carsharing

This article originally appeared in Protean Magazine, a leftist print magazine of critique, fiction, poetry, and art. Nothing quite captures the enormous chasm between capitalist promises about the future of transportation and our present-day reality than the typical car commercial. These commercials are nearly indistinguishable, and not just in surface details. (Notice how there are, improbably, never any other cars on the road.) Rather, they all push the same alluring message: with a car, you can go wherever you want,…

Photo: JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP (Getty Images)The 2022 midterms are officially over. Well, sorta. If you don’t know what’s going on, feel free to just Google it. For our purposes here at Gizmodo, we wanted to take a quick look at how the midterms may have impacted technology. In addition to hotly contested congressional races, this election cycle saw voters decide on a variety of ballot initiatives, including some that could have big impacts on everything from internet access to police surveillance to clean energy to your…

Photo: Kelly Sullivan (Getty Images) Lyft workers, like so many others in the tech industry this year, opened their inboxes today to read some dreaded news: Nearly 700 of their coworkers would lose their jobs.01:25Randall Park's Favorite SuperheroesMonday 5:02PMThe company’s two co-founders, ​​John Zimmer and Logan Green, sent the memo to staff Wednesday confirming earlier reports by The Wall Street Journal suggesting the company would part ways with 13% of its workforce. Fears over an impending recession and increasing…

Uber has started showing iPhone users ads for other companies in its push notifications. Screenshots posted on Twitter over the weekend show promotions for the Peloton app showing up in notifications from the Uber app —the same notifications many users have elected to leave on, because they’re what Uber uses to let you know when your ride has arrived.For now, the company just seems to be testing the limits of what its customers will put up with, and it’s unclear whether Uber riders can expect push ads to be a regular…

Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)We’ve all been there—you want to get totally sloshed but you don’t have the energy to get off the couch. The solution? Make the debauched decision to order alcohol straight to your apartment like some sort of moral pervert. Yes, dear friends, there is an app for that—and it’s in a bit of trouble right now.The booze delivery company Drizly is currently under fire from the Federal Trade Commission over a series of data security blunders that left the personal information of 2.5 million…

Uber announced they were testing out in-car tablets for vehicles in select cities, and the company announced Wednesday it plans to add ads to those tablets as well.Photo: Scott Olson (Getty Images)It seems Uber just isn’t content with letting users travel in peace and awkward silence during their point-to-point trips. The ride-hailing company now plans to advertise to users at every point of a trip from the moment you open the app. These ads will potentially appear on multiple screens, blasting consumers with new products…

Rideshare cars wait in line in downtown San Francisco.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle (AP)There’s a well-funded heavyweight fight over potential EV tax credits brewing in California that is drawing the attention of some serious financial interests. A group of billionaires, mad about a proposed tax increase, is squaring off against a powerful ridesharing company over a ballot initiative that could open the door for more Californians to drive electric vehicles.The well-financed tussle is over Proposition 30,…

Photo: ROBYN BECK/AFP (Getty Images)A federal jury has convicted Uber’s former security chief of charges related to a 2016 cover-up involving the ride-share giant, according to journalists present in the courtroom. Joe Sullivan, who was found guilty of one count of obstruction and one count of misprision of a felony on Wednesday, helped to conceal a massive 2016 data breach from authorities, while also obstructing a Federal Trade Commission investigation. Sullivan’s troubles began in the fall of 2016, when two…

Photo: Matthew Horwood (Getty Images)Uber has published additional information about how it was hacked, claiming that it was targeted by LAPSUS$, a cybercriminal gang with a hefty track record that is thought to be composed largely of teenagers.Last week, someone broke into Uber’s network and used the access to cause all sorts of chaos. The culprit, who claims to be 18 years old, managed to spam company staff with vulgar Slack messages, post a picture of a penis on the company’s internal websites, and leak images of…

A driver and passenger wear face masks as Uber and Lyft drivers with Rideshare Drivers United and the
 Transport Workers Union of America conduct a ‘caravan protest’ outside the California Labor Commissioner’s office amidst the coronavirus pandemic on April 16, 2020 in Los Angeles, California.Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images)Uber may have built its hailing empire, in part, by notoriously skirting past local laws and regulations, but at least one state’s finally forcing the company to pay up.On Tuesday, Uber agreed to pay…