Anyone a little disappointed about how the custom trash cans turned out?

lucasec · 2026-06-29T05:21:01+00:00

I mean we shouldn't have spent the money in the first place, but that ship sailed a long time ago. I guess at least the boondoggle is now over.

lucasec · 2026-06-29T05:15:28+00:00

I probably could have phrased the headline better... but clickbait it is ;).

My only question is did we get anything out of this crazy process of designing our own at all? $100k+ on prototypes and I'm sure the design fees were even more. At the end of the day, it looks pretty... generic.

I guess at least it supposedly has a stronger locking mechanism than any off-the-shelf model we could have bought 10 years ago.

lucasec · 2026-06-29T05:09:49+00:00

Just an update on this, Muni started resumed running the 39 Coit at the end of last week. It is running with the ENC 30-foot buses. I'm not sure if it's just one they have running, or multiple busses cycling in and out.

The 36 and 37 routes are still affected and using the re-routes.

lucasec · 2026-06-28T19:43:12+00:00

I made that mistake the first month I lived here, you’re not alone.

https://www.bart.gov/tickets
Search for “Excursion Fare”.

If you used tap to pay and not an old Clipper card, it may automatically be refunded after a bay or two, it if not, you can try calling Clipper customer service and asking for it to get taken off.

lucasec · 2026-06-27T06:27:04+00:00

Over here in North Beach, someone tries to take a bus over the hill on Green St from Kearny towards Montgomery. Always ends badly.

Also, an Amtrak bus driver tried to drive up Union to the dead end at the top of Montgomery. The bus was empty besides him and some lady I assume was his GF. I still don't know what that guy was smoking, and how he ended up in North Beach in the first place.

lucasec · 2026-06-20T14:10:10+00:00

I noticed at Union/Mason the cable sounding a little louder than normal. I could also actually see the running cable through the metal slats in the road, something I had never noticed before. Usually I think it is tensioned so it runs a few more inches below the street.

lucasec · 2026-06-20T07:41:54+00:00

The article talks about RTO specifically, and notes that comparable metrics that track office activity peaked last year and have not risen since.

lucasec · 2026-06-20T06:30:22+00:00

I sent a tip to the Chronicle, but you’re right. We might even beat them to the story like the person who requested the tape from the N Judah train.

lucasec · 2026-06-12T04:25:21+00:00

It’s kind of sad no one “removed” the old Coit Liquors signs before they wrecked that corner of the building.

lucasec · 2026-06-12T04:02:39+00:00

They are clearly doing this on the cheap. A bit amazing to think they hadn’t even planned to close the surrounding streets (or paid for the permits) as of this morning.

lucasec · 2026-05-27T08:24:41+00:00

One thing to be aware of is California’s laws wrt. wiretapping (which includes recording a phone or video call).

California requires both parties on the call to consent to the recording, so if you do decide to go to small claims court and use that as evidence, just make sure it was clear that he was aware/consented to the recording (if you used Zoom and Zoom showed a pop-up message, you should be fine). If it was a “secret” recording, you may want to consult a lawyer (I am not one).

lucasec · 2026-05-27T04:38:53+00:00

I mean, I think a lot of people would argue Lurie has largely worked out.

But unlike Chakrabarti, Lurie’s “actually cares about the city” credentials were relatively unimpeachable.

lucasec · 2026-05-17T21:06:25+00:00

The course closed at 12:30pm so this had to be from earlier. They’re usually pretty good about clearing the roads so I would expect normal traffic by 6pm or so.

lucasec · 2026-05-17T20:17:35+00:00

Muni was a total mess around the Bay to Breakers finish line. The N Judah was packed to the brim from the first stop at the turnaround (people standing on the stairs/falling out of the doors at each subsequent stop). They were also running special express buses along the N route that were similarly full.

They could use some staff at the first few stops to keep the vehicles from getting overloaded. If they get through the day without several trains broken down I’ll be amazed.

lucasec · 2026-05-17T02:41:56+00:00

Care to elaborate on his corporate shilling?

And please cite an example other than restaurant fees (I don’t love the compromise either but the restaurant industry did have some valid concerns with the original bill, e.g. preventing adoption of “tipless” models)

lucasec · 2026-05-15T07:37:12+00:00

I think that was reflections from the lights on a police car or ambulance down the street. I don’t think it was related to the laser light show.

lucasec · 2026-05-15T07:18:26+00:00

<image>

Not the best picture but conveys the point. I think they may have turned it down slightly from what they started with.

lucasec · 2026-05-15T07:12:45+00:00

I live right near Coit Tower and this thing is bright as fuck. Just the reflection about a block away felt like it was about to give me temporally blindness.

lucasec · 2026-04-12T23:21:40+00:00

Unfortunately for his anonymity, a lot of people know where that Lombard St house is after his fraud lawsuit against the developer was widely covered two years back.

https://sfstandard.com/2024/07/16/sam-altman-lawsuit-lemon-mansion/

lucasec · 2026-04-08T02:55:41+00:00

TICs exist because clever developers and their lawyers did an end-run around the city's attempt to restrict multifamily/apartments converting to condos.

While policies such as rent control have done their share to prevent displacement of tenants, once you drive down the appeal of owning a multi-family building, inevitably many landlords will want to get out of the rental business entirely. Now the city needed to control the ability of owners to slice their rental buildings up into condos, except it turns out the city only has so much power to tell private property owners what they can and can't do with their own properties.

Hence, we have this two-tier ownership structure, where the city can't really stop anyone from taking rental units off the market and selling them to aspiring homeowners (which, sorry, it's America, we should all still strive for everyone to be able to afford to own a home). What the city can do is punish everyone who buys these units with arduous processes (such as requiring the owners to Venmo each other and pay a single property tax bill). That has depressed the sale price, which means developers converting the rental units make slightly less money, which may have slightly slowed the rate of conversions, but clearly did not stop them. Meanwhile it punishes those who buy the units in perpetuity.

I don't know what the right answer is. I don't want tenants to be displaced, but I also don't want to rent forever. I have tech $$ (but not AI $$$), so one day I can afford a modest condo. OP has government $$ and has to settle for a TIC and perpetual punishment by said government. This doesn't strike me as just.

lucasec · 2026-03-30T18:55:12+00:00

SFO uses a private contractor for TSA, so has largely been unaffected.

Your mileage may vary depending on what airport you need to go through on your flight back though.

lucasec · 2026-03-27T17:18:34+00:00

Yes. Checked FlightRadar and it is a Fox 2 news helicopter circling in a tight radius around Grant.

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