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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: When you order food through an app and tip the worker who delivers it, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the money you give goes directly to that person. But in reality, some delivery apps use your tip to make up the worker’s base pay — essentially stealing the money you’re trying to give someone to maximize their profits. This isn’t a new practice by any means, but a recent report from The New York Times highlights how DoorDash, the most popular food delivery app in the U.S., enforces it.

Here’s Times reporter Andy Newman: “DoorDash offers a guaranteed minimum for each job. For my first order, the guarantee was $6.85 and the customer, a woman in Boerum Hill who answered the door in a colorful bathrobe, tipped $3 via the app. But I still received only $6.85. Here’s how it works: If the woman in the bathrobe had tipped zero, DoorDash would have paid me the whole $6.85. Because she tipped $3, DoorDash kicked in only $3.85. She was saving DoorDash $3, not tipping me.” “DoorDash’s policy is the equivalent of a ‘tipped wage,’ a common practice in America where employers pay workers less than the minimum wage and rely on tips to make up the payments they owe,” the report adds. “Apps like DoorDash are essentially just extending established bad labor practices into the world of tech.”

Amazon Flex also uses tips to make up pay, even after being heavily criticized for it. Instacart was the same way, but it scrapped the policy and promised to retroactively compensate workers following outcry. Postmades, Grubhub, Seamless, and Uber Eats all confirmed to The Verge that customer tips are not used to subsidize workers’ pay.

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Source:: Slashdot

Jennifer Connelly, Patrick Stewart, Henry Cavill, Taylor Swift, Tom Cruise, Pennywise. See everything here! …read more

Source:: CNet

A dozen pages offering Libra are on Facebook and Instagram, a report says. …read more

Source:: CNet

Melissa Di Donato, SAP’s former COO, has been named SUSE’s new CEO. ZDNet reports: London-based Di Donato is a well-known technology leader. In particular, she has a proven track record in sales and business operations. Besides being SAP’s COO, she was also the company’s chief revenue officer. In SAP’s latest quarter, SAP saw an increase of 11% year-over-year revenues. Much of that came from the cloud — where SAP saw 40% year-over-year growth. SAP’s cloud is built on SUSE’s Linux servers and OpenStack cloud.

Di Donato succeeds Nils Brauckmann. While officially Brauckmann is retiring, there seems to be more to the story. On LinkedIn, Brauckmann wrote: “I care very deeply for the SUSE business and its employees, and this difficult decision is based entirely on personal reasons. I am pleased to be handing over the reins to such a talented and accomplished leader as Melissa Di Donato.” In his SUSE statement, Brauckman added: “She is a proven and dynamic change agent, and many of her achievements have occurred in subscription businesses that exist in high-growth cloud environments.” In April, then-CEO Nils Brauchmann said his company would soon be the largest independent Linux company. This comes after Brauckmann delivered eight years of continuous expansion during his tenure, including record-breaking revenues in FY18, reports ZDNet.

“Under Di Donato’s leadership, SUSE will continue to focus on growth and expansion. What that means is she’s expected to advance SUSE’s core business and emerging technologies, both organically and through add-on acquisitions.”

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Source:: Slashdot

Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie may finally get her queen after all. …read more

Source:: CNet

US senator dismisses cop-out, suggests jail time for execs

Data-spaffing consumer credit biz Equifax is offering a package of roughly $700m in order to kill off lawsuits regarding its 2017 super-cyber-heist.…

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Source:: Register

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is in advanced talks to buy Intel’s smartphone-modem chip business (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), “a move that would jump-start the iPhone maker’s push to take control of developing the critical components powering its devices.” From the report: A deal, covering a portfolio of patents and staff valued at $1 billion or more, could be reached in the next week, the people said — assuming the talks don’t fall apart. Though the purchase price is a rounding error for companies valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the transaction would be important strategically and financially. It would give Apple access to engineering work and talent behind Intel’s yearslong push to develop modem chips for the crucial next generation of wireless technology known as 5G, potentially saving years of development work.

For Intel’s part, a deal would allow the company to shed a business that had been weighing on its bottom line: The smartphone operation had been losing about $1 billion annually, a person familiar with its performance has said, and has generally failed to live up to expectations. Though it would exit the smartphone business, Intel plans to continue to work on 5G technology for other connected devices. Earlier this year, it was reported that Apple began discussing plans to acquire parts of Intel’s smartphone modem chip business last summer, around the time former Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich resigned. “Mr. Krzanich championed the modem business and touted 5G technology as a big future revenue stream,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “When Bob Swan was named to that job in January, analysts said the odds of a deal rose because his focus on cleaning up Intel would require addressing the losses in the modem business.”

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Source:: Slashdot

It’s the first time federal legislation has addressed limits on technology and tenants. …read more

Source:: CNet

A real-life look at what Apple’s 2019 iPhone could look like, based on the latest rumors, and a detailed look at that camera bump. …read more

Source:: CNet

But does complain there are too few suppliers, cybersecurity not a priority

The British government has decided again defer the already postponed decision on whether or not to ban Huawei equipment from 5G networks in the UK.…

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Source:: TheRegister