Talking Tech: Internet outages are the worst, but we've got to get used to them

It's Thursday, which means one day closer to the weekend. Brett Molina here with a fresh batch of tech headlines and must-know info.

If you're reading this, thank goodness. For starters, it means you've likely subscribed to Talking Tech, which is obviously awesome.

But it also means your email and other internet services are working, unlike earlier this week when an Amazon Web Services outage knocked out a major chunk of the internet.

Multiple sites including Roku, Venmo, Doordash, Spotify, Instacart and Disney+ were down. Not great.

The good news is those sites are back up as normal. The bad news is these outages are going to be a normal part of digital life and we have to get used to them.

What else happened in Tech?

► Ouch. The CEO of Better.com issued an apology after a video surfaced of his recent Zoom call during which he laid off a huge swath of the online mortgage company's employees.

► A big shift on Facebook. Black people share and produce far more content than any other group on Facebook, according to the social network's own research. Now, they're leaving the platform altogether. 

► The great Roku-YouTube standoff is over. The YouTube TV and YouTube apps on your Roku are safe.

► King James would be pleased. The top trending search in the U.S. this year, according to Google? The NBA.

Thursday tech tip

Need to share a way for a company or person to call you but don't want to give out your phone number? There are several services like Google Voice that can help.

On this week's Talking Tech

On the Talking Tech podcast, we discuss the new Amazon service for seniors, Alexa Together, how to "force restart" your smartphone, and Zoom taking your attendance during meetings.

One more thing

If you're reading this newsletter on a browser, why not just have it sent right to your inbox?

Thanks for reading. Time to plot out how I plan to get free doughnuts.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.