EMPIST Tech News Roundup: Friday, April 26, 2019

Top tech news of the week: Find out the latest on Walmart’s AI store, WSU’s data breach lawsuit, Chipotle’s run-in with hackers and more. Keep scrolling for all this week’s tech news updates!  

Walmart Unveils an AI-Powered Store of the Future, Now Open to the Public 

TechCrunch | Thurs April 25, 2019 — This tech news may surprise you. The future of in-person shopping may be at Walmart. Recently, Walmart unveiled a new store model using AI technology. The concept of this store design is known as an Intelligent Retail Lab. Unlike the Amazon Go stores, the AI cameras in this Walmart location are tracking product inventory. When items are out of stock; the Walmart employees get notified. Read the full story >>  

How Amazon Automatically Tracks and Fires Warehouse Workers for ‘Productivity’ 

The Verge | Thurs April 25, 2019 — Amazon is on fire, and so is this tech news! Stats indicate that the company fires about 10% of its staff annually. The craziest thing about this is that they are firing workers with tracking technology that measures their productivity. If you are wondering, that’s about 300 employees a year that get terminated. Read the full story >> 

Washington State University Settles $4.7M Data Breach Lawsuit 

Health IT Security | Tues April 23, 2019 — In 2017, Washington State University reported a theft of portable hard drives containing important information from about 1.2 million people. Most of the data on the stolen hard drives were not encrypted. Fast forward to 2019, and the university is just now settling the data breach lawsuit for a whopping 4.7 million. Read the full story >>  

Facebook Faces Political Blowback for a New Reason: Its Rising Stock Price 

NBC News | Thurs April 25, 2019 — Bold move, Zuckerberg. Hang on to your Facebook statuses; we have some tech news. Recently, Facebook has gotten a lot of press. Some of it has been good and the rest of it…not so much. Facebook is now facing serious political pushback for rising about 40 billion in market value. The tech company went ahead with this market move, disregarding the previous warning of a large fine. Can the US regulate tech giants, or do they have too much power? Read the full story >>  

This Week in Tech Breach – No Bueno Chipotle 

ID Agent | Thurs April 25, 2019 — This tech news was littered all over Twitter and Reddit. Chipotle’s app was HACKED. Several users reported that charges were made on their accounts that they did not authorize. That’s right, hackers are buying themselves burrito bowls with your money. They probably got guacamole too, because what’s an extra dollar? Users of the Chipotle app that did not have a unique login are also risking credential stuffing. Read the full story >>  

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