What's New

By nearly any measure, Netflix has had a ridiculous year. When all is said and done, the company will have spent upwards of $10 billion (and perhaps as much as $13 billion) to produce more than 550 new movies and shows. Those new movies and shows, in turn, have helped to attract some of the more than 27 million new subscribers that Netflix signed up in 2018—adding to a customer base that was already close to 120 million strong worldwide. (And picking up 23 Emmys in the process.

In early February, the technologist Tristan Harris stood in front of a crowd at a tech conference and held up his iPhone like Martin Luther presenting his Ninety-five Theses. He was there to warn of the plain and common dangers of our phones, which he has compared to slot machines and to cults, while announcing a coalition called the Center for Humane Technology to liberate us.

The podcast explores the speaker's experience of using a flip phone for eight months, highlighting the challenges faced, the benefits of disconnecting from smartphones, and the conflicting beliefs surrounding technology in society.

The death of the Chevrolet Volt was a quiet one. It came in early December amid news that General Motors was cutting 14,000 jobs, closing three assembly plants, and also ending production of the Chevy Cruze and Impala, the Buick LaCrosse, and the Cadillac CT6. It made sense: Sales have been slowing, Americans aren’t buying compact cars or sedans anymore, and GM is repositioning itself for a future that includes both bigger vehicles and many more electrics.

Yesterday, Vladimir Putin presented his country with a belated Christmas present: the Avangard hypersonic missile. According to Russian media, it's capable of reaching Mach 20. And if its ability to conduct evasive maneuvers at high velocity is as good as the Russian president boasted back in March, it would render missile defense systems effectively useless. Cold War recidivists aren't the only ones hoping hypersonic technology will deliver a futuristic throwback.

“It seems like journalists are used to being in charge of editorial processes.” —“Algorithms for Journalism: The Future of News Work,” The Journal of Media Innovations (2017) News breaks like a rain cloud, or a daydream. Roy arrives at his desk just in time to claim the story: Rival militias started a gunfight at a federal water pipeline that they both wanted to steal from. Nine people dead, another 17 injured.

“It’s fully electric!” Mark Frohnmayer yells to the guy in the pickup truck idling next to us. It’s a sunny Friday afternoon on San Francisco’s Embarcadero, and Frohnmayer and I are the center of attention at this red light. Now there’s another guy in another pickup truck, on the other side of the first one, who also has questions about the vehicle we’re sitting in.

The new children’s book Max Einstein: The Genius Experiment, written by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein, aims to introduce small children to the work of Albert Einstein. It’s a challenge that Patterson initially found a bit daunting.

“Human enhancement with in-the-body technologies introduces new potential for both individual opportunity and individual exploitation.” —“Cyborgs, Robots and Society,” Technologies (2018) It’s not like I haven’t thought about killing the humans since I hacked my governor module.