How do cyclists get to their final destination, then? Do we have equal numbers of bike routes and driving, all the way from A to B? If so, that's pretty much just a protected bike lane.
I agree with this. We have both here in NYC. First of all, cyclists need a way to get to their destination. Nobody is going to ride on the greenway and then walk a few blocks to their destination. Second of all, motorist behavior has really changed since the lanes were installed. The protected lanes are mostly like a separate route, but they still intersect the same road, and force drivers to mix in with cyclists on some turns. It can be hairy, but it's helped define space for everyone and increase safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike by reducing turn speeds.
Is it really "cheaping out" when you computerize a system. CBTC systems cost in the billions, and as such NYC's subway is almost entirely running on 1930's relays. It's a solid system, but it requires the drivers to be on point 24/7. Very little pieces of the system enforce speed limits, as this has to be done mechanically with trip cocks, and while trip cocks will often pull the brakes if a driver runs a red signal, there's usually nothing that prevents the driver from going the wrong way on a one way track [1][2].
But ignoring that, computerizing the system can lead to better headways. Right now most systems, and almost all of the NYC subway, use a fixed block system to enforce braking distances. That means it doesn't matter if a train is 1001ft away or 1999ft away, the following train can't enter the next block until the train completely clears it. It's a safe system, but it means trains can bunch up in a stop and go pattern. Modern computerized systems can behave essentially like our self-driving car dream, where they match their speed safely to the train in from and keep the breaking distance block moving. For people in the Bay Area, BART uses fixed-block signaling (but is actually computerized), and Muni uses moving-block signaling. The difference is especially notable on the BART, which tends to speed up and slam on the brakes when there's train traffic ahead.
Also, it's federally mandated that we computerize trains, anyway, [3] mostly because of incidents like the Metrolink collision.
This is why many are worried about Level 3 autonomy vehicles -- that is, driver assist where the car can drive ~95% of the time, but the driver may need to intervene at any moment. So far all the studies I've seen indicate that the driver loses attentiveness whether they mean to or not, and the disengagement times are in multiple seconds.
Personally, I think a system needs to work well enough to drive itself the whole trip, or be dumb enough to act as cruise control with some crash prevention built in, but otherwise force the driver to be on task.
If I'm entering an intersection and there's a driver that I suspect hasn't noticed me and may take a turn, I'll make eye contact and point, then signal a full hand for 'stop'. Seems to work.
It's more than just paying attention: if the conductor can line their finger up with the zebra board for their train, they've guaranteed that the train is completely within the station. Opening the doors where there is no platform is one of the few fireable offenses (others include using a phone on the job). The zebra boards have the train model written on them -- in this case, R160 [1]. While it would be easier for the driver to just stop the train at the very end of the platform, this would be pretty inconvenient for passengers on the end of the platform when a shorter train rolls in.
This is my stance. Texting (and apps) while driving is a huge issue, but so is road rage, DUIs, forgetting to check the bike lane when turning, loud music that makes it impossible to hear ambulances approaching, massive A pillars in newer cars that save the passengers in a wreck but make it impossible to see pedestrians entering a crosswalk when taking a left, people being dicks and running lights because they're more important than you, and the general fact that humans get distracted and can never focus on all directions at once. I appreciate the regulators trying to solve a major piece of the puzzle, but honestly, if we want to reduce the toll that automobiles are pushing on society, we need to focus on a world where very few humans are driving. Some of that is self driving cars, some of that is better rapid transit infra (and two and two go together).
My partner and I will trade off who drives, but mine is always the one on Bluetooth. This would make it super annoying for me to navigate to places as a passenger, and I'd have to use her phone, which then shows the defects in the system.
Last I heard, nobody has been able to verify if the car was actually in autopilot mode. However, the emergency braking also clearly failed, if the police report that no attempt to stop was made is true.
Google's policy is that the first link from google's results must be freely viewable, but any other links on the site can be paywalled, login-walled, etc. That's why you can often just google a WSJ article or the title of another Quora question and view the results freely. It's all based on the HTTP referer.
They had one at 53k and another at 55k last week, but those went quick. If you're serious about going electric, keep tabs on that report. You should be able to snag a deal in your price range. The Model S checks off everything on your list except price, and it's just barely out of that range at that.
If you look at their strategy, they're aiming to make profit around 2020 when the Gigafactory is at full capacity and the Model 3 is shipping at full capacity. At that point, the government subsidy expires for Tesla (100,000 cars shipped by one manu) and they make full profits on their own dime. If they were really unsustainable, nobody would be investing in TSLA right now.
The tax subsidy applies to all electric cars, and has made the Leaf and other cars in its class affordable for many Americans, which has pushed electric car adoption.
Even in the case of Tesla, there are plenty of people who couldn't afford a Tesla if it weren't for the $7,500 tax credit. It seems silly, but it's a big chunk of money, and when you're stretching your budget to afford a nice, eco-friendly and American-produced car, the extra subsidy really helps.
Tesla is opening the door for sustainable transit in the U.S., has pushed other car manufacturers to follow suit, and is creating a buttload of jobs with their domestic factory, the Gigafactory 1, their local service centers, and whatever comes next.
It is frustrating to see tax money thrown at corporations, but hey, Tesla didn't take a multi-billion dollar bailout when they made poor business decisions and were going to cost America millions of jobs. Just something to put this in perspective.
Absolutely, but the car industry didn't need to innovate there much because demand already existed. The point I was getting at is that we ripped out municipal transit systems, then built spread out cities where implementing mass transit would not be cost effective (i.e. Orlando, FL) but work well with cars. I'm no expert, though. It's just a thought I frequent on whenever looking at the state of transit and where we're going.
I drive a Leaf. It's actually a really great city car. I use it for all my driving (commute, shopping, exploring the city) except for one trip a month I make in my old gas car. The car basically pays for itself compared to what I paid in gas in my old car. It's also almost zero maintenance, which is a huge plus coming from my old under 12k gas car which needed oil, random part replacements, cooling system issues, etc. Worth considering if you drive less than 60 miles a day, imo.
I think the biggest difference, speaking from my experience as a Leaf owner, is that electricity is much cheaper than petrol, more predictable in price/not as volatile as petrol prices, and the car itself is much more efficient than a gas car would be thanks to aerodynamics, regenerative braking and otherwise high efficiency in electric motors when compared to internal combustion engines.
To be fair, though, we theoretically don't need the car industry at all. Tesla is building an electric industry to solve the emissions problem created by a transportation industry that does not need to exist.
Take NYC for example. MTA enables transportation to just about anywhere in the city, all through an electric, mass-transit trolley system.
If we look at the history of municipal transportation, it looks pretty clear that trolleys were winning over the majority of the car industry up until GM took over trolleys[1] and shut them down to essentially require people to own cars to do any transportation outside of biking and walking.
I think what Tesla is doing is wonderful, but I feel like the problem they are having to solve didn't need to exist in the first place, and the petrol car industry got us in a bad situation.
I disagree, only on the grounds that Chrome will max out the tiny GPU in that machine when HTML5 videos or CSS3 animations play. Even simple video effects like Expose will stutter. It's a great machine, but the video card is much too weak for the pixels it has to push. Take it with a grain of salt, of course.
They've got hardware accelerated CSS3 working right in the latest versions, but VP8/VP9 won't work. The explanation is that Safari doesn't support VP8/VP9, so a fallback to h264 happens and the hardware accelerates that properly.
Not just the view. React Native also gives you access to HTTP and full JavaScript logic, so the model, view and controllers can be written using React Native.
On the other hand, this could be an incentive to purchase zero-emission vehicles instead of the alternatives, as the buying experience would be theoretically much better than that of going to a traditional dealer.
I have constant crashes/freezes when waking up on Yosemite, and something about having iCloud disabled makes every iLife application show unrelated dialogs (usually "This will overwrite the existing file on iCloud" warnings, despite the file not existing at all, nor having iCloud), the EULA box randomly shows up in System Preferences and gets stuck in an infinite loop of showing me the terms even when I press cancel, yada yada. I agree with the word "shoddy". I can work around all this, but it's like nobody bothered to test it. I'm part of the Appleseed program and send in every bug I find, but apparently they're all minor enough to not be patched. Frustrating.
I can second the author's conclusion. I fly regularly and have noticed in the last 6 months, PA systems have become much louder than usual on most flights. It's especially bad if you have headphones plugged in to the XM radio -- they don't seem to have separate volume controls for the PA speakers and hardwired headphones.
I tried running ads once, made about a penny in a month. Turned off the ads, cleaned up the site, focused on posting my notes/work, and ended up getting recruited through some engineers finding my posts when searching for info. To me, that was way more worth it than any ad revenue, but of course, your mileage may vary.
Reminds me of the Android File Transfer bug that disables MacBook keyboard/trackpad if the phone is locked. It was recently marked as "obsolete", despite all Android documentation (and even software on the phone) suggests the user use it, and the bug still exists on Lollipop:
I don't really understand how this has slipped through the cracks; Google has a decent number of MacBooks in their offices last time I was there, so maybe copying files just isn't popular? Either way, it's a pain that the tool is closed source and the maintainer won't maintain it.