Slate News4 Apr 2018

What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Alexa, How Do You Really Work?

On this week’s If Then, Slate’s April Glaser and Will Oremus discuss the outrage at the largest television station owner in the country—Sinclair Broadcasting—after the media conglomerate forced its local news anchors read a script that echoes Trumpian talking points. They also unpack Trump’s beef about Jeff Bezos owning what he calls #AmazonWashingtonPost. Meanwhile, music streaming site Spotify went public this week in a totally new kind of way. The hosts take a look at its unorthodox move, and what it means for the company’s future.

Will is joined by Al Lindsay, vice president of Alexa Engine Software at Amazon to talk about how exactly Alexa works, what privacy concerns it raises, and why it started scaring the bejesus out of people a few weeks ago by emitting peals of creepy laughter for no apparent reason.

Don’t Close My Tabs:

The New York Times: ‘I Can’t Stop”: Schools Struggle With Vaping Explosion

BuzzFeed: Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo - And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed

Podcast production by Max Jacobs.

If Then plugs:

You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.

If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(4888)

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - By the People | For the Children

In 1867, an 8-year-old girl named Elizabeth Turner became the epicenter of a legal battle that would help define what freedom really meant after the Civil War. Days after Maryland abolished slavery, h...

25 Jul 0s

Slate Money - Explosive You-Know-What

This week: The term “explosive diarrhea” captured the nation's attention, turning all eyes toward the company linked to a major cyclosporiasis outbreak. Felix Salmon, Elizabeth Spiers, and Emily Peck ...

25 Jul 0s

What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Off-the-Record: Wait, You Ran THAT Boston Marathon?

Why are kids getting faster? Is it the shoes? Also, running the Boston Marathon is obviously a huge accomplishment, but if you ran the 2013 Boston Marathon, you should lead with that and not save it f...

24 Jul 0s

What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Trump’s Only Friend

Steve Witkoff is a real estate investor, an attorney, and now America’s Special Envoy to the Middle East. It may seem like a weird career shift for Witkoff, but he’s such an outlier that the famously ...

24 Jul 0s

Political Gabfest - Now We Can Call It a Quagmire

This week, Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz discuss why the war in Iran has flared back up despite the increasing likelihood of political consequences for Trump and his allies, the promi...

23 Jul 0s

What Next - Will Andrew Tate Finally Be Held Accountable?

Over the weekend, Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in Florida after British prosecutors brought new charges of rape and sex-trafficking, which were added to charges from May 2025 and an on-going ...

23 Jul 0s

What Next - The Best DOJ Money Can Buy

A federal judge paused the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. This may not have been a necessary step if the Department of Justice had taken its corporate enforcement mandate more serious...

22 Jul 0s

Slate Money - Money Talks: Plastic, Plastic Everywhere

In this Money Talks: Elizabeth Spiers talks to journalist Beth Gardiner about her expose of the plastic industry, Plastic Inc. They’ll get into the unsettling history behind the now ubiquitous materia...

21 Jul 0s