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by Karen Hao, Heidi Swart on (#5YAFH)
The cameras are not there yet. But the fiber already is. Thami Nkosi points to the telltale black box atop a utility pole on a street once home to two Nobel Peace Prize laureates: South Africa’s first Black president, Nelson Mandela, and the anti-apartheid activist and theologian Desmond Tutu. It always happens this way, Nkosi…
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MIT Technology Review
| Link | https://www.technologyreview.com/ |
| Feed | https://www.technologyreview.com/stories.rss |
| Updated | 2025-04-16 23:02 |
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by Karen Hao on (#5YAFG)
My husband and I love to eat and to learn about history. So shortly after we married, we chose to honeymoon along the southern coast of Spain. The region, historically ruled by Greeks, Romans, Muslims, and Christians in turn, is famed for its stunning architecture and rich fusion of cuisines. Little did I know how…
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by David Rotman on (#5YAE2)
The economy is being transformed by digital technologies, especially in artificial intelligence, that are rapidly changing how we live and work. But this transformation poses a troubling puzzle: these technologies haven’t done much to grow the economy, even as income inequality worsens. Productivity growth, which economists consider essential to improving living standards, has largely been…
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by Lois Parshley on (#5Y9BH)
If, in 2017, you had taken a gamble and purchased a comparatively new digital currency called Bitcoin, today you would be a millionaire many times over. But while the industry has provided windfalls for some, local communities have paid a price. Cryptocurrency is created by computers solving complicated mathematical equations—a process that took off after…
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by Patrick Howell O'Neill on (#5Y7JJ)
The FBI said on Thursday that the Lazarus Group, a prolific hacking team run by the North Korean government, is responsible for the March 2022 hack of a cryptocurrency platform called Ronin Network. The hackers stole $620 million in the cryptocurrency Ethereum. That’s an eye-catching number in almost any context. But in the Wild West…
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#5Y79P)
Like many banks, National Australia Bank (NAB) decided to outsource a large part of its operations in the 1990s. “We pushed all our operations and a large part of our development capability out to third parties with the intent of lowering costs and making our operations far more process driven,” says Steve Day, the chief…
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by Jenn Webb on (#5Y77H)
Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.” 5G-powered digitization promises to accelerate connectivity-led transformation in an increasingly hyperconnected world, ushering in a new range of possibilities for both individuals and enterprises. The transformative approach of 5G is pushing for an open standards, disaggregated, and cloud and edge-based approach…
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by Jessica Hamzelou on (#5Y755)
Age is much more than the number of birthdays you’ve clocked. Stress, sleep, and diet all influence how our organs cope with the wear and tear of everyday life. Factors like these might make you age faster or slower than people born on the same day. That means your biological age could be quite different…
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by Lana Swartz on (#5Y70H)
“We are cashless,” proclaims a sign on the gleaming glass door of the cafe I frequent. The sign predates the glossy list of covid-19 measures taped beside it, but together they present a united declaration of touchless efficiency—the promise of experiencing public space, social interaction, and consumer exchange with utmost convenience and cleanliness. Yet for…
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by Jenn Webb on (#5Y6CB)
Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.” Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.” As manufacturers increase investments in digital technologies to meet the demands of the changing environment, there is a realization that technology must be coupled with an empowered…
by Jenn Webb on (#5Y6CC)
Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.” Watch Christian Bayer, global head of ERP, data and analytics platforms, Syngenta, in conversation with Dinesh Rao, EVP and global head of enterprise package application services, Infosys, in a series that discusses a cloud-first strategy for digital farming, Agile and DevOps,…
by Jenn Webb on (#5Y6CD)
Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.” Data privacy and security must be built into the data, technology, and governance mechanisms underpinning a mergers and acquisitions deal, rather than being an afterthought. This can promote increased customer confidence, improved regulatory approval rates, and a healthy balance sheet. Click…
by Jenn Webb on (#5Y6CE)
Thank you for joining us on “The cloud hub: From cloud chaos to clarity.” Watch Daniel Dines, co-founder and CEO, UiPath Automation, speak with Ravi Kumar S, president, Infosys, on the future of automation and its role in enhancing human achievement. Click here to continue.
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by James Temple on (#5Y61F)
The venture capital firm Lowercarbon Capital has raised a $350 million fund dedicated to carbon removal startups, in another sign of the surging interest in a space that barely existed a few years ago. The goal of the new fund, which MIT Technology Review is reporting exclusively, is to accelerate the development and scale-up of…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5Y5ZC)
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 mobile money supercharged Kenya’s sports betting addiction Mobile money has mostly been hugely beneficial for Kenyans. But it has also turbo-charged the country’s sports betting sector. Since the middle of the last…
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by Jonathan W. Rosen on (#5Y5QW)
Hitchhiking in the cab of a sand truck late one Saturday night in 2018, Bill Kirwa had almost forgotten about the bet. The wager he’d placed that afternoon had been a long shot: to win, he’d need to correctly pick which team was ahead, at both halftime and full time, in four soccer matches on…
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#5Y5A4)
With its Emirates Mars Mission, also known as the Hope Probe, the UAE has established itself as only the fifth country in history to reach Mars and the seventh in the world to reach the orbit of another planet. The UAE’s first mission to Mars, Hope’s goal is to provide the first, complete picture of…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5Y53E)
Cities are loud places. Traffic, trains, and machinery generate a lot of noise. While it’s a mere inconvenience much of the time, it can become a deadly problem when it comes to detecting earthquakes. That’s because it’s difficult to discern an approaching earthquake amid all the usual vibrations in bustling cities. Researchers from Stanford have…
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by Casey Crownhart on (#5Y4TR)
A new type of battery made from electrically conductive polymers—basically plastic—could help make energy storage on the grid cheaper and more durable, enabling a greater use of renewable power. The batteries, made by Boston-based startup PolyJoule, could offer a less expensive and longer-lasting alternative to lithium-ion batteries for storing electricity from intermittent sources like wind…
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#5Y4QZ)
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5Y4R0)
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. Russian hackers tried to bring down Ukraine’s power grid to help the invasion Targeted attack: Russian hackers targeted the Ukrainian power grid and attempted to cause a blackout that would have hit 2…
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by Matthew Ponsford on (#5Y4ED)
For years, Michael Maxson spent more nights in hotels than his own bed, working on speaker systems for the titans of heavy rock on global tours. When Maxson decided to settle down with his wife and their two dogs, they chose the city where stadium rock spectacles took him more often than any other: Las…
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by Patrick Howell O'Neill on (#5Y3KB)
Russian hackers targeted the Ukrainian power grid and attempted to cause a blackout that would have hit 2 million people, according to Ukrainian government officials and the Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET. The hackers attempted to destroy computers at a Ukrainian energy company using a wiper, malware specifically designed to destroy targeted systems by erasing key…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5Y3AP)
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. Money is about to enter a new era of competition We’re on the cusp of a giant upheaval to the ways we pay for things. Cash is on the way out, and the…
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by Eswar Prasad on (#5Y34S)
Money is one of humankind’s most remarkable innovations. It makes it possible to trade products and services across great geographic distances, between people who may not know each other and have no particular reason to trust each other. It can even be used to transfer wealth and resources over time. Without money, trade and commerce—all…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5Y242)
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. Inside the fierce, messy fight over “healthy” sugar tech In a former insurance office building on the outskirts of Charlottesville, Virginia, a new kind of sugar factory is taking shape. The facility is…
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by Mark Harris on (#5Y1WW)
In a former insurance office building on the outskirts of Charlottesville, Virginia, a new kind of sugar factory is taking shape. The 48,000-square-foot facility is being developed by a startup called Bonumose, funded in part by Hershey. It uses a processed corn product called maltodextrin that is found in many junk foods. Like its notorious…
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by Elana Wilner on (#5XZVR)
To create sustainable business impact, AI capabilities need to be tailored and optimized to an industry or organization’s specific requirements and infrastructure model. Hear how customers’ challenges across industries can be addressed in any compute environment from the cloud to the edge with end-to-end hardware and software optimization. About the speakers Kavitha Prasad, VP &…
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by Elana Wilner on (#5XZVS)
The use of AI in finance is gaining traction as organizations realize the advantages of using algorithms to streamline and improve the accuracy of financial tasks. Step through use cases that examine how AI can be used to minimize financial risk, maximize financial returns, optimize venture capital funding by connecting entrepreneurs to the right investors;…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5XZA2)
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 a Zambian morgue is exposing the real covid toll in Africa The morgue at Lusaka’s University Teaching Hospital (UTH), near the center of Zambia’s capital, is not the most pleasant place to…
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by Jonathan W. Rosen on (#5XZ43)
The morgue at Lusaka’s University Teaching Hospital (UTH), a sprawling brick facility near the center of Zambia’s capital, is not the most pleasant place to carry out a clinical study. Inside the cavernous interior, newly arrived bodies linger unattended—on rolling metal tables or on the concrete floor wrapped in blankets. Others lie stacked on open-air…
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by Nicole Silva on (#5XYQD)
Good data is the bedrock of a self-service data consumption model, which in turn unlocks insights, analytics, personalization at scale through AI. Yet many organizations face immense challenges setting up a robust data foundation. Dive into a pragmatic perspective on abstracting the complexity and untangling the conflicts in data management for better AI. About the…
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by David Moradi on (#5XY8P)
While digital accessibility awareness is growing — fueled by the rise of accessibility lawsuits, renewed efforts by the government, and diversity and inclusion initiatives—progress on making the internet more accessible to people with disabilities remains slow. Companies ranging from major health care corporations to small businesses with Shopify storefronts are struggling to make their websites…
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#5XY8Q)
In many areas of the world, environmental conditions are not conducive to traditional farming. Ensuring food security depends on continuous agricultural innovation, which has been part of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) mission since its founding, given the country’s arid conditions and little water. Smart Acres is one of the many companies exploring new sustainable…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5XY0F)
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. Deception, exploited workers, and free cash: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users On a sunny morning last December, Iyus Ruswandi, a 35-year-old furniture maker in the village of Gunungguruh,…
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by Eileen Guo, Adi Renaldi on (#5XX34)
On a sunny morning last December, Iyus Ruswandi, a 35-year-old furniture maker in the village of Gunungguruh, Indonesia, was woken up early by his mother. A technology company was holding some kind of “social assistance giveaway” at the local Islamic elementary school, she said, and she urged him to go. Ruswandi joined a long line…
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by Will Douglas Heaven on (#5XX35)
When OpenAI revealed its picture-making neural network DALL-E in early 2021, the program’s human-like ability to combine different concepts in new ways was striking. The string of images that DALL-E produced on demand were surreal and cartoonish, but they showed that the AI had learned key lessons about how the world fits together. DALL-E’s avocado…
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by Charlotte Jee on (#5XWRD)
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. A battle is raging over long covid in children Before Jasmin got covid-19 last year, she was an especially active 10-year-old. She loved dancing, swimming, and gymnastics. “She was always upside-down, doing handstands,”…
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by Jessica Hamzelou on (#5XWMQ)
Before Jasmin got covid-19 last year, she was an especially active 10-year-old. She loved dancing, swimming, and gymnastics. “She was always upside-down, doing handstands,” says her mother, Binita Kane. Although she only had a mild case of the virus, she developed lasting, debilitating symptoms that kept her out of school. Jasmin, now 11, has abandoned…
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by MIT Technology Review Insights on (#5XVZQ)
For many people, the concept of directed energy, or lasers, conjures images of lightsabers and bank vault security systems—the stuff of Hollywood movies. However, the fact is, lasers are commonly used in everyday life applications, from surgery to optical communications. At Technology Innovation Institute’s (TII) Directed Energy Research Center (DERC), scientists and engineers are using…
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by Antonio Regalado on (#5XVZR)
The daring Chinese biophysicist who created the world’s first gene-edited children has been set free after three years in a Chinese prison. He Jiankui created shock waves in 2018 with the stunning claim that he’d altered the genetic makeup of IVF embryos and implanted them into a woman’s uterus, leading to the birth of twin…
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by James Temple, Casey Crownhart on (#5XVZS)
A bleak new report from the UN’s climate panel underscores the price the world is paying for the long delays in addressing global warming despite decades of warnings. Last year, worldwide energy-related carbon dioxide topped 36 billion tons, setting a new record as the global economy sprang back from the depths of the pandemic. As…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5XR5A)
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. Droughts are cutting into California’s hydropower. Here’s what that means for clean energy. The droughts that swept across the western US in 2021 sparked wildfires and damaged crops. But the historic lack of…
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by Casey Crownhart on (#5XR15)
The droughts that swept across the western US in 2021 sparked wildfires and damaged crops. But the historic lack of water also had an impact on one of California’s key sources of renewable energy: hydropower. Electricity generation from California hydropower plants was down 48% from the 10-year average, according to new data from the Energy…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5XPTQ)
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 startup wants to kick-start a molecular electronics revival In 2000, many hoped molecular electronics (using single molecules to create circuits and components) would leapfrog silicon-based circuitry to allow computer chips to keep…
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by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan on (#5XPKG)
In 1999, Rice University chemist Jim Tour co-founded Molecular Electronics Corporation, a company that aimed to use single molecules to make a new type of electronic memory. But Tour had even bigger dreams. In a 2000 story in Wired, he foretold a future in which molecular electronics would leapfrog silicon-based circuitry, allowing computer chips to…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5XNKG)
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. Chatbots could one day replace search engines. Here’s why that’s a terrible idea. Large AI models can simulate natural language with remarkable realism. Trained on hundreds of books and much of the internet,…
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by James Temple on (#5XNDN)
The world’s oceans are amazing carbon sponges. They already capture a quarter of human-produced carbon dioxide when surface waters react with the greenhouse gas in the air or marine organisms gobble it up as they grow. Their effectiveness has prompted growing hopes that we could somehow accelerate those natural processes to boost the amount the…
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by Rhiannon Williams on (#5XMAD)
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. A US oil-drilling hotspot is kicking out far more methane than we thought The news: One of the largest and fastest-growing oil production sites in the US is emitting far more methane than…
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by Will Douglas Heaven on (#5XM7Q)
At last year’s Google I/O, its annual showcase of new widgets and work-in-progress tech, CEO Sundar Pichai revealed his company’s “latest breakthrough in natural-language understanding”: a chatbot called LaMDA, designed to converse on any topic. He then gave a demo in which LaMDA answered questions about Pluto in natural language. The exchange showed off a…
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