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Senator Al Franken's Letter to Uber [pdf]

franken.senate.gov

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Re: Senator Al Franken's Letter to Uber [pdf]

#141

Post by thehammer »

smt88 wrote: post #134
thehammer wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The press is our shield against all the evil that is done against the public by governments and corporations." This seems incredibly naive to me. It's certainly idealistic, and it's extremely difficult to believe that the media, at least the American media, isn't heavily biased by capitalism. Sensationalism does more harm than good, and it's trivial to "buy" press coverage. The New York Times may very well have enou…

It doesn't matter if the press functions with 100% altruism or 100% efficiency. No body comprised of humans ever will. Of course there are capitalistic motives, and making money does often run counter to the public benefit of the press. But there are many idealistic journalists (look at ProPublica, for many examples) who are doing important work, exposing things that aren't always sexy, but are definitely in the publ…

The press isn't a special case where we have to make sure they can operate without being held accountable for their actions. Everyone should be held accountable and everyone should be able to defend themselves. If anything, journalists are already granted a greater shield than the rest of us.

Again, we're talking about journalists who have _acted_ with agenda against a company, and we're up in arms over off-hand _comments_ about retaliation. Neither party is altruistic and both are financially motivated. If the press acts with agenda and now reports on the retaliatory comments that were made, they can no longer be regarded as unbiased and fair. I'm not going to take their side, and I'm certainly not going to defend them when they appear to be the real bully. Nor am I going to support Al Franken as he attempts to exploit the situation for his own benefit. We've got bigger problems to deal with than who's more butt-hurt about what someone else said.

Re: Senator Al Franken's Letter to Uber [pdf]

#143

Post by thinkling »

downandout wrote: post #61
thinkling wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that people sometimes say stupid things after two or three glasses of wine. And I get that blabbing about something is different from actually doing it. But this was egregiously beyond the boundaries of basic ethics and societal values, and a company executive should know better. So you may think it's overblown, but I'd like Uber to feel that this is not OK, so it got me to finally install the Lyft app which I'…

So you may think it's overblown I think it's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. I don't know if you read Sarah's actual article, but it reads as if this guy called her up and told her that he was going to murder her children. It is that sentiment, not facts about what actually happened, that has carried this "story" so far. She is exploiting others' fears about stalking and sexism for her own personal gain. IMO,…

The tone of Sarah Lacy's article is irrelevant to me. It is the suggestion that a company executive would consider lashing out at a journalist this way that I find disturbing.

How about looking at it this way: even if everyone has had a moment of wanting to "wring someone's neck" as you say down-thread, I don't expect company executives to actually suggest that they might hire some goons to go rough up someone who negatively reviewed their product. An executive who says something like that in public is an idiot, and I personally would seriously reconsider whether I want that person to be in charge of anything at my company, or represent my company in public ever again.

Re: Senator Al Franken's Letter to Uber [pdf]

#144

Post by dang »

bambax wrote: post #123

This story was on top of HN a few moments ago and then seemed to drop like a stone while gaining points : currently at 22nd position with 325 points and 10 hours old, whereas these stories are above it (all as old or older and with less points): pos id points hours 6 8632209 292 15 9 8633707 129 10 12 8633683 204 14 13 8632405 139 14 17 8632363 140 15 18 8633286 58 12 20 8632043 161 16 21 8632018 141 16 What's happen…

You can't derive story rank from displayed points and times alone. That's on purpose, to make it harder to game HN.

The phenomenon you're describing happens routinely, for multiple reasons. One is that we've been experimenting with flushing the front page of older stories periodically when there is a crop of newer ones that, if not for the older ones' inertia, would make the front page. This is related to the work we've been doing to improve the odds for good stories that would otherwise fall through the cracks. We might eventually change the main ranking algorithm to accommodate this, but our approach tends to be to do manual experiments first, software experiments second, and modify the core HN system last.

Re: Senator Al Franken's Letter to Uber [pdf]

#145

Post by Aeolun »

mfringel wrote: post #89
Aeolun wrote: post #74

Why is everyone so surprised that Uber is tracking information about their users, or that employees have access to that information. I just think it's incredibly naive to think that they wouldn't use it in any way possible.

"I'm shocked you're shocked" is just fancy-grade despair.

Not at all. I just think that what I've heard they've done with their data so far falls into acceptable levels.

As soon as they publicise this data (identifiable) to people other than employees that have access to it anyway, or the person concerned, that's where it becomes an issue. But I haven't heard of any instances of that yet.

Re: Senator Al Franken's Letter to Uber [pdf]

#146

Post by bambax »

dang wrote: post #144
bambax wrote: post #123

This story was on top of HN a few moments ago and then seemed to drop like a stone while gaining points : currently at 22nd position with 325 points and 10 hours old, whereas these stories are above it (all as old or older and with less points): pos id points hours 6 8632209 292 15 9 8633707 129 10 12 8633683 204 14 13 8632405 139 14 17 8632363 140 15 18 8633286 58 12 20 8632043 161 16 21 8632018 141 16 What's happen…

You can't derive story rank from displayed points and times alone. That's on purpose, to make it harder to game HN. The phenomenon you're describing happens routinely, for multiple reasons. One is that we've been experimenting with flushing the front page of older stories periodically when there is a crop of newer ones that, if not for the older ones' inertia, would make the front page. This is related to the work we…

Many thanks for answering. However, this doesn't seem to explain it

> when there is a crop of newer ones that, if not for the older ones' inertia

since the stories that were above this one were older stories, some much older (16 hours vs 10): it seems the story wasn't pushed down to make room for newer ones, but to make room for older ones.

Re: Senator Al Franken's Letter to Uber [pdf]

#147

Post by dang »

bambax wrote: post #146
dang wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't derive story rank from displayed points and times alone. That's on purpose, to make it harder to game HN. The phenomenon you're describing happens routinely, for multiple reasons. One is that we've been experimenting with flushing the front page of older stories periodically when there is a crop of newer ones that, if not for the older ones' inertia, would make the front page. This is related to the work we…

Many thanks for answering. However, this doesn't seem to explain it > when there is a crop of newer ones that, if not for the older ones' inertia since the stories that were above this one were older stories, some much older (16 hours vs 10): it seems the story wasn't pushed down to make room for newer ones, but to make room for older ones.

It isn't that straightforward; I'm afraid that without going into details the explanation is bound to be less than fully satisfying.

Also, there are other reasons why stories fall suddenly. My main point is that it's routine. Sample bias comes into play here in that one mostly notices it with stories one was paying attention to.

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