Snap Laying Off 20% of Its Staff Amid ‘Business Restructuring’

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Snap Laying Off 20% of Its Staff Amid ‘Business Restructuring’

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel has informed employees the company will be laying off approximately 20% of its staff.

Like many companies, Snap is experiencing slower growth than expected as a result of the economic downturn.

The investments we have made in our business to-date assumed a higher rate of revenue growth based on our vast opportunity and our proven history of execution, including 2x growth in the size of the Snapchat community and 10x growth in trailing twelve month revenue since our IPO in 2017.

Despite the company’s best efforts to insulate itself, Spiegel says it must cut costs to avoid significant losses.

Unfortunately, given our current lower rate of revenue growth, it has become clear that we must reduce our cost structure to avoid incurring significant ongoing losses. While we have built substantial capital reserves, and have made extensive efforts to avoid reductions in the size of our team by reducing spend in other areas, we must now face the consequences of our lower revenue growth and adapt to the market environment.

Spiegel says the company will restructure to focus three strategic priorities, including community growth, revenue growth, and augmented reality. As part of this restructuring, the company will shed roughly 20% of its workforce across nearly all teams. Spiegel hopes this will be the only layoff necessary.

As a result, we have made the difficult decision to reduce the size of our team by approximately 20%. The scale of these changes vary from team to team, depending upon the level of prioritization and investment needed to execute against our strategic priorities. The extent of this reduction should substantially reduce the risk of ever having to do this again, while balancing our desire to invest in our long term future and reaccelerate our revenue growth. Overall, the size of our team will remain larger than it was at this time last year.

Snap Laying Off 20% of Its Staff Amid ‘Business Restructuring’
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Arm Sues Qualcomm Over Its Nuvia Purchase

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Arm Sues Qualcomm Over Its Nuvia Purchase

Qualcomm has run afoul of Arm Holdings, with the latter suing the former over the licenses it acquired with its Nuvia purchase.

Arm is the world’s leading semiconductor design firm. Unlike Intel, AMD, Samsung, and others, Arm does not manufacture any chips. Instead, it designs semiconductors and licenses those designs to other companies, companies that use them to power some of the world’s most popular computing devices.

Qualcomm has been working to improve the performance of its chips, especially targeting the gap between Apple’s Arm-based chips and its own. Qualcomm purchased Nuvia in an effort to close that gap, but Qualcomm is calling foul, issuing the following statement:

Arm is filing this claim to protect Arm, our partners, and the unparalleled ecosystem we have built together. Arm and its partners have invested billions of dollars to create industry-leading intellectual property. Because Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without Arm’s consent, which is a standard restriction under Arm’s license agreements, Nuvia’s licenses terminated in March 2022. Before and after that date, Arm made multiple good faith efforts to seek a resolution. In contrast, Qualcomm has breached the terms of the Arm license agreement by continuing development under the terminated licenses. Arm was left with no choice other than to bring this claim against Qualcomm and Nuvia to protect our IP, our business, and to ensure customers are able to access valid Arm-based products.

At the heart of the issue is the designs Arm licensed to Nuvia, designs it says required authorization before they were transferred to Qualcomm. As a result, Arm wants a court-ordered injunction that would force Qualcomm to destroy any designs Nuvia developed that are based on Arm IP.

For its part, Qualcomm says its existing agreement with Arm cover the designs Nuvia licensed.

“Arm’s complaint ignores the fact that Qualcomm has broad, well-established license rights covering its custom-designed CPU’s, and we are confident those rights will be affirmed,” Ann Chaplin, General Counsel of Qualcomm, said in a statement to Reuters.

If the court sides with Arm, it could prove a devastating setback to Qualcomm’s plans, especially since the company is one of the leading makers of Arm-based processors for Windows PCs.

Arm Sues Qualcomm Over Its Nuvia Purchase
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Google Cloud Exec Fires Back at Microsoft’s Cloud Licensing Terms

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Google Cloud Exec Fires Back at Microsoft’s Cloud Licensing Terms

A Google Cloud exec is firing back at Microsoft’s cloud computing licensing changes, accusing the company of not ‘addressing core customer concerns.’

Microsoft drew the ire of smaller EU cloud providers over terms that made it more expensive for Office 365 customers to use third-party cloud providers, rather than Microsoft’s Azure. The company outlined its plans to address the complaints and work to more fairly treat its smaller competitors earlier this week.

Despite Microsoft’s efforts to allay concerns, its rivals are not convinced, with Google Cloud Vice President of Government Affairs and Policy Marcus Jadotte slamming Microsoft’s announcement:

The promise of the cloud is flexible, elastic computing without contractual lock-ins. Customers should be able to move freely across platforms and choose the technology that works best for them, rather than what works best for Microsoft.

— Marcus Jadotte (@MarcusJadotte) August 30, 2022

Jadotte contrasted Microsoft’s approach with Google’s, with the latter focused on openness and a multi-cloud approach:

At Google Cloud, we believe that openness matters, and we continue to gain customers’ trust by promoting the security, cost, and benefits of using multiple cloud providers.

— Marcus Jadotte (@MarcusJadotte) August 30, 2022

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has made no secret of his desire to move from third-place to second-place in the cloud market. As part of that goal, Google has been positioning itself as a multi-cloud provider.

It remains to be seen if Microsoft’s actions will be enough to prevent a regulatory response from the EU, but it certainly hasn’t won any praise from its biggest competitors.

Google Cloud Exec Fires Back at Microsoft’s Cloud Licensing Terms
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Netflix Taps Snap Exec to Run Its Ad Business

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Netflix Taps Snap Exec to Run Its Ad Business

As Netflix rolls out an ad-supported tier, the company has poached a top exec from Snap to take the lead.

Jeremi Gorman was Snap’s Chief Business Officer and ran the platform’s ad business. According to The Verge, Gorman is leaving Snap to help run Netflix’s ad-based endeavors.

“Jeremi’s deep experience in running ad businesses and Peter’s background in leading ad sales teams together will be key as we expand membership options for consumers through a new ad-supported offering,” Netflix COO Greg Peters said in a statement.

Netflix was long-rumored to be working on an ad-supported plan as the company looked to revive its subscriber growth. The company reported its first subscriber loss in nearly a decade in 2022, adding further impetus to the need for a cheaper, ad-supported plan.

After rumors it would tap Google or NBCUniversal to help it deploy its ad program, Netflix ultimately turned to Microsoft to assist it.

“Microsoft has the proven ability to support all our advertising needs as we work together to build a new ad-supported offering,” Peters wrote at the time. “More importantly, Microsoft offered the flexibility to innovate over time on both the technology and sales side, as well as strong privacy protections for our members.”

With the hiring of Gorman, Netflix’s plans are coming into focus more and more.

Netflix Taps Snap Exec to Run Its Ad Business
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Debian May Change How It Handles Non-Free Firmware

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Debian May Change How It Handles Non-Free Firmware

Debian is currently investigating the possibility of changing how it handles non-free firmware, moving the discussion to a general resolution process.

Debian is one of the oldest Linux distributions (distros) and serves as the basis of many others, including Canonical’s Ubuntu. Unlike Ubuntu, and the countless distros based on it, Debian does not currently include non-free software. According to Phoronix, that could be about to change.

The discussion regarding whether or not to include non-free firmware has moved to a general resolution phase. There are three options being considered:

• Include non-free firmware as part of the official installation, loading it by default when needed while still giving users the option to use only free firmware.
• Include non-free firmware options, but not make them the default.
• Separate the two different options into individual downloads — one installation download with non-free firmware and one without.

If Debian does move forward with one of the proposed options, it could significantly lower the barrier to entry for new users. Debian is often touted as one of the most stable and reliable Linux distros, but many new users are intimidated by the prospect of manually installing non-free firmware their computers may need to run efficiently. Non-free firmware can include improved security for some machines as well.

Debian May Change How It Handles Non-Free Firmware
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Japan Wants a $24 Billion Investment in Battery Production

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Japan Wants a $24 Billion Investment in Battery Production

Japan wants to ramp up battery production in-country, calling for a $24 billion investment to increase manufacturing.

Battery production is becoming more important to companies and countries alike as the world pivots to renewable energy, battery-powered vehicles, and energy storage. Amid growing international tensions, many countries are looking to increase production within their own borders rather than rely on China.

According to Reuters, Japan is the latest country that wants to increase its in-country production, calling on the public and private sectors to develop the manufacturing capabilities the country needs.

“The government will be in the forefront and mobilise all its measures to achieve the strategy’s goals, but we can’t achieve this goal without the efforts of the private sector,” said industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura.

Japan has set the goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and increased battery production is a critical step in that direction.

Japan Wants a $24 Billion Investment in Battery Production
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Google Tackles Supply Chain Attacks With New Bug Bounty

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Google Tackles Supply Chain Attacks With New Bug Bounty

Google is tackling supply chain cybersecurity attacks with a new bug bounty program.

Supply chain attacks involve hackers compromising the source code or service used by a range of industries and companies rather than targeting each individual organization. As a result, a single successful supply chain attack can compromise hundreds or even thousands of organizations using the service or product.

WIih supply chain attacks growing in popularity, Google is looking to address the problem with a bug bounty program. Bug bounties refer to the payouts paid to professional hackers and security experts, also known as “white hats,” who find bugs and report them to companies so they can fix them before bad actors exploit them.

Google posted the new bug bounty program in a blog post:

Today, we are launching Google’s Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program (OSS VRP) to reward discoveries of vulnerabilities in Google’s open source projects. As the maintainer of major projects such as Golang, Angular, and Fuchsia, Google is among the largest contributors and users of open source in the world.

Google made it clear that the goal of the new program was to help secure open source software supply chains.

The addition of this new program addresses the ever more prevalent reality of rising supply chain compromises. Last year saw a 650% year-over-year increase in attacks targeting the open source supply chain, including headliner incidents like Codecov and the Log4j vulnerability that showed the destructive potential of a single open source vulnerability. Google’s OSS VRP is part of our $10B commitment to improving cybersecurity, including securing the supply chain against these types of attacks for both Google’s users and open source consumers worldwide.

Google says payouts will range from $100 to $31,337, depending on the severity and importance of the bug, as well as whether it is particularly interesting or unusual.

Google Tackles Supply Chain Attacks With New Bug Bounty
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Inflation Then and Now: How Gold Has Stayed On Top

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Inflation Then and Now: How Gold Has Stayed On Top

While nearly everyone is aware that inflation is not a new trend in the United States, it may still be surprising how much prices have changed over the past few decades. Did you know that $.06 in 1922 has the same buying power as $1 today?  While prices are soaring, it is clear the value of the dollar is declining, and yet gold has still remained one of the most valuable investments. 

Price Increases Through the Years

Over the last 100 years, prices for some of the most basic items have increased by hundreds or even thousands of percent. For example, in the last century the price of milk has increased from $.69 to over $6, an 825% increase. The 1960’s saw the first year where a gallon of milk cost more than a dollar, but now milk for a dollar is unheard of. An even higher increase can be seen in the price of a new car which rose 23,815% from $260 to over $60,000. 

With all of these increases, the value of money is declining. As of today it is estimated that $1 will only amount to about $.65 in ten years due to runaway inflation rates. The 1980’s saw inflation hit an all time high of 14.5%. The value of the dollar diminished significantly into the 2000’s, and once the pandemic hit in 2020 it decreased even more due to the unconventional recession. In 2021 the US dollar depreciated 16% compared to the Australian dollar, 12% compared to the Canadian dollar, and 9% compared to the British pound. Even with the patterns of inflation and money decreasing in value, gold has remained one of the safest investments. 

Why Gold Holds Its Own

Gold is one of the few investments with 0% counterparty risk which makes it safer than other options. It also has a higher investment return rate of nearly 25% compared to the 18% return rate of the stock market.  Gold also has a set amount of 244,000 metric tons on the Earth. Paper money only loses its value further when it is overprinted which cannot happen with gold. Gold has also been where many investors turn to in times of past recessions.

In the 2008-2012 recession, gold saw a 101% surge in interest. Investors saw the decrease of the value of currency and poured more money into gold which caused its value to increase.  Since investors found so much success in the past, there has been a stronger public demand in times of economic strife. In fact, 1 in 6 Americans bought gold in 2020 and overall demand jumped 80%

In Conclusion

Today, inflation continues to rise. In 2022, inflation rose 9.1% and it is not expected to slow down any time soon especially given the Russia / Ukraine conflict. The value of the dollar is continuing to decline, and if history continues to repeat itself we will see investors turning to gold once again. This should lead to yet another surge in interest and value and keep gold on top of all other investments To learn more about how gold holds its value in times of inflation, take a look at the infographic below:

Brought to you by: usgoldbureau.com

Inflation Then and Now: How Gold Has Stayed On Top
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Ericsson: 5G Subscriptions Hit 690 Million in Q2 2022

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Ericsson: 5G Subscriptions Hit 690 Million in Q2 2022

The growth of 5G continues unabated, with global subscriptions reaching 690 million in Q2 2022.

Despite challenges and hiccups, 5G adoption is progressing at a faster rate than 4G. According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, total mobile subscriptions grew by 52 million, reaching 8.3 billion. 5G subscriptions grew by 70 million, reaching 690 million.

Ericsson’s report also shows how people are using their mobile phones, with mobile data use climbing dramatically year over-year. Between Q2 2021 and Q2 2022, network data traffic increased by 39%. Even the growth from Q1 2022 to Q2 2022 was an impressive 8%.

Ericsson attributes the growth to the increased consumption of media on mobile devices, no doubt driven by the faster speeds 5G provides.

Over the long term, traffic5 growth is driven by both the rising number of smartphone subscriptions and an increasing average data volume per subscription, fueled primarily by increased viewing of video content. There are large differences in traffic levels between markets, regions and service providers. The graph below shows the total global monthly network data traffic from Q2 2015 to Q2 2022, along with the year-on year percentage growth for mobile network data traffic.

5G has long been touted as a revolutionary advancement in wireless technology, thanks to the speed it offers. It appears that 5G adoption is finally reaching the point where it is beginning to have a tangible impact on the wireless industry.

Ericsson: 5G Subscriptions Hit 690 Million in Q2 2022
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Microsoft Lays Out Plans to Address EU Cloud Pricing Complaints

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Microsoft Lays Out Plans to Address EU Cloud Pricing Complaints

Microsoft has laid out its plans to address complaints that it unfairly leverages its position in the market to penalize smaller cloud companies.

Smaller EU cloud companies filed a complaint against Microsoft, claiming the larger company made it more expensive for customers to use the smaller companies’ cloud services. Microsoft was specifically accused of making Microsoft Office more expensive for customers that chose to use a third-party cloud provider instead of Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft vowed in mid-May to address the complaints and revamp its licensing terms, and the company has now delivered, laying out its plans to do so. Microsoft is expanding its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program to make it easier for partner cloud companies to provide their services to customers. According to a company blog post, Microsoft plans to do the following:

• Make it easier from customers to run their software on partner cloud platforms.
• Make sure partners have the tools they need to easily sell their products and services to customers.
• Help partners build solutions that provide the speed and scale customers need.

The company emphasized its goal of competing fairly in the EU market and based its changes on discussions with EU cloud partners.

At Microsoft we recognize the importance of a competitive environment in the European cloud provider market, in which smaller competitors can thrive. It is therefore critical for us to remain mindful of our responsibilities as a major technology company. In May of this year, after constructive discussions with representatives of our European cloud provider partners, Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith announced our European Cloud Principles and committed to addressing their valid concerns, starting with changes to our software licensing terms.

We are committed to competing fairly and in partnership with the diverse group of European cloud providers, and we strongly believe in the importance of an open and competitive cloud economy in Europe.

The new terms go into effect on October 1, 2022.

Microsoft Lays Out Plans to Address EU Cloud Pricing Complaints
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Microsoft Unveils Ampere Altra Arm-Based Virtual Machines for Azure

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Microsoft Unveils Ampere Altra Arm-Based Virtual Machines for Azure

Microsoft is throwing its weight behind Arm-based cloud computing, unveiling Ampere Altra Arm virtual machines (VMs) on its Azure platform.

Microsoft Azure is currently the second-largest cloud provider, behind AWS. While the cloud industry has largely been powered by x86 processors, such as Intel and AMD, Arm-based options are becoming increasingly popular. Microsoft clearly sees the potential benefits for its customers.

“Microsoft is announcing the general availability of the latest Azure Virtual Machines featuring the Ampere Altra Arm–based processor,” writes Paul Nash, Vice President, Azure Compute Platform. “The new virtual machines will be generally available on September 1, and customers can now launch them in 10 Azure regions and multiple availability zones around the world. In addition, the Arm-based virtual machines can be included in Kubernetes clusters managed using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). This ability has been in preview and will be generally available over the coming weeks in all the regions that offer the new virtual machines.”

Nash also touted Microsoft’s 20-year history working with the Arm architecture and its partnership with Ampere in particular.

“Ampere’s Cloud Native Processors are uniquely designed to meet both the high performance and power efficiency needs of the cloud. Through our strong partnership with Microsoft, Ampere Altra processors are now generally available as Azure Virtual Machines, bringing new cloud-focused processor technology to end users so that they can deploy the next generation of innovative cloud applications at scale, and do so in a sustainable manner.”—Jeff Wittich, Chief Product Officer, Ampere

Several Linux distributions are available on the new VMs, including Canonical Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Debian, with planned support for Alma Linux and Rocky Linux.

Microsoft Unveils Ampere Altra Arm-Based Virtual Machines for Azure
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Dan Price: ‘Only American Workers Made to Feel Guilty for PTO’

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Dan Price: ‘Only American Workers Made to Feel Guilty for PTO’

Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price has some strong words for the American workplace, saying it’s unique in making workers feel bad for paid time off.

Virtually everyone has received an email auto-response explaining the person will be out of the office for X number of days for health reasons, maternity leave, paternity leave, family responsibilities, or a host of other reasons. Price makes the case that the explanations are unnecessary and indicative of a bigger issue.

“Only in America are workers made to feel so guilty that they have to ‘apologize for the late response’ and put an excuse for why they’re out,” writes Price in a LinkedIn post. “If you need to, direct people to a coworker or team that can help while you’re gone. Don’t check your email unless you want to diminish the benefits of your time off.

“Time off is a benefit you earned,” Price adds. “Use it all, unapologetically. Sick but work from home? Take the time off. Don’t have anywhere to go but feel burned out? Take the time off. Just need a random mental health day to chill on the couch? Take the time off.”

Price goes on to make the case that bosses don’t need to know why an employee is taking time off and shouldn’t ask. He says bosses also shouldn’t expect to be able to reach their employees during PTO.

“I heard recently about someone who always tells their boss ‘I’m camping’ when they go on PTO so they’d know he had no service,” Price continues. “This is the result of a toxic culture that assumes people exist only to work, and are not whole people with full, rich lives.”

Price is famous for the progressive way he treats employees, lowering his salary to $70,000 while raising his employees’ minimum salary to match in 2015. Since then, he has continued to be a vocal advocate for fair treatment and pay of employees and a critic of the status quo where executives often make hundreds of times the amount as their employees.

Price has also been a proponent of letting employees work from wherever they want, saying: “If you get your work done, that’s all that matters.”

Dan Price: ‘Only American Workers Made to Feel Guilty for PTO’
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Dell Shuts Down Russia Operations

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Dell Shuts Down Russia Operations

Dell is the latest company to shut down its operations in Russia in response to that country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has faced international sanctions by countries and corporations alike in response to the invasion. According to Reuters, Dell is the latest company to join the ever-growing list of companies taking action.

Dell had previously suspended sales in Russian and Ukraine in February before closing its offices in mid-August.

“In mid-August, we closed our offices and ceased all Russian operations,” Dell spokesperson Mike Siemienas told Reuters.

“Back in February, we made the decision to not sell, service or support products in Russia, Belarus and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, in addition to the already embargoed Crimea.”

Dell Shuts Down Russia Operations
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Salesforce-Owned Heroku Eliminates Free Plans

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Salesforce-Owned Heroku Eliminates Free Plans

Salesforce-owned Heroku announced it will eliminate all free plans, citing the cost involved in combating “fraud and abuse.”

Heroku is a cloud application platform that helps developers “build, deliver, monitor and scale apps.” The company was one of the first cloud platform as a service (PaaS) companies and was snapped up by Salesforce in 2010. Heroku has allowed developers to maintain free accounts, but is now discontinuing them.

Bob Wise, Heroku General Manager and Salesforce EVP, outlined the change in a blog post:

Our product, engineering, and security teams are spending an extraordinary amount of effort to manage fraud and abuse of the Heroku free product plans. In order to focus our resources on delivering mission-critical capabilities for customers, we will be phasing out our free plan for Heroku Dynos, free plan for Heroku Postgres, and free plan for Heroku Data for Redis®, as well as deleting inactive accounts.

Starting October 26, 2022, we will begin deleting inactive accounts and associated storage for accounts that have been inactive for over a year. Starting November 28, 2022, we plan to stop offering free product plans and plan to start shutting down free dynos and data services. We will be sending out a series of email communications to affected users.

Wise points out that Heroku’s plans start at just $7/mo and include additional certificate management and better app responsiveness than the free plans.

Salesforce-Owned Heroku Eliminates Free Plans
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DOJ May Launch Antitrust Suit Against Apple

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DOJ May Launch Antitrust Suit Against Apple

The Department of Justice (DOJ) may be close to launching an antitrust lawsuit against Apple after a years-long investigation.

The DOJ began investigating Apple’s App Store practices in 2019, but the investigation eventually widened to include the company’s interaction with other hardware developers. According to Politico, the agency is close to a decision and could proceed with a lawsuit in the near future.

Apple’s App Store serves as the only way to install applications on the company’s iPhones and iPads. Initially lauded as a breakthrough for small developers, sentiment has soured in recent years, with many developers wanting to avoid Apple’s fees or avoid the App Store altogether.

The company has also faced increasing criticism from other hardware makers, such as smart-tracking device maker Tile, who claims the company makes it difficult for them to integrate their products with iOS.

According to Politico, no decision has been reached, but officials are looking at the App Store, as well as Apple’s mobile operating systems in general.

Making a case against Apple will not be an easy matter. Epic Games sued Apple in an effort to circumvent the App Store and the mandatory use of Apple’s payment processing system. Epic largely failed in making its case, with the judge ruling that Apple was not a monopoly. The only victory Epic scored was the judge ruling that Apple cannot prevent developers from using third-party payment systems. Both companies have appealed the ruling.

Politico believes the DOJ will wait to see how the appeals court rules in the Epic case before making a final decision on whether to proceed with an antitrust suit.

DOJ May Launch Antitrust Suit Against Apple
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AWS Bastion Aims to Help Advertisers Work Within Data Privacy Rules

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AWS Bastion Aims to Help Advertisers Work Within Data Privacy Rules

AWS is preparing to unveil a new tool that aims to help advertisers work within the various data privacy rules that are currently hindering them.

AWS is the leading cloud provider and is widely used across a variety of industries. One such industry, the advertising industry, is reeling from various data privacy efforts, both on the part of companies like Apple and Google, as well as various countries’ legislative efforts.

According to The Information, via Tech Monitor, AWS wants to help advertisers deal with the restrictions in an innovative way with its upcoming Bastion service. The service acts as a “clean data room,” allowing companies to anonymously pool customer data in a way that prevents any company from viewing or accessing the entire pool.

The Information uses the example of Target and HBO Max being able to see where their customers overlap, giving the retailer useful insight into whether it should target its customers with ads on the streaming platform. The clean data room, however, would still protect the privacy of the customers and help the companies stay compliant with privacy regulations.

Unlike existing options, such as Google’s, AWS Bastion will allow companies to work with partners of their choosing, not even locking them into the Amazon Ads service. Amazon sees a future where Bastion could be used in other industries far beyond advertising, such as the financial industry, manufacturing, and more.

AWS will likely launch the new service later this year.

AWS Bastion Aims to Help Advertisers Work Within Data Privacy Rules
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California Votes to Ban New Gasoline Vehicle Sales by 2035

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California Votes to Ban New Gasoline Vehicle Sales by 2035

California has become the first state in the US to ban the sale of new gasoline vehicles, effective 2035.

According to CNBC, the policy will not prevent owners from utilizing their existing gasoline vehicles, nor will it prevent people from buying and selling used models. Nonetheless, the law is the first to ban the sale of new gasoline vehicles, marking the most aggressive shift toward hydrogen and electric vehicles (EVs) within the US.

As interim goals, California has stipulated that 35% of new vehicles be battery or hydrogen-powered by 2026 and 68% by 2030. At the same time, the rule would allow up to 20% plug-hybrid sales by 2035, despite such vehicles still having a gasoline engine.

While some are praising California for taking such a bold step, not everyone is convinced the state is taking the right path or that the infrastructure is ready to support a mass shift to EVs.

“It’s a worthy goal, but may be unrealistic given the charging infrastructure and likely increasing demand for power,” Brian Moody, executive editor for Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader—Cox Automotive brands, said in a statement to WPN.

” While it sounds good on paper, unless there is a stipulation that the power for those electric cars be generated by clean sources, it doesn’t really have teeth. A more graduated approach might be better. It’s concerning that the conversation seems to be an inflexible ‘all or nothing’ approach without fully knowing the impact of battery recycling on a mass scale, as well as the recycling of solar panels. What would it look like if we had a 50% mix of electric and gasoline? As electric cars get more and more affordable, the market will get California to a certain adoption rate organically.”

California Votes to Ban New Gasoline Vehicle Sales by 2035
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T-Mobile Partners With SpaceX to Provide Coast-to-Coast Coverage

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T-Mobile Partners With SpaceX to Provide Coast-to-Coast Coverage

T-Mobile and SpaceX are working together to take coverage to the next level, leveraging SpaceX’s Starlink service and T-Mobile’s 5G.

T-Mobile is already the second-largest wireless carrier in the US and is widely considered to be the leader in 5G. Despite significant advances in coverage over the past several years, there are still parts of the US that have no wireless coverage from any provider.

The magenta carrier wants to fix that problem and is working with SpaceX to do so. The two companies will leverage the power of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, in combination with T-Mobile’s wealth of mid-band spectrum, to provide true coast-to-coast coverage. Best of all, T-Mobile wants to ensure the new network works with existing phones, meaning most phones will be compatible with the service.

“We’ve always thought differently about what it means to keep customers connected, and that’s why we’re working with the best to deliver coverage above and beyond anything customers have ever seen before,” said Mike Sievert, CEO and president of T-Mobile. “More than just a groundbreaking alliance, this represents two industry-shaking innovators challenging the old ways of doing things to create something entirely new that will further connect customers and scare competitors.”

“The important thing about this is that it means there are no dead zones anywhere in the world for your cell phone,” said SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk. “We’re incredibly excited to do this with T-Mobile.”

The two companies’ new network will provide customers with connectivity virtually anywhere they can see the sky. Initial plans include coverage for “the continental US, Hawaii, parts of Alaska, Puerto Rico and territorial waters,” and the companies have invited carriers around the world to participate, opening the door to truly global coverage.

T-Mobile Partners With SpaceX to Provide Coast-to-Coast Coverage
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LastPass Source Code Stolen in Data Breach

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LastPass Source Code Stolen in Data Breach

Popular password manager LastPass has revealed that portions of its source code were stolen by hackers in a recent data breach.

LastPass revealed the news in a blog post, emphasizing that no customer data was stolen and no password vaults were compromised. Instead, the hackers seem to have largely focused on gaining access to the company’s source code.

We have determined that an unauthorized party gained access to portions of the LastPass development environment through a single compromised developer account and took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information. Our products and services are operating normally.

The company emphasizes that customers do not need to take any additional action at this time.

At this time, we don’t recommend any action on behalf of our users or administrators. As always, we recommend that you follow our best practices around setup and configuration of LastPass which can be found here.

LastPass Source Code Stolen in Data Breach
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Why Tech Businesses Need Content Writers

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Why Tech Businesses Need Content Writers

More or less every modern business has a blog. A good blog does not only help attract more visitors to the website, but it also significantly helps improve traffic and revenue. An added advantage of blogs is that they also help further educate current and potential customers.

Therefore, a high-quality blog needs to contain important information regarding not just your company and product or services it offers, but also anything that may bring additional value to your visitors. That’s why it is of the utmost importance that companies pay special attention to creating their blogs.

Obviously, the first place to start off on this journey is hiring content writers. Since content is king in the current marketing scene, any business that wishes to achieve success needs to ensure that the content they create and put out is stellar.

Luckily, with the help of professionals, such as those at Top Content, tech businesses can ensure that the tech content they put out matches the necessary level of quality. This not only helps them establish themselves as experts in their fields, but it also significantly aids all of their SEO efforts as well.

Reasons Why Tech Content Writers Are in High Demand

• They Provide High-Quality Content

The first and arguably the most important reason tech content writers are in such high demand is the fact that they create high-quality content. The fact of the matter is that not all content creators are able to create high-quality tech content that will actually bring real value to readers.

Therefore, in order to be able to create such a piece of content, the writer must first get familiar with the matter and understand all of the ins and outs of the subject before they can start creating. 

Needless to say, specializing in tech content creation is not an easy task and it is definitely not the one suited for everybody. So, instead of simply looking for “Jack-of-all-trades” content creators, it’s always better to focus on the ones that specialize in a certain field – in this case tech.

• They Know How to Engage the Audience

Another invaluable perk of tech content writers is the fact that they know exactly how they can reach out to and engage with the readers. Since they’re so knowledgeable and well-versed about the industry and the niche they’re working in, coming up with interesting and engaging blog topics is quite easy for them.

Needless to say, the more engaged your readers are, the more they will feel inclined to interact with your brand. And the more they do it, the greater the website traffic, exposure and – in the end – revenue you can expect to receive. 

Additionally, the more organic traffic your website manages to attract – and needless to say, this is easily achievable with high-quality blog posts – the better the results your marketing efforts will yield. Meaning that the incoming organic traffic will signal search engines, such as Google, that your website actually provides value to your audience. 

• They are quick to learn

While we’ve mentioned previously that tech content writers know much about the industry and the niche they’re working in, the fact of the matter is that none of them know everything. 

However, this is not a bad thing actually. By hiring a tech content writer for your tech business, you will get the opportunity to first teach them about the specific products or solutions your business is offering.

That way they will get a unique perspective into your business and your offer, which will only help them further improve the quality of the content they end up creating. Even better than that, they can use the knowledge they’ve acquired and present it to your audience in a more concise way that is easier to understand even for someone who’s not extremely skillful or familiar with the industry-specific jargon.

• They Understand How Marketing Works

Aside from everything mentioned previously, high-quality content creators also have a deep understanding of how modern-day marketing works. This is great news for any business, as digital marketing plays a huge role in business success.

Knowing how to say things is not the only important part of content creation. Knowing when and where to say them also has quite a bit of significance.

What we mean to say is that not all digital marketing channels require or even favor the same type of content. That’s why it’s important to hire an expert that will create the right type of content for the specific channel you intend to use it in. 

Final Thoughts

Every modern business needs high-quality content to help them attract more visitors, establish themselves as the authority in the industry and generally boost their marketing efforts. That is why every business that has a goal of reaching success should look for skilled and high-quality tech content writers to help them out.

Why Tech Businesses Need Content Writers
Brian Wallace

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Snowflake Results Buoy Cloud Computing Stocks

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Snowflake Results Buoy Cloud Computing Stocks

Snowflake turned in second-quarter results, and it was good news for the company and the cloud computing industry in general.

Snowflake is a cloud computing company focused on helping other companies break down data silos, gain better insights from their data, and maximize its overall value. The company just posted its second-quarter results, reporting 83% year-over-year product revenue growth.

In addition to revenue growth, Snowflake posted 171% net revenue retention, owing to significant expansion of services offered to existing customers. The company also has 246 customers accounting for more than $1 million in product revenue.

“Sustained 80%+ product revenue growth in a quarter when the broader demand environment for software softened likely boosts investor confidence that Snowflake’s cloud data platform is viewed as a strategic (and durable) area of investment by enterprise customers,” Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss wrote in a note to clients, according to Seeking Alpha. Morgan Stanley currently has an overweight rating on Snowflake’s stock.

According to Seeking Alpha, much of the cloud industry saw gains following Snowflake’s report. Competitors Datadog and MongoDB saw healthy gains following their own results, while Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle all saw gains as well. Salesforce was the outlier, falling 5.5%.

Snowflake Results Buoy Cloud Computing Stocks
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Meta Is Finally Creating a Customer Service Group to Handle Lost Accounts

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Meta Is Finally Creating a Customer Service Group to Handle Lost Accounts

Meta is finally addressing one of its biggest shortfalls, creating a customer service group to address complaints over lost Facebook accounts and deleted content.

One of the long-standing issues users have with Facebook is accounts being closed unexpectedly, or content being removed with no warning. Since the company relies on automated systems to help with moderation, accounts are often removed despite the user not violating any rules or guidelines.

Until now users whose accounts or content were removed have had little to no recourse. Facebook technically has a variety of automated tools to appeal a decision, but as virtually anyone who has been in that situation can attest, the automated tools fall woefully short of useful.

According to Bloomberg, Meta is establishing a customer service group that will handle these kind of complaints, hopefully improving the user experience significantly.

“How do we provide care and customer service and responsiveness to people about why their content has been taken down or why their accounts are taken down?” said Brent Harris, Meta’s vice president of governance. Harris confirmed that improving Meta’s customer service is something the company is “spending a bunch of time on.”

The impetus to finally do something to address the issue gained momentum as a result of Meta’s Oversight Board. The board received more than one million appeals from users, many of them having issues with account access.

Meta Is Finally Creating a Customer Service Group to Handle Lost Accounts
Matt Milano

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Amazon’s ‘Frupidity’ Is Becoming a Problem

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Amazon’s ‘Frupidity’ Is Becoming a Problem

“Frupidity,” the combination of “frugality” and “stupidity,” is becoming a problem for Amazon as the company manages various challenges.

Amazon has 16 leadership principles, according to Business Insider, with frugality being one of them. As the company faces an economic downturn, not to mention its first CEO change in its history, some are making the case that Amazon’s frugality is reaching a stupid level — otherwise known as frupidity.

Former executive Ethan Evans penned a blog post giving examples of the kind of frupidity Amazon seems to be experiencing.

At Amazon, I saw this in person in another way. A very good boss of mine, someone I respect immensely overall, was asked if our team, which had been together over two years and had shipped several products, could get team coffee mugs. At the time, part of the definition of Frugality at Amazon said that we didn’t spend money on T-shirts, which do not help customers. Rather than buck this trend, he bought the coffee mugs with his own money. Whether or not he was Frupid, he was coerced by the culture into an unnatural act. A tight knit, successful team wanted coffee mugs for crying out loud. This is a small, almost trivial cost. It would have been repaid literally 1,000 times if it helped retain or motivate one employee. Once can make the argument, of course, that the lack of corporate swag was a valuable symbol of true frugality. Perhaps you find this argument compelling; I do not.

Unfortunately, such instances appear to be happening in other areas as well. Insider cites an example of an employee who had to drive from Los Angeles to the company’s San Francisco office for a company outing. Rather than being able to take a flight, the employee had to drive — a trip that can take nearly seven hours one way.

Amazon recently missed expectations for its first quarterly results and has struggled to adapt as online spending has started returning to pre-pandemic normals. Like many others, the company has slowed hiring, is looking to offload unneeded warehouse space, and is counting on attrition to trim its headcount by as much as 100,000.

It certainly is not a surprise that frugality is one of Amazon’s leadership principles, especially in the current economic environment. The company does need to be careful, however, that frupidity doesn’t end up costing the company more than common-sense frugality.

Amazon’s ‘Frupidity’ Is Becoming a Problem
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Google’s North American Smartphone Share Grew 230% in Q2 2022

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Google’s North American Smartphone Share Grew 230% in Q2 2022

Google was the big winner among smartphone makers in Q2 2022, with its market share growing a whopping 230%.

Q2 2022 was not a good quarter for North American smartphone shipments, with the overall industry experiencing a 6% decline. Despite that, there were a few bright spots, according to Canalys.

Apple and Samsung continued to dominate the market, being the most popular smartphone models among NA buyers. Despite the overall downturn, Apple’s share grew by 3%, Samsung’s share grew by 4%, and Motorola’s grew by a mere 1%. TCL’s share dropped by 1%, while “Others” dropped by 61%.

The real winner, however, was Google. Despite its Pixel series not breaking the top ten most popular, the company saw a 230% increase in its market share, bringing it to 2% overall.

Google has struggled to make significant headway in the market, despite its Pixel line of phones generally receiving favorable reviews. It appears the company has finally hit a winning combination with its Pixel 6 redesign.

Google’s North American Smartphone Share Grew 230% in Q2 2022
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UK’s Atom Bank Embraces Four-Day Workweek, Extols Its Virtues

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UK’s Atom Bank Embraces Four-Day Workweek, Extols Its Virtues

As companies strive to regain a sense of post-pandemic normalcy, the UK’s Atom Bank is going all-in on the four-day workweek.

Companies large and small are trying to navigate the best path forward as they work to integrate in-person, hybrid, and remote work options. In some cases, employees are pushing back against corporate plans to return to the office. Atom Bank believes it has found a solution, moving to a four-day workweek and reaping the benefits.

According to Bloomberg, Atom moved to a four-day week six months ago. Since the change, the bank reports its job applications are up 49%, and retention rates are up as well, no doubt a result of what is perceived as a more desirable work schedule.

In addition to acquiring and keeping staff at an improved rate, the bank reported higher customer service ratings and fewer sick days being used.

“We firmly believe the four-day week is the future of working life,” said Anne-Marie Lister, chief people officer at Atom Bank. “We hope Atom’s experiences will encourage more businesses to make the shift permanently.”

Atom could prove to be an example for companies looking for a fresh take on a new workplace normal.

UK’s Atom Bank Embraces Four-Day Workweek, Extols Its Virtues
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SEO for Lawyers – What to Know

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SEO for Lawyers – What to Know

In the legal field, there are many ways to stand out from your competitors. You can have a bigger office, more staff members, or even better marketing strategies than other lawyers in your area of practice. One crucial way to attract new clients is search engine optimization (SEO). 

In this post, we will go over what search engine optimization for lawyers is and how you can use its tactics to help grow your client base and become more visible on the internet.

What is SEO?

Digital marketing techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO) involve using search engines, notably Google, to drive organic (non-payment) traffic to a website and other online profiles. Using SEO, law firms can bring targeted traffic to their websites, directories, or blogs over the long term.

Due to the type of services they provide, lawyers frequently use SEO as their primary marketing strategy. Instead of searching on social media (though it’s important to also have a good social media plan), prospective clients most frequently use Google to search for lawyers in their region.

As a result, SEO is recommended for legal firm advertising.

It is already clear that the majority of people search online for legal assistance. Despite the value of social media and verbal, online search frequently dominates the research process.

Search engine optimization is the only marketing strategy your law firm can use to yield cumulative long-term returns.

For instance, content creation offers the following three opportunities:

1. Possibility of increasing traffic and keyword rankings
2. Excellent content to produce organic link-building opportunities enhances your capacity to rank higher in Search results even further.
3. The capacity to persuade website visitors to put their trust in you and get in touch with you.

SEO’s Benefits for Law Firms

For law firms, SEO is essential for the following reasons.

1. Find clients in your area looking for the service your law firm offers. 
2. Get a weekly, monthly, or yearly flow of organic traffic to your website. 
3. Amplify the brand awareness of your law firm. 
4. Obtain backlinks that will increase authority. 
5. A better and more engaging website experience

Why Do I Need an SEO- and Conversion-optimized Website for My Law Firm?

Since search engines like Google are the primary source for people to find businesses to hire, attorneys must have a search-engine-optimized website.

All of your efforts to develop and market your company and position yourself in front of your ideal target market should be founded on SEO.

Your website’s design is crucial as well. Having a high-ranking site with a poor design will reduce lead generation. It should be developed to increase understanding, promote trust, and motivate action.

How SEO Compares to Other Legal Marketing Channels 

Legal SEO versus Google Ads and PPC

If your marketing visibility is primarily from pay-per-click and sponsored ads, it vanishes once you stop paying for it. SEO for law firms is an investment. 

Your content and backlinks have a long-lasting, evergreen effect; in other words, their rankings continue to pay off for years. Conversely, good SEO tells Google that your law firm is the authority of your specific practice areas.

Social media marketing versus SEO

On desktop, search traffic converts ten times better than social networking traffic.

Search engines, especially Google, are increasingly used on the internet to filter out the noise because they have gotten better at deciphering the meaning of the words we type into them.

Given the prevalence of search, it only makes sense for lawyers who market themselves online to make sure their sites are designed and set up to be simple to use.

Conclusion 

SEO is a powerful tool to help lawyers stand out in search engine results. To get more clients, you should focus on generating quality content for your website and using SEO strategies to drive traffic back there. This will help you connect with people who may one day need legal representation.

SEO for Lawyers – What to Know
Brian Wallace

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Steve Jobs Was Right, and Tech Firms Are Screwing Up With Mass Layoffs

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Steve Jobs Was Right, and Tech Firms Are Screwing Up With Mass Layoffs

Tech firms are setting themselves up for problems by not following the Steve Jobs playbook for responding to an economic downturn.

Companies across the tech industry have started freezing hiring or laying off employees, including Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Shopify, Tesla, and others. According to Business Insider’s Sawdah Bhaimiya, that strategy is a mistake that will come back to haunt those companies.

Bhaimiya makes the case that each layoff tarnishes a company’s reputation and brand and will hurt its ability to attract top talent down the road.

“Every time I see a notice in the news that such and such technology company has cut X percentage of their workforce, I don’t forget that,” Danny Allen, chief technology officer at software firm Veeam, told Bhaimiya. “So you’re sending a message that also has a brand impact that you don’t necessarily want to be associated with.

“Employees remember and people looking for jobs remember how organizations acted during the economic downturn.”

Allen went on to expound on the two specific ways layoffs hurt a company:

“One is simply the loss of innovation, cutting resources,” said Allen. “You’re cutting your investment in future technology, that’s number one. Number two, when you cut 10% of your workforce, you’re sending the message to your employees that we care more about money than we do about you.

“And employees have a long memory, so if you’re cutting people that uncertainty is very disconcerting.”

How Steve Jobs and Apple Thought Different

Interestingly, Steve Jobs had a very different approach to dealing with an economic downturn, arguably one far worse than the current downturn.

“We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst,” Jobs said. “What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that’s exactly what we did. And it worked. And that’s exactly what we’ll do this time.”

Jobs’ approach is the very opposite of what current companies are doing and directly addresses the two issues Allen raises:

• Rather than risking innovation by losing some of its best people, Apple doubled down, intent on innovating through the downturn rather than simply trying to weather it and pick up innovation afterward.
• Jobs reiterated the value he and the company placed on the people who worked there. As Jobs said, Apple had put forth a tremendous amount of effort getting the people it had. Why lose them over a temporary downturn?

It’s safe to say Jobs’ approach is a significant factor in Apple being where it is today. The company’s innovation continued unabated, and its employees felt respected and valued, confident the company had their backs.

Today’s tech companies should take note…or pay the price later.

Steve Jobs Was Right, and Tech Firms Are Screwing Up With Mass Layoffs
Matt Milano

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How To Increase Sales and Traffic With eCommerce Mobile App Development

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How To Increase Sales and Traffic With eCommerce Mobile App Development

There is no doubt that the popularity of online shopping keeps increasing year by year. Customers prefer to use their PCs or smartphones for making purchases of everything from drinks to apartments. That’s so simple, efficient, and profitable that no buyer can stay aside from such an attractive offer.

As a result, the popularity of eCommerce apps has also grown. According to the latest statistics, more than 90% of the time mobile users spend on mobile software. And almost 80% of people have an experience with online shopping. So developing an app does really make sense. This is your opportunity to increase traffic, sales, and revenue in the end. 

If you haven’t launched a mobile app for your project yet then hurry up to do it. While you doubt your rivals attract customers, sell their goods, and get insane profits. And if you have already developed mobile software for your company then take care of its promotion. Make people want to install and use your app. Try these tips to make your eCommerce mobile apps truly popular and efficient.  

Follow the Requirements of ASO

The basic principles of App Store Optimization are called to promote your application in the App Store and Google Play. By using proper keywords, adding informative descriptions, placing relevant screenshots, and so on you will allow users to find your software among thousands of other apps.  By increasing your recognition, you’ll notice a higher amount of downloads.

In general, ASO is powerful enough to guarantee the following benefits:

– increase retention rate. It demonstrates that the number of active users installing your app is much higher than the number of those customers who have uninstalled it;

– scale the loyalty of users. Paid ads also boost your mobile app traffic but organic search forms a loyal community of people truly interested in using your software for a long time;

– further app improvement. By getting feedback from your users you will be able to detect bugs and get rid of them efficiently. 

Take Advantage of Email Marketing

Newsletters and promotional emails aren’t dead in marketing meaning, as you may think. No matter new and original advertising tools, email marketing is still known as one of the most efficient and low-cost tools to reach desired goals. By sending regular emails and newsletters you are able to share with subscribers new information about your sales, promote special offers, gift them with personal discounts, and so on.

Many companies use email marketing to announce the launch of their apps. You can propose users download the app and get special benefits, for instance, a coupon or early access to a new collection of your products. 

Use a Landing Page

A customized landing page is a great mobile eCommerce platform to promote your shopping offers. It helps in brand recognition so potential buyers can find out more about your company. In addition, powerful CTA elements will intrigue users and motivate them to try your software for a better shopping experience. 

All you need is to create a one-page website with a detailed description of your app’s features and advantages. Don’t forget to add downloading links so the visitors of your landing page can easily reach your software. 

Promote Your Apps on Social Media

Depending on the type of your business, you may be interested in investing more funds in SMM marketing. It means you need to grow the number of subscribers and share with them viral content. Such an approach is powerful because an average user spends approximately 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media every day. 

If you have a successful account on social media platforms you should definitely promote your app. There are many ideas on how to encourage your subscribers to do it. For instance, you can explain the beneficial eCommerce app features and customers’ benefits. Launch a relevant hashtag and let people share their opinions about your offer. Thanks to using the power of your social media accounts, you can make your app popular too.

Launch Referral Marketing

Have your friends ever shared with you any link, product, or app? This is an example of referral marketing. It means the recommendation of something to other people for a bonus. Person A only needs to have a unique affiliate link or code to share it with user B. After user B installs your app, user A will receive a reward. 

As you can see, the mechanism of referral marketing is very simple. No need to invest funds in software ads – your users will be your ambassadors for free. As a result, you can reach your planned goals: increase the number of app installs, save money on advertising campaigns, scale your loyal community, etc. 

Try to Work with Influencers 

Influencer marketing isn’t a new thing. You can contact social media personalities with great bases of subscribers for cooperation. Such influencers may advertise your mobile eCommerce app without noticeable signs of traditional advertisement. That’s the point of native marketing: by working with influencers you’ll make your ads look like friendly recommendations. 

As a result, online buyers will be much more excited to purchase your products using your mobile software. Once the social media personality shares a recommendation with them, they may rely on it and give your offer a chance. 

Develop Your Business with a Mobile App

A mobile app is a key to massive sales nowadays. It allows you to reach new target audiences, motivate your loyal customers to make orders, improve conversation rate, increase brand recognition, build better relationships with customers and, finally, reach your business goals. 

It seems you can generate mobile app sales. It’s possible that your app isn’t good enough to bring you desired results. Then you must improve it to make its features and interface user-friendly. But if your software is great but traffic and sales leave much to be desired then rely on the listed above tips. Make a step forward in your eCommerce success now and your business will demonstrate better results soon.

How To Increase Sales and Traffic With eCommerce Mobile App Development
Brian Wallace

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Microsoft Takes Aim at Salesforce With Viva Sales

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Microsoft Takes Aim at Salesforce With Viva Sales

Microsoft has unveiled its latest attempt to take on Salesforce, launching Viva Sales, “a new seller experience application.”

Microsoft has been working on challenging Salesforce’s dominance in the CRM market for years. The company’s latest effort is the Viva Sales tool, designed to with with any CRM and integrate its data with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365.

“The future of selling isn’t a new system. It’s bringing the information sellers need at the right time, the right context, into the tools they know, so their work experience can be streamlined,” said Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Microsoft. “Empowering sellers to spend more time with their customers has been our goal — and we’ve done that by reimagining the selling experience with Viva Sales.”

Viva Sales allows sales reps to tag customers in Outlook, Teams, or Office apps, automatically capturing the data as a customer record. The software then uses AI to help move a customer through the sales process, prioritizing the next steps and providing valuable insights. The AI also helps sellers with recommendations to improve customer engagement and follow-through.

“Sellers rely on digital collaboration and productivity tools to connect with customers and close deals, but a lot of the insights they uncover with these tools don’t make it into the CRM,” said Paul Greenberg, founder and managing principal, The 56 Group. “Microsoft is taking on this challenge by offering a solution that complements the CRM. Viva Sales automates the busy work, captures critical information about the customer and helps sellers get the job done.”

Salesforce clearly sees Microsoft as a significant threat to its business, with many believing its acquisition of Slack was a way for the company to better fend off the Redmond giant.

While Viva Sales works with any CRM, the app could represent a significant foothold effort. If companies find that Viva Sales lives up to expectations, it’s one more piece of Microsoft software integrated into their workflows. Eventually, they may find a full switch to the company’s CRM is the next logical choice.

Microsoft Takes Aim at Salesforce With Viva Sales
Matt Milano

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Intel Signs $30 Billion Financing Deal With Brookfield to Expand Chip Factories

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Intel Signs $30 Billion Financing Deal With Brookfield to Expand Chip Factories

Intel is pulling an industry first, partnering with Brookfield Asset Management Inc to help fund its chip factory expansion.

Intel is working on expanding its US-based chip production as lawmakers look to help the US become less dependent on foreign semiconductor manufacturing. In an unprecedented move, Intel is partnering with Brookfield to help fund its $30 billion expansion plans, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Intel will fund 51% of the expansion, with Brookfield funding the rest. Intel and Brookfield will split ownership of the financing entity that will own the factories, as well as the resulting profits, although Intel will retain majority ownership.

While the financing arrangement is new for the semiconductor industry, it’s a relatively common practice in others, such as telecommunications and energy. Given the challenges Intel is facing, not the least of which is the surprise $500 million loss the company recently reported, the deal made sense.

“We have gotten behind, and that requires a fairly aggressive investment cycle over the next few years, which is not a place Intel typically finds itself,” said Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner.

Intel Signs $30 Billion Financing Deal With Brookfield to Expand Chip Factories
Matt Milano

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YouTube TV May Gain fuboTV’s Biggest Advantage

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YouTube TV May Gain fuboTV’s Biggest Advantage

YouTube TV (YTTV) may be on the verge of gaining one of fuboTV’s biggest advantages, a feature that will allow multiple simultaneous livestreams.

According to Protocol, YTTV is working on “Mosaic Mode,” a feature that will allow up to four simultaneous livestreams. The feature is designed to appeal to sports fans, giving them the ability to watch multiple games or events at the same time.

Rival fuboTV is currently one of the only streaming services that offer a similar feature. The service is geared toward sports fans, but has struggled over the last couple of years to deliver on that promise. For example, fuboTV lost the Turner family of channels, including both TBS and TNT, two channels that many sports fans consider must-haves.

With YTTV preparing to duplicate fuboTV’s signature feature, the latter service may lose what competitive advantage it had — even among its core market.

YouTube TV May Gain fuboTV’s Biggest Advantage
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Amazon Has a Prime Pharmacy Problem

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Amazon Has a Prime Pharmacy Problem

Amazon may be trying to lure people to its Amazon Prime with prescription cost savings, but customers aren’t buying it.

Amazon Prime is the company’s popular service that bundles free shipping and lower prices for members. The membership also comes with a variety of other services and features, but it seems that some of them are not very popular.

According to Business Insider, Morgan Stanley conducted a survey to see what services mattered most to Amazon Prime users. The survey found the company’s prescription service ranks dead last among the reasons people subscribe to Prime. In fact, only 2% cited Prime Pharmacy as the reason for signing up.

To put that in perspective, Prime Gaming, Echo/Alexa integration, and Amazon Fresh all ranked higher. The company chalked Prime Pharmacy’s lack of popularity up to its relative newness.

“To compare a newer Prime benefit like the Prime prescription savings benefit, to one like Prime Video or two-day delivery, isn’t a true apples to apples comparison. The Prime prescription savings benefit is relatively new, and we are committed over the long term to making healthcare services easier and more affordable,” the spokesperson told Insider.

Amazon has been aggressively moving into the healthcare industry, even rumored to be interested in Signify Health. Only time will tell if the company’s Prime Pharmacy eventually gains traction.

Amazon Has a Prime Pharmacy Problem
Matt Milano

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Twitter Whistleblower Lends Weight to Elon Musk’s Claims

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Twitter Whistleblower Lends Weight to Elon Musk’s Claims

Peiter Zatko, who served as Twitter’s head of cybersecurity, has filed a complaint with federal agencies and bolstered Elon Musk’s claims.

Zatko is the famous and well-respected hacker who goes by the handle “Mudge.” He served as Twitter’s cybersecurity head from late 2020, when he was hired by then-CEO Jack Dorsey until he was fired by the current CEO at the beginning of 2022. According to The Washington Post, he claims the company and CEO Parag Agrawal is intentionally misleading investors and regulators about the state of its security and its issues with spam bots.

“Agrawal’s Tweets and Twitter’s previous blog posts misleadingly imply that Twitter employs proactive, sophisticated systems to measure and block spam bots,” the complaint says. “The reality: mostly outdated, unmonitored, simple scripts plus overworked, inefficient, understaffed, and reactive human teams.”

That statement, as well as the complaint in general, will certainly bolster Elon Musk’s case against Twitter. The tech mogul is trying to back out of his deal to purchase the social media company based on his belief the company is not being truthful about the scope of its spam bot issues. He also claims the company has misled investors.

Read more: Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of Running a ‘Scheme’

Zatko also claims to have found multiple instances where Twitter was in violation of a 2011 settlement with the FTC, failing to implement security measures and properly protect users, as it had been ordered to do. While Twitter claims to have complied with its obligations, the sheer number of security breaches the company has faced — not to mention the ease with which the breaches occurred — lends weight to Zatko’s claims.

“If all of that is true, I don’t think there’s any doubt that there are order violations,” David C. Vladeck told the Post in an interview. Vladeck is now a Georgetown Law professor but previously served as director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection when the settlement was reached in 2011. “It is possible that the kinds of problems that Twitter faced eleven years ago are still running through the company.”

The complaint alleges Twitter has exceptionally poor security policies in place, policies that leave the company, its intellectual property, and its customers vulnerable to bad actors. Roughly 30% of the company’s laptops allegedly would not automatically update software to receive the latest security fixes. Even worse, Zatko says thousands of laptops had full copies of Twitter’s source code on them, a scenario that is a dream come true for hackers. Why waste time trying to penetrate a carefully secured and protected programming repository when stealing one of the thousands of available laptops will yield the same result?

See also: Elon Musk’s Twitter Cancellation Letter

“It’s near-incredible that for something of that scale there would not be a development test environment separate from production and there would not be a more controlled source-code management process,” Tony Sager, former chief operating officer at the cyberdefense wing of the National Security Agency, told the Post. “Almost any attack scenario is fair game and probably easily executed.”

The Post interviewed more than a dozen current and former employees for context. While some did say the company deployed extensive measures to fight spam, many agreed with much of Zatko’s complaint regarding the general state of security and dysfunction within the company.

For his part, Zatko sees blowing the whistle on Twitter as the final step in completing the job he was hired to do.

“This would never be my first step, but I believe I am still fulfilling my obligation to Jack and to users of the platform,” Zatko said. “I want to finish the job Jack brought me in for, which is to improve the place.”

Twitter Whistleblower Lends Weight to Elon Musk’s Claims
Matt Milano

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Hyundai Secures Its Vehicles Systems With Sample Encryption Keys

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Hyundai Secures Its Vehicles Systems With Sample Encryption Keys

In what may be one of the worst examples of cybersecurity, Hyundai is being called out for using example encryption keys for its security.

Encryption keys are critical components of modern cryptography. The key used to decrypt sensitive information is supposed to be carefully and closely guarded.

According to The Register, Hyundai’s programmers seemed to have missed the memo and instead used cryptographic keys found in publicly available programming tutorials.

A developer, going by the handle “greenluigi1,” discovered he could overwrite Hyundai’s infotainment system with his own software thanks to Hyundai using publicly available crypto keys. Once he discovered them, it was a relatively simple matter trick the system into accepting his software as a valid update.

The entire situation is a case study in bad programming, not to mention the danger drivers can be exposed to as a result. If a vehicle’s computer system is compromised, there’s no limit to the dangerous scenarios that can result if key parts of the vehicle’s software are replaced with malicious elements.

As manufacturers create vehicles that are increasingly connected to the rest of the world, they’re going to have to do a much better job securing those vehicles — or Hyundai will need to, at the very least.

Hyundai Secures Its Vehicles Systems With Sample Encryption Keys
Matt Milano

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Tesla Raises Price of Full-Self-Driving Software to $15,000

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Tesla Raises Price of Full-Self-Driving Software to $15,000

Tesla’s Full-Self-Driving (FSD) software has yet to fully live up to its name, but the company is still raising the price 25% to $15,000.

Tesla is just one of many automakers racing to develop autonomous driving capabilities, but few others have a CEO that is so open about the company’s goals and timeframes. As TheStreet points out, Musk has famously said his company would roll out fully autonomous driving capabilities by the end of the year.

In keeping with that goal, the company is deploying the latest FSD beta.

FSD Beta 10.69 started rolling out to Tesla owners last night. This build is a big step forward!

10.69.1 probably end of week with wider release.

1069.2 in a few weeks should be good enough to provide to all FSD Beta participants.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2022

Musk also says the price will increase 25%, from $12,000 to $15,000 for North American buyers.

After wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2, price of FSD will rise to $15k in North America on September 5th.

Current price will be honored for orders made before Sept 5th, but delivered later.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2022

Tesla Raises Price of Full-Self-Driving Software to $15,000
Staff

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