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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.
We person capable materials to powerfulness the satellite with renewable energy
The news: Powering the satellite with renewable vigor volition instrumentality a batch of earthy materials. The bully quality is, erstwhile it comes to aluminum, steel, and rare-earth metals, there’s plentifulness to spell around, according to a caller analysis.
Greater wage off: Although emissions are an unavoidable broadside effect of extracting the materials, implicit the adjacent 30 years they adhd up to little than a year’s worthy of planetary emissions from fossil fuels. Experts are assured the up-front emissions outgo volition beryllium much than offset by savings from cleanable vigor technologies replacing fossil fuels.
But there’s a catch: While we technically person capable of the materials we request to physique renewable vigor infrastructure, really mining and processing them tin beryllium a challenge. If we don’t bash it responsibly, getting those materials into usable signifier could pb to biology harm oregon quality rights violations. Read the afloat story.
—Casey Crownhart
Could ChatGPT bash my job?
—Melissa Heikkilä, elder AI reporter
There’s been a batch of speech lately astir whether journalists oregon copywriters could oregon should beryllium replaced by AI. So far, newsrooms person pursued precise antithetic approaches to integrating the buzziest caller tool, ChatGPT, into their work: tech quality tract CNET secretly utilized it to constitute articles, portion BuzzFeed (more transparently) announced plans to usage it to make quiz answers.
But here’s the soiled concealed of journalism: a amazingly ample magnitude of it could beryllium automated. That’s not needfully a atrocious happening if we tin outsource immoderate of the boring and repetitive parts of the occupation to AI. The existent problems originate erstwhile you springiness AI excessively overmuch control. Read the afloat story.
Melissa’s communicative is from The Checkup, her play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things AI. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 Elon Musk wants to crook Twitter into a fintech platform
It’s each portion of his program to look beyond advertizing to marque money. (FT $)+ Ex-Twitter unit don’t cognize what to bash with their aged laptops. (Wired $)
+ The institution has made its archetypal involvement outgo connected its monolithic debt. (Bloomberg $)
2 Inside FTX’s shadowy PR power campaigns
A caller filing reveals an undisclosed web of almighty governmental figures. (The Intercept)
+ Things are getting adjacent messier for the collapsed crypto exchange. (NY Mag $)
+ FTX’s victims are inactive furious. (The Atlantic $)
3 The US has stopped allowing companies to export to Huawei
It’s conscionable the latest successful a bid of China-related sanctions. (BBC)
4 The contention for AI supremacy is heating up
But whether American oregon Chinese labs volition travel retired connected apical is anyone’s guess. (Economist $)
+ Generative AI is changing everything. But what’s near erstwhile the hype is gone? (MIT Technology Review)
5 You don’t needfully request a headset to participate the metaverse
Our mundane world is edging person to dystopia each day. (The Atlantic $)
+ Kpop could assistance to amended the metaverse’s image. (NYT $)
6 Celebrity dependable deepfakes person been co opted to spew racist hate
This sadly felt inevitable. (Motherboard)
+ AI dependable actors dependable much quality than ever. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Boeing has made its past ever 747
Once a awesome of accessible travel, it’s apt to extremity up carrying cargo. (NYT $)
+ Hydrogen-powered planes instrumentality disconnected with a startup’s trial flight. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Social media has a acheronian obsession with being #kind
Is it truly a bully deed if you’re filming it for clickbait? (The Guardian)
Quote of the day
“I could property the reddish button, adjacent my laptop and get nether my blankets for a mates hours.”
—Phoebe Gavin, a erstwhile enforcement manager of endowment and improvement astatine quality tract Vox, reflects connected the upsides of being laid disconnected implicit video telephone alternatively than successful idiosyncratic to the Wall Street Journal.
The large story
A backstage information radical regularly sent Minnesota constabulary misinformation astir protestors
July 2022
When US marshals changeable and killed a 32-year-old Black antheral named Winston Boogie Smith Jr. successful a parking store successful Minneapolis connected June 3, 2021, the metropolis was already successful a full-blown policing crisis. George Floyd had been murdered by a subordinate of the constabulary unit the erstwhile May. As protests reignited each implicit the city, the cops couldn’t support up.
Into the void stepped backstage information groups, hired chiefly to forestall harm to properties. But the organizations often ended up managing protestation activity—a task usually reserved for police, and 1 for which astir backstage information guards are not trained.
One company, Conflict Resolution Group (CRG), regularly provided Minneapolis constabulary with accusation astir activists that was astatine times untrue and profoundly politicized. Read the afloat story.
—Tate Ryan-Mosley & Sam Richards
We tin inactive person bully things
A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line or tweet 'em astatine me.)
+ This one-page calendar is earnestly blowing my mind.
+ I emotion that actors are rehearsing Shakespeare wrong dystopian video crippled Fallout (thanks Will!)
+ Quick—I request an exigency photo of a bear, stat!
+ Can you judge these impressive plants are carved from wood?
+ Ambient tunes are monolithic close now, and I tin spot why.
English (US) ·