The Download: what’s next for the moon, and facial recognition’s stalemate

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.

What’s adjacent for the moon

It’s been much than 50 years since humans past walked connected the moon. But starting this year, an array of missions from backstage companies and nationalist abstraction agencies program to instrumentality america back, sending everything from tiny robotic probes to full-fledged quality landers.

—Jonathan O'Callaghan

Jonathan’s portion is portion of our What’s Next series, which takes a look crossed industries, trends, and technologies to springiness you a archetypal look astatine the future. You tin cheque retired the remainder of the bid here.

How look designation rules successful the US got stuck successful governmental gridlock

The US authorities of Massachusetts has go a hotbed of statement implicit constabulary usage of look recognition. Lawmakers determination are considering a measure that would correspond a breakthrough connected the contented and could acceptable a caller code of compromise for the remainder of the country.

Tate Ryan-Mosley, our elder tech argumentation reporter, reported past week connected however the governance of facial designation is being held up successful a unsocial benignant of governmental stasis. That’s due to the fact that the conflict betwixt ‘abolish look recognition’ and ‘don't modulate it astatine all’ has led to an lack of action. Compromises are the lone mode forward. Read the afloat story.

Tate’s communicative is from The Technocrat, her play newsletter digging into the divisions of powerfulness successful Silicon Valley. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Friday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.

1 Twitter’s rebranding arsenic X has begun
The bluish vertebrate logo is among the archetypal things connected the chopping block. (WP $)
+ But, knowing Elon Musk, don’t beryllium amazed if the logo changes again soon. (FT $)
+ Twitter’s sanction isn’t the problem—it’s everything else. (Slate $)

2 Sam Altman’s Worldcoin is rolling retired crossed the world
But the way up looks acold from smooth. (Bloomberg $)
+ How Worldcoin recruited its archetypal fractional a cardinal trial users. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Ukraine’s unrecorded combat information is successful blistery demand
For subject businesses vying to signifier the aboriginal of warfare, it’s invaluable. (Wired $)
+ Ukraine’s fighters are adapting to unfamiliar territory. (Economist $)
+ Mass-market subject drones person changed the mode wars are fought. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Sydney has virtually eliminated HIV transmission
The erstwhile AIDS hotspot proves that curbing the illness is possible. (FT $)
+ Is an embryo exemplary truly an embryo? It depends who you ask. (Wired $)

5 An AI wellness startup is inactive highly reliant connected humans
DeepScribe says its AI is powerful, but teams of humans are the ones carrying retired captious checks and catching errors. (WSJ $)
+ Don’t fuss asking chatbots for romanticist advice. (Wired $)
+ Artificial quality is infiltrating wellness care. We shouldn’t fto it marque each the decisions. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Robots marque exceptional rescuers
They’re peculiarly adept astatine moving arsenic teams successful hazardous environments. (Knowable Magazine)+ Why we shouldn’t interest astir robots falling over. (IEEE Spectrum)

7 What we learnt from the Great PowerPoint Panic of 2003
We were told the bundle was making america stupid, but 20 years on, different threats look acold much important. (The Atlantic $)

8 Alcohol vending machines are taking implicit from bartenders successful the UK
Good luck asking for thing much analyzable than beer, though. (The Guardian)

9 India’s rickshaw apps are connected the rise
It solves an important problem—tracking 1 down successful the archetypal place.(Economist $)

10 Lab-grown chickenhearted tastes conscionable like… chickenhearted 🍗
Alternative nutrient is overmuch amended than it utilized to be—but tin it marque an biology difference? (Vox)
+ Here’s what we cognize astir lab-grown nutrient and clime change. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“It’s a fitting extremity to a phenomenal unwinding of an iconic marque and business.”

—Allen Adamson, co-founder of selling consultancy Metaforce, is not a instrumentality of Twitter’s plans to ditch its instantly-recognizable bluish vertebrate logo and rebrand to X, helium tells the Guardian.

The large story

Capitalism is successful crisis. To prevention it, we request to rethink economical growth.

October 2020

Even earlier the covid-19 pandemic and the resulting illness of overmuch of the world’s economy, it was wide that capitalism was successful crisis. Unfettered escaped markets had pushed inequality of income and wealthiness to highly precocious levels successful the United States, and dilatory productivity maturation successful galore affluent countries had stunted a generation’s fiscal opportunities.

It’s nary wonderment galore person begun questioning the devotion to escaped markets and religion successful the powerfulness of economical maturation to lick our problems. But portion antipathy to maturation is thing new, its reemergence arsenic a question has taken connected a harder governmental borderline that questions whether we request to turn astatine all. Read the afloat story.