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

Climate action is gaining momentum. So are the disasters.

October 12, 2022
This essay is an extended version of the opening talk that James Temple will deliver this morning at ClimateTech, MIT Technology Review’s inaugural climate and energy conference.  In recent months, we’ve witnessed stunning progress on climate action—and terrifying signs of the dangers we’ve unleashed. The US finally stepped up as a leader in climate action,…

What happens when you donate your body to science

October 12, 2022
Rebecca George doesn’t mind the vultures. They remind her of toddlers as they rustle their feathers in annoyance when she opens the gate of the Western Carolina University body farm early one July morning. Her arrival has interrupted their breakfast. George studies human decomposition, and part of decomposing is becoming food. Scavengers are welcome.  The…

Meta is desperately trying to make the metaverse happen

October 11, 2022
The star of Tuesday’s Meta Connect, the so-called “state of the union” for the company formerly known as Facebook, was Meta Quest Pro. Meta’s newest virtual-reality headset clocks in at a whopping $1,499.99. That’s a significant price jump from its previous iteration, Meta Quest 2, which could be yours for $399.99—not exactly cheap, but still…

Smashing success: NASA’s DART spacecraft bumped an asteroid off its orbit

October 11, 2022

The demise of a spacecraft is usually something rather poignant. But two weeks ago, NASA celebrated one’s destruction. On September 26, NASA executed the final stage of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), in which a spacecraft intentionally crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos to investigate whether or not such an impact could deflect an Earth-bound […]

Smashing success: NASA’s DART spacecraft bumped an asteroid off its orbit by Stefanie Waldek originally published on TechCrunch

The complicated danger of surveillance states

October 11, 2022
China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about what’s happening in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Welcome back to China Report!  I recently had a very interesting conversation with Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin. They wrote a new book called Surveillance State, which explores how China is…

Kraken’s Jesse Powell on why he’s stepping down as CEO of the crypto exchange

October 11, 2022

Jesse Powell is stepping down from the CEO role at U.S.-based crypto exchange Kraken, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. Co-founded by Powell and Thanh Luu in 2011, Kraken is now the fourth-largest crypto exchange by volume, according to CoinMarketCap. It’s a critical inflection point for the company, which was valued at $10 billion […]

Kraken’s Jesse Powell on why he’s stepping down as CEO of the crypto exchange by Anita Ramaswamy originally published on TechCrunch

Many Americans treat driver assist systems like self-driving

October 11, 2022

Many Americans feel comfortable treating their advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which partially automate certain driving functions, as full self-driving systems, according to a study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The survey explored habits, expectations and attitudes among regular users of General Motors Super Cruise, Nissan/Infiniti ProPILOT Assist and Tesla Autopilot. A […]

Many Americans treat driver assist systems like self-driving by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

The mothers of Mexico’s missing use social media to search for mass graves

October 11, 2022
“Attention Jalisco. Do you know the location of a clandestine grave of corpses?” The question, aimed at people in the populous Mexican state, was posed on Twitter in February by Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, an organization of mothers searching for their missing loved ones. Dozens of people responded. Neighbors who had witnessed clandestine burials came…

No one asked for this, but you can share Horizon Worlds videos to Instagram Reels

October 11, 2022

Huge news for, like, five people: you can take videos on Horizon Worlds and share them to Facebook and Instagram Reels, Meta’s TikTok clone. At today’s Meta Connect event, the company formerly known as Facebook announced this new way to share content from Horizon Worlds, Meta’s flagship social VR app. Despite launching about a year […]

No one asked for this, but you can share Horizon Worlds videos to Instagram Reels by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch