Globetrotting science & technology journalist
Rome
Joined June 2008
- Tweets9.8K
- Following1K
- Followers2.4K
- Likes7.8K
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
Today's the pub day of my first book, Are We Ready for Mars?, coauthored with Mark Shelhamer! We're already in the top 20 for bestselling books on Mars on Amazon. Pretty neat! If you ever wondered what it might take to help astronauts thrive on the way there—and how that all might benefit us on Earth—this book is for you!
amazon.com/Ready-Mars-Johns-…
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
Man never thought I’d be an author one day but here I am, holding a book with my name on it. Had been a bit bummed today—the last year has been hard if I’m being honest—but having copies of my book arrive brightened the mood. It’s OK to feel a bit accomplished for a moment right?
This guy is promoting his app that will make an AI digital twin of your dead relatives. What's going through his head? Literally every single comment is trashing this twisted Black Mirror idea. Is he so lost in the tech bubble that he doesn't talk to any normal people?
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
I love this.
If you live anywhere in the dark blue areas, you are closer to outer space--defined by the Kármán line--than you are to the nearest seashore.
(source: u/Many-Excitement3246 via Reddit)
Modern chips make 10 times as much heat per unit area as a stovetop on high. Heat makes them slower, less efficient, and fragile.
Companies are trying to remove that heat with the best thermal conductor in the world: diamond.
Computing is getting weird. My latest in @nytimes.
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
Researchers are investigating using synthetic diamonds to help cool AI data center chips; De Beers-owned Element Six has long used diamonds in satellite chips (@settostun / New York Times)
nytimes.com/2025/10/08/scien…
techmeme.com/251008/p20#a251…
📫 Subscribe: techmeme.com/newsletter?from…
How can Europe replace natural gas it used to get from Russia, while hitting its increasingly strict CO2 emissions targets? No problem, just run a cable carrying green electricity under the Black Sea.
But that isn't as easy as it sounds. (1/3)
That cable would be the longest & deepest one in the world.
And Russia, which occupies land near the cable's path, has allegedly started cutting European electricity cables.
And the supplier of this green energy is a petro state that considers oil and gas a gift from God. (2/3)
I untangle these twisted threads in this feature for IEEE Spectrum. (3/3)
spectrum.ieee.org/black-sea-…
My latest @NYTScience joint. We 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 don't know exactly what made ancient Roman concrete so durable, but researchers are using lessons from the old stuff to make better new stuff now.
Big thanks to @admir_masic, Marie Jackson, @DrWardaAshraf.
nytimes.com/2024/10/19/scien…
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
AI Needs Enormous #ComputingPower.
Could #Light -Based #Chips Help?
quantamagazine.org/ai-needs-… #fintech #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #GenerativeAI #GenAI #BigData #chipmaker @settostun @QuantaMagazine
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
Delighted to announce the upcoming release of my new book this fall, a culmination of my life and work to date:
us.macmillan.com/books/97803…
Creative new weapon against climate change: storing energy by compressing a huge balloon of carbon dioxide into liquid.
nytimes.com/2024/03/18/scien…
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
To learn more flexibly, a new machine learning model selectively forgets what it already knows. @settostun reports: quantamagazine.org/how-selec…
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
The "Ship of Theseus" article has been edited 1792 times since it was created in July of 2003. At present, 0% of the phrases in the original article (seen below) remain.
Everyone has seen crime & scifi shows where a computer can near-magically enhance photos to look far better. AI is bringing us closer to having that universal enhance button, drawing us right up to the limits of what's possible.
Me in @QuantaMagazine
quantamagazine.org/the-ai-to…
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
Effortlessly enhancing an image may be commonplace in crime and science fiction, but researchers are still brainstorming ways around the tradeoff in accuracy that comes with using AI systems to improve photos. @settostun reports:
quantamagazine.org/the-ai-to…
Fake data is really useful. My first in the excellent @QuantaMagazine
The “learning” part of machine learning requires a large amount of data. But data can be expensive, private or in short supply. Training machines with fake data has offered a real solution. @settostun reports: quantamagazine.org/neural-ne…
Amos Zeeberg retweeted
Great @settostun profile of @ipvideo and how they've helped expose the dangers of surveillance tech. Got to team up with them on our investigation into Huawei's minority-detecting "Uyghur alarm" AI. They're the real deal
wired.com/story/surveillance…
Here's the biggest journalism thing I've ever done. It's a @Wired feature on @IPVM, a small publication that stumbled on a huge story: the world's leading #surveillance-camera company used #AI to help China persecute #Uyghurs.
Peep some of the key bits🧵
wired.com/story/surveillance…
One ethnic-minority family was about to be snared in China's racial net, until IPVMer @healy_conor whisked them out of Kyrgyzstan late at night. It's a never-before-told, mini Argo-style rescue story.
The father revealed that his dystopian cell was powered by Hikvision cameras.