It’s time to retire the term “user”
A user is also, of course, someone who struggles with addiction. To be an addict is—at least partly—to live in...
World
Three ways the US could help universities compete with tech companies on AI innovation
Academia's greatest strength lies in its ability to pursue long-term research projects and fundamental studies that push the boundaries of...
The Download: American’s hydrogen train experiment, and why we need boring robots
Like a mirage speeding across the dusty desert outside Pueblo, Colorado, the first hydrogen-fuel-cell passenger train in the United States...
How to build a thermal battery
Step 2: Choose your storage material Next up: pick out a heat storage medium. These materials should probably be inexpensive...
Hydrogen trains could revolutionize how Americans get around
A group called Californians for Electric Rail also views hydrogen as an immature technology. “From an environmental as well as...
Researchers taught robots to run. Now they’re teaching them to walk
In previous projects, researchers from the University of Oregon had used the same reinforcement learning technique to teach a two-legged...
The Download: commercializing space, and China’s chip self-sufficiency efforts
NASA designed the International Space Station to fly for 20 years. It has lasted six years longer than that, though...
Why it’s so hard for China’s chip industry to become self-sufficient
But in the last few years, both the US and Chinese governments have changed that way of thinking. And new...
The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit
Other challenges include spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome, which is a change in the structure and function of the eye, something researchers...
Check your work
The latest iteration of a legacyFounded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1899, MIT Technology Review is a world-renowned,...
The Download: the problem with police bodycams, and how to make useful robots
When police departments first started buying and deploying bodycams in the wake of the police killing of Michael Brown in...
Three reasons robots are about to become way more useful
And researchers at the Toyota Research Institute, Columbia University and MIT have been able to quickly teach robots to do...
AI was supposed to make police bodycams better. What happened?
Tassone claims that Truleo, which hit the market in 2021, can identify events like an officer frisking someone or reading...
The Download: saving Louisiana from sinking, and the promise of thermal batteries
“If you were wondering what they're using to train GPT-5, well, now you know.” —John Levine, creator of a site...
How thermal batteries are heating up energy storage
Electrified Thermal Solutions is building thermal batteries that use thermally conductive bricks as both a heating element and a storage...
How to stop a state from sinking
VIRGINIA HANUSIK But some government officials and state engineers are hoping there is an alternative: elevation. The $6.8 billion Southwest...
The Download: a history of brainwashing, and America’s chipmaking ambitions
Zooming in further, there’s one particular type of insulating material placed between the chip and the structure beneath it; this...
The effort to make a breakthrough cancer therapy cheaper
It’s an attractive model. Demand for CAR-T often outstrips supply, leading to long wait times. “There is a growing tension...
A brief, weird history of brainwashing
Over the following years, in the wake of the Korean War, “brainwashing” grew into a catchall explanation for any kind...
This US startup makes a crucial chip material and is taking on a Japanese giant
Thintronics is promising a product purpose-built for the computing demands of the AI era—a suite of new materials that the...
