The News

Delivery gig economy drivers to get basic worker protections

Drivers for two of Australia’s biggest food delivery platforms will have a minimum wage floor and other benefits, as part of a union deal (ABC News). The Transport Workers Union, Uber Eats and DoorDash have agreed to on a floor for minimum pay for workers, as well as giving them protections like insurance, access to a dispute resolution process and the right to join a union. The Fair Work Commission still has to agree but it’s a big deal, considering the precarity and poor pay for most gig workers. (Worth noting that this is possible because of laws passed by the Albanese government in 2023).

The Sizzle: The gig economy boom of the late 2010s-early 2020s was made possible by a few things. There was the technological innovation of being able to call a private taxi for your burrito with an app. Then there was the regulatory innovation that allowed you to pay people below minimum wage, keep them out of unions, and fire them at will because, well, app?

We’ll see how the platforms respond to this change, i.e. will they place new requirements on drivers? But, considering these companies spent years citing stats that actually their drivers are massively out-earning minimum wage, surely, a minimum floor for wages won’t cost them that much — right?

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Privacy-focused Android maker leaving France over legal fears

The people behind the privacy version of Android GrapheneOS say they’re leaving France, citing fears of political prosecution and encryption-breaking laws (PrivacyGuides). The spark of this flight seems to be a French article quoting a prosecutor implying that GrapheneOS’ publisher could be sued over supposed links to criminal organisations. The GrapheneOS guys say they’ve been mistakenly blamed for other groups who’ve forked their operating system to do naughty things. Either way, they’re moving off French hosting and say their developers won’t travel to France because of the (as yet un-passed) European “chat control” law that threatens encryption (Mashable).

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Australia will finally get a government body dedicated to defeating Skynet

Australia is getting a government-run agency responsible for monitoring AI harms and coming up with ways to deal with them (Australian, $). The government announced an AI Safety Institute that will “work directly with regulators to make sure we’re ready to safely capture the benefits of AI” (Andrew Charlton) from “early 2026”. Australia joins other countries like the EU, US, UK, etc. who already have similar bodies (Information Age). Not a lot of details beyond this announcement, but we also found out that the government’s “National AI Plan” is due before the end of the year.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

Things are not going well at Napster 2.0

In case you haven’t been keeping track: Napster is alive. In fact, the company — which is now a “portal to AI-driven music experiences” — has 1,500 employees. It recently received a $5.2 billion investment, which values it at about $18.5 billion.

At least, it thought it did. But, last week, Napster employees found out that this investor never paid up (Forbes). This comes after Forbes reported that the investor had a lot of bills and told a lot of lies. It’s just the latest twist in the fascinating road of Napster’s revival which started in 2019 when:

But fundamentally… are you REALLY surprised that Napster, the music stealing platform, is a bit dodgy? Fool me once, etc.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

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