A week's worth of tech news that takes you 5 minutes to read

Happy Father’s Day, and welcome to this week's Sunday Download! What we do is simple: we break down a week's worth of tech news in 5 minutes or less so you can stay informed and up to date.

This week your tech-daddy has you covered from Big Tech to mobility, AI and Machine learning, fintech, futuristic tech, and everything in between.

In return, we ask that you share it with a friend or colleague instead of keeping the Smartology goodness all to yourself. While greed may be good on Wall Street, sharing is caring here at Smartology. 🤝

Lots of stuff to go through, so let's not waste any (more) time. Highlights of this week's issue include:

• The MOVEit hack takes down big names

• Reddit wars

• US Government admits it buys your data

• BONUS: ChatGPT prompts sales and marketing folks can actually use

Total read time: 4 minutes and 22 seconds. Let's goooooo! 🚀

MOVEit hack gets the US Government

A few weeks ago, we shared reports that hackers have exploited a newly discovered vulnerability in the popular file transfer tool MOVEit Transfer (owned by Progress Software). Progress Software confirmed the vulnerability, urging users to disable internet traffic and apply available patches. The attacks, affecting both on-premises and cloud platform users, demonstrate the attractiveness of targeting corporate file-transfer tools for data theft.

This week it was reported that multiple US federal agencies had been targeted in cyberattacks exploiting the same MOVEit security vulnerability. The Russia-linked Clop ransomware gang is believed to be responsible for the attacks. The Department of Energy confirmed that two of its entities were breached and have been served ransomware notices.

Other impacted organizations include energy giant Shell, financial services firm 1Source, and the University of Georgia. There could be more, but those are the only names that Clop (the hacker group) has released. No information has been leaked yet, but Clop says that companies have till 6/21 to comply with the ransom before they start leaking information.

Are AI avatars coming soon?

Synthesia, a startup using AI to create synthetic videos featuring realistic avatars, has raised $90 million in a Series C funding round. The company's technology allows users to generate personalized videos for advertising (and whatever else you’d want an AI-generated actor for). With over 50,000 customers and a significant user growth rate, Synthesia aims to enhance digital marketing and training experiences while reducing video production costs. The funding will be used to improve avatar expressiveness and enhance the platform's speed and collaboration features.

Synthesia claims that they have processes built to prevent misuse of its technology for deepfakes or disinformation purposes, but who the hell knows if that’s true.

Here’s an example of what the AI avatars look like:

And here’s a disapproving John Conner:

Twitter can’t pay their bills

Is Twitter broke? This week we have two reports of Twitter not paying their bills.

The first report is that Twitter refuses to pay Google for hosting services before their contract renewal, risking platform instability. Twitter is rushing to migrate services off Google's infrastructure, but it's behind schedule, putting tools like Smyte (the primary tool that stops harassment and abuse) at risk. The potential shutdown could impact spam and child abuse moderation efforts.

The second is that Twitter owes three months’ rent to its Boulder landlord, and a judge has signed off on evicting the tech giant from its office there, court documents show.

Are they going broke, or is someone just forgetting to send the checks? The only person that knows is Elon, but it doesn’t look good.

The RTO/WFH battle rages on
Tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta are facing employee pushback as they enforce policies requiring workers to return to the office. Google's plan to track office attendance for performance reviews has frustrated employees, while Amazon faced a walkout protesting the return-to-office mandate.

Tech companies have invested in sprawling campuses and value in-person interactions but are clashing with employees accustomed to remote work. Salesforce is taking a gentler approach by donating to charity for each day employees come into the office. Employee dissatisfaction highlights the need for transparent, fair working conditions.

Reddit drama

Hundreds of subreddits, including popular ones, are going dark indefinitely in protest against Reddit's API changes. The blackout, which started on June 12, aims to challenge the potential shutdown of third-party apps. Despite the outage causing temporary disruptions, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman downplayed its impact on revenue. Some subreddits plan to extend the blackout beyond June 20, with concerns raised over unaffordable API pricing. Reddit's push for profitability aligns with its reported plans to go public this year, as the platform recently underwent layoffs and scaled back hiring.

Uncle Sam wants your location data

A terrifying report came out this week about a declassified government report which reveals that US intelligence and spy agencies purchase significant amounts of commercially available data on Americans, raising privacy and civil liberties concerns. Examples are The Internal Revenue Service buying a huge database storing the location data of millions of Americans’ phones to try to catch tax cheats, while Homeland Security used similar phone location data for immigration enforcement.

The report highlights the risks associated with this data, which includes information on nearly everyone and can be deanonymized to identify individuals. Despite people clamoring for it, the US government lacks basic privacy laws governing the sharing or selling of Americans' private information. This lack of oversight allows companies to sell our data to the highest bidder and sell multiple copies of that data to whatever enemy state wants it.

Sorry, I had to get on my “data privacy needs to become a priority” soapbox for a second. Back to your regularly scheduled content…

Sorry, I lied. One more thing about data privacy

One thing to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic was a renewed obsession with running, much of which was encouraged by fitness apps like Strava. Joining a running group and using the fitness app Strava became game-changers, providing support, tracking capabilities, and a social aspect. However, experts warn about the risks of sharing personal data on such apps, especially regarding digital and physical security. Information such as your home and work location, regular running routes, and time of day the runs take place…all create serious security concerns for an individual’s physical safety. Check out the article for tips on protecting your data and taking precautions while using fitness apps.

Making ChatGPT useful

This article by TechCrunch is jam-packed with great tips and tools for how to get ChatGPT to do a lot of the legwork for you. The main lesson here is learning how to prompt the AI tool effectively so that the output is detailed and personalized to what you’re looking for. You’ll inevitably have to tweak things, but it’s SUCH a time saver.

Rapid Fire

• “Hey Disney,” the Amazon Voice assistant, is now live

• Synthetic human embryos are now a thing

• Apple to release a cheaper version of the Vision Pro headset by 2025

• iOS 17 to bring “check-in” feature to iMessage

• Massive Google Pixel updates announced

• Sol Reader, a VR headset just for reading books, raises $5 million

• Having a hard time tracking what streaming services you’re paying for? These 4 apps can help

• More EV charging companies are using Telsa’s standard

• Google is using AI for their “virtual try-on” feature when buying clothes

• Toyota says their next generation of EVs will have a 600-mile range

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