DTNS 2877 – I Put on My Robe and VR Hat

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comNolan Bushnell is behind a company that wants to sell football field size VR to the enterprise. Tom Merritt and Scott Johnson discuss that and whether they want to pay $4 to quote lyrics to their Amazon Echos.

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Daily Tech Headlines – October 12, 2016

DTH_CoverArt_1500x1500Amazon’s new music service, Apple expands in china, Microsoft Hololens comes to Europe.

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Your Private Driver: Not in Service

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.

You’ve just called an Uber to your quiet suburban home, getting ready to take your significant other out on the town for a night. The car is about 11 minutes away according to the app’s estimate, which should give you just enough time for a last-minute–the phone rings. You don’t recognize the number, but this late at night it can’t be just a random solicitor, can it?

Your Uber driver is on the other end of the line, asking about your destination. That’s weird, you put the destination into the app, they should already know where you’re going, shouldn’t they? You tell them again. They respond with some flimsy excuse about your destination not being in the right direction and say that you should cancel the trip and request another Uber. Annoyed and with the realization that your car won’t be coming to pick you up after all, you start to cancel, then remember that you’ll be charged a five-dollar fee if you do. You’re not paying that, it’s not your fault the driver flaked on you! The driver can cancel it on their own… but several minutes later you realize they don’t appear to have any intention of doing so. You can’t request another car until someone cancels the trip, and your night is slipping away. Angrily you cancel the trip, making a mental note to contest the charges later, then request another Uber… this time with a 17-minute ETA. Grumbling, you call to make a later dinner reservation.

Uber has made it a point of pride to talk about how well their UberX cars provide better service to the neighborhoods than traditional taxicabs ignore, particularly low-income and minority neighborhoods. Uber wants every ride request, regardless of origin or destination, to be a matched with a willing driver. For the most part, this still happens. After two rounds of drastic rate cuts since last year however, drivers have been finding ways to “profile” potential fares and refuse the ones that have a high risk of being unprofitable.

I say “high risk” because contrary to prevailing knowledge, Uber and Lyft drivers don’t know where a passenger is going until they start the trip, which means their riders are probably already in the back seat. This leads to situations like the scenario that opened this article (which Uber discourages with threats of deactivation, by the way). Drivers will more frequently refuse to accept trips (known as letting a ping time out) originating from certain areas that are too far away or don’t have surge pricing applied. Drivers can’t be deactivated for not accepting requests, though Uber will give them a “time out” if they decline three in a row or so.

What are these so-called unprofitable fares that drivers like to avoid? Most commonly avoided are trips with long ETAs. A pickup more than 10 or 15 minutes away will almost certainly result in a net loss for a driver if the rider is taking a short trip (and most trips are indeed quite short). Drivers aren’t paid for the distance it takes to pick a passenger up, only the distance it takes to drop them off. Basically the farther away you are from Uber hot-spots like nightclub districts, the more likely you are to have your trip profiled or rejected by one or two drivers before one eventually accepts.

Pickup requests near airports are another problem. If you need to be picked up at any place close to a major airport, most or all of the nearby drivers will be waiting in line for their shot at a (likely) long-distance run from one of the disembarking passengers. They’re not going to want to leave their place in line to gamble on ping from a nearby hotel or office park.

Finally there’s UberPOOL, which an increasing number of drivers are refusing to accept altogether. I won’t get into why UberPOOL is so disliked, but if you’re curious there’s a previous article that covers the subject somewhat in depth.

Unfortunately, as a passenger there’s not much you can do if your trip falls into one of these high-risk categories. Drivers place their need to make money above your need to get to where you want to go in an efficient manner (though even other drivers get annoyed with the tactics used at times). Uber occasionally offers incentives to entice drivers to complete more trips than they ignore, but those are gradually ending in the wake of the company’s massive hemorrhaging of capital that it blames on those same incentives. They could raise rates, but that would take Uber out of reach of the lower-income users the company is trying to court in order to expand its market dominance.  They could make their drivers employees instead of independent contractors, but there’s no way that’ll happen, not with all the money they’re spending on court cases to prevent that outcome. Drivers themselves suggest promising a cash tip for their time. It sounds like bribery, but it does cut cleanly through the problem of income versus expenses.

At the end of the day, you may just have to plan on waiting a bit longer for an Uber to pick you up than you were expecting. And if you’re willing to wait long enough, self-driving cars that don’t care about how much money they’re making individually will replace all those pesky humans that need to pay their bills.  Problem solved. Eventually.

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 2876 – The French Connect Things

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comCan we use the Internet of Things to make our cities smarter? Laetitia Gazel Anthoine joins to explain. Plus Tom Merritt and Patrick Beja discuss the fallout from Samsung abandoning the Samsung note 7.

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Daily Tech Headlines – October 11, 2016

DTH_CoverArt_1500x1500Samsung halts Note 7 production, Facebook brings software to Workplace, Yahoo ends email forwarding.

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Daily Tech Headlines – October 10, 2016

DTH_CoverArt_1500x1500The US accuses Russia in the DNC email hack, Hangouts is replaced by Duo on Android, and part of Salesforce REALLY doesn’t want to buy Twitter.

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DTNS 2875 – Machine Learning Doggies

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comRussian Hackers, Hangouts Demoted, And Automated Checkout Cops

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Weekly Tech Views: The Tech, No Logic Blog – Oct 8, 2016

Untitled drawing (1)

Real tech stories. Really shaky analysis.

On this Columbus Day weekend, it’s important to take a moment to appreciate the accomplishment of the crews of those three ships–completing a trans-Atlantic sailing when the height of technology available to them–this was 1492, remember–were mechanical swivels for their cannons and, though many don’t like to recall this, iOS 2.2.1. Pre-multitasking! They certainly beat the odds surviving that ordeal.

 

Only Worn Once And Landed Gently In A Patch Of Grass Fifty Feet From The Wearer
Oculus is developing a standalone VR headset “that you can bring with you out into the world.” As wearing a VR headset actually blinds you to real world activities like, for instance, speeding traffic, Oculus is also developing a handy standalone VR headset Scratch-and-Dent Store.

Oculus Sub-Prime
Oculus also announced that touch controllers for the Oculus Rift will be available for $199. When many in the crowd responded with low whistles and murmurs of “Wow, $199?” Mark Zuckerberg said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you looking for something cheaper? Maybe you thought this was the Oculus Thrift event? I hear they have a real nice setup; you can get the whole package for under fifty bucks. There’s the headset made from a pair of those sweet sunglasses your grandparents wear over their other glasses. The inside of those glasses are decorated with stickers of Saturn, a moon, and a couple asteroids to make you feel like you’re in spaaaaace. And some say the level of immersion truly rivals the Rift when you activate their ten-dollar controller–a refurbished Wiimote where the only working button activates a simulation of the galaxy’s stars, represented with eerie accuracy by a ten-bulb strand of twinkling mini Christmas lights. That must be the VR experience you’re looking for. And with the money you save you can complete your state of the art gaming experience with Tetris FOR YOUR FREAKING FLIP PHONES!”

After Further Review, There Will Be No Further Reviews
Amazon is now forbidding reviews from customers who were given free or discounted products. Have it your way, Amazon, but you’re damned sure going to be the one to explain to my family why it’s so empty under the Christmas tree this year.

Eight Is Enough
The Life on Air company has discontinued Meerkat, its live video streaming app, to focus on their Houseparty app, which allows private video chatting for groups of up to eight contacts. Meerkat will not completely go away, however, as all of its users have vowed to band together and continue the Meerkat experience in one of those Houseparty private groups.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Balance Sheets
Twitter’s board members are reportedly split on whether to sell the company. CEO Jack Dorsey is arguing for staying the course and capitalizing on the company’s recent improvements and success streaming live video. Those in favor of selling have rebutted with a carefully crafted argument consisting of a GIF of Scrooge McDuck doing the backstroke across a huge room filled with gold coins.

I Didn’t Pay $7.99 To Just Look At The Sausage Gravy. Or Is It Oatmeal? Eh, Doesn’t Matter.
Twitter’s decision about whether to sell may be made for them, as Google, Apple, and Disney have reportedly decided not to bid. Salesforce is the final company rumored to be interested, though their CEO commented, “We have to look at everything, but we’re going to pass on most things.” Coincidentally, this is my exact philosophy concerning breakfast buffets, except for the “pass on most things” part.

When’s The Last Time You Saw Someone Relaxing In A Hammock And Sipping A Cold Nanoscale Machine?
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded was awarded to three men for their work designing and synthesizing nanoscale machines, marking the twentieth straight year that the committee has egregiously snubbed the geniuses responsible for the creation of Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

At Least That Explains The Pentagram Burned Into My Hand
A new Samsung Galaxy Note 7–a replacement for the previous edition which was recalled for catching on fire–caught on fire. Gray-green smoke billowed from the device and it burned through a carpet. This finally confirms the initial internal research indicating that it was never the battery, but the work of demons unleashed from the underworld to bring Note 7-sized bits of Hell to Earth as Samsung’s punishment for skipping the Note 6.

In a press release, Satan stated, “You may know I have an affinity for the number six, and I can only interpret this jump from the Note 5 to the Note 7 as a personal affront. If Samsung insists on replacing the replacements with yet another non-Note 6, they may as well prepare the public for the constant smell of brimstone, swarms of flies squeezing from the speakers, and bleeding headphone jacks and call it the Note 7: Amityville Edition.”

But How Much Scarier Can A Charred Feral Ghoul Be Than Leaked Videos And Emails?
Bethesda Softworks will allow player-made modifications for Fallout 4 on the PlayStation 4, so get ready for 953 versions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton being sent unarmed and naked into the Wasteland.

 

Thanks, as always, for spending some of your precious free time with the Weekly Tech Views. Even if “free time” is technically during the Monday Morning meeting while you pretend to take notes on the new sign-out procedure for office supplies.

Mike Range
@MovieLeagueMike

 

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Weekly Tech Views: The Tech, No Logic Blog by Mike Range is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

DTNS 2874 – NSA Say – Yahoo Do

Logo by Mustafa Anabtawi thepolarcat.comShould the government step in on Internet of Things security? And Shanon Morse and Tom Merritt make sense of what do and don’t know about Yahoo’s government surveillance program.

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Daily Tech Headlines – October 7, 2016

DTH_CoverArt_1500x1500New Oculus products, Comcast ads caps, Verizon may want a new Yahoo deal.

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