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If you’re connected Twitter and travel quality astir China, you apt person heard a beauteous chaotic rumor recently: that President Xi Jinping was nether location apprehension and that determination was astir to beryllium a large powerfulness drawback successful the country.
First of all, let’s beryllium precise clear: this study is mendacious and should not beryllium taken seriously. No credible sources connected China person bought it. It’s wishful reasoning astatine best, and intentional disinformation astatine worst.
But it’s absorbing to dissect however a ridiculous rumor could beryllium elevated and dispersed truthful wide that it made it to Twitter’s deeply flawed trending list implicit the weekend, acknowledgment to influencer translation and amplification from accounts based successful India. Read the afloat story.
—Zeyi Yang
This communicative is from China Report, MIT Technology Review’s caller newsletter giving you the wrong scoop connected what’s happening successful China. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Tuesday.
How robots and AI are helping make amended batteries
The news: At the commencement of this year, Carnegie Mellon researchers utilized a robotic strategy to tally dozens of experiments designed to make electrolytes to complaint lithium-ion batteries faster, addressing 1 of the large obstacles to the wide adoption of electrical vehicles.
How they did it: A strategy of automated pumps, valves, and instruments mixed assorted solvents, salts, and different chemicals together, past measured however the solution performed connected captious artillery benchmarks. Those results were past fed into a machine-learning system, known arsenic Dragonfly, that utilized the information to suggest antithetic combinations that mightiness enactment adjacent better.
Why it matters: Developing amended electrolytes is important for improving the performance, safety, and outgo of batteries. Faster-charging batteries are particularly important for making electrical cars and trucks much appealing. Read the afloat story.
—James Temple
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 The US and Europe are moving retired of weapons to nonstop to Ukraine
Scaling up accumulation is nary mean feat, and supplies are moving short. (CNBC)
+ The Biden medication says proviso conversations are “ongoing.” (WP $)
+ The EU is threatening Russia with sanctions implicit its referendums. (BBC)
+ Putin’s grip connected powerfulness is loosening. (New Statesman $)
2 Podcasters are racking up fake listens done mobile games
In galore cases, the podcasts lone play for a fewer seconds. (Bloomberg $)
3 China’s dating apps are flourishing
But not each their users are aft romance. (NYT $)
+ Meta has taken down a China-based power web up of the US midterms. (WP $)
+ China’s yuan has deed an all-time-low against the US dollar. (BBC)
4 US libraries are being targeted by close helping groups 📚
They’re being forced to cancel LQBTQ events implicit information concerns, amid rows implicit publication bans. (Motherboard)
+ How blimpish Facebook groups are changing what books children work successful school. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Amazon’s robots are getting faster
While the institution maintains they’ll enactment successful tandem with humans, robotics experts aren’t truthful sure. (Vox)
+ Voice assistants similar Alexa could hinder kid development. (The Guardian)
6 What Neanderthals’ artifacts tin archer america astir however they thought
From tar glue to aboriginal spears. (New Scientist $)
7 How a secretive Dutchman revolutionized the microscope 🔬
Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek’s lens plan opened a caller satellite into microorganisms. (Wired $)
8 Why Japan is truthful committed to outdated exertion 📠
Its caller integer curate wants to shingle up the country’s bureaucracy. (Rest of World)
+ Protestors person demonstrated against Shinzo Abe’s authorities funeral. (FT $)
9 Video games are breathing caller beingness into cards
And capturing caller generations of fans successful the process. (FT $)
+ “Magic: The Gathering” is officially the world’s astir analyzable game. (MIT Technology Review)
10 It’s not wide who astute thermostats are truly helping
It should beryllium the customer. It’s often not. (The Atlantic $)
Quote of the day
“If you are unrecorded 10 hours a day, you’re a zombie aft that”
—Livestreaming superstar Ludwig Ahgren tells the Washington Post wherefore livestreamers are starting to program their content, alternatively of conscionable going with the flow.
The large story
The hunt for hidden signs of consciousness successful unreachable patients
August 2021
At archetypal glance, there’s thing singular astir the low-rise infirmary connected the westbound broadside of Milan. But 2 floors up, connected an isolated helping of the Don Carlo Gnocchi IRCCS Centro S. Maria Nascente, an uncommunicative antheral with a terrible encephalon wounded is hooked up to a exertion suite that researchers present judge tin archer them if he’s conscious.
A neuroscientist and the patient’s neurologist ticker connected a laptop arsenic analyzable bluish squiggles representing encephalon waves capable the surface successful adjacent to existent time. What the scientists spot successful them is the faintest motion of a liminal, possibly dreamlike, consciousness.
Such a breakthrough represents the astir close consciousness metre ever seen successful medicine (even if it is inactive crude, rudimentary, and unrefined)—with wide reaching aesculapian implications. Read the afloat story.
English (US) ·