It's techie Tuesday, buds. I'm Diamond Naga Siu, and I really enjoy cooking and eating food.
That's why this Googler is living my dream life. He's a manager at the search giant by day and culinary school student by night. The company even pays a portion of Harrison Hill's tuition for the Institute for Culinary Education in New York.
He took Insider behind-the-scenes for a day in his life balancing his day-job responsibilities with his first steps into the world of professional chefs.
While I daydream about getting my culinary education partially comped too, let's dive into today's tech.
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1. Googlers tell CEO Sundar Pichai: "Don't be evil." The catchphrase has long been phased out from the company. But more than 1,400 Googlers asked their CEO to continue the spirit of the adage by handling layoffs better.
- Their open letter highlighted how worker voices were not considered throughout the layoff process. So they gathered Googlers all over the world to ask Pichai to publicly commit to doing better.
- Their first request is to freeze all new hires during the layoff process. Under this point, they also asked the company to allow for "voluntary redundancies and voluntary working time reduction before compulsory layoffs."
- Workers also asked the company to protect Googlers from countries with active conflicts or humanitarian crises. They cited Ukraine as an example and urged Pichai to offer extra support for workers who hold work visas.
Read the full, anti-evil letter here.
In other news:
2. Romance scams are costing Americans billions. A loneliness epidemic. The rise of online dating. Advances in cryptocurrencies. These have created a perfect storm for online romance scams, Eve Upton-Clark writes for Insider. Dive into the rise of costly relationship ruses here.
3. Target "double-tapper" customers are causing chaos. It's the digital equivalent of cutting in line, but unlike real-world queue-hopping, most people would never realize they're doing it. Go inside the daily source of disruption here.
4. Become fluent in talking with ChatGPT. Anna Bernstein trains bots to generate high-quality, accurate writing. She shared three tips on how to get the best results from ChatGPT, including paying attention to your verbs. Get the full list here.
5. Inside the demise of Vice. The media company was once on the edge of a $3.5 billion offer from Disney. But then it all went downhill. Today, Vice Media is scrambling for a buyer, and its future will likely be determined in the coming months. Here's how Vice fell so far, so fast.
6. Meet the AI robots that clean, conduct deliveries, and check inventory. Companies like Lowe's and 7-Eleven recently announced that they'll use robots for a variety of tasks. Check them out here.
7. Teslas saw an uptick in crashes after changing a safety feature. In 2021, the car company swapped out radars for cameras to detect obstacles. This has caused an uptick in accidents, per a Washington Post report. More on the crash increase here. Bonus: Tesla Model Y batteries have "zero repairability."
8. Mark Zuckerberg is shooting himself in the foot with layoffs. The Meta CEO is on round two of layoffs during his self-proclaimed "year of efficiency." But experts say the job cuts will likely have the opposite effect and drag things down. Dive into the layoff damage here.
Odds and ends:
9. Americans getting weight-loss drugs from Canada and Mexico. A prescription diabetes medication has been recently used as a weight-loss drug. But its prices are surging in the US. So many are getting it internationally for cheaper. More on the pricey problem here.
10. Spotting a stunt double is all in the ears. Skeptics claim Russian president Vladamir Putin has multiple decoys. They even believe his stand-ins have undergone surgery to look like him. Check out the body-double biology here.
What we're watching today:
- The Adobe Summit starts today in Las Vegas. Top execs from T-Mobile, Verizon, EY, Eli Lilly, and other major companies will speak at the multi-day event.
- The Wired Health Conference starts today in London. The event highlights changes in how we access and provide healthcare.
- The Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe is hosting a conference in Hamburg, Germany on the future of digital advertising.
Curated by Diamond Naga Siu in San Diego. (Feedback or tips? Email dsiu@insider.com or tweet @diamondnagasiu) Edited by Matt Weinberger (tweet @gamoid) in San Francisco and Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London.