Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are bitter rivals in the commercial space race, but they agree on one thing: Settling space is an existential imperative. Space is the place. The final frontier. It is our human destiny to transcend our…
Last year, I added my DNA profile to a private genealogical database, FamilyTreeDNA, and clicked “Yes” to allow the police to search my genes. In 2018, police in California announced they’d caught the Golden State Killer, a man who had eluded…
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. On the ground in Ukraine’s largest Starlink repair shop Starlink is absolutely critical to Ukraine’s ability to continue…
Google has just released a technical report detailing how much energy its Gemini apps use for each query. In total, the median prompt—one that falls in the middle of the range of energy demand—consumes 0.24 watt-hours of electricity, the equivalent…
I remember using a princess toothbrush when I was little. The handle was purple, teal, and sparkly. Like most of the other pieces of plastic that have ever been made, it’s probably still out there somewhere, languishing in a landfill.…
Oleh Kovalskyy thinks that Starlink terminals are built as if someone assembled them with their feet. Or perhaps with their hands behind their back. To demonstrate this last image, Kovalskyy—a large, 47-year-old Ukrainian, clad in sweatpants and with tattoos stretching…
NASA and IBM have released a new open-source machine learning model to help scientists better understand and predict the physics and weather patterns of the sun. Surya, trained on over a decade’s worth of NASA solar data, should help give…
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. How churches use data and AI as engines of surveillance On a Sunday morning in a Midwestern megachurch,…
Despite decades of green certifications, better material sourcing, and the use of more sustainable materials such as mass timber, the built environment is still responsible for a third of global emissions worldwide. According to a 2024 UN report, the building…