This was roughly speaking my first thought as well. I thought "Well we always laughed at the sci-fi depictions of people with big cans of air for sale, come pay for premium filtered air ... but this is how that all starts, isn't it. Rich people pay for an air that might make them think 10% faster, then as it starts to normalize to the middle-class, they care less and less about pollutants in the air and eventually we just regard that as a poor-peoples' problem."
The sweet spot for me is a particular mountain I go to which starts at 1200m and goes to 2000 (although I don't spend time at the peak - it's a ski field).
Thanks for your anecdote, now I feel I can take my observations more seriously
It could also be the sheer concentration of CO2. I work in a forest: 400ppm in the office every morning. Back at home, in the city, 5km away: 580ppm minimum all day long. Maybe cities make people stupid :D
It's incredible how quickly CO2 can build up inside a room. I'm also in a small village, and CO2 is 420ppm-ish outside. In my home office right now with the window open but no through flow, it's 1800ppm. If I close the window, it'll head off the scale of my CO2 monitor, above 5000ppm. Now that definitely is in the realm of cognitive impairment. I need some better ventilation.
Fair. My appropriate point of comparison (if I wasn't currently nitrogen drunk) should in fact have been mountains <1000m. Which I also love, but they don't have that clear headed altitude feeling.
Most successful transit systems are a short couple minutes walk to the train station, bus stop or streetcar. No further than walking from the parking lot to your destination in a lot of cases.
Cars are really only 'door to door' in the suburbs when commuting between two homes with driveways. Otherwise they're no different than a decent transit system.
I do find it interesting how people automatically assume all driving is door-to-door, forget about parking lots, forget about finding street parking, etc. and immediately talk about how transit can't work based on the same issue.
> Cars are really only 'door to door' in the suburbs when commuting between two homes with driveways
American suburbs are incompatible with trains. In cities, Uber is door to door.
I get the broader point. But at this crossroad, re-designing our cities for trains is a moot point. We could have, we should have, but we didn’t. Similar to African and Southeast Asian countries leapfrogging copper for mobile and fibre, electric self-driving point-to-point (perhaps with sub regional rail and more-efficient air) looks like the clear future for America, a rich and spread-out country.
> I get the broader point. But at this crossroad, re-designing our cities for trains is a moot point.
Why not? Cities were redesigned from 1940s-60s to be compatible with cars. It took an enormous amount of capital, but it was done because of the promise of a new technology.
Most of the infrastructure in suburbs currently under construction will be tear-downs in 30 years. The only redesign that needs to happen is letting current developments age out, removing restrictions on denser and multi-use architecture closer to the city center, and pricing utilities by effective utilization (suburbs use more utilities but don't pay more for them). Denser architecture and urbanization will naturally re-emerge because it is more economically competitive.
Mass transit can then be added in piecemeal, first with busses, then light rail and street cars, then underground trains.
> Why not? Cities were redesigned from 1940s-60s to be compatible with cars. It took an enormous amount of capital, but it was done because of the promise of a new technology.
I'm not arguing against redesign per se. Just the timing. We don't know what self-driving cars will mean for urban transport, but we know it's going to be impactful. Building out rail infrastructure now is like building the best piston engine on the eve of the dawn of the jet age. It's probably still very relevant. But we don't know in what form.
I doubt it will be mass transit a la Europe. But I also don't think we'll be in an LA universe. Cars that can seamlessly deliver people to train stations is an option. But at that point, why not directly to their train car? These seem like simple modifications, but they impact whether you build out lines and arteries with waypoints in the suburbs.
> We don't know what self-driving cars will mean for urban transport, but we know it's going to be impactful.
At this point, given the challenges that we can see in front of us, we do not know that self-driving cars will ever be genuinely practical. Not in the "can drive anywhere, under any conditions, with no more danger than humans" sense.
> the "can drive anywhere, under any conditions, with no more danger than humans" sense
That’s fine. I’m limiting scope to urban and suburban environments where they interface with other modes as a universal last mile. That definitely looks proximate, given there are working examples already deployed, albeit unsustainably.
> American suburbs are incompatible with trains. In cities, Uber is door to door.
Absolutely, in part because they don't have trains. You have to put the trains in first, and the density will follow. However, I actually picked my wording pretty carefully in the original post. Most people live in cities, and the fraction that lives in urban areas continues to grow. I don't think trains solve all problems but I reiterate they solve the problems of most people.
That's before we even get to the problem of Uber and Lyft being utterly unsustainable businesses.
> I get the broader point. But at this crossroad, re-designing our cities for trains is a moot point. We could have, we should have, but we didn’t.
It's not nearly as bad as you think. You drop the transit down, and the buildings around will redevelop absent punitive zoning. No better time to start than today!
> Most people live in cities, and the fraction that lives in urban areas continues to grow
Given a choice, many are choosing point-to-point. Even where there is mass transit, American cities aren’t as dense as European and Asian centres. (Particularly post Covid.) The solution will be hybrid. Planners who pivot hard for trains make the same mistake as those who went hard for cars in the 50s.
> before we even get to the problem of Uber and Lyft being utterly unsustainable businesses
In suburbs, yes. Cities have had cabs for ages.
> drop the transit down, and the buildings around will redevelop absent punitive zoning. No better time to start than today
Now isn’t good. We’re on the precipice of a regime change. Self-driving cars port economies of scale from Phoenix to New York and vice versa. That isn’t true of trains given the amount of local planning required*. We should deploy artery routes. But the end game will be point to point, aided with trains for efficiency. There are many ways that could develop; it seems silly to bet on the legacy model this late in the game.
* Yes, Wayne must tune. But that team can move on once done. We don’t ship Chicago’s urban planners to Seattle; there is a strong element of re-learning everything every time with trains.
> Now isn’t good. We’re on the precipice of a regime change. Self-driving cars port economies of scale from Phoenix to New York and vice versa. That isn’t true of trains given the amount of local planning required*. We should deploy artery routes. But the end game will be point to point, aided with trains for efficiency. There are many ways that could develop; it seems silly to bet on the legacy model this late in the game.
Cars are an awful model because they spend 95% of their time idle. They do that because most people only want to commute to work and from work. Which means you need to have enough capacity on the road for 1.5-pax average vehicles for everyone. That's why adding one more lane never solves anything. They're fundamentally a choice which does not scale no matter how many more lanes you add. No matter how much automation you add. And if you choose to play this game you just induce more demand.
They're also a regressive tax on the poor since you're shouldering the average person with hundreds to thousands of dollars in car payments, maintenance, registration, licensing, insurance, etc. Plus the socialized cost of 'free parking'.
Cars are a bad model, period.
> In suburbs, yes. Cities have had cabs for ages.
Well sure, but that's because they pool their leases and insurance, which isn't something you can do in a gig economy. Which means uber and Lyft have fundamentally worse unit economics than cabs. So you should assume you'll in the fullness of time pay at least as much as cabs cost.
> Cars are an awful model because they spend 95% of their time idle
Private cars, sure. I doubt a New York taxi gets that down time.
> uber and Lyft have fundamentally worse unit economics than cabs. So you should assume you'll in the fullness of time pay at least as much as cabs cost
But higher utilization. Uber is profitable in New York. I think Uber is actually more expensive than a yellow, now, because the TLC hasn't been great about inflation adjusting rates. But it's more convenient, more reliable, and so, again, utilized more. (Wayne was like $5 per ride in Phoenix.)
> Now is the best time since yesterday
You're purposely ignoring the point. If you're getting all the requirements tomorrow, tonight isn't a smart time to build.
> Of all people who commute to work in New York City, 39% use the subway, 23% drive alone, 11% take the bus, 9% walk to work, 7% travel by commuter rail, 4% carpool, 1.6% use a taxi, 1.1% ride their bicycle to work, and 0.4% travel by ferry.
> Uber is profitable in New York.
And if that's all it took to be Uber they'd be in great shape but again, most people in New York take the metro. And Uber's business model relies on people taking Uber outside of Manhattan.
> You're purposely ignoring the point. If you're getting all the requirements tomorrow, tonight isn't a smart time to build.
This doesn't make sense. I'm telling you if you build rail density will come. Like it always has. So if you want a chicken, you better get started on the egg.
I assume this is your source [1]. It's from 2017, and only measures commutes. As of February, total subway ridership was down a quarter to a third; busses have stabilized at -35% [2]. Notable absentee: Manhattan, the densest of the lot, where we're stubbornly below -50%.
I'm not arguing against trains. Just against deploying new trains at the precipice of a game changer.
> if you build rail density will come. Like it always has
You're quoting sources from before remote work. (I'm ignoring the increasing automation, particularly in Manhattan.) And, again, before we know how self-driving cars will change transportation.
> even trains with drivers can be considered close to driver less vs people driving cars
In a sense. That also applies to planes and cruise ships. All remain labor constrained.
That’s the vision of self-driving cars. Door to door and scale free. Trains approximate that for the masses, most of the time. But they don’t for the long tail.
I lived and worked (as a coder) on a boat for a number of years. I used long range wifi to steal internet from cafes, LTE, and for worst case, satellite internet (insanely expensive, just for emergencies, back in 2014-6).
A lot of my time was spent messing about keeping internet. Whenever the boat moved around I had to move the high gain wifi antenna. LTE at the time was great but small data caps.
For ~$6k a year it's a total game changer.
If I didn't have kids now I'd buy a boat again and do it in a heartbeat. Hell if I can afford it, maybe if my company exits, I'll jump at it with the kids.
Good question. I tested heaps. The winning design by a landslide was a metal plate reflector, with essentially two diamonds around 15mm in front of it, side by side, apx 15mm on the edge.
I thought it was called a 'butterfly antenna', but web searching now I don't think that's correct.
I built one for a friend just with wire and pliers. The tolerances mustn't have been that important because it worked well.
Maybe someone on here knows the name of that antenna design?
I vaguely remember _years_ ago, someone, perhaps here on HN but not sure, predicted Apple would become a bank. It seemed insane at the time... from memory it was maybe around 2010 or perhaps earlier.
Does that ring any bells for anyone here? Id love to re-read it and know the exact date
Why does this move indicate they are closer to being a bank? Also, Apple’s profit margins are already much better than a retail bank’s, so why would Apple want to get into that business and be subject to all that extra bureaucracy?
As to why, A) given Apple's lawyers, I'm sure they can structure the deal so as to minimize exposure to regulations for the rest of the empire, and B) they like money. Judging from how much of it they have, they really like money. More to the point though, banking sucks - as did smartphones for a lot of reasons before the iPhone, so if Apple thinks they can make a better product for their customers, they totally would.
Given their inroads into the space already, it's not that far fetched that they wouldn't need to in order to accomplish their goals, simply by co-opting their current partner, Goldman Sachs, which is a bank.
Why this current move moves them closer to being a bank, it means they're now running savings accounts for consumers, which is a very bank-shaped thing to do.
> As to why, A) given Apple's lawyers, I'm sure they can structure the deal so as to minimize exposure to regulations for the rest of the empire, and B) they like money. Judging from how much of it they have, they really like money.
Everyone really likes money. If Apple wanted to, they could just buy Goldman Sachs in cash, it is worth a small fraction of Apple. Or any number of small banks, but there is huge regulatory risk involved, and it is not necessarily true that all opportunities for profit are worth the risks and costs.
As far as I understand, the regulatory hurdles for starting and operating a bank are so big and the ROI so low that pretty much no new bank gets started these days, and only old ones get bought for those who want to get into the banking business.
I remember this comment and I think it makes a lot of sense that this is what companies do when they become huge and have excess cash on hand. Apple has a ton of cash and so something like this makes a lot of sense. They can absorb any short-term risk that it may introduce and likely it is structured in such a way that Goldman takes the majority of the risk anyway.
My world depends on writing TBs of data to micro SD cards in difficult environments right at the limit of write speed. These tools are great but our devices are linux (embedded), so this really is a huge help.
For anyone else out there who needs high performance out of an SD card... fstrim is your friend. Seriously, nothing comes close. Run it regularly when not under load.
