Singularity Hub Staff
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This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through January 16)
CRYPTOCURRENCY
Lost Passwords Lock Millionaires Out of Their Bitcoin Fortunes
Nathaniel Popper | The New York Times
"Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through January 9)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
This Avocado Armchair Could Be the Future of AI
Will Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review
"OpenAI has extended GPT-3 with two new models that combine with image recognition to give its AI a...
‘The Secret History of the Moon’: The Epic Story of How the Moon Was Made
Where did the moon come from?
The leading theory suggests the moon was formed after a massive collision between a Mars-sized planet Theia and Earth in the early days of the solar system. Theia was...
These Were Our Favorite Tech Stories From Around the Web in 2020
This time last year we were commemorating the end of a decade and looking ahead to the next one. Enter the year that felt like a decade all by itself: 2020. News written in...
These Were the 15 Most-Read Singularity Hub Stories of 2020
Most Saturdays we post a curated collection of our favorite articles from the week. But with the year nearing its end, this Saturday and next we'll curate 2020 as a whole. First up, we'll...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through December 19)
HEALTH
How Science Beat the Virus
Ed Yong | The Atlantic
"Much like famous initiatives such as the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program, epidemics focus the energies of large groups of scientists. ...But 'nothing in history...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through December 12)
ENVIRONMENT
Human-Made Stuff Now Outweighs All Life on Earth
Stephanie Pappas | Scientific American
"Humanity has reached a new milestone in its dominance of the planet: human-made objects may now outweigh all of the living beings on...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through December 5)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
'It Will Change Everything': DeepMind's AI Makes Gigantic Leap in Solving Protein Structures
Ewen Callaway | Nature
"In some cases, AlphaFold's structure predictions were indistinguishable from those determined using 'gold standard' experimental methods such as...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through November 28)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Can a Computer Devise a Theory of Everything?
Dennis Overbye | The New York Times
"Computer programs like DeepMind’s AlphaGo keep discovering new ways to beat humans at games like Go and chess, which have been studied...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through November 21)
HEALTH
Larry Brilliant Says We'll Beat Covid—After We Go Through Hell
Steven Levy | Wired
"The epidemiologist calls it 'the best of times and the worst of times,' as good news on vaccines and testing coincides with...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through November 14)
COMPUTING
Like a Futuristic Phone Booth, PORTL Lets You Communicate Via Full-Body Hologram
Luke Dormehl | Digital Trends
" wants to reinvent the way we beam people, public figures or otherwise, into living rooms all over the...
How the Ownership Economy Could Make Internet Platforms Work for Everyone
The way we transact with each other and conduct business has changed a lot in the last 10 years.
For some of us it’s hard to remember how we used to find rides or places...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through November 7)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI Pioneer Geoff Hinton: 'Deep Learning Is Going to Be Able to Do Everything'
Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review
"i'I do believe deep learning is going to be able to do everything, but I...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 31)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI Has Cracked a Key Mathematical Puzzle for Understanding Our World
Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review
"Partial differential equations can describe everything from planetary motion to plate tectonics, but they’re notoriously hard to solve....
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 24)
AUGMENTED REALITY
Forget AR Glasses. Augmented Reality Is Headed to Your Windshield
Luke Dormehl | Digital Trends
"...What Envisics has developed is a headset-free, in-car holography system that aims to transform the way we view the road....
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 17)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
A Radical New Technique Lets AI Learn With Practically No Data
Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review
"Shown photos of a horse and a rhino, and told a unicorn is something in between, can...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 10)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
GPT-3 Bot Spends a Week Replying on Reddit, Starts Talking About the Illuminati
Rhett Jones | Gizmodo
"..the length of the replies was especially unusual in that they were sometimes coming within a minute of...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 3)
COMPUTING
Trapped-Ion Quantum Computer Sets New Mark for Quantum Volume
John Timmer | Ars Technica
"While still the offerings of companies that are using superconducting qubits, the high fidelity of the trapped ions makes them...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through Sept 26)
SENSORS
'Extremely Brilliant' X-Ray Beams Are About to Revolutionize How We See Into Matter
Rose Pastore | Gizmodo
"A new way of producing powerful X-ray beams—the brightest on Earth—is now making it possible to create 3D images...
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 desirable — but it seems to be crucial for humans...
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 training: data parallel training, model parallel training, and pipeline parallel...
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 over Los Angeles at approximately 3,000 feet on Sunday? Some...
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 having to learn anything about the progression of time, says...
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 competition different from most in the industry is that rivals...
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 of the week, Liam Porr had only heard of GPT-3....
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 estate. Their creators are promoting the machines as cost-effective solutions...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 1)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI's Latest Breakthrough Is Astonishingly Powerful, But Still Fighting Its Flaws
James Vincent | The Verge
"What makes GPT-3 amazing, they say, is not that it can tell you that the capital of Paraguay is...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 25)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI's New Language Generator GPT-3 Is Shockingly Good—and Completely Mindless
Will Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review
"'Playing with GPT-3 feels like seeing the future,' Arram Sabeti, a San Francisco–based developer and artist, tweeted last...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 18)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI's Fiction Spewing AI Is Learning to Generate Images
Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review
"The results are startlingly impressive and demonstrate a new path for using unsupervised learning, which trains on unlabeled data, in...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 11)
GENETICS
This Company Wants to Rewrite the Future of Genetic Disease
Megan Molteni | Wired
"Tessera has spent the past two years developing a new class of molecular manipulators capable of doing lots of things CRISPR can...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 4)
VIRTUAL REALITY
How Holographic Tech Is Shrinking VR Displays to the Size of Sunglasses
Kyle Orland | Ars Technica
"...researchers at Facebook Reality Labs are using holographic film to create a prototype VR display that looks less...
Why Bitcoin Will Be Crucial in Our Cashless Future
Cold, hard cash is king. But maybe not much longer. In many countries, cash transactions are all but disappearing.
People pay with cash just 20 percent of the time in Sweden and only 14 percent...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 27)
AUTOMATION
Amazon Shakes Up the Race for Self-Driving—and Ride-Hailing
Aarian Marshal | Wired
"Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says his company wants to be the 'Amazon for transportation.' Friday, Amazon made clear that it intends to be the...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 20)
ROBOTICS
Boston Dynamics Will Now Sell Any Business Its Own Spot Robot for $74,500
James Vincent | The Verge
"It’s a hefty price tag, equal to the base price for a luxury Tesla Model S. But Boston...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 13)
GOVERNANCE
A Bill in Congress Would Limit Uses of Facial Recognition
Tom Simonite | Wired
"Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM say they want federal rules around the technology. ...A police reform bill introduced in the House of Representatives...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 6)
IMPACT
Can't Go Out and Protest? Here's How to Help From Home
Demetria Mosley | Wired
"Whether you’re trying to maintain your social distance or just looking for other ways to speak up, here are some ideas...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 30)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI Debuts Gigantic GPT-3 Language Model With 175 Billion Parameters
Khari Johnson | VentureBeat
"A team of more than 30 OpenAI researchers have released a paper about GPT-3, a language model capable of achieving state-of-the-art results...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 23)
COMPUTING
OpenAI's Supercomputer Collaboration With Microsoft Marks Its Biggest Bet Yet on AGI
Kyle Wiggers | VentureBeat
"Today, during Microsoft’s Build 2020 developer conference, the first fruit of the partnership was revealed, in the form of a...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 16)
AUTOMATION
The Pandemic Is Emptying Call Centers. AI Chatbots Are Swooping In
Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review
"Over the last few years, advances in natural-language processing have also dramatically improved on the clunky automated call systems...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 9)
BIOTECH
With CRISPR, a Possible Quick Test for the Coronavirus
Carl Zimmer | The New York Times
"A team of scientists has developed an experimental prototype for a fairly quick, cheap test to diagnose the coronavirus that...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 2)
FUTURE
Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing
Ed Yong | The Atlantic
"...beyond its vast scope and sui generis nature, there are other reasons the pandemic continues to be so befuddling—a slew of forces scientific and societal,...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 25)
FUTURE
From the Editors: We Can Beat Covid-19. Just Trust Science and Hold the Line
Adam Rogers | Wired
"...When humanity hits a crisis, it always looks to science for help. Not because scientists are perfect, or...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 18)
BIOTECH
The Quest for a Pandemic Pill
Matthew Hutson | The New Yorker
"Our usual antiviral approach is, as researchers say, 'one bug, one drug'; often, it’s no drug. ... like to see a penicillin for viruses—one...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 11)
TECHNOLOGY
The Technology That Could Free America From Quarantine
Derek Thompson | The Atlantic
"Millions of Americans—many of whom might be deeply skeptical of government surveillance, or Big Tech—may become participants in a national project to track...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 4)
FUTURE
We Need to Start Modeling Alternative Futures
Andrew Marino | The Verge
"'I'm going to be the first person to tell you if you gave me all the data in the world and all the computers...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through March 28)
MEDICINE
Researchers Push for Mass Blood Tests as a Covid-19 Strategy
Gregory Barber | Wired
"...a simple blood test, like the kind Zaaijer’s team will perform on the donated blood, can tell whether it carries antibodies to...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through March 21)
MEDICINE
America Is Finally Testing for Coronavirus in Significant Volumes
Timothy B. Lee | Ars Technica
"On Thursday, the total number of coronavirus tests conducted in America topped 100,000, according to the COVID tracking project. That's a...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through March 14)
MEDICINE
Flattening the Coronavirus Curve
Siobhan Roberts | The New York Times
"The ideal goal in fighting an epidemic or pandemic is to completely halt the spread. But merely slowing it—mitigation—is critical. This reduces the number of...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through March 7)
SPACE
Inside Elon Musk's Plan to Build One Starship a Week—and Settle Mars
Eric Berger | Ars Technica
"Musk always wants to go fast. He will not live forever, and the money may eventually run dry. He...
This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 22)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The Messy, Secretive Reality Behind OpenAI's Bid to Save the World
Karen Hao | MIT Technology Review
"The AI moonshot was founded in the spirit of transparency. This is the inside story of how competitive...
