valhalla

Could a D-Wave be used to perform Shor's algorithm? I remember reading a long time ago that In-Q-Tel and an unnamed 3-letter agency had invested in D-Wave

I agree. It wouldn't surprise me if Reddit's initial subreddits were narrow and reflected the interests of the founders and early employees – they created a proto-listserv for people like them and it grew from there

I think it's important to remember that none of these startups were as popular now as in the beginning. This is obvious, but it's hard too think back to the late-90s and put ourselves in the metapsychology of a user who was evangelizing Google when (basically) everyone uses Google now. Same with Reddit and Mint.

I first heard about Google from my 1st grade teacher. He bought us 1984 Macintoshs (with his own money) to use since our school didn't see the point of buying new computers to teach first graders computer skills in 1999 (the irony is not lost on me...). When he saw me using Alta Vista one day in our school's computer lab, he stopped me mid-search, logged onto Google and the rest is history.

My teacher was kind of a hippie and had spent time on an Indian Reservation as a photographer. He was obsessed with astronomy and took us on field trips to the Griffith Observatory at night where attendance was extra credit. I don't know if this is representative of Google's initial user base but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.

TL;DR: It's almost impossible to tell in hindsight who the few users were especially when a company is ubiquitous. Needless to say, it seems to be the best way to succeed

That may be true. I'd imagine that a cheap median price and solid service will depend on the scale of Swift's supply side. Assuming there's plenty of demand (lots of Uber, Lyft customers switching over) then Uber's drivers would be more than willing to switch over to Swift. The co-op model would be a great incentive.

The issue is though how does one get drivers to switch from a reliable (though possibly imperfect, inefficient) source of regular income with a well-known brand to an upstart at a large enough scale to pose a direct threat to Uber, thereby forcing them to change their model or go out of business?

I'm living in LA right now and I typically wait 4 min for a car (longest has been 10 min). My last ride cost $4.44. That's less than a Big Mac! ($5.04 average price in the US). I can't imagine a new service being able to beat that from it's inception.

The other issue is that if drivers are allowed drive for Uber and Swift there could be a free rider dynamic: drivers get the benefit of belonging to Swifts' co-op but still get to be part of Uber's network. Sure Uber's service would suffer, but it would be a huge drain on Swift's resources and undercut their model (and reason of existing) from the driver's perspective.

Steven Pinker wrote about the distribution you mention in 2002 in the "Blank Slate". I'd highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in neuroscience and assumptions about human nature that underly political discourse in this country.

It's remarkably relevant even though it's over a decade old

Does anyone live in a city (within the US) that takes a similar approach to GDS? I live in SF and developers usually create their own apps for services (Like MUNI/BART) but the city seems to have a mix of good and bad UX when it comes to municipal services (from my experience, at least)

According to the article, they ran simulations and it only provided a .2% increase in likelihood of a breach