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[alway]

Related, since that is one: here's all the GDC 2017 talks online http://www.gdcvault.com/browse/gdc-17
The ones without stars next to them can be viewed for free; the others are paywalled. (PCG shotgun on page 10 was the one with Tarn's mini-talk)

[martinuzz]

The beginning of the end for Uber has begun.
The Italian court ruled that Uber services are unfair competition on the market, and banned them from Italy. Uber has 10 days to withdraw all it's services, apps, and commercials from Italy. If the verdict holds in supreme court, Italy will be the first EU country that bans all Uber services, like Uberpop, Uberlux, Uberblack, UberSUV, UberXL, UberVan and UberSelect. More are expected to follow.

[TheBiggerFish]

"unfair competition"

unfair

competition

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Teneb]

"unfair competition"

unfair

competition

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Taxists don't want to adapt, so they make a lobby to drive Uber out of the country.

[alway]

Uber's fares are subsidized heavily by VCs in an attempt to monopolize the market. Uber's fares pay for only 41% of their expenses.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh
Their business model is driving all others out of business so they can jack up prices later. So yeah, unfair competition funded by capitalists in an attempt to make things worse for everyone.

[TheBiggerFish]

Uber's fares are subsidized heavily by VCs in an attempt to monopolize the market. Uber's fares pay for only 41% of their expenses.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh
Their business model is driving all others out of business so they can jack up prices later. So yeah, unfair competition funded by capitalists in an attempt to make things worse for everyone.

So charge them with attempted monopolization and fine them lots of money?

[alway]

Uber's fares are subsidized heavily by VCs in an attempt to monopolize the market. Uber's fares pay for only 41% of their expenses.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh
Their business model is driving all others out of business so they can jack up prices later. So yeah, unfair competition funded by capitalists in an attempt to make things worse for everyone.

So charge them with attempted monopolization and fine them lots of money?

Which is precisely what they're doing by banning the service. Though the fines are more an implicit thing in this case, both because Uber didn't actually profit in the market yet (and thus the loss is mostly spending lots of money subsidizing without gaining a monopoly at the end of it) and because it's often seen as more fair to warn a business to stop doing something explicitly before breaking out big fines.

Banning them is how you tell them to stop doing what they're doing; they could continue in the market, but not without a massive redesign of their business practices which they're repeatedly shown they aren't willing to do. The ban is to keep them from playing a legalistic shell game at the expense of everybody else.

[TheBiggerFish]

Uber's fares are subsidized heavily by VCs in an attempt to monopolize the market. Uber's fares pay for only 41% of their expenses.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh
Their business model is driving all others out of business so they can jack up prices later. So yeah, unfair competition funded by capitalists in an attempt to make things worse for everyone.

So charge them with attempted monopolization and fine them lots of money?

Which is precisely what they're doing by banning the service. Though the fines are more an implicit thing in this case, both because Uber didn't actually profit in the market yet (and thus the loss is mostly spending lots of money subsidizing without gaining a monopoly at the end of it) and because it's often seen as more fair to warn a business to stop doing something explicitly before breaking out big fines.

Banning them is how you tell them to stop doing what they're doing; they could continue in the market, but not without a massive redesign of their business practices which they're repeatedly shown they aren't willing to do. The ban is to keep them from playing a legalistic shell game at the expense of everybody else.

I think I need to see the rationales behind this before passing further judgement.

[martinuzz]

We can expect AirBnB to get banned at some point too. It's already causing huge disruption of the housing market. House owners rather rent out their house per touist / per room / per period via AirBnB than using it for what it's needed: housing. It's already been restricted somewhat in the Netherlands, with Amsterdam passing a decree that a house may only be rented out as tourist accomodation for a limited number of months per year, because the house rental market was completely locked down with AirBnB.

As for Uber, it's what alway said, at least over here. Uber offers 'carpooling' service for less than half a normal taxi price. There's no way that taxi drivers can compete with that. 'Real' taxi drivers have to pay for expensive taxi licenses every year, and invest in expensive safety and comfort driving education, to comply with labour and safety laws. Uber taxi drivers don't, because they're 'carpoolers', not taxi drivers. Changing that would help. It would still allow Uber to heavily subsidize their fares, but it would mean that everyone who wants to drive for Uber will first need to go to chauffeur school for a year or so (and pay for it), and buy a taxi license. Basically, no one would want to be an Uber driver anymore, because they could just as well become a normal taxi driver in that case and earn much more.

[alway]

On a similar note, the other half of the Uber monopoly bet is self-driving cars so they can avoid paying drivers in the future; which is the only way they could keep current rates and turn a profit. To that end, they've been working on self-driving car tech. Which they apparently started on by nicking a set of documents from Google's self driving car work, resulting in the current Google v Uber trial. It's worth following that trial (currently in discovery phase) if only for the ace commentary from Judge Alsup, taker of no bullshitting, and master of snark.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/uber-exec-accused-of-stealing-from-google-made-120m-while-working-on-the-side/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/ubers-levandowski-really-doesnt-want-to-talk-about-any-waymo-documents/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/judge-orders-uber-to-search-servers-work-harder-to-find-waymos-14000-files/
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/judge-accuses-uber-and-levandowski-of-obfuscation-in-waymo-case/

"I hope the court of appeals will read this record, to see the obfuscation the poor judge has been subjected to on this motion," Alsup said.

And despite all that, their self driving car project is still terrible: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/03/17/1916215/uber-nowhere-close-to-having-a-fully-autonomous-vehicle-its-self-driving-cars-need-a-lot-of-human-help
"Uber's self-driving cars traveled, on average, just 0.8 miles on their own before a human had to take over"
So yeah, Uber's not in a happy place.

[Starver]

We can expect AirBnB to get banned at some point too. It's already causing huge disruption of the housing market. House owners rather rent out their house per touist / per room / per period via AirBnB than using it for what it's needed: housing. It's already been restricted somewhat in the Netherlands, with Amsterdam passing a decree that a house may only be rented out as tourist accomodation for a limited number of months per year, because the house rental market was completely locked down with AirBnB.

Not the only problem potentially facing AirBNB... 

[Reelya]

I think I need to see the rationales behind this before passing further judgement.

The rationale is that they're selling below cost in order to drive everyone else out of business. And of course, costs aren't actually coming down, they plan to get the monopoly then triple the prices to make their money back. Gotta stomp on people who do that or else you're screwed. That's the rationale.

There's also the fact that everyone who works at Uber is an asshole, from top to bottom, no exceptions. And they plan to replace all their actual non-asshole drivers with robots. so you have bunch of assholes who want to drive everyone else out of business and replace their own workforce with a robot army. What more rationale do we need for destroying Uber before it's too late?

[Azzuro]

Fuck Uber, and FUCK the gig economy shit they've introduced. Yes, taxis charge higher prices, but taxi drivers also get insured and licensed by their companies to drive safely and professionally. Whereas if you're an Uber driver and get into an accident, you're shit out of luck because Uber won't pay for repairs/healthcare as they specifically go out of the way to avoid calling their drivers employees, instead calling them contractors and shifting all responsibility onto them. Uber also does their damnedest to avoid government rules and regulations wherever they can to drive costs down, which they've been pretty successful at so far as laws haven't caught up to their business model.

The most insidious thing is that Uber drivers actually believe Uber is doing a good thing for them, by giving them an avenue to earn more money. They fail to see that contractual employment is, by its nature much more dangerous to their personal finance and retirement savings than staff employment, and gives an even greater degree of bargaining power to the employer (Uber) rather than cutting out the employer entirely as it's promised to do. It's a huge step back in labour relations, and yet many millennials see it as the way of the future.

[Reelya]

Actually the way of the future there is to replace Uber completely with a blockchain-based ride hailing app.

[wierd]

Unless Uber is transporting data, that does not make a whole lot of sense Reelya.  Maybe once they develop some kind of digital transport for people (startrek transporter, et al)-- but until then? Uhm.... How exactly will a blockchain in any way help physical transport?