The Download: the mortality issue, and America’s new favorite shopping app

This is right now&#8217s edition of The Download, our weekday publication that delivers a day-to-day dose of what&#8217s going on in the planet of technologies.

Introducing: The Mortality Issue

From the second you are born, the a person detail you can be wholly particular of is that you will die. But what if growing older is not inevitable, following all? And if you could gradual, or even turn back again the clock, would you?

The most current concern of MIT Know-how Evaluation examines what death indicates to us in 2022, digging into why some people are nonetheless dedicating their lives to kicking from it, whilst other folks are developing their possess coping mechanisms for grief. Here’s a assortment of some of the new tales in the version, assured to get you contemplating about what comes subsequent.

• My colleague Charlotte wrote a attractive piece about making electronic clones of her (living) mother and father, for a glimpse into what it could be like to converse to the lifeless. Would you be geared up to do the exact for your liked types? 
• If you have ever wondered about what transpires to your system when you donate it to science, wonder no additional.
• Just due to the fact AI can make life-and-death decisions, doesn’t essentially suggest we must permit it to.
• Why the difficult-seeming dream of reviving frozen human bodies using cryonics refuses to die.
• Ought to we think in—or even want—immortality?
• In an age when every thing is staying recorded, even know-how has a lifespan.
• Are electrical automobiles really the resolution to the climate disaster they are currently being touted as?
• Engineering utilized to be a thing to get excited about. When did it grow to be anything to dread?

Study the full journal, and if you have not by now, you can subscribe to MIT Technologies Overview for as very little as $80 a year.

The major browsing application in America that you’ve hardly ever heard of

There is a new Chinese e-commerce app that is quietly but rapidly increasing. It’s known as Temu. And on October 17, it turned the most downloaded buying app in the United States, beating off levels of competition from Amazon, Walmart, and its Chinese competitor Shein.

If your fast reaction is What? I have by no means even heard of Temu!, you are in superior firm. The application remains obscure among the most folks, however it marks yet another substantial-profile try by still a different Chinese tech large to consider its luck in the American e-commerce current market. So how did Temu rise to the top rated of the iOS App Store’s buying chart? Examine the entire tale.

—Zeyi Yang

Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his new weekly newsletter filling you in on all the most up-to-date happenings in China. Indicator up to obtain it in your inbox every single Tuesday.

The need to-reads

I’ve combed the online to locate you today’s most enjoyable/critical/frightening/fascinating tales about know-how.

1 Conspiracy theorists have seized upon Russia’s “dirty bomb” claims
Even with there getting no proof for its existence. (NYT $)
+ Russia’s presentation on the so-called dirty bomb contained 9/11 footage. (Motherboard)
+ The war in Ukraine is dragging us back again to a bloodier age. (Economist $)

2 Superstar deepfakes are advertising’s following frontier
The providers powering them consider the certain attention is really worth the probable legal repercussions. (WSJ $)
+ Inside of the weird new earth of getting a deepfake actor. (MIT Engineering Overview)

3 Twitter’s most energetic customers are turning their back on it
And its team aren’t solely certain why. (Reuters)
+ Twitter has been at any time madder than regular about the previous 7 days. (Motherboard)
+ Elon Musk is optimistic he can near his deal by Friday. (Reuters)
+ Why Twitter even now has people awful Developments. (MIT Technological know-how Evaluate)

4 US election officers are swamped with public information requests 
It is all thanks to one male in Florida. (Bloomberg $)

5 Weather activists are suing governments
They assert that authorities’ inaction to secure nature has harmed their constitutional legal rights. (Hakai Journal)
+ Nature-centered methods can assist to mitigate the local weather disaster&#8217 results. (CNET)
+ Climate motion is gaining momentum. So are the disasters. (MIT Technological innovation Evaluate)

6 Tech’s unicorns are starting to be rarer yet again
Buyers are not offering up hope, though. (WP $)
+ Some undertaking capital money are heading following narwhals as a substitute. (Bloomberg $)

7 Sexually transmitted bacterial infections are rising in the US
Physicians are holding off prescribing a pill especially developed to overcome them, however. (Vox)

8 The pandemic proved it was feasible to perform good science promptly
Higher transparency around study could support to have it on. (Wired $)
+ Is a covid and flu “twindemic” on the horizon? (MIT Technological innovation Evaluate)

9 NASA’s main UFO investigation has started
It’s possible the reality seriously is out there. (Motherboard)
+ Radiation-resistant microbes could survive on Mars for millions of many years. (New Scientist $)

10 Singapore’s politicians are TikTok superstars
Their clips are satisfied with just about unprecedented positivity. (Rest of Earth)

Quote of the working day

“It&#8217s not great, it&#8217s not pleasurable.”

—Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus VR, is not a lover of Meta’s VR social application Horizon Worlds, Insider reports.

The significant story

This is how AI bias seriously happens—and why it is so hard to correct

February 2019

If we want to be able to resolve bias in AI, we require to comprehend the mechanics of how it occurs in the first place.

We typically shorthand our explanation of AI bias by blaming it on biased instruction information, but the fact is additional nuanced. Bias can creep in prolonged in advance of the data is gathered as very well as at numerous other phases of the deep-learning process—and can be unbelievably tough to take care of. Read the total story.

—Karen Hao

We can still have good factors

A position for ease and comfort, entertaining and distraction in these strange situations. (Bought any ideas? Fall me a line or tweet &#8217em at me.)

+ Animals really do do the funniest factors (thanks Charlotte!)
+ Gentlemen, would you dare to bare in a backless match?
+ Perfectly, this tiny picket ball rolling down a colossal xylophone in a Japanese forest has built anything improved.
+ I experienced no concept a magnified ant encounter would be these types of nightmare fodder.
+ Dare you stop by this spooky Italian ghost city?