Tech
The Download: Amazon’s home-guarding robot, and covid’s violent legacy
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.
Amazon has a new plan for its home robot Astro: to guard your life
The news: Amazon announced yesterday that its home robot, Astro, will be getting a slew of major updates aimed at further embedding it in homes—and in our daily lives.
The details: The new features offer more home monitoring. Astro will be able to watch pets and send a video feed of their activities to users, for example. But the robot will also be able to wander around the house to keep an eye on rooms and entry points. Amazon also announced a new collaboration between Astro and the Ring home security camera system designed to protect areas outside the home from possible break-ins.
Why it matters: Ring’s approach to surveillance hasn’t been without controversy. It’s reasonable to ask whether combining Astro’s ability to roam around a house with Ring’s established surveillance system might create even more problems than either product did in their previous iterations. Read the full story.
—Tanya Basu
The pandemic created a “perfect storm” for Black women at risk of domestic violence
Starr Davis was smitten when she met a handsome stranger with flawless skin and a wide smile in March 2020. He was charming and persistent; but their whirlwind romance took a major turn when she fell pregnant. His aggressive behavior started to make her uncomfortable, but he was the father of her child.
He became physically abusive a few weeks after she moved in with him. He forbade her from setting foot outside, saying it was to protect her and their unborn child from covid. With no friends or close family nearby for support, she suffered in silence.
Covid seems to have made things worse for many women experiencing violence at home. Anti-domestic-violence advocates point to dramatic increases in calls to shelters and support groups, and many care workers say this increase in domestic violence seems to have disproportionately affected Black women like Davis. Read the full story.
—Chandra Thomas Whitfield
Podcast: AI births digital humans
In the latest episode of our podcast, In Machines We Trust, we dig into the world of digital twins: AI-powered replicas designed to capture the physical look and expressions of real humans. But although the entertainment industry is embracing them, they raise familiar, thorny questions about ownership and digital rights. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you usually listen.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Sweden has found a new leak in the Nord Stream pipeline
Russia is still denying any responsibility for attacking the gas pipeline, as the number of known leaks reaches four. (BBC)
+ Finding someone to blame is easier said than done. (Wired $)
+ The methane leak is likely to be the biggest ever, by far. (AP News)
+ The country’s tech imports have collapsed under sanctions. (Insider $)
+ Russia hasn’t been honest about the state of the pipeline for quite some time. (Slate $)
2 A bionic pancreas could solve one of the biggest challenges of diabetes
An algorithm takes over the arduous job of counting carbohydrates. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Crypto is still in crisis
Senior executives are still departing major firms, and investors are still wary. (Bloomberg $)
+ Do Kwon, the missing Terraform boss, has called the case against him ‘unfair.’ (Bloomberg $)
+ Crypto is weathering a bitter storm. Some still hold on for dear life. (MIT Technology Review)
4 A teenager died after a telehealth provider prescribed him antidepressants
The company failed to obtain consent from the minor’s parents. (WSJ $)
5 China’s chipmakers are being investigated
Which is dealing the industry’s dreams of self-sufficiency a heavy blow. (FT $)
+ Corruption is sending shock waves through China’s chipmaking industry. (MIT Technology Review)
+ There are no chip reserves. (Vox)
6 What it’s like being trapped in a driverless car
The vehicles work pretty well—until they don’t. (NYT $)
+ The big new idea for making self-driving cars that can go anywhere. (MIT Technology Review)
7 How good bacteria can fight malnutrition
Food that rebalances malnourished microbiomes can help children to grow. (Economist $)
+ Choanoflagellates are tiny creatures that also harbor bacteria communities. (The Atlantic $)
8 Tech startups are helping to rebuild Bosnia
Its up-and-coming businesses want to reverse the war-scarred nation’s brain drain. (Rest of World)
9 TikTok is making it harder for record execs to discover new musicians
There’s plenty of chaff to separate from the wheat. (The Guardian)
+ A car-renting couple have been tracking their customers on the platform. (Motherboard)
+ Investors are growing tired of chasing TikTok-style social apps. (The Information $)
10 The CIA is investing in tech to resurrect mammoths 
It uses CRISPR gene editing to create optimized genetic code. (Intercept)
Quote of the day
“Everything is possible if you’re brave.”
—Katherin Bestandig, a regular at the Bam Bam Beach Bitcoin Bar in Lagos, Portugal, describes her bold approach to investing in volatile cryptocurrency to the New York Times.
The big story
Why the balance of power in tech is shifting toward workers
February 2022
Something has changed for tech giants. Even as they continue to hold tremendous influence in our daily lives, a growing accountability movement has begun to check their power. Led in large part by tech workers themselves, a movement seeking reform of how these companies do business has taken on unprecedented momentum, particularly in the past year.
Concerns and anger over tech companies’ impact in the world is nothing new, of course. What’s changed is that workers are increasingly getting organized. Read the full story.
—Jane Lytvynenko
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Ever feel like you’re being watched?
+ It’s up to you, New York!
+ Forget the gym, all the coolest cats are bouldering these days.
+ Lizzo visiting the Library of Congress to play a priceless flute is the serotonin boost I needed today.
+ A helpful reminder that all on LinkedIn is not as it seems (thanks Beth!)
My senior spring in high school, I decided to defer my MIT enrollment by a year. I had always planned to take a gap year, but after receiving the silver tube in the mail and seeing all my college-bound friends plan out their classes and dorm decor, I got cold feet. Every time I mentioned my plans, I was met with questions like “But what about school?” and “MIT is cool with this?”
Yeah. MIT totally is. Postponing your MIT start date is as simple as clicking a checkbox.
COURTESY PHOTO
Now, having finished my first year of classes, I’m really grateful that I stuck with my decision to delay MIT, as I realized that having a full year of unstructured time is a gift. I could let my creative juices run. Pick up hobbies for fun. Do cool things like work at an AI startup and teach myself how to create latte art. My favorite part of the year, however, was backpacking across Europe. I traveled through Austria, Slovakia, Russia, Spain, France, the UK, Greece, Italy, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Hungary.
Moreover, despite my fear that I’d be losing a valuable year, traveling turned out to be the most productive thing I could have done with my time. I got to explore different cultures, meet new people from all over the world, and gain unique perspectives that I couldn’t have gotten otherwise. My travels throughout Europe allowed me to leave my comfort zone and expand my understanding of the greater human experience.
“In Iceland there’s less focus on hustle culture, and this relaxed approach to work-life balance ends up fostering creativity. This was a wild revelation to a bunch of MIT students.”
When I became a full-time student last fall, I realized that StartLabs, the premier undergraduate entrepreneurship club on campus, gives MIT undergrads a similar opportunity to expand their horizons and experience new things. I immediately signed up. At StartLabs, we host fireside chats and ideathons throughout the year. But our flagship event is our annual TechTrek over spring break. In previous years, StartLabs has gone on TechTrek trips to Germany, Switzerland, and Israel. On these fully funded trips, StartLabs members have visited and collaborated with industry leaders, incubators, startups, and academic institutions. They take these treks both to connect with the global startup sphere and to build closer relationships within the club itself.
Most important, however, the process of organizing the TechTrek is itself an expedited introduction to entrepreneurship. The trip is entirely planned by StartLabs members; we figure out travel logistics, find sponsors, and then discover ways to optimize our funding.
COURTESY PHOTO
In organizing this year’s trip to Iceland, we had to learn how to delegate roles to all the planners and how to maintain morale when making this trip a reality seemed to be an impossible task. We woke up extra early to take 6 a.m. calls with Icelandic founders and sponsors. We came up with options for different levels of sponsorship, used pattern recognition to deduce the email addresses of hundreds of potential contacts at organizations we wanted to visit, and all got scrappy with utilizing our LinkedIn connections.
And as any good entrepreneur must, we had to learn how to be lean and maximize our resources. To stretch our food budget, we planned all our incubator and company visits around lunchtime in hopes of getting fed, played human Tetris as we fit 16 people into a six-person Airbnb, and emailed grocery stores to get their nearly expired foods for a discount. We even made a deal with the local bus company to give us free tickets in exchange for a story post on our Instagram account.
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.
How ubiquitous keyboard software puts hundreds of millions of Chinese users at risk
For millions of Chinese people, the first software they download onto devices is always the same: a keyboard app. Yet few of them are aware that it may make everything they type vulnerable to spying eyes.
QWERTY keyboards are inefficient as many Chinese characters share the same latinized spelling. As a result, many switch to smart, localized keyboard apps to save time and frustration. Today, over 800 million Chinese people use third-party keyboard apps on their PCs, laptops, and mobile phones.
But a recent report by the Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto–affiliated research group, revealed that Sogou, one of the most popular Chinese keyboard apps, had a massive security loophole. Read the full story.
—Zeyi Yang
Why we should all be rooting for boring AI
Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense announced it is setting up a Generative AI Task Force, aimed at “analyzing and integrating” AI tools such as large language models across the department. It hopes they could improve intelligence and operational planning.
But those might not be the right use cases, writes our senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkila. Generative AI tools, such as language models, are glitchy and unpredictable, and they make things up. They also have massive security vulnerabilities, privacy problems, and deeply ingrained biases.
Applying these technologies in high-stakes settings could lead to deadly accidents where it’s unclear who or what should be held responsible, or even why the problem occurred. The DoD’s best bet is to apply generative AI to more mundane things like Excel, email, or word processing. Read the full story.
This story is from The Algorithm, Melissa’s weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.
The ice cores that will let us look 1.5 million years into the past
To better understand the role atmospheric carbon dioxide plays in Earth’s climate cycles, scientists have long turned to ice cores drilled in Antarctica, where snow layers accumulate and compact over hundreds of thousands of years, trapping samples of ancient air in a lattice of bubbles that serve as tiny time capsules.
By analyzing those cores, scientists can connect greenhouse-gas concentrations with temperatures going back 800,000 years. Now, a new European-led initiative hopes to eventually retrieve the oldest core yet, dating back 1.5 million years. But that impressive feat is still only the first step. Once they’ve done that, they’ll have to figure out how they’re going to extract the air from the ice. Read the full story.
—Christian Elliott
This story is from the latest edition of our print magazine, set to go live tomorrow. Subscribe today for as low as $8/month to ensure you receive full access to the new Ethics issue and in-depth stories on experimental drugs, AI assisted warfare, microfinance, and more.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 How AI got dragged into the culture wars
Fears about ‘woke’ AI fundamentally misunderstand how it works. Yet they’re gaining traction. (The Guardian)
+ Why it’s impossible to build an unbiased AI language model. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Researchers are racing to understand a new coronavirus variant
It’s unlikely to be cause for concern, but it shows this virus still has plenty of tricks up its sleeve. (Nature)
+ Covid hasn’t entirely gone away—here’s where we stand. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Why we can’t afford to stop monitoring it. (Ars Technica)
3 How Hilary became such a monster storm
Much of it is down to unusually hot sea surface temperatures. (Wired $)
+ The era of simultaneous climate disasters is here to stay. (Axios)
+ People are donning cooling vests so they can work through the heat. (Wired $)
4 Brain privacy is set to become important
Scientists are getting better at decoding our brain data. It’s surely only a matter of time before others want a peek. (The Atlantic $)
+ How your brain data could be used against you. (MIT Technology Review)
5 How Nvidia built such a big competitive advantage in AI chips
Today it accounts for 70% of all AI chip sales—and an even greater share for training generative models. (NYT $)
+ The chips it’s selling to China are less effective due to US export controls. (Ars Technica)
+ These simple design rules could turn the chip industry on its head. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Inside the complex world of dissociative identity disorder on TikTok
Reducing stigma is great, but doctors fear people are self-diagnosing or even imitating the disorder. (The Verge)
7 What TikTok might have to give up to keep operating in the US
This shows just how hollow the authorities’ purported data-collection concerns really are. (Forbes)
8 Soldiers in Ukraine are playing World of Tanks on their phones
It’s eerily similar to the war they are themselves fighting, but they say it helps them to dissociate from the horror. (NYT $)
9 Conspiracy theorists are sharing mad ideas on what causes wildfires
But it’s all just a convoluted way to try to avoid having to tackle climate change. (Slate $)
10 Christie’s accidentally leaked the location of tons of valuable art 
Seemingly thanks to the metadata that often automatically attaches to smartphone photos. (WP $)
Quote of the day
“Is it going to take people dying for something to move forward?”
—An anonymous air traffic controller warns that staffing shortages in their industry, plus other factors, are starting to threaten passenger safety, the New York Times reports.
The big story
Inside effective altruism, where the far future counts a lot more than the present
October 2022
Since its birth in the late 2000s, effective altruism has aimed to answer the question “How can those with means have the most impact on the world in a quantifiable way?”—and supplied methods for calculating the answer.
It’s no surprise that effective altruisms’ ideas have long faced criticism for reflecting white Western saviorism, alongside an avoidance of structural problems in favor of abstract math. And as believers pour even greater amounts of money into the movement’s increasingly sci-fi ideals, such charges are only intensifying. Read the full story.
—Rebecca Ackermann
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Watch Andrew Scott’s electrifying reading of the 1965 commencement address ‘Choose One of Five’ by Edith Sampson.
+ Here’s how Metallica makes sure its live performances ROCK. ($)
+ Cannot deal with this utterly ludicrous wooden vehicle.
+ Learn about a weird and wonderful new instrument called a harpejji.
