"Uncovering and reusing these old tracks could prove far cheaper than constructing new lanes."
- I guess that seems key to me. Those lanes are nearly 90 years old. How much cheaper would they be vs new ones? And is that savings (10%, 30%?) really the thing that's holding back adding a nationwide biking network?
I think the key point is that they already have a right of way reserved for cycling use, so even if they all need to be rebuilt the cost is merely that of breaking up and laying down concrete. Generally any bike infrastructure project has to contend with the politics of taking space away from cars.
Building a new cycle lane has all of the same costs getting it approved as a new road does - planning, buying the land, landowner negotiations, navigating planning permissions, public consultations etc. A bit of digging and tarmac on an existing one avoids most of that, it's just a case of finding the money - and the national government has announced a funding pot that councils can apply to.
> > The draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies, which has not yet been made public, concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now. It directly contradicts claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain, and that the ability to predict the effects is limited.
These are entirely separate claims. The author of the article is saying that the United States are warmer; then implying that the change is entirely man-made and detrimental to make a political point (in this case, a hit against President Trump, though I suppose it's a step in the right direction that NYT are now allowed to refer to the President as the President).
- I think that paragraph is a little confusing. It might be better as "It _also_ directly contradicts claims" - ie the first sentence is not tied to the second sentence, even though I could see how it might at first read that way.
One thing you're missing is how the market came to them, partly through their own making. Laptops and PC's looked "corporate" Apple products (blue, pink, green computers anyone?) looked decidedly uncorporate. The iPhone looked so not like a Blackberry (with it's accompanying belt holster!) However, the "consumerization" of IT meant sleek personal design was preferred to corporate design. The iPhone helped breakdown that wall and now MSFT and others went out the side door and are reentering as consumer looking devices.
Yes I think this is why the iWatch has largely been a failure. There wasn't really a watch out there that was getting real traction despite itself so that apple could come along and add the missing ingredients and "boom"! It's the downside of when there is so much pressure to have "another hit" but your skill isn't creating something out of thin air but rather taking something that has real upside if you can get all the pieces of the ecosystem (hw/sw/contentproviders) to hum together.
Hah. I think patio11 just joined Stripe, one of the fastest growing startups around :) Anyway, besides many of the usual answers, talent is a key one often forgotten. People want the chance to do new and ever changing things so as to be challenged. It's hard to retain good people when they know it's going to be a smaller company with modest growth. What often kills companies with slowish growth is that they lose their best people to other companies with a more dynamic environment.
I can't tell you how true this is. A lot of my friends still in the startup world call me a "burn out" and accuse me of having "no ambition."
Yeah, I have no ambition. Yet I can totally take a week off and head to Puerto Rico. Not only does the world not end, but I don't get called with an emergency while I'm hiking through the rainforest to find a swimming hole.
I get to go out every weekend. I go out on Sundays. I go out whenever. I pretty much key in 40 hours and work 35 hours a week (10 a.m. to 5 or 6).
Yeah, maybe I don't get paid above $200,000, but my life is straight out of some Oprah "Live your best life" book. So bite me. I'll take no ambition over that startup life any day.
I would think that cuts both ways. SiftScience only needs to have a few big retail clients and they'll be doing a huge volume. More to the point I would think Stripe's strength here is their weakness....they're only as good as the users they have on Stripe vs Sift which might have a broader mix of datasets. Of course, as Stripe continues to grow that weakness will diminish.
Given that we all know headlines are made for clicking, I think it's pretty clear why this time is very different vs the previous 10 years: "He notes that the company is now managing inventory, building relationships with carriers, sourcing components, making supply chain deals and managing distribution. Google is even making accessories, including cases and cables." This article isn't about the technical approach, it's more about the business/go to market approach.
That's _very_ different to how Google went to market prior. Is this going to materially impact the iPhone? I don't know. But it is different enough that it warrants some sort of "This is a new approach by Google to taking on the iPhone" headline.
It's different, but it doesn't mean it's an iPhone killer.
MS started making their own hardware and it certainly helped push the market but the Sufarce never turned into the 'iPad killer' that tons of sites decided to declare it.
It's a new Android phone, Google was heavily involved (more than the Nexus line). That's it. That's not bad, but it doesn't automatically make something an X killer.
Wasn't saying it was an iPhone killer. Actually specifically said I have no idea. More addressing OP's questioning that there was anything of real import in the article.
> MS started making their own hardware and it certainly helped push the market but the Sufarce never turned into the 'iPad killer' that tons of sites decided to declare it.
The Surface is basically a superior option to the iPad Pro, which all accounts give inferior sales to.
Besides "using iOS apps" what exactly is the iPad's use case? Certainly the Surface line as a whole has seen a really big uptake from the art community. So while the pen specs are slightly better on the iPad side it doesn't seem to influence consumer behavior.
I'm a grad student. I have a workstation in my office. But at home, it's perfect for reading research papers thanks to the high resolution display, the fact that I can disconnect the keyboard, and the included pen which I can use to annotate.
Yes, the iPad can do all that, but I can reconnect the keyboard, and continue using Matlab, or log in remotely to my office machine and continue my office work, or edit spreadsheets/PPTs/thesis in full MS Office. And it's light enough that I can throw it in my backpack "just in case" I need it. Honestly, the being able to disconnect the keyboard thingy seems gimmicky before you get used to it. After you do, it's a godsend.
I have one collecting dust. My partner was going to use it for digital illustration but ended up hijacking my S4 and I use a SB now.
They're really quite nice. Not sure why people are predisposted to hate them. Certainly it can't be the usual privacy concerns: the iPad Pro is more instrumented than any install of Win10 could ever dream of getting away with.
There's a hell of a lot more "windows apps that weren't designed for a tablet" - 20+ years' worth - than there are "iOS apps". And not just apps but also a lot of hardware peripherals. I play '90s games at lan parties (which aren't really substitutable - iOS might have strategy games, but it won't have Supreme Commander and that's what my friends are playing). I run eclipse (is there any kind of Java IDE on iOS?). I run the vocaloid software (which iOS doesn't have, though it might have other music synthesis software), and the fan-made 3d modelling software that people use to animate the characters (which definitely won't exist for iOS); I render and encode the resulting video. If a program hasn't got a windows release I can compile it on the surface itself and run it there (can iOS do that?). If I want to run a program for a different platform I can run an emulator on the surface (which the iOS app store disallowed last I knew).
How many non-crossplatform apps does iOS have? How many of those don't have acceptable substitutes for at least most use cases?
It's an excellent development environment for everyone but iOS and macOS developers. It's got a great set of digital illustration tools with a lot more time put into development than the newer iOS equivalents. It's is a full windows box, which gives it impressive range. It has better linux binary support than MacOSX (unfair, that has none).
There are a lot of windows apps that are designed and work really well on the tablet. It's not like Apple holds a monopoly here.
Well every other manufacturer has looked to Google (largely) for the sw and built the hw. It's this bundling together of the two that's being presented as unique and is different to every other Android manufacturer.
But that's hypothetical. I'm not seeing any features that Google is uniquely placed to offer. And it's not like Android is so antithetical to third party modifications.
Well the Gen 1 version suffered from ever decreasing sales. So right now it would seem as though the HN crowd and general public are in sync when it comes to interest in the watch. I guess you could argue GPS support could create a strong use case with the fitness vertical and that is not well represented here but not sure if that's true.
But for how long? "Apple Watch shipments were a different story, with Apple being the only company to post a year-on-year decrease in shipments - almost 58% down" That's from IDC's 2nd quarter report. I appreciate that you might be a big fan but I seriously doubt Rolex is going down 58% YoY.
This is a perfect distillation of otherwise intelligent people losing their capacity for reason when it comes to anything Apple-related. Just ... just "lol".
- I guess that seems key to me. Those lanes are nearly 90 years old. How much cheaper would they be vs new ones? And is that savings (10%, 30%?) really the thing that's holding back adding a nationwide biking network?