Tech News Weekly (Video)

Over the weekend one of Uber's self-driving cars in Arizona was involved in a high-speed crash after a human driver failed to yield. Uber temporarily suspended its driverless testing program in Tempe, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh, but now they've started back up again.

The Trump administration is creating an Office of American Innovation, that will be charged with modernizing the tech infrastructure of all federal agencies. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner will lead the office, which will operate out of the West Wing of the White House.

The Note 7 is back. Or at least part of it is back. Samsung says they'll start selling refurbished Note 7s, without the batteries that might catch fire. Salvaged components from the estimated 4.3 million devices will also be recycled and precious metals, such as copper, nickel, gold and silver will be extracted, using environmentally friendly methods.

Get ready to update your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. iOS 10.3 is now available and it introduces a new feature called Find My AirPods that will help you locate the small wireless headphones if ever they're lost. Also: CarPlay improvements, Siri support for cricket scores, a new user security section in the Settings app, and weather data in the Weather app now has 3D Touch forecast.

And Rolfe Winkler from The Wall Street Journal joins us to talk about Elon Musk's new company, Neuralink.

Host: Megan Morrone

Guests: Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Rolfe Winkler

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Will robots and artificial intelligence take your job one day? United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnunchin said the Trump administration thinks not.

In Silicon Valley's Redwood City, the startup Door Dash is replacing human couriers with delivery robots from a UK startup called Starship Technologies. The robots aren't taking all the human delivery jobs yet. They're only traveling a maximum of two miles from a restaurant for now.

Google and Howard University are teaming up to create a summer program at Google's Mountain View headquarters that will train 25 to 30 juniors and seniors from Howard, a historically black university. Over 12 weeks, students will learn from senior Google engineers and Howard faculty while getting course credit. Among the goals of the program is to increase the number of African Americans working at Google. Currently African Americans make up just 1% of the company's workforce.

A hacker claiming to have millions of iCloud logins and passwords is demanding Apple pay a for ransom of $75,000 in cryptocurrency or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards. What does this mean to you? Well, turn on two-factor authentication and make sure you're not using your Apple ID password anywhere else.

Hosts: Megan Morrone and Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Guest: Sam Machkovech

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The Senate voted to roll back Obama-era FCC rules that prevent internet service providers, like Verizon and Comcast, from selling our private, demographic data without asking permission first. Critics of the broadband privacy rules that Congress passed in the waning months of the Obama administration say that the rules target broadband providers unfairly, but privacy experts call this a crushing loss to privacy.

Wikileaks wants to give you a friendly reminder to update your Mac and your iPhone. And their way of telling us this is by dropping a new trove of Vault 7 documents. These are called "Dark Matter", which contain decades-old documentation for CIA projects that can infect Macs at the firmware level, if you haven't gotten your available updates.

In 2016, 50% of all the active Android phones in the world didn't receive a security patch -- with many not getting any OS updates in over a year. Google disclosed this shameful stat in an annual Android Security Year in Review released Thursday.

In that post, Google's security team said it is working on news ways to make it easier for its hardware partners and telecommunications companies to issue Android OS updates and patches to the public. Google issued Android software updates to 735 million devices from more than 200 manufacturers in 2016.

Brian X. Chen from the New York Times joins us to tell us to wipe all of our devices, forget all our passwords, and other tips for protecting our privacy and rights when we travel. And we explore new research that says it's possible to create solar powered robot skin that's softer than human skin.

Hosts: Megan Morrone and Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Guest: Brian X. Chen

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Airbnb says it has a plan to succeed where so many other big names in tech have failed: China. On Wednesday, Airbnb announced that it is doubling investment in China and will triple its workforce there. Airbnb also says its goal is to double the number of listings it has in the country.

Due to an ongoing controversy over YouTube accidentally showing ads on extremist content, AT&T, Verizon, and Enterprise rent-a-car have pulled all their advertising dollars from Google and YouTube, even after Google apologized and said they were fixing their system.

President Donald Trump recently touted a NASA budget authorization as being "about jobs." Elon Musk says not so fast, recognizing that authorization bills don't give NASA new funding or create new jobs. Musk said: "This bill changes almost nothing about what NASA is doing. Existing programs stay in place and there is no added funding for Mars." Musk sits on a tech advisory council to the President and his company SpaceX has received more than $3 billion in funding from NASA in the past.

We'll also talk about how Instagram will soon let you book reservations from their app, and how you can deal with left Joycon desync issues. Plus Liza Mundy from The Atlantic explains why Silicon Valley is so awful to women and what we can do about it.

Hosts: Megan Morrone and Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Guest: Liza Mundy

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Apple announced a cheaper 9.7 iPad with an A9 chip, starting at $329 for 32GB. They also revealed a special edition Project Red iPhone 7 which costs $100 more than the regular iPhone 7 and will support HIV/AIDS programs. And say goodbye to the 16 gigabyte iPhone. Apple will release two new iPhone SEs, with double the storage at 32GB and 128GB, but no other changes.

The US and the UK introduced bans on the use of electronic devices larger than a smartphone in plane cabins from a total of 10 Muslim-majority nations on Tuesday. Under the ban, laptops, e-readers, handheld gaming devices and cameras all have to be stowed away in checked luggage, and can't be taken into the cabin or used during flights. The ban only applies to passengers -- not the flight crew -- and is the same for both those who are and aren't citizens of the US and UK. The ban covers flights to the US from Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The UK ban applied to flights from Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

Chip designer ARM just announced DynamIQ (that's dynam I-Q), a new chip technology designed for self-driving cars. ARM hopes DynamIQ will help power the AI in all of our internet-of-things devices which are supposed to experience a 50-fold boost over the next three to five years.

We'll also talk about Android O, Netflix and Net Neutrality with Jake Kastranakes of The Verge, and ordering booze from Amazon Prime using the Amazon Echo Speaker.

Hosts: Megan Morrone and Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Guest: Jake Kastrenakes

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Drake's new album "More Life" sets streaming records on Apple Music and Spotify. On Apple Music, "More Life" was streamed 89.9 million times in the first 24 hours of its release. On Spotify, it was streamed 61.3 million times in the first 24 hours. The album dropped on both apps on Saturday the 18th, setting new release day record for both services.

Uber-President Jeff Jones announced his departure from the company, the latest top exec to flee the scandal-ridden company. Jones was previously a CMO at Target and told Kara Swisher at Recode that the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided his career are inconsistent with what he saw and experienced at Uber.

Instagram now lets you save your own live videos to your camera roll. On Monday the Facebook-owned photo and video sharing app rolled out the new feature via an app update. Periscope, Facebook and YouTube have let users do this for a long time now. Unlike on those other services, there's still no way to let your followers see your live video once a stream has ended. Unless of course you upload your video to your profile page, the old-fashioned way.

We also talk about how often Google has to apologize for its algorithms, whether or not we need Samsung's new digital assistant, and Matt Haughey, founder of Metafilter tells us about his experience with Defy Ventures, and organization that goes into prisons to teach entrepreneurship.

Host: Megan Morrone

Guests: Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Matt Haughey

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A Minnesota judge is asking Google to fork over the names of all users who searched the name of a local fraud victim last December in a passport fraud case. The court also wants email addresses, MAC addresses, SSNs, IPs, and more. If Google complies, legal experts say it could set an anti-privacy precedent.

Living in the San Francisco Bay Area is so expensive that one startup, Zapier, is offering employees $10,000 in reimbursements to move elsewhere. In order to get the reimbursement, the employees have to commit to working for Zapier for at least one year.

Big brands are pulling their ads from Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange Service after it was shown that ads were being placed next to YouTube videos promoting hate and racism. Google says it is working on changes to its review process to ensure ads appear where they should.

Plus, Netflix's new rating system, Chance the Rapper spills the beans on his exclusivity deal with Apple, how an animated GIF on Twitter caused an epileptic seizure and led to an arrest, and Mike Murphy from Quartz talks about Nintendo's increase in production of the Nintendo Switch.

Hosts: Jason Howell and Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Guest: Mike Murphy

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Google Home began playing an ad for Beauty and the Beast during its daily briefing feature. In a statement Google said this isn't an ad, but a ""partner"" that they invited to ""be our guest and share their tales."" Google has since removed the ad from Google Home.

Swatch is developing its own wearable OS to compete with watchOS and Android Wear, with its first device in the Tissot brand running it sometime around the end of next year. Swatch CEO Nick Hayeck expects the OS to be more battery efficient, protect user data better, and connect to other wearables and connected objects.

A new academic paper from the University of Cambridge and the Economist says Google made ""inexcusable"" errors when dealing with sensitive medical information in the partnership between the company's DeepMind and the UK's National Health Service. The researchers mainly take issue with Google's transparency.

Plus, Spotify might be making a deal for exclusive music on its paid tier, Amazon's voice assistant is coming to iOS, and Bryan Clark from The Next Web shares his thoughts on his time at this year's South By Southwest.

Hosts: Megan Morrone and Jason Howell

Guest: Bryan Clark

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Facebook is including a new feature to its mobile app called Town Hall that allows users to locate government representatives on a local, state and federal level. Users can follow those representatives on Facebook or contact them via Message or Email from within the app.

The US Department of Justice has charged two Russian spies and two criminal hackers, hired by Russians, in the hack of 500 million Yahoo accounts back in 2014. Officials say the charges include hacking, wire fraud, trade secret theft and economic espionage.

A group of 58 tech companies, including Lyft, Airbnb and Pinterest, teamed up to sign an amicus brief opposing President Trump's revised ban on immigrants from a selection of Muslim majority countries Wednesday. Later, a Hawaii federal judge blocked the revised ban. Big names that signed a similar brief opposing the President's first ban didn't sign this time, including Apple, Google and Microsoft.

Plus Google has a new service for parents who want to get their kids using google products, Tesla is raising more funds to get ready for the Model 3, GoPro is laying off even more employees to stay profitable, and TWiT's newest host Nate Olivarez-Giles joins us to discuss it all.

Hosts: Megan Morrone, Jason Howell, and Nathan Olivarez-Giles

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Search Engine Land says Google is hiring 10,000 real humans to work on the search algorithm and teach it to recognize offensive or factually wrong websites. The contract workers are called "quality raters" and will flag content NOT to remove it from search results, but to teach the algorithm how to deal with it.

Tag Heuer announced its next Android Wear smartwatch, the Connected Modular 45. Tag says it made extra effort to build the watch the way it builds its other luxury mechanical watches, and with the modular design, the consumer can even swap the Connected module out FOR a mechanical module to increase the longevity of the timepiece.

Volvo is building an electric car and taking on Tesla with an affordable starting price of between $35,000 to $40,000, and a range of 250 miles. We don't know the look of the new car or whether it will be a variant of an existing Volvo model, but we should be able to drive one by 2019.

Plus, Visa has shades that pay, snowplows are part of the gig economy, an iPhone case that's an Android phone, and Brad Sams from Petri.com details Microsoft's slack competitor called Teams for Office 365 users.

Hosts: Megan Morrone and Jason Howell

Guest: Brad Sams

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