This photo from the other side shows things much better. First off we can see a bike actually attached. But what speaks the most is the comparison between the high tech, super innovative modern, revolutionary bike rack, and the simple sheffield stands (Nietje in Dutch, lit "staple") in the background. One of these is storing lots of bikes, one storing one bike.
Why? Simple. No really. It's about simplicty. Nietje stands are almost idiot proof. You don't havce to lift anything.
There's no moving parts. There's no lifting needed. Just wheel your bike upto the stand, wrap your lock around it. And you're done.
Compared to the cyclecity circle thing at the start of this thread which requires pulling the stand down, hooking the wheel up, making sure it's all aligned, and letting it lift your bike up into space. It looks like you don't need to actually lift the bike yourself. But it's still a lot of faff. Esp compared to a sheffield stand.
Cyclists see this a lot, various attempts to make a better bike rack. None of which has come close to the simple usability of the sheffield bike stand. None. Some are denser, the Cyclecity circle is definitely a dencer way to store bikes. But if you look around here, there's not a shortage of space. It's just not needed.
What's with the solar panel? It's to power lighting. Or rather, to part power lighting. It's not big enough to provide enough lighting in winter.
I dread to think how much Gemeente Amsterdam spent on installing this thing. But I hope that they don't spend any more on them. It's just not needed.
The sheffield bike stand is pretty much perfect for most bike parking uses. The side by side installation of the two types here shows this perfectly. No moving parts. No lifting of the bike. Just simplicity in form and function.
I strongly believe we're within 5 years of the generative AI boom collapsing almost completely, and it will have a profound economic impact, as the use cases for the products being sold almost entirely suck arse.
@twobiscuits i have taps from Germany and china. They all have a conical tip. Just a question of how long it is. But none of them get closer than 3mm to the bottom of the hole...
Next week I leave my housemate in charge of my triffid collection, and head out for a couple of weeks of interrailing. I've planned the first half of the trip, crossing 7 borders with over a dozen trains in the first week.
But now I need to make the hardest decision of the trip planning.
I'd take Allison Kirkby (CEO/BT) more seriously in her complaints that the regulatory environment of the UK (contrasted with Scandinavia) has led to a lack of world-class broadband infrastructure if I hadn't had for ten years world class broadband delivered via a community broadband project (one of many in rural England).
Its not the regulatory environment that's the problem its BT's quasi monopoly position & its hatred of its customers that is the problem!
@ChrisMayLA6 to say BT hates it's customers is unfair. BT doesn't hate it's customers, it despises them with a firey passion... It's well beyond hate...
This phot outlines beautiful. If heartbreakingly, the law of unintended consequences.
Last summer the Dutch government introduced deposit returns for small plastic bottles and cans. A 500ml pet bottle is €0.15, and a can is €0.10. They used the justification of reducing litter this policy.
Reducing litter.
It hasn't worked. In fact it's made the problem worse. This isn't the fault of the idea of a deposit return system on small drinks containers. But in the implementation. Thread time. 1/n
People generally want to do the right thing, but they won't if doing so is much more difficult than doing something else. So we need to design our systems and infrastructure to make it easy to do the right thing.
Just as Amanda Palmer in her excellent ted talk said (roughly paraphrased) "Don't ask how do we make people pay for music, ask how do we let them pay for music?".
Ask yourself how do we make it easy for people to do the right thing?