Instacart announces its Connected Stores ecosystem, including a smart Caper Cart that lets shoppers self-checkout by detecting items placed inside it (Umar Shakir/The Verge)

The Economic Times:
A survey of ~4,000 Indian gig workers on Swiggy, Zomato, Uber, Amazon, and others: 42% say their income is flat, 47% have no insurance, and 51% can’t save money  —  Gig workers in India are young, financially stressed, and largely uninsured, according to a new report.

Varsha Bansal / Rest of World:
How India’s gig workers, tired of algorithms dictating their lives, are using Telegram to exchange cheap hacks on how to game the platforms to their advantage  —  Tired of the obscurity around black box algorithms that dictate their lives, India’s gig workers are coming up with jugaads to game the system.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Arizona-based Qwick, an on-demand staffing service that matches gig workers with hospitality jobs, raised a $40M Series B, bringing its total funding to $69.1M  —  Leisure and hospitality workers are quitting at the highest rates of any industry.  About 1 million left the workforce in November 2021 alone …

Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
The Labor Department releases a nonbinding proposal to classify US gig workers as employees and not independent contractors  —  A proposed rule, long awaited by labor activists, would make it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors.

Umar Shakir / The Verge:
Amazon unveils new Prime Air delivery drone MK30, claiming it is 25% quieter and can handle high temperatures and light rain, due to come into service in 2024  —  Amazon is building a better drone that should help chart a course for the company’s Prime Air delivery service after the project …

Reuters:
France plans to impose a €3 minimum delivery fee for online book orders of less than €35 to help independent bookstores compete against big sellers like Amazon  —  France plans to impose a minimum delivery fee of 3 euros ($2.93) for online book orders of less than 35 euros to level …