Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

Project Voldemort, that’s today’s business story.

“Snap Detailed Facebook’s Aggressive Tactics in ‘Project Voldemort'”

Or, to put it another way, you can’t handle the truth. It’s easier to see Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos as winners than to delve into how they got there. Their characters are more chiaroscuro, but that doesn’t stick in today’s world of image. You’re a winner or a loser. You’re somebody or a nobody. And chances are, if you’re a winner, you didn’t get there the old-fashioned way, but by bending the rules and sometimes cheating.

It’s probably been this way forever. But after tech started minting billionaires, they were subject to attention, if not scrutiny. Everybody wanted to be an entrepreneur, we even got a TV show about it, “Shark Tank,” but the real lessons in how you make it were never shared. Oh, the sharks can talk about projections and scale, but no one focuses on the fact that Bill Gates made computer manufacturers pay for Windows whether it was installed or not. Yup, if you installed Linux, you had to pay for Windows anyway. This not only helped Microsoft, it was to the disadvantage of competing operating systems, made them nonstarters.

So Facebook bought Onavo, which allowed them to spy on all your activity on your phone, including what you did at Snapchat. Yup, it’d be like allowing competitors to sit in on your writing sessions and then beat you to the punch with a release of the same song. Or, to put it another way, covering your indie track and distributing it by a major to prove that you either had to sell to them or get out of the way, i.e. change your business model like Foursquare, or lose out to the me-to product Instagram as all your features were copied almost instantly, as Snapchat did. Snapchat kept a dossier of Facebook’s bad behavior, it’s called “Project Voldemort.”

Now Facebook SAYS it stopped using Onavo when caught, but since that time the social media behemoth’s heinous behavior has been revealed time and time again… But the stock? Investors are thrilled.

It always comes down to the money, and Travis Kalanick was spending too much of it, not keeping track of it, and creating/tolerating a sexist bro culture all the way.

Like every other male techie is not into private planes, swanky hotel rooms, hookers and drugs. Yup, they’re imitating the rock star lifestyle. They killed themselves to get here, and now they want to relish the rewards. Most of them relate to sex. Yup, it’s as base as that. Can you question that when Jeff Bezos puts his fortune on the line to date a friend’s wife?

So Kalanick was just like Zuckerberg. Only Zuckerberg’s company went public earlier in its lifespan. And Facebook stock tumbled at first too, but then it gained, it was all about advertising. Uber is not about advertising.

Uber is about providing a service.

Now speaking of services, there’s a review of Netflix cofounder Marc Randolph’s book “That Will Never Work” in today’s WSJ too. No one could foresee streaming. At first Netflix didn’t even have a subscription service. They made it up on the fly, and eventually ended up in streaming and their own production. The goal? To make sure no one could compete.

Founders. The wisdom today is you don’t replace them. And if you do, you get a bad rep in the VC world. You see founders have a vision. It’s like the songwriter in a band, he dies and you’re screwed, like that guy in the Gin Blossoms, they never had another hit. But if you take money, you’re beholden to it.

Kalanick was screwed by Mike Ovitz. Ovitz wrote off his investment in Kalanick’s Scour so as to not be on the wrong side of copyright law.

So Kalanick protected himself from day one with Uber, by giving himself control with super-voting shares. Yup, Zuckerberg has control of Facebook, but Facebook was just an improvement on what had worked before, i.e. MySpace, et al, can you remember Friendster? Uber was conceived out of thin air.

At first it was black cars only. UberX was actually a me-too product. Uber felt it was on the right side of the law with black cars, but when you were competing with taxis…they weren’t so sure.

So to combat local governments they came up with Greyball, which prevented the law from busting their drivers. Oh, Uber got in trouble with Apple, for its spying technology akin to Onavo, but that’s how the game is played in tech. You go over the line and wait until you get caught.

Now the institutions are not prepared. They’re based on ancient technology, they’re reaping the profits while the upstart begins to eat their lunch. As for the public? Uber is a blessing. You can’t hail a cab almost anywhere in Los Angeles, but you can call up an Uber, with a nicer driver and a cleaner car. This is the way it always happens, the public votes and the old companies scream, but they die anyway.

So #deleteUber was a misunderstanding of what was going on. Uber turned off surge pricing so as to avoid huge bills that had gotten the company in trouble previously. But the creator of #deleteUber thought it was to kill the taxi business.

But one guy in Chicago with a hashtag put a permanent dent in Uber’s rep. And allowed Lyft to flourish. And now, when I take an Uber ride, people wonder, why am I not using Lyft?

But it very easily could have gone the other way. Lyft could have cratered.

Kalanick wanted to win in China. The establishment told him it couldn’t be done. Isn’t that what they always tell you?

Uber went into driverless cars.

That mission has been pulled back since Kalanick was kicked out. How dumb is that? The future always arrives. Blockbuster is history. He or she who does not prepare for what’s coming down the pike is gonna be snubbed out.

Same deal with UberEats. Supposedly losing money, but someone is going to own this sphere.

Today Uber is a nice company which folded its business in Asia and isn’t prepared for the future and the stock has sunk. And you want me to laud the board and Dara Khosrowshahi? We’ve seen this movie before, we’re seeing it right now. Apple was built on breakthrough products, Tim Cook is incapable of coming up with them, never mind delivering them. The iPod and the iTunes Store were built on the back of copyright protection…the labels wanted it, Jobs delivered it and wouldn’t share FairPlay with competitors. The game remains the same, he or she who is not striving for a monopoly ends up with almost nothing. If you’re not playing for all the marbles in tech, you might as well close down the company right now. Especially with social media sites and Uber…there’s no there there, it’s all virtual, there are no hard assets, except maybe some servers, but you can rent those too. It’s all about what’s in the brain. And we love the victorious techies as long as their warts are not revealed.

To tell you the truth, if you followed the Uber story in the newspaper, ironically covered mostly by Mike Isaac, the author of “Super Pumped,” you will find little new in terms of Uber facts. But you’ll learn a whole hell of a lot how business works, especially in Silicon Valley. The way the board gangs up on people. The way info is leaked to achieve the desired result. How personality is used to cover up a killer instinct. He or she who doesn’t know how the game is played loses.

That’s one thing that outsiders never understand. If you want to make it big in movies or music, move to L.A. Because that’s where it happens. Until you hang with both the wannabes and the players, you’ll have no idea how the system really works. And if you’re outside the system, it’s hard to win, especially in movies and TV. It’s easier in music, but even if we write off the major labels, which are signing their own death warrant with such narrow pickings, the truth is there are zillions of people in L.A. who know about how much it costs to tour, where to get the best road people, how you penetrate media…you go where most people are. Amazon may be based in Seattle, but it’s got a big team in the Valley, that’s Silicon Valley to you.

If you ask me, Uber should blow out Dara Khosrowshahi immediately. Bring Travis Kalanick back. America loves a comeback, especially after a mea culpa. Didn’t Steve Jobs come back from oblivion to triumph? And hiring an HR department, and a CFO with stricter cost accounting, that’s easy, but not the vision thing.

Now if you’re one of the boys, if you get along with everybody, self-deprecating and backslapping, I’m not worried about you, you’ll always find a gig somewhere. You can make it to the top, but you’ll have to kill a few people along the way, and the chances of you actually making it to ruling status are de minimis.

No, those who change the world are outsiders. Never a member of the group, never accepted. They’ve got a vision and they want to see it come true. And nothing will stop them, because they want to prove to the establishment that they have value, that you don’t have to do it the usual way, that you don’t have to blend into the group to succeed. And if you’re one of these people, it’s astounding how much information you can gain just by reading.

“Super Pumped” is one of the books you should devour.

I thought the tweeter was broken. When I got the Thiels I retired them. The foam had long ago fallen off the scrims, along with the logos, I wondered whether to fix them or to toss them. Then again, they’d probably cost as much to fix as to buy new ones. But when I moved, I found one of the cables was broken. It had a gold end, the high-priced cords I’d purchased back in ’99, when I got my new amp, I wondered…were the JBLs really in working order?

I brought the cables back to the place I bought them. The owner said they hadn’t used that kind of connector in years, he sent me up the street to the video installer, who said he couldn’t fix it, to just strip the wires and go straight in, that I needed a box from Niles Audio for about a hundred, that would allow me to switch between the JBLs and the Thiels.

So I e-mailed the guru, Michael Fremer, asked him what I should do.

Michael said to buy an old ADCOM GFS-6 on eBay, I could pick one up for twenty bucks.

That seemed too cheap for me. So I started to investigate.

You’ve got to know I don’t buy on impulse, I’ve had too much buyer’s remorse. I’ve got to do research, and oftentimes you can get the best for the same price, and I’m totally into the best. I mean if I’m listening to music??

So I’m going through all the listings, and I find a GFS-3. Which allows only three speakers instead of six, didn’t I want that one? Michael said yes, he hadn’t seen one for sale, but I had, they were fewer in number and more expensive. Huh? And I’ve only used eBay a couple of times, and one time I had a bad experience. What was advertised was not what I got, and the seller wasn’t eager to refund my money. But then I checked my PayPal account and saw I had over $100 from readers gifting me, and I decided to bite the bullet. But did I want the unreturnable one or the cheaper, returnable one? Well, I was only risking fifty bucks, but…they both said the ADCOM had been tested and worked, but if I couldn’t return it… But the guy selling the unreturnable one sold more stereo gear, so I decided to take the risk.

And I get so many packages, to tell you the truth I don’t always open them up the day they arrive, Friday was hellacious, I never even got on the computer, I kept up on my phone, but my fake address I use for purchases, etc., is not on it, it wasn’t until late last night that I saw the e-mail that the ADCOM arrived, that it was in that box that I thought was records.

So today I broke it open. The ADCOM appeared almost brand new!

But now I had to set it up.

This used to be a thrill, part of the moving process, getting your stereo hooked up, but now with computer speakers, especially my Genelecs, I saw no reason to hurry, and, after all, I needed the ADCOM box since my NAD only allows the connection of one pair of speakers (don’t worry, it’s not a cheap one, cost nearly a thousand bucks twenty years ago, the weekend JFK, Jr. died, my old Sansui crapped out, actually it burned up, and one thing’s for sure, I want no clipping, I never want to run out of power, I can turn the NAD up to about 2 before it’s too loud).

So I pulled those expensive cables out of the plastic bag I’d put them in and…

They wouldn’t connect to the ADCOM. So I decided to strip the wires, and that’s when I realized I’d have to do this to two sets, i.e. four connectors, and each wire had two stiff wires and I decided to forgo it, to just use the heavy zip wire I had attached to the Thiels. (I know you’re not supposed to use this, sue me.)

But then I wondered if I had enough. And I remembered I’d thrown out about fifty feet in the move. Now if this were still the seventies I’d just run down to the stereo shop and…now there aren’t any stereo shops left. And I didn’t want to waste any time. So I split the cable and had to strip two ends and while I was plugging them in, I realized the cables on the other side might not be long enough. And I’m wondering why I’m doing this anyway. Everybody else just pays somebody. But I used to like this. And I could always do it. But now I’m stripping wires and I find…the left channel cables are just long enough, I mean barely, so I connect them.

Then came the turntable. The EAT. My Panasonic SL1300 has a speed problem. I paid just over two hundred thirty bucks for it back in ’76, I’m sure it’ll cost me at least that much to fix it today, if I can find someone to fix it.

But the ground wire of the EAT had come out of its housing. So I had to strip that one and reattach it too. And I’m reliving stuff I haven’t thought about in eons… Like the fact there’s no turntable input on the NAD. Oh, I’d purchased the phono preamplifier, but where did I plug it in again? That’s right, AUX. As for Tuner and Tape inputs… I saved my top of the line Yamaha tuner and Nakamichi tape deck, but am I ever gonna use them again? And the belts on the Nakamichi have probably stretched anyway.

But I plug in all the wires and then I need power.

I broke out the surge protector I bought with my Mac Plus back in ’86, I’d used up the newer ones, and plugged in these stereo units and…I pushed the button on the NAD…AND IT LIT UP! Ah, the feeling of success.

Now I needed a source. I ran into the house, I had the reissue of Gregg Allman’s “Laid Back” on both vinyl and CD. I dropped the CD on the post, added the weight, pushed in the drawer and…

Nothing happened.

I forgot you have to push go, i.e. play, that’s how long it’s been since I’ve used the Sony XA20ES. And then…WOW!

If you’re really old, if you bought your speakers before the Beatles broke through, you had ARs. And, after that, you bought KLHs. And then came the glorious Advents, $119 a piece, better than anything at that price point, which was not cheap, and superior to speakers much more expensive.

But they were not JBL L100s. The JBLs were $333 apiece. They were out of my price range. But Tony said he’d gotten the salesman at Pacific Stereo down to $450 Friday night, and hadn’t even purchased them, that’s Tony, he’s more into the hunt than the kill. This was positively astounding to me. Most people paid nearly list price. If I could buy them that cheap…

We went back to Pacific Stereo. The salesman was a bit wary, after Tony had ground him and not bought, but I told him if the deal was right I’d buy.

Took hours, but we got him down to $470, that was as low as he’d go. And I went for it, I was thrilled. I was gonna buy this Sony receiver, but the guy said the sound wouldn’t match the JBLs, they were bright and so was the Sony. The Sony would be great for the Advents, but with the JBLs I’d need either Luxman or Sansui. LUXMAN? That stuff was expensive! Oh, they had a unit in my price range, but it only had 30 watts per channel, no way I was gonna buy that, I need to play it LOUD!

As for Sansui, wasn’t that a second-rate brand?

Not according to the salesman. They had high end units. I needed this integrated amp for $750, it had 110 watts of fat power. He came down to about $650, and I knew there was no way, so we went on the hunt, I ended up buying the Sansui AU11000 for $520 at University Stereo, I had to wait a week for them to get it, I was champing at the bit, with my speakers and no amplifier. I’d wanted a tuner, but for excellence, I decided to wait, ergo the Yamaha CT1010 a year later. And I brought the Sansui home and plugged the system in and…

YOU HAVE NO IDEA!

Now today there are rich people with stereos costing tens of thousands of dollars and shops that cater to them, but for those in the less than five figure price range, closer to a few thousand, there’s nowhere to go. People will pay a lot for headphones, but not component stereo. And I just heard what they’re missing.

I broke out “Laid Back,” remembered how to break the shrinkwrap and turned on those JBLs and…

IT WAS JUST LIKE THE AD!

Oh, you remember it, or maybe you don’t, it was for Maxell, with the listener’s hair blown back, the speakers were…

JBL L100s.

Suddenly there was a thumping bass, I was checking the balance, and then the right speaker went completely dead. Oh, come on, all this work, I could have just plugged in the Thiels and forgotten about it.

So I had to troubleshoot.

That’s when I found an unplugged wire at the back of the NAD, and when I reconnected it…WHEW!

This is why I can’t live in an apartment, a condo, my dream was always to buy a farm so big I could turn on the stereo in the house and hear it playing loud while I was riding my tractor out in the fields.

Now I’m not talking the bass of today’s records, made to shake the earth even at low volume. I’m talking the bottom of rock and roll, from the rhythm section straight to your gut.

Now “Laid Back” was seen as a bit of a disappointment back when it was released. This was just after the breakthrough of “Brothers and Sisters.” Yes, Duane had been dead for years, “Fillmore East” was two years before, but the hoi polloi didn’t catch on until they heard “Ramblin’ Man” on AM radio, not everybody had an FM unit in their car yet. And, “Laid Back” wasn’t quite as good as what came before. I mean could you improve on the original, definitive “Midnight Rider” on “Idlewild South”? Then again, Gregg’s version of “These Days” did more for Jackson Browne’s career than any of his own efforts, who was this young dude so advanced beyond his years?

And yes, the bass on the JBLs made me smile. But it was the strings that made me sing. That’s right, real strings, with a good enough stereo you used to think they were playing inside the speaker cabinets. And the piano on “Please Call Home”…that’s why Chuck Leavell plays with the Stones, he’s the secret weapon.

So I fired up the vinyl to compare, suddenly Gregg Allman was alive again! This was the sound of the seventies, on the speakers of the seventies.

I’m in heaven.

It’s no “Spiral.”

Thursday we finished season six of the French TV series. That’s 64 episodes, but who’s counting?

It started with “A French Village.” That was 72 episodes. Bob Bookman recommended it. There were seven seasons, but now it’s finished. The war is over. We had to pay for MHz in order to see seasons two to seven, but it was worth it. The story of the Nazis’ occupation of a French village during World War II. The performances were outstanding, and some of the same stars are in “Spiral.” That’s why we started to watch it. For Thierry Godard and Audrey Fleurot. They’re stars in France. Actually, “Spiral” is a hit everywhere but here, it’s been shown in more than 70 countries. Unlike “A French Village,” there’s no deeper meaning, no history, no learning, unless you’re interested in the French legal system, which is unlike ours.

“Spiral” is a cop show. But not like the police procedurals in America. The cops constantly screw up, and they live for their jobs, they sacrifice everything for them, and every case is not linear, other investigations permeate each season, you’re never quite sure how it’s going to turn out, who the perp will be.

I knew I was hooked when I was at a gig and started thinking about Laure and Gilou, I couldn’t wait to get home to them, they’d become part of my life. Gilou, i.e. Thierry Godard, was in “A French Village,” but Laure was not. Laure is played by Caroline Proust, whom you see aging through the seasons, who you ultimately get to know in 3-D. Most TV is two-dimensional, especially when it comes to women. But not Proust in “Spiral.”

Now they don’t make TV overseas like they do in the United States. Before we started “Spiral,” we watched an episode of “Inspector Montalbano,” made in Italy. There have been 13 seasons so far. It started in 1999! That’s right, they don’t make them every single year. Same deal with “Spiral,” which began in 2005 and continues to this day.

Now “Spiral” is free on Amazon Prime. All available six seasons. The seventh aired overseas earlier this year, but not here. So you can watch “Spiral,” but you probably won’t, because you won’t be part of the discussion. But that’s one thing I love about watching these “obscure” series, it’s not a competition, I’m in my own little bubble, it feels good.

And to tell you the truth, the images from 2005 are not perfect in this HD world. It isn’t until the third season that you get pristine HD. And, in the third season, the series really hits its stride. Not that it isn’t excellent before this, but when season three wraps up, you’ll tell yourself…THAT WAS GREAT! Kinda like movies used to be, satisfying.

You see the French do it differently. Being beautiful is not enough, you have to know how to act. And the players in “Spiral” are so good you believe they could be on the big screen, or on stage, which many of them are.

Actually, I saw Jonathan Groff as the king in the original production of “Hamilton,” he plays against type in “Mindhunter,” if you consider said king his type. He’s really good. As is Holt McCallany, who truly embodies an FBI agent with his buzz cut and sculpted body. As for Anna Torv, she’s an enigma. The way she speaks…maybe it’s because she’s Australian, she’s almost always hesitant in getting the words out, as if she’s afraid of showing her accent, her voice is oftentimes deep, like Elizabeth Holmes’ fake voice, or maybe she’s just playing the character.

Speaking of Holmes, did I tell you to read “Bad Blood,” John Carreyrou’s book about Theranos? It’s a must-read, even if you saw the TV show and listened to the podcast. There are many more details, the story comes alive, you’ll be riveted, you won’t want to turn out the light to go to bed.

“Mindhunter” is based on a book. But I haven’t read it. It’s all about FBI agents profiling serial killers.

The first season was riveting. Really dark and it came together. But during the second, you always asked yourself…DID THIS REALLY HAPPEN? I’m talking less about the killers than those pursuing them. Were these plot twists made for TV or did the real characters’ lives play out this way, I’ve got to do some research.

Now Kendall made a convincing case for “When They See Us” as our next viewing adventure. Normally, I’m against watching something when I’ve followed the news closely. That’s the reason I didn’t view “Escape At Dannemora,” I followed the story when it played out in the news.

Then there’s “Unbelievable.”

And I hate to admit I’m the only one who hasn’t seen the second season of “Fleabag.” I wasn’t riveted by the first, but now everybody says the second is genius.

But people don’t say the same thing about the second season of “Killing Eve.” And I didn’t even know the third season of “13 Reasons Why” had been released, there’s no buzz.

Except for the last one, the “Mindhunter” episodes were too short. We killed the show in three days. I like to marinate in a series. As for the debate re drip versus all-at-once, the same people who want to drip out product are the same people who said we had to save CDs and record stores…look how that played out. It’s satisfying to binge, you don’t have to wait when you’re intrigued. Whereas week by week is a challenge. What if you’re busy one week, suddenly you’re behind on the conversation, and there’s nothing so satisfying as rolling into the next episode just when you finished the previous one, to find out what happened.

It’s already off the front page. Literally. Check your apps, the NYT, the WaPo, you won’t find it. That’s how fast the news cycle is today.

Speaking of the news cycle, did you read the “Guardian”‘s article

“Pop’s need for speed: ‘You have to drop new stuff constantly'”?

Taylor Swift’s new album is a stiff, already in the rearview mirror, the only thing that can save it is radio airplay, never underestimate the power of Republic’s promotion team, but everybody gives up at some point, the opportunity cost is just too high, your team could be working on something else. But Taylor Swift is positively rearguard, everything she does is behind the times. She tried to burnish her image with social media after that venue had already gone on backlash and kept her work from streaming services and now has dropped an album in an era of singles. Albums are only for the niche. Or else you release multiple albums a year, otherwise you’re no longer top of mind.

Like the climate strike.

But the school strike for climate is not a new thing. It’s been a constant presence this year. Go to Wikipedia:

School strike for climate

Remind you of anything? Probably not, because you weren’t alive at the turn of the decade, from the sixties to the seventies, when antiwar protests ramped up and Johnson declined to run for re-election and the whole country turned against the war in Vietnam. It was the youth who did that. Because the war was unwinnable and unjust, and because men were afraid of dying in Southeast Asia.

Now people are afraid of dying as a result of climate change.

That’s right, as the bigwigs debate it, as governments pooh-pooh it, as those who lived through the aforementioned peace protests fifty years ago forget the lessons of history, a whole new generation, of both males and females, is freaking out, they’re afraid climate change is gonna negatively impact their future, if they get one at all, these lobsters have finally realized the temperature of the water is going up and they don’t want to boil.

Come on, just look around, another hurricane in Houston? Well, technically Imelda is a tropical depression, but who knew that living in Houston was so dangerous?

As for hurricanes… They had ’em when I was growing up. But not with devastating results seemingly every year.

My personal litmus test is the heat in Santa Monica. When I moved there at the beginning of the eighties, you didn’t need air conditioning, only one week a year was sweltering. But not now, now you can’t function without air conditioning, you’re shvitzing, you can’t run off to a meeting without a shower.

And then there’s the ski season. Which is shorter than ever. And those who venture to Colorado are aware of the bark beetle, killing trees all over the forest, it no longer gets cold enough to kill them. Yup, drive through the Centennial State, you can’t avoid it, those swaths of dead, brown trees.

But I’m not here to debate climate change with you, doesn’t matter if you disbelieve, THE YOUTH DO! The climate is the number one issue of one-quarter of Gen-Z. That means when they vote…

Yup, the polluting corporations and the Republicans are on the wrong side of this. Which is one reason California is a blue state. Oh, don’t buy the hogwash how bad life in the Golden State is. Sure, we’ve got an affordable housing crisis, but if you look at the economy at large…it’s booming, much better than the vaunted Texas.

And it’s not only Governor Newsom standing up for climate change, Trump wants to lower fuel economy ratings, but an additional twenty two other states disagree.

Once again, I’m not here to argue climate facts. I’m just putting you on notice that the youth are energized, just like they were during the Vietnam era, it’s their future they’re worried about, and they’re going to vote accordingly.