10 months ago
151 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.
IBM wants to physique a 100,000-qubit quantum computer
What’s happening: Last year, IBM took the grounds for the largest quantum computing strategy with a processor containing 433 quantum bits, oregon qubits, the cardinal gathering blocks of quantum accusation processing. Now, the institution has acceptable its sights connected a overmuch bigger target: a 100,000-qubit instrumentality that it aims to physique wrong 10 years.
Why it matters: The task is portion of IBM’s plans to propulsion quantum computing into the realm of full-scale operation, wherever the exertion could perchance tackle pressing problems that nary modular supercomputer tin solve.
The potential: The thought is that the 100,000 qubits volition enactment alongside the champion "classical" supercomputers to execute caller breakthroughs successful cause discovery, fertilizer production, artillery performance, to sanction conscionable a fewer fields. Read the afloat story.
—Michael Brooks
Here’s what a lab-grown burger tastes like
Eating nutrient has an undeniable interaction connected the planet. Animal agriculture makes up astir 15% of planetary greenhouse-gas emissions, and beef is simply a peculiar offender, with much emissions per gram than fundamentally immoderate different meat.
Intrigued by the committedness of lab-grown meat, our clime newsman Casey Crownhart decided to spot whether a cultivated Wagyu burger could ever unrecorded up to the lofty promises made by alternate nutrient companies. Find retired however she got on.
Casey’s communicative is from The Checkup, her play clime and vigor newsletter. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Wednesday.
If you’re funny successful the aboriginal of alternate meats, wherefore not cheque out:
+ Will lab-grown nutrient scope our plates? Ethical, environmentally friendly, mass-produced nutrient mightiness beryllium thing much than a tube dream. Read the afloat story.
+ Your archetypal lab-grown burger is coming soon—and it’ll beryllium “blended.” Growing nutrient successful a laboratory is inactive mode excessively expensive. But mixing it with plants could assistance yet get it onto our plates. 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 Ron DeSantis’ statesmanlike run got disconnected to a disastrous start
The motorboat connected Twitter Spaces was besieged with glitches. (NYT $)
+ Even without the bugs, launching the run connected Twitter would person been weird. (Vox)
+ Elon Musk’s committedness to escaped code is slanting sharply rightward. (Insider $)
2 OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman is connected a planetary PR offensive
However, the protestors extracurricular his speech successful London aren’t buying it. (The Verge)
+ OpenAI is backing regularisation for “superintelligence,” which conveniently doesn’t exist. (WP $)
+ Our speedy usher to the 6 ways we tin modulate AI. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Chinese hackers person compromised captious US infrastructure
Microsoft says they’ve been gathering quality crossed a staggeringly ample scope of sectors. (FT $)
+ The targets of the hack would beryllium captious successful an Asia-Pacific conflict. (The Guardian)
4 Moore’s Law is struggling
A caller strategy mightiness beryllium the lone anticipation to support it going. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Inside the instrumentality that saved Moore’s Law. (MIT Technology Review)
5 We tin make energy retired of bladed aerial ⚡
If it tin beryllium scaled up, it could beryllium a aboriginal alternate to fossil fuels. (Motherboard)
+ This abundant worldly could unlock cheaper batteries for EVs. (MIT Technology Review)
6 New Alzheimer’s drugs travel with precise precocious risks
While they look to dilatory the disease’s progression, they tin marque peoples’ brains swell and bleed. (Wired $)
+ How AI is helping scientists to survey quality brains much closely. (Economist $)
7 This chatbot promises to support your privacy
Data leaking is 1 of the biggest challenges facing today’s models.(Motherboard)
+ Three ways AI chatbots are a information disaster. (MIT Technology Review)
8 How Nextdoor blew up section politics
The busy-body vicinity app has been accused of politically-biased moderation. (The Atlantic $)
9 Ticket sellers’ tech simply isn’t up to scratch
Demand to spot Latin America’s biggest stars execute is causing systems to buckle. (Rest of World)
10 How we tin yet pass with aliens 📡
Or construe signals from elsewhere successful the universe, astatine least. (Vox)
Quote of the day
“Glitchy. Tech issues. Uncomfortable silences. A implicit nonaccomplishment to launch. And that’s conscionable the candidate.”
—A Trump spokesperson savages US statesmanlike candidate’s Ron DeSantis’ botched moving announcement connected Twitter, reports Politico.
The large story
How exertion helped archaeologists excavation deeper
April 2021
Construction workers successful New York’s Lower Manhattan vicinity were breaking crushed for a caller national gathering backmost successful 1991 erstwhile they unearthed hundreds of coffins. The site, known arsenic the African Burial Ground, became 1 of the best-known archaeological discoveries successful the state and is present a nationalist monument.
The African Burial Ground task was among the archetypal to usage a caller constellation of “bioarchaeology” tools that went mode beyond the accepted pickaxes and brushes. But this was simply the archetypal signifier of a overmuch broader archaeological gyration that brought scientists and humanities scholars unneurotic to make information astir our ancestors. Read the afloat story.
—Annalee Newitz
We tin inactive person bully things
A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line oregon tweet 'em astatine me.)
+ Goodbye to the 1 and lone Tina Turner, you truly were simply the best.
+ Looking to publication a abrogation successful June and request immoderate inspiration? Look nary further.
+ The shimmering colors successful butterflies’ wings person inspired a new benignant of paint—the lightest overgarment successful the world, successful fact.
+ How overmuch barroom is too overmuch cake?
+ The Greek land of Paros looks perfectly incredible.
