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The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

danielcompton.net

311–320 of 542 posts

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many thousands of hours of video is uploaded to youtube _daily_ and stored on google servers forever? And you are talking about logging actions of your own employees. Let's say 100kb per day per employee (these logs are pretty detailed). 100kb * 50 000 employees = 4.7Gb per day. 1740Gb per year. Probably much, much less then 1 day of youtube videos.

It's obviously not the volume of data that is surprising. It's that they retained system message logs from a random laptop for years. They must regard this as potentially important business information. Does your company do this? Mine sure doesn't.

For a company at Google's scale, figuring out how to cull even a couple TB a year may cost much more in salary than the money saved. Also, it's occasionally really really useful.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#312
post #97
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the correct percentage?

AFAIK there is not enough publicly available data to answer this question. But total_corporate_revenue(1) / total_corporate_spend(2) is an almost nonsensical way to calculate that number. (1) which is not the same thing, at all, as the total amount customers are paying for rides (2) which is not the same thing, at all, as the cost of providing all uber rides

    > (1) which is not the same thing,
    > at all, as the total amount customers
    > are paying for rides
Why not?

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#313
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Uber will pay as much as $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit with the district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/technology/uber-settles-s... "Uber settles driver lawsuit over background checks, to pay $7.5 million" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-lawsuit-idUSKCN0Z12GS "Uber has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle litigation brought by customers who alleged the…

Settlements are not admissions of guilt.

if your definition of guilt is "found guilty by a jury"- then sure. but because OP claimed they were "breaking the law", whether or not they were found guilty is irrelevant (by your definition).

that is, just because one was not found guilty by deliberation does not mean one didn't break the law.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#314
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, do you work for Uber full-time, or are you just shilling as a contract gig?

All uber shills are independent contractors. Disclosure: I used to shill for Uber but when I factored in wear on my laptop/keyboard (you have to bring your own equipment) I realized I was actually working for below minimum wage.

Bravo! ;)

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#315
(Possible) Consequences: ... Without any way to raise more money or reduce their costs, Uber runs out of money and folds.

Highly unlikely. Why? Investors who stomach multi-billion dollar annual losses will probably just shrug off a mere lawsuit or a "bad media narrative". If the choice is to either write off $15 billion or to give another couple to help the company go through a rough patch (what a buying opportunity!) I think I know what investors are going to do.

They may demand Kalanick's head in the process (and I think they will -- not that it would really hurt him much personally though...) but seriously a whole nother level of crap would have to happen before investors start getting comfortable with the thought of letting go those $15 billion.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because I prefer the non profit approach that respects drivers and gives them a much higher percentage For now. I generally prefer for-profit approaches because their motivations are far more transparent. They want to make money for the investors. Non-profits exist to serve the wishes of the donors, which may be opaque. For instance, the Ride Austin investors might suddenly decide that they really want to focus on…

Yeah I can understand that. Honestly, the non profit / coop thing is just a big part of Austin culture. Not only are food coops a pretty big deal in Austin, but when I lived in Austin even the electricity company that I got my power from was a coop ( https://www.pec.coop/ ) and if the coop made too much money it redistributed the profits back out as credits to member accounts. I generally ended up with one out of twe…

> if the coop made too much money it redistributed the profits back out as credits to member accounts.

This is great and all, but wouldn't that money be more effectively utilized maintaining or upgrading the grid or investing in renewable energy? Seems like the co-op model never really invests in progress.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#317
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Uber will pay as much as $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit with the district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/technology/uber-settles-s... "Uber settles driver lawsuit over background checks, to pay $7.5 million" http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-lawsuit-idUSKCN0Z12GS "Uber has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle litigation brought by customers who alleged the…

Settlements are not admissions of guilt.

Yeah, they kinda are.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many thousands of hours of video is uploaded to youtube _daily_ and stored on google servers forever? And you are talking about logging actions of your own employees. Let's say 100kb per day per employee (these logs are pretty detailed). 100kb * 50 000 employees = 4.7Gb per day. 1740Gb per year. Probably much, much less then 1 day of youtube videos.

It's obviously not the volume of data that is surprising. It's that they retained system message logs from a random laptop for years. They must regard this as potentially important business information. Does your company do this? Mine sure doesn't.

What's interesting is that I can see these logs as being a liability as well as an asset; there's a reason most business records retention policies are about getting rid of records, not keeping them. From that perspective it's surprisingly they'd reveal the level of logging in play.

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#319
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why could this not be a public service? Sort of like the very public highways the cars drive on.

Hmmm... interesting idea. I wonder it autonomous vehicles would enable this even more? I wouldn't mind paying a little extra tax to my local government to enable them to maintain a fleet of self-driving vehicles that I could summon with an app.

Imagine the beauty of this tax if it were not mandatory. Kind of like a gov. service, but without any threat attached to it. Like a private startup out something..

Re: The Uber Bombshell About to Drop

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not. Every major car company plus competitors are focusing on self-driving cars. Why pay a human what a machine can do for cheaper? Uber's future depends on being first with self driving cars. Being a good taxi company in the 21st century will mean good at self-driving cars.

If self-driving cars become the norm, if you can just buy one at will, Uber's business model is junked.

Not so much buying one, but if you really do own one, then you can rent your car out autonomously. Ford, GM and others have mentioned this is the plan, so Uber's model is really junked because everyone is an uber/lyft.
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