Amazon’s coffee-badging crackdown

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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, a roundup of some of our top stories. Last week, this newsletter week delivered the latest news from the aftermath of an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Since then:

• Trump made a triumphant return to the public eye at the RNC.
• Former VC and “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance was named his VP.?
• Some of Silicon Valley’s loudest investors came out for Trump.?
• Pressure again ratcheted up on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the race.

You can get the latest on what the political turmoil might mean for businesses, the economy, and markets right here or by downloading the Business Insider app.?

This week’s dispatch

A historic outage

Computers at Australian retailer Woolworths froze with the blue screen of death. Cash register issues closed scores of McDonald’s branches in Japan. Tesla halted some production lines. 911 call centers in Alaska couldn’t operate. Airline passengers around the world faced chaos and uncertainty.?

All because of a single IT update.?

The update, delivered by cybersecurity company Crowdstrike to Microsoft Windows desktop and laptop computers, tipped the digital world into delays and closures. There were no remote or automatic fixes: Instead, each computer required a manual reboot, in some cases more than 15 times.?

Crowdstrike saw its stock price finish down more than 11 percent on Friday, a clear sign of the damage done to its business.?

For those impacted, Crowdstrike’s terms and conditions limit liability to “fees paid,” leaving customers eligible for a refund and nothing more. Those with cyber insurance will likely be checking the fine print of their policies to see what’s covered.

The chaos is a stark illustration of the vulnerability of global IT systems. An update gone wrong from a single company many hadn’t heard of before Friday morning brought retailers, banks, hospitals, production lines, and airlines to a halt. It’s a pressing reminder of how reliant we are on just a few companies.??

No more “coffee badging”

Amazon’s return-to-office mandate is getting serious. In recent months, the company has told several teams they must stay a minimum of two to six hours per visit to the office.

The new rule is a way to crack down on “coffee badging,” or employees who badge in, get coffee, and leave shortly after to satisfy their RTO requirements. Workers aren’t taking the rules lightly —?many took to Slack to air their complaints about the new policy.?

Inside Amazon’s RTO crackdown.?

More of this week’s top reads:

• A founding father of Utah's VC industry is stepping back as accusations of sexual harassment surface.
• Silicon Valley's loudest investors are suddenly all-in on Donald Trump.
• Goldman Sachs thinks the merger machine is revving up.
• JD Vance could be the first tech guy in the White House. It's way too early to say what that means.
• Blackstone just raised the stakes on its AI gamble.
• The top reasons job applicants ghost prospective employers.
• Goldman's global head of equity syndicate reflects on her days as a junior banker.
• Wall Street “bake offs” are back. Here's what that means for dealmaking.
• Netflix had another blowout quarter.?

Curated by Matt Turner and edited by Jordan Parker Erb.

This is a shorter version of our flagship newsletter, which brings you in-depth analysis and summaries of the top stories from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

Sign up here to get the full Insider Today in your inbox every day.