Category: Uncategorized

Using a simple set of magnets, MIT researchers have come up with a sophisticated way to monitor muscle movements, which they hope will make it easier for people with amputations to control their prosthetic limbs. In a new pair of papers, the researchers demonstrated the accuracy and safety of their magnet-based system, which can track […]

Reflecting on the mission and approach of SENSEable City Lab at MIT and his role as its director, Carlo Ratti quotes the Nobel laureate Herbert Simon, who said, “The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be — how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and […]

Mutually beneficial partnerships can both drive profit and alleviate poverty.

Sponsor content from EY-Parthenon.

Investors have a quantitative understanding of how the market values a company. Management teams should too.

There doesn’t have to be a trade-off between good research and fast research.

Keep tabs on your cat’s bathroom habits—and catch potential health issues early—with this scale and app developed by Purina.

Growers are using images taken from space to quantify how much carbon is stored in their soil and validate the credits they’re selling.

Matt Levine / Bloomberg: An in-depth look at crypto and blockchains: the underlying tech, its uses and meaning, the crypto financial system, and trust, money, and community  —  – What If You Don’t Like It?  — Digital Cash  —  Part II  —  What Does It Mean?  — A Store of Value  — A Distributed Computer

James Vincent / The Verge: Shutterstock partners with OpenAI to begin selling DALL-E 2-generated stock imagery “in the coming months” and launches a Contributor Fund to reimburse creators  —  Will AI image generators kill the stock image industry?  It’s a question asked by many following the rise of text-to-image AI models in recent years.

Bloomberg: Nigeria’s eNaira digital currency, launched in October 2021, is used by less than 0.5% of Nigerians, leading the government to add incentives to aid adoption  —  A year after launching Africa’s first digital currency, Nigeria’s central bank is turning to the nation’s three-wheeler taxi operators …

When it comes to battery innovations, much attention gets paid to potential new chemistries and materials. Often overlooked is the importance of production processes for bringing down costs. Now the MIT spinout 24M Technologies has simplified lithium-ion battery production with a new design that requires fewer materials and fewer steps to manufacture each cell. The […]

In the early 2000s, David Kaiser first visited famed physicist Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. By the end of the conversation, Dyson was handing over keys to his office, along with files, to help Kaiser’s research — a characteristically open gesture by Dyson, a legendary quantum theorist. The […]

The company is celebrating its 53rd anniversary with a deals bonanza that runs through November 1.

Meir Orbach / CTech: Cybersecurity startup Snyk lays off 198 employees, or 14% of its staff, after laying off 30 people in July 2022; Snyk was valued at $8.5B in September 2021  —  The Israeli-founded company raised $530 million at an $8.5 billion valuation last year  —  Israeli cybersecurity unicorn Snyk …

Stacy Elliott / Decrypt: Coinbase to custody $1.6B worth of MakerDAO’s USDC treasury after MakerDAO community voted 75% in favor; a pilot will run through 2022, with new voting in 2023  —  The MakerDAO pilot will run through the end of 2022 before the community needs to vote on whether to keep its USDC with […]

The Pixel 6A is just $299—its lowest price ever—but you can also pick up the Pixel Buds Pro and Nest Audio at a discount.

Get cameras, headphones, and smart home gadgets before Halloween even arrives.

An increasing number of large shipping companies are trying out technologies that blow bubbles underneath a ship’s hull, in an attempt to save fuel and reduce emissions

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica: macOS Ventura review: Stage Manager has some good ideas and runs much better on the Mac than on the iPad, the new System Settings app is inconsistent, and more  —  A pleasantly surprising new multitasking UI and app redesigns define macOS 13.  —  If you asked me to tell you […]

It may have a history of over-optimistic predictions, but research into generating power using a fusion reactor is finally making notable advances

From its new headquarters in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, The Engine is investing in a number of “tough tech” startups seeking to transform the world’s energy systems. A few blocks away, the startup Inari is using gene editing to improve seeds’ resilience to climate change. On the MIT campus nearby, researchers are working on groundbreaking innovations […]

A good math problem is like a walled, secret garden, according to Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) head and MIT Professor Asu Ozdaglar, who was addressing an audience of middle and high school female-identifying mathematics contestants at the 14th annual Math Prize for Girls (MP4G) event. “Many people walking around the outside […]

The School of Engineering has announced that MIT has granted tenure to 14 members of its faculty in the departments of Biological Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (which reports jointly to the School of Engineering and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing), Materials Science and Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. “I am […]

Sponsor content from VSP.

You’ll need purpose, not just money, to have a fulfilling post-work life.

Bias affects whose ideas are heard — and whose are given short shrift.

Sitting at a desk for hours? Upgrade your WFH setup and work in style with these WIRED-tested comfy seats.

Josh Horwitz / Reuters: Chinese government data shows chip imports fell 12.4% YoY to 47.6B units in September; in January to September, domestic chip production fell 10.8% YoY to 245B  —  China’s chip imports fell 12.4 percent in September, according to official customs data published on Monday …

Henry Ren / Bloomberg: As President Xi Jinping consolidates his grip on China’s ruling party, Alibaba, JD.com, Naspers, and other tech stocks drop by 10%+  —  US-listed Chinese stocks tumbled in premarket trading, with investors spooked by President Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on China’s ruling party …

At the end of its 39th season, it’s become clear the Time Lord’s world, despite always regenerating, has become static and small.

For months, an anonymous caller has terrorized communities around the US by reporting false shooting threats. We know how they did it. The question is, why?

Thomas Ricker / The Verge: Ikea Dirigera review: the Matter-ready smart home hub is easy to use and works well, but is expensive, lacks a migration tool from Trådfri, and is simplistic  —  Easier to use and stable.  But let’s check in again after a few months. … Ikea’s new Matter-ready Dirigera smart home hub […]

Michael Mignano / Lightspeed Venture Partners: Whereas Creator Economy companies have mostly built infrastructure for the top 1% of creators, new AI tools will fuel businesses that democratize creativity  —  Creativity has become the focal point of our modern Internet economy.  What was once just a means of artistic expression now powers …

It’s the indispensable multi-tool of the kitchen. We sliced and diced our way through meats and veggies to find today’s best blades.

Gaming PC? That’s so 2020. Save some cash on a good, travel-friendly rig with these WIRED-tested picks.

A comprehensive mathematical framework treats these crinkles as elegant solutions to geometric problems.

Associated Press: Iran’s atomic energy agency says its email system was breached; a hacking group says it leaked 50GB of emails, construction plans related to Bushehr power plant  —  Iran’s atomic energy agency alleged on Sunday that hackers acting on behalf of an unidentified foreign country broke …

Dave Lee / Financial Times: An interview with eBay CEO Jamie Iannone on eBay’s strategy to focus on the second-hand luxury market, as its market value has fallen from $53B in 2021 to $21B  —  “One of a kind!” said Jamie Iannone, the chief executive of eBay, pointing down to the pair of pristine, custom-made […]

Whether it’s for accessibility or research purposes, you have lots of tools to work with here.

Bono / The Guardian: In his memoir, Bono details making a deal with Steve Jobs for the U2 iPod in October 2004 and convincing Tim Cook to give away an iTunes album in September 2014  —  In an exclusive extract from his memoir, the singer looks back  —  nything strange or startling?  ” That’s how […]

Newley Purnell / Wall Street Journal: A profile of e-commerce company Meesho, which accounts for ~7% of India’s online sales; Apptopia: Meesho was the world’s most downloaded shopping app in H1 2022  —  Startup makes gains in world’s biggest developing digital market, with users drawn to its prices on clothing, household goods

A former congressman who helped the House select committee investigate the Capitol attack says the US is losing sight of the big picture.

The Wire: The Wire retracts its recent stories on Meta and says it is using “independent external experts” to conduct an investigation into its Meta coverage  —  Earlier this week, The Wire announced its decision to conduct an internal review of its recent coverage of Meta …

Make life hard for bike thieves and shackle your precious with these U-locks and bike chains, plus tips on how best to secure it.

Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead wanted to make a movie that didn’t romanticize the past.

Rachel Metz / CNN: Several artists whose work was included in the dataset used to train Stable Diffusion say they are angry that they weren’t informed, asked for consent, or paid  —  Erin Hanson has spent years developing the vibrant color palette and chunky brushstrokes that define the vivid oil paintings for which she is […]

Bill Toulas / BleepingComputer: McAfee researchers found 16 clicker apps with adware in Google Play with 20M+ downloads in total; Google removed the apps after McAfee reported them  —  Security researchers at McAfee have discovered a set of 16 malicious clicker apps that managed to sneak into Google Play, the official app store for Android.

Plus: A Microsoft cloud leak exposed potential customers, new IoT security labels come to the US, and details emerge about Trump’s document stash.

Joe Rossignol / MacRumors: Apple will expand ads to the App Store’s main Today tab and “You Might Also Like” section of individual app listings, starting October 25 globally except China  —  In an email to developers this week, Apple announced that app-related ads will begin appearing in the App Store’s main Today tab …