Frustrated commuters in Toronto blast Uber and Lyft for higher fares, movie theatre trips were less popular this Thanksgiving, and a new documentary highlights the journey of a single Playboy photo and its impact on the tech industry.
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It was another snowy day in Toronto, meaning another public transit meltdown. But instead of shaking their fists at public transportation, angry commuters directed their anger at the “surge pricing” attached to the Uber and Lyft platforms. As commuters ditched the buses and subways for ride share apps, Twitter quickly exploded with the shocking prices. One person noted a usual trip to work with Uber costs roughly 17 bucks – today, that number spiked to $63 for the UberX option. The subway delays were caused by a wooden cover board making contact with the subway system’s third rail, according to a TTC spokesperson.
Thanksgiving wasn’t the hit cinemas in the U.S. and Canada were expecting this year. According to research firm Comscore, movie theatres across the continent raked in $264 million in tickets, 16 per cent less than last year. While the bad weather was a legitimate excuse in certain areas, LinkedIn is buzzing about the ongoing effect streaming services like Netflix are having on the movie theatre industry. In response to shrinking revenue, Cineplex announced last week it plans to launch a new entertainment complex called Junxion. Canada’s largest movie theatre chain says the new space will include six auditoriums and a lobby for performances and other events.
And lastly, trending on Twitter is the recent launch of a new documentary called “Losing Lena” which focuses on the many small ways in which women are told they don’t belong in tech. The story begins with a Swedish woman named Lena Soderberg, who was on the cover of the November 1972 issue of Playboy. The following year, engineers at the University of Southern California’s Signal and Image Processing Institute used the cover photo to test new image-compression software. The photo was used for similar pilots years later, and even as the tech and engineers working with new software changed, the Lena image did not. As the movie’s producer Francesca Walker says “It was an image problem that expanded beyond gender.” The film was produced by several Australian agencies on behalf of Creatable and Code Like a Girl. The half-hour doc launched on Facebook Watch on Nov. 26.
