Browsed by
Month: April 2022

The Great Resignation or the Great Rethink?

The Great Resignation or the Great Rethink?

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Mo Hassan

According to all reports, we’re in the midst of a Great Resignation. People are leaving their jobs in great numbers, but what it is actually all about?

Pew Research reported that the Majority of workers who quit a job in 2021 cite low pay, no opportunities for advancement, feeling disrespected.

“Workers aren’t just looking for higher pay, more time off, or more days at home (though those things would surely help in the short term). They’re actually questioning the whole meaning of the daily grind. Why do we put so much of ourselves into our careers? And are we getting a fair deal from our employers in return for all this stress and heartache?,” said Inc. “The period of prolonged uncertainty of a year and a half is going to make people consider their priorities on many, many levels, including the work they do.” Read More...

Elon Musk and the Battle for Twitter Explained

Elon Musk and the Battle for Twitter Explained

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Iván Jesus Rojas from Pixabay

You gotta love Elon Musk, whether you’re a fan or not. Or at least give him the fist bump of respect for his – going there – elan. No one has that flair for shaking up the tech landscape quite like him, and one never quite knows what his next move will be, or why.

So, what’s with Musk’s focus on Twitter, be it as a majority shareholder or actual owner? At the end of the day, does it really matter?  Forest through the trees: every tech cabalist owns a media outlet: Apple has Apple News and Apple TV; Google has Google and YouTube, Meta has Facebook and Instagram; Amazon has The Washington Post. With Twitter, power influencer Musk now has his. Period.

The Twitterverse has gone wild since Musk announced his takeover plans, especially Twitter employees. OMG! He’s threatening to restore freedom of speech! Can you imagine??? Yet, “Several employees noted in internal messages that Musk, who considers himself to be a champion of free speech, has appeared to express disdain for the use of gender pronouns,” The Washington Post reported. Or is controversy the tool he uses to shine a light on hypocrisy? Hmmm…. Read More...

Bitcoin2022: The Bull from Miami (Not!)

Bitcoin2022: The Bull from Miami (Not!)

Comments 0 Comment

We were recently in Miami for the Bitcoin 2022 conference – the first time we’ve traveled to a conference in years and as a compulsive networker and superconnector, we didn’t realize how much we had missed the serendipity and synergies that only happens at in-person events.

This is a lesson in tech hubs and why they shift. Boston was long the center of technology, but with the advent of the internet, Boston lost it. Boston was set in its ways and had its processes.  A young, unproven sector was not in its purview: Boston was about Real Tech, not a bunch of upstarts with a bold vision of a tech future that might well never happen.

The energy shifted to Silicon Valley and in due time, New York. Other hubs sprung up around the country and the world, although with all due respect, our focus here is the US. The SV and NY hubs quickly took the lead, at least in terms of where the investor dollars were. And how did they become investors? For the most part, they were founders who had enjoyed exits. Boston might still have been in the mix, but as a distant third: it was not an internet hub. Read More...

Same Schmidt, Different Day

Same Schmidt, Different Day

Comments 0 Comment

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on the tech cabal,. You know that there’s always something to see. And something they’d prefer you’d not see.

One of the latest reports is that Apple and Meta Gave User Data to Hackers Who Used Forged Legal Requests. It seems the two behemoths “provided customer data to hackers who masqueraded as law enforcement officials,” Yahoo!finance reported, including “basic subscriber details, such as a customer’s address, phone number and IP address, in mid-2021 in response to the forged “emergency data requests.””

It seems that rather than hacking Apple and Meta (nee Facebook) directly, given their armies of coders, instead, the hackers breached law enforcement agencies worldwide. For the record, the hackers who sell this information to various and nefarious, only charge $100-$250 for this service. In 2021, Meta received 21,000+ ‘emergency requests’ which do not need to be signed off by a judge, and complied with 77% of them, while Apple received over 1100 and complied with 93% of them. Read More...