281–290 of 529 posts
Why are there so many Uber article on HN? The more I know the more upset I am with them. I also find the fact that their new logo looks like an asshole very fitting
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…
>regular taxi system as that's even more corrupt and despicable. The idea that the taxis are corrupt and despicable is 100% Uber/Lyft propaganda. The idea that a bunch of immigrants driving 12 hours a day to support a meager income for their families are a cabal of special interests is ridiculous. Uber and Lyft are better than taxis because of the on demand nature and they are cheaper because of better utilization. B…
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Firstly, what's "not good" about having too many taxis or Uber/Lyft drivers? I don't think people in the outer boroughs would complain. Secondly, even if there's a good reason why that's bad, it's a problem that would sort itself out. The supply (drivers) will decrease until it meets demand (riders).
The limits of Taxis is historical and stemmed from unsafe behavior: not because Taxi companies want to sell medallions for a lot of money. Maybe that's a good reason now, but it's unfair to say it's the only reason. > The supply (drivers) will decrease until it meets demand (riders). Maybe? Economics is rarely perfect like this. See the government subsidies of many industries, farming for example. Maybe in the middle…
in general if a state want's to limit concession to a scarce resource (whether riders, coal, fishes) it's best to make them time limited and non transferable, with the current owner having a preferred option for renewal and a bid for reassignment.
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If you take out a loan from a loan shark, you should probably know what to expect. That doesn't mean that the loan shark isn't breaking the law when you get roughed up for non-payment.
Also, the thing is this is not really the loan shark situation. People who go to loan shark know exactly what they're getting into--borrowing money. People who signed up for unroll.me signed up because they got sick of all the the spammers and wanted to get away from all that easily. Most people including me, thought they would somehow monetize with ads or something like that, but never thought they would sell our in…
Buried lede here: "They spent much of their energy one-upping rivals like Lyft. Uber devoted teams to so-called competitive intelligence, purchasing data from an analytics service called Slice Intelligence. 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. Uber used the data as a proxy for the health of…
This jumped out at me, too. Here's how Unroll.me describes their service: Clean up your inbox Instantly see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe easily from whatever you don’t want. It's not clear at all that they are reading people's emails and selling the data.
They don't think it's any of the customer's business to know that, and it's counter to the company's interests to publicize it.
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What you read on the public site is the USP for the users that install the unroll.me app. They are not the economic buyers, the ones who pay for the service. Those are the people that buy the user's aggregate data. They get in-person pitches on confidential slides, because if their USP leaked to the public, nobody would install and use the app.
"We may collect, use, transfer, sell, and disclose non-personal information for any purpose. For example, when you use our services, we may collect data from and about the “commercial electronic mail messages” and “transactional or relationship messages” (as such terms are defined in the CAN-SPAM Act (15 U.S.C. 7702 et. seq.) that are sent to your email accounts. We may collect and use your commercial transactional m…
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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..
> Wow I think this unroll.me thing is the real scandal here. How is it a scandal? Competitive intel is a normal and widespread thing and it's not a scandal that people don't read a privacy policy that says, "We may collect, use, transfer, sell, and disclose non-personal information for any purpose."
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The saying isn't meant to be an excuse for companies, it's a reminder to end users to pay attention what they're signing up for. Situations like this one are exactly why the saying became popular.
It's trite, and aside from belonging in the big dustbin of Hacker News cliches like linking to XKCD Standards, 'Just because you can doesn't mean you should' and 'Conflating Causation and Correlation' in this case it obscures more than it illuminates. A product may be free - and you may still be happy to be the product if you think your attention is being sold, or that they plan to upsell you onto a premium plan. 'If…
1. Emails with subject [xxx] are opened more often than emails with subject [yyy].
2. Lyft does more business in Scottsdale than we expected.
3. 25% of people who use ridesharing use multiple services and 75% are loyal to one service.
4. 33% of people who don't use ridesharing services also don't use traditional taxi services.
"Nefarious" is a strong word.
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You think that Uber is a service that people need? This sounds like exactly the kind of company that should be held to a high standard.
But how do you judge uber if you can't trust journalistic integrity? The very people you trust to think for you are unqualified - which leads me to believe so is your opinion. This seems to be the problem with Fake News.
Quote: "In a quest to build Uber into the world’s dominant ride-hailing entity, Mr. Kalanick has openly disregarded many rules and norms, backing down only when caught or cornered. He has flouted transportation and safety regulations, bucked against entrenched competitors and capitalized on legal loopholes and gray areas to gain a business advantage." This is classic malignant narcissism[1]. The irony of the story is…
This type of unsubstantive, inflammatory comment has a wholly predictable and undesirable effect on these threads. Please don't post like this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
My comment doesn't have these properties, in fact it's the conventional view, as shown here:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201201...
There's no way to have a meaningful conversation about Kalanick -- or Steve Jobs -- without addressing these issues.
Would you prefer that topics having a psychological dimension be categorically excluded from HN? Nothing would make me happier, but that's neither realistic nor likely.
I appreciate your helpful link to the HN posting guidelines. They include this rule:
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site."