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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 porcelain situation didn’t request to beryllium existent to get views
Despite what you whitethorn person heard, teens are not stealing their family’s good dinnerware, tossing it successful a blender, and snorting the resulting particulate for the “porcelain challenge.”
That’s conscionable what Sebastian Durfee, a 23-year-old histrion and TikTok creator, hoped you mightiness judge erstwhile helium dispersed the connection connected societal media of the latest unsafe teen challenge. Never caput that it was each fake from the start.
Last week, Durfee posted a telephone to enactment to his followers: to enactment unneurotic to get “boomers to freak retired astir a fake TikTok challenge.” His relationship was banned conscionable a fewer days later, but his extremity wasn’t conscionable to rack up views. It was besides to analyse however attraction and outrage enactment online, and, successful a caller twist, to instrumentality the precise radical who were successful connected the gag successful the archetypal place. Read the afloat story.
—Abby Ohlheiser
DeepMind’s game-playing AI has beaten a 50-year-old grounds successful machine science
What’s happened: DeepMind has utilized its committee game-playing AI AlphaZero to observe a faster mode to lick a cardinal mathematics occupation successful machine science, beating a grounds that has stood for much than 50 years.
Why it matters: The problem, matrix multiplication, is simply a important benignant of calculation astatine the bosom of galore antithetic applications, from displaying images connected a surface to simulating analyzable physics. It is besides cardinal to instrumentality learning itself. Speeding up this calculation could person a large interaction connected thousands of mundane machine tasks, cutting costs and redeeming energy. Read the afloat story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
Inside a artillery recycling facility
A monolithic caller artillery recycling installation from Redwood Materials is being built successful the mountains conscionable extracurricular Reno, Nevada. My workfellow Casey Crownhart, our clime reporter, took a look astir to spot however the construction’s going, including connected the hydrometallurgical building, wherever invaluable metals—lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper—will beryllium isolated from crushed artillery materials. Read the afloat story.
Casey’s communicative is from The Spark, her caller play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things clime and energy. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 Hurricane Ian is apt to beryllium Florida’s deadliest successful 87 years
The bulk of the 100+ casualties are believed to person drowned. (WP $)
+ Areas that clasp star powerfulness fare amended successful utmost weather. (Slate $)
+ Bangkok’s flooding occupation is steadily worsening. (New Yorker $)
2 It’s not excessively precocious to debar a wintertime of utmost illness
Accepting flu and covid shots tin assistance to lessen the blow. (The Atlantic $)
+ Covid vaccines don't harm menstrual cycles, a caller survey says. (Economist $)
+ This nanoparticle could beryllium the cardinal to a cosmopolitan covid vaccine. (MIT Technology Review)
3 You shouldn’t interest astir the US predetermination getting hacked
At least, that’s what the DBI and CISA are saying. (Motherboard)
+The alt-right’s tech tactics person evolved since the Capitol riots. (Slate $)
+ Election misinformation is inactive thriving successful non-English languages. (CNET)
4 Pollution particles tin scope babies successful the womb
Depending connected however overmuch contamination the parent is exposed to, soot particles tin transverse the placenta. (Bloomberg $)
5 Big Tech destroys millions of information retention devices a year
Even though they could hitch and resell them, companies are frightened stiff of confidential information falling into the incorrect hands. (FT $)
6 Inside the contention to extremity HIV—using CRISPR
In theory, the exertion could instrumentality cells to a near-standard state. (Wired $)
+ The idiosyncratic who co-created CRISPR isn’t ruling retired engineered babies someday. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Chinese apps are inactive thriving successful India
Despite the Indian government’s efforts to propulsion users toward autochthonal apps. (Rest of World)
+ Censorship-evading apps are being stamped retired successful China. (TechCrunch)
8 The emergence and emergence of facial designation successful US airports
Self-check successful kiosks are being phased retired successful favour of the arguable technology. (NYT $)
+ If you get your look scanned the adjacent clip you fly, here’s what you should know. (MIT Technology Review)
9 What it’s similar to sojourn an Instagram tourer trap
It sounds similar a full batch much occupation than it’s worth. (Vox)
10 It’s clip to clasp robot dolphins 🐬
They’re an ethical alternate to the existent happening successful captivity. (Hakai Magazine)
Quote of the day
“The spam finds its mode into my inbox, too.”
—Commissioner Ellen L. Weintraub of the Federal Election Commission, who helps constabulary US governmental campaigns, tells the Washington Post that adjacent she can’t flight the deluge of governmental spam emails.
The large story
Gene editing has made pigs immune to a deadly epidemic
December 2020
When covid-19 began to spread, countries closed businesses and told radical to enactment home. Many thought that would beryllium capable to halt the coronavirus. If we had paid much attraction to pigs, we mightiness person known better.
To forestall their animals contracting diseases, pig farmers employment measures acquainted to anyone who has been avoiding covid-19, including requiring quality workers to alteration apparel earlier entering a unafraid barn, answering questions astir their past pig interaction and dousing supplies successful disinfectant.
Now the Pig Improvement Company, successful Hendersonville, Tennessee, is trying thing different. Instead of trying to seal animals disconnected from the environment, it’s changing the pigs themselves. At a concealed experimental installation successful the US, the institution has a swine IVF halfway and a laboratory wherever pig eggs are being genetically edited utilizing CRISPR, the revolutionary cistron scissors, to marque piglets immune to deadly diseases. Read the afloat story.
—Antonio Regalado
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.)
+ The pitfalls of making movies astir making movies.
+ Chic is dead, agelong unrecorded chic.
+ Ada Lovelace telling Charles Babbage she wished helium was arsenic close arsenic she was is conscionable astonishing (thanks Will!)
+ Notorious stone mag Creem is making a comeback.
+ It’s clip to choose the champion songs and albums of the 90s—but however iconoclastic are your opinions?
English (US) ·