Business, Spoken

Since the Trump administration blocked sales by US companies to Chinese telecom giant Huawei last month, the world has waited for Beijing to retaliate. Previously, the trade conflict between the US and China centered on escalating tariffs. While tariffs make things more expensive; they don't cut off supplies entirely. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nine states and the District of Columbia filed suit Tuesday to block T-Mobile and Sprint's planned $26.5 billion merger, complicating the companies’ path to completing the deal. The merger would cut the number of major wireless carriers in the US from four to three, but the two companies have argued the deal would help consumers by enabling the companies to expand coverage and build a nationwide 5G network more quickly than they would be able to on their own. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In March, Matt Bratlien saw something odd in the spacious suburb of Silver Firs, north of Seattle. A six-wheeled robot with the Amazon Prime logo on its sky-blue carapace was driving up and down the sidewalks and curbs, watched by a company representative. “I was surprised, excited, and very curious,” says Bratlien, a partner at Net-Tech, an IT services company in nearby Bellevue. Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for WIRED. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you believe you may have stumbled into a cryptocurrency conference (godspeed, my friend), there are a few telltale signs. First, look for the live bulls and the yellow Lambos. But if they’ve fallen victim to cost-cutting or newfound modesty, then look for a procession of cream-colored cowboy hats. They belong to a retinue of lobbyists and legislators from Wyoming, preaching the virtues of their state as a mecca for blockchain. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The operators of the only bitcoin mine in Missoula County, Montana, thought they were doing everything right. They set up shop in an abandoned mill on the edge of town, made a plan to recycle the computers when they conked out, and contracted with a nearby dam for cheap renewable power. Sure, it might be a warehouse full of energy-intensive computers and cooling systems, designed to churn out digital money day and night. But it would be a low-carbon, low-impact operation all the same. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The way Alexi Robichaux tells it, his online executive coaching company BetterUp didn’t start because he was a bummed-out, burned-out mid-level manager on a vision quest. Sure, he spent nine months of post-employment with self-improvement books, sports psychology, life coaching, executive coaching, and all sorts of other precision-guided gazes at his own navel. But that wasn’t what did it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Russia has millions of internet users. But if you want them to use your search engine, network on your social media platform, or use your messenger to share their favorite memes, then Russia wants you to know one thing: You have to play by its data-sharing rules. Tinder is the most recent platform to get the message. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Rumblings about the role of Big Tech in American society have coalesced into a storm long coming, with revelations that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are contemplating sweeping antitrust investigations of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple. WIRED Opinion About Zachary Karabell is a WIRED contributor and president of River Twice Research. At any point in the past few years, these companies could have acted preemptively to head off the storm. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For years, the US government stood by as big tech companies like Facebook and Google growth hacked and gobbled up competitors on their way to dominance, with barely a mention of “anticompetitive” concerns. But that lax attitude is changing. Word continued to leak this week about possible antitrust investigations by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, who reportedly divvied up companies like a couple might divide household chores. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The chatter about 5G is everywhere. It’s a worldwide race. It’s a security challenge. It’s a geopolitical battle between the United States and China. By some accounts, 5G is already here; by others, true 5G is still years away. There is more than a kernel of truth in this rhetorical excess. That’s because the next generation of essential infrastructure in this country will be built using wireless technology. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Amazon isn’t exactly the most stylish place to shop for clothes. Most of its top-selling women’s fashion items are simple pieces: easy dresses, spandex workout gear, socks, and underwear—a lot of it from brands you’ve probably never heard of. But that doesn’t mean Amazon isn’t a powerhouse for apparel sales. As traditional department stores have declined, Amazon has become one of the most popular clothing retailers in the US, especially among millennials. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Just when it seemed that things couldn't get much worse for Huawei, it may soon not be able to sell phones with the world’s most popular social networks. Facebook will reportedly no longer allow the Chinese telecom giant to preinstall Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram apps on its phones. According to Reuters, if you already have a Huawei phone you should be able to continue receiving updates to Facebook-owned apps. The change will only affect new phones. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Monday the House Judiciary committee announced a bipartisan antitrust probe that has Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon in its crosshairs. The news followed reports that the Federal Trade Commission is examining Amazon’s power over online retailing. Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for WIRED. Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos appeared untroubled by that attention at a company conference in Las Vegas Thursday. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

YouTube has a child exploitation problem. In February, the platform disabled comments on millions of videos including children 13 and younger after WIRED UK revealed that pedophiles had used the feature to identify videos featuring snippets of nude or sparsely clothed children. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In May 2019, WIRED joined the One Free Press Coalition, a united group of pre-eminent editors and publishers using their global reach and social platforms to spotlight journalists under attack worldwide. Today, the coalition is issuing the fourth monthly “10 Most Urgent” list of journalists whose press freedoms are being suppressed or whose cases are seeking justice. Jamal Khashoggi, the murdered columnist for The Washington Post, remains atop the list following no independent U.N. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Amazon’s Alexa is ready to broaden its one-track mind. The virtual assistant can deliver weather forecasts and traffic updates, and tap more than 90,000 additional functions, or “skills,” contributed by outside developers. The catch is that you can generally do only one of those bounteous things at a time. Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for WIRED. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last week, the Canadian social media company Kik---and an array of prominent backers in the crypto world---launched a $5 million campaign to fund an impending legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission. CEO Ted Livingston said the fight, which centers on Kik’s $100 million initial coin offering in 2017, was worth funding because it could have wide implications for blockchain startups, many of which used ICOs to fund their fledgling ventures. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As tech giants and lobbying groups race to defang California’s landmark consumer privacy law before it takes effect next year, lawmakers on the other side of the country are considering a bill that's even more drastic. The New York Privacy Act, introduced last month by state senator Kevin Thomas, would give residents there more control over their data than in any other state. It would also require businesses to put their customers’ privacy before their own profits. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It is unclear how many people died when Chinese troops cleared pro-democracy protests from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square 30 years ago this week. Local authorities said it was 241. A cursory search of the web or social media will show that human rights organizations estimate a death toll many times higher—unless you’re in China. Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for WIRED. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Many Americans think Big Tech and Silicon Valley have too much power and need to be reigned in. Six weeks ago, it was hard to believe Washington had the political will to do much about that. Facebook had just said it would take a charge of up to $5 billion for an expected Federal Trade Commission fine related to its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The reaction: Facebook’s stock stock jumped 6 percent to its highest price in nine months. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

MacKenzie Bezos’ recent announcement that she’d take the Giving Pledge and dedicate at least half of her $35 billion in net worth to philanthropy has sparked attention, partially because her ex-husband, Jeff Bezos, wouldn’t sign the pledge. Her commitment to the Giving Pledge, spearheaded by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett in 2010, should be lauded, especially in light of the current cynicism about the giving of mega philanthropists. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For much of the past decade, Airbnb and New York City have been embroiled in a high-profile feud. Airbnb wants legitimacy in its biggest market. City officials want to limit home-sharing platforms, which they argue exacerbate the city’s housing crisis and pose safety risks by allowing people to transform homes into illegal hotels. Paris Martineau covers platforms, online influence, and social media manipulation for WIRED. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apple has a Huawei problem. Of the myriad issues raised by the evolving and intensifying US-China trade Cold War, the knock-on effects on Apple have been perhaps least appreciated. And not just Apple of course, but a slew of American companies that have both shifted production to China over the past two decades and, more vitally, tapped into Chinese middle-class consumers as a source of growth and profits. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nearly two months after her divorce from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was finalized, MacKenzie Bezos has made a plan to be far more generous than she and her former husband were as a couple. When the pair split, she became one of the richest women in the world, with a fortune estimated to be worth more than $36 billion. Now she wants to start giving it away. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For months, there’s been a steady march of controversies over how tech companies collect, manage, process, and share massive (and passive) amounts of data. And even though the executives and founders of these companies profess a renewed commitment to privacy and corporate responsibility, people are beginning to worry about surveillance and power—and reconsider how much faith they should put in both the leaders and services leveraging these quickly evolving technologies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Earlier this week, FCC chair Ajit Pai announced that he would soon be asking his fellow commissioners to approve the merger of two of the four nationwide wireless carriers, T-Mobile and Sprint. After a year of deliberation, including thousands of pages of legal and economic filings by proponents and opponents and three congressional hearings, Pai has now decided that a handful of promises, made just days ago by the merging parties, puts this $26 billion transaction in the public interest. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The US has joined China, the European Union, and South Korea, in ruling that Qualcomm violated antitrust laws. Qualcomm is the largest maker of modem chips for connecting smartphones to wireless networks. Its customers, including Apple and Samsung, complain that the company uses unfair practices, such as threatening to withhold supplies of chips, to force companies to agree to excessive licensing fees for its technology. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It's been a week since the Trump administration raised tariffs from 10 percent to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese exports, and tech companies are still grappling with the consequences. Adding to the confusion are possible US tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of goods, and China's own retaliatory tariffs on US exports. The existing tariffs cover a wide range of goods, but few finished consumer electronics. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last year, Microsoft paid $7.5 billion to buy GitHub, the online home of thousands of open source software projects that power apps and sites ranging from Facebook to Walmart.com. The acquisition, along with IBM's $34 billion purchase of open source company Red Hat, proved that open source software can be big business. That's a little surprising since, by definition, open source code can be freely shared by anyone. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

How do you kill a company? The answer, in the context of Chinese electronics giant Huawei, appears to be depravation, removing ready access to the elements that distinguish smartphones from very expensive chunks of anodized aluminum and glass. The latest blow: Chip designer ARM has reportedly severed ties with the company. Huawei could arguably survive without Google. Without ARM? Not so much. It’s important to clarify that nothing at this point is certain, or permanent. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Lately I've been hearing complaints from my techie friends about San Francisco. Sure, the city is a mecca for anyone who wants to build a startup—with ample capital, helpful angels, and some of the best software talent on the planet. But it's becoming a monoculture. “You go to dinner and tech is literally all people talk about: tech, tech, tech,” sighs my friend David Silva, an engineer who lived in San Francisco for five years before decamping for the East Coast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nearly a decade ago, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Congress passed a law requiring publicly traded companies to report the median pay of their employees and compare it to the CEO’s pay. The goal was to highlight corporate excess and income inequality, with an eye toward curbing the outsized executive-compensation packages that Congress viewed as contributing to the crisis. The requirement kicked in for most companies last year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

T-Mobile's proposed $26.5 billion merger with Sprint just cleared its first legal hurdle. Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai says he will recommend the agency approve the deal. The agency will most likely follow his lead. But the deal still needs approval from the Department of Justice, where antitrust enforcement staffers have expressed concerns, Bloomberg reports. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The next generation of wireless tech, 5G, promises a frictionless future: We'll be able to do whatever we do on our phones much, much faster, and more devices can come online without slowing down the works. Self-driving cars, smart meters that track electricity usage, and health-monitoring devices may all take a big leap from childhood to adolescence. 5G will happen in the airy realm of radio waves. To get there, big telecoms have to harness underused parts of the spectrum. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Socialism schmocialism—I've never minded redistributing a bit of wealth to help a creator realize their dreams (or cover a few medical bills). I'm Angry Nerd, not Scroogey Nerd. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Just before 8am one Wednesday last December, a can of bear repellent exploded in an Amazon warehouse in New Jersey, sending two dozen workers to the hospital. It wasn’t the first time the product had caused problems inside Amazon. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Civil liberties activists trying to inspire alarm about the authoritarian potential of facial recognition technology often point to China, where some police departments use systems that can spot suspects who show their faces in public. A report from Georgetown researchers on Thursday suggests Americans should also focus their concern closer to home. The report says agencies in Chicago and Detroit have bought real-time facial recognition systems. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In early April, the European Commission published guidelines intended to keep any artificial intelligence technology used on the EU’s 500 million citizens trustworthy. The bloc’s commissioner for digital economy and society, Bulgaria’s Mariya Gabriel, called them “a solid foundation based on EU values.” Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for WIRED. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The White House is scrubbing out Obamacare, Microsoft found a major flaw, and there's a good alternative to AirPods. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines The Trump administration is scrubbing Obamacare from government websites President Donald Trump hasn't been subtle about his distaste for the Affordable Care Act. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As director of paid search at Greenlane Marketing, a web marketing firm based in Eagleville, Pennsylvania, Christian Wenzel spends a lot of time studying who's clicking on his clients’ Google ads. He’ll look at things like where they're located to see if, for instance, people in Pennsylvania are more likely to click on a given ad than people in California. Then, he'll tweak the ad campaign accordingly in hopes of maximizing its effectiveness. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

President Trump has never been coy about his desire to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. While that pledge has faced setbacks in Congress, his administration has managed to gut Obamacare by other means, like cutting financial support. The executive branch can also undermine the law in subtler ways. According to a new report, the Trump administration has been systematically wiping crucial information about the ACA from government websites over the past two years. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The so-called last mile of delivery—getting an order to the customer’s door—has long been an obsession for ecommerce companies. To make the journey as efficient as they can, some have engaged in extreme experiments. Take Walmart: Two years ago, it tried asking its employees to deliver online orders before and after work, in their own cars. That idea was later abandoned, but the problem of the last mile remains, even for the biggest retailers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Microsoft would like to loosen its grip on your login. The company’s credentials are used all around the internet, especially by companies and developers who use its cloud service, Azure. But on Monday, the company unveiled a project that, using the technology that underpins bitcoin, would give you control of your own credentials, independent of any company. The question is whether you’ll want to take on the responsibility. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Instagram has begun using image recognition and other tools to identify posts and stories that may contain misinformation and send them to Facebook’s fleet of fact-checking partners for review. If they’re determined to be false, Instagram will not recommend the posts to new users in the Explore tab or hashtag pages, as first reported by Poynter. Paris Martineau covers platforms, online influence, and social media manipulation for WIRED. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States voted to allow a years-long antitrust case against Apple to move forward, despite Apple's objections. The case, Apple Inc. v. Pepper, concerns a group of iPhone users who accuse Apple of driving up the price of apps by charging third-party app developers a 30 percent commission. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Microsoft announced this week that it will bring the heart of the open source operating system Linux into Windows. Not to be outdone, Google says all future Chromebooks will be able to run Linux applications. Chromebooks run an operating system, ChromeOS, that is built on the Linux kernel but was originally designed to only run Google's web browser Chrome. That meant you could only really use web apps. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Over the course of a weekend in which North Korea tested a new short-range missile, Iran allegedly prepared to attack US forces, and the Pentagon confirmed China may be holding as many as three million Muslims in concentration camps, the one region of the world that received the most direct and damning criticism from the President of the United States was, er, Silicon Valley. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Millions of people routinely say “hey” to voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, even though the experience can be frustratingly glitchy. On Tuesday, Google previewed new technology that makes speech recognition strikingly more responsive, suggesting voice control could soon be seamless enough to be irresistible. Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for WIRED. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For decades, Microsoft Windows and the open source Linux operating system were polar opposites. Windows was developed by the biggest software company in the world, one that was no friend to open source. Linux was developed by a ragtag team of programmers scattered around the world, often working in their spare time. But over the years, open source, and Linux in particular, went mainstream. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Google’s mission for the past 21 years has been to organize the world’s information. Onstage at the company’s annual developer conference Tuesday, CEO Sundar Pichai had a more low-key message: We just wanna help. As corporate messaging goes, it was a smart choice. After years of nonstop scandals from Big Tech, the usual buzzwords have taken on a sinister cast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices