About: blatcho

In February, an AI from DoNotPay is set to tell a defendant exactly what to say and when during an entire court case. It is likely to be the first ever case defended by an artificial intelligence

Iceland is developing a suite of technologies to help it reach carbon neutrality by 2040 – and its research could help other countries go green too

Ordinary folks gazing at the night sky can readily spot Earth’s close neighbors and the light of distant stars. But when Ian Hutchinson scans the cosmos, he takes in a great deal more. There is, for instance, the constant rush of plasma — highly charged ionized gases — from the sun. As this plasma flows by solid […]

The way electrons interact with photons of light is a key part of many modern technologies, from lasers to solar panels to LEDs. But the interaction is inherently a weak one because of a major mismatch in scale: A wavelength of visible light is about 1,000 times larger than an electron, so the way the […]

You don’t have to stay in a bad situation.

Talented employees may feel demoralized by slow career advancement. These interim strategies can help ensure their underlying needs are met.

Paying for stolen data — even when it’s your own — comes with substantial legal and reputational risks.

Nivedita Balu / Reuters: Memo: Salesforce plans to lay off around 10% of its staff and close some offices, expecting to incur $1.4B to $2.1B in charges for the restructuring  —  Salesforce Inc (CRM.N) said on Wednesday it would lay off about 10% of its employees and close some offices as a part of its […]

Chris Welch / The Verge: A look at Samsung’s TV updates in 2023: Neo QLEDs converting SDR to HDR, futuristic MicroLED TVs, improvements to The Frame, and software and AI updates  —  Last year, Samsung radically shook up the TV market with the introduction of its first OLED model in many years.

Matt Levine / Bloomberg: The US case against alleged Mango Markets manipulator Avraham Eisenberg highlights traders treating crypto as a game, forgetting the real-world consequences  —  Mango  —  So here’s a trade.  — You open two accounts on a commodity futures exchange, Account A and Account B.

A typical bacterial genome contains more than 4,000 genes, which encode all of the proteins that the cells need to survive. How do cells know just how much of each protein they need for their everyday functions? Gene-Wei Li, an MIT associate professor of biology, is trying to answer that question. A physicist by training, […]

We tested the latest and greatest gaming notebooks to sort the god-rolls from the vendor fodder.

These are our favorite Windows notebooks, MacBooks, and Chromebooks.

Zuck promised his “metaverse” could bring people together. All I got were glitches and disappointment.

Sabela Ojea / Wall Street Journal: Foxconn partners with Nvidia to produce electronic control units based on Nvidia’s Drive Orin SoC for intelligent vehicles and use them in Foxconn’s own EVs  —  Foxconn will produce, use Nvidia’s chips that help enable autonomous driving  —  Graphics chip maker Nvidia Corp. NVDA -1.91%decrease …

Axios: Sources: crypto payments startup Wyre told its staff that it’s shutting down; Bolt planned to acquire Wyre for ~$1.5B but canceled the deal in September 2022  —  Wyre, a crypto payments company founded in 2013, has told employees that it is shutting down amid layoffs, Axios has learned.

Twitter Safety: [Thread] Twitter relaxes its policy for cause-based ads in the US and plans to expand the political advertising the company permits in the coming weeks  —  We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics. Today, we’re relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US. We also plan […]

Artificial intelligence that analyses the sound of a cough to detect covid-19 had been reported to be 99 per cent accurate, but a comprehensive analysis shows it’s only about 60 per cent accurate

U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu serves as the Department of Defense’s chief technology officer. In a recent talk at MIT, she spoke about the DoD’s initiatives to build a stronger U.S. manufacturing base and to tackle the country’s “toughest challenges.” President Biden nominated Shyu as under secretary in April […]

Our hosts’ picks for the best conversations of 2022.

After Wordle became an instant hit, Josh Wardle had to consider long-term options for the web-based word game he created.

Advice on what to say (and what not to say) when you break the news.

Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: Southwest Airlines’ recent meltdown exposed an over-reliance on aging crew-assignment software SkySolver, forcing the company to return to manual scheduling  —  The airline industry is long overdue for a tech overhaul that takes full advantage of the cloud and data integration, analysts say

Clive Thompson / MIT Technology Review: A profile of blockchain auditing service CertiK, which inspects smart contracts to help clients like Yuga Labs avoid critical bugs that can lead to lost crypto  —  Programming errors on the blockchain can mean $100 million lost in the blink of an eye.  Ronghui Gu and his company CertiK […]

Debby Wu / Bloomberg: Chinese media: Foxconn says its Zhengzhou plant is operating with ~200,000 workers, or ~90% capacity, back to around reported normal levels, after disruptions  —  Foxconn Technology Group has brought the world’s largest iPhone plant to about 90% of anticipated peak capacity …

NASA and Lockheed Martin’s strange-looking X-59 plane is set to fly early in 2023, and it is designed to break the sound barrier quietly rather than creating a huge sonic boom

Previous golf robots have required assistance from human operators, but Golfi can find golf balls on a green and work out how to hit them by itself

WIRED visited the Geological Society of America conference to learn about the untapped potential of gigantic reptiles in gaming.

This type of devastating scheme ensnares victims and takes them for all they’re worth—and the threat is only growing.

Electric vehicles went mainstream in 2022, so 2023’s designs will be bold, weird, and wonderful. Here are a few flashes of inspiration.

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Zomato co-founder and CTO Gunjan Patidar leaves, following departures of two senior execs and another co-founder last month; Zomato’s stock dropped 57%+ in 2022  —  Zomato said on Monday its co-founder and chief technology officer Gunjan Patidar has left the firm, the latest in a series …

Evelyn Cheng / CNBC: A look at China’s rising Beijing-endorsed industry of “virtual people”, including scandal-free influencers, performers, and customer service representatives  —  – Tech company Baidu said the number of virtual people projects it’s worked on for clients has doubled since last year …

New York Times: Research: 35+ companies have pledged ~$200B for chip-related manufacturing projects in the US since spring 2020 across 16 states and 23 new chip factories  —  Amid a tech cold war with China, U.S. companies have pledged nearly $200 billion for chip manufacturing projects since early 2020.

As cells perform their everyday functions, they turn on a variety of genes and cellular pathways. MIT engineers have now coaxed cells to inscribe the history of these events in a long protein chain that can be imaged using a light microscope. Cells programmed to produce these chains continuously add building blocks that encode particular […]

Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times: German grocery delivery app Flink, one of the last independent services, had €400M in 2022 sales and expects to be profitable in 2023; Flink has raised $700M+  —  Berlin-based start-up aims for profits next year as rivals struggle for cash  —  Flink, one of Europe’s …

Stephen Katte / Cointelegraph: Luke Dashjr, one of the original core BTC developers, says someone stole “basically” all his BTC by compromising his PGP key; a wallet shows ~217 BTC were moved  —  A Bitcoin OG and core developer Luke Dashjr claims his PGP key was compromised, resulting in virtually all his Bitcoin being stolen […]

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: A look at the longest tech boom so far, including crypto’s rise and fall, VR falling short of its hype, the marketplace economy’s growth, pizza robots, and more  —  From pizza robots to the crypto meltdown, the long bubble has shown us the hilarious, the regrettable, and the unexpectedly […]

Whether you’re skiing in the backcountry or trampolining in the backyard, we have an activity tracker for you.

Maintenance of FORM, the 1980s software that’s used for the field’s hardest calculations, rests almost entirely with one septuagenarian physicist.

If you’re about to set your resolutions for 2023, stop. According to experts, this is how to pick the right ones, build good habits, and stay motivated.

Matthew Smith / Wired: A look at the use of AI to design and test games, such as to tune difficulty, find world geometry flaws, and sniff out situations that make it impossible to win  —  The next generation of video game characters could be powered by AI, making them more engaging and challenging.

Chris Velazco / Washington Post: Hands-on with Pixel 7 Pro’s Real Tone, which claims to render skin tones more accurately in photos, compared with the Galaxy S22 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro Max  —  Google is trying to make its phone cameras more inclusive.  We put it to the test against its rivals.

Chloe Cornish / Financial Times: A look at the impact of the funding crunch on India’s tech startups, which raised $24.7B from January to November 2022, down 35% YoY, per data provider Tracxn  —  Funding crunch has triggered mass job cuts of up to 25,000 at country’s once-thriving tech companies

Neuroscientists and psychologists explain how to keep yourself on track—for good this time.

Keeping your coders in good spirits will be critical to retaining talent and beating a downturn.

New approaches to the biology of senescence can make lives longer and healthier.

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: Verizon decommissioned its 3G network on December 31, the last major US carrier to do so after AT&T and T-Mobile turned off services earlier in 2022  —  It’s well and truly curtains for 3G, one of the key technologies that helped usher in the age of the smartphone.

Wall Street Journal: A look at the rise and fall of Alameda Research, whose troubles began well before the crypto crash as it took big gambles, winning some and losing plenty  —  Trading firm took big gambles, winning some and losing plenty; ‘complete lack of a risk-management framework’

Hannah Murphy / Financial Times: Experts weigh in on Meta’s impending decision to lift Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram ban; source: the announcement will be made later than January 7  —  Tech giant’s policy chief Nick Clegg due to rule this month whether to revoke ban on former US president

It’s all the same features, but none of the distractions or annoying notifications.