Cory Weinberg / The Information: Source: Databricks has told investors it is looking to raise $7B to $9B at a ~$61B valuation, to cash out employees that hold restricted stock units  —  Good afternoon from Las Vegas, where I’m writing this newsletter from a hotel room with a Strip view of the Encore, the hotel […]

Jay Peters / The Verge: Sony launches cloud streaming on the PlayStation Portal in beta, letting PlayStation Plus Premium subscribers in some countries stream select PS5 games  —  Sony is bringing a big new feature to the PlayStation Portal: cloud streaming.  When it first launched, the device was only able to stream games from your […]

Daniel Kuhn / The Block: Coinbase says it will delist wBTC next month, as Justin Sun gains influence over the wBTC protocol; Coinbase launched its wrapped bitcoin, cbBTC, in September  —  – The exchange said it will delist the token in December, though users will still be able to move the wBTC off the exchange.

The largest number of logical qubits has been linked through quantum entanglement, which is a key step towards quantum computers that can detect and correct errors

The vast computational power of the El Capitan supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will be used to support the US nuclear deterrent

More than 20 million people have joined Bluesky, a social network that gives you fine-grained control over what you see and who you interact with. I think it is the future of social media, says Chris Stokel-Walker

In April 2019, a group of astronomers from around the globe stunned the world when they revealed the first image of a black hole — the monstrous accumulation of collapsed stars and gas that lets nothing escape, not even light. The image, which was of the black hole that sits at the core of a […]

Anoushka Bose ’20 spent the summer of 2018 as an MIT Washington program intern, applying her nuclear physics education to arms control research with a D.C. nuclear policy think tank. “It’s crazy how much three months can transform people,” says Bose, now an attorney at the Department of Justice. “Suddenly, I was learning far more […]

A crowd gathered at the MIT Media Lab in September for a concert by musician Jordan Rudess and two collaborators. One of them, violinist and vocalist Camilla Bäckman, has performed with Rudess before. The other — an artificial intelligence model informally dubbed the jam_bot, which Rudess developed with an MIT team over the preceding several […]

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How leaders can make the case during a moment of backlash.

Three operational differences that allow them to make the most of the technology.

Instagram has become a key avenue for Hindu nationalist “cow vigilantes” to share their violent exploits with a wider audience, and even raise money.

This pricey gaming phone still has a headphone jack and arrives in the US this January.

The agency dedicated to protecting new innovations prohibited almost all internal use of GenAI tools, though employees can still participate in controlled experiments.

Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal: Sources: US officials are racing to deliver billions in CHIPS Act funding to Intel and others before Biden leaves office; nearly $30B is tied up in negotiations  —  Government officials and chip makers like Intel are in talks over billions of dollars aimed at growing domestic manufacturing

Carmen Reinicke / Bloomberg: Super Micro hires BDO USA as its new independent auditor and files a plan to come into compliance with Nasdaq listing requirements; SMCI jumps 29%+ pre-market  —  – The company filed a plan to stay listed on the Nasdaq  — Super Micro said it appointed a new auditor in press release

Peter Eavis / New York Times: US federal data shows nearly 1.8M human warehouse workers, up 30% since early 2020, despite automation efforts, as robots struggle at crucial, simple tasks  —  The machines can load and unload trucks, move goods and do other repetitive tasks but are stymied by some, like picking items from a […]

When we gaze at nature’s remarkable phenomena, we might feel a mix of awe, curiosity, and determination to understand what we are looking at. That is certainly a common response for MIT’s Alan Lightman, a trained physicist and prolific author of books about physics, science, and our understanding of the world around us. “One of […]

Reducing methane emissions is a top priority in the fight against climate change because of its propensity to trap heat in the atmosphere: Methane’s warming effects are 84 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year timescale. And yet, as the main component of natural gas, methane is also a valuable fuel and a precursor […]

You can snag discounted MagSafe wireless chargers, USB-C cables, and iPhone 16 cases from now through December 3.

Shopping for the best gifts for travelers? Our guide features top picks that frequent fliers will truly appreciate.

Get your pictures off your phone and in front of your friends and family with these connected displays.

NBC News: The US Library of Congress says hackers accessed some email communications between congressional offices and library staff between January and September 2024  —  The Library of Congress didn’t specify who was behind the hack.  —  The Library of Congress said hackers broke into its communications systems …

Eugene Kim / Business Insider: Internal document: Amazon has held talks with several partners for handling specific tasks on the AI-powered Alexa, including Uber, Ticketmaster, and Instacart  —  – Amazon discussed partnerships with other companies for an AI-powered Alexa upgrade.  — Partners under consideration included Uber …

Daniel Wiessner / Reuters: In the Fifth Circuit, Amazon and SpaceX argued the NLRB, which recently ruled against them, is unconstitutional; the judges questioned their arbitrary deadlines  —  A panel of U.S. judges on Monday seemed likely to rule that Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Elon Musk’s SpaceX were too quick to bring …

From early development to old age, cell death is a part of life. Without enough of a critical type of cell death known as apoptosis, animals wind up with too many cells, which can set the stage for cancer or autoimmune disease. But careful control is essential, because when apoptosis eliminates the wrong cells, the […]

MIT physicists have shown that it should be possible to create an exotic form of matter that could be manipulated to form the qubit (quantum bit) building blocks of future quantum computers that are even more powerful than the quantum computers in development today. The work builds on a discovery last year of materials that […]

MIT physicists have taken a key step toward solving the puzzle of what leads electrons to split into fractions of themselves. Their solution sheds light on the conditions that give rise to exotic electronic states in graphene and other two-dimensional systems. The new work is an effort to make sense of a discovery that was reported […]

Amy G thought the demands would ease up. Instead, they’ve just changed.

Companies can address environmental challenges for society while delivering immediate economic benefits for themselves.

A leader who’s on track for the C-suite learns how to choose between her career purpose and her potential.

Jump on the early Black Friday sales with these WIRED Gear team-approved mattresses, mattress pads, sheets, and more.

The Biden administration chose to target only companies developing frontier AI models in China. But Trump could take a more sweeping approach.

There are many open questions regarding how the new Trump administration will handle economic policies. Some leaders of the repairability movement aren’t all that worried about it.

Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal: Roblox rolls out parental controls and gatekeeping features, like letting parents link accounts with a child and banning text chat for under 13s outside games  —  Videogame company has denied the allegations and says the new protections were planned before a short seller’s report

Parmy Olson / Bloomberg: Tim Berners-Lee’s Inrupt begins an early trial of its digital wallet in Belgium to help deliver social services to 7M citizens, as he worries over AI’s rise  —  The inventor of the World Wide Web is on a laudable mission to give everyone control of their online data.  He’s fighting an […]

New York Times: How Substack is betting on politics content and recruiting stars like Nate Silver, as profits remain elusive; sources: Elon Musk sought to buy it in April 2023  —  The newsletter start-up, which once drew an overture from Elon Musk, is betting on politics content and recruiting stars.

The modular phone concept returns and it’s rather boring.

Diving into virtual reality is easier than ever—but here are a few key things to know.

If you use screens for work and play, your child probably does too. These are the best pairs we’ve bought and tested for our own kids.

Bloomberg: Sources: Trump’s transition team is looking for candidates to lead the US Department of Transportation and develop a federal framework for autonomous vehicles  —  – Policy leaders are being pursued for key Musk priority  — Tesla CEO, named to efficiency role, plans push on robotaxis

Nextgov/FCW: Sources: CISA’s director Jen Easterly and deputy director Nitin Natarajan plan to leave the agency on January 20, 2025, the day Trump will be inaugurated  —  Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Jen Easterly speaks during Kyiv International Cyber Resilience Forum 2024 on February 7, 2024.

Tom Carreras / CoinDesk: An interview with El Salvador’s top crypto regulator Juan Carlos Reyes on taking a tech-minded approach to crypto regulation, how his agency works, and more  —  The National Commission of Digital Assets is the agency in charge of regulating crypto in El Salvador, the first nation to accept Bitcoin as legal […]

Dijkstra’s algorithm was long thought to be the most efficient way to find a graph’s best routes. Researchers have now proven that it’s “universally optimal.”

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Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: Q&A with Jakob Uszkoreit on his contribution to the Attention Is All You Need paper, Google’s conservatism, ChatGPT’s success, biological computers, and more  —  In 2017, eight machine-learning researchers at Google released a groundbreaking research paper called Attention Is All You Need …

Federal Trade Commission: The US FTC’s DNC Registry data shows the agency received ~1.1M consumer complaints about robocalls in FY 2024, down from ~1.2M in FY 2023 and 3.4M+ in FY 2021  —  FTC releases annual Do Not Call Registry Data Book showing total reports about unwanted calls decreased further in 2024

GovTech: US DHS issues guidance on adopting AI in critical infrastructure, identifying AI-driven attacks, targeted attacks on AI systems, and design flaws as core risks  —  A new series of recommendations from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is designed to enable cloud providers, AI developers …

Yiming Chen ’24, Wilhem Hector, Anushka Nair, and David Oluigbo have been selected as 2025 Rhodes Scholars and will begin fully funded postgraduate studies at Oxford University in the U.K. next fall. In addition to MIT’s two U.S. Rhodes winners, Ouigbo and Nair, two affiliates were awarded international Rhodes Scholarships: Chen for Rhodes’ China constituency and […]