would say 'never' even if they'd done so dozens of times.

Why would they lie to me about that? "If I tell the hiring manager I watch, listen to copyrighted stuff without paying, he might think that was wrong and not hire me, so I have to lie."

"It's not stealing, I just disagree with copyright laws/distribution channels/etc."

No it's stealing.

GOOD RIDDANCE. The example of Zuckerberg stealing the idea for Facebook and getting rich has contributed to the foolish belief that it's okay to "enjoy the benefit of something that was SUPPOSED to be paid for -- and NOT PAYING".

"I didn't steal any copyrighted material, my site just helped people who WANTED to enjoy the benefit of copyrighted material that was SUPPOSED to be paid for but didn't pay. So I'm in the clear!"

NO. Torrentz "Drove the getaway car", taking thieves to where the crime was committed.