Well that doesn’t bode well for something grander than I’d envisioned. But what about the smaller stuff. Like if I’m driving a cousin to his CPA exam and he plans to uber home, what’s the best way to, in the car ride convince him to not use uber, or at the very least only as a last resort.
Those Silicon Valley bros are defending Uber because they are guilty of the same crimes. Create a business that succeeds because it ignores all existing laws and regulations. See also AirBNB ignoring all hotel taxes and regulations, Amazon ignoring sales tax for a long time, every social network not giving any fuck about privacy or information sharing, etc.
Thankfully at least some regulators are still pretty strong. Theranos wasn’t able to get away with it in the medical space. Tesla and others are forced to make cars that are actually street legal, crash tested, etc. The FAA is somewhat keeping drones under control.
[quote=“Naoza, post:21, topic:499, full:true”]
Well that doesn’t bode well for something grander than I’d envisioned. But what about the smaller stuff. Like if I’m driving a cousin to his CPA exam and he plans to uber home, what’s the best way to, in the car ride convince him to not use uber, or at the very least only as a last resort.
[/quote]Well, it’s tricky, I find, and not something that’s easy to do in the space of a single conversation. Suggest other options, tell them about the stuff uber has done, you’ve got a lot of options, but no clear path.
Honestly, it depends on the person - Your CPA cousin, it might be worth telling him about the time they evaded taxes in Canada, and then when raided, encrypted the data remotely from the US, to introduce a huge host of legal issues with trying to get the files decrypted. Or maybe if he’s a progressive sort of chappy, tell him about the times they tried to argue that they shouldn’t be subject to anti-discrimination laws, or this latest situation.
Honestly, the biggest problem is that from the regular consumer side, Uber often provides a good service, for a good price. Getting people to stop supporting the company, it’s basically shitting in their cereal. People don’t tend to get on board with that too easy, it takes time to explain to them how the shit was always there, but since they were told it’s chocolate, they were just pushing it aside with their spoon as they ate. I did not think this analogy through and I think it shows.
[quote=“Apreche, post:22, topic:499”]
Those Silicon Valley bros are defending Uber because they are guilty of the same crimes. Create a business that succeeds because it ignores all existing laws and regulations. See also AirBNB ignoring all hotel taxes and regulations, Amazon ignoring sales tax for a long time, every social network not giving any fuck about privacy or information sharing, etc.
[/quote]Nah man, you’re thinking way too high up the food chain. I’m talking the assholes in comment threads, reddit, twitter, facebook and so on who crop up like mushrooms on shit. These people are way too numerous for that, they’re your regular rank-and-file current or aspiring tech workers or other tech enthusiasts who are just way too starry-eyed and randy for basically anything high-tech and silicon valley, or at least that give the appearance of it. These dudes are mostly guilty through complicity and support, rather than actual deeds. They’d be doing just the same, given the chance, but they’re too small-fry.
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The problem is that Uber isn’t actually profitable. If taxi companies were getting billions and billions of dollars in venture funding and investors over the course of five years, guess how much they could charge for rides? Yeah. Way, way less than they do now. About the same as Uber charges.
The only way the investors are going to make that money back is by playing the long game. By making Uber so competitive on price, they hope to force out existing competition until autonomous vehicles take over completely. Then they hope people will stick with the app/brand and keep paying similar-ish rates.
And the rapid implosion continues - First, another post comes out with allegations about both sexual abuse, gross misconduct not only by high–ranking members of the company but by CEO Travis himself, and the incredibly toxic work environment at the company.
Second, their Senior VP of engineering resigns after it is revealed that he didn’t disclose that he left his previous employment due to credible accusations of sexual harassment.
Third, it’s also come out that their big legal dust-up with California about their Self-driving cars is not only a result of the multiple-billion-dollar company refusing to pay $150 for a permit, but they were warned about their compliance on multiple occasions over a number of months.
Fourth and final(for now) is that it’s been discovered that they knowingly lied to both California regulators and later the public about one of their autonomous cars blowing through a red light at speed. They claimed that it was human error, but documentation leaked to the NYT from Uber employees show that the car was, in fact, in Autonomous mode, and had failed to recognize not one, but six traffic lights that day. The same documents also prove that Uber was knowingly testing it’s autonomous cars illegally, which they also lied to California state regulators about.
You forgot the part where Google is suing them for data and design theft involving their autonomous car project.
Didn’t forget, I incorrectly thought it had already been posted, but didn’t bother to check.
Like triple J on Australia day, the hits keep coming - a six minute video has come out of Uber’s CEO being a dick to a driver when confronted over dropping fare rates. Not the biggest deal, but a black eye they don’t need right now.
I have a problem. I don’t want to use a company that condones hostile work environments, bigotry, lying to regulators, etc… on the other hand, every time, and I mean EVERY time, I have ever taken a legal taxi I was ripped off with card readers or meters “not working” or ridiculously unsafe driving or both. I called proper authorities all those times and they gave zero fucks. This was all in Boston in case that matters.
Lyft
(this post must be 15 chars for a useless reason)
Lyft is merely the less of a handful of evils.
I thought Lyft had the same issues with hostile work environments?
Almost all of Silicon Valley and so-called startups have this culture. Fuck 'em all.
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Great I can support general asshattery or I can get ripped off or horribly killed when the taxi driver goes twice the speed limit the wrong way on a one way. Public use self driving cars can’t come fast enough.
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You can get ripped off or horribly killed in an Uber also. At least if a regulated and licensed cab driver does that, there is a system where you can see recourse and they will be punished. No such thing in an unlicensed car.
[quote=“panfriedmarmot, post:35, topic:499, full:true”]
Great I can support general asshattery or I can get ripped off or horribly killed when the taxi driver goes twice the speed limit the wrong way on a one way. Public use self driving cars can’t come fast enough.
[/quote]Depending on where you live, look into more local services, if any exist. They’re usually far better on basically all of those problem areas for Uber, provide the same service, at a similar price.
And the festival of fuck-ups continues -
A second Uber executive resigns over sexual harassment allegations. Funnily enough, both caused by reportage from the same outlet.
Who did you call? If you called the taxi company, they have a vested interest in ignoring you. If you called the BPD Petticab division, I’m surprised. They’re usually pretty good about fixing things.
BPD. They asked for the cab info and said “We’ll look into it,” the international code for “We don’t care.”