Business, Spoken

Most electronics suffer a debilitating aquaphobia. At the ­littlest­ spillage—heaven forbid Dorothy’s bucket—of water, our wicked widgets shriek and melt. Microsoft, it would seem, missed the memo. Last June, the company installed a smallish data center on a patch of seabed just off the coast of Scotland’s Orkney Islands; around it, approximately 933,333 bucketfuls of brine circulate every hour. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On a recent Tuesday night, during a session of rash bedtime scrolling, I sold my Facebook data to a stranger in Buenos Aires. Reckless, maybe, but such was my newfound life as a digital vigilante. My tipping point was the Facebook hack, exposed in September, in which I—along with some 90 million other potential victims—was temporarily locked out of my account. I imagined my identity rippling across the internet, thanks to the single sign-in convenience of Facebook Connect. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2006, Jeffrey Hammerbacher, then a recent Harvard graduate in math, became an early employee at a budding company founded by another Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg. After building Facebook’s data team, Hammerbacher left the company in 2008. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee had the opportunity to question one of the most powerful people on the planet---Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, the company that filters all the world's information. And they blew it. Over the course of three and a half hours, the members of the committee staked out opposite sides of a partisan battle over whether Google search and other products are biased against conservatives. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It's been one year since the Federal Communications Commission voted to gut its net neutrality rules. The good news is that the internet isn't drastically different than it was before. But that's also the bad news: the 'net wasn't always so neutral to begin with. As we predicted last year, broadband providers didn't make any drastic new moves to block or cripple the delivery of content after the FCC's order revoking its Obama-era net neutrality protections took effect in June. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The future depends on connectivity. From artificial intelligence and self-driving cars to telemedicine and mixed reality to as yet undreamt technologies, all the things we hope will make our lives easier, safer, and healthier will require high-speed, always-on internet connections. GLOSSARY The Spectrum All radio wave frequencies, from the lowest frequencies (3 kHz) to the highest (300 GHz). Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Tech has a diversity problem. This isn’t new. Women and minorities have long been woefully underrepresented in startup land, a problem that founders have insisted they are trying their best to fix. However, a new survey conducted by venture firm First Round Capital suggests that many startup founders may have given up hope of achieving diversity in tech, with most doubting that gender or racial parity will be achieved anytime soon. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 1999, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison suspected that Microsoft was secretly funding the seemingly independent advocacy groups that were loudly defending Microsoft amid a heated antitrust investigation. Seeking proof, Oracle’s law firm hired Terry Lenzner, a private investigator from Washington, DC, who had dug up dirt on Bill Clinton’s female accusers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In February, The New York Times Magazine published a cover story urging regulators to break up Google because the company abuses its dominance in search to crush promising competitors. The next day, representatives from two conservative think tanks published blog posts defending Google and attacking the article’s call for antitrust enforcement. Both think tanks have received funding from Google. Both blog posts referenced studies by a professor who has received funding from Google. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After a hellish year of tech scandals, even government-averse executives have started professing their openness to legislation. But Microsoft president Brad Smith took it one step further on Thursday, asking governments to regulate the use of facial-recognition technology to ensure it does not invade personal privacy or become a tool for discrimination or surveillance. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices