Uber is going back to court next summer:

Next summer, a federal court in California will hear arguments in a lawsuit that could change Uber forever. The lawsuit challenges the way Uber and other so-called transportation network companies classify their drivers as independent contractors rather than employees. But if that case goes poorly for Uber, the ride-hailing company already has a fallback plan: the states.

State governments in Ohio and Florida are considering bills that would statutorily define Uber drivers as independent contractors and not employees entitled to certain benefits and protections, like medical insurance and wage guarantees. They join three other states — Arkansas, North Carolina, and Indiana — that have successfully passed bills classifying drivers for transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft as contractors, according to Reuters.

Uber just received another round of funding that could value it at over $64.6 billion, but they’ll not interested in having any of their actual drivers as employees, just the people behind computers in Silicon Valley.

Sounds greedy as shit to me.

Kickstarter hires investigative journalist to dig into one of its biggest failures:

In November, the company behind Europe’s biggest ever Kickstarter project told its backers it was shutting down. The Torquing Group had raised more than £2.3 million ($3.6 million) to fund its palm-sized Zano drone, but after delivering only around 600 of the 15,363 units paid for, the company went into liquidation. Now, with frustrated backers still smarting from their loss, Kickstarter wants to find out what went wrong. The company has hired technology journalist Mark Harris “to write a story about the collapse of the Zano drone project on Kickstarter.”

As it was reported recently, about 9 percent of Kickstarter projects fail, but when they do fail, they fail BIG, it seems.

RZA is tempted to steal back the $2 million Wu-Tang album:

Pretty much everyone was sad to learn this week that the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s new album was sold to Martin Shkreli, the 32-year-old pharmaceutical executive who made millions by raising the price of a life-saving anti-parasitic drug by 4,000 percent. Bloomberg broke the news that Shkreli had bought Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for around $2 million, and RZA wasn’t very happy about it, telling the outlet that no one in the Clan was aware of Shkreli’s reputation before closing the deal and noting that a “significant portion” of the proceeds were donated to charity.

But the internet had a glimmer of hope that the tragedy could be reversed, after Twitter user Rob Wesley posted what seemed like a hilarious clause in the contract. “The buying party also agrees that, at any time during the stipulated 88 year period, the seller may legally plan and attempt to execute one (1) heist or caper to steal back Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, which, if successful, would return all ownership rights to the seller,” the alleged clause reads. “Said heist or caper can only be undertaken by currently active members of the Wu-Tang Clan and/or actor Bill Murray, with no legal repercussions.”

Bobby Digital, call Bill.

Noah Davis on what writers make in 2015:

In my own work, I’ve seen my average rate for my writing, which
includes print and digital combined, jump from thirty-seven cents per
word during the first half of 2013 to fifty cents per word in the
first six months of 2014, and fifty-three cents per word so far this
year. While that increase is partially due to my slowly rising
standing in the freelance writing ecosystem, a lot of it stems
directly from writing for flush sites. In general, each new digital
outlet I write for pays better than the previous ones; there’s money
out there if you know where to look.

Being an artist—painter, writer, musician—is hard.

Last week Dropbox announced is was shutting down two of it’s services, Mailbox and Carousel.

There’s been some bitching and moaning about these moves, but it doesn’t bother me. I use Carousel almost daily, mainly to back up my photos to my Dropbox account (For a few years now I’ve been paying $99/year for 1 terabyte of storage).

When I have to hunt for a photo, I find the timeline scrubber navigation super-useful. Carousel should have been kept as a feature within the Dropbox app from the beginning. I hope this is on their to-do list for the next big update to the iOS app.

As for Mailbox, I’ve heard good things about it, but I don’t see it contributing to Dropbox’s business goals so having it go away makes sense. As Golden Krishna pointed out on Twitter, Mailbox introduced us to the UI paradigm of swiping left and right, which is now a part of the native Mail app on iOS 9 (and 8?).

Over at The New York Times, Matt Dorfman shares his 12 favorite book covers from 2015 that made him, “stop, stare and ask aloud to no one in particular what the cover means, only to turn to the first page and then the following and then the one after that and onward.”

The Reality Editor is a new kind of tool for empowering you to connect and manipulate the functionality of physical objects. Just point the camera of your smartphone at an object and its invisible capabilities will become visible for you to edit. Drag a virtual line from one object to another and create a new relationship between these objects. With this simplicity, you are able to master the entire scope of connected objects.

Woah.

via Fast Company

Interesting to see how iOS apps are taking advantage of 3D Touch:

Flickr may have my favorite twist on 3D Touch so far, with a slight change to how peek works. When you’re previewing a photo in your camera roll, Flickr lets you scrub from side to side to quickly see more pictures. It’s a small change, but as soon as you try it, you wonder why Apple didn’t figure this out in the first place — it ought to be in the iPhone’s camera roll, and maybe even everywhere there’s a gallery of photos. Unfortunately, Flickr has only implemented this so far for your own overall camera roll; it doesn’t work inside of albums or for other users, and it totally should. (Flickr does, however, let you do a standard peek at most profiles, photos, albums, and notifications.)

I’m looking forward to getting an iPhone 7 next year.

“One theory is that companies over the last 10-15 years, unlike in the ’90s, don’t need to hire as many people because the software — loosely described as machines — is doing the work,” he explained. “It’s the classic case of how many people actually work for Facebook versus its market capitalization. Another theory is that a lot of these companies get bought up or they fail — and if you fail, you can’t hire more workers.”

—Economists Suggest Silicon Valley Startups Aren’t Really Creating Many Jobs

Technology is absolutely phasing out jobs permanently but you also have many companies that won’t offer to help educate and modernize employees with skill sets and tools they need to be more relevant in today’s job market.

So just learn on your own, right? Sure. For me that’s pretty easy. I can look at code and read books and pick up new technologies pretty quickly, but most people are not that adept with technology. Technology is scary to a lot of people.

I see it firsthand when I go home for the holidays and I become the ‘gadget fixer’ for everyone. I’m also the IT department for my mother-in-law, and occasionally, her boss. My wife also has an aunt who’s solution to maxing out her iPhone with thousands of photos is to just buy a new iPhone with more capacity.

I’m going off on a bit of a tangent but my point is these average, everyday people I’m describing are the same people that are susceptible to being made redundant by technology.

Who said Trump is good for nothing?

He’s good for something.

via 512 Pixels

Oh this is tasty:

On Monday, the Cowboys’ communication service to their Microsoft surface tablets wasn’t working properly. With their primary source of playbook information temporarily down, they used the next best thing and relied on printed versions of their playbook. Tangible copies can’t fail, right? They don’t, but even the printers weren’t working correctly for the visiting Cowboys.

To make matters worse, Washington cannot access its devices, either, even though they’re still functional. As a rule, the team cannot use its sideline devices if its opponents have technical issues.

Microsoft paid the NFL $400 million just so they could cause them grief.

I think they have a hit on their hands with this Surface thingy of theirs.

Keep up the great work, guys.

The results were incredibly revealing – after just 7 days 88% of the group that left Facebook said they felt “happy” as opposed to 81% in the group still using the site. They also felt less angry, less lonely, less depressed, more decisive, more enthusiastic, and enjoyed their lives more. Ditching Facebook also appeared to reduce stress levels by as much as 55%. They’re some pretty strong results…

—Study Finds Quitting Facebook Makes You Happier and Less Stressed

Yeah, what my brother says.

Jack White’s Nashville-based label Third Man Records will release the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino’s blizzard-shrouded western The Hateful Eight on vinyl. The four-side, 28-song soundtrack includes new work from Italian composer Ennio Morricone, despite a spat in 2013 during which Morricone said he never wanted to work with Tarantino again. Tarantino has used Morricone’s music in several of his past films, but this is the first time Morricone has written compositions specifically for Tarantino.

—Jack White’s record label will release the Hateful Eight soundtrack on vinyl

Of course he’s releasing it on vinyl.

The Verge took a look at Airbnb’s data in light of the New York attorney general’s beef with them:

But a review of the data by The Verge found that Airbnb’s numbers, covering November of 2014 through November 1st of 2015, largely confirmed the attorney general’s accusations. A small number of hosts renting out multiple listings took home a disproportionate amount of the total revenue. And while roughly 71 percent of hosts rented out their home for three months or less, there were still thousands of “whole units,” meaning an entire house or apartment, which were rented for six months or more during the last year.

This, my friends, is what the sharing economy looks like.

A few people at the top making the most the money.