Amazon warehouse workers become increasingly vocal about working conditions and pay, New Yorkers get the green light to obtain marriage licenses over Zoom, and India is offering local tech companies $130K to build an encrypted Zoom clone.
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Reddit is buzzing about a story from CNBC about Amazon workers telling the news network that they’ve received no pay or were given 60 per cent of their usual weekly paycheck, despite meeting the requirements for paid sick leave. Combine that with another recent story about Amazon’s attempted shut down of a virtual even where workers spoke out about warehouse conditions, and it becomes pretty clear that business is not as usual at Amazon. Currently, people have been tested positive for COVID-19 in at least 74 of the company’s facilities.
You can now respond to one of the world’s most important yes or no questions via Zoom. With New York’s marriage offices closed due to the pandemic, New York governor Andrew Cuomo says the state is allowing marriage licenses to be granted remotely. Not only that, but clerks can conduct ceremonies over video as well. New York remains one of the hardest hit states by the coronavirus. The state is under a stay-at-home order.
And lastly, a story about the Indian government launching a program encouraging local tech companies to come up with an encrypted video conferencing solution that works on all platforms is making its rounds on Reddit. According to NextWeb.com, the government has asked companies to register for the project by April 30. By the end of three phases of the program, one team will get approximately US$130,255 to develop the app. Privacy issues have become more important due to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis with more organizations and individuals using audio and video conferencing. Zoom alone has seen the maximum number of daily meeting participants, both free and paid, conducted on its platform rise from approximately 10 million sessions at the end of December to more than 200 million daily meeting participants, both free and paid last month.
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.