Business, Spoken

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Rural Americans Are Rebooting the Spirit of the Internet Nov 21, 2018

Show notes

Back in the early 1930s, farmers couldn’t get wired. The big-city electric utilities claimed that delivering power to customers spread out in rural areas wasn’t profitable. So eventually the locals rolled up their sleeves and did it themselves. They formed electric co-ops and strung their own damn wires, aided by cheap federal loans. Today there are nearly 900 rural co-ops still providing their communities with electricity.

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We Made Our Own Artificial Intelligence Art, and So Can You Nov 21, 2018

Show notes

On the 3:13 pm train out of San Jose on a recent Friday, I hunched over a Macbook, brow furrowed. Hundreds of miles north in a Google datacenter in Oregon, a virtual computer sprang to life. I was soon looking at the yawning blackness of a Linux command line—my new AI art studio. Some hours of Googling, mistyped commands, and muttered curses later, I was cranking out eerie portraits.

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How a Teenager's Code Spawned a $432,500 Piece of Art Nov 20, 2018

Show notes

One Thursday last month, 19-year-old Robbie Barrat woke to a fusillade of messages on his phone. “I was half asleep but saw they all contained the same number,” he says. “Then I fell back asleep for a few hours. I didn’t really want to believe.

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The Promise of (Practically) ‘Serverless Computing’ Nov 20, 2018

Show notes

The definition of cloud computing may be nebulous, but its promise is clear. Instead of filling a warehouse with servers and paying people to manage them, a company can pay a cloud computing provider to provide computing resources on demand and pay only for what it actually uses. This prospect lured organizations ranging from startups to massive corporations to stodgy government agencies onto cloud offerings from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and others.

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'He Who Must Not Be Named': What Alex Jones and Voldemort Have in Common Nov 19, 2018

Show notes

When Alex Jones crashed the congressional hearings looking into big tech platforms back in September, Lord Voldemort kept coming to my mind. Even if you haven’t read the Harry Potter books, you probably know that almost no one in the wizarding world will speak this archvillain’s name aloud; he is referred to only as “he who must not be named” or “you know who.

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What Diane Greene's Departure Means for Google Cloud Nov 19, 2018

Show notes

Google parent Alphabet generated 86 percent of its revenue from advertising last year. On Friday the woman leading its best shot at building a second big revenue stream said she is moving on. Diane Greene, a storied cloud computing entrepreneur and executive, has been leading Google’s cloud computing division since early 2016.

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6 Questions After The New York Times' Facebook Bombshell Nov 16, 2018

Show notes

On Wednesday afternoon, The New York Times published a blockbuster—five byline, 50 source, 5,000 word—report on the failures of Facebook’s management team during the past three years. It begins with Sheryl Sandberg yelling at one of her employees; it ends with her hand-written stage directions, captured by a Times photographer, as she sat before the Senate: “Slow, Pause, Determined.

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Why Amazon’s Search for a Second Headquarters Backfired Nov 15, 2018

Show notes

Amazon announced Tuesday that the 14-month public bidding war for its so-called second headquarters was coming to an end. After reviewing 238 proposals from cities across North America, the company says it will build two large regional offices in Queens, New York and Arlington, Virginia as well as a smaller campus in Nashville, Tennessee. The search was largely a success for CEO Jeff Bezos, who can use valuable data from the losing cities to inform Amazon’s business and future expansion.

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Facing UK Regulation, Big Tech Sends a Lobbyist to London Nov 14, 2018

Show notes

The tech industry already spends tens of millions of dollars every year lobbying in Washington for federal regulations that will benefit their businesses---or, better yet, for no regulations at all. But while lawmakers on Capitol Hill have spent the last two years handwaving and making empty threats against Big Tech, regulators in the UK have been getting to work, strengthening their data privacy laws and taking steps toward more restrictions around content online.

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Amazon’s HQ2 Hunger Games Are Over, and Jeff Bezos Won Nov 14, 2018

Show notes

After a 14-month search, Amazon announced Tuesday that it will open a pair of regional offices in two major metropolitan areas where it already has a presence: the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, New York, and Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington D.C. The decision comes after over 230 cities submitted bids to be home of the Seattle-based company’s highly-anticipated second headquarters, which originally promised to employ 50,000 white collar workers.

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