i dont know that its such a great thing in the end. Uber/Lyft is 50-100% more expensive now than taxis were before. Theyre entrenched in different ways.
Idk how it is in the US but in eastern Europe that's only true if surge is on and even so considering how shitty the quality of service was before Uber it's fine.
And it’s still shitty. Uber/Bolt is like on par with 90s taxis. At least here there was a short attempt to make things better in early 2010s with nicer cars and trying to force drivers to be nicer. But then it was „disrupted“.
I far, far, far prefer Uber (or Lyft, in the US) wherever I am, over whatever local taxi service there is. Yes, the quality of cars varies a lot. Yes, you never know if you're going to get a quiet driver or a way-too-talkative one.
But I know what I'm going to pay up-front, can always pay with a credit card (which happens automatically without annoying post-trip payment), the ride is fully tracked, and I can report issues with the driver that I have an expectation will actually be acted upon. And when I'm in another country where there are known to be taxis that scam foreigners, Uber is a godsend.
Yes, pre-Uber taxis were expensive and crappy, and even if Uber is expensive now, it's not crappy; it's actually worth the price. And I'm not convinced Uber is even that expensive. We always forget to account for inflation... sure, we might today say, "that ride in a taxi used to cost $14, but in an Uber it costs $18". But that ride in a taxi was 15 years ago.
Uber did a great job convincing lay people that taxis were ripoffs and they were a good deal. For some time that was probably true.
Now, I see people at the airport walk over to the pickup lot, joining a crowd of others furiously messing with their phones while scanning the area for presumably their driver.
All the while the taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door were $2 more expensive, last time I checked.
It helped that they started in places like San Francisco, where the taxi cartel was so absurdly terrible that you'd win fans just by showing up.
I lived in SF when Uber started. We used to call Veteran's Cab because they were the only company that wouldn't ditch on the way to pick you up, but it was completely normal to wait more than an hour for a cab in the dark hinterlands of 24th and Dolores or the industrial wasteland of 2nd and Folsom. An hour during which you had to be ready to jump as soon as the car arrived. Everybody had at least one black-car driver's cell number for downtown use because if they happened to be free, you could at least get picked up.
Uber would have had a religious following of fanpersons even if all they'd done was an estimated pickup time that was accurate to within 20 minutes.
Uber didn't have to convince anyone, taxis were ripoffs. It didn't even have to always do with money. Taxis asked people where they were going and drove off if it wasn't far enough was a significant issues. Taxis not picking up black people. Many taxis in my town were dirty and and the drivers were jerks or creepy or both. With protections built into law and no competition the industry didn't have to even try to cater to the customer.
The taxi industry sealed it's own death warrant a long time ago. Ride sharing services solved a real problem at the right time. If that cost a bit more, it was well worth it. I won't take a taxi now unless I am forced to.
Where I am, the taxi from the airport is about $5 more expensive during off peak, but it can be $20 cheaper during peak hours. I always take the taxi since it's right there, but I usually check the price on Lyft or Uber just to compare.
That's funny - ride fares change, and only in an Uber have I been kicked out of the car "because the app crashed" in the middle of an abandoned road, or had a very intoxicated person pick me up, or try to drive recklessly in hazardous conditions.
I happily pay a premium for none of these things again.
Not at any airport I've been to recently. I've never seen lines of taxis waiting at any airport in the last few years. There are empty taxi slots. People hail the taxi using an app and then wait for it to show up. Just like Lyft/Uber.
I mean, that seems pretty unfair, no, giving one set of transportation companies an arbitrary advantage over another? This sort of thing is exactly why Uber started in the first place: because taxis had unfair monopolistic advantages for no particular reason, and gave customers a poor experience, because they knew they didn't have to do better to keep their jobs.
I have no idea what I'm going to get with those taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door. Even in my home country, at the airport next to my city, I have no idea. I know exactly what I'm getting with an Uber/Lyft, every time. That's valuable to me.
I was just in another country a couple months ago, and when trying to leave the airport, I was confused where I'd need to go in order to get an Uber. I foolishly gave up and went for one of those "conveniently-waiting" taxis, where I was quoted a price up-front, in my home currency, that I later (after doing the currency conversion on the Uber price) realized was a ripoff. The driver also aggressively tried to get me to instead rent his "friend's car" rather than take me to the rental car place like I asked. And honestly I consider that lucky: he didn't try to kidnap me or threaten me in any way, but I was tense during the whole ride, wondering if something bad was going to happen.
That sort of thing isn't an anomaly; it happens all the time to tourists in many countries.
There are many schemes nowadays on Uber cars. I know some stories in developing countries where people are robbed and even killed because they foolishly think that by getting a Uber this means a safe ride. In some countries a regular taxi is actually better regulated and safer than Uber.
I won't recount what recently happened to a friend in Milwaukee. It was an unpopular story (because the ripoff was Uber-based, and not the traditional taxi).
There's bad actors in every industry. I have found that industries that get "entrenched," tend to breed the most bad actors.
If anything turns into a "pseudo-monopoly," expect the grifters to start popping up. They'll figure out how to game the system.
Did you remember to factor in well over 30% inflation in America in the past 5 years plus Uber Lyft initially losing money on rides to capture market share before they eventually had to actually breakeven?
In all those countries what’s illegal is abuse of a monopoly, which is not what’s being discussed here. The parent cited Uber and Lyft when they first started. Nothing is illegal about startups undercutting established competitors.
They acquired market power by killing them through predatory pricing, leaving incumbents unprofitable and forcing them to exit - while creating a steep barrier to entry for any new comers and strategically manipulating existing riders by offering high take rates initially and subsidising rides to create artificial demand and inflate market share - then once they kicked out the incumbents, they exercised their market power to raise prices and their % of the take rate of each transaction; leaving consumers and riders worse off.
We can talk all day about the nice UX blah blah. But the reality is, financially, they could not have succeeded without a very dubious and unethical approach.
I get why we look on Uber with disdain today. They're the big rich behemoths who treat drivers poorly, previously had a CEO who was a raging asshole, and have now raised their prices (gasp!) to a level that they need to be for a sustainable business.
But I remember when I started using Uber back in 2012. It was amazing compared to every single other option out there. Yes, they entered the market in questionably-legal or often probably outright illegal ways. But illegal is not the same thing as immoral. And I don't think it's unethical to force out competition when that competition is a lazy, shitty, legally-enforced monopoly that treats its customers poorly.
I can only speak in EU terms in any more detail here, but the EU laws are based on "dominant market position". Monopoly is one route to that but it's not the only route and there is no minimum market share required, as e.g. Qualcomm found out (https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/talk...)
Which EU country reacted against Uber's predatory pricing when it was actually happening? Ie. which EU government refused investor money flowing into their economy? The only examples I can find are a few cities, and some of those are in the US. No EU state did, unless I'm missing something.
Sure now that it costs them money, they're reacting, making things worse for literally everyone: the taxi drivers, who've been victimized by the governments not reacting when they should. The customers, who are now paying more. The Uber drivers, who are certainly not the ones getting the money.
A great lawyer will tell you laws don't matter if they're not applied, and then tell you how laws are applied and what you can and can't get away with (this is a necessity since most laws aren't very clear at all, especially where it comes to actual real-world cases or penalties). The EU are absolute masters of that. The famous GPDR, for example, isn't protecting anyone's data in any way it matters since governments have the power to grant themselves exceptions to them. Which lead to all the things the GPDR tried to avoid: insurance getting private medical data (who are mostly part of governments in the EU), private medical data being used by the police or in court, just to give some examples.
Hell, it's now been confirmed every 2 years or so since 2015 that essentially all European countries think all of the FANGs are abusing their market position. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, ... they've given them billions of dollars in fines. Tell me, what has been fixed? US advertising companies are deeper entrenched than ever before (even outside of the internet, ie. ClearChannel). Law is supposed to fix the problems. Well, obviously the problem of US companies' dominance is not solved, in fact it's gotten a lot worse.
And this is nothing new. Take what EU countries signed in the Budapest memorandum. You will find that it states that if Russia ("any of the ... blabla", which includes Russia) takes Crimea a bunch of EU countries (France, UK) would, first, declare war on the country that did it (Russia) and initiate actual hostile action against that country (ie. not just support to Ukraine). That meant they agreed to have UK and French (and ...) soldiers attack Russia. That was the security guarantee Ukraine had, and that was an international treaty, which in the EU (look it up) has the power of law.
As everyone and their grandmother's cat knows, they didn't actually follow through. They "gave support". That's just one, at the moment important, example.
And of course, the effect is the same: it became worse and worse. Russia's actions became worse and worse and worse. Now the EU countries have given the same guarantees for countries like Poland, Latvia and even Estonia, either directly or through NATO. Will Russia attack? Why not? It's not like these countries will (or let's be real: can) actually fight under any circumstance.
A couple EU countries bans on Uber seem to date back from 2015-2019, which is slow, but still fairly early as to worldwide adoption per https://dig.watch/trends/uber
After few years of operation, government realised it was serious and pressured Uber to stop taxi operations « Uber pop », until disruption in legislation got through.
I used Uber from first year it was here. As the service got popular with young adults and the people took notice and public debate began, the police was instructed to fine Ubers. Then the drivers asked us passengers to sit up front and pretend we were friends. (Not sure if the app had instructions related to this or not.) Once the legislation change was clear, they closed operation officially for the brief period, as stated in the article.
For what it is worth what Wikipedia says about the document you mention is not what this comment mentions. Personally I found that comment spreading disinformation.
No country gave guarantees only assurances and it is even highlighted that the US senate would have never voted for it favourably, and thus it never was a treaty.
On the other hand breaking this assurances will guarantee no other country will ever give up their nuclear arsenal, of course a non consolation price for Ukraine.
Guarantees in nato which is indeed a treaty and ratified, covering Poland and Latvia and Estonia would be stronger but of course, I would not put all my eggs on it.
> Which EU country reacted against Uber's predatory pricing when it was actually happening?
Bulgaria kicked out Uber for not obeying taxi regulations.
Sounds unrelated? Well it used to be a socialist dictatorship and laws are still written in a ham-fisted-yet-vague* way so that (1) you can't realistically obey them and (2) they can be used against anyone state authorities (or their friends) don't like.
So what's the actual reason? Uber was on its way to price taxi companies out of the market by offering better service at a price of €0.25/km.
* If you're from a developed country and this sounds like what your government is currently doing, you should start panicking.
Especially because in 10 years from now they will progressively get replaced by AI like Waymo, so no point into making sure they are happy in the long-term
As far as I was aware taxis were an imagined thing we saw in movies. I understand you could call a number and ask for a ride to the airport though they were never useful.
They're always more common in metro areas of the US. You must be from a relatively rural area and don't get out of it much.
That said, uh, the use of getting a taxi to drive you to or from the airport was just not having to park at the airport which generally costs a lot of money, and in certain areas is a little sketchy on whether or not your car will get cracked open while you're away.
That's a little reductive. I grew up in San Diego and went to school in LA and had the same experience with taxis - never took them. But now I use ubers in those cities whenever I'm there.
The US has tons of cities like this that I imagine would have issues with taxis - all parts of the bay area peninsula / east bay, cities in Texas, Denver, etc. Most cities are not like the NYC/Boston and even in places in Chicago, unless you lived downtown likely didn't see taxis driving around.
Taxis weren’t actually available in most US cities before ride share. Only the large dense cities really had them. This argument that things were better before is only relevant for a small handful of metros. The ride shares are better in spite of their flaws.
Here in Australia theres a never ending steam of complaints about taxis managing to bill passengers extraordinary amounts. From taking a route that deliberately includes a highway leg thats expensive to correct (screws tourists), to demanding higher fares, to card skimming, to outright just not displaying the taxi licences so you cant complain and have no idea which driver was being creepy.
Uber at least has fixed rates from what was displayed and there are logs of which driver was doing dodgy stuff.
that doesnt really work if they have to compete on price with foreign producers that have lower labor costs, looser environmental regulations, deeper supply chains and better process knowledge. might as well eat the tax (waiting for monopolistic opportunities) or light the money on fire
That's not how it works in the U.S. If an executive branch department was created by the legislature, it is up to the legislature whether or not it exists, not the executive. If the legislature has passed laws regarding how its resources are to be used, its employees treated, the executive is not free to disregard those laws.
The legislature is the source of laws in the U.S., not the executive. The irony is that the Republicans control the legislature as well. They could pass laws to achieve what Musk wants. It would be slow, but it would be legal.
A coup is seizing power outside the legal mechanism for doing so.
It's actually not up to the legislature anymore. And that's a huge problem in this country. The legislature exited stage left by handing way too many powers and responsibilities over to the executive branch. Now the courts determine if the executive branch has been previously allowed by congress to do something stupid or not. By the time the legislature can agree on exercising power on one item or another, the shit has already hit the fan.
It doesn't need to be a coup. Congress sold us out to presidents long before most of us were born.
we were talking about operational access to the payment system. you are conflating the situation at USAID which may or may not by illegal, idk.
the legislative branch can form administrative departments and prescribe their function however the president has already defined powers to impound funds and remove senior administrative officers and appoint/remove low-level staff. how these things intersect will be sorted be the courts.
executive actions (by-passing what should be legislation) have been increasing the last few decades. the various media companies plainly do make choices to portray some actions as nothingburger or crisis depending on their political alignment with the party in power.
the issue with the left-media and Trump is they outrage clickbait a bunch of events that are insignificant in terms of outcomes. Should they alarm about Jan6 yes. should they alarm over minor personnel at treasury or some dumb unserious thing Trump said at a press conference, no. This is how the media loses all trust in themselves broadly.
Playing by those rules, it's nearly impossible to change any big law or enact any drastic change to an existing law unless you have some world-changing event. The rest is just the slow march towards the mean which is controlled by the people that can bully others into silence and agreement. The mean is controlled by those that control the conversation and by those career politicians and bureaucrats that "play the game". Look how magically everyone is agreeing to deporting violent criminals, yet somehow we didn't all think that was the right answer 6 months ago?
It's beyond me how so many of us think that continuously ignoring the will of the people is "OK". Either tell me my choice doesn't matter, or just shut up with the drama and enact safe and fair referendums on every single hot topic so we can all get to the right answer and then if we find we're in the minority, we'll shut up.
It should be clear as day to anyone that is unbiased that fixing the US/Mexican border was ridiculously easy (it's essentially been done in 2 weeks and they didn't even have to finish building their stupid wall). The only reason it didn't happen till now was precisely because the whole thing is broken and not really an expression of the peoples' will. It was rather an expression of an amalgamation of a giant mindless mass of bureaucrats, and you can't fix it unless you do what they are doing now. Not to single you out sorry, but opinions like yours ("we gotta do it the legal way and according to rules x, y, z, and 500 other rules") are precisely why nothing ever got done or fixed properly. And I say that as someone that is absolutely on board with following every rule to the T, with no exceptions.
I agree that our system of government makes it extremely difficult to enact large changes. That is by design, however well considered that design might be. Nevertheless, those are the rules. Which means the president can't legally do whatever he wishes to anything "under his purview" upon gaining power.
Or rather, that was the case until the SCOTUS decided there are no laws the president need respect. What they have not pronounced upon is whether the law binds anyone acting under the direction of the president. Does their invention merely protect the president from prosecution or does it abrogate all laws he finds inconvenient? I find it hard to believe they'll take the second step, but we'll probably find out pretty soon. Is Musk a monarch or merely our president?
>It should be clear as day to anyone that is unbiased that fixing the US/Mexican border was ridiculously easy (it's essentially been done in 2 weeks and they didn't even have to finish building their stupid wall). The only reason it didn't happen till now was precisely because the whole thing is broken and not really an expression of the peoples' will.
Fixing the border happened 8 months ago. Nothing meaningful has changed at the border since June 2024. The only reason it took so long is that Biden wanted Congress to do it rather than using probably-illegal executive fiat powers, and eventually Biden got tired of waiting and did it anyway after Trump told Congress to axe the bipartisan border deal that bascially everybody but the extremists on either side was on board with.
You can make an argument that Biden should have done it by executive fiat even earlier, and that's your prerogative. But the fact of the matter is that even once a legislative fix was ready, Trump and the Republicans threw it away for no good reason, so that he could continue campaigning on immigration. That, by the way, is exactly "not an expression of the peoples' will". That's refusing to fix a problem for the sole purpose of campaigning on that problem.
Much of Trump's governance is like an episode of reality TV or WWE. Loud, flashy and mostly fake. Creating his own problems to "solve" by changing nothing. Threaten Canada and Mexico with tariffs then cancel them and declare victory when they say they'll do something they were already doing, e.g. Mexico deployed 10,000 Mexican troops to their border years ago under an agreement with Biden. Columbia accepted hundreds of deportation flights under Biden, then Trump tries to use military aircraft to do it and they say no, he makes threats then he declares massive victory when the arrangement reverts to exactly what was happening before.
Data obtained by fox news suggested that migrant arrivals at the southern border declined by 60% in the first week of Trump’s presidency compared to the last week of Biden’s administration. However, this figure differs from Trump’s 93% claim.
Biden 2021: 1,734,686 (378.68% from previous year)
Biden 2022: 2,378,944 (137.14% from previous year)
Biden 2023: 2,475,669 (104.07% from previous year)
Biden 2024: 2,135,005 (86.24% from previous year)
I couldn't find older that 2019, but it's clear that in trumps last year, it more than halfed from his previous year. Then it more than tripled in the first year under Biden. Then almost doubled again in the subsequent year under Biden, and then grew a bit in 2023. Then only in 2024, did it reduce by a tiny 14%. Notably a 14% of what is effectively a number 5 times higher than what Trump got it down to before he left office.
And yeah you could argue (like some of the journalist did) that "oh this is just because Trump created a backlog". Well that's what people wanted, and it stopped the flow of people over the border. That's solving the problem, and really just shows that Biden literally just opened the doors, let it grow huge, and then "claimed success" when it started going back down to it's pre-Trump average. This is why we can't discuss this, we have so many supposedly "smart" people arguing and using the supposed "data" to twist the truth, and then dismissing what every can see plain as day (and is in this case supported by the data).
Oh and let's also not mention that it surged quite a bit in the last few months of 2024 when people I would assume started to flood the border in anticipation of Trump's arrival. So all that supposed work the Biden team did somehow didn't apply then? Of course, because they did nothing and the numbers reflect the fact that the border just lets them go through.
You can't attack other users like that here, regardless of how wrong they are or you feel they are. Worse, you've been doing this repeatedly in other places:
I don't want to ban you because your commenting history before that looks (mostly) fine. But if you keep breaking the site rules, we won't have much choice, so if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful.
the strength of the US defense commitment is likely proportional to the strategic value of the economic assets they still hold. the taiwanese have every incentive to do just well enough at the AZ plant for the $39 Billion checks to clear and no better
While true, TSMC has a stronger incentive for its own survival than the survival of Taiwan. If it's easier for them to shift operations to the US and continue to make $$$, I suspect they'd do that over retaining operations in Taiwan and hoping it will convince the US to protect the country.
the really dumb thing about working at AWS is they pay so much lip service to Ops, literally you can spend a third of a week in meetings talking about Ops Issues, but not a single long term project to improve the deeper architectural problems that cause bad Ops ever get funded.
they should have focused on building light-duty utility vehicles based on the Model Y platform. A ModelY Truck could be like the Ford Maverick or a 90s Tacoma, the Van could be like Ford Transit Connect. It would be significantly faster to market, re-using the some of the production lines, and there's a huge market (landscaping, residential trades, short-haul delivery, etc). Elon was high off his own supply the year he launched CT, Semi, & Roadster
Our local Tesla dealer just got a Cybertruck on display last week and I went and took a look at it last weekend. My impression is the front end is actually pretty good looking, they rounded it off quite a bit from the original prototype and it has a similar shape as other Tesla models like the Y. The headlight bar is actually really cool and the frunk is probably pretty big. The back half of the Cybertruck is a travesty, in addition to just being really angular and ugly they lost some of the most useful aspects of being a truck, like being able to throw gear over the side of the bed, or being able to put a custom cap on the back. The Cybertruck is excessively long for all the more cargo capacity it gives you, all because of that ugly angular back end. A lot of people are probably going to shy away from buying one because it's not going to fit in their garage. The custom tires are probably going to cost a fortune to replace as well, for no real good reason other than looks. In short Tesla designed 50% of a pretty cool truck, it really could have changed the segment.
What's a "custom cap"? Is it like a tonneau cover (I'm from Aus, not sure if they're a thing in other countries)? Or something more like a tailgate pad for bikes?
Tonneau is the flat cover for the bed. A cap is the n-shaped cover that encloses it, giving it a roof. Typically matching the cab body work, so overall looks more like an SUV.
The funny thing is, it's not a single piece of metal anymore, they completely ditched the whole "exoskeleton". The Cybertruck is made just like the Model Y, with casted front and back ends attached to an upper frame with body panels. If you look at recent pictures you can see the lines between all the body panels. The panels are stainless steel and probably are a little thicker than a typical body panel so they might be a little more resistant to dents, but that's about it.
feel like the board is too small and a handful of them kicked him out over personal agendas - which are incoherent and hence they cant explain it publicly
- Ilya for decel (but really tech fame jealously)
- Adam for a CoI with his startup (but really founder fame jealousy)
- Helen Toner for Sam disagreeing with her research in EA, safety and decel
and somewhere 2 teams of Software Engineers are tasked with Test Case 7462628: a Video classifier to detect when the AV has stopped on top of human and pinned them beneath its wheels
