Technology

California voters approved Prop. 22, which would exempt companies such as Uber and Lyft from having to classify their workers as employees, according to The Associated Press. The $200 million campaign in support of the measure was the most expensive in state history. The ballot measure mandates that drivers for Uber, Lyft and DoorDash will receive new benefits, such as minimum hourly earnings. But drivers won’t get the full protections and benefits that come with employment, as they may have had to under another law, AB5 — which originally took aim at gig work. Labor groups, which opposed the law, raised only a tenth as much money. Uber and Lyft threatened to leave California — or drastically cut back service — if they were forced to classify drivers as employees. Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrows...

President Donald Trump prematurely claimed victory in the 2020 election early Wednesday morning, telling a live TV audience that he’d already won — while also threatening to take legal action against votes that have yet to be counted, even though many states are continuing to process legitimate mail-in ballots. “Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said, while also suggesting he would take legal action to keep further ballots from being counted. Initially, Trump stopped short of declaring a win, instead focusing on individual states where he’s done well. Even there, however, he appears to have lied about some of the details — prompting NBC News to cut him off and fact-check him in real time: NBC News cuts off Trump. Savannah Guthrie: “We’ve got to dip in here because there’ve been sev...

Natural Cycles, the first “digital birth control” to get sign-off from the Food and Drug Administration, is back. This time, it’s asking the agency to authorize integration with wearable devices like the Oura Ring. The feature could make it easier for users to use the app properly, but it doesn’t sidestep some of the existing issues with app-based birth control. The Natural Cycles app uses daily temperature measurements and period cycle tracking to predict the days someone is least likely to get pregnant. It falls under the broad category of fertility awareness birth control methods, where people track when they’d be ovulating and use that information to figure out when they’d have the best chance of conceiving. It tends to be conflated with the rhythm method, which is ineffective, but whe...

Today is Election Day and I am definitely anxious. But I have felt a physical sense of relaxation while watching this Twitch stream of people in the chat solving New York Times crossword puzzles together. The game is very cleverly done. The stream shows the crossword and the clues. Users type in responses to clues in the chat, and then the puzzle will select that clue and fill in the answer. For example, somebody typing “29d ark” essentially translates to “the answer to 29 down is ‘ark,’” and the game can select that clue and type out the answer in the crossword itself. And the whole thing is backed by an extremely chill instrumental soundtrack. Sam Von Ehren’s collaborative crossword puzzle-solving stream on Twitch.Image: Twitch The game isn’t bug-free — it has crashed a few times while I...

Physicists from Leiden University have 3D-printed a miniature version of an Intrepid-class starship from Star Trek (via PC Gamer). The idea of a tiny starship is probably something you haven’t considered outside of the plot of a Star Trek episode, but this microscopic model is actually part of a larger research experiment the physicists published in the scientific journal Soft Matter. The five micrometer long ship looks like the USS Voyager and was microprinted by the physicists for their microswimmer research. Unlike the impulse engines and warp drive of its TV counterpart, this Voyager is propelled through liquid by chemical reactions between its platinum coating and the hydrogen peroxide solution the physicists placed it in. Their article notes that these studies usually use sphere-shap...

The US will formally leave the landmark Paris climate agreement on November 4th, turning its back on the rest of the world as it comes together to stop climate change. How quickly the US takes on the planetary crisis will hinge on the results of today’s election. The Paris Agreement entered into force nearly four years ago today, on November 4th, 2016, after being adopted by every nation on Earth. (There are still a handful of countries that have yet to formally ratify the agreement). Donald Trump moved to remove the US from the accord soon after taking office, but the process took four years. That process comes to an end tomorrow, as voters wait to find out who the next US president will be. “The US will be an outlier.” If it’s Joe Biden, Americans can expect the US to rejoin the accord n...

In the last year, the number of streaming platforms has really gotten out of hand. There’s Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, CBS All Access (soon to be Paramount Plus), and Peacock — and each of them has different pricing tiers. If you scored free trials for Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus, like I did, you probably got to sample a healthy selection of them. Those trials, however, are starting to wind down. Which means it’s time to figure out what’s worth keeping and what’s worth ditching: with this many monthly bills, you should absolutely play favorites. I was surprised to learn mine was HBO Max. HBO Max isn’t particularly well-defined. (It’s HBO… and more?) It has baffling holes in its catalog thanks to licensing agreements, which made its original pitch of ...

The Pixel 5 is one of several flagship phones to offer a reverse wireless charging feature, but Google’s done something particularly clever with its implementation of the feature here: whenever you plug in a USB-C cable, your Pixel 5 will automatically turn on its reverse wireless charging feature, effectively turning it into a Qi charging pad, as spotted by 9to5Google. Google is pretty smart about how it handles the automated feature: according to a support doc, Battery Share will only turn on for “a short period.” If the phone detects another Qi-compatible device has been placed on top to charge, it’ll work as usual, otherwise it’ll automatically turn Battery Share off. [embedded content] This doesn’t mean that you can’t use reverse wireless charging to share power when your phone isn’t ...

Twitter is warning users about misleading tweets from Philadelphia’s polling locations, offering an early preview of how it will handle the rest of the night. The platform has already restricted a tweet from Trump’s director of election day operations, Mike Roman, among others. “Misinformation being spread online has driven more calls to the Election Task Force hotline than actual incidents at polling sites,” complained the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to New York Times reporter Nick Corasaniti. Roman posted a video showing a woman in Philadelphia apparently returning multiple ballots to a dropbox and claimed Democrats were “trying to STEAL THE ELECTION in broad daylight.” But Philadelphia DAO spokeswoman Jane Roh noted that you can legally deliver ballots on behalf of voters wi...

Snapchat is now allowing creators to publicize how many subscribers they have. This is the first time Snapchat has given its users any sort of public-facing metric about their followings or audiences, and it represents a substantial change to the platform, as first reported by Tubefilter. In a statement to The Verge, a Snap spokesperson said: “We’ve listened to feedback from our creator community and many of them expressed interest in having the option to show that their community on Snapchat is growing,” which is why it’s making subscriber counts visible. Creators can decide to turn this feature on or off from their settings. The company introduced creator profiles in September, which gives users on the platform more insights on their audience and helps them coordinate with brands. The fa...

Buying a smartphone for under $500 is a lesson in setting priorities. It’s impossible to buy a phone that does everything at this price point, but luckily you will be able to buy a great phone that does the things that matter the most to you. Phones at this price point are better than ever, many coming with features that used to be reserved just for flagships. But instead of getting it all, you should think about the features that you care about and focus on finding a phone that nails them. Some phones emphasize a big screen, others a quality camera, and one of them emphasizes speed and longevity. The trend of inexpensive phones getting better has been happening for a few years now, with companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung making devices that absolutely can meet your needs for less. ...

Election Day is here, and in the next few days or weeks, we’ll know who won — but for lots of people, tonight isn’t just about choosing the next president. It’s also a stress test for online platforms and a measure of how carefully they can handle information when the stakes are this high. By now, we know what failure could look like. In one nightmare scenario, a candidate (likely Trump) could preemptively declare victory before the votes are counted. In another, a fast-spreading rumor could cause serious offline unrest — like a viral hoax or misleading video that encourages vigilante violence. Since election night might not end with a clear winner, sites could be dealing with these threats for days. The biggest platforms have laid out a playbook for stopping false information, but no matt...