Technology

Researchers from Zhejiang University have revealed that the coronavirus has mutated into at least 30 different strains, which range is severity

How big a hit is Netflix &Tiger King&? In its latest earnings release, the streaming company says 64 million households have &chosen to watch& the docu-series its first four weeks of release.

You&ll note that it isn&t claiming that 64 million people actually watched the whole show (which tells the story of Joe Exotic, a big cat owner who&saccused of hiring a contract killer to murder his nemesis, an animal rights activist). Thatbecause the company recently switched to a new system for selectively reporting audience numbers.

Netflix now focuses on how many people chose to watch, which means how many people selected a given show or movie and watched at least two minutes (so they didn&t just click on it by accident).By the companyown admission, this method increases viewer counts by an average of 35%, so ithard to do an apples-to-apples comparison with numbers that the streaming service has released in past years.

But among recent releases, &Tiger King& — which has already spawned a follow-up special — comes out way ahead of &Ozark& season 3 (29 million) and the reality show &Love Is Blind& (30 million), and is roughly as popular as &​La Casa de Papel​&/&​Money Heist​& (65 million).

The series was not, however, able to match the viewership of what Netflix says was its most popular show ever, &The Witcher& (76 million) — not to mention the Ryan Reynolds action movie &6 Underground& (83 million) and the Mark Wahlberg action movie &Spenser Confidential& (85 million).

And of course the viewership numbers should be seen in the context of a big spike in paid Netflix subscribers amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tonight the annual Lyrid Meteor Shower is set to peak, providing you with the perfect opportunity to see a shooting star from the UK

Creative platform Patreon has laid off 30 employees, which is 13% of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.

&It is unclear how long this economic uncertainty will last and therefore, to prepare accordingly, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with 13% of Patreonworkforce,& a Patreon spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. &This decision was not made lightly and consisted of several other factors beyond the financial ones.&

Patreon, which enables creators to build relationships with their fans via monthly subscriptions for content in exchange for perks and other benefits, had seen an uptick in new creators launching on the platform in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March, Patreon wrote in a blog post, &Not only are patrons not leaving the platform, we&ve even seen many of them upgrade their tiers to support their favorite creators during this challenging time.& Additionally, the average income for creators was 60% higher in March than in previous months, according to the company.

Around that same time, however, Patreon said it saw patrons exiting the platform more than usual due to financial hardships. Still, Patreon said churn rates were stable.

The startup ecosystem has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with layoffs no longer the exception, but the rule. Still, itpeculiar timing for Patreon, given the company touted an increase in new memberships during the first three weeks of March.

&This surge, along with years of continuous growth, has put Patreon in a strong financial position to help creators successfully manage creative businesses during this challenging time,& the spokesperson said. &Although the business is in a strong cash position, we want to ensure that we can continue to support creators for many years to come.&

HerePatreonfull statement below:

As much of the world has ground to a temporary halt over stay at home orders, Amazon has continued churning. The retail giant is nothing if not an essential business for many in the U.S. and abroad, as everyday tasks like going to the supermarket and drugstore have become hazardous.

While the company has continued providing necessary supplies for many, its labor policies have entered the spotlight — certainly not a first for Amazon. While the company has consistently batted away suggestions of unfair or unsafe working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of workers this week have planned mass protests of policies.

Workers& rights group United for Respect says more than 300 Amazon employees from 50 facilities plan to take part in the protest. The organization writes, &Amazonresponse to the Coronavirus outbreak has unnecessarily put the lives of Amazon employees at increased risk and exposure,& citing a large number of facilities where employees have contracted the virus.

The organization calls for additional transparency around confirmed COVID-19 cases, more sanitation and various additional benefits, including two weeks of paid sick leave and health for &part-time, drivers, temporary and contracted associates.&

Amazon sent a strongly worded denial to TechCrunch, calling reports of the protests overblown and reiterating its record.

&Reports of employee participation in todayevent organized by labor unions are grossly exaggerated,& Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski said in the statement. &Already today more than 250,000 people have come to work today, even more than last week to serve their communities. We couldn&t be more grateful and proud for their efforts during this time. The union organizers claims are also simply false & whattrue is that masks, temperature checks, hand sanitizer, increased time off, increased pay, and more are standard across our network because we care deeply about the health and safety of our employees. We encourage anyone to compare the health and safety measures Amazon has taken, and the speed of their implementation, during this crisis with other retailers.&

Last week, two additional employees reported firings they believed were tied to their public criticism of Amazon policy. In March, a Staten Island employee who was critical of working conditions was also fired.

Amazon denied the connection. &We support every employeeright to criticize their employerworking conditions,& it told TechCrunch, &but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies. We terminated these employees for repeatedly violating internal policies.&

Software as a service companies, modern software firms often referred to by the acronym &SaaS,& had a tough day in the public markets. The basket of companies, as tracked by Bessemercloud index, dropped 4.49% during regular trading hours.

The losses gave back some of the software industryrecent gains, advances that had followed a sharp decline in the value of their shares as concerns relating to a COVID-19-induced economy hit the richly valued cohort of companies hard; indeed, at one point earlier in the year, SaaS and cloud companies were down around 38% from the 2020 highs.

Those losses, however, largely proved transitory. A steep rally in SaaS and cloud shares brought their decline from all-time highs (set earlier this year) to just about 10% yesterday afternoon. Then, today, the firms lost over 4%. This puts SaaS and cloud shares in between a correction and a bear market.

Earlier today, TechCrunch covered a number of &green shoots& for software companies relating to churn, and some back-of-the-napkin funding data for the month of April thus far. To see SaaS firms drop as sharply as they did right after rings of comedic timing.

The impact of todaytrading was varied. Atlassian fell a modest 2.9%, Dropbox 3.3%, Zuora 5.99% and Slack a sharp 9.54%.

But despite all the worries about churn and changing sentiment, SaaS companies are still richly valued compared to historical norms. How rich? Bessemer notes on its website the companies it tracks in its index were valued at an enterprise value/revenue multiple of 12.9x.

Itkind enough that SaaS trades on a multiple of revenue, and not EBITDA; to see that revenue multiple sit comfortably above 10 is a gift. So far, however, a durable one. Investors have not lost their shine to SaaS shares, todaytrading notwithstanding.

In broader indices, the daydamage was less severe, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling 2.67%, the S-P 500 falling 3.07% and Nasdaq Composite dropping 3.48%.