This is at present’s version of The Download, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a each day dose of what’s occurring on the planet of expertise.
Google’s Gemini is now in all the pieces. Here’s how one can strive it out.
The information: In the most important mass-market AI launch but, Google is rolling out Gemini, its household of enormous language fashions, throughout virtually all its merchandise, from Android to the iOS Google app to Gmail to Docs and extra. A brand new subscription plan will even give customers entry to Gemini Ultra, probably the most highly effective model of the mannequin, for the primary time.
Why it issues: ChatGPT, launched by Microsoft-backed OpenAI simply 14 months in the past, modified individuals’s expectations of what computer systems may do. Google has been racing to catch up ever since and unveiled its Gemini household of fashions in December. By baking Gemini into its ubiquitous instruments, will probably be hoping to make up any misplaced floor, and even overtake its rival. Read the complete story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
How digital energy vegetation are shaping tomorrow’s power system
The shift from standard power sources like coal and gasoline to variable and unpredictable renewables comparable to photo voltaic and wind means the means we function the power system is altering. Welcome to the period of digital energy vegetation (VPPs).
Governments and personal corporations alike are relying on VPPs’ potential to assist hold prices down and cease the grid from turning into overburdened.
Here’s what it’s essential to learn about VPPs—and why they may very well be the important thing to serving to us deliver extra clear energy and power storage on-line. Read the complete story.
—June Kim
This piece is a part of MIT Technology Review Explains: our sequence untangling the advanced, messy world of expertise that can assist you perceive what’s coming subsequent. You can learn extra from the sequence right here.
Advanced photo voltaic panels nonetheless have to move the check of time
It should be robust to be a photo voltaic panel. They’re constantly uncovered to solar, warmth, and humidity—and the panels put in at present are anticipated to final 30 years or extra.
But how can we inform that new photo voltaic applied sciences will stand the check of time? That’s been particularly difficult for one rising expertise particularly: perovskites. They’re a category of supplies that builders are more and more concerned about incorporating into photo voltaic panels due to their excessive effectivity and low value.
The drawback is, perovskites are infamous for degrading when uncovered to excessive temperatures, moisture, and vibrant mild—all of the issues they’ll want to face up to to make it in the true world.
The excellent news is that researchers have made progress in each stretching out the lifetime of perovskite supplies and figuring out predict which supplies will probably be winners in the long term. Read the complete story.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, our weekly local weather and power e-newsletter. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you at present’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 OpenAI is engaged on an AI agent to take management of your gadget
It would enable software program to carry out clicks, typing and different actions. (The Information $)
+ These six questions will dictate the way forward for generative AI. (MIT Technology Review)
2 A driverless Waymo automobile hit a bicycle owner in San Francisco
It’s yet one more instance of autonomous automobiles posing a hazard to pedestrians (Reuters)
+ What’s subsequent for robotaxis in 2024. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Russia is stoking fears of US civil conflict on-line
Influencers, bloggers and state-run media platforms are spreading disinformation concerning the Texas border disaster. (Wired $)
4 Ransomware hackers stole greater than $1 billion final yr
That’s practically double the funds stolen in 2022. (The Guardian)
+ It’s far simpler to share ransomware than it was. (Bloomberg $)
+ No, hundreds of thousands of sensible toothbrushes weren’t utilized in a DDoS assault. (404 Media)
5 New York goes after social media algorithms
State officers wish to prohibit platforms from algorithmically serving content material to minors. (WSJ $)
6 Uber has recorded its first annual revenue
Just beneath 5 years because it flopped throughout its IPO. (FT $)
7 Self-fertilizing vegetation could also be on the horizon 
Engineered vegetation that don’t depend on artificial fertilizer may liberate farmers in areas with usually poor fertility.(New Yorker $)
+ The Earth is getting greener—fairly actually. (Vox)
8 It’s not simply you—the entire web is getting worse
Once platforms begin prioritizing companies over peculiar customers, the top is nigh. (FT $)
+ Good luck making an attempt to look at these viral Grammy clips on social media. (Slate $)
+ How to repair the web. (MIT Technology Review)
9 A Dutch man is formally the world’s longest-living coronary heart transplant affected person
Bert Janssen acquired his donor coronary heart virtually 40 years in the past—and is comfortable and wholesome. (BBC)
+ This firm plans to transplant gene-edited pig hearts into infants. (MIT Technology Review)
10 TikTok is overrun with lame, manufactured slang
Creators are determined to coin phrases within the hopes it’ll go viral. (Vox)
Quote of the day
“It feels very gloves-off.”
—Jackie Burns Koven, head of menace intelligence at crypto tracing Chainalysis, explains why legal exercise on-line has returned to the unhealthy previous days of the peak of the covid pandemic to Wired.
The huge story
Welcome to Chula Vista, the place police drones reply to 911 calls
In the skies above Chula Vista, California, the place the police division runs a drone program 10 hours a day, seven days per week, it’s not unusual to see an unmanned aerial automobile darting throughout the sky.
Chula Vista is certainly one of a dozen departments within the US that function what are known as drone-as-first-responder applications, the place drones are dispatched by pilots, who’re listening to dwell 911 calls, and sometimes arrive first on the scenes of accidents, emergencies, and crimes, cameras in tow.
But many argue that police forces’ adoption of drones is going on too rapidly. The use of drones as surveillance instruments and first responders is a basic shift in policing, one with out a well-informed public debate round privateness laws, techniques, and limits. There’s additionally little proof that drone policing reduces crime.
Now Chula Vista is being sued to launch drone footage, illustrating how privateness and civil liberty teams are more and more nervous that the expertise will dramatically increase surveillance capabilities and result in much more police interactions with demographics which have traditionally suffered from overpolicing. Read the complete story.
—Patrick Sisson
We can nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre occasions. (Got any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ I can say with absolute certainty that that is the sweetest slug I’ve ever seen.
+ Are these the greatest British rappers of all time?
+ Easy weeknight dinners are important right now of yr.
+ The wild story of the Noguchi Table is a rollercoaster trip.
+ The Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners by no means fail to amaze (thanks Peter!)