February 7, 2025

These documents are influencing the DOGE-sphere’s agenda

Reports from the US Government Accountability Office on improper federal payments in recent years are circulating on X and elsewhere online, and they seem to be a big influence on Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its supporters as the group pursues cost-cutting measures across the federal government.  The payment reports have been…

Technology

How the internet pushed China’s New Year red packet tradition to the extreme

February 14, 2024
This story first appeared in China Report, MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. If you ask any child in China what’s the most exciting thing about welcoming another year, they are likely to answer: the red packets. It’s a festive tradition: During the holidays, people…

The Download: learning from environmental DNA, and why we should welcome watermarks

February 13, 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. How environmental DNA is giving scientists a new way to understand our world Environmental DNA is a relatively inexpensive, widespread, potentially automated way to observe the diversity and distribution of life.  Unlike previous…

Why Big Tech’s watermarking plans are some welcome good news

February 13, 2024
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. This week I am happy to bring you some encouraging news from the world of AI. Following the depressing Taylor Swift deepfake porn scandal and the proliferation of political deepfakes, such as AI-generated robocalls…

How environmental DNA is giving scientists a new way to understand our world

February 13, 2024
In the late 1980s, at a federal research facility in Pensacola, Florida, Tamar Barkay used mud in a way that proved revolutionary in a manner she could never have imagined at the time: a crude version of a technique that is now shaking up many scientific fields. Barkay had collected several samples of mud —…

A Waymo robotaxi was vandalized and burned in San Francisco

February 12, 2024

A Waymo robotaxi was vandalized and then set on fire by a crowd of people Saturday evening in San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood. The incident is the latest encounter between driverless vehicles and the public in San Francisco, a city where autonomous vehicle companies have spent years testing the technology on public streets.  The Saturday night […]

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The Download: join us at EmTech Digital Europe in London!

February 12, 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. Join us at EmTech Digital Europe in London For over ten years, academics, policymakers, and business and technology leaders have gathered at our EmTech Digital event in Silicon Valley and on the MIT…

3 Hot Restaurant Picks for Your 2024 Radar

February 12, 2024
The restaurant industry is poised to thrive this year, owing to easing inflation, a considerable increase in fast-casual preferences, and advanced technology. Given this backdrop, quality restaurant stocks Compass Group…

This chart shows why heat pumps are still hot in the US

February 12, 2024
Heat pumps are still a hot technology, though sales in the US, one of the world’s largest markets, fell in 2023. Even with the drop, the appliances beat out gas furnaces for the second year in a row and saw their overall market share increase compared to furnaces, sales of which also fell last year.…