GENETICS

This Company Wants to Rewrite the Future of Genetic DiseaseMegan Molteni | WiredTessera has spent the past two years developing a new class of molecular manipulators capable of doing lots of things CRISPR can doand some that it cant, including precisely plugging in long stretches of DNA. Its not gene editing, says von Maltzahn. Its gene writing.

A Bird? A Plane? No, Its a Google Balloon Beaming the InternetAbdi Lahif Dahir | The New York TimesA fleet of high-altitude balloons started delivering internet service to Kenya on Tuesday, extending online access to tens of thousands of people in the first-ever commercial deployment of the technology.

Fading Light: The Story of Magic Leaps Lost Mixed Reality Magnum OpusAdi Robertson | The VergeInside the company, though, a few dozen developers were building what they describe as one of Magic Leaps most exciting projects. Its calledThe Last Light: an interactive story about a young woman dealing with the death of her grandmother, designed to show the storytelling potential of mixed reality. And crucially, its creators say its finishedbut they arent sure if anyone will ever see it.

Augmented Reality Heads-Up Displays for Cars Are Finally a Real ThingJonathan M. Gitlin | Ars TechnicaAs you can see, it fuses various sensor inputs from the vehicle like the forward-looking radar as well as optical sensors to alert or inform the driver. That information could be the distance to a car youre following, or markers delineating the edge of the road in low-light situations, or navigation help via directional arrows that work a bit like the optimal racing line overlay in games like Forza.

Astronomers Are Uncovering the Magnetic Soul of the UniverseNatalie Wolchover | WiredTwenty years ago, astronomers started to detect magnetism permeating entire galaxy clusters, including the space between one galaxy and the next. Last year, astronomers finally managed to examine a far sparser region of spacethe expanse between galaxy clusters. There, they discovered the largest magnetic field yet: 10 million light-years of magnetized space spanning the entire length of this filament of the cosmic web.

The Tech Giants Invisible HelpersShira Ovide | The New York Timesone of the underappreciated ways that todays technology superpowers like Google and Amazon stay superpowers is their mastery of all the boring stuff that makes the internet possible. This is the kind of advantage the tech superpowers have that is hard forgovernments to break apart or for rivals to compete with. The tech giants fingerprints, brain power and dollars are all over the invisible backbone of the global internet.

Facebook Weighs Banning Political Ads Before the 2020 ElectionJoe Berkowitz | Fast CompanyWhile the ban is only being discussed at this point, asBloombergpoints out, some within Facebook are concerned that an ad blackout may harm voter registration and motivation campaigns, or limit candidates non-ad messaging. However, pre-election blackouts on Facebook are not without precedent: theyre a fixture in other countries, including the U.K.Quote.

NASA Unveils New Rules to Protect the Moon and Mars From Earth GermsChelsea Gohd | Space.comIt is important, the NASA chief explained, that future missions leave behind a pristine environment so we have the ability to know that what we discover in the future was not something that was left there by us We have to make sure that we are inventorying every kind of biological substance and even nonbiological substanceorganics for example that could leave something behind on the moon that could be problematic for future research.

Its an Incredible Experiment: Banning Cars in Cities Stirs Controversyand Has Mixed ResultsNate Berg | Fast CompanyThe converted streets quickly become part of peoples lives, with families having outdoor meals, older residents meeting in the mornings for coffee, and even indoor chores such as folding laundry moving out into the social space. Some are even becoming permanent. One street, which is in front of a school, now prohibits car traffic. In another neighborhood, residents are planning a Living Street explicitly for the purpose of seeing how a permanent closure would affect the area.

Image credit: Kasper Rasmussen /Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 11) - Singularity Hub