About: blatcho

Mariella Moon / Engadget: Google launches News Showcase in France, partners with 65+ publishers representing 130+ outlets, and will offer “a limited amount” of paywalled content for free  —  Google has launched News Showcase in France, and it has teamed up with over 65 publishers representing over 130 publications …

Tim Hakki / Decrypt: CoinGecko: the Aptos token fell 40.5% on its first day of trading; Aptos’ Layer 1 blockchain was panned for opaque tokenomics and a low transaction throughput  —  The price of Aptos has crashed more than 40% a day after launch as investors remain wary of the network’s widely-panned mainnet rollout.

A laser controlled by two cameras and a small computer running an AI model can be trained to target certain types of insect

“Drawing Together,” a social and ecological resilience project in New York City, has been awarded the 2022 Norman B. Leventhal City Prize.  The project is a collaboration between MIT faculty, researchers, and students, and Green City Force (GCF), a nonprofit organization in New York City that trains young people for careers with a sustainability focus […]

While automated manufacturing is ubiquitous today, it was once a nascent field birthed by inventors such as Oliver Evans, who is credited with creating the first fully automated industrial process, in flour mill he built and gradually automated in the late 1700s. The processes for creating automated structures or machines are still very top-down, requiring […]

Some of our favorite camera gear is on sale, just in time to capture the dazzling colors of autumn.

Repressive regimes are teaching each other how to control protesters’ web access with increasingly surgical precision.

If you stumble on one you just can’t beat, there is no other choice but to watch others do it online.

Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic: A look at “gradient accounts” on Twitter that have color gradients as profile pictures, post viral “relatable” content, and are often accused of stealing tweets  —  Here’s a very popular tweet: “she’s a 10 but she cries on her birthday every year.”  —  Solid.  Concise.

Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica: SpaceX unveils its Starlink Aviation service, promising speeds up to 350Mbps in airplanes, with a $150K one-time hardware cost and $12.5K to $25K monthly fees  —  Airplane operators can reserve now for Starlink deliveries in mid-2023.  —  SpaceX is now advertising Starlink Aviation …

Katyanna Quach / The Register: A study of 1,063 US adults’ YouTube browsing experience shows the site is more likely to suggest conservative-leaning videos regardless of the viewer’s ideology  —  There goes Woke Big Tech again, downplaying traditional liberal views  —  YouTube’s recommendation algorithm not only gently traps viewers …

Almost 23 per cent of developers in Russia who used the popular coding platform GitHub changed their location information or deleted their profiles between February 2021 and June 2022

A neural network forms the basis of many modern artificial intelligence set-ups, and now the concept has been applied to a purely mechanical calculating machine

The venerable British journal Nature is publishing four special issues in 2022 that delve into matters of racism and science, including the way racist thinking has imbued the content of biological thinking, the downplaying of knowledge accumulated by non-Western societies, and the exclusion of people of color from the scientific establishment. MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles […]

Six members of the MIT community have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society for 2022. The APS Fellowship Program was created in 1921 for those in the physics community to recognize peers who have contributed to advances in physics through original research, innovative applications, teaching, and leadership. According to the APS, each year […]

Sponsor content from Roche.

Choosing the combo platter can restore a sense of autonomy.

A collaborative culture both reduces physician burnout and boosts clinical, operational, and financial performance.

Russia’s invasion is reversing years of environmental progress. But the world can help Ukraine reconstruct its damaged landscape and energy systems.

From microchips to trackers, these tools can save you some heartache and help bring your fur babies back home.

In the future, remote-controlled quadcopters might mean that researchers won’t have to crawl inside volcanoes to collect carbon dioxide anymore.

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: ASML, the Dutch company that makes chip making equipment, expects US restrictions on exporting high-end chips to China to have “limited” impact on its business  —  – ASML reported third-quarter revenue and earnings on Wednesday that topped analyst expectations …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Reddit’s chief product officer says 3M+ users created Reddit Vault wallets, including 2.5M to buy NFT avatars that can be used as profile pictures on the site  —  In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed […]

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Munich-based Holidu, which runs a search engine and booking website for vacation rentals, raised a €100M Series E led by 83North, with €75M equity and €25M debt  —  Munich-based software and services vacation rental startup, Holidu, has topped up its coffers …

In a tournament of the first world war strategy game Diplomacy, two AIs built by Facebook’s parent company Meta outplayed humans

NASA hit a bullseye in late September with DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which flew a spacecraft straight at the heart of a nearby asteroid. The one-way kamikaze mission smashed into the stadium-sized space rock and successfully reset the asteroid’s orbit. DART was the first test of a planetary defense strategy, demonstrating that scientists […]

Two new 4K Apple TVs and a Pencil trick were also unveiled.

Three warehouses have voted on joining the Amazon Labor Union, but organizers prevailed in only one—and the retail giant’s heavily funded opposition continues.

A case heading to SCOTUS claims platforms should be held responsible for their algorithmic recommendations. A history of the statute suggests otherwise.

Sander Lutz / Decrypt: Bluesky previews its Authenticated Transport Protocol, formerly ADX, for large distributed social applications and says a Bluesky social app is “coming soon”  —  The group, formed within Twitter, is building a decentralized protocol that limits corporate and governmental influence on social media platforms.

Florence Ion / Gizmodo: Google adds tablet-friendly features to Chrome on Android, like a visual tab grid, a drag-and-drop mode, and a side-by-side design; tab groups are coming later  —  The update brings abilities like tabs and a drag-and-drop mode, but it’s for Android tablets only.  —  Alerts

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu says the company is “seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering” and plans to open a new gaming studio in Southern California  —  At TechCrunch Disrupt, Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu dropped two bits of news about the streaming giant’s foray into games.

The Ad Hoc Committee on Leveraging Best Practices from Remote Teaching for On-Campus Education has released a report that captures how instructors are weaving lessons learned from remote teaching into in-person classes. Despite the challenges imposed by teaching and learning remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, the report says, “there were seeds planted then that, we […]

Humans are highly sensitive to the bodily movement of other people. Our ability to comprehend body language is crucial to our social thriving, providing information on emotion and behavioral predictions through subtle cues. When and how do we develop the ability to recognize human movement and distinguish it from other forms of movement? Newborns only […]

On October 17, the National Academy of Medicine announced the election of 100 new members to join their esteemed ranks. MIT faculty members Laura L. Kiessling ’83 and Mark Bear were among the new members, along with MIT alumni Krishna Shenoy SM ’92, PhD ’95 and David Tuveson ’87. Martin Burke, a former student in […]

Sponsor content from Accenture.

How leaders can leverage the power of hope — while avoiding its pitfalls.

Managers often fail to recognize the problem until it’s too late.

This new iCloud feature makes it super easy to access smartphone pics and videos on your computer—no cords necessary.

The 2020 Apple smartphone is still a great pick. Kit it out with MagSafe-tested protection, chargers, and other extras.

Ahead of US midterms, activists are fighting falsehoods circulating in Chinese-language communities that they fear will distort the vote or suppress turnout.

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: UK’s CMA gives a final order to Meta to sell Giphy, after a judge ordered the CMA to reassess the case in July  —  Bye-bye: Meta has again been ordered by the UK’s competition watchdog to sell animated GIF platform, Giphy.  And this time it’s final.  —  The decision follows a […]

Jon Porter / The Verge: Carl Pei’s Nothing will hike the price of its Ear (1) wireless earbuds from $99 to $149 on October 26, citing “an increase in costs”  —  Nothing is hiking the price of its debut Ear 1 earbuds from $99 to $149, the company’s CEO Carl Pei has announced.

Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: Apple restores Russia’s largest social network VKontakte, Mail.ru, and other apps from VK, three weeks after removing them citing UK sanctions  —  Apple has restored Russian apps for social network VKontakte and webmail provider Mail.ru to the App Store, three weeks after removing …

When he matriculated in 2019 as a graduate student, Raúl Mojica Soto-Albors was no stranger to MIT. He’d spent time here on multiple occasions as an undergraduate at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, including eight months in 2018 as a displaced student after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Those experiences — including participating in […]

There’s a fight brewing over how Hollywood stars can protect their identities. But it’s not just actors who should be paying attention.

The social app with a reputation for being somewhat oblique has dropped several new features that make it easier for newbies to have a good experience.

Your best friend can receive timely medical help without ever leaving home, and this guide to our favorite televets can help.

Janko Roettgers / Protocol: Netflix rolls out a feature globally to let users transfer all their personalized viewing data to a new account, ahead of a crackdown on account sharing in 2023  —  Netflix is making it easier for people to disentangle their personal viewing data: The streaming service is rolling …

Avery Menegus / Engadget: Internal doc: Amazon has a high attrition rate across all levels, costing $8B annually, and workers choose to leave twice as often as layoffs and firings occur  —  Amazon churns through workers at an astonishing rate, well above industry averages.  According to a tranche of documents marked …