Technology

This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Regular readers will know that the microbiome is one of my favorite topics to cover. The billions of bacteria crawling all over our bodies play a vital role in our health, influencing…

Last week a leaked memo reported to have been written by Luke Sernau, a senior engineer at Google, said out loud what many in Silicon Valley must have been whispering for weeks: an open-source free-for-all is threatening Big Tech’s grip on AI. New open-source large language models—alternatives to Google’s Bard or OpenAI’s ChatGPT that researchers…

Nexon, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, is wading into web3 like some of its peers in Asia. The developer of MapleStory is creating a blockchain-powered ecosystem based on the twenty-year-old massively multiplayer online game, where players can trade in-game assets like outfits, equipment and virtual pets in the form of non-fungible […]

Nexon takes 20-year-old MapleStory into web3 with Haechi’s help by Rita Liao originally published on TechCrunch

Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon pleaded not guilty in a Montenegrin court on Thursday to a charge of forging his passport and travel documents. Kwon’s hearing comes a month after Kwon and Chang-joon Han, Kwon’s former colleague, who also pleaded not guilty, were arrested at the airport in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, while trying to […]

Terraform co-founder Do Kwon pleads not guilty to fake travel documents by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

Meta today announced an AI Sandbox for advertisers to help them create alternative copies, background generation through text prompts and image cropping for Facebook or Instagram ads. The first feature lets brands generate different variations of the same copy for different audiences while trying to keep the core message of the ad similar. The background […]

Meta announces generative AI features for advertisers by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Historically and even today, poor memory has been an impediment to the usefulness of text-generating AI. As a recent piece in The Atlantic aptly puts it, even sophisticated generative text AI like ChatGPT has the memory of a goldfish. Each time the model generates a response, it takes into account only a very limited amount […]

Anthropic’s latest model can take The Great Gatsby as input by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Axiom Space’s second private crewed mission to the International Space Station is now scheduled to launch in just ten days, with the four-person crew preparing to conduct more than twenty scientific experiments while in space. The Ax-2 mission will now launch no earlier than 5:37 PM EST on May 21 from SpaceX’s Launch Complex 39A […]

Axiom Space gears up for second private human spaceflight mission to ISS by Aria Alamalhodaei originally published on TechCrunch

I don’t have any images from my Project Starline experience. Google had a strict “no photos, no videos” policy in place. No colleagues, either. Just me in a dark meeting room on the Shoreline Amphitheater grounds in Mountain View. You walk in and sit down in front of a table. In front of you is […]

Project Starline is the coolest work call you’ll ever take by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Dutch e-bike maker VanMoof is refreshing its entry level lineup with a pair of new bikes available in some very springy colors. The X4 and S4, out this month, retain the frame and philosophy of VanMoof’s previous X3 and S3 e-bikes while trimming some of the complexities that made those models notably high-tech but less […]

VanMoof updates its last-gen e-bikes with simplified X4 and S4 models by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch