I'm surprised to hear so many in this thread had negative experiences. My experience as an applicant at Stripe was stellar from beginning to end, probably the most professional and well-executed interview process I've seen in my career. I can say that without bias because I ended up choosing another offer, but it was really difficult to turn down Stripe's after that.
Strongly disagree, depending how your commute is. In my office and on the factory floor we've had 3 major cycling accidents just in the last year - the latest guy was put into a coma for 2 weeks.
I cycled for 6 months before I could afford a car, and counted 11 separate incidents that could have ended with me hospitalized if it weren't for some adrenalin fuelled swerves. Had one accident where someone failed to indicate left as I was crossing the road of a roundabout, and I ended up on her bonnet. No amount of apologies make up for a broken rib unfortunately. How that was my only "major" injury still baffles me. Had another where someone failed to check their mirrors as they randomly swerved out and forced me into oncoming traffic. Never tried to overtake from that point onwards. I had 4 instances where people tried to overtake me way too close and forced me to bail onto the pavement (not fun with clip-on pedals). As soon as that bank balance hit the magic number I went and invested in driving lessons, insurance and a car.
Unless my future commutes have bike paths from beginning to end, there's no chance I will ever cycle to work again. It was the most miserable part of my day. I'll stick to my morning spin class and get to work early to avoid the traffic instead.
Judging by your language here and the fact you couldn't already drive, I'm guessing you're British, was this London? Because cycling has gotten a lot better in London in the last few years and I'm interested what your route is.
No, but it was in the South. I have cycled around London and it's much, much more friendly for it. It's improved substantially in recent years. I think part of that is culture - people cycle in London, so drivers/pedestrians pay attention for cyclists - and part of it is that there are substantially more designated areas for cyclists. In my current location, you're damned to end up under a car if you cycle on the road, and you're damned to get fined by the police for cycling on the footpath.
South of England. The town is also known as the worst place for cycle commutes outside London, which probably will single it out. We've probably got about 2k people across design, HR, head office and the factory floor, but of that I don't see more than maybe 50 people cycle, and of that only 20 or so regulars (mainly because it's just too dangerous). I bet you can imagine how fun that is with everyone trying to get out of work.
The local council (local government in the UK) have had a massive drive to get new cycle lanes in place - problem is, they're also completely inept so have put them in places where nobody cycles anyway. I've been told they are where they are purely to fulfil a quota so they don't look so statistically bad when compared to other municipalities, which honestly wouldn't surprise me. They painted road markings for nigh-on 10km of unused road, whereas all of the roads leading to the major industrial and office estates where people travel to daily have been completely neglected. It's beyond infuriating.
Greatly depends on the drivers around you. Here it'll definitely shorten your life expectancy if you're lucky, and will leave you with a nice whole-body paralysis, if you're not.
You know how motorists sarcastically refer to cyclists over here? "Crunchies", or something like that.
Also depends on the type of infrastructure available. I lived in the city until about 5 years ago and cycled everywhere. Out in the bush where I am now, with only narrow windy unshouldered roads (& many stoned drivers), I'd be dead in a week.
Anecdote: I was with a group of tourists and we were about to rent bikes for a guided tour. We were offered helmets, but only some were taken. Before we even departed, a girl managed to fall of her bike and injur herself. A second offer to use helmets was met with much more acceptance.
I cycle through the year. I put on my downhill skiing helmet at the first sign of autumns freeze.
Statistically speaking, dutch don't wear helmets and they don't get much injuries. It's as much about how you cycle and what the routes are like than having or not having a helmet.
It's going to depend entirely on the city, and even the location of an office. For ANYONE to get to my office, at minimum you have to cross at least one highway, and likely travel down the narrow shoulder of it for several miles, to get to our building. For most you have to cross under interstate as well on said highway. There are virtually no bike lanes in Indy outside of a handful of neighborhoods.
Never mind we had it rain nearly every day for like a month and that this week it's in the 90Fs with air quality alerts and 60%+ humidity every day and just walking to your car gets you sweating and NO ONE wants to smell you all day because you biked to work... and then come winter it'll get below 0F many days with varying amounts of snow and ice. I think we had -35F windchill this past winter on a day or two it was -12F.
Maybe because people actively avoid biking on dangerous roads ? It's easy to say that bike is safer than car when being safe is the number one concern for a vast majority of people cycling, while it's pretty obvious it isn't for automobilists. It's _because_ people like quickthrower2 don't go on dangerous roads that bike is safe.
Depends where. Some routes in NYC are downright suicidal. I was knocked off my bike on one occasion in a roundabout. Injured my knee and swore off cycling to work. There are unfortunately plenty of jerks driving out there.
Cars are at least parked in designated spots/areas. Dockless bikes and scooters don't have a designated space to park in; they have to be left on the sidewalk, and they can be dropped anywhere.
This is such a boondoggle. I rarely see any birds, lime bikes, orange bikes, ofos, etc. parked in places other than off to the side of the sidewalk, or in a bike rack. When I do, I move them.
Most people, generally speaking, are good people. They put bikes where they're supposed to be, they put scooters where they're supposed to be etc. It isn't just enlightened tech commenters who know that a bike should go in a bike rack.
This hasn't been my experience at all when walking around Santa Monica. It seems like about half the time Birds are parked in a reasonable place - in an alcove designed for bike parking, on the edge of the sidewalk on the Promenade, off to the side next to a door - and the rest are just... random. It's not at all uncommon to see three or four Birds parked in the middle of the sidewalk in front of a popular store or restaurant.
I know this might be a radical proposal but have you considered, when encountering a bicycle blocking part of a sidewalk, moving slightly to the left. I admit its a crazy proposal but it might help you while you’re waiting for the state to implement the death penalty for scooter infractions.
This might be the case for where you live, but I've see dozens of Lime bikes recently around the Boston area (not in Boston proper, but in Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, Everett, etc.) that are just on sidewalks. The main problem is that there aren't really a ton of bike racks around. Usually when I bike somewhere, even in Boston proper, I have to search for a bit to find a bike rack. I imagine it's similar for other cities that don't really have the existing bike rack infrastructure.
Do you mean in the middle of the sidewalk, or to the side, against a wall? The former seems overtly malicious, the latter is a completely normal place to park a bike in cities where people ride bikes.
You must not live in San Francisco, where I saw multiple scooters every day parked in the middle of sidewalks or otherwise in the way of pedestrians. Until the city temporarily banned them.
These scooters need docking stations and the users parking them illegally need to be handed hefty fines, just as a motorist would be fined for parking their car illegally.
In Melbourne, our dockless bike provider, oBike, had to pull out because the council threatened them with fines for littering.
People just couldn't help throwing the bikes on train tracks, or in the river, or in trees, or basically anywhere that wasn't a bike rack. I don't think I ever saw an oBike in a bike rack.
This is not true. They came to an arrangements with the Melbourne city council, and hired people to go around and tidy it up.
They pulled out because too many people were dumping bikes in rivers and train tracks, and they weren't making enough money. They were reasonably popular.
Melbourne is a car addicted city though, and it is difficult to get anyone here to see an alternative.
You're right, I was oversimplifying the situation. The council threatened oBike with fines, so they came to arrangements to have cleanup crews, which then cost too much money, causing them to pull out.
I wouldn't say oBikes were reasonably popular. The only people I ever saw riding them were tourists in St Kilda, and homeless people who had broken the locks off them.
I'm surprised they don't have a technical solution -- like, say, have it take a photo from the scooter when you log out to validate you put it in a good spot. (Or gps if they have drop-off points, etc.)
One man's "placed in designated spots" is another man's "dumped on the side of the road"
I honestly think we are just used to seeing idle cars all over the place that we don't "notice" them. There's no reason scooters won't be able to "blend in" in the same way over time.
In my fantasy world, we go the opposite direction and start realizing that all that idle car space could be used for parkland, housing, storefronts, bike lanes, miles-long slip'n'slides, pretty much _anything_ but wasted space in high-land-value areas.
It wouldn't be too difficult for cities to create designated 'parking spots' for scooters. Or require that they must be next to a bike rack. The apps all require you to take a picture of the scooter after parking, so it would be pretty easy to verify if someone moved it after the fact.
That wouldn't be too difficult, and I think some cities have done that. The problem is that it's difficult to enforce and there isn't much incentive to try; are they going to give out tickets for poor scooter parking? Who would they ticket? Bird/Lime, the user, or the unknown person who moved it afterwards?
I think docking stations are the better solution. Portland has docked shared bikes and they work well. It prevents the littering problem almost entirely, and it could provide a way to keep these scooters charged.
You're right that it would be hard to figure out the exact mechanics of the enforcement, but I think it can be done.
> I think docking stations are the better solution. Portland has docked shared bikes and they work well. It prevents the littering problem almost entirely, and it could provide a way to keep these scooters charged.
I strongly disagree. Docked bikes have been around for a while in most cities, and scooters have been a lot more popular because they are everywhere. If I use a docked bike to go 2 miles I'll spend half my time on either end walking to and from a dock.
The only way to make the docked model work is to have many small docks - several on every block, which isn't going to happen. My suggestion is essentially this (multiple docks on every block) without the need for infrastructure. Cars (which are way less space efficient) have more parking options that docked bikes, which makes 0 sense.
> The only way to make the docked model work is to have many small docks - several on every block, which isn't going to happen.
That's probably the root of the disagreement: ubiquitous docks seem perfectly possible to me. I wouldn't advocate for several on every block but I think there's a feasible level where they remain pretty common. Here in Portland the bike stations are close enough that you don't often have to walk more than 2-3 blocks [1]. It would be even easier to create scooter stations, since they're less than half the size of a bike -- small enough to put a 10-12 scooter station on a sidewalk corner without much fuss. That compares pretty favorably with bike stations, which usually need to take up street space (which I'm fine with, but it can create political/logistical barriers).
You make a fair point about the scooters' pervasiveness being important for their popularity. Looking again at the system I know best, Portland has a hybrid system: in the highest traffic areas you can leave a bike pretty much anywhere at no cost, and you can leave one anywhere at all for a $2 fee. To prevent bikes from being strewn about and/or poorly distributed they offer a program where you earn account credit if you return a bike to a station [2].
I think that kind of thing would work pretty well with scooters, since they need to be charged every so often. Bird already has their Charger program [3] that pays you to pick up and charge their scooters. Users could instead earn account credit for returning scooters to stations, especially if they need charging and/or that station is low on scooters. That would allow people to leave them around but would keep them charged and "crowdsource" the effort to cut down on scooter clutter.
Why would it be so hard to enforce? Treat the problem, not the symptom. If the problem is that people leave scooters in the middle of the sidewalk, pass a code that says scooters blocking a thoroughfare will be impounded. Don’t mandate to the companies where their property must be stored, let them know where it can’t be stored and hold them accountable thusly.
If Bird had to pay a fee to get scooters out of impound, I’m sure it would find a customer-friendly way to encourage its users to keep the scooters out of impound to begin with.
It seems like this problem is already solved with cars. If you leave a car in the middle of the street, it will get towed. Then the registered owner has to pay a fee to recover it. No worrying about whether to give a ticket to the last driver, or the owner, etc.
Or rather, the owner worries about recovering the fee from the last driver. This works fine for dockless car rentals; the only reason I can see that it wouldn't work for bikes is that the margins are too small to actually cover administering such a system.
This seems like over-solving the problem, to me. All that's needed is a general guideline: 'Scooters should be parked on the side of the sidewalk nearest the road, no more than 12" from the curb'.
Given that photos of the scooter are required by the apps anyhow, enforcement via a small fine should be trivial.
When they're actually parked in those spots. But the issue is idling cars (Ubers) taking up spots in the lane because they're waiting on people/don't want to leave a good pickup zone. I see it all the time in Seattle and it's made traffic significantly worse, particularly around Cap Hill. I see the bus drivers honk at them to get out of the bus stops at least once a week.
That happens in Portland as well, especially in front of streetcar and MAX stations. I think pretty much everyone dislikes that, but that would be more like standing still on your phone in front of an escalator than tossing a scooter on a sidewalk. Plus, there are laws in place that are supposed to prevent people from idling in active lanes, it's just a question of enforcement.
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Surprises me that the newspaper boxes are still there. As a visitor to the US, they stand out and look so unsightly. Do the companies pay a fee for them to be there?
The rules and guidelines which essentially subsidize auto ownership with public space that could be better utilized. The current state of scooters probably falls too far on the "unregulated" side of things, but I'm bullish on solutions which reduce the need for curbside parking which will lead to additional transit / bike / other more productive uses of street space in urban areas.
I'm all for improving bikeability/walkability of cities, I'd just like to see it done with community input rather than a VC funded private company dumping their externalities on others.
That's a silly argument. They have to be connected to the streets, unless you want to limit parking to off-road 4WD vehicles. They're adjacent to the street.
It didn't, though, so we must deal with the repercussions of those choices. I'm all for increasing the walkability of our cities, but I want a say in how that happens as a citizen, via my elected representatives. I'm not comfortable with Uber making those decisions for my city.
And why do you think that is? I've seen too many situations where the reward for being more productive than lesser-clued co-workers was a greater share of grief and stress.
Well in his case it's because he's obsessed with finding the shortest possible solutions to the more difficult levels in the puzzle game Fish Fillets. He's recently rewritten the game's undo/redo system to help him in this.
Sometimes people, even smart people, are unproductive for the usual reasons -- they're lazy/unmotivated or simply just goofing off.
I haven't pushed it very hard. I'm only using it for personal stuff.
That said, it's pretty good at DWIM for a command-line tool. It works as advertised and doesn't require any fiddling once you have it set up.
cons: command line syntax is verbose. Enough so that there's a wrapper for it (http://duply.net/) which I also recommend. Access to backups isn't as straightforward as with forest-of-hardlinks approaches.
I'd be interested to hear how it holds up to production use.
some of the comments about rdiff-backup (below) might also apply to duplicity, since it seems to share much of the same internals (duplicity seems to be the encrypted version of rdiff-backup).
$ cat foo.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int ac, char av)
{
int x = 3;
x = x + x++;
printf("x = %d\n", x);
return 0;
}
$ make foo CFLAGS=-Wall
cc -Wall foo.c -o foo
foo.c: In function ‘main’:
foo.c:5: warning: operation on ‘x’ may be undefined
$ ./foo
x = 7
what are you all talking about? I've been using 64-bit firefox 3.0 (debian's iceweasel) with 64-bit flash (ever since 64-bit flash became available), no nspluginwrapper, and I have no firefox stability troubles at all.
I restart FF every week or so to keep its memory usage down. I typically have 30-50 tabs open at a time. Is it because I use flashblock?
