Yearly Archives: 2020

Nvidia’s Arm Acquisition Brings the Two Key Technologies of This Century Under One Roof

Artificial intelligence and mobile computing have been two of the most disruptive technologies of this century. The unification of the two companies that made...

What Two Billion People Pay Attention to Is Still in the Hands of a Few Companies

With increasing frequency, I notice sudden silences, like sonic black holes opening around me. There’ll be the white noise of a person puttering about...

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through September 19)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE How to Give A.I. a Pinch of Consciousness Chris Baraniuk | OneZero "That higher, attentive level of processing is not always necessary — or even...

Venus: Could It Really Harbor Life? New Study Springs a Surprise

Earth’s sister planet, Venus, has not been regarded as a high priority in the search for life. Its surface temperature of around 450°C is...

Microsoft Had a Crazy Idea to Put Servers Under Water—and It Totally Worked

A little over two years ago, a shipping container-sized cylinder bearing Microsoft’s name and logo was lowered onto the ocean floor off the northern...

This Startup Is Growing Sushi-Grade Salmon From Cells in a Lab

As the ills of factory farming become more pronounced, people are increasingly gravitating towards vegetarian or pescatarian diets. Besides producing a large percentage of...

A CRISPR Baby Future? New Report Outlines Path to Human Germline Editing

What will it take for CRISPR babies to become medically acceptable? Earlier this month, an international commission of scientists released a highly anticipated report...

This Microchip Has Its Own Built-In Cooling System

As we pack electronics into ever smaller packages, dealing with the heat they produce is becoming a growing challenge. Now researchers have developed a...

Resilience Is the New Black: The Lessons of Covid-19

For years it can seem as if the world is predictable, and then all at once, everything changes. Most of us have been blown away...

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through September 12)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Microsoft's Updated DeepSpeed Can Train Trillion-Parameter AI Models With Fewer GPUs Kyle Wiggers | TechCrunch "The enhanced DeepSpeed leverages three techniques to enable 'trillion-scale' model...

Walmart Is Piloting Drone Delivery in North Carolina

The coronavirus pandemic has forced us to quickly adapt to circumstances that were unimaginable a year ago. Companies are finding new ways to do...

Uber Wants to Go All-Electric by 2030. It Won’t Be Easy

The coronavirus pandemic has been an all-around nightmare, but there are a few silver linings. One of these is a renewed focus on the...

Oxford Scientists: These Are Final Steps We’re Taking to Get Our Coronavirus Vaccine Approved

Of the hundreds of potential Covid-19 vaccines in development, six are in the final stages of testing, known as phase three clinical trials. One...

An Army of Microscopic Robots Is Ready to Patrol Your Body

If I were to picture futuristic bots that could revolutionize both microrobotics and medicine, a Pop-Tart with four squiggly legs would not be on...

A New Breakthrough Just Brought City-Wide Quantum Communication Into Reach

A quantum internet promises a truly unhackable way to communicate, but most proposals so far only link two users at a time and require...

Solarpunk Is Growing a Gorgeous New World in the Cracks of the Old One

What will the future look, smell, sound, taste, and feel like? And why on Earth—and other planets—are those questions relevant, especially given the havoc...

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through September 5)

TRANSPORTATION Did You Fly a Jetpack Over Los Angeles This Weekend? Because the FBI Is Looking for You Tom McKay | Gizmodo "Did you fly a jetpack...

Microsoft’s New Deepfake Detector Puts Reality to the Test

The upcoming US presidential election seems set to be something of a mess—to put it lightly. Covid-19 will likely deter millions from voting in...

How a New Solar and Lighting Technology Could Propel a Renewable Energy Transformation

The demand for cheaper, greener electricity means that the energy landscape is changing faster than at any other point in history. This is particularly...

Stream or Skip? A Synthetic Biologist’s Review of ‘Biohackers’ on Netflix

Glow-in-the-dark mice, gene-modded weed, and payment microchips in your hand? That's the surprisingly realistic science backdrop of Biohackers, but that's where it stays. Biohackers, the...

Neuralink’s Wildly Anticipated New Brain Implant: the Hype vs. the Science

Neuralink’s wildly anticipated demo last Friday left me with more questions than answers. With a presentation teeming with promises and vision but scant on...

Could Quantum Computing Progress Be Halted by Background Radiation?

Doing calculations with a quantum computer is a race against time, thanks to the fragility of the quantum states at their heart. And new...

New Zealand Is About to Test Long-Range Wireless Power Transmission

A famous image of inventor Nikola Tesla shows him casually sitting on a chair, legs crossed, taking notes—oblivious to the profusion of artificial lightning...

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 29)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE How Special Relativity Can Help AI Predict the Future Will Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review "The AI can make guesses about the future without...

Algorithms Workers Can’t See Are Increasingly Pulling the Management Strings

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” HAL’s cold, if polite, refusal to open the pod bay doors in 2001: A Space...

Waymo Just Started Testing Its Driverless Trucks in Texas

It’s been almost four years since Uber shipped 50,000 cans of beer across Colorado in a self-driving truck. It was the first-ever commercial shipment...

Facebook Wants to Make Smart Robots to Explore Every Nook and Cranny of Your Home

“Hey Alexa, turn on the kitchen light.” “Hey Alexa, play soothing music at volume three.” “Hey Alexa, tell me where to find my keys.” You can ask...

This Is How Your Brain Responds to Social Influence

I’m a doormat when it comes to peer pressure. Jump off a 32-foot (10 meter) diving board without any experience? Sure! Propel off a...

Scientists Used Protein Switches to Turn T Cells Into Cancer-Fighting Guided Missiles

One of the main challenges in curing cancer is that unlike foreign invaders, tumor cells are part of the body and so able to...

Moore’s Law Lives: Intel Says Chips Will Pack 50 Times More Transistors

If you weren’t already convinced the digital world is taking over, you probably are now. To keep the economy on life support as people stay...

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 22)

COMPUTING IBM Doubles Its Quantum Computer Performance Stephen Shankland | CNET "There's now a race afoot to make the fastest quantum computer. What makes the quantum computing...

6G Will Be 100 Times Faster Than 5G—and Now There’s a Chip for It

Though 5G—a next-generation speed upgrade to wireless networks—is scarcely up and running (and still nonexistent in many places) researchers are already working on what...

We’re Using Microbes to Clean Up Toxic Electronic Waste. Here’s How

If you were to stack up all the electronic waste produced annually around the world it would weigh as much as all the commercial...

A Norwegian Startup Is Turning Dry Deserts Into Fertile Cropland

The UN population forecast predicts that by 2050 there will be almost 10 billion people on the planet. They’ll live mostly in cities and...

We Need New, Safer Ways to Treat Pain. Could Electroacupuncture Be One?

In college, I volunteered to have a needle jabbed into the fleshy part between my thumb and forefinger in the name of acupuncture. I...

Scientists Found a Way to Turn Bricks Into Batteries

One of the biggest barriers to the renewable energy revolution is working out how to store power when the sun doesn't shine and the...

Biotechnology Could Change the Cattle Industry. Will It Succeed?

When Ralph Fisher, a Texas cattle rancher, set eyes on one of the world’s first cloned calves in August 1999, he didn’t care what...

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 15)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE A College Kid's Fake AI-Generated Blog Fooled Tens of Thousands. This Is How He Created It. Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review "At the start...

New Algorithm Paves the Way Towards Error-Free Quantum Computing

No one likes noise when they’re working through a difficult problem. Quantum computers are no different, and now researchers have devised a new way...

These Sleek Houses Are 3D Printed, and They Fit in Your Backyard

If you’d told me ten years ago that I could go live in a house built by a giant concrete-spitting 3D printer, I not...

An Indian Company Is Gearing Up to Make Millions of Doses of a $3 Covid-19 Vaccine

As the Covid-19 pandemic drags on, there’s one thing we’re all counting on to rescue us from the drudgery of socially-distanced life: a vaccine. How...

Scientists Gene-Hack Cotton Plants to Make Them Every Color of the Rainbow

Imagine this: You’re on a drive through cotton country. The sun’s out, top’s down. It’s a beautiful, totally normal day. Only, what was once...

The Secret to a Long, Healthy Life Is in the Genes of the Oldest Humans Alive

The first time I heard nematode worms can teach us something about human longevity, I balked at the idea. How the hell can a...

Science Fiction Explores the Interconnectedness Revealed by the Coronavirus Pandemic

In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, a theory widely shared on social media suggested that a science fiction text, Dean Koontz’s 1981...

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 8)

ROBOTICS For Robots, It's a Time to Shine (and Maybe Disinfect) Lisa Prevost | The New York Times "...cleaning robots are having a moment in commercial real...

The Deck Is Not Rigged: Poker and the Limits of AI

Tuomas Sandholm, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, is not a poker player—or much of a poker fan, in fact—but he is fascinated...

The Global Work Crisis: Automation, the Case Against Jobs, and What to Do About It

The alarm bell rings. You open your eyes, come to your senses, and slide from dream state to consciousness. You hit the snooze button,...

These Scientists Just Completed a 3D ‘Google Earth’ for the Brain

Human brain maps are a dime a dozen these days. Maps that detail neurons in a certain region. Maps that draw out functional connections...

Airships Are No Longer a Relic of the Past; You Could Ride in One by 2023

As concern over climate change and rising temperatures grows, the airline industry is taking heat (pun intended). Flying accounts for 2.5 percent of global...

Construction of the World’s Biggest Nuclear Fusion Plant Just Started in France

Fusion power promises to provide limitless green energy using cheap and abundant fuel, but it’s a long-running joke that it’s always 20 years away....
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