Business, Spoken

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

Mark Zuckerberg once promised Facebook would move fast and break things. Now Zuckerberg says Facebook is trying to fix the things it broke. Standing on stage before an audience of developers at the annual F8 Conference on Tuesday, Zuckerberg—the same guy who spent years convincing billions of people to share their every thought and action with the world—explained all the ways Facebook is going to help people keep that same information under wraps. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If Facebook’s pivot from town square to private living room wasn’t laden with enough irony, here’s a new twist: Big business, it appears, has been invited to join us by the fireplace. Gregory Barber covers cryptocurrency, blockchain, and artificial intelligence for WIRED. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported new potential details about Facebook’s long-awaited cryptocurrency plans. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For programmers, building a new application is never as simple as writing the code. That's because most software depends on other software, such as database management systems, to work. Just because an application works on your laptop doesn't mean it will work well on your company's data center, which might lack some of the software it depends on. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

One day at work last year, Lade Obamehinti encountered an algorithm that had a problem with black people. The Facebook program manager was helping test a prototype of the company’s Portal video chat device, which uses computer vision to identify and zoom in on a person speaking. But as Obamehinti, who is black, enthusiastically described her breakfast of french toast, the device ignored her and focused instead on a colleague—a white man. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Facebook took down some conspiracy theorists, Indonesia has to move its capital because of climate change, and Mother's Day is coming. Here's the news you need to know in two minutes or less. Facebook banned Alex Jones, Louis Farrakhan, and others After stating that it wouldn't ban accounts that push conspiracy theories, Facebook did exactly that today when it banned a handful of extremists from the platform. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A little over a year ago, we introduced a paywall at WIRED. The idea, as I wrote back then, was largely about us. To start, we wanted to give ourselves stronger structural incentives to do great reporting. When your business depends on subscriptions, your economic success depends on publishing stuff your readers love—not just stuff they click. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

One Saturday last month, five men ages 19 through 26 strode confidently out of a cloud of magenta smoke in a converted auto showroom in San Francisco. They sat at a line of computer keyboards to loud cheers from a crowd of a few hundred. Ninety minutes of intense mouse-clicking later, the five’s smiles had turned sheepish and the applause consolatory. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Facebook is channeling its earliest days as a hot or not website for college students with a new feature called Secret Crush. To be announced today at the social network’s annual F8 developer conference, Secret Crush will allow Facebook Dating users to select up to nine friends they want to express interest in. Think of it like matching on Tinder or Bumble, except you get to hand-pick the specific friends you want to date ahead of time, instead of hoping their profiles show up in the queue. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Facebook wants to know which of your friends you'd like to date, there's a new wireless VR headset, and we're teaching you how to land a plane in an emergency. Here's the news you need to know in two minutes or less. Facebook wants to connect you with your "secret crush" At Facebook's developer conference, the company announced a new feature: Secret Crush. Secret Crush will allow Facebook Dating users to select up to nine friends they want to express interest in. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Google shuttered its source code hosting service Google Code in 2015. Like Facebook, Twitter, and most other major technology companies, Google primarily shifted to a similar service called GitHub to host its own open source projects. Microsoft followed suit and closed its CodePlex service in 2017. It acquired GitHub the next year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There are few fiercer enemies than Airbnb and the hotel industry. The two have been at each other’s throats practically since the short-term rental giant began back in 2008. Yet they now appear to agree on at least one thing: They could each stand to learn a thing or two from the other. On Monday, Airbnb adopted a strategy from the hotel playbook, announcing a fleet of new apartment-style luxury hotel suites exclusively available for Airbnb guests in New York City. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

This March, a book that advances an outlandish conspiracy theory—a theory whose name I will not mention—soared in Amazon's sales rankings. The book's rise was helped greatly when the ecommerce giant put the book on its carousel of recommended titles, which is shown to shoppers who aren't searching for that particular book. That fueled more curiosity and sales. Which led to more recommendations. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It's a feeling familiar to anyone who lives an extremely online life. You spend all day on Twitter watching Howard Schultz get roasted and ratioed or retweeting all of the best definitions of the word "covfefe." Then you log off and enter the real world---the one where your spouse, your friends, your parents, and all the other people in your life who don't spend their days obsessively checking their mentions have precisely no idea what you're talking about, let alone why they should care. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned US allies in February against using technology built by Chinese telecom giant Huawei, going so far as to suggest the US might stop sharing intelligence with countries whose communications infrastructure rely on Huawei’s equipment. Pompeo's remarks during a European speaking tour echoed years of concerns from the US government over the possibility that Huawei might use its products to help China spy on US citizens. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

California is sinking. In the Central Valley, the most productive agricultural region in the US, some areas drop an inch or two per year. Telephone poles slump, roads crack, canals fail. In time, all that sinking adds up. A recent state survey found one patch of farmland off I-5 near the town of Arbuckle had fallen 2 feet in nine years. The culprit: overdrafted aquifers. The process speeds up during periods of drought, when rivers run dry and farmers scramble to find other ways to water their fields. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In November of 2018, Usha and her husband Sudhir received the news they never expected: the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services declined to extend Usha’s work visa, meaning the couple and their daughter would have 180 days to leave the country before the US government would consider their presence to be unlawful. The notice hit the whole family like a punch to the gut. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When Mark Zuckerberg turned on Facebook’s News Feed in 2005, his users—exclusively college students at the time—freaked out at the notion that Facebook was automatically sharing their posts with friends. Even digital natives were scared to share much online then. But Zuckerberg waited a few days, explained the product, told his users to “breathe,” and News Feed became one of the most influential ideas of the 21st century. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you were on the internet in the late 1990s, you might remember companies like AllAdvantage that promised to pay you to surf the web. You could install a program that tracked your browsing and showed you targeted ads at the top of the screen; then AllAdvantage would give you a cut of the ad revenue you generated. These schemes largely disappeared after the dot-com crash. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

President Trump tweeted insults at Twitter again this morning, but this time Jack took the conversation off platform to the White House. In other news, a controversial Census question creates some strange bedfellows, and a "blockchain bandit" is pilfering millions in cryptocurrency. Here's the news you need to know in two minutes or less. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Two employee activists at Google say they have been retaliated against for helping to organize a walkout among thousands of Google employees in November, and are planning a “town hall” meeting on Friday for others to discuss alleged instances of retaliation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Remember last week when Samsung unveiled its "foldable" phone? Well, it appears there are still a few wrinkles to iron out. Meanwhile, Google is striking back against strikes, a new Game of Thrones episode has come, and John Legend is putting Siri to shame. Here's the news you need to know in two minutes or less. Google retaliates against walkout organizers Two Google employees who worked to organize a walkout of thousands of employees last November say the company is now retaliating against them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You know what I hate? Rating drivers on Lyft. Three stars? Five stars? I know Lyft wants to feed the ravenous maw of its machine intelligence, but I worry that drivers will get punished for low ratings. In the app-dominated gig economy, platforms already hoover up as much as 30 percent of the fees, and workers barely eke out a living. So when Lyft asks me to rank drivers, I lie—I give everyone five stars. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hustling is the default mode of the 21st century, and I'm not above listing my adorable split-level Victorian on Airbnb during my out-of-town weekends. Need to rent a car for the day? Take mine—I wasn't using it anyway. But whoring out my bed—my own private sanctuary, complete with sweat-stained sheets and raggedy stuffed elephant named Elephant—on Recharge, the “Airbnb for naps”? I'd rather sell a kidney. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the immediate aftermath of the horrific attacks at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, internet companies faced intense scrutiny over their efforts to control the proliferation of the shooter's propaganda. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you were to get all of your news last month from Twitter (and, well, maybe you did), you might reasonably conclude that the Democrat to beat in 2020 is none other than a 37-year-old Indiana mayor with a knack for linguistics and a tongue-twister of a name. According to the social media monitoring service Crowdtangle, Pete Buttigieg got the most interactions on Twitter of any Democratic candidate in the month of March. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Communities across the country are trying to lure high-tech jobs away from Silicon Valley. It doesn’t seem like that should be hard. Silicon Valley is one of the most expensive places on earth, and as the home to some of the biggest and most valuable companies in the world, the competition for tech talent is fierce. But according to a report by job site Indeed, Silicon Valley’s share of tech job listings is growing, not shrinking. Tech job listings are growing elsewhere too. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Initial coin offerings have gotten a bad rap---in many cases, deservedly so. Sure, there were blockchain projects with sound dreams and solid business plans. But as the bitcoin bubble swelled in late 2017, ICOs became synonymous with predation: get-rich-quick schemes that involved taking money from anyone who was willing, in return for worthless crypto tokens. Since then, the Securities and Exchange Commission has been trying to clean up the mess. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The convoluted legal battle between Apple and chipmaker Qualcomm may be coming to an end. The companies Tuesday said they're dismissing all litigation against each other. Apple will pay Qualcomm an undisclosed sum as part of the settlement, which includes a six-year licensing agreement between the companies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Tuesday, Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, came to TED 2019 to answer for the sins of his platform. In his signature black hoodie and jeans, unkempt facial hair and black beanie, he sat with head of TED Chris Anderson and Whitney Pennington Rodgers, who curates current affairs for the conference, for a conversation that left all three members, and the audience, frustrated. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

China’s bitcoin miners have long embodied a contradiction. Cryptocurrency trading is illegal in the country; initial coin offerings, used to fund new blockchain projects, are banned; and Chinese banks can hardly touch the stuff. And yet somehow the country has remained the epicenter of global cryptocurrency mining, home to more of the computing power used to mint new bitcoin than any other country. Now the Chinese government has proposed to ban mining. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Just before 9 am last Thursday, an unusual speed dating scene sprang up in San Francisco. A casually dressed crowd, mostly male, milled around a gilt-edged Beaux Arts ballroom on Nob Hill. Pairs and trios formed quickly, but not in search of romance. Ice breakers were direct: What’s your favorite programming language? Which data analysis framework are you most expert in? More delicately, conversations drifted toward rankings on Kaggle. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices