Steve Henn

We've come to expect a steady stream of flashy new gadgets from the booming tech sector, but another area of innovation in Silicon Valley is how we work, mainly the structure of our offices and companies. Planet Money tells the story of a company that has no employees, doesn't pay any salaries, but has hundreds of extremely talented workers nonetheless.

In a lot of video games, the default character is a man. If you want to play as a woman, you often have to pay.

In the U.S., possessing and selling marijuana is a federal crime, so banks have ignored this emerging market. In Canada, financial institutions are beginning to back corporate cannabis producers.

For legal marijuana businesses, getting a bank account can be a challenge. Many banks are unwilling to do business with them. How do banks decide which marijuana businesses are worth the risk?

Collecting data about people has become $1 trillion industry, but keeping this information safe is proving near impossible. So, a small group of entrepreneurs and developers are building new technologies that don't rely on data as a digital currency.

Unsecure Wi-Fi networks have been a well-known vulnerability in the tech industry for years. They can let even an unsophisticated hacker capture your traffic and possibly steal your identity.

A bug has been discovered in one of the Internet's principal encryption programs. The bug enables attackers to evade security and eavesdrop on information supplied to companies online by users.

Google and big automakers including Audi, GM, Hyundia and Honda are creating an open automobile alliance. That is, a framework that will allow Google Android software to work with theses cars creating connected mobile experiences.

The federal government's beleaguered health care exchange site, HealthCare.gov, shares little in common with the e-commerce sites consumers use every day. On most e-commerce sites, prices are simple to find. Not so on HealthCare.gov. And that may be one of the reasons relatively few visitors to the site have actually enrolled.

Apple released quarterly earnings on Tuesday that beat Wall Street's bearish expectations. Investors have done a pessimistic about-face on Apple since the company's stock price topped $700 in September. Apple's earnings were lower than a year ago for the first time in a decade. But Apple did offer investors some goodies — it increase its dividend and added $50 billion to a stock buyback program.