Technology

Officials in Prague are using the coronavirus crisis to get a firmer grip on short-term rentals like Airbnb, which they say have squeezed locals out of the Czech capital's centre. Using state of emergency powers in place during the coronavirus pandemic, the Czech parliament's lower chamber fast-tracked a plan allowing local authorities to better collect tax and other information on short-term lets. "We want to get more information from Airbnb owners about the capacity of their apartments, how they are being used and the fees they receive," Hrib added.

France's competition authority issued a ruling on Thursday that Google would have to pay up to French publishing companies and news agencies for re-using their content. The ruling by the French 'Autorite de la Concurrence' body followed an earlier complaint by several unions representing French press publishers regarding Google's practices. "Google's practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile, and while the law aimed on the contrary at improving the conditions of remuneration they derive from content produced by journalists," the watchdog said in a statement.

Zoom Video Communications Inc has gotten subject of a class action suit by one of its shareholders on Tuesday, accusing the video-conferencing app of overstating its privacy standards and failing to disclose that its service was not end-to-end encrypted. Shareholder Michael Drieu claimed in a court filing that a string of recent media reports highlighting the privacy flaws in Zoom's application have led to the company's stock, which had rallied for several days in the beginning of the year, to plummet.

The technology company Zoom Video Communications Inc has hired former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos as an adviser and set up an advisory board to improve the privacy and security of its rapidly growing video-conferencing app amid a global backlash. In a series of tweets in late March, Stamos called on Zoom to be more transparent and roll out a 30-day security plan. Following those tweets, Zoom Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan called up Stamos, asking him to help the company build up its security, privacy and safety capabilities as an outside consultant.

A WeWork board committee that negotiated a $3 billion tender offer with SoftBank Group sued the Japanese conglomerate on Tuesday for abandoning the deal, accusing it of succumbing to "buyer's remorse" amid the novel coronavirus outbreak. The tender offer was part of a $9.6 billion rescue financing package that SoftBank agreed with WeWork in October that gave it control of the company.

In order to support the hosts, that rent out their living space on Airbnb, the platform has announced to pay out up to $250 million in order to compensate parts of the losses resulting from the coronavirus pandemic and cancellations. Guests will be able to cancel bookings made "on or before March 14 with a check-in between March 14 and May 31, 2020" for a full refund and Airbnb bill pay the hosts 25% of the normal cancellation policy.

Reporter Patrick Klepek announced on Twitter that he obtained a memo stating that all PlayStation employees are set to work from home until April 30. Employees will be paid "regardless of ability to perform remote work due to job function or responsibilities". Additionally, employees will receive a one-time payment of $1,000 to purchase any equipment needed to continue their work remotely.

The YouTuber PippenFTS aims to recreate the entire Earth in the online game Minecraft in life-size. With the help of two mods, called "Cubic Chunks" and "Terra 1-to-1" respectively removing the size limits of the Minecraft worlds and converting Google Maps earth data into Minecraft maps, the YouTuber has re-created the earth in a Minecraft world. In his proposed second steps he calls for players to get together and hand-build all human-made structures, which were not added by the mods itself. The players organize in a Discord which already has over 40,000 members and the video with the call for participation broke the 5 million views.

The online platform has announced that it'll donate in total 50,000 surgical masks to different organizations in the state of New York, as well as donating €50,000 to various organizations across Europe including countries like Germany, Italy and Spain. Additionally, the company will donate $25,000 to the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) in order to "to meet immediate requests for support from sex workers impacted by COVID-19".