Hacker News: zachkatz

New comment by zachkatz in "Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates"

zachkatz — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 16:30:31 +0000

There are tons of roommate situations in Portland for around that price: https://portland.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=700#sea...

New comment by zachkatz in "Show HN: I made a tiny device for automatically recording digital pianos"

zachkatz — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 03:21:26 +0000

Do you have a mailing list?

New comment by zachkatz in "Show HN: I made a tiny device for automatically recording digital pianos"

zachkatz — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 02:15:28 +0000

Wow, this is amazing! As a songwriter, the only feature that I’d really need to make it an insta-buy is always-recording audio as well (and then you bookmark it and it only keeps what you sang when you started playing, since obviously audio takes way more storage space). This is probably way out of scope right now, but just adding my feedback. The always-recording piano is brilliant, but I’m not sure how useful it’d be for me without the melodies I’m improvising to go along with it. Honestly, if I wasn’t broke, I’d invest in you building that feature (or entirely separate product?) because it’d be such a gamechanger (and then you could sell it to people who play any instrument).

New comment by zachkatz in "Brain waves appear to wash out waste during sleep in mice"

zachkatz — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 18:08:33 +0000

If the problem is psychological trauma, wouldn’t therapy be the obvious solution?

New comment by zachkatz in "The happiest kids in the world have social safety nets"

zachkatz — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 21:22:42 +0000

For more in-depth reading on Dutch street design, this blog is fascinating:

https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/search/label/what%20wo...

New comment by zachkatz in "Apple's Testy Developer Relationships Threaten to Hamper Vision Pro"

zachkatz — Sun, 21 Jan 2024 19:27:58 +0000

Phones have completely fucked our posture because they have to be hunched over and our fingers need to contort into unnatural shapes and do repetitive motions. The form factor of being able to stand up straight (or sit back) naturally while computing is the killer feature.

New comment by zachkatz in "The changing face of post-pandemic New York City"

zachkatz — Tue, 19 Dec 2023 19:32:04 +0000

Basically all the housing in NYC—from the brownstones in Bed-Stuy to the high rises on the Upper East Side—were built during the early 20th century when there was a huge population boom, to provide affordable housing for literally millions of people.

We need to keep doing that. NYC doesn’t need a few thousand more apartments—it needs hundreds of thousands more apartments.

New comment by zachkatz in "DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC"

zachkatz — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 02:55:28 +0000

Illegal immigrants. Here are some sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/nyregion/migrant-delivery...

https://nypost.com/2023/09/20/tidal-wave-of-migrants-in-nyc-...

https://gothamist.com/news/doordash-legal-group-set-to-deliv...

New comment by zachkatz in "DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC"

zachkatz — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 01:02:53 +0000

The “problem” is that many (most?) delivery cyclists in NYC aren’t legally allowed to work, so this option would be jeopardizing a large part of their workforce (bad for DoorDash) while also being bad for the workers themselves (who aren’t exactly swimming in job options). I’m not making a value judgement here, just weighing in with a tradeoff to consider.

New comment by zachkatz in "Why does sleep become more elusive as we age?"

zachkatz — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 04:26:53 +0000

I feel like maybe one of the causes of apparently such widespread sleep apnea is how most people, as far as I gather, sleep with their windows closed. This is deeply unnatural—we evolved to sleep more or less outside, or at least in a shelter with a steady airflow—so of COURSE sleeping in an unventilated box with stale, stagnant air is going to result in not getting enough air while sleeping. A CPAP machine is basically doing the same thing. This is pure speculation, so I’m curious if anyone else has any perspective on this.

New comment by zachkatz in "Heated yoga may reduce depression in adults"

zachkatz — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 14:28:16 +0000

FYI, for anyone interested in learning Bikram, this book (by Bikram himself) is amazing: https://www.amazon.com/Bikram-Yoga-Radiant-Personal-Fulfillm...

New comment by zachkatz in "Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder"

zachkatz — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 00:34:27 +0000

It’s not a conspiracy theory. The nation’s car-centic instructure is a direct result of the decisions and actions of Robert Moses, as detailed in The Power Broker.

Not to say that “emergent social dynamics” didn’t play a role, but Moses singlehandedly built most highways in NYC, and influenced hundreds (thousands?) more around the world. And he built them not simply as a response to emerging demand, but because he personally saw cars as the future of transportation.

I suggest reading The Power Broker to learn more about this; I wouldn’t have believed it either before reading it!

New comment by zachkatz in "Why Ugly Architecture Is Bad for Your Health"

zachkatz — Sat, 16 Sep 2023 20:39:29 +0000

Le Corbusier

New comment by zachkatz in "Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder"

zachkatz — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 15:07:58 +0000

I know it seems too cartoonish to be real, but if you read about Robert Moses, you’ll see that it is shockingly true. He didn’t just lobby and propogandize; he had absolute power over all public works projects in NYC. That’s not a typo or an exaggeration—absolute power, outside of the established system of checks and balances. And he genuinely loved cars, and hated public transit, so his projects were all designed as such. Since his reign, no one has had nearly as much power (some say he was as powerful as Gengis Khan), so it’s been very difficult to reverse the impact of his decisions.

Robert Moses was so influential in reshaping the urban fabric of the US to prioritize cars that everything else is basically a footnote.

New comment by zachkatz in "Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder"

zachkatz — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 02:40:02 +0000

For cars, it’s actually even more cartoonish than that. Read The Power Broker; auto-centric urban planning is basically entirely the result of Robert Moses’ insane power and influence (in the same way that the reason everyone has smartphones is basically solely because of Steve Jobs).

New comment by zachkatz in "Electric bike, stupid love of my life"

zachkatz — Sun, 16 Jul 2023 19:38:58 +0000

The Gazelle Arroyo C8 is a Dutch e-bike (one of the only models available in the USA) with a beautiful design.

New comment by zachkatz in "A new study looks at how exercise can help alleviate anxiety and depression"

zachkatz — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 02:29:29 +0000

> we did not evolve to sit all day, inside, at desk, gazing into screens

What I love about Apple Vision Pro is that it has the potential to solve this!

New comment by zachkatz in "America has paid a steep price for parking"

zachkatz — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 18:09:55 +0000

This blog post addresses all of your points, which are actually just common misconceptions: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2011/02/all-those-myths...

New comment by zachkatz in "America has paid a steep price for parking"

zachkatz — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 18:08:29 +0000

> the former is almost impossible

When you understand how quickly the Netherlands changed (it used to be just as car-centric at the US), you might change your view about what's possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnFYOvcOn_E

New comment by zachkatz in "Many soft contact lenses in US made up of PFAS, research suggests"

zachkatz — Mon, 15 May 2023 23:55:09 +0000

Any actionable advice here? Are there any safer contact lens brands?