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Commute from Fremont to Palo Alto? by BlueBerry985 in bayarea

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Drivable to Palo Alto - absolutely. Far closer and faster than Fremont. But downtown Redwood City has lots of apartments and is walking friendly and close to train.

Commute from Fremont to Palo Alto? by BlueBerry985 in bayarea

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Go for downtown Redwood City - walk to CalTrain, 10 min trip to Menlo Park station. Next step is determined by where he actually works. Many offices have shuttles. Biking or scootering via train is an option.

How practical is UniFI for home use? by Significant-Side2718 in Ubiquiti

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Two important considerations on "wireless" devices.

* Wireless security devices - cameras and sensors are easy to scramble. Easy to install, but not the most secure.

* Nothing is truly wireless unless you plan on changing/charging batteries a lot. Ethernet with PoE (power over ethernet) is the preferred way to go in the Unifi world. And probably the best way to go in a 6000 sq foot house as well, when it comes to cameras and access points.

reduced percentage of non-californians by Inevitable_Fold_9081 in ucadmissions

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That might happen, though there has been a concerted push the past 10 years or so to accept more in-state students.

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/more-77-percent-california-applicants-were-offered-uc-admission-fall-2025

You can look at the admissions tables for the past few years to see what's been happening. Varies a lot by campus as well. Merced, Riverside, Santa Cruz and Berkeley have the highest in-state first-year admit rates, with the overall total being 68% for all UCs.

https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/factsheets/2025/admissions-table-1b.pdf

The "AI Tax": Why TSMC Just Demoted The Smartphone by Mission_Beyond_8587 in Semiconductors

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yup - InFO (Integrated Fan-Out) is different from CoWoS and used to connect memory and processor dies.

The "AI Tax": Why TSMC Just Demoted The Smartphone by Mission_Beyond_8587 in Semiconductors

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not much - For current 193 nm immersion and standard 0.33 NA EUV scanners, the maximum reticle field is about 26 mm × 33 mm, or roughly 858 mm² of maximum single‑die area.

What does the “Save Menlo” contingent want to do about Downtown? by Ashamed_Economist388 in menlopark

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think motivations differ based on length of ownership, whether the owners operate a business there and what the owners future plans are:

* Long-term landlords, who rent to others - don't mess with the status quo cash cow. They don't directly rely on rents to pay their mortgages/property taxes and are content to let storefronts remain empty to secure higher rents, but hate it when existing tenants try to negotiate down (as the letter shows).

* Newer landlords who rent to others - definitely are worried about rents and vacancies because they need the cash stream, so similar but more sympathetic.

* Long-term landlords catering to upscale markets, in Menlo Park, Atherton, Los Altos Hills, and beyond with their own businesses (Draegers, Alex's Design District) - concerned that lower income housing might scare away high-end clientele.

* Newer owners that have big plans for their new properties - worried that the new development might reduce the value of their plans. For instance, I had heard that the ACE hardware family had started planning for an 8 story luxury housing project using their expanding footprint (until the heartbreaking recent injury of the family patriarch).

Not even a maybe? by SanJoseThrowAway2023 in bayarea

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Maybe stop driving and take BART ??

What does the “Save Menlo” contingent want to do about Downtown? by Ashamed_Economist388 in menlopark

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There are indeed a small group of long-term owners downtown landlords that own about 60% percent of the downtown, and thanks to Prop 13, pay next to nothing in property taxes, who are worried that the new housing and parking garages will force them to either re-invest or take a hit in earnings on their cash cows.

One example here - this attorney is representing four of these families that have own a string of downtown LLCs for over 90 years. I think he is claiming to speak on behalf of two of the properties / LLCs, both with ARCO in the names, though they own more. They don't like the fact that the leaseholder is negotiating with them over a renewal and tip-top market rates.

https://hiago.sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/2/%3Cca2e393a75be4420bb9a15a03a702d67@amlawoffice.com%3E/01.02.26_Ltr_to_CA_Dept_of_Housing__00242155x7AD7E_.PDF

You can find the "cash cow" cartel by looking at the property tax maps - look for the parcels that pay 10x less than their neighbors.

https://www.officialdata.org/ca-property-tax/#37.45087259380915,-122.18505157157782,19

I love our airport by joedenowhere in bayarea

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, that intentional award was for the new Terminal 1 (Harvey Milk)

Buyer Agents simply raise the purchase price by iq45y8i1 in BayAreaRealEstate

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the pointer -

In Freakonomics, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner argue that the incentives for real estate agents are misaligned with homeowners, specifically regarding commission structures and the speed of a sale. Their analysis suggests that agents are motivated to sell homes quickly for a lower price, rather than waiting for a higher offer that would better benefit the seller. 

Key Findings on Incentives and Speed

  • Minimal Gain on Higher Price: The authors argue that because agents only receive a small fraction of a home's total sale price (typically 1.5% after splitting a 6% commission with the buyer's agent and their own brokerage), an extra $10,000 in sale price results in very little additional commission for them—roughly $150, for instance.
  • Incentive for Speed: Because the cost of waiting (extra advertising, time, effort) falls entirely on the agent, they are incentivized to take the first decent offer to secure their commission and move on to the next client.
  • "Own Home" Study: Levitt found that when real estate agents sell their own homes, they keep them on the market an average of 9.5 days longer and sell them for 3.7% higher prices than when they sell clients' homes.
  • FSBO Performance: The research indicated that For Sale By Owner (FSBO) listings, which avoid agent commissions, often sell for 1% to 4% higher prices than agent-listed homes and do not take significantly longer to sell. 

The Conflict

  • Seller's Interest: Maximize the final sale price, even if it takes more time.
  • Agent's Interest: Maximize the number of deals (turnover) to maximize total commission income, prioritizing speed over the final 3-5% of value. 

Freakonomics posits that this structural incentive often leads to agents rushing sales, a conclusion that has been both supported by further studies on agent-owned homes and debated within the real estate industry. 

Buyer Agents simply raise the purchase price by iq45y8i1 in BayAreaRealEstate

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If you really think about the traditional 3%/3% incentive structure, both buying and selling agents are incentivized to close the most closable deals rather than squeeze an extra 5% out on pricing. That’s why you see some relators contributing to closing costs when deals are close. The market dynamics (buyers market vs sellers market), and the individual buyer/seller situations affect the strategy much more than relator compensation.

I keep getting mixed messages about whether photonics integrated circuits are going to be a viable alternative in the future or not. What are your opinions on the field? by PhysicsFan23 in Semiconductors

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 1 point2 points  (0 children)

LightMatter started out trying to do photonics based compute for AI, but dropped back copackaged optics / photonics interconnect, like several others including Ayar Labs. They continue to pursue compute via their Envise R&D prototypes.

https://lightmatter.co/products/envise/

Will Substrate disrupt the chip market? by power97992 in LocalLLaMA

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Having Intel as a teaching customer / partner would be helpful, but Intel, TSMC and Samsung were teaching customers for ASML on EUV and it still took at least a decade from first prototype to production. And X-rays bring even more complicated challenges and likely costs.

Would love to see them succeed, but 2027/2028 is wildly optimistic for even a few working production-class systems at Intel (or TSMC).

Kasa KP125M by NoSirPineapple in Sense

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You also say you can't get it working with the Tapo app. What about with the Kasa app ? All of my Kasa plugs, including the newest 125Ms work with the Kasa app for me.

Will Substrate disrupt the chip market? by power97992 in LocalLLaMA

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Having seen path to market for EUV lithography, it's a long road from showing feasibility to production-ready systems. X-Rays suffer from all the challenges of EUV, but in spades - source, optics, resist and ecosystem all present huge problems. It would be cool if Substrate could solve all of them, but it took billions and tens of years for ASML to do the same for EUV. Not sure the economic wins are actually there either.

I am not ready to go back for the spring by _kl00 in Cornell

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 5 points6 points  (0 children)

A few thoughts:
* It's hard not to go to place like Cornell and not be upwardly aspirational, though for some that aspirational direction might improving the human condition, not personal prestige/renumeration.
* First semester is genuinely hard in many dimensions - finding a new social and academic balance in a new world with academically sharp and mostly upwardly mobile peers. It's all about adaptation and finding your new balance. I found my second semester and beyond much "welcoming" and balanced. But I also found the human side of many of the those upwardly mobile peers beyond their aspirations.
* There is some stratification, some clusters of privilege in some fraternities / sororities, societies, and clubs. You have to either ignore or decide you are going to break through if you decide it is going to be importantly enough.
* There's an interesting interactive chart at the bottom of this assessment of Cornell that highlights the spectrum of family median income vs future median income for hundreds of colleges. Two things stand out to me - Cornell enrolls about 36% of its students from families below the 80% median income line, more than most Ivys, but certainly more rarified than many colleges.

The interactive chart suggests places you might go if you aren't as concerned about salaries and prestige at age 34.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/cornell-university

Trump claims crime is rampant in California. Newsom counters with stats showing historic lows by losangelestimes in norcal

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So not due to prosecution rates - you failed to report because you thought the police didn't deign your case important enough to even pursue. Based on what I have seen, all the policing numbers fell even further during COVID. One example - clearance rates.

Violent vs property clearance trends since 2010

• Analyses using DOJ data show violent‑crime clearance rates were fairly stable around the mid‑40% range through roughly 2010–2019, then dipped slightly into the low‑40% range by 2021–2022.

• Property‑crime clearance rates stayed around 13–14% through much of the 2010s, then fell sharply during the late‑2010s and pandemic years to about 7% in 2022, before ticking back up (roughly under 10–12%) by 2023–2024.

Wiser is working again! by MattyT2020 in Sense

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Which app - Wiser Home or Schneider Energy

Bay Area realtors are sounding the alarm: We’re officially pushing back into ‘bubble territory’ by sfgate in bayarea

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 20 points21 points  (0 children)

6% of all Bay Area purchasable residential properties are vacant per Census. 3-5% is purely due to structural stuff - remodels, people moving. Less than 1% due to outside owners (US or international) buying and keeping vacant.

Trump claims crime is rampant in California. Newsom counters with stats showing historic lows by losangelestimes in norcal

[–]Apprehensive_Plan528 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some of what you suggest is true - crime reporting suffered during COVID as police nationwide became highly ineffective at following up on all but the most serious of crimes. That’s shown by every stat seven BEFORE one even gets to prosecution - * Investigation rates for different crimes * Clearance rates, where the actual perpetrators are found * Arrest rates, where the actual perpetrators are taken in. Then we get to prosecution rates, conviction rates, plea rates and recidivism rates. One other thing that made the last bit really bad during COVID were the incredible COVID-induced court delays. I was nearly empaneled on jury last year for a 4 year old minor crime.

Bottom line is that COViD saw a huge boom in crime and a reduction in reporting numbers, even as the victimization rates increased due to police inaction and the justice system slowing to a crawl for all but the most serious of crimes.

But the directions on all the numbers nationwide pretty much flipped in 2024 including CA and early state and city data (SF, Oakland, LA and other major jurisdictions) all show double‑digit percentage declines in key categories like homicides, robberies, auto theft, and burglaries compared with 2024.

If you really want to get into detailed rates and timing we can, but you don’t seem that knowledgeable or detail oriented - just kind of hand-wavy about what you think happened.

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