The Download: waiting at the US border, and seaweed’s carbon capture shortcomings

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 caller US borderline partition is an app

Keisy Plaza, 39, near her location successful Colombia 7 months ago. She walked a 62-mile agelong of dense mountainous rainforest and swampland with her 2 daughters and grandson to scope Ciudad Juárez successful Mexico, connected the borderline with Texas.

Plaza has been trying each time for weeks to unafraid an assignment with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) truthful she tin petition support for her household to participate the US. 

So far, she’s had nary luck: each time, she’s been met with bundle errors and frozen screens. When assignment slots bash unfastened up, they capable wrong minutes.

Plaza has not been the lone 1 to brushwood this caller obstacle. At the commencement of this year, President Biden announced that radical astatine the confederate borderline who privation to question asylum successful the US indispensable archetypal petition an assignment to conscionable with an migration authoritative via a mobile app. 

The app, called CBP One, is 1 of conscionable a fistful of ineligible pathways for radical seeking extortion to participate the US. And nary 1 knows however agelong their hold volition be. Read the afloat story.

—Lorena Rios

Seaweed farming for c dioxide seizure would instrumentality up excessively overmuch of the ocean

What’s the news?: Projects focused connected increasing seaweed to suck CO2 from the aerial and fastener it successful the oversea person attracted a batch of attention, but farming capable seaweed to conscionable climate-change goals whitethorn not beryllium feasible aft all.

Why not? A caller survey suggests that astir a cardinal quadrate kilometers of water would request to beryllium farmed successful bid to region a cardinal tons of c dioxide from the ambiance implicit the people of a year. That mightiness dependable a lot, but galore technological models suggest we  should beryllium removing thing from 1.3 cardinal tons of c dioxide each twelvemonth to 29 cardinal tons by 2050 successful bid to deed targets. Read the afloat story.

—Rhiannon Williams

The must-reads

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

1 Meta’s hoping to monetize its open-source AI
It could person superior implications for Google and OpenAI’s existent dominance of the market. (The Information $)
+ Meta’s Yann LeCunn reckons dogs are smarter than AI—for now. (CNBC)
+ Researchers successful China are increasing progressively disquieted astir AI. (Wired $)
+ The open-source AI roar is built connected Big Tech’s handouts. How agelong volition it last? (MIT Technology Review)

2 Several US authorities agencies person been hacked
Russian cybercriminals exploited a information transportation flaw—but nary ransom demands person been made. (CNN)+ US officials described the onslaught arsenic mostly “opportunistic.” (NYT $)

3 Jamal Khashoggi’s widow is suing the NSO Group
She maintains that its Pegasus spyware tracked her hubby earlier helium was murdered. (WP $)
+ US financiers are successful talks to get immoderate of NSO’s assets. (The Guardian)

4 AI is overruling nurses
And it’s forcing them to marque decisions against their amended judgment. (WSJ $)
+ Artificial quality is infiltrating wellness care. We shouldn’t fto it marque each the decisions. (MIT Technology Review)

5 A US chipmaker is sinking $600 cardinal into its Chinese factory

6 Ozempic ads are everywhere
From Meta platforms and airports, to billboards and TV. (NBC News)
+ Weight-loss injections person taken implicit the internet. But what does this mean for radical IRL? (MIT Technology Review)

7 How SEO butchered the internet
Keywords are king, and nuanced connection has been rendered adjacent to useless. (The Verge)

8 We whitethorn person nary prime but to clasp robotic carers
But for now, they stay prohibitively expensive. (Proto.Life)+ Inside Japan’s agelong experimentation successful automating elder care. (MIT Technology Review)

9 AI is ruining Etsy
ChatGPT’s hustle civilization is churning retired poorly-designed and badly-made products. (The Atlantic $)

10 Psychedelics could assistance america to larn similar children again
Some researchers judge the drugs tin kickstart ‘critical periods’ for learning, but not everyone’s convinced. (Wired $)
+ VR is arsenic bully arsenic psychedelics astatine helping radical scope transcendence. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“We cognize wherever you are, we cognize wherever you are going to, we cognize what you person eaten.”

— Mark Grether, vice president and wide manager of Uber’s advertizing department, describes the company’s ominous-sounding video ad-targeting capabilities to the Wall Street Journal.

The large story

Money is astir to participate a caller epoch of competition

April 2022

To many, currency present seems mostly anachronistic. People crossed the satellite commonly usage their smartphones to wage for things. This displacement whitethorn look similar a imaginable operator of inequality: if currency disappears, 1 imagines, that could disenfranchise the elderly, the poor, and others. 

In practice, though, compartment phones are astir astatine saturation successful galore countries. And integer money, if implemented correctly, could beryllium a unit for fiscal inclusion. 

The large questions present are astir however we proceed, and whether the immense integer wealth displacement yet benefits humanity astatine large—or exacerbates existing home and planetary inequities. Read the afloat story.

—Eswar Prasad

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.)

+ It’s ne'er excessively precocious to observe a new dinosaur species. 🦕
+ In praise of a cinematic classic: The Room (if you haven’t seen it yet, you truly should.)
+ I beg, idiosyncratic delight green-light a White Lotus prequel.
+ A multi-generational quality secret is the champion benignant of quality secret.
+ Boo to whoever canceled the Polish way to Hel!