• Uber is offering bonuses to some drivers for completing more rides or referring new drivers.
• The bonuses can add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars.
• Uber has used such extra pay in the past to attract drivers to the platform.

Uber is offering ride-hailing drivers something that many haven't seen in years: Big bonuses.

The ride-hailing service is coaxing some drivers to take more rides, offering up to several hundred dollars in "incentive" pay if they complete a set number of rides within a set time period, according to several screenshots of the offers seen by Business Insider.

In one example, a driver was offered $525 if the driver completed 45 trips within a few days. Similar offers involved smaller payouts and fewer trips, but paid out proportional amounts of $10 to $12 per trip.

That's a huge pay bump for many drivers, who make as little as a few dollars per trip, said Sergio Avedian, an Uber driver and senior contributor to the gig-driver-advocacy blog and YouTube channel The Rideshare Guy.

The bonuses might also be Uber's attempt to get more drivers on the road to meet rider demand during busy periods like Halloween and the holiday travel season, Avedian said.

"This may tell the story that they need supply," he said. "They're saying that we need to get everybody out there."

Some drivers have also gotten messages from Uber encouraging them to refer friends to sign up as drivers or get those who haven't driven in a couple of years back on the app, according to screenshots seen by Business Insider. Payment for those referrals can reach up to $1,225.

The payments are a potential boon to Uber drivers, whose pay can vary significantly between cities.

Uber drivers have to cover their own costs, such as car maintenance, since they are independent contractors, not full-time employees. Rising gas prices have eaten into drivers' pay after the US and Israel started a war with Iran earlier this year.

An Uber spokesperson did not provide details on why the company is offering the payments.

Uber has used targeted incentive payments before.

In 2021, demand for rides began to outpace the number of available drivers after many had stopped driving during the pandemic.

In response, the company decided "to invest fast and to invest aggressively in attracting drivers back to Uber" and increased the number of active drivers on the app by 65% between January and November that year, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on an earnings call at the time. Uber later pulled back on the extra pay.

"When we were coming out of the pandemic, they were short tons of drivers," said Avedian, who was driving for Uber at the time. "It was crazy bonuses out there."

More recently, riders have been paying more per mile and waiting longer for their rides to show up, according to a study published last month.

Do you have a story idea about Uber? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Inquiry chair says failure to advise care homes to isolate people discharged from hospital was ‘significant oversight’

• UK politics live – latest updates

The care sector was “an afterthought” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and government failures caused the virus to spread “like wildfire” among vulnerable and elderly people, a public inquiry has found.

Heather Hallett, who is leading the Covid-19 inquiry, said it was a “significant omission” that the government did not advise that patients discharged from hospitals into care homes should be isolated, causing the virus to spread rapidly among residents and staff.

• I visited an NYC coworking space, where startups spend up to $9,000 a month for a spot.
• There was a private chef, a robot, and a love for in-person work.
• The overall vibe more closely resembled a college campus than a midtown office.

I've been following and interviewing tiny team founders for the last year. As part of my ongoing research, I popped into the Series HQ workspace last month to observe how these founders are running their small teams.

As the elevator doors opened on the top floor of the Chelsea office building, the Series HQ office manager, a 21-year-old NYU student, greeted me. Balancing on a skateboard, the tall, young, and very casually dressed Gen Zer fit right in among the cohort of founders he works for.

Most of the founders at Series HQ are either straight out of college or under 30, with many of their startups being in early funding rounds.

"I do honestly think if you're 35 or 40 thinking about starting a company now, it's probably too late," Nathaneo Johnson, the 22-year-old Series cofounder, said. He recognizes that as a "harsh belief" but believes the average founder age at Series HQ reflects a growing community of young entrepreneurs.

Series itself was launched in 2024 by Johnson and Sean Hargrow as an AI social networking app for iMessage. After they both graduated from Yale and raised $5.1 million in pre-seed funding, the pair signed a lease for over 10,000 square feet of office space. They tacked on "HQ" to distinguish between the coworking space and the business.

When they moved their company into the building last October, they had roughly eight to 10 people on their team. The pair was preparing for growth, but AI has helped to keep their head count lean, and their tenants operate with similarly sized staff.

As I scanned the still mostly empty office, it seemed the tiny teams didn't require much to function. What stood out to me — more than the young, mostly male office demographic — was each company's desire to be around more people, despite operating with as few employees as possible.

The tiny teams here can spend up to $9,000 a month for shared space

I was at the office around 3 p.m. on a Thursday, and about a dozen people from at least five different companies were working, mostly young men and a few young women. The space usually hosts about 15 to 20 startups, and members have 24-hour access when possible, Johnson said.

In August, Series HQ charged between $1,250 and $4,000 for workstation pods that hold up to four people. For more privacy, founders can rent the glass pods for $5,000 to $9,000 a month. The more expensive rental options include meals cooked on-site by the private chef they hired last year to curb their takeout costs.

In the massive main room, across from the scattered row of founder workstations, was a basketball hoop and a roughly $21,000, beat-up robot holding a football.

When they talked about their robot, which was slightly broken during my visit, the room lit up.

It fascinated me that these founders would incur the expense to work in such a large office. They didn't need all of this physical space — which was, in some ways, obvious, as most of it still looked sparse with objects.

Many of the founders I talked to are around my age — 23 — and graduated from high school during the pandemic, when so much social and work interaction moved online. Now building companies, the appeal of Series HQ seemed to be less about the fancy office with a private rooftop and chef, and mainly about having like-minded coworkers to build in-person with.

Long hours mean more time together

Zain Ahmad, who was a summer tenant at Series HQ, works at the AI startup Evos. He said Evos found Series from the promotional drone videos that took over their social media platforms all summer.

"We figured if they're good enough to end up on both of our For You pages and get this much traction, there's a lot to learn from them and be in that space," he said.

Evos rented one of the private glass pods and, during my visit, gave me a tour of their space. Inside the small glass office, we stood in front of their two desks, chatting directly across from a small couch and coffee cart.

In between investor calls, which he said were powered by cups of tea with creatine honey, Ahmad confessed he has taken quite a few naps on that couch. An average workday for them is around 8:30 a.m. to around 10 p.m., sometimes longer. As tenants of Series HQ, they were in the office around six days a week.

He explained the concrete environmental benefits for Evos, which creates specialized agentic AI workflows for traditional industries. Ahmad said they were able to meet a new hire because the new hire was another tenant at Series. They even learned about their most-used AI tool at the moment through the Series team: Aside, an AI-powered browser.

Turnover was high at the beginning of the experiment, Johnson said. Partly because some of the summer tenants were just in town between school semesters. But those tenants probably didn't feel too far from home, since the vibe here more closely resembled a college campus than a midtown office.

The most important piece of growing an AI startup is still the human network

The majority of companies working in the space are AI or technology startups. Logan Milano, the 23-year-old founder of the drink brand Amryth, is one of the few non-tech founders. He recently graduated from college and said he spends well over 40 hours a week here despite living close by.

Milano said all he needs to operate his business is "my laptop, a good place to lock in, and being around other people who are building."

This was an overall sentiment I heard. Many of these young founders lived a hop, skip, and a jump away, based on the commutes they told me about. But simply being around others who are building is, in some ways, one of the biggest benefits.

"Even if we're getting dinner or going out or something, it's like you're still kind of thinking about work and it's all kind of related," he said about the Series community. Adding that "sourcing opportunities" everywhere likely drew them together and is their biggest similarity.

At a time when AI is making it possible to build companies with fewer employees and building solo can be the dream for many, these young founders don't need, or necessarily want to run their business with tons of employees, but they still seem to really want coworkers.

When I asked Milano if he's ever spent the night at the Series office, he smiled, looked over at one of the Series team members, and said, "Am I allowed to say?"

Do you have a story to share about working on a tiny team? If so, please reach out to the reporter at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

Andy Haldane writes that Conservative economic plans would be best for growth ahead of Healey budget

Badenoch says Britain needs tax cuts.

We need to get out of the way of job creators who make our country richer. We need to encourage risk taking, wealth creation, enterprise.

Britain’s tax burden has never been higher. You are taxed on the heating in your home. You’re taxed at the petrol pump filling up your car. You’re taxed when you insure that car. You’re taxed if you take the family away on holiday. You’re taxed if you stay in the UK thanks to Andy Burnham’s tourist tax. You’re taxed to buy a home, taxed to live in a home, taxed to pass on your home. This is clearly not working. Britain does not feel better off.

Andy Burnham wrote in The Times yesterday about the moral outrage of the current benefit system. But as far as I could work out, his answer is to spend even more on benefits.

Acting President Delcy Rodríguez led a meeting on Monday with Venezuela’s main business federations and national union confederations to consolidate agreements on wage restoration, salary scales and worker’s protections.

The meeting brought together the Federation of Chambers and Associations of Commerce and Production of Venezuela (Fedecámaras), the Federation of Chambers and Companies of Venezuela (Fedeindustria) and the country’s various union confederations.

The dialogue table evaluated the progress made in the days of debate focused on restoring workers’ purchasing power.

RELATED: Venezuela Promotes Venezuela Feeds Plan and Local Economy Law to Achieve “Hunger 0”

Three core areas shaped the agenda. The first was the progressive conversion of workers’ income into formal salary, a shift the government describes as progressive salary restructuring.

The second involved adjusting salary scales and tables. The third centered on designing guarantees of stability for Venezuelan workers. In this sense, the working group also reviewed draft laws and regulatory instruments meant to shield the framework of social and economic protection for workers.

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Una publicación compartida de teleSUR English (@telesurenglish)

Dialogue for Sovereign Growth

Venezuelan Acting President Rodríguez reiterated the government’s unwavering commitment to protecting the inalienable rights conquered by the people. She insisted on preserving the workday, end of year bonuses, additional bonuses, vacations, seniority premiums and social benefits in the face of external economic aggression. Following this, the authorities said the three-way dialogue strengthens the model of social justice and lays the groundwork for sovereign economic growth.

The government’s participants included Economy Minister and sector Vice-president Anabel Pereira, Sectoral Vice President for Social and Territorial Socialism Héctor Rodríguez, Planning Minister Ricardo Menéndez and Economy Sectoral Vice-President Calixto Ortega. Labor Minister Carlos Alexis Castillo, University Education Minister Ana María San Juan and Presidential Commissioner for the Constituent Assembly and Labor Consensus Eduardo Piñate also attended.

The labor meeting follows Rodríguez’s announcement days earlier before the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that the executive will submit a draft Law for the Local Economy to the National Assembly.

Rodríguez explained that the legal text has as its strategic objective the dynamization of the domestic productive apparatus through the effective linkage of the different economic sectors of the country. Before the multilateral delegations, the Venezuelan Acting President detailed the guiding principles of the norm, designed to strengthen the food sovereignty and security of the Venezuelan people against the blockade of foreign powers.

• Matthew Guerrero says gas costs eat up much of his pay as an Uber driver in Southern California.
• He prioritizes giving rides to weekend barhoppers who tend to tip well, he said.
• Uber says that one driver's experience isn't representative of the broader platform.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Matthew Guerrero, a 41-year-old Uber driver in Southern California. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I worked as a firefighter for about four years before I got injured on the job.

I've been seeking a workers' comp settlement that should be settled soon. In the meantime, my lawyer said that I could start working again. I needed a job really quickly, especially with three kids, so I started driving with Uber.

I've been driving with Uber for about five weeks. So far, it hasn't been very successful. For example, one week, I made $600 working 30 hours. To make that, I spent about $300 in gas driving my SUV.

Then, I have to put between 20% and 30% of what's left aside for taxes. That comes out to about $210 for 30 hours of work. That doesn't even include wear and tear on my car. I don't understand how anybody can do this long-term. It's not sustainable.

The pay is better if you drive in Los Angeles or San Diego. But I'm in Riverside County, and the pay seems to be lower here.

To get better-paying rides, you have to be strategic. Sometimes, I try to get a ride with a passenger who's headed to an airport in one of the big cities. Then, I stay there all day and take rides. That's not always feasible, though.

When I started with Uber, I realized that there were a lot of rides that involved taking people to morning doctor's appointments. Most of those people didn't tip well, though, and tips are key to making money.

Instead, I like to work Friday and Saturday nights around bars in Temecula. I usually log on around 4 pm and head home around 3 am. The pay is good, and the tips are a lot better than other rides in my area. Sometimes you have to deal with drunk people throwing up, but it's worth it.

I've given some rides to veteran Uber drivers — people who were working on the app back in 2015 and 2016. They said that they used to make better money than I do, and that they quit after they saw pay fall.

That was eye-opening for me. I don't understand how a company like Uber can pay as little as they do.

An Uber spokesperson said drivers in Riverside County, California make "at least $20.28 per engaged hour, plus $0.37 per engaged mile for vehicle expenses, with tips on top of that."

"While this guarantee doesn't cover time spent waiting for trips, it's important context when discussing driver compensation," the spokesperson said. Driver earnings can vary based on when drivers decide to work, where they drive, and rider demand.

"One driver's experience isn't representative of the broader platform," the spokesperson said.

Do you have a story idea about Uber? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at 808-854-4501. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

We went aboard a cruise ship navigating some of the world's most dangerous waters. In the Arctic, drifting icebergs, sea ice, sudden storms and fierce winds make sailing unpredictable. Yet every year, around 100,000 cruise passengers travel to Greenland to explore its remote coastline and experience one of the world's last great wildernesses.

A Russian attack on Sloviansk on 13 October wounded members of a Ukrainian Red Cross team, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society reported. The same day, a Russian bomb hit the city’s invincibility point, one of the state-run hubs where residents warm up and charge phones when power goes out.

Help is getting harder to reach in Sloviansk. Public transport stopped after a Russian strike on two buses in nearby Kramatorsk killed 30 people on 8 October. From 1 November, a curfew from 16:00 to 11:00 will cover nearly all of Donetsk Oblast’s free territory. The people providing help are hit too. Russian drones struck three ambulances in Kramatorsk on 5 October. In August, a Russian strike destroyed a World Health Organization humanitarian warehouse in Dnipro.

Team had moved from Lyman

Three members of the society’s Lyman city branch were hurt. The branch had moved to Sloviansk because of the security situation and kept working there. All three were hospitalized with shrapnel wounds and burns. The building where the team worked took heavy damage, and a fire caused by the attack damaged the organization’s property.

The society’s Donetsk Oblast branch later added that a fourth person suffered a concussion, and that all four were hospitalized. The Red Cross condemned attacks on civilian infrastructure and humanitarian workers.

Bomb hit the warming center

The strike came at 12:45 in the Lisnyi microdistrict, Sloviansk city military administration head Vadym Liakh wrote. He later identified the weapon as a FAB-250, a 250-kg air-dropped bomb. Eight people were injured, and five apartment blocks were damaged, Liakh said. He described the warming center’s building as damaged, while Suspilne Donbas reported it destroyed.

Two Russian strikes on Sloviansk that day killed at least one person, Donetsk Oblast head Vadym Filashkin wrote. Liakh said a Russian attack on the Semenivka neighborhood killed a 55-year-old woman. On 14 October, Filashkin reported that Russian attacks killed three people across Donetsk Oblast on 13 October, in Sloviansk, Druzhkivka, and Starovarvarivka.

No doubt Ed Davey lovingly cares for his disabled son, says Joanna Gray. But he's not his "carer"; he's his father. It's a distinction Britain is fast losing sight of, to the detriment of us all.

The post No Ed Davey, You’re a Father, Not a “Carer” appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

It is fitting that DreamWorks’ “Forgotten Island” carries a title that evokes memory and loss. The film, released globally in September, is on the surface a coming-of-age adventure about friendship. Look a little closer and it is a poignant meditation on separation – a theme that speaks deeply to the Philippines and its diaspora, whose […]

The post ‘Forgotten Island’: joyous, painful love note to Filipino diaspora appeared first on Asia Times.

The European Parliament has backed calls for an EU-wide strategy to tackle worsening shortages of healthcare professionals, including an ambition to increase the health workforce by one million, as doctors, nurses, pharmacists and dentists urged the European Commission to turn the recommendations into concrete action.

The own-initiative report, led by MEPs Loucas Fourlas (EPP, Cyprus) and Ruggero Razza (ECR, Italy), warns that shortages of doctors, nurses, carers and other professionals are becoming structural, driven by ageing populations, rising demand for care and persistent burnout...

In the year of the 250th anniversary of US independence, the bipartisan US Semiquincentennial Commission released “America’s Soundtrack: The Sound of 250 Years.” Perhaps unsurprisingly – because the initiative was planned over the course of a decade with the support of corporations like Amazon, Oracle, and Palantir – the playlist is a romantic ode to the most paternalistic and militaristic sides of the United States.

However, activists have pointed out that there are “Two Americas at 250.” In other words, there is a working-class history and culture that directly contradicts the imperialist project of the billionaire class. Therefore, we must study another soundtrack: one based on the struggles, desires, and traditions of the people. One person that represents this soundtrack is “America’s favorite blues man,” 34-year-old Buffalo Nicols.

Music characterized Carl Nichols’s upbringing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Though not surrounded by musicians, he always had the sounds of jazz on the radio, his mother‘s music collection, his older brother’s hip-hop, and his older sisters, R&B, punk, and metal. This was the context in which he taught himself to play his sister’s guitar at the age of 12.

Performing with bands throughout high school, Carl found kinship among the West African community. As he played a cheap banjo along with a friend on the instrument known as the xalam, he embraced music as an opportunity to learn about other cultures. Traveling through countries like Senegal, Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine in his early 20s and learning their sonic traditions, motivated him to study Black American music with the same rigor.

Performers like Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie left a lasting mark on him, specifically relating to communal and commercial music. Similarly, the writing of Etheridge Knight, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Amiri Baraka helped him understand the blues as “a living thing” rather than a set of important names and dates. He said, “There’s always been this connection between activism and folk music because I think trying to exist as an artist in America has been a political thing.”

His 2025 song “Belly of the Beast“ is one example of this because it asks about the responsibility which domestic victims of US imperialism have for protecting victims abroad. Written during the heightened media coverage of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, the song calls attention to the relationship between Black Americans and Palestinians. He conceptualized the song following a period of political education defined by a collection of Malcolm X speeches and Régis Debray’s 1967 “Revolution in the Revolution?”

I live in the belly of the beast

Though I only meant to look into his mouth

It was not opportunity but chains he used to capture me

And every day I’ve tried to get back out

While these lines of the chorus speak from the individual or first person perspective, Nichols uses them to describe a common experience.This is why the song ends with the collective “we live in the belly of the beast.” The song is neither nihilistic or romantic in its allusion to topics like police killings, occupation and ethnic cleansing. Rather, in verse four, the singer puts his hope for change in the hands of the people, saying “we cannot win ’till we get organized.”

Read more: Studying the changes: a Palestinian music teacher’s lesson on will

Some, who mistake folk music as apolitical, took offense to this song. They attack him in social media comments, direct messages, and hate mail. In the spirit of the blues, Nichols said he laughs at their assumption that they can hurt him. The same minority of listeners attacked him for his 2025 song “Ice Age Blues.”

He wrote the song in response to the second Trump administration’s escalation of ICE terror. Specifically, on the widespread sense of surprise that law-enforcement would use deadly force against the US residents. He said that it reminded him of the same realization among new activists during the 2020 uprising for George Floyd. However, Nichols shows that he was not shocked by the contradiction – he ends the song by asking,

You think all that money is for war fought abroad?

They won’t hesitate to kill you in your own backyard. 

They’d be happy to kill you in your own backyard.

Nichols said that political finger pointing will not help identify the common perpetrator of a shared oppression. Instead, he urges readers to understand the state and how it works against the people; to study the basis of its patterns and changes. By doing so, he calls listeners attention to the basis of repression rather than simply what accelerates it. 

Similarly, he recommends the new generation of blues people to “return to the root.” That is, to disregard stereotypes about their Black art and study those – like Zora Neal Hurston – who preserved long-standing traditions. By reclaiming their legacy, he said that culture workers can affect consciousness on a mass level.

I know no artist really wants to be a role model or to be representing an entire people but the reality is that Black culture is such a fragile, delicate and important thing that we have to be more mindful of how we share it and how we interact with it. 

Buffalo Nichols is currently touring through states like West Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois, and Minnesota.

If you spend your day in front of a computer, you may ask yourself, at times, why you do it. What’s it all for? Who benefits? For Noēma, Aaron Horwath suggests that the crisis confronting knowledge workers these days isn’t strictly economic, it’s also existential. He explores the pitfalls of work-as-performance and wonders whether the “messy middle,” which embraces human interaction and collaboration over an army of agents, might offer more for workers and employers alike.

But perhaps the most powerful action of all is simply to maintain an awareness (and remind others) that Workism is a spectacle. For most employees, we owe it to each other to remind one another that this work is not, in the grand scheme of things, all that important. It is illusory. No one has ever died over a spreadsheet. The world does not wait with bated breath for product launches. A marketing campaign will not change the world. Almost no one will remember all the work we do. But they might remember the types of people we were, the relationships we had and how we treated the people we worked with.