The Download: Apple’s eucalyptus carbon bet, and climate tech’s bad vibes
Plus: Elon Musk had a falling out with the top US finance official
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Inside the controversial tree farms powering Apple’s carbon neutral goal
“We were losing the light, and still about 20 kilometers from the main road, when the car shuddered and died at the edge of a strange forest.
The grove grew as if indifferent to certain unspoken rules of botany. There was no understory, no foreground or background, only the trees themselves, which grew as a wall of bare trunks that rose 100 feet or so before concluding with a burst of thick foliage near the top. The rows of trees ran perhaps the length of a New York City block and fell away abruptly on either side into untidy fields of dirt and grass. The vista recalled the husk of a failed condo development, its first apartments marooned when the builders ran out of cash.”
This is the opening to our latest Big Story, which we are excited to share today. It’s all about how Apple (and its peers) are planting vast forests of eucalyptus trees in Brazil to try to offset their climate emissions, striking some of the largest-ever deals for carbon credits in the process.
The big question is: Can Latin America’s eucalyptus be a scalable climate solution? Read the full story.
—Gregory Barber
This article is part of the Big Story series: MIT Technology Review’s most important, ambitious reporting that takes a deep look at the technologies that are coming next and what they will mean for us and the world we live in. Check out the rest of them here.
The vibes are shifting for US climate tech
The past few years have been an almost nonstop parade of good news for climate tech in the US. Headlines about billion-dollar grants from the government, massive private funding rounds, and labs churning out advance after advance have been routine. Now, though, things are starting to shift.
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Elon Musk had a shouting match with the US Treasury Secretary
Scott Bessent did not take DOGE meddling with the IRS lying down. (Axios)
+ Musk announced he’d spend less time on government work shortly afterwards. (WP $)
+ What has the agency achieved in its first 100 days? Chaos. (Reuters)
2 Trump’s tariffs are disrupting production of vital medical devices
Of everything from MRI scanners to glucose monitors. (FT $)
+ The tariffs aren’t good news for protective medical gear makers either. (NYT $)
3 Nvidia has released a new platform for building AI agents
And unlike its rivals, it relies on open-source models to make them. (WSJ $)
+ Nvidia has a very specific vision for how they’ll work. (The Register)
+ Why handing over total control to AI agents would be a huge mistake. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Even Mark Zuckerberg thinks social media isn’t what it was
The question is, what comes next? (New Yorker $)
+ Meta’s Oversight Board ruled that videos disparaging trans women aren’t hate speech. (WP $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)
5 How AI can help programmers preserve aging computer code
Governments across the world are using AI tools to modernize their systems. (Bloomberg $)
+ The race to save our online lives from a digital dark age. (MIT Technology Review)
6 LinkedIn is rolling out its verification system
Adobe is among its first adoptees. (The Verge)
7 Google’s AI Overviews is making stuff up again
This time, it’s confidently claiming that made-up idioms are real. (Wired $)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Reselling apps are flourishing in the US
Savvy shoppers are dodging tariffs by shopping second-hand. (WP $)
+ The end of ultra-cheap shopping is nigh. (Rest of World)
9 How to create a new color
Olo is a bit like teal—but it doesn’t technically exist. (The Atlantic $)
10 This Starbucks store is entirely 3D-printed
The coffee will still taste the same, though. (Fast Company $)
+ Meet the designers printing houses out of salt and clay. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“It went from a Cinderella story to Nightmare on Elm Street.”
—Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst, tells the Financial Times why Elon Musk’s allegiance to Donald Trump has backfired for his businesses.
One more thing
How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrimeTokelau, a string of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific, is so remote that it was the last place on Earth to be connected to the telephone—only in 1997. Just three years later, the islands received a fax with an unlikely business proposal that would change everything.
It was from an early internet entrepreneur from Amsterdam, named Joost Zuurbier. He wanted to manage Tokelau’s country-code top-level domain, or ccTLD—the short string of characters that is tacked onto the end of a URL—in exchange for money.
In the succeeding years, tiny Tokelau became an unlikely internet giant—but not in the way it may have hoped. Until recently, its .tk domain had more users than any other country’s: a staggering 25 million—but the vast majority were spammers, phishers, and cybercriminals.
Now the territory is desperately trying to clean up .tk. Its international standing, and even its sovereignty, may depend on it. Read the full story.
—Jacob Judah
