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Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

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Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#151

Post by nebabyte »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

The FAQ continues to list the "HN becoming more like reddit" comments (which I'd classify this comment as, considering even in a vaccuum both exhibit regression-to-the-mean based quality deterioration, so it's familiar) as a newcomer misconception, so either the mods here are in denial (worse) or lazy enough to not care (better, but still not great).

I'd take an update to the FAQ as at least acknowledgement of issues here, but tbh I don't care much either. Once you have some feeds up for the voices you do like having weigh in the standard content curation set doesn't matter as much.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#152

Post by GlobalServices »

austenallred wrote: post #129
BoiledCabbage wrote: post #2

This company is absolutely astounding. The objects you hold up as ideals says a lot about the culture of your environment and its values. It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley.

> It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley. To be honest, I'm not sure many hold them up as the crown jewel of Silicon Valley. All I hear with regard to Uber is derision.

I live in Silicon Valley, and I never heard anyone say that.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#153

Post by GlobalServices »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

Hi, Travis! Welcome back.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#154

Post by [deleted] »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

[deleted]

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#155

Post by Terretta »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #15
iamdave wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley The common refrain I hear is "they're better than taxis" and more and more evidence is mounting against them (at the corporate level) that suggests: no, they really aren't.

I think you're both right and wrong. Uber is better than taxis for riders, and worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers. Also consider that some Uber drivers couldn't realistically become taxi drivers in their spare time, and perhaps some of them would prefer to be underpaid by Uber rather than not working at all.

> "Uber is better than taxis for riders"

Not in NYC.

First, download Curb, add a payment option. Then...

1. Hail a cab, any cab, on street, get in immediately, no wait.

2. While riding, key cab code into app. Every cab is in same system.

3. At destination, simply exit cab. Apple Pay or regular cc pay bills your card, emails you receipt.

If you're in a cab lite zone, you can optionally hail using app, just like Uber.

As far as I can tell, this is BnL always faster pickup and less charge than Uber.

Tell your friends in the city cabs are the new hotness.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#156

Post by aetherson »

samstave wrote: post #120
aetherson wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be clear that "they're buying market share and betting that they can pull self-driving cars into their fleets" thing is revisionist history. Nobody who invested billions in Uber years ago was told, "Our plan is to burn your money and win driverless cars." They didn't even have a driverless car program until about two years ago. Uber thought that they had a viable business model based on human drivers, and that…

Honestly though, years ago when I heard on the radio that google gave Uber 1 billion in funding I loudly exclaimed to everyone in my tiny office "ah... they want to invest in self driving cars through Uber!" So yeah, there were plenty of people who were looking at that. I think they just didn't know how expensive that long con would wind up being

So, to be clear, you think that when Google gave Uber 250M in funding (not 1B), in 2013, when Google had without-a-doubt the most advanced driverless car program in the world, and Uber was roughly two years away from beginning any driverless car program, Google made its investment in order to get into driverless cars?

Huh.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#157

Post by greenyoda »

robbyking wrote: post #49

This is the same company whose founder "took the tax dollars from employee paychecks — which are supposed to be withheld and sent to the Internal Revenue Service — and reinvested the money into the start-up, even as friends and advisers warned him the action was potentially illegal." [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanic...

It's not potentially illegal, it's unquestionably illegal. Money withheld for taxes doesn't belong to the employer; it has already been paid to its employees, who are trusting the employer to pay it to the government on their behalf, as required by federal and state law. So it's (1) stealing from employees and (2) tax fraud. If the authorities had found out about it, he'd have gone to prison.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#158

Post by abrookewood »

avaer wrote: post #143
tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

Welcome back! One of the worst parts of open source is when someone who has been happily getting value out of your free product for 4 years opens an issue to complain about how quality has gone downhill, and you need to fix a few things.

I don't think this is fair. The mods want the site to be successful and the parent is pointing out something that should be a cause for concern for them. No one wants HN to turn into the next Slashdot.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#159

Post by paulcole »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

>all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber.

You must be new here.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#160

Post by greenyoda »

dragonwriter wrote: post #36
Jabanga wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue not all laws are moral and that following immoral laws is emphasising your own interests over those of humanity. If abiding by the law was people's only priority, there would be no widespread usage of public key cryptography (it was extremely illegal in the early 1990s, and only gained legal acceptance after cypherpunks pushed back against the laws and proliferated its use), which would have prevented…

> Also worth noting that Amazon didn't charge a sales tax for a long time. Amazon actively and vigorously sought to make sure it stayed within the previously-established exceptions to the requirement to collect a sales tax for quite a long time, which is different thing than flouting the law.

In particular, many states (e.g., NY) would only demand that a company collect sales tax if it had a physical presence in that state. Since Amazon had no warehouses in NY, it didn't have to collect sales tax here.

In NY, it's actually the purchaser's obligation to report tax that was due on mail order purchases where the company didn't collect NY sales tax - there's a box for it on the state income tax form. (But it's something that most people don't bother to report since it's difficult to enforce.)

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