Alamo Drafthouse, a small movie theater chain known for its anti-texting stance and general coolness, scheduled a special women-only showing of the summer superhero film Wonder Woman. This seemed like a fun one-off idea, but the idea has met some resistance, particularly online. Now a law professor who specializes in employment discrimination and sexual orientation law is filing a complaint with the city, claiming that the showing may be violating the city’s own laws. [More]
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Austin’s First SXSW Without Uber And Lyft Not Going Well
By 3.13.17
Ride-hailing apps Uber and Lyft exited Austin last May, meaning hundreds of thousands of attendees at the currently running South By Southwest festival are seeking new ways to get around the Texas capital. Unfortunately, some say the companies trying to fill the Uber/Lyft void are not ready for the big time. [More]
AT&T To Start Using DirecTV Now To Test 5G Tech
By 1.4.17
The future is wireless. At least, so all the wireless companies say. Sure, running actual cables to houses and apartment buildings brought broadband this far, but the always-on, always-streaming future is just going to get more and more mobile. And so the current era of 4G LTE wireless connections will eventually give way to 5G, which promises to be faster, better, and stronger in every way. But before you can use 5G tech, first you have to make it, you know, work. [More]
Austin City Councilman Sues Mayor To Overturn New Ride-Hailing App Ordinance
By 6.20.16
A new law requiring drivers for ride-hailing services to undergo a city background check, including fingerprinting, led the two leading companies in the industry, Uber and Lyft, to pull out of the Austin market, leaving passengers rideless and around 10,000 drivers jobless. Now a city councilman who was against the original law has filed a lawsuit against the city. [More]
Former Uber And Lyft Drivers In Austin Sue Over Abrupt Pullout
By 6.10.16
In Austin, TX last month, city voters approved a ballot measure that would require drivers for ride-hailing apps to pass city background checks and be fingerprinted. Both companies immediately pulled out of the city, suddenly leaving thousands of workers, many of whom were driving for their full-time jobs, out of work. Now drivers are suing the companies, alleging that they were owed notice under the WARN Act. [More]
People Don’t Really Want To Live Next To A Vacation Rental Party House
By 10.9.15
It’s not that people in residential neighborhoods don’t like tourists, or that they don’t want their neighbors to make money by occasionally renting out their homes on AirBNB or HomeAway. It’s that they didn’t sign up to live next to a party hotel, and services that let people rent out their homes very easily also make it super-easy to buy an ordinary house and turn it into a party rental. [More]
Google Takes Self-Driving Prototypes To Texas For More Testing
By 7.7.15
Google is taking its driverless car technology on the road: after unleashing a new generation self-driving prototypes on the streets near its California home recently, the company says there’s a new driverless vehicles that will be tooling around Austin, TX. [More]
Thought Of Comcast Merger Scares AT&T Into Expanding Gigabit Fiber Service
By 3.7.14
Dallas is AT&T’s home turf. It’s cable market is also dominated by Time Warner Cable. But the thought of that cable/Internet business being swallowed up by Comcast if its merger with TWC goes through was apparently enough to get AT&T to decide to roll out gigabit fiber service to the Texas town. [More]
Aereo Launching Next Week In Austin
By 2.24.14
Only days after a federal court in Utah issued an injunction halting Aereo service in six states — and a showdown with broadcasters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on the horizon — streaming video startup Aereo continues to expand, announcing a launch date and channel lineup for TV viewers in Austin. [More]
Real Competition From Google Or Window-Dressing For FCC? Time Warner Cable Improves Speeds In Austin
By 2.20.14
Here are two facts: Google Fiber is coming to Austin, and Time Warner Cable is being bought by Comcast. The question is: Which one of these two facts is the cause for TWC’s significantly ramped-up service in the Texas capital? [More]
Video: Restaurant Mocks Drone Trend, Uses Flying Bot To Chop Celery, Take Out Trash
By 1.3.14
While Amazon and others prepare to darken the skies with the flying robots that will one day enslave all humanity and turn us into organic batteries, some restaurants have already opened the door to the pernicious plague of aerial drones. Now one Austin eatery has produced a video showing all the ways in which it employs the hovering harbingers of the robo-pocalypse. [More]
AT&T Offers $70 (Sort-Of) Gigabit Internet… If You Let It Snoop On Your Browsing History
By 12.11.13
AT&T has finally kicked off its gigabit Internet service in some parts of Austin, and is offering people high-speed fiber access “for as low as $70 a month.**” See those two stars? They’re kind of important, as the only way you’re getting that $70 price is if you sign up for a program that gives AT&T access to your web browsing habits so it can serve you up even more ads. [More]
Why New Fiber Networks Are Required To Shatter Monopolies Of Comcast & Other ISPs
By 10.2.13
It’s one thing if a company earns a dominant market share in a region because consumers have voted with their wallets and decided that Company X is the best around and it’s the only one they want. It’s another when, in the case of the cable industry, that monopoly isn’t earned, but is instead the result of outdated regulations that force a certain company on consumers based on ZIP code. The introduction of higher-speed fiber-optic networks like Google Fiber and AT&T’s new experiment in Austin may shatter the concrete feet of a cable colossus like Comcast. [More]
McDonald’s Tries To Healthy-Up The McMuffin With “Egg White Delight”
By 11.16.12
Since the dawn of Yuppies, people have been asking for egg-white omelets and other egg-white only options for their breakfasts. It took a while, but McDonald’s is finally dipping its toes into the egg white water with tests of something called the Egg White Delight. [More]
Austin Realizes Not Everyone Loves Junk Mail, Gives People Way To Opt Out
By 4.20.12
Contrary to the opinion of Nevada Senator Harry Reid, not everyone view junk mail as an indispensable conduit between elderly Americans and the outside world. In fact, most of us would rather do without it. That’s why officials in Austin took time off from rehearsing with their ska/bluegrass fusion trios to become the latest city to give residents a way to opt out of receiving unwanted mail. [More]
Packaging-Free Grocery Store To Open In Texas
By 6.27.11
While there are plenty of farmers’ markets or bulk spice shops you can go to buy fresh goods with zero packaging, some entrepreneurs in Austin, TX, are aiming to open what they say is the first 100% packaging-free grocery store in the country. [More]
Time Warner Shuts Off Heavy User's Account With No Warning
By 4.24.09
While they’ve temporarily shelved metered broadband plans, Time Warner is cutting off, with no warning, the accounts of customers who they deem have used too much bandwidth. One such customer lives in Austin, TX, one of the original markets slated for metered broadband. Stop The Cap has the story, and an excerpt is inside.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car Is Unsurprisingly Useless And Full Of Lies
By 4.11.09
Enterprise Rent-A-Car failed reader Jimmy in every possible way, which is quite the accomplishment since he only wanted a full size car to drive around his visiting friends. GEICO, Jimmy’s insurance company, set him up with Enterprise after he lost a head-on collision with a deer. Enterprise managed to muck up nearly every step of the rental process, promising to deliver cars they didn’t have, delivering the wrong class of car, and upselling unnecessary insurance that they wrongly said GEICO would cover. Jimmy’s never going to use Enterprise again, and inside, you’ll see why…
