Comments for Raanan Bar-Cohen

Comment on New Yorker article: Sergey Brin’s case for driverless cars by Andrew Spittle

Andrew Spittle — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 23:50:55 +0000

Nice, added to my reading list. You'd probably find this article from a while back interesting.

Comment on New Yorker article: Sergey Brin’s case for driverless cars by Avram Bar-Cohen

Avram Bar-Cohen — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 16:32:19 +0000

There are many compelling reasons to pursue driverless cars, but other than an expansion of Zip-cars and a re-casting of taxi service, I am not convinced that many people will give up their private cars for permanent access to a fleet of driverless cars. Nevertheless, the fuel and time savings of self-parking cars, as well as the higher highway speed and tighter car spacings enabled by collision avoidance and automated controls, will yield substantial fuel savings and enable higher traffic capacity on existing highways.

Interestingly, Brin’s comments echo the arguments made for the rail-based Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems, first proposed in the 1970′s by engineering faculty at the University of Minnesota. Some early systems were built but the PRT technology did not experience the rapid expansion they had hoped for.

Comment on New Yorker article: Sergey Brin’s case for driverless cars by Raanan Bar-Cohen

Raanan Bar-Cohen — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 22:30:31 +0000

ya, good points.

a few thoughts:
- self driving cars will drive faster, need less space between each other, and will cause way fewer accidents. So we should be able to shrink even existing infrastructure and still have the same number of cars on the road.
- people might get comfortable sharing the car on a trip w/ a few others, if it’s intelligently done and doesn’t impact your ETA by much (i.e. drops the person next to you just a few blocks from where you are going). https://angel.co/leap-transit is doing some interesting stuff around this.
- with various economic incentives such as price per mile, price of tolls, etc – I think you could get people to shift their daily commute even a tiny bit which would have a huge impact.

But yes, distributed companies are the future !

Comment on New Yorker article: Sergey Brin’s case for driverless cars by Barry

Barry — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 18:36:34 +0000

Even though most cars are used 1-2 hours per day, aren’t most of them used during the same 1-2 hours (commute to/from work). If you have enough cars to offer a personalized public transportation system during peak hours without other tradeoffs like carpooling, waiting, etc I am not sure how big the savings will be. Since transportation infrastructure isn’t elastic, you have to have enough infrastructure deployed to support max capacity all of the time.

Rather than self-driving cars we could just let everyone work from home – problem solved

Comment on MacBook Pro 13″ Retina > MacBook Air by Philip Arthur Moore

Philip Arthur Moore — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 06:35:50 +0000

This is wonderful. My biggest gripe with the 15″ rMBP is the battery life. It’s incredibly powerful but I can’t take it anywhere without its plug. The 13″ rMBP sounds like it may be the answer.

Comment on MacBook Pro 13″ Retina > MacBook Air by Matt Wiebe

Matt Wiebe — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 17:09:28 +0000

Just came to the 13″ rMBP from the other direction: a 15″ rMBP. A full pound lighter, and way more compact. So far so great.

Comment on Video: Sad clown Puddles covers Lorde’s ‘Royals’ by Beau Lebens

Beau Lebens — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 14:23:40 +0000

Super creepy, but pretty awesome

Comment on Alec Baldwin and Jerry Seinfield Give Startup Advise by jedsundwall

jedsundwall — Thu, 31 Oct 2013 20:50:26 +0000

Yes! I just listened to this last night and loved *loved* the surfboard v yacht metaphor. It’s perfect.

Comment on Broadband in big US cities costs 100% more than overseas by Lloyd Dewolf

Lloyd Dewolf — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 18:55:31 +0000

-1 dislike

Comment on A Must Read: The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Susanne Leist

Susanne Leist — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 18:32:50 +0000

I hope Amazon lives up to its reputation. I am betting the future of my book on it. So far, my book is sitting all alone on Amazon, waiting for buyers. My friends find it difficult to even find it. I guess that is the plight of a new author.
Susanne Leist