Business, Spoken

How do you kill a company? The answer, in the context of Chinese electronics giant Huawei, appears to be depravation, removing ready access to the elements that distinguish smartphones from very expensive chunks of anodized aluminum and glass. The latest blow: Chip designer ARM has reportedly severed ties with the company. Huawei could arguably survive without Google. Without ARM? Not so much. It’s important to clarify that nothing at this point is certain, or permanent.

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Lately I've been hearing complaints from my techie friends about San Francisco. Sure, the city is a mecca for anyone who wants to build a startup—with ample capital, helpful angels, and some of the best software talent on the planet. But it's becoming a monoculture. “You go to dinner and tech is literally all people talk about: tech, tech, tech,” sighs my friend David Silva, an engineer who lived in San Francisco for five years before decamping for the East Coast.

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Nearly a decade ago, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Congress passed a law requiring publicly traded companies to report the median pay of their employees and compare it to the CEO’s pay. The goal was to highlight corporate excess and income inequality, with an eye toward curbing the outsized executive-compensation packages that Congress viewed as contributing to the crisis. The requirement kicked in for most companies last year.

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T-Mobile's proposed $26.5 billion merger with Sprint just cleared its first legal hurdle. Federal Communications Commission Chair Ajit Pai says he will recommend the agency approve the deal. The agency will most likely follow his lead. But the deal still needs approval from the Department of Justice, where antitrust enforcement staffers have expressed concerns, Bloomberg reports.

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The next generation of wireless tech, 5G, promises a frictionless future: We'll be able to do whatever we do on our phones much, much faster, and more devices can come online without slowing down the works. Self-driving cars, smart meters that track electricity usage, and health-monitoring devices may all take a big leap from childhood to adolescence. 5G will happen in the airy realm of radio waves. To get there, big telecoms have to harness underused parts of the spectrum.

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Socialism schmocialism—I've never minded redistributing a bit of wealth to help a creator realize their dreams (or cover a few medical bills). I'm Angry Nerd, not Scroogey Nerd.

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Just before 8am one Wednesday last December, a can of bear repellent exploded in an Amazon warehouse in New Jersey, sending two dozen workers to the hospital. It wasn’t the first time the product had caused problems inside Amazon.

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Civil liberties activists trying to inspire alarm about the authoritarian potential of facial recognition technology often point to China, where some police departments use systems that can spot suspects who show their faces in public. A report from Georgetown researchers on Thursday suggests Americans should also focus their concern closer to home. The report says agencies in Chicago and Detroit have bought real-time facial recognition systems.

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In early April, the European Commission published guidelines intended to keep any artificial intelligence technology used on the EU’s 500 million citizens trustworthy. The bloc’s commissioner for digital economy and society, Bulgaria’s Mariya Gabriel, called them “a solid foundation based on EU values.” Tom Simonite covers artificial intelligence for WIRED.

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The White House is scrubbing out Obamacare, Microsoft found a major flaw, and there's a good alternative to AirPods. Here's the news you need to know, in two minutes or less. Today's Headlines The Trump administration is scrubbing Obamacare from government websites President Donald Trump hasn't been subtle about his distaste for the Affordable Care Act.

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