Marketplace Tech

Security researchers revealed this week that dozens of apps in the Google Play Store had secretly gathered data on tens of millions of users and sent it to a company linked to a U.S. defense contractor. Developers of Muslim prayer apps, QR code scanners and international weather apps were paid by a company called Measurement Systems to insert code that gave Measurement access to user data, without the developers fully knowing. Google says it has since banned these apps. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Byron Tau, who covered this for The Wall Street Journal.

It’s going to be a minute before the contours of an actual collective bargaining agreement come into focus for workers at the Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York, who voted to unionize Friday. Amazon says it’s evaluating options to contest the election. But the union drive has put workplace conditions in the spotlight, including how the company uses technology to monitor its warehouse employees. Lisa Kresge, a researcher at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, said there’s a long history of unions negotiating management’s use of tech in the workplace, and Amazon warehouses use plenty of it.

Folded among the big-ticket programs in President Joe Biden’s latest budget proposal is a small sliver — $88 million — to study and track space junk. That includes everything from defunct satellites to the debris caused from explosions in space. The president wants the Office of Space Commerce to ramp up its ability to track this stuff in real time. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Moriba Jah, chief scientist and co-founder of the space debris tracking company Privateer. Jah says scientists are currently tracking about 50,000 pieces of space debris, down to the size of a cellphone, and that there’s much, much more out there.

Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced Monday that they’ve partnered up with NASA to bring artificial intelligence to the International Space Station. The AI will be used to check astronaut gloves for damage. These gloves help maintain pressure and protect astronauts working at the station from extreme temperatures; a damaged glove is a big deal. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino speaks with Stephen Kitay, senior director of Azure Space at Microsoft, who says this space tech is just the beginning.

President Joe Biden is pushing for more green energy storage to get us out of the gasoline crisis. He’s encouraging the American special minerals industry to increase production. Biden wants more lithium, nickel, cobalt and other metals to come from  the U.S. to fuel more domestic manufacturing of batteries that power electric vehicles. More electric vehicles mean less demand for gas, which means less reliance on oil from other countries, particularly important when gas prices are high, like they are now. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Leah Stokes, who teaches energy and environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She explained the old-school law Biden is turning to to address this modern problem.

Supermarkets are increasingly becoming testing grounds for some of the latest technology. At Walmart’s subsidiary, Sam’s Club, customers can use an app to scan and pay for items while in the grocery aisle. Last month, Walmart sued BJ’s Wholesale Club, alleging the company infringed on patents for its Scan and Go technology. As checkout tech gets more advanced, it’s getting more competitive. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Don Apgar, merchant practice director at Mercator Advisory Group, about innovations in the space.

Private investment in artificial intelligence more than doubled last year, according to Stanford University’s AI Index Report. The research tracks and visualizes data about this tech, including business investment, software costs and research trends. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams speaks with Jack Clark, co-chair of Stanford’s AI Index, who explains why we’re seeing more of this technology now.

Steve Wilhite, inventor of the graphics interchange format, also known as GIF, died this month at the age of 74. Animated or not, GIFs may now be a common, free feature of the internet, but the tech that powered Wilhite’s format was patented by the technology company Unisys. For a few contentious years during the internet’s youthful era, Unisys wanted to charge fees for all the sparkly GIFs we were sharing. This fight — over who controls how information moves around the web and who gets paid in the process — continues to this day. Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke with Jason Eppink, an artist and a former curator at the Museum of the Moving Image, who gave her a GIF history lesson.

European Union lawmakers recently unveiled the Digital Markets Act, which aims to limit the power of “gatekeepers” — companies so big and popular that they shape entire industries — like the tech companies behind messaging apps. One rule would require that apps be “interoperable” with one another, so a startup, for instance, could let its users send messages to people using Apple’s iMessage or Meta’s WhatsApp seamlessly. Companies that don’t comply would face steep penalties — up to 20% of their global revenue. Alex Heath covers tech and internet platforms at The Verge. He laid out some of the pros and cons of the proposal.

We’re wrapping up our series on cryptocurrency mining, the energy-intensive computing process that does all of the accounting for most cryptocurrencies. Marketplace’s Andy Uhler previously reported on how crypto miners were drawn to the small Texas town of Rockdale because of its robust electric power infrastructure that hasn’t seen much use in recent years. Elsewhere in Texas, oil and gas companies are starting to get involved in crypto mining.