cities

Protesters Say Uber and Lyft Are Still Failing Their Blind Passengers

Protesters Say Uber and Lyft Are Still Failing Their Blind Passengers

Michelle Barlak, public relations manager for The Seeing Eye, which provides guide dogs for people with visual impairments, tells WIRED that the organization has received “frequent and increasing reports of rideshare access denials from Seeing Eye dog handlers.” A survey by the nonprofit Guide Dogs for the Blind found 83 percent of members said they had been denied rides.Both Uber and Lyft offer in-app options for people to specify that they’re traveling with a pet, which usually involves paying slightly more. But since guide dogs aren’t pets, people with visual impairments cannot be required to use this option.A Lyft spokesperson…
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New York Cracked Down on Airbnb One Year Ago. NYC Housing Is Still a Mess

New York Cracked Down on Airbnb One Year Ago. NYC Housing Is Still a Mess

It’s been one year since New York enacted a law that barred most whole-apartment rentals for short-term stays on platforms like Airbnb. Since then, the number of stays under 30 days has plummeted in the city, but Airbnb is raising questions about whether the lawmakers’ stated goals—lowering rents and opening up apartments for full-time residents—have been achieved.Airbnb fought New York’s Local Law 18 in court, calling it a “de facto ban” on the platform, but failed to block it. Now, the company is asking New York to reconsider. In a recent post, the company called the outcomes of the law…
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The Paris Olympics Promised Flying Taxis—Here’s Why They Failed to Launch

The Paris Olympics Promised Flying Taxis—Here’s Why They Failed to Launch

Six months before the Olympic Opening Ceremony, Dirk Hoke, CEO of Volocopter, was still hopeful. “[We’re] making people aware that this is not science fiction,” he told WIRED in February, touting the flying taxi as a sustainable, safe and quiet mode of transport that would become normal in just a few years. “It works and it starts this year.”Flights on Volocopter’s VoloCity model would be free-of-charge and initially three routes were planned across Paris. Even as those plans were made public, Hoke had yet to travel in one of his own vehicles. “I would love to,” he said, “but so…
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Uber-Backed E-Scooter Startup Lime Enters Japan After Korea Exit

Uber-Backed E-Scooter Startup Lime Enters Japan After Korea Exit

Uber Technologies Inc.-backed Lime is entering Japan’s growing e-scooter ride market in a foray that pits the San Francisco-based startup against homegrown Luup KK.Lime, which has a global fleet of around 200,000 e-bikes and scooters, on Monday launched its service in some of Tokyo’s most densely populated neighborhoods of Shibuya, Shinjuku, Meguro and Setagaya wards. Lime now has around 200 electric scooters and more than 40 recharging ports. Tokyo-based Luup, which controls more than 90% of the domestic market in terms of ride mileage, operates 9,100 ports. Source link lol
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AI Has a Way to Go to Become A Connections Puzzle Champ

AI Has a Way to Go to Become A Connections Puzzle Champ

Are you a New York Times word game enthusiast? The Mini Crossword, Wordle and the infuriating Connections puzzle have drawn many fans, and some of them tested how AI might fare. But first... Source link lol
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Mobile Networks Market Sees ‘Glimmer of Hope’ After Long Decline

Mobile Networks Market Sees ‘Glimmer of Hope’ After Long Decline

The years-long decline in demand for radio access networks that has battered sales at mobile equipment makers Ericsson AB and Nokia Oyj is showing signs of stabilization, according to a report from Dell’Oro Group Inc.Three of the six regions tracked by Dell’Oro showed signs of growth in the second quarter, compared to one region in the prior period, said the Redwood City, California-based telecom research company, whose reports are widely watched by the industry. Source link lol
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How Politics Will Expand Into the Final Frontier

How Politics Will Expand Into the Final Frontier

Listen and subscribe to the Voternomics series on the In the City and Stephanomics podcast feeds on Apple, Spotify and the Bloomberg Terminal.The rapid commercialization of space is launching the world into an “era of astropolitics,” journalist and author Tim Marshall tells host Allegra Stratton on this episode of Voternomics.Commercial companies are driving “Space Race 2.0,” from commercial fleets of satellites a few hundred miles above Earth to NASA’s search for private companies to bring back a piece of the moon. Ultimately, Marshall says, entities are eyeing the lucrative prospect of mining extraterrestrial objects for resources needed to provide renewable…
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The Olympics’ Hostile Architecture Is a Preview of What’s to Come

The Olympics’ Hostile Architecture Is a Preview of What’s to Come

On a graffiti-stained sidewalk in Paris, a strange sight appeared days before the Olympic opening ceremony in July: Around 40 giant cement Lego-like blocks in neat rows beneath the Pont de Stains, a bridge in the northern suburb of Aubervilliers that connects two Olympic sites, the Stade de France and the Parc des Nations.This place used to be a homeless encampment, where around 100 people, many of them migrants, lived in tents. Then on July 17, the police arrived and instructed everyone to leave, as part of a cleanup operation in which authorities put homeless people, members of the Roma…
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Millions Meant for a National ID System Instead Benefited Congo’s Elites

Millions Meant for a National ID System Instead Benefited Congo’s Elites

In Congo’s second city of Lubumbashi, a blue glass-and-steel shopping mall towers over the dust-blown skyline, dwarfing the surrounding colonial-era architecture. In 2018, then President Joseph Kabila was guest of honor at the development's opening ceremony, using a pair of golden scissors to cut a ribbon printed in Congo’s national colors of yellow, red and blue.Six years later, the $25 million Hypnose complex stands as a monument to the corruption that has long dogged the vast central African nation. It illustrates how money intended to develop a national ID system was leveraged to serve a small number of elite with…
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Saudi Film Industry Calls on Hollywood to Nurture Local Talent

Saudi Film Industry Calls on Hollywood to Nurture Local Talent

At the end of a meandering desert road, between cliffs streaked with red hues and burnt orange sand, sits a pristine, state-of-the art film studio, awaiting its first production.Located in the outskirts of AlUla, a city in northwest Saudi Arabia built more than 2,000 years ago along the Silk Road, the facility is as untouched as the landscapes around it. Source link lol
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