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The Download: Facebook’s misleading cancer ads, and hacking’s next era

The ad reads like an offer of salvation: Cancer kills many people. But there is hope in Apatone, a proprietary vitamin C–based mixture, that is “KILLING cancer.” The substance, an unproven treatment... Read more »

Facebook is bombarding cancer patients with ads for unproven treatments

One from Verita Life, in Bangkok, Thailand, targeted Australians like Autar, falsely claiming that a hypothermia treatment offered there would “destroy cancer cells.” When Autar took a screenshot of the ad in... Read more »

Metaverse: Open for business?

Already the metaverse is increasingly part of companies’ merger and acquisitions (M&A) strategies. In December 2021, Nike announced its acquisition of digital design studio RTFKT, which the sportswear company says it hopes... Read more »

We need smarter cities, not “smart cities”

Truly smart cities recognize the ambiguity of lives and livelihoods, and they are driven by outcomes beyond the implementation of “solutions.” They are defined by their residents’ talents, relationships, and sense of... Read more »

The hacking industry faces the end of an era

That’s still a huge and rich market, but it cuts out dozens of nations in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia, where Israeli cyber firms had been making a killing selling... Read more »

The US Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. What does that mean?

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion, was joined by justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who supported the decision. The court’s three liberal justices, Justices Stephen... Read more »

Yann LeCun has a bold new vision for the future of AI

Melanie Mitchell, an AI researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, is also excited to see a whole new approach. “We really haven’t seen this coming out of the deep-learning community so much,”... Read more »

The Download: Yann LeCun’s AI vision, and smart cities’ unfulfilled promises

“We’re addicted to being on Facebook.” —Jordi Berbera, who runs a pizza stand in Mexico City, tells Rest of World why he has turned to selling his wares through the social network... Read more »

The smart city is a perpetually unrealized utopia

What is interesting about both early and current visions of urban sensing networks and the use that could be made of the data they produced is how close to and yet how... Read more »

The Download: Retrofitting cities, and Alexa mimics the dead

The scars and pockmarks of the aging apartments and housing units under the purview of the New York City Housing Authority don’t immediately communicate the idea of innovation. The largest landlord in... Read more »