Made in China—three words often associated with cheap quality. Four years ago, the Chinese government repurposed the phrase as the name of a new industrial strategy intended to propel homegrown companies into more advanced markets, and to make them less reliant on overseas components. This month, tough new US sanctions on China’s Huawei, the world’s Read more about US Sanctions on Huawei May Fuel China's Plan for Its Own Tech[…]
One of the most difficult things about detecting manipulated photos, or "deepfakes," is that digital photo files aren't coded to be tamper-evident. But researchers from New York University's Tandon School of Engineering are starting to develop strategies that make it easier to tell if a photo has been altered, opening up a potential new front Read more about To Fight Deepfakes, Researchers Built a Smarter Camera[…]
So where are antibiotics supposed to come from? Last month I wrote about the unexpected bankruptcy of the small biotech firm Achaogen, which declared Chapter 11 despite having brought out a needed new antibiotic. It’s remarkable that, in the five weeks since the company put itself up for sale, the alarm provoked by its crash Read more about The Radical Plan to Change How Antibiotics Get Developed[…]
When Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Goana takes off in his T-38 Talon training jet, he flies a loop north toward the Red River, which forms a meandering border between north Texas and southern Oklahoma. For decades, the remote farming area has been an ideal training ground for Air Force pilots like Goana. But in recent years, Read more about The Military Is Locked in a Power Struggle With Wind Farms[…]
Earlier this month, the Trump administration dubbed Huawei a national security threat, impelling Google and other US tech companies to cut off business ties. The move followed growing fears that its products could contain backdoors for the Chinese government, as well as a string of indictments charging Huawei with misleading banks about violating Iran sanctions Read more about Life at Huawei: Trains, European Design, and Lunch Naps[…]
Hello, and welcome to a post-Memorial Day weekend edition of The Monitor, WIRED's pop-culture news roundup. What's in store today? First up, Disney's Aladdin had a pretty big weekend at the box office. Also, Netflix picked up a couple of big movies at the Cannes Film Festival, and there might be another Alien prequel coming. Read more about <em>Aladdin</em> Made $113 Million at the Box Office This Weekend[…]
For months, there’s been a steady march of controversies over how tech companies collect, manage, process, and share massive (and passive) amounts of data. And even though the executives and founders of these companies profess a renewed commitment to privacy and corporate responsibility, people are beginning to worry about surveillance and power—and reconsider how much Read more about We Need to Build Up ‘Digital Trust’ in Tech[…]
Guo Xinhua wants to teach computers to echolocate. He and his colleagues have built a device, about the size of a thin laptop, that emits sound at frequencies 10 times higher than the shrillest note a piccolo can sustain. The pitches it produces are inaudible to the human ear. When Guo’s team aims the device Read more about This AI Uses Echolocation to Identify What You're Doing[…]
Observation is a game about putting yourself back together. Yourself, in this case, being an artificial intelligence whose "body" is a space station drifting in low orbit. Hey, these journeys come in all shapes and sizes. When you begin Observation, developed for PC and PlayStation 4 by developer No Code, your body has forgotten you, Read more about <em>Observation</em> Is About Putting Yourself Back Together[…]
Nearly two months after her divorce from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was finalized, MacKenzie Bezos has made a plan to be far more generous than she and her former husband were as a couple. When the pair split, she became one of the richest women in the world, with a fortune estimated to be worth Read more about MacKenzie Bezos and the Pitfalls of Tech Philanthropy[…]