Good morning, everyone, im scott mcgrew. Im neither a mathematician nor a racist. In fact, im bad at both of those things. But im told this is the formula when someone shows prejudice towards minorities in the world of ride share, uber and lyft and whatnot. They found africanamericans and people with africanamerican sounding names will have to wait longer for rides, and are more likely to see those rides canceled by the driver, even before theyre picked up. Dr. Steven soth studies transportation as the executive director of the center for Automotive Research at stanford. Joined this morning by sara lacy and John Schwartz of usa today. Let me start with what even inspired the study. What made you think, you know what we ought to do is we ought to see if this is a thing . It really started when don mckenzie and i were grad students at m. I. T. And during the course of our time there we really watched as ride sharing was kicking over a big part of the Transportation Business in the country. We started to wonder about all the different ways that transportation was really affecting society, affecting its users. And this is one of the things that we talked about at the time was, is the service truly equal. And ultimately the experiment that we ran was the evolution of those early conversations. There was a line in your report that i thought was particularly salient that said basically, weve seen this in cab drivers. If a cab driver will not stop for an africanamerican, would this then translate into a driver just swiping away an africanamerican ride, the same idea. Correct. Its something we know is part of our culture. And its seeped its way into comedy and song lyrics and latenight talk shows. Theres certainly reason to suspect that it might exist even if you change the way the marketplace works. Is this a positive of the ondemand world that we can track this and prove this now . Air bnb has had similar scandals. Facebook advertisers were able to pinpoint ethnicity. Which, by the way, you probably could have done by, you know, kind of advertising in certain things that tend to be more white or black, like i feel like weve made it so clear and easy with data, to engage in these activities, and prove theyre being engaged in. Does that give us an opportunity as a society to actually be able to say no, youre doing this and its not okay . Its ooh question of how open the data is. In this case, the study we ran was an audit study. Its typical of these kinds of studies where you actually send people out into the field, either the electronic field, and in this case actually the streets of boston and seattle. And you test whether the system actually performs equally, based on race and gender. You could in theory, at least, given unfettered access to the data perform the same type of experiments if you you know, without actually having people in the field. But no ones opened that up to you . Not yet. Well see. Without going through a litany of the data, this was done in, i think youre looking at boston, seattle. Correct. I was wondering about the wait time difference between some of the africanamerican and naup the white customer. I think it was 90 seconds in some cities. Im wondering how significance a difference that is. We measured a number of different things. We measured really were looking at four pieces of the service where we thought discrimination might happen. Where the drivers drive, how the drivers act at the time of pickup, how they deliver service, and how far they drive, and ultimately the star ratings that they leave after the rides. And in the case of the acceptances, we found that the time it took for drivers to accept the africanamerican passengers in seattle was about 20 longer. In the case of uber x, tra translated into about a 20 longer wait time for the africanamerican customers. In the case of cancellations, because uber and uber x work slightly differently. My understanding is an uber x driver gets the request, says yes, then sees who it is . Have i got that understanding right . The difference is between uber x and lyft. Oh, okay. In the case of uber x, you get the request. You say yes. You see who it is. Is that the process . And thats where you were seeing some of the drivers say, oh, never mind. Correct. It seems like me the most clear example of racism. It seems uber could penalize the drivers for doing that. Is there a penalty if ubers algorithms detect this pattern of behavior over and over again . I think uber and lyft try to detect misbehavior in a number of ways. If you do cancel on a large fraction of your passengers as a driver, ultimately youll be banned from the service. I think that the conclusion that we came to was that, simply aggregate measures of cancellation arent enough to prevent discrimination. Because lets say 10 of your customers are africanamerican, and theres a 20 cancellation threshold beyond which youll be banned. You could cancel against almost every africanamerican passenger and none of the white passengers and you wouldnt run afoul of the regulations. How do uber and lyft respond to your settings . Do they have any plans do they feel theyre responsible . Or is it the platform defense . I think its pretty clear, we dont feel uber or lyft are discriminating. This is people individuals acting on their platform. That having been said, i think theres certainly ways you could go about trying to check to see if this is happening. And we are in discussions with them to see if we can move further in that way. There is a whole car industry thats being created in Silicon Valley that youre studying beyond uber and lyft. You studied ford also. Correct. I was incredibly impressed. Lets take tesla aside for a minute. Other than tesla, is there a particular carmaker that you think has got it, or is dialed in to what it should be as far as automation and safety and the things that were going to see ahead . Well, you know, im the manager of an Affiliate Organization, and so rather than point to specific automated i dont know what a director of Affiliate Organization means. I run an organization of companies that sponsor research at stanford university. Very, good. Okay. Rather than speak to one of them specifically, i would just say that as an automotive manufacturer, its actually very hard to essentially try to invest in all the technologies that you think might be important in the future. You simply just dont have the capital to do it at all the same time. Its difficult to get right, if youre investing in hydrogen or electric vehicles, or new mobility and new financial models, to try to invest in all those things simultaneously is a real challenge. All of them are trying to face that right now. Do you think its harder for a traditional automaker to do software and apps or uber to make selfdriving cars . Not modified, with the guy still sitting behind the steet. I think making a car is a very hard thing to do. Its intensive both in terms of its intellectual content. Its intensive in terms of its capital requirements, and its physicality. Think about an iphone, its very complex, but at the end of the day its very small, and use little material. I wonder what type of impact the elephant in the room, the Trump Administration might have on this industry . Given his stance on the Auto Industry in general, and on tech in particular . Well, i think that ive learned that trying to predict what trump will do or what will happen to him is a losing game. Ill pass on that question. But i think it will certainly be very interesting. I think there are a lot of eyes on that. Im thinking about manufacturing being forced in the u. S. Exclusively, as he said about apple. He wants them to build all their hardware products in the u. S. Instead of china. It will be interesting to see. I think the Transportation Industry is one space where the u. S. Is doing very well right now. I think the department of transportation has really taken the lead on the vehicle regulations, for instance. And i think that to ignore that lead, or to sort of temper the progress there is important. Its the cars institute that best acronym in the world. Thank you for being with us this morning. I should point out that uber and lyft are aware of stevens study. Uber said discrimination has no place in society. Lyft says it does not tolerate any form of discrimination. Up next, google is ready to sell a new wifi system that we think has eerie similarities to a product already on the store shelves. When press here continues. Welcome back to press here. Youll soon be able to get your hands on a new wifi device that google first introduced back in october, at the same event where it introduced the pickle cell phone. The google wifi device works as a mesh. You plug one in each room and they Work Together to bring you better wifi. Many of us who cover tech watch the google presentation and said, that looks a heck of a lot like a product called ero. Ero works as a mesh. You put one in each room, and they Work Together to bring you wifi. Sound familiar . We were somewhat amused at the similarities. Nick weaver may not feel amusement, maybe horror. Landed 50 million in Venture Capital for men lo ventures. I know youre not accusing necessarily google of anything. You must looked at that presentation and said, oh, come on. You definitely have that feeling for a moment. But, you know, at the end of the day, it brings a lot of validation to the space. You were there first. To know we created this category and now its an interesting enough cat gore for all the other players to play in. I think orbi is sort of a similar concept. Theyre raising awareness, branding, for what you do already, right . Like an advertisement indirectly for you. It brings our name up in a lot more conversations than organically. And it sheds a light on a space that is going through a huge transition. This whole concept is meeting perfect connectivity in every corner of the home. And the more people talking about the challenges and now these solutions, you know, better for our business. Im curious why this hasnt been done before. I remember when i covered networking in the 90s, we were talking about the power of mesh network. Since then, i have had comcast in my home many times and they cant seem to a fabulous company, by the way. Horrible, horrible company. Dont trust anyone who works for them or anything they say. They cannot get me wifi in every room of my house. They simply cant. Why is this a new industry . Why isnt this a tenyearold industry . It took a lot of fundamental development on the technological side. In the last five, ten years, its usually a common design from a big chip manufacturer, and that gets put in a different color plastic and its shipped to you. Here we had to rebuild a lot of the fundamentals to make it work seamlessly. I had some sort of a repeater. Im an eero customer, but i had a repeater thing. How is eero different . I know how its different in the sense that its easy to plug in and it works. Is that fundamentally the difference . There are a few things. At the end of the day, were going for a product that just works. And to make that happen, with repeaters, you typically end up with a Different Network name, like switchandchange. With eero, you have one name. With repeaters, you cut at least half your speed when you connect to the repeater network. For us, weve got multiple radios so you dont mood any speed when you go from hop to hop to hop. Are there certain changes in the home, pieces of hardware, ways of consuming content that are really driving this . In my house, i have them in every room, in the back of my house needs more of a connection. Ive had both sono and peletons tell me that theres a way of leveraging the points. You know, i think the biggest thing is streaming video. Streaming content is absolutely whats driving great connectivity in the home, whether youre trying to stream video or audio. Having great connectivity everywhere. Everybody wants great coverage in their kitchen, or backyard. Like light bulbs. With the internet of things can i ask you a question you probably wont answer . Sure. Those are my favorite questions. I know. Is it trump . No. Actually, i was going to you ask your trump question first. You know, trump wants to put in a 43 or 47, hes used different numbers, percent tariff on all chinese made goods, which are going to include eeros and iphones and everything else. Are we supposed to take that seriously . I think theres a lot of things that have been discussed and well see how they materialize. Our big focus is wifi. Thats what weve been focused on. So google in a sense validates what youre doing. Im wondering, because of what they did, Technology Companies copy one another. Are you interested from countries to acquire you know, there hasnt been anything out of the ordinary. One thing were excited about, just this past week, we started immigrating with amazon alexa. You can interact with your eero system. You can literally tell her to turn off the internet. Thats correct. You can say, alexa alexa, tell eero to pause nicks devices, so it will pause all my devices. Did i just trick you to turning off everybodys internet all over . I love alexa. It makes such a difference. I can see why you would want coverage throughout the whole area. Youre a relatively young entrepreneur. This is your first major product. Yes. What do you wish you did differently . What did you think, oh, i learned from that . When we initially got things going, we were really aggressive on the timetable schedule, and a lot of the hardest part about shipping the product wasnt building the actual product, it was building the team to go build the product. So i caution other entrepreneurs just to make sure you continue to spend enough time working on team building. At the end of the day, like thats whats going to drive a great product. Improve that product. And build not just a product, but an entire company. Is it enough to have one good product as a Hardware Company . Weve seen go pro struggle, fitbit struggle, and these were the lucky ones that made it to that point. I think you need to have a portfolio. A lot of the investments were making is having a great team. Not just go fix wifi, but go fix connectivity and other challenges throughout the home. When you expand the eero brand, and im not going to ask you what youre going to expand into, but when you do, whats the ethos of, well, this is clearly an eero made device . Is it the design . Ease of use, where you say, yep, thats got eero dna in it . Its the whole product story. Its about the look and feel of the product. How consumers connect with it when they take it out of the box. How it sets up. And then that whole, you know, process of improving it, and supporting customers. You should have this feeling of a really complicated thing in my home, all of a sudden became this dropdead simple beautiful device that i just cant stop talking about. It remind me in many ways about the first nest not the other stuff that nest has made actually, but the nest thermostats as well. Its elegant, beautiful, easy to use. Nick weaver with eero, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. Its probably too early to talk about Holiday Shopping, so well wait until after this next set of commercials to do it, when press here continues. Welcome back to press here. Lots of things to think about as we get to the Holiday Shopping season. Whether youve been naughty or nice. And scientists will soon release their yearly list of really dangerous toys. My first chain saw they will not recommend. Well start warning you about the ways that you can get ripped off as well. This year, the concern starts with apps. The New York Times warns some of the Shopping Apps you can find in the app stores are not authentic. This one is from a Company Called overstock, but its not overstock. Com. You dont want to use your credit card on this one. Dom dedicates his life to track down bad guys online. Hes the founder of a Digital Security company. Thank you for being with us this morning. Thank you. Do we see an increase in around the holiday, or is there so much ecommerce now that it doesnt kind of matter . Actually, we do. It works exactly the same way with the fraudsters as every other person. They have their own Holiday Season. You see promotions in the dark net. People are trying to sell millions of accounts, millions of credentials, facebook accounts, like on facebook. Everything is out. And its on sale. Are some of them doing it to raise money for Holiday Gifts . Why are they doing it towards christmas, or hanukkah . Theres a massive pressure on the industry, as the Industry Needs to tackle more and more volume. So all the security measures are being more lenient. And basically as people need to manually review transactions, stuff is there pressure many sales theyre pulling back. Yes. Heres my frustration with this. The same frustration i have with the whole scandal with Facebook News right now. Im fine if were in the wild west of the open internet, and it is like user beware, and if you click on this link in your email you may get nished. Im fine with that. About but what im not fine with is where we have crazy amounts of fraud. The reason people are getting so mad at facebook and not twitter, because facebook already messes with your feed. Its not everything in there. It is supposed to be it already censures stuff. The same thing with the app store. The app store is not the open internet. Why are they putting the startups through the pain of getting this app up but they have overstock but its not overstock . I agree completely with you on the conclusion. What we do need to remember, the more sophisticated and complex the system is, the motivation to really hack it is also growing. The challenge is like with apple, or paypal, or facebook is facing is very significant, far more than any other startup in our overall marketplace. But i have a theory that these companies, wen when they say somethings really hard, that just means they dont want to solve it. Facebook has claims its beaming satellites down. Youre telling me figuring out fraud is too hard . I say the same thing to apple. Do you think these Companies Care . Thats a very, very good question. And i can tell in our space, were tackling credit card fraud. And to be very, very frank, the incentive doesnt exist for the Credit Card Companies to fight fraud as we are, because at the end, the online merchant is on the hook. You do see when it comes to stolen credentials inside banks, its a very, very harsh, very, very secure process. They wont take any risk. On the other side, online merchants, when they basically every online merchant, even a startup, needs to have a Fraud Prevention mechanism. I sympathize with you, that, yes, if they dont have the immediate incentive, and if the public doesnt push them to pay for that, theres no incentive. Do you treat the Holiday Company like the Tech Companies gear up the more sophisticated attacks . Particularly in the Holiday Season when theres more traffic. Do they save their best tools for that . Absolutely. On the front end they will try to create all the big breaches during the Holiday Season. You see the attention going towards the united states. On the other side you also see them trying to release more of the stock they already have out in the secondary market where people are buying with stolen credit cards. You can decide whether you want to buy a credit card that was already successful in being hacked, or you could decide whether you want to buy a platinum preferred, or you want to buy a chase card. What is a platinum preferred car costing . From 5 for something that nobody tested all the way to 500. And how many transactions can i probably get away with . Thats something you have to ask each merchant individually. Its really a matter of whether you have the mechanisms in space to lock it. There are probably some merchants i could probably get away with five transactions and some i can only get away with one. And they know who they are, they can get the five. Not only do they know, also the rumor spreads very well on the dark net. So if somebody will have will be able to apply some fraud attack on a certain merchant, it is very, very likely this merchant will get a wave of products coming to him. Weve only got 30 seconds left and im going to take the question, jon. As with esee chip cards, im assuming theres more online fraud now, because chip cards make things more difficult . These guys are not retiring. Theyre not going theyre going straight to online. We do see a spike not only in the amount of fraud coming, but also in the level of sophistication. Basically moving over to online. We do see more organized crime going there. We do see more sophistication. With edo see a very big spike in the amount of fraud attempts. And youll be there to stop it. There you go. Press here will be back in just a minute. Thats our show for this week. My thanks to my guests. And thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. Valle. Im damian trujillo, and today, baseball without borders, bringing americas pastime to every corner of the globe, on your comunidad del valle. Male announcer nbc bay area presents comunidad del valle with damian trujillo. Damian they are the organizers of the baseball without borders foundation. With me are juan bustos jr. And juan bustos sr. Ill let you guess which one is which here on comunidad del valle. Welcome to the show. Juan bustos jr. thank you. Damian well, you brought some great merchandise, and this is just fabulous. I mean, just the title itself, baseball without borders. Ill let you, juan sr. , talk first of all about your foundation and the great work that youre doing, and you provided us with some beautiful video. Go ahead. Juan bustos sr. baseball without borders started in 1995 in august. We wanted to give the young