February 7, 2025

The Download: DOGE’s tech-enabled destruction, and Meta’s brain AI for typing

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Elon Musk, DOGE, and the Evil Housekeeper problem —Dan Hon is principal of Very Little Gravitas, where he helps turn around and modernize large and complex government services and products. In trying to…

July 2023

Akhetonics raises capital for its All-Optical processor prototype

July 25, 2023
Traditional processors from the likes of Intel, AMD, or Nvidia have well-known limitations around speed, energy efficiency, and electromagnetic interference. For instance, foundational chip makers like TSMC and Samsung are currently racing to move to the 3nm process for customers like Apple and Nvidia. In the meantime, photonics is becoming a bigger sector as chip […]

Zombie game maker Techland joins Tencent’s global empire in latest acquisition

July 25, 2023
Tencent, the world’s largest gaming company, is set to gobble up Techland, the Polish game developer known for open-world zombie games like Dying Light, adding yet another member to its sprawling investment portfolio. In a letter to players, Techland’s founder and CEO Paweł Marchewka announced that Tencent is in the process of becoming the gaming […]

Blue Origin, Astrobotic, Varda Space and others win NASA funding to develop advanced space tech

July 25, 2023
NASA awarded new funding to eleven companies today for advanced space tech projects ranging from advanced power generation on the lunar surface to additive manufacturing for space habitats. The awards, which total $150 million across all eleven companies, were announced as part of the space agency’s Tipping Point program. According to NASA, a technology is […]

OpenAI scuttles AI-written text detector over ‘low rate of accuracy’

July 25, 2023
OpenAI has shut down its AI classifier, a tool that claimed to determine the likelihood a text passage was written by another AI. While many used and perhaps unwisely relied on it to catch low-effort cheats, OpenAI has retired it over its widely criticized “low rate of accuracy.” The theory that AI-generated text has some […]

Google Search is making it easier to find relevant information on women’s sports

July 25, 2023
Google is introducing a few new ways to make it easier for users to find relevant information when searching for women’s sports, the company announced on Tuesday. The new updates come in time for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. The search giant says it has expanded coverage of women’s competitions in the information boxes […]