😅$230 for a sock😅 - Colorintech Newsletter #274

Colorintech Weekly - 274
(View this version on the web)

Hey

We need your help. We spend all year trying to do stuff to support you, but we need to check we are on track, soooo..

Please complete our 2025 survey to see how we can support you further:
https://form.typeform.com/to/YWeOA8Jb

Please note this survey will take about 10 - 15 minutes to complete.

The deadline to complete is 25th November 2025!

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🗞️Diversity and inclusion news🗞️

🎙️Your: A digital all boys club?🎙️

We saw some research this week from academic researchers who analysed 592 of the most popular podcasts and found that the “anyone-can-start-a-podcast” dream is… mostly true if “anyone” means men. And specifically white ones.👀

Across the top shows, 64.1% of hosts are men, and across the wider sample, that rises to 66.3%. Women — who are leading in film, rising in TV, and gaining ground in music — are stuck at roughly one-third of the seats in audio. And the moment you wander into business or tech, the numbers fall off a cliff: just 7.7% of hosts are women in those genres. Women of colour? A bleak 6.6% on the Top 100🎙️

And if you’re thinking, “Well at least they’re invited as guests…” — no. Researchers examined over 4,000 podcast episodes and found that 72.8% of guests were men, and nearly two-thirds of episodes had zero women at all. It turns out the medium that calls itself “the most accessible format in media” is doing the worst job of actually being accessible😵

Suddenly the audio world starts looking an awful lot like the panel line-ups at tech conferences: warm intros, strong opinions, and not many women.

The study also makes a sharp point about design. The genres where women thrive — true crime, culture, arts — are the ones where audiences expect curiosity, narrative and emotional intelligence. The genres where women vanish — business, tech, sports — are the ones that still treat authority as male by default. The medium may be modern; the biases are extremely dial-up era😰

📉 So what?
Democracy in theory, monopoly in practice: a format that sells accessibility while distributing opportunity to the same narrow set of voices. For the UK ecosystem — where creative industries, AI literacy, and digital skills pipelines are all wrestling with representation — the lesson is simple: platforms don’t become inclusive by accident. And if podcasting can’t break this cycle, it risks becoming the least innovative part of the creator economy.

📚 Read more:
USC Annenberg – https://assets.uscannenberg.org/docs/aii-inequality-Podcasts-2025-11-06.pdf

💗 Halo, & How Not to Do Women’s Sport

Sky Sports tried to do women’s sport marketing this week and accidentally speedran a case study in what not to do.🙄

Halo, its new TikTok channel billed as the “little sister” / “lil sis” of Sky Sports, launched on Thursday with a blur of pink fonts, hearts, “hot girl walks”, matcha references and Barbie-ish vibes – then died on Saturday after women’s sports fans collectively said: absolutely not.👋🏾

The pitch sounded fine on paper: a dedicated space “for new, young, female fans,” a place to “champion female athletes” and build community. The execution? Less “inclusive sports culture”, more “what if The Apprentice contestants had to invent a Gen Z women’s brand in 20 minutes with no research”.😅

Nearly half the early posts focused on men’s sport. A Manchester City goal got captioned “How the matcha + hot girl walk combo hits”. One rugby clip came wrapped in Barbie-style graphics. The branding lived in that tired pink/peach universe women’s sport has been trying to escape for a decade.

Women’s football platforms like GirlsontheBall and She Kicks didn’t hold back, calling out the tone as patronising and unimaginative – the kind of thing you’d expect before the Lionesses, the WSL boom and record-breaking Euros crowds, not after. Fans pointed out the obvious: female sports audiences don’t need a dumbed-down, glittery side-channel. They want proper coverage, real investment, and equal visibility on the main feeds, not a “girlified” annex with worse copy and fewer actual athletes.😫

Sky did at least read the room eventually. After 72 hours, most of Halo’s posts were deleted, replaced by a short statement: “We’ve listened. We didn’t get it right… we’re stopping all activity on this account. We’re learning and remain as committed as ever to creating spaces where fans feel included and inspired.” It’s a neat line, but it also sidesteps the bigger question: why did this pass through multiple layers of sign-off without anyone asking whether women’s sport deserves more than matcha jokes and “lil sis” branding?💁

What makes it more frustrating is that the opportunity is huge. Women’s sport is exploding on TikTok and Instagram. There’s an entire ecosystem of women-led platforms already doing this well – building audience, telling serious stories, being funny and respectful. Marketing Week quite fairly argues that the problem wasn’t trying something new; it was doing your “test and learn” in public with stereotypes as your core creative concept, then binning the whole thing instead of fixing it.

Halo was reportedly meant to livestream England v New Zealand netball – exactly the kind of fixture that deserves more eyeballs and thoughtful coverage. Instead, the game lost a potential stage, and the women’s sport community got a three-day reminder that big brands will happily “girlboss” the aesthetic while underestimating the audience.😑

📉 So what?
Halo is what happens when brands treat women’s sport as a tone-of-voice exercise rather than a strategic priority. You can’t pink-wash the branding, sprinkle in some TikTok slang and call it inclusion. Women don’t need a side-channel; they need power, budget and proper integration into the main product. The missed opportunity isn’t just that Halo was bad – it’s that, instead of iterating with the community or partnering with existing women’s sport platforms, Sky pulled the plug and walked away. If this is a “test and learn” moment, the lesson is simple: respect the audience, fund the coverage, and stop acting like women’s fandom needs a filter to be legible.

🧠Things that make you go hmmm🧠

💼 No more working from the beach, Teams Wants to Snitch Now💼

Microsoft Teams has entered its telltale era. A new update quietly added to the Microsoft 365 Roadmap means the app will now auto-set your work location whenever you connect to your organisation’s Wi-Fi – effectively telling your colleagues (and, more importantly, your boss) whether you’re actually in the office or still “WFH-but-definitely-online” in your dressing gown.🏝️

It’s pitched as a productivity booster. No more wandering around the building looking for someone! No more missed desk bookings! Just instant clarity on who’s where. But the subtext is louder than the release notes: with companies pushing aggressively away from hybrid working, this lands like a digital attendance register with extra steps. TechRadar and Windows Central both point out the obvious — this makes hiding from office culture… complicated. Looking for quiet time? Not anymore; Teams will literally out you.

Microsoft stresses the feature is “off by default,” and admins decide whether to enable it (with user opt-in). But we all know how that tends to go. If your employer wants the data, they won’t struggle to justify flipping the switch — and suddenly that harmless Wi-Fi login becomes a real-time presence audit. A small update, but a big cultural signal about where workplace surveillance is drifting. Just in time for the holidays😬

To make matters worse, Teams is simultaneously dealing with fresh security trouble. Cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated a technique allowing attackers to extract encrypted authentication tokens from Teams on Windows — giving access to chats, emails, SharePoint files, and even the ability to impersonate you in messages. Microsoft confirmed Teams is now a “high-value target” for both cybercriminals and state actors because of its central role in modern work. So, to summarise: Teams might tell your boss where you are and let hackers pretend to be you. An incredible two-for-one.😓

📉 So what?
We’ve officially hit the point where workplace tech is optimised less for collaboration and more for compliance. Teams’ new “location transparency” feature nudges us toward a future where office attendance becomes algorithmically enforced, not organisationally negotiated. And the irony? Even as employers get more visibility into your physical whereabouts, the platform itself remains vulnerable enough that someone else might be reading your messages anyway. The bigger question for companies isn’t “where are my employees?” but “why are we building digital workplaces that feel like surveillance systems with Zoom backgrounds?”

🤖A new game's console is in town🤖

Valve has decided that 2026 is the year it crashes the console party again. The company behind Steam is launching a new Steam Machine – a small black cube pitched as a direct rival to Xbox and PlayStation, designed to run your PC games on the TV and double as a desktop PC. Think: gaming PC that looks like a set-top box, behaves like a console, and quietly asks why you’re still paying for online multiplayer🎮

Under the hood, this thing is basically a stationary, overpowered Steam Deck. It runs SteamOS (Valve’s Linux-based OS) and uses Proton to make Windows games behave, while promising 4K at 60fps and roughly six times the power of a Steam Deck, off a custom AMD setup and 16GB RAM. Launch is pencilled in for early 2026, with pricing “TBA” – which usually translates to “brace yourself”. Alongside it, Valve is rolling out a redesigned Steam Controller and the Steam Frame VR headset, a fully wireless, streaming-first device that replaces the old Valve Index and joins the same ecosystem.😅

Strategically, this is interesting. Sony and Microsoft have quietly shifted from “buy our box” to “subscribe to our service” – Game Pass, cloud streaming, cross-platform releases, fewer true exclusives. Valve is taking the opposite route: starting from a dominant PC storefront and now building hardware that makes that ecosystem feel console-simple in the living room. One analyst summed it up neatly: with streaming, cross-play and the death of strict exclusives, there’s never been a better moment for a PC–console hybrid that taps your existing library instead of making you start again from scratch💡

Of course, we’ve also seen this movie before. The original Steam Machines (2014) were fragmented, expensive and mostly ignored. This time, Valve is keeping it tight: one flagship box, one OS, one ecosystem, plus neat touches like shared microSD libraries across Steam Deck, Steam Frame and Steam Machine (literally moving your games around like cartridges). The risk is classic Valve: if this is priced like a PC, not a console, it probably stays in “enthusiast toy” territory – great for the existing Steam hardcore, not exactly a PS5 moment🤔

📉 So what?
The Steam Machine isn’t just another console – it’s a reminder that the real battle is over platform lock-in, not plastic boxes under the TV. Valve is betting that an “open-ish” PC ecosystem, with no online-subscription tax and massive indie back catalogue, can win against tightly curated walled gardens. For players, that could mean more choice and fewer duplicated purchases. For developers – especially smaller or underrepresented creators – it reinforces Steam as the place where niche titles can still find life far beyond a console store front-page slot. If Valve nails the user experience and the price, this could push Sony and Microsoft to open up faster; if it doesn’t, the Steam Machine becomes what it already secretly is: a beautifully engineered, very nerdy reminder that infrastructure is where the real power in gaming lives.

🙏🏾 di(Vine)

Just when you thought nostalgia culture had run out of things to revive, Vine — the spiritual ancestor of all short-form chaos — is back from the dead. And not in the “Elon tweeted about it once and forgot” way. No, this resurrection comes courtesy of Jack Dorsey, Evan Henshaw-Plath (Rabble) and a nonprofit literally called and Other Stuff, which feels extremely on-brand for someone who once co-founded Twitter and then wandered off to think about the blockchain🚶🏾‍♂️

Their new app, diVine, does something almost radical for 2025: it brings back six-second human-made videos, complete with 100,000+ restored Vines, painstakingly extracted from 40–50GB archival blobs like some kind of archaeological dig through early-2010s internet chaos. If that weren’t nostalgic enough, diVine also refuses to let you upload AI-generated content. If it suspects you tried to sneak in a Sora clip, it just… won’t let you post it. Imagine: a platform with boundaries😅.

The reboot is built on Nostr, is fully open source, and — because this is Jack Dorsey — comes wrapped in a manifesto about decentralisation, permissionless protocols, and rebuilding the web without VC-fuelled enshittification. CBC, somewhat gleefully, notes that this approach is designed to fight back against “AI slop” and restore the era where the internet was made by people, not pipelines. There’s something poetic about a platform famous for “It is Wednesday, my dudes” now being positioned as a bulwark against algorithmic entropy.🤓

And honestly, it makes sense. Social apps are increasingly stuffed with AI-generated filler no one asked for, creators are competing with machines that never sleep, and users are drowning in content that looks polished and says absolutely nothing. Vine, in its original chaotic energy, was the opposite: lo-fi, weird, human and — crucially — short enough to forgive anything. diVine is betting that people miss that.📲

Of course, every nostalgia revival brings with it the ghosts of platforms past. Tumblr keeps trying to “come back” (newsflash: it never died, it just became the internet’s most committed underground arts commune). And this whole thing has big “remember when Bebo relaunched?” energy — that brief, bright moment when we all logged in, realised no one we knew was there, and quietly backed out of the room. But diVine feels different, mostly because it isn’t selling nostalgia as a business model; it’s selling humanity. Six seconds of imperfect, chaotic, deeply unserious humanity.📲

📉 So what?
diVine’s comeback isn’t really about Vine — it’s about the internet finally hitting the point where authenticity becomes a competitive advantage. If the big platforms are filling their feeds with synthetic engagement, the counter-strategy isn’t more AI — it’s less. Real people. Real posts. Real six-second nonsense. The deeper insight? Tech moves in cycles, and the next one might be a retreat from algorithmic bloat and back toward community, creativity, and user autonomy. For founders, policymakers and platforms, the message is simple: if nostalgia plus human connection can outshine AI spectacle, then the future of social may look a lot more like 2013 than Silicon Valley expected.

💸Bus aunty👩🏿‍🦱

London has a new cultural icon — and she’s not a Love Island contestant, a chart-topper or a founder raising a “stealth” £4m pre-seed.😅

She’s Bus Aunty: the 56-year-old mental health nurse who stands on pavements, smiles serenely into her camera, and lets double-decker buses roar past her head in what can only be described as TikTok’s most wholesome jump-scare.

Her videos break every “creator rule” the platforms love to preach. No transitions. No trending audio. No hyper-edited B-roll. Just Bemi Orojuogun, a red bus, and a level of joy that can only come from someone who truly, truly loves Transport for London🚎

And yet somehow, this low-fi, low-stakes, quietly delightful content has racked up almost 50 million views, a cult following, and — naturally — a partnership with Burberry. Because why wouldn’t Britain’s most heritage luxury house decide that standing next to a bus is the new trench coat?🧥

Even the Mayor of London has joined in, congratulating her like she just won MasterChef rather than Trying to spot anyone using those free buses through the silvertown tunnel.😅

It’s so wonderfully British: we may argue endlessly about ULEZ, strikes, or whether the Piccadilly line is cursed, but we will unite for a woman who reminds us the city is still magical if you stop to notice it💓

And that’s the real appeal of Bus Aunty’s universe: in a social media landscape obsessed with hustle culture, productivity hacks and “my 5am routine”, she’s out here building an empire by… standing still. Happiness, apparently, is a tripod, a pavement, and a well-timed 253 to Hackney.🙏

📉 So what?
Bus Aunty shows us that the centre of culture has shifted decisively away from polished institutions and towards ordinary people who capture everyday joy. She’s proof that authenticity travels farther than algorithms, that community resonance beats production budgets, and that influence can come from the margins of the city as much as its glossy billboards. For tech, brands and policymakers, this should be a neon sign: the next wave of British cultural power won’t come from strategy decks — it’ll come from people who accidentally go viral by loving something wholeheartedly. If a nurse with a camera and a bus route can move both Londoners and Burberry, then the rest of us need to rethink where we’re looking when we talk about “emerging talent.”

🤣230 for a cut up sock🤣

Yes, Apple has done it again. The company that gave us a £1,000 monitor stand, a $20 polishing cloth, and a mouse that charges through its belly has now dropped… a knitted iPhone sock. Sorry — the iPhone Pocket™. Yours for a breezy £149 (short strap) or £229 (long strap).

And because we live in the most predictable timeline imaginable, it sold out in days.

The internet did what it always does: turned it into a meme before Apple could even publish the press release. The dominant comparison?

👙 Borat’s neon mankini.
Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Bright colours, string-like straps, and a “one wrong move and the whole thing’s on the floor” energy.

Apple says the iPhone Pocket is inspired by the purity of fabric.
The rest of the world says: you crocheted a bag and charged Hermès prices.

But here’s the interesting bit: this isn’t random merch. It’s a collaboration with Issey Miyake’s design studio, a nod to Steve Jobs’ long love affair with Miyake’s minimalist aesthetic. Think: the original black turtlenecks, but for your phone — just with more straps and more chance of accidental theft.

Analysts are calling it part of Apple’s slow-burn move to turn the iPhone into a wearable.
First the cross-body strap.
Now the Pocket.
Next… who knows? iPhone Cargo Jorts? The iPhone Kente Belt?

Meanwhile, security experts are confused:
“No zip, no structure… theft is going to have an absolute field day,” wrote one user.
But Apple insists it’s “a beautiful new way to carry your essentials.”
(“Essentials” here clearly means: phone + vibes.)

📉 So what?

This is the inclusive innovation lesson: if people will pay £230 for a phone sling, imagine the market potential for thoughtfully designed tools that actually improve people’s lives. The bar is… soft.

And yes — we will absolutely judge you if we see you wearing one at BTF. But respectfully. Lovingly. With curiosity.

📚 Read more:

SlashGear – The Internet May Keep Comparing This New Apple Product to Borat’s Mankini…
https://att.yahoo.com/att/internet-may-keep-comparing-apple-154500484.html
CNN – Apple launches $229.95 iPhone Pocket ‘sock’ to widespread bemusement
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/business/apple-iphone-pocket-scli-intl
IGN – Apple’s $230 iPhone Pocket Ridiculed for Looking Like Borat’s Mankini
https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/apple-intelligence/articles/apples-230-iphone-pocket-sock-112934256.html

👩🏿‍💻For the creators👩🏿‍💻

📈 The tools behind the tech📉

📦Product📦

Europe rethinks tech regulation

📏Design📏

600 image generations to compare AI models

👩🏿‍💻Code👩🏿‍💻

Vibe coding warning

🏢The business behind the tech🏢

😅Meme/AI video of the week 😅

🌐Partner Events & Opportunties 🌐

Below are the top opportunities we want to highlight to you this week! If you want to see more, then check out our new website where we have a whole page dedicated to events and opportunities from us and our partners:

https://www.colorintech.org/events

😃Our EIR program😃

🚀 Scale Your Revenue: Colorintech EIR Programme Returns to Manchester!

Are you an early-stage founder in the North West, North East, or Yorkshire & the Humber who is actively building and looking to move from inconsistent revenue to scalable, repeatable growth?
The Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIR) Programme by Colorintech is back in Manchester with a highly practical session focused entirely on Generating Revenue.
This is not a general talk—it's a targeted initiative for founders who have already achieved some level of traction (generated revenue or raised funding) and need the tactical frameworks to scale responsibly.

What to Expect:

90-Minute Revenue Workshop: A practical, peer-led session focused on monetisation strategy, identifying what to double down on, and how to improve capital efficiency.
Fireside AMA: Get direct, honest insights from experienced founder Felix Robinson (Founder, Homes for Pets).
High-Quality Networking: Connect with 30–40 ambitious founders from across the North over drinks and food.

Event Details:

Date: Thursday, 27th November 2025
Time: 5:30 PM onwards
Location: Manchester
Target Audience: Early to growth-stage EU founders (Pre-Seed to Seed+) with traction, especially those in the North of England.

Secure Your Place

Spaces are limited to ensure a quality, intimate session. Registration is required.

Register here: https://form.typeform.com/to/Mh8YbCDp

😃HELP US PLEASE!😃

🚀As we're near the end of the year, we're launching our fourth Colorintech community survey! The last three iterations of the survey have been invaluable in helping us understand our community, but also the needs you have. This has allowed us to refine the support we give so it's helpful for you!

We found out:

Most requested action was more in-person events -> hosted 25 events (17 in-person) so far this year;

Working Professionals & Students asked for more job and networking opportunities with recruiters -> ran 12 different events with employers like Netflix, Dojo and Apple and saw multiple people get hired from them;

Founders asked for more on Fundraising, using AI strategically and GTM Strategy -> ran events on Investment Insights, Using AI To Scale Your Business and storytelling as a marketing strategy;

96.3% of people said they wanted more AI based opportunities -> launched our Google AI Essential Programme, AI Learning Sprint, and launching our AI Fundamentals Courses early next year!

Now, I wanted to invite you to complete our 2025 survey to see how we can support you further:
https://form.typeform.com/to/YWeOA8Jb

Please note this survey will take about 10 - 15 minutes to complete.

The deadline to complete is 25th November 2025!

By completing this survey, you'll be influencing Colorintech and the opportunities we provide in the future so they're more impactful to you.

❓Need help finding work?🙋🏽‍♀️

Interested in learning tips to help you succeed in your next interview

At Colorintech, we know the job market is tough right now. With many of our community members messaging us about wanting support with getting a job…

We want to do something about it!

On Fri 21st Nov, we’re teaming up with the fabulous team at Samsara for an event in our new Career Support series, where we aim to provide support to those who are currently unemployed or at risk of unemployment or redundancy.

These events aim to provide the knowledge, techniques and support to help you get your next job! For our first one, we're focusing on interviews, specifically for Go To Market and R&D focused positions!

What can you expect from the session:

A keynote covering: Samsara’s Recruitment process, key recruitment terms and answering methods like STAR;

A panel Q&A with recruiters focusing on actionable advice and strategies for succeeding in different types of interviews;

Role Play activities where you get to see demonstrations of good and bad interview techniques, before giving a go yourself;

Connect and network with Samsara and the Colorintech community.

This opportunity is designed for those who need the extra support, so we will be prioritising spaces for those who are currently unemployed or at risk of redundancy/unemployment!

Does this sound like it’ll be beneficial for you? If so, check out the key details below:

Date: 21st November 2025

Time: 10:00 - 13:00 BST

Location: London, E1

As this event has limited spaces, we'll need you to sign up using our Luma Link below:

https://lu.ma/interview-accelerator

If you are not allocated a space at this time, you’ll be notified as priority if we run the event again.

🙌🏾The latest from the Colorintech team🙌🏾

😃What we are consuming😃

🎙️Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine sign voice deal with AI company

🚀Jeff Bezos reportedly returns to the trenches as co-CEO of new AI startup, Project Prometheus

🛰️Amazon rebrands its satellites

💻Chat GPT group chats

🎧Spotify new shuffle