Enlarge / Warehouse workers at the STL8 Amazon Fulfillment Center marched on the boss Wednesday to demand a $25 an hour minimum wage for all workers. (credit: via Justice Speaks)

Amazon currently faces disgruntled workers in every direction.

Office workers are raging against CEO Andy Jassy's return to office mandate, Fortune reported—which came just as a leaked document reportedly showed that Amazon is also planning to gut management, Business Insider reported. Drivers by the hundreds are flocking to join a union to negotiate even better work conditions, CNBC reported, despite some of the biggest concessions in Amazon's history. And hundreds more unionized warehouse workers are increasingly banding together nationwide to demand a $25 an hour minimum wage. On Wednesday, workers everywhere were encouraged to leave Jassy a voicemail elevating workers' demands for a $25 minimum wage.

Putting on the pressure

This momentum has been building for years after drivers unionized in 2021. And all this collective fury increasingly appears to be finally pressuring Amazon into negotiating better conditions for some workers.

Enlarge (credit: via Zynga)

Zynga must pay IBM nearly $45 million in damages after a jury ruled that popular games in its FarmVille series, as well as individual hits like Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells, infringed on two early IBM patents.

In an SEC filing, Zynga reassured investors that "the patents at issue have expired and Zynga will not have to modify or stop operating any of the games at issue" as a result of the loss. But the substantial damages owed will likely have financial implications for Zynga parent company Take-Two Interactive Software, analysts said, unless Zynga is successful in its plans to overturn the verdict.

A Take-Two spokesperson told Ars: "We are disappointed in the verdict; however, believe we will prevail on appeal."

Enlarge / Andrew J. Pincus, attorney for TikTok and ByteDance, leaves the E. Barrett Prettyman US Court House with members of his legal team as the US Court of Appeals hears oral arguments in the case TikTok Inc. v. Merrick Garland on September 16 in Washington, DC. (credit: Kevin Dietsch / Staff | Getty Images News)

The fight to keep TikTok operating unchanged in the US reached an appeals court Monday, where TikTok and US-based creators teamed up to defend one of the world's most popular apps from a potential US ban.

TikTok lawyer Andrew Pincus kicked things off by warning a three-judge panel that a law targeting foreign adversaries that requires TikTok to divest from its allegedly China-controlled owner, ByteDance, is "unprecedented" and could have "staggering" effects on "the speech of 170 million Americans."

Pincus argued that the US government was "for the first time in history" attempting to ban speech by a specific US speaker—namely, TikTok US, the US-based entity that allegedly curates the content that Americans see on the app.

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

The Biden administration has proposed rules that could make it more costly for Chinese e-commerce platforms like Shein and Temu to ship goods into the US.

In his announcement proposing to crack down on "unsafe, unfairly traded products," President Joe Biden accused China-founded e-commerce platforms selling cheap goods of abusing the "de minimis exemption" that makes shipments valued under $800 duty-free.

Platforms taking advantage of the exemption can share less information on packages and dodge taxes. Biden warned that "over the last 10 years, the number of shipments entering the United States claiming the de minimis exemption has increased significantly, from approximately 140 million a year to over 1 billion a year." And the "majority of shipments entering the United States claiming the de minimis exemption originate from several China-founded e-commerce platforms," Biden said.

Enlarge / Union members cheer during a news conference following a vote count on the union contract at the IAM District 751 Main Union Hall in Seattle, Washington, US, on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024. (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

More than 33,000 unionized Boeing workers went on strike Friday, rejecting what they say were unfair terms of a deal the embattled aerospace company tentatively reached with their union.

The rejected deal tried and failed to win over workers by offering a 25 percent wage increase and promised to build Boeing's next jet in the Puget Sound region in Washington, which Boeing claimed offered "job security for generations to come."

But after International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751 president Jon Holden urged the union to accept the deal—which Boeing said was the "largest-ever general wage increase" in the company's history—hundreds of Boeing employees immediately began resisting ahead of a Thursday vote that ultimately doomed the deal.

Enlarge (credit: Dmitri Toms | iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Federal authorities have seized more than 350 websites after an undercover investigation revealed that the sites were used to illegally import gun parts into the US from China. To get the illegal items through customs, the sites described the items as toys, necklaces, car parts, tools, and even a fidget spinner.

The sites violated import bans and the National Firearms Act by selling switches—which are "parts designed to convert semiautomatic pistols into fully automatic machineguns"—and silencers—which "suppress the sound of a firearm when discharged," a Department of Justice press release said.

Some sites also marketed counterfeit Glock parts, infringing trademark laws, including a phony Glock switch that Glock confirmed to investigators was "never manufactured."

Enlarge / A staffer with the Paul, Weiss legal firm wheels boxes of legal documents into the Albert V. Bryan US Courthouse at the start of a Department of Justice antitrust trial against Google over its advertiing business in Alexandria, Virginia, on September 9, 2024. Google faces its second major antitrust trial in less than a year, with the US government accusing the tech giant of dominating online advertising and stifling competition. (credit: SAMUEL CORUM / Contributor | AFP)

Just a couple of days into the Google ad tech antitrust trial, it seems clear that the heart of the US Department of Justice's case is proving that Google Ad Manager is the key to the tech giant's alleged monopoly.

Google Ad Manager is the buy-and-sell side ad tech platform launched following Google's acquisition of DoubleClick and AdX in 2008 for $3 billion. It is currently used to connect Google's publisher ad servers with its ad exchanges, tying the two together in a way that allegedly locks the majority of publishers into paying higher fees on the publisher side because they can't afford to drop Google's ad exchange.

The DOJ has argued that Google Ad Manager "serves 90 percent of publishers that use the ad tech tools to sell their online ad inventory," AdAge reported, and through it, Google clearly wields monopoly powers.

Enlarge / Boeing Factory workers assemble Boeing 787 airliners at the Boeing factory in Everett, WA. (credit: Vince Streano | The Image Bank Unreleased)

Boeing is hoping to avoid a strike Friday with a tentative deal reached Sunday with the Machinists union representing 33,000 of its West Coast employees fighting for better wages and working conditions.

If Boeing employees agree to the deal in a vote Thursday, their new contract will provide the "largest-ever general wage increase" in the company's history, Boeing Commercial Airplanes president and CEO Stephanie Pope said in a press release.

The potential deal guarantees that over the next four years, Boeing employees would receive a 25 percent pay raise, as well as "lower medical cost share to make healthcare more affordable, greater company contributions toward" retirement, and "improvements for a better work-life balance," Pope said.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Cops are now using AI to generate images of fake kids, which are helping them catch child predators online, a lawsuit filed by the state of New Mexico against Snapchat revealed this week.

According to the complaint, the New Mexico Department of Justice launched an undercover investigation in recent months to prove that Snapchat "is a primary social media platform for sharing child sexual abuse material (CSAM)" and sextortion of minors, because its "algorithm serves up children to adult predators."

As part of their probe, an investigator "set up a decoy account for a 14-year-old girl, Sexy14Heather."