1 year ago
108 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.
How the Supreme Court ruling connected Section 230 could extremity Reddit arsenic we cognize it
When the Supreme Court hears a landmark lawsuit connected Section 230 aboriginal successful February, each eyes volition beryllium connected the biggest players successful tech—Meta, Google, Twitter, YouTube.
The lawsuit mightiness person a scope of outcomes. One of the imaginable consequences is that these companies whitethorn beryllium forced to alteration their attack to assemblage contented moderation.
Many sites trust connected users for assemblage moderation to edit, shape, remove, and beforehand different users’ contented online—think Reddit’s upvote, oregon changes to a Wikipedia page. If those users were forced to instrumentality connected ineligible hazard each clip they made a contented decision, experts pass that it could person a catastrophic effect connected online code communities. Read the afloat story.
—Tate Ryan-Mosley
A de-extinction institution is trying to resurrect the dodo
The news: The dodo vertebrate was big, flightless, and beauteous tasty, too—all of which assistance to explicate wherefore it went extinct astir 1662. Now a US biotechnology institution says it plans to bring the dodo backmost into existence.
Why a dodo? It’s the 3rd taxon picked by Colossal Biosciences, of Austin, Texas, for what it calls a process of technological “de-extinction.” The institution is besides moving connected utilizing large-scale genome engineering to morph modern elephants backmost into wooly mammoths and resurrect the Tasmanian tiger.
How are they doing it? The institution recovered elaborate DNA accusation from 500-year-old dodo remains held astatine a depository successful Denmark. It plans to effort to modify the bird’s closest surviving relative, the Nicobar pigeon, turning it measurement by measurement into a dodo and perchance “re-wilding” the carnal successful its autochthonal habitat. The occupation is that portion it is casual to gene-edit vertebrate cells successful the lab, it’s hard to crook cautiously edited cells backmost into a bird. Read the afloat story.
—Antonio Regalado
Who gets to beryllium a tech entrepreneur successful China?
We unrecorded successful an property wherever the conception of being an entrepreneur is progressively broad. It’s often hard to slot occupations—hosting a podcast, driving for Uber, adjacent having an OnlyFans account—into the accepted definitions of employment vs. entrepreneurship.
Of course, this is not a strictly Western phenomenon; it’s happening each implicit the world. And successful China, it’s besides transforming however radical work—but with the country’s ain twists.
Our China newsman Zeyi Yang has spoken with writer Lin Zhang astir her caller publication that explores the emergence and societal interaction of Chinese radical who person succeeded (at slightest temporarily) arsenic entrepreneurs. Read the afloat story.
This communicative is from China Report, Zeyi’s play newsletter covering each the latest quality from China. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 OpenAI has released a instrumentality that detects AI-generated text
Unfortunately, it’s not precise good. (WSJ $)
+ The instrumentality returns a batch of some mendacious positives and mendacious negatives. (Axios)
+ It identified lone 26% of AI-written substance correctly. (Bloomberg $)
+ What the quality encephalon tin thatch america astir AI. (The Atlantic $)
+ Google is seemingly investigating its ain ChatGPT rivals. (CNBC)
+ A watermark for chatbots tin exposure substance written by an AI. (MIT Technology Review)
2 The US defence manufacture is struggling to limb Ukraine
Its proviso chains are straining nether the sheer request for weapons. (FT $)
+ How Russia is sneakily bypassing lipid sanctions. (Economist $)
3 Elon Musk’s Twitter provender is an echo chamber
Despite his insistence that the broader level should beryllium much unfastened and diverse. (NYT $)
+ Twitter isn’t blessed astatine the outgo of backstage jets. (Bloomberg $)
+ We’re witnessing the encephalon decease of Twitter. (MIT Technology Review)
4 A streamer was caught watching deepfake porn of his colleagues
The non-consensual videos show the dangers of the technology. (Motherboard)
+ A horrifying caller AI app swaps women into porn videos with a click. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Covid appears to beryllium scrambling our immune systems
Even mild infections look to disrupt our quality to combat disconnected diseases. (Slate $)
+ How to enactment retired however steadfast your immune strategy is. (New Scientist $)
6 Tracking truckers hasn’t made long-haul driving safer
It has, however, ushered successful a caller epoch of surveillance. (New Yorker $)
7 What’s adjacent for laid-off tech workers?
Their skills are highly prized—especially by businesses extracurricular tech. (Vox)
+ Anonymous app Blind is the hottest spot to hunt for work. (CNN)
+ The US is weaning itself disconnected being a federation of workaholics. (The Atlantic $)
8 Assembling iPhones successful Foxconn’s mill is simply a thankless task
It pays well, but the grueling moving conditions situation employees daily. (Rest of World)
9 Airport protocols are getting faster 🛫
E-gates and biometric passports are making it easier to velocity through. (WP $)
10 It’s easier than ever to study a UFO sighting 🛸
Simply occurrence up Enigma Labs’ app. (Wired $)
Quote of the day
—Programmer Miles Zimmerman recalls a nightmarish experimentation with generative AI exemplary Mindjourney, which created images of radical with excessively galore fingers and teeth, helium tells BuzzFeed.
The large story
This $1.5 cardinal startup promised to present cleanable fuels arsenic inexpensive arsenic gas. Experts are profoundly skeptical.
April 2022
Last summer, Rob McGinnis, the laminitis and main enforcement of startup Prometheus Fuels, gathered investors and staged a theatrical objection of his technology. Prometheus promises to alteration the planetary substance assemblage by drafting greenhouse state retired of the aerial and converting it into carbon-neutral fuels that are arsenic inexpensive arsenic dirty, accepted ones.
But portion investors person thrown wealth astatine the company, pushing it up to a valuation of much than $1.5 billion, determination is small grounds it tin really unrecorded up to its lofty claims. Read the afloat story.
—James Temple
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.)
+ It’s just to accidental that I didn’t spot the twist successful immoderate of these agony aunt letters coming (thanks Jess!)
+ Some choices are excessively pugnacious to contemplate, and this is 1 of them.
+ What tin board games thatch us? More than you mightiness think, actually.
+ Keep an oculus retired for the green comet passing adjacent to Earth tonight—if you miss it, you’ll person to hold different 50,000 years.
+ A java day with these 3 angels is my thought of the cleanable day.
