MIT Technology Review

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. Everything you need to know about the monkeypox vaccines The global outbreak of monkeypox has so far led to more than 24,000 cases in over 80 countries, and the World Health Organization has…

The global outbreak of monkeypox has so far led to more than 24,000 cases in over 80 countries, and the World Health Organization has warned that the window of opportunity to contain the disease and prevent it from becoming endemic outside Africa is rapidly closing. Vaccines represent a potentially crucial measure. Monkeypox vaccines are already…

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. Electric vehicle uptake in the US could be held back by a lack of batteries The news: The US Senate Democrats released a bill last week that could significantly cut the country’s carbon…

A tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 designed to spur adoption of EVs could fail to reach consumers because of the auto industry’s heavy reliance on battery materials and components from China. To qualify for the credit, which could effectively shave up to $7,500 off the price of a new EV, the…

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. Wildfires are raging across the US The news: Five large wildfires ignited across the US yesterday, with further outbreaks expected over the next few days, experts have warned. The new fires in California,…

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. Here are the biggest technology wins in the breakthrough climate bill Two weeks after blowing up hopes of a US climate deal, Senator Joe Manchin announced on Wednesday that he and Senator Chuck…

Two weeks after blowing up hopes of a US climate deal, Senator Joe Manchin announced on Wednesday that he and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, had struck a compromise agreement that would provide nearly $400 billion for climate and energy projects. It remains to be seen whether the sprawling spending package proposed by…

When Twitter introduced a new feature called Trends in mid-2008, the company’s cofounder Jack Dorsey described it as an evolution of the morning media diet. Where he might once have gained a sense of what was important in the world by reading newspapers or online media, Dorsey wrote in a short blog post, Trends, “at…

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. DeepMind has predicted the structure of almost every protein known to science The news: DeepMind says its AlphaFold tool has successfully predicted the structure of nearly all proteins known to science. From today,…

DeepMind says its AlphaFold tool has successfully predicted the structure of nearly all proteins known to science. From today, the Alphabet-owned AI lab is offering its database of over 200 million proteins to anyone for free. When DeepMind introduced AlphaFold in 2020, it took the science community by surprise. Scientists had spent decades trying to…

The blistering heat waves that set temperature records across much of the US in recent days have strained electricity systems, threatening to knock out power in vulnerable regions of the country. The electricity has largely stayed online so far this summer, but there have been scattered problems and close calls already. Heavy use of energy-sucking…

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 day in the life of a Chinese robotaxi driver When Liu Yang started his current job, he found it hard to go back to driving his own car: “I instinctively went for…

When Liu Yang started his current job, he found it hard to go back to driving his own car. “I instinctively went for the passenger seat. Or when I was driving, I would expect the car to brake by itself,” says the 33-year-old Beijing native, who joined the Chinese tech giant Baidu in January 2021…

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. We’re starting to understand the mysterious surge of hepatitis in children The news: Hundreds of young children around the world have developed severe cases of hepatitis with no obvious cause, leaving doctors baffled.…

There have been so many recent multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency thefts that it’s easy to lose track. Organized crime, bad cybersecurity, financially motivated spies, and colorful criminals of all kinds have made so many headlines that even huge heists can go mostly unnoticed by the public. But sometimes the government is able to get it back. Last…

Hundreds of young children around the world have developed severe cases of hepatitis with no obvious cause, leaving doctors baffled. But two new studies reveal the potential culprits: a combination of genetic factors, lockdowns, and at least two viruses working together. Doctors first noticed a strange cluster of hepatitis cases in young children in Scotland…

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. Wastewater could help us more accurately detect monkeypox The news: Last month, Stanford’s Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network, or SCAN, added monkeypox to the suite of viruses it checks wastewater for daily. Since then,…

Last month, Stanford’s Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network, or SCAN, added monkeypox to the suite of viruses it checks wastewater for daily. Since then, monkeypox has been detected in 10 of the 11 sewer systems that SCAN tests, including those in Sacramento, Palo Alto, and several other cities in California’s Bay Area. As of July 21,…

If you have been on Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming platform, you might have noticed an anomaly on the chart of the top 20 most popular apps: Wallpaper Engine. The software is pretty cool—it lets you download animated and interactive wallpapers for your machine’s monitor—but it’s hard to explain why an obscure wallpaper app…

When one of China’s biggest celebrities, Simon Gong—also known as Gong Jun—released a new music video in June 2022, it quickly attracted 15 million views on the country’s Twitter-like microblogging site Weibo. But the event also stood out for a different reason—one that only eagle-eyed fans might have noticed. The singer in the video was not…

Millions of people are now experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand. Blistering heat waves have smashed temperature records around the globe this summer, scorching crops, knocking out power, fueling wildfires, buckling roads and runways, and likely killing thousands across Europe alone. The dizzyingly quick shift from an abstract threat to an era of tumbling…

Europe is sweltering in record-breaking temperatures this week, and across the continent, people are largely trying to cope without air conditioning. Fewer than 10% of households in Europe are air-conditioned. But as temperatures rise, that figure is set to climb. Rising AC use may present new challenges, as most systems are inefficient and produce emissions…

OpenAI will now sell its image-making program DALL-E 2 to the million people on its waiting list, MIT Technology Review can reveal. Around 100,000 people have played with DALL-E 2 since its invite-only launch in April. Today, the San Francisco–based company is opening the gates to 10 times as many as it turns the AI…

Alice Moon couldn’t stop throwing up. She had made a name for herself as an online cannabis influencer, but after a weed-infused dinner in a Malibu home in 2018, she spent more than two weeks constantly puking—unable to keep down food or water, going back and forth to urgent care for IVs, and at one…

“Wait, what? How?” Emily Jones wasn’t used to being left behind. A top sim-racing driver with multiple wins to her name, Jones jerked the steering wheel in the e-sports rig, eyes fixed on the screen in front of her: “I’m pushing way too hard to keep up— How does it do that?” Her staccato commentary…

If digital transformation was a strategic business priority in the pre-2020 era, the pandemic propelled it to an existential imperative. Consumers witnessed the results of this enforced experiment in myriad ways. Their favorite clothing brand launched virtual try-on services. Their doctor became accessible via telehealth appointments. Even their local government—not an entity typically associated with…

The robot dog is waving its legs in the air like an exasperated beetle. After 10 minutes of struggling, it manages to roll over to its front. Half an hour in, the robot is taking its first clumsy steps, like a newborn calf. But after one hour, the robot is strutting around the lab with…

Imagine you are working on your novel on your home computer. It’s nearly finished; you have already written approximately one million words. All of a sudden, the online word processing software tells you that you can no longer open the draft because it contains illegal information. Within an instant, all your words are lost. This…

“We’re dealing with a crisis here, folks.” The warning from John Kerry, the US president’s top climate envoy, to global leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos in May 2022 couldn’t have been clearer. And Asia Pacific—home to 60% of the global population and responsible for more than half of the world’s greenhouse gas…

Nancy Vera was awakened suddenly at midnight on July 12 by the sound of a single gunshot fired into her yard. She looked at a security camera just in time to see a truck speed away. Vera was shocked but not surprised. The president of the Corpus Christi, Texas, branch of the American Federation of…

Last summer, a TikTok creator named Ziggi Tyler posted a video calling out a disturbing problem he found in the app’s Creator Marketplace, a tool that matches creators with brands looking to pay for sponsored content. Tyler said he was unable to enter phrases like “Black Lives Matter” and “supporting Black excellence” into his Marketplace…

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. The US military wants to understand the most important software on Earth It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the whole world is built on top of the Linux kernel—although most…

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the whole world is built on top of the Linux kernel—although most people have never heard of it. It is one of the very first programs that load when most computers power up. It enables the hardware running the machine to interact with the software, governs…

Some of the world’s most productive agricultural regions from India to the US Midwest have already broken temperature records this year, with potentially worrying implications for food supplies. Hot days and nights can make drought conditions worse, and that’s not the only way rising temperatures can hurt crops. In extreme conditions, the molecular machinery inside…

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. The James Webb Space Telescope just delivered some incredible new images of the universe NASA has released the second set of images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, revealing galaxies, planets, and…

The first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have been released by NASA, following an initial reveal by US President Joe Biden. JWST’s stunning first science image, which was unveiled by Biden on Monday, is a deep view into the universe showing thousands of galaxies, showcasing the immense power of the $10…