Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Friday, December 6, 2019.

I'm Brian McCullough today, the Uber Safety Report.

More Galaxy S11 rumors, Could Apple be about to kill the

charging port on iPhones entirely? And what would that mean? Samsung's new chips to

make AR mainstream and of course the weekend long read suggestions. Here's what

you missed today in the world of tech.

As it promised to do, Uber has unveiled its first ever safety report, revealing that

over 1.3 billion rides in the US in 2018 there were 3,000 45 sexual assaults, 9 murders, and 58

people killed in crashes.

Noting, those incidents represent just

0.002% of all rides taken on the Uber platform over that time period.

Quoting the New York Times.

There are few comparable figures to judge Uber's safety record against the New York Police Department, which keeps a register of sex crimes and rapes that occur on transit systems, counted 533 in 2018. But even one of Uber's top executive said the company's

findings were difficult to stomach. Quote, the numbers are jarring and hard to

digest Tony West.

Uber's chief legal officer said in an interview,

what it says is that Uber is a reflection of the society it serves, end quote.

Indeed, I'm bringing this up not to harp on Uber or ride hailing or gig economy companies in general or anything really just I guess it's interesting and probably positive to start getting some

data and transparency on this sort of thing. As Ian Bogost said on Twitter, quote,

it is very hard to find apples to apples comparisons of safety risks in ride shares versus taxis slash livery,

for example, especially across the country. Knowing that Uber had a certain number

of reported sexual assaults at a certain time may tell us less than it seems. The point isn't

...