The San Francisco Rent Explosion - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/the-san-francisco-rent-explosion/ <comment><USER3> I had to have a chuckle at these numbers...

"The population is also growing. From 2000 to 2010, 28,500 new San Franciscans arrived in the city. From 2010 to 2012, the city welcomed another 20,600 inhabitants in just three years."

Oh, is that all? I live in Austin, TX, the #1 destination in the U.S. for people aged 25-34. [1] You got 28,500 people in 10 years? We get that many new people _every_ year. In fact, perhaps even as often as every 6 months; 158 people move to Austin _every day_ by another estimate. [2]

You have to increase the supply of rental and housing units in order to accommodate population growth. Austin is struggling with it, too, but condos are springing up downtown.

San Francisco has no choice; Austin is barely managing to handle the growth, and we're a growth-happy boom town teeming with young folks. (Yes, it's pretty awesome to run a startup here too--I'm having a blast!) You must build more housing. If you are an SF resident, vote people in who will support new housing. Vote out the politicians who curb growth with ridiculous laws. Otherwise, all the cool people will end up in Austin (and other cities that can better manage the growth. ;)

[1]: [http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/for-people-on- the-m...](http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/for-people-on-the-move- austin-is-a-place-to-stop-a/nW75T/) [2]: [http://www.realtyaustin.com/blog/how-to-keep-up- with-158-peo...](http://www.realtyaustin.com/blog/how-to-keep-up- with-158-people-moving-to-austin-per-day.html)

<comment><USER4> I live in SF and it's certainly far from perfect. California no doubt has its share of problems too.

But as noted in comments below, I would never -- not ever -- consider living in a state run by people like Rick Perry.

<comment><USER5> Texas isn't really run by Rick Perry, it has a weak governor system. The legislature is the major problem.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but he said "people like", and don't most of them qualify?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe this was posted fairly recently:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/facebook_george_lucas_and_nimbyism_the_idiotic_rules_preventing_silicon_valley_from_building_the_houses_and_offices_we_need_to_power_american_innovation_.html)

"San Francisco—one of the most expensive cities in the United States—added just 418 new housing units in 2011, the fewest since 1993. What's more, 149 existing units were removed, leading to a nearly nonexistent increase in housing supply."

<comment><USER8> Meanwhile, Chicago, a city that is at best barely maintaining population, is seeing the construction of thousands of units in highrises in downtown alone: [http://www.domu.com/blog/apartment-projects-under- constructi...](http://www.domu.com/blog/apartment-projects-under-construction- update). I think from around my old apartment in Chicago right now, you can see three or four skyscrapers under construction just by looking around from the same spot.

There is clearly something massively dysfunctional in San Francisco. High prices should create the incentive for drastically increased supply. San Francisco should look like Toronto does, with dozens of high rises under construction trying to cash in on the high rents. See: [http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blogs-and-comment/what- toron...](http://www.canadianbusiness.com/blogs-and-comment/what-torontos- skyline-will-look-like-in-2020).

<comment><USER9> As indicated in the article cited above: [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/face...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/05/facebook_george_lucas_and_nimbyism_the_idiotic_rules_preventing_silicon_valley_from_building_the_houses_and_offices_we_need_to_power_american_innovation_.html)

      superficial explanation for the outrageously high housing
      prices in the Bay Area is that that there's not much
      developable land, especially on the peninsula between San
      Francisco and San Jose. In fact, the major reason is
      the NIMBY ("not in my backyard")

I can attest to this rampant NIMBYism. Not too long ago in my grandparents' neighborhood, a small group of neighbors had the area rezoned so it could not be developed any further. Previously, it was mixed use, but now it could only be residential with small businesses such as nail salons. Also houses were now limited to two stories because they did not want their views blocked.

Not surprisingly, the existing people with 3 or more story houses have seen their property values shoot up since those large houses can no longer be built there.

<comment><USER10> You can't really be expecting people to go against their own interests without a competing value proposition?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _In January 2010, the unemployment rate in San Francisco was 10.1%. By April 2013, the rate had plummeted almost in half to 5.4%. In just the first four months of 2013, the San Francisco unemployment rate fell 22%._

Considering those rent prices (location location location!), if you don't have a good-paying job you're not going to stay there long. No unemployment entitlement is going to cover three years of renting a one-bedroom apartment renting at twice the mortgage on a four-bedroom one-acre-lot house conveniently outside Atlanta. Of course the unemployment rate plummeted: surely sky-high rent drove out anyone not able to keep or get a high-salary job.

Author focuses on availability of _new_ units, and marvels at the low vacancy rate, without addressing the turnover of _old_ units. It's a limited supply of high-desirability housing; either pay a high price or get out, there's a line of people waiting for openings and willing to pay premium prices to get in. Of course unemployment is low and prices high there.

<comment><USER12> Tenant laws hurt availability as many people keep units off the market because the law puts such strict limits on landlords that it can become abusive. There are many horror stories in SF about tenants from hell.

<comment><USER13> Ugh...the "rent control" argument again.

First off, rent control doesn't apply to apartment building built after 1979, so, as noted below, its less relevant - especially with the new construction in SOMA.

Second, the anecdotal stories about landlords holding units off the market is just that - anecdotal stories. The owners of those buildings are Prop. 13'ed with a 30yr old assessment and are doing just fine. Opening a new unit means they can collect more rent at todays market rates. Its a silly story promoted by landlords that would like to make more money during the booms. Of course, its also those very rent control laws that protect landlords during the busts (2002, 2009, etc).

Sorry to say this, but rent will come down when companies in SF start running out of their free, investor money and have to turn a profit or sell themselves. More people will lose their jobs, won't be able to afford living in the city proper and people will move away. Thats the way it has been here for at least the last 20 years and probably longer.

By the way, also anecdotally since I can't find the reference, rents in the area have decreased by 5% on YoY basis.

<comment><USER14> However new buildings much provide a certain number of units as Below Market Rate housing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a New Yorker I'm always amazed as to how inconvenient of a city San Fran is. The BART has one track in the city, the Muni takes forever, walking is an absolute pain with all the hills, and there's so little mixed use development that you can really feel confined in many neighborhoods. Everywhere can't be New York, but cities like Boston and Chicago and D.C. have done a much better job of urban planning.

<comment><USER14> I can totally attest to feeling confined and inconvenienced. I live in Nob Hill, right at the top, and it is very confining because all the commercial areas are at the bottom of the hill (Polk Gulch, Downtown, North Beach, Chinatown). This means that even running to the corner store involves going all the way down the hill and back up.

Plus, as someone who bicycles most places, I am happy that I'm capable of biking all the way up without stopping, but it gets sooooo old and contrary to what you may think, it never gets any easier. There is nothing worse than going to the gym, getting in a good workout and then having to deal with that bullshit hill just to get to your bed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tend to think that the housing is presently at a local maxima. There are at least four large highrise apartment complexes going in SOMA right now, along with a good size complex on Guerrero and Market St. Additionally, America's Cup is currently in progress, which is completely eating up short-term supply in the northeast corner of the city. By the end of the year, the new apartment complexes will be online, and all of the short-term rentals for America's Cup will be put back on the long-term rental market.

Edit: "More than 4,220 units of housing began construction in San Francisco in 2012 — following a year in which just 269 net units were added." \-- [http://www.spur.org/publications/library/article/san- francis...](http://www.spur.org/publications/library/article/san-francisco- boom-back)

</comment><comment><USER17> And thats why SF is no longer relevant for startups. I work for db startup, and most of stuff is happening outside of California (Europe, Texas...).

<comment><USER18> People have been declaring that California is too expensive for startups for decades.

<comment><USER17> I actually blame California cost of living for stagnation of database industry.

I know many smart people in SF and LA, who created great open-source projects as a hobby. After a few years this project matures, and it would be great time to turn hobby into business. But they have to keep working for large company, to support family.

Some stuff (such as DBs) is just bellow VCs radar. I guess it is good for me. My startup is all about collecting abandoned ideas and adding nice wrapping.

<comment><USER19> That's essentially claiming that somehow market forces don't apply to the database industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Posted this in the comments section there, but I would love to hear your feedback as well.

I think the primary issue is constrained supply. As klochner said, barely any new housing is added and SF has a fixed land mass. But this problem is made much much worse by rent control.

If you have an apartment in SF with Rent Control and prices are rising, you don't move. This means fewer apartments are on the market, which further increases the price, leading to a price inflation cycle.

Of course, ironically now that I live in the city I would never want rent control taken away. Pretty much everyone else I've talked to, even those who agree with my assessment on its negative aspects, also find it very convenient once it's in their favor. So it's removal will likely never pass in a public vote situation.

<comment><USER19> Fixed land mass is a canard. Infill development requires little land. One Rincon Hill has almost 600 units and is built on about the size of a plot that a single-family home would have been built on, in most parts of the country.

Rent control is becoming increasingly irrelevant as anything constructed after 1978 is exempt, which is most of SOMA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting. I live in Kendall Square (Cambridge, MA) and have seen the prices rise (over the past 3 years) to the median prices outlined in the article.

I keep hearing about how insane SFO is, but can't help but think that Cambridge is experiencing a similar 'explosion' in it's own right.

I've gathered that the exit's out west are accelerating the price increases, but with the abundance of schools here as well as the interest in establishing a presence in 'tech square', rent has skyrocketed and I don't really see it slowing down.

Maybe I'm missing something, but why doesn't the acceleration in Cambridge get such attention?

<comment><USER22> I think one reason Kendall rents aren't a topic of discussion is also because the Boston/Cambridge area has lower rent areas that are close by and accessible via public transportation.

While it's nice to live right where things are happening, you could easily get a place out in Davis Sq or Porter Sq and take the T in, or in Somerville or Union Sq and have a 10 minute bike ride.

From what I gather, as a fellow Cambridge resident, the problem in the Bay Area is that areas with Somerville-level rent result in an HOUR+ commute, rather than a 10-minute commute.

There's a lot that's great about the bay area, but I think we certainly have the upper hand here when it comes to [reasonably priced] city live-ability and transportation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any time I see stories of how crazy the situation surrounding the SF housing market is, I compare it to my own city (Amarillo, TX), which has the opposite situation. A much smaller population over a larger area with plenty of land to sprawl into means that the population density (and average rent) is much lower. My 1 bedroom apartment is ~650/mo, and my impression is that that situation would be a laughable offer in any larger city.

The only issue? Amarillo is pretty far away from the other larger cities. In the plains, we talk of distances between cities based on the number of hours it would take to drive that distance. Six to Dallas/Fort Worth, six to Denver, four to Oklahoma City, ten to Houston. Combined with the lower population, not much of an urban culture makes it out here. I don't mind, though, and because of the low cost of living and the Internet bringing the world to me, the low cost of living makes up for it. I'm not working with a startup nor on any products of my own at the moment, but should I start, I don't think I'd relocate unless a very compelling offer came my way.

<comment><USER24> You talk about time to other cities because it's a constant.

We talk about miles because otherwise, we'd have to say,"I live seven minutes from downtown SF between 10pm and 7am, an hour and a half between 7am and 10am, twenty minutes between 10am and noon, an hour between noon and 2pm, forty minutes between 2pm and 4pm, an hour between 4pm and 7pm, and half an hour between 7pm and 10pm."

<comment><USER23> Very true. That the roads between these cities mostly go through sparsely- populated rural areas helps.

EDIT: Though, the point I wanted to make was that it was an abstraction over the longer distances between the cities. To rephrase my examples, it's 360mi to Dallas, 430mi to Denver, 260mi to OKC, and 600mi to Houston. (Now that I'm looking up distances, I can add 500mi and 7.5 hours to Austin in that list - that length isn't in my cache, so to speak.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Oakland and Berkeley should be ripe for startups. The rent is drastically lower than SF, both for commercial and residential space, and they are still very close, via freeways and BART to most of the areas that make San Francisco attractive. The East Bay has its own cool/interesting aspects too.

Disclaimer. Just moved to Oakland. Loving the lower cost of living and proximity to my old haunts in SF.

</comment><comment><USER26> I live in Petaluma up in Sonoma county. I commuted to the city for a year on a nice direct bus-line that usually got me to/from the city in about an hour. I know that sounds long but the bus was more comfortable than bart, had wifi and I'd just code my way to/form work. Seemed better than as East Bay commute.

Best move I've ever made. Surrounded by beautiful country, better weather and a very friendly, hip community with great restaurants, bars and the like.

It may not be for the 20 year olds, but when you're ready or can work a couple days from home, there are definitely affordable alternatives other than SF and the Valley. My previous rent check now covers a house mortgage, yard, insurance and taxes. Plenty of places in northern or western Marin that are the same. It's more affordable than you think.

Almost more importantly, my neighbors and friends out here aren't all in startups. There's some actual diversity to the residents, being a mix of farmers, blue collar workers and desk job commuters.

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's my ill-informed take on the dilemma (I no longer live in SF):

* More high-rises means that SF loses it's charm

* The technorati are cash rich so they'll keep on coming anyway

* Soaring rents are forcing out those who make SF the desirable, culturally rich place that it is

* Eventually this corrects itself and Oakland becomes the desirable, culturally rich place (already happening)

* Rinse and repeat

<comment><USER28> > Soaring rents are forcing out those who make SF the desirable, culturally > rich place that it is

If by culturally rich you mean burner babies, human freak shows, and unemployed artists who've depleted their trust-fund, then yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish that this article discussed other factors that are causing rents to increase absurdly in other cities as well. In Portland, for example, rents have gone up 20-30% in the last couple of years. Why? I don't know the whole answer, but some possible factors are:

\- People who lost their houses recently have trouble qualifying for a mortgage and must rent instead.

\- Investors (Wall Street and otherwise) are buying up houses to rent because it's hard to get a good return on your money in other ways.

\- There still exists some amount of "shadow inventory" that banks are keeping off of the market, either on purpose or because foreclosing on a house has become more expensive and time consuming.

Source: [http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/real- estate/articles/renta...](http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/real- estate/articles/rental-market-madness-march-2013)

<comment><USER30> At an abstract level, it's likely caused by low/stagnant supply, and increased demand which is inelastic (not affected much by changes in price).

Imagine a real estate market with only 100 1BR apartments to rent. If 85 are occupied, 15 available, and 5 people are trying to rent those 15, the price of rent should remain about the same as 10 will remain vacant.

However, if 40 people are trying to rent those 15, the price of the 15 will be bid up due to a limit in supply. Then the remaining 25 people will continue to bid up rents for any new vacancies. A scenarios like this can cause rents to skyrocket, especially if supply remains nearly constant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yeahhh I'm living in SoMa and paying much, much below the median cost for a 1BR, but I'm thinking of moving out to the peninsula after my lease is up even if I continue working in the city. $200/mo for a Caltrain monthly pass and 1 hour commute one way (on which I can do whatever I want because I'm on a train!) is worth it for me to live closer to my friends (many of whom go to Stanford), not be clumped up with thousands of other people, and have a cheaper apartment.

SF is really going to need to figure out its artificial supply scarcity problems soon.

<comment><USER32> Where on the Peninsula would you live that's substantially cheaper than SF? The area around Stanford is fairly pricey.

<comment><USER33> You can easily find a bedroom in Palo Alto for $1500 (maybe not right downtown, maybe as part of a bigger house/apartment, but a bedroom to yourself). It seems like ~1k is still achievable if you're patient and any part of PA will do. And it only gets cheaper if you're willing to go to Mountain View (only a bit cheaper), Redwood City, or really any other part of the peninsula.

<comment><USER34> In Sunnyvale-Santa Clara area rents for 1BR's are approaching 2K. So I find it hard to believe that MV PA is $1500.

<comment><USER35> He said a "bedroom", not an apartment. That actually seems high to me - <USER2> you're willing to live with roommates you can find plenty of places for around $1K/month, or even a bit less.

Mountain View rents for a 1BR are running around $1700/month in a not-so-great neighborhood, or about $2k/month if you're close to the Googleplex or downtown (except for a few smaller family-owned apartments...owner-rented places tend to have smaller rent increases than manager-rented places, since usually a family just wants to find a good tenant and have them stick around rather than take the risk of getting a bad tenant).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> 1\. San Francisco is small enough that there is in how much housing stock is created, with the same development groups at times opposing growth and at times advocating for growth.

2\. Since building codes and zoning laws are often manipulated to adjust supply, there is predictably a lag between need and updated codes. We are in the middle of a housing creation wave. There is currently a large volume of to-be-constructed units that have been approved by the planning commission and will be entering the market in the next year [1].

3\. One of the most overlooked sources of demand pressure is the recent and rapid rise of west coast properties as good investment vehicle for Asian investors [2].

4\. Re: rent control - it is intentional that the community believes it is more valuable to keep rental housing stock fluid and accessible, at the expense of investment appreciation. Or, at least the community used to believe - given the changing demographics of San Francisco, I would expect these rules to change in the next decade or two. A reasonable comp is changes in how rental stock and rent control is treated in Berkeley over the past two decades.

[1] [http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=1691](http://www.sf- planning.org/index.aspx?page=1691) [2] [http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22313326/bay-area- rea...](http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22313326/bay-area-real-estate- market-bolstered-by-investments)

</comment><comment><USER37> Q: Can anyone document a situation where increased housing supply didn't just take the edge off the rate of rent increases, but actually pushed prices down?

I've been able to watch some dramatic housing supply buildouts in a few areas, and my observation has been that the owners almost always price new housing somewhat above market rates for existing housing -- after all, it's new, and it's often marketed as luxury housing (plus the building costs were in $LAST_YEAR dollars and are mostly unamortized rather than in $DECADES_PAST dollars and mostly amortized).

I'd think this might be more true for land-constrained places like San Francisco, where the only way to increase supply is up, so it's more capital intensive and _only makes financial sense at a certain price_.

There's a few places I've observed a decrease in price, but it hasn't been because of supply increase. It's places like Detroit where demand drops, usually because the economic activity of the region stagnates or collapses, thought it's sometimes because of health/property hazards instead.

If I'm right, building more might _stabilize_ prices in SF, but they're not going down, short of the current tech boom there turning out to be an unsustainable bubble. Or maybe a major natural disaster.

<comment><USER35> Rents - like wages - tend to be sticky downwards.

Usually what happens is that a large increase in supply doesn't immediately push prices down, but results in a large overhang of vacant housing stock. The developer eats the cost on that for a while, but then the next recession hits, people lose their jobs, banks foreclose on the properties, and that starts the tumble in prices. That's how it worked in 2009 - rents dropped significantly in the Bay Area as employment numbers tumbled and people moved in with roommates. It does depend on their being a recession before demand catches up with supply...if there isn't, prices just don't increase as fast in the meantime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is why I wont move to SF area. Housing prices are insane. Not worth living in a cave for that amount of money, I don't care who I work for.

</comment><comment><USER34> Will the tech community ever get politically active and do something about the lack of new construction and rent controls creating greater scarcity?

<comment><USER39> I don't know about "The Tech Community", but better, cheaper places to live elsewhere do attract individuals that don't seen to be hung up on SF and SV. You can code anywhere and find fellow geeks that don't waste money on crazy rents.

<comment><USER34> Been there done that. This is my second tour of duty in SF-SV. Opportunities in the tech industry are unequaled by any other region in the states. India is getting there I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> More startups should move to low cost areas such as Austin Texas!

<comment><USER41> Only if you like live music, a beautiful city, wonderful people, and an old guy who rides his bike around town in a thong, usually pink.

<comment><USER42> Why I don't live in Austin: [http://weatherspark.com/#!graphs;a=USA/TX/Austin](http://weatherspark.com/#!graphs;a=USA/TX/Austin)

<comment><USER43> Here in NYC it's at least as hot, but air conditioning solves the problem nicely during day hours.

<comment><USER44> NYC is above 90 for what, 10-20 says a year? I'd wager Austin is above 90 for 150+

<comment><USER42> Close.

Average # of Days Above 90 degrees: 111

Source: [http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/](http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I hear Detroit has some pretty cheap rent these days. Maybe it's time for an exodus?

</comment><comment><USER46> Its unsurprising that SF would eventually have a rental market as bad or worse than NYC. I'm just surprised it took this long

But at least in NYC developers are constantly adding bucketloads of rental inventory, especially in Brooklyn and Queens. The restrictive development policies of not just San Francisco but other Bay Area municipalities sounds like a disturbing crisis is on the horizon. Pretty glad I'm not planing on moving back there anytime soon...

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm currently living in my startup's office closet in SOMA.

I used to have an apartment a few blocks away, but my roommate moved out and the rent went up. From a month before my move-out to a week after, I scoured through craigslist trying to find an acceptable home at a reasonable price. But now, having lived in my office for 3 weeks, I have lost all will to look.

Perhaps I don't get paid enough as a developer in SOMA. I'm certainly not making six figures.

</comment><comment><USER48> The numbers of units being built in the linked SF Business Times article [0] seems to contradict those from the SF Chronicle [1].

Business Times:

        Nearly 8,000 new apartments, mostly in mid-rise and high-rise buildings,
        will come on line between now and 2015 — 3,498 in 2015 alone. It's more
        new rental housing than was built in the last 15 years combined, according
        to real estate research firm Polaris Pacific.

SF Chronicle:

        Largely in response to the city's growing technology sector, 22,000 residential
        units are in various stages of approval and construction. … Since 2008, only
        about 1,710 units were built each year, compared with an average of 2,220 each
        year between 2004 and 2008, according to the department.

If the average was 2,200 housing units built each year between 2004 and 2008, that's 11,000 housing units. Granted the Business Times is using apartments as units, while the planning department uses housing units.

Looking at the planning department data [1], there are currently 28,010 housing units approved and 3,930 under construction. The total pipeline is 43,580 units. For the previous reports they provide, we've got:

      * Q1, 2007: 9,305 filed, 4,736 approved, 4,978 under construction, 30,002 total
      * Q3, 2007: 10,708 filed, 5,005 approved, 6,134 under construction, 31,761 total
      * Q4, 2007: 20,890 filed, 4,570 approved, 6,790 under construction, 40,370 total
      * Q1, 2008: 34,510 filed, 4,560 approved, 7,520 under construction, 53,980 total
      * Q2, 2008: 32,370 filed, 4,780 approved, 7,480 under construction, 51,470 total
      * Q2, 2009: 34,570 filed, 6,200 approved, 6,510 under construction, 54,610 total
      * Q4, 2009: 30,370 filed, 8,220 approved, 1,320 under construction, 46,600 total
      * Q2, 2010: 30,780 filed, 5,870 approved, 1,480 under construction, 43,780 total
      * Q3, 2010: 20,710 filed, 16,690 approved, 1,180 under construction, 44,100 total
      * Q1, 2011: 15,610 filed, 22,590 approved, 1,730 under construction, 45,820 total
      * Q2, 2011: 7,620 filed, 29,760 approved, 1,820 under construction, 45,760 total
      * Q3, 2011: 7,620 filed, 30,280 approved, 1,990 under construction, 46,620 total
      * Q1, 2012: 6,180 filed, 27,670 approved, 3,990 under construction, 42,520 total
      * Q2, 2012: 6,940 filed, 28,060 approved, 4,220 under construction, 43,280 total

So, data-wise, it's not clear this is as big a construction boom as it's made out to be. As an SF resident, however, I've never seen so much housing under construction, so maybe it's just more visible?

Does anybody else have any data?

[0] [http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print- edition/2013/0...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print- edition/2013/05/17/san-francisco-rental-construction-soars.html?page=all)

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-apartment- construc...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-apartment-construction- boom-around-the-corner-3428146.php)

[2] [http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=1691](http://www.sf- planning.org/index.aspx?page=1691)

<comment><USER48> Ooh, more data from the Housing Inventory reports [0] by the Planning Department.

Net gain or loss of units:

      * 2000: 1,797
      * 2001: 1,779
      * 2002: 2,408
      * 2003: 2,496
      * 2004: 1,487
      * 2005: 1,855
      * 2006: 1,914
      * 2007: 2,567
      * 2008: 3,263
      * 2009: 3,454
      * 2010: 1,230
      * 2011: 269

[0] [http://www.sf-planning.org/index.aspx?page=1663](http://www.sf- planning.org/index.aspx?page=1663)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> How much potentially rentable space is currently being held off the market by disgruntled landlords?

I seem to recall an article about at least one owner who was tired of bad tenants. He had mentioned that he wasn't the only one and that there were many who just weren't leasing out otherwise empty space.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm beginning to be glad I'm not in the Valley. My competitors there might have access to far more VC than I do, but their cost structure is going the wrong way for them with these crazy rental prices.

</comment><comment><USER51> Can a local explain what is "wrong" with Sunset/Parkside as they are half the price? Surely there is some attraction to being able to observe the ocean, sunsets and being alongside a park?

<comment><USER52> Nobody in the tech scene thinks there's life west of Divisadero.

In my experience, if you grabbed ten tech people at random, you'd find at most one person who could tell you anything at all about neighborhoods outside of the Mission and SOMA. The Googlebus picks people up from their home in those neighborhoods in the morning, and drops them off again at night. There is nothing else.

<comment><USER53> Life west of divis, southwest of Glen Park, South of Bernal and Dog Patch.

Honestly, the inner/outer richmond has better restaurants than SoMa.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Rising rent is a leading indicator of rising house price, 6 months to 1 year. If there's that house you want to buy, buy it now. House price will move up in the area.

<comment><USER28> I bought in November for this reason. My home value estimate on Trulia and Zillow has increased by nearly 50% since I purchased. I thank my lucky stars every day that my wife and I were ready to buy at that time. I dread to think what we could afford in today's market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Do San Franciscans have to pay a broker $5000 every time they move? If not, the city is still _much_ cheaper than New York.

</comment><comment><USER56> Did... they do that svg path overlay on the map image by hand? Or is there something that makes creating these shapes easier?

</comment><comment><USER57> This could be mostly addressed overnight by abolishing the Ellis Act. This will never happen.

</comment><comment><USER58> "In San Francisco last year, only 269 new units came on the market."

<comment><USER19> The most-loved canard on HackerNews?

<comment><USER24> No, that's DuckDuckGo.

<comment><USER59> That's a mallard.

<comment><USER24> No, mallards have colored heads. Brown for the female, glossy green for the males.

(Apologies for even more off-topic, but xkcd #386.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> How do people afford this?!?

<comment><USER61> Not sure if you are being rhetorical, but the answer is that the new entrants are generally childless and making at least $80k annually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> That's horrible.

Paying the high rents isn't _that_ bad. It sucks to have to have sell off your prime saving years to landlords, but the high tech wages and career benefits of spending one's 20s in high-prestige companies almost sorta quasi-compensate for that.

The problem is that it's culturally devastating when rent gets that high. When rent prices go up, losing a job is a financial catastrophe (as opposed to an annoying inconvenience) and employers know they can get away with more bullshit. Adventurism goes away and you get an almost creepy deference to authority in the workplace that's unbecoming of high-talent people. That's a big part of why the New York startup scene is, while well-funded, so unimaginative and mediocre.

If Silicon Valley wants to be relevant in 25 years, it will drop some Nordic Indignation on the NIMBY assholes. New York has tons of other stuff and will be fine (as a city, if not necessarily a tech scene) when what is now called "the Series A crunch" is fully fledged and recognized as what it it is-- a post-bubble correction, the start of a bust-- but the Valley will die if it doesn't reverse course. (By the way, one might think that prices would come down and reverse the problem; that doesn't happen. Real estate prices are so sticky against downward movement that, by the time they start to seriously drop, it's too late.)</comment>


heyOK - super easy way to organize with friends, messenger bot - <AUTHOR> https://facebook.com/heyokapp <comment><USER2> Neat, I might be able to use this to organize for baseball tonight

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome - let us know how it goes!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! This bot was made to remove the need to copy and paste same message to lots of friends just to make last minute plans.

How it works - message the HeyOK bot and we'll make whatever you type shareable. Share it with your friends and we'll add an "OK!" button to the message. We'll let you know which friends clicked OK

Here's a short how it works video (with volume) - [https://www.facebook.com/heyokapp/videos/460327694335849](https://www.facebook.com/heyokapp/videos/460327694335849)

Simply message the Facebook page to use it - facebook.com/heyokapp

It's available to anyone with the Facebook Messenger app, no download required!</comment>


Ask HN: Why No Ajax in HN? - <AUTHOR> I Upvote a post,the vote count will not be updated. I should reload the page everytime to check the top post and also the number of votes. Why Ajax like techniques aren't employed in HN? Any Downsides of using it? <comment><USER2> I think one reason might be the "framework level" news.arc code, which does a continuation-passing-like thing for forms to create a sort of synchronous straight-line flow in the code without lots of callbacks. A side effect of that is that some of the code is very tightly coiled around the render-form post-form flow of a standard, 2001-era web application.

Another reason is that Graham simply seems a little allergic to Javascript. When you look at HN, think Rails 1 (they come from similar eras). Today, if you had an application like HN, you'd probably have a serverside that primarily provided a JSON HTTP API for a Javascript project that managed almost all the actual UX. But that wasn't at all a normal way to design applications back when HN was first written.

</comment><comment><USER3> Conversely, ask yourself the opposite question: what will happen if AJAX voting were enabled in HN?

\- votes will be counted immediately, the number increase. Then what?

While this is good UX, would this be helpful in the entire context of HN? What if your vote were a ghost vote - i.e. your user account is a ghosted account? Should it show just for you? If so, you are adding a lot of complexity to the system. Why is such complexity needed?

Now, I can't speak for dang and kogir, but I think it's a rather good thing that the vote counts don't increase immediately - prevents gaming

<comment><USER4> I think it would also be visually distracting and place too much emphasis in how high stories are ranked. Note also that Reddit doesn't work this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The honest to god answer is very simple. The website was made, and administered by pg (Paul Graham) directly. He was (until very recently), the only eyes on the code base, and the only maintainer. The code was sloppy, and generally un-reviewed. A lot of features didn't exist because they didn't exist when the site was started, or were just deemed unnecessary.

As of recently a new team has taken over, who before adding new features is porting the entire website over to a more maintainable code standard. New features are coming, just eventually.

<comment><USER6> It's fairly impressive that HN lasted this long without creeping featurism and an iteration of "I'll refactor this in my favourite language"(tm) by a new maintainer who (as is normal for humans) confuses "my personal preference" with "objectively better". It couldn't last forever.

<comment><USER7> I think you mean rewrite, not refactor.

* or perhaps not, but cynicism and beer lead me to a pessimistic outlook as the clock nears midnight</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Runtime configurable HTTP proxy designed for E2E testing, written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/martian

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

This is yet another HTTP proxy written in Go so I'll try to be brief. :)

Martian was written to provide a solution for writing larger E2E tests that require custom behavior at the request/response layer.

For example, we've used it to spoof headers, redirect traffic to local fakes, and verify that all traffic coming to the backends is over HTTPS.

We wrote Martian so that others could build their own proxies to suit their own needs. Martian provides a Go API[0] for building custom behavior and a JSON API[1] that can be used to reconfigure the proxy at runtime. We provide a fair bit of custom modification and verification behavior out-of-the-box, such as header modification[2], URL verification[3], and filtering based on proxy credentials[4][5].

Check out the README and if it seems interesting feel free to ask questions or let us know what you think. :)

An example proxy binary is available in the examples directory[6] and can be run with `go run`. Note that it requires Go 1.5 due to some recent changes in crypto/tls we depend on for dynamically generating certs.

[0] [https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/martian.go](https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/martian.go)

[1] [https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/parse/parse.go](https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/parse/parse.go)

[2] [https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/header/header_...](https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/header/header_modifier.go)

[3] [https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/martianurl/url...](https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/martianurl/url_verifier.go)

[4] [https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/proxyauth/prox...](https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/proxyauth/proxyauth.go)

[5] [https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/auth/auth_filt...](https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/auth/auth_filter.go)

[6] [https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/examples/main....](https://github.com/google/martian/blob/master/examples/main.go)</comment>


Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing - <AUTHOR> https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/january/jobs-involving-routine-tasks-arent-growing <comment><USER2> I'm interested by the classification here.

Many backend jobs involve routine work from people who could be doing non- routine work if the CRUD routine job was automated. Within an industry or a profession it seems like there could be a mix of routine and non-routine work.

Similarly, how many people's jobs have changed from being routine jobs to non- routine jobs through either retraining or automation allowing them to take on higher order work? Again, doesn't say.

Also, interesting to note that the actual unemployment rate for routine congnitive, routine manual etc 2009 shock aside doesn't actually look anomalous compared to much of the last two decades of the graph is to be believed.

<comment><USER3> I think you've hit on the right point. I'm also always curious about how far these definitions can and should be pushed.

Talking in terms of "automation of routine tasks" sounds reasonably descriptive of how the spread of technology works. But, technology is a concept that is notoriously elusive in economics. That's because it's hard to clearly define in concrete terms useable in the context of economic theories, whether they're mathematical conceptual.

For example, we've always been imagining "robots" as tin humans that do stuff people where doing. You have science fiction movies, books and such being written right now with this imagery, just like the 1950s sci fi art, Jetsons. Just like the mechanical turk and automatons of the 1700s.

I think robots are a useful mental placeholder. "Technology will be doing task X." But in reality, technology is usually more like "tools." Imagine a mechanic in the future. Maybe the cars come in with better self diagnosis before he sees them. The parts he needs are already known so he has them ready ahead of time. An AR (or whatever) info delivery thingy tells him exactly how to install or remove parts. etc.

What you have is a more useful mechanic. As long as a mechanic is still involved, I think "tool" is a better description. If people are no longer involved, "robot" seems a bit better. Ahead of time, when you are trying to imagine where technology is going it is very hard to discern tools from robots. Is a lawnmwer a robot? Is a a self guiding scalpel a tool?

<comment><USER4> > What you have is a more useful mechanic.

The endgame here is that I don't need a mechanic.

<comment><USER3> Yup, potentially. In that case what you have is a more useful car, or cloud transport service.

But endgame, where it's "robots" as we all imagine it is always a moving target. Mechanics weren't needed 200 years ago either. So far, we've needed new professions. Maybe that will end.

My point was just that automation is a fairly fuzzy way of explaining what is going in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assisting or caring for others is not a low-skill job! It may not require a doctorate in theoretical physics, but it requires a lot of emotional intelligence, stamina and ability to be present with other people. It's far from routine!

This immediate nitpick aside - I think it's great that routine task jobs are going away. The bulk of those are mind-numbing, dead-end jobs - do we really need to keep subjecting people to 40h/wk routine boredom?

<comment><USER6> > _This immediate nitpick aside - I think it 's great that routine task jobs > are going away. The bulk of those are mind-numbing, dead-end jobs - do we > really need to keep subjecting people to 40h/wk routine boredom?_

Sure, it's great that we are gaining this capability, and the people working towards it should be lauded for their progress. The issue is that many people rely on the ability to exchange 40h/wk of routine boredom for the basic necessities of living.

Our society assumes that most people will contribute enough value from their "work" that they can exchange for the things they need in life. If their work loses all value, then we need to figure out what else we can do for/with these people.

At this point, it seems as if our engineering ability is advancing beyond the pace of our social structures and legal system.

<comment><USER7> > If their work loses all value, then we need to figure out what else we can > do for/with these people.

Global warfare would solve this problem on all fronts. You know, if the prospect of war these days didn't stand a good chance of ending the species.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py Scary parallel here with the recent jeff dean talk about NN. He claims he won't let his team touch any 'research task' that takes more than a week, and prefers to stick to experiments that take under a day to set up and run -- that there's so much low-hanging fruit that every ML project should be simple.

Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine.

I hope I'm misquoting him. But my takeaway is that between manually coding processes that could be solved with ML & doing infrastructure profiling, most devs are spending half their time fixing problems that are 'routine' at the big three.

<comment><USER8> >Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine.

Isn't that more properly regarded as exciting than scary? The long term benefits to automation have rarely failed to outweigh the temporary costs.

I would personally be very happy if my own current job- software developer- were somehow automated out of existence. Not only would it allow me to put my money where my mouth is regarding praising automation but it would mean huge gains for the human race.

<comment><USER9> > but it would mean huge gains for the human race.

This entirely depends on the model the human race is running off of. With the current state of mass-centralization in tech (see, again, the big 3), you will never get to experience such gains. In fact, you would quickly grow dependent on someone else to feed and shelter you, considering you can no longer provide a benefit to society that puts food on the table. In fact, most people wouldn't provide value anymore.

> The long term benefits to automation have rarely failed to outweigh the > temporary costs.

For _some_ people, yes. You are correct when it comes to the numbers. GDP increases. A nation has more "wealth" to work with altogether. But the other side of the coin is that wealth disparity becomes more extreme.

Big however - If we ran off a decentralized model - arguably the way the Web was originally intended, I could see how the human race would be placed in an unprecedented position for future growth, and humanity would really thrive.

Granted, regarding the current state as ""exciting"" boils down to what you value, I guess.

When (not _if_ ) I automate myself out of existence, I'm sure as hell not telling anyone I did it.

<comment><USER10> The assumption that the "current model" (I assume you mean capitalism) makes is that people, when placed in a position where they no longer provide a benefit to society and yet must in order to put food on the table, will find a way to provide a benefit to society.

In my experience, this is true over longer (1-2 year) timescales, even if it's not obvious _how_ at the outset. Most people, when made redundant, find new ways to make themselves relevant. The process isn't exactly pleasant, but the outcome often results in a lot more lucrative and fulfilling career than they had before.

<comment><USER11> If you _owned_ the product of your labor (i.e. the automation of your job) then it should make no difference. The trouble is, then when you create an automaton that replaces a $100K/year employee, then the creator gets f __*ed.

Put another way, if you could create a way to automate your job entirely, then there also has to be a guarantee that doing so will not result in you getting fired. Alternatively, if you automate someone else's job, then the company needs to be responsible for training them to do a new job. Even if this is not practical or possible in all cases, it needs to be the case more often. Right now, corporations pay the government to solve this problem (not voluntarily), but the government does a pretty bad job of helping. Ideally corporations interested in any social responsibility need to solve this problem themselves. When the automation revolutions becomes real enough to threaten executive jobs, I suspect they'll solve it pretty quickly.

<comment><USER10> Or you could automate yourself out of a job and get a new job.

There's nothing that says that jobs are sacred. Indeed, most folks born since 1980 believe that they'll have to switch jobs every few years to a.) stay relevant and b.) get paid what they're worth.

<comment><USER11> Jobs are not sacred, but salaries are. Your automation has a certain NPV on it, just like your job, and just like the "value" of not working. So, there are really 3 scenarios.

a) do your job, same as always b) automate your job, and either end up unemployed, or find a new job, still working xx hours/week. c) don't tell anyone you automated your job, don't work, collect the money.

If you are capable of automating your job (you have the skills, the know-how etc.) then all of these options have different moral and economic tradeoffs.

a) if you like your job, you get to keep doing it, but, by not automating it, you are maybe not doing your job as well as it could be done, and/or are costing the company money which could be reallocated. As an employee, you maybe have a responsibility to automate your job and by not doing it, you are shirking your duties (its a stretch) b)You automate your job, get a new job, and take everyone else who was doing the same job as you and automate their jobs as well. You end up ok, because you're talented enough to automate your job. the other people who weren't talented enough just get fired and have no shiny new credential. c)You are definitely dodging the obligation to your employer, but at the same time, they don't know the difference. If the work is unchanged, then you are free to use your time for an alternative economic benefit. It seems unfair, since you get to double-spend your time.

In my mind, B is the choice most people worry about. There are fewer people who can automate a job than there are people currently doing that job, and that doesn't even touch the problem that few low-skill jobs are filled by the people that can self-automate their jobs. So, more worrying is that someone invents the roomba of floor waxers, or the self cleaning toilet stall and then we don't need janitors anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Oh well, please let us not connect softwaredevelopment and management too much with non-routine work. On a daily basis I see so many people who work on less than 50% of their capabilities because they haven't created routines in their work, thinking that their work is 90% non-routine.

Think about the last time you heard how a developer tells you that you don't need to learn the ten finger system to program well, or that he is capable of using 10-20 programming languages. How can a person think about usability of his software and a debuggable architecture, if he has to think about how to put an "i" and an "f" in the text editor? How much time is left for genius ideas when he has to look up all the time if the current language requires him to write a try-catch or a try-except block?

<comment><USER13> I touch type ("ten finger system") but I can see a point to the argument that it's not necessary to program well.

Typing is only a small part of programming, and touch typing isn't a huge benefit even for that part, considering all the numbers and symbols used, auto-complete for identifiers and keywords, and macros for common idioms.

And it painfully overworks the right pinky.

<comment><USER12> I see your point. Typing is not the main part of programming, so just typing faster than your colleague doesn't make you feel that much more powerful.

Let me give you another example that maybe drives the point home better: Have you seen the videos of how Minecraft was made? A very short amount of time was spent on getting the I/O to the filesystem to work, of setting up a window and filling it with colors, of creating the basic 3D world. I believe that is a huge part why not everybody can write a successful game as Minecraft. Because I don't have trained the routines, I need to spend a considerable amount of time getting all these basic things done before I can start with an actual 3D game. Thus an experienced game developer is already done with his first demo in the time I am done with the basics. And at this point he has a demo to show for, I have nothing. So he even gains more motivation in the same time to continue, and he may even gain some first user feedback. This will make him code longer (huge benefit, I give up at this point) and he will also develop more in the direction that is fun for players (huge benefit two).

It is hard to connect directly the geometrical transformation math to making a game that is more for the players. It is in fact not directly connected. But if you don't sit down to learn the "boring math" you can't get there. That's what typing faster is for. It's not yielding benefits directly. But if you learn that, learn your text editor, learn your language, learn some design concepts, you will reach a level of competence that is not reachable without. Of course you could also do other things to get the ideas from your head into the computer faster, like voice input, or flow programming with touchpads. But then you need to get into these very well to get them out of your way as well.

<comment><USER14> > Let me give you another example that maybe drives the point home better: > Have you seen the videos of how Minecraft was made? A very short amount of > time was spent on getting the I/O to the filesystem to work, of setting up a > window and filling it with colors, of creating the basic 3D world. I believe > that is a huge part why not everybody can write a successful game as > Minecraft. Because I don't have trained the routines, I need to spend a > considerable amount of time getting all these basic things done before I can > start with an actual 3D game. Thus an experienced game developer is already > done with his first demo in the time I am done with the basics. And at this > point he has a demo to show for, I have nothing. So he even gains more > motivation in the same time to continue, and he may even gain some first > user feedback. This will make him code longer (huge benefit, I give up at > this point) and he will also develop more in the direction that is fun for > players (huge benefit two).

I think Minecraft's success is mostly luck and doesn't really prove anything. A lot of very experienced game developers write games that fail, all the time.

You're right that as a programmer, when you start working on something you're not yet familiar with then there will be a period in which things that are routine and automated for someone experienced in that area are not yet routine for you and you haven't yet automated them. I just don't see that as particularly important. You learn how to do these things, then you automate them, and you've only needed a small one-off extra effort compared to the experienced programmer doing the same thing. 80% or more of the work of writing a program isn't solving business problems directly, it's writing the tools that make it straightforward to do the actual business problem solving. Most of the skill of doing this is transferable, and learning 10-20 languages really doesn't involve that much overhead.

<comment><USER15> Angry Birds' popularity was mostly luck and timing. Minecraft was doing something that wasn't very well represented in video games and touched on people's creativity, primed as children with Lego blocks, and helped create a whole new genre. I don't think there's a parallel universe where Minecraft was created and did not become a hit.

Sure, he did get lucky that Penny Arcade (and Kotaku, and a bunch of other sites) covered his minecart rollercoaster video to get that initial burst of attention to his project, and maybe you could argue that it was lucky that he stuck with the project's development for two years in relative obscurity for it to get developed enough to help reach its overnight success.

However, I definitely feel it was a novel enough of an experience that it would have eventually found a way to hit the mainstream and been a big hit regardless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Isn't that the purposeful outcome of technology? "I could replace everything you do with a script."

I know for a fact that work I have done has contributed to the demise of many positions. Could you imagine the industry for "Internet Cataloging" if we didn't have search engines? Email if we didn't have Gmail?

Technology is a job killer. That idea is something that's been a part of society and literature for hundreds of years, sometimes in violent fashion. Our economy needs to evolve in such a way that the destruction of jobs is a net positive for society.

<comment><USER17> Most of the population having access to most of the worlds knowledge in the palm of their hand is a gigantic boon to society.

What we should accept is that the time is approaching where a) it is possible for skill and lucky people to make many millions of times more money than those who are neither and that b) the cost communication has decreased so much that in many cases it no longer makes sense to employ people, instead it makes more sense to contract the work out.

This means we should do two things: stop talking about income differences and focus on making sure the poorest have tolerable lives and b) make it much, much, much easier to start your own small business. This means tax cuts but above all simplifications of the relevant law.

<comment><USER18> I think we need to be careful about what "tolerable lives" means too. I've seen "guaranteed income" proposals talking about something in the $25,000 USD range or similar. That's basically poverty level - and while that's better than nothing, it probably won't work as more and more jobs go away.

Imagine a world (or the US) where 75% of the people are at the poverty level and 25% are "rich". How long do you think that's going to last?

<comment><USER19> $25,000 is a very reasonable existence for a single person, as long as it's present buying power and after tax.

You can rent for less than $1000 and should be able to do utilities for ~$300.

That leaves about $200 a week, which is certainly not the lap of luxury, but it's plenty for food and necessities (I've done 2 people eating well enough for ~$100 a week so I really don't feel full of shit saying that).

There's no planning for the future in that, but part of the idea of a basic income is to de-risk things like that no?

<comment><USER20> For the young and healthy that may be true. But we're all going to get old, and most of us will need medical care that could easily exceed that.

<comment><USER19> That's fair, but that's a problem we have to solve regardless of whether a basic income is installed or not.

(At least, if we means the US and we keep providing Medicare and similar)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if you can reliably classify jobs into "nonroutine" and "routine". There is element of routine in every work, and I'm pretty sure that even most boring and repetitive job can be done better with some degree of creativity. It would be really interesting to read more about reasoning behind classification presented in this article. I mean can you seriously say there is no "routine" in programming or management?

<comment><USER22> Here's a better article that discusses that: [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/04/08/is-your-job- routin...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/04/08/is-your-job-routine-if- so-its-probably-disappearing/)

If your work is just following instructions, then it's probably routine.

As for me, I'd like to see most middle management go away, since I largely see it as a waste (basically, if people know how to manage themselves, you can get rid of most middle-managers).

<comment><USER2> It's not a knowledge problem it's a process problem. You can get rid of most middle managers but only once you have the conditions in the business where people can be both autonomous and aligned to the business goals.

Most middle managers end up achieving neither, but a layer of management is the default solution that companies most end up with.

<comment><USER22> That is an interesting thought. I would suggest that one of the goals of the company should be to teach people to be autonomous and aligned to the business goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> All of this points to the fact that work is a consumer good. We need to manufacture work just like we manufacture products. You buy work with time, and in return you get money; after all time is money. It should be work that we actually want to do, in an environment which we find to be psychologically positive. We need to just call it a day for capitalism and all the other garbage that goes with it. Let's throw away idiotic ideas like efficiency and productivity. And let's focus on meaning. Maybe we can build a fulfilling society rather than this madness and busi-ness we have created to produce garbage at breaknecks speeds so capital owners can do more of the same.

For instance this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time- based_currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_currency)

<comment><USER24> Not everyone's time is worth the same. Some people have more experience, intelligence, or can simply brute-force the task with determination. Productive societies reward people as such, and for good reason. You're talking about obliterating incentives as we know them. Perhaps you can test your hypotheses in a voluntary society before advocating for a coercive state to enact such policies.

<comment><USER23> It's easy to account for this in terms of education. Number of years of education should be added into the calculation for that. For instance for every year of schooling you get a a certain percentage more currency in terms of hours worked than someone with less schooling. And I am for all sorts of pilot programs to explore how else we can organize society.

As for "productive societies", I don't know what that will actually mean in the near future. Automation is 100% productive. It needs no people for that. These terms have meaning for industrial society where people are treated like robots. It has little meaning for society where robots produce more of the goods. And everything else is about simply organizing society so that people feel some sense of meaning and contentment.

At the end of the day in motivated people with money, and engineering society in that direction, we actually get a lot of ills like burnout, alcoholism, workaholics, etc. Yes people can be coerced by money, but often it's not for their own good. It for the good of the owners of money so they can make more profit. But at the same time, this sort of thing ruins the experience of life for the worker.

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure I agree with

> Automation is 100% productive

Because perfect (i.e. 100%) productivity is technically unobtainable because there will always be efficiencies to be made. Yes, machines are 'always on' and will complete a task in the most efficient way we tell them to, or that they learn to do themselves, but I think that humans will always play a role in raising productivity of even fully-automated systems by making efficiency improvements.

That is for the foreseeable future anyway, until AI starts making its own exponentially big efficiency improvements ;)

<comment><USER23> Whatever you get there rather quickly. Things are productive enough as it is now. It will only get better. It's irrelevant. It's sad how obsessed we have become over terms like these, when they should not matter at all. Reality is that art like entrepreneurship does not care about efficiency. Only factory work does, and when it is done by robots then yes I am sure some engineer will figure out how to squeeze that last bit of performance out of that before starting to hit diminishing returns and getting himself fired in the process. Eventually machines will learn how to optimize themselves, and at that point in a very very short time they will be fully optimized and stay that way forever. These terms will become redundant and irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really like Mike Rowe's viewpoint on unemployment: [http://profoundlydisconnected.com/](http://profoundlydisconnected.com/)

<comment><USER26> It's disconnected alright. There's only 3 companies advertising for jobs on his careers page. And one of them is a franchising company (Mr. Sparky). Trades are very competitive. Just look up the number of electricians in your area. It's a race to the bottom in the trades.

<comment><USER27> Do you have more sources on this? I've been looking for good data on the competitiveness of traditional blue-collar "trade" jobs/industry since it started becoming the go-to panacea to all our job woes a few years ago. It seems like plumbing, electrician work, HVAC, etc. would be pretty easily saturated areas; how many plumbing jobs can be sustained per neighborhood, for example?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> With self-driving cars, drone delivery.. unemployment will get even worse.

</comment><comment><USER29> What's wrong with that? This is called "progress".

<comment><USER30> Progress implies moving toward a goal. What goal are we moving toward? Our society and economy aren't optimized for scenarios involving large scale unemployment. What use is automation if it only leads to mass human suffering?

<comment><USER29> Luddites were saying the same around 200 years ago, but it turned out better than expected. Lots of new jobs were created, replacing manual labor.

<comment><USER31> Not for the Luddites. This is one of the most consistently misunderstood and misused historical lessons I run into in tech circles. The true lesson of the Luddites isn't that "things will turn out better than you thought", it is that "there will be casualties".

The Luddites were basically correct - they were trading "good jobs" for fundamental unemployment. Demographically speaking the families involved did not on average recover from the damage for a few generations.

So while from a global perspective the overall change may be positive over time, you can't discount people out of hand for saying "wait a minute, we're going to get screwed hard here". They may well be right. It may still be the right thing to do.

What the policy implications of such are or should be is a separable issue.

Another potentially deep issue: the industrial revolution creating a bunch of new jobs and job categories does not demonstrate that the same will be true of a putative automation revolution that we are entering....

<comment><USER32> Technological advancements displace jobs at a relatively slow pace. It doesn't happen overnight. And as those jobs get replaced, the demand for the remaining people who can do those jobs goes up because not all companies can afford to automate initially. The "casualties" you mention are more likely the future workers for a particular profession, but they're unlikely to care much having, y'know, not been born yet.

<comment><USER31> No, that is not at all what happened with the Luddites.

Which is the point, really. This is exactly the sort of assertion that is often made ... and often the Luddites are trotted out as an example. But they are a better _counterexample_ to what you assert than an example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Note that they _were_ growing faster than any other kind of job:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery- has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> The site's layout seems to treat my 10" android tablet in landscape mode as if it were a first generation iPhone in portrait mode. I wonder what happens. Faaulty browser sniffing?</comment>


Review my Prototype: Course Scheduler for Students - <AUTHOR>

The prototype can be found at:
http://www.brandonbloom.name/static/scheduler/scheduler.html
Clickable link in the comments.
This is a tool to help college students make a class schedule. Amazingly, this is a relatively unsolved problem for most universities. I've been kicking this idea around for a long time, but only recently had the Javascript chops to pull it off.
I'm aware of a number of bugs and the code could use some cleanup, but it should work in the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox as well as mostly work in Internet Explorer 8. Despite prototype status, I still welcome bug reports, visual and usability design feedback, grand ideas, etc. Hell, feel free to read the source and critique it if you like :-)
One significant problem is the school-individualized data required for this tool to be useful. I suspect that it will be difficult to convince schools to provide the data, even though it is already public and even if I make the tool entirely free. I've considered crowd sourcing, but fear low tolerance for incompleteness and inaccuracies. I'm also considering spidering the data, as well as publishing Specs/APIs for others to provide the data. Any suggestions regarding obtaining course data are greatly appreciated.
Thanks! Brandon Bloom <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://www.brandonbloom.name/static/scheduler/scheduler.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> A similar app for scheduling at MIT if you're looking for grand inspiration.

<http://pickr.mit.edu/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to try it out, but I'm getting Javascript errors in both Firefox and Chrome. The app permanently says "Working..." :-(

<comment><USER2> Hmm yea it looks like it's auto logging in via certificate. Doesn't work without the cert though. Sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting: [http://opendata.mit.edu/~opendata/www/index.php?title=OpenDa...](http://opendata.mit.edu/~opendata/www/index.php?title=OpenData:Community_Portal)

Initially, the data appears to be behind lock and key, but the XML formatted data is available. Is that information intentionally locked away and the XML a leak? Or is everything protected by default, so to speak?

This would be a great starting point for data, but MIT is one school probably _least_ in need of such a new scheduler tool :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's one of the more popular CMU schedulers: <https://scheduleman.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, another CS-heavy school :-)

This one also seems to require certificates and a university account. That's a shame, I'd like to try it. The browse/search seems nice.</comment></comment>


Steve Wozniak On Apple Security, Employee Termination, and Gray Powell - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5523673/steve-wozniak-on-apple-security-employee-termination-and-gray-powell <comment><USER2> Who cares? Woz was up there Kildall and Katz and Kapoor, but remains there with those bygone greats. He hasn't done anything great in a very long time. He's hasn't been relevant to Apple in a very long time.</comment>


Thor Electric Truck Will Probably Beat Tesla's to Market - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-13/this-electric-truck-will-probably-beat-tesla-s-to-market <comment><USER2> Semis are incredibly damaging to roads, they cause 1,400x more wear than cars! [1]

It seems that with current battery technology, electric semis' average weight is going to increase drastically, even if they remain within the allowable GVW limit. For example, a Model S weighs more than a Honda Pilot, due to the 1,200lb battery [2]! . Without the diesel tax, we're going to have to figure out another way to pay for road usage.

Right now semis are heavily subsidized by everyone else (They're certainly not paying 1,400x more in fuel tax). And I suppose it would be unfair to continue to subsidize diesel, and not electric. However, as our infrastructure decays we're going to have to figure this out.

[1] [https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf](https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf) [2] [http://www.roperld.com/science/teslamodels.htm](http://www.roperld.com/science/teslamodels.htm)

<comment><USER3> The Tesla Model S weighs significantly less than most pickups and large SUVs on the road today. Tesla's heaviest, the Model X, is significantly lighter than the GMC Yukon, for example.

I don't see the logic in this argument. Electric vehicles are not going to destroy the roads.

<comment><USER4> Road maintenance is funded primarily through taxation of gas and diesel [1]. As electric vehicles don't use either, they do not pay a proportional share of the cost to maintain roads. The fuel tax has been an elegant funding solution because it scales both with mileage and vehicle weight (as heavier vehicles use more fuel).

Further, electric vehicles weigh more than comparable gas or diesel vehicles, making the ratio of road wear to tax contribution even more disparate.

Even if you agree electric vehicles are good for society overall, we will need to find a new way to fund road maintenance.

[1] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X16...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X16301482)

<comment><USER5> Ditch the fuel tax, and instead have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled and vehicle weight? Could also incorporate lesser factors like efficiency, and likely to be a subsidy for heavy vehicles. Of course the beauty of fuel tax that it incorporates all of those factors already, and you get easy, regular collection.

As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity infrastructure... through your electricity bill?

<comment> Tuna-Fish > have an annual registration tax based on distance travelled

Now the hard part is getting accurate distance traveled figures from all road users. Good luck with that.

> As to the sister comment on how do we pay for the extra electricity > infrastructure... through your electricity bill?

Yes, and the system is breaking down because of solar. Typically, most of what you pay for electricity goes towards maintaining the line to your house, not towards generation. When you get solar panels that cover most of your usage, but keep the connection for use when the sun does not shine, your bill goes down to the point where it's no longer enough to maintain your grid connection.

The correct solution to that is to disaggregate transmission and generation, and for transmission bill you for the size of your main incoming fuse instead of consumption. However, in much of the US the utilities are heavily constrained in how they bill you by law, and cannot do this, so the only thing they can do is hike up prices on everyone, so solar is even more appealing and more people get it, resulting in even higher prices...

<comment><USER6> In the UK (and many other countries) each vehicle has a mandatory yearly inspection.

The MOT test in the UK checks emissions, roadworthiness, basic functionality. No reason why it couldn't also report mileage.

Most modern cars provide an API so you can track mileage. Again, not hard to provide that as a taxable figure.

<comment><USER7> _" The MOT test in the UK checks emissions"_

Unfortunately the UK does not have proper emissions checks as part of the MOT.

There is a (subjective) visual check for visible smoke, and a metered exhaust check which again only tests generically for "smoke", ie large particulates.

Unfortunately there is no testing of specific pollutants (NOx, PM2.5, PM10, etc) so many vehicles can pass MOT even if they are way outside allowed emissions levels, have had DPF removed, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This makes sense. Electric delivery trucks have been available for decades. Battery powered "milk floats" used to be big in the UK. UPS and the USPS may go for this. Both use their own semi-custom vehicles, and those vehicles spend much of their time stationary while the driver gets out and delivers.

UPS is already doing that, but not with these guys.[1] There are other electric van startups, but they have bullshit no-shipping-product startup sites.[2][3] The real player seems to be Damlier, which is electrifying the Mercedes line of vans.[3]

[1] [https://electrek.co/2017/11/10/ups-converting-battery- electr...](https://electrek.co/2017/11/10/ups-converting-battery-electric- delivery-trucks-new-york/)

[2] [http://www.chanje.us/vehicles](http://www.chanje.us/vehicles)

[3] [http://fortune.com/2017/11/20/mercedes-benz-vans-electric- da...](http://fortune.com/2017/11/20/mercedes-benz-vans-electric-daimler/) [3] [http://workhorse.com/](http://workhorse.com/)

<comment><USER9> USPS should be replacing their trucks. They're all a minimum of 20 years old and get 10 mpg.

<comment><USER10> I get the idea their trucks are also very easily serviceable.

Found this[1] after a quick Google: apparently they are called Long Life Vehicles precisely for that reason—but yes there are caveats and they might strongly benefit from EV versions.

[1] [https://www.greatbusinessschools.org/usps-long-life- vehicle/](https://www.greatbusinessschools.org/usps-long-life-vehicle/)

<comment><USER11> This may sound like Ubuntu LTS, but in reality it's a guarantee of consistency mainly (also doesn't hurt that it's essentially jobs guarantee for the Congresscritter who has jurisdiction).

Governments don't necessarily want things to be as cheap as possible but do require consistent pricing and parts availability.

In no way does it guarantee "easily or cheaply serviceable" and hybridizing or electrifying the fleet would almost certainly make it cheaper to maintain it by any calculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They have 18 people and do custom work on every truck? Beating Tesla to market may be moot if you can only build a dozen of them a year.

<comment><USER13> Sounds a lot like a startup. The question is going to be, "will they scale?"

<comment><USER14> Software is relatively easy to scale. Manufacturing small electronic devices can also be scaled by outsourcing to factories in China (even Apple does it). Scaling automotive production seems a lot harder. There aren't a lot of car factories out there waiting for some car company to make an order. Building your own factory can take billions of dollars and years to complete. Even Tesla is struggling with scaling production.

<comment><USER15> If their modifications work, then couldn't an existing truck manufacturing company purchase them and integrate the tech into their existing line?

<comment><USER16> It might not be able to mass produce their changes. Vehicles are designed around the production line. Think ikea flat pack furniture vs a custom carved table.

<comment><USER15> That's what hardware "design for manufacture" product stages are all about. But no one puts money into that unless there's some knowable value in putting forth that effort. So if a startup proves the value, then a vehicle manufacturer could be willing to do that redesign and integration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The photo of a single lithium-ion cell getting a tab spot-welded on by hand is worrisome. That is very-early-prototype stage kind of stuff. If they want to "beat Tesla to market" they should have a fully automated battery production line by now.

<comment><USER18> Like Tesla's "fully automated" hand-crafted Model 3 line?

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-teslas-production- delays...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/behind-teslas-production-delays-parts- of-model-3-were-being-made-by-hand-1507321057)

<comment><USER17> "Hand-crafted" body welding is VERY different from hand-crafting a truck-sized battery pack that contains thousands of small cylindrical cells.

The Tesla battery design has used automated cell welding for many years now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ah the half dozen products I dream of building if I could just fund my bills a year or two. :-)

(I'm referring to the fact that the founder is really rich from his family's businesses and has self-funded the whole endeavor)

<comment><USER20> You dream of building an electric semi truck to beat Tesla to market? If that's in your range I don't think you're currently in the right field, whatever you're doing.

<comment><USER19> haha no, the article talks about the guy being really rich (from his family's defense electronics business) and funding the whole business out of his pocket.

That's what I'm referring to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not to be confused with Thor Industries - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Industries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Industries) which manufactures RVs and motor coaches.

<comment><USER22> Having owned a very cost effective and enjoyable Thor, I thought the same thing when I saw the headline.

Thank you for the reminder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> These guys are not doing what Tesla are doing.

Tesla as a company is focused on building a manufacturing plant that is capable of producing Electric Semi Trucks. That's what they're working on. Electric Trucks is the product of the thing they're working on.

These guys are working on making Electric Trucks.

The more apt comparison is that these guys are competing with the robots that will go in Musk's factory.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder, if there has been a discussion on serviceability of these trucks because that is one of the major selling points.

> but dramatic advances in battery technology, electric motors, and control > software have made electric trucks more practical.

So, if someone wants to learn more about the battery technology and control softwares, where to start?</comment>