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Category: Technology

Climate inaction is making the desperate choice of solar geoengineering more likely

Climate inaction is making the desperate choice of solar geoengineering more likely

Bill McKibben writes: If we decide to “solar geoengineer” the Earth—to spray highly reflective particles of a material, such as sulfur, into the stratosphere in order to deflect sunlight and so cool the planet—it will be the second most expansive project that humans have ever undertaken. (The first, obviously, is the ongoing emission of carbon and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.) The idea behind solar geoengineering is essentially to mimic what happens when volcanoes push particles into the atmosphere;…

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This week, billionaires made a strong case for abolishing themselves

This week, billionaires made a strong case for abolishing themselves

Anand Giridharadas writes: In recent years, a swelling chorus of Americans has grown critical of the nation’s bajillionaires. But in the extraordinary week gone by, that chorus was drowned out by a far louder and more urgent case against them. It was made by the bajillionaires themselves. One after another, four of our best-known billionaires laid waste to the image of benevolent saviors carefully cultivated by their class. It is a commendable sacrifice on their part, because billionaires, remember, exist…

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Embattled crypto exchange FTX files for bankruptcy

Embattled crypto exchange FTX files for bankruptcy

The New York Times reports: On Monday, Sam Bankman-Fried, the chief executive of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, took to Twitter to reassure his customers: “FTX is fine,” he wrote. “Assets are fine.” On Friday, FTX announced that it was filing for bankruptcy, capping an extraordinary week of corporate drama that has upended crypto markets and sent shock waves through the industry. In a statement on Twitter, the company said that Mr. Bankman-Fried had resigned, with John J. Ray III, a…

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Yet another Chinese rocket is set to tumble uncontrollably back to Earth this week

Yet another Chinese rocket is set to tumble uncontrollably back to Earth this week

LiveScience reports: The core stage of yet another Chinese Long March 5B rocket is set to tumble uncontrollably back to Earth this week after delivering the third and final module to China’s fledgling space station. The roughly 25-ton (23 metric tons) rocket stage, which launched Oct. 31 to deliver the Mengtian laboratory cabin module to the Tiangong space station, is predicted to reenter Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday, Nov. 5 at 11:51 p.m. EDT, give or take 14 hours, according to…

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China’s high-tech surveillance drives oppression of Uyghurs

China’s high-tech surveillance drives oppression of Uyghurs

Steven Feldstein writes: On August 31, 2022, in the final hours of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s term, after months of delays and postponements, her department released a comprehensive report detailing China’s oppression in Xinjiang Province. The circumstances of China’s repression are well documented. Academics and human rights organizations estimate that 10 to 20 percent (with an upper limit calculated at 1.8 million) of adult Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been subjected to detention by Chinese authorities. Officials…

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The danger of advanced artificial intelligence controlling its own feedback

The danger of advanced artificial intelligence controlling its own feedback

DALL-E Michael K. Cohen, University of Oxford and Marcus Hutter, Australian National University How would an artificial intelligence (AI) decide what to do? One common approach in AI research is called “reinforcement learning”. Reinforcement learning gives the software a “reward” defined in some way, and lets the software figure out how to maximise the reward. This approach has produced some excellent results, such as building software agents that defeat humans at games like chess and Go, or creating new designs…

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After Ukraine, Biden administration turns to Musk’s satellite internet for Iran

After Ukraine, Biden administration turns to Musk’s satellite internet for Iran

CNN reports: The White House has engaged in talks with Elon Musk about the possibility of setting up SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink inside Iran, multiple officials familiar with the discussions told CNN. The conversations, which have not been previously reported, come as the Biden administration searches for ways to support the Iranian protest movement that exploded just over a month ago after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died under suspicious circumstances after being detained by the country’s morality police. The White…

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U.S. busts network providing military technology to Russia

U.S. busts network providing military technology to Russia

The Associated Press reports: The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a round of criminal charges and sanctions related to a complicated scheme to procure military technologies from U.S. manufacturers and illegally supply them to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Some of the equipment was recovered on battlefields in Ukraine, the Justice Department said, and other nuclear proliferation technology was intercepted in Latvia before it could be shipped to Russia. The Justice Department charged nearly a dozen people in separate…

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Elon Musk drops threat to halt Starlink internet service in Ukraine

Elon Musk drops threat to halt Starlink internet service in Ukraine

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX, abruptly reversed himself on Saturday, saying that his company would continue to fund the operation of the Starlink internet service in Ukraine, where it has become a digital lifeline for both soldiers and civilians. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, drew criticism on Friday when he said on Twitter that his company could not “indefinitely” fund Ukraine’s use of Starlink. The service has been crucial for the…

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Musk threatens to stop funding Starlink internet Ukraine relies on in war

Musk threatens to stop funding Starlink internet Ukraine relies on in war

The Washington Post reports: Elon Musk said Friday that his space company could not keep funding the Starlink satellite service that has kept Ukraine and its military online during the war, and he suggested he was pulling free internet after a Ukrainian ambassador insulted him on Twitter. A Starlink cutoff would cripple the Ukrainian military’s main mode of communication and potentially hamstring its defenses by giving a major advantage to Russia, which has sought to jam signals and phone service…

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Zuckerberg hopes to stoke metaverse enthusiasm by threatening to layoff unenthusiastic Meta employees

Zuckerberg hopes to stoke metaverse enthusiasm by threatening to layoff unenthusiastic Meta employees

The New York Times reports: Last October, when Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, announced that the company would change its name to Meta and become a “metaverse company,” he sketched a vision of a utopian future many years off in which billions of people would inhabit immersive digital environments for hours on end, working, socializing and playing games inside virtual and augmented worlds. In the year since, Meta has spent billions of dollars and assigned thousands of employees…

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How the U.S. can block China from getting microchips made abroad

How the U.S. can block China from getting microchips made abroad

Henry Farrell writes: On Friday, the Biden administration issued aggressive new regulations, aimed at making it harder for China to access and build high-end semiconductors. Monday saw the publication of “Chip War,” a new book on global fights over semiconductors, written by Chris Miller, an associate professor of history at Tufts University’s Fletcher School and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. I interviewed Chris by email over what the new developments mean and how they reflect a longer…

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‘They are watching’: Inside Russia’s vast surveillance state

‘They are watching’: Inside Russia’s vast surveillance state

The New York Times reports: Four days into the war in Ukraine, Russia’s expansive surveillance and censorship apparatus was already hard at work. Roughly 800 miles east of Moscow, authorities in the Republic of Bashkortostan, one of Russia’s 85 regions, were busy tabulating the mood of comments in social media messages. They marked down YouTube posts that they said criticized the Russian government. They noted the reaction to a local protest. Then they compiled their findings. One report about the…

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More bosses are spying on so-called quiet quitters. It could backfire

More bosses are spying on so-called quiet quitters. It could backfire

The Wall Street Journal reports: In the battle against “quiet quitting” and other obstacles to productivity in the workplace, companies are increasingly turning to an array of sophisticated tools to watch and analyze how employees do their jobs. The sobering news for America’s bosses: These technologies can fall short of their promises, and even be counterproductive. Patchy evidence for the effectiveness of workplace monitoring tech hasn’t stopped it from sweeping through U.S. companies over the past 2½ years. Since the…

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‘Timber cities’ might help decarbonize the world

‘Timber cities’ might help decarbonize the world

Inside Climate News reports: Buildings constructed with more wood, and less cement and steel, would help decarbonize the construction and housing industries in line with global goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent by 2030 and reach net zero emissions by 2050, new research shows. The paper, published Aug. 30 in Nature Communications, explains that building mid-rise wood dwellings to meet the demand from rapidly expanding urban populations could avoid about 100 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions through 2100—about…

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NASA to crash $330m spacecraft into asteroid to see if impact can alter course

NASA to crash $330m spacecraft into asteroid to see if impact can alter course

The Guardian reports: In a few weeks, Nasa controllers will deliberately crash their $330m Dart robot spacecraft into an asteroid. The half-tonne probe will be travelling at more than four miles a second when it strikes its target, Dimorphos, and will be destroyed. The aim of this kamikaze science mission is straightforward: space engineers want to learn how to deflect asteroids in case one is ever discovered on a collision course with Earth. Observations of Dart’s impact on Dimorphos’s orbit…

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