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mbcrower's comments

mbcrower | 10 years ago | on: Urban highways destroy wealth

Highways are only useful because there are so many of them that connect just about every community in the contiguous US - what economists call a "network effect". Therefore adding a new highway tends to make the other highways and roads it's connected to more useful. Likewise, public transit systems like the NYC subway are useful because there are so many of them.

When the first train is built in a metro area, it's not going to be useful to very many people. As more lines are built, however, that first train line becomes useful to more people because they can transfer to another line, or a bus line. As the third and fourth lines are built, the marginal utility of that each new mile of tracks goes up as the train becomes feasible for more people.

Of course there are examples of both highways and trains that probably shouldn't have been built where they were built (http://streets.mn/2014/07/07/strangulation-on-the-green-line...). My point is that cost comparisons of building a new highway versus building a new train are skewed by the fact that most metro areas have a mature (even crumbling...but that's another point) highway system, but few is the US have a large network of public transit yet, other than buses that are often slow, late and dirty.

mbcrower | 10 years ago | on: The Navigation Bar Is an Affordance, Stop Removing It

IMHO Apple's user interfaces have been getting less intuitive and more buggy with every release. I actually had to use Google to figure out how to disable shuffle on my iPhone.

Another annoyance with iTunes is that they removed the border. If it's placed over a white background, you can't tell where the iTunes window ends. Minimalism done right can be a beautiful thing. When it's done wrong (it's very difficult to get right), it's a disaster.

mbcrower | 10 years ago | on: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

StubHub could easily look at the historic pricing data and the normal cancellation rates for tickets. If the cancellation rate is normally low, except for instances where the ticket price suddenly jumped, then any cancellations in that time frame would likely have a high probability of being fraudulent, especially if the same tickets were later relisted through the same sellers account.

mbcrower | 10 years ago | on: The Surreal Story of StubHub Screwing Over a Kobe Fan

I've never used StubHub. When you buy tickets, does a seller profile appear next to the listing, as in Amazon? If so, a cheap move by this seller should at least put a bad mark on the seller's public profile. That could benefit reputable sellers, though. Of course, anyone selling their first tickets on StubHub would be at a disadvantage because they'd have no reputation.
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