Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News

The great irony in the sport of surfing is that the process of making a surfboard puts a great deal of strain on the environment. The various chemicals and materials used to assemble boards, leashes, and wetsuits end up polluting the waterways, and defiling the very beaches that surfers rely on. A number of organizations and companies are dedicated to reversing this trend through something called the Ecoboard project. The certification program establishes manufacturing and sourcing guidelines that let people create boards that are gentler on the oceans and perform as well as traditional surfboards.One such company is Firewire Surfboards. We’re joined on today’s show by Firewire CEO Mark Price to talk about ecoboards, sustainability, and surfing in general. Also on the show, the hosts cover the latest news about products from Amazon and Google, and also give a preview of what to expect from Apple’s WWDC developer conference that takes place next week.Show Notes: Find Firewire’s website here. Also check out the

What’s a giant consumer electronics maker to do when it notices that younger customers are more interested in paying for experiences, rather than things? That’s what WIRED senior associate editor Arielle Pardes had the chance to ask Samsung’s David Eun this week at the Collision conference in Toronto. Eun says he envisions a consumer market in the not-so-distant future where all of the physical goods we now purchase outright are rented, and he talked about how Samsung Next, the company’s innovation arm, is investing and acquiring to make sure Samsung doesn’t miss the (rented?) boat. Show Notes: Here’s WIRED’s story on how Huawei might handle the latest U.S. sanctions. And you can read about the new MacBook Pros here and the keyboard fix here. Recommendations:Mike recommends the Popcast! Podcast; this week it’s all about AirPods. Arielle recommends earplugs. Just wear earplugs. Lauren recommends this Ezra Klein podcast episode about work as identity and burnout as a lifestyle. Arielle Pardes can be found at @p

Beauty product reviews on YouTube aren’t just about beauty products and internet capitalism. They’re a conduit for drama, loyalty politics, and “cancel” culture, as WIRED’s Emma Grey Ellis has learned throughout her reporting on some of YouTube’s biggest names. This week’s drama is centered around James Charles, a hugely popular 19-year-old beauty influencer and Tati Westbrook, an OG YouTube beauty guru and a mentor of James Charles. Coachella and hair vitamins were involved. Charles was cancelled (again). But as Ellis writes, “The real victims of cancel culture might be the rest of us, perpetually required to join the angry mob lest ye be taken for a collaborator.” We talk about this and more on this week’s Gadget Lab podcast. Show Notes: Read Emma’s story here. Read all about the WhatsApp vulnerability here. Read Casey Newton’s newsletter here on the White House’s call for supposedly politically biased social media content. Recommendations:Emma recommends the Canadian television series Schitt’s Creek, which

Developer conferences aren’t just a chance for tech companies to incentivize app makers and show off the latest tricks and tools in software. The events also present an opportunity for companies like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google to assure the public that they are on it when it comes to issues like privacy, openness, and also, privacy. And companies often use the giant keynote stage to show off futuristic demos involving augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and assistive technologies. How much of this is reality–not the virtual kind–and how much is simply lip service? The Gadget Lab team discusses on this week’s podcast. Recommendations: Arielle recommends checking out BTS, if you haven’t already. Lauren recommends Emily Dreyfuss’s compelling interview with Melinda Gates. Peter recommends this percussive therapy instrument, no really. Arielle Pardes can be found at @pardesoteric. Lauren Goode is @laurengoode. Peter Rubin is @provenself. Michael Calore is on vacation this week, but can be found at @sn

You might know Adam Savage as the co-host of the television show MythBusters, as the editor of Tested.com, or as the host of countless web videos that show him building machines, sewing costumes for Comic-Con, and occasionally blowing something up in his San Francisco workshop. Now Savage is the host of a new television show, Savage Builds, coming to the Science and Discovery channels on June 12. Savage has also written a memoir about his life as a maker called Every Tool’s a Hammer. We bring Adam on the show to talk about his new book, his new show, why he hates homework, how the gig economy exposes the motives of late-stage capitalist entities, and so much more.Show notes: Find Adam Savage on book tour. See his new show starting June 12. Find Tested on YouTube and at Tested.com.Recommendations: Arielle recommends Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan. Mike recommends Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing. Lauren recommends Arielle’s story on the Helvetica Now typeface. Adam recommends The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.Arie

What happens when your drop your phone and shatter the screen? Or when its battery starts to grow noticeably weaker? These common technological woes are things that you should be able to remedy yourself—just buy some parts, get some tools, and fix your device. But it’s not that simple. Gadget manufacturers have been increasingly restricting access to the parts, tools, and knowledge required for regular consumers to fix their broken tech. Instead, consumers have to turn to authorized repair technicians, and often pay a lot more, to get something fixed.Our guest this week, Nathan Proctor, is the national director of the Right to Repair Campaign for US PIRG. Proctor and his team advocate for state and federal legislation that secures consumer access to hardware repairs and software updates so they can handle these repairs themselves.Also this week, Peter Rubin tells us about what to expect from the new PlayStation console Sony plans to release next year, and we discuss the problems with early review units of the

Uber filed to go public this week. No big surprise there; everyone in the industry has been waiting months for the ride-hailing giant to hit the accelerator on its IPO. What did raise an eyebrow were the details the company divulged in its filing—from how it views the future of its business to what it considers its primary challenges in the marketplace.This week, we invite WIRED transportation reporter Aarian Marshall back onto the show to break down all of the revelations in Uber’s S1 filing. You can read her news story about the upcoming Uber IPO right here on WIRED.Also on this week’s pod, Mike, Lauren, and Arielle discuss the first photo of a black hole, the latest privacy concerns around Alexa devices, and some upcoming changes to Facebook’s News Feed. Show notes: Read Aarian on Uber. Read Lily Hay Newman on Alexa, Sophia Chen on the black hole pic, and Emily Dreyfuss and Issie Lapowsky on Facebook. Recommendations this week are Jumbo Privacy Assistant, 1bike1world, and the Criterion Channel. Send the Ga

We’re confused about what exactly this hoped-for Targaryen Restoration is about, politically. And is Game of Thrones, like, good anymore? Laura Hudson and Spencer Ackerman preview the political and social themes fueling the forthcoming final season of Game of Thrones.

This week, we’re joined by a special guest: freelance war correspondent Kenneth R. Rosen. Ken is working on a series of stories for WIRED about the reconstruction efforts in Syria. The first of Ken’s stories, “The Body Pullers of Syria,” published earlier this week. We talk to Ken about how he does his job, the tools he uses to report the stories of the men and women rebuilding the war-torn cities, and the methods he uses to stay safe in the field.

Hormonal male contraception is not a new idea––in fact, researchers have been working on solutions for men the pill was invented for women. But early tests around male contraceptives were inconclusive, and as birth control pills exploded, interest in a male version of this waned. A new male contraceptive gel, one that reduces sperm count, could change that. It’s been in the works for more than a decade, WIRED’s Arielle Pardes reports this week, and it looks promising. Even if the gel eventually make its way to pharmacies, though, there may still be societal hurdles to overcome. And survey results are mixed, Arielle tells us on this week’s Gadget Lab podcast: Some men indicate they would be reluctant to use birth control, while others are for it. Also on this week’s pod, Mike, Lauren, and Arielle discuss all of the news announced at Apple’s services-focused event on Monday. You could say it was an unusual presentation, as far as Apple events go. But on the upside: Oprah was there. Show notes: You can read Arie

Google’s Project Stream, first unveiled last October, gave gamers a taste of what it would be like to stream heavy games directly from the cloud – from a Chrome browser, even. That effort has now evolved into something much, much more ambitious. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, Google formally announced Stadia. Stadia is Google’s bet on next-generation gaming: It exists entirely in the cloud, with a physical, WiFi-enabled controller that connects to whatever computer you’re playing on. WIRED’s Peter Rubin was at GDC this week for Google’s big reveal, and he joins the latest Gadget Lab episode to talk about how Stadia is supposed to work when it launches later this year. The Gadget Lab team also discuss how Google is taking aim at Microsoft’s and Amazon’s cloud gaming services, and tries to answer the most important question of all: Is streaming and capturing 4K games totally going to destroy our Google Drive subscriptions? Show notes: You can read Peter Rubin’s story on Stadia her

“Should this exist?” is not typically a question that technologists ask themselves, Caterina Fake says. The Flickr cofounder-turned-investor says that most entrepreneurs and engineers will ask themselves, “Can this exist, could this exist, how can we gain the funding to make this exist? Those are the conversations we’ve been having for the past 15 to 20 years about technology.”But that narrative in tech is evolving, Fake tells WIRED on this week’s Gadget Lab podcast, from one of ideation, optimism, and changing the world, to a stark reality in which technology can do as much harm as good. The cracks are showing, and suddenly, Fake says, “People are asking, ‘Whoa, what have we done? Is this what we really wanted to build?’” That line of questioning was the genesis for her own podcast, “Should This Exist?”, a WaitWhat original series made in partnership with Quartz. Show notes: On this week’s show we also talked about the tragic Ethiopian Airlines crash, Elizabeth Warren’s call to break up Big Tech, and Apple’s

Jessica Powell was the top communications executive at Google when she found herself Googling, in no uncertain search terms, how to quit her job at Google. She tried approximately 837 different tactics before she ended up taking the leap, and now she’s a startup founder, a contributor to Medium and The New York Times, and the author of The Big Disruption, a novel about a giant Silicon Valley tech company. The eventual burnout and dissatisfaction Powell experienced is not unique in Silicon Valley, she tells us on this week’s Gadget Lab podcast. But it can be difficult to acknowledge when you’re working in an industry filled with mission-driven companies and leaders who want to “change the world” (and in some cases–––they do). Powell also talks about the commercialization of International Women’s Day, and speaks candidly about Facebook’s latest manifesto around privacy. “Facebook is in such a bad place that I feel like if they cough, people say, ‘That cough is just a way to get more data!’” Powell tells the G

Microsoft just unveiled a brand new product, but it really doesn’t want to hype it. That’s according to Alex Kipman, technical fellow at Microsoft who is credited with inventing Kinect and HoloLens. Kipman joins the Gadget Lab podcast this week to talk about HoloLens 2, the next-generation mixed reality headset. HoloLens 2 has some significant upgrades: It’s lighter, more comfortable, and “smarter” than the previous version. Due to a new, patented optics module, its field-of-view is larger. But if you’re an officer dweller or average tech consumer, you likely won’t be buying one, both because of its price ($3500) and because of who it’s built for. Microsoft is focused entirely on commercial clients; think frontline employees, field workers, and maintenance professionals. “The majority of the world does not sit in front of desks all day, and a lot of these jobs are being digitally transformed,” Kipman told WIRED in an earlier interview. “Things are getting more complex. There’s much more need to travel aroun

At its flagship phone event this week in San Francisco, Samsung announced not one but four different versions of the new Galaxy S10: A phone with a 6.1-inch display, a plus-sized model, a “less expensive” version of the phone, and a handset that will support 5G networks when it ships. But the most interesting part of the launch was undeniably Samsung’s reveal of its new foldable phone, the Galaxy Fold. It wasn’t the very first time this phone was shown off, but this time around Samsung showed a demo, shared a ship date, and announced that it would cost a whopping $1980. How will a foldable phone fit into our lives? How does any super-expensive smartphone fit into our lives (and our budgets) these days? These are a couple of the questions we had for Axios chief tech correspondent Ina Fried, who has tracked the mobile industry for more than a decade and who joined us on this week’s Gadget Lab podcast. Ina brought nearly half a dozen phone models with her to compare to the new Samsung wares, and, even though it

Product designer and internet native Chris Messina was lucky enough to snag the username @chris on Instagram back when Instagram was known as Burbn, and, like all of his early usernames, it became a part of his digital identity. But having an OG username has exposed him to hacks, scams, and generally shady online exchanges. It has also lead him down the path of more existential questions about life online––like, is the internet still fun? On this week’s Gadget Lab podcast we talk to Chris about the biggest offer he’s ever been made for his name, ephemerality in apps, and what the future of social media looks like once the concept of “following” goes away. Also covered in this episode of the Gadget Lab podcast, which was taped on Valentine’s Day: Amazon’s big break up with New York City. After a months-long search for “HQ2” that ended in an eventual commitment to build out corporate offices in Long Island City, Queens, Amazon has now backed out of the deal. While not everyone is happy about Amazon’s retreat,

Move fast and break app store rules: That very well may have been Facebook’s motto for awhile now, only, we’re just learning about it this week. After TechCrunch reported that Facebook was sidestepping Apple’s rules for enterprise apps and distributing a market research app to iOS users as young as 13 years old, Apple temporarily removed Facebook’s internal apps from its enterprise app program. Facebook wasn’t the only guilty party: Google also had its wrist slapped by Apple this week, for a sneaky app of its own. The big question is what happens next, and whether this will only escalate growing tensions between Apple and Facebook, two massive tech companies that monetize their user bases in fundamentally different ways. Also on this week’s Gadget Lab podcast: WIRED’s transportation editor Alex Davies joins us to talk about Tesla earnings and its preparation for the production of the Model Y. Show notes: You can read WIRED’s coverage of the app smackdown here and here. And here’s Alex Davies’ story on the T

Kids are particularly terrible for robots. At least, that’s what researchers in Japan discovered when they let a robot roam around a shopping center in Osaka in 2015. A group of kids antagonized the robot, forcing the researchers to program an algorithm that would give the bot the agency to evade abuse. That’s just one example of challenging social interactions between humans and robots, and one that technologists have almost certainly considered when building and designing delivery bots. Including the folks at Amazon: This week, the e-commerce behemoth dropped a web page for Scout, its new delivery robot. For now, Scout’s impact is small. The six-wheeled delivery bot is only piloting in Snohomish County, Washington, and only with Prime customers who request short-term delivery. But anything Amazon does has the potential to fundamentally disrupt shipping (not to mention a whole slew of eager startups that have been building their own automated delivery solutions). On this week’s Gadget Lab podcast, WIRED’s A

Self-lacing sneakers have been the dream since Marty McFly first rocked Nike MAGs in 1989, but most attempts at turning shoe leather into smart sneakers have been expensive, produced in small batches, and frankly, a little gimmicky. Until now: Earlier this week, Nike revealed Adapt BB, the company’s latest self-lacing basketball shoe. And these actually seem … smart. WIRED’s Peter Rubin joins the Gadget Lab podcast this week to talk about what it’s like to wear the new kicks, and describes all of the tech that goes into them. At $350, the Adapt BB’s are a little more accessible than previous iterations, though as Peter points out, they’re likely to be worn by professional athletes and Nike-backed college teams to start. Also on this week’s podcast: WIRED’s Nitasha Tiku talks about a group of Googlers who have launched a public awareness campaign about mandatory arbitration agreements, arguing that employers use them to suppress workers facing harassment and discrimination. Show notes: Peter’s story on Nike’

We came. We saw. We touched a lot of gadgets. This week was the annual CES, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics show, and WIRED’s team was on the ground covering all of the top tech trends to emerge from the show. In this week’s episode of the Gadget Lab podcast, Mike, Arielle, and Lauren talk about CES’s big security #fail, what all of these connected gadgets mean for the future of healthcare, and robots. Lots of robots. Later in the episode, Arielle talks to Jen Wong, the chief operating officer of Reddit, about the company’s “growing up” moment and how it plans to monetize its users. Show notes: Check out our best of CES list when you’ve finished listening to the pod. Our CES reporting goes beyond gadgets, as well: We have stories on how insidious logging your child’s data has become, why you should ignore the 5G hype (for now), and how women’s sexuality is apparently still taboo at CES. Recommendations this week: Arielle recommends getting a Yubikey for all your 2FA needs; Mike recommends t