Here's a bonus episode of Function with Anil Dash, another podcast from Vox Media that we think you'll enjoy. The episode explores whether Twitter needs an edit button by taking a closer look at this popular feature request. Anil speaks with Leslie Miley, a former engineering manager at Twitter, about the behind-the-scenes technical and ethical considerations...

The hype cycle for bots exploded in 2016 as developers poured time and money into the dream of personal digital assistants. Facebook and Microsoft announced major investments into conversational user interfaces, and Slack launched a fund to capitalize on the bots hoping to build on its platform.But when bots became available the public, the public largely...

Breaking down music into its component parts helped Pandora build personalized music playlists years before services like Spotify even existed. Could taking a similar approach with podcasts help the streaming-audio company regain the users it has lost to newer services? That’s the bet Pandora is making under Roger Lynch, who joined the company as CEO...

Should ride-sharing companies build a “quiet mode”?“We have thought about it,” Taggart Matthiesen, head of product for autonomous driving for Lyft, told me. “I think it’s interesting. At some point, we may play around with that idea, but that’s unfortunately not a feature at this point.”Matthiesen says that a “zen mode” would represent another step...

Tiffani Ashley Bell is the founder of the Human Utility, a nonprofit organization working to restore water service to people who are unable to pay their bills. The organization, which was founded in 2014, began its work in Detroit and has since expanded to Baltimore.Bell lays out her thoughts on how Silicon Valley should change its priorities on this...

Alexia Bonatsos has watched countless startups come and go. First as the editor in chief of TechCrunch, and now in her current role as the founder of venture capital firm Dream Machine, Bontasos’ job has been to understand what makes a tech company succeed. “A lot of it’s gut, but gut’s not magical woo-woo dust,” she says. “It’s taking in data and information,...