Category: Start Ups

Summer of Scooters

Start Ups

Op-ed sections in most major United States newspapers have published at least one article in the last few months lamenting or berating this summer’s most visible change in urban transportation—the mobile-hailed, electrically powered scooter. 

Resistance

The gripes are generally the same from city to city: they litter the sidewalks, interfere with pedestrian and vehicle traffic, people can use them under the influence of drugs or alcohol, there is no experience requirement, helmets are not required or provided, and some anecdote about someone tripping on a discarded scooter.

These are legitimate complaints, some more so than others, but they should not be taken as condemning personally rentable, electric transit vehicles in general.

Ride-hailing is not a viable alternative

Car-ride hailing companies such as Uber, Lyft, and Grab infiltrate a city’s market by pricing their services in competition with public transportation (not to mention traditional taxi services). Rather than reducing the amount of cars on the road, (which Uber actually claimed as its goal), they disincentivize busses and trains in cities attempting to bring them into more regular use. 

Same companies, different models

Scooters are designed (albeit by a lot of the same companies that offer ride-hailing services) in conjunction with public transportation systems, and in opposition to the private automobile cityscape that has emerged in American cities over the last 50 years. A collection of them at a transit hub enables one to take a mass transit line as close to your destination as possible, after which everyone branches off on foot or by rented scooter or bicycle. it almost sounds natural. compared to the tradition of sitting in rush hour traffic for two hours while checking your car’s embedded GPS for alternate routes, its certified organic.

The clientele of scooter-users is easy to misjudge as well; if you’re in an affluent, downtown area it might seem like they are mostly used by wealthy under 35’s hopping between cafes and boutique restaurants. But records show the average income of a scooter rider to be under $50,000 per year, and not exclusively in gentrified/gentrifying neighborhoods. Implemented correctly, scooters could actually resist and change the urban landscape away from prioritizing enclosed, time-consuming, and environmentally destructive private vehicles.

French inventor flies over English Channel on hoverboard

General, Start Ups

French inventor Franky Zapata just flew over the English Channel on a jet-powered hoverboard. It was Zapata’s second such attempt, having failed in July.

Zapata, who made headlines after flying over a military parade in Paris on 14 July, took off from Sangatte, France and landed in St. Margaret’s Bay 22 minutes later. Flying 15-20 meters above the water, he reached speeds of up to 177 km/h.

It was not a direct flight, however. Zapata’s hoverboard can stay airborne for roughly 10 minutes, at which he has to land and refuel. Still, the successful flight was a dream come true.

“I’m feeling happy … it’s just an amazing moment in my life,” he said. ““The last 10% [of the flight] was easier … because I had the time to look at the cliffs.”

Speaking to the Guardian, Zapata explained some of the difficulties he faced.

“It’s an isometric exercise for the thighs, so it burns, it’s quite hard. But you recover quickly, it’s not like riding a bicycle,” he said, adding, “Your body resists the wind, and because the board is attached to my feet, all my body has to resist to the wind. I tried to enjoy it and not think about the pain.”

Zapata’s first attempt to cross the Channel failed, he said, because strong waves had pushed his landing platform slightly out of place. When he tried to land to refuel he crashed into the sea.

His hoverboard sustained damage in the accident, and his assistants worked 15-16 hours a day to repair it for the next attempt.

For Zapata, the flight was the culmination of years of hard work.

“We made a machine three years ago, and now we’ve crossed the Channel. It’s crazy,” he said.

The Verge reports that military companies have expressed interest in Zapata’s machine. His company, Zapata Industries, was nearly purchased by military contractor Implant Sciences, while France’s defense and procurement agency provided Zapata with a €1.3 million grant in 2018.

StockX hacked, millions of users affected

Data Management & Networks, Start Ups

Last week StockX, a website in which users buy and sell sneakers and fashion accessories according to a stock market-like structure, issued a bewildering statement indicating that it had been forced to reset customers’ passwords due to unspecified “system updates.”

“We recently completed system updates on the StockX platform,” a user notification announced. “To access your account, reset your password by clicking below.”

StockX was lying. Edging closer to the truth, a company representative later admitted that “StockX was recently alerted to suspicious activity potentially involving our platform. Out of an abundance of caution, we implemented a security update and proactively asked our community to update their account passwords.”

But as TechCrunch reports, that was a half-truth at best:

“An unnamed data breached seller contacted TechCrunch claiming more than 6.8 million records were stolen from the site in May by a hacker. The seller declined to say how they obtained the data.

“In a dark web listing, the seller put the data for sale for $300. One person at the time of writing already bought the data.”

As proof, this anonymous person gave TechCrunch 1,000 of the stolen customer records. After directly contacting the customers, the website was able to confirm that the records were genuine.

“The stolen data contained names, email addresses, scrambled password (believed to be hashed with the MD5 algorithm and salted), and other profile information — such as shoe size and trading currency,” TechCrunch reports. “The data also included the user’s device type, such as Android or iPhone, and the software version.”

Before publishing its story, TechCrunch reached out to StockX personnel, who declined to comment. “A non-attributable statement published late on Saturday confirmed our reporting, but the company did not answer our specific questions, including why it failed to inform customers when it first learned of the data breach and why it misled customers prior to our reporting.”

Founded in 2015, StockX is now valued at more than $1 billion. If it wishes to stay there, it should perhaps consider apprising customers of security breaches that put them at risk. Opacity and lack of accountability appear to be something of a principle among tech companies. How much longer will people put up with it?