HughPickens.com writes David Streitfeld reports at the NYT that people routinely use the Internet to review services from plumbers to hairdressers but now the tables are turned as companies like Uber are rating their customers, and shunning those who do not make the grade. “An Uber trip should be a good experience for drivers too, ” says an Uber blog post. “Drivers shouldn’t have to deal with aggressive, violent, or disrespectful riders. If a rider exhibits disrespectful, threatening, or unsafe behavior, they, too, may no longer be able to use the service.” It does not seem to take much to annoy some Uber drivers. On one online forum, an anonymous driver said he gave poor reviews to “people who are generally negative and would tend to bring down my mood (or anyone around them).” Another was cavalier about the process: “1 star for passengers does not do them any harm. Sensible drivers won’t pick them up, but so what?” In response, some consumers are becoming more polite and prompt. “The knowledge that they may be rated is also encouraging people to submit more upbeat reviews themselves, even if the experience was less than stellar, ” writes Streitfeld. “When services choose whom to serve, no one wants to be labeled difficult.” The result may be a Barney world says Michael Fertik referring to the purple dinosaur who sings, “With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you/ Won’t you say you love me too.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Don’t Sass Your Uber Driver – He’s Rating You Too
The lure of quantum entangled computing is strong, as it can provide a means of impenetrable encryption —but the hardware has always been too bulky to make it practical. Now, though, researchers have shrunk the technology down to less than the width of a human hair, small enough to squeeze onto a chip. Read more… 
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Army Research Laboratory in Maryland has released on GitHub a version of a Python-based internal forensics tool which the army itself has been using for five years. Dshell is a Linux-based framework designed to help investigators identify and examine compromised IT environments. One of the intentions of the open-sourcing of the project is to involve community developers in the creation of new modules for the framework. The official release indicates that the version of Dshell released to Github is not necessarily the same one that the Army uses, or at least that the module package might be pared down from the Army-issued software. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
