An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In the months since a coalition of app-based gig companies successfully passed Prop 22 in California, exempting themselves from reclassifying their workers as employees, DoorDash has been silently passing costs onto consumers. The company-funded Yes on Prop 22 campaign claimed that not passing the ballot initiative would result in higher prices for consumers, and in early December, news first broke that gig companies would be charging more anyway to cover the cost of benefits promised in Prop 22 such as a healthcare stipend and a minimum pay guarantee. It's also not clear whether these new benefits warrant price hikes as an October 2019 study by the Berkeley Labor Center of Proposition 22 found that driver pay would come out to $5.64 an hour. Nonetheless, companies in the coalition signaled they'd have to pass costs onto consumers instead of absorbing them into their already unprofitable enterprises. Now, DoorDash is raising its service fee to 15 percent in California, which according to an in-app description "helps us operate DoorDash & provide a minimum pay guarantee to California Dashers. Service fees are, according to DoorDash, also calibrated by market demand and Motherboard has seen receipts where the service fee jumped as high as 21 percent. A DoorDash spokesperson told Motherboard that the company is raising fee percentages for orders in California to cover Prop 22 and is keeping a close eye on the impact of these various price hikes and fee increases, adjusting them when necessary. It's important to remember, however, that for DoorDash and other companies, that usually means when a policy is affecting the gig economy's schemes to realize previously illegal profits.

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A laptop was stolen from the office of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, one of her aides said on Friday. From a report: Drew Hammill, an aide to Democrat Pelosi, said on Twitter that the laptop belonged to a conference room and was used for presentations. He declined to offer further details. The theft of electronic devices from congressional offices has been a persistent worry following the invasion by pro-Trump followers. They were encouraged by Republican President Donald Trump at a rally beforehand to march to the Capitol while Congress was certifying Democrat Joe Biden's Nov. 3 election win. Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, said on Twitter on Thursday that a laptop was taken from his office.

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Apple's App Store grossed more than $64 billion in 2020, according to an analysis by CNBC. From a report: That's up from an estimated $50 billion in 2019 and $48.5 billion in 2018, according to the same analysis, suggesting that App Store sales growth accelerated strongly during the Covid-19 pandemic, as people sheltered at home and spent more time and money on apps and games. App Store revenue grew 28% in 2020, up from 3.1% growth in 2019, according to CNBCâ(TM)s analysis. Apple's App Store is a core growth area for the company. It's reported as part of Apple's Services division, which reported $53.7 billion in sales in Apple's fiscal 2020, which ended in September. The money that Apple makes from its App Store has become a flash point for critics of Apple which argue it has too much power. Apple charges 30% for digital sales through its platform, with a few exceptions. Apple recently altered its fee structure, and now it only takes a 15% cut from companies that generate less than $1 million in the App Store.

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A duo of French security researchers has discovered a vulnerability impacting chips used inside Google Titan and YubiKey hardware security keys. From a report: The vulnerability allows threat actors to recover the primary encryption key used by the hardware security key to generate cryptographic tokens for two-factor authentication (2FA) operations. Once obtained, the two security researchers say the encryption key, an ECDSA private key, would allow threat actors to clone Titan, YubiKey, and other keys to bypass 2FA procedures. However, while the attack sounds disastrous for Google and Yubico security key owners, its severity is not what it seems. In a 60-page PDF report, Victor Lomne and Thomas Roche, researchers with Montpellier-based NinjaLab, explain the intricacies of the attack, also tracked as CVE-2021-3011. For starters, the attack won't work remotely against a device, over the internet, or over a local network. To exploit any Google Titan or Yubico security key, an attacker would first need to get their hands on a security key in the first place.

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Sidebars to JN: 1. I wish your blog had permalinks so I could point to individual items. 2. I like strong language. The people who run these platforms are not elected, it's true. Neither are the other gatekeepers, and it would suck, imho, if they were elected. When someone screams fire in a crowded movie theater, as Trump is doing, it's up to the management to do something about it. Nothing wrong with that. I like the title "creeps" -- it fits, because like the management of Exxon, the people who run Facebook spoil the resource they monetize, in this case the open web.

My big objection with the way journalists talk about Facebook is that it's so naive. The questions are much much much more complicated. Shutting off Facebook, which seems to be what journalism wants, would be as stupidly disruptive as turning off Wikipedia, or even the phone network -- or for that matter, all the daily newspapers. Facebook is that important for information flow in our society. It's not a joke. John Naughton wrote an excellent rant yesterday about how reporters had no idea how to cover something like the riot in DC on Wednesday. Well they don't know how to cover Facebook either. Yes it is used for some awful purposes, so is everything. Their complaints amount to nothing. We have a much bigger job to do today. One thing journalists could do to help is being more outgoing, inquisitive, and respond to direct statements like this one. We need to work together.

Trump is leading the Keystone Cops version of a military coup. Yesterday's speech was clearly a KK version of a coverup. All the tracks lead back to him, as usual he didn't even try to hide them. God help us all if he were even slightly more competent and slightly less blind.

Amazon has announced that it has discontinued its Amazon Pantry services (originally known as Prime Pantry), instead rolling those household goods and shelf-stable pantry items into the main Amazon website where they can be ordered alongside the rest of Amazon's products. From a report: Originally launched back in 2014, Pantry worked differently from most Amazon orders. Instead of following the usual Amazon delivery rules, Pantry orders charged customers a flat $5.99 shipping fee per box of groceries, which could be filled with up to 45 pounds of products or up to four cubic feet of stuff (whichever limit customers reached first). The focus of the program was to make it easier to stock up on everyday products that would otherwise be bulky or expensive to ship, like bottled water, paper goods, flour, canned food items, boxes of cereal, and more.

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The aerospace industry is testing models of radical looking aircraft, but will they ever make it into production?

Another problem I have with the Dodgers is that my parents were Dodgers fans, back when they were in Brooklyn, and known as Da Bums. The name turns out to have fit, because one day they up and left Brooklyn. I understand the problem wasn't of their making, they were targeted by Robert Moses to be the team for his new stadium which turned out to be the stadium the Mets played in. And our family, before I was really aware of these things, switched allegiance to the Mets, who were called The Amazins, which was of course sarcastic. Which is fine, because as I said -- baseball is not a respectful sport. Even when it comes to your home team.

Tommy Lasorda is gone. 93 years old. A good run. He was manager of the Dodgers back before I hated them. But I can't say I ever loved them. I had an experience at the World Series vs the Oakland A's where we scalped tickets that turned out to be in the Dodger's wives section. They tried to have us removed, because we were very vocally advocating for the A's. Of course, this was at the Oakland Coliseum. They argued with the cops that we would have been ejected at Dodgers Stadium. You see that's the problem with baseball these days. Decorum. It was never meant to be a respectful sport, imho. Anyway, I digress. Lasorda was a famous manager of a winning team "back in the day." Sigh. We're all getting old and soon we'll be dead. That's what it all means. Oh la.

Good morning sports fans.

A semiconductor shortage is dragging on some of the world's biggest auto manufacturers, costing Daimler, Nissan Motor, Honda Motor and Ford Motor production of a range of cars. From a report: Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler joined its German peer Volkswagen AG in announcing it's affected by the industrywide supply bottleneck, without quantifying the impact. Honda said it will cut domestic output by about 4,000 cars this month at one of its factories in Japan, while Nissan is adjusting production of its Note hatchback model. Ford is idling a sport-utility vehicle factory in Kentucky next week, pulling forward previously planned downtime due to the chip shortage. VW, the world's biggest carmaker, announced last month that it would need to adjust first-quarter manufacturing plans around the globe because of the shortage. The company said chipmakers reassigned some of their production capacity to consumer electronics and other sectors last year and were caught off guard by surprisingly resilient auto demand. The amount of VW car output lost could be in the low six-digit range, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Twitter has suspended the account of Sci-Hub, a site that offers a free gateway to paywalled research. The site is accused of violating the counterfeit policy of the social media platform. However, founder Alexandra Elbakyan believes that this is an effort to silence the growing support amidst a high profile court case in India. From a report: In recent weeks, Sci-Hub has become the focus of a high-profile lawsuit in India where Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society want the site blocked. The case isn't as straightforward as in other countries, in part because access to Sci-Hub is seen as vital by many local academics. Earlier this week, the Indian High Court declared the case an "issue of public importance," inviting experts and scientists to testify on the matter. Meanwhile, however, the pressure on Sci-Hub grows. This morning, Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan informed us that Twitter has suspended the siteâ(TM)s official account, which had over 185k followers and operated without notable issues for nine years. Elbakyan believes that it may be directly related to the legal action in India. "It happened right after Indian scientists revolted against Elsevier and other academic publishers after Sci-Hub posted on Twitter about the danger of being blocked -- thousands of people spoke up against this on Twitter. Now Twitter said to all of them, SHUT UP!" Elbakyan adds.

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