As someone who is paying 5% to deposit a foreign check, and also lost a non-trivial amount when a ripple gateway folded, I can say I am still excited to see another iteration on the idea.

5% as a consumer spread on international transfers is ridiculous, and seemingly only avoided using some sort of forex exchange with high minimums and excessive red tape.

Bitcoin exchanges do not offer reliable or timely deposit/withdrawal in most local currencies to consider it an alternative.

The trust points are no worse than existing banks / currency exchange / forex models that allow this type of transfer to take place. If we are lucky, we can improve and decentralize those choke points further.

Yes, those who control the choke points have the potential to make stupid amounts of money based solely on traffic, much like existing banking models and many startups.

Worth reading is the recent blogpost that I'm sure most regulars have seen https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective.

As ridership in a given community increases, everyone's quality of life goes up. In such cases, increased driver awareness and reduced biker isolation increases safety for everyone -- drivers and pedestrians included.

Slowing cars down on streets where bikers and pedestrians are present will save many lives, mostly those in cars, additionally some who are not.

This strikes me as naturally similar to many human marketplaces, such as craigslist roommates, hiring practices, where to go grab a drink -- which have long been reflective of similar biases. In my anecdotal experience, the scales on airbnb/couchsurf/craigslist roommates/similar are even further tipped in a sexist? manner, dramatically favoring females.

There is little surprising or special about the sharing economy resonating these patterns. However, It does provide an excellent venue for study and potentially creative mitigation.

In Seattle, http://elliescoworking.com/ -- I know it received lots of interest and support a few years back when it was first being tested. It looks like this may have transitioned away from childcare for the time being into http://www.worksprogressseattle.com/ Jessie is extremely friendly and I'm sure has quite a bit to say about her experience.

I worked from worksprogress for a few months when I first moved to Seattle, good space and location and Jessie and Marnee are great.

In talking with them about the childcare side of things, they ran into a lot of regulation that just proved too much at the time.

Childcare is highly regulated and childcare and workplaces even more so apparently. They said that many of the laws they were running into were meant to keep larger industrial organizations in check back in the day. Companies used to offer very sub-par "childcare" for line-workers and if a child was having a problem (sick, injury, etc) it wasn't in the best interest of the company to inform the parent (who would have to leave the production line).

I didn't think those laws would apply to a co-op type office where everyone is working for themselves.

When I left in December, there was no childcare running, just the co-op workspace (which I would highly recommend).

I hope that this materializes. I work from home in Tacoma and send my son to daycare but I would take us both to Seattle on the Sounder train for the day if I could work next to his daycare.