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Monday, December 23, 2024

The Obtain: ready on the US border, and seaweed’s carbon seize shortcomings


That is at the moment’s version of The Obtain, our weekday publication that gives a every day dose of what’s happening on the earth of know-how.

The brand new US border wall is an app

Keisy Plaza, 39, left her residence in Colombia seven months in the past. She walked a 62-mile stretch of dense mountainous rainforest and swampland together with her two daughters and grandson to achieve Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, on the border with Texas.

Plaza has been attempting on daily basis for weeks to safe an appointment with Customs and Border Safety (CBP) so she will request permission for her household to enter the US. 

To date, she’s had no luck: every time, she’s been met with software program errors and frozen screens. When appointment slots do open up, they fill inside minutes.

Plaza has not been the one one to come across this new impediment. In the beginning of this 12 months, President Biden introduced that folks on the southern border who need to search asylum within the US should first request an appointment to satisfy with an immigration official by way of a cell app. 

The app, known as CBP One, is one among only a handful of authorized pathways for folks looking for safety to enter the US. And nobody is aware of how lengthy their wait can be. Learn the complete story.

—Lorena Rios

Seaweed farming for carbon dioxide seize would take up an excessive amount of of the ocean

What’s the information?: Tasks centered on rising seaweed to suck CO2 from the air and lock it within the sea have attracted a whole lot of consideration, however farming sufficient seaweed to satisfy climate-change targets will not be possible in any case.

Why not? A brand new examine means that round 1,000,000 sq. kilometers of ocean would have to be farmed with the intention to take away a billion tons of carbon dioxide from the environment over the course of a 12 months. That may sound quite a bit, however many scientific fashions counsel we  needs to be eradicating something from 1.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually to 29 billion tons by 2050 with the intention to hit targets. Learn the complete story.

—Rhiannon Williams

The must-reads

I’ve combed the web to search out you at the moment’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.

1 Meta’s hoping to monetize its open-source AI
It might have critical implications for Google and OpenAI’s present dominance of the market. (The Info $)
+ Meta’s Yann LeCunn reckons canines are smarter than AI—for now. (CNBC)
+ Researchers in China are rising more and more nervous about AI. (Wired $)
+ The open-source AI growth is constructed on Huge Tech’s handouts. How lengthy will it final? (MIT Expertise Assessment)

2 A number of US authorities businesses have been hacked
Russian cybercriminals exploited an information switch flaw—however no ransom calls for have been made. (CNN)+ US officers described the assault as largely “opportunistic.” (NYT $)

3 Jamal Khashoggi’s widow is suing the NSO Group
She maintains that its Pegasus adware tracked her husband earlier than he was murdered. (WP $)
+ US financiers are in talks to amass a few of NSO’s belongings. (The Guardian)

4 AI is overruling nurses
And it’s forcing them to make selections towards their higher judgment. (WSJ $)
+ Synthetic intelligence is infiltrating well being care. We shouldn’t let it make all the selections. (MIT Expertise Assessment)

5 A US chipmaker is sinking $600 million into its Chinese language manufacturing unit
Micron is doubling down on its dedication to the nation, regardless of ongoing tensions. (FT $)
+ Chinese language chips will maintain powering your on a regular basis life. (MIT Expertise Assessment)

6 Ozempic adverts are in every single place
From Meta platforms and airports, to billboards and TV. (NBC Information)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the web. However what does this imply for folks IRL? (MIT Expertise Assessment)

7 How search engine marketing butchered the web
Key phrases are king, and nuanced language has been rendered subsequent to ineffective. (The Verge)

8 We might haven’t any selection however to embrace robotic carers
However for now, they continue to be prohibitively costly. (Proto.Life)+ Inside Japan’s lengthy experiment in automating elder care. (MIT Expertise Assessment)

9 AI is ruining Etsy
ChatGPT’s hustle tradition is churning out poorly-designed and badly-made merchandise. (The Atlantic $)

10 Psychedelics might assist us to study like youngsters once more
Some researchers imagine the medication can kickstart ‘vital durations’ for studying, however not everybody’s satisfied. (Wired $)
+ VR is nearly as good as psychedelics at serving to folks attain transcendence. (MIT Expertise Assessment)

Quote of the day

“We all know the place you’re, we all know the place you’ll, we all know what you’ve got eaten.”

— Mark Grether, vice chairman and normal supervisor of Uber’s promoting division, describes the corporate’s ominous-sounding video ad-targeting capabilities to the Wall Road Journal.

The massive story

Cash is about to enter a brand new period of competitors

April 2022

To many, money now appears largely anachronistic. Folks the world over generally use their smartphones to pay for issues. This shift might seem like a possible driver of inequality: if money disappears, one imagines, that might disenfranchise the aged, the poor, and others. 

In follow, although, cell telephones are almost at saturation in lots of nations. And digital cash, if applied appropriately, could possibly be a power for monetary inclusion. 

The massive questions now are round how we proceed, and whether or not the large digital cash shift in the end advantages humanity at massive—or exacerbates present home and world inequities. Learn the complete story.

—Eswar Prasad

We will nonetheless have good issues

A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre instances. (Acquired any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ It’s by no means too late to find a new dinosaur species. 🦕
+ In reward of a cinematic traditional: The Room (in the event you haven’t seen it but, you actually ought to.)
+ I urge, somebody please green-light a White Lotus prequel.
+ A multi-generational magnificence secret is the most effective sort of magnificence secret.
+ Boo to whoever canceled the Polish path to Hel!



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