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
Intel’s Bold Plan to Reinvent Computer Memory (and Keep It a Secret)
March 24, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesIntel just unleashed a new kind of computer memory it believes will fundamentally change the way the world builds computers. But it won’t tell the world what’s inside. The company calls this new creation 3D XPoint—pronounced “three-dee cross-point”—and this week, after touting the stuff for a year-and-a-half, Intel finally pushed it into the market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Forget Bitcoin. The Blockchain Could Reveal What’s True Today and Tomorrow
March 23, 2017 08:10 - 11 minutesAs far back as the 1880s, people stood on the curb outside the New York Stock Exchange taking bets on political elections, and newspapers would report the odds as a way of predicting the results at the polls. In the years since, economists refined the concept, and more recently, prediction markets have tapped into the wisdom of the crowds via the internet, forecasting everything from presidential races to sporting events to stock prices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices....
Germany’s Flawed Plan to Fight Hate Speech by Fining Tech Giants Millions
March 22, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesThe way tech companies deal with online harassment and abuse is broken. YouTube allows anti-Semitism to stay live. Twitter waffles as targeted harassment runs rampant. Facebook takes down an iconic photo that shouldn’t be banned. Now one German politician is tired of letting platforms make excuses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
At SXSW, Tech Reckons With the Problems It Helped Create
March 21, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesHangovers are a fixture of South by Southwest. Free branded booze abounds, turning late nights into too-early mornings filled with product demos and repetitive panels. But determined marketers and wide-eyed founders pitch on through the pain, in the unbridled belief they might just be SXSW’s next breakout star. Or at the very least, its next Meerkat. But this year, the conference itself feels a lot like a hangover. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
It Begins: Bots Are Learning to Chat in Their Own Language
March 20, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesIgor Mordatch is working to build machines that can carry on a conversation. That’s something so many people are working on. In Silicon Valley, chatbot is now a bona fide buzzword. But Mordatch is different. He’s not a linguist. He doesn’t deal in the AI techniques that typically reach for language. He’s a roboticist who began his career as an animator. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Initial Coin Offering, the Bitcoin-y Stock That’s Not Stock—But Definitely a Big Deal
March 17, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesNext month, a venture capital firm called Blockchain Capital plans to do something that could change the way companies get funded—and perhaps even the way they operate. Instead of an Initial Public Offering, in which a company sells stock via a regulated exchange like Nasdaq, the San Francisco-based VC firm is making an Initial Coin Offering, selling its own digital token as a way of raising money for its latest venture fund. Anyone who buys a token will be buying into the fund. Learn more ab...
Travis Kalanick Doesn’t Need a New COO. He Needs a New CEO
March 16, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesHave you heard? Uber is hiring. CEO Travis Kalanick wants a chief operating officer. Heapparently came to this decision in the midst of the company’s worst PR crisis yet. Accusations of a misogynistic company culture,aGoogle lawsuit, and allegations that it misled regulators with phantom rides leave the company in an almost permanent state of damage control.Hiring a COO almost certainly is Kalanick’s attempt to show that he, and his company, can grow up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...
Love or Hate the CBO Health Care Report, It Ain’t Biased
March 15, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesThe Congressional Budget Office just released its much-awaited report analyzing the possible effects of the American Health Care Act, the GOP plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. The verdict is a doozy. Twenty-four million fewer Americans would have health insurance by 2026, according to the CBO, with 14 million of them losing coverage in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
If Trump Fans Love Freedom, They Should Love Net Neutrality
March 14, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesImagine a world where Comcast slows video streaming from Fox News’s website to a pixelated crawl while boosting Rachel Maddow—who happens to star on Comcast-owned MSNBC. What if Verizon, which owns the liberal Huffington Post, charged you more to visit right-wing Breitbart. Or maybe Google Fiber bans access to the alt-right social network Gab. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hey, Coastal Elites: Don’t Dis ‘Flyover Country’—Fund It
March 13, 2017 09:10 - 8 minutesHere’s a math problem: Ten startup founders and CEOs hurtle down the long highway from Omaha to Lincoln, Nebraska, in a cornflower blue bus. One of the execs builds construction management software. Another runs a blog-hosting startup. A third makes medical devices used in colon surgeries. They sit facing each other on two banquettes, swapping war stories and offering each other advice on hiring and raising money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wintel Is Going. But It’s Not Dead Yet
March 10, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesFor decades, two companies worked side by side to build the very foundation of personal computing. Microsoft built the operating system—Windows—and Intel built the chips. But Wintel is no more. Sure, Windows will continue to run on Intel chips. But Wintel as a mighty alliance has died. It’s been fading for years, and this week Microsoft snuffed out the last of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The New FCC Chairman’s Plan for Undermining Net Neutrality
March 09, 2017 08:10 - 7 minutesAjit Pai, the new chairman of the FCC, doesn’t like the net neutrality rules enforced by the agency President Trump named him to lead. He voted against them as a commissioner in 2015, and in a speech after Trump’s election said their days arenumbered. But until this week, Pai hasn’t explainedhow he would go about reversing the rules. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Supreme Court Could Soon Decide if You Have a Right to Facebook
March 08, 2017 08:10 - 7 minutesLester Packingham Jr. registered as a sex offender in 2002 after pleading guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl when he was 21. But that offense isn’t what brought Packingham to the Supreme Court of the United States on Monday. The crime this time around? A Facebook post. The post itself was benign enough. In 2010, Packingham took to Facebook to celebrate a recently dismissed parking ticket. “Praise be to GOD, WOW!” he wrote. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...
The Race to Sell True Quantum Computers Begins Before They Really Exist
March 07, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesWithin the next five years, Google will produce a viable quantum computer. That’s the stake the company has just planted. In the pages of Nature late last week, researchers from Google’s Quantum AI Laboratory told the world that a machine leveraging the seemingly magical principles of quantum mechanics will soon outperform traditional computers on certain tasks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Facebook to Telcos: Forget Hardware Empires—Let’s All Share
March 06, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesAfter two decades of Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint ads, you know how the big telcos deliver cellular service to your smartphone. Each builds its own nationwide wireless network, boasting that its particular web of data centers, fiber lines, and antennas is faster and more reliable (or at least cheaper) than the others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Clash Between Snap’s IPO and What Really Makes It Great
March 03, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesToday, Snap starts its life as a publicly traded company—the buzziest tech IPO of the year and likely the most valuable in the US since Alibaba debuted in 2014. The event carries the fascination of an impending rocket launch: Is this thing actually going to take off? Or will it crash and burn in a huge, morbid spectacle (of Spectacles)? Snap has tried to sell investors on the idea that it has cachet other social platforms don’t. Invest in us, the company urges. Learn more about your ad choice...
Internet Bots Fight Each Other Because They’re All Too Human
March 02, 2017 08:10 - 10 minutesNo one saw the crisis coming: a coordinated vandalistic effort to insert Squidward references into articles totally unrelated to Squidward. In 2006, Wikipedia was really starting to get going, and really couldn’t afford to have any SpongeBob SquarePants-related high jinks sullying the site’s growing reputation. It was an embarrassment. Someone had to stop Squidward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Think the Internet Is Polarized? Just Look at the FCC These Days
March 01, 2017 08:10 - 11 minutesEarlier this month, in a classic late Friday afternoon news dump, the Federal Communications Commission announced a rollback of two key decisions made during theObama administration. In another era, few besidespolicy wonks and internet activists would have noticed such a thing. But these changes drew intense attention. These days, politics isn’t just what happens on the internet—it’s what happens to the internet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Internet Made ‘Fake News’ a Thing—Then Made It Nothing
February 28, 2017 08:10 - 15 minutesAscourge is killing people’s minds, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, and the world needs a massive campaign to stop it. Across the nation, people lament its rise, and the threat it poses to America.Opioids? ISIS? Nope. “Fake news.” Even homicidal dictators agree things have gotten out of control. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Math Behind Trump’s Deportation Plan Makes No Sense
February 27, 2017 08:10 - 7 minutesPresident Trump claims his administration’s new and expansive executive order on undocumented immigrants is “getting really bad dudes out of this country.” But aggressive enforcement of immigration laws is also sweeping up vulnerable, far-from-bad people seeking help and care. Still, even setting aside the humanitarian issue, Trump’s anti-immigrant plan suffers from a fundamental flaw: bad math. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Republicans Are Trying to Let Internet Providers Sell Your Data
February 24, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesThe Affordable Care Act is far from the only Obama-era policy Republicans want to take down now that they control the government. A set of internet privacy rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission last year has also become a target. Though it’s received far less attention than healthcare or immigration, the rollback would affect millions of consumers and bring basic changes to how they use the internet—though they might not ever know it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit po...
Tech Still Doesn’t Take Discrimination Seriously
February 23, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesThe tech industry isn't big on dress codes, employee handbooks, or rules. The Silicon Valley management philosophy is simple: Hire talented coders, give them tools to do their jobs, and get out of their way. The best coders should be rewarded, and those who just can't hack it should be let go. The problem is that, all too often, workplace problems boil down to more than just code. Yesterday widely respected programmer Susan J. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
An AI Hedge Fund Created a New Currency to Make Wall Street Work Like Open Source
February 22, 2017 08:10 - 11 minutesWall Street is a competition, a Darwinian battle for the almighty dollar. Gordon Gekko said that greed is good, that it captures “the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” A hedge fund hunts for an edge and then maniacally guards it, locking down its trading data and barring its traders from joining the company next door. The big bucks lie in finding market inefficiencies no one else can, succeeding at the expense of others. But Richard Craib wants to change that. Learn more about your ad choi...
The Sad Way Trump’s War with CNN Could Keep Cable Cheaper
February 21, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesThis week, President Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly met with Time Warner executives to complain about CNN’s coverage of the president. Any visit from a White House official seeking to stifle journalists is disturbing. But Time Warner, which owns CNN, has another problem that’s all tied up in presidential politics. The cable and entertainment giant is seeking to sell itself to AT&T, a mega-merger that would require federal approval. Learn more about your ad choi...
Mark Zuckerberg’s Answer to a World Divided by Facebook Is More Facebook
February 20, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesWhen I ask Mark Zuckerberg if the presidential election changed the way he sees Facebook—if he made poor assumptions, if Facebook functioned in ways he didn’t intend—he pauses. I’ve interviewed Zuckerberg before, and he tends to pause like this, gathering his thoughts in complete silence, sometimes turning to face the empty space across the room. But this dead air lasts particularly long. Five seconds. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...
Spanner, the Google Database That Mastered Time, Is Now Open to Everyone
February 17, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesAbout a decade ago, a handful of Google’s most talented engineers started building a system that seems to defy logic. Called Spanner, it was the first global database, a way of storing information across millions of machines in dozens of data centers spanning multiple continents, and it now underpins everything from Gmail to AdWords, the company’s primary moneymaker. But it’s not just the size of this creation that boggles the mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...
Edward Snowden’s New Job: Protecting Reporters From Spies
February 16, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesThis story is part of our special coverage, The News in Crisis. When Edward Snowden leaked the biggest collection of classified National Security Agency documents in history, he wasn’t just revealing the inner workings of a global surveillance machine. He was also scrambling to evade it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Millions Need the Broadband Program the FCC Just Put on Hold
February 15, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesEven before an electrical fire burned her house down in 2014, Jennifer Sneperger had trouble affording home internet. A little more than a year after the fire, she and her young son joined a program that fast-tracked them into a spot in a Sarasota, Florida, public housing complex. But the spot came with a condition: Sneperger had to get a job or go back to school. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How to Keep Your AI From Turning Into a Racist Monster
February 14, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesWorking on a new product launch? Debuting a new mobile site? Announcing a new feature? If you’re not sure whether algorithmic bias could derail your plan, you should be. Algorithmic bias—when seemingly innocuous programming takes on the prejudices either of its creators or the data it is fed—causes everything from warped Google searches to barring qualified women from medical school. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet. It’s the End of the Middle Class
February 13, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesIn February 1975, a group of geneticists gathered in a tiny town on the central coast of California to decide if their work would bring about the end of the world. These researchers were just beginning to explore the science of genetic engineering, manipulating DNA to create organisms that didn’t exist in nature, and they were unsure how these techniques would affect the health of the planet and its people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tech Still Doesn’t Get Diversity. Here’s How to Fix It
February 10, 2017 08:10 - 7 minutesLast month, in response to news of President Donald Trump’s controversial executive orders, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that his company, whose founder Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant, would not exist if the US didn’t have sound immigration policies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Time for Snap to Prove It’s Bigger Than Snapchat
February 09, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesSnap Inc. is a camera company. It's very important to Snap Inc. that you understand it's not a social networking app or a messaging service. It's something else. It's a camera company. "We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way that people live and communicate," it says in an S1 filing made public today, ahead of its $3 billion public offering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In Trump, Tech Finds a Troll It Can’t Ignore
February 08, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesTo adapt one of our new president’s favorite aphorisms: We knew he was a troll when we elected him. Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump gleefully behaved more like a social-network scourge than a presidential candidate, combining a slash-and-burn approach to social norms with an aggressive strategy of constant provocation. So it’s perhaps not surprising that, in the not-quite-two-weeks since his inauguration, internet companies have struggled to respond to his presidency. Learn more about y...
AI Is About to Learn More Like Humans—with a Little Uncertainty
February 07, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesNeural networks are all the rage in Silicon Valley, infusing so many internet services with so many forms of artificial intelligence. But as good as they may be at recognizing cats in your online photos, AI researchers know that neural networks are still quite flawed, so much so that some wonder whether these pattern recognition systems are a viable path to more advanced—and more reliable—forms of AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Comcast Looks All Set to Keep Controlling Your Cable Box. Yay
February 06, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesNearly a decade ago, Comcast promised liberation from the tyranny of the cable box. But today its control seems here to stay—as does big cable’s control over how you consume the programming you pay for. This week, the Federal Communications Commission met for the first time under its new chairman, Ajit Pai, a Republican. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google’s Go-Playing Machine Opens the Door to Robots that Learn
February 03, 2017 08:10 - 10 minutesTwo robotic arms face two closed doors. Both reach forward and miss the door handles entirely. So they reach again, and this time, they hit the handles head-on, rattling the door frames. So they try again. And again. Finally, they grab the handles cleanly and pull the doors open, and after a few more hours of trial and error, they can repeat the trick every time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Trump’s SCOTUS Pick Needs to Get Tech—These Cases Show Why
February 02, 2017 08:10 - 10 minutesDuring a primetime television appearance tonight, President Donald Trump announced his final pick for the man who could be the next Apprentice—er, we mean the next justice to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The TV Ad Isn’t Going Anywhere—It’s Going Everywhere
February 01, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesYou’re inching home alongside four lanes of fellow commuters when a digital billboard blinks to a video ad for the latest model of the car you’re driving. Oh yeah, you think, my lease is up next month. Fifteen minutes later, you’re home. You grab your laptop and sink into your couch. You check Facebook and distractedly tune into a new Facebook Original Series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apps Make Pestering Congress So Easy That It Can’t Keep Up
January 31, 2017 08:10 - 12 minutesDonald Trump is now president, and Americans are flooding Congress with pleas and protestations. They’re anxious about the fate Obamacare, the future of the environment, and the president’s cabinet nominations. How are they expressing their anger, fears, and hopes? Email. Lots of email. Take Pennsylvania Democratic senator Bob Casey. He reportedly received 50,000 letters and emails opposing the nomination of Betsy DeVos for secretary of education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...
The Race to Pass Obama’s Last Law and Save Tech in DC
January 30, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesIt was 10:15 am on Inauguration Day, and John Paul Farmer was beginning to lose hope. The former Obama White House staffer had spent the last night at his sister’s apartment in Washington DC, working the phones and emailing any sentient being he’d met during his years in Washington. Farmer was trying to find someone, anyone, who could get the Tested Ability to Leverage Exceptional Talent Act—the Talent Act, for short—to President Barack Obama. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...
Author of Trump’s Favorite Voter Fraud Study Says Everyone’s Wrong
January 27, 2017 08:10 - 7 minutesJesse Richman used to be one of those researchers who only dreamed his work might someday capture national attention—maybe even inspire some sort of systemic change. On Ratemyprofessor.com, his students describe him as tough but fair, a “genius” who was liberal with extra credit projects and went out of his way to offer help. In 2014, Richman’s world changed when he co-authored a paper on voter fraud that instantly caught fire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Artificial Intelligence Is About to Conquer Poker, But Not Without Human Help
January 26, 2017 09:55 - 8 minutesKim is a high-stakes poker player who specializes in no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em. The 28-year-old Korean-American typically matches wits with other top players on high-stakes internet sites or at the big Las Vegas casinos. But this month, he’s in Pittsburgh, playing poker against an artificially intelligent machine designed by two computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fake Think Tanks Fuel Fake News—And the President’s Tweets
January 25, 2017 09:50 - 12 minutesFake news isn’t just Macedonian teenagers or internet trolls.A longstanding network of bogus “think tanks” raise disinformation to a pseudoscience, and their studies’ pull quotes and flashy stats become the “evidence” driving viral, fact-free stories. Not to mention President Trump’s tweets. These organizations have always existed: they’re old-school propagandists with new-school, tech-savvy reach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Women’s March Defines Protest in the Facebook Age
January 24, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesA rushing river of protesters flooded downtown Washington, DC, today, pink hats stretching as far as I could see. But it’s thesigns that stayed with me. “I’m With Her” and “Love Trumps Hate” posters from Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Signs mocking President Trump: “Keep your tiny hands off my rights” and “Can’t build the wall. Hands too small. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Now You Can Save the Democratic Party for the Low, Low Price of $4.68 a Month
January 23, 2017 08:10 - 7 minutesOn the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Democrats are lost. The Democratic National Committee has not elected a new leader. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton supporters are still blaming each other for her loss. The party holds no branch of the federal government and fewer than half of state legislatures. What in mid-2016 looked like a fractured Republican party is increasingly uniting behind its new leader. The Democratic Party looks like its falling apart. Learn more about your ad choic...
One Indian State’s Grand Plan to Get 23M People Online
January 20, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesThe trench running along the road linking Kodicherla and Penjarla in southern India is just 5 feet deep and about half as wide. Yet it carries the promise of a better life for the people of those villages, and all of Telangana. Within the ditch lie two pipes, a large black one carrying fresh water and smaller blue one containing a fiber optic broadband cable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Microsoft Thinks Machines Can Learn to Converse by Making Chat a Game
January 19, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesMicrosoft is buying a deep learning startup based in Montreal, a global hub for deep learning research. But two years ago, this startup wasn’t based in Montreal, and it had nothing to do with deep learning. Which just goes to show: striking it big in the world of tech is all about being in the right place at the right time with the right idea. Sam Pasupalak and Kaheer Suleman founded Maluuba in 2011 as students at the University of Waterloo, about 400 miles from Montreal. Learn more about you...
Tech’s Favorite School Faces Its Biggest Test: the Real World
January 18, 2017 08:10 - 21 minutesOn lengths of yarn stretched between chairs, sixth-grade math students were placing small yellow squares of paper, making number lines—including everything from fractions to negative decimals—in a classroom at Walsh Middle School. Working in teams one recent morning, they paper-clipped the squares along the yarn like little pieces of mathematical laundry. Their teacher, Michele O’Connor, had assigned the number lines in previous years, but this year was different. Learn more about your ad cho...
Move Over, Coders—Physicists Will Soon Rule Silicon Valley
January 17, 2017 08:10 - 9 minutesAt least, that’s what Oscar Boykin says. He majored in physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and in 2002 he finished a physics PhD at UCLA. But four years ago, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland discovered the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle first predicted in the 1960s. As Boykin points out, everyone expected it. The Higgs didn’t mess with the theoretical models of the universe. It didn’t change anything or give physcists anything new to strive for. Learn more ...
Tesla Is Snatching Apple’s Stars to Make Itself the New Apple
January 16, 2017 08:10 - 8 minutesIf you don’t follow the ins and outs of Silicon Valley personnel moves, you might have missed the news. Even if you saw it, it may not have made much sense. Chris Lattner is leaving Apple for Tesla? Chris who? Lattner doesn’t enjoythe name recognition of a Tim Cook or a Jony Ive. But he’s a rock star among software engineers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices