This is at the moment’s version of The Download, our weekday publication that gives a each day dose of what’s happening on the planet of expertise.
Recapturing early web whimsy with HTML
Websites weren’t all the time slick digital experiences.
There was a time when browsing the online concerned opening tabs that performed music towards your will and sifting via partitions of textual content on a coloured background. In the 2000s, earlier than Squarespace and social media, web sites have been manifestations of individuality—constructed from scratch utilizing HTML, by customers who had some data of code.
Scattered throughout the online are communities of programmers working to revive this seemingly outdated strategy. And the motion is something however a superficial attraction to retro aesthetics—it’s about celebrating the human contact in digital experiences. Read the total story.
—Tiffany Ng
This story is from the subsequent journal version of MIT Technology Review, set to go stay on January 8—and it’s all about innovation. If you don’t already, make the most of our seasonal subscription affords to get a duplicate when it lands.
2023 is breaking all types of local weather information
This has been fairly the 12 months for local weather information, with climate disasters, technological breakthroughs, and coverage adjustments making headlines all over the world. There’s an abundance of unhealthy information, however there are additionally some glimmers of hope, if you realize the place to look.
It’s loads to make sense of, so we took a glance again on the 12 months, with the assistance of loads of knowledge. A “climate wrapped,” if you’ll. Check it out, and in addition learn our story about why our local weather group is extra optimistic than you may think.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly local weather publication. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you at the moment’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 Child sexual abuse images have been present in AI coaching knowledge units
It’s a stunning demonstration of how little we all know in regards to the large quantities of knowledge generative AI fashions are skilled on. (WP $)
+ The largest AI picture coaching knowledge set, LAION, has been quickly taken offline whereas it scrambles to reply. (404 Media)
2Apple’s headset could possibly be prepared as early as February 2024
Then we’ll discover out the reply to the large query: who will purchase it? (Bloomberg $)
+ These minuscule pixels are poised to take augmented actuality by storm. (MIT Technology Review)
3 TikTok moderators are struggling to evaluate Israel-Gaza content material
The huge drawback is an absence of native language abilities in content material moderation groups. (The Guardian)
+ Meta’s oversight board has stated AI is main the corporate to take away too many posts associated to the battle. (Quartz)
+ Search engines assist to spice up misinformation. (Scientific American $)
4 The US pumped extra oil than some other nation in historical past in 2023
Sounds dreadful, however the actuality beneath the headline is advanced. (The Atlantic $)
+ Fossil-fuel emissions are over 1,000,000 occasions larger than carbon elimination efforts. (MIT Technology Review)
5 What will Ozempic’s subsequent act be? 
These kinds of medicine are being studied as therapies for every little thing from dependancy to liver illness to infertility. (NYT $)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the web. But what does this imply for individuals IRL? (MIT Technology Review)
6 YouTube is without doubt one of the final bastions of unbiased journalism in India
And even then, reporters who run their very own channels work with few protections and a variety of worry. (Rest of World)
7 X went down for greater than an hour
It’s not the one main outage for the positioning in current days both. (The Verge)
+ How Twitter died in 2023. (Engadget)
8 Science fiction is kinda ruining the world
Billionaires grew up studying dystopian novels, and now they’re decided to make them a actuality. (Scientific American $)
9 What occurs to our planet when the solar dies?
Read this for a wholesome serving to of perspective over the vacations(!) (Quanta $)
10 How 2023 went down on social media
It wasn’t a classic 12 months in honesty, however there have been nonetheless loads of lolz—and drama—to go round. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“People have always been able to lie, but the effectiveness of those lies is now augmented and significantly increased.”
—Arizona’s Secretary of State Adrian Fontes tells Wired how he expects AI to have an effect on the 2024 elections.
The huge story
A Roomba recorded a lady on the bathroom. How did screenshots find yourself on Facebook?
December 2022
In the autumn of 2020, gig employees in Venezuela posted a sequence of photos to on-line boards the place they gathered to speak store. The images have been mundane, if generally intimate, family scenes captured from low angles—together with a revealing shot of a younger girl sitting on the bathroom, her shorts pulled right down to mid-thigh.
The photos have been taken by growth variations of a Roomba robotic vacuum. They have been then despatched to Scale AI, a startup that contracts employees all over the world to label knowledge used to coach synthetic intelligence.
MIT Technology Review obtained 15 screenshots of those non-public images, which had been posted to closed social media teams. The photos reveal an entire knowledge provide chain—and new factors the place private data might leak out—that few shoppers are even conscious of. Read the total story.
—Eileen Guo
We can nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ The new 12 months is approaching, and with it: 30 days of yoga with Adriene!
+ The JWST has gifted us with a plethora of fantastic photos this 12 months. Here are a few of the most spectacular.
+ There’s by no means a foul time to eat scrumptious pasta dishes.
+ Shout out to Sally Snowman, the Boston Light first and on-line feminine lighthouse keeper.
+ India’s oldest bookshop appears to be like like a stunning place.