41–50 of 100 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Atherton residents include people like founders of A16Z, Stephen Curry and others. The funny thing, 10-15 years ago, a number of residences were second houses and generally empty. Back about 15-16 years ago, there was an international incubator BlackBox based out of one of the properties in Atherton.
Wasn't 10-15 years ago the financial crisis?
> They lost. So why did it still cost us $400 million? Did the article provide a direct answer to this? I see the $20M delay payments to contractors and the rise of labor costs cited, but is that all?
In fact the article comes dangerously close to admitting that there is correlation without correlation, it opens with:
> Here is the short version. In 2012, Caltrain budgeted its electrification project — the backbone of the Peninsula's transit future and a prerequisite for high-speed rail to ever reach San Francisco — at roughly $1.5 billion. By 2017 that number had ballooned to $1.9 billion. In between, the Town of Atherton sued.
While I don't agree with what Atherton did here (in general, I did not look at the specifics), you have to be fairly negligent to think you're going to build something in California without a massive legal headache. This is a legislative problem which it sounds like, for this narrow case, the legislature actually solved (shockingly to me). I find it hard to blame the residents of the city for exercising their rights.
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if we are going to complain about AI content then i suggest we also include some evidence to make the argument at least somewhat insightful. i'll start: pangram gives this a 100% score (without the sources section), on account of the em-dashes. remove those and the score drops to 49%. include the sources and the score drops to 36%. (edit, i misread the score: after removal of the em-dashes the result is 48% generated…
> They lost. So why did it still cost us $400 million? Did the article provide a direct answer to this? I see the $20M delay payments to contractors and the rise of labor costs cited, but is that all?
Which is obviously a bit sus, because the actual lawsuit froze everything for only around 18 months from Feb 2015 to Sep 2016.
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if we are going to complain about AI content then i suggest we also include some evidence to make the argument at least somewhat insightful. i'll start: pangram gives this a 100% score (without the sources section), on account of the em-dashes. remove those and the score drops to 49%. include the sources and the score drops to 36%. (edit, i misread the score: after removal of the em-dashes the result is 48% generated…
In my opinion, this construct is massively overused by LLMs and is extremely jarring to read. The pithy followup "The delay is the weapon." feels like Year 8 Debate Club and is very melodramatic and cringy, which LLMs do a LOT.
There are other spots that stand out, but this is the point where I said to myself "oh this is the point where the author stopped "cowriting" and just pasted the LLM slop directly."
The HN rules need to expand to ban all AI generated posts.
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While you’re at it, why not disestablish the state and have everything federal? There is value in local control - with some glaring exception.
Local control is desirable, the question is the proper granularity of local control in the modern era. The structure of places like the Bay Area with dozens of little towns that have veto power over everything is too granular. Planning should happen at the granularity of entire metro areas.
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That sounds too extreme. I like Australia where states (ok much less populated than US states!) have certain building powers esp. to build rail infra but local can manage planning rules pertaining to an area but within a state level framework.
I liked the government structure of the ACT when I lived there with a territory government that also had all the local government responsibilities for bins etc.