Amazon addresses pee bottle denial tweet | TechCrunch

April 5, 2021April 4, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Amazon kicked off the holiday weekend by backtracking slightly on a social media offensive that unfolded in the waning days of a historic unionization vote. The earlier comments reportedly arrived as Jeff Bezos was pushing for a more aggressive strategy.

Along with taking on Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the Amazon News Twitter account went toe to toe with Congressman, Mark Pocan. The Wisconsin Democrat cited oft-reported stories of Amazon workers urinating in bottles in reaction to comments from Consumer CEO, Dave Clark.

“You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you?” the account asked. “If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.”

The Airline Industry Will Release a Covid-19 Passport for Your iPhone Next Month | Entrepreneur

April 2, 2021April 1, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

After successfully trialing it on an international flight between Singapore and London earlier this month, the IATA says it will release its Travel Pass app in mid-April. The software allows airline travelers to store verified COVID-19 test results and vaccination certificates on their phones. The trade association told Reuters it expects to make the app available to download on iPhone around April 15th, with an Android version to follow later.

Starting on April 16th, Virgin Atlantic plans to pilot the digital pass on its London to Barbados route. The Caribbean island will accept the app at its border, making it one of the first countries to admit a digital pass instead of paper documentation.

Apple will finally fix the iOS issue that blocked searches for ‘Asian’ as adult content | Mashable

March 31, 2021March 30, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Do you have adult content blocked on your iPhone or iPad?

If so, it’s likely that your iOS device is currently blocking web searches using the word “Asian.” It’s been an issue for more than a year — but it’s about to be fixed.

Mashable has confirmed that in the latest iOS 14.5 Beta, the adult content filter no longer blocks web searches containing the word “Asian.”

The iOS 14.5 Beta was released for developers just last week. Apple will launch the public release for all users sometime in the Spring.

Olive Garden is raising its wages. That’s not the full story | CNN

March 31, 2021March 30, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The company that owns Olive Garden is raising wages in a bid to attract workers. But the move doesn’t go far enough to satisfy critics of a practice common in the restaurant industry.

Currently at Darden Restaurants (DRI), which owns Longhorn Steakhouse, Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen and other chains in addition to Olive Garden, all employees are entitled to at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 or state minimum wage.

But not all of their wages have to come from the company. In many states, employers pay tipped workers a sub-minimum wage floor, which amounts to $2.13 at the federal level and is higher in some states. Customers pay the rest in tips. If those tips don’t bring employees up to the minimum wage, companies like Darden are required to make up the difference.

Elon Musk announces Teslas can now be bought with Bitcoin | Fast Company

March 29, 2021March 28, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Elon Musk took to Twitter this morning to announce that customers will soon be able to buy a new Tesla using bitcoin instead of fiat currency.

The move to accepting bitcoins as payment comes roughly a month after Tesla announced it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and that it had plans to enable bitcoin as a payment option in the future.

In a further tweet, Musk clarified that Tesla would not convert the bitcoin payments into fiat cash, and would instead hold onto the bitcoin as bitcoin.

Bitcoin Plunge Erases $100 Billion In 24 Hours–Here’s How Long The ‘Bloodbath’ Could Last | Forbes

March 26, 2021March 25, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

960x0 Despite still-booming institutional adoption, the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency is tanking Thursday morning as analysts warn of massive volatility on the horizon, pushing bitcoin’s losses to nearly 15% since an all-time high on March 13.

KEY FACTS

As of 11 a.m. EDT, the price of bitcoin has tanked 9.4% over the past 24 hours, pushing its market capitalization down to about $970 billion, from nearly $1.1 trillion at the same time Wednesday, according to crypto-data website CoinMarketCap.

Where Are Those Shoes You Ordered? Check the Ocean Floor | WIRED

March 23, 2021March 21, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

SINCE THE END of November, this is some of what has sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean: vacuum cleaners; Kate Spade accessories; at least $150,000 of frozen shrimp; and three shipping containers full of children’s clothes. “If anybody has investments in deep-sea salvage, there’s some beautiful product down there,” Richard Westenberger, chief financial officer of the children’s clothing brand Carter’s told a conference recently.

You can blame the weather, a surge in US imports tied to the pandemic, or a phenomenon known as parametric rolling.

All told, at least 2,980 containers have fallen off cargo ships in the Pacific since November, in at least six separate incidents. That’s more than twice the number of containers lost annually between 2008 and 2019, according to the World Shipping Council.

This Week in Apps: Google Play slashes commissions, Apple sued over scammy apps, YouTube launches a TikTok clone in the US | TechCrunch

March 22, 2021March 21, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.

Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.

Covid-19: Miami imposes emergency curfew over spring break ‘chaos’ | BBC News

March 22, 2021March 21, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

A state of emergency has been declared in the US city of Miami over concerns large crowds gathering for spring break pose a coronavirus risk.

A 20:00-06:00 curfew has been announced in Miami Beach and will remain in effect for at least 72 hours.

Traffic restrictions are in place during the curfew, while businesses in the busy South Beach area must close.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said thousands of tourists had brought “chaos and disorder” to the city.

Wikipedia wants to charge Google, Amazon, and Apple for using its content | Mashable

March 17, 2021March 16, 2021 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Everybody uses Wikipedia.

It’s currently the 8th most visited website in the U.S. and the 13th most trafficked site in the world. The website bills itself as the “free encyclopedia,” providing knowledge free of charge to a global user base. However, the nonprofit which runs Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, hopes that it soon won’t be free for everybody.

Don’t worry, it’ll still likely be free for you, dear Mashable reader. But for companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, Wikipedia is hoping to charge them for publishing its content.

A new report by Wired looks into a brand new division under the Wikimedia umbrella called Wikimedia Enterprise. In a first for the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise will offer a paid service targeting Wikipedia’s biggest users: Big Tech companies.