Month: May 2019

Enlarge / Headquarters of ride-sharing technology company Uber in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood of San Francisco on October 13, 2017. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

Lyft and Uber drivers around the world are striking on Wednesday to protest low pay, arbitrary terminations, and other concerns. The protest comes just before Uber's debut as a publicly traded stock on Friday.

The movement is decentralized, with drivers' groups in different cities organizing strikes and protests. Drivers in some cities plan to disconnect for 24 hours, while in other cities drivers are striking for only a couple of hours. In New York, for example, drivers switched off their apps during the morning rush hour, from 7am to 9am.

There's a list of driver demands on the website of Rideshare Drivers United, a Los Angeles-based drivers group. The drivers are seeking a 10-percent cap on Uber's or Lyft's share of each fare, an hourly minimum wage, and compensation for time spent traveling to pick up a passenger. They would also like to see a driver representative on the boards of Uber and Lyft, respectively.

Enlarge / The cooling towers of Willington Coal-Fired Power Station, first commissioned in 1957, contains four 104MW generating units. Each unit, when on full load, burns approximately 1,000 tons of coal per day, which produces 200 tons of ash. Willington, Derbyshire, United Kingdom. (credit: Andrew Aitchison / In pictures via Getty Images)

On April 21 in 2017, the UK had its first coal-free day since the Industrial Revolution. Now, just two years later, the UK's National Grid confirmed that it had gone 168 hours, or seven days, without using any coal-fired power. The electricity system operator said that it expected coal-free stretches to become more frequent in the coming years.

In 2015, the UK pledged to remove coal from its grid by 2025. In a statement to the Financial Times on Thursday, the National Grid's director, Fintan Slye, said he expected the grid to be able to not only hit that target but to run with zero carbon emissions.

"As more and more renewables come on to our energy system, coal-free runs like this are going to be a regular occurrence," the director said. "We believe that by 2025 we will be able to fully operate Great Britain’s electricity system with zero carbon."

Enlarge / FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on December 14, 2017, in Washington DC, the day of the FCC's vote to repeal net neutrality rules. (credit: Getty Images | Alex Wong )

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has rejected a request to have the FCC investigate Frontier Communications' business practices in Minnesota, despite evidence that the company has failed to properly maintain its telecom network.

An investigation by the Minnesota Commerce Department already found that Frontier's network has "frequent and lengthy" phone and Internet outages, that Frontier has failed to provide refunds or bill credits to customers even when outages lasted for months, that Frontier is guilty of frequent billing errors that caused customers to pay for services they didn't order, and that it has failed to promptly provide telephone service to all customers who request it. When we wrote about the investigation in January, Frontier said it "strongly disagrees" with the findings but did not dispute any of the specific allegations.

The Minnesota Attorney General's office is investigating whether Frontier violated state consumer-protection laws, and the state's two US senators asked Pai to have the FCC investigate as well. When Pai wrote back to the senators, he said that he has asked his staff to "monitor" the state investigation but made no commitment to have the FCC investigate, too. Pai's response and the senators' letter were posted on the FCC's website this week.

Enlarge / The three color options of the new Pixel 3A. (credit: Google)

Google launched a new Pixel yesterday, and it looks like a good deal. The Android maker's latest smartphones, the Pixel 3A and 3A XL, start at $399 but appear to pack many of the things that make Pixel phones what they are in the first place. That includes an optimized version of Android, three years of updates direct from Google, and, most notably, a rear camera that's virtually identical to the top-notch shooter found on the back of the original Pixel 3, a phone that's about twice as expensive. Google even added a headphone jack.

There are trade-offs, of course, to hit that lower price point. The Pixel 3A trades the glass-heavy finish of the flagship Pixel 3 for a mostly plastic design, which in turn means there's no wireless charging. There's little in the way of water-resistance, too, and the glass used on the (still OLED) display isn't as high-quality as the usual Gorilla Glass. Performance also takes a hit, as the phones use a decidedly midrange Snapdragon 670 chip that will make them slower to launch apps and play games. (Though it should still be fast enough for most purposes.) And while the Pixel 3A does come with unlimited Google Photos storage like past Pixel phones, it limits your backups to "high quality" files instead of their original resolution.

Those are real sacrifices, and it's worth keeping in mind that some Pixel 3 users have experienced notable performance degradation over time. But a lower price tends to make some of these issues more forgivable. A not-insignificant number of Android users may even prefer the feel of the Pixel 3A's plastic to the slippery, more fragile glass of the Pixel 3.

Enlarge / Most of Baltimore City's networks were shut down as a ransomware attack took down mail servers and other systems at a number of city departments on May 7. (credit: Alex Wroblewski / Getty images)

Systems at a number of departments of Baltimore’s city government were taken offline on May 7 by a ransomware attack. As of 9:00am today, e-mail and other services remain offline. Police, fire, and emergency response systems have not been affected by the attack, but nearly every other department of the city government has been affected in some way.

Calls to the city’s Office of Information Technology are being answered by a recording, stating, “We are aware that systems are currently down. We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

#BCRPALERT: BCRP is experiencing network and email outages. We apologize for the delay in all communications and are working to solve the problem. Please know our online payment, permit, program registration and service requests are currently effected. pic.twitter.com/vzXYnEqi7M

— Baltimore Rec & Parks (@RecNParks) May 7, 2019

Lester Davis, a spokesperson for Baltimore’s Mayor’s office, told the Baltimore Sun’s Ian Duncan that the attack was similar to one that hit Greenville, North Carolina in April. Based on information obtained by the Sun, the ransomware is a variant of RobbinHood, a relatively new type of malware with an as-yet unknown attack vector.