Culture

Automakers are getting closer to Silicon Valley, both in the products thay make and the companies they work with. But the people are from different worlds.

Test rides with real passengers could start within the next few months.

Yes, there's a real chance you wouldn't even be alive to see the day when driverless rides hit New York roads.

Make sure to read the fine print.

One step forward, one step back?

Didi, the Chinese ride-hailing service, is worth more than 1.5 times the 2015 NASA budget.

The Google car team has recently been teaching the car's AI when and how to honk the horn and give the human drivers on the road a helpful heads up.

Companies are using balloons, planes and other high-tech apparatuses to provide WiFi in underserved areas. In Australia, they're using Land Cruisers.

One reporter used New York City's open data and Google Maps to determine that the NYPD was issuing thousands of tickets on streets where parking is legal.

The "Flyboard Air" from inventor Franky Zapata is real, spectacular and just set a world record for the longest hoverboard flight of all time.

Uber clarified that tipping isn't expected or required, citing a hassle-free experience as to why it doesn't give riders the option to add a tip to their fares.

Juno has a simple solution for improving the ride-sharing experience: better drivers.

The automaker plans to develop "predictive, contextual, and intuitive services" that aim to making the technology you use while driving less intrusive.

A new partnership with Gobank will let Uber pay its drivers right after each ride, instead of once a week.

Open up Google Maps in the browser and you'll notice that the yellow Pegman now looks like Link.

With an artistic industry driven by business, as enterprise goes, so goes art -- so when a prime mover goes down, it takes prime art with it. The reduction in General Motor's fortunes also means that Detroit's cultural institutions can collectively expect to lose more than $1 million in annual funding. In 2007, GM's worldwide giving amounted to $31.4 million dollars, with Michigan institutions alone receiving $12 million of that.

A culture's fears always finds its way into that culture's media. The best example is probably the allegories of McCarthyism in the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Peak Oil and climate change have seen their share of movie dramatizations, but Mad Max and The Day After Tomorrow were more cartoon-ish than terrifying.

Update: While Mrs. Hilton did buy a hybrid, Pop Fiction actually provided her with a Land Rover to pull the pranks.