vostrocity

This article gives a prognosis of AI that does not destroy civilization but makes civilization better.

It is much more comforting than proposals to try to limit AI in my opinion.

I interpreted the construction of data centers as happening over the span of a few years, and continuously after that. The whole transformation up to the creation of the Alliance seemed like it would have to happen in half a century, if not longer.

On a road with high traffic speed and not enough visibility of pedestrians waiting at the side of the road, most motorists won't yield

Similar to a few places in Los Angeles

Flashing red light = stop sign is in most people's driver's ed, but it seems like most people don't know how to react to it (like you, I see some people simply blow through and others wait indefinitely)

Better known as the 'CHMSL' (Center High-Mounted Stop Lamps)

Knowing student groups, it's not about making money, but a few smart undergrads showing other undergrads emerging fields and letting them get some hands-on experience.

A group like this has a DeCal (a student-led university-credit course), events, speakers, and probably a selected group that works on club leadership and consulting.

Uber can probably be profitable tomorrow if it wanted to be, but then it would have its long-term opportunities gobbled up by others

People keep saying Uber is burning cash, but their core business model is sound:

$5 per hour per driver goes to Uber

Assume 80,000 drivers (half of # U.S. Uber drivers) drive 8 hours a day, 7 days a week

52 weeks in a year

5x8x80000x7x52=$1,164,800,000

So about $1.1 billion just in the US. The only expenses are at headquarters (engineering, operations, design, legal, marketing, support) and the tiny field support offices they have in each city (local, entry-level employees).

"no longer price competitive" to who?

"drivers start to leave" where are they leaving to?

What's truly fascinating is all of these innovative products made in Asia which aren't officially marketed in the West (thus allowing people to market it in smalltime ways, like Kickstarter). If you go to the right parts of Asia now you will see a wild array of amazing, futuristic products that you can't find anywhere in the US.

I don't think you can get approved for cards like Chase Sapphire Reserve without a certain credit history. It's not the annual fee.

Uber could just run Android or iOS emulators running Lyft with fake user accounts and fake geolocation.

This is exactly why I enjoy Lyft's option for tipping. Tipping is awkward if I have to fumble for cash and stuff it in the driver's hands. It's not awkward if I can just press a button and charge it to my credit card.

If I remember correctly, Lyft's tip options are No Tip or +$1 or +$2 or +$3, so it's not much math.

I usually use Lyft, and one reason is that I get the option to tip the driver.

This is what I was thinking.

I don't see ill will on eBay's part. What I see is a few badly-designed processes: not soliciting proof when there is a buyer/seller dispute and not integrating a "Money Back Guarantee" charge into eBay's account balance.

These seem like matters of incompetence.

Also, in my experience, when I refused to pay eBay for some charges I disagreed with, they simply sent the debt to a collections agency.

Maybe not organized, but usually specialized. To steal a bike, you need a set of tools (like a modified car jack http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2014/10/your-u-lock-is-basi...) and knowledge of where to sell the parts.

What? The bikes that get stolen in public are the bikes that get used regularly (usually daily).

You have to consider how difficult it is for the police to do anything in that circumstance – it's just 'he say, she say.' It might be easier if you've filed a police report and your bike is registered, but even then there is no evidence (especially on the spot) that the seller (who is probably just lingering around and not an actual registered flea market seller) stole the bike. I think part of it is also the culture: you don't want cops coming into a flea market to arrest people, because the whole flea market is a bit of a legal grey zone.

However, you should definitely press charges every time if you do get the police involved. That's the only way to reduce bike theft. If you don't press charges, the thief simply goes and steals another bike the next day.

Bluetooth LE and motion sensors are actually brilliant, but I think we're treating this too much as an individual problem when we can eliminate bike theft in the first place and not worry about installing trackers.

I've always thought about doing stings from the other direction: with bait bikes. For a bait bike, you just need a bike and a GPS tracker with a battery life of a week or so (a poorly-locked bike will be stolen in a matter of days). The GPS tracker is inserted in the seat tube, and if you glue/oxidize the seat in the seat tube, the thief can't remove the seat to check even if they are smart enough to check for a tracker. You can even add security cameras where you set up the bait bike (outside your apartment or home is a great place) to get additional information. The GPS tracker then gives you a location of either where the thief lives or where they store their stolen property, which lets you bust them pretty easily.

Even in a bicycle-friendly town with 100,000 in population (ala Berkeley), I can't imagine that there are more than a few hundred bike thieves. It would take only a dozen individuals doing bait bikes to bring down bike theft drastically. Combine that with "Bike Batman" style vigilantism identifying stolen bikes on the used market, and I think it's possible to reduce bike theft to near zero in a local area.

There are plenty of good dentists, and the internet has made it much easier to compare. Not sure if there's a well-reputed review site for healthcare professionals, but Yelp has worked well for me.

On iOS, I find that it's mostly the OS that becomes unusable. However, that's an interesting idea.

PS: I believe he used the noun usage of 'vintage', referring to a desktop manufactured in 2011.

I noticed recently while doing a price check on parts that NewEgg isn't the lowest on price anymore in a number of categories.

Do people really equate Google and GM because of the amount of 'mental space' they take? I would imagine people look at market cap or revenue or pretax earnings etc.

Right, Yosemite has made my system about as unstable as iOS 7/8 on iPhone. Both are prone to random restarts and lags and other issues. Finder lags for multiple seconds doing simple file operations even when CPU use is low. There are UI bugs all over the place.

Not to burst bubbles, but this is a Tumblr blog with all of 11 images.

http://vastpic.com/archive

Not saying that it's not worth subscribing to if you like the style of images though. :)

No one has mentioned that the author of the piece likes to leave his monitors on 24/7. I often see many monitors in offices left on overnight running a screensaver. Is there a good reason for this, or simply ignorance?

Does anyone have UI issues with SelfControl? I run SelfControl on a schedule using AppleScript and cron but often the program will get stuck (clicking SelfControl's UI button will do nothing). If anyone has a better way to automatically block internet access at set times (without using the router), let me know.

But the usefulness of game theory is pinned on the accuracy of utility functions.

I think there will be a lot to worry about before we have to worry about running out of oil.