So I wouldn't put them in the same category as Twitter for instance. They can always charge more. Yes, they've had about a zillion mis-steps, several times the quota even for a company in hypergrowth.
No, a lot of the advantage that Uber gets from breaking laws is the ability to charge less due to fewer overheads. They are not being 'disruptive' for the fun of it, it is a way of increasing profit.
EBITDA is a close-to-meaningless measure. Ignoring depreciation, and amortisation for the moment, if your "operating income" is $1 billion and you pay $1.5 billion in interest charges to your investors, you are making what any normal person would call a cash loss.
Um, the point is the current amount of "cash on hand" means nothing when you can go out and raise more of it at the drop of the hat. No one is "suddenly call in" Ubers debt. They would quickly lose all their money. All of these companies might go out of business, but not in 2018.
Up to a point, but the investors are expecting to get their money back and make a profit at some point in the future. They are not an infinite source of funding.
Whether it's based on totally implausible outcomes or not, the investors will have a model showing how much they have invested and the potential future cash flows. At some point, if it becomes clear that Uber or whoever are never going to make a profit, the investors will cut their losses.
As people elsewhere have said, the logic behind financing Uber is that they will become some sort of private transportation near-monopoly in a decade or so when they own virtually all the self driving cars in the world. Just becoming a big taxi firm doesn't justify the massive investment.
Uber's fate really depends on their ability to get a fleet of self diving cars running before everyone else. Taxi diving is a profession that will be automated away in the next decade or two, along with truck driving, and the only way to survive is to own the fleet and capture the market early.
So far Uber looks pretty far behind the competition, but if someone offers to sell them the cars they might be okay.
But why would Uber be allowed to operate as a monopoly transport provider? Is everyone working on the assumption that in ten years time we will actually be living in a Libertarian/Corporatist dystopia where there is no government to stop such things?
Twitter may be full of Twats, but it has some real practical uses - for example, it's used by the train operators in the UK as a convenient way to post service updates and answer questions like 'No trains out of Kings Cross, how do I get to Leeds' - 'Go to St. Pancras, train to Sheffield and change, you ticket will be valid'.
Agreed, it's often useful for updates from the police if there's been a major road traffic incident, too.
The way some people on slashdot go on, you'd think it was mandatory to be forced to follow Barack Obama and [insert name of pet liberal hate object here] on Twitter to be allowed an account.
I'd rather see Facebook die. Then there would be mass suicides of attention whores and drama queens.
"I condemn social media like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram where people post on an internet forum" say countless Slashdotters posting on an internet forum.
It's a climate story. Just sit back, pass the popcorn and enjoy the rants from both sides.
I decided a long time ago to not get involved anymore. I have no kids and the world, even according to the worst predictions, will last longer than me. So why bother caring?
In the long run we are all dead. Why bother doing anything?
If water resistence is seriously a problem, it's probably because you're dropping it into water. And if you're doing that, you need a rugged phone anyway, which the iPhone is definitely not
I think this translates as: even though you bought a phone that claimed to be water resistant, you shouldn't in fact expect it to resist water.
Call me a luddite, but why would you want to upload your mp3s to a cloud service? They're not exactly hefty files, and storage is cheap as it's ever been, plus there's software that makes managing libraries pretty easy. Putting them in the cloud seems like a good way to end up sans music when:
1. You find yourself in a place with bad reception
2. The service shuts down or undergoes maintenance
Strikes me as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Then again, I'd also venture that the decision to shut down the service was influence by the MAFIAA foaming at the mouth over potential piracy, so hats off to Amazon for providing a service that pisses them off.
Clearly it is more convenient for a lot of people. I don't suppose Amazon forced them at gunpoint to upload their mp3s to their cloud service.
It is amusing how on slashdot "I don't do X therefore no one else could possibly have a reason to do X" is used as an argument.
I know a CEO (we fly together weekly) that wrote in his contract that he can use all his vacation time at the same time. That said, he gave 12 months notice, and said that he's going to use his 6 months of saved PTO in a row, so he goes on vacation in May, comes back for a week in November, and then retires. Pretty sweet deal!
That's handy advice if you're a CEO, perhaps not so much otherwise.
Don't need to terraform the whole thing. Create a network of massive enclosed subterranean biospheres in the caves, link em by transport tunnels, mine for water and needed minerals as needed. Its kind of a crappy existence but a little better once you get some kind of ecosystems going and artificial skies. You might be able to run solar tubes down (filtering out radiation of course) if its near the equator you might even pipe in enough natural light during the day through radiation filtered solar tubes (it gets up to 70 degrees sometimes although down to -100 at night).
Like on Total Recall before Arnie restarted the blowy things?
What exactly is the purpose of a dive watch if you are not actively diving?
They are properly waterproof, rugged and easy to read the time in poor conditions. The analogue timer is often useful and you can operate it wearing gloves.
And before anyone asks, no fishing your phone out of your pocket to tell the time is not more convenient than looking at your wrist. There is a reason people moved away from pocket watches to wrist watches.
Here in the UK anyone with a pension or life assurance or whatever "owns stocks and shares" since the provider has to have their money invested somewhere.
It is a meaningless statement though. I can't go to my pension company and say "can you please move GBP10,000 of my pension fund into this great new Blockchain company I've heard about."
Slashdot Mirror
So I wouldn't put them in the same category as Twitter for instance. They can always charge more. Yes, they've had about a zillion mis-steps, several times the quota even for a company in hypergrowth.
No, a lot of the advantage that Uber gets from breaking laws is the ability to charge less due to fewer overheads. They are not being 'disruptive' for the fun of it, it is a way of increasing profit.
Here's a clue: even in a tech company not everyone is a developer or IT person.
Operating income is basically EBITDA, and yes - companies make that.
EBITDA is a close-to-meaningless measure. Ignoring depreciation, and amortisation for the moment, if your "operating income" is $1 billion and you pay $1.5 billion in interest charges to your investors, you are making what any normal person would call a cash loss.
Um, the point is the current amount of "cash on hand" means nothing when you can go out and raise more of it at the drop of the hat. No one is "suddenly call in" Ubers debt. They would quickly lose all their money. All of these companies might go out of business, but not in 2018.
Up to a point, but the investors are expecting to get their money back and make a profit at some point in the future. They are not an infinite source of funding.
Whether it's based on totally implausible outcomes or not, the investors will have a model showing how much they have invested and the potential future cash flows. At some point, if it becomes clear that Uber or whoever are never going to make a profit, the investors will cut their losses.
As people elsewhere have said, the logic behind financing Uber is that they will become some sort of private transportation near-monopoly in a decade or so when they own virtually all the self driving cars in the world. Just becoming a big taxi firm doesn't justify the massive investment.
Uber's fate really depends on their ability to get a fleet of self diving cars running before everyone else. Taxi diving is a profession that will be automated away in the next decade or two, along with truck driving, and the only way to survive is to own the fleet and capture the market early.
So far Uber looks pretty far behind the competition, but if someone offers to sell them the cars they might be okay.
But why would Uber be allowed to operate as a monopoly transport provider? Is everyone working on the assumption that in ten years time we will actually be living in a Libertarian/Corporatist dystopia where there is no government to stop such things?
On reflection, they probably are.
Twitter may be full of Twats, but it has some real practical uses - for example, it's used by the train operators in the UK as a convenient way to post service updates and answer questions like 'No trains out of Kings Cross, how do I get to Leeds' - 'Go to St. Pancras, train to Sheffield and change, you ticket will be valid'.
Agreed, it's often useful for updates from the police if there's been a major road traffic incident, too.
The way some people on slashdot go on, you'd think it was mandatory to be forced to follow Barack Obama and [insert name of pet liberal hate object here] on Twitter to be allowed an account.
I'd rather see Facebook die. Then there would be mass suicides of attention whores and drama queens.
"I condemn social media like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram where people post on an internet forum" say countless Slashdotters posting on an internet forum.
Oh damn I'm wrong, there are enough blanks.
But a Scrabble board is only 15 squares across, OPs word has 27 letters. I win today's scrabble nerd competition.
It's a climate story. Just sit back, pass the popcorn and enjoy the rants from both sides.
I decided a long time ago to not get involved anymore. I have no kids and the world, even according to the worst predictions, will last longer than me. So why bother caring?
In the long run we are all dead. Why bother doing anything?
You made a mistake. HA!
That's never happened on the internet before!
Your post makes me aware that it is starting to look a lot like Christmas.
His post is making me aware that some people have started on the Christmas Spirits (like vodka) early. Lucky bastard.
0 + 0 = 0, that's a mathematical certainty.
-100+100 = 0 is a mathematical certainty too.
Psychological violence is just as real as physical violence, genius.
Haha who cares about old tech haha granpa go shit in diapers haha
Good Lord, is that Oscar Wilde posting on slashdot?
If water resistence is seriously a problem, it's probably because you're dropping it into water. And if you're doing that, you need a rugged phone anyway, which the iPhone is definitely not
I think this translates as: even though you bought a phone that claimed to be water resistant, you shouldn't in fact expect it to resist water.
But my head is spinning.
Call me a luddite, but why would you want to upload your mp3s to a cloud service? They're not exactly hefty files, and storage is cheap as it's ever been, plus there's software that makes managing libraries pretty easy. Putting them in the cloud seems like a good way to end up sans music when:
1. You find yourself in a place with bad reception 2. The service shuts down or undergoes maintenance
Strikes me as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Then again, I'd also venture that the decision to shut down the service was influence by the MAFIAA foaming at the mouth over potential piracy, so hats off to Amazon for providing a service that pisses them off.
Clearly it is more convenient for a lot of people. I don't suppose Amazon forced them at gunpoint to upload their mp3s to their cloud service.
It is amusing how on slashdot "I don't do X therefore no one else could possibly have a reason to do X" is used as an argument.
iTunes is far from the best music player
In the same way that Windows ME is far from the best OS I've ever had to use.
I know a CEO (we fly together weekly) that wrote in his contract that he can use all his vacation time at the same time. That said, he gave 12 months notice, and said that he's going to use his 6 months of saved PTO in a row, so he goes on vacation in May, comes back for a week in November, and then retires. Pretty sweet deal!
That's handy advice if you're a CEO, perhaps not so much otherwise.
you'd need to try and keep an atmosphere
Re-spin the core, fire up that magnetic field; voila! Atmosphere contained. I believe there's a documentary where they did something like this.
If they've made a documentary about terraforming Mars, I am at a loss as to why Mars isn't, um, terraformed.
Don't need to terraform the whole thing. Create a network of massive enclosed subterranean biospheres in the caves, link em by transport tunnels, mine for water and needed minerals as needed. Its kind of a crappy existence but a little better once you get some kind of ecosystems going and artificial skies. You might be able to run solar tubes down (filtering out radiation of course) if its near the equator you might even pipe in enough natural light during the day through radiation filtered solar tubes (it gets up to 70 degrees sometimes although down to -100 at night).
Like on Total Recall before Arnie restarted the blowy things?
I've got to put my suit and swiss watch on so I can jump in my Porsche and get to work.
Seems like a lot of effort to move from one area of your mom's basement to another.
I don't care enough about what the time is to need to look at it on my wrist.
But maybe, just maybe, other people do.
What exactly is the purpose of a dive watch if you are not actively diving?
They are properly waterproof, rugged and easy to read the time in poor conditions. The analogue timer is often useful and you can operate it wearing gloves.
And before anyone asks, no fishing your phone out of your pocket to tell the time is not more convenient than looking at your wrist. There is a reason people moved away from pocket watches to wrist watches.
Why would you wear a dive watch if you arenâ(TM)t diving?
Why would anyone wear training shoes or a sweatshirt if they're not an athlete?
It is a meaningless statement though. I can't go to my pension company and say "can you please move GBP10,000 of my pension fund into this great new Blockchain company I've heard about."