10 things in tech you need to know today
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Tuesday.
- Amazon says it has already hired 100,000 workers in 4 weeks during the coronavirus crisis and plans to hire 75,000 more. Amazon is now estimating it will spend over $500 million on increased wages.
- Apple and Google say their coronavirus-tracking tech will remain "opt-in" only, and governments won't be allowed to require people to use it. The two companies say only public health authorities will be able to build apps that use their API.
- Amazon is going to start accepting all non-essential products to its warehouses again this week, a month after pausing those shipments. The change signals easing pressure on Amazon's supply chain after a month of grappling with a surge in demand caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
- Google announced it will donate $1 million to San Francisco Bay Area families impacted by COVID-19, with another $1 million coming from CEO Sundar Pichai. Google is working with the charity GiveDirectly, which is partly funded by Google's charitable arm, Google.org.
- Researchers found hundreds of new shady websites are pushing questionable COVID-19 drugs hyped by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Researchers with security rating service NormShield have identified at least 362 new websites pushing questionable coronavirus drugs that have appeared since January.
- Amazon is waitlisting new grocery delivery customers to help it keep up with a surge in demand. The change is one of several Amazon is making to help its overwhelmed workers and infrastructure meet demand amid the coronavirus outbreak.
- Video game ratings will now warn parents about "loot boxes." The new rating applies to all games with "any randomized elements, including loot boxes, gacha games, item or card packs, prize wheels, treasure chests, and more."
- Zoom is giving paid users more control over where their calls are routed, after it got slammed for "mistakenly" using data centers in China. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has said the mistake was made because the company was scrambling to keep pace with heightened demand, and didn't follow its usual "best practices."
- Over 500,000 Zoom accounts are available for purchase or even free of charge on the Dark Web, Bleeping Computer reports. Lists of accounts were compiled using "credential stuffing" attacks, where hackers use leaked information from previous data breaches to try to hack into new accounts.
- The next iPhone will reportedly look a little like Apple's latest iPad models with angular sides and a flat screen. Apple is expected to launch two high-end iPhone models to replace the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max, in addition to two lower end models to replace the iPhone 11.
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