The Download: coping in a time of arrhythmia, and DNA data storage
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 arrhythmia of our current age
Arrhythmia means the heart beats, but not in proper time—a critical rhythm of life suddenly going rogue and unpredictable. It’s frightening to experience, but what if it’s also a good metaphor for our current times? That a pulse once seemingly so steady is now less sure. Perhaps this wobbliness might be extrapolated into a broader sense of life in the 2020s.
Maybe you feel it, too—that the world seems to have skipped more than a beat or two as demagogues rant and democracy shudders, hurricanes rage, and glaciers dissolve. We can’t stop watching tiny screens where influencers pitch products we don’t need alongside news about senseless wars that destroy, murder, and maim tens-of-thousands.
All the resulting anxiety has been hard on our hearts—literally and metaphorically. Read the full story.
—David Ewing Duncan
An easier-to-use technique for storing data in DNA is inspired by our cells
The news: It turns out that you don’t need to be a scientist to encode data in DNA. Researchers have been working on DNA-based data storage for decades, but a new template-based method inspired by our cells’ chemical processes is easy enough for even nonscientists to practice.
Some background: So far, the process of storing data in DNA has been expensive, time consuming, and error prone. It also required skilled expertise to carry out.
The details: The new method is more efficient and easy enough that anyone can do it. They enlisted 60 students—studying all sorts of topics, not just science—to test it out, and the trial was a success. It could pave the way for an unusual but ultra-stable way to store information. Read the full story.
—Jenna Ahart
Read next: We’re making more data than ever. What can—and should—we save for future generations? And will they be able to understand it? Read our feature all about the race to save our online lives from a digital dark age.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Facebook is auto-generating militia group pages
Rather than shutting extremist content down, it’s actually lending a helping hand. (Wired $)
+ X is shoving political content into people’s feeds, whether they want it or not. (WSJ $)
+ Some users say they’re being paid thousands of dollars by X to promote misinformation. (BBC)
2 OpenAI is working on its first in-house chip with Broadcom and TSMC
It’s abandoned ambitious plans to manufacture its own chips. Instead, it’s focusing on the design stage of the process. (Reuters $)
+ Chip designer Arm could become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom. (FT $)
3 Elon Musk has build a compound for his children and their mothers
It is an… unconventional set-up to say the least. (NYT $)
+ Musk fans are losing a lot of money to crypto scams. (Gizmodo)
4 A quarter of new code at Google is now AI-generated
That fascinating fact emerged from CEO Sundar Pichai himself on the company’s latest earnings call. (The Verge)
+ Github Copilot will switch from only using OpenAI’s models to a multi-model approach. (Ars Technica)
+ How AI assistants are already changing the way code gets made. (MIT Technology Review)
5 This app can operate your smartphone for you
If you live in China anyway—but companies everywhere are working on the same capabilities. (South China Morning Post)
+ LinkedIn has launched an AI agent that purports to do a whole range of recruitment tasks. (TechCrunch)
6 Universal is building an AI music generator
But it’s a long way off from demoing it just yet. (The Verge)
+ Rival AI music startups face a big barrier: licensing copyrighted music is very expensive. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Kids are getting around school smartphone bans with smartwatches
But it seems it’s anxious parents that are really driving adoption. (Wired $)
8 Reddit just turned a profit for the first time
It has almost 100 million daily users now. (FT $)
9 AI is coming to the world of dance
You still need human bodies—but AI is helping with choreography and set designs. (The Guardian)
10 A PhD student found a lost city in Mexico by accident
Luke Auld-Thomas stumbled across a vast ancient Maya city while studying online Lidar survey data. (BBC)
Quote of the day
Compared to what AI boosters were predicting after ChatGPT was released, this is a glacial pace of adoption.”
—Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, digs into a study which found that only 0.5-3.5% of work hours involve generative AI in a post on X.
How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users
April 2022
In December 2021, residents of the village of Gunungguruh, Indonesia, were curious when technology company Worldcoin turned up at a local school. It was pitched as a “new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible,” in exchange for an iris scan and other personal data.
Gunungguruh was not alone in receiving a visit from Worldcoin. MIT Technology Review has interviewed over 35 individuals in six countries who either worked for or on behalf of Worldcoin, had been scanned, or were unsuccessfully recruited to participate.
Our investigation reveals wide gaps between Worldcoin’s public messaging, which focused on protecting privacy, and what users experienced. We found that the company’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. Read the full investigation.
—Eileen Guo and Adi Renaldi
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Can you guess these movies from their French name?
+ Why leopard print is an eternally solid style choice. ($)
+ Sitting all day screws our bodies up, but these stretches can help.
+ You can pretty much pinpoint the exact hour you hit peak happiness on vacation. ($)