physcab

I think people are vastly over-estimating how much time they are saving using these "on-demand" apps. For a mom who is trying to juggle 2 children, yes, I can see this as a huge help. But for the vast majority of the target demographic (young, single-ish, urban upper middle class folks), we're not gaining hours in a day. We're experiencing instant gratification. We're stimulating the reward centers in our brain that remind us how great it is to be 2 again: press a button, get a prize.

I recently started coming to the realization that the "on-demand" lifestyle is having a much more detrimental affect on my life enjoyment. When I'm consumed with messaging, pressing buttons, working, social media, filling my head with anxiety of the next thing, I am losing myself in the future. It takes an enormous amount of effort to be mindful. Cooking, engaging with others, sitting in silence and letting thoughts bubble up, and even chores. These are all little moments that keep me grounded and self-aware and I've think that has made me a better person.

Apartments in SF now are $1800 / studio - $2200 / 1br. so...

  $100k:
  - $30k taxes
  - $24k rent
  - $12k food and misc
  -------------
  $34k

$34k is about what you have to play with for investing, transportation, entertainment, fitness, saving, student loans, other debt

This makes me happy. After having been an Uber customer, then an Uber driver, and now a Lyft customer, I'm more than happy to transition my business to Lyft. Where Uber made me feel douchey, Lyft has made me feel part of a community. Even though functionally the two services are indistinguishable, I've always had better experiences with Lyft. Lyft feels more grounded. You have the opportunity, if you wish, to sit next to your driver and not treat them as a lower class citizen. I don't hear about Lyft employees being ruthless or money-grabbing. And generally all Lyft drivers I've met have been happy Uber driver converts. I totally buy the Southwest Airlines angle they are trying to achieve.

There was a service that used to do this called ChaCha. It raised a bunch of money but never became profitable and went out of business I believe.

Many people here are making the argument that this is more efficient than opening up an app or going to a UI. However after looking at one poster's times of actually using the service, it seems like the opposite. (http://brianbeck.com/images/magic-times.png)

For someone who gets really overwhelmed by too many texts, this seems like a lot of back and forth compared to just googling to find the number of the restaurant and ordering.

Thats horrible, but I don't see where it says Lockitron. If you thought Lockitron Bolt, I think thats different from the Bolt they were talking about.. https://www.bolt.io/

There's actually a very simple answer for this. When you go to Yahoo.com on an iOS device it asks you if you want Yahoo to be the default search engine. Since Yahoo is a popular portal (I go to Yahoo news atleast a few times a day on my iOS device) people can inadvertently switch to Yahoo. This has happened to me numerous times and I couldn't figure out why. Then I figured out that Yahoo puts up a popup which I promptly clicked "ok" to get it out of the way, then wondered time and time again why my iPhone was always ignoring my default search preferences which was Google.

How are you getting the data from Braintree? I've tried exporting my data from them before but they don't seem to support an export API. Are you getting raw CC data from them?

Its entirely ok to feel anger, just as it is entirely to feel happiness or sadness. There are no right or wrong emotions. The grieving process is a multi-stage process- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance and you can go through any emotion at any period in time in whatever order it comes. The only real way to truly get over pain is to go through it- talk about it, feel it, and don't suppress it.

There's a difference between this type of post and a post by OkCupid. OkCupid is a dating platform and their blog posts are net-positives for their users. What should I say in my first opening message? What do I wear in a picture to attract a mate?

By contrast, it's simply not professional and reeks of juvenile behavior for Uber to be writing a post like this. Just because you have data and have these thoughts, doesn't mean you have to do the analysis and show the world. It doesn't help their users, it's not even that interesting, and it's not relevant to their value proposition as a business.

One of the things I've always hated about Uber is that they are in expert in euphemisms for wage cuts to consumers.

"February is a slow month! We're gonna make this deal sweet for you by lowering prices 20%!"

"March Madness, 20% off all rides!"

"Summer Special, 20% off all rides!"

"Summer Special is here to stay! 20% off all rides is permanent!"

Now, lets not kid ourselves here. Uber is always going to get their cut. If you talk to any Uber driver (I was one of them at one point in time), they'll tell you their hourly wage has dropped from $30/hr to about $18/hr now. Still not bad, but now factor in the longer hours, the maintenance fees, the city fines...not so much a good deal anymore for the other side.

Why do I dislike Uber?

1) They readily treat their drivers like second-class citizens (I was one of them at one point in time)

2) They use "Special Promotion" as a euphemism for "this wage cut is coming in 2 months, you better start shifting your spending habits"

3) In aggregate, their public persona is one of douche-baggery

Not all sharing economy "jobs" are created equal though. Being an Uber driver (or Taskrabbit or Instacarter or Postmate courier,etc) is certainly closer to being a servant than being an owner of a business. If we're thinking of societal impact, we have to also keep in mind the widening disparity between owners and workers.

Ultimately, as in all professions, you want to be supported by your manager. Building that trust is what earns you promotions, helps proliferate your work, and contributes to your career goals. So I completely agree with your comment, and would go further to say that if the OP makes it a point of stating they are self-taught, they will self select. They may have to churn through more interviews to make up for the bias, but in the long run it will be more worthwhile.

A bit OT: Why is the churn graph so wave-like?

I've had mine for 2-3 years and its been fine. Pick of the litter I suppose.

I drive for Uber too, or used to anyway. I applied because I heard stories of drivers earning $2k in a weekend during a conference which seemed like the perfect side income source. After a number of drives I jokingly told my coworkers that I'd quit because the money seemed easy. But then uber dropped their rates and I went from earning $35 / hr to $20. And now all of a sudden I had to work twice as long to make the same income.

It wasn't worth it for me to continue as I value my free time from my normal job more than $20 /hr. But there are many more people who don't have that luxury. There are drivers who sunk in a lot of money to become drivers - bought cars, dropped jobs, moved cities, etc. When a company has that power to cut your wage so easily with the sending of an email or text message, that's disproportionate power.

The data here would be very useful for performance reviews for employees. For HR, it would also be helpful for looking at morale at a high level.

> This also means that 74 people out of 21,309 (0.3%) paid to unlock internationally compared to 112 out of 5521 (2%) that paid to unlock domestically.

I don't know how many of these are DAU (you didn't say), but these numbers are not as bad as they might seem. 1%-5% is about industry average for % spenders in games. Where you need to tune things is figure out who the spenders are and raise your ROI. You state that you spent $700 to get $261 in revenue which is about 37% ROI. Not good, but its a start atleast. Obviously you want to be above 1. What I would do is invest a little in some analytics, figure out who your spenders are and cohort them. Then see if you can reduce your spend, become more targeted in your buying, while also increasing opportunities to earn more revenue. Just my $0.02

ULA uses engines manufactured from many different sources. Some rockets fly with engines manufactured in Russia, and as far as I know these aren't necessarily new engines but re-used from the 60's. But other programs use engines manufactured in the US. Atlas V rockets have engines made by Aerojet Rocketdyne which is based in Sacramento California. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_V

Also to match costs, you have to look at the payloads and the distance to space.

Falcon 9 - $56M - 4.8 metric tons to GTO

Falcon 9H - $135M - 21 metric tons to GTO

Atlas IV/V - $160M - 7 metric tons to GTO or 21 tonnes to LEO

Ariane V - $200M - ? metric tons to GTO

http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/007/131124commercial/#.U1q...

These other companies justify the higher price because they have a better track record. If you're a military customer and your payload needs to get to space, you probably will choose the "safe" bet. Its a catch-22. SpaceX needs more flights to prove their record, but they can't get more flights because of their record.

In my experience, dashboard metrics shown on TV screens for everyone to see are as useful as wall painted murals -- cool to look at but not much help driving the business forward. Everyone wants to look at different things. Marketing might want to look at ROI and LTV, PM's want to see retention rates, and execs want to see top line goals as a percentage of monthly targets. Its better to have a tool that can be customized for each owner / stakeholder.

I've heard Palantir does #1. I live in SF and my office is in SOMA- still takes me about 45 minutes to get to work on Muni. Living in SOMA would be more expensive but palatable with the stipend. That would be very convenient.

They'll recover. As much as I dislike their PR attitude (whether an act or not), they have a good product. I still listen to rap music, and I still want to know the meaning of the lyrics, so I'll go directly to the site if I have to. Google made it one click easier, but whatever, I have time.

Companies have survived much worse blows. I worked for a music company that was not only being sued by every major record company, they were also taken out of all app stores. They persisted, and today I still listen to music from their site, even almost a decade later.

You're right, I do need to support my hypothesis with more data. Consider another data point:

My dad works for a government contractor where the profit / margins are fixed, so essentially a "limited" growth company. He's been employed for over 30 years.

Why has he stayed? Because he can work 40 hours a week. His pay is good (EOY bonus is tied to a project success). He holds a position of value (to him not just to the organization). In his career he has seen more product failures than successes, but his successes were large, and he uses the knowledge from each to consult other projects in the organization (eg, he feels valued).

My takeaway is to look at your career in totality - it goes beyond equity and a worthwhile project because in a long career, you'll have many worthwhile projects and many that are not. And for the vast majority of startups, equity is worthless. It also includes interaction with team members and how you want to shape your company's future, and how your company wants to shape yours.

I think the author misses one important factor in employee retention - work / life balance. If a start-up hires a bunch of employees, everyone will be tempted to trade work for life in favor of "rocketship growth". In essence, they believe in the mission of the company so much that they are willing to sacrifice their mission for themselves. Companies who are empathetic to employee needs stand a much better chance of retaining employees. If I work for a company that lets me choose the most fulfilling work, compensates me fairly for that good work, and gives me enough time off to re-generate, and actually seems to care for my well being, I'm more more apt to stay.

When I talk to ex-coworkers, the reasons they often cite for leaving are: 1) weren't empowered to achieve their career goals 2) weren't compensated relative to the value they felt they brought 3) worked on too many failed products and 4) burned out.

I got a Naturebox ($20/month) for my mom and she loves it. I'm considering doing the same this year for her and myself and I think its the right price point. If my company stocked Naturebox treats, they would be a huge hit. Most tech companies seem to be using the same service for their snacks. Whenever I visit another office I always see the same assortment of Popchips, Doritos, Pirates Booty as well as Vitamin Water, Crystal Geyser mineral water, Odwalla, and soft drinks.

I'm all for more lunch options. Can you please offer a healthy snack solution as well? I'd pay out of pocket for this. 4pm is my hunger-witching time.

I know HN readers have a love affair with SpaceX but my dad's company is launching a rocket on Thurs at Vandenberg and it should be fun to watch:

http://www.noozhawk.com/article/atlas_v_set_for_launch_from_...

This is a really good idea for chain/ casual restaurants where people are constrained by time and value, ie Applebees. But if some of the nicer restaurants I go to start using this, it will degrade the experience as a whole because the server acts more like an MC at a show. Not having them will be a loss.

I actually might buy Google Glass just to have this app when I travel. It's the perfect app for Glass. I just hope Google can take away the auditory cues of "Ok glass, do this...". I should be able to just turn on Glass, steady my head, and get the translation.