Top all-time · #3174
Tim De Chant
Personal blog · persquaremile.comdatascience
Tim De Chant writes Per Square Mile, a personal blog at persquaremile.com about data and science. Since 2011, 24 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “Which reads faster, Chinese or English?”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (15) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Tim De Chant's blog uses data and maps to examine density, transit, land use, urban and rural differences, income inequality and reading speed. HN commenters cite its posts as evidence in those debates.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 15 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog about density, by Tim De Chant.
Most-linked posts?
- Which reads faster, Chinese or English?3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-12-22
- Urban trees reveal income inequality2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-06-04
- The World's population, concentrated2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-08-15
- Income inequality, as seen from space2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-11
- Which reads faster, Chinese or English?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-29
What Hacker News says?
If hiring one person changes the calculus that much, it's nonetheless easy to afford if profitable companies paid their workers more instead of sending it to shareholders or doing stock buybacks. The proportion of wealth held by the managerial class exceeds the Roman Empire at its height. https://persquaremile.com/2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-th... For reference, the gini coefficient of the united states in 2016…
Comment linking /2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-the-roman-empire/
on “The Nightmare Letter: A Subject Access Request Under GDPR”Submitted Income inequality, as seen from space as a story · 138 points
HN discussionCommonly cited but not really grounded in reality— lots of places that have made rail work have very similar or worse density characteristics to the coastal US routes that should be a no-brainer: https://persquaremile.com/2011/05/27/u-s-not-dense-enough-fo...
Comment linking /2011/05/27/u-s-not-dense-enough-for-high-speed-rail-think-again/
on “Boom announces successful flight of XB-1 demonstrator aircraft”Submitted If the world’s population lived like... (infographic) as a story · 129 points
HN discussion> Logographic-based languages... actually allow Japanese speakers to become comfortable with processing a lot of information in short period of time / space not true - article with references: http://persquaremile.com/2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chine... This article and references is about continued reading speed (bandwidth), and as it notes all languages read at similar speed, because the bottleneck is in cognit…
Comment linking /2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chine...*
on “Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different”- pg · 2012-06-04
Submitted Urban trees reveal income inequality as a story · 117 points
HN discussion The anecdotal cultural 'explanations' here are a little ridiculous without some real data to reference. > Logographic-based languages... actually allow Japanese speakers to become comfortable with processing a lot of information in short period of time / space not true - article with references: http://persquaremile.com/2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chine... > Japanese doesn’t have italics or capital letters which l…
Comment linking /2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chinese-or-english/
on “Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different”Submitted Which reads faster, Chinese or English? as a story · 94 points
HN discussionInteresting hypothesis, but apparently Chinese and English read at the same rate http://persquaremile.com/2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chine...
Comment linking /2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chinese-or-english/
on “The long process of creating a Chinese font”Submitted If the world’s population lived in one city as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIn a follow-up, the author posts similar images submitted by readers. http://persquaremile.com/2012/06/13/your-images-of-income-in... Two of these images show a border between rich and poor areas. The visual effect is striking.
Comment linking /2012/06/13/your-images-of-income-inequality-from-space/
on “Income inequality, as seen from space”Submitted Which reads faster, Chinese or English? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe same site has a nice write-up on how trees reveal the income disparity: http://persquaremile.com/2012/05/17/urban-trees-reveal-incom...
Comment linking /2012/05/17/urban-trees-reveal-income-inequality/
on “Income inequality, as seen from space”Submitted The World's population, concentrated as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAh, the old "tree covered building" render. Putting trees on buildings might make them green as in color, but doesn't make them "green" as in environmentally sound. Supporting all those trees requires a lot of concrete, and the maintenance of the trees is another issue. On balance, it's a gimmick [1]. There are few real world examples of buildings like this (one in Italy I believe) but it ended up being a far cry fr…
Comment linking /2013/03/07/trees-dont-like-it-up-there/
on “A Multi-Billion Dollar Real Estate Project Is Rising on Native Land in Vancouver”Submitted How far should you live from work? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor reference, in 2010 the US was estimated to have 60,000 km² of road & parking lots https://persquaremile.com/2011/01/20/800-million-spaces-and-... So we have experience building infrastructure of a similar scale, though probably not quite at the speed currently needed to meet carbon emissions targets solely by building photovoltaics. Of course, deserts, and not cities, are the best places to put solar power, espe…
Comment linking /2011/01/20/800-million-spaces-and-nowhere-to-park/
on “How does the land use of different electricity sources compare?”Submitted Income inequality, as seen from space May 24, 2012 as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis doesn't make sense to me. When I'm reading, it feels like comprehension of ideas is the limiting factor, not optical recognition. A cursory internet search backs up this intuition: https://persquaremile.com/2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chin... https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2elbtp/do_avera...
Comment linking /2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chinese-or-english/
on “The miracle of reading and writing Chinese characters”Submitted How population density affected the 2012 election as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI am not sure where it's established that Stonehenge was built by hunters/gatherers. But if it is true, it would be pretty impressive, given the absence of long distance communication and a low population density per mile (you need 32 mi2 to support 100 people). Aligning a population spread over potentially hundreds if not thousands of square miles behind a single goal is mind boggling (not the least being that if y…
Comment linking /2011/08/17/hunter-gatherer-populations-show-humans-are-hardwired-for-density/
on “Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple? (2008)”I wonder when we will cross the post-scarcity point on housing. Considering that about 50% of my monthly expenses goes to rent, I think reducing the cost of housing is where most of my mental energies should be devoted, instead of yet another social/local CRUD app. My partial solution is Commodity Housing in urban areas, i.e., housing so abundant that what you pay is close to the maintainance costs , which I estimat…
Comment linking /2011/01/18/if-the-worlds-population..
on “RMS on evil developers, spying social networks, the legitimacy of Anonymous”Oh god, the rent! Thanks for the reminder. I wonder when we will cross the post-scarcity point on housing. Considering that about 50% of my monthly expenses goes to rent, I think reducing the cost of housing is where most of my mental energies should be devoted. My partial solution is "Commodity Housing", i.e., housing so abundant that what you pay is close to the maintainance costs, which I estimate would be on the…
Comment linking /2011/01/18/if-the-worlds-population-lived-in-one-city/
on “RMS on evil developers, spying social networks, the legitimacy of Anonymous”The US, meanwhile, has only a few dense regions, mostly in the Northeast, with the rest of population centers spread out very large areas. [...] There are notable exceptions, such as Los Angeles, but LA is not representative of most of the country. Think again[1]. [1] http://persquaremile.com/2011/05/27/u-s-not-dense-enough-for...
Comment linking /2011/05/27/u-s-not-dense-enough-for-high-speed-rail-think-again/
on “Highways gutted American cities. So why did they build them?”A more detailed write-up can be found here if you don't have access to the article itself (not my blog, found via ResearchBlogging.org): http://persquaremile.com/2011/06/28/this-is-your-brain-in-th...
Comment linking /2011/06/28/this-is-your-brain-in-the-city/
on “The Difference Between Urban and Rural Brains”
