Spotify now lets everyone turn off videos in its app
The controls can be used to choose an audio-first experience on the app or a video-enhanced one, Spotify says.
Constellations
I. We had crash-landed on the planet. We were far from home. The spaceship could not be repaired, and the rescue beacon had failed. Besides me, only the astrogator, part of the captain, and the ship’s AI mind were left. Outside, the atmosphere registered as hostile to most organisms. We huddled in the lifeboat, which…
Instagram expands its movie inspired content restrictions for teens internationally
Instagram first debuted its movie rating inspired content settings in limited countries in 2025.
This founder helped build SpaceX’s most powerful rocket engine. Now he’s building a ‘fighter jet for orbit’
The company’s novel rocket engine could be a game changer for the U.S. military.
Collide Capital raises $95M fund to back fintech, future-of-work startups
Collide Capital, founded by Brian Hollins and Aaron Samuels, announced Thursday the close of a $95 million Fund II.
Radify’s sci-fi plasma reactors could break China’s dominance of rare earth elements
Radify Metals is developing a new way to process a variety of metals that promises to be pollution free.
Waymo robotaxis are tracking potholes and sharing that data with Waze users
Two Alphabet-owned businesses are teaming up to find potholes and share that information with cities.
The Download: AstroTurf wars and exponential AI growth
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. Is fake grass a bad idea? The AstroTurf wars are far from over. In 2001, Americans installed just over 7 million square meters of synthetic turf. By 2024, that number was 79 million square meters—enough to carpet all of Manhattan and then some. The…
Ex-Tesla engineer’s startup taps Pronto to help automate a copper mine
Pronto’s autonomous haulage trucks are about to start operating at Mariana Minerals’s Utah copper mine — the first such deal since Pronto got acquired by Travis Kalanick’s Atoms Inc.
Is fake grass a bad idea? The AstroTurf wars are far from over.
A rare warm spell in January melted enough snow to uncover Cornell University’s newest athletic field, built for field hockey. Months before, it was a meadow teeming with birds and bugs; now it’s more than an acre of synthetic turf roughly the color of the felt on a pool table, almost digital in its saturation.…
Desalination technology, by the numbers
When I started digging into desalination technology for a new story, I couldn’t help but obsess over the numbers. I’d known on some level that desalination—pulling salt out of seawater to produce fresh water—was an increasingly important technology, especially in water-stressed regions including the Middle East. But just how much some countries rely on desalination,…