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That's an interesting question. I know I've tried to get a cab during a busy time and just given up and caught public transit home. Generally this is Friday and Saturday nights, when most people are in no condition to be driving themselves.

I also find Uber fares are about price comparable to public transit when travelling with multiple people, and so for that reason I could see it displacing trips previously taken with public transit.

Are you aware on any data on what transit modes the increased ridership of uber is displacing?

Taxi drivers are actually employees in some places? I had assumed most drivers were already under some non-employee structure in most jurisdictions pre-uber.

That's certainly the case here in Australia where taxi drivers were making under minimum wage with working conditions that would not be allowed were they employees. It's hard to see Uber as any worse than what existed before.

Tax dollar ROI for whom?

Part of the benefit of ensuring a diversity in government roles is aiding governments to better provide services for all aspects of society, not just the minority who hold those roles.

I actually like this as implemented by one of my banks. The 'pick a few letters' part of the login is pulled from a list of secret question answers rather than the password itself, and is presented after successfully entering the password.

So my password manager enters my password, and then on the next screen I am asked for the (for example) 4th and 5th letters of the street I grew up on. The requested letters change and the question is pulled from a saved list of question/answer pairs.

I am not aware of how the bank deals with accessibility limitations of this system.

This is a great description of why motors can make a big difference in racing. Even small differences in power output can make a big difference in an elite race where so little can mean the difference between winning and not. It's easy to imagine using a tiny motor (much smaller than the one mentioned in the article) could make the difference between winning and being an also ran.

However I have to nitpick on one point:

"Even a 2.5W power boost could be a game changer. If your muscles put out 250W, 2.5W is 1% more, which is significant. It's about 36 seconds shaved off a one hour haul."

Air resistance is one the most significant factor affecting riders at race speeds, and its force increases at a much greater than linear rate. You'd need about 3% more power in your example to save 36 seconds. In a flat time trial over one hour, 1% extra power would actually save you closer to 12 seconds. That said, the Tour de France has been won by less.

You realise Wikipedia isn't a source, right? Every news article about this incident (including the one you linked to) states that the tested bicycle was in the pits. The rider in question was out on course, riding a different bike.

That doesn't make it right of course. The whole incident stinks. But the UCI did not, and to date has not, caught someone racing with a motor.

Having disassembled the aforementioned Z3C a couple of times, I disagree that it's fine to have to break out the tools for it ever. It's a tough job, with lovely warnings like this one from iFixit:

"Warning first: Never try to move the battery unless it's broken and need to replace. Because there is very very strong adhesive sticker between battery and motherboard.And too much effort or careless operation will break the motherboard."

It's also difficult to maintain the waterproof seal when reassembling the phone. So while the Z3C has great battery life, you're essentially only going to have that for a couple of years.

Just as Lumberyard is only free up to the point you actually deploy it on AWS, at which point Amazon are making money on your hosting.

Pages 699-702 address this in detail:

“The land (France) was divided into loose and shifting territories that owed little or no allegiance to any central authority, ruled across large swathes by noblemen who were little more than warlords”

and

"Flanders, too, had great autonomy from the French monarch and strong ties to Germany and England (Sumption 1990, p. 35). In 1384 Flanders united with Burgundy to create a principality in France that fell in and out of French control for over a century."

and

"Most critically, (Scotland) was bitterly divided into three warring parts: the English- speaking southeast, the Gaelic-speaking northwest, and the lands that fell between"

There's a bunch more detail there along with references to the papers they draw those conclusions from. I'd say they support that part of their argument soundly.

One of the notes does actually address this point:

23 At the battle of Courtrai, for instance, the small principality of Flanders was able to muster an army of archers larger than the army of the entire kingdom of France, which consisted of knights and men-at-arms (Rogers 1993, p. 252). In this sense, a weapon like the longbow allows for the military enfranchisement of commoners, which institutionally constrains the ruler

It doesn't go on to discuss this further, but it shows that while maintaining a large force of archers required a population widely practiced in archery, where a region could muster enough longbows it enabled them to effectively combat the central control of their country.

Holden were indeed investigated by the ACCC for this, but they were not forced to refund the difference. The resolution was to "offer an opportunity to return the vehicle for a full refund of the purchase price including additional charges"[1], and applied to only 250-300 customers.

[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/holden-employee-pricin...

What strikes me as odd about this is that the laptops weren't encrypted to begin with.

Relying on remote encryption to protect the data could have been defeated by simply taking the network offline at the beginning of the raid.

Potentially a remote lock prevents employees of Uber Canada being ordered to decrypt the data as they lack the means, but presumably such a court order would lead to head office having to decrypt the data anyway.

Why isn't the statement that people on high incomes can afford to pay more tax generally true? Simply feeling that the tax you pay is adequate does not mean paying more would be unaffordable. Certainly you could more afford it than someone on an income of half or a quarter of yours.

The question of whether reducing funding of the military complex would be a better policy than tax increases is a valid one, but unrelated.

The outcome of winning is positive in the sense of cashflow, but the actual outcome on you is more likely to be negative:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/11/28/why-winnin...

So while not winning in the lottery might seem like a bad outcome, in fact you've avoided an even worse one. Which confoundingly means rational winnings maximization strategies (such as picking less commonly chosen numbers to reduce the odds of sharing a prize) in fact make the expected outcome of lottery playing even worse.

There's a study on red light cameras in Chicago that shows some interesting data about what affects they have on driving behaviour and accident rates

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/redlight/ct-red-...

Archive.org does: https://web.archive.org/web/20140722172840/http://www.apple....

The new base model has double the RAM and a .2ghz bump for the same price.

The largest Australian bank (commbank) was reporting as vulnerable on filippo.io/Heartbleed/ for some hours after the vulnerability became known. GE Money Australia haven't fixed their vulnerability yet either.

But how many of those taking non government jobs end up working on intelligence projects with the private consulting firms this work is increasingly being outsourced to?

Really? I've been impressed with Kiwibank's balancing security and usability. Rabobank NZ have two factor authentication too.

Of course if you're with one of the four majors, well... they're owned by Australians, what did you expect?