Today Shopify’s latest earnings call turns heads; Airbnb says it’s cutting a quarter of its staff; and a hacker buys old Tesla equipment and finds them full of user data.
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After reporting that adjusting earnings tripled to 19 cents a share from 6 cents a year ago, social media is again buzzing about the Canadian tech giant. The commerce platform saw a 62% increase in new stores created between March 13 and April 24, during the height of the coronavirus outbreak. Unsurprisingly, Shopify says that online sales were far outstripping in-store point-of-sale purchases. The company is now worth just over $121 billion. That’s enough to make it the most valuable company in Canada, just ahead of the Royal Bank of Canada.
Airbnb says it’s laying off nearly a quarter of its workforce as the pandemic continues to crush the travel industry. The home-sharing company’s CEO Brian Chesky says it’s streamlining its operations in anticipation of its annual revenue being cut in half. In total, it’s one of the largest layoffs to hit Silicon Valley since the pandemic struck, and a dramatic turn of events for the unicorn.
And lastly, a story on ARSTechnica about a “researcher” who described himself as a “Tesla tinkerer that’s curious about how things work,” recently gained access to 13 Tesla parts that were removed from the electric vehicles during repairs and refurbishments, is getting a lot of attention. If you’re wondering what’s special about that, it’s worth noting the parts stored a trove of sensitive information despite being retired. Examples included phone books from connected cell phones, call logs containing hundreds of entries, recent calendar entries, Spotify and W-Fi passwords stored in plaintext, locations for home, work, and all places navigated to, and session cookies that allowed access to Netflix and YouTube (and attached Gmail accounts)
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing.