Boston Dynamics sells to Hyundai, Bitcoin crackdowns in China lead to major ripple effects, and Amazon warehouses are destroying over 100,000 items per day.
It’s all the biz/tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Wednesday, June 23 and I’m your host Alex Coop.
Hyundai acquires controlling stake in U.S. robotics firm Boston Dynamics for $880 million from technology
Boston Dynamics, the group most famous for creating the viral automated robo-dog ‘Spot’, has been acquired by South Korean Auto Manufacturer Hyundai for $880 million. The deal, which see’s Hyundai acquire 80% of the Boston Dynamics’ shares, gives them and its subsidiaries a controlling stake of Boston Dynamics, which is valued by the Japanese Investment Firm Softbank at $1.1 Billion. The deal marks the first major investment made by Hyundai since they introduced Chung Euisun (Yu-son) as their new chairman in late 2020. The deal is expected to help Hyundai design “industrial robots for factory use and logistics.” [finbold]
Bitcoin crackdown sends graphics cards prices plummeting in China after Sichuan terminated mining operations from technology
Bitcoin continues to plummet in price as China continues cracking down on mining operations across the country. The cryptocurrency fell below $30,000 on Tuesday, officially erasing all of its 2021 gains. The news, which spawned the hashtag #Cryptocrash on Twitter among panicked crypto investors, has led to several ripple effects beyond the plummeting crypto price – perhaps most notably, a drop in GPU prices. In China, according to one regional news outlet, graphic cards, like the Asus RTX3060, which are integral to crypto mining operations, have dropped in price by over 60% since their peaks in May. The crackdowns from Beijing have made regions that were once havens for Crypto Mining due to cheap electricity into hostile crypto environments. More recently, cryptocurrencies have been under the microscope because of crypto mining’s environmental impact, which can equate to the electricity consumption of a small town. [SCMP]
One Amazon warehouse destroys 130,000 items per week, including MacBooks, COVID-19 masks, and TVs, some of them new and unused, a report says from technology
And finally, a recent probe into Amazon Warehouse conditions out of the U.K. has found that one warehouse destroys as many as 130,000 items every week, including laptops, televisions, and even COVID-19 masks. In the report conducted by the British news network ITV News, it said that during one week in April, 124,000 items were marked to be destroyed, while conversely just 28,000 products were set to be donated. ITV News interviewed an ex-Amazon employee who had this to say:
Exclusive: Amazon is destroying millions of items of unsold stock in one of its UK warehouses every year, an ITV News investigation has uncovered.
Many of the products – including smart TVs and laptops – are often new and unused. https://t.co/OJjexB0YQd#AmazonWaste pic.twitter.com/UR7XrLWvIM
— ITV News (@itvnews) June 21, 2021
This story comes following a similar 2019 report from France in which undercover reporters found that over 3 million products were being destroyed every year by Amazon. [Business Insider]
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