Photo by Gabriel Benois on Unsplash
This truly must be the end of days because Larry Ellison complimented a company that wasn’t Oracle. Ellison gave conferencing tool Zoom (which has had major security issues since their rise to fame) a shout out in a recent news article stating the technology was transformational…
Speaking of security issues, several governments around the world are using technology to track the covid virus and the people infected. Some watch groups are concerned about eroding rights in a time of crisis.
Acquisitions/Investments
- Airbnb Gets $1 Billion Loan, Bringing Coronavirus Funding to $2 Billion
The San Francisco-based company didn’t disclose Tuesday the terms of the loan or the names of the investors. According to a person familiar with the matter, the loan is five years, and the interest rate will be 7.5%, plus a benchmark rate known as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.
Airbnb had planned to start trading publicly this year. Instead, it faced escalating losses as travel ground to a halt, forcing it to raise money privately at a lower valuation than the $31 billion price tag of its last fundraising round in 2017, people close to the company have said.
Last week, Airbnb said it was raising $1 billion from private-equity firms Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners. That investment came with a steep price tag: an interest rate of 10%, plus Libor, according to people familiar with the deal.
Security/Privacy
- How Coronavirus Is Eroding Privacy
Authorities in Asia, where the virus first emerged, have led the way. Many governments didn’t seek permission from individuals before tracking their cellphones to identify suspected coronavirus patients. South Korea, China and Taiwan, after initial outbreaks, chalked up early successes in flattening infection curves to their use of tracking programs.
In Europe and the U.S., where privacy laws and expectations are more stringent, governments and companies are taking different approaches. European nations monitor citizen movement by tapping telecommunications data that they say conceals individuals’ identities.
American officials are drawing cellphone location data from mobile advertising firms to track the presence of crowds—but not individuals. Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google recently announced plans to launch a voluntary app that health officials can use to reverse-engineer sickened patients’ recent whereabouts—provided they agree to provide such information.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-paves-way-for-new-age-of-digital-surveillance-11586963028
Software/SaaS
- Oracle’s Larry Ellison calls Zoom an ‘essential service’ as coronavirus forces remote work
Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison gave Zoom high praise this week, calling it an “essential service” for his business and others around the world.
Ellison said in the video posted Monday he believes Zoom will continue to be an important to businesses once workers return to the office.
“We’re looking forward to the economy being reopened, we’re looking forward to going back to work, but the way we work will never again be the same,” Ellison said. “We will now meet not just face-to-face, we’ll meet sometimes face-to-face and sometimes digitally via Zoom.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/oracles-larry-ellison-calls-zoom-an-essential-service.html
Larry Ellison actually said something nice about another tech company… wow. He must be an investor.
Other
- Amazon fires two employees who condemned treatment of warehouse workers
The user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa said on Tuesday they had been fired after internally circulating a petition about health risks for Amazon warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Costa had worked at the company for more than 15 years and Cunningham had been an employee for more than five.
“I don’t regret standing up with my co-workers,” Costa said in a statement. “This is about human lives, and the future of humanity. In this crisis, we must stand up for what we believe in, have hope, and demand from our corporations and employers a basic decency that’s been lacking in this crisis.”
An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the two employees were fired for “repeatedly violating internal policies”, which prohibit employees from commenting publicly on its business without corporate justification and approval from executives.
“We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies,” the spokeswoman said.
- IBM age discrimination lawsuit suddenly ends, suggests Big Blue was willing to pay to avoid discovery process
The judge overseeing Jonathan Langley’s age discrimination lawsuit against IBM has dismissed the case, which was scheduled to go to trial later this year.
The court order [PDF] closing the case, signed on Wednesday by Judge David Ezra in the Texan Western District Court, cites a stipulation of dismissal by Langley and IBM. That suggests the two parties have agreed to settle confidentially out of court.
The Register asked IBM to confirm that the case has been settled. We’ve not heard back. Langley’s attorneys could not be reached for comment.
In 2018, Langley sued IBM, claiming age discrimination. He was laid off at the age of 60 after 24 years at the biz. The lawsuit was filed several months after a report from ProPublica and Mother Jones claimed that IBM had embarked on a company-wide campaign to dismiss older workers, a project said to be called Operation Baccarat.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/15/ibm_age_discrimination_lawsuit/