Business, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

With Instagram Cofounders Out, It’s Facebook All the Way Down Sep 26, 2018

Show notes

On Monday night, when the cofounders of Instagram announced that they had quit Facebook, reportedly over Mark Zuckerberg’s meddling, it marked the end of an era in more ways than one. It shattered the partition that protected the beloved photo-sharing app from the sins of its parent company. The departures also extinguished the idea of Facebook as a “family of companies.

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Twitter Releases New Policy on 'Dehumanizing Speech' Sep 26, 2018

Show notes

Twitter on Tuesday announced a new policy addressing “dehumanizing speech,” which will take effect later this year, and for the first time the public will be able to formally provide the company with feedback on the proposed rule. The policy will prohibit “content that dehumanizes others based on their membership in an identifiable group, even when the material does not include a direct target.

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Google Is Getting a Lot More Visual to Keep You on Its Site Sep 25, 2018

Show notes

Cobbling together a DIY dossier about a celebrity is a time-honored internet tradition. Scan a few Wikipedia pages, click through some Google images, scroll through social media accounts, maybe some dubious gossip sites, and you have a snapshot of the person’s life. Now Google wants to do that detective work for you, accessible in a format that owes a lot to Instagram stories, except showcasing the highlights of a person’s life instead of just their day.

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The Dawn of Twitter and the Age of Awareness Sep 25, 2018

Show notes

When it came into being in 2006, Twitter seemed perplexing. Publishing teensy, 140-character updates? Whatever was that good for? Twitter seemed like a ghastly mashup of the preening narcissism and nanosecond attention spans that defined the worst trends in digital culture. Tim Ferriss, writer of productivity books, called it “pointless email on steroids.” Who cares what you had for lunch? But critics misunderstood it. What Twitter truly portended wasn’t small, it was huge.

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'Netflix for Open Source' Wants Developers to Get Paid Sep 24, 2018

Show notes

Henry Zhu makes software that's crucial to websites you use every day, even if you’ve never heard of him or his software. Zhu manages a program called Babel, which translates code written in one version of the programming language JavaScript into code written for another version of the language. That might not sound like a big deal.

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It's Time for Techies to Embrace Militant Optimism Again Sep 24, 2018

Show notes

When we launched WIRED, we were accused of being Panglossian optimists. I embraced that as a badge of honor. The Digital Revolution was reinventing everything, and that was good. Twenty-five years on, that optimism is no longer justified—it’s necessary. Indeed: militant optimism. WIRED’s premise was that the most powerful people on the planet weren’t the politicians or generals, priests or pundits, but the people creating and using new technology.

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If VCs Aren't Socially Responsible, the Robots Will Win Sep 21, 2018

Show notes

When a man overseeing $5.7 trillion speaks, the global business community tends to listen. So when BlackRock founder Larry Fink, head of the world’s largest asset management company, posted a letter to CEOs demanding greater attention to social impact, it sent shockwaves through corporations around the globe.

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Amazon Wants Alexa to Hear Your Whispers and Frustration Sep 21, 2018

Show notes

(Whispers) Amazon Alexa will soon notice if you talk to it sotto voce—and whisper its response back to you. The new feature, announced by Amazon today alongside new devices including a microwave and a wall clock at an event in Seattle, is one of several upgrades that will expand the virtual assistant’s ability to listen to and understand the world around it.

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ACLU Says Facebook Ads Let Employers Favor Men Over Women Sep 20, 2018

Show notes

In recent years, Facebook has faced lawsuits, media exposés, and even federal charges alleging that its ad-targeting tools help advertisers discriminate based on age or race for jobs, housing, and credit. Now, the American Civil Liberties Union claims Facebook is also allowing employers to discriminate against women.

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Mark Zuckerberg on Why We Should Support the Dreamers Sep 20, 2018

Show notes

WIRED ICON Mark Zuckerberg, Cofounder of Facebook NOMINATES Dreamers, Undocumented youth A few years ago, I taught a class on entrepreneurship at a local middle school. I quickly realized that some of my best students—ones with the motivation and talent to build great businesses—weren’t even sure they’d be able to go to college. They were undocumented immigrants, brought here as children. You know them as Dreamers.

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