In many municipalities, it would be cheaper to run on demand van service for people than run busses. Not only would it get people to and from their actual homes and work, vans are cheap and readily available. Paying more drivers is cheaper than buying and maintaining multi million dollar busses that are empty a lot of the time.
In most of CA, most homes are far from bus lines. Making their use prohibitive for all but those who must use them. I know they do something like this in LA. People love it.
Metro micro doesn’t scale at all. It is still limited to pilot study areas. Cost per trip is absurd compared to traditional bussing. One of the stated goals of the next gen bus plan in LA was to get a bus stop in a 10 min walk of 85% of the workers in LA county and this was achieved.
The real trouble with transit is people choose where they live based on car convenience rather than transit convenience. So they open an app and go “gee I can drive to work in 30 mins but I have to take two or three busses and three times the time on transit.” And write it off forever, rather than considering that they could have optimized their housing for a 30 min single bus transit commute when seeking housing convenient to work. The way LA county is developed is that there are apartments basically in every neighborhood anyhow without very strong neighborhood specific effects on pricing. Housing a little more neighborhood specific but that changes as townhomes and other sort of not-detached-sfh buying opportunities come to bear generally in neighborhoods with demand for a song compared to detached housing.
> rather than considering that they could have optimized their housing for a 30 min single bus transit commute when seeking housing convenient to work
In many places I've lived, this optimization would need to be re-done every job change and you would probably need to move, because it's as much about where the job is as where your house is.
The thing about optimizing for a good commute in a car is that you're way more likely to be at least average or better even if your job location changes.
With the way traffic works in LA county that isn’t so much the case. Rush hour speeds are like 15mph or less no matter surface streets or freeways. Really large geographic area too. Other metros where you can move at more or less 60mph even in rush hour I agree.
The hardest working people in society are paid the least. We created a system of financial engineering that has bifurcated society. The sad part is it's only going to get worse as those with money will have access to the tools and resources that will allow them to accelerate their position.
Conflating wealth for success is a big part of why we're here. Success in life is not the same as success at life and as we all personally know, money is no indicator of one's intelligence, abilities or personality. In face, any idiot can make money and it takes a true sociopath to earn billions without pure luck...
I'd say that this is a take only for your time, not for all time. For all time, learning about the humanities has shown to further one's ability to reason, create and imagine. IMHO Curiosity paired with an understanding of humanity (social skills) will become the most valuable job skills. The ability to talk and connect with people will outweigh any technical skill. You can only do this by understanding humanity and living in a society that promotes and fosters humanity.
In the near term, AI will override any and all non-physical skills. However AI is not able to create or imagine, it can only mimic and regurgitate. Additionally, it cannot fix a leaking shower, and it cannot make your bed. Add in physical real-world limitations and complexities,(randomness and disorder), and you have a world where physical skills and artistic abilities will dominate.
People will value authenticity, human touch and the magic that is human creativity (love) more and more as the non-physical world becomes less and less real.
Makers, Do-ers, Designers and Caretakers will dominate the workforce in 25 years.
People do value human creativity, but why do you think that comes from the degree mills and monocultures of the humanities departments? I don't agree that these departments foster creativity, rather the opposite, they foster conformity. There are lots of concrete real life examples of this.
I think that creativity doesn't come from humanities departments, but more likely, organically from counter culture. Who doesn't know what a rick roll is? This did not come from a humanities department.
Edit:
Forgot to add my second point: AI is going to let people outside the mainstream produce genuinely credible, professional-level work without a massive budget.
That means further devaluing of establishment institutions like humanities departments. It strips away the gatekeeping power, deciding who gets to count as legit. AI blows that up.
I'm not sure why you're being down voted. Art degrees aren't aimed at artists. There are dedicated schools to go to for things like graphics design and other creative degrees, but those aren't the sort of humanities degrees that we're talking about.
I vaguely recall even creative art degrees as being looked down upon by artists as teaching you to conform to certain styles, essentially mimicry rather than creativity (though it has been some years since anyone in my network attended one).
In any case, despite the waxing philosophical of the personal growth value of a humanities degree, there's still the fact that every college and university also advertises job placement rates of their majors. Individual courses may focus on specific topics, but the people taking your money are promising job opportunities to parents and school councilors to convince them that the over inflated price tags are worth it.
> There are dedicated schools to go to for things like graphics design and other creative degree
Yes, there are dedicated trade schools for graphic design just like there are coding bootcamps.
There are also university degree programs designed for creative artists. (And yes, there are universities that specialize exclusively, or nearly so, in those degrees and are highly regarded within them, just as is the case in STEM.)
There are some art-adjacent degrees that aren't primarily focussed on doing art (Art History being the most common and well-known one) and some of the creative-focussed programs may have options to focus on more critical/analytical vs. practical concentrations available, as well.
But creative degrees focussed on actual creative output whether writing or film or theater or dance or music or photography or other visual art are a very big slice of the humanities.
> But creative degrees focussed on actual creative output whether writing or film or theater or dance or music or photography or other visual art are a very big slice of the humanities.
But the result doesn't seem to be very creative, so what is the point?
Although I hate to get political on HN, barely 20 years ago Democrats were the ones banning books in school for being too "culturally insensitive", while republicans were the ones who opposed book banning in schools. One would argue at least banning (often recently written) books with adult content/porn makes sense, saying a classic is "culturally insensitive" and banning it is just another word for political indoctrination
> Let educators rather than politicians decide which books should be in a school library
We already don't do this though, between state laws, federal laws, and the department of education. I am fine getting rid of the department of education though since it seems you're opposed to it too.
And it was 20 years ago, you'd have to look up the specific policies. The point is acting like this is the first time people have tried banning books from young children in school is ignorant of all recent history
Making a claim and supporting it by effectively saying "go look it up yourself" is hardly compelling. It might be accurate, or perhaps not incorrect but misleading.
This smells a lot like the old "both sides do bad stuff" argument, which often gets over applied to pretend there is no difference in magnitude of the egregiousness when two sides do similar bad stuff.
And even if we did it would still go to shit because "educators" is not an representative cross section of the population and their choices would be ideologically skewed and/or subject to industry circle jerks and fads.
Generally institutions have more Democrats serving in them (I suppose it’s a culture fit thing) so it’s less needed for them to pass explicit laws vs just issuing organisational memos or other internal orders.
> it’s less needed for them to pass explicit laws vs just issuing organisational memos or other internal orders.
But issuing organizational memos is not illegal, whereas passing explicit laws is banned by the Constitution. Probably because one is a really bad idea that chills free speech for the whole nation, while the other is just how any community organization operates.
Banning should be an extreme measure only applied in some extremely limited form for the shortest duration possible, if ever. For instance when the book is directly being used to institute violence or hate. While porn should be restricted, it should be in the hands of parents, not the state. Same with abortion, a deeply personal matter, not in the hands of the state or whatever some church things, just because they think they are right. Justice should be blind, not carry a bible or creed.
It should appear evident, and a pretty apolitical stance, but here we are.
>Although I hate to get political on HN, barely 20 years ago Democrats were the ones banning books in school for being too "culturally insensitive", while republicans were the ones who opposed book banning in schools
Source? I was an adult alive 20 years ago, that wasn't a thing.
> Although I hate to get political on HN, barely 20 years ago Democrats were the ones banning books in school for being too "culturally insensitive"
And it was rightfully opposed by the majority and by folks who understand the tenability of our rights to the whims of authoritarians, as many, many, many of the actions of the current administration should be.
It seems like every side wants to ban content nowadays. It’s really quite sad. One side wants to ban books with two men kissing and the other books that use the wrong pronouns.
With these "both sides" arguments why is it always "heres thing one, which is definitely happening and has been for decades. And here's thing two, which could hypothetically happen but never has and almost certainly never will"
I mean, it's absurd. It feels like a psyop. Is this a targeted propaganda campaign?
Stop trying to both sides. I see crazed MAGAs banning books here and I would bet if we look at numbers the crazies censor at least an order of magnitude more than whatever you're referencing. I can't think of an example of books being banned by non rightwingers, but will look into it now to learn.
I feel like there are a lot of conservatives who are unaware about what sex and gender actually are, and rather than looking for understanding they prefer to mock because they are lazy and chose the easy route rather than understanding other people.
Real rough to have a society when one side just wants to openly mock the other.
You're making the same sort of mistake I make in situations like this. You assume they're good people because you're a decent person. You project that onto them. You don't consider they actually are bigots, and lacking curiosity :)
I mean, if there really was a book that was too harmful to allow at all and it was successfully banned, we likely wouldn't know about it at this point.
I am extremely against book banning, but the possibility of some time in history where they really needed to disallow access to a book seems at least _possible_.
Which books on the list covered in this article are equivalents of Mein Kampf in mid-century Germany? I'll save you the effort. The answer is "none of them." That makes it pretty black and white for me. There's not some massive overlap here that makes it all shades of gray. The two situations and the works of literature are entirely different and the Germany case is an abberation, an exception, and hardly a good basis for drawing global conclusions. It is black and white. Either you're for or against the wholesale banning of books or you're for it. Countering with "but this one time in this one place" is hardly convincing.
It was essentially banned via copyright for a long time. The only reason that it is available now is that 70 years have passed since the authors death.
It actually was forbidden in other countries. But that's not the point. I do not consider banning this particular book bad, nor on the wrong side of history. Do you?
Being German I think it's important to point out that possession of Mein Kampf or reading it was never banned, the idea wasn't to hide some evil esoteric secret knowledge from the German people, to a large extent it was a pragmatic decision because the state did not want Neo-Nazis to benefit financially from the sales of Hitlers legacy, so they just held on to the copyright and didn't print it. There are now since 2016 annotated academic versions of it.
Also you have to have a very cartoonish view of people think we're like the Hulk and turn green the moment you come across a copy of Mein Kampf, denazification was a broad cultural project, not a binary thing about one text.
The primary struggle with that book is actually reading it because it's simply horrid. If you wanted to prevent Germans from turning to nationalism you'd probably have taken Thomas Mann's political writings off the shelves.
Religious freedom may come into play here. Incense and candles are a basis for many faiths so assigning a fee on people practicing their faith will cost them in court and in payouts.
If I got one of these I'd pay it and never, ever, ever stay at any hotel owned by the entity again. Being that I spend $25k-50k a year on hotels, their loss is a small hotel's gain.
In fact, whoever does this will lose my business ahead of time as I will never stay at any hotel that uses this service. A few minutes on Tripadvisor and you'll know.
Such incredible business myopia. Hotels are one of the few businesses that loyalty is not only a boon, but a necessity for survival. Without brand loyalty, hotels suffer.
The hotel chain probably had no input into the decision to add this. Hyatt is just a franchise for many hotels. Call up /email the chain's corporate folks and tell them about the charge and that you'll not stay in their chain of hotels unless they can guarantee the devices are banned from the franchise. If you really spend that much on hotels every year your demand would at least raise some eyebrows.
It's not myopia. The hotel owner only owns one or two locations. They damage the national brand but they make more money for themselves. As long as new people loyal to Hyatt keep coming to their location, they are fine.
Of course, that's why Hyatt imposes standards on their hotels to keep the name.
And those standards always need updating to keep up with social norms, new technologies, consumer expectations, et cetera. Hence my recommendation to start by communicating with Hyatt or whatever franchise.
It’s tricky because the chains (like “Hyatt”) don’t actually own any hotels. They are generally owned by local ownership groups and it can be hard to figure out the real owner.
That’s also why one Hyatt could be 5/5 and another 1/5. The chains don’t do a great job of quality control.
That's a cop out. What's the point of a brand if quality control is all over the place?
Most McDonald's are franchises, and they famously give very similar experiences wherever you are. Not identical, obviously, but a Big Mac is a Big Mac.
This is absolutely on Hyatt corporate. They should have policies regulating these types of detection systems.
I agree that Hyatt needs to take some responsibility, but not all franchises are equal, e.g. prior to inflation it was ~1-2M USD investment average to startup a McDonalds, you still must follow their rules, and it’s not hands-off.
But in that case brand association is an empty signal. As a paying customer, I can't meaningfully infer anything from it, and would thus best disregard it entirely.
They lock you in mostly with loyalty incentives vs brand recognition. Ask any of your friends who travels for work frequently where they stay and why. The answer always has to do with the points on offer not the experience which is more or less the same across most hotels and pricepoints until you reach a very very high pricepoint.
McDonalds is a real estate company, not a hamburger company. Corporate often owns the land the restaurant sits on and they charge the franchisee rent. I presume they could raise the rent or kick the franchisee out if they fail to live up to the required standards. I don't know that other franchise operations have the degree of corporate control that McDonalds has.
I hate seeing this repeated because it is plainly untrue despite being technically true.
An attention grabbing headline that feels smart but is really just careful half-truth writing.
McDonald's chargers fees that are a percentage of a stores gross sales and rent that is usually a base fee plus a percentage of sales.
What they are actually doing is folding part of the food sales cut into rent so they can evict you if they don't like you.
So while "McDonald's is actually a real estate company" gets clicks, the truth is they are a hamburger company with a huge cash flow from selling burgers, which they funnel through "Rent" for control. They also do own a ton of commercial real estate, but they aren't cashing out on that.
This isnt exactly true. They do not own the property but their contracts give them full ownership over policies and processes of the location. It's an essential part of their brand by the way, to assure continuity.
Executive decision makers won't though. It's clear that consolidation in many sectors has gotten to the point that consumer power is an absolute joke and "ignore them, abuse them, and just defraud them" is a standard business model. Even if there's litigation.. this crap just overwhelms services so that basically the public pays twice. Witness the situation where various attorney generals have said that Facebook outsources customer support to the taxpayer when the attitude for handling everything is simply "don't like it? so sue us, good luck"
For anything smaller than Facebook though, it's hard to understand why brands/investors/business owners tolerate their decision makers encouraging wild abuse and short-term thinking like this, knowing that after brand loyalty is destroyed the Hyatt leadership will still get a bonus and fail upwards to another position at another company after claiming they helped to "modernize" a legacy brand. Is the thinking just that destroying everything is fine, because investors in the know will all exit before a crash and leave someone else holding the bag? With leadership and investors taking this attitude, I think it's natural that more and more workers get onboard with their own petty exploitation and whatever sabotage they can manage (hanging up on customers, quiet-quitting to defraud their bosses, etc). And that's how/why the social contract is just broken now at almost every level.
This is what actually kills brands. The funny thing is our collective memory is short, so a brand killed by poor product and bad decisions is often revitalized by PE a few years later, because of brand recognition.
Actually I think the public tends to generalize their complaints/injuries and act in the most spiteful ways that are available to them. For example, decades of bad experiences at the DMV translates into cries that we should defund the post-office, NSF, etc, no matter how irrational that is.
But capital has a playbook now that's pretty effective at dodging this kind of backlash, like the "advertising without signal" thing that's also on the front page right now is pointing out. That article mentions "Disposable brand identities" which does seem relevant here even if that piece is mainly talking about the relationship between amazon/manufacturers/consumers. Part of what PE is accomplishing is brand/liability laundering, but brands head in this direction anyway before they fail. Consumers can't typically look at list of 10-20 "different" hotel brands and really tell which are under the same umbrella.
And all this is kind of assuming consumer choice exists and is still meaningful, but when you need a hotel you need a hotel. If Hyatt gets away with this abuse, every hotel will do it soon, and capital can just wait out any boycott.
The only reason any businesses using tricks can get away with it, for any significant time, is because their customers rather pay less and endure some tricks than pay more to the honest upright folks elsewhere.
So it’s the customers themselves intentionally seeking out less than completely honest businesses to spend their money at because it’s X% cheaper.
Hyatt is typically considered an above average chain but I don’t think any HN reader would have thought them to be 100% honest and straightforward in 100% of locations.
Often I wonder if some scammers (and this is totally a scam) basically pay a premium to feel like they've outsmarted people, or for the smirking satisfaction that their victims can't do anything about it. Some scams are so much work for so little gain, or so obviously counterproductive in anything but the short term, that it seems like that.
No, it's just stupidity and myopia. Like those screens that replaced glass beverage cases in liquor stores a few years ago. Not one customer liked them. Not one customer wanted them and the results were beyond terrible. People literally stopped buying. But people actually invested millions into that company and other people actually bought their products and thought "gee this is great". Imagine how disconnected you have to be from your customers to make such an investment and/or installation for a few bucks? Stupid is as stupid does...
For what it's worth, when I run into trash like that, I just open the door(s) and eave/prop them open while I browse. The entire point of having glass was so that people could browse without having to open the door, but apparently that doesn't matter to them any more.
I seem to recall hearing that there was a person high up in the management of at least one of the store chains that did this who had a ton of financial interest in the company that made those door-screens.
LOL! I'd never seen those, either. Must not be a priority in my region, or I haven't been to a Walgreens recently. But, here's the reason:
> front-facing sensors used to anonymously track shoppers interacting with the platform
From my (albeit limited) experience with tech platforms like this, it probably is anonymous - but they're scary good at identifying your age and gender, and what you look at before you buy. That's the data they're immediately after.
Of course, they've probably already built a "shadow" profile of you based on your mobile phone identity, so they could cross-reference that if they cared to, and then a loyalty profile they could connect to that. So, yeah... The fridge data is technically anonymous, but, you know, data can be connected together in all sorts of ways. Privacy is dead.
I wonder if the company making the detectors, pitched them on a free install.
They sound networked, so what if they only get cash, every time there is a hit? So the hotel is getting 1/2.
And with contracts like these, come with hefty fines if people back out. Even if the hotel now realises it's too sensitive, lots of false positives, the hotel now has to prove it, or pay big.
If the hotel refunds the guest, the hotel still owes the fee!
Sounds similar to the red light traffic camera revenue sharing scam. Free or discounted install and then revenue share. Both the supplier and location owner have every incentive to trigger false positives to make more money. In both cases this 'business model' is exploiting asymmetry in power dynamics.
Also, in both cases it's subverting and abusing a cost-effective technology which, if used appropriately, could be beneficial and all-around positive. If it was really about stopping illicit smoking in hotels, preventing annoying other guests with the smell and potential extra cleaning, the front desk would just call the room and say they got an alert on the smoke detector and will have to send someone up if it triggers again. If people are smoking/vaping, they'll very likely stop. Problem solved. Instead they silently stick a charge on the bill received at check out, proving what they really care about.
Because of this scummy money-grabbing misuse of the tech, it will get a terrible reputation and consumer push back like boycotts, lawsuits, regulation or banning will eventually lead to it being restricted even for appropriate, beneficial applications. The same thing happened with red light traffic cameras. My city banned them without ever adopting them because of the abusive scams happening in other cities. It's sad because when someone blows through a red light at high speed long after the light changed to red, it can kill people. Fortunately, that's quite rare but it does happen. Since the potentially life-saving use was too rare to be a big revenue opportunity, those cameras became all about catching someone trying to slide through a yellow light a quarter second after it turned to red, which happens more frequently (especially when the company shortened the yellow light time) but is also almost never a serious risk of injuring anyone since cross traffic is still stopped or not in the intersection yet. And now we lost the potentially life-saving beneficial application due to some assholes trying to scam people.
They undoubtedly wouldn’t charge someone like you. They would overcharge people who do not have an existing or potentially lucrative relationship with them, like families in town for a wedding.
In most of CA, most homes are far from bus lines. Making their use prohibitive for all but those who must use them. I know they do something like this in LA. People love it.
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