In honor of Memorial Day The Tech Jawn crew did not record a new episode so we are hitting you with a recent episode from the archives.

In episode 74 we were joined by the founder and managing partner of RareBreed Ventures, Mac Conwell. We talked 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 also talked 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 talked about Mac’s journey to becoming a VC and why he focuses on business outside of Massachusetts, New York, and California.

This was a fun one, so, strap in.

Link to Show Notes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

DoorDash is facing a lawsuit claiming the food delivery service charges iPhone users more for identical deliveries than Android users.

Google Photos, after misidentifying Black men as Gorillas back in 2015, disabled the ability to categorize apes, and 8 years later, still hasn’t turned the ability back on.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which frees companies from liability due to user-generated content on their platforms, kinda sorta got tested in the Supreme Court last week.

And, just when you thought your data was safe from the state unless it gets a warrant compelling companies to hand it over, the authorities can just buy it from data brokers.

Link to Show Notes 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Google AI, err ughm, Google I/O kicked off last Wednesday. The company spent most of its 2 hours plus keynote talking about Artificial intelligence, and it also officially announced the Pixel Tablet and the Pixel Fold phone.

Elon Musk has named a new CEO to take the helm at Twitter. Linda Yaccarino, a.k.a. The Velvet Hammer, is expected to officially move into the role in within the next 6 weeks.

A Snapchat influencer launches an AI-powered 'virtual girlfriend' to help 'cure loneliness'.

And the Godfather of AI offers a dire warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Link to Show Notes

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is ChatGPT better at picking stocks than hedge fund managers?  According to an 8-week study in the UK, the answer is yes, and it's not even close.

The Writer’s Guild of America is currently on strike, and, one of their major issues is that writers do not want to be displaced by AI.

#BlackTechTwitter may have found a new home on the invite-only, federated social media startup BlueSky.

And, are passkeys the solution for people’s bad habits when it comes to using passwords?  Is authenticating via your device a safer option?

Link to Show Notes 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Juice Jacking may not be as big of an issue as the FBI and literally every other media outlet made it out to be last month seeing how there are no reports of it ever happening on record.

Monthly subscriptions for features on new cars may be the wave of the future, but, not many in the present are looking forward to this trend.

Apple won an appeals court ruling against Epic, but, the maker of Fortnite and other popular games kind of won as well.

And, although Netflix is officially ending free password sharing, there are still ways to get around signing up for your own account, if you’re really determined to.

Link to Show Note

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There is no way to sugarcoat it.  Google employees think Bard is trash and you simply can’t trust it even if its tongue came notarized.

Meta will soon start doling out payments from the $725 million Cambridge Analytica settlement where it sold data on 87 million Facebook users.

The SCOTUS will decide if public officials blocking users on social media is an affront to free speech rights.

And WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and other companies are worried that the UK’s Online Safety Bill could undermine end-to-end encryption.

Link to Show Notes 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.