Uber Update Lets Users See How They Have Been Rated by Drivers

Especially for people living in densely populated cities like Los Angeles or New York, it can be difficult to justify owning a vehicle. Traffic is usually difficult to deal with, parking can be nearly impossible to find, and unless you're driving a significant distance each day, the combination of gasoline, insurance, and maintenance can make it all too costly. Fortunately, ride-sharing technology gives people a way to get around town without having to own a car of their own.

While there are many ride-sharing smartphone applications, the two most popular and well-known are Uber and Lyft. Each has similar business plans: they take a percentage of every dollar earned by one of their drivers. Both driver and rider have the opportunity to rate each other, and the ratings help other drivers and riders to choose whether they want to use the service. Until recently, riders could see all of the ratings (on a 5-star scale) that other riders had left for their driver, and drivers could see ratings left for riders. According to Tracey Lien's L.A. times article, a recent update to the Uber app will allow riders to view their own ratings.

Uber executives hope that this update will help both drivers and riders to improve the ride-sharing experience. The riders can rate the drivers on safety, friendliness, and cleanliness of the vehicle, while drivers can rate riders on whether they leave a mess in the car or if they slam the doors. Because riders will now be able to see what drivers think of them, it is hoped that they will be more cognizant of their behavior and will, therefore, become better passengers.

Everyone wants to have a high rating on apps like Uber because the app's algorithm matches up riders and drivers based on similar rankings. So, if a rider has close to 5 stars, they will likely get paired up with a driver with a 5-star rating. If they have a lower score, they will, in turn, be paired up with a less-sought-after driver. While this update should be beneficial to everyone, another update aims to help drivers avoid being negatively affected by the behavior of other passengers in an UberPool, in which a rider chooses to share the ride with another user of the app. Lately, Uber has had some bad press, but the changes they are making could help to improve their image, retain their drivers, and win back potential riders.

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LA County to Offer Lower Utilities Rates Through Community Choice Aggregation Programs

In this day and age, as technology continues to advance and resources are stretched thin, energy sources are often on the mind of the common consumer and government entities. Electricity rates have been going up, and even as we search for alternative, green energy options, it can be difficult to make those options affordable. Fortunately, earlier this week, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a public energy program that gives Southern California Edison customers an alternative, government-backed energy source to purchase from. According to Ivan Penn and Nina Agrawal's article in the L.A. Times, the public energy program is expected to lower individual costs by around 5% and is open to residences and businesses alike.

Not only will the energy program be providing power to customers at a lower cost, it will also be focusing on green energy sources. The county will be able to purchase energy from the market and invest in solar energy projects. Because the community choice aggregation (CCA) programs are government entities, they aren't allowed to make a profit on customer rates, which means they will charge the bare minimum to break even. This is very different from companies like Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Co., who can charge however much they want.

Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the L.A. County will be able to enroll in the new CCA program, and many people in other counties could be allowed to as well, depending on local regulations. This new energy plan is expected to revamp the entire electricity industry. Private companies will be forced to find ways to lower prices and bring in green energy sources in order to compete with the government entity. Competition tends to drive down prices and drive up demand, so everyone should be happy in the long run. Some private electricity companies worry that the long-term implications of this project remain to be seen and that we should take things slow before rushing into anything.

All in all, CCA programs seem almost too good to be true. A government program that lowers rates and improves the usage of green energy sources seems like a pipe dream. Yet, with proper planning and careful budgeting, it could work out. Technology is redefining various industries, and to survive, the entire country has to change with it. With the new program, new customers can decide exactly what kind of energy they want: wind, solar, or other resources. By giving people options and lowering costs, customers become loyal and are more willing to face the changes that come with dramatic improvements. As long as the CAAs make sure their budgeting is solid, things should work out, at least for the near future.

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Telemarketers Aim to Scam via Social Engineering

Most people have experienced robocalls and telemarketers looking to sell them something. While such calls are annoying, up until recently, they were just annoying. Very few people actually bought the products being sold, but they sold enough to make robocalls economically feasible. Most recently, however, the robocallers have taken a new strategy: known as the "can you hear me" scam. David Lazarus, in his latest L.A. Times article, discusses the popular new telemarketer scam and what you can do to protect yourself from it.

Just as technology is constantly improving to make overall quality of life go up, that same technology can be used to make life more difficult for some. Technology similar to that used by Apple's Siri and Google's Alexa is now being used by computer programmers to make telemarketing calls by a computer seem conversational enough that the recipient doesn't hang up immediately. Because the technology is not perfect yet, the target will quickly catch on and realize that they're speaking to a computer, but in the first few seconds, they may say something that can be used against them.

The "can you hear me" scam is a feat of human engineering, where telemarketing companies demonstrate a thorough understanding of the dynamics of true human conversations. By using that knowledge, the computer is able to get a response they want, in order to scam the responder later. In this scam, the computer asks "can you hear me" with the same inflections as a human, which can usually cause the recipient of the call to respond "yes." Giving an affirmative response is the worst thing you can do in that situation, according to police officials.

When the recipient of the call says "yes," the computer already has what it needs to move forward with the scam. The affirmative response can easily be edited later to make it seem like the target was giving the company approval for a purchase of some kind. There have been several situations over the past months where people have responded to the question "can you hear me" and later found that their credit card had been charged for products they never ordered. A safe rule of thumb when dealing with telemarketers, especially those employing these tactics, seems to be to hang up immediately. If you're not sure if someone is a telemarketer or not, avoid affirmative responses and ask a lot of questions to determine if the answers seem like they are coming from a computer. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are just starting to boom, so be on the lookout for similar scams in the near future.

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