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 The Dark Omen of Those Dow 19,000 Hats
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Dec 2, 2016 19:56
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| # ? May 24, 2024 14:06 |
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True story: I use my internet connected scale and internet connected lights to make it so if I ever weigh more than 160 pounds all my lights turn off and I have to be fat in the dark.
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Dec 2, 2016 20:16
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Voice recognition assistants have already moved beyond Siri to the point that they're starting to almost be useful. Google's voice recognition is a lot better and works in many more environments, Cortana is better integrated into the OS, and Amazon Alexa is connected to more things by virtue of pretty good developer tools. None of them are quite there yet, but if your main experience was how useless Siri was around the time it was getting the most hype you might be surprised by how far things have moved in a short amount of time.
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Dec 2, 2016 21:15
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wearables like fitbit have grown huge because fatties want to think that by owning one they'll magically drop 150lbs. at the gym I still see most hardcore workout people carrying around oldschool notebooks, which are probably more useful
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Dec 2, 2016 21:49
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Landsknecht posted:wearables like fitbit have grown huge because fatties want to think that by owning one they'll magically drop 150lbs. Probably because fitbits are completely useless for weightlifting or any gym activity outside of walking/jogging. There used to be an app for logging/gamifying all workout data but I think it died off. Really though the main takeaway from all the Fitbit studies seems to be that all the data in the world is useless unless you actually do something with it, and you're more likely to actually put data to use if you have to actively log it rather than letting a wristband log it all for you. From personal experience I can tell you manually logging meals with MyFitnessPal is extremely effective for diet control and awareness of what you're eating, but you actually have to log that poo poo yourself, no wristband yet exists that can do that for you.
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Dec 2, 2016 22:03
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Rhesus Pieces posted:Probably because fitbits are completely useless for weightlifting or any gym activity outside of walking/jogging. There used to be an app for logging/gamifying all workout data but I think it died off. Fitocracy? I used to have an account long ago when it was pretty new; it seemed to get cluttered with commercial stuff over time and seemed less valuable FitBit is just like anything else in "quanitified self" -- just simply collecting data doesn't necessarily change anything, and that data may be less useful than a persons idealized value of it upon analysis
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Dec 2, 2016 22:14
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I've never really had a wearable, because strava on a phone is plenty good for tracking outdoor cycling
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Dec 2, 2016 22:14
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Well yeah, if you like Terrible GPS Data
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Dec 2, 2016 22:15
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dex_sda posted:as a fitness goon, here are my hot takes: Cite the Ioannidis article, not some garbage youtube video. Note that Ioannidis's claim is more nuanced and ultimately less absolute than what you or others cite it for.
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Dec 2, 2016 22:35
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dex_sda posted:- smartwatches are extra garbage because they're only good at things my phone does better, all while looking bad and needing charging, things mechanical watches figured out a century ago. This is exactly why I have a Pebble, and why I'm pissed at the CEO. It looks like a watch, it acts like a watch, the display always works and the battery lasts over a week. It lets me get notifications without fiddling with my phone in public, it lets me reply with voice or a canned message, it lets me control the music in my headphones, it tells me the weather, it tells me my next appointment and it tracks my sleep and steps without having to configure anything. I don't want anything else out of a watch, really. I don't need apps or fitness or anything else, but I need the display to be always on, and the battery has to last a week. Nothing else does that. Pebble had one of the worst business plans for a hardware startup I've ever heard of. Use kickstarter as the major sales platform and don't advertise anything ever. Why they ever even got into retail spaces is beyond me because they didn't bother educating their market beforehand.
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Dec 2, 2016 22:56
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Rhesus Pieces posted:I can tell you manually logging meals with MyFitnessPal is extremely effective for diet control and awareness of what you're eating, but you actually have to log that poo poo yourself, no wristband yet exists that can do that for you.
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Dec 2, 2016 23:07
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From https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unicorns-new-clothes/ "Uber riders are paying only 41% of the cost of their rides".
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Dec 3, 2016 03:57
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MickeyFinn posted:How is it that silicon valley, home of the data science ~*revolution*~, doesn't seem to understand basic sampling? Data and statistics are a venn diagram with some overlap but encompass many different things.
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Dec 3, 2016 03:58
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Arsenic Lupin posted:From https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unicorns-new-clothes/  , who could have known that the company that religiously guards its balance sheets could have profitability issues.
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Dec 3, 2016 05:53
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This is really odd because having taken a number of Uber and Taxi rides in SF over the last few years, Uber fares are definitely not that much cheaper than taxi fares.
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Dec 3, 2016 07:38
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cheese posted:Uber fares are definitely not that much cheaper than taxi fares. An Uber/Lyft to SFO is ~$25 for me. A cab is $47 + tip.
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Dec 3, 2016 08:12
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Arsenic Lupin posted:From https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unicorns-new-clothes/ And I'm pretty sure there are no shortages of ways uber is finding to waste money that don't involve subsidizing fares.
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Dec 3, 2016 08:55
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ShadowHawk posted:And I'm pretty sure there are no shortages of ways uber is finding to waste money that don't involve subsidizing fares. iirc they have a self-driving car r&d program. which makes so little sense for uber of all firms. automakers, it makes total sense - be on the forefront of new car technology. even elon musk made a car manufacturing firm before he made a self-driving car lab. google and apple, it kinda makes sense - at least apple produces hardware, and google is ginormous and into all kinds of new fancy computer technologies. but uber did nothing more than make an app and raise a hojillion dollars on the taxi business, uber specifically avoids owning their own rolling stock, so it makes little sense for them to jump into the automatic car game too. and the first wave of automatic car use in society is going to be owning your own car that drives itself around, which cuts out a ton of the reason people use uber in the first place (everyone i know who uses uber owns a car but uses uber to go to bars/social events with alcohol)
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Dec 3, 2016 09:58
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boner confessor posted:iirc they have a self-driving car r&d program. which makes so little sense for uber of all firms. They want to code their drivers, not hire them/contract them. boner confessor posted:uber specifically avoids owning their own rolling stock They own every uber car in - at a minimum that I can directly confirm - Singapore. I understand this is the case elsewhere too. boner confessor posted:and the first wave of automatic car use in society is going to be owning your own car that drives itself around, which cuts out a ton of the reason people use uber in the first place And they are betting on a second wave where no one want s to own a car because you just fire up the Uber app and one of their completely autonomous self-driving vehicles shows up at your house 5 minutes later to take you wherever. It's cloud computing for cars. boner confessor posted:(everyone i know who uses uber owns a car but uses uber to go to bars/social events with alcohol) Your experience is not typical.
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Dec 3, 2016 14:35
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Motronic posted:They want to code their drivers, not hire them/contract them. "The fall of unicorns: Your experience is not typical."
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Dec 3, 2016 17:47
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Motronic posted:And they are betting on a second wave where no one want s to own a car because you just fire up the Uber app and one of their completely autonomous self-driving vehicles shows up at your house 5 minutes later to take you wherever. It's cloud computing for cars. this second wave is at minimum fifteen years away, closer to thirty. uber wont last that long. it's a terribly stupid idea, because it's investor storytime the average age of a vehicle in america is 11.5 years. it's going to take a while after self-driving is a standard option on cars before they become commonplace. there's going to be a long period of mix between manually operated cars and autonomous cars - poor people, car enthusiasts, traditionalists etc. will continue to drive their own cars for a long time. until then, self driving cars will be subject to the same inefficiency as regular cars regarding traffic and congestion, especially around peak travel times. waiting just five minutes for a car is a fantasy, uber can currently pull it off because they subsidize more than half the cost of the trips and therefore have more supply of trips than demand for trips. a more natural equilibrium is a longer wait. and at that point, you might as well wait for a bus the problem with "well eventually there will just be fleets of autonomous cars no individual owns" is that there's a whole lot of time and societal changes between now and then, and you can't just skip over all that to talk about how things are going to work in 2040 and beyond. five years from now is more important for uber's survival than twenty years from now. i'm surprised that the "fleets of robot cars" advocates can somehow restrain themselves from including "oh yeah and they also fly" boner confessor fucked around with this message at 19:31 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 19:23
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blah_blah posted:An Uber/Lyft to SFO is ~$25 for me. A cab is $47 + tip. Motronic posted:And they are betting on a second wave where no one want s to own a car because you just fire up the Uber app and one of their completely autonomous self-driving vehicles shows up at your house 5 minutes later to take you wherever. It's cloud computing for cars.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:34
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Arsenic Lupin posted:"The fall of unicorns: Your experience is not typical." Something happened.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:37
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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cheese posted:Fair enough. Most of my experience is usually Uber/Taxi to the nearest BART station, and it always feels like its 8 bucks on Uber and maybe 10-12 + 2 tip for a Taxi. That is a significant difference, but still makes Uber's huge undercutting of Taxi's pretty shocking. You can thank some VC chump for paying the difference between your Uber fare and what it actually costs to drive you from place to place.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:37
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withak posted:You can thank some VC chump for paying the difference between your Uber fare and what it actually costs to drive you from place to place.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:39
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cheese posted:Yes and I think the entire point is that this is unsustainable? Also, that Uber is not 40% the cost of a taxi ride but they are charging only 40% of what it costs to transport. How long can a company use investor capital to pay for 60% of a taxi ride? We might find out pretty soon.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:41
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cheese posted:Yes and I think the entire point is that this is unsustainable? Also, that Uber is not 40% the cost of a taxi ride but they are charging only 40% of what it costs to transport. How long can a company use investor capital to pay for 60% of a taxi ride? Until bankruptcy.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:43
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boner confessor posted:this second wave is at minimum fifteen years away, closer to thirty. uber wont last that long. it's a terribly stupid idea, because it's investor storytime Also reminder that a fully coordinated autonomous automotive traffic system would only improve congestion by around ~30% vs the self organized status quo Driver aids are fantastic technology but fully autonomous cars are mostly nerd sci-fi pipe dreams that might just end up like 3D movies and television: everyone fantasizing about how amazing it will be, then it arrives and fizzles because it turns out its just not that amazing
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Dec 3, 2016 19:50
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MiddleOne posted:Until bankruptcy. In Uber's case, I think it's either until the economy crashes and VC dries up that way, or until it becomes apparent that we aren't remotely as close to that second wave of automation as Uber keeps telling people we are.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:50
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You don't think they can get public markets to fund this strategy?
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Dec 3, 2016 19:52
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lancemantis posted:Also reminder that a fully coordinated autonomous automotive traffic system would only improve congestion by around ~30% vs the self organized status quo Sure, but I think there was an equally good chance before the tech started rolling out that 3D would have become quite popular. The truth is, nobody knows. It's just not accurate to call it either way, we just have to wait and see what happens. What is inevitable is that some major players are going to make a very serious play for autonomous cars, so I'm excited that we'll get to play out the experiment in the next couple decades (as our cities slide into the ocean)
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Dec 3, 2016 19:54
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Subjunctive posted:You don't think they can get public markets to fund this strategy? They can't, going public would mean revealing their balance sheets which has been their most fervently guarded secret for the last 3 years.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:56
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Subjunctive posted:You don't think they can get public markets to fund this strategy? No, I don't. Their EBITDA was negative one point two billion dollars in the first two quarters of 2016, yet they're valued at 69 billion dollars on the private market. They don't have an icicle's chance in satan's rear end in a top hat of going public. If they do, it will be the most insane display of magical thinking in tech history.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:57
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lancemantis posted:Also reminder that a fully coordinated autonomous automotive traffic system would only improve congestion by around ~30% vs the self organized status quo also traffic aka congestion scales with population increases, as first world cities get bigger and more populated it's more likely that any efficiency increases in autonomous fleet travel would simply be keeping up with traffic growth as we yet again knock into triple convergence and the equilibrium of traffic jams Dr. Fishopolis posted:What is inevitable is that some major players are going to make a very serious play for autonomous cars, so I'm excited that we'll get to play out the experiment in the next couple decades (as our cities slide into the ocean) for sure, but in the immediate 5-15 year timespan this just means the most likely outcome is wealthy people sitting in brand new cars they own, same as now, except the cars drive themselves while everyone else with an old beater model 2015 is manually driving
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Dec 3, 2016 20:00
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boner confessor posted:for sure, but in the immediate 5-15 year timespan this just means the most likely outcome is wealthy people sitting in brand new cars they own, same as now, except the cars drive themselves while everyone else with an old beater model 2015 is manually driving Tesla's plan is an interesting model that I think will be lubricate the transition. Sell affordable, high volume autonomous cars, and allow owners to lend those cars to the Tesla "shared fleet" when they don't need them. The owners then get a cut of the fares their cars generate. There are obviously a host of challenges with that idea, but unlike the other companies we're talking about in this thread, they're already public and they actually made some profit this year.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:12
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:They don't have an icicle's chance in satan's rear end in a top hat of going public. 
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Dec 3, 2016 20:20
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Tesla's plan is an interesting model that I think will be lubricate the transition. Sell affordable, high volume autonomous cars, and allow owners to lend those cars to the Tesla "shared fleet" when they don't need them. The owners then get a cut of the fares their cars generate. There are obviously a host of challenges with that idea, but unlike the other companies we're talking about in this thread, they're already public and they actually made some profit this year. yeah, tesla built an actual business (making cars) rather than just rent seeking off of a chunk of the taxi market, so tesla's going to make money with or without robot fleets. although i'd say uber's real business is fundraising another thing people don't really talk about with the autonomous fleet idea is the increased number of trips made by vehicles with 0 passengers inside, inherently adding to congestion, which is something that can't really happen now. and currently car storage is widely distributed - any fleet operator is going to need physical locations to store and maintain cars during off-peak times. this doesn't have to be a dedicated facility necessarily but you're going to have to have either in house or some very tightly contracted third party mechanics, refulers, car washers, people to vacuum up crumbs and scrub stains out of the seats etc. on payroll. or maybe separate uber service into tiers where if you use the uber bronze plan sometimes you're expected to take care of those chores
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Dec 3, 2016 20:23
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A fully automated fleet could probably be designed to reduce empty trips quite a bit compared to a human driver waiting for their next fare.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:26
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withak posted:A fully automated fleet could probably be designed to reduce empty trips quite a bit compared to a human driver waiting for their next fare. the idea of an automated fleet though implies that it's way more widely used than the current taxi market. like if 80% of the cars on the road were for hire rather than just like 2%. the fleet is supposed to replace widespread car ownership also taxis dont relate here because of the wide disparity in distribution of trips by time. the huge bulk of trips are made during the morning and evening commutes, this is why rush hour exists. taxis are mostly used for specific purposes, not for daily commutes. any autonomous fleet operator is going to have to find a place to store all those cars at 4am. and it gives me chills to think about the 'optimal' number of cars provided for the market intersecting with rush hour, i highly doubt for-profit operators are going to have sufficient fleet sizes to meet all travel demand during rush hour (given that if you have 100k cars to move 100k commuters then you have 99k vehicles sitting around doing nothing in the small hours of the morning when everyone is asleep) which means the people on the low paying bronze plans are certainly going to wait more than five minutes during peak travel times boner confessor fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 20:28
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| # ? May 24, 2024 14:06 |
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:No, I don't. Their EBITDA was negative one point two billion dollars in the first two quarters of 2016, yet they're valued at 69 billion dollars on the private market. They don't have an icicle's chance in satan's rear end in a top hat of going public. If they do, it will be the most insane display of magical thinking in tech history. Yes, good, I like it.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:59
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