The Obtain: ready on the US border, and seaweed’s carbon seize shortcomings

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That is in the present day’s version of The Obtain, our weekday publication that gives a day by day dose of what’s happening on this planet of expertise.

The brand new US border wall is an app

Keisy Plaza, 39, left her residence in Colombia seven months in the past. She walked a 62-mile stretch of dense mountainous rainforest and swampland together with her two daughters and grandson to succeed in Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, on the border with Texas.

Plaza has been attempting on daily basis for weeks to safe an appointment with Customs and Border Safety (CBP) so she will request permission for her household to enter the US. 

To this point, she’s had no luck: every time, she’s been met with software program errors and frozen screens. When appointment slots do open up, they fill inside minutes.

Plaza has not been the one one to come across this new impediment. At the beginning of this yr, President Biden introduced that folks on the southern border who need to search asylum within the US should first request an appointment to satisfy with an immigration official through a cellular app. 

The app, known as CBP One, is one among only a handful of authorized pathways for individuals in search of safety to enter the US. And nobody is aware of how lengthy their wait will likely be. Learn the complete story.

—Lorena Rios

Seaweed farming for carbon dioxide seize would take up an excessive amount of of the ocean

What’s the information?: Tasks centered on rising seaweed to suck CO2 from the air and lock it within the sea have attracted loads of consideration, however farming sufficient seaweed to satisfy climate-change targets might not be possible in any case.

Why not? A brand new research means that round 1,000,000 sq. kilometers of ocean would should be farmed with the intention to take away a billion tons of carbon dioxide from the ambiance over the course of a yr. That may sound quite a bit, however many scientific fashions recommend we  needs to be eradicating something from 1.3 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually to 29 billion tons by 2050 with the intention to hit targets. Learn the complete story.

—Rhiannon Williams

The must-reads

I’ve combed the web to search out you in the present day’s most enjoyable/essential/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.

1 Meta’s hoping to monetize its open-source AIIt might have severe implications for Google and OpenAI’s present dominance of the market. (The Info $)+ Meta’s Yann LeCunn reckons canine are smarter than AI—for now. (CNBC)+ Researchers in China are rising more and more nervous about AI. (Wired $)+ The open-source AI growth is constructed on Huge Tech’s handouts. How lengthy will it final? (MIT Know-how Overview)

2 A number of US authorities companies have been hackedRussian cybercriminals exploited a knowledge switch flaw—however no ransom calls for have been made. (CNN)+ US officers described the assault as largely “opportunistic.” (NYT $)

3 Jamal Khashoggi’s widow is suing the NSO GroupShe maintains that its Pegasus spyware and adware tracked her husband earlier than he was murdered. (WP $)+ US financiers are in talks to amass a few of NSO’s property. (The Guardian)

4 AI is overruling nursesAnd it’s forcing them to make selections in opposition to their higher judgment. (WSJ $)+ Synthetic intelligence is infiltrating well being care. We shouldn’t let it make all the selections. (MIT Know-how Overview)5 A US chipmaker is sinking $600 million into its Chinese language factoryMicron is doubling down on its dedication to the nation, regardless of ongoing tensions. (FT $)+ Chinese language chips will preserve powering your on a regular basis life. (MIT Know-how Overview)

6 Ozempic advertisements are everywhereFrom Meta platforms and airports, to billboards and TV. (NBC Information)+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the web. However what does this imply for individuals IRL? (MIT Know-how Overview)

7 How search engine optimization butchered the internetKeywords are king, and nuanced language has been rendered subsequent to ineffective. (The Verge)

8 We might haven’t any alternative however to embrace robotic carersBut for now, they continue to be prohibitively costly. (Proto.Life)+ Inside Japan’s lengthy experiment in automating elder care. (MIT Know-how Overview)

9 AI is ruining EtsyChatGPT’s hustle tradition is churning out poorly-designed and badly-made merchandise. (The Atlantic $)

10 Psychedelics might assist us to study like youngsters againSome researchers consider the medication can kickstart ‘essential intervals’ for studying, however not everybody’s satisfied. (Wired $)+ VR is nearly as good as psychedelics at serving to individuals attain transcendence. (MIT Know-how Overview)

Quote of the day

“We all know the place you might be, we all know the place you’re going to, we all know what you will have eaten.”

— Mark Grether, vp and normal supervisor of Uber’s promoting division, describes the corporate’s ominous-sounding video ad-targeting capabilities to the Wall Avenue Journal.

The large story

Cash is about to enter a brand new period of competitors

April 2022

To many, money now appears largely anachronistic. Individuals internationally generally use their smartphones to pay for issues. This shift might seem like a possible driver of inequality: if money disappears, one imagines, that might disenfranchise the aged, the poor, and others. 

In follow, although, cell telephones are practically at saturation in lots of international locations. And digital cash, if carried out accurately, may very well be a pressure for monetary inclusion. 

The large questions now are round how we proceed, and whether or not the large digital cash shift in the end advantages humanity at massive—or exacerbates current home and international inequities. Learn the complete story.

—Eswar Prasad

We are able to nonetheless have good issues

A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre occasions. (Received any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ It’s by no means too late to find a brand new dinosaur species. + In reward of a cinematic traditional: The Room (when you haven’t seen it but, you actually ought to.)+ I urge, somebody please green-light a White Lotus prequel.+ A multi-generational magnificence secret is the most effective type of magnificence secret.+ Boo to whoever canceled the Polish path to Hel!

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