April 17, 2020
Amazon cracks down on price gouging seller accounts, Western Colorado gets creative with its internet service, and a breakup story that took place on Zoom catches fire online.
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Amazon is telling investors it’s suspending more than 6,000 seller accounts on its platform from around the world for price gouging on essential items during the pandemic. In an annual letter to shareholders, Bezos says the company has also removed 50,000 listings from Amazon’s website because of price gouging.
A band of local governments and partners from 14 rural communities have stitched together a 481-mile network, dubbed “Project Thor.” Why would they do this you ask? Well, their service was so bad at times that the Northwest Colorado Council of Governments, referred to as Northwest COG, coordinated the two-year effort of public and private organizations that couldn’t wait any longer for existing broadband providers to fix their problem. And they did. According to the Colorado Sun, Project Thor is the “middle mile” of physical lines that sits between the greater internet and an internet service provider that serves consumers. Thor doesn’t serve home users, but Northwest COG partners can tap it for their own communities and share it with their school districts and other local institutions – even local ISPs! That’s a cool project indeed.
And lastly, a breakup over Zoom is trending on Twitter. A BuzzFeed story penned by Julia Moser about her breakup, with a gentleman who didn’t have a great internet connection, is probably a story you’ve heard before as quarantine efforts continue. But in this particular instance, the words “we’re breaking up” had multiple meanings during the final exchange, which is getting a good laugh out of everyone.
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.