About: blatcho

These are our favorite classic flicks, Marvel movies, and Star Wars sagas on the streaming platform.

Put a discounted fitness tracker on your wrist, hop on an electric bicycle, and experience spring bliss.

Video memes made with algorithms are suddenly everywhere. Their sudden proliferation may herald an imminent explosion in the technology’s capability.

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: Substack writers are getting a pop-up saying Twitter “unexpectedly restricted access to embedding tweets”, a day after Substack unveiled its Twitter-like Notes  —  Writers trying to embed tweets in their Substack stories are in for a rude surprise: after pasting a link to the site …

Abner Li / 9to5Google: YouTube adds a Podcasts tab to channel pages globally on its website and mobile apps, showing playlists that creators have marked as podcasts  —  While we’re still waiting for podcasts to widely roll out (in the US) to YouTube Music, YouTube has added a “Podcasts” tab to channel pages.

Lance Whitney / ZDNet: Microsoft adds three Bing features to its SwiftKey keyboard beta for Android: web search results, a tone option in which AI rewrites text, and the AI chatbot  —  Android users who want to tap into some AI as they type on their phones can now do so with help from Microsoft.

Benjamin Mangrum, assistant professor of literature at MIT, has been awarded the 2023 Levitan Prize in the Humanities. This award, presented each year by a faculty committee, empowers a member of the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) faculty with funding to enable research in their field. With an award of $30,000, […]

Research has shown that standout customer experiences are fueled by cross-functional collaboration.

It can help you work around obstacles, find opportunities across silos, and more.

Advice from a time-management coach on navigating four key phases of the process.

BMW and others have been criticized for charging monthly fees for features in new cars like heated seats. Now the tactic is coming to used cars.

This week, we learn how automakers adopted the subscription model where drivers pay to unlock features, and why the used car market will embrace it too.

Without an information sharing and analysis center, the country’s food and agriculture sector is uniquely vulnerable to hackers.

Financial Times: As Revolut and other “e-money” companies grow in the EU and the UK, customers complain of inadequate customer support, leading to a UK FCA warning in March 2023  —  Regulators crack down after complaints mushroom about digital money services  —  In early 2023, John started …

Jay Caspian Kang / New Yorker: Utah’s bills restricting kids’ social media use have galling civil-liberties concerns and hazy enforcement plans, and will likely face constitutional challenges  —  Most people seem to agree that something should be done to protect kids from what sure looks like an addictive product.

Andy Bell: A Mastodon user since 2018 details issues with the service despite decentralization’s promise, including little diversity, tone policing, and a weird atmosphere  —  I first joined Mastodon in 2018 (even though my old profile says 2016?), so I’d say I’ve seen a lot of its evolution.

Victor Damptey has been studying Spanish ever since he attended a language-immersion elementary school. “It was a great opportunity to explore beyond the bounds of Minnesota to learn about different cultures and people around the world,” says Damptey. “This experience shaped a significant portion of my childhood.” In his home state, Damptey found few opportunities […]

Think the former president would be shamed by a mug shot? Think again.

For residents of the historic South Carolina city, the best solution to the coming storm may be to leave their homes behind.

For too long, supports have been at the mercy (ahem) of tank and damage players. Lifeweaver’s intriguing new ability claws some power back.

Stephanie Li / DealStreetAsia: China-based SJ Semiconductor, which offers a 12-inch wafer bumping and testing service, raised a $340M Series C extension at a $1.8B valuation  —  Chinese chip maker SJ Semiconductor has raised nearly $340 million in its Series C extension round, according to a release.

Washington Post: Study: ChatGPT cited nonexistent Washington Post, Miami Herald, and Los Angeles Times articles and fabricated a sexual harassment story about a law professor  —  The AI chatbot can misrepresent key facts with great flourish, even citing a fake Washington Post article as evidence

Semafor: Tests show that Twitter’s “stay informed” labels, implemented in February 2022 to flag tweets with links to Russia or China-controlled sites, no longer appear  —  Twitter is no longer taking steps to limit the reach of Chinese and Russian state-controlled media outlets …

There are many smartphone apps that aim to identify plants from photographs, but tests have found that most are not very accurate

Over 25 years at MIT’s Office of the Dean for Graduate Education (OGE), Blanche Staton has advised graduate students, faculty, and administrators; served on numerous Institute committees; provided support to countless graduate students; and created and sponsored programs designed to enhance graduate student life and prepare future alumni for leadership in their careers. Now, the […]

In early 2021, the U.S. government set an ambitious goal: to decarbonize its power grid, the system that generates and transmits electricity throughout the country, by 2035. It’s an important goal in the fight against climate change, and will require a switch from current, greenhouse-gas producing energy sources (such as coal and natural gas), to […]

President José Maria Neves of Cape Verde visited MIT on Tuesday, meeting with the campus community and conducting a public event about e-governance in Africa, which highlighted the ways technology has helped his country. “Technology and information are a mechanism or means to establish links between [our] islands, and between Cape Verde and the diaspora,” […]

Retreat isn’t just inadvisable; it’s dangerous.

A survey of U.S. residents asks whether new subscription services from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat meet their expectations.

Companies should find ways to connect employees and customers regardless of whether “customer service” is in their job description.

Episodes land every Wednesday starting April 12. You can hear the trailer (and subscribe!) right now.

Text-to-video AI generators are advancing rapidly—and capturing the internet’s attention. But don’t expect them to overtake Hollywood anytime soon.

By recreating an early state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma, scientists hope to understand the conditions that made the universe what it is today.

Aisha Counts / Bloomberg: SimiliarWeb: of the 2.6M people who visited the Twitter Blue web promo page in March, only 116,000 signed up; Blue is used by less than 1% of monthly users  —  Twitter Inc. is struggling to sell users on its new subscription product, Twitter Blue, according to a new report.

Tom Henderson / Insider Gaming: Source: Sony is developing a handheld, codenamed Q Lite, which will use Remote Play with the PS5 and feature an 8-inch 1080p touchscreen and adaptive triggers  —  Following days of speculation, Insider Gaming can report that there’s a new PlayStation Handheld in development.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources detail Apple’s efforts to shift production from China, including wooing other countries and assembling “tiger teams” to solve supply chain weaknesses  —  In late March, when Tim Cook made his first public appearance in China since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic …

The popular board game “Puerto Rico,” dating to 2002, features sophisticated rules and heavily rewards skill, not chance, as players attempt to create 19th-century economic growth on the island. Many people have found it compelling but haven’t delved into its implications. “I played that game without thinking about it too much,” says Mikael Jakobsson, a […]

The House of Mouse has plenty of streaming options for the whole family.

These days, video game companies can just promote their hardware and new releases via prepackaged livestreams. Why would they bother with a trade show?

Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab: Twitter’s new API tiers are useless for researchers; the $100/month plan is much worse than the old free plan, and the $42K-$210K/month plans are too expensive  —  Access to Twitter’s API has been mostly free to researchers for more than a decade.  So how does $210,000 a month sound?

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Everstream Analytics, a provider of predictive insights for supply chain management, raised a $50M Series B co-led by Morgan Stanley’s 1GT Fund and StepStone  —  Just short of a year after raising $24 million from backers including DHL, Everstream Analytics, a company that provides predictive insights …

Jeff Mason / Reuters: Biden says tech companies have a responsibility to ensure AI products are safe before making them public and that it remains to be seen whether AI is dangerous  —  U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday it remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence is dangerous …

Mel King, an adjunct professor emeritus in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and renowned activist, community leader, and politician, passed away on March 28 at the age of 94. Through his teaching, ideas, and the institutions he created at MIT, King profoundly influenced DUSP and its community members, who showcase the love […]

Benoit Forget, the Korea Electric Power Professor of Nuclear Engineering, has been named the new head of the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), effective April 1. “Ben’s substantial research contributions and dedication to his students are truly remarkable,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush […]

MIT’s School of Science welcomes Juliana García-Mejía, one of eight recipients of the 2023 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. The announcement was made March 30 by the Heising-Simons Foundation. The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship provides postdocs with the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy. García-Mejía, who expects to complete her doctorate […]

Four common mistakes the Roys – and Cousin Greg – made this week.

Three ways to reengage after you quiet quit.

A conversation with DePaul University professor Kelly Richmond Pope about warning signs we regularly miss.

Thanks to large language models, a single scammer can run hundreds or thousands of cons in parallel, night and day, in every language under the sun.

Excessive heat, ever fiercer storms, and a reliance on fossil fuels are becoming an existential crisis for the yearly festival in the Nevada desert.