uber

I'm, honestly a little surprised, as in this day and age it is safe to assume that every app you use, and every webpage you visit is taking as much of your data as it can, and - if not directly used for advertising - is selling it off to data brokers,m which combine it with data from other...

Uber has agreed to pay $20 million to settle a lawsuit that stemmed from its classification of its drivers as independent contractors. By classifying its drivers as independent contractors, the ride-hailing service was able to avoid paying expenses and benefits associated with traditional...

The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission has reportedly passed a law designed to enforce a minimum hourly wage for app-based driving services, like Uber and Lyft. The formula proposed in the document guarantees $27.86 per hour, but that actually works out to about $17.22 per hour after...

Uber has reached a $148 million settlement with state attorneys general in all 50 states with varying amounts being distributed to each state. The legal matter that was settled was in reference to the 2016 data breach in which Uber failed to notify the 57 million customers affected by it for...

Uber added a new safety feature called "Ride Check" to their app. Using GPS and other phone sensors, the Uber app scans for conditions that indicate a possible crash. When the feature is initiated, both the rider and the passenger get a prompt asking if they're OK, as well as an offer for 911...

Toyota is investing $500M in Uber. Why is Toyota doing this? The investment gets Toyota to the front of the line in Uber's self-driving car program. In the past, Uber has been retrofitting Volvo SUVs with its self-driving tech, and it seems that will continue alongside Toyota. Now Toyota...

The NYC City Council passed a bill that requires Uber and Lyft to pay their drivers a minimum wage and placed a one-year moratorium on new for-hire vehicle licenses. The Taxi and Limousine Commission is going to conduct a study over the next year to determine if there should be a limit on the...

Uber has lost a New York State labor review board case that has set a precedent for how similar services may function in the Big Apple. Three drivers for the company were awarded employee status for the purpose of unemployment insurance. This gives the drivers unemployment benefits as they...

Cargo and Uber have teamed up to provide snacks and other products when you take an Uber ride. Drivers that have a good rating and are fairly active will be able to stop by a Greenlight Hub and pick up a free box of goods. Once a passenger is in the vehicle they can offer snacks, phone chargers...

The New York Times is reporting that Uber has made a significant investment into the scooter rental company Lime. Lime was recently able to secure an additional $335 million in overall fund raising which elevated the value of the company to $1.1 billion. Uber has gained the right to display...

Uber is working to detect if the person requesting a ride is drunk before the driver gets there, according to this patent. It is rumored that Lyft is working on an app to help you determine if your Uber driver is a murderer or rapist. Hopes are that these two technologies will be used together...

The next time your Uber driver attempts to rape or attack you, you might very well have an Uber emergency button right there on the app in order to get you some help. The feature is rolling out in the USA now. The last time I got rear-ended in an Uber, it was not by the driver, but I was in the...

A couple of months ago we began reporting on a fatal crash in Arizona involving an Uber self-driving car and a pedestrian. Dashcam video was released and it looked like the area where it happened was dark. However, the NTSB has released a preliminary report that lays the fault of the accident on...

In the latest earning call for Tesla, Elon Musk has predicted that once his cars are upgraded for autonomous driving that the owners will be able to share them out for others as 'Robo-Uber' cars. This is an interesting idea, but I don't see someone letting their $100K car just drive off on its...

Uber has their eyes set on the future with their Uber Elevate flying taxi service. They hope to begin deployment of flying taxis by 2023 and plan to transition them to autonomous capability sometime in the future. The taxi is going to be designed and built by others, but they are doing all of...

Uber and the FTC have agreed on an expanded settlement over the 2016 data breach of millions of customers information. The FTC claims Uber mislead their customers about their privacy and security practices and then hid the 2016 data breach from the FTC. Not a good idea to hide a data breach...

Uber has quickly settled with the family of the pedestrian that was killed by a Uber self-driving car in Arizona on March the 18th. According to Nvidia the car was using Nvidia GPUs as part of the self-driving system, but wasn't running the DRIVE program developed by Nvidia. Nvidia has...

In more news surrounding the death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving car operated by Uber, The Register is reporting that when Uber switched from the Ford Fusion to the Volvo XC90 in 2016, the number of LIDAR sensors on the car was reduced from five, to one. Instead of having LIDAR...

Bloomberg is reporting that Uber disabled the standard collision-avoidance technology in the self-driving Volvo SUV that hit and killed a woman in Arizona last week. Aptiv Plc, the company that supplies the radar and camera for the Volvo system states “We don’t want people to be confused or...

Despite the fact that Jensen just spent quite a bit of time showing off their Self Driving car technology at GDC, Nvidia has announced that they are suspending self-driving car tests globally. The news comes a week after a self-driving car operated by Uber struck and killed a pedestrian in...

Uber and its self driving cars have been in the news a lot recently, and not for good reasons. After one of Uber's self-driving cars killed a woman crossing a dark street at night, and the footage of the accident came to light, it did not paint a very good picture of Uber's technology. Even...

Before anyone gets bent out of shape, this video is not gory, does not show death. I'm posting this video to address what I believe is a massive failure of technology. With that said, yesterday, the Tempe Police Department released a video from the Uber car that struck and killed a pedestrian...

The New York Times is reporting that a woman in Tempe Arizona has died after being hit by a self-driving car operated by Uber. The article states that the Uber vehicle was in autonomous mode with a human safety driver at the wheel when the car struck the woman when she was crossing the street...

UBER not only had a data breach that it did not warn its customers about, the state of Pennsylvania is allegeding that UBER actively tried to cover up the incident by paying off the hackers that stole the data. The state of Pennsylvania has filed a lawsuit for damages. The more you know...

There is a reason you identify your ride sharing driver by name, before you hop in the car with him and cruise away. If "Bob" is supposed to come pick you up, make sure that "Bob" is driving the car. And while this is not exactly tech related, and about 98% of HardOCP readership identifies as...

Nissan is testing their new autonomous vehicle ride-sharing service called Easy Ride. They have developed in-house software that hails a ride like Uber or Lyft. The test starts in Japan next month and once everything checks out they plan to offer the service across Japan in the early 2020's...

While this is a very local story home to Silicon Valley, it does paint an ugly picture as to how Uber and Lyft are lobbying local governments in order to keep citizens from using their own self-driving cars in urban areas. Bottom line we all know it is a cash grab to turn us all into drones...

Uber is serious about "security" in it offices....when it comes to evidence....and hiding that from the police...that show up with search warrants. This all sounds fully above board and has nothing to do with obstructing justice. Check out the video. From spring 2015 until late 2016, Uber...

Richard Jacobs, a former manager at Uber, admitted to prosecutors about a secret messaging system that was used to destroy potentially sensitive information as soon as it was read. Additionally, he stated that Uber had a special unit that was involved in the business of stealing trade secrets...

I think we all call BS on Uber waiting a year to let us know its systems were hacked and personal data was exposed. The ride-hailing company said Tuesday that it had suffered a breach in 2016 that exposed personal information belonging to tens of millions of drivers and customers. The...

Lyft has decided it's time to expand outside of the US market and the first target is Toronto. I imagine they will continue to expand to other cities once Toronto is up and operating, but we'll have to wait and see how things go in Toronto. Once again, competition will be good for the consumer...

Uber chief product officer Jeff Holden planned to announce (WARNING auto play video) at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon today that Los Angeles will join Dallas as the first two cities to host the company's proposed network of flying vehicles. He said the company expects L.A. residents to be...

Eviation Aircraft, an Israel-based startup is working on self-piloting, electric aircraft and wants to use them to whisk passengers from regional airports to their final destination. The idea is to use a smarphone app similar to Uber and simply request a flight once you get to the regional...

A judge overseeing the Waymo v. Uber case rebuked lawyers of both companies for being unscrupulous delaying the trial until early December. Waymo claims that Uber stole trade secrets and patent ideas due to hiring a former employee of theirs who had downloaded 14,000 files containing its...

Meet the new CEO of uber. Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is taking on the role of CEO for Uber. Early this year, Uber had been burdened with a few controversies even leading to the ousting of its founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick. Kalanick and the board of Uber are currently facing...

The Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Benchmark is taking form Uber CEO Travis Kalanick to court. Filed in Delaware Chancey Court, the suit accuses the former CEO of being "selfish" and appointing his "loyal allies" to the board when it expanded from 8 to 11 members with Kalanick taking...

Reuter reports the CEO for Uber and co-founder, Travis Kalanick has resigned due to pushback from investors over his leadership. During the recent weeks, the company was under scrutiny from facing rape allegations among workers and firing 20 employees amid investigation into its workplace...

I am not sure what to think about this. Earlier this year, Google/Alphabet/Waymo sued Uber for ripping off patented and trade secret tech regarding self driving car research back in early 2016. According to the suit, Levandowski, who runs Uber’s automated vehicle research team, downloaded data...

Greyball is the name of Uber's software that allowed it to deceive and evade local transportation regulators in cities that Uber wasn't licensed to operate in. This has brought the wrath of the Department of Justice upon the company as the DOJ has launched a probe into the company's practices...

Technical website "The Information" has published an article claiming that Uber is in league with the Lord of Darkness. Are you stunned? Neither am I. Through the use of spoofed rider accounts on the Lyft platform, Uber found that they were able to track the 8 closest Lyft drivers to the...