akgerber

69 ms·

661.
by akgerber 14y ago
I've been using prepaid smartphones in the US for the past two years, and have been paying $30 or less a month the whole time. Previously the best prepaid phones on cheap carriers have been pretty low-end and carrier-locked, but the unlocke
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by akgerber 14y ago
In the United States, the federal government will subsidize capital investments for mass transit systems (a/k/a buses, in most cities, also railway/busway in some), but not operating costs (drivers & mechanics). Labor costs are, in fact
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by akgerber 14y ago
If you're under 34 years of age, a motor vehicle is the thing most likely to kill you. Pedestrians are close to 50% of the motor vehicle deaths in NYC. All too many collisions are caused by dangerous driving such as speeding or violation of
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by akgerber 14y ago
Flying cars are uncommon not because they are dangerous, but because it requires a huge amount of energy to defeat gravity in addition to propelling the vehicle forward. Cities are more populous and wealthy than ever before because there is
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by akgerber 14y ago
Here's an article on the economics of a taxi in NYC: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-12/new-york-taxi-co... According to the article, at the end of a 12-hour shift, a driver goes home with $160 after paying $120-$130 to rent the
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by akgerber 14y ago
The same Preet Bharara did just come out with a suit against Bank Of America: http://www.businessinsider.com/bank-of-americas-hustle-progr... Not that more oughtn't be done.
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by akgerber 14y ago
This is a party bus service to allow bar hopping in a car-dependent city when passengers are too intoxicated to drive. It only runs on Friday & Saturday nights between a couple of suburban bars & the downtown & university distri
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by akgerber 14y ago
That isn't right. NYC's trolleys/buses were more efficient in the pre-automobile era when there was much less other traffic to block them, but Manhattan is about two miles wide and about 15 miles long; covering even 10 miles in 10 minutes w
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by akgerber 14y ago
Of course, in that time even more than today, sex & status were deeply intertwined. It wasn't a coincidence that the secretarial pool was all female and the executive suite was all male: women had typing classes in school, went to secre
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by akgerber 14y ago
It's tragic that almost all of the benefits of a unified currency are becoming easily replicated by technological solutions just as all the problems of currency union without fiscal union have come to haunt the Eurozone.
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by akgerber 14y ago
If AMD is optimizing their processors for the purpose, they could well put a full ARM core (since they don't take up much die area), or just add specialized instructions to make it easier to translate ARM assembly. It seems like they are ad
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by akgerber 14y ago
The problem is that the city government artificially limits supply through zoning. If the zoning were changed, the market could easily supply a lot more housing, perhaps looking like this: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=park+slope+brooklyn
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by akgerber 14y ago
Because if you can't build much-to-any more housing in Silicon Valley, salary increases there just serve to bid up housing prices further, rather than motivating people to build more & better housing.
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by akgerber 14y ago
Likewise, the stretch of "E 15th St." in Brooklyn is actually named "Marlborough Rd." on the ground in the stretch where #315 is located: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=315+E+15th+St,+Flatbush+-+Dit... It does look like the city understan
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by akgerber 14y ago
Just because a piece of land doesn't have a building on it (even if it isn't currently legally buildable) doesn't mean its address "doesn't exist". New York City is glad to point you at the address: http://gis.nyc.gov/dcp/at/f1.jsp?submit=
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by akgerber 14y ago
Fortunately, it isn't wholly hopeless in this country. The Front Range is indeed making a large investment in commuter rail, though not yet all the way to Colorado Springs & Fort Collins: http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/systemmap.php The
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by akgerber 14y ago
Social insurance in Germany has been around since the 1880s. Social Security has been around since 1935, or nearly 80 years. Social insurance may change in the future, but so long as the elderly still have a vote, they will vote very heavil
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by akgerber 14y ago
Vintage steel bikes have gone up in price quite a bit in the last 5 years or so, especially in big cities.
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by akgerber 14y ago
Quite fragmented, especially considering nearly every local police department has their own.
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by akgerber 14y ago
Many towns have laws like this from the 1970s that are unenforced (except, perhaps, as an excuse to bother the people police don't like). San Diego just repealed theirs: http://www.bikesd.org/2012/08/02/city-of-san-diego-to-remove...
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by akgerber 14y ago
ThinkGeek apparently uses Gildan shirts, which are cheap, baggy shirts made out of thick cotton; you were probably buying shirts of similar quality when you bought plain shirts. Since it seems you're spending more on shirts now, you're prob
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by akgerber 14y ago
The largest danger in cycling comes from automobiles; Denmark's infrastructure, which keeps cyclists away from automobiles and automobiles at low speeds in shared areas, and their high standards for driver skills and behavior, make their co
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by akgerber 14y ago
The unsubsidized phone is already down to $349, down from $400 when they first put it on Play.
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by akgerber 14y ago
That amount of money would pay the mortgage (and nothing else) on a 30-year loan on a $900,000 house in the place where he lives, given a 20% down payment: http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2012-Coralbells-Ct-Longmon... It wouldn't pay fo
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by akgerber 14y ago
That machine is 2 pounds heavier, half again as thick, and has a shorter battery life; in other words, it's more like the cheaper model 15" Pro, which is also easily upgradeable, and also an inch thick and lighter at 5.5 lb.
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by akgerber 14y ago
Bushwick and Williamsburg don't have particularly beautiful architecture-- just lots of vinyl-sided wood frame tenements. Williamsburg is already as expensive as parts of Manhattan while Bushwick is gentrifying rapidly too. Just about all o
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by akgerber 14y ago
This isn't universally true, especially in climates where trees grow naturally. Oftentimes, the poorest neighborhoods in a city are among the oldest, and thus the trees have had the most times to mature and grow. For example, look at <a
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by akgerber 14y ago
What makes a timeframe meaningful? Many of the settlers of the American West (including Portland and Seattle) walked there from Missouri alongside their wagons.
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by akgerber 14y ago
People could do everything an Apple II or IBM PC could do fifteen years before those machines came out. But most people didn't, because it was extremely expensive and cumbersome.
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by akgerber 15y ago
I believe ZocDoc is as well.

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