4 ms·

Uber Confirms It Is Assisting Police in India Following an Alleged Rape

57 points by pajtai 12y ago

CodeWriter23 12y ago
> However, media report that the driver is missing. He had allegedly registered to use the Uber service in a false name and disabled the GPS functionality from his smartphone during the incident. I'll just skip over the background check failure here, and ask why doesn't the Uber Rider app keep the GPS function going during the ride? The server could compare notes and detect a bad operator whose Driver app has gone offline.
plinkplonk 12y ago
ha I like the phrasing. Instead of "Uber Driver rapes Woman" you have this. Let me try. "Policeman shoots unarmed teenager" vs "The policeman who shot a teenager in Ferguson is co-operating with the investigation, his attorney says" PS:This exact news item was submitted some time ago and flagkilled https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222
- infinitone 12y ago
  This happens all the time in today's 'journalism', more prominently it happens to much worse incidents like when a white person does a terrorist act, he's labeled mentally ill, but not so much if it were a colored person.
- baddox 12y ago
  The title in your analogy should be "The police department is cooperating with the investigation."
  - plinkplonk 12y ago
    Sure. it wasn't meant as an exact analogy. More just an exercise in weaselly slanted phrasing. Point taken.
    - baddox 12y ago
      No matter. This story seems to have been removed from the front page, although it's not dead.
sarnowski 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711284 600+ upvotes, top #1, vanishes from one second to another - whats up HN?
- dang 12y ago
  I answered the question and buried the story for what should be an obvious reason: meta support questions are not on-topic for HN, let alone belong on the front page, let alone at #1. The guidelines explicitly ask you not to post them. I'll add this info to my comment there as well.
  - pajtai 12y ago
    Why did this thread disappear from the front page? It has 45 upvotes and was on the front page initially with just 5 or so upvotes.
    - dang 12y ago
      The only thing affecting these stories is that many users are flagging them. Edit: perhaps more detail would help. The story was initially flagged by enough users that it was killed. We unkilled it for reasons I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660. That caused the process which is affecting all these stories to pick up where it left off: lots of upvotes and lots of flags, with the flags winning over the upvotes. As a result, the story fell in rank again—but didn't get killed, because once we unkill something flags no longer have the power to kill it.
      - pajtai 12y ago
        thanks for the explanation
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
dmishe 12y ago
This probably would not help in this case, but, the app should have an emergency button that'll call the police and provide vehicle info and driver details with a real-time coordinates to them. It really is a no-brainer from tech point view, they have all the data. Or if you want to go even deeper, make drivers install tamper-proof hardware with a big red button. But there a lot of small details and likely regulations in this approach
auser678 12y ago
My Post comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711960 downvoted on Hackernews I wear it as a badge of honor. Unethical and unsustainable companies like Uber get USD 40 Bil valuation by being led by arrogant misogynistic CEOs when they condone looking up user data including journalists http://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-far-uber-will-go-to-silence-journalists-and-attack-women/ http://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-fa... http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/emil-michael-of-uber-proposes-digging-into-journalists-private-lives/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/emil-michael-of-ube... Two reputed (understatement) publications decrying them, while CEO is arrogant and still does not fire Emil And then this happens http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/12/indian-woman-raped-uber-cab-driver-201412771324100241.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/12/indian-wo... While they claim they have extensive background tests for drivers. Investors reward with a 40 Billion valuation, which is more than Infosys valuation a 33 year old company employing 200,000 people, bringing a lot of poor people out of poverty and into middle/upper middle class (and many such companies like TCS, TechM etc) SV VCs and in general VCs if you are focussed on companies which are cool and provide high growth and high rates of signups (the new eyeballs) refer to what happened to secret https://gigaom.com/2014/12/05/whats-happening-with-secret/ https://gigaom.com/2014/12/05/whats-happening-with-secret/ and pile on in news companies (dude you guys are like retail investors, Zynga, Groupon...unsustainable companies but a pile on) I believe in building sustainable businesses which provide employees, founders, and eventual shareholders consistent returns over a period of time I will never put a Zynga founder Marc Pincus in the same league as NRN. The difference they made to the world is levels (think exponential) apart I would rather drill, toil, sweat it out than just hype out, I say with conviction as many companies in my space (mobile, cloud, Big data) did fail or sold out after creating a hype @Uber with 40 Bill ur not going to make a mark in India.
bob917 12y ago
For all of you cracking jokes about this story. Rape is no laughing matter.

57 points by pajtai 12y ago

> However, media report that the driver is missing. He had allegedly registered to use the Uber service in a false name and disabled the GPS functionality from his smartphone during the incident. I'll just skip over the background check failure here, and ask why doesn't the Uber Rider app keep the GPS function going during the ride? The server could compare notes and detect a bad operator whose Driver app has gone offline.

plinkplonk 12y ago

ha I like the phrasing. Instead of "Uber Driver rapes Woman" you have this. Let me try. "Policeman shoots unarmed teenager" vs "The policeman who shot a teenager in Ferguson is co-operating with the investigation, his attorney says" PS:This exact news item was submitted some time ago and flagkilled https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711222

infinitone 12y ago
This happens all the time in today's 'journalism', more prominently it happens to much worse incidents like when a white person does a terrorist act, he's labeled mentally ill, but not so much if it were a colored person.
baddox 12y ago
The title in your analogy should be "The police department is cooperating with the investigation."
- plinkplonk 12y ago
  Sure. it wasn't meant as an exact analogy. More just an exercise in weaselly slanted phrasing. Point taken.
  - baddox 12y ago
    No matter. This story seems to have been removed from the front page, although it's not dead.

sarnowski 12y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711284 600+ upvotes, top #1, vanishes from one second to another - whats up HN?

dang 12y ago
I answered the question and buried the story for what should be an obvious reason: meta support questions are not on-topic for HN, let alone belong on the front page, let alone at #1. The guidelines explicitly ask you not to post them. I'll add this info to my comment there as well.
- pajtai 12y ago
  Why did this thread disappear from the front page? It has 45 upvotes and was on the front page initially with just 5 or so upvotes.
  - dang 12y ago
    The only thing affecting these stories is that many users are flagging them. Edit: perhaps more detail would help. The story was initially flagged by enough users that it was killed. We unkilled it for reasons I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711660. That caused the process which is affecting all these stories to pick up where it left off: lots of upvotes and lots of flags, with the flags winning over the upvotes. As a result, the story fell in rank again—but didn't get killed, because once we unkill something flags no longer have the power to kill it.
    - pajtai 12y ago
      thanks for the explanation

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

dmishe 12y ago

This probably would not help in this case, but, the app should have an emergency button that'll call the police and provide vehicle info and driver details with a real-time coordinates to them. It really is a no-brainer from tech point view, they have all the data. Or if you want to go even deeper, make drivers install tamper-proof hardware with a big red button. But there a lot of small details and likely regulations in this approach

auser678 12y ago

My Post comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8711960 downvoted on Hackernews I wear it as a badge of honor. Unethical and unsustainable companies like Uber get USD 40 Bil valuation by being led by arrogant misogynistic CEOs when they condone looking up user data including journalists http://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-far-uber-will-go-to-silence-journalists-and-attack-women/ http://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-fa... http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/emil-michael-of-uber-proposes-digging-into-journalists-private-lives/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/emil-michael-of-ube... Two reputed (understatement) publications decrying them, while CEO is arrogant and still does not fire Emil And then this happens http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/12/indian-woman-raped-uber-cab-driver-201412771324100241.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/12/indian-wo... While they claim they have extensive background tests for drivers. Investors reward with a 40 Billion valuation, which is more than Infosys valuation a 33 year old company employing 200,000 people, bringing a lot of poor people out of poverty and into middle/upper middle class (and many such companies like TCS, TechM etc) SV VCs and in general VCs if you are focussed on companies which are cool and provide high growth and high rates of signups (the new eyeballs) refer to what happened to secret https://gigaom.com/2014/12/05/whats-happening-with-secret/ https://gigaom.com/2014/12/05/whats-happening-with-secret/ and pile on in news companies (dude you guys are like retail investors, Zynga, Groupon...unsustainable companies but a pile on) I believe in building sustainable businesses which provide employees, founders, and eventual shareholders consistent returns over a period of time I will never put a Zynga founder Marc Pincus in the same league as NRN. The difference they made to the world is levels (think exponential) apart I would rather drill, toil, sweat it out than just hype out, I say with conviction as many companies in my space (mobile, cloud, Big data) did fail or sold out after creating a hype @Uber with 40 Bill ur not going to make a mark in India.

bob917 12y ago

For all of you cracking jokes about this story. Rape is no laughing matter.