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3 What it’s like to receive a brain-computer implantJeffrey Keefer, who has Parkinson’s, agreed to having the device temporarily applied to the surface of his brain. (WSJ $)+ Former Neuralink workers think the firm is taking unnecessary risks. (Vox)+ How it feels to have a life-changing brain implant removed. (MIT Technology Review) 4 Tragic news stories drove readers to donate thousands of dollarsThe only problem is, the victims didn’t exist. (NBC News)+ Surveillance company Flock Safety claims to have solved 10% of…

That virus likely came from a single employee who happened to be shedding an enormous quantity of a very weird variant. The researchers would desperately like to find that person. But what if that person doesn’t want to be found? A few years ago, Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri, became obsessed with weird covid variants he was seeing in wastewater samples. The ones that caught his eye were odd in a couple of different ways: they didn’t match any of the common variants, and they didn’t circulate.…

How China Got Ahead on EVs Speakers: Zeyi Yang, China reporter, Amanda Silverman, Features & investigations editor, and Abby Ivory-Ganja, Sr engagement editor In the race to produce and sell more electric vehicles, China has emerged as the unexpected winner. If you visit Shanghai or Shenzhen today, it feels like half of the cars running on the streets are electric. The burgeoning domestic demand also transformed Chinese auto companies into aggressive challengers in the global auto market. What did China’s government…

“From what we’ve seen so far, our method seems to be working well,” says Machado.  This isn’t the only attempt to use drones for the dispersal of disease-fighting mosquitoes—one team ran similar studies in Brazil’s northeast after the region saw an outbreak of zika in 2015 and 2016 that led to 3,308 babies being born with birth defects, and another is carrying out EU-funded tests in France and Spain.  Birdview is now negotiating with different biofactories, or insectaries, that sterilize male Aedes aegypti and with…

The news: There is a new most expensive drug ever—a gene therapy that costs as much as a Brooklyn brownstone or a Miami mansion, and more than the average person will earn in a lifetime. Lenmeldy is a gene treatment for metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD) and was approved in the US on Monday. Its maker, Orchard Therapeutics, says the $4.25 million wholesale cost reflects the value the treatment has for patients and families. Why it matters:  MLD is a nerve disorder that strikes toddlers, quickly robbing them of their…

The Redmi Note 13 Pro, in some sense, may appear as the awkward middle sibling in the new Redmi Note 13 series, but it is nonetheless an attractive option, considering the price. Starting at Rs 25,999, the smartphone packs a 200MP camera, 67W charging, a tall 6.67-inch AMOLED display with 1.5K (2,712 x 1,220 pixels) resolution, and Dolby Atmos-enabled stereo speakers.The Note 13 Pro also sticks to the OG Redmi Note roots and it is among the few sub-Rs 30K phones to offer a headphone jack. There’s also an IR transmitter,…

It’s part of the city’s efforts to cut down on the risk of battery fires, some of which have been sparked by e-bike batteries charging inside apartment buildings, according to the fire department. For more on the program and how it might help address fires, check out my latest story. In the meantime, here’s what I heard from delivery drivers and the startups at the kickoff event. On a windy late-February day, I wove my way through the lines of delivery workers who showed up to the event in Manhattan’s Cooper Square.…

But there’s no denying that super-high prices can signal that a treatment isn’t economically sustainable.  One prior title holder, the gene therapy Glybera, was purchased only once before being retired from the market. It didn’t work well enough to justify the $1 million price tag, which made it the price champion at the time. Then there’s the treatment that’s been reigning as the costliest until today, when Lenmeldy took over. It’s a $3.5 million hemophilia treatment called Hemegenix, which is also a gene therapy. Such…

The Blackview MP60 mini PC. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNETBlackview, a company best known for its rugged Android smartphones with built-in thermal cameras, released the MP60 Mini PC Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNETThe cooling fan has a cool LED light-up effect. Well, it's cool if you like such things. If not, I haven't found a way to switch it off without opening up the system. That fan initially bothered me because I thought it might be noisy, but the sound turned out to be very unobtrusive.Power adapter, HDMI cable,…

For companies producing just about any physical product, the many “black swan” events (catastrophic incidents that are nearly impossible to predict) of the last four years illustrate the importance of supply chain resilience—businesses’ ability to anticipate, respond, and bounce back. Yet many organizations still don’t have robust measures in place for future setbacks. In a poll of 250 business leaders conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights in partnership with Infosys Cobalt, just 12% say their supply chains are…