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.

Housing is an election issue. But the US sucks at it.

Ahead of abortion access, ahead of immigration, and way ahead of climate change, US voters under 30 are most concerned about one issue: housing affordability. And it’s not just young voters who say soaring rents and eye-watering home sale prices are among their top worries. For the first time in recent memory, the cost of housing could be a major factor in the presidential election.  

It’s not hard to see why. From the beginning of the pandemic to early 2024, US home prices rose by 47%. In large swaths of the country, buying a home is no longer a possibility even for those with middle-class incomes. 

Permitting delays and strict zoning rules create huge obstacles to building more and faster—as do other widely recognized issues, like the political power of NIMBY activists across the country and an ongoing shortage of skilled workers. But there is also another, less talked-about problem: We’re not very efficient at building, and we seem somehow to be getting worse. Read the full story.

—David Rotman

Inside a fusion energy facility

—Casey Crownhart

On an overcast day in early October, I picked up a rental car and drove to Devens, Massachusetts, to visit a hole in the ground.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised over $2 billion in funding since it spun out of MIT in 2018, all in service of building the first commercial fusion reactor. The plan is to have it operating by 2026.

I visited the company’s site recently to check in on progress. Things are starting to come together and, looking around the site, I found it becoming easier to imagine a future that could actually include fusion energy. But there’s still a lot of work left to do. Read the full story.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

MIT Technology Review Narrated: How gamification took over the world

Instead of liberating us from drudgery and maximizing our potential, gamification has turned out to be just another tool for coercion, distraction, and control. Why did we fall for it?

This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast. In partnership with News Over Audio, we’ll be making a selection of our stories available, each one read by a professional voice actor. You’ll be able to listen to them on the go or download them to listen to offline.

We’re publishing a new story each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, including some taken from our most recent print magazine.

Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Bird flu has been found in a pig in the US for the first time 
The USDA says it’s not cause for panic. But it’s certainly cause for concern. (Reuters)
+ Why virologists are getting increasingly nervous about bird flu. (MIT Technology Review)
 
2 Elon Musk has turned X into a political weapon 
This is what $44 billion bought him: the ability to flood the zone with falsehoods during an election. (The Atlantic $)
+ X’s crowdsourced fact-checking program is falling woefully short. (WP $)
+ And it’s not just X. YouTube is full of election conspiracy content too. (NYT $)
+ Spare a thought for the election officials who have to navigate this mess. (NPR)
 
3 Europe’s big tech hawks are nervously eyeing the US election
Biden was an ally in their efforts to crack down. Either of his potential successors look like a less sure bet. (Wired $)
+ Attendees regularly fail to disclose their links to big tech at EU events. (The Guardian)
 
4 The AI boom is being powered by concrete
It’s a major ingredient for data centers and the power plants being built to serve them—and a climate disaster. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ How electricity could help tackle a surprising climate villain. (MIT Technology Review)
 
5 What makes human brains so special? 
Much of the answer is still a mystery—but researchers are uncovering more and more promising leads. (Nature)
+ Tech that measures our brainwaves is 100 years old. How will we be using it 100 years from now? (MIT Technology Review)
 
6 Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot is getting much more capable
If its latest video, in which it autonomously picks up and moves car parts, is anything to go by. (TechCrunch)
+ A skeptic’s guide to humanoid-robot videos. (MIT Technology Review)
 
7 Alexa desperately needs a revamp
The voice assistant was launched 10 years ago, and it’s been disappointing us ever since. (The Verge) 
 
8 We’re sick of algorithms recommending us stuff
Lots of people are keen to turn back to guidance from other humans. (New Yorker $)
+ If you’re one of them, I have bad news: AI is going to make the problem much worse. (Fortune $)
 
9 Russia fined Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That’s more money than exists on Earth but sure, don’t let that stop you. (The Register)
 
10 What is going on with Mark Zuckerberg recently 
He’s using clothes to rebrand himself and… it’s kinda working?! (Slate)

Quote of the day

“It’s what happens when you let a bunch of grifters take over.”

—A Trumpworld source explains to Wired why Donald Trump’s ground campaign in Michigan is so chaotic. 

 The big story

A day in the life of a Chinese robotaxi driver

July 2022

When Liu Yang started his current job, he found it hard to go back to driving his own car: “I instinctively went for the passenger seat. Or when I was driving, I would expect the car to brake by itself,” says the 33-year-old Beijing native, who joined the Chinese tech giant Baidu in January 2021 as a robotaxi driver.

Liu is one of the hundreds of safety operators employed by Baidu, “driving” five days a week in Shougang Park. But despite having only worked for the company for 19 months, he already has to think about his next career move, as his job will likely be eliminated within a few years. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

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.)

+ Happy Halloween! Check out some of the best spine-chilling classic novels. 
+ If scary movies are more your jam, I’ve still got you covered.
+ These photo montages of music fans outside concerts are incredible. 
+ Love that this guy went from being terrified of rollercoasters to designing them.
+ You’ll probably never sort your life out. And that’s OK.

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.

 The big story

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. ($)

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.

Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work.

There’s a trendy new cure-all in town—you might have seen ads pop up on social media or read rave reviews in beauty magazines. 

Exosomes are being touted as a miraculous treatment for hair loss, aging skin, acne, eczema, pain conditions, long covid, and even neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. That’s, of course, if you can afford the price tag—which can stretch to thousands of dollars.

But there’s a big problem with these big promises: We don’t fully understand how exosomes work—or what they even really are. Read our story. 

—Jessica Hamzelou

AI will add to the e-waste problem. Here’s what we can do about it.

The news: Generative AI could add up to 5 million metric tons of e-waste in total by 2030, according to a new study. That’s a relatively small fraction of the current global total of over 60 million metric tons of e-waste each year. However, it’s still a significant part of a growing problem.

Under the hood: The primary contributor is high-performance computing hardware that’s used in data centers and server farms. That equipment is full of valuable metals and hazardous materials, and it’s being replaced at a rapid rate as AI companies race to adopt the most cutting-edge hardware to power their models.

What can be done: Expanding hardware’s lifespan is one of the most significant ways to cut down on e-waste. Refurbishing and reusing components can also play a significant role, as can designing hardware in ways that makes it easier to recycle and upgrade. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

Militaries are great testing grounds for AI tech, says Palmer Luckey

War is a catalyst for technological change, and the last couple of years have been marred by high-profile conflicts around the world. Geopolitical tensions are still rising now. 

Silicon Valley players are poised to benefit. One of them is Palmer Luckey, the founder of the virtual-reality headset company Oculus, which he sold to Facebook for $2 billion. After Luckey’s highly public ousting from Meta, he founded Anduril, which focuses on drones, cruise missiles, and other AI-enhanced technologies for the US Department of Defense. The company is now valued at $14 billion. We interviewed Luckey about his new project: headsets for the military.

But the use of AI for the military is a controversial topic, with a long and bitter history that stretches from Project Maven to killer robots. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter all about the latest in AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Strava is leaking the location of foreign leaders
Their bodyguards’ runs are revealing more than they ought to. (Le Monde)
+ It’s shockingly easy to buy sensitive data about US military personnel. (MIT Technology Review)

2 A man who used AI to make child sexual abuse images has been jailed
His 18-year sentence is the first of its kind in the UK. (FT $)

3 Here’s what Trump plans to do if he wins a second term
The 900-page Project 2025 document provides plenty of hints. (The Verge)
+ It would be hard for him to roll back the Green New Deal—but not impossible. (Axios)
+ Russia, China and Iran are interfering in the election. (NYT $)
+ But cybercriminals may pose an even greater threat. (Wired $)

4 Apple Intelligence is here 
But it seems it’s still kinda dumb. (WP $)
+ Meta is reportedly building its own AI search engine. (The Information $)
+ The trouble is, AI chatbots make stuff up. And it’s not a fully fixable problem. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Medium is drowning in AI slop
Almost half of the posts on there now are probably AI-generated. (Wired $)

6 What steampunk can teach tech today
We’re too keen on removing friction—people still like fiddling with dials and gears. (New Yorker $)
+ Prosthetics designers are coming up with new ways to augment our bodies. (MIT Technology Review) 

7 This is what wargaming looks like now
Militaries around the world use software called Command PE built by a tiny British game publisher. (WSJ $)

8 Tiktok’s founder has become China’s richest man 
Zhang Yiming’s wealth has almost doubled in the last year, to $49 billion. (BBC)
+ How China takes extreme measures to keep teens off TikTok. (MIT Technology Review)

9 How complex life started to flourish 
You can thank eukaryotes, a type of cell that emerged about 3 billion years ago. (Quanta $)

10 Oregon Trail is being turned into an action-comedy movie
With musical numbers. Yes, seriously. (Hollywood Reporter)

Quote of the day

“I thought it would conquer the world.”

—Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, spoke for us all (well, for me anyway), when he waxed lyrical about the 1999 Sega Dreamcast video game console on a Twitch stream last weekend, the Washington Post reports.

 The big story

Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraine’s drone defense

September 2024

Drones have come to define the brutal conflict in Ukraine that has now dragged on for more than two and a half years. And most rely on radio communications—a technology that Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov has obsessed over since childhood.

While Flash is now a civilian, the former officer has still taken it upon himself to inform his country’s defense in all matters related to radio. He studies Russian transmissions and tries to learn about the problems facing troops.

In this race for survival—as each side constantly tries to best the other, only to start all over again when the other inevitably catches up—Ukrainian soldiers need to develop creative solutions, and fast. As Ukraine’s wartime radio guru, Flash may just be one of their best hopes for doing that. Read the full story.

—Charlie Metcalfe

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.)

+ Timothée Chalamet turned up at his own look-alike contest in New York last weekend. Spoiler alert: he didn’t win. 

+ Learn these basic rules to make veg-based meals delicious.

+ There’s something very special about ancient trees.

+ Do you tend to please everyone but yourself? Here’s how to stop. (NYT $)

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.

Palmer Luckey on the Pentagon’s future of mixed reality

Palmer Luckey has, in some ways, come full circle. 

His first experience with virtual-reality headsets was as a teenage lab technician at a defense research center in Southern California, studying their potential to curb PTSD symptoms in veterans. He then built Oculus, sold it to Facebook for $2 billion, left Facebook after a highly public ousting, and founded Anduril, which focuses on drones, cruise missiles, and other AI-enhanced technologies for the US Department of Defense. The company is now valued at $14 billion.

Now Luckey is redirecting his energy again, to headsets for the military. In September, Anduril announced it would partner with Microsoft on the US Army’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), arguably the military’s largest effort to develop a headset for use on the battlefield. Luckey says the IVAS project is his top priority at Anduril. 

He spoke to MIT Technology Review about his plans. Read the full interview.

—James O’Donnell 

This AI system makes human tutors better at teaching children math

The US has a major problem with education inequality. Children from low-income families are less likely to receive high-quality education, partly because poorer districts struggle to retain experienced teachers. 

Artificial intelligence could help. A new tool could improve the one-on-one tutoring sometimes used to supplement class instruction in these schools, by letting tutors tap into more experienced teachers’ expertise during virtual sessions. Here’s how it works. 

—Rhiannon Williams 

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1  Google is developing an AI agent called Jarvis
It’ll be able to do entire tasks for you, like buying things or making bookings. (The Information $)
+ What are AI agents? (MIT Technology Review)

2 Far-right sheriffs are preparing to disrupt the election 
And the means they’re planning to use are getting more and more violent. (Wired $)
+ Election officials are receiving an unprecedented number of threats. (The Atlantic $)
+ Groups are coordinating online to spread lies about the election. (NBC) 

3 Check out the first images of the sun’s flares from a new NASA telescope
These storms are what’s behind the increased visibility of shimmering lights in our night skies recently. (NYT $)

4 Elon Musk seems to have briefly worked illegally in the US
Which makes his current obsession with borders look a tad hypocritical. (WP $)
+ Why is he backing Trump so enthusiastically? (Vox)

5 An AI transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one said
OpenAI has said its Whisper tool shouldn’t be used in ‘high-risk domains’. But that’s exactly what’s happening. (AP)

6 China is restricting access to materials needed to make chips
It has a near-monopoly, so any squeeze on supply is likely to have an outsized impact. (NYT $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

7 A Neuralink rival says its eye implant restored vision to blind people 
It’s an exciting finding—but still very early days for testing the technology. (Wired $)

8 Nuclear power is back in fashion
But whether building new reactors is the best way to rapidly cut emissions is debatable. (Nature)
+ Why artificial intelligence and clean energy need each other. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Is Boeing fixable? 
It’s been in chaos for the best part of five years, and the problems just keep piling up. (FT $)

10 People have a lot of love for Microsoft Excel 
It’s been around for 40 years, during which time it’s gathered a surprisingly devoted fanbase. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“Today’s win may not be parfait, but it’s still pretty sweet.”

—Meredith Rose, senior policy counsel for consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, hails a US Copyright Office ruling which should make it much easier to fix McDonald’s McFlurry machines, Ars Technica reports.

 The big story

Longevity enthusiasts want to create their own independent state. They’re eyeing Rhode Island.

May 2023

—Jessica Hamzelou

Earlier this month, I traveled to Montenegro for a gathering of longevity enthusiasts. All the attendees were super friendly, and the sense of optimism was palpable. They’re all confident we’ll be able to find a way to slow or reverse aging—and they have a bold plan to speed up progress.

Around 780 of these people have created a “pop-up city” that hopes to circumvent the traditional process of clinical trials. They want to create an independent state where like-minded innovators can work together in an all-new jurisdiction that gives them free rein to self-experiment with unproven drugs. Welcome to Zuzalu. Read the full story.

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.)

+ I learned a lovely new word recently: sonder.
+ Feeling less brave than you’d like to? This Maya Angelou poem is for you. 
+ You can use miso to boost the flavor of so many more things than you’d imagine. 
+ Such a tender moment captured in this photo of kids buying ice cream.