Month: November 2016

How many minutes depends on your race, study says. (credit: Lyft)

A study conducted by transportation research labs at Stanford, MIT, and the University of Washington has shown that Uber, Lyft, and taxi drivers continue to discriminate based on the ride requester’s race, with black customers waiting significantly longer for a ride and facing more trip cancellations than white customers. The study took place in Seattle and Boston and required research assistants to request trips pre-selected by the researchers to include a variety of neighborhoods.

The numbers

The study found that black male customers using UberX experience three times more cancellations than white male customers in Boston. In Seattle, black customers experienced wait times from 16 to 28 percent longer than white customers on both UberX and Lyft services.

The researchers weren’t able to study how cancellations affected Lyft riders, because the two services offer different information about the rider to the drivers. “A Lyft driver sees both the name and a photo of the passenger prior to accepting or denying a ride, while UberX drivers see this information only after accepting a request,” the researchers wrote. “We find no effect on cancellations for African-American riders of Lyft because, we surmise, that given that names and photos are visible to the driver prior to acceptance, any discrimination occurs prior to accepting the initial request.”

After two years of teases, teases, and more teases, fans of Bioware's Mass Effect series were hoping for a substantive amount of info on Mass Effect: Andromeda for "N7 Day" this year. Unfortunately, we instead got yet another tease: Bioware released a 1:43 cinematic trailer for the title with a "Spring 2017" release date.

We learned in past sneak-peeks that the game takes place in the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy, in a region called the Helios cluster. We already know that the game focuses on the Ryder family, who are part of a massive multi-species exploration/colonization effort called the "Andromeda Initiative." And, we learned last week that the game is likely set 600 years after the main storyline in the previous Mass Effect games. Today's trailer gives us a few dribs and drabs of additional plot details—something went wrong during the Andromeda Initiative's trip, and the "Pathfinder"—the mysterious N7 figure shown in previous trailers, rumored to be the main character's father—has been killed, incapacitated, or otherwise removed from the picture. This leaves the player as the new "Pathfinder," which jibes with dialog heard in this year's 4K tech demo video.

Enlarge / An expanded settlement on Mars in the late 2020s, as envisioned by Mars One. (credit: Mars One)

The Mars One project launched in 2011 with the grand ambition of establishing a permanent human settlement on Mars. Since that time, it has winnowed a large field of would-be astronauts to 100 and garnered considerable public attention. What the initiative has not done is raise significant funding to enable its vision—of the $6 billion Mars One estimates it needs to create a settlement, it has collected only about $1 million from merchandise sales, donations, and astronaut applications.

But now Mars One says it has a plan to address that fundraising difficulty. On Monday the Netherlands-based Mars One and Switzerland based InFin Innovative Finance AG announced a reverse merger in which InFin will acquire Mars One, and the combined entity will change its name to Mars One Ventures AG. This will effectively make the Mars One venture eligible for trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

"This step provides the opportunity to raise capital through the listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange," explained Bas Lansdorp, CEO and cofounder of Mars One, in a news release. "Our global followers will have the opportunity to be part of this adventure and to literally own a piece of this historic venture. We have a solid business based on our historical performance that might be of interest to anyone looking for diversification of their investment portfolio."