NASA's newest Mars rover is on its way to look for alien life

A new neural network could help computers code themselves

Sponsored by MIT Sloan School of Management The Download Your daily dose of what’s up in emerging technology 07.30.20 Good morning! Today we are on our way to Mars to look for alien life. Tech bosses got a grilling in Congress. And a neural network that makes coding easier. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. NASA’s newest Mars rover is on its way to look for alien life Launch: At 7.50am EST this morning, NASA launched its latest Mars Rover, Perseverance, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. When it gets to Mars in February 2021it will begin the hunt for ancient (or even current) signs of life. Are we alone? Were we always? We might soon know.  Destination: Once Perseverance lands, it will head for the 28-mile long Jezero crater, a former lakebed that’s 3.8 billion years old and is thought to have once been one of the most habitable parts of ancient Mars.  How it will look for life: Two instruments mounted on the rover’s robotic arm will do most of the extraterrestrial detective work. Both are spectrometers: PIXL, which analyzes X-rays; and Sherloc, which looks at ultraviolet light. They’ll be used to determine the chemical composition of interesting samples, with researchers hoping they may spot complex molecules like amino acids or fatty acids that could indicate the presence of life.  Bring it home too: The new mission will also collect up to 43 samples of interest to be shipped back to Earth later in the decade, in the first-ever sample return mission from another planet. On Earth, scientists will use laboratory analysis to unearth Mars’s ancient secrets. It just needs to get there safely now. Read the full story here. —Neel V. Patel A new neural network could help computers code themselves The news: A new system developed by Intel can extract the meaning of a piece of code in much the same way as natural-language processing (NLP) systems can read a paragraph written in English.  How it works: MISIM works by comparing snippets of code with millions of other programs it has already seen, taken from a large number of online repositories. First it translates the code into a form that captures what it does but ignores how it is written. MISIM then uses a neural network to find other code that does a similar job. In a preprint, the team report that MISIM is 40 times more accurate than previous systems that try to do this. The future: Intel plans to use the tool to suggest ways to write code that is faster or more efficient. But in theory this approach could let machines write their own software, drawing on a patchwork of preexisting programs with minimal human oversight or input. Ultimately, by combining it with NLP, it could let people write software simply by describing what they want to do in words. Read the full story.  —Will Douglas Heaven We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + A subreddit where the rules are you have to pretend to know everyone. + The melancholy beauty of a rain metallophone. (I could listen to this all day.) + The US Space Force has a horse, of course. + How to make a footprint tunnel for small animals. + Which classic 90s songs lasted—and which are being forgotten. With data. + Peace and non-proliferation reigned in Metal Gear Solid V (briefly). Sponsor Message How To Build A Data Analytics Dream Team Having a single data analyst on staff isn't going to cut it anymore. You need the right team to harness the power of data analytics. MIT Sloan shows you where to start. Digital roles, defined. The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 The big four tech bosses faced down Congress yesterday Here’s how it played out. And who won. (NYT)   + They invoked the American Dream to obscure the nightmare. (Motherboard)   + The hearing’s “I’ll get back to you tally.” (Markup on Twitter)   + The five little lies they told. (WaPo)   + Some of the most damaging documents that were revealed. (Wired)   + Ten highlights. (NBC) 2 There’s not just one covid-19 outbreak in the US—there are many And each one requires different solutions. (NYT)   + More than 6,000 cases have been linked to colleges (NYT)   + The first dog to test positive in the US has died. (NatGeo)   + Owners are being told not to kiss pets after a cat was infected. (Guardian) 3 What happens to violent police officers after they’re caught on camera? Tracking the cases of 68 cops who used force during the protests. (ProPublica) 4 Who exactly are “America’s Frontline Doctors” from that viral conspiracy video? Name and shame. (Gizmodo)   + How does this keep happening? (TR) 5 China is exporting AI autocracy around the world Xi Jinping is enhancing his government’s totalitarian control. (Atlantic)   + Why Trump can’t win the new Cold War with China. (New Yorker) 6 One man’s quest to infect people with covid-19 for science Inside the movement to launch a human challenge trial for Covid-19. (Elemental)    + Meet the people who volunteer. (TR) 7 The gig economy is failing—say hello to the hustle economy Teachers, cooks and dancers are using new tools to generate income. (OneZero)   + Has the effort to halt global poverty failed? (Atlantic) 8 One of Stonehenge’s oldest mysteries has been solved The chemical signature of the big sarsen stones has given clues to their origin. (SciAm) 9 Why it matters that TikTok wants to reveal its algorithms It wants to show total transparency—and challenge its rivals to do the same. (Recode) 10. Huawei is now the world’s biggest smartphone maker The Chinese firm has finally toppled Samsung—and has the pandemic to thank. (CNN)   EmTech MIT, our flagship event, is going online. Join us virtually this October as our carefully curated lineup of leaders and experts explore the road ahead for cloud computing, AI, biotech, innovating in the new economy, cybersecurity, and more. Register now. Quote of the Day “Instagram can hurt us meaningfully without becoming a huge business.” A line from an email sent by Mark Zuckerberg that was revealed in the hearing in Congress yesterday. According to the committee, the series of emails are evidence that the Facebook boss saw Instagram as a potential threat and that's why he bought it. Top image credit: NASA/JPL Please send rain music to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @niallfirth. Thanks for reading! —Niall Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free Leading with Innovation. Join us online, October 19-22. Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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