A prototype N95 face mask with a sensor built into the breath valve appears to be highly sensitive to virus proteins in early-stage tests

On Saturday night, MIT came out to party. An all-Institute dance party, organized by L. Rafael Reif as a thank you to the community as he approaches the conclusion of his tenure as MIT’s 17th president, was attended by thousands of students, staff, faculty, and their guests. The festivities opened with a community café dinner, […]

Companies that have diversity of thought are higher performing — and more resilient.

How to work with someone who’s moving their career forward at the expense of yours.

Kaizen, the Japanese management practice of continuous innovation, can be applied to knowledge work.

You won’t need all the pixels, but Samsung’s 8K flagship TV will be the prettiest screen in your neighborhood.

Neurons get a lot of attention—but researchers think this star-shaped brain cell type could hold the key to treating some disorders.

Despite having one of the strongest data-protection policies in Africa, the country’s enforcement and disclosure practices remain dangerously broken.

Wall Street Journal: Sources: Instacart plans to mostly sell employees’ stock during its IPO to help staff cash out, issuing a small number of shares and limiting the amount raised  —  Most shares listed will come from employees, in a move that could help the delivery company retain and recruit talent

Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post: Sources: the Pentagon plans to audit how it conducts online clandestine information warfare after Meta, Twitter, and others removed pro-US operations  —  Complaints about the U.S. military’s influence operations using Facebook and Twitter have raised concern in the White House and federal agencies.

Jane Zhang / Bloomberg: A profile of China-born, US-educated academic Li Zexiang, an angel investor in 60+ Chinese tech startups collectively worth almost $12B, including DJI  —  Li Zexiang grew up in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, when capitalists were the enemy.  Now the 61-year-old academic …

Design decisions often treat people unequally. Take a bicycle, for instance. Bicycles offer a relatively inexpensive, healthy, and environmentally friendly mode of transportation for billions of people around the world. Yet each bicycle that hits the market automatically excludes those living with certain disabilities. “Even with the most benevolent technology, no matter how well-intentioned we […]

Load up your iPhone 14, iPhone 13, or iPhone 12 with a magnetic bike mount, tripod, wallet, or power bank.

These are our favorite gender-inclusive vibrators, wand massagers, and sleeves to give you and your partner(s) a helping hand.

Ellen Barry / New York Times: How Russia’s IRA troll factories tweeted a torrent of fabricated narratives against the US Women’s March and its leaders for 18 months, fracturing the movement  —  As American feminists came together in 2017 to protest Donald Trump, Russia’s disinformation machine set about deepening the divides among them.

Tom Warren / The Verge: A GTAForums user uploads 90 gameplay videos of Rockstar’s upcoming GTA VI, claiming they were behind last week’s Uber hack and may leak GTA V and VI source code  —  Footage of Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar’s next entry in its open-world franchise, appears to have leaked online.

Bloomberg: A look at the mounting challenges for Lingang, a Shanghai suburb meant to be China’s next Silicon Valley, amid an economic slowdown and geopolitical tensions  —  This article is the fourth in an occasional series about the New Geography of Technology.  You can read the first installment on Milan here …

Tired of advertisers spying on your private communications? This beta promises to kick tracking technology to the curb.

A statistical analysis of chemical tags on DNA may help unify disparate theories of aging.

Snipers on buildings. Drone no-fly zones. Temporary CCTV. The security plan is even more complex than it was for the London 2012 Olympics.

David Streitfeld / New York Times: An in-depth look at a 2019 cyberstalking campaign by eBay employees against two critics who are now suing the company, its former CEO, and others for harassment  —  The victims of a bizarre cyberstalking operation are trying to hold the chief executive and the culture of the company responsible.

Qianer Liu / Financial Times: Despite a talent shortage, startups in the Chinese chip sector are cutting back on hiring plans due to the deteriorating macro environment and a funding crunch  —  Despite a talent shortage, cash-crimped companies are having to cut back hiring plans  —  Fresh from six months of training courses …

Matthew Gault / VICE: The DHS has awarded a ~$700K grant to researchers to develop best practices and resources for monitoring and evaluating extremist activities in game communities  —  Several groups are coming together to study the little understood phenomenon.  —  Matthew Gault

The world is facing a maternal health crisis. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 810 women die each day due to preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. Two-thirds of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. In Rwanda, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality is infected Cesarean section wounds. An interdisciplinary team […]

How much speed do you need? And what’s a MU-MIMO? We decipher the jargon and explain what to look for.

The pioneering FX comedy helmed by Donald Glover is coming to an end—but its cultural impact will live on.

Plus: Alexa will soon give branded answers, ByteDance has its own VR headset in the works, and TikTok pushes a new BeReal knockoff.

Joe Tidy / BBC: A Vietnamese couple says they wiped some of Intercontinental Hotels Group’s data, accessed using the password Qwerty1234, after a failed ransomware attack  —  Hackers have told the BBC they carried out a destructive cyber-attack against Holiday Inn owner Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) “for fun”.

Bloomberg: A profile of Figma founder Dylan Field, who will become the wealthiest person from the Thiel Fellowship by far, as PitchBook estimates his stake is worth $2B+  —  Dylan Field dropped out of an Ivy League school in 2012 to take a grant from the billionaire Peter Thiel and start a software company called […]

Matteo Wong / The Atlantic: How neural network chess engines redefined the game’s creativity, leading some top players to use deception, misdirection, and other psychological techniques  —  It was as if a bottom seed had knocked out the top team in March Madness: At the Sinquefield Cup chess tournament in St. Louis earlier this month […]

A single rule change would be a good start.

A close-knit culture can attract top talent — but managers must deliver on this promise in order to keep them.

After an unusual period of cooperation, drug companies are suing each other again.

The razorback sucker has survived in the river for more than 3 million years. Climate change could end that.

This AI-enabled device can identify the species around your home by their songs and alert you when new ones arrive.

You can rest easy knowing you’re saving money on some top-notch gadgets.

Financial Times: Sources: BeReal is exploring adding paid features to avoid advertising; the app now has 15M DAUs, up from 10K in March 2021, and is now valued at ~$600M  —  Photo-sharing app BeReal is exploring the addition of in-app payments for extra features to avoid Instagram-style advertising …

Natasha Singer / New York Times: Some experts say targeted ads on streaming services could be crucial in the 2022 US midterms, as others worry the ads evade federal regulation and oversight  —  Over the last few weeks, tens of thousands of voters in the Detroit area who watch streaming video services were shown different […]

Sidhartha Shukla / Bloomberg: After Ethereum’s Merge, a look at four more upgrades to the network that are under active development, called The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge  —  After much celebration over the successful transition of Ethereum, the question remains what’s next for the most commercially-significant crypto project.

An alleged teen hacker claims to have gained deep access to the company’s systems, but the full picture of the breach is still coming into focus.

The film—a trans coming-of-age allegory—was pulled from the Toronto International Film Festival over “rights issues.”

Svea Herbst-Bayliss / Reuters: Filing: Starboard Value has built a 9% stake in Wix, which has been struggling with losses since Q4 2021 and has adopted a three-year cost-cutting program  —  Starboard Value LP has built a 9% stake in website development platform Wix.com Ltd (WIX.O), the activist hedge fund disclosed in a regulatory filing […]

Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica: EVGA stops making video cards, citing conflicts with Nvidia and ending a partnership started in 1999; Nvidia’s GeForce reportedly makes up 80% of EVGA’s revenue  —  EVGA will continue selling current-gen GeForce cards until it runs out of stock.  —  Graphics card manufacturer eVGA …

Joe Schneider / Bloomberg: A US federal appeals court upholds the Texas social media content moderation law, lifting an injunction that blocked it and remanding it back to the lower court  —  A federal appeals court upheld the validity of a Texas social-media law that companies like Twitter Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc …

A smart way of putting together lots of nanogenerators that exploit static electricity to generate a current could open up a new kind of wave power

Two MIT scientists from the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) are among this year’s winners of the Ig Nobel Prize, the satiric award celebrating “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” BCS professor Edward “Ted” Gibson and graduate student Eric Martinez, along with former MIT visiting researcher Francis Mollica, […]

Professor Hal Abelson has dedicated his career to making information technology more accessible to all and empowering people — kids, in particular — through computer science. But his storied career in computer science began with Abelson coming to MIT in 1969 to pursue his interest in mathematics. “The thing I like to remind students of […]

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: General Atlantic to buy out SoftBank’s entire 15% stake in game-based online learning service Kahoot for about $152M; SoftBank spent $215M+ for the stake  —  SoftBank’s retreat from its past investing exuberance continues apace.  This morning, Kahoot, the Norwegian startup that provides …

Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal: US DOJ forms the Digital Asset Coordinators Network with 150+ federal prosecutors across the country to target illegal activities involving digital currencies  —  New effort is part of trend toward putting more resources to target illegal activities involving digital currencies

Financial Times: Sources: UK’s new PM Liz Truss is planning a last-ditch bid to persuade SoftBank to list Arm in London, pushing for talks after the Queen’s mourning period  —  UK prime minister to push for talks with Japanese owner of British tech company  —  Prime Minister Liz Truss and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng …