CYBER

Today we’re sharing an episode of The Hustle Daily Show — a daily dose of irreverent, offbeat, and informative takes on business & tech news.

In this episode, they take a look at how getting stuff for “free” affects consumer behavior.

Why do we care so much when a crummy t-shirt gets shot out of a cannon at a sporting event? It's all about the power of "free," a price point that makes us feel high and act so irrationally that we forget that even free stuff comes with a cost.

And to really get at the heart of the story here, Hustle writers Zachary Crockett and Mark Dent focus on 3 wildly different areas: free grocery store samples, free shipping, and free online content.

If you like what you hear, search for The Hustle Daily Show in your favorite podcast app. Like the one you’re using right now ;)

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In America the trains never seem to run on time. On February 3, a train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio releasing toxic chemicals into the air. Almost a month later, another train owned by the same company also derailed in Ohio. That’s not all. Trains in Charlotte are running slower than they should. NYC can’t fit trains into its new station. The list goes on and on.

What the hell is going on with mass transit in America?

If you’re a long time Cyber listener, you might already know some of the answers to this question. That’s thanks to returning champion, Motherboard senior writer Aaron Gordon.

Stories discussed in this episode:

East Palestine Derailment ‘Foreseeable and Preventable,’ Ohio Attorney General Lawsuit Alleges

24 Hours of News Shows America's Transportation Hellscape

The Worst Transit Project in the U.S. Is Officially Dead

Boston's Subway Was Running at Half Speed Because It Lost Paperwork

‘We Had All the Issues That Town Has:’ East Palestine Is Not the First or Last Derailment Disaster

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. 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.

Collapse. It’s the word on everybody’s lips. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature are no more. The banks, folks, they’ve collapsed. But don’t worry, these aren’t your typical banks. SVB and Signature were not the kinds of places working class folks were holding checking accounts. These were massive institutions that propped up America’s ailing tech sector. If you’ve been hustled by an NFT startup in the past year, there’s a good chance it had deposits at SVB.

But now they’re gone and, after some panic, it looks like America’s blessed institutions are working as intended. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is gonna clean all this up. But should they?

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Managing Editor Jordan Pearson sits down to answer the question.

Stories discussed in this episode:

How Silicon Valley's Bank Imploded

Are Failing Banks About to Destroy the Economy?

OK, WTF Is Up With the Government Bailing Out the Tech Industry?

WSJ Wonders: Did Silicon Valley Bank Die Because One Black Person Was on Its Board?

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. 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.

It’s Cipher time, baby. It’s that infrequent style of Cyber we do where we decipher Motherboard’s tech coverage in a potpourri for the panopticon age. 

On today’s episode we’ve got a little bit of everything. A popular hiking app reveals that, once again, we just can’t trust private companies with our data. But what about our passwords? Surely a company that bills itself as a secure way to remember all those logins is secure right? Nope! Also, Twitter ditches Tor and, just for fun, another wonderful story about cheating in online video games.

Motherboard’s own Joseph Cox is here to walk us through all of it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

AllTrails Data Exposes Precise Movements of Former Top Biden Official

Twitter’s Most Important Anti-Censorship Tool Is Currently Dead

‘Escape From Tarkov’ Roiled By Severe Cheating Accusations

LastPass Shouldn't Be Trusted With Your Passwords

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. 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 February 4, 2023, an F-22 fighter jet committed the first air to air kill in the weapons history. It was an alleged Chinese spy balloon near Myrtle Beach. In the days that followed the F-22 would score another kill, this time against a mysterious floating object above the Yukon.

But this second object hadn’t come from China. Hobbyists, in fact, think it might be one of their balloons. Across the world there is a small but dedicated group of people who love launching tiny balloons into the sky.

It’s been a weird month for the community. What with the fighter jets patrolling the sky and constant reports of UFOs. On this week’s Cyber, Motherboard reporter Becky Ferreria stops by to talk about the amateur balloonists who lived through the great balloon panic of 2023.

Stories discussed in this episode:

'Unfortunate and Amusing': Balloon Enthusiasts Undeterred by U.S. Air Force Shootdowns

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. 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.

YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are awash in people reacting to horrifying videos. 2 girls 1 cup, Tubgirl, Goatse, and websites like Ogrish.com shaped the modern internet. Appropriating and sharing these horrifying images and videos was a big part of what people did during the early days of the web.

But why? And how do these shocking viral sensations translate onto the modern and sanitized web? This week on Cyber, Blake Hester stops by to walk us through it all.

Stories discussed in this episode:

How Shock Sites Shaped the Internet

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. 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.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI has made the voice of Emma Watson say some very strange things, and 4Chan is to blame. But trolls playing with new machine-learning tools aren’t the only villain in this story. Actors are being asked to sign away the rights to their own voice for the purposes of AI reconstruction.

Also on today’s episode: Dutch police have been reading encrypted messages; some politicians in the UK want to ban encrypted phones; Apple is looking to roll out a new form of end-to-end encryption; and a police contractor that promised to track homeless people has been hacked.

Cypher. We’re bringing it back. For those that don’t know, Cypher is a special edition of Cyber where we decipher the week’s news. It’s a potpourri for the panopticon. A grab bag of tech horror stories. And who better to join us for such an adventure than Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox?

Stories discussed in this episode:

AI-Generated Voice Firm Clamps Down After 4chan Makes Celebrity Voices for Abuse

UK Proposes Making the Sale and Possession of Encrypted Phones Illegal

‘Disrespectful to the Craft:’ Actors Say They’re Being Asked to Sign Away Their Voice to AI

Dutch Police Read Messages of Encrypted Messenger 'Exclu'

Apple's End-to-End iCloud Could Be a Security Game Changer

Police Contractor That Promised to Track Homeless People Hacked

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. 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.

What if you could watch new episodes of your favorite shows, forever?

That’s one of the promises of artificial intelligence. On Twitch, the show Nothing, Forever pumped out episode after episode of content that was kind of like an episode of Seinfeld.

Larry Feinberg told jokes, lived in NYC, and cavorted around with a crazy cast of characters. The show drew a lot of attention. And then Larry told a transphobic joke during an interstitial standup bit and the show was banned.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler stops by to relay the saga of Nothing, Forever.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Conservatives Are Panicking About AI Bias, Think ChatGPT Has Gone 'Woke'

Developers Created AI to Generate Police Sketches. Experts Are Horrified

People are 'Jailbreaking' ChatGPT to Make It Endorse Racism, Conspiracies

Conservatives Are Obsessed With Getting ChatGPT to Say the N-Word

Thousands of People Can’t Stop Watching AI-Generated Sitcom ‘Nothing, Forever’

AI-Generated 'Seinfeld' Show Banned on Twitch After Transphobic Standup Bit

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. 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.

What would you give to live forever? Hell, what would you give to have the body of an 18-year-old well into your 40s? That’s the goal of tech CEO Bryan Johnnson. He is, by his own estimation, the most measured man on the planet. He takes 112 to 130 pills a day. He eats a restrictive diet. He has automated his body. It’s an expensive process. And one that robbed him of what many of us would see as the simple joys of life. Drinks with a friend. Late night pizza. A little sugar in your bowl.

Motherboard Senior Editor Maxwell Strachan just spent some time with Johnson and he’s here today on Cyber to tell us all about it.

‘The Most Measured Man in Human History’

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. 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.