The Download: bots for the brokenhearted, and AI for life and death decisions

Philip Nitschke, besides known arsenic “Dr. Death” oregon “the Elon Musk of assisted suicide,” has a funny goal. He wants to “demedicalize” decease and marque assisted termination arsenic unassisted arsenic imaginable done technology.

Nitschke’s nonprofit, Exit International, is moving connected an algorithm-based psychiatric self-assessment to let radical to extremity their lives without immoderate quality involvement. Although Nitschke is an utmost example, AI is already being utilized to triage and dainty patients successful a increasing fig of health-care fields. 

—Melissa Heikkilä

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

1 Russia is terrorizing Ukraine with deadly Iranian drones 
The unmanned “kamikaze” drones are targeting infrastructure in Kyiv. (FT $)
+ The US authorities has committed to different billion-dollar assistance package. (New Yorker $)
+ China, India and Turkey are inactive buying substance from Russia. (Vox)

2 Kayne West has agreed to bargain Parler
What happens present is anyone’s guess. (CNBC)
+ West said helium was driven to marque the acquisition aft being banned by Instagram and Twitter. (Bloomberg $)
+ He’s been repeating extremist conspiracy theories lately. (Vox)
+ As fringe societal platforms go, Parler is highly tiny fry. (Slate)

3 China is struggling to power its fans
Fandoms are notoriously competitive, and they’re undermining Xi Jinping’s imaginativeness of a agreed China. (Vox)
+ How China’s biggest online influencers fell from their thrones. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Astronomers person witnessed the brightest detonation of each time
This benignant of gamma ray burst is estimated to hap erstwhile each 1000 years. (New Scientist $)

5 Why “zero trust” is losing its meaning
Partly due to the fact that not each cybersecurity teams tin hold connected what it refers to. (Protocol)

6 Iodine tablets aren’t a magic cure for radiation exposure
They can, however, support 1 circumstantial portion of the body. (Wired $)
+ NATO is watching Russia similar a hawk for signs of a atomic attack. (Economist $) 

7 We request to alteration however we presumption the ocean
That should impact giving it a ineligible close to life, researchers argue. (Motherboard)
+ Sponge cities are changing our narration with water. (Wired $)
+ The designer making friends with flooding. (MIT Technology Review)

8 The location surveillance manufacture thrives connected paranoia
The question is, what to bash erstwhile thing happens? (The Atlantic $)
+ How Amazon Ring uses home unit to marketplace doorbell cameras. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Teenagers privation to beryllium bully to each different online, actually ❤️
Luckily, there’s an app for that. (WSJ $)

June 2020

Venture capitalists merchantability themselves arsenic the apical of the heap successful Silicon Valley. They are the endowment spotters, the cowboys, the hazard takers; they enactment radical consenting to subordinate the strategy and, they say, merit to beryllium richly rewarded and lightly taxed for doing so.

This mostly white, mostly antheral country of concern has backed bundle companies that turn accelerated and make ample amounts of wealth for a shrinking fig of Americans—companies similar Google, Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb. But they don’t make galore jobs for mean people, particularly compared with the companies oregon industries they disrupt. And things person been slowing down. Recently, task capitalists person recovered less and less ideas that acceptable their preferred pattern. Read the afloat story.