Uber drivers with low ratings can get deactivated from the Uber platform. Now, passengers who consistently get well below a five-star rating will get the same treatment. 

This feature already rolled out in Australia, New Zealand, and India, and now passengers in the U.S. and Canada need to think more about how they act as ride-share users. As part of an effort to make rides safer and more respectful, starting Wednesday unruly passengers can lose access to the Uber app.

It varies from city to city, but just like drivers, if riders fall below an average minimum rating, they’ll be booted from the platform. That means no more ride requests or pickups.

This should only affect a small percentage of riders, Uber spokespeople assured, and for anyone at risk of getting booted off you’ll get fair warning and tips and advice to improve your rating. To see your current rating, open the Uber app and click on the top left-side menu. Under your name is your star-rating that goes up to 5.0. If you click on your rating, you can learn more about Uber’s policy and what you can do to increase the likelihood of receiving five stars after every ride.

The threat of deactivation is supposed to encourage better ridership and pinpoint users that consistently behave poorly, whether that’s leaving trash behind, using vulgar or aggressive language, or forcing drivers to speed or run red lights. 

The U.S. and Canada rider deactivations are part of Uber’s updated community guidelines, also released Wednesday. Starting today, the guidelines are laid out in a clearer, more visual format with simpler language with an emphasis on “safety and respect for all.” For anyone who wants the full text, that still exists.

SEE ALSO: Uber introduces minimum rating requirements for riders, so don’t be a jerk

To make sure everyone actually pays attention to Uber’s expectations of getting into a car or ordering food through its platform, everyone who uses Uber will see a large in-app message appear about the updated community guidelines. At some point you need to click “I understand” to continue onto the usual app. Uber wants to make it clear what they expect from everyone using the app for rides, bike rentals, restaurant pickups, and more.

So once you know what’s expected of you, it should be all five-star ratings from here on out – no pressure.

Metal Mario has a need for speed and he finally has an outlet for it now that he’s going to be a Hot Wheels toy.

Metal Mario is joining the Mario Kart Hot Wheels lineup this summer, ready to race regular flesh Mario and the rest of the non-metallic gang on the bright orange tracks. 

Take a look at him, paraglider and all:

If we’re talking metallic Mario Kart racers, Metal Mario has gotta be one of the top metallic racers out there. Sure, Pink Gold Peach is a good one too, but Metal Mario is the original, debuting back in 1996 in Super Mario 64.

SEE ALSO: ‘Super Mario Maker 2’ hands-on: What a delight

This particular Metal Mario Hot Wheels toy is inspired by the character in Mario Kart 8 with a matching metallic kart and paraglider to match.

The Metal Mario toy will be available online for $20 starting June 17 on Hasbro’s website and will be coming to San Diego Comic-Con on July 17.

Superhero stories have taught us that surviving the worst circumstances can be powerfully transformative, like Tony Stark building the first Iron Man suit or Bruce Wayne becoming Batman. But the reality is not so glorious. There’s nothing noble about living with trauma. Usually, it’s messy and painful and littered with regressions and false steps.

Doom Patrol is a show all about the parts that aren’t so easily squared away. The titular superhero team may have remarkable abilities, but their unruly powers came at extreme cost. For each of them, their mutations are a result of a life-altering incident that irrevocably altered their life.

They’ve been brought together over the span of decades by Dr. Niles Caulder (Timothy Dalton), dubbed “The Chief,” who saves them in one way or another, and brings them to stay in his mansion. He gives them a safe space surrounded by others as fragile as they are so they can regain their sense of self. 

When he’s captured by Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk) at the start of the season, the group is forced to move from fragile co-existence to co-dependence, throwing them into disarray as they contemplate facing the outside world without The Chief’s guidance and support.

During the team’s first excursion away from the mansion, Larry (Matt Bomer), wrapped in bandages head-to-toe to hide his burned skin, anxiously stares out from the safety of the team’s bus. He hadn’t left the mansion in years, and going out into society was never his strong suit to begin with. He gathers his courage and makes a move. 

It’s a process I’m very familiar with.

When I was a teenager, I was bullied to the point of becoming suicidal. Starting as a friend’s boyfriend, my bully tore through my social circle in a violent haze of entitlement and adolescent rage over the course of a year, with me one of his main victims. I’d miss school because he was waiting outside my mom’s apartment to attack me. He’d send menacing texts and turn any interaction into an attempt at coercion. I’m still not sure why I became one of his foremost targets. I think a lack of self-esteem just made me easy prey. He knew he could, so he did.

Doom Patrol is a superhero show that understands that the longest, greatest battles we face are against ourselves.

Most of the Doom Patrol’s squad are products of questionable decisions, unfair choices and some astonishingly bad luck. Cliff’s (Brendan Fraser) adultery tore his family apart, the fateful crash that made him a brain in a robot suit tragically occurring as he and his wife were starting to reconcile. Rita (April Bowlby) may have been hard-nosed and manipulative, but she was playing by the patriarchal rules of classic Hollywood. Larry was living a double-life because being a successful Air Force pilot and queer were incompatible with each other in the 1960s.

Traumatic events can leave us wishing we’d done things differently, blaming ourselves within warped perceptions of who we even are anymore. There isn’t always a better choice, and victims are not to blame for the behavior of abusers. I wasn’t the nicest person, I’d a selfish streak not unlike Rita’s, but that doesn’t make what happened right or excuse the friends that sat idly by. “Ah, lads, be friends,” one quipped after I was told to kill myself. They probably didn’t think he was being serious, but I knew he was, and I have their indifference as mentally ingrained as anything my bully did.

He assaulted me twice – once punching me to the ground outside the local girl’s high-school when I lost my temper with him, and again at a Blink-182 concert three years later. Finding me in the audience, he blamed me for him ending up in prison and elbowed me twice in the face so hard it broke the skin. I still have the scar.

I’d considered fighting back that second time. I decided against it in the moment because I figured if I let him do what he was going to do he’d stop. I’ve seen him twice in the nine years since then, and despite him shouting to make sure I saw him, he hasn’t laid another finger on me.

What makes the Doom Patrol remarkable is that, when we first meet them, they’re people similarly downtrodden. They’re broken and beaten down, taking life day by day with as little discomfort as possible, trying to get used to these weird powers they’ve been cursed with. Existence has become its own kind of morose punishment for who they were. 

Their triumph — their heroism — is in the slow march towards accepting that what they’ve become doesn’t lessen who they are and deciding to face their demons, and Mr. Nobody, regardless of the outcome. If it all goes wrong, well at least they tried, and did so on their terms.

SEE ALSO: DC Universe’s ‘Swamp Thing’ drops an intriguing first trailer

Nowadays, I’ve become used to the tinge of fear when I leave the house. Most times I shrug it off, like Larry leaving that bus. But some days are like Jane (Diane Guerrero) defiantly screaming at the massive internal projection of her abusive father in “Jane Patrol.” Others, I’m too exhausted to bother. Doom Patrol is a superhero show that understands that the longest, greatest battles we face are against ourselves.

Our disparate protagonists resist connection because solitude is comfortable when living with this kind of anguish. Vulnerability might lead to people wanting to talk about it, like Cliff does to Jane after seeing the underground, and that means risking more manipulation and heartache. But being alone eventually becomes a cage from which you watch the rest of the world with only your pain for company. 

I feel Jane’s level of discomfort, though not quite with the same animosity. This piece, in itself, is an exercise in rebutting my own secrecy and making what happened to me known. Silence only favors the oppressive, and I am tired of keeping myself down.

“I assure you there are many monsters in this world, and none of them, not a one, is you,” Dr. Caulder tells Cliff in the opening episode. Perhaps Doom Patrol‘s most heroic accomplishment is making one believe that that just might be true.

It was over in a split second.

With a tap of her iPhone XS to the new OMNY contactless payment terminals installed on the turnstiles at the Grand Central Terminal-42nd Street station, an Apple executive showed me how fast and easy it is to use Apple Pay to purchase a subway ride. 

Then she did it again, but this time tapped her Apple Watch to the terminal instead. As the terminal’s blue lights switched from blue to green and displayed a “GO” on its screen, I couldn’t help but get a little excited for the death of the MetroCard.

SEE ALSO: NYC subway will soon accept Google Pay at select turnstiles

MetroCards (if you aren’t familiar with them already) are the flimsy yellow transit cards used to ride New York City’s subway and buses. Even if you’re a veteran “swiper,” the MetroCard often malfunctions if you don’t swipe it with just the right amount of force and at an even speed. Yes, really.

OMNY is the beginning of the end of the janky MetroCard. The contactless payment system launches on Friday and is rolling out to subway stations on the 4, 5, and 6 lines between Grand Central and Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center and all buses in Staten Island.

There’s one big catch at launch: OMNY won’t support commuter passes.

Paying for a subway ride with your phone or smartwatch is really quick and way less of a hassle than fishing out a MetroCard and swiping it. But there’s one big catch at launch: OMNY won’t support commuter passes such as the discounted 30-day Unlimited MetroCard that lets you take as many rides as you want per day, only single-ride, full-fare tickets.

The MTA, which operates the New York City subway, says other fare options won’t be added until “late 2020” when it expects OMNY terminals to be installed at all stations.

“Until late 2020, when it’s available throughout the entire subway system and on all bus routes, you’ll only be able to use OMNY on a full-fare, pay-per-ride basis,” the MTA states on its website. “We’ll add more fare options, including time-based passes, reduced fares, student fares, and more, at that point.” 

Mashable reached out to the MTA to get clarification on why it needs to wait until terminals are installed at all subway stations before other fare options like a monthly pass can be added. An MTA spokesperson said the company’s rolling out OMNY as a public beta and didn’t want to abruptly kill the MetroCard and cause any confusion. The plan is to phase out the MetroCard by 2023.

For New Yorkers like myself, who rely on the monthly commuter pass to get around the city’s five boroughs, this is a huge bummer since it means we can’t ditch our MetroCards just yet. 

However, for visitors and tourists, OMNY is going to be a game-changer. Instead of having to wait in long lines at a kiosk to buy a single-fare MetroCard or deal with the many issues these old ticket machines are saddled with (like “no cash accepted”), they’ll be able to use their smartphones and smartwatches to pay for a ride with just a tap.

In a demo ahead of OMNY’s launch, Apple showed me how easy it is to setup “Apple Pay Express Transit” and then tap-to-pay with an iPhone or Apple Watch. The only real requirement is a compatible device (iPhone SE, iPhone 6S or newer or Apple Watch Series 1 or newer) and the latest software, iOS 12.3 and watchOS 5.2.1.

iPhone users need only go into “Wallet & Apple Pay” within the Settings app and then assign an Apple Pay-connected debit or credit card as an “Express Transit Card.” If you’ve got an Apple Watch, the Express Transit Card setting automatically transfers over. And that’s it.

Once you’ve got Apple Pay Express Transit set up, paying for a ride with an iPhone or Apple Watch is literally a tap on an OMNY terminal. 

Unlike other Apple Pay transactions, you don’t need to double-tap your iPhone’s power button to bring up your Apple Pay-connected card at the terminal and you don’t have to authenticate the ride payment with Touch ID or Face ID. The same goes for Apple Watch.

From the off and locked screen, you just tap your iPhone or Apple Watch to the OMNY terminal and your Apple Pay-connected card appears if the payment goes through. A digital receipt confirmation is sent to you afterwards. Once paid, the terminal screen should say “GO” and then you’re good to pass through the turnstile. 

In the below video, you can see how easy and fast OMNY and Apple Pay Express Transit works on iPhone:

And here’s how it works on Apple Watch:

Now, I realize the ability to pay for a subway or bus ride with your phone or smartwatch isn’t exactly new. Japan’s public transportation has supported Apple Pay Express Transit with iPhone via Suica since 2016 and Beijing and Shanghai also support the mobile payment with their own transit cards. 

Other cities’ transportation systems, including London’s TfL and the Moscow Metro, also work with Apple Pay, but not with Express Transit, which means users need to “authenticate ride purchases with Face ID, Touch ID, or passcode” according to Apple.

In the U.S., though, this is new stuff. Earlier this month, Portland’s TriMet became the first U.S. city to accept Apple Pay Express Transit. However, launching for New York City’s 115-year-old subway system, which moves over 5.5 million people daily, is arguably a much bigger deal. Chicago’s next for Apple Pay Express Transit, but Apple has’t announced any additional information beyond that it’s coming later this year.

While my demo of OMNY demonstrated how mobile transit payments work with Apple devices, the terminals will also work with Android devices as well. At launch, OMNY will also work with both Google Pay and Samsung Pay. 

Google Pay appears to work similarly to Apple Pay Express Transit with riders able to pay with their phones without having to open any additional apps. Samsung Pay is clunkier, though. According to the company, users will need to “swipe up to activate Samsung Pay, authenticate with your fingerprint, iris or PIN, and hold your phone near the OMNY reader.”

Mobile payments are big step towards modernizing New York City’s subway and bus system, but not launching with any commuter pass support is disappointing and limits the usefulness of the contactless terminals. Portland’s Hop app, which does support various fare options, is a glimpse of things to come for New York City, but for now the MetroCard will live on — for at least another year and a half.