Technology

The Download: brain-melting heatwaves and unprecedented OpenAI restrictions

June 26, 2026
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. Heat waves mess with your brain. Scientists are trying to figure out why. —Jessica Hamzelou It’s been hot in London this week. Really hot. A dangerous heat wave has hit Western…

Heat waves mess with your brain. Scientists are trying to figure out why.

June 26, 2026
It’s been hot in London this week. Really hot. A dangerous heat wave has hit Western Europe. Yesterday, the UK recorded its highest ever June temperature at 36.1 °C (about 97 °F). But as the weather app on my phone confirmed, it felt like 39 °C. It’s frightening that we are seeing such temperatures in…

Repositioning retail for the AI era

June 25, 2026
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping retail, but not in the ways consumers might immediately notice. The biggest transformation may not be flashy virtual try-ons or chatbot shopping assistants, but in how decisions are made behind the scenes: how products surface in search results, how inventory moves through supply chains, how engineers ship code faster, and…

What Europe’s heat wave means for the power grid

June 25, 2026
It’s been hard to look away from headlines about the European heat wave this week. Temperatures are breaking records across the continent, and the weather is threatening lives, shutting down schools, and in one particularly ironic case, forcing the cancellation of a London Climate Action Week event about extreme heat.  As the summer ramps up…

IBM has unveiled chip technology that could help extend Moore’s Law another decade

June 25, 2026
IBM has built a new prototype chip with around 100 billion transistors on an area the size of a fingernail, which is twice the density of the company’s previous state-of-the-art technology announced in 2021. The design could pave the way for faster and more energy efficient computers for years to come. For more than half…