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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • unless you see the uber car circling around you on the map, then canceling the ride and cashing in the “cancelation fee”

    That’s a relatively new phenomenon as people have learned how to game the system. The reliability of Uber when they first launched was complete night and day.

    yes, uber was faster to adapt it than traditional taxi industry, but they are not doing it for your blue eyes, they are doing it for profit and they do lot of shady stuff to achieve it.

    I never said otherwise. I was merely providing an example of why Uber gained adoption early on. The service was materially better than what taxi companies were delivering at the time in many places. I experienced that first hand.


  • Tracking, arrival timer and an easy app.

    The fact that they would actually show up.

    Where I live, before Uber you needed to call the cab company at least an hour before you wanted to get anywhere (in a city that you can get pretty much anywhere in 15 minutes). The dispatcher would tell you someone will be there in 20 minutes and, if you were lucky, somebody might show up in 45. Before Uber, there was more than one occasion where I ended up stranded downtown until 4 or 5am after the bars had closed at 3:00.

    Being able to request a ride, having someone reliably show up, and show up reasonably close to when they said they would was an absolute game changer at the time.


  • 80%+ of severe injury and death on a bicycle is caused by motor vehicles, or complications of motor vehicle involvement.

    Which would mean ~1 in 5 have absolutely nothing to do with a motor vehicle. That’s significant.

    There is considerable evidence that everyone wearing a helmet in a car would save vastly more lives and prevent severe head injury

    Then that should be an easy [citation needed] for you because my searches are coming up blank for actual studies. Lots of assertions of it, but I’m not finding anything in terms of actual data.

    It’s very easy, on the other hand, to find comprehensive meta analyses on the efficacy of helmet use.

    It’s also worth noting that the introduction makes a point of calling out another common online assertion that you repeated – that helmets make people engage in more risk-taking behavior – as false:

    There has already been an extensive peer-reviewed literature review conducted by Esmaeilikia et al.5, which found little to no support for increased risk-taking when cyclists use helmets and if anything, they cycled with more caution.

    I don’t feel those people should be called stupid for their choice.

    I don’t think they’re stupid. I think they’re bad at risk analysis. That’s a pretty inherent feature of humans. It’s the reason I want to see actual data.


  • A helmet is only needed if you intend to spend significant time in traffic.

    The worst wreck I’ve ever had on a bike was without a single car in sight. Pinch flat while carrying speed through a steep downhill curve. I split an expensive MIPS helmet in two and still hit hard enough that I had a minor concussion, road rash up one side of my body, and cracked the face of a week old watch just to pour salt in the (metaphorical) wound. I mostly landed on my head and that helmet is the reason I didn’t have drastically more severe head injuries.

    Helmets aren’t just for traffic.



  • Like how Ferrari cars are designed for 20 year olds but only 80 year olds can afford to buy them.

    I mean, making the comparison to motorsports just emphasizes how cheap gaming is as a hobby.

    Autocross is as entry level as you can get and a typical ~$50 entry fee gets you maybe 10 minutes of seat time and it’s typical to need to drive 2-3 hours each way for an event. That’s before you start adding in things like the fact that a $1500 set of tires will last you a season or two at most, suspension and brake upgrades easily running a couple of thousand dollars, etc.

    Start dipping into actual track time and fees jump to more like $250-750 plus around that much again for track insurance per event. And the upgrades needed for the car to hold up on track are even more expensive still. And this is all ignoring the purchase price of the car and potentially needing to trailer a dedicated track car.

    I’ve almost certainly spent far less on PC gaming in the last 5 years combined than I have on motorsports in the past 3 months. I’m on the upper end of spending for most gamers and a dabbler at best when it comes to the cars.

    The insanity of the GPU market since covid has put some upward pressure on things but A. the proliferation of great indie titles means you can get incredible value without breaking bank on the highest end equipment and B. even then, the money I spent literally tonight ordering just brake pads and rotors would buy you a 4070 all day long. And I went cheaper than I could have.

    Gaming dollars go a long, long way. It’s a hobby that was affordable even when I was younger and broke. It’s still relatively affordable compared to many, many other hobbies.



  • commandar@lemmy.worldtoA Boring Dystopia@lemmy.worldSigh.
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    9 months ago

    Their business model is buying overstock items from other retailers and then reselling it highly discounted. It’s the reason you’ll find things that are Walmart, Target, etc store brands there.

    Basically, it’s anything that aged out in inventory elsewhere that the original retailer no longer wanted taking up shelf space for whatever reason.