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Paris wants all gas-powered cars out of the city by 2030
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has already announced plans to remove all diesel cars from the roads of the French capital by 2024. Now she's adding gasoline-powered vehicles to her list. Today, the Evening Standard reports that Parisian authorities announced plans to ban all combustion-engine cars, including those powered by gasoline, from the city's roads by the year 2030. Christophe Najdovski, one of Paris's transportation officials, told the radio station France Info, "Transport is one of the main greenhouse gas producers . . . so we are planning an exit from combustion engine vehicles, or fossil-energy vehicles, by 2030."
Taxify takes on Uber in Paris with lower prices and commissions
Taxify is boldly entering the Paris ridesharing market that has proven to be such a pain for Uber and others. The company announced it will be able to compete with its main competition, UberX, thanks to 10 percent lower prices on average, and by taking a smaller cut from drivers -- 15 percent compared to Uber's 25 percent. "The prices will be lower for the customer and the drivers, better paid," Taxify told Le Parisien.
Paris holds a city-wide 'car-free' day
Cities have dabbled with temporary bans on cars before, but rarely (if ever) on this scale. Paris just held a third "Day Without Cars" that forbade nearly all private transport across the complete core of the city -- about 40 square miles of it. If you visited between 11AM and 6PM local time on October 1st, you had to bike, walk or take public transit like buses and taxis to make your way around the City of Lights. And officials were strict about enforcing the car ban, too. You risked facing a fine between €90 and €135 ($105 to $159) if you drove without an emergency or another good reason (such as visiting an elderly relative), and you still had to honor a 30KM/H (about 19MPH) speed limit on top of that.
The OnePlus 5 got a whimsical French makeover
If you like your tech on the whimsical side, you'll probably be interested in OnePlus' latest collaboration with French designer Castelbajac. The partnership's line of "Callection" products includes a limited edition version of the OnePlus 5, complete with colorful hardware buttons and a handwriting-adorned back cover. The OnePlus 5 JCC+, which is otherwise identical to the regular OnePlus 5, is available as a 128GB variant and is on sale for the standard device price of £500 ($680). The phone will be available from a pop-up event in Paris on September 22, and online from October 2. But if that's a bit too spendy, you can still own a piece of the Callection with a limited edition T-shirt (£30/$40) or tote bag (£25/$35), or by downloading a Castelbajac smartphone wallpaper from the Callection website. Update: This article previously mistakenly stated a pop-up event was taking place in London, and has been edited accordingly.
France wants autonomous high-speed trains by 2023
According to reports from FranceInfo, the SNCF, France's national state-owned railway company, announced on Friday that it is actively working to develop and deploy autonomous trains that will operate along its high-speed TGV lines by 2023. The so-called "drone trains" should begin initial trials some time in 2019.
Gogoro and Bosch launch electric scooter-sharing service in Paris
The Gogoro EV Smartscooter is headed to France. A fleet of 600 scooters will be available starting this summer for short-term rentals via Bosch's Coup Mobility service. This is the second city -- Berlin being the first -- that Coup and Gogoro have teamed up in.
Google's Curio-Cité shows you a different side of Paris
Anyone can visit Paris, but even residents like myself can't just stroll into Mayor Hidalgo's office or go backstage (and underneath) the Opéra Garnier, the venue that inspired Phantom of the Opera. So you may be interested in Google's latest Curio-Cité project that lets you stroll through ten "forgotten corners" of Paris.
Caption Contest: Chanel and the art of Robocouture
Karl Lagerfeld's love of technology runs deep. For his latest fashion show at the Grand Palais in Paris, Chanel's Creative Director celebrated the surreal beauty of information infrastructure by anointing his fashion runway with data center aesthetics. Lagerfeld even went so far as have some of his models don robot helmets like high-fashion Cybermen. But what was going through those models minds as they were crammed inside those robodomes?
Cities are collaborating on rules for Uber and Airbnb
The sharing economy,and the companies that embody it, have often waded into a fight wherever they set up shop. That's because local governments aren't nimble enough to cope with such radically new ideas, and the companies themselves often struggle with compromise. In order to smooth things over, a coalition of 10 cities across the globe are collaborating on a framework that'll provide these companies with ground rules to abide by. Bloomberg quotes New York official Wiley Norvell, who says that providing common rules will help both protect users and ensure that political voices are heard by famously regulation-averse startups.
Paris fears Amazon Prime Now will 'destabilize' its economy
Amazon has brought its one-hour grocery delivery service to Paris, and the city isn't thrilled. Prime Now is available to Premium subscribers who pay €49 per year (Prime is called "Premium" in France) with free two-hour deliveries and €6 for one-hour shipping. Besides groceries, the company will ship "thousands" of other products like Kindles and electronics. However, it's the food deliveries that have Paris and its mayor, Anne Hidalgo, most upset. "This service could seriously destabilize the retail balance in Paris," she says.
Google's Paris HQ raided by French tax authorities
French authorities have raided Google's Paris headquarters as part of an ongoing investigation into the company's tax affairs in the country. In February, reports claimed the government believed Google owed 1.6-billion Euros ($1.2-billion) in back taxes. According to The Guardian, investigators were on the scene at Google's Paris headquarter at around 5am this morning, with the raid involving up to 100 investigators, reports in Le Parisien.
Paris looks to Instagrammers to boost city museum visits
Maybe you've heard the term "influencer." It's the moniker marketers have given to the heavy hitters of social media with considerable follower counts (often in the tens or hundreds of thousands). You know, the Kendall and Gigis currently dominating our world. Well, Paris Musées, the public institution that oversees 14 of the city's municipal museums, has cottoned on to this new media wave and is turning to Instagram as a platform to raise awareness and boost museum attendance. To promote its recently launched site, which houses a searchable digital collection of all the museums' works, Paris Musées has commissioned 10 Instagrammers from various art backgrounds to re-create or reinterpret some of these iconic works.
French authorities investigate suicide broadcast via Periscope
In another intersection of internet livestreaming and tragedy, French police are investigating the suicide of a teenager that was apparently broadcast on Periscope. The New York Times reports that a 19 year-old woman threw herself in front of a train at the Égly station (25 miles south of Paris) Tuesday afternoon, at the end of five streaming sessions totaling nearly two hours. French paper Metro says she told viewers they would "see something" around 4PM. During the broadcasts, a viewer asked if she was going to kill herself, and she responded "No," but also said nothing could make her get up in the morning. Prosecutor Éric Lallement said in a statement that she sent a text to a close friend, saying that her actions came as a result of evil, in the form of violence and rape, inflicted upon her by an ex-boyfriend.
Paris police want drones to watch over crowds
Paris' police force is understandably anxious about crowd security as of late, and it's turning to technology in a bid to track threats hiding in those groups. It's planning to buy hexacopter drones that would be used for close crowd surveillance. The machines will have to meet very specific criteria: they'll have to clearly spot a license plate from 50m (164ft) away, fly at altitudes of 100m (328ft), require no more than 5 days of training and use encrypted connections to avoid hacks. In essence, they have to serve as an extra set of eyes that law enforcement can use without a moment's hesitation.
Supreme Court decision may derail Obama's emissions pledge
At the Paris climate talks, President Obama pledged that America, historically the world's biggest polluter, would reduce its carbon emissions 32 percent by 2030. However, the Supreme Court has ruled that it will not enforce his Clean Power Plan, now under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The court voted along party lines, with the five conservative judges ruling that states don't have to start making emissions cuts until lower courts rule on pending challenges.
Uber shuts down its app in Paris to support driver protest
Uber will suspend its service in Paris today between 11 AM and 3 PM in support of a driver protest against proposed legislation from the French government. So far, the company has distanced itself from the conflict, but said it will shut down its app in support of its Paris drivers, the first time it has ever done so. The issue, of course, is about private chauffeur services and apps like Uber versus traditional taxis. The government banned the UberPop service last year, so there are no longer concerns over non-professional drivers. However, it now wants to stop a group of minicab chauffeurs from using Uber and other apps.
Our Google searches are defined by tragedy and entertainment
Nothing signals Christmas like Google's year in search lists, and this year it's gotten a lot more visual thanks to the search giant's fledgling News Lab and Trends. Sadly, the most-searched topic globally in 2015 was terrorism in Paris, thanks to the January Charlie Hebdo and November 13th attacks in the French capital. Together, the two incidents resulted in 900 million Google searches, over twice as many as the next most-sought event, the Oscars. Rounding out the top five topics were the cricket and rugby world cups and Star Wars.
Facebook's 2015 review video puts the year in perspective
One of the internet's greatest achievements is its ability to connect disparate global communities in discussion and, at times, compassion -- and a lot of that conversation takes place on Facebook. The company's Year in Review, a video and list released today, outlines the top 10 stories of 2015, including the US presidential election, Paris terrorist attacks, Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, Nepal earthquakes, Baltimore protests, and marriage equality. It's a snapshot of a year with extreme peaks and valleys, ultimate joy and devastation.
Sometimes silence speaks louder than Twitter
On November 13th, when a group of terrorists murdered 130 people in Paris without justification, I said nothing. Their aim was to provoke fear and chaos in the western world, and to cause tensions between otherwise peaceful peoples to spill into violence. And in response, I said nothing. The attack unfolded in front of near-constant background chatter from the peanut gallery that is the internet, but still I said nothing. I wanted to -- I wanted to join in, help out, and say something useful or comforting or meaningful. But in the end, I decided to say nothing at all.
Experience the Paris vigils using the New York Times' VR app
The New York Times launched its virtual reality news app last month, and in the wake of the Paris attacks last week, it's giving readers a glimpse at the heartbeat of the city. The NYT VR app allows viewers to experience the vigils taking place in Paris, offering people in other parts of the world a look at some of the stories unfolding in the days following the tragic events. While The New York Times' use of VR is still in the early stages, it's already showing its potential. NYT VR provides a platform where readers are better able to relate to events and stories by stepping inside them rather than simply reading about them. "Our mission as journalists is to answer questions," an article accompanying the video explains. "In this case, we sought to answer the question of how a city gathers itself and begins moving forward." If you don't have access to a VR headset, you can watch the interactive piece via 360-degree videos on both Facebook and YouTube. [Image credit: LightRocket via Getty Images]
