Business News

With the reduction of COVID and high levels of vaccination in the Gulf region, Google will stop allowing most employees to do their work remotely and will start forcing workers to a three-day office routine this month, the company said Wednesday.

The mandate follows four stalled attempts by digital advertising giant Mountain View to resume office work amid changing threats from the coronavirus pandemic and changing public health contracts. Most recently, Google announced plans in December to end voluntary remote work on January 10, but amid the spread of the omicron coronavirus variant, it postponed the return to the office indefinitely.

Google Bay Area offices are among the company’s chosen locations in the United States, where the new “hybrid” model will be imposed, mixing remote and office work, the company announced on Wednesday. Google has about 45,000 employees in the region, a spokesman said.

Employees can spend March adapting to the new workplace scheme, and the company expects the hybrid model to be fully operational on April 4, Google said in a press release.

To enter offices, workers will need to be vaccinated against COVID or, if not vaccinated, must work under company-approved restrictions, including camouflage and regular COVID testing, Google said.

Fifteen-minute consulting sessions will be available for workers who need help adapting to the new model, the company said.

Workers can apply for a location transfer or a full-time job, Google said, adding that it has approved about 85% of such requests from employees worldwide since June, with about 14,000 workers approved.

McDonald’s has been sued by Kytch, a startup that is working to repair the ice cream machine by inventing a device, Wired reports.

Kitsch’s legal appeal was pending. McDonald’s was accused of false advertising. The co-founders of the startup, Melissa Nelson and Jeremy O’Sullivan, are therefore seeking $ 900 million in damages.

Since 2019, Kitsch says it has a phone-sized device designed to fix problems with McDonald’s ice cream machine through installation. The device is designed to intercept the internal communications of each machine. It had to be sent to a smartphone or web interface to help owners repair their machines, according to Wired.

Although in November 2020, McDonald’s sent emails asking all franchisees to remove the device from their machines. In an email, McDonald’s said the Kytch device violated machine warranties and intercepted “confidential information.”

The fast food chain device can also cause serious injury. Kitsch denied the allegation, calling it slanderous.

“Nothing is more important to us than food quality and safety, which is why all the equipment in McDonald’s restaurants has been thoroughly inspected before being approved for use,” the statement said. “After learning that the unapproved Kytch device was being tested by some of our franchisees, we made a call to better understand what it was and subsequently reported potential concerns for the safety of franchisees. There is no conspiracy here. “

Read more via Wired.

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), led by cryptosceptic chairman Gary Gensler, is reportedly investigating the creators of NFT and securities markets, according to a Bloomberg report.

Anonymous sources in the report claim that the SEC is investigating whether: “certain irreplaceable tokens … are used to raise money as traditional securities.”

In the last few months, lawyers from the SEC’s law enforcement unit have reportedly sent summonses requesting information on specific NFTs and other symbol proposals.

While crypto loan products have been subject to serious regulatory scrutiny over the past year, this report marks an important milestone in the NFT sector investigation. The inquiry shows that the SEC is particularly interested in how fractional NFTs are used. This is where the more valuable NFT is tokenized into smaller pieces and sold.

The warning signs have been clear for some time, as Hester Peirce, also known as Crypto Mom, said back in March 2021 that selling fractionated NFT could break the law.

“You better be careful not to create something that is an investment product – it’s security

This investigation is the latest in a wave of crackdown that seeks to tighten the cryptocurrency market. Most recently, the SEC ordered New Jersey-based cryptocurrency company BlockFi to pay a record $ 100 million in fines for failing to name “high-yield: credit products as securities.”

While Bitcoin and Ethereum have managed to evade control due to the fact that they are not considered SEC securities (at least not yet), other digital assets have not enjoyed the same deferral, most notably Ripple Labs, the parent company of XRP, which has been involved in a lawsuit for the sale of “unregistered securities” since the end of 2020.

Connected: SEC can’t find BitConnect founder convicted of $ 2.4 billion fraud

NFT’s sales continue to grow, ignoring the current market downturn, with NFT’s two best exchanges, LooksRare and OpenSea, sharing $ 10.7 billion in trading over the past 30 days.