Business, Spoken

Latest Episodes:

How Tech Shaped San Francisco’s Unresolved Mayor’s Race Jun 12, 2018

Show notes

The last time there was a real contest for the mayor’s seat in San Francisco, residential rents were falling, the city had 15 million square feet of vacant office space, the empty headquarters of Pets.

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The FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Are Dead, but the Fight Isn't Jun 11, 2018

Show notes

Federal net neutrality protections are officially dead. Today the Federal Communications Commission's rules barring internet providers from blocking or slowing content, or giving special treatment to certain content, were wiped off the books, following an FCC vote last December. But don't expect to see huge changes right away. First, there are still some rules constraining broadband providers.

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The US Again Has World’s Most Powerful Supercomputer Jun 11, 2018

Show notes

Plenty of people around the world got new gadgets Friday, but one in Eastern Tennessee stands out. Summit, a new supercomputer unveiled at Oak Ridge National Lab is, unofficially for now, the most powerful calculating machine on the planet. It was designed in part to scale up the artificial intelligence techniques that power some of the recent tricks in your smartphone.

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The Deal to Save ZTE Won't Resolve US-China Tensions Jun 08, 2018

Show notes

The Trump administration just came to an agreement to lift crippling sanctions against Chinese telecommunications ZTE. Ending the sanctions banning US companies from selling hardware or software to ZTE could save the company, which announced last month that it had suspended its major operations due to the restrictions. But the tensions between the US and China are far from over. Congress is investigating both Google and Facebook over their dealings with Huawei and other Chinese firms.

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Google Sets Limits on Its Use of AI, but Allows Defense Work Jun 08, 2018

Show notes

Earlier this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai described artificial intelligence as more profound to humanity than fire. Thursday, after protests from thousands of Google employees over a Pentagon project, Pichai offered guidelines for how Google will—and won’t—use the technology. One thing Pichai says Google won’t do: work on AI for weapons. But the guidelines leave much to the discretion of company executives, and allow Google to continue to work for the military.

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Apple's Plans to Bring Artificial Intelligence to Your Phone Jun 07, 2018

Show notes

Apple describes its mobile devices as designed in California and assembled in China. You could also say they were made by the App Store, launched a decade ago next month, a year after the first iPhone. Inviting outsiders to craft useful, entertaining, or even peurile extensions to the iPhone’s capabilities transformed the device into the era-defining franchise that enabled Uber and Snapchat.

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Does It Matter If China Beats the US to Build a 5G Network? Jun 06, 2018

Show notes

Technical standards for the next generation of wireless services aren’t even finalized, yet the US and China are already locked in a crucial race to be the first country to deploy a so-called 5G network. Or at least that's what both the US government and the wireless industry say.

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Google Won't Renew Controversial Pentagon AI Project Jun 06, 2018

Show notes

The backlash to Google’s work on a US military artificial-intelligence project began inside the tech giant, but in recent weeks, it has spilled into the public. As employees resigned in protest over Google’s work with Project Maven, which uses AI to identify potential drone targets in satellite images, reports revealed top executives fretting over how it will be perceived by the public.

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A New Privacy Problem Could Deepen Facebook's Legal Trouble Jun 05, 2018

Show notes

On Sunday, the New York Times revealed that Facebook had deals with phone manufacturers including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Blackberry going back a decade that gave the device makers access to copious amounts of personal data about users and their friends in order to recreate a mobile version of Facebook on their devices.

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Massive Visa Outage Shows the Fragility of Global Payments Jun 05, 2018

Show notes

On Friday, Visa's payment network suffered outages across Europe, limiting transactions for both businesses and individuals. Banks and commerce groups began advising customers to use cash or other payment cards if possible, and reports indicated that online and contactless transactions were having more success than chip cards. Though some Visa transactions still went through, the failure appeared widespread.

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