Category: Technology

Stop giving out your main mobile number to just anyone. This is the best way to stay safe, keep annoying calls from coming to your main number — all for free.. I got a free second number years ago and use it today. I use the free second number to give out at the grocery store, pharmacy, credit card companies, utilities, retailers or anyone I wouldn’t necessarily invite to the dinner table.

Some folks on dating sites who’ve met online and think it’s time to share their phone number get a second number so that the other person isn’t as easily able to reverse search a primary phone line.

My primary number is precious, and I guard to keep it from being interrupted by sales calls and annoying solicitations.

I don’t want my life interrupted unless it’s from someone I care about.  It’s time to regain some of your privacy and uninterrupted life.

CLICK TO GET KURT’S CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH QUICK TIPS, TECH REVIEWS, SECURITY ALERTS AND EASY HOW-TO’S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER

How do free phone numbers work?

When you want to obtain a free phone number, you first must choose an area code. All phone numbers, including free ones, must have area codes in order to operate. Once you chose your area code, whichever service you are using will give you a list of available phone numbers that fall within that area code.

Your free number will allow people to dial with no extra cost to the person calling the number. This allows people to reach you from long distances without being charged any extra fees.

Plus, it ensures that people can reach you without you having to give them your personal phone number, giving you an extra layer of privacy.

4 COMMON THINGS ALEXA CAN DO BETTER THAN YOU

How can I get a free phone number?

There are various services that offer free phone numbers to people who want them.

Google Voice

Google Voice offers free phone numbers to users, and you can receive calls on all your devices at once. The number works both on smartphones and the web, so whether you’re on your phone, tablet, or computer, you will get an alert when someone is calling you. Some other features of Google Voice include:

• Voicemail transcription so that you can read your voicemails instead of listening to them
• Forwarding calls to any device and having spam calls blocked
• Free local calls to any phone number in the U.S. at no extra cost
• International calls can be made with a fee per minute

To download Google Voice:  iOS  | Android

TextNow

TextNow is an iOS app that you can download from your iPhone app store. The app gives you a free, secondary phone number to use, and it works just like a regular phone number. You just choose a city in the USA or Canada, and it gives you a new number with a unique area code. Some features that come on the app include:

• Change the text and ringtones to whatever you want
• Access to a voicemail inbox
• Call or text for free on your home Wi-Fi network
• You can purchase a SIM card for 99 cents for unlimited calls and texts at $0/month
• $8.99/month plans for 1 gigabyte of data

To download TextNow:  iOS | Android

Dingtone

Dingtone is an app only found on iOS devices that offers lots of features in addition to your free phone number with basic texting and calling. Some of these features include:

• Make conference calls and send faxes at no extra cost
• Free or cheap international phone calls to over 200 countries
• Premium features such as call blocking, forwarding, and recording

To download Dingtone:  iOS only

Textfree

Textfree is an app available through both iOS and Google Play app stores, and it can be used via smartphones, tablets, or computers. It gives you a custom phone number that you can use to contact people even if they don’t have the app themselves. Some other unique features of the app include:

• Unlimited free texting including sending pictures and videos
• Reliable WiFi calls with no carrier plan needed
• Customize your voicemail greeting

To download TextNow:  iOS | Android

APPLE, GOOGLE, AMAZON, AND FACEBOOK ARE ALWAYS LISTENING UNLESS YOU CHANGE THESE SETTINGS

Other ways to keep your information private

Besides having another unique number that will allow you to control who’s calling you, there are other ways to control your privacy. There are plenty of options for keeping your personal information out of the hands of the wrong people. Here are some extra safety tips you can take:

Use a VPN for private browsing

You can keep your browsing private and secure by making sure you install a VPN on your computer.  VPNs have other benefits as well, like increasing your connection speeds and preventing internet service providers from tracking any activity you do online.

Read more about our top picks by heading over to CyberGuy.com/VPN.

Use an encrypted email provider

You can keep your emails private by using an encrypted email server. This will prevent companies from selling your information to people who might bombard you with targeted ads, which could make you vulnerable to a phishing scam or even identity theft.

Our top pick for private and secure email providers is StartMail.  Their service will give you unlimited, anonymous aliases which can protect you from getting hundreds of spam emails a day. They also allow you to send password-protected messages, meaning the recipient of your email would have to enter a password just to view your message. And best of all, StartMail has a clean and easy-to-use interface making the whole experience enjoyable and safe.
Exclusive deal for CyberGuy readers: 60% off:  $23.98 for first year ($2 per month, billed annually) Includes a free 7-day trial.

Read more about our review by heading over to CyberGuy.com/Mail.

For more privacy tips, be sure to subscribe to the CyberGuy Report Newsletter at CyberGuy.com/Newsletter.

Copyright 2023 CyberGuy.com.  All rights reserved.  CyberGuy.com articles and content may contain affiliate links that earn a commission when purchases are made.

Washington
CNN
 — 

Two years after TikTok avoided a national ban in the United States, the popular short-form video app is now facing growing pushback at the state level.

In the past two weeks, at least seven states have said they will bar public employees from using the app on government devices, including Alabama, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Texas. (Another state, Nebraska, banned TikTok from state devices in 2020.) Last week, the state of Indiana announced two lawsuits against TikTok accusing the Chinese-owned platform of misrepresenting its approach to age-appropriate content and data security.

On Tuesday, a group of 15 attorneys general wrote to Apple and Google calling on the app store owners to stop listing TikTok as being appropriate for teens, over claims about the prevalence of mature content on the app.

The mounting pressure on TikTok has come from states led by Republican governors who have highlighted fears that TikTok users’ personal information could wind up in the hands of the Chinese government, thanks to that country’s national security laws.

“South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence gathering operations of nations who hate us,” said Gov. Kristi Noem in announcing the new state policy.

The flurry of announcements has drawn sharp contrasts with activity at the federal level. Since 2020, when the Trump administration threatened a ban over national security concerns, TikTok and the US government have been negotiating a deal that may allow the short-form video app to keep serving US users.

There have been years of closed-door negotiations between TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an opaque multi-agency panel charged with reviewing foreign investment deals for national security risks. One US official has suggested that CFIUS ban TikTok from the United States outright.

Whatever outcome the negotiations produce is still expected to have big implications for TikTok and its users. But the federal government’s continued inaction on that front, as well as recent reports of delays in the negotiations, has left the door open for states to step in as the app has gained immense popularity among US users.

In taking these steps, the states are unlikely to disrupt how everyday users access the app. But these recent announcements could nonetheless add to political pressure for tougher action at the federal level, which could in turn be more disruptive to users.

“It feels like the states are stepping into the DC vacuum on TikTok,” said Paul Gallant, a policy analyst at the investment research firm Cowen Inc. “I don’t see those new restrictions disrupting TikTok that much, but it probably adds a bit of pressure for Washington to ‘do something’ on TikTok one way or another.”

The Treasury Department, CFIUS’s chair agency, said in a statement that the panel is “committed to taking all necessary actions within its authority to safeguard US national security” and declined to comment on TikTok specifically. The White House also declined to comment.

“We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the bandwagon to enact policies based on unfounded, politically charged falsehoods about TikTok,” Hilary McQuaide, a spokesperson for TikTok, said in a statement provided to CNN. “It’s unfortunate that the many state agencies, offices, and universities on TikTok in those states will no longer be able to use it to build communities and connect with constituents.”

US lawmakers have raised bipartisan concerns that China’s national security laws could force TikTok — or its parent, ByteDance — to hand over the personal data of its US users. Security experts have said that the data could allow China to identify intelligence opportunities or to seek to influence US users through disinformation campaigns.

TikTok has said it is working with the US government to address all reasonable national security concerns. It has also taken independent steps to isolate US user data from other parts of its business. Last week, amid the pushback from the states, the company said it would restructure its US-focused content moderation, policy and legal teams under US Data Security, a special group within the company that’s led by US-based officials and walled off organizationally from other teams focused on the rest of the world.

Under the change, content policies TikTok develops for its global audience must be “reviewed and approved” for US audiences by TikTok’s US Data Security group, to ensure the policies meet the standards of any deal approved by CFIUS, the company said. Content moderation involving US users’ data, TikTok said, will be handled by a US-specific trust and safety team within the US Digital Security group, and not by its global trust and safety team.

TikTok has previously acknowledged that employees based in China can currently access user data, and has also declined to commit to stop sending US user information to China.

Harry Broadman, who leads the CFIUS practice at Berkeley Research Group, a consulting firm, said he isn’t privy to the details of the negotiation between TikTok and the US government but called the continued lack of resolution “a mystery.”

“I’m a little bit mystified why it’s taking so long for CFIUS to deal with this problem,” he said. “There must be some issue that’s going on.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a bipartisan pair of congressmen in the House, introduced new legislation that aims to ban TikTok from operating in the United States. In a statement, Rubio expressed frustration with the lack of action at the federal level.

“The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok,” Rubio said. “There is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company. It is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.”

With no deal yet between CFIUS and TikTok, the states led by Republican officials appear to have capitalized on the moment from a “tactical, political, winning-points perspective,” Broadman said.

“I don’t think it reflects a deeper suspicion on the part of the Republicans versus Democrats,” he said. “I think it’s more of a tactical question.”

Since government agencies have clear authority to manage their own devices in ways they see fit, barring public employees from using the app represents low-hanging fruit (and easy headlines), Broadman said.

In some ways, the states that have restricted TikTok are following the federal government’s lead. Already, the US military, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security have prohibited their own employees from using TikTok.

States such as Maryland also enacted their TikTok bans on government devices as part of a wider crackdown on Chinese-linked products and services, making the announcement more about China than about TikTok individually. Maryland’s directive also applies to Huawei and ZTE, which the US government has also taken steps to block from US markets.

At least one state is going even further. Last week, Indiana sued TikTok in two separate cases. One claimed that TikTok lures children onto the platform by falsely claiming it is appropriate for users between 13 and 17 years old; the other claims TikTok has “deceived” consumers about whether user data is sufficiently protected from Chinese government access. TikTok has declined to comment on the litigation but has said “the safety, privacy and security of our community is our top priority.”

Some states could also choose to begin advancing meaningful legislation that effectively limits TikTok on private devices, Broadman said, in a move that would more directly impact TikTok’s American user base. But such a move would likely introduce other issues about the regulation of commerce, and potentially result in legal challenges.

I use my voice to get a lot done. Siri sets meetings for me, silences my phone, and lots more. Tap or click for five simple voice commands you’ll use all the time.

An Amazon Echo can help you find your phone, lock the front door and drop in to chat with loved ones. Tap or click for the things I always ask Alexa to help with.

What’s the downside of always-on devices that listen for commands? Nearly all voice-activated technology uses microphones that listen for “wake words.” That means they are, technically, always listening.

If you want to take control of your privacy, here’s how to stop your smart devices from listening.

Foiling Facebook

Facebook sometimes requests access to the microphone for video chatting and text-to-speech purposes. You might not feel comfortable giving Facebook control of your mic. You can follow these steps for any app you want to block mic access to.

Note: There are many Android manufacturers, so the steps outlined in this article may differ from your model. If so, check with your model’s online manual. 

For iPhone:

• Open the Settings app. Then, scroll down and tap Facebook.
• Toggle the green switch next to Microphone to the off position.

You can also follow these steps:

• Open the Settings app. Then, scroll down and tap Privacy & Security.
• Locate the menu labeled Microphone and tap it.
• Find Facebook in the list of apps and toggle the green switch to the off position.

For Android:

• Open the Settings app, then tap Apps.
• Tap the app you want to change, in this case Facebook.
• Choose Permissions. To change a permission setting, tap it, then choose from these options: Allow only while using the app, Ask every time, or Don’t allow.

If you decide to shoot a video or chat with a friend, return to these settings and enable your mic. You can always switch it off again when you’re finished.

AUTOMAKERS LIKE BMW, GM, AND MERCEDES CHARGE MONTHLY FEES FOR FASTER SPEEDS, HEATED SEATS AND MORE

Stopping voice assistants

It is common knowledge that virtual assistants can pick up snippets of private conversations if you say something that sounds like the wake word. One study outlined 1,000 phrases that tripped up Alexa, Siri, Cortana and Google.

If you’re worried about your gadget’s always-on microphone, here are the steps to turn it off. Just know you’re trading some convenience for privacy.

Amazon Echo

• On your Echo device, find the button that looks like a microphone or a circle with a line through it.
• Push the button. This stops the device from passing voltage through the mic’s internals.
• If you wish to use Alexa, simply press the button again. You can always turn the mic off when not in use or during a private conversation.

PRIVACY SMARTS: 30-second check every Google and Facebook user must do today

Siri

• Open the Settings app on your iPhone. Scroll down and tap Siri & Search.
• Toggle the green switch next to “Listen for ‘Hey Siri’” to the off position.
• You can also turn off Allow Siri When Locked to prevent Siri from activating if a button is pressed in your pocket.

Google Assistant

On Android:

• Open the Settings app on your phone, then choose Apps.
• Under General, tap Assistant, then See all Assistant Settings.
• From here, you can click the toggle to turn off “Hey Google.”

On iOS:

• Open the Settings app. Scroll down and tap Privacy & Security.
• Locate the menu labeled Microphone and tap it.
• Find Google Assistant in the list of apps and toggle the green switch to the off position.

Cortana on Windows 10

• Click the Start Menu button, then Settings.
• Click Privacy > Voice Activation.
• Locate Microphone on the left-hand panel and click it.
• Scroll down to Cortana and toggle the Microphone permission to off.

Cortana on Windows 11

• Click the Start Menu button, then Settings.
• Click Privacy & Security > Voice Activation.
• Under Let apps access voice activation services, disable Cortana.

I-SPY: CHANGE YOUR COMPUTER’S SETTINGS TO STOP PROGRAMS SPYING ON YOU

Smart security systems listen, too

Even home security devices have always-listening microphones. You can disable audio recording on two popular home security devices: Google Nest and Amazon Ring.

Google Nest

• Open the Nest app on your smartphone and select the camera on the home screen.
• Tap Settings.
• Select Microphone. Then, tap the switch to turn it off.

Amazon Ring

• Open the Ring app on your smartphone and select the device you would like to mute.
• Tap Device Settings followed by Video Settings.
• Tap on the Audio Streaming and Recording toggle to turn off the mic.

Your smart TV

If you want to stop your smart TV from listening to you and scanning your channel-surfing history, check out our detailed guide to disabling these features on TVs made by Samsung, VIZIO, LG and more.

Tap or click here to see the easiest ways to stop your smart TV from tracking you

Keep your tech-know going

My popular podcast is called “Kim Komando Today.” It’s a solid 30 minutes of tech news, tips, and callers with tech questions like you from all over the country. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts. For your convenience, hit the link below for a recent episode.

PODCAST PICK: Cops use Facebook, ChatGPT drama, top scams spreading

Plus, how to save big money with smart water tech, know files hackers use the most, the five worst tech gadgets that steal your privacy and callers like you.

Check out my podcast “Kim Komando Today” on Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player.

Listen to the podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts. Just search for my last name, “Komando.”

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Get more tech know-how on The Kim Komando Show, broadcast on 425+ radio stations and available as a podcast. Sign up for Kim’s 5-minute free morning roundup for the latest security breaches and tech news. Need help? Drop your question for Kim here.

Copyright 2023, WestStar Multimedia Entertainment. All rights reserved. By clicking the shopping links, you’re supporting my research. As an Amazon Associate, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. I only recommend products I believe in.

The Apple iPhone has tons of unique little tricks within each of its apps, and you have to really play around with it to figure out what’s hidden. The one you may not expect to find is actually in the calculator app. 

So, if you’re trying to figure out what to tip your waiter at a restaurant or simply adding up how much money you’ve spent over the last week, these quick tips will certainly make your life easier.  

APPLE’S REPLACEMENT FOR THE PASSWORD

How to delete a single digit

If you type an incorrect digit in your calculator app, you do not have to press the C button to clear it and start all over again. Instead, simply swipe your finger to the left or right at the top of the display and the last digit you typed will disappear. 

How to use the scientific calculator 

GOT AN IPHONE? DON’T WAIT ANOTHER SECOND TO UPDATE CRITICAL PRIVACY SETTINGS

If you need to perform more complicated math equations such as exponents, square roots, etc., simply open your calculator app and turn your iPhone sideways. This will reveal an entire scientific calculator keyboard that offers tons of mathematical options, just like a real calculator.

CLICK TO GET KURT’S CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH QUICK TIPS, TECH REVIEWS, SECURITY ALERTS AND EASY HOW-TO’S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER 

How to copy and paste from within the calculator app 

If you need to quickly input your calculator results into another app, you don’t necessarily need to memorize the number itself. Simply double-tap the number to copy it, then paste it to wherever you need it to go. 

HOW TO FIND YOUR LOST IPHONE

How to use Spotlight Search to quickly do a calculation 

Calculator functions are also built into your Spotlight Search function on your iPhone. So if you don’t feel like going into your calculator app, you don’t have to.

Swipe left on your Home screen to reveal the Spotlight search page 

Type any simple math equation (addition, subtraction, etc.) into the search bar and the results will appear directly below.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

For more of my iPhone tips, head over to CyberGuy.com and search “Apple” and be sure to sign up for my free newsletter at CyberGuy.com/Newsletter. 

Hello, hello! Greg here again with Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the most read TechCrunch stories from the past seven days. Been too busy to read tech news? WiR should leave you with a pretty good idea of what people were reading/talking/tweeting about.

Want it in your inbox every Saturday AM? Here’s the link.

Oh! And before we dive in, a bit of a plug: I’m told we’ve got a handful of “Founder” tickets left for the TC Early Stage event coming to Boston next year. These tickets let current/prospective founders get into the (seriously excellent) event for just $149, and they’re letting us bump that down to $75 for Week in Review readers. Get ’em here while supplies last.

most read

Twitter vs. ElonJet: Another wild one at Twitter this week. First came the news that @ElonJet, an account that tracked the whereabouts of Elon’s private jet, had been suspended. Then the official account of Twitter-competitor Mastodon got suspended (with links to Mastodon flagged as “potentially harmful”) shortly after posting about said jet trackers. Then a bunch of tech reporters all got suspended, at least some of whom had been tweeting about the jet tracker ordeal. And then — yes, there’s more! — Elon joined a Twitter Space that featured a handful of said suspended reporters (with Twitter Spaces seemingly not recognizing/respecting the suspensions); after a few minutes of questions, Elon left the session and the entire Twitter Spaces feature was taken offline.

SBF arrested: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange/Gordian knot that exploded oh-so-dramatically over the last few months, was arrested in the Bahamas this week. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was officially charging SBF with defrauding investors, with investigations on other charges underway.

OpenAI wants to watermark the stuff its AI writes: “Did a human write that, or ChatGPT?” Kyle Wiggers asks. “It can be hard to tell — perhaps too hard, its creator OpenAI thinks, which is why it is working on a way to ‘watermark’ AI-generated content.”

NSA warns of exploits in popular networking gear: “The U.S. National Security Agency is warning that Chinese government-backed hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in two widely used Citrix networking products,” writes Carly Page. The flaw, which Citrix confirms is being actively exploited, allows hackers to run malicious code on devices often found in enterprise networks.

iOS 16.2: This week Apple shipped out the latest version of iOS, and Ivan Mehta took a look at some of its best features, from end-to-end encryption of more iCloud data, a karaoke mode for Apple Music, and the public rollout of the “infinite whiteboard” collaboration app, Freeform.

Instagram gets text-only posts: Ever wished you could post to Instagram without having to take a picture? No? Me neither. But Instagram added a text-centric option this week, and it’s at least proving popular enough to crack our top posts list — or, more likely, people are googling what the heck this new Instagram “Notes” thing is and landing on our site. Whatever the case, they kinda remind me of old-school AIM status messages — they’re short, ephemeral updates that live in your DMs rather than the main feed (see image below.)

audio roundup

The Equity crew may not be clairvoyant, but they are very, very smart — and this week, after a few absurdly unpredictable years, they dared to make some predictions about 2023. The Found podcast, meanwhile, chatted with Tiny Health founder Cheryl Sew Hoy about the importance of the gut microbiome — particularly in how having a good gut microbiome as an infant can help prevent chronic health issues down the road.

TechCrunch+

TC+ is the premium, members-only section of the site where we get to step away from the news cycle and go a bit deeper on some of the stuff our readers tell us they like most. Here’s what TC+ members were reading most this week:

The one slide 99% of founders get wrong: Between his time as a reporter, a VC, and a startup pitch coach, Haje has looked at more pitch decks than just about anyone I know. The most common mistake he sees? It’s all about “the ask.”

How much money should you raise for your startup?: It’s a Haje double feature this week, with his second most popular post touching on an all-too-common question: When it’s time to raise money for a startup, how much is the right amount?

If you have been using the same email address for a significant period of time, it’s likely that you receive hundreds of messages every day that you just don’t need or care about. Whether it’s discounts and promotions from stores you shopped at for your friend that one birthday, or even potentially dangerous spam that’s trying to sell your personal information, the time and energy it takes for you to sift through all that junk just isn’t necessary. 

That’s why we’re giving you some simple steps to regain control of your inbox. 

Unsubscribe from advertising and promotional email lists 

When you’re shopping online, most retail companies will require you to enter your email before purchasing in order to keep you in the loop of how soon your order will get to you. Makes sense, right? 

But what they don’t tell you is that now that they have your email address, they will be sending you multiple emails a day with their latest promotional discounts and deals in the hopes that you will keep shopping with them. 

PENTAGON HAS RECEIVED ‘SEVERAL HUNDRED’ OF UFO REPORTS, NONE OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL ORIGIN SO FAR

How do I unsubscribe? 

• Log into your email account 
• Click on one of the promotional emails in your inbox 
• Scroll all the way to the bottom and look for an unsubscribe link 
• Click the link and follow the steps that the retail company provides for unsubscribing 

Report unwanted emails as spam 

Every email account automatically comes with a Spam folder. Sometimes your email provider will recognize spam mail before it can reach your main inbox and automatically put it into that Spam folder so that you won’t even have to see it. But it’s important to know when an email that reaches your inbox looks fishy in case your provider misses something. 

How do I get rid of spam in my main inbox? 

• Always check the subject line of the email before clicking on it. If it looks suspicious or like something you don’t recognize, it’s probably spam 
• If you feel that the email could be spam mail, right-click on the email without opening it 

• A dropdown menu should appear when you right-click. Select the option Report Spam, Mark as Spam, or Mark as Junk

Create an alias email address 

Yes, we know the thought of creating a whole new email sounds like a lot of work. But we can assure you that it is way simpler than you think, and it will keep your main email address inbox cleaner and more clutter-free than ever before. 

What is an alias email address? 

An alias email address is a forwarding email address that you can keep separate from your main email inbox, but still have access to all those emails. You can create tons of different alias email addresses depending on what you want that specific alias to be used for. Some examples include: 

• Promotional or discount alias for all the stores you shop at 
• Work-related alias for all your business emails 
• School alias for keeping track of all your assignments

Which alias email service should I use? 

CLICK TO GET KURT’S CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH QUICK TIPS, TECH REVIEWS, SECURITY ALERTS AND EASY HOW-TO’S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER 

Our #1 pick for alias email addresses is StartMail, a secure email platform that allows you to keep your inbox safe and free from junk. Some benefits to subscribing to StarMail include: 

• Unlimited anonymous aliases can be created to protect your information from being sold 
• Automatic email encryption so that only you and the receiver can see your messages 
• StartMail is usable on any device 
• See entire links in your email before clicking them so you’re less likely to fall for malware or a phishing scam 

For more of my review, visit CyberGuy.com/Mail. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

For more privacy tips, be sure to subscribe to the CyberGuy Report Newsletter at CyberGuy.com/Newsletter. 

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

May the earnest among us rise up: Techies, it’s prediction season. It’s my favorite time of the year, not because I’m a glutton for threads or care deeply about why DTC’s worst is still ahead of us — a take that echoes loudly for the third year in a row, mind you — but because it’s nice to see us all sit down and reflect.

Before I jump into what I’m thinking, some of my favorite prediction pieces and threads have come from Ganas VC’s Lolita Taub, QED Investors’ Nigel Morris and our very own. 

OK, with that, here’s what I think will happen next year: the return to in-person, five-day work weeks for tech workers. Before you jump in with all the exceptions and asterisks, let me explain why I believe this is going to happen.

All of 2021, we spoke about the power pendulum shifting toward employees, spearheaded by the Great Resignation. Then, this year, the Great Resignation became the Great Reset, as employers fired large percentages of their staff due to changing macroeconomic conditions. As we enter 2023, many have predicted that the wave of layoffs may get worse before it gets better — a prediction already proved true by recent rounds of cuts before the holidays, including Airtable, Plaid and Komodo Health.

In a lot of cases, the power is shifting back to employers once again — which means those who have wanted to bring people in the office since the moment lockdown first began may finally be empowered to do so. I’m not saying every founder and executive is secretly colluding, but I also think the domino effect matters here. If your biggest competitor starts working from the office to boost productivity, you may feel tempted to as well; at the same time, if you’re a scrappy early-stage startup that is lucky enough to be hiring, you might still be able to get the upper edge on recruitment if you tell employees they can work from everywhere.

My perspective isn’t just a hunch; it’s what I’m hearing from founders. A number of entrepreneurs, some citing Elon Musk’s choice to bring Twitter employees back to in-person work, say that they’re planning to bring back a mandatory in-person work culture in the new year because of the issues that are arising from remote work (whether that be productivity or collaboration). It’s a bit of manifesting, a bit of reality. One founder told me over drinks and fancy snacks that they weren’t worried about losing talent — because those who leave just because there’s an in-person mandate weren’t mission-driven to begin with.

Hm.

There’s a lot there that makes that sentiment much more complicated, especially when thinking about how in-person work impacts the immunocompromised and those with families and caretaking responsibilities. While I don’t think the companies that were 100% distributed since day one will jump into buying offices, I think we’ll see more companies than you think start with a hybrid approach and more hybrid companies weigh more toward in-person work than remote.

I know all of you have thoughts on this, as you didn’t shy away from telling me that on Twitter. Let’s end with some of my favorite tweets there:

Let’s pause from all this work chatter and talk about other work chatter. As always, you can find me on Substack and Instagram, where I publish more of my words and work. In the rest of this newsletter, we’ll talk about opinionated AI and open source — as well as staff gift guides.

AI art apps are having a moment — thanks to Lensa AI

Artificial intelligence is having (another) moment — which means scrappy innovation is getting some deserved, if not buzzy, attention. This week, TC’s Sarah Perez spotted the rise of AI art apps all over the App Store, seemingly jumping off the success of Lensa AI’s viral avatar generators.

Here’s why this is important: We’re going to see a lot of flash-in-the-pan stars, and real power, in this space in the coming months. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, helped built ChatGPT (which has been in charge of all those fun prompts and answers that you’ve been seeing all over Tech Twitter). He made a great point when describing the technology but one that I think can be scaled to all of the sector:

“ChatGPT is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness. it’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. it’s a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness,” Altman tweeted.

How open source is shaping Twitter’s future

TC’s Paul Sawers is one of the most thoughtful writers I know, and you’ll get what I’m talking about if you read his latest: “Decentralized discourse: How open source is shaping Twitter’s future.” He walks through how algorithmic transparency, encrypted DMs, and, yes, even content moderation, has been a recurring theme in Twitter’s present — and will certainly shape its next chapter.

Here’s a key excerpt:

What if Twitter decided to go all-in on open source? Not just a recommendation algorithm or a protocol, but the whole shooting match — codebase, clients ‘n all? It would certainly be a Herculean undertaking, particularly with everything else going on at Twitter right now.

It would also be an almost unprecedented move to see a $44 billion private company open its entire codebase to the world’s masses. That’s not to say that it couldn’t ever happen though, as Musk has form in making radical moves. Eight years ago Musk ripped up the patent playbook when he pledged that Tesla wouldn’t sue any company that infringed any of its patents “in good faith.” At the time, Musk said it was all about expediting electric car adoption and the infrastructure required (e.g., charging stations), an ethos that is broadly aligned with that of open source.

Gift guide corner

Here are some of the fun and imaginative gift guides that the TC staff put together this week:

A few notes

Seen on TechCrunch

Is ChatGPT a ‘virus that has been released into the wild’?

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas

Komodo Health, once tipped for a looming IPO, has cut staff as CFO departs

The FTC is suing to block Microsoft from buying Activision

As AI pervades biotech, what are investors looking for in 2023?

Seen on TechCrunch+

Why the SPAC route makes sense for Getaround

OK, now. Now we’re going to see more startups acquire other startups

There are a lot of reasons to be excited about Canada’s venture market

How to respond when a VC asks about your startup’s valuation

How much money should you raise for your startup?

So we’ve made it to the end of our last chat about this wild, plot twist of the year. I’m not going to lie: These past 12 months didn’t fly by. Instead, every day on the tech news beat felt important, complex — if not exhausting and confusing too — in a way that has really shaped the way I see this world. It’s still a work in progress, but I will say that 2022 was ultimately the year in which I finally landed the right sourcing, trust and networks to realize that tech is not all rainbows and butterflies.

To brag for a second, there were some career highlights for me this year, from interviewing Kevin Hart to getting in fights with many a millionaire on Twitter. I wrote about the difficulties of rebuilding a startup and gave a window into a community-based company letting down its community. I laughed about how full circle tech is — and then found my predictions aging horribly every single time. We grew Equity Wednesday into a thoughtful show that tries to answer one big question at a time, instead of all the questions at once.

Startups Weekly is now read by tens of thousands of you all — and it’s never been spicier!

I have never been more fascinated by how power and capital works in this world. That’s thanks to all of you, from the ones who read and amplify our stories, to the ones that help nudge us to rocks waiting to flip over, to even the ones that tell us what angle we missed (and how to do better next time). It’s also thanks to my amazing team here at TechCrunch, for whom I never have enough words of gratitude for.

I’m going to be out of the office until the new year, probably sipping cocoa, sneaking some Skyline chili and indulging in my mom’s chana masala. I wish you a happy and safe holiday season, and when we’re back let’s talk resolutions, okay‽

In the mean time, I would love if you follow me anywhere other than Twitter. I’m on Substack, Mastodon and Instagram as @/natashathereporter.

OK, you say bye first. No seriously. Ok fine, ok, bye,

N

When you look at Adobe and Salesforce, while there are many differences, they compete directly in some areas. And when you consider their overall performance, the numbers weren’t all that different in their most recent earnings reports:

For Adobe:

• Revenue of $4.53 billion, which was right in line with analysts’ expectations, up 10%, which translates to 14% in constant currency if the dollar weren’t so strong it was dragging down overseas earnings numbers.

For Salesforce:

• Revenue of $7.8 billion, compared with $7.2 billion expected by the analyst class. That was up 14%, or 19% in constant currency.

On its face, that’s pretty darn similar, yet Salesforce’s stock price has gotten slammed since it revealed its results. On Friday, the day after Adobe announced its most recent results, its stock closed up nearly 3%.

To be fair, Salesforce did drop the bombshell news that Bret Taylor was leaving at the same event, which may have spooked investors some, but Adobe’s 10% number isn’t exactly something to scream from the rooftops.

In fact, it’s dangerously close to single-digit growth doldrums, a place no public company wants to be living (except perhaps IBM). But Adobe has a couple of things going for it that Salesforce doesn’t. The first is that it’s diversifying its income in a big way, which should help as we enter the new year amid ongoing economic turbulence.

While the vast majority of the revenue still comes from the creative side of the house, as Adobe celebrates its 40th anniversary, we are starting to see long-term bets that CEO Shantanu Narayen made on marketing starting to pay off. That includes the $4.75 billion Marketo acquisition and the $1.6 billion Magento acquisition, both of which occurred in 2018.

The company also announced that Experience Cloud, which includes marketing tools and analytics products, reached $1 billion for the quarter for the first time — $1.15 billion, to be precise.

Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM essentials, who watches the marketing and sales markets closely, said it’s a big milestone for Adobe.

“I think most people still think of Photoshop, Illustrator and all the rest of the Creative Cloud apps, but Experience Cloud hitting this milestone illustrates the importance of using those tools to create and manage customer experiences to build deep, long-lasting relationships with them.

“Experience Cloud gets to come out of the shadows of Creative Cloud a bit,” Leary told TechCrunch.

And speaking of diversifying, investors may not have liked Figma’s $20 billion price tag when it was announced, but they seem to be settling into the idea of it becoming part of the company. Of course, the deal still has to clear significant regulatory hurdles in the U.S. and abroad before it becomes a reality.

Yet even without that, let’s face it: Figma revenue is not going to move the needle all that much in the short term, and Adobe is doing pretty well. But let’s take a closer look at these two reports and see if they are as similar as they appear at first glance and try to parse why Adobe is getting more favorable investor treatment.

Yesterday, we had the chance to catch up with Fabrice Grinda, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded the free classifieds site OLX — now owned by Prosus — and who has in recent years been building up his venture firm, FJ Labs. He often likens the outfit to an angel investor “at scale,” saying that like a lot of angel investors, “We don’t lead, we don’t price, we don’t take board seats. We decide after two one-hour meetings over the course of a week whether we invest or not.”

The outfit, which Grinda co-founded with entrepreneur Jose Marin, has certainly been busy. Though its debut fund was relatively small — it raised $50 million from a single limited partner in 2016 — Grinda says that FJ Labs is now backed by a wide array of investors and has invested in 900 companies around the world by writing them checks of between $250,000 and $500,000 for a stake of typically 1% to 3% in each.

In fact, the data provider PitchBook recently ranked FJ Labs the most active venture outfit globally, just ahead of the international outfit SOSV. (You can see Pitchbook’s rankings at page bottom.)

Yesterday, Grinda suggested that the firm could become even more active in 2023, now that the market has cooled and founders are more interested in FJ Lab’s biggest promise to them — that it get them follow-on funding come hell or high water through the connections of Grinda and his partners. Indeed, while that promise was probably less interesting in a world awash with capital, it has likely become more compelling as investors pull back and founders find themselves facing fewer options. Excerpts from our wide-ranging chat with Grinda follow, edited lightly for length.

TC: You’re making so many bets in exchange for a very small stake. Meanwhile you’ve bet on companies like Flexport that have raised a lot of money. You’re not getting washed out of these deals as they raise round after round from other investors?

FC: It’s true that you sometimes go from 2% to 1% to 0.5%. But as long as a company exits at 100 times that value, say we put in $250,000 and it becomes $20 million, that’s totally fine. It doesn’t bother me if we get diluted on the way up.

When making as many bets as FJ Labs does, conflicts of interest seem inevitable. What’s your policy on funding companies that might compete with one another?

We avoid investing in competitors. Sometimes we bet on the right or the wrong horse and it’s okay. We made our bet. The only case where it does happen is if we invest in two companies that are not competitive that are doing different things, but one of them pivots into the market of the other. But otherwise we have a very Chinese Wall policy. We don’t share any data from one company to the others, not even abstracted.

We will invest in the same idea in different geographies, but we will clear it by the founder first because, to your point, there are many companies that attract the same markets. In fact, we may not take a call when a company is in the pre-seed or seed-stage or even A stage if there are seven companies doing the same thing. We’re like, ‘You know what? We’re not comfortable making the bet now, because if we make a bet now, it’s our horse in the race forever.’

You mentioned not having or wanting board seats. Given what we’re seen at FTX and other startups that don’t appear to have enough experienced VCs involved, why is this your policy?

First of all, I think most people are good-intentioned and trustworthy so I don’t focus on protecting the downside. The downside is that a company goes to zero and the upside is that it goes to 100 or 1,000 and will pay for the losses. Are there cases where there has been fraud in lining the numbers? Yes, but would I have identified it if I sat on the board? I think the answer is no, because VCs do rely on numbers given to them by the founder and what if someone’s giving you numbers that are wrong? It’s not as though the board members of these companies would identify it.

My choice not to be on boards is actually also a reflection of my personal history. When I was running board meetings as a founder, I did feel they were a useful reporting function, but I didn’t feel they were the most interesting strategic conversations. Many of the most interesting conversations happened with other VCs or founders who had nothing to do with my company. So our approach is that if you as a founder want advice or feedback, we are there for you, though you need to reach out. I find that leads to more interesting and honest conversations than when you’re in a formal board meeting, which feels stifled.

The market has changed, a lot of late-stage investment has dried up. How active would you say some of these same investors are in earlier-stage deals?

They’re writing some checks, but not very many checks. Either way, it’s not competitive with [FJ Labs] because these guys are writing a $7 million or a $10 million Series A check. The median seed [round] we see is $3 million at a pre-money valuation of $9 million and $12 million post [money valuation], and we’re writing $250,000 checks as part of that. When you have a $1 billion or $2 billion fund, you aren’t going to be playing in that pool. It’s too many deals you’d need to do to deploy that capital.

Are you finally seeing an impact on seed-stage sizes and valuations owing to the broader downturn? It obviously hit the later-stage companies much faster.

We’re seeing a lot of companies that would have liked to raise a subsequent round — that have the traction that would have easily justified a new outside round a year or two or three years ago — having to instead raise a flat, internal round as an extension to their last round. We just invested in a company’s A3 round — so three extensions at the same price. Sometimes we give these companies a 10% or 15% or 20% bump to reflect the fact that they’ve grown. But these startups have grown 3x, 4x, 5x since their last round and they are still raising flat, so there has been massive multiples compression.

What about fatality rates? So many companies raised money at overly rich valuations last year and the year before. What are you seeing in your own portfolio?

Historically, we’ve made money on about 50% of the deals we’ve invested in, which amounts to 300 exits and we’ve made money because we’ve been price sensitive. But fatality is increasing. We’re seeing a lot of ‘acqui-hires,’ and companies maybe selling for less money than was raised. But many of the companies still have cash until next year, and so I suspect that the real wave of fatalities will arrive in the middle of next year. The activity we’re seeing right now is consolidation, and it’s the weaker players in our portfolio that are being acquired. I saw one this morning where we got like 88% back, another that delivered 68%, and another where we got between 1 and 1.5x of our money back. So that wave is coming, but it’s six to nine months away.

How do you feel about debt? I sometimes worry about founders getting in over their heads, thinking it’s comparatively safe money.

Typically startups don’t [secure] debt until their A and B rounds, so the issue is usually not the venture debt. The issue is more the credit lines, which, depending on the business you’re in, you should totally use. If you’re a lender for instance and you do factoring, you’re not going to be lending off the balance sheet. That’s not scalable. As you grow your loan book, you would need infinite equity capital, which would lead you to zero. What usually happens if you’re a lending business is you initially lend off the balance sheet then you get some family offices, some hedge funds, and eventually a bank line of credit, and it gets cheaper and cheaper and scales.

The issue is in a rising-rate environment, and an environment where perhaps the underlying credit scores — the models that you use — are not as high and not as successful as you’d think. Those lines get pulled, and your business can be at risk [as a result]. So I think a lot of the fintech companies that are dependent on these credit lines may be facing an existential risk as a result. It’s not because they took on more debt; it’s because the credit lines they used might be revoked.

Meanwhile, inventory-based businesses [could also be in trouble]. With a direct-to-consumer business, again, you don’t want to be using equity to buy inventory, so you use credit, and that makes sense. As long as you have a viable business model, people will give you debt to finance your inventory. But again, the cost of that debt is going up because the interest rates are going up. And because the underwriters are becoming more careful, they may decrease your line. They may call it, in which case your ability to grow is basically shrinking. So companies that depend on that to grow quickly are going to see themselves extremely constrained and are going to have a hard time on a go-forward basis.

The head of the United Nations is warning that Twitter’s suspension of several journalists’ accounts sets a “dangerous precedent.” Most of the journalists had covered Elon Musk’s decision to ban an account that tracked his private jet, using publicly available data.