Electric Wrigglies posted:

Somewhat amusing the normal complaint about big company and investor thinking is that it is always only focused on quarter to quarter or year to year profitability. Uber is an example of five years to a decade or so of investment without expectation of instant profit and this is seen as a big failing for its own sake.

I dunno if Uber will be around in 10 years (Grab taxi and other companies are able to cut Uber's grass pretty well, not sure what's stopping that?) but in the meantime, the app based rideshare / driver review / feedback system has made a huuugge difference to taking a taxi around the world. Anyone that is all down in the mouth about Uber owns a set of now worthless taxi plates or has never travelled much.

Vegetable posted:

Uber’s share price is doing super well and they’re wiping the floor with Lyft in the rideshare business.

Main Paineframe posted:

The usual complaint is about companies seeking maximum profit, selling off or breaking down the foundations of their own long-term profitability for the sake of maximizing short-term metrics. It's when companies could have a stable and consistent profitability over the long-term, but choose instead to pursue maximum short-term profit even when it means throwing away their sustainability and sacrificing the things that stable income is built on.

Running at a loss for a decade and a half isn't really sustainable either. It's a luxury most companies don't have, after all. And that's exactly why it's so effective - simply undercut your opponents, who can't afford to simply lose money for a decade. It's not a sustainable business practice, it's a desperate mad dash to choke your rivals out of existence with the expectation that you'll be able to figure out a sustainable business model at your leisure once you've brute-forced all the competitors out of business and established an effective monopoly over the industry.

Main Paineframe posted:

The usual complaint is about companies seeking maximum profit, selling off or breaking down the foundations of their own long-term profitability for the sake of maximizing short-term metrics. It's when companies could have a stable and consistent profitability over the long-term, but choose instead to pursue maximum short-term profit even when it means throwing away their sustainability and sacrificing the things that stable income is built on.

Running at a loss for a decade and a half isn't really sustainable either. It's a luxury most companies don't have, after all. And that's exactly why it's so effective - simply undercut your opponents, who can't afford to simply lose money for a decade. It's not a sustainable business practice, it's a desperate mad dash to choke your rivals out of existence with the expectation that you'll be able to figure out a sustainable business model at your leisure once you've brute-forced all the competitors out of business and established an effective monopoly over the industry.

quote:

While there is some small-scale mining that goes on with personal computers and small rigs, most cryptocurrency mining has moved to large collections of specialized hardware. While this hardware can be pricy compared to personal computers, the main cost for these operations is electricity use, so the miners will tend to move to places with low electricity rates. The EIA report notes that, in the wake of a crackdown on cryptocurrency in China, a lot of that movement has involved relocation to the US, where keeping electricity prices low has generally been a policy priority.

One independent estimate made by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance had the US as the home of just over 3 percent of the global bitcoin mining at the start of 2020. By the start of 2022, that figure was nearly 38 percent.

mllaneza posted:

That's a shame, Lyft's app has a way, way better UI.

Electric Wrigglies posted:

The complaint is generally never so subtle as to be about unrecoverable structural damage to a long term profitable business through short term decisions. It is mostly about cost cutting, head count reduction, price increase or any range of things that were good for the person complaining (whether they be an employee, customer, other stakeholder, etc) without any consideration of what it means for the company, good move or bad.

Losing money for a decade is routine for a lot businesses (as long as you ignore cross subsidizing (eg an infrastructure company will tip money into a new bridge for five years of approvals, three years of construction and a decade or more of payback even as the rest of their portfolio chips in the difference). Medium sized mines are five to 10 years before they are profitable (from decision to move ahead, again approvals and studies absorb money for years before any ground gets broken) and large one a decade or more is not unusual (BHP is tipping billions into a phosphate mine in Canada that is half a decade or more of just digging the access hole). Chip fab companies, any company that decides to get into that business is probably making an investment with multiple decades in their spreadsheet.

And on uber, the sekret sauce is breaking down monopolies and taking a cut of the difference between what the prices were (inclusive of all profit resulting from scams and predatory driver behavior (no meter, drive around town, no change available,, strongman pricing, etc). To do this is taking three things, legal investment to take on legislation designed to protect the monopolies (often set up with the best of intentions but very much taken advantage of in a lot of cases) and cheap enough in the first instance that first adopters is not only rich people (like Apple products) to normalise catching an Uber versus risk adverse people sticking to taxies. Last is the app to make it all happen but I don't think the software is that expensive to develop or maintain? Not billions a year at least.

Maybe some of the billions is competing with fellow ap based programs (Lyft, Grab, etc) but the complaints about Uber are that rideshare/app based taxi is a waste of time and money and it should be left to the various taxi mafias or those that bought a taxi plate in QLD for 500k, a year before uber came out.

DeathSandwich posted:

Doesn't Lyft also pay their contractors better too?

I understand where the initial drive for Uber came from, if you didn't live in New York or LA, finding and getting traditional taxis was kind of a huge inconsistent pain in the rear end, doubly so if you weren't local.

Jesus III posted:

80%? That's crazy! Where did you live? That seems almost like a made up statistic

Twerk from Home posted:

Taxis loving sucked, just completely awful and the only time I had a decent experience with them was fixed price airport runs, which were insanely expensive anyway.

It is wild to me that Uber was allowed to just break the law and operate unlicensed taxis, but the Taxi industry themselves in the US had grown incredibly corrupt and lovely.

RBA Starblade posted:

The last time I took a taxi the guy was drunk and stopped in the middle of the highway, but the last time I took an uber the guy was drunk and jumped an island, so who can say if it's good or bad

cat botherer posted:

Over 2% of US power generation is now going to Bitcoin:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/over-2-percent-of-the-uss-electricity-generation-now-goes-to-bitcoin/

We need that energy for our LLMs!

Jesus III posted:

80%? That's crazy! Where did you live? That seems almost like a made up statistic

Main Paineframe posted:

RBA Starblade posted:

The last time I took a taxi the guy was drunk and stopped in the middle of the highway, but the last time I took an uber the guy was drunk and jumped an island, so who can say if it's good or bad

Jesus III posted:

80%? That's crazy! Where did you live? That seems almost like a made up statistic

Jesus III posted:

80%? That's crazy! Where did you live? That seems almost like a made up statistic

feedmyleg posted:

Cool. Microsoft is investing in AI-generated news. Surely nothing bad will come of this.

quote:

Signals will offer a feed of breaking news and analysis on big stories, with about a dozen posts a day. The goal is to offer different points of view from across the globe—a key focus for Semafor since its launch in 2022.

Semafor co-founder Ben Smith emphasized that Signals will be written entirely by journalists, with artificial intelligence providing a research tool to inform posts.

Microsoft on Monday was also set to announce collaborations with journalist organizations including the Craig Newmark School of Journalism, the Online News Association, and the GroundTruth Project.

quote:

For a breaking news event, Semafor journalists will use AI tools to quickly search for reporting and commentary from other news sources across the globe in multiple languages. A Signals post might include perspectives from Chinese, Indian, or Russian media, for example, with Semafor’s reporters summarizing and contextualizing the different points of view, while citing its sources.

Jesus III posted:

I've been in a couple hundred taxis in the last two decades, all over the US and never been scammed. Maybe you all just look like rubes? Maybe dress less touristy in your daily lives or don't make up shot for internet points.

Electric Wrigglies posted:

I get there is very legitimate criticism and have experienced long term damage for short term gains as well which is frustrating. My point is that a lot of the yelling and shouting is from people that have had their own personal interests being harmed brings out the declaration of a move being said short term gain for long term damage. If a company or dept does not have work to keep someone busy, it is important to find new work for them if possible and to let them go sooner rather than later otherwise. This applies whether it's steam locomotive factory workers in the USSR in the 70's or the hundreds of extra recruitment specialists at Google when they are in the process of laying off thousands of workers. Sure it sucks to look for a new job but I have seen a number of small businesses/farms hold onto staff way too long (eg paying veggie pickers more per kg to pick than the market price is) and sink their entire business. Then they are out of work anyway. And in the case of Google, what is hundreds of recruits going to do for the next few years/decade when its likely they are never going to hire at the rates they did post pandemic?

I don't read Ubers billions being spent in the early ears as undercutting opposition (just getting access to the market to implement app based taxi hailing/payment (which was illegal more often than not) is undercutting enough) but maybe in more recent years they are spending billions trying to stave of competition from lyft/grab et al? Certainly, Grab seems to be the dominant provider in the markets I visit. The US market is maybe different, but Uber/Grab prices aren't much different to what traditional taxi drivers offered locals in the past, just that you don't get white skin/foreigner tax, know that you are not going to be driven miles out of the way, no change in prices at the destination, no demand for tip, no lack of change, no stopping for fuel and request to pay for it, no paying for tolls, not being asked to take a different taxi the rest of the way, no being pressured to use their "recommended hotel" etc.

quote:

Uber Drivers Say They Are Struggling: ‘This Is Not Sustainable’
Drivers’ hourly earnings have increased since 2018, but the company sued to block their raise last year and inflation has taken a toll.

When Lamin Jatta began driving a yellow cab in 2012, competition was stiff to procure a taxi for his shifts from a busy garage in Queens. Along with other drivers, he would have to slip up to $25 to a dispatcher to make sure he got a car.

This cost, though unofficial, was on top of his daily taxi lease, $120 for a 12-hour shift, which took a big chunk out of his earnings. And if he got stuck in traffic returning to the garage, he would get hit with a $25 late fee.

So Mr. Jatta eventually traded in yellow cabs for Uber and Lyft, lured by the promise of more money and working on his own terms.

But now, Mr. Jatta, an immigrant from Gambia, cannot earn enough to support himself and his family. He and other ride-hail app drivers say they struggle to pay their rent and other bills, have maxed out their credit cards, and are stuck making payments on cars they no longer want.

“You work and you make no money,” said Mr. Jatta, now 43, who is quitting Uber to become a truck driver. “This is not sustainable.”

Uber and Lyft drivers now earn less in fares and tips than taxi drivers, according to new data from the Taxi and Limousine Commission, which regulates both groups. During the month of September, Uber and Lyft drivers earned an average total of $5,046, including $277 in tips, while those in taxis earned $5,844, including $865 in tips.

Drivers have increasingly battled with Uber, which sued the taxi commission to block a raise for Uber and Lyft drivers in December. Uber argued the raise could cost the company an additional $21 million to $23 million per month, and that it could force it to raise passenger fares by 10 percent.

In response, drivers organized two strikes and urged customers to boycott the Uber app. Last week, Mr. Jatta and dozens of drivers gathered outside Uber’s office in Lower Manhattan, shouting “Shame on Uber.”

Still, Uber prevailed in its lawsuit after a state court judge said the city had failed to sufficiently justify the increase. The ruling will also apply to drivers for Lyft, which was not part of the lawsuit.

Josh Gold, a spokesman for Uber, said that its drivers “remain busy by any metric,” and that their earnings have increased significantly in recent years. Uber drivers now earn an average of $33.30 per hour before tips, up from $23.50 per hour in 2018, according to Uber data.

But the inflation rate — as of last fall, triple what it was four years ago — has possibly canceled out some of those wage increases. Last summer, the cost of food in the city was up by nine percent over the previous year. And drivers and passengers are both dealing with more expensive Uber rides. As of September, prices had risen 37 percent over the last three years, according to the data analytics company YipitData.

Many drivers said the higher fares had benefited Uber more than them. “Don’t think what they charge you is what goes to the driver’s pocket,” said Ibrahima Gory, 56, who began driving for Uber in 2014.

Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant, said the app services make money by charging passengers as much as they can — and paying drivers as little as possible. “The point of the business is to squeeze both the driver and passenger as much as possible because the companies make more money,” he said.

Uber, which arrived in New York in 2011, was once seen by many drivers as a better alternative to the yellow cabs that long ruled city streets. App services like Uber and Lyft offered bonuses and incentives to drivers to switch, and they allowed those who could not afford a taxi medallion — city-issued permits that peaked at more than $1 million in 2013 — to drive their own cars.

As riders and drivers embraced the apps, the taxi industry plummeted. Taxi owners, many of whom had borrowed hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy medallions at an inflated price, were drowning in debt. In desperation, some were pushed to suicide. Then, the pandemic decimated their business.

Nino Hervias was a taxi driver for 38 years before he lost his medallion in September 2021 because he was unable to keep up with the payments. Though he is considering reacquiring his medallion through a relief program the city created last year, he is not sure whether he will earn enough as a cabby to cover the cost.

In the meantime, Mr. Hervias, 63, is driving for Uber. He earned about $1,200 per week last year, but that dipped below $1,000 in December — or less than one-third of the $3,000 a week that he could earn driving a cab before 2015.

Currently, there are about 173,000 licensed for-hire drivers in the city, down from 204,000 in early 2020 before the pandemic, according to the taxi commission. The total number of for-hire vehicles, most of which are affiliated with Uber and Lyft, also shrank from 125,000 to about 100,000 during the same period.

“There weren’t enough trips for everyone at the height of the pandemic, so drivers had to switch to other industries to make a living,” explained David Do, the taxi commissioner. This resulted, he said, in “a major reduction and attrition in the numbers of drivers and vehicles.”

But some critics said the number of for-hire drivers was still too high, making it difficult for anyone to make a decent living. “Too many cars on the street is like too many cooks in the kitchen,” said Samuel I. Schwartz, a transportation consultant who drove a taxi in the early 1970s. “Everybody bumps into each other.”

In 2018, the City Council passed a bill to to establish a minimum pay standard for app service drivers. Since then, the taxi commission has significantly raised wages for Uber and Lyft drivers, who are also scheduled to receive an increase in March that will be the third since 2020 to help offset rising expenses and costs from inflation. Last month, metered taxi fares increased for the first time in a decade.

“The minimum pay standard has really changed the industry,” Mr. Do said. “Drivers are making more across the board.”

But it has not been enough for Ishtiaq Ahmed, 42, who works for Uber and Lyft and lives with his wife and four children in Brooklyn. Mr. Ahmed said that, more than a decade ago, he used to earn $700 to $800 a day with the app services. Now, he is lucky to make $140. He has $30,000 of credit card debt, he said, and he owes thousands more to family and friends who helped him buy an S.U.V. for the job.

Mr. Ahmed and other drivers have criticized the service fees charged by Uber and Lyft, along with government-imposed taxes and surcharges, for cutting into their earnings.

For an Uber trip from Manhattan to Kennedy International Airport in November, Mr. Ahmed earned $59.29, or just 65 percent of the $91.71 fare, while Uber’s service fee was $17.72, or 19 percent. Another $14.70, or 16 percent of the fare, went to government taxes and fees, including a $2.75 congestion fee in Manhattan.

Mr. Gold said that Uber and Lyft drivers have earned less than taxi drivers because they work significantly fewer hours each month, and if calculating by hour, they make slightly more, according to city data. In September, taxi drivers worked an average of 7.6 hours per day compared with 6.5 hours per day for Uber and Lyft drivers.

He added that, last year, Uber reduced its average service fee to 16 percent of the total passenger fare for every trip that started in New York City, compared with generally between 20 and 28 percent before 2015. But government-imposed fees and charges have increased since 2018.

Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which represents for-hire drivers in the city, disputed Uber’s statistics, noting that the company generally keeps data on driver pay secret and only publicizes flattering numbers. “When convenient, Uber hides behind the corporate veil,” Ms. Desai said.

Mr. Gold responded that Uber reports detailed data on driver pay, passenger fares and trips to the taxi commission, as is required by city law.

Some drivers said they felt trapped because they had invested heavily in Uber and Lyft when they thought driving for a ride-hailing service would be a lucrative career.

Alpha Barry, 50, who was a yellow cabdriver for about 15 years before switching to ride-hailing apps six years ago, bought a 2017 Lexus for about $42,000 when he decided to work for Lyft.

Because of that investment, Mr. Barry said, he cannot return to the taxi industry, even if working conditions might have improved since he left.

“I already put myself in this car, you know, spent all this money on this car,” Mr. Barry said.

Mr. Gory, the Uber driver who was a cabby for 20 years, makes about $800 a week with the app service and still owes about $51,000 on his 2022 Toyota Highlander. He recalled that he was drawn by Uber’s ads and sign-up bonuses and incentives. “They were so slick,” he said.

By the time he found out that he could not make a living with Uber, it was too late. He was stuck.

“I pay my insurance, I pay costs of repairs, oil change, brakes, carwash — it’s too much,” he said. “Way, way too much.”

Twerk from Home posted:

Taxis loving sucked, just completely awful and the only time I had a decent experience with them was fixed price airport runs, which were insanely expensive anyway.

It is wild to me that Uber was allowed to just break the law and operate unlicensed taxis, but the Taxi industry themselves in the US had grown incredibly corrupt and lovely.

Edit: I don't even know how to make a comparison to what Uber was allowed to do. Taxi medallions cost a million dollars, but Uber was allowed to just operate illegally. It's like if a developer started building 5-over-1 apartment buildings on lots zoned for low density single family homes and then made a huge killing and said "clearly, it's what the market wanted".

Main Paineframe posted:

Electric Wrigglies posted:

You are literally defending taxi cartels as not entirely good and digging up some anecdote from some ex-taxi cartel operator to prove how much better it was before uber showed up with its service that told you where you were getting picked up and by whom (with previous rider reviews), where you were going and by which route and already squared away payment before you got in the cab without getting your arm twisted getting into or out of the cab. (Hint, tips are not entirely voluntary, sometimes they take, uh, encouragement, (read, obnoxious arm bending/standover tactics. Also ~14% of the earnings of yellow cab according to that article)

Amusingly, the article's big complaint seems to be that the drivers can't pay off their million dollar cartel medallion on Uber fares when Uber doesn't require the medallion. They literally got their situation made worse by changing business circumstances and are complaining about it as if the whole world is worse off not to have cartel run mafia taxi. A good example of what I was saying about how people measure organizational decisions in terms of how it effects them personally (and that you are vehement about never happens).

Ubers costs and verbalized opposition in the early years was not about "undercutting opposition", it was about "taking on legislated/mafia monopolies (illegally or not)". And sure, the illegal aspect is amazing they have done as well as they did as that is normally business suicide- oh wait, they were doing the equivalent of kicking the mafia out of Cuba via revolution so Uber gets a free ride for 10 years or more before it will start to feel sour in general (although in reality, Uber will go the way of the dodo and Lyft/Grab/other will be the long term app taxi company).

Main Paineframe posted:

Jokes aside, it seems like you have some really strong opinions about the taxi industry. However, those opinions are absolutely loving irrelevant to my argument that Uber used investor funding to run at a loss to undercut existing companies by offering low prices and high payouts that couldn't be sustained without that subsidy, and then raised prices and cut payouts once they'd completely smothered the competition by simply burying it in money.

Those taxi drivers are not accusing Uber of making incorrect business decisions in the name of prioritizing short-term profit over long-term stability. Nor are they accusing Uber of neglecting profitability entirely. They are accusing Uber of screwing them over, personally. I never claimed that no one has ever resented a business that screwed them over - I just said that banal criticisms of the companies' business strategy were likely not motivated primarily by self-interest. People who've been screwed over by a company usually have no problem saying they've been screwed over; they don't need to cloak it in nonsense about investment tactics or long-term business outlooks.

Whether non-app taxi companies are cartels or mafias, or whether that's extreme hyperbole driven by a deep hatred of taxi companies, doesn't really matter to the discussion here. Comparing Uber's predatory business tactics and open flaunting of labor law to the Cuban Revolution, on the other hand, is absolutely baffling. Who's Batista in this analogy? It seems like you've built a heroic narrative around Uber, in which their accomplishments in destroying the evils of taxi drivers are so outstanding that any sins they might commit should be forgiven in gratitude for their service. I don't know if that's necessarily something that really suits the Tech Nightmares thread, though!

Mega Comrade posted:

If I open the Uber app I have about 3 options and it's gonna be an hour at least
Or I can call one of the many cab companies and have one in 10 minutes.
Since Uber was forced to offer basic worker rights and pay tax proper in the UK it's pricing is no longer that much cheaper.