Year: 2019

On the heels of a driver-led protest outside Uber’s San Francisco headquarters, where drivers showed their support for gig worker protections legislation (via Assembly Bill 5) and demanded a union, Uber is circulating a petition urging people to “protect ridesharing in California.” In the petition, Uber advocates for a policy that would offer drivers a minimum of $21 per hour, paid time off, sick leave and compensation if they are injured while driving, as well as a collective voice and “the ability to influence decisions about their work.”

Uber has also created a new website called “Independent Driver” to showcase stories from drivers who want to remain independent contractors. Lyft, similarly, is circulating a petition urging people to demand legislators “fix AB 5.”

“We agree with the bill’s goal to protect workers, but we don’t agree that this protection should come at the cost of the flexibility our community relies on to supplement their income, support their families, and set their own schedules,” Lyft wrote in its petition. “After talking with thousands of California drivers and listening to experts in labor laws, we’re proposing a revision that protects driver earnings and the flexibility to earn when and how you want. Our proposal includes additional workplace protections for drivers and a minimum earnings floor.”

I’ve reached out to Gig Workers Rising, one of the organizations responsible for bringing drivers together to support AB-5 and demand the right to unionize. I’ll update this story if I hear back. But, based on the organization’s recent tweet, what Uber is offering isn’t enough.

“$21 isn’t a living wage for any category of worker in the San Francisco metro area except a single adult or two adults living together,” Gig Workers Rising tweeted. “What they’re offering is the floor, while hoping to kneecap any efforts to raise wages down the line & create a real union.”

These petitions are clearly Hail Marys by Lyft and Uber to try to prevent the passage of AB-5, which seeks to codify the ruling established in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v Superior Court of Los Angeles. In that case, the court applied the ABC test and decided Dynamex wrongfully classified its workers as independent contractors based on the presumption that “a worker who performs services for a hirer is an employee for purposes of claims for wages and benefits…”

According to the ABC test, in order for a hiring entity to legally classify a worker as an independent contractor, it must prove the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity, performs work outside the scope of the entity’s business and is regularly engaged in an “independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.”

In short, AB-5, which has already passed in the California State Assembly, would ensure gig economy workers are entitled to minimum wage, workers’ compensation and other benefits.

On the heels of a driver-led protest outside Uber’s San Francisco headquarters, where drivers showed their support for gig worker protections legislation (via Assembly Bill 5) and demanded a union, Uber is circulating a petition urging people to “protect ridesharing in California.” In the petition, Uber advocates for a policy that would offer drivers a minimum of $21 per hour, paid time off, sick leave and compensation if they are injured while driving, as well as a collective voice and “the ability to influence decisions about their work.”

Uber has also created a new website called “Independent Driver” to showcase stories from drivers who want to remain independent contractors. Lyft, similarly, is circulating a petition urging people to demand legislators “fix AB 5.”

“We agree with the bill’s goal to protect workers, but we don’t agree that this protection should come at the cost of the flexibility our community relies on to supplement their income, support their families, and set their own schedules,” Lyft wrote in its petition. “After talking with thousands of California drivers and listening to experts in labor laws, we’re proposing a revision that protects driver earnings and the flexibility to earn when and how you want. Our proposal includes additional workplace protections for drivers and a minimum earnings floor.”

I’ve reached out to Gig Workers Rising, one of the organizations responsible for bringing drivers together to support AB-5 and demand the right to unionize. I’ll update this story if I hear back. But, based on the organization’s recent tweet, what Uber is offering isn’t enough.

“$21 isn’t a living wage for any category of worker in the San Francisco metro area except a single adult or two adults living together,” Gig Workers Rising tweeted. “What they’re offering is the floor, while hoping to kneecap any efforts to raise wages down the line & create a real union.”

These petitions are clearly Hail Marys by Lyft and Uber to try to prevent the passage of AB-5, which seeks to codify the ruling established in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v Superior Court of Los Angeles. In that case, the court applied the ABC test and decided Dynamex wrongfully classified its workers as independent contractors based on the presumption that “a worker who performs services for a hirer is an employee for purposes of claims for wages and benefits…”

According to the ABC test, in order for a hiring entity to legally classify a worker as an independent contractor, it must prove the worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity, performs work outside the scope of the entity’s business and is regularly engaged in an “independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.”

In short, AB-5, which has already passed in the California State Assembly, would ensure gig economy workers are entitled to minimum wage, workers’ compensation and other benefits.

You would, of course, be completely forgiven for not recognizing Oppo’s name here in the States. In its native China, however, the company is a powerhouse, regularly capturing around 20 percent of the world’s largest smartphone market and handily beating out more familiar names (here, at least) like Apple and Samsung.

India (the number two global market) has been a pretty solid market for the company as well, generally landing itself in the top five. The Reno 2 was just announced for that country today, bringing with it some of the unique, boundary-pushing features that have become Oppo’s stock-in-trade.

Most notable here is the “shark fin.” That’s the in-house name for the triangular mechanical selfie camera that pops out the top. It’s a return feature and one a number of other manufacturers have implemented in some form, including the Oppo-connected OnePlus, which has a much stronger U.S. presence.

The other big thing here are the cameras on the other side. It’s a pretty impressive set up back there, including a 48 megapixel lens with optical image stabilization, wide angle lens and telephoto. At 5x hybrid, it’s a step down the 10x Zoom the company launched a while back.

At Rs. 36,900, it’s priced at just over $500, putting it at the mid-range here in the States. I’ve been playing around with it a bit at our New York office, and it’s not a bad little phone — albeit a little bit chunky compared to some flagships. That’s not really a surprise at that price point. Nor is the continued inclusion of a headphone jack, which continues to be an important feature for markets like India.

Grab your economic zombie mask: A Halloween “no deal” Brexit is careening into view. New prime minister Boris Johnson has pledged that the country will leave the European Union on October 31 with or without a deal — “do or die” as he put it. A year earlier as the foreign secretary, he used an even more colorful phrase to skewer diplomatic concern about the impact of a hard Brexit on business — reportedly condensing his position to a pithy expletive: “Fuck business.”

It was only a few years ago during the summer of 2016, following the shock result of the UK’s in/out EU referendum, the government’s aspiration was to leave in a “smooth and orderly” manner as the prelude to a “close and special” future trading partnership, as then PM Theresa May put it. A withdrawal deal was negotiated but repeatedly rejected by parliament. The PM herself was next to be despatched.

Now, here we are. The U.K. has arrived at a political impasse in which the nation is coasting toward a Brexit cliff edge. We’re at the brink here, with domestic politics turned upside down, because “no deal” is the only leverage left for “do or die” brexiteers that parliament can’t easily block.

Ironic because there’s no majority in parliament for “no deal.” But the end of the Article 50 extension period represents a legal default — a hard deadline that means the U.K. will soon fall out of the EU unless additional action is taken. Of course time itself can’t be made to grind to a halt. So “no deal” is the easy option for a government that’s made doing anything else to sort Brexit really really hard.

After three full years of Brexit uncertainty, the upshot for U.K. business is there’s no end in sight to even the known unknowns. And now a clutch of unknown unknowns seems set to pounce come Halloween when the country steps into the chaos of leaving with nada, as the current government says it must.

So how is the U.K. tech industry managing the risk of a chaotic exit from the European Union? The prevailing view among investors about founders is that Brexit means uncertain business as usual. “Resilience is the mother of entrepreneurship!” was the almost glib response of one VC asked how founders are coping.

“This is no worse than the existential dread that most founders feel every day about something or other,” said another, dubbing Brexit “just an enormous distraction.” And while he said the vast majority of founders in the firm’s portfolio would rather the whole thing was cancelled — “most realize it’s not going to be so they just want to get on.”

Tesla said Wednesday it has launched an insurance product, promising owners of its electric vehicles to deliver rates 20% and even as high as 30% lower than other insurance providers.

For now, the product known as Tesla Insurance, will only be available to owners in California. The business will expand to additional U.S. state in the future, Tesla said without naming where or providing a timeline.

The announcement follows Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s promise back in April that the company would launch an insurance product “in about a month.” At the time, he said it would be “much more compelling than anything else out there.”

The company argues that Tesla Insurance will be able provide insurance at a lower cost by leveraging the “advanced technology, safety, and serviceability of our cars.” In short, Tesla is saying that it deep insight and familiarity with its own vehicles gives it a better understanding of the technology and repair costs. This helps eliminate fees taken by traditional insurance carriers.

Tesla says the cost of each policy will be based on an individual’s driving record and “other factors that can typically impact a person’s insurance rates.” The company says it won’t, however, use or record vehicle data, such as GPS or vehicle camera footage, when pricing insurance.

That policy seems in direct conflict with Musk’s comments during a first-quarter earnings call with analysts in April when he said Tesla has an “information arbitrage opportunity, explaining that it’s able to capture driving data, giving the company direct knowledge of the risk profile of the driver and car.

If customers want to buy Tesla insurance they might have to agree to “not drive the car in a crazy way,” Musk said at the time. He later added that they can drive crazy, they’ll just have a higher insurance rate.

Tesla insurance won’t cover commercial services such as using the vehicle for ride-hailing or car-sharing services.

Owners looking to insure multiple Tesla vehicles may also be eligible for further discounts, the company said,

Existing Tesla customers in California, and eventually owners in other states, are able to purchase a policy through a dedicated webpage. Customers ordering new vehicles can request a quote prior to delivery once a VIN has been assigned to their Tesla Account, according to the company.

The moderators who sift through the toxic detritus of social media have gained the spotlight recently, but they’ve been important for far longer — longer than internet giants would like you to know. In her new book “Behind the Screen,” UCLA’s Sarah Roberts illuminates the history of this scrupulously hidden workforce and the many forms the job takes.

It is after all people who look at every heinous image, racist diatribe, and porn clip that gets uploaded to Facebook, YouTube, and every other platform — people who are often paid like dirt, treated like parts, then disposed of like trash when worn out. And they’ve been doing it for a long time.

True to her academic roots, Roberts lays out the thesis of the book clearly in the introduction, explaining that although content moderators or the companies that employ them may occasionally surface in discussions, the job has been systematically obscured from sight.

The work they do, the conditions under which they do it, and for whose benefit are largely imperceptible to the users of the platforms who pay for and rely upon this labor. In fact, this invisibility is by design.

Roberts, an assistant professor of information studies at UCLA, has been looking into this industry for the better part of a decade, and this book is the culmination of her efforts to document it. While it is not the final word on the topic — no academic would suggest their work was — it is an eye-opening account, engagingly written, and not at all the tour of horrors you may reasonably expect it to be.

After reading the book, I talked with Roberts about the process of researching and writing it. As an academic and tech outsider, she was not writing from personal experience or even commenting on the tech itself, but found that she had to essentially invent a new area of research from scratch spanning tech, global labor, and sociocultural norms.

“Opacity, obfuscation, and general unwillingness”

“To take you back to 2010 when I started this work, there was literally no academic research on this topic,” Roberts said. “That’s unusual for a grad student, and actually something that made me feel insecure — like maybe this isn’t a thing, maybe no one cares.”

That turned out not to be the case, of course. But the practices we read about with horror, of low-wage workers grinding through endless queues of content from child abuse to terrorist attacks, while they’ve been in place for years and years, have been successfully moderated out of existence by the companies that employ them. But recent events have changed that.

“A number of factors are coalescing to make the public more receptive to this kind of work,” she explained. “Average social media users, just regular people, are becoming more sophisticated about their use, and questioning the integration of those kinds of tools and media in their everyday life. And certainly there were a few key political situations where social media was implicated. Those were a driving force behind the people asking, do I actually know what I’m using? Do I know whether or how I’m being manipulated? How do the things I see on my screen actually get there?”

A handful of reports over the years, like Casey Newton’s in the Verge recently, also pierced the curtain behind which tech firms carefully and repeatedly hid this unrewarding yet essential work. At some point the cat was simply out of the bag. But few people recognized it for what it was.

India has further liberalized its foreign direct investment (FDI) rules for many sectors, opening new avenues for global investors and giants such as Apple as Asia’s third-largest economy attempts to jump-start its years-low economic growth.

New Delhi said Wednesday evening that it is easing sourcing norms for single-brand retailers like Apple. As part of the new proposal, which has been approved, the government said single-brand retail companies will be allowed to open online stores before they set up presence in the bricks-and-mortar market.

This would allow Apple, which has yet to set up retail stores in the country, to start selling a range of products through its own online store. Currently, Apple sells its products in India through partnered third-party offline retailers and e-commerce platforms such as Amazon India, Flipkart and Paytm Mall.

Over the years, Apple has requested the government numerous times to relax the local foreign direct investment (FDI) rules. Company executives have long expressed disappointment at Amazon India, Flipkart and Paytm Mall for offering heavy discounts on the iPhone and MacBook Air to boost their respective GMV metrics.

Even as this boosted the sales of iPhones in India, the discounts diluted the brand image of iPhones in the country, executives felt.

Apple will soon explore selling its products through its online store in India, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. But the move is unlikely to materialize before next year, the person said, requesting anonymity.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

New Delhi previously also forced companies like Apple to source 30% of their productions locally (PDF). Now the government says it is broadening the definition to include both materials sold in India and those exported in the local sourcing law.

“It has been decided that all procurements made from India by the single brand retail trade entity for that single brand shall be counted towards local sourcing, irrespective of whether the goods procured are sold in India or exported. Further, the current cap of considering exports for five years only is proposed to be removed, to give an impetus to exports,” Piyush Goyal, Commerce and Industry Minister, said in a press conference.

Apple had urged the government previously to ease this requirement, as well.

India has emerged as one of the world’s biggest battlegrounds for smartphone vendors. As sale of smartphones slow or decline in nearly every corner of the world, Indians are showing a growing appetite for handsets.

The local smartphone market, which is the fastest growing globally and also second largest, was once commanded by local smartphone manufacturers. But things have dramatically changed in recent years with Chinese phone makers such as Xiaomi, Vivo, OnePlus, Oppo and Realme and South Korean giant Samsung together controlling 90% of the market.

Apple continues to largely focus on users looking for a premium smartphone in India. Even as the iPhone maker’s market share in India stands below 2%, per research firms IDC, Counterpoint and Canalys, Apple CEO Tim Cook has said on a number of earnings calls that the company sees major opportunity in India.

To boost sales in India, Apple has started to assemble several iPhone models locally and reached a stage where it can begin to export to overseas markets phones produced in India. Assembling phones in India allows Apple — as it does other phone makers — to enjoy some tax benefits that Narendra Modi’s government provides.

As part of today’s announcement, the government is now also allowing foreign investment in digital media to take up to 26% stakes in companies — a figure that now stands at 100% for the coal mining industry and associated infrastructure and sales of fuel.

“The extant FDI policy provides for 49% FDI under approval route in Up-linking of ‘News &Current Affairs’ TV Channels. It has been decided to permit 26% FDI under government route for uploading/ streaming of News & Current Affairs through Digital Media, on the lines of print media,” it said in a press release.

India’s move today comes as the nation grapples with a slowing of economic growth. The economic growth in the quarter that just ended stood at 5.8%, a five-year low in the nation.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Peloton files publicly for IPO

Peloton previously filed a confidential S-1, but now its IPO documents have been revealed publicly, showing that the fitness tech company brought in $915 million in revenue during its most recent fiscal year, with losses of $245.7 million.

Co-founder and CEO John Foley laid out a grand vision in the documents, writing that “Peloton is so much more than a Bike — we believe we have the opportunity to create one of the most innovative global technology platforms of our time.”

2. Anthony Levandowski, former Google engineer at center of Waymo-Uber case, charged with stealing trade secrets

If convicted, Levandowski faces a maximum sentence of 10 years and a fine of $250,000 — plus restitution — for each violation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

3. Fitbit’s CEO discusses the company’s subscription future

At a small event in Manhattan this week, Fitbit laid out its future for the press. Tellingly, the event was far more focused on the company’s software play. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

Image via Getty Images /
franckreporter

4. US border officials are increasingly denying entry to travelers over others’ social media

The latest case saw a Palestinian national living in Lebanon and would-be Harvard freshman denied entry to the U.S. just before the start of the school year.

5. ThoughtSpot hauls in $248M Series E on $1.95B valuation

ThoughtSpot was started by a bunch of ex-Googlers looking to bring the power of search to data. Seven years later the company is growing fast, sporting a valuation of almost $2 billion and looking ahead to a possible IPO.

6. Google will shut down Google Hire in 2020

Google built Hire in an effort to simplify the hiring process, with a workflow that integrated into Google’s G Suite things like searching for applicants, scheduling interviews and providing feedback about potential hires.

7. Rwanda to phase out gas motorcycle taxis for e-motos

The government of Rwanda will soon issue national policy guidelines to eliminate gas motorcycles in its taxi sector in favor of e-motos.

The creatures of the depths live in a very different world — one lethal to us. But our world is lethal to them as well, all sharp edges and rapid movements. If we’re to catch and learn about the soft-bodied denizens of the deep, our machines too must be soft — and that’s what this Harvard robotics research is all about.

Collection of samples from the deep ocean is a difficult task to do safely: Although these animals are subject to pressures and temperatures well beyond what any surface creature could handle, they are nevertheless very easily damaged by handling. Existing methods to collect them for study often involve sucking them into little containers that are kept pressurized and brought to the surface. But it would be nice to be able to snatch an intriguing critter up and inspect it in vivo, wouldn’t it?

To that end researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have been working on simpler, safer ways to entrap these creatures temporarily, letting them go seconds or minutes later once the collector has gotten some good images or (I don’t know) sampled some mucus.

A little more than a year ago, they created an “underwater Pokeball,” a kind of soft geodesic form that could close around something like a jelly or drifting fish. But even with that kind of method, there’s still the possibility that it could get squished during closure.

So they continued their work, pursuing instead “noodle-like appendages” that, when not activated, are as pliable and harmless as cooked spaghetti, or rather fettuccine considering their shape.

Each “finger” is made of an “elastic yet tough silicone matrix,” and inside it are tiny fibers that remain slack when not in use, but which can be stiffened using a tiny amount of hydraulic pressure. This causes the whole finger to bend in a specific direction, in this case inwards at the same time as the others, scooping whatever is in their range into the soft 3D-printed “palm.” The grip is soft enough that it won’t harm the creature, but firm enough that it can’t just wriggle out.

Sinatra et al. / Science Robotics

At that point the researchers are free to do what they wish, though presumably after taking such care to catch the animal unharmed, they won’t be doing anything too rough with it.

There are few limitations on the size or length of the fingers, meaning they can be customized for different operations. The device you see pictured was made to be effective in catching common jellies, but the whole thing could easily be scaled up or down to handle bigger or smaller animals.

Of course the whole thing can be attached to a submersible, but it’s small and simple enough that it can also be made into a handheld gadget for manual sampling, should that what a given researcher prefers. They put together a prototype and “demonstrated the use of this hand-held soft gripper to successfully perform gentle grasping of three canonical jellyfish species.”

Here’s hoping this means less shredded jellies in our oceans, and perhaps one day you’ll be able to rent such a grabber while snorkeling and have a chance to examine fragile marine life closely without having to grab it with your hands (not recommended).

The researchers’ work was published today in the journal Science Robotics.

Bestmile, a transportation software startup, has raised $16.5 million in a Series B round led by Blue Lagoon Capital and TransLink Capital.

Existing investors Road Ventures, Partech, Groupe ADP, Airbus Ventures, Serena and others also participated in the round. The company, which launched in 2014, has raised $31 million to date.

Bestmile has developed fleet management software that orchestrates the delicate balance between demand for, and supply of transportation. Managing fleets isn’t new. However, the emergence of new and varied ways for people and packages to move within cities has created new opportunities for software companies.

Bestmile is aiming to become the preferred platform for public transit operators, automakers and taxi companies that offer ride-hailing, microtransit, autonomous shuttle services and even robotaxis. While Bestmile emphasizes the ability of the platform to manage more futuristic means of travel, namely autonomous shuttles, fleet management software is designed to be agnostic. This means it will work for human-driven fleets like traditional taxi cabs as well as autonomous shuttles and, someday, robotaxis.

The startup’s investors also see opportunities for the platform that extend beyond microtransit, ride-hailing and autonomous shuttles. For instance, Airbus Ventures sees Bestmile as a key enabler for urban air mobility, according to Thomas d’Halluin, a managing partner at the Airbus’ venture arm.

The platform works by collecting real-time data such as weather, traffic, demand and vehicle telemetry. It then uses the data to squeeze the most out of the fleet. That means balancing demand from customers with the cost of operations.

The startup, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland and has an office in San Francisco, already has a number of customers, including autonomous shuttle operators. The company’s software is managing 15 deployments globally. Bestmile announced earlier this week that it has partnered with Beep, an autonomous shuttle company in Orlando, Fla.

Blue Lagoon partners Rodney Rogers and Kevin Reid have joined Bestmile’s board. Rogers is now board chairman. The pair, which have first-hand experience as co-founders, should be able to provide the kind of insight needed to scale a company. Rogers and Reid co-founded enterprise cloud services company Virtustream, which was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2015 for $1.2 billion. The business is now part of Dell Technologies.