Episodes
This week we’re talking about the recent wave of tech layoffs, and React Eurasia’s controversial decision to locate this year's conference in Dubai. Then we speak with Steven Spohn, senior director of development at The AbleGamers Charity Foundation about Diablo Immortal’s native voice chat transcription and speech-to-text accessibility feature, and where we are in terms of accessible design in the video game industry as a whole. Finally, we speak with Jeri Ellsworth, co-founder and CEO of...
Published 06/09/22
Published 06/09/22
In this episode, we talk about Salesforce employees calling for an end of the company working with the National Rifle Association. Then we speak with Zeyi Yang, reporter at the MIT Technology Review about a recent piece he wrote titled, "How censoring China’s open-source coders might backfire." Finally, we speak with Sarah Fossheim, independent accessibility engineer and creator and maintainer of the Ethical Design guide, about the new accessibility features Apple is bringing to its products.
Published 06/02/22
In this episode, we speak with Tara Robertson, a diversity and inclusion consultant about some of the ways the tech industry has continued to fail when it comes to DEI, which is a topic spurred by a recent piece in the New York Times titled, At Wells Fargo, a Quest to Increase Diversity Leads to Fake Job Interviews. Then we speak with Stefan Marr, researcher and Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent’s School of Computing about Shopify’s investment into Ruby at Scale, and the research he...
Published 05/26/22
This week, we feature one of our favorite episodes of our sister podcast, DevDiscuss, where hosts Ben Halpern and Julianna Tetreault talk about creating beautiful data-driven essays with Michelle McGhee and Russell Goldenberg, Journalist-Engineers at The Pudding.
Published 05/19/22
In this episode, we talk about Apple's gatekeeping of web-based AR on the iPhone, a neat feature added to Apple Mail that blocks email tracking, and we say goodbye to the iPod. Then we talk about Apple, Google, and Microsoft’s plan to implement passwordless sign-in on all major platforms with Jackie Singh, former senior incident response and threat analyst at Biden For President, who currently is the director of an anti-surveillance nonprofit, which advocates and litigates against government...
Published 05/12/22
In this episode, we talk about Lego expanding its online ambitions and its plans to triple the number of software engineers on staff. Then we’ll speak with Joseph Menn, author of the book, Cult of the Dead Cow, and technology reporter at The Washington Post, about a piece he wrote titled, “Hacking Russia was off-limits. The Ukraine war made it a free-for-all.” Finally, we’ll speak with Jen Caltrider, who leads Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included guide, about their research which found that the...
Published 05/04/22
In this episode, we talk about Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and the Twitter storm it created, especially amongst Twitter employees. Then we speak with Dipanjan Das, system security researcher at UC Santa Barbara, about various large scale hacks in the blockchain space, and how companies and individuals can better protect themselves in the growing Web3 space. Finally, we speak with senior software engineer and popular Tiktoker feleciaforthewin, about how she experimented with the TikTok...
Published 04/28/22
In this episode, we talk about how a developer irreversibly lost a community of 54-thousand stars and watchers built up over the past 10 years on GitHub, and how unregulated crypto-mining wrecked the power of an entire New York town. Then we speak with Vidushi Marda, senior program officer at Article 19, where she leads the research and engagement on the human rights implications of machine learning, to get her perspective on the Artificial Intelligence regulations and systems different...
Published 04/21/22
In this episode, we talk about Elon Musk buying the largest share of Twitter and then flip flopping on being on the board. Then we speak with Alex Lebedev, software engineer at HotJar, about his experience living in Ukraine under the horrific conditions of its war with Russia, and about his blog post titled, “Coding Under Bombing.”
Published 04/14/22
In this episode, we talk about various ways in which big tech has lent a hand to Ukraine in their war with Russia. Then we talk about Russian disinformation efforts with Dr. Jeffery Blevins, professor in the Journalism Department at the University of Cincinnati and co-author of the book, Social Media, Social Justice and the Political Economy of Online Networks. Then we talk about leaked IBM documents that show the company’s persistent ageism problem with Peter Gosselin, former investigative...
Published 03/03/22
In this episode, we talk about another major hack on Ukraine, a report from Google’s Project Zero about which tech vendors are the fastest at fixing security bugs, and we also chat about injecting old computers with Chrome OS Flex. Then we speak with Pariss Athena, founder and CEO of Black Tech Pipeline about the challenges that tech recruiters are having in the current job landscape. And finally, we speak with Dr. Calvin Roberts, president and CEO of Lighthouse Guild International and...
Published 02/24/22
In this episode, we talk about Google’s move to get your mobile apps to stream on their other devices. Then we speak with Aunshul Rege, associate professor with the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University, about the rise of online dating scams and the incredible amounts of money people get swindled out of. Then we speak with Billy Perrigo, Staff Writer for TIME, about his piece titled, "Inside Facebook's African Sweatshop."
Published 02/17/22
In this episode, we talk about some hardware and some software that might be of interest to you, and DeepMind’s claims that their AI coding engine is on par with your average human developer. Then we speak with Giulia Gentile, fellow in law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, about Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation and a ruling by a German court saying that it found "no legitimate interest for using Google Fonts on its websites," and the legal precedent that it...
Published 02/10/22
In this episode, we talk about The New York Time’s Wordle acquisition, and Apple App Stores new unlisted apps option. Then we speak with Hector Monsegur, director of research at Alacrinet and former black hat hacker about what a cyberwar between Russia and Ukraine would look like and what its effects could be. Finally, we speak with Jamshid Hashimi, founder of CodeWeekend, a coding bootcamp that is still providing education and hope within the chaos caused by the US pullout from Afghanistan...
Published 02/03/22
This week we talk about Twitter NFT profile pictures and some stories about US government versus big tech. Then we speak with Ellen Fitzsimmons-Craft, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, about a research paper she co-authored about how the use of chatbots could help prevent and mitigate eating disorders. Then we speak with Maroš Brojo, general manager at Slovak Game Developers Association, about a wealth of unearthed slavic text...
Published 01/27/22
In this episode, we talk about Walmart’s plans to get into NFTs and cryptocurrency, telecom operators starting to block Apple’s iCloud Private Relay, and an attack of the Wordle clones. Then we speak with Valentin Vasilyev, co-Founder and CTO at FingerprintJS, whose team spotted a vulnerability in Safari 15’s IndexedDB API.
Published 01/20/22
In this episode, we talk about a developer who broke around 19-thousand projects by intentionally corrupting his own open source libraries, and how iMessage won in the smartphone battle for favor amongst Gen Z. Then we speak with Dr. Merav Ozair, Leading Blockchain expert and FinTech Professor at Rutgers Business School, about NFTs and the turbulent removal of the founders of the Pudgy Penguins project.
Published 01/13/22
In this episode, we talk about some criticisms of web3, which Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey wrote this week, and then we’ll speak to Samina Kabir, developer advocate at Decentology and Niharika Singh, product manager at Decentology, a web3 company about what in the world web3 is and their perspectives on it. Then we’ll speak with Sam Kriegman, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and Tufts about his research with the world’s first reproducing organic robots.
Published 12/23/21
In this episode, we talk about a lawsuit filed by Riot Games against fraudsters of an intricate video game studio scam, and a New York City law that will ban employers from using potentially biased AI-driven recruitment software to screen candidates. Then we speak with Rob Frelow, co-founder & chief AI officer of The StoryGraph, who has 15 years of experience being a tech support engineer, to give you lifehacks for your holiday family tech support woes.
Published 12/15/21
In this episode, we talk about Timnit Gebru’s new research institute, researcher’s contentious relationship with Facebook, and a company that has been secretly helping governments track people’s mobile phones. Then we chat with Dennis Ushakov, Fleet Developer at JetBrains, about Fleet, the company’s new IDE. Finally, we speak with Julian McAuley, computer science professor at the University of California San Diego, about an internal TikTok document the New York Times obtained titled, TikTok...
Published 12/09/21
In this episode, we talk about the resignation of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and Apple’s new self-service repair announcement. Then we speak with Dustin Moody, a mathematician in the National Institute of Science and Technology’s Computer Security Division, about the looming threat of post-quantum cryptography.
Published 12/01/21
In this episode, we talk about a new Apple settlement and a big win for workers in Portugal. Then we speak with Nicholas Boucher, PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge about new research into something they are calling a “Trojan Source” attack. And finally, we chat with Safia Abdalla, senior software engineer at Microsoft about new updates and features in the recently released .NET 6.
Published 11/17/21
In this episode, we have an update about Facebook’s Facial Recognition system, and then we get into You.com, which calls itself “the world’s first open search engine.” Then we speak with Stephanie Eckles, software engineer at Microsoft and author of ModernCSS.dev about exciting new CSS updates that were just announced at Chrome Dev Summit 2021.
Published 11/10/21
In this episode, we talk about Facebook’s plan to shut down its Facial Recognition System, and a mass firing at a Russian payment services company fueled by AI productivity measurement tools. Then we speak with Scott Carey, enterprise technology journalists at InfoWorld, about how the growing complexity of modern software systems might be “killing” software developers.
Published 11/04/21