Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on Monday said its drivers should get the "best of both worlds" -- benefits and work flexibility. In an op-ed published in The New York Times, Khosrowshahi proposed that lawmakers require gig economy companies to create benefits funds, which would "give workers cash that they can use for the benefits they want, like health insurance or paid time off." From a report: "Our current employment system is outdated and unfair. It forces every worker to choose between being an employee with more benefits but less flexibility, or an independent contractor with more flexibility but almost no safety net," wrote Khosrowshahi. "It's time to move beyond this false choice." The op-ed comes as Uber and rival ride-hailing company Lyft face a possible injunction in California that would force them to reclassify their drivers as employees. Currently, drivers are classified as independent contractors, which means they pay for their own expenses, such as gas, car maintenance and insurance. Drivers also don't have benefits like health care and sick leave.

With SoftBank's Masayoshi Son trying to sell ARM, a columnist for the Observer newspaper has a suggestion for the U.K. government (and specifically Brexit Tories), calling the Cambridge-based company "a kind of public-interest commercial company: licensing state-of-the art instruction sets that can be implemented in silicon architecture by everyone. It was in nobody's pocket." Its business, as its chief founder, Tudor Brown, acknowledges, relied on it never betraying its neutrality... A future owner could almost trash Arm in the pursuit of its own commercial ends. Nvidia, reported to be in advanced talks with Son, is just such a possible owner. Rooted in the games industry, it has found to its surprise that its processing units are much in demand as artificial intelligence applications mushroom. Son wanted to sell Arm to an industry coalition that might protect the company's independence and business model. None could be found, so, desperate for cash, given a string of failed and written-down investments (WeWork, Uber etc), he is now having to sup with a buyer that can only destroy Arm.

Nvidia's ambitions are scarcely hidden. Once it owns Arm it will withdraw its licensing agreements from its competitors, notably Intel and Huawei, and after July next year take the rump of Arm to Silicon Valley, just as Google has done with the British AI company DeepMind. Arm, and Britain's hopes to be a player in hi-tech, will be dead.

Ownership is fundamental and the lesson of the story is that unless Britain creates the legal, cultural and institutional framework allowing companies such as Arm (or DeepMind) to have anchor shareholders — or simply allowing founder shareholders to have powerful differential voting rights as in the U.S. and Canada — we are condemned to inferiority. But even now Britain could act. The government could offer a foundational investment of, say, £3bn-£5bn and invite other investors — some industrial, some sovereign wealth funds, some commercial asset managers — to join it in a coalition to buy Arm and run it as an independent quoted company, serving the worldwide tech industry... if Britain is to develop an industrial strategy, this is how it must act...

A successful capitalism is always about framing innovative private dynamism within a fit-for-purpose regulatory and ownership architecture designed by the state, a reality that neither major party has ever understood. The open question is whether Brexit Tories, forced by reality, might change. This kind of audacious deal could appeal to Johnson and Cummings, a statement of intent to match China in our commitment to a decisive presence in 21st-century hi-tech.

Brexit was meant to give Britain the freedom to make this kind of move.

An anonymous reader quotes long-time technology pundit Robert Cringely: Forty-five days from now, we're told, President Trump will shut down TikTok and WeChat. TikTok, maybe, but WeChat? Impossible...

Trump has a chance of taking down TikTok, the short form video sharing site, because that service is dependent on advertising. He can force the app out of U.S. app stores (though not out of foreign ones) and he can cut off the flow of ad dollars... at least those dollars that flow through American pockets. But there are workarounds, I'm sure, even for TikTok and 45 days is a lot of time to come up with them. So maybe the service will be sold to Microsoft or maybe not. In either case I'm sure TikTok will survive in some form.

WeChat, on the other hand, will thrive.

WeChat, if you haven't used it, is the mobile operating system for China. It's an app platform in its own right that is used for communication, entertainment, and commerce. Imagine Facebook, LinkedIn, PayPal, Venmo, Skype, Uber, Gmail and eBay all in a single application. That's WeChat. It's even a third-party application platform, so while U.S. banks operate on the Internet, Chinese banks operate on WeChat. Shutting WeChat down in the U.S. would be a huge blow to WeChat's parent company, TenCent, and a huge blow to the Chinese diaspora. Except it won't work.

To defeat President Trump, all WeChat users need is a Virtual Private Network and any WeChat users already in the U.S. already have a VPN to defeat the much more formidable Great Firewall of China.

In the second quarter of 2020, Uber announced that its ride-hailing business plunged by 75 percent compared with a year earlier -- from $12.2 billion to $3 billion. "That was offset somewhat by rapid growth in Uber's delivery business," reports Ars Technica. "Delivery bookings more than doubled from $3.4 billion to $7 billion." From the report: The company lost $1.8 billion in the second quarter on a GAAP basis. Ignoring one-time charges, Uber has been losing around $1 billion per quarter for the last couple of years. Prior to the pandemic, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was bullish about the company's financial future. After reporting a $1.1 billion loss for the fourth quarter of 2019, Khosrowshahi said in February that he expected Uber to start generating a profit by the end of 2020.

At the time, Uber's rides business was (just barely) profitable. But it was being dragged down by big losses from Uber Eats, where Uber was spending heavily in pursuit of growth. Uber expected the rides business to become more profitable over time, while losses in the delivery business would decline as growth slowed. But then the coronavirus hit, and Uber was forced to throw those projections out the window. In May, Uber laid off 3,700 people in an effort to contain mounting losses. [...] Fortunately, Uber is in no danger of running out of money; it has almost $8 billion in cash and short-term investments. It could easily burn cash at this rate for another year.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has been sentenced to 18 months on one count of stealing trade secrets. Judge Alsup said that home confinement would "[give] a green light to every future brilliant engineer to steal trade secrets. Prison time is the answer to that." During court proceedings today, Levandowski also agreed to pay $756,499.22 in restitution to Google and a fine of $95,000.

"Today marks the end of three and a half long years and the beginning of another long road ahead. I'm thankful to my family and friends for their continued love and support during this difficult time," Levandowski said in a statement provided by his attorneys after the sentencing. The sentencing is the latest in a series of legal blows that have seen Levandowski vilified as a thieving tech bro, unceremoniously ejected from Uber, and forced into bankruptcy by a $179 million award against him. And yet, Levandowski is not skulking away. Even as he faced years in prison, the maverick engineer was plotting a comeback that could see him netting upwards of $4 billion from Uber.

TechCrunch has learned that Levandowski recently filed a lawsuit making explosive claims against Waymo and Uber that, if proven, could turn his fortunes around with a multi-billion dollar payout. Whether this is a last-ditch effort by a desperate man whose career has been upended by his own poor choices or a viable claim against a double-dealing tech titan, will be up to the courts to decide. This new lawsuit, filed as part of Levandowski's bankruptcy proceedings, mostly focuses on Uber's agreement to indemnify Levandowski against legal action when it bought his self-trucking company, Otto Trucking. It also includes new allegations concerning the settlement that Waymo and Uber reached over trade secret theft claims.

In a press conference on Friday, US authorities announced they arrested the main suspect behind this month's major Twitter hack. From a report: The suspected hacker was identified as Graham Ivan Clark, a 17-year-old teen from Hillsborough County, Florida. According to Florida news outlet WFLA-TV, which first reported on the arrest, Clark was arrested earlier this morning, following a nationwide collaboration between the FBI, the IRS, the DOJ, and the Secret Service. Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren filed charges against Clark for being the "mastermind" behind the July 15 Twitter incident, when the teen is believed to have gained access to Twitter's backend, took over several high-profile accounts, and tweeted on their behalf to promote a cryptocurrency scam. The list of hacked accounts includes big names like Barrack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, Uber, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Michael Bloomberg, and others. Further reading: Twitter Says High-Profile Hack Was the Result of a Phishing Attack.

Google and Apple, which already battle over mobile operating systems, are opening a new front in their fight. How that plays out may determine the future of the web. From a report: Google was born on the web, and its business reflects its origin. The company depends on the web for search and advertising revenue. So it isn't a surprise that Google sees the web as key to the future of software. Front and center are web apps, interactive websites with the same power as conventional apps that run natively on operating systems like Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS. Apple has a different vision of the future, one that plays to its strengths. The company revolutionized mobile computing with its iPhone line. Its profits depend on those products and the millions of apps that run on them. Apple, unsurprisingly, appears less excited about developments, like web apps, that could cut into its earnings.

The two camps aren't simply protecting their businesses. Google and Apple have philosophical differences, too. Google, working to pack its dominant Chrome browser with web programming abilities, sees the web as an open place of shared standards. Apple, whose Safari browser lacks some of those abilities, believes its restraint will keep the web healthy. It wants a web that isn't plagued by security risks, privacy invasion and annoyances like unwanted notifications and permission pop-ups. Google leads a collection of heavy-hitting allies, including Microsoft and Intel, trying to craft new technology called progressive web apps, which look and feel like native apps but are powered by the web. PWAs work even when you have no network connection. You can launch PWAs from an icon on your phone home screen or PC start menu, and they can prod you with push notifications and synchronize data in the background for fast startup. PWA fans include Uber, travel site Trivago and India e-commerce site Flipkart. Starbucks saw its website usage double after it rolled out a PWA.

The split over native apps and web apps is more than just a squabble between tech giants trying to convert our lives online into their profits. How it plays out will shape what kind of a digital world we live in. Choosing native apps steers us to a world where we're locked into either iOS or Android, limited to software approved by the companies' app stores and their rules. Web apps, on the other hand, reinforce the web's strength as a software foundation controlled by no single company. A web app will work anywhere, making it easier to swap out a Windows laptop for an iPad. "What you're seeing is the tension between what is good for the user, which is to have a flexible experience, and what's good for the platform, which is to keep you in the platform as much as possible," said Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Eric Rescorla.

Facebook in recent weeks has approached a handful of small venture capital firms to discuss becoming an investor in their funds, The Information reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The VC strategy, which also includes direct investments in startups, aims to give the social network early, valuable insight into a wider swath of companies. From a report: To run the new investing initiative, Facebook recently appointed Sunita Parasuraman, a nine-year veteran of the company who previously ran the treasury for its embattled Libra cryptocurrency project. Former Kleiner Perkins general partner Eric Feng, now a Facebook employee, is helping approach funds, sources say. The moves come as Facebook fends off antitrust scrutiny of its acquisitions and attempts to find new ways to counter growing competitive threats like TikTok. While Microsoft, Intel and others for years have taken stakes in startups through VC subsidiaries, Facebook has shied away from adopting a formal investing program until recently. Instead, it has made one-off investments, such as its recent $5.7 billion investment in Indian tech conglomerate Jio Platforms. Google, in contrast, has multiple, long-running venture arms, including GV, which has backed big-name companies like Slack and Uber.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple told U.S. employees they can take as many as four hours off with pay on Election Day to vote or volunteer at a polling place. The policy applies to retail employees and hourly workers and is similar to moves made by other companies, including Twitter and Uber. It was announced in a memo to Apple employees seen by Bloomberg News. Election Day is Nov. 3. "For retail team members and hourly workers across the company, if you're scheduled to work this Election Day, we'll be providing up to four hours of paid time off if you need it to get to the polls," Deirdre O'Brien, Apple's senior vice president of retail and people, told staff. "If they choose, our teams can also use this time to volunteer as an election worker at one of your local polling stations."

According to a new lawsuit first reported by Bloomberg, Tesla alleges that four of its former workers took highly sensitive proprietary information as they left to work for the rival EV startup Rivian. The Verge reports: Tesla even claims Rivian is "knowingly encouraging" this behavior, and it is seeking unspecified punitive damages for what it alleges is "despicable, wanton, oppressive, willful, malicious, [and] duplicitous" conduct. Rivian calls the allegations "baseless." The lawsuit, filed late last week, names four former Tesla employees and Rivian as defendants, though Tesla says it has identified additional people who may have also stolen and brought confidential company information to the EV startup. Tesla says two of the named defendants admitted to taking confidential information. One is Tami Pascale, who was a senior manager in Tesla's staffing department. Tesla says that one day after Pascale signed Rivian's offer letter, she "took at least ten confidential and proprietary documents from Tesla's network," including candidate lists, information about where the automaker finds potential hires, and a "detailed internal write-up of an executive level candidate." Tesla says Pascale initially denied this when confronted by the company's investigative team in early July, but that she ultimately "confessed to taking the confidential and proprietary documents." Pascale allegedly did not agree to delete the files, though, and the company claims she still has her work laptop. Tesla says she shared the screen of her phone with one of the company's investigators, and that when she was asked to search for the company's name, "numerous files" were visible, but Pascale "abruptly ended the session."

Jessica Siron, who was a manager in Tesla's environmental, health, and safety department, allegedly sent documents to her personal Gmail account three days after signing an offer letter from Rivian. Tesla claims Siron initially denied doing this when confronted by its investigative team, but that she admitted to sending one document when pressed. Tesla's complaint is light on details about Rivian's knowledge or encouragement of any wrongdoing, save for the case of Kim Wong, who was a staff recruiter at Tesla up until just a few weeks ago. Tesla claims Wong was contacted by a Rivian hiring manager who told her "Rivian did not have the recruiting templates, structures, formulas, or documents that would be needed" to grow the startup's recruiting efforts, according to the complaint. The same day as that conversation, Tesla says Wong sent "at least sixteen highly confidential recruiting documents from Tesla's network to her Gmail account," including confidential Powerpoint presentations that contained details about the automaker's recruiting and hiring process, as well as salary information.

Rivian's associate general counsel, according to Tesla, took a "cavalier attitude" toward the accusations and "claimed that taking confidential information was common in the industry." Rivian tells The Verge it disagrees with this framing. "In good faith, we discussed with Tesla the seriousness with which we take any allegation. This document misrepresents a conversation between counsel," the spokesperson said. Tesla says in the lawsuit that it was able to figure all this out because its investigative team "recently acquired sophisticated electronic security monitoring tools." If this sounds familiar, it's because a similar fight broke out in 2017 between Alphabet's Waymo and Uber, where Waymo accused Anthony Levandowski of stealing troves of data about self-driving cars and conspiring with then-CEO Travis Kalanick to shepherd that data to Uber. It was eventually settled in early 2018.

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 how this is used to exert management control, including through automated decision-making that invisibly shapes their jobs. The case is being brought on Monday by the UK-based App Drivers and Couriers Union in the district court in Amsterdam, where the international headquarters of the $56 billion ride-hailing firm is located. The union said transparency was essential in checking if Uber was exercising discrimination or unequal treatment between drivers. It will also allow drivers to organize and build collective bargaining power over terms of work and pay in a way that is currently impossible.

The claim says Uber uses tags on drivers' profiles, for example "inappropriate behavior" or simply "police tag." Reports relate to "navigation -- late arrival / missed ETA" and "professionalism -- cancelled on rider, inappropriate behavior, attitude." The drivers complain they were not being provided with this data or information on the underlying logic of how it was used. They want to how that processing affects them, including on their driver score. The union members Azeem Hanif and Alfie Wellcoat claim Uber has failed to fulfill its obligations in its response to their requests under general data protection regulations (GDPR). They want to see their detailed driver profiles, comments about them made by Uber staff and how more than two dozen categories of data gathered about them are processed, legal papers show. A spokesperson for Uber said: "Our privacy team works hard to provide any requested personal data that individuals are entitled to. We will give explanations when we cannot provide certain data, such as when it doesn't exist or disclosing it would infringe on the rights of another person under GDPR. Under the law, individuals have the right to escalate their concerns by contacting Uber's data protection officer or their national data protection authority for additional review."

Uber on Friday unveiled several "long-term commitments" the ride-hailing company says will help it improve equality and fairness, including doubling Black representation in its leadership and taking steps to support Black-owned businesses and restaurants. From a report: "One thing is clear to us: we can't just hope that our products alone will improve equity and fairness," wrote Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in a blog post. "We must use our global breadth, our technology, and our data to help make change, faster -- so that we become a more actively anti-racist company; a safer, more inclusive company and platform; and a faithful ally to all the communities we serve." Uber is among several tech giants to say it'll make changes as well as pledge funds to groups battling racial injustice after the killing of George Floyd by police sparked protests across the US.

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 research director at research and consulting firm Gartner. Mr. Azaham said the coronavirus has made startup investors far more risk averse, resulting in a sharp downturn in investment capital for IT companies looking to raise less than $100 million. As of last week, nearly 70,000 tech-startup employees world-wide had lost jobs since March, led by ventures in the transportation, financial and travel sectors, according to a report by U.K.-based brokerage BuyShares.co.uk.

Startups in the San Francisco region, including Silicon Valley, have shed more than 25,500 jobs, including layoffs at high-profile companies such as Uber, Groupon and Airbnb, the report said. Uber in May announced more than 6,500 layoffs, cutting roughly a quarter of its workforce. A month earlier, Lyft said it would cut about 17% of its workforce, furlough workers and slash pay in cost-cutting efforts to cope with lost sales during the coronavirus pandemic. Startups developing artificial intelligence and other emerging digital tools fall under the category of tech-sector employers, which have cut jobs for four consecutive months, said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at IT industry trade group CompTIA. The cuts included a record 112,000 layoffs in April, as tech companies scrambled to slash costs, according to CompTIA's analysis of federal employment data.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Oregon Live: The Portland City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to make it illegal for third-party food delivery services like DoorDash and Grubhub to collect more than 10% in commission fees from city restaurants amid the coronavirus pandemic. Portland joins other cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, that have instituted similar caps in recent months. Those cities have limits at 15%. New Jersey last week put a 10% service fee cap that applies to all restaurants in the state. Food delivery company fees can be as high as 30%.

The new rule also makes it illegal for DoorDash, Uber Eats and other companies to decrease payments to delivery workers in order to make up lost money from restaurant fees, the ordinance said. The city council approved an amendment to the order Wednesday to also include a 5% limit if the delivery service allows a restaurant to transport their own food or if a customer orders through the app and picks up their items at the business. The restrictions would end 90 days after Portland's state of emergency order lifts. No date has been set to lift the order, which has been in place since March 12. Delivery app companies would be liable for up to $500 in civil penalties if the order is violated and the fine would accrue every day and for every restaurant overcharged. The restaurant would have to sue the company involved if they aren't given refunds.

Uber has bought food-delivery service Postmates for $2.65 billion in stock, the companies announced Monday. From a report: The deal brings together the fourth-largest U.S. food delivery service with Uber Eats, which trails only DoorDash in market share, according to Second Measure and Edison Trends. The companies said Uber intends to keep the Postmates app running separately, "supported by a more efficient, combined merchant and delivery network." Uber previously was in the running to buy rival food delivery service GrubHub, but talks broke down as the companies could not agree on a break-up fee, and the ride-sharing company grew frustrated with what it perceived as stalling tactics, CNBC previously reported. GrubHub instead sold to European food delivery service JustEatTakeaway in early June. Uber is banking on food delivery to help sustain its business during the coronavirus pandemic, as demand for ride-sharing has plunged. In its first-quarter earnings call, Uber said gross bookings revenue for its rides segment was down 80% in April from a year earlier, while gross bookings revenue in eats was up more than 50% during the period.

Uber's new strategy is just like its old one. Make its money-losing business bigger by buying other money-losing businesses like Postmates. From a report: After Uber's merger talks with food-delivery company Grubhub fell apart, Uber has now set its sights on Postmates, according to the New York Times. Uber Eats, the ride-hailing company's food-delivery unit, is just as unprofitable as the rest of Uber's business operations, but that hasn't stopped the company from reportedly offering $2.6 billion to takeover Postmates. Uber has been searching for ways to stay afloat during the pandemic as its core ride-hailing business has collapsed and its business model of misclassifying driver-employees as independent contractors to save on labor costs is coming under increased scrutiny in California and nationwide. In its Q1 earnings call, Uber reported that rides were down over 80 percent and it had recorded an eye-watering loss of $2.9 billion (it has never recorded a profit), but there was a bright spot: food-delivery was up by 54 percent since last year.

Still, it's not clear that Uber Eats -- or an acquisition of Postmates -- will be enough to save the company. In March, Rideshare Drivers United, an app-based driver advocacy group in California, released a wage claim tool to let drivers claim stolen wages and unpaid business expenses; a mere 4,000 Uber and Lyft drivers have filed claims in excess of $1 billion. Last year, there were well over half a million Uber and Lyft drivers last year and reports have pegged Uber's annual driver retention rate at around 4 percent. Mind you, this is only in California and only includes wage claims -- there is also a growing call for Uber to pay state unemployment insurance taxes in not only California but the rest of the country, a prospect that could cost billions more if realized.

Strider- (Slashdot reader #39,683) shares a story from Reuters: Canada's Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of a driver in a gig economy case that paves the way for a class action suit calling for Uber Technologies Inc to recognize drivers in Canada as company employees.

UberEats driver David Heller had filed a class action suit, challenged by Uber, aiming to secure a minimum wage, vacation pay and other benefits like overtime pay. Drivers are now classified as independent contractors and do not have such benefits.
A lower court had already ruled that Uber's contracts included an arbitration clause that was "invalid and unenforceable," Reuters, reports, and it was Uber's attempt to appeal of that ruling that was dismissed by Canada's Supreme Court in an 8-1 vote. Reuters notes that "The arbitration process, which must be conducted in the Netherlands where Uber has its international headquarters, costs about C$19,000 ($14,500)."

Meanwhile, CNN also reports that Uber and Lyft "could soon be forced to reclassify their drivers in California as employees or cease operating in the state as part of an escalating legal battle over a new law impacting much of the on-demand economy." California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and a coalition of city attorneys intend to file for a preliminary injunction this week to force the two ride-hailing companies to comply with the new state law, according to a press release issued Wednesday...

"It's time for Uber and Lyft to own up to their responsibilities and the people who make them successful: their workers," said Becerra in a statement concerning the injunction the state is intending to file. "Misclassifying your workers as 'consultants' or 'independent contractors' simply means you want your workers or taxpayers to foot the bill for obligations you have as an employer.

Uber is getting into software. The company is making the technology that powers its ride-hailing business available to others, starting with public transit agencies. From a report: California's Marin County transportation providers are the first customers to buy access to Uber's software in a deal the company announced Wednesday. The tie-up represents a potential new revenue stream for Uber at a time when the company could use it. "This is not a one-off. This is a new product and a new business," said David Reich, head of Uber Transit, adding that the company intends to partner with other transit agencies in the future. "Together we want to make car ownership a thing of the past."

Even fed-up tech workers are paralyzed by Silicon Valley's culture. From a column: It's easier for tech workers to talk about taking a stand than to do so. For one, big technology companies such as Facebook and Google are viciously competitive about acquiring talent. They hire or poach the best people, sometimes just to prevent a competitor from having access to them instead. Some workers don't want to rock the boat for fear they might get blacklisted, Ian McCarthy, a vice president of product at Yahoo, said. And ironically, the brokenness at companies such as Facebook and Uber can also make their jobs enticing. Disruption is appealing, and the promise to move fast and break things (even priceless and irrecoverable ones, such as democracy) can be a recruiting tool.

Others already in a company's employ may see an opportunity to fix some of its ills. One product manager at a large tech firm, who also advises many early-career professionals, spoke with me on the condition of anonymity because she fears reprisal from within the industry. She told me about her "activist" friends who refuse to leave jobs at Facebook, even if they disagree with the company's practices. "They came to change the world," she said, "and stayed to work within the system on issues they cared about." The same drive that makes these workers care about the consequences of Facebook's impact on democracy also makes them want to stick it out in an effort to improve the service.

Even so, Facebook seems to have crossed the line of tolerable abhorrence for some tech workers. Inside the business, nextplayism may offer the best, and maybe the only, way for them to show their distaste. "The vast majority of people I know at the director-and-up level, when they are leaving a company and looking for a new gig, they're Never Facebookers," McCarthy, who is also an occasional collaborator of mine, said, referring to senior-level roles. "They're offended if you even offer to do introductions to someone at Facebook." But that is a privileged attitude. Much of the magical operation of online services is driven by rote laborers, such as moderators, AI-training wranglers, and gig workers. They aren't counted as members of the industry, except perhaps as its casualties.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Los Angeles Monday over the city's requirement that electric scooter rental companies provide anonymized real-time location data. The Verge reports: The lawsuit centers on the Los Angeles Department of Transportation's use of a digital tool called the Mobility Data Specification program (MDS), which the agency created as a way to track and regulate electric scooters operating on its streets. MDS provides the city with data on where each bike and scooter trip starts, the route each vehicle takes, and where each trip ends. LADOT has said the data won't be shared with police without a warrant, won't contain personal identifiers, and won't be subject to public records requests. But the ACLU says the data tool is unconstitutional.

"Renting an electric scooter should not give the government the right to trace your every move -- where you start, where you end, and all stops, twists, and turns in between," the ACLU said in a statement. The group's California chapter is joined on the suit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the law firm Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger LLP. The ACLU is [...] alleging that MDS violates the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution preventing unlawful search and seizure. "The government's appropriate impulse to regulate city streets and ensure affordable, accessible transportation for all should not mean that individual vehicle riders' every move is tracked and stored without their knowledge," said Mohammad Tajsar, senior staff attorney at ACLU SoCal. "There are better ways to keep ride-share companies in check than to violate the constitutional rights of ordinary Angelenos who ride their vehicles."