Author: Charlotte Jee

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Why shiny, high-tech solutions won’t solve one of Africa’s worst crises

Herding— one of humanity’s most foundational ways of life—is a pillar of survival in West Africa’s Sahel.

Migratory herders usher cattle between seasonal pastures, since they rarely own land. However, these traditional ways of doing things are becoming increasingly impossible, thanks to a complex mix of climate change, politics and war.

In more recent years, various Western players touting tech trends like artificial intelligence and predictive analysis have swooped in with promises to solve the region’s myriad problems.

But some think there could be a much simpler solution, that puts real data directly into the herders’ hands.

Recent advances in data collection—both from geosatellites and from herders themselves—have generated an abundance of information on ground cover quantity and quality, water availability, rain forecasts, livestock concentrations, and more. The resulting breakthroughs in forecasting could help people anticipate droughts and other crises. 

The work couldn’t be more urgent. The region’s herders face an existential crisis that has already started to shred the very fabric of society. Read the full story.

—Hannah Rae Armstrong

How bacteria are cleaning up our messy water supply

Some bacteria are evolving in a way that could help, rather than hurt us. That’s good news, because the US has made a real mess of its water supply. 

Scientists first detected pharmaceuticals in water more than 40 years ago. But concern has increased dramatically in the past 20 years, as a dizzying array of medications and personal care products swill into the water supply. 

Luckily, there might be a way to tackle it: using bacteria which get rid of these tiny pollutants. Read our story to find out how. 

—Cassandra Willyard

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter all about biotech and health. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 AI is unleashing a data center goldrush
It could rise from 2% of the global data center footprint to 10% by 2025. (NYT $)
+ AI’s carbon footprint is bigger than you think. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Emissions reached a record high in 2023
A big driver of that increase was extreme drought, which cut hydropower production in some countries. (Bloomberg $)
+ And forecasters predict we’re in for a very hot 2024. (The Verge)
+ ExxonMobil is suing investors who want quicker climate action. (NPR)

3 GoFundMe donations to campaigns in Gaza keep being frozen
Legitimate concerns over money laundering and terrorist financing are blocking desperate civilians from getting aid. (The Verge)

4 Can we control AI’s hallucinations?
It’s possible that we can’t. And in that scenario, it’ll remain risky to use AI for any important tasks. (The Economist $)
+ Google’s problem isn’t that its AI is ‘woke’. It’s that it’s being rushed out into products too quickly. (Bloomberg $)
+ The SEC is investigating whether OpenAI misled investors. (WSJ $)
+ Generative AI is challenging the very notion of copyright. (The Atlantic $)
+ Your posts are being used to train AI. Yes, even the ones you would imagine are safe. (Vox)

5 A humanoid robots startup got $675 million from tech investors 🤖
But can it really succeed where so many others have failed? (FT $)

6 More than one billion people now have obesity 
It’s shocking how big this public health problem has become now. (Axios)
+ However, weight loss drugs are poised to potentially help alleviate it. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Conspiracists are obsessing over Kate Middleton online
These people seem to just have way too much time on their hands. (The Atlantic $)

8 The FBI is using push alerts to catch suspects
But it’s a privacy nightmare, and could include people seeking abortions. (WP $)

9 A viral photo of a guy smoking in McDonald’s was made by AI
There are ways to tell, but they’re tricky to spot at a glance. (Quartz)

10 Zuckerberg is having a bit of a PR moment
Enjoy it while it lasts, Mark. (Axios)

Quote of the day

“I’m totally 100%, sadly addicted to this.”

—Artist and musician Laurie Anderson tells The Guardian she can’t stop talking to an AI version of her late husband Lou Reed.

The big story

Inside the billion-dollar meeting for the mega-rich who want to live forever

LONGEVITY INVESTORS CONFERENCE

November 2022

Back in September 2022, Jessica Hamzelou, our senior biotech reporter, traveled to Gstaad, a swanky ski-resort town in the Swiss Alps, to attend the first in-person Longevity Investors Conference.

Over the two-day event, scientists and biotech founders made the case for various approaches to prolonging the number of years we might spend in good health. The majority of them were trying to win over deep-pocketed investors.

As the field of longevity attempts to define itself as scientifically sound, plenty of “anti-aging treatments” based on little-to-no human evidence continue to enter the market. But can billions of investor money—some of it from ethically dubious sources—ever offer a concrete path to evidence-based life extension? Read the full story.

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ I’d love to visit this pub conjured up by George Orwell.
+ Happy St David’s Day (that’s ‘Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus’ in Welsh) to all who celebrate!
+ Now this is my kind of macaroni cheese. 
+ Hmm, sounds like a dream job to me.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How scientists are using quantum squeezing to push the limits of their sensors

When two black holes spiral inward and collide, they shake the very fabric of space, producing ripples in space-time that can travel for hundreds of millions of light-years. Since 2015, scientists have been observing these so-called gravitational waves to help them study fundamental questions about the cosmos, including the origin of heavy elements such as gold and the rate at which the universe is expanding. 

But detecting gravitational waves isn’t easy. By the time they reach Earth, the ripples have dissipated into near silence. Our detectors must sense motions on the scale of one ten-thousandth the width of a proton to stand a chance. And making them more sensitive is a huge challenge. Physicists say a new approach could help: quantum squeezing. 

The technique could also help create ​​more precise magnetometers, gyroscopes, and clocks with potential applications for navigation. Creators of commercial and military technology have begun dabbling in quantum squeezing, too: the Canadian startup Xanadu uses it in its quantum computers, and last fall, DARPA announced Inspired, a program for developing quantum squeezing technology on a chip. Find out more.

—Sophia Chen

Google DeepMind’s new generative model makes Super Mario-like games from scratch

The news: OpenAI’s stunning generative model Sora is pushing the envelope of what’s possible with text-to-video. Now, Google DeepMind is bringing us text-to-video games.

How it works: The new model, called Genie, can take a short description, a hand-drawn sketch or a photo and turn it into a playable video game in the style of classic 2D platformers like Super Mario Bros. But don’t expect anything fast-paced. The games run at one frame per second, compared to the typical 30-60 frames per second of most modern games.

Why it matters: While Genie won’t be released, it could one day be turned into a game-making tool. It could also potentially help advance the field of robotics. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

Why concerns over the sustainability of carbon removal are growing

There’s a looming problem in the carbon removal space.

By one count, nearly 800 companies around the world are exploring ways to draw planet-warming greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere and storing it away or putting it to use, a gigantic leap from the five startups I could have named in 2019. 

Globally, venture investors poured more than $4 billion into this sector between 2020 and the end of last year, according to data provided by PitchBook.

The trouble is, carbon dioxide removal is a very expensive product that, strictly speaking, no one needs right now. It’s waste management for invisible garbage, a public good that nobody is eager to pay for. Some climate experts even argue it’s an outright fantasy, and a dangerously distracting one at that. Read the full story. 

—James Temple

This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter about how tech could help to combat the climate crisis. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Inside the weird world of AI-generated videos 
These models have gotten better at making human hands. But cats’ paws? That’s another story. (WP $)
+ Welcome to the new surreal: How AI-generated video is changing film. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Selective forgetting can help AI to learn better
This new approach could also help us to better grasp how these models understand language. (Quanta)
+ AI is creating new kinds of software bugs. (Axios)
+ Use AI tools for brainstorming. Not for truth-seeking. (WP $)

3 A Pornhub chatbot stopped people searching for child abuse videos 
When people searched terms linked to abuse, a warning message popped up urging them to get help. (Wired $)

4 The US is investigating Chinese cars
It’s citing security risks, but the real fear is likely of being out-competed. (WP $)
+ The US car giants simply cannot win against Chinese automakers. (NYT $)
+ Why Apple abandoned its car project. (NYT $)

5 Tech billionaires keep buying up land on Hawaii 
Much to the detriment of the locals living there already. (NPR)

6 Why recorded music never measures up to seeing it live
It’s to do with how our brain responds. (The Economist $)

7 What it’s like to use the Vision Pro for a month
Honestly? It sounds kinda lonely. (WSJ $) 

8 Elon Musk really wants you to know he’s never been to therapy
Bless him—as if we hadn’t figured that out already. (Gizmodo)

9 The Winklevoss twins are returning $1 billion to their crypto customers
But only after being ordered to by a judge, to be clear. (BBC)

10 Wendy’s is giving up on introducing surge pricing
Outraged people on the internet forced it to backtrack. And rightly so! (Gizmodo)

Quote of the day

“The worst part of all? There was no chocolate.”

—Father-of-three Stuart Sinclair tells the New York Times how he was one of many people duped by AI-generated ads into attending an underwhelming WIlly Wonka-themed event in Glasgow last weekend. 

The big story

A day in the life of a Chinese robotaxi driver

COURTESY OF BAIDU

July 2022

When Liu Yang started his current job, he found it hard to go back to driving his own car: “I instinctively went for the passenger seat. Or when I was driving, I would expect the car to brake by itself,” says the 33-year-old Beijing native, who joined the Chinese tech giant Baidu in January 2021 as a robotaxi driver.

Robotaxi driver is an occupation that only exists in our time, the result of an evolving technology that’s advanced enough to get rid of a driver—most of the time, in controlled environments— but not good enough to convince authorities that they can do away with human intervention altogether. 

Liu is one of the hundreds of safety operators employed by Baidu, “driving” five days a week in Shougang Park. But despite having only worked for the company for 19 months, he already has to think about his next career move, as his job will likely be eliminated within a few years. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Today is a leap day! Did you know that people born on leap years are called leaplings? 
+ Once you’ve seen the giant chihuahua in the Dune 2 poster, there’s no unseeing it. 
+ There are hardcore spinning classes, and then there’s….this. 
+ Love this story about turning music into a scent. (NYT $)

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Introducing: the Hidden Worlds issue 

A hidden world is fundamentally different from the undiscovered. We know the hidden world is there. We just can’t see it or reach it. 

Hidden worlds exist in the great depths of the ocean and high above us in the planets of the night sky. But they are also all around us in the form of waves and matter and microbes. 

Technology has long played the spoiler to these worlds in hiding. We have used ships, airplanes, and rockets to shrink distances. Telescopes, cameras, satellites, drones, and radar help us peer into and map the places we cannot go ourselves. AI increasingly plays a role, too. 

If this all fascinates you as much as us, you’ll love the latest issue of MIT Technology Review. It’s all about using technology to explore and expose those hidden worlds, whether they are in the ocean depths, in the far reaches of our galaxy, or swirling all around us, unseen. 

Check out these stories from the magazine:

+ Why Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, is being investigated as a potential host for life. 

+ Meet the intrepid divers experimenting with breathing hydrogen as part of an effort to reach depths no diver has ever been before. 

+ Inside the hunt for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider, which hasn’t seen any new particles since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

+ As AI develops at breakneck speed, this comic explains what we can all learn from the Luddites. 

+ Here’s a job title you perhaps haven’t heard before, but will hear more in future: climate equity specialist. 

This is just a small selection of what’s on offer. I urge you to dive in and enjoy the whole thing, when you find the time. Enjoy!

The first-ever mission to pull a dead rocket out of space has just begun

More than 9,000 metric tons of human-made metal and machinery are orbiting Earth, including satellites, shrapnel, and the International Space Station. But a significant bulk of that mass comes from one source: the nearly a thousand dead rockets that have been discarded in space since the space age began.

Now, for the first time, a mission has begun to remove one of those dead rockets. Funded by the Japanese space agency JAXA, it was launched on Sunday, February 18, and is currently on its way to rendezvous with such a rocket in the coming weeks.

It’ll inspect it and then work out how a follow-up mission might be able to pull the dead rocket back into the atmosphere. If it succeeds, it could demonstrate how we could remove large, dangerous, and uncontrolled pieces of space junk from orbit—objects that could cause a monumental disaster if they collided with satellites or spacecraft. Read the full story. 

—Jonathan O’Callaghan

Why hydrogen is losing the race to power cleaner cars

Imagine a car that doesn’t emit any planet-warming gases—or any pollution at all, for that matter. Unlike the EVs on the roads today, it doesn’t take an hour or more to charge—just fuel up and go.

It sounds too good to be true, but it’s the reality of vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. And almost nobody wants one. 

Don’t get me wrong: hydrogen vehicles are sold around the world. But they appear to be lurching toward something of a dead end, with fuel prices going up, vehicle sales stagnating, and fueling stations shutting down. Read our story to find out why that is, and what we’d need to get these cars on the road.

—Casey Crownhart

The story above is for subscribers-only. But subscriptions start from just $8 a month to get access to all of MIT Technology Review’s award-winning journalism—why not try it out? 

Why Chinese apps chose to film super-short soap operas in Southeast Asia

A handful of Chinese companies are betting that short videos can disrupt the movie and TV industry. These “soap operas for the TikTok age” have found a huge audience in China, creating a market worth $5 billion. Now, they’re betting that these shows, once adapted, can appeal to an American audience. 

But rather than just jumping straight into the US, many of these firms are using Southeast Asia as both a testing ground, and a production hub. And they’re treading a well-worn path for using that region as the first frontier for expansion outside China. Read the full story. 

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter about China’s tech scene and how it interacts with the world. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Apple is killing its electric car project
Execs say they’ll get the 2,000-odd employees working on it to focus on generative AI instead. (Bloomberg $)
+ This is why they axed it. (Wired $)
+ Despite never selling a single vehicle, Apple still managed to exert an impact on the car industry. (The Atlantic $)

2 Google’s big AI push is coming back to bite it
The problems with generative AI keep being laid bare for all to see, in real time. (WSJ $)
+ Apple’s shareholders are trying to force it to be more transparent about the risks associated with AI. (FT $)

3 How the Pentagon uses targeted ads to find its targets
Including Vladimir Putin. No, really. (Wired $)
+ Nowhere online is safe from ads these days. (The Atlantic $)

4 AI is coming for the porn industry 
But porn companies believe some people will pay a premium to interact with a real human being. (WP $)

5 An out-of-control fire is forcing mass evacuations in Texas 
It’s more than doubled in size since igniting on Monday afternoon. (CNN)
+ The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes. (MIT Technology Review)

6 A pharma company posted positive results for another weight loss drug 
Viking Therapeutics, a smaller player from San Diego, has joined the goldrush. (Quartz $)
+ These drugs are wildly popular and effective. But their long-term health impacts are still unknown. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Delivery drivers have to contend with off-the-charts air pollution 
It’s such a big problem in South Asia that some of them are forced to take sick days as a result. (Rest of World)

8 Crypto miners blocked legal efforts to reveal how much energy they use
A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order which will prevent the Department of Energy from collecting the data. (The Verge)
+ Bitcoin’s value hit a two-year high. (Quartz)

9 Some advice: don’t use ChatGPT for your taxes
Or, frankly, anything important. (CNET)

10 Want to feel sad? Ask TikTok how old you look 
I have… zero temptation to do this. (NYT $)

Quote of the day

“I feel so powerless in this state.”

—Lochrane Chase, a 36-year-old lifelong resident of Birmingham, Alabama, tells Wired how she’s having to put her plans to pursue IVF on hold due to the Alabama Supreme Court’s February 16 ruling, which stated that embryos are “unborn children.”

The big story

This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it.

MS TECH VIA STABLE DIFFUSION

September 2022

Greg Rutkowski is a Polish digital artist who uses classical painting styles to create dreamy fantasy landscapes. His distinctive illustration style has been used in some of the world’s most popular fantasy games, including Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. 

Now he’s become a hit in the new world of text-to-image AI generation, becoming one of the most commonly used prompts in the open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion.

But this and other open-source programs are built by scraping images from the internet, often without permission and proper attribution to artists. As a result, they are raising tricky questions about ethics and copyright. And artists like Rutkowski have had enough. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+  There are so many ways to say “drunk” in English. Drunkonyms, if you will. 
+ Some amazing close-up photographs on display here.
+ Look after your joints, and they’ll look after you. 
+ A philanthropist has donated $1 billion to ensure students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx will get free tuition “in perpetuity.”

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

China’s next cultural export could be TikTok-style short soap operas

Until last year, Ty Coker, a 28-year-old voice actor who lives in Missouri, mostly voiced video games and animations. But in December, they got a casting call for their first shot at live-action content: a Chinese series called Adored by the CEO, which was being remade for an American audience. Coker was hired to dub one of the main characters.

But you won’t find Adored by the CEO on TV or Netflix. Instead, it’s on FlexTV, a Chinese app filled with short dramas like this one. The shows on FlexTV are shot for phone screens, cut into about 90 two-minute episodes, and optimized for today’s extremely short attention span. Coker calls it “soap operas for the TikTok age.”

In the past few years, these short dramas have become hugely popular in China, and the most successful domestic productions make tens of millions of dollars in a few days. This success has motivated a few companies to replicate the business model outside China. If they succeed, they could be China’s next big cultural export. Read the full story. 

—Zeyi Yang

How Wi-Fi sensing became usable tech 

Wi-Fi sensing is a tantalizing concept: that the same routers bringing you the internet could also detect your movements. But, as a way to monitor health, it’s mostly been eclipsed by other technologies, like ultra-wideband radar. 

Despite that, Wi-Fi sensing hasn’t gone away. Instead, it has quietly become available in millions of homes, supported by leading internet service providers, smart-home companies, and chip manufacturers. 

Wi-Fi’s ubiquity continues to make it an attractive platform to build upon, especially as networks continually become more robust. Soon, thanks to better algorithms and more standardized chip designs, it could be invisibly monitoring our day-to-day movements for all sorts of surprising—and sometimes alarming—purposes. Read the full story. 

—Meg Duff

Ubiquitous algorithms are shaping culture

Music, film, the visual arts, literature, fashion, journalism, food—algorithmic recommendations have fundamentally altered all these cultural products, not just influencing what gets seen or ignored but creating a kind of self-reinforcing blandness we are all contending with now.

This is actually the opposite of the personalization Netflix and other tech platforms promise. But why does it matter? And how did we get here? Three recently-released books try to get at some answers. Read our review of them.

—Bryan Gardiner

The two stories above are from the next issue of MIT Technology Review, set to land tomorrow. The theme of the magazine is hidden worlds. Subscribe to get your copy!

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The US spacecraft that landed on the moon is about to stop functioning
But another lunar lander, from Japan, has unexpectedly popped back to life. (NYT $)

2 Meet the nine-month-old $2 billion French AI startup 
Mistral claims it’ll rival US giants—but it’s also just taken money from Microsoft. (WSJ $)
+ Microsoft is investing an undisclosed amount into Mistral. (FT $)

3 How a local news website became an AI-generated clickbait farm
This case provides a fascinating insight into how generative AI is starting to fill the internet up with trash. (Wired $)
+ We are hurtling toward a glitchy, spammy, scammy, AI-powered internet. (MIT Technology Review)

4 A Democrat consultant admitted to being behind the Biden robocall 📞
Well, that was pretty dumb, as campaigning strategies go. (WP $)
+ The US is not ready for what AI is going to do to its elections. (The Guardian)
+ Meta is promising it’ll form a team to tackle deceptive uses of AI in the upcoming EU elections. (BBC)

5 The US is reportedly using AI to choose where to bomb
It used machine learning algorithms to identify targets in the Middle East this month, a defense official said. (Bloomberg $)
+ Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines. (MIT Technology Review) 

6 What a huge solar storm could do to us ☀️
We’re poorly prepared for the havoc it could wreak on our energy grids and communication systems. (New Yorker $)

7 Bans on deepfakes take us only so far—here’s what we really need
Recent moves are promising, but the open source boom makes things tricky. (MIT Technology Review)

8 The promise of green ammonia
Ammonia production accounts for almost 2% of global CO2 emissions, but startups are racing to produce cleaner alternatives.  (BBC)
+ How ammonia could help clean up global shipping. (MIT Technology Review) 

9 Some etiquette rules for how to use tech without being rude
Let the debate commence. (WSJ $)

10 Here’s a Slack hack for you 
Change your name to ‘Slackbot’ and simply disappear into the ether. (The Verge)

Quote of the day

“We’re not clear exactly how these platforms work.”

—Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sums up a very real problem facing judges and politicians trying to regulate social media companies during yesterday’s Supreme Court hearing, Vox reports. 

The big story

Mass-market military drones have changed the way wars are fought

ALESSIO MAMO / GUARDIAN / EYEVINE VIA REDUX

January 2023

When the United States first fired a missile from an armed Predator drone at suspected Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan in November 2001, it changed warfare permanently. During the two decades that followed, highly sophisticated US drones were repeatedly deployed in targeted killing campaigns. They were only available to the most powerful nations.

But new navigation systems and wireless technologies have helped to create a new type of Turkish-made military drone. It caught the world’s attention in Ukraine in 2022, when it proved itself capable of holding back one of the most formidable militaries on the planet. The Bayraktar TB2 drone marks a new chapter in drone warfare. Read the full story.

— Kelsey D. Atherton

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ How do cows stay so calm?!
+ What no one tells you about getting old. (NYT $)
+ I enjoyed looking at these beautiful photos of birds from around the world. 
+ Time is the best ingredient, as these braising recipes show.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Trump wants to unravel Biden’s landmark climate law. Here is what’s most at risk.

President Joe Biden’s crowning legislative achievement was enacting the Inflation Reduction Act, easily the nation’s largest investment into addressing the rising dangers of climate change. 

Yet Donald Trump’s advisors and associates have clearly indicated that dismantling the landmark law would sit at the top of the Republican front-runner’s to-do list should he win the presidential election. 

If he succeeds, it could stall the nation’s shift to cleaner industries and stunt efforts to cut the greenhouse-gas pollution warming the planet. The IRA’s tax credits for EVs and clean power projects appear especially vulnerable. But lots of other provisions could also come under attack. Read the full story. 

—James Temple

The era of cheap helium is over—and that’s already causing problems

Helium is excellent at conducting heat. And at temperatures close to absolute zero, at which most other materials would freeze solid, helium remains a liquid. That makes it a perfect refrigerant for anything that must be kept very cold.

Liquid helium is therefore essential to any technology that uses superconducting magnets, including MRI scanners and some fusion reactors. Helium also cools particle accelerators, quantum computers, and the infrared detectors on the James Webb Space Telescope. 

“It’s a critical element for the future,” says Richard Clarke, a UK-based helium resources consultant. However, it’s also played a critical role throughout the history of technology development, while remaining in tight supply. 

As part of MIT Technology Review’s 125th anniversary series, we looked back at our coverage of how helium became such an important resource, and considered how demand might change in the future. Read the full story.

—Amy Nordrum

How Antarctica’s history of isolation is ending—thanks to Starlink

“This is one of the least visited places on planet Earth and I got to open the door,” Matty Jordan, a construction specialist at New Zealand’s Scott Base in Antarctica, wrote in the caption to the video he posted to Instagram and TikTok in October 2023. 

In the video, he guides viewers through the hut, pointing out where the men of Ernest Shackleton’s 1907 expedition lived and worked. 

The video has racked up millions of views from all over the world. It’s also kind of a miracle: until very recently, those who lived and worked on Antarctic bases had no hope of communicating so readily with the outside world. 

That’s starting to change, thanks to Starlink, the satellite constellation developed by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX to service the world with high-speed broadband internet. Read the full story. 

—Allegra Rosenberg

Wikimedia’s CTO: In the age of AI, human contributors still matter

Selena Deckelmann is the chief product and technology officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that hosts and manages Wikipedia.

There she not only guides one of the most turned-to sources of information in the world but serves a vast community of “Wikipedians,” the hundreds of thousands of real-life individuals who spend their free time writing, editing, and discussing entries—in more than 300 languages—to make Wikipedia what it is today. 

It is undeniable that technological advances and cultural shifts have transformed our online universe over the years—especially with the recent surge in AI-generated content—but Deckelmann still isn’t afraid of people on the internet. She believes they are its future. Read the full story.

—Rebecca Ackermann 

The two stories above are from the next issue of MIT Technology Review, all about hidden worlds. It’s set to go live on Wednesday—subscribe now to get your copy!

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The Supreme Court will decide whether states can control social media 
It’ll start hearing arguments today about whether laws aimed at controlling online platforms in Texas and Florida are constitutional. (WP $)
+ Here’s what you need to know. (NYT $)
+ Texas’s law is dangerous. Striking it down could be even worse. (The Atlantic $)

2 Celebrities are being ‘deepfaked’ for adverts
AI-generated videos have them endorsing and promoting things they’ve never even heard of. (BBC)
+ These companies show why the next AI wave won’t revolve around chatbots. (Fast Company)

3 Inside TikTok’s live money-making machine
Live streaming can be hugely lucrative—for both the creator and TikTok itself—but there’s a dark side too. (ABC)
+ Influencers are getting younger and younger. (NBC)

4 A vending machine was secretly scanning undergrads’ faces
As privacy violations go, this is a pretty insidious and unnecessary one. (Ars Technica)
+ Computer scientists designing the future can’t agree on what privacy means. (MIT Technology Review)

5 China is set to dominate the future of electric cars 
Thanks, at least partly, to years of careful investment and planning by its government. (Insider $)
+ Why the world’s biggest EV maker is getting into shipping. (MIT Technology Review)

6 People are reporting cracks in their Apple Vision Pros
Bad news about these headsets just keeps on coming. (Engadget)
+ Apple is exploring developing even more wearable devices. (Bloomberg $)

7 Digitally resurrecting your loved ones might be bad for you
Researchers claim it could create unhealthy dependence on the technology. (New Scientist $)
+ Technology that lets us “speak” to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? (MIT Technology Review)

8 Could you endure living on Mars? 👨‍🚀
Physical concerns aside, it’d wreak havoc on most people’s minds. (NYT $)
+ These scientists live like astronauts without leaving Earth. (MIT Technology Review)

9 A man allegedly made $1.8 million eavesdropping on his wife’s calls 
US regulators claim he traded on confidential information he overheard during her remote meetings. (The Guardian)

10 Meet the man whose job is to keep an ice cream factory cool 🍦
Engineering challenges don’t come much more delicious than this. (IEEE Spectrum)

Quote of the day

“I understand that SpaceX is possibly withholding broadband internet services in and around Taiwan — possibly in breach of SpaceX’s contractual obligations with the U.S. government.”

—Republican Representative Mike Gallagher makes an explosive claim in a letter to Elon Musk, CNBC reports. 

The big story

ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like.

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR

March 2023

Whether it’s based on hallucinatory beliefs or not, a gold rush has started over the last several months to make money from generative AI models like ChatGPT.

You can practically hear the shrieks from corner offices around the world: “What is our ChatGPT play? How do we make money off this?”

But while companies and executives want to cash in, the likely impact of generative AI on workers and the economy on the whole is far less obvious.

Will ChatGPT make the already troubling income and wealth inequality in the US and many other countries even worse, or could it in fact provide a much-needed boost to productivity? Read the full story.

—David Rotman

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ If you want to be happy, fill your days with ‘firsts’. 
+ May these chatty cats bless your morning. 
+ Please, don’t make tea in an air fryer.
+ This writing exercise could help you to better understand what you want from life.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

The weird way Alabama’s embryo ruling takes on artificial wombs

A ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court last week that frozen embryos count as children is sending “shock waves” through the fertility industry and stoking fears that in vitro fertilization is getting swept up into the abortion debate.

The Alabama legal ruling is clearly animated by religion. But what hasn’t gotten much notice is the court’s specific argument that an embryo is a child “regardless of its location.” This could have implications for future technologies in development, such as artificial wombs or synthetic embryos made from stem cells. Read the full story. 

—Antonio Regalado

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things health and biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

Remote learning can work for preschoolers

Educational interruptions due to the pandemic, climate disasters, and war have affected nearly every child on Earth since 2020. A record 43.3 million children have been driven from their homes by conflict and disasters, according to UNICEF—a number that doubled over the past decade. Despite that, less than 2% of humanitarian aid worldwide goes to supporting young kids’ care and education. 

That may be about to change, thanks to a program called Ahlan Simsin, a special version of Sesame Street that has been custom-made for Syrian refugee children. It’s the largest-ever humanitarian intervention intended for small children’s development, with remote learning a core part of it. And it’s already yielding promising early evidence that remote learning can help young children in crisis situations. Read the full story. 

—Anya Kamenetz 

This story is from the next issue of MIT Technology Review, all about hidden worlds. It’s set to go live next Wednesday—subscribe now so you don’t miss out when it lands!

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The first privately-built spacecraft has touched down on the moon
The Odysseus lunar lander has already started to send back data, according to its developer, Intuitive Machines. (CNN) 
+ There are more private landers headed there too. (NYT $)

2 Five charts that show how Nvidia took over the world 📈
It added more than $276 billion in market value yesterday, more than any other company in a single day. (WSJ $)
+ Its chips underpin advanced AI systems, giving it a market share estimated at over 80%. (WSJ $)

3 Mothers are selling photos of their kids to pedophiles online
This is a very important, but also very disturbing, read. (NYT $)
+ Five crucial takeaways from the investigation. (NYT $)

4 What it’s like to cry while wearing an Apple Vision Pro 
Kinda lonely, from the sounds of it. (Wired $)
+ What would wearing the Vision Pro all day do to our brains? (Scientific American $)
+ These minuscule pixels are poised to take augmented reality by storm. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Who actually wants an AI search engine?
It still looks a bit like a solution searching for a problem. (Fast Company)
+ Chrome has added an AI feature that helps you to write. (The Verge)
+ Chatbots could one day replace search engines. Here’s why that’s a terrible idea. (MIT Technology Review)
+ AI-generated videos are here to awe and mislead. (Vox)

6 A GPT-4 developer tool can hack websites autonomously
Not good. (New Scientist $)
+ Three ways AI chatbots are a security disaster. (MIT Technology Review)
+ AI could help defend against security threats too though, says Google CEO Sundar Pichai. (CNBC)

7 What it’s like to hang out with the 46-year-old ‘anti-aging’ millionaire 
At a rave, no less. (The Atlantic $)
+ Longevity enthusiasts want to create their own independent state. They’re eyeing Rhode Island. (MIT Technology Review)

8 X is becoming a bit of a hellscape  
Especially for famous women, as Bobbi Althoff has unfortunately found in recent days. (WP $)
+ Three ways we can fight deepfake porn. (MIT Technology Review)
+ X has been removing accounts and posts critical of the Indian government. (Reuters $)

9 Humane’s AI Pin has been delayed
The vibes are getting pretty inauspicious for this product, frankly. (The Verge)

10 A startup wants to turn the sugar we eat into fiber 
Pretty neat—if it works as promised. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“The balance of power has shifted back to employers.”

—Laszlo Bock, an adviser at the venture capital firm General Catalyst, tells Wired why tech job interviews are becoming more and more onerous for applicants. 

The big story

The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes

DON BARTLETTI/LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES

April 2023

With each devastating wildfire in the US West, officials consider new methods or regulations that might save homes or lives the next time.

In the parts of California where the hillsides meet human development, and where the state has suffered recurring seasonal fire tragedies, that search for new means of survival has especially high stakes.

Many of these methods are low cost and low tech, but no less truly innovative. In fact, the hardest part to tackle may not be materials engineering, but social change. Read the full story.

—Susie Cagle

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ This ‘reverse packet ramen’ TikTok is mesmerizing.
+ These quotes have got me craving bubbles.
+ If I ever won the lottery, it’d become obvious pretty quickly. 
+ Here’s a fun challenge for you this weekend: try doing absolutely nothing.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How tracking animal movement may save the planet

Animals have long been able to offer unique insights about the natural world around us, acting as organic sensors picking up phenomena invisible to humans. Canaries warned of looming catastrophe in coal mines until the 1980s, for example.

These days, we have more insight into animal behavior than ever before thanks to technologies like sensor tags. But the data we gather from these animals still adds up to only a relatively narrow slice of the whole picture. Results are often confined to silos, and for many years tags were big and expensive, suitable only for a handful of animal species.

This is beginning to change. Researchers are asking: What will we find if we follow even the smallest animals? What if we could see how different species’ lives intersect? What could we learn from a system of animal movement, continuously monitoring how creatures big and small adapt to the world around us? It may be, some researchers believe, a vital tool in the effort to save our increasingly crisis-plagued planet. Read the full story.

—Matthew Ponsford 

This story is from the upcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, dedicated to exploring hidden worlds. Buy a subscription to get your hands on a copy when it publishes on February 28th! Deals start at just $8 a month.

These are the biotech plants you can buy now

—Antonio Regalado

This spring I am looking forward to growing some biotech in my backyard for the first time. It’s possible because of startups that have started selling genetically engineered plants directly to consumers, including a bright-purple tomato and a petunia that glows in the dark.

This week, for $73, I ordered both by pressing a few buttons online.

Biotech seeds have been a huge business for a while. In fact, by sheer mass, GMOs are probably the single most significant product of genetic engineering ever. But the difference now is that people are able to plant and grow GMO houseplants in their homes. Read the full story. 

Watch this robot as it learns to stitch up wounds

The news: A new AI-trained surgical robot can make stitches on its own. A video taken by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, shows the two-armed robot completing stitches in a row on a simple wound in imitation skin. It managed to make six stitches before a human had to intervene. 

Why it matters: It’s common for surgeons today to get help from robots, but we’re a long way from them being able to fully replace many tasks. This new research marks progress toward robots that can operate more autonomously on very intricate, complicated tasks. Read the full story. 

—James O’Donnell

Three frequently asked questions about EVs, answered

Transportation is a critical part of the climate change puzzle: it accounts for something like a quarter of global emissions. And the vehicles that we use to shuttle around to work, school, and the grocery store in many parts of the world are a huge piece of the problem.

Last week, MIT Technology Review hosted an event where we dug into the future of batteries and the materials that go into them. We got so many great questions, and we answered quite a few of them (subscribers should check out the recording of the full event). 

But there were still a lot of questions, particularly about EVs, that we didn’t get to. So let’s take a look at a few of those. 

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter all about the technology that could combat the climate crisis. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The first US moon landing for over 50 years is due today
If all goes to plan, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft will touch down at 5.30pm ET. (WP $)
+ Here’s how you can watch it. (NYT $)

2 ChatGPT had a meltdown yesterday
Which is not necessarily worrying in itself… but it isn’t great that we have no idea why. (Ars Technica)
+ Gab’s racist chatbots have been trained to deny the Holocaust. (Wired $)
+ Soon, we might be using AI to do all sorts of tasks for us. (NPR)

3 You can buy Vision Pro headsets in Russia 
Two years after Apple quit the country. (NBC)

4 Google is racing to fix a new “overly woke” AI-powered tool 
It was returning women and people of color when asked to produce images of America’s founding fathers, for example. (BBC)
+ It’s pausing the ability for Gemini AI to generate images until it’s fixed the issue. (The Verge)
+ These new tools let you see for yourself how biased AI image models are. (MIT Technology Review) 
+ How it feels to be sexually objectified by an AI. (MIT Technology Review)

5 American winters are getting warm
They’re also getting shorter, and less predictable. (Insider $)

6 Instagram is a news site, whether it likes it or not
And that means it has a responsibility to do content moderation properly. (NYT $)

7 Inside the weird world of Instacart’s AI-generated recipes
It’s becoming harder and harder to work out what’s been made by a human versus a machine. (404 Media)
+ Why Big Tech’s watermarking plans are some welcome good news. (MIT Technology Review)

8 We need protection from companies building tech to read our minds
It’s not such a concerning issue right now, but it could be sooner than you know. (Vox)
+ How your brain data could be used against you. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Why AM radio lingers on 📻
A surprisingly diverse group of people still rely on it, even as it heads towards obsolescence. (The Atlantic $)

10 Writing by hand has a positive impact on memory and learning ✍️
I knew it! (Scientific American $)

Quote of the day

“Happy listening! 🎶 Happy listening! 🎶 Happy listening! 🎶 Happy listening! 🎶”

—An example of how ChatGPT went off the rails yesterday, screenshotted and shared by a user on X. 

The big story

Inside the app Minnesota police used to collect data on journalists at protests

MS TECH

March 2022

Photojournalist J.D. Duggan was covering a protest in Minnesota in April 2021 when police officers surrounded him and others, and told them to get on the ground.

Officers sorted the press from the protesters, walked them to a parking lot, and began photographing them, one by one, with cellphones, which they told Duggan would be stored in an app. 

An investigation by MIT Technology Review found the data was collected using a tool called Intrepid Response, an easy way to almost instantly de-anonymize protest attendees and keep tabs on their movements. For some, the tool’s use is a dangerous step in the direction of authoritarianism. Read the full story.

—Sam Richards & Tate Ryan-Mosley

+ Fascinated by the stories in this grisly interactive map, which details murders committed in medieval London, York and Oxford. 
+ Terrible night’s sleep last night? Fear not, it’s possible to salvage your day. (NYT $) 
+ This athletic fluffy cat is bound to bring a smile to your face.
+ Some simple ways to make your diet healthier.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go

Two hundred thirty meters into one of the deepest underwater caves on Earth, Richard “Harry” Harris knew that not far ahead of him was a 15-meter drop leading to a place no human being had seen before. 

Getting there had taken two helicopters, three weeks of test dives, two tons of equipment, and hard work to overcome an unexpected number of technical problems. But in the moment, Harris was hypnotized by what was before him: the vast, black, gaping unknown. 

Staring into it, he felt the familiar pull—maybe he could go just a little farther. Instead, he and his diving partner, Craig Challen, decided to turn back. They weren’t there to exceed 245 meters—a depth they’d reached three years earlier. Nor were they there to set a depth record—that would mean going past 308 meters. 

They were there to test what they saw as a possible key to unlocking depths beyond even 310 meters: breathing hydrogen. Read the full story. 

—Samantha Schuyler

This story is from the next print issue of MIT Technology Review, all about exploring hidden worlds. Want to get your hands on a copy when it publishes next Wednesday? Subscribe now.

Why China’s EV ambitions need virtual power plants

Virtual power plants (VPPs) are an idea whose time has arrived. They’re basically a layer on top of resources like electric vehicle chargers, solar panels, and battery packs, which allow you to coordinate energy consumption and supply. This lets utility companies handle times of higher energy demand by adjusting the end use of electricity, for example reducing the efficiency of an EV charger so it takes longer to finish and thus puts less burden on the grid.

In China, which is adopting electric vehicles faster than any other country, VPPs could be transformational. The country has just started testing programs which incentivize EV owners to charge their vehicles late at night, when there’s less demand on the grid. 

It’s also piloting bidirectional charging stations, which would let EV owners not only use electricity, but even sell it back into the grid at times of peak demand, earning them a little extra cash. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter giving you behind-the-scenes insights into China and its tech scene. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are ‘children’
It’s a worrying development, especially for people seeking infertility treatments. (CNN)
+ The first IVF babies conceived by a robot have been born. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Inside AI startup Anthrophic’s funding spree 
Investors cannot hand money over to promising AI companies quickly enough right now, it seems. (NYT $)
+ OpenAI is now valued at a staggering $86 billion. (Bloomberg $)
+ Why the New York Times could win against OpenAI. (Ars Technica)

3 The EU is setting up rules for sucking CO2 out of the sky
It’s creating a first-of-its-kind certification framework for carbon removal technologies. (The Verge)
+ How carbon removal technology is like a time machine. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Researchers are imbibing AI with human-like qualities
No one is immune from anthropomorphism, it seems. (New Scientist $)
+ If you’ve posted on Reddit, your words are probably being used to train AI. (Ars Technica)

5 What mind-reading devices can teach us
They’re restoring functions like speech and movement. But they’re also shining a light on how the brain works. (Nature)
+ Elon Musk claims the first Neuralink patient can now control a computer mouse with their thoughts. (CNBC)

6 Fake funeral livestream scams are proliferating on Facebook
Beyond grim, and Meta’s doing almost nothing to prevent it. (404 Media)

7 A spacecraft is about to try to snag some space junk
If it works, it’ll be an important development for the effort to clear Earth’s orbit of debris. (Ars Technica) 

8 People are breeding pythons to have ‘emoji’ patterns 🐍
But, as always amid a gold rush, some of them are doing some deeply unethical things in the process. (New Yorker $)

9 How scientists predicted Iceland’s vast volcanic eruption
And saved a lot of lives in the process. (Quanta)
+ How machine learning might unlock earthquake prediction. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Older people are among VR’s most enthusiastic adopters
And studies suggest spending time in virtual reality can produce positive effects, too. (AP)
+ Virtual reality can be used as a painkiller. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“People say AI is overhyped, but I think it’s not hyped enough.”

—Puneet Chandok, who leads Microsoft India and South Asia, says we should get even more excited about AI, the Economic Times reports.

The big story

The open-source AI boom is built on Big Tech’s handouts. How long will it last?

STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | ENVATO

May 2023

Last year a leaked memo written by a senior engineer at Google said out loud what many in Silicon Valley must have been whispering: an open-source free-for-all is threatening Big Tech’s grip on AI.

New open-source large language models—alternatives to Google’s Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT that researchers and developers can study, build on, and modify—are dropping like candy from a piñata. These are smaller, cheaper versions of the best-in-class AI models created by the big firms that (almost) match them in performance—and they’re shared for free.

In many ways, that’s a good thing. AI won’t thrive if just a few mega-rich companies get to gatekeep this technology or decide how it is used. But this open-source boom is precarious, and if Big Tech decides to shut up shop, a boomtown could become a backwater. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

We can still have nice things

+ Paul McCartney has been reunited with a beloved bass guitar that was stolen 51 years ago. 
+ How to have a better relationship with money.
+ Obsessed with Nimbus and his marvelous piano skills. 
+ Cracking up at this game where you have to guess if a name refers to antidepressants or a character from Tolkien.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Inside the hunt for new physics at the world’s largest particle collider

In 2012, using data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, researchers discovered a particle called the Higgs boson. In the process, they answered a nagging question: Where do fundamental particles, such as the ones that make up all the protons and neutrons in our bodies, get their mass?

When the particle was finally found, scientists celebrated with champagne. A Nobel for two of the physicists who predicted the Higgs boson soon followed. 

But now, more than a decade later, there is a sense of unease. That’s because there are still so many unanswered questions about the fundamental constituents of the universe. 

So researchers are trying something new. They are repurposing detectors to search for unusual-looking particles, squeezing what they can out of the data with machine learning, and planning for entirely new kinds of colliders. Read the full story.

—Dan Garisto

This story is from the upcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, dedicated to exploring hidden worlds. Want to get your hands on a copy when it publishes next Wednesday? Subscribe now.

I went for a walk with Gary Marcus, AI’s loudest critic

Gary Marcus, a professor emeritus at NYU, is a prominent AI researcher and cognitive scientist who has positioned himself as a vocal critic of deep learning and AI. He is a divisive figure, and can often be found engaged in spats on social media with AI heavyweights such as Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton (“All attempts to socialize me have failed,” he jokes.) 

Marcus does much of his tweeting on scenic walks around his hometown of Vancouver. Our senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkilä decided to join him on one such stroll while she was visiting the city, to hear his thoughts on the latest product releases and goings-on in AI. Here’s what he had to say to her. 

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter all about AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 A new class of satellites could change everything 🛰️
They’re armed with cameras powerful enough to capture peoples’ individual features. (NYT $)
+ A big European satellite is set to return to Earth tomorrow. (Ars Technica)
+ A new satellite will use Google’s AI to map methane leaks from space. (MIT Technology Review)

2 How much electricity does AI consume?
It’s a lot—but working out exact sums can be tricky. (The Verge)
+ Making an image with generative AI uses as much energy as charging your phone. (MIT Technology Review)

3 How Silicon Valley learned to love the military
The world is feeling like a more dangerous place these days, and that’s drowning out any ethical concerns. (WP $)
+ Why business is booming for military AI startups. (MIT Technology Review)
+ SpaceX is getting closer to US intelligence and military agencies. (WSJ $)
+ Ukraine is in desperate need of better methods to clear land mines. (Wired $)

4 The EU is investigating TikTok over child safety
It alleges the company isn’t doing enough to verify users’ ages. (Mashable)

5 It’s hard to get all that excited about Bluesky 
It’s just more of the same social media. (Wired $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Why millions of people are flocking to decentralized social media services. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Ozempic is taking off in China
A lack of official approval there yet isn’t stopping anyone. (WSJ $)
+ We’ve never understood how hunger works. That might be about to change. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Meet the people trying to make ethical AI porn
Sex work is a sector that’s already being heavily disrupted by AI. (The Guardian)

8 Why we need DNA data drives
We’re rapidly running out of storage space, but DNA is a surprisingly viable option. (IEEE Spectrum)

9 You don’t need to keep closing your phone’s background apps
It does nothing for your battery life. In fact, it can even drain it further. (Gizmodo)
+ Here’s another myth worth busting: you shouldn’t put your wet phone in rice. (The Verge)

10 The mysterious math of billiard tables
If you struggle to play pool, take comfort in the fact mathematicians get stumped by it too. (Quanta $)

Quote of the day

“We realized how easy it is for people to be against something, to reject something new.” 

—Silas Heineken, a 17-year-old from Grünheide, a suburb near Berlin in Germany, tells the New York Times why he’s in favor of Tesla’s plans to expand there.

The big story

Meet the wannabe kidfluencers struggling for stardom

December 2019 

On YouTube, children can become millionaires—seemingly overnight. The highest paid of them, eight-year-old Ryan Kaji, made $22 million in 2018 by playing with toys on his channel Ryan ToysReview (now Ryan’s World). 

There are now thousands of similarly famous child YouTubers: babies who have been vlogged since the moment of their birth, 10-year-old streamers showing off video-game tricks, teenage girls giving acne advice from their bedrooms.

Why do so many kids want to be YouTubers? How are their parents helping them? And what happens if, after spending thousands of dollars or dropping out of school, it doesn’t work out? Read the full story.

—Amelia Tait

We can still have nice things

+ Cillian Murphy sounds like he’s got life pretty much figured out. 
+ Some quick, simple ways to instantly lower your stress levels. 
+ My love for PG Wodehouse is pure and eternal. 
+ Carrots can be a real standout ingredient—here’s how to put them to work.

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

The search for extraterrestrial life is targeting Jupiter’s icy moon Europa

Europa, Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, is nothing like ours. Its surface is a vast saltwater ocean, encased in a blanket of cracked ice, one that seems to occasionally break open and spew watery plumes into the moon’s thin atmosphere. 

For these reasons, Europa captivates planetary scientists. All that water and energy—and hints of elements essential for building organic molecules —point to another extraordinary possibility. Jupiter’s big, bright moon could host life. 

And they may eventually get some answers. Later this year, NASA plans to launch Europa Clipper, the largest-­ever craft designed to visit another planet. The $5 billion mission, scheduled to reach Jupiter in 2030, will spend four years analyzing this moon to determine whether it could support life. Read the full story.

—Stephen Ornes

This story is from the upcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, dedicated to exploring hidden worlds. Buy a subscription to get your hands on a copy when it publishes on February 28th! Deals start at just $8 a month.

Uruguay wants to use gene drives to eradicate devastating screwworms

The New World screwworm, a parasite common in parts of South America and the Caribbean, is a disaster for cattle. It burrows into their flesh, eventually killing them. In Uruguay alone, it costs farmers between $40 million and $154 million a year. However, work is underway to fight back.

A group of researchers in Montevideo Uruguay have used the gene-editing system CRISPR to develop what’s known as a gene drive: tweaks to the screwworms genes that, if they spread, will cause a population crash.

They are about to move into the next stage of caged trials in the lab, with a view to eventually using the genetic tool to decimate the screwworm fly population. Read the full story. 

—Abdullahi Tsanni

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The White House will spend $1.5 billion on a new chip factory
The money will go to semiconductor giant GlobalFoundries to produce advanced chips not currently made in the US. (WP $)
+ But work to expand US chip manufacturing keeps being plagued with problems. (NYT $)
+ Can the massive infusions of money rebuild the US’s industrial base? (MIT Technology Review)

2 Apple is facing its first EU fine
The EU says its music streaming services violate antitrust law. (FT $)

3 A judge ruled that Air Canada had to honor its chatbots’ discount error
This sets an important precedent as companies start to adopt AI tools. (WP $)
+ Judges, not politicians, are starting to dictate AI rules. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Should you trust an AI chatbot to plan a trip for you? (The Atlantic $)
+ It’s surprisingly tricky to work out when and how we’ll use generative AI. (FT $)

4  Is AI going to change how we define videos? 
Systems like OpenAI’s Sora don’t make recordings. They render ideas. (New Yorker $)
+ Sora looks amazing—but the rest of us will have to wait to try it out. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Don’t blindly trust Google search results 
AI-generated content, adverts, and ranking algorithms are really starting to spoil searches. (WSJ $)

6 The days of fast, free shipping may be coming to an end
Blame interest-rate hikes, and growing impatience from startup investors. (Insider $)

7 How New York’s legal weed revolution got derailed 
The state’s plans ended up in an unholy mess. (New Yorker $)
+ The feud between a weed influencer and scientist over puking stoners. (MIT Technology Review)

8 A gun influencer’s conviction has done nothing to dent his popularity
In fact, YouTube is still running adverts on his channel. (NBC) 
+ Hated that video? YouTube’s algorithm might push you another just like it. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Phone cases are getting jazzed up 🤳
They can do so much more than just protect your phone—for example, holding your lip balm. (Wired $)
+ Sharp-cornered smartphone cases are all the rage too. (WSJ $)

10 3D-printed chocolate sounds delicious 🍫
It’s something to do with the ridges and textures. (The Verge)

Quote of the day

“Everyone is looking around, talking about when layoffs are coming next, at what company.”

—A tech worker tells Insider that no job in the industry feels safe right now. 

The big story

Longevity enthusiasts want to create their own independent state. They’re eyeing Rhode Island.

GETTY IMAGES

May 2023

—Jessica Hamzelou

Earlier this month, I traveled to Montenegro for a gathering of longevity enthusiasts, people interested in extending human life through various biotechnology approaches. All the attendees were super friendly, and the sense of optimism was palpable. They’re all confident we’ll be able to find a way to slow or reverse aging—and they have a bold plan to speed up progress.

Around 780 of these people have created a “pop-up city” that hopes to circumvent the traditional process of clinical trials. They want to create an independent state where like-minded innovators can work together in an all-new jurisdiction that gives them free rein to self-experiment with unproven drugs. Welcome to Zuzalu. Read the full story.

We can still have nice things

+ Finding this funny New Yorker piece almost painfully relatable. 

+ I don’t need another cat, I don’t need another cat…..oh. Hmm. Maybe I do. 

+ Let this clip of Weird Al Yankovic conducting an orchestra brighten up your day. 

+ When people say the English are eccentric, I guess this is the sort of thing they mean.