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Modern tech needs to stop changing user interfaces every 2-3 years.

Imagine if every few months when go to your faucet, someone decides to switch which side cold and hot are. Or perhaps the acceleration and brake pedals in a car get swapped because "our testing showed x".

Software is a tool for people and they build up muscle and spatial memory, so changing the interface can be a user hostile act.

That's not to say there shouldn't be improvements, but we should be scrutinizing these changes instead of frivolously treating the interface as this year's latest fashion.

This is where a membership to the local museum comes in handy. Then there's no pressure to see all the exhibits because you could always come back next week.

Hi Gwern, just wanted to say your post on melatonin helped me sort out my sleep in my twenties. I had hangups using it on a regular basis and your arguments helped me get over that taboo. Thank you.

For anyone interested: https://gwern.net/melatonin

You're right. It's reflective of the neighborhood itself.

It's in the name: stadtpark, city park.

In defense of Berlin's Tiergarten, it was originally a hunting preserve for deer (and Hasenheide was for rabbits), so it's big and intimidating. But there are still facilities in it that serve the neighboring residents. And throughout Berlin there are multiple volksparks, people's parks, which have everything the author mentions.

In most cities, parks evolve to serve the residents.

If you haven't watched Mike Judge's Silicon Valley, you should: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps

It was about Web 2.0, then we had "big data", then right before the pandemic we put things on the "blockchain", then Web3, and now it's A.I.

> The kids' guide to piracy

> It is only my intent that the advice offered here be used to download media that is in the public domain.

Then call it the guide to torrenting?

And yes, a VPN is a requirement. It's reckless to present a guide without a stronger emphasis on this.

> What might make me switch?

Google Maps will always have better POI data because they have a larger userbase and they've gamified adding POIs with the "Local Guides" badge.

The main reason to switch is to have an offline-first experience. Google Maps does not provide offline maps everywhere, e.g. South Korea. And if you've ever tried using the Google Maps app on a weak connection, it's frustrating because it still tries to download remote tiles instead of using the ones you've downloaded.

Lastly any contributions you make in OpenStreetMap will show up in Organic Maps / CoMaps for everyone.

Personally, I use Google Maps on a daily basis, but have Organic Maps and regions downloaded for travel and just switch between the two. It's good to have a reliable fallback.

I believe MapsWithMe (now Maps.me) was released about that time, but I personally didn't get an iOS device until 2013.

Asking you to name a book or two to continue the conversation is fine, but 10 is ridiculous. That interviewer literally pulled the "oh you like _____ band?! name 5 of their albums" meme on you.

Yup! Sonic.net

`whois sf.ca.us` will give you the email of the registrar (thanks cogitosum).

Just saw your other comment here. That's a bummer. I've been lucky to have never dealt with GoDaddy.

For some reason, I was using ICANN's lookup (lookup.icann.org) which came up empty. But yes, a simple whois from the commandline gave me the right contact. Thanks!

That Neustar list is horribly outdated from 2009 and didn't list sf.ca.us and had scruz.net as the administrator for san-francisco.ca.us.

I checked www.whois.us and oakland.ca.us is administered by locality-support [at] about [dot] us

Try sending them an email?

A few years back, I looked into registering a *.sf.ca.us locality domain and Sonic was the registrar back then.

Now, I'm trying to recreate how I found that, and I can't. But if anyone is interested, try: hostmaster [at] 50N1C [dot] net (spell sonic correctly).

That's actually the official slogan by LA Metro: https://shop.metro.net/collections/ride-the-d

And someone even created a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride_the_D

It's LA.

It's subjective, right? But a few artists I like have pieces there:

- Margaret Kilgallen (RIP): https://www.sfomuseum.org/public-art/public-collection/untit...

- Barry McGee: https://www.sfomuseum.org/public-art/public-collection/untit...

- Paul Madonna: https://www.sfomuseum.org/public-art/public-collection/here-...

- Robert Bechtle: https://www.sfomuseum.org/public-art/public-collection/untit...

- Ned Kahn: https://www.sfomuseum.org/public-art/public-collection/wind-...

- Emily Fromm: https://www.sfomuseum.org/public-art/public-collection/four-...

- Shawn HibmaCronan: https://www.shawnhibmacronan.com/#/the-press/

They also have a sculpture by Noguchi and another by Kusama, but those particular pieces don't speak to me.

Theoretically the space should be conducive to art viewing, but the reality is most travelers are hurrying from security to their terminals, so few folks have the time to stop and appreciate.

> On one hand, speeding alone when done by a mature highly-attentive driver isn't really dangerous no matter the limit, because the driver has enough expertise to know what his personal limit ought to be. The residual risk is more from immature drivers, the mistakes of other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.

The problem is the vast majority of drivers overestimate their skills and underestimate the risks. Many people are also emotional drivers and will drive faster when angry or stressed. A great combo.

> I settle for a middle position, which is that the speed limit should be no less than 35 mph on most streets, with heavy mandated use of automated collision avoidance systems.

So what are you going to do about all the millions of existing cars out there without collision avoidance systems?

Given all this, the easiest solution is for people to drive the speed limit, especially in urban areas with pedestrians and bicyclists.

If you really want to gas it, go to a racetrack or buy a motorcycle and donate your brain.

Do you think O'Reilly would still put an animal on the cover?

I've worked without a product manager before and it was not a pleasant experience.

Without a PM: I conducted customer interviews, wrote up product requirement docs (PRD), and iterated with design on the mocks. On top of that, I had to implement the whole feature (while tweaking things with a designer), and also juggling another track of technical work.

This would be fine if I was a founding engineer, but I'm not and wasn't being compensated enough for the extra workload. And sure, now with LLMs the coding portion would be smaller, but there would still a lot of context switching and one might not able to do technical deep dives into things with all the meetings. All those meetings.

So don't overlook your PM.

Those e-scooters are a red herring. Ring cameras on everyone's front door and automated license plate readers (ALPR) on police vehicles and Flock cameras throughout cities are bigger concerns in America.

Flock is already known to assist the government surveilling protestors:

- [CBP is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with suspicious travel patterns](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45996860)

- [How Cops Are Using Flock Safety's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/how-cops-are-using-flo...)

- [Amazon has a form so police can get my (Ring) data without permission or a warrant](https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/14/23219419/amazon-ring-law-...)

Thanks for the correction!

Wow, the props to the author for digging deep!

> Looking inside of the display, I found labels identifying the make and model. The signs were designed and manufactured by Trans-Lite, Inc., a company based in Milford, Connecticut that specialised in transport signage from 1959 until its acquisition by the Nordic firm Teknoware in 2012. After lots of amateur detective work, and with the help from an anonymous Reddit user in a Connecticut community group, I was connected with Gary Wallberg, Senior Engineer at Trans-Lite and the person responsible for the design of these very signs back in 1999.

Few years back, we had a work thread about this exact Muni Metro font and the designers brought up segmented types. We never got as far as the author in finding the source, but did bring up other systems with similar typefaces.

NYC has their own called R142A: https://www.nyctransitforums.com/topic/55346-r142a-mosaic-lc...

And here's one inspired by Spain's transit system: https://aresluna.org/segmented-type/

This author's other articles are also about the every mysterious millennials. Pandering to the clueless.

Clickbait title. Have you even bothered playing ping-pong casually? It has multiple benefits:

1) Physical activity. Sure standing desks are the rage right now, but actual movement is better.

2) People actually hold conversations while playing ping-pong. One of our VPs would be talking to another one about investment strategies while they played each other.

3) It's a good way to meet new people in your office. You see someone from another department play, ask to join, then meet someone new and bond over a shared interest.

So in HR vernacular, ping-pong has the potential to form organic relationships. Instead of company volunteer days on weekends where half the people would rather be at home with their friends or families.

Think you meant "publish or perish." I'm not on academia, but it seems like it'd lead to a lot of filler articles written.

The problem with research is that it doesn't always move in predictable increments. Sometimes things do take a few years to actually have any sort of breakthrough. Secondly, it might pressure researchers to falsify their data just to appear that they're making progress. I remember this being a contentious issue laster year.