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.
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.
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)
> 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.
> 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.
Whenever I start feeling smug about how cagey I've been about data brokers in the past, I remind myself that enough of my relatives have handed over their DNA to operations like 23andMe so as to render my efforts futile.
Phew, good thing that things many people think are problems but that benefit large businesses always get made illegal. We’d be in a real pickle if that weren’t the case.
The administration could decide to detain, deport, or kill everyone who has certain traits - say, Jewish, or Arab, or Mexican, or maybe just has undesirable traits. The db of millions of users makes this very easy.
The US admin is already at the stage of mass deportations. Detention camps (beyond those we already have at the border) are probably not far behind.
Not required. Also not the point. Genetic data allows bulk identification of traits that may not be outwardly visible. Or even invention of new traits.
This information can be easily used to target large groups of individuals.
What happens when an ambitious young data analyst correlates a gene with criminal activity?
The point is you don’t want an admin that carries out malicious discrimination to have genetic data. We have already seen that movie. It doesn’t end well.
> If true, wouldn't it make sense to monitor them?
My point is that there's no reason to believe criminal tendencies are genetic in nature. If they are or aren't it is still easy to identify correlation. To even embark on this dangerous path of research we would need robust guardrails to ensure it doesn't devolve to genocide again.
> May be not go full minority report, but certainly makes it easier to catch.
Makes what easier to catch? How close do you think we should get to Minority Report? My opinion is that we should strive to be as far from Minority Report as possible at all times.
Racism comes from a place of ignorance. It's literally stupid. Genetic data is very easy to misinterpret and human history has no lack of examples of how it can be misused to cause harm to innocent people. Stupid people will misinterpret genetic data the same way they misinterpret skin color or any other physical characteristic.
Ask yourself, honestly, how comfortable you'd be with the idea of the government monitoring you (regardless of how you act, think, or feel) because you have a gene sequence correlated with antisocial activity.
... if, in your deepest heart, you'd be comfortable with that...
... I'd humbly suggest that you may have a genetic condition that makes you a lot more trusting of under-constrained authority surveilling you than the average human being, and you should be sensitive to their genetically-predisposed needs for privacy.
If the US is 'at the stage of mass deportation' [of people here illegally in the first place] it's only because we've been wildly generous to that set of people for so long that there's a backlog of them. In most countries, doing crimes while there illegally is something you don't dare do, or deportation could be the least of your worries.
Okay, but almost no other countries ever accepted people on this vague basis in the first place -- since "The country I'm from is poorly run" isn't a recognized reason for seeking asylum. They got 2 years free out of generosity, and now they want a green card on what grounds again?
Would you advocate for the US to invite every citizen of Haiti, Cuba, and Venezuela to move here? If not, why these particular 532,000 people?
Most people here seem concerned about insurance companies misusing personal data or a full-on totalitarian government takeover. However, my concern is about becoming susceptible to manipulation and coercion. A significant aspect the last election was the use of "Super PACs" like Elon's which targeted individuals on social media to influence their decision.
I think this trend will continue, not just in politics but across all sectors. The internet you experience will be tailored to your personality completely, but it will also be shaped to steer you in directions decided by who pay the most. The more data they collect about you, the more effective this manipulation will be.
This doesn't even account for the risks posed by malicious actors who might target you using this information.
You don't need DNA for that though. Just hand out money and buy people.
Similar to November, a Musk funded group is currently offering $100 to registered voters in Wisconsin to sign a petition against “activist judges” with a not so subtle nudge to vote for the judge that will be favorable to the lawsuit he(musk) and Tesla are involved in within the state and who happens to be be part of the Trump gang having campaigned with junior.
Sure. I just think that we will be looking back at that as a horribly inefficient and expensive way to accomplish something that will be much more advanced soon.
yeah you're just projecting your personal concerns on to this thread. i have FAR more info about you from your social media activity than your DNA. learn to compartmentalize.
It's not just those without smartphones who are penalized. It's those without Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and spying imposed by Apple or Google on their devices.
I run GrapheneOS on an older Pixel. It does everything I need it to do: alarms, offline maps and navigation, end-to-end encrypted communications, podcasts, audiobooks, music, photos, weather, and even phone calls. All without any DRM or spying.
Now let's talk about the downsides in this article: shopping discounts, parking, entertainment, fast food, and banking.
Shopping discounts: The deal is that they get to track me and advertise to me, and they cut some percentage off a purchase here and there. No deal. I've discovered so many great products by moving away from big retail shops that engage in this kind of activity. I mostly shop at Trader Joe's, which has no coupon/discount/loyalty nonsense. For the occasional trip to another supermarket, I simply key in <local area code>-867-5309. Works every time.
Parking: I ride my bicycle or take public transportation almost everywhere, so parking is a moot point for me. But for the rare occasion when I drive to a place where I have to pay for parking, most everything accepts a credit card. If it doesn't, most everything else has a website that I can go to in Vanadium or Waterfox. It's actually very rare that I find I actually have no choice but to download and install a DRM'd app in order to park somewhere. In fact I don't recall that ever actually happening to me. Not to say that's not a possibility in the future.
Entertainment: I despise large crowds, and almost everything that's exclusively done through Ticketmaster et al. is of absolutely no interest to me. If I'm not sitting down in a cozy venue within 10-15 or so feet from the performers, I'm just not interested.
Fast food: I don't eat fast food. Discounted Big Macs isn't my idea of a good time.
Banking: My bank's web site works fine on Waterfox. But if I'm going to be managing my money I'd much prefer to do it on my computer. If I want a reasonable return on my deposits I simply park most of my cash in a money market ETF. It's plenty convenient and is simply not a big issue for me.
I'll add a few more.
Rideshare: I find traditional taxis are everywhere I've recently visited, tend to be driven by more interesting people, and they accept cash, no problem. I've had plenty of bad experiences with rideshares and have never had a bad experience since switching to traditional taxis. Knock on wood.
Audiobooks: I get ODM files from my local library. The audio files you download via ODM aren't DRM'd.
Ebooks: My offline Kobi reader works great. Kindles can be cracked with WinterBreak. Again, the library. DeDRM is your friend.
Email: Fastmail app from apkcure.com.
Chat: Signal.
Airlines: Check in on Waterfox, take a screenshot of the ticket/QR code. If that doesn't work, check in at the airport and get a printed boarding pass.
Those kiosks are gone from many airports. You're going to have to wait in line to get anything printed. And if you fly Ryanair it will cost you over 50 euro.
> That's not a thing. They're literally just cameras looking for a QR code.
And yet for me one time earlier this year said QR code on my Graphene OS phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but refused to scan at the gate, leading to mayhem as the crew couldn't figure out for nearly an hour why the number of people sitting on the plane wasn't equal to the number of people who they registered as boarding.
I've had airline machines fail to scan the barcode on my poorly printed paper boarding passes (e.g. faded ink or unfortunate located gaps etc in the barcode area). The solution is simple, just type in the details off the BP into the terminal to look up my PNR and type the command to confirm I've boarded. I've seen this done for both paper and mobile boarding pass issues. Not a mobile issue but obviously poor staff training and problem solving which occurs with or without mobiles.
> It's more about some weird incompatibility between my device and the scanner.
I think I held up an entire flight for nearly an hour because the QR code on my Graphene OS Android phone scanned fine at the TSA checkpoint but didn't scan at all at the gate. They ended up letting me on the flight without properly registering that I boarded in their system. That triggered some crazy security hold that prevented the crew from obtaining permission to pull back from the gate.
When that happens (and note it happens to paper boarding passes as well) I've always seen gate agents simply type in the details off the boarding pass. E.g. name, sequence number, etc and do a manual entry that way. I've had this happen to me at least once, and the agent very quickly just typed in something in their terminal and it was all done with no fuss. Really surprised no one thought of doing this in your situation.
> It's often €50 now to print boarding pass at the counter in Europe.
I was about to respond, "No way this is true. I don't believe you." But then I found an article claiming that yes, indeed you can be fleeced like this for simply showing up and asking for your boarding pass. Unreal.
Printing a boarding pass at home works for the flight out. But what about the returning flight?
Just last week I flew back home from SFO. I needed to change the flight at the last minute. The app failed to update with the new flight. The airline had removed all the boarding pass kiosks from that airport and only seemed to have luggage drop service. I asked an airport employee how I could get a boarding pass printed, and he pointed to a poorly-marked lane with a sign about "special accommodations" or something, like I was blind. I waited in that line for about 20 minutes along with people who were trying to check their bags. Eventually I got to someone who seemed really put out that I hadn't checked in yet and that they'd need to push a few more buttons on their computer to do that for me.
Weird, I've flew out of SFO two weeks ago on United, and their online check-in never works for me so I just do it at the airport and get a paper boarding pass. I didn't run into any issues. Line was short (mid morning on a Thursday). They have a bunch of self-service kiosks to check-in and print passes.
It's never crossed my mind that an airline app exists and I would never consider installing one. If they don't want to provide self-service kiosks or a working website, I guess they'll have to have more demand for agents. Same with banks: there's no check deposits through their website, so I go in person when I need to do that. Installing an app is just not even on my radar to consider.
I'd also never rely on a gate number from my phone anyway knowing that it could be out of date. I'd have to verify with a departure board or sign at the gate anyway, so I'm just going to start there.
I'm all-in on this. If the only way for me to attend an event is to deal with an app on my phone, I automatically assume there are a few dozen other activities or events I'd enjoy doing more during that time and choose to go do one of those instead.
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.