Files from Samira Balsara
Amazon warehouse workers can keep their cellphones with them while working, Mark Zuckerberg isn’t worried about losing employees, and PayPal closes its San Francisco office.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Friday, April 29, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
Amazon announced that it will let its warehouse workers keep their cellphones with them during work hours. This move comes just weeks after Amazon warehouse workers defeated Amazon in a union drive in New York City by over 500 votes. In an internal notification on Amazon’s scheduling app, the company said, “We recognize the desire for employees to keep their mobile phones with them inside facilities, and the last two years have demonstrated that we can safely do so,” Vice reported. During the pandemic, Amazon had suspended its cell phone ban in warehouses but had plans to reinstate it. However, following the tornado in Illinois that destroyed an Amazon warehouse and killed six workers, Amazon associates demanded permanent access to their cell phones at work. Workers have expressed they need their phones to check up on family members, particularly those with young kids, and in case of emergencies.
Source: Vice
More workers are leaving Facebook, but Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t see that as a bad thing. Amid the employee exodus, The Facebook CEO said that people leaving Facebook “make us a better company.” Further, Zuckerberg doesn’t believe that this volatility isn’t always unhealthy for making sure the company has the right people. According to a Business Insider article, the company’s been experiencing some retention problems, with some tech workers now saying Facebook could be a “black mark” on their resumes. On the Wednesday call, Zuckerberg said that employee attrition can ultimately ensure that the right people stick with the company, which is important to him as it begins a risky shift to building the metaverse.
Source: Business Insider
PayPal is closing its office in San Francisco. Sources say the payments giant is closing its office on 425 Market Street which housed its Xoom business unit. PayPal acquired Xoom in 2015, with its focus being online money transfer technology and services. According to a TechCrunch article, a person familiar with the matter said the employees from that office will now work virtually with the option to work in the company’s main office in San Jose. Some people are speculating that the reason behind this move could be due to San Francisco’s Prop C, which levied a tax upon any San Francisco business that earns over $50 million in gross receipts. Proceeds are to be directed toward housing and services in an attempt to address the city’s challenges with homelessness. Similar to PayPal, another fintech company called Stripe, closed its San Francisco headquarters in 2020.
Source: TechCrunch
Call Of Duty cheaters can now be punished with a penalty that makes them unable to see their opponents. Activision, the developer of the Call of Duty series, says this new anti-cheat feature is called “cloaking.” According to Ars Technica, citing a Call of Duty post, cheaters who are subject to a cloaking penalty will find that characters, bullets, and sound from legitimate players will be undetectable. Those cheaters will remain fully visible to non-cheaters. This anti-cheat update will roll out first for Call of Duty: Vanguard, then be applied to the free-to-play Warzone. It also joins a list of other cheating mitigation measures, including Damage Shield, which was announced in February and disables the cheater’s ability to inflict major damage on other game players. After Damage Shield debuted in February, Activision said it noted a decline in cheating.
Source: Ars Technica
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 briefings 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. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Tom Li.