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The Download: Google’s Project Astra, and China’s export bans

3 How China secretly repatriates Uyghurs
Even the United Nations is seemingly powerless to stop it. (WP $)
+ Uyghurs outside China are traumatized. Now they’re starting to talk about it. (MIT Technology Review)

4 How Big Tech decides when to scrub a user’s digital footprint
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione’s Instagram has been taken down—but his Goodreads hasn’t. (NYT $)
+ Why it’s dangerous to treat public online accounts as the full story. (NY Mag $)

5 Russia-backed hackers targeted Ukraine’s military using criminal tools
Which makes it even harder to work out who did it. (TechCrunch)

6 What Cruise’s exit means for the rest of the robotaxi industry
Automakers are becoming frustrated waiting for the technology to mature. (The Verge)
+ Cruise will focus on developing fully autonomous personal vehicles instead. (NYT $)

7 Researching risky pathogens is extremely high stakes
The potential for abuse has some researchers worried we shouldn’t undertake it at all. (Undark Magazine)
+ Meet the scientist at the center of the covid lab leak controversy. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Altermagnetism could be computing’s next big thing
It would lead to faster, more reliable electronic devices. (FT $)

9 Why some people need so little sleep
Gene mutations appear to hold at least some of the answers. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Babies spend most of their time asleep. New technologies are beginning to reveal why. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Inside the creeping normalization of AI movies
The world’s largest TV manufacturer wants to make films for people too lazy to change the channel. (404 Media)
+ Unsurprisingly, it’ll push targeted ads, too. (Ars Technica)
+ How AI-generated video is changing film. (MIT Technology Review)

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