Hillicon Valley — New York taxis coming to Uber
Today is Thursday. Welcome to Hillicon Valley, detailing all you need to know about tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Subscribe here.
Follow The Hill’s tech team, Chris Mills Rodrigo (@millsrodrigo) and Rebecca Klar (@rebeccaklar_), and cyber reporter Ines Kagubare (@ineskagubare) for more coverage.
Let’s jump into the news.
Uber deal marks major shift for yellow cabs
New Yorkers will soon be able to request an iconic yellow cab on the Uber app through a deal made public Thursday.
The agreement, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, will go into effect later this spring.
New York City’s licensed technology providers, Curb Mobility and Creative Mobile Technologies, will integrate their existing software for hailing cabs into Uber, opening up access to a much larger user base.
“This is a real win for drivers – no longer do they have to worry about finding a fare during off peak times or getting a street hail back to Manhattan when in the outerboroughs,” Uber’s director of business development, Guy Peterson, said in a statement. “And this is a real win for riders who will now have access to thousands of yellow taxis in the Uber app.”
The deal between Uber and New York City’s yellow cabs comes after the ride hailing app and others like it have quickly outpaced the taxi industry.
Ride-sharing companies significantly undercut taxis when moving into cities in the early 2010s, heavily subsidizing customer rides and gaining loyal users in the process.
DOJ indicts Russians over energy hacks
The U.S. Department of Justice indicted four Russian nationals on Thursday alleged to have hacked energy sectors in 135 countries.
In one of the indictments unsealed in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, the DOJ alleges that Evgeny Viktorovich Gladkikh, a Russian computer programmer, and his co-conspirator targeted a foreign oil facility, causing two separate emergency shutdowns. Gladkikh and the unnamed co-conspirator then tried to hack a U.S. energy company.
The indictment follows a series of warnings from U.S. officials, including the White House and the FBI, who have urged the private sector to strengthen its cyber defenses against possible Russian cyberattacks.
“The conduct alleged in these charges is the kind of conduct that we are concerned about under the current circumstances,” a DOJ official said during a press conference.
OK GOOGLE, DOCTOR PLEASE
Google announced on Thursday it is partnering with providers such as CVS Pharmacy to allow people to schedule health care appointments through its search engine.
The new feature will allow Google users to search for appointment availabilities at some health care providers in their area.
“While we’re still in the early stages of rolling this feature out, we’re working with partners, including MinuteClinic at CVS and other scheduling solution providers. We hope to expand features, functionality and our network of partners so we can make it easier for people to get the care they need,” Google said in a blog post.
In a screenshot demonstrating the new function, Google showed how users can search for health care providers near them and then receive a list of services offered and appointment availabilities.
CLEARVIEW SPOTTED
Ukraine is utilizing facial recognition software to identify the bodies of Russian soldiers who have been killed amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who also heads the country’s ministry of digital transformation, told Reuters that Kyiv is using software from Clearview AI, a recognition company headquartered in New York, to identify fallen Russian soldiers. The technology matches uploaded photos of the dead soldiers with images from the web.
Fedorov said Ukraine has worked to match photos of deceased Russian soldiers with images from social media accounts. After the soldiers are identified, authorities have contacted family members to make plans for collecting the body.
The technology, however, is not being utilized to identify Ukrainian soldiers, according to Fedorov. He did not elaborate why.
BITS & PIECES
An op-ed to chew on: From Ukraine to China, we need to mitigate vulnerabilities
Lighter click: Dad joke machine
Notable links from around the web:
- The Trevor Project relies on AI to train counselors, but won’t let it near suicidal LGBTQ+ kids (Protocol / Kate Kaye)
- Internet entrepreneurs far from the U.S. are inflaming political division on Facebook to sell T-shirts and coffee mugs (San Francisco Chronicle / Nazmul Ahasan)
- Exploding ‘kamikaze’ drones are ushering in a new era of warfare in Ukraine (The Washington Post / Gerrit De Vynck, Pranshu Verma and Jonathan Baran)
- LAPSUS$: How a Sloppy Extortion Gang Became One of the Most Prolific Hacking Groups (Motherboard / Joseph Cox)
One last thing: Okta hackers arrested
British authorities arrested seven individuals on Thursday suspected of hacking major tech companies including Okta and Microsoft, according to Reuters.
“Seven people between the ages of 16 and 21 have been arrested in connection with this investigation and have all been released under investigation,” Detective Inspector Michael O’Sullivan of the City of London Police said in a statement to Reuters.
The arrests follow online breaches this week that targeted San Francisco-based software company Okta and Microsoft.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s technology and cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you Friday.
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