Congress Passes Open Data Law
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| Congress Passes Open Data Law | |
| Number | 706 |
| Broadcast Date | DECEMBER 24, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 2:55 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
Congress passes an Open Data Law, Uber settles with suing drivers, and Microsoft might release some webcams in 2019.
Headlines
- The US House of Representatives passed H.R. 4174, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2017, which requires public information to be open by default to the public in machine-readable formats. On Saturday, the Senate passed a resolution to resolve two amendments to the bill approved by the House which limited the Act to larger agencies, and provided some exemptions for the Federal Reserve. The bill now awaits the President's signature before going into law.
- TechCrunch reports that Uber has reached a tentative settlement with drivers in individual arbitration over employment status. The settlement would pay out $0.11 per mile driven for Uber, but would not address payment of expenses related to driving raised in the initial lawsuit. The settlement requires an unspecified number of the 160,000 drivers in arbitration to accept the offer before becoming effective.
- Driverless car startup Zoox received the first permit in California to transport passengers in their vehicles, as part of the Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot. The permit requires Zoox to have safety drivers onboard and cannot charge for rides, as well as provide the California Public Utilities Commission with incident reports, passenger mileage, and safety protocols. For those not familiar with Zoox, the company has raised $800 million in venture funding since 2015, and plans to launch a fully autonomous, all-electric ride hailing fleet by 2020.
- Paul Thurrott reports that according to sources, Microsoft will release webcams in 2019, including at least one 4K camera with support for Windows 10 and Xbox One. The camera would support Windows Hello on PCs, and sign users in automatically on Xbox One, similar to the Kinect. Sources say a more enterprise-focused camera will be introduced as well.
- Slack issued an apology after the company inadvertently blocked some users in an attempt to comply with U.S. trade embargoes and economic sanctions. The company reiterated that any blocks were based on location information from IP addresses, and that the company does not block users based on nationality or ethnicity.
- Huawei announced the expansion of their contactless payment service, Huawei Pay, to Russia. This marks the first expansion of the service outside of China. Huawei Pay will initially be available to UnionPay cardholders banking with either Gazprombank or the Russian Agricultural Bank on select Huawei handsets.
- The North American Aerospace Defense Command confirmed that despite the current partial US government shutdown, NORAD Tracks Santa will still be available on Christmas Eve. Now in its 63rd year, the Santa Tracker relies on 1500 volunteers, and had budget approved earlier this year by the Department of Defense.
Links
| Preceded by: "Week in Review for the Week of 12/17/18" |
Congress Passes Open Data Law |
Followed by: "Alphabet Spins Out Project Malta" |