Folding iPhones, mind-reading tech and EV supercars are all heading your way in 2026, write our tech columnists. But it isn’t all rosy: AI is causing problems in fields ranging from cybersecurity to healthcare.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/tech-predictions-2026-6884d6b0?st=uYi79k&reflink=article_gmail_share
Your home address, birth date and other personal info are strewn all over the internet. @nicnguyen explains how you can track it down and delete it. But you’ll have to stay vigilant.
https://www.jcvi.org/research/first-minimal-synthetic-bacterial-cell QT:{{” Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) and Synthetic Genomics, Inc. (SGI) have accomplished the next feat in synthetic biology research—the design and construction of the first minimal synthetic bacterial cell, JCVI-syn3.0.
Using the first synthetic cell, Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0 (built by this same team in 2010), JCVI-syn3.0 was developed through a design, build, and test (DBT) process using genes from JCVI-syn1.0. The new minimal synthetic cell contains only 531,000 base pairs and just 473 genes making it the smallest genome of any self-replicating organism. “}}
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30069045/
QT:{{” Eukaryotic genomes are generally organized in multiple chromosomes. Here we have created a functional single-chromosome yeast from a Saccharomyces cerevisiae haploid cell containing sixteen linear chromosomes, by successive end-to-end chromosome fusions and centromere deletions. The fusion of sixteen native linear chromosomes into a single chromosome results in marked changes to the global three-dimensional structure of the chromosome due to the loss of all centromere-associated inter-chromosomal interactions, most
telomere-associated inter-chromosomal interactions and 67.4% of intra-chromosomal interactions. However, the single-chromosome and wild-type yeast cells have nearly identical transcriptome and similar phenome profiles. The giant single chromosome can support cell life, although this strain shows reduced growth across environments, competitiveness, gamete production and viability. “}}
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Samuel_(computer_scientist) QT:{{” Arthur Lee Samuel (December 5, 1901 – July 29, 1990)[3] was an American pioneer in the field of computer gaming and artificial intelligence.[2] He popularized the term “machine learning” in 1959.[4] The Samuel Checkers-playing Program was among the world’s first successful self-learning programs, and as such a very early demonstration of the fundamental concept of artificial intelligence (AI).[5] “}}
…from here to DeepBlue & AlphaGo
https://learn.academy4sc.org/video/selective-attention-invisible-gorilla-experiment-see-through-your-focus/#:~:text=The%20study%20was%20conducted%20in,a%20gorilla%20thumping%20its%20chest. QT:{{” The study was conducted in 1999 at Harvard University. It involved a short video of people in white t-shirts and black t-shirts passing a basketball to people in the same colored shirt. Participants were asked to watch this video and count the number of passes the white team made. Most could correctly list the number of passes and thought it was a relatively easy task. Yet despite this, over half of the participants failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit walk between the basketball players, stand and face the camera, bang their chest, and walk offscreen.
This goes against nearly everyone’s intuition: we’d expect to be able to spot such an obvious occurrence. Yet repeated studies have gathered similar results: we aren’t as observant as we like to think. If we don’t expect to see something, odds are we won’t notice it. Selective attention has its benefits, but it can cause you to miss out on something as obvious as a gorilla thumping its chest.
“}}
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm3951
Allen, B. L., & Taatjes, D. J. (2015). The Mediator complex: a central integrator of transcription. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 16(3), 155–166. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm3951
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