Is it plausible they've created a Church/State style separation between the Ads and Results? Seems like that would be desirable in a lot of cases, though perhaps not in cases when someone is Googling for something with an obvious first result
They can't put the percentage or denominator in the headline? Seems borderline click-baity to me. Even a percentage probably wouldn't cut it -- I can't tell from either whether it's lower or higher than I should expect. Obviously I hope for 0 sexual assaults, but it'd be nice if the headline communicated meaningful information
The vast majority (99.9%) of Uber trips end without any safety-related issue at all.
For example, for the trips in 2017 and 2018:
•1.4% of trips had a support request of any kind, most frequently for issues such as lost items, refunds, or route feedback.
•0.1% of trips had a support request for a safety-related concern, and the majority of those concerns were about less-severe safety issues such as complaints of harsh braking or a verbal argument.
•0.0003% of trips had a report of a critical safety incident,8 which are the incidents referenced in this report
But if the percentage is actually small then it doesn't happen a lot. Looking at the literal number of occurrences instead of the percentage just gives you a biased impression, because any number of assaults > 0 can seem like a lot.
For comparison, it looks like the probability of a random passenger on a 737 MAX dying in an MCAS related accident was about 10 times the probability that a random passenger would report a sexual assault on their Uber ride.
They grounded the 737 MAXes because that probability of death was too high.
If the probability of assault in an Uber is within an order of magnitude, that suggests to me that it is reasonable to expect some additional scrutiny / regulation.
Maybe there should be government cameras in all the vehicles, and other sensors that can detect what is going on and provide it all directly to the NSA.
Nobody is trying to diminish it. Good statistics for crime help provide context, comparisons, measure progress, etc. All of which helps you do better in addressing it.
Raw numbers provide comparisons and measure progress too. Not sure what you mean by context.
I’m of the same mind as your OP: the goal is zero violence, in raw numbers. Shooting for a low seeming percentage seems to be most often just a way to hide the fact that specific small groups are consistently receiving the lions share of violence, which is unacceptable to me.
Context would mean many things. A percentage, for example, would let you see if there are areas that exceed the average. Or driver demographic slices (age group, for example). Or time of day/week. Or comparisons to other related industries. If it's higher than regular taxi service, that might help you see if they are doing something you aren't.
It's hard to improve things you don't measure with actionable data.
Because percentages can be compared across, locations, for example. Raw numbers cannot. 10 assualts in city A vs 20 assaults in city B tells you squat, unless you know how many rides in each.
Similar for other comparisons. Like assaults by driver demographic, like age group. Or comparisons to traditional taxi service...if they have lower incident rates, maybe they have a practice you should adopt.
Actionable is having a percentage AND the percentage of the most likely alternative, such as a taxi. Then, you can decide which is safer to take home tonight.
What we should be asking for is analysis of these 3000-3400 cases to see what were the patterns? Maybe there are 3 patterns we can identify as being inherently risky and then educate customers to avoid those.
I agree the number is surprisingly high. It appears 10 people are getting assaulted every day. That's a scary thought. However, at the same time, I am happy that this data exists and is published so that we can now ask for year over year comparisons moving forward.
Trying to equate adding context with 'downplaying' a topic is what's slowly turning people off to most activism. You're not doing anyone favors by advocating for ignorance.
since half of those sexual assaults are accusing passengers it really does not give you any insight into the safety of the service as a passenger
the passengers being accused of sexually assaulting a driver or another passenger
for any uber user looking for validation of danger, don't take shared rides, don't ride with friends, don't be a driver and your chances of avoiding sexual assault have just doubled.
Article is pay walled, is that number assaults on passengers, drivers or both? Does article it break it down? Seems lower than baseline population numbers either way.
When people here read these articles, is the platforms-vs-publishers relationship top of mind for you?
I don't really know what headspace I should be in when I open these articles. I generally want to understand the underlying motivations of the publishers. How are y'all feeling?
Let's not limit it to antitrust issues since it's usually been about privacy, free speech, the rest
Meanwhile, traditional news media is currently lobbying congress to make news organizations and online publishers exempt from anti-trust law in order to secure a better negotiating position with tech companies. [0]
I don't trust them to report on tech companies objectively one bit. And why should I? They have a vested interest in presenting negative coverage.
That actually seems reasonable. Anti-trust laws were intended to protect consumers, not enable abuse by even bigger monopolies. An exception for colluding in negotiations with monopolies might be a good idea, and not only for media companies.
Similar to the exception that already exists for unions.
After the GFC, besieged bankers had a similar sentiment about the press. How to frame it in your mind is that you're now the bankers.
Read all the threads on HN about the Boeing 737 MAX, many from the same publications writing about Big Tech like the NYT, you never see any commentary about the publications and their motives like you do in the Big Tech threads.
The Occam razor's explanation for the difference is that the reaction to critical coverage when it's about your industry will be different in a predictable way.
The Occams razor is that Facebook and Google threaten The New York Times business model where bad banking and faulty jets do not. Big media is way too involved in these stories to report them objectively.
That's certainly not true for the NYT. The NYT's stock has done very well in recent years and it's solely because their digital subscription business has taken off. It's one of the few publications that doesn't really depend on Facebook and Google for revenue.
They do threaten it though. They could elevate competitors voices or choose to filter the NYT from results of weigh them lower. I'm sure social media and search both drive a huge amount of NYT traffic. The only time I ever read it is when it's linked here.
This is incorrect. I assure you they get a large porition of their traffic from referrals and Google search results (and Google News). They were literally just complaining about this yesterday:
> is the platforms-vs-publishers relationship top of mind for you?
More that the press does narratives, which are often the creation of, or strongly influenced by, long-term PR campaigns.
My very fuzzy understanding is, atleast after the Microsoft-Google nonaggression pact some years ago, the largest interest pushing the anti-BigTech narrative has been Hollywood, wishing to regulate the lawless internet and reduce tech industry influence.
One thing that's puzzled me, and I'd appreciate any insight, is how Microsoft got dropped from the Big Tech set.
Microsoft simply isn't a big player for the consumer/luser segment anymore when it comes to the services that tend to come up in these conversation (e-mail, social, ads, etc). For these services they're more B2B. They're not a data company like Google or Facebook.
Interesting, though, how their compliance with censoring and filtering etc in China for years barely register compared to the outrage Google gets for even preparing for it.
And thinking about it, Microsoft IS big in social with acquisitions like LinkedIn, Skype and GitHub.
But no one's getting concerned or outraged on those accounts. After being the nemesis for so long, I think they have learned to play this game very well this time around.
I have wondered the same thing - Netflix is an obvious outlier among the Big 5, and Microsoft an equally obvious omission. Apparently the "FAANG" idea is a Wall Street thing, a grouping based on financial rather than technical impact.
"BRICS" was a Goldman Sachs invented acronym, coined in 2002, and was frequently used by policymakers and press for at least a decade, despite nobody ever seeing common threads between the economic structures and populations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Same. I guess it is because Microsoft is a relatively smaller company established in rural Washington and focusing its efforts on FOSS. Nothing to be worried about there.
I'm not American (maybe better so?) but this piece sounds a lot like the author is anti-google.
Oracle is unpopular, so let's add the noodle shop to compensate. You won't like EU fines, so we say that USA should fine before. Epic photo of the noodles guy. Very nice photo of Yelp people, who wouldn't like to work there?
To be honest, I believe that Google and friends are very dangerous right now. But with all HN limitations, any discussions here is light years deeper than this fluff.
I think about the lack of accountability inherent in large corporations. Tech is foregrounded in our lives right now, but it plays out in more quiet industries too.
Exactly! People get down right indignant if you suggest that the negative reporting on tech is a conflict of interest for old media institutions like the NYT, but turns out these institutions are just as corrupt as you would expect
"It then models this anonymized data in simulations — creating a synthetic population that faithfully replicates a city’s real-world patterns but that “obscures the real-world travel habits of individual people,"
Headline isn't clickbait; your comment is deceptive. The article actually says this:
"If Sidewalk Labs has access to people’s unique paths of movement prior to making its synthetic models, wouldn’t it be possible to figure out who they are, based on where they go to sleep or work?"
People can read the article for themselves and see for themselves.
The text fields on the sign-up form [0] are unlabeled, the submit button ("Register") doesn't visually show keyboard focus, and almost nothing has sufficient color contrast; that doesn't bode well for the actual player's accessibility. Also, the <form> element has a completely unnecessary role="form" ARIA attribute which suggests accessibility has crossed someone's mind but also that it's likely errors of consequence have been or will be made.
It's been a couple years and I don't recall if he was associated with NPR, WBEZ or both, but a meetup I sometimes go to had someone from "there" speaking about accessibility and giving the impression that it was actually a pretty serious matter for them.
Please be sensitive to the lightness of greys you use for smaller text, especially if you value any of your users who are aging (all of them) or have vision-related issues (some of them, maybe more than you think)
if you're eager to separate the idea from the sanctity of life (or whatever), you can just throw this into the huge bucket of things we do as a society to dissuade behavior with significant negative externalities. and suicide does come with a lot of negative externalities
