The future is here, if you can pay for it. From NFTs, to web3, to virtual worlds, it seems like everyone has a pitch about what the future looks like and how we get there. For those involved, it’s a frenzied world of big money and massive opportunity. From the outside looking in, a lot of it looks like a massive scam.When I was a kid, the future meant flying cars and virtual worlds of our own creation. Now people are telling me it means clunky headsets, pictures of cartoon apes, and decentralized platforms that make absolutely no sense but will make those involved filthy rich.What the hell is going on?With me today is Motherboard managing editor Jordan Pearson and special guest Jackson Palmer. Palmer is perhaps most famous for creating the Doge coin, but he’s also a musician, programer, and host of the new show Griftonomics.Griftonomics is available in iTunes and YouTube.We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Discord. The popular chat app was once the humble home of gamers who were tired of paying for Ventrilo and Teamspeak servers. Now, it’s so much more. The crypto people have come and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere.From the Bored Ape Yacht Club to the next alt-coin with no backing, any project related to the blockchain probably has a space on Discord. But Discord was never built to be a place where people gathered together to manifest complex financial schemes and, because of that, it’s rife with scammers, grifters, and hackers. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai walks us through the perils of using Discord as a financial chat app.Stories discussed in this episode:Discord Is the World’s Most Important Financial Messenger, and a Hotbed for ScammersWe’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2018, the Camp Fire swept through California. It was the deadliest in the state’s history, destroying more than 18,000 buildings and killing 85 people. The town of Paradise all but burned to the ground at the time. Four years later, Paradise is in the midst of a housing boom. New homes are everywhere as people, some of them who lost their homes in the Camp Fire, return to the region.There’s no guarantee that another fire won’t sweep through the region. So why are people flocking to the area?On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Aaron Gordon sits down to talk about what’s going on in Paradise.. Gordon is newly back from California where he chased some dogs through some forests and talked to a few of the town’s residents.Stories discussed in this episode:Paradise Burned to the Ground. Now It’s Another Hot Housing MarketWe’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On May 24, several news outlets reported on the internal workings of a Chinese run Uyghur internment camp in Xinjiang. The reports included detailed blueprints of the camp’s interiors, classified speeches from officials, and the personal information of police officers.An anonymous source hacked the information and got it out of China and into the hands of journalists. It’s part of a recent trend in resurgent hacktivism. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox walks us through the recent hack and what it’s like when journalists work with hackers.Stories discussed in this episode:Hacker Leaks Mountain of Files From Inside Xinjiang CampsWe’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The atom. For a few brief years in the middle of the 20th century, America and the world was cowed by the awesome possibility and terrifying reality of nuclear energy. Nuclear power had the potential to revolutionize the world but nuclear bombs could destroy it. But still … for a brief moment it seemed like nuclear energy would save the world. Then came Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and The China Syndrome. America fell out of love with nuclear energy.That might be changing. Climate change and scientific advances might just be the shot in the arm the flagging nuclear energy industry needs. But did the dangers actually go away?That’s the subject of the excellent podcast Wild Thing. Its third season is all about the shifting landscape of nuclear energy. It’s comprehensive, excellent, and it’s produced and hosted by former NPR editor Laura Krantz. On this episode of Cyber, Krantz sits down with Matthew to discuss Going Nuclear.We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The image is now iconic. An arctic wolf fursona in a Starbucks smock. Stance set wide. A sign in his hand held high that reads “UNION YES!”This was Michael Vestigo dressed in his Fursona as Apollo, a former Starbucks employee in Overland Park, Kansas. Why former? The company fired him for “displaying violent and threatening behavior” after he participated in a walkout of his location as part of a unionization effort.Vestigo is fighting to get his job back and he’s not the only person Starbucks has retaliated against for trying to form a union. As Apollo, he’s become a symbol of a movement that’s sweeping the country. Apollo joined us on today’s episode of Cyber to answer your burning questions about Unions and Starbucks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This bonus episode of Cyber is sponsored by Command Line Heroes. If you like Cyber, you’re going to like Command Line Heroes. It’s an original podcast from Red Hat where listeners hear epic true tales of how developers, programmers, hackers, geeks, and open source rebels are revolutionizing the technology landscape.It’s an award winning show that’s been running for nine seasons. Every season has a theme and season 9 is all about the dark side of programming. Botnets, logic bombs, and—of course—ransomware. If you’ve ever wanted to know about the origins of some of the things you hate most on the internet, this season of Command Line Heroes has you covered.With Matthew on this show are Command Line Heroes producers Kim Huang and Johan Philippine.Command Line Heroes Is Available wherever you listen to podcasts.We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some days I think that maybe we’re not all gonna make it. It’s been a bad week for cryptocurrency and, as of this recording, it’s only Tuesday. Bitcoin is down. Ethereum down. Stablecoin seems not so stable. The NFT market is on fire. There’s copium all around, panicked posters, and soothing souls advising everyone to buy the dip.But won’t that just exacerbate the problem? Won’t that just delay what people outside the crypto space have been waiting to see happen: the great crypto crash.On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Managing Editor Jordan Perason is here to answer all our burning crypto questions.We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Facebook’s biggest strength is quickly becoming its largest headache. For years, Facebook has survived by tracking every little thing its users do and selling that on to everyone. But now a slew of regulations across the globe are looking to crack down on the social media site and, according to leaked documents, Facebook has no idea how to get compliant. Worse, the social media giant has no idea where any given piece of data goes once it enters its ecosystem.On this episode of Cyber, we sit down with Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai to talk about the regulation “tsunami” facing the social media site.Stories discussed in this episode:Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked DocumentLawmakers Call For Better Facebook User Data OversightWe’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Your data is valuable. Everything you do online and everywhere you go with your phone is tracked. And there’s a robust market for that data, a market that lets governments and private individuals purchase reams of your personal data. What if the CDC wanted to track people’s phones to see if they’re obeying Covid-19 lockdown orders? They can do that. What about a private individual paying to track the whereabouts of groups of people who visited Planned Parenthood? Also possible.On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Joseph Cox comes on to discuss SafeGraph and the data it’s selling to anyone who is willing to pay.Stories discussed in this episode:Data Broker Is Selling Location Data of People Who Visit Abortion ClinicsCDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown OrdersHow the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary AppsLeaked Location Data Shows Another Muslim Prayer App Tracking UsersGoogle Bans Location Data Firm Funded by Former Saudi Intelligence HeadWe’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.