INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Amazon fires two employees who criticized the company COVID-19 response, Google may be creating its own chips to use in Pixel phones and
more details emerge about Apple and Google contact tracing plan
Here your Daily Crunch for April 14, 2020.
1
Amazon fires two more employees who were openly critical of working conditions during pandemic
Two additional employees who were publicly
critical of Amazon warehouse conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic have been fired by the company
Those employees — UX designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa — were also members of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an
organization of employees &who believe it our responsibility to ensure our business models don&t contribute to the climate crisis.&
Amazon
has pushed back against the notion that the employees were fired expressly due to their criticisms of its treatment of workers during the
But, at the very least, the optics are less than ideal.
2
Google said to be preparing its own chips for use in Pixel phones and Chromebooks
Axios reports that Google is readying its own in-house
processors for use in future Pixel devices, including both phones and eventually Chromebooks, too
The in-house chip is apparently code-named Whitechapel, and it being made in collaboration with Samsung.
3
Q-A: Apple and Google discuss their coronavirus tracing efforts
On a media call, Apple said it will roll out the feature update to the
broadest number of iOS devices as possible — more than three-quarters of iPhones and iPads are on the latest version of iOS 13 and will
Google said it will update Google Play Services with the feature so that the contact tracing system can run on the entire fleet of Android
devices running Android 6.0 or newer.
4
Reddit announces updates, including a new subreddit, to increase political ad transparency
Reddit announced an update to its policy for
political advertising that will require campaigns to leave comments open on ads for the first 24 hours
The platform also launched a new subreddit, r/RedditPoliticalAds, that will include information about advertisers, targeting, impressions
and spending by each campaign.
5
Venture capitalists chat edtech new normal after COVID-19
TechCrunch asked top investors in the space for their predictions on what ahead
once life resumes to its new normal
One investor mentioned how in March, they spent a third of their time in edtech — now, they&re spending almost all their time vetting
(Extra Crunch membership required.)
6
Nintendo Switch update adds ability to transfer game downloads to SD card
Previously, Switch owners had few options if their console ran out
With the update, if storage is running low, a person can transfer a game directly to an SD card.
7
UK tech job vacancies fall 31% in less than 4 weeks, according to job site data & so who is still hiring?
According to numbers shared
exclusively with TechCrunch from job sites Adzuna (which also powers the U.K
government &Find a job& service and provides data to No
10) and WorkinStartups, tech hiring activity amongst 100 of the U.K
top tech companies has fallen 31% in the last month.
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch roundup of our biggest and most important stories
If you&d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
