Marcus Baram

Even after his arrest, scientists were more than happy to take money from Jeffrey Epstein

For years, automakers wildly overpromised on self-driving cars and electric vehicles—what now?

Tech execs and auto company leaders are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the future of AVs—and they are far less sanguine about electric vehicles (EVs) as well—because the raft of rosy projections in recent years have not even remotely come true.

The ‘Indiana Jones of mezcal’ takes on Big Liquor and tries to save a culture

Erick Rodriguez, who sells unique mezcals from small agave producers in Mexico, is scrambling to compete with giant distributors eager to make money off the fastest-growing niche of the liquor market.

I worked at Google: Here’s how to regain trust and work with tech’s critics

Let’s be part of the solution, rather than just attacking our critics. Some of the best ideas about how to sensibly regulate tech can probably be found in the Valley.

Obama staffers deleted speeches about the immigration crisis hours before Trump’s inauguration

The secret to rebuilding trust in tech: More emotionally intelligent humans

From my conversations with industry leaders at companies like Dell and data scientists like Jon Christiansen, the main takeaway is that closing the trust gap and ensuring a greater understanding of AI lies in our very humanity.

Under fire by U.S. regulators, Chinese telecom lobbying skyrocketed in 2018

I left the ad industry because our use of data tracking terrified me

With every post, click, and purchase, we have become the product. I didn’t agree to that, and I bet you didn’t either.

Startup that aims to dominate new space race raises funds from Sumitomo and Perot Jain

The “ridiculous loophole” that promises to improve low-income areas while benefiting the wealthy

A federal program’s critics say it provides questionable benefits for low-income communities and hastens gentrification—while awarding large tax breaks to the wealthiest.

With the death of iTunes, here’s what happens to your carefully curated music library

Why I think Facebook investors should vote no on Zuckerberg

For years, my organization has engaged deeply with Facebook’s leadership to address an ongoing pattern of dangerous and racist practices. But they have not truly prioritized solutions to these problems.

These black women gamers teamed up to take on the worst online trolls

Black Girl Gamers—many of whom have to deal with harassment, racial epithets, and sexist slurs while playing on popular platforms like Twitch—are helping each other share strategies for overcoming the hate.

DowDuPont giving generously to lawmakers sitting out a ban on controversial pesticide

The 118 members of Congress who haven’t sponsored a measure to ban chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to brain damage in children, have received many more campaign contributions from the pesticide’s manufacturer.

This “UX nerd” is running hackathons to tackle the POC maternal mortality crisis

To address the African-American maternal health crisis requires community-generated, black-led solutions, says Whitney Robinson.

John Cleese has some good recommendations for how to deal with a**holes

The Monty Python legend sat down with Fast Company to talk about a new documentary, which posits that “assholery” is a crisis that threatens the republic.

What it’s really like to be one of the ghost workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk

This excerpt from “Ghost Work,” a new book by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, delves into the lives of the thousands of workers around the world who toil away on the crowdsourcing marketplace.

During Betsy DeVos’s first year in office, her family fund gifted millions to conservative groups

The Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation gave or pledged almost $3.2 million in 2017 to nonprofits including politically oriented organizations that favor school choice, oppose abortion, and question the urgency in mitigating climate change.

Meet the big-thinking space startups that want to transform the universe with tiny satellites

As the cost of launching satellites drops dramatically, there is a new wave of innovation on the horizon, and dozens of new startups are jumping in.