ZDNET

Image: Michael Blann/GETTY Andrej (not his real name) laughs at the suggestion that he only moved to Poland for the money. Sadly, things aren’t that simple. The front-end developer has been living in a cramped Warsaw flat with his wife and two children for close to a year. His wife left a well-paying job in Belarus, and now the only household income comes from the work Andrej does for German and Czech businesses.  Andrej’s decision to move to Warsaw is a result of ongoing turmoil in Belarus, where many in the IT industry feel subjected to intense suspicion by the current ruling regime under Alexandr Lukashenka.  SEE: How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens the IT industry The presidential elections of August 2020 saw the largest mobilization of popular sentiment against Lukashenka since he come to power in 1994. Lukashenka claimed to have beaten his opponent Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, but his apparent landslide victory has been widely disputed. The following mass protests were eventually put down, while many political activists were jailed. Many IT leaders in Belarus have turned against Lukashenka, perhaps most prominently of all Valery Tsepkala.   Tsepkala was the initiator of the Belarus Hi-Tech Park programme 2005 initiative designed to establish a technology cluster in a country that had traditionally favoured agriculture. The programme created a vibrant IT community, which in 2018 accounted for an estimated 5.7% of the country’s GDP. It also gave rise to companies like Wargaming.net, the gaming studio behind the $2.6 billion World of Tanks franchise, and Viber, a popular messaging app that is now part of the Japanese platform developer Rakuten.   For a while, the tech sector was left in peace, and Belarus was even seen as Eastern Europe’s tech darling. Lukashenka, who prides himself on his agricultural background, had shown little personal interest in technology. But by 2020, Tsepkala had entered the presidential race, gaining strong support amongst tech workers, before being forced to flee the country  Like many of the country’s tech workers, Andrej feels that Tsepkala’s association with technology has had an impact on the entire industry. It’s for this reason he says that his employer relocated its main office to Cyprus.   “We basically left everything behind,” he says. “I’m now working for the same company as a freelancer, through their office in Latvia.”  SEE: Google donating $15 million to Ukraine relief efforts, blocking RT YouTube channels in Europe Kamil Klysinski, a specialist in Belarusian affairs for the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) in Warsaw, puts the number of IT professionals who have left Belarus over the past two years at around 20,000 – roughly 20% of the total IT workforce prior to the summer of 2020.  The economic power of the tech sector might be stopping the Belarusian authorities from punishing it financially. Klysinski points out that IT accounts for one-third of total services exports from the country, despite the relatively small size of the tech industry. At the same time, the IT sector in Belarus is now estimated to account for around 7.5% of the country’s GDP – approximately $2.5 billion annually.  “During a three-hour speech Lukashenka gave on 28 January, he openly said he didn’t know what to do with IT professionals and small business owners. That he doubts their loyalty, that they were too active in opposition towards him. But that, on the other hand, they bring in money,” Klysinski says. Klysinski says tech workers are still monitored by Lukashenka’s security services.   But still, while a number of prominent IT companies have left Belarus, new ones have been founded in their place, which has softened the blow for an economy experiencing mass migration of IT workers.   Most of the 23,000 Belarussians that moved to Poland since August 2020 claimed political asylum. But around 8,000 came to the country on an economic programme Poland put in place to lure knowledge workers from former Soviet states. Named Business Harbour, the Polish government allows those that can show their qualifications in either IT or other innovative industries to obtain a visa to set up a business in Poland. This includes freelancers.  SEE: Tech salaries just hit record highs. So why do IT staff still feel underpaid? During Christmas 2021, Andrej and his family returned to Belarus one last time to sell their house and secure their remaining possessions. Using a remote control and two cups of tea, Andrej shows how their coach zig-zagged barbed wired barriers on the Bug River bridge that forms the border between Poland and Belarus.  Lukashenka is also a strong ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and is now also actively involved in support of Russia in the conflict in Ukraine. Restrictions on the population have already tightened substantially.  With no signs of the regime changing any time soon, Andrej has accepted that he won’t be returning to Belarus. “Everyone in Belarus working in IT knows that the authorities can come in any day and take everything you have for some imaginary transgression,” he says. source

Risk management leaders in Europe and worldwide are either already experiencing impacts from the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russian and Belarusian actors — or they soon will. If you haven’t already, here are the risk-management-related steps to take right now. You can find the cybersecurity-related actions to take in this companion blog post.  Build plans to maintain resilience for business units exposed to the conflict zone. What would you do if your main hyper-scale cloud provider could no longer provide services to business units based in or near the conflict zone or was subject to sanctions or direct damage to their business operations there? Organizations with operations in Belarus, Russia, or Ukraine may face precisely this scenario. Risk managers, CISOs, and IT leaders need to urgently review their dependencies on key IT suppliers in the region and quickly assess their ability to switch suppliers if the need arises. Review business continuity plans, supply chain arrangements, and local or global alternatives, and make sure that specific executives are empowered to make those decisions quickly if necessary.  Update your employees on the heightened risk. Help your employees help you. Make sure there is companywide awareness of potential attacks and what form these attacks may take. Be factual and brief in your messaging to avoid inciting unnecessary fear. Show empathy in your messaging, particularly if you have employees who may be personally impacted by the event. Make sure your employees are prepared for potential phishing attacks. This is not the time to increase your employees’ stress with unnecessary phishing simulations, as any thoughtless phishing campaign now will erode your brand and goodwill.  Be prepared for more supply chain disruption. Just when it looked like the global supply chain woes might be easing, the war in Ukraine has dealt another blow to the system. Firms should prepare for shortages, supply disruptions, and sanctions to destabilize supply chains for at least 24 months. Given that Russia supplies more than a third of Europe’s natural gas and is the world’s second-largest oil exporter and that Germany has already halted approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, you’re likely already bracing for higher fuel prices and possible shortages. And given that the EU has closed its airspace to all Russian flights and FedEx and UPS have (as of this writing) halted shipments to both Russia and Ukraine, you should also expect increases in the cost of and disruption to both travel and freight transport. Further, the war in Ukraine will also exacerbate the chip shortage: Xenon and neon gas are both critical for semiconductor manufacturing, and Ukraine produces about 70% of the global total of both gases. The list goes on: Russia and Ukraine together account for 25% of the world’s wheat exports.  Start mapping your tier one and downstream supply chain now. Whether a physical event occurs or not, cyberattacks have already begun against Ukrainian financial and government services. Make no mistake: Even firms that don’t have (or don’t know they have) critical suppliers in the region will be caught in the crosshairs of digital and, if it comes to it, physical warfare. Firms should immediately start mapping the ecosystem of relationships with operations, assets, data, or dependencies on the region (think fuel, metals, industrial gases, maize, and wheat). More than 3,300 US and European firms have tier-one suppliers in Russia, and more than 650 US and European firms have tier-one suppliers in Ukraine. If you haven’t already, start mapping your tier-one, tier-two, and tier-three suppliers to assess the potential impact on the downstream supply chain. Brace yourself for another wave of cyberattacks on your suppliers, and have your contingency plans ready.  Here’s What To Do Next  After you’ve completed the above steps, here’s your next checklist to follow:  Watch for quickly changing sanctions that will require changes to your third-party ecosystem. Routine sanctions screenings for “go; no-go” decisions on whether to work with a customer, partner, vendor, or supplier just got more complicated. The US has already put a sanction on new investment, trade, and finance in the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic regions of Ukraine. As of this writing, Australia, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK, and the US have imposed sanctions targeting Russia’s financial system, trade, and access to semiconductors, cut off access to new Swiss bank accounts for sanctioned firms and individuals, and ejected several Russian banks from SWIFT (thus cutting them off from the global financial system). Assume there will be further sanctions; be proactive by screening third parties, including partners, foreign affiliates, and customers, for ties to Russia, Russian oligarchs, Ukraine’s separatist states, and Belarus.  Take a close look at the terms and conditions of your cyber insurance policy. Property and liability policies typically have a war exclusion. Standalone cyber insurance policies may also have a language related to coverage when an attack is considered cyberterrorism. Since at least 2020, cyber insurance carriers have been refusing to pay claims related to attacks attributed to state-sponsored actors. Most notably, Lloyd’s of London added broad language to its policies and those of its syndicates, excluding coverage for cyberattacks considered a direct or indirect result of an act of war or cyber operation. What your policy explicitly covers matters. Increasingly, the days of “silent cyber,” where a policy doesn’t specifically address cyber and is silent on the exposure, are behind us. Work with your legal team or outside counsel to seek clarity from your cyber insurance broker or your carrier’s claims management contact.  Rehearse your disaster recovery (DR) and high availability (HA) plans. Given the diverse network topologies you’re using (because you’ve likely got a mix of on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid infrastructure), it is important to not only have a DR playbook in place, but also to understand how you’ll implement that workflow. Verify with your IT colleagues that you’ve actually been executing the key elements of your DR plan (e.g., frequent backups, circuit cutovers and reroutes, etc.), and, if not, understand what it will take to dust the plan off and make

Remote workers and cloud-based technologies have become the dominant attack vectors for ransomware, which continues to grow at a “blistering pace”, according to a survey from CyberRisk Alliance (CRA). More than 300 North American IT and cybersecurity decision-makers were polled.  Most, 62%, said they plan to increase spending on ransomware protection, as 43% admitted to at least one Ransomware attack within the past two years. The top attack vectors were all from outside the organization, with 37% citing remote worker exploits as a key issue. An additional 35% said cloud infrastructure was to blame, and 32% reported security problems with cloud-based apps.  Most organizations, 58%, paid the ransom demand, with 44% reporting a significant financial loss and 29% finding their data on the dark web. “2021 gave witness to elevated levels of ransomware attacks, and there is no reason to believe 2022 will be different,” said Matt Alderman, EVP at CRA. “Cyber insurance is not the answer. On average, organizations will invest 4 – 5% more in 2022 to address ransomware in 2022.”  Alderman warns that despite the higher vigilance and spending on cybersecurity, it will take companies many months to fully implement such measures, which means there will be lots of very vulnerable organizations until well into this year. Also: Report: Ransomware attacks fall but new threats appear The survey revealed two troubling issues: 37% reported they don’t have the budgets to deal with ransomware, while nearly one-third believe there is nothing to be done to stop ransomware attacks because they are too sophisticated.  Ransomware attacks typically demand payment in a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin, which the criminals then try to convert into fiat currencies. Although there are ways to hide the ownership of Bitcoins through the use of services called “Tumblers”, which mix up Bitcoins, the transparency of the blockchain technology means it is still possible to track down the bad actors despite such obfuscation measures.  The Department of Justice recently traced and seized 94,000 Bitcoins that were from a ransomware exploit of Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex in 2016.  Earlier this month, The FBI announced a new unit to deal with ransomware and other cybercrimes involving cryptocurrencies, called the Virtual Asset Exploitation Team (VAXU).  The goal of VAXU is to combine the FBI’s cryptocurrency experts, its blockchain analysis tools, and virtual asset seizure capabilities into one group. There are more than 100 ransomware variants currently being tracked. The FBI wants companies to report the ransomware attacks so that VAXU can trace the payments and prevent criminals from transforming their virtual currencies into real loot. Without a reliable business model, the FBI believes ransomware attacks will begin to fall in number rather than increase every year. source

Image: Getty Images A group of US state attorneys-general have launched an investigation into the impact TikTok has on the mental and physical health of children, teenagers, and young adults. The bipartisan investigation will analyse if usage of TikTok is harming young users, and whether or not TikTok knew about those harms. As part of the investigation, the attorneys-general will look into the methods and techniques used by TikTok to boost young user engagement, including increasing the duration of time spent on the platform and frequency of engagement with the platform. There have been dozens of studies over the years showing the damaging effects of social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok on teens and their perceptions of themselves. In a study published in September, the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control found that youth who were exposed to online risk factors such as cyberbullying, violence, and hate speech, among others, were significantly associated with subsequent severe suicide/self-harm alerts.   The investigation will be used to help determine whether TikTok has violated consumer protection laws and put the public at risk, the attorneys-general said. “As children and teens already grapple with issues of anxiety, social pressure, and depression, we cannot allow social media to further harm their physical health and mental wellbeing,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said. “State attorneys-general have an imperative to protect young people and seek more information about how companies like TikTok are influencing their daily lives.” The TikTok investigation is being led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys-general from the states of California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont. The latest investigation adds another to the pile that have been launched by state attorneys-general to scrutinise the conduct of big tech. Beyond a bipartisan investigation looking into Meta’s plan to launch Instagram Kids that was shortly followed by the company pausing the project, there has been limited change arising from these investigations. Even with Meta’s decision to shelve Instagram Kids, that decision was only made after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s leaks came to light. Around the world, governments are growing more concerned about the adverse mental health impacts that social media platforms have on users. In Australia, the federal government is undertaking its own social media probe and has intentions to launch legislation aimed at requiring social media platforms to do more to protect users. The UK government is also considering similar laws. Related Coverage source

We are just weeks away from closing out the year and if 2021 has taught us anything, it’s that obstacles and challenges exist for us to overcome. In a year plagued by chip shortages and supply chain attacks, we saw companies — small and large — adapt their business models and forge new paths to satisfy the demand of consumers worldwide. And in doing so, ZDNet has been at the forefront to cover, review, and make recommendations on tech products in numerous categories. From the Google Pixel’s return to premium, to Apple’s M1 supremacy, the ZDNet team of subject-matter experts and industry veterans have spent the past year dissecting all that the tech space had to offer. And while hundreds of gadgets earned outstanding ratings and the hearts of many, only the best of the best clinched a spot in our year-end gala. Each selection has proven to bring an improved quality of life, endured the test of time, and worthy of your hard-earned money. And now, presenting to you, our readers, ZDNet’s pantheon of the best tech products reviewed in 2021. Best phones, smartwatches, earbuds These mobile gadgets not only improved on the shortcomings of its predecessors but added fuel to the fire of competition. Laptops, tablets, and more Chips aside, there was no shortage this year of some of the best laptops and tablets that we’ve ever tested.   Useful tech that we can’t stop thinking about These gadgets made a memorable first impression and continues to impress. Did your pick for best tech product of 2021 make it onto the list? Comment down below and let us know. If you haven’t already, also check out ZDNet’s most innovative tech reviewed in 2021.  source

The Brazilian science and technology minister Marcos Pontes has announced he will be stepping down from his role this month with hopes to get elected in the country’s upcoming elections. At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona yesterday (1) Pontes told journalists at a press conference he will be leaving the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MCTI) to run for federal deputy of the lower house of the National Congress in October 2022. Pontes said he communicated the decision to Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro and will be choosing his successor himself, and has already handed over a list of suggestions to the head of state. However, the minister refused to disclose the names and said the announcement of the next incumbent be will be made by Bolsonaro. A lieutenant colonel of the Brazilian Air Force, Pontes was the first Brazilian astronaut to occupy the International Space Station, in 2006. The engineer had been leading the MCTI since the start of the Bolsonaro administration in 2019. At the time, the Ministry also had the Communications remit. This changed in 2020 when the government re-created the Ministry of Communications ahead of the 5G auction, which took place in November 2021. When Pontes took over the MCTI, his intention was to use technology to drive job creation and focus on higher education — though grants to Brazilian researchers were significantly compromised in the Bolsonaro administration. Under Pontes’ leadership, Brazil made some progress in areas such Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, with the launch of various research centers nationwide. Conversely, also under his watch, the government decided to liquidate the national semiconductor company, CEITEC, before trying to sell it as part of a privatization program. The Brazilian science and technology ministry also suffered a number of budgetary cuts whilst led by Pontes, who openly criticized the decisions. In May 2021, the minister said the drastic budget reductions in his department compromised the basic maintenance of various science and technology research organizations, such as the National Institute for Space Research, which, among its attributions, monitors fires in the Amazon rainforest. In October 2021, the budget situation for MCTI became critical, and Pontes was slammed by the country’s economy minister Paulo Guedes over his management of taxpayer money. Also: Elon Musk’s Starlink granted license to operate in Brazil Among his achievements over the last couple of years, Pontes cited the work to rebuild the Brazilian space program. The outgoing minister also said one of his greatest dreams is to see another Brazilian astronaut. “I’d like Brazil to have its own Space X, Blue Origin, all of them”, he noted. Pontes’ focus on space initiatives was also criticized by the economy minister, who said last year he has always supported investment in science, but public funds ended up going towards rockets. At the time, Guedes used the word “dumb” to describe the MCTI minister and, in the same context, he complained that incompetence is rife in the administration of public resources and that execution is lacking across many government departments. After consistent budget cuts, the resources available to the ministry increased in 2022, to 6.9 billion Brazilian reais ($1.3 billion). source

Image: Getty Images Manipulative online advertising and disruptions to supply chains will be high on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) priority list in terms of what it will crack down on for this coming year. Outgoing ACCC chair Rod Sims, in his annual speech to the Committee for Economic Development Australia, said the ACCC’s compliance and enforcement efforts would focus on these priority items due to their growing prevalence as of late. “Consumers are facing a growing number of manipulative techniques to exploit or pressure them, and other practices that seek to distort or disregard their consumer choice in the digital economy,” Sims said, when explaining the ACCC’s consumer concerns for the 2022/23 financial year. Greenwashing, which is the false promotion of green credentials, is chief among these manipulative techniques, Sims said. He added that the uptick of greenwashing has reduced confidence in the market due to the inability for consumers to determine the veracity of a product’s credentials. Other manipulative techniques that have been put on notice are false scarcity reminders such as low-stock warnings, false sales countdown timers, targeted advertising using a consumers’ own data to exploit their individual characteristics, pre-selected add-ons, design interfaces that discourage unsubscribing, manipulation of online reviews and search results, and comparison websites and social media influencers who do not disclose commercial relationships including paid promotions. Another of the ACCC’s consumer priorities will be consumer issues arising from the pricing and selling of essential services, with a focus on the energy and telecommunications sector. The competition watchdog said it has continued to hear concerns about the lack of transparency in agreements between essential service providers and small businesses and consumers, misleading advertising claims, and recurring mis-selling of essential service products. “There needs to be a better response from the firms in these sectors and it’s clear from the complaints we are hearing and the Ombudsman’s reports that more work is required,” Sims said. In the latest Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman complaints report published last month, the ombudsman received almost 18,400 complaints during the second quarter of the 2021-22 financial year. While this was a decline of over 14% compared to the previous quarter, the ACCC is currently in the midst of various legal proceedings against telcos that accuse them of making false and misleading representations about NBN speeds. On the competition compliance front, the ACCC will prioritise disruptions to domestic and global supply chains in light of the issue becoming more evident during the pandemic. Freight rates on major global trade routes are currently seven times higher than prior to the pandemic, according to the ACCC. Industry analysts have also stated that semiconductor prices are expected to remain high for 2022 with both the chip shortage and pandemic still ongoing. The ACCC’s prioritisation of supply chain issues builds upon its recently established partnership with the competition watchdogs of Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US to collectively focus on stopping collusion in global supply chains. Sim’s announcement of these enforcement and compliance priorities marks the first time the ACCC has aligned its priorities with the financial year. “We will continue to announce these at the start of each calendar year and give immediate focus, placing business and stakeholders on notice of our interest, and initiate implementation,” Sims said. “This approach will better allow a transition from priorities finishing to commencing.” These new consumer and competition priorities are in addition to the ACCC’s existing priority of regulating big tech dominance — Sim’s self-proclaimed “proudest” initiative. Earlier this week, the ACCC proposed a slew of legislative measures addressing competition and consumer welfare issues found within digital platforms as part of its big tech probe that commenced five years ago. Sims, who has held the ACCC chair mantle for over a decade, is set to leave the post later this month. He will be replaced by Gina Cass-Gottlieb, a litigator who established law firm Gilbert + Tobin’s competition and regulation practice.  RELATED COVERAGE source

A more secure union with your Android phone? Jason Cipriani When you walk into an Apple store, you know what you’re going to get. Usually, at least. If you ask a fine Apple salesperson why, say, an iPad is better than any other tablet, they might ask you whether there are any other tablets. And when you ask them about iPhones, well, they may whip out their own shiny iPhone from their pockets just to show their pride. There are, however, some grumblings in Apple stores these days. On a couple of visits, I — and, indeed, some of my dearest friends — have discovered that masks are slipping. Metaphorically, you understand. This may have something to do with rumors that many Apple store employees feel they’re not being paid enough. The Washington Post reported that many store employees are looking at Apple’s vast profits and wondering: “Where’s our share?” Recently, Apple gave many of their retail hard grafters raises. They weren’t, suggest some, entirely substantial raises. Which has led some disgruntled employees to consider a move that’s recently seen success in vast, profitable enterprises such as Starbucks: forming a union. Many American corporations aren’t fond of unions. They feel they interfere with paying employees what the employer feels like paying them. Yet, in a period of seemingly full employment, even the wealthiest employers aren’t finding it so easy to locate the willing. Which leaves the willing wondering what they’re really worth. This, naturally, brings me to phones. The Post reveals, you see, that some union-mulling Apple store employees have resorted to using Android phones to communicate in an encrypted fashion with each other. The suggestion is that they don’t want store managers to be able to snoop on them in any way. Many might find this appropriately paranoid. As well as lightly entertaining. Apple’s phones are supposed to be more secure, more privacy-focused, and more human-friendly in every way. Yet here are some of Apple’s own people apparently not trusting that — well, what exactly? That managers have sneaky ways to listen in? That Apple has a sneaky way of listening in? Apple? The company that’s always fought against allowing any sort of backdoor into iPhone security has a little side door all of its own? What a scurrilous notion. Yet, in a world where tech companies seem to talk far better about security than actually being able to deliver it, who would feel entirely confident that total security exists at all? And aren’t employers so very, very keen these days on using all sorts of new surveillance tools to snoop on their employees? A twisted mind — guilty, your honor — might even wonder whether Samsung, Google or OnePlus should create an ad campaign along the lines of “Trusted by Apple store employees everywhere.” Just imagine Apple’s reaction to that. source

The global shortage of semiconductors and critical minerals that play a part in much of our technology will still be a nuisance in 2022, an analyst says, for some industries more than others. According to a recent report from GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, the semiconductor (or chip) shortage we have seen in the past two years will be an issue for industries thanks to new variants of COVID-19. Most notably, the shortage will affect industry sectors like 5G, pharmaceuticals, and batteries. The report, titled “Tech, Media, and Telecoms Predictions 2022,” details that the strife between the US and China over the supply chain of chips and minerals will remain heated for most of this year but will begin to improve in the latter half of 2022. Daniel Clarke, an analyst on the Thematic Research Team at GlobalData, told ZDNet that consumers could expect the automotive and tech industries to be the most impacted. “For the automotive sector, it means that new car sales will not be as high as automakers would like, simply due to production issues,” he said. “For the tech sector, smartphones and gaming consoles will continue to be affected. Consumers will be impacted by rising prices or a general lack of widespread availability. This is because tech companies will either decide to absorb the cost internally or pass the cost onto the consumers.” We’ve already felt the repercussions of the chip shortage in 2021, especially in the tech sector. For example, Apple cut the production of the iPhone 13 by 10% late last year. However, Clarke added that the pressure on the tech industry in supply chains would be less than last year. “The emergence of a new variant, which could lead to countries locking down for a short period could put further unexpected pressures on the shortage in 2022,” he said. “Although, in this hypothetical scenario, the demand side pressures created by working from home would not be as disruptive, as most of those working from home will have already bought consumer electronics equipment in the previous lockdowns. “ Other reports echo GlobalData’s study that while the supply chain issues will remain this year, they won’t be as harsh as what we’ve already dealt with. A November report from Deloitte points to an even more grim outcome, in which consumers would still be waiting 10 to 20 weeks for chips by the end of 2022. Clarke said that, ultimately, the key to solving the chip shortage is a bigger investment in chip manufacturing from Western governments. These investments would include exploration, mining, and processing critical minerals to diversify supply. “Subsidizing chipmaking companies to ensure that domestic chipmakers do not outsource their manufacturing abroad will be a key focus of Western governments,” Clarke said. “Cost-competitiveness is key for chipmakers.” source

Uber debuted a new $9.99 per month ($99.99 per year) subscription for its ridesharing and Uber Eats services. Dubbed Uber One, the offering provides a continual 5% discount on rides, deliveries, and order pickups, with unlimited $0 delivery fees on eligible delivery orders over $15 and grocery orders over $30. Should any of these discounted deliveries arrive later than Uber’s estimated delivery time, subscribers will also receive a $5 credit for future use on rides or deliveries. While this is a nice backup, the company clearly expects it to be an infrequent requirement since it is also guaranteeing that Uber One requests will be fulfilled by “top-rated drivers” backed by “elevated member support.”  To enhance the feeling of exclusivity provided by the service, Uber also plans to create exclusive perks, promotions, and members-only events in the future, although it did not provide any information on what form these bonus offerings might take.  Uber’s attempt to lock users into a new loyalty program comes at a time when an increasing number of individuals may be turning to ridesharing services to avoid the ongoing spikes in fuel prices and car shortages impacting so many wallets. The company’s most recent financial release showed it has already rebounded to pre-pandemic levels of ridesharing use, and trends in its Mobility and Delivery businesses suggest it’s poised to continue setting new financial and user records in the coming quarters.  It’s worth noting that Uber is not the first ridesharing company to launch a loyalty program like this. Lyft introduced its Lyft Pink service in 2019, offering a 15% discount on all rides and a similar list of priority services for twice the price at $19.99 per month. Uber one signups are available now, with the company offering a free, one-month trial for new subscribers.  source