Business, Spoken

In a move that’s months in the making, Facebook announced Wednesday that beginning next week, it will take down posts supporting both white nationalism and white separatism, including on Instagram. It’s an evolution for the social network, whose Community Standards previously only prohibited white supremacist content while allowing posts that advocated for ideologies like race segregation. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For our eyes, reading is hardly a smooth ride. They stutter across the page, lingering over words that surprise or confuse, hopping over those that seem obvious in context (you can blame that for your typos), pupils widening when a word sparks a potent emotion. All this commotion is barely noticeable, occurring in milliseconds. But for psychologists who study how our minds process language, our unsteady eyes are a window into the black box of our brains. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The US government says a Chinese gaming company's ownership of gay dating app Grindr poses a national security risk, according to a report from Reuters. Beijing Kunlun Tech acquired a 60 percent stake in Grindr in 2016 and bought the rest in 2018. But, according to Reuters, the Chinese firm didn't clear the acquisition with the agency known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which evaluates the national security impacts of foreign investments in US companies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less: Facebook moves against white nationalist content After months of grappling with its stance, Facebook has finally decided to ban white nationalist content on both Facebook and Instagram. Starting next week, US users who attempt to search for or post this type of content will be redirected to a nonprofit that works to help people leave hate groups. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the late 1980s, Canadian master’s student Yoshua Bengio became captivated by an unfashionable idea. A handful of artificial intelligence researchers was trying to craft software that loosely mimicked how networks of neurons process data in the brain, despite scant evidence it would work. “I fell in love with the idea that we could both understand the principles of how the brain works and also construct AI,” says Bengio, now a professor at the University of Montreal. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Emily Pickett, a doula in Louisville, Kentucky, is used to hearing hard truths from expecting mothers. Her job is to guide women through pregnancy, acting as confidante and supporter; understanding their deepest stressors---an abusive partner, a struggle with drugs---is important to ensuring healthy pregnancies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Apple’s event Monday ended up featuring one piece of hardware after all: a new credit card, which it plans to launch this summer in the United States. The aptly-named Apple Card, created in partnership with Mastercard and Goldman Sachs, will live within the existing Wallet app on iPhones and as a traditional physical card. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Government usually isn't the place to look for innovation in IT or new technologies like artificial intelligence. But Ott Velsberg might change your mind. As Estonia's chief data officer, the 28-year-old graduate student is overseeing the tiny Baltic nation's push to insert artificial intelligence and machine learning into services provided to its 1.3 million citizens. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I have superpowers, OK? One of them is predicting earthquakes. Don’t go showing me “government” “reports” disproving my awesome abilities. Twice already this year, I have shaken awake before my house has. So you will believe me when I tell you, unblessed mortals, that my seismological Spidey sense discerns a Third Event. This catastrophe won’t involve literal tectonics. What I’m detecting is the quivering instability of the metaphorical. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Microsoft's programming language TypeScript has quietly become one of the most popular languages among developers, at least according to a report published by the analyst firm RedMonk this week. TypeScript jumped from number 16 to number 12, just behind Apple's programming language Swift, in RedMonk's semiannual rankings, which were last published in August. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A couple of years ago, I fell in love with a color scheme: off-white text accented with a buttery yellow-orange and a neutral blue against a deep gray, the "color of television, tuned to a dead channel," to borrow a phrase from Neuromancer author William Gibson. The colors were part of a theme called "Solarized Dark" for the popular MacOS code editor TextMate. To be honest, I didn't think much of Solarized at first. But I soon found that I couldn't work with any other color scheme. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In January 2018, the top policy executives from YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter testified in a Senate hearing about terrorism and social media, touting their companies’ use of artificial intelligence to detect and remove terrorist content from groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Tuesday, Facebook reached a historic settlement with civil rights groups that had accused the company of allowing advertisers to unlawfully discriminate against minorities, women, and older people by using the platform’s ad-targeting technology to exclude them from seeing ads for housing, jobs, and credit—three areas with legal protections for groups that have historically been disenfranchised. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Fei-Fei Li heard the crackle of a cat’s brain cells a couple of decades ago and has never forgotten it. Researchers had inserted electrodes into the animal’s brain and connected them to a loudspeaker, filling a lab at Princeton with the eerie sound of firing neurons. “They played the symphony of a mammalian visual system,” Li told an audience Monday at Stanford, where she is now a professor. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

European officials Wednesday fined Google €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) for more than a decade of abusive practices in how it brokered online ads for other websites like newspapers, blogs, and travel aggregators. This is the third billion-dollar antitrust penalty levied against Google by the European Commission, which has fined the company more than $9 billion for anticompetitive practices since 2017. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After each new horrific mass shooting, an all-too-familiar cycle often plays out: Reporters (myself included) race to attempt to unpack an alleged shooter’s possible motivations by piecing together clues from their social media accounts and online postings before it all gets scrubbed from the internet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The college admissions bribery scandal has all the components of a made for TV movie, including celebrity cameos, suspense, and unexpected twists and turns. Behind the broken admissions process and the drama, however, a different educational crisis is looming. According to a 2018 Korn Ferry study, by 2030, there could be a global talent shortage of more than 85.2 million people, costing an estimated $8.5 trillion in unrealized annual revenue. In the U.S. alone, the study forecasts $1. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The internet is an ocean of algorithms trying to tell you what to do. YouTube and Netflix proffer videos they calculate you’ll watch. Facebook and Twitter filter and reorganize posts from your connections, avowedly in your interest—but also in their own. New York entrepreneur Brian Whitman helped create such a system. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On October 27, 2012, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote an email to his then-director of product development. For years, Facebook had allowed third-party apps to access data on their users’ unwitting friends, and Zuckerberg was considering whether giving away all that information was risky. In his email, he suggested it was not: “I’m generally skeptical that there is as much data leak strategic risk as you think,” he wrote at the time. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The first five days or so of SXSW in Austin are always dedicated to the “interactive” portion of the festival. The city’s downtown streets swell with lanyard-laden “entrepreneurs” and “founders” wearing that familiar uniform of T-shirts screen-printed with their company’s clever logo, an outfit made professional by throwing a blazer over the ensemble. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last spring, Chris Cox, the chief product officer of Facebook, was promoted to also oversee Whatsapp, Messenger, and Instagram. It seemed, at the time, almost like succession planning. If Mark Zuckerberg were to ever leave the company, Cox, his longtime confidante, and a representative of the engineering and product side, would be set up to run it. But today Cox has announced that, after 13 years at the company, he’s leaving. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

5G is coming, and with it a massive boost in bandwidth that will feed artificial intelligence applications, enable the long fabled Internet of Things, and deliver more streaming video. Lots of streaming video. But all that extra bandwidth won't be much use if the average consumer can't afford a 5G connection, or if those connections are hobbled by restrictive bandwidth caps. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A wave of antitrust interest is washing over Europe and much of the United States, and Spotify is riding its crest. The Swedish audio-streaming giant lodged a complaint against Apple with the European Commission on Wednesday, accusing the company of abusing its position as owner of the App Store to stifle competition. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

So, it finally happened. A leading American politician has said aloud what many have whispering: it’s time to break up Big Tech. Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren just fired the opening salvo and called for the federal government to take action: “Today’s big tech companies have too much power— too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The Bay Area is famed for nurturing speculative investments like flying cars, floating cities, and the notion that a ride hailing service can turn a profit. A new utopian investment opportunity arrived Monday: Shovel dollars into a San Francisco artificial intelligence lab cofounded by Elon Musk and you’ll receive a share of the profits when (or if) it figures out how to create machines smarter than humans. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As soon as you visit a modern website, it starts feeding you reasons to leave. First by begging you to download its app from the app store, then with a dialog box urging you to sign up for a newsletter. Next will come a request to send you alerts, followed by either an onslaught of ads or a plea to turn your ad blocker off. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last week, presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) announced an ambitious plan to break up big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon and block them from selling their own products on their platforms. Warren called out Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp and Google's acquisition of online advertising giant DoubleClick as examples of the deals she'd like to see reversed. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s Thursday afternoon, and I’m on the eighth floor of a nondescript building in the Flatiron District, sitting across from Foursquare cofounder Dennis Crowley. He pulls out his phone to show me an unreleased, nameless game that he and his skunkworks-style team Foursquare Labs have been working on. Think “Candyland,” but instead of fantasy locations like Lollipop Woods, the game’s virtual board includes place categories associated with New York City neighborhoods. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The world's largest telecommunications-equipment company, China's Huawei, is suing the US government. But the suit isn't just about US law. It's part of Huawei's larger campaign to defend its role as a global provider of telecom gear amid fears that its technology is or could be used by the Chinese government for spying. In essence, Huawei is challenging the US government to prove its suspicions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Wednesday afternoon, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, described a sweeping new vision for his platform. “The future of communication,” he wrote, “will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure.” The post raised all kinds of questions about Facebook’s business model and strategies, as well as the tradeoffs the company could face. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If there’s one choice that Facebook has made repeatedly over the past 15 years, it’s been to prioritize growth over privacy. Users were consistently encouraged to make more of their information public than they were comfortable with. The settings to make things public were always a bit easier to use than the ones to make things private. Data was collected that you didn’t have any idea was being collected and shared in ways you had no idea it was being shared. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last year, Chinese police arrested a man at a pop concert after he was flagged as a criminal suspect by a facial recognition system installed at the venue. The software that called the cops was developed by Shanghai startup Yitu Tech. It was marketed with a stamp of approval from the US government. Yitu is a top performer on a testing program run by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that’s vital to the fast-growing facial recognition industry. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

At the end of every year, Google conducts a pay equity analysis to determine whether employees of different sexes and races who are doing similar jobs are being paid equally. On Monday, Google published a blog post with selected findings from its 2018 analysis, highlighting that proposed changes for 2019 would have paid male engineers less than female engineers in one lower-level job category, referred to internally as Level 4 engineers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki defended her company’s efforts to keep violent content off the video platform at the sixth annual Lesbians Who Tech Summit Friday in San Francisco. Wojcicki was interviewed by New York Times columnist Kara Swisher, who took the YouTube leader to task for the platform’s failure to keep dangerous content away from kids. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last March, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that, despite the company’s intentions, Twitter wasn’t the best at encouraging productive or meaningful conversations among users. More often, the platform served to further abuse, harassment, and the spread of misinformation, while plunging users deeper into echo chambers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Just before the Civil War, and long before the Federal Reserve, the United States had 8,000 kinds of money. It was a chaotic, confusing time to buy your groceries. Private banks issued notes with the promise of backing in gold and silver, but their actual value was anybody’s guess. Soon other companies---drug stores, coal mines, and of course railroads, the wealthy connectors of their day---jumped into the fray. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As the United States wrestles with what to do about the tremendous power its technology giants have amassed, the Federal Trade Commission is launching a new task force, which will keep tabs on the industry's competitive landscape and assess mergers both past and present. But critics say the creation of the task force is little more than an exercise in virtue signaling for an agency that has lately failed to bring any meaningful action against tech monopolies. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last year, Seattle’s city council repealed a tax on big employers less than a month after approving the legislation designed to raise funds to support homeless programs. The quick reversal came after Amazon, which employs around 45,000 people in the city, halted the construction of a new building and threatened to not occupy space it had leased in the planned Rainier Square tower because of the tax. Now, Amazon says it won’t move into the Rainier Square tower after all. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Tomorrow, all the carbon emissions spewed into the atmosphere from US ecommerce deliveries---some 55,000 metric tons of CO2, by one estimate, from trucks and planes shipping packages across the country---will be neutralized. It’s all thanks to Etsy, the global online market for indie makers, which is picking up the tab on high-quality carbon offsets for itself as well as its competitors on Thursday. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Friday, a pediatrician and parenting blogger named Free N. Hess published a post about a series of disturbing videos she found on YouTube Kids, a standalone app that is supposed to make it “safer and simpler” for those under 13 to browse videos online. A number of news outlets quickly picked up on the clips Hess discovered, which included one where Minecraft–inspired characters carry out a school shooting. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It was hard not to fear the worst when President Barack Obama appointed Tom Wheeler as chair of the Federal Communications Commission in 2013. Wheeler was the CEO of the wireless industry group CTIA from 1992 to 2004, and the CEO of the National Cable Television Association from 1979 to 1984. As the agency drafted its net neutrality rules, comedian John Oliver famously compared putting Wheeler in charge of the FCC to hiring a dingo to babysit your kids. But Wheeler wasn't a dingo. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Even before the online gig economy existed, a simple truth defined life in the American workforce: full-time employees get a safety net—the benefits, the labor protections, the security—and everyone else goes without. Tech companies have revolutionized how people work in countless ways, but this benefits gap persists, especially among low-income workers. The question now is whether these platforms can also be part of the solution. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Over the past few years, China's tech ascension has become one of the hottest topics du jour. Just as there are America's FAANG companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google), a trio of Chinese companies have become their own tech acronym: BAT's Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent. And China has clear aims to surpass the United States as the new techonomic superpower, from President Xi Jinping’s "Made in China 2025" initiative to his plans for China to lead AI globally by 2030. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ajit Pai says the Federal Communications Commission's annual broadband assessment will show that his deregulatory policies have substantially improved access in the United States. The annual report will also conclude that broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely basis. The FCC hasn't released the full Broadband Deployment Report yet and won't do so until the commission votes on whether to approve the draft version sometime in the next few weeks. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

AT&T and Verizon are slowly trickling out the next generation of wireless networks, known as 5G, in parts of a few cities. But even as the major carriers prepare larger 5G launches, San Francisco based startup Common Networks is hoping that it can compete with bigger telecom companies by combining 5G with technology open sourced by Facebook. Common Networks is using 5G to offer home, as opposed to mobile, broadband, essentially competing with internet providers such as AT&T and Comcast. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Just before Valentine’s Day last week, Belgian security researcher Inti De Ceukelaire noticed something strange on Facebook. He found the social network’s search function treated pictures of men and women in dramatically different ways. Searching for “photos of my female friends” returned a hodgepodge of images, whereas a similar search for “photos of my male friends” yielded no results. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Are machines racist? Are algorithms and artificial intelligence inherently prejudiced? Do Facebook, Google, and Twitter have political biases? Those answers are complicated. But if the question is whether the tech industry doing enough to address these biases, the straightforward response is no. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Yaël Eisenstat is a former CIA officer, National Security Advisor to Vice President Biden, and CSR leader at ExxonMobil. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It's been a big week for 5G, the next generation of wireless networks. Samsung announced its first 5G capable phone, the S10, on Wednesday. Qualcomm announced a new 5G modem on Tuesday. But President Trump is aiming higher. "I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible," Trump wrote in a tweet urging carriers to pick up their pace. "It is far more powerful, faster, and smarter than the current standard." https://twitter. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When it comes to cracking down on tech giants, India is on a roll. The country was the first to reject Facebook’s contentious plan to offer free internet access to parts of the developing world in 2016. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Some AT&T customers noticed a strange phenomenon earlier this year. The upper left corner of their smartphones began displaying “5GE,” ostensibly indicating their phones were using 5G technology. And while Samsung announced Wednesday that it will soon release a 5G-compatible phone, actual 5G networks in the US are still in their nascent stages. AT&T is engaging in a marketing ploy—one it has used in the past. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices