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.
Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Ex-Apple Employee Accused of Stealing Self-Driving Car Tech
July 13, 2018 16:31 - 4 minutesFederal prosecutors have charged a former Apple employee with stealing trade secrets related to Apple's autonomous vehicle program. Xiaolang Zhang allegedly worked on Apple’s secretive self-driving car project. Zhang left Apple in April saying he was going to work for a Chinese electric vehicle company called Xpeng Motors. He is accused of copying more than 40GB of Apple intellectual property to his wife's laptop before leaving the company, according to court documents. Learn more about your ...
It Just Got Easier for the FCC to Ignore Your Complaints
July 13, 2018 07:10 - 3 minutesIt may soon be harder to get the Federal Communications Commission to listen to your complaints about billing, privacy, or other issues with telecommunications carriers like AT&T and Verizon. Today, the agency approved changes to its complaint system that critics say will undermine the agency's ability to review and act on the complaints it receives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Your Twitter Follower Count Might Go Down This Week
July 12, 2018 16:31 - 6 minutesPerhaps a healthier Twitter is one with smaller follower counts—even if that comes as a blow to your ego. That’s what the company is hoping, anyway. Over the last several months, Twitter has embarked on a renewed push to fight abuse and spam, as well as encourage “healthy” debates and conversations, and on Wednesday the social network announced it was expanding that effort to profiles that have been “locked” for suspicious behavior. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...
The Rise And Fall of Uber HR Chief Liane Hornsey
July 12, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesIn January, I sat down with Liane Hornsey, who until yesterday was Uber’s HR chief, to discuss the progress she’d made helping to reform Uber’s culture. The company had invited me to report on its turnaround, in the run-up to the release of its redesigned drivers app. But I was interested in something else: how were things at Uber since CEO Dara Khosrowshahi arrived? She told me that she had asked an employee—a three-year veteran at Uber—how it felt to be there. Learn more about your ad choic...
Uber and Lyft's Never-Ending Quest to Crush Price Comparison Apps
July 11, 2018 16:32 - 7 minutesFor nearly as long as there have been ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, there have been apps that help riders compare fares and travel times. These aggregator apps allow riders to survey all the services in an area and check prices and wait times—an efficient version of what many do already. There are always fresh versions of these apps popping up. The newest one, Bellhop, officially launched in New York this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Immigration Fight Shows Silicon Valley Must Stop Feigning Neutrality
July 11, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesLast month, the Trump administration announced that it would halt itspolicyof separating young asylum-seekers from their parents. For those Americans angered by their government’s cruel treatment of children as young as a few months old, this was a hard-fought victory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How an App Could Give Some Gig Workers a Safety Net
July 10, 2018 16:30 - 7 minutesThe gig economy has a problem. Freelancing is increasingly common, but it’s still difficult and costly to access benefits without a 9-to-5 job. For the lowest-paid workers, it can be close to impossible. In the past few years, many have seized on the idea of “portable benefits": insurance and paid time off not bound to a single employer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sonos' IPO Filing Shows Risks of Relying on Amazon and Apple
July 10, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesThere are smart speakers, which connect wirelessly to other devices, and then there’s the new era of smart speakers, designed to offer services through voice-controlled virtual assistants. Sonos, for a long time, was all about the former, having been a pioneer of high-quality, WiFi-connected speaker systems. Now it’s entered the next era with products like Sonos One and Sonos Beam, which work with Amazon’s Alexa and other virtual assistants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoi...
The Court Case that Enabled Today's Toxic Internet
July 09, 2018 16:31 - 5 minutesThere once was a legendary troll, and from its hideout beneath an overpass of the information superhighway, it prodded into existence the internet we know, love, and increasingly loathe. That troll, Ken ZZ03, struck in 1995. But to make sense of the profound aftereffects—and why Big Tech is finally reckoning with this part of its history—you have to look back even further. In 1990, an online newsletter called Rumorville accused a competitor, Skuttlebutt, of being a “scam. Learn more about you...
New California Bill Restores Strong Net Neutrality Protections
July 09, 2018 07:10 - 4 minutesLast month, a California Assembly committee voted to remove key protections from a state-level net neutrality bill. Critics said the changes opened loopholes that would allow broadband providers to throttle some applications, or charge websites or services for "fast lane" access on their networks. Now those key protections are coming back. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Transformative Power of Reddit's Alien Mascot
July 06, 2018 18:16 - 5 minutesReddit’s little mascot, Snoo, contains multitudes. The precious, ever-smiling alien hangs out at the top of hundreds of subreddits, mixing with the locals like a savvy politician. In r/trees, a community for marijuana enthusiasts, Snoo puffs a joint. In r/gonewild, Snoo poses for a selfie in a wig and lingerie. In r/Asceticism, Snoo dematerializes into the cyberether, its form the mere wisp of an outline. Cheeky bugger. Indeed, Snoo’s existence has always been something of an inside joke. Lea...
Friday's Massive Comcast Outage Shows How Fragile the Internet Is
July 06, 2018 07:10 - 4 minutesWidespread internet outages around the United States on Friday afternoon quelled productivity and sent irate customers to Twitter to complain. Comcast and Xfinity suffered the biggest service interruptions across its internet, cable, and landline products. The company, which has more than 29 million business and individual customers, said on Friday that the outages stemmed from fiber optic cables at two internet infrastructure companies that were cut or otherwise disrupted. Learn more about y...
Reps. Khanna and Ratcliffe: It’s Time to Modernize Government Websites
July 05, 2018 16:30 - 5 minutesIt’s no secret that the federal government is way behind the private sector when it comes to modernization and technology. Because of these outdated systems, many federal agencies rank staggeringly behind the private sector when it comes to customer service. WIRED OPINION ABOUT US Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) (@RepRatcliffe) is chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure. US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastc...
GitHub Developers Are Giving Microsoft a Chance
July 05, 2018 12:34 - 4 minutesEarlier this month Microsoft announced plans to buy the code-hosting and collaboration site GitHub for $7.5 billion. It's hard to overstate how important GitHub is to modern software development. The service boasts about 28 million users and hosts 85 million codebases for a wide variety of organizations, including Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Walmart, and the US government. Much is open source code, a far cry from Microsoft’s roots making highly proprietary software. Learn more about your...
Dell Is Ready to Go Public Again. But Has it Really Changed?
July 04, 2018 16:31 - 5 minutesDell Technologies is going public again, five years after going private to transform itself amid slowing personal computer sales. Dell has certainly changed in those years, but it needs to change even more if it doesn't want to find itself back in the same position. Since going private, Dell has invested heavily in expanding its business selling hardware, software, and services for data centers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Airbnb's Newest Weapon Against Regulation: The Real Estate Industry
July 04, 2018 07:11 - 7 minutesEverywhere you look, regulators are cracking down on Airbnb. In Paris, the company’s largest market, hosts must now register with the city government and can only list their homes for 120 nights each year. In Amsterdam, new rules, which go into effect in 2019, will restrict hosts to listing for just 30 nights annually. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Silicon Valley’s Exclusive Salary Database
July 03, 2018 16:31 - 5 minutesWhen Steve, a thirtysomething engineer, launched a software company in San Francisco a few years ago, he and his cofounder faced the daunting task of hiring a team, from low-level engineers to a new VP. Novices, they nonetheless had an advantage: access to Option Impact, an exclusive database of tech salaries that has become a go-to reference for Silicon Valley startups. That insider information, Steve realized, has immense value. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...
The Airbnb Challenger You've Never Heard of (by Name)
July 03, 2018 07:10 - 9 minutesThere is a travel story that Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, formerly called Priceline, likes to tell. While planning a recent family trip to Iceland, his wife wanted to check out “another site,” which Fogel carefully avoids naming, but is clearly Airbnb. The home rental she found there looked good, so she tried to book it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Gaming Gets X-Rated–and Very Profitable
July 02, 2018 16:30 - 3 minutesIn the game Armor Blitz, players assemble an army of anime “tank girls.” When the game debuted on Google Play in November 2016, it grossed just $23,400 in six months, less than half its production cost. Then the same game relaunched on the adult-gaming platform Nutaku—now with the notable addition of hentai cartoon porn. Blitz went on to bank more than $160,000 in six months. The thriving erotic-gaming industry that originated in Japan is now going global. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...
Andreessen Horowitz Lends Credence to Crypto With New Fund
July 02, 2018 07:10 - 5 minutesVenture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is bringing in its first female general partner, former federal prosecutor Katie Haun, to help manage a new $300 million fund dedicated to investing in cryptocurrency and blockchain-related projects. Andreessen Horowitz has long invested in cryptocurrency companies, including the digital-wallet company Coinbase and the game company Cryptokitties. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Tech Worker Dissent Is Going Viral
June 29, 2018 16:30 - 10 minutesSilicon Valley has a long and secretive history of building hardware and software for the military and law enforcement. In contrast, a recent wave of employee protests against some of those government contracts has been short, fast, and surprisingly public---tearing through corporate campuses, mailing lists, and message boards inside some of the world’s most powerful companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A Plea for AI That Serves Humanity Instead of Replacing It
June 29, 2018 07:10 - 4 minutesSixty-two years ago this summer, Dartmouth professor John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence. Joi Ito, director of MIT’s Media Lab, has come to think it’s unhelpful. Talk of AI has become hard to avoid due to surging investment from companies hoping to profit from advances in machine learning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apple Tries to Avoid Facebook's Mistakes With 2018 Midterms
June 28, 2018 16:32 - 8 minutesApple waded knee-deep into the muck of political news delivery Monday with the announcement of a special section in Apple News devoted to the upcoming 2018 midterm elections, which will determine whether Republicans hold onto their majorities in Congress. From now until November, you will see a little Midterm Elections 2018 banner above the curated Top Stories section of the app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In Upholding Trump's Travel Ban, the Supreme Court Harms Scientists
June 28, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesHani Goodarzi is trying to cure cancer. At the new lab he runs at the University of California, San Francisco, he and his team try to understand the disease’s molecular processes, building on his research into disease metastasis. Important, life-saving work. He has grants to write, and bench work to oversee, but right now all he can think about is the pain President Donald Trump’s travel ban will cause students and postdocs from Iran, where he was born. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit...
Trump's Trade War Won't Hurt China. It Could Hurt US Tech
June 27, 2018 16:31 - 8 minutesIn the latest installment of the simmering trade war, the Trump administration reportedly plans to impose restrictions on Chinese investments in US technology companies and American technology exports to China. If implemented as rumored, any company with more than 25 percent Chinese ownership would be barred from investing in US companies that produce “industrially significant technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Red Hen and the Weaponization of Yelp
June 27, 2018 07:10 - 9 minutesPress Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced on Twitter Saturday that she and her family had been asked to leave the Red Hen, a small restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. The Red Hen's co-owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, reportedly asked Sanders to leave because of her involvement in Trump administration policies like separating migrant children from their parents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
'ICE Is Everywhere': Using Library Science to Map the Separation Crisis
June 26, 2018 16:31 - 13 minutesOn Father’s Day, Alex Gil was IMing with his colleague Manan Ahmed when they decided they had to do something about children being separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border. Since May, the US government had taken more than 2,300 kids away from their families as a result of Attorney General Jeff Sessions' new "zero tolerance" immigration policy, which calls for criminally prosecuting all people entering the country illegally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.co...
Can Bots Outwit Humans in One of the Biggest Esports Games?
June 26, 2018 07:10 - 6 minutesThis August, some of the world’s best professional gamers will travel to Vancouver to fight for millions of dollars in the world’s most valuable esports competition. They’ll be joined by a team of five artificial intelligence bots backed by Elon Musk, trying to set a new marker for the power of machine learning. The bots were developed by OpenAI, an independent research institute the Tesla CEO cofounded in 2015 to advance AI and prevent the technology from turning dangerous. Learn more about ...
YouTube Will Help Creators Make Money With More Than Just Ads
June 25, 2018 16:30 - 9 minutesOver the last year, YouTube has faced a seemingly endless number of controversies over disturbing and problematic videos—including ones published by PewDiePie, the site’s most popular vlogger—that were often found to be running advertisements from major companies. In response, YouTube tightened its ad policies, hired new moderators, and took steps to assure advertisers that its platform was brand safe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Another Failed Silicon Valley Exec Gets a Crypto Project
June 25, 2018 07:10 - 7 minutesLucas Duplan, who founded Clinkle and made it into an object lesson in Silicon Valley overhype, is plotting a return. He has raised money from his family and outside investors for a venture fund focused on backing enterprise-software startups, WIRED has learned. The fund will operate out of New York and has backed at least two companies in which Duplan is involved. One of those companies is a cryptocurrency project focused on employee rewards called Universal Recognition Token (URT). Learn mo...
Why the Supreme Court Sales Tax Ruling May Benefit Amazon
June 22, 2018 16:30 - 6 minutesThe Supreme Court just paved the way for broader collection of online sales taxes. That's probably good news for Main Street and bad news for smaller online retailers. But it just might be good news for larger online retailers---especially Amazon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Trump Stokes Outrage in Silicon Valley—But It's Selective
June 22, 2018 07:54 - 13 minutesSilicon Valley is in the middle of an awakening, the dawning but selective realization that their products can be used to achieve terrible ends. In the past few months, this growing unease has bubbled up into outright rebellion from within the rank and file of some of the largest companies in the Valley, beginning in April when Google employees balked at the company's involvement with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program called Project Maven. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc...
How a Child Moves Through a Broken Immigration System
June 21, 2018 16:31 - 11 minutesAs an immigration attorney working along the US-Mexico border in McAllen, Texas, Carlos García says he’s seen “a lot of sad stuff” over the years. But what he encountered at the McAllen federal courthouse Tuesday left him lost for words. “You walk into the courtroom and there are 90 people waiting to be prosecuted for illegal entry,” he says. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Now the Computer Can Argue With You
June 21, 2018 07:11 - 6 minutes“Fighting technology means fighting human ingenuity,” an IBM software program admonished Israeli debating champion Dan Zafrir in San Francisco Monday. The program, dubbed Project Debater, and Zafrir, were debating the value of telemedicine, but the point could also apply to the future of the technology itself. Software that processes speech and language has improved enough to do more than tell you the weather forecast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Lyft Is Trying to Become the Next Subscription Business
June 20, 2018 16:30 - 7 minutesIn many US cities, ride-sharing is a commodity. Both drivers and riders pull up Uber and Lyft interchangeably on their phones, weighing which to use based on price and wait time. That’s a problem for ride-sharing companies. In an industry where new apps like Via, Juno, and Gett are coming online regularly, riders have myriad choices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Man Who Saw the Dangers of Cambridge Analytica Years Ago
June 20, 2018 07:10 - 23 minutesIn December 2014, John Rust wrote to the head of the legal department at the University of Cambridge, where he is a professor, warning them that a storm was brewing. According to an email reviewed by WIRED, Rust informed the university that one of the school’s psychology professors, Aleksandr Kogan, was using an app he created to collect data on millions of Facebook users without their knowledge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Supreme Court Will Decide If Apple's App Store Is a Monopoly
June 19, 2018 16:30 - 8 minutesHas Apple monopolized the market for iPhone apps? That's the question at the heart of Apple Inc. v. Pepper, a case the Supreme Court agreed to hear Monday, which could have wide-reaching implications for consumers as well as other companies like Amazon. The dispute is over whether Apple, by charging app developers a 30 percent commission fee and only allowing iOS apps to be sold through its own store, has inflated the price of iPhone apps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoice...
The Dark Side of the Crypto Revolution
June 19, 2018 07:10 - 3 minutesThe bitcoin Hodlers, ICO hustlers, and Lambo-owning crypto millionaires would like you to know that the cryptocurrency revolution is upon us. Before long you’ll be making breakfast on the blockchain! But as the trustless, decentralized world of digital tokens expands—and Fortune 500 companies, banks, restaurant chains, and even countries (ahem, Venezuela) cautiously wade in—a credibility problem persists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why You Should Slack Off to Get Some Work Done
June 18, 2018 16:30 - 5 minutesHow much do you slack off at work? If you’re the average white-collar drone, the odds are it’s an astonishing amount. A 2015 survey by a UK firm asked 1,989 office workers how many hours they spent “productively working” each day. The average: A paltry two hours and 53 minutes. The rest of those eight-hour workdays consisted of kicking back: checking social media, reading news, or talking to friends. Viewed one way, this is absolutely dismal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...
Can Verizon Build a Strong Brand From the Bones of Yahoo and AOL?
June 18, 2018 07:10 - 8 minutesTim Armstrong has spent the last year under renovation. After AOL, the company Armstrong has run for the past nine years, merged with newly acquired corporate sister Yahoo in June, Armstrong was tasked with uniting the two. First he announced a new brand name-–Oath---suggesting a move away from the stale early days of the internet that many people associate with AOL and Yahoo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google’s Employee Diversity Numbers Haven’t Really Improved
June 15, 2018 16:31 - 6 minutesThe company that championed the idea of moonshots---ambitious ideas that can “make the world a radically better place”---is still struggling to make incremental change when it comes to diversifying its ranks of black, Latinx, and female employees. But as the conversation around diversity in Silicon Valley has evolved and grown more sophisticated, so has Google’s approach to the problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Startup Working on Contentious Pentagon AI Project Was Hacked
June 15, 2018 08:19 - 10 minutesLast summer, a sign appeared on the door to a stuffy, windowless room at the office of Manhattan artificial intelligence startup Clarifai. “Chamber of secrets,” it read, according to three people who saw it. The notice was a joking reference to how the small team working inside was not permitted to discuss its work with others at Clarifai. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This Week Shows How Hard It Is to Curb Big Tech
June 14, 2018 16:31 - 5 minutesThe Seattle City Council voted 9-0 last month to approve an annual $275-per-employee tax on big employers like Amazon. The tax was expected to raise about $47 million a year for services for the homeless and construction of affordable housing. But Tuesday, less than a month after passing the tax, the council voted 7-2 to repeal it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Is a Done Deal. Now What?
June 14, 2018 07:10 - 6 minutesHBO, CNN, Warner Brothers, DC Comics, and the rest of the Time Warner empire will soon be owned by AT&T thanks to a decision by by a federal judge Tuesday to approve the telecommunications giant's $85 purchase of the media conglomerate. The Department of Justice filed suit to stop the merger last November, arguing that the merger would lead to higher television prices and fewer choices for consumers. US District Judge Richard J. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho...
How Maps Became the New Search Box
June 13, 2018 16:32 - 7 minutesOpen the Uber app in downtown San Francisco, and you’ll discover you can do a lot more than hail a ride. You rent a bike, thanks to Uber’s recent acquisition of Jump Bikes. You can rent a car, courtesy of a partnership Uber has struck with the startup Getaround. In a test version of the app, which I saw when I reported on Uber last January, a train schedule popped up if you hailed a ride to Caltrain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Hustlers Fueling Cryptocurrency’s Marketing Machine
June 13, 2018 07:10 - 16 minutesIt took only a few months for Sally, an executive assistant living in British Columbia, to become Crypto Sally, a Lambo-touting altcoin influencer who makes a living on YouTube videos. She got interested in cryptocurrencies last summer as the buzz around initial coin offerings, or ICOs, surged. She bought some ether---at the top of the market, she admits---and spent her free time researching how to trade lesser-known cryptocurrencies called altcoins, eventually making enough money to quit her...
The Crazy Hacks One Woman Used to Make Money on Mechanical Turk
June 12, 2018 16:31 - 11 minutesWhen her husband lost his factory job in 2010, Kristy Milland ran through her options. Until that point, she’d been working at home, earning extra money through odd jobs like selling collectables on eBay. She hadn’t waited on tables, had no experience in fast food, and had not learned any skills that might be particularly useful in a factory. She’d once applied for a job at McDonald’s, but nobody had called her for an interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho...
How Tech Shaped San Francisco’s Unresolved Mayor’s Race
June 12, 2018 07:10 - 11 minutesThe last time there was a real contest for the mayor’s seat in San Francisco, residential rents were falling, the city had 15 million square feet of vacant office space, the empty headquarters of Pets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Are Dead, but the Fight Isn't
June 11, 2018 16:30 - 9 minutesFederal net neutrality protections are officially dead. Today the Federal Communications Commission's rules barring internet providers from blocking or slowing content, or giving special treatment to certain content, were wiped off the books, following an FCC vote last December. But don't expect to see huge changes right away. First, there are still some rules constraining broadband providers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The US Again Has World’s Most Powerful Supercomputer
June 11, 2018 07:10 - 6 minutesPlenty of people around the world got new gadgets Friday, but one in Eastern Tennessee stands out. Summit, a new supercomputer unveiled at Oak Ridge National Lab is, unofficially for now, the most powerful calculating machine on the planet. It was designed in part to scale up the artificial intelligence techniques that power some of the recent tricks in your smartphone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices