I would suggest reading through these articles. Brewing and Food trucks each have their pros and cons, but there's a lot more to both of them than you may think.
This system doesn't (currently) solve the problem it was created to solve, which is to create a system that can uniquely encode locations that also produces phonetically coherent names. The problem is, by encoding the location so precisely in each name, you leave no leeway in the speaker's pronunciation.
Different languages have different sets of phonemes. For instance, in Japanese, "L" and "R" are allophones, meaning native speakers consider the sounds to be the same.
So, take these two UBI's:
Smack dab in the middle of Tokyo, about 15 minutes apart from each other.
Also, this would require speakers having the same vowel distribution/phonological rules. I pronounce "PACASU-FADERO" and "PACASU-FEDERO" pretty similarly. Relying on letters that are only different in voicing is also risky. For instance, take "P" and "B". It's easy to mistake "PACASU-BATERO" for "PACASU-PATERO".
Finally, street names have an advantage over UBI's. Street names are usually formed from words in the inhabitants' native language, so they sound more natural and will of course be easier to pronounce.
I came here to point out this exact same thing. Why use vans and trucks to re-balance stations when you can have people re-balance them?
Not only can you can have dynamic pricing based upon stations and times, imagine having a feature where you can "call" for a bike at an empty station. There can be an app that notifies people near other close non-empty stations to ride a bike over for you. Or, you could even display it on the screen of the kiosk.
How would you get people to ride these bikes for re-balancing or on demand?
Offer something like a rewards plan (re-balance a bike X number of times and receive a discount on your next bike rental) or pay them in micro-payments (Think Tom Hanks returning luggage trolleys in The Terminal).
How could you ensure that people riding bikes on demand don't take advantage of the process to just get a free ride to wherever?
First, make sure that the bike being taken out is checked into the station it's being delivered to. Second, impose some sort of time limit in which that needs to be done. Base the time limit on an acceptable pace and take into account the distance between the stations (with a time buffer). If it exceeds that limit, it becomes a regular rental and the deliverer is charged regularly. Also, it then becomes possible to add bonus incentives for getting the bike to the station faster.
One particular bonus of this system is that it can leverage a city's homeless population as a workforce. (If you disagree due to cleanliness issues, I'm sorry to tell you that the homeless already use citibikes as cycling machines). Of course, there would be a need to hedge against the possibility they may just take out a bike and never return it, since they don't really have any sort of credit. One possibility would be to sponsor a homeless person by covering the cost of a bike and then having them operate on a "one strike" policy.
I did a bit of amateur sleuthing(googling) out of curiosity. First, let's lay out the hard facts:
1. The work-for-hire occurred at least two years ago. This would peg the time frame at roughly early-mid 2012.
2. Pigeonly started out as Fotopigeon, the photo sending portion of the company. Telepigeon was added at a much later date.
3. Pigeonly applied to the YCombinator Summer 2012 batch, but was rejected [1].
4. Pigeonly entered the NewMe Accelerator as part of their Spring 2013 batch[2]. The equity stake that NewMe took was 4%[3]. Crunchbase lists the intial investment date at October 2012[7]
5. Pigeonly also received a $20000 investment in December 2012 from FIU AVCC as well as $10000 in services from New Frontier Nomads to build out a MVP[4].
6. Frederick Hutson is placed in a work-release program in September 2011 and is released in March 2012[5].
7. Hutson's budget prior to December 2012 was a minimum of $2500[5].
8. From the article: "From the halfway house, he did not have any money, so he persuaded the photo company to do some coding for free." [5]
9. The developer claims Pigeonly fell behind on payments[6].
Now for the assumptions/conclusions:
A. From #2 and #5 we can conclude that that the codebase in question is not in use today.
B. Prior to October 2012, based upon #3, #4, #6 and #7, we can assume that the total amount of funding Pigeonly had was not substantially more than $X000.
C. From #8, interpreting the identity of "the photo company" is impossible, but if we assume that it is the developer, then D follows.
D. From #8, initial coding occurs while Hutson is in the work-release program ("halfway house"), pegging the date at some time between September 2011 and March 2012 (from #6)
E. From B and D, it seems that #9 is plausible, if not probable.
Of course. One possible source could be a family lawyer or descendants. I could imagine this being a viable method within 100 years, but beyond that, it might not be so reliable.
The first method (contracts) is dependent upon people. The second method (money) is dependent upon your currency remaining relevant as well as finding some way of managing the fund. People and money are both fallible, but I included them for completeness. I personally think that the last two reasons are much more likely if we're talking about hundreds (or thousands) of years. At those intervals though, a more relevant question might be, "who would store and maintain the bodies?"
A legally binding contract might do it. Or, there might be some fund that accrues interest over time to pay for the procedure. If neither of those options exist, then I suppose the first people to be revived would be in the name of science ("Let's do it just to prove that we can.") Then, I suppose anyone who's revived after that would be useful from a anthropological/historical perspective. Imagine having firsthand sources from different time periods.
Couldn't it be solved by only taking a picture of the changed columns of the calendar instead of the entire three months?
I'm not familiar with how you're processing the picture, but it might be possible to identify the columns by utilizing the empty row at the top of each column. I count 7 positions/bits. You can use 2 bits to mark the month and the remaining 5 bits to mark the day of the month. Using this encoding, you could even add a fourth month without any problems.
Can the synchronizer differentiate between single block and double block heights?
Also, another cool level of granularity (if needed) could be using 1x2 or 1x1 lego blocks to add more information that's easily seen in the photo. Not only do you have different colors of 1x2 and 1x1 blocks, you can also place them in different positions (left/right vertically, top/bottom horizontally).
All in all, great idea. I'd like to set one of these up myself in the future.
It's too bad they didn't split up the keyboard. Putting your fingers on the home keys looks like it would basically put your right hand over your crotch.
The NPR article[1] gives some more information on what it is. Apparently, it's ultrasonic piezoelectric charging. My guess is that it's using a resonance frequency approach to vibrate the crystals.
The first three articles you linked to refer to commercial space, not residential space. I'd argue that they don't support your argument since I believe we're talking about residential spaces. Moreover, densely packed commercial centers aren't unique to cities. However, I suppose we can talk about those articles as well. They all refer to one specific case, the building of a Taco John's. The argument against it isn't that it takes up too much space, it's that it provides less value (in terms of tax revenue and how much money is being funneled back into the town through jobs) to the town than another comparable area. However, it's not just about the density of businesses. If we were to imagine a X-story high-rise containing X different businesses was built in place of the Taco John's, would that necessarily be better than the Taco John's? Not necessarily. You would need to take into consideration many other factors: the extra strain on the utilities, the generated tax revenue, whether or not it fits in with the characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood.
As for the last article, that one does talk about residential housing. I will agree that the article does talk about urbanization as the natural progression of town maturation. However, note that the article talks about progressions/increments (i.e. going from a house to a duplex, from a duplex, to a row of houses, from a row of houses to an apartment building) and not skipping those progressions (going straight from a house to an apartment building). In fact, the article specifically outlines that the changes must be natural, be compatible with the neighborhood, and must fit in. Overall, Marohn's more concerned with adding value to properties than increasing population density. He even goes as far as to specifically address our topic of discussion. I quote:
"I am going to pause now before going on to the next step and reiterate something important. I know there are those of you reading this right now, sitting at the kitchen table of your nice single family home, saying, "There is no way on God's green earth that I'm going to allow a set of row houses across the street from me. Who does this Strong Towns guy think he is?" Fair point, and the reality is that most neighborhoods will not grow beyond the single family stage. That's okay too, at least as long as the public infrastructure and services stay scaled to that investment level." Emphasis mine.
He states that what's tantamount is responsible spending.
You're taking the sentence out of context. Here's the entire paragraph you quoted:
"Here’s what he means. The way suburban development usually works is that a town lays the pipes, plumbing, and infrastructure for housing development—often getting big loans from the government to do so—and soon after a developer appears and offers to build homes on it. Developers usually fund most of the cost of the infrastructure because they make their money back from the sale of the homes. The short-term cost to the city or town, therefore, is very low: it gets a cash infusion from whichever entity fronted the costs, and the city gets to keep all the revenue from property taxes. The thinking is that either taxes will cover the maintenance costs, or the city will keep growing and generate enough future cash flow to cover the obligations. But the tax revenue at low suburban densities isn’t nearly enough to pay the bills; in Marohn’s estimation, property taxes at suburban densities bring in anywhere from 4 cents to 65 cents for every dollar of liability. Most suburban municipalities, he says, are therefore unable to pay the maintenance costs of their infrastructure, let alone replace things when they inevitably wear out after twenty to twenty-five years. The only way to survive is to keep growing or take on more debt, or both. “It is a ridiculously unproductive system,” he says."
Taken in context, the quoted sentence is specifically talking about the development/expansion of a town beyond its current financial means. In other words, the town builds out its infrastructure and is banking on an influx of new homeowners (taxpayers) to help with the maintenance of the infrastructure. When that doesn't happen, that's when the tax revenue/liabilities ratio dips below 1.
Also, if you go to the Strong Towns[1] website that Charles Marohn helped start and read the Mission Statement and their Quantification of a Strong Town, nowhere does it talk about population density or converting suburbs/towns into cities.
The article isn't pointing out that all suburbs are unsustainable. It's talking about how treating the suburbs as something they are not (a higher population density area, like a city) leads to infrastructure that is inappropriate for the community, which then leads to the tax revenue to infrastructure cost disparity. In the jargon of HN, it's a premature optimization. Charles Marohn is still championing suburbs. What he's against is irresponsible spending by local townships.
I'm confident that incorporating pictures of the same place at different times/days (like Google Map's wayback machine) would boost the accuracy, but I'm not too sure how you would need to change the model.