AI companies like Unanimous.ai and Expert.ai say they correctly predicted election results in battleground states while traditional polling again falls short — As traditional political polling methods appear to fall short again, some tech firms say that AI holds promise
The built-in usable storage of the PS5, Xbox Series S and Series X are already known and those that are looking to pick up a PS5 should know that the console comes with 825GB of storage of which 667GB is available to users for games and apps. One of the highlights of the PS5 is that users can simply slot in an M.2 PCIe gen 4 drive to expand the storage. The catch is that the drive must be compatible with Sony’s console.
According to The Verge, the expansion slot “will apparently be disabled out of the box”. Sony tells The Verge that the expansion slot is reserved for a future update. During the reveal of the PS5 specifications back in March, PS5 System Lead Architect Mark Cerny spoke about the expandable storage and how they were testing M.2 drives for compatibility with the PS5. During the talk, he does highlight that the support for expandable storage could come after the launch of the console so this shouldn’t be a big surprise. The Verge goes on to highlight that “Sony’s compatibility testing program hasn’t actually kicked off yet”.
With the PS3 and PS4, users could simply replace the internal drive and with the PS4, players could use an external HDD to store and play games as well. Since the PS5’s SSD is soldered onto the motherboard, it won't be replaceable.
Microsoft on the other hand has partnered with Seagate for a proprietary solution for expandable storage. You can learn more about it here.
https://ift.tt/36d4Lyp
China-based e-signature services provider Esign raises $151M Series D, says it now has over 5.02M enterprise users and 270M individual users — Esign, an e-signature services provider in China, announced that it has raised over 1 billion yuan (US$151 million) in a series D round led …
Welcome back to Human Capital and congrats on making it through one of the hardest weeks of the longest year.
Now that the Associated Press has called the election in favor of Joe Biden, it should be good news for DEI practitioners, who expressed some worry they’d be out of a job if Trump was allowed to continue on his path of destruction.
Meanwhile, over in California, the Uber and Lyft-backed gig worker ballot measure, Prop 22, passed. We’ll get into what that all means and the implications moving forward.
Human Capital is a weekly newsletter that lands in subscribers’ inbox every Friday at 1 p.m. PT. Sign up here to receive it.
Gig workers will continue being independent contractors in CA
As y’all may have seen by now, the Uber and Lyft-backed gig worker measure, Proposition 22, passed in California.
The current count is 58.4% in favor of Prop 22 and 41.6% in opposition. Below, you can see how mostly counties in Northern California along the coast drove the opposition.
That means gig workers will continue to be classified as independent contractors in the state. It also essentially makes these gig companies exempt from AB-5, the gig worker bill that went into law at the beginning of the year. Lastly, it means we can expect these gig companies, which spent $205 million on the ballot measure, to seek similar legislation in other states.
“To get Prop 22 passed, gig companies — which have yet to turn a profit — spent a historic $205 million on their campaign, effectively creating a political template for future anti-democratic, corporate law-making,” Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of AI Now Institute and Veena Dubal, professor of law at the University of California, Hastings, wrote.
On Uber’s earnings call this week, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company would “more loudly advocate for laws like Prop 22” throughout the U.S. and worldwide.
Meanwhile, labor groups are already planning their next steps forward. Partnerships for Working Families, for example, is considering potentially lobbying the hopeful Biden administration’s Department of Labor for better federal laws for worker classification, according to Cal Matters. Other options entail suing for issues around worker’s compensation requirements or the ⅞ supermajority needed to amend Prop 22.
Below are statements issued over the past couple of days from interested parties.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to drivers: “With this vote, drivers and delivery people will get what so many of you have been asking for: access to benefits and protections, while maintaining the flexibility and independence you want and deserve.
The future of independent work is more secure because so many drivers like you spoke up and made your voice heard—and voters across the state listened.”
Lyft Chief Policy Officer Anthony Foxx: “California voters have spoken, and they stood with more than a million drivers who clearly said they want independence plus benefits. Prop 22 is now the first law in the nation requiring health, disability and earnings benefits for gig workers. Lyft stands ready to work with all interested parties, including drivers, labor unions and policymakers, to build a stronger safety net for gig workers in the U.S.”
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu: Passing Prop 22 is a big win for Dashers, merchants, customers, and communities. Californians sided with drivers, recognizing the importance of flexible work and the critical need to extend new benefits and protections to drivers like Dashers
Gig Workers Rising: “Billionaire corporations just hijacked the ballot measure system in California by spending millions to mislead voters. The victory of Prop 22, the most expensive ballot measure in U.S. history, is a loss for our democracy that could open the door to other attempts by corporations to write their own laws.”
Gig Workers Collective: “Our organizing has always been untraditional since we aren’t classified as employees and don’t have the legal protections to organize or unionize, but we still found a way to build worker power and fight back. We’re disappointed in tonight’s outcome, especially because this campaign’s success is based on lies and fear-mongering. Companies shouldn’t be able to buy elections. But we’re still dedicated to our cause and ready to continue our fight.”
Uber Chief Diversity Officer Bo Young Lee said on Twitter that for many DEI professionals, “the results of the election will impact how we do our jobs and may even impact if we have jobs in the long term.”
Now that Biden is the presumptive president, the change in the administration will likely mean a change in the executive order banning types of diversity training for federal contractors.
Late last month, three civil rights groups filed a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s execute order. That suit came after Microsoft disclosed that the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs contacted the company regarding its racial justice and diversity commitments made in June.
Shine app co-founders Naomi Hirabayashi and Marah Lidey
On this week’s episode of Mixtape, we spoke with Shine app founder Marah Lidey about mental health. We spoke about the psychological and physiological manifestations of racism, the adverse effects of 2020 and how Black death isn’t new, but it’s finally getting global attention.
“Nothing necessarily new is happening with Black people dying in the streets,” Lidey said. “[Black people] all know that. But when all of your friends and co-workers become aware in this very new way and want to understand and want to share and want to ask you questions and you’re watching this play out at this national level and you’re bombarded at the global level, right I mean, this is in our DNA. Our cells were in the cells of those people who were enslaved.”’
You can check out the full conversation here.
This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays, based on the column of the same name. You can sign up for the email here.
Are you tired? I am. What a week. But, if you kept your eyes off American politics and instead focused on the stock market, this was not a week of stress at all. It was a celebration.
Yes, the election appears to be influencing stocks, with investors delighted at what could be a divided government. Their bet is that with different parties in control of different bits of the government, nothing will happen, and thus taxes and regulation won’t change. You can handicap that as you wish.
Regardless, this week’s stock market boom was a multifaceted affair. Software stocks rallied as the summer-era trade appeared to come back into vogue, in which investors pour capital into SaaS and cloud companies in hopes of parking their wealth into something with growth potential. Software earnings also look pretty good thus far (we chatted with JFrog and Ping Identity and BigCommerce), improving on their early performance.
Uber and Lyft drove their own rally as California voters decided that their long-standing labor arbitrage would stand. And then Uber failed to vomit on itself during its earnings report. Not bad.
Big tech stocks rose, as well. All this is to say that after some fear in the market a week ago, things are back to being heated for tech companies. And it is, as we expected, flushing out the next wave of IPOs.
Airbnb is expected to file publicly early next week (we have four questions here that we cannot wait to get answered), and Upstart actually filed this week, which you probably missed because you were watching something else. No worries. We are here for you.
Another notable possible include DoorDash, now unshackled from its expensive California regulatory battle. How many debuts shall we see? Hopefully many.
Upstart’s IPO filing brings a fintech IPO to the fore, and overall its numbers are pretty good if you discount worries about its customer concentration. Its debut could augur well for fintech as a whole, a segment of the startup population that, when viewed through the lens of PayPal’s earnings, is having a hell of a year.
Fintech VCs are active, as well, dropping over $10 billion into startups focusing on financial technology products and services in Q3. Payments, insurtech, wealth management and banking startups caught our eye as sectors to watch in that niche.
It was not a perfect week for fintech, however, as the U.S. government decided that the Visa-Plaid deal should not happen. Damn. As discussed on Equity, this deal could limit M&A interest for fintech startups from large players. Does that mean that fintech IPOs, then, have to carry the liquidity bucket for the sector?
Maybe! And if so, Upstart’s impending flotation seems to take on extra importance. We’ll keep you posted.
Sticking under our target word count for the first time in so long I nearly forgot what it is, here are a few iotas and crumbs for your weekend:
Have a good weekend. Stay safe. Fight COVID-19. And listen to this.
A vicious culture war is taking place via edit wars on Wikipedia in India, exploiting and aggravating religious tensions in the context of COVID-19 — Edit-warring was already common as India descended into political polarisation. Then along came Covid-19
Angus Berwick / Wall Street Journal : Sources: ECB President Christine Lagarde asked Greece to block Binance's MiCA license in June a...
