davidf18

> Err, the cheaper rates were due to uber subsidising rides with VC money, which was unsustainable. Uber also did start a leasing program for drivers.

The cheaper rates in NYC which are extremely high compared with the rest of the USA were because there was no $125 / 12 hour lease fee because there were no medallions.

Medallion owners would get mortgages (like houses) for the $1.2 million medallions and the high lease fee paid for the medallion mortgage. In fact the other special interests besides Yellow Cab medallion owners were credit unions who financed these mortgages.

A $125 / 12 hour lease fee comes to over $90,000 per year.

By not having to pay these excessive expensive leases, drivers could be paid less money and still make a profit. Drivers who leased the Yellow Cabs still have to pay for gas. Lower costs for taxi service means more time with customers in cabs. Everyone wins except medallion owners and credit unions with the mortgages and politicians bought off by these special interests.

Much of the resistance to Uber (such as laws that were broken, protests) were from entrenched interests. At least where I live in NYC, Uber was dramatically improving customer value while providing innovations that reduced greenhouse gas. It provided completion for the entrenched Yellow Cab monopoly with its very high rates. Sometimes Uber would have higher rates but then you could take a Yellow Cab instead.

The Yellow Cab special interests paid off politicians so that there was a limit of 13,000 Yellow Cab medallions for 8.5 million people. The price of the taxi medallion was $1.2 million. While people in Manhattan could get a taxi, there were no taxis in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, ... Because of the artificial limit on medallions which only benefited medallion owner but not New Yorkers, a driver leasing a cab for a 12 hour shift could pay $125 just to lease the car.

When Uber and Lyft came, the rates were lower, one could use Uber Pool to have even lower rates and save on greenhouse gas. Now taxi services have some availability outside of Manhattan. Now many Yellow Cabs are idle and the value of the medallions went for $1.2 million to about $700,000 or less.

In NYC, the Yellow Cab medallion owners tried to get the mayor to put restrictions on the growth of Uber/Lyft, but New Yorkers protested.

Uber/Lyft have increased customer value, lowered greenhouse gasses while not forcing drivers to pay excessing leasing fees for vehicles.

In NYC, the Yellow cabs have a huge, huge overhead because of Taxi Medallions that used to cost $1.2 million each which effectively added $125 or so for a 12 hour shift. The value of the medallions are now < $700K, but I don't know if the $125 overhead is still in force.

Uber is far more expensive in NYC than other cities such as Chicago.

Now that Uber has allowed tipping and since there is a rating system, everyone must now tip otherwise risk getting low ratings which effectively makes NYC rides even more expensive than they had been.

Most people don't own cars in Manhattan so that they either have to take mass transit or use Uber/Lyft/Taxi. There are many elderly on fixed incomes that have trouble ambulating (moving around) where lower cost taxi service is important.

In NYC at least, Uber doesn't need all of that corporate overhead and perhaps they should spin it off into some low-overhead operation.

I saw Ed Catmull (Pixar) give a post-Jobs death talk on youtube about how Jobs had completely changed during his 10 year hiatus and was far more empathic.

Thank you for the release! There is an submitted issue because the Intel MKL support does not work with Mac OS X, only Linux.

There should be some way of doing this manually. Any ideas?

Interesting, my undergrad is actual engineer, Electrical, worked in VLSI design (GPUs) for 4 years after college, and nobody I ever heard doing EE every got paid overtime.

Frieden and Bloomberg are very, very data driven. He provided data to back up his statements. He showed the cost/benefit analysis.

Also, the Frieden, Bloomberg article I cited has additional information from a Lancet peer-reviewed article.

This article co-authored by NYC's then Health Commissioner and Mayor Bloomberg (which I believe is a free download) provides the evidence of the various interventions along with footnotes.

http://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(07)60782-X/abstr...

> I've heard time and time again that scary ads don't seem to do a damn thing

Whenever the TV ads are run, a number of people call to quit. Dr. Frieden has given sworn testimony how cost effective the TV ads are.

Well, there are many levels and types of mental illness and in some cases, people aren't even aware that they have it. What I know is that there is more that we can be doing today to help those who have mental illness, both in terms of diagnosing those who don't know they have it and treatment (both therapy and pharmacologic) for those that are diagnosed.

As of roughly 5 or more years ago, half of tobacco consumed in the US is by people who are mentally ill and/or substance abusers. For example, people with Schizophrenia are heavy smokers and 90% smoke. Those with clinical depression 60%. They are self-medicating for their underlying illness. We need to ensure that they are getting proper treatment.

Income Disparities in Absolute Cardiovascular Risk and Cardiovascular Risk Factors in the United States, 1999-2014 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28593301

This study shows that in the 15 years studied, only the smoking rate of high income individuals has decreased from 14% to about 9%. Those at the poverty level or below has remained about 36.5% who are smokers (some of those will be the mentally ill and/or substance abusers) and middle income is about 24% who are smokers.

Former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg with his latest donation of $360 million in December, now donated a total of $960 billion to combat tobacco in low- and middle-income countries (e.g. China, Russia, Bangladesh, but also Turkey). Bill Gates added another $125 million.

The plan is to implement the World Health Organization's (WHO) MPOWER program which has been implemented in NYC since 2001. Raising the cost of tobacco has over half the effect of getting people to quit or never start. Also very important is banning smoking in public places and hard-hitting, scary, advertisements spending about $1 to $2 per capita. Clinical interventions such as doctors speaking with patients about quitting, providing nicotine replacement therapy, and telephone counseling support are also important. But most of the gains are from the public policy initiatives.

A frustration I have with the healthcare system in the US is that too little is sent on public health interventions such as MPOWER compared with the spending on clinical interventions. If you want to lower healthcare costs, ultimately more effort has to be put in public health interventions which is much more scalable and more effective than clinical interventions.

Under ObamaCare, smokers can be charged premiums 50% higher than non-smokers because the healthcare costs of smoking are so high, yet most insurance plans don't charge the premium nor does the ObamaCare let insurers really verify if someone is a non-smoker.

If you want to lower the high costs of healthcare, nationally implement MPOWER in the US as well as other public health interventions. ObamaCare made a huge mistake when they did not implement the tobacco tax policies of Canada, UK, France and other nations which have universal care which is pay for the healthcare partially with high tobacco taxes in the range $5 to $7 per pack or more. Our federal tax is about $1. Raising that of these other nations would result in tens of billions of dollars for paying for healthcare while helping people, especially the poor, to quit smoking.

Most of the healthcare costs come from lifestyle choices of smoking, overeating and lack of exercise, alcohol and drug abuse, guns. Other costs are from air pollution (asthma) and depression.

Interestingly, people complain when CDC tries to implement public health programs that help to reduce unhealthy lifestyle choices (some call it nanny-state). But you can't complain about high healthcare costs and then not support the public health efforts meant to prevent it.

Specifically, to lower health care costs from tobacco use, tax tobacco (which has over half the effect to get people to quit), ban smoking in public places, spend $1 or $2 per capita for hard-hitting, scary anti-smoking ads. Yet, the Federal Govt. has a roughly $1 tobacco tax. Many states have very low tobacco taxes.

> Why is medicine so expensive?

Medicine for most people with chronic hypertension and most people with high cholesterol is generic in the $100 per year cost range.

Cities are states are free to work the the Federal Government to set up healthcare for their citizens.

For example, where I live in NYC (at least prior to Obamacare) 450,000 New Yorkers without health insurance could go to one of many Community Health Centers funded by Feds, State and other sources as well as go to one of 11 public hospitals.

Interestingly, ObamaCare cut the DSH funding to these and similar public hospitals throughout the country. [1]

Part of the funding in NY State / NY City comes from $4.35 state and an additional $1.50 city tax per pack on cigarettes. The tax revenues are then put into Medicaid funding which in the case of NY State is matched 1:1 by the Federal Govt.

Trumpcare should restore the DSH funding that ObamaCare unwisely cut and increase the funding for Community Health Centers. States should increase tobacco taxes and use those funds to help pay for healthcare for their residents.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disproportionate_share_hospita...

Competition is good. For research, The Cold War with Russia and the resulting "Space Race" was good. In Israel, they spend a much larger share of their national income on R&D, largely to develop technologies to defend themselves.

"The General Motors (GM) research and development center in Herzliya yesterday unveiled the company's first prototype of an autonomous vehicle. The car's systems were developed in Israel."

Kim Mast developed an email system in 1974 on a computer system called PLATO at the University of Illinois with thousands of users using 512x512 graphics computer terminals which were located throughout the country and had output speeds of 180 characters/sec.

http://www.thinkofit.com/plato/dwplato.htm

Also a year prior to that a forum system was developed by David Woolley

There is a current version still working on this system: https://cyber1.org

> "...like stress and mental imbalances."

About half of tobacco consumed in the US is by people who are mentally ill and/or alcohol abusers because they are self-medicating for their illness. They are very heavy smokers. 90% of people with schizophrenia, 60% of those with severe depression.

That said, we should be helping these people with other treatments instead of smoking.

Also, there are other ways of dealing with stress (such as exercising) that using cigarettes. I live in NYC which can be very stressful, but only about 14% of adults and 7% of teens smoke.

This is great, but in general when it comes to cancer, we need to focus more on putting in fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems primarily, and then building better fire fighting equipment secondarily.

Much of cancer is caused by smoking. Not only lung cancer but 12 different types have been implicated by smoking, IIRC. In the US warning labels have been on cigarettes for more than 50 years, yet people still start smoking.

In NYC, they implemented WHO's MPOWER program with great success. This includes raising the cost of tobacco through tax, banning smoking in public places, very, very strong anti-smoking ads and more. Yet, the Federal tax on tobacco is only about $1.

The 8088 was designed in Israel so interestingly the IBM PC CPU even back then was "Israeli." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8088

State Universities are getting underfunded these days. I would like to see a major challenge grant for state universities with major science/engineering schools. For example, donate $140 million if the State increases its expenditures by $140 million above current trends for each of the next 5 years.

"C.E.O. of Career International, told me two of his hottest job openings in China are in “software and new energy” — everyone is looking for engineers for electric cars, solar and wind. Walter Fang, a top executive at iSoftStone, which helps design China’s smart, sustainable cities, told me that “just two weeks ago I brought in about a dozen green energy start-up companies from Massachusetts” to show them opportunities in China."

In celebration of D-Day.

“By September 1943, 12,964 of the American Navy’s 14,072 vessels had been designed by Higgins Industries..."

“You’re the only man I’ve ever met,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt told him, “who has done all the talking.”

See also: http://www.americanheritage.com/content/man-who-won-war-us

His motto was “The Hell I Can’t,” and he always far exceeded expectations.

Cardoza and at least one case of Columbia. I'd guess there are others.

Strictly speaking, The Old Testament or Jewish Bible (Tenach) is made up of three parts 1) the 5 books of Moses [Genesis, ...], 2) 5 scrolls [Ruth, Ester, ...], and 3) the 12 prophets [Isiah, ...]. A Torah Scroll is the 5 books of Moses.

In Jewish tradition, there is the written part of the law (Tenach above) and the oral law which was given to Moses by God, but not intended to be written down but be passed down orally from generation to generation. By tradition, Moses told it to Joshua. As Judaism became more spread out and Jews more dispersed, they started to write down the Oral Law which with many commentaries became The Talmud.

The Talmud helps to explain passages written in Tenach. For example, "an eye for an eye" does not literally mean an eye, but rather the monetary value of an eye for an eye.

The Talmud is a book of process and ones learns the critical thinking skills by studying the Talmud. There is also of course the content which is learned.

Well, I'm glad you find me amusing. Using your logic, studying Physics makes me a Physicist. Studying Mathematics makes me a Mathematician.

Also, I think that the Koreans who study Talmud might not think that they are religious.

Honestly, anyone with intellectual curiosity I feel would find the Talmud interesting, regardless of being non-religious or of an ethnicity other than Judaism.

I have learned Talmud without being religious and it is very, very educational in my opinion and very interesting. If you study it you will see that it is full of critical thinking and different ways of looking at the same issue.

It has been translated into Korean and a number of Koreans study it to help them to be better at thinking [1].

Check out an Artscroll Talmud which has a good English translation. There might even be something on-line.

Also, much of critical thinking in my opinion is cultural. In some cultures, children "are to be seen and not heard." In the Passover Seder (The Last Supper was a Passover Seder) the youngest child at the Seder asks "The 4 questions" (memorized ahead of the ceremony of course).

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-the-talmud-be...

Why wait for college to teach critical thinking skills? My father is a prof at a major university and we grew up discussing ideas, but high schools can teach critical thinking skills and problem solving. My high school was owned by the university and we did a lot of critical thinking.

Jewish religious schools (Yeshivas) teach critical thinking skills by studying the Talmud [1]. A number of Yeshiva students take the LSATs and skip college altogether to go directly to law school so powerful is the process of learning Talmud.

Basically Talmud is full of (often) legal arguments and stories and a lot of time is spent on thinking through/arguing edge conditions (e.g., a piece of property is found overlapping public space and private space).

The point is that college is absolutely not necessary to teach critical thinking skills and in my opinion this should be started at a much younger age.

Incidentally, I have found even graduates of Ivy League schools seem to not understand basic fundamentals. For example, in Economics, they don't seem to understand why housing is so expensive in certain cities and don't seem to have the analytical skills to understand why prices are high.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud

I have to read NYT, WaPo, WSJ, Economist, The Guardian, Breitbart, TimesofIsrael to get full information. NYT does a lot of censoring/under emphasizing of critical information. Of course there is also general reading that is important.

It is possible/probable that these processes are used by NSA/DARPA, military applications. In many of these situations performance well trumps volume/cost issues.

I suspect that one way or the other the military and spy agencies will be funding the further development for national security and weapons reasons. It may not be known, but they are (or will be) funding either directly or indirectly.

When it comes to terror, there is no middle ground. If you are against terror in the Britain and the US then you are against terror in Israel.

> "hundreds of civilians, politicians, policemen, and scientists"

Please cite your sources. The British had appointed the head of the Palestinians a terrorist who was responsible for the deaths of 73 Jewish students in Hebron in 1929 including 10 Americans. It was this man who became "The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem" who later spent WW II as a guest of Hitler's in Berlin. This man who was appointed by the British wanted Hitler to bring "The Final Solution" to the Middle East.

It was Israel which bombed the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor which made Operation Desert Storm far easier than it would have been if Iraq would have had nuclear weapons. Israel is committed to fighting terror and not letting terrorists get away with terror. See Steven Spielberg's movie, "Munich" about how the Palestinian terrorists that killed 11 Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics were tracked down and killed. Or see how once prevalent airplane hijackings were stopped by the Israeli "Raid on Entebbe" which itself was featured in 3 different movies.

There has to be zero tolerance for terror. The Palestinians, instead of combatting terror embrace it. They honor terrorists and they pay them and their families over $300 million per year of US and British taxpayer money.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/un-chief-pulls-support-for-pale...

"Palestinian Media Watch, which first brought attention to the naming of the women’s center, recently quoted a local village leader saying that “the center will focus especially on the history of the struggle of Martyr Dalal Mughrabi and on presenting it to the youth groups, and…constitutes the beginning of the launch of enrichment activities regarding the history of the Palestinian struggle.”

In addition to the women’s center in Burqa, the PA has named a number of events and facilities in honor of Mughrabi and the other terrorists who died during the massacre in a firefight with Israeli security forces, with the ruling Fatah party repeatedly hailing them as “martyrs.”

There will never be a Palestinian State until the Palestinians elect leadership that denounce terror instead of embracing it.