July 3, 2025

The Download: AI agents hype, and Google’s electricity plans

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. Don’t let hype about AI agents get ahead of reality —Yoav Shoham is a professor emeritus at Stanford University and cofounder of AI21 Labs. At Google’s I/O 2025 event in May, the company…

Technology

The race to destroy PFAS, the forever chemicals 

October 26, 2023
The PFAS sample slides around the inside of the plastic jar when I swirl it, dark and murky, like thin maple syrup. For many, these toxic so-called “forever chemicals” amount to something of a specter, having crept into our lives—and bodies—quietly for more than half a century. In the environment, PFAS are clear and odorless.…

ULA aims to launch Astrobotic lunar lander on Christmas Eve

October 26, 2023

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s first lunar lander is set to take off on United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket on Christmas Eve, ULA CEO Tory Bruno said. Bruno told the audience at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit that the rocket company is targeting between December 24 and December 26 for the first-ever Vulcan launch. “The […]

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Three people were gene-edited in an effort to cure their HIV. The result is unknown.

October 25, 2023
The gene-editing technology CRISPR has been used to change the genes of human babies, to modify animals, and to treat people with sickle-cell disease.  Now scientists are attempting a new trick: using CRISPR to permanently cure people of HIV.  In a remarkable experiment, a biotechnology company called Excision BioTherapeutics says it added the gene-editing tool…

The Download: introducing the Hard Problems issue

October 25, 2023
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. Introducing: the Hard Problems issue For all of history we’ve turned to technology, again and again, to help us solve our hardest problems. It has made virtually all of human knowledge available to…

Job titles of the future: carbon accountant

October 25, 2023
His official title is vice president of regulated reporting solutions. But really, Billy Scherba is a carbon accountant. At Personifi, a platform for climate management, Scherba works with companies to measure, manage, and disclose their contributions to climate change. Carbon accountants help companies understand what data matters to their carbon footprint, how to collect that…

The grassroots push to digitize India’s most precious documents

October 25, 2023
On a bright sunny day in August, in a second-floor room at the Gandhi Bhavan Museum in Bengaluru, workers sit in front of five giant tabletop scanners, lining up books and flipping pages with foot pedals. The museum building houses the largest reference library for Gandhian philosophy in the state of Karnataka, and over the…

The quest to re-create nature’s strongest material

October 25, 2023
For a long time, spider silk held the top spot as the strongest biological material on the planet, inspiring researchers and startups worldwide to manufacture an artificial version. But not so long ago, spiders were pushed off their silky pedestal by the common limpet, a small marine snail dotting the shores of Western Europe.  When…

Shuffling the deck

October 24, 2023
When Andy Bloch ’91, SM ’92, graduated from MIT, he fully intended to use his degrees in electrical engineering. He got a job with a New York City startup, working on 3D stereo displays and other projects, until one day he got in an argument with his boss and was fired.  It was an early…

Tapping into the ocean to combat climate change

October 24, 2023
Chloe Dean traces her decision to go to graduate school to the day a wildfire blazed through southern Oregon. At the time, Dean was working as a lab technician at a hemp-processing startup in Oregon. She had studied environmental science as an undergraduate at the Oregon Institute of Technology but fell in love with chemistry.…

Superhero U

October 24, 2023
In a workshop filled with robotic limbs and several expensive cars, the clanging of a hammer rings out over the blasting sounds of AC/DC. Amid the clamor, a man with a glowing arc reactor in his chest is hard at work with help from J.A.R.V.I.S., an AI program of his own creation. On the man’s right…