A US intelligence report has found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder of exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. BBC: The declassified report released by the Biden administration says the prince approved a plan to either capture or kill the US-based Saudi exile. It is the first time America has publicly named the crown prince, who denies…
Tag: uber
Anthony Levandowski Closes His Church of AI
The first church of artificial intelligence has shut its conceptual doors. From a report: Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer who avoided an 18-month prison sentence after receiving a presidential pardon last month, has closed the church he created to understand and accept a godhead based on artificial intelligence. The Way of the Future church, which Levandowski formed in 2015, was…
Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine Just Got a Lot Easier to Distribute
Pfizer and BioNTech “have asked the U.S. health regulator to relax requirements for their COVID-19 vaccine to be stored at ultra-low temperatures, potentially allowing it to be kept in pharmacy freezers,” reports Reuters, which adds that approval “could send a strong signal to other regulators around the world that may ease distribution of the shot in lower-income countries.” Slashdot reader FrankOVD…
Uber Loses Gig Workers Rights Challenge in UK Supreme Court
Uber has lost a long running employment tribunal challenge in the UK’s Supreme Court — with the court dismissing the ride-hailing giant’s appeal and reaffirming earlier rulings that drivers who brought the case are workers, not independent contractors. From a report: The case, which dates back to 2016, has major ramifications for Uber’s business model (and other gig economy platforms) in…
Biofuel-Powered Rocket Makes Historic Launch in Maine
Despite bad weather and early technical difficulties, employee-owned bluShift Aerospace “made history Sunday afternoon when it launched its prototype rocket, Stardust 1.0,” reports Maine’s Portland Press Herald:
The company became the first in Maine to launch a commercial rocket and the first in the world to launch a rocket using bio-derived fuel… It carried three payloads, two commercial and one, free of…
President Trump Pardons Anthony Levandowski, Ex-Uber Engineer Sentenced To Prison For Stealing Trade Secrets From Google
On his final night in office, President Trump granted clemency to a total of 143 people, ranging from former adviser Stephen K. Bannon to rapper Lil Wayne. One name in particular that stands out in the tech community is none other than Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer that was sentenced to 18 months in prison for stealing trade secrets from…
Robert Cringley Predicted ‘The Death of IT’ in 2020. Was He Right?
Yesterday long-time tech pundit Robert Cringley reviewed the predictions he’d made at the beginning of last year. “Having done this for over 20 years, historically I’m correct abut 70 percent of the time, but this year could be a disappointment given that I’m pretty sure I didn’t predict 370,000 deaths and an economy in free-fall. “We’ll just have to see whether…
Uber and Lyft operating in US cities linked to rises in car ownership
When ride-sharing companies including Uber and Lyft begin operating in a city, there is a slight increase in car ownership on average, a study of US urban areas suggests Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2264144-uber-and-lyft-operating-in-us-cities-linked-to-rises-in-car-ownership/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Uber Wasted $100 Million On Useless Digital Ad Campaigns
Uber apparently squandered an estimated $100 million on third-party digital advertising campaigns. Input Mag reports: Former Sleeping Giants alum and co-founder of Check My Ads, Nandini Jammi, caught most of us up on the whole situation yesterday in a lengthy Twitter thread detailing just how Uber, the poster child of startup capitalism’s unethical robber baron mentality, managed to recently waste a…
When Big Brands Stopped Spending On Digital Ads, Nothing Happened. Why?
This weekend Forbes ran a thought-provoking article by “a digital marketer of 25 years” who now helps marketers audit their digital campaigns for ad fraud: When P&G turned off $200 million of their digital ad spending, they saw NO CHANGE in business outcomes. When Chase reduced their programmatic reach from 400,000 sites showing its ads to 5,000 sites (a 99% decrease),…