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Squalid posted:If funding for Uber and lyft dry up what will that mean for the pseudo taxi market? Are we just going to see prices spike if VC funding dries up and these companies suddenly have to make profits? the business model is bone simple to operate and afaik the big expense from uber and lyft is advertising so as to be the biggest fish in a pond full of dozens of identical competitors taxis are inherently scaled for a local market. people generally don't take taxis between cities or for very long distances, and regulations on taxis vary widely by jurisdiction. so there's no real advantage to having a nationally scaled taxi company in the united states, and this is why nearly every traditional taxi company is restricted to one major metro market, or part of a group of companies, each of which operate only in one metro. so instead of trying to exist in this weird space where uber both is and isn't a taxi company, they could easily just license their technology to actual taxi companies who handle drivers and employees and conform to local regulations. or even catering to individual taxi drivers who operate independently, because that is something that happens in some cities. but to position themselves as the biggest fish uber has to operate in hundreds of different markets with dozens of different competitors and the only real advantage uber has is branding, which is what they spend their money on i guess, and the hope is that they can convert this brand into market dominance to make the big bucks instead of just ticking along as a sensible saas middleman prices would certainly go up to traditional taxi rates, but at least with the real advantage of a ride hail app, which is that you can be relatively certain when and where your taxi will show up and that you can pay for it with a card
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May 13, 2019 20:15
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Squalid posted:If funding for Uber and lyft dry up what will that mean for the pseudo taxi market? Are we just going to see prices spike if VC funding dries up and these companies suddenly have to make profits?
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May 13, 2019 20:16
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Squalid posted:If funding for Uber and lyft dry up what will that mean for the pseudo taxi market? Are we just going to see prices spike if VC funding dries up and these companies suddenly have to make profits? Yup. They are quite deliberately losing money short-term in order to become the dominant player long-term and raise prices. Worked for Amazon, not so much for a lot of other companies.
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May 13, 2019 20:56
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luxury handset posted:the business model is bone simple to operate and afaik the big expense from uber and lyft is advertising so as to be the biggest fish in a pond full of dozens of identical competitors This doesn't really seem like a probable outcome at least under the current regulatory environment. Uber and Lyft have a huge advantage over traditional taxi companies in that they don't need medallions and have been able to effectively circumvent most other regulations. As long as they are able to do this and rely on independent contractors as drivers, I see no reason for them to begin to partner with local taxi companies. I don't see any benefit even if they do have to raise prices. It might be a good idea to regulate Uber like a regular taxi company but I'm not sure I will hold my breath waiting for it. The basic idea is relatively simple, but so is the basic idea of Google or Amazon. Lot's of companies could create their own search engine and online retailer, but most people just use one. If your local taxi company has their own app it probably won't have as smooth an interface, and nobody travelling from out of town is going to bother downloading a new app if they can use Uber instead. Until the regulatory environment dramatically changes I don't think the taxi app market is going to stop being a winner take all market.
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May 13, 2019 21:23
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Squalid posted:This doesn't really seem like a probable outcome at least under the current regulatory environment. Uber and Lyft have a huge advantage over traditional taxi companies in that they don't need medallions and have been able to effectively circumvent most other regulations. As long as they are able to do this and rely on independent contractors as drivers, I see no reason for them to begin to partner with local taxi companies. I don't see any benefit even if they do have to raise prices. medallions are a thing only in a few markets i'm only saying that it is entirely possible for uber etc. to sell their services to existing taxi companies that then conform to local labor and transportation regulation, rather than playing chicken with a host of local regulators and inciting expensive legal fights. like the only thing that uber actually does is handle the ride hailing part and everything else is sort of legally vague, such as are uber drivers employees, and how much does uber have to conform exactly to every local regulation? Squalid posted:It might be a good idea to regulate Uber like a regular taxi company under which laws? uber operates in hundreds of jurisdictions, all with different laws. there is no national standard for taxi regulation, which is why there are no national-scale taxi companies there's a lot of headaches involved in trying to operate taxis on a national or international scale given the variety of legal conditions under which you need to operate, and the reason you would put up with these headaches is so that you can justify a huge pricing as one single large company and not a hundred little ones. this is part of what creates the paradox of uber having a huge valuation despite owning very little in terms of assets, and being heavily dependent on a casual labor force which could disappear overnight Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 21:38 on May 13, 2019 |
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May 13, 2019 21:35
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Amazon, which is racing to deliver packages faster, is turning to its employees with a proposition: Quit your job and we'll help you start a business delivering Amazon packages. The novel I was thinking of was The Baby Boom Generation, by Taichi Sakaiya (pdf). Strangely enough, the author died in February.
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May 13, 2019 23:15
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Tech thread I'm sorry but I thought y'all needed to see this supremely cursed infographic Bonus if you can guess who paid to have this monstrosity published before reaching the end. 
Squalid fucked around with this message at 00:45 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 00:39
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May you please put that image in [timg] tags?
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May 14, 2019 00:41
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Squalid posted:If funding for Uber and lyft dry up what will that mean for the pseudo taxi market? Are we just going to see prices spike if VC funding dries up and these companies suddenly have to make profits? Uber and Lyft are now both public company on stock market. They can not get venture capital by the definition anymore, they must play in traditional financing markets.
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May 14, 2019 03:48
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Squalid posted:Tech thread I'm sorry but I thought y'all needed to see this supremely cursed infographic The only person I've seen more flatteringly depicted is Trump.
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May 14, 2019 14:14
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Tech Nightmare Thread: The Uber has no profits https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-uber-lyft-ipos-20190514-story.html Arsenic Lupin fucked around with this message at 21:39 on May 14, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 21:37
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Amazon, which is racing to deliver packages faster, is turning to its employees with a proposition: Quit your job and we'll help you start a business delivering Amazon packages. Saranzanmai?
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May 14, 2019 21:44
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OJ MIST 2 THE DICK posted:Saranzanmai? Dankai no Sedai, I think. See above.
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May 15, 2019 01:17
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https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1128434154436288513
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May 15, 2019 05:43
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I thought this was an interesting interview, my favorite part is this:quote:Who are the worst tippers? Pretty good microcosm on the gig economy and the "tech people" that push it.
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May 15, 2019 10:40
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For way too long I thought the “gig economy” referred exclusively to “gigs” like gigabytes, and I thought it was just another term for whatever our increasingly tech-centered economy is now. Then I realized it just meant everybody works just like before but without the pay, benefits, job security, time off, and dignity of having a job.
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May 15, 2019 12:42
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Mineaiki posted:For way too long I thought the “gig economy” referred exclusively to “gigs” like gigabytes, and I thought it was just another term for whatever our increasingly tech-centered economy is now. 
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May 15, 2019 14:52
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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They fight every city that has a background check requirement for livery so quite obviously they don't actually do them.
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May 15, 2019 15:19
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MickeyFinn posted:I thought this was an interesting interview, my favorite part is this: Excuse me but I think you'll find they vote entirely Democratic so this is really a none-issue.*huffs farts*
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May 15, 2019 15:32
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I used to work for a pretty big start up with a massive fleet of drivers and I was in charge of the support team that did background checks and dealt with drivers. It was soul crushing and terrible and I really hate the gig economy. There were also times where we just needed more drivers on the platform so I would be told to change the background check requirements to make it easier for people to join, so as time went on, people we would have rejected previously were on the platform. And it still takes some manual checks that hourly employees making 14 or less an hour with a week of training, at max, have to run. One mistake can gently caress things up.
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May 15, 2019 16:27
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Your driver, Deathwalker, is arriving.
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May 15, 2019 17:54
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skooma512 posted:Your driver, Deathwalker, is arriving. 15% if I got to shoot the gun.
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May 15, 2019 18:06
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skooma512 posted:Your driver, Deathwalker, is arriving. One star, driver attempted medical experiments on me mid-trip before being killed by an alien who assured me I wasn't ready for immortality.
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May 15, 2019 18:14
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It really shouldn’t be legal to be fired just because you have a pending trial. Especially if there’s no reason to assume you are a danger to your customers, which that guy is almost certainly not.
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May 15, 2019 18:19
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Squalid posted:It really shouldn’t be legal to be fired just because you have a pending trial. Especially if there’s no reason to assume you are a danger to your customers, which that guy is almost certainly not. But he's not getting fired because he's not an employee. You can basically remove somebody from the platform for any number of nebulous reasons.
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May 15, 2019 18:26
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uggy posted:But he's not getting fired because he's not an employee. You can basically remove somebody from the platform for any number of nebulous reasons. That should also be illegal
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May 15, 2019 18:27
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Squalid posted:That should also be illegal Yeah, if they're going to start banning war criminals from being drivers, what's next? Banning rapists?
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May 15, 2019 19:08
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Today's CEO follies courtesy of WeWork.quote:ARK, which WeWork hasn’t previously discussed publicly, is an ambitious move to establish the company as a landlord, a complicated feat of financial gymnastics and also a bit of public relations. WeWork has been dogged by criticism from some investors this year for renting space in buildings partly owned by Neumann. That’s legal, but outside of the real estate world, the boss negotiating how much to pay his own investments from the company’s coffers carries more than a whiff of unseemliness. Partly for that reason, Neumann is transferring some of his own real estate holdings into ARK. The fund will be run independently from WeWork’s main office-leasing business but will remain under the executive team’s control as part of an umbrella company, so for all intents and purposes, WeWork will still be sitting on both sides of the table when it leases ARK-owned spaces. Oh, and they've banned meat from their cafeterias and from being expensed. Whatever.
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May 15, 2019 19:24
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Doggles posted:Yeah, if they're going to start banning war criminals from being drivers, what's next? Banning rapists? Alleged war criminal. Besides he’s almost certainly less likely to commit violent crime now than the average American. This is not a safety issue.
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May 15, 2019 19:41
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So I don't know if this got any coverage in the US, but it feels right for this thread. Last month, the Chinese billionaires Jack Ma and Richard Liu not only defended the 12 hour work days, but said it was a blessing that you have the opportunity to work that long. These comments came after protests online this March in China against the so-called "996" shift, or working from 9 AM to 9 PM 6 days a week, oftentimes working much longer than that. While this is the norm in Chinese IT jobs, it is blatantly illegal in China, as according to Chinese law you can only work maximum of 44 hours a week. Of course the CPC has never let a little laws get in the way of profit so there are no signs that any company will actually change to have 44 hour work weeks as far as I can tell.
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May 15, 2019 19:49
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Something actually kinda cool that came out of that was this solidarity statement from a bunch of Microsoft/GitHub workers. It doesn't mean anything concrete yet but I thought it was pretty great.
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May 15, 2019 20:12
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My father in law is observing that trial. He spent his peace corps time there in the 1960s. I'll see about sharing his thoughts with his permission.
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May 15, 2019 23:06
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MickeyFinn posted:I thought this was an interesting interview, my favorite part is this: tipping culture... good?
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May 16, 2019 01:44
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Freakazoid_ posted:tipping culture... good? Tipping culture is a pile of poo poo that enables tons of sexist and racist crap, but people working for tips don't get to choose the system they work under, and so not tipping as some sort of statement is a huge dick move.
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May 16, 2019 02:10
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Today's CEO follies courtesy of WeWork. That sounds downright presidential.
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May 16, 2019 03:13
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Freakazoid_ posted:tipping culture... good? It isn't about whether "tipping is good" or not, which is an obvious troll. It is about the people who create the platforms for the gig economy (1) reducing the workers on their platforms to cogs in a machine, (2) designing the platform to vacuum up as much of the money flowing through it as possible (remember Instacart was stealing the tips) while talking about how good they are to their workers (look at the responses in the interview from Instacart) and then (3) not even using the platform in the way they claim is good for the workers. The whole process is yet another cynical play for money, but this time instead of duping rich people out of money, they are victimizing the un-employees.
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May 16, 2019 05:34
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Feinne posted:One star, driver attempted medical experiments on me mid-trip before being killed by an alien who assured me I wasn't ready for immortality. Rest assured, your B5 reference did not go wasted.
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May 16, 2019 08:08
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https://twitter.com/latimesautos/status/1129073163768279041 Sound familiar? quote:The car drove beneath the trailer, killing the driver, in a March 1 crash that is strikingly similar to one that happened on the other side of Florida in 2016 that also involved use of Autopilot.
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May 16, 2019 20:24
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Systems which expect the driver to take over in emergencies are lol. AI driving should be all or nothing. People in regular cars have enough trouble staying focused, you expect people to just sit and stare until they maybe need to intervene? Good luck with that.
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May 16, 2019 21:27
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yeah, it's absurd the NHTSA isn't cracking down on tesla for fraud because this dumbass autopilot branding is killing people and will continue to kill people
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May 16, 2019 21:30
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