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: 10 climate tech companies to watch
Every year, the MIT Technology Review newsroom produces a list of some of the most promising climate tech firms on the planet. It’s an exercise that we hope brings positive attention to companies working to decarbonize major sectors of the economy, whether by spinning up new, cleaner sources of energy or reinventing how we produce foods and distribute goods.
Though the political and funding landscape has shifted dramatically in the US since last year, nothing has altered the urgency of the climate dangers the world now faces—we need to rapidly curb greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. This project highlights the firms making progress toward that end.
Check out the third annual edition of the list, and learn more about why we selected these companies.
Our best weapon against climate change is ingenuity
—Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist.
It’s a foregone conclusion that the world will not meet the goals for limiting emissions and global warming laid out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Many people want to blame politicians and corporations for this failure, but there’s an even more fundamental reason: We don’t have all the technological tools we need to do it, and many of the ones we do have are too expensive.
But I don’t think this is a reason to be pessimistic. I see it as cause for optimism, because humans are very good at inventing things. In fact, we’ve already created many tools that are reducing emissions. And I am confident that more positive changes are coming. Read the full story.
Another effort to track ICE raids was just taken offline
People over Papers, a crowd-sourcing project that maps sightings of immigration agents, was taken offline yesterday by Padlet, the collaborative bulletin board platform on which it was built.
It’s just the latest ICE-tracking initiative to be pulled by tech platforms in the past few days, including the ICEBlock app that was removed from app stores last week and the Stop ICE Raids Alert Network. Read the full story.
—Eileen Guo
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 ICE wants to build a social media surveillance squad
Contractors will sift through social content searching for information to aid arrests and deportations. (Wired $)
+ A US citizen with stage four cancer has been deported. (The Guardian)
2 xAI is building massive data centers in Memphis
Which isn’t great news for disgruntled locals. (WSJ $)
+ Data centers are big business in Europe right now. (Bloomberg $)
+ The data center boom in the desert. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Ukraine’s front lines are fighting deadly infections
Bacteria that are resistant to multiple antibiotics are infiltrating the country. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Why tiny viruses could be our best bet against antimicrobial resistance. (MIT Technology Review)
4 A Silicon Valley school asked its students to draft an AI policy
Mountain View High School thinks involving kids is the best way forward. (WP $)
+ Elsewhere, a school in Texas is letting AI guide its entire curriculum. (CBS News)
+ AI’s giants want to take over the classroom. (MIT Technology Review)
5 These countries hope to benefit from the US visa crackdown
Skilled engineers from overseas are looking beyond America for new opportunities. (FT $)
+ India hopes its skilled workers living abroad will return home. (BBC)
6 How an empty Chinese city became a self-driving testbed
Ordos has everything that self-driving cars need—except humans. (Rest of World)
+ Why China’s self-driving industry is pushing into Europe. (Reuters)
7 How to talk to cows
A wave of high-tech AI-powered collars is the closest we’ve got. (NYT $)
+ Scientists are trying to get cows pregnant with synthetic embryos. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Technology is full of fascinating records
Strongest robotic arm, anyone? (IEEE Spectrum)
9 Posting a simple Instagram photo is no longer enough
The app keeps pushing us to ‘contentify’ everything. (The Verge)
10 Japanese beer brand Asahi has resumed production
After a huge cyber attack forced its breweries offline. (BBC)
+ But we don’t know when its plants will return to full capacity. (Reuters)
Quote of the day
“You’ll never have a human trafficked AI girl.”
—Steve Jones, who runs an AI porn site, explains how he sees the ethics of his endeavor to the Guardian.
One more thing
The race to fix space-weather forecasting before next big solar storm hits
As the number of satellites in space grows, and as we rely on them for increasing numbers of vital tasks on Earth, the need to better predict stormy space weather is becoming more and more urgent.
Scientists have long known that solar activity can change the density of the upper atmosphere. But it’s incredibly difficult to precisely predict the sorts of density changes that a given amount of solar activity would produce.
Now, experts are working on a model of the upper atmosphere to help scientists to improve their models of how solar activity affects the environment in low Earth orbit. If they succeed, they’ll be able to keep satellites safe even amid turbulent space weather, reducing the risk of potentially catastrophic orbital collisions. Read the full story.
—Tereza Pultarova
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ I love this website showcasing madcap music genres (thanks Rachel!)
+ It’s not just you—world records really are getting harder to beat.
+ If you’ve ever wanted to play Snake in a url bar, now’s your chance (warning, it’s hard!)
+ Fall is here, and the photos are already breathtaking ($)
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