badusername

And many others: http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/20/buzzfeeds-ben-smith-plays-...

I'm not refuting any ethical questions that were being thrown around, but I would never trust Buzzfeed to do any honest and serious journalism. These are the same people that created the most annoying clickbait lists, sponsored news and their whole design seems to be centered around getting as many ad impressions as possible. Sensationalizing a story for their own benefits is not beyond them.

I think the point is that it could be pooled in a way to minimize dropoffs (by knowing the pickups and destinations beforehand).

I've noticed that most of these walls have an endstate of penises.

No matter how interesting or artful it was, there is always a human drive to defile and debase. Or we start out there because that's all we can do when faced with an empty wall. It's an interesting experiment though.

That's a great product - neat packaging of a technology that's mature enough for this use. That was a horribly awkward video as well.

I'd say that, while this almost sounds like a reasonable argument to put forward, it isn't probably going to work that way.

Case in point: Gett in NYC. They are running a $10 flat fare anywhere in Manhattan, and promising drivers double pay for three months already. That should undercut incumbents as well as cause drivers to flee, right? Why is Uber and Lyft totally winning NYC while Gett is not even operating at 1/10th the scale?

I think it's got to do with liquidity and reliability. Even if the driver has 10 apps running, the probability that the driver gets the first/most ping from the app with the best client liquidity is extremely high. As long as he's constantly engaged, there is no need for him to open another app. On the flip side, when you're small, your supply runs out quick. If clients opening the app constantly see that, they'll eventually not open your app and go to one with the most supply liquidity. There are strong network advantages in this game. Your paper mostly discounts that.

Daily weighting is made up without any real insight into operations. Furthermore, whatsthefare says that it bases its own approximations on relatively sparse data from user's use of their systems, not realtime monitoring on a service that's probably prone to constant change.

I think I mostly find it incorrect to essentially take a pin-hole view at the data through 5-6 averages, and extrapolate it towards a somewhat biased result.

Nope, he does not. If he'd studied the blog post he's linked to, it is clear that surge rates can go a few multiples at busy periods, which would make an outsized contribution to total fares even at 10-15% occurrence.

If you look at the service area on the ubernyc page, it goes way beyond the city limits (even a fixed price to the hamptons). Again, even if the percentage of these rides are low, it isn't hard to see how average trip length or average fare would be moved up significantly.

I read the article - even though it's written well, it makes a lot of hypotheticals based on hazy assumptions that seem to lead well to a result that the author probably wanted to put forward. Not the best article if you want an objective analysis on the issue.

This is great, and perfectly encapsulates all the irksome interactions and usability problems with scroll hijacking that has taken over the web in the last couple of years. I hope this article travels wide and forces a rethink of some of the strategies.

Nice try, IBM.

That seems like an illogical reasoning regarding Uber. Remember that uber only gets a small slice of whatever the "islanders" are getting. There wouldn't be any reason to deliberately make it harder for the people working unless the market itself has dictated such changes.

I agree that it is harder to see, especially if you have a backlight. If you have a well-lit room, with light coming from the top in a non-reflective angle, the display is vastly better than the matte one. (Source: I have both Apple Thunderbolt Display and old-school Apple Cinema Display with matte finish)

NYC does seem to have one of the higher rates for uberX, but still a bit cheaper than taxi - http://blog.uber.com/nyc/uberX-price-cut

This is an amazing resource. I just read a couple of them, it is gut-wrenching to read the founders' stories, but a reminder to everyone else to learn and not repeat them.

I don't agree that 20% retention statistic is a good way to view it at all. There are tons of exceptions to that rule - Amazon, Kayak, Turbotax, or even TripAdvisor. I often view that as entering one's normal "workflow" through whatever it is they are trying to do - it's a rarity, and there is a good chance that a fringe app wouldn't make it.

You underestimate the amount of capital needed to even make a small dent in public transportation. I'm sure facebook's spend is not even a miniscule amount of what any public transportation project would take.

It's quite amazing that these companies provide commuter buses, and that's probably the best way every private company can help the community. Each one of those buses probably takes hundreds of cars off the road, easing traffic and reducing pollution. I don't understand why the media is obsessed with viewing private buses as a symbol of privilege, and not as a practical solution to bay area's commute problem.

Credit card processing itself cost 2.7%, on average.

It's interesting how the dynamics work these days, and how Amazon just doesn't seem to be getting it. People are perfectly happy to sign a 2-year contract on a well-designed fully-rounded functional phone, they do that by the tens of millions. They even pay $200 to get the phone. The phone has become personal, and also a necessity as you go through the day. Going through 2 years on a badly designed phone just because somebody gave it to you for free doesn't really makes sense anymore.

More realistically, I think it was obvious to them that they couldn't make a watch in a singular style and expect wide adoption. Personal style is a very important factor in watch purchases.

Exactly the opposite seems to be true. Uber had a presence in the keynote today with a way to ride without ever creating a login, which should enable lot more people to use the service. If you thought that the advantage Uber had was mostly was in minimizing payment friction, that would be pretty wrong.

The current valuation would mean that Yahoo, as a company, is valued at around 14-18 billion. Note that even though Yahoo's ownership is about $35B, a tax-rate of about 35% is taken into account, even though the eventual tax-rate might be something quite different.

Overestimates seems to be a wrong label, having gone through several H1B visa and transfer applications myself. I would say that most lawyers simply fill in the actual amount.

5000 cancelled rides over a year does not mess up a system that reportedly has a millions of trips per year.

Where the hell is Facebook? Born on this earth to slow it down.

You are locked in at the rate if you get in before Jan 2016. I don't see anything wrong with that. It's promotional marketing to catch up to other players.

How is Amazon able to offer such low rates when the VISA/MasterCard/Amex processing charges are themselves higher than that?

I suspect that there is a bit of smart PR from Lyft here as well. It seems like a sympathy-for-the-underdog card being played here.

I've used both services quite heavily, and talked to tons of drivers. Drivers seem happy with both the services. I wonder if Uber is just getting big enough that some media names love to take sides. Knowing many people at these companies, I'm not sure if we are objectively assessing this situation.

Seems like you can split the fare with everyone that's riding.

https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can-I-s...

Seems like what you are describing is already possible by using single sign-on providers like onelogin and okta.

Though I agree with you on the weather bit, there is already a history of yellow and red cards from the tournament already, which could have huge implications on the tournament ahead. (For eg, Luis Suarez getting booted is one.)

Who's still printing these days? :) It's safe to say that iPads and smartphones have made it easy to consume content anywhere needed. Interactive documents are definitely where the puck is headed.