Uber To Cap Surge Pricing During East Coast Snowstorm

Cars drive on a Manhattan Street in heavy snow on January 26, 2015 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A “potentially historic” snowstorm just hit the Northeast coast, and it’s expected to affect more than 40 million people, dumping up to three feet of snow in places. But it’s also a chance for Uber to make nice with the critics.

On Monday, with an email sent to the press, the San Francisco ride-hailing startup said it would limit prices during the storm, following a policy developed with New York Attorney General Schneiderman last year. In the email, the company said prices would not exceed 2.8-times the normal fare, and that all proceeds would be donated to the American Red Cross to support relief efforts.

In a separate release, Schneiderman issued a warning shot against possible price gouging during the storm.

Typically, Uber imposes what’s called surge pricing during times of peak demand or short supply. It’s an automated process that the company paints as a way to get more drivers on the road during critical times. But many have criticized the practice, saying it exploits crises for profit.

Most recently, users protested Uber’s surge pricing during Sydney’s hostage crisis this past December, in which passengers saw a minimum of $100 for a ride, four times the normal fare. And similar complaints popped up another snowstorm last year and during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

Uber is particularly primed to mollify the critics this time around, because it spent the past several months dealing with all sorts of other bad press, lawsuits, and clashes with regulators across the U.S. as well as overseas. The cap is certainly nice to see. But people are still finding things to complain about.

You Know You Want One: A Turbo Diesel Snowblower

One awesome thing about a massive Nor’easter: You get to bust out the riding snowblower.

It’s one of those power tools you’ll use a handful of times a year if you’re lucky. But on those rare days when Mother Nature dumps a foot or three of the fluffy stuff, you wake up to something like Christmas morning. Pulverizing those soft white mounds of snow? Talk about good old American fun.

This kid takes us for a ride on his Ventrac diesel tractor with a snowblower attachment. It’s a compact all-wheel drive tractor—pretty badass in its own right—but the snowblower attachment instantly turns this thing into the Batmobile of snow. Seriously, this kid is the hero of his neighborhood. He clears half the driveways on his block. People come out to chit-chat. He’s all smiles. He’s probably swimming in hot cocoa offers.

If you’ve spent over $10,000 on a pro Ventrac rig like this and your part of the world doesn’t get enough snow to meet your fancy, you can still put it to work smashing (and forcefully ejecting) pumpkins.

BMW’s Hilarious Super Bowl Ad Recalls Life at the Dawn of the Internet

On that fateful day in 1994, Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric were seated side by side on the set of The Today Show, attempting to sort out the translation of the “@” symbol. It was between takes, and Gumbel and Couric wondered aloud what in the world that symbol was supposed to mean. At? Around? About? A puzzle for the ages, indeed.

Then, as if as a gift to the Ghost of YouTube Future, Gumbel uttered the words that would—somewhat ironically—become internet gold: “What is internet anyway? What, do you write to it like mail?”

It was a simpler time.

Now, BMW is using this little gem of recent history in a hilarious new Superbowl commercial promoting its i3 electric vehicle. Titled “Newfangled idea,” the ingenious ad juxtaposes the 21-year-old clip of Gumbel and Couric with a scene of the twosome driving along in the present day, trying to figure out how the electric vehicle works.

It’s a nice encapsulation of the i3’s tagline: “Big ideas take a little getting used to.” But it also shows how far we’ve come in just 20 short years:

Code Literacy Rising: Programming School Acquired For $36M

Online IT training company Pluralsight has agreed to acquire web-based programming tutorial outfit Code School for $36 million. And to celebrate, the two companies will offer free access to all the content on both sites for free for 72 hours.

It’s the latest twist in the growing “code literacy” market. The announcement follows news last week that San Francisco-based programming school Hack Reactor will acquire the similar, Austin-based school called MakerSquare.

Pluralsight has historically focused on selling training materials to companies or to well established technology professionals, while Code School has largely marketed its service to beginning programmers. Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard said that the company looked at several other players in the beginners tutorial market, including Codecademy and Treehouse, but thought that Code School had the best balance between entertaining video content and interactive tutorials.

Skonnard says Pluralsight may end up taking advantage of some of the technology that Code School has developed, such as its in-browser tools for writing iOS applications. But mostly the acquisition is about helping Pluralsight serve additional markets.

“Both companies are really complimentary,” Code School founder Gregg Pollack. says. “People could start learning on Code School than move into the massive library they have at Pluralsight.”

The two companies will also work together to help students decide which courses to take—and in what order to take them—to advance their careers, and to create an evaluation system to help students prove what they’ve learned.

Facebook Launches ‘Lite’ App for Users in the Developing World

Facebook has launched an alternate, slimmed down version of its app called Facebook Lite, designed for low-end Android phones used primarily in the developing world.

According to a description in the Google Play store, the app uses less data than the main Facebook app does and works with 2G networks and in places with limited internet connectivity. Over the weekend, Techcrunch reports, Facebook launched the app in parts of Asia and Africa without its typical pomp and circumstance, in part because Facebook Lite is still in its testing phase. The company did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made no secret of his desire to expand access to the internet in the developing world. In addition to working on drone and satellite technology that will actually bring the internet to places in the world that don’t have it, Zuckerberg’s non-profit, Internet.org, is also working on ways to make the internet more accessible and affordable in places where limited connectivity already exists. Recently, for instance, his non-profit Internet.org launched an app that offers people access to basic services, like employment and healthcare information, free of any data services.

But providing free access to apps is just one part of solving the problem. The other part is ensuring that once those people have free access to apps, the apps will work in places where connectivity is suboptimal. That’s why Internet.org has created its own Innovation Lab in partnership with Ericsson, where it tests how apps perform in developing world environments and how that performance can be improved so developers will begin tweaking their technology accordingly.

Now, it seems, Facebook is testing its findings in the real world. More than just an altruistic endeavor, Facebook’s ability to expand internet access has a direct correlation with its ability to grow its business. Asia and Africa contain some of the fastest growing markets for mobile adoption in the world. If Facebook and Internet.org can become the most accessible apps in these countries, then Facebook will have a big head start over other Western tech companies.

Coinbase Opens ‘First Licensed Bitcoin Exchange in the U.S.’

San Francisco bitcoin startup Coinbase has opened what it calls the country’s first licensed bitcoin exchange.

“With this launch,” reads a blog post from the company, “our goal is to bring increased stability to the bitcoin ecosystem.”

Coinbase already offered what amounted to an online bitcoin exchange, a service that let you trade the digital currency for dollars and other fiat currencies. But the new Coinbase Exchange represents a much wider effort to bring added legitimacy to bitcoin, a system that has often operated outside of government regulations. Last week, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss announced a regulated exchange in New York called Gemini.

According to Coinbase, its new exchange is backed by the New York Stock Exchange, and is approved for use in 24 U.S. states, including New York and California. Initially, the exchange will only be available to US users, but Coinbase’s chief executive, Brian Armstrong, says he eventually plans to expand overseas. “Our goal is to become the world’s largest exchange,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

Coinbase has long offered a wallet service that lets consumers store their bitcoin, and it provides backend services that allow business to accept the digital currency as payment for products. According to the company, it now operates 2.1 million consumer wallets and it serves almost 40,000 merchants.

Just last week, the startup received $75 million in new funding, the largest funding round so far for a BItcoin company, bringing its total capital raised to $106 million. With its new exchange, the startup will take a 0.25 percent cut of most transactions and waive fees for the first two months.

James Patterson’s New Book Self-Destructs in 24 Hours

Courtesy of James Patterson

The bomb defusing scene is, by now, an old storytelling trope. You know it well—you know the hero who’s sweating bullets down his face will clip the correct wire and right before the clock face hits zero the bomb will deactivate and whir to a halt—but nonetheless, it never fails to kick your adrenaline up to 11.

Bombs are terrifying, but the real tension comes from the clock. In chase scenes or horror flicks you always have—in theory—an infinite amount of time to get away safely. But those red digital numbers ticking to zero are totally unforgiving. That’s why thriller novelist James Patterson’s latest book Private Vegas comes with a clock counting down from 24 hours. Once time runs out, the book detonates. Either finish the book on time, or live the rest of your life in suspended curiosity.