Tag: angeles
Los Angeles Votes to Ditch Styrofoam With Citywide Ban
Los Angeles officials voted to ban styrofoam and other single-use plastics on Thursday in a move to become a “zero waste” city. The 12 city council members who were present at the meeting voted unanimously in favor of the ban, prohibiting the distribution and sale of expanded polystyrene products, more commonly known…
Strange Coincidences — Are They Fluke Events Or Acts Of God? – Los Angeles Times
— Delivered by Feed43 service
‘Devastated’ Harry Styles POSTPONES three sold-out Los Angeles concert dates
Waymo driverless rides are coming to Los Angeles
Autonomous ride-hailing company Waymo, a division of Google’s parent company Alphabet, Inc., announced Wednesday that Los Angeles will be its “next ride-hailing city.” So Angelenos will soon notice Waymo’s eye-catching, gadget-heavy driverless cars on LA roads as the company eyes offering its services in as many parts of the Los Angeles area as are feasible.
Waymo says in its press release that it will “deploy a round-the-clock service that provides more accessible and dependable mobility options to all residents of LA – whether they’re carpooling to work along Pico, catching a ride to the nearest Metro stop, meeting up with friends at The Broad, or taking the kids to Dodger Stadium.”
The specificity in the release is bold and hints at the expectation of an uphill battle to earn the trust of residents. As any Angeleno who has driven their kids through Echo Park to Dodgers Stadium on game day can attest, navigating the streets of LA is not something locals will instinctively want to trust to driverless cars.
By operating in Los Angeles County, Waymo joins its competitor Motional, an autonomous car project created jointly by Aptiv and Hyundai, which partnered with Uber Eats to perform limited driverless food deliveries in Santa Monica starting in May of this year.
Los Angeles follows Phoenix and San Francisco in Waymo’s U.S. expansion plan, and those two other big Waymo cities offer a glimpse of what’s in store for Los Angeles in the months and years ahead. For instance, earlier this year, Waymo began offering ride-hailing services between Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport and downtown Phoenix — a big step. But the program is still in its infancy after years of research and planning. You have to be part of a group known within Waymo as “trusted testers” to get one of these rides.
As of 2018, all Waymo users in Phoenix had to sign nondisclosure agreements to ride, according to the tech publication Futurism. And while this is presumably still the case with “trusted testers,” Waymo rides are now available to some regular customers. Riders in the Phoenix area have to start and end their routes in a small service area that includes the suburbs of Chandler, Tempe, Mesa, and Gilbert, Arizona. This tiny market in which the service is apparently ready for prime time is the product of a program that started in the Phoenix area back in 2016.
So if the past is any indication, Los Angeles should expect Waymo to roll out bit-by-bit over the course of years.
Though, according to Waymo’s recent press release, “Everything we’ve learned over 12 years of autonomous driving has prepared us to serve Angelenos.” Waymo also notes that its vehicles have “autonomously driven millions of miles on freeways, giving us a head start handling some of Los Angeles’s most challenging roads.”
But challenges or not, Waymo does not appear to view its Los Angeles expansion as another opportunity to gather mountains of data and log millions more road miles. It seems, rather, to be asserting itself as bona fide, commercially viable ride-hailing business. “With approximately 13 million residents, the Los Angeles metropolitan area is one of the largest ride-hailing service areas in the world and the third largest in the U.S., with an estimated market opportunity of $2 billion in 2022,” reads Waymo’s press release.
“As a commercial opportunity, Los Angeles is the equivalent of a dozen smaller U.S. ride-hailing market opportunities combined.”
So, who knows? If you’re dreaming of an autonomous ride to, say, the 2023 World Series at Dodger Stadium, making that a reality might prove to be more of a heavy lift for the Dodgers themselves than for Waymo.
Convicted sex-offender Harvey Weinstein appeared in a Los Angeles court looking pale and emotionless
Los Angeles’ Delusion Brings Interactive Theater to Haunting New Heights
The Valley of Hollows—the latest interactive theater show from immersive storytellers Delusion—opened in Los Angeles just in time for Halloween season. It’s Delusion’s eighth year being a part of the city’s haunt scene, and io9 was invited to check out this year’s production. We also spoke with director Jon Braver…
Hackers Target Los Angeles School District With Ransomware
The Los Angeles Unified School District is dealing with a ransomware attack
The Los Angeles Unified School District is navigating a ransomware attack on its information technology systems. The cyberattack originated over Labor Day weekend, starting on September 3rd, though it hasn’t disrupted school operations and classes are scheduled as usual. The district says in-school safety and emergency systems weren’t affected by the attack, nor were employee payroll and health care networks.
LAUSD officials are already working with the Department of Education, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to uncover the source of the attack, and they’ve implemented protocols to protect email and other internal IT applications. The district says that while investigations into the attack are ongoing, some business operations may be delayed, but transportation, food and Beyond the Bell services won’t be affected.
“Los Angeles Unified is immediately establishing a plan of action, informed by top public and private sector technology and cyber security professionals, to determine additional protections for the District, and to provide an independent opinion on system-wide protective measures,” officials said.
Los Angeles Unified Targeted by Ransomware Attack
For more information, please visit https://t.co/Itdix5TlqK. pic.twitter.com/HDgktJKT0S
— Los Angeles Unified (@LASchools) September 6, 2022
The district says it will establish an independent information technology task force that will develop recommendations for schools within 90 days, reorganize its departments to better safeguard its IT systems, and establish advisers to oversee cybersecurity best practices, among other responses. LAUSD officials said they will provide updates on the cyberattack as investigations progress, and you can find these on Twitter.