v3.5_bonus: Canva creates cringe

In this bonus episode from For Tech’s Sake, Elaine and Jenny weigh up whether a cringe-inducing product announcement was a misstep or a stroke of genius.

You can only find out where they landed on this debate if you’re a HeadStuff+ subscriber.

Of course, you can also decide for yourself:

Remember what Liz Carolan told us: shitposting is strategic! 💩

And let’s just say tech has form when it comes to cringeworthy content.

(The inspiration for Finland’s Eurovision entry perhaps?)

In other news, Spotify got into hardware with its Car Thing (yep, that’s the real name) and quickly regretted it, deciding to brick the products already sold and telling people to just chuck them in the bin. 🗑️

Since recording, Spotify has at least started to offer refunds for the device. (Our influence? Maybe. Or it could be the threat of a lawsuit. Who can be sure?)

But the devices are still going to be rendered useless, and if you listened to our episode on e-waste, you’ll know how much we hate this! 🤬 So users are still pleading with the company to open-source it and extend its use. (Learn more about the open source community in this episode.)

Jenny would also like to give a shout-out to cybercrime fighters who are trolling criminals online. Great job lads! (Psyops can be good, actually? 🤔)

These tactics formed part of the global operation to take down the LockBit ransomware gang (although this might not be the end of them).

Of course, we can’t reference a cybersecurity story without mentioning our illuminating episode with Brian Honan, a world-leading expert on these matters.

Oh, and Ticketmaster is getting sued for antitrust in the US, so that’s great news.

That’s it until were back in the main feed next week with an all-new episode. In the meantime, we’re probably going to tune in to our daylist (but not via Car Thing). 🎶