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We'll probably see more and more fluff pieces as Uber heads closer to its IPO date. Last week, there was flying cars

bduerst 9y ago
Any bets on the next sharks they'll jump? - Uber phone OS - Uber IoT platform for cities - Uber edge computing on smart cars
- khazhoux 9y ago
  Uber to buy 24,000 self-jumping sharks.
  - wunderg 9y ago
    I like that one!
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Mining bitcoin on TMPS sensors
- stephengillie 9y ago
  Uber grocery delivery / Uber Espresso (Why Keurig when you can Starbucks?) Uber analytics (How often do riders get dropped off outside your store? Your competitors?) Uber Mobile Hotspot / Uber Wardriving Analytics Uber Maps / Uber Traffic Uber Music (Starbucks does it, why not Uber?)
  - FabHK 9y ago
    Many of you might not know Go-Jek, a pretty neat alternative to Uber in Indonesia (predominantly), cheaper, too, often. GO offers: * GO-CAR: like Uber * GO-RIDE: same, but on a motorbike (cheaper & faster in traffic jams, as you often have eg in Jakarta) * GO-FOOD: delivers food * GO-SEND: courier service, picks up and delivers item, eg correspondence or a forgotten USB charger, etc. * GO-SHOP: buys anything for you * GO-TIX: buys and delivers event tickets * GO-BOX: moving * GO-MASSAGE: well, massage at home * GO-CLEAN: two cleaners will come to clean your apartment * GO-GLAM: home manicure/pedicure/make-up * GO-MED: deliver medicine etc. from licenses pharmacies It's rather amazing, well written set of apps, and works quite well. EDIT to fix description of GO-MED and add: They have 200k+ drivers, and got funding from Sequoia. https://www.go-jek.com https://www.go-jek.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GO-JEK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GO-JEK
    - stephengillie 9y ago
      They could make GO-JIRA ticket and project management system.
dpflan 9y ago
"Uber donates $1M to Meals on Wheels" -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15741798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15741798 (Your comment made me cynical; yet, this post is on the front page right now.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Gravityloss 9y ago
Uber has actually been doing something on the flying cars front. They even hired Mark Moore from NASA.
- wmeredith 9y ago
  From The Terror of Deep Time[0] in Ecosophia: Crackpot realism is one of the downsides of the division of labor. It emerges reliably whenever two conditions are in effect. The first condition is that the task of choosing goals for an activity is assigned to one group of people and the task of finding means to achieve those goals is left to a different group of people. The second condition is that the first group needs to be enough higher in social status than the second group that members of the first group need pay no attention to the concerns of the second group. Consider, as an example, the plight of a team of engineers tasked with designing a flying car. People have been trying to do this for more than a century now, and the results are in: it’s a really dumb idea. It so happens that a great many of the engineering features that make a good car make a bad aircraft, and vice versa; for instance, an auto engine needs to be optimized for torque rather than speed, while an aircraft engine needs to be optimized for speed rather than torque. Thus every flying car ever built—and there have been plenty of them—performed just as poorly as a car as it did as a plane, and cost so much that for the same price you could buy a good car, a good airplane, and enough fuel to keep both of them running for a good long time. Engineers know this. Still, if you’re an engineer and you’ve been hired by some clueless tech-industry godzillionaire who wants a flying car, you probably don’t have the option of telling your employer the truth about his pet project—that is, that no matter how much of his money he plows into the project, he’s going to get a clunker of a vehicle that won’t be any good at either of its two incompatible roles—because he’ll simply fire you and hire someone who will tell him what he wants to hear. Nor do you have the option of sitting him down and getting him to face what’s behind his own unexamined desires and expectations, so that he might notice that his fixation on having a flying car is an emotionally charged hangover from age eight, when he daydreamed about having one to help him cope with the miserable, bully-ridden public school system in which he was trapped for so many wretched years. So you devote your working hours to finding the most rational, scientific, and utilitarian means to accomplish a pointless, useless, and self-defeating end. That’s crackpot realism. [0] http://www.ecosophia.net/terror-deep-time/ http://www.ecosophia.net/terror-deep-time/

Any bets on the next sharks they'll jump? - Uber phone OS - Uber IoT platform for cities - Uber edge computing on smart cars

khazhoux 9y ago
Uber to buy 24,000 self-jumping sharks.
- wunderg 9y ago
  I like that one!
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
Mining bitcoin on TMPS sensors
stephengillie 9y ago
Uber grocery delivery / Uber Espresso (Why Keurig when you can Starbucks?) Uber analytics (How often do riders get dropped off outside your store? Your competitors?) Uber Mobile Hotspot / Uber Wardriving Analytics Uber Maps / Uber Traffic Uber Music (Starbucks does it, why not Uber?)
- FabHK 9y ago
  Many of you might not know Go-Jek, a pretty neat alternative to Uber in Indonesia (predominantly), cheaper, too, often. GO offers: * GO-CAR: like Uber * GO-RIDE: same, but on a motorbike (cheaper & faster in traffic jams, as you often have eg in Jakarta) * GO-FOOD: delivers food * GO-SEND: courier service, picks up and delivers item, eg correspondence or a forgotten USB charger, etc. * GO-SHOP: buys anything for you * GO-TIX: buys and delivers event tickets * GO-BOX: moving * GO-MASSAGE: well, massage at home * GO-CLEAN: two cleaners will come to clean your apartment * GO-GLAM: home manicure/pedicure/make-up * GO-MED: deliver medicine etc. from licenses pharmacies It's rather amazing, well written set of apps, and works quite well. EDIT to fix description of GO-MED and add: They have 200k+ drivers, and got funding from Sequoia. https://www.go-jek.com https://www.go-jek.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GO-JEK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GO-JEK
  - stephengillie 9y ago
    They could make GO-JIRA ticket and project management system.

dpflan 9y ago

"Uber donates $1M to Meals on Wheels" -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15741798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15741798 (Your comment made me cynical; yet, this post is on the front page right now.)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Gravityloss 9y ago

Uber has actually been doing something on the flying cars front. They even hired Mark Moore from NASA.

wmeredith 9y ago
From The Terror of Deep Time[0] in Ecosophia: Crackpot realism is one of the downsides of the division of labor. It emerges reliably whenever two conditions are in effect. The first condition is that the task of choosing goals for an activity is assigned to one group of people and the task of finding means to achieve those goals is left to a different group of people. The second condition is that the first group needs to be enough higher in social status than the second group that members of the first group need pay no attention to the concerns of the second group. Consider, as an example, the plight of a team of engineers tasked with designing a flying car. People have been trying to do this for more than a century now, and the results are in: it’s a really dumb idea. It so happens that a great many of the engineering features that make a good car make a bad aircraft, and vice versa; for instance, an auto engine needs to be optimized for torque rather than speed, while an aircraft engine needs to be optimized for speed rather than torque. Thus every flying car ever built—and there have been plenty of them—performed just as poorly as a car as it did as a plane, and cost so much that for the same price you could buy a good car, a good airplane, and enough fuel to keep both of them running for a good long time. Engineers know this. Still, if you’re an engineer and you’ve been hired by some clueless tech-industry godzillionaire who wants a flying car, you probably don’t have the option of telling your employer the truth about his pet project—that is, that no matter how much of his money he plows into the project, he’s going to get a clunker of a vehicle that won’t be any good at either of its two incompatible roles—because he’ll simply fire you and hire someone who will tell him what he wants to hear. Nor do you have the option of sitting him down and getting him to face what’s behind his own unexamined desires and expectations, so that he might notice that his fixation on having a flying car is an emotionally charged hangover from age eight, when he daydreamed about having one to help him cope with the miserable, bully-ridden public school system in which he was trapped for so many wretched years. So you devote your working hours to finding the most rational, scientific, and utilitarian means to accomplish a pointless, useless, and self-defeating end. That’s crackpot realism. [0] http://www.ecosophia.net/terror-deep-time/ http://www.ecosophia.net/terror-deep-time/