Engineer on @googlechrome. Involved in CSS and W3C standards. Previously @mozilla, @w3ctag. Mastodon: @dbaron@w3c.social
Rockville, Maryland, USA
Joined March 2008
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- Following 1,244
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L. David Baron @dbaron@w3c.social retweeted
North Carolina Republicans placed six constitutional amendments on the November ballot, then wrote misleading ballot captions that do not tell voters what the amendments actually do.
Now they're threatening to impeach any judge who tries to stop them.
slate.com/news-and-politics/…
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L. David Baron @dbaron@w3c.social retweeted
An ICE attorney forged a document to secure the deportation of an immigrant. ICE found out—and did nothing until the immigrant sued. slate.com/news-and-politics/… @Slate
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L. David Baron @dbaron@w3c.social retweeted
Is this California tax break for kids who inherit property contributing to the state's housing crunch? sfchronicle.com/business/net…
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L. David Baron @dbaron@w3c.social retweeted
As many of 63% of homes which have been inherited under Prop 13 in California are being used as rental properties or vacation homes. latimes.com/politics/la-pol-…
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I think it's important for standards processes to clearly assign this responsibility, and give time for it to happen. I think a working mode where even the editor needs to get changes reviewed (as in @WHATWG) is probably helpful here. 3/3
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... without making it clear who is responsible for reviewing all the details and ensuring that the details have been properly reviewed. What is needed, and often doesn't happen, is detailed technical review by a small number (1-3?) of people with relevant expertise. 2/3
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A hard problem in many collaborative efforts to make technical things (such as writing Web standards, and I suspect also in writing laws and regulations) is that you can end up with bad output because people support things that are at a high level a good idea... 1/3
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Not sure "livable" is a good description of my standard, and my list is biased by where I've been. But I think it looks something very roughly like:
Barcelona
Paris
Taipei
Sydney
Lisbon
Tokyo
Rome
NYC
Hong Kong
Lyon
Expect a totally different answer if you ask again tomorrow.
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Finally, Sydney has great food. (That's not unusual for such a diverse city, in a country that encourages immigration.) Better Thai food than I've had anywhere in the US, lots of other good food as well.
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And the train system runs modern double-decker EMU trains with high platforms (for mid-level boarding) at pretty good headways. That is, the train system is what I hope Caltrain looks like in 2030 (except it has a lot more lines).
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On the weekends, instead of running infrequent service, they cut the fares to encourage people to travel, by cutting the per-day fare maximums. The Sunday fare cap is lower than a single short train ride. It's also nice that ferries are well integrated into the transit system.
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Back to the positives, the transit system is pretty good compared to most US systems. It has a pretty unified fare payment system and planning system run by the state government. And they're building a new subway line (their first! yes, a bit behind) and a new light rail line.
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To make it worse, the pedestrian signals turn red quickly, even if the cars have a long green, e.g., on Goulburn Street. And there are some dangerous slip lanes, such as the one right outside the main exit of Museum Station at the SW corner of Hyde Park.
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On the negative side, the city center is pretty car-centric, and pedestrian hostile. Intersections in the core have beg buttons for pedestrians. Sometimes the person at the front of the crowd of 20 waiting to cross doesn't press it... and then it's a crowd of 50.
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There's a ton of construction activity. Yes, housing has gotten expensive, but they're building plenty of new housing. Maybe not enough, but they're building way more than the Bay Area. Feels like more than Seattle.
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The city center feels dense. I think it feels more like a big city than any city in the US other than NYC. And it's getting that density through infill; replacing old 4-6 story buildings with 40-60 story buildings: flickr.com/photos/dbaron/438… flickr.com/photos/dbaron/438…
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For a start, Sydney has great weather. January average high 26.5°C/80°F, average low 19.6°C/67°F (though there are serious hot spells sometimes). July average high 17.4°C/63°F, average low 8.7°C/48°F. 1.2m/48" of rain per year, so pretty green. And pretty sunny.
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So I spent almost 2 weeks at the beginning of July in Sydney. Sydney is one of my favorite cities (probably my favorite English-speaking city), and I want to explain some of the things I like about it in this thread.
The set of photos from my trip is at flickr.com/photos/dbaron/alb…
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I don't know why newspapers use correct name ordering for Chinese politicians but backwards name ordering for Japanese politicians, though. But it bugs me...