Category: Uncategorized

The blockchain project’s cofounder Vitalik Buterin says its recent big upgrade lays a path for more technical changes, and greater adoption.

Reuters: Sources: Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi express concerns over India’s home-grown GPS plan, arguing integrating the system would be costly and require new hardware  —  India is pushing tech giants to make smartphones compatible with its home-grown navigation system within months …

Christopher Weaver / Wall Street Journal: Analysis: Amazon’s regular trucking contractors were more than twice as likely as other companies to get unsafe driving scores from February 2020 to August 2022  —  Its regular contractors were more than twice as likely to receive unsafe driving scores compared with similar outfits; Amazon says its network is […]

Scientists estimate that more than 95 percent of Earth’s oceans have never been observed, which means we have seen less of our planet’s ocean than we have the far side of the moon or the surface of Mars. The high cost of powering an underwater camera for a long time, by tethering it to a […]

Patrick McGee / Financial Times: Counterpoint: the average selling price of iPhones could rise to $892 in Q3 2022 and $944 in Q4 2022, as buyers choose Pro models; the record is $873 in Q4 2021  —  Upward trajectory driven by customers buying more expensive ‘Pro’ models that command higher margins

Tiernan Ray / ZDNet: An interview with Meta Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun on his critics and why today’s most popular approaches to AI won’t lead to human-level machine intelligence  —  (Article is updated with a rebuttal by Gary Marcus in context.)  —  Yann LeCun, chief AI scientist of Meta Properties …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: The iPhone, in its third year of a three-year design cycle, may be overhauled in 2023; Apple may delay Pay Later to 2023 and may not host an October 2022 event  —  I’ve spent the last week or so testing out the iPhone 14 Pro Max, and I believe it sets […]

Everything you need to know to successfully transfer your contacts, music, photos, and apps from one iOS device to another.

Joined a new community and discovered—to your horror—that there are no party parrots? Let’s fix that.

Physicists have solved a key problem of robotic locomotion by revising the usual rules of interaction between simple component parts.

Viola Zhou / Rest of World: Using translation apps, dubbing software, and VPNs, some Chinese creators are getting millions of views for TikTok videos summarizing Hollywood movies and shows  —  With machine translation, dubbing apps and VPNs, Chinese creators are shortening movies for Americans.

Che Pan / South China Morning Post: A profile of YMTC, China’s top memory chip maker that could end up in the crosshairs of US sanctions; YMTC had 1% share of the global memory chip market in 2020  —  A few months before the US-China trade war started in July 2018, local media coverage of […]

Kashmir Hill / New York Times: A look at The Follower, an art project using open-source facial recognition software to match Instagram photos with EarthCam video footage of people taking them  —  A tech-savvy artist unearthed video footage of people working hard to capture the perfect shot for Instagram.

Although Fernanda De La Torre still has several years left in her graduate studies, she’s already dreaming big when it comes to what the future has in store for her. “I dream of opening up a school one day where I could bring this world of understanding of cognition and perception into places that would […]

These weatherproof devices can keep a watchful eye on your property and let you get on with life.

Plus: A leaked trove illuminates Russia’s internet regulator, a report finds Facebook and Instagram violated Palestinian rights, and more.

Voice of America: The US Treasury updates its guidance to let US tech companies expand their internet services in Iran, after the country took most of its ~83M citizens offline  —  The U.S. Treasury Department said Friday that it was updating guidance to U.S. tech firms to expand the range of internet services available …

Anthony Breznican / Vanity Fair: A look at Kyiv-based Respeecher, which uses performers’ archival voice recordings and AI to create new dialogue, including for Darth Vader in Obi-Wan Kenobi  —  As the conflict raged, Ukrainian tech workers at Respeecher hurried to bring back James Earl Jones’s legendary voice for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Plus: Framework has a new ultra-repairable Chromebook, there’s a cheaper Google Chromecast, and Amazon refreshes its Fire HD tablets.

Rest of World: A look at the fight between delivery apps in Brazil after the local government launched delivery app Valeu to take on iFood, which controls 80%+ of the market  —  Free-market politicians argue that a government-controlled app is unfair competition.  —  • RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: A look at some of the challenges of zero-trust systems that can create friction for users and employees, as businesses increasingly adopt them to fight hackers  —  Hackers keep tricking employees to gain access to corporate networks, so companies are changing their approach to make it harder to wreak […]

Todd Woody / Bloomberg: How Whale Safe is using real-time data and AI to detect endangered whales in the Bay Area’s busy shipping lanes and alert ships to avoid collisions  —  Is your iPhone whale-safe?  Smartphones, like many consumer products, arrive in the US on giant container ships, vessels that are leading killers …

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Source: Byju’s has paid ~$234M to Blackstone for ~38% shares in Aakash, settling all its dues owed to the PE firm as part of a ~$1B deal from April 2021  —  Byju’s has cleared all its dues to Blackstone by paying $234 million it owed the global investment giant for the […]

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Sci-fi author Neal Stephenson’s blockchain technology startup Lamina1 releases a whitepaper on building an open metaverse, dubbed Theee Metaverse  —  Neal Stephenson’s Lamina1 blockchain technology startup dropped a white paper today on building the open metaverse.  It’s quite the manifesto.

The company is going after cryptocurrency gambling—but will that be enough to satisfy concerned streamers?

In their new book, brothers Steven, Jay, and Bob Novella try to improve on the futurism of yesteryear by identifying 10 “futurism fallacies” that have bedeviled earlier predictions.

New research shows how third-party apps could be exploited to infiltrate these sensitive workplace tools.

Metal pipes beneath the floor provide enough local disturbance of Earth’s magnetic field for an autonomous robot to work out where it is and navigate around a lab

William Gallagher / AppleInsider: Report: some NFT startups say they are limiting functionality in iOS apps, as Apple insists that its 30% commission from IAP must be paid on all trades  —  Startup and trading NFT firms say they ignore the App Store because Apple’s rules, and 30% commission, make it untenable for them.

Cecilia D’Anastasio / Bloomberg: Internal letter shows Twitch SVP of global creators Constance Knight resigned on the same day the company announced revenue sharing changes for top creators  —  The senior vice president of global creators at Twitch told employees she is leaving the company on the same day it announced changes …

This year’s incoming cohort of new MIT graduate students enjoyed a warm welcome from the Graduate Student Council (GSC), with a number of in-person orientation activities from Aug. 21 through Sept. 6. The GSC has traditionally offered a broad range of in-person orientation activities to the entire incoming graduate cohort. Katie Chen, a graduate student […]

Mancur Olsen’s 1982 classic, “The Rise and Decline of Nations,” offers a startling lens on what’s gone wrong with the U.S. economy.

Innovation tends to decline from one generation to the next. But it doesn’t have to.

Interviews with more than 40 CDOs in 2019 and 2021 explore how DEI has transformed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

The best classic flicks, Marvel movies, and Star Wars sagas on Disney+.

Nicholas Quah / Vulture: A look at the crowded podcast market, where competition has made almost everything in the business more difficult, and some say no one is taking creative risks  —  It’s been ages since the last blockbuster narrative show.  What does that mean for the medium as an art form?

Wall Street Journal: Google’s Mandiant say it observed four instances of pro-Russian hacktivist groups publishing data within 24 hours of it being stolen by GRU using wiper malware  —  ‘We have never previously observed such a volume of cyberattacks, variety of threat actors, and coordination of effort …

Virgin Orbit will launch satellites from the country for the first time, bringing orbital flight capability to Europe.

Welcome to your new Apple smartphone. Here’s how to get the most out of it right out of the box.

Chris Willman / Variety: Timbaland and Swizz Beatz settle a missed payments lawsuit with Triller after Triller acquired their music series Verzuz in March 2021; terms were not disclosed  —  Swizz Beatz and Timbaland have settled their lawsuit with Triller, after suing the service last month for $28 million …

Steve Case, founder of AOL, predicts the dominance of tech companies on the coasts will give way to a flourishing of startups from smaller cities.

Elizabeth Warren and Cori Bush led over two dozen congressional Democrats in urging Amazon, Lyft, Uber, and others to reclassify contractors as employees.

Churches are using invasive phone-monitoring tech to discourage “sinful” behavior. Some software is seeing more than congregants realize.

Finextra: AccessFintech, which helps financial institutions collaborate by sharing data, has raised a $60M Series C led by WestCap, bringing its total funding to $97M  —  Capital markets specialist AccessFintech has closed a $60 million Series C funding round led by WestCap and joined by a host of big banks …

Jordan Novet / CNBC: DocuSign hires Google executive Allan Thygesen as its CEO, starting on October 10; the company’s CEO for the past five years, Dan Springer, stepped down in June  —  DocuSign shares rose almost 5% in extended trading after the electronic signature software maker announced it has hired an Alphabet executive …

Joel Rosenblatt / Bloomberg: In 70+ lawsuits against Meta, Snap, TikTok, and Google, parents are making product liability claims, blaming algorithms for kids’ mental health issues, and more  —  A 16-year-old girl in Utah becomes so obsessed with her body image after getting hooked on Instagram that she develops anorexia and bulimia.

As electric car ownership rises, we will need new infrastructure to avoid overwhelming electricity grids – including public charging stations and more daytime charging

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab have designed a miniature antenna that can operate wirelessly inside of a living cell, opening up possibilities in medical diagnostics and treatment and other scientific processes because of the antenna’s potential for monitoring and even directing cellular activity in real-time. “The most exciting aspect of this research is we […]

Tool use has long been a hallmark of human intelligence, as well as a practical problem to solve for a vast array of robotic applications. But machines are still wonky at exerting just the right amount of force to control tools that aren’t rigidly attached to their hands.  To manipulate said tools more robustly, researchers […]

Alejandra Rosario’s enthusiasm for research is infectious. When she talks about studying cancer cells, or the possibility of getting a PhD, her face lights up. “It’s something I’m really passionate about,” she says. As a Bernard S. and Sophie G. Gould MIT Summer Research Program in Biology (BSG-MSRP-Bio) student this past summer in the lab […]