Uber fires up its own traffic estimates to fuel demand beyond cars

If the whole map is red and it’s a short ride, maybe you’d prefer taking an Uber JUMP Bike instead of an UberX. Or at least if you do end up stuck bumper-to-bumper, the warning could make you less likely to get mad mid-ride and take it out on the driver’s rating.

This week TechCrunch spotted Uber overlaying blue, yellow, and red traffic condition bars on your route map before you hail. Responding to TechCrunch’s inquiry, Uber confirmed that traffic estimates have been quietly testing for riders on Android over the past few months and the pilot program recently expanded to a subset of iOS users. It’s already live for all drivers.

The congestion indicators are based on Uber’s own traffic information pulled from its historic trip data about 10 billion rides plus real-time data from its drivers’ phones, rather than estimates from Google that already power Uber’s maps.

If traffic estimates do roll out, they could make users more tolerant of longer ETAs and less likely to check a competing app since they’ll know their driver might take longer to pick them up because congestion is to blame rather than Uber’s algorithm. During the ride they might be more patient amidst the clogged streets.

Uber’s research into traffic in India

But most interestingly, seeing traffic conditions could help users choose when it’s time to take one of Uber’s non-car choices. They could sail past traffic in one of Uber’s new electric JUMP Bikes, or buy a public transportation ticket from inside Uber thanks to its new partnership with Masabi for access to New York’s MTA plus buses and trains in other cities. Cheaper and less labor intensive for Uber, these options make more sense to riders the more traffic there is. It’s to the company’s advantage to steer users towards the most satisfying mode of transportation, and traffic info could point them in the right direction.

Through a program called Uber Movement, the company began sharing its traffic data with city governments early last year. The goal was to give urban planners the proof they need to make their streets more efficient. Uber has long claimed that it can help reduce traffic by getting people into shared rides and eliminating circling in search of parking. But a new study showed that for each mile of personal driving Uber and Lyft eliminated, they added 2.8 miles of professional driving for an 180 percent increase in total traffic.

Uber is still learning whether users find traffic estimates helpful before it considers rolling them out permanently to everyone. Right now they only appear on unshared UberX, Black, XL, SUV, and Taxi routes before you hail to a small percentage of users. But Uber’s spokesperson verified that the company’s long-term goal is to be able to tell users that the cheapest way to get there is option X, the cheapest is option Y, and the most comfortable is option Z. Traffic estimates are key to that. And now that it’s had so many cars on the road for so long, it has the signals necessary to predict which streets will be smooth and which will be jammed at a given hour.

For years, Uber called itself a logistics company, not a ride sharing company. Most people gave it a knowing wink. Every Silicon Valley company tries to trump up its importance by claiming to conquer a higher level of abstraction. But with advent of personal transportation modes like on-demand bikes and scooters, Uber is poised to earn the title by getting us from point A to point B however we prefer.

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Uber fires up its own traffic estimates to fuel demand beyond cars

If the whole map is red and it’s a short ride, maybe you’d prefer taking an Uber JUMP Bike instead of an UberX. Or at least if you do end up stuck bumper-to-bumper, the warning could make you less likely to get mad mid-ride and take it out on the driver’s rating.

This week TechCrunch spotted Uber overlaying blue, yellow, and red traffic condition bars on your route map before you hail. Responding to TechCrunch’s inquiry, Uber confirmed that traffic estimates have been quietly testing for riders on Android over the past few months and the pilot program recently expanded to a subset of iOS users. It’s already live for all drivers.

The congestion indicators are based on Uber’s own traffic information pulled from its historic trip data about 10 billion rides plus real-time data from its drivers’ phones, rather than estimates from Google that already power Uber’s maps.

If traffic estimates do roll out, they could make users more tolerant of longer ETAs and less likely to check a competing app since they’ll know their driver might take longer to pick them up because congestion is to blame rather than Uber’s algorithm. During the ride they might be more patient amidst the clogged streets.

Uber’s research into traffic in India

But most interestingly, seeing traffic conditions could help users choose when it’s time to take one of Uber’s non-car choices. They could sail past traffic in one of Uber’s new electric JUMP Bikes, or buy a public transportation ticket from inside Uber thanks to its new partnership with Masabi for access to New York’s MTA plus buses and trains in other cities. Cheaper and less labor intensive for Uber, these options make more sense to riders the more traffic there is. It’s to the company’s advantage to steer users towards the most satisfying mode of transportation, and traffic info could point them in the right direction.

Through a program called Uber Movement, the company began sharing its traffic data with city governments early last year. The goal was to give urban planners the proof they need to make their streets more efficient. Uber has long claimed that it can help reduce traffic by getting people into shared rides and eliminating circling in search of parking. But a new study showed that for each mile of personal driving Uber and Lyft eliminated, they added 2.8 miles of professional driving for an 180 percent increase in total traffic.

Uber is still learning whether users find traffic estimates helpful before it considers rolling them out permanently to everyone. Right now they only appear on unshared UberX, Black, XL, SUV, and Taxi routes before you hail to a small percentage of users. But Uber’s spokesperson verified that the company’s long-term goal is to be able to tell users that the cheapest way to get there is option X, the cheapest is option Y, and the most comfortable is option Z. Traffic estimates are key to that. And now that it’s had so many cars on the road for so long, it has the signals necessary to predict which streets will be smooth and which will be jammed at a given hour.

For years, Uber called itself a logistics company, not a ride sharing company. Most people gave it a knowing wink. Every Silicon Valley company tries to trump up its importance by claiming to conquer a higher level of abstraction. But with advent of personal transportation modes like on-demand bikes and scooters, Uber is poised to earn the title by getting us from point A to point B however we prefer.

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Facebook is hiring a director of human rights policy to work on “conflict prevention” and “peace-building”

Facebook is advertising for a human rights policy director to join its business, located either at its Menlo Park HQ or in Washington DC — with “conflict prevention” and “peace-building” among the listed responsibilities.

In the job ad, Facebook writes that as the reach and impact of its various products continues to grow “so does the responsibility we have to respect the individual and human rights of the members of our diverse global community”, saying it’s:

… looking for a Director of Human Rights Policy to coordinate our company-wide effort to address human rights abuses, including by both state and non-state actors. This role will be responsible for: (1) Working with product teams to ensure that Facebook is a positive force for human rights and apply the lessons we learn from our investigations, (2) representing Facebook with key stakeholders in civil society, government, international institutions, and industry, (3) driving our investigations into and disruptions of human rights abusers on our platforms, and (4) crafting policies to counteract bad actors and help us ensure that we continue to operate our platforms consistent with human rights principles.

Among the minimum requirements for the role, Facebook lists experience “working in developing nations and with governments and civil society organizations around the world”.

It adds that “global travel to support our international teams is expected”.

The company has faced fierce criticism in recent years over its failure to take greater responsibility for the spread of disinformation and hate speech on its platform. Especially in international markets it has targeted for business growth via its Internet.org initiative which seeks to get more people ‘connected’ to the Internet (and thus to Facebook).

More connections means more users for Facebook’s business and growth for its shareholders. But the costs of that growth have been cast into sharp relief over the past several years as the human impact of handing millions of people lacking in digital literacy some very powerful social sharing tools — without a commensurately large investment in local education programs (or even in moderating and policing Facebook’s own platform) — has become all too clear.

In Myanmar Facebook’s tools have been used to spread hate and accelerate ethic cleansing and/or the targeting of political critics of authoritarian governments — earning the company widespread condemnation, including a rebuke from the UN earlier this year which blamed the platform for accelerating ethnic violence against Myanmar’s Muslim minority.

In the Philippines Facebook also played a pivotal role in the election of president Rodrigo Duterte — who now stands accused of plunging the country into its worst human rights crisis since the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 80s.

While in India the popularity of the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messaging platform has been blamed for accelerating the spread of misinformation — leading to mob violence and the deaths of several people.

Facebook famously failed even to spot mass manipulation campaigns going on in its own backyard — when in 2016 Kremlin-backed disinformation agents injected masses of anti-Clinton, pro-Trump propaganda into its platform and garnered hundreds of millions of American voters’ eyeballs at a bargain basement price.

So it’s hardly surprising the company has been equally naive in markets it understands far less. Though also hardly excusable — given all the signals it has access to.

In Myanmar, for example, local organizations that are sensitive to the cultural context repeatedly complained to Facebook that it lacked Burmese-speaking staff — complaints that apparently fell on deaf ears for the longest time.

The cost to American society of social media enabled political manipulation and increased social division is certainly very high. The costs of the weaponization of digital information in markets such as Myanmar looks incalculable.

In the Philippines Facebook also indirectly has blood on its hands — having provided services to the Duterte government to help it make more effective use of its tools. This same government is now waging a bloody ‘war on drugs’ that Human Rights Watch says has claimed the lives of around 12,000 people, including children.

Facebook’s job ad for a human rights policy director includes the pledge that “we’re just getting started” — referring to its stated mission of helping  people “build stronger communities”.

But when you consider the impact its business decisions have already had in certain corners of the world it’s hard not to read that line with a shudder.

Citing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (and “our commitments as a member of the Global Network Initiative”), Facebook writes that its product policy team is dedicated to “understanding the human rights impacts of our platform and to crafting policies that allow us both to act against those who would use Facebook to enable harm, stifle expression, and undermine human rights, and to support those who seek to advance rights, promote peace, and build strong communities”.

Clearly it has an awful lot of “understanding” to do on this front. And hopefully it will now move fast to understand the impact of its own platform, circa fifteen years into its great ‘society reshaping experience’, and prevent Facebook from being repeatedly used to trash human rights.

As well as representing the company in meetings with politicians, policymakers, NGOs and civil society groups, Facebook says the new human rights director will work on formulating internal policies governing user, advertiser, and developer behavior on Facebook. “This includes policies to encourage responsible online activity as well as policies that deter or mitigate the risk of human rights violations or the escalation of targeted violence,” it notes. 

The director will also work with internal public policy, community ops and security teams to try to spot and disrupt “actors that seek to misuse our platforms and target our users” — while also working to support “those using our platforms to foster peace-building and enable transitional justice”.

So you have to wonder how, for example, Holocaust denial continuing to be being protected speech on Facebook will square with that stated mission for the human rights policy director.

At the same time, Facebook is currently hiring for a public policy manager in Francophone, Africa — who it writes can “combine a passion for technology’s potential to create opportunity and to make Africa more open and connected, with deep knowledge of the political and regulatory dynamics across key Francophone countries in Africa”.

That job ad does not explicitly reference human rights — talking only about “interesting public policy challenges… including privacy, safety and security, freedom of expression, Internet shutdowns, the impact of the Internet on economic growth, and new opportunities for democratic engagement”.

As well as “new opportunities for democratic engagement”, among the role’s other listed responsibilities is working with Facebook’s Politics & Government team to “promote the use of Facebook as a platform for citizen and voter engagement to policymakers and NGOs and other political influencers”.

So here, in a second policy job, Facebook looks to be continuing its ‘business as usual’ strategy of pushing for more political activity to take place on Facebook.

And if Facebook wants an accelerated understanding of human rights issues around the world it might be better advised to take a more joined up approach to human rights across its own policy staff board, and at least include it among the listed responsibilities of all the policy shapers it’s looking to hire.

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Twitter now puts live broadcasts at the top of your timeline

Twitter will now put live streams and broadcasts started by accounts you follow at the top of your timeline, making it easier to see what they’re doing in realtime.

In a tweet, Twitter said that that the new feature will include breaking news, personalities and sports.

The social networking giant included the new feature in its iOS and Android apps, updated this week. Among the updates, Twitter said it’s now also supporting audio-only live broadcasts, as well as through its sister broadcast service Periscope.

Last month, Twitter discontinued its app for iOS 9 and lower versions, which according to Apple’s own data still harbors some 5 percent of all iPhone and iPad users.

Twitter launches audio-only broadcasting feature on its iOS app and Periscope

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10 Sites and Games to Teach Kids Typing the Fun Way

Technology has taken us to a place where computer usage in elementary school is now the norm. So to help your kids get a head start on their typing skills, why not make it enjoyable for them?

These 10 websites include free typing games that are great for kids of all ages. So, your children can have fun while they learn and practice their keyboarding skills.

1. FreeTypingGame

FreeTypingGame is a nice option because it has three clear sections for lessons, games, and tests. This way, your kids can learn from the lessons, practice their skills with nifty games, and then take a quick test to see how well they are progressing.

The lessons let you choose from 30 options based on the keys to be learned. Plus, you can pick a goal such as achieving 20 words per minute. Cool games themes include everything from frogs on a diet to saving sailboats and allow you to choose the related lesson as well as the difficulty level.

2. KidzType

For another site that has a good selection, KidzType offers lessons, exercises, practices, and games. The website is dedicated to helping kids learn and practice their typing skills. The lessons, exercises, and practice activities are divided by keyboard section, which is handy for tackling trouble spots.

The game options are lively and fun with gliding cats, juicy apples, and powerful ninjas. Some games allow you to choose a difficulty level or school grade, like Bull Spell. While others jump right into complete words, like Car Rider. This is not indicated on the main game page, so you may need to check out a few to see which is best for your child’s skill level.

3. Learning Games for Kids

With over 20 options, Learning Games for Kids has a great selection of typing (keyboarding) games and challenges. Kids can start with learning the home row keys and then move on to typing adventures with spooky ghosts, monstrous meteors, and silly foods.

Learning Games for Kids offers a few tough typing challenges to hone those skills. Your kids can also check out a lesson-based course with 10 levels and then finish up with a speed and accuracy test. When it comes to free and fun typing games for kids, this is one to check out.

4. TurtleDiary

TurtleDiary has almost 20 games with the majority for kindergarten-aged children and up. The game themes are truly enjoyable with Underwater Typing, Balloon Typing, and Keyracer. So there is definitely a game for almost any interest. plus you can select the difficulty level and keyboard area to practice.

In addition to fun typing games, the site offers a set of lessons. There are three skill levels with several lessons in each: Beginner has 25, Intermediate has 9, and Advanced has 17, for a full learning experience.

5. SlimeKids

With almost a dozen games, SlimeKids provides several enjoyable options. Your kids can run from the ghosts in a Pac Man style game called Keyman or shoot alien letters to protect the planet in Type ‘Em Up.

SlimeKids may not offer lessons or tests, but the games are cute and challenging at the same time. This makes it a great option for your children to enjoy learning and practicing their typing skills.

6. Typing

Typing is a site aimed at both teachers and their students. You can access lessons and typing tests along with several entertaining games. Some games allow you to choose the level of difficulty such as Keyboard Jump. Other games require your skills to be quite accurate like Ninja Cat vs. Zombie Dinosaurs.

The lessons offered by Typing cover all areas of the keyboard, broken up into sections. Your kids can learn and practice typing special characters, punctuation, and sentences. Plus, there is a lesson for the numeric keypad, which is helpful when your child is ready to move on.

7. ABCya

For a site with another variety of free typing game options, ABCya is a terrific choice. When you arrive on the website, just enter the word Type into the search box and you will see your game results below. Each game has an indicator with the school grade range it is intended for, making it easier to pick one.

Kids can stack and unstack with letters in Cup Stack Typing, fly through the sky in Keyboarding Chase, or visit the animals in Keyboard Zoo. Each game has an upbeat theme with colorful graphics and silly sounds making them a ton of fun.

8. Dance Mat Typing

If you prefer just one option for your kids to learn typing skills, check out Dance Mat Typing from BBC. This teaching tool has four levels with three stages each which are divided by letters and rows on the keyboard.

What makes Dance Mat Typing neat is that it is not really a game so much as it is an entertaining, animated, colorful typing teacher. Kids follow along with the instructions and then practice what they learn all in one spot.

And, if your child practices on different days, they can directly access the level without starting over. For example, if they complete level one, they can start right off with level two the next day. This makes typing practice for kids flexible and simple to progress.

9. Nitro Type

Nitro Type is a cool typing game from Teaching.com. This is a self-contained, competitive, typing challenge website. Signing up for an account is free, but kids can also play as a guest to give it a try.

Players race against others by typing the paragraphs displayed. Speed and accuracy both count in Nitro Type. The faster you type, the faster you race, but make a mistake and your car lags a bit. The game has achievements, leaderboards, teams, and stats. It is ideal for practice and honing typing skills, so it is suited for children already experienced with the keyboard.

10. TypeTastic

From Typing Master comes TypeTastic, a terrific typing tool for kids. The adventure starts with the keyboard builder which gets you used to where the keys are located. You can then move onto basic word typing with games like Astro Bubbles and Letter Trucks.

Finally, the games finish with All Fingers Aboard! which lets you practice everything they’ve learned. TypeTastic offer 13 fun games through its three-level journey. And, each game is colorful, enjoyable, and helps kids learn to type in an upbeat environment.

Do Your Kids Enjoy Learning Games?

While many times we want to limit game-time for our kids, there are some occasions where games really are educational for them. And when it comes to learning typing skills, a colorful animation or challenging game might be just the nudge to make that keyboard more interesting for them.

And if your kids have an interest in programming, take a look at how they can learn to code with Microsoft’s Kudo or fun activities they can learn with Raspberry Pi.

Read the full article: 10 Sites and Games to Teach Kids Typing the Fun Way

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How to Improve Your Handwriting: 8 Resources for Better Penmanship

4 Ways to Factory Reset Your Windows Computer

Factory resets can solve a number of Windows issues. If your computer is far slower than it once was, you’re dealing with malware that won’t go away, or plan to sell your machine, a factory reset is the most convenient solution.

Depending on your setup and installed version of Windows, you have a few different ways to factory reset a laptop or desktop. We’ll show you how to reset a Windows computer as easily as possible.

First: Make Sure You Back Up!

Before you proceed with any of the below options, you should ensure you have a recent backup of your files. Performing a factory reset will wipe out all your installed programs and files, so you don’t want to leave anything behind.

Check out our ultimate Windows 10 backup guide for all the methods you have for doing this.

1. The Built-In Reset Option on Windows 10

Factory resetting was once a fairly inconvenient process, but Microsoft introduced a much easier way to do so in Windows 8. It’s also included in Windows 10 and is the best way to factory reset a computer for most people.

To access it, head to Settings > Update & Security > Recovery. You’ll see a Reset this PC header; click the Get started button underneath this.

Reset or Refresh?

You’ll have two options to choose from: Keep my files or Remove everything. The first option sets your options back to default and removes all your installed apps (like browsers, Microsoft Office, and games), but keeps your data. True to its name, Remove everything resets everything to factory defaults and removes your files.

Though the Keep my files option will retain your data, you should still back up before using it in case something goes wrong.

If you picked Remove everything, Windows will ask if you want to clean the drive or just remove your files. Choosing Remove files and clean the drive will securely erase the drive so it’s harder to recover data from (this process takes some time). If you’re getting rid of your PC for any reason, you should choose this. Just remove my files is fine if you’re keeping your computer.

Otherwise, if you picked Keep my files, you’ll see a list of apps that the reset will remove. Windows will save this to your desktop after the reset finishes so you can remember what you need to reinstall.

Finally, confirm the operation by clicking Reset and wait for the process to complete. If you’re factory resetting a laptop, make sure you plug it in to avoid losing power during the operation. You’ll need to walk through the setup procedure once it’s done.

2. Use the “Fresh Start” Option in Windows 10

In the Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft added a new option to factory reset your computer. It’s similar to the above but has a few small differences that make it worth a look.

On the Settings > Update & Security > Recovery page, click the link text Learn how to start fresh with a clean installation of Windows at the bottom. This will open a Windows Defender Security Center window to the Fresh Start option. Click Get started to proceed.

Compared to the above reset option, Fresh Start has the following differences:

• Fresh Start always keeps your personal files, with no option to remove them like above.
• Fresh Start downloads the latest version of Windows 10, while the standard reset option uses the recovery information on your hard drive. This is provided by your PC manufacturer, or in the protected C:\Recovery folder if you installed Windows on your own.
  • Because of this, Fresh Start avoids clutter by removing all non-standard Windows apps, including manufacturer bloatware. The standard reset option will re-install from the recovery set by your PC’s maker.
• Finally, Fresh Start keeps “some Windows settings” but doesn’t specify which. The above reset does not keep any of your settings.

To summarize, Fresh Start downloads a fresh copy of the most recent Windows 10 version, keeps your files and some settings, and doesn’t leave any bloatware aside from Store apps. In comparison, the standard reset option lets you choose whether to keep your files, doesn’t save any settings, and will reinstall Windows and apps based on your recovery partition.

Check out our guide to refreshing and resetting scenarios if you’re not sure which option is best for you.

3. Reinstall Using Windows Installation Media

If you’re not using Windows 8 or 10, or don’t want to use the convenient methods above for some reason, you can always factory reset Windows using installation media. This allows you to install a fresh copy of Windows on your computer and wipe out everything currently on it.

For Windows 10, check out our guide to creating Windows 10 installation media, which is free and easy.

If you want to reinstall Windows 7 from scratch, you can use Microsoft’s Windows 7 download tool. This lets you download an ISO to burn onto a flash drive or DVD so you can reinstall Windows. You’ll need to provide a valid Windows 7 product key to do this.

Either way, simply insert the USB drive or disc containing your install media, then boot from the removable device. You’ll be greeted with the Windows setup screen, which you can proceed through to install a clean copy.

4. Advanced Factory Reset Options

While the three methods listed above will work for the majority of users, there are a few advanced ways to reset Windows if you’re interested.

One involves system images, which are complete snapshots of a system. If you’ve created a system image of your Windows installation in a clean state, you can restore it from the Advanced Startup menu. Access this at Settings > Update & Security > Recovery under the Advanced startup section.

Otherwise, you may be able to boot into the BIOS and directly access the recovery partition on your hard drive, if your PC manufacturer included one. However, if you factory reset with this method, you’ll reinstall all the bloatware, so it’s not ideal.

You can also type create a recovery drive into the Start menu to access a tool that lets you make your own. However, this requires a fair bit of space on the drive, and you’ll have to do it before you run into trouble.

Overall, if you’re using Windows 8 or 10, one of the built-in reset options is your best bet. Windows 7 users should download an image from Microsoft and perform a clean installation that way.

Now You Know How to Factory Reset a Computer

You’ve got several options for factory resetting a Windows computer. Whether you need to reset your laptop before you sell it or just want to refresh your PC for a performance boost, one of these methods will have you on your way relatively quickly.

Don’t forget to go through the vital steps after reinstalling Windows 10, too.

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