Aarti Shahani
Aarti Shahani is a correspondent for NPR. Based in Silicon Valley, she covers the biggest companies on earth. She is also an author. Her first book, Here We Are: American Dreams, American Nightmares (out Oct. 1, 2019), is about the extreme ups and downs her family encountered as immigrants in the U.S. Before journalism, Shahani was a community organizer in her native New York City, helping prisoners and families facing deportation. Even if it looks like she keeps changing careers, she's always doing the same thing: telling stories that matter.
Shahani has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, a regional Edward R. Murrow Award and an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award. Her activism was honored by the Union Square Awards and Legal Aid Society. She received a master's in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, with generous support from the University and the Paul & Daisy Soros fellowship. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago. She is an alumna of A Better Chance, Inc.
Shahani grew up in Flushing, Queens — in one of the most diverse ZIP codes in the country.
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In Silicon Valley, you're supposed to build businesses unapologetically. You're not supposed to speak out against injustice. Freada Kapor Klein breaks those rules. -
Drivers say Uber feels more like a faceless boss — setting strict rules and punishments, but eerily hard to reach, even in emergencies.
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To recruit drivers, company leaders are fond of saying that at Uber, you can "Be Your Own Boss." But NPR found that many Uber drivers feel controlled by a boss that is both always there, yet faceless. -
Because of supply and demand, pay rates for Uber drivers shift. They never know how much they're going to make. To reach a goal, some drivers stay on the job at least 14 hours — sometimes longer.
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Imagine that instead of your boss telling you — eye-to-eye — you get the news as an alert on your phone. That's how it works at Uber, and the Uber app's move to fire is sometimes made in error.
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Uber says drivers can each be their "own boss." But in an NPR survey, hundreds of drivers said they don't feel that way. They feel controlled by a boss that is both always there, and yet faceless.
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Former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been appointed as a special counsel to investigate Russian influence in the election. And Google has unveiled its latest product ideas.
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Microsoft President Brad Smith calls for a "Digital Geneva Convention" under which governments would set limits on the creation of cyberweapons, just like they did for nuclear weapons. -
The volume of ransomware attacks is slowing or stabilizing around the world, according to government officials and security experts. And the amount of ransom paid out by victims is relatively small — just tens of thousands of dollars. But the scope of the attack in more than 100 countries is still massive, its disruptions are widespread, and the weaknesses it exposed in computer systems can only be described as frightening.
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Massive cyberattacks spread throughout the world, affecting computer systems in nearly 100 countries. The hackers reportedly used a flaw in Microsoft software identified by the NSA.
