{"id":17115,"date":"2026-01-28T13:32:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T13:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/28\/the-download-a-bid-to-treat-blindness-and-bridging-the-internet-divide\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T13:32:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T13:32:26","slug":"the-download-a-bid-to-treat-blindness-and-bridging-the-internet-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/28\/the-download-a-bid-to-treat-blindness-and-bridging-the-internet-divide\/","title":{"rendered":"The Download: A bid to treat blindness, and bridging the internet divide"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This is today\u2019s edition of\u00a0The Download<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what\u2019s going on in the world of technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first human test of a rejuvenation method will begin \u201cshortly\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Life Biosciences, a small Boston startup founded by Harvard professor and life-extension evangelist David Sinclair, has won FDA approval to proceed with the first targeted attempt at age reversal in human volunteers.<\/p>\n

The company plans to try to treat eye disease with a radical rejuvenation concept called \u201creprogramming\u201d that has recently attracted hundreds of millions in investment for Silicon Valley firms like Altos Labs, New Limit, and Retro Biosciences, backed by many of the biggest names in tech. Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Antonio Regalado<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Stratospheric internet could finally start taking off this year<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, an estimated 2.2 billion people still have either limited or no access to the internet, largely because they live in remote places. But that number could drop this year, thanks to tests of stratospheric airships, uncrewed aircraft, and other high-altitude platforms for internet delivery.<\/p>\n

Although Google shuttered its high-profile internet balloon project Loon in 2021, work on other kinds of high-altitude platform stations has continued behind the scenes. Now, several companies claim they have solved Loon\u2019s problems\u2014and are getting ready to prove the tech\u2019s internet beaming potential starting this year. Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Tereza Pultarova<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

OpenAI\u2019s latest product lets you vibe code science<\/strong><\/p>\n

OpenAI just revealed what its new in-house team, OpenAI for Science, has been up to. The firm has released a free LLM-powered tool for scientists called Prism, which embeds ChatGPT in a text editor for writing scientific papers.<\/p>\n

The idea is to put ChatGPT front and center inside software that scientists use to write up their work in much the same way that chatbots are now embedded into popular programming editors. It\u2019s vibe coding, but for science. Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Will Douglas Heaven<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

MIT Technology Review Narrated: This Nobel Prize\u2013winning chemist dreams of making water from thin air<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of Earth is covered in water, but just 3% of it is fresh, with no salt\u2014the kind of water all terrestrial living things need. Today, desalination plants that take the salt out of seawater provide the bulk of potable water in technologically advanced desert nations like Israel and the United Arab Emirates, but at a high cost.<\/p>\n

Omar Yaghi, is one of three scientists who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry in October 2025 for identifying metal-\u00adorganic frameworks, or MOFs\u2014metal ions tethered to organic molecules that form repeating structural landscapes. Today that work is the basis for a new project that sounds like science fiction, or a miracle: conjuring water out of thin air.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>This is our latest story<\/a> to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we\u2019re publishing each week on Spotify<\/a> and Apple Podcasts<\/a>. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it\u2019s released.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The must-reads<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve combed the internet to find you today\u2019s most fun\/important\/scary\/fascinating stories about technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

1 TikTok has settled its social media addiction lawsuit<\/strong>
Just before it was due to appear before a jury in California. (NYT<\/a> $)
+ But similar claims being made against Meta and YouTube will proceed. <\/em>(Bloomberg<\/a> $)<\/p>\n

2 AI CEOs have started condemning ICE violence<\/strong>
While simultaneously praising Trump. (TechCrunch<\/a>)
+ Apple\u2019s Tim Cook says he asked the US President to \u201cdeescalate\u201d things<\/em>. (Bloomberg<\/a> $)
+ ICE seems to have a laissez faire approach to preserving surveillance footage. <\/em>(404 Media<\/a>)<\/p>\n

3 Dozens of CDC vaccination databases have been frozen
<\/strong>They\u2019re no longer being updated with crucial health information under RFK Jr. (Ars Technica<\/a>)
+ Here\u2019s why we don\u2019t have a cold vaccine. Yet. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

4 China has approved the first wave of Nvidia H200 chips<\/strong>
After CEO Jensen Huang\u2019s strategic visit to the country. (Reuters<\/a>)<\/p>\n

5 Inside the rise of the AI \u201cneolab\u201d<\/strong>
They\u2019re prioritizing longer term research breakthroughs over immediate profits. (WSJ<\/a> $)<\/p>\n

6 How Anthropic scanned\u2014and disposed of\u2014millions of books <\/strong>\"\ud83d\udcda\"<\/strong>
<\/strong>In an effort to train its AI models to write higher quality text. (WP<\/a> $)<\/p>\n

7 India\u2019s tech workers are burning out
<\/strong>They\u2019re under immense pressure as AI gobbles up more jobs. (Rest of World<\/a>)
+ But the country\u2019s largest IT firm denies that AI will lead to mass layoffs. <\/em>(FT<\/a> $)
+ Inside India\u2019s scramble for AI independence. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

8 Google has forced a UK group to stop comparing YouTube to TV viewing figures
<\/strong>Maybe fewer people are tuning in than they\u2019d like to admit? (FT<\/a> $)<\/p>\n

9 RIP Amazon grocery stores \"\ud83d\uded2\"<\/strong>
The retail giant is shuttering all of its bricks and mortar shops. (CNN<\/a>)
+ Amazon workers are increasingly worried about layoffs. <\/em>(Insider<\/a> $)<\/p>\n

10 This computing technique could help to reduce AI\u2019s energy demands<\/strong>
Enter thermodynamic computing. (IEEE Spectrum<\/a>)
+ Three big things we still don\u2019t know about AI\u2019s energy burden. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Quote of the day<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOh my gosh y\u2019all, IG is a drug.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014An anonymous Meta employee remarks on Instagram\u2019s addictive qualities in an internal\u00a0 document made public as part of a social media addiction trial Meta is facing, Ars Technica<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

One more thing<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral<\/p>\n

<\/strong>Wikipedia is the most ambitious multilingual project after the Bible: There are editions in over 340 languages, and a further 400 even more obscure ones are being developed. But many of these smaller editions are being swamped with AI-translated content. Volunteers working on four African languages, for instance, estimated to MIT Technology Review that between 40% and 60% of articles in their Wikipedia editions were uncorrected machine translations.<\/p>\n

This is beginning to cause a wicked problem. AI systems learn new languages by scraping huge quantities of text from the internet. Wikipedia is sometimes the largest source of online linguistic data for languages with few speakers\u2014so any errors on those pages can poison the wells that AI is expected to draw from. Volunteers are being forced to go to extreme lengths to fix the issue, even deleting certain languages from Wikipedia entirely. Read the full story<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2014Jacob Judah<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

We can still have nice things<\/strong><\/p>\n

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? <\/em>Drop me a line<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>skeet \u2019em at me<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

+ This singing group<\/a> for people in Amsterdam experiencing cognitive decline is enormously heartwarming ($)
+ I enjoyed this impassioned defense of the movie sex scene<\/a>.
+ Here\u2019s how to dress like Steve McQueen<\/a> (inherent cool not included, sorry)
+ Trans women are finding a home in the beautiful Italian town of Torvajanica<\/a> \"\u2764\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is today\u2019s edition of\u00a0The Download,\u00a0our weekday newsletter that provides […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}