Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31433162

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After trying to scour and even reading many books in this area, most that are either highly abstracted for the 'pop-sci' reader (like me, with no training in physics) or were all-out textbooks, I chanced upon Susskind's lectures and the Theoretical Minimum series. I started off right from the basics and IMHO, it has the right balance between introducing concepts and making sure you internalize them by having you actually work on problems (highly recommend that you don't skip these). I am nowhere near close to understanding any of this yet but it gave me at least an orientation for what to expect and how to prepare. Once I get a bit of time and the interest back again, I expect to go back to the other books in the series.

A new one I found out is their supposedly open-source initiative called 'Cloud Information Model' [1]. Along with others such as Salesforce, Genesys and AWS (companies that I personally don't trust), they promise 'you can create seamless and tailored personal experiences across cloud-native applications'. It's all a bit vague and fancy and sufficiently "tech-y" to impress the marketing folks but colour me suspicious.

EDIT: forgot the link,

1: https://cloudinformationmodel.org/faq/

So now I use them only when I absolutely need to (e.g. in noisy places, taking calls on the move) and avoid them all other times.

It's been 16 years since I worked there but I still remember this vividly. Modern banking has to be one of the biggest scams legally running and once you go below the prime segments, it's basically just exploiting the poorest and weakest to make some of the easiest money you can.

Just curious- how does it stack against Metabase (https://www.metabase.com/product/) for example? I used Metabase a few years back and was really blown away with the ease of use.

My experience is anecdotal but I visit my home country every year for a few months and I can clearly notice the declining quality of Uber's services:

1. Vehicles, on average, take at least 10-15 mins longer to get

2. Even if you find a vehicle, 60% of these rides are canceled (either by the driver because they call me and find out they don't want to go that way or they just don't move at all and I'm forced to cancel)

3. After all this, if I am lucky to get into a commute, every driver has complaints about Uber (complaints include intransparent pricing, delays in payments). Most of these drivers are completely dependent on Uber or similar services and have heavy debts that they are now unable to service.

4. Uber's app itself appears to get bloated by the day and while they do appear to make an effort collect my feedback when rides get canceled, not once have I got an impression that the feedback matters at all. Additionally, payment options are numerous but they require me to complete multiple steps to finish which puts me off using it (not Uber's fault I suppose but is part of the riding experience).

Given that they are competing against flag-down autos and rides, not to mention public transport and private vehicles (as electric bikes and cars get more popular), I think their model is not sustainable anymore and I expect them to struggle further as riders withdraw and once the demand-supply gap grows further, it's a downward spiral.