The cases allege substantial negligence on Uber’s part: plaintiffs say the company failed to keep safe the data of the affected 50 million customers and 7 million drivers. Uber reportedly paid $100,000 to delete the stolen data and keep news of the breach quiet.
On Tuesday, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote: “None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it.â€
The first case, Alejandro Flores v. Raiser, which was filed Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles, described Uber’s conduct as “grossly negligent†and added that the company “departed from all reasonable standards of care.†(Raiser is Uber’s subsidiary that contracts with drivers.)
Another lawsuit was submitted Wednesday in federal court in San Francisco on behalf of two people in South Carolina.
Lawyers who filed Danyelle Townsend and Ken Tew v. Uberallege that the company should have had “administrative, physical, and technical safeguards, such as intrusion detection processes that detect data breaches in a timely manner, to protect and secure Plaintiffs’ and Nationwide Class members’ [personally identifiable information].â€
“Major corporations like Uber face a higher threat of security breaches than smaller companies due in part to the large amounts of data they possess,†they wrote. “Uber knew or should have known its security systems were inadequate, particularly in light of the prior data breaches that Uber had experienced, and yet Uber failed to take reasonable precautions to safeguard the PII of Plaintiffs and members of the Nationwide Class.â€
The law firm which brought Townsend,Keller Rohrback, has represented numerous clients in similar data breach lawsuits, including cases involving Sony, Equifax, and more.
“By choosing not to disclose this massive data breach and attempting to mitigate the breach by paying the hackers to destroy the data, Uber has essentially rolled the dice with its customers’ and drivers’ personal identities,†Cari Campen Laufenberg, a Keller Rohrback attorney said in a statement sent to Ars.
“What’s more, it has done so for more than a year–denying these victims the crucial opportunity to take timely steps to mitigate the disclosure of their private information.â€
Uber did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment late Wednesday evening.
Steve Levine, an Axios journalist who wrote a whole book about battery technologies, wrote a few days ago that “experts estimate that the Semi could be $300,000.” MIT Technology Review speculated that the Semi would cost even more: $400,000.
So a lot of people were surprised on Thursday when Tesla posted estimated prices for its Semi product. According to the company, a low-end truck with a 300 mile range will cost around $150,000, while you’ll be able to get a range of 500 miles for $180,000. A premium “Founders Series” truck will cost $200,000.
That’s more than the $120,000 cost of a typical conventional truck. But Tesla says that its truck will deliver $200,000 in fuel and maintenance costs over the life of the vehicle. If that’s true, paying an extra $30,000 to $60,000 for the truck would be a bargain.
Tesla is labeling these as “expected” prices, and the truck isn’t due to launch until 2019. Elon Musk has a track record of setting overly ambitious goals and blowing through deadlines. So we shouldn’t be surprised if the first deliveries slip into 2020 and a truck with 500 miles of range costs a bit more than $180,000.
Still, Tesla probably wouldn’t be teasing prices this low unless it had some reason to think it could deliver some dramatic price reductions.
Battery math
The key issue here is battery costs. Batteries are expensive, and it takes a lot of power to drive a fully-loaded semi. Tesla says that its trucks consume “less than 2 kWh per mile,” so a 500-mile semi could require as much as 1,000 kWh of battery capacity. A Tesla executive stated last year that its battery pack costs were below $190 per kWh. At that price, 1,000 kWh of batteries would cost $190,000, putting the total cost of a truck in the neighborhood of $300,000.
But Tesla might be giving itself wiggle room with that 2 kWh per mile figure, and battery costs have continued to fall since last year. In April, another expert told Levine that a 500-mile truck might only need 500 kWh of battery capacity, and that batteries could cost as little as $120 per kWh, making the total cost of the battery around $70,000.
That’s right in line with Tesla’s expected costs for the Semi battery. The $30,000 cost difference between the 300 and 500-mile versions of the Tesla truck suggests that Tesla believes it can get a 200-mile range for $30,000, which translates to $75,000 for a 500-mile battery.
One complication here is Tesla’s promise that the truck will be able to operate for a million miles without breaking down. Levine says an insider told him that this guarantee includes the battery. That’s surprising because a typical lithium-ion battery is good for 1,000 charge cycles—which would mean the 500-mile truck would need a new battery after 500,000 miles.
In an interview with Levine, Stanford researcher Tony Seba pointed out one way to get a longer range:Â “If you don’t fully charge and discharge a battery, it’s going to last far longer.” So perhaps Tesla is putting extra batteries on the truck, allowing it to charge and discharge slowly and never be fully drained. But of course that makes the battery more expensive.
Fortunately, Tesla has good reason to expect battery prices to continue falling over the next two to three years.
High-tech products almost always fall in cost as they are manufactured at higher volumes. And that’s been happening surprisingly quickly with batteries. A McKinsey study last year found battery costs had fallen from almost $1,000 in 2010 to $230 six years later. If costs continue to fall at that rate over the next three years, we can expect costs to be well under $100 per kWh by 2020, putting Tesla’s ambitious truck price targets comfortably within reach.
Shot for Shot: Movie Scenes That Inspired “Stranger Things†Season 2
“Stranger Things†Season 2 is filled with retro movie references, including parallels to ‘Stand By Me,’ ‘Aliens,’ ‘Indiana Jones,’ ‘Gremlins,’ ‘Star Wars’ and more. Here’s a shot for shot comparison from the team over at IMDB.
Newly-released Closed-circuit television footage released shows a North Korean soldier sprinting south across the border while his fellow soldiers fire on him. The incident occurred last week.
Screengrab by NPR/United Nations Command
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Screengrab by NPR/United Nations Command
Newly-released Closed-circuit television footage released shows a North Korean soldier sprinting south across the border while his fellow soldiers fire on him. The incident occurred last week.
Screengrab by NPR/United Nations Command
The closed-circuit television footage is silent, but that makes it no less dramatic.
A jeep speeds through the North Korean countryside, crossing what’s known as the 72-Hour Bridge.
Inside the vehicle is a North Korean soldier, making a desperate escape. All but the headlights disappear behind tree cover.
Stars and Stripes YouTube
The video changes. We see North Korean soldiers running from their posts.
The video shifts again. The jeep is stuck in a ditch. The driver leaps from it and he sprints south under gunfire from his fellow soldiers. In a separate frame, we see him run across the border.
In pursuit, a North Korean soldier also runs across the border. He looks down and seems to realize what he’s done. He turns around and dodges behind a building on the North Korean side.
The episode transpired on Nov. 13 in the Joint Security Area, according to The Associated Press.
Infrared video shows South Korean soldiers forty minutes later, crawling toward the defector, who lies wounded about 55 yards south of the border. They drag him to safety; he’s then taken aboard a U.S. Black Hawk military helicopter and rushed into surgery at a hospital near Seoul.
The Joint Security Area is the only portion of the border where soldiers from the two countries stand just feet apart – and thus is one of the only areas where a sprint across is feasible, The New York Timesreports. The last time a North Korean soldier defected across the Joint Security Area was 2007.
Footage of the incident was released this week by the American-led United Nations Command, which administers the site on the southern side of the border. The Joint Security Area lies within the Demilitarized Zone.
The UN Command said it had completed its investigation of the incident, and said the North Korean army had violated the UN Armistice Agreement twice: by firing weapons across the border and when the North Korean soldier briefly crossed the border chasing the defector.
Gen. Vincent Brooks, the American who leads the UN Command, said in a statement dated Tuesday, that the battalion acted “in a manner that is consistent with the Armistice Agreement, namely – to respect the Demilitarized Zone and to take actions that deter a resumption of hostilities. The armistice agreement was challenged, but it remains in place.”
The defector is being identified only with the surname Oh, according to Reuters. In the gunfire during his escape, he was shot five times.
Dr. Lee Cook-jong, a surgeon who treated Oh following his escape, told outlets, including The New York Times that when doctors performed surgery on the his intestinal wounds, they found parasitic worms 11 inches long.
“In my 20 years as a surgeon, I have only seen something like this in a medical textbook,” Lee said.
But the Times reports that the parasites should come as no surprise:
“Defectors to the South have cited the existence of parasites and abysmal nutrition. Because it lacks chemical fertilizers, North Korea still relies on human excrement to fertilize its fields, helping parasites to spread, the experts said.
“In a 2014 study, South Korean doctors checked a sample of 17 female defectors from North Korea and found seven of them infected with parasitic worms.”
Lee told a news conference on Wednesday that the man had regained consciousness and was now stable.
“He is fine,” Lee said, according to Reuters. “He’s not going to die.”
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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai at The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research on May 5, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla
Net neutrality rules are popular with Americans who use the Internet. When the Federal Communications Commission deliberated on possible net neutrality rules in 2014 and 2015, millions of comments poured in to support strict regulation of Internet service providers.
Public opinion helped push the FCC to adopt rules that prevent ISPs from blocking or throttling Internet content, and from charging websites or other online services for priority treatment on the network.
Public opinion hasn’t changed much in the two-plus years that the rules have been on the books. The cable lobby surveyed registered voters this year and found that most of them continue to support bans on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Multiple polls have found that net neutrality rules are popular with both Democratic and Republican voters.
It was thus no surprise to see a huge backlash to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to eliminate the rules. While most of the 22 million public comments on the plan were spam and form letters, a study funded by the broadband industry found that 98.5 percent of unique comments supported the current rules.
But net neutrality rules have some vocal and influential opponents. The most prominent are Republican politicians and regulators, conservative think tanks, and the Internet service providers that have to follow the rules. Those are the voices that counted most in Pai’s decision to eliminate popular consumer protection regulations.
Pai’s full proposal is available here and is expected to be approved in a commission vote on December 14.
FCC official explains why comments can be dismissed
A senior FCC official spoke with reporters about Pai’s anti-net neutrality plan in a phone briefing yesterday, and explained why the FCC is not swayed by public opinion on net neutrality.
The vast majority of comments consisted of form letters from both pro- and anti-net neutrality groups, and generally did not introduce new facts into the record or make serious legal arguments, the official from Pai’s office said. In general, the comments stated opinions or made assertions and did not have much bearing on Pai’s decision, the official said. The official spoke with reporters on the condition that he not be named and that his comments can be paraphrased but not quoted directly.
The official noted that many of the comments are fraudulent. He said that there were 7.5 million identical comments that came from 45,000 unique names and addresses, apparently due to a scammer who repeatedly submitted the same comment under a series of different names.
The message from this official seemed to be that a huge percentage of the comments can be safely ignored. But the docket is filled with these comments because the FCC took no significant steps to prevent fraud and did not delete even the most obviously fraudulent comments from the record.
Allowing the docket to be filled with junk made it easier for Pai’s office to argue that the comments should not be seen as a legitimate expression of public opinion.
Pai’s office has also refused to provide evidence for an investigation into fraudulent comments, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said yesterday. Schneiderman said that there was “a massive scheme that fraudulently used real Americans’ identities” in order to “drown out the views of real people and businesses.”
Pai likes public opinion—when it agrees with him
The FCC isn’t required to follow public opinion, but Pai favorably cites public opinion when it suits him.
On net neutrality, Pai and his staff have consistently said that they would consider the quality of the comments rather than the quantity on each side. Yet in another recent decision to eliminate a regulation, Pai took the opposite approach.
“The overwhelming majority of public input favored our proposal,” he said before a recent vote, while urging his fellow commissioners to eliminate a decades-old rule that required TV and radio stations to maintain studios in the local communities they serve.
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, urged the FCC to hold public hearings across the country before eliminating net neutrality rules. Hearings are necessary to get Americans’ opinions because of the spam bots, impersonation and other problems marring the FCC’s docket, she argued.
“I’ve called for public hearings before any change is made to these rules, just as Republican and Democratic commissions have done in the past. We should go directly to the American public to find out what they think about this proposal before any vote is taken to harm net neutrality,” Rosenworcel said yesterday.
Comments that count more than others
The Pai staffer who spoke with reporters acknowledged that there were legitimate comments from both sides in the net neutrality docket. In Pai’s draft order, the FCC comprehensively addresses all the serious comments that made factual and legal arguments, the official said.
Pai’s order, not surprisingly, speaks favorably of research in the docket that supports his claim that broadband network investment fell as a result of net neutrality rules. The proposal then criticizes studies that found the opposite, saying they used methods that are “unlikely to yield reliable results” or have other problems.
Pai also was not swayed by the fact that ISPs themselves have told investors that the rules do not harm their network investments. That’s significant because publicly traded companies are required by law to give investors accurate financial information, including a description of risk factors involved in investing in the company.
Another expression of public opinion comes in the form of complaints filed by consumers against their Internet providers. Yet the FCC initially refused to release the text of tens of thousands of those complaints.
Consumer advocacy groups wanted more time to review those complaints in order to submit analyses into the net neutrality docket. But when the FCC finally released more of them, the big document release came just one day before the deadline for the public to comment on the anti-net neutrality plan.
Pai’s proposal says that the tens of thousands of complaints do not prove that the net neutrality rules solve any real problems. “The Commission takes consumer complaints seriously and finds them valuable in informing us about trends in the marketplace, but we reiterate that they are informal complaints that, in most instances, have not been verified,” the proposal said.
Like Rosenworcel, Democratic Commissioner Mignon Clyburn says that the opinion of Internet users should be taken more seriously by the commission.
Pai’s proposal, she said, “ignores thousands of consumer complaints and millions of individual comments that ask the FCC to save net neutrality and uphold the principles that all traffic should be created equal.”
Google Shopping is getting some new tricks ahead of the busiest retail season of the year. Specifically, when you’re looking for a coffee grinder or pair of headphones, now Google will populate search results with buying guides from editorial publications. More than that, search results will offer up items related to what you’re browsing too. Yeah, it’s kind of like Amazon in that regard, which definitely seems intentional. After all, why would Google want you to buy from anywhere but its own search results? There’s even a flag if you’re looking at an outdated model, too. For more information (and some very large GIFs), hit the source link below.
HARARE, Zimbabwe—Robert Mugabe awoke last Wednesday in his luxurious palace known as “Blue Roof†to find that his head of security wasn’t there for the usual morning briefing. Only then did the 93-year-old president, the survivor of many challenges over 37 years of tumultuous and widely criticized rule, realize he was under house arrest.
No one had awakened Mr. Mugabe during the night, according to senior security officials, as Zimbabwe’s military deployed tanks and troops around the capital, seizing government buildings…
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