Category: Uncategorized

By overtly supporting green and tech sectors, governments can stimulate economic growth and innovation.

Laura Preston / n+1: A first-person narrative on working as a human fallback for Brenda, a real estate conversational AI chatbot, as part of a team of about sixty operators  —  THE RECRUITER WAS A CHIPPER WOMAN with a master’s degree in English.  Previously she had worked as an independent bookseller.

Matt Burgess / Wired: Analysis: multiple major Russian cities appear to have faced widespread GPS disruption during the past week, as part of efforts to evade Ukraine’s drone attacks  —  Navigation system monitors have seen a recent uptick in interruptions since Ukraine began launching long-range drone attacks.

The risk of escalation from cyberattacks has never been greater—or the pursuit of peace more complicated.

Mike Florio / NBCSports.com: Report: Apple has backed out of the negotiations for the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, leaving Amazon and Google as the frontrunners  —  The company once regarded as the frontrunner for NFL Sunday Ticket has opted to take a Sunday drive, instead.  —  Buried in an item on Puck.news from Dylan […]

Brian Fung / CNN: Twitter sparked an international outcry by suspending journalists, and some legal experts say it could face regulatory scrutiny for blocking links to Mastodon  —  Elon Musk’s Twitter sparked an international outcry on Thursday by suspending a number of journalists at major news organizations who cover him.

Historian Michael Livingston explores the real-world myths and legends the author used to construct his epic fantasy series.

The entrepreneur says he’s cracking down on doxing. Many see his account-blocking spree as self-serving.

Once a mainstay in arguments about how soulless and bloody video games could be, the franchise is now a star of narrative design.

Semafor: Sources: the MD of Elon Musk’s family office is seeking new equity investors for Twitter, offering shares of Twitter at $54.20, the same price that Musk paid  —  The managing director of Elon Musk’s family office is seeking new equity investors for Twitter as users revolt, advertisers flee …

9to5Mac: Apple, Google, and Mozilla are collaborating on the development of Speedometer 3, a browser benchmark that measures responsiveness  —  Speedometer is a browser benchmark that measures responsiveness by simulating user interactions on demo web applications.  Introduced by Apple’s WebKit team …

Nuclear fusion, infectious diseases and an incredible new space telescope were ongoing stories in 2022, but what were some of the other big scientific developments, discoveries and events of the year?

On Oct. 16 and 17, 14 MIT graduate students and one postdoc joined by five students from the University of the District of Columbia traveled to Washington to speak to representatives from several federal executive agencies. The trip served as an opportunity for participants to discuss issues related to science and technology policy and the […]

Robert W. Balluffi, professor emeritus in the MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), died Dec. 8 at his home in Ithaca, New York. He was 98 years old. Described by colleagues as the last of an era of materials scientists with a holistic understanding of the field, Balluffi was renowned for both his […]

Fernanda De La Torre went through a long journey before becoming a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS). She grew up in Mexico and crossed the border to the United States by foot at the age of 12, looking to escape an abusive family relationship. For years, De La Torre […]

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Takeaways from interviews and a survey of 35,000 older U.S. employees.

The answers will help guide your strategy.

A Portuguese island created a village for remote workers, promising community to the newcomers and prosperity to the locals—then delivered on neither.

Companies are exploring how to adapt powerful new chatbot technology to negotiate with customer service—and to persuade humans to buy stuff.

Governments, nonprofits, and small startups hope to scoop up people let go by the likes of Meta and Amazon. It’s their big chance to lure top-tier talent.

Pranav Dixit / BuzzFeed News: Elon Musk briefly showed up to a Twitter Space hosted by a BuzzFeed News reporter discussing the latest bans, but left after reporters asked him questions  —  The embattled Twitter CEO briefly appeared in the Twitter Space hosted by BuzzFeed News tech reporter Katie Notopoulos.

Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk: Binance says Mazars, the auditing firm that worked on proof-of-reserves reports for Binance, Crypto.com, and others, has paused work for all crypto clients  —  Mazars has deleted Binance’s proof-of-reserves assessment, which found its bitcoin reserves were overcollateralized.

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Twitter seems to have disabled Spaces, its live audio service, after Musk joined and then abruptly left a group conversation that included suspended journalists  —  Twitter has apparently pulled its Spaces group audio feature, at least temporarily, after Elon Musk joined a group conversation …

From a young age, Valeria Robayo has taken the lead in her own education. At age 3, her family moved from Bogotá, Colombia, to Houston, Texas, to seek better opportunities for Robayo, and later, her sister. She spent summer days at the local library while her parents worked to support the family. Her parents, who […]

Here’s how Amazon’s ebook readers stack up—and which one might be right for you.

A spacecraft called SWOT will image most of the planet every 21 days to track flooding, drought, and many other water woes.

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Adobe reports Q4 revenue up 10% YoY to $4.53B, Digital Media revenue up 10% YoY to $3.3B, and Digital Experience revenue up 14% YoY to $1.15B; stock is up 5%+  —  – Adobe maintained its forecast for the new fiscal year.  — The company’s earnings for the fiscal fourth quarter was […]

Greg Stohr / Bloomberg: Tech industry groups that include Meta and Google ask SCOTUS to overturn the Texas social media content moderation law, arguing it violates the First Amendment  —  Trade groups that represent Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google said they asked the US Supreme Court to overturn …

These past few years have been visceral reminders of our mortality. But new technologies can offer a way for us and our loved ones to live on.

Bloomberg: About 200 companies in China and Hong Kong, including Alibaba and JD.com, no longer face the threat of a US delisting after US inspectors reviewed their audits  —  About 200 companies based in China and Hong Kong are no longer facing an acute threat of being booted off American stock exchanges, sending shares surging.

A talon-like claw with sharp ends and a softer middle helps this flying robot grasp onto thin perches just like a bird

With Twitter, FTX and Alexa all in the doldrums by the end of this year, Annalee Newitz explains why this is actually an encouraging sign for humanity

This year saw the launch of ChatGPT, an AI that anyone can converse with, and the news that a quantum computer simulated a wormhole. Are our sensibilities about what is real changing, asks Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

In July 2022, the MIT School of Engineering welcomed its first class of scholars selected for the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for Engineering Excellence. The idea for the fellowship grew from conversations taking place within the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee — established in 2020 — that identified a need to diversify the pool […]

The Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) at MIT has a new director. Maria Zuber, vice president of research and the E.A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics, and Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), recently announced that Tomás Palacios assumed the role of director […]

Six principles for deciding whether, when, and how to weigh in.

Consumers’ tastes are changing fast, but one things remains: they value quality, value, and inspiration in their products.

An analysis of 10,000 acquisitions finds the market performance of firms with two or more advisors tends to be worse than those with just one.

Soon, companies will have no place to hide if they fail to deliver on sustainability.

It’s not the same as a last will and testament—and you can share it with your loved ones while you’re still living.

Governments around the world are pushing AI regulation that has nothing to say about generative models. That could be dangerous.

Keith Zhai / Wall Street Journal: Sources: hoping to boost the economy, Chinese officials begin reassessing tech policies and plan to close long-running investigations against internet companies  —  Senior officials are setting a robust GDP growth target of more than 5% for next year as they loosen Covid rules and de-emphasize ideology

Zack Beauchamp / Vox: A look at The Managerial Revolution, a 1941 book that predicted the rise of the “managerial class” over capitalists and may help explain Elon Musk’s Twitter  —  The long shadow of James Burnham’s The Managerial Revolution.  —  Since the launch of the so-called “Twitter Files” …

Following established guidelines about prescription drugs would seem to be an obvious course of action, especially for the professionals that do the prescribing. Yet doctors and their family members are less likely than other people to comply with those guidelines, according to a large-scale study co-authored by an MIT economist. Depending on your perspective, that […]

A drone equipped with lights and speakers can deter bats from wind farms to protect them from potentially deadly turbine blades

Loni Prinsloo / Bloomberg: A look at the face off in South Africa between the Khoisan, an ancient southern African tribe, and Amazon, which plans to build a regional HQ on sacred land  —  On the outskirts of Cape Town, at the base of Table Mountain and set back from a tangle of freeways, the […]

During the coronavirus lockdowns, emissions of the potent greenhouse gas somehow soared. The culprit wasn’t humans—but the Earth itself.

Ryan Mac / New York Times: Twitter updates its private information and media policy with new rules, including the suspension of accounts “dedicated to sharing someone’s live location”  —  The suspended accounts include one that followed the private plane of Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner.

The relaunch of Twitter’s subscription service is pretty confusing. Here’s what users receive for their money.