June 27, 2025

The Download: how to clean up AI data centers, and weight-loss drugs’ side effects

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. This battery recycling company is now cleaning up AI data centers In a sandy industrial lot outside Reno, Nevada, rows of battery packs that once propelled electric vehicles are now powering a small…

The Download: introducing The Education issue

April 26, 2023
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. Introducing: The Education issue —Mat Honan, editor in chief Welcome to the Education Issue, our latest print magazine. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re in an entirely new place when it comes to…

UK blocks Microsoft’s planned $68.7B Activision bid, saying it would ‘substantially weaken competition’

April 26, 2023

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed that it intends to block Microsoft’s megabucks Activision acquisition, concluding that such a merger would create “…the most powerful operator” in the cloud gaming market. The CMA noted that with a current share of 60-70%, acquiring Activision’s portfolio of games, which includes Call of Duty and […]

UK blocks Microsoft’s planned $68.7B Activision bid, saying it would ‘substantially weaken competition’ by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

The air-cleaning qualities of plants get a genetically modified boost

April 26, 2023
In the late 1980s, NASA conducted a study to determine how well indoor plants like aloe vera, Chinese ivy, and potted chrysanthemums abate air pollution. The results were a boon to nursery owners everywhere: the research showed that houseplants can capably dispatch harmful pollutants including benzene and formaldehyde.  But NASA’s study was conducted in sealed…

Shift happens: Writing about the history of keyboards

April 26, 2023
When the designer and typographer Marcin Wichary stumbled upon a tiny museum just outside Barcelona five years ago, the experience tipped his interest in the history of technology into an obsession with a very particular part of it: the keyboard.  “I have never seen so many typewriters under one roof. Not even close,” he shared…

Inmates are using VR to learn real-world skills

April 26, 2023
Atorrus Rainer, age 41, is standing in the center of a stuffy, ­fluorescent-lit room. A virtual-reality headset covers his eyes like oversize goggles. Every so often, he extends his arm, using the VR controller to pick up garbage bags, a toothbrush, and toilet paper during a simulated trip to the supermarket. The experience is limited—Rainer…

Cheat Codex

April 26, 2023
Welcome to the Education Issue. I cheated on my editor’s letter. This one that you are reading right now. I’m very sorry.  Look, I didn’t set out to do this, but the thing about magazines is that they have very hard deadlines, and if you miss them, you’re left with blank pages. So when I…

Lookout sells its consumer cybersecurity business to F-Secure and goes all-in on the enterprise

April 26, 2023

Lookout’s long-running transition to becoming an enterprise security company is all but complete, revealing today that it’s selling its consumer mobile security business to Finland’s F-Secure. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded out of Boston in 2009, Lookout originally started out as a consumer-focused smartphone security and data backup business, garnering millions of […]

Lookout sells its consumer cybersecurity business to F-Secure and goes all-in on the enterprise by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Exquisite bullshitters

April 26, 2023
Artist Ariel Aberg-Riger is author of America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History.