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A profound apology

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Re: A profound apology

#301

Post by dowjones »

gingerbread-man wrote: post #298
dowjones wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Steve Jobs was 40, which Travis Kalanick is now, he had been kicked out of the first company he founded (Apple), and his second company (NeXT) was failing miserably. Pretty much everything that Steve is remembered fondly for -- his success at Apple and Pixar -- came after 1995.

> Pretty much everything that Steve is remembered fondly for -- his success at Apple and Pixar -- came after 1995. I strongly disagree. I think Steve is more remembered for the Macintosh than for the iMac/iPod/iPhone/iPad, at least amongst HN readers and the like.

You're changing the subject. You imply Travis isn't a good CEO because his company is losing money, whereas Steve Jobs was "was a phenomenally effective CEO." At the age of 40, he most certainly was not.

Re: A profound apology

#302

Post by tnone »

_xhok wrote: post #124

Here's the conversation that took place: Travis: So we are reducing the number of black cars in the next few months. Fawzi: It’s good. Travis: You probably saw some email. Fawzi: I saw the email [that says] it starts in May. But you’re raising the standards and dropping the prices. Travis: We’re not dropping the prices on Black. Fawzi: But in general. Travis: In general, but we have competitors. Otherwise we’d be out…

Ffs why use code formatting? This is unreadable on mobile.

Re: A profound apology

#303

Post by dllthomas »

coldtea wrote: post #300
morgante wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So maybe "some people" is actually most people. In fact, I'd say Travis is 100% correct. Most people out there would rather blame someone else for their problems than take personal responsibility.

> Most people out there would rather blame someone else for their problems than take personal responsibility. And why not? There are 8 billion people out there, and one of you. And tons of people who came before the person was even born and shaped the place one was born in, were responsible for their childhood, designed their education programs etc. And of course others are in power and shape policy. Who is more like…

This is balanced, to some degree, by locality and focus. I leave open the question of how it all nets out.

Re: A profound apology

#304

Post by TheCondor »

_xhok wrote: post #216
btian wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the Bloomberg article - > In 2012, Uber Black cost riders $4.90 per mile or $1.25 per minute in San Francisco, according to an old version of Uber's website. Today, Uber charges $3.75 per mile and $0.65 per minute. The least a CEO could have said is to thank the driver for his feedback and promise to look into it. Just because you're disrespectful doesn't mean the CEO of a consumer facing company can treat its p…

I spent the last half hour thinking about this on and off, trying to shift my perspective. I feel sort of guilty. Advocating for objectivity and dispassionate truthseeking is the second easiest way to curry favor on HN, and it feels cheap. (The easiest is still outrage, never to be topped anywhere :)) If anything, I find it sort of funny that Travis got mad. He handled it pretty well at first; they were just having a…

Does it work? You know, without subsidies and with competition?

Re: A profound apology

#305

Post by HelloNurse »

vacri wrote: post #138
reitanqild wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's clear he's always lying, because no-one says 'believe me' when they're not lying. Is that an general thing in English-speaking countries or just American? Where I grew up I think it would be perfectly fine to say this even when I have been speaking the truth all the way. (Don't want to defend Trump. I don't like him. Just curious about the idiom or whatever this is.)

I'm Australian, and after hearing Stewart say that, I thought back on my own experiences. The only time I can recall it being used in a somewhat truthful manner is in an angry parental warning "Believe me, you're going to suffer if you continue that way" - some sort of threat that the person in question can carry out. Every other time, it's been bluster with no substance. I mean seriously, if you throw out the questi…

Good examples of the difference between "you'd better believe me" and "I hope you believe me". The latter case is of course more common.

Re: A profound apology

#306

Post by cylinder »

synicalx wrote: post #211
_xhok wrote: post #124

Here's the conversation that took place: Travis: So we are reducing the number of black cars in the next few months. Fawzi: It’s good. Travis: You probably saw some email. Fawzi: I saw the email [that says] it starts in May. But you’re raising the standards and dropping the prices. Travis: We’re not dropping the prices on Black. Fawzi: But in general. Travis: In general, but we have competitors. Otherwise we’d be out…

Why should he have to apologise for this? This is normal 'robust' conversation between an employer and an employee who have a disagreement. The driver is apparently bankrupt (well done), so I would not be at all surprised if he deliberately tried to bait Travis into this conversation so he'd have a story to sell. At the end of the Bloomberg article where this surfaced, they noted that the driver got 1 Star for that r…

You one of those who never ever talks to their Uber drivers? Talk to them sometime. Here in NYC, it's their full time gig, requires TLC license and expensive commercial insurance paid upfront. Not to mention the car which is financed. People take a big risk investing in Uber driving and they get lured with deceptive ads promising "guaranteed income" they can't actually attain. The money the drivers are making is an absolute joke now, especially since you're required to drive UberPool. People relied on Uber, not thinking they would try to screw their own so called "partners."

Re: A profound apology

#307

Post by coldtea »

dllthomas wrote: post #303
coldtea wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people out there would rather blame someone else for their problems than take personal responsibility. And why not? There are 8 billion people out there, and one of you. And tons of people who came before the person was even born and shaped the place one was born in, were responsible for their childhood, designed their education programs etc. And of course others are in power and shape policy. Who is more like…

This is balanced, to some degree, by locality and focus. I leave open the question of how it all nets out.

For a slave in ancient Rome, for example, it would be quite absurd to consider himself responsible for his fate.

A few opportunities aside, I'm not sure it's much different for a modern person.

Re: A profound apology

#308

Post by acjohnson55 »

humanrebar wrote: post #290
acjohnson55 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet many in that same half have no problem scapegoating Latinos, blacks, Muslims, liberals, China, or pretty much anyone that's not themselves.

...and the "other half" (as if there are only two perspectives) scapegoat just as handily: corporations, racist people, sexist people, homophobic people, Russian hackers, Fox News, the bourgeois, disloyal white women, people who "vote against their interests", patriotic people, spiritual people, uneducated people, cherry-picked structural injustice, and pretty much anything that doesn't support their preconceived not…

For many progressives I know, those things are blamed indeed, but for society's problems, not their own. There's a real difference there, deriving from the difference in political philosophy. Broadly speaking, the left believes that if you address structural social issues, individuals will eventually have paths to succeed. The right believes that if everyone focuses on the problems they themselves experience, society will eventually improve. Either ethic can be applied in the extreme with disastrous results.

Re: A profound apology

#309

Post by tptacek »

synicalx wrote: post #211
_xhok wrote: post #124

Here's the conversation that took place: Travis: So we are reducing the number of black cars in the next few months. Fawzi: It’s good. Travis: You probably saw some email. Fawzi: I saw the email [that says] it starts in May. But you’re raising the standards and dropping the prices. Travis: We’re not dropping the prices on Black. Fawzi: But in general. Travis: In general, but we have competitors. Otherwise we’d be out…

Why should he have to apologise for this? This is normal 'robust' conversation between an employer and an employee who have a disagreement. The driver is apparently bankrupt (well done), so I would not be at all surprised if he deliberately tried to bait Travis into this conversation so he'd have a story to sell. At the end of the Bloomberg article where this surfaced, they noted that the driver got 1 Star for that r…

Uber drivers are not employees. Uber is a vendor to its drivers. In fact, Uber's existence depends on no employee relationship existing.

Re: A profound apology

#310

Post by Jaruzel »

epmaybe wrote: post #295
Jaruzel wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's not linked. It's an unclickable relative URL. Also, if I wanted to read about this on Reddit, I'd be over on Reddit. I'm here because I want to read the comments from HN users.

That second point doesn't really make sense to me. You're reading links submitted on hacker news by other readers, isn't this basically the same thing? An HN user is telling you that he read something that was particularly useful to the conversation at hand and wanted to share it, what's wrong with that?

Maybe it's my anti-Reddit bias coming out, I dunno. shrug

(Which is ironic as I'm a Reddit mod on an active sub with ~4,500 members)

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