The Download: funding US batteries, and Elon Musk’s Twitter deal is nearing completion

2 years ago 159

The US is connected a clime tech spending spree. Over the past year, national enactment has acceptable speech hundreds of billions of dollars for vigor and climate. Now, we’re starting to spot immoderate of that wealth really get handed out.

The Department of Energy announced astir $2.8 cardinal successful grants to companies moving to marque artillery materials and components successful the US past week, joining what seems similar an endless watercourse of announcements from companies gathering EV and artillery manufacturing successful the US implicit the past respective months.

But portion this is an breathtaking archetypal measurement to getting much batteries built successful the US, these planned facilities are successful a deceptively tiny portion of the artillery proviso chain—and hazard stealing absorption from different crucial, aboriginal stages of the proviso concatenation too. Read the afloat story.

—Casey Crownhart


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

Delve backmost into immoderate of Casey’s astir caller issues:

  • Why scientists privation to assistance plants seizure much c dioxide. Casey sat down with Pamela Ronald, a works geneticist astatine the University of California, to perceive much astir her caller program to usage precocious genetics for c removal connected farmland. Read the afloat story.
  • How hydrogen and energy tin cleanable up dense industry. “Hard-to-Solve Sectors” is simply a word that’s progressively bandied astir erstwhile it comes to technologies designed to tackle the clime crisis. But what does the word mean, exactly? Read the afloat story.
  • Inside a artillery recycling facility. Casey took a travel to Reno, Nevada, to sojourn a monolithic caller artillery recycling installation from Redwood Materials earlier it opens its doors. Read the afloat story.

The must-reads

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

1 Elon Musk is edging person towards buying Twitter
If the woody closes connected Friday, he’ll go much almighty than ever. (NYT $)
+ In his idiosyncratic fashion, Musk arrived astatine Twitter HQ with a sink. (WP $)
+ He appears to person changed his caput astir cutting jobs. (Bloomberg $)
+ Here’s however the woody has unfolded implicit the past 10 months. (Insider $)

2 Meta is simply a messiness close now
Facebook’s not looking healthy, and it’s inactive waiting for the metaverse to drawback on. (NY Mag $)
+ Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse gamble volition support losing money. (Bloomberg $)
+ He doesn’t look to caput that excessively much, however. (Insider $)
+ Meta’s marketplace worth has plunged by much than $65 billion. (The Guardian)

3 Our appetite for fossil fuels is predicted to highest by 2035
The warfare successful Ukraine has accelerated the power to cleaner energy. (New Scientist $)
+ The US bureau successful complaint of processing fossil fuels has a extremist caller job. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Recycling EV batteries is undoubtedly challenging
Dedicated gigafactories could beryllium our champion bet. (Economist $)

5 China’s entrepreneurs are facing pugnacious choices
They tin enactment successful an progressively hostile China, oregon hazard it overseas. (WSJ $)
+ A pro-China radical is clumsily trying to dispersed US predetermination disinfo. (Wired $)
+ How the mendacious rumor of a Chinese coup went viral. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Puerto Rico’s powerfulness grid ne'er afloat recovered from Hurricane Maria
Residents are inactive plagued by powerfulness outages 5 years later. (The Verge)
+ How Google alerted radical to an earthquake earlier it happened. (Wired $)
+ Predicting—and preparing for—the worst. (MIT Technology Review)

7 A mysterious particle appeared pursuing a abstraction explosion
Experts anticipation it could beryllium the beingness of acheronian matter. (Quanta Magazine)

8 Emotional investigation tech is not backed by science
The UK is clamping down connected companies that assertion it are. (The Guardian)
+ Emotion AI researchers accidental overblown claims springiness their enactment a atrocious name. (MIT Technology Review)

9 People are hiring ghostwriters to marque it large connected LinkedIn
Corporate relatability has ne'er been truthful fashionable. (Vox)

10 How TikTok pushed the edifice reappraisal to caller heights of meanness
But prima critics assertion they’re conscionable being honest. (Bon Appetit $)
+ Here’s however TikTok works, for the latecomers. (NYT $)
+ Miserable contented tends to rack up immense audiences connected it. (Vox)

Quote of the day

“It utilized to beryllium however to hack your beingness to enactment more, slumber less, bid more. Now radical instrumentality pridefulness successful however galore hours a nighttime they sleep. That’s awesome.”

—Maëlle Gavet, main enforcement of effect capitalist Techstars, explains however wellbeing has yet go a precedence for Silicon Valley to the Financial Times.

The large story

Inside the FBI, Russia, and Ukraine’s failed cybercrime investigation

July 2021

More than 10 years ago, American FBI cause Jim Craig traveled each implicit Ukraine to physique a narration betwixt the American, Ukrainian, and Russian governments.

It had been an unprecedented effort to enactment unneurotic and sound down the rapidly metastasizing cybercrime underworld. US agents exchanged quality with their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts, they drank together, and they planned a sweeping planetary instrumentality enforcement action.

It would beryllium a chaotic understatement to accidental that successful the decennary since Craig took that travel to Ukraine, cybercrime has grown dramatically. His cognition was a unsocial accidental to disrupt 1 of the world’s astir palmy cybercrime gangs. It was an accidental to enactment distant immoderate of the astir important operators successful the immense underground hacking system operating successful Russia and Ukraine. But it was besides the time erstwhile things went sideways. Read the afloat story.

—Patrick Howell O’Neill

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+ The lone happening amended than cheese? Insanely stretchy cheese (well, aligot!)

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