Yes, but that five mile trip takes 10 driving minutes, plus entry/exit, plus time to next fare - call it 15 minutes per five mile fare while on duty over a whole shift. $15 - x 4 fares per hour = $60. Pay the cabbie a wage that doesn't require federal assistance (125% of poverty wage, plus medical benefit costs, plus taxes, plus overhead for leave) comes to about $22-25 hour all burdened. So your "throw-away employee" rate for labor leaves you about $25/hr - 42%Profit (71% markup).

Considering that not every hour is peak, that's not exactly rolling in it. (FWIW, gross margins before labor on fast food restaurants are also in the 600% range for food products).

So *before* fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and driver costs, a medallion (before Uber) was worth less than 14% ROI? That sucks.

" work a farm or the oil fields of North Dakota"

You've been in the city too long. Go 20 miles outsize of any city center and the only option for reliable, time-efficient transportation is a car. Inside any of the top 20-30 cities - sure, getting around the city is going to be more efficient on public or hired transportation. That covers about 7000-8000 square miles of the 3 million square miles that makes up the lower 48. By population, it's only about 30 million of the 330 million US residents.

For the vast majority of the US personal automobiles are, and will remain, a necessity for the typical American lifestyle.

I'm guessing you're a fan of driving, not necessarily of cars. Before you complain, what are your thoughts about all cars having automatic transmissions?

I expect that the 122l is at 7-10,000 psi (Nissan recently had a pres release about 7MPa CF wound Al tanks). Actually, very few cars have 122l tanks - that over 32 gallons. Most small cars have 14-16 gallon tanks, vans are about 20, and light trucks 20-25 gallons (without optional extended range or dual tanks).

You are that old, you just probably don't remember. It was way back when MTV played music videos.

Depends on where you're from. Game designers aren't, generally "computer engineers"

When I was in school, there were different tracks for Computer Science (programming, IT management) and for Computer Engineering (a sub-discipline for Electrical engineering), involving the design of computer hardware at the chip and sub-chip level. Computer engineers were generally at/near the top of the intellectual heap, joining the aerospace engineers looking down at all the other engineering disciplines.

Math, at the age where Barbie hits her prime demographic, is no harder than reading, history, singing, or being physically fit. There are exceptions where certain things really are hard to some people with disabilities (both mental and physical), but for the vast majority its not hard - it just takes practice and study/work.

Saying "Math is hard" elevates it and offers an excuse as to why you aren't doing well at it. If you don't read, you'll never be a good reader. If you never do physical activity, you'll never be in good cardiovascular shape. If you don't study history, you shouldn't expect to be able to recall historical facts and make logical connections between events. Playing piano will not work out well for you if you never practice. In that sense, all those things are "hard" - but only "hard" as compared to, say, watching a movie or drinking a slurpee.

Misogyny is presenting a girl as an incompetent fool, incapable of doing the very things which the presentation aims to promote. Apparently, writing even the most basic story book an staying true to the subject is hard as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The sun is putting more heat than that on every exposed/sun facing square meter of the 14+ Million square meter surface area of that rock. An extra 1000W, mostly radiated off to the 3K of space, wouldn't have been an issue.

Compared to an RTG, solar panels are very light and the mass scales down pretty well with power requirements (which isn't as true with RTGs). Discl: I've designed solar panel deployment mechanisms for spacecraft.

Have you ever seen the prices in those gadget catalogs? An iPhone is only ~175 in parts, but they retail for 600-900. Maybe they'll have it on sale for 169 on Black Friday.

Yeah, exactly. I suspect you'll never match human losses without a much larger energy source for the condenser.

This is a much better product for areas with poor drinking water quality, but those people don't have a spare $200 for a new bicycle gadget. This was custom made for the Sharper Image / Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, not some third world peace corp work.

Actually, if I read the article correctly it's a peltier cooler that runs off of solar panels. The fact that its on a bike is just his version of a solution looking for a problem in a market with disposable income.

Uh, please tell me that was sarcasm.