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I think everyone can agree that the caltrain owns, also nice that the pie in the sky high speed rail project will at least have some trickle down funding for more practical local needs.
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Jun 28, 2014 18:40
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ProperGanderPusher posted:(one old timer I know still thinks BART was a waste of money and still talks about how inconvenienced he was during its construction in the early 70s). This is loving hilarious.
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Jun 28, 2014 23:34
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Except for the fact that a big reason why the bay area doesn't have enough housing or adequate public transit is because of people like him. "THEM TRAINS AND POORS AND SHADOWS ON MY LAWN AND CARS ON MY STREET AND NOISE IN MY EARHOLES AND DETOURS FOR CONSTRUCTION BAH GAWD STOP IT ALL" Hordes of crotchety old folks and other assorted assholes have been dong that for decades, and it's a big reason why so many other people in the Bay Area are getting hosed by housing prices.
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Jun 28, 2014 23:53
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Big K of Justice posted:I'm in Novato near the old freight line, they redid the level crossings near me. I work over in the presido, and commute down which isn't as bad as people here told me. Novato is an ok place, nice school district and I'm walking distance to a few places downtown for shopping which is nice. Enough people from work live here we carpool almost every day. Yeah, I grew up all over Sonoma (Healdsburg, Windsor, Guerneville, & Cotati) and used to commute to Petaluma, Santa Rosa and San Rafael (and sometimes SF) a lot in nearly every direction. It's not bad once you get the traffic patterns down. Novato is nice, I knew some people from SRJC there and it's a pretty good place to live and close to everything. SMART is going to be a bit of a boondoggle because it's going to be expensive and very time consuming if you want to get to SF. You'll have to pay ~$6-10 x 2 for the train, then wait around for the ferry and another $6.25 x 2, and then that will still only take you to the Ferry Building. The first phase doesn't even take you to Larkspur so you'd have to get off at San Rafael and then wait for a connecting bus to take you the Ferry and ugh. Phase 1 is going to be a clusterfuck and it's going to be held up by opponents who will say "look it doesn't work! nobody is using it!" and then phase 2 will probably get delayed due to funding. It'd be nice to have the option to get between cities without driving, but most of the jobs are not really centralized with a kinda poor bus system so I'm not seeing much use of it for commute purposes.
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Jun 29, 2014 00:06
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Xaris posted:Yeah, I grew up all over Sonoma (Healdsburg, Windsor, Guerneville, & Cotati) and used to commute to Petaluma, Santa Rosa and San Rafael (and sometimes SF) a lot in nearly every direction. It's not bad once you get the traffic patterns down. Novato is nice, I knew some people from SRJC there and it's a pretty good place to live and close to everything. Yeah also Sonoma tends to be a more rural county with a lower population and also density than the more built up parts of the bay area. Another side note is all the way back in the 80s there were proposals to switch Caltrain over to electricity but was blocked by you know who/lack of local funding. It was until the high speed rail white elephant project that Caltrain finally got enough federal funding to seriously start the upgrade.
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Jun 29, 2014 01:51
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Glad to see our corporate warriors are fighting against tyranny for us: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/06/26/monkeyparking-tells-sf-its-not-going-to-kill-its-parking-app/quote:“I have the right to tell people if I am about to leave a parking spot, and they have the right to pay me for such information,” Dobrowolny said.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:19
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Trabisnikof posted:Glad to see our corporate warriors are fighting against tyranny for us: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/06/26/monkeyparking-tells-sf-its-not-going-to-kill-its-parking-app/ I can't wait until some douche doing this gets their car rammed by a raging crazy person, or gets stabbed in the face or something. Oh wait, I actually don't want that to happen, because stuff like that is bad. As is charging people for the use of public property that you don't own. Which is exactly why this parking app is a stupid idea.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:41
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Trabisnikof posted:Glad to see our corporate warriors are fighting against tyranny for us: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/06/26/monkeyparking-tells-sf-its-not-going-to-kill-its-parking-app/
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Jul 1, 2014 02:08
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Trabisnikof posted:Glad to see our corporate warriors are fighting against tyranny for us: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2014/06/26/monkeyparking-tells-sf-its-not-going-to-kill-its-parking-app/ The Forum where they had on the CEO of this app company was hilarious. The guy was exactly as much of an rear end in a top hat as you'd expect, his arguments about why this is legal were completely ridiculous, and Michael Krasny actually had to interrupt him at one point and explain to him that Forum is "a dialog".
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Jul 1, 2014 03:00
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cheese posted:I love how patently ridiculous that claim is when you apply it to other standards. "Guys, I'm not selling unregistered handguns. I'm just storing them in a place and selling information about where they are. Its totally legal and not at all the same as you giving me money for a gun." You just helped a bitcoin startup with the next million dollar idea!
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Jul 1, 2014 03:01
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This guy sounds like an idiot, and will lose this fight, but why can't the city just implement more limited-time nonresident parking?
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Jul 1, 2014 03:19
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Slobjob Zizek posted:This guy sounds like an idiot, and will lose this fight, but why can't the city just implement more limited-time nonresident parking? Where do you suggest they implement those parking spots? Removing residential parking or adding more parking spots? SF provides one of the most amazing parking availability APIs.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:25
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Trabisnikof posted:Where do you suggest they implement those parking spots? Removing residential parking or adding more parking spots? SF provides one of the most amazing parking availability APIs. I'm at a loss as to what this guy is doing. Does his app secretly signal when someone is leaving a meter or something?
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Jul 1, 2014 03:29
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Slobjob Zizek posted:I'm at a loss as to what this guy is doing. Does his app secretly signal when someone is leaving a meter or something? I think it's like Uber except with parking spots. Someone announces they are leaving a spot, someone else is notified about it and pays for the spot, then they meet and swap places. Of course it's just an exchange of information!
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Jul 1, 2014 03:39
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The app works like this, you parked somewhere and right before you leave you whip out your app and people who are looking for spots near you have bid a dollar amount for knowing the next spot. Highest bidder wins and the app tells them where your spot is and you get the money minus a cut. Edit: That's not exactly right...here's from their website. 
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Jul 1, 2014 03:46
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And if there is any justice, before getting in your car to pull out of the spot you get run down by someone screwing with their phone while circling the block looking for parking.
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Jul 1, 2014 03:48
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Trabisnikof posted:The app works like this, you parked somewhere and right before you leave you whip out your app and people who are looking for spots near you have bid a dollar amount for knowing the next spot. Highest bidder wins and the app tells them where your spot is and you get the money minus a cut. Okay, so it's people selling off their spots when they leave. Obviously that is illegal. Interesting question: would it be illegal to remove the bidding part, but to make it social? I.e. to alert friends, goons, etc. that you will have a spot free?
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Jul 1, 2014 03:50
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Slobjob Zizek posted:Okay, so it's people selling off their spots when they leave. Obviously that is illegal. Interesting question: would it be illegal to remove the bidding part, but to make it social? I.e. to alert friends, goons, etc. that you will have a spot free? That came up numerous times in the Forum segment referenced earlier. The CEO just blathered on about how people need the profit motive to use the app.
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Jul 1, 2014 04:04
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^^^ Clearly dude won't get his sweet cut so he's against that. Slobjob Zizek posted:Okay, so it's people selling off their spots when they leave. Obviously that is illegal. Interesting question: would it be illegal to remove the bidding part, but to make it social? I.e. to alert friends, goons, etc. that you will have a spot free?
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Jul 1, 2014 05:10
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Slobjob Zizek posted:Okay, so it's people selling off their spots when they leave. Obviously that is illegal. Interesting question: would it be illegal to remove the bidding part, but to make it social? I.e. to alert friends, goons, etc. that you will have a spot free? SF already has a free app for metered spots that can direct you to an open space.
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Jul 1, 2014 05:23
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withak posted:SF already has a free app for metered spots that can direct you to an open space. I didn't know this! Okay so this guy is a pure clown.
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Jul 1, 2014 05:27
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Slobjob Zizek posted:I didn't know this! Okay so this guy is a pure clown. Upon further inspection, it appears that the city removed the feature that directs you to empty spots in a recent update.  edit: Apparently the sensors that detect whether a space is empty have been turned off. Who the gently caress thought that was a good idea? withak fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 05:32
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withak posted:Upon further inspection, it appears that the city removed the feature that directs you to empty spots in a recent update. The aforementioned Forum episode actually mentioned the sensors in passing with a short comment to the effect of them being relatively useless in practice. Apparently, as soon as you got to the spot that it said was free, someone else had usually gotten there first (because it would only let you know a spot was free when it was actually free). Hence the CEO's smarmy claims of "being more useful to cut the amount of traffic looking for parking spaces" because his company lets people know BEFORE the spot is available (for a fee, of course).
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Jul 1, 2014 06:06
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Also, people need to get off their loving phones and drive. Having the City sponsor a citywide stare-at-your-phone while navigating traffic app is pretty dumb.
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Jul 1, 2014 09:04
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on the left posted:Hispanics are only a tiny portion of UC admissions, which would explain a large part of the disparity. Also, if the immigration system were loosened up, you'd probably see a lot more immigrants from South America even out a lot of the numbers on white collar employment. If you're attempting to justify Google's hilariously pathetic hiring track record by appealing to UC admissions you should probably look elsewhere (nice try, though!). The UC system's newly admitted class is over 28.8% Chicano/Latino, which is a tad higher than a "tiny portion". http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2014/fall-2014-admissions-table3.pdf Sorry - you don't have real diversity, especially when the percentage of black and brown people you employ is literally so minuscule that it could almost fall into the margin of error of an election year poll. Since the Google non-diverstiy numbers have come out, it's been interesting watching the tech crowd try to "DISRUPT!!!!" and reconceptualize ideas of diversity (i.e. We have white, male programmers from all over and...... Asians! ). Since the tech world in SF and SV are so ahead of the curve compared to the rest of us, they've totally bypassed this antiquated idea of diversity and they literally are the embodiment of equal opportunity and meritocracy - everyone else just needs to catch up! mA fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 12:23
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mA posted:If you're attempting to justify Google's hilariously pathetic hiring track record by appealing to UC admissions you should probably look elsewhere (nice try, though!). The UC system's newly admitted class is over 28.8% Chicano/Latino, which is a tad higher than a "tiny portion". The graduation rate of Black/Latino people is dramatically different from Whites and Asians, both in the UC system and in general. Getting them into school doesn't help if they wash out or have a poor GPA (a contributing factor in the washout problem).
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Jul 1, 2014 13:41
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on the left posted:The graduation rate of Black/Latino people is dramatically different from Whites and Asians, both in the UC system and in general. Getting them into school doesn't help if they wash out or have a poor GPA (a contributing factor in the washout problem). The UC system has an 85% 6 year graduation rate. ( http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/accountabilityreport13.pdf , page 42)
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Jul 1, 2014 13:58
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computer parts posted:The UC system has an 85% 6 year graduation rate. ( http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/accountabilityreport13.pdf , page 42) Yeah, but Black and Hispanic are in the 70-80% range, and Whites/Asians are in the 85%+ range: http://diversity.berkeley.edu/undergraduate-students-new-freshmen-6-year-graduation-rates
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Jul 1, 2014 14:11
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mA posted:If you're attempting to justify Google's hilariously pathetic hiring track record by appealing to UC admissions you should probably look elsewhere (nice try, though!). The UC system's newly admitted class is over 28.8% Chicano/Latino, which is a tad higher than a "tiny portion". Do you have a breakdown of majors/programs of study by race/ethnicity? Getting underrepresented minorities into the STEM pipeline is a big problem, and generally speaking it's those disciplines that the tech industry hires from. Seems like improving that would be the first piece of the solution.
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Jul 1, 2014 18:52
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mA posted:If you're attempting to justify Google's hilariously pathetic hiring track record by appealing to UC admissions you should probably look elsewhere (nice try, though!). The UC system's newly admitted class is over 28.8% Chicano/Latino, which is a tad higher than a "tiny portion". Keep in mind that Indians are typically grouped in with Asians, but "brown people" probably includes Indians... there are a lot of Indians working in high tech/silicon valley and I bet a lot of them at Google too. The "hilariously pathetic" hiring track record for Google, and other tech companies, is a reflection of the pool of candidates more than some kind of institutional racism throughout the software industry. Our country is doing a very bad job at graduating non-Asian minorities who are highly qualified for software positions. Your UC admissions doc does not reveal how they break down into graduations by degree type, and the UC system itself is likely not representative of the nation as a whole's admissions. I work at a different large software company and I have been involved in hiring before. Our pool of qualified candidates has always consisted primarily of A) lots of white men, B) a decent amount of white women, C) quite a few men and women from India, and D) almost nobody else, ever. Whatever filter is preventing us from seeing lots of qualified hispanics, is taking place well before we get resumes. I'm not going to make the unsupportable claim that no software hiring managers are racially biased, because of course they are, and also gender-biased and age-biased. But the problem of minority representation in high tech cannot be solved only by attacking software companies on the diversity issue. It's a symptom of the nationwide problem of poor minority representation in graduating classes at universities, which is itself symptomatic of racial and (especially) economic inequality. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 19:12
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gonger posted:Do you have a breakdown of majors/programs of study by race/ethnicity? Getting underrepresented minorities into the STEM pipeline is a big problem, and generally speaking it's those disciplines that the tech industry hires from. Seems like improving that would be the first piece of the solution. Yeah - I agree. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ I work with youth in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood community of San Francisco, within the schools and within local youth organizations. I've done my share of outreach to tech organizations and companies to try to get volunteers to work with students, as tutors or mentors, or even teach code. Literally 99% of responses I get are "Invite your kids to our "#HACK4POVERTY" event! While my story is anecdotal, I don't think it's a stretch to say that it's also symptomatic of how tone deaf and out of touch they are issues regarding poverty and inequity, which is sad considering the publicly extolled mantra of SF CEOs (Benioff) and VCs (Ron Conway) is to "give back". mA fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 19:18
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mA posted:If you're attempting to justify Google's hilariously pathetic hiring track record by appealing to UC admissions you should probably look elsewhere (nice try, though!). The UC system's newly admitted class is over 28.8% Chicano/Latino, which is a tad higher than a "tiny portion".
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Jul 1, 2014 19:49
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mA posted:Yeah - I agree. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ Leperflesh posted:The "hilariously pathetic" hiring track record for Google, and other tech companies, is a reflection of the pool of candidates more than some kind of institutional racism throughout the software industry. Our country is doing a very bad job at graduating non-Asian minorities who are highly qualified for software positions. Cicero fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 21:11
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Cicero posted:
This doesn't really work as an explanation, though. If you limit it to non-tech employees, women are just about equal to men, but diversity by race barely changes at all, at least at google. edit: It's too bad we can't look at age demographics, since a lot of these companies skew young. Xandu fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jul 2, 2014 |
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Jul 2, 2014 00:03
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Google in 2013 had 26,500 employees and a total of 483 Black employees. Among CS, CE, and Information BS degree recipients in 2010 4.2% were Black. That same year there were 39,589 CS/IS degrees granted meaning ~1,700 Black CS/IS graduates that year. Google, Facebook, and the other shining stars of Silicon Valley can hire pretty much anyone they want. So I find the argument "we couldn't find any qualified black engineers" to be a cover for "we don't think its worthwhile to try hard enough to look outside our own social circles."
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Jul 2, 2014 00:26
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Xandu posted:
The median age of Google is 29. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/technology-workers-are-young-really-young/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 quote:The seven companies with the youngest workers, ranked from youngest to highest in median age, were Epic Games (26); Facebook (28); Zynga (28); Google (29); and AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com (all 30). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only shoe stores and restaurants have workers with a median age less than 30.
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Jul 2, 2014 00:29
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cheese posted:Its also important to remind everyone that Google, Facebook, etc have been lobbying the goverment to block the release of this data for years. These companies have known they have a huge demographic PR nightmare on their hands and have almost certainly been working very hard over the last few years to fix that (read: hire latinos, blacks and women - bonus points for black/latino women!). And THIS is as diverse as they could get the company. I'd love to see what Facebooks demographics looked like in 2010. No words. I am sure this is true for Africa as well, but there are plenty of well-qualified Hispanics in central and south America who can't get visas to come work for Google in the USA. If congress would fix the visa situation, a lot more diversity would take place. Hispanics are definitely hurt by the fact that immigration has been dominated by the uneducated/unskilled, who will then have children who are behind their peers, and so on and so forth.
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Jul 2, 2014 01:07
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on the left posted:I am sure this is true for Africa as well, but there are plenty of well-qualified Hispanics in central and south America who can't get visas to come work for Google in the USA. If congress would fix the visa situation, a lot more diversity would take place. Hispanics are definitely hurt by the fact that immigration has been dominated by the uneducated/unskilled, who will then have children who are behind their peers, and so on and so forth. There are also plenty of well qualified Hispanics in America too but for *some* reason Google et all aren't hiring them. (And again this applies to non-tech workers as much as tech workers)
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Jul 2, 2014 01:09
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computer parts posted:There are also plenty of well qualified Hispanics in America too but for *some* reason Google et all aren't hiring them. Only a small percentage of hispanics have bachelors degrees, and markedly less than the African American population:  The figures are really bad for men too, last time I checked. Black and hispanic women do the lion's share of keeping averages up for their respective races.
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Jul 2, 2014 01:19
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on the left posted:Only a small percentage of hispanics have bachelors degrees, and markedly less than the African American population: And even with those figures Black people and Latinos are still under-represented by a large margin (they should be 2-5 times higher than they are at Google even if you're only counting the native population*). *And again, this is with non-tech jobs, i.e. the ones that are highest in Black/Latino representation.
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Jul 2, 2014 01:23
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