Google has decided to trim some more fat, sacking "hundreds of workers in several divisions" according to the New York Times. Those divisions include "its core engineering division, as well as those working on the Google Assistant, a voice-operated virtual assistant, and in the hardware division that makes the Pixel phone, Fitbit watches and Nest thermostat". The Google Assistant cuts seem severe, with the team publishing a lengthy list of "underutilised features" that will no longer be supported. Sucks if you relied on any of those! There's been a bit of sackings going on around tech companies this week. Amazon purged its Prime Video, Twitch & MGM divisions, Discord let go of 17% of its staff and Unity said go away to 25% of its staff after sacking thousands last year.
SpaceX has shown off a photo of two iPhones sharing SMS messages via Starlink's new "direct to cell" service after launching the first 6 satellites with this feature last week. If you haven't been following, this is will allow T-Mobile customers with smartphones that support LTE band 25 to have access to text messaging anywhere in the country with open sky this year and voice calls by 2025. Optus is onboard to have the same thing in Australia later this year, but I don't know which LTE band they'll be using here. SpaceX's press release says that "operators in our network have access to reciprocal global access that allows their users to access the service when they travel to one of our partner countries" Pretty cool stuff. It's fantastic peace of mind knowing that even if I'm in bumfuck nowhere I can at least send a text message.
I've mentioned the UK's Post Office Horizon scandal a few times over the years, but now there's a TV mini-series about it called Mr. Bates vs The Post Office. If you're unfamiliar with the Horizon scandal, have a squiz as this article from David Allen Green - "Between 2000 and 2014, hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were held to be liable for non-existent accounting shortfalls recorded on a faulty IT system. For some, this meant heavy personal losses and bankruptcy; for others it also meant criminal convictions; some of those caught up in the scandal have since committed suicide. There seem to have been around 900 convictions that relied on the now-notorious Horizon system, though nobody knows for certain". It's essentially the UK's Robodebt. It was very bad. Going by how much attention this TV show has gathered in the UK, I'd love to see something similar about Robodebt.
Here's five interesting discussions over on The Sizzle's paid subscriber forum for you to enjoy over the weekend. If you are not a paid subscriber but want to get involved, visit https://thesizzle.com.au/payme to get onboard.
1984 Macintosh Manual Wallpaper, a composite of two pages from the 1984 Macintosh Manual (xarph / The Internet Archive)
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