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.
The two words that pushed international climate talks into overtime
The annual UN climate negotiations at COP28 in Dubai have officially come to a close. Delegates scrambled to get a deal together in the early morning hours, and the meetings ended a day past their scheduled conclusion (as these things tend to).
It’s understandable if you’ve tuned out news from the summit. The quibbles over wording—“urges” vs. “notes” vs. “emphasizes”—can all start to sound like noise. But these talks are the biggest climate event of the year, and there are some details that are worth paying attention to, not least the high-profile fight about those two words: fossil fuels.
As negotiators start their treks home, let’s sort through what happened at COP28 and why all these political fights matter for climate action. Read our story.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things energy and climate-related. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.
This new system can teach a robot a simple household task within 20 minutes
The news: A new system can teach robots a domestic task in around 20 minutes. The system, called Dobb-E, was trained on iPhone videos of people carrying out a range of household jobs, recording data on movement, depth, and rotation—important information when it comes to training a robot to replicate the actions on its own. That data is then fed to an AI model which instructs the robot how to carry out the actions.
Why it matters: This new system could help the field of robotics overcome one of its biggest challenges: a lack of training data. While other types of AI, such as large language models, are trained on huge repositories of data scraped from the internet, the same can’t be done with robots, because the data needs to be physically collected. This makes it a lot harder to build and scale training databases. Read the full story.
—Rhiannon Williams
Vertex will pay tens of millions to license a controversial CRISPR patent
The news: Vertex Pharmaceuticals has agreed to buy rights to use a CRISPR patent owned by the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, avoiding a potential lawsuit over its new gene-editing treatment for sickle-cell disease.
Why it matters: The agreement allows Vertex to start selling its treatment, approved last Friday, without fear of patent infringement claims. Under an agreement with Editas announced today, Vertex agreed to pay it $50 million and annual fees of between $10 and $40 million a year until 2034. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
The bigger picture: read Antonio’s story from earlier this month explaining the background, and context, to the fight over the first CRISPR cure to be approved in the US.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Google’s AI search tool could upend the internet
Publishers in particular fear it could take a sledgehammer to their traffic. (WSJ $)
+ OpenAI is partnering with a major publisher. (The Guardian)
+ Chatbots could one day replace search engines. Here’s why that’s a terrible idea. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Tesla has to update nearly all 2 million of its vehicles in the US
To address a defect in the autopilot system. (The Verge)
+ Here’s what to do if you’re affected. (WP $)
3 What you need to know about plastic pollution
One fact stands out: the US produces more plastic waste than any other country. (one5c)
+ Think that your plastic is being recycled? Think again. (MIT Technology Review)
4 What’s the point of Meta’s smart glasses?
Despite all the time and money thrown at them, they still lack a killer app. (NYT $)
+ Why Facebook is using Ray-Ban to stake a claim on our faces. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Amazon is under growing pressure
If tons of its products come from China anyway, why not buy from its Chinese competitors? (The Atlantic $)
+ The counterfeit lawsuits that scoop up hundreds of Chinese Amazon sellers at once. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Apple could sign X’s death warrant
Soon it could become such a toxic platform it violates Apple’s standards, triggering a removal from its app store. (Bloomberg $)
+ X’s ad revenue reportedly fell by $1.5 billion this year. (Ars Technica)
7 Why weight loss drugs are so significant
Their impact will ripple across our societies over the coming years. (New Yorker $)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the internet. But what does this mean for people IRL? (MIT Technology Review)
8 How much time should we spend on our phones at Christmas?
I’d say that it really depends on how bearable your family is. (Wired $)
+ There still isn’t much evidence to back up claims that social media is bad for teens. (NBC)
9 AI astrology is getting out of hand
It’s all fun and games until it starts instructing people to ditch things they find healthy and useful. (The Atlantic $)
10 Taylor Swift fans literally rocked the Earth
People danced so enthusiastically at her gig in Seattle that it was picked up by the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. (The Economist $)
Quote of the day
“Grok is woke unfortunately.”
—Right-wing US podcaster Tim Pool expresses his annoyance at the fact that Elon Musk’s ‘anti-woke’ AI chatbot seems to express just as left-leaning views as any of its rivals.
The big story
Inside Australia’s plan to survive bigger, badder bushfires
April 2019
Australia’s colonial history is dotted with fires so enormous they have their own names. The worst, Black Saturday, struck the state of Victoria in February 2009, killing 173 people.
While Australia is notorious for spectacular blazes, it actually ranks below the United States, Indonesia, Canada, Portugal, and Spain when it comes to the economic damage caused by wildfires.
That’s because while other nations argue about the best way to tackle the issue, the horrors of Black Saturday led Australia to drastically change its response—one of the biggest of which was also one of the most basic: how fire risk is rated. Read the full story.
—Bianca Nogrady
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ I’m a big fan of this festive hip hop house.
+ This kinetic PC case is a real feat of engineering.
+ There’s something seriously eerie about hearing voice recordings from the distant past.
+ It’s almost Christmas! Time to relax with a festive film or two.
+ All hail 2023, the year of the hat.