Charlotte Henry

A protest caravan of Uber and Lyft drivers is preparing to make its way across California, Techcrunch reported. It will launch in SoCal Monday, August 26, before finishing in Sacramento on August 28.

Yesterday, California-based advocacy organizations Gig Workers Rising and Mobile Workers Alliance announced that a caravan of Uber and Lyft drivers will drive from SoCal through San Francisco to Sacramento, next Monday, August 26 through Wednesday, August 28th. Over 200 drivers in more than 75 cars plan to drive south to north, with more drivers joining along the way, to take dramatic action in advocating for California State Legislature bill AB5, and for a drivers union. With AB5 almost certain to pass the CA Senate, this coming week presents a crucial moment in the history of gig work and tech more broadly: an opportunity for drivers to demonstrate the efficacy of 21st century labor modes of organizing, even as Uber and Lyft continue ramping up efforts to kill AB5, drop pay rates, and generally mistreat drivers.

Most of use are excited about what 5G will enable us to do on a smartphone, and how fast it will enable to us to do it. However, as CNET noted, the effect could be just as significant in the home broadband space.

Consumers often see prices rise in areas where there’s only one provider, yet many Americans continue to lack competitive home internet options. Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint have all hyped up home broadband as one of the many uses of 5G to solve this problem by offering a viable and speedy alternative. Verizon’s first 5G network rollout focused on the home, while T-Mobile CEO John Legere railed against “big cable” while pitching regulators on his company’s $26.5 billion merger with Sprint.

In June 2015 Apple unveiled its music social network, to great fanfare. However, it killed-off the service in December 2018. Music Business Worldwide looked at what might have been.

In a world where every streaming service is desperate to differentiate itself, Apple had something really unique. Connect could have been hugely influential… At its core, Apple Music Connect was a social media platform embedded into the Apple Music ecosystem. Artists could use it to share lyrics, exclusive photos, videos or even release their latest song directly to fan followers from their iPhone. As such, Connect was sort of an Instagram-SoundCloud-Facebook-Twitter-YouTube hybrid. This is why Jimmy Iovine, Apple’s former Head of Music Operations, described Connect at the time as one of Apple Music’s three key differentiating elements, alongside human-curated music streaming and the 24-hour Beats 1 radio station.

Apple Card is a key part of Goldman Sach’s work to become a key player in the consumer market, its CEO said. David Solomon made the comments in an interview with CNBC.

“Apple Card is big, but it’s also a beginning,” Solomon said Tuesday in an internal memo obtained by CNBC. “In the decades to come, I expect us to be a leader in our consumer business, just like we are in our institutional and corporate businesses, with customer-centricity at the core of everything we do.” The co-branded credit card rolled out Tuesday to all U.S. customers, featuring a cash-back policy of up to 3% as well as a titanium, laser-etched physical card. “Apple Card makes a typically frustrating application process easy; it provides an interface with more useful information for the customer; and it places greater importance on customer privacy and security,” Solomon said.

On Monday, Twitter suspended over 900 accounts it said were involved in a Chinese disinformation campaign in Hong Kong. One of those people who had their account suspended, 24-year-old Luka Ivezic, told the BBC his account should not have bee amongst those flagged by the social media firm.

Mr Ivezic, who was born in Croatia and says he has never been to China, recently completed his thesis. The subject? “Disinformation, and how artificial intelligence can empower the tools that China and Russia have to misinform us.” “It is a bit ironic that something like this would happen to me,” he said after I contacted him about the list. According to documents released by Twitter on Monday, four of Mr Ivezic’s tweets were flagged, all of which discussed Artificial Intelligence, bitcoin and other related tech subjects. Tweets, which he says, he posted himself… “It doesn’t make any logical sense,” said Marin Ivezic, Luka’s father, a partner with consultancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, working on cybersecurity.

YouTube creators are known for makeup tips and stunts. But the i looked into how the platform is aiming to offer content looking at philosophy, science, and history, in partnerships involving its creators and influencers.

YouTube executive Luke Hyams describes the platform as “the biggest video library and resource in the history of civilisation”. It is also a media giant competing in an increasingly crowded video entertainment market. Whereas rival streaming services throw their budgets at star directors, scriptwriters and acting talent, YouTube’s content focus is on its own “YouTubers’”, the creators and influencers who have used the platform to build channels that attract millions of visitors each day. Hyams, who is head of YouTube Originals for Europe, Middle East and Africa, will look to harness this homegrown talent in making a series of ambitious UK-commissioned shows which he hopes will become global hits.

The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue will host the second Chicago Music Summit it emerged Monday. 9to5Mac outlined some of the details of the event, which which will run for the second time this September. Details of the first two weeks of sessions also appeared as part of the Today at Apple program.

Apple describes the Chicago Music Industry Summit as a time to “connect with others and tap into creative resources to help further your career in music and the arts.” The month-long event collection is a collaboration with Apple Music and organized under the umbrella of Today at Apple, the program of daily creative sessions held in every Apple Store. Like all Today at Apple sessions, Chicago Music Industry Summit events are free to attend and generally take the form of hands-on labs, discussions, and live performances.

In recent times, reports emerged about the toll being a Facebook moderator took on people. The company introduced access to on-site counselling for staff. However, The Intercept found that some therapists were put under pressure to disclose what was discussed in those confidential sessions.

Access to on-site counseling is one of the few bright points for this workforce. But now even this grim perk has been undermined by corporate prying, according to a letter drafted by a group of about a dozen Austin moderators who work across Facebook and Instagram. The letter alleges that, starting in early July, Accenture managers attempted to pressure multiple on-site counselors to share information relating to topics discussed in employee trauma sessions. This information was understood by both counselors and Accenture employees to be confidential, said several Accenture sources interviewed by The Intercept. It is not clear what specific information related to the sessions was sought by the managers.

We’ve just finished marking the 50th anniversary of the first man on the moon. Of course, there were a number of Apollo missions before that. National Geographic told the story of Poppy Northcutt.  Aged 25, she became the first woman inside Apollo mission control.

“The whole society discouraged me” from a career in engineering, she recalls. Nevertheless, when she graduated early from what was then the University of Texas with a degree in mathematics, she knew she wanted to work in the space program, and in 1965 she got a job crunching numbers for NASA through TRW, one of the space agency’s contractors. “My job title was ‘computress’—a gendered computer,” she recalls. Computresses were subordinate to all-male teams of engineers… “Interesting little bugs kept showing up,” Northcutt recalls. “A small or inconsequential error could be fatal.” That lesson was driven home during the disastrous Apollo 13 mission, when Northcutt and team had to troubleshoot their return-to-Earth program to get those astronauts home safely.