The Download: Twitter’s user exodus, and fixing bridgesRhiannon Williams
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. Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took over The news: In the days since Elon Musk confirmed his purchase of Twitter on October 27, tweeting “the bird is freed,” many Twitter users have threatened to leave. But while people often fail to follow through on threats to quit Twitter, new data suggests that a significant number of users really are abandoning the platform. How they did it: The firm Bot Sentinel, which […]
Here’s how personalized brain stimulation could treat depressionJessica Hamzelou
This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Sending a jolt of electricity through a person’s brain can do remarkable things. You only have to watch the videos of people with Parkinson’s disease who have electrodes implanted in their brains. They can go from struggling to walk to confidently striding across a room literally at the flick of a switch. Stimulating certain parts of the brain can bring people in and out of consciousness. Even handheld devices that deliver gentle pulses to the brain can […]
Smartphone data from drivers could help spot when bridges need urgent repairsTammy Xu
Smartphones could be used to monitor the safety of bridges much more quickly and cheaply than currently possible, providing engineers with data they can use to fix the structures before they become dangerously unstable. Usually, bridges’ state of repair is monitored in one of two ways: either engineers visually inspect them for cracks and faults, or sensors collect data about their vibrations and movements. But a new method developed by researchers at West Point Military Academy avoids the need for either by collecting accelerometer data from smartphones in cars as they drive over the bridges. In tests that involved driving […]
Twitter may have lost more than a million users since Elon Musk took overChris Stokel-Walker
In the days after Elon Musk’s October 27 purchase of Twitter was confirmed by his tweet saying “the bird is freed,” many Twitter users have threatened to leave, unhappy about the new ownership. People always threaten to leave Twitter and then often fail to follow through—but new data suggests that a significant number of users really are abandoning the platform this time. The firm Bot Sentinel, which tracks inauthentic behavior on Twitter by analyzing more than 3.1 million accounts and their activity daily, believes that around 877,000 accounts were deactivated and a further 497,000 were suspended between October 27 and […]
The Download: updates from our flagship EmTech event, and cleaning up the gridRhiannon Williams
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 latest news and announcements from EmTech 2022 Which technologies are creating new opportunities for our planet, our bodies and our businesses? That question was at the forefront of yesterday’s EmTech 2022—MIT Technology Review’s annual conference that brings together global changemakers, innovators, and industry veterans to discuss cutting-edge technologies and the people making them possible. Highlights from the day included: + Michael López-Alegría, an astronaut with more than 40 years of aviation and space experience, who explained to […]
How new versions of solar, wind, and batteries could help the gridCasey Crownhart
Hello hello, welcome back to The Spark! I’m back in Boston again this week, this time for one of my favorite events of the year, EmTech MIT. The program covers everything from crypto to CRISPR, and I’ll be hosting a session this week called “Future Clean Energy Solutions.” In the session, I’ll be chatting with innovators focused on three different areas of renewable energy: solar, wind, and batteries. These are technologies that are being deployed on massive scales, but to meet climate goals, they need to keep getting better, and cheaper. So let’s take a sneak peek into what could […]
What the future holds for humanity and machinesRhiannon Williams
Come back to this page for rolling updates throughout the day as we kick off the final day of EmTech 2022, MIT Technology Review’s flagship event on emerging technology and global trends. Global changemakers, innovators, and industry veterans will take to the stage to distinguish what’s probable, plausible, and possible with tomorrow’s breakthrough technologies. We’ll be hearing from some of the biggest names in the industry, discussing everything from how to get promising ideas off the ground and commercialize space, to building tomorrow’s AI and tackling the world’s biggest challenges. Today we’ll be focusing on unpacking what the future holds […]
The Download: voting machines, and paying with your palmRhiannon Williams
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. This scientist is trying to create an accessible, unhackable voting machine For the past 19 years, computer science professor Juan Gilbert has immersed himself in perhaps the most contentious debate over election administration in the United States—what role, if any, touch-screen ballot-marking devices should play in the voting process. While advocates claim that electronic voting systems can be relatively secure, improve accessibility, and simplify voting and vote tallying, critics have argued that they are insecure and should be […]
A new age of disaster recovery planning for SMEsMIT Technology Review Insights
Today’s cyberthreat landscape has become increasingly complex. Gone are the days when devastation to enterprises’ data and IT systems was caused solely by force majeure events and physical terrorist attacks. Rising geopolitical tensions, fast-tracked digital transformation, and remote and hybrid working styles driven by the pandemic have made both public and private organizations across the globe increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks via ransomware, malware, or hacking. Today’s data is generated and distributed across highly complex ecosystems—multicloud, hybrid cloud, edge, and internet of things. Enterprises’ surface exposure to risks has ballooned. It’s not just big corporations that are at risk. Smaller, less […]
Better developer platforms are the key to better digital productsKen Mugrage
The move to thinking about “products” instead of “projects” should be welcomed when it comes to developer tooling. At a time when hiring and retaining talent—technical or otherwise—is one of the biggest concerns for organizations, paying attention to the needs of internal customers can only be a good thing. However, for all the benefits of this turn to product-thinking, too often it lacks substance. This is particularly problematic when it comes to developer platforms. While the notion of “developer experience”—how development teams interact with their tools and platforms—is one that every organization needs to take seriously, it’s not enough to […]