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This is today's variation of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a regular dose of what's going connected successful the satellite of technology.
Inside the arguable histrion farms powering Apple’s c neutral goal
“We were losing the light, and inactive astir 20 kilometers from the main road, erstwhile the car shuddered and died astatine the borderline of a unusual forest.
The grove grew arsenic if indifferent to definite unspoken rules of botany. There was nary understory, nary foreground oregon background, lone the trees themselves, which grew arsenic a partition of bare trunks that roseate 100 feet oregon truthful earlier concluding with a burst of heavy foliage adjacent the top. The rows of trees ran possibly the magnitude of a New York City artifact and fell distant abruptly connected either broadside into untidy fields of ungraded and grass. The vista recalled the husk of a failed condo development, its archetypal apartments marooned erstwhile the builders ran retired of cash.”
This is the opening to our latest Big Story, which we are excited to stock today. It’s each astir however Apple (and its peers) are planting immense forests of eucalyptus trees successful Brazil to effort to offset their clime emissions, striking immoderate of the largest-ever deals for c credits successful the process.
The large question is: Can Latin America’s eucalyptus beryllium a scalable clime solution? Read the afloat story.
—Gregory Barber
This nonfiction is portion of the Big Story series: MIT Technology Review’s astir important, ambitious reporting that takes a heavy look astatine the technologies that are coming adjacent and what they volition mean for america and the satellite we unrecorded in. Check retired the remainder of them here.
The vibes are shifting for US clime tech
The past fewer years person been an astir nonstop parade of bully quality for clime tech successful the US. Headlines astir billion-dollar grants from the government, monolithic backstage backing rounds, and labs churning retired beforehand aft beforehand person been routine. Now, though, things are starting to shift.
This nonfiction is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s play clime newsletter. To person it successful your inbox each Wednesday, sign up here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 Elon Musk had a shouting lucifer with the US Treasury Secretary
Scott Bessent did not instrumentality DOGE meddling with the IRS lying down. (Axios)
+ Musk announced he’d walk little clip connected authorities enactment soon afterwards. (WP $)
+ What has the bureau achieved successful its archetypal 100 days? Chaos. (Reuters)
2 Trump’s tariffs are disrupting accumulation of captious aesculapian devices
Of everything from MRI scanners to glucose monitors. (FT $)
+ The tariffs aren’t bully quality for protective aesculapian cogwheel makers either. (NYT $)
3 Nvidia has released a caller level for gathering AI agents 4 Even Mark Zuckerberg thinks societal media isn’t what it was
And dissimilar its rivals, it relies connected open-source models to marque them. (WSJ $)
+ Nvidia has a precise circumstantial imaginativeness for however they’ll work. (The Register)
+ Why handing implicit full power to AI agents would beryllium a immense mistake. (MIT Technology Review)
The question is, what comes next? (New Yorker $)
+ Meta’s Oversight Board ruled that videos disparaging trans women aren’t hatred speech. (WP $)
+ How to hole the internet. (MIT Technology Review)
5 How AI tin assistance programmers sphere aging machine code
Governments crossed the satellite are utilizing AI tools to modernize their systems. (Bloomberg $)
+ The contention to prevention our online lives from a integer acheronian age. (MIT Technology Review)
6 LinkedIn is rolling retired its verification system
Adobe is among its archetypal adoptees. (The Verge)
7 Google’s AI Overviews is making worldly up again
This time, it’s confidently claiming that made-up idioms are real. (Wired $)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Reselling apps are flourishing successful the US
Savvy shoppers are dodging tariffs by buying second-hand. (WP $)
+ The extremity of ultra-cheap buying is nigh. (Rest of World)
9 How to make a caller color
Olo is simply a spot similar teal—but it doesn’t technically exist. (The Atlantic $)
10 This Starbucks store is wholly 3D-printed
The java volition inactive sensation the same, though. (Fast Company $)
+ Meet the designers printing houses retired of brackish and clay. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“It went from a Cinderella communicative to Nightmare connected Elm Street.”
—Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst, tells the Financial Times wherefore Elon Musk’s allegiance to Donald Trump has backfired for his businesses.
One much thing
How a tiny Pacific Island became the planetary superior of cybercrimeTokelau, a drawstring of 3 isolated atolls strung retired crossed the Pacific, is truthful distant that it was the past spot connected Earth to beryllium connected to the telephone—only successful 1997. Just 3 years later, the islands received a fax with an improbable concern connection that would alteration everything.
It was from an aboriginal net entrepreneur from Amsterdam, named Joost Zuurbier. He wanted to negociate Tokelau’s country-code top-level domain, oregon ccTLD—the abbreviated drawstring of characters that is tacked onto the extremity of a URL—in speech for money.
In the succeeding years, tiny Tokelau became an improbable net giant—but not successful the mode it whitethorn person hoped. Until recently, its .tk domain had much users than immoderate different country’s: a staggering 25 million—but the immense bulk were spammers, phishers, and cybercriminals.
Now the territory is desperately trying to cleanable up .tk. Its planetary standing, and adjacent its sovereignty, whitethorn beryllium connected it. Read the afloat story.
—Jacob Judah
English (US) ·