Category: Uncategorized

Federal Trade Commission: The US FTC’s DNC Registry data shows the agency received ~1.1M consumer complaints about robocalls in FY 2024, down from ~1.2M in FY 2023 and 3.4M+ in FY 2021  —  FTC releases annual Do Not Call Registry Data Book showing total reports about unwanted calls decreased further in 2024

GovTech: US DHS issues guidance on adopting AI in critical infrastructure, identifying AI-driven attacks, targeted attacks on AI systems, and design flaws as core risks  —  A new series of recommendations from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is designed to enable cloud providers, AI developers …

Yiming Chen ’24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been selected as 2025 Rhodes Scholars and will begin fully funded postgraduate studies at Oxford University in the U.K. next fall. In addition to MIT’s two U.S. Rhodes winners, Ouigbo and Nair, two affiliates were awarded international Rhodes Scholarships: Chen for Rhodes’ China constituency and […]

From headphones and speakers to accessories for their vinyl LPs, these picks will appeal to any audio aficionado.

Unravel the tangled world of cords and find the ones you need to charge your gadgets and transfer data.

The JubileeTV is a set-top box and camera for seniors that offers remote tech support, video calls, and medication reminders.

Bloomberg: Netflix says 60M households watched the Paul vs. Tyson boxing bout live around the world, peaking at 65M concurrent streams  —  – Mike Tyson and Jake Paul faced off in heavily anticipated bout  — Users complained on social media of difficulty watching fight

Ben Quinn / The Guardian: FOIA docs show Palantir has been in talks with the UK’s Ministry of Justice about using its tech to calculate the “reoffending risks” of prisoners  —  Exclusive: Rights group expresses concerns as it emerges US spy tech company has been lobbying UK ministers

Wall Street Journal: Ukraine’s drone suppliers are using US-based Auterion’s tech to ramp up production of automated attack drones that are cheap and can evade electronic jamming  —  Kyiv’s drone suppliers are ramping up production of computer-guided drones that are cheap and can’t be electronically jammed

The Diplomat, Heartstopper, and Arcane are just a few of the shows you need to watch on Netflix this month.

Emilia Pérez, Woman of the Hour, and Will & Harper are just a few of the movies you should watch on Netflix this month.

Five minutes a day on an AI-enabled exercise bike really can keep the doctor away.

ProPublica: Investigation: Microsoft offered the US government free cybersecurity upgrades in 2021, increasing government reliance on Microsoft due to high switching costs  —  – Raising the Bar: President Joe Biden asked tech companies to “raise the bar on cybersecurity.”

Nandagopal Rajan / The Indian Express: An interview with Apple’s Tim Millet and Tom Boger on Apple’s chip strategy, making big changes to the Neural Engine after the 2017 transformer paper, and more  —  ‘No other platform can touch our power performance per watt.  That’s the tangible benefit to users,’ Tom Boger, Vice President of […]

Dominic Patten / Deadline: Many Netflix viewers faced issues while watching the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight and the undercard bouts, including the stream glitching and losing sound  —  From nearly the start of the undercard bouts from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, the streamer has been freezing, losing sound and proving slow to […]

Attempts to prevent Australian children from accessing social media are likely to fail, and could do more harm than good

Why wait? Our favorite tents, sleeping bags, backpacks, and other outdoor gear are on sale now.

Two recent studies offer some of the most nuanced evidence yet about the potential benefits and risks of working on your feet.

Want to digitally control your favorite instruments? These tools will help.

Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg: One year after Sam Altman was dramatically ousted and reinstated, OpenAI remains dominant as it continues to push ahead on impressive new products  —  The ChatGPT maker is still the company to beat in AI despite going through a turbulent period.  —  One year after Sam Altman’s dramatic …

Shakeel Hashim / Transformer: New emails released as part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI show Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever had serious concerns about Sam Altman as early as 2017  —  New emails released as part of Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI reveal that the company’s fondness of drama is hardly new.

Ari Levy / CNBC: Palantir stock jumps 9% after announcing a move from the NYSE to the Nasdaq; its stock is up 50%+ since reporting better-than-expected earnings on November 4  —  Palantir shares continued their torrid run on Friday, soaring 11% to a record, after the developer of software for the military announced plans …

Letting AI models communicate with each other in their internal mathematical language, rather than translating back and forth to English, could accelerate their task-solving abilities

J-PAL North America recently selected government partners for the 2024-25 Leveraging Evaluation and Evidence for Equitable Recovery (LEVER) Evaluation Incubator cohort. Selected collaborators will receive funding and technical assistance to develop or launch a randomized evaluation for one of their programs. These collaborations represent jurisdictions across the United States and demonstrate the growing enthusiasm for evidence-based […]

At age 22, aerospace engineer Eric Shaw worked on some of the world’s most powerful airplanes, yet learning to fly even the smallest one was out of reach. Just out of college, he could not afford civilian flight school and spent the next two years saving $12,000 to earn his private pilot’s license. Shaw knew […]

To fend off the worst impacts of climate change, “we have to decarbonize, and do it even faster,” said William H. Green, director of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor, MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, at MITEI’s Annual Research Conference. “But how the heck do we actually achieve this goal when […]

Advanced AI can learn how seasoned experts make decisions and perform tasks that used to require specialized knowledge.

Alliances with national governments are no longer enough.

Take advantage of the momentum of the holidays to foster deeper connections that carry into the new year.

Users frustrated with Elon Musk’s handling of X and closeness to president-elect Donald Trump are fleeing to Bluesky—an easier migration than leaving the US.

An analysis of Substack’s top newsletters estimated that around 10 percent publish AI-generated or AI-assisted content.

You should absolutely not build this thing. But it’s still fun to think through the physics.

Financial Times: A profile of Klarna and its CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski as it filed for a US IPO on November 13; investors hope Klarna can achieve a $150B-$200B valuation  —  Swedish entrepreneur born to Polish immigrants seeks to list the ‘buy now, pay later’ fintech in New York

Bloomberg: Filing: Samsung plans to buy back about $7.2B of its own stock in stages over the next year, in one of the larger shareholder return programs in its history  —  – Samsung’s stock soared as much as almost 9% on Friday  — Investors fear the company is missing out on the AI boom

Yifan Yu / Nikkei Asia: Biden admin finalizes its $6.6B CHIPS Act grant to TSMC; money will be disbursed in stages and TSMC is expected to receive at least $1B by the end of 2024  —  LIMA, Peru — The Biden administration has finalized its $6.6 billion CHIPS Act grant to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. […]

On the campaign trail, incoming US president Donald Trump vowed to release Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht from prison if reelected. Will he keep his word?

All-Clad cookware is the best you can buy—and it has a price tag to match. This sale will stretch your dollars.

WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond joins this week to discuss what the fragmented internet did for the Trump campaign, and what the incoming Trump administration means for the internet.

Sabrina Willmer / Bloomberg: Ilya Lichtenstein is sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring with his wife, Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan, to launder money from the 2016 Bitfinex hack  —  – Ilya Lichtenstein tried to launder proceeds of Bitfinex hack  — His rapper wife ‘Razzlekahn’ is set to be sentenced on Monday

Dag Spicer / CHM: Thomas E. Kurtz, an American mathematician, computer scientist, and co-inventor of the BASIC programming language with John Kemeny, died at 96 on November 12  —  2023 CHM FELLOW  —  With deep sadness, we say goodbye to computer pioneer Thomas Kurtz.  —  Thomas Eugene Kurtz (Feb. 22 1928-Nov. 12 …

Michael Kan / PCMag: OpenAI makes the ChatGPT desktop app for Windows available to all users, following an October release limited to paying ChatGPT subscribers  —  Previously limited to ChatGPT Plus subscribers, the app opens a ‘companion window’ on your PC, allowing you to easily use the AI chatbot alongside any other Windows programs.

Readers give higher ratings to AI-generated poetry than the works of poets such as William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson – perhaps because they often have more straightforward themes and simpler structure

Driverless cars can now do doughnuts and drift like stunt drivers, skidding sideways around corners while maintaining control, which might help the cars recover from dangerous situations

Linzixuan (Rhoda) Zhang, a doctoral candidate in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, recently won the 2024 Collegiate Inventors Competition, medaling in both the Graduate and People’s Choice categories for developing materials to stabilize nutrients in food with the goal of improving global health.   The annual competition, organized by the National Inventors Hall of Fame […]

Faculty and researchers receive many external awards throughout the year. The MIT School of Engineering periodically highlights the honors, prizes, and medals won by community members working in academic departments, labs, and centers. Summer 2024 honorees include the following: Polina Anikeeva, the Matoula S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, professor of brain and […]

Any child who’s spent a morning building sandcastles only to watch the afternoon tide ruin them in minutes knows the ocean always wins. Yet, coastal protection strategies have historically focused on battling the sea — attempting to hold back tides and fighting waves and currents by armoring coastlines with jetties and seawalls and taking sand […]

Three models for continuing DEI efforts in an increasingly hostile climate.

Six steps to address the problem and change the dynamic.

Researchers found that AI excels at certain kinds of budgeting tasks — but still struggles with others.

Under Donald Trump and Joe Biden alike, the US has been determined to “reshore” chipmaking. Now money and colossal infrastructure are flowing to a vast Intel site in Ohio—just as the company may be falling apart.