About: blatcho

A new patent allows Ford to build cars that take action if the owner falls behind on payments by playing annoying sounds – or even driving themselves back to the seller

The 2023 Marconi Prize has been awarded to Hari Balakrishnan, the Fujitsu Professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a principal investigator in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). The Marconi Prize, widely considered to be the top honor within the field of communications technology, is given […]

When Liu He, a Chinese economist, politician, and “chip czar,” was tapped to lead the charge in a chipmaking arms race with the United States, his message lingered in the air, leaving behind a dewy glaze of tension: “For our country, technology is not just for growth… it is a matter of survival.” Once upon […]

Sponsor content from Appspace.

You don’t have to be in your dream job to advance your career.

A conversation with the University of Pennsylvania’s Emily Hund on an increasingly important part of the online economy.

New details reveal that Beijing-backed hackers targeted the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, adding to a string of attacks in the region.

Plus: Microsoft fixes several zero-day bugs, Google patches Chrome and Android, Mozilla rids Firefox of a full-screen vulnerability, and more.

Alonzo Sawyer’s misidentification by algorithm made him a suspect for a crime police now say was committed by someone else—feeding debate over regulation.

Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day: After declining Twitter engagement, a writer games the For You algorithm, which he suspected was using invisible subreddits via Topics to organize tweets  —  Read to the end for some really good horse content  —  I Gave Into The New Twitter Algorithm And I Went Way Too Viral

Financial Times: Some marketers worry that Meta’s AI-based Advantage+ ad tool, added after Apple’s ATT to automatically generate multiple ads, forces them to relinquish control  —  Social network claims successes with tool to counteract Apple’s privacy changes that resulted in billions in lost revenue

Niha Masih / Washington Post: Access Now: in 2022, 35 countries instituted internet shutdowns at least 187 times, led by India with 84 disruptions, Russia causing 22 in Ukraine, and more  —  More countries shut down the internet in 2022 than ever before, according to a new report by digital rights researchers …

One of the most expensive steps in manufacturing protein drugs such as antibodies or insulin is the purification step: isolating the protein from the bioreactor used to produce it. This step can account for up to half of the total cost of manufacturing a protein. In an effort to help reduce those costs, MIT engineers […]

In 2010, Phiala Shanahan was an undergraduate at the University of Adelaide, wrapping up a degree in computational physics, when she heard of an unexpected discovery in particle physics. The news had nothing to do with any of the rare, exotic particles that physicists were searching for at the time. Rather, the revelation revolved around […]

Sponsor content from OPPO.

What do liters mean? What capacity will you need for work or the wilderness? We unpack all your questions.

This all-in-one for online content creators simplifies the process of making videos for the internet.

Fantasy and sci-fi publication Clarkesworld has been hit with hundreds of submissions from writers using chatbots. Others are prepping for an onslaught.

Ian Allison / CoinDesk: DCG reports 2022 revenue of $719M and a loss of $1.1B as the firm struggled with plunging crypto prices and the restructuring of its lending platform, Genesis  —  DCG held cash and cash equivalents of just $262 million at the end of 2022, while investment assets amounted to $670 million.

David Shepardson / Reuters: White House gives federal agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have TikTok installed on government devices and adjust IT contracts with vendors accordingly  —  The White House on Monday gave government agencies 30 days to ensure they do not have Chinese-owned app TikTok on federal devices and systems.

Brody Ford / Bloomberg: Zoom reports Q4 revenue up 4% YoY to $1.12B, vs. $1.1B est., Enterprise revenue up 18% YoY to $636.1M, Enterprise customers up 12% YoY to ~213K; ZM jumps 6%+  —  Zoom Video Communications Inc. gained in late trading after giving an upbeat profit forecast for the current period …

In 2020, the School of Engineering and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company launched the MIT-Takeda Program, which aims to leverage the experience of both entities to solve problems at the intersection of health care, medicine, and artificial intelligence. Since the program began, teams have devised mechanisms to reduce manufacturing time for certain pharmaceutical products, submitted a patent […]

Six factors holding the industry back — and how it can move ahead.

Reducing their learning curve about your organization, team, and culture will help set all of you up for success.

Why it helps you and your workplace — and how to get better at it.

Tesla pioneered selling vehicles online. Electric cars, the pandemic, and changing consumer behavior are now causing other automakers to embrace the shift.

Thinking of shelling out for tailor-made joysticks and buttons? Here’s what to consider first.

Atomic weapons are highly complex, surprisingly sensitive, and often pretty old. With testing banned, countries have to rely on good maintenance and simulations to trust their weapons work.

Washington Post: After a string of high-profile setbacks, the White House and FTC are finding breaking up Big Tech is hard, as Google lawyers up ahead of its court battle  —  Google is hiring teams of former DOJ lawyers to fight antitrust lawsuits as the battle over tech firms’ power shifts to the courts

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal: A look at Dude Perfect on YouTube, as its five founders look to build a theme park; a source says Dude Perfect’s 2022 revenue was ~$25M, up from ~$20M in 2021  —  The five friends found fame making basketball trick shots and now hope fans can try similar antics […]

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch: Google announces new features for Android, ChromeOS, and Wear OS, including Fast Pair support for Chromebooks, Keep shortcuts, and Wear OS accessibility modes  —  Google has announced a slew of new features for Android, Chromebook and Wear OS that are designed to improve connectivity, productivity and accessibility.

Rushing the release of AI chatbots for search is a risky experiment fuelled by greed.

MIT researchers have built an augmented reality headset that gives the wearer X-ray vision. The headset combines computer vision and wireless perception to automatically locate a specific item that is hidden from view, perhaps inside a box or under a pile, and then guide the user to retrieve it. The system utilizes radio frequency (RF) […]

Composers find inspiration from many sources. For renowned MIT Media Lab composer Tod Machover, reading the Richard Powers novel “The Overstory” instantly made him want to adapt it as an operatic composition. This might not seem an obvious choice to some: “The Overstory” is about a group of people, including a wrongly maligned scientist, who […]

These nontoxic beds are easier on the environment and your health—and they’re also incredibly comfortable.

Bungie sent me a real-life (Nerf) Gjallarhorn. I was not prepared.

Construct this cute arcade machine to play all your favorite games from old consoles.

Emma Roth / The Verge: Reports: 50+ Twitter staff were laid off over the weekend, including Twitter’s product lead Esther Crawford, and Revue founder Martijn de Kuijper  —  Crawford headed up various projects at Twitter, including the company’s Blue with verification subscription as well as Twitter’s forthcoming payments platform.

Zoë Schiffer / @zoeschiffer: Source: Esther Crawford, who has become one of the most influential leaders at Twitter after Musk’s takeover, is out as chief executive of Twitter Payments  —  Just got confirmation that Esther Crawford, chief executive of Twitter Payments, is out.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Inside Apple Exploratory Design Group, which works on a glucose monitor, other advanced tech, and was behind some of the chip and battery tech in iPhones, Macs  —  Apple has a secret team working to bring noninvasive glucose monitoring to its smartwatch, but that’s not all it’s pursuing.

Mia Sato / The Verge: Editors at some literary magazines say they are getting overwhelmed by AI-generated submissions, potentially crowding out genuine submissions from newer writers  —  A short story titled “The Last Hope” first hit Sheila Williams’ desk in early January.

Ranjan Roy / Margins: How the potential of voice as a platform was wasted: closed ecosystems, overly ambitious claims, distorted monopolistic incentives, and too much capital  —  Sometimes innovation just ain’t enough … I have four Echo devices in my household.  For years, we used them to control the lights in our apartment …

Molly White: The recovery of ~120,000 stolen ether by Jump and Oasis demonstrates the centralization of DeFi enabled by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts  —  Wormhole, Jump Crypto, and Oasis demonstrate the centralization threat introduced by multisig-controlled upgradable smart contracts.

When Victor Ransom ’42 arrived at MIT from New York City in 1941, he discovered a campus electrified by the war effort. People scurried between what he described as MIT’s “massive, unsympathetic buildings” as the campus underwent a transformation that took on new urgency after the attacks on Pearl Harbor that December. During his sophomore […]

Play music, audiobooks, and more for your children with one of these WIRED-tested gadgets.

Plus: YouTube Music is finally adding podcasts, and Google Photos lets more users remove annoying friends from their pictures.

Plus: Iran’s secret torture black sites, hacking a bank account with AI-generated voice, and Lance Bass’ unhinged encounter in Russia.

Anton Shilov / Tom’s Hardware: Report: 69,190 semiconductor patents were filed globally in 2022, up 9% YoY; Chinese companies accounted for 55%, US companies 26%, and UK companies 0.26%  —  The U.K. only accounted for 0.26% of the global total.  —  China is neither the world’s largest developer of chips nor the world’s largest maker […]

Tabby Kinder / Financial Times: Sources: Sequoia resigned from Citizen’s board after the startup offered a “pay to play” deal obliging existing investors to participate in a new funding round  —  Investor abandons start-up over fundraising that has massively diluted its shareholding, as Silicon Valley VCs re-evaluate deals

Morgan Meaker / Wired: Experts: the proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles is driving militaries in Ukraine and beyond to hand over more control to AI, creating a slippery slope  —  Drones that can find their own targets already exist, making machine-versus-machine conflict just a software update away.