Cyber Casts

Roblox is one of the most popular and profitable video games ever created. Unless you’ve got kids, there’s a decent chance you’ve probably never heard of it. What makes it so engaging is that it’s a place where players develop and sell their own games and items. There is an internal economy and culture built around it. Roblox is, dare I say,  a metaverse all its own.Lurking at the edges of that metaverse is a group of people called Beamers. With so many items floating around the Roblox economy worth so much cash and so many of them owned by children. That’s a target an unscrupulous hacker can hardly pass up.This week on Cyber, Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox walks us through the underground world of Roblox. It’s the subject of his newest piece, “How Roblox ‘Beamers’ Get Rich Stealing from Children.”We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscri

In 2016, someone hacked the crypto exchange Bitfinex and made off with 120,000 BTC. At the time, the bitcoins were worth $65 million. Now they’re worth around $5 billion.On February 7, authorities in the U.S. arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan. The charge? Allegedly the couple laundered around $1 billion in stolen Bitcoin. As news of the charges spread, journalists began to dig into the couple and discovered that Morgan was extremely online. A wannabe rapper, Morgan has posted dozens of YouTube videos, TikToks, and contributed to Forbes. Here to talk about the hack, the charges, and Morgan’s outsized personality we’ve got Motherboard senior staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Motherboard Senior Editor Jordan Perason.Morgan’s output is embarrassing, but it’s also a distraction from the very real crimes her and her husband have been charged with. Pearson and Franceschi-Bicchierai unpack the central mysteries that still linger on the case. The feds have seized the Bitcoin but

Motherboard Senior Staff writer Anna Merlan joins to talk about where disinformation comes from and whether we can stop it. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The late 80s and early 90s were a golden age of free stuff on the internet. If you could afford the equipment and the access, you could find just about any piece of software you wanted without paying for it. And also a lot of pictures of naked people.The Bulletin Board System, or BBS, was the lifeblood of this freewheeling time. It didn’t last long.This week on Cyber we’re bringing you the story of Rusty ‘n’ Edie’s BBS: the Friendliest BBS in the World. Here to tell the tale is Motherboard Senior Staff Writer Samantha Cole. It’s the subject of her newest piece, The Death of Rusty n Edie’s, One of the Horniest Places on the 90s Internet.We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

It’s been a wild few weeks for crypto and NFTs. The whole market took some hits, but the crypto markets especially have seemed to spiral. At the same time, there’s been so many hacks, stolen Apes, and ransomed tokens that it’s hard to keep track of them all.This week on Cyber, we go through it all. Who lost what and how? Also, what is it about the blockchain that makes it so vulnerable to hacks and schemes?Motherboard senior staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Motherboard Senior Editor Jordan Perason sit down with Matthew Gault to talk about the unique vulnerabilities of the crypto market and what happens when centralized systems try to interact with a decentralized platform.We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out informa

What do you picture when you read the word “hacker?” I always see Cereal, Matthew Lillard’s character, from the movie Hackers. A dude with weird hair, intense need to make information free, and copies of 2600 magazine scattered around his dank apartment. That image is, and always was, a fantasy. What hackers are, and what they’ve become, is complicated. The word was once synonymous with “criminal,” but through years of activism and hard work, that’s changed. Now, “hacker” means so much more.The story of how hackers became security professionals and respected, if not always trusted, members of society is the subject of the study Wearing Many Hats: The Rise of the Professional Security Hacker.This week on Cyber, Harvard Anthropology professor Gabreilla Coleman and Data & Society researcher Matt Goerzen sit down to talk about the birth of the hacker scene and how criminals slowly turned themselves into vaunted security professionals.It’s a fascinating story that involves Lubbock, Texas, a debate about a

Signal, the app, is synonymous with security. The end-to-end encrypted messaging platform is a go-to for discerning people who want to keep their communications private. Just remember to turn on the vanishing messages feature. But it’s CEO is stepping down. Moxie Marlinspike is out  and Whatsapp’s Brian Acton is in.Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox is on the show this week to talk to us about the changes at Signal, the history of end-to-end encryption, and what Marlinspike thinks of web3. It’s also the subject of his article, WhatsApp Co-Founder Is the New Acting CEO of Signal.Cox sticks around for Cypher where we discuss the incredible news that marijuanna may be able to help prevent COVID-19, why PS5 restock accounts are helping people find COVID-19 tests, and how someone scraped massive amounts of personal data from a database used by private investigators.We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. We record the show on Wednesdays at 4pm EST. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questio

Popcorn time, a place where millions of people gathered everyday to watch low-res streams of their favorite films, is dead.Or is it? According to Motherboard Editor-in-Chief Jason Koebler, rumors of the demise of the Netflix of Piracy have been greatly exaggerated. According to Jason, Popcorn time is likely unkillable.It’s the first Cyber back after the holiday break and there’s a lot to talk about. After Jason and Matthew run through a brief history of pirating things online, they turn their attention to Call of Duty. Activision has revealed the identity of people it says are selling cheats to Warzone players. Now, it’s suing them.We also talk about recently released pictures of the one of a kind Wu Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request. Judging by the pictures, the album wasn’t treated well while in government custody. And finally, we round out the week by talking about the CharaCorder—a keyboard so advanced that some people think it’s cheating.We’

Deadly storms swept through parts of the U.S. last Friday, killing at least 90 people. Six of those worked in an Amazon warehouse in Illinois. As the deadly tornado hit the warehouse, the walls fell inward, the roof collapsed. Moments before his death, worker Larry Virden texted his girlfriend to say “Amazon won’t let us leave.”If you’ve ever worked retail or shipping during the holidays, you know that what is a restful period of joy and relaxation for much of the world is a stressful nightmare for you. Winter brings inclement weather, icy roads, and snow. Sometimes the choice is either putting yourself in danger or losing your job.This week on Cyber, Motherboard Senior Staff writer and expert on all things labor, Lauren Kaori Gurley explains Amazon’s policies around inclement weather, worker safety, and why OSHA has opened an investigation into what happened the night of the deadly Tornado in Illinois. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In which we go deep on ConstitutionDAO, and DAOs in general. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Cyber’s intro music has clips from various movies. The first is from WarGames, a 1983 film where a hacker squares off against an artificial intelligence that’s in control of the nukes. Almost forty years later and AI is beating people at Starcraft 2, which is not quite the organization of a nuclear war but can still feel scary. But how smart are these systems really? Is AI, or “machine learning” as practitioners prefer to call it, the next big thing or just another in a series of promises about the future that hasn’t quite materialized? What are the actual dangers of these systems?Here to help us answer this question is Os Keyes. Keyes is PhD student at the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centred Design & Engineering and an occasional Motherboard contributor. Their area of expertise is, broadly, how technology constructs the world we live in.It’s a wide-ranging conversation that covers everything from Henry Kissinger to Human Centipede and the hard limits of artificial intelligence. Se

Encrypted messaging apps. We all love them. You don’t have to be doing anything shady to want to make sure your messages are end-to-end encrypted. And for most people there’s dozens of options. Signal, Wicker, even WhatsApp boasts end-to-end encryption.But what if you need something a little more secure? That’s where encrypted phone companies like Sky Global and Phantom come in. These companies cater to a more discerning clientele with a need for a more secure messaging environment. Which is part of how they get into such trouble with the feds.With us today is Motherboard journalist Joseph Cox. He’s gonna tell us about his newest feature: Crime Boss or Tech CEO? An Encrypted Phone Company Sues the Government to Save Itself.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out infor

Today we are sharing an episode from one of our newest series -- A Show About Animals. This season, we tell the strange and wonderful story of the wildly famous Koko the “talking” Gorilla. In the early 1970s, a grad student named Penny Patterson set out to investigate a big question: is language unique to humans? So she begins an ambitious experiment -- with the help of a young gorilla named Koko. Pretty soon, Penny says Koko is learning sign language. But, of course, that’s not the whole story. You can listen to our weekly series, A Show About Animals, in all the places you get your podcasts. A Show About Animals is hosted and reported by Arielle Duhaime-Ross and produced by Julia Nutter and Pete Lang-Stanton. Our associate producer is Leily Rezvani. Sound design and original score by Pran Bandi, with additional support from Steve Bone. Annie Aviles is our executive editor. Our executive producer and VP of Vice Audio is Kate Osborn. Special thanks to Maximo Anderson for fact-checking

Apple recently announced a plan to sell customers manuals and parts that will let them fix their own iPhone 12s and 13s. It’s a huge win for the right to repair, but what are the specifics of the plan and what does it mean for the future of the repair movement in America?This week on Cyber, Matthew Gault and Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler sat down with heavyweights of the right-to-repair movement to answer that question. This conversation between iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, Repair.org’s Gay Gordon-Byrne, and U.S. PIRG’s Nathan Proctor covers everything from John Deere tractors to lies Apple tells when it’s lobbying against the right-to-repair.A non-comprehensive list of the Motherboard reporting mentioned in this episode:Half the Country Is Now Considering Right to Repair LawsFTC Formally Adopts Right to Repair PlatformApple Is Lobbying Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records ConfirmApple Is Telling Lawmakers People Will Hurt Themselves if They Try to Fix iPhonesWhy American Farmers

The Metaverse. The term was coined by author Neal Stephenson in his book Snow Crash. It was a digital playground where people were only limited by their imagination.Facebook has changed its name to Meta and says it’s trying to make the metaverse a reality. Now, other companies are rushing to get a piece of Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future. Here to help me puzzle out the nightmarish world Silicon Valley billionaires want for us is Motherboard Senior Editor Janus Rose and panopticon expert and professor of English at Macomb Community College Chris Gilliard.This wide-ranging conversation starts with Rose’s recent piece, “Zuckerberg’s Meta Endgame Is Monetizing All Human Behavior”, but it gets into the deeper and systemic issues around machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the kind of future we want.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or

We’ve all gotten phone calls from someone trying to talk to us about our car’s extended warranty, even if we don’t own a car. But has a robot ever called you to try to get the code your bank sends you when you log on? If it hasn’t happened, it might very soon.It’s the subject of Motherboard staff writer Joseph Cox’s new piece: The Booming Underground Market for Bots That Steal Your 2FA Codes.We’re recording CYBER love on Twitch. Follow us on Twitch to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience. Yours just might end up on the show.Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches war, geopolitics,and desert power and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches mysticism, spirituality, spice, and psychedelics and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches eugenics and race in the book series, and how Denis Villeneuve handles it in the blockbuster movie. This episode features: Hood Feminism author Mikki Kendall, Edward Ongweso Jr., Gita Jackson, Jason Koebler, Brian Merchant, and Tim Marchman. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

BONUS SERIES: Dune is out! And it's the biggest movie in America. In this special series, Motherboard and friends dissect all things Dune. In this episode, we look at how Frank Herbert approaches oil, environmental destruction, and what it can tell us about how we treat our planet. Note to CYBER listeners: We're doing this series in addition to our normal CYBER episodes, which will still be released this week. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.