Techlife News 10.23.2021

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WALGREENS
BEGINS TESTING
DRONE DELIVERY
IN TEXAS

Walgreens will begin flying packages by drone
to residents in a pair of Texas cities in partnership
with Google’s drone-making affiliate, Wing.
The companies said they will begin testing
the service next week in the city of Frisco
and neighboring Little Elm, two fast-growing
communities north of Dallas where road traffic
is “probably the biggest complaint we get,” said
Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney.
“Every delivery made by drone is taking a
delivery vehicle off our roads,” Cheney said.
It will be Wing’s first commercial expansion
in the U.S. after years testing the concept in a
Virginia town and parts of Australia and Finland.
The drone company is a subsidiary of Google’s
corporate parent, Alphabet.
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“We’ve gradually moved into denser and denser
environments,” said Jonathan Bass, Wing’s head
of marketing and communications.

Rivals including Amazon, Walmart and UPS
have all sought to get drone delivery fleets off
the ground but the projects face numerous
technical and regulatory challenges. There’s also
not much evidence that American consumers
have been clamoring for airlifted packages, and
many have expressed privacy, safety or nuisance
concerns when asked to imagine the noisy
machines over their homes.

Walgreens says about 100 store items will be
available for air delivery when the service rolls
out in Texas in the coming months, including
over-the-counter medication, snacks and
cosmetics. Store employees will be tasked
with taking online orders and then loading the
purchased items onto one of a small number of
Wing’s 10-pound drones.

The drones are able to navigate autonomously
— though a human pilot can also control them
remotely — and are powered by two forward
propellers on their wings and 12 smaller vertical
propellers. A tether releases to drop the package
onto a front lawn.

Wing expects most customers to be in the
single-family homes that dominate the area,
though it has delivered to apartment buildings
in Europe.

“It’s got very advanced planning and routing
capabilities so for each flight, the system does
millions of simulations to get the best route,”Bass
said.“It can navigate to a very specific location.”

The first phase of the initiative will operate out
of the parking lot of a single Walgreens store in

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a shopping center near the border of Little Elm
and Frisco. Wing says the drones will be able to
serve thousands of people within a 4-mile radius
of the store.
Wing’s biggest delivery service so far has been in
the Australian city of Logan, where the company
says it made about 50,000 drone deliveries in the
first eight months of this year. A smaller pilot with
Walgreens started in 2019 in sparsely populated
neighborhoods of Christiansburg, Virginia.
Frisco, which grew from about 6,000 people
in 1990 to about 200,000 last year, has pitched
itself as a testing ground for new modes of
transport such as self-driving cars and Uber’s
flying taxis. Cheney said he doesn’t expect many
complaints about drone noise or safety.
Federal officials started rolling out new rules in
mid-April to allow operators to fly small drones
over people and at night, potentially giving a
boost to commercial use of the machines. Wing
says its Texas service will be limited to daytime
hours for now.

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Image: Tiffany Hagler

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COMPANY
BEHIND TETHER
‘TOKEN’ FINED

$41M BY US
REGULATORS

The company behind a digital token called
Tether has agreed to pay $41 million to settle
charges that it misled investors by claiming the
token was fully backed at all times by U.S. dollars
and other fiat currencies.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission
said it charged Tether Holdings Limited with
making untrue or misleading statements and
omissions in relation to its claims. Specifically,
the U.S. regulator found that since launching the
token in 2014, Tether Holdings represented that
its was a “stablecoin” with its value pegged to fiat
currency, including U.S. dollars and euros.
A stablecoin is a digital currency backed by
real-world assets such as national currencies or
other commodities. Unlike Bitcoin and other
cryptocurrencies, stablecoins are designed to
not fluctuate wildly in value.

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However, the CFTC determined that at least
from June 1, 2016 through Feb. 25, 2019, Tether
misrepresented to customers and the market
that it maintained sufficient U.S. dollar reserves
to back every Tether token in circulation with
the equivalent amount of “corresponding
fiat currency.”

The agency also found that Tether failed to
disclose that it included unsecured receivables
and non-fiat assets in its reserves, and that the
company falsely represented it would undergo
regular audits to prove it was maintaining the
fiat currency reserves it needed to back
Tether tokens.

In a statement, Tether, which is headquartered
Hong Kong and maintains an office in Santa
Monica, California, said the CFTC’s findings
pertained to certain disclosures about the
company’s reserves that were “fully resolved” in
February 2019, when the company updated its
terms of service.

“As to the Tether reserves, there is no finding
that Tether tokens were not fully backed at
all times — simply that the reserves were not
all in cash and all in a bank account titled in
Tether’s name, at all times,” the company said,
noting that it has “always maintained adequate
reserves and has never failed to satisfy a
redemption request.”

Separately, the CFTC also ordered Bitfinex to
pay a $1.5 million civil penalty after finding
that the cryptocurrency trading platform
made illegal, off-exchange retail commodity
transactions involving digital assets with U.S.
investors and operated as a futures commission
merchant without registering to do so.

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FACEBOOK
PLANS TO
HIRE 10,000
IN EUROPE
TO BUILD
‘METAVERSE’

Facebook said it plans to hire 10,000 workers in
the European Union over the next five years to
work on a new computing platform that promises
to connect people virtually but could raise
concerns about privacy and the social platform
gaining more control over people’s online lives.
The company said in a blog post that those high-
skilled workers will help build“the metaverse,”a
futuristic notion for connecting online that uses
augmented and virtual reality.
Facebook executives have been touting the
metaverse as the next big thing after the mobile
internet, though their track record is spotty
on predicting future trends. Expectations that
CEO Mark Zuckerberg made four years ago of
taking virtual vacations with faraway loved ones
via a headset or using a smartphone camera
to improve an apartment virtually have not
materialized so far.

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The company also is contending with
antitrust crackdowns, the testimony of
whistleblowing former employees and
concerns about how it handles vaccine-
related and political misinformation.

“As we begin the journey of bringing the
metaverse to life, the need for highly
specialized engineers is one of Facebook’s
most pressing priorities,” according to the
blog post from Nick Clegg, vice president
of global affairs, and Javier Olivan, vice
president of central products.

Facebook’s recruiters are targeting Germany,
France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Netherlands
and Ireland for the hiring drive. The company
as of June reported having more than 63,000
employees worldwide, up 21% from the same
time last year.

The metaverse essentially is a massive virtual
world that can be accessed in real time by
millions of people using avatars, who can use it
to hold virtual meetings or buy virtual land and
clothing or other digital assets, often paying
with cryptocurrencies.

The social network isn’t the only one
working on the metaverse, and Facebook
acknowledged that no single company will
own and operate it. Other players include
Fortnite maker Epic Games, which has raised $1
billion from investors to help with its long-term
plans for building the metaverse.

“There’s not going to be specific metaverses
to specific companies. There’s only going to be
one metaverse,” said Tuong Nguyen, an analyst
who tracks immersive technologies for research
firm Gartner.

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But there are concerns Facebook and a handful
of other Silicon Valley giants would end up
monopolizing the metaverse and use it to collect
and profit from personal data, mirroring the
situation now with the internet.

Facebook last month announced a $50 million
investment to fund global research and
partnerships with civil rights groups, nonprofits,
governments and universities to develop products
responsibly for the metaverse. But the company
added that it would probably take 10 to 15 years
to“fully realize”many of those products.

The term metaverse was coined by writer
Neal Stephenson for his 1992 science fiction
novel “Snow Crash” but has recently found
new life in the tech business world as startups
and tech giants try to stake their claim on an
emerging trend.

Some of that involves a“little bit of metaverse-
washing,”or applying the term to existing
initiatives in augmented reality and other
technologies to take advantage of the hype
around it, Nguyen said.

“It will help raise their profile, at least for the
moment, as one of the leaders in metaverse
initiatives,”he said of Facebook’s latest push.
“But like any big technology trend, there will be
competing ideas and competing standards.”

In a separate blog post, Facebook defended its
approach to combating hate speech, in response
to a Wall Street Journal article that examined the
company’s inability to detect and remove hateful
and excessively violent posts.

A British parliamentary committee that’s working
on online safety legislation was set to hear

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from two Facebook whistleblowers. The bill
proposes big fines or other penalties for internet
companies that don’t remove and limit the
spread of harmful material such as child sexual
abuse or terrorist content.

Sophie Zhang, a data scientist who raised the
alarm after finding evidence of online political
manipulation in countries such as Honduras and
Azerbaijan before she was fired, appeared before
the committee. She said social media companies
should be required to apply policies consistently,
adding that it’s not what happened at Facebook.

Fake accounts that weren’t directly tied to a
political figure were easier to take down than
those that weren’t, she said.

This resulted in a“perverse effect in that it
creates an incentive for major political figures to
essentially commit a crime openly,”Zhang said.
She compared it to police taking a year to arrest
a burglar who was a member of Parliament and
didn’t wear a mask.

“That’s an analogy of what is going on at
Facebook,”Zhang said.

Next week, the committee will hear from Frances
Haugen, who went public with internal Facebook
research that she copied before leaving her job
earlier this year. Haugen testified before a U.S.
Senate panel this month about her accusations
Facebook’s platforms harm children and incite
political violence, and her British appearance will
be the start of a tour to meet European lawmakers
and regulators.

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LAWMAKERS
GIVE AMAZON
‘FINAL CHANCE’
TO CLEAR UP
TESTIMONY

House lawmakers are threatening to seek
a criminal investigation of Amazon, saying
the tech giant has a “final chance” to correct
its executives’ previous testimony on its
competition practices.
The lawmakers sent a letter this week to Amazon
President and CEO Andy Jassy saying they were
giving the company until Nov. 1 to “correct
the record” and provide new documents and
evidence. The missive marks an escalation in the
bipartisan battle against Amazon by the House
Judiciary Committee panel that has investigated
the market dominance of Big Tech.
The letter says the antitrust subcommittee is
considering referring the case to the Justice
Department for criminal investigation. It accuses
the world’s biggest online retailer of at least
misleading Congress and possibly outright lying.

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It cites recent media reports detailing Amazon’s
alleged practice of undercutting the businesses
that sell on its platform by making “knock-offs,”
or very similar products, and boosting their
presence on the site.

The reports directly contradict the sworn
testimony of Amazon executives and other
statements to Congress, the letter says. It was
signed by Judiciary Committee Chairman
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and the Democratic and
Republican leaders of the antitrust panel.

“We strongly encourage you to make use of
this opportunity to correct the record and
provide the Committee with sworn, truthful
and accurate responses to this request as we
consider whether a referral of this matter to the
Department of Justice for criminal investigation
is appropriate,” the letter said.

Jassy took over the top position at Seattle-based
Amazon from founder Jeff Bezos in July. Bezos
became executive chairman.

Amazon denied that its executives had misled
the panel in their testimony.

“Amazon and its executives did not mislead the
committee, and we have denied and sought
to correct the record on the inaccurate media
articles in question,” the company said in a
statement. “As we have previously stated, we
have an internal policy, which goes beyond that
of any other retailer’s policy that we’re aware of,
that prohibits the use of individual seller data to
develop Amazon private-label products.‴

Amazon said it investigates any allegations of
violations of its policies and takes “appropriate
action” when warranted.

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“In addition, we design our search experience
to feature the items customers will want to
purchase, regardless of whether they are offered
by Amazon or one of our selling partners,” the
statement said.

Amazon’s third-party marketplace, with
independent merchants listing millions of
their products on the site, is a huge part of the
company’s business. It has about 2 million sellers
on its marketplace, and Amazon has said that
more than half the goods sold on Amazon.
com come from third-party sellers. It also makes
money by charging third-party sellers fees,
bringing in tens of billions in revenue.

Already in a May 2020 letter to Bezos, the
subcommittee threatened a subpoena if Bezos
didn’t agree voluntarily to appear before
the panel.

The Wall Street Journal reported then that
Amazon used sensitive, confidential information
about sellers on its marketplace, their products
and transactions to develop its own competing
products. An Amazon executive denied such
a practice in statements at a subcommittee
hearing in July 2019, saying the company has a
formal policy against it.

The letter to Bezos said the statements by
Amazon attorney Nate Sutton appeared to be
misleading “and possibly criminally false” or
constituting perjury.

Bezos testified on the issue in an appearance
at a July 2020 hearing on Big Tech’s alleged
monopolistic practices along with Facebook
CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook and
Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

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Addressing allegations that Amazon has used
data generated by independent sellers on its
platform to compete against them, Bezos at the
time said it would be “unacceptable” if those
claims were proven to be true.

The panel’s new letter to Jassy also cites the
testimony by Sutton, who denied that the
company used sellers’ data to compete with
them or help create the company’s own private-
brand products. Sutton said the site’s algorithms
were “optimized to predict what customers want
to buy regardless of the seller.”

One of the media reports cited in the letter
quotes a former Amazon employee as saying: “I
used to pull sellers’ data to look at what the best
products were when I was there.”

The letter made clear that the committee
believed the media reports and not the
testimony of Amazon’s representatives. “Each of
these investigative reports are inconsistent with
the sworn testimony and numerous statements
made by Amazon’s executives,” it said.

The District of Columbia sued Amazon in May
in an antitrust action, accusing the company
of anticompetitive practices in its treatment of
sellers on its platform. The practices have raised
prices for consumers and stifled innovation
and choice in the online retail market, the
lawsuit alleged.

The suit maintains that Amazon has fixed online
retail prices through contract provisions that
prevent merchants selling their products on
Amazon.com from offering them at lower prices
or on better terms on any other online platform,
including their own websites. Amazon rejected
the allegations.

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NETFLIX POSTS
HIGHER 3Q
EARNINGS, SOLID
SUBSCRIBER
GROWTH

Netflix posted sharply higher third-quarter
earnings thanks to a stronger slate of titles,
including “Squid Game,” the dystopian survival
drama from South Korea that the company says
became its biggest-ever TV show.
The company has ramped up production,
rebounding from pandemic-induced delays in
the first half of the year. It’s also looking beyond
movies and TV and said it plans to fund “new
growth opportunities” such as video games,
which are being tested in some markets.
“It remains very early days for this initiative and,
like other content categories we’ve expanded
into, we plan to try different types of games,
learn from our members and improve our game
library,” the company said.
And as it faces saturation in the U.S. market,
Netflix is focusing on growing its international
subscriber numbers. For instance, it launched
a free mobile plan in Kenya, in the hopes it will

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get more people in the country to sign up for
paid memberships.

In all, Netflix said its subscriber base grew 9%
from a year earlier, to 213.6 million, surpassing
its own projections.

Netflix earned $1.45 billion, or $3.19 per share, in
the latest quarter. That’s up from $789.9 million
or $1.79 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue grew 16% to $7.48 billion from
$6.44 billion.

Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings
of $2.56 per share on revenue of $7.48 billion,
according to a poll by FactSet.

Shares of the Los Gatos, California-based
company fell about 1% in after-hours trading.

Netflix also said that later this year it will change
how it reports its viewership metrics. Instead of
how many accounts watch its titles, it will report
the number of hours viewed. Netflix said this is a
“’slightly better indicator of the overall success of
our titles and member satisfaction.”

“It also matches how outside services measure
TV viewing and gives proper credit to
rewatching,” Netflix said.

The company made no mention in its earnings
press release of the fallout surrounding a recent
Dave Chapelle special, which premiered earlier
this month after the third quarter ended.

Netflix said that it had fired an employee for
disclosing confidential financial information
about what it paid for the Chappelle’s comedy
special “The Closer,” which employees and
advocacy groups condemned as being
transphobic and harmful to transgender people.

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The employee, who wasn’t named, shared
“confidential, commercially sensitive information
outside the company,” a Netflix statement said.
The media watchdog group GLAAD said that
“anti-LGBTQ content” violates Netflix’s policy to
reject programs that incite hate or violence.
However, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told
managers in an internal memo that the show
doesn’t cross “the line on hate” and will remain
on the streaming service.

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WORKERS FED
UP WITH NIGHTS,
WEEKENDS
SEEK FLEXIBLE
SCHEDULES

After struggling to hire workers for its outlet
store in Dallas, Balsam Hill finally opened
on Sept. 1. But the very next day, the online
purveyor of high-end artificial holiday trees was
forced to close after four of its five workers quit.
The main gripe for three of them? Working on
weekends. So they found jobs elsewhere with
better hours.
Balsam Hill reopened weeks later with nine
workers, hiking the hourly pay by $3 to $18
per hour. But more importantly, it changed its
approach: Instead of only focusing on the needs
of the business, it’s now closely working with
each employee to tailor their schedules based
on when they want to work.
“We’re working against people who have the
choice of wherever they want to work,” said
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Kendra Gould, senior retail strategist at Balsam
Hill. “Now, it’s more about what do you need as
an employee and how can we make you happy?”

Companies are confronting demands by hourly
workers on terms that often used to be non-
negotiable: scheduling. Taking a page from
their white-collar peers who are restructuring
their workdays to accommodate their lifestyles,
hourly workers are similarly seeking flexibility
in how — and when — they do their jobs. That
means pushing back on weekend, late night or
holiday shifts.

Job openings are plentiful, so workers can
afford to be picky. There were 10.4 million job
openings at the end of August and 11.1 million
openings the month before, the highest on
record since at least December 2000, when the
government started recording that figure. At the
same time, the Labor Department said that the
number of people quitting their jobs jumped to
4.3 million in August from 4 million in July.

Among the new workers Balsam Hill hired was
Rickey Haynes, 62, a pastor for a local Baptist
church. He retired in July but still preaches in the
community. He said he was looking for part-time
work in retail, but didn’t want to work Sundays
because of his preaching. Balsam Hill was willing
to work around his schedule.

“They were accommodating,” he said. “If I could, I
could work with them until I am done.”

A recent study from ManpowerGroup Solutions
revealed that nearly 40% of job candidates
worldwide said schedule flexibility is one of their
top three factors in career decisions.

The shifting mindset is showing up in data from
job site platforms.

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SnagAJob.com, an online marketplace for
hourly workers, says the word “flexibility” now
accounts for roughly 11% of the more than 7
million job postings on its site compared with
8% earlier in the year. But overnight shifts at
restaurants have also increased significantly
since January.

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COMMERCE
HEAD OUT TO
SAVE US JOBS,
1 COMPUTER
CHIP AT A TIME

Gina Raimondo only wears watches made by Image: Alex Brandon
Bulova — a company that laid off her scientist
father, closed its Rhode Island factory and
moved production to China in 1983.

The watches give Raimondo, the U.S. commerce
secretary, a sense of mission as President Joe
Biden’s de facto tech minister, a responsibility
that is focused on adding the kinds of cutting-
edge factory jobs that are now abroad.

“It’s been a tribute to my dad,” Raimondo said
of her watch choices in an interview, “and a
reminder to me that we need to do more to get
good manufacturing jobs in America.”

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Biden has tasked Raimondo, a former Rhode
Island governor, with ensuring the United
States will be the world leader in computer
chips. America’s place atop the world as an
economic and military power — as well as
his political fortunes — might ride on
her performance.

The computer chip has become the essential
ingredient for autos, medical devices, phones,
toys, washing machines, weapons and even
some watches. But a global shortage is
dragging on growth and fueling inflation.
Without computer chips that serve as the
switches for today’s economy, the United States
could be eclipsed by China and other nations
that support their semiconductor industries.

To end the shortage, Raimondo, 50, must bring
back production of chips as well as solar panels
and batteries on the premise that these sectors
are key to prosperity. This means consulting
semiconductor executives almost daily,
following data on plant shutdowns in Asia,
seeking additional government support for
these industries and making her department
something more than a generic envoy
to business.

“If we do our job right, and I believe that
we will, 10 years from now you’ll see a
fundamentally more vibrant, larger and
revitalized manufacturing industry,” Raimondo
said. “It is a national security problem that we
don’t make any leading edge semiconductors
in America, that we don’t make enough solar
panels in America, that we don’t make critical
batteries in America. This leaves us vulnerable,
not just economically.”

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Image: Alex Brandon

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Raimondo’s tenure at Commerce has been high-
profile for a department that some presidents
have paid little heed.

The prior secretary was advertised as a killer
negotiator, but Wilbur Ross was best known for
falling asleep at events for President Donald
Trump and trying to explain tariffs by holding
up a soup can on TV. The Obama administration
went a full year with only an acting secretary.

Raimondo bonded with Biden, who often
quotes his own parents when pitching his
policies. Political allies noted her own ambitions
after she was interviewed last year as Biden’s
prospective running mate. The Commerce
Department could be the stepping stone in
a Democratic Party increasingly shaped by
college-educated women.

“She is someone, like the president, who knows
the pain a job loss has on a family, and has never
forgotten where she comes from and the real
impact economic and trade policies have on
real people,” said White House chief of staff
Ron Klain.

Rhode Island contains grand Newport mansions
that once belonged to America’s wealthiest
families and the factories that drew Italian
immigrants such as Raimondo’s grandparents.
This mix of size and breadth of social class gives
its politics an unusual intimacy.

Joseph Raimondo lost his chemist job at the
Bulova plant when his youngest child was in
sixth grade. His daughter’s admirers and even
some detractors say that formative event made
her competitive and as meticulously detail-
oriented as a watchmaker.

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She has been known to email staff on policy
ideas as late as midnight and as early as 6 a.m.
Tech CEOs say she works like them: direct,
focused, full of questions.
Rhode Island was still a manufacturing state
when Raimondo left for college in 1989.
More than 20% of the state’s jobs were
in manufacturing then; now only 8% are,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Raimondo’s story is a microcosm of the the
American economy, which emerged from World
War II with its manufacturing might intact. But
lower wages overseas siphoned off factory jobs
and the economy was reengineered for college
graduates and a digital age.
The smartest or luckiest children of former
steelworkers and autoworkers got degrees from
the best universities, as did Raimondo.

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Image: Alex Brandon

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Like so many of her generation who witnessed Image: Alex Brandon
America’s industrial decline through family
experiences, Raimondo labored to be part of
the meritocracy. She clerked for a federal judge
and became a venture capitalist, while marrying
a similarly pedigreed husband, Andy Moffit.
Federal ethics disclosures peg her wealth at as
much as $10 million.

Raimondo has long been interested in the finer
details of what makes people and systems tick.
Bob Walsh, executive director of Rhode Island’s
leading teachers union and a former banker,
recalls getting quizzed by Raimondo over lunch.

“Why do you do what you do?” Raimondo asked
him. “You could make much more money doing
something else.”

Before winning her first term as governor in
2014, Raimondo took controversial steps as state
treasurer to shore up Rhode Island’s strained
public pension fund. This meant bucking the
teachers union to raise the retirement age and
suspend cost of living adjustments. Many unions
opposed her in the primary. But Walsh backed
her personally in the general election and
provided an organizational endorsement for her
2018 reelection.

In overwhelmingly Democratic Rhode Island,
Raimondo learned to govern by building
coalitions within a diverse caucus. She has
her detractors. State Sen. Sam Bell, one of
Raimondo’s top Democratic opponents, said she
was “brilliant and effective” — but in ways that
he believes gutted Medicaid and other services
for the poor.

Now, Raimondo’s ability to parse numbers to
explain policy comes into play on multiple

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