> An iPhone or a Toyota Corolla costs the same in the US as it does in China.
A maxed out iPhone costs RMB 13999 in China, which is about USD 1925. The same iPhone costs USD 1599 in the US. In Brazil it costs the equivalent of USD 2565. PPP is still very much relevant.
That's the opposite of how PPP usually works. Purchasing Power Parity means that although you earn much less in China, things also cost less, so your cost of living and relative wealth are the same.
So PPP usually is a boost to the poorer countries. The post you're responding to claims that this is less and less relevant because the things they want to buy are global in nature. The fact that these things cost more actually reinforces that point.
You often are better off in poorer countries anyway even if some goods cost more. My coworkers in India have servants that clean their house every day - I make more $$ than them by a bit but I could not afford that and so I personally have to spend a few hours in cleaning every week and my house isn't as clean (because I'm spending less time cleaning)
Better off than no job. But it will be interesting seeing culture shock of a few generations in some countries that seem to be improving fast and thus the servants kids can get better jobs. I hope it works out that way anyway.
The paper suggests biking only 118 days per year. The car ownership costs are not "saved" - the projected savings are wrong. Ownership car costs are 0.167/km and savings by riding a bicycle are 0.349/km.
Two ignored real costs of bicycling are lack of optionality (planning ahead for weather changes, locked into transport mode) and carrying capacity (groceries, children, sports equipment, etcetera). And I'd like to see other costs of cycling (wet weather gear, helmets, locks) included.
I do all grocery shopping for a family of four with a cargo bike. I pick up and drop off children in the cargo bike. You can think up objections all day if you want, but that doesn't change the fact that some people succeed in living car-free.
Nobody is forcing you to take a bicycle. Even if you personally don't like cycling, you should still encourage others to: every cyclist you see riding around is one less car stuck in traffic with you.
> And I'd like to see other costs of cycling (wet weather gear, helmets, locks) included.
Then you're in luck. On page 24, they include a budget of 117 EUR for gear and accessories.
I'm really sorry, my comment was meant to respond to nehal3m (a link to a thesis), not your comment.
I understand that biking can work and there are people that benefit greatly. Having a cargo-bike suggests you are an outlier. I've used biking and bussing as my main mode of transport in the past.
I just prefer we are truthful and admit that it is expensive to put down a bike lane. The paper you linked mentions the expense.
That paper is strongly biased towards cycling - hardly a fair analysis. It notes the same argument as the other paper "Total costs of ownership for a bicycle range between 16 and 28 eurocents per kilometre, while an average passenger car costs easily 32 eurocents per kilometre. Bicycles can play a key role in inclusive mobility policies.".
Comparisons need to be between trips not per km since a bicycle usually cannot fully substitute for a car.
And it is just a true that cars play a key role in inclusive mobility policies; however they don't mention that eh. I had a disabled parent so I do see both sides.
The three-wheeled ones take some getting used to. You can't take turns at a high speed or you'll tip over. They are nice when you are standing still, because they stay up-right. They are easier to turn-around on foot: the front wheels are closer to the centre of mass, so you can easily lift the back wheel and swing it around.
The two-wheeled ones are faster, and handle more like a normal bike. When fully loaded (100+ kg) they take some effort getting them on the stand. They are clunkier to turn around.
No, it preheats the cold water connected to your shower. Warmer cold water means you need less hot water to achieve the same temperature in the shower.
Why would the number of cars grow by 5% for the next 100 years? Currently there are 1.4 billion cars. Projections say the world population will peak at 10 billion. Even if everyone would have a car, that’s only a sevenfold increase.
> I just run until they fall apart. A couple of thousand km easily.
Amazing! What kind of shoes do you use?
Mine do basically fall apart around 600km and I can feel a big difference in cushioning. New shoes feel like springs that give my feet a sproing, old shoes are like running barefoot – no sproing at all.
Adidas adizero adios (the old ones, before they grew a thick sole). Allbirds had a nice shoe they developed together with Adidas, which is discontinued now. Some Nike free, but they have too thick a sole for my taste… At the moment, the shoes I like best are discontinued. Luckily I have a couple of pairs in reserve. You know the writing is on the wall when they are heavily discounted; good time to buy a couple of pairs.
By the time I need to buy new ones, fashions will hopefully have shifted back…
By the way, when I say fall apart, I mean it literally: toes peeking out and losing bits of the sole.
I also rotate the shoes: the older ones are for the easy runs, the newer ones for tempo or intervals.
Maybe I'm missing something, but after a cursory glance, I can't find any place where that library does an fsync() call. How does it handle durability?
your comment made me laugh.
I never thought about entering a codebase by searching for fsync, but in the case of a DB that's probably the best place to start :))
A maxed out iPhone costs RMB 13999 in China, which is about USD 1925. The same iPhone costs USD 1599 in the US. In Brazil it costs the equivalent of USD 2565. PPP is still very much relevant.