About: blatcho

No matter how old you are, someone will argue you’re the wrong age.

This compact clamshell is a classy introduction to folding smartphones for folks without deep pockets.

Here’s everything you need to know about switching from Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T to the search giant’s cell phone service.

Director Tim Story’s new movie turns a timeworn trope into a staggeringly modern slasher.

Dana Priest / Washington Post: Hanan Elatr, the widow of Jamal Khashoggi, sues the NSO Group in Virginia, claiming Saudi Arabia used the Israeli company’s Pegasus tool to track them both  —  In the lawsuit, Hanan Elatr says Saudi Arabia used NSO’s Pegasus spyware to track her and her husband’s whereabouts before he was murdered

Anne VanderMey / Bloomberg: Reddit says 80% of its top subreddits are currently open; Reddark estimates that 5K+ subreddits are limiting access, down from almost 9K on June 12  —  Reddit Inc. said that most of the company’s communities were operating as normal — four days after a protest that shut down thousands …

Financial Times: Sources: OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Adobe have met News Corp, the NYT, and others to discuss copyright issues over LLMs and a possible subscription fee  —  Google and OpenAI are discussing agreements to pay publishers over using content to train generative AI models

Everything you never wanted to know about the future of talking about the future.

From Succession to SmartLess, Max is a streaming paradise of “it’s not TV” television.

Netflix’s dystopian hit asks what happens when people become too content about … content.

Jay Peters / The Verge: CEO Steve Huffman says Reddit’s API was “never designed to support third-party apps” and now takes issue with apps that are building a business on top of Reddit  —  Thousands of Reddit communities are still dark in protest of the API changes that are forcing some third-party developers to shut […]

Teo Armus / Washington Post: Amazon officially opens Metropolitan Park in Arlington, Virginia, the first phase of its HQ2, where it has projected to bring 25,000 workers by 2030  —  After a national bidding war that prompted cities to offer billions in tax dollars and years of planning and construction that promised …

Sylvia Varnham O’Regan / The Information: Sources: Meta is working on ways to make the next version of LLaMA available for commercial use; the model is currently only licensed for research use  —  Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his deputies want other companies to freely use and profit from new artificial intelligence software Meta […]

Particles produced by cosmic rays hitting Earth’s atmosphere, called muons, have been proposed as an alternative to GPS navigation that would work underground – and now it has been tested for real

From self-driving cars to humanoid robots, the world of robotics is a long way from talk of artificial intelligence causing human extinction. It’s a breath of fresh air, says Alex Wilkins

MIT’s School of Engineering and global health care company Novo Nordisk has announced the launch of a multi-year program to support postdoctoral fellows conducting research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and data science with life sciences. The MIT-Novo Nordisk Artificial Intelligence Postdoctoral Fellows Program will welcome its first cohort of up to 10 postdocs […]

The rapid advance of artificial intelligence has generated a lot of buzz, with some predicting it will lead to an idyllic utopia and others warning it will bring the end of humanity. But speculation about where AI technology is going, while important, can also drown out important conversations about how we should be handling the […]

It was an uncharacteristically sunny morning as Marcela Angel MCP ’18, flanked by a drone pilot from the Boston engineering firm AirWorks and a data collection team from the Colombian regional environmental agency Corpoamazonia, climbed a hill in the Andes Mountains of southwest Colombia. The area’s usual mountain cloud cover — one of the major […]

Research finds that consumers treat refunds as money they’ve already spent.

Companies have more options than ever. Here’s where to start.

How one integrated, community-based care program lets vulnerable seniors continue to live at home for as long as possible.

This week, we sift through the details revealed in the leaked Cybertruck report, and talk about what happens next for Tesla.

Psilocybin is on the cusp of becoming legally available in Oregon—but not as a medical treatment.

Here’s how the video game in the new season’s best sketch happened on the backend.

Bloomberg: A look at Nvidia’s long-planned transformation to an AI powerhouse, driven by CEO Jensen Huang; in 2022, data center operators collectively spent $15B on orders  —  The first time Jensen Huang tried ChatGPT, he asked it to write a poem about his company.  Huang, who’d made a bet …

Reuters: Sources: Alphabet cautions staff not to enter confidential info into chatbots, including Bard, or directly use AI-generated code, following Amazon and others  —  Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) is cautioning employees about how they use chatbots, including its own Bard, at the same time as it markets …

Tom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft begins selling replacement Surface components via the Microsoft Store, including displays, batteries, and SSDs, for “out-of-warranty, self repair”  —  Microsoft is starting to sell replacement components for its Surface devices.  The software giant now supplies replacement parts …

MIT engineers have synthesized a superabsorbent material that can soak up a record amount of moisture from the air, even in desert-like conditions. As the material absorbs water vapor, it can swell to make room for more moisture. Even in very dry conditions, with 30 percent relative humidity, the material can pull vapor from the […]

“All I did was swim,” says Jerry Lu, recalling his teenage years as a competitive swimmer. “From age 12 to 19, it was close to 30 hours a week of training.” Although Lu no longer competes himself, his understanding of the dedication and impeccable technique required in elite sports continues to shape his path as […]

Stimulating the frontal lobes of sleeping epilepsy patients improved their recall of information—and may one day help treat Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

The generative AI tool lets you “try on” clothes from hundreds of brands by displaying them on models of a wide array of sizes and skin colors.

The Facebook whistleblower says laws to fix social media will come—but she warns of emerging threats posed by virtual reality and AI.

Victor Dey / VentureBeat: Canva announces a new SDK, a set of APIs, and a $50M fund to help developers build apps for its marketplace  —  Canva, the visual communication platform, unveiled its Canva Developers Platform today at Canva Extend, its inaugural developer conference in San Francisco.

Cate Lawrence / Tech.eu: Munich-based Fernride, which develops technology for autonomous driving and remote control of electric yard trucks, raised a $31M Series A  —  Fernride’s teleoperated yard truck technology platform not only provides a sustainable alternative to diesel-powered trucks but also addresses the challenges posed by driver shortages.

Devin Coldewey / TechCrunch: In a case study, researchers estimate that between 33% and 46% of Mechanical Turk workers used LLMs when completing a text summarization task  —  File this one under inevitable, but hilarious.  Mechanical Turk is a service that from its earliest days seemed to invite shenanigans …

Researchers at IBM pitted their 127-qubit Eagle quantum computer against a conventional supercomputer in a challenge to perform a complex calculation – and the quantum computer won

David H. Autor, Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, has been recognized as one of two 2023 NOMIS Distinguished Scientists for his significant contributions and ongoing research work to understand the effects of technological change and globalization on jobs and earnings prospects for workers. Anne Brunet of Stanford University is the other winner for this […]

On a Monday afternoon, poet Joshua Bennett is chatting with early arrivals to his class, asking how they spent their weekends. The wistful chords of the 1979 Bill Evans jazz album “We Will Meet Again” play in the background. It’s a relaxed, convivial start to a new MIT Literature class that explores the relationship between […]

People who are passionate about their work are more likely to judge colleagues who work for financial stability, social status, or familial obligations.

Disruptive innovation isn’t just about simplifying technology — it also requires a new business model.

How an unconventional CEO transformed the safety culture in the mining industry.

My sister and I were part of the “Oregon Trail Generation”—some of the first to truly form long-lasting relationships over video games.

Are the wearable pumps worth it? What does “hospital-grade” mean? Here’s everything you need to know.

Henry Grabar, author of Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World, talks about the blunders of urban planners and how better cities depend a whole lot on a smarter approach to parking.

Sayan Chakraborty / Nikkei Asia: Peak XV head Shailendra Singh discusses the Sequoia split, saying the move will remove potential conflicts, especially in AI and with Sequoia’s US portfolio  —  Split with American parent eliminates potential conflicts in hot sectors like AI  —  Managing Director Shailendra Singh …

Nic Newman / Reuters Institute: Reuters’ 2023 Digital News Report: despite social media fragmentation, users’ dependence on platforms for news keeps growing; Facebook drops and TikTok grows  —  This year’s report comes against the backdrop of a global cost-of-living crisis, a continuing war in the heart of Europe, and further climate instability across the world.

BBC: Margrethe Vestager says discrimination, not extinction, is a more pressing concern for AI due to training models and “guardrails” are needed to counter bias  —  Discrimination is a more pressing concern from advancing artificial intelligence than human extinction, says the EU’s competition chief.

From Avatar: The Way of Water to Magic Mike’s Last Dance, here are our favorite movies on the streaming service.

John Vaillant’s ‘Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World’ is a tortuously timely examination of the effects of climate change.

You finally don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for a large-screen Apple laptop.