November 21, 2017 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Uber fined $8.9 million for hiring drivers with criminal records

Uber has notorious issues when it comes to its background checks for its drivers. The company has missed (or outright ignored) criminal records in the past; earlier this year, over 8, 000 Uber and Lyft drivers failed a Massachusetts background check . It appears that these issues haven’t improved much; this week, Colorado regulators fined Uber for allowing 57 people with criminal offenses to drive for the company. The penalty totals $8.9 million, reports the Denver Post . Back in 2014, the San Francisco and Los Angeles District Attorneys offices sued Uber for misleading consumers by claiming that the company conducts thorough background checks of its drivers . The company has gotten in hot water countless times due to its lax approach when it comes to this issue. The organization in charge of the Colorado investigation, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), determined that Uber had the necessary background information on these drivers, yet chose to do nothing. Instead, the drivers should have been disqualified. The investigation started because the police department in Vail referred a case to the PUC in which an Uber driver dragged a passenger out of the car and kicked him in the face. The PUC then asked Uber and Lyft for all records of drivers accused, arrested or convicted of any crimes that would prevent them from being accepted as a driver. Lyft provided 15–20 records; there were no problems there. Uber provided 107 records of drivers that had been removed from its system; when the PUC cross-checked the names, they found multiple aliases for 57 of the drivers with criminal records. The fine based on $2, 500 per driver per day they were working for Uber. The real issue here is that these drivers with criminal background checks (the PUC set aside people who only had drivers license issues) are being entrusted to drive passengers around. These kinds of problems are putting passengers in danger, and it’s well past time that Uber did something about it. Source: Denver Post

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Uber fined $8.9 million for hiring drivers with criminal records

Over 400 of the World’s Most Popular Websites Record Your Every Keystroke

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The idea of websites tracking users isn’t new, but research from Princeton University released last week indicates that online tracking is far more invasive than most users understand. In the first installment of a series titled “No Boundaries, ” three researchers from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) explain how third-party scripts that run on many of the world’s most popular websites track your every keystroke and then send that information to a third-party server. Some highly-trafficked sites run software that records every time you click and every word you type. If you go to a website, begin to fill out a form, and then abandon it, every letter you entered in is still recorded, according to the researchers’ findings. If you accidentally paste something into a form that was copied to your clipboard, it’s also recorded. These scripts, or bits of code that websites run, are called “session replay” scripts. Session replay scripts are used by companies to gain insight into how their customers are using their sites and to identify confusing webpages. But the scripts don’t just aggregate general statistics, they record and are capable of playing back individual browsing sessions. The scripts don’t run on every page, but are often placed on pages where users input sensitive information, like passwords and medical conditions. Most troubling is that the information session replay scripts collect can’t “reasonably be expected to be kept anonymous, ” according to the researchers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iMac Pro Will Have An A10 Fusion Coprocessor For ‘Hey, Siri’ Support and More Secure Booting, Says Report

According to Apple firmware gurus Steven Troughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo, the upcoming iMac Pro will feature an A10 Fusion coprocessor to enable two interesting new features. “The first is the ability for the iMac Pro to feature always-on ‘Hey, Siri’ voice command support, similar to what’s currently available on more recent iPhone devices, ” reports The Verge. “[T]he bigger implication of the A10 Fusion is for a less user-facing function, with Apple likely to use the coprocessor to enable SecureBoot on the iMac Pro.” From the report: In more practical terms, it means that Apple will be using the A10 Fusion chip to handle the initial boot process and confirm that software checks out, before passing things off to the regular x86 Intel processor in your Mac. It’s not something that will likely change how you use your computer too much, like the addition of “Hey, Siri” support will, but it’s a move toward Apple experimenting with an increased level of control over its software going forward. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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iMac Pro Will Have An A10 Fusion Coprocessor For ‘Hey, Siri’ Support and More Secure Booting, Says Report

Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020, Report Says

Michael Larabel, writing for Phoronix: Intel is planning to end “legacy BIOS” support in their new platforms by 2020 in requiring UEFI Class 3 or higher. Making rounds this weekend is a slide deck from the recent UEFI Plugfest. Brian Richardson of Intel talked about the “last mile” barriers to removing legacy BIOS support from systems. By 2020, they will be supporting no less than UEFI Class 3, which means only UEFI support and no more legacy BIOS or CSM compatibility support mode. But that’s not going to force on UEFI Secure Boot unconditionally: Secure Boot enabled is considered UEFI Class 3+. Intel hasn’t removed legacy BIOS / CSM support yet due to many customers’ software packages still relying upon legacy BIOS, among other reasons. Removing the legacy BIOS support will mitigate some security risks, needs less validation by vendors, allows for supporting more modern technologies, etc. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020, Report Says

US Navy sends underwater robots to assist in search for Argentine sub [Updated]

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Arthurgwain L. Marquez US Navy P-8 Poseidon patrol planes have joined an international search for the Argentine Armada submarine San Juan , and the Navy has prepared submarine rescue vehicles and four uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) to assist in the search as well. The Argentine sub has been missing in the Argentine Sea, and the subsequent search is entering its fifth day. One Naval P-8 arrived in Argentina over the weekend, and another is arriving today. Additional rescue systems are now on their way, including a NATO submarine rescue system. Thus far, rough weather and high seas have been hindering the search, and hopes for the missing crew are fading. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US Navy sends underwater robots to assist in search for Argentine sub [Updated]

First-known interstellar visitor is a bizarre, cigar-shaped asteroid

Enlarge / An artist’s impression of the oddly shaped interstellar asteroid `Oumuamua. (credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser ) Since mid-October, the astronomy community has been buzzing about what might be our Solar System’s first confirmed interstellar visitor. An automated telescope spotted an object that appeared as if it had been dropped on the Solar System from above, an angle that suggests it arrived from elsewhere. Now, a team of astronomers has rushed out a paper that describes the object’s odd properties and gives it the name “1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua.” In Hawaiian, ‘Oumuamua roughly means “first messenger,” and the 1I indicates that it’s the first interstellar object. ‘Oumuamua was first spotted on October 19 by the Pan-STARRS1 automated telescope system. Pan-STARRS1 turned out to have captured images of the object the day previously, but the automated analysis software hadn’t identified it. Further images over the next few days allowed researchers to refine its travel through our Solar System, confirming that ‘Oumuamua was making the most extreme approach toward the inner Solar System of any object we’ve ever seen. In essence, it appeared to have been dropped onto the Solar System from above, plunging between the Sun and the orbit of Mercury. It was also moving extremely quickly. The Solar System was formed from a flattened disk of material, and all of the planets orbit roughly in the plane of that disk. Smaller objects, like dwarf planets and comets, may take somewhat more erratic approaches with orbits tilted out of that plane, but they still roughly aligned with it. We had literally never seen anything like ‘Oumuamua. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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First-known interstellar visitor is a bizarre, cigar-shaped asteroid

How the Kindle was designed through 10 years and 15 generations

Amazon’s Chris Green, VP of Design at its Lab126 hardware arm, talked with me for a retrospective of the design choices that have defined and redefined the device, and the reasoning behind them. Green has been at Lab126 for a long time, but not quite for the entire Kindle project, as he explained to me. “My first day at Amazon was the day the Kindle launched – November 19, 2007. Read More

Uber orders up to 24,000 Volvo SUVs for its self-driving fleet

Uber has just taken another big step from a ride-sharing service to a transportation provider. It announced that it will buy up to 24, 000 Volvo XC90s, marking the first major vehicle fleet purchase by a ride-hailing service. Uber will take delivery of the SUVs between 2019 and 2021, then equip them with its own sensors and tech, allowing it to do fully autonomous, driver-free passenger rides . “This new agreement puts us on a path toward mass-produced, self-driving vehicles at scale, ” Uber’s Jeff Miller told Bloomberg . The XC90 starts at $47, 000, so this could be a pretty substantial purchase — over $1 billion worth of cars, to be exact. Uber and Volvo previously signed a $300 million pact, and Volvo, based in Sweden but owned by China’s Geely Auto , is using the proceeds to develop its own driverless cars. It has been working with Uber for nearly three years to develop a base vehicle with core autonomous tech, which the ride-sharing company could then customize as it sees fit. Uber has also made deals with Ford and Daimler. Uber aims to eventually give driver-free passenger rides, which is the only way such a service would be economically feasible. “It only becomes a commercial business when you can remove the vehicle operator from the equation, ” Miller told Reuters . However, Uber and everyone else are still far from that goal. Uber has been offering autonomous car rides in Ford Fusion and other vehicles for over a year in Pittsburgh. However, earlier this year, it admitted that human drivers had to take the wheel at least once every mile . City dwellers are also reportedly tired of the tests, as they haven’t provided the promised jobs and other benefits. On top of all that, Uber is embroiled in a lawsuit with Google’s Waymo, which accused it of stealing key self-driving tech. Source: Bloomberg

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Uber orders up to 24,000 Volvo SUVs for its self-driving fleet