Most days in her chambers, Judge Maritza Braswell, a federal magistrate judge in Colorado, sifts through stacks of documents written by people without a lawyer. Many of them can’t afford to hire a lawyer, and others have cases too weak or too small to interest one. She reads each one carefully, mindful of how daunting…
Would you take a payment to ramp down your electricity use? Would it change anything if you were doing so to help power a local data center? Google just signed a new deal to help pay for a virtual power plant (VPP) in the largest power grid in the US. The agreement is with Voltus,…
One day last October, sitting in the courtyard of his house in China’s Henan province, Dong Hui decided to see if he could hold a pen to write. Dong, 39, had sustained spinal cord injuries in a car accident six years earlier that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Slowly but determinedly, he wrote…
The alert was raised on May 5. Four health-care workers in the Ituri Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo had died from an unknown illness within four days. Rapid response teams were sent to investigate, and tests at a research center in Kinshasa revealed the culprit: the Bundibugyo virus, one of the viruses…
During Tuesday’s Google I/O keynote, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, proclaimed that we are currently “standing in the foothills of the singularity.” It was a striking statement—the singularity is the theoretical future moment when AI rapidly exceeds human intelligence and dramatically transforms the world. But what struck me as I listened in the…
This Sunday, a group of 42 athletes will gather in Las Vegas to compete in a somewhat unusual sporting competition. Participants in the inaugural Enhanced Games are being encouraged to take performance-enhancing drugs. The goal is to “push the boundaries of human performance.” The games’ organizers have said that competitors will only be taking substances that…
The vibes were strong at Code with Claude, Anthropic’s two-day event for software developers in London that kicked off on May 19, the same day as Google’s I/O in Palo Alto. (A coincidence, not a flex, Anthropic staffers assured me.) “Who here has shipped a pull request in the last week that was completely written…
Since its earliest days back in office, the Trump administration has been going after researchers who study and try to counter hate speech, harassment, propaganda, and disinformation online. Now, some of those researchers are fighting back. Last week their lawsuit—which could have global repercussions for online safety and free speech—made its first appearance in court. …
The startup Boston Metal has raised a $75 million funding round to produce critical metals, MIT Technology Review can exclusively report. The company has been known largely for its efforts to clean up steel production, an industry that’s responsible for about 8% of global greenhouse emissions today. With the additional money, the new focus could…
The baby chicks were shifting and starting to pip—or trying to hatch. But not from an egg. Instead, these chickens were growing inside transparent 3D-printed plastic cups at the Dallas headquarters of Colossal Biosciences. The biotech company today claimed it has developed a “fully artificial egg” as part of its effort to resurrect extinct avian…