Bobby Allyn
Bobby Allyn is a business reporter at NPR based in San Francisco. He covers technology and how Silicon Valley's largest companies are transforming how we live and reshaping society.
He came to San Francisco from Washington, where he focused on national breaking news and politics. Before that, he covered criminal justice at member station WHYY.
In that role, he focused on major corruption trials, law enforcement, and local criminal justice policy. He helped lead NPR's reporting of Bill Cosby's two criminal trials. He was a guest on Fresh Air after breaking a major story about the nation's first supervised injection site plan in Philadelphia. In between daily stories, he has worked on several investigative projects, including a story that exposed how the federal government was quietly hiring debt collection law firms to target the homes of student borrowers who had defaulted on their loans. Allyn also strayed from his beat to cover Philly parking disputes that divided in the city, the last meal at one of the city's last all-night diners, and a remembrance of the man who wrote the Mister Softee jingle on a xylophone in the basement of his Northeast Philly home.
At other points in life, Allyn has been a staff reporter at Nashville Public Radio and daily newspapers including The Oregonian in Portland and The Tennessean in Nashville. His work has also appeared in BuzzFeed News, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
A native of Wilkes-Barre, a former mining town in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Allyn is the son of a machinist and a church organist. He's a dedicated bike commuter and long-distance runner. He is a graduate of American University in Washington.
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After settling a class action suit over the company's incognito viewing mode in Chrome, Google says it will destroy millions of user search histories.
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Blue bubbles versus green bubbles. In texting it's the difference between iPhone owners and Android phone users. Green bubble people can be made to feel like unwelcome party crashers.
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The popular social media site Reddit lists as a stock on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday. Its ticker symbol? RDDT. Reddit plans to reward its users by setting aside some stock for them.
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Google paused its AI image-generator after Gemini depicted America's founding fathers and Nazi soldiers as Black. The images went viral, embarrassing Google.
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TikTok's Chinese parent company would have to sell off the popular app under a bipartisan bill approved overwhelmingly by the House Wednesday — or face a ban on all U.S. devices.
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The House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve a bill that would force parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban of the social media app on U.S. devices.
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Apple is pulling the plug on its secretive electric, self-driving car project, according to multiple reports. Apple worked on EVs for a decade, but never released a car.
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The social media company Reddit, known for its "ask me anything events" and subreddits on many topics, is filing to trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Gadgets powered by AI that can complete everyday tasks are coming into the workplace.
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Whether it's a song that auto-plays on Spotify or a certain type of recommended video on YouTube, many people are fed up with the algorithms that guide our digital choices.