Cyber is a show covering a diverse range of topics. We’ve covered everything from crypto to AI to online cults. If it touches technology or online culture, we’ll talk about it. That’s how you get an episode like today’s, which is both a deep dive into professional wrestling’s latest scandal and a discussion of the latest existential threat: nuclear weapons in space. Vice features editor Timothy Marchman can do it all. First, Marchman walks us through the newest allegations against WWE boss Vince...
Feb 16, 2024•1 hr
An AI-generated Biden called voters in New Hampshire ahead of the primary and told them to stay home . X locked down the search term “Taylor Swift” after AI-generated nudes of the pop giant flooded the platform. In the wake of both scandals, Congress has struggled with how to fight back against the flood of fake bullshit. Keeping the world from drowning in fakes affects all of us, but some of the cures sound worse than the sickness. This week on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose and Fi...
Feb 09, 2024•50 min
Ten years ago, Big Tech reached a peak. Facebook had wormed its way into the lives of billions of people. The mainstream news covered iPhones releases like they were Taylor Swift concerts. Elon Musk was promising to colonize Mars and fill the streets with self-driving cars. In 2024, the wheels have come off all these dreams. Musk has filled the sky with satellites, but no colonists, and constantly fights people on X. Self-driving cars are killing people. Apple has released a $3,500 VR headset th...
Feb 02, 2024•1 hr 8 min
We live in a golden age of data. Every day, hacktivists release terabytes of data on sites like DDoSecrets, but sorting through it all requires some technical knowledge. What if you don’t know XML from SQL let alone how to write a simple Python script? Micah Lee is the director of information security for The Intercept and he’s on Cyber today to talk about his new book: Hacks, Leaks, and Revelations . The book is a manual for people who want to learn how to parse and organize hacked datasets. It...
Jan 26, 2024•56 min
The unreliable narrator of After World, the new novel from author Debbie Urbanski, is an AI tasked with writing a book about Sen, the last human on Earth. In this world, humanity is done. The world is moving on without us and Sen was born for a purpose: to watch the planet change itself without humanity. After World is a story about artificial intelligence, climate change, and what we can hope to leave behind for our children in a doomed future. On today’s episode of Cyber, Emily and Matth...
Jan 19, 2024•53 min
According to the hype, artificial intelligence is changing everything. The truth is more complicated, but that doesn’t mean that companies and governments aren’t rushing to embrace the new technology. It’s even being used to update an old and destructive technology: nuclear weapons. America is modernizing its force, Russia is building new kinds of nuclear weapons, and China is increasing its nuclear stockpile. At the same time, all three countries are looking to AI to outsource the dangerous and...
Jan 12, 2024•1 hr 2 min
The New York Times kicked off the holiday season by suing OpenAI and Microsoft. The paper of record believes that ChatGPT is violating various copyrights by using its articles as training data. It’s a landmark case that may end up before the Supreme Court and might change copyright law in America forever. This week on Cyber, Sharon Goldman of VentureBeat sits down with us to discuss the lawsuit, the coming presidential election, and all the other big AI stories she’s watching in 2024. Stor...
Jan 05, 2024•58 min
On February 3, a train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio releasing toxic chemicals into the air. Almost a month later, another train owned by the same company also derailed in Ohio. That’s not all. Trains in Charlotte are running slower than they should. NYC can’t fit trains into its new station. The list goes on and on. What the hell is going on with mass transit in America? If you’re a long time Cyber listener, you might already know some of the answers to this question. That’s thanks to returni...
Dec 20, 2023•58 min
As we slide into the winter holidays, Cyber is taking some time to relax with old friends and discuss the things that truly matter: the decline of the internet, creator culture, and the transcendent power of movies. This week on Cyber, Aftermath co-founder Gita Jackson stops by to talk about “Napoleon,” the death of film criticism, and what happens when a big name on YouTube plagiarizes you. Stories discussed in this episode: Please Stop Asking Me To Sue James Somerton Cyber Live is coming...
Dec 13, 2023•1 hr 9 min
Your posts matter more than you think. Social media has changed the way wars are fought and the internet has become a new battlefield. Twitter may be dying, but it still matters an awful lot to policy makers. TikTok is ascendent, but often because its content can be repurposed on other platforms. Telegram can give you the news on the ground, but only if you trust the sources. With all this information flowing and everyone motivated by personal politics, who can you trust? This week, Emerso...
Dec 01, 2023•51 min
The tensions between security and operations and developer teams are the stuff of legend. DevSecOps is trying to change that, and automation is a big part of making it possible. But automation alone can’t overcome entrenched behavior. Joylynn Kirui shares how Microsoft is helping teams prioritize security without bogging down development. Follow and listen to Code Comments: https://link.chtbl.com/codecomments?sid=podcast.cyber Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 27, 2023•20 min
What happens when a for profit company is run by a non-profit board of directors who are ideologically opposed to the company’s product? You get something like what happened to OpenAI over the past week, which saw its board of directors sack CEO Sam Altman before eventually reinstating him and resigning. It’s a weird story that involves AI, predictions of the end of the world, strange pagan rites in Silicon Valley offices, and a Harry Potter fanfic. Join us this week on Cyber as Motherboard seni...
Nov 22, 2023•54 min
When “Alison” started working for Operation Underground Railroad, she wanted to make a difference in the lives of kids. She was a former Marine and social worker who’d seen the devastating effects that abuse could have on people. She wanted to stop it before it happened. She ended up with a broken orbital bone, bleeding and vomiting in a gym after a training exercise gone wrong. This week on Cyber, Anna Merlan and Tim Marchman walk us through their latest reporting on Tim Ballard and Operation U...
Nov 20, 2023•2 hr 34 min
It’s a bad time to be a crypto-person. Some of crypto’s biggest evangelists are facing serious federal jail time. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on seven counts of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering after a disastrous trial. Some owners of Bored Ape NFTs experienced vision injuries at a recent gathering. Prices are in the toilet and SEC regulators are circling. And yet, many crypto holders are holding out hope that the number will go up again soon. This week on Cyber...
Nov 10, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Rhino sounds like a good deal at first. When people move into a new apartment, they often have to pay a large lump sum security deposit to their landlord. For people who can’t pay, Rhino offers to bill them a little bit every month in lieu of the deposit. But there’s a catch: unlike security deposits, money sent to Rhino is never returned. The company uses algorithms to make the wealthy pay less than poorer people, some renters are still paying for places where they no longer live and no o...
Oct 31, 2023•52 min
Kias and Hyundais are being stolen in America at an alarming rate. Using a screwdriver and a USB cable, it’s trivially easy to steal one. Kia and Hyundai blame social media, but the problem is so overwhelming that several cities are suing the car manufacturer for creating a crime epidemic by electing not to build a $100 anti-theft device into some models. This week on Cyber, Motherboard Reporter Aaron Gordon stops by to walk us through what’s really behind the viral crime wave. ‘Kia Boys’ Trend ...
Oct 20, 2023•1 hr 11 min
There’s a lot of reasons to be worried about the future. Climate change, nuclear weapons, space junk, and World War III are all threats both present and long-term. But, every day, people are trying to make the world a better place. It lands them in weird situations like skinny dripping with Soviet officers at the height of the Cold War or getting drunk with engineers in North Korea. This week on Cyber, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis stops by to tell us all about the brave men and women who took a chance, rea...
Oct 10, 2023•56 min
Have you noticed your internet is …. kinda shitty? Does Spotfiy’s smart shuffle keep playing the same Cure song over and over again? Does a quick google search give you page after page of obvious advertisements? Want to leave Facebook behind but that one group chat keeps you checking in day after day? Well have I got the book for you. It’s The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. It’s a little bit history, it’s a little bit manifesto, and it’s all about one simple concept that ca...
Oct 04, 2023•1 hr 7 min
Luddites! It’s a dirty word, right? One that’s become synonymous with anti-technology crusaders that want to return us to an idyllic past where everyone is free from their phones. But who were the Luddites? Where does the term come from? How has it been misused and do we, perhaps, need a little more King Ludd in all our lives? Brian Merchant is here to answer all our burning questions about Luddites and his new book Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech . He’s a tec...
Sep 29, 2023•47 min
This summer, a movie called The Sound of Freedom took America by storm. The hero was Tim Ballard, the founder of an organization called Operation Underground Railroad. The movie depicted Ballard as an avenging hero who rescued trafficked children from a life of slavery. The truth, we’re all finding out, is something more complicated and a lot less heroic. Ballard left the organization around the time Sound of Freedom premiered, following an investigation into his sexual misconduct. It’s a wild s...
Sep 25, 2023•1 hr 10 min
It’s time for a new history of the internet, one that focuses on the recent revolutions that define the world we all live in. Social media has changed the way many of us live and work. It’s a world defined by a new economy of creators and influencers. The new media is here and it’s Extremely Online. That’s the title of the new book from Taylor Lorenz, which is the untold story of fame, influence, and power on the internet. Lorenz is a columnist for The Washington Post and she joined us to answer...
Sep 15, 2023•2 hr 2 min
The heat is still here, but the summer will soon be over. Here at the precipice of fall I wanted to take a moment to reflect on one of the big stories that Motherboard covered this season: labor, strikes, and unions. Here to tell us all about it is Motherboard labor reporter Jules Roscoe. Stories discussed in this episode: Instacart Tells Shoppers in Hurricane ‘Bad Weather = Good Tips’ 'It Feels Horrible': Amazon Workers Delivered Packages During Destructive Tropical Storm Amazon Told Drivers No...
Sep 05, 2023•43 min
It’s part two of our bittersweet episode of Cyber where we bid farewell to Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. This week we do a deep dive into the Motherboard lore. The stories that broke us, the controversies that made us who we are. Come find out which popular web comic wrote a strip about us that’s aged like milk, how much horse shit you can buy for $10 in Bitcoin, why the director of Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story hates Motherboard, and why you should never bowl with someone who...
Aug 25, 2023•1 hr 10 min
It’s a bittersweet episode of Cyber as we bid farewell to Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. It’s a long episode so we’ve split it into two parts. This week you get some discussions about the topics of the day including Planet of Bass, Oliver Anthony, and the vibes-based economy. After that we start dishing all of Motherboard’s secrets, including how Jason came to work there and what it’s like to walk out of a meeting with 8 missed calls from Disney on your phone. Next week we’re talking...
Aug 18, 2023•1 hr 18 min
Room-temperature superconductors are here! Maybe! Look, science is a liar sometimes , especially in the internet age. Motherboard science reporter Becky Ferreira is here to help us parse the truth from fiction of LK-99. It’s either one of the biggest science stories of our entire lives or … just another science hoax. Later in the show, Joseph Cox is stopping by to tell us about another group of researchers who’ve uncovered a backdoor in police radios. Stories discussed in this episode: DIY Scien...
Aug 04, 2023•56 min
We’ve got a super sized Cyber for you today that’s all about the two hottest movies in theaters. One is a mythological take on the creation of the modern world and the devastating weapons that ushered it in. The other is about an idol forged from plastic that came to dominate that world. That’s right. It’s Barbenheimer time. Emily Lipstein is co-hosting with me and we’re joined by nuclear historian and master of secrets, Alex Wellerstein as well as journalist and critic Gita Jackson. We’re recor...
Jul 28, 2023•2 hr 1 min
It’s a brutally hot summer, a great time to cool off in an air conditioned movie theater or to catch up on some of those TV shows you’ve had on your list forever. But did you know the people who make the fine entertainment you know and love are on strike? Both writers and actors are picketing, trying to get a fair shake out of the studios and companies that bet big on streaming and used the shift to screw over the workers who keep us all entertained. With us today to talk about it is standup com...
Jul 24, 2023•43 min
A movie about a Mormon anti-trafficking activist made headlines when it beat Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the box office. But Sound of Freedom’s box office numbers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and the group behind the movie, Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) has a long and troubled history. Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Anna Merlan joins us this week on Cyber to explain OUR and Sound of Freedom . Stories discussed in this episode: Tim Ballard Has ‘Stepped Away’ From Opera...
Jul 14, 2023•46 min
It feels like the old internet is breaking apart and no one is sure where to go. The first three pages of search results on Google are dreck. Reddit is shutting down the third party apps that make it usable. AI generated content is flooding beloved old websites. This might just be the end of the usable internet. On this episode of Cyber, we talk it all out with Motherboard editor-in-chief, Jason Koebler. Stories discussed in this episode: Threads: The Motherboard Review You Can't Look at Porn on...
Jul 07, 2023•41 min
Discord and Minecraft servers are part of an ecosystem where young people brag about crimes. SIM swapping, cryptocurrency, extortion, and violence-for-hire are all part of an disparate online community where people gather to swap stories and videos about crime. It’s called The Comm, and this week on Cyber, Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox comes on the show to tell us all about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoDl73J5EJY Stories discussed in this episode: Bloodied Macbooks and Stacks of Cash: ...
Jun 23, 2023•34 min
