Marketplace Tech

In the United States, would-be internet stars turn to YouTube, Twitch or Instagram. In China, it's a livestreaming platform called YY, where creators sing or tell jokes to an audience that pays them directly in the form of digital gifts. Top streamers can make $100,000 a month or more, and lots of people now want in on the action. A new documentary about China's livestreaming economy, "People's Republic of Desire," is in some U.S. theaters now. It's about loneliness, fame and greed. Molly Wood talks with the film’s director Hao Wu about how China's livestreamers are mostly looking for a better life.

It's been almost six months since the Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality rules. Today is the deadline for the House of Representatives to overturn that decision, although no one expects that to happen. But what has the repeal meant for ordinary people? Well, according to new research, it's meant wireless carriers potentially slowing down your video streams. Molly Wood talks with David Choffnes, one of the researchers. He's assistant professor of computer and information science at Northeastern University. Today's show is sponsored by Mozilla  and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

Earlier this week, Google's self-driving car spinoff, Waymo, launched a commercial self-driving taxi service in the Phoenix area. It's limited, but it's technically a public launch, not just testing. And this is a case where the tech moved faster than the laws. Proposed federal rules for regulating self-driving cars called the AV START Act have been stuck in neutral for about a year. But this week senators updated the language in the bill. They're even considering attaching it to the must-pass budget legislation that Congress will decide on before the end of the year. Molly Wood talks about it with Aarian Marshall, who covers autonomous vehicles for Wired magazine. Today's show is sponsored by Colgate University.

For a time it seemed like tech might free us from the bonds of geography. In theory, fast internet meant new economic opportunity in any city. And telecommuting and video conferencing meant we could work from anywhere. But in reality, the geographic digital divide is as wide, and in fact even wider than it ever was. Recently Amazon decided its new headquarters could only go in big cities with a big tech workforce. That just solidified the fact that technology and the digital economy are less evenly distributed than ever. Molly Wood talks with Mark Muro, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and lead author of the 2017 report "Digitalization and the American Workforce." Today's show is sponsored by Colgate University.

More than 40 percent of Americans still have a landline, at least according to a 2017 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People keep them for convenience, reliability and emergencies so they can still make calls if the power goes out due to an earthquake, fire or other disaster. But only about 20 percent of households have good old copper phone lines, according to the trade group USTelecom. The rest are digital connections or voice over internet protocol. AT&T has been pushing for almost a decade to drop analog landline service and move to an all-digital network for landlines. Telecom companies say it's a lot cheaper to operate just one network. But are IP phone lines as reliable as the old tech? Molly Wood talks with Joan Engebretson, executive editor at Telecompetitor, an industry publication focused on broadband and telecom.

At the heart of the creator economy is video, whether it's YouTube videos in a home studio or online documentaries or social videos. And, at some point, everybody realizes you can only do so much on a phone. But high-end digital cameras and proper audio gear are expensive and in the past were made more for moviemaking than for creating short, shareable web videos. Enter Kristina Budelis, co-founder and president of KitSplit, a startup that got $2 million in funding earlier this year. It lets creators and businesses who own camera and audio gear rent it out to others. Molly Wood talks with Budelis about how the creator economy is even changing how manufacturers make their stuff. Today's show is sponsored by the University of Florida Warrington College of Business and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

We all had a party on Twitter last week when NASA landed a new probe on Mars. But for people to land or live on Mars, they'll have to survive in a hostile environment where you can't just run to the hardware store for new tools ... or a new satellite or new habitat. So some companies are trying to move manufacturing to space. NASA contracted with one company, Made in Space, to use a 3D printer to make tools on the International Space Station. One day it may be able to "print" satellites in space. Molly Wood talks with Andrew Rush, president and CEO of Made in Space.

Everybody wants 5G, the superfast next-generation wireless technology. And Huawei, the giant Chinese electronics maker, is the world's largest supplier of 5G networking equipment. But the U.S. government banned Huawei and Chinese company ZTE from its telecom infrastructure back in 2012 because of concerns that the Chinese government could use the equipment to spy on companies and government agencies. This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States has been trying to convince foreign allies to also dump Huawei. The warnings about Huawei's equipment might be working. On Wednesday, New Zealand banned the company from its telecom infrastructure. Australia did the same back in August, and the United Kingdom yesterday warned Huawei to tighten up its security overall. Stu Woo, one of the reporters who wrote the story in the Journal, tells Molly Wood that the thing that makes 5G so useful is also the thing that makes it so insecure. Today's show is sponsored by Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage.

News broke this week about a Chinese scientist who says he edited the genes of twin girls while they were in the womb. The goal was to make the girls immune to HIV, but editing human genes at that level is ethically controversial and illegal in many countries. It raises many questions about creating genetic traits that can be passed on and about a future where people choose the genetic traits in their children. Not surprisingly, it's a topic well covered in science fiction. The 1997 movie "Gattaca" is about a future where your genes determine whether you'll succeed in life or be considered an "invalid." Molly Wood talks about it with Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute. Webb says there are plenty of benefits to gene editing technology, but that "Gattaca's" social commentary was all too prescient.

If you are a creator on YouTube, you live and die by the algorithm. It's the invisible technology that recommends videos on the trending page or in search results or suggestions all across the platform. No one but YouTube knows exactly how the algorithm decides what to promote and what not to promote. The controversial process has at times promoted fake news and sensational or harmful content. And creators say it's burning them out. Katherine Lo, a visiting researcher in informatics at the University of California, Irvine, studies harassment and mental health in online communities. Molly Wood talks with her about how the YouTube algorithm affects business for creators.