This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Europe’s extreme heat is shutting down power plants
Europe is in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave, and the grid is being pushed to its limits as people turn to fans and air-conditioning to try to stay cool. But some power plants won’t be online to help handle the load.
The main source of stress is increased demand, largely driven by cooling. And the challenges are only expected to worsen as climate change brings more frequent and intense heat waves.
Find out how rising temperatures are stretching power supplies—and how utilities can adapt.
—Casey Crownhart
What Europe’s heat wave means for the power grid
Grid planning in the age of climate change generally means that we need a lot more supply, and quickly. But one interesting facet to this challenge is that in some places, seasonal patterns are shifting, compounding the difficulty of meeting demand.
Europe has historically seen its grid peak in the winter when electric heating is widespread. So some planned outages happen in the spring and into the summer, which is affecting the supply right now. But a growing need for air-conditioning will alter the balance.
Read the full story on how climate change is reshaping electricity demand.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things climate. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.
IBM unveils chip technology that could help extend Moore’s Law another decade
IBM has built a new prototype chip with around 100 billion transistors on an area the size of a fingernail. That’s twice the density of the company’s previous state-of-the-art technology announced in 2021. And the design could pave the way for faster and more energy-efficient computers for years to come.
In the last fifteen years, transistors have been shrunk close to their limits. They can’t get smaller without their function deteriorating. IBM’s new chip resolves this with an approach familiar to urban planners: building up.
Here’s how the strategy is bringing new hope to the technology industry.
—Sophia Chen
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Anthropic says Alibaba “illicitly” extracted Claude’s capabilities
It claims the Chinese firm ran a “brazen” campaign to access the model. (BBC)
+ It says it’s the “largest known distillation attack” on the company. (CNBC)
+ The technique trains a weaker model on a stronger one’s outputs. (FT $)
+ Anthropic previously accused other Chinese rivals of using it. (CNN)
+ But it’s still feuding with the White House. (MIT Technology Review)
2 NASA has detected possible chemical signatures of ancient life on Mars
The Perseverance rover spotted complex carbon on rocks. (New Scientist $)
+ The molecules are typically associated with dead organisms. (Guardian)
+ The US has lost its lead in the hunt for alien life. (MIT Technology Review)
3 The EU has joined a US pact to stop relying on Chinese AI
Much of the rest of the world seems to still be a battleground for control. (FT $)
+ China is expanding its AI push in the Global South to counter the US. (The Wire China)
+ Chinese AI experts are freaking out about the AI arms race. (Wired $)
4 OpenAI and Broadcom have unveiled their first jointly designed AI chip
Jalapeño is built to power large-scale AI systems like ChatGPT. (NYT $)
+ It’s part of OpenAI’s push to “build the full stack.” (CNBC)
5 A new report shows ICE has built a vast hi-tech surveillance system
It includes facial recognition, drones, and data scraping.(Guardian)
+ Is the Pentagon allowed to surveil citizens with AI? (MIT Technology Review)
6 Electronics can now be printed onto living tissue
Which could enable smart implants and ingestible diagnostics. (The Economist $)
7 The data center boom is sparking a third wave of inflation
Demand for memory chips is pushing prices higher.(WSJ $)
8 Companies are scrambling to curb spending on AI token “chewing”
Accenture data shows non-technical staff are draining budgets. (404 Media)
9 Claude Design is creating a bland wave of website uniformity
The AI tool is homogenizing the internet’s aesthetic. (The New Yorker $)
10 Elon Musk has lost his trillionaire status
Thanks to SpaceX stock coming back to Earth. (Business Insider)
Quote of the day
“Tom Brown is not being a weirdo like Dario and can actually engage.”
—A person directly familiar with calls between the Trump administration and Anthropic tells Wired that they’ve improved since cofounder Tom Brown replaced CEO Dario Amodei in the talks.
One More Thing
The quest to learn if our brain’s mutations affect mental health
For years, scientists searching for the roots of conditions like schizophrenia, autism, and Alzheimer’s have focused on single genes. But the real source may lie in a more complex genetic puzzle inside the brain.
Mike McConnell has spent decades exploring the idea that neurons do not all share identical DNA, and that these differences could help explain psychiatric disease. His work has contributed to evidence that brain cells can form a “genetic mosaic,” with mutations that vary across the brain.
Discover how this could reshape our understanding of mental illness.
—Roxanne Khamsi
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ This classical reimagining of the Super Mario soundtrack is exquisite.
+ At long last, we can calculate the fuel efficiency of launching our enemies into the Sun.
+ Before CGI, explosions were an art form. This compilation of classic practical effects is pure action-movie nostalgia.
+ Cambridge botanists lovingly recreated a 336-year-old garden to honor the “father of natural history.” (Big thanks to reader Peter Ryan for the find!)