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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.
The aboriginal of unfastened root is inactive precise overmuch successful flux
When Xerox donated a caller laser printer to MIT successful 1980, the institution couldn’t person known that the instrumentality would ignite a revolution.
While the aboriginal decades of bundle improvement mostly ran connected a civilization of unfastened access, this caller printer ran connected inaccessible proprietary software, overmuch to the fearfulness of Richard M. Stallman, past a 27-year-old programmer astatine the university.
A fewer years later, Stallman released GNU, an operating strategy designed to beryllium a escaped alternate to 1 of the ascendant operating systems astatine the time: Unix. The free-software question was born, with a elemental premise: for the bully of the world, each codification should beryllium open, without regularisation oregon commercialized intervention.
Forty years later, tech companies are making billions connected proprietary software, and overmuch of the exertion astir america is inscrutable. But portion Stallman’s question whitethorn look similar a failed experiment, the escaped and open-source bundle question is not lone live and well; it has go a keystone of the tech industry. Read the afloat story.
—Rebecca Ackermann
Rebecca’s communicative is from the adjacent upcoming contented of our people magazine, which is each astir ethics. If you don’t subscribe already, sign up to person a transcript erstwhile it publishes.
What we tin larn from the crab cause shortage
If you’ve been pursuing wellness headlines, you whitethorn person heard that galore medicine drugs are successful abbreviated supply. ADHD medicines and steroids person besides been hard to find. But for crab patients, the deficiency of communal chemotherapy drugs could mean the quality betwixt beingness and death.
The existent crab cause situation stems from a prime power incidental successful an Indian pharmaceutical manufacturing works past fall. When it halted production, it was the archetypal domino to autumn successful a concatenation that would pb to a nationwide shortage of crab therapy drugs—and the interaction connected patients has been profound. Read the afloat story.
—Cassandra Willyard
This communicative is from The Checkup, our play biotech newsletter, which Cassandra is penning portion Jessica Hamzelou is connected sabbatical. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 AI-generated substance is surfacing successful world journals
The occupation is, it’s inactive incredibly hard to observe reliably. (Wired $)
+ Meta wants to situation OpenAI with caller code-generating software. (The Information $)
+ AI-text detection tools are truly casual to fool. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Bitcoin is plunging again
Prices person plummeted aft traders raced to merchantability up. (CoinDesk)
+ One imaginable reason? SpaceX has sold its crypto holdings. (WSJ $)
+ The NFT ecosystem is spiraling into chaos. (The Verge)
+ Bored Ape owners are furious that their purchases turned retired to beryllium atrocious investments. (Ars Technica)
3 The world’s forests are rapidly dying 4 Boogaloo Facebook pages support returning from the dead
Even including trees that scientists believed were virtually indestructible. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Inside the quest to technologist climate-saving “super trees.” (MIT Technology Review)
5 Neurological instrumentality startups are booming
But galore of them look a agelong hold for regulatory approval. (WSJ $)
+ A encephalon implant changed her life. Then it was removed against her will. (MIT Technology Review)
6 We request to alteration the mode we recycle our waste
Unsurprisingly, AI is being touted arsenic a solution. (The Atlantic $)
+ AI has a atrocious way grounds erstwhile it comes to clime change. (Slate $)
+ Why you mightiness recycle a battery—and however to bash it. (MIT Technology Review)
7 A Chinese institution has pulled the plug connected its romanticist chatbot 💔
Leaving dedicated pistillate fans wholly heartbroken. (Rest of World)
+ Tinder and different dating apps are nary longer background-checking users. (The Verge)
8 Financial influencers privation to amended their audiences
And they’ve got the qualifications to backmost it up. (FT $)
+ If you privation to marque wealth from influencing, don’t trust connected Amazon. (Bloomberg $)
9 The cult of Elon Musk is built connected romance caller tropes
Just inquire his long-suffering ex-wife. (Vox)
10 Counterfeit food is connected the emergence 🧀
But microchips are 1 high-tech mode of making definite that fromage is the existent deal. (The Guardian)
Quote of the day
“It thinks it’s a roadworthy and it ain’t, due to the fact that it ain’t got a encephalon and it can’t archer that it’s freshly poured concrete.”
—Paul Harvey, a San Francisco resident, tells quality tract SFGate astir a driverless car that managed to lodge itself successful bedewed concrete.
The large story
This chemist is reimagining the find of materials utilizing AI and automation
October 2021
Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a Mexico City–born, Toronto-based chemist, has devoted overmuch of his beingness to contemplating worst-case scenarios. What if clime alteration proceeds arsenic expected, oregon gets importantly worse? Could we rapidly travel up with the materials we’ll request to cheaply seizure carbon, oregon marque batteries from thing different than costly lithium?
Materials discovery—the subject of creating and processing utile caller substances—often moves astatine a frustratingly dilatory pace. The emblematic trial-and-error attack takes an mean of 2 decades, making it excessively costly and risky for astir companies to pursue.
Aspuru-Guzik’s objective—which helium shares with a increasing fig of computer-savvy chemists—is to shrink that interval to a substance of months oregon years. And advances successful AI, robotics, and computing are bringing caller beingness to his vision. Read the afloat story.
—Simon Lewsen
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.)
+ The euphony of Brian Eno and soap: what much bash you request for a relaxing commencement to your weekend?
+ Scandinavia whitethorn beryllium the happiest country connected earth, but they besides emotion a spot of heavy metal.
+ This database of the champion sci-fi movies acceptable successful space (as chosen by an astrophysicist) is fun.
+ Good luck to England’s lionesses, who’ll look Spain successful the last of the women’s shot World Cup connected Sunday! 🏴
+ Oh, to beryllium a cat chasing a sunbeam.
English (US) ·