3.8.2016
Good to Know: Let’s take a moment of silence for Raymond Tomlinson, aka, the man who put the “@” in email addresses. He passed away at 74 over the weekend. #RIP
THE SKINNY
When People Are No Longer Checkin’ For You …
When You Need To Rephrase That …
To be clear, the talent pool is still growing thanks to highly educated foreign-born workers but homegrown talent is dipping out of the area in search of more affordable housing.
When You’ve Been Replaced …
People are migrating to smaller tech hubs like Seattle and Austin with each city bringing additional 17,000 and 720 workers, respectively. These days, turns out things are slowing all the way down in Silicon Valley and San Francisco’s tech sector (e.g., companies laying off peeps and venture capital money drying up).
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Good News, Finally …
Lately, it’s been a tough road for DraftKings, FanDuel, and fantasy sport sites in general. After a slew of bad news, the industry finally got a breaky-break. Virginia (VA) just passed the “Fantasy Contests Act,” intended to allow those sites to be on the up and up in the state. The law would require these sites to do things like go through two independent audits each year, pony up US $50K to operate in Virginia, make sure all players on the sites are 18+, and make sure employees aren’t participating in their public contents, etc. Good looks, VA.
We’re Not Gonna Take This …
Last week, a New York federal judge said ‘nice try’ to the U.S. government in its against Apple, Inc. The government brought the case against Apple because the company refused to give it access to one of the iPhones involved in one of its investigations. Now, the government is appealing on account of it thinks that Apple can bypass the phone’s passcode to give the government access with no problems. Per usual, we’ll keep you posted on how this appeal turns out … In other news, Mac computers are under attack by Ransomeware. And, the software works in the way you’d think the name implies. Hackers infect your computer with the software, encrypt your data, and then the hackers ask you to hand over digital $$$ to get your data back. #SAVAGE
THE STREETS ARE TALKIN’
Taking advantage of the situation? Who knows, but what we do know is … After Facebook failed to convince India’s government to accept its Free Basics program to bring Internet access to rural India, Google is now in talks with Indian telecoms to kick off its Project Loon. The project shares similar goals with Free Basics except it plans to use balloons to bring the people affordable Internet access.
Style Code Live, Amazon’s first live online show, is available tonight and is … wait for it … free! It’s a daily fashion and beauty show if you’re into that type of thing. In more Amazon news, it’s putting together its very own virtual reality program and is on the look out for a software development manager to take the lead. And, its second physical bookstore is setting up shop in San Diego. #GoodReads
Ryan Lewis, one-half of the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis duo, is getting into the startup game with his company Disruptive Multimedia featuring a tool called Superphone to scoop up info on customer relationship management and direct sales. The plan is to use the tool to figure out how to monetize audiences. Looks like venture capitalist and investor Ben Horowitz is here for it.