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This is today’s download.,Our weekday newsletter that delivers a daily dose of what’s happening in the tech world.
Why can’t technology fix the gender problem?
Despite the tech sector’s great wealth and vocal corporate commitment to the rights of women, LGBTQ+ people, and ethnic minorities, the industry is largely a straight, white man’s world.
Much of the burden of changing the system has been placed on women themselves: they have been encouraged to learn to code, major in STEM, and become more assertive. But confidence and masculine swagger aren’t enough to overcome structural barriers, especially for parents of tech workers. Even the pandemic’s shift to remote work hasn’t made workplaces less hospitable to women.
It wasn’t always like this. Software programming was once an entirely female profession. As recently as 1980, women held 70% of programming jobs in Silicon Valley, but the ratio has completely reversed since then. From the education pipeline to the tiresome, persistent fiction of technology as a gender-blind “meritocracy,” many factors contribute to the shift, but none fully explain it. At the core of technology’s gender problem is money. Read the full story.
– Margaret O’Mara
Google examines how different generations handle misinformation.
The news: Young people are more likely than older generations to think they’ve unknowingly shared false or misleading information online – often driven by pressure to share emotional content quickly. However, they are adept at using advanced fact-checking techniques, according to a new study by Poynter, YouGov and Google.
What you get: One-third of Gen Z respondents said they always or often practice lateral reading (referring to multiple searches and their results) when verifying information.
But, but: The study relies on participants reporting their own beliefs and habits, which is an extremely unreliable method. And his optimism about Gen Z’s authentic habits contrasts sharply with other findings about how people verify information online. Read the full story.
– Abby Olhizer
It should be read
I’ve scoured the internet for the most entertaining/important/scary/amazing stories about technology today.
1 Amazon wants to start offering teletherapy
The e-commerce giant is rapidly expanding into healthcare. (in $)
+ And it’s expanding its palm print-reading payment system to dozens of Whole Foods stores. (Ars Technica)
2 The US rejects Starlink’s broadband bid. 
The FCC He said he has failed to deliver on his promise to provide broadband access to rural America. (TechCrunch)
+Who is Starlink really for? (MIT Technology Review)
3. Big Tech wants to build data centers on American battlefields
But Civil War Guardians are fighting. (New Scientist $)
4 China’s economic crisis is spawning a new wave of rich people.
But they’re making their fortunes not in technology, but in sportswear and skin care. (Economist $)
5 Silicon Valley genius inventors are joining the Great Retirement.
Their money-losing businesses need experienced leadership for the industry’s tough times. (NYT$)
+ Why Steve Jobs loved his turtleneck so much. (now $)
6 Air conditioning is terrible for the planet
Better building ventilation and green rooms are a few possible solutions. (Vox)
+ The legacy of European heat waves will be more air conditioning. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Big Tech engineers are leaving climate-focused startups. (protocol)
7 Social media wants to buy live streams directly
Direct e-commerce is huge in China, but uptake has been slow elsewhere. (FT$)
+ China wants to control how its popular live broadcasters act, speak and dress.. (MIT Technology Review)
8 ebike rise and rise 
Electric bikes are a cheaper alternative to cars amid rising gas prices. (WSJ$)
+ Lithium, which is essential for electric car batteries, is currently in short supply. (WSJ$)
9 Millennials are bonding with their kids over Pokemon.
26 years later, the franchise has mass-generation appeal. (WP$)
+ Fewer people are playing now than at the peak of the epidemic. (Reuters)
10 Jobhunters are paying $1,000 for the perfect LinkedIn headshot.
They hope it will give them an edge in an image-obsessed world. (WSJ$)
Quote of the day
“Cyber criminals were eating our lunch.”
—Chris Krebs, former director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, thinks the government’s focus on tracking sophisticated overseas attackers has turned a blind eye to the daily threat of ransomware attacks, PC Mag reports.
The big story
Demis Hassabis started DeepMind for this reason.
February 2022
In the year In March 2016, DeepMind CEO and founder Demis Hassabis was in Seoul, South Korea, watching his company’s AI make history. AlphaGo, a computer program trained to master the classic board game, changed the world’s perception of what AI can do with a five-game match against Korean professional Lee Sedol and a 4-1 victory.
But while the DeepMind team was celebrating, Hassabis was already thinking about a bigger challenge. The company’s technology is understood to be ready to take on one of the most important and complex puzzles in biology, the prediction of protein structure that researchers have been trying to solve for 50 years. Read the full story.
– Douglas Garden
We can still have something good.
A place of comfort, relaxation and distraction in these strange times. (Got an idea? Drop me a line or Tweet at me.)
+ 8glitchorbit digital art is incredibly soothing.
+ Prey, the new Predator prequel, seems to only address a few of the horrors of the franchise’s past.
+ Everyone rejoices in the rise and rise of the Imo leader.
+ This is interesting: investigators are using DNA to fight illegal loggers.
+ Turtles are returning to the Mississippi mainland for the first time in four years.
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