Rural broadband is an issue, but some of what you say is not quite accurate. Satellite connections don’t typically require any special tower unless there is no line of site to the satellite, which typically only happens on rural properties that are surrounded by tall trees and have no cleared areas (so obviously, not…

That’s why most smart-TV’s try to get you to opt into a feature that basically tracks what you view based on a capture of the actual images on the screen. It can tell Sony or Vizio that you’re actually watching an NFL game or a bluray or torrent of a movie or TV show, or an over-the-air broadcast which captures the…

Cleanup on aisle four! Bring a mop and mortuary affairs!

If working in coal mines is so shitty and “exploitative”, then why do so many parents continue to send their children down into the darkness? Is anyone coercing or forcing them to do so? Who is preventing them from pursuing other options? “Oh no, my life’s been ruined by coal mining because my child was killed in a…

This seems to be fundamentally true. They basically used a bunch of investors money to dump their product on the market, like Japan did with electronics back in the 1980s. They also tended to just straight-up ignore local laws. Uber went as far to basically run a military-like black ops division to identify and track…

I’m going to ungrey you just so people can laugh at you Dunning-Krugering.

The article is about California, where McDonalds is required by law to provide health benefits, paid sick leave, and overtime after 8 hours. In the city/county where Uber is headquartered (where a significant fraction of of Uber’s revenue comes from) McDonald’s is required to provide all the same benefits to part time…

1. The Supreme Court of the State of California clearly indicated that they are being misclassified in a 2018 ruling.

It is $110K for a family of four, not for a single person.

The law is not “being changed to make them employees.” The California Supreme Court was pretty clear in its ruling that Uber drivers have been employees all along and Uber has been intentionally misclassifying their drivers as independent contractors (Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, 2018). Based on…

Nobody is forcing you to “be an employee”. Nobody is stopping you from starting your own business.

I mean, on the plus side, there won’t be as many ride share drivers that lack a commercial license, driving around, breaking traffic laws, double-parking, blocking bike lanes, injuring and killing pedestrians and bicyclist, and killing and maiming other drivers.

Yeah, it is almost as if there exists a relationship between the employee and the employer that allows them to make mutual demands that may not always align. And apparently there is this thing called “the law” (which seems to be a foreign concept to Uber) that requires the employer to do things like pay minimum wage,…

That is a straw man. Just because an adult is capable of making the decision to work at a worksite that is unnecessarily dangerous, lacks drinking water, lacks toilets, pays in literal peanuts instead of money, et cetera does not mean that the people of the State should allow such a business to operate.

There is no basis in State law that I know of for denying things like minimum wage to employees simply because they are allowed to schedule their own shifts or pickup shifts ad hoc. The hours an employee works are negotiated between the employee and the employer.

If you work at McDonalds as a side-gig, you still get paid minimum wage, overtime, sick leave, unemployment, and health benefits. Why should Uber get to refuse to follow State law regarding minimum wage and other benefits while virtually every other company complies with the law?

Please explain why they shouldn’t have to follow California State law like ever other business in the State? All California businesses have to pay their employees minimum wage and provide employee benefits like sick time, regardless of whether their employees work for 2 hours a week or 100 hours a week. Why is Uber…

I mean, if I have a couple hours after work and so I take a part time job at McDonalds working a few hours a couple nights a week, I get paid the minimum wage of $15+ an hour, get paid sick leave, unemployment benefits, et cetera.

1. The company’s employees so far have not unionized. This has nothing to do with a union. This has to do with the fact that many of these tech companies that employee commercial drivers are misclassifying their workers as independent contractors instead of employees, not only denying their workers the benefits they…

I think they counted on either automation or killing the competition and becoming a monopoly. And because they were so far-behind in automation research, they took a lot of risks with the public’s lives trying to catch up to companies like Google. They got kicked out of California for their arrogance in refusing to…