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Comment by chopin | Hacker News Reader

Afaik a taxi-meter is an approved device, at least somewhat tamper-resistant. Smartphone + app + backend is none of these.

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The most popular taxi cheat is to the take the long way around. Meters don't help you there. Also, meters don't show you the full trip price before you commit.

Uber could perhaps fiddle around with map data, but the history would have to show the correct origin and destination, or it would be noticed. It's trivially easy, and free, to audit against Google maps.

I don't trust Uber to be ethical, but cheating in this space would just be corporate suicide...they would easily be caught.

Depends where I guess, certainly in Asia fast-running meters are not uncommon. To say a taxi meter is secure is like doing javascript client-side validation and no server-side whilst disabling right click. And approved by who? Vetted cryptographers?

Those are at least verifiable by 3rd parties - in Uber's case, both the driver's and passengers' smartphones should match up in terms of what route they took. I guess a sophisticated enough malicious driver could set up a GPS spoof in their car, but honestly if they can do that they're working in the wrong industry.

Is it tamper-resistant to a taxi driver driving in circles to screw over clueless tourists?

They're not even tamper resistant to clickers, which add additional pulses to the output of the tachometer the meter relies on to calculate fares.

This is Hacker News. I feel like you should at least know that taxi meters are not reliable and the systems that Uber etc use simply are. Using GPS and navigation to ensure fair driving fees is one of the key parts that makes Uber/Lyft literally better than Taxis.

Who cares? Why is this the sort of thing that needs to be regulated in the first place?

When I go to a restaurant and order a 16oz steak it doesn't get weighed on a government approved scale. That's because if a restaurant rips off its customers then people will stop eating there. If Uber overcharged for rides then people would stop using them for rides.

This is textbook government overregulation.

Well it depends where you are. I spent my last vacations in Cuba, and it was a pain to have to bargain with taxis every single time, same distances will cost me anywhere between 25 and 5 dlls. I really missed uber over there, or even a taximeter, and again I'm sure that was because I was a tourist, even though I'm Hispanic myself they were able to spot me as a tourist.

> Why is this the sort of thing that needs to be regulated in the first place?

Customer protection laws are entirely normal in lots of countries. You question the need, I question why you think it shouldn't exist?

For your example, the restaurants are checked by the government. Unhealthy restaurants get warned and eventually closed. Determining if a scale is accurate on e.g. a market is another textbook regulation.

> This is textbook government overregulation.

Seems you're arguing for having companies cheat customers. What's the benefit for a country like Denmark to allow that to happen?

I'm arguing that, when it comes to taxi service (and steaks) customers are perfectly capable of protecting themselves from cheating service providers without government help.

We should have as few regulations as we can get away with as regulations almost inevitably get used in unintended ways with negative consequences. Incumbents use them to drive out upstart competition and increase costs for everyone.

At least in the UK, companies are generally required to use government approved scales for goods that are sold by weight - and Trading Standards do random audits of this to make sure they're in compliance. This has been the case for a long time because rigged scales are a very old swindle.

Yes and no. Where I come from... Greece more than half of Taxi-meters have been tampered.

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