MTS Inside JMail: The Email Les Wexner Sent Epstein That Left Him Speechless Under Oath | MTS Live
May 13, 2026
Luke Igel, founder of Kino and indie developer behind JMail and an SF abandoned-buildings map, discusses building data-driven tools. He talks about San Francisco’s open data API and the window for indie open-data projects. Conversations cover housing, storefronts, community group houses, and how JMail’s release of Epstein emails sparked major reactions.
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Build Tools That Leverage City APIs
- Use high-quality public APIs to build focused tools like Luke's abandoned buildings map.
- Luke discovered haunting candidate properties by querying San Francisco's unified data API and citizen complaints.
NIMBY Complaints Make Reliable Inventories
- Civic complaint systems create valuable crowdsourced inventories when combined with open APIs.
- Luke used frequent 'board up' and cleanup complaints from residents to identify underused civilian buildings.
City Data Window Is Closing
- Freely available city APIs enable rapid indie experimentation that chains multiple data sources together.
- Luke warns this window may close as models make it trivial to aggregate granular data cities didn't expect to be scraped.