Cybersecurity, Intel, Retailer UX, Google, Phone Charging, and Doing Nothing

Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI

If you haven’t followed us on Tiktok or Twitter, now is a great chance.

Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:

• 🔐 Cybersecurity

• 📉 Intel

• 🏬 Retailer UX

• 🔍 Google 2024

• 👥 Social Media

• 📱 Phone Charging

• ⏸️ Doing Nothing

Podcast

Cybersecurity, Identity, and Building Trust in the Age of AI: Insights from CEO Aaron Painter

In this episode of Prodity: Product By Design, I welcome Aaron Painter, CEO of Nametag, to discuss the critical role of identity verification in preventing social engineering attacks. Aaron shares his extensive experience working at Microsoft and leading global teams, emphasizing the importance of understanding diverse cultural and business contexts. Together, we explore the challenges and innovations in cybersecurity, particularly how Nametag addresses the vulnerabilities in traditional authentication methods. Aaron highlights the impact of AI in both facilitating and combating cyber threats and underscores the importance of design and UX in building trusted products. Join us for a deep dive into the future of identity verification and its implications for personal and corporate security.

News and Useful Reads

What is going wrong for Intel?

While Nvidia has skyrocketed, Intel has pretty much flatlined. So, it’s not surprising that everyone is asking a lot of questions since you’d think that Intel should be doing a lot better.

The market reaction was brutal. On August 1st Intel released a dismal set of results. The semiconductor giant’s sales were down by 1%, year on year, and the company declared a net loss of $1.6bn, compared with a profit of $1.5bn in the same period in 2023. “Our costs are too high, our margins are too low,” wrote Pat Gelsinger, its chief executive, in a note to employees. As a consequence, Intel plans to slash 15,000 jobs and to suspend dividends, which it has paid since 1992. Since the results were published its share price has plunged by nearly 30%.

Chipmaker Intel to cut 15,000 jobs as tries to revive its business and compete with rivals

This is the worst kind of news for the current job market and for everyone working at Intel. I’m just gutted that employees are suffering the brunt of Intel’s problems to solve a problem for shareholders.

Chipmaker Intel says it is cutting 15% of its huge workforce — about 15,000 jobs — as it tries to turn its business around to compete with more successful rivals like Nvidia and AMD.

In a memo to staff, Intel Corp. CEO Pat Gelsinger said Thursday the company plans to save $10 billion in 2025.

Retailers Locked Up Their Products—and Broke Shopping in America

By creating a poor user experience in store, often without good data to validate the decision, retailers disproportionately hurt specific groups and have driven many more people to simply shop online. It’s become a vicious cycle.

The plastic shields, once used sparingly to secure certain kinds of expensive or heavily regulated items such as cellphones or cigarettes, were now holding hostage run-of-the-mill toiletries and cleaning supplies. To negotiate their release, you’d need a key-wielding store employee. If no one was around—and no one ever was—you could press a call button and hope for the best.

Made by Google 2024: Pixel 9 Pro, Gemini, new foldables and everything else to expect on August 13

We'll get the official reveal of the Pixel 9 lineup, for one thing. This includes what the company is calling the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, which is certainly more of a mouthful than "Pixel Fold 2." In addition, Google will certainly reveal more details about Android 15 and the operating system's public rollout. Expect to hear the word "Gemini" a lot too as Google is likely to focus on the AI-powered features of the new handsets.

How to find your oldest social media posts and delete them

I think all of us probably have social media posts that haven’t aged well. Maybe just because the format has changed or the context. I see memories pop up occasionally and realize that some things I posted on Facebook over a decade ago are nonsensical and deserve to be deleted because the format has changed so much. It’s obvious why social media today has become more ephemeral. Context changes so much that what we say probably shouldn’t live for a decade on the internet.

We’ve been living with social media for a long time now — Facebook opened up to the public in 2006 — and that means a lengthy trail of posts stretching back through the years. While this does let you take a nostalgic trip into the past with just a few clicks, it can also bring up some embarrassing and awkward memories.

Other Interesting Finds

You can (and should) stop charging your phone when it hits 80 percent

I generally don’t think much about charging my phone, except to plug it in at night. But I just switched my phone setting to see if I can improve my battery life since I know that constantly charging batteries to 100% isn’t the best way to make them last (even if I don’t always put that knowledge into practice).

Plugging in your phone before bed and letting it charge up overnight is a nightly ritual for many of us. But it’s actually better for long-term battery health if you’re not hitting 100 percent every recharge.

how to do nothing

I’m suggesting that we protect our spaces and our time for non-instrumental, non-commercial activity and thought, for maintenance, for care, for conviviality. And I’m suggesting that we fiercely protect our human animality against all technologies that actively ignore and disdain the body, the bodies of others, and the body of the landscape that we inhabit.