Viewing profile — osdiab

You kidding me? Physical infrastructure is absolutely central to the issue. Demand to live in SF skyrocketed but the city responded by resisting any expansion of its housing stock.…

Oh, I didn't answer the how - I had been to Japan a lot, so I already had friends here. When I made the move permanent, I had cofounded a company with a few friends, piloted doing …

I do believe city governments play an enormous role in these issues; the most obvious is the ridiculous and convoluted process for housing approvals in SF that has made it impossib…

I hope US cities wake up, become humble, and actually try to fix the deep hole of social issues they’ve dug themselves into. Best I can say is be active and vocal in your local gov…

I’m half southeast Asian, which is different enough people can tell if they get close, but close enough that I can blend in in a crowd. It depends where in Japan you’re moving to a…

Then great news, SF has built almost nothing since 1979, so you’re more likely than not to be covered! Maybe I was being a cheapskate for keeping my rent under $2k per month when I…

Uhh, maybe US cities haven’t, but here in Tokyo I never smell feces, step on needles, nor are there hordes of homeless people in every major part of the neighborhood, in a city tha…

I don't think the purpose of these policies are to produce a "better" student population, but are more that a) there are too many qualified applicants for the number of seats and t…

While the Chinese government has forced the majority of young people to learn Mandarin in schools, even just taking a 1 hour train ride from Shanghai to Hangzhou, both cities have …

Maybe in your region but in suburban Cleveland it certainly is freakish to see anybody on their legs outside of a shopping mall.

Unfortunately I haven’t found any good cycling mapping apps for Tokyo. Most apps try to take you down tiny streets but here those can be pretty dangerous and slow - lots of blind c…

Yeah, there are so many alternate syntaxes, shortcuts, and ambiguous statements in Ruby; just reading through Matz’s reference book on Ruby was a trip for me.

I’ve found that doing it has helped me sleep when I’m restless at night - I think it’s more about giving you something concrete to focus on in order to make you more conscious of y…

It's mostly been word of mouth for me - Japanese friends telling me DeepL is way better for Japanese, people on HN complaining about Google Chrome performance vs Firefox. And compe…

The US is so loud! I don’t know if it’s true but one of my theories is that a lot of US cities consist of uninterrupted grids, and noise from a much larger area than in cities with…

They definitely store location for the majority of users who use Google Maps, their location history is both very accurate and opt-out buried in settings menus. I don’t have number…

I live in Tokyo now and I can confirm a solid number of these are! Though also the thread notes several that have been demolished too.

I grew up in a wealthy American suburb, the nearest grocery store was a 40 minute walk from my home, and I would have looked like a madman for simply walking on any street in the e…

FWIW I moved to Tokyo in part because it’s not a hellscape, but a great place to live if you like cities (and have income). I guess if you only consider American cities then maybe …

Tokyo already passed and is enforcing an ordinance that banks smoking in all restaurants, cafes and bars. It’s great! There are some straggler restaurants not complying with it tho…

My friends actually are making a startup, Cupper [1], for ordering high quality decaf beans on the web, you should check it out :) [1] https://www.gocupper.com/

I do think you get a specific "tourist curated" version of Japan traveling this way - not that that's necessarily a bad thing, nor is it unique to Japan, but having spent my fair s…

The impact of having a site work without JS depends on who your site targets - if your site is mostly focused on young US professionals in cities using Macbooks and iPhones, bandwi…

The Unpaywall iOS workflow worked fine for me! https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/bypass-paywalls-safari-re...

Or at least that government has the incorrect values which may or may not align with those of society at large (I would argue, not)