Monthly Archives: August, 2019

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 31)

COMPUTING A Carbon Nanotube Microprocessor Mature Enough to Say Hello Samuel K. Moore | IEEE Spectrum "It’s the most complex integration of carbon nanotube-based CMOS logic so...

Bargain-Hunting Robocars Could Spell the End for Downtown Parking

Imagine a scene from the near future: you get dropped off downtown by a driverless car. You slam the door and head into your...

Nuke Mars? Here Are Some (Hopefully Better) Alternatives

Scientists and science fiction writers have been toying with the idea of terraforming Mars for the better part of a century. Turning the red...

You’ll Hail Your First Flying Taxi Within a Decade

Not too long ago, the notion of flying cars was most comfortably categorized alongside fusion power—a classic tech vision that seemed forever stuck just...

Inside the Story of LightSail 2, a Solar Sail to the Stars

Right now, there’s a piece of reflective fabric about the size of a boxing ring orbiting the Earth. On the surface, it looks like...

This Giant AI Chip Is the Size of an iPad and Holds 1.2 Trillion Transistors

People say size doesn’t matter, but when it comes to AI the makers of the largest computer chip ever beg to differ. There are...

How Much Is AI Really Moving the Needle on Health?

When it comes to health and wellness, most people have a similar goal: we want to live a healthier, longer, and happier life. Thanks...

The Internet Is a Force of Nature. It’s Our Job to Civilize It.

We’re a long way from the halcyon days of the early internet, when the promise of a decentralized digital communications network meant anyone could...

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 24)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE To Power AI, This Startup Built a Really, Really Big Chip Tom Simonite | Wired "The silicon monster is almost 22 centimeters—roughly 9 inches—on each side, making...

The Promise of Direct Air Capture: Making Stuff Out of Thin Air

Imagine making fuel, plastics, and concrete out of “thin air." That’s the promise of direct air capture (DAC), a technology that fundamentally disrupts our...

Tech Is Fueling the Hong Kong Movement. Here’s How, and Why It’s a Huge Step for Freedom

Over the past two months, Hong Kong has roared into global headlines. Its seven million citizens have increasingly taken to the streets (and the...

The Time for AI Is Now. Here’s Why

You hear a lot these days about the sheer transformative power of AI. There’s pure intelligence: DeepMind’s algorithms readily beat humans at Go and StarCraft,...

These Are the Meta-Trends Shaping the Future (at Breakneck Speed)

Life is pretty different now than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. It’s sort of exciting, and sort of scary....

Harvard’s Smart Exo-Shorts Talk to the Cloud to Help You Walk and Run

Exosuits don’t generally scream “fashionable” or “svelte.” Take the mind-controlled robotic exoskeleton that allowed a paraplegic man to kick off the World Cup back...

Singularity University’s Global Summit Kicks off Today in San Francisco

Singularity University’s (SU) annual Global Summit begins today in San Francisco, running through Wednesday, August 21. The Singularity Hub team is on the ground...

California Passed the Country’s First Law to Prevent Genetic Biohacking

Genetic engineering technologies are quickly becoming mature and cheap enough for people to start using them in their own homes. That’s got scientists and...

Inside China’s Play to Become the World’s CRISPR Superpower

In some ways, Hercules is pretty standard for the course where beagles are concerned. He likes to run around and generally looks as (borderline...

This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through August 17)

AUGMENTED REALITY This Is the Computer You'll Wear on Your Face in 10 Years Mark Sullivan | Fast Company " foreshadow a device that many of us...

AI Is in Danger of Becoming Too Male—New Research

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are becoming smarter every day, beating world champions in games like Go, identifying tumors in medical scans better than human...

The Value of Owning Your Business’s Values

Nikolay Storonsky, CEO of the UK’s hottest fintech startup Revolut, has been extremely vocal about his company’s values. “Ninety-five per cent of founders, they...

This CAR-T Tag-Team Could Wipe Out HIV for Good

CAR-T may have made its name as the cancer breakthrough of this century, but its roots dig far back to one of humanity’s other...

Driverless Electric Trucks Are Coming, and They’ll Affect You More Than You Think

Self-driving and electric cars just don’t stop making headlines lately. Amazon invested in self-driving startup Aurora earlier this year. Waymo, Daimler, GM, along with...

Wait, What? The First Human-Monkey Hybrid Embryo Was Just Created in China

Last week, news broke that a prominent stem cell researcher is making human-monkey chimeras in a secretive lab in China. The story, first reported by...

How Cheap Must Batteries Get for Renewables to Compete With Fossil Fuels?

While solar and wind power are rapidly becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels in areas with lots of sun and wind, they still can’t provide...

The Moral Case for Lightning: A Global Private Payment Network

The other day, I went to buy dog food at my local pet shop. I bought a large bag of dog food and some...

This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through August 10)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Inside DeepMind's Epic Mission to Solve Science's Trickiest Problem Greg Williams | Wired UK "For Hassabis, Suleyman and Legg, if the first nine years of...

The Age of Solar Energy Abundance Is Coming in Hot

Every five days, the sun provides the Earth with as much energy as all proven supplies of oil, coal, and natural gas. If humanity...

Three Invaluable Ways AI and Neuroscience Are Driving Each Other Forward

DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis once pointed to the human brain as a paramount inspiration for building AI with human-like intelligence. He’s not the only one....

Watch China’s New Hybrid AI Chip Power an Autonomous Bike

When I lived in Beijing back in the 90s, a man walking his bike was nothing to look at. But today, I did a...

Why Companies and Armies Are Hiring Science Fiction Writers

Are you a science fiction writer? Do you have command of the French language? If you can answer yes to both questions, a new...

Where Death Ends and Cyborgs Begin, With Futurist Zoltan Istvan

Transhumanism is a growing movement but also one of the most controversial. Though there are many varying offshoots within the movement, the general core...

The Newest Way to Go Green? Retrofit Your Old Car to Make It Electric

Thanks to a rapid decline in lithium-ion battery prices and increases in their energy storage density, we’re headed into the age of the electric...

What If We Visualized Humanity’s Future in Millennia Instead of Centuries?

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” It’s a classic job interview question, designed to probe your level of ambition and aspiration. And...

This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through August 3)

NEUROSCIENCE Facebook Is Funding Brain Experiments to Create a Device That Reads Your Mind Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review "The research is important because it could...

What ‘Chernobyl’ Can Teach Us About Failure

I’ve been watching the outstanding HBO series Chernobyl, which details the worst nuclear reactor meltdown in human history—an event that was approximately 400 times...

Undeclared Wars in Cyberspace Are Becoming More Aggressive and Automated

The US is at war. That’s probably not exactly news, as the country has been engaged in one type of conflict or another for...
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