Recent submissions

Comment · 7 years ago
Interesting. But I have personally witnessed poverty and people dying of hunger in front of my very eyes. I’d rather help those people than invest in failed moon missions.
Comment · 7 years ago
Being from India myself, I always believed these funds would be better spent on helping the less fortunate.
Comment · 7 years ago
Exactly
Comment · 7 years ago
Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean users are clamoring for it. I can think of hundreds of things that are easy that apple hasn’t done
Comment · 7 years ago
All easy software implementations. This is not a hardware story.
Comment · 7 years ago
Yep it’s just the settings, hardware is basically the same and can achieve the same result.

This is a marketing blog post.

Comment · 7 years ago
As long as you manually control the exposure and exposure time, the same can be achieved with an iPhone camera. This is not specific to Pixel.
Comment · 7 years ago
We are currently in the AI winter. What we have now is not AI it’s curve fitting. Don’t be fooled, the computer does not “understand” it’s doing blind curve fitting.
Comment · 7 years ago
Funny thing is I know of of at least two other women that currently call themselves Crypto Queen, or a variation of that, who are doing the TED circuit and similar.
Comment · 7 years ago
I know Uber shareholders do not like to hear this.
Comment · 7 years ago
Title assumes that Alan did in fact get anything wrong, which is incorrect
Comment · 7 years ago
This is not Uber's real problem. The much bigger problem is that Uber's business model by definition cannot be profitable, and here is why:

Let's start with the costs of the business model.

What are the two costs involved in transporting a customer from point A to point B? They are: - The car’s time - The (human) driver’s time

Operating or leasing a car for a certain amount of time (maintenance/insurance/gasoline) has not become significantly cheaper since Uber was created, so there is no cost reduction here.

Hiring a human's dedicated time (at least minimum wage) has also not become significantly cheaper since Uber, so here too there is no cost reduction.

Therefore the cost to transport something from point A to B has stayed exactly the same, before Uber and after Uber.

To transport something from point A to point B, someone must still carry this unavoidable cost. If the customer is not carrying this cost, then Uber must be carrying it. Uber can do so for now because investor money has subsidized the cost. But Uber can’t do this forever because investors will lose patience and stop the subsidy.

Uber can only be profitable once the unavoidable cost transport is passed on entirely to the customer. At that point, Uber will have to charge the same price as any taxi. Stated differently, Uber can never be more profitable than a taxi company on a per-ride basis.

Given that customers have no loyalty to a ride-share service, because every ride is virtually identical, any taxi company can build a similar service, removing any "walled garden" or "network effect" Uber may have hoped for. In fact, Uber clones are doing well in other countries and are creating significant headwinds for Uber.

Uber therefore has no hope of ever delivering its promises unless it can deliver driverless cars. Even if it can do that, the technology will quickly become commoditized and ubiquitous, meaning that any other ride-share service could offer it as well, once again removing any advantage, and driving margins for all ride-share services to near zero.

Comment · 7 years ago
There’s always bitcoin
Comment · 7 years ago
Artificial diamonds are more flawless than natural diamonds. And natural diamonds are not rare. And they’re not forever because they burn easily.

These are all things you’re not supposed to know.

Comment · 7 years ago
I hope he doesn’t trigger a Phobos Anomalie

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