Topic 1: Massive Botnet Network Taken Down Police coordinated by the European Union's justice and police agencies have taken down computer networks responsible for spreading ransomware via infected emails, in what they called the biggest-ever international operation against the lucrative form of cybercrime. The European Union's judicial cooperation…

Check out the bonus Killing IT content on MSP Radio's Business of Tech podcast! Today's a great day to subscribe to that: https://www.businessof.tech/subscribe/ -- -- -- Topic 1: The Current State of Mergers, Acquisition, and MSP Consolidation Mergers and Acquisitions are alive and well in the MSP channel. Jay McBain from Canalys predicts a growth …

Topic 1: Chat GPT 1 year later. AI Article Summary: Elon Musk creates his own AI company called X.AI, while Satya Nadella of Microsoft invests in OpenAI and accelerates plans to incorporate AI into Microsoft's products. OpenAI releases ChatGPT as a "low key research preview," which becomes a hit. Meta, led by Mark Zuckerberg, faces challenges with …

We're Baaaaaack! The Killing IT team returns . . . with a fun and educational Q4 show. Topic 1: Overworking Have you heard the term Over Employment or Overworking? These are folks who manage to hold down two or three full time jobs using apps and BS. Are these just eager, hardworking "gig" folks, or are they thieves who are simply more interested i…

Topic 1: How much will AI change our business in the next twelve months? ChatGPT now has over 100 million users. Government wants to regulate it. We’re past the hockey stick moment. https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/14/u-s-tech-policy-must-keep-pace-with-ai-innovation/ --- Topic 2: Oh Dear God - Minority Report crack for Ryan: Movie clip reconstructed…

Topic 1: The Arms Race is Here...AI is Definitely Moving Fast, but Will It Break Things? ChatGPT is now integrated in Bing as “Prometheus.” That sounds ominous. But Bard is also coming. And now Ernie. And Claude. Soon there will be AI bots generating “conversations” and disrupting the search industry on all sides of the globe. Is that a good thing?…

Topic 1: Score 1 for the Good Guys in the Cyber Wars https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-login-0f2b3e6a-1272-4510-8fd2-c1aa9128b8db.html In a significant development in the fight against ransomware, the FBI announces that they have shut down a notorious cyber gang after infiltrating their system months ago and secretly giving decryption keys to…

Topic 1: Sorry: Let’s talk jobs. December: Total new jobs UP 235,000. That is despite the fact the enterprise companies (500 employees+) reduced jobs by 151,000 https://adpemploymentreport.com/ ← Great summary stats Spotify 600 (6% of workforce) Twitter 3,700 (50% of those who lasted this long) Salesforce 7,000 (10% of workforce) Microsoft 10,000 (…

Topic 1: Small companies are “labor hoarding” while large companies are laying off. https://www.utahbusiness.com/labor-hoarding-tech/ https://www.teambonding.com/labor-hoarding/ Keeping employees at any cost! Topic 2: Understanding the Dynamics of the Tech Workforce in 2023 Data Point 1: Tech Layoffs are Happening … But Not Because Tech is Suddenly…

Topic 1: Algorithms Need Management Training, Too! From Wired Magazine. Human beings excel at avoiding responsibility for difficult decisions. Management and personnel decisions are often difficult. Therefore, they are great candidates for turning decision-making over to the bots. What could possibly go wrong? https://www.wired.com/story/platform-w…

Topic 1: Generative AI is Fun … Until the “Other” Guys Start Doing It Too https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/31/how-china-is-building-a-parallel-generative-ai-universe/ China is aggressively building their own versions of generative AI platforms (with some obvious / inevitable filters) that do essentially the same thing as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.…

Topic 1: For Sale on eBay: A Military Database of Fingerprints and Iris Scans Great topic for ITSPs - especially as clients get rid of equipment at the end of year. Old machines of all kinds might have sensitive data. Not this juicy, perhaps, but stories like this are great for you client-facing newsletters. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/27/techn…

Topic 1: Meta scamming: Scammers Are Scamming Other Scammers Out of Millions of Dollars https://www.wired.com/story/cybercrime-hackers-scams-forums/ On cybercrime forums, user complaints about being duped may accidentally expose their real identities. Topic 2: Teens are Self-Liberating from Social Media ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes https:/…

Topic 1: The Bots are Coming for LinkedIn, Adding New Layers of Risk for Professionals and for Companies … but Especially for Recruiters https://thehustle.co/12122023-LinkedIn-bots/ Bots are everywhere on social media, and some platforms are doing more to combat them than others. Now that the bots are proliferating on LinkedIn, it’s vital for every…

Topic 1: Should the Police have killer robots? San Francisco approves the use of robots capable of lethal force. Is this move inevitable, or are the arguments in favor of this just rare exceptions to the rule? https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/sf-police-killer-robots-would-have-explosives-not-guns-sfpd/ Topic 2: Data Volumes are Increasing at Suc…

Topic 1: The FTX Contagion Has Affected VC / PE Firms that Invest In MSP Vendors https://www.channele2e.com/news/ftx-cryptocurrency-bankruptcy-filing/ In all the noise that’s surrounding the collapse of FTX and the impact on other crypto companies, news is coming out that several major MSP investors have also suffered significant losses. Initial st…

Topic 1: The Federal Communications Commission has published the initial draft of its revised high-speed internet coverage maps. The old maps were census-block based. The new maps are based on more detailed information from broadband providers. With the old system, a huge census block would be marked as served even if only one household had broadba…

Topic 1: Good News on the EV Front: Lithium Ion Batteries can be Recycled! https://www.axios.com/2022/11/10/audi-redwood-ev-battery-recycling Yes … we are headed for an EV world. No … there are not nearly enough batteries or charging stations or grid capacity to handle an EV world. But in a positive sign, it turns out that the rare Earth minerals u…

Topic 1: Lessons from the Stripe Layoffs - for tech ITs, vendors, and everyone. Stripe layed off 14% of their workforce, and were very open about the reasons. We all make mistakes in periods of rapid growth and rapid decline. This stuff is hard! https://www.businessinsider.com/stripe-layoffs-memo-tech-sector-challenges-2022-11 https://www.npr.org/2…

Topic 1: U.S. workers have gotten way less productive. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/31/productivity-down-employers-worried-recession/ No one is sure why. So we get to make up reasons! Can this be attributed to the Quiet Quitting Phenomon? Maybe. But maybe not. (Again, we get to come up with our own theories today.) Perhaps, compl…

Topic 1: Japan pushes for digitization https://apnews.com/article/technology-health-japan-covid-public-d47817295a647379f69da9bb16160d13 Japan has stepped up its push to catch up on digitization by telling a reluctant public they have to sign up for digital IDs or possibly lose access to their public health insurance. As the naming implies, the init…

Topic 1: Marketplaces — McBain is big on them, but how well do they scale down? AWS Marketplace makes it so you find everything you need in one spot. As a seller, the appeal is apprent. As a vendor, especially a small to medium business, the playing floor might be a bit crowded. https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/aws-cloud-marketplace-…

Topic 1: Some juicy stats... https://www.zippia.com/advice/tech-industry-statistics/ The U.S. tech market accounts for 35% of the total world market. The U.S. tech industry is expected to grow by 6.7% in 2022. The U.S. tech industry employs roughly 12.2 million workers as of 2020. Check out these stats and let us know what stood out to you. These s…

Topic 1: The Open Internet as We Know It Dodged an Existential Bullet Last Week https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2022-09-29-ITU-SG-elected-Doreen-Bogdan-Martin.aspx https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2022/08/12/the-most-important-election-you-never-heard-of/ In an election for the Secretary-General of the International Telecommunica…

Topic 1: Public Cameras, Social Media, Art, and Privacy concerns Great article on how to use publicly-available surveillance systems and open source facial recognition to mash up Instagram selfies with Earthcam video. Artist shows all the “behind the scenes” activities that go into professional selfies - all while violating copyrights and GDPR on a…