Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to Sacha,
Well, their transaction costs are minimal (server and bandwidth). Their customer acquisition costs, as for every global 'tech' firm are high, but can be viewed as a one-off (once a customer has Uber on their phone, they'll keep using it until either Uber gets banned in their country or they have a nightmare experience).
Their problem is that they are illegal, and as I think I mentioned before, the strategy for dealing with this is predicated on countries (e.g. AU and US) where the taxi industry is both an entrenched monopoly and a cash-cow for local government. Those industries/governments aren't going to relinquish this lightly (by moving to an NZ model where any qualified person can operate a taxi service) so Uber's approach is to try and drive taxis out of business so they can negotiate legalisation from a position of strength.
And something being illegal doesn't mean it isn't a good investment. Indeed, since you can't buy stock in the Medellin Cartel, Uber has the advantage of rarity in appealing to certain investors.
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Speaker: Apocalypse on the count of…, in reply to Bart Janssen,
how primitive all the equipment looked
Time gets telescoped. It was only 15 years from the V2 to the Titan, which first flew 57 years ago.
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Speaker: Apocalypse on the count of…, in reply to Tristan,
I've seen a similar sign on a caged rack in a Wellington data centre.
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Legal Beagle: The Spinoff: Offensive and…, in reply to Martin Brown,
Is the Spinoff an independent blog or is there a media outlet (or NZ on Air) funding behind it?
I don't see why an online outlet should become a Press Council member, especially if they come out with rulings like this. ISTR some discussion when they first started accepting online membership => does this confer some sort of legal privilege? (tea and biscuits on budget day or whatever).
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Looks more like an early Infinite Improbability Drive to me - complete with the hot cup of tea,
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This may be relevant (it's clickbait, but at least it's interesting):
http://gizmodo.com/6-freeway-removals-that-changed-their-cities-forever-1548314937?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Gizmodo_facebook -
So on this story the subbing computer/serf obviously screwed up and failed to remove location information from the lede.
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Hard News: Obscuring the News, in reply to Russell Brown,
Is that because radio sells lots of advertising, or because it's really cheap to make - all you need is a couple of fuckwits in a studio and a grateful government that lets you off the license fees? (or smiles on you repurposing an iwi or other public benefit frequency).
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Sadly, experience have shown that such things typically improve traffic for a brief time, then people adjust their plans accordingly (e.g. commuting by car from Otorohanga or wherever Auckland's outer suburbs are now) and the roads fill up again.
Most European cities (even London) called a halt some time ago and have motorways stopping on the outskirts.
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Hard News: Obscuring the News, in reply to st ephen,
Of course you can say let x = + assuming that you allow lambdas. (I refrained from the original clickbait so I have no idea of the context).
