Tag Archives: Travel Transportation

Uber’s new XXL rides will have extra room for your big-ass suitcase

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Uber is rolling out some new features for the holiday travel season. On Wednesday, it announced a new, super-duper-sized option with extra trunk space for airport travel. In addition, there will be a third shuttle route for NYC travelers.

UberXXL is the company’s new extra-spacious rideshare option. These airport-only rides offer more trunk space and plenty of “comfortable” seating room “for you and your group.” Uber says pricing for the new jumbo-sized service will fall somewhere between UberXL and Uber Black. Upfront pricing will be available in the app.

The service is launching at 40 airports in the US and Canada, including New York’s Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark. Other participating UberXXL airports include (among others) LAX, SFO, Reagan National, O’Hare, DFW, Miami and Atlanta. It will be available at over 60 airports globally.

Two Uber app screenshots show the new Flight Capture feature and airport rideshares.
Uber

Holiday travelers will also have new ways to save a few bucks on their trips this year. UberX Share is launching at eight US airports and two international ones. The service lets you book a trip with “just one other airport traveler” to save up to 25 percent compared to UberX fares. The company says the cheaper rates will apply even if you aren’t matched with a random stranger.

UberX Share for flights will launch at Austin, Denver, Newark, Dulles, Miami, New Orleans and Phoenix airports.

Uber Reserve, the company’s schedule-ahead feature, is adding Flight Capture, which lets you enter your flight info and schedule your trip around it. The app will recommend the best time to leave and ask if you want to adjust your drop-off if your flight is delayed. In addition, Uber Reserve will now give you the option of adding multiple stops when setting up your ride.

After launching in New York City last month, Uber Shuttle has added an extra stop to and from LaGuardia. The $18 shuttle service, which lets you save some money on its preset routes, will now include a third stop at the World Trade Center site at 198 Fulton St. It joins the previous two shuttle pickup and drop-off points: Midtown Manhattan (with stops at Port Authority Terminal and Grand Central) and Penn Station.

Finally, the Uber app for iPhone has added a widget that could shave a few seconds off the time it takes to schedule a pickup. Starting today, the iOS app has a new Home Screen widget that lets you request a ride “in as little as two taps.” You can check the App Store for the update today. The company added a ride-tracking Live Activities feature last year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/ubers-new-xxl-rides-will-have-extra-room-for-your-big-ass-suitcase-110027241.html?src=rss

Faulty Windows cybersecurity update takes out banks, airlines and other major companies worldwide

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A massive Microsoft Windows BSOD (blue screen of death) outage has impacted multiple companies worldwide including airlines, broadcasters and others. The problem was caused by a faulty update from security giant CrowdStrike that forced PCs and servers into an unrecoverable boot loop. The change has since been rolled back, and airlines and hospitals were gradually recovering by midday in the US, but many machines are still affected.

"We have widespread reports of BSODs on windows hosts, occurring on multiple sensor versions," CrowdStrike wrote in a pinned Reddit post. "[We have] identified a content deployment related to this issue and reverted those changes." The company went on to describe a workaround, which involves booting Windows into Safe Mode and deleting a specific driver. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz apologized for the global meltdown on the Today show (via The NY Times), saying, “We’re deeply sorry for the impact that we’ve caused.”

The issue forced Delta, Frontier and other airlines to ground flights, and impacted UK broadcaster Sky and the London Stock Exchange. On a Reddit thread, dozens of commenters stated that their companies were effectively offline due to the problem. Flight-tracking service FlightAware reported in mid-afternoon that over 2,500 US flights had been canceled on Friday. They gradually recovered as the day continued, but the restoration was far from complete.

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told airlines on Friday that they would need to handle the situation as if it were a self-inflicted (mechanical or technical) failure, which requires them to cover travelers’ food, transportation and lodging costs for those whose delays last longer than three hours. Earlier in the day, United Airlines and Delta had told stranded airline passengers they’d have to foot the bills themselves since the CrowdStrike meltdown was out of their control. A United spokesperson later reversed its previous stance after Buttigieg’s comments.

IT pros around the world struggled to adapt to the nearly impossible hand they’d been dealt.

"Even if [CrowdStrike] fixed the issue causing the BSOD, I'm thinking how are we going to restore the thousands of devices that are not booting up," one user noted. "Let me explain to someone who is not tech savvy and is working from home how to boot their machine into safe mode," another wrote. 

Reddit users including many IT managers from Australia, Malaysia, Japan, India, the Czech Republic and elsewhere have said they're fighting through the issue. "Here in the Philippines, specifically in my employer, it is like Thanos snapped his fingers. Half of the entire organization [is] down due to BSOD loop. Started at 2pm and is still ongoing. What a Friday," said one.

US court systems were affected as well, with cases scheduled for the day postponed (including the latest trial of the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein). Many hospitals reportedly postponed surgeries requiring anesthesia, and some were unable to reschedule due to the required appointment planning software also being down.

CrowdStrike is a US-based security firm that provides real-time protection against security threats to corporations. One of its key products is Falcon, described by the company as "providing real-time indicators of attack, hyper-accurate detection and automated protection" from threats. A CrowdStrike spokesperson said it was likely an issue with Falcon that caused the incident.

To add to the pain, Microsoft appears to have also suffered a separate outage with its Azure services and Microsoft 365 app suite. "Users may be unable to access various Microsoft 365 apps and services," it wrote. It's not clear which, if any, of the outages are related to this instead of the CrowdStrike problem. 

Update July 19, 2024 6:12 AM ET: CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has acknowledged the problem on X, saying it was caused by a defect in a content update for Windows hosts, and not a "security incident or cyberattack," He added that "the issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed." There's no mention on whether the fix will be usable on machines currently stuck in a boot loop.

Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted, he added. An identical statement has been posted on CrowdStrike's blog.

Update, July 19, 2024, 3:46 PM ET: This story has been updated to add developments around flights, hospitals, court cases and an apology from CrowdStrike’s CEO.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/faulty-cybersecurity-update-takes-out-banks-airlines-and-other-major-companies-worldwide-085142264.html?src=rss