AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: Minicab drivers will launch a legal bid to uncover secret computer algorithms used by Uber to manage their work in a test case that could increase transparency for millions of gig economy workers across Europe. Two UK drivers are demanding to see the huge amounts of data the ride-sharing company collects on them and…
Tag: pay
‘Mozilla VPN’ Launches in Six Countries
“Starting today, there’s a VPN on the market from a company you trust,” Mozilla announced Wednesday. Mozilla VPN is now officially available for Windows and Android in six countries: the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Singapore, Malaysia, and New Zealand, and it’ll be coming to even more countries later this year, reports the Verge: The service is available for $4.99 a month,…
Stockton Basic Income Program Extended. Is Support For the Idea Growing?
A $500-a-month basic-income program in Stockton, California will be extended through 2021 “in response to the economic strain put on participants by the coronavirus pandemic,” reports the New Yorker:
While the idea of extending the program had been under discussion even before the spread of COVID-19, Stockton’s mayor, Michael Tubbs told me that current conditions made doing so a “moral imperative,” as…
Is Microsoft Planning To Phase Out Xbox Live Gold?
Yesterday, a Microsoft rep confirmed that the option to purchase 12 months of Xbox Live Gold has been removed from the Microsoft Store. That’s exactly a week ahead of the July 23 games presentation, where Microsoft could be announcing a plan to phase out the subscription service altogether with the launch of Xbox Series X. Inverse reports: “At this time Xbox…
Suspect Is Arrested In Grisly Killing of Tech CEO Fahim Saleh
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The former personal assistant of a young tech entrepreneur found decapitated and dismembered in his Manhattan apartment was arrested early on Friday and was expected to be charged in the killing, according to three officials briefed on the matter. The entrepreneur, Fahim Saleh, 33, was discovered dead on Tuesday afternoon…
Verizon Has Turned To Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI To Automate Phone Calls
Verizon has turned to Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI to automate its customer-service phone calls and chatbot conversations. The Register reports: The Contact Center AI technology will, we’re told, use natural-language recognition to transcribe on-the-fly customers as they talk down the line. This speech-to-text output will be fed into Dialogflow, a platform that parses the text and generates responses in real-time….
Why Did a Tech Executive Install 1,000 Security Cameras Around San Francisco?
The New York Times explains why Chris Larsen installed over a thousand surveillance cameras around San Francisco to monitor 135 city blocks:
It sounds sinister. A soft-spoken cryptocurrency mogul is paying for a private network of high-definition security cameras around the city. Zoom in and you can see the finest details: the sticker on a cellphone, the make of a backpack,…
Right to Repair Advocates Accuse Medical Device Manufacturers of Profiteering
A new Motherboard article interviews William, a ventilator refurbisher who’s repaired at least 70 broken ventilators that he’s bought on eBay and from other secondhand websites, then sold to U.S. hospitals and governments to help handle a spike in COVID-19 patients. He’s part of a grey-market supply chain that’s “essentially identical to one used by farmers to repair John Deere tractors…
Nearly 70,000 Tech Startup Employees Have Lost Their Jobs Since March
Technology startups have been laying off tens of thousands of workers to cope with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, potentially blunting a key innovation pipeline for the enterprise information-technology market, according to industry analysts. From a report: “Startups are a great source of innovation in the IT industry, but are now especially cash constrained,” said Max Azaham, a senior…
Amazon Will Pay $135,000 To Settle Alleged US Sanction Violations
In a statement (PDF) issued this week, the U.S. Treasury Department notes that Amazon has agreed to pay $134,523 to settle potential liability over alleged sanctions violations. TechCrunch reports: The charges specifically pertain to goods and services sent to people located in Crimea, Iran and Syria, which are covered by Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions, between November 2011 and…