Comment by steelframe
2 days ago
The last time I was in SF I used Waymo to get around town and Uber to get to the airport.
The Waymo rides were near-perfect. At one point when a delivery truck was blocking 3 lanes, the vehicle assertively merged over into the free lane to get around. A couple of people on e-bikes were all over the place, but at no point did I feel that the vehicle put them in any kind of danger. Starts, stops, and turns were all smooth. End-to-end time was good, the ride itself was comfortable, and the price was reasonable.
On the other hand the Uber driver picked me up in a Tesla that had regen cranked up. They continually accelerated and decelerated the entire way to the airport, rocking the car back and forth the whole time, as if it were a nervous habit to continually press and release the accelerator or something. I felt sick by the time we got to my terminal.
For me at this point, technology like Waymo can't carpet every metropolitan area quickly enough.
One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
I’d like to use it anonymously too but it doesn’t feel reasonable to ask for access to a $80k piece of hardware anonymously. I needed to give ID to rent a movie at blockbuster.
I’ve been trying to think of other expensive things you can do anonymously. Busses aren’t cheap, but have a driver. You can ride a plane (national only) here in NZ with no ID check. There is a name on the ticket, but no one checks it matches the passenger. Plenty of staff and other passengers around too.
> You can ride a plane (national only) here in NZ with no ID check
that is impressive to the point of giving me "living in the future" vibes
> You can ride a plane (national only) here in NZ with no ID check. There is a name on the ticket, but no one checks it matches the passenger.
I hypothesize that at least one of these is true:
No one has exploited this yet (it only takes one incident).
It is checked, you just don't know about it. Facial ID is pretty rad now.
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You hit an important point here.
Waymo is offering a very consistent experience, from the car that is used to the driving behavior.
Taxi services in the past, at least where I grew up, were kind of enforcing a more consistent experience by having requirements about the car and even the color.
But the driving experience was always highly variable and is getting solved by self driving cars.
With uber and Lyft you as the customer gave away some of the experience elements with the promise of cheaper and more abundant transportation.
But the experience has gone so bad, that getting into a Waymo feels so refreshing.
The problem is inherent in any business that scales revenue by volume.
For many goods (short term rental spaces, rideshares), there's a finite supply of quality at a given price point.
Both AirBnb and Uber/Lyft tried to over-scale their supply, to drive revenue, and quality suffered.
Now they're fishing for the Amazon-ian point where they maximize revenue without making people so unhappy they stop using the service.
> One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
That it requires a Google account is worth taking up with the TCP. That's a tie-in sale.
The TCP?
The part of the California Public Utilities Commission that regulates private buses and ride-sharing.[1]
[1] https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/tcpinfo/
E-bikes are the way to move anonymously. If you're in an environment with any traffic congestion, they stand a good chance of getting you there faster than a car. Another reason to promote bike lanes.
In most of the US, and in urban areas in particular, absolutely E-bikes are king. In California or the bay area in particular, motorcycles are a major contender due to ability to take on highways at speed, but still able to cut through traffic (lane splitting i.e. cutting between cars is 100% legal, but only in California, and neither legal nor illegal in DC), not to mention more power and range generally. The big difference here however is parking. Squeezing a motorcycle between to parallel parked cars is still significantly easier than finding parking for a 4-wheeled vehicle, but with a bicycle one can practically park anywhere that the bicycle can be locked up (depending on common sense decisions of how mad a person would be if you lock to some fence, vs how long you will be parked there)
Is it possible to use Uber anonymously?
They’re probably comparing to taxis, where you can pay in cash.
> One caveat: I should be able to use it (and, hence, pay for it) anonymously.
I assume you mean this as a moral claim and I can agree in that case. However, it's meaningless of course and kind of infuriating in any other light, because this is the world everyone has been mindlessly begging for and there is no chance that it comes without extremely severe consequences. An automated world like this means even less power for working people than ever before, so how on Earth do you expect to realize any of these desires? Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy? Even if they did "care" it wouldn't matter because they have to compete.
> so how on Earth do you expect to realize any of these desires?
The same way this sort of thing has always been accomplished: Government regulation.
Vote, write reps, donate to the ACLU and EFF, socialize.
> Do you still think capitalists care about your privacy?
Why do you think most people did in the first place? We (speaking for the majority of consumers) care more about free services than we do having our privacy protected.
The fact that there are a seemingly endless stream of cases of identity fraud and leaks of private data and we still continue to use all the services indicates that we don't value it very much.
Do I care that Google knows I went to Amazon after searching for a particular book title? Nope. Do I care that Google knows I went to the grocery store today? Still no. I would much rather get a great search engine, free maps, GPS, email, documents, storage, photo backups and more.
If I did care about the privacy of these things, I'd pay for it. Or, I'd use a dedicated account on a different service on a different device that can't be connected if I want to do something I don't want others knowing about, like buying naughty lingerie for my partner or something.
Nonsense. You describe a world in which everyone has disposable income to navigate the market, picking and choosing as they please. Capitalism is not that world. Most people are just trying to keep their debt manageable enough to keep a roof over their heads and get to work on time the next day. Get real, guy.
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