Sitting on a stage in Wuzhen, China, a historic city up the river from Shanghai, Google chairman Eric Schmidt described what he called “the age of intelligence.” But he wasn’t talking about human intelligence. He meant machine intelligence. He trumpeted the rise of deep neural networks and other techniques that allow machines to learn tasks largely on their own, either by finding patterns in vast amounts of data or through their own trial and error. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/...
Jun 08, 2017•9 min
After this weekend’s attacks in London, President Trump became embroiled in a spat with the city’s mayor, where the president criticized British authorities for not taking the threat of terrorism seriously enough. In its crude way, that confrontation underscored a deeper divide between the United States and much of the rest of the world over what taking terrorism seriously means. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jun 07, 2017•11 min
A couple weeks ago,during an unassuming antitrust conference at Oxford University, a German bureaucrat uttered a few words that should send a chill through Silicon Valley. In front of a crowd of nearly 200 competition law experts—including enforcement agents, scholars, and economic policy-makers from the United States and Europe—Andreas Mundt, president of Germany’s antitrust agency, Bundeskartellamt, said he was “deeply convinced privacy is a competition issue. Learn about your ad choices: dove...
Jun 06, 2017•16 min
Just past midnight on Wednesday morning, the man who gave us the word "bigly" added yet another term to the American lexicon: "covfefe." The president's since-deleted late-night tweet, which read, cryptically, "Despite the constant negative press covfefe," launched a thousand Twitter takes. Some of the jokes were great. Some were so very, very bad. (We're looking at you, Ted Cruz. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jun 05, 2017•9 min
On HBO’s Silicon Valley, startups promise to “change the world” by tackling silly, often non-existent problems. But this season, the show’s characters are tackling a project that really could. In their latest pivot, Richard Hendricks and the Pied Piper gang are trying to create new internet that cuts out intermediaries like Facebook, Google, and the fictional Hooli. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Jun 02, 2017•12 min
The web’s favorite file format just turned 30. Yep, it turns out the GIF is a millennial, too. At the same time, 30 makes the GIF ancient in web years, which feels a bit weird, given that the proliferation of animated GIFs is a relatively recent phenomenon. Today, Twitter has a GIF button and even Apple added GIF search to its iOS messaging app. Such mainstream approval would have seemed unthinkable even a decade ago, when GIFs had the cultural cachet of blinking text and embedded MIDI files. Le...
Jun 01, 2017•10 min
On February 16, Mark Zuckerberg published “Building Global Community,” a6,000-word open letter directly addressed to Facebook’susers. “To our community,” Zuckerberg begins. “On our journey to connect the world, we often discuss products we’re building and updates on our business. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 31, 2017•11 min
A disembodied voice sounded over a loudspeaker. "Incoming. Take cover," it warned to anyone within earshot. Then, the sirens began to wail. Erin Delaney assumed it was a drill. She peeked down the hallway to see how other people were responding. Then she hit the deck. It was not a drill. The NATO base in Kabul where Delaney had been working for weeks was being attacked. Delaney, 24, had never had any military training. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
May 30, 2017•20 min
Kathryn Minshew is a female cofounder and CEO of The Muse, a popular online job search destination for millennials. She doesn’t have a technical degree, although she was a top computer science student who aced the advanced placement exam for computer science when she was in the tenth grade at Thomas Jefferson High, a prestigious math and science magnet school in northern Virginia. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 29, 2017•16 min
Last Thursday Republicans proposed a new law that would require companies from Comcast and Verizon to Facebook and Google to get your permission before selling your internet browsing history. Sounds familiar? Probably, because last year the Federal Communications Commission passed a sweeping set of privacy rules that did much the same thing, rules that Republicans voted to scrap just two months ago. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
May 26, 2017•12 min
Ross Diedrich had gone pale and raw-boned. The CEO of a year-old startup in Denver, he'd stay at his office until the middle of the night, go home and sleep for about five hours, then chug a spinach smoothie and start again. He was just 27 years old, but he felt wrung out. Now he was standing in front of six angel investors, wearing a blazer over a T-shirt printed with the word covered—the name of his startup—and regretting he hadn't spent more time practicing for this moment. Learn about your a...
May 25, 2017•37 min
Ross Diedrich had gone pale and raw-boned. The CEO of a year-old startup in Denver, he’d stay at his office until the middle of the night, go home and sleep for about five hours, then chug a spinach smoothie and start again. He was just 27 years old, but he felt wrung out. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 24, 2017•35 min
Data mining is such a prosaic part of our online lives that it’s hard to sustain consumer interest in it, much less outrage. The modern condition means constantly clicking against our better judgement. We go to bed anxious about the surveillance apparatus lurking just beneath our social media feeds, then wake up to mindlessly scroll, Like, Heart, Wow, and Fave another day. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 23, 2017•17 min
Two days before delivering the keynote at Google I/O, the company’s annual State of the Union address, Sundar Pichai is worried about losing his voice. Sitting at the coffee table inside his remarkably spartan office at company headquarters, the Google CEO speaks softly, even by his standards. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 22, 2017•10 min
Is it possible that someday we will elect an AI president? Given some of the recent occupants of the White House, many might consider it an upgrade. After all, humans are prone to making decisions based on ego, anger, and the need for self-aggrandizement, not the common good. An artificially intelligent president could be trained to maximize happiness for the most people without infringing on civil liberties. It might even learn that it's a good idea to tweet less—or not at all. Learn about your...
May 19, 2017•11 min
“Should I tellthe story about the killer robots?” Micah Weinberg said. “I love telling this story. It’s such a good story.” A group of roughly 50 people listened raptly as Weinberg, president of a think tank called the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, addressed a public-policy luncheon in San Carlos, California, on Thursday afternoon. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 18, 2017•10 min
Apple just became the first US company to surpass $800 billion in market capitalization. Speculation quickly followed that Apple would soon become the first $1 trillion company, with a rumored $1,000 iPhone 8 coming at year’s end. The company’s share price has been on a tear since the beginning of the year, and sales of the iPhone 7 have been strong in part because of safety issues surrounding rival Samsung devices. Apple retains an enviable brand image and a devoted consumer base. Learn about y...
May 17, 2017•11 min
Vikingmaiden88 is twenty-six years old. She enjoys reading history and writing poetry. Her signature quote is from Shakespeare. I gleaned all this from her profile and posts on Stormfront.org, America's most popular online hate site. I also learned that Vikingmaiden88 has enjoyed the content on the site of the newspaper I work for, the New York Times. She wrote an enthusiastic post about a particular Times feature. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
May 16, 2017•15 min
Magic Leap, the secretive augmented reality tech startup that’s valued at $4.5 billion (and reportedly bores Beyoncé), settled a sex discrimination lawsuit this week. The plaintiff, Tannen Campbell, a former vice-president of strategic marketing, was hired to make the company’s product more appealing to women. Campbell filed a notice of settlement Monday in federal court in Florida, Magic Leap’s home state, and the terms of the settlement are confidential. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.p...
May 15, 2017•7 min
Today Snap reported its first earnings as a public company, and it bombed. Snap’s stock market debut three months ago was the most valuable tech IPO in the US in two years, and certainly the most talked-about. Snap, after all, provides one of the few significant alternatives to the two giants of online advertising, Facebook and Google. If Snap can eke out some space in a field long dominated by this duopoly, that could mean more meaningful competition. ‘Snap is a niche platform. Learn about your...
May 12, 2017•7 min
For Etsy, the internet's best-known marketplace for all things artisanal, the past week has served up a heaping portion of unpleasant corporate reality. After revealing aloss of nearly half-a-million dollars in the first quarter of 2017, Etsy said it would replace longtime chair and CEO Chad Dickerson. The company cut 8 percent of its workforce and said it wouldn't provide guidance on future earnings until August, when it hoped to have a better grip on its longer-term prospects. Learn about your...
May 11, 2017•7 min
The girls were dancing on a neon tank, wearing sequined bikinis lit up by red and green laser light. A strobing fixed-wing aircraft passed overhead like the acid-trip kissing cousin of a Mitsubishi A6M Zero, with more sequined women dangling from it, trapeze-style. Flashing robots had preceded them — wheeling through the room, pumping their fists at the crowd — while the audience, seated on tiers of glittery red plastic swivel chairs, waved glow sticks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx....
May 10, 2017•32 min
It was like a nightmare crossover between Gossip Girl and Black Mirror. Socialites, models, and celebrities, promised extravagant beachside benders, flocked to the Bahamas only to find feral dogs, luggage gone AWOL, and accommodations resembling FEMA camps. Social media feeds exploded with tales of wealthy millennials stranded on an island with little food or water. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 09, 2017•7 min
During a brief break in the online broadcast, Tom Hanks leaned toward Jack Dorsey. “So, has this been good for Twitter or bad?” he asked. Hanks was only semi-serious, but the Twitter CEO didn’t have an answer. Which is fair. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 08, 2017•7 min
Airbnb is trying to change the narrative. For so long, the nearly nine-year-old home-sharing platform pushed for growth by barging into new markets and new cities around the world, regulations be damned. So the news that the company agreed this week to settle its lawsuit against the City of San Francisco seems jarring. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 05, 2017•7 min
The Circle, a film adaptation of the best-selling novel by David Eggers about a mega-Silicon Valley company that has sinister plans to control the world, opened recently to tepid reviews and unimpressive box office. That shouldn’t obscure the fact that the issues it attempts to address—and which the novel brilliantly took on—are ones that need to be dealt with, urgently. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
May 04, 2017•8 min
The GOP-led Federal Communications Commission this week released the first details of its long-anticipated plan to roll-back Obama-era net neutrality protections. The good news for net neutrality advocates: You can already voice your official displeasure on the FCC’s proposal. The bad news: It’s quite possible no one will listen. The FCC’s Republican commissioners never supported the net neutrality rules, and they’re not likely to change their minds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org...
May 03, 2017•8 min
The world finds itself in an age saturated with anxiety—at least, that’s the sense created by the daily deluge of news portraying a grim present of economic hardship, global tensions, terrorism, and political upheaval. The five-year-old site Upworthy doesn’t want you to see the world that way. At one time, if Upworthy was known at all, it wasn’t for its mission, but for its attention-gathering headlines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
May 02, 2017•11 min
You read the news. But if Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales' hunch is right, you'll want to edit it, too. Wales is raising money to bring a new model of ad-free news creation to the web: one that would mix professional journalists with volunteer editors. Wales, like so many other idealists who believe in a better public discourse, wants to fix the fake news problem he sees as driven by a clickbait economy where accuracy comes second to intrigue. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-ch...
May 01, 2017•9 min
“What if you could type directly from your brain?” Regina Dugan said, as the same words appeared on the towering screen behind her, one digital character at a time, a cursor leading the way. “It sounds impossible,” she continued, taking another measured step across the stage. “But it’s closer than you may realize.” Dugan once oversaw Darpa, the visionary research arm of the US Department of Defense. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Apr 28, 2017•9 min
