Three stories about technologies that started out doing one thing, and ended up doing quite another — from online tractors, to tasers in schools, to cellphone hackers who take their online battles into the real world.

95. Reality Bytes:  the URL-IRL crash

The podcast that tells true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world. We take listeners into the world of cyber and intelligence without all the techie jargon. 
Every Tuesday and Friday, former NPR investigations correspondent Dina Temple-Raston and the team draw back the curtain on ransomware attacks, mysterious hackers, and the people who are trying to stop them.

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The White House’s top cyber official is keen to set minimum cybersecurity standards for industry, put contingencies in place in case cyberattacks are successful, and start looping ordinary people into an effort to make products secure by design.

127. Mic Drop: NSC’s Neuberger on mitigating cyber attacks: ‘We should be using an operational approach’

An episode from the ‘CSAIL Alliances Podcast’ from MIT CSAIL Alliances. Host Kara Miller talks with MIT robotics researcher and professor Daniela Rus about how we can use a new generation of robots to help humankind. Rus is the co-author of the new book, "The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots."

126. The future of robotics from MIT’s "Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Labs Alliances" podcast

Before Nigerian authorities detained two mid-level Binance executives back in February, they were telling anyone who would listen that the cryptocurrency platform was manipulating the value of its currency, the naira. It turns out the more likely culprit is more than a decade of economic mismanagement. We explain.

125. Mic Drop: The problem with the Nigerian economy has nothing to do with crypto

A former American IRS investigator responsible for some of the earliest dark market takedowns has been in Nigerian custody since February. Neither Nigerian nor the US authorities seem to be distinguishing Tigran Gambaryan from Binance, the company where he works.

124. The company man: US response to Nigeria’s detention of former IRS crypto investigator rankles federal agents

Chinese hackers are stepping up their game, according to Nigel Inkster, the former director of operations for Britain’s MI6. He says they are taking on a new swagger in cyberspace and borrowing things from a familiar playbook: a Russian one.

95. Reality Bytes: the URL-IRL crash

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