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+17 +1
Uber kept new drivers off the road to encourage surge pricing...
Andrew Lane is a regular Uber customer with some fond memories of the service. Last year on President's Day he was the lucky rider selected for an "Ubercade" upgrade. "They sent over a free limo with secret service agents and everything. I got my girlfriend and we cruised by her ex-boyfriend's place. It was awesome."
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+21 +1
Undercover Police Are Targeting Uber And Lyft Drivers To
Undercover police operations have been systematically targeting Uber and Lyft drivers by issuing citations totaling thousands of dollars in places like Madison and Pittsburgh. In Madison, a police sting operation from the weekend resulted in $1,300 in fines for drivers of both e-hailing companies.
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+11 +1
Can We Trust Uber?
I was a big fan of the Uber service since I first saw one of the initial prototypes of the product. Yet, over time, I’ve started to trust the company less and less, causing me to increasingly wonder about the leadership team. The news from August that Uber gave contractors phones and credit cards to create fake Lyft accounts in an attempt to recruit drivers and create false demand (which led to 5,000 lost rides) was the last straw. I’m no longer using Uber, at least until I can trust the brand.
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+20 +1
How Chicago's red light ticketing turned yellow lights into cash
Confronted with questions about a flurry of red light camera tickets stamped with yellow times below the 3-second minimum, Mayor Rahm Emanuel 's administration said the fluctuation of hundredths of a second was normal — imperceptible to anyone behind the wheel of a car.
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+5 +1
Uber Receives a Big Fat "F" From Better Business Bureau
Riders aren't pleased with the company's "surge pricing". The ride-share company has received an F grade from the Better Business Bureau due to consumer complaints. The evaluation was done in March 2014, with the results having been recently announced.
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+15 +1
Ashton Kutcher Defends Uber Against 'Shady Journalist'
One day after Uber's SVP of business suggested his company spend millions of dollars hiring people to investigate the private lives of its most vocal critics in the media, actor/entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher, an investor of Uber, defended the company on Twitter.
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+15 +1
Uber's Emil Michael isn't going anywhere, report says
Despite pressure to fire Uber executive Emil Michael after his controversial remarks surfaced this week, at least two investors in the company and CEO Travis Kalanick are still firmly behind him, according to a new report. Bloomberg reported on Friday that Michael was integral to Uber's financing round in June that valued it at $17 billion, as well as in the company's deal with Spotify.
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+13 +1
Taxi medallions have been the best investment in America for years. Now Uber may be changing that.
When Uber first launched as a fledgling ride-for-hire service in San Francisco four years ago, it was a tech and transportation curiosity, a niche company for the kind of people who travel in black town cars. Since then, the company has transformed from yet another app to a billion-dollar behemoth with major public policy implications.
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+9 +1
We Can’t Trust Uber
UBER, the popular car-service app that allows you to hail a cab from your smartphone, shows your assigned car as a moving dot on a map as it makes its way toward you. It’s reassuring, especially as you wait on a rainy street corner. Less reassuring, though, was the apparent threat from a senior vice president of Uber to spend “a million dollars” looking into the personal lives of journalists who wrote critically about Uber. The problem wasn’t just that a representative of a powerful...
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+16 +1
Overstock must pay $6.8 MILLION for deceptive comparison pricing
After a trial, Overstock.com, the popular online seller, has been ordered to pay $6.8 million after being found to have used deceptive advertising that gave consumers the false illusion that they were getting a bigger bargain. Alameda Judge Wynne Carville found that Utah-based, internet retailer Overstock.com had violated California laws intended to protect consumers from deceptive advertising practices...
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+19 +1
Judge Shuts Down Uber In Spain, Pending Taxi Association Court Action
We might be at the point of losing count of the number of places Uber is being shut down at this point. Now, after a series of protests by taxi associations in Spain, a Madrid judge has ordered ride-sharing app Uber to cease all activities as of today. The judge accepted the ‘cautionary measures’ put forward by the Madrid Taxi Association, pending a future court case the organisation wants to file against Uber.
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+1 +1
Uber intros surge pricing during Sydney hostage siege, then backtracks after user outcry
Uber briefly charged its users in downtown Sydney a minimum $100 to escape an armed hostage crisis, a result of automatic surge pricing meant to get more drivers online. An executive in the city's Central Business District (CBD) sent Mashable screenshots of the Uber app that showed the company was charging up to four-times the normal rate because "demand is off the charts."...
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+23 +1
Merry Christmas From Uber: Here's A $2 Booking Fee
Everyone's favorite rideshare app has decided that Christmas Eve is the perfect time to slip through a small change to its Uber Taxi service. Nothing big. Just a $2 fee every single time you want to hail a cab through Uber. Motherboard has a copy of the email that Uber (very quietly) sent to UberT users, on this, a day when everyone will totally be paying attention to their emails. UberT currently works as a hailing system for yellow or boro cabs — use the app to get a ride...
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+16 +1
The Business of Fake Diplomas
With a four-year college degree generally averaging around $80,000, a diploma is the most expensive piece of paper most people ever earn. Though it’s just a flimsy sliver of dead tree embossed with a stamp and signed by the lords of higher education, it’s also a symbol of the hard work -- the blood, sweat, and tears -- that went into being admitted. Unless, of course, you purchase your certificate from one of the dozens of websites offering fake diplomas for as little as $400.
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+15 +1
Dish used “small business” discount to save $3 billion at taxpayer expense
Dish took advantage of discounts intended for small businesses to save $3.3 billion in an auction of public airwaves, making a "mockery" of the small business program, according to a member of the Federal Communications Commission. Dish used companies it owns in order to place $13.3 billion worth of winning bids in an auction of wireless airwaves that can be used for cellular networks. Results of the auction were announced last week. But Dish only has to pay $10 billion because it...
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+17 +1
Revenge porn boss wants Google to remove his “identity related” info
What do you do if you're a revenge porn site operator and the Federal Trade Commission has barred you from publishing nude images of people without their consent? You demand that Google remove from its search engine links to news accounts about the FTC's action and other related stories, citing "unauthorized use of photos of me and other related information."
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+5 +1
The Pigeon King and the Ponzi Scheme that Shook Canada
The Pigeon King delivered his closing statement to the jury dressed in his only suit. His name was Arlan Galbraith, and he was representing himself. He had abruptly fired his lawyer nearly two years earlier, during the long lead up to the trial, and then ignored the judges who advised him to hire another. He seemed adrift but also supremely confident.
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+30 +1
Criminals barter for your Social Security number and the most intimate details of your personal life
When Target was breached in 2013, it didn't take long for credit and debit card data stolen from its systems to start flooding the underground forums and storefronts that trade in such merchandise. One was Rescator – a black market outpost that former Washington Post reporter-turned-cybersleuth Brian Krebs discovered was selling more than 1 million of the stolen cards at prices ranging from $20 to $100.
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+32 +1
Fake Diplomas, Real Cash: Pakistani Company Axact Reaps Millions
Seen from the Internet, it is a vast education empire: hundreds of universities and high schools, with elegant names and smiling professors at sun-dappled American campuses. Their websites, glossy and assured, offer online degrees in dozens of disciplines, like nursing and civil engineering. There are glowing endorsements on the CNN iReport website, enthusiastic video testimonials, and State Department authentication certificates bearing the signature of Secretary of State John Kerry.
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+13 +1
Uber gutted Carnegie Mellon’s top robotics lab to build self-driving cars
This January, as much of the world was getting over its post-holiday hangovers, people began disappearing from Carnegie Mellon University's robotics center. At first it was only a few individuals, mostly software developers. Then it became an entire team, and eventually the group included the center's director. They weren't going far.
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