About: blatcho

The new Misalignment Museum in San Francisco is a memorial to an imagined future in which artificial general intelligence kills most of humanity.

Faced with extreme drought, Kenya’s president approved a controversial new crop for farmers. Then the legal backlash began.

Amid isolating sanctions, a Russian tech giant plans to launch new Android phones and tablets. But experts are skeptical the company can pull it off.

Amanda Darrach / Columbia Journalism Review: Q&A with former NYT photo editor Fred Ritchin on AI destroying the credibility of the photo, ensuring readers understand if an image is manipulated, and more  —  b  —  In recent years, artificial intelligence engineers have used millions of real photographs—taken by journalists all over the world …

Bloomberg: Sources: Foxconn plans to invest ~$700M on a new plant to make iPhone parts on a 300-acre site in Bengaluru, India; the plant is expected to create 100K jobs  —  Apple Inc. partner Foxconn Technology Group plans to invest about $700 million on a new plant in India to ramp up local production …

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: Shef, a chef-to-consumer marketplace, raised a $73.5M Series B in June 2022, including $7M in debt, led by CRV with participation from a16z and Amex Ventures  —  In its quest to turn the culinary talents of passionate home cooks into small businesses, Shef, a chef-to-consumer marketplace, is now taking those efforts […]

The impressive capabilities of ChatGPT can be turned to cybercrimes like phishing despite safety precautions taken by OpenAI to prevent misuse, warn researchers

In a packed room in MIT’s Stata Center, hundreds of digital robots collide across a giant screen projected at the front of the room. A crowd of students in the audience gasps and cheers as the battle’s outcome hangs in the balance. In an upper corner of the screen, the people who have programmed the […]

Score discounts on our favorite stuff for working from home, from computer monitors to standing desks.

Elon Musk says a new Tesla will rewire the company and help save the world, but he won’t tell investors what it is.

The US still leads the world in artificial intelligence, but there are signs it is losing its edge to China in other areas of advanced computing.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Tel Aviv-based Hexa, which helps companies create and manage 3D models for AR/VR shopping experiences and other applications, raised a $20.5M Series A  —  Hexa, a 3D asset visualization and management platform, today announced that it closed a $20.5 million Series A round from Point72 Ventures …

Jon Swartz / MarketWatch: HPE reports Q1 revenue up 12% YoY to $7.8B, vs. $7.45B est., HPC & AI revenue up 34% YoY to $1.1B, and Q2 revenue guidance above estimates  —  Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.’s stock climbed more than 6% in extended trading Thursday after the computing giant reported quarterly results …

The Verge: A look at TikTok’s viral Bold Glamour filter, which an expert says likely uses generative adversarial networks, amid fears the tool may hurt users’ self-esteem  —  TikTok rolled out new AI tools for filters last month.  But the company won’t say if its new Bold Glamour effect uses them …

How would we design and build differently if we learned to live at multiple time scales? How would human communities respond to global challenges if the short-term mindset of contemporary life was expanded to encompass new dimensions of past and future — diving into the depths of geological history and projecting forward to imagine the […]

The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (MIT SHASS) is pleased to announce that 32 MIT undergraduate sophomores and juniors have been named as the 2023 Burchard Scholars. Elected by the Burchard Committee from a large pool of impressive applicants, all students chosen for the program have demonstrated excellence and engagement in the […]

Companies like Shell and DBS Bank are using it to change how their work gets done.

Visualizing this complex — and increasingly common — executive role.

A survey of more than 400,000 employees, from physicians and nurses to security and maintenance workers, finds that organizational culture is key.

Taking a polygraph test is always stressful, and the results are often flawed. So why have police been using it for 100 years?

Some publications are already using text and image generators. Here’s how WIRED will—and won’t—use the technology.

John Gruber / Daring Fireball: After Twitter cut off API access, Tapbots and The Iconfactory update Tweetbot and Twitterrific, asking subscribers to consider declining prorated refunds  —  Long story short: If you’re a subscriber to either Tweetbot or Twitterrific, you can help them out with three simple steps:

Elizabeth Weil / New York Magazine: A profile of Emily M. Bender, a computational linguist at the University of Washington who co-wrote a paper in 2020 to illustrate what LLMs can and cannot do  —  Nobody likes an I-told-you-so.  But before Microsoft’s Bing started cranking out creepy love letters; before Meta’s Galactica spewed racist rants […]

Financial Times: Staff and analysts: the ~$43B FIS-Worldpay deal suffered from incompatibility, Worldpay’s slow response to changing user needs, and more, resulting in the split  —  Integration was difficult but the deal itself had always been misguided  —  Since it was founded by former UK policeman Nick Ogden …

On Sept. 26, 2022, at precisely 6:14 p.m. ET, a box-shaped spacecraft no bigger than a loveseat smashed directly into an asteroid wider than a football field. The planned impact knocked the space rock off its orbit, showing for the first time that an asteroid can potentially be deflected away from Earth.   The spacecraft […]

Modern fabrication tools such as 3D printers can make structural materials in shapes that would have been difficult or impossible using conventional tools. Meanwhile, new generative design systems can take great advantage of this flexibility to create innovative designs for parts of a new building, car, or virtually any other device. But such “black box” […]

Stroll past MIT.nano, the Institute’s center for nanoscience and engineering, and you can peer through large panes of glass at hundreds of tool sets ready to assist researchers in their scientific journey. Anyone who wants to take a closer look at what is happening at the nanoscale and beyond — even seeing individual atoms — […]

CoinDesk: Filing: crypto-friendly bank Silvergate delays its annual report and cites investigations from regulators, Congress, and the US DOJ; its stock plunges 30%+  —  Shares fell over 10% in after-hours trading.  —  Christy Goldsmith Romero … Commissioner  —  U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Paris-based Sesamm, which uses NLP to generate insights helping companies adhere to their ESG goals, raised a €35M Series B2, taking its total funding to €50.5M  —  Sesamm, a French startup that helps financial firms and corporates adhere to their ESG goals by using natural language processing …

Emily Bary / MarketWatch: Snowflake reports Q4 revenue up 53% YoY to $589M, vs. $576M est., lowers FY 2024 guidance below est., and authorizes a $2B share buyback program; SNOW drops 5%+  —  Company lowers full-year forecast relative to an initial view offered in November  —  This update corrects the FactSet consensus …

A bill that would empower the US president to ban TikTok from all devices nationwide has advanced beyond committee for discussion by Congress

Science Surfaces, a capsule collection of body coverings and accessories, serve as canvases for digital prints of ideas inspired by award-winning biomedical images produced by life science research labs at MIT. The exhibition, now on display in the Koch Institute Public Galleries, is the result of the inaugural Peers + Pros Project, a Boston Fashion […]

Four lessons from Microsoft’s CISO.

Stop shielding your team from challenges and responsibilities.

Unpacking the psychology behind defensiveness, denial, and distancing.

The country has discovered enough lithium to electrify every vehicle on its roads, but the massive deposit has tensions running high.

Let’s indulge: Once fusion arrives, handmade suns could wipe out all human problems in a go.

The state sponsors titles that cast it in a favorable light and punish indies for depicting a more complex vision of Iranian identity.

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: TikTok adds new well-being features for teens and others, including screen time controls, default settings for teens, and expanded Family Pairing  —  TikTok announced today that it’s introducing new well-being features for teens, families and its broader community.

James Vincent / The Verge: Twitter users globally report multiple outages for over an hour, including its timeline failing to load on web and mobile; most users can still tweet  —  Twitter seems to be having difficulties, with users reporting that the site’s timeline isn’t loading on either the web or mobile apps.

Clément Girardot / Rest of World: A look at Belarus’ once-vibrant tech startup scene, decimated after ruthless repression by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine  —  Ruthless political repression has decimated Belarus’ once-thriving tech scene.  —  • VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too) sets sail to uncover unknown vents and lifeforms along the mid-Atlantic ridge

A lack of access to critical resources has prevented many middle- and low-income entrepreneurs from starting successful businesses, economic sociologist Daniel Auguste told an MIT audience in a Feb. 9 presentation on barriers to entrepreneurship in under-resourced communities of America. That’s a fundamental problem because entrepreneurship is one of society’s most significant pathways to economic […]

The company’s anti-union tactics at retail outlets have drawn government scrutiny and are fueling a drive to get a new labor bill through Congress.

One million species are at risk of extinction, but a handful of charismatic creatures get all the hype. A new conservation strategy has a different focus.

After passenger complaints, non-white drivers are suspended or deactivated more often than their white counterparts, according to new research.

Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with iHeartMedia’s Conal Byrne on overseeing podcasting at the company, the industry maturing, RSS, radio and podcast ads, subscriptions, and exclusivity  —  Amid layoffs and a looming recession, folks are concerned about the audio industry. iHeart’s podcast head Conal Byrne is not worried.

Karissa Bell / Engadget: Twitter changes its violent speech policy to ban users from voicing “wishes of harm” on people, a policy reversal, as well as homes and essential infrastructure  —  Twitter is once again tightening its rules around what users are permitted to say on the platform.

Reuters: HP reports Q1 revenue down 19% YoY to $13.8B, vs. $14.1B est., Personal Systems net revenue down 24% YoY to $9.2B, and Printing net revenue down 5% YoY to $4.6B  —  HP Inc (HPQ.N) on Tuesday reported the steepest fall in quarterly revenue since 2016 and missed analysts’ estimates …

Most AI training relies on electrical grids primarily powered by coal and gas rather than low-carbon sources, according to an analysis of 95 AIs