March 2024

A plan to bring down drug prices could threaten America’s technology boom

March 8, 2024
Forty years ago, Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was full of deserted warehouses and dying low-tech factories. Today, it is arguably the center of the global biotech industry.  During my 30 years in MIT’s Technology Licensing Office, I witnessed this transformation firsthand, and I know it was no accident. Much of it was the direct…

The many uses of mini-organs

March 8, 2024
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. This week I wrote about a team of researchers who managed to grow lung, kidney, and intestinal organoids from fetal cells floating around in the amniotic…

Apple launches VisionOS 1.1. with improved personas

March 8, 2024

Apple released VisionOS 1.1 on Thursday with the most notable feature being improved personas of users. Specifically, the new update improves hair and makeup appearance, neck and mouth representation, and rendering of the eyes for EyeSight, which lets others see your eyes when you’re wearing the headset. Additionally, users can also now set up their […]

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Sea’s Free Fire India relaunch in limbo six months on

March 8, 2024

Sea is “still making changes” and has yet to launch its popular mobile game Free Fire in India, more than six months after announcing plans to do so. Yanjun Wang, Group Chief Corporate Officer at Sea, said during the earnings call this week that the Singapore-headquartered giant is still making changes to the game to […]

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India’s smartwatch market in flux as unknown brands challenge heavyweights

March 8, 2024

India’s smartwatch market has transformed, seemingly overnight. For years, it has been dominated by its homegrown players, while global giants like Apple and Samsung have struggled for presence, amid the hundreds of millions of annual shipments. Suddenly, however, the category has been flooded with unknown brands, which have no prior and significant existence. These have […]

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India’s Election Commission fixes privacy flaws that exposed citizens’ information-seeking data

March 8, 2024

India’s federal election commission has fixed flaws on its website that exposed data related to citizens’ requests for information related to their voting eligibility status, local political candidates and parties, and technical details about electronic voting machines. India is heading for its next general elections, expected between April and May, to elect the members of […]

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Inside the weird and quirky world of building a startup behind a wall of tariffs

March 7, 2024

Think quick — how much does a top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max cost? If you said around $1,600, you’d be right, but only if you’re based in the U.S. In Turkey, the same phone will set you back almost $3,000. That gap introduces a fantastic opportunity for arbitrage — and a lively second-hand and refurbished […]

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AALTO seeks to democratize high-speed internet access through solar-powered drones

March 7, 2024

In the beginning of 2021, Alphabet shuttered Loon. It was a familiar story within the annals of Google X history: an ambitious moonshot with tremendous upside that sputtered out prior to gaining any sort of meaningful traction after nearly a decade. “Despite Loon’s extraordinary technical progress,” X explains with a tinge of melancholy on the […]

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