Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Revolt of the Delivery Workers

curbed.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 223 posts

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#91

Post by deivid »

Gaessaki wrote: post #74
JackMcMack wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of no off the shelf solution, but this does sound like a problem that can be solved with electronics. The motor controller could do electric braking if the rider's phone isn't in the vicinity of the bike. This would mean you can't push the pedals, but the wheels will still turn without resistance. If you forget to unlock it, you won't break the spokes, and there's no sudden halt, so you can still manually a…

We’ve increasingly been looking at electronics as you’ve suggested. I like the idea of tying the controller to the rider’s device. It would require some hacking with our current setup. One of the big risks is that the cargo bikes are worth stealing with a truck or pickup. The resell value is great and even if the bike is inoperable, the parts can be easily dismantled and sold off. I worry that the tactics will shift…

sounds like the old tilt sensor from arcade games could be useful? start blasting an alarm if the rider is not around and the bike shakes

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#92

Post by ahepp »

rualca wrote: post #28
sbacic wrote: post #10

I'm curious - why is there no open source solution to replace these apps? If not with full functionality, then at least with 80% of the features? The day to day running of the system for each particular market could be handled by an NGO, a cooperative or something of the sort.

> I'm curious - why is there no open source solution to replace these apps? If not with full functionality, then at least with 80% of the features? Who would benefit from that? Delivery companies offer a simple and practical way to process orders and payments. Restaurant chains can and do provide their own in-house delivery services. The added-value is not the software infrastructure but the service that's provided.…

If the market operated more efficiently, everyone would benefit. The question is, would it be more efficient?

I can imagine some kind of federated system where restaurants put out a contract in response to a customer order, workers bid on it. Maybe there's even blockchain based reviews.

It seems that efficiently connecting buyers and sellers in the delivery labor market, without an middle party to collect huge fees, would be beneficial to everyone.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#93

Post by Filligree »

Gaessaki wrote: post #74
JackMcMack wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of no off the shelf solution, but this does sound like a problem that can be solved with electronics. The motor controller could do electric braking if the rider's phone isn't in the vicinity of the bike. This would mean you can't push the pedals, but the wheels will still turn without resistance. If you forget to unlock it, you won't break the spokes, and there's no sudden halt, so you can still manually a…

We’ve increasingly been looking at electronics as you’ve suggested. I like the idea of tying the controller to the rider’s device. It would require some hacking with our current setup. One of the big risks is that the cargo bikes are worth stealing with a truck or pickup. The resell value is great and even if the bike is inoperable, the parts can be easily dismantled and sold off. I worry that the tactics will shift…

You can have a GPS unit installed in the frame, e.g. from PowUnity.

That won’t stop anyone stealing it, but it should vastly increase the chances of recovery.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#94

Post by Macha »

sbacic wrote: post #26
jsmith99 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it would not be competitive? Most of these apps are loss making. An open source solution wouldn't involve VCs subsidising your deliveries.

So let me get this straight - it's a bad deal for the restaurants, it's an increasingly bad deal for the deliverymen and it depends on VCs subsidizing it to even work? How did something like this even get funded? I mean, I could understand if the development costs were being funded by VC money, but actual deliveries? Even if one company were to actually dominate the market, it would still need to continue subsidizing…

The hope for most of the investors is to undercut the competition out of business, build customer loyalty and then hike prices as far as I can tell.

Which seems to miss that even if they succeed at doing that to the incumbents, they're then vulnerable to the next investor's subsidised business doing the same to them.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#95

Post by Filligree »

deivid wrote: post #91
Gaessaki wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ve increasingly been looking at electronics as you’ve suggested. I like the idea of tying the controller to the rider’s device. It would require some hacking with our current setup. One of the big risks is that the cargo bikes are worth stealing with a truck or pickup. The resell value is great and even if the bike is inoperable, the parts can be easily dismantled and sold off. I worry that the tactics will shift…

sounds like the old tilt sensor from arcade games could be useful? start blasting an alarm if the rider is not around and the bike shakes

There are bike locks which do basically that. The only way to disarm them is to use the key, or pick them, and few thieves have the skill to do the latter.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#96

Post by jakelazaroff »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #82
jakelazaroff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police exist to protect capital, not labor. The system is working as intended.

The crime described in the article hurts capital too. Many companies have to leave markets due to the costs imposed by the described criminality. This bifurcation betweem labor and capital is an invention of socialists/unions, to draw attention away from the exploitation that they demand.

That hypothesis is belied by the fact that these companies allocate approximately zero of their considerable lobbying resources to fixing the issue.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#97

Post by dayofthedaleks »

Gaessaki wrote: post #74
JackMcMack wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of no off the shelf solution, but this does sound like a problem that can be solved with electronics. The motor controller could do electric braking if the rider's phone isn't in the vicinity of the bike. This would mean you can't push the pedals, but the wheels will still turn without resistance. If you forget to unlock it, you won't break the spokes, and there's no sudden halt, so you can still manually a…

We’ve increasingly been looking at electronics as you’ve suggested. I like the idea of tying the controller to the rider’s device. It would require some hacking with our current setup. One of the big risks is that the cargo bikes are worth stealing with a truck or pickup. The resell value is great and even if the bike is inoperable, the parts can be easily dismantled and sold off. I worry that the tactics will shift…

When your threat model is two guys with a pickup truck and an angle grinder your only real mitigation is a claim against your insurance policy.

I think market is very close to a solution. I'm waiting for shipment on a Boomerang, which is an anti theft GPS that secures to the frame's water bottle attachment points. It's designed enough around connectivity that I could imagine motor lockdown in the next iteration.

Unfortunately one of the most competent motor builders, Bafang, just moved to a more closed CANBUS interface to penetrate markets that heavily regulate speed. Bosch has anti theft logic in their systems but there seems to be a smaller ecosystem for modding.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#98

Post by jakelazaroff »

bradleyjg wrote: post #60
tazjin wrote: post #51

It's always strange to read these reports from American cities that sound like something out of war-torn countries. Delivery workers grouping together to defend themselves against hordes of bandits, in well-known places, with no police protection? What the ...? This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Bruss…

For a while there, NYC was very safe. Then de Blasio got elected. Hopefully, Eric Adams can turn around the disaster Bill is leaving him.

Crime is down under de Blasio. Virtually every category has continued decreasing since he took office in 2014: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm

(That link only covers through 2019, but if you look at the official CompStat data the two year trend for 2019–2021 is also negative: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist...)

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#99

Post by Telemakhos »

jollybean wrote: post #84
humanistbot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you're trying to make a clever joke in the style of mocking SV types for reinventing products that have existed for generations, except you're wrong. The parent means the Amazon delivery locker kiosks they're putting in all kinds of retail stores, where you enter a code to unlock the locker with your package. It is secure from theft, has variable sizes, works 24/7 with no waiting for a clerk, and can fi…

So a mailbox with a lock then? We should have had that in 1980. 5 'large mailboxes' for the apartment building, the postman sets the code, locks it, and leaves writes the code on a piece of paper and leaves it in your slot. This is not 'Silicon Valley' innovation.

I do have that in my apartment building. But, instead of a code, the lockboxes have keys that only the postman can remove from them. He locks a package in the box, removes the key, and puts it in the recipient's box. When the recipient checks his mail, he uses the key to open the lockbox and withdraw his package. The key is then stuck in the lockbox lock and cannot be withdrawn again except by the postman.

Re: Revolt of the Delivery Workers

#100

Post by ThePadawan »

pjc50 wrote: post #72
ThePadawan wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I cannot tell if you're being sarcastic or genuine). Yes, except (before COVID) if you were at work, and the mail carrier tried to deliver a package to your house unsuccessfully, they would take it with them again. Or they would leave it outside the house, where it could be stolen. Then, starting the next day, you could go to the nearest pickup site (and depending on the carrier, this either means the post office, w…

Parcel delivery is such a classic principal-agent problem; the customer contracts with a seller, who then subcontracts with a delivery company. But because there's layers in the middle the delivery companies can't compete on actual customer satisfaction, just on being cheap for the vendors.

I do my best to tell sellers this.

I recently tried to find out where to buy a new mattress online. Usually I get them IKEA and that's fine, but their shipping is so expensive, it's generally only worth it if you boy a whole lot of large items at once.

I talked to the customer repo of another shop to inquire what vendor they used for shipping and what would happen if I wasn't home - and they told me they used DPD.

Turns out that DPD's "we missed you" service is "you have to go to our distribution center to pick up your package". As mentioned above, that would have been a 1h15min train journey (one-way) with multiple changes. Carrying a mattress.

I sincerely hope the customer rep actually understood why I told them that this was an immediate non-starter for me. Especially since I regularly missed packages because the mail carrier simply didn't attempt delivery at all.

Post reply on HN