I thought the productivity data was interesting but then it stopped right after hack week... Definitely agree, the long term implications are a lot more interesting.
Reply all is an excellent show, and Gimlet media has an excellent lineup of podcasts in general. I particularly like the early seasons of startup (I may have to check back in this season for them covering they sale to Spotify), and Every Little Thing.
It's well produced podcasts done well. If you took This American Life and scaled it to few slightly more targeted podcasts but kept the same quality, that's what they offer. That's less a metaphor than a description of history, given the original founder cut his teeth on TAL and then started Planet Money (also still excellent) before starting his own company.
Okay, that's enough fanboying from me. It's just that I listen to a lot of podcasts, and Gimlet accounts for a large amount of my favorites.
Vulture capitalism strikes again, exploiting undiversified, banana republic rustbelt towns who misplace their faith in a single, quick-fix, recovery panacea rather than many different industries that are geared to the needs of today.
I imagine a lot of readers are taking umbrage at these towns being called “banana republics.” Honestly a lot of American town and city councils can be described this way, regardless of where in the US they are. I write this as an American who has been to too many local government meetings over my life.
Yes. There are way to many local government representatives who think they can go "toe to toe" with the lawyers and officers of multinational corporations. They often take promises from those corporations at a word and don't (or can't) hold the corporations accountable when promises aren't kept. Inevitably the local representatives, and the constituents they represent, are left holding the short end of the stick.
I'll also point out the whole deal was bought & sold by the state government as well. It wasn't just the local government. Governor Walker and the state representatives had an interest in getting the Foxconn deal through to show they were "creating jobs" for the state.
I don’t think you know what the term banana republic means. A rust belt town with an American middle class (even in an economic depression) doesn’t qualify. They are in no way dependent on a single corporation.
I disagree. SOME rust belt towns are not dependent on a single corporation. Other rust belt towns are and when that company ceases operations there, the town experiences rapid decline.
If you disagree that some rust belt towns are dependent on a single corporation, I think you are either using a different definition of dependent than how I read the original comment use it, or you are not aware that towns where a single factory employs a significant portion of the towns population exist.
In banana republics, the citizens have no mobility compared to US citizens so the dynamic is completely different.
The fact that people in these towns can continue to live in them and easily telecommute like any other US citizen or even physically commute to the nearest major US city means that the citizens are not dependent on a single industry.
This won't fix things. If you look at maximum road capacity for a highway lane it's pretty pitifully in the hundreds. Maximum capacity being exact speed limit driving with minimum safe distance between cars. Obviously, city streets have an even lower capacity even if you exclude pedestrian and bicycle traffic Ultimately cars can't be the only solution in dense urban environments.
You’re right that cars can never compete with mass transit in density and bandwidth, and mass transit already operates pretty close to the ideals that I proposed for motor vehicles. If anything it’s an example of why we should implement trains on tracks rather than self driving cars.
But your calculation would be off because there would not be any inefficiencies associated with human driving. Cars would have reduced safe distance, increased max speeds, and would not have to slow down for stops, intersections (assuming walkways are built over intersections for pedestrians), as all cars would be part of the same computer system, and essentially one harmonious unit.
Even if cars are low density and roads are narrow, the increased throughout would be massive.
"If you look at maximum road capacity for a highway lane it's pretty pitifully in the hundreds."
You need some units for this sentence to have meaning.
If a vehicle and its space buffer takes up 52.8 feet and goes 60mph one gets 100 vehicles/minute or 6000 per hour. With two people per vehicle, that is 12000 people per hour. Use mini-buses with 10 people each you can get 60,000 people per hour. This rate is about what BART does when completely full at rush hour.
Another cool thing about a road is that one can mix high capacity vehicles (buses) with lower capacity ones (cars) with cargo vehicles (trucks). You can even use them for tanks, ambulances, fire trucks, Humvees, etc.
It's important to remember that the federal government was actively subsidizing the urban exodus to suburbia in the 1940s. The subway became unprofitable due to federal housing policy and the local or state government ended up having to bail it out.
The NYC subway became unprofitable due to the terrible contracts that the operators signed.[0] Specifically they could not increase the fare greater than five cents, which doomed them because of inflation. The city took over the BMT and IRT companies on June 1st 1940. Suburbanization did not really start occurring in the US until after the end of WW2.
"Whatever reason" is because the quality of life in an urban area is much higher than in a rural "cheap" area. Jobs are centered in urban areas, you can eliminate a huge commute by living close to work, clawing back hours of your life. For those who are unable to afford a car the rich transit options available in urban areas are life lines to school, work, a community. Cheaper areas can be massive voids where go to the grocery store or post office is a 30 minutes round trip car ride.
If that is true, don't you think the university had a duty to communicate that? It seems like the u of Chicago promised them a first class institute and is not delivering. If that was never possible then it seems like a clear bad faith agreement.
I am happily surprised google assistant not only plays from Spotify but let's you set Spotify as your default music service. No "ask Spotify to play..." just a simple "play..."
I feel like Apple bullies people into inferior experiences.
I hate this line of logic. San Francisco is already insanely expensive. Letting property crime go untouched is just pushing the cost of that on to those in the city who are already strapped for time and money. My window got busted and I had to pay $350 and miss half a day of work. I fully expect this to happen again, at my own expense.
That is a very scary future. I too had comments under my name in support of net neutrality in addition to the real comment I filed. Hopefully the Equifax leak (which really seems to have blown over quickly) leads to a new identification system so public comments can actually be verified as coming from real citizens.
