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Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The plan is to deploy a lander, a rover, and hopper to explore a site near the lunar south pole that could harbor water ice,…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. While DOGE’s efforts to shutter federal agencies dominate news from Washington, the Trump administration is also making more global moves. Many of these center on China. Tariffs on goods from the country…

When the journalist and culture critic Amanda Hess got pregnant with her first child, in 2020, the internet was among the first to know. “More brands knew about my pregnancy than people did,” she writes of the torrent of targeted ads that came her way. “They all called me mama.”  The internet held the promise…

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. Adventures in the genetic time machine An ancient-DNA revolution is turning the high-speed equipment used to study the DNA of living things on to specimens from the past.  The technology is being used…

Eske Willerslev was on a tour of Montreal’s Redpath Museum, a Victorian-era natural history collection of 700,000 objects, many displayed in wood and glass cabinets. The collection—“very, very eclectic,” a curator explained—reflects the taste in souvenirs of 19th-century travelers and geology buffs. A visitor can see a leg bone from an extinct Steller’s sea cow,…

Many artists worry about the encroachment of artificial intelligence on artistic creation. But Sougwen Chung, a nonbinary Canadian-Chinese artist, instead sees AI as an opportunity for artists to embrace uncertainty and challenge people to think about technology and creativity in unexpected ways.  Chung’s exhibitions are driven by technology; they’re also live and kinetic, with the…

Gloria Zhu ’26 and Lee Liu ’26 set out to make a calligraphy machine during IAP 2024. They built its mechatronic parts in a month; then, fueled by Hershey’s dark chocolates, they put in many late nights in the Metropolis makerspace’s electronics mezzanine to finish the job. The resulting device can move its brush pen…

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. China’s electric vehicle giants are betting big on humanoid robots As the electric-vehicle war in China calms down, leaving a few established players to dominate the field, Chinese EV giants are expanding into…

The near future. It’s not a kiss, but it’s not not a kiss. Her lips—full, soft, pliable—yield under mine, warm from the electric heating rod embedded in her throat. They taste of a faint chemical, like aspartame in Diet Pepsi. Her thermoplastic elastomer skin is sensitive to fabric dyes, so she wears white Agent Provocateur…

At the 2025 CCTV New Year Gala last month, a televised spectacle watched by over a billion viewers in China, 16 humanoid robots took the stage. Clad in vibrant floral print jackets, they took part in a signature element of northeastern China’s Yangko dance, twirling red handkerchiefs in unison with human dancers. But the robots…

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. Motor neuron diseases took their voices. AI is bringing them back. Jules Rodriguez lost his voice in October of last year. His speech had been deteriorating since a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis…

An entertainment revolution, powered by AI and other emerging technologies, is fundamentally changing how content is created and consumed today. Media and entertainment (M&E) brands are faced with unprecedented opportunities—to reimagine costly and complex production workloads, to predict the success of new scripts or outlines, and to deliver immersive entertainment in novel formats like virtual…

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. A few weeks ago, a fire broke out at the Moss Landing Power Plant in California, the world’s largest collection of batteries on the grid. Although the flames were extinguished in a…

Jules Rodriguez lost his voice in October of last year. His speech had been deteriorating since a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2020, as the muscles in his head and neck progressively weakened along with those in the rest of his body. By 2024, doctors were worried that he might not be able…

AI is everywhere, and it’s starting to alter our relationships in new and unexpected ways—relationships with our spouses, kids, colleagues, friends, and even ourselves. Although the technology remains unpredictable and sometimes baffling, individuals from all across the world and from all walks of life are finding it useful, supportive, and comforting, too. People are using…

Organizations working toward ambitious sustainability targets are finding an ally in emerging technologies. In agriculture, for instance, AI can use satellite imagery and real-time weather data to optimize irrigation and reduce water usage. In urban areas, cloud-enabled AI can power intelligent traffic systems, rerouting vehicles to cut commute times and emissions. At an industrial level, advanced…

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. Robots are bringing new life to extinct species In the last few years, paleontologists have developed a new trick for turning back time and studying prehistoric animals: building experimental robotic models of them. …

Paleontologists aren’t easily deterred by evolutionary dead ends or a sparse fossil record. But in the last few years, they’ve developed a new trick for turning back time and studying prehistoric animals: building experimental robotic models of them. In the absence of a living specimen, scientists say, an ambling, flying, swimming, or slithering automaton is…

We often take the internet for granted. It’s an ocean of information at our fingertips—and it simply works. But this system relies on swarms of “crawlers”—bots that roam the web, visit millions of websites every day, and report what they see. This is how Google powers its search engines, how Amazon sets competitive prices, and…

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 dream of offshore rocket launches is finally blasting off Want to send something to space? Get in line. The demand for rides off Earth is skyrocketing, with launches more than doubling over…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. No tech leader before has played the role in a new presidential administration that Elon Musk is playing now. Under his leadership, DOGE has entered offices in a half-dozen agencies and counting,…

Want to send something to space? Get in line. The demand for rides off Earth is skyrocketing, pushing even the busiest spaceports, like Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, to their operational limits. Orbital launches worldwide have more than doubled over the past four years, from about 100 to 250 annually. That number is projected to spiral…

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. These documents are influencing the DOGE-sphere’s agenda  Reports from the US Government Accountability Office on improper federal payments in recent years are circulating on X and elsewhere online, and they seem to be…

Reports from the US Government Accountability Office on improper federal payments in recent years are circulating on X and elsewhere online, and they seem to be a big influence on Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its supporters as the group pursues cost-cutting measures across the federal government.  The payment reports have been…