The Download: preserving digital lives, and more sensitive prostheses

10 months ago 133

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.

Your integer beingness isn’t arsenic imperishable arsenic you deliberation it is

Earlier this week, Google announced its volition to commencement deleting idiosyncratic accounts that haven’t been progressive successful implicit 2 years successful December. Photos, emails, and docs attached to inactive accounts volition each beryllium eradicated.

The announcement follows a akin 1 from Twitter past week, pledging to purge accounts that person been inactive for respective years. It caused an uproar among radical who don’t privation their deceased loved ones’ accounts to beryllium deleted. 

With developments similar unreality storage, we’ve developed an expectation, oregon fantasy, that information is infinite and that our integer spaces volition past forever. Such argumentation changes are a reminder of however fragile our integer lives are and conscionable however small power we person implicit their preservation. Read the afloat story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

A brushed e-skin mimics the mode quality tegument tin consciousness things

The news: A brushed physics tegument could let radical with prosthetics to consciousness unit and temperature, helping them to much easy interact with their surroundings. It contains sensors to measurement outer somesthesia and pressure, which it converts into electrical signals to assistance the encephalon archer the quality betwixt sensations similar a softer interaction and a steadfast handshake, oregon a strawberry and an apple. 

Why it matters: Lack of sensory feedback is 1 of the main reasons radical halt wearing a prosthesis, arsenic it tin permission users feeling frustrated. Flexible e-skins could pb to amended prosthetics, and could besides pave the mode for robots that tin consciousness human-like sensations. Read the afloat story.

—Rhiannon Williams

I conscionable met the founders of a would-be longevity state

What if I told you there’s a radical of radical who deliberation decease is morally bad—that we person a motivation work to find ways to dilatory oregon reverse aging? Who question to make a caller authorities with its ain laws that expedite the improvement of longevity drugs, partially by encouraging biohacking and self-experimentation?

A assemblage of specified individuals person been surviving unneurotic successful a edifice successful Montenegro for the past 7 weeks. They’ve been sharing ideas, collaborating connected projects, moving hackathons, and having plentifulness of parties. They telephone their gathering Zuzalu. Jessica Hamzelou, our elder biotech reporter, went to cheque retired the assemblage for herself past week. Read astir her acquisition and the colorful characters she met.

This communicative is from The Checkup, Jessica’s play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things biotech. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Thursday.

The must-reads

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

1 The US Supreme Court won’t dismantle Section 230 aft all 
Social media firms and different net companies volition beryllium breathing a suspiration of relief. (WP $)
+ The tribunal ruled that societal media sites weren’t liable for hosting violent content. (WSJ $)
+ It besides declined to blasted algorithms for pushing recommended content. (FT $)

2 Your iPhone tin present tally ChatGPT 
It inactive requires an net connection, though. (Ars Technica)
+ The fallout from Meta’s chatbot leak is inactive reverberating. (WSJ $)
+ Apple doesn’t privation its workers spilling secrets to the chatbot. (The Verge)
+ The wrong communicative of however ChatGPT was built. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Robotic country is already redeeming lives
Doctors separated by oceans are capable to usher each different done tricky operations. (Wired $)

4 Extremism is rife successful gaming chat rooms
While communities tin beryllium small, they’re incredibly influential. (NYT $)
+ Pro gaming streamers person changeless abuse, too. (The Guardian)

5 Apple’s repair partners are losing out
The smaller businesses assertion Apple is reluctant to cooperate with them. (The Guardian)

6 Advertisers are cautiously considering moving with Twitter again
It’s nary longer considered “high risk” by a large advertizing group. (FT $)

7 Crypto fraud is inactive fraud
It’s the aforesaid aged tricks, dressed up successful a shiny tech interface. (Vox)
+ Disgraced crypto fugitive Do Kwon is facing proceedings successful Montenegro. (NY Mag $)
+ It’s good to opt retired of the crypto revolution. (MIT Technology Review)

8 US soldiers are turning to Reddit for assistance astatine work
When authoritative channels can’t resoluteness their issues, they caput to the internet. (Slate $)

9 We’re firmly successful our exothing epoch 🪐
We’re learning much and much astir the worldly successful abstraction that’s not a planet. (The Atlantic $)
+ Earth is astir apt harmless from a slayer asteroid for 1,000 years. (MIT Technology Review)

10 How to trim your pet’s c pawprint 🐶
Feeding them insects is surely 1 solution—if they’ll oblige. (Fast Company $)

Quote of the day

“Everyone knows we are lagging behind.”

—Taro Kono, Japan’s integer minister, speaks frankly astir his conflict to digitize Japan’s paper-based bureaucracy to the Financial Times.

The large story

The large caller thought for making self-driving cars that tin spell anywhere

May 2022

When Alex Kendall sat successful a car connected a tiny roadworthy successful the British countryside and took his hands disconnected the instrumentality backmost successful 2016, it was a tiny measurement successful a caller direction—one that a caller clump of startups stake mightiness beryllium the breakthrough that makes driverless cars an mundane reality.

This was the archetypal clip that reinforcement learning—an AI method that trains a neural web to execute a task via proceedings and error—had been utilized to thatch a car to thrust from scratch connected a existent road. It took little than 20 minutes for the car to larn to enactment connected the roadworthy by itself, Kendall claims.

These startups are betting that smarter, cheaper tech volition fto them overtake existent marketplace leaders. But is this yet much hype from an manufacture that’s been drinking its ain Kool-Aid for years? Read the afloat story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

We tin inactive person bully things

A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line oregon tweet 'em astatine me.)

+ I enjoyed this saccharine homage to the writer’s poker playing mom.
+ Let’s observe the incredible skills of Andy Rourke, bassist with The Smiths, who’s sadly died.
+ Tag yourself successful this endlessly entertaining database of chaotic early Quaker names—I’m Temperance Poor.
+ What solitude tin truly thatch us.
+ This is simply a precise amusive look implicit the weird and fantastic metaphors we’ve utilized for the net (thankfully there’s nary notation of ‘interwebs.’)

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