Uber is offering free rides to its own protest today

Uber is offering free UberPool rides to its New York customers to attend a pro-Uber protest at noon on Tuesday at New York’s City Hall.

On Monday, Uber sent an email to its New York City customers, asking them to “Save Uber as you know it in NYC.”

Its email to customers reads, in part:

“We need your help. Mayor de Blasio is supporting a bill that would stop thousands of new drivers from joining the Uber platform. This bill would destroy 10,000 job opportunities for New Yorkers in just one year, and result in longer wait times, higher prices and less reliable service for riders.”

The bill in question is backed by New York’s Taxi & Limousine Commission, and if it were to become law, it stands to severely kneecap Uber’s growth in New York, one of the company’s largest and more mature markets. Under the proposed bill, for-hire vehicle companies that have bases with 500 cars or more — which includes Uber — would only be able to increase their number of vehicles by 1% annually. 

Proponents of the bill say it’s an effort to cut down on congestion and traffic in New York, according to the New York Post. In the past four years since Uber started operating in New York, 25,000 black cars have been introduced to New York’s streets. Today, New York is one of Uber’s biggest markets, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually. There are more Uber vehicles than taxis on New York City’s streets.

In its email to customers, Uber says its UberPool service, which pairs you with other riders going the same direction as you, actually helps solve the problem of congestion. Uber is offering free UberPool rides to and from New York’s City Hall today until 2:30 pm to get riders and drivers to attend its rally. We’ve reached out to Uber for comment and for more information about the protest, and will update this post when we hear back.

Uber has previously butt heads with New York’s Taxi & Limousine Commission. Earlier this year, the TLC briefly suspended 5 of Uber’s 6 NYC bases, a largely toothless punishment served when Uber refused to hand over ride records. 

Between April 29 and June 15, NYC authorities seized 496 cars from Uber drivers taking illegal street hails, mostly at the three airports in the region. And in May, the TLC published a series of newly proposed rules for how for-hire vehicles like Uber can operate. Among the TLC’s proposals for companies like Uber is something that would prevent drivers from using Uber’s turn-by-turn directions while they’re driving a car.

SEE ALSO: How a tweet turned Uber’s first hire into a billionaire

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The creepiest and most bizarre stories told by people who explored the internet’s hidden websites

Someone on Reddit recently asked the simple question “What’s your deep web story?”

In other words, the Redditor was asking people to share any weird experiences they had encountered while using anonymous web services like Tor to access secret websites.

Services like Tor have been around for years, letting people hide obfuscate their IP address to make it harder to be tracked.

They also provide access to a slew of websites known as the Dark Web, which can only be accessed through services like Tor. Silk Road is the prototypical example of a Dark Web site. Though it has now closed with its famous founder now in prison, new online black markets have surfaced to take its place. 

But here’s a look at some of the bizarre and creepy things you can stumble on when accessing the dark underbellies of the web, as told by the people who actually experienced them.

SEE ALSO: How to access the dark web, where all sorts of illegal stuff goes down online

The dark web may seem scary, but sometimes it’s quite innocuous…

Though people tell tales of drugs and other illicit sites, sometimes people use the dark web just for silly purposes.

A scavenger hunt…

One user was playing what was called an “Alternate Reality Game.” This game, called ‘No Love Deep Web,’ had users accessing Tor to go on a hunt for various things. 

This user got engrossed in the game. And, it ended with “me driving to New York to answer a pay phone at 3:00AM. That was cool.”

“The next stop is…”

Sometimes you find weird forums. Take this user’s example:  

I once found a forum dedicated to sharing recordings of the automated messages that tell you the next stop on trains. People would post the recordings that they presumably made themselves and then they would discuss them.

It haunts me to this day. I have so many questions.

 

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14 easter egg questions you can ask Siri to get a hilarious response

Executive assistants are rapidly vanishing from the workplace, and in their place has come Siri, the voice-activated virtual assistant created by Apple. Siri is incredibly talented — in a matter of seconds she can make a dinner reservation, tell you how many calories are in a bagel and sort through your music library.

But it seems that Siri’s creators decided to give the virtual assistant a sense of humor too! Siri will occasionally provide a hilarious response to your questions.

Most recently, iPhone users discovered that when asked to divide zero by zero, Siri responds, “Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? See? It doesn’t make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies, and you are sad that you have no friends.”

raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimised by siri after asking what 0 divided by 0 is http://pic.twitter.com/mF5aeg5Sk1

— rachel (@stylesftbananas) June 30, 2015

So that you don’t have to, we spent a few hours chatting with our iPhone to find Siri’s funniest responses. Check out our favorite 14.

 

SEE ALSO: If you’re still not using Siri, then you’re missing out

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The launch of Apple Music shows how important subscriptions are becoming for digital media companies

Many digital media companies have embraced monthly and annual subscriptions and now Apple has gotten into the business with its Apple Music service. The subscription model allows digital media companies to provide a premium experience that offers more than the basic, often ad-supported service level.

Subscriptions are enjoying a new prominence as a revenue model for digital content and apps. Internet companies are exploiting the opportunity to boost ARPU (average revenue per user), thanks to recurring payments from a subscriber base.

In this new and exclusive report from BI Intelligence we look at how prominent players in five separate categories have tried to build a subscription-based revenue stream alongside ad-based businesses: the categories are video, music, news publishing, social networks/messaging, and dating apps.

Access The Full Report And Data Sets By Signing Up For A Trial Membership »

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Most companies operate on a “freemium model.” Subscriptions typically operate alongside an advertising business.
• Success in freemium boils down to offering a core audience exclusive value that can only be accessed beyond a paywall. The key is to target the most loyal audiences, and sell them on an expanded offering — bundles of features or content — that they find irresistible.
• Some publishers and apps have had mixed results with subscriptions, and vary in terms of how hard they have pushed them. Part of the problem is that ad-dependent companies are worried about limiting audience if they pack away too much value into a subscription tier. 
• The proportion of paying subscribers within the total user base varies considerably across digital media industries. Each category is obviously different, and won’t face the same challenges and opportunities in dialing up the percentage of subscribers and subscription revenue. Here are some of the proportions of subscribers in apps’ user bases: Spotify (25%), WhatsApp (21%), Pandora (5%), Match Group (5%), The New York Times (3%), and LinkedIn (2%). 

The report is full of charts, data, and case studies that can easily be downloaded and put to use. 

In full, the report: 

• Analyzes the most common subscription-based digital media revenue models
• Explores the drivers that allows some subscription or freemium business models succeed  
• Explains the revenue mix and business opportunity in several key digital media industries
• Outlines companies that have succeeded with  subscription-based business models

For full access to all BI Intelligence’s analysis, reporting, and downloadable charts and presentations on the digital-media industry, the internet of things, and mobile, sign up for a trial.

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You get a bizarre answer when you ask Siri to divide 0 by 0

Fire up Siri and ask it “What is zero divided by zero.”

You get the true mathematical answer:

But Siri goes on a bit of a rant after that.

Here’s a transcription of the bizarre answer Siri gives you:

Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends. How many cookies does each person get? 

See? It doesn’t make sense. And Cookie Monster is sad that there are no cookies. And you are sad that you have no friends.

Strange, right?

And if you’re interested, a math lover, or just think Siri is plain wrong about the whole idea of 0/0 being indeterminate, Wolfram MathWorld has the technical answer to squash your fears:

Division by zero is the operation of taking the quotient of any number x and 0, i.e., x/0. The uniqueness of division breaks down when dividing by zero, since the product 0 • y = 0 is the same for any y, so y cannot be recovered by inverting the process of multiplication. 0 is the only number with this property and, as a result, division by zero is undefined for real numbers and can produce a fatal condition called a “division by zero error” in computer programs.

SEE ALSO: These are the DJs Apple hired to revolutionize radio

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17-year-old dies of Ebola in Liberia, 52 days after country declared free of the virus

The body of a 17-year-old Liberian boy tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday, 52 days after the country was declared free of the disease by the World Health Organization.

“Liberia has got a re-infection of Ebola,” deputy health minister and head of Liberia’s Ebola response team, Tolbert Nyenswah, told the Associated Press, adding that the boy died at his home and was buried safely to avoid spreading the virus

See also: ‘Ebola eats at my soul every day’: Stories of survival from Sierra Leone

Nyenswah said teams are investigating how the boy became infected. The area is not near the borders with Sierra Leone and Guinea, which still have Ebola cases. Read more…

More about Liberia, Us World, and Ebola

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The launch of Apple’s online radio station has already gone wrong (AAPL)

Apple launches its Apple Music streaming service on Tuesday, as well as its global Beats 1 radio station.

The iOS 8.4 update went live an hour before the radio station was meant to begin broadcasting, but it sounds as if something has gone wrong.

Everyone with the iOS update can listen in to Beats 1 now, and hear presenter Zane Lowe repeating “Test” and asking if his studio engineer can hear him, all over an ambient music track by Brian Eno. It’s surreal.

Here’s what you can hear right now if you tune into Beats 1:

“What about now? I’m ready when you are.”
“You’re getting us?”
“I’m hearing you through one way.”
“Talk again please”
“Test.”
“Anything, Jason? Test, test.”
“OK, say that again.”
“I’m lowering it. I’m turning on my own mic. I’m turning the hub program up and down.”
“Right.”
“Huh?”
“Test, test, test, test, 37 minutes, test. How’s that?”
“Hello, hello, OK. Look at that, that’s crazy.”

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