30 SET 2021 · Tesla will soon allow more drivers to have access to “full self-driving” mode, according to tweets by CEO Elon Musk. Drivers will pay $10,000 upfront or between $100 and $200 a month to use the software. Up until now, a beta version has been available to a select group of people. And the name "full self-driving" kind of implies that the car will drive itself. But, as Tesla notes on its website, that is not the case right now — these cars will not be autonomous. Marketplace's Marielle Segarra speaks with Alistair Weaver, editor-in-chief at the car-shopping site Edmunds.

29 SET 2021 · Amazon hosted its annual hardware event Tuesday, where it announced updates to some products, like its Ring home security system, and debuted some new ones, like a home security drone. Microsoft and Apple hosted similar events recently. You know the kind of event we're talking about, right? The kind pioneered by Steve Jobs. Big screens, fancy visuals, open bar, fancy food — maybe they've got an omelet station going. That's how they used to be in person. Marketplace's Marielle Segarra speaks with Ian Sherr, an editor at large at CNET, who has been to a lot of these.

28 SET 2021 · Facebook just announced that it's pausing the rollout of Instagram Kids, a version of the platform for children under 13 years old, while it works to "demonstrate the value and need for this product.” The pause comes after a Wall Street Journal story a couple of weeks ago about the company's research on how Instagram affects teens. One finding? A third of teen girls who have body image issues say Instagram makes them worse. Marketplace's Marielle Segarra speaks with Jean Twenge, author of the book “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.” She said the effects could be even worse for younger kids.

27 SET 2021 · In the U.S., about 20% of calls to cellphones and 40% to landlines are robocalls — many of them scams. Tuesday is the deadline for voice service providers, including some phone companies, to show the Federal Communications Commission what steps they're taking to stop robocalls. Marketplace's Marielle Segarra speaks with Brad Reaves, a professor of computer science at North Carolina State University. Reaves said the FCC is telling these companies to be on the lookout for clear signs of fraud.

24 SET 2021 · Next month, Epic Games will shut down Houseparty — the group video-chatting app that became popular in the pandemic — to focus instead on the metaverse. But, what is that, exactly? That is a topic for “Quality Assurance,” where we take a second look at a big tech story. While there are different visions of the metaverse to come, most digital builders and watchers believe the metaverse is essentially the next evolution of the internet, a virtual world that you'd move through with, some say, just one identity, not a bunch of separate logins or accounts. And you could do things in it like attend a virtual concert, sit in a virtual conference room or go to a virtual shopping mall. Marketplace's Marielle Segarra speaks with Alexander Lee, a reporter at Digiday covering esports and gaming, about who would want this. Lee said it's partly a generational thing.  

23 SET 2021 · Emoji users: Your vocabulary is about to grow. The Unicode Consortium, a group that approves emoji, has added 112 new ones, including a melting smiley face, a coral reef, an X-ray and more skin tone and gender options, like a pregnant man and pregnant person. The new icons will start appearing on your phones later this year. Marketplace's Marielle Segarra speaks with Jeremy Burge, chief emoji officer at Emojipedia, an encyclopedia for emoji. Burge talked about how emoji get approved and what happens when companies lobby for an emoji of one of their products.

22 SET 2021 · During the pandemic, especially with gyms shut down or just less appealing, people bought a lot of wearables. Those are smart devices that you wear on your body — in your ear, on your wrist or as a patch, even — that track your activity in some way. Look at sales of smartwatches. They jumped by almost 18% in 2020, according to Gartner. The research firm also forecasts that spending on wearables will grow to more than $81 billion by the end of this year. Marketplace's Marielle Segarra talked to Ramon Llamas, a research director at International Data Corp., about why wearables got so popular during the pandemic.

21 SET 2021 · World leaders are gathering for meetings this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Among the topics they’ll discuss is the ravages of climate change. This year, climate damage across the U.S. included devastating flooding, and while some people know they face flood risk, many do not. That’s largely because the official federal flood maps are often outdated and may not account for the effects of increasingly powerful storms. We wanted to know how technology is advancing the mapping effort. Marketplace's Jed Kim speaks with Michael Grimm, assistant administrator for risk management at FEMA, who manages flood mapping. Grimm says the agency continuously updates its tech, like lidar.

20 SET 2021 · For those in prison, privacy is already hard to come by. Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is looking at patent applications from some companies that provide communication services to prisons. Some of the applications they’ve seen include ideas to incorporate ads on tablets that would be given to incarcerated people and plans for systems that would identify and disable drones suspected of bringing in contraband. Marketplace's Jed Kim speaks with Beryl Lipton, an investigative researcher with the EFF. Lipton says there are even ideas for robot guards that could deliver packages or electric shocks, depending on the situation.

17 SET 2021 · Facebook knows a lot about how it affects its users, because it’s investigated possible negative impacts. For instance, internal research showed that one of its algorithms actually encourages angrier content. Or that Instagram, which it owns, makes body image issues worse for teen girls. And even though it knows all this, it doesn’t share the information, either with Congress or its own oversight board. That’s the finding of an investigation out this week from The Wall Street Journal, called the Facebook Files. It’s a topic for "Quality Assurance." Marketplace's Jed Kim speaks with Jeff Horwitz, a reporter for the Journal and an author of the series.