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“Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

stallman.org

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Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#71

Post by baddox »

glesica wrote: post #36
agildehaus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nearly in the job description of every software engineer to create things that ease people's workloads or replace their jobs entirely. I bet Stallman's projects, and the free software movement itself, are responsible for the non-existence of numerous jobs. Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive.

> Also: basic income, or whatever it is that will make sense when there aren't enough jobs to go around, won't be preemptive. Seems like this is really his point, if it isn't going to be preemptive, then (he feels) we should stop the jobs from going away.

And that's the problem. If basic income won't happen until technological advancement causes mass unemployment, and governments ban technological advancement that might lead to mass unemployment, then we will get neither technological advancement nor basic income.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#72

Post by alecco »

gregthompsonjr wrote: post #51

Richard Stallman is engineering's smartest conspiracy theorist in the world. He's great at his sport, but getting to his level of expertise has clearly taken a toll on his ability to distinguish paranoia from reality. The tinfoil is doing something... The whole post is both objectionable and somewhat warranted/understandable at the same time.

Yeah, only he was right about spying and tracking by government. In fact, his "conspiracy" theories fell quite short to the brutal reality of AT&T, Wikileaks, and Snowden revelations.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#73

Post by skylan_q »

cjbprime wrote: post #3

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. > It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. Okay, so I am extremely liberal and everything, but "let's ban any new technologies that might make somebody lose their job to a robot" is seriously the most ridiculo…

I'd take this all with a grain of salt. Reading this from RMS is like taking financial advice from Michael Jordan or medical advice from Albert Einstein. This is Russel Brand level thinking.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#74

Post by eastbayjake »

cjbprime wrote: post #3

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. > It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. Okay, so I am extremely liberal and everything, but "let's ban any new technologies that might make somebody lose their job to a robot" is seriously the most ridiculo…

The argument for Basic Income was a Hacker News thread a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8184265

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#75

Post by diminoten »

lambda wrote: post #27
diminoten wrote: post #13

Modern taxis fail every one of these "tests", so the fact that RMS wouldn't use Uber but would continue to use taxis at all is merely RMS riding a hatred bandwagon in an effort to stay relevant. Fortunately for us, he hasn't said anything remotely new, so we can continue to think of him as the 20th century man he is.

Uh, no. You can hail a taxi by hand, and pay with cash, and no one will have your information in a database that can be used against you later. While I don't agree with all of his reasoning here, he is correct that taxis offer you substantially more privacy than Uber, and Uber has been known to abuse the data they collect on passengers in several instances, so it's far more than just a theoretical concern.

> You can hail a taxi by hand, and pay with cash, and no one will have your information in a database that can be used against you later.

No you can't. Plenty of taxis record the backseats of their cars, and you have no way of knowing which do/don't.

Taxis don't offer you enough privacy over Uber, and the reason he's coming after Uber is because he wants to stay relevant, not because Uber is particularly bad.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#76

Post by krapp »

aembleton wrote: post #64
M2Ys4U wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

install != run. Using that mobile site still requires one to run non-free Javascript, which RMS also has a problem with.

Javascript is an interpreted language. You can view the javascript that your machine is going to execute and step through it line by line. Therefore it is free (as in speech) for you to inspect.

I think the problem is javascript that's not 'free' as in explicitly licensed as free software.

The web, as a concept, seems to conflict with his ideals in a number of ways, at least superficially. For instance, you can't modify and redistribute the source code of any site you visit, since by definition you only get the response of that site. Technically, every URL leads to a black box. Although many sites use free libraries and might offer their source code as a repo, you never really know what they're actually running.

Hacker News is a perfect example. It's only barely "open source" in that you can download an old version of the Arc forum, and it's known that the HN staff have made their own edits to the software, which no one can contribute to, or fork, or even see, since they don't want people to be able to game the system. What people are interacting with is pretty much a closed source and proprietary service.

But on the other hand, you interact with the html, and you can mess with it in the browser all you want. Still not technically free, though.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#77

Post by cheald »

minthd wrote: post #63
johnloeber wrote: post #26

>Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. >It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. So what? This is the way of technology: obsolete work becomes automated. Extending RMS' argument to its logical conclusion means reinstating many forms of manual labor…

I believe uber/lyft could be a monopoly because: 1. The benefits of scale -> lower cost insurance/gas/car/services for drivers. 2. The benefit of having more customers -> less time for driver to get to customer, i.e. more money.Also when shared rides become possible(2-3 or more passenger sharing a car) , more customers you can arrange them to shorter routes(which means more people willing to share) , which also means…

You just cited two competing companies and then said they could become "a monopoly". That's not how monopolies work.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#78

Post by vezzy-fnord »

michaelvkpdx wrote: post #53

"Then what will you do, if you don't want to tell Big Brother where you are going?" RMS is right on again, as always. The problem is that the younger generation wants Big Brother to know everything, and that is sad and scary. One need look no further than the comments on this thread for proof. We are not teaching our children the value of humanity, and the way that privacy creates a sense of self. "Self" is now what…

I haven't really noticed any trend on "younger programmers" believing RMS is absurd. On HN, yes. But then again HN is heavily slanted towards startup culture, which typically clashes with the ideals of RMS in a lot of places.

On the contrary, younger programmers benefit from and frequently use the results of RMS' activism and labor. The term "free software" did get diverted and slandered by the OSI, but other than that free software is bigger than ever.

The last three sentences of yours are a plain troll.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#79

Post by rokhayakebe »

cjbprime wrote: post #3

> Uber plans to do away with human cab drivers. > It would be easy for a non-plutocratic government to prohibit this, and that's what every country ought to do, unless/until every person gets an adequate basic income so people don't need to be employed. Okay, so I am extremely liberal and everything, but "let's ban any new technologies that might make somebody lose their job to a robot" is seriously the most ridiculo…

You have TRULY misquoted the author. Actually you did not, you said something entirely different.

He said "let's ban this," with this referring to Uber. Secondly even if he said "let's ban ANY techno...," he did add "Unless/until every ..," which is more than a valid argument.

Re: “Why you should not use Uber (the car ride brokering company)”

#80

Post by [deleted] »

blhack wrote: post #29
taurath wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the value in his principles but I feel like it could use a more marketable steward.

"More marketable" is how you end up compromising on your ideals. Stallman is nuts, but he is an extremely important type of nuts. The world needs more people like him.

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