Uber is building on its efforts to make passengers feel safer in their on-demand taxis, introducing continuous background checks for its drivers. Beginning in the US, Uber will now get alerts very soon after one of its drivers gets charged with a criminal offense.
Axios reports that Uber is going to rely on third-party services Checkr and Appriss to monitor its drivers. Up until now, once a driver has passed the initial background check and been approved, it hasn’t always been easy for Uber to keep track of what happens after that point.
It’s going to be up to Uber whether or not drivers will be able to continue working after being charged. At the same time drivers who have been stopped from Ubering in the past can apply again if their circumstances have changed.
Going real-time
“Ultimately what we’re looking for… is a way to get the same kind of info as in a background check, but get it in a real-time manner,” Uber VP of safety and insurance Gus Fuldner told Axios. Since testing began in July, 25 drivers have been suspended.
Passenger safety and company accountability are big issues for Uber, and part of the reason why the service almost lost its license to operate in London last year. The more measures it can put in place to reassure the public and the regulators alike, the better its chances of continuing to grow.
The company is busy investing in new technology as well. Uber drivers are being offered incentives to drive electric cars rather than gas ones, and Uber’s self-driving program continues to move forward with the help of partners such as Nvidia.
Sometimes it’s easy to be cynical. When I read pieces suggesting that in the future robots will do all the journalism, I wonder: hasn’t that already happened? My news feeds are full of pieces highlighting the funny tweets I saw yesterday, regurgitating press releases and embedding YouTube clips of someone I don’t recognize being ‘totally destroyed!’ by someone I haven’t heard of. You could probably automate that in an afternoon.
We’re already used to news aggregation, where algorithms create personalized feeds. Could the next step to be automated writing?
Shallow isn’t stupid
Not so fast, bots. Buzzfeed does some brilliant, important journalism, as do many other media properties that also publish the shallow stuff. In our ad-driven utopia, in which hardly anybody wants to pay for news any more, the fluff is often what pays the bills, and it’s bankrolling the good stuff, because good journalism takes time, effort and money; what’s important is rarely what’s bringing in the eyeballs for advertisers.
The Washington Post’s Knowledge Map automatically adds contextual and background information to articles
If robots can take over the grunt work, which in many cases they can, then that has the potential to lower media organizations’ costs and enable them to spend a greater proportion of their advertising income on more serious material. That’s terrible news for anybody whose current job is to trawl Twitter for slightly smutty tweets by reality TV show contestants, but great news for organizations funding the likes of Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who broke the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal. Isn’t it?
What newsbots can (and can’t) do
A lot of journalism is simple reporting: it simply says, “here is a thing that happened”. And that can be very valuable.
When the UK’s Met Office issues a weather warning, that’s crucial information for farmers. When a company issues a trading warning or central banks consider raising interest rates, that’s important for the financial markets. When a publication in one part of the world publishes a story, it might be really useful information for organizations in another part of the world, and so on. Automating that kind of thing is pretty straightforward, so for example a bot might take a company’s financial press release and summarize it for a financial news site.
We’re already used to news aggregation, with algorithms creating personalized feeds for us. Could the next step to be automated the writing of stories?
Technology can help with a lot of basic reporting. For example, the UK Press Association’s Radar project (Reporters And Data And Robots) aims to automate a lot of local news reporting by pulling information from government agencies, local authorities and the police. It’ll still be overseen by “skilled human journalists”, at least for the foreseeable future, but the actual writing will be automated: it uses a technology called Natural Language Generation, or NLG for short. Think Siri, Alexa or the recent Google Duplex demos that mimic human speech, but dedicated to writing rather than speaking.
According to Urbs Media editor-in-chief Gary Rogers, who’s working with PA on the RADAR project, “local papers don’t have the staff to write those stories and no centralized operation – even at the scale of PA – is going to take on writing 250 localized stories. We realized if we can write this automation into the local news production process, we are not taking someone’s job, we are doing something that no one else is doing.”
Tools of the trade
Where automation gets interesting is when it assists journalists rather than replaces them. The BBC’s Juicer “takes articles from the BBC and other news sites, automatically parses them and tags them with related DBpedia entities. The entities are grouped in four categories: people, places, organizations and things (everything that doesn’t fall in the first three).”
The New York Times’ Editor app, meanwhile, scans, classifies and tags articles to crunch data faster than humans can. The Washington Post’s Knowledge Map assists readers by linking related content together, automatically “providing relevant background, additional information or answers to frequently asked questions, when the reader wants it”.
The BBC’s Juicer scans and classifies stories from multiple sources to help journalists with their research
The answer may be more AI. For example, the startup AdVerif.ai uses AI to detect fake news and other problematic content on behalf of advertisers who don’t want their ads to appear next to made-up content. It describes itself as “like PageRank for fake news, leveraging knowledge from the web with deep learning”. In practice that means checking not just the page content but the trustworthiness of its publisher, and comparing it with a database of known fake news articles. It’s in its very early stages, and mistakes do get through, but it and systems like it have the potential to help us separate fact from fiction.
Then again, as the internet has demonstrated time after time, the bad guys find ways to use technology too, and they often outsmart the good guys. It isn’t hard to imagine a not-too-distant future where one set of AIs battle fake news while another set comes up with ever more inventive ways to battle the first bunch of AIs.
Could AI lead to an online arms race between fakebots and newsbots like the one between advertisers and ad-blockers? My optimistic side says no, but two and a half decades spent online tells me yes.
Maybe I should ask Siri to investigate.
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You have to admit that it’s been a funny old ladies singles competition at this year’s Wimbledon. We knew from day one that the draw was very open, but we hadn’t imagined for a minute that all top 10 seeds would be history by the time we reached the quarter-finals!
Wimbledon 2018 ladies’ final – where and when
Wimbledon 2018 is taking place at the famous All England Club in South-West London.
The ladies’ final of Serena Williams vs Angelique Kerber will take place on Saturday, July 14 at 2pm BST – that’s 9am ET, 6am PT, 11pm AEST and 3pm in Kerber’s native Germany.
But, as it should be, the two best players in the competition have reached today’s 2018 Wimbledon final. Serena Williams vs Angelique Kerber it will be and we’re here to tell you how you can get a 2018 Wimbledon live stream and watch all the tennis online from the All England Club championships for free, wherever you are in the world.
If you don’t know who Serena Williams is by now, then we’re guessing you only have a passing interest in tennis. She’s hunting down her eighth(!) Wimbledon singles crown and 40th(!!!) major title in all if you include doubles Grand Slam wins too. Despite only a recent comeback after maternity leave, Serena is the clear favorite to continue to smash records.
Trying to stop her is the remaining top seeded player Angelique Kerber, and she should not be underestimated. The German already has two Grand Slams to her name, and will be desperate to make it a hat-trick this weekend.
It’s a repeat of the 2016 final, when Serena won in straight sets – could 2018 be Kerber’s revenge? Whatever happens, we’re here to make sure you don’t miss a single serve. Check out the Wimbledon live stream options below, kick back, and watch the Wimbledon 2018 ladies’ singles final absolutely free.
Use a VPN to live stream the Williams vs Kerber Wimbledon final from anywhere for FREE
If you don’t have easy access to watch Wimbledon in your country and want to catch all of that beautiful UK coverage, then you can still watch it for free by downloading and installing a VPN. That way you can login to the UK and watch the tennis as if you were sat in the British Isles. And it’s really easy to do:
1. Download and install a VPN We’ve tested all of the major VPN services and we rate ExpressVPN as the absolute best. It’s compatible with all of your devices, supports most streaming services and ranks amongst the fastest. You can even install it on devices like an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, Xbox and PlayStation. So for a one-stop shop, you can’t go wrong with Express – but there are more fantastic VPN options out there as well:
The best 3 VPNs for streaming sports online 1. ExpressVPN: the best all-round VPN for streaming, comes with 30-day trial 2. IPVanish: claims to be the world’s fastest VPN, it supports up to 10 devices per subscription 3. VyprVPN: blazing speeds make VyprVPN a great choice for 4K video
2. Connect to the appropriate server location Simply open the VPN app, hit ‘choose location’ and select a UK location – it’s super easy to do and opens up all that coverage from UK broadcasters.
3. Head to a UK broadcaster’s feed Keep reading to see where and when you can watch Wimbledon coverage in the UK. There’s so much to watch and you can live stream pretty much every Wimbledon match live – our first stop would be TVPlayer.com.
How to live stream Wimbledon final in the UK for free
As always, the BBC pitched up at the All England Club to bring comprehensive coverage of Wimbledon 2018. Live coverage of the Serena Williams vs Kerber final will be broadcast on BBC One with a program starting at 1.15pm BST (in time for the 2pm start). The Beeb is even making it available in ultra HD 4K through its iPlayer app. That means as well as your TV, you’ve got the option to watch via mobile and tablet on iPlayer, completely free.
The alternative is to watch the championships on TVPlayer.com, which let’s you channel hop at your convenience and delivers a reliable, robust live stream online. And if you’re out of the country but still want the UK coverage, then we suggest using a VPN to virtually relocate to the UK – full instructions above.
Wimbledon.com and YouTube streaming
Wimbledon.com is globally live streaming action and that goes for Wimbledon’s YouTube channel. The trouble is, it doesn’t seem to have the rights to show the big action from the show courts and so won’t have the final. We reckon you should stick to the breadth of coverage offered by the BBC.
How to watch Serena Williams at Wimbledon in the US
In the US, you’ve got a couple of different TV options for catching the action: you can either tune into the Tennis Channel or ESPN. It’s worth knowing that both of these are paid-for services so in order to watch you’ll need to have a subscription.
An online-only option meanwhile, is PlayStation Vue. The Internet-based live TV service is available on streaming devices such as PS4, Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Roku, PC and Mac and mobile devices, and will be airing Wimbledon live. There’s also a 5-day free trial available to new customers if you want to check out the service.
If neither of those works for you, there’s always the VPN option for a completely free watch. By downloading and installing a VPN, you can effectively trick your computer into thinking that it’s in the UK. It’s really easy to get started with a VPN and then you can watch the whole thing on TVPlayer.com.
How to watch the Wimbledon final: Australia live stream
In Australia, you have a couple of options. Firstly, if you’re a cable-subscriber Fox is showing Wimbledon 2018 action Down Under. As this is a subscription service, you’ll need to be a paid-up member in order to watch.
But don’t worry if you’re cableless as the free-to-air Channel 7 also has coverage – both on TV and online. Failing that, use of a VPN would allow you to watch the more extensive free UK coverage.
The best way to stream Wimbledon 2018 finals in Canada
In Canada, it’s a similar deal as you’ve got fairly limited options. It will only be covered by TSN, but again, this is a subscription service.
If you want to watch for free, your best bet is to use a VPN and access the UK’s BBC coverage for no cost in the comfort of your own home.
Wimbledon 2018 final live stream in New Zealand for free
It’s good news for those in New Zealand, as free-to-air TVNZ will be showing all the action from Wimbledon 2018.
However, those wanting their fix of Sue Barker and the Beeb can also use a VPN to access the free UK coverage. The choice is yours.
Where else can I watch the Wimbledon final using a VPN?
A VPN will enable you to get a Wimbledon live stream from literally anywhere. So that obviously includes: the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, France, Spain, Japan, Italy, Poland, Germany, Mexico, Czech Republic, Austria, Thailand, Denmark, China, South Africa, Argentina, Singapore, Turkey and more!
