> I’m fascinated how simple the __NSDictionaryI turned out to be.
There may be other cases where one gets something entirely different than the __NSDictionaryI class, depending on how the dictionary was created or how much / what kind of data it contains. There is some evidence[1] that Apple switches implementations of its collection classes based on various conditions, even something very simple, such as when an array contains more than X elements (where "X" is some threshold where the optimization characteristics change). Being able to dynamically change implementations is the main benefit of class clusters after all.
The quality of Uber drivers in San Francisco has dropped all the way to the point where I simply will not try to use Uber anywhere near downtown. They will accept the ride and the app will show they are "1 minute" away, however it will often take upwards of 15 minutes for them to reach me because they don't know their way around the city and are confused by all the one-way streets in downtown. I promise I"m not exaggerating, it really does take that long. I've stood there and watched them on the map spending 10-15 minutes driving very long distances away from me before finally turning in the right direction and painfully, slowly, starting to get closer. It's ridiculous.
If I'm in downtown or SOMA, I will use a taxi (either hailing or using Flywheel). It's usually a huge time saver (and there's no "surge" pricing either).
That's more the Uber app's fault than the driver's. I've chatted with drivers about this; the app doesn't actually tell you where the pickup is, it just starts the navigation. It seems to be a security measure.
Probably so people can't poach uber riders with a competing service. You could easily accept riders, relay their location to your services drivers, then cancel the pickup in the Uber app right as your driver shows up.
Sounds like something Uber themselves would do come to think of it.
This might explain why the only time I used Uber the driver did not understand where to find me. I was outside near a fence opposite the expressway. He was told by the app to stop on the expressway and pick me up. This despite my entering the street address when booking. It wasted one person hour of time. The driver told me he can't make more than minimum wage with Uber, he just does it as a hobby.
Some drivers near me will mark the trip 'complete' before dropping off their current passenger. This way they're already in the queue for the next passenger. Then it may take them 5-15min to finish dropping someone off then getting over to you.
I've had exactly the same experience in Bogota, Colombia.
There was a precise cliff-edge over which service levels dropped dramatically, and it came a few months ago when the lowest priced tier, which had nice, big modern cars with really professional drivers who knew the city, was replaced with a tier branded as 'uberX'.
The uberX experience, while still certainly usable, is a very obvious step down from the previous standard. To sum it up, it basically feels less like you're getting an on-demand professional driver/ taxi, and a lot more like you're just flagging a lift from some guy with a car.
The cars themselves are a big step down - much older, smaller, worn out interiors, sometimes even without seatbelts. On numerous occasions the drivers have been far from the professional driver standard. In general they get the job done but they sometimes don't know the roads very well, and I've run the full spectrum of issues like them taking forever to get to the pickup point, often driving past it and circling back round a one-way system etc, having to take ridiculous detours en route because they miss a turn, going via obviously gridlocked routes, asking me for directions along the way to the destination. All of the things you just don't expect to happen with a driver service but you might expect to happen if you asked a friend for a lift. It's not a guaranteed slick service like it previously was, at all.
I'm not sure what happened here but this, along with the Android app being fairly buggy and seeming to get worse over time (takes minutes to lock GPS coordinates, really kills my battery, sometimes completely freezes when you're tracking them coming to pick you up, gives you a locking error message when you've lost your data connection so you can't even see the map, or the license plate of the car, any more) has really downgraded my impression of uber from something which was all-round vastly better than taxis, to a something which is basically on the same level and that I'll just use when it's not that convenient to hail a taxi on the street. And I'm no big fan of taxis.
It's a shame, I used to rave about uber to anyone who'd listen, but if the level of service for the same cost continues to slide like this here and in other cities then I could see myself looking for and switching to competitors much more often where previously I had no real need or desire to.
No joke. When my brother uses Uber on the south end of Mercer Island, it regularly shows the "closest" car as being in Seward Park - about 1/2 mile away across a lake. The bridge of course is far north, and pretty much every Uber in Seattle's downtown or centrally-located neighborhoods is significantly closer than the one Uber picks.
Seems like they are simply using as-the-crow-flies distance, which is kinda crazy.
This is what happens when you have an "app store" with no approval or review process. Google should be cracking down on this, just like those ads they were displaying[1] which would serve up malware-infected versions of Firefox whenever someone searched for "Firefox".
I reported an issue with spoofing on the Google play store about 6 months ago. They told me there was no timeframe for the fix, and no fix yet as far as I'm aware. Maybe if I post it here someone from google will do something...
Just so everyone is aware, you can use any email address as your company email address on the google play store without verification. This means when looking at an app, you see the email is support@legitcompany.com and think it's from them, but it's not.
A lot of people lost bitcoins because of the malicious ad problem. Somebody spoofed blockchain.info and stole a bunch of credentials... The entire bitcoin subreddit reported it, yet 2 months later it was back up.
Precisely! The issue is storage.
There are many ways to create energy: solar, wind, water, nuclear (thorium!)...but storage is still unsolved. And Lithium is NOT the answer, not at the scale we need.
The storage problem is almost solved. Batteries/Supercaps with double the capacity, charge rate and lifespan of current Lithium-ions should be on the market soon.
Lithium-ion batteries are still at least $100/kWh (probably more like $300/kWh) and assuming a useful life of 1000 charge/discharge cycles, you're talking between $0.10 and $0.30/kWh just for the STORAGE! That doesn't even take into account the cost of generating the energy to begin with, nor the losses that come with charging and discharging the battery, nor the capital cost on the inverter that absolutely isn't free and definitely doesn't last forever.
Until storage can be had for a few cents per kWh storage is an unsolved problem.
I suspect that it will continue to be an unsolved problem for quite some time. Not because it's impossibly hard, but because getting oil or gas or coal out of the ground is so easy and has such large energy gain (output energy / input energy) that you have to be very clever to beat it.
It was more like buying new apartment. Contract (decret) was life-long cheap rent, transferable to children and other family members. Price was very high.
While this isn't nearly as bad as companies like Valve which go around claiming not even to have any managers, let alone any policies, it still means you're going to run into this:
It's worth pointing out that the author was a Stalinist, and so thought the solution to the problem of hierarchies forming implicitly was to make those hierarchies explicit and enshrine them.
The article describes a real problem; it speaks to my experience and the experiences of my comrades; but it offers no real solution and is essentially a defense of the status quo. It doesn't preclude a better solution.
Agree with your points. I find that posting the essay is still quite valuable, though - as an industry we are still enamored with the mythology of structurelessness.
So yeah, her solutions may be pretty questionable, but IMO as an industry we're not even at the point of exploring solutions, considering that so much of our industry doesn't even acknowledge the problem exist.
Until then it's useful to keep flogging the essay until people accept that yeah, this problem actually exists.
Personally, I think that structurelessness is much more possible in "our industry" because it's so culturally, racially, sexually, and class homogeneous. It's worth noting that this article is about feminist activist groups, and not software companies. Software companies have both much more clearly defined goals and much better metrics of measuring their progress towards those goals than feminist activist groups do. That in itself is a gamebreaking difference.
> "Personally, I think that structurelessness is much more possible in 'our industry' because it's so culturally, racially, sexually, and class homogeneous ..."
> "Until then it's useful to keep flogging the essay until people accept that yeah, this problem actually exists."
I fully agree, but I'm pleased to note that this is the first such 'management is dead' story where multiple commenters have given salient counterpoints (small company, no HR/PR disasters to date, who can fire you, etc), rather than jumping on the bandwaggon.
