A new wearable from tech startup Humane promises to bring an AI assistant to your lapel. It attaches to your jacket, sweater or shirt and operates with voice commands or a digital interface laser projected onto the palm of your hand. It sounds like the stuff of a sci-fi novel, but the reviews so far are not good. The panning of the Ai Pin comes after five years in development, $240 million in funding and partnerships struck with the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft and Salesforce. So, what went wrong? Marketplace?s Meghan McCarty Carino asked Victoria Song, senior reviewer at The Verge, what this device is supposed to be for.

Artificial intelligence has become a big part of medicine ? reading images, formulating treatment plans and developing drugs. But a recent investigation by Stat News found that some insurers overrely on an algorithm to make coverage decisions for seniors on Medicare Advantage, a Medicare plan offered by private insurers. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Casey Ross, who co-reported the story. He said an algorithm predicted how long patients needed care and coverage was curtailed to fit that calculation.

On this week’s show, the United Kingdom is cracking down on makers of sexually explicit deepfakes. We’ll look at what penalizing the practice could mean for the victims. Then, the creator economy has the attention of millions of subscribers, but also venture capital. Why content creators like Dude Perfect on YouTube and other startups are attracting so much investment right now. But we begin with Amazon. The e-commerce giant’s Just Walk Out technology lets shoppers scan an app when they enter a store so they can leave with their purchases without paying at a register. This week, Amazon said there’s growing interest in the technology among retailers outside its empire. Yet the company is reportedly reducing the use of Just Walk Out in its own brick-and-mortar stores. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on these stories.

When you think about gin, what tastes comes to mind? Pine? Maybe citrus or coriander? It can vary quite a bit because unlike some spirits, gin is very lightly regulated. Distillers can throw in all kinds of flavors and call the result “gin” as long it has some minimum requirements. In the U.S., gin is gin as long as the flavor is derived from juniper berries and alcohol by volume is at least 40%. In the European Union, the minimum ABV is 37.5%. But researchers in Edinburgh, Scotland, recently identified the exact elements that define gin using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscropy. Think of it as something like an MRI scan that lets scientists create a flavor “fingerprint.” The new technique could have big implications for this very old industry. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Eve Thomas, who wrote about it for Wired, to learn more.

When the chemical company DuPont unveiled Teflon in 1946, nonstick pots and pans seemed like a miracle. We now know their coatings contain “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, which don’t break down. These compounds are not only in cookware but in clothing, cosmetics and more ? and they contaminate the water millions of us drink. Research shows there’s no safe level of exposure. As the EPA rolls out new limits on PFAS in drinking water, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Tasha Stoiber, senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group, about the tech used to filter it.

President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020 by a razor-thin margin, flipping the state blue for the first time in more than 20 years. As a result, Arizona became a hotbed of election misinformation and conspiracy theories, as false claims of a stolen election led to protests outside voting centers, a GOP-backed ballot audit and threats against election workers. Now, with just over 200 days until the 2024 election, experts warn that artificial intelligence could supercharge misinformation and disinformation in this year’s race. So how are election officials in a state that has already been in the trenches preparing for another battle over facts? In this episode of “Marketplace Tech?s” limited series, “Decoding Democracy,” Lily Jamali and Kimberly Adams look back at what happened in Arizona during the last presidential election and how the state became entangled in conspiracy theories. Plus, we hear from Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes about how his office plans to combat AI-charged misinformation this year.

The programming language known as COBOL turns 65 this year. We couldn?t help noticing that?s right around retirement age, but COBOL is nowhere near retirement. It remains a mainstay of IT operations at U.S. government agencies, businesses and financial institutions. Yet the programming language, which is older than the Beatles, is no longer taught at most universities. Glenn Fleishman is a freelance tech journalist who has written about this aging slab of digital infrastructure. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali asked him whether our continuing reliance on COBOL is a problem.

The Labor Department this week confirmed what a lot of Americans have been feeling: Inflation is kind of sticking around, and higher interest rates are likely to as well. We’ll look at what that means for venture capital, which was already slow to flow. Plus, the Joe Biden administration announced a $6.6 billion deal with Taiwan-based semiconductor maker TSMC to build a third production hub in Arizona. We take a look at the ongoing rollout of the CHIPS and Science Act, which makes it all possible. But first, Tesla has settled a lawsuit in the death of a software engineer who was killed driving a Tesla while using the company’s semiautonomous driving software, Autopilot. The suit put scrutiny on Elon Musk’s claims about the software.

Marketplace?s Lily Jamali is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing director at Collab Capital, for her take on these stories.

More than 99% of all species that have lived on Earth are now extinct ? something humans have certainly had a hand in. There’s now an entire scientific discipline devoted to bringing some of these species back. If you’re picturing those cloning scenes from “Jurassic Park” right now, we get it. But “de-extinction” is not quite that. Beth Shapiro is the chief science officer at Colossal Biosciences, a bioengineering startup working on de-extinction. She explained to Marketplace?s Lily Jamali how the process works.

AI models are increasingly being used by the fashion industry, as they save time and money. Some models and agencies are fans, but others want to see more protection for the image rights of models. What does it all mean for the fashion industry? The BBC’s Sam Gruet reports.

We hear words like “safety” and “transparency” thrown around in the artificial intelligence industry, but they don’t always mean the same things to a tech insider that they do to the rest of us. Luckily, tech journalist Karen Hao wrote a helpful glossary of 50 AI ethics terms to help us make sense of what tech leaders really mean by the words they use. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with her about some of the double meanings on her list.

It’s been six months of war in the Gaza Strip since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The destruction and death have been profound, and nearly every aspect of life in the roughly 140-square-mile territory has been upended. The New York Times recently reported that the Israeli military is using facial recognition artificial intelligence to monitor Palestinians in Gaza. The government hasn’t publicly acknowledged it, but reporter Sheera Frenkel spoke to Israeli intelligence officers, military officials and soldiers who confirmed that the technology was being used for mass surveillance. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Frenkel about facial recognition’s role in the conflict, starting with the story of a Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha, who reportedly was arrested and beaten by Israeli forces.

Google has agreed to destroy billions of browser data records to settle a class action suit alleging that the tech giant misled users about how Chrome tracked them in “Incognito mode.” Plus, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart reveals that Apple discouraged him from interviewing Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on his Apple TV+ podcast, “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” It’s a window into the “creative differences” that led to the abrupt end of the show last fall and the pressure creators face as Big Tech companies move deeper into “content.” But first, a federal internet subsidy for low-income households is about to expire. We’ll look at efforts to keep that program funded as the Federal Communications Commission moves to vote on restoring net neutrality rules. That policy, enacted during the Barack Obama administration and rescinded under former President Donald Trump, blocked internet service providers from favoring certain websites over others. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali and Maria Curi, tech policy reporter at Axios, discuss these stories for Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.

Fake obituaries have become an online trend. They exploit tragedy for profit and have raised concerns about the reliability of search engines. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali discussed the problem with reporter Mia Sato of The Verge. Her investigation uncovered a network of websites generating this content using search engine optimization, or SEO, tactics. Sato also covered the story of Brian Vastag, a journalist who experienced this abuse when he read his own fake obituary along with that of his ex-wife, who did actually pass away.

The Chinese company ByteDance owns two versions of basically the same app. In the U.S. we have TikTok, used by an estimated 170 million people, while in China they have Douyin, home to more than 700 million active users. Despite having the same parent company, TikTok and Douyin function as separate worlds. Now, as TikTok simmers in political hot water, the differences between the two apps are under a microscope. To get to the bottom of what sets these sister apps apart, Marketplace?s Lily Jamali spoke with Marketplace?s China correspondent, Jennifer Pak, about why ByteDance has this system in the first place.

It was an early attempt to use artificial intelligence in the 2024 presidential election: Ahead of January’s New Hampshire primary, a deepfake audio recording of President Joe Biden made it to some voters in the form of a robocall, encouraging them to save their vote. A political consultant named Steve Kramer said he orchestrated that call to show the dangers of deepfakes. Nevertheless, it caused real confusion. And there are a lot of deepfakes out there, including videos, that contend they are educational or parodies. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali and Kimberly Adams discuss video deepfakes and whether the intent behind them outweighs their overall impact.

Right now, the federal government is piloting its response to Silicon Valley?s AI boom. It?s called the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, and it?s supposed to ?democratize? access to AI by making gigantic and expensive AI models available to academic researchers. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali spoke with Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, who is skeptical of the initiative?s goals. As Myers West explains, the issue with the NAIRR is the government can?t launch an AI program of its own without partnerships that are potentially lucrative for Big Tech.

In this week’s episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, Lily Jamali chats with Joanna Stern, The Wall Street Journal’s senior personal tech columnist, who takes us on a road trip through New Jersey’s network of Tesla superchargers. Stern recently explored how drivers of non-Tesla electric vehicles can now use these stations via an adapter. It’s part of her larger look into the best ways to save money supercharging your EV. Also this week, we’ll get Stern’s take on what to expect at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which will kick off June 10 in Cupertino, California. But first, a look at a new law in Florida, the latest legislative attempt to address the potential harms social media can inflict on children. It prohibits kids 13 and under from creating accounts on popular platforms.

It’s something government officials on both sides of the aisle are known to do: pressuring tech platforms to bend to their will, aka jawboning. But the line between persuasion and coercion, or even censorship, can get murky.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments from two states alleging that the Joe Biden administration illegally coerced social media companies into blocking conservative content. Matt Perault, now with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center on Technology Policy, says that in his former job working in policy at Facebook, jawboning happened all the time.

When you look at the lawsuits aimed at blocking attempts to regulate tech, it’s usually not companies like Meta or Snap doing the suing. Oftentimes, it’s a group called NetChoice, which has emerged as Big Tech’s top lobbying force from Capitol Hill to the courts.

Today, a conversation with NetChoice General Counsel Carl Szabo and Megan Iorio, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit focused on privacy. They occasionally agree, but very often they do not.

Case in point: the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which requires websites that children are likely to visit to provide privacy protections by default. It was set to take effect in July, but so far, Szabo’s group has successfully blocked it in court.

Marketplace’s Lily Jamali sat down with Szabo and Iorio and asked about how their groups interact.

The number of gamers in Africa has doubled in recent years, but many gaming platforms require users to pay for subscriptions or make in-game purchases. That’s a problem for users who don’t have credit cards, but as the BBC’s Mo Allie reports, some fintech companies think they have a solution.

Crypto is once again big in the Philippines. It first took off during COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021 with a now-defunct video game called Axie Infinity, where players earned money ? often more than minimum wage ? through non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. Of course, the crypto winter soon followed with the implosion of FTX in 2022, but now crypto is back in a big way on the island nation. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with reporter Eli Tan, who recently visited and wrote about the scene for The New York Times.

When a company pushes false claims about using artificial intelligence in its  business, that’s known informally as ?AI washing.? It can feel like everybody?s doing it, but the Securities and Exchange Commission is cracking down on the practice. Plus, is the government?s communication with social media companies persuasion or coercion? The Supreme Court heard arguments this week in yet another case involving online speech. But first, the Department of Justice on Thursday announced that it?s bringing antitrust charges against Apple. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali spoke with Reuters Breakingviews columnist Anita Ramaswamy about all of these stories for this week?s episode of Marketplace Tech?s Bytes: Week in Review.

Imagine that you could walk into one of the world’s great libraries and leave with whatever you wanted ? any book, map, photo or historical document ? forever. No questions asked. There is an argument that something like that is happening to the digital data of nations. In a lot of places, anyone can come along and scrape the internet for the valuable data that’s the backbone of artificial intelligence. But what if raw data generated in a particular country could be used to benefit not outside interests, but that country and its people? Some nations have started building their own AI infrastructure to that end in a bid to secure their “AI sovereignty.” According to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, the potential implications and opportunities are huge.

Marketplace’s Lily Jamali and Kimberly Adams discuss how deepfake images are leading people to second guess everything in the latest episode of our “Decoding Democracy” series.

More than two years after Reddit first announced plans to go public, a share offering is expected to hit the stock market this week. The social network boasts 260 million active weekly users and more than 100,000 active communities, according to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Yet in its nearly two-decade history, Reddit has never turned a profit. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Elizabeth Lopatto, senior writer at The Verge, who says not everyone is on board with the company selling stock.

Roasting coffee beans was a market worth over $1 billion globally in 2022, according to Grand View Research, which projects that figure could double by 2030. Traditional roasters, powered by the fossil fuel natural gas, still dominate the market. These machines are big and bulky and kind of look like part of a train. But the makers of more compact electric roasters are piling into the business. And they have an edge, touting themselves as high-tech alternatives that are more environmentally friendly and cheaper to run than their old-school counterparts. The BBC?s Frey Lindsay has more on the story.

We’re at the end of the week, which means we’re serving up another episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review. Autonomous vehicle company Waymo has launched its driverless taxi service in Los Angeles. OpenAI has given CEO Sam Altman his board seat back. And a U.S. bill passed by the House of Representatives would force TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, to sell its stake in the U.S. version of the popular social media platform or be banned from app stores. Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, joined Marketplace’s Lily Jamali to discuss why policymakers have been pushing for action on TikTok for years.

On Wednesday, members of the House of Representatives proved they can agree on something. In a bipartisan vote, lawmakers passed a bill that would force TikTok to split from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban ? the first for a social media app in the U.S. President Biden has signaled he?d sign the bill into law if it passes the Senate. Advocates argue that the Chinese government could use the hugely popular app to collect Americans’ personal data and threaten U.S. security. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali spoke to Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, about the congressional action. He pointed out that a little something called the First Amendment could complicate the crackdown.

When President Barack Obama took office way back in 2009, he created a new role that promised to bring some tech know-how to his administration. Chief Technology Officer, or CTO, was, of course, a title borrowed from corporate America. Early on, the job focused on things like bringing broadband access to rural parts of the country and modernizing the way the federal government keeps records. President Donald Trump also had a CTO. Well, we are now deep into President Joe Biden’s current term in office and the president has yet to appoint a CTO for the United States. For more on why, Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Cristiano Lima-Strong, tech policy reporter at The Washington Post, who’s been tracking developments on the position.

It’s been about a year and a half since ChatGPT hit the scene and changed the world of education, leaving teachers scrambling to adjust lesson plans and grading policies. Currently, only a handful of states are providing guidance on how AI should be used in the classroom. Just five have official policies, with about a dozen more in the works. Bree Dusseault at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University has been following all this.

Almost one in five lawyers are using AI, according to an American Bar Association survey. But there are a growing number of legal horror stories involving tools like ChatGPT, because chatbots have a tendency to make stuff up ? such as legal precedents from cases that never happened. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke with Daniel Ho at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence about the group’s recent study on how frequently three of the most popular language models from ChatGPT, Meta and Google hallucinate when asked to weigh in or assist with legal cases.

Late last month, Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth, came under attack by an infamous hacker group called BlackCat. $22 million in ransom later, reportedly paid in bitcoin, and the problem is far from solved. Also this week: Max, previously HBO Max, announces a crackdown on password sharing ? maybe it’s time to dust off the old DVD player. But first, Apple on Monday got hit with a massive fine from regulators in Europe. They say the company used its app store dominance to box out music streaming services competing with its own. What’s $2 billion to the tech titan of Cupertino? Marketplace’s Lily Jamali asked Chrissy Farr, a health tech investor at OMERS Ventures, for today’s episode of Marketplace Tech Bytes.

More than 260,000 people working in the tech industry were laid off last year, and some CEOs have put at least some of the blame on high interest rates. Policymakers at the Federal Reserve hiked rates at the fastest pace in modern history to beat back inflation. And when rates rise, borrowing money gets more expensive. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali sat down with Mary Daly, president and CEO of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, to discuss how the tech industry is navigating through this higher interest rate world and ask about her agency’s role in the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, one year later.

This week marks the first anniversary of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the largest bank failure in the United States since the 2008 financial crisis. Today, Marketplace?s Lily Jamali revisits the SVB collapse with Anat Admati, an economics professor at Stanford University and co-author of the book ?The Banker?s New Clothes.?

Audio deepfakes have become shockingly convincing in the last few years. A deepfake robocall impersonating President Joe Biden encouraging voters to stay home for the New Hampshire primary was one recent example of how far the technology has advanced. That’s why “Marketplace Tech” is launching a limited series called “Decoding Democracy.” Marketplace’s Lily Jamali will be joined by other Marketplace reporters, experts and researchers to discuss what election mis- and disinformation is out there, how to spot it and how it impacts our democracy. In this first episode of ?Decoding Democracy,? Marketplace senior correspondent Kimberly Adams joins Jamali to delve into the latest on audio deepfake technology and how to protect yourself from being fooled by one.

“Misinformation” and “disinformation” are often lumped together. They’re not the same, but they are very much connected. Say you hear that Christmas falls on Dec. 23 this year. If someone told you that thinking it was true, it’s considered misinformation. But when it’s spread with the intent to deceive, that’s disinformation, which can easily be amplified unwittingly by the folks in the first group. Audio and video generated by artificial intelligence is everywhere in this election season. So before you click Share, know that the tech used to create that convincing-but-often-false content is getting a lot better a lot faster than you might think. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with longtime misinformation researcher Joan Donovan, now a journalism professor at Boston University, to learn more.

It’s Friday, and that means it’s time to dig into some of this week’s tech headlines in “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” Good news for Nvidia, the top chipmaker for artificial intelligence applications. There are signs that the company’s product shortage is finally easing up, as more customers nab chips to power their AI ambitions. Plus, Apple reportedly hits the brakes on plans to create its own electric vehicle. But first, there was significant movement on data privacy policy. This week, the Joe Biden administration issued an executive order restricting the sale of Americans’ data to “countries of concern,” according to the White House. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Natasha Mascarenhas, reporter at The Information, for her take on these stories.

“DRE” is the acronym in election-speak. It stands for direct-recording electronic voting machines … the kind that record votes directly into a computer’s memory, often with no paper trail. In an effort to boost security and ensure more reliable counting of ballots across the country, officials have been replacing them with voting machines that produce a paper backup. And there has been noticeable progress on this front. According to a recent report from the nonprofit organization Verified Voting and the Brennan Center for Justice, in 2016 about 22% of registered voters were in jurisdictions that used DREs. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 9% and could drop considerably further this year. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Megan Maier, co-author of the Verified Voting report, about replacing what’s left of these outdated machines and bringing that number down to zero.

A big part of Jennifer Granholm’s job as U.S. secretary of energy involves selling President Biden’s clean energy agenda and convincing Americans that it’s benefiting them. On Monday, she toured a facility near San Francisco operated by the company Cuberg, which is developing a lithium-based battery that’s less flammable than the ones we use today. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali talked with Granholm about how batteries like Cuberg’s fit into the administration?s sweeping climate policy.

The race to coin new words and phrases is on ? on TikTok. They range from “first time cool syndrome,” to “the weekend effect,” and “dinner and couch” friend. Keeping track of all this can feel like a wild goose chase, to use an expression credited to William Shakespeare, who introduced countless words and phrases to the English language. But unlike the Bard’s phrases, TikTok slang doesn’t seem to have much staying power. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Rebecca Jennings, senior correspondent for Vox, on the TikTok “trendbait,” as she calls it ? terms invented by content creators who seem like they’re trying a little too hard ? and what’s driving it all.

The Supreme Court hears arguments on two state laws Monday ? one in Texas and one in Florida ? that seek to punish social media platforms over allegations they censor conservative speech. The legal force fighting these state laws is itself a group with conservative leanings called NetChoice, which has emerged as Big Tech’s top political lobbyist. And it’s going after social media crackdowns in blue states too, like the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, which required that platforms put in stronger default data privacy protections for younger users. Wherever a social media regulation pops up, NetChoice, it seems, is there. Isaiah Poritz of Bloomberg Law has been reporting on the organization.

It was not that long ago that electric vehicle maker Rivian was drawing comparisons to Tesla. But flagging demand for EVs has not served the company well. Its earnings release this week made that much clear. Also, a look at why American venture capital firms appear to be pulling back from funding startups in China. But first, Amazon has come a long way since it was founded 30 years ago. Its next stop: the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It joins the market indicator Monday. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali is joined by Jewel Burks Solomon, managing director at Collab Capital, for her take on these stories.

AT&T is asking California regulators to be relieved of its obligation to provide basic landline phone service to anyone who wants it. ?No customer will be left without voice or 911 service,? AT&T says, but Californians weighing in are, by and large, skeptical. Regina Costa, telecom policy director at the Utility Reform Network, an advocacy group, told Marketplace?s Lily Jamali that having a “carrier of last resort” matters.

Once a week, many of us get that dreaded screen-time report courtesy of our smartphones. But a recent study found keeping track of our average usage doesn’t actually help us control our screen time all that much. Caught in the loop of screen-time shame like so many of us are, New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill decided to actually do something about it. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali spoke with Hill about her experience breaking up with her iPhone and replacing it with a flip phone, T9 texting and all, because she’d finally had enough.

As consumers, we’ve all been subjected to the “upsell,” or pressure to pay a little more for a product that’s slightly better. It’s one thing if you’re buying, say, a car or a piece of clothing. The ethical questions get a lot more complicated in health care. Some providers have started integrating artificial intelligence in diagnostic procedures, including screenings for breast cancer. The tools may be available for an additional cost, and questions about their accuracy have been raised. Marketplace’s Lily Jamali spoke with Meredith Broussard, a journalism professor at New York University, about integrating AI into mammograms and her personal experience grappling with the tech.

We often think of music as a mostly auditory experience, but it?s also a physical one, especially for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Daniel Belquer ? a Philadelphia-based technologist, composer and “chief vibrational officer” of Music: Not Impossible ? has been studying the relationship between sound and sensation, and how that connection can make music more accessible. “Marketplace Tech” spoke with Belquer about how his vibrating technology is helping people experience music in new ways.

On the show today, Microsoft says groups affiliated with the governments of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are using AI tools to improve their cyberattacks. Also, Disney is investing $1.5 billion in Epic Games. Can we expect a “Frozen” / Fortnite crossover? We?re not sure yet, but what we can expect is regulatory scrutiny. But first, in Silicon Valley, where software normally gets all the glory, OpenAI’s Sam Altman is reportedly planning a big move into hardware by raising up to $7 trillion for a new AI chips project. Marketplace?s Lily Jamali is joined by Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, for his take on this week?s tech news.

On our show last week, we had Sen. Amy Klobuchar share her take on the recent Senate hearing with tech executives. You remember the one, with the execs, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, doing their best to stall in response to searing questions about how to keep kids safe online. Klobuchar told us that hearing may have actually moved the needle on that issue. She stressed to us that such events educate the public and help lawmakers get on-the-record pledges of support for specific bills from tech CEOs. In the absence of federal rules, a patchwork of state laws has filled the void. How’s that going? Nicol Turner Lee, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, gave Marketplace’s Lily Jamali the rundown.

Cuffing season is that time of year when singles hunker down with someone to keep them warm ? temporarily. And Valentine’s Day more or less marks the end of it. So people are about to start flocking back to their dating apps. Adrianus Warmenhoven, cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, told Marketplace’s Lily Jamali that a lot of those apps are eager to vacuum up their personal data.