Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck finding a sunny day because Pittsburgh enjoys the fewest hours of annual sunlight of any major city, and continues to have air quality as bad as any other US city, being in the top ten worst according to the Lung Association.
I don't feel like there's any major lack of sunlight and I've lived in Pittsburgh for years. Source?
Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
91–100 of 158 posts
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#92I lived in Pittsburgh for 17 years. I bootstrapped a company out of CMU, grew it to $25M/year in revenue and sold it to IBM. Pittsburgh is a great place to start a company, lots of tech talent, lots of support and exposure in the community, cheap rent. And it is today a much more enjoyable place to live than 20 years ago (great restaurant scene, bike paths, revitalized downtown). There are two big drawbacks: finding…
A drawback for us engineers: no moonlighting law. When you work for a tech company in Pittsburgh, they own everything you think and produce, even in your off hours when you're trying to bootstrap that startup. Pittsburgh can never turn into a Silicon Valley with this limitation.
What policy is this a consequence of?
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
As much as I love it here, we got our share of problems. Winter is rough and so is the biking situation, due to bridge related reasons. However the city is very good at dealing with the bad weather and the current powers that be have been doing a lot to make infrastructure more bike friendly.
What are the bridge-related issues? You appear to have a lot more bridges than Manhattan Brooklyn, which is nice. Is it the lack of proper bike lanes on the bridges?
I have a biased view on this (I briefly biked competitively), so take it with a mild grain of salt, but it's pretty much fine if you can be an assertive cyclist. Some of the bridges you have to be very assertive about owning your lane -- particularly the highland park bridge, to get to areas north/northeast of the city. From downtown to the north side, there are several bike-friendly bridges: The Clemente, Warhol, and Rachel Carson bridges all have sidewalks. To the south side, the Smithfield bridge has a very large (and very popular) sidewalk, and the newly renovated Hot Metal bridge has a dedicated bike span.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck finding a sunny day because Pittsburgh enjoys the fewest hours of annual sunlight of any major city, and continues to have air quality as bad as any other US city, being in the top ten worst according to the Lung Association.
What causes the poor air quality? There are no obvious pollution sources other than cars.
There are still major steel works in the area, some of which are operating with grandfathered emissions limits. Also Pittsburgh receives the wind-blown emissions of practically every coal-fired power plant in the nation.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#95Pittsburgh is a great town. It looks a bit like it was on the barely winning side of a fist fight, but it has lots going for it: - Two big, well funded, well respected schools cranking out talent. CMU is one of the top schools in the world for CS. - Cheap rent - If you want to buy a house, some really beautiful neighborhoods - SEI - lots of cyber security talent - Great food and activities, it's not hard to find plen…
Pittsburgh is a great town. It looks a bit like it was on the barely winning side of a fist fight I was born in Pittsburgh, and I have some experience with towns in the region and other rust belt river towns. Maybe I'm biased, but I'd say that Pittsburgh, in its good parts, looks better than most in the region. Also, I'm old enough to know the benefits of the Clean Air Act on that town. Once, you could literally smel…
I'll never forget, as a kid, seeing a news report on KDKA, showing a white cat with long fur. The only way to see that the fur was white, was to spread the fur and look at the base of the hairs, as the rest of the fur was an orange-pink color. This was down near J&L. (Yeah, I'm old.)
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some parts of the city are really beautiful and nice places to be, lots of great parks and so on It's hard to understate this point. Compared with San Francisco, Pittsburgh is much more visibly green. There are trees everywhere, grassy areas abound, and the city itself is nestled in green hills. San Francisco is full of concrete. The Bay Area is still really brown from the recent droughts. There are certainly peopl…
The Bay Area turns green and brown every year. It has nothing to do with droughts. In the winter, the grass on the hills is green. In the summer, it is brown or "golden." That color is what the phrase "Golden Hills of California" is referring to.
Rule of thumb is that the Santa Cruz mountains are green and the East Bay Hills are brown. When I moved to the Bay Area, I was taught that this is how you orient yourself: if green is on your left and brown on your right, you're going north; if green is on your right and brown on your left, you're going south; if you're driving toward brown, you're going east; and if you're driving toward green you're basically in the mountains already or on one of the bridges.
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a remaining conception of Pittsburgh as a dirty industrial wasteland. Today one good look at the city from a high vantage point on a sunny day kills this conception instantly.
Good luck finding a sunny day because Pittsburgh enjoys the fewest hours of annual sunlight of any major city, and continues to have air quality as bad as any other US city, being in the top ten worst according to the Lung Association.
Most people in California don't realize that the air quality in the San Francisco Bay Area is actually worse than in Pittsburgh [1].
Moreover, after growing up in Pittsburgh and living in Seattle, I can tell you that Seattle definitely has less sunlight (it's not even close) than Pittsburgh. So much less that my doctor had to prescribe my Vitamin D to address a deficiency I had when I moved there (after living in Pittsburgh my whole life, no problems).
[1] "California is home to eight of the 10 cities in America where air pollution is worst" https://qz.com/963089/california-is-home-to-eight-of-the-10-...
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#98[deleted]
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#99PG has written about what it would take for Pittsburgh to become a startup hub. The gist of it is talent (which it has) and capital (early stages).
1) How to Be Silicon Valley http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html
2) How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub http://www.paulgraham.com/pgh.html
Re: Pittsburgh Gets a Tech Makeover
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't feel like there's any major lack of sunlight and I've lived in Pittsburgh for years. Source?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_sunshine_d...
Seattle is shown to be even worse in the winter months than Pittsburgh on that chart.