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a foolish pianist posted:I live in an old six-unit apartment building, and two of the units are leased by a woman who runs them strictly as AirBNB rentals. It's incredibly annoying - people coming in loudly at weird hours, knocking suitcases up and down, loving up the parking situation, etc.. I imagine it brings in plenty of women for the woman who runs the operation, but it's awful for the rest of us. Yeah. That is literally what hotel regulation and zoning is supposed to prevent.
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May 11, 2016 00:49
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quote:Rival Lyft, which, like Uber, is based in California, said in its own statement that "the rules passed by the city council don't allow true ridesharing to operate." As a result, it says it hopes a "pause" in operations will show it is taking a stand in defense of app-based ridesharing.
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May 11, 2016 00:56
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asdf32 posted:So are you sure you think airbnb is liable for this sort of stuff? Is craigslist liable if it facilitated the identical transaction? AirBnB does a lot more than Craigslist does unless Craigslist has added payment processing, identity verification and a ton more things since I last used them. AirBnB doesn't qualify for section 230 immunity at all. cheese posted:You would think I'd be immune to corporate bullshit speak and hilarious euphemisms at this point, but the insistence on calling it ridesharing when everyone knows its a taxi service just gets under my skin. If Lyft/Uber are ridesharing, then restaurants are foodsharing and going to the doctors is health care sharing. Its loving absurd, we all know its absurd, and they just can't let it go. Every time they use it in a press release my eye twitches. They might as well just say "The American people are loving idiots and we can say whatever we want". I'm glad I'm not the only one this pedantically upset about it.
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May 11, 2016 01:30
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asdf32 posted:So are you sure you think airbnb is liable for this sort of stuff? Is craigslist liable if it facilitated the identical transaction? Craigslist has never been forced to take action in response to how it has facilitated certain transactions, no sir. So as you can see, there is absolutely no grounds for expecting Uber or Airbnb to ever fall under related regulations. Yes it's not a perfect analogy, but facilitation of x-like services could, at least in theory, fall under the category of providing x, depending on how the relevant regulations were worded and enforced.
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May 11, 2016 01:36
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Panfilo posted:Regarding Air BnB, I'm curious if it's really more profitable to buy a house and rent it out this way vs just leasing it to people on year to year leases like people already do. Or is this just some retarded loophole where they buy a motel but aren't subject to the same bylaws and regulations? Whose getting screwed over in that scenario? It appears it would make more money to rent it out through AirBnB. I first heard of it over a year ago inmy old workplace by one of the ladies in upper management. She was having a discussion about her friend who discovered a way to make much more off her rental home. Her friend was renting it out on AirBnB and making an average of 4 times what she used to make in a month, without having to deal with the hassle of the 'private residential tenants board' regulations, or the higher tax liability she'd have on the income as a registered landlord. The website InsideAirBnb gives an overview of average earning per property along with percentage of properties that are entire homes or apartments vs a spare room. Look at the cities and it seems to be at least and many times much more than 50% of AirBnb properties which are full homes that would have suited long term residents. The entire thing is fairly despicable when we've been in a house crisis since I overheard that story, and it's only gotten worse with many families made homeless. And thousands of houses that would suit long-term residents are kept off the market to make profits off holiday renters of at least double what they would renting long term. That's before taken into account the potential gains from the tax differences.
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May 11, 2016 01:54
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HYYYYPPPEEERRRLLLOOOOPP!!!! http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/10/hyperloop-technologies-becomes-hyperloop-one-pulls-in-80-million-and-announces-global-partners/ quote:Los Angeles-based Hyperloop Technologies is now Hyperloop One and $80 million richer from a close of its Series B round of financing today.
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May 11, 2016 03:47
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/business/dealbook/as-lending-club-stumbles-its-entire-industry-faces-skepticism.htmlquote:
RIP ~fInTeCh~
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May 11, 2016 04:04
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I knew it would be a failure as soon as I got to the part where the company was endorsed by Larry Summers
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May 11, 2016 04:19
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Cicero posted:HYYYYPPPEEERRRLLLOOOOPP!!!! Why is Musk always credited with this? There is a paper detailing it from 1972. Did he add something?
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May 11, 2016 04:36
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Hyperloop reminds me of Theranos or the ultrasonic charging startup that got piled with money while actual experts pointed out it would never work as described. That ultrasound startup is hilarious by the way. It is basically a photo-Theranos and ticks pretty much every box in Silicon Valley startup bingo. Some choice bits: quote:Perry seems to brag that she knew nearly nothing of physics before starting the company—not even how a TV remote control worked. She says the basic idea for uBeam came after only a few hours of googling, and portrays herself as the first person to have thought of using ultrasound for wireless power. “It seemed like an awesome idea,” said Perry in the TED Talk. “Why hadn’t the ultrasound experts thought of it before?” quote:Spectrum e-mailed uBeam several lists of questions about the issues raised in this article, but the company declined to answer any of them. A uBeam spokesperson said the questions had a “negative slant” and added, “If you want to write about real science, for a scientific audience, you would reach out to us and work with us in a collaborative rather than offensive way.” IEEE Spectrum just isn't real science for a scientific audience like TechCrunch is I guess. From a different article: quote:So why hasn't it been done before? Perry believes her status as a non-expert helped her think about the problem differently than most. After lots of research, she says she broke the solution down into steps, using seed funding to hire contractors to build the various elements of the technology. Perry says uBeam has used 30 of the world's leading ultrasonic engineers, physicists, and electrical engineers. Ah yes. Steps and teams, why didn't other people think of that? And of course in response to criticism the founder breaks out what must be the most misused quote in all of Silicon Valley: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi — Meredith Perry (@meredithperry) October 21, 2015
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May 11, 2016 04:40
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Boot and Rally posted:Why is Musk always credited with this? There is a paper detailing it from 1972. Did he add something? quote:Description of a very high speed transit (VHST) system operating in its own rarefied atmosphere in evacuated tubes in underground tunnels. Most cases considered took less time to go coast-to-coast (e.g., 21 min) than it takes an aircraft to climb to an efficient operating altitude. VHST's tubecraft ride on, and are driven by, electromagnetic (EM) waves. In accelerating, it employs the energy of the surrounding EM field; in decelerating, it returns most of this energy to the system. Tunnel systems would be shared by oil, water, and gas pipelines; channels for laser and microwave waveguides; electric power lines including superconducting ones; and freight systems. Environmental and economic benefits are substantial, and the technology for building and operating the system exists.  Clearly Elon Musk the physical embodiment of this abstract.
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May 11, 2016 04:43
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Do underground vacuum tubes do amazingly well during earthquakes
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May 11, 2016 05:27
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Aliquid posted:Do underground vacuum tubes do amazingly well during earthquakes They get disrupted.
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May 11, 2016 05:28
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Absurd Alhazred posted:They get disrupted. Alright then, we have to do it now.
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May 11, 2016 05:33
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I kind of have a hard time thinking of Musk"s various projects as unicorns as at least his projects have a plan to really do something even if that something is stupid or illconseved like hyperloop.
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May 11, 2016 05:51
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a foolish pianist posted:I live in an old six-unit apartment building, and two of the units are leased by a woman who runs them strictly as AirBNB rentals. It's incredibly annoying - people coming in loudly at weird hours, knocking suitcases up and down, loving up the parking situation, etc.. I imagine it brings in plenty of money for the woman who runs the operation, but it's awful for the rest of us. Report her/come to an understanding where you get some of the money. Disruption!
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May 11, 2016 06:13
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Absurd Alhazred posted:
The power expended keeping 2000+ miles of tube large enough to comfortably stuff a person, let alone a useful amount of cargo into evacuated would probably be staggering after a few years of frost heave 
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May 11, 2016 06:25
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Cultural Imperial posted:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/business/dealbook/as-lending-club-stumbles-its-entire-industry-faces-skepticism.html #ripfintech is definitely the headline, but looking deeper, it's pretty clear that the insider trading is what got Laplanche ousted. I mean goddamn.
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May 11, 2016 06:33
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Boot and Rally posted:Why is Musk always credited with this? There is a paper detailing it from 1972. Did he add something? Actual venture capital? Basically being one of the first rich people to look at the idea of launching people 700 MPH through a giant railgun and ignore the high building cost, high maintenance and high liability. Absurd Alhazred posted:
There's going to be one hell of an explosion the first time this thing crashes into a misaligned section.
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May 11, 2016 07:15
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Marenghi posted:The entire thing is fairly despicable when we've been in a house crisis since I overheard that story, and it's only gotten worse with many families made homeless. And thousands of houses that would suit long-term residents are kept off the market to make profits off holiday renters of at least double what they would renting long term. That's before taken into account the potential gains from the tax differences. From my perspective AirBNB has been a tremendous enabler for group housing, which has helped put more people into the fewer homes we're actually willing to build here.
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May 11, 2016 08:03
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ShadowHawk posted:Err, are you saying airbnb is increasing the number of people moving here? Like dramatic hordes of new techbros that weren't willing to come work until they could pay inflated rates on airbnb listings? No, he's saying that (as is well known) Bay Area housing construction has not for at least a decade been keeping up with the number of people moving into the area to work. Air B&Bers buying out what construction -does- happen to run it as unlicensed hotels is the epitome of Not Helping.
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May 11, 2016 08:31
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ShadowHawk posted:Err, are you saying airbnb is increasing the number of people moving here? Like dramatic hordes of new techbros that weren't willing to come work until they could pay inflated rates on airbnb listings? AirBNB artificially increases demand for housing in an area where supply is already being crushed under the weight of far more demand. As tech bros flock to the area to grab high-paying tech jobs it's just getting continually worse.
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May 11, 2016 09:30
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ToxicSlurpee posted:AirBNB artificially increases demand for housing in an area where supply is already being crushed under the weight of far more demand. As tech bros flock to the area to grab high-paying tech jobs it's just getting continually worse. Meanwhile in my neighborhood there are plenty of "ghost houses" that are owned by real estate speculators and not being rented out to tenants. An AirBNB baron buying one of those would increase the available supply of housing, even if they moved into the area to do it!
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May 11, 2016 09:47
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wateroverfire posted:I think there's some interest in making sure vehicles are regulated for safety and that drivers aren't scam artists, but how much of the regulation is doing that as opposed to setting up a barrier of entry to protect established cab companies? The LA requirements, for instance require the endorsement of a taxi franchise to get permitted and that freezes out independant operators. And official licensing doesn't seem to guarantee good experiences. I have been overcharged for trips in cabs from drivers who tried to take the long way around to pad the fare (happens all the time to me), from some who tried to negotiate an up-front fee more expensive than the trip would be if metered (happens a lot), from a couple who outright tampered with their meters, etc. I've been in licensed cabs that were falling apart but somehow passed inspection (I hope). Most of my cab experiences have been fine...but so have all of my Uber experiences. I think by and large that private commuters are savvy enough to handle driving people around, and Uber's fare system keeps them more honest than many cab drivers. I'm going to mail you an envelope full of bedbug eggs
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May 11, 2016 10:18
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an airbnb isn't housing any more than a goddamn Hilton is, and the Hilton is usually less illegal
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May 11, 2016 10:19
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Uber just de-commisioned Uberpop in Stockholm after months of drivers getting successfully charged in court as unregistered cab drivers for driving under Uberpop. The official investigation into Uber's own activities by the swedish tax administration is still not due until December but I'm looking forward to it.  http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/uber-tvarv...ridda-tjansten/
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May 11, 2016 10:44
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atomicthumbs posted:an airbnb isn't housing any more than a goddamn Hilton is, and the Hilton is usually less illegal Exactly. Hotel supply and housing supply are very different things. Turning housing supply into hotel supply is loving your market even more than it already is.
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May 11, 2016 10:44
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Shifty Pony posted:"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Mahatma Gandhi
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May 11, 2016 11:53
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ShadowHawk posted:Ok, so people buy houses or condos to be airbnb landlords since this is now more profitable. But then they rent out that housing to tenants. How is there "more demand" or "less supply" than we started with? AirBNB properties probably spend at least part of the year vacant. Hotels spend most of their time in the state of "not full." Apartments only spend time vacant if they're between tenants which is actually very unlikely in an area like San Francisco. Some quick Googling shows that AirBNB places are occupied less than half of the year. Somebody living in an apartment is going to want to stay there and will occupy it first at least a year solid, probably longer. A long-term tenant is going to occupy a place for a long, solid stretch of time while an AirBNB renter is going to occupy it briefly and lead into a gap before the next renter. So you have all of these apartments just sitting empty most of the year because "gently caress you it's more profitable." This is already in the middle of an area suffering from a housing crisis. Granted it also doesn't help that a poo poo load of the living space there (incidentally in places like NYC as well) is owned by people who don't even live there or rent it out but rather have it as a second home sort of thing. They aren't renting AirBNB spaces out to tenants. They're renting it out to people visiting like it was a hotel or inn or whatever. There's a massive difference between "people live here" and "people stay here." edit: Thought of something else; if a property is exclusively AirBNB'ed then it's a place somebody can no longer live. It is no longer a dwelling and has reduced the amount of living space in the area. The supply of "places a person can live" has been reduced. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 14:48 on May 11, 2016 |
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May 11, 2016 14:14
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Zikan posted:About that safety arguement... It sucks about that guy's dad but most of those stories are 3rd world as gently caress. The one about the foreigners in that place in Taiwan (and it's horrible, no question) is HostelsOutsideTheAngloWorld.txt. Same about the dog bite in Argentina. Peztopiary posted:Report her/come to an understanding where you get some of the money. Disruption! This, but unironicly! Talk to the landlord - they're going to be very interested in not having trouble. Arsenic Lupin, I think we do have a cultural difference that's causing us to talk past eachother. "This venue is not following the rules", as a matter of principal, doesn't provoke any outrage in me. That is the way things are done where I live. If the rules are inconvenient, people won't follow them unless they're being audited. Much of the time they couldn't even tell you what rules should apply in any case. Any kind of certificate or certification here means very little. You just sort of talk things out informally and come to arrangements that work for you, and use your eyes and your good sense to avoid bad situations. So for me, Uber and AirBNB present no dangers or difficulties that don't already exist without them. With regard to background checks in Austin, it's notable that national criminal background checks have been mandatory for Uber and Lyft since 2014 but weren't mandatory for traditional livery companies until just last month. Were commuters being exposed to needless danger because felons from out of state could become taxi drivers? edit: on the subject of background checks: http://kxan.com/2015/10/27/uber-drivers-who-failed-its-background-check-have-austin-issued-permit/ tldr - Turns out that of 163 applicants with chauffer's licenses in Austin who applied to Uber, 53 failed the background check and 19 of those had serious offenses such as DUI, violent felonies, etc. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 15:29 on May 11, 2016 |
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May 11, 2016 14:41
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Unguided posted:There's going to be one hell of an explosion the first time this thing crashes into a misaligned section. Cost of doing business. Doubt we'll be lucky enough for that to happen in the maiden voyage with the idiots who pushed this through on board, though. 
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May 11, 2016 15:27
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wateroverfire posted:Arsenic Lupin, I think we do have a cultural difference that's causing us to talk past each other. "This venue is not following the rules", as a matter of principal, doesn't provoke any outrage in me. That is the way things are done where I live. If the rules are inconvenient, people won't follow them unless they're being audited. Much of the time they couldn't even tell you what rules should apply in any case. Any kind of certificate or certification here means very little. You just sort of talk things out informally and come to arrangements that work for you, and use your eyes and your good sense to avoid bad situations. So for me, Uber and AirBNB present no dangers or difficulties that don't already exist without them. To give one example, I spend a lot of time reading human-caused disaster books. The major cause of death in the big American fire calamities -- the Triangle fire, the Iroquois Theatre fire, the Collinwood School fire, the Cocoanut Grove fire, and on and on and on, was human decisions like having too few fire exits, fire exits that were impossible to find, fire exits that were blocked, fire exits whose latches it was difficult to operate. The response to many of these fires was to (A) tighten fire code enforcement and (B) update the fire code to prevent problems in the future. Without fire code adherence, you get the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire (165 dead), the Station nightclub fire (100 dead), and many more. I don't think that casually ignoring laws that reduce profit (obeying the fire code means expensive building materials and reducing the amount of salable floor space) is a good thing for society.
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May 11, 2016 15:44
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ShadowHawk posted:Err, are you saying airbnb is increasing the number of people moving here? Like dramatic hordes of new techbros that weren't willing to come work until they could pay inflated rates on airbnb listings? No, I was saying airbnb takes homes off the long-term rental market to cater to tourists. Just using that insideairbnb website I can see a number of studio apartments on my street identical to mine, that are being rented for an average of twice mine, or similar properties in the area. But being rented out by the day instead of month. Marenghi fucked around with this message at 16:02 on May 11, 2016 |
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May 11, 2016 15:58
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Ah! I don't think we'll ever agree then. What you call "rules" I call "laws", and I think a company whose business model relies on ignoring the laws is a bad company. I think this especially strongly when the laws in question regulate matters of health, safety, and labor protection. Let's also not forget that in situations like the Triangle factory the workers were literally locked in. The guy that ran the place decided he couldn't trust the women to actually do their jobs so he mandated that the doors be locked so they couldn't even try to leave early. None of them had a way out. This "regulations are bad let's destroy them" attitude is just so incredibly stupid. Generally speaking if a regulation exists it probably has roots in some rich guy being an rear end in a top hat somewhere between 50 and 200 years ago.
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May 11, 2016 16:24
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wateroverfire posted:Arsenic Lupin, I think we do have a cultural difference that's causing us to talk past eachother. "This venue is not following the rules", as a matter of principal, doesn't provoke any outrage in me. That is the way things are done where I live. If the rules are inconvenient, people won't follow them unless they're being audited. Much of the time they couldn't even tell you what rules should apply in any case. Any kind of certificate or certification here means very little. You just sort of talk things out informally and come to arrangements that work for you, and use your eyes and your good sense to avoid bad situations. So for me, Uber and AirBNB present no dangers or difficulties that don't already exist without them. This is hilarious because a consistent and predictable regulatory environment helps a business grow a lot faster than a bunch of arbitrary handshake agreements and workarounds ever will.
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May 11, 2016 16:35
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Ah! I don't think we'll ever agree then. What you call "rules" I call "laws", and I think a company whose business model relies on ignoring the laws is a bad company. I think this especially strongly when the laws in question regulate matters of health, safety, and labor protection. Yet some laws seem more relevant than others, don't they? For instance, consider an apartment building with 50 units in which some are being rented on AirBNB. If the building meets the code requirements for people to live in it long term, does it become unsafe if some of the units are rented short term? The relevance of hotel buliding and fire codes to this sort of operation seems less obvious.
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May 11, 2016 16:38
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Munkeymon posted:This is hilarious because a consistent and predictable regulatory environment helps a business grow a lot faster than a bunch of arbitrary handshake agreements and workarounds ever will. A consistent and predictable and also well designed and administered regulatory environment, sure, I agree. If you have one that is consistent and predictable but generally awful (but still arguably the best in Latin America, LOL) you get what we have here. =(
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May 11, 2016 16:41
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FlamingLiberal posted:I knew it would be a failure as soon as I got to the part where the company was endorsed by Larry Summers I'm not sure why people would think that an idea supported by an economist would necessarily be a good business idea, but I guess they're assuming all the investors really care about is he's a connected guy who is Very Serious and has something to do with money. Theranos was the king company of putting together a list of important, connected people that had nothing to do with their actual product, though. It's funny that none of their investors stopped and thought "Why isn't there a doctor, scientist, or someone who involved with biomedical testing companies on their board?". For companies that are supposed to be disruptive to the existing order, it's funny when they hamfistedly ram themselves into the existing political establishment like some kind of venture capital sucking suppository.
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May 11, 2016 16:46
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FlamingLiberal posted:I knew it would be a failure as soon as I got to the part where the company was endorsed by Larry Summers Lending Club and Prosper are both good ideas and legitimate business models. Much like Uber. They may have just screwed things up.
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May 11, 2016 16:58
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Let's also not forget that in situations like the Triangle factory the workers were literally locked in. The guy that ran the place decided he couldn't trust the women to actually do their jobs so he mandated that the doors be locked so they couldn't even try to leave early. None of them had a way out. This "regulations are bad let's destroy them" attitude is just so incredibly stupid. Generally speaking if a regulation exists it probably has roots in some rich guy being an rear end in a top hat somewhere between 50 and 200 years ago.
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May 11, 2016 16:59
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