Friday, July 2, 2004

The New Scientist reports on a new traffic model that takes into account the effects of bad driving on traffic flow: The model is already being used to forecast traffic on the autobahn network around the city of Cologne, based on traffic data gathered in real time from sensors buried in the road. Its forecasts, which predict conditions up to an hour ahead, are displayed on the web at www.autobahn.nrw.de. More than 90 per cent of time, it correctly predicts traffic density. But the website has already become a victim of its own success, admits Schreckenberg. Some of the 300,000 people a day who are visiting the site are replanning their journeys on the basis of its forecasts, and this is beginning to make the forecasts themselves less accurate. And soon it could get even worse when the website becomes available on 3G cellphones, he says. Time to apply a bit of game theory? What distortion function should be applied to the published forecasts to maximize overall utility given that individual site visitors use the (mis)information to maximize their own utility? Would that be ethical? [New Scientist] 2:39:31 PM

Sometimes free is a good price for everyone... [tingilinde] Intermezzo, one long block east of the Penn campus, draws many customers with their free wifi (and Peet's coffee...). The campus Starbucks has for-pay wifi, which is an idiotic notion given that there are several wifi access points on campus open to all Penn faculty, staff, and students. Intermezzo makes up for its distance from campus by virtually extending the net's reach. Smart. 9:58:17 AM