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

MSG Entertainment is being petty with its facial recognition capabilities. The company is actively banning employees from law firms that are litigating cases against it from patronizing its venues. Inaccuracy in Facial Recognition of Black and Brown faces is still problematic for the technology, but, police departments arresting and jailing suspects who have clearly been misidentified is crue...

Apple decides not to scan your iCloud photos against the Child Sexual Abuse Material database, or, CSAM, and has other plans to expand its Communication Safety features. The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft alleging that its bid to acquire Activision Blizzard violates U.S. law. Meta’s content moderation policy for Facebook and Instagram had a double standard...

We’ve got something special in this week’s episode of The Tech Jawn. We interview Cherish Samuels , a unicorn of unicorns, as she is a Black, female, mechanical engineer. We talk about everything from her journey getting into engineering at a young age, for years being the only face on the job that looks like hers, and how she has transitioned into tech now working on Amazon Fresh, the automa...

Twitter grappled with nuisance spam from the Chinese State intended to obscure news of covid restriction protests happening in cities across the country. Even though Amazon Alexa devices are pretty popular the digital assistants are on pace to lose $10 billion this year because users just don’t buy products with them. The Department of Justice opens an investigation into a real estate tech company...

Is Taylor Swift really that big, or, is TicketMaster's and Live Nation’s monopoly on ticket sales and venues the cause for Swifties not being able to purchase tickets? Microsoft is eager to acquire gaming company, Activision Blizzard, for $68.7 billion, but, a new EU investigation has Microsoft Gaming’s CEO promising Call of Duty will remain on PlayStation. Bob Iger is returning, temporarily, as C...

Google is set to pay nearly $400 million to settle lawsuits with 40 state's attornies general over location data it wasn’t supposed to be collecting. Regardless of how you feel about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, the new Twitter non-verified blue check mark, right now,  is creating confusion and making Twitter even less reliable. The FTX crypto exchange bankruptcy could setback cryptocu...

Election misinformation safeguards in social media work fairly well unless the election lies come in foreign languages. Many of last week’s Twitter rumors have come to pass. Twitter did lay off nearly half of its employees hours before asking some of them to come back. Twitter Blue actually cost $8, not $20, but it’s been postponed until after the election. And Elon Musk is concerne...

Be careful when having receipts emailed to you.  It looks like Square along with many other credit card processing companies is selling your contact information. The acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk happened last week and the new owner isn’t wasting time making changes.  Verified accounts are rumored to cost 20 bucks a month, big companies are preemptively pulling advertising from the...

Google’s vision for RCS hasn’t materialized, but, is it too soon to call it a failure?  Probably not. Netflix reported its third-quarter earnings, is launching an ad-supported tier in November, and, is putting the kibosh on password sharing in early 2023. The Republican National Committee is suing Google for sending campaign emails to spam even though Gmail filters reflect user reactions.&nbs...

Kanye West, after having his Instagram and Twitter accounts restricted for antisemitic comments, agrees to buy the right-leaning social media platform Parler. TikTok has raised the age requirement for live streaming from 16 to 18 and is introducing adult-only streams. The website for the Biden administration's student loan relief program goes live in Beta on Friday. And big tech companies are appe...

The Apple Watch’s fall and crash detection experience false positives everywhere from the emergency room to roller coasters. Meta has notified nearly 1 million Facebook users that their login information may have been compromised by apps downloaded from the App Store and Google Play. Alphabet announced new devices during its Pixel event last week including the Google Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, and the...

James Earl Jones is retiring as the voice of Darth Vader but his menacing tones will live on through A.I. supplied by Ukrainian startup, Respeecher.    Apple reportedly won’t boost iPhone 14 Production because it appears that the new hotness is selling as Apple predicted it would. Square makes Tap to Pay on iPhone available to U.S. sellers. And will companies like Amazon urging employees...

The Windows 11 22H2 Update is out. It’s the first major update of Windows 11 and we break down some of the new features and old features that Windows users should check out. The latest version of WhatsApp allows users to join calls by typing a link. Call Links aims to make it easier for groups of up to 32 to join both voice and video calls. Amazon decided that one Amazon Prime Day Event...

The iPhone 14 launch isn’t going that smoothly for Apple. iMessage and Facetime aren’t working for many after activation, some 14 Pro and Pro Max freeze after data transfers, and there are a lot of videos of the 48-megapixel camera acting weird with third-party apps. Uber confirmed that it took several key systems down in response to a cybersecurity breach allegedly perpetrated by an 18-year-...

This week’s episode of The Tech Jawn is mostly about the Apple Event and all the new gadgets that are coming out. We talk about the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro, the new Apple Watch Series 8 and Ultra, and we mention the new AirPods Pro 2. But before we get to all the Apple news we talk about Patreon laying off its entire security team, apparently outsourcing everything, and how it probably should ha...

The Tech Jawn took Labor Day off and didn’t record a new episode this week.  We didn’t, however, want to leave the feed empty, so, we put together a quick highlight reel from some of our favorite moments on the show.  We’ll be back next week, September 13, with a brand new episode, so, until then… Enjoy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twitter’s former Security Chief blows the whistle alleging Twitter misled the public on problems with its security and with bot accounts. Cosmetics company Sephora will pay $1.2 million in the first major settlement with the state of California’s Consumer Privacy Act for selling users' data without permission. A federal judge sided with a Cleveland State University student stating that scanning hi...

Apple wants employees back in the office for a hybrid work week, but, some employees want to remain remote.  Something has got to give, but, we don’t think it's going to be Apple. A husband of a slain wife is sentenced to 65 years in prison after her Fitbit data told a different story about how and when she was murdered. We thought facial recognition policy was bad in the United States but, N...

It only took one weekend of interacting with people for Meta’s new Blenderbot 3.0 AI chatbot to turn racist. WeWork co-founder and ousted former CEO, Adam Neumann, secures $350 in venture capital for his new startup Flow. Isn’t that kinda like failing forward? HBO and Discovery+ are officially merging in 2023, Disney Plus sets a launch date for its new ads-supported tier, and, YouTube advance...

Apple doesn’t want any supply chain disruption in China over Made in Taiwan labels so it's asking its Taiwanese-based suppliers to add Made in China labeling to their products. TikTok’s contracted moderators are allegedly requiring employees to watch actual child abuse videos as part of its training program. Technology exists to determine if a child has been left behind in a locked car to help pre...

30,000 tech workers have lost their jobs through July, but, we still believe Information Technology is, one of, if not the hottest job industries. Apple Pay could possibly come to Chrome, Edge, and Firefox in iOS 16. We aren’t sure if this is because Apple has seen the light, or, to prepare for looming EU legislation. Meta and Tik Tok aren’t doing that great with content moderation in the dia...

Senators Corey Booker and Ben Ray Luján propose the UnCap America Act that would ban data caps on consumer high-speed broadband in the U.S. A chess-playing robot in Russia breaks its seven your old opponent's finger. Reports are that the robot is completely safe, so, long as you don’t move too fast. Netflix reports on its 2nd quarter earnings. Subscribers are down for the second quarter...

Amazon releases Ring Doorbell video to the police without consent from or even notification to Ring owners. Twitter had a 40+ minute outage, its newsletter service Revue was down for over a day, and some employees are saying there’s no strong leadership at the helm in the wake of Elon Musk reneging on his takeover bid. Uber settles a lawsuit with the DOJ for overcharging passengers with disabiliti...

Rogers Telecommunications in Canada suffered a 19-hour outage last week affecting all kinds of services including cell and landline access, banking services, internet access, 911/emergency services, and more. A new law in New York will require concealed-carry gun license applicants to hand over their social media accounts for review of their “conduct and character”. More black investors than your...

Google will, soon, start deleting visits to potentially sensitive locations like domestic violence shelters from users' location histories. Search history, however, still remains. Scammers are using deep fakes to interview and get hired to remote jobs for nefarious reasons. We ponder if this tech, for some folks, could be used to get by the gatekeepers in efforts to really hired. A robocall loopho...