DoorDash is paying restitution after keeping tips from as many as 63,000 of its New York delivery workers thanks to a settlement with the New York Attorney General’s office, The New York Times reports. Attorney General Letitia James announced on Monday that DoorDash will pay $16.8 million, which will be spread across workers who were subjected to the company’s “guaranteed pay” model that subsidized payments against customer tips.

DoorDash will additionally pay up to $1 million in administrator costs to help make the payments happen. Some workers are expected to get several thousand dollars, others as much as $14,000, a spokesperson for the New York Attorney General’s office told The New York Times. The Office of the Attorney General will determine which workers are eligible and how much they’re repaid. DoorDash also made similar settlements with Illinois for $11.3 million in November and with Washington DC for $2.5 million in 2020.

From May 2017 through September 2019, DoorDash’s payment model would “guarantee” a certain payout to workers whether customers tipped or not. However, what the company didn’t make clear was that it was really giving a base pay of $1 and would use tips from customers before doling out money towards the guaranteed amount. For instance, if a delivery job had guaranteed payment of $10 to the worker and the customer tipped $6, DoorDash would pay the worker $1 plus the $6 tip, then fill in the remaining $3 to add up to the guarantee. If they tipped $7 or $8, the worker wouldn’t be paid anything extra — DoorDash would pocket the difference instead.

DoorDash’s model of using tips for workers’ base pay came into light in July 2019 and was met with scrutiny by the workers and customers which pushed the company to promise change in the policy. In an August 2019 response to the situation, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu tweeted that they thought they were “​​doing the right thing for Dashers by making them whole if a customer left no tip, but the feedback we’ve received recently made clear that some of our customers who were leaving tips felt like their tips didn’t matter.”

Not only was the guaranteed pay system deceitful to workers, the state complaint alleged, but it was also misleading to customers since the app promised “Dashers will always receive 100 percent of the tip,” which is only technically accurate. The New York Attorney General’s office also noted that disclosures of how tips work were buried to the point of inaccessibility during the ordering process.

During the 2021 pandemic, DoorDash and Grubhub were also sued by the city of Chicago for unfair fees and tipping policies. The case is ongoing.

Hackman, who's career spanned generations of classics from The French Connection to The Royal Tenenbaums, was 95.

Trump’s comments about turning Gaza into a resort have inspired hellish AI videos and memecoins.

Save 26% on the officially-licensed SanDisk 1TB microSDXC card branded with the Pokémon Snorelax's happy face.

Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous driving subsidiary, has been rapidly expanding its self-driving robotaxi across various US cities, introducing both testing phases and public ride-hailing operations. Despite these expansion plans, many people remain hesitant to embrace autonomous technology. A Pew Research Center study from 2022 found that 45 percent of Americans would not feel comfortable sharing the road with driverless vehicles.

Much of this skepticism comes from the coverage in the media of autonomous driving incidents. Crashes are rare, so when they do happen, they make headlines and fuel the idea that these cars are untrustworthy. The hype around a few high-profile crashes can easily drown out the bigger picture.

The data tells a different story, though. In collaboration with Swiss insurance company Swiss Re, Waymo conducted a study analyzing 25.3 million miles driven by its autonomous vehicles. The findings revealed an 88 percent reduction in property damage claims and a 92 percent reduction in bodily injury claims compared to human-driven vehicles for the same distance traveled.

Read full article

Comments

© Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is set to fly Katy Perry, Lauren Sanchez and Gayle King as part of a six-person, all-female spaceflight.

Meta has fixed an error that caused some users to see a flood of graphic and violent videos in their Instagram Reels feed. The fix comes after some users saw horrific and violent content despite having Instagram’s “Sensitive Content Control” enabled. “We have fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

ResilienceVC, a new seed-stage fintech venture capital firm based out of Washington, D.C., is announcing its $56 million debut fund, the firm shared exclusively with TechCrunch. Founded by Tahira Dosani and Vikas Raj in 2023, ResilienceVC’s mission is a straightforward one: to back fintech companies dedicated to helping Americans find financial stability. It’s writing checks […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Prime Video launched its ad-supported tier last January, opening new opportunities for brands looking to reach its massive audience of more than 200 million Amazon Prime subscribers. As the platform enters its second year with ads, advertisers have praised the streamer for its robust data offering, impressive reach, and premium content. But the streamer still...

As programmatic advertising spend continues to surge, reaching a projected $180 billion by 2025 in the U.S. alone, the industry faces mounting challenges around efficiency and scale. 

Between 2020 to 2023, the number of bidstream requests between DSPs and SSPs has increased by 2.3 times, far outpacing actual inventory growth. This surge, driven by the proliferation of SSPs, ad tech intermediaries and increased header bidding adoption, has created a complex supply chain rife with inefficiencies, impacting everyone from brands and agencies to DSPs and SSPs.

These inefficiencies manifest in wasted ad spend due to duplicate bid requests, reduced campaign performance from suboptimal inventory matching, strained technical infrastructure and increased operational costs and difficulty achieving campaign goals due to inconsistent access to desired audiences. Meanwhile, DSPs and SSPs face growing processing overhead as they manage an ever-increasing volume of bid requests, some of which never result in delivered impressions. 

Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV.

Many years ago, I built my first PC inside a repurposed Gateway chassis with just a regular old screwdriver and a grounding bracelet. I’ll spare you the ugly details, but let’s just say I wish I had tools specially made for the job. If you want to avoid pain in your own projects, you should consider picking up Hoto’s 48-in-1 Electric Precision Screwdriver set. It has everything you need to pry open gadgets for fine adjustments, yet costs just $69.99 ($40 off) on sale at Amazon and Walmart. That price matches the record low from Black Friday.

The cordless electric screwdriver is a bit skinnier but longer than some of the other Hoto variants we’ve recommended, which is what you want in tighter quarters. It offers two torque speeds, allowing you to dial it up for stubborn screws or down for softly reassembling fragile items.

Among the included magnetic screwdriver bits are half a dozen options with 45mm shafts for extra reach. You’ll get 20 more 28mm bits to cover a range of common screw heads. The package also contains a variety of spudgers, picks, priers, and tweezers, along with a suction cup, a magnetic pad that doubles as a ruler, and things to help you stay grounded to protect yourself and your electronics. Everything is neatly secured in the included storage case, which also has a dedicated magnetizer and demagnetizer, plus an external USB-C port to charge the screwdriver while it’s docked.

Other deals you might like

• Samsung just announced a blistering fast PCIe Gen 5 SSD, but if you’re buying an SSD purely for gaming, you can get by just fine and save money with the last-gen Samsung 990 EVO Plus. The 1TB model is down to $74.99 ($35 off) at Amazon, or you can step up to 2TB for $129.99 ($55 off) — both are new record lows. The M.2 NVMe drives are primarily limited to PCIe Gen 4 speeds, with read/write values of 7.2GBps and 6.3GBps, respectively. That’s still very fast for heavy file transfers and more than enough for SSD-optimized PC games to play their best. You can also install one inside a PlayStation 5 for expanded storage.
• Prime members can get Ugreen’s MagFlow 2-in-1 charging stand for $23.99 ($36 off) at Amazon, which is an all-time low price. It has a magnetic holder for your MagSafe iPhone, but note: it doesn’t have Qi2’s 15W charging speed. That might be fine if you’re just using it as a bedside stand for overnight charging, however. The stand features a ball join that lets you adjust the viewing angle. There’s also a Qi pad in the base to charge your wireless earbuds. Be aware that the package doesn’t include the required 20W wall adapter.
• The JBL Authentics 200 is available at a new all-time low of $199.95 ($150 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. The smart speaker sounds really good for its small stature, but surprisingly, it doesn’t have a battery to make it truly portable like the bigger and more powerful Authentics 300 does, which is also on sale for a record low $299.95 ($150 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart. Both take on a retro-inspired appearance, but include modern smarts with both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant built in, plus diverse connectivity options including Wi-Fi (supporting AirPlay, Chromecast, and the like), Bluetooth, and aux. Read our hands-on impressions.

OpenAI’s former CTO Mira Murati has officially launched Thinking Machines Lab, an AI research company focused on making AI systems “more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable.” The startup came out of stealth last week and is already drawing serious […]

The post Thinking Machines, an AI startup launched last week by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, set to be valued at $9 billion first appeared on Tech Startups.

In its latest teaser, Nothing is showing off the design and camera of its standard Nothing Phone (3a) while more leaks detail an upcoming software feature.

more…

Apple has been under investigation by authorities in France for nearly two years over App Tracking Transparency, a privacy feature that lets iPhone users decide whether their activity can be tracked by advertisers or not. You’ve likely seen many of the ‘Ask App Not to Track’ pop-ups. Now, per a new Reuters report, the case is about to wrap up and looks set to end unfavorably for Apple.

more…

Never be in the dark again with what this power station can offer you.

Sony is permanently reducing the price of the PlayStation VR2. Starting in March, the headset will cost $400, €450 and £400 — down from $550, €600 and £530, respectively. Included in the price cut is the Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle, which, like the standard package, will cost $400, €450 or £400 depending on your region. While it’s been possible to buy the PS VR2 for less than $400 during recent sales, the new pricing should give retailers the flexibility to discount the device even more aggressively down the road.

It’s hard to say what this means for the future of the PS VR2. Arguably, it was too expensive at launch, and at $400, it still costs more than the Meta Quest 3S, a standalone headset that doesn’t require a PlayStation 5 or PC to power it. Sony recently added support for low-latency hand tracking, but overall the company doesn’t appear keen on investing more time and money into the platform. Major first-party studios haven’t made many games for the PS VR2, and those that have, including the creators of Call of the Mountain, have seen layoffs in recent months.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/sony-cuts-the-price-of-ps-vr2-to-400-154138227.html?src=rss

©

© Devindra Hardawar/Engadget

For several years now, we've been following a tantalizing story indicating that the high heat of the ash cloud generated when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD was sufficiently hot to turn one of the victim's brains into glass. It remains a matter of debate in the archeological community, but a fresh analysis of the physical properties of the glass-like material found in the remains lends more evidence to the hypothesis, as detailed in a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.

As previously reported, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius released thermal energy roughly equivalent to 100,000 times the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, spewing molten rock, pumice, and hot ash over the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in particular. The vast majority of the victims died of asphyxiation, choking to death on the thick clouds of noxious gas and ash.

But a 2001 study in Nature, co-authored by Petrone, estimated a temperature of 500° Celsius (932° Fahrenheit) for the pyroclastic surge that destroyed Pompeii, sufficient to kill inhabitants in fractions of a second. Back in 2018, we reported on Petrone's conclusion that inhabitants of Herculaneum may have suffered a similar fate. There was fracturing in the bones and "cracking and explosion" of the skullcaps, consistent with forensic cases where skulls burst from extreme heat.

Read full article

Comments

© Pier Paolo Petrone

Ram's 1500 Ramcharger goes on sale later this year, and the company is taking a slightly different approach to its electrified truck than rivals Ford and General Motors, which both now offer battery electric pickups. The Ramcharger will be a range-extended EV, albeit one with more lithium-ion on board than most BEVs have.

Honestly, pickup trucks are a poor candidate for electrification, at least while we're still firmly in early adopter territory. The instant and impressive torque from an electric motor is great, but the shape of a cab and bed is inherently draggy in a way that few other vehicles are, a problem exacerbated by whopping great frontal areas.

But the pickup truck is also the most popular kind of vehicle in the US, and the industry has tried very hard to convince itself and everyone else that pickup buyers could seamlessly adopt electric powertrains en masse. That way, everyone in America could drive an EV, climate change would go away, and no one would have to consider changing their lifestyle or taking a bus to work.

Read full article

Comments

© Ram

In a bid to take on YouTube, TikTok is revamping its desktop platform with the addition of several new features. The company announced on Thursday that its web-based experience features a new modular layout, refreshed For You feed, a new Explore tab, immersive full-screen LIVE gaming streaming, and a floating player. The social network’s new […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

For two decades, TechCrunch has provided a front row view to the future of technology, shaping conversations that matter and spotlighting the next big things before they break — both on the page and in person at our world-renowned events.  This year, as we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we’re launching our most ambitious events calendar […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.