Business, Spoken

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Can the American Heartland Remake Itself in the Image of Silicon Valley? One Startup Finds Out May 25, 2017

Show notes

Ross Diedrich had gone pale and raw-boned. The CEO of a year-old startup in Denver, he'd stay at his office until the middle of the night, go home and sleep for about five hours, then chug a spinach smoothie and start again. He was just 27 years old, but he felt wrung out. Now he was standing in front of six angel investors, wearing a blazer over a T-shirt printed with the word covered—the name of his startup—and regretting he hadn't spent more time practicing for this moment.

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Can the American Heartland Remake Itself in the Image of Silicon Valley? One Startup Finds Out May 24, 2017

Show notes

Ross Diedrich had gone pale and raw-boned. The CEO of a year-old startup in Denver, he’d stay at his office until the middle of the night, go home and sleep for about five hours, then chug a spinach smoothie and start again. He was just 27 years old, but he felt wrung out.

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Get Ready for the Next Big Privacy Backlash Against Facebook May 23, 2017

Show notes

Data mining is such a prosaic part of our online lives that it’s hard to sustain consumer interest in it, much less outrage. The modern condition means constantly clicking against our better judgement. We go to bed anxious about the surveillance apparatus lurking just beneath our social media feeds, then wake up to mindlessly scroll, Like, Heart, Wow, and Fave another day.

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Sundar Pichai Sees Google’s Future in the Smartest Cloud May 22, 2017

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Two days before delivering the keynote at Google I/O, the company’s annual State of the Union address, Sundar Pichai is worried about losing his voice. Sitting at the coffee table inside his remarkably spartan office at company headquarters, the Google CEO speaks softly, even by his standards.

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Hear Me Out: Let’s Elect an AI as President May 19, 2017

Show notes

Is it possible that someday we will elect an AI president? Given some of the recent occupants of the White House, many might consider it an upgrade. After all, humans are prone to making decisions based on ego, anger, and the need for self-aggrandizement, not the common good. An artificially intelligent president could be trained to maximize happiness for the most people without infringing on civil liberties. It might even learn that it's a good idea to tweet less—or not at all.

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Silicon Valley Rebrands Itself as Good for the Rest of America May 18, 2017

Show notes

“Should I tellthe story about the killer robots?” Micah Weinberg said. “I love telling this story. It’s such a good story.” A group of roughly 50 people listened raptly as Weinberg, president of a think tank called the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, addressed a public-policy luncheon in San Carlos, California, on Thursday afternoon.

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Even if Apple Breaks $1 Trillion, It Won’t Stay on Top Forever May 17, 2017

Show notes

Apple just became the first US company to surpass $800 billion in market capitalization. Speculation quickly followed that Apple would soon become the first $1 trillion company, with a rumored $1,000 iPhone 8 coming at year’s end. The company’s share price has been on a tear since the beginning of the year, and sales of the iPhone 7 have been strong in part because of safety issues surrounding rival Samsung devices. Apple retains an enviable brand image and a devoted consumer base.

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Maybe the Internet Isn’t Tearing Us Apart After All May 16, 2017

Show notes

Vikingmaiden88 is twenty-six years old. She enjoys reading history and writing poetry. Her signature quote is from Shakespeare. I gleaned all this from her profile and posts on Stormfront.org, America's most popular online hate site. I also learned that Vikingmaiden88 has enjoyed the content on the site of the newspaper I work for, the New York Times. She wrote an enthusiastic post about a particular Times feature.

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The Magic Leap Bias Suit: Sexism As a Sign of Failure May 15, 2017

Show notes

Magic Leap, the secretive augmented reality tech startup that’s valued at $4.5 billion (and reportedly bores Beyoncé), settled a sex discrimination lawsuit this week. The plaintiff, Tannen Campbell, a former vice-president of strategic marketing, was hired to make the company’s product more appealing to women. Campbell filed a notice of settlement Monday in federal court in Florida, Magic Leap’s home state, and the terms of the settlement are confidential.

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Snap Blows First Earnings—But That’s Not the Whole Story May 12, 2017

Show notes

Today Snap reported its first earnings as a public company, and it bombed. Snap’s stock market debut three months ago was the most valuable tech IPO in the US in two years, and certainly the most talked-about. Snap, after all, provides one of the few significant alternatives to the two giants of online advertising, Facebook and Google. If Snap can eke out some space in a field long dominated by this duopoly, that could mean more meaningful competition. ‘Snap is a niche platform.

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