The Lighthouse IT Podcast - April 23rd, 2021
Matt and Griff go through interesting stuff this week like the Semiconductor Shortage, FBI hacking for good, Twitter Spaces and Facebook's response, Netflix in a bad spot, and research proving that your brain needs breaks.
Listen here!
Tech News
Semiconductor Shortage
When things started to shutdown in 2020, many companies told chip manufacturers that they would be reducing orders in preparation for a slumped economy.
What actually happened is an increase in spending. Electronics, Work From Home supplies, even cars spiked in purchases
Car manufacturers have been heavily impacted - GM & Ford claiming that a hit of $2b in profits could be observed. Plus they are starting to cut shifts for staff until necessary parts that are dependent upon semiconductors come in.
And as much as Sony would like to completely say its PS5 is just selling copious volumes of the new console - much of the supply issues also stem from these shortages.
Semiconductors are effectively the building blocks of chips used in electronics. With a tech-dependent world such as ours, the absence of these items makes producing nearly everything impossible.
FBI Hacks hundreds of servers in the US.
Nope, that's right. The FBI is hacking into servers in the US... to disinfect them.
We talked about the webshells on Exchange servers, believed to be instigated by the group HAFNIUM.
The webshells would allow remote control and access to a network via Microsoft Exchange.
FBI received a warrant to use these webshells to connect to known affected servers and issue a command designed to remove itself to obscure infiltration. The command, "DELETE THYSELF" instead cleaning up the vulnerability.
Marketing News
Twitter Spaces
It's out! And here's how to use it...
Facebook unveils suite of new audio products
Zuckerberg has been experimenting more with audio platforms lately as the trend gets bigger. A few weeks ago, he unveiled a new shopping partnership with Shopify on Clubhouse, a buzzy new audio startup that recently raised a new fundraising round valuing it at $4 billion.
Netflix reports a dramatic slowdown in subscribers
Netflix said the slowdown in subscriber numbers could be blamed on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, which forced the company to delay some of its big-name shows and films.
Misc. News
Research Proves Your Brain Needs Breaks
Microsoft now lets customers have the ability to set organization-wide scheduling defaults that shorten meetings and create space for breaks for everyone at the company.