About: blatcho

Two of Japan’s heavy hitters teamed up to build a limited-edition, super-cheap, China-only electric moped: We took it for a spin.

Don’t bolt at the first sight of something that needs repair. You can nail most DIY jobs with the right gear and the right attitude.

It might lack a few snazzy features, and it’s not as navigationally capable as a Garmin, but this sports watch gets the basics right.

Joseph Menn / Washington Post: Researchers and ex-Twitter staff: physical attacks in the US have tracked with spikes in some hate speech on Twitter, notably anti-Semitic and anti-gay rhetoric  —  SAN FRANCISCO — Earlier this month, the FBI charged a Florida man with making detailed online threats to murder 100 gay people.

Keri Blakinger / The Marshall Project: How some US incarcerated people use contraband mobile phones to educate themselves, make TikToks, find love, publicize prison conditions, earn money, and more  —  Despite the security concerns of administrators, incarcerated people use phones to hustle, make TikToks or publicize prison conditions.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Analysis: Apple timed the new MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and HomePod launch to boost this quarter’s revenue, while avoiding supply issues during the holiday season  —  Apple timed the launch of the new MacBook Pro, Mac mini and HomePod to shore up its current quarter’s revenue …

Why does your guitar sound that way? Is it your amp, your pickups, or your pedals? Jim Lill is trying to find out, one filmed A/B test at a time.

Nilesh Christopher / Rest of World: Creators from India’s hinterland are going viral on YouTube Shorts and running into copyright issues for “fact channels” that add context to other users’ videos  —  A new generation of creators found success on YouTube Shorts.  Now, YouTube is after them for violating its community guidelines.

Wall Street Journal: A look at Mittens, a ruthless Chess.com bot with a kitten avatar introduced on January 1 that is driving more people than ever to play in the site’s history  —  A ruthless bot with an innocuous avatar is driving chess players crazy  —  The heels of the chess world have included Soviet […]

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: Hackers leak police raid plans, confidential reports, AWS private keys, and other sensitive data from the servers of ODIN, which makes apps for the US police  —  Leaked files reveal tactical plans for police raids, surveillance, and facial recognition  —  Detailed tactical plans …

Keep your phone, tablet, laptop, and other electronics running with these handheld power banks.

Plus: Recommendations on the Explore page are getting better, Google is probably making an AirTag rival, and Amazon finally wipes that Smile off its face.

Plus: A leaked US “no fly” list, the SCOTUS leaker slips investigators, and PayPal gets stuffed.

Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg: Q&A with Netflix co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos about shared leadership, what role Reed Hastings may play, adding FAST channels, the ad tier, and more  —  So that’s what an orderly transfer of power looks like.  —  While Disney chief Bob Iger ousted every potential threat …

Annie Palmer / CNBC: A look at Amazon’s nascent drone delivery unit, which has struggled due to crashes and other safety issues and now faces layoffs and other cost-cutting measures  —  – As part of Amazon’s widespread layoffs, some employees in the nascent drone delivery project are losing their jobs, according to people familiar with […]

Eric Wallerstein / Wall Street Journal: Filings: Signature Bank borrowed nearly $10B in Q4 from Federal Home Loan Banks, a system originally designed for mortgage lending; Silvergate borrowed $3.6B+  —  Signature and Silvergate turn to government-chartered lenders after customer withdrawals surge

Whether you’re hitting the slopes or planning a spring trip later this year, there are plenty of discounts on gear that can help.

Creatives disagree about the ethical uses of these tools, but one thing is clear: AI art identification is about to become a whole lot harder.

Most governments work off incomplete or inaccurate information, but it’s time to plug the gaps.

Paresh Dave / Wired: Tech companies like Google and Microsoft have offered a muted response to unrest in Iran, prompting side projects by employees to fight censorship and more  —  Companies like Google have offered a muted response to unrest in Iran.  Grassroots coders are tackling internet censorship on their own.

Julia Love / Bloomberg: Google cuts most of the Area 120 team and will graduate three of the incubator’s projects in 2023; sources: staff not involved in those projects were laid off  —  Alphabet Inc.’s Google has cut most of the jobs at Area 120, its in-house incubator for new projects, as part of a […]

New York Times: Emails and sources: Google fired 16% of its ~400-person Fuchsia OS team, Research cut jobs in low traction areas, and Cloud cut operational and other roles  —  The layoffs amount to about 6 percent of the global work force at the company, the latest tech giant to make cuts after a pandemic […]

The mobile operator just suffered at least its fifth data breach since 2018, despite promising to spend a fortune shoring up its systems.

The switch away from the serif-laden typeface is being made for accessibility and legibility reasons, the agency says.

Get over yourselves.

Lora Kolodny / CNBC: Internal records: Twitter now has around 1,300 active employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers, and about 1,400 non-working employees  —  – Internal records show that Twitter has shed about 80% of its employees since Elon Musk took over and headcount is hovering around 1,300 employees today.

Mia Sato / The Verge: In a staff call, CNET and Red Ventures executives said they were pausing AI-generated content on CNET and other websites and detailed their proprietary AI tool  —  The call, which lasted under an hour, was held a week after CNET came under fire for its use of AI tools on […]

Josh Scott / BetaKit: Waterloo-based Magnet Forensics, which develops digital investigation software, agrees to be acquired by Thoma Bravo for CA$1.8B  —  Announcement comes hours after IIROC halted trading of Magnet’s shares.  —  Kitchener-Waterloo’s Magnet Forensics has entered into a definitive agreement …

Aerospace company ZeroAvia successfully tested using a hydrogen-electric engine to power one of the propellors in a 19-seat aircraft

A fabric made by welding aerogel pockets together with ultrasound mimics the make-up of a camel’s hump to protect against fire as well as letting sweat escape

Google has built an AI that can answer medical questions. However, it’s not as good as a human doctor and the company says it cannot yet perform safely in the real world

When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Tetiana Herasymova had several decisions to make: What should she do, where should she live, and should she take her MITx MicroMasters capstone exams? She had registered for the Statistics and Data Science Program’s final exams just days prior to moving out of her apartment and into […]

Visitors to MIT’s AgeLab in the Center for Transportation and Logistics are greeted silently by a shiny mannequin in a jumpsuit and chunky red goggles, standing a little ominously in a glass-walled studio. While the mannequin itself cuts a striking appearance, it’s the accessories under the jumpsuit that are the real attraction: a collection of […]

Imagine living and sharing your passions with hundreds of MIT students while experiencing the fun and singular energy of living in an on-campus residence. Sound fun? Welcome to the Residential Scholars Program. The program is managed by the Office of Residential Education in the Division of Student Life (DSL), which is committed to developing welcoming, […]

Five priorities to ensure federal and state regulators build on the progress achieved during the pandemic.

Online shopping platforms allow people to see changes in a product’s price over time — offering opportunities for buyers and sellers alike.

Five strategies to regain your influence.

Nico Grant / New York Times: Sources: Google executives met with Larry Page and Sergey Brin last month to discuss Google’s AI efforts, as the company seeks to combat OpenAI’s ChatGPT  —  A rival chatbot has shaken Google out of its routine, with the founders who left three years ago re-engaging and more than 20 […]

Bloomberg: The Chinese government grants Didi permission to republish its apps on Apple’s, Huawei’s, Xiaomi’s, and other app stores, after over a year of regulatory limbo  —  Didi Global Inc.’s main apps have returned to the country’s biggest mobile stores, allowing the ride-hailing giant to resume growth …

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: India releases rules on social media influencers and virtual avatars promoting content without disclosing payment, adding an up to ~$12.3K fine for violations  —  As the market of social media influencers is getting bigger in India, the South Asian nation has introduced endorsement guidelines …

Photographer Julian Abrams’ new project, Everything Beautiful Is Far Away, celebrates some key telescopes from around the world – and the impressive structures that house them

People at MIT know “mens et manus,” or “mind and hand,” as the school motto. But it’s also a good framework for early childhood education. Kids often learn best when they’re allowed to explore the environment around them, building models of the world by picking things up and moving them around. Back in 2014, that […]

In patients with Huntington’s disease, neurons in a part of the brain called the striatum are among the hardest-hit. Degeneration of these neurons contributes to patients’ loss of motor control, which is one of the major hallmarks of the disease. Neuroscientists at MIT have now shown that two distinct cell populations in the striatum are […]

Companies like Meta are still betting big on immersive virtual worlds, but people who have been building digital spaces for years don’t see the long-term potential.

This week, we get honest about our attachments to our gas stoves, and debate whether to replace them or just continue breathing their fumes.

Research suggests that once low fertility becomes the norm, it’s unlikely to rebound. But this doesn’t need to spell disaster for the country or those with similar trends.

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Texas Instruments names COO Haviv Ilan as its next CEO starting on April 1, replacing Rich Templeton, who has been CEO for 19 years and will remain its chairman  —  – Rich Templeton has run Texas Instruments for almost 19 years, and the company has outperformed one exchange-traded fund for chips.

Catherine Larkin / Bloomberg: SEC filing: T-Mobile says a hacker stole data for ~37M customer accounts, including names and addresses, but no passwords, SSNs, or financial information  —  T-Mobile US Inc. said a hacker obtained data for 37 million customer accounts, though it didn’t include payment card information or personal identifying numbers.

Emma Roth / The Verge: Netflix plans to roll out paid password sharing “more broadly” later in Q1 2023 and expects some “cancel reaction” before an improvement in overall revenue  —  The era of Netflix password sharing will soon come to a close.  Netflix has plans to enforce password-sharing rules …

A feature of server motherboards intended to allow remote updates can be abused to trick the machines into damaging themselves beyond repair