Pure nostalgia! I was seven when my father got me one. Apparently I declared in a dramatic voice that "We have now entered... THE COMPUTER AGE!!!". Honestly, the things one could do with that machine were intoxicating.
10,941 karma · joined November 30, 2011
The platform is being used by customers around the world, from large-multinational private campus owners, to global consultancies, to local authorities and transport operators. They use Podaris for everything from bus network redesigns, to the planning of new innovative multi-billion pound fixed-infrastructure schemes.
Our small team makes for an inclusive, interdisciplinary, and intellectually stimulating environment. We value diversity and welcome candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. The UK/US-based team has been working remotely since before the pandemic.
We’re looking for a fullstack engineer to join our growing team. You'll be able to make a big impact, joining a small but very enthusiastic team. Our platform is centred around a feature-rich collaborative single-page application, that is built using technologies such as Openlayers, Node.js, MongoDB, and Meteor.js. Our stack includes a number of programming languages and frameworks used throughout different services, and your experience with those is less important than your expertise with modern Javascript.
Apply here: https://careers.podaris.com/fullstack-engineer/en
Podaris is a fast-growing software startup in the transport and urban planning sector, aiming to change the way the world plans its cities. Our mission is to bring together all stakeholders in the urban development process -- planners, engineers, transport technology vendors, public interest groups, property developers, and more -- in a shared modelling environment, where ideas can be iterated in a rapid and agile fashion. We have created a web-based collaborative transport planning platform which incorporates aspects of GIS, CAD, transport simulation, and more.
The platform is being used by customers around the world, from large-multinational private campus owners, to global consultancies, to local authorities and transport operators. They use Podaris for everything from bus network redesigns, to the planning of new innovative multi-billion pound fixed-infrastructure schemes.
Our small team makes for an inclusive, interdisciplinary, and intellectually stimulating environment. We value diversity and welcome candidates from non-traditional backgrounds. The UK/US-based team has been working remotely since before the pandemic.
We’re looking for a fullstack engineer to join our growing team. You'll be able to make a big impact, joining a small but very enthusiastic team. Our platform is centred around a feature-rich collaborative single-page application, that is built using technologies such as Openlayers, Node.js, MongoDB, and Meteor.js. Our stack includes a number of programming languages and frameworks used throughout different services, and your experience with those is less important than your expertise with modern Javascript.
Apply here: https://careers.podaris.com/fullstack-engineer/en
I don't mean that one should be naive about things. You might correctly observe that a high percentage of Oxycontin addicts exhibit behaviour X, and therefor you might want to keep a wary eye out for that behaviour when dealing with an individual Oxycontin addict. Of course that way lies confirmation bias, which one must also guard against. But it's still better than saying that because most Oxy addicts exhibit trait X, this individual addict will necessarily exhibit trait X. That's worse than confirmation bias becuause it's pre-confirmation bias. You're treating statistics about a group as evidence about an individual -- and that's wrong.
Podaris is changing the way the world plans its cities. Our aim is to bring together all stakeholders in the urban development process -- planners, engineers, transport technology vendors, public interest groups, property developers, and more -- in a shared modelling environment, where ideas can be iterated more rapidly, accurately, and transparently. We have created an web-based collaborative modelling tool which incorporates aspects of GIS, BIM, transport simulation, and more. It is already being used by customers around the world.
We're a small and friendly (but extremely driven) team, and have been working remotely since before the pandemic. Come join us!
Contact: jobs@podaris.com
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Role: Full-stack engineer
Job Description: We’re looking for a full-stack engineer to join our growing team. You'll be able to make a big impact, joining a small but very enthusiastic team. For this role, you'll primarily focus on mathematical problems: computational geometry, parametric constraint solvers, network routing optimisation, etc -- problems that come up in the course of modeling physical transport infrastructure, as well as transport network simulation and analysis. However you should be enough of a generalist to be unafraid to dive into other areas of the application where needed.
Technology-wise, Podaris is built on Javascript/ES6, Meteor.js, OpenStreetMap, and OpenLayers, a mapping library. Your expertise with Javascript is more important to us than your experience with the particular libraries that we use. Experience with building large single-page apps is particularly helpful. Experience with OSM routing engines, transit data formats like GTFS, and GIS tools/databases is also a strong plus.
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Role: Customer Success Associate
Job Description: You will learn the Podaris platform to a very high level, then assist in training new customers and supporting existing customers in their projects. You have an innate aptitude for self-learning new and unfamiliar software, and have excellent verbal and written communication skills, which make you adept at teaching people who don't have such an innate aptitude. You have an interest in all aspects and disciplines involved in creating transport systems and the built environment. You're especially knowledgeable with regards to transport planning and operations, but find it easy to talk to urban planners, architects, civil engineers, and more. You've at least dabbled in many different kinds of design/planning/engineering tools, and have some experience with GIS in particular.
When not directly assisting our customers, your responsibilities will include beta-testing new functionality, improving documentation and training materials, and creating case studies that can be used for sales & marketing purposes.
Source: while working as a transport planning consultant, I had a private client in Austin. He flew our team around the city in a helicopter, saying "see all this traffic? It's insane!". I'd just flown in from New Delhi. By the standards I was accustomed to, I didn't see any traffic at all.
Certainly Austin does have a need for much better public transit -- and if being upset about traffic is a catalyst for making that investment, then that's great! -- but in that respect it's no different to most other major metropolitan centers in the US.
Fortunately there are groups that are doing just that: https://b612foundation.org/
And of course if the 2013 Chelyabinsk bolide had been just a bit larger, then the city would no longer exist. (Larger size = lower airburst, so even a modest increase in megatonnage can result in substantially more energy transferred to the ground).
And there are other recent city-killer-size impacts that are well-known but fortunately didn't have cities underneath them, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_del_Cielo
define:attitude
Er, rather than "until now", surely the article means "until 2011, when MESSENGER went into orbit around Mercury"
Meanwhile, I just looked at your profile, and "simulation software for electric utilities" is something I have a very specific interest in. If you feel like telling me more, get in touch.
> 1. What's the most populous arcology that's currently inhabited?
The term "arcology" hasn't really been embraced by the wider urban planning community, so in terms of self-identified arcologies, that'd just be Arcosanti, population 80-100. But arguably one could apply the term to something like Whittier Alaska (population: 318), Masdar City in the UAE (population: 1,300?), or even something like "The Line" in Saudi Arabia, which, when I talked to them a few weeks ago, already had 17,000 people on-site. Lots of projects in China probably qualify, depending on how far you want to stretch the definition. A few may even have been built -- there's a lot that's just on paper.
> 2. Do the seasteading people and the arcology people have much overlap?
Not that I'm aware of, although I'm sure there's at least a bit.
> 3. Are arcologies aimed at making affordable housing or no?
One of the great deficiencies of Soleri's forumlation of Arcology theory is that he incorporated virtually no concept of urban economics, so this question would've just been out of scope, from his perspective. Which is a problem, because it's a good and urgent question, and needs to be answered. Doing so would require evolving the notion of "arcology" well beyond how Soleri defined it, however. (And in my opinion that would be a good and necessary thing, since otherwise it's a largely un-realizable theory.)
So from a more personal perspective, I'd say that making housing more affordable is something which arcologies ought to be aiming at, and given their general frugality -- via minimal land use, maximal sharing of resources, etc. -- should be achievable. But there are many devils in the details which are yet to be worked out.
(Also, it's worth pointing out that "affordable housing" itself may actually be a too-narrow formulation of the problem. Net cost-of-living is probably a better way to think about it. Perhaps your actual living space is actually a bit more expensive -- but given that you don't have to spend any money on a car or gas or insurance or even public transport, then that really ought to compensate. Or perhaps your personal living space is a bit cheaper but a LOT smaller -- but given the fantastic public amenities at your doorstep, it's a richer life overall. In other words, what needs to be optimized is the whole-life package, not just the cost of a domicile. Although obviously the latter does need to be within reach, in a way which for many people it currently isn't.)
> 4. Is anyone working on incrementally built arcologies, or is that just a city?
I'd say that yes, people are "sort of" working on incrementally-built arcologies -- and that's not simply a city.
Again, this is an area where Soleri's formulation of Arcology theory is quite deficient. He always thought about arcologies as things that are wholly self-contained (although not necessarily self-sufficient; he thought that was a false ideal) and built from scratch. There are places in the world (mostly Africa and Asia) where building whole new cities from scratch is a very real prospect, but for the most part, the developed world isn't going to (and arguably shouldn't) do that. In that case, the question is whether the principles of Arcology are something that can be adopted incrementally, and if so, how to do that.
My personal answer would be that yes, there are ways these principles can be brought forward piecemeal in existing cities, via projects that (among other things) promote high-density, car-free, mixed-use development. Here's a good example of such a project, also in Arizona: https://culdesac.com/
There are limitations to this kind of approach, but it's definitely a good start.
> 5. There is basically no discussion of agriculture in the article; is anyone working how arcologies integrate/improve the food system?
Yes! Integrated food production has long been a concern at Arcosanti (and of Arcology theory in general), and there's been an on-and-off agriculture program there, as people willing to take it on have come and gone. This has recently been re-started and re-energized by an independent nonprofit called Arco Agritecture. You can read about them here: https://www.arcosanti.org/arco-agritecture/. There's also a newsletter signup etc. here: https://mailchi.mp/50d2bae3774b/v0z8xb894p
Hope that helps!
There's a lot of interesting work currently being done on bringing those models into virtual reality and even mixed reality.[1] Of course bitrot is always a thing, but hopefully these will last longer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esysldCzFgs&list=PL-bfFPHb2g...
(Oh, and also: the Cosanti Foundation, which runs Arcosanti, is currently searching for a new Executive Director[1], and I'm helping with the search. If you have any candidates in mind, please point them in this direction.)
Confirmation bias for the win. Upvoted.
The fact that the "vegetation raft" theory persisted for more than a few seconds in the face of this knowledge always astonished me.
History is fickle and nonlinear. In 1968, Kubrick and Clarke could look at the timeline between the Wright Brothers' first flight and then impending moon landings and conclude -- very reasonably! -- that there would be cities on the moon in 2001. And yet it's just as plausible that the moon landings, like this circumnavigation of Africa, could have simply been a momentary flex of a civilisation at the height of its powers, not to be repeated for thousands of years.
I'd love to see an alternate history which diverges at 600 BC. What if somebody had managed to connect an aeolipile to a drivetrain to a dialkos bogey, and kicked off the industrial revolution in Greece, at the same time as the circumnavigation of Africa had started the era of Phonecio-Egyptian colonialism? How different would the world look today?
I was left in no doubt -- none whatsoever -- that they were laughing at the absurdity of what I evidently considered "swimming".
Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing them... but I'm pretty sure they were dolphopomorphizing me first, and it was cracking them up.
Anyhow, those dolphins were a bunch of punks.
But apart from that, its physics are pretty close to 100%.