Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber CEO Plays with Fire

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 529 posts

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#241

Post by tedmiston »

idop wrote: post #68
bmelton wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think you can support a ridesharing company that by design treats employees as contractors and also be socially conscious I don't understand why not. I have a total of five friends who have each chosen to drive for various ridesharing companies, and in the conversations I've had with them, it seems pretty clear that none of them would be drivers if they couldn't set their own schedules, or if they were othe…

> he might drive for 14-15 hours in one day This, by the way, is probably illegal, as it is extremely dangerous. If I'm taking a taxi, I'd like to know my driver is not on the brink of exhaustion.

It might be unsafe but it's not illegal. It looks like Uber recently sidestepped it with agreeing that drivers not work more than 12 "consecutive" hours. Does a 15-min food break make two 8 blocks "non-consecutive"? I hope not.

http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016...

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#242

Post by JorgeGT »

greenyoda wrote: post #228
JorgeGT wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hmm, 90% of this anonymous guy rides start/end at this residential address which the public property deed says it's registered to Mr. John Smith, I wonder who this anonymous guy could be."

...and 10% of John's rides are to an address whose only tenant is a drug addiction rehab clinic, but he apparently doesn't work there because 50% of his rides are from a tech company's headquarters to his home late at night. So it looks like John may have a little bit of a drug problem. You can find out a lot of personal information about someone by tracking where they go on a regular basis.

Yep, once I plotted my Google location history and played this game looking at my "hot spots". Even if you work at a large company and don't go to special places it's very easy to gather insight by looking, for instance, where a person goes in certain dates: he spends Christmas in this village, he stays home in Valentine's day, etc.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#243

Post by tedmiston »

ars wrote: post #45

For all the criticism he is getting, this would never have happened without him. Taxi companies are too strong, and the US needed someone like him to break barriers. Lyft would never have existed without Uber. Now that Uber broke through the path (and is getting destroyed for it) the way is open for lots of other companies. It happens all the time that the company that invents or creates something new, does not actua…

> Lyft would never have existed without Uber. Now that Uber broke through the path (and is getting destroyed for it) the way is open for lots of other companies.

Lyft rolled out in many cities before Uber. It certainly can / did exist without Uber's aggressive approach in several cities.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#244

Post by tedmiston »

plg wrote: post #124

"Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. " Can someone explain to me the mechanics of how this happens? I use Lyft, which emails me a receipt. How does Slice get a hold of this? Does Lyft sell it to Slice?

People that use Unroll.me grant it access to their Gmail account for its newsletter bundling feature. However Gmail permissions aren't fine-grained about only allowing them access to certain senders so Unroll.me has access to all email. While they are in your email, they sneakingly check everything in your inbox, even senders that you have not rolled up, and share "anonymized" data. This is my hunch of what they're doing given the input / output they have, but none of us can really know exactly without seeing the code. They're also tweeting a lot today trying to convince people that they scan one's inbox in good conscious.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#245

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

bigbento wrote: post #181
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow I think this unroll.me thing is the real scandal here. I am an unroll.me user, but had no idea they sell user data to companies this way. Their whole value proposition is to help people control their own privacy and now I kind of feel betrayed..

I was a little creeped out when--long after I deauthorized the app and enabled 2FA on my Gmail account--I got an email from them saying "We've found 141 new subscriptions". I wonder if that was just marketing spam, or if they have a weird way of accessing my email still.

I believe Google lets you view all apps with access to your account. Check that, change your password, and you should be good.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#247

Post by hsod »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #129
jakelarkin wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wonder why Mike Issac gave that clarification immediately to his twitter-base but didn't put it in the relevant section? could it be because the article intentionally glosses over complex details in order to pump a specific narrative ... hmm. \s

That's a clever media hack. Using provocative headlines and misleading lead to get clicks and shares, but using a separate medium (Twitter) to get away with it. Clever, but it's disappointing that even NYT is turning into this madness.

Kind of reminds me of the "motte and bailey"[0]. The misleading but technically accurate claim gets all the play and all the reaction. The author goes on Twitter and says "golly gee I didn't mean for you take it like that, all I really meant was [much weaker claim that wouldn't have gotten all this attention in the first place]."

The correction bounces around but never takes hold the way the initial claim does and people quietly go on believing their initial interpretation. Sad.

[0] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#248

Post by mahyarm »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #22
taude wrote: post #18

I really hope Lyft doesn't do anything to screw up, as I've uninstalled Uber and will probably never use the service again. However, I don't see myself going back to regular taxi system as that's even more corrupt and despicable. I just hope Lyft plays the game with a social conscious and makes positive decisions and continues to treat drivers well (most Lyft drivers I talk to say they like driving for Lyft way bette…

I don't think you can support a ridesharing company that by design treats employees as contractors and also be socially conscious . If you really want to do this use public transportation .

You don't think medallion taxi drivers are not contractors also? Ask you next taxi driver how much he is paying to rent his taxi and how it all works. Maybe he'll be an employee, but more likely he will be paying a flat fee of $3000/month to the medallion owner and doesn't make money for himself until he's paid off that debt. And that is in my small hometown of 300k people.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#249

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

georgiecasey wrote: post #184
minimaxir wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "to be clear, a # of companies practice 'fingerprinting,' and it is fully breaking the App Store rules. But also very clever fraud detection." https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/856180005977677825

instagram do it on android. they place a small file called .profig.os on external storage that is left there even if the app is deleted.

External? So change the SD card and it's gone?

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#250

Post by tedmiston »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #146

Genuinely curious, can anyone tell me how this is different from Branch metrics? https://branch.io/ Tons of apps use their platform to identify unique devices, and I'm curious what makes it legal and what makes it not.

It looks like Branch uses an ensemble of techniques for matching, but one (perhaps the main) is just a browser cookie, so it happens outside of a third party native app. Based on the recent notes on that page, it sounds like Apple isn't too fond of their approach.

https://dev.branch.io/getting-started/matching-accuracy/over...

Post reply on HN