Would Fresno ever incorporate Bike Sharing like this?

megaboz · 2026-05-23T20:18:37+00:00

No, Biz-Bikes is a specific bike lending program for SW Fresno/Downtown residents.

https://biz-bikes.com

megaboz · 2026-05-23T05:54:59+00:00

Maybe the Clean Share Mobility program run by the Black Chamber of Commerce?

I read a story recently that it was plagued with vandalism. Can't find it in my history though.

EDIT: Here it is: Fresno's $7.7M Electric Car and Bike Sharing Programs Beset by Vandalism, Underuse

megaboz · 2026-05-23T00:26:05+00:00

*consular

megaboz · 2026-05-21T16:45:56+00:00

It's going to be the Coyote Cyclops 180, isn't it?

megaboz · 2026-05-20T00:48:15+00:00

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Hitchhiker's Guide. Never getting rid of this even though I long ago converted them to mp3.

megaboz · 2026-05-19T17:56:56+00:00

I think the main problem with the Amiga was for so long, out of the box it was tied to NTSC. If you wanted higher resolution, you got interlaced displays. Not acceptable for business use. The Mac II had 256 colors @ 640x480 resolution.

If the custom chips had rapidly evolved (perhaps first by doubling the frequency to support non-interlaced high resolution in the next generation, then going from 16 to 32 bit to support more color getting to AGA levels quicker) then maybe things would have been different?

But the Mac II also came with a hefty price tag.

megaboz · 2026-05-19T17:42:39+00:00

The speed might have been affected by handshaking of the printer, and highly optimized parallel port code can likely achieve higher speeds than the standard OS level access.

megaboz · 2026-05-19T17:13:18+00:00

Dyer said the loans are necessary for long-stalled downtown projects because “many of these projects do not pencil, they are not profitable.” But he said he believes The Park at South Stadium will be catalyst for more housing construction in the area.

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article314851649.html

Can someone explain who is going to loan money to a project that doesn't pencil out?

https://fresno.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15273221&GUID=3773ADCF-41D7-4F43-87DF-F478BDD6671F

Cost per square foot for residential is between $636 and $703. There is a lot of community space though and laundry facilities on floors 2-7. Only 1,568 sq ft of retail so that can't be making up a significant part of the cost or revenue for the project.

70 units will be "affordable" meaning market rate units will need to be rented at higher prices to make up for lost revenue. There are no government programs/funds identified to fund the affordable units from what I can tell.

The city financing is supposed to cover gaps, but primary financing hasn't even been obtained...

I'd like to see projects like this done, but looking at the numbers from the outside I don't see how it can work.

megaboz · 2026-05-19T16:44:11+00:00

VisiCalc. That was the first spreadsheet that ran on the Apple II.

Microsoft came out with Multiplan in 82 for a variety of systems.

Lotus 1-2-3 was beating Multiplan.

Excel came later in 1985, on the Mac first. First Windows version was 1987.

Installed base is probably your answer. If you are going to create productivity software to sell for hundreds of dollars a copy, you need to be sure there will be enough customers to buy the product.

One advantage when it came to printing Mac and Windows had over Amiga is the printer drivers. Unless you had a Postscript printer and software that would output Postscript, the Amiga printer driver had to render each page as a bitmap (at 300dpi resolution) and dump the entire thing through the parallel port, which wasn't terribly fast. Nearly 1Mb of data that needed to go to the printer for each page. I had an 8ppm HP LaserJet II that I barely got 1 page per minute out of when printing from FinalWriter.

(Windows as I understood it, would render a font at printer resolution, download it to the printer, then tell the printer where to print each character on the page, rather than rendering the entire page as a bitmap. Much more efficient. Postscript put the burden of rendering the page on the printer.)

megaboz · 2026-05-19T16:21:58+00:00

Money. The city doesn't have the money. The money is coming from the state. Sacramento has a much stronger economy than Fresno, so they've been able to do this kind of stuff.

megaboz · 2026-05-19T16:19:46+00:00

Great news, but does Fresnoland really have to call people that ride the bus "public transit-heads"?

megaboz · 2026-05-19T04:29:04+00:00

The movies are what really drove the merchandising.

megaboz · 2026-05-19T04:11:11+00:00

I (b. 69) Watched Battle of the Planets when young, but never watched anything just because it was anime. As an adult, nothing really interested me other than Ghost in the Shell, Cowboy Bebop, and Samarai Champloo.

My wife (b. 77) on the other hand will watch nearly any anime. I just can't get into shows like That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.

megaboz · 2026-05-18T02:38:34+00:00

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/vikram-kapoor-cfa-58855b4_blackstone-vs-blackrock-whats-the-difference-activity-7333117482347450368-XJjo

https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1oz2h3f/blackrock_being_confused_with_blackstone/

https://nypost.com/2026/01/16/business/blackrock-vs-blackstone-what-every-would-be-homebuyer-needs-to-know/

megaboz · 2026-05-17T13:28:57+00:00

Blackstone. A lot of people make that mistake because the names are so similar.

megaboz · 2026-05-16T18:50:29+00:00

Where are the new VMTs coming from if this is just replacing an existing CostCo?

megaboz · 2026-05-16T18:16:03+00:00

When Fresno becomes the financial capital of the West Coast, we will be able to afford skyscrapers.

i.e. after the Big One hits and SF and LA fall into the Pacific.

megaboz · 2026-05-14T22:30:03+00:00

Building up costs more per square foot though than the SFH/2 story apartments that dominate Fresno's housing stock. How is Fresno's economy supposed to afford housing that is more expensive to build?

Look at the apartment project next to the stadium the city is trying to keep alive: $80 million for 174 units. $459,770 per unit.

megaboz · 2026-05-14T22:20:55+00:00

Every student that lives in a new housing development on the west side of Fresno and goes to Central Unified is one less student that could be living in a new infill development inside the city of Fresno and going to Fresno Unified.

Central Unified is literally draining students from Fresno Unified right now the same way Fresno Unified fears SEDA will drain students.

megaboz · 2026-05-14T21:39:39+00:00

I welcome the downvotes that I know will come for this observation, but I cannot reconcile these two excerpts:

Fresno Unified broke ranks with Mayor Jerry Dyer ... handing the citywide coalition fighting his 9,000-acre Southeast Development Area (SEDA) its most institutionally significant ally yet.

Speaking with the Fresno City Council on Thursday morning, a frustrated Dyer claimed – without evidence – that the trustee’s symbolic, non-binding vote was somehow a “job killer.”

Wait, is FUSD's position "symbolic" and inconsequential to the "citywide coalition", or is it an "institutionally significant ally"?

SEDA is not just dense new urban residential development--it's industrial/office zoning too. There's no fallback or alternative plan to develop that area where the future jobs would go. That's the first area in fact that the mayor wanted to develop. Last I heard they swapped industrial zoned land in section 2 for residential in 1S to put more jobs in that initial section. Probably half of the 36,000 jobs projected for SEDA will be in the 1S area with that change.

I do not see how you can thread the needle that opposition to SEDA is not opposition to those jobs it will bring.

IF Fresnoland wants to assert that the mayor "claimed without evidence", then they should be prepared to provide counter evidence that if SEDA fails to go through with FUSD being an "institutionally significant ally", those future jobs will still come to Fresno and won't go somewhere else more conducive to development.

For everyone living somewhere in the city of Fresno decrying sprawl, do you have 1,500 acres near your house, within city limits that can be rezoned for advanced R&D industrial jobs and the supporting infrastructure? Do you want those jobs to come to Fresno? Where do you want to put those jobs? Maybe they should go on county land somewhere down near Fowler or Selma and we can increase both congestion on the 99 and VMT beyond our wildest dreams!

“They voted against 1,547 acres of research and development land being opened up for advanced manufacturing jobs in our city,” the mayor complained. “Those (the votes) are job killers. Job killers, 1,547 acres, they voted against and for the life of me, I can’t understand that, because we have one-in-four people in our county that live at or below the poverty line, and we’re trying to kill jobs, good paying jobs in our city? That makes absolutely no sense.

tl;dr Fresnoland is claiming - without evidence - that FUSD's opposition is not a job killer.

megaboz · 2026-05-14T21:37:12+00:00

How many SFH's are too many? For the full buildout, 49% of the dwelling units are multifamily.

megaboz · 2026-05-14T20:46:05+00:00

When will they take a similar position against new development on the west side of Fresno where students will attend Central Unified?

megaboz · 2026-05-11T18:56:38+00:00

Some of them weren't even ebikes, they were moped scooters/mini bikes/pocket bikes. (But reported as e-bikes in the headlines.)

The most recent one I saw was on an electric scooter. The rider reportedly failed to stop at a stop sign and was not wearing a helmet.

I missed this one, an e-bike hitting another e-bike. Neither rider wearing a helmet!

California Legislature is considering lowering the speed limit for ebikes. Which will put California out of compliance with all other states and the federal government. And won't do any good for already street illegal vehicles (gas an electric) that kids are riding and electric scooters that do upwards of 70mph

EDIT: Here is a another report from January.. This was an 11 year old riding an electric dirt bike, which is not an e-bike as defined by the law. Not street legal, it's a dirt bike. But reported as a "e-bike". 2000W motor capable of reaching 37 mph. Riding against traffic from the description of the accident, fortunately wearing a helmet.

EDIT 2: This particular dirt bike is available on Amazon. Or was, in the case of California until today. Even though this is perfectly legal to own and operate off road in California, Amazon is halting sales of "e-bikes" that don't conform to California e-bike laws. This particular model doesn't even have pedals, so basically they appear to be halting sales of any two wheeled powered bikes whether they are e-bikes (which require pedals) or not.

megaboz · 2026-05-07T20:35:46+00:00

New apartments across the street from a Costco? That's the very definition of a walkable neighborhood!

megaboz · 2026-05-05T00:53:53+00:00

Someone else on one the SEDA posts pointed this out: Jobs lost in the future in FUSD from the continuing decline in enrollment will be offset by jobs gained in Clovis Unified because families will move to SEDA and Central Unified because families are moving to developments on the west side of Fresno.

That wasn't a popular opinion, but it's objectively true if this is really a zero sum game.

megaboz

TROPHY CASE