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Despite President Biden’s assurances astatine Wednesday’s United Nations gathering that the US is not seeking a caller acold war, 1 is brewing betwixt the world’s autocracies and democracies—and exertion is fueling it.
Late past week, Iran, Turkey, Myanmar, and a fistful of different countries took steps toward becoming afloat members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), an economical and governmental confederation led by the authoritarian regimes of China and Russia.
The bulk of SCO subordinate countries, arsenic good arsenic different authoritarian states, are pursuing China’s pb and are trending toward much integer rights abuses by expanding the wide integer surveillance of citizens, censorship, and controls connected idiosyncratic expression.
And portion democracies besides usage monolithic amounts of surveillance technology, it’s the tech commercialized relationships betwixt authoritarian countries that’s enabling the emergence of digitally enabled societal control. Read the afloat story.
—Tate Ryan-Mosley
Watch this squad of drones 3D-print a tower
The news: A mini-swarm’s worthy of drones person been trained to enactment unneurotic to 3D-print immoderate elemental towers. Inspired by the mode bees oregon wasps conception ample nests, the process has aggregate drones enactment unneurotic to physique from a azygous blueprint, with 1 fundamentally checking the others’ enactment arsenic it goes.
How it works: One drone deposits a furniture of gathering material, and the different verifies the accuracy of everything printed truthful far. The drones are afloat autonomous portion flying, but they are monitored by a quality who tin measurement successful if things spell awry.
Why it matters: One day, the method could assistance with challenging projects specified arsenic post-disaster operation oregon adjacent repairs connected buildings that are excessively precocious to entree safely, the squad down it hopes—and could conception buildings successful the Arctic oregon adjacent connected Mars. Read the afloat story.
—Tammy Xu
Podcast: Real-time farming
In the latest occurrence of our podcast, In Machines We Trust, we instrumentality a travel to a Californian vineyard to larn astir however how it’s deploying sensors and different forms of AI. Listen to it connected Apple Podcasts, oregon wherever other you usually listen.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 ISIS execution footage is powering AI text-to-image models
Non-consensual explicit images of celebrities person besides been recovered successful fashionable models’ datasets. (Motherboard)
+ Dall-E 2 tin present make images of quality faces. (The Guardian)
+ Open root AI instrumentality Stable Diffusion creates much risque creation than different models. (Wired $)
+ The acheronian concealed down those cute AI-generated carnal images. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Patients immersed successful VR during country whitethorn request little anesthetic
Which could assistance to shorten infirmary stays and swerve surgical complications. (MIT Technology Review)
+ VR is arsenic bully arsenic psychedelics astatine helping radical scope transcendence. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Predators are targeting children connected Twitch with startling ease
Its moderation tools are failing to support young users from abusers. (Bloomberg $)
+ The level is slashing the percent of gross it gives to its biggest streamers. (NYT $)
4 Making a battery-powered level is truly hard
But that’s not stopping companies from trying to flooded the important hurdles. (WP $)
+ Air taxi steadfast Kittyhawk has announced that it’s closing down. (WSJ $)
+ This is what’s keeping electrical planes from taking off. (MIT Technology Review)
5 The hidden dangers of instrumentality translation
When harmless phrases are mistranslated into different language, the results tin beryllium deadly. (Slate $)
6 We request caller painkillers 💊
We’re overly reliant connected unsafe opioids. But uncovering caller drugs that are arsenic effectual is simply a agelong process. (Economist $)
7 South Korea doesn’t privation to miss retired connected the US EV boom
Carmakers extracurricular the US are excluded from the country’s taxation credits break. (Rest of World)
+ China is considering ineligible enactment implicit the “discriminatory” law. (Bloomberg $)
+ EV taxation credits could stall retired connected deficiency of US artillery supply. (MIT Technology Review)
8 How tech tin assistance prevention whales from fatal vessel encounters
Data streams and microphones show the animals. (NYT $)
9 Neptune has ne'er looked better
The James Webb Space Telescope has taken a ace wide representation of the planet. (The Atlantic $)
+ NASA has refueled its Artemis 1 rocket up of its adjacent launch. (The Verge)
+ SpaceX’s Starship rocket could instrumentality disconnected successful October, apparently. (CNET)
10 Cats and dogs whitethorn not request to devour truthful overmuch nutrient 🐈⬛🐕
Evidence is mounting that pets tin thrive connected plant-based diets, but vets aren’t truthful sure. (New Scientist $)
Quote of the day
“Start reasoning with your sci-fi chapeau on.”
—Peter Singer, co-manager of futurist steadfast Useful Fiction, which has advised the US Air Force and subject contractors, explains to Vox wherefore the warfare successful Ukraine has ushered successful a caller epoch of technological warfare.
The large story
Zimbabwe’s clime migration is simply a motion of what’s to come
Julius Mutero has spent his full big beingness farming a three-hectare crippled successful Mabiya, eastbound Zimbabwe, but has harvested virtually thing successful the past six years. He is conscionable 1 of the 86 cardinal radical successful sub-Saharan Africa who the World Bank estimates volition migrate domestically by 2050 due to the fact that of clime change—the largest fig predicted successful immoderate of six large regions the enactment studied.
In Zimbabwe, farmers who person tried to enactment enactment and accommodate by harvesting rainwater oregon changing what they turn person recovered their efforts woefully inadequate successful the look of caller upwind extremes. Droughts person already forced tens of thousands from the country’s lowlands to the Eastern Highlands. But their hopeless moves are creating caller contention for h2o successful the region, and tensions whitethorn soon boil over. Read the afloat story.
—Andrew Mambondiyani
English (US) ·