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.
Introducing: the Hidden Worlds issue
A hidden world is fundamentally different from the undiscovered. We know the hidden world is there. We just can’t see it or reach it.
Hidden worlds exist in the great depths of the ocean and high above us in the planets of the night sky. But they are also all around us in the form of waves and matter and microbes.
Technology has long played the spoiler to these worlds in hiding. We have used ships, airplanes, and rockets to shrink distances. Telescopes, cameras, satellites, drones, and radar help us peer into and map the places we cannot go ourselves. AI increasingly plays a role, too.
If this all fascinates you as much as us, you’ll love the latest issue of MIT Technology Review. It’s all about using technology to explore and expose those hidden worlds, whether they are in the ocean depths, in the far reaches of our galaxy, or swirling all around us, unseen.
Check out these stories from the magazine:
+ Why Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, is being investigated as a potential host for life.
+ Meet the intrepid divers experimenting with breathing hydrogen as part of an effort to reach depths no diver has ever been before.
+ Inside the hunt for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider, which hasn’t seen any new particles since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.
+ As AI develops at breakneck speed, this comic explains what we can all learn from the Luddites.
+ Here’s a job title you perhaps haven’t heard before, but will hear more in future: climate equity specialist.
This is just a small selection of what’s on offer. I urge you to dive in and enjoy the whole thing, when you find the time. Enjoy!
The first-ever mission to pull a dead rocket out of space has just begun
More than 9,000 metric tons of human-made metal and machinery are orbiting Earth, including satellites, shrapnel, and the International Space Station. But a significant bulk of that mass comes from one source: the nearly a thousand dead rockets that have been discarded in space since the space age began.
Now, for the first time, a mission has begun to remove one of those dead rockets. Funded by the Japanese space agency JAXA, it was launched on Sunday, February 18, and is currently on its way to rendezvous with such a rocket in the coming weeks.
It’ll inspect it and then work out how a follow-up mission might be able to pull the dead rocket back into the atmosphere. If it succeeds, it could demonstrate how we could remove large, dangerous, and uncontrolled pieces of space junk from orbit—objects that could cause a monumental disaster if they collided with satellites or spacecraft. Read the full story.
—Jonathan O’Callaghan
Why hydrogen is losing the race to power cleaner cars
Imagine a car that doesn’t emit any planet-warming gases—or any pollution at all, for that matter. Unlike the EVs on the roads today, it doesn’t take an hour or more to charge—just fuel up and go.
It sounds too good to be true, but it’s the reality of vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells. And almost nobody wants one.
Don’t get me wrong: hydrogen vehicles are sold around the world. But they appear to be lurching toward something of a dead end, with fuel prices going up, vehicle sales stagnating, and fueling stations shutting down. Read our story to find out why that is, and what we’d need to get these cars on the road.
—Casey Crownhart
The story above is for subscribers-only. But subscriptions start from just $8 a month to get access to all of MIT Technology Review’s award-winning journalism—why not try it out?
Why Chinese apps chose to film super-short soap operas in Southeast Asia
A handful of Chinese companies are betting that short videos can disrupt the movie and TV industry. These “soap operas for the TikTok age” have found a huge audience in China, creating a market worth $5 billion. Now, they’re betting that these shows, once adapted, can appeal to an American audience.
But rather than just jumping straight into the US, many of these firms are using Southeast Asia as both a testing ground, and a production hub. And they’re treading a well-worn path for using that region as the first frontier for expansion outside China. Read the full story.
—Zeyi Yang
This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter about China’s tech scene and how it interacts with the world. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Apple is killing its electric car project
Execs say they’ll get the 2,000-odd employees working on it to focus on generative AI instead. (Bloomberg $)
+ This is why they axed it. (Wired $)
+ Despite never selling a single vehicle, Apple still managed to exert an impact on the car industry. (The Atlantic $)
2 Google’s big AI push is coming back to bite it
The problems with generative AI keep being laid bare for all to see, in real time. (WSJ $)
+ Apple’s shareholders are trying to force it to be more transparent about the risks associated with AI. (FT $)
3 How the Pentagon uses targeted ads to find its targets
Including Vladimir Putin. No, really. (Wired $)
+ Nowhere online is safe from ads these days. (The Atlantic $)
4 AI is coming for the porn industry
But porn companies believe some people will pay a premium to interact with a real human being. (WP $)
5 An out-of-control fire is forcing mass evacuations in Texas
It’s more than doubled in size since igniting on Monday afternoon. (CNN)
+ The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes. (MIT Technology Review)
6 A pharma company posted positive results for another weight loss drug
Viking Therapeutics, a smaller player from San Diego, has joined the goldrush. (Quartz $)
+ These drugs are wildly popular and effective. But their long-term health impacts are still unknown. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Delivery drivers have to contend with off-the-charts air pollution
It’s such a big problem in South Asia that some of them are forced to take sick days as a result. (Rest of World)
8 Crypto miners blocked legal efforts to reveal how much energy they use
A federal judge granted a temporary restraining order which will prevent the Department of Energy from collecting the data. (The Verge)
+ Bitcoin’s value hit a two-year high. (Quartz)
9 Some advice: don’t use ChatGPT for your taxes
Or, frankly, anything important. (CNET)
10 Want to feel sad? Ask TikTok how old you look
I have… zero temptation to do this. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“I feel so powerless in this state.”
—Lochrane Chase, a 36-year-old lifelong resident of Birmingham, Alabama, tells Wired how she’s having to put her plans to pursue IVF on hold due to the Alabama Supreme Court’s February 16 ruling, which stated that embryos are “unborn children.”
The big story
This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it.
September 2022
Greg Rutkowski is a Polish digital artist who uses classical painting styles to create dreamy fantasy landscapes. His distinctive illustration style has been used in some of the world’s most popular fantasy games, including Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
Now he’s become a hit in the new world of text-to-image AI generation, becoming one of the most commonly used prompts in the open-source AI art generator Stable Diffusion.
But this and other open-source programs are built by scraping images from the internet, often without permission and proper attribution to artists. As a result, they are raising tricky questions about ethics and copyright. And artists like Rutkowski have had enough. Read the full story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
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.)
+ There are so many ways to say “drunk” in English. Drunkonyms, if you will.
+ Some amazing close-up photographs on display here.
+ Look after your joints, and they’ll look after you.
+ A philanthropist has donated $1 billion to ensure students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx will get free tuition “in perpetuity.”