Category: Uncategorized

Andy Bell: A Mastodon user since 2018 details issues with the service despite decentralization’s promise, including little diversity, tone policing, and a weird atmosphere  —  I first joined Mastodon in 2018 (even though my old profile says 2016?), so I’d say I’ve seen a lot of its evolution.

Jay Caspian Kang / New Yorker: Utah’s bills restricting kids’ social media use have galling civil-liberties concerns and hazy enforcement plans, and will likely face constitutional challenges  —  Most people seem to agree that something should be done to protect kids from what sure looks like an addictive product.

Financial Times: As Revolut and other “e-money” companies grow in the EU and the UK, customers complain of inadequate customer support, leading to a UK FCA warning in March 2023  —  Regulators crack down after complaints mushroom about digital money services  —  In early 2023, John started …

Victor Damptey has been studying Spanish ever since he attended a language-immersion elementary school. “It was a great opportunity to explore beyond the bounds of Minnesota to learn about different cultures and people around the world,” says Damptey. “This experience shaped a significant portion of my childhood.” In his home state, Damptey found few opportunities […]

Think the former president would be shamed by a mug shot? Think again.

Washington Post: Study: ChatGPT cited nonexistent Washington Post, Miami Herald, and Los Angeles Times articles and fabricated a sexual harassment story about a law professor  —  The AI chatbot can misrepresent key facts with great flourish, even citing a fake Washington Post article as evidence

Stephanie Li / DealStreetAsia: China-based SJ Semiconductor, which offers a 12-inch wafer bumping and testing service, raised a $340M Series C extension at a $1.8B valuation  —  Chinese chip maker SJ Semiconductor has raised nearly $340 million in its Series C extension round, according to a release.

For too long, supports have been at the mercy (ahem) of tank and damage players. Lifeweaver’s intriguing new ability claws some power back.

For residents of the historic South Carolina city, the best solution to the coming storm may be to leave their homes behind.

There are many smartphone apps that aim to identify plants from photographs, but tests have found that most are not very accurate

Semafor: Tests show that Twitter’s “stay informed” labels, implemented in February 2022 to flag tweets with links to Russia or China-controlled sites, no longer appear  —  Twitter is no longer taking steps to limit the reach of Chinese and Russian state-controlled media outlets …

President José Maria Neves of Cape Verde visited MIT on Tuesday, meeting with the campus community and conducting a public event about e-governance in Africa, which highlighted the ways technology has helped his country. “Technology and information are a mechanism or means to establish links between [our] islands, and between Cape Verde and the diaspora,” […]

In early 2021, the U.S. government set an ambitious goal: to decarbonize its power grid, the system that generates and transmits electricity throughout the country, by 2035. It’s an important goal in the fight against climate change, and will require a switch from current, greenhouse-gas producing energy sources (such as coal and natural gas), to […]

Over 25 years at MIT’s Office of the Dean for Graduate Education (OGE), Blanche Staton has advised graduate students, faculty, and administrators; served on numerous Institute committees; provided support to countless graduate students; and created and sponsored programs designed to enhance graduate student life and prepare future alumni for leadership in their careers. Now, the […]

A survey of U.S. residents asks whether new subscription services from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat meet their expectations.

Retreat isn’t just inadvisable; it’s dangerous.

Companies should find ways to connect employees and customers regardless of whether “customer service” is in their job description.

Text-to-video AI generators are advancing rapidly—and capturing the internet’s attention. But don’t expect them to overtake Hollywood anytime soon.

Episodes land every Wednesday starting April 12. You can hear the trailer (and subscribe!) right now.

Tom Henderson / Insider Gaming: Source: Sony is developing a handheld, codenamed Q Lite, which will use Remote Play with the PS5 and feature an 8-inch 1080p touchscreen and adaptive triggers  —  Following days of speculation, Insider Gaming can report that there’s a new PlayStation Handheld in development.

Aisha Counts / Bloomberg: SimiliarWeb: of the 2.6M people who visited the Twitter Blue web promo page in March, only 116,000 signed up; Blue is used by less than 1% of monthly users  —  Twitter Inc. is struggling to sell users on its new subscription product, Twitter Blue, according to a new report.

By recreating an early state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma, scientists hope to understand the conditions that made the universe what it is today.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources detail Apple’s efforts to shift production from China, including wooing other countries and assembling “tiger teams” to solve supply chain weaknesses  —  In late March, when Tim Cook made his first public appearance in China since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic …

The popular board game “Puerto Rico,” dating to 2002, features sophisticated rules and heavily rewards skill, not chance, as players attempt to create 19th-century economic growth on the island. Many people have found it compelling but haven’t delved into its implications. “I played that game without thinking about it too much,” says Mikael Jakobsson, a […]

These days, video game companies can just promote their hardware and new releases via prepackaged livestreams. Why would they bother with a trade show?

The House of Mouse has plenty of streaming options for the whole family.

Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab: Twitter’s new API tiers are useless for researchers; the $100/month plan is much worse than the old free plan, and the $42K-$210K/month plans are too expensive  —  Access to Twitter’s API has been mostly free to researchers for more than a decade.  So how does $210,000 a month sound?

Jeff Mason / Reuters: Biden says tech companies have a responsibility to ensure AI products are safe before making them public and that it remains to be seen whether AI is dangerous  —  U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday it remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence is dangerous …

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Everstream Analytics, a provider of predictive insights for supply chain management, raised a $50M Series B co-led by Morgan Stanley’s 1GT Fund and StepStone  —  Just short of a year after raising $24 million from backers including DHL, Everstream Analytics, a company that provides predictive insights …

Benoit Forget, the Korea Electric Power Professor of Nuclear Engineering, has been named the new head of the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), effective April 1. “Ben’s substantial research contributions and dedication to his students are truly remarkable,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush […]

Mel King, an adjunct professor emeritus in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and renowned activist, community leader, and politician, passed away on March 28 at the age of 94. Through his teaching, ideas, and the institutions he created at MIT, King profoundly influenced DUSP and its community members, who showcase the love […]

MIT’s School of Science welcomes Juliana García-Mejía, one of eight recipients of the 2023 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. The announcement was made March 30 by the Heising-Simons Foundation. The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship provides postdocs with the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy. García-Mejía, who expects to complete her doctorate […]

Three ways to reengage after you quiet quit.

Four common mistakes the Roys – and Cousin Greg – made this week.

A conversation with DePaul University professor Kelly Richmond Pope about warning signs we regularly miss.

Excessive heat, ever fiercer storms, and a reliance on fossil fuels are becoming an existential crisis for the yearly festival in the Nevada desert.

Thanks to large language models, a single scammer can run hundreds or thousands of cons in parallel, night and day, in every language under the sun.

Tom Bristow / Politico: The UK ICO fines TikTok £12.7M for failing to protect kids’ data, saying the app “should have done better”, down from a £27M fine proposed in September 2022  —  The ICO estimates that 1.4 million children in the UK were on TikTok in 2020.

Sam Kim / Bloomberg: SEMI report: Japan is expected to spend $7B on chipmaking equipment in 2024, up 82% on 2023, the largest in the world; China’s spending is forecast to rise 2%  —  Japan is poised to sharply raise its chip-gear spending in an attempt to boost its position in the global semiconductor market […]

The tech giant is helping researchers and clinicians decipher vast amounts of data generated by people with persistent symptoms.

Tim Hardwick / MacRumors: Apple reports an issue with its Weather app on iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and macOS, ongoing for over five hours; some users have had issues for over a week  —  Apple is currently experiencing issues with its weather data provider, leaving many users unable to see live weather information and forecasts for […]

When the historic cities of Europe were built hundreds of years ago, there were open green spaces all around them. But today’s city centers can be a 30-minute drive or more to the vast open greenery that earlier Europeans took for granted. That’s what the startup Roofscapes is trying to change. The company, founded by […]

Yes, it has looks only a mother could love—but shut your eyes and wait till you hear how mind-blowingly good this new speaker is.

Here’s a guide to all the models—plus case recommendations and hidden software tricks to try.

North Korean hackers appear to have used the corrupted VoIP software to go after just a handful of crypto firms with “surgical precision.”

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple to eliminate a small number of its corporate retail staff, marking its first known cuts since embarking on a belt-tightening effort last year  —  Apple Inc. is eliminating a small number of roles within its corporate retail teams, according to people with knowledge of the matter …

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: UK-based Quantexa, which uses AI to help businesses prevent online fraud and manage customer data, raised a $129M Series E led by GIC at a $1.8B valuation  —  Financial fraud and other online crime continue to present major threats to businesses, and they remain a key focus for regulators requiring …

Meir Orbach / CTech: Cybersecurity company Cybereason has raised $100M led by SoftBank and says Eric Gan, EVP of SoftBank, will be its new CEO, replacing co-founder Lior Div  —  The new investment will make the Japanese conglomerate Cybereason’s leading shareholder  —  SoftBank is investing another $100 million in Cybereason.

With Russia’s invasion ongoing, Ukraine is looking for ways that artificial intelligence can help treat the wounded

Popular plagiarism detection software used by many schools and universities worldwide is set to get an AI-detecting component in the wake of the release of ChatGPT