Tech news: "The great tech layoff"

Last week all the major players of technology; Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have all announced huge layoffs of workers. When we say huge, we're talking in the thousands.

Google laid off 12,000, Microsoft 10,000, and at Amazon 18,000.

According to layoffs.fyi and Insider's calculations, more than 65K workers have lost jobs so far in 2023.

Over at Apple, it's looking slightly brighter for the employees as Tim Cook took a 40% pay cut to avoid the layoffs.

On January 20, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, announced layoffs that equal to about 6% of the company's total workforce.

https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/january-update/

So why the gauntlet of employee cuts?

Most industry watchers speculate that the pandemic had a major effect on the way consumers spend. 

During the Covid lockdown taking your wallet out for travel, restaurants and entertainment were off the table. Many industries were directly impacted by the pandemic, especially restaurant, airlines, cruises, media production, manufacturing, retail, oil, and gas.

So instead of the usual spending habits, people began looking at alternative ways of spending their dollar with the majority of purchases done online.

One source reported that in less than a year, from February 2020 to January 2021, the percentage of online sales to total retail sales nearly doubled, going from 19.1% to 36% boosting sales for major tech companies including Amazon, Google and Zoom. 

In fact, in 2021 the New York Times reported, the five tech superpowers — Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook — had combined revenue of more than $1.2 trillion!

Major tech needed major workers to fill in needed positions quickly!

So here we are January 2023, almost 3 years since the lockdown began in the US. Retail stores, restaurants, and malls have long since reopened and consumers have since reverted back to their pre-pandemic spending habits. The sharp influx of online shopping has slowed down dramatically.

So now the major tech firms that had fattened their workforce now need to trim the fat. Mind you these tech firms aren't going anywhere, and some foresee a slow hiring trend in the next two years but as Sundar Pichai stated they're all "bound to go through difficult economic cycles."

Tech History: How the term 'debug' came about

Today, the term 'debug' means to identify software or hardware errors. 

But why the word 'debug' and what do bugs have to do with computers anyways?

Well, history shows what really happened.

Back in September of 1947 the US Navy was testing it's newly built Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator for ballistic tables.

Located at Harvard University, this electromechanical computer was nothing to what we use today. The machine over 20ft in length and weighed over 5 tons.

It was an electromechanical behemoth!

Physicist Dr. Howard Aiken and Dr. Grace Hopper worked together to design, build and program the machine.

Dr Aiken and Dr Hopper worked well as a team. Grace would write the technical manual and assist Howard with maintenance and hardware of the Mark II. 

Both Mr Howard Aiken and Mrs Grace Hopper were working on the machine when she found a moth stuck in one of the relays, impeding the operation of the machine.

So now you know "the rest of the story" ;-)

Originally posted 10/29/16

How To: Receive text for an appointment on your Google Calendar

Years ago when you made an appointment on your Google Calendar and you had SMS notifications enabled, you would receive a text on your phone of that appointment .

This was the best thing since sliced bread in my opinion.
For some unknown reasons in 2015, Google decided to no longer offer SMS notifications for appointments on your Google Calendar. Bye Bye SMS notifications.
It was a "Why did you do that?!" moment.

But not to fret. The world is not ending....and you can still receive SMS/text messages of any appointments on your calendar.
You just have to go a round about way of setting it up. 

Basically we forward the calendar appts to Gmail.... then forwarding the Gmail as a SMS to your phone.

We'll be working on the Desktop version as it's the easiest working while in Gmail.

Phase 1

First, we want to have Google Calendar send notifications to Gmail. 

This is straightforward.
1. Inside Google Calendar, click Settings (it's the gear in the upper right)

2. Now, scroll down to your calendar and click 'Share with specific people'

3. Here you want to enter your email address.....
4. Right below you want to Add Notification.... and using the drop-down menu, select email... and then select the number of days out you want the notification to occur.

Okay... so now you're set for having Calendar forward notifications to your email. Now lets log into your Gmail where we'll forward the email you receive from Calendar as an SMS message to your phone.

Phase 2

1. Within Gmail, select settings (The gear in the upper right corner)

2. Click 'Settings' (ironic I know)

3. To add a forwarding address, click 'Forwarding And POP/IMAP'

4. Click 'Add A Forwarding Address'...

5. In the box here is where you enter your email address OF YOUR PHONE.

AT&T                 10digitphonenumber@txt.att.net

Cellular One      10digitphonenumber@mobile.celloneusa.com

Sprint                 10digitphonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com

T-Mobile             10digitphonenumber@tmomail.net

US Cellular         10digitphonenumber@email.uscc.net

Verizon               10digitphonenumber@vtext.com

Virgin Mobile      10digitphonenumber@vmobl.com

Follow the prompts to complete adding a forwarding address.

6. Select 'Filters And Blocked Addresses' (we have to create a filter first in order to forward it)

7. Scroll down to the bottom and click 'Create New Event'

8. In the 'From' field in the new window type  calendar-notification@google.com 

(This lets Gmail know to filter and fwd any email you get from this address)

9. Click 'Create Filter' 

10. In this window is where the magic happens..... you have several options here, but the most important is the 'Forward To' line. Use the drop down to select your forwarding phone email (We created that in Step 5)

11. Click 'Create Filter' and that's it. 

Your appointments that are in Google Calendar will be forwarded to Gmail. There Gmail will forward it to you phone as an SMS/Text message.

You may want to test it out. Create an appt within Google Calendar and open Gmail to view the email from calendar-notification@google.com. 

In a few minutes you should receive a text of the appointment. Trace the steps again if you don't get the text.

Originally published 2/18/20

How to: Accessing your router web page

Most customers I come across know an open unsecured network is an invitation for others to waltz and access your network at ease. And by saying that they realize how important it is to have a secured wifi network.

However there are some home networks I stumble across that are WIDE OPEN with no WPA security password AT ALL.

It's the electronic equivalent of leaving your front door open. 

More over may have the ability to access your documents on your laptop/desktop if file & print sharing is enabled. To prevent such an infiltration of unwanted hackers and visitors snooping around your network needs to be secure. This means setting up a password on your network via the router settings web page. 

Take a deep breath...it's fairly simple and takes about 10 minutes to do.


First determine what brand router you have. Likely it's one of the main brand one's such as Linksys, Cisco, Belkin, DLink, or Netgear. You may have to look under the router for the make/model.

Open your favorite web browser. Enter in the IP address of your router. This depends of what brand router you have, however it's very likely either 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1. 

Answersthatwork has a great listing of IP addresses, default user names and passwords for most routers out on the market.

If you enter your router IP address and you're prompted for a Username and Password, that's great!! You're one step closer to accessing your router settings and securing your network.

Enter in the default Username and Password. This is where you may have to experiment. Some router manufactures make the default Username as Admin and Password as Admin. It may be the router manufacture name (like Belkin) and password of Admin.

Again Answersthatwork has this listing for the default usernames and passwords.

If you're still unable to login to the router web page, it’s possible that you may need to reset your router back to factory settings to regain access with one of the default IP address/username/password combinations above. 

That’s usually about as easy as finding a depressed button in the back of the router that’s labeled “Reset,” and pressing it with a pen for 30 seconds. try going back to step 2 above and try to log in again.

Once you've logged in successfully in the routers web page you can access several administrative settings concerning your home network. These settings include your network security and password, SSID Name (the name you give your home network), the list of current 'clients' or computers accessing your home network and other functions.

One of the first recommendations I give customers when setting up and configuring wireless networks is ensuring their network is secure with a password. That is typically found under the Security tab on the web page.

The web pages will differ slightly from one manufacture to the next. For more assistance I recommend referring to the support page of the router/modem manufacturer.

Here are a few links to popular router/modem manufactures.

Apple Airport
Belkin
D-Link
Linksys
Netgear
Western Digital

This article originally published 7/7/2012 - SL