Stay ConnectedHacking. Hackers. Disinformation campaigns. Encryption. The Cyber. This stuff gets complicated really fast, but Motherboard spends its time embedded in the infosec world so you don’t have to. Host Matthew Gault talks every week to Motherboard reporters about the stories they’re breaking and to the industry’s most famous hackers and researchers about the biggest news in cybersecurity.
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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 Senior Writer Aaron Gordon takes us through the history of “community feedback” and why it has to change.
Stories discussed in this episode:
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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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? Why did everyone think he was a genius? And how did FTX seemingly make billions of dollars in wealth evaporate overnight.
On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Edward Ongweso Jr. tries to answers those questions.
Stories discussed in this episode:
Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Crypto Empire Is Officially Bankrupt
Sam Bankman-Fried Was Supposed to Be Different. He Wasn't.
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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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 Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole. She’s here with us today to talk about breasts, BBS’, boy’s clubs, and the broad strokes of the culture war.
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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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:
At SXSW, A Pathetic Tech Future Struggles to Be Born
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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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 discussed in this episode:
The Man Who Broke Ticketmaster
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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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 end of Facebook?
On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Edward Ongweso Jr. stops by to try to answer the question.
Stories discussed in this episode:
Facebook’s Monopoly Is Imploding Before Our Eyes
Elon Musk’s First Days as Twitter Owner: Conspiracies, Chaos, and Desperation
For Much of the World, Facebook Going Down Is a Disaster, Not a Joke
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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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 years ago? Did you know cops have already used a robot to kill a suspect? Did you know the Netherlands has already deployed robots on the ground equipped with machine guns?
Kelsey Atherton knows, and he’s here to tell us all about it. Atherton is a military tech writer specializing in robots, nukes, and other terrible futures. He’s written for Motherboard before and his substack is Wars of Future Past.
Stories discussed in this episode:
Robot Dog Maker Boston Dynamics Pledges Not to Let Its Robots Kill You
Robot Dog With RPG Strapped to Its Back Demoed at Russian Arms Fair
Police Outsourcing Human Interaction With Homeless People to Boston Dynamics’ Robot Dog
The Netherlands Has Deployed NATO’s First Killer Robot Ground Vehicles
Robot Dog Not So Cute With Submachine Gun Strapped to Its Back
Hacker Finds Kill Switch for Submachine Gun–Wielding Robot Dog
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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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 show, UFOs, and Dan Carlin.
Listen to American Terror now on Spotify.
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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 insidious going on. It’s an evolution of the old addictive mobile game formula. One that’s generated a new lawsuit.
On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Maxwell Strachan comes on to talk about the new era of mobile games, the price of addiction, and the people suing for false advertising.
Stories discussed in this episode:
CYBER: How Corporations and Governments Use Games to Control Us
Confessions of a Semi-Reformed Video Game Completionist
B.F. Skinner on his beef with Noam Chomsky
On Chomsky's Appraisal of Skinner's Verbal Behavior: A Half Century of Misunderstanding
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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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 least that’s the claim.
On this episode of Cyber, the Arms Control Wonk himself, Jeffrey Lewis, comes on to answer all your burning questions about nuclear weapons. Lewis is a professor at the Middlebury Institute, a member of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and the host of the Arms Control Wonk podcast.
Stories discussed in this episode:
Is There a Threat of Nuclear War with Russia? Experts Weigh In.
Putin Puts Russia’s Nuclear Deterrent Forces on High Alert
Putin Demonstrates New Missiles With Visualization of Nukes Hitting Mar-a-Lago
Nuclear War Anxiety Is Back. Here’s How to Manage It.
We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.
Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
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