maxaf · HackerTrans

8 месяцев назадdiscuss

I view LLMs as a trade of competence plus quality against time. Sure, I’d love to err on the side of pure craft and keep honing my skill every chance I get. But can I afford to do so? Increasingly, the answer is “no”: I have precious little time to perform each task at work, and there’s almost no time left for side projects at home. I’ll use every trick in the book to keep making progress. The alternative - pure as it would be - would sacrifice the perfectly good at the altar of perfection.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

I dove into the comments to ask the same question. I just did something similar to this with a few lines in my docker-compose.yml, which eventually turned into a few lines in a Helm chart. Why would I pay someone money for something as trivial as this?

Now, I won’t write another rant on the subject of Eternal September, and how our field is increasingly populated by charlatans who can’t do simple things on their own. But yes: that’s exactly how I feel.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

There's a "Fair Insurance" product which, IIRC, is not available in my market (NYC). I got the impression that it does cost extra per month in addition to the base lease payment, but I couldn't see what the amount would have been.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

> Equity dollars are used to recondition and transport your car

Not true! I get charged at the end of my lease for any "wear & tear above normal". Fair allows the customer to pre-pay a monthly surcharge to avoid the lump sum W&T charge at the end. Transport is cheap: I can get the car towed across town for <$100, which is less than 40% of a single monthly payment.

> Since the majority of their customer base churns through the platform with low tenure and is not retained (short term Uber drivers)

How can you possibly know that? Here in NYC driving for Uber is not a short-term thing by any means. TLC licensing cost and the time it takes to obtain this license is sufficient overhead to lock Uber drivers in for a long time in the hope of perhaps one day breaking even. Fair also charges a relatively hefty (I paid ~$2k) lease start fee in order to discourage customers from churning too quickly.

> Your gut is very wrong on this one, sorry.

I encourage you to present information in support of your assertion.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

Setting aside SoftBank, let's talk about Fair.

I'm a Fair customer, and I like the service, but I don't think it's a steal. It's a fair deal (no pun intended), but by no means would I call it a ridiculous, out-of-this-world deal.

Surely some fellow New Yorkers will remember the good old days of the Uber-Lyft price war, when it was possible to travel from the low 90-s & York to the low 80-s & Columbus for $2 on an Uber Pool. Or how during the morning rush an Uber Pool would take one from the UWS to FiDi for about $5. Those were unimaginably good deals because they were heavily subsidized by the VC cash that was flowing so easily into rideshare companies and out the other end into riders' wallets. Those were the days!

Fair is nothing like that. I pay $266/month for a 2018 CPO Honda Accord that I received with 2k miles and most of its original warranty. I reckon this costs me about 15-20% more than a dealership lease of a brand new car. I consider this a fair (...) premium for the flexibility that a Fair lease affords me: I can end it at any time without undue shenanigans, whereas a traditional lease would require me to either transfer it or pay an early termination fee.

Why is this important? With Fair I don't feel as if some hapless VC is subsidizing my use of the vehicle. The whole thing feels like an actual business with assets and employees and some kind of plan, not a reckless gamble for market share that in itself is worth nothing to begin with. It all makes a certain kind of cold sense: when you browse Fair's app for a vehicle, the cars you see aren't actually on Fair's balance sheet until the lease has started. Since their prices aren't too good to be true, my gut tells me that, at the very least, they have a spreadsheet somewhere that spits out the price they should charge a customer after having quantified the risk of this customer ending the lease before its break-even date, thus saddling Fair with the car for which it now has to pay out of its own coffers.

SoftBank being SoftBank, it's possible that Fair is one of its better bets.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

I called out “Brooklyn car services” specifically because I still see such operations around town. I’m assuming they survive because there’s a group of users who are beyond the reach of new technology.

I’m sure there are taxi services that offer conveniences similar to Uber, but none have enough name recognition for me to name even a single one off the top of my head. It’s possible that they need marketing help. It’s also possible that they aren’t looking to grow beyond whatever niche they serve now.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

This is handled the same way 24/7 availability is handled. The company employs some multiple of the employees it needs to handle regular demand during the day. Some of these employees happen to like working at night. Others like working during the day. All are required to put in some number of hours per week in order to qualify for the perks that come with full time employment.

When a spike in demand occurs, a page goes out to all employees who currently aren’t on the road requesting that all those who can do so safely proceed immediately to an area that has unfilled demand.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

I'm not sure if someplace like Lancaster, PA (totally random example; it's a city I enjoy visiting) even needs a service like Uber. There is nothing in the value prop that demands that it be scaled up, down & out to fit everywhere in the world.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

The operative word in my blurb was "modest". Screw the shareholders; or rather, screw the public shareholders. I don't want their money because it comes with strings attached: demands that the business operate in an unethical and inefficient manner. Those types of shareholders are crazy can take their money to the casino for all I care.

However, I'm sure there are other shareholders who might appreciate a "modest" dividend instead of a meteoric rise and trading potential. Where are those people? Aren't they the true smart money?

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

Perhaps, and there are plenty of those around. You're a fellow New Yorker, so you can readily conjure up the image: crummy Lincoln Town Car, leather seats that reek of stale tobacco, driver who talks on the phone while operating the vehicle, payment in cash (plus the tolls!), ordering process that involves speaking on the telephone... You know, the typical Brooklyn-based car service that dispatches cars via the radio from a storefront office.

Uber's greatest contribution to the industry is the discovery that customers want a nice and smooth experience. Order using a smart phone, ride in a nice car (or perhaps a luxury one, or a larger one, or one with a child seat - you have options), and don't worry about payment and how much you owe in tolls.

So, my pitch is that this convenience can probably be made to work as a business that doesn't abuse its employees and doesn't flood the roads with idle drivers. And also doesn't burn investor cash in order to conduct a price war. That's just bananas.

maxaf

7 лет назадdiscuss

I’ve been conducting a thought experiment. Imagine an Uber competitor that keeps drivers as full time employees and charges customers a price that allows it to pay the drivers a fair wage while slicing a modest profit margin off the top. Let’s discuss if something like this can work.