What does Google Search sound like? This week in the News Roundup, Oz explores Google’s new AI-generated audio summaries — and why a simple question like “what’s two plus two?” triggered a two-minute podcast. Then, Wikipedia tried its own AI experiment and faced backlash from editors. On TechSupport, Semafor’s Reed Albergotti recasts Big Tech as characters from The Wizard of Oz and explains the current AI landscape.

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Adam Clark Estes is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and the author of the User Friendly newsletter. Estes sits down with Oz to discuss Amazon’s expanding use of palm scanners and what that might mean for the future of healthcare and our biometric data. They also dive into Estes’ months-long experiment of trying about a dozen health trackers and whether or not it was worth it.

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Malcolm Gladwell visits Kennesaw State University to learn about Jiwoo, an AI Assistant that helps future teachers practice responsive teaching by simulating classroom interactions with students. Discover how AI can enhance teaching methods to prepare teachers for the classroom.

This is a paid advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this podcast don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

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Time named the Sony Walkman number 47 on a list of the 50 most influential gadgets of all time. How did the Walkman become a thing, and what influence has it had on how we experience music? 

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Charles Babbage was a man ahead of his time. He was an engineer, inventor, mathematician, and grouchy pants. We learn more about this historic figure and his creations.

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Despite all the Y2K hype, the world kept turning on January 1, 2000. Did we have nothing to fear to begin with, or did we narrowly avoid technological Armageddon? We explore how the Year 2000 Problem worked.

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Intel gets a new CEO, the Signal messaging app gets a bunch of new users and CES gets virtually crazy. All this and more in today's news episode.

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Google launched a video game streaming service called Google Stadia in 2019. Can Google succeed where others failed, or will Stadia become another Google product that fades away?

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The assault on Capitol Hill in the US has already had an enormous impact, including in the world of tech. We look at how social platforms and hosting services have responded. We also learn about what we'll be seeing this week at CES, plus more.

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Earthlink encountered some serious challenges in the 2000s. From the rise of cable and telecom companies in the ISP world to the decline of the dial-up customer base, things looked grim. But while some news sites declared Earthlink dead in 2017, it turns out they were a bit premature.

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Are invisible cars and exploding pens just the stuff of James Bond fiction? We look at spy gear both real and imaginary in this episode.

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What happened to Chinese billionaire Jack Ma? Why did a UK judge deny bail to Julian Assange? And are we ready for CES 2021? All this and more in tech news!

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In the 1990s, an Internet Service Provider called Earthlink helped some of the earliest denizens of the Internet get connected. We learn about the dial-up era and how Earthlink helped shape it.

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News for Tuesday, January 5, 2021. A UK judge denies the US's extradition request for Julian Assange. The SolarWinds hack is worse than we thought. Atari has found an extra life.

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As the scale of artificial intelligence continues to evolve, open technology like many of IBM’s Granite models are helping enhance transparency in AI and improve efficiency across businesses. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Jacob Goldstein sat down with Maryam Ashoori, the Director of Product Management and Head of Product for IBM’s watsonx.ai, where she spearheads the product strategy and delivery of IBM’s watsonx Foundation Models. Together, they explored the shift from large general-purpose AI models to smaller, customizable models tailored to specific needs.

This is a paid advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this podcast don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Visit us at https://ibm.com/smarttalks

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You might have thought we were out of 2020, but we've got to cover the rest of the year in tech news.

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Are the amazing gadgets in James Bond films possible? We look at the tech found in the early James Bond movies and compare it to real life.

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Let's take a little break from the depressing newscycle and talk about the iconic Missy Elliott and how she's been changing the digital game since the very beginning. 

Check out the video for The Rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHcyJPTTn9w

“Supa Dupa Fly: Black Women as Cyborgs in Hiphop Videos" by Dr. Shaviro: http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/MissyKim.pdf

"Missy Elliott" with Margot and Richie Tenenbaum, Halloween 2008: https://www.tangoti.com/episode-12-missy-elliott-digital-innovator

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We continue our look at the top tech stories of 2020 and learn about how the Black Lives Matter movement shook up tech, how the MeToo movement hit gaming and how the coronavirus continued to affect the tech sector.

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A lot has happened in 2020, and TechStuff is looking at the big tech stories that unfolded throughout the year. From tech successes and failures to the impact of coronavirus, we take a look at the first quarter of 2020.

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TechStuff listeners join Jonathan Stickland and Ariel Kasten, the host of this cool geeky podcast called Large Nerdron Collider as they wade through the newest holiday movies.

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Don Bies, President of the Grant Imahara STEAM Foundation, joins the show to talk about Grant Imahara's life, his impact and how his family and friends intend to carry on his memory.

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Special guest Ariel Kasten is back and we talk about some more sci-fi stuff, including the various means of getting from point A to point B. Hyperspace, warp speed and teleportation - how much is science and how much is fiction?

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Will the flying car ever be available to the average driver? We take a look at the history (and future) of flying cars.

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Special guest Ariel Kasten joins the show to talk about some of the gadgets found in various speculative fiction stories. Are any of them possible? From blasters to teleportation, we take a look.

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Where did CAPTCHAs come from? What purpose do they serve? How do they relate to artificial intelligence? And why are some of them so doggone hard?

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Many years ago in the United States, the government forbade movie studios from owning theater chains because it would lead to anticompetitive practices. But today, we see movie studios as part of companies that own streaming services. Are we back to the bad old days?

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What's Skunk Works up to today? TechStuff talks about the more recent projects the ultra secret division has worked on.

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While most of us are still waiting on a robust rollout of 5G technology, there have been tons of questions about what it is and whether it is harmful. From concerns to conspiracies, we look at what 5G promises it will do, what it might actually do and what it definitely is not doing.

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A US law that was instrumental in shaping the Internet has been a controversial topic recently. In this episode, we learn what Section 230 is and why without it we wouldn't have the Internet of today.

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What is Lockheed's Skunk Works division? TechStuff peeks under a veil of secrecy to talk about the early days of a classified operation.

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Algorithms, when you get down to it, are simple in concept. In practice, they can be really useful. Or, in Facebook's case, they can lead to a lot of problems.

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What is Black Friday, and how did it spawn Cyber Monday? From business trends to marketing schemes, we take a look at the history of holiday shopping online.

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What is the Google Loon project? Jonathan and Lauren look at how some ultra-thin balloons could supply Wi-Fi to remote locations.

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After emerging from one potential hostile takeover, Ubisoft would find itself in another. And then in 2020, the company was rocked with scandal. In this episode, we learn what happened from 2011 to 2020 at the video game company.

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Some global success stories propelled Ubisoft into the spotlight, where an even bigger fish began to take notice. We learn about a potential hostile takeover and how that affected the company's business for several years.

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Israel is allegedly behind an attack on Hezbollah involving exploding pagers. How did that happen? In other news, Microsoft wants to reopen a nuclear power plant to supply electricity to power-hungry AI data centers. Plus much more! 

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In this classic episode of TechStuff Jonathan Strickland and Joe McCormick explain what Antikythera Mechanism is, when it was built and what it does.

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Today, it's a huge video game company with multiple studios around the world. But Ubisoft's origin story starts with truly humble origins. Learn how five brothers went from working at a company that sold farming equipment to founding a video game powerhouse.

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It’s paramount for businesses in any sector to have visibility into their supply chain. In this episode of Smart Talks, Jonathan Strickland talks with Jason Kelley, General Manager of Blockchain at IBM, about what blockchain is, how it’s transforming global supply chains with respect to the pandemic, and the broader implications for these trusted transactions. 

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A lot has happened since my office went into lockdown. Enough that I need to update some stories I covered in previous episodes of TechStuff. From the new consoles to Quibi, here's a rundown on some updates.

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What is the Hyperloop concept? How would it work? Will we actually build it?

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The course of true technology does not always run smoothly. There are lots of stories about different formats battling it out to become a standard. Here are a few of them.

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What is ransomware and where did it come from? From an odd, chaotic campaign in 1989 to the present day, we look at the dangers of ransomware.

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What's happened to AT&T since it was broken up by the government? What was SBC? What's AT&T been up to lately?

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Why has the US government engaged in an antitrust investigation into Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google? We learn about US antitrust law, a precedent with Microsoft, and what the future might hold.

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Disney Imagineers are working on animatronic figures that can make eye contact with humans and the results are fascinating (and a little creepy). We explore what has to happen to create a robot that can make eye contact.

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Is there a link between social media use and mental health challenges? We look at a meta-analysis and use some critical thinking to tackle the issue. 

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To improve the diversity in the tech industry and racial tolerance in the country, we need novel, tangible ideas. In this episode of Smart Talks, Jonathan Strickland talks with IBM Distinguished Engineers Dale Davis Jones and Lysa Banks, along with Creative Architect Britni Lonesome, about their involvement with the Call for Code for Racial Justice effort and how listeners can get involved with the tech solutions they're developing.

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In this episode of TechStuff, Jonathan and Chris discuss ghost hunting technology -- and ghost hunting in general -- from a skeptical perspective.

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