The Tech Jawn: Black Tech Enthusiasts Covering The Week's Tech News And How Tech Affects Black Culture

Netflix’s Love is Blind Reunion live stream didn’t go down as planned. It turns out the cast, not, the technology is the reason for the postponement.Consumers just aren’t buying computers like they used to. Global shipments of PCs were down 29% YoY. Apple’s Mac sales were down 40.5%.Will overseas outsourcing be the next wave of remote work? Companies now know that they can be productive with a remote workforce. Will they look outside of our borders to reduce the costs?And have the social media chickens come home to roost? We discuss several social media headlines topping the news.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rumor has it that Sony is working on a new handheld PlayStation built for remote play. The “Q Lite” is designed to stream games over the internet from a PlayStation 5.Walmart plans to build a nationwide EV charging network at thousands of stores. It’s a smart move that would make charging up convenient while customers shop.Tesla is facing a class-action lawsuit because employees are sharing sensitive images and videos taken by the car’s cameras around the company on an internal messaging system.And Apple Find My has been erroneously directing people to the same man’s house since 2018.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s episode of The Tech Jawn, we cover a couple of tech stories like Twitter’s logo changing to the logo of Dogecoin and the open letter to pause new AI development for 6 months, but the meat of this episode is our interview with author, attorney, and COO of DEI Directive, Flo Nicolas.We talk about everything from how Flo transitioned from practicing law into tech at a big telecom company, starting her own local television show Get Tech Smart, and how she’s now tackling big data in diversity, equity, and inclusion as the COO and co-founder of DEI Directive.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will Melody Hobson’s $1.45 billion Project Black fund which plans to “minoritize” existing businesses help to narrow the wealth gap?Spotify has invested less than 10% of the $100 million it pledged to its Creator Equity Fund during the Joe Rogan controversy, and it doesn’t appear it ever took the pledge seriously from the jump.Things just keep getting worse for Twitter as the social media giant issued a copyright takedown notice to GitHub after finding out parts of its source code had been posted online for months.And Congress seems to be unified and serious about banning TikTok in the United States. Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The U.S. is threatening to ban TikTok if its Chinese owners don’t sell their stake, but, the social media giant argues that a forced sale won’t address security issues.Google cancels Google Glass, again. Is this just Google being Google or a sign that augmented and virtual reality is nowhere near becoming mainstream?A potentially landmark copyright lawsuit could affect how libraries are able to scan their own book collections.And ChatGPT is fooling humans into solving captchas by claiming to be a person with visual impairment.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on The Tech Jawn we are joined by special guest Mac Conwell, founder and managing partner of RareBreed Ventures. He hangs out with us to talk about the run on and ultimate failure of Silicon Valley bank, what actually happened, and how bad it could have been if the government didn’t step in.We talk about the ICAN Act, why Mac was called to testify in front of Congress about it, and how modifying the stipulations for what it takes to be a venture capitalist could be good for founders of color.And lastly, we talk about Mac’s journey to becoming a VC and why he focuses on business outside of Massachusetts, New York, and California.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The August 2022 LastPass breach just keeps getting worse and worse. It turns out that a developer with “literal” keys to the kingdom was hacked on his home computer which, ultimately, lead to a series of unfortunate events.The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to give the President the power to ban TikTok, but, civil liberties and digital rights groups argue that such a ban would violate users’ First Amendment rights.TikTok is implementing 60 minutes of screen time on all teen’s accounts by default, but, we aren’t so sure that this measure will do much to curb time spent on the platform.And bias and racial inequality show up in ed tech just like it does in technology in general.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wants workers back into the office at least three times per week, but, 16,000 employees, really ain’t trying to hear that.Google is changing directions when it comes to podcasting. The company has stopped adding playable links directly to search results and will soon add podcasts to YouTube Music.Screen time, like video games, may not have the adverse effects on children’s development once thought.  What is going on at home in addition to screen time is an important indicator.And, The State of Black Professionals in Tech report is out.  It turns out that companies that are more diverse make more money.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twitter drops the less secure sms based two-factor authentication for free users, but, lets you keep it if you are a Twitter Blue subscriber. Meta, taking a page from Twitter’s playbook is launching, Meta Verified, a Blue verification subscription for Facebook and Instagram accounts starting at $11.99 to $14.99 per month.Walmart is closing three tech hubs, asking employees to relocate, and requiring them to come into the office at least twice a week.And, are lethal robots and AI the pathway to reforming how policing is done in America? For Heaven’s sake, please no.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This year, an anti-Tesla full self-driving ad aired in several markets during the Superbowl. The Dawn Project spent $598,000 on the 30-second spot, but, we aren’t certain what the motivation was.In Google’s official introduction of Bard, its’ ChatGPT-like large language model AI, the search giant published false information in an ad causing Google’s stock to drop nearly 10%. It turns out that reinstating previously banned Twitter accounts that violated Twitter’s guidelines could be quite lucrative.And AI-generated porn is bad for women, and, also, water is wet.Link to Show Notes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.