February 6, 2025

Superlogic raises $13.7M at a $200M valuation to help consumers use reward points toward cool ‘experiences’

Superlogic, a startup that helps give consumers a way to apply rewards points toward experiences, has raised $13.7 million at a $200 million valuation, the company tells TechCrunch exclusively. Lin Dai, CEO and co-founder of Miami-based Superlogic, said his company’s technology is designed to “enhance the value of rewards points” by giving consumers a broader […]

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Technology

The Download: herbicide-resistant weeds, and an octopus-inspired adhesive

October 10, 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. The weeds are winning Since the 1980s, more and more plants have evolved to become immune to the biochemical mechanisms that herbicides leverage to kill them. This herbicidal resistance threatens to decrease yields—out-of-control…

Everything comes back to climate tech. Here’s what to watch for next.

October 10, 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. We get to celebrate a very special birthday today—The Spark just turned two!  Over the past couple of years, I’ve been bringing you all the news you need to know in climate…

The weeds are winning

October 10, 2024
On a languid, damp July morning, I meet weed scientist Aaron Hager outside the old Agronomy Seed House at the University of Illinois’ South Farm. In the distance are round barns built in the early 1900s, designed to withstand Midwestern windstorms. The sky is a formless white. It’s the day after a storm system hundreds…

This octopus-inspired adhesive can stick to just about anything

October 10, 2024
A new adhesive technology pays homage to one of nature’s strongest sources of suction: an octopus tentacle. Researchers replicated an octopus’s strong grip and controlled release to create a tool that manipulates a wide array of objects. It could help improve underwater construction methods or find application in everyday devices like an assistive glove.  Each…

Preventing Climate Change: A Team Sport

October 9, 2024
This sponsored session was presented by MEDC at MIT Technology Review’s 2024 EmTech MIT event. Michigan is at the forefront of the clean energy transition, setting an example in mobility and automotive innovation. Other states and organizations can learn from Michigan’s approach to public-private partnerships, actionable climate plans, and business-government alignment. Progressive climate policies are…

Productivity Electrified: Tech That Is Supercharging Business

October 9, 2024
This sponsored session was presented by Ford Pro at MIT Technology Review’s 2024 EmTech MIT event. A decarbonized transportation system is a necessary pre-requisite for a sustainable economy. In the transportation industry, the road to electrification and greater technology adoption can also increase business bottom lines and reduce downstream costs to tax payers. Focusing on…

The Download: another Nobel Prize for AI, and Adobe’s anti-scraping tool

October 9, 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. Google DeepMind wins joint Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein prediction AI   Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis has won a joint Nobel Prize for Chemistry for using artificial intelligence to predict the structures…

Google DeepMind wins joint Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein prediction AI  

October 9, 2024
In a second Nobel win for AI, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded half of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and John M. Jumper, a director at Google DeepMind, for their work on using artificial intelligence to predict the structures of proteins,…

Adobe wants to make it easier for artists to blacklist their work from AI scraping

October 8, 2024
Adobe has announced a new tool to help creators watermark their artwork and opt out of having it used to train generative AI models. The web app, called Adobe Content Authenticity, allows artists to signal that they do not consent for their work to be used by AI models, which are generally trained on vast…

The Download: Geoffrey Hinton’s Nobel Prize, and multimodal AI

October 8, 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. Geoffrey Hinton, AI pioneer and figurehead of doomerism, wins Nobel Prize Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist whose pioneering work on deep learning in the 1980s and 90s underpins all of the most powerful…