Great recommendation - I immediately spotted the point about blue light, but wasn't aware of high quality sleep apps that help address the problem. Looking forward to trying your guys' suggested apps.
Definitely agree on the science side - but I'd have to differ on the sexism argument. True, Pixar and Disney have recently taken small steps to balance the almost overwhelmingly boy/male as hero model with Brave and Frozen, but we're a loooong way from thinking that there's a dearth of independent, forceful male characters.
I thought Tangled was Disney's finest moment. Two strong leads and lots of humour, plus Maximus the horse. I cringe at some films, I have a son and a daughter and I hate it when males are stupid and females are just holding out for a hero. But these type of films deal with stereotypical character types that are quickly recognised. The geeky kid has glasses, the princess is pretty, the muscular hero often doesn't pick up an non-verbal cues. What really freaks me out is the way the characters' eyes (especially princesses) are getting bigger every year!
Sheesh. I feel like we should just create a script to auto-post 'Tube strike' every 24.5 days or so; it certainly seems like they threaten to strike enough.
Agreed - and echoes a similar case I read about when the folks behind the Ordnance Survey (government agency and makers of truly exceptional maps for outdoor enthusiasts in the UK) proudly showed how they made their data online for a licensing fee that generated about £10m a year.
The people they were presenting to? A group of European governments that endorse massive, free access to this sort of data - as a means of spurring innovation and economic growth.
Now contrast that with London Mayor Boris Johnson's movie to open up the data for their city bike sharing scheme... released on a Friday, by Monday there were two apps that were slicker and better-developed than the city was planning, plus were now two small businesses.
Yeah the whole 'charging for government data' thing drives me crazy!
In almost all cases, the marginal cost of producing the 'good' (data) is approximately 0. Furthermore, because infinite copies of data can be made, there is no reason for price rationing. And there's no argument for granting monopoly through artificial scarcity (like there might be with patents and copyright) as the government would have produced the data anyway (often as a byproduct of some other activity e.g. income tax reporting).
Government data is a public good, in the strict economic sense (non-excludable, non-rivalrous).
Setting prices above marginal cost (i.e. 0) causes significant dead-weight loss; it is absolutely inexplicable and inexcusable public policy. This isn't complex economic theory. This is economics 101; you'll find this information in any first-year uni economics textbook (in the 'market failure' chapter). I can only conclude that public servants who do this kind of thing either aren't familiar with extremely basic public economic theory (which is a bad sign), or are actually trying to reduce public welfare (making the public service a rather odd career choice).
Conceptually, charging for government data is equivalent to levying a super-narrowly based and highly inefficient sales tax. The most baffling thing is that it's conservative governments that generally approve these kinds of policies, even though the net effect is to increase the size of government at extremely high efficiency costs.
I agree... especially with the comment about terse and unclear error messages. I recently got lured into the customer-facing side of things, and nothing annoys me (or our new users) than a message like "Incorrect syntax" when I used a unsupported symbol for my password.
First, be clear with your design and instructions. In my hasty password example - "Please create your password (6 or more characters, letters and numbers only)"
Then - if the user messes up, explain a bit... "Whoops, please only use letters and numbers"
Good point... a key problem though is self-inflicted. Taxi driver unions have a vested interest in keeping the number of licenses in operation low (so keeping rates high). That only pushes the value of each license up - and you have to spend thousands to buy someone else's license.
Same thing used to happen in NYC - but with the onset of Uber, the value of licenses (which were steadily climbing) has flatlined or even dropped.
It's unfortunate for the last set of drivers with these licenses, but it's a horrible way to run a much-needed service.
Insurance, training - absolutely. But forcing investment in super expensive legacy licenses is very inefficient.
Great article - cars are an old idea that are dramatically in need of a fundamental reboot. Google's self-driving cars are a huge start - as combined with the rise of the sharing economy, could signal that the car industry's approach of many slightly different models of the same basic tech to different segments of the market will no longer work. Safety, convenience, and reliability could be the new important features consumers look for.
I agree with the comment about Tesla - it's madness that most cars are still using the internal combustion engine! One mundane but important factor for people driving long distances are drinks holders! My wife's Audi has really crap drinks holders that don't work unless the drink is half empty (or full).
what is so great about introducing gadgets like car play into old and outdated technology like cars that need gas? Seriously, the big innovation in the car industry is coming from Tesla and not from Google or Apple.
Tesla's plans to have enough super chargers (solar powered) around the U.S. with instant battery swaps for those in a hurry, to allow you to travel from N.Y. to L.A. without spending a dime - those are the game changers.. not touch screens or the replacement of the suction cup.
