July 8, 2025

The Download: hunting an asteroid, and unlocking the human mind

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. Inside the most dangerous asteroid hunt ever If you were told that the odds of something were 3.1%, it might not seem like much. But for the people charged with protecting our planet,…

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Roundtables: Generative AI Search and the Changing Internet

February 18, 2025
Recorded on February 18, 2025 Generative AI Search and the Changing Internet Speakers: Mat Honan, editor in chief, and Niall Firth, executive editor. Generative AI search, one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2025, is ushering a new era of the internet. Despite fewer clicks, copyright fights, and sometimes iffy answers, AI could unlock new ways…

The Download: 4G on the moon, and parenting in the digital age

February 18, 2025
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. Nokia is putting the first cellular network on the moon Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second…

How to have a child in the digital age

February 18, 2025
When the journalist and culture critic Amanda Hess got pregnant with her first child, in 2020, the internet was among the first to know. “More brands knew about my pregnancy than people did,” she writes of the torrent of targeted ads that came her way. “They all called me mama.”  The internet held the promise…

Inside China’s electric-vehicle-to-humanoid-robot pivot

February 18, 2025
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. While DOGE’s efforts to shutter federal agencies dominate news from Washington, the Trump administration is also making more global moves. Many of these center on China. Tariffs on goods from the country…

Nokia is putting the first cellular network on the moon

February 18, 2025
Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The plan is to deploy a lander, a rover, and hopper to explore a site near the lunar south pole that could harbor water ice,…

Are your noise-canceling headphones messing with your head?

February 17, 2025

We all know headphones can be bad for your hearing if you listen to sounds too loudly in such close proximity to your ears. But a BBC report suggests that a new health scare could be emerging around the noise-canceling feature that’s hugely popular in modern earphones. The article considers whether the technology could essentially […]

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The Download: ancient DNA’s modern uses, and an AI-artist collaboration

February 17, 2025
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. Adventures in the genetic time machine An ancient-DNA revolution is turning the high-speed equipment used to study the DNA of living things on to specimens from the past.  The technology is being used…

This artist collaborates with AI and robots

February 17, 2025
Many artists worry about the encroachment of artificial intelligence on artistic creation. But Sougwen Chung, a nonbinary Canadian-Chinese artist, instead sees AI as an opportunity for artists to embrace uncertainty and challenge people to think about technology and creativity in unexpected ways.  Chung’s exhibitions are driven by technology; they’re also live and kinetic, with the…

Adventures in the genetic time machine

February 17, 2025
Eske Willerslev was on a tour of Montreal’s Redpath Museum, a Victorian-era natural history collection of 700,000 objects, many displayed in wood and glass cabinets. The collection—“very, very eclectic,” a curator explained—reflects the taste in souvenirs of 19th-century travelers and geology buffs. A visitor can see a leg bone from an extinct Steller’s sea cow,…

AI Alexa and AI Siri face bugs and delays

February 14, 2025

Amazon and Apple are struggling to put generative AI technology in their digital assistants – Alexa and Siri, respectively – according to a pair of reports that came out on Friday. Amazon hoped to release its new Alexa during an event in New York on February 26. Now Amazon plans to delay the release of […]

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