When Mark Zuckerberg isn't responding to the latest scandal engulfing his company, he's actually trying to fix Facebook: He's trying to redirect its obsession with growth---in users and in the time they spend on Facebook---to focus on whether those users have good experiences on the platform. The problem is that he'd prefer the world not know exactly how obsessed with these metrics his company was. And the world is not cooperating. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Apr 02, 2018•7 min
The headlines about the trade wars being touched off by President Trump’s new tariffs may telegraph plenty of bombast and shots fired, but the most consequential war being waged today is a quieter sort of conflict: It’s the new Cold War over data protection. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Apr 02, 2018•7 min
It was a somber scene outside New York’s City Hall on Wednesday afternoon. Four coffins sat at the foot of the steps; one by one, taxi drivers covered them with white flowers, before assembling on the steps and shouting for the city to “stop Uber’s greed” and “stop making us slaves.” It was the second such gathering in two months, as drivers and their advocates mourned another suicide that they attribute to the rise of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. Learn about your ad choices: doveta...
Mar 30, 2018•11 min
Last week the internet jumped on a new research paper proclaiming that the bitcoin blockchain contains child pornography. The authors of that paper conclude that if you’re one of the thousands of people running a full copy of the bitcoin software, or even just a curious researcher downloading the transaction history, you’re breaking the law. Because removing any data from the blockchain destroys the functionality of the system, this legal trouble could spell doom for cryptocurrencies. Learn abou...
Mar 30, 2018•13 min
Oracle's nearly eight-year legal battle with Google just won't end. Tuesday a federal appeals court ruled that Google violated Oracle's copyrights when it built a custom version of the Java platform for its Android operating system. The court sent the case back to a district court to decide how much Google should pay Oracle. But Google can appeal to the Supreme Court. And it should, because the decision will affect not just Google and Oracle, but the entire software industry. Learn about your ad...
Mar 29, 2018•6 min
In 1933, Thupten Gyatso, the 13th Dalai Lama, died at the age of 57. According to Tibetan Buddhist doctrine, the spirit of a departed Dalai Lama chooses the next body into which he will be reincarnated. So when a group of elders noticed that Gyatso’s head had pivoted from facing south to facing northeast during the embalming process, they took it as an omen. A search party left Lhasa for the northeastern province of Amdo, where they found a 2-year-old boy named Lhamo Thondup. Learn about your ad...
Mar 29, 2018•5 min
At age 25, Anjney Midha has a stronger resume than some people twice his age. Before graduating from Stanford, he joined the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He led the firm’s investment in Magic Leap, the mysterious and much-hyped augmented reality company. Then he ditched venture capital to pursue a dream that had followed him from a technology-free young adulthood on a bird sanctuary in India, to the hyper-connected streets of Singapore, to his days at Stanford. Lear...
Mar 28, 2018•9 min
A grinning 4-year-old boy clambers up and down an inflatable backyard water park, collecting oversize Easter eggs, goaded from behind the camera by his mom. The boy, Ryan, stomps the eggs open and unveils plastic toys. It looks like a home movie, but it’s actually the most-watched video on one of the most-watched YouTube channels in the world, Ryan ToysReview. It has been viewed more than 1.1 billion times since 2016, and the leaders of a new startup, Pocket. Learn about your ad choices: dovetai...
Mar 28, 2018•3 min
See this fancy pink water bottle I’m holding? Now watch as I bash my head in with it. This is not, I assume, what the makers of the $38 “beauty essential” intended. What they promised was “glamour sipping like a boss.” They wanted me to “be brave. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 27, 2018•2 min
The sixth-month anniversary of Hurricane Maria’s grinding-up of Puerto Rico brought what might feel like good news. According to AEE, the Electrical Energy Authority, almost 93 percent of Puerto Ricans—1,365,065 people—now have power. The process has been agonizing—a misguided early repair contract to the unlikely Whitefish Energy for $300 million got cancelled, and it took months for crews from better-suited firms to get started. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 27, 2018•8 min
When administrators in Ohio’s Mentor Public Schools were buying MacBooks during the 2015-16 school year, the local Best Buy was offering a lower price than Apple, even after the company’s standard discount for school districts. Superintendent Matt Miller pushed for a better deal, but Apple said it would not budge from its price list. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 26, 2018•16 min
The drumbeat to regulate Big Tech began pounding long before the Cambridge Analytica scandal rocked Facebook—six long years ago, the Obama administration pushed a “Privacy Bill of Rights” that, like most other legislative attempts to safeguard your data online, went nowhere. But this time, as they say, feels different. Thanks to repeated lapses from not just Facebook but all corners of Silicon Valley, some sort of regulation seems not only plausible but imminent. Learn about your ad choices: dov...
Mar 26, 2018•8 min
Even if you're not a gadget geek, you likely know whether your laptop is powered by an Intel chip or one from a competitor like AMD. The sticker plastered next to your keyboard won't let you forget. But even if you know your Ryzens from your Ice Lakes, you probably don't put much thought into who makes the memory chips that store your data and keep your laptop and smartphone working. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 23, 2018•8 min
Travis Kalanick, Uber’s founder and former CEO, wasn’t gone very long. After he resigned from Uber in June 2017, Kalanick spent time hobnobbing at elite conferences like Davos and getting good at smartphone games. This month, he announced 10100, a fund for his personal investments. On Tuesday Kalanick elaborated on his plans: 10100 acquired a controlling stake in City Storage Systems, a holding company which invests in distressed real estate assets, for $150 million. Learn about your ad choices:...
Mar 23, 2018•7 min
A year ago, The Intercept published a story about a Trump campaign affiliate that was circulating personality tests to collect Americans’ personal information. The company, called Cambridge Analytica, had already been unveiled by the Guardian in a chilling report that detailed its voter-targeting operation. There was every reason to be concerned. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 22, 2018•6 min
“I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform,” wrote Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a statement that addressed a series of news stories reporting Facebook’s data had been misused. In the 937-word statement, posted on his Facebook profile Wednesday afternoon, Zuckerberg outlined all that Facebook has done and plans to do to keep our data safe. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 22, 2018•8 min
The technology at the heart of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin—blockchain—has captured the world’s attention, much as the internet, peer-to-peer file transfers, apps, and the cloud did before it. Simply put, blockchains are distributed databases that can be securely updated without the need for central intermediaries. That makes them relevant to a whole host of uses, including everything from food safety to digital identity to insurance records. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-cho...
Mar 22, 2018•5 min
Two weeks ago, Facebook learned that The New York Times, Guardian, and Observer were working on blockbuster stories based on interviews with a man named Christopher Wylie. The core of the tale was familiar but the details were new, and now the scandal was attached to a charismatic face with a top of pink hair. Four years ago, a slug of Facebook data on 50 million Americans was sucked down by a UK academic named Aleksandr Kogan, and wrongly sold to Cambridge Analytica. Learn about your ad choices...
Mar 21, 2018•17 min
You return home to your penthouse apartment after a long day at work auctioning Cryptokitties and other cryptogoods on a peer-to-peer marketplace. You grab a bottle of tangerine-flavored weed soda from the fridge and sink into your couch. With a flick of your hand, the overhead light switches on. A wooden side table, custom-built by a robot in India, holds a box containing your antidepressant patches. You peel off the back and slap one on your arm. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/a...
Mar 21, 2018•6 min
We all know how it feels to be low on energy at the end of a long work day. Some call-center agents at insurer MetLife are watched over by software that knows how it sounds. A program called Cogito presents a cheery notification when the toll of hours discussing maternity or bereavement benefits show in a worker’s voice. “It’s represented by a cute little coffee cup,” says Emily Baker, who supervises a group fielding calls about disability claims at MetLife. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail...
Mar 20, 2018•9 min
Consumers have long wondered just what Google and Facebook know about them, and who else can access their personal data. But internet giants have little incentive to give straight answers — even to simple questions like, “Why am I being shown this ad?” On May 25, however, the power balance will shift towards consumers, thanks to a European privacy law that restricts how personal data is collected and handled. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 19, 2018•12 min
On January 16, a new course launched on the online learning platform Coursera with an unassuming name: The Google IT Support Professional Certificate. It promised to prepare beginners for entry-level jobs in IT in eight to 12 months. That day, it attracted the largest-ever group of first-time Coursera users, almost half of them people without college degrees. By February, it was Coursera’s second-most-popular offering. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 19, 2018•10 min
WIRED Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Thompson interviewed YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki on Tuesday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. Here is an edited transcript of the talk. Nicholas Thompson: So you have had a crazy year and a half. All the social media companies have had a crazy year and a half. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 16, 2018•27 min
Tech companies are rushing to infuse everything with artificial intelligence, driven by big leaps in the power of machine learning software. But the deep-neural-network software fueling the excitement has a troubling weakness: Making subtle changes to images, text, or audio can fool these systems into perceiving things that aren’t there. That could be a big problem for products dependent on machine learning, particularly for vision, such as self-driving cars. Learn about your ad choices: dovetai...
Mar 16, 2018•7 min
If broadband providers thought that they'd be subject to fewer regulations after the Federal Communications Commission voted in December to jettison its net neutrality protections, they could be disappointed. California state Senator Scott Wiener on Wednesday introduced a bill that would create a regime in some ways more strict than the Obama-era rules against blocking, throttling, or otherwise discriminating against content. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 15, 2018•5 min
Technology keeps making it easier to separate you from your money. PayPal enabled you to easily send money via the internet. Square allowed businesses to use a smartphone to accept your credit card. Apple Pay and Android Pay flipped this idea on its head and let you pay with your phone instead of a card. Despite this innovation in how consumers can pay businesses, the way businesses pay each other hasn't changed much. San Francisco startup Fundbox wants to give businesses another option. Learn a...
Mar 15, 2018•4 min
President Donald Trump blocked Broadcom's proposed $105 billion acquisition of fellow wireless chip giant Qualcomm on Monday amidst mounting fears that US could fall behind China on technology innovation. That’s a little odd, because on its face, the deal itself has nothing to do with China. Broadcom's key units are US-based; the company is headquartered in Singapore, which is generally considered friendly to the US. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Mar 14, 2018•5 min
Washington state Governor Jay Inslee Monday signed the nation’s first state law intended to protect net neutrality, setting up a potential legal battle with the Federal Communications Commission. The law bans broadband providers offering service in the state from blocking or throttling legal content, or from offering fast-lane access to companies willing to pay extra. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 14, 2018•4 min
Predicting the winners and losers of March Madness is such a daunting challenge that it attracts math nerds like Starfleet voyagers lining up at Comic-Con. Statisticians, economists, Silicon Valley coders, the PhD quants at hedge funds and gambling syndicates: They’ve all tried to “solve” the outcome of the annual college basketball tournament’s 63 matchups. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 13, 2018•4 min
No matter where you situate yourself on the political spectrum, don’t try to deny that the 2016 US presidential election made you go “whaaaaaaat?” This isn’t a judgment; if you believe Michael Wolff’s book, even Donald Trump didn’t think Donald Trump was going to be president. Partially that’s because of polls. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Mar 13, 2018•8 min
