Almost 40 percent of rural America, or about 23 million people, don’t have access to broadband internet or reliable mobile service. Long term, this digital divide is a huge economic problem. Companies need high-skilled workers, and people without decent internet access can’t find those jobs or get the training they might need to do them. Now the Fed is trying convince businesses that the digital divide is their problem, too, Jeremy Hegle told us. He’s a senior community development adviser for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Its territory includes Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, parts of Missouri and northern New Mexico. (10/08/18)

Facebook announced this week that it had suffered its biggest hack ever, compromising the accounts of at least 50 million users. Part of the reason a Facebook hack is so scary is that the social network connects to so many other apps and services. You might use it to log in to Spotify or Tinder or OpenTable — a whole string of apps might have your information connected to your profile. So far, Facebook has said hackers did not access any third-party apps. But it’s still investigating the scope of the hack. We dig into this in Quality Assurance, the segment where we take a deeper look at a big tech story. Molly Wood talks with Mike Isaac, a tech reporter for The New York Times who’s been covering the story. (10/05/18)

Automation is coming. And although it’s inevitably going to take jobs away, it’s also going to create millions of new jobs, make production more efficient and kickstart entire new industries. The countries that invest in automation early, and in the retraining that will help workers transition to new types of jobs, could really jump ahead economically. That’s partly why automation is a huge part of the Chinese government’s Made in China 2025 initiative. That’s the country’s plan to reduce its reliance on outside technology and create a tech economy that rivals the West. Automation is an especially big deal in China because there’s so much manufacturing there. It’s sometimes referred to as “the world’s factory.” Marketplace’s China correspondent Jennifer Pak joins host Molly Wood to talk about how big a deal the transition to automation might be for China. (10/04/18)

This week, the United States, Mexico and Canada made a tentative trade deal that will replace NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. And while NAFTA is better known for, say, avocados and cars, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, as it’s known, is updated for the digital age. For example, it would protect internet companies like Facebook or Google from being sued over material that shows up on their services. It addresses how internet services and future 5G might work in all three countries. And it would make it easier for digital goods and data to cross borders. Molly talks about it with Victoria Espinel, who is on the federal Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations and is CEO of the software industry trade group called BSA / The Software Alliance. (10/03/18)

In the insanely popular video game “Fortnite,” players can spend about five bucks to unlock dances called emotes for their characters to perform. And these dances are everywhere. You see them on playgrounds, in pro sports, and there are “Fortnite” dance classes.  But are they really “Fortnite” dances? Most of them appear borrowed, like the dance called “Ride the Pony,” which is pretty clearly “Gangnam Style.” There’s the one called “Fresh,” which is a dead ringer for the “Carlton Dance” from the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Back in July, Chance the Rapper Tweeted at Epic Games, the maker of “Fortnite,” and said it should give rappers and artists credit and cash for their dances. A rapper named 2 Milly has said he might sue Epic Games over his dance “Milly Rock,” which he alleges is “Swipe It” in “Fortnite.” Host Molly Wood talks about it with Merlyne Jean-Louis, a lawyer and former dancer who’s written about copyrighting choreography. (10/02/18)

Elon Musk must resign from Tesla’s board of directors after a settlement on Saturday with the Securities and Exchange Commission over his tweets about taking the company private. He will stay on as CEO. It’s tough to separate the conversation about Tesla from the conversation about Elon Musk. But let’s talk about cars for a minute. Because it feels like electric car announcements are fast and furious lately. Ford is promising an electric crossover that’s the size of a Tesla Model X but inspired by the Mustang. There are rumors of a $30,000 electric Volkswagen. Is Tesla’s biggest problem actually competition? Molly talks with Maryann Keller, an auto industry analyst, about the new entries into the electric car market. (10/01/18)

TV is still the big dog when it comes to advertising. But it’s slipping. Advertisers are moving their dollars online, fast. The money is mostly flowing to Facebook and Google because those platforms can use personal information to target ads specifically based on your interests. But the next frontier in TV ads is coming our way. AT&T just completed its purchase of Time Warner and has launched an ambitious new ad-tech strategy. The plan is to take all that data it has from wireless subscribers and its internet services and deliver way more targeted ads on television. Today on Marketplace Tech, we dig into how this would work in Quality Assurance, the segment where we take a closer look at a big tech story. Molly talks with Ad Age media reporter Jeanine Poggi. (09/28/18)

Earlier this week, the founders of Instagram up and left Facebook five years after Facebook bought their company. But quitting isn’t so easy for the rest of us. Facebook has our friends, our pictures and our snarky comments. It’s why there are so few real competitors. And if you switch to a smaller social network, it’s pretty lonely. But earlier this year, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Twitter announced a project to make it easier to move your personal information between services. That data portability is just what it sounds like — creating the option for users to move on. Host Molly Wood talks with Kevin Bankston, director of the Open Technology Institute at New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C., about one big reason for the portability project: the European privacy law known as GDPR. (09/27/18)

Much of the physical makeup of the internet lies on the ocean floor in the form of fiber optic cables that snake between continents. They’re what allow you to send email or Facebook messages to friends around the world. But just like roads get clogged with traffic, these information highways are starting to get clogged, too. An ambitious initiative out of Finland is underway to solve the problem by laying a new route through the one body of water still largely untouched by sea cables: the Arctic Ocean. (09/26/18)