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Housing, traffic woes stoke urge to flee Bay Area, new poll shows, Mercury News

Choked by traffic and overwhelmed by skyrocketing housing costs, a greater percentage of Bay Area residents than a year ago now say they yearn to flee the region.

In a new Bay Area Council poll released Thursday, 40 percent of the region's residents said they want to move away in the next few years, a marked increase from the 33 percent who said in 2016 they wanted to leave. Read more.

This Startup Is Quietly Packing S.F.'s Empty Luxury Rentals with Millennials, San Francisco Magazine

At the heart of many of the Bay Area's tech megacorporations is a simple quid pro quo: In return for free media, professional connections, or cheap rides, you surrender privacy. Now, inevitably, that arrangement has moved into the realm of housing, with a hush-hush startup asking tenants to sacrifice privacy in return for a discount spot inside a gleaming new luxury tower.

Say you're young and new to town. Forget settling down in an illegal Craigslist in-law or behind a curtain in a Richmond district living room as your young, striving forebears once did. For about $1,300 a month, you can now be safely housed within 40 stories of concave blue-glass facade at 340 Fremont Street. Or, if you prefer a grittier vibe, you can put down roots at Potrero 1010, where you can see (and hear) the traffic on I-280 rattle away beneath your window.

These arrangements, which come complete with subdivided bedrooms featuring upholstered partitions between roommates' beds, come courtesy of HomeShare, a startup that carves up rooms inside of unoccupied luxury apartments and then vets and links up strangers to occupy them. Each of HomeShare's hundreds of tenants gets about 55 square feet along with half a closet, half a bathroom, and a compact common area shared with a roommate and usually two other flatmates, slumbering in the unit's other divided bedroom. Each micro-bedroom fits a queen-size bed and little else. Some of the walls don't quite reach the ceiling. It's a fit for the kind of person who needs to scrounge cash and will tolerate roommates, but craves panoramic views and glistening new plumbing fixtures. Read more.

Steve Kerr Wins 200 Games Faster Than Any Other N.B.A. Coach, The New York Times

Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, took his team on the road Tuesday night to face James Harden and the Houston Rockets, and he walked away with a 113-106 victory. It was the eighth consecutive win for the Warriors, and the team's 60th of the season. More notably, it was the 200th win of Kerr's career, in only 238 games.

Needless to say, that is a record.

It may be early to celebrate milestones in a career that has yet to reach three complete seasons, but consider how long it took some other coaches to reach 200 victories. Don Nelson, the N.B.A.'s career leader with 1,335 coaching victories, needed 367 games to get to 200. Lenny Wilkens needed 424. George Karl needed 417, Gregg Popovich 333, Red Auerbach 324 and Pat Riley 289. Even Phil Jackson, with his 11 N.B.A. championships and .704 career winning percentage, needed 270 games, or 32 more than Kerr, to become a 200-game winner. Read more.

California No. 1 in U.S. study showing spike in pedestrian deaths, SF Gate

As San Francisco police searched for a driver who fled after striking and injuring a 76-year-old woman crossing a street in North Beach this week, data released Thursday showed pedestrian deaths nationwide were at their highest number in more than four decades — surpassing motorist fatalities.

The Governors Highway Safety Association report also showed California as one of the states with the most pedestrian-related fatalities in 2016. Read more.

Facebook Mirrors Snapchat (Again) With Stories Feature, The New York Times

On Tuesday, Facebook completed its mirroring of Snapchat Stories by rolling out Facebook Stories. The feature lets people share videos and photographs in the Facebook app, which will appear on top of the News Feed. After 24 hours, the Facebook Stories also disappear.

Facebook introduced Stories as part of several changes to help its nearly two billion users around the world share more photographs and videos on its mobile app. Apart from Facebook Stories, the social network also promoted a new in-app camera that has visual effects like filters. Read more.