Technology

This December a set of autonomous vehicles will start roaming the streets of Columbus, Ohio, in an effort to turn this bustling Midwestern community into the first smart city. The project, which is part of the Smart Columbus and DriveOhio initiatives, is the first step in launching a fully autonomous shuttle route in the city.

&We&re proud to have the first self-driving shuttle in Ohio being tested on the streets of Columbus,& said Mayor Andrew J. Ginther. &This pilot will shape future uses of this emerging technology in Columbus and the nation. Residents win when we add more mobility options to our transportation ecosystem & making it easier to get to work, school or local attractions.&

Michigan-based May Mobility provided the shuttles and the team is training the autonomous vehicles to navigate Columbus streets. May Mobility already launched their vehicles in Detroit and this is the second full implementation of the tech.

The six-seater electric shuttles will follow a 3 mile route through downtown Columbus and the vehicles will start picking up passengers on December 1. Rides are free. May Mobility has already performed over 10,000 successful trips in Detroit. In Columbus the shuttles will drive the Scioto Mile loop, a scenic route through the city and by the Ohio River. A large digital display will show system information and there will be a single operator to oversee the trip and take control in case of emergency.

Founder Edwin Olson is a robotics professor at the University of Michigan and his team won the original DARPA challenge in 2007.

&Cities are seeking cost-effective transportation services that will improve congestion in urban cores, and self-driving shuttles can offer a huge relief,& he said. &As we work toward a future where people can drive less and live more, we&re thrilled to be working with partners from Columbus to provide a new transportation experience that will make traveling through Columbus safe, reliable and personal.&

Columbus won the $40 million Smart City Challenge in June 2016 to test and implement smart city tech.

Think Ethereum and other crypto coins are overvalued Now you can make money when their prices fall via Compound, which is launching its money market protocol for shorting cryptocurrencies today. The Coinbase and Andreessen Horowitz-funded startup today opens its simple web interface allowing users to borrow and short Ethereum, 0xZRX, BraveBAT, and AugurREP token, or lend them through Compound to earn interest.

Compoundprotocol isn&t just useful for crypto haters, or HODLers who want to generate interest instead of just having their coins gathering dust in a wallet. &If/whenCompoundscales, this will lead to some really interesting improvements in market structure, namely, fairer prices& Compound CEO Robert Leshner tells me.

The startup spent the summer completing a security audit by Trail Of Bits and adding 26 hedge fund partners who will trade with Compound, offering liquidity to independent investors looking to be matched with borrowers or lenders. Next, the startup wants to offer a stablecoin on its protocol, bring in big financial institutions to add even more liquidity, and partner with a wallet provider to make signup faster.

Compound users visit its site through a Web3 browser such as MetaMask or Coinbase Wallet and enter their Ethereum price. They can then view the interest rates for borrowing and shorting or lending and earning interest for each of the supported tokens. Compoundsecret sauce is that those interest rates are set algorithmically based on demand, though eventually it wants a community governance body to oversee this process. &It ranges from 5 percent to 45 percent APR depending on how scarce liquidity is . . . in general, we expect supply to outnumber borrowing about 5-1, and borrowing rates to be about 10 percent&.

To make sure no one thinks they&re getting scammed, Compound is also releasing a transparency dashboard users can view to check up on all the assets moving through the protocol and see what Compound is earning. It charges 10 percent of what borrowers pay in interest, with the rest going to the lender. That margin is what attracted the $8.2 seed round for Compound that also included Polychain Capital and Bain Capital Ventures.

It could also make crypto exchanges like Coinbase or Robinhood less attractive to users because leaving their coins there comes with the opportunity cost of not lending them for profit. Meanwhile, shorts could pop the volatile crypto bubble and push prices to more sensible and stable levels. Thatmarket health is a critical precursor to big banks and traditional investors diving into crypto.

[Disclosure: The author owns small positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum, but has no financial motive for writing this article, did not make trades in the week prior to this article, and doesn not plan to make trades in the 72 hours following publication.]

Slowly but surely, Google is expanding its portfolio of travel offerings that now range from hotel- and flight-booking services to trip planning tools. Today, itlaunching yet another set of new travel features that focus on travel planning and hotel bookings.

Maybe the most interesting new tool, especially if you are planning to travel over the holidays, is a new landing page that shows you when to best book your flights ahead of Thanksgiving, the December holidays and New Yearbased on 2017price changes. The tool is a bit limited in the number of city pairs it supports, but if you plan to fly on one of the 25 supported routes, then it could definitely save you a few dollars (assuming this yearprice trends are comparable to last year&s).

The same page will also show you hotel deals, though thatmore of a lead-generation tool for Google Maps& hotel search feature, which many people probably don&t yet know about.

Once you have decided on a destination, Googlenew hotel location score can then help you find the neighborhood thatbest for you. The score summarizes information like nearby bars, landmarks and access to public transportation based on data from Google Maps. It&ll also tell you how to get to and from the airport, which is a smart addition.

Come October, Google will also launchYour Trips, a new feature that&ll help you organize your travel plans. Your Trips is not a new feature, but when this update goes live, it&ll collect all of your flight price tracking, hotel research and everything else you may have saved about a potential trip in one place. Ita bit like Inbox(RIP) trip bundles, but for trips that you are still planning.

And finally, if you perform a regular search for a popular travel destination in Google Search, the result page will automatically highlight these trip-planning features, including day plans and articles about the destination. Once you start booking a trip, these results will also include information about your bookings and additional information based on this data.