The Download: 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch

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: 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch

The urgency of addressing climate change has never been clearer. Emissions of planet-warming gases are at record highs, as are global temperatures. 

All that extra heat is endangering people around the world, supercharging threats like heatwaves and wildfires and jeopardizing established food and energy systems. We need to find new ways to generate electricity, move people and goods, produce food, and weather the challenging conditions made worse in a warming world.

The good news is that we already have many of the tools we need to take those actions, and companies are constantly bringing new innovations to the market. Our reporters and editors have compiled a comprehensive list of the 15 companies that we think have the best shot at making a difference on climate change. Check out the full list here. 

Europa Clipper set to look for life-friendly conditions around Jupiter

The news: NASA is poised to launch Europa Clipper, a $5.2 billion mission to Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, as early as October 10. The spacecraft will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. 

What’s the mission? Europa Clipper’s team hopes to assess the moon’s habitability—how well it could support life.It will study Europa, a possible home for extraterrestrial life, through a series of flybys after reaching Jupiter in 2030. Read the full story.

—Jenna Ahart

MIT Technology Review Narrated: The cost of building the perfect wave

The growing business of surf pools wants to bring the ocean experience inland, making surfing more accessible to communities far from the coasts.

These pools can use—and lose—millions upon millions of gallons of water every year. With many planned for areas facing water scarcity, who bears the cost of building the perfect wave?

This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast. In partnership with News Over Audio, we’ll be making a selection of our stories available, each one read by a professional voice actor. You’ll be able to listen to them on the go or download them to listen to offline.

We’re publishing a new story each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, including some taken from our most recent print magazine. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The death toll from Hurricane Helene is rising
Rescue and recovery teams are searching for hundreds of missing people. (WP $)
+ Entire towns have been swept away. (Vox)
+ EV owners in North Carolina are using their cars to power their homes. (The Atlantic $)
+ It’s looking like things could get even worse, too. (Slate $)

2 AI lab assistants are on the horizon
Google DeepMind and BioNTech are building research models to aid scientists. (FT $)
+ Meanwhile, OpenAI is making it easier to build its voice assistants. (Reuters)
+ Amazon has been working on a new internal chatbot, apparently. (Insider $)

3 The FTC has been permitted to proceed with its case against Amazon
Amazon has been fighting to have the landmark antitrust case dismissed. (WP $)

4 The Kremlin ordered cyberattacks on NATO allies
The UK, US, and Australia have sanctioned the hackers, known as Evil Corp. (Bloomberg $)

5 Inside Google’s plan to regain its smart glasses crown
It’s lagging behind in the AI stakes, when its rivals are surging ahead. (The Information $)
+ The coolest thing about smart glasses is not the AR. It’s the AI. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Our genetic databases don’t reflect humanity’s diversity
Particularly across Latin America. (Undark Magazine)
+ This new genome map tries to capture all human genetic variation. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Apple is desperate for workers in Vietnam
It’s offering them bonuses and gift incentives to join its manufacturing team. (Rest of World)

8 Take a peek at the future of dentistry
Including tooth-regenerating drugs and tiny bots to clean your mouth.(WSJ $)

9 How Instagram became a digital dumping ground
Millennials can’t get enough of clearing out their camera reel. (The Guardian)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

10 The moon is getting its own time zone
Future inhabitants may live by Coordinated Lunar Time. (Motherboard)

Quote of the day

“It was not just a perfect storm, but it was a combination of multiple storms.”

—Meteorologist Ryan Maue explains why Hurricane Helene is so deadly, AP reports.

The big story

Broadband funding for Native communities could finally connect some of America’s most isolated places

September 2022

Rural and Native communities in the US have long had lower rates of cellular and broadband connectivity than urban areas, where four out of every five Americans live. Outside the cities and suburbs, which occupy barely 3% of US land, reliable internet service can still be hard to come by.

The covid-19 pandemic underscored the problem as Native communities locked down and moved school and other essential daily activities online. But it also kicked off an unprecedented surge of relief funding to solve it. Read the full story.

—Robert Chaney

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.)

+ Love him or hate him, there’s no escaping Tim Burton’s nightmarish vision of the world.
+ The 100 best songs of the past 24 years? Yes please.
+ We all know surveillance is bad, but when it’s letting us know that someone in San Francisco is blasting out Me So Horny at 9.03am, I could be persuaded otherwise.
+ Japan is celebrating 60 years of its iconic bullet trains.