WTF?! Another example of why CTOs (or any CSOs, for that matter) don’t find love from others is the boss of a digital marketing company in Utah, who wants his employees back in the office, praised one employee for being that he sold his family dog ​​in order to fulfill his demands. Unsatisfied with this remark, he accused the employees of “quiet withdrawal” and insufficient work. He also interviewed full-time single parents, saying the arrangement was unfair to children or employers.

At the center of the controversy was James Clark, CEO of Clearlink, a digital marketing company based in Utah. Last week, he hosted a virtual town hall that made headlines for his extreme work ethic that is foisted on employees.

motherboard posted an edited video of the meeting after it was taken down elsewhere due to a copyright complaint from Clearlink. This was mainly intended to discuss the company’s return to work policy, which forced workers living within 50 miles of the company’s headquarters in Draper, Utah to return to the building four days a week, with a few exceptions. This is despite Clark telling employees in late October that there were no plans to stop telecommuting — some employees were hired on the understanding that they would be working from home.

But instead of reassuring employees that they will be back in the office, Clarke appeared to spend most of the video complaining about them. He said about 30 employees hadn’t opened their laptops for a month (quiet quitters) and claimed that some of the developers were working for other companies on their payroll from Clearlink.

Clarke said recent advances in artificial intelligence mean the company needs to increase its productivity by 30 to 50 times that of conventional manufacturing. He also mentioned that he studied at Oxford and Harvard, which he said were founded and operated according to the Judeo-Christian ethic. “I call on any of you to work harder than me, but you won’t,” he said.

The CEO also praised the sacrifices people made to get back to the office. “I have sacrificed myself, and those of you who are here have sacrificed a lot to be here – to be away from your family.” He noted that “I learned from one of our leaders that while listening to this message, [someone] went out and sold his family dog.”

James Clark is definitely not Gordon Gekko

Clark, who served a decade on the board of pet health company PetIQ, said the dog story “breaks my heart as someone who has led the pet humanization movement at other companies we’ve built.” But then it sounds like he’s praising the dog salesman – that doesn’t mean he added the words “Please people don’t sell your beloved pets” at the end of the joke.

Clark ended his memorable tirade by targeting single mothers, stating that they struggled to fill both roles as caregivers and staff members.

“This pandemic has hit breadwinner mothers the hardest. Many of you have struggled to take care of your children while also managing your hectic work schedules and responsibilities. And while I know you’re doing your best… I can argue that this path is not fair to your employer or to these kids,” Clarke said.

“I don’t necessarily believe this,” he continued, perhaps covering his back before confirming, “but I do believe that only the rarest of those who are full-time caregivers can be both productive and fulfilling workers at the same time. with any part of it, but I believe the data will also confirm this over time.”

Not surprisingly, some employees compared Clark to a “Wall Street criminal,” likely referring to Michael Douglas’ character Gordon Gekko in Wall Street films, whose mantra “Greed is good” seems to be often the one that executives adhere to. companies. .

Clearlink told Vice that what Clark said was an internal company matter.

Not that the leaders were against such behavior. In December 2021, Vishal Garg, CEO of mortgage company Better.com, laid off 900 employees during a three-minute Zoom call. More recently, MillerKnoll CEO Andy Owen stated that after paying herself a $6 million bonus, the rest of the company will not receive annual bonuses and should “leave the city of pity.”

Amazon has introduced a new Prime Video feature called Dialogue Boost. It is designed to isolate dialogue and make it louder than other audio streaming on the service.

Amazon describes how it works in Blog Post:

Dialogue Boost analyzes the original sound in a movie or TV series and intelligently identifies places where dialogue might be hard to hear due to background music and effects. The speech patterns are then isolated and the sound is amplified to make the dialogue clearer. This AI-based approach delivers targeted enhancements to portions of conversational dialogue rather than overall center channel boost in a home theater system.

However, not all content will be eligible for the dialogue enhancement feature – at least not yet. Amazon says it “originally launched on select Amazon Originals around the world”, such as The Amazing Mrs Maisel another big sick.

While this is partly a feature of hearing-impaired accessibility, Amazon is also responding to a widespread complaint among viewers.

2022 survey found that 50 percent of 1,260 American viewers “watch content with subtitles most of the time,” many of them referring to “confusing audio” and saying that it’s harder to understand dialogue in movies and TV shows than before.

Problem with dialogue

There is no one simple reason for this development. It combines several factors, but many of them can rightly be categorized as a “fragmented viewing experience”.

Decades ago, most televisions or home theater speakers had similar audio capabilities. However, the range of devices used, from built-in speakers in cheap TVs and laptops to high-quality Dolby Atmos surround sound systems with AI-optimized sound fields and everything in between, has grown. In addition, TV manufacturers present a wide range of proprietary technologies and configurations that they can try to use to differentiate their products in marketing materials by changing the way the same content sounds on virtually every device.

All of this means that professionals who process and encode audio for distribution on streaming networks are short on work. Some shows prioritize sounding good for the most expensive configurations, but the comparative lack of dynamic range in cheaper speakers can leave owners of smaller systems sounding confused. But even if (futile) efforts are made to encode audio for the widest possible audience, devices will still be so fragmented that it may not be possible to provide a quality experience for everyone.

There are, of course, other factors as well. The more theatrical styles of TV acting that were popular in the 70s, 80s and 90s have given way to the more subtle and realistic presentation that was previously the realm of feature films. While these supplies play well in movie theaters with solid sound systems, they don’t always work as well on $200 TVs. Streaming bitrates and associated audio quality can also vary from family to family.

It’s the same set of core issues as the TV show that some viewers find too dark. Many of us remember the last season Game of Thrones an episode in which the audience squinted in vain to see what was going on. It used cinematic techniques played on small screens with limited contrast, peak brightness, and dynamic range, although the then-low resolution and bitrates of HBO Go and HBO Now were a particularly significant problem in this particular case.

Anyway, back to audio: some streaming boxes or audio systems, like the Apple TV 4K or Sonos home theater systems, offer built-in dialog amplification, but not everyone uses these devices. In theory, Amazon’s new feature should work on just about anything, even if it doesn’t yet support dialog amplification.

The company has not announced when this feature will be expanded to more content. But we wouldn’t be surprised to see a rapid expansion – not just from Amazon, but from other streamers offering similar features.

Dota 2one of the most popular esports games in the world, serving over 300,000 players simultaneously on Steam. while I write these wordsjust fell massive update called New Frontiers this will probably change the free game forever. And the biggest difference is definitely real estate: The entire game map is now 40 percent larger, allowing you to explore the edges.

“The main goal of the game remains the same,” says Valve, “your lanes are no further apart, and everything you need to win is still in the center of the map.”

But Valve continues to describe “meta-defining new features,” new locations, new Tormentor mini-bosses, neutral vision-giving units called Watchers, lotus pools that generate fruit, new items, matchmaking changes, UI tweaks for streaks health, and a lot of hero rebalancing that will affect every character in the game.