The question is: can Uber attract investment in their plan?
The answer is up to the people with the money - I think they have a compelling enough case to separate hundreds of millions of dollars from willing investors. Is it a good idea, likely to succeed? Irrelevant, unless you are thinking about becoming one of those investors.
Thing is, I don't think they _can_ lower the rates... I think the human drivers are already giving their vehicle depreciation away for less than complete compensation, and their time spent driving for free. People constantly comment on "how nice their Uber car was" - because it is new, and depreciating rapidly.
There's are many reasons why taxis are old, and smelly. 1) it's a commodity business with little consumer choice - almost nobody turns away the first taxi at the stand because it's older than the next one. 2) maintaining an old vehicle with 200K+ miles on it is less expensive than buying a new one, especially when you own the repair depot.
Miles put on old vehicles are much less expensive than miles put on newer cars.
Autonomous vehicles would be a whole new business model for Uber, but they do have some important pieces of the puzzle in their hand to make it work: 1) a "taxi replacement" business with all the scheduling and management infrastructure working, 2) a brand name that will get them instant customers for the business, and 3) a fleet of human driven vehicles that can handle the customer load until the expensive auto-driven fleet can ramp up to capacity. 4) wide geographic coverage/presence. Any other company trying to launch a robot driven taxi fleet without all of these pieces in-place will be at a significant disadvantage to Uber. Anybody who thinks that robot taxis are "the way of the future" would be wise to invest in or partner with Uber to make it happen.
It's going to make an already sucky proposition worse for Uber drivers, but they're mostly in it for the financial abuse already, it seems.
Uber is big enough, they've analyzed the permit option and it's not attractive to them - that's why they're not planning on getting one even after they've been shut down. "Open to talks" means they want something in the permit changed. Not much to see here, unless Uber actually speaks up about why they don't want a permit.
Uber sucks for the drivers, too... if they can pull this driverless thing off it will be better for so many people. Taxi drivers can retrain and get better jobs, and the clueless volunteers who drive for Uber can stop giving away the equity in their car for 90% return in fare payment - after expenses.
Quote from an ex-trucker: "Truckers are all idiots. They underbid each other to the point that they barely break even."
Ever encounter a semi-driver with a case of road rage? They're rare, but I've seen a couple, they know they've already lost their CDL and f-yeah, let's intimidate a few sub-compacts on the last drive home. More common are the sleep deprived and otherwise unpredictable ones. I'll feel much better having all their sorry asses retrained into something useful, like daycare for children - yeah, that's the ticket, they'd be great! Teach the toddlers how to man-up, MAGA!
Never happen, the people underneath are constantly pissed on (always remember, it's better to be pissed off than pissed on, that's why DT is so angry all the time.) It's trickle down theory, makes it too hard to light a fire underneath.
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Where's the problem here? Only losers are suffering, winners have no fear. There will always be winners and losers, you will never change that. What we need to focus on is staying on the winning side, that's why we should only be letting the crappy jobs get exported.
The robots already have flying cars, the meat bags are just too fat to ride in them. (See: The White Rabbit project "Where's my hoverboard" - the 145lb host couldn't get off the ground until he invested $20K in motors - a robot can fly itself for well under $200.)
it takes way more motivation to be sentenced for life to work 2-3 primitive, minimum wage or even below minimum wage jobs than attend classes @ college, university etc.
Fear is the motivator, fear of homelessness, fear of starvation - people who are motivated by that will jump when you tell them to jump. The smart ones will figure out a way to finance their childrens' future income so they can attend those classes and higher universities - that's kind of smarts we need in the upper levels of the workforce. Everyone else needs to stay off the top floor.
You know what worked really well for like 50 years? The Iron Curtain. We can do that, we can build a wall, keep the stinking filth in the sewer where it belongs. Anybody who doesn't like to work for the company, deport 'em. The beatings will continue until morale improves. MAGA!
The best motivation is fear, fear of homelessness, starvation - everybody is afraid of that. Keep the workers' feet to the fire, without a social safety net they'll have to get out there and retrain themselves - we don't need education programs, the workers worth having will figure it out without teachers or classrooms. Think of the cost savings, think of the PROFIT!
There is a sort of death spiral that happens when management loses confidence. They're probably losing confidence because of some real problem (complete lack of communication is also a real problem.) So, they put in the order for increased communication, shorter update frequency, etc., and it flows down past all the layers who aren't good enough managers to protect their people from such distractions. If a major insecurity from the top manages to splatter across 50+ members of a team, now you're getting 25+ hours a day of reporting effort drawn out of the team, plus increased meeting time to tighten communication, keep the stories consistent, etc. none of which is actually addressing any root problems (unless the root problem was a total lack of communication, in which case they need to find some happy medium that doesn't involve daily status updates from the worker bees.)
I'll circle back to the value of diversity. Some of those meetings with 2 layers of management and 8 engineers are good to have, especially if they can avoid loss of confidence in upper management, but they should be rare. For every hour spent in one of those meetings, there should be two hours spent in smaller meetings of the working group, and 4+ hours spent working things out in pairs, and, ideally, 8+ hours of individual work, getting the necessary stuff done.
Some days it feels like that pyramid is upside down.
Definitely reads like a porn tax / we don't like porn so we're going to kick it around some kind of law.
I just wonder how much and what type of research the legislators have to do about porn, human trafficking, prostitution, etc. before they feel qualified to vote on the bill.
It may be full of sex and violence, but not in full-motion video. That's a specious point.
Oooooh, I feel a major porn production coming on... The Red Tent was nothing, if you actually depicted the King James literally in uncensored screenplay, imagine how irate you could make so many people.
It's actually much worse - the filter won't be disabled, but it won't work, either. Carolina parents who like the idea of blocking porn from their children will come to depend on it instead of parenting their children. By the age of about 9, most kids will know how to Google well enough to find the sites that tell how to circumvent the filter in a way that their parents will never know - teaching them how to lie to authority, circumvent the system, etc. Oh, and illicit porn is soooo much more exciting than porn that your parents know about and shrug at.
Slashdot Mirror
Everything in the future is far from a given.
The question is: can Uber attract investment in their plan?
The answer is up to the people with the money - I think they have a compelling enough case to separate hundreds of millions of dollars from willing investors. Is it a good idea, likely to succeed? Irrelevant, unless you are thinking about becoming one of those investors.
Thing is, I don't think they _can_ lower the rates... I think the human drivers are already giving their vehicle depreciation away for less than complete compensation, and their time spent driving for free. People constantly comment on "how nice their Uber car was" - because it is new, and depreciating rapidly.
There's are many reasons why taxis are old, and smelly. 1) it's a commodity business with little consumer choice - almost nobody turns away the first taxi at the stand because it's older than the next one. 2) maintaining an old vehicle with 200K+ miles on it is less expensive than buying a new one, especially when you own the repair depot.
Miles put on old vehicles are much less expensive than miles put on newer cars.
Autonomous vehicles would be a whole new business model for Uber, but they do have some important pieces of the puzzle in their hand to make it work: 1) a "taxi replacement" business with all the scheduling and management infrastructure working, 2) a brand name that will get them instant customers for the business, and 3) a fleet of human driven vehicles that can handle the customer load until the expensive auto-driven fleet can ramp up to capacity. 4) wide geographic coverage/presence. Any other company trying to launch a robot driven taxi fleet without all of these pieces in-place will be at a significant disadvantage to Uber. Anybody who thinks that robot taxis are "the way of the future" would be wise to invest in or partner with Uber to make it happen.
It's going to make an already sucky proposition worse for Uber drivers, but they're mostly in it for the financial abuse already, it seems.
Uber is big enough, they've analyzed the permit option and it's not attractive to them - that's why they're not planning on getting one even after they've been shut down. "Open to talks" means they want something in the permit changed. Not much to see here, unless Uber actually speaks up about why they don't want a permit.
Uber sucks for the drivers, too... if they can pull this driverless thing off it will be better for so many people. Taxi drivers can retrain and get better jobs, and the clueless volunteers who drive for Uber can stop giving away the equity in their car for 90% return in fare payment - after expenses.
Whoosh.
Quote from an ex-trucker: "Truckers are all idiots. They underbid each other to the point that they barely break even."
Ever encounter a semi-driver with a case of road rage? They're rare, but I've seen a couple, they know they've already lost their CDL and f-yeah, let's intimidate a few sub-compacts on the last drive home. More common are the sleep deprived and otherwise unpredictable ones. I'll feel much better having all their sorry asses retrained into something useful, like daycare for children - yeah, that's the ticket, they'd be great! Teach the toddlers how to man-up, MAGA!
"Why not just have a bigger army?"
But what is someone comes along and creates an even bigger army of robots (or clones) and puts them out of work?
Never underestimate the enemy: nanites and bio-weapons FTW!
Never happen, the people underneath are constantly pissed on (always remember, it's better to be pissed off than pissed on, that's why DT is so angry all the time.) It's trickle down theory, makes it too hard to light a fire underneath.
You can't jail half the population.
Never underestimate the power of technology, and robots - watch RoboCop again and then tell me you can't incarcerate half the population.
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Where's the problem here? Only losers are suffering, winners have no fear. There will always be winners and losers, you will never change that. What we need to focus on is staying on the winning side, that's why we should only be letting the crappy jobs get exported.
The robots already have flying cars, the meat bags are just too fat to ride in them. (See: The White Rabbit project "Where's my hoverboard" - the 145lb host couldn't get off the ground until he invested $20K in motors - a robot can fly itself for well under $200.)
it takes way more motivation to be sentenced for life to work 2-3 primitive, minimum wage or even below minimum wage jobs than attend classes @ college, university etc.
Fear is the motivator, fear of homelessness, fear of starvation - people who are motivated by that will jump when you tell them to jump. The smart ones will figure out a way to finance their childrens' future income so they can attend those classes and higher universities - that's kind of smarts we need in the upper levels of the workforce. Everyone else needs to stay off the top floor.
You know what worked really well for like 50 years? The Iron Curtain. We can do that, we can build a wall, keep the stinking filth in the sewer where it belongs. Anybody who doesn't like to work for the company, deport 'em. The beatings will continue until morale improves. MAGA!
The best motivation is fear, fear of homelessness, starvation - everybody is afraid of that. Keep the workers' feet to the fire, without a social safety net they'll have to get out there and retrain themselves - we don't need education programs, the workers worth having will figure it out without teachers or classrooms. Think of the cost savings, think of the PROFIT!
I've been buying NUCs from Intel for some time now, but they don't come pre-configured from Intel with an OS (or even a SSD or RAM.)
There is a sort of death spiral that happens when management loses confidence. They're probably losing confidence because of some real problem (complete lack of communication is also a real problem.) So, they put in the order for increased communication, shorter update frequency, etc., and it flows down past all the layers who aren't good enough managers to protect their people from such distractions. If a major insecurity from the top manages to splatter across 50+ members of a team, now you're getting 25+ hours a day of reporting effort drawn out of the team, plus increased meeting time to tighten communication, keep the stories consistent, etc. none of which is actually addressing any root problems (unless the root problem was a total lack of communication, in which case they need to find some happy medium that doesn't involve daily status updates from the worker bees.)
I'll circle back to the value of diversity. Some of those meetings with 2 layers of management and 8 engineers are good to have, especially if they can avoid loss of confidence in upper management, but they should be rare. For every hour spent in one of those meetings, there should be two hours spent in smaller meetings of the working group, and 4+ hours spent working things out in pairs, and, ideally, 8+ hours of individual work, getting the necessary stuff done.
Some days it feels like that pyramid is upside down.
Coal is dead as long as we can frack, baby frack!
I also wonder, does the $20 per PC tax also apply when you buy a RaspberryPi? What makes it a computer?
Definitely reads like a porn tax / we don't like porn so we're going to kick it around some kind of law.
I just wonder how much and what type of research the legislators have to do about porn, human trafficking, prostitution, etc. before they feel qualified to vote on the bill.
All laws can be circumvented and/or broken.
That would be bootlegging, that never happens in the South.
It may be full of sex and violence, but not in full-motion video. That's a specious point.
Oooooh, I feel a major porn production coming on... The Red Tent was nothing, if you actually depicted the King James literally in uncensored screenplay, imagine how irate you could make so many people.
It's actually much worse - the filter won't be disabled, but it won't work, either. Carolina parents who like the idea of blocking porn from their children will come to depend on it instead of parenting their children. By the age of about 9, most kids will know how to Google well enough to find the sites that tell how to circumvent the filter in a way that their parents will never know - teaching them how to lie to authority, circumvent the system, etc. Oh, and illicit porn is soooo much more exciting than porn that your parents know about and shrug at.
Now we get to see just how powerless the President really is, or is not.