Recode Daily: How Amazon is preparing its workforce for robots

Amazon admits that automation will replace many workers’ jobs. To prepare for this impending reality, Amazon announced this week that it will spend $700 million to retain and retrain about 100,000 workers in the US by 2025. Amazon says it aims to give warehouse workers the opportunity to learn technical skills, like software engineering, that could lead to better jobs at Amazon or other firms.

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Postmates has explored a sale to companies like DoorDash and Walmart. Sources tell Recode that the food-delivery startup, which filed for its IPO over five months ago, has had acquisition talks during that time with some of its competitors. Postmates has taken the matter seriously enough that it is working with Qatalyst Partners, the investment bank famous for selling companies, to see if there’s a good deal to be struck.

The taxman cometh … for Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook, in France. A new law means the country will tax tech companies 3 percent; it is expected to bring in 400 million euros ($450 million) in revenue in 2019. The law applies to digital platforms “that connect users in transactions” and “digital advertising services that collect data,” meaning that Airbnb and Uber will also feel the effects. In total, the law will apply to about 30 global tech companies.

Facebook’s new transparency tool tells you why an ad was targeted at you (and how to opt out, yay!). That’s the good news. The bad news (as BuzzFeed puts it) is that: “looking at it may end up just making you feel worse about how your data is passed around by third-party data brokers — credit reporting bureaus and marketing agencies — like Halloween candy.” This new tool shares more information than what Facebook had previously disclosed about how it targets ads, which was basically just age and location data. You can now see in your account’s Facebook Ad Preferences exactly which companies and “data brokers” have your info. From there, you’ll also be able to opt out.

Donald Trump’s bogus White House social media summit is basically a big troll. The summit is an easy way to promote what Trump hopes will be a wedge issue in 2020: that social media outlets have supposedly joined traditional publishers in working against Trump and his supporters. It’s also a way to troll people like the ones writing or reading about it. [Peter Kafka]

Erin Lee Carr on making true crime documentaries: Erin Lee Carr joins Peter Kafka on this week’s Recode Media to talk about her recent HBO film, I Love You, Now Die, about the Michelle Carter texting suicide case. Carr talks in depth about the painstaking process of making the film, from gathering footage in the courtroom to talking to the victim’s family.

Plus: Media mogul watch: NBC’s Dylan Byers talks to Peter Kafka about the tech and media leaders at this year’s Sun Valley conference, and what to cover when there’s not a lot to cover.

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Here’s what happens when nature goes viral.

Source: Vox.com

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