Marketplace Tech

Data shows that venture capital companies — typically led by all-white males — are leaving a lot of money on the table by only investing in people who look like them. Morgan Stanley put out new information this week that said venture capital as an industry could be missing out on as much as $4 trillion in value by not investing in more diverse founders.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in Washington yesterday trying to keep the dream of the global digital currency called Libra alive. When Facebook laid out a vision for Libra, not everyone believed it. Lisa Ellis, an analyst at MoffettNathanson, said that at a minimum Libra will have to win back partners like Visa, PayPal or Stripe if it’s going to survive.

In Hong Kong, protesters have used umbrellas and face masks to avoid cameras and pulled down what they thought was an internet-equipped lamppost to avoid being spied on. Cameras, artificial intelligence and databases of personal information are used to shame debtholders, track down dissidents and assign people a social credit score based on their activities. Jennifer Pak describes the daily surveillance.

In recent years, Lego has made a big push in education. It makes robotics kits, and kids can learn to code Lego robots on the company’s website. The company is working directly with schools by offering curriculum, teacher training and competitions to help get kids interested in science, technology, engineering and math.

After a decade of trying to improve traffic, the real-time mapping app Waze has spent the last year trying to get its users to carpool. The app hooks riders up with drivers who are commuting in the same direction, and the riders pay a small fee that goes to the drivers. Waze said it’s gotten about half a million people using the carpool feature, but it’s not an easy sell. Noam Bardin, CEO of Waze, said everyone knows traffic is bad for your health, your life and the environment.

It has been quite the week for speech online. Twitter introduced new guidelines on how to deal with world leaders on its platform after Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris called on the platform to ban President Donald Trump. On this segment of “Quality Assurance,” Molly Wood takes a deep dive on platforms and regulating speech. She spoke with Daphne Keller, who is at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.

Tesla’s latest over-the-air software update for its cars is perfect fodder for online viral videos. It added a feature the company calls “smart summon.” Owners use an app on their phone to summon their cars from about 200 feet away, and have it drive to them all by itself with nobody inside — just hold down a button. Ars Technica’s Timothy Lee, who watched 100 videos Tesla owners have uploaded using the smart summon feature, said the results seem to vary.

U.S. companies export tens of billions of dollars in sensitive technology every year — AI computer chips, drones or encryption software. They have to apply for licences to do it, and those approvals have dropped in recent years, while rejections have risen. Matt Drange, an investigative reporter at The Information, sifted through the data to see what it can tell us about tech trade.

PG&E cut power to more than 700,000 people and businesses last week in Northern California cities as a way to prevent fires from sparking in dry, windy weather. But is a chaotic blackout the best solution? Marketplace’s Ben Bradford tells host Amy Scott that there are alternatives that could prevent this kind of disruption in the future.

With the World Series just around the corner, we’re hearing a lot about players’ stats. But another issue is when an umpire gets a call wrong. Major League Baseball is trying to make those instances less frequent. Over the summer, robot umpires helped officiate a minor league game. The goal is not only to improve accuracy of the calls, but to speed up the game and get more butts in the seats. But Boston University finance professor Mark Williams thinks there’s a way to use an app to make human umpires better at their jobs before we turn the reins over to the bots. We talk with him about the idea behind it.