I'm not a fan of how taxis in Australia are operated, but the law was there to prevent unapproved businesses to pick up passenger.
The law was ignored and it impacted real people who had owned taxi licence plates, sometimes for generations. At $350k a pop, it was an asset that came under attack.
It only was an "asset" because they created a restricted supply oligopoly. Somehow they were being rewarded for very ordinary service. Uber created a necessary disruption to shake up the identity.
Uber acted in the same shitty way and ran illegal taxis and price dumped even in places which did not have monopolies. This is their modus operandi, illegally enter new markets and then paying the fines and starting to follow the law once caught.
Exactly. There should be additional penalties each time a parent entity operates this way across regions. Right now 180M is just the cost of doing business in a country for Uber. There is less incentive to not operate illegally for other players.
Uber's global revenue was $22.5B in just the year 2023. This class action lawsuit has been dragging on since 2019. I completely get the 'regulatory capture' aspect everyone is supporting Uber for but breaking laws and regulations as a M.O. needs to be dealt with more than a slap on the wrist.
That's revenue my man. Uber's last quarter income from operations was $658m. So $180m isn't far off 10%. Also look at same time the year before, they are way in the hole. This fine will hurt them (if they ever have to pay it).
The point is that the "local laws and regulations" were an unjust monopoly. Ride-hires definitely improved the taxi experience from what it was before.
It was a deliberately tightly restricted market to ensure taxi drivers could make a liveable wage. Now the industry is filled with people forced to work two or three jobs to survive and a tech company is capturing profits off the top. That might be a better outcome for customers but it sure doesn’t seem like one for the workers involved.
>Anytime I see/hear someone rambling in email/on meeting, I know they are not confident in what they are saying.
Well then you are dismissing people unfairly. You won't hear a peep out of me if I don't know the answer. On the other hand, if I have mountains of data that proves my point, or if the problem is nuanced, you'll hear all of it.
I'm working on getting better at distilling that data into short, actionable points for people like VPs (because I'm now at the level where these people read what I write).
But if you were to assume that I'm not confident, based on my inability to boil it down, you'd be drawing the wrong conclusion. You should listen to me because I'm nearly always right, and when I'm wrong, I'm usually the first to identify that fact and provide a solution.
Also I am autistic, which certainly impacts my communication.
> On the other hand, if I have mountains of data that proves my point, or if the problem is nuanced, you'll hear all of it.
I wouldn't consider this rambling. There are many people who just talk to fill space. Their point was made in the first 10 seconds and then they just keep going. IMO, that's very different than going over all the data or explaining a nuance.
I'd argue its far better to say something like, "Good question. I need to think about that for a minute" rather than just sit there saying nothing at all after being asked something. I know a few engineers who do that and while their answer is normally fine, the awkward silence makes me and others question their social skills. Not their intelligence.
I know other engineers who do the same thing but say, "Let me think about that for a minute" and I've never heard of anyone questioning their ability to think quickly or social skills.
What you are suggesting is not wrong, its just a bit.. rude? awkward? Why impose that feeling on others when a clarifying sentence can prevent it?
I've seen an interviewer react negatively to a CISO candidate who wanted to actually think about our question.
Nobody paid attention to that interviewer, but they're probably not the only one in the panel to have that (wrong, in my opinion) reaction -- just the one to voice it.
I said when you are the question asker, give the person time to answer. Too often, particularly in challenging conversations, the asker will not wait for an answer.
When you are the answerer, yes, do what you suggest but try not to ramble.
The best impromptu speakers, who can carry debates and thrive on off the cuff arguments, in my experience were full of shit. When I critically look at what they said, it usually boiled down to: (a) if you're not with us, then you are against us (b) you just need to believe, work harder, and stop complaining.
Probably less amazing if it's a shady place in the middle of nowhere, with a dirty bathrooms, and shady characters roaming around asking for money. I don't see having to hanging out in some of those places for 30 minutes a positive experience. It's got it's excitement, but usually not the good kind of excitement.
I've been to countless superchargers in a good chuck of the country. I've never seen a shady one with anyone begging, dirty bathrooms, or anything similar. They're in reasonable places, mid to upscale, next to grocery stores, etc.
That's good that it's the case. I was mainly pointing out that if it's ever not the case, and the place is not one would enjoy hanging out around, with an IC car it's a 5 minute deal and you're out of there. With an EV it's a half an hour, and possibly going out of your way, which adds extra time.
For instance, when I travel with my regular IC car, I don't plan or think too much about where to refuel, how I am going to drive there, etc. It's usually a last minute decision. Having to spend half an hour somewhere it's a bit more tricky, now the trip revolves around recharging, waiting, possibly combining with lunch or dinner, etc.
Pretty much anywhere. chargers are scattered all over. not every town has them, they are often hidden, and off the beaten path. If you start navigating to them when you are down to 150 miles of range you will ba okay and not have to go too far out of your way.
It's become commonly accepted to mean any algorithmic system.
It's probably better to use an accepted umbrella term rather than multiple specific scientific ones in this case.
Fuzzy and misused words are pushed to muddy the semantics. Actual AI doesn't exist.
If/else, case, and while statements are basic building blocks of automation and computational logic. Intelligence is far from anything we've done with computers. It is a parlor trick looking for money right now.
The word "actual" is doing a lot of lifting there. Artificial intelligence has existed for decades. Presumably you mean "artificial general intelligence", whatever that's even supposed to mean (it's subjective, and for many people it's a matter of literal religious faith that humans have something called souls which machines can never possibly emulate, and therefore "actual AI" is literally impossible as far as they're concerned.) Well anyway... if you want to say AGI, just say AGI. AI is more general than that and the term is well established to encompass a great many methods and kinds of systems. Many kinds of AI are very primitive and seem trivial today; they are nonetheless "actual AI".
It's not "sloppy use of words", both the term and the practice of AI have been around for far longer than today's probabilistic models. In particular, decision trees and similar are some of the simplest forms of AI.
The difference between an AI and a "regular" bunch of if/else statements is, in my opinion, the ease of adding new rules to the system. That's why something like Prolog counts as AI.
With a technical audience, it is better to use actual terminology.
However the general public does not have the knowledge to understand these. These are the people using ChatGPT and for them it is AI. We can correct them, but it's likely they won't care.
The general public is being misled with overwrought appeals to emotion and misused terms applied in a deliberately overbroad manner. AI may contain algorithms but an algorithm is not AI.
Social media feed algorithms are bad, and the public is awakening to the damage they cause. But they are not AI. As Yan LeCun pointed out recently, AI is actually the solution to the problems created by "algorithms."
If you don't want a company to have your DNA, don't give it to them.
It seems like a business was built around people wanting to be told they had 20% more fun in their bloodline, for a fee. Those people didn't consider the implications of giving this kind of data to a private company.
Now the company is saying, "we got the DNA you gave us, for a fee and we don't want to go to court to fight you about how we use it".
Just don't give them your DNA. It's not that hard.
I've been in the game a long time and there is not much here I would disagree with.
"Working in software engineering often means long working hours. Most of the time, you are glued to a computer screen, with little work-life balance."
For sure this is true. The younger you are, the easier it is to deal with and be amazingly productive.
As you get older, life creeps back in and you get a bit of balance.
When you get to my age it becomes less about screentime and more about problem solving. Something I am very happy about.
Eh that's one of the least universal ones in there. I've worked in tech for a decade now across 6 positions in 4 companies and I have never had any complaints about WLB. If anything, I frequently feel like I'm getting away with something when it comes to how little I can actually get by with doing if I want to.
I'm not a fan of how taxis in Australia are operated, but the law was there to prevent unapproved businesses to pick up passenger.
The law was ignored and it impacted real people who had owned taxi licence plates, sometimes for generations. At $350k a pop, it was an asset that came under attack.