So now that youve seen the Hoonigan garage, what do you think I was blown away. I had no idea that a majority of their space was set up for car projects, building. Uber and Lyfts efforts to keep drivers from unionizing faced a setback when a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that would have ended a rideshare driver union in. Uber And Lyft Drivers Fight For Unionization Still Alive For Now UpdatedUber and Lyfts efforts to keep drivers from unionizing faced a setback when a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that would have ended a ride share driver union in Seattle. U. S. District Judge Robert Lasnik dismissed a suit that argued allowing driver unionization in Seattle breaks antitrust laws, as ride share companies classify its drivers as independent contract workers instead of employees. Seattle is the first and only city to allow Uber and Lyft driver unionization. Don Creery signed up for health care on the Affordable Care Act as soon as it went live. CreeryRead more Read. Lasnik, however, ordered a temporary halt on Seattle driver unionization after the lawsuit was filed and the block remains in place. Uber and Lyft drivers would rather classify drivers as independent contract workers to keep from paying expensive benefits and salaries. Driver earnings are already costly for Uber and Lyft, and both companies are looking into self driving technologies to nix the need for drivers altogether. Uber and Lyft drivers in Seattle, however, told Jalopnik they enjoy their right to collective bargaining. Many of these drivers work as many hours driving as they would at a full time job, without benefits or a salary. UPDATED August 2 4 5. EST Lyft spokesperson Adrian Durbin told Jalopnik the company is disappointed in the ruling. Seattles poorly drafted ridesharing ordinance could undermine the flexibility of drivers to choose when, where and for how long they drivethe very things that make Lyft so attractive to drivers and useful for passengers, Durbin said in an e mail. UPDATED August 2 2 0. EST Brooke Steger, Ubers general manager for the Pacific Northwest, gave the following statement to Jalopnik The Courts decision ignores the serious legal challenges raised in this case about an ordinance that will turn back the clock in Seattle. If this ruling is allowed to stand, those most adversely affected will unfortunately be thousands of drivers. This ordinance was never about benefiting drivers or the community but really about helping Teamsters and protecting taxi companies. Uber intends to appeal Lasniks decision in the U. S. Court of Appeals. Apples Patented i. Phone Panic Button Might Not Make You Much Safer. Could future i. Phones come with a built in panic button to discreetly summon the cops Its certainly a possibility, judging by Apples recent patent filings. According to a patent granted to Apple on Tuesday for Biometric Initiated Communication, the panic button could operate from a number of inputs including a particular finger or finger sequence, a particular timing or cadence, or whether input was entered with a particular force. One possible application of the button is to call emergency services without that fact being known to an assailant or other aggressive person that prompted the emergency call, and potentially send GPS data andor streaming audio or video to the authorities. It could also be used to execute a wipe of any crucial data on the phone, like social security numbers. Its certainly a feature that at face value sounds suitably pro safety. But whether or not a cell phone panic button ends up being much more than security theatersomething designed to provide the reassuring illusion of safety instead of actual safetymay end up relying on a lot of factors that cant be engineered into a phone. A panic button by definition can only be as effective as the response it summons while it may offer a new way to summon the cops, your mileage may vary depending on who those cops are. A 2. 00. 8 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey concluded that just 2. Just one third of property crimes were responded to within 1. But individual police departments can do much worse, like in Baltimore, where in certain neighborhoods a domestic violence call could take an average of 1. According to the Economist, police in New Orleans took an average of 2. Detroit police were taking close to an hour to respond to priority calls. Its tough to imagine surreptitious panic button callsespecially in situations where the user might not be able to talk directly with a dispatcherwould do much better. A good comparison might be home security systems. The New York Times estimated some 3. U. S. in 2. 01. 0, which is much less than the number of estimated i. Phones. Those stationary security systems are already a low police response priority, due in part to a high rate of false alarms. In 2. 01. 1, the Detroit Police Department decided only to respond to burglar alarms after they were verified by the security company. The problem of false alarms and where and how to direct police resources wont be made easier by putting panic buttons in millions of phones, especially when considering recent research has found cell phone butt dials might already constitute a huge percentage of 9. Theres also the continued problem of police shootings in the U. S., in which vague or incomplete information about suspects can play a contributing role. But Apple is far from the first to come up with the idea of equipping phones with some kind of panic button. Earlier this month, the Mexican city of Juarez released the No estoy sola I am not alone app, which dispatches text messages to emergency contacts with a link to the location of the user. Another app developed by Kenyan university student Edwin Inganji had similar functionality, but also relayed information to authorities. In India, which last year rolled out a plan to equip all new phones with panic buttons and GPS by 2. New York Times noted some advocates fighting the countrys epidemic of sexual assault were optimistic while others cautioned it wouldnt solve deep rooted problems with the responsiveness and professionalism of police forces in India. CNBC.
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