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The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics
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. Inside India’s scramble for AI independence Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI. That gap…
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Tesla reportedly delays launch of new low-cost model by months
Tesla is pushing back the promised launch of a more affordable EV by months, according to a report from Reuters. The new model, which is supposedly a very stripped-down Model Y, was supposed to debut in the first half of this year but now might not come until late 2025 or early 2026, states the […]
Airbnb will now show users the total cost of their stay right away
One of the chief complaints of Airbnb users over the years has been not being able to tell right away how much they would pay for their stay, including charges such as cleaning fees. Airbnb is now fixing that by showing the total cost for a given property, including all charges, automatically. Users across the […]
AI is pushing the limits of the physical world
Architecture often assumes a binary between built projects and theoretical ones. What physics allows in actual buildings, after all, is vastly different from what architects can imagine and design (often referred to as “paper architecture”). That imagination has long been supported and enabled by design technology, but the latest advancements in artificial intelligence have prompted…
The quest to build islands with ocean currents in the Maldives
In satellite images, the 20-odd coral atolls of the Maldives look something like skeletal remains or chalk lines at a crime scene. But these landforms, which circle the peaks of a mountain range that has vanished under the Indian Ocean, are far from inert. They’re the products of living processes—places where coral has grown toward…
$8 billion of US climate tech projects have been canceled so far in 2025
This year has been rough for climate technology: Companies have canceled, downsized, or shut down at least 16 large-scale projects worth $8 billion in total in the first quarter of 2025, according to a new report. That’s far more cancellations than have typically occurred in recent years, according to a new report from E2, a…
Yahoo will give millions to a settlement fund for Chinese dissidents, decades after exposing user data
A lawsuit to hold Yahoo responsible for “willfully turning a blind eye” to the mismanagement of a human rights fund for Chinese dissidents was settled for $5.425 million last week, after an eight-year court battle. At least $3 million will go toward a new fund; settlement documents say it will “provide humanitarian assistance to persons…
Palantir exec defends company’s immigration surveillance work
One of the founders of startup accelerator Y Combinator offered unsparing criticism this weekend of the controversial data analytics company Palantir, leading a company executive to offer an extensive defense of Palantir’s work. The back-and-forth came after federal filings showed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — tasked with carrying out the Trump administration’s […]
OpenAI’s o3 AI model scores lower on a benchmark than the company initially implied
A discrepancy between first- and third-party benchmark results for OpenAI’s o3 AI model is raising questions about the company’s transparency and model testing practices. When OpenAI unveiled o3 in December, the company claimed the model could answer just over a fourth of questions on FrontierMath, a challenging set of math problems. That score blew the […]
Kids sure love video game movies
“A Minecraft Movie” isn’t just a hit — after three weekends in theaters, the film is estimated to have grossed $344 million domestically and $720 million worldwide. That makes it the biggest movie of an admittedly underwhelming year at the box office (so far), and the second biggest video game movie of all time. Coming […]