Business, Spoken
2,340 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 days ago - ★★★★ - 16 ratingsGet in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology, and how they are shaping business, entertainment, communications, science, politics, and society.
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Episodes
The Solo JavaScript Developer Challenging Google and Facebook
August 23, 2018 16:30 - 8 minutesIt's hard to escape the gravity of internet giants like Facebook and Google. Not only do they offer an ever-growing number of apps and services that are hard to live without, many other popular websites and applications incorporate code written by these companies. That's because today's web developers don't typically write all of their code themselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Even Teens Worry That Teens Are Addicted to Their Phones
August 23, 2018 07:10 - 5 minutesAmerican teenagers have a complicated and sometimes contradictory relationship with their smartphones—just like the rest of us. A new Pew Research study shows that kids are trying to negotiate between worry that they spend too much time on their phones and anxiety when they are separated from their devices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
At Y Combinator, Startups Manage Molecules Rather Than Code
August 22, 2018 16:30 - 7 minutesThis week, a couple of hundred venture capitalists descended on the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California, for Y Combinator's twice-annual Demo Day. The event showcases graduates of the famous incubator's training program to investors who hope to sniff out the next Dropbox, Airbnb, or Stripe, all of which emerged from Y Combinator. But increasingly, the entrepreneurs marching onto the stage are as likely to be experts at manipulating molecules as writing lines of code. Learn m...
Airbnb Wants to Find a Home in China
August 22, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesAt the start of August, Airbnb announced an essay contest: Four winners would fly to China to stay in a watchtower on the Great Wall. They’d be treated to a gourmet dinner at sunset, a traditional Chinese music experience, and a sunrise historical hike through the countryside. The official Beijing Tourism Twitter account even promoted it. Six days later, the company called the contest off abruptly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FiftyThree, Maker of Popular Paper and Paste Apps, Gets Acquired
August 21, 2018 17:42 - 12 minutesBack in 2012, a Seattle-based startup named FiftyThree launched a drawing app designed for iPad, with a name that sounded like it was designed specifically for an Apple crowd: Paper. Despite its simplicity and also because of it, Apple crowned the iPad App of the Year. Tech writers described it as “the next great iPad app”, “a superbly designed sketching app,” and “a fresh canvas ready and waiting for your ideas, inspiration, and art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com...
Schools Are Mining Students' Social Media Posts for Signs of Trouble
August 21, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesAaah, the traditions of a new school year. New teachers, new backpacks, new crushes—and algorithms trawling students’ social media posts. Blake Prewitt, superintendent of Lakeview school district in Battle Creek, Michigan, says he typically wakes up each morning to twenty new emails from a social media monitoring system the district activated earlier this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
'It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature.' Trite—or Just Right?
August 20, 2018 16:31 - 6 minutesWe’ll never know who said it first, nor whether the coiner spoke sheepishly or proudly, angrily or slyly. As is often the case with offhand remarks that turn into maxims, the origin of It’s not a bug, it’s a feature is murky. What we do know is that the expression has been popular among programmers for a long time, at least since the days when Wang and DEC were hot names in computing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI Is the Future—But Where Are the Women?
August 17, 2018 16:30 - 13 minutesFor all their differences, big tech companies agree on where we’re heading: into a future dominated by smart machines. Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple all say that every aspect of our lives will soon be transformed by artificial intelligence and machine learning, through innovations such as self-driving cars and facial recognition. Yet the people whose work underpins that vision don’t much resemble the society their inventions are supposed to transform. Learn more about your ad choices. V...
Coinbase Doubles Down on Digital Identity With Distributed Systems Acquisition
August 16, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesEarlier this year, the executors of #DeleteFacebook engaged in a form of decentralized group therapy. Catharsis came in a zip file downloaded before deletion, containing the data you shared with Facebook—your friends, your photos, your posts—and with it, the data Facebook shared about you: the ads you clicked, the list of businesses that know where you live and where else you shop. A portrait of the modern digital identity—or, at least, part of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...
Programming Languages May Finally Be Reaching a Status Quo
August 15, 2018 07:10 - 3 minutesApple's programming language Swift and the Android developer favorite Kotlin are two of the fastest growing languages of all time. But that growth might be starting to slow according to a new report. The analyst firm RedMonk has tracked programmers' interest in various programming languages since 2011. During that time, Swift and Kotlin grew faster than any other language the firm tracked, including Google's Go and Mozilla's Rust. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...
The Sinclair/Tribune Merger Is Dead
August 14, 2018 07:10 - 5 minutesA merger that would have given a conservative broadcasting company access to 73 percent of US households is now officially dead. Today, the Tribune Media Company announced that it has terminated its $3.9 billion merger agreement with Sinclair Broadcast Group, and is now suing Sinclair for $1 billion for breach of contract. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Creative Ways Your Boss Is Spying on You
August 13, 2018 16:31 - 4 minutesEarlier this year, Amazon successfully patented an “ultrasonic tracker of a worker’s hands to monitor performance of assigned tasks.” Eerie, yes, but far from the only creative method of employee surveillance. Upwork watches freelancers through their webcams, and a UK railway company recently equipped workers with a wearable that measures their energy levels. By one study’s estimate, 94percent of organizations currently monitor workers in some way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...
Patreon Makes a Move as Tech Giants Encroach on Its Territory
August 13, 2018 07:10 - 6 minutesPatreon, the membership platform that helps online creators make a living, announced Wednesday that it has acquired Memberful, another membership service that caters to larger creators including Gimlet Media and Stratechery. Though they operate in the same, growing field, Memberful and Patreon don't consider themselves direct competitors, and Patreon says that for now, the Memberful platform will remain independent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Maybe MoviePass Shouldn't Compare Itself to Uber
August 10, 2018 16:30 - 8 minutesOn Monday, MoviePass announced yet another entirely new model for subscribers. After announcing that it would be raising prices and limiting options for users of its all-you-can-eat movie theater subscription service, they reversed course. Now, users will be able to enjoy three movies per month, with limited restrictions on releases, for the same $9.95 that previously got them all of the movies they wanted to see. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Viral Political Ads May Not Be As Persuasive As You Think
August 10, 2018 07:10 - 10 minutesWhen a political ad goes viral on Facebook, conventional wisdom holds that it was a success. After all, the Golden Rule of advertising in the digital age is simple: Engagement is good. It’s good for Facebook, too. The more time users spend watching, commenting, clicking, and sharing on its platform, the more money the company makes. Little wonder, then, that Facebook allows advertisers to test which ads get the most engagement with a single click. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...
When Bots Teach Themselves to Cheat
August 09, 2018 17:50 - 5 minutesOnce upon a time, a bot deep in a game of tic-tac-toe figured out that making improbable moves caused its bot opponent to crash. Smart. Also sassy. Moments when experimental bots go rogue—some would call it cheating—are not typically celebrated in scientific papers or press releases. Most AI researchers strive to avoid them, but a select few document and study these bugs in the hopes of revealing the roots of algorithmic impishness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...
The Strange David and Goliath Saga of Radio Frequencies
August 09, 2018 16:30 - 14 minutesThe email blast from the head of my son and daughter’s theater group relayed a frantic plea: “We need to raise $16,000 before the upcoming spring performances,” Anya Wallach, the executive director of Random Farms Kids’ Theater, in Westchester, New York, wrote in late May. If the money didn’t materialize in time, she warned, there could be a serious problem with the shows: nobody would hear the actors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Inside Magic Leap’s Quest To Remake Itself As An Ordinary Company (With a Real Product)
August 08, 2018 16:30 - 23 minutesIn retrospect, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz realizes that all the hype was a big mistake. “I think we were arrogant,” he says. It’s nearly 11 pm on a Monday night in late July, and we are in the back room of an Italian restaurant not far from the Fort Lauderdale beach. It’s a place he often takes visitors who make the trek from Los Angeles or San Francisco to Mickey Mouse’s Florida homeland for a demo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Big Tech's Fight Against InfoWars Is Unwinnable
August 08, 2018 07:10 - 6 minutesEarly Monday morning, Apple pulled several podcasts associated with notorious conspiracy theorist and protein powder peddler Alex Jones from the iTunes store. The decision opened the floodgates to a wave of suspensions that continued throughout the day. First came Facebook, which said it unpublished four pages affiliated with Jones after receiving new reports over the weekend that videos on those pages violated Facebook's policies on hate speech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcas...
The One Telecom Group That Does Support Net Neutrality
August 07, 2018 16:30 - 11 minutesThe battle lines over net neutrality are firmly drawn. On one side are internet advocacy groups, large tech companies, and most Democrats. On the other are free-market adherents, telecom companies, and most Republicans. Then there’s Charles "Chip" Pickering, a conservative Republican former member of Congress and CEO of a telecommunications-industry group called Incompas. He supports net neutrality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google Faces Hurdles in China Beyond Censorship
August 06, 2018 16:30 - 9 minutesIn April, the founder of multibillion dollar Chinese startup Bytedance made a striking public statement. “Our product took the wrong path, and content appeared that was incommensurate with socialist core values,” Zhang Yiming said, in a message widely distributed by state-controlled media. He pledged that Bytedance would work harder to “promote positive energy and to grasp correct guidance of public opinion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
So Apple Is Worth $1 Trillion. Now Comes the Hard Part
August 06, 2018 07:11 - 8 minutesSo it finally happened. Apple announced stellar quarterly earnings; investors liked them; the stock rose; and Apple became the first US company to surpass $1 trillion in market value. In our love for big numbers, that made it a big story. WIRED Opinion About Zachary Karabell is a WIRED Contributor and president of River Twice Research. Never mind that if you adjust for inflation and go global, Apple isn’t actually the first trillion-dollar company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...
Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Wikipedia's Gender Problem
August 03, 2018 16:30 - 7 minutesMiriam Adelson is an accomplished physician who’s published around a hundred research papers on the physiology and treatment of addiction, and runs a high-profile substance-abuse clinic in Las Vegas. She’s also publisher of Israel’s largest newspaper, and, with her billionaire husband Sheldon, a philanthropist and influential Republican party donor. Yet Wikipedia does not have an entry for her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
China’s Numbers Force Google to Recalculate Its Morals
August 03, 2018 07:10 - 6 minutesIn 2010, Google made a moral calculus. The company had been censoring search results in China at the behest of the Communist government since launching there in 2006. But after a sophisticated phishing attack to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, Google decided to stop censoring results, even though it cost the company access to the lucrative Chinese market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FCC Offers Small ISPs a Boost, but a Bigger Setback Looms
August 02, 2018 17:50 - 9 minutesSmall internet providers expect a helping hand from the Federal Communications Commission Thursday, a move that could spur competition and perhaps lower prices. But the commission is also considering a more sweeping proposal that would hurt upstarts to the benefit of industry giants like AT&T. Both issues revolve around how much access upstarts should have to facilities and equipment owned by their bigger rivals. Thursday’s vote is about arcane rules for moving wires on utility poles. Learn m...
Playing Monopoly: What Zuck Can Learn From Bill Gates
August 02, 2018 07:10 - 11 minutesPop quiz: What tech mogul dropped out of Harvard after two years to found a tech company that conquered the world? If you answered Mark Zuckerberg, congratulations! You are correct. And if you answered Bill Gates, congratulations: You are also correct! And the interesting thing is, it’s not just Harvard. The more you compare the two, the more similar they seem. It’s as if they were cloned from the same DNA: They both were born the only boy into a wealthy family. Learn more about your ad choic...
Despite Pledging Openness, Companies Rush to Patent AI Tech
August 01, 2018 16:31 - 10 minutesAt Google’s cloud computing conference in San Francisco last week, CEO Sundar Pichai mused on his company’s commitment to openness, and artificial intelligence. “We create open platforms and share our technology because it helps new ideas get out faster,” Pichai said. Then he namechecked TensorFlow, the machine learning software Google developed and uses internally. The company open sourced the code in 2015, and it has since been downloaded more than 15 million times. Learn more about your ad...
UK Group Threatens to Sue Facebook Over Cambridge Analytica
July 31, 2018 16:31 - 10 minutesLawyers for a group of UK residents whose Facebook data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica are now threatening to sue for damages. In a 27-page letter served to the company Tuesday, they accuse Facebook of violating British data privacy regulations. The letter before claim, as it's called, is the first step in the UK's legal process for filing a class action suit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Trump’s ‘Shadow Banning’ Claim Isn’t Twitter’s Worst Problem
July 30, 2018 16:31 - 8 minutesThere’s a not so subtle irony to the President of the United States tweeting that Twitter is suppressing prominent conservative voices in America---and almost instantly receiving tens of thousands of likes, retweets, and replies. But such are the times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Airbnb’s Slow-Moving Mission to Win Over African Americans
July 30, 2018 07:10 - 7 minutesA year ago today, Airbnb announced a wise move designed to to increase the company’s presence in black neighborhoods: a partnership with the NAACP. By the time the press release crossed the wires, the move was a long time coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Office-Messaging Wars Are Over. Slack Has Won.
July 27, 2018 16:31 - 5 minutesLast September, the software company Atlassian launched a new workplace chat app called Stride, aimed squarely at taking on the similar app Slack. “We’ve been thrilled by the excitement we’ve seen from the tens of thousands of teams who have adopted it as their communication platform,” the company gushed in a March blog post. Now, less than a year after the launch, Atlassian is pulling the plug on the product, along with its earlier workplace chat app HipChat. Learn more about your ad choices...
Is the US Leaning Red or Blue? It All Depends on Your Map
July 27, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesOn May 11, 2017, a reporter named Trey Yingst, who covers the White House for the conservative news network OANN, tweeted a photo of a framed map of the United States being carried into the West Wing. The map depicted the 2016 election results county-by-county, as a blanket of red, marked with flecks of blue and peachy pink along the West Coast and a thin snake of blue extending from the northeast to Louisiana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Happy Birthday to Us! WIRED Turns 25
July 26, 2018 16:31 - 4 minutesYour house is full of Amazon Alexas streaming Spotify; in the car, you pull up YouTube on your phone to play "Everything Is Awesome" (again!) for the kids. SoundCloud rocks. When was the last time you bought music on any physical medium? But back in the old days, music barely existed online. "Downloading music required people to search for websites where songs were posted. Most were unreliable. Links broke," we wrote more than a decade ago. "Traffic spikes slowed download times. Learn more ab...
Google Glass Is Back–Now With Artificial Intelligence
July 26, 2018 07:10 - 5 minutesGoogle Glass lives—and it’s getting smarter. On Tuesday, Israeli software company Plataine demonstrated a new app for the face-mounted gadget that understands spoken language and offers spoken responses. Plataine’s app is aimed at manufacturing workers. Think of an Amazon Alexa for the factory floor. The app points to a future where Glass is enhanced with artificial intelligence, making it more functional and easy to use. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ro Khanna Says Silicon Valley Libertarianism Is Dead
July 25, 2018 16:30 - 6 minutesIn “The Political Education of Silicon Valley,” which appears in the August issue of WIRED, Steven Johnson looks at the changing political worldview of the tech sector, a shift from the libertarianism of the 1990s to a more progressive, pro-government outlook today. One of the exemplars of that transformation is Ro Khanna, who was elected in 2016 to represent California’s 17th congressional district in the heart of Silicon Valley. In early May, Johnson sat down with Rep. Learn more about your...
What Problems? Facebook Stock Has Never Been More Valuable
July 25, 2018 07:10 - 6 minutesFew companies in the history of business have been pilloried like Facebook in the last two years. The list of offenses, largely self inflicted, reads like a rap sheet. It ignored its growing role in media and politics. It dismissed fake news as unimportant. It let fake accounts proliferate. It was too slow to find and shut down foreign hackers and spies. It allowed third parties to download and sell user data without telling anyone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...
How Americans Wound Up on Twitter's List of Russian Bots
July 24, 2018 16:31 - 14 minutesIf you followed Rebecca Hirschfeld’s @Beckster319 account on Twitter in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, you would have seen that she’s an actress, an obsessed fan of David Bowie, not so much of Donald Trump, and will eat anything pumpkin flavored. Around the same time, if you looked at Markiya Franklin’s @internalmemer account, you’d figure she supports Black Lives Matter and is a diehard K-Pop fan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Users Sue Juul for Addicting Them to Nicotine
July 24, 2018 07:10 - 5 minutesJuul Labs, the San Francisco-based e-cigarette company, is under pressure from parents, schools, public health advocates, lawmakers, and the Food and Drug Administration for its popularity with younger users, who have gravitated to Juul’s discrete rechargeable vaping device and nicotine pods in flavors like mango and fruit medley. Now come the lawsuits. Since April, consumers have filed at least three complaints against Juul. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
‘Scraper’ Bots and the Secret Internet Arms Race
July 23, 2018 16:31 - 9 minutesCompanies are waging an invisible data war online. And your phone might be an unwitting soldier. Retailers from Amazon and Walmart to tiny startups want to know what their competitors charge. Brick and mortar retailers can send people, sometimes called "mystery shoppers," to their competitors' stores to make notes on prices. Online, there's no need to send people anywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Uganda's Regressive Social Media Tax Stays, at Least For Now
July 23, 2018 07:10 - 10 minutesThe Ugandan parliament referred a controversial new social media tax to a committee for further consideration on Thursday, after protesters took to the streets of Kampala last week. The tax, which went into effect July 1, charges 200 Ugandan shillings (or $0.05) per day of use for 60 mobile apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Critics say it puts an undue burden on the poorest members of society, and that it is an assault on freedom of expression. Learn more about your ...
How a Facebook Group for Sexual Assault Survivors Became a Tool for Harassment
July 20, 2018 16:31 - 11 minutesLast year, as thousands of women shared their stories of sexual assault and harassment with the hashtag #MeToo, Amanda, a 30-year-old from Oregon, was looking for a supportive place to share her own experiences. Soon enough she was invited by a friend to join a Facebook group for survivors of sexual assault that had thousands of members. The group was easy to find: As recently as this month, the page associated with it ranked higher in some search results than the #MeToo page verified by Face...
Nonprofit for Migrants Declines a Donation from Salesforce
July 20, 2018 07:10 - 5 minutesA Texas-based nonprofit helping migrant families detained at the US southern border has refused a substantial donation from Salesforce after the tech company declined to cancel its contracts with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Don’t Expect Big Changes from Europe’s Record Google Fine
July 19, 2018 16:30 - 7 minutesEuropean regulators took a big swing at Google Wednesday for abusing the dominance of its Android mobile operating system, fining the company €4.34 billion ($5 billion) and ordering changes to Android designed to put Google rivals on a more level playing field. But it’s not clear that the fine or the operational changes will have much effect. “Google has basically won,” says Maurice Stucke, co-founder of The Konkurrenz Group and a law professor at the University of Tennessee. Learn more about...
How a Startup Is Using the Blockchain to Protect Your Privacy
July 19, 2018 07:10 - 7 minutesDawn Song, a Berkeley computer-science professor and MacArthur fellow, is a fan of cloud computing. She also thinks it needs a major rethink. “The cloud and the internet have fundamentally changed our lives mostly for good,” she says. “But they have serious problems with privacy and security—users and companies lose control of their data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Lawmakers Don't Grasp the Sacred Tech Law They Want to Gut
July 18, 2018 16:31 - 10 minutesToward the tail end of a sparsely attended hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Republican congressman John Rutherford turned to the three witnesses before him---representatives of Facebook, Google, and Twitter---and asked a question that left them speechless. Congress, he explained, has already amended Section 230, the law that protects tech platforms from liability for what people post, by creating an exception for content related to sex trafficking. Learn more about your ad...
Why Sinclair's Bid to Buy the Tribune Company Might Die
July 18, 2018 08:00 - 6 minutesSinclair Broadcasting's proposed $3.9 billion takeover of the Tribune company, which would have expanded the conservative media company's footprint to nearly three-fourths of American households, suddenly appears in trouble. Today, Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai effectively came out against the acquisition by proposing to refer it to a hearing with a judge. In theory, the deal could still go ahead if the judge finds no problems with the acquisition or if the decision is appe...
Strikes, Boycotts, and Outages Mar Amazon Prime Day
July 17, 2018 16:30 - 5 minutesPrime Day, which began Monday, is one of Amazon’s biggest promotions of the year, when the retailer offers deals to subscribers to its Prime service. This year, some Amazon workers in Europe are striking during Prime Day, hoping to draw draw attention to working conditions like proposed cuts in wages and health benefits. In solidarity, some consumers have been boycotting the company and its many subsidiaries, like Twitch and Whole Foods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....
Juul’s Lobbying Could Send Its Public Image Up in Smoke
July 17, 2018 07:10 - 9 minutesOver the past year, Juul, the vaping sensation that dominates 70 percent of the US e-cigarette market, has tried to cultivate the image of decent corporate citizen that wants to play by the rules. The company is known for its legions of obsessive young users who have embraced Juul’s discrete, flash-drive-shaped e-cigarettes and pleasing nicotine pods in flavors like fruit medley and mango. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Congress Needs to Revive Its Tech Support Team
July 16, 2018 16:31 - 5 minutesCongress is finally turning its attention to Silicon Valley. And it’s not hard to understand why: Technology impinges upon every part of our civic sphere. We’ve got police using AI to determine which neighborhoods to patrol, Facebook filtering the news, and automation eroding the job market. Smart policy could help society adapt. But to tackle these issues, congressfolk will first have to understand them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FCC Retracts a Plan to Discourage Consumer Complaints
July 16, 2018 07:10 - 4 minutesThe Federal Communications Commission has reportedly dropped a proposed change in how it handles complaints that critics argued could have left consumers with fewer avenues to resolve problems with telecommunications carriers like AT&T and Verizon. The agency is scheduled to vote Thursday on proposed changes to the complaint process, but according to the Washington Post, the most controversial changes have been removed from the draft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com...