I found two reasons here:
- They make money by using bikes as advertising space, so they do not really care about the overall quality of the system as long as they have a permanent exploitation contract.
- They use historic data to approach future situations. In spite they do not have alert systems, they seem to think this is enough. Although, when sun suddenly appears, the shore tends to get crowded and "locked" for hours; they doing nothing about it.
What my system was going to provide was smart routes for the vans, to add or subtract bikes on strategic places.
I built an app over it that attempts to predict the future state of any network. It later recommends addings/substractions in order to keep offer and demand balanced among stations.
It could work in about 440 cities but none of the big companies that lead this wanted this. What would you do with it?
I quit AirBnB as they pushed me to accept the new terms or either chase them on the email to cancel my property offer.
It happened that some people came by saying they had just reserved, and I told them I had nothing to offer. It's been +2 months and my room is still there. I am talking about foreign people finding they have no place to sleep.
AirBnB doesn't care, as long as they have stock to bait.
It makes sense, if you compare it to the conditions of the hosts. I got people for a year and this is remarkable:
— Not host, nor guests are legally related to AirBnB. Hence, none of the parties is really protected, even if ABnB talks about "insurance".
— Not even the help desk is AirBnB. As they call them, they are "community helpers", and their help is not legally linked to AirBnB.
— They changed the conditions just because, and they place them as you go in for you to accept them. If you disagree, you have to remove yourself from the platform via email.
— They promise a plan of prizes for good hosts. It seems that most of your ratings should be high. It turns statistically impossible once your go into the real conditions: must be evaluated by +80% of your hosts, and +80% of your score must be five stars (or similar).
— They don't pay your social security, welcoming time, help, and after all anything we call "added value".
— Nevertheless, they added surreptitious-yet-public evaluation for things nobody is paying for, like being the tourist guide of someone who is getting a room for 10€/night.
— They do not care about hosts opinions, in spite they are the ones putting the real value on the platform, paying taxes for it, doing the face-to-face with the end client, etc. If your guests arrive 8 hours early and they complain you didn't received them, the bad scoring is on you (happened). If your hosts leave a mess behind, AirBnB evaluates if they should cover it for the shake of their public image, or if they rather claim that according to the rules that is not covered.
Everybody is free to do whatever, but after my experience I trust hotels more than anything.
We are not making the difference among cultural and technical determinism. Hence, we are buying mere narcissistic inventions as progress. It could be simply that Humanity needs a bit more experience handling IT. If I could change something, I would turn every Snapchat addict into a Wikipedia editor and would put Twitter to work like Reddit.
This is also a sign for a tech bubble; as long as startups keep creating no value beyond aesthetics.
I recommend you read "You Are Not A Gadget" by Jaron Lanier ;)
I paid for Kaspersky during three or four years. What I noticed was that, prior to the license expiration, this last edition pushed pop ups on my screen constantly. Along, it seemed like it was slowing the computer on purpose.
I read an article saying what you comment, and I decided to try without. Feels a bit odd and I'm slightly paranoid, but this argument pushed me to follow you: it's not a good idea to give critical access to a 3rd party software that might be adding more bugs to you "backdoor policy".
What people might be missing is that you don't do anything "lean" without refactoring sprints. So as you grow, you keep considering the macro structure. If not, you should use TDD at least.
Nevertheless, validation is key, from an executive POV. It makes sense that things are dirty in the beginning, but they should start being encapsulated, object oriented, properly interfaced, etc. as soon as you feel in need for a second programmer.
- They use historic data to approach future situations. In spite they do not have alert systems, they seem to think this is enough. Although, when sun suddenly appears, the shore tends to get crowded and "locked" for hours; they doing nothing about it.
What my system was going to provide was smart routes for the vans, to add or subtract bikes on strategic places.