This NASA spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter’s mysterious asteroid swarms

How we'll learn to live with covid 

Sponsored by Masterworks.io The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology Liftoff for Lucy 10.18.21 Good morning! I hope you had a lovely weekend. Today: NASA's Lucy spacecraft has set off on a 12-year journey to Jupiter's mysterious asteroid swarms. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. This NASA spacecraft is on its way to Jupiter’s mysterious asteroid swarms   The news: NASA’s Lucy spacecraft has begun the first leg of its 12-year journey to visit ancient, distant asteroids out near Jupiter. Lifting off from Cape Canaveral early Saturday morning, Lucy is headed to study the Trojans, two swarms of rocky bodies far past the asteroid belt that are leftovers from when the solar system formed some 4.6 billion years ago. The plan: Lucy’s mission is to fly by one asteroid in the jam-packed area that circles the sun between Mars and Jupiter—and then continue on to the Trojans. Lucy will take black-and-white and color images, and use a diamond beam splitter to shine far-infrared light at the asteroids to take their temperature and make maps of their surface. This data could help scientists understand how the planets may have formed. Hitch: Lucy has two giant solar arrays to help power it on its journey. They unfurled shortly after the launch, but NASA says that one of them has not fully latched into position properly. Its engineers are now working out what to do next. Read the full story. —Tatyana Woodall 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 livestream of cheetah cubs and their mother. So adorable.   + This amazing animation gives you a sense of the oceans' relative depths.    + An essay on sand to help whet your appetite for Dune (hitting theaters this week!)   + A park in Detroit is offering free skateboarding lessons, and Victor Williams did an excellent job reporting on it for the local news.   + Trees are truly amazing things.    + We can surely all occasionally relate to this copywriter who just could not be bothered anymore.    + Someone managed to get a snap of Ireland's largest native stag.   + What you can learn about your writing by looking only at the punctuation. Protect your organization from the latest cyber-threats.  Join us at CyberSecure, our premier cybersecurity conference, to explore the emerging technologies involved in attack and defense. Register now. Sponsor Message Unexpected Ways Millionaires Use Alternatives (And How You Can Too) The Power Law dictates that 1.1% of the world’s population holds 45.8% of the wealth. And they’re only getting richer thanks to consumer tech’s rise in 2020. What are they doing that we’re not? They allocate 30% to alternatives, like Contemporary Art.  In fact, Contemporary Art prices outperformed the S&P 500 by 174% from 1995–2020. With Masterworks.io, Silicon Alley’s newest $1B unicorn, you can access this unexpected and potentially lucrative asset class. Their revolutionary tech platform allows you to invest in multimillion-dollar art with a few clicks. The Download Subscribers skip their waitlist* The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 How we'll learn to live with covid Even as it becomes endemic, the world still has a long way to go. (The Economist $)   + China is the last country to have a "zero covid" policy. How much longer can it cling on to it? (The Economist $)   + The unvaccinated may not be who you think. (NYT $)   + The complex business of vaccine mandates. (New Yorker $)   + The FDA is recommending that everyone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine gets a booster. (Ars Technica)   + The US is reopening its borders to vaccinated travelers on November 8. (Quartz)  2 How Facebook uses math trickery to hide its hate speech problem In public, it says it removes more than 90% of hate speech on its platform. In private, it admits it's only 3-5%. (Wired $)   + Those stats are likely even worse outside the US. (The Guardian)   + Facebook says AI is the answer. Its own engineers say it's not. (WSJ $)   + Facebook has pledged to hire 10,000 people in the EU to work on the metaverse. (BBC)   + How to fix social media? Change the default settings. (WSJ $)  3 West Virginia is more exposed to floods than any other US state Meanwhile, its senator is fighting legislation to prevent climate change. (NYT $)   + Xi Jinping won't be attending COP26. (Quartz)  4 Cases of psychosis went up by 75% in England in the last two years The pandemic has been devastating for people's mental health. (The Guardian)   5 China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile And demonstrated that its capabilities are far more advanced than US officials realised. (FT $)   6 The US Treasury linked $5.2 billion in bitcoin transactions to ransomware payments See, bitcoin is being used as a currency! (The Record)   + Hackers are still targeting US water facilities. (CyberScoop)  7 UK schools are using facial recognition to let kids pay for lunch The relentless mission creep of this technology continues. (FT $)   + Moscow has just rolled out facial recognition across its metro system. (Reuters $)  8 The weird elitism of private social media It might be a bit more pleasant, but it also sounds… just a bit boring. (New Yorker $)   9 How the hunt for extraterrestrial life led to your smartphone 📱 One of many examples of how government-funded space travel has led to new technologies. (WSJ $)   10 Is it time for robot umpires in baseball? ⚾ This kind of technology has been widely adopted across other sports, but it's not without its controversies. (WP $) Quote of the day "This drug could prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and deaths. But the barrier is going to be price." —John Amuasi, an infectious disease expert at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine in Ghana, tells the New York Times about the huge potential of molnupiravir, made by Merck, and why it may not be fully realized. Top image credit: NASA | BILL INGALLS Please send sand to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? 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