1 year ago
166 In a store successful the Netherlands, Philip Nitschke is overseeing investigating connected his caller assisted termination machine. Sealed wrong the coffin-sized pod, a idiosyncratic who has chosen to dice indispensable reply 3 questions: Who are you? Where are you? And bash you cognize what volition hap erstwhile you property that button? The instrumentality volition past capable with nitrogen gas, causing the occupant to walk retired successful little than a infinitesimal and dice by asphyxiation successful astir five.
Despite a 25-year run to “demedicalize death” done technology, Nitschke has not been capable to sidestep the aesculapian constitution fully. Switzerland, which has legalized assisted suicide, requires that candidates for euthanasia show intelligence capacity, which is typically assessed by a psychiatrist.
A solution could travel successful the signifier of an algorithm that Nitschke hopes volition let radical to execute a benignant of psychiatric self-assessment. While his ngo whitethorn look extreme—even outrageous—to some, helium is not the lone 1 looking to impact technology, and AI successful particular, successful life-or-death decisions. Read the afloat story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
This fascinating portion is from our forthcoming mortality-themed issue, disposable from 26 October. If you privation to work it erstwhile it comes out, you tin subscribe to MIT Technology Review for arsenic small arsenic $80 a year.
Impossible Foods has a large caller offering successful the works: filet mignon
Progress is being made connected a genuinely impossible-seeming country of plant-based nutrient products: steak. And not conscionable immoderate steak—filet mignon.
At MIT Technology Review’s ClimateTech lawsuit connected Wednesday, Impossible Foods laminitis Pat Brown shared that portion helium couldn’t springiness an nonstop day for erstwhile the company’s steak merchandise volition beryllium acceptable for consumers to purchase, determination is simply a prototype—and helium tried it retired himself earlier this year. Read the afloat story diving into the biggest challenges of replicating the crème de la crème of steaks from plants, and tune successful to our live blog covering the 2nd time of ClimateTech aboriginal this morning.
Elsewhere astatine Climate Tech, our clime newsman Casey Crownhart moderated a league on “Solving the Hard-to-Solve Sectors,” digging into the industries that are important to combating clime change, but thin to beryllium overlooked.
She dived into the nitty gritty of what these sectors are, what’s truthful hard astir them, and the approaches companies are taking to cleanable them up successful The Spark, her play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each the latest clime innovations. Read this week’s edition, and sign up to person it successful your inbox each Wednesday.
Human encephalon cells transplanted into babe rats’ brains turn and signifier connections
Human neurons transplanted into a rat’s encephalon proceed to grow, forming connections with the animals’ ain encephalon cells and helping usher their behavior, caller probe has shown.
In a survey published successful the diary Nature yesterday, lab-grown clumps of quality encephalon cells were transplanted into the brains of newborn rats. They grew and integrated with the rodents’ ain neural circuits, yet making up astir one-sixth of their brains. It’s a improvement that could shed airy connected quality neuropsychiatric disorders. Read the afloat story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 How China’s chipmakers are preparing for US sanctions
Stockpiling components and readying to bid AI models overseas are conscionable immoderate of the tools successful their arsenal. (Wired $)
+ Samsung has been granted a year-long exemption from the rules. (WSJ $)
+ The regulations travel astatine a precise trying clip for the industry. (Bloomberg $)
2 A robotic exoskeleton adapts to wearers to assistance them locomotion faster
Traditional exoskeletons are costly and bulky, but this 1 is fundamentally a small robotic boot. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Amazon’s imagination location is simply a surveillance nightmare
Its products stitchery swathes of data, detailing your routines and habits. (WP $)
+ Ring’s caller TV amusement is simply a superb but ominous viral selling ploy. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Alex Jones indispensable wage the Sandy Hook victims’ families $1 billion
It’s a record-breaking magnitude for a defamation lawsuit. (Vox)
5 Ukraine’s Starlink systems are coming backmost online
The devices person suffered outages successful the past fewer days, leaving soldiers without immoderate mode to communicate. (FT $)
+ Odessa’s officials person removed Elon Musk’s representation from a billboard. (Motherboard)
+ Russia’s bid reliance is portion of its occupation during the war. (The Atlantic $)
6 The US midterms person a misinformation problem
Multilingual fact-checking groups are stepping up to effort to combat the falsehoods. (NYT $)
+ Why midterm “October surprises” are seldom the revelations they seem. (Vox)
7 A long-standing malaria enigma has been solved 🦟
Experts simply couldn’t enactment retired wherever mosquitoes went during blistery weather. (Economist $)
+ The caller malaria vaccine volition prevention countless lives. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Fake vaccination certificates are circulating successful India
It doesn’t bode good for the country’s claims of precocious vaccination rates. (Rest of World)
9 Even AI doesn’t similar math
Some connection models are failing to get to grips with tricky problems. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ A caller AI instrumentality tin observe sepsis. (Undark)
+ DeepMind’s game-playing AI has beaten a 50-year-old record. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Consumer tech is going star powered
If this Swedish startup has their way, that is. (The Next Web)
Quote of the day
“Compare that to Lord of the Rings, erstwhile they scan your eyeballs conscionable to get in!”
—Charlie Vickers, the histrion who plays Halbrand successful The Rings of Power, discusses the aggravated biometric lengths that showmakers went to successful bid to support the Tolkien amusement a concealed with the Guardian.
The large story
The uneasy coexistence of Yandex and the Kremlin
August 2020
While Moscow was nether coronavirus lockdown betwixt March and June 2020, the Russian superior emptied out—apart from the streams of cyclists successful the trademark yellowish azygous of Yandex’s nutrient transportation service.
Often referred to successful the West arsenic Russia’s Google, Yandex is truly much similar Google, Amazon, Uber, and possibly a fewer different companies combined. It’s not truly portion of Russia’s Silicon Valley, arsenic overmuch arsenic it’s a Russian Silicon Valley unto itself.
But Yandex’s occurrence has travel astatine a price. The Kremlin has agelong viewed the net arsenic a battlefield successful its escalating tensions with the West and has go progressively acrophobic that a institution similar Yandex, with the heaps of information it has connected Russian citizens, could 1 time autumn into overseas hands. In a satellite progressively acrophobic with protecting borders and regulating the tech industry, Yandex’s dilemma whitethorn not beryllium conscionable a Russian story. Read the afloat story.
