As the US-China trade war rages on, two Chinese tech companies are facing a new headache: Australia’s government has joined the US in effectively banning its wireless carriers from buying gear for 5G networks from Huawei and ZTE. The decision is more than spillover from the US-China dispute. It's part of a bigger controversy over the role of China in Australia, which is in the midst of political turmoil.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In January 2016, technology incubator Y Combinator announced plans to fund a long-term study on giving people a guaranteed monthly income, in part to offset fears about jobs being destroyed by automation. “I’m fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Online commerce has made it easier than ever to shop, right? Maybe too easy. A recent study by comparison-shopping site Finder revealed that more than 88 percent of Americans admitted to spontaneous impulse buying online, blowing an average of $81.75 each time we lose control. Clothes, videogames, concert tickets. One in five of us succumb weekly. Millennials do it the most.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For anyone watching the net neutrality debate unfold, it feels like a never-ending, ever-evolving complicated saga of a complicated topic. So, here’s one more tick to track in the timeline: earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of the Inspector General released a report saying the agency misled Congress and the public and last year when it claimed its site was the victim of a cyberattack in 2017.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One way to measure progress in artificial intelligence is to chart victories by algorithms over champions of increasingly challenging games---checkers, chess, and, in 2016, Go. On Wednesday, five bots sought to extend AI’s mastery to e-sports, in the fantasy battle game Dota 2. They failed, as a team of pro gamers from Brazil called paiN defended humanity’s honor---for now.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Say you're scrolling through Facebook, see an article that seems a little hinky, and flag it. If Facebook's algorithm has decided you're trustworthy, the report then might go to the social network's third-party fact checkers. If they mark the story as false, Facebook will make sure fewer people see it in the News Feed. For those who see it anyway, Facebook will surface related articles with an alternative viewpoint just below the story.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's hard to escape the gravity of internet giants like Facebook and Google. Not only do they offer an ever-growing number of apps and services that are hard to live without, many other popular websites and applications incorporate code written by these companies. That's because today's web developers don't typically write all of their code themselves.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American teenagers have a complicated and sometimes contradictory relationship with their smartphones—just like the rest of us. A new Pew Research study shows that kids are trying to negotiate between worry that they spend too much time on their phones and anxiety when they are separated from their devices.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, a couple of hundred venture capitalists descended on the Computer History Museum, in Mountain View, California, for Y Combinator's twice-annual Demo Day. The event showcases graduates of the famous incubator's training program to investors who hope to sniff out the next Dropbox, Airbnb, or Stripe, all of which emerged from Y Combinator. But increasingly, the entrepreneurs marching onto the stage are as likely to be experts at manipulating molecules as writing lines of code.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the start of August, Airbnb announced an essay contest: Four winners would fly to China to stay in a watchtower on the Great Wall. They’d be treated to a gourmet dinner at sunset, a traditional Chinese music experience, and a sunrise historical hike through the countryside. The official Beijing Tourism Twitter account even promoted it. Six days later, the company called the contest off abruptly.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices