Computer programming has never been easy. The first coders wrote programs out by hand, scrawling symbols onto graph paper before converting them into large stacks of punched cards that could be processed by the computer. One mark out of place and the whole thing might have to be redone. Nowadays coders use an array of powerful tools that automate much of the job, from catching errors as you...
Deep down, our drive to explore Mars has always been about figuring out the story of life in our solar system. Are we alone? Were we always? Or is life on Earth descended from Martian progenitors? NASA is now on the verge of launching its most ambitious effort ever to chip away at those questions, in the form of a high-tech rover called Perseverance and a scheme to return some of the samples it...
If you need a reason to feel good about the direction technology is going, look up Dell Technologies CTO John Roese on Twitter. The handle he composed back in 2006 is @theICToptimist. ICT stands for information and communication. This podcast episode was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was…
Toronto and the corridor that stretches west to Kitchener and Waterloo is already Canada’s capital of finance and technology—and naturally, the region’s leaders want to set an example for the rest of the world. That’s part of the reason why in 2017, municipal organizations in Toronto tapped Google’s sister company Sidewalk Labs to redevelop a…
Preston Estep was alone in a borrowed laboratory, somewhere in Boston. No big company, no board meetings, no billion-dollar payout from Operation Warp Speed, the US government’s covid-19 vaccine funding program. No animal data. No ethics approval. What he did have: ingredients for a vaccine. And one willing volunteer. Estep swirled together the mixture and…