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After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

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Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#91
post #87
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't you worried that such a startup will run up against the same systemic biases that have been preventing poor minority neighborhoods from accessing healthy food at reasonable prices for decades? In other words, food truck entrepreneurs have been around for decades, so why doesn't the service you imagine exist yet? Because so far no one with the right motivation, i.e., no one with their heart in the right place,…

I haven't noticed an overwhelming systemic bias in the startup community, have you? Why wouldn't it work? Are you saying VCs won't invest in such an obviously worthy cause because they are racially or class biased? Are you saying that the demand just doesn't exist? That people in food deserts just want to be unhealthy because of some unspecified and perhaps unknowable reasons? I don't get it.

If it were as easy as bootstrapping a retail food business by buying or renting a few food trucks, someone would've done it already. Food trucks are not exactly new.

(The reason for my earlier mention of bias is because those that haven't understood that usually believe the obstacle to be systemic bias.)

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#92
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The level of crime in an area correlates far more closely to poverty than race, so suggesting a bad neighbourhood is bad because of the race of people who live there rather than other factors probably is racist.

Given the extremely high correlation of crime to race, that seems unlikely. https://www.quora.com/Are-crime-rates-correlated-with-ethnic...

Given the extremely high correlation of crime to race, that seems unlikely.

Ouch man, you're not even going to try to dog whistle?

From your link:

As of 2003 West Virginia Blacks accounted for just 3.2% of the total population and 34.9% of the total prison population.

Simply translated: White areas are safer areas. That is an irrefutable fact. The poverty argument, or excuse more accurately, can be torn to shreds time-after-time.

There are so many conclusions being jumped to there that you've probably worn the mat out already. All of that racist bullshit completely ignores the disparities in enforcement, prosecution, and sentencing. As an added bonus it completely misinterprets how the FBI categories race. But hey, maybe you can get a good deal on a dog whistle for Prime Day.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#93
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit scores? This is a fairly widely known fact that honestly shouldn’t need citations. There’s a reason banks secure credit cards from people with no credit history. There’s a reason insurance in Florida is different than the rest of the U.S. etc

I'm generally with you until the end sentence. But, insurance in Florida is like insurance anywhere else, so not sure what you're alluding to...

I’m referring to the fact that Florida has much more expensive home insurance (and fewer home insurance companies) due to the risks associated with said region. A “neighborhood”, if you will (from the grand parent post). The insurance companies didn’t lower their standards, they offset their risks by charging more or being unavailable entirely.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#94
> Car2Go sent several workers to retrieve the vehicles, only to find that a group of thieves had claimed them as their own. Some blocked the vehicles in to prevent repossession; others threatened the company’s employees, according to someone with knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

How come they haven't contacted the police immediately after that?

Also, they mentioned that people sublet their cars at inflated prices. This means they don't have the most basic foreground checks in place. Here in Moscow carsharing companies have cameras in their cars and the face of the driver is compared with the photo ID they have provided. I think it also tracks unsafe behavior, like holding a phone to talk or text.

If they really relaxed their checks to the point where a single credit card was all that was needed, they brought this upon themselves.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#95
post #79

How is this "sharing?" This seems like app-based short term rentals little different from what I could get from Avis and the like. My initial thought was that this was allowing individuals to rent out their cars and my reaction was a hard 'oh hell no.' What's the term from the various "my expensive camera /lens was stolen" stories? Voluntary parting? Pretty sure that would apply to your nice car as well.

I still can't wrap my head around it why car rental companies like Hertz and Avis don't have this market completely cornered. They have the infrastructure, the assets, the know-how. Why is it still so inconvenient to get a car through them ?

Because their upside is in profitable up-sells like extra insurance and additional drivers, and their downside is fraudulent rentals and renters returning damaged vehicles.

Having face-to-face interactions with renters is surprisingly effective both at maximising upside and minimising downside.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#97
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's also due to having a population that has nothing to lose.

FWIW, there has never been an easier time to be alive. When you frame things like that, it really drives home how utterly unfit for modern life a person has to be to justify a life of crime in 2019. Life is always a struggle, but we’re not exactly living in a Dickens novel.

Perhaps it's time to repurpose all that time set aside for classical fiction literature to pick up some contemporary non-fiction.

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely can. A control system causes a signal to be ~constant and thus ~uncorrelated to whatever you care to name.

If a control system's output is uncorrelated with what it is controlling, then it's not really controlling it. Also, to see a clear linear correlation, you might need to know what you're looking for. A controller output may look uncorrelated with the target system state, until you realize it's a I controller, so you need to look for correlation between controller's output and the integral of the system's state.

Let’s say there is a system that controls whether a second system receives input from random source A or random source B, and there is some difference in the distribution of values generated from each source.

Starting without knowing the relationship between the two systems, is there a good general approach that could pick out what it is doing?

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#99
The anonymity that these car sharing services provide is already an issue.

In my neighbourhood car2go are the most likely to be recklessly driving and harassing people in the streets. They should be tightening their policy not loosening it.

I really believe there needs to be a standard for this (if one doesn't already exist).

Re: After Car2Go eased its background checks, 75 vehicles were stolen in one day

#100
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t have causation without correlation.

You definitely can. A control system causes a signal to be ~constant and thus ~uncorrelated to whatever you care to name.

That correlation ought to be pretty quick to spot once you remove or turn off the control system. The control system in your example sounds binary, so on / off sounds like the only input (to the control system) to correlate.
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