Senator Al Franken's Letter to Uber [pdf]
franken.senate.gov
franken.senate.gov
Systems Engineering teaches the concept of POSTED: People, Organisation, Support, Training, Equipment and Doctrine. When a system is developed, it must give consideration to all of these aspects. Failing to do so means you design an incomplete system.
In this case, Uber has developed a piece of Equipment, their God Mode view. Franken's asking about the other pieces of the system, such as the training, support and doctrine and people. These are equally as important to design, document and implement. Failing to give due consideration to these aspects of the system is no different to having an incomplete equipment solution developed. I'm interested to see whether Uber gave due consideration to these aspects of the system.
There's something to be said about startups moving fast to develop technology but not necessarily the other aspects of a complete system. Mature systems engineering / software development firms do this day in and day out. Yes, it can lead to slower iteration on the core technology and capabilities, but it is critically important to consider. I suspect it's often a pinch point when start-ups try to scale, for example when a piece of technology then needs to consider user access rights, etc.
So while I agree with the spirit of what Frankin is saying, I'm just left with distaste for what obvious posturing and pandering it is.
First, Uber did this brazenly and, one could argue, openly. Their hubris needs to be curbed this way.
Second, Uber explicitly wanted to go after a member of the press. The press is our shield against all the evil that is done against the public by governments and corporations.
We need our journalists to feel absolutely safe in their chosen profession. We may disagree with or even hate some of them, but we have to show people considering such an important career that it won't put them at risk.
As far as I know, Google and other companies are using/gathering our information equally legally. They might be doing something nefarious with it, but at least they claim to be responsible and honorable. With the exception of their press releases, Uber seems proud of their ruthlessness and lack of integrity.
The reported quote was couched in the hypothetical; reported out of an 'off the record' private event; by a reporter that was the +1 of an invite.
Those are major caveats. While they don't excuse anything, they also (frankly) answer several of the senators questions.
I find it un-imaginable that Franken (or anyone) has never articulated views in the hypothetical, that may or may not have been in line with "corporate policy".
Imagine if the 405 freeway was mic'd during rush hour. We'd have prisons full of criminals charged with thought crimes.
All that being said, Uber needs to get its act together. Transportation is a heavily regulated industry for a variety of reasons. There are personal safety issues involved, interstate commerce, and all kinds of local issues.
Uber needs to get itself in a position where politicians and the public can trust the company to operate in a manner deserving of the public trust. And in that direction, it seems to me at least, that they are showing a pattern of behaviour that is more at issue than any single event.
It seems their general approach is open to question, on quite a few fronts. Wether or not rebellious, upstart brands are a problem, I don't think thats it. They seem to take on take on a air privledged 'bro's' who are untouchable and shady. And that is something that they don't want to be type-cast as, when ultimately their business relies on the public's trust.
"Off the record" isn't some magic phrase you can use to stop a journalist from reporting what you say.
It's a carefully constructed agreement between a source and a journalist. That agreement will cover what material is divulged and how it is sourced.
It is wrong to suggest that this meeting was "off the record".
The ethical nuances here are lost because you have a sketchy company and an ethically challenged publication.
But in the same vein as the Mozilla incident, freedom of the press, nor freedom of speech...does not protect a citizen from another citizen.
If a muck-raking journalist wants to hide behind ethics to keep citizens from muck-rakin them, that's simply not protected by law or frankly by any real ethical consideration, other than the sense of moral proportionality that reflects their own behaviour.
It is a bizzarre point, but unfortunately its fundamentally correct.
The only "new" ethical consideration in this flap has to do with using specific information (presumably confidential company information) to bolster an attack. From what i've read, nobody suggested that this type of attack was only possible using a certain set of information.
Notwithstanding the distastefullness here, this is simply nothing that is not done in every major national election. So in that regard, the senator could equally send such a complaint to the DNCC.
What is actually the legitimate issue here is something much narrower: whether or not a malicious person would have the potential to abuse information that is not publicly available to do this.
That is very much a legit issue, but I'd be interested to see if the actual discussion would have been so bizaerre as to require this formulation. That would bring the company and its policies into the actual discussion in a way which simply articulating that low ethical standards swing both ways does not.
For example, a malicious threat would be something along the lines of "I know where you were last weekend at xx:xx" where this information would be used to extort or blackmail someone (eg, an affair etc). This type of threat would specifically hinge on the abuse of private information. Whether or not this was somehow allowed under any user agreement or employee policy is beside the point--its blatantly an abuse of implicit trust.
That is an entirely different type of situation that saying if "reporter X" is unethica, someone might very well do the equivalent of a classified-security clearance review of "reporter X" and articulate the findings in public. [1]
Needless to say, most people that look at this cannot distinguish the two cases, or if they can they are happy to disregard the reality of how the world works already.
The second issue is the idea of proportionality. In that when faced with some level or argument or counter argument, you dis-repscet the process of discourse and engage in ad-hominem. That is to say, in this case, retaliation with character assasination.
Again, I think this cuts both ways here. Being tone deaf and lacking in porportionality is a problem for ethically challenged startups--not doubt--but its also a problem with tabloids (see: uk phone hacking) and social media lynch mobs.
[1] If it meets the test of being legal and proportionate, its not really unethical by default.
People need to realise that journalists will report everything. They will report as much as they possibly can. Unless you have a written agreement with a specific journalist that covers what is or isn't allowed to be printed you must assume that they will print everything.
The meeting was not private.
You keep saying things like "ethically challenged". That's wrong -- this is standard journalistic ethics.
That's a gutter dwelling argument that is bullshit on both-sides. Because it supports the idea that private citizens should also be free to trash journalists. After all, if they have no ethics, they have no moral high ground to use as a defense against their own tactics.
So you are arguing the point of the Uber-douche.
Nice one.
You've twisted that to suggest that journalists are the same as an Uber executive digging dirt. The difference is that the journalist publishes under their name, via an editor and publisher, and is prepared to go to jail to protect their source.
As someone else has written, if you think you need a (written) contract to enforce ethics, you don't understand the concept of 'ethics'. Contracts are useful because they create legal -- not simply ethical -- obligations.
In any event, if you don't appreaciate any of this, we can agree to disagree.
The man laid out a detailed plan to harm reporters while talking to reporters. That it's hypothetical doesn't matter. If a mob boss told journalists about how easy it would be to make journalists disappear, that it was hypothetical and off the record wouldn't matter.
Senior executives of zillion-dollar companies do not accidentally talk to journalists. It could be that the guy is just a total idiot. But when otherwise smart people do something apparently stupid that just happens to serve their interests, it's reasonable to think that it was entirely intentional.
ftfy
If we want to make hyperbolic analogies, the closest one might be a mob boss suggesting hiring hit men to kill other hit men while talking to a hit man.
This seems incredibly naive to me. It's certainly idealistic, and it's extremely difficult to believe that the media, at least the American media, isn't heavily biased by capitalism. Sensationalism does more harm than good, and it's trivial to "buy" press coverage. The New York Times may very well have enough integrity to refuse to be bought, but it's a common practice to solicit journalists to write articles about new products and such. If you have an agenda, there are journalists ready to be paid to support it. Not only is the press sometimes not our shield, sometimes they're actually a sword against us.
While Travis' comments were certainly regrettable, there's an important distinction between talking about doing something and actually doing it. Almost anytime someone is called out for something they've said, the comments are taken out of context. It's easy for me to imagine that what was said was a reaction to a journalist behaving badly, writing an article with an agenda. It seems likely that the suggestion to use trip data was a suggestion to stoop to the same level, rather than simply to be evil towards someone who was noble and with unquestionable integrity. Uber gets a lot of press, and while some fair points are made, the press I've seen tends to be overly aggressive, misinformed, and usually displaying a clear agenda. What Uber is doing is revolutionary, disrupting well entrenched business models. When you disrupt an industry, you make enemies of the people who were lazily profiting from it. That doesn't mean Uber is good and their opponents are evil. But make no mistake that there is a battle going on, and ugly things are being said on both sides. We're all a bunch of idiots if we waste time letting ourselves be drawn in by someone else's agenda rather than assessing the merits of each side independently and voting with our wallets.
But there are many idealistic journalists (look at ProPublica, for many examples) who are doing important work, exposing things that aren't always sexy, but are definitely in the public's interest.
Again, we're talking about journalists who have _acted_ with agenda against a company, and we're up in arms over off-hand _comments_ about retaliation. Neither party is altruistic and both are financially motivated. If the press acts with agenda and now reports on the retaliatory comments that were made, they can no longer be regarded as unbiased and fair. I'm not going to take their side, and I'm certainly not going to defend them when they appear to be the real bully. Nor am I going to support Al Franken as he attempts to exploit the situation for his own benefit. We've got bigger problems to deal with than who's more butt-hurt about what someone else said.
"Dear Mr. Kalanick - how dare you allow your staff to announce an idea to spy on the American people and use the information you learn against them? Didn't you know that privilege is exclusively for the US government?
You know we will partner with you to abuse the vast information available on the habits of Americans through your service when the time is right - no need to get people riled up more than they already are.
Best Regards, Uncle Sam."
Uncle Sam is _people_. Good people, bad people, influential people, less influential people.
[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/al-franken-nsa_n_34...
So all federal government is responsible for all other arms of federal government, Al Franken is a member of the federal government, therefore guilt by association?
Just a question, but are you ok with your movements being tracked by Uber? Are you ok with any corporation spying on your movements and potentially using that information against you? So because the NSA spies on you, it's not ok for Al Franken to stand up to corporate privacy issues? Just saying ...
Yes, I would like to see anyone stand up for privacy issues, corporate or federal. As has been pointed out in other threads on this post, Al Franken actually does stand against both.
So let's agree that "the pot calling the kettle black" is a bad analogy because not all federal government necessarily agrees with other arms of the federal governments' actions. Yeah?
At least someone is speaking up. You criticize Al Franken for not going after everyone else as well, but why not criticize the other 99 senators who haven't done anything. I apologize in advance if I'm missing another senator that has done anything like this about privacy.
This is nearly meaningless political grandstanding because Uber happens to be both well-known as well as currently in the headlines.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/the-nsa-has-at-least...
And here's Rand Paul proposing a bill to end warrantless NSA wiretaps. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rand-paul-bill-would-curb-nsa...
Complaining about gov't behaviour compared to private enterprise is like complaining about how kernel-level processes can do so much more than userland processes.
You voted for them, which is their way of saying "see, it's in the fine print, hahaha"
It never will - Franken loses his chairmanship of the committee come January when the Republicans take power, which only serves to highlight that this "investigation" is merely him pandering to his constituency on his way out.
http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2562
"... that this "investigation" is merely him pandering to his constituency on his way out."
An alternative, and more likely, explanation is that he is just being consistent in representing his constituency throughout his career.
It seems like arbitrary application of political power in this way is more likely to increase political lobbying dollars than anything (make The Eye glare a different way or get your competitor).
Where is the outrage over Target, Home Depot, et al carelessly storing and allowing credit card information for hundreds of millions of customers to be compromised?
Where is the outrage over my landloard losing my sensitive information and having no liability if/when my identity is stolen?
Use/abuse of data by companies is nothing compared to the damage that is done when data is stored improperly. How are we allowing companies to hold so much information that is so potentially damaging to us yet not able to hold them legally/financially accountable when our data is compromised because of their negligence?
I'm not sure what it would look like, but regulation and penalties should be focused on sensitive data storage not use.
http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2699
Here's one to Google from Markey:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/googles-pl...
Here's one to the FTC about Facebook from Warner:
http://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?...
Here's one from Schumer to Zuckerberg:
http://www.schumer.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=324221
Here's one from Blumenthal and Franken to Social Intelligence (never heard of them before):
http://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blum...
I found all these by Googling something like "senator letter [company name] privacy". Most don't get covered here because they are typically routine pandering by politicians that doesn't change anything. (As is this letter IMO.)
Uber is not (yet) on the inside, and its brazen, undiplomatic and downright stupid behavior is an embarrassment and a liability for those who work to destroy privacy quietly.
A backlash against Uber might escalate into a broader backlash, and that makes a lot of people very nervous.
If you're a U.S. senator, you're probably not all that plugged-in to what various companies are doing with privacy. Heck, I'm constantly learning new things: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634687.
> and so it can be used for political posturing.
So? You're unlikely to be able to build-up the mindshare to tackle an industry-wide problem without meaningful high-profile examples. Uber happens to make a particularly good one: they have a "God Mode" where they can see everyone's physical location! Quite a bit more visceral than uploading your e-mail address to Facebook and following you around with 1x1 pixel images.
Jurisdiction: (1) Oversight of laws and policies governing
the collection, protection, use and dissemination of
commercial information by the private sector, including
online behavioral advertising, privacy within social
networking websites and other online privacy issues;
(2) Enforcement and implementation of commercial
information privacy laws and policies; (3) Use of
technology by the private sector to protect privacy,
enhance transparency and encourage innovation;
(4) Privacy standards for the collection, retention, use
and dissemination of personally identifiable commercial
information; and (5) Privacy implications of new or
emerging technologies.http://www.pcworld.com/article/2050720/tech-firms-push-for-n...
http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/1/4790484/can-the-nsa-transp...
Politics aren't always black and white..
The 2009 dissent, led by a senior NSA official and embraced by others at the agency, prompted the Obama administration to consider, but ultimately abandon, a plan to stop gathering the records.
The secret internal debate has not been previously reported. The Senate on Tuesday rejected an administration proposal that would have curbed the program and left the records in the hands of telephone companies rather than the government. That would be an arrangement similar to the one the administration quietly rejected in 2009.
http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=news&id=2513
> Since I came to the Senate, I've been working to fix this. I've supported amendments to the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that would have required greater public reporting on the use of surveillance authorities and greater disclosures about the legal opinions and safeguards that support them. When those amendments failed, I voted against renewing both of these laws.
From the article you posted, you left out a few relevant quotes.
> In an early 2006 AlterNet interview before he was officially running for Senate, Franken disparaged the Bush administration's NSA warrantless-surveillance program
> At a September 2009 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the reauthorization of expiring components of the USA Patriot Act, Franken read the Fourth Amendment to the assistant attorney general for national security as a means of questioning the act's "roving wiretap" provision. Franken would also eventually vote against a 2012 reauthorization of the FISA amendments that give the government wide surveillance authority.
> Before voting against reauthorizing the FISA amendments last year, Sen. Franken also cosponsored and voted for three amendments that his office says would have "improved the bill on transparency and privacy."
Not to mention all of the lobbyist pressure Uber is experiencing on the business side of things, this is the kind of stuff taxi driver unions and companies/entities threatened by Uber's business model can only dream of getting. They are not doing themselves any favours here.
It seems that Uber have well and truly put their foot in it this time over any of the other controversies and scandals that have involved the company. And yet, after all of this, Emil Michael gets to keep his job? Seems to me the only way Uber can start to make amends and repair their broken image here is to make some effort and fire Emil.
You'd be surprised . . .
The barrier to entry for an Uber competitor is quite low and trust is the only thing that keeps Uber afloat. If they don't realize that and act accordingly, they could die relatively quickly.
It's a business with a very strong network effects: you need both sides of the market because without drivers, users are not interested and without users drivers are not interested.
Uber seems to have a big lead over competition here, is growing like crazy and they raised insane amounts of capital so that they can grow faster than competition.
But even without network effects, I don't see that as an easy to replicate business: * you need a great iOS app * you need a great Android app * you need a backed that is both fast and has rock solid 24/7 reliability. it can't be like Twitter in early days * you need to become a payment processor that interjects itself between users and drivers, which I'm sure comes with its own set of legal and logistic challenges * and you need to do it internationally * and you need a massive operation team whose job is to onboard new drivers (recruit, train, supervise) * you need a legal team because every state can have different rules * and you need them also internationally
I really don't see any of the above as easy to pull off and to do it all well, that requires both technical and operational excellence that few have.
> you need a great Android app
Neither of these is rocket surgery. Good devs can create an app very quickly, especially if your directions are "clone this other app."
> you need a backed that is both fast and has rock solid 24/7 reliability. it can't be like Twitter in early days
So you need something that isn't node + redis + mongo + riak running heroku through cloudflare. This is also quite easy.
> you need to become a payment processor that interjects itself between users and drivers, which I'm sure comes with its own set of legal and logistic challenges * and you need to do it internationally
> and you need a massive operation team whose job is to onboard new drivers (recruit, train, supervise)
> you need a legal team because every state can have different rules
> and you need them also internationally
The beauty of all of these things is that Uber has already done many of them for you. Unless they have all of their drivers under NDA (possible, but unlikely) and haven't published any of that informaton on their website, you're going to profit from hundreds of thoussands if not millions of dollars of legal work that Uber has already done for you. It's not as simple as a sed script on a legal document, but it's way (way way) easier than starting from scratch.
The best part is that your drivers can also be Uber drivers, so you don't need the volume that Uber has today - you can slowly build up both sides of your market as long as the friction for drivers is minimal and the ease for users is equal or better.
Is it easy? Fuck no. Is it about 1000% easier for you now that Uber has done all of the hard work? Hell yes.
Note that autowale.in (an Uber competitor, currently profitable) was started on an investment of about 30 lac - roughly speaking 1 year runway for 3-5 engineers. Various tricks: start in 1 city, do the onboarding manually, and ignore the legalities until you are big enough to be noticed.
Autowale.in dealt with the bootstrap issue directly buying inventory from drivers. I.e. autowale.in pays the driver for 20km each day, and then tries to find customers to use that inventory.
The major barrier to entry here is the fact that Uber is really good. But if Uber decides to exploit their market condition and rip people off, that will change.
It's the reason Uber is taking such extreme measures to scare "it's" drivers into not simultaneously listing themselves on competing apps. See: http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/04/technology/uber-lyft/
But how Uber could benefit from answering this fishing expedition? If I were Uber I'd simply stonewall. They are under no legal compunction to answer, and virtually no answer would help them.
The federal government can make your life extremely difficult, fully funded startup or not.
Profitability has a lot to do with how you spend your money. "Startup" is commonly used to connote a small, new business. The dictionary says it is a "fledgling" business.
If Uber's revenue were the GDP of a nation, it would have 40 countries ranked below it. That's not a "fledgling" business, even if it isn't profitable.
Here's a nice white paper on Congress's subpoena power: http://www.mayerbrown.com/files/Publication/ec1203b2-a787-44...
"The Enforcement Process. Congressional investigations often begin informally, with the interested committee or subcommittee first seeking information on a voluntary basis (i.e., by sending a letter request or asking for an informal interview), rather than by issuing compulsory subpoenas. Although there is no legal obligation that a party comply with such a request, it is typically in the responding party’s best interest to do so"
It's an opportunity to establish publicly that your company won't be engaging in any of the kind of shenanigans that can cost you customers in a competitive industry.
pos id points hours
6 8632209 292 15
9 8633707 129 10
12 8633683 204 14
13 8632405 139 14
17 8632363 140 15
18 8633286 58 12
20 8632043 161 16
21 8632018 141 16
What's happening?
The phenomenon you're describing happens routinely, for multiple reasons. One is that we've been experimenting with flushing the front page of older stories periodically when there is a crop of newer ones that, if not for the older ones' inertia, would make the front page. This is related to the work we've been doing to improve the odds for good stories that would otherwise fall through the cracks. We might eventually change the main ranking algorithm to accommodate this, but our approach tends to be to do manual experiments first, software experiments second, and modify the core HN system last.
> when there is a crop of newer ones that, if not for the older ones' inertia
since the stories that were above this one were older stories, some much older (16 hours vs 10): it seems the story wasn't pushed down to make room for newer ones, but to make room for older ones.
Also, there are other reasons why stories fall suddenly. My main point is that it's routine. Sample bias comes into play here in that one mostly notices it with stories one was paying attention to.
Completely ignoring it would likely bring quite unpleasant results. Even with the subcommittee chairmanship changing party hands, Senators aren't going to look kindly on a company ignoring a request for information.
Uber could refuse the subpoena. If they did, Uber could be held in contempt of congress. But, that would require a full vote -- which seems very unlikely.
Hilariously, the last person to refuse to testify before congress was an IRS director (Lois Lerner). She was held in contempt... and then nothing happened whatsoever.
Congress's real power is to pass laws. Franken won't be doing much of that with the Republicans in control of the Senate.
I wouldn't be shaking in my boots if I was Uber...
The best example is the EU/UK "cookie law." It was impractical to begin with, mostly serving to allow legislatures the opportunity to be morally outraged and incensed. Then it devolved into "all sites must have a nagging popup."
Realistically, the only way to achieve any of the law's goals was in the browser, not laws dictating what websites can do.
This letter is mostly is mostly a criticism of Uber's bureaucracy. Privacy policies, training, etc. Again, not really the place to tackle any of these issues especially if the intent isn't there. Maybe, phones could do a better job of letting users control the data they leak. We don't really know how to deal with data in which the quanta is not sensitive, but aggregation makes it scary.
An interesting point here is that the "statement" really sounded like tipsy macho bullshitting, not an actual threat or indication of intent. What the statement does indicate is a violation of the "don't be evil" maxim. Hey, Uber have assholes in high places. They have a lot of power. How many assholes are out there with dangerous access to data?
I couldn't stand SL at TC but I'm 100% behind on her this one.
Real journalists give full notice about potential conflicts of interest (especially when they write flimsy attack articles). Exposing that unacknowledged conflict of interest doesn't seem like it puts someone's family in harms way. All it would do is show clear bias in a clearly biased attack article.
For example: "When was the last time the US Senate got involved after you went on a rant at a party?"
I am not a SVP of a company valued in the billions working in a highly regulated industry. I also didn't do the rant at a private "party" designed to improve relations with prominent members of the media that covers my particular industry.
Also, the Senate sends letters on all sorts of mundane matters. That is not the issue of proportion here. The issue is the media giving undue emphasis to stories involving the media.
So you may think it's overblown, but I'd like Uber to feel that this is not OK, so it got me to finally install the Lyft app which I'll be giving a try.
I think it's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. I don't know if you read Sarah's actual article, but it reads as if this guy called her up and told her that he was going to murder her children. It is that sentiment, not facts about what actually happened, that has carried this "story" so far. She is exploiting others' fears about stalking and sexism for her own personal gain. IMO, that makes her far more evil than anything Uber could or would do.
Nope. ONE exec went on a rant at a party about what HE would hypothetically like to do to a self-declared enemy of the company. Have you ever been really frustrated with someone and said "Ugh sometimes I'd like to ring his/her neck" or similar? Now imagine someone overheard you, took it literally, and called the person you were frustrated with. Sensing an opportunity to exploit the situation, they call the police, contact Senators about you, and write a blog post about how you threatened to eradicate him/her and everyone they've ever spoken to from the planet in the most violent possible way - all in an effort to get clicks on ads on your blog. That is basically what happened here.
You're right about one thing, it is disgusting.
https://medium.com/@petersimsie/can-we-trust-uber-c0e793deda...
How about looking at it this way: even if everyone has had a moment of wanting to "wring someone's neck" as you say down-thread, I don't expect company executives to actually suggest that they might hire some goons to go rough up someone who negatively reviewed their product. An executive who says something like that in public is an idiot, and I personally would seriously reconsider whether I want that person to be in charge of anything at my company, or represent my company in public ever again.
There should be no sliding scale for things like this. Period.
As the bumper sticker says "Government doesn't like competition" and the Uber exec clearly voiced intention to venture into typical government territory - illegal usage of private info against the ones whom you don't like.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/al-franken-nsa_n_34...
http://www.techpolicydaily.com/technology/nsa-surveillance-r...
I just think it's incredibly naive to think that they wouldn't use it in any way possible.
I'm actually more surprised if I find a company who is actively supporting users privacy. In this day and age, you just have to assume a company is tracking everything they can to find out more about you and your preferences.
Also, if you don't like being tracked using Uber, make a statement with your wallet and don't use the service - problem solved.
As soon as they publicise this data (identifiable) to people other than employees that have access to it anyway, or the person concerned, that's where it becomes an issue. But I haven't heard of any instances of that yet.
In all reality, maybe he said these things just to get the free advertising? It's too bad it's come to this? That said, is there any freeware uber/Lyft type code floating around? Just curious?
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201403/uber-cab-c...
Yeah seems more like an insult than a transcript to a conversation.
Hopefully, such lack of humility doesn't make them end up dead in a bath tub like Whitney Houston. Success went to her head and as she noted in an interview the high she felt after her hit, "I Will Always Love You," could never be matched. Thus she snorted everything up her nose and then some to try and match that high. Eventually, leading her to a downward spiral and dead at 48.
Uber to become Whitney Houston possibly...