Archives for June 9, 2019

The company says it has an exclusivity deal with the city.

It looks like San Francisco’s call for applications to expand its dockless bicycle program didn’t sit well with Lyft. The company has just filed a lawsuit against the California city, seeking an injunction that would prohibit SF from giving its rivals permission to operate. Lyft claims that giving other companies a permit will violate the 10-year exclusivity agreement Ford GoBike — previously operated by Motivate, which Lyft eventually purchased — signed with San Francisco. The ride-hailing firm says the deal gives it exclusive rights to run bike-share services in the city, but local authorities are saying otherwise.

John Coté, communications director for SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera, told TechCrunch that the agreement only covers docked bike-sharing services. Lyft’s Ford GoBike operation in San Francisco, as you can guess, uses stations for docking. “It does not give Lyft the right to a monopoly on bike sharing in San Francisco. Lyft can seek a permit for dockless bikes on equal footing with everyone else,” Coté said.

A Lyft statement given to TC, however, insinuates that San Francisco changed the terms of their agreement. “We need San Francisco to honor its contractual commitments to this regional program — not change the rules in the middle of the game,” the spokesperson said. “We are eager to quickly resolve this, so that we can deliver on our plans to bring bikes to every neighborhood in San Francisco.” Uber already operates a dockless service in San Francisco after purchasing a local service called Jump. But according to the lawsuit, it was supposed to be a one-time exception because Lyft wasn’t ready to launch its dockless product at the time

As SF Examiner noted, docked bike-sharing services are getting pushback from SF residents, as the construction of more and more docks could lead to the lack of parking space. That’s why when the city decided to expand its dockless program, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Benjamin Barnett said one of the reasons was that there’s high “[p]ublic demand for shared and stationless electric bikes.”

Early Standard Model 3s shipped with unlocked software that gave buyers extra features for free.

The earliest customers who pulled the trigger on Tesla’s entry-level Model 3 may want to enjoy their car’s features to the fullest over the coming days. Those early vehicles shipped with unlocked software that effectively gave owners access to the more expensive Standard Range Plus car. Eventually, the company started shipping Model 3s with the features locked down from the get go. Now, the automaker has started warning customers via email that it’s going to limit their vehicle’s software and remove their access to the Plus features they’ve been enjoying in the next 10 days.

Tesla’s email reads:

“Your Model 3 will soon receive new software that matches the Model 3 Standard Range configuration you ordered. As we communicated in April, this includes a limited range of 220 miles, and the removal of several software features. To continue experiencing the extended range, faster acceleration and Autopilot features of Model Standard Range Plus, schedule a service appointment through your Tesla app.”

When the software patch rolls out, the affected Model 3s’ range will become 10 percent shorter. Customers might also lose access to Tesla’s onboard music streaming service and heated seats, among other upgrades, though they’ll have to wait until the software lock comes out to know which ones they’re losing for sure. They can always pay to unlock those upgrades again, since both variants come with the same components anyway. Whether customers got hooked on those extra features enough to pay for them, however, remains to be seen.

You can make an informed decision about your privacy.

Apple will be big on privacy in iOS 13, and that includes the data collected after you’ve granted permission. Beta testers at 9to5Mac and elsewhere have discovered the upcoming release (and iPadOS) will occasionally pop up detailed panels asking if you want to retain the level of location sharing you have for a given app, including a map of just where an app has been tracking you. There’s also a description of just why an app needs that tracking data. If you’re uncomfortable with either explanation, you can limit location gathering on the spot.

These notifications won’t really pop up on Apple’s other platforms, but that’s because they either don’t support always-on location gathering (as with macOS and tvOS) or don’t need it (watchOS).

The odds are that this won’t have a dramatic impact on your usage habits — you probably know why an app is tracking your whereabouts. This could be useful if you quickly downloaded an app without considering its implications, though, and it might help you make an informed choice if you didn’t realize that an app was creating a vivid record of your travels. For that matter, it should dissuade sketchier developers who collect your location arbitrarily. They might scale back their info collecting if they know they’ll have to justify it to you.