What happens when a large, multinational electronics company shows up in rural Wisconsin and cuts a major development deal? This week on the interview episode of The Vergecast, Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel sat down with Reply All producer Sruthi Pinnamaneni to discuss her recent reporting on Foxconn and the company’s subsequent tensions and dealings with the people of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin.

Below is a brief, edited transcript of Nilay’s conversation with Sruthi on how Mount Pleasant moved people out of their homes to make way for Foxconn.

Nilay Patel: They’re moving people out of their homes, and they’re paying a lot of money — they’re paying $30,000 an acre — but they’re asking people to leave. There was one gentleman who was in a wheelchair, and he needed to make his new house accessible, and they won’t give him the money. And just listening to that, I was heartbroken.

Sruthi Pinnamaneni: Yeah. It’s so hard to imagine why the village decided to do it this way. In the negotiations with Foxconn, the parcel of land that they needed to get ready for Foxconn right away — so they gave themselves a deadline of August 1st. So by August 1st, they had to get about 60 homeowners off of this very large, almost two-square-mile area of land. And the way they did it was the village said, “Foxconn, you don’t need to go individually and do the buyouts and buy the land. We will do it for you.” In fact, the village is also paying for that land. They took out, I believe, over $100 million in loans just to pay for the land. So the village, your village, is paying a mortgage on land that they collected from their own residents, and gave — not sold, not rented — gave to Foxconn.

Nilay: That’s insane.

Sruthi: It is… odd. It’s not what you expect a village to do. They’re not set up to do this kind of operation. They’re not real estate brokers. So, everybody I spoke to, even people who were for the deal, who lived on that land and had to move out, said the process was so chaotic and so many things fell through the cracks. There was all this confusion about money, who was going to get it, how to get the relocation fees. And I think most of the people just took the deal that the village was offering because they know the village is doing this, so the threat of eminent domain was always hanging above the whole process. There wasn’t room for negotiation.

For more on this story, check out The Verge’s recent interview with Sruthi Pinnamaneni.

Most discussions about online harassment begin and end with Gamergate, but online harassment campaigns were well underway in the 1990s. They’ve evolved to include life-threatening tactics, including doxxing and swatting. Caroline Sinders, a research fellow at the Digital Harvard Kennedy School and an expert in machine learning, joins Nilay Patel and Casey Newton on The Vergecast to talk about the origins online harassment, how platforms like Twitter and Facebook can be better designed to combat it, and what we as individuals can do to mitigate its effects.

Below is a brief, edited transcript of their conversation about how better designs can help content moderators enforce the rules and protect people from online harassment:

Caroline Sinders: Some of the tools that people are given to content moderate, from what we have seen and different leaked information about content moderators, is awful. What they have to work with is really, really not great. And it’s upsetting when you think about it from a design standpoint, when you think about how the beacons of modern design in the United States will be software design and it will be from major platforms, that what content moderators have to use to moderate platforms is really antagonistic. Outside of the content that they are forced to look at, the tools that they are given and the time frames that they’re given to analyze content is almost… I want to argue like a human rights violation.

Casey Newton: Wow.

They have under 10 seconds to make a decision. Sometimes what they’re looking at is extremely violent content. They have to look at it all day, and they have specific quotas that they often have to meet. So how do you build context out of that? How do you build context out of something like a harassment campaign that’s happening in Steubenville?

Mm-hmm.

How do you build in context to that? What people often have is like a checklist that they have to memorize. It’s based off policy that’s not great policy around defining harassment. And they have to make a split-second decision. And they have tools where there’s not enough shown to them to perhaps understand what they’re looking at. So, what are all the solutions here? The solutions are to perhaps redesign the way in which content moderators are engaging with content on the platforms. Make that experience better.

On this week’s interview episode of The Vergecast, Nilay talked with president of StubHub Sukhinder Singh Cassidy. Singh Cassidy previously served as president of Google Asia Pacific and Latin America, building the company’s presence globally. In 2015, she also launched theBoardlist, a talent marketplace dedicated to placing women on the boards of tech companies, and she has been a leader in diversifying the industry.

On The Vergecast, Singh Cassidy talked about her long journey as an entrepreneur and executive in the field, her more recent role as president of StubHub, and her thoughts on the recent Google walkouts and how tech companies can be run better.

Below is a brief, edited transcript of their conversation about how tech company boardrooms may change.

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy: I can only tell you as a board member, I would love the idea for any of the boards I was on to be able to have direct visibility to what is the ratio of complaints. You know, give me some data on what’s going on inside the company.

Nilay Patel: Yeah.

Most often, by the time it comes to the board, it’s one crisis situation. But as a board member I would want to know what the pattern is. Am I seeing 1 out of 1,000 incidents? Am I seeing 1 out of 100? How do I get the data that something is or is not a problem inside a company I serve the board on?

And I think people underestimate or over estimate how much access the board has to information like that. Right?

Yeah.

I mean boards are consuming vast amounts of information, you know. But it still all comes through one lens in a quarterly board meeting. And they have to distill and dissect a lot and I don’t think there is a good feedback loop on issues relating to employee happiness, talent, and culture overall to the boardroom.

And most committees, you know, like nom / gov committees or remuneration committees, you know comm committees, their charter’s very narrow today. And until it’s expanded to include these things, there’s not a natural way that this information is all coming to the boardroom. Unless the CEO himself or herself is very attuned to bringing it.

In 2011, Steven Yang’s laptop battery gave out. Searching online, he couldn’t find a new battery from a third-party supplier with good enough ratings. Instead, he was faced with paying an arm and a leg to buy a battery from the manufacturer. With this problem in mind, Yang created Anker and began developing and selling batteries and chargers through Amazon. Just one year later, the company was profitable and highly regarded by customers. Now, Anker has set its sights on solving bigger problems in the tech and gadget world.

On this week’s interview episode of The Vergecast, Nilay sat down with Yang backstage before Anker’s event in New York City. The two talked about the humble beginnings of Anker, the new products it’s bringing to market, and the many ins and outs of USB-C.

Below is a brief, edited transcript of their conversation about the changing face of USB-C charging.

Steven Yang: With the increasing popularity of gadgets, smartphones, tablets, it was clear that charging has become a problem. Slow charging speed, short battery life, easily broken cables, and so on and so forth. And there’s no great solution to this. So we felt that we could really make a difference, not only through price point and through quality, but through our own innovative technology. That’s why we set up our first R&D center in Shenzhen in May 2012. It was a hell of a journey!

Nilay Patel: So now you’re here, and you have some new products you’re announcing today. You’re announcing a new USB-C power delivery brick that’s very small, 27 watts. And this is something you developed in your research and development center.

Well, partnered with manufacturers of silicon and GaN, gallium nitride.

What is GaN? 

GaN is actually a new material. It’s a new semiconductor material that we think is going to replace silicon as the best material to make chargers for the next decades.

Why is that?

We’ve been using silicon to make chargers for the past 40–50 years. They’re helpful, but they operate at a lower frequency, so chargers could not be made smaller. GaN actually operates at a much higher frequency so it basically adapts five to 10, or even more, times every second than silicon does. The result of that is actually a much smaller charger form factor, much less heat being produced, and, ultimately, lower BOM cost.

That’s bill of materials — a lower cost for you and a lower cost for the consumers.

Yes. But I think, initially, what you’re going to see is the small form factor. The lower cost will come several years later when that mass scale is reached.

Off the heels of Google’s event announcing the Pixel 3, Pixel Slate, and Home Hub, Nilay sat down with Ivy Ross (Google’s VP of hardware design) and Rishi Chandra (Google’s VP of Home and Nest) for this week’s Vergecast interview. The three discussed the evolving and increasingly human design language of Google products, the future of devices like the Home Hub in a world that demands privacy, and — yes — the infamous Pixel 3 notch.

Below is a brief, edited transcript of their conversation about Google’s hardware design philosophy.

Nilay Patel: You said “what is it like to hold Google in your hands?” So, what unites that entire portfolio for you? What are the ideals you’re pushing forward?

Ivy Ross: Yeah, so we really use three words to inform that design language: human, optimistic, and bold. And that may sound simple, but it came from a long exercise of a cross-functional team representing marketing, the product folks, and design, really looking at what is uniquely Google and how might that come alive in hardware, and then what does that design language look like that delivers on these words.

So, human: I think we have always been, for everybody, much more accessible. Optimistic comes from our sense of fun. I mean, what other brand changes their logo every day on the browser? And then bold, ‘cause we do bold things as a company, i.e. driverless cars. And so we felt that those are three elements of our DNA that we wanted to make sure came through in our hardware design language.

Nilay: Does that start from the design of the actual hardware itself, the technology inside of it, or are you saying, “We’re going to do pops of color and fun fabrics at the end”?

Ivy: So when I say design language, I think as a group, and my team does the industrial design, color materials, finishing. We work collaboratively with the PMs and the engineers. The PMs really come up with what the product function will be, and then our job is to work together to bring that to life through the physical product. So it is materials, color, finish, form, interactions — that’s what my team is responsible for. But I think there are certain things, for sure, that overlap. I mean the fact that we create our hardware to be helpful to people, I would say, is definitely a human trait. So, they’re very relatable. They’re not isolated.

That is something I think is very much on the entire hardware division’s mind, is how we have a history of delivering helpful software. And for us, we want to be able to deliver the best hardware that leverages our software AI, but at the end of the day is helpful. Because if it’s not helpful to us humans, it won’t stay around.

Nilay: Yeah and I think a good example of that is the new Pixel phone’s have the selfie camera on front and the wide-angle, which actually solves a constructive need — because they’re showing the phone to people, that’s the thing that they’re most wowed about, which is kind of remarkable.

Ivy: Yeah, it’s a small thing but it’s really fun and you’re right, that’s a great example of seeing a problem that exists out in the wild and being able to solve it.

This week on The Vergecast, we’re doing something a little different — we’re introducing you to our newest reporter, Julia Alexander, who joins The Verge to cover YouTube, Twitch, and more.

Nilay sat down with Julia to talk about the controversy around YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, the rise of parasocial relationships, and how creators are cultivating an audience of very savvy media consumers.

Below is a brief, edited transcript of their conversation about how YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is radicalizing young people on the far right:

Nilay Patel: What’s broken with the platform?

Julia Alexander: So the number one issue I think is the recommendation algorithm. It’s radicalizing so many people. I spoke to a lot of kids, for example, who came up through Gamergate — they were like 13, 14, when Gamergate first happened in 2014 — who are now 18, 19 and they were saying YouTube is the main reason that they believe a lot of stuff they believe. ‘Cause they would watch a video from, like, someone like Sargon of Akkad that would give them recommendations into this whole area of people — it’s disturbing and it’s just opinions. And I talked to high school teachers a lot and the kids that we talk to, they just use YouTube for news and they’re getting really bad sources to back up their opinions.

So I think that’s the most disturbing part of YouTube, and it’s not something that you know how to fix. I mean, they’re interested in fixing it, it’s just not something they’re capable of fixing and I think that’s a Google problem not just a YouTube problem.

Nilay: Why do you think they’re not capable of fixing it? ’Cause I mean they are trying some things, right? They’re labeling things in different ways. I think the Wikipedia links that they’re now adding are adorable in their way.

Julia: Yeah. The moon landing happened.

Nilay: Yeah. I remember — I won’t name names — CES one year, end of the day, long day, everyone’s having a drink and I just remember suddenly the conversation became about whether 9/11 was an inside job. I was like, I was an adult when that happened. That was 100 percent real. I promise you, every journalist in America would be chasing that story forever if it hadn’t, but he’s like, “Well, I watch a bunch of YouTube videos.” And I just remember thinking to myself, “Wow this is, like, a lot.”

Julia: There was a moment with Kyrie Irving, he was on stage somewhere and they brought up the fact that Kyrie believed the Earth was flat and he very explicitly said, “I was watching a bunch of YouTube videos and I got into the hole.” On YouTube it’s super easy to find something and it starts off really fun with like, “Is the moon landing real?” I’m gonna watch a conspiracy video, but that quickly becomes topics that aren’t as ludicrous that are even scarier.

So you use keywords like “liberals” or “feminism” or “conservatives” and it gets into scary territory where people spend a day formulating a very well put together 20-minute argument that is based on bad faith. And it travels well and it spreads to Twitter, and it spreads to Instagram, and it’s like this cross promotional thing. And I don’t think YouTube knows how to stop people from gaming their system, which is upsetting.

And that’s the conversation I have with creators a lot where they outthink YouTube all the time. Abusive tags, abusive metadata. It’s something that websites are aware of and YouTube doesn’t know how to fix it, and it’s like the most blatant issue that it’s facing a lot of creators is they just put in however many tags they want. You could put “Google” or “Android” into a YouTube search and you’re going to get far-right conspiracy theories. Because people just realize that you’re searching for Android and they can game that pretty easily.

This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Paul, and Dieter discuss the Pixel 3, tackling its new features, improved screen, and infamous notch. Then, Nilay covers the latest in antitrust news coming off the heels of the European Commission fining Google $5 billion for “illegally tying” Chrome and search apps to Android. Of course, Dieter also talks about the surprising response to Palm, a tiny phone that’s made to be less distracting than your smartphone. There’s plenty more in between — like Liz Lopatto and Paul Miller returning with our favorite recurring segments — so listen now!

3:14 – Google Pixel 3 Review

35:55 – “This Week in Elon Musk” with Liz Lopatto

40:32 – Google will charge a licensing fee for Android device makers using its apps

49:01 – Google could finally face serious competition for Android

1:00:34 – Paul’s weekly segment, “Plam This”

1:02:37 – The new Palm is a tiny phone to keep you away from your phone

1:17:31 – Apple announces iPad Pro and Mac event for October 30th

Also, last week Nilay and Verge reporter Dami Lee interviewed Scott Belsky, Adobe’s chief product officer, about bringing Photoshop to the iPad. You can listen to that in The Vergecast feed.