At the Micromobility conference in Richmond, CA Horace Dediu talked through why micromobility solutions need to exist and why they are set up to succeed today. Here’s my notes from his talk on The Reason for Micromobility:

• The wealthiest nations have always been those with the highest rates of urbanization. Across the World, urbanization continues to increase in all countries and is expected to reach 50% in most countries by 2025. 6.7 billion people will live in cities by 2050. This is easy to predict so you can plan on it happening.
• In cities, people are closer together and interact more. That’s how you create wealth and prosperity so it’s no wonder this trend will grow.
• The World today consumes kilometers through land, air, and sea kilometers. 52 trillion kilometers are traveled per year across the globe. Half of these miles are in cars and low efficiency. In developed countries today (US and Europe), most trips are in personal vehicles like cars. Some of these car miles need to be reallocated.
• The most common distance traveled by New York taxis is 1.4 miles. Less than 2% are 5 miles or more. 90% of all cars in trips are less than 20 miles. 162 billion trips per year in the United States are less than ten miles. Short trips consume more time and cost more money than long trips as well.
• The addressable market for micromobility today is zero to five miles. That adds up to 4 trillion kilometers per year.
• Cities are going to be the predominant place people live. Short trips are going to be the dominant type of travel. They’ll consume the most time and account for the most consumer spending.
• There’s a remarkable consistency for modes of travel across the World. Cars are used the same in the US as in the UK and Switzerland. Scooters have a shorter average distance (.4 miles) than e-bikes (.8 miles). Each mode (of transportation) has a clear distance distribution and thereby unique characteristics.
• We can begin to segment the transportation market by distance traveled. Regardless of vendors, modes of transportation cluster along similar usage models.
• Given these usage model differences, can we move automobile mobility to micromobility? There’s currently a gap between average car distances and average scooter/bike distances. However we see cabs and powerful 2-wheelers beginning to cross this chasm.
• There’s trillions of car kilometers that can potentially be moved to more efficient solutions. That’s the challenge for micromobility today.
• The first experiments in micromobilty have been very successful in delivering many miles. Bird hit 10M rides in 320 days since launch. Lime hit 10M in 400 days. The slope of growth for these companies is steeper than for Uber and Lyft. 100M rides per year is the run rate for several of these companies.

In a recent call to Filipinos, president Arroyo said they should boil rice with sweet potatoes or they should go for cheaper cereals to avoid going hungry as rice prices soared to record levels. "This is a once-a-millennium global crisis. We have an action plan," Arroyo said, noting that residents of the central island of Cebu are already using cheap sweet potatoes to beat the crisis.

According to USDA estimates, the US accounted for an average of 11.5 percent of world exports of rice for calendar years 2004 through 2007 and is projected at 12.7 percent for 2008. US exports will increase to 3.5 million metric tons while world total exports decline to 27.5 MMT. The largest rice exporter is Thailand at 9.0 MMT for 2007/08, 32.7 percent of world exports, down 0.5 MMT from 2006/07 and up from 7.3 MMT in 2004/05 and 2005/06.

Adani Ports arm has raised Rs 125 crore today by allotment of 1,250 rated, listed, secured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures (NCDs) of the face value of Rs 10,00,000 each

GCMMF has been achieving a CAGR of more than 17 per cent since last 10 years on the back of higher milk procurement

It had reported a pre-tax profit of Rs 8,954.38 crore in the same period last financial year (Q4FY19).

Company abstains from giving annual revenue projections owing to COVID-19 uncertainties, appoints new board member

The company, which follows January-December financial year, had posted a profit of Rs 346.02 crore in the same quarter a year ago, ACC said in a BSE filing

Mindtree posted a net profit of Rs 198.4 crore in the same period last year

To cushion against the uncertainties arising due to the outbreak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the bank has provided for Rs 260 crore under the provisions and contigencies segment

The company's total income fell to Rs 6,327.57 crore in the quarter from Rs 8,077.89 crore in the year-ago period

The private lender's net interest income (NII) came in at Rs 6,808 crore for the period under review

the bank reported a 17 per cent increase in its operating profit at Rs 5,851 crore in the March quarter

"COVID-19 is perhaps the biggest challenge for us both from the lens of sustaining lives as well as livelihoods," said Sanjiv Mehta, Chairman and Managing Director.

Revenue from operations stood at Rs 139,283 crore, down 2.30 per cent from Rs 142,565 crore in the year-ago period.

The company looks to raise Rs 53,125 crore through this rights issue, which will be the first by RIL in three decades

Lower expenses drive profit number; firm had incurred a loss in the same period a year ago

Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) stood at Rs 3,881 crore while EBIT margin came in at 20.9 per cent.

See how easy it is to create an equal heights, responsive CSS pricing table using the power of CSS Flexbox.

See the two ways to add a sticky horizontal menu to your site, plus 7 beautiful examples of this pattern out in the wild.

See how to use native JavaScript to create smooth scrolling HTML bookmark links inside the page, and for those that need legacy browser support, using jQuery instead.

jQuery script that uses CSS flexbox to create cards that when clicked on expands to show copious amount of information in a compact, manageable manner.

Explore CT's special issue for the Easter season.

Edmonton, Alberta : Brush Education Inc., 2020

Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, [1996]

Shrivenham, Oxfordshire : Shearsman Books, 2020.

[U.K.] : StudioCanal, [2017]

Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, [2020].

Preaching Today provides pastors and preachers sermon prep help with sermon illustrations, sermons, sermon ideas, and preaching articles.

Robert Kirkman, creator of the Walking Dead comic book series brings zombies to TV.  We ask him why he thinks zombies are the new vampires.

Seems like everyone is bringing out their own line of headphones these day.  Entering into the fray is Ludacris.  We asked Ludacris about his 'Soul' line of headphones, which come out in Spring 2011.

Fill the CRY-AC-3's canister with liquid nitrogen and pull the trigger. Then just chill.

These stainless steel cleats will will grip rock, ice, particleboard—whatever cubicle wall that blocks your path.

Flosstradamus shows Wired how to make electronic music.

Hover your way across the room with this homemade GeekDad hovercraft.

Robotic worm crawls through simple obstacle course.

Tim Burton talks about his new film Frankenweenie.

The judges from the special-effect make-up reality show Face Off discuss with Wired what's in store in season 3, including a their new judge.

After years of secrecy, Camilla Luddington is finally able to come clean about the bruises.  It seems she is not as clumsly as people thought, she was just getting roughed up playing the Tomb Raider heroine Lara Croft.

"We were trying to create a really grounded near-future dystopia," Looper director Rian Johnson tells Wired in our video. Joseph Gordon-Levitt explains how to be Bruce Willis.

Ben Cohen wanted to take on the man. He enlisted the San Francisco maker community, and built a noisy, carnivalesque, vaudeville-style device, full of bright-colored wood and plastic and metal, to drive around the country and stamp slogans on money.