Luke Cage (101-102), Westworld (101 and original movie), Justified (312). With special guest Fraser Cain.
01:19 – Luke Cage (101-102)
16:07 – Westworld (101 and movie)
39:17 – Justified (312)
Daily Tech Headlines – October 5, 2016
Yahoo accused of scanning for the NSA, A Nobel prize for nano machines, and hacks on insulin pumps.
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Today in Tech History – October 5, 2016
1969 – The first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus aired on the BBC. The show created the Spam sketch that would eventually inspire the slang term for unsolicited email.
1991 – Linux Kernel version 0.02 was released, attracting a lot of attention. Author Linus Torvalds felt this version was at least usable and worth a wider release.
1992 – IBM announced the ThinkPad line of Notebook computers at offices in New York City.
2002 – “Xbox Media Player” and its first beta source code was released. The code was a result of Frodo, the founder of “YAMP” (Yet Another Media Player), joining the Xbox Media Player team. The project was later changed to Xbox Media Center and then just XBMC.
2011 – Steve Jobs died at his home surrounded by family. The co-founder and CEO of Apple had fought pancreatic cancer for years.
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.
Your Private Driver: Who You Gonna Call?
This is a weekly column that offers news, insights, analysis, and user tips for rideshare platforms like Uber and Lyft. Look for it every Tuesday after the live show, right here on dailytechnewsshow.com.
The interaction in the above image probably seems very familiar to anyone who’s ever tried to contact Uber for any reason. Oh sure, firing off an email is easy enough, you can even do it from the website or the app. But it’s pretty obvious that everything is answered by a computer that just picks out a few key words and generates a form-letter response. At least Uber responds promptly, which is more than can be said from rival Lyft; it many cases it takes over a week to get a similarly clueless response.
Why is the support structure of these companies so bad? Well, apparently with Uber you get what you pay for, and the company treats its customer service representatives about as well–or worse–than they treat their so-called driver-partners. Uber takes support so seriously that they’ve gone the extra several thousand miles to contract the task out to a company in the Philippines. I was unable to find any real information about the state of Lyft’s customer service, which is an unfortunate side effect of being second-place (and less SEO friendly) in the rideshare wars.
So, what’s a layman to do when they need help? While I haven’t discovered any tricks to getting Lyft to respond faster, with some persistence and patience you can get to someone at Uber that doesn’t have the bedside manner of a Gmail auto-response.
Your first email to Uber will always get a form-letter response. Keep replying with the same query (maybe change up the wording a little) until someone that’s not a computer finally answers. Unfortunately when you finally do get a human to help you (after the third email or so) the response time slows down greatly. You may even need to start the process all over again. Be persistent!
If your issue is a bit more urgent (but not an emergency, always dial 911 or the appropriate emergency services number in your area for accidents or violent incidents), both Uber and Lyft have a critical response line when you can (*gasp*) talk to a live human being on the phone! Try not to abuse it; Uber at least has been known to change or take down their phone number. You can at the time of this writing dial Uber at 800-285-9481, and Lyft at 855-865-9553. Both numbers are U.S. only unless you have a cheap international plan, and as far as I’m aware, both numbers are available for drivers and passengers. Speaking of drivers, Uber is slowly rolling out phone support in limited markets, which hopefully becomes a widespread thing quickly.
Hopefully this post will help people get… help… when they need it. Once you know the tricks, talking to a machine isn’t all that bad. I mean, you could be dealing with those pesky humans at the taxi depot instead.
Sekani Wright is an experienced Uber driver working in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. If you have any questions you would like answered for this column, you can contact him at djsekani at gmail dot com, or on twitter and reddit at the username djsekani. Have a safe trip!
DTNS 2871 – All the Pixels
Yahoo spied on email for the US Government, Google announces new phones and home products. Patrick Beja and Tom Merritt discuss that and more.
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Show Notes
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Daily Tech Headlines Part 2 – October 4, 2016
Google Announces Pixel phones, DayDream View VR, Google Home, Google WiFi and Chomecast Ultra.
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Show Notes
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Daily Tech Headlines Part 1 – October 4, 2016
WhatsApp gets more Snapchat Like, Signal gets subpoenaed and Microsoft disbands the Band.
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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.
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Show Notes
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Today in Tech History – October 4, 2016
1957 -The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, becoming the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, and motivating the US to get into gear and heat up the space race.
1985 – Richard Stallman started a non-profit corporation called the Free Software Foundation, dedicated to promoting the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software. The FSF among other things, enforces the copyleft requirements of the GNU General Public License often referred to as the GPL.
2004 – SpaceShipOne returned from its third journey, a reusable spacecraft that could carry passengers beyond the earth’s atmosphere. It won the $10 million Ansari X prize for private spaceflight.
Read Tom’s science fiction and other fiction books at Merritt’s Books site.
Cordkillers 139 – Take the Cable Cleanse Challenge w/ Fraser Cain
Cord-cutting hurts cable bottom lie but helps yours, says businessman. Netflix has lost half its content but do we care?
DTNS 2870 – Robot Baby On Board
Use your body to transmit passwords, city-subsidized Uber and Robot babies. Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt discuss that and more.
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A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible.
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Big thanks to Dan Lueders for the headlines music and Martin Bell for the opening theme!
Big thanks to Mustafa A. from thepolarcat.com for the logo!
Thanks to our mods, Kylde, TomGehrke, sebgonz and scottierowland on the subreddit
Show Notes
To read the show notes in a separate page click here!