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The latest contented of MIT Technology Review examines what decease means to america successful 2022, digging into wherefore immoderate radical are inactive dedicating their lives to kicking against it, portion others are processing their ain coping mechanisms for grief. Here’s a enactment of immoderate of the caller stories successful the edition, guaranteed to get you reasoning astir what comes next.
- My workfellow Charlotte wrote a beautiful piece astir making integer clones of her (living) parents, for a glimpse into what it could beryllium similar to speech to the dead. Would you beryllium prepared to bash the aforesaid for your loved ones?
- If you’ve ever wondered astir what happens to your body erstwhile you donate it to science, wonderment nary more.
- Just due to the fact that AI tin marque life-and-death decisions, doesn’t needfully mean we should let it to.
- Why the impossible-seeming imagination of reviving frozen quality bodies utilizing cryonics refuses to die.
- Should we judge in—or adjacent want—immortality?
- In an property erstwhile everything is being recorded, adjacent cognition has a lifespan.
- Are electric vehicles truly the solution to the clime situation they’re being touted as?
- Technology utilized to beryllium thing to get excited about. When did it go thing to dread?
Read the afloat magazine, and if you haven’t already, you tin subscribe to MIT Technology Review for arsenic small arsenic $80 a year.
The biggest buying app successful America that you’ve ne'er heard of
There’s a caller Chinese e-commerce app that is softly but rapidly growing. It’s called Temu. And connected October 17, it became the astir downloaded buying app successful the United States, beating disconnected contention from Amazon, Walmart, and its Chinese rival Shein.
If your contiguous effect is What? I’ve ne'er adjacent heard of Temu!, you’re successful bully company. The app remains obscure among astir people, though it marks different high-profile effort by yet different Chinese tech elephantine to effort its luck successful the American e-commerce market. So however did Temu emergence to the apical of the iOS App Store’s buying chart? Read the afloat story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s communicative is from China Report, his caller play newsletter filling you successful connected each the latest happenings successful 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 Conspiracy theorists person seized upon Russia’s “dirty bomb” claims
Despite determination being nary grounds for its existence. (NYT $)
+ Russia’s presumption connected the alleged soiled weaponry contained 9/11 footage. (Motherboard)
+ The warfare successful Ukraine is dragging america backmost to a bloodier age. (Economist $)
2 Celebrity deepfakes are advertising’s adjacent frontier
The companies down them deliberation the guaranteed attraction is worthy the imaginable ineligible repercussions. (WSJ $)
+ Inside the unusual caller satellite of being a deepfake actor. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Twitter’s astir progressive users are turning their backmost connected it
And its unit aren’t wholly definite why. (Reuters)
+ Twitter has been ever madder than accustomed implicit the past week. (Motherboard)
+ Elon Musk is optimistic helium tin adjacent his woody by Friday. (Reuters)
+ Why Twitter inactive has those unspeakable Trends. (MIT Technology Review)
4 US predetermination officials are swamped with nationalist records requests
It’s each acknowledgment to 1 antheral successful Florida. (Bloomberg $)
5 Climate activists are suing governments
They assertion that authorities’ inaction to support quality has harmed their law rights. (Hakai Magazine)
+ Nature-based solutions tin assistance to mitigate the clime crisis' effects. (CNET)
+ Climate enactment is gaining momentum. So are the disasters. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Tech’s unicorns are becoming rarer again 🦄
Investors aren’t giving up hope, though. (WP $)
+ Some task superior funds are going aft narwhals instead. (Bloomberg $)
7 Sexually transmitted infections are rising successful the US
Doctors are holding disconnected prescribing a pill specifically designed to combat them, though. (Vox)
8 The pandemic proved it was imaginable to behaviour bully subject quickly
Greater transparency astir probe could assistance to transportation it on. (Wired $)
+ Is a covid and flu “twindemic” connected the horizon? (MIT Technology Review)
9 NASA’s large UFO probe has begun 🛸
Maybe the information truly is retired there. (Motherboard)
+ Radiation-resistant bacteria could past connected Mars for millions of years. (New Scientist $)
10 Singapore’s politicians are TikTok superstars
Their clips are met with astir unprecedented positivity. (Rest of World)
Quote of the day
“It's not good, it's not fun.”
—Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus VR, is not a instrumentality of Meta’s VR societal app Horizon Worlds, Insider reports.
The large story
This is however AI bias truly happens—and wherefore it’s truthful hard to fix
February 2019
If we privation to beryllium capable to hole bias successful AI, we request to recognize the mechanics of however it arises successful the archetypal place.
We often shorthand our mentation of AI bias by blaming it connected biased grooming data, but the world is much nuanced. Bias tin creep successful agelong earlier the information is collected arsenic good arsenic astatine galore different stages of the deep-learning process—and tin beryllium incredibly hard to fix. Read the afloat story.
—Karen Hao
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.)
+ Animals truly bash do the funniest things (thanks Charlotte!)
+ Men, would you situation to bare successful a backless suit?
+ Well, this tiny woody shot rolling down a colossal xylophone successful a Japanese wood has made everything better.
+ I had nary thought a magnified ant look would beryllium specified nightmare fodder.
+ Dare you sojourn this spooky Italian ghost town?
English (US) ·