98 karma · joined October 11, 2013
http://examinedexistence.com//wp-content/uploads/2013/12/cry...
This is a simplified view but communicates the idea.
Some might say crystallized intelligence is under-valued in tech. That might be true. But then we should discuss that, not through the lens of social justice against age discrimination.
This claim seems to be the root of every anti-AirBnB argument: AirBnB rentals eat into the resident housing supply.
But this is simply solved by zoning and regulation. In any given city there is some number of residents and some number of visitors, and some number of permanent and temporary beds for them to sleep in. Yes, AirBnB shifts some of the housing stock from resident to visitor - but, if that's what economic forces are commanding then the zoning & regulation should adapt, not fight it. It's not a capacity issue, just one of allocation.
> “Full repeal of the estate tax would allow African Americans to pass the full fruits of their business success to the next generation and thereby laying the foundation for a permanent minority ownership class that can contribute to the economic growth and development of the United States economy,” Robert Johnson, whose worth has been estimated at more than half a billion dollars, wrote to the House Ways and Means Committee last week.
Our mission is to help people see & understand their data. I'm not good at marketing, you can Google us & read for yourself. I've been here >3 years and love it - common feeling here, the high retention rate and happy team speaks for itself. Happy customers, too. The customer conference is a lot of fun.
We're hiring pretty much every engineering specialty, still growing fast - my team specifically is looking for web client expertise, but if that's not your thing I can connect you with someone who knows your specialty better. Web client stack is the usual SPA ecosystem: Angular, React, Node, TypeScript. Happy to go deeper if you're interested. Reach me at jclement@tableau.com or koggit@gmail.com.
Why?
I experienced some culture shock learning that San Francisco's top coffee shop didn't serve espresso. The idea of a coffee shop without an espresso machine had never crossed my mind. I left confused, with a scalding hot pour over, and moved back to Seattle soon afterward.
Blue Bottle and Four Barrel Coffee were both excellent.
Americans subsidize parking by imposing fees on developers who don't include "enough" of it, and by reserving large portions of cities' streets for car storage. Multi-billion dollar highways enable sprawl and cheaper commercial parking lots. Driving & parking personal vehicles is incredibly wasteful from a broad economic perspective (but it was the correct path -- a necessary evil in the absence of density to enable effective mass transit).
Even with the government subsidies, Uber is an economically competitive alternative to driving & parking personal vehicles. That's the amazing part. Public policy favors the incumbent behavior, yet "ride-sharing" has still been able to expose market inefficiencies. Imagine if we killed all the parking subsidies, or better yet: used economic incentives to discourage driving & parking personal vehicles, and encourage the behavior that had a lower total cost.
I believe the future of personal transportation is computer-driven computer-dispatched vehicles, a game Uber and Google are leading. We can't get there soon enough.
Doesn't solve the worst part of parking: reserving that much space for car storage.
The author's vision seems to be one in which everyone owns a self-driving car. Why own the car? Just pay for use, Uber et al. can handle logistics. Only the reserve portion of the fleet should be parked, like buses.
Pretty & usable are easily purchased. Throw an expensive dev team at it. Brand and reputation are more difficult.
The cost of a bike lane averages $130,000 per mile.
The cost of an urban road averages $4,000,000 per mile, per lane.
Not to mention better bike infrastructure reduces car traffic: more bikes means fewer cars, the bike infrastructure is not simply additive.
Plus secondary economic benefits: civil density, reduced parking costs, reduced healthcare costs, reduced environmental costs, reduced oil & gas imports, ...
Did you know a parked car takes up 10 times as much space as a parked bicycle?
Did you know there are approximately 10 parking spaces per car in America?
Take away the driving subsidies and everyone would be riding bikes demanding better infrastructure.
As a consumer, I think I should oppose Zillow. They seem to just take public data, present it nicely, and slather it with advertisements. Real estate agents play the same heavy-handed role they always have, except now they have to give some of their profits to Zillow else lose visibility to their competitors.
I'm more excited about Redfin. Redfin makes shopping for a home closer to the self-service experience it should be, with agents dealing in higher volume with lower margins playing a lighter role. Unlike Zillow, Redfin seems to make that market more efficient, and I think that's the bigger opportunity for capitalization.
As a result of my efforts, I am more skilled, and consequently enjoy a more lucrative position than I otherwise would. If I were a mediocre developer I could earn half as much as I do, or less. My nights & weekends developing software for my employer are investments in myself.
* What about the web?
* What about cross-platform?
* What about when the device token changes? (for example, after restoring the phone from a backup image)
My take: Facebook Login solves a real problem well and this 'Anonymous' option is a good improvement. The name is no worse than other industry uses of terms "Incognito", "Private", and "Cloaked".
If you enjoy certain characteristics of urban living -- dense, progressive, diverse, bustling -- NYC is peerless.
Should a retired taxi driver be able to afford such a location? Should we be upset that she cannot?
Probably means: "The market price is above what I believe it should be."
Not: "$1000 is too much money for me to spend."
My guess is that the price drops because of so many employees selling at once, but I don't pretend to understand finance.