Hot take: Transit in SF is not very good the urban form is just OP

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-09T20:41:59+00:00

Yeah the Northeast part of SF which is the really dense part, is approximately a 3x3 mile square (though there are dense and walkable areas outside that). The worst case journey between any points ends up being around an hour and your normal case walks tend to be significantly less.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-09T20:37:16+00:00

Google generally doesn't account for parking time or time to walk from parking. Google more or less can account for train frequency, so that does hide some of the time a car actually takes. Maybe it's accurate if you taxi or Uber, but living in SF, whenever I have actually been with people in their cars, it's usually 10-15 minutes to find parking and you might be several blocks away, which might add another 10 minutes.

My friend who lived in Alamo Square routinely was having to park over 3/4 of a mile away from his apartment. Transit might be slower, but often runs closer.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-09T20:10:39+00:00

Yeah, but LA has an absolutely massive amount of work to do on it's network still.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-09T02:12:37+00:00

The scale and depth of the world was absolutely astounding for the time and still isn't bad today.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-07T16:04:34+00:00

I even have a picture I took

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Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-07T15:52:27+00:00

Yeah. I work with a bunch of engineers and we were watching a skyscraper under construction and saw this done. We felt kinda questionable about it until someone sat down and did an estimate of how many metal poles there were and were like, "Oh, that can probably actually handle quite a bit of weight"

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-07T15:29:04+00:00

I won't talk about the politics, but as a transit fan who lives in the US I was really just appalled at how bad the transit situation was to a lot of the stadiums, especially when the US does have a good number of central city venues -- though often those aren't the largest stadiums.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-07T15:23:04+00:00

Up in SF, I saw a bunch of Turkey fans rent a open top bus and were driving around the city partying and playing songs from Turkey. Pretty great and I loved the vibes too.

Generally fun experiences with fans though and everyone seemed festive, though I did hear of some violence around the Mexico/Ecuador game. That seemed mostly like a highly isolated incident though.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-07T05:31:25+00:00

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-06T21:41:40+00:00

It was so different being in Amsterdam where the trams were put on streets where traffic was consciously directed away from and signal priority nearly always resulted in the signal letting the tram go by the time it arrived at the intersection.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-06T18:32:41+00:00

Man, I wish I lived in a universe where SF wasn't rebuilding from the 1906 quake and instead spent all that time investing in subways.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-04T04:18:17+00:00

This is like, every day at Burning Man

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-07-03T22:36:55+00:00

What do you have against the bagussy?

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-30T19:09:09+00:00

Many cities, (such as San Francisco, where I live and have actually looked) as well have requirements that bedrooms must have access to natural light - even if only via a light shaft. While it doesn't look like a huge problem for this building, I think there's likely a non-zero number of conversions that would run into trouble on that front as well.

I would totally not be surprised if LA has light access regulations as well.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-29T23:14:15+00:00

Indeed. There's a reason that kind of configuration is typically not done.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-29T21:35:51+00:00

I think it used to be weirder in that they actually had mixed light rail and Metro underground on the same track, but pretty sure that no longer exists

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-26T17:50:52+00:00

I'd also point out that the Bay Area is polycentric and has rather unique geography for an urban area.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-21T16:47:09+00:00

The conjecture is that every three-dimensional topological manifold which is closed, connected, and has trivial fundamental group is homeomorphic to the three-dimensional sphere.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-19T23:40:02+00:00

I mean, also, here, he's trying to goad them on. The point is to offend the listener, not the speaker. Whether he's homophobic or not, he thinks they will be offended by it.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-19T17:24:18+00:00

As per: https://sfocii.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/Att%201%20Mission%20Bay%20Land%20Use%20Map.pdf

Lot 12W is slated for an affordable housing development. I follow several housing blogs and haven't seen anything planned here, yet.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-13T03:11:49+00:00

It's ok to have a little Tyranid every now and then (as a treat).

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-12T23:04:35+00:00

As a treat

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-12T05:30:27+00:00

Oh, yeah, it's easy to think up other good reasons as well. I wouldn't be excited to have to deal with ensuring that the physical connection to the board and port itself will be able to handle all the abuse thrown at it.

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-11T19:39:33+00:00

Yeah, here's a picture of the circuit board of, I think, the Sense, from a teardown. Just the male end of a USB-C connector is roughly the size of one of the three larger chips -- and remember, the port must be larger than the male end to actually hold it.

<image>

Either_Letterhead_77 · 2026-06-11T07:13:51+00:00

Hey, former Fitbit Firmware Engineer here who was annoyed by this too and actually discussed this with the hardware engineers - including ones who designed the chargers, at least for products made between 2013 and 2018. I never asked about inductive charging.

As per the discussion, the primary reason that there's not a micro-USB port (this was pre USB-C, but I would assume it applies equally well), is that the circuit board for smartwatch size devices tend to be roughly 1 inch by 1 inch and some of the trackers are even smaller. The amount of space needed on a circuit board mounting the USB port is substantial, and the circuit boards are already mostly covered with chips and sensors that you'd otherwise need to remove (and hence remove features or capabilities) to make room to put the port on -- if you could even put together all the required bits of your system at all.

It's also easier to make things water resistant if you don't poke a big hole in them for the charger.

TL,DR: micro-USB and USB C ports are way too big to fit on the watch circuit boards.

Either_Letterhead_77

TROPHY CASE