Chinese firms are rushing to launch their own versions of Clubhouse, one spy firm wants to sell your car location data to the U.S. military, and the eight-hour workday is up for debate.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Thursday, March 18, and I’m your host Baneet Braich.
Chinese firms are now jumping on the Clubhouse bandwagon to launch their versions of the audio chat platform. For example, Capital Coffee was created by financial data provider JingData in less than 10 days. Beijing had initially blocked Clubhouse similar to other foreign apps like Gmail and Facebook but now Chinese firms have the opportunity to make their versions. The Chinese apps are very similar to Clubhouse and even have names like Clubhorse, Clubchat and Clubtalk. Bloomberg reports that it’s still a bit early to see how successful these apps will be. So far Capital Coffee which is in beta testing has recorded a peak of 3,000 simultaneous users. [Twitter]
A surveillance contractor wants to take vehicle record location and sell that information to the military. Ulysses told Vice Motherboard that their product can locate the real-time locations of specific cars in nearly any country on Earth except for North Korea and Cuba. They have access to over 15 billion vehicles over the world every month. The company says they have not sold this technology to the U.S. government yet but many sectors are eyeing it closely. Government contractors say they want to use the data for intelligence and surveillance purposes. Vehicles often have sensors that collect information such as airbag and seatbelt status, engine temperature, and current location that transmits to the automaker or third parties.
The eight-hour workday is up for debate on LinkedIn. The founder of Tower Paddleboards says that for some organizations, five hours is enough to stay productive and finish work. One employer told his employees the five-hour workday would be allowed from August 1 to November 30 each year that the company posted a higher revenue than the year before. However, not everyone agrees that five hours days will fit their industry. But, most acknowledge that flexibility in work hours can increase productivity and allow employees to manage personal commitments without disrupting their workdays. What are your thoughts about the five-hour workday? Let us know in the comments.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. I’m Baneet Braich, thanks for listening!