Uber and Lyft drivers are classified as employees, the California Public Utilities Commission has officially ruled. The regulator, which oversees ride-hailing companies, declared its decision in an order published on Tuesday. It said “a person providing labor or services for remuneration shall be considered an employee rather than an independent contractor” under AB5, the state’s new law covering gig work, which became effective on January 1st, 2020.
In its order, the Commission mentioned that Uber filed a lawsuit in federal court to prevent its drivers from being classified as employees under AB5. It also noted that Uber and Lyft successfully “placed on the November 2020 ballot a measure that would exclude all app-based drivers from AB5.” The lawsuit and ballot don’t affect the Commission’s authority over ride-hailing services, though, so their drivers are “presumed to be employees.” That means the regulator must ensure that ride-hailing services “comply with those requirements that are applicable to the employees of an entity subject to the Commission’s jurisdiction.”
We’ve seen plenty of games that mixed music in with other styles of gameplay, but now Metal: Hellsinger will try to blend guitar riffs with standard first-person shooter action. Similar to games like Parappa the Rapper, the focus here is staying on beat. If you can do it, then your character will become more powerful, the music will become more intense and so on.
Metal: Hellsinger’s trailer premiered as part of IGN’s Summer of Gaming event, coming from indie developer studio The Outsiders. The Swedish company includes people who’ve worked on games like Payday 2 and Battlefield in the past, and had been developing a project called Darkborn where players took on the role of a growing monster.
The deal is a consolation prize of sorts for Grubhub. As CNBCexplained, Grubhub had courted Uber as a potential buyer until talks fell through. Antitrust concerns were reportedly the sticking point — both companies were worried that the combination of two US-based delivery giants might run afoul of regulators, and they couldn’t agree on how Uber would help Grubhub through any government challenges. On the surface, at least, a Just Eat deal is more likely to go through.
Uber isn’t heartbroken. A spokesperson said that the delivery market will “need consolidation” to meet its potential, but that Uber wasn’t so determined to merge that it would accept “any deal, at any price, with any player.”
Provided the buyout goes forward, it should give Grubhub more of a safety net in the US as it competes with Uber, DoorDash and others. You might not have to worry about losing access to a preferred app or restaurant. It also helps Just Eat’s reentrance in the UK. This might not be great for overall competition, though. While an Uber deal would have had more of an impact on competition in places like the US, the Just Eat merger could still make it harder for upstarts to get a foothold.
It’s been easy to revisit early Super Mario games, but what if you were one of those rebels who had a Sega Master System and played Alex Kidd instead? Don’t worry, there’s a nostalgia trip in store for you as well. Jankenteam and Merge Games have unveiledAlex Kidd in Miracle World DX, a revival and expansion of the 1986 classic coming to PC, PlayStation, Switch and Xbox. This is considerably more ambitious than the straighforward, years-old Wii release. There are modernized graphics, new levels and modes (such as a boss rush) and more story elements.
The developers also promise tweaks to combat, movement and boss fights in the updated version, although you can stick to a Classic Mode with familiar mechanics if you’d rather not mess with Sega’s original formula.
We’ve asked Amazon for comment. At present, it’s not clear if “police” refers to all law enforcement or standard police forces.
The move comes just days after Congressional Democrats introduced a police reform bill that, among other things, would forbid the use of real-time facial recognition for body and dashboard cameras without a judge’s approval. If the bill is eventually signed into law, it theoretically prevents agencies from abusing Rekognition to profile people or otherwise tread on their privacy.
At the same time, there’s little doubt that Rekognition represents a sore point for Amazon in the current climate. In addition to concerns about privacy, people have raised alarms about racial bias and basic accuracy in Amazon’s platform — Rekognition is bound to face heightened scrutiny and opposition when there’s an uproar over racism among the police. A moratorium gets Rekognition out of the spotlight and gives Amazon a chance to rethink how (or if) it shares the system with police going forward.
Developers will have to enable Bubbles for you to start seeing more apps work with this. We’ve reached out to Telegram and WhatsApp to see if they plan to support this feature, and the latter declined to comment. Telegram has yet to respond, while Google says Messages support is coming soon.
Whether you favor Telegram, WhatsApp, Messages, Instagram, Facebook Messenger or any of the plethora of chat apps available today, it can be a drag to stay on top of all the people trying to contact you. The Android 11 beta features an area in the notifications shade that consolidates all your messages so you can address alerts that need a response before attending to your Instagram likes or Twitter hearts. If you can’t reply immediately, you can also set a reminder to get to it later. I like having all my conversations organized neatly at the top, but there are other things also taking up space in the notification shade like media controls that might make this less like Marie Kondo-ing and more like cluttering.
Easier device and media controls
One of the things that would take up room in the Quick Settings area above your list of notifications is a new persistent media player. In this beta version, you’d have to first enable developer options (by repeatedly hitting the Build number at the bottom of the About Phone page), then enabling the “Media resumption” setting. If you don’t do this, media controls will look the same as they did in Android 10.
Screenshot by Cherlynn Low
After I activated the feature, a small widget about the size of 3×2 Quick Settings icons appeared, offering buttons for play/pause, next and previous track. This is a smart way for Google to offer easy access to these controls without taking up space in the alerts list below, though it doesn’t display album art the way the notification-based controls do. I’m impressed that Google managed to keep the same six shortcuts in the Quick Settings panel, which previously was a single row of icons, by expanding to two lanes and squeezing the original set of options to the right. This way, it managed to place this media widget to the left for more controls. If you’d rather a simpler interface, you can disable Media resumption.
In Android 11, you’ll see more settings pop up when you long-press the power button. In addition to shortcuts for Google Pay, Emergency information, shutting down and restarting like before, the page will also show your connected devices. I had to make sure my Google Home app was installed first, and after I did, all my synced lights showed up. My smart speakers, displays and clocks didn’t, though. Google told Engadget that not all devices on the Home app currently show up, and that “we’re working on adding support for more devices.”
Each light had an individual tile, while the first tile of the grid controlled all of them — you can rearrange this order if you prefer. I only have about five devices connected so this page was fairly manageable, but I imagine it’d get unwieldy if you have more than ten connected. Tapping the “All lights” tile once turned them all on at 8 percent, which is similar to one of my preset routines. My coworker Chris Velazco had his lights turned all the way up to 100 percent when he did this, so it’s clear our experience varied. We’ve reached out to Google to clarify how this works and will update when we hear back. I couldn’t find a way to add other settings though, like turning them to 50 percent after the 8 percent level, so I’ll probably still rely on my Google Home for my preset lighting profiles.
Twitter is about to deal with one of the greatest threats to meaningful discussions on the internet: people who forward articles they haven’t even read. It’s starting an Android test that asks you if you’d like to open an article you’re about to retweet. This should help foster “informed discussion,” the company said.
The social network told Engadget it doesn’t have a timeline for bringing the feature to iOS.
In the physics community, arXiv says it will not mail its regularly scheduled announcement this evening, and submissions that would have been announced today will be announced on Wednesday.
“I want a day where I don’t have to worry that I’ve missed an important paper on the arXiv because I am stressed out while my non-Black colleagues happily keep going. The strike is not just about gathering people together to begin to take action, but it is also about a day of rest for the people most affected by this heated moment,” wrote Chandra Prescod-Weinstein, a University of New Hampshire physics professor and co-organizer of the strike.
The strike organizers note that the STEM community plays a role in society by conducting research that is turned into media releases, books and legislation, which can reinforce anti-Black narratives. STEM professionals also create technology, like facial and voice recognition, and several examples show racial bias in those technologies.
“As members of the global academic and STEM communities, we have an enormous ethical obligation to stop doing ‘business as usual,’” the organizers wrote.
There is one exception to the strike. The organizers say this is aimed at the broad research community, not those working directly on COVID-19 research. “If your daily activities are directly helping us end this global crisis, we send our sincerest gratitude. The rest of us, we need to get to work,” they wrote.
The strike is being promoted on social media with hashtags #ShutDownAcademia, #ShutDownSTEM and #Strike4BlackLives.
iTunes U will be available to existing customers until the end of the 2020-2021 educational year, and Apple is pointing users to other services like Classroom and Schoolwork. For those publishing content on iTunes U, Apple suggests moving content to Apple Podcasts or Apple Books.
Neither of these changes are surprising, as we haven’t heard much about either app for several years. Since Apple’s other products pick up where iTunes U and iBooks Author leave off, users who may still be clinging to the apps have viable alternatives to choose from.
The phone boasts “the best image stabilization ever on a HUAWEI P Series device” thanks to its two telephoto cameras for 3x and 10x optical zoom, 100x maximum digital zoom capability and AI-assisted image stabilization among other features. A 32MP camera with auto-focus and an IR depth camera work together to “produce flawless selfies.”
Huawei promises superior video capability as well, with a “40MP Ultra-Wide Cine Camera” to support low-light video capture. The camera allows for HDR content capture, “Ultra Slow Motion” recording and 4K time-lapse videos. Directional Audio Zoom makes it possible to zoom in on an audio source and amplify its sound.
The phone has a 6.58-inch 2,640 x 1,200 Overflow display to view your newly captured photos and videos. Other notable features include 40W wireless charging, 5G connectivity “with the most comprehensive 5G band support” and the latest EMUI 10.1 operating system.
The phone’s biggest drawback appears to be its lack of Google services. The US government added Huawei made its “Entity List” last summer, meaning no Gmail or Chrome for Huawei phones. It also comes at a hefty price — the P40 Pro+ retails for €1,399, or, just over $1,500.
