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Subjunctive posted:I tried to warn the thread, I really did. They never listen until it's too laaaate...  If y'all want to talk about self-driving/autonomous cars for pages on end, please create a new thread for it. I mean, with all this distraction, did and of you notice that the thread's theme has its very own front page article?
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Dec 21, 2016 02:24
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| # ? May 9, 2024 20:26 |
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I have half of an OP written about SDCs, but then I realized that I didn't want to have the same arguments over and over in a specially designated thread either.
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Dec 21, 2016 02:27
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This thread can't stay in its lane, much unlike an automated car.
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Dec 21, 2016 02:30
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jre posted:Volvo you say ? This is a really good metaphor for tech over the last 20 years.
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Dec 21, 2016 10:14
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carrrrrrs cars cars caaaaarrrrrrs toot toot beep beep CARS ARE THE CANCER THAT ARE KILLING US. WE ENGINEERED OUR OWN CANCER YOU FOOLS
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Dec 21, 2016 11:15
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and now you're embracing it! you're perpetrating ways to help it spread faster! you idiots! cars are an evolutionary dead end, we'll all die out unless we think OUTSIDE the car to the heart of how our pre-ordained societal structure works. we can't work outside that structure, it's hard-coded into us. we need communal workspaces in the heart of cities and everybody shits on the ground so it's added to a nutrient pool from which our food is grown. antisocial individuals are beaten to death by the greater colony. i begin to dance and rays of opalescent future shoot out of my mouth, you are rendered numb from shock and arousal
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Dec 21, 2016 11:20
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every intelligent race is eventually faced with a convenience choice that will suit its paradigms and current means of resource extraction but will also place a huge exertion on natural resources and do more harm than good. we only have one biosphere! we can't destroy it! we have to evolve beyond the car, it's a death trap and a snake in the grass
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Dec 21, 2016 11:22
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beasts of burden are better than cars you idiots. once upon a time all cows drew vehicles. therefore you have a cow and a vehicle working together in harmony so the methane from the cow is matched by the total lack of energy expenditure from the vehicle (petrol etc.) instead of engineering better cars, we need to engineer better cows
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Dec 21, 2016 11:23
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human beings shouldn't move at speeds greater than 30 km/hour and if you think otherwise you're just hosed. "oh but i want to travel overseas and expand my soulniverse!" too loving bad you dimwit (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 21, 2016 11:24
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nice meltdown
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Dec 21, 2016 11:53
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PT6A posted:I don't know why some people are acting like the evolutionary stage of "mostly autonomous in most situations, but with a licensed driver in the car in a position to take over" isn't likely to exist, and wouldn't itself be a massive improvement in driver safety. Because if the car is driving for you 98% of the time then you're not going to be paying attention when something actually does go wrong. Due to the velocity and mass of a car the difference between a 1 and 2 second reaction can mean death, it's physics. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 11:57
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Yeah even if you tell people to be alert and ready to take over, if the car is driving itself fine 99.9% of the time people are going to be sipping margaritas and watching movies and OH poo poo *yanks the wheel sideways*. Edit: Attempt to get back on track! Uber's Loss Exceeds $800 Million in Third Quarter on $1.7 Billion in Net Revenue quote:Even as Uber Technologies Inc. exited China, the company's financial loss has remained eye-popping. In the first nine months of this year, the ride-hailing company lost significantly more than $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. In the third quarter, Uber lost more than $800 million, not including its Chinese operation. Mozi fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 13:58
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I remember the good old days when Uber was a black cab company that I could order for my buddies at the bar, thinking this is a complete waste of money but hey so are these $13 cocktails. Times change!
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Dec 21, 2016 16:40
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Any investors out there, I promise to lose less than $150 million as well!
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Dec 21, 2016 16:51
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Mozi posted:Any investors out there, I promise to lose less than $150 million as well! What about as a percentage? Unused capital isn't great either.
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Dec 21, 2016 16:52
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I promise to use ALL the capital you give me. I'll also ask for 33% less than Uber loses in a year. Pretty please?
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Dec 21, 2016 17:08
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I guarantee that any money remaining after losing $150 million goes directly to my own salary. That's the Mozi promise!
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Dec 21, 2016 17:09
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I already doze off or type on my phone incessantly while driving, so I'm very excited about pseudo self driving cars reinforcing those behaviors - i'll be able to look up once a minute instead of every 30 seconds
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Dec 21, 2016 17:23
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quote:the ride-hailing company lost significantly more than $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter.
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Dec 21, 2016 18:13
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I for one am happy to see that people are finally starting to embrace the notion of a company into which you put money in order to provide a useful public service.
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Dec 21, 2016 18:22
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Mozi posted:I guarantee that any money remaining after losing $150 million goes directly to my own salary. That's the Mozi promise! Sorry, that violates the Brewster's Millions rule that startups (should) operate under.
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Dec 21, 2016 18:30
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Kobayashi posted:I remember the good old days when Uber was a black cab company that I could order for my buddies at the bar, thinking this is a complete waste of money but hey so are these $13 cocktails. Times change! You can still get legit licensed black cars through Uber, its the only service I use through it since I only use it when work is paying for it. Arsenic Lupin posted:WHOA. If this were a public company, somebody would be about to be in severe trouble with the SEC. For a private company, they're probably just violating an NDA?!?!?!? In any case, you'd have to be a pretty drat disgruntled employee to say "Hey! You know this company I have options in? IT SUCKS DEAD CARROTS." Lol if you think stuff like this is anything but a "leak" purposely meant to gauge and normalize market response to Uber's financial status while preparing for an IPO. Same thing regarding the "leak" of the perfectly worded internal email from the CISO a couple weeks ago about how much work Uber is doing on improving privacy and protecting user data.
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Dec 21, 2016 19:23
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pr0zac posted:Lol if you think stuff like this is anything but a "leak" purposely meant to gauge and normalize market response to Uber's financial status while preparing for an IPO. Same thing regarding the "leak" of the perfectly worded internal email from the CISO a couple weeks ago about how much work Uber is doing on improving privacy and protecting user data. I bet this actually isn't a leak. I worked with them on a deal once and their CFO is incredibly serious about their financials not getting out. They had ID numbers on all documents in the room linked to names, for online data rooms you couldn't read anything unless you had your mouse hovered over it and there was no way to screenshot it or download anything. Also this doesn't fit an IPO leak. Every institutional investor looking to get in on the IPO has already seen these numbers. They issued 2 billion of term loans earlier in the year where they had to open their books.
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Dec 21, 2016 19:30
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Punkin Spunkin posted:I assume that Dan Lyons Hubspot memoir is worth reading by thread consensus, any other on topic reading recs people might have? Can be light or heavy fare, I was just curious It's from quite a few pages ago thanks to another one of this thread's periodic self driving car derails, but here's my Silicon Valley Reading List: Disrupted -- Dan Lyons is a great tech writer, but I'd caveat by saying that Hubspot isn't really a Silicon Valley company -- it's more like a cargo cult of a Silicon Valley company -- and Lyons himself is hardly an unbiased source on what makes it lovely. Chaos Monkeys -- As has been said, it's like Disrupted but about Facebook. Actually, the most interesting bits are about the author's pre-Facebook startup and the drama around arranging a sale to twitter that basically fucks his two co-founders over. Once he gets to Facebook it's just bitter office drama about how his also run ad product got canned in favor of Facebook's current ad product. The author is a good deal more punchable than Lyons, which is good or bad depending on how "authentic" you want your Silicon Valley Product Manager experience. Googled: The End of the World as We Know It: Most people say In The Plex is the definitive Google book, but it's a bit hagiographic for my taste. This earlier book has a lot of the same flavor but with more distance from its subject, and it's better because of it. World War 3.0: Microsoft and its Enemies: An inside look at Microsoft's actions to stifle competition and the resulting anti-trust case. This battle seems a lot less important given the way that cloud software has completely upended Microsoft's model, but it's a very interesting history nonetheless. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon: Probably the most comprehensive thing ever written about Amazon. It's telling that Amazon looks like a morally-questionable company that's a pretty lovely place to work even though the company basically cooperated in the writing of this book. Apple Confidential 2.0: I'll be honest with you, there's actually not a good book about Apple. They're all either masturbatory paens to its greatness or angry screeds long on condemnation but light on facts. This is the closest one to a middle ground, but while it covers Apple's early history in excellent detail, it's a little light on detail about newer stuff that would be more relevant to how the company operates today. Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Elison: Basically a biography of Larry Ellison -- Exhibit A for Silicon Valley Narcissism. The interesting bit is that Ellison saw the manuscript before it was published and had a chance to weigh in ... but instead of making changes they just published all his comments as footnotes. It makes for a kind of interesting hypertextuality, and Ellison comes off about how you'd expect he would.
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Dec 21, 2016 20:00
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I also recommend the earlier The Difference between God and Larry Ellison* on Ellison and Oracle up through the late '90s. Condensed version: Never do business with Larry Ellison personally, for he will screw you over. This goes double for marrying him, with the exception of his first wife, who married and divorced him before he was rich. Subtitle: *God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.
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Dec 21, 2016 20:11
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Time posted:I bet this actually isn't a leak. I worked with them on a deal once and their CFO is incredibly serious about their financials not getting out. They had ID numbers on all documents in the room linked to names, for online data rooms you couldn't read anything unless you had your mouse hovered over it and there was no way to screenshot it or download anything. My assumption isn't that its a leak to prepare for the IPO, but that they are regularly leaking financials to normalize the idea "Uber can lose hundreds of millions of dollars a quarter and still be worth $70billion dollars" with the general public in order to eventually IPO. Whether they're being successful is up for debate. I will acquiesce that I know way way less about startup financial behavior than you though.
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Dec 21, 2016 21:04
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pr0zac posted:My assumption isn't that its a leak to prepare for the IPO, but that they are regularly leaking financials to normalize the idea "Uber can lose hundreds of millions of dollars a quarter and still be worth $70billion dollars" with the general public in order to eventually IPO. Whether they're being successful is up for debate. I will acquiesce that I know way way less about startup financial behavior than you though. The investors that matter for an IPO all got a really thorough look at the books about 5 months ago. It might be a leak. I can't say for certain it isn't. If they announce an IPO in the next 6 months then you might be right. Otherwise, I'm guessing it's a leak. Who knows at this point, my speculation isn't any more valid than yours. I'm more interested in who is going to lead the IPO. I'm betting it's Morgan Stanley since they were the ones who got the debt offering out the door at such a low rate but it's hard for me to go against Goldman when it comes to TMT. This is going to be the biggest IPO of the year and how it goes down would make for a great book. Too bad it will never get written for fear of investigation.
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Dec 21, 2016 23:25
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Time posted:This is going to be the biggest IPO of the year and how it goes down would make for a great book. Too bad it will never get written for fear of investigation.
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Dec 22, 2016 03:53
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:As someone who has worked as a consultant to various companies for various reasons, there are exactly three things that have ever made me straight up walk away: I don't think it's the second, because my company has a long history of #2 and it just means more billable hours.
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Dec 22, 2016 04:51
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Kim Jong Il posted:I don't think it's the second, because my company has a long history of #2 and it just means more billable hours. Depends on the organization. I'm just one person, so if someone I'm consulting with won't take my advice, I can't use them as a reference or case study. Usually, their project goes to poo poo and it ends up hurting my reputation. If I had a shitload of clients and the employees to handle them, I wouldn't care as much. Even big agencies will care about this for the same reasons, though.
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Dec 22, 2016 05:05
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Let's disrupt managing people! (weeps)quote:Deep inside Bridgewater Associates LP, the world’s largest hedge-fund firm, software engineers are at work on a secret project that founder Ray Dalio has sometimes called “The Book of the Future.”
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Dec 22, 2016 19:59
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Edit: Edited
GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Dec 22, 2016 |
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Dec 22, 2016 20:00
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Ahahahahahaha. More on Bridgewater:quote:Data are incorporated from a phalanx of personality tests that Mr. Dalio requires of his employees. In one, managers undergo written exams to determine their “stratum,” an unconventional score for conceptual skills developed by the late Canadian-born psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques.
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Dec 22, 2016 20:06
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Ahahahahahaha. More on Bridgewater: Holy loving poo poo. What do I have to do to be able to design an entire philosophy and school of thought centered around proving empirically that I am the smartest man alive? Or that I am, like, the carbon 12 for smartness.
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Dec 22, 2016 20:08
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Arsenic Lupin posted:Ahahahahahaha. More on Bridgewater: Of course the software is rigged to "prove" that the founder is the best employee in the world
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Dec 22, 2016 20:08
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Man, who wouldn't want to work here?
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Dec 22, 2016 20:11
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This certainly won't run underling morale into the ground. Although given that second article snippet he could easily get into forming a cult!
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Dec 22, 2016 20:41
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Absurd Alhazred posted:
edit: car chat removed jre fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Dec 22, 2016 |
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Dec 22, 2016 20:43
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"We did it! The algorithm is actually going to make the hedge fund more efficient and successful!" *computer fires each and every employee*
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Dec 22, 2016 21:33
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| # ? May 9, 2024 20:26 |
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Once again, fiction was too optimistic.
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Dec 22, 2016 22:06
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