There are plenty of apps that offer mental exercises claiming to make users smarter the more they play. Not only are they not much fun, but studies show they have no effect on performance, says Adrian Hon

In Building 13 on MIT’s campus, there sits a half-a-million-dollar piece of equipment that looks like a long stretched-out chandelier, with a series of gold discs connected by thin silver pipes. The equipment, known as a dilution refrigerator, is a key player in PhD student Alex Greene’s research, as it houses all their experiments. “My […]

The Prime Early Access Sale is here. From Alexa-powered Echo Dots to laptops, here are all the greatest discounts we’ve found.

From Echo smart displays and speakers to Kindles and Fire tablets, snag the retailer’s own hardware on sale.

Upgrade your digs with Amazon price cuts on cooking gadgets, TVs, vacuums, and air purifiers.

Ivan Levingston / Bloomberg: Dream Security, a cybersecurity company co-founded by former NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio with a focus on protecting critical infrastructure, has raised $20M  —  The former chief executive officer of Israeli spyware company NSO Group, Shalev Hulio, has joined with ex-Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz …

Matthew Townsend / Bloomberg: Amazon, Shopify, Wayfair, and other big e-commerce sites scale back operations after erroneously betting that pandemic online shopping trends would be permanent  —  Did the pandemic forever change how we shop?  —  The answer seemed obvious in the first half of 2020, when retailers closed …

Wall Street Journal: Sources: US chip equipment suppliers are pausing business activities and pulling out staff based at China’s YMTC, following US curbs on China’s chip sector  —  Tool makers are pulling out staff and pausing work as they assess the impact of Commerce Department restrictions on semiconductor exports to China

The ability to fine-tune a robotic exoskeleton boot while you are walking around could make such devices more affordable and practical

A morphable limb design allows this robot to flip between a sea turtle-like limb for swimming in water to a tortoise’s style for travel on land

A battery that includes tiny heaters inside it can be charged to 70 per cent, the equivalent to a range of more than 300 kilometres for an electric car, in just 11 minutes

Laura Maiorino arrived in Cambridge in late 2019, one of more than 1,400 postdoctoral scholars from around the world who join MIT each year to launch their careers in the company of other outstanding researchers. Within months, of course, the pandemic struck: labmates were working in shifts and taking meetings over Zoom. “Even connecting within […]

Danna Freedman, the F.G. Keyes Professor of Chemistry at MIT, and Moriba Jah, a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar, have been named recipients of a 2022 MacArthur Fellowship. Often referred to as “genius grants,” the fellowships come with a five-year, $800,000 prize, which recipients are free to use as they see fit. Freedman, who […]

If ever there was an event that would seem designed for dwelling on the past, it would be the anniversary celebration of an institute centered on the study of memory, but the first of many insights offered by the 20th Anniversary Exhibition of The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT Sept. 22 was […]

A guide to setting a strategy-centric agenda for board meetings.

Lessons from Best Buy’s failure and semiconductor manufacturer AMD’s success.

Data will help you identify the biggest problems — and get buy-in from skeptics.

The toughest export restrictions yet cut off artificial intelligence hardware and chip making tools crucial to China’s commercial and military ambitions.

Scientists are investigating why large animals like the mule deer of Wyoming go where they go—and how humans can get out of their way.

The “wife guy” has always been bad. But the fading phenomenon hints at bigger issues, like gender inequality and men relying on their partners for clout.

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Google rolls out support for signing in with passkeys on Android and Chrome to beta testers ahead of a wider launch in 2022  —  Apple, Google, Microsoft, and others in the industry want to replace website/app passwords with “passkeys” that just require you to unlock your device.

Jon Fingas / Engadget: What to expect from Microsoft’s Surface event: Surface Pro 9, Surface Laptop 5, Surface Studio 3, and potentially a mini PC and Surface accessories  —  – Wildcards: A mini PC and Surface accessories  —  Microsoft is holding its customary fall Surface event on October 12th …

Halisia Hubbard / NPR: British artist Damien Hirst burns thousands of his paintings live on Instagram as part of an NFT project, “completing the transformation” from physical to NFTs  —  British artist Damien Hirst is among the many art-world giants who have set fire to their work, having burned 1,000 of his artworks Tuesday.

When Gloria Choi was making plans to launch her research lab at MIT, nearly 10 years ago, she thought it would be nice to find a side project where she could collaborate with her husband, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School. The two scientists decided to look into a startling observation they had heard about […]

The Prime Early Access Sale is here. From Alexa-powered Echo Dots to laptops, here are all the greatest discounts we’ve found.

These are the best bargains to scratch your shopping itch without breaking the bank.

There’s a ton of gadgetry on sale for Amazon’s Early Access sale. These are all the top offers.

Sam Kessler / CoinDesk: Mango, a DeFi platform on Solana, says a hacker was able to drain some funds via an oracle price manipulation; blockchain auditor OtterSec says for $100M+  —  The apparent exploit stemmed from the ability of an attacker to manipulate the value of their posted collateral.

Bloomberg: Sources: Intel is planning major job cuts, likely in the thousands, as early as this month; some divisions, including sales and marketing, could see ~20% cuts  —  Intel Corp. is planning a major reduction in headcount, likely numbering in the thousands, to cut costs and cope …

Scott Stein / CNET: A look inside Meta’s Reality Labs, with demos of its neural input wristband, 3D audio, photorealistic avatars with Codec Avatars 2.0, and 3D object scanning  —  My visit to a future that isn’t quite here yet: neural wristbands, ghostly 3D audio and lifelike avatars.  Plus, the new Meta Quest Pro.

Editor’s note: Since this event was held on Oct. 7, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has continued to evolve, including airstrikes on Ukranian cities following an explosion that damaged a key bridge linking Russia to Crimea. More than seven months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the battlefield map has shown recent progress for Ukranian forces — and […]

A growing number of people are living with conditions that could benefit from physical rehabilitation — but there aren’t enough physical therapists (PTs) to go around. The growing need for PTs is racing alongside population growth, and aging, as well as higher rates of severe ailments, are contributing to the problem.  An upsurge in sensor-based […]

This year saw high-temperature records shattered across much of Europe, as crops withered in the fields due to widespread drought. Is this a harbinger of things to come as the Earth’s climate steadily warms up? Elfatih Eltahir, MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering and H. M. King Bhumibol Professor of Hydrology and Climate, and […]

Investors reward clear communication.

Career paths are hard to navigate alone these days.

A conversation with a veteran tech journalist about the industry’s successes and failures.

Here’s everything you need to know about where Google’s smartwatch platform stands now.

From Echo smart displays and speakers to Fire tablets, snag the retailer’s own hardware on sale.

Les Johnson, author of the new book A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars, talked to WIRED about solar sails and more ways to get farther into the final frontier.

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Google partners with Coinbase to let some customers pay for cloud services in crypto, starting 2023; Coinbase plans to move some data from AWS to Google Cloud  —  – Google will start allowing a subset of customers to pay for cloud services with digital currencies early next year.

David Shepardson / Reuters: IIHS survey: 53% of Super Cruise, 42% of Autopilot, and 12% of ProPILOT Assist users say they were “comfortable treating their vehicles as fully self-driving”  —  Drivers using advanced driver assistance systems like Tesla (TSLA.O) Autopilot or General Motors (GM.N) …

Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk: Nansen: former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky, who resigned on September 27, has moved ~$960K in CEL and USDC from six wallets to exchanges so far in October  —  Data show that Alex Mashinsky, who resigned as Celsius’ CEO on Sept. 27, continues to move crypto out of wallets while withdrawals are […]

A group of robot-makers led by Boston Dynamics has pledged to push back on any attempts to add weapons to their creations, but other companies will continue to arm their robots and market them to police and military buyers

The Prime Early Access Sale runs on October 11 and 12, but the discounts have already started—including on the Apple Watch Series 8.

To upstage Amazon’s (second) shopping holiday, the competitor has released tons of deals on big-screen TVs, wireless earbuds, and more.

We braved the cold to answer the modern dilemma: Can you keep your hands warm and use a smartphone at the same time?

Mat Di Salvo / Decrypt: European Parliament approves Markets in Crypto Assets bill 28 to 1, which if passed in next vote will limit stablecoin token issuance, regulate mining, and more  —  The Markets in Crypto Assets regulation bill (MiCA) is one step closer to being put into law.

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer: Fortinet confirms a critical remote authentication bypass vulnerability in FortiOS, FortiProxy, and FortiSwitchManager is being exploited; a patch is available  —  Fortinet has confirmed today that a critical authentication bypass security vulnerability patched last week is being exploited in the wild.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Trendsi, which helps sellers and manufacturers predict demand, raised a $25M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $30M  —  In the traditional business-to-business world, sellers often don’t know how much of a product they should order.

Amy Gallo offers advice on how to turn things around with a difficult colleague.