In Sweden there is Lime competing with the Swedish VOI.
They both charge 10 sek (USD 1.1) to unlock, where VOI charges 0.165 and Lime charges 0.330 per minute.
Bus stops are everywhere and a single ticket costs $2.75 where a 24 hour ticket in the same city zone costs $5.50 (so you always get this if returning), in addition to 25% off any rider in addition to the first on the ticket.
Riding to work (5 min) and back from the grocery store to home (another 5) costs me $5.5 on a Lime, the same as the bus which allows me to ride anywhere for 24 hours, and $3.86 on a VOI.
For any distances longer than that I'd rather take the bus, since it's warm, comfortable and a notably safer ride.
I was pretty shocked at how expensive they are in London too. Our public transport isn't cheap compared to mainland Europe, but wow there's no chance I'm paying ~£3-5 for a 10-15 minute ride vs £2.90 for a peak tube journey, £1.50 for 90 mins of bus usage, or £2 for 30 minutes on a bike.
I tested li.me e-bikes in London for the 3 times I had the free start ride (invitee bonus).
The bikes are ok, the electric push helps (you still have to pedal, but it levels out the effort, so going uphill is kind of the same effort as going level), and the convenience of just taking them from wherever and leave them where you feel like is really nice.
But holy shit they are expensive. My commute by bike would be aprox 30 mins, that is 5.5 pounds per ride - the tube is only 2.9 pounds, the bus only 1.5 pounds. A 1-year Santander bike subscription is only 90 pounds, and the ride is almost equally nice.
At 5 pounds per ride, buying a commute scooter would break even in 2 months. To make it worthwhile to ride the electric bikes, the price would have to come in at about half to be somewhere between the tube (which moves you fast, but you have to walk a bit to the station) and bus (which moves slower, but the stations are much closer to your home, usually), at 2.5 pounds per 30 min ride (a bit above Santander which charges 2 pounds per 30 mins, but which are not electric).
When I lived in London (before I got brave/foolish and rode a bike all year round) - I combined a 2nd hand electric scooter and the tube. Scooter was £20 - and in no way would have driven me across London - got a hour tops out of the battery and slowed significantly after 45 mins.
Shooting along to a station and then letting the tube get me the 13 miles across London and then jumping back on the scooter was great.
Downsides:
This wasn't long after the tube bombing and I was stopped a few times to discuss the scooter - was it petrol powered? Was it safe to take on the tube)
It was heavy (this was 2004 and I know they have come a long way)
It wasn't fun in the rain
Stowing it on a train or bus was a hassle (again this was a 2004 model - they likely fold better now)
Had a vague unease that I'd get stopped for either riding on the road or the pavement - potential risks of getting points on your licence.
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In the end I actually got a Razor push scooter and got nearly the same benefit, but with no charging.
But finally I got a job with room to store bikes, and a shower and never looked back. Far faster than any other option for me, and paid for itself very swiftly (started on a £150 bike, and worked way up to a nicer one in time with the savings I'd made.)
I don't know. Some of the tweets are funny, but it's effortless to be cynical about other peoples work. (Especially when presented by non-native English speakers)
Similar lines could have been written about once crazy ideas that we take for granted today.
Yeah, I’m usually pretty cynical in general about the bevy of marketing hyped ‘smart’ devices being sold these days, but this takedown feels really low effort.
Some of the products being mocked actually look like interesting ideas written off because of their bad marketing copy.
I actually looked up the mini dishwasher from one of the pictures because I’d like a portable dishwasher for my small apartment kitchen. The the ones on the market right now are really clunky and it appears to have been a zero-innovation kind of space for some time. Unfortunately the first version is Euro-only, but I have my eye on it for the future.
Most of the products are pretty terrible or lack innovation. Seems like things I would have found at a sharper image 20 years ago. That being said it doesnt preclude them from success considering electric scooters just became a billion dollar industry.
Hi tpetry. It might have been too subtle, but with Loadmill you can record and replicate live production traffic using real devices from around the world.
Yeah, our affiliates get a visible iframe to embed in their website, and that is their responsibility to communicate this to their visitors (they can also do it in other ways).
This should work really well blogs and websites who want to avoid ads and look for alternative monetization models.
Hi Linde, the traffic comes from our affiliate websites' visitors. They perform a set of limited http/s requests to the tested application.
This way we can offer our affiliates an alternative monetization model. Website owners embed our script, and share the revenue generated from the tests they help to power, while keeping their website free from ads.
IMHO ads are far more intrusive than sharing your upstream bandwidth with others, they also waste your attention and incept ideas in your mind. This is why some people choose to opt-out and use ad-blockers, and that's ok.
But as long as we want to get free quality content, publishers have to see some profit (And I'm ok with that). You opt-in to many things when you visit a website on a regular basis, and tools like peer5 are just one of these things.
I really love the simplicity, I think I will use it for one of my side projects! (also here at Show HN)
Quick question, why did you choose to use a PATCH request and get involved with CORS issues, instead of injecting an image element with a tracking pixel (web beacon)?
My analysis of Bird's unit economics in Tel Aviv:
https://twitter.com/ido_co/status/1080883756184023041
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