Business, Spoken

When you think about 3-D printing, chances are you think of little plastic doodads created by desktop devices like those made by MakerBot. Computing and printer giant HP wants you to think about metal. Today the company announced the Metal Jet printer, an industrial-scale 3-D printer that builds items not of plastic but of steel. 3-D plastic printing is widely used for custom items such as prosthetics and hearing aids, and by product designers for prototyping. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I knew from the day I started at Facebook that I would have to make a choice. I was five months pregnant and raising two young boys. Balancing motherhood with my work as a data scientistwas exciting and strenuous. It meant working during my commute, coming home to feed the kids and put them to sleep, then falling into bed. I worked until the day my daughter was born. Then I had to make the hardest decision of my life. I had to choose between my dream job and my baby girl. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2012, artificial intelligence researchers revealed a big improvement in computers’ ability to recognize images by feeding a neural network millions of labeled images from a database called ImageNet. It ushered in an exciting phase for computer vision, as it became clear that a model trained using ImageNet could help tackle all sorts of image-recognition problems. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Since the early 2000s, Amazon has quietly received more than $1.5 billion in government subsidies, in exchange for bringing new jobs to cities and states across the country. At the same time, low-wage employees at Amazon's grueling warehouses have sometimes had to rely on a different kind of government benefit, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, to make ends meet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Dara Khosrowshahi stands in the wings of an airy, modern corporate event space in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. It’s the first anniversary of his taking the CEO reigns at the iconic ride-sharing company, and he’s celebrating like a Silicon Valley suit--with a set of product announcements. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Amazon briefly touched $1 trillion in market capitalization Tuesday, barely a month after Apple topped $1 trillion. The companies share the letter A and 12 zeros, but the similarity largely ends there. WIRED Opinion About Zachary Karabell is a WIRED contributor and president of River Twice Research. Apple is a cash machine, with a small suite of high-end products and an uncertain post-iPhone future. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s too loud for me to hear inside the Cupertino coffee bar, but Achin Bhowmik says it doesn’t bother him. He’s got a superpower, he says. If I look closely—very closely—I can see the tiny plastic tubes reaching from his ear canals to small devices hidden behind his ears. The hearing aids are running machine-learning algorithms that continuously monitor his “acoustic environment” to help him hear what he wants to hear. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Consumer debt, credit card debt, and personal loan debt are at all-time highs. Meanwhile, investors who purchase debt for cents on the dollar and then try to collect the whole amount, and the collection agencies they hire, are getting increasingly aggressive. One in four consumers contacted by debt collectors feels threatened, and most consumers say the calls persist even after requests to stop, according to a 2017 study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

An objectively good thing happened in big tech Thursday: Microsoft said it will require companies that supply it with subcontractors—think cafeteria and custodial staff—to give those workers 12 weeks of paid parental leave. In doing so, Microsoft is once again taking the lead in ensuring contractors get benefits that other big companies reserve for full-time employees. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

IPU n. Short for intelligence processing unit, a new kind of computer chip optimized for AI. Way back in the early 2000s, when the first Xbox came out, researchers discovered they could hack video­game consoles for scientific uses. It seems the devices’ graphic processing units, or GPUs, designed to render flying gore and mayhem, also ran physics simulations faster than the CPUs in ordinary computers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices