A habit called “lateral reading” is a core part of any good fact-checking routine. It means opening up a bunch of tabs and doing multiple searches to verify the facts, source, or claims made in a piece of online information. So it seemed like great news when a new study from Poynter, YouGov, and Google…

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. Psychedelics are having a moment and women could be the ones to benefit Psychedelics are having a moment. After decades of prohibition and vilification, they are increasingly being employed as therapeutics. Drugs like…

Nikhita Singhal’s breath still catches when she talks about how her life changed. A psychiatry resident at the University of Toronto, Singhal says it was using psychedelic drugs—ayahuasca, ketamine, and MDMA—that finally addressed the eating disorder she’d had since she was seven years old. “It was really emotionally and psychologically painful,” she says, recounting a…

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. Social media is polluting society. Moderation alone won’t fix the problem We all want to be able to speak our minds online—to be heard by our friends and talk (back) to our opponents.…

We all want to be able to speak our minds online—to be heard by our friends and talk (back) to our opponents. At the same time, we don’t want to be exposed to speech that is inappropriate or crosses a line. Technology companies address this conundrum by setting standards for free speech, a practice protected…

I learned on a liveblog that I had lost the right to have an abortion. When the United States Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade on the morning of June 24, 2022, I was one of the nearly 16,000 people reading SCOTUSblog, a news site launched 20 years ago, which has no official relationship with…

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. Corruption is sending shock waves through China’s chipmaking industry The news: China’s chipmaking industry has descended into chaos, with at least four top executives associated with a state-owned semiconductor fund recently arrested on…

Fifteen years ago, David Glowacki was walking in the mountains when he took a sharp fall. When he hit the ground, blood began leaking into his lungs. As he lay there suffocating, Glowacki’s field of perception swelled. He peered down at his own body—and, instead of his typical form, saw that he was made up…

China’s chipmaking industry descended into chaos last week, with at least four top executives associated with a state-owned semiconductor fund arrested on corruption charges. It’s an explosive turn of events that could force the country to fundamentally rethink how it invests in chip development, according to analysts and experts.  On July 30, China’s top anticorruption…

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. This startup wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting In a search for novel forms of longevity medicine, a biotech company based in Israel says it intends to create embryo-stage…

Machine-learning researchers make many decisions when designing new models. They decide how many layers to include in neural networks and what weights to give inputs at each node. The result of all this human decision-making is that complex models end up being “designed by intuition” rather than systematically, says Frank Hutter, head of the machine-learning…

In a search for novel forms of longevity medicine, a biotech company based in Israel says it intends to create embryo-stage versions of people in order to harvest tissues for use in transplant treatments. The company, Renewal Bio, is pursuing recent advances in stem-cell technology and artificial wombs demonstrated by Jacob Hanna, a biologist at…

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. Researchers repaired cells in damaged pig organs an hour after it died The news: A new system called OrganEx stopped the deterioration of cells in pig organs one hour after the animal’s death,…

A new system stopped the deterioration of cells in pig organs one hour after the animal’s death, a finding that suggests cells don’t die as quickly as previously understood. The technology successfully restored blood circulation and repaired damaged cells in the pigs. The research, described in Nature today, could pave the way to making human…

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. Everything you need to know about the monkeypox vaccines The global outbreak of monkeypox has so far led to more than 24,000 cases in over 80 countries, and the World Health Organization has…

The global outbreak of monkeypox has so far led to more than 24,000 cases in over 80 countries, and the World Health Organization has warned that the window of opportunity to contain the disease and prevent it from becoming endemic outside Africa is rapidly closing. Vaccines represent a potentially crucial measure. Monkeypox vaccines are already…

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. Electric vehicle uptake in the US could be held back by a lack of batteries The news: The US Senate Democrats released a bill last week that could significantly cut the country’s carbon…

A tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 designed to spur adoption of EVs could fail to reach consumers because of the auto industry’s heavy reliance on battery materials and components from China.  To qualify for the credit, which could effectively shave up to $7,500 off the price of a new EV, the…

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. Wildfires are raging across the US The news: Five large wildfires ignited across the US yesterday, with further outbreaks expected over the next few days, experts have warned. The new fires in California,…

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. Here are the biggest technology wins in the breakthrough climate bill Two weeks after blowing up hopes of a US climate deal, Senator Joe Manchin announced on Wednesday that he and Senator Chuck…