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- 🧠 The Weekly Download #25: Peek behind the veil
🧠 The Weekly Download #25: Peek behind the veil
It's been roughly a year, but now is a good time as ever to share what happened a year ago
Kevin Raposo
February 17, 2024 • Reading Time: 12 minutes
Sponsored by
Welcome to KnowTechie’s Weekly Download. We know life gets busy, so we've compiled the most important tech stories you might have missed this week. So grab a coffee, and let’s get started! If this email was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe to the newsletter. Missed an issue? Here's an archive of past newsletters.
Here’s what you can expect from today’s newsletter
⛪️ Confession Time
ℹ Quick Tech Tip
🎁 Giveaway
🕹️ Trivia
📰 Headlines
🛠️ Tools
🤑 Deals
Hey everyone: I realized I haven't talked much about what goes on behind the scenes here at KnowTechie.
For those of you who don’t know, this newsletter isn’t just a newsletter. It’s the newsletter for the tech news website KnowTechie.
About a year ago, we hit a rough patch and ended up losing 80% of our team. This included Josiah, our main editor; Alex Gatewood, our top writer; and Joe Rice-Jones, who knew everything about hardware.
So, what happened? Josiah pretty much quit and ghosted me. Or that’s what I initially thought. But the truth is that he secretly launched a new site under my nose and worked on the site while he was working at KnowTechie. Lessons learned.
As for Alex, well, he used to work in construction before joining us and later decided this kind of job wasn’t for him, so he left too.
And Joe? That was on me—I made a bad call that ended up costing us, but I made sure to bring him back with better pay and a bigger role.
I won’t sugarcoat it—it was tough without them. Handling everything from writing and researching to managing a big website like KnowTechie was almost too much.
It was a really low point for me personally, as everything else in my life was also taking a hit because I had zero time for anything else.
So, why am I sharing all this with you? I guess if there's a lesson in all of this mess, it's pretty simple: Keep going, no matter how hard it gets.
Today, we have a thriving staff again. We have editors, writers, a graphic design and video team, and much more. I’ll make the formal introductions next week.
Moral of the story: Losing most of our team was tough, but it taught us to stick it out and adapt to changes. Life threw us a curveball, and it was rough, but we learned that we could get through it. And that's something worth sharing.
A message from our sponsor
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💾 Quick Tip 💾
Did you know that pressing CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + WIN + L opens the LinkedIn website in Windows 11? Whether this is helpful to you or not, well, the verdict is still out.
I was today years old when I learned that holding
CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-WIN and then pressing L
opens LinkedIn in Windows 11 😳
Is this the worst shortcut ever?
— BadSeed Tech (@badseedtech)
Feb 14, 2024
🎁 Giveaway(s)
If you missed the newsletter last week, we shared a new page that hosts all of our current giveaways. Since we partnered up with Bonbon, they’ve been feeding us (well, really, our readers) with giveaway prizes, and instead of nagging with you guys with each one, we made a dedicated page that lists them all. You can find that page here or on our newsletter homepage here.
If you enjoy getting free stuff, make sure to check back on that page for new giveaways. We will update it once a week with new giveaways and contest information.
⏰ Trivia Time
Who led the design team behind the first iMac? |
⏪ Last Week’s Question:
Alright, last week’s also brought more people out. Shoutout to all the lurkers out there. Keep this up, and we may have to start dishing out prizes.
Anyway, we threw a hard one at you last week because a lot of you got it wrong. Let’s look at the numbers:
Question: What is the name of the app developed by Google that can measure the distance between objects using your smartphone's camera?
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Google Distance Measure (26)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Google Lens (49)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Google Maps (12)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Google Measure (15)
Correct Answer: Google Measure
Google Measure uses a special system by Google called ARCore. This lets you use your phone's camera to put computer-made images and measurements on top of what you're really seeing around you.
Headlines worth checking out
OpenAI’s new text-to-video model will melt your brain: OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, is kicking things up a notch with the introduction of Sora, a generative AI that transforms written AI prompts into ridiculously life-like videos.
ChatGPT will soon be able to remember your conversations: ChatGPT is getting a new feature: memory. OpenAI said Tuesday that it is testing a feature that will allow ChatGPT to remember things users discuss with the chatbot in future conversations.
Mark Zuckerberg basically called the Apple Vision Pro….trash: Mark Zuckerberg recently shared his thoughts on Apple's Vision Pro in an Instagram post. Basically, it’s a five-minute commercial video that essentially calls Apple’s Vision Pro trash.
Sony Will Not Release Any New Major Existing PlayStation Franchise Titles Before April 2025: Sony announced no new major franchise titles for 2024 and that the PlayStation 5 is nearing the end of its life cycle, anticipating a sales slowdown in the next fiscal year.
Gemini and ChatGPT appear to have almost no safeguards against creating AI disinfo for the 2024 US presidential election: Google and OpenAI's chatbots have almost no safeguards against creating AI disinformation for the 2024 presidential election.
Nintendo Switch 2 may not launch in 2024 after all: Nintendo told game publishers the Switch 2's launch is delayed from late 2024 to Q1 2025; source: Nintendo needs more time to prepare its own games.
Google brings a version of Pixel's 'Hold for Me' tool to more phones and desktop via Search: This feature will call a business on your behalf, navigate through the various phone menus, wait on hold and then notify you when an actual human is ready to talk.
🤖 Tools
Fixkey: Fixkey is a grammar-fixing tool designed for macOS that fixes grammar mistakes in seconds.
ReclaimAI: A calendar app that optimizes everyone’s time for better productivity, collaboration, and work-life balance.
Heyday: AI copilot that transforms your documents, notes, and conversations into quotes, shareable content, and a queryable database.
Mindy: A new Al assistant that lives in your email.
Sintra: AI Prompts that transform a chatbot into a full-on automation system, freeing up more of your time.
Wondera: Karaoke and transform any songs in your AI voice.
💸 Deals
Get 3 months of free Audible Plus with new Amazon promo
For Presidents’ Day, this Philips Hue starter kit is $40 off
1-Year Quicken Classic Subscription (Windows/Mac): Get it now for $32 with promo code ASW4BDN23336. If you prefer to upgrade to the Premier or Business Edition, use the following promo codes below.
Alright folks, this is where I wrap it up. As always, my door is always open. Reply to this email and say hi. Always happy to talk shop.
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