Wednesday, May 14, 2025

The Obtain: company displays, and carbon removing funding


That is immediately’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a every day dose of what’s happening on the planet of expertise.

Subsequent slide, please: A short historical past of the company presentation

PowerPoint is all over the place. It’s utilized in non secular sermons; by schoolchildren getting ready ebook reviews; at funerals and weddings. In 2010, Microsoft introduced that PowerPoint was put in on greater than a billion computer systems worldwide. 

However earlier than PowerPoint, and lengthy earlier than even digital projectors, 35-millimeter movie slides had been king. They had been the one medium for the sorts of high-impact displays given by CEOs and prime brass at annual conferences for stockholders, workers, and salespeople. 

Recognized within the enterprise as “multi-image” exhibits, these displays required a small military of producers, photographers, and stay manufacturing workers to drag off. Learn this story to delve into the fascinating, flashy historical past of company displays

—Claire L. Evans

This story is from the following upcoming challenge of our print journal, which is all about ethics. When you don’t subscribe already, enroll to obtain a duplicate when it publishes.

The US simply invested greater than $1 billion in carbon removing

The information: The US Division of Vitality has introduced that it’s offering $1.2 billion to develop regional hubs that may draw down and retailer away at the very least 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per 12 months as a way of combating local weather change. 

The small print: The primary recipients will embrace Occidental Petroleum’s proposed carbon-removal undertaking in Kleberg County, Texas, in addition to a partnership between Battelle, Climeworks, and Heirloom to develop services in southwestern Louisiana. Billions of {dollars} extra funding and extra hubs are set to be introduced additional down the road. 

Why it issues: A rising physique of analysis has discovered that, to maintain local weather change in test, nations might have to not solely radically minimize greenhouse gasoline emissions but additionally draw down billions of tons of carbon dioxide per 12 months. This newest transfer represents a significant step ahead within the effort to determine a marketplace for doing this. Learn the complete story

—James Temple

AI isn’t nice at decoding human feelings. So why are regulators focusing on the tech?

Lately regulators have been ramping up warnings in opposition to emotion recognition: the try to establish an individual’s emotions or frame of mind utilizing AI evaluation of video, facial pictures, or audio recordings.

The concept isn’t tremendous sophisticated: the AI mannequin might even see an open mouth, squinted eyes, and contracted cheeks with a thrown-back head, for example, and register it as fun, concluding that the topic is comfortable. 

However in follow, that is extremely complicated—and, some argue, a harmful and invasive instance of the type of pseudoscience that synthetic intelligence usually produces. However why is that this a prime concern now? Learn this story from senior reporter Tate Ryan-Mosley to search out out

This story is from The Technocrat, Tate’s weekly e-newsletter providing you with the within observe on all issues tech, coverage and energy. Join to obtain it in your inbox each Friday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the web to search out you immediately’s most enjoyable/vital/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.

1 Survivors say there was no warning siren earlier than the Lahaina wildfires
However it’s unclear what went flawed. (BBC)
+ Researchers are beginning to take inventory of the losses in Maui. (Science)
Because of this the wildfires occurred—and what could be performed to stop future ones. (Wired $)

2 The clear vitality transition is occurring quicker than you would possibly assume
Renewables at the moment are anticipated to overhaul coal because the world’s largest supply of electrical energy by 2025. (NYT $)
Sure, we have now sufficient supplies to energy the world with renewable vitality. (MIT Know-how Evaluation)

3 Regulators have authorised a driverless taxi growth in San Francisco
Autonomous cabs can now function throughout your complete metropolis 24/7. (CNN)

4 TikTok ‘twin’ movies are set to destroy our brains even additional 
Pity our poor, over-stimulated, already-obliterated consideration spans. (Wired $)
Individuals are going to excessive lengths to make the right TikTok clip. (WSJ $)

5 Why is it so exhausting to create new forms of ache relievers? 💊
The sector is plagued by failures, however a brand new research presents a small glimmer of hope. (MIT Know-how Evaluation)

6 Why everybody went so loopy over the LK-99 superconductor
The claims don’t appear to face up. However the episode exhibits how determined Silicon Valley is for the following huge factor. (WP $)
A physique of proof has piled up that disproves the preliminary claims. (The Verge)

7 AI means hackers can simply discuss computer systems into misbehaving
Instruments like ChatGPT radically decrease the limitations for all kinds of assaults. (WSJ $)
3 ways AI chatbots are a safety catastrophe. (MIT Know-how Evaluation)

8 How China is utilizing apps to woo Taiwanese youngsters
An ideal instance of sentimental energy in motion. (The Guardian)

9 How tech is altering how we grieve
We now depart behind reams and reams of stuff on-line for our households to pore over once we’re gone. (The Atlantic $)
Contained in the metaverse meetups that allow folks share on dying, grief, and ache. (MIT Know-how Evaluation)

10 Zuckerberg says that cage battle isn’t occurring
It appears fairly apparent that Musk has chickened out. (BBC)

Quote of the day

“That they had an understanding that I wasn’t the only option — I used to be the one selection.”

—German director and actor Werner Herzog tells the New York Instances why he’s voicing a brand new assortment of AI-generated poems.  

The massive story

Tech’s new labor motion is harnessing classes discovered a century in the past

ANDREA DAQUINO

June 2021

Again in 2020, because the world struggled to deal with the pandemic, employees on the Amazon achievement heart in Bessemer, Alabama, had been being pressed to work tougher and longer. They felt dehumanized. They wished dignity, not simply increased wages.

Staff pushed to affix the Retail, Wholesale, and Division Retailer Union, however Amazon waged struggle on the marketing campaign, and ultimately a vote handed in favor of protecting the established order. Elsewhere, nonetheless, different employees throughout the nation had began agitating. 

Their exercise displays a brand new groundswell of curiosity in organizing amongst tech employees, who’re up in opposition to the world’s richest firms. However for each side on this wrestle, the underside line shouldn’t be cash however energy. Learn the complete story.

—Sarah Jaffe

We are able to nonetheless have good issues

A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction to brighten up your day. (Acquired any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ London’s skater women certainly need to be among the coolest folks on the planet. 
+ Let the talk start over one of the best 100 motion pictures.
+ You’ll be able to study lots about somebody from how they spend their cash.
+ Diane Morgan’s Netflix present Cunk on Earth had me in stitches final weekend. 
+ A little bit bit of information can delude us into considering we all know much more than we actually do. ($)



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