Technology

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…

How open source voting machines could boost trust in US elections

March 7, 2024
While the vendors pitched their latest voting machines in Concord, New Hampshire, this past August, the election officials in the room g­­asped. They whispered, “No way.” They nodded their heads and filled out the scorecards in their laps. Interrupting if they had to, they asked every kind of question: How much does the new scanner…

The Download: hydropower’s rocky path ahead, and how to reverse falling birth rates

March 7, 2024
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. Emissions hit a record high in 2023. Blame hydropower. Hydropower is one of the world’s largest sources of renewable electricity. But last year, weather conditions caused hydropower to fall short in a major…

Sequoia’s Jess Lee will demystify product-market fit at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024

March 7, 2024

Build something people want. It’s a simple concept — and one that Y Combinator loves to repeat — but one that can be hard to get right when building a startup. How strongly a technology good or service resonates with potential customers is often called “product-market fit,” or PMF. The more product-market fit you have, […]

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Emissions hit a record high in 2023. Blame hydropower.

March 7, 2024
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. Hydropower is a staple of clean energy—the modern version has been around for over a century, and it’s one of the world’s largest sources of renewable electricity. But last year, weather conditions…

Satellite servicing tech startup, led by former head of Ukraine’s space agency, lands $4M

March 6, 2024

Kurs Orbital, a startup founded by Ukrainian space industry veterans, has closed a new tranche of funding to accelerate the commercialization of its satellite servicing technology. The two-year-old company aims to unlock a new era for human activities in space by enabling capabilities like satellite relocation and inspection, de-orbiting and space debris removal. Kurs does […]

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k-ID launches a solution that helps game developers comply with ever-changing child safety regulations

March 6, 2024

Making a video game successful is already hard. Doing so while complying with the growing number of child safety laws and regulations around the world is an almost insurmountable task. A new technology company called k-ID aims to make this process much easier for game makers, by offering a framework that protects publishers and developers […]

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