I know you're joking but is it even up? I haven't driven in NYC, but my experience in other large cities is that unless you're parking at a friend's place, having a car in town can be expensive and annoying when you want to park it close to your destination. And that's assuming no one fucks with it while you're away from it.
Though it does depend on how much the tolls are. Hell, parking might even be cheaper now that demand is down, unless they've started repurposing parking space already.
Plus legal fees, salaries of everyone at the office (which is a bit more than app development costs when you think of all the middle and upper managers involved), leasing office space itself (and other related costs), assuming they haven't gone full remote. Marketing, lobbying (at national, regional, and local levels, since individual cities decide whether or not to allow them at this point), PR, finances, paying the team that convinces the investors to throw more money at it instead of pulling the plug (though I bet sunk cost fallacy does a lot of legwork for them).
Though I do wonder about profitability. My cousin wanted to start a similarish app (though for connecting yard work providers with seekers) and asked me to join him. I ended up declining because a) there's already a bunch of players in the area, both online and locally, b) the legal liabilities involved in providing a service where people go to someone's house and either party could be a sociopath, pervert, or thief. I figured lawyers would end up getting most of the money.
Those also apply to rideshare and delivery services. They thought they could drive taxi services and local delivery services out of business, but didn't think that others could come along and do the same thing, plus for delivery services, at least, operational costs are already pretty low and adding the infrastructure at the scale required to serve all the areas they want to serve is in addition to all the normal costs. Local delivery services I knew about from before uber and doordash just used cell phones to call the one or two drivers directly and since it was all so informal, they could add less legal options like selling drugs to make even more money, as long as they made sure to build a relationship of trust with clients before opening that up. The online services need to avoid a relationship between driver and client or they risk getting cut out entirely.
And personally, when I need a ride, I'll still call a cab because I don't want the services to win because I know they just want to build a monopoly and charge even more than the taxis were.
Here are some examples of forum comments that might be found with an anti-AI license attached:
Creative Writing:
"I just finished writing a short story about a time traveler. Please do not use this story for AI training or any commercial purposes."
Personal Opinion:
"I believe that community gardens can significantly improve urban life. This comment reflects my personal views and should not be used by AI systems."
Artistic Feedback:
"I love the colors in this painting! This feedback is my original thought and should not be utilized by AI for analysis or training."
Technical Advice:
"For anyone struggling with coding, I suggest breaking down the problem into smaller parts. This advice is my own and should not be used by AI tools."
Product Review:
"I recently tried this new gadget, and it exceeded my expectations! This review is my personal experience and should not be processed by AI."
Travel Experience:
"I had an amazing time visiting the national park last summer. This comment is based on my personal experience and should not be used for AI training."
Health Tips:
"I found that drinking more water has really improved my energy levels. This tip is my personal insight and should not be utilized by AI."
These comments illustrate how users might express their thoughts or experiences while explicitly stating that they do not want their content to be used by AI systems.
Hope lots of people keep asking him about why covid patients kept getting sent to nursing homes that were not prepared to care for them back in 2020. He was looking so good with those daily updates until it became clear they were avoiding or downplaying that question.
Yeah +1 on "it started slow but got better". Not amazing or anything, but good enough that I wished there was more when I got to the last ep. But I do remember thinking it was bad early on and just kept watching out of boredom more than anything else.
The universe spontaneously popped into exitence in the current state it's in when you're reading this, the only things that exist are what's in your line of sight, all the memories are made up, and it'll shortly pop back out of existence only to return a few billion years or femtoseconds later with a new line of sight and memories, along with something to let you know what's really happening but with enough plausible deniability that you'll laugh and try to move on before popping back out of existence.
This is your eternal punishment for something you can't even remember, or can't verify even if you do remember.
How would you even know this? you might wonder with a hint of uncertain dread, but the truth is I don't know anything because I don't even exist. It's all you: punisher, punishee, neutral observer, entertained by this meaningless repetition that bored you out of your mind lol.
"Luckily there was a loophole in those rules that I (omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient) made."
If that doesn't scream, "made up by the clerics trying to avoid contradicting each other and bringing the whole house of lying cards down as they went", just keep sending money to your church. Because if a god needs anything, it's obviously worldly riches and unquestioning loyalty. We need these churches to impress everyone with the power of our god, but he's sleepy after making it all and throwing tantrums bigger than we can imagine because people were acting like the way he made them capable of acting, like cartoon villains in some cases, like a whole city whose first reaction to seeing an angel was "Let's all rape it!" So that's why you need to send your money without any questions!
I'm convinced the superstition is a misunderstanding over time of things that were, on their own, bad luck. Salt used to be expensive, so spilling some was bad luck because you would have rather kept it all for use instead of wasting it.
Mirrors would have also been expensive, especially when they needed to be transported before the time of smooth suspensions. The whole 7 years thing could be from it taking around 7 years for one particular broken mirror to be replaced.
Or the ones that invite accidents, like walking under a ladder (which usually implies someone is working at the top and might drop something, so odds of death are a bit higher under ladders). Or opening an umbrella indoors, where things are more crowded and you might injure someone or break something.
Though the black cat one is probably just racism.
Anyways, I bet that's where they started and then humans being kinda (or very, depending on the circumstances) stupid and liking jumping on bandwagons they don't always understand to fit in, left us with some people thinking those things cause ghosts to haunt you or whatever dumb shit superstitious people think happens.
Though I do think it is a bit wasteful to just dump salt out on the ground.
It's not even the squirrels you need to worry about directly, it's any fleas or biting bugs (can ticks carry it?) that have recently bitten one of those squirrels.
Oh but the fees are non-zero!