Tag Archives: Opaque

Second Study Reveals Uber’s Profits Surge Through Opaque Algorithms

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A prominent academic institution has accused Uber of utilizing opaque software algorithms to significantly boost profits while negatively impacting drivers and passengers using their ride-hailing platform.

Research conducted by scholars at Columbia Business School in New York determined that the Silicon Valley company has adopted a systematic and selective approach to “algorithmic price discrimination,” which “raises rider fares and severely diminishes driver earnings to the tune of billions.”

The Ivy League Business School’s findings are based on an analysis involving “tens of thousands of rides… amounting to over 2 million…” travel requests, and it builds upon a recent study from the University of Oxford concerning 1.5 million UK trips published the previous week.

The UK research revealed that many Uber drivers in the UK have reported “substantially reduced” earnings since the introduction of the “dynamic pricing” algorithm in 2023, correlating with the company capturing a significantly larger share of fare revenue.


The US report, authored by Len Sherman, highlights that as a passenger, acceptance appears less favorable, while he expresses amazement at what has been accomplished.

Sherman’s report remarked: Reducing driver payments while enhancing their take rate significantly contributes to improving cash flow during the study’s duration.

In 2024, Uber announced that it had generated $6.9 billion (£5 billion) in cash for the year, a stark contrast to their loss of $303 million in cash in 2022.

Sherman noted that the advanced pricing introduced in the U.S. in 2022 is akin to the UK dynamic pricing algorithm implemented in 2023, significantly affecting passenger fares.

Columbia’s study, which examined trips made by 24,532 U.S. Uber drivers, concluded that the new algorithm has “modified the distribution of net rider fares among driver incomes.”

The recent Oxford study found that following the rollout of dynamic pricing, Uber’s median take-rate per driver surged from 25% to 29%, with some trips exceeding 50%.

These findings contribute to a growing list of controversies surrounding technology companies, including a 2021 UK Supreme Court ruling affirming that Uber drivers are entitled to a minimum wage and paid leave, along with the 2022 disclosure of the Uber Files, a global investigation revealing the company’s efforts to bypass police and regulations while secretly lobbying governments worldwide.

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Following the release of the Uber Files, Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s Vice President of Public Relations, stated:

An Uber spokesperson remarked, “Uber’s pricing structure aims to be transparent and equitable for both riders and drivers. The prepaid pricing is disclosed prior to booking, enabling drivers to make informed choices based on a full understanding of wages, distance, and expected duration.”

“Our dynamic pricing algorithms function to synchronize real-time supply and demand, enhancing the platform’s overall reliability. The prepaid pricing model is not personalized, and our pricing algorithms do not utilize personal information from individual riders or drivers.”

“Last week, the company reiterated: [the University of Oxford] Report. All drivers are guaranteed to earn at least the national living wage.”

Source: www.theguardian.com

Elon Musk targets an opaque US government office

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Federal employees in a lesser-known office dedicated to high-tech and consulting services were working when Elon Musk first tweeted about the agency on the afternoon of February 3rd.

“The group has been deleted.” The mask was written.

The world's wealthiest man had responded to a tweet from a right-wing activist who mistakenly claimed that the 18th floor within the General Services Agency (GSA) was a left and right cell within the government. Activists accused the 18th floor of creating a programme that would take care of bureaucrats to prepare people's tax returns. This was one of several false claims about the offices circulating on X, the social media platform Musk owns and spends much of his day.

Musk's tweet quickly sparked widespread confusion on the 18th floor. This is not a radical leftist cabal, but is tasked with partnering with government agencies to consult and develop software solutions. Former staff and current GSA employees described the 18th floor as a workforce focused on providing high-tech services and improving efficiency within the bureaucracy. Mask's so-called “government efficiency” (DOGE) is designed to perform accurately.

When Musk insisted on deletion, the partner agency was already in work and was hoping for the office's help on civic technology projects, which are key to updating the business. Will they still get that help? What does “delete” mean? What will happen to the technical tools 18F was building? According to three former workers, staff at the sub-agency were unable to get a definitive answer from the leadership of the new Musk Alliance and were unsure what to tell the other institutions.

The confusion lasts for several weeks. On Saturday, March 1st, staff on the 18th floor received an email around 1am, informing them that everything would be fired and closed “in an explicit direction from the top level of both the administration and the GSA leadership.”

The 18F episode fits a common pattern that appears to be amplifying masks by ingesting misinformation online. It is also a window into the influence of right-wing media and activists on Musk when he attacks and disbands some of the government that he believes does not fit the ideological worldview.

For a week after cutting the 18F, the recently appointed director of GSA's Technology Transformation Services, which oversees the 18F, held a meeting explaining the decision. Thomas Shed, a 28-year-old former Tesla software engineer and Musk's ally who sent the mass layoff email, told staff that the 18th floor had been shut down. Employees' hourly wages were too high And external consultants will be cheaper. Shedd did not respond directly to requests for comment on this article.

“After a thorough review of the 18th floor, the leadership of the GSA has determined that the business unit is not in line with President EOS, following consent from the administration and all OPM guidelines.

The explanation, according to former staff, not only misunderstands how the 18th floor operates and how its cost structure operates, but also ignores the frequent savings of agents by advising private vendors on costs and unnecessary contracts. Instead, former employees and current staff at GSA thought the layoffs were politically motivated.

“The only reason I can see when 18F is chosen to be eliminated in front of other offices is to make Elon Musk happy,” said a GSA employee who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation.

Misleading tweets and musk destiny workers dedicated to government efficiency

The 18th floor worked with various government agencies to create popular services, but little known to the public. The group quietly helped create dozens of services each year for various stations, including the IRS direct file free tax return system. Many 18F software projects, including streamlining government weather websites for easy use in the event of natural disasters, have a clear intention to make government services more efficient and reduce taxpayer costs.

When Musk claimed he “deleted” 18F, he was retweeting a February 3 post from right-wing activist Alex Rorsso, producer of conservative media influencer Benny Johnson. Musk of X, and the one courted by Donald Trump's administration. he I'm working As a paid consultant for Musk's Super PAC, he is also a fan. His first post on X profile is a 2023 photo of a mask and laughing, pinned to the top so that others don&#39t push out in the sight.

Lorusso's post allegedly claiming that the 18th floor is “in charge of preparing people&#39s tax returns,” suggesting that it is “a far left government wide computer office.” His claims about 18F were later revised by other X users in the Community Notes. Instead, the office explained that it helped Americans build a service that would allow them to file taxes online for free. Set to extended Nationwide.

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Like Musk, Lorusso's posts about X were retweets from another conservative media person. Luke Rosiak, author of the conservative news site The Daily Wire, posted a long thread on January 31st attacking 18F. He framed the technology consulting unit as “a far left agency” and “a contract in which transgender and queer hire each other.” The thread included a profile of former 18F employees using the pronoun for “them” in their BIOS, as well as images of employee crowdfunding campaigns for gender-affirming healthcare. I was also caught up in an article published by Rosiak about the GSA and the 18F in 2023. He suggested that he focused on agency diversity. The Russian chain&#39s first post has received over 13.5 million views and was retweeted by Musk.

According to a former employee, the Russian attack on the 18th floor included a misleading statement. Daily Wirewriters refused to insert facial recognition software into the government's website login.gov for “racial equity,” so 18F claimed 18F&#39s at-risk security for Americans on 18F. The claim blended several different parts of the GSA and misinterpreted security issues with facial recognition, said one former employee, with 18F denounced leadership decisions related to completely different business units.

The GSA faced a legitimate scandal when former Technology Transformation Services Director Dave Zvenyach misrepresented the level of security operated by Login.gov, but Login.gov was an independent entity from the 18th floor and had no direct staffing with the office. According to a former 18F employee, facial recognition software is well known for not being able to recognize non-white faces, and using it as an identity verification tool creates security issues for users, resulting in racial stock testing of facial recognition technology.

“I think it&#39s impossible to imagine people putting their partisans aside while they work for the government,” the former 18F employee said in response to conservative vitriol against the 18F.

In response to requests for comment on the thread&#39s statement, a Daily Wire spokesperson said the Russian report on the 18th floor speaks for itself.

Some former staff members following a massive layoff on the 18th floor Set up your website They attempt to revise the right-wing narrative that their group is partisan within the government, and instead highlight the various projects they have completed. Others warned that their group was an early warning sign of how the Doji and the Trump administration target other agencies based on ideological evidence, not on what they do.

“We lived through the evidence that the topic of this administration was wrong. Lindsay Young, former executive director of 18F, said in a LinkedIn post: “This targeted us.”

Source: www.theguardian.com

Gold Flecks Give Ultra-Clear Glass a Completely Opaque Appearance on One Side

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Objects visible through glare-free materials are clear, but traditional anti-glare films (right) blur the view.

Mu Wang et al/Nanjing University

Glare-free windows can be made from materials studded with billions of tiny metal patches. This leaves the one-way window matte – it looks opaque and reflects only 1% of the light from outside – but it is still transparent, so it doesn’t blur your view or significantly reduce the amount of light it lets in. You may be able to secure the privacy of your car or office without having to worry about it. They let them in.

Mu Wan Nanjing University in China and his colleagues have created a glass-like material with a matte finish similar to frosted glass, called transparent material surface (TMS). Unlike existing anti-glare coatings and films, objects can be viewed and photographed through TMS without blur.

Wang notes that matte and transparent are typically mutually exclusive properties. To accomplish both at the same time, he and his team coated the material with nanosized patches that scatter and reflect light in just the right way. They make these parts from reflective metals like gold and materials like silicon that conduct electricity poorly, which reduces the amount of light reflected. They then placed billions of them onto glass wafers.

They tested it by shining a light on it and found that a camera with a TMS wafer over the lens could reflect just 1.3% of the light while transmitting enough light to take clear photos. . The researchers also asked the AI ​​to identify a tennis ball on the other side, combined with a camera connected to the AI ​​that labels the object. The AI ​​was successful when viewing the ball through TMS, but labeled the ball as “unidentified” when viewing through the blur created by traditional anti-glare film.

“The most exciting part of the experiment for us was the interesting moment when we saw the freshly prepared 4-inch sample with our own eyes for the first time without any special equipment. The material became transparent when light passed through it. It was difficult to imagine that there would be no distortion in the image, but it would look dull when reflecting light,” says Wang.

Simon Horsley Researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK say the material is suitable for making “very large windows” and could help reduce light pollution. Reflections are a major source of light pollution, and this material helps minimize light pollution by reflecting soft, diffused light instead of annoying bright glare.

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Source: www.newscientist.com