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Popular Thug Drink posted:an ayn rand fanboy leveraged a buyout of kmart, which he then used to buy sears, and he merged the two companies. he then imposed a policy where all the sears department heads have to compete internally for resources (!) leading to a breakdown of interdepartmental teamwork within the same stores which is a super bad strategy when you're already facing tough competition and falling sales. he also forced the adoption of an in-house social network which he uses to pick fights anonymously with entry level sales clerks
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Aug 15, 2016 21:35
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Edit:wrong thread
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Aug 15, 2016 21:48
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie-lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles This is the Sears article you all should read.
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Aug 15, 2016 21:55
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Jumpingmanjim posted:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie-lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles note that this article points out sears is dumping tons of money into online sales. sears has had an online shopping portal since 1999 if not earlier, dumping on the "sears ignored the internet" theory the problem is that young people don't think sears when they think "place to shop online" and the people who still shop at sears don't buy as many things online. amazon works as the online megaretailer because they have minimal physical infrastructure beyond data farms (which generate profit themselves) and warehouses. sears has a giant legacy infrastructure of lovely stores
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Aug 15, 2016 22:04
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Kobayashi posted:I work at a company that buys data from one of these brokers. It's "anonymized," but then I listen to our data scientists talk about how trivial it is de-anonymize, usually with perfect fidelity. poo poo's crazy. it's also pretty shoddy. I looked up my info and it was pretty much all wrong.
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Aug 16, 2016 00:58
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Popular Thug Drink posted:thats not irony? they were just a giagantic general retailer who thrived on mail order. only recently has amazon started reselling various home goods, for the longest time amazon was just a bookseller This is just me doing stupid nitpicking, but Amazon started moving away from books as early as the late 90s. They've definitely operated as a general online retailer for a longer period of time than they operated as just an online bookstore.
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Aug 16, 2016 01:12
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-15/how-hyperloop-one-went-off-the-railsquote:BamBrogan and three other former employees filed a lawsuit against the Pishevar brothers and the company, also naming Chief Executive Officer Robert Lloyd and investor Joseph Lonsdale in the suit. It alleges the men didn’t have the company’s interests at heart, and also makes claims of assault and defamation. In its countersuit against BamBrogan and the other ex-employees, Hyperloop One said the insurgent employees were trying to start a competing firm. One dispute surrounds a long, looped rope BamBrogan discovered on his office chair one morning, in the shape of a noose or a lasso, depending on your perspective. quote:Board member Justin Fishner-Wolfson was deputized to patch things up. On May 31, he met for seven hours with the disgruntled employees, having worked over Memorial Day weekend with other board members on a response that incorporated many of the employees’ demands, including changing equity provisions, according to the countersuit.
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Aug 16, 2016 01:45
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quote:an engineer with the unlikely name Brogan BamBrogan
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Aug 16, 2016 01:53
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Gail Wynand posted:What's next, Big McLargeHuge? Other articles have said he changed his name to that when he got married.
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Aug 16, 2016 02:08
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Spazzle posted:Other articles have said he changed his name to that when he got married. What, Big McLargeHuge??
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Aug 16, 2016 07:27
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Helsinki Uber drivers now face criminal charges when caught quote:In other words, Uber drivers risk paying pack all of the money they made while driving for the illicit taxi service.
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Aug 16, 2016 11:59
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Same as in Stockholm last year then.
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Aug 16, 2016 12:04
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MiddleOne posted:Same as in Stockholm last year then. Did it work?
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Aug 16, 2016 15:44
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MickeyFinn posted:Did it work? Eventually, Uber finally gave up on its Uberpop service after the police had successfully charged over 30 drivers who all proceeded to lose in court. As of May earlier this year, the service is de-commissioned. MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Aug 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 15:54
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tbh that sounds a little crappy since they only took money from the drivers, which is really effective at discouraging people from signing up, but uber still got theirs
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Aug 16, 2016 16:05
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The line that Uber dances back and forth over is razor sharp and someday it's going to get them something way worse then just getting locked out of markets.
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Aug 16, 2016 16:53
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MiddleOne posted:The line that Uber dances back and forth over is razor sharp and someday it's going to get them something way worse then just getting locked out of markets. Sadly, I wouldn't be so sure of that. One thing all that VC capital can easily buy is a lot of top-notch lawyers. And even if you lose the wrongful death suit, carefully structured holdings ensure that there are no assets to seize for bankruptcy! They're disrupting the way that companies crash and burn!
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Aug 16, 2016 20:58
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Zero One posted:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-15/how-hyperloop-one-went-off-the-rails Willingham. Fishner-Wolfson. Pishevar. Pendergast. BamBrogan. These names.
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Aug 16, 2016 22:24
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I worked with Pishevar at a previous company. Nothing in that article surprises me.
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Aug 16, 2016 22:27
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kaynorr posted:Sadly, I wouldn't be so sure of that. One thing all that VC capital can easily buy is a lot of top-notch lawyers. And even if you lose the wrongful death suit, carefully structured holdings ensure that there are no assets to seize for bankruptcy! They're disrupting the way that companies crash and burn! Haha, as if Uber has any assets beyond their corporate offices and the so far imaginary self-driving car tech to seize. The app is worthless and so to is the goodwill too since its pretty much tied to the service being provided at price below cost. Seeing everyone involved burn financially would be fun but I would settle for the shares becoming de-facto paperweight as Uber finally gets legislated out of the US. Or you know, investor confidence bellows out.
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Aug 16, 2016 22:39
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MiddleOne posted:so far imaginary self-driving car tech They have cars on the road, no? Not deployed taking fares, but tooling around in test mode like Google's.
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Aug 16, 2016 22:43
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I completely agree with the criticisms that I've read against most companies here. However, following on the same pessimistic note as the poster above, does anyone think that when this bubble bursts any of these people will actually lose money? I've seen so many former CEOs of companies that never turned a profit, and who are still filthy rich, that I can assume that if Uber goes under the only people who'll lose are the drivers.
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Aug 16, 2016 22:44
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And people who live in cities with lovely cab service. Uber isn't the right answer to that problem but at least it's an answer. Also it's way easier to expense an uber.
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Aug 16, 2016 22:50
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Non Serviam posted:I completely agree with the criticisms that I've read against most companies here. However, following on the same pessimistic note as the poster above, does anyone think that when this bubble bursts any of these people will actually lose money? Main losers will be the ultra rich and whatever pension funds the investment banks have managed to sucker in. The VC's have liquidation preferences and will take most of the carcass. No one will be left destitute by any means but the money that's been invested will be gone for most. If there had been an IPO then the founders and original investors would have already been made whole but we are not there yet. Subjunctive posted:They have cars on the road, no? Not deployed taking fares, but tooling around in test mode like Google's. So does a boatload of other companies. The tech is only worth something if it does something proprietary that the competitors doesn't.
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Aug 16, 2016 22:54
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Non Serviam posted:I completely agree with the criticisms that I've read against most companies here. However, following on the same pessimistic note as the poster above, does anyone think that when this bubble bursts any of these people will actually lose money? People are going to lose money, but most of the senior people won't lose all their money, and what's left will probably be enough for you to consider them rich. Many of the senior people at Uber are looking to go from 7 digits to 8 digits, so if their shares go to zero they're back at 7. (Lower if they unwisely spent against their inevitable UBER-on-Nasdaq riches.) MiddleOne posted:So does a boatload of other companies. The tech is only worth something if it does something proprietary that the competitors doesn't. I think the number of companies who can run vehicles autonomously on public streets makes for a small boat, but "not competitively differentiated" is a pretty far cry from "imaginary".
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Aug 16, 2016 22:57
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Subjunctive posted:I think the number of companies who can run vehicles autonomously on public streets makes for a small boat, but "not competitively differentiated" is a pretty far cry from "imaginary". Agreed. But we've had a discussion ITT about where self-driving cars are today and the optimistic answer is 10-15 years out. That's assuming we re-tool a fair bit of infrastructure. I'd rather just have better public transit in US cities, not that the two are mutually exclusive.
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Aug 16, 2016 23:05
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Chakan posted:Agreed. But we've had a discussion ITT about where self-driving cars are today and the optimistic answer is 10-15 years out. That's assuming we re-tool a fair bit of infrastructure. I'd rather just have better public transit in US cities, not that the two are mutually exclusive. I agree completely that they aren't finished. I just don't think I'm imagining things when a Google SDC pulls up behind me at a light.
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Aug 16, 2016 23:09
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Subjunctive posted:I think the number of companies who can run vehicles autonomously on public streets makes for a small boat, but "not competitively differentiated" is a pretty far cry from "imaginary". I think timing is the important thing. 2 years ago you'd have bigshoots like Daimler throwing around money to buy up tech of this caliber. Today though? Everyone interested has their own project running par already.
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Aug 16, 2016 23:10
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MiddleOne posted:I think timing is the important thing. 2 years ago you'd have bigshoots like Daimler throwing around money to buy up tech of this caliber. Today though? Everyone interested has their own project running par already. Ford just bought E: don't for a second think that Uber was the only one bidding on the CMU lab. Who was going to outbid them, though? Lots of places would love to buy Uber's SDC arm, if it were for sale.
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Aug 16, 2016 23:13
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Subjunctive posted:Ford just bought Ford says 5 years for self-driving car but interestingly, isn't targeting them at consumers and is skipping level 3: Ars posted:And forget about more incremental steps in driver assist technologies. "Today we're looking at this differently," Nair said. "We have to take a completely different path." That means no level 3 autonomous Ford. Nair said that Ford's researchers still haven't found a satisfactory solution to the problem of returning control to a human driver in a safe manner (a level 4 car by contrast has no steering wheel and requires no human control beyond inputting the destination).
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Aug 17, 2016 01:37
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asdf32 posted:Ford says 5 years for self-driving car but interestingly, isn't targeting them at consumers and is skipping level 3: It actually makes a hell of a lot of sense to target trucks rather than personal vehicles, which is what I assume they're doing. Companies are willing to pay quite a bit for automated freight hauling, the routes are pretty well set on a per truck basis, and you can start the rollout in less populated industrial areas less likely to cause accidents. I don't see how they can eliminate the driver from refueling the vehicle and from dropping off or picking up cargo (not without major overhauls to both types of facilities), but that's a solvable problem where an on-site driver can hop in the vehicle and drive it to the dock for 5-10 minutes, and where you can get a service contract at a specific gas station or truck stop to have a guy prioritize refueling automated trucks as they arrive.
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Aug 17, 2016 09:36
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Just doing a cursory google search says there are 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States, which means that over 1% of the people in the country generate their income from driving semis. That's going to be a bloodbath if there is a semi-fast switchover to automated trucking.
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Aug 17, 2016 10:31
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Chakan posted:Agreed. But we've had a discussion ITT about where self-driving cars are today and the optimistic answer is 10-15 years out. That's assuming we re-tool a fair bit of infrastructure. I'd rather just have better public transit in US cities, not that the two are mutually exclusive. Quick reminder that at present the DOT is barely sufficiently funded to keep up with maintenance and necessary upgrades to meet present traffic levels, on the national level. Worse at the state level in places. Much less major re-tooling to suit automated vehicles.
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Aug 17, 2016 10:34
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Zyklon B Zombie posted:Just doing a cursory google search says there are 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States, which means that over 1% of the people in the country generate their income from driving semis. That's going to be a bloodbath if there is a semi-fast switchover to automated trucking. There'd be no way to outright destroy the industry's manpower with automated vehicles for a handful of reasons, one major one being routes programmed by GPS. They'd need to have perfect, pinpoint GPS for all areas with no issues whatsoever, which is a huge problem for truckers I currently know. They often find themselves on sideroads they're not legally allowed to be on, on grades unfit for their load, encountering roadways with overpasses that are lower than their clearance, or just outright pointed in the wrong directions, without human error being the biggest issue. This might pave a way for autonomous interstate trucking from near-highway warehouse to warehouse, but some aspects of the industry will be impermeable without perfecting the route planning to a tee, with proactive information-gathering on traffic trends, road changes, and other issues that a trucker has to improvise on when tech fucks up their route. Ford could probably put a foot in the door on the business, but unless they're developing even more precise and proactive GPS programs on top of the autonomy of a SDC, they won't be able to touch all of the industry. The people affected by that kind of changeover would be truckers employed by large distribution and logistics businesses, more likely a FedEx/UPS or Target/Walmart situation than anything else. For agricultural, chemical, oversized, and other loads of a similar type, you'd still either need a human in the cab, or the company would prefer to have one in the case of dangerous loads. If you think the first gently caress-up of a SDC hitting a toddler is bad, just imagine the first news story of a SDC hauling Anhydrous Ammonia on an interstate would be.
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Aug 17, 2016 11:35
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Even then, the best I could see is a trainyard-style depot. No way in hell you're going to get an autonomous semi to back into half the loading docks I've worked with, much less the -really- bad ones.
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Aug 17, 2016 12:57
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asdf32 posted:Ford says 5 years for self-driving car but interestingly, isn't targeting them at consumers and is skipping level 3: Nobody is doing level 3 AFAIK. Getting the transition to manual right is likely impossible other than "I have safely stopped and don't know what to do" for flooded roads or crazy construction or similar, and that's L4.
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Aug 17, 2016 14:21
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Liquid Communism posted:Even then, the best I could see is a trainyard-style depot. No way in hell you're going to get an autonomous semi to back into half the loading docks I've worked with, much less the -really- bad ones. Backing up into a constrained space seems like the kind of thing a sensor-laden system with perfect sense of physics and geometry would be great at. The "driver" can effectively be at the rear of the trailer as well. Why do you think it would be harder than navigating the traffic to get there?
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Aug 17, 2016 14:25
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Zyklon B Zombie posted:Just doing a cursory google search says there are 3.5 million truck drivers in the United States, which means that over 1% of the people in the country generate their income from driving semis. That's going to be a bloodbath if there is a semi-fast switchover to automated trucking. You don't pay truck drivers for their skill driving, you pay them for their time in case something fucks up.
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Aug 17, 2016 14:28
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Cisco (loving Cisco) just announced that they're laying off 20% of their workforce. It looks like the hammer is starting to fall for real. I imagine we'll be going into 2017 in a post-bubble world.
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Aug 17, 2016 16:17
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e_angst posted:Cisco (loving Cisco) just announced that they're laying off 20% of their workforce. It looks like the hammer is starting to fall for real. I imagine we'll be going into 2017 in a post-bubble world. I had heard that Cisco doesn't even use all their office space in their massive campus anyway.
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