hershel

True , some of those points i didn't take into account, but:

> Similar trip

I once read a research paper about "demand responsive transportation" that simulated such route aggregation in realistic traffic over a large part of a city(probably in finland), and got similar results with regards to route efficiency, as far as i can remember. Can't seem to find the paper , will look later again.

> induced demand

It's really hard to predict how much induced demand this will cause ,because:

1.Big efficiencies - hard to imagine all we be "eaten".

2.It lengthens trip time.

3.Once it's running, we have a software layer on top of transportation, which might be a powerful new tool for transportation management - which might greatly affect demand.

> comfort

You might be right on that, although for bus riders the decreased travel time will surely be worth the extra inconvenience.

> in my country people are stopping using buses, and doing some kind of car sharing

can you share more details? it's interesting.

Not as same, but relatively close:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7888339

Public transport win by costing the same price, for a much better experience and that's where uber is going:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7888339

This guy gets the wrong impression because he doesn't understand that uber is growing to something totally different:

1.Uber recently started to offer it's uberxl suv service, which carries upto 6 passengers and in sf costs $5 base fare + the lowest of ($0.45/minute or $2.15/mile)[1].

2.Given enough demand, uber can offer a highly efficient personalized route service, which builds optimal routes needed to transport 6 people. Let's assume such routes can be only 25% longer than normal routes , on average[2].

Combine both of those, we can replace 6X30 minutes car trips , with a single 37.5 minute suv trip, which will be charged $21.87 for 6 passengers, or $3.64 per person.

If we wanted to have a similar trip in public transportation, it would probably take around 1.5-2 hours , but might cost $2.

And if we compare this to a normal car trip, the uber experience could be much better - you could watch a tv episode on your tablet after a long work day and unwind, instead of the stress of fighting traffic. And it's priced pretty closed to the cost of personal transportation.

And the secondary effects from shifting so much traffic to highly efficient forms would greatly decrease traffic jams and further increase speed.

TL;DR - with it's new offering uber is evolving to be a much better, new mode of public transportation, both cost effective and a great experience.

[1]https://www.uber.com/cities/san-francisco

[2]research of "demand responsive transportation" talks about similar efficiencies.

On a $10 fare , UBER gets $2(or $4 for 2 trips) , the driver gets $8

For the $16 trip, let's say UBER gives $10 for the driver(instead of ~$8), and takes $6. UBER still comes ahead. And don't forget the huge lockup it gets - which is valuable in and off itself, esp. in the long term as a basis for self driving cars service.

There's of course the issue of decreased traffic for drivers, but there's probably a strategy to make it work.

Two ama's:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ypjd5/hi_reddit_iama_...

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ztruj/iama_uberx_driv...

AFAIK, not at scale, which makes all that difference in that kind of business.

I think the author is wrong about the possibilities for UBER raising prices. One such option combining trips of 2 passengers(or more) who seek a trip from similar starting locations to similar destinations.

Such option could easily increase demand, be more cost efficient and higher margin and be highly dependent on market reach , which makes it very difficult to replicate.

And i'm sure UBER has some data to demonstrate this and other attractive options to investors[1], which make it much harder for us non-insiders to truly evaluate UBER.

[1]A similar example is the nest acquisition, which raised many eyebrows and guesses, but it appears they had a "secret" way to monetize their service - selling demand response services to utilities.

Stanford did some research on using large screen displays and google glass to increase safety in medicine, using smart adaptive checklists and good UI design:

http://hci.stanford.edu/research/icogaid/

This might also be interesting for creators of user interfaces for rapid decision making under stress.

> Gmail seems like an obvious entry point ... but it would go against their business model (they could no longer mine your emails).

A few ideas why google won't mind encryption that much:

http://www.reddit.com/r/tech/comments/278cze/google_launches...

> Is there any hope?

TextSecure is already offering a secure communication service(that in my view could be a decent replacement for email). They will also release a browser extension in the future. Those(and the fact google's involved) are good signs for google's encryption project , at least technically.

And assuming the technical infrastructure for easy encryption does exist, i can see some sort of hybrid model[1] becoming popular and/or mandated in some groups, and growing from there.

[1]For example, textSecure/redPhone's model lets you send sms to everybody, but if it detects the other side has encryption , it encrypts it. There's also an easy to use method for out-of-band key verification.

There's a difference between revenue and valuation. In this[1] example of taxi companies, valuation is 3x the revenue.

And the great potential of the company will show once they find a way to offer efficient shared transportation services at much lower prices, like [2]. If they do, they'll basically swim in money.

[1]not so great but a good start :http://www.mergernetwork.com/for-sale/nations-only-publicly-...

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7391885

Currently , the most practical way for secure communications looks like textSecure, which is a mobile IM app that is easy to use and install , and relatively easy to convince others to communicate in.

http://www.ersatzlabs.com/ claim to offer intuitive deep learning.

There are diminishing returns to house size, like most other things in life.

The comparison is between being middle class in 1950 to being poor today.

Today poverty comes with some extra baggage - lower access to the healthcare system and much worse healthcare results, increased crime rate, low social status , higher stress, etc.

Not everything in life is about possessions.

They can use a simple subset.

Maybe they don't care about your email(they have plenty of data) as long nobody else can use it for ads ?

> "Smart" component selection with no understanding of the underlying complexity of the technology is a sure way to ensure you end up with crap that's 30% more expensive and 50% more power hungry than it should be.

Can you please expand on that ?

I think the cheapest chips it runs on cost $3 in 1K volume.

> Information is only valuable if it's asymmetrical

That's very true. The question is - how do you use the internet(which i believe is more suited than book stores to that task), to find such valuable asymmetric information ?

Analog electronics is a unique, not representative case.I think it depends greatly on the field and application. Some applications are too complex for math, so you just have to create really good simulations, like for example in wireless communications.

In other applications , value comes through integration, managing complexity ,smart component selection, and rapid development and combining multiple knowledge domains.One such example is smart watches. Some of the theory is less valuable there.

I can imagine such "practical engineering" online degree being formed, which will give one the ability to create systems that combine multiple domains of knowledge.

Having people with such capabilities is highly useful in many startups, especially at the early stages, and startup access is percieved as a chance to wealth, so it seems such a degree would have significant marketing value and differentiation, maybe to a degree that would surpass it being online.

There are better ways to learn about new products on the web, so ads suck more.

I'm not sure that coming from the field is a requirement to getting good ideas(in important fields).

Being able to learn subjects deeply and communicate with subject matter experts , do in depth market studies of potential customers and creating collaborations could all be good options for creation of innovations. Hell, it works quite well for academics.

Does anybody have anidea what's the completion rates for students who paid(for certification/something else) ?

True ,it could be a wealth badge. But how many such badges does a person needs ? is there any additional value to the new ones?

I support unions, but i think they need to be in the model used in sweden:one union for blue collar worker, one for white collar workers , which leads to distribution of power among all employees(and far greater negotiation power) .

This is far better than the union per company , because some unions get rich and powerful , and abusive , while other suffer.

That's an interesting idea,and while RFID can be read up to nice distances(16 meter) but the RFID is quite power hungry and is dependent on antenna quality to achieve that , so it becomes a very challenging task and maybe an impossible one to build a decent concentrator.