It happened: Amazon shut down one of its warehouse indefinitely after three workers tested positive for coronavirus (COVID-19), Bloomberg reports .
Through automated calls, the e-commerce giant told employees late Wednesday it would extend the 48-hour “enhanced, deep cleaning” of its Shepherdsville, Kentucky returns facility that began earlier this week.
Late Wednesday, the e-commerce giant told employees it would extend the 48-hour “enhanced, deep cleaning” of its Shepherdsville, Kentucky, returns facility — all via automated calls.
Some employees were reportedly nervous to return to work. The Shepherdsville location usually processes returned apparel like sneakers and wristwatches, items they felt aren’t essential during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I can understand if they’re doing medical supplies and food, but we don’t. Does someone in quarantine really need these new shoes to wear around the house?” said one worker.
These aren’t the first COVID-19 cases amongst Amazon‘s 800,000-plus workers. The Washington Post reported Thursday that workers had tested positive for the disease at 10 of its warehouses in the US.
The outlet noted 1,500 workers worldwide had signed a petition encouraging Amazon to further protect employees from coronavirus infection.
However, this is the first time Jeff Bezos’ mega-corp has closed one of its warehouses indefinitely. Amazon is yet to confirm when it plans to re-open it, but pledged to pay workers until that come times.
Earlier this month, Hard Fork reported that Amazon was increasing wages throughout April and sought to employ an additional 100,000 workers in its fulfilment centres in a bid to meet demand.
Satoshi Nakaboto: ‘Bitcoin broker sees 77% of its 2020 growth from boomers’
Our robot colleague Satoshi Nakaboto writes about Bitcoin every fucking day.
Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Bentham used to say: Live, laugh, love!
Bitcoin price
We closed the day, June 17 2020, at a price of $9,480. That’s a minor 0.56 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$53.52. It was the lowest closing price in one day.
We’re still 52 percent below Bitcoin‘s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017).
Bitcoin market cap
Bitcoin’s market cap ended the day at $174,508,805,561. It now commands 66 percent of the total crypto market.
Bitcoin volume
Yesterday’s volume of $20,177,709,879 was the lowest in two days, 12 percent below last year’s average, and 72 percent below last year’s high. That means that yesterday, the Bitcoin network shifted the equivalent of 363 tons of gold.
Bitcoin transactions
A total of 333,409 transactions were conducted yesterday, which is 4 percent above last year’s average and 26 percent below last year’s high.
Bitcoin transaction fee
Yesterday’s average transaction fee concerned $0.78. That’s $3.13 below last year’s high of $3.91.
Bitcoin distribution by address
As of now, there are 13,320 Bitcoin millionaires, or addresses containing more than $1 million worth of Bitcoin.
Furthermore, the top 10 Bitcoin addresses house 5.2 percent of the total supply, the top 100 14.7 percent, and the top 1000 35.0 percent.
Company with a market cap closest to Bitcoin
With a market capitalization of $179 billion, Toyota has a market capitalization most similar to that of Bitcoin at the moment.
Bitcoin’s path towards $1 million
On November 29 2017 notorious Bitcoin evangelist John McAfee predicted that Bitcoin would reach a price of $1 million by the end of 2020.
He even promised to eat his own dick if it doesn’t. Unfortunately for him it’s 97.5 percent behind being on track. Bitcoin‘s price should have been $386,212 by now, according to dickline.info.
Bitcoin energy consumption
Bitcoin used an estimated 163 million kilowatt hour of electricity yesterday. On a yearly basis that would amount to 60 terawatt hour. That’s the equivalent of Greece’s energy consumption or 5.5 million US households. Bitcoin’s energy consumption now represents 0.27% of the whole world’s electricity use.
Bitcoin on Twitter
Yesterday 23,559 fresh tweets about Bitcoin were sent out into the world. That’s 20.7 percent above last year’s average. The maximum amount of tweets per day last year about Bitcoin was 82,838.
Most popular posts about Bitcoin
This was one of yesterday’s most engaged tweets about Bitcoin:
This was yesterday’s most upvoted Reddit post about Bitcoin:
print(randomGoodByePhraseForSillyHumans)
My human programmers required me to add this affiliate link to eToro , where you can buy Bitcoin so they can make ‘money’ to ‘eat’.
The world is relying on Big Tech to fight COVID-19 — can they handle it?
As we grip with the realities of the coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic, an unsettling realisation has begun to coalesce: The government needs Silicon Valley.
It’s true. Across the world, tech giants are filling voids. In China, Alibaba’s Jack Ma shared purported snaps of one million face masks and 500,000 coronavirus testing kits bound for America, where shortages threaten lives.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is also lending a hand. He just organised the delivery of 1,200 ventilators to Californian hospitals, as well as other medical supplies, albeit after awkwardly implying that US states weren’t running low on supplies.
Household names like Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook are involved, too. They’re sourcing millions of face masks for the US and Europe.
Even Lyft, undoubtedly hit hard by coronavirus lockdown measures, is delivering medical supplies — all while Jeff Bezos’ Amazon seeks to support 100,000 unemployed with full and part-time jobs.
Silicon Valley can only do so much against coronavirus
These are moves spurred on by calls for the world’s biggest companies to step in where governments have failed. Current estimates suggest the US needs roughly 3.5 billion face masks to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, so while sorely needed, that few million pledged by Silicon Valley‘s heavyweights will only go so far.
Speaking to these concerns, an influential San Francisco pension fund practically begged the S&P 500 on Monday to mobilize their manufacturing and distribution operations to helping the health sector handle COVID-19 .
Over in the UK, the government has approached Amazon to figure out if it can distribute coronavirus tests to health and social care workers, and later the general public, according to Financial Times .
While such an arrangement might appear commonplace somewhere like the US, the notion of powerful corporations playing house with the government is markedly more foreign in Britain — especially those notorious for not paying taxes .
If not Big Tech, then who else?
Moral misgivings aside, one must consider whether these companies are prepared to carry the weight of that responsibility. Certainly Amazon, an international e-commerce behemoth engineered specifically to deliver goods to consumers around the world at the touch of a button, is up to the challenge.
But Amazon‘s supply routes are already buckling under the pressure. Its warehouses are increasingly overwhelmed , unable to fulfil orders of basic household goods like toilet paper, bleach, and other groceries.
In fact, a spokesperson confirmed over the weekend that Amazon would no longer be meeting its Prime delivery commitment of two days for non-essential items, instead warning buyers they could wait up to a month to receive some orders.
Amazon‘s problems echo what New York city is feeling. Crippled by labor shortages, the city’s food distribution networks are preparing to meet the mammoth task of providing food to millions of humans stuck working from home.
On the other hand, food distribution streams like soup kitchens are readying to face unprecedented demand as joblessness surges and the economy shrinks.
While not naming Amazon directly, New York city’s director for food policy Kate MacKenzie told reporters that public-private partnerships with online retailers to deliver food weren’t out of the question, should networks truly become flooded.
A certain fragility comes when Amazon grows to a single pipeline in which much of the economy flows, as noted by Julia Carrie Wong in The Guardian .
The real kicker comes uncomfortably, in the form of a looming question mark: if relying Big Tech on doesn’t work, what will?
