Happy Earth Day from all of us at DEV! In this week's episode of the DevNews podcast, @saronyitbarek and I covered a story that is particularly relevant today...

S4:E2 - U.K. Central Bank Digital Currency, the Environmental Impact of Digital Currency, a Problematic Spotify Patent, and WordPress’ Google FLoC Block

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... The environmental impact of digital currency. For this story, we spoke with Tim Swanson (Founder and Director of Research at Post Oak Labs, Head of Market Intelligence at ClearMatics, and the author of the research paper, “Bitcoin & Other PoW* Coins Are An ESG** Nightmare”).

Saron and I also chatted about the following things...

• WordPress blocking Google’s Federated Learning of Cohorts tracking technology
• The Bank of England and HM Treasury creating a joint task force to explore the possibility of creating a central bank digital currency in the U.K
• Isedua Oribhabor’s letter to Spotify on why the company should abandon their recent speech-recognition patent of a technology to detect emotion, gender, and age. Oribhador is a U.S. Policy Analyst at Access Now — and they joined us for this episode, too!

*POW = proof of work
**ESG = environmental, social, and governance

I hope you enjoy this episode! You should feel good about the fact that you saved some trees by listening to DevNews instead of buying the paper 😉 Enjoy the rest of your Earth Day!

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Acknowledgements

• @levisharpe for producing & mixing the show
• Our season four sponsors, Scout APM and Rudderstack ❤️