Technology

The cost of building the perfect wave

June 17, 2024
For nearly as long as surfing has existed, surfers have been obsessed with the search for the perfect wave. It’s not just a question of size, but also of shape, surface conditions, and duration—ideally in a beautiful natural environment.  While this hunt has taken surfers from tropical coastlines reachable only by boat to swells breaking off…

What happened when 20 comedians got AI to write their routines

June 17, 2024
AI is good at lots of things: spotting patterns in data, creating fantastical images, and condensing thousands of words into just a few paragraphs. But can it be a useful tool for writing comedy?   New research suggests that it can, but only to a very limited extent. It’s an intriguing finding that hints at the…

The Download: milk beyond cows, and geoengineering’s funding boom

June 14, 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. Biotech companies are trying to make milk without cows The outbreak of avian influenza on US dairy farms has started to make milk seem a lot less wholesome. Milk that’s raw, or unpasteurized,…

These board games want you to beat climate change

June 14, 2024
It’s game night, and I’m crossing my fingers, hoping for a hurricane.  I roll the die and it clatters across the board, tumbling to a stop to reveal a tiny icon of a tree stump. Bad news: I just triggered deforestation in the Amazon. That seals it. I failed to stop climate change—at least this…

Biotech companies are trying to make milk without cows

June 14, 2024
The outbreak of avian influenza on US dairy farms has started to make milk seem a lot less wholesome. Milk that’s raw, or unpasteurized, can actually infect mice that drink it, and a few dairy workers have already caught the bug.  The FDA says that commercial milk is safe because it is pasteurized, killing the…

Foundations are lining up to fund geoengineering research

June 14, 2024
A London-based nonprofit is poised to become one of the world’s largest financial backers of solar geoengineering research. And it’s just one of a growing number of foundations eager to support scientists exploring whether the world could ease climate change by reflecting away more sunlight. Quadrature Climate Foundation, established in 2019 and funded through the…

How to opt out of Meta’s AI training

June 14, 2024
MIT Technology Review’s How To series helps you get things done.  If you post or interact with chatbots on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, or WhatsApp, Meta can use your data to train its generative AI models beginning June 26, according to its recently updated privacy policy. Even if you don’t use any of Meta’s platforms, it…

After the Yahoo News app revamp, Yahoo preps AI summaries on homepage, too

June 13, 2024

Yahoo’s AI push isn’t over just yet. The company, also TechCrunch’s parent, recently launched AI-powered features for Yahoo Mail, including its own take on Gmail’s Priority Inbox and AI summaries of emails, and today it’s rolling out an AI-powered version of its Yahoo News app, leveraging technology it acquired from its latest acquisition, Artifact. Still, […]

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The Download: the rise of gamification, and carbon dioxide storage

June 13, 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. How gamification took over the world It’s a thought that occurs to every video-game player at some point: What if the weird, hyper-focused state I enter when playing in virtual worlds could somehow…