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Communication apps have become vital in our day to day lives with  popular mobile messaging like Whatsapp, Signal, and Facebook Messenger connecting users the world over. It's staggering to think that people send over 30 BILLION messages a day, just through messaging clients.

Today, on Things Have Changed, we talk to someone who has been at the forefront of product design for many of the technology communication apps that we use today.

Jean Marc Denis is Director of Design at Facebook and has been behind many of the incredible features we take for granted today on Messenger, such as reactions and our favorite feature here at THC, the gorgeous Dark Mode.  Also, what's special about this conversation is JM's breakdown of his experience building one of the first email clients on the app store, the widely loved  Sparrow.

The ingenious design and UI brought tech giant knocking and Google acquire Sparrow in 2012. The acqui-hire resulted in Jean-Marcs foray into "Gmail” and the birth of material design, a design language created by Google in 2014.

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Imagine if airplanes weren’t reusable. It costs a staggering $250-300M to buy a Boeing 747.  A one way trip to fly anywhere on the planet would cost millions. Yup, it sounds bizarre.

That’s exactly the conundrum with space flight. Missions have always been incredibly expensive… but recent breakthroughs in reusability of rockets have drastically reduced the cost of spaceflight and jump started the once stalling space industry.

In fact, we actually have private companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin & ULA to thank for here, who in conjunction with NASA have unleashed engineering breakthroughs that have significantly moved the needle.

NASA has calculated that commercial launch costs to the International Stations have been reduced by a factor of 4 over the last 20 years. That's not all. For commercial launches to LEO orbit, costs have dropped by a factor of 20, from $54,500/kg for NASA's space shuttles to $2,720/kg and $1,410/kg for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 (2010) and Falcon Heavy (2018).

We have finally reached a tipping point. There was no doubt that the physics behind spaceflight could be conquered, but now the economics have been conquered as well, all thanks to reusability.

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As we see rich countries slowly open up, there is an interesting economic phenomenon taking place. While Americans are coming out of lockdown, we are seeing a large number of jobs that are not being filled. There are about 9 million job openings in the United States and a little over 9 million people who are considered “unemployed”, and some 6 million people who weren’t actively looking for jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Why then are people not taking the jobs that are open?

The pandemic had forced a lot of businesses to close down and a lot of industries to stall, causing an all-time unemployment high of about 16% in April of 2020. The economic impact of the unstable job markets have caused more than a financial strain, but a social, and psychological one. The government has tried to weigh in and to ease this pain through benefits (unemployment insurance, unemployment, added benefits, etc). This could be one of the reasons why people aren’t getting back to work. They get paid more to NOT work. But it isn’t the only reason.

As much as people like to conclude that the unemployed are lazy, there is also another element: Fear. With jobs that have lots of in-person contact, like healthcare workers and retail workers, there is a significant risk of getting infected. Around 4 million people mentioned that they aren’t looking for work because they “Don’t want to get COVID”, according to The Economist. The Economist suggests that “allocation of work” is also changing as consumer preferences change post-pandemic, like delivery services versus in-restaurant dining.

Join us as we explore how the labor market looks today, which industries are experiencing the labor shortage, and why Americans aren’t going back to work.

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How many times have you had to throw away your electronics because they were out of date? Or not repairable? The result is a growing mountain of e-waste.

E-waste is the world’s fastest-growing trash problem. Humans generate the equivalent of 4,500 Eiffel Towers of electronic waste in a single year. Yet just 20% gets collected and recycled. This has people calling for products that are no longer designed for obsolescence, but designed to last and keep pace with rapid advancements in technology.

Our guest today is Charles Duffy, the Founder of Biscuit, a company creating repairable and upgradable wireless battery chargers. He starts with a simple question: "Do you feel weird throwing away your tech?"

Biscuit's approach is to design wireless chargers which will be the last chargers you’ll ever need. This novel concept has garnered a huge following and led to almost $100K pledged on Biscuit's Kickstarter campaign.

We sat down with Charles and chatted about all things Biscuit as well as designing, manufacturing, marketing a one-and-done product that is as easy on the eyes as it is to our planet.

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Since the start of the pandemic, retail investors have plowed billions into the market, making calls against institutional investors. With free trading at their fingertips and huge online communities like Wall Street Bets wherein they discuss trading ideas and stock picks, many figure they have a shot against the big guys on Wall Street.

GameStop, AMC & cryptocurrency Doge are some of the most famous 'meme stocks' and their incredible run ups have made many retail investors millions. This also reveals the appetite for risky moonshot bets & could be just the start of a global phenomenon of retail investing going head to head with Wall Street.

Institutional investors typically have access to a wide range of tools and information that puts them at a solid advantage compared to the average retail investor, you. But we sit down with an entrepreneur that thinks things should be different within the investing community.

Lorenzo Ampil is the Co-founder and CTO of Hawksight, an open source investment analysis platform that empowers retail investors to quickly build, test, and optimize their own trading strategies. As a retail investor, it can help inform you to make better trading decisions

Can retail investors compete in a world riddled with asymmetric information? If you’d like to backtest your own investor strategy, or simply want to learn about the unique advantage that a trading assistant will give you, tune in!

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What kind of toys did you have as a child? Was it Snakes & Ladders? Uno? For the Millennials, did you have a Game Boy? Each each year, toys are getting smarter. If you think about how early kids now have access to smartphones, digital learning looks to be a mainstay in early education.

Today, we have Yuting Su, CEO and Co-founder of Thinker Tinker, the company behind Octobo, an award-winning educational multi-sensory smart plush robot that enables development in an interactive environment. Through guided storybooks, interactive tokens, and educational apps, Octobo transforms screen time into an immersive experience. 

Yuting  is a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Games,  passionate entrepreneur, inventor, and storyteller with a background in digital/physical game design, medical device design, and bioinformatics. She walks us through building her company as a mother, a UX researcher, and former med student. She’s merging physical and digital game play to encourage intuitive learning.

The next time you’re thinking about getting a toy for your kids, nephews, nieces, consider taking a look at toys that could actually teach them something while they play. Consider Octobo, an award winning interactive soft robot that helps your child learn through fun and engaging play.

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It’s happening. AWS is no longer the only cloud heavyweight doing business with the US Government. Azure has recently signed a $10 Billion deal with the DoD. 

Gartner reports that AWS is still a better product than most competitors, in terms of what they offer and the quality! But some ask if it's fair that the DoD is only doing business with Amazon, a representation of perpetuating the monopoly Amazon is clinging onto. Amazon and Oracle both raised questions about “political interference”.

Microsoft’s resurgence has been nothing short of extraordinary! With almost a year and a half of revenues more than 30% of AWS’, has Microsoft officially trumped Amazon in Cloud? And don't forget Google, the small fish in this race aggressively ramping up in high growth markets like India & South East Asia.

If you’re curious about how the Cloud Wars are pitting the biggest tech companies against each other, tune in!

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IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are all taking the helm for the cloud renaissance. Gartner says that in 2021, spending on public cloud services could go over $330B. All types of industries and even GOVERNMENTS are moving their infrastructure and technology to the cloud.

There is tremendous opportunity to build on the infrastructure of the cloud. AWS has been the clear winner for a while now, spanning almost 14 years, the margins and scale are unlike any other business in the world, and those incredible margins are attracting some pretty big fish like Microsoft and Google.  

If you’ve ever wondered how you’re able to watch Netflix or hail a cab through Lyft with a click of a button, you are basically using the cloud. So ‘What is the cloud?’ Join us as we make sense of the highly-coveted industry!

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Cyber-risk has more than quadrupled since 2002 and tripled since 2013. Cyber-attacks are now common across industries.  Just recently, FireEye, one of the top cybersecurity firms in the world today stated that it was hacked by a Nation State.

The work-from-home wave has not helped the state of cyber-insecurity. We largely don’t think of our digital security. And it looks like the government hasn’t really been on top of things as well.

In our first cybersecurity episode, we talked about the recent ransomware attacks crippling city infrastructure and big conglomerates. Today, we talk about what the industry is turning into, and how nation-states are starting to deploy resources to decrease the likelihood of cyber-attacks.

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Even before the COVID-19 Pandemic, the world has been moving towards digitization. We spend almost all our lives on the internet and even the mundane things we interface with like our fridges, coffee makers, cars, and houses can be connected to the network. This marriage between the digital and physical worlds has vastly improved our lives.. But also increasingly poses a security threat.

Cyber attacks are becoming increasingly impactful. Cybercriminals can hold your data and systems hostage, threatening your business continuity.

Just recently, meat processor JBS paid $11 million in ransom to the hacker group,  REvil, as they initiated the cyberattack that shut down JBS packing plants for at least a day!

If you want to take a peek into the cybersecurity industry or simply learn how to defend yourself against malicious hackers, tune in!

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