Encrypted app for criminals Cipher is rebranding to go above-board, California has got new digital license plates with strange security implications, a researcher made deepfaked demands for a refund to Wells Fargo, and the American military is trying to ply Gen Z gamers with sweet sweet streams. On today’s Cyber, we’re playing catch up with Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox. Stories discussed in this episode: Researchers Could Track the GPS Location of All of California’s New Digital License Plate...
Jan 10, 2023•36 min
Facial recognition technology is here. Whether we like it or not, cameras all across the world are scanning faces and building databases. There’s a popular misconception that technology is objective and unbiased. But that’s not true. All systems carry the biases of the people who created them, and nowhere is that more evident than in facial recognition systems. Today’s show is about how those biases come to bear, and the dangers of running recklessly forward without considering the consequ...
Jan 05, 2023•40 min
Apple has democratized stalking for the modern world. With the Airtag you can keep track of your luggage and your estranged spouse. There’s been an uptick in stalking cases with Apple Airtags at the center and the legal system doesn’t quite know what to do. Often, the cops and the prosecutors don’t even know what an Airtag is. So what do you do when there’s technology at the center of your legal battle, technology that the authorities do not understand. Today on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor ...
Dec 14, 2022•36 min
We all love a good chatbot, some nice AI art, and a pleasant automated system. Artificial intelligence is here and these fancy decision trees are supposed to make our lives easier everyday without a human ever having to lift a finger. Except that’s not exactly true. AIs require an incredible amount of human input to train; AI art doesn’t make nightmares reality without scanning over millions of human-made images; and Meta’s content didn’t learn how to moderate itself with a human first telling i...
Dec 09, 2022•31 min
An online prophet that claims to be god. A murder in the Alabama woods. A child holding a shotgun in the middle of a camp. Reptilians. Urine therapy. The American South. Police violence. Conspiracy. Robot birds. The uniquely American black esoteric tradition. This episode of Cyber is a big and surreal story about a New Age movement that’s spread through livestreams. Its followers are decentralized, driven by belief rather than any organizing principle, but at the center of it all is a prop...
Dec 06, 2022•1 hr
This episode of Cyber is an action packed double feature that feels like it’s been pulled directly from a Cyberpunk novel. That’s right, today is all about railway strikes and killer robots. It’s hard to be a railway worker in America. The schedules are a nightmare, the kind of working conditions that can make someone sick. Just don’t try to use your sick days. Facing a railway strike, Congress passed legislation to prevent it. All at the behest of the White House. We’ll get into that. The...
Dec 02, 2022•53 min
Landlords. Most of us have to deal with them. They can be nosy, weird, invasive, and lazy. The best kind of landlord tends to be one that’s hands off. Well what if I told you that you can look forward to a bright future of automated landlords. Robot landlords tending their rental properties with a cool and calloused algorithmic hand. That impersonal future is here. Now. This week on Cyber, Nick Keppler stops by to talk about the rise of automated landlords. Keppler is a freelance journalist whos...
Nov 29, 2022•36 min
We have to talk about Elon Musk. It’s fun to make fun of him, and whatever he’s doing at Twitter certainly looks like the weird flailing of a man who doesn’t know how to run a company. But let’s take Musk seriously for an hour or so. He is the richest man in the world. He has big dreams and some of the resources to achieve them. The Pentagon is paying him for rocket launches. Starlink works and has been instrumental in the war in Ukraine. So who is Elon Musk and why do we care so much? His detra...
Nov 22, 2022•50 min
We’ve all seen the videos. Those viral townhall meetings where the community gathers to give its feedback to city managers on this or that subject. Too often a crank with a microphone stands before a panel of local political operators and talks at length about something bizarre and hyper specific. Sometimes they get abusive. There’s yelling, tears, grandstanding, and often nothing changes. It wasn’t always this way and there might be a better way to do it. On this episode of CYBER, Motherboard S...
Nov 16, 2022•49 min
Have you heard about Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX? FTX was the second largest crypto currency exchange in the world and Bankman-Fried was the guy who ran it. He was a young genius, people said. He practiced something called “effective altruism,” gave away money to people on the street, played video games, and was predicted to be the world’s first trillionaire. Now he’s bankrupt, FTX is in ruins and large amounts of crypto seem to keep shifting around with no explanation. So who was Bankman-Fried? W...
Nov 15, 2022•42 min
Without sex there would be no internet. From the moment the servers spun up, users were trying to figure out how to use instant connection to pleasures themselves and each other. The history of sex and the internet are intertwined. And what feels like new problems in the space: banking woes, hate speech, harassment, and moral panics about children are all much much older than you think. That’s the subject of the new book How Sex Changed the Internet . It’s out on November 15 and it’s by Motherbo...
Nov 10, 2022•49 min
We’re living through the end of something. Facebook is the site where your older family shares racist memes, Twitter seems only capable of talking about itself, and Instagram can’t compete with TikTok. What started with Friendster and MySpace, social media, once felt like a totalizing on the internet. Now it’s dying. According to Motherboard writer Edward Ongweso Jr, social media isn’t dying. It’s already dead. So what monsters struggle now to be born? Stories discussed in this episode: Social M...
Nov 08, 2022•47 min
Have you tried going to a concert recently? What about a stadium show for a popular comedian? What did it cost? How was the Ticketmaster experience? Like everything else, the price of live event tickets is on the rise. But the reasons why aren’t as simple as inflation and the economy. Outrageous ticket prices are all about a business monopoly using an algorithm to outflank the secondary market. It’s a surreal story and here to tell it is Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. Stories d...
Nov 03, 2022•41 min
For almost two decades, Facebook has dominated headlines and the lives of its users. It’s been blamed for genocides, pointed to as a vector of disinformation, and depressed you as you scrolled past high school acquaintances that seem to be doing so much better than you. But now its founder Mark Zuckerberg is obsessed with a virtual world no one wants, the company’s stock is down 70 percent of its peak and it has lost $800 billion of its market capitalization. Are we finally witnessing the ...
Nov 01, 2022•48 min
The killer robots are here and they’re not going away. We’ve all seen footage of the cute robot dogs stumbling around with weapons strapped to their back, and loitering munitions (or so-called “suicide drones”) have become a fixture on the battlefield in Ukraine. There’s a general fear in the air that the near future will be populated by semi-autonomous killing machines. But killer robots have been here a long time. Did you know one of the first aerial drones was deployed more than 100 yea...
Oct 28, 2022•42 min
America and political violence go together like George Lincoln Rockwell and a corncob pipe. There is a growing movement in the U.S., one that’s spreading online and probably in some of your neighborhoods. Far right extremist movements have a deepy history in America and there’s a new podcast from VICE that explores that history. It’s called American Terror and it’s hosted by a familiar voice: VICE news correspondent and founding host of Cyber Ben Makuch. He stopped by Cyber to talk about the sho...
Oct 26, 2022•46 min
We’ve all gotten a little too involved in a video game. I’ve talked repeatedly about how I’ve gotten lost in trying to complete maps in open world games like Assassin’s Creed . And there’s a million stories out there about kids who spent all their parents' money on upgrades in Farmville . But when I say the words State of Survival or Game of Thrones: Conquest , what comes to mind? Crappy ads on Facebook? Weird looking games that are obvious money pits? Yes, but there’s something a little more in...
Oct 20, 2022•33 min
On this episode of Cyber we talk about an old technology that suddenly feels very new. The bomb. That’s right, this episode is all about nuclear weapons. Thanks to Moscow’s war in Ukraine and Putin’s implicit and explicit threats to use them should Russian territory be threatened, everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons once again. Able Archer? Passé. Cuban Missile Crisis? Old news. These days it’s all about hypersonics, tactical nukes, and even cruise missiles powered by a nuclear engine. At leas...
Oct 13, 2022•49 min
Apps have made our life so convenient haven’t they? With the push of a button you can order Postmates, book an Airbnb, or even call an Uber. But what happens when the apps stop taking your calls? What happens when they shut you out completely? It’s happening more and more. In a bid to increase user safety, companies like Airbnb and Uber are turning to third parties to run background checks for them. A lot of it is automated and the background checkers make a lot of mistakes. So what happens if y...
Oct 11, 2022•32 min
Do you ever feel like you’re being played? Like the people who run the world have got you on a treadmill that’s feeding you just enough rewards to keep going. Gold stars on your attendance sheet at elementary school. Apps that encourage you to run by pretending you’re fleeing zombies. Bosses that keep track of everyone’s progress in a public spreadsheet, pitting employees against each other. As video games have gotten more popular, the world of flesh and blood has adopted some of its aspects. No...
Oct 04, 2022•43 min
Hacks are increasing but the hackers are not necessarily getting more sophisticated. What do Twitter, Twilio, and Uber all have in common? They were all hacked by, in part, a conversation. In all three cases, the hack was helped along by social engineering. Someone contacted an employee of the company and tricked them into giving up the keys to the company. It doesn’t matter how fancy your 2FA system is if an employee is just gonna give up their SMS codes to some rando on the phone. But worry no...
Sep 29, 2022•30 min
Chess. Chess. Chess. You, the audience, quite literally asked for it. It’s the scandal that just won’t quit. On September 4 at a live Chess Tournament in St. Louis, chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen lost in a massive upset to young chess wiz Hans Niemann. This was not supposed to happen and almost immediately accusations and revelations about cheating have gotten wilder, involving AI driven cheating engines and buttplugs. Throughout it all, Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler has kept pushi...
Sep 28, 2022•38 min
AI art has gotten wildly popular over the past year. Programs like Midjourney and Dall-E are generating incredible images and incredible controversy. But these programs don’t exist in a vacuum. AI’s require billions of images to learn how and what to draw. Where are they getting those pictures? They’re hoovering them up on the internet. A place full of child porn, ISIS execution videos, and non-consensual adult images. With AI it’s all garbage in, garbage out. So who controls this data and is th...
Sep 23, 2022•30 min
You ever feel like somebody’s watching you? Well, on the internet, it’s often true. Every move you make on the internet generates reams of data that ISPs and data brokers sell on to on to a ton of people who may want to take a look. It’s a big business. One we don’t often see the inside of. One of the companies buying up all that data is Team Cymru who watches over all of it with a tool it calls Augury. Who buys Augury? We’ve just learned a lot of agencies within the federal government. Cyber Co...
Sep 21, 2022•45 min
Groups on Telegram that used to primarily be interested in taking over people’s phones and online accounts have changed tactics. Now, they’re selling violence. And to cap off the week, a hacker we don’t know much about was able to steal the credentials of an Uber employee and access the company's back end. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writers Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Joseph Cox walk us through the latest in the world of cybersecurity. Stories discussed on this episode: Fi...
Sep 16, 2022•32 min
This week on Cyber we’re going deep into recent stories of unidentified flying objects and Chess. The Pentagon has gotten big into investigating what it calls unidentified aerial phenomenon and a chess champion has been accused of cheating but the exact phenomenon he’s accused of remains unidentified. With me today to walk through all of this is Motherboard’s lovely editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. Stories discussed in this episode: Congress Admits UFOs Not ‘Man-Made,’ Says ‘Threats’ Increas...
Sep 14, 2022•46 min
Today on Cyber we’ve got a special presentation: We’re talking about Motherboard’s science fiction short story collection Terraform one last time. This week’s episode is a recording of a live roundtable discussion with Cory Doctorow and Geoff Manaugh—both of whom have short stories in the collection—and Terraform editors Claire L. Evans and Brian Merchant. Want to learn the secret history of the Luddites? Find out if corporations can be bought off? Learn what it’s like to work with Netflix? Well...
Sep 07, 2022•56 min
It seems like the Earth’s billionaires are desperate to escape the planet. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are looking to outer space. Mark Zuckerberg is looking to the inner space of virtual reality. So many billionaires are buying up land and luxury survival bunkers in New Zealand that it’s hard to keep track. Do they know something we don’t? Or do they just have the money to act on fears they themselves were instrumental in creating? Here today to help me answer that question is Douglas Rushkoff. Ru...
Sep 01, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Woe to those who live in the path of a hypercane. What’s a hypercane? I’m glad you asked. In a frighteningly possible future you’ll be hearing more about them. As the planet warms and the climate changes, we’re in for all kinds of new and bizarre extreme weather systems. It’s a hurricane so big and so powerful it extends through several states. Today on Cyber, we’ve got something special. Another short story from Motherboard’s first book: Terraform . Terraform editor Brian Merchant and special g...
Aug 30, 2022•52 min
A new study in Nature Food has revealed, once again, the unprecedented danger of nuclear weapons. Built on the foundation of decades of research, it’s about the climate change and global famine that would follow even a limited nuclear exchange. The models are a terrifying warning. A limited war between Pakistan and India that uses just three percent of the world’s nuclear weapons could kill a third of the Earth’s population. In this special edition of Cyber, we talk about the study, its implicat...
Aug 25, 2022•51 min
