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From dinners with Travis Kalanick to fired after maternity leave: One of CloudKitchens’ earliest employees is suing

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From dinners with Travis Kalanick to fired after maternity leave: One of CloudKitchens’ earliest employees is suing

Isabella Vincenza, one of CloudKitchens’ earliest employees, never imagined she would be suing her now-former employer.

Hired as a full-time salesperson in 2018, she became a mainstay at President’s Club dinners hosted by CEO Travis Kalanick at his Bel Air home throughout 2020 and 2021. These dinners were prized, invite-only events for top salespeople at CloudKitchens, a company that provides delivery-only commercial kitchens known as “ghost kitchens.”

The gatherings started with cocktails by the pool. Then the partygoers would mingle indoors until they sat for a chef-prepared dinner. Vincenza recalled Kalanick would greet her with a hug and praise her work. Sometimes, he would invite her to sit near him during dinner and they would chat throughout the meal.

“If you were the best salesperson, you were his favorite person because you were making the company a lot of money,” Vincenza told TechCrunch, adding that she was also CloudKitchens’ first female salesperson. 

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In August 2022, she arrived at one President’s Club dinner visibly pregnant. When she tried to sit across from Kalanick at the dinner, she recalled him asking her to move over. She said he hardly looked at her, would not engage in conversation, and didn’t say goodbye. Vincenza left the dinner unsettled.

“That was the beginning of me being a pariah,” Vincenza told TechCrunch.

She and another describe a “boys’ club”

Vincenza was fired in July 2023, a bit over six months after returning from maternity leave, according to her lawsuit and the company.

After receiving a right-to-sue letter from California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing in August 2024, she filed the suit in Los Angeles Superior Court. In it she named Kalanick and two other executives, CloudKitchens’ parent company City Storage Systems, and its associate company CSS Payroll as defendants. The suit alleges wrongful termination, sex discrimination, and a hostile work environment, among other claims. TechCrunch has obtained a copy. 

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Vincenza claims in her suit that she spent years “dodging all of her employer’s sexist curveballs,” that the “office culture was that of a boys’ club,” and alleges she received less pay and a smaller equity grant than her male counterparts. She also claims she was “retaliated against for standing up for herself” following her pregnancy and subsequent maternity leave. 

The company rejects her allegations. “Isabella Vincenza had one of the highest salaries amongst hundreds of account executives, yet in the last year of her tenure at the company she was one of the lowest performers,” company spokesperson Devon Spurgeon told TechCrunch. Spurgeon added that an “internal company review” found Vincenza’s claims of discrimination “to have no merit and the irony of all of this is that the fabricated and fraudulent allegations were against the people who were her biggest supporters.” Spurgeon also denied that the seating arrangements for the President’s Club dinner were influenced by Vincenza’s pregnancy, and said seating was a reflection of the seniority of people in attendance.

Vincenza’s lawsuit echoes some of the allegations that led Kalanick to step down as CEO of Uber in 2017 after Susan Fowler’s viral blog post sparked an investigation into that workplace’s culture. The investigation revealed a culture so rampant with gender discrimination and workplace harassment that Uber fired more than 20 people later that year. While Kalanick himself wasn’t personally accused of sexual discrimination or harassment, shortly after the report and firings, Kalanick resigned. 

In 2018, he bought a controlling interest in City Storage Systems, owner of CloudKitchens, became CSS’s CEO, and brought some ex-Uber employees along with him. By 2021, some employees felt CloudKitchens’ workplace was Uber all over again, with long hours and a boys’-club mentality; with one executive, the head of recruiting, resigning after an internal misconduct investigation, according to reports in Business Insider that year.

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TechCrunch has viewed Slack messages from 2022, unrelated to Vincenza’s case, in which employees were cajoled for not being at work after 7 p.m.; male employees were openly messaging about another male employee having sex; and CloudKitchens co-founder Barak Diskin used a dating profile-style shirtless photo of himself for his Slack profile photo.

Female employees have sued CloudKitchens before. One woman sued alleging unfair labor practices like being forced to work overtime without pay, and being denied meal breaks. Another sued claiming gender and race-based pay discrimination (Kalanick was also originally named in this suit but was later dropped as a defendant). The first case was moved to private arbitration; the second was settled in 2023.

These women are not the only ones who found CloudKitchens’ culture difficult. One former employee who worked in the Los Angeles office told TechCrunch that people were frequently fired and employees worked to the edge of burnout, sometimes staying in the office until 2 a.m. This employee, whose identity is known to TechCrunch, asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

This employee also used the words “boys’ club” to describe CloudKitchens’ culture. Slack messages viewed by TechCrunch showed employees using the N-word in a public group. At one point, someone hung a photoshopped picture of Donald Trump on the wall, showing him as a muscled, bare-chested boxer standing in a ring, complete with boxing gloves and a championship belt, according to a photo seen by TechCrunch. 

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While Vincenza did not comment on those incidents, she did tell TechCrunch: “It was always a bro culture.”

Spurgeon denies the characterization of a boys’ club or bro culture, pointing out that women hold senior positions at the company, including the heads of HR, legal, and the enterprise sales team. She also said that the company has “no evidence” of Slack messages containing the N-word and that its policy is to “promptly” address and remove any inappropriate messages or photos brought to management’s attention.

Fired after going to HR

Vincenza’s lawsuit claims that in 2020, when Vincenza was a top sales performer, Jessica Morton — CloudKitchens’ head of business development and partnerships, and one of the other defendants in this suit — accidentally revealed on a Zoom call that two of Vincenza’s male teammates were being paid more than $20,000 more than Vincenza was. Afterward, Vincenza received a $5,000 pay increase. (Morton did not respond to TechCrunch’s requests for comment.) 

In addition to the dinners during the years before her maternity leave, Vincenza remembers routinely being praised at all-hands meetings where the top salespeople were named.

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“It was a big deal,” Vincenza said. “You were a leader. You were an example. And I was presented that way to the rest of the company. ‘Isabella is number one.’” 

In January 2022, Vincenza informed her manager, as well as Kalanick, that she was pregnant and planning on taking maternity leave. Vincenza claims in the suit that her manager “insinuated” she could lose her job if she took leave, and reportedly asked how she was going to work while pregnant. While the company has a maternity leave policy, Vincenza says the company struggled to finalize details of how hers would be handled.

“Two days before I went on maternity leave, they couldn’t figure it out,” she said.

When she returned to work in January 2023 after her three-and-a-half month leave, the suit alleges Vincenza found that her largest accounts had been reassigned. The spokesperson says that her accounts were assigned to others in her absence but denies that the changes were punitive.

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“Let me prove that I’m still number one,” Vincenza remembered telling herself after returning to work. For instance, salespeople were given a goal of closing at least one larger 5- to 10-kitchen deal — meaning signing a client that would rent multiple kitchens. One quarter, she says she was the only salesperson to land a 10-kitchen deal but received no public congratulations, nor an invite to the President’s Club, her suit alleges. Spurgeon says of the 10-kitchen deal that it never actually closed. “Nothing was actually signed. No funds were received by the company.”

Vincenza’s suit also alleges that Kalanick teased her once when she called home to check on her four-month-old during the day, and that leadership would call her or schedule meetings in the evenings and early mornings when they knew she was unavailable, which are also allegations the company denies. 

Vincenza says she went to HR in early 2023 to discuss her overall treatment since returning from maternity leave and was terminated shortly after. 

“She was not given any reprimands. She was not given a performance plan to review. The termination comes out of the blue,” Vincenza’s lawyer, Patrick Downes, a partner at Manteau Downes LLP, told TechCrunch. “This is really unheard of for a company of any size in California.”

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The spokesperson denies this claim as well, saying Vincenza’s manager did have ongoing discussions about her performance.

As for why Vincenza decided to sue, given how difficult such lawsuits are to pursue, she says, “I don’t want other people to be treated that way at this company.” Then she added: “I don’t want this company to be that way for other moms, other women.” 

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Watch out Dyson: these 3 radically different hair dryers are making haircare exciting again

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Three hair dryers from IFA 2024 that impressed me; the Dreame Pocket (right) Laifen Mini (middle) and Shark FlexFusion (left)

There were plenty of devices at IFA 2024 that showed how technology in general is getting creative with form and function, but a lot of eyes were on the beauty space as it continues to radically reinvent what hair styling devices look and feel like. 

Gone are the days of conventional hair dryers being the market norm; the once iconic pistol-shaped handheld dryers are shifting into new form factors, making the best hair dryers interesting once again. 

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Dell Rack Servers | Price List | Refurbprice

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Dell Rack Servers | Price List | Refurbprice



#Dell #Rack #Servers | #PriceList | #Refurbprice

https://www.refurbprice.com/refurbished-dell-rack-servers-price-list

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Why Machines Learn: A clever primer makes sense of what makes AI possible

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Members of the medical staff at the Elithair clinic conduct an artificial Intelligence analysis of Felix Hofmann
Members of the medical staff at the Elithair clinic conduct an artificial Intelligence analysis of Felix Hofmann's scalp and his hair roots.

Machine learning is key to developments in medical diagnostics

Mario Heller/Panos Pictures

Why Machines Learn
Anil Ananthaswamy (Allen Lane (UK); Penguin Random House (US))

As someone who writes for a living, I routinely feel assaulted by the onslaught of generative artificial intelligence. How long before I become a mere massager of prompted paragraphs, the joy of creation abandoned in favour of more, faster, cheaper?

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Anil Ananthaswamy’s Why Machines Learn: The elegant maths behind modern AI won’t tell me or you about the future of AI in our society, nor what we should do about it. But whether you regard the algorithms used in facial recognition,…

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The introduction of YPVALUE 42U server rack network cabinet

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The introduction of YPVALUE 42U server rack network cabinet



Brand: YPVALUE
Width: 600mm, 800mm
Depth: 600mm, 800mm, 1000mm, 1100mm, 1200mm
Height: 18U, 22U, 27U, 32U, 37U, 42U, 48U
Static loading capacity: 600-1200kgs

Application scenarios: data center, communication room, office building, weak current monitoring, shopping center, bank, airport
Suitable for 19″ network equipment, server equipment

product advantages:
1. Provide a variety of cabinet sizes and components, flexible configuration according to different application requirements;

2. Welded frame, combined structure design, light weight, strong structure, flexible and changeable;

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3. There are multiple wiring channels at the upper and lower parts that can be closed, and the size of the large wiring holes at the bottom can be adjusted as needed, which is convenient for on-site wiring;

4. Built-in side door, tool-free installation and disassembly, optional lock and anti-disassembly design;

5. The front and rear doors can be quickly disassembled without tools and interchanged left and right, with an opening angle of 180°, which is convenient for equipment installation and maintenance;

6. Advanced revolving door handle, all front and rear door lock keys of the entire HYA series can be opened;

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7. There are grounding copper nails in many places in the cabinet to facilitate the grounding of the equipment;

8. Complete accessories, self-contained buckle nut fixing tools; self-contained adjustable movable feet, the maximum static load is up to 800kg;

9. Optional installation base to meet the requirements of fixed cabinet, bottom wire passing, cold air sent from the bottom, and rat-proof;

10. The surface treatment is degreasing, pickling, rust-proof phosphating, pure water cleaning, and electrostatic spraying in compliance with European RoHS environmental protection standards.

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Quality Standard:
Comply with EIA-310-E, DIN41491; PART1, IEC297-2, DIN41494; PART7, GB/T3047.2-92 standards; compatible with ETSI standards;
Meet ROSH, CE testing requirements;

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SSD vs. HDD: What’s the difference, and which is best?

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SSD vs. HDD: What's the difference, and which is best?

When on the hunt for a new PC or external hard drive, you’ll likely see two different storage options: Traditional hard disk drive (HDD) and solid-state drive (SSD). Deciding on the best one for your needs can be a massive obstacle if you don’t know the difference. Should you go with the old-school HDD or the newer, faster, and better SSD? Here, we’ll help you make the best choice based on crucial factors such as storage size, speed, and price.

If you decide an SSD is right for you, we’ve also rounded the best SSD deals available now.

Storage capacity

It isn’t difficult to find hard drives with several terabytes worth of storage — and they are getting bigger all the time — without too much of an increase in cost to the consumer.

In contrast, SSDs have lower capacity and become prohibitively expensive when you go beyond 4TB capacity in the 2.5-inch SATA model or 2TB in the M.2 model.

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However, when it comes to storage space, hard drives will maintain their advantage for the foreseeable future although the conversation will change over the next few years when SATA SSDs appear with 16TB of capacity, and thereafter as prices fall to affordable levels. If you want to store something long-term or store large files and folders, hard drives are the way to go, but that is one of the only areas where hard drives still hold sway.

Speed, design, and durability

Drive “speed” is predominantly focused on how fast they can read and write data. For HDDs, the speed at which the platters spin helps determine the read/write times. When accessing a file, the “read” part of the read/write head notes the magnetic section’s positioning as it flies over the spinning platters. As long as the file being read was written sequentially, the HDD will skim it. However, as the disc becomes crowded with data, it’s easy for a file to be written across multiple sections. This phenomenon is called “fragmenting” and leads to files taking longer to read.

With SSDs, fragmentation is not an issue. Files can be written sporadically across the cells — and are designed to do so — with little impact on read times, as each cell is accessed simultaneously. This easy, simultaneous access to each cell means files are read at incredibly fast speeds — far faster than an HDD can achieve, regardless of fragmentation. That’s why SSDs can make a system feel snappy — because their ability to access data across the entire drive, known as random access, is so much faster.

This faster read speed comes with a catch. SSD cells can wear out over time. They push electrons through a gate to set its state, which wears on the cell and, over time, reduces its performance until eventually the SSD wears out. That said, the time it would take for this to happen for most users is quite long; one would likely upgrade their SSD due to either obsolescence or a desire for more storage space before a standard SSD would fail. There are also technologies like TRIM, which help keep SSDs from degrading too quickly.

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There is a balancing act between durability, capacity, and speed as NAND storage technology has moved from the original SLC with 1 bit of data per cell to MLC with 2 bits, then TLC (the T is for Triple), and now QLC for Quad, i.e. 4 bits of data per cell. The Samsung 860 QVO earns that QVO suffix through its use of QLC flash storage.

Cramming more bits of data into each cell allows the manufacturers to increase storage capacity and reduce costs. Unfortunately, there is a problem with hardware longevity, as it becomes more complicated to determine the state of each of the bits in a given cell as the silicon ages. Furthermore, the process of reading and writing takes longer than it did previously, so we see a distinct split in the characteristics of new SSDs. Some models, such as WD Black or Samsung 980 Pro, feature a PCI Express 4.0 interface with TLC NAND and are blazing fast, while other SSDs deliver higher capacity at a lower price but with lower performance and a shorter life span.

The single biggest problem with hard drives is that they are much more vulnerable to physical damage due to their use of mechanical parts. If one were to drop a laptop with an HDD, there is a high likelihood that all those moving parts would collide, resulting in potential data loss and even destructive physical damage that could kill the HDD outright. SSDs have no moving parts, so they can better survive the rigors we impose upon our portable devices and laptops.

Another thing to be mindful of is the design of these devices. HDDs are almost always a 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch disk, while SSDs come in various shapes and sizes. The most common is still the 2.5-inch drive, but smaller SSDs with the M.2 form are becoming increasingly common. If you are considering an upgrade to your PC or laptop with an M.2 SSD, you will need to do some research into NVMe, M.2, and SATA SSDs. This will help you determine whether the M.2 supports the NVMe protocol and whether it is PCI Express Gen 3 or Gen 4. It would be a shame to install a slow SSD in a fast system, and equally upsetting to buy a fast SSD for a system that is unable to reap the benefits of the technology. We love M.2 SSDs, despite their higher price over their SATA III counterparts, as they are much smaller and increasingly offer the fastest storage speeds.

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For further information on SATA, you can check out our guide that explains what SATA is.

Pricing

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although prices have been coming down for years, SSDs are still more expensive per gigabyte than hard drives. For similar amounts of storage, you could end up paying nearly twice as much for an SSD than an HDD — and even more at higher capacities.

While you’re paying higher prices for less space with an SSD, you’re investing in faster, more efficient, and far more durable data storage overall. If you’re building a system with speed, power needs, or portability in mind, then an SSD is going to be the better choice. Adding another hard drive is easy and cheap on most desktops, so it’s a good upgrade down the road if you need more storage space. Having a separate data drive also allows you to update or reinstall your operating system with minimal effort.

In the past year, we have suffered a shortage of PC hardware, and that has stalled the steady reduction in SSD prices. Even so, we are finding fewer reasons to opt for HDDs in most systems. For as little as $60, there are brand-name 500GB SSDs available, which is almost the same price as the average 1TB HDD. At those prices, even casual users will notice a drastic improvement in terms of boot-up time, data access, and general system snappiness. We expect new systems to include an SSD — or at least a hybrid drive.

Hybrid drives, externals, and the final word

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Hybrid drives offer a middle ground between the benefits of SSDs and HDDs. They combine an HDD and SSD into one device. There are a couple of different versions of this sort of technology.

First, there are the SSHDs — or solid-state hybrid drives. These drives are full-sized HDDs (often around one or two terabytes) that come equipped with an extra cache of SSD NAND memory (usually a few GBs worth). SSHDs work by learning which files you use most often and writing them to the quickly accessible SSD section of memory. All other files are stored on the HDD’s spinning disc. While an SSHD won’t give you the durability and lower power needs of an SSD, they should still offer a considerable uptick in speed for certain processes.

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You can find SSHDs that can fit a 2.5-inch slot, as well as 3.5-inch options. In addition to these two hybrids, which make excellent choices for those with space for only one drive, one could also opt to buy multiple separate drives, depending on their configuration and the amount of space they have for mounting.

AMD Ryzen systems with X399, X400, or X500-series chipset motherboards have access to different types of AMD’s StoreMI technology drives. You could arguably use any combination of these drives to build your own custom storage system; However, the go-to choice for most users is a small SSD paired with a larger HDD. Another storage option is Intel’s Optane memory, which functions as a small caching drive in itself, but it’s not available on AMD systems.

You do have the choice of using a drive as an external storage device for your system. A number of manufacturers create drives like this with the sole intention of using them as an external storage source. They also tend to manufacture external housing kits that fit a range of SSDs and HDDs. External drives deliver the features and benefits of an internal drive, but with added portability.

SSDs are quickly getting singled out as the preferred solution for older, mechanical HDDs. As you look for a new storage setup for your device, consider options that feature an SSD. Those drives tend to run faster and create a noticeable difference in your performance levels. The price tends to be higher for these products, but it will pay off in the long run, thanks to the increased speed you’ll experience from the SSD tech.

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YouTube Premium subscribers on Android now get conversational AI

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YouTube has started rolling out its conversational AI. The Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) feature is currently available to YouTube Premium subscribers using Android devices in the US.

Conversational AI on YouTube rolling out to paying members only

YouTube had previously indicated that it would roll out its own AI feature before 2024 ends. Back then, Google was focused on Bard. Subsequently, Bard graduated to become Gemini AI.

Now, the crowd-sourced, video-sharing platform has offered its conversational AI tool, which could be relying on Gemini AI. Incidentally, YouTube had implied that its Gen AI platform would be a standalone tool. It would allow users to ask questions about the video for answers before actually finishing it.

However, YouTube is now rolling out its conversational AI feature inside the YouTube app. Moreover, only YouTube Premium subscribers currently have access to the Gen AI tool.

How to use the Gen AI tool in the YouTube app?

YouTube appears to be testing its Gen AI feature. The video-sharing platform officially announced that users in the US will begin to see the conversational AI tool popping up on their devices.

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YouTube has ensured its Gen AI tool is subtle and unobtrusive. According to 9to5Google, it is currently visible on personal devices and in the comments section.

The YouTube Android app, with a YouTube Premium account signed in, is showing an “Ask” button below the video being played. Additionally, swiping left on the comments card also reveals a new “Ask” card.

Tapping on this card brings up a new page that appears similar to a chatbot. Users can either tap on suggested text prompts or type their queries. Alternatively, users can also tap on a new “Summarize video” button. As the name suggests, this will prompt the YouTube AI chatbot to generate a summary of the video being played.

YouTube hasn’t yet confirmed what Large Language Model (LLM) or Gen AI backend it is using. However, some reports suggest YouTube could be relying on Gemini to summarize YouTube videos and comments. YouTube should offer its conversational AI chatbot outside the US. But the company hasn’t indicated any timeframe.

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