More Facebookies Get the Chop; Bad Botnet Gets More Dangerous; Starling & T-Mobile Satellite to Cell Service; Rivian EV Vans- Soon Selling to Other Than Amazon

It was announced last week, and now Meta has done the deed…another round of layoffs at Facebook and Instagram has begun. This week, they are cutting another 10,000 staffers on top of the 11,000 let go last fall. Theverge.com notes that they are also not going to fill another 5,000 open roles. That’s not all, either. Look for a second wave for tech roles in April, and yet another for business roles in late May. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a memo that it no longer makes sense for managers to have only “a few” direct reports and confirmed that many of them will be asked to become individual contributors throughout the company. Not to tell a billionaire how to run his company, but after losing $10 billion on the Metaverse in 2021 and $14 billion last year, maybe Zuck ought to cut back on that vaporware idea, and keep a few more people that make the present company run.

A nasty Botnet called Emotet that had been stealing info through phishing and other email tricks is back…with some even craftier tricks up its digital sleeve. According to arstechnica.com, the malicious spammer is now sending out email that seem to come from a known contact, know your name, and appear to be replying to an existing email thread. Here’s the ‘must know’ part…there will be an attachment like a Word document. The document has a huge section of invisible text…so much that most security products can’t scan the content. A popup will advise you that the document is protected, and to click on ‘enable content’ to read it. DON’T do it! Clicking runs a macro, which downloads a .zip file from a legitimate website that has been hacked. When it’s unzipped, the Emotet DLL will infect your computer, then the malware pilfers passwords and other sensitive data and uses the device to send malicious spam to other users. The malware can also download additional malware such as the Ryuk ransomware or the TrickBot malware. Just DON’T click enable content!

Starling and T-Mobile are getting ready to start testing their satellite to cellular service this year. This is according to a SpaceX executive, as reported by CNBC. A partnership was announced in August of last year, with the idea to provide “near complete coverage in most places in the U.S. — even in many of the most remote locations previously unreachable by traditional cell signals.” The idea is to create a new network, one that leverages Starlink satellites’ and T-Mobile’s mid-band 5G spectrum. There are several other companies working on this type of coverage. Apple already has emergency texting coverage via satellite, Samsung is getting ready to provide additional texting on top of emergency coverage, and a couple others are in the mix as well. In a few years, we may have full connections for our smartphones virtually every place on earth! 

Rivian has been unhappy that Amazon has only taken 10,000 of their electric delivery vans this year…on the low end of the promised purchase. Now, engadget.com reports that the EV maker is in talks with Amazon to wriggle out of their exclusive deal, and start to sell to other customers. Rivian site expects to sell 100,000 vans to Amazon by 2030. Amazon seems warm to the idea…a representative of the online giant saying Amazon wants ‘others to benefit’ from Rivian technology. Even if sales open up to other firms, Amazon still accounts for about a third of Rivian sales so far. 

I’m Clark Reid, and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.