1879 – Thomas Edison finished up 14 months of testing with an incandescent electric light bulb that lasted 13½ hours. It improved on 50-year-old technology to make light bulbs safe and economical by using lower electricity, a carbon filament and an improved vacuum.
1949 – An Wang filed a patent for a magnetic ferrite core memory, that he called pulse transfer controlling devices. Two years later he formed Wang computers.
1983 – The seventeenth General Conference on Weights and Measures ruled the meter would be defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. This actually simplified it from the previous definition of 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of the orange-red emission line in the electromagnetic spectrum of the krypton-86 atom in a vacuum.
Nintendo trickles out some info and video about its tablet/console hybrid the Nintendo Switch. Plus Razer puts all the specs in its new gaming laptop. Justin Robert Young and Tom Merritt discuss along with Nintendo insights from Patrick Beja.
Hey readers, I know today isn’t Tuesday (or even Monday), but this is another topic that’s been coming up very often lately and is important enough for an out-of-cycle update.
Uber drivers have been taking advantage of the company’s trip cancellation policy to collect cancellation fees without actually attempting to pick anyone up.
Drivers actually do get a cut of those five-dollar cancellation fees, and interestingly enough it’s more money than what drivers make from the average short fare (as an example, in my market I get paid $4 from a cancellation but only $2.40 from a one-mile trip).
The best way to protect yourself from unnecessary charges is to know Uber’s cancellation policy. Most relevant to this scenario, if a driver hasn’t arrived more than five minutes after the ETA estimate given in the app, you won’t be charged a fee. This works best when the driver is a no-show, and don’t be pressured into cancelling early if a deadbeat driver calls and asks you to.
In cases where the driver just zooms by without stopping, you may have to dispute the charges; the driver can mark you as a no-show after five minutes and collect a cancellation fee themselves. Fortunately this is one thing the drones at Uber support are actually competent with.
Finally, report any driver that you believe is intentionally trying to defraud you. In the app, HELP > Trip and Fare Review > My driver was unprofessional.
In the meantime, you can also try switching to Lyft if it’s available in your area. I’ve not heard of any Lyft drivers using any of these tactics, probably because the company is a bit stingier with paying for cancellations.
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!
1975 – Atari filed for a patent on the sit-down “cockpit” arcade cabinet, literally putting you inside the game. The game Hi-Way with the slogan “Hi Way — All It Needs Is Wheels”, was the first Atari game to use the cabinet. It was a first-person driver in which you had to dodge cars and– well– drive.
1984 – The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened in Monterey, California. It not only provided a world-class place to learn about sea life, but inspired millions of screensavers and wallpaper images.
2004 – Mark Shuttleworth sent out an email to Ubuntu developers announcing the first official release of the Linux-based operating system, Warty Warthog. Every six months since, a new version of Ubuntu comes out with a new alliterative animal-inspired name.
China’s LeEco announces everything it can think of in push to sell products in the US and the idea of e-ink keyboards has Scott Johnson. dreaming Tom Merritt tries to wake him.
1941 – The Smith-Putnam Wind Turbine first fed AC power to the electric grid on Grandpa’s Knob in Castleton, Vermont, becoming the first wind machine to do so. The 1.25 MW turbine operated for 1100 hours before a blade failed.
1973 – The Atanasoff-Berry Computer finally got its due. US Federal Judge Earl R. Larson signed his decision that the ENIAC patent was invalid and named Atanasoff the inventor of the electronic digital computer. But ENIAC still incorrectly gets the credit from many to this day.
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.
Last week’s blog talked a little about driver behaviors that negatively impact the Uber-Lyft experience. While I don’t necessarily condone them, there are reasons for them. I want to go into detail into one of those reasons since it seems to be one of the biggest sources of issues, especially since the average passenger is pretty misinformed about it.
Uber and Lyft drivers don’t have any idea where you’re going before you get in the car. We actually get a pretty small amount of information (that we have to process in about 15 seconds) before deciding whether or not to accept a trip. We get your pickup address, your rating, and a poor estimate of how long it’ll take to get to your pickup address. As for where you’re going? Well, it could be across the street or across the state, we really have no idea.
What the driver sees during a typical Uber pickup request
So if that information is not given to the drivers, why do you have to enter your destination in the app? For starters it’s how you get a fare quote. For UberPOOL and Lyft Line rides it’s required for route matching. For other rides, it’s used for assigning rides to otherwise occupied drivers in busy areas; a driver could be given a pickup at a hotel while they’re en route to drop off another passenger at that same hotel. Finally, it just makes your driver’s job easier since to be frank, most of you are not good at giving directions.
The primary reason for not giving drivers destination info is presumably to prevent them from screening trip requests instead of accepting them. In some markets a full-time driver may not want to waste time with a short trip to the corner store, or a driver trying to make a few dollars on their lunch hour may not want to take a trip all the way into the suburbs. This level of screening can throw off the system that rideshare companies try to create where someone who needs a ride is always matched with the closest available driver.
Unfortunately this system forces drivers into a lottery where they don’t know if the next time they tap on the screen to accept a trip, they’re going to make money or potentially lose it. This system falls apart the most at airports, where drivers who have to wait in a queue for potentially hours only to be randomly stuck with a trip that’s only going to a nearby hotel instead of one going to a residence on the other side of the metro area. Drivers have developed their own strategies to adjust the odds of this lottery in their favor (like calling to confirm a destination and making up some excuse like “technical difficulties” if it’s not far enough), and none of them benefit the passenger. An unlucky rider who only wants a short trip from the airport may find that it’s faster to walk if enough drivers flake out.
Waiting my turn…
There’s also the issue of “banned” destinations; some airports or other restricted locations don’t allow Uber or Lyft business on their premises either without a proper permit or at all. A trip request to the airport without a permit can result in steep fines for drivers, and a driver can’t avoid that risk without first driving up to a passenger’s location and seeing them come out with their luggage.
Like I said earlier, most passengers have no idea that this is how the system works, and they all seem to be in favor of letting drivers know their destination before they show up instead of just springing it on them as a surprise. Despite the potential drawbacks, it would seem that riders at this point would prefer to know that their driver is committed to a complete trip instead of making up excuses why they can’t do it.
Besides, it’s starting to become obvious that the current situation isn’t working. Why not try something new?
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!
1879 – Thomas Edison finished up 14 months of testing with an incandescent electric light bulb that lasted 13½ hours. It improved on 50-year-old technology to make light bulbs safe and economical by using lower electricity, a carbon filament and an improved vacuum.
Nintendo reveals the Nintendo Switch tablet/console hybrid. Tesla adds self-driving to all its cars, China’s LeEco announces all the things.
