The Tech Jawn: Black Tech Enthusiasts Covering The Week's Tech News And How Tech Affects Black Culture

Hey Folks, Robb Dunewood from The Tech Jawn here. Let me first wish everyone a Happy New Year and let you know that the crew from the Tech Jawn is off this week with our normal recording day falling on Monday.  We didn’t want your feeds to be empty so we’re doing a feed drop of @BrothaTech’s and @TechSavvyDiva’s SnobOS Podcast.  In this clip, Terrance and Nica give you the lowdown on the...

In most of this episode of The Tech Jawn, we’ll be talking to our featured guest, but before we get to the interview we discuss another case of facial recognition misidentifying a person of color leading to their wrongful arrest.   In our interview, we talk with Lamarr Wilson, the unofficial “CEO of Tech Unboxings” and Lifestyle Entertainer and Influencer with over 3 million followers. L...

A DEI lead at Facebook has admitted to embezzling 4 million dollars in a scheme that involved fake expense reports, payments via CashApp, and all kinds of easily “firgureoutable” types of fraud. Elon Musk has declared that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives need to die and has even equated DEI to being a different type of discrimination. A Cox Media Group subsidiary claims the company ca...

The FDA has approved the first-ever gene editing therapy we talked about in episode 106 that treats sickle cell disease which affects over 100,000 mostly Black Americans in the United States. Rumor has it that Apple’s iMessage will not be classified as a gatekeeper service under the EU’s Digital Markets Act and will not have to become interoperable with other messaging services. Genetic Testing co...

Happy belated birthday to ChatGPT. OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot that kicked off the AI craze of 2023 officially turned 1 year old on November 30th. Spotify has laid off 17% of its workforce eliminating around 1500 jobs. This is the music streaming company’s third reduction in staff this year. Do we need to worry about NameDrop? All the concerns related to the new contact sharing feature which de...

This is a public service announcement to check your old Google accounts because, starting this week, Google is deleting accounts that have not been accessed in over two years. Tech Life Steph has made the switch from PC to Mac, but, all is not well as she explains why she is not yet using her new hotness to record episodes of the show. Coding My Crown and Dove have partnered to launch an open-sour...

Apple has finally decided to add RCS to the iPhone sometime in 2024, but, the company makes it clear that RCS is not coming to iMessage, thus the blue bubble vs. green bubble bullying will continue. OpenAI fired its CEO, failed at trying to rehire him less than 24 hours later, had most of its employees threaten to leave the company if it didn’t bring him back, and is now trying to rehire him again...

It looks like the Food and Drug Administration might be ready to approve the first gene-editing therapy, CRISPR, that cured sickle cell anemia symptoms in 97% of trial patients.   Are we ready for the Humane AI Pin? A wearable AI assistant that kind of reminds you of a Star Trek TNG communicator badge.  Rapper and Producer The D. O. C. may use AI to release new music. And banks are...

Electric vehicle sales are actually up year over year but their increased cost compared to the ICE counterparts keeps consumers from adopting them at the rate auto manufacturers thought they would. Elon Musk’s generative AI company X.ai released its LLM Grok this week. The chatbot comes with an X Premium+ account and answers you in a snarky tone. Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are out. Are y...

Cruise’s robotaxi permit was immediately suspended in San Francisco after the company failed to report the whole story about a pedestrian-involved accident and two days later the company suspended service everywhere. Facebook and Instagram launched ad-free premium subscriptions in Europe.  And X, formerly Twitter, launched Basic and Premium+ subscriptions here in the U.S. Multiple states are...

A jury awards a female Google Cloud executive $1.1 million because the company gave higher pay to less-experienced male cohorts and later denied her promotions in retaliation for complaining about it. On the heels of the password-sharing crackdown and a 70% increase in ad-supported tiers, Netflix has a better-than-expected Q3.  The company is still hiking subscription prices though. Google is...

Microsoft, Apple, and now Google all have native support for passkeys, the next wave of authentication technology that doesn’t require you to remember passwords. A New York state bill has been proposed that would require everyone to register in order to buy certain 3-D printers because of their potential to print parts for guns. The European Union isn’t messing around when it comes to misinformati...

Midjourney is trippin' when it comes to using AI to draw Black African doctors helping white children. Would you pay $14 monthly or more to access Facebook and Instagram without ads? This is what Meta wants European Union users to pay if they opt out of targeted ad Amazon is being sued by the US Federal Trade Commission for illegally maintaining monopoly power. And, another Tesla owner was ki...

iPhone 15 overheating issues have been widely reported, but, Apple is stating that the problem is not with hardware and lies with apps like Uber and Instagram. The Forbes Top Creators 2023 list is out and we discuss who made the list, why they made the list, and why so few African American women are on the list. After 25 years, Netflix’s DVD delivery service has come to an end.  This is one c...

Google announces Project Elevate Black Voices, a partnership with Howard University to improve the technology used in Automatic Speech Recognition. A Family sues Google alleging its Maps app led a father to drive off a collapsed bridge to his death after being notified numerous times that the bridge had been out for nearly 10 years. Tinder launches a new $500 per month Tinder Select Tier to less t...

We recap Apple’s Wunderlust event where the company officially unveiled the Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, the new iPhone 15, 15 Plus, 15 Pro, and 15 Pro Ultra, and we discuss iOS 17 which just came out Monday.  Streaming has not only changed how we listen to music, but it has changed the music that we listen to.  The MGM Hack is moving into its second week and it turns out that Ceasa...

The Apple Event where the iPhone 15, USB-C Airpods, and new Apple Watches are officially being announced is upon us and we do a bit of speculation on what all the new hotness will look like. We are so not shocked that, according to a leaked spreadsheet with self-reported salary information, Black Google employees earn $20,000 less than white colleagues. Apple didn’t meet the EU DMA Gatekeeper stat...

Brothatech downloaded and installed iOS Beta 17 which is expected to be officially released next month. Apple is, oddly supportive of SB 244, a right-to-repair bill being considered in California and we ponder why. Tesla is facing its first lawsuits on autonomous vehicle deaths. A UK study reports that autonomous driving systems are less accurate for children and darker-skinned pedestrians, and, S...

In most of episode 95 of The Tech Jawn, we’ll be talking to our featured guest, but before we get to the interview we discuss another case of facial recognition misidentifying a person of color leading to their wrongful arrest.   In our interview, we talk with Lamarr Wilson, the unofficial “CEO of Tech Unboxings” and Lifestyle Entertainer and Influencer with over 3 million followers. Lam...

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...

An Asian MIT student asked Playground AI to make her profile pic look more professional, and it turned her into a white woman. Local governments can’t wait on Washington to implement federal guidelines for the use of Artificial Intelligence so they are taking matters into their own hands. The conservative activist behind the Supreme Court affirmative action case sues an Atlanta-based, female-run,...

Samsung held its Galaxy Unpacked event last week and officially announced the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5, the Galaxy Watch 6 and Watch 6 Classic, and the Galaxy Tab 9 series of Tablets. TikTok is getting into the music streaming service game it isn’t necessarily coming for Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube Music. Will the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes supercharge the Creator Economy...

Nearly 200 school systems are suing the parent companies of Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok in a class-action lawsuit over alleged harms to students via their social media platforms. Several streaming services including Netflix, YouTube Premium, Spotify, and Youtube Music recently told consumers that “Yesterday’s price is not today’s price. Black Tech Week in Cincinnati took place last wee...

Google’s new privacy policy indicates the search giant wants to scrape all your data for use with its A.I. Not just all Google data. Like, literally, all your data on the internet. The Actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, joined its sister union the Writer’s Guild of America in going on strike. Both unions list demands for A.I. protections as significant reasons for shutting down movie and television product...

Did an A.I.-powered robot give a reporter the side-eye when questioned about rebelling against humans? It did appear that the bot felt some type of way about the question. NYC’s anti-bias law for hiring algorithms went into effect. Employers using A.I. to hire or promote must submit the algorithms for independent review and make the results public. The DEI goodwill we saw after the George Floyd mu...