CYBER

It’s time for a new history of the internet, one that focuses on the recent revolutions that define the world we all live in. Social media has changed the way many of us live and work. It’s a world defined by a new economy of creators and influencers. The new media is here and it’s Extremely Online.

That’s the title of the new book from Taylor Lorenz, which is the untold story of fame, influence, and power on the internet. Lorenz is a columnist for The Washington Post and she joined us to answer all our questions about why Vine failed, Tumblr was the best social network, and what the future holds for everyone who lives and works in the era of social media-powered capitalism.

In the back half of the episode, Motherboard science reporter Becky Ferreira stops by to talk about UFOs and radioactive boars.

Pre-order Taylor's book here.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The Original 'Avocado Toast' Millionaire Is Back, And He Wants 'Pain In the Economy'

'Avocado Toast' Millionaire Very Sorry for Saying 'Arrogant' Workers Should Lose Jobs After Outrage

Here Is NASA's 36-Page Report Investigating UFOs

'The Truth Is Out There': The Emails NASA's UFO Investigators Got From Scientists and the Public

WTF Is Going On With 'Alien Corpses' Being Shown to Mexico's Congress?

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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The heat is still here, but the summer will soon be over. Here at the precipice of fall I wanted to take a moment to reflect on one of the big stories that Motherboard covered this season: labor, strikes, and unions.

Here to tell us all about it is Motherboard labor reporter Jules Roscoe.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Instacart Tells Shoppers in Hurricane ‘Bad Weather = Good Tips’

'It Feels Horrible': Amazon Workers Delivered Packages During Destructive Tropical Storm

Amazon Told Drivers Not to Worry About In-Van Surveillance Cameras. Now Footage Is Leaking Online

Ohio Man Charged for Shooting Amazon Driver Delivering to His House

Amazon Says It Doesn't 'Employ' Drivers, But Records Show It Hired Firms to Prevent Them From Unionizing

Teamsters UPS Union Wins Historic Contract, Likely Avoiding Gigantic Strike

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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It’s part two of our bittersweet episode of Cyber where we bid farewell to Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. This week we do a deep dive into the Motherboard lore. The stories that broke us, the controversies that made us who we are. Come find out which popular web comic wrote a strip about us that’s aged like milk, how much horse shit you can buy for $10 in Bitcoin, why the director of Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story hates Motherboard, and why you should never bowl with someone who has ebola.

Vox Something Or Other

The Shitexpress video

Bowling with Ebola

The Chinese Mystery Seed Saga

Neil Blomkamp destroys his computers

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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It’s a bittersweet episode of Cyber as we bid farewell to Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. It’s a long episode so we’ve split it into two parts. This week you get some discussions about the topics of the day including Planet of Bass, Oliver Anthony, and the vibes-based economy. After that we start dishing all of Motherboard’s secrets, including how Jason came to work there and what it’s like to walk out of a meeting with 8 missed calls from Disney on your phone.

Next week we’re talking about a webcomic, comments sections, and how much horseshit $10 in Bitcoin could buy a few years ago.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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Room-temperature superconductors are here! Maybe! Look, science is a liar sometimes, especially in the internet age. Motherboard science reporter Becky Ferreira is here to help us parse the truth from fiction of LK-99. It’s either one of the biggest science stories of our entire lives or … just another science hoax.

Later in the show, Joseph Cox is stopping by to tell us about another group of researchers who’ve uncovered a backdoor in police radios.

Stories discussed in this episode:

DIY Scientists and Institutions Are Racing to Replicate the Room-Temperature Superconductor

Researchers Find ‘Backdoor’ in Encrypted Police and Military Radios

Defense Lawyers Push Judge to Reveal Secret Country that Helped FBI Wiretap the World

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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We’ve got a super sized Cyber for you today that’s all about the two hottest movies in theaters. One is a mythological take on the creation of the modern world and the devastating weapons that ushered it in. The other is about an idol forged from plastic that came to dominate that world.

That’s right. It’s Barbenheimer time. Emily Lipstein is co-hosting with me and we’re joined by nuclear historian and master of secrets, Alex Wellerstein as well as journalist and critic Gita Jackson.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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It’s a brutally hot summer, a great time to cool off in an air conditioned movie theater or to catch up on some of those TV shows you’ve had on your list forever. But did you know the people who make the fine entertainment you know and love are on strike? Both writers and actors are picketing, trying to get a fair shake out of the studios and companies that bet big on streaming and used the shift to screw over the workers who keep us all entertained.

With us today to talk about it is standup comedian and consummate host and presenter Adam Conover. If you’ve been following the strike at all you’ve probably seen some of his videos. If you’re a fan of great TV or podcasts, you may have seen his various TV shows or listened to his Factually! Podcast.

Stories discussed in this episode:

SAG Files Unfair Labor Practice Against Universal After It Trimmed Trees on Picket Line Without a Permit

Striking Writers Are on the Front Line of a Battle Between AI and Workers

How Long Will the Writers’ Strike Last? An Expert Explains

The Hollywood Strike Will Affect Way More Than Movies and TV

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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A movie about a Mormon anti-trafficking activist made headlines when it beat Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the box office. But Sound of Freedom’s box office numbers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and the group behind the movie, Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) has a long and troubled history.

Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Anna Merlan joins us this week on Cyber to explain OUR and Sound of Freedom.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Tim Ballard Has ‘Stepped Away’ From Operation Underground Railroad, Org Says

Anti-Trafficking Group With Long History of False Claims Gets Its Hollywood Moment

A Famed Anti-Sex Trafficking Group Has a Problem With the Truth

Inside a Massive Anti-Trafficking Charity's Blundering Overseas Missions

Anti-Trafficking Charity Operation Underground Railroad Has Another Murky Rescue Story

Operation Underground Railroad’s Carefully Crafted Public Image Is Falling Apart

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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It feels like the old internet is breaking apart and no one is sure where to go. The first three pages of search results on Google are dreck. Reddit is shutting down the third party apps that make it usable. AI generated content is flooding beloved old websites.

This might just be the end of the usable internet. On this episode of Cyber, we talk it all out with Motherboard editor-in-chief, Jason Koebler.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Threads: The Motherboard Review

You Can't Look at Porn on Any Reddit Third-Party App Now

AI-Generated Books of Nonsense Are All Over Amazon's Bestseller Lists

The Reddit Protest Is a Battle for the Soul of the Human Internet

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Discord and Minecraft servers are part of an ecosystem where young people brag about crimes. SIM swapping, cryptocurrency, extortion, and violence-for-hire are all part of an disparate online community where people gather to swap stories and videos about crime. It’s called The Comm, and this week on Cyber, Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox comes on the show to tell us all about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoDl73J5EJY

Stories discussed in this episode:

Bloodied Macbooks and Stacks of Cash: Inside the Increasingly Violent Discord Servers Where Kids Flaunt Their Crimes

Firebombs and Shootings: The Rise of IRL Harassment and Violence as a Service

'The Comm': The Group Linked to a Nationwide Swatting Rampage

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Did you know that AI is set to automate as many as a third of your tasks? In the future we’re all going to be saving a lot of time. That’s as long as no one invents artificial general intelligence that fires all the nukes or turns us all into paperclips. Which, some experts seem to think, will surely happen.

Today we’re gonna talk about hype. Not the exciting kind of hype, but Criti-Hype, a kind of techno doomerism we’re often fond of here at Motherboard. Social media, biogenetics, Artificial Intelligence. These things could ruin us all. At least … that’s what people tell you when they’re selling something.

Lee Vinsel is a professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech and the host of the People & Things podcast. His Medium post that caught our eye is: You’re Doing it Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype.

Stories discussed in this episode:

You’re Doing It Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype

The Open Letter to Stop 'Dangerous' AI Race Is a Huge Mess

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Customs and Border Protection is scanning people’s social media, the feds have arrested some swatters, and the FTC has ordered Ring to cough up a fine. This week on Cyber, Motherboard’s premier cyber crime reporter Joseph Cox is back to walk us through the latest in privacy violations done by Washington and the private sector. We’ll also take another look at the criminal world of SIM swappers and auto-swatters.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Homeland Security Uses AI Tool to Analyze Social Media of U.S. Citizens and Refugees

'The Comm': The Group Linked to a Nationwide Swatting Rampage

FTC Orders Ring to Pay $5.8 Million in Refunds For Surveilling Customers, Failing to Stop Hackers

Russian FSB Accuses U.S. of Hacking Thousands of iPhones in Russia

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Is there anything artificial intelligence can’t do?Debt collectors want AI to push people into coughing up what’s owed. An AI created photo of an attack on the Pentagon generated a minor panic. There’s an AI that can read your mind and the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, just testified before Congress.

This week on Cyber, Motherboard reporter Chloe Xiang comes on to walk us through the big headlines in the world of AI.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Debt Collectors Want To Use AI Chatbots To Hustle People For Money

Verified Twitter Accounts Spread AI-Generated Hoax of Pentagon Explosion

AI Reconstructs 'High-Quality' Video Directly from Brain Readings in Study

Worried About Sending Your Data to a Chatbot? 'PrivateGPT' Is Here

OpenAI Tells Congress the U.S. Should Create AI 'Licenses' to Release New Models

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Crypto and crime, crime and crypto. They go together like spreadsheets and tax evasion. When cryptocurrency hit the scene it was, according to its evangelists, going to usher in a world of decentralized currency and free everyone from the shackles of oppressive central banks. Turns out it’s also been a pretty great way to launder money.

It’s also the subject of the new book Red Team Blues, a novel from writer Cory Doctorow. In Red Team Blues a 67 year old forensic accountant finds himself at the center of a crypto-crime mystery that takes him from the heights of silicon valley to the depths of the Tenderloin. This week on Cyber, Doctorow walks us through a brief history of the valley and why he wrote three books about an old accountant during the pandemic.

Doctorow is the author of more than two dozen books and too many articles to count. He’s currently blogging at pluralistic.net.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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We talk a lot about encrypted phones on Cyber. Everyone loves a secure communication channel that no one can peer into. But some companies, well, if there’s criminal activity going on they’re gonna sell you out. And the cops have gotten very good at setting up honeypots and hacking into existing networks.

But there’s one encrypted service out there that is, as far as we know, still secure. It’s called No. 1 Business Communication and it’s a favorite of the Italian Mafia. On this episode of Cyber, Joseph Cox comes on to explain how and why No. 1 Business Communication has survived in a world where authorities have shut down the competition. 

Stories discussed in this episode:

Inside the Italian Mafia’s Encrypted Phone of Choice

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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If you’re watching or listening to this show you’re probably doing it on a device that owes its very existence to the Apple II. But these days we remember the iPhone, 90s era Windows, and even the Macintosh as these big benchmark moments in widespread adoption of tech.

But all those devices wouldn't be here if it weren’t for the little Apple II board that could and the people who turned a hobbyist curiosity into a fundamental part of every household in the world.

That story is the subject of the new book The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal. This week on Cyber, author Laine Nooney comes on to talk about The Apple II Age and how the little machine ushered in a new world of personal computing. Nooney is also an assistant professor of Media and Information Studies at New York University and the founding editor of ROMchip: A Journal of Games Histories.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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When Elon Musk posted a video of himself arriving at Twitter HQ carrying a white sink along with the message “let that sink in!” it marked the end of a dramatic takeover. Musk had gone from Twitter critic to “Chief Twit” in the space of just a few months but his arrival didn’t put an end to questions about his motives. Musk had earned a reputation as a business maverick. From PayPal to Tesla to SpaceX, his name was synonymous with big, earth-shattering ideas. So, what did he want with a social media platform? And was this all really in the name of free speech...or was this all in the name of Elon Musk?

From Wondery, the makers of WeCrashed and In God We Lust, comes the wild story of how the richest man alive took charge of the world’s “digital public square.”

Listen to Flipping The Bird: Wondery.fm/FTB_Cyber

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It looks like a bluetooth speaker or an old Nokia cellphone. But that’s a disguise. Inside these small devices is everything car thieves need to break into your vehicle. There are telegram channels now where, for a few thousand dollars, you can buy a device that will break into a car in seconds.

Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox is here on Cyber this week to walk us through it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The Car Thieves Using Tech Disguised Inside Old Nokia Phones and Bluetooth Speakers

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Automation is making everyone’s lives easier, including people who call in fake bomb threats on crowded public locations. We live in a world where pranksters and criminals can summon a massive police presence with the click of a few buttons. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox is here to tell us all about it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

A Computer Generated Swatting Service Is Causing Havoc Across America

Smart Garage Company Fixes Vulnerability by Breaking Customers' Devices

Hackers Can Remotely Open Smart Garage Doors Across the World

IRS Wants to Buy Internet Mass Monitoring Tool

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Top Secret classified Pentagon documents leaked on a Minecraft Discord server. The pages of documents contain sensitive information about troop placements in Ukraine, rumors about allies, and—weirdly—a character sheet for a tabletop roleplaying game. 

On this episode of Cyber, host Matthew Gault takes a back seat and lets Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler interrogate him about what’s in these classified Pentagon documents.

Pentagon’s Ukraine War Plans Leaked on Minecraft Discord Before Telegram and Twitter

Leaked Pentagon Docs Share Wild Rumor: Kremlin Plans to ‘Throw’ Putin’s War While He’s Getting Chemo

Leaked Classified Documents Also Include Roleplaying Game Character Stats

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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A terrible April Fool’s day glitch screws over Uber drivers, tenants in California are striking back against landlords, and private banks: do we need them?

Today’s episode of Cyber is a cypher, that infrequent version of the show where we decipher some recent tech news. It’s a potpourri for the panopticon age. A grab bag of tech horrors, a not so gentle reminder that our work is not yet done.

Motherboard reporter Roshan Abraham is here to talk about it all.

'Screwed': Uber Claws Back Double Pay from Drivers After April Fools Glitch

Tenants of America's Biggest Landlord Form Union to Fight Evictions, Rent Hikes

Want to Curb City Crime? Evict Fewer Tenants, Study Says

Private Banks Are In Crisis. What If They Were Public Banks?

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Facial recognition systems are here. They’ve been deployed extensively along America’s southern border and in its cities. Authoritarian regimes in Iran and Russia are using the technology to crack down on dissidents and what’s going on in Moscow right now paints a horrifying picture of how dangerous the tech has become.

On this episode of Cyber, Lena Masri is here to talk about it. She’s the author of a new report at Reuters about how Putin uses facial recognition to curb dissent.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Facial recognition is helping Putin curb dissent with the aid of U.S. tech

U.S. Hardware Is Fueling Russia's Facial Recognition Crackdown on Anti-War Dissidents

AI Use by Cops, Child Services In NYC Is a Mess: Report

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Love it or hate it, you can’t escape artificial intelligence. People are using Midjourney to make viral photos of Donald Trump’s arrest and the Pop’s puffy coat. Redditors are creating entire fake historical events and backing it up with AI-generated photos. Silicon Valley seems to think this tech is the next big thing, with Google and Microsoft betting big on it and some people begging everyone to pause development for six months.

Is AI changing the world? With us here today to try to answer that question is Motherboard reporter Chloe Xiang.

Stories discussed in this episode:

People Are Creating Records of Fake Historical Events Using AI

ChatGPT Can Replace the Underpaid Workers Who Train AI, Researchers Say

The Open Letter to Stop 'Dangerous' AI Race Is a Huge Mess

'He Would Still Be Here': Man Dies by Suicide After Talking with AI Chatbot, Widow Says

AI Theorist Says Nuclear War Preferable to Developing Advanced AI

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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In America, no one can protect you from a transportation employee being paid off by the feds.

The Drug Enforcement Agency has a single remit: to prosecute America’s long-failed war on drugs. Joseph Cox is on today’s episode of Cyber to talk about one its shadier practices and the senators who want answers from the Department of Justice. It turns out that the DEA has been paying Amtrak and commercial package companies to act as informants and supply data on customers without having to get a warrant.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The DEA Bought Customer Data from Rogue Employees Instead of Getting a Warrant

The 'Insanely Broad' RESTRICT Act Could Ban Much More Than Just TikTok

Here is the FBI’s Contract to Buy Mass Internet Data

Cops Sue Afroman for 'Emotional Distress' After He Made Music Videos of Botched Raid

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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America is thinking about banning the most popular social media app in the world. TikTok has exploded in the past few years and whether you love it or hate it, you can’t deny its huge influence.

Legislators in America are concerned about that influence, especially because of TikTok’s connections to China. On Thursday, TikTok’s CEO testified before the House’s Committee on Energy and Commerce and fielded questions about the app, its connection to China, and what it might be doing to America’s children.

It was a shitshow.

Motherboard’s Social Media Manager, Emily Lipstein, is on this episode of Cyber talking about.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Congress Shocked to Discover 10 Year Olds Check the ‘I’m Over 18’ Box Online

Banning TikTok Is Unconstitutional, Ludicrous, and a National Embarrassment

Follow Motherboard on TikTok to see the Congressional footage

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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It’s almost impossible to get retail priced tickets to The Cure’s newest live tour. Fans are, once again, turning to the secondary market despite the band’s insistence that Ticketmaster shut it down. 

This week on Cyber, Joseph Cox and Motherboard Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler take us into the world of the ticket scalper, where whole Ticketmaster accounts are being sold in bulk and a “verified fan” is just someone the algorithm approves of.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The Cure Tried to Stop Scalpers. Brokers Are Selling Entire Ticketmaster Accounts Instead

Ticketmaster Cancels Public Sale for Taylor Swift Tickets Because It Already Sold Them All

Blink-182 Tickets Are So Expensive Because Ticketmaster Is a Disastrous Monopoly and Now Everyone Pays Ticket Broker Prices

The Man Who Broke Ticketmaster

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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In America the trains never seem to run on time. On February 3, a train crashed in East Palestine, Ohio releasing toxic chemicals into the air. Almost a month later, another train owned by the same company also derailed in Ohio. That’s not all. Trains in Charlotte are running slower than they should. NYC can’t fit trains into its new station. The list goes on and on.

What the hell is going on with mass transit in America?

If you’re a long time Cyber listener, you might already know some of the answers to this question. That’s thanks to returning champion, Motherboard senior writer Aaron Gordon.

Stories discussed in this episode:

East Palestine Derailment ‘Foreseeable and Preventable,’ Ohio Attorney General Lawsuit Alleges

24 Hours of News Shows America's Transportation Hellscape

The Worst Transit Project in the U.S. Is Officially Dead

Boston's Subway Was Running at Half Speed Because It Lost Paperwork

‘We Had All the Issues That Town Has:’ East Palestine Is Not the First or Last Derailment Disaster

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Collapse. It’s the word on everybody’s lips. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature are no more. The banks, folks, they’ve collapsed. But don’t worry, these aren’t your typical banks. SVB and Signature were not the kinds of places working class folks were holding checking accounts. These were massive institutions that propped up America’s ailing tech sector. If you’ve been hustled by an NFT startup in the past year, there’s a good chance it had deposits at SVB.

But now they’re gone and, after some panic, it looks like America’s blessed institutions are working as intended. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is gonna clean all this up. But should they?

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Managing Editor Jordan Pearson sits down to answer the question.

Stories discussed in this episode:

How Silicon Valley's Bank Imploded

Are Failing Banks About to Destroy the Economy?

OK, WTF Is Up With the Government Bailing Out the Tech Industry?

WSJ Wonders: Did Silicon Valley Bank Die Because One Black Person Was on Its Board?

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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It’s Cipher time, baby. It’s that infrequent style of Cyber we do where we decipher Motherboard’s tech coverage in a potpourri for the panopticon age. 

On today’s episode we’ve got a little bit of everything. A popular hiking app reveals that, once again, we just can’t trust private companies with our data. But what about our passwords? Surely a company that bills itself as a secure way to remember all those logins is secure right? Nope! Also, Twitter ditches Tor and, just for fun, another wonderful story about cheating in online video games.

Motherboard’s own Joseph Cox is here to walk us through all of it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

AllTrails Data Exposes Precise Movements of Former Top Biden Official

Twitter’s Most Important Anti-Censorship Tool Is Currently Dead

‘Escape From Tarkov’ Roiled By Severe Cheating Accusations

LastPass Shouldn't Be Trusted With Your Passwords

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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On February 4, 2023, an F-22 fighter jet committed the first air to air kill in the weapons history. It was an alleged Chinese spy balloon near Myrtle Beach. In the days that followed the F-22 would score another kill, this time against a mysterious floating object above the Yukon.

But this second object hadn’t come from China. Hobbyists, in fact, think it might be one of their balloons. Across the world there is a small but dedicated group of people who love launching tiny balloons into the sky.

It’s been a weird month for the community. What with the fighter jets patrolling the sky and constant reports of UFOs. On this week’s Cyber, Motherboard reporter Becky Ferreria stops by to talk about the amateur balloonists who lived through the great balloon panic of 2023.

Stories discussed in this episode:

'Unfortunate and Amusing': Balloon Enthusiasts Undeterred by U.S. Air Force Shootdowns

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are awash in people reacting to horrifying videos. 2 girls 1 cup, Tubgirl, Goatse, and websites like Ogrish.com shaped the modern internet. Appropriating and sharing these horrifying images and videos was a big part of what people did during the early days of the web.

But why? And how do these shocking viral sensations translate onto the modern and sanitized web? This week on Cyber, Blake Hester stops by to walk us through it all.

Stories discussed in this episode:

How Shock Sites Shaped the Internet

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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AI has made the voice of Emma Watson say some very strange things, and 4Chan is to blame. But trolls playing with new machine-learning tools aren’t the only villain in this story. Actors are being asked to sign away the rights to their own voice for the purposes of AI reconstruction.

Also on today’s episode: Dutch police have been reading encrypted messages; some politicians in the UK want to ban encrypted phones; Apple is looking to roll out a new form of end-to-end encryption; and a police contractor that promised to track homeless people has been hacked.

Cypher. We’re bringing it back. For those that don’t know, Cypher is a special edition of Cyber where we decipher the week’s news. It’s a potpourri for the panopticon. A grab bag of tech horror stories. And who better to join us for such an adventure than Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox?

Stories discussed in this episode:

AI-Generated Voice Firm Clamps Down After 4chan Makes Celebrity Voices for Abuse

UK Proposes Making the Sale and Possession of Encrypted Phones Illegal

‘Disrespectful to the Craft:’ Actors Say They’re Being Asked to Sign Away Their Voice to AI

Dutch Police Read Messages of Encrypted Messenger 'Exclu'

Apple's End-to-End iCloud Could Be a Security Game Changer

Police Contractor That Promised to Track Homeless People Hacked

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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What if you could watch new episodes of your favorite shows, forever?

That’s one of the promises of artificial intelligence. On Twitch, the show Nothing, Forever pumped out episode after episode of content that was kind of like an episode of Seinfeld.

Larry Feinberg told jokes, lived in NYC, and cavorted around with a crazy cast of characters. The show drew a lot of attention. And then Larry told a transphobic joke during an interstitial standup bit and the show was banned.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler stops by to relay the saga of Nothing, Forever.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Conservatives Are Panicking About AI Bias, Think ChatGPT Has Gone 'Woke'

Developers Created AI to Generate Police Sketches. Experts Are Horrified

People are 'Jailbreaking' ChatGPT to Make It Endorse Racism, Conspiracies

Conservatives Are Obsessed With Getting ChatGPT to Say the N-Word

Thousands of People Can’t Stop Watching AI-Generated Sitcom ‘Nothing, Forever’

AI-Generated 'Seinfeld' Show Banned on Twitch After Transphobic Standup Bit

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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What would you give to live forever? Hell, what would you give to have the body of an 18-year-old well into your 40s? That’s the goal of tech CEO Bryan Johnnson. He is, by his own estimation, the most measured man on the planet. He takes 112 to 130 pills a day. He eats a restrictive diet. He has automated his body. It’s an expensive process. And one that robbed him of what many of us would see as the simple joys of life. Drinks with a friend. Late night pizza. A little sugar in your bowl.

Motherboard Senior Editor Maxwell Strachan just spent some time with Johnson and he’s here today on Cyber to tell us all about it.

‘The Most Measured Man in Human History’

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On January 31, a court in Iran handed out a combined sentence of 10 years to a couple who danced outside of Azadi Tower in Tehran, Iran. A film of the brief dance went viral on Instagram and Twitter. They’re 21 and 22 years old. The woman was not wearing a hijab.

The long sentence for a viral post is part of a pattern in Iran. In response to protests, the Iranian government is using technology and violence to suppress its people. Iran is a pioneer in the use of new technologies like AI and facial recognition to suppress dissent and enforce the will of the state.

On this episode of Cyber, Mahsa Alimardani—a senior researcher at Article 19 and a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford—comes on the show to talk about how Iran is pioneering the modern surveillance state.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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In 2016, Americans working in Cuba began to experience something strange. Something that is, to this day, unexplained. They felt a pressure in the brain, a ringing in their ear, and in the aftermath … a distressing sense of fatigue. This is Havana Syndrome, a mysterious ailment that felled spies and diplomats.

It remains a mystery to this day, one U.S. government officials have a hard time talking about let alone understanding. Sometimes it sounds like a frightening new weapon, other times like a classic moral panic. But what was it really? Will we ever know?

This is all the subject of a new podcast from VICE World News called Havana Syndrome. Over the course of the show’s nine episodes it unpacks not just the mysterious syndrome, but a history of spy and counterspy, the CIA, and America’s complicated relationship with Cuba.

With me here today to talk about it all is series producer Jesse Alejandro Cottrell.

Go here to check out ‘Havana Syndrome’ from VICE World News.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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We've all heard about how Facebook is destroying democracy. How Twitter enables the loudest, dumbest voices to have the most influence. How Instagram has ruined an entire generation's self esteem. But what if there is a social media network even more important than those?

Every day, people are gathering online in this space to organize powerful political movements. They’re sharing details of what’s going on, locally, getting organized, and fighting each other in an online cage match of American politics.

It’s time to talk about Nextdoor.

On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Writer Aaron Gordon comes on to talk about the wild world of Nextdoor.

Stories discussed in this episode:

How Nextdoor Put Neighbors In a Housing Policy 'Cage Match'

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Replika is a chatbot that you can find on the App Store. It bills itself as a companion that can, if you pay, become something more. The ads on the internet offer a repertoire of sexually suggestive services including kinky roleplay and on-demand sexy photographs.

But what if you just want to talk? People in the Replika community are complaining that the chatbot has taken a turn recently, making unwanted comments and sending unsolicited lewds. Some users think it’s all about money.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole stops by to help us unravel the mystery of the AI that got too horny.

Stories discussed in this episode:

‘My AI Is Sexually Harassing Me’: Replika Users Say the Chatbot Has Gotten Way Too Horny

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Recent remarks from Richard Trumka Jr., one of the three commissioners with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), sparked outrage in some circles. As it turns out, gas stoves aren’t great for you, and the CPSC has considered regulating them. Pretty soon politicians were sharing images of gas ranges above the words “Come and Take It.”

Why does it feel lately like the only war America is any good at fighting is the culture war? What is the actual science behind gas stoves? And why, while we’re asking national questions, does C-SPAN look so good lately?

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Writer Aaron Gordon stops by to explain it all.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Here Come the Gas Stove Culture Wars

Why C-SPAN’s Camera Work Is Suddenly So Interesting

C-SPAN Is Once Again Asking the House to Relax Filming Rules So It Can Document Its Dysfunction

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Encrypted app for criminals Cipher is rebranding to go above-board, California has got new digital license plates with strange security implications, a researcher made deepfaked demands for a refund to Wells Fargo, and the American military is trying to ply Gen Z gamers with sweet sweet streams.

On today’s Cyber, we’re playing catch up with Motherboard reporter Joseph Cox.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Researchers Could Track the GPS Location of All of California’s New Digital License Plates

Ciphr, Encrypted App That Served Organized Crime, Rebrands as Enterprise Software

Researcher Deepfakes His Voice, Uses AI to Demand Refund From Wells Fargo

U.S. Army Planned to Pay Streamers Millions to Reach Gen-Z Through Call of Duty

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Facial recognition technology is here. Whether we like it or not, cameras all across the world are scanning faces and building databases. 

There’s a popular misconception that technology is objective and unbiased. But that’s not true. All systems carry the biases of the people who created them, and nowhere is that more evident than in facial recognition systems.

Today’s show is about how those biases come to bear, and the dangers of running recklessly forward without considering the consequences. All the way back in 2013, the University of North Carolina, Wilmington published a dataset meant for facial recognition systems. It contained more than 1 million images of trans people, pulled from YouTube, showing them at various stages of their transition.

This was done without the permission of the original posters. Why? Because terrorists might take hormones to alter their face and beat border control systems.

It gets weirder from there.

Here to help us tell the story is Os Keyes. Keyes is a researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering. They’re also the co-author of Feeling fixes: Mess and emotion in algorithmic audits, which is a scientific audit of the dataset we’re going to be talking about today.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Facial Recognition Researcher Left a Trans Database Exposed for Years After Using Images Without Permission

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Apple has democratized stalking for the modern world. With the Airtag you can keep track of your luggage and your estranged spouse.

There’s been an uptick in stalking cases with Apple Airtags at the center and the legal system doesn’t quite know what to do. Often, the cops and the prosecutors don’t even know what an Airtag is. So what do you do when there’s technology at the center of your legal battle, technology that the authorities do not understand.

Today on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole comes on to walk us through it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The Legal System Is Completely Unprepared for Apple AirTag Stalking

How ‘Porn Addiction’ Took Hold of the Internet

Republicans Are Panicking Because They Somehow Just Found Out You Can Buy Vibrators at CVS

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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We all love a good chatbot, some nice AI art, and a pleasant automated system. Artificial intelligence is here and these fancy decision trees are supposed to make our lives easier everyday without a human ever having to lift a finger.

Except that’s not exactly true. AIs require an incredible amount of human input to train; AI art doesn’t make nightmares reality without scanning over millions of human-made images; and Meta’s content didn’t learn how to moderate itself with a human first telling it what to look for.

So who are these people who teach AI and why do we never hear about them?

On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard writer Chloe Xiang will help us answer that question.

Stories discussed in this episode:

AI Isn’t Artificial or Intelligent

ISIS Executions and Non-Consensual Porn Are Powering AI Art

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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An online prophet that claims to be god. A murder in the Alabama woods. A child holding a shotgun in the middle of a camp. Reptilians. Urine therapy. The American South. Police violence. Conspiracy. Robot birds. The uniquely American black esoteric tradition. 

This episode of Cyber is a big and surreal story about a New Age movement that’s spread through livestreams. Its followers are decentralized, driven by belief rather than any organizing principle, but at the center of it all is a prophet who claims to be god and is sitting in jail on some pretty serious charges.

Here to talk about the story is Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Anna Merlan and Editorial Director Tim Marchman.

Stories discussed in this episode:

An Online Prophet Claims to Be a God. His Followers Keep Getting Arrested.

Followers of Charismatic New Age Influencer Accused of Two Different Murders in Alabama

Suspects in Bizarre ‘Off-Grid’ Alabama Shooting Posted About New Age Conspiracy Theories, Followed a Controversial Content Creator

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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This episode of Cyber is an action packed double feature that feels like it’s been pulled directly from a Cyberpunk novel. That’s right, today is all about railway strikes and killer robots. It’s hard to be a railway worker in America. The schedules are a nightmare, the kind of working conditions that can make someone sick. Just don’t try to use your sick days. Facing a railway strike, Congress passed legislation to prevent it. All at the behest of the White House. We’ll get into that. 

Then we’ll talk about San Francisco. The City by the Bay has written the rules of killer robots. SF won’t have the first police department that’s killed someone with a drone, just the first with rules.

With me today to talk about it is Motherboard Senior Writer Aaron Gordon. He’s been following both stories. You may remember he was on the show more at the start of the year talking about the horrifying conditions of America’s rail workers.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The Most Complicated Labor Negotiation in the Country Just Got More Complicated

Once Again, Rail Workers Lose

More than 500 Labor Historians Condemn Biden’s Intervention in Freight Rail Dispute

San Francisco Police Want to Be Allowed to Kill People With Robots

San Francisco Police Can Now Kill People With Robots

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Landlords. Most of us have to deal with them. They can be nosy, weird, invasive, and lazy. The best kind of landlord tends to be one that’s hands off. Well what if I told you that you can look forward to a bright future of automated landlords. Robot landlords tending their rental properties with a cool and calloused algorithmic hand. That impersonal future is here. Now.

This week on Cyber, Nick Keppler stops by to talk about the rise of automated landlords. Keppler is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and—of course—VICE. His latest at Motherboard is Robot Landlords Are Buying Up Houses.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Robot Landlords Are Buying Up Houses

Among the Landlords

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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We have to talk about Elon Musk. It’s fun to make fun of him, and whatever he’s doing at Twitter certainly looks like the weird flailing of a man who doesn’t know how to run a company. But let’s take Musk seriously for an hour or so. He is the richest man in the world. He has big dreams and some of the resources to achieve them. The Pentagon is paying him for rocket launches. Starlink works and has been instrumental in the war in Ukraine.

So who is Elon Musk and why do we care so much? His detractors see only a shitposter who made some great business bets. His fans see him as a messianic figure, a superhero who will lead us into a new golden age of technology.

But what’s the truth? Is it somewhere in between? The answer isn’t that simple.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard managing editor Jordan Pearson sits down to help us think through the bizarre geopolitical importance of Twitter’s new CEO.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Twitter Employees Call Elon Musk’s Bluff

Twitter Employees on Visas Can’t Just Quit

Elon Musk Is Creating His Own Reality

SpaceX Was Born Because Elon Musk Wanted to Grow Plants on Mars

Elon Musk's Tech Has Geopolitical Clout. Things Are Going to Get Weird

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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We’ve all seen the videos. Those viral townhall meetings where the community gathers to give its feedback to city managers on this or that subject. Too often a crank with a microphone stands before a panel of local political operators and talks at length about something bizarre and hyper specific. Sometimes they get abusive. There’s yelling, tears, grandstanding, and often nothing changes.

It wasn’t always this way and there might be a better way to do it. On this episode of CYBER, Motherboard Senior Writer Aaron Gordon takes us through the history of “community feedback” and why it has to change.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Thank You For Your Feedback

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Have you heard about Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX? FTX was the second largest crypto currency exchange in the world and Bankman-Fried was the guy who ran it. He was a young genius, people said. He practiced something called “effective altruism,” gave away money to people on the street, played video games, and was predicted to be the world’s first trillionaire.

Now he’s bankrupt, FTX is in ruins and large amounts of crypto seem to keep shifting around with no explanation. So who was Bankman-Fried? Why did everyone think he was a genius? And how did FTX seemingly make billions of dollars in wealth evaporate overnight.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Edward Ongweso Jr. tries to answers those questions.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Crypto Empire Is Officially Bankrupt

Sam Bankman-Fried Was Supposed to Be Different. He Wasn't.

FTX Founder: ‘I Fucked Up’

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Without sex there would be no internet. From the moment the servers spun up, users were trying to figure out how to use instant connection to pleasures themselves and each other. The history of sex and the internet are intertwined. And what feels like new problems in the space: banking woes, hate speech, harassment, and moral panics about children are all much much older than you think.

That’s the subject of the new book How Sex Changed the Internet. It’s out on November 15 and it’s by Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole. She’s here with us today to talk about breasts, BBS’, boy’s clubs, and the broad strokes of the culture war.

Buy Sam’s Book Here

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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We’re living through the end of something. Facebook is the site where your older family shares racist memes, Twitter seems only capable of talking about itself, and Instagram can’t compete with TikTok. What started with Friendster and MySpace, social media, once felt like a totalizing on the internet. Now it’s dying.

According to Motherboard writer Edward Ongweso Jr, social media isn’t dying. It’s already dead. So what monsters struggle now to be born?

Stories discussed in this episode:

Social Media Is Dead

At SXSW, A Pathetic Tech Future Struggles to Be Born

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Have you tried going to a concert recently? What about a stadium show for a popular comedian? What did it cost? How was the Ticketmaster experience? Like everything else, the price of live event tickets is on the rise.

But the reasons why aren’t as simple as inflation and the economy. Outrageous ticket prices are all about a business monopoly using an algorithm to outflank the secondary market.

It’s a surreal story and here to tell it is Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. 

Stories discussed in this episode:

Blink-182 Tickets Are So Expensive Because Ticketmaster Is a Disastrous Monopoly and Now Everyone Pays Ticket Broker Prices

The Man Who Broke Ticketmaster

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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For almost two decades, Facebook has dominated headlines and the lives of its users. It’s been blamed for genocides, pointed to as a vector of disinformation, and depressed you as you scrolled past high school acquaintances that seem to be doing so much better than you. 

But now its founder Mark Zuckerberg is obsessed with a virtual world no one wants, the company’s stock is down 70 percent of its peak and it has lost $800 billion of its market capitalization.

Are we finally witnessing the end of Facebook?

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Edward Ongweso Jr. stops by to try to answer the question. 

Stories discussed in this episode:

Facebook’s Monopoly Is Imploding Before Our Eyes

Elon Musk’s First Days as Twitter Owner: Conspiracies, Chaos, and Desperation

For Much of the World, Facebook Going Down Is a Disaster, Not a Joke

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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The killer robots are here and they’re not going away. 

We’ve all seen footage of the cute robot dogs stumbling around with weapons strapped to their back, and loitering munitions (or so-called “suicide drones”) have become a fixture on the battlefield in Ukraine.

There’s a general fear in the air that the near future will be populated by semi-autonomous killing machines. But killer robots have been here a long time. Did you know one of the first aerial drones was deployed more than 100 years ago? Did you know cops have already used a robot to kill a suspect? Did you know the Netherlands has already deployed robots on the ground equipped with machine guns?

Kelsey Atherton knows, and he’s here to tell us all about it. Atherton is a military tech writer specializing in robots, nukes, and other terrible futures. He’s written for Motherboard before and his substack is Wars of Future Past.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Robot Dog Maker Boston Dynamics Pledges Not to Let Its Robots Kill You

Robot Dog With RPG Strapped to Its Back Demoed at Russian Arms Fair

Police Outsourcing Human Interaction With Homeless People to Boston Dynamics’ Robot Dog

The Netherlands Has Deployed NATO’s First Killer Robot Ground Vehicles

Robot Dog Not So Cute With Submachine Gun Strapped to Its Back

Hacker Finds Kill Switch for Submachine Gun–Wielding Robot Dog

​It's Going to Be Okay

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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America and political violence go together like George Lincoln Rockwell and a corncob pipe. There is a growing movement in the U.S., one that’s spreading online and probably in some of your neighborhoods. Far right extremist movements have a deepy history in America and there’s a new podcast from VICE that explores that history.

It’s called American Terror and it’s hosted by a familiar voice: VICE news correspondent and founding host of Cyber Ben Makuch. He stopped by Cyber to talk about the show, UFOs, and Dan Carlin.

Listen to American Terror now on Spotify.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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We’ve all gotten a little too involved in a video game. I’ve talked repeatedly about how I’ve gotten lost in trying to complete maps in open world games like Assassin’s Creed. And there’s a million stories out there about kids who spent all their parents' money on upgrades in Farmville. But when I say the words State of Survival or Game of Thrones: Conquest, what comes to mind? Crappy ads on Facebook? Weird looking games that are obvious money pits? Yes, but there’s something a little more insidious going on. It’s an evolution of the old addictive mobile game formula. One that’s generated a new lawsuit.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Maxwell Strachan comes on to talk about the new era of mobile games, the price of addiction, and the people suing for false advertising.

Stories discussed in this episode:

‘Game of Thrones: Conquest’ and ‘State of Survival’ Players Say They Felt Addicted and Pressured To Spend

CYBER: How Corporations and Governments Use Games to Control Us

Confessions of a Semi-Reformed Video Game Completionist

B.F. Skinner on his beef with Noam Chomsky

On Chomsky's Appraisal of Skinner's Verbal Behavior: A Half Century of Misunderstanding

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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On this episode of Cyber we talk about an old technology that suddenly feels very new. The bomb. That’s right, this episode is all about nuclear weapons. Thanks to Moscow’s war in Ukraine and Putin’s implicit and explicit threats to use them should Russian territory be threatened, everyone is afraid of nuclear weapons once again. Able Archer? Passé. Cuban Missile Crisis? Old news. These days it’s all about hypersonics, tactical nukes, and even cruise missiles powered by a nuclear engine.

At least that’s the claim.

On this episode of Cyber, the Arms Control Wonk himself, Jeffrey Lewis, comes on to answer all your burning questions about nuclear weapons. Lewis is a professor at the Middlebury Institute, a member of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and the host of the Arms Control Wonk podcast.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Is There a Threat of Nuclear War with Russia? Experts Weigh In.

Putin Puts Russia’s Nuclear Deterrent Forces on High Alert

Putin Demonstrates New Missiles With Visualization of Nukes Hitting Mar-a-Lago

Nuclear War Anxiety Is Back. Here’s How to Manage It.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Apps have made our life so convenient haven’t they? With the push of a button you can order Postmates, book an Airbnb, or even call an Uber. But what happens when the apps stop taking your calls? What happens when they shut you out completely?

It’s happening more and more. In a bid to increase user safety, companies like Airbnb and Uber are turning to third parties to run background checks for them. A lot of it is automated and the background checkers make a lot of mistakes. So what happens if you’ve been a five star guest on Airbnb but a decades old run in with the cops suddenly makes you a pariah?

Not much, it turns out.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard senior editor Samantha Cole comes on to talk about Inflection, the company running background checks for Uber, Airbnb and DraftKings.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Banished for an Unleashed Dog: Airbnb Bans Bewilder Guests and Hosts

‘Consumers Get Screwed’: Airbnb’s and Uber’s Background-Check Company Keeps Getting Sued

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Do you ever feel like you’re being played? Like the people who run the world have got you on a treadmill that’s feeding you just enough rewards to keep going. Gold stars on your attendance sheet at elementary school. Apps that encourage you to run by pretending you’re fleeing zombies. Bosses that keep track of everyone’s progress in a public spreadsheet, pitting employees against each other.

As video games have gotten more popular, the world of flesh and blood has adopted some of its aspects. Not all of them are good. Gamification is here, all around us, and the powers that be are using it to keep us in line.

On this episode of Cyber ex-neuroscientist, current game developer, and best-selling author Adrian Hon talks about gamification with us. His newest book is You’ve Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All.

Stories discussed in this episode:

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch and YouTube. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Hacks are increasing but the hackers are not necessarily getting more sophisticated. What do Twitter, Twilio, and Uber all have in common? They were all hacked by, in part, a conversation. In all three cases, the hack was helped along by social engineering. Someone contacted an employee of the company and tricked them into giving up the keys to the company. It doesn’t matter how fancy your 2FA system is if an employee is just gonna give up their SMS codes to some rando on the phone.

But worry not. There are ways to protect yourself and your company against such attacks. With me today to work through it all is Rachel Tobac. Tobac is a hacker and the CEO of SocialProof Security, a company that aims to get your organization politely paranoid.

She also, coincidentally, just published a really amazing video that dramatizes a lot about what we’re going to talk about today. You can find it on Twitter @racheltobac.

Stories discussed in this episode:

The Uber Hack Shows Push Notification 2FA Has a Downside: It’s Too Annoying

How a Third-Party SMS Service Was Used to Take Over Signal Accounts

Hackers Convinced Twitter Employee to Help Them Hijack Accounts

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Chess. Chess. Chess. You, the audience, quite literally asked for it. It’s the scandal that just won’t quit. On September 4 at a live Chess Tournament in St. Louis, chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen lost in a massive upset to young chess wiz Hans Niemann. This was not supposed to happen and almost immediately accusations and revelations about cheating have gotten wilder, involving AI driven cheating engines and buttplugs.

Throughout it all, Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler has kept pushing the story, watching every moment, and now he’s got a big scoop.

Stories discussed on this episode:

‘I Can’t Believe It’: Magnus Carlsen Resigns After One Move in Chess Rematch With Hans Niemann

Magnus Carlsen Finally Speaks on Chess Cheating Scandal, Sows Even More Chaos

Magnus Carlsen: Hans Niemann ‘Has Cheated More—and More Recently—Than He Has Publicly Admitted’

Chess Grandmaster Maxim Dlugy Admitted to Cheating on Chess.com, Emails Show

Did Hans Neimann Cheat at Chess With a Sex Toy? This Coder Is Attempting to Find Out.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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AI art has gotten wildly popular over the past year. Programs like Midjourney and Dall-E are generating incredible images and incredible controversy. But these programs don’t exist in a vacuum. AI’s require billions of images to learn how and what to draw. Where are they getting those pictures? They’re hoovering them up on the internet. A place full of child porn, ISIS execution videos, and non-consensual adult images. With AI it’s all garbage in, garbage out. So who controls this data and is there anything we can do about it?

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard writer Chloe Xiang walks us through the ins and outs of the AI trained on ISIS execution images.

Stories discussed in this episode:

ISIS Executions and Non-Consensual Porn Are Powering AI Art

Amazon Driver Fired for Posting Photo of Customer’s Dildo to Reddit

'The Silence of My Critics Speaks for Itself:' Hans Niemann Says He Is Being Unfairly Attacked in Chess Scandal

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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You ever feel like somebody’s watching you? Well, on the internet, it’s often true. Every move you make on the internet generates reams of data that ISPs and data brokers sell on to on to a ton of people who may want to take a look. It’s a big business. One we don’t often see the inside of.

One of the companies buying up all that data is Team Cymru who watches over all of it with a tool it calls Augury. Who buys Augury? We’ve just learned a lot of agencies within the federal government. Cyber Command, the Army, the Navy, are all using Augury to paw through internet traffic. But what, exactly, are they looking for? And what can they even see?

Stories discussed on this episode:

Revealed: US Military Bought Mass Monitoring Tool That Includes Internet Browsing, Email Data

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

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Groups on Telegram that used to primarily be interested in taking over people’s phones and online accounts have changed tactics. Now, they’re selling violence. And to cap off the week, a hacker we don’t know much about was able to steal the credentials of an Uber employee and access the company's back end.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writers Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Joseph Cox walk us through the latest in the world of cybersecurity.

Stories discussed on this episode:

Firebombs and Shootings: The Rise of IRL Harassment and Violence as a Service

LAPSUS$: How a Sloppy Extortion Gang Became One of the Most Prolific Hacking Groups

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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This week on Cyber we’re going deep into recent stories of unidentified flying objects and Chess. The Pentagon has gotten big into investigating what it calls unidentified aerial phenomenon and a chess champion has been accused of cheating but the exact phenomenon he’s accused of remains unidentified.

With me today to walk through all of this is Motherboard’s lovely editor-in-chief Jason Koebler. 

Stories discussed in this episode:

Congress Admits UFOs Not ‘Man-Made,’ Says ‘Threats’ Increasing ‘Exponentially’

Was This Viral UFO Photo a Hoax Generated By an AI?

Navy Says All UFO Videos Classified, Releasing Them ‘Will Harm National Security’

The Chess World Is Absolutely Losing It Over Cheating Allegations After Massive Upset

'The Silence of My Critics Speaks for Itself:' Hans Niemann Says He Is Being Unfairly Attacked in Chess Scandal

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Today on Cyber we’ve got a special presentation: We’re talking about Motherboard’s science fiction short story collection Terraform one last time. This week’s episode is a recording of a live roundtable discussion with Cory Doctorow and Geoff Manaugh—both of whom have short stories in the collection—and Terraform editors Claire L. Evans and Brian Merchant.

Want to learn the secret history of the Luddites? Find out if corporations can be bought off? Learn what it’s like to work with Netflix? Well, stay tuned.

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It seems like the Earth’s billionaires are desperate to escape the planet. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are looking to outer space. Mark Zuckerberg is looking to the inner space of virtual reality. So many billionaires are buying up land and luxury survival bunkers in New Zealand that it’s hard to keep track.

Do they know something we don’t? Or do they just have the money to act on fears they themselves were instrumental in creating?

Here today to help me answer that question is Douglas Rushkoff. Rushkoff is a media theorist and author. His newest book is out on September 6. It’s called Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Woe to those who live in the path of a hypercane. What’s a hypercane? I’m glad you asked. In a frighteningly possible future you’ll be hearing more about them. As the planet warms and the climate changes, we’re in for all kinds of new and bizarre extreme weather systems. It’s a hurricane so big and so powerful it extends through several states.

Today on Cyber, we’ve got something special. Another short story from Motherboard’s first book: Terraform. Terraform editor Brian Merchant and special guest Eric Holthaus come on Cyber to discuss how we personalize the climate disaster we’re all living through. Holthaus is a meteorologist, climate journalist, and the founder of Currently—a weather service built for folks on the front line of the climate emergency. He’s here to read a bit of his Terraform story ‘Hypercane.’

Stories discussed in this episode: 

Hypercane

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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A new study in Nature Food has revealed, once again, the unprecedented danger of nuclear weapons. Built on the foundation of decades of research, it’s about the climate change and global famine that would follow even a limited nuclear exchange.

The models are a terrifying warning. A limited war between Pakistan and India that uses just three percent of the world’s nuclear weapons could kill a third of the Earth’s population.

In this special edition of Cyber, we talk about the study, its implications, and what we can do to avoid tragedy. Here with me to have that discussion is one of the author’s behind the study, Rutgers University climatologist Alan Robock.

Robock will lay out what he and his colleagues found in just a moment, to help us understand what actions we should take is Dr. Ruth Mitchell from the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Alicia Sanders-Zakre from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Stories discussed in this episode:

A Nuclear War Between the U.S. and Russia Would Starve 5 Billion People

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Drone. The word has come to mean so many things. An eye in the sky. A hobbyist flying toy. A dangerous voyeur. A weapon of war. An enforcer. A worker. But a worker that’s maybe not as soulless as the name implies. As AI gets more sophisticated and the subroutines become rote… might it be possible to convert the electronic oppressor?

Today on Cyber, we’ve got something special. Motherboard has published a book! It’s called Terraform and it’s out now. It’s a collection of short stories about the near future and the dystopian present. With me today on the show are the book’s editors, Claire L. Evans and Brian Merchant as well as special guest Sarah Gailey. They’re the author of the new novel Just Like Home and the Terraform story “Drones to Ploughshares.”

Terraform’s stories are all about possible futures. “Drones to Ploughshares” is a window into one of those worlds.’

Terraform is out now! Buy it here.

Stories discussed in this episode: 

Drones to Ploughshares

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Some days, it feels like all you can do is watch worlds burn.

This is especially true for the millions of people living in hospice care. Health in the U.S. isn’t what it used to be. The population is aging and it’s not just the Baby Boomers. If you think Millennials will age more gracefully than their parents, well, I have a counselor I’d like you to speak with. It’s specially trained for the job and It knows all about you. It really does keep the cost of healthcare down.

Today on Cyber, we’ve got something special. Motherboard has published a book. It’s called Terraform and it’s out now. It’s a collection of short stories about the near future and the dystopian present. With me today on the show are the book’s editors, Claire L. Evans and Brian Merchant as well as special guest Robin Sloan. He’s the author of the new novel The Suitcase Clone and … the Terraform story “The Counselor.”

Terraform’s stories are all about possible futures. “The Counselor” is a window into one of those worlds.

Terraform is out now. Buy it here.

Stories discussed on this episode:

The Counselor

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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We all get them. We all hate them. Spam. There was a time, long ago, when it was just your mailbox and your inbox that got hit with superfluous ads and scams. But now? My phone rings all day long and all of the calls are spam. All of them. If you’re not on my contact list, I’m not picking up. And the texts have gotten much much worse. Everyday is a new offering and every ping is spam.

Did you know that most of that spam is actually illegal and that you, yes you, can sue the companies sending it out and make a few hundred bucks. On this episode of Cyber we sit down with a man who did just that. David Weekly sued a spam texter and got $1,200. Here’s how he did it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

This Guy Sued a Spam Texter and Got $1,200 (and You Can Too)

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Some days, it feels like all you can do is watch worlds burn.

This is especially true in the desperate small towns that pocket the parts of America some derisively call ‘Flyover Country.’

Today on Cyber, we’ve got something special. Motherboard is publishing a book! It’s called Terraform and it drops on August 16. It’s a collection of short stories about the near future and the dystopian present. With me today on the show are the book’s editors, Claire L. Evans and Brian Merchant as well as special guest Tim Maughan. He’s the author of the novel Infinite Detail and … the Terraform story Flyover Country.

Terraform’s stories are all about possible futures. Flyover Country is a window into one of those worlds. One that may seem unpleasantly familiar.

Terraform is out on August 16. Buy it here.

Stories discussed on this episode:

Flyover Country

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Last month, a hacker posted a trove of stolen documents online detailing the weird internal struggles of a little gaming company called Roblox. If you don’t know what Roblox is, just ask any child in America and they’ll explain it to you. The hacked documents contained fascinating insights into how gaming companies whose product depends on player freedom and creativity must navigate the treacherous waters of children, free speech, China, mass shootings, and content moderation. It’s a weird story where a child driven internet sandbox can lead to troubling and weird questions about genocide roleplay.

Today on Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox comes on to talk about the hack and what we learned from it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Hacker Posts Internal Roblox Employee Documents Online

Revealed: Documents Show How Roblox Planned to Bend to Chinese Censorship

Leaked Documents Reveal How Roblox Handles Grooming and Mass Shooting Simulators

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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A lot of stuff happened on the internet this week. Strange orbs fell from the sky and landed in Mexico. Thousands watched online as Nancy Pelosi’s plane slowly made its way to Taiwan. And the International Atomic Energy Agency called out Russia for making Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant a front in its war in Ukraine.

It’s a grab bag episode of Cyber and we’re gonna get into it all with Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Fighting Around Europe’s Largest Power Plant Is ‘Out of Control,’ UN’s Nuke Chief Warns

How Online Flight Trackers Have Helped People Follow Nancy Pelosi, Taylor Swift, and Russian Oligarchs’ Private Flights

Space Junk Crashing All Over the World, Upsetting Everyone

Mysterious Metallic Orb Falls on Mexico, May Contain ‘Valuable Information,’ Meteorologist Says

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Alex Jones, the slowly bloating Texan broadcaster, is currently on trial in Austin for peddling conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre. Jones has already lost—the trial will eventually set damages. 

Amid this, Jones’ companies are filing for bankruptcy and a new documentary about him is playing the festival circuit. He says this is all about the First Amendment. In a way, he’s right. Defamation cases are about the First Amendment. 

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Anna Merlan comes on to discuss all things Alex Jones. Merlan has written extensively about Jones and is following the trial for Motherboard.

Stories discussed in this episode:

As Damages Trial Begins, Alex Jones’ Lawyers Fight for His Financial Life

InfoWars Cannot Stop Covering Its Own Damages Trial

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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If you haven’t heard, there’s a hot new condiment on the market that’s gone viral on TikTok. It’s called Pink Sauce and it’s been at the center of several controversies over the past few weeks.

The sauce has been accused of making people sick, being a rip off of other condiments, and lying about its nutritional information. On this episode of Cyber we’re going to try to answer the question: why does everyone ok TikTok seem to care about this pepto-bismol colored goop?

With us today to talk all things Pink Sauce is Motherboard Intern and TikTok master Jules Roscoe.

Stories discussed in this episode:

‘They Accused Me of Poisoning the Nation:’ Chef Pii's Viral Pink Sauce Has Turned Into a TikTok Nightmare

Viral Pink Sauce Comes With Lengthy Terms and Conditions

Let Me Eat the TikTok 'Pink Sauce'

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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We don’t get a lot of feel good stories on Cyber. It’s often a podcast about hacking and tribulation. So we thought we’d do something a little different and tell the story of someone who fought back against abuse and won. Nicole Gililland is a former nursing student who began to experience discrimination when people at the nursing college she was attended began to dig into her past.

Gililland was just trying to get a nursing degree, but the faculty at Southwestern Oregon Community College decided she wasn’t fit because she’d formerly performed in porn. She sued. She won. A jury awarded her $1.7 million in damages and the precedent set could have far reaching consequences.

On this episode of Cyber, Gililland sits down with Motherboard senior editor Samantha Cole to talk about her case and her future.

Stories discussed in this episode:

How a Former Porn Performer Sued Her School for Discrimination—and Won

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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What do an iPad, the Department of Homeland Security, and heated seats in a BMW all have in common? Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox has written about all of them.

In this episode of Cyber, it’s a JC potpourri. First, how exactly does the Department of Homeland Security track phones across the country? Then we’ll get to the bottom of that viral story about BMW selling subscriptions to heated seats and what hackers might have to say about it. Finally, we’ll get to the bottom of JC’s new iPad situation and finally answer the question: why doesn’t he have a smartphone?

Stories discussed in this episode:

Documents Show DHS Tracks Smartphones Across the Country

Apple Killed My Precious iPod. Can an iPad Mini Be My New Everyday Messaging Device?

BMW Wants to Charge for Heated Seats. These Grey Market Hackers Will Fix That.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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The war in Ukraine isn’t just happening on the ground, it’s also happening in cyberspace. It’s under reported and little understood, but just as the resilience of Urkainian’s kinetic defense is grinding against Russia, so too is the war online.

Which is funny, because Russia is supposed to be good at this. At least … that’s what we all used to think. Hell, maybe it even used to be true. But now a team of volunteer hackers called the Ukraine IT Army is defending Kyiv and striking back against Moscow.

This week on Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Lorenzo Franchesci-Biccherai takes us into the Ukraine IT Army.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Inside Ukraine’s Decentralized Cyber Army

Russia Released a Ukrainian App for Hacking Russia That Was Actually Malware

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Let’s talk about that hot new topic screaming from the lips of Tech’s hottest billionaires: birth rates.

For some time, Elon Musk’s pinned tweet was about the declining birth rates in the United States. A man of conviction, Musk has sired at least ten children. Now Marc Andreesen of Andreessen Horowitz is in on the act. He recently went on Joe Rogan and had a wide ranging conversation that covered birth rates and eugenics.

So why are some of the richest people alive obsessed with the U.S. having more kids? On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Edward Ongweso Jr. comes on to talk about longtermism and America’s history of being weird about who gets to have kids.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Why Are Elon Musk and Marc Andreesen Obsessed With Birth Rates?

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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For years criminal organizations around the world were buying a special phone called Anom. The pitch was that it was completely anonymous and secure, a way for criminals to do business without authorities watching over their shoulder. 

It turned out that the whole thing was an elaborate honeypot and that the FBI and law enforcement agencies around the world were listening in. They’d help develop the phones themselves.

The fallout from that revelation is ongoing and, here at Motherboard, we’ve just learned how the phones work. On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Joseph Cox comes on to discuss the code that powered the Anom phone.

Stories discussed in this episode:

This is the Code the FBI Used to Wiretap the World

We Got the Phone the FBI Secretly Sold to Criminals

FBI's Backdoored Anom Phones Secretly Harvested GPS Data Around the World

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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You can’t scroll 1 inch on the internet these days without someone trying to sell you something. Facebook and Google rake in millions of dollars on advertising alone. When we talk about Ad Tech, those are the names that move through our mind. Not many people think about Disney. But they should.

On today’s Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox comes on to talk about how Disney became a big player in the digital world of advertising. We begin with a set of surreal videos that use the Muppets and Star Wars to talk directly to advertisers. 

Want to hear Muppets extol the virtues of targeted advertising? Stick around.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Leaked Videos Show Disney Is the Biggest Ad Tech Giant You've Never Heard Of

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that will have far reaching consequences about the power of the federal government to fight climate change. How did the landmark ruling even end up in front of the Justices, why did they decide to rule on it, and what will the consequences be for the environment and the country?

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Aaron Gordon sits down to answer all these questions and do more than a little ranting.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Supreme Court Kneecaps Federal Government’s Ability to Fight Climate Change

Democrats Are Not Going to 'Vote Harder,' Primaries Show

Here's What America Looked Like Before the EPA

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, upsetting decades of precedent and ushering in a weird new world of conflicting laws and a lack of bodily autonomy for many women in the country. 

It’s a decision that will affect life in the U.S. in ways we’re only starting to comprehend. This week on Cyber we’re going to look at one small piece of all this: tech, data, and censorship. 

With me today is Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole. She’s been working on a number of stories about period tracking apps and data and she’s here to walk us through how the Roe decision is not just a blow against bodily autonomy, but also against privacy.

Stories in this episode:

The #1 Period Tracker on the App Store Will Hand Over Data Without a Warrant

Here’s What Period Tracking Apps Say They Do With Your Data

Tech Companies Won't Say If They’ll Give Cops Abortion Data

Facebook Is Banning People Who Say They Will Mail Abortion Pills

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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What do landlords talk about behind closed doors, among other landlords? Motherboard staff writer and Cyber host Matthew Gault attended in St. Louis recently. Landlords traded gossip, talked about raising rents, and tried to sell each on books and online classes. Outside of the convention, rents hit record medians, the COVID moratorium is ending, and a lot of tenants simply can’t afford to put a roof over their head.

On this week’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler interviews Matthew about what it’s like to attend the 21st Annual Mr. Landlord.com National Landlord Convention.

Stories discussed on this episode:

Among the Landlords

Where People Pretend to Be 'Landchads' and Make Fun of 'Rentoids'

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Reply guys. Maybe you’ve got one, maybe you are one. If you’re a public person online, and especially if you’re a woman, you tend to attract a few fans or detractors who respond to every single thing you post. Sometimes those interactions can be obnoxious. Sometimes, they can be so much worse.

Today’s Cyber is about a reply guy from hell, a person who—for almost two decades—has used the internet to wage sustained harassment campaigns against multiple women. It’s a bizarre and disturbing story that involves Twitter DMs, revenge porn, and Animal Crossing.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Anna Merlan walks us through the story of the man who has been harassing women online for almost 20 years.

Stories discussed on this episode:

These Women Say One Man Terrorized Them Online for Years. Then, They Decided to Band Together

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Artificial intelligence. It’s in your headlines and on your social media feed. AIs like Midjourney and DALL-E have filled my Twitter feed with algorithmically generated nightmare images of Tony Soprano as a Roman Emperor and Bigbird participating in the January 6 riots.

At the same time, the press has become enamored with the story of Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer who the company let go after Lemoine insisted the LaMDA chatbot was sentient. Are we at the beginning of the AI apocalypse? Have our machines finally become sentient?

Simply: no. And conversations about AI outpacing human artists and chatbots becoming sentient are part of a tired news cycle around AI. They also mask the actual dangers of the technology we should be watching out for.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose walks us through the real and imagined terrors of Artificial Intelligence.

Stories discussed on this week’s episode:

Technologists Are Using AI to ‘Expand’ Famous Works of Art

Google's AI Isn’t Sentient, But It Is Biased and Terrible

The AI That Draws What You Type Is Very Racist, Shocking No One

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Crypto is the wild west. Decentralized finance is the purview of the rich and the risk-taker. There’s millions to be had, but it’s easy—often too easy—to lose everything. If you read Motherboard you know that big and wild hacks are common. Maiar went offline recently after hackers stole $113 million from it. The Osmosis exchange just lost $5 million to hackers. And those are just the stories Motherboard reported on this week.

If you’re an investor, an exchange, or a private holder, who do you turn to when your crypto is being stolen? The authorities are so far behind it’s funny. No, remember, this is the wild west. Sometimes the only thing that can handle a black hat is a white hat.

Today we’re gonna meet one of the vigilante white hat hackers who saves crypto from thieves… by stealing it before they can.

With me today is Motherboard Senior Staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, who wrote about the phenomenon on the site and LP, one of the white hats who hacks millions in crypto before thieves can get to it.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Meet the Vigilantes Who Hack Millions in Crypto to Save It From Thieves

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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The future is here, if you can pay for it. From NFTs, to web3, to virtual worlds, it seems like everyone has a pitch about what the future looks like and how we get there. For those involved, it’s a frenzied world of big money and massive opportunity. From the outside looking in, a lot of it looks like a massive scam.

When I was a kid, the future meant flying cars and virtual worlds of our own creation. Now people are telling me it means clunky headsets, pictures of cartoon apes, and decentralized platforms that make absolutely no sense but will make those involved filthy rich.

What the hell is going on?

With me today is Motherboard managing editor Jordan Pearson and special guest Jackson Palmer. Palmer is perhaps most famous for creating the Doge coin, but he’s also a musician, programer, and host of the new show Griftonomics.

Griftonomics is available in iTunes and YouTube.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Discord. The popular chat app was once the humble home of gamers who were tired of paying for Ventrilo and Teamspeak servers. Now, it’s so much more. The crypto people have come and it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere.

From the Bored Ape Yacht Club to the next alt-coin with no backing, any project related to the blockchain probably has a space on Discord. But Discord was never built to be a place where people gathered together to manifest complex financial schemes and, because of that, it’s rife with scammers, grifters, and hackers. 

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai walks us through the perils of using Discord as a financial chat app.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Discord Is the World’s Most Important Financial Messenger, and a Hotbed for Scammers

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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In 2018, the Camp Fire swept through California. It was the deadliest in the state’s history, destroying more than 18,000 buildings and killing 85 people. The town of Paradise all but burned to the ground at the time. Four years later, Paradise is in the midst of a housing boom. New homes are everywhere as people, some of them who lost their homes in the Camp Fire, return to the region.

There’s no guarantee that another fire won’t sweep through the region. So why are people flocking to the area?

On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Aaron Gordon sits down to talk about what’s going on in Paradise.. Gordon is newly back from California where he chased some dogs through some forests and talked to a few of the town’s residents.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Paradise Burned to the Ground. Now It’s Another Hot Housing Market

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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On May 24, several news outlets reported on the internal workings of a Chinese run Uyghur internment camp in Xinjiang. The reports included detailed blueprints of the camp’s interiors, classified speeches from officials, and the personal information of police officers.

An anonymous source hacked the information and got it out of China and into the hands of journalists. It’s part of a recent trend in resurgent hacktivism. 

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox walks us through the recent hack and what it’s like when journalists work with hackers.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Hacker Leaks Mountain of Files From Inside Xinjiang Camps

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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The atom. For a few brief years in the middle of the 20th century, America and the world was cowed by the awesome possibility and terrifying reality of nuclear energy. Nuclear power had the potential to revolutionize the world but nuclear bombs could destroy it. But still … for a brief moment it seemed like nuclear energy would save the world. Then came Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and The China Syndrome. America fell out of love with nuclear energy.

That might be changing. Climate change and scientific advances might just be the shot in the arm the flagging nuclear energy industry needs. But did the dangers actually go away?

That’s the subject of the excellent podcast Wild Thing. Its third season is all about the shifting landscape of nuclear energy. It’s comprehensive, excellent, and it’s produced and hosted by former NPR editor Laura Krantz. 

On this episode of Cyber, Krantz sits down with Matthew to discuss Going Nuclear.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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The image is now iconic. An arctic wolf fursona in a Starbucks smock. Stance set wide. A sign in his hand held high that reads “UNION YES!”

This was Michael Vestigo dressed in his Fursona as Apollo, a former Starbucks employee in Overland Park, Kansas. Why former? The company fired him for “displaying violent and threatening behavior” after he participated in a walkout of his location as part of a unionization effort.

Vestigo is fighting to get his job back and he’s not the only person Starbucks has retaliated against for trying to form a union. As Apollo, he’s become a symbol of a movement that’s sweeping the country. 

Apollo joined us on today’s episode of Cyber to answer your burning questions about Unions and Starbucks.

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This bonus episode of Cyber is sponsored by Command Line Heroes. If you like Cyber, you’re going to like Command Line Heroes. It’s an original podcast from Red Hat where listeners hear epic true tales of how developers, programmers, hackers, geeks, and open source rebels are revolutionizing the technology landscape.

It’s an award winning show that’s been running for nine seasons. Every season has a theme and season 9 is all about the dark side of programming. Botnets, logic bombs, and—of course—ransomware. If you’ve ever wanted to know about the origins of some of the things you hate most on the internet, this season of Command Line Heroes has you covered.

With Matthew on this show are Command Line Heroes producers Kim Huang and Johan Philippine.

Command Line Heroes Is Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Some days I think that maybe we’re not all gonna make it. It’s been a bad week for cryptocurrency and, as of this recording, it’s only Tuesday. Bitcoin is down. Ethereum down. Stablecoin seems not so stable. The NFT market is on fire. There’s copium all around, panicked posters, and soothing souls advising everyone to buy the dip.

But won’t that just exacerbate the problem? Won’t that just delay what people outside the crypto space have been waiting to see happen: the great crypto crash.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Managing Editor Jordan Perason is here to answer all our burning crypto questions.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Facebook’s biggest strength is quickly becoming its largest headache. For years, Facebook has survived by tracking every little thing its users do and selling that on to everyone. But now a slew of regulations across the globe are looking to crack down on the social media site and, according to leaked documents, Facebook has no idea how to get compliant. Worse, the social media giant has no idea where any given piece of data goes once it enters its ecosystem.

On this episode of Cyber, we sit down with Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai to talk about the regulation “tsunami” facing the social media site.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked Document

Lawmakers Call For Better Facebook User Data Oversight

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Your data is valuable. Everything you do online and everywhere you go with your phone is tracked. And there’s a robust market for that data, a market that lets governments and private individuals purchase reams of your personal data. 

What if the CDC wanted to track people’s phones to see if they’re obeying Covid-19 lockdown orders? They can do that. 

What about a private individual paying to track the whereabouts of groups of people who visited Planned Parenthood? Also possible.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Joseph Cox comes on to discuss SafeGraph and the data it’s selling to anyone who is willing to pay.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Data Broker Is Selling Location Data of People Who Visit Abortion Clinics

CDC Tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders

How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps

Leaked Location Data Shows Another Muslim Prayer App Tracking Users

Google Bans Location Data Firm Funded by Former Saudi Intelligence Head

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Elon Musk’s attempts to buy Twitter have sent ripples through the social media platform. There is a story here about panic, the limited reach of social media, and the increasingly fuzzy nature of the private/ public space … but I think all that is a surface level analysis. For me, the more interesting story is the corporate what lies just underneath.

You see, Musk is the richest man not because he invented anything wonderful and world changing. No, he’s rich because he’s good at making money. He’s a businessman first and foremost. Through that lens, the story of the Twitter acquisition becomes one of shitposts and SEC filings, a bizarre fight between tech titans, a rehashing of old corporate techniques like “poison pills” and “hostile takeovers.”

On this episode of Cyber, we sit down with Motherboard features writer and editor Maxwell Strachan. He’s here to answer all your burning questions about Musk’s attempted Twitter takeover.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Twitter Loses Elon Musk the Board Member, Regains Elon Musk the Shitposter

Twitter and Elon Musk Are Now at War

We Spoke to an Old-School Corporate Raider About Elon Musk and Twitter

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Drones are here to stay. The U.S. Military may have pioneered the art of using drones in a war zone, but America’s cops are pushing the tech on the homefront. From the Boston Dynamics dogs taking temperatures in Hawaii to quadcopters patrolling the skies, the cops are very interested in drone tech.

One of the big companies in the field is Skydio. It advertises itself directly to police officers and has cultivated relationships with departments across the country. This week on Cyber, host Matthew Gault and Motherboard Editor-in-Chief Jason Koebler discuss the close relationship between Skydio and America’s police.

Stories discussed in this episode:

When Police Do Marketing for Surveillance Tech Companies

World’s Richest Man Gets What He Wanted (Elon Musk Becomes King Shit of Turd Mountain)

Everything You Need to Know About Ring, Amazon’s Surveillance Camera Company

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Are you using two-factor authentication for all your accounts? Do you have Apple Pay or another service hooked up to a bank card? Well, so do criminals. 

It’s the growth of a scheme Cyber first reported on about six months ago. Thanks to bots that help criminals trick you into giving up your 2FA codes, they're now able to set up links between Apple Pay bank cards. It’s shockingly easy to do and, bizarrely, shockingly hard to stop.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox walks us through how criminals are circumventing 2FA and using Apple Pay to go on spending sprees.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Criminals Abuse Apple Pay in Spending Sprees

The Booming Underground Market for Bots That Steal Your 2FA Codes

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Trains, trains, trains. You might not think of them very often but they make America run. Getting stuff from point A to Point B is more than a full time job. Our world runs on logistical supply chains that are supported, in large part, by freight trains.

But what happens if the people doing those jobs don’t get much sleep? What happens when the company running the trains implements systems that deprive its already weary workforce of much needed Zs?

This week on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Aaron Gordon is here to answer all those questions. 

Stories discussed in this episode:

‘The Worst and Most Egregious Attendance Policy’ Is Pushing Railroad Workers to the Brink

Amtrak Is Streaming an Empty Railroad on Twitch to Beef With Freight Rail Companies

‘What Choice Do I Have?’ Freight Train Conductors Are Forced to Work Tired, Sick, and Stressed

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Every week we publish multiple incredible stories on Motherboard. This week there were so many that we couldn’t decide which one we wanted to focus on. So. We’re gonna do something a little different for this episode.

That’s right, we’re going full Cipher. If you’re familiar with the show, Cipher is that infrequent segment we do where we decipher the week’s biggest tech stories. On this episode of Cyber we answer the questions: Is it illegal to run a private Club Penguin server? How is T-Mobile dealing with hackers? And why can’t I get on to the Raid Forums and what happens if you make an illegal trip to North Korea to spread the gospel of the Blockchain.

Here to help sort through these headlines is the man who wrote many of them: Motherboard Staff Writer Joseph Cox.

Stories discussed in this episode:

Cops Arrest 3 People for Running ‘Club Penguin Rewritten’ Beloved by Millions

Law Enforcement Seizes RaidForums, One of the Most Important Hacking Sites

T-Mobile Secretly Bought Its Customer Data from Hackers to Stop Leak. It Failed.

US Extradites Man Who Allegedly Sold Backdoored Phones for the FBI

Ethereum Programmer Jailed for North Korea Trip Wanted to Clone Dogs, Become ‘Crypto Hero’

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Police records reviewed by Motherboard show that, as security experts immediately predicted when the product launched, this technology has been used as a tool to stalk and harass women.

Of the 150 total police reports mentioning AirTags, in 50 cases women called the police because they started getting notifications that their whereabouts were being tracked by an AirTag they didn’t own. Of those, 25 could identify a man in their lives—ex-partners, husbands, bosses—who they strongly suspected planted the AirTags on their cars in order to follow and harass them. Those women reported that current and former intimate partners—the most likely people to harm women overall—are using AirTags to stalk and harass them.

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Close your eyes. Imagine it's 2010. You’ve just learned about something called Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency. You spend $50 and get 50 of the coins, thinking the whole thing is funny. Cut to 2022. What you spent around 50 bucks on in 2010 is now worth 2 million dollars.

There’s just one problem. You need a password to access that 2 million and 2010 was a long time ago. It’s a problem plaguing the world of cryptocurrency: an epidemic of millionaires unable to access their cash. But there are options.

To deal with the problem, a cottage industry of asset recovery specialists has emerged. One is Crypto Asset Recovery, a startup run by a father-son team in New Hampshire.

They are Chris and Charlie Brooks and they are here with me today to talk about the business of breaking in.

Chris and Charlie also appeared on an episode of Motherboard’s TV show Cryptoland, which you can stream at YouTube.com/motherboard.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week.  Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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For many, playing video games for a living is a dream come true. Whether you’re streaming on Twitch or doing speedruns for charity, there are viable ways to earn a living playing video games. But get NFTs and the blockchain in the mix and, well, you’ve got a whole different system.

Today we’re gonna talk about Axie Infinity, the most popular of the so-called ‘play-to-earn’ games. The promise of Axie and others is that you can earn money simply by playing the game. But how much? Is Axie fun? How easy is it to cash out? And wait … this game has bosses and managers? What the hell is going on?

This week on Cyber, Motherboard Staff Writer Edward Ongweso Jr. is here to help us untangle this hellishly complicated nightmare of “play-to-earn” gaming. His latest on the site is “The Metaverse Has Bosses Too. Meet the ‘Managers’ of Axie Infinity.”

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We’ve got a special presentation on the show for you today, an interview with Yuliana Shemetovets, the spokesperson for a group of ethical hackers going to war with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. They’re called the Cyber Partisans and they’re responsible for hacks against the Lukashenko regime.

Lukashenko is a die-hard Putin ally who has been in charge of Belarus since 1994. In that time, the country has become more unstable. Protestors have disappeared from the streets and Belarus has allowed Russian troops to move through the country to strike at Ukraine.

The Cyber Partisans have worked behind the scenes to disrupt Lukashenko’s regime. They’ve hacked the Belarusian railway system, which still runs on Windows XP, and obtained phone calls between government officials.

You’ll hear a little untranslated Belarussian in this episode. I only want to highlight one bit that I think is important. When Shemetovets is talking about acquiring phone calls, we’ll play the raw audio of Belarussian government officials talking. What you’re hearing is someone bragging about beating up a protestor.

“I open the…car door, and pull this [woman] by her hair. I kicked her, and told the riot police to..and that bitch started screaming.”

The translated audio has quite a few more explivites in it.

This is an on-camera interview that first aired on VICE News as an episode of SuperUsers. It was produced by Louise McLoughlin and Cal Bateman.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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There are thousands of people still trapped in Ukraine and trying to flee. Millions are internally displaced and many are crossing the Polish border and finding refuge. But, for foreign students stuck in Ukraine, it can be much much more difficult to leave. A war zone is a terrible place to be no matter who you are, but these foreign students are facing unprecedented challenges. Thankfully, there are people trying to help.

That’s the subject of the Motherboard story “Inside the OSINT Operation to Get Foreign Students Out of Ukraine.” It was written by Sebastian Skov Andersen and Gabriel Geiger. One of the OSINT organizers is Chris Kubecka. On Cyber this week, all three are here to discuss the operation and the ongoing struggles of foreign nationals trying to flee a war zone.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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Stories of the death of religion in America are overblown. If you’re in the right part of the country, there are vibrant Christian communities developing apps, working in Christian-startups, and spreading their faith on Instagram and YouTube. There is a whole community and culture just outside of the mainstream using tech in all sorts of wild and interesting ways.

This week on Cyber, we explore the weird world of evangelical tech with Corrina Laughlin. She is a professor of media studies at Loyola Marymount University and author of the book Redeem All: How Digital Life is Changing Evangelical Culture.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

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It started with SIM swapping and escalated into hacks of Okta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and EA. They’re LAPSUS$, a hacking collective that’s been the boogeyman of big corporations for the past few years. People have wondered about their motivations and identities.

Now, seven of them have been arrested. They’re mostly teenagers who used unsophisticated methods to get the better of some of the world’s most powerful companies.

On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox walks us through what happened. It’s the subject of his story “LAPSUS$: How a Sloppy Extortion Gang Became One of the Most Prolific Hacking Groups.”

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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

We all type it. Some of us say it. Three little letters. L O L. Whether you’re laughing out loud or softening the blow of bad news, it’s so ubiquitous in the English speaking world that it’s almost become punctuation. But where did it come from and does it have a strict definition?

If you know anything about linguistics, you may already know the answers to those questions. Motherboard senior staff writer Shayla Love knows. She’s here today to talk about the origins of the phrase that’s part of our online world. It’s the subject of her new piece: “Why We Use ‘lol’ So Much.”

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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

The internet encourages the best and absolute worst of human behavior. Online led hate campaigns and conspiracy theories are often more than just frivolous distractions. They can ruin lives. In the U.S., I think the Gamergate movement from 2015 and 2016 opened a lot of people’s eyes to what was brewing under the surface of some of the darker places online. If Gamergate didn’t, then Qanon certainly did. But, across the Pacific Ocean, the people of Korea had a pretty good idea of how the internet can destroy lives long before it became a topic of think pieces in America.

That is the subject of the excellent Podcast, Authentic, a new show from VICE that focuses on the life of the Korean rapper Tablo and how the internet turned it upside down. With us today is its host and producer, Dexter Thomas. 

Authentic is available on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio and pretty much every other podcast platform.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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

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

Amazon. The company none of us can seem to get away from. Whether you’re a Prime member or just surfing the web on sites hosted by AWS, the company is inescapable. But it’s worse when you work for them. Especially if you’re an independent contractor running delivery vans. It’s a job where crushing debt, sudden shifts in policy, and impossible demands are the norm. 

These Amazon Delivery Service Partners, or DSPs, are key to Amazon's dominant position, and the way many people are able to get what they order from the company so quickly, the next day or even within hours. But as Amazon gets unimaginably rich, some of these small companies are going bankrupt and leaving owners in crushing debt.

EMBED

This week on CYBER, Motherboard Senior Staff writer Lauren Kaori Gurley walks us through her piece ‘‘I Had Nothing to My Name’: Amazon Delivery Companies Are Being Crushed by Debt.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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

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

There are a lot of companies out there willing to sell shady customers the tools they need to spy on just about anyone. All over the world software vendors like Hacking Team and NSO Group will help you break into a cellphone or read an email you’re not supposed to. But that might soon be changing.

On this episode of Cyber, Motherboard senior staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai joins host Matthew Gault to talk about spyware vendors. It’s the subject of Lorenzo’s new piece, “The US Crackdown on Spyware Vendors Is Only Beginning.”

After a brief break, Gault and Franceschi-Bicchierai discuss the war in Ukraine. It’s a wide ranging conversation about the digital battleground. As of this recording, Russian Government Websites are Down and the world is discussing whether it's feasible and effective to prevent Russia from updating its software. Gault also talks about how a college professor used Google Maps traffic data to figure out the war had started before news had even broken.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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

The internet has created an explosion in audio and video captured from the frontlines of war zones. As Russia escalates the conflict in Ukraine, it’s also pushing propaganda harder than ever. But there’s so much information available online, and so many people willing to call bullshit on propaganda, that it’s hard to make a believable video that justifies a war these days.

That hasn’t stopped Russia from trying.

On today’s episode of Cyber, Motherboard journalist Matthew Gault sits down with Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler to discuss the community of people online who are debunking Russian disinformation in real time. It’s a wide ranging conversation that goes from incredible memes to ethical considerations and a brief remembering of the Boston Marathon Bombing.

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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