That is at the moment’s version of The Obtain, our weekday publication that gives a day by day dose of what’s happening on this planet of know-how.
Recapturing early web whimsy with HTML
Web sites weren’t all the time slick digital experiences.
There was a time when browsing the net concerned opening tabs that performed music towards your will and sifting by means of partitions of textual content on a coloured background. Within the 2000s, earlier than Squarespace and social media, web sites had been manifestations of individuality—constructed from scratch utilizing HTML, by customers who had some data of code.
Scattered throughout the net are communities of programmers working to revive this seemingly outdated strategy. And the motion is something however a superficial enchantment to retro aesthetics—it’s about celebrating the human contact in digital experiences. Learn the complete story.
—Tiffany Ng
This story is from the following journal version of MIT Know-how Assessment, set to go dwell on January 8—and it’s all about innovation. If you happen to don’t already, benefit from our seasonal subscription gives to get a replica when it lands.
2023 is breaking all types of local weather information
This has been fairly the yr for local weather information, with climate disasters, technological breakthroughs, and coverage adjustments making headlines all over the world. There’s an abundance of dangerous information, however there are additionally some glimmers of hope, if you already know the place to look.
It’s quite a bit to make sense of, so we took a glance again on the yr, with the assistance of loads of knowledge. A “local weather wrapped,” if you’ll. Test it out, and likewise learn our story about why our local weather crew is extra optimistic than you may think.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, MIT Know-how Assessment’s weekly local weather publication. Enroll to obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you at the moment’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 Baby sexual abuse pictures have been present in AI coaching knowledge units
It’s a stunning demonstration of how little we all know in regards to the huge quantities of information 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 massive query: who will purchase it? (Bloomberg $)
+ These minuscule pixels are poised to take augmented actuality by storm. (MIT Know-how Assessment)
3 TikTok moderators are struggling to evaluate Israel-Gaza content material
The large downside is an absence of native language expertise in content material moderation groups. (The Guardian)
+ Meta’s oversight board has mentioned AI is main the corporate to take away too many posts associated to the battle. (Quartz)
+ Serps assist to spice up misinformation. (Scientific American $)
4 The US pumped extra oil than every other nation in historical past in 2023
Sounds dreadful, however the actuality under the headline is complicated. (The Atlantic $)
+ Fossil-fuel emissions are over one million occasions better than carbon elimination efforts. (MIT Know-how Assessment)
5 What’s going to Ozempic’s subsequent act be? 
All these medicine are being studied as therapies for the whole lot from habit to liver illness to infertility. (NYT $)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the web. However what does this imply for folks IRL? (MIT Know-how Assessment)
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 whole lot of worry. (Remainder of World)
7 X went down for greater than an hour
It’s not the one main outage for the location in latest 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?
Learn 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 yr in honesty, however there have been nonetheless loads of lolz—and drama—to go round. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“Folks have all the time been capable of lie, however the effectiveness of these lies is now augmented and considerably elevated.”
—Arizona’s Secretary of State Adrian Fontes tells Wired how he expects AI to have an effect on the 2024 elections.
The large story
A Roomba recorded a girl on the bathroom. How did screenshots find yourself on Fb?
December 2022
Within the fall of 2020, gig staff in Venezuela posted a sequence of pictures to on-line boards the place they gathered to speak store. The pictures had been mundane, if typically intimate, family scenes captured from low angles—together with a revealing shot of a younger girl sitting on the bathroom, her shorts pulled all the way down to mid-thigh.
The pictures had been taken by growth variations of a Roomba robotic vacuum. They had been then despatched to Scale AI, a startup that contracts staff all over the world to label knowledge used to coach synthetic intelligence.
MIT Know-how Assessment obtained 15 screenshots of those non-public pictures, which had been posted to closed social media teams. The pictures reveal an entire knowledge provide chain—and new factors the place private info might leak out—that few customers are even conscious of. Learn the complete story.
—Eileen Guo
We are able to nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction to brighten up your day. (Obtained any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ The brand new yr is approaching, and with it: 30 days of yoga with Adriene!
+ The JWST has gifted us with a plethora of fantastic pictures this yr. Right here are among the most spectacular.
+ There’s by no means a nasty time to eat scrumptious pasta dishes.
+ Shout out to Sally Snowman, the Boston Gentle first and on-line feminine lighthouse keeper.
+ India’s oldest bookshop appears to be like like a stunning place.
