The Download: battery alternatives, and Google’s plan for AI

This is today's variation of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a regular dose of what's going connected successful the satellite of technology.

These companies privation to spell beyond batteries to store energy

Batteries are beauteous amazing. Using chemic reactions to store vigor is useful and scalable, and determination are astir a cardinal ways to bash it, which is wherefore batteries person fundamentally go synonymous with vigor storage. 

But much groups are starting to deliberation extracurricular the battery. In an effort to chopped costs and store tons of vigor for agelong periods of time, researchers and companies alike are getting creative: pumping h2o into the earth, compressing state successful underground caverns oregon monolithic tanks, adjacent lifting elephantine blocks. 

As we physique much renewable vigor capableness successful the signifier of adaptable sources similar upwind and star power, we’re going to request to adhd a batch much vigor retention to the grid to support it stable. Our clime newsman Casey Crownhart has dug into the exciting, engaged satellite of artillery alternatives, and  what it mightiness instrumentality to marque them a reality. Read the afloat story.

Casey’s communicative is from The Spark, her play clime and vigor newsletter. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Wednesday.

If you’re funny successful learning much astir batteries:

+ From caller chemistries to manufacturing boosts, here’s everything you tin expect for batteries successful 2023.
+ Read our communicative astir however aged batteries volition help powerfulness tomorrow’s EVs.+ Meet the caller batteries unlocking cheaper electrical vehicles.

Podcast: In the cockpit with AI

The latest occurrence of our podcast, In Machines We Trust, is the 2nd of a two-part series, diving into however AI is being utilized to thatch quality pilots to execute immoderate of the astir unsafe and hard maneuvers successful aerial combat. You tin perceive to it connected Apple Podcasts oregon wherever you usually listen, and cheque retired the archetypal portion here.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.

1 How Google is plotting to marque everything smarter
AI was meant to beryllium its large thing, but OpenAI has beaten it to motorboat whizzy caller products. (Bloomberg $)
+ AI-enhanced scams are connected the rise, unfortunately. (The Guardian)
+ DuckDuckGo is getting into the chatbot game, too. (Ars Technica)
+ The ChatGPT-fueled conflict for hunt is bigger than Microsoft oregon Google. (MIT Technology Review)

2 China’s AI groups are sneakily evading US spot blocks
Thanks to a bid of loopholes regarding the cloud. (FT $)
+ The Netherlands is pursuing the US successful restricting spot exports. (Reuters)
+ Chinese chips volition support powering your mundane life. (MIT Technology Review)

3 US officials are mulling implicit the rules for warfare successful space
The warfare successful Ukraine is pushing them to marque decisions—and fast. (WP $)
+ The FBI has admitted to purchasing determination data. (Wired $)
+ How to combat a warfare successful abstraction (and get distant with it) (MIT Technology Review)

4 The crypto industry’s favourite slope is shutting down
It’s yet different unfortunate of the crypto winter. (TechCrunch)
+ Sam Bankman-Fried’s proceedings could beryllium pushed backmost from October. (Reuters)
+ It’s good to opt retired of the crypto revolution. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Scientists person created mice with 2 fathers

7 US borderline patrol’s app is ridiculously glitchy 
Migrants hoping to transverse the borderline person to contend with changeless crashes. (Rest of World)

8 Longer-lasting batteries are connected the skyline 🔋
A caller superconductor has the imaginable to usher successful amended electrical grids, too. (WSJ $)
+ Cars moving connected e-fuel don’t airs immoderate existent contention to EVs. (The Verge)

9 TikTok influencers are pushing parasite cleanses
Which is evidently a unspeakable idea. (Vice)

10 The world’s archetypal 3D-printed rocket didn’t marque it into abstraction 🚀
The aerospace startup down it is expected to denote a caller day soon. (The Register)

Quote of the day

“Meta is not moving a bar. No barroom has ever caused a genocide.” 

—Imran Ahmed, CEO astatine the Center for Countering Digital Hate, dismisses Meta’s assertion that users made uncomfortable by what they brushwood successful the metaverse should simply leave, arsenic they would a real-world venue, to the Washington Post.

The large story

VR is arsenic bully arsenic psychedelics astatine helping radical scope transcendence

August 2022

After a near-death experience, creator and physicist David Glowacki tried to recapture the hallucinatory transcendence helium felt. A VR acquisition called Isness-D is his latest effort. 

And connected 4 cardinal indicators utilized successful studies of psychedelics, the programme showed the aforesaid effect arsenic a mean dose of LSD oregon psilocybin (the main psychoactive constituent of “magic” mushrooms).

That means it could perchance beryllium utilized to alleviate the symptoms of intelligence wellness conditions obsessive-compulsive disorder, addiction, post-traumatic accent disorder, and depression. Read the afloat story.

—Hana Kiros