I live in Portland & often people mistake *problems inherent to any big city* with problems of the specific city, or even neighborhood they visit.

Oh, no mistake there - I apologize if I suggested that as a problem unique to SF.

I meant only that SF, despite its reputation, doesn't get a pass on the "cities suck" vibe. It did have a few nice neighborhoods; and I'll even admit I felt relatively safe walking around at night (though I stayed on the "good" side of the hill). But beyond that, it has the qualities all cities necessarily have - Too damned many people, too little public transit, too many beggars, too much traffic, too loud, too bright, too expensive (I've never understood that last one - Supposedly, dense populations reduce the cost of living, so why does everything cost more?).

But no, nothing against SF itself. Mostly just disappointed it doesn't live up to its reputation.

I'm sure there's some religions I'm not against. I'm against, ironically, the extremely bigoted ones. Which includes Christianity, specifically. Christians believe themselves to be superior. Ironically, I feel that makes them inferior. Is it ironic both because of my sense of superiority (relative) or because it's the opposite of what they're trying to achieve? Sure. But then, if there is something that puts people below other people, it's treating people badly. And that is what people do when they think they're better than other people.

I don't go scraping Jesus fish off of people's cars or anything. But some assface did scrape the Darwin fish off one of my cars gone by. And that, friend, is why I am anti-religion in a nutshell — that is, writ very small. There are good people who are also religious, even though their religion is doing harm. I suppose I'll do my best to hate the sin and not the sinner.

Yeah. And their reaction was more of the same. I am not impressed.

Get it right: I'm anti-religion.

Maybe he just meant "conductor". Or maybe he meant strands. But it's a fact that some cables with which devices will charge just fine at 5V1A will not supply 5V2A to a device successfully. I like to think the device is detecting low voltage on a brief test charge and then giving up, but probably it's just trying over and over again to charge and failing forever. Even the 7W for the Nexus 7 2nd has been a problem.

Mu.

You mandate that all cars speak some sort of common language for negotiating power levels, and guarantee a certain amount of interoperability. It worked in the automotive industry well enough for this purpose with OBD-II. Sure, there's all kinds of secret bullshit going on, but you can get basic powertrain codes. It's easier to go out-of-fold with the euro stuff than the American stuff, amusingly enough. And the euro stuff is more likely to use standard output values, whereas the american stuff will require odd conversion factors before data is usable. There's no good reason for that, the Ford PCMs for example are plenty powerful enough to do the conversion, it doesn't need to be left to the scan tool.

I'm with you there. Finding a cheap USB cable that will pass 5V@2A reliably is nontrivial.

Well, they've talked about making Roadsters again eventually. And then there's the X coming.

Every automaker is now making or thinking about making EVs, or at least hybrids. This is a massive step in the right direction. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that after the Prius, the Tesla is one of the biggest influences in this movement. But I would prefer to never deal with another $tealership again. You know we still say that over in car-land, I guess we're less mature than the people who get angry when you type Micro$oft — you know, the kiddies too young to remember Compu$erve.

Almost all car dealerships' sole purpose is to see how much they can overcharge you for stuff, including how much more vehicle they can sell you than what you need.

Sometimes I think I should sell cars, because I actually care about people. But I guess I'd have to sell Subarus, because I won't lie to people. There's only so many jobs doing that. What, Selling Subarus, or selling without lying? Yes.

At least you can mostly escape the latter. Get yourself an introductory eye exam someplace, or hell even pay for it, and use the numbers to order lenses online — fit in some frames you picked up anywhere you like. There's lots of good ones out there at flea markets and yard sales.

They don't actually deserve to do that. Their first function is to overcharge you as much as possible for a commodity product that is available from many different sources. Their second function is to try to milk you for service revenues. Typically, dealerships depend on service for a significant portion of their income and automakers depend on parts sold to those dealership for a significant portion of theirs. The parts themselves are grossly overmarked and a tidy profit can be made selling them at 60% or less of the list price in most cases, especially from everyone but the base Japanese brands.* The Germans exemplify this but Ford and Chevy are right up there. If you manage to locate a scrupulous dealership you can actually get the parts at reasonable prices — which, of course, the internet has already enabled. The hilarious thing, though, is that the really good prices on many of these parts actually come from dealerships. This is notably true in the Audi parts market. Audi Marin? Evil right down to their black little hearts. Won't work with you at all on parts pricing. But I can go to any of several sites online and get a nice quote from a dealership that has precisely what I need for somewhere half to two-thirds the price they want around here. On the other hand, back when I was buying Nissan parts, my local dealership would give me parts at reasonable prices. And back when I had a local Ford dealership, they would also modify the ridiculous Ford list prices down to something sane and based on their cost for me. Obviously, I buy my Mercedes parts on eBay.

So basically, given that the dealership's job is usually to fuck you over, why in shit would I give one tenth of one fuck about them today? The ones that are worth a crap will continue to exist, because they already fulfill a valuable function. The ones that don't won't be missed. Am I supposed to care about the jobs? Because I assure you that those people don't give a shit about IT jobs lost to outsourcing — another part of a natural process which I call progress. And I say this as an on-again, off-again IT professional.

* And maybe the Koreans, I haven't dealt with them yet.

San Francisco is peopled by the self-entitled and the disenfranchised and very little in between. This is a natural factor of the immense property values. Sooner or later there will be a big earthquake and it will all slide back into the sea and we can all have a good laugh. In the meantime they will continue gentrifying the last vestiges of personality out of it.

I heard once about this thing called the crusades...

Maybe we oughta just burn down all the churches

WOW, just WOW, I'm sure they believe all this too.

Having recently experienced SF as an outsider on vacation... Honestly, after a week, I got used to some of its quirks. I could see it as more or less basically habitable as a permanent resident.

But my impression for the first half of that week? "You fucking savages call this shithole home??? Google couldn't pay me enough to put up with this!"

In hindsight, yes, Google could pay me enough - But for similar money, they could also pay me enough to take a private jet in every day from further North.

Jus' sayin'...


/ I did find the guy spraypainted gold amusing, though - Especially when a scab stole his usual spot. Like watching monkeys fling poo at each other.

You will probably be able to go to userscripts and find several scripts provided by someone else. Some of them will even be maintained. Perhaps adblock plus will include a feature to do it.

Detecting an element and hiding an element containing it shouldn't take anyone capable of doing the job an hour, unless they have to learn enough Javascript to do it in the bargain. But I agree, it is an annoyance.

My point was that people do not in fact have to do what you say they have to do before they can "shop". They only have to do that before they can get spammed. Therefore, you were incorrect at best.

Funny, that's almost all I do, too. I also make sure I don't see links I probably won't like. Because if people are spending money annoying me by helping google poison my search results, I probably don't want to give them money for that bullshit anyway — I prefer not to fund my own annoyance.