The cloud’s heavy toll on natural resources (rerun)

For the millions of residents and visitors who commute in and out of the areas daily, billboards in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area have long been a way to see where the state of tech is at the moment — and where it’s headed next.

Yesterday, we explained San Francisco’s fraught relationship with the tech industry. Tech workers weren’t always welcome in the eyes of many other residents, and when the COVID-19 pandemic began, a lot of them left, taking their dollars with them. But on a recent Thursday evening, organizers of a block party downtown were trying to bring people back. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to Manny Yekutiel and Katy Birnbaum about their efforts to revive the city’s downtown.

Cities across the country are still trying to recover after the COVID-19 pandemic changed how and where many of us work, leaving big holes in downtown office districts. San Francisco, once teeming with tech workers, is no exception. But few cities have suffered the sustained reputational damage that San Francisco has. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali recently visited the city to meet with Heather Knight, The New York Times’ San Francisco bureau chief. Knight, who has been covering the city for more than two decades, offered her take on San Francisco’s image problem, economic situation and tech culture.

In the past week or so, Nvidia’s stock finally encountered the law of gravity — what goes up must eventually come down, at least a little bit. And we look under the hood of artificial intelligence companies that aren’t necessarily making headlines. Plus, the Supreme Court ruled against Republican-led states that accused the federal government of coercing social media companies into suppressing content. But first, major music labels, including Universal, Sony and Warner, are suing two startups that produce AI-generated music. The labels accuse Suno and Udio of using copyrighted works scraped from the internet to train their AI models. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali speaks with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, for her takes on these stories in this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

It feels like eons ago, but during a town hall on violence in America in 1994, then-President Bill Clinton took to MTV to reach the nation’s youth. Clinton’s openness to MTV and what The New York Times called “other unconventional media” had helped pave his path to the White House two years earlier. Fast-forward to today, and even reluctant politicians use TikTok to reach younger voters — President Joe Biden is no exception. His first post came just ahead of this year’s Super Bowl. We invited Marketplace’s senior Washington correspondent, Kimberly Adams, and Joshua Scacco, professor of political communication and director of the Center for Sustainable Democracy at the University of South Florida, to discuss the evolution of political messaging with Marketplace’s Lily Jamali. Scacco said Clinton’s MTV moment informed how future presidents, including his successor, George W. Bush, have engaged with Americans.

This week, we’ve been taking stock of how tech has both helped and harmed Americans trying to get abortions in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. After the Dobbs decision, some experts warned consumers that menstrual tracking apps would provide a means of surveilling abortion seekers. There was even a social media campaign on what was then Twitter advising people to delete their period trackers. But it’s turned out that the threat to privacy isn’t limited to those apps. Other digital data can actually be more likely to reveal an illegal abortion. That’s according to Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. He told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that everyday consumer apps generate sensitive data that can be used for abortion surveillance.

After the U.S. Supreme Court took away the federal right to abortion two years ago, telehealth has helped provide ongoing access, including to people in states where abortion is now banned. That was our subject Monday. Now we are looking into apps that link patients with abortion providers. Julie F. Kay, executive director at the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that digital privacy protections are far from equal across these services.

Two years ago this week, the Supreme Court ruled that abortions are not constitutionally protected in the U.S., a decision that would draw protests across the country. Since then, 14 states have outlawed abortions. Still, some people in those states have been able to cut through barriers to get abortions via telehealth, according to a recent report from the research project #WeCount. Usually, this requires a virtual visit with a telehealth care provider. The provider assesses the patient and gets their information, then can mail them mifepristone and misoprostol, which aid in ending a pregnancy. The Supreme Court preserved access to mifepristone in a ruling this month, which means it can still be prescribed and mailed to patients. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali discussed the increase in telehealth abortions with Ushma Upadhyay, professor of OB-GYN and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and a coauthor of the #WeCount report.

Big Tech subscription services are once again in the crosshairs of the Federal Trade Commission, nonprofits with links to OpenAI are becoming less transparent, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is urging Congress to require warning labels on social media. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali speaks with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired magazine, for this week’s Tech Bytes: Week in Review

Picture this: The year is 2014. The song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams is playing on every top 100 station, and the Ellen DeGeneres star-studded Oscars selfie has just “broken Twitter.” As all of this is happening, a bunch of content creators in certain corners of social media are about to start making a whole lot of money. Culture reporter Steffi Cao recently wrote in The Ringer that 2014 was the year that shaped the internet we know today. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke to her about what happened online 10 years ago.

Enable fast, easy data center interconnect (DCI) deployments with the Corning EDGE™ Rapid Connect Solution. Designed to facilitate DCI deployments and connections between data halls, EDGE Rapid Connect Solution utilizes trunk cables with the all-new Fast-Track MTP® Connector. 

In this episode of Solution Spotlight, hosted byt Instor CEO Jack Vonich, we’re joined by Brian Rhoney, Director Of Market Development for Corning, to learn more about their groundbreaking new technology.

Key Moments:

First Impressions:

• The excitement of seeing the Apple Vision Pro in person after years of anticipation.
• Aesthetic highlights: Glass display, 23 million pixels, 3D technology, and Micro‑OLED.

Demo Experience:

• The 30-minute in-store demo, available only by walking in.
• Scripted elements and limited room for independent exploration.
• A rogue moment: Testing the Safari app for an immersive website experience.

Favorite Immersive Experience:

• A standout moment in a lake with a 360-degree view transitioning into the rain.
• Similar to creating a vivid Colorado hiking trail experience in May.

Spatial Memories:

• Reflections on the intriguing and occasionally peculiar aspects of spatial memories.

Powerhouse Specs and Cost:

• Breakdown of specifications: 8‑core CPU, 10‑core GPU, 16‑core Neural Engine, and more.
• Justifying the high cost (around $5k) with top-tier quality.

Privacy and Security Features:

• Apple's commitment to privacy and security.
• Introduction of Optic ID: A secure authentication system using the uniqueness of the user's iris.

EPISODE CREDITS:

Produced, edited, and mixed by Ashley Coffey. Artwork designed by Ashley Coffey.

Headshot by Brandlink Media

Introduction music composed and produced by Ashley Coffey

LINKS

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© 2024 Coffey & Code Podcast. All rights reserved. The content of this podcast, including but not limited to text, graphics, audio, and images, is the property of Ashley Coffey and may not be reproduced, redistributed, or used in any manner without the express written consent of the owner.

Food delivery apps and marketplaces have raised $31.3 billion since 2017. Still, the long-term profitability of these low-margin companies remains in question—something that could impact restaurants that are prioritizing takeout and delivery amid COVID-19. In this episode, we chat with REEF Technology’s VP of Corporate Strategy Felix Gonzalez Roson and Creating Culinary Communities’ COO Brad Reynolds about the evolution of foodtech, how ghost kitchens could help address food delivery apps’ remaining barriers and how COVID-era shifts might impact our dining options and experiences into the future. Our guests are also joined by PitchBook emerging technology analyst Alex Frederick, who focuses on foodtech and agtech.

Artificial Intelligence is all the rage right now and most of the investor excitement has so far been focused on the companies providing the hardware and computing power to actually run this new technology. So how does it all work and what does it actually take to run these complex models? On this episode, we speak with Brannin McBee, co-founder of CoreWeave, which provides cloud computing services based on GPUs, the type of chips pioneered by Nvidia and which have now become immensely popular for generative AI. He walks us through the infrastructure involved in powering AI, how difficult it is to get chips right now, who has them, and how the landscape might change in the future.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Designed specifically to overcome the challenges presented by single corded devices, the Z-ATS Micro (also referred to as the Zonit Micro ATS) automatically switches from the primary power source (A) to the backup source (B) as needed, guaranteeing redundant power to connected devices at all times, thus minimizing downtime.

In this episode of Solution Spotlight, hosted by Instor CEO Jack Vonich, we’re joined by Danny Latzer, Western Regional Sales Director for Zonit, to learn more about their industry leading technology.