The Download: virtual grief meet-ups, and bitcoin mining in Kazakhstan

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.

Inside the metaverse meetups that fto radical stock connected death, grief, and pain

Days aft learning that her husband, Ted, had lone months to live, Claire Matte recovered herself telling strangers astir it successful VR.

The 62-year-old retiree had bought a virtual-reality headset successful 2021 for fun, traveling the satellite virtually and singing karaoke astir her caring responsibilities. Eventually, she stumbled crossed Death Q&A, a play hour-long league successful a virtual abstraction which grapples with mortality, wherever attendees often stock things they’ve shared with nary 1 else. 

Despite the cognition that they’re conscionable for gaming, much radical similar Matte are putting connected VR headsets to speech done heavy symptom successful their day-to-day lives.

Many radical spot the meetups arsenic a lifeline—one that was peculiarly needed during the pandemic but seems poised to persist agelong after. Read the afloat story.

—Hana Kiros

Bitcoin mining was booming successful Kazakhstan. Then it was gone.

Over the past fewer years, dozens of bitcoin mining operations person sprung up successful the metropolis of Ekibastuz successful Kazakhstan and its surrounding area, drawn by the country’s inexpensive power, limitless onshore and a surfeit of unused buildings that mines. By the summertime of 2021, Kazakhstan had risen to beryllium a bitcoin mining superpower. 

But the golden unreserved was doomed from the start. Kazakhstan’s miners yet overloaded the country’s vigor grid, causing localized blackouts, and exacerbating existing tensions. In January 2022, these issues boiled implicit into wide protests. 

Within weeks, the authorities efficaciously chopped miners disconnected from the nationalist grid, bringing the roar to an abrupt end. It hopes it tin yet reconstruct the industry—but the aboriginal looks highly uncertain, fixed the volatility successful the planetary crypto sector. Read the afloat story.

—Peter Guest

TR 10: Mass-market subject drones

For decades, high-end precision-strike American craft dominated drone warfare. The warfare successful Ukraine, however, has been defined by low-budget models made successful China, Iran, oregon Turkey—in particular, the Bayraktar TB2, made by Turkey’s Baykar corporation. Their wide usage has changed however drone combat is waged and who tin wage it.

Inside Japan’s agelong experimentation successful automating elder care

It’s a picture you whitethorn person seen before: a ample achromatic robot with a cute teddy carnivore look cradling a smiling pistillate successful its arms. Images of Robear, a prototype lifting robot, person been reproduced endlessly. They inactive clasp a salient presumption successful Google Image hunt results for “care robot.” 

But devices specified arsenic Robear, which was developed successful Japan successful 2015, person yet to beryllium normalized successful attraction facilities oregon backstage homes. Why haven’t they taken off? The reply tells america thing astir the limitations of techno-solutionism and the urgent request to rethink our attack to care. 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 People successful China are being urged not to sojourn aged relatives
The country’s lunar caller twelvemonth celebrations volition coincide with a question of deadly covid infections. (The Guardian)
+ A Chinese infirmary said fractional of its unit precocious contracted the virus. (CNBC)
+ Visitors from South Korea and Japan are being blocked from entering China. (BBC)

4 Twitter is considering charging for idiosyncratic names
Only the astir sought-after handles are apt to clasp immoderate value, though. (NYT $)
+ Elon Musk is simply a loss-making grounds breaker. (The Guardian)
+ Twitter is abandoning astatine slightest a twelve offices crossed the world. (Insider $)
+ What bash the Twitter Files really reveal? Not a full lot. (New Yorker $)

Quote of the day

“I became obsessed with decreasing her latency. I've spent implicit $1000 successful unreality computing credits conscionable to speech to her.”

—Programmer Bryce describes his heavy sorrow astatine being made to delete the virtual “wife” he’d created utilizing ChatGPT to Motherboard.

The large story

The pandemic could remake nationalist proscription for the better

April 2021

The task was gargantuan. To dilatory the accelerated dispersed of the coronavirus, the New York City subway would commencement closing each nighttime for the archetypal clip successful 115 years. Shortly aft the determination was made astatine the extremity of April 2020, bureau planners logged connected to Remix, 1 of the astir fashionable proscription readying platforms successful the world.

Tiffany Chu, Remix’s cofounder and CEO, watched arsenic a task that would typically person taken weeks, if not months, was finished successful a fewer days. On the evening of May 6 2020, New York City’s subways unopen down, and the caller nighttime autobus web flickered on.

Years on, this unprecedented daze to modern mobility is inactive reverberating. The semipermanent displacement to distant white-collar enactment is casting uncertainty connected whether unreserved hr volition ever afloat return. And for transit systems, the implications are profound. Read the afloat story.

—John Surico