About: blatcho

Physicists just reconstructed a 19th-century paradox that seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics (but really doesn’t).

The ambient music pioneer is back with ForeverAndEverNoMore, an album that wants to get you in touch with your climate emergency feelings.

Angus Loten / Wall Street Journal: IT teams are hiring more freelancers and slowing recruiting full-time staff; Freelancer.com says software developer job postings rose 54.7% YoY in Q3 2022  —  New wave of IT freelancers prefer to tackle digital projects, then move on, recruiters say  —  Facing economic headwinds …

Coco Liu / Bloomberg: Study: Chinese netizens are permitted to air environmental concerns and criticize polluters on social media, resulting in lower emissions from some factories  —  In spite of China’s intensifying crackdown on political dissent, residents still have plenty of leeway to air their environmental concerns …

Financial Times: Chinese internet censors suspend thousands of WeChat accounts and remove posts after a rare protest in central Beijing against “dictator and traitor Xi Jinping”  —  Banners hung from bridge call for leader’s removal ahead of Communist party congress

The company pushed up the launch of its $6-per-month ad-supported tier, edging out competition from Disney+.

In an independent test, cathode components Redwood Materials made from reused metals matched the performance of those made from raw ones.

These phones remain unbeatable when it comes to sheer value.

Chris Baraniuk / BBC: How cosmic rays can alter computers’ memory, a phenomenon understood since at least the 1970s, and why it is hard to tie specific errors to ionizing radiation  —  The Earth is subjected to a hail of subatomic particles from the Sun and beyond our solar system which could be the cause […]

Tom Giles / Bloomberg: Filing: Twitter says Elon Musk is under a federal investigation related to his bid to acquire the company and asks for access to documents he gave authorities  —  Billionaire Elon Musk is being investigated by federal authorities related to his attempted acquisition of Twitter Inc. …

Ashley Gold / Axios: Meta files to dismiss the FTC’s attempt to block its acquisition of Within, arguing the FTC’s claims rely on “pure speculation of a hypothetical future state”  —  Meta filed to dismiss the Federal Trade Commission’s attempt to block its acquisition of virtual reality fitness startup Within …

Double-whammy approach uses chemical catalysts to break down mixed plastic waste so bacteria can convert what’s left into desirable compounds

Apps that create images based on text can deliver amazing results, but there are problems with the data sets some are trained on and the lack of compensation for artists, says Annalee Newitz

“My job is basically flooding Cambridge,” says Katerina “Katya” Boukin, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering at MIT and the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub’s resident expert on flood simulations.  You can often find her fine-tuning high-resolution flood risk models for the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, or talking about hurricanes with fellow researcher Ipek […]

Professor Michel DeGraff of MIT Linguistics has been elected as a fellow of the Linguistics Society of America (LSA), the highest academic honor within the field of linguistics, in recognition of his dynamic and impactful scholarship in Creole studies with a focus on Haitian Creole (or “Kreyòl,” as it’s called in Haiti). DeGraff’s scholarship into […]

Leon Villegas SM ’08, MBA ’08, a graduate of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations program, works on the cutting edge of autonomous aviation. At Wisk Aero, an advanced air mobility company dedicated to delivering safe, everyday flight for everyone, Villegas is responsible for the production of aircraft for a new market just coming into […]

A roundtable conversation takes stock of Clayton Christensen’s influential theory.

Sponsor content from Siemens Healthineers.

A look at the opportunities, risks, and mitigation strategies.

The latest additions to Hestan’s app-controlled countertop burner system show how this sector of the smart kitchen is progressing, and where it still lags.

This week, we discuss Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions for growing virtual reality as a platform, and how the new Quest Pro headset fits into that vision.

A new study finds no correlation between research and development spending and outlandish drug prices.

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post: China’s central bank: e-CNY transactions totaled ~$14B from December 2019 to August 2022, up 14% from ~$12.2B in December 2021, signaling slowing growth  —  China’s central bank digital currency transactions totalled 100 billion yuan (US$14 billion) from the start of the e-CNY initiative …

Spencer Soper / Bloomberg: Numerator: during Amazon’s second Prime Day, the average US order size was $46.44, down 23% from the July Prime Day, mostly comprising household essentials  —  Amazon.com Inc. shoppers are largely skipping pricey purchases during the company’s Prime sale sequel — favoring pantry items …

Axios: Sources: the FCC plans to ban all sales of new Huawei and ZTE telecommunications devices in the US over national security concerns, pending a vote  —  The Federal Communications Commission plans to ban all sales of new Huawei and ZTE telecommunications devices in the U.S. …

There are plenty of apps that offer mental exercises claiming to make users smarter the more they play. Not only are they not much fun, but studies show they have no effect on performance, says Adrian Hon

In Building 13 on MIT’s campus, there sits a half-a-million-dollar piece of equipment that looks like a long stretched-out chandelier, with a series of gold discs connected by thin silver pipes. The equipment, known as a dilution refrigerator, is a key player in PhD student Alex Greene’s research, as it houses all their experiments. “My […]

The Prime Early Access Sale is here. From Alexa-powered Echo Dots to laptops, here are all the greatest discounts we’ve found.

From Echo smart displays and speakers to Kindles and Fire tablets, snag the retailer’s own hardware on sale.

Upgrade your digs with Amazon price cuts on cooking gadgets, TVs, vacuums, and air purifiers.

Ivan Levingston / Bloomberg: Dream Security, a cybersecurity company co-founded by former NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio with a focus on protecting critical infrastructure, has raised $20M  —  The former chief executive officer of Israeli spyware company NSO Group, Shalev Hulio, has joined with ex-Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz …

Matthew Townsend / Bloomberg: Amazon, Shopify, Wayfair, and other big e-commerce sites scale back operations after erroneously betting that pandemic online shopping trends would be permanent  —  Did the pandemic forever change how we shop?  —  The answer seemed obvious in the first half of 2020, when retailers closed …

Wall Street Journal: Sources: US chip equipment suppliers are pausing business activities and pulling out staff based at China’s YMTC, following US curbs on China’s chip sector  —  Tool makers are pulling out staff and pausing work as they assess the impact of Commerce Department restrictions on semiconductor exports to China

The ability to fine-tune a robotic exoskeleton boot while you are walking around could make such devices more affordable and practical

A morphable limb design allows this robot to flip between a sea turtle-like limb for swimming in water to a tortoise’s style for travel on land

A battery that includes tiny heaters inside it can be charged to 70 per cent, the equivalent to a range of more than 300 kilometres for an electric car, in just 11 minutes

Laura Maiorino arrived in Cambridge in late 2019, one of more than 1,400 postdoctoral scholars from around the world who join MIT each year to launch their careers in the company of other outstanding researchers. Within months, of course, the pandemic struck: labmates were working in shifts and taking meetings over Zoom. “Even connecting within […]

Danna Freedman, the F.G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry at MIT, and Moriba Jah, a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar, have been named recipients of a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship. Often referred to as “genius grants,” the fellowships come with a five-year, $800,000 prize, which recipients are free to use as they see fit. Freedman, who […]

If ever there was an event that would seem designed for dwelling on the past, it would be the anniversary celebration of an institute centered on the study of memory, but the first of many insights offered by the 20th Anniversary Exhibition of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT Sept. 22 was […]

A guide to setting a strategy-centric agenda for board meetings.

Lessons from Best Buy’s failure and semiconductor manufacturer AMD’s success.

Data will help you identify the biggest problems — and get buy-in from skeptics.

The toughest export restrictions yet cut off artificial intelligence hardware and chip making tools crucial to China’s commercial and military ambitions.

Scientists are investigating why large animals like the mule deer of Wyoming go where they go—and how humans can get out of their way.

The “wife guy” has always been bad. But the fading phenomenon hints at bigger issues, like gender inequality and men relying on their partners for clout.

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google rolls out support for signing in with passkeys on Android and Chrome to beta testers ahead of a wider launch in 2022  —  Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others in the industry want to replace website/app passwords with “passkeys” that just require you to unlock your device.

Jon Fingas / Engadget: What to expect from Microsoft’s Surface event: Surface Pro 9, Surface Laptop 5, Surface Studio 3, and potentially a mini PC and Surface accessories  —  – Wildcards: A mini PC and Surface accessories  —  Microsoft is holding its customary fall Surface event on October 12th …

Halisia Hubbard / NPR: British artist Damien Hirst burns thousands of his paintings live on Instagram as part of an NFT project, “completing the transformation” from physical to NFTs  —  British artist Damien Hirst is among the many art-world giants who have set fire to their work, having burned 1,000 of his artworks Tuesday.

When Gloria Choi was making plans to launch her research lab at MIT, nearly 10 years ago, she thought it would be nice to find a side project where she could collaborate with her husband, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School. The two scientists decided to look into a startling observation they had heard about […]

The Prime Early Access Sale is here. From Alexa-powered Echo Dots to laptops, here are all the greatest discounts we’ve found.