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Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

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Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#291

Post by freeone3000 »

kovek wrote: post #281
ablekh wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my guess is correct, it seems that you have missed a chance to work on relatively popular AS/400 servers ... :-)

Could you explain why are AS/400 relatively popular? I don't read much about these mainframes, and am a user of Personal Computers (macbook, thinkpad) and EC2 instances (something that runs Linux?) , so I am not sure what AS/400 servers are, but I'd love to learn more!

"Popular" was a touch sarcastic. AS/400s were most recently called the IBM system I, and are now a discontinued product. IBM still sells mainframes, and they have discontinued the AS/400.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#292

Post by Judgmentality »

majani wrote: post #140
AlexandrB wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was the publicly stated strategy because saying "we want to monopolize taxi service, then raise prices" doesn't sound great to regulators.

When has monopolizing a sector then jacking up the prices ever worked as a strategy?

Railroads, telecommunications, aerospace, integrated circuits, electric power...

I think a better question is when has it not worked?

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#293

Post by deathanatos »

cercatrova wrote: post #187
holoduke wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am convinced that it takes another 100 to 200 years before we really have smart self driving cars. Maybe it will never happen as I think it will be much more likely that we have self flying drones before long before. Airspace being regulated heavily and thus much more predictable for a machine.

100 to 200 years is a very long time. Look at the exponential nature of technology, and even deep learning. Only in 2012 had the image network reached 90% accuracy levels, and now we have all sort of networks for all sorts of things, including style transfer for videos.

Yes, like the other day I pointed Google Lens at a QR code! The AI dutifully recognized the QR code … as a QR code, and promptly searched the web for other pictures of "QR code".

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#294

Post by chairmanwow1 »

tuyguntn wrote: post #110
chairmanwow1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technical work is relatively easy to copy. But what Uber has and what the market reliably undervalues is how expensive it is to acquire customers. Furthermore they have an actually competent customer support team to deal with problems encountered while providing the service.

if you really have self-driving taxi and it is cheap, I don't think it is difficult to acquire customers, since customers are not loyal to taxi brands, they are loyal to price

It’s quite a delicate balance between supply (cars) and demand (riders). If you have too much supply, you aren’t making money because you have to subsidize all the cars without riders in them.

If you have too much demand and not enough supply, then wait times shoot up, and people return to your competitors.

Plus demand is non-uniformly distributed across time. If you have enough cars to handle peak demand, then they’ll be sitting idle the remainder of the day/week.

Most people think that trains are busy, because most people ride trains in high-demand times of year. If the same is true of a TNC, then it’s much better to list your cars with a bigger network and let them keep your cars busy more than you can.

It’s much more expensive to properly balance the marketplace than you think.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#295

Post by astrange »

Apocryphon wrote: post #85
khazhoux wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of their execs literally pitched me this very vision when I turned Uber down for an eng mgr position several years ago. I thought it was comical that his pitch was "The reason we're going to be successful at Problem 1 (taxis) is because we're going to be successful at ridiculously-difficult Problem 2 (self-driving) which we're not close to solving". Pass.

Not to mention, a ridiculously difficult problem that can't only be solved by technical breakthroughs, but also relies on legal and social advancements in order to see widespread adoption.

Also a problem that when solved completely changes their business model (not owning cars) into a different one (owning robot cars) that’s much less profitable and they have no expertise in.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#296

Post by astrange »

jfim wrote: post #278
mkolodny wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that saying self-driving is a threat is very different from saying that your business will fail unless you create self-driving cars. Also, saying that Uber/Lyft need to create their own self-driving cars is ignoring the fact that other companies that create self-driving cars are, and will likely continue to offer rides in their cars through existing ride sharing companies.

> other companies that create self-driving cars are, and will likely continue to offer rides in their cars through existing ride sharing companies That remains to be seen. If a company is able to create self driving cars, what's the value add provided by Uber and Lyft? Having a middleman TNC platform skim some profits doesn't really make sense from that perspective. Compared to achieving reliable and cost effective a…

Uber seems to be expanding into food delivery and other logistics, where trust is still valuable so a middleman can be useful, but it’s hard to say how well it’ll work.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#297

Post by astrange »

alejohausner wrote: post #70
asdff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So whats the big plan to lower overhead on rides? I looked up their last quarter and it was billions lost yet again. This doesn't seem sustainable, just shoveling money into the furnace quarter after quarter like that.

Uber's true mission is a charitable effort by SV capitalists to subsidize the cost of taxi rides. Of course they're not meant to make money. How silly to think so!

It’s actually charity by SoftBank and Saudi Arabia at this point, but yes, this is what it actually seems to be.

Amazon is also an investor charity to give us all one day shipping since the investors show no sign of wanting profit margins above 1%.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#298

Post by astrange »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #270
cercatrova wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe so, but there isn't much evidence of a slowdown while there is a lot of evidence of acceleration, such as time to new tech, re: hunter gatherer to agriculture to industrial revolution to information revolution to potentially genetic/biotech/AI revolution in the future.

That jump happened because of groundbreaking discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology. We are reaching the ends of that, though. Particle physics has been at a standstill for decades. Fusion power is still a pipe dream. Global warming continues to go on without a technological answer in sight. False AI promises are not evidence of anything. Nothing AI is doing now is genuinely artificial intelligence. Biotech?…

Immunotherapy for cancer is actually making great progress.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/02/u-s-life-expe...

Most other progress depends on cheap energy and governmental policies, which we’re getting again.

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/techno-optimism-for-the-20...

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#299

Post by astrange »

Barrin92 wrote: post #112
boh wrote: post #99

Is it possible that just having an app doesn't make you a tech company? Anyone else ready to think Uber might just be an overvalued taxi company?

the definition of 'tech' has been hollowed out for a while. Almost all software 'tech' companies are actually just market-makers or middlemen rather than actually driving deep process innovation that delivers extreme efficiency gains. Uber, Airbnb's etc.. model is basically regulatory arbitrage by externalising costs that taxi companies or hotels have to take on themselves to the detriment of workers and the environm…

You’re assuming Uber behaves worse than a taxi company, but that’s giving too much credit to the taxi company. They’re just a mini-Uber with a medallion, they don’t necessarily take care of the drivers or the cars.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#300

Post by astrange »

Judgmentality wrote: post #292
majani wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has monopolizing a sector then jacking up the prices ever worked as a strategy?

Railroads, telecommunications, aerospace, integrated circuits, electric power... I think a better question is when has it not worked?

Aerospace doesn’t have a monopoly except that strictly regulated industries prefer having one passenger plane manufacturer because they’re easier to watch. Nor do ICs (there’s at least four big fabs and three big CPU producers).

The ones that work own moats like land or government licenses. But Uber doesn’t have that.

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