The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is requiring buy-now, pay-later lenders to provide the same protections to shoppers as credit card companies do.
A new report from the Fed shows little change in family finances over the last year, but rising prices remain a big worry. And parents of children under the age of 18 feel worse off than a year ago.
With a few clicks of AI software, anyone can conjure the voice or visual likeness of a dead celebrity — or really anyone. This new world has opened up a bunch of new legal questions about the rights of people and their heirs to control digital replicas of themselves. Today on the show, how a Drake diss track featuring the voice of Tupac made it into the Congressional record, and how it may lead to more regulation of AI.
Target joins other retailers trying to draw inflation-weary shoppers to stores. The chain says reductions have already been reflected in about 1,500 products.
Johansson says she was approached multiple times by OpenAI to be the voice of ChatGPT, and that she declined. Then the company released a voice assistant that sounded uncannily like her.
FDIC chairman Martin Gruenberg says he's prepared to step down once a successor is confirmed. Gruenberg has been widely criticized for fostering a toxic workplace at the agency.
The seafood chain is in hot water after a series of bad choices by a parade of executives. Almost 580 restaurants will stay open, after dozens closed abruptly last week.
Homes are not just where we eat and sleep, but one of the primary ways people build generational wealth in the U.S. But with home shortages and harsh climates, rural America's path to building that wealth looks a little different than other parts of the country. Today on the show, we focus in on housing challenges in Alabama's Black Belt and one innovative solution to preserving generational wealth.
Disneyland employees in California, including those who perform as characters from Mickey Mouse to Moana, have voted to unionize. The 1,700 workers will be represented by Actors' Equity Association.
More than 5,000 Mercedes-Benz workers who build luxury SUVs in Alabama were eligible to vote on whether to join the UAW. Workers faced intense anti-union messaging from Mercedes in the run-up.
Last month, the world narrowly avoided a cyberattack of stunning ambition. The targets were some of the most important computers on the planet. Computers that power the internet. Computers used by banks and airlines and even the military.
What these computers had in common was that they all relied on open source software.
A strange fact about modern life is that most of the computers responsible for it are running open source software. That is, software mostly written by unpaid, sometimes even anonymous volunteers. Some crucial open source programs are managed by just a single overworked programmer. And as the world learned last month, these programs can become attractive targets for hackers.
In this case, the hackers had infiltrated a popular open source program called XZ. Slowly, over the course of two years, they transformed XZ into a secret backdoor. And if they hadn't been caught, they could have taken control of large swaths of the internet.
On today's show, we get the story behind the XZ hack and what made it possible. How the hackers took advantage of the strange way we make modern software. And what that tells us about the economics of one of the most important industries in the world. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.
The Justice Department is expected to argue that its clamp down on TikTok is about national security, but Constitutional lawyers say there is no way around grappling with the free speech implications.
For decades, the Dominican Republic's economy has been growing at a remarkably steady pace. The Caribbean nation of 11 million people is today considered a middle-income nation, but the International Monetary Fund projects it could become an advanced economy within the next 40 years.
Today on the show, we uncover the reasons behind the Dominican Republic's economic success and whether or not these benefits are being felt widely in the country.
For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.
Stock markets received a boost from new data showing inflation is easing. Lower inflation has raised hopes about the U.S. economy — but there are still a lot of unknowns.
