The Tech Jawn

iOS 18 has been released and is now available. We cover a few of the new features and ponder if you should go ahead and update now, or, wait until 18.1 comes next month with Apple Intelligence.The Fearless Fund, which awarded $20,000 grants specifically to Black women-led businesses, shut its Striver’s grant as part of a settlement in its appeals case.Oprah Winfrey did an ABC special on artificial intelligence, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman seemed to remove some of her skepticism about AI.And Amazon orders all of its corporate employees back into the office 5 days per week starting in January.Link to Show Notes

In this episode of The Tech Jawn, we are joined by Malcolm Coley, Chief Technology Officer at Futures First Gaming, who chops it up with us about all the things announced at Apple’s iPhone 16 “Glowtime” event before telling us a bit more about Futures First Gaming, a STEM.org Accredited Ed. Tech, Media, and Esports Entertainment company that convenes esports enthusiasts to engage in competitive and recreational gaming events, fosters a gaming community, and presents opportunities for participants to explore educational and career development pathways in science, technology, art, and relevant esports disciplines.Link to Show Notes

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

French authorities arrested Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov over the weekend as part of an investigation related to charges of "complicity" in various crimes that happen on the cross-platform messaging service. Apple lost its lead when it comes to podcast listening market share. The iPhone maker sits in third place with 12% solidly behind YouTube with 31% and Spotify with 21%. The Justice Department is suing real estate startup RealPage whose software helps landlords price fix rental prices.And Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter is the worst deal for banks since the financial crisis.Link to Show Notes

Pittsburgh may be the latest major city to drop Shotspotter, the gunshot detection system that uses a network of microphones to alert police to gunfire incidents because the technology just doesn’t work.Former Google CEO and board chair Eric Schmidt walks back his comments about Google being behind startups like OpenAI because ‘work-life balance was more important than winning’.The U.S. DOJ is considering a breakup of Google to address its monopoly on search.And, everybody should check to see if their data was stolen in the NPD data breach. Sadly, the chances are that it probably was.Link to Show Notes

group of users it knew skewed towards those under 18.X sued the Global Alliance for Responsible Media for abusing its influence and prompting a boycott against advertising on X.New York City’s drone warning system shouted incomprehensible Spanish to residents when delivering weather-related instructions.And the number of Black podcast listeners is increasing in the United States with 46% of Black listeners listening for the first time within the last year.Link to Show Notes

Don Lemon sued Elon Musk and the social media platform X for fraud, negligent misrepresentation, and breach of contract after Musk canceled a deal for the Don Lemon Show to appear on the platform.After dragging its feet with a proprietary system for over a year, California is now preparing to launch support for adding your Driver’s License to Apple Wallet.  No smartphones in school seems to be a growing sentiment globally. The prestigious boarding school, Eton College in Great Britain is replacing 1st-year student's smartphones with Nokia feature phones. And, the US Court for the District of Washington DC has ruled that Google is a monopoly.Link to Show Notes

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