Last Monday the U.S. celebrated Labor Day, the federal holiday honoring America's labor movement and the contributions of U.S. workers. On that day a small protest was held outside Cruise's headquarters in San Francisco — featuring taxi drivers and mass transit workers.

CBS News spoke to Edward Escobar, a Bay Area Uber driver and director of the Alliance for Independent Workers. They report that Escobar orchestrated the protest "to convey their concerns about the potential impact of robotaxis on their jobs. "There isn't any dialogue happening. It's pretty much one-sided. It's being dictated by the tech titans, Waymo, which is Google, and General Motors, which is Cruise," Escobar said. "And they're pretty much dictating the terms, and the California Public Utilities Commission is allowing that to happen."

Cruise, however, insists that it is taking steps to protect workers through partnerships with local labor unions. In a statement, the company said, "Cruise was proud to sign industry-first jobs agreements with local labor — IBEW Local 6 and SEIU Local 87 — whose workers will install chargers and support our facilities across San Francisco." Cruise also highlighted its commitment to the community by emphasizing that the construction of a major EV charging facility on Cesar Chavez Street was carried out by 100% Bay Area union labor. It included electricians, carpenters, and ironworkers, representing over 100 jobs.

Despite these efforts, Escobar remains deeply concerned about the future of drivers like himself. "We're looking at automation, self-driving technology in the new age of AI and looking at permanent displacement of many workers. If you look at transport workers alone in the state of California, UC Berkeley came out with a study, and they said approximately 600,000-plus transport workers in California will be displaced."
One local newscast shows only a handful of activists in its video from the protest. The local news anchor summarized the protesters' message as "The robots are taking over and taking your jobs.... [And] making things more dangerous..." "The people of San Francisco, the workers of San Francisco have to take a stand now," said Steve Zeltzer with United Front Committee for Labor Party... The group who rallied Monday also said Cruise's driverless taxis not only violate vehicle codes, but also are not advanced enough to know when to pull over for responding emergency vehicles. Every time they are on the road, they violate the law," Zeltzer said. The speakers at the Labor Day protest said so-called "robo workers" and artificial intelligence are chipping away at jobs. And before we know it, demonstrators claim, a flood of high-tech human replacements will steal the jobs of the masses.

"We're talking about millions, if not billions, of people being displaced," said Edward Escobar with Alliance for Independent Workers. "Not just here locally, but nationally and globally."
The Verge adds: GM's Cruise is "just days away" from regulatory approval to begin mass production of its fully autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, the company's CEO, Kyle Vogt, said at an investor conference Thursday...

But Vogt may have spoken too soon. "No agency decision to grant or deny the petition submitted by GM has been reached nor has a deadline been set for such a decision," a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spokesperson told The Verge.

The city of Boston also allows testing of self-driving cars. But the Boston Globe reports that "There are far fewer complaints about self-driving cars because you barely see them." [F]ollowing a string of high-profile crashes and the disruption of the COVID pandemic, the state Transportation Department — now under Governor Maura Healey — has seemingly lost its enthusiasm for AVs... Only one company is permitted to test autonomous vehicles here — Boston-based Motional — and it confines its occasional experiments to a corner of the Seaport and a closed track at Suffolk Downs in East Boston. And despite past efforts to woo autonomous-vehicle firms, the state hasn't received any new applications in years...

Proponents have long said AVs could transform transportation, with all manner of economic and social benefits: high-paying jobs in robotics, manufacturing, and artificial intelligence, and reduced carbon emissions should people forgo private cars for electric robo-taxis. But skeptics abound, particularly in San Francisco, where residents say autonomous vehicles have caused traffic jams and blocked emergency vehicles... [A]fter an autonomous Uber vehicle in Arizona killed a pedestrian in 2018, Boston transportation officials asked nuTonomy and Optimus Ride, the two companies the state had granted a permit, to pause testing in the city...

There's another key difference between Massachusetts and some other states — including California — where autonomous testing is more advanced. Here, companies seeking to test self-driving cars need the approval of both state regulators and officials in whatever communities where they plan to test. In California, AV firms just need the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Public Utilities Commission to sign off; then they "notify" local governments of planned testing in the area. Those rules significantly ease the path for AV companies, but have created significant friction between the state and cities like San Francisco, where companies like General Motors-owned Cruise and Waymo, a subsidiary of Google, have been testing self-driving cars without humans... So far, California has issued permits to seven companies to test autonomous vehicles without safety drivers and to over 60 automakers and software firms to test self-driving cars with a backup human driver, including Apple, Nissan, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Tesla, according to state records. In Massachusetts, there's only Motional, which seems inclined to stick to the Seaport and Suffolk Downs.
One startup founded suggested Massachusetts create a special lane where autonomous vehicles can test safely.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: An unknown hacker gained administrative control of Sourcegraph, an AI-driven service used by developers at Uber, Reddit, Dropbox, and other companies, and used it to provide free access to resources that normally would have required payment. In the process, the hacker(s) may have accessed personal information belonging to Sourcegraph users, Diego Comas, Sourcegraph's head of security, said in a post on Wednesday. For paid users, the information exposed included license keys and the names and email addresses of license key holders. For non-paying users, it was limited to email addresses associated with their accounts. Private code, emails, passwords, usernames, or other personal information were inaccessible.

The hacker gained administrative access by obtaining an authentication key a Sourcegraph developer accidentally included in a code published to a public Sourcegraph instance hosted on Sourcegraph.com. After creating a normal user Sourcegraph account, the hacker used the token to elevate the account privileges to those of an administrator. The access token appeared in a pull request posted on July 14, the user account was created on August 28, and the elevation to admin occurred on August 30. "The malicious user, or someone connected to them, created a proxy app allowing users to directly call Sourcegraph's APIs and leverage the underlying LLM [large language model]," Comas wrote. "Users were instructed to create free Sourcegraph.com accounts, generate access tokens, and then request the malicious user to greatly increase their rate limit. On August 30 (2023-08-30 13:25:54 UTC), the Sourcegraph security team identified the malicious site-admin user, revoked their access, and kicked off an internal investigation for both mitigation and next steps."

The resource free-for-all generated a spike in calls to Sourcegraph programming interfaces, which are normally rate-limited for free accounts. "The promise of free access to Sourcegraph API prompted many to create accounts and start using the proxy app," Comas wrote. "The app and instructions on how to use it quickly made its way across the web, generating close to 2 million views. As more users discovered the proxy app, they created free Sourcegraph.com accounts, adding their access tokens, and accessing Sourcegraph APIs illegitimately." [...] While most data was available for all paid and community users, the number of license keys exposed was limited to 20.

Two UK teenagers accused of being key members of the notorious hacking group Lapsus$, behind attacks on companies including Nvidia, Rockstar Games, and Uber, were convicted of their crimes by a London jury Wednesday. From a report: Arion Kurtaj, 18, and a 17-year-old male, who can't be identified, were found to have carried out a number of offenses including serious computer misuse, blackmail and fraud against BT Group's EE network and Nvidia. Kurtaj was also separately accused of hacks into Uber, Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto game, and fintech firm Revolut. The Southwark Crown Court jury only needed to come to a decision on whether Kurtaj was liable for the crimes after he was found by the judge to be unfit to stand trial because of a complex medical condition. The jury found him liable for all 12 charges. The 17-year-old was found guilty of hacking, fraud and blackmail against Nvidia and cleared over two other counts against EE. He had previously plead guilty to two charges relating to the BT hacks. Lapsus$ are an international bunch of loosely connected online extortionists.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: A group of teenage hackers managed to breach some of the world's biggest tech firms last year by exploiting systemic security weaknesses in US telecom carriers and the business supply chain, a US government review of the incidents has found, in what is a cautionary tale for America's critical infrastructure. The Department of Homeland Security-led review of the hacks, which was shared exclusively with CNN, determined US regulators should penalize telecom firms with lax security practices and Congress should consider funding programs to steer American youth away from cybercrime. The investigation of the hacks -- which hit companies like Microsoft and Samsung -- found that, in general, it was far too easy for the cybercriminals to intercept text messages that corporate employees use to log into systems. [...]

"It is highly concerning that a loose band of hackers, including a number of teenagers, was able to consistently break into the best-defended companies in the world," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN in an interview, adding: "We are seeing a rise in juvenile cybercrime." After a series of high-profile cyberattacks marked his first four months in office, President Joe Biden established the DHS-led Cyber Safety Review Board in 2021 to study the root causes of major hacking incidents and inform policy on how to prevent the next big cyberattack. Staffed by senior US cybersecurity officials and executives at major technology firms like Google, the board does not have regulatory authority, but its recommendations could shape legislation in Congress and future directives from federal agencies. [...]

The board's first review, released in July 2022, concluded that it could take a decade to eradicate a vulnerability in software used by thousands of corporations and government agencies worldwide. The second review, to be released Thursday, focused on a band of young criminal hackers based in the United Kingdom and Brazil that last year launched a series of attacks on Microsoft, Uber, Samsung and identity management firm Okta, among others. The audacious hacks were often followed by extortion demands and taunts by hackers who seemed to be out for publicity as much as they were for money. The hacking group, known as Lapsus$, alarmed US officials because they were able to embarrass major tech firms with robust security programs. "If richly resourced cybersecurity programs were so easily breached by a loosely organized threat actor group, which included several juveniles, how can organizations expect their programs to perform against well-resourced cybercrime syndicates and nation-state actors?" the Cyber Safety Review Board's new report states. Lapsus$, as well as other hacking groups, conduct "SIM-swapping" attacks that can take over a victim's phone number by having it transferred to another device, thereby gaining access to 2FA security codes and personal messages. These can then be used to reveal login credentials and access financial information.

"The board wants telecom carriers to report SIM-swapping attacks to US regulatory agencies, and for those agencies to penalize carriers when they don't adequately protect customers from such attacks," reports CNN.

After growing "increasingly frustrated" with the Google Maps experience, Fast Company's Michael Grothaus has highlighted five main reasons the app has "become a cluttered, frustrating mess" -- and why he finds himself turning to Apple Maps more often. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares an excerpt from the report: ENOUGH WITH THE HOTEL AND BAR PINS: Whenever I'm in a major metropolitan area, Google Maps seems to have an obsession with displaying as many hotels, bars, and clubs on the map as it can. This happens even when I haven't searched for a single hotel or bar. And it happens not only when I'm on vacation in a new city, but when I'm in my home city. Google knows my home address. So, why on Earth does it default to showing me as many hotels as possible in the city where I live? The same is true of clubs and bars. I see pins for more dance clubs and bars in one small area shown on my smartphone's display than I've ever actually been to in my life. Google knows I'm middle-aged and get up early to work. When I'm just browsing the map, can it really think I might care about the nearest club where patrons normally don't leave until well past midnight? By displaying all these irrelevant hotels and bars, Google makes it much harder to browse and navigate the map, since frequently the pins' labels overlap or obscure more important elements, such as the shape and layout of streets.

TOO MANY ADS CLUTTER THE MAP: The square pins you see in Google Maps are ad pins. They represent a place of business (a hotel, spa, etc.) that is paying Google to make sure it's displayed on the map, despite the business's irrelevance to me. Again, ad pins for hotels dominate, but right behind them are ad pins for restaurants with small text underneath them imploring me to "Order Delivery with Uber Eats," which just further clutters the map. Google is, of course, first and foremost an advertising company. Data compiled by Oberlo showed that 78.2% of its Q1 2023 total revenue of $69.8 billion came from ads. But its enthusiasm for placing ads in every corner of Google Maps just makes it all the more cluttered and increasingly hard to read. And that's before we even get to

PHOTO PINS SIGNIFY WHAT, EXACTLY?: Google Maps identifies points of interest primarily by pin color and glyph: Hotels are represented by a pink pin with an image of a person sleeping in a bed, restaurants get an orange pin with a fork and knife, and so forth. Regular pins, denoting businesses or other points of interest, are reverse teardrop-shaped, while ad pins are square-shaped. But, since last year, there is also now a third form: the photo pin. As best as I can tell, a photo pin is a pin for a business, but instead of a typical category glyph, it shows a large photo ostensibly related to the establishment. These pins don't appear to signify that the business is notable in any way. (I mean, I'm sure I've seen photo pins for muffler repair shops -- not exactly a tourist attraction.) The photo pin might be the ultimate map monopolizer. It's bigger, and the photo, seemingly pulled from a business's Google Maps listing, doesn't always even represent the business well. One photo pin I came across, oddly, seemed to show a photo of the dumpsters behind a restaurant. This just adds to user confusion and more clutter. It isn't helping the business, either.

I HAVE NO INTEREST IN SOMEONE'S WORK-FROM-HOME BUSINESS: Another major contributor to Google Maps being an eyesore these days is a holdover from the pandemic when so many people were stuck working from home -- or decided to begin offering their services from home. It is not uncommon to be browsing a residential area on Google Maps and be faced with a sea of work-from-home business pins. The number of "consultant" businesses I've seen in residential areas on Google Maps has been shocking. The same goes for web designers, app programmers, and handymen -- all of whom operate out of their residential homes. These may all be legitimate businesses run by self-employed people, but why on earth does Google Maps surface their listings on maps if they never have a single client enter their doors and, more important, if I've not searched for a provider of any of these services? Clutter, clutter, clutter.

WHY WON'T YOU SHOW ME THE STREET NAME?: Finally, Google Maps seems more intent today on showing bars, restaurants, ads, and work-from-home businesses than useful map-related features. Sometimes it doesn't even show the most basic information anymore, including street names. Many times I just want to see the name of the street I'm standing on. So, I open Google Maps and zoom in on my current location. Yet no matter how far in I zoom in, Google Maps doesn't always apply a label to the street I'm standing on. It just remains blank. Of course, business pins I have no interest in are still prominently displayed. A workaround I've stumbled upon whenever this happens is to select a business pin on the next street over. When Google Maps centers on that, it for some reason will label the street I'm standing on. Among all the gripes on this list, I think this one is my biggest. If my ad-hoc workaround doesn't work, I often have to open Apple Maps just to look up the name of the street I'm on.

theodp writes: Wired Editor at Large, Steven Levy, was hit with a $52 bill for a 2.9-mile Uber ride in New York City as he headed to interview Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. "Do you know how much it cost me to go 2.9 miles to where we are now in an Uber?," Levy asked Khosrowshahi. "And he said $20, and I said, 'no it was like $52,' and he said, 'oh my God wow.'" [While Khosrowshahi attributed the head-scratching fee to "surge pricing," Levy insisted that made no sense given the trip took place at "10 a.m. on a sunny weekday and it's not like the president's in town." Uber's CEO blamed inflation for the increased rates, telling Wired during his sit-down that "everything is more expensive."]

When asked for a statement, Uber shared the following: "Riders' fares are a direct result of the city's regulations." "The fact is that they're not subsidizing rides anymore," said Levy of Uber. "And the way that company operates is expensive." Uber, which had recorded more than $31 billion in losses since it launched in 2009, reported its first profit ever on Tuesday.

Do-it-yourselfers want a piece of the rental-car market. Small-time entrepreneurs are amassing vehicles to rent out through car-sharing services such as Turo and Getaround, or their own websites. From a report: They aim to take on giants including Hertz and Avis Budget -- assuming they can master the difficult logistics of the business. One owner said he had to retrieve a car that was stolen, driven all the way up the West Coast and abandoned at the Canadian border. Another rented out a car that was involved in a shooting. Still another said a customer totaled a Maserati by driving it into a wall.

"It can be tough if you don't know what you're doing," said Jerome Mends-Cole, who rents out more than a dozen Teslas on Turo and his own website in Sacramento, Calif. "People look at it as a get rich quick thing, or a set it and forget it." It usually isn't. The costs of parking, cleaning, insurance and financing can quickly add up. Vehicles need to be picked up, dropped off, maintained and repaired. The expenses can quickly outpace any revenue. Renting cars is the latest iteration of gig work, which has become a robust piece of the American economy. People who started side hustles such as renting out rooms on Airbnb or driving for Uber are now taking on the more elaborate task of maintaining inventories of cars.

A new article in Game Rant points out that the 2013 game Grand Theft Auto V was "the most successful piece of fictional media ever made, amassing almost 8 billion dollars." So with a sequel planned, it was a big deal when 50 minutes of authentic pre-release footage was leaked by a U.K. teenager.

Game Rant reports that the trial of that teenager has begun. But a group of psychiatrists has just declared that the teenager "is unable to stand trial, so instead, the jury will decide if he committed these alleged crimes instead of delivering a verdict based on his guilt." 18-year-old Arion Kurtaj, a member of the hacker group named Lapsus$, attempted to blackmail Rockstar Games by releasing the Grand Theft Auto 6 source code online. Kurtaj has a history of hacking into giant companies, like when he caused nearly three million dollars of damage to Uber by releasing private information...

This story almost feels like a side mission in Grand Theft Auto 6, but it's all true. Kurtaj also had an unnamed partner in crime who demanded a four million dollar ransom from EE, a British mobile company. The two hackers were known as "key players" in Lapsus$. Lapsus$ has members all over the world and is suspected to be highly organized. The group has attacked companies as big as Samsung, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Ubisoft.

Kurtaj has been charged with three counts of blackmail, as well as nine other offenses, including fraud.

Uber Eats, DoorDash, and GrubHub filed lawsuits on Thursday seeking to strike down New York City's minimum wage law for delivery workers. The New York Times reports: Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub on Thursday each filed a request for a temporary restraining order in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to stop the wage changes from going into effect on July 12. Relay, a smaller, New York-based food delivery platform, did the same. The new pay standard, which was announced last month, would require gig platforms to pay food delivery workers about $18 per hour and to increase that amount to $20 per hour by 2025. Delivery workers currently make around $11 an hour, according the city's estimate.

But Uber and the other gig companies say they will be forced to pass on the cost of the higher wages to consumers by raising prices. They argue that the city's modeling does not correctly calculate the degree to which these higher prices will harm local restaurants. And they say that the new system will work to deliverers' disadvantage because the company, to control costs, will have to strictly monitor how much time they spend online on the apps but not actually doing deliveries. "The rule must be paused before damaging the restaurants, consumers and couriers it claims to protect," Josh Gold, an Uber spokesman, said in a statement.

In a prepared statement, Vilda Vera Mayuga, the commissioner of New York City's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, defended the new wage standard. "Delivery workers, like all workers, deserve fair pay for their labor, and we are disappointed that Uber, DoorDash, Grubhub and Relay disagree," she said. "These workers brave thunderstorms, extreme heat events and risk their lives to deliver for New Yorkers -- and we remain committed to delivering for them."

"One of the biggest pain points that comes with driving an electric vehicle is the time it takes to charge the battery," writes CNET. "Startup Ample's new technology can give drivers a full charge in about the same time it takes to fill a gas tank." Ample's model runs on the idea that the fastest charge is the one you never have to do. Its next-generation battery-swapping station can replace the battery on an electric vehicle in about five minutes...

Ample currently operates 12 first-generation swapping stations in the San Francisco Bay Area, mainly serving Uber delivery vehicles. The company expects to launch its next-generation station in the US, as well as Japan and Spain, later this year.
Their drive-through stations work with "just about any" kind of electric vehicle (including larger delivery vehicles), according to CNET's video report. Basically the company uses an "interface tray" that locks under the car (where the battery would go) containing its own charged battery cells. When a car drives in, a robotic system simply removes that tray and replaces it with another with fully-charged battery cells.

The company's co-founder argues this makes charging stations more like gas stations which service every kind of car — and adds that it's incredibly easy to deploy. "There's no construction involved... It comes in pre-built parts. You go through, connect them, test them — and you're up and running."

They've already got a deal with American EV automaker Fisker.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Uber plans to introduce full-length video ads across a variety of its platforms for the first time this week. Insider reports: Riders will encounter ads that are up to 90 seconds long on Uber's app while waiting for pickup and during rides. Similar to New York City taxis, which introduced TV screens in 2007, select Uber cars will have tablets that auto-play ads as well, the WSJ reported. Video ads will also be incorporated across Uber Eats and Drizly, an alcohol delivery service acquired by Uber for over $1 billion in 2021, the WSJ reported. On Uber Eats, ads will display while customers wait for their deliveries, and on Drizly, ads will play on search results pages.

While this development is not exactly out of the blue -- Uber announced it would launch an advertising division to connect brands with customers in October -- the move to begin implementing them so swiftly shows how serious the company is about its goal of growing its advertising business to more than $1 billion in sales by 2024. Part of Uber's pitch to brands is its cache of user data. The company has information on where its users go, how often they travel to their destinations, and how long they spend in the car. "We have two minutes of your attention," Mark Grether, vice president and general manager of Uber Technologies' advertising division, told the WSJ. "We know where you are, we know where you are going to, we know what you have eaten."

Grether added that Uber can use all of that data "to then basically target a video ad towards you."

New York City's food delivery workers will be guaranteed a minimum wage for the first time under new regulations announced by Mayor Eric Adams. Gothamist reports: Tens of thousands of delivery workers are slated to make at least $17.96 per hour plus tips by July 12, and at least $19.96 an hour by 2025, city officials said. That's a sharp increase from what delivery workers make now. Many take home less than the city's minimum wage of $15 an hour. The $19.96 hourly rate is less than the $23.82 the Department of Consumer and Worker Protections originally proposed last November -- but is still almost three times more than what delivery workers currently make, according to the city agency.

Sunday's announcement comes after months of back-and-forth between delivery workers, elected officials and app companies over the minimum wage rates. City officials blew past a Jan. 1 deadline set by City Council legislation to establish the new wage rules. Delivery companies, like Uber and DoorDash, argued that the new legislation will force a raise in prices and less schedule flexibility, while some advocates claim these companies are manipulating employees into testifying against the measure. DoorDash spokesperson Eli Scheinholtz said the company was considering litigation against the city over the new pay rules. "The ones that bring you pizza in the snow, and that Thai food you like in the rain," said Mayor Adams. "This new minimum pay rate will guarantee these workers, and their families, can earn a living. They should not be delivering food to your household, if they can't put food on the plate in their household."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: One of Alphabet's Waymo autonomous cars has killed a pet dog. TechCrunch spotted the public report of the incident, which says one of the Waymo Jaguar I-Pace cars ran over a dog in San Francisco while in autonomous mode with a safety driver behind the wheel.

Waymo's collision report says: "On May 21, 2023 at 10:56 AM PT a Waymo Autonomous Vehicle ("Waymo AV") operating in San Francisco, California was in a collision involving a small dog on Toland Street at Toland Place. The Waymo AV was traveling southwest on Toland Street when a small dog ran into the street in front of the Waymo AV. The Waymo AV then made contact with the dog, which did not survive. At the time of the impact, the Waymo AV's Level 4 ADS was engaged in autonomous mode, and a test driver was present (in the driver's seating position). The Waymo AV sustained damage."

The collision was a block from Waymo's Toland Depot, a 120,000-square-foot warehouse that houses at least 50 autonomous cars. The speed limit on Toland Street is 25 mph, according to posted signs viewable on Google Maps. From that Street View link, the road looks like a busy industrial area with many warehouses, truck delivery areas, and barbed-wire fences. The incident is Waymo's first reported fatality. Waymo sent along a statement: "On May 21 in San Francisco, a small dog ran in front of one of our vehicles with an autonomous specialist present in the driver's seat, and, unfortunately, contact was made. The investigation is ongoing, however the initial review confirmed that the system correctly identified the dog which ran out from behind a parked vehicle but was not able to avoid contact. We send our sincere condolences to the dog's owner. The trust and safety of the communities we are in is the most important thing to us and we're continuing to look into this on our end."

In early 2018, an autonomous Uber vehicle in Tempe, Arizona, hit and killed a woman. "According to Tempe PD, the car was in autonomous mode at the time of the incident, with a vehicle operator sitting behind the wheel," reported Gizmodo at the time. The company went on to suspend self-driving car tests in all North American cities after the fatal accident.

"If you live in San Jose, Dallas, or Vancouver, you may soon be sharing the sidewalk with an army of delivery robots," reports PC Magazine (citing a report from TechCrunch. Uber Eats is expanding its partnership with Serve Robotics to deploy up to 2,000 zero-emission bots: Currently covering Los Angeles and San Francisco, Serve Robotics has been working with more than 200 California restaurants to dish out meals via the Uber Eats platform... Serve's sidewalk robots run seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. They're capable of Level 4 autonomy, allowing them to operate routinely without human intervention, TechCrunch reports.

Uber is no stranger to driverless robots. Together with AI-powered partner Cartken, the firm recently expanded a food delivery pilot from Miami to Fairfax, Virginia, where bots now roam the sidewalks, dropping off meals and providing curbside pickup to locals.
Last week Uber also announced it was making robotaxis available via the Uber app in Phoenix.

TechCrunch argues this new expansion "validates Serve's goal to mass commercialize robotics for autonomous delivery" — while also signalling Uber's deeper commitment to autonomy.

Waymo and Uber announced a new partnership today that will make robotaxis available via the Uber app in Phoenix. The Verge reports: A "set number" of Waymo vehicles will be available to Uber riders and Uber Eats delivery customers in Phoenix, where the Alphabet company recently doubled its service area to 180 square miles. The partnership was described as "multi-year," with the goal of bringing together "Waymo's world-leading autonomous driving technology with the massive scale of Uber's ridesharing and delivery networks."

Katherine Barna, a spokesperson for Waymo, declined to disclose the number of vehicles that would be hail-able through Uber's app, though she did share that the vehicles will not be exclusive to Uber. For example, Phoenix residents can also summon a Waymo vehicle through the company's Waymo One app.

A judge sentenced Joe Sullivan, the former chief security officer at Uber, to three years' probation and 200 hours of community service on Thursday for covering up a 2016 cyberattack from authorities and obstructing a federal investigation. From a report: Sullivan's case is likely the first time a security executive has faced criminal charges for mishandling a data breach, and the response to Sullivan's case has split the cybersecurity community. In October, a jury found Sullivan guilty of obstructing an active FTC investigation into Uber's security practices and concealing a 2016 data breach that affected 50 million riders and drivers. Uber paid the hackers $100,000 to not release any stolen data and keep the attack quiet. Sullivan and his team routed the payment through the company's bug bounty program, which good-faith security researchers usually use to report flaws. The hack wasn't publicly disclosed until 2017, shortly after Dara Khosrowshahi stepped into the CEO role.

Khosrowshahi fired Sullivan in 2017, telling the jury last fall that he thought the decision to conceal the breach was "the wrong decision." Sullivan then joined Cloudflare as its chief security officer in 2018, and he stayed there until July 2022 when he stepped down to prepare for his trial. "If I have a similar case tomorrow, even if the defendant had the character of Pope Francis, they would be going to prison," Judge William Orrick said during the sentencing on Thursday. "When you go out and talk to your friends, to your CISOs, you tell them that you got a break not because of what you did, not even because of who you are, but because this was just such an unusual one-off," Orrick added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Growth at $50 billion fintech Stripe has been slowing this year, but one of its key strategies to reverse that course got a decent push today: Stripe is announcing that it has inked a "strategic payments partnership" with Uber. The pair will work together initially on selected services in eight of Uber's biggest markets, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Mexico, Australia and Japan. Some context on this deal: Uber's big U.S. rival Lyft has been a longtime marquee customer of Stripe's for payments, and whether or not it was true, that was one reason some assumed Uber and Stripe would not work together. Uber is, however, a much bigger beast, at close to $100 billion transacted annually (Stripe processed $817 billion last year). And Uber is not just a force globally but in the U.S. specifically, where one estimate from YipIt (via WSJ) puts Uber's rideshare market share currently at a whopping 74%.

Lyft will remain a customer of Stripe's, Stripe president Will Gaybrick confirmed to TechCrunch. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but as with the rest of Stripe's payments business, a big component will come from commissions that Stripe will make from each transaction that it powers on Uber's platform. The Uber partnership, expected to be announced formally later today at Stripe's user conference, comes on the heels of recent enterprise deals Stripe has inked with Amazon, Microsoft and BMW. But this partnership -- for now at least -- is not a global adoption of all that Stripe has to offer. Uber will be using Stripe to break into a specific, new payments frontier. Specifically, it will integrate Stripe Financial Connections and Link to let users import banking details to pay for services like Uber Rides and Eats directly from bank accounts, giving users a payments alternative to credit or debit cards.

According to the Wall Street Journal, ride-hailing company Lyft is planning to cut 1,200 jobs, or more than 30% of the company's 4,000-person workforce. These figures don't include drivers because they aren't counted as employees at Lyft. Insider reports: It's another round of reductions for the company that last cut 700 employees in November. The cuts come just days after David Risher took the helm as Lyft's new CEO and could help the company reduce costs by 50%, the Journal said. In a memo to employees sent Friday morning that has since been posted on Lyft's site, Risher noted that the company intends to use the savings to "invest in competitive pricing, faster pick-up times, and better driver earnings." In the memo, Risher said employees would receive an email with details of their employment status on April 27 at 8:30 am Pacific time.

A spokesperson for Lyft told Insider that the company would not be able to confirm the number of affected employees until next week. However, in an emailed statement, the spokesperson said that "David has made clear to the company that his focus is on creating a great and affordable experience for riders and improving drivers' earnings." The spokesperson added, "to do so requires that we reduce our costs and structure our company so that our leaders are closer to riders and drivers. This is a hard decision and one we're not making lightly. But the result will be a far stronger, more competitive Lyft."

Amazon announced on Thursday it's releasing a ChatGPT and DALL-E rival it calls Amazon Bedrock. Insider reports: Bedrock is a suite of generative AI tools that can help Amazon Web Service customers -- businesses who run their operations on Amazon's data servers -- build chatbots, generate and summarize text, and make and classify images based on prompts. While OpenAI's ChatGPT is run solely on its GPT-4 language model, Bedrock users can perform specific tasks by selecting from a range of machine learning models it calls "foundation models," such as AI21's Jurassic-2, Anthropic's Claude, Stability AI's Stable Diffusion, and Amazon Titan.

A content marketing manager, for example, can use Bedrock to create a targeted ad campaign for a new line of handbags by feeding it data so it can generate product social media posts, display ads, and web copy for each product, according to an AWS blog post. A preview of Amazon's generative AI toolkit is currently limited to select AWS customers. So far, Coda, an AI-document generation firm used by companies like Uber and the New York Times, is using Bedrock to scale its business operations, according to Amazon.