Our climate reporter Casey Crownhart has been in the middle of plenty of heated conversations around the dinner table. And although you might be tempted to sneak away or change the subject, it might be worth sticking around and helping people to cut through the confusing things they’ve heard on TV, or the internet, or from their friends.
If you decide to do that, we’ve got you covered. Let’s dig into a few questions about climate change, and especially climate technology, that might come up over the course of the holidays. Read the full story.
This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things energy and climate change. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Sam Altman’s past hints at why OpenAI’s board tried to fire him
The very qualities some admire deeply rankle others. (WP $)
+ Who is in and who is out on OpenAI’s board. (NYT $)
+ Behind the scenes of the OpenAI showdown. (WSJ $)
+ Who won? The money men. (NYT $)
+ Some OpenAI customers have been considering switching to rival companies. (CNBC)
+ But the development of AI is now controlled by a tiny cadre of firms. (NBC)
+ You can now voice chat with ChatGPT. (Engadget)
2 Binance users have withdrawn at least $1 billion in the last 24 hours
With the CEO pleading guilty to various criminal charges, can you really blame them? (CNBC)
+ One of the perks Binance offered VIP customers was a heads-up if they were being investigated by law enforcement. (CNBC)
+ But does all this drama mean crypto might be about to become… boring? (Wired $)
+ What’s next for crypto. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Gazans are desperately trying to stay online
Even before the siege, internet connectivity was poor. Now the situation is dire. (Vice)
4 Digital hate has a long, dark history in India
And we can expect things to get much worse with an election looming early next year. (Wired $)
5 AI-generated photos are proliferating on stock image sites
It’s harder than ever before to tell fact from fiction. (WP $)
+ Text-to-image AI models can be tricked into generating disturbing images. (MIT Technology Review)