As a Trump supporter, do you still consider Russian hacking to be fake news when President Trump tweeted the following?
The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With 4 months looking at Russia... https://twitter.com/realDonald...
After all, you can't have it both ways. You can't say that something doesn't exist and then turn around and blame Obama for doing nothing about that non-existing thing.
What do you think is Trump's excuse now? That meddling doesn't equal hacking? That meddling doesn't mean that Russian intelligence tried to influence Trump's campaign and Trump's team? That the fact that they tried to meddle doesn't mean that they succeeded? Or that the fact that Russia tried to meddle doesn't mean that there should be a US investigation on the matter, nor does it mean that there should be an investigation of Trump's team?
Tell us. How old is too old for someone to drive a car without auto-braking? Is 86 years old too old? Is 100 years old too old? At what age do you draw the line? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Please note that not all the auto-braking systems are designed to prevent a car from hitting something, those systems are not standardized yet, and they vary greatly in quality, some are super basic, but at least, those systems will brake once you've hit someone, even if you keep on pressing on the gas pedal afterwards (like it did in France when the terrorist tried to keep on going with the stolen truck, or like it could have helped the 86 year old man in the US who kept on pressing the gas pedal even though his car was plowing into the crowd of the Santa Monica Farmers market, killing 10 people and injuring 63).
Are you serious? It's expensive to change all the cars to the latest generation all at once. I'm sure some retrofitting kits must exist, but I'll bet those are super expensive and probably can't be applied to all the cars or all the trucks (considering the liability and all the testing that must be done).
Also, it will be easier for older people to replace their used cars/trucks if they can resell them at a decent price to the rest of the population. Also, what you're describing will happen eventually for everyone, but it will take time. And we might as well prioritize the populations that have the most accidents or that can cause the most damage first.
For instance, take a look at the Japanese laws for drunk driving. If someone is caught drunk driving in Japan, the driver is punished, the passengers are punished, and even the bar is punished (which usually means Japanese bars will take people's car keys before they even start serving them alcohol). http://www.motoring.com.au/dri...
This is a strawman argument. Every African American man is not being paid a 6 figure salary for a job which does not need a college degree.
That was my point actually. That is a separate issue that also needs to be addressed, but for a variety of reasons, I didn't want to address it in my response.
Cops are being paid to use their judgement and we are footing the bill so when it happens that they screw up and not use judgement we do get to criticize our employees.
Yes, that's true, but the podcast I pointed to specifically addresses the training issue.
For instance, there is a myth going around that a person with a knife can kill a police officer with an undrawn firearm if that person is within 21 feet of the police officer. And that myth is used to train some police officers to shoot anyone who threatens them with a knife within the distance of 21 feet. However, in Germany where knife violence is much more prevalent (because criminals don't have guns, they have knives), and where German police officers are trained completely differently, there isn't an epidemic of police officers dying of knife attacks because of the different training they've received.
Also, the podcast and book address the different ways civilians can be killed by police officers and other issues that the police training has a direct impact on, but the devil is in the details, and I don't want to repeat something incorrectly when you guys could easily listen to the podcast for yourselves (without me as the filter).
Putting aside for a moment that suicide by cop in some cases is actually a thing, and yes, I do believe that it's real, and putting aside that that an African American young man is far more likely to get shot by another fellow African American young man than by the police.
Another starting point would be to actually listen to this podcast, a super insightful interview of a criminologist. https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/201...
Civilian deaths from shootings and other police actions are vastly higher in the United States than in other developed nations, but American police also confront an unusually high risk of fatal assault. Zimring offers policy prescriptions for how federal, state, and local governments can reduce killings by police without risking the lives of officers. Criminal prosecution of police officers involved in killings is rare and only necessary in extreme cases. But clear administrative rules could save hundreds of lives without endangering police officers.
You must indeed be from a smaller town. Because in the big cities that can support it, there is such a thing as UberPool and LyftLine.
And you're partially right at least, UberPool is not like traditional carpool at all. It's actually better than traditional carpool. It's actually difficult to explain unless you've actually experienced it for yourself. Yes, it's a copout of an explanation, but my post is going to be long enough, I don't want to make it even longer.
And yes, just in case you were thinking it, I am an Uber driver, I can't claim to be completely objective. Nor can I convince you that I am not a troll. After all, that's what trolls do. They take a popular opinion and just contradict it just for the hell of it. So I wouldn't blame you if you thought I was a troll.
But in the "city taxi" cities you've mentioned, at least the American ones, San Francisco, New York, or Chicago. The number of taxis allowed to do pickups in those cities had been mostly set in stone through an archaic medallion system. And having a static number of taxis is fine in theory, but the entire mechanism starts to break down when the theory starts to meet the real world.
The demand for transportation is variable and it usually comes in waves. By that, I mean that when there is Warriors game on TV in my area, everyone watches it and when the game finishes or when the game is not interesting because it's obvious who's going to win, everybody starts requesting an Uber/Lyft/Taxi at the same time. Same goes for special events, or going to work in the morning and returning from work in the evening, or going to dinner in the Marina or finishing dinner at the Marina, or going to a bar and leaving the bar, or going to a club and returning from a club. The demand only seems to have peaks and valleys. That's how our world is organized. And having a static number of taxis in such a world only ensured that the taxi service used to be equally unreliable for everyone.
In San Francisco ten years ago, you couldn't reliably get a taxi during rush hour. I know African Americans were complaining, but this wasn't limited to only them. During rush hours, the taxi system was a total crap shoot. Either you were lucky, or you weren't. Some of the more savvy people in need of taxis walked to the expensive hotels, where they would ask the doorman to get them a taxi and apparently that helped a little for those people who knew that trick at least. Apparently, if a taxi refused to take a customer during rush hour because it was too short of a ride, the doorman would subsequently blacklist that particular taxi. And during low demand, a good doorman/concierge would call his favorite taxi drivers for pickups and those taxi drivers would kick some money back to the doorman or concierge.
That being said, for the rest of us who didn't know that trick, the taxi system couldn't be depended upon. So that left us the public transportation system, which is good, but which doesn't work for all cases. For instance, the last Bart train usually runs around 12:30 PM. And the Muni system, it's better than in many American cities, but it suffers from the same issue of having too many people using it during peak hours and not enough people using it at other times. And even scheduling a taxi for an airport pickup during certain hours was super tricky. The taxi dispatcher would make all kinds of promises to you, but when the cab was supposed to arrive -- it came an hour late and it was pretty obvious that the taxi dispatchers had no actual authority over the drivers they dispatched. And sometimes, if you know you're going to need reliable transportation, the only solution left to you may be to bring your own car to the city during work hours and pay through your nose for garage parking.
And if Uber/Lyft are successful in the San Francisco Bay Area, it's because they're able to supply the market with a variable workforce, variable pricing, and variable capacity, which is able to adapt to those peaks and valleys on the demand side. It's not the
I am currently a full-time Uber driver, so perhaps I may be able to address some of you misconceptions.
Those are just taxi apps.
No, taxi apps are either digital or analog. The Uber app, on the other hand, is only digital.
The analog taxi apps work like this. If you see a taxi, you raise your hand and the taxi picks you up. It's as simple as that. Their analog app can even override their digital one. By that I mean that if a taxi driver sees you signaling him, he may abandon the current pick up he may be going after simply because you're closer to him and he can more easily pick you up than someone else who may still be 10 to 15 minutes away.
On the other hand, an Uber driver doesn't have that luxury. If he picks up any customer without using the digital app, he risks being permanently deactivated/fired and having to pay a $1,000 fine (at least, that's the fine in California, I don't know about other states). The same goes for a Lyft driver.
An apps to setup and coordinate carpools... now THAT would be a ride sharing app.
Yes, it does that too, assuming your area is dense enough with enough population to support it. It's called UberPool or LyftLine.
And yes, some people like yourself do freak out when they see that their ride is arriving with one or two passengers already in it. The fact is that many people don't fully read their screen the very first time they order their first Uber, and if they selected the cheapest option, it's usually an UberPool/LyftLine they ordered (assuming that their area supports it).
Also, keep in mind that if you order an UberPool, unlike UberX, you should wait on the sidewalk or at the door for when it arrives (because if you wait to receive the confirmation that the car is already there before leaving your house, the Uber car may already have pulled away and taken your no-show $5 cancellation fee with it). Don't be mad at the driver when that happens. Other passengers may be in the car already, or other passengers may be watching his car on the map waiting to be picked up next, and if the driver waits more than 120 seconds before pulling away, it means that those other passengers may cancel on him and he'll get dinged for it).
Also, note that you can cancel on an UberPool before it arrives and before 120 seconds have passed, but if the UberPool is on its way and still on schedule for the original ETA, you'll still be charged a $2 cancellation fee for changing your mind. Many people actually cancel their UberPool when they find out there is already someone in the car. In that sense, UberPool is much less flexible.
If you want the car to yourself, or want to be able to change to a new destination midway through the trip, you'll need to order an UberX instead.
How is that anything but a taxi service?
If you want to become better at criticizing Uber and stick it to them at the same time.
You should google for their first-time user Uber promo code. If you're in California, that code should give you a starting credit of $20, although you'll still be required to enter a valid credit card (assuming this is the first time you're registering with Uber and this is the first time you're installing their app on your phone). Personally, I was able to use that credit for two rides and a half. By that, I mean that I could have stopped using Uber after using it for the second time and never have been charged a dime.
On the other hand, the promo code from Lyft is a bit trickier. That is why I am not recommending it to you, despite the fact that I think Lyft is a much more ethical and a much nicer company overall. Lyft gives you a $50 discount, but you can only apply it $5 at a time for each ride. So it's more of a discount for the first 10 rides, not an actual advanced credit like it is with Uber.
And of course, there is no need for you to even try Uber if you don't want to. It's just that if you ever envision being in need of transp
It may be meaningful. Such a judgment may make it easier to get the site delisted from US-based search engines. It may also make it easier to cut off Visa/Mastercard donations to the site and possibly stop other forms of revenues coming from US-based companies.
Also, when the leader of the Republic of Kazakhstan dies, he's 76 years old now. There will be two factions, a Russian-alignment faction and a US/NATO-alignment faction. If the US/NATO faction wins, and if US troops can be placed there before Russia invades (which won't be easy), many people in Kazakhstan will be relieved, but that that doesn't mean that the woman who created SciHub won't go to prison for the rest of her natural life.
Just take a look at what the US forced Colombia to do. 8 years of prison for sharing a single scientific article. Just imagine what punishment they would push for SciHub (which is one of the largest repositories of scientific articles in the world). Maybe 5 million years in prison? Summary execution? I don't know. But if Kazhakstan gets in bed with the US, that woman needs to drop everything she's doing and defect to Russia.
It's a very transparent advertisement. The new Slashdot owners/editors have basically given up. It's like they don't even try to pretend the headlines are genuine anymore.
If the car is not smart enough to see a truck by itself, it may not be smart enough to find a safe space to pull over and shut itself off.
In any case, I agree with you. Maintaining the 74 MPH speed by that point is insane. At the very least, it should begin to decelerate and flash its warning lights to show other cars that something is wrong.
I can press as many radio buttons on my car radio as I want... as fast as I want. I don't have to press one button, and then HOLD IT to have it move radio station.
Chris, You better sit down because I am about to blow your mind.
Your car radio works like that too for resetting a station to the current one. "Not mine! My car is 30 years old, I still have the original radio. It has mechanical buttons" you say. Well, if that's the case, that's a hard press, not a long press.
And that little black triangle next to your fuel gauge icon, it's an arrow to remind you which side of the car is your gas door. And that fuel cap, there is actually fuel cap holder built into the gas door flap (in addition to the plastic tether that may, or may not be there anymore). Mine works by screwing the cap to the flap of the door.
Also in Android, if you long press an autocomplete suggestion, it will allow you to delete it from your auto-complete dictionary. And you know that weird arrow next to an auto-complete suggestion for Google on the right side, not the auto-complete from the keyboard, but the auto-complete from the search box, go ahead press one of them on your phone, or click it on your desktop, and see what happens.
And assuming you've upgraded your S5 to an S6 or above, note that 'Samsung pay' will work at a payment terminal even if that payment terminal doesn't support Android pay, Apple Pay, or NFC. In addition to NFC, the Samsung phone can mimic the magnetic strip of a credit card reader (I kid you not!) as long as the magnetic reader is not deeply embedded in the device. And of course, it does it more securely than your normal magnetic card because it generates a one-time credit card number for each transaction (which your plastic card doesn't).
Stay tuned. Next week, I will blow your mind again by teaching you all about the function of the plastic tray below your fridge and the reason you should clean it once in a while.
Per the contract, we have to finish the project on schedule, but cannot bill for people that are not approved. What do you do?
You contact the client in writing to cover your ass before a higher up gets the bright idea that you should personally commit a Federal Crime to solve the issue.
The purpose of all the contract requirements is to try to maintain accountability. It just gets out of hand sometimes.
As far as I'm concerned, if you've lost 75% of your team just three weeks before a project is completed, that project is doomed. It doesn't matter to me how many new people you throw at that problem.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... There is also the idea that most development teams keep the more difficult problems for the end of the project, and if your development team quit just before completing the final part, it probably means that the most difficult problems have been left unsolved.
If you're willing to do the research, you can lock down a cell phone for your kid.
If you're worried about privacy, you can put your phone in a Faraday envelope. And no, it doesn't need to have its data-enabled. It's just nice to have a cell phone in a case of emergency (even just a dumb flip phone), or in case you're meeting someone and that person is not there or late.
Actually, cell phones can be locked down to only call/text parents and family members, parent pre-approved friends, and emergency numbers if need be. Plus, they can be used to locate your kid with GPS. And your carrier (AT&T for instance) can also supply you with an archive of the texts it sent and received. They don't need to have games on them or anything else on them. As a parent, you're the one in control, you just need to do your research.
And if coordinating pickups ever becomes an issue, giving your daughter a locked down cell phone could be very useful.
Because it's claimed that Edward Snowden lied about his Master's degree, which the background check supposedly failed to uncover. So if your HR is incompetent, it's going to impact the entire organization because they do the hiring for the entire organization (assuming HR is the one that does that, for all I know, maybe the FBI did the background check, I don't know).
That being said, I'm not sure if the degree thing is true. Many Universities in the US will refuse to confirm degrees, grades, or even attendance if a grad's student loans are delinquent, so it may just be that Edward Snowden paid the minimum on his student loans and decided to stop paying his student loans once he became a fugitive.
Not to mention, the ping pong table is a bad idea where it's placed.
Every time a ping pong ball is missed, it will bounce on the concrete floor for one minute and it will roll 75 feet away. This is neither good for the employees actually working because of the distraction, nor is it good for the employees that are actually playing (unless they're Olympic level ping pong players). This problem could have easily been handled with some carpeting and some glass partitions.
Same goes for the movie watching/presentation screening area. The screen is obviously too small to be watched by everyone. But the visual distractions and the sound distractions that come out of that area will be one more source of distractions.
The problem with this space is that their original intent may have been to start a co-working space. Since most of their customers are bloggers, it would make sense that they do that. But then, no place seems to have been assigned to their actual employees. There is no place to put work artifacts, no place to meet privately. Like you said, there are also no large external LCD monitors. There is not even a bean bag or a small table that I could take to the side of the room so I could work without getting interrupted. A large public train station has actually better amenities than this place.
For non-commercial transactions, Venmo is already free. So it's a hit with everybody, not just with families. And you're much more likely to have someone in your circle of friends suggesting that you install that application if you can use it for ALL your friends and family.
That being said, that new service is not competing directly with Venmo. I believe it's really competing with existing wire transfers. The fact that their transactions will be near-instantaneous (and therefore probably incontestable) may make it riskier to use. And therefore, it may be targeted by scam artists more readily (like they target gift cards and Western Union more readily).
But because traditional banks are very risk-averse and are lead by risk-averse executives, they'll probably require security in favor of usability. So I'm really not expecting much from that project in terms of usability (if the bankers themselves are the ones commissioning it).
Not only that, but the OP doesn't seem to realize how fridges work.
cooling your hardware down without using any CPU fans or liquid cooling and similar.
Refrigerators do use "liquid cooling". That's how they work.
And unless the OP can think of a highly contrived McGyver episode in the magical fantasy land of Hollywood where every woman is silicon-enhanced and electricity costs do not matter at all, then I don't think he should seek a patent and quit his day job anytime soon.
As a current Uber driver, I hate Uber too, but not for the same reasons others do.
Uber/Lyft actually save lives. This fact shouldn't be underestimated. Talk to any longtime bartender or policeman in an area that allows Uber and Lyft and they'll tell you that Uber/Lyft have made a huge impact on the reduction of drunk driving accidents. This is the real benefit to society. And I don't care if you're a Democrat, or a Bernie Sanders supporter, but trying to outlaw or regulate Uber/Lyft out of existence is sheer insanity if you really claim to care about your fellow human beings.
With that said, the CEO of Uber has autistic tendencies and lacks emotional maturity. While Trump is a compulsive liar, Uber's CEO (Travis) is a compulsive truth-sayer (but not in a good way either). And I'm not saying this lightly. For instance, Uber's CEO has spoken to a dinner with hundreds of journalists and told them that Uber was doing opposition research into journalists that were critical of Uber. Now, he didn't say that to threaten journalists, he just said to explain his strategy (which he really should never have). And I don't care that probably most large corporations do use opposition research and compose extensive dossiers on whoever they deem an enemy of the company, I'm sure that many of them do. As an executive, it's just not something that you should just blurt out and say, especially to other journalists.
But that too is not the reason I hate Uber. The reason I hate Uber is because the company has no human empathy for any of its drivers. For instance, when Uber deactivates (fires) a driver, it does it while the driver may still be driving a passenger and it does it in the most dangerous way possible. It just logs you out of the driver app (and it doesn't let you log back in). That's it. So imagine, you're a passenger, you're in the car of an Uber driver, you're about halfway towards your destination on some freeway, and suddenly, the trip gets canceled, the driver won't get paid for having picked you up, in fact, he just got fired. Who does that? Seriously? Not even Walmart will fire their employees when they're in middle of a transaction with another customer. And if the employee was unstable to begin with, that's why you're firing him, then all the reason you shouldn't do that when your associate/employee is in a car alone with your customer. Plus, it's not like Uber is a new company anymore. Uber was founded six or seven years ago. Six or seven years, in my opinion, should be enough to rectify such an issue.
And the second reason I hate Uber is wage theft. Now, I won't go into the details. There is a class action lawsuit on this issue. That is the main reason Uber changed its terms of services with its drivers three weeks ago. But now instead of telling its drivers, sorry, we made mistake, we're sorry we stole the money we owed you and lied about what riders were actually paying us. Uber is now doubling down by essentially telling us, from now on, the amount the rider is paying us has no relation to the amount that we'll be paying you. This is a take it, or leave it, deal. If you don't accept the new terms of services, you can't drive for us anymore.
It's adorable that you think a complaint to Trump's FCC is going to have any effect.
You should at least leave a ringerless voice mail to their cell phone and to their office phone. Automating it and doing it once a month should do the trick (after all, you don't want to be accused of doing a denial of service attack). Plus, you should do the same for all your local legislators.
And since it's a political message, you can let the phone ring if you want, it doesn't matter. Political messages are exempt from robocalls and telemarketing regulations. Just make sure to call between 8 AM and 9 PM for the politician you're calling and double-check with any local political campaign laws (so you don't accidentally run afoul of them).
Slashdot Mirror
As a Trump supporter, do you still consider Russian hacking to be fake news when President Trump tweeted the following?
The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling. With 4 months looking at Russia...
https://twitter.com/realDonald...
After all, you can't have it both ways. You can't say that something doesn't exist and then turn around and blame Obama for doing nothing about that non-existing thing.
What do you think is Trump's excuse now? That meddling doesn't equal hacking? That meddling doesn't mean that Russian intelligence tried to influence Trump's campaign and Trump's team? That the fact that they tried to meddle doesn't mean that they succeeded? Or that the fact that Russia tried to meddle doesn't mean that there should be a US investigation on the matter, nor does it mean that there should be an investigation of Trump's team?
Tell us. How old is too old for someone to drive a car without auto-braking? Is 86 years old too old? Is 100 years old too old? At what age do you draw the line? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Please note that not all the auto-braking systems are designed to prevent a car from hitting something, those systems are not standardized yet, and they vary greatly in quality, some are super basic, but at least, those systems will brake once you've hit someone, even if you keep on pressing on the gas pedal afterwards (like it did in France when the terrorist tried to keep on going with the stolen truck, or like it could have helped the 86 year old man in the US who kept on pressing the gas pedal even though his car was plowing into the crowd of the Santa Monica Farmers market, killing 10 people and injuring 63).
Why not mandate this for all vehicles?
Are you serious? It's expensive to change all the cars to the latest generation all at once. I'm sure some retrofitting kits must exist, but I'll bet those are super expensive and probably can't be applied to all the cars or all the trucks (considering the liability and all the testing that must be done).
Also, it will be easier for older people to replace their used cars/trucks if they can resell them at a decent price to the rest of the population. Also, what you're describing will happen eventually for everyone, but it will take time. And we might as well prioritize the populations that have the most accidents or that can cause the most damage first.
For instance, take a look at the Japanese laws for drunk driving. If someone is caught drunk driving in Japan, the driver is punished, the passengers are punished, and even the bar is punished (which usually means Japanese bars will take people's car keys before they even start serving them alcohol). http://www.motoring.com.au/dri...
This is a strawman argument. Every African American man is not being paid a 6 figure salary for a job which does not need a college degree.
That was my point actually. That is a separate issue that also needs to be addressed, but for a variety of reasons, I didn't want to address it in my response.
Cops are being paid to use their judgement and we are footing the bill so when it happens that they screw up and not use judgement we do get to criticize our employees.
Yes, that's true, but the podcast I pointed to specifically addresses the training issue.
For instance, there is a myth going around that a person with a knife can kill a police officer with an undrawn firearm if that person is within 21 feet of the police officer. And that myth is used to train some police officers to shoot anyone who threatens them with a knife within the distance of 21 feet. However, in Germany where knife violence is much more prevalent (because criminals don't have guns, they have knives), and where German police officers are trained completely differently, there isn't an epidemic of police officers dying of knife attacks because of the different training they've received.
Also, the podcast and book address the different ways civilians can be killed by police officers and other issues that the police training has a direct impact on, but the devil is in the details, and I don't want to repeat something incorrectly when you guys could easily listen to the podcast for yourselves (without me as the filter).
Putting aside for a moment that suicide by cop in some cases is actually a thing, and yes, I do believe that it's real, and putting aside that that an African American young man is far more likely to get shot by another fellow African American young man than by the police.
Another starting point would be to actually listen to this podcast, a super insightful interview of a criminologist.
https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/201...
He also wrote a book, When Police Kill
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674...
Civilian deaths from shootings and other police actions are vastly higher in the United States than in other developed nations, but American police also confront an unusually high risk of fatal assault. Zimring offers policy prescriptions for how federal, state, and local governments can reduce killings by police without risking the lives of officers. Criminal prosecution of police officers involved in killings is rare and only necessary in extreme cases. But clear administrative rules could save hundreds of lives without endangering police officers.
Oh damn! Now, I am feeling bad for the ad companies. They're getting ripped off.
Booo-hooooo
You must indeed be from a smaller town. Because in the big cities that can support it, there is such a thing as UberPool and LyftLine.
And you're partially right at least, UberPool is not like traditional carpool at all. It's actually better than traditional carpool. It's actually difficult to explain unless you've actually experienced it for yourself. Yes, it's a copout of an explanation, but my post is going to be long enough, I don't want to make it even longer.
And yes, just in case you were thinking it, I am an Uber driver, I can't claim to be completely objective. Nor can I convince you that I am not a troll. After all, that's what trolls do. They take a popular opinion and just contradict it just for the hell of it. So I wouldn't blame you if you thought I was a troll.
But in the "city taxi" cities you've mentioned, at least the American ones, San Francisco, New York, or Chicago. The number of taxis allowed to do pickups in those cities had been mostly set in stone through an archaic medallion system. And having a static number of taxis is fine in theory, but the entire mechanism starts to break down when the theory starts to meet the real world.
The demand for transportation is variable and it usually comes in waves. By that, I mean that when there is Warriors game on TV in my area, everyone watches it and when the game finishes or when the game is not interesting because it's obvious who's going to win, everybody starts requesting an Uber/Lyft/Taxi at the same time. Same goes for special events, or going to work in the morning and returning from work in the evening, or going to dinner in the Marina or finishing dinner at the Marina, or going to a bar and leaving the bar, or going to a club and returning from a club. The demand only seems to have peaks and valleys. That's how our world is organized. And having a static number of taxis in such a world only ensured that the taxi service used to be equally unreliable for everyone.
In San Francisco ten years ago, you couldn't reliably get a taxi during rush hour. I know African Americans were complaining, but this wasn't limited to only them. During rush hours, the taxi system was a total crap shoot. Either you were lucky, or you weren't. Some of the more savvy people in need of taxis walked to the expensive hotels, where they would ask the doorman to get them a taxi and apparently that helped a little for those people who knew that trick at least. Apparently, if a taxi refused to take a customer during rush hour because it was too short of a ride, the doorman would subsequently blacklist that particular taxi. And during low demand, a good doorman/concierge would call his favorite taxi drivers for pickups and those taxi drivers would kick some money back to the doorman or concierge.
That being said, for the rest of us who didn't know that trick, the taxi system couldn't be depended upon. So that left us the public transportation system, which is good, but which doesn't work for all cases. For instance, the last Bart train usually runs around 12:30 PM. And the Muni system, it's better than in many American cities, but it suffers from the same issue of having too many people using it during peak hours and not enough people using it at other times. And even scheduling a taxi for an airport pickup during certain hours was super tricky. The taxi dispatcher would make all kinds of promises to you, but when the cab was supposed to arrive -- it came an hour late and it was pretty obvious that the taxi dispatchers had no actual authority over the drivers they dispatched. And sometimes, if you know you're going to need reliable transportation, the only solution left to you may be to bring your own car to the city during work hours and pay through your nose for garage parking.
And if Uber/Lyft are successful in the San Francisco Bay Area, it's because they're able to supply the market with a variable workforce, variable pricing, and variable capacity, which is able to adapt to those peaks and valleys on the demand side. It's not the
I am currently a full-time Uber driver, so perhaps I may be able to address some of you misconceptions.
Those are just taxi apps.
No, taxi apps are either digital or analog. The Uber app, on the other hand, is only digital.
The analog taxi apps work like this. If you see a taxi, you raise your hand and the taxi picks you up. It's as simple as that. Their analog app can even override their digital one. By that I mean that if a taxi driver sees you signaling him, he may abandon the current pick up he may be going after simply because you're closer to him and he can more easily pick you up than someone else who may still be 10 to 15 minutes away.
On the other hand, an Uber driver doesn't have that luxury. If he picks up any customer without using the digital app, he risks being permanently deactivated/fired and having to pay a $1,000 fine (at least, that's the fine in California, I don't know about other states). The same goes for a Lyft driver.
An apps to setup and coordinate carpools... now THAT would be a ride sharing app.
Yes, it does that too, assuming your area is dense enough with enough population to support it. It's called UberPool or LyftLine.
And yes, some people like yourself do freak out when they see that their ride is arriving with one or two passengers already in it. The fact is that many people don't fully read their screen the very first time they order their first Uber, and if they selected the cheapest option, it's usually an UberPool/LyftLine they ordered (assuming that their area supports it).
Also, keep in mind that if you order an UberPool, unlike UberX, you should wait on the sidewalk or at the door for when it arrives (because if you wait to receive the confirmation that the car is already there before leaving your house, the Uber car may already have pulled away and taken your no-show $5 cancellation fee with it). Don't be mad at the driver when that happens. Other passengers may be in the car already, or other passengers may be watching his car on the map waiting to be picked up next, and if the driver waits more than 120 seconds before pulling away, it means that those other passengers may cancel on him and he'll get dinged for it).
Also, note that you can cancel on an UberPool before it arrives and before 120 seconds have passed, but if the UberPool is on its way and still on schedule for the original ETA, you'll still be charged a $2 cancellation fee for changing your mind. Many people actually cancel their UberPool when they find out there is already someone in the car. In that sense, UberPool is much less flexible.
If you want the car to yourself, or want to be able to change to a new destination midway through the trip, you'll need to order an UberX instead.
How is that anything but a taxi service?
If you want to become better at criticizing Uber and stick it to them at the same time.
You should google for their first-time user Uber promo code. If you're in California, that code should give you a starting credit of $20, although you'll still be required to enter a valid credit card (assuming this is the first time you're registering with Uber and this is the first time you're installing their app on your phone). Personally, I was able to use that credit for two rides and a half. By that, I mean that I could have stopped using Uber after using it for the second time and never have been charged a dime.
On the other hand, the promo code from Lyft is a bit trickier. That is why I am not recommending it to you, despite the fact that I think Lyft is a much more ethical and a much nicer company overall. Lyft gives you a $50 discount, but you can only apply it $5 at a time for each ride. So it's more of a discount for the first 10 rides, not an actual advanced credit like it is with Uber.
And of course, there is no need for you to even try Uber if you don't want to. It's just that if you ever envision being in need of transp
It may be meaningful. Such a judgment may make it easier to get the site delisted from US-based search engines. It may also make it easier to cut off Visa/Mastercard donations to the site and possibly stop other forms of revenues coming from US-based companies.
Also, when the leader of the Republic of Kazakhstan dies, he's 76 years old now. There will be two factions, a Russian-alignment faction and a US/NATO-alignment faction. If the US/NATO faction wins, and if US troops can be placed there before Russia invades (which won't be easy), many people in Kazakhstan will be relieved, but that that doesn't mean that the woman who created SciHub won't go to prison for the rest of her natural life.
Just take a look at what the US forced Colombia to do. 8 years of prison for sharing a single scientific article. Just imagine what punishment they would push for SciHub (which is one of the largest repositories of scientific articles in the world). Maybe 5 million years in prison? Summary execution? I don't know. But if Kazhakstan gets in bed with the US, that woman needs to drop everything she's doing and defect to Russia.
The click-bait part is the least of its problems.
It's a very transparent advertisement. The new Slashdot owners/editors have basically given up. It's like they don't even try to pretend the headlines are genuine anymore.
If the car is not smart enough to see a truck by itself, it may not be smart enough to find a safe space to pull over and shut itself off.
In any case, I agree with you. Maintaining the 74 MPH speed by that point is insane. At the very least, it should begin to decelerate and flash its warning lights to show other cars that something is wrong.
I was talking about the new standard Android keyboard.
That makes sense. They know how to leak and where to leak. Only those professionals could leak a confidential briefing about leaks so quickly.
I can press as many radio buttons on my car radio as I want... as fast as I want. I don't have to press one button, and then HOLD IT to have it move radio station.
Chris,
You better sit down because I am about to blow your mind.
Your car radio works like that too for resetting a station to the current one. "Not mine! My car is 30 years old, I still have the original radio. It has mechanical buttons" you say. Well, if that's the case, that's a hard press, not a long press.
And that little black triangle next to your fuel gauge icon, it's an arrow to remind you which side of the car is your gas door. And that fuel cap, there is actually fuel cap holder built into the gas door flap (in addition to the plastic tether that may, or may not be there anymore). Mine works by screwing the cap to the flap of the door.
Also in Android, if you long press an autocomplete suggestion, it will allow you to delete it from your auto-complete dictionary. And you know that weird arrow next to an auto-complete suggestion for Google on the right side, not the auto-complete from the keyboard, but the auto-complete from the search box, go ahead press one of them on your phone, or click it on your desktop, and see what happens.
And assuming you've upgraded your S5 to an S6 or above, note that 'Samsung pay' will work at a payment terminal even if that payment terminal doesn't support Android pay, Apple Pay, or NFC. In addition to NFC, the Samsung phone can mimic the magnetic strip of a credit card reader (I kid you not!) as long as the magnetic reader is not deeply embedded in the device. And of course, it does it more securely than your normal magnetic card because it generates a one-time credit card number for each transaction (which your plastic card doesn't).
Stay tuned. Next week, I will blow your mind again by teaching you all about the function of the plastic tray below your fridge and the reason you should clean it once in a while.
Per the contract, we have to finish the project on schedule, but cannot bill for people that are not approved. What do you do?
You contact the client in writing to cover your ass before a higher up gets the bright idea that you should personally commit a Federal Crime to solve the issue.
The purpose of all the contract requirements is to try to maintain accountability. It just gets out of hand sometimes.
As far as I'm concerned, if you've lost 75% of your team just three weeks before a project is completed, that project is doomed. It doesn't matter to me how many new people you throw at that problem.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... There is also the idea that most development teams keep the more difficult problems for the end of the project, and if your development team quit just before completing the final part, it probably means that the most difficult problems have been left unsolved.
If you're willing to do the research, you can lock down a cell phone for your kid.
If you're worried about privacy, you can put your phone in a Faraday envelope. And no, it doesn't need to have its data-enabled. It's just nice to have a cell phone in a case of emergency (even just a dumb flip phone), or in case you're meeting someone and that person is not there or late.
Actually, cell phones can be locked down to only call/text parents and family members, parent pre-approved friends, and emergency numbers if need be. Plus, they can be used to locate your kid with GPS. And your carrier (AT&T for instance) can also supply you with an archive of the texts it sent and received. They don't need to have games on them or anything else on them. As a parent, you're the one in control, you just need to do your research.
And if coordinating pickups ever becomes an issue, giving your daughter a locked down cell phone could be very useful.
Because it's claimed that Edward Snowden lied about his Master's degree, which the background check supposedly failed to uncover. So if your HR is incompetent, it's going to impact the entire organization because they do the hiring for the entire organization (assuming HR is the one that does that, for all I know, maybe the FBI did the background check, I don't know).
That being said, I'm not sure if the degree thing is true. Many Universities in the US will refuse to confirm degrees, grades, or even attendance if a grad's student loans are delinquent, so it may just be that Edward Snowden paid the minimum on his student loans and decided to stop paying his student loans once he became a fugitive.
The BBB is a scam like Yelp. You pay them to improve your rating.
Now don't get me wrong, you should still post your complaint with the BBB, Yelp, the Federal Trade Commission, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc.
Not to mention, the ping pong table is a bad idea where it's placed.
Every time a ping pong ball is missed, it will bounce on the concrete floor for one minute and it will roll 75 feet away. This is neither good for the employees actually working because of the distraction, nor is it good for the employees that are actually playing (unless they're Olympic level ping pong players). This problem could have easily been handled with some carpeting and some glass partitions.
Same goes for the movie watching/presentation screening area. The screen is obviously too small to be watched by everyone. But the visual distractions and the sound distractions that come out of that area will be one more source of distractions.
The problem with this space is that their original intent may have been to start a co-working space. Since most of their customers are bloggers, it would make sense that they do that. But then, no place seems to have been assigned to their actual employees. There is no place to put work artifacts, no place to meet privately. Like you said, there are also no large external LCD monitors. There is not even a bean bag or a small table that I could take to the side of the room so I could work without getting interrupted. A large public train station has actually better amenities than this place.
For non-commercial transactions, Venmo is already free. So it's a hit with everybody, not just with families. And you're much more likely to have someone in your circle of friends suggesting that you install that application if you can use it for ALL your friends and family.
That being said, that new service is not competing directly with Venmo. I believe it's really competing with existing wire transfers. The fact that their transactions will be near-instantaneous (and therefore probably incontestable) may make it riskier to use. And therefore, it may be targeted by scam artists more readily (like they target gift cards and Western Union more readily).
But because traditional banks are very risk-averse and are lead by risk-averse executives, they'll probably require security in favor of usability. So I'm really not expecting much from that project in terms of usability (if the bankers themselves are the ones commissioning it).
Not only that, but the OP doesn't seem to realize how fridges work.
cooling your hardware down without using any CPU fans or liquid cooling and similar.
Refrigerators do use "liquid cooling". That's how they work.
And unless the OP can think of a highly contrived McGyver episode in the magical fantasy land of Hollywood where every woman is silicon-enhanced and electricity costs do not matter at all, then I don't think he should seek a patent and quit his day job anytime soon.
As a current Uber driver, I hate Uber too, but not for the same reasons others do.
Uber/Lyft actually save lives. This fact shouldn't be underestimated. Talk to any longtime bartender or policeman in an area that allows Uber and Lyft and they'll tell you that Uber/Lyft have made a huge impact on the reduction of drunk driving accidents. This is the real benefit to society. And I don't care if you're a Democrat, or a Bernie Sanders supporter, but trying to outlaw or regulate Uber/Lyft out of existence is sheer insanity if you really claim to care about your fellow human beings.
With that said, the CEO of Uber has autistic tendencies and lacks emotional maturity. While Trump is a compulsive liar, Uber's CEO (Travis) is a compulsive truth-sayer (but not in a good way either). And I'm not saying this lightly. For instance, Uber's CEO has spoken to a dinner with hundreds of journalists and told them that Uber was doing opposition research into journalists that were critical of Uber. Now, he didn't say that to threaten journalists, he just said to explain his strategy (which he really should never have). And I don't care that probably most large corporations do use opposition research and compose extensive dossiers on whoever they deem an enemy of the company, I'm sure that many of them do. As an executive, it's just not something that you should just blurt out and say, especially to other journalists.
But that too is not the reason I hate Uber. The reason I hate Uber is because the company has no human empathy for any of its drivers. For instance, when Uber deactivates (fires) a driver, it does it while the driver may still be driving a passenger and it does it in the most dangerous way possible. It just logs you out of the driver app (and it doesn't let you log back in). That's it. So imagine, you're a passenger, you're in the car of an Uber driver, you're about halfway towards your destination on some freeway, and suddenly, the trip gets canceled, the driver won't get paid for having picked you up, in fact, he just got fired. Who does that? Seriously? Not even Walmart will fire their employees when they're in middle of a transaction with another customer. And if the employee was unstable to begin with, that's why you're firing him, then all the reason you shouldn't do that when your associate/employee is in a car alone with your customer. Plus, it's not like Uber is a new company anymore. Uber was founded six or seven years ago. Six or seven years, in my opinion, should be enough to rectify such an issue.
And the second reason I hate Uber is wage theft. Now, I won't go into the details. There is a class action lawsuit on this issue. That is the main reason Uber changed its terms of services with its drivers three weeks ago. But now instead of telling its drivers, sorry, we made mistake, we're sorry we stole the money we owed you and lied about what riders were actually paying us. Uber is now doubling down by essentially telling us, from now on, the amount the rider is paying us has no relation to the amount that we'll be paying you. This is a take it, or leave it, deal. If you don't accept the new terms of services, you can't drive for us anymore.
If there is silver lining to this story, it's that most of us do not work, nor will ever work, for Amazon.
It's adorable that you think a complaint to Trump's FCC is going to have any effect.
You should at least leave a ringerless voice mail to their cell phone and to their office phone. Automating it and doing it once a month should do the trick (after all, you don't want to be accused of doing a denial of service attack). Plus, you should do the same for all your local legislators.
And since it's a political message, you can let the phone ring if you want, it doesn't matter. Political messages are exempt from robocalls and telemarketing regulations. Just make sure to call between 8 AM and 9 PM for the politician you're calling and double-check with any local political campaign laws (so you don't accidentally run afoul of them).