And if he were a sociologist or anthropologist, published in the field with any reputation at all in it, who could speak on that complex dynamic over history and the interplay between environment, tradition, human biology, and social context, he might have a prayer of using reason to move the needle on the taboos in his own culture. But he's not. He's a professor in another field speaking way out on the deep end of a field he doesn't have the credentials to be taken seriously in.
We all have freedom of speech, but academic professors are expected to uphold a level of rigor that most people are not, and his writings on this topic harm his credibility and therefore, indirectly, his ability to advocate for free software.
But he's using that right to say very public things that are very objectionable, in a space he understands poorly, and everyone else can use their same rights to call him on his nonsense. And when one is an academic, one's word carries weight outside one's area of expertise.
For all the good he did for science education, a common criticism of Carl Sagan is he was an astrophysicist (damn good one) who dabbled in neurobiology, which was well outside his area of expertise---his oft-repeated "reptile brain" theory basically doesn't match to a contemporary understanding of neuro-anatomy and didn't when he wrote Cosmos either. But because he shared it from his platform and wrote a book on the topic, "humans are a fish brain wrapped in a lizard brain wrapped in a monkey brain" is an oft-repeated untruth.
We hold those whose reputations and positions are built on knowledge more accountable to be right when they speak than we hold others. Stallman chooses to exercise his freedom of speech, and we choose to hold him accountable for his position on topics that have real consequences for people who aren't him.
I like how people in comments are keen to change the world, but I - more realisticly - only focus on gaming the system so I can actually save myself couple bucks right away.
I set pick up and destination, exit the app, open another rides app, wait few minutes for uber to notify me that the price went down.
I only give it initials (instead of full name) and phone number, not even my gender, I rarely rate drivers positively, if it is not a negative experience, I skip reviewing, so they don't know I "like" the service.
When it takes more than a minute to find a ride, I cancel the ride and choose the "others" option, as this is the de-facto the option for "I will just take a cab", so I get inserted on the "churn risk" list.
I use a virtual card that I some time leave empty so payment fail after the ride, and on the next ride I readjust my virtual card limit on the next ride and pay the last bill so I am added on the "poor and miserable riders" list.
> I like how people in comments are keen to change the world, but I - more realisticly - only focus on gaming the system so I can actually save myself couple bucks right away.
This type of attitude sometimes makes the world a worse place. If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down.
> I rarely rate drivers positively
Drivers live or die by their rating. Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by. This is a very good example of how you can cause real world harm with by trying to game the system for yourself.
> Drivers live or die by their rating. Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by.
I drive on Uber part-time. In my city at least, rating is not such a big deal. The vast vast majority of people give 5 stars ratings (i'm talking about 99% of ratings).
I assume there are some people who only give ratings when the service was exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, or would otherwise consider 3 stars as a fair rating for a normal experience. Let's call there honest raters. As a driver, i don't think honest raters can have such a big impact on me, because the platform is designed so that there's no preference to always match honest raters to some particular drivers. Their honest ratings will be spread more or less uniformly among drivers.
And, if we want to apply Kantian logic and think "but what would happen if everybody did the same?", well, Uber is a live system too: if more people would become honest raters, then the ceiling of what's the minimum average rating you need to have as a driver would be lowered accordingly. Uber needs drivers too. It needs to keep a healthy balance of available drivers and available passengers. If either of the two gets too low, if would lose the other part in short time.
> I drive on Uber part-time. In my city at least, rating is not such a big deal. The vast vast majority of people give 5 stars ratings (i'm talking about 99% of ratings).
Same here, and all that means the scale is different. 4.70 is I drive on Uber part-time. In my city at least, rating is not such a big deal. The vast vast majority of people give 5 stars ratings (i'm talking about 99% of ratings), 4.80 is bad, 4.90 is good, 4.95+ is very friendly. I no longer am assigned any drivers below 4.85 because I
started consistently cancelling every driver I got below 4.8.
I recently got some help from my banker dealing with sorting out accounts following a death. When we finished she told me she'd appreciate a review on the survey I'd likely get, but that only 4s and 5s (or 9s-10s) count. In the end I didn't get a survey but it left a bit of a weird taste, I've worked with her for 8-10 years, she seems good at her job, and I've never really had any complaints.
Some systems are worth breaking down. On a macro-level, I think it's safe to assume that drivers are already being maximally exploited by the algorithm.
> This type of attitude sometimes makes the world a worse place. If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down.
Any system like this entails a set of individual incentives. If following those incentives would lead the system to break down, the system is already broken.
> If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down.
Yes, that is why "I like how people [in comments] are keen to change the world", I don't want everyone to be as lazy as I am.
> Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by. This is a very good example of how you can cause real world harm with by trying to game the system for yourself.
No uber rider owe feedback at all, even if there is no gain of skipping it..
I would understand your argument if I were giving negative feedback on purpose for good drivers, which I consider a false testimony and a lie, but every user have all the right to skip reviewing, owing no more than the ride fees.
No one actually knows what the global maximum is, or how to get there, outside of any specifics that religion may or may not tell you.
A "global maximum" closely parallels the definition of faith. It's the maximal good for the maximal number of people, and a real destination for some (surely not all are worthy of it, as long as human evil exists). How we get there, what it is, who actually makes it there, on what basis, what's preventing its realization at present, how to overcome such obstacles --- these are the questions that religions (including secular humanism) answer.
That may be the case but this can be seen as 'Hate the game not the player'. Just because folks are in this position doesn't mean you should be complicit in its continuation as it stands.
I mean I get it, you end up hurting those that have the least power. It is a rough predicament to be in.
"Drivers live or die by their rating" - really??? I have never given the drivers rating a moments thought. Do you seriously cancel rides because the driver doesn't have 5 stars??
If a driver's average rating falls below 4.6 Uber typically removes them from the platform. A rating of less than 5 stars is treated similarly to if a customer reported a driver for poor service.
I guarantee their algorithms factor in average number of riders who don’t rate anyone lol. Maybe they weight them. Maybe they grade everyone on a bell curve. Maybe they use it in C-suite meetings to determine strategies. I can just about guarantee they don’t ignore it, though.
They’re a tech company;a decent rating algorithm should be one of the most likely things for them to excel in, or they’d just lose to any company that does because all the good drivers they’re dropping are immediately signing up to work for a competing service.
tl;dr It is in ride-services’ best to retain good drivers, no?
A non rating doesn't directly affect their score. But if a driver doesn't get plenty of five star reviews, they'll get dropped from the app because there are always people who give bad reviews because they had a bad day.
I'm not sure if any of this actually saves you money. If anything, it may drive the algorithm to pair you with less than stellar drivers. In a customer retention phase, which Uber is in right now, the algorithm should aim to pair good clients with good drivers and poor clients with poor drivers, just to protect the repeat business.
I'm convinced the person you're replying to is right. At my last job, all of us took separate Ubers every day. I started cancelling every driver below X rating. After a while, Ive ended up only being assigned drivers far above X, while my colleagues still got low rated drivers often enough (they never cancelled based on rating). My own rating wasn't higher than theirs, and I was a worse customer in that I used Uber less than they did.
all steps, like .. fiddling with virtual cards, retrying transactions, occasionally cancelling when searching for a driver ... this seems like waay too much effort.
Negligible saving for one ride, but I rely on Uber as I have no car and riding in taxis in my city is sometimes horrible, so it adds up on the long-run.
Do you have info, anecdotal or otherwise, on how much you think you save per ride in total and relative amounts? That might sound like a lot, but really I'm just wondering if you can estimate "I think I save about $X dollars on a fare that would cost $Y dollars otherwise."
By leaving the app before booking, I often get 10%-20% off (it claims rates went low, of course it's just a retention discount), not sure about others.
Yeah, and any individual vote doesn't make a difference, so why take the time to vote?
I don't know man... saving a few bucks on the average HN 300k+ salary doesn't make a difference, but let people have their principles. Isn't that the source of the original hacker mentality and the stuff we like to celebrate here?
Wouldn’t / shouldn’t this heavily penalize you? Like, what I want to optimize for is that when there’s little Uber capacity and many requests, that I get prioritized and get put as close to the front of the queue as possible. Which is why I tend to stick to just one app (Uber), and try to have a high rating.
But idk if it’s doing anything. At least back when Uber had tiers (platinum / diamond) it was more obvious the perks you get with more use (like with airlines), but now that they dropped those I’m feeling less inclined to keep using just Uber vs a mix of all apps and picking cheapest.
The system cannot penalize the working party in the same way it penalizes the paying party, if you are an easy customer whi never complain, always seem satisfied, would ride anyway no matter how high is the current rate, we might as well assign you any driver.
If you are a difficult customer who is rarely satisfied and complain of most inconveniences, you will get the better drivers.
Because simply, the algorthm is prioritizing sales, not nice and chill riders.
> When it takes more than a minute to find a ride, I cancel the ride and choose the "others" option, as this is the de-facto the option for "I will just take a cab", so I get inserted on the "churn risk" list.
I don't live in the US, and over here a driver rating below 4.8 guarantees you a rollercoaster ride by an angry man. I've cancelled enough times straight after being assigned such a driver that I now only get drivers with near-perfect ratings. Doesn't take any longer either.
It's sad that it's come to this, but you've really got to make the algorithm work for you.
I'm not in the US, and over here, any driver with a rating unf
Honestly, even as it is, I am not very much impressed. I feel like the most of the reaction here is... artificial? I mean, look at him, poor guy, he has cancer, of course we should side with him against evil Mozilla. All these statements that "I am finally ditching Firefox" despite that nothing really has changed are just virtue signaling. Many of the firefox-ditchers in this comments section cannot even properly tell, what they are ditching it for. They just support all good against all evil.
I never liked Mozilla leadership in many, many years. It never was the point, really. The only thing that matters always was Firefox, and the only real question was if there is anything better. I don't claim to have an answer to that question (let's just say there were multiple occasions when I considered switching, but never did), but I can tell you for sure, whatever it is, it couldn't have changed because of this guy's demise.
Siding with him feels kinda ironic in a way. It was unsightly when it was about Brendan Eich or servo team, because these are technical people, who created something of value, which is why Mozilla exist. But this guy is basically the very same "evil Mozilla leadership" who only turned out on the bottom side of the internal corporate games. He isn't the one who created Firefox, or JavaScript, or Rust, or anything. He worked in Microsoft for 14 years, not in Mozilla. I'm not even sure I can recollect, how exactly Firefox changed in the past 2 years (except for Translate button, this was nice). Which is probably a good sign, but still, I don't know any reason to cheer for this guy. He is just a dude with cancer, that's basically his only "defence". Defence against... being demoted? Oh, come on. I wonder if his compensation decreased by 40% is less than the total cost of the former Servo team. (And just by the way, the fact I am constantly mentioning Servo doesn't mean I am blaming Mozilla for that decision. It surely wasn't nice, but it is understandable. Firefox is free to use, never financially viable, doesn't have any plans to become financially viable. It is a miracle of sorts that Google still agrees to sponsor them.)
And having something like this in his defence speech:
> He questioned the need for the layoffs and raised concerns about the potential to disproportionately impact women and people of color
You are right. The lack of details or time window when this happened make it difficult to know what the actual compromise was, or if it is still something that can be used. However, if they compromised a Ricochet user, then this attack was a long time ago, and from what Tor's blog says that client didn't have the defenses that would have prevented the attack they think it is. Without the actual details, it seems like this attack was mitigated some time ago and is no longer something that can be done in the same way.
I doubt it's just a cyberattack, the videos of the explosions indicate small explosives rather than batteries.
Don't think we'll know exactly what happened until Israel tells the world or an independent investigation concludes but so far my impression is there was a supply chain infiltration and thousands of pagers with explosives have been distributed to Hezbollah.
It's the provider I'm using that does it for the Tor exits people host with them. I don't have my own IPv4 space, which is something like 8k$ for the smallest useful subnet and that's too expensive for a hobby.
They just have a Russian ASN and IP space but it's still located in Norway.
you have a german nick name suggesting you are german, you run tor nodes in norway which appear to be located in russia ... i think that is already a lot of technically interesting stuff. also many people would probably like to understand why you do it and how much you spend for this hobby(?).
If I was Russian, sure. I think it’s best to always use exit nodes/proxies in geopolitically opposed countries to prevent collaboration between states. E.g. use western VPNs while in China, use Russian/Chinese tunnels in the west.
In parallel with gea0's comment, using a Russian state-sanctioned exit node would make tracing efforts difficult-to-impossible for western government / law enforcement.
Why is this a very controversial topic?
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