That is as we speak’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a day by day dose of what’s occurring on the earth of know-how.
Why can’t tech repair its gender drawback?
Regardless of the tech sector’s nice wealth and loudly self-proclaimed company commitments to the rights of girls, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial minorities, the business stays principally a straight, white man’s world.
A lot of the burden for altering the system has been positioned on girls themselves: they’re exhorted to be taught to code, main in STEM, and turn into extra self-assertive. However self-confidence and male-style swagger haven’t been sufficient to beat structural hurdles, particularly for tech employees who’re additionally mother and father. Even the pandemic’s shift in direction of distant working hasn’t made workplaces extra hospitable to girls.
It wasn’t all the time this manner. Software program programming as soon as was an virtually totally feminine career. As not too long ago as 1980, girls held 70% of the programming jobs in Silicon Valley, however the ratio has since flipped totally. Whereas many issues contributed to the shift, from the tutorial pipeline to the tiresomely persistent fiction of tech as a gender-blind “meritocracy,” none clarify it totally. What actually lies on the core of tech’s gender drawback is cash. Learn the complete story.
—Margaret O’Mara
Google examines how totally different generations deal with misinformation
The information: Youthful individuals are extra probably than older generations to suppose they might have unintentionally shared false or deceptive info on-line—usually pushed by the strain to share emotional content material rapidly. Nevertheless, they’re additionally more proficient at utilizing superior fact-checking strategies, a brand new examine from Poynter, YouGov, and Google has discovered.
What they discovered: One-third of Gen Z respondents mentioned they observe lateral studying (making a number of searches and cross-referencing their findings) all the time or more often than not when verifying info—greater than double the share of boomers.
However, however: The examine depends on contributors reporting their very own beliefs and habits, which is a notoriously unreliable methodology. And the optimistic figures about Gen Z’s precise habits distinction fairly starkly with different findings on how individuals confirm info on-line. Learn the complete story.
—Abby Ohlheiser
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you as we speak’s most enjoyable/essential/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 Amazon desires to begin providing teletherapy
The e-commerce big is quickly increasing into healthcare. (Insider $)
+ And it’s increasing its palm print-reading fee system into dozens of Complete Meals shops. (Ars Technica)
2 The US has rejected Starlink’s broadband provide bid
The FCC mentioned it had did not exhibit that it might ship on its promise to provide rural America with broadband. (TechCrunch)
+ Who’s Starlink actually for? (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
3 Huge Tech desires to construct information facilities on US battlefields
However Civil Conflict preservationists are preventing again. (New Scientist $)
4 China’s financial disaster is birthing a brand new wave of tycoons
However they’re making their fortunes in sportswear and skincare, not tech. (Economist $)
5 Silicon Valley’s boy genius founders are becoming a member of the Nice Resignation
Their money-losing companies need skilled management throughout a troublesome time for the business. (NYT $)
+ Why Steve Jobs was so keen on his turtleneck. (NYT $)
6 Air-con is horrible for the planet
Higher constructing air flow and greener models are only a few various options. (Vox)
+ The legacy of Europe’s warmth waves will likely be extra air con. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
+ Huge Tech’s engineers are leaving legacy companies for climate-focused startups. (Protocol)
7 Social media actually desires procuring stay streams to take off
Stay ecommerce is already enormous in China, however takeup has been slower elsewhere. (FT $)
+ China desires to regulate how its well-known livestreamers act, converse, and even gown. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
8 The rise and rise of the ebike 
Amid rising gasoline costs, electrical bikes are a less expensive various to automobiles. (WSJ $)
+ Lithium, which is crucial for electrical automotive batteries, is briefly provide proper now. (WSJ $)
9 Millennials are bonding with their children over Pokémon
After 26 years, the franchise has mass-generational enchantment. (WP $)
+ Fewer individuals are gaming now than on the top of the pandemic. (Reuters)
10 Jobhunters are paying $1,000 for the proper LinkedIn headshot
In an image-obsessed world, they’re hoping it’ll give them the sting. (WSJ $)
Quote of the day
“Cyber criminals have been consuming our lunch.”
—Chris Krebs, former director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company, thinks the federal government has been blinded to the specter of on a regular basis ransomware assaults as a consequence of its concentrate on monitoring subtle abroad attackers, reviews PC Magazine.
The massive story
That is the explanation Demis Hassabis began DeepMind
February 2022
In March 2016 Demis Hassabis, CEO and cofounder of DeepMind, was in Seoul, South Korea, watching his firm’s AI make historical past. AlphaGo, a pc program skilled to grasp the traditional board recreation Go, performed a five-game match in opposition to Korean professional Lee Sedol and beat him 4-1, in a victory that modified the world’s notion of what AI can do.
However whereas the DeepMind staff was celebrating, Hassabis was already fascinated with a fair larger problem. He realized that his firm’s know-how was able to tackle one of the vital essential and sophisticated puzzles in biology, one which researchers had been making an attempt to unravel for 50 years: predicting the construction of proteins. Learn the complete story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
We are able to nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre instances. (Received any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ 8glitchorbit’s digital artwork is weirdly soothing.
+ Prey, the brand new Predator prequel, sounds prefer it would possibly simply absolve the franchise’s previous few horrors.
+ All hail the rise and rise of the emo main man.
+ That is fascinating: investigators are utilizing DNA to struggle again in opposition to unlawful tree loggers.
+ Turtles are returning to the Mississippi mainland for the primary time in 4 years.