In this episode of the Tech Channel, we discussed Block laying off 40% of its workforce, open-eye making a deal with the DoD where Anthropic could not, and Netflix backing out of its deal to take over Warner Brothers Discovery. Got all this and more for you in episode 217 of the Tech John from Columbus, Ohio. I'm your host, Rob Dunwood. And coming out of Philly, it's your girl, Tech Life, Steph. Tech Life, Steph, I was struggling. People, no one is not in the pre-shorty after show, I hear this, but I was struggling to read about 60 words to get through the intro of this show. I don't know what's going on. It's, I, I flub it regularly. But it took, I think, four takes for me to get it. All good. All good, man. You know, it happens sometimes. So, I got to ask before we get into doing the show, and for folks who are listening and don't hear another deep voice, Terrence is at a basketball game. I believe that's what he said is, you know, his son has got a basketball game this evening, so he wasn't able to make it. So Steph and I just going to run with just the two of us edition of the show. But I did want to, before we get into this, just let folks know that, hey, we have patrons that are rocking with the show. I don't know what it is over the last few months. We didn't get a new patron this month, but Aaron Jones actually increased their level. So they said, hey, we want to make sure you guys bring this tech the way that you bring it. So they've actually given us a raise in Patreon. Hey. We started to get folks who are actually emailing us in Patreon.

So if you did not know, if you're a patron or even if you're not, you can go over to Patreon. If you head over to the techjohn.com for slash Patreon or go to patreon. dot com for slash the tech John, you can send us messages. So we do read those and try to get back to you as quickly as we possibly can on what folks are saying. So if you got anything that you want to let us know about the show or what's going on with the show, please, please, please go over there to our Patreon and hit us up. So we really appreciate all the things the patrons are doing for us. And even those who aren't patrons, we're just, you know, coming in to let us know what's up. Let us know what's up via the Patreon. So with that, Steph, let's jump right into the tech because it's a hot week. It's a hot week. Even though it's two of us, we got more stories than we normally would have. It is a lot going on. And I wanted to kick it off with this one with Block. So for those who don't know what Block is, Cash out, I know a lot of our listeners no cash yet,

but Block is the company that's behind cash.

They're behind a lot more than that.

It's a financial and services company.

But it's run by Jack Dorsey and Block last week announced that they were laying off over 40% of their employees across the board. So they have laid off over 40% of their employees across the board.

So they have laid off over 4,000 workers at the company.

Block was just over 10,000 employees.

Now they are somewhere just over 6,000.

So in the interesting thing here, because not a lot of companies do this,

Jack Dorsey flat out said,

we're doing this because of efficiencies with artificial intelligence. In fact, he said,

we're already seeing that the intelligence tools were creating and using paired with smaller

and flatter teams are enabling a new way of working with fundamentally changing what it means to

build and run a company. So that's what he's doing at Block, but he then doubled down on it and says,

and I'm not the only one.

He believes that Block is not alone in this and that other companies will be following suit.

So he literally is telling us, he said this in their earnings call,

that he expects that other companies will be telling us that they are doing

massive layoffs of significant portions of their workforce. And the reason is because artificial

intelligence. Now, we've talked about on this show a lot that this is coming. You know,

we're probably going to start seeing this. But for the most part, with the exception of Andy

...