with @rvenkayya @jorgecondebio @smc90 As with all of the episodes on this show about tech & science trends in the news, and where they are on the long arc of innovation -- this one is actually a story of human ingenuity over 100 years in the making, with the ultimate breakthrough in a malaria vaccine just last year. How is fighting a parasite vs a virus different?

Welcome to 16 Minutes, our podcast where we discuss tech trends in the news and their impact on the long arc of innovation. Today’s topic is crypto regulation, and specifically, two recent federal government hearings in the news that were focused on crypto and therefore the related trend of web3. In contrast to the model of web2 — typified by very broadly used but also very centralized platforms run by corporations — web3 refers to the idea of a new internet enabled by crypto that is owned by...

Welcome to 16 Minutes, our show on the a16z podcast network where we talk about tech trends that are dominating news headlines, industry buzz, and where we are on the long arc of innovation. Today’s episode actually features a look back at the GameStop saga — the stock market drama that some headlines described as a “David-and-Goliath battle” that quote “upended Wall Street.” For quick basic context, here’s what happened: A group of Reddit users mass-purchased and drove up prices of stock...

Welcome to 16 Minutes, our show where we talk about tech trends in the news. We have two segments today: 1) The announcement recently that Valve Software, which operates the massive gaming platform Steam, added a rule against games that use blockchain technologies or that allow users to exchange cryptocurrencies or NFTs – this rule appeared on its “What you shouldn’t publish on Steam” onboarding list for developers. We go beyond the players to the trends at play here, putting the news in...

In today’s episode we have two short segments, both on bioscience topics: [0:00] Moderna has started clinical trials for a flu vaccine, called mRNA-1010, that is based on the same mRNA technology that Moderna and Pfizer used for their COVID vaccines, and that several other companies including Sanofi and Glaxo all are actively working on for the influenza use case. Our experts are general partners Vineeta Agarwala and Jorge Conde of the a16z bio team, who have joined us on many of our...

with @jorgecondebio @vijaypande @smc90 Given recent news of drug company settlements, policy moves, and more, this episode is a rerun of one of our early explainers on the opioid crisis -- how do opioids work; who's to blame; and where does (and doesn't) tech come in?

Welcome to 16 Minutes, the a16z show where we talk about tech trends in the news, what’s hype and what’s real, and the long arc of innovation. In today's episode we’re talking about the latest developments and trends in cybercrime – including the trends of ransomware, and, attacks on physical infrastructure. First (0:00 - 6:07), we have the recent attack on the meat processing plant JBS, the largest meat processor in the world; just last week it had to temporarily shut down some operations...

with @martin_casado @smc90 Given recent news and discussions around the Endless Frontiers Act, we re-released this episode about that and innovation funding/ R&D

with @jorgecondebio @rvenkayya @smc90 In this special 2x explainer episode, we dig into what's hype/ what's real about news of a breakthrough malaria vaccine candidate, beyond the headlines and beyond the buzz: data, science, tech, innovation.

In this week’s episode of 16 Minutes, our show where we cover tech trends in the news — and also cover themes from company developer and innovation events! — we focus on the latest coming out of Apple’s event this week. The company announced a bunch of things, ranging from new device colors and form factors to podcast services, but in this episode we asked regular guest Steven Sinofsky (an a16z board partner and former Microsoft Windows president who has appeared on past event episodes...

We have two brief segments in today’s episode: News and analysis of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine pause, and the widespread hack of Microsoft Exchange Servers across the country (and the dramatic and unusual steps the FBI took in response). Johnson & Johnson: Federal health officials last week revealed that six women who received the vaccine had developed rare and severe blood clots in their brain, in one case fatally. Even more recently, a panel of expert advisors to the...

with @ljxie @jessewldn @smc90 This deep-dive (one of our 3-4X explainer episodes here) teases apart what's hype/ what's real and the what, where, how, why, who -- answering questions top of mind around all things NFTs.

Today on our news analysis show 16 Minutes — since this show is all about teasing apart what’s hype/ what’s real and where we are on the long arc of innovation — we're taking a quick pulse-check with the experts on just where we are with the COVID vaccine rollout in the U.S.  Our experts today are Dr. Bob Wachter, the Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF — he has come to additional prominence during the pandemic as a regular public resource, providing daily updates & reports on...

In today's episode of our news analysis show 16 Minutes, our topic is the ongoing buzz and the mixed news around the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was the third vaccine for COVID approved under Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA just a few weeks ago. Johnson & Johnson reported it as “the first single shot vaccine” and as having 85% efficacy in preventing severe disease across regions studied; meanwhile, STAT headlines reported 66% efficacy overall and 72% in the U.S. in...

In this week’s episode of 16 Minutes, our show where we talk about tech trends in the news, what’s hype/ what’s real, and where we are on the long arc of innovation, the topic is semiconductors – specifically, the ongoing global shortage that began last summer and has intensified in recent weeks. So much so, that the U.S. president signed an executive order just last week to address concerns around the shortage, calling for reviews of supply chains for critical sectors of the economy. Our...

In this week’s episode of 16 Minutes — where we talk about tech trends in the news, what’s hype/ what’s real, and where we are on the long arc of innovation — the topic is NFTs ("non-fungible tokens"); specifically, the news that Christie’s has become the first major auction house to offer a purely digital artwork tied to an NFT or “non-fungible token." We’ll go more into NFTs (as well as whether this is really a big deal or not) in this episode, but here’s the news context: The work of art...

We have two brief segments — taking up less than 16 Minutes! — in this week’s episode of "16 Minutes," where we talk about tech trends in the news, what’s hype/what’s real, and where we are on the long arc of innovation. Both segments touch on trends in gaming/ online worlds and entertainment — both now and "next."  First, Steam China: Steam — the cloud library and marketplace for buying, selling, and storing games that was launched by Valve in 2003 and is now the largest distribution...

with @martin_casado @zoranbasich @smc90 Amazon just announced that its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos will transition to the role of Executive Chair and that CEO of Amazon Web Services Andy Jassy will become CEO. So in this episode of 16 Minutes, we talk not just about this news, but what it signals regarding cloud computing as well as CEO transitions in general. Especially given other recent cases and more.

with @stevenadair joeldelagarza @smc90 In this special “3x”-long episode of our (otherwise shortform) news analysis show 16 Minutes, we cover the SolarWinds hack, one of the largest known hacks of all time... and the ripple effects are only now starting to be revealed, especially given latest news reports from the U.S. government. What actually happened, when does the timeline really begin? We help cut through the headline fatigue of it in this "anatomy of a hack" teardown -- the who, what,...

We've got segments on artificial intelligence and IPO innovation in today's episode of 16 Minutes, where we take a look at the news and what it means for the long arc of innovation. In the first segment (0:00): Take the surrealistic images of Salvador Dali and cross them with Pixar's animated film Wall-E and you've got ... Dall-E! It's a new neural network that creates images based on text inputs, and the worlds of A.I. and machine learning recently got their first glimpse. Last summer,...

Given recent news and events, we re-released this episode all about section 230 of the Communications Decency Act

We're covering two trends in this week’s episode of "16 Minutes," where we talk about the news, tech trends, and the long arc of innovation:  #1 FinCEN, the Treasury Department's financial crimes enforcement arm, proposed a new rule targeting cryptocurrency holders’ ability to transact using self-hosted wallets. These are software applications for storing crypto that allow people to transact on the blockchain directly, rather than going through financial institutions. The rule would require...

with Joel de la Garza @smc90 @ali01 @zoranbasich This week, we cover (1) the news that broke very recently about how hackers spied on U.S. Treasury emails and other federal agencies; and (2) that the first of several planned upgrades to Ethereum 2.0 recently went live and why it matters for scaling, security, and applications like DeFi and more.

with @vijaypande @smc90 We cover the news around Google DeepMind's AlphaFold system outperforming all others in the 14th biennial CASP challenge, which tracks progress, key metrics, and state-of-the-art on predictive techniques for 3-D protein folding. Structure is function in biology, and this is one of the grand challenges in biology. So is it really solved? Will it really revolutionize drug discovery? What's hype/ what's real when it comes to the buzz here; what are other applications;...