Uber’s background checks aren’t very good, according to the San Francisco and Los Angeles district attorneys, who listed 25 individuals with criminal records or fake driver’s licenses who drive for the car service.
The crimes these drivers committed is long: Assault with a firearm, sexual exploitation of children, theft of the elderly and disabled and identity theft. The DAs discovered these drivers while doing research for their lawsuit against Uber over the way it markets its background check practices.
“To the extent that the DAs have shared enough information with us to identify the individuals, we have removed their access to Uber — representing the vast majority of the folks described,” an Uber spokesperson told Re/code. “But we still need more information on a few, so that we can pinpoint the accounts.”
For anyone following the ridehailing company’s controversies with security issues, this latest revelation about unsavory drivers will perhaps come as no surprise. Throughout Uber’s short history, there’s been several instances of drivers with undetected arrest or conviction records, who then allegedly groped, raped and assaulted passengers.
One issue: Uber is not legally mandated to do the gold standard of background checks — live scan fingerprints. Taxi drivers in California are required to, as well as those workers in other sensitive positions, such as nurses, teachers and paramedics.
Live scans are the only kind of check that updates after the fact, informing an employer if someone commits a crime in the months or years after they were hired. They’re also the only kind of check that can directly access federal government databases — others have to rely on secondary sources compiled by crawling Google and online public records. Live scans can go back in time to a person’s birth, whereas other kinds of checks are limited to seven years by law.
Uber claims that their checks are just as good as live scans, and in some ways better. “We disagree that the live scan process used by taxi companies is an inherently better system for screening drivers than our background checks,” Uber said in a statement. “The reality is that neither is 100% foolproof.”
Interestingly, Uber’s own background check supplier — an agency called Hirease — agrees. “Fingerprinting helps uncover criminal history not discovered through traditional methods, offers extra protection to aid in meeting industry guidelines, and helps prevent fraud,” the company said.
Regardless of which kind of check is better, the DAs aren’t suing Uber to change its practices — they’re leaving that up to the regulatory body that governs Uber — the California Public Utilities Commission.
FilePizza enables fast and private peer-to-peer file transfers in your web browser.
By using WebRTC, FilePizza eliminates the initial upload traditionally required when sharing files via file sharing services (e.g. Dropbox).
Instead of transmitting files through an intermediary server, the sender initializes a transfer and receives a “tempalink” they can distribute. When recipients click on this link, they connect directly to the sender’s browser to complete the download. Because the file never touches the server, the transfer is fast, private, and secure.
she looks like the woman named margaret who sits in the front of the office and has a betty boop calendar and usually is a little stressed out because no one ever puts the outgoing mail in the right place and she’s not really great with this whole “google docs” thing yet but she always remembers to fill up her candy jar with peanut m&ms in seasonal colors and when she finally retires this whole place will fall apart probably
hire me for the next godzilla movie ill show up in a legoland store with the miniature city displays and start kicking apart the buildings while screeching
August 8 2015 - A ‘pick-up artist’ who believes rape should be legalised was chased out of a Montreal bar after trying to chat up a group of women.
The video shows a bar full of people turning on Daryush Valizadeh, known as Roosh V, and chasing him through the streets. The 35-year-old U.S writer has said he believes sexual assault should be legalised on private property and that he treats American women like ‘disposable razors’.
There was a public outcry over Roosh V’s trip to Canada with 37,000 people signing a petition to stop him entering the country after he wrote a blog post in February claiming rape on private property should be legal.
He wrote: ‘I thought about this problem and am sure I have the solution: make rape legal if done on private property. I propose that we make the violent taking of a woman not punishable by law when done off public grounds.’ He came to Canada to give seminars on how to pick up women to other pathetic PUA pieces of shit.
In the video women chuck beer in the man’s face as he tried to chat them up. Someone else shouts: ‘This is Roosh V, this is the guy who says rape should be legal.’ A scuffle breaks out as a group of men try to remove him from the bar. One woman shouts, ‘How dare you come to fucking Canada’, while others yell ‘Get the fuck out of here!’ and “You’re not welcome in this city!”.
Finally he flees to his hotel while being chased by an angry group of people, and being protected by his security and some of his pathetic fans. Good job, Montreal! [video]
Good job, Montreal, proud of u
Darius gets really mad this guy is also named Darius. (I mean, also mad about the dude’s behavior, but he takes it extra personally because he’s another Iranian Darius/Daryush.) I kind of wish this was a thing with all dudes…like, get extra mad and feel a little like you should balance out the shittiness of the other Matts in the world, gentlemen.
After killing a black teenager earlier in the afternoon, police gather by the dozen at the scene shortly before sunset and illegally use tear gas on peaceful protesters without warning. They shoot the gas indiscriminately, gassing homes, churches, and young children in the process.
In American Ultra—a stoned, occasionally gruesome riff on The Bourne Identity, flavored with a touch of First Blood and Burn After Reading—a small-town pothead lives blissfully unaware of his past as a brainwashed super-soldier, programmed by the CIA to be able to kill anyone using anything. Then, an intra-agency power struggle results in a termination order, and within a few hours our hapless hero finds himself in the parking lot of the Cash-N-Carry, having just killed two black-ops gunmen using nothing more than a dull spoon and a cup of ramen noodles, with no understanding of how he did it or why. Operating within the logic of severely stoned paranoia, he concludes that he must be a robot.
Arriving in theaters in the dog-day dumping ground of August, American Ultra is one of those geeky genre mishmashes that’s very clever about being dumb. Written by Max Landis ...
"I didn't think it was limiting," Braun says. "I liked to find creative solutions. We used 1-pixel blank GIFs everywhere and stretched them. We found really creative ways to make things look the way we wanted. There's so much technology out there now, but I still write HTML where, if you don't have a style sheet, the page will still work. I still try to keep to the core values."
'Rising costs of the drivers and vehicles are likely one rationale. According to multiple sources, Google is trying to curb these by outsourcing its delivery to other on-demand startups and has held initial talks with multiple companies, including Postmates and Flywheel.
Google notified its retail vendors that it was closing the San Francisco hub on June 30th. It plans to shut its Mountain View hub in the coming months. In July, a California local with the Teamsters Union said workers for Google Express, who are hired through the HR firm Adecco, are planning to unionize.'
Google Express, the search giant’s same-day delivery service, is shutting down its two delivery hubs in San Francisco and Mountain View, Calif., according to sources.
The move is part of a broader push within Google to revamp the service, which launched in March 2013, after it failed to make a serious dent in a market crowded with Amazon and a myriad of on-demand startups.
Express was hatched out of Google’s commerce plans, formed, in part, to hedge against Amazon’s growing foray into product searches. It is now in seven major cities. In most of them, Google delivers goods from retail and shipping partners. When the service arrived in the Bay Area, Google tried out a hub model. Customers would order from Google’s retail partners, and drivers delivered the goods from the two locations on the same day or overnight.
Now, Google is changing course. And the change comes after a tumultuous year for the company’s commerce initiatives: It lost the exec atop Express, Tom Fallows, then the exec atop all of commerce, Sameer Samat. After Fallows’ departure, Google shook up the Express leadership multiple times, putting the business development lead for Google Shopping, Brian Elliott, at its helm in July.
Google declined to comment on the decision to shutter its delivery hubs.
Rising costs of the drivers and vehicles are likely one rationale. According to multiple sources, Google is trying to curb these by outsourcing its delivery to other on-demand startups and has held initial talks with multiple companies, including Postmates and Flywheel.
Google notified its retail vendors that it was closing the San Francisco hub on June 30th. It plans to shut its Mountain View hub in the coming months. In July, a California local with the Teamsters Union said workers for Google Express, who are hired through the HR firm Adecco, are planning to unionize.
Much has already been made of the way F. Gary Gray’s N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Comptonelides some of the group’s less admirable aspects—especially its members’ relationships and sometimes violent actions toward women. Most prominently, music journalist Dee Barnes, who was assaulted by Dr. Dre in 1991, posted her own review of the movie on Gawker, calling out the film for the way it ignores violence against both herself, and other women who operated in N.W.A.’s orbit. It’s interesting, then, to note that Barnes only called for her attack to be acknowledged in the film, not graphically depicted, in light of a Los Angeles Times article published today that shows that the altercation was originally included in Straight Outta Compton’s script.
Looking over an earlier draft of Jonathan Herman’s screenplay, Times reporter Gerrick D. Kennedy describes the scene like ...
Emoji have become such a ubiquitous part of the contemporary vernacular that it’s possible to recreate entire movie plots using them. And while it might seem obvious there’s a generational divide when it comes to emoji use, it’s not so apparent that there’s a geographical one as well. But by analyzing cloud data from its users, popular keyboard app maker SwiftKey complied a detailed US Emoji Report to take a deep dive into emoji use by state.
The map is a little deceptive at first glance. It doesn’t necessarily list the most popular emoji in each state, but rather the emoji that each state uses more than any other state. Presumably, people all over the country use a thumbs up to show agreement, a heart to show love, and the pointing/OK fingers to show you-know-what. But New York understandably talks about the Statue of ...
Jeb Bush, one of the leading Republican presidential candidates, told a national security forum that Washington, DC needs a stronger link to Silicon Valley.
"There's a place to find common ground between personal civil liberties and NSA doing its job," Bush said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. "I think the balance has actually gone the wrong way."
The former Florida governor's statement puts him not only at odds with rival Republican candidates like Rand Paul, but also against a number of government committees and federal judges.
Bernie’s campaign has been channeling grassroots enthusiasm into massive rallies. Now, it's working to whip all those supporters into a sophisticated political machine.
Comcast is beginning to extend its low-cost internet service offering to senior citizens, launching pilot programs in San Francisco and Palm Beach County, Florida. The pilots are an extension of Comcast's Internet Essentials service, a low-cost internet plan that it's been offering to low-income families since 2011. It was initially launched on a temporary basis as a condition of its NBCUniversal purchase, but Comcast has kept the program running and continues to expand it. The program has traditionally offered 10 Mbps internet access for $9.95 per month to households with a child in the school lunch program; it's not stated what the requirements will be for senior citizens — it may well be something that Comcast is figuring out through these pilots.
Continuing the Internet Essentials program is very much part of Comcast's play to convince people that it's not totally evil; and fair enough: the program is addressing a real issue. There's a huge gap in internet access for low-income families. The situation is similar for senior citizens, and Internet Essentials' expansion could help to address that.
Disclosure: Comcast Ventures and NBCUniversal are investors in Vox Media, The Verge's parent company.
The “real-life Olivia Pope” has sold a New Orleans-set family drama to NBC, Deadline reports. Judy Smith, who co-executive produces Shonda Rhimes’ Scandaland whose crisis-management firm inspired the series, is developing House Of The Rising Sun with NBC. The series is set against the backdrop of New Orleans’ food and music scenes and follows three generations of a corrupt political family that has controlled just about everything in New Orleans for decades. As a sprawling and racially diverse family drama, the show is already being compared to Empire, whose success NBC is no doubt thirsty to re-create.
The pilot was written by Jeremy Miller and Daniel Cohn, who recently sold their rehab comedy pitch The Fix to TBS. Production on The Portland Condition, Miller and Cohn’s Black List feature screenplay, is slated for the end of 2015. In addition to her producing role on Scandal, Smith also executive ...
WCVB Channel 5 Boston: Vandals defaced an iconic statue of Christopher Columbus in Boston’s North End by covering it in red paint and tagging it with the phrase “Black Lives Matter. |http://ift.tt/1UcYIOf
Now that’s what I like to see, Boston!
#DefaceWhiteSupremacyMonuments2k15
Okay so like the first year I lived in Boston that statue was *missing its fucking head for a while* for no reason that I could ever discern, so let’s not call this “vandalism” or act like it’s unique.
This is some peaceful public art, and it’s great, and it’s way better than what residents have historically done to this specific statue (not that I’m against beheading Columbus, just maybe leave me a sign so I know we’re on the same page idk).
RPGnet is commissioning a small book on the topic of "Family Friendly Roleplaying". Questions we'd like answered in this book for parents is how to introduce children to roleplaying, encourage learning to share the spotlight and other social skills, teach improv and freedom to fail, and how to have games with children of different ages and skills to play together. We not seeking rules or scenarios for play.
This is an experiment for RPGnet, so rates are just 1¢ a word to 3¢ a word a word, depending on experience. We're looking for about 40k length. Our goal is to have a first draft of the text completed by Thanksgiving, but we have some flexibility on this deadline.
We are open to this being a collaborative work, however, the book needs to be single cohesive work with a consistent voice, which means either a great collaboration or a really good writer/editor in charge of the collaboration. We do not want a book of disjoint chapters.
Let use know if you are interested in creating a proposal to author this book. We would like to review proposals the week of September 8th. We don't require a sample chapter, but at least an annotated outline with some word count, some details as to how you would approach the topic, and some examples of your other work.
-- Christopher Allen
(You can mail me at shannona@skotos.net and I'll also forward it to Christopher.)
Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz just announced that he’s joining the crew of Pixar’s Coco, an upcoming movie inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead. Why is this news? Well, in addition to being a fantastic artist and the creator of the syndicated comic strip La Cucaracha, Alcaraz is a political cartoonist who’s been sharply critical of Disney/Pixar’s treatment of Latinos and Latino culture.
On Wednesday morning, a North Carolina news station tweeted that a candidate named "Deez Nuts" was surging in NC presidential polling. So, uh, what's going on here?
Super Opinionated.
xkcd.com.
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