Uber coughs up $20m after 'lying about how much its drivers make' Cab app Uber has agreed to pay $20m to settle charges that it exaggerated how much drivers using its software can earn and downplayed the cost of financing cars through the company. "Many consumers sign up to drive for Uber, but they shouldn't be taken for a ride about their earnings potential or the cost of financing a car …
As long as you use the word "disruptive" in, like, every third sentence that comes out of you mouth, you can bypass all laws, regulations, and licensure that apply to everyone else who does what you do. So, the next time you're pulled over for drunk driving, just tell the nice officer that you're being "disruptive." Odds are, s/he'll agree with you as s/he slaps on the handcuffs. WARNING: This one weird trick works only for the monied interests and the self-important. Like, say, Uber.
And what's the deal with the [sic] in the last sentence of the article?
"And what's the deal with the [sic] in the last sentence of the article?"
The Latin word 'sic' -- 'thus' (short for 'sic erat scriptum/dictum'), and is there to indicate that the error was in the original source which was quoted.
"[...]for anyone looking to earn money on their [sic] own schedule."
If you want to know what the error was -- "anyone" is singular, "their" is plural.
That may be the case, but saying "for anyone looking to earn money on anyone's own schedule" does not imply the same thing.
This is a failure of English to assign a proper word for this grammatical case. As for me, I don't think there is an error in the original sentence and I understood the meaning perfectly well.
According to traditional grammar: "his". Similarly, it is generally accepted that the word "mankind" does not just refer to males. A related example is the French word for "they" -- "ils" for men, "elles" for women, or "ils" for a mixed group.
To avoid being "gender-specific", I would say "his or her". To me, that sounds less clumsy than "their", because the grammar is not broken. Some people would choose to say "her". That's also fine, as far as I am concerned.
Many people would say "they" in this context. I don't go around correcting them, and I am sure that it is passing into normal usage. I just find it sounds a little bit wrong.
Indeed. Even Oxford Dictionaries accept this usage. I quote: "Some people object to the use of plural pronouns in this type of situation on the grounds that it’s ungrammatical. In fact, the use of plural pronouns to refer back to a singular subject isn’t new: it represents a revival of a practice dating from the 16th century. It’s increasingly common in current English and is now widely accepted both in speech and in writing."
The dissenting option seems odd, considering the problem seems to be Uber claiming median* incomes were so much when they weren't.
The Commisioner carping on about possible incomes being whatever number sounds beside the point to me.
* I'll bet they didn't use median, I'll bet they used average.
Yeah, that's what I thought too - Uber claimed X was Y when in fact it was 0.7Y but one judge argued that X wasn't a very good choice in the first place.
Great, but that's still Uber's problem. If the choice of measurement is misleading, that's hardly a mitigating factor for Uber - it makes it worse.
My understanding there was that Uber correctly said that X = Y, but someone came up and said that actually X' was a more informative statistic and X' = 0.7 Y. In this case, X would be the median income, and X' being the median standardised into a 40 hour week, whatever that means.
I think it's a step too far if people and organisations can't publish whatever statistics they want to ( and have the rights for ). If Uber want to publish stats on the mean temperature in South Sudan, that should be their perogative. It would be our role as the audience for that advert to determine for ourselves that the heat in South Sudan isn't relevant to driving an uber in the US.
"Uber has publicized high annual and hourly earnings to entice consumers to become Uber drivers," the FTC complaint states. "However, once drivers have begun to receive their paychecks, drivers have discovered their actual earnings were substantially less than Uber has claimed."
Doesn't the FTC realise that it is harming America by undermining good, capitalist instinct? I expect the incoming president will be only too happy to slash their funding to ensure that they can no longer disrupt the disruptive.
And how would he do that ? Does Uber have some government funding we are not aware of ?
Because the President of the US does not have the power to tell private individuals in a capitalist economy to not put money into something.
But I acknowledge that it is typically American to expect the US President to wave a hand and do something about whatever it is that irks them at that specific point in time.
Enjoyable, perhaps, for those watching from the outside. But spare a thought for those stuck inside the clown show, for whom the more appropriate adjective is "interesting" - as in times.
Icon: Also, spare a thought for those who are on the outside, but within the wind-drift areas for the fallout.
Judging by some of the Trumpster's cabinet appointments, while the appointees may not be carreer politician, most of what they are likely to do will be far from funny.
We will have an ex general on board who makes Patton look as though he was weak willed and didn't try hard enoughbut if we manage to avoid WW III then watching corporations taking even more power and funneling more wealth to the one percent will be order of the day.
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