18 karma · joined June 18, 2013
In general I feel like surrounded by the Microsoft paper clip. There is constantly something animating, popping up or popping with strong colors into your eyes.
Try to find in all the talk about material design the underlying reasons for usability. There aren't any. To me it feels like the emperor's new cloths.
I was about to buy a Nexus 6 but the new Gmail app is a no go for me and I will avoid it as long as possible.
# Name : q (With respect to The Q Continuum)
To me this is very questionable marketing non-sense. You take the excellent bicycling culture of the Netherlands, you combine it with solar energy and the result is profit.
Just exchange Wcycling track" with "landfill" and tell everybody you'd cover them for 300 times the normal price with solar panels and you'd be kicked in the balls.
I am just very sensitive about public funded projects.
To give you an example:
"XYZ is a project co-founded by the European Union that aims to validate how to approach Open & User Driven Innovation methodologies to the Public Sector in a scenario of Future Internet Services for Smart Cities. It will do so, by leveraging existing tools, trials and platforms in Crowdsourcing, Open Data, Fiber to the Home and Open Sensor Networks in seven major European cities: Helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Barcelona and Bologna."
Would YC fund that? Would they get an interview?
The EU gave 3M€ for that. The outcome is three websites that nobody uses.
There are companies in the EU specialised for grant grabbing. They will get 10% of the funding if the application succeeds.
The EU funds 50% and the expected outcome is that the funded companies will create a viable product out of it. Now tell me, why do the same companies funded over and over again?
Just google for "Wetab". The same company of that miserable disaster was on plenty of EU funded projects.
Putting it more directly: would YC think that this is a good investment of money? I think you wouldn't even get an interview.
As always, just follow the money and you can find out what's going on.
Edit: since 4.4 [https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/webview/overview]
They sold a batch of MiEV / IOn for $15.000 here and so far everybody is very enthusiastic about them. I think 5 years is a tad optimistic but I give it less then 10 years.
The overall losses in Germany are 7%. [1]
> It's more efficient to simply use hydrogen.
Only if you fake your numbers by an order of magnitude, see above.
> I don't understand why anyone would be convinced by arguments like this that don't include numbers.
Still better than your astroturf numbers. If hydrogen is better, so be it. However, the Tesla S can go 450km with one charge today and it can be charged everywhere.
An electric car is the nightmare of traditional car manufacturers: an electric motor costs nothing and lasts unlimited kilometers. You need no engine oil change, the brakes last a lot longer and cars will easily last 1.000.000 miles / kilometers and a lot more with little maintenance. You do need to change the battery but this is not money for the car manufacturer.
So there are two huge industries for which e-cars are a nightmare: petrol and classic car manufacturers.
Disclosure: I drive an MiEV an it works amazingly well.
[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbertragungsverlust (german)
A friend of mine has a special weakness for Venice (Italy) because it is one of the few place without any billboards, i.e. graphics everywhere.
It is not black and white but good food for thought.