The Download: preserving our digital lives, and X exits Brazil [MIT Tech Review]

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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.

The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age

There is a photo of my daughter that I love. She is sitting, smiling, in our old back garden, chubby hands grabbing at the cool grass. It was taken on a digital camera in 2013, when she was almost one, but now lives on Google Photos. 

But what if, one day, Google ceased to function? What if I lost my treasured photos forever? For many archivists, alarm bells are ringing. Across the world, they are scraping up defunct websites or at-risk data collections to save as much of our digital lives as possible. Others are working on ways to store that data in formats that will last hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years.

The endeavor raises complex questions. What is important to us? How and why do we decide what to keep—and what do we let go? And how will future generations make sense of what we’re able to save? Read the full story.

—Niall Firth

Niall’s story is from the forthcoming print issue of MIT Technology Review, which is celebrating 125 years of the magazine! It’s set to go live on Wednesday August 28, so if you don’t already, subscribe now to get a copy when it lands.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 X is ceasing operations in Brazil
The company is locked in a legal battle with the country’s Supreme Court Justice. (TechCrunch)
+ Users in Brazil will still be able to access the platform, though. (Reuters)
+ X alternatives are just a bit…lacking. (The Guardian)

2 Far right influencers are unhappy with Donald Trump’s campaign
They’ve accused his team of watering down his persona and policies. (WP $)
+ The FBI is increasingly cautious about investigating far right groups. (New Yorker $)

3 Startups are struggling in the US
Especially if they’re not focusing fully on AI. (FT $)
+ Commercializing AI isn’t as simple as many people make out, though. (Vox)

4 A superconducting wire has set a new record
It can apparently carry 50% as much current as the previous record-holding wire. (IEEE Spectrum)

5 Waymo’s robotaxis are keeping San Francisco residents up at night
They just keep honking, even after a rapidly-deployed fix. (The Verge)
+ Amazon’s delivery drones are pretty noisy too. (Insider $)
+ What’s next for robotaxis in 2024. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Worldcoin is still running into trouble
Jurisdictions across the world are concerned by Sam Altman’s data-grabbing project. (WSJ $)
+ Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Your guts are teaming with viruses
But we’re not sure how many, or what they’re doing there. (Knowable Magazine)
+ How bacteria-fighting viruses could go mainstream. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Are the Ray-Ban Meta glasses cool now?
Mark Zuckerberg certainly thinks so. (The Information $)
+ Their launch back in 2021 was marred by privacy concerns. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Tarot readers are sick of Instagram scammers
I guess they didn’t see it coming? (The Guardian) 

10 TikTok’s favorite restaurant is entirely fictional
Its cast of characters delights millions of fans. (NBC News)
+ Chinese social media users are skillfully parodying AI video goofs. (Ars Technica)

Quote of the day

“It’s like asking about the risks of replacing a car with a big cardboard cutout of a car. Sure, it looks like a car, but the ‘risk’ is that you no longer have a car.”

—Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, compares a chatbot running a city—which could become a reality in Wyoming’s capital city—to driving an imaginary car, the Washington Post reports.

The big story

Alina Chan tweeted life into the idea that the virus came from a lab.

June 2021

Alina Chan started asking questions in March 2020. She was chatting with friends on Facebook about the virus then spreading out of China. She thought it was strange that no one had found any infected animal. She wondered why no one was admitting another possibility, which to her seemed very obvious: the outbreak might have been due to a lab accident.

Chan is a postdoc in a gene therapy lab at the Broad Institute, a prestigious research institute affiliated with both Harvard and MIT. Throughout 2020, Chan relentlessly stoked scientific argument, and wasn’t afraid to pit her brain against the best virologists in the world. Her persistence even helped change some researchers’ minds. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

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 or tweet ’em at me.)

• I don’t know how many walnuts I could crush with my elbow in 30 seconds, but I do know it wouldn’t be this many.
  + Stop buying poor quality clothing: these tips can help you decide whether a garment’s worth your cash.
  + An important investigation into how many times Pitbull has used his catchphrase ‘dale.’
  + Let’s road trip!