Marketplace Tech

On Wednesday, hundreds of employees of video game company Activision Blizzard walked out. The protest followed a lawsuit from California regulators accusing the maker of World of Warcraft and Call of Duty of unfair pay and lack of advancement for women and a “frat boy drinking culture” at the company. Management eventually apologized for its initial, dismissive response to the lawsuit and promised to investigate. Sarah Needleman covers video games and technology for The Wall Street Journal. She said men have dominated the video game industry for years, despite a roughly 50-50 split among players.

Yesterday, the show focused on how the growing market for electric vehicles is affecting the supply chain for batteries. Today, how about where to charge all those batteries? Many people have electric cars, and a lot more will by 2025. Global sales will triple by 2025, according to IHS Markit. But it’s not just about the number of cars, it’s also about the number of available chargers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Jessika Trancik, a professor at MIT who recently co-wrote an article on charger placement for Nature Energy. Trancik says for the EV market to grow, we’re going to need more chargers in the right places, especially at home.

The electric vehicle market, while still small, has grown rapidly this year. Of course, a global shortage of microchips could slow things down. In the long term, there’s also the issue of availability of lithium, a soft, silvery metal that’s the key component in electric car batteries. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks to Chris Berry, a strategic metals consultant and president of House Mountain Partners. He says demand for lithium is expected to triple in the next five years which is why some automakers, like GM, have taken the unusual step of making deals with lithium mines directly.

When you search for someone notable on the internet, one of the first things that often pops up is a link to their Wikipedia page. But if you're looking for a notable woman, that might not be the case. There are about 1.5 million biographies on Wikipedia. Only about 19% of them are about women. And those that do get published are much more likely to be targeted for deletion, compared to biographies of men. That’s according to research by Francesca Tripodi, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks to Tripodi about her recent paper, “Ms. Categorized: Gender, notability, and inequality on Wikipedia.”

Let's talk about gardening technology. Not some fancy gadget for monitoring water or sunlight, but technology that feeds the dirt itself. Washington, D.C.’s wastewater-treatment plant is one of the largest high-tech plants in the world. It uses a process akin to pressure cooking to turn what’s flushed down the toilet into fertilizer fit for planters at home. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams takes a tour to learn more about thermal hydrolysis tech.

Optimists in Washington, including President Biden, are hoping debate on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package could start as early as Monday, just before the August recess. Senate Republicans blocked a procedural vote to start that debate this week, pushing for more time to hammer out details. You’ve got the usual talk of roads and bridges, yes, but broadband is another key part of the bill, with a draft showing $65 billion devoted to expanding high-speed internet access across the country. Details are starting to emerge about what form that might take. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams interviews John Hendel, a technology reporter at Politico, who is covering the blow-by-blow.

It's been five years since Pokémon Go launched, sending kids and adults alike out into the streets, capturing Pokémon through their smartphones. It was one of the first massively successful augmented reality games, generating maps populated with the fantastical creatures based on actual maps. It tracks where players are in the real world to determine which Pokémon they can see. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with John Hanke, the CEO of Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, about the future of augmented reality. 

High profile trips by billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos have more people thinking about the future of space tourism. There’s a long way to go before that’s common, but one destination for would-be space explorers is Mars. NASA scientists are working on robots to help explore more of the planet first. Marketplace's Kimberly Adams talks with Ali Agha, a principal investigator and research technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who’s testing a fleet of robots, including ones from Boston Dynamics called Spot by sending them into caves in Northern California.

Seventeen international news organizations dropped the results of a sprawling and detailed investigation over the weekend. It’s called the Pegasus Project, and it found that Israeli surveillance tech firm NSO sold its software to clients who used it to spy on human rights activists, journalists and politicians. One surveillance tool, called Pegasus, could infect people’s smartphones, sometimes just by sending a text. It could collect emails, calls, social media posts, passwords, even activate the camera or microphone. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams and Molly Wood talk about the story.

The Federal Trade Commission is turning its attention to the right-to-repair movement — a pushback against manufacturers limiting who can repair the equipment they make. The agency put out a report on this in May that found “the burden of repair restrictions may fall more heavily on communities of color and lower-income communities.” The FTC is set to vote on Wednesday on next steps. One group watching this debate is farmers, as some companies that make farm equipment only allow repairs at their own dealerships. Kimberly Adams speaks to Terry Griffin, an agricultural economist with Kansas State University. He grew up on a farm in northeast Arkansas and says back then, DIY equipment repairs were just a part of life.

This week in Cuba, journalists, influencers and regular citizens posted scenes online from the country’s largest anti-government protests in decades. That is, until the government restricted access to a number of social media platforms. According to the internet monitoring firm NetBlocks, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and WhatsApp were all disrupted. There are reports that access returned by midweek. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Isabella Alcañiz, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center at the University of Maryland, about the growing importance of internet access in Cuba.

Arguably one of the biggest problems facing the world right now is disinformation. It’s fueled everything from the spread of QAnon conspiracy theories to the Capitol Insurrection to anti-vaccination movements — all of which undermine democracy and public health. Lawmakers and researchers in the U.S. have demanded that social media platforms do more to deal with disinformation. But what about the European Union, which has aggressively regulated tech in other ways and has historically been more willing to police speech than the U.S. has? Host Molly Wood interviews Margarethe Vestager, executive vice president of the European Commission. Vestager oversaw an EU legislative proposal, the Digital Services Act, which would require online platforms to do more to tackle things like hate speech.

The European Union has led the charge on regulating Big Tech companies for years now. Europe's General Data Protection Regulation was the first major rule on the transfer and tracking of personal data. The EU has also given the rest of the world a new way to think about tackling the American giants: Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon. Last year, the EU produced two proposals for regulation that labeled the biggest tech companies “gatekeepers” meaning they control or restrict access to other companies, apps or services. Host Molly Wood speaks with Margrethe Vestager, the executive vice president of the European Commission who oversaw the proposals.

European Union leaders said Monday they will delay, for now, plans for a digital tax that would require Big Tech companies like Facebook and Google to pay taxes anywhere they do business. That’s because, this weekend, leaders from the world’s 20 biggest economies agreed to try to create a global minimum tax. Host Molly Wood speaks to Margrethe Vestager, the executive vice president of the European Commission, who oversees competition and digital policy. She says the digital tax isn’t off the table, but tech will have to pay either way.

The neighborhood social media platform Nextdoor is planning to go public at a valuation of around $4.3 billion. The company says it saw astronomical growth in active users this past year. Its shares will trade under the ticker symbol “KIND” because part of the company’s mission, it says, is to cultivate kindness. At the same time, the platform has struggled to deal with hate speech and the spread of misinformation. Nextdoor says it is willing to accept a decline in user engagement if that means the platform has less racist speech. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks to Susan McGregor, a scholar with the Data Science Institute at Columbia University. McGregor says that even though people may know one another on Nextdoor, it doesn’t necessarily make them nicer.

About two weeks ago, part of a 12-story condominium in Surfside, Florida, collapsed. Dozens of people were killed, and dozens more are unaccounted for. Images of cranes and giant shovels, along with lines of first responders carefully removing buckets of debris, reveal the scale of the difficult task of finding those still missing. While sniffer dogs and emergency personnel working by hand are still doing most of the work, there is a variety of technology, old and new, aiding them. First, in the attempt to rescue any survivors; now, for the recovery of victims and as part of the effort to understand why the building collapsed. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Robin Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue.

Most of what people watch on YouTube is recommended by YouTube’s algorithm. Finish one video on how to save a dying houseplant, and it might suggest more. But that system can also send users down rabbit holes that radicalize and misinform. For almost a year, the Mozilla Foundation has been tracking the viewing habits of more than 37,000 volunteers who installed a browser extension letting them identify videos they called “regrettable.” Mozilla found YouTube’s algorithm recommended 70% of those problematic videos. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks to Brandi Geurkink, senior manager of advocacy at Mozilla, who led the research effort.

If you land a contract with the Department of Defense, that’s usually big money. Unless, of course, the government changes its mind. That's what happened to Microsoft this week when the Pentagon canceled the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, cloud computing contract. The government controversially awarded that $10 billion contract to Microsoft in late 2019; Amazon immediately sued, saying former President Donald Trump exerted undue influence over the decision, which led to a long legal battle. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with “Marketplace Tech” host Molly Wood about why the old contract no longer met the Pentagon’s needs.

More than a third of women report personal experiences with online violence. This month, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Google all signed on to new commitments to address online abuse and women's safety on the web. The companies say they will test out new tools, including one that would give users the chance to put the brakes on a video that unexpectedly goes viral. Facebook, Twitter and Google didn't make specific pledges about when they would be testing the new tools, but TikTok said its tests will start as early as this year.

This episode originally aired May 5, 2021. Throughout the pandemic, we've been focused on how the internet is everything. When it comes to federal policy governing the internet, the Federal Communications Commission is everything. Among other roles and responsibilities, the FCC maps out broadband access nationally and its maps are used to determine which areas receive billions of dollars in federal subsidies to help build out more infrastructure. But the data used to create those maps is flawed at best. Last year, Congress passed a law requiring the agency to correct that. Host Molly Wood speaks with the new acting chairwoman of the FCC, Jessica Rosenworcel, about expanding access — starting with those maps.

It’s been a big week for the Federal Trade Commission. A court on Monday threw out the agency’s antitrust complaint against Facebook and told it to come back with a stronger argument. On Thursday, Lina Khan chaired her first meeting as the new head of the Federal Trade Commission and started making changes right out of the gate, expanding the agency’s antitrust powers. Khan is famous for her antitrust arguments against Amazon, but she’s also written on the role privacy concerns could play in attempting to regulate big tech firms like Facebook. Marketplace's Kimberly Aadms speaks with Issie Lapowsky, a senior reporter for Protocol, who dug into this part of Khan’s background, especially a 2019 article she co-authored on the idea of “information fiduciaries.”

A new report from the Government Accountability Office says at least 20 federal agencies are using facial recognition technology, and not just the obvious acronyms like the FBI, TSA and ICE. Agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NASA are using the tech, too. More than half of the agencies using facial recognition don't know what systems their employees are using or how often they use them. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams interviews Gretta Goodwin, director of the GAO’s homeland security and justice team, about the agency’s findings.

In recent years, Nevada has drawn plenty of tech companies to the state, especially to Northern Nevada, which is close to both Silicon Valley and Lake Tahoe. Lawmakers now are looking at a new way to try to lure companies to the state. As Benjamin Payne reports, it is not without controversy.

When you search for something online, chances are you Google it. The company handles about 90% of search traffic globally and makes money by selling ads based on the things it knows about you. But, there are competitors offering the ability to search privately, including a new one from folks who learned the trade at Google. Sridhar Ramaswamy worked in ads at Google for 15 years, and he's the co-founder of Neeva — an ad-free, subscription-based search engine that launches Tuesday. But why would people pay $4.95 a month for something they’re used to getting for “free?” Marketplace’s Amy Scott interviews him to find out.

Venture capital has been the way the world's most promising tech companies get funded. But it's a notoriously white industry. A survey last year by the National Venture Capital Association found that just 4% of U.S. workers in the industry are Black. HBCUvc is a nonprofit trying to change that by connecting VC firms with historically Black colleges and universities, like Morgan State. Marketplace’s Amy Scott spoke to HBUvc leadership, students and Black entrepreneurs to find out more about how the group might bring about change.

This week, after nearly 30 hours of debate, the House Judiciary Committee passed a series of antitrust bills that could weaken the power and influence of the biggest tech companies. The proposed legislation would increase merger filing fees to give regulators more money to police them, prohibit big companies from snapping up smaller competitors and even force tech giants to sell off parts of their business that create conflicts of interest. All of the measures had some bipartisan support, but there's still a lot of disagreement even within parties about how far to go. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks to Makena Kelly, a policy reporter at The Verge, who followed the hearings.

The self-driving software firm Embark Trucks said Wednesday it plans to go public in a deal that would raise more than $600 million and value the company at more than $5 billion. Alphabet's Waymo just raised $2.5 billion in fresh funding as it tries to expand its self-driving taxi fleet outside of Phoenix. Chris Gerdes is a professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford and a safety adviser with Ford's autonomous-vehicle division. Marketplace’s Amy Scott asked him where all this money is going.

The median sale price of an existing home rose to a record $350,300 last month, according to the latest report from the National Association of Realtors. Sales of existing homes fell in May for the fourth straight month as competition for the few homes available continued to push up prices. Last week, Zillow announced an update to its tool for estimating home values, saying the changes allow its algorithm to “react more quickly to market trends.” Marketplace’s Amy Scott spoke to Norm Miller, a professor of real estate finance at the University of San Diego and a consultant to companies that create automated valuation models for banks and the government.

Earlier this month, the White House released its first-ever strategy to fight domestic terrorism. The plan includes more funding for investigators and prosecutors, better information sharing between agencies and efforts to address the underlying causes of violent extremism, such as racism and bigotry. Tech has a role to play too. The Joe Biden administration says it will invest in programs to increase digital literacy and work with tech companies to make it harder for terrorists to recruit online. Marketplace’s Amy Scott spoke with Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

You’d think one line of work that would be safe from the robot takeover is human resources. But some companies are working on it. A recent New York Times investigation laid out how Amazon’s automated systems for managing warehouse workers led to unreasonable scheduling, delayed benefits and inadvertent firings. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Peter Cappelli, a professor of management and director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He explains what a traditional HR department used to do that’s now done by software.

This week, the White House appointed Lina Khan to chair of the Federal Trade Commission. The announcement came just hours after she was confirmed by the Senate to be a commissioner. At just 32, she’s the youngest-ever FTC chair. Khan rose to fame for a paper she wrote while at Yale Law School, making the case for reining in Amazon's monopoly power. Khan went on to work on Capitol Hill, as an FTC staffer and as a professor at Columbia University’s law school. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Cecilia Kang, who covers tech policy for The New York Times. According to Kang, the difference between commissioner and chair is a big one.

If you do any shopping online, you’ve no doubt seen offers to pay for that sweater or mattress in installments using services from Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna and other fintech companies. These “buy now, pay later” startups got a boost from the growth in online shopping during the pandemic. And the model is moving beyond retail to include things like rent, travel, even medical bills. Marketplace’s Amy Scott spoke with Sheridan Trent, a research analyst for the Strawhecker Group, a consulting firm that works with some “buy now, pay later” companies.

It’s been more than a decade since the revolution that came to be known as the Arab Spring, when protesters across the Middle East challenged — and in some cases overthrew — authoritarian governments. Social media played a central role in helping activists organize and build support. Now, autocratic leaders around the world have been stifling dissent on these platforms or banning them altogether. Russia, China, India and Nigeria are some recent examples. Could social media play the same role today that it did in 2010? Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Philip Howard, a professor of sociology, information and international affairs at Oxford University.

The cost of building a new house has gone up sharply over the past year. Not just because of lumber, but because steel, insulation, windows and appliances are all harder to get and more expensive because of high demand and delays. A number of startups have promised to revolutionize construction with new materials and technologies. It's not easy — the modular construction startup Katerra filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. But there are others looking to disrupt the housing industry. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Sam Ruben, the co-founder and chief sustainability officer of Mighty Buildings, which uses an enormous 3D printer in a warehouse in Oakland, California, to build houses.

SoftBank launched its first, $100 billion Vision Fund in 2017. Just last month, the Japanese conglomerate led by Masayoshi Son said the fund had delivered record profits for the quarter. But there have been some big failures too. The modular-construction startup Katerra filed for bankruptcy last week. SoftBank had invested more than $2 billion in the company. Katerra had borrowed money from Greensill Capital, which also received about $2 billion of SoftBank money. Greensill also collapsed earlier this year. That, of course, follows the WeWork debacle a couple of years ago. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Sarah Kunst, managing director of the venture firm Cleo Capital. She said SoftBank’s strategy has been to make huge bets on relatively unproven companies.

Las Vegas hosted its first in-person convention this week since the pandemic. It’s called World of Concrete, which normally attracts some 60,000 engineers, architects, masons and contractors. Not quite a full turnout this year, but Marketplace senior reporter Matt Levin was there. Marketplace’s Amy Scott asked Levin what kind of tech he’s seen there.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday rescinded a series of executive orders from the Trump administration that had tried to ban the Chinese-owned apps TikTok and WeChat here in the United States. The orders had been blocked by federal judges. Instead, the Biden administration plans a security review of those and other apps. Many turned to the short-form video app TikTok for entertainment during the pandemic or to create their own content. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Charley Button, a talent manager at Select Management Group, where she manages some TikTok creators.

When a couple of Stanford professors founded Coursera in 2012, they promised to democratize access to higher education by making courses from prestigious colleges available online. Nearly a decade later, many of us were thrust into the world of online education by the pandemic. Tens of millions of new users joined Coursera’s platform, some just looking for lectures to occupy their time, others seeking new skills in areas like machine learning and data science. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Jeff Maggioncalda, the CEO of Coursera. He said states like New York and Tennessee have also paid the company to provide free courses for unemployed residents.

More than 2,000 police and fire departments have partnerships with Amazon to use surveillance video from its Ring security cameras. This week, the company changed the way law enforcement can access that video. Now, departments will have to post public requests on Amazon’s Neighbors app and include some details about the relevant investigation. Police used to be able to directly email users without making the request public. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at American University and author of the book “The Rise of Big Data Policing.”

Hospitals and other health care systems are eager to find patterns in their patient data that can help treat and prevent illness and cut costs. In England, the National Health Service is collecting the medical histories of up to 55 million patients to share with third parties. Here in the U.S., Google will help the hospital chain HCA Healthcare store and analyze health data. Amazon, IBM and Microsoft have similar partnerships. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Deven McGraw, chief regulatory officer at the health records startup Ciitizen. She’s also an adviser to Verily, a sister company to Google. McGraw says predictive analytics can help providers anticipate things like which patients are at risk of coming back to the hospital after surgery.

Throughout the pandemic we’ve seen hospitals, pipelines and other critical infrastructure hit with ransomware attacks. Just this past week, meat processor JBS and a ferry operator in Massachusetts were targets. Hackers often target companies with insurance because they know they’re more likely to pay their often multimillion-dollar demands. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with James Rundle, who covers corporate cybersecurity at The Wall Street Journal. He says the increase in attacks has had a real impact on the cyber insurance market. Premiums are rising, and some insurers won’t cover ransom payments anymore.

One promise of technology is open access to information –– if that information is shared. The tight housing market has led to a rise in what are called “pocket listings,” where a home is for sale but only offered to select clients. It’s common with celebrities seeking privacy. But one big real estate site, Redfin, is not taking part. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Glenn Kelman, Redfin chief executive, about why his company stopped using pocket listings in 2018. Kelman is on a bit of a campaign to end the practice. A Redfin analysis found that 4% of homes nationally were sold this March without being marketed. In Kansas City, Columbus and Minneapolis, more than 10% of sales were pocket listings. In Chicago, about 15%.

It’s been three years since the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, took effect. At its core, the law was meant to give consumers more control over how companies collect, share and use their personal data. It was the first major privacy law with real teeth in the form of potentially large fines for companies that didn’t comply. But that didn’t really happen until recently. Marketplace’s Amy Scott speaks with Jessica Lee, who advises companies on privacy as a partner with the law firm Loeb & Loeb. She said consumer advocates tracking enforcement have been somewhat disappointed.

So far, most of our conversations about disinformation have been about politics, the 2020 election and, during the pandemic, misleading posts about COVID-19 and the vaccine. Facebook and Twitter have gotten more aggressive about fact-checking, labeling and removing posts or accounts that misinform the public about those two topics. But now, there’s growing concern about climate misinformation. In some cases, coming from a lot of the same old sources either denying that climate change is caused by humans, downplaying its impact or spreading conspiracies about it. “Marketplace Tech” host Molly Wood speaks with Erin McAweeney, a senior analyst at Graphika. She said the fracking discussion in last year’s presidential debate and the 2020 wildfires both led to spikes in climate misinformation.

This episode originally aired on March 22, 2021. Joy Buolamwini is a researcher at the MIT Media Lab who pioneered research into bias that's built into artificial intelligence and facial recognition. And the way she came to this work is almost a little too on the nose. As a graduate student at MIT, she created a mirror that would project aspirational images onto her face, like a lion or tennis star Serena Williams. But the facial-recognition software she installed wouldn't work on her Black face, until she literally put on a white mask. Buolamwini is featured in a documentary called “Coded Bias,” now streaming on Netflix. She told “Marketplace Tech” host Molly Wood about one scene in which facial-recognition tech was installed at an apartment complex in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.

The insurance company Lemonade is all about automation. To file claims, customers upload a selfie video and Lemonade’s chatbot, AI Jim, will handle some claims automatically. On Twitter this week, Lemonade got in trouble suggesting that AI handles fraud detection and uses nonverbal cues to assess some claims. Researchers said that capability doesn’t exist and could be discriminatory. Lemonade quickly downplayed how much AI it uses and said it’s not based on physical features. “Marketplace Tech” host Molly Wood speaks with Ryan Calo, a professor of law at the University of Washington who studies emerging tech and policy.

It’s a big news week for Amazon. First, it got sued by the District of Columbia on antitrust grounds. The lawsuit accuses the company of preventing sellers on its marketplace from offering better prices elsewhere. Then, in another part of its business, Amazon announced that it was acquiring one of the world’s oldest film studios, MGM, which was founded in 1924. So even as big as Amazon is, it just keeps getting bigger, but not in one single market. “Marketplace Tech” host Molly Wood speaks with Rebecca Allensworth, a law professor at Vanderbilt University. She said that makes antitrust enforcement tricky and that it reminds her of another old company: Standard Oil. Your support makes our journalism possible — become a Marketplace Investor by Thursday to help us reach our fundraising goal: marketplace.org/givetech

Legal arguments between Apple and Epic Games wound down this week in federal court. Some have called it the Super Bowl of antitrust cases. No flashy halftime show, though, but the trial did have mighty opponents, wild fans and a whole lot of cash. Epic, the maker of the video game Fortnite, argues Apple's whole operating system is a monopoly and complains about the 30% cut of app sales it takes. But Apple says its tight controls ensure the security of apps in its store. A decision isn’t expected anytime soon. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Adi Robertson, a senior reporter with the Verge, what we can take away from the case. Your support makes our journalism possible — become a Marketplace Investor by Thursday to help us reach our fundraising goal: marketplace.org/givetech

The tech industry, like most of America, is grappling with its lack of diversity and its systemic inequality. At the top of that pyramid is venture capital. In the VC industry, it’s hard to break through as either a startup founder or an investor. Last summer, Act One Ventures general partner Alejandro Guerrero created a diversity rider for venture capital firms to use in their investment deals. It says a startup and the primary investor in a startup will make every attempt to include a member of an underrepresented group as a co-investor. Guerrero said now more than 50 VC firms have adopted the language, as well as a big law firm that made it standard in all its term sheets — basically the bullet points of an investment deal. He told “Marketplace Tech” host Molly Wood that the point of the rider is to pause the deal-making process and think about who isn’t in the room. Cheers to making it through this year! Donate today and get our new Mason Jar Mug and stock market-inspired drink recipes: marketplace.org/givetech

This week marks one year since a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd. The year has seen national, even global, protests, demanding justice for Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black victims of police killings as well as a racial reckoning in society and business. Many tech companies came out in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and made promises to make their companies more diverse and equitable in a notoriously nondiverse industry. One year later, is it possible to measure their progress? “Marketplace Tech” host Molly Wood speaks with Megan Rose Dickey, a senior reporter at Protocol who covers labor and diversity in tech. Cheers to making it through this year! Donate today and get our new Mason Jar Mug and stock market-inspired drink recipes: marketplace.org/givetech

The California Department of Motor Vehicles said this week it’s reviewing whether Tesla is telling people that its cars are self-driving when, legally speaking, they’re not. This follows fatal crashes that may have involved its Autopilot feature. Tesla advertises a “Full Self-Driving upgrade option.” One man has been busted in Teslas more than once for reckless driving. He hangs out in the backseat and steers with his feet. Meanwhile, no cars are fully self-driving yet. “Marketplace Tech” host Molly Wood speaks with Missy Cummings, the director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University. She says the so-called deep learning that cars need to see the road around them doesn’t actually learn. Cheers to making it through this year! Donate today and get our new Mason Jar Mug and stock market-inspired drink recipes: marketplace.org/givetech