The Download: radioactive rhinos, and the rise and rise of peptides

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.

Why conservationists are making rhinos radioactive

Every year, poachers shoot hundreds of rhinos, fishing crews haul millions of sharks out of protected seas, and smugglers carry countless animals and plants across borders. This illegal activity is incredibly hard to disrupt, since it’s backed by sophisticated criminal networks and the perpetrators know that their chances of being caught are slim. With an annual value of $20 billion, according to Interpol, it’s the world’s fourth-most-lucrative criminal enterprise after trafficking in drugs, weapons, and people.

The environmental guardians facing up to these nefarious networks—dispersed alliances of rangers, community groups, and law enforcement officers—have long been ill equipped and underfunded.

Still, there is genuine hope that tech could help turn the tide—and prevent poaching at the source. Read the full story.

—Matthew Ponsford

This story is from the next print issue of MIT Technology Review magazine, which is all about crime. If you haven’t already, subscribe now to receive future issues once they land. 

Peptides are everywhere. Here’s what you need to know.

Want to lose weight? Get shredded? Stay mentally sharp? A wellness influencer might tell you to take peptides, the latest cure-all in the alternative medicine arsenal. They’re everywhere on social media, and that popularity seems poised to grow.

The benefits and risks of many of these compounds, however, are largely unknown. Some of the most popular peptides have never been tested in human trials. They are sold for research purposes, not human consumption, and some are illegal knockoffs of wildly successful weight-loss medicines. That raises big questions about their safety and effectiveness, which are still unresolved. Read the full story.

—Cassandra Willyard

This story is part of MIT Technology Review Explains: our series untangling the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here.

The human work behind humanoid robots is being hidden

In January, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang proclaimed that we are entering the era of physical AI, when artificial intelligence will move beyond language and chatbots into physically capable machines. (He also said the same thing the year before, by the way.)

The implication—fueled by new demonstrations of humanoid robots putting away dishes or assembling cars—is that mimicking human limbs with single-purpose robot arms is the old way of automation. The new way is to replicate the way humans think, learn, and adapt while they work. The problem is that the lack of transparency about the human labor involved in training and operating such robots leaves the public both misunderstanding what robots can actually do and failing to see the strange new forms of work forming around them.

Just as our words became training data for large language models, our movements are now poised to follow the same path. Except this future might leave humans with an even worse deal, and it’s already beginning. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, 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 Anthropic has accused DeepSeek of using Claude to train its own model 
It claims three Chinese companies siphoned its data to help their systems catch up. (WSJ $)
+ OpenAI made similar allegations against DeepSeek the other week. (CNN)
+ DeepSeek’s latest model was reportedly trained on banned US Nvidia chips. (Reuters)

2 Donald Trump’s global 10% tariff has come into effect 
But the US President is still hoping to increase it to 15%. (FT $)
+ Tariffs are bad news for batteries. (MIT Technology Review)

3 What the US stands to lose if China invades Taiwan
Access to critical chips, for one. (NYT $)
+ Apple is moving some of its Mac Mini production to Houston from Asia. (WSJ $)
+ Taiwan’s “silicon shield” could be weakening. (MIT Technology Review)

4 The UK’s first baby has been born using a womb transplanted from a dead donor
It’s positive news for people born without a womb that hope to give birth. (BBC)
+ Everything you need to know about artificial wombs. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Binance sent $1.7 billion to sanctioned Iranian entities
It comes after the crypto exchange promised to clean up its act in the wake of its founder being sent to prison. (NYT $)
+ Binance fired workers who raised concerns about the transactions. (WSJ $)

6 ICE is using free walkie-talkie app Zello to communicate
It had previously been used by at least two of the January 6 insurrectionists. (404 Media)
+ ICE has resurrected pandemic-style shelter in place orders. (Vox)

7 Meta built an app for teens, but never released it
Bell was supposed to bring high school classmates together, a court filing has revealed. (NBC News)

8 Battery storage is a rare US clean energy success story
Things are looking up for the sector, surprisingly. (Wired $)
+ What a massive thermal battery means for energy storage. (MIT Technology Review)

9 How to play Tetris on the cover of a magazine
It’s a whole new way of looking at portable gaming devices. (The Verge)

10 Meta’s director of AI safety allowed OpenClaw to accidentally delete her inbox
A cautionary tale, if ever there was one. (TechCrunch)
+ It wouldn’t stop, dispute her repeatedly ordering it to. (404 Media)
+ Moltbook was peak AI theater. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Shameless people stealing everyone’s data then complaining about other people stealing from them.”

—AI researcher Timnit Gebru has little sympathy for Anthropic’s complaints that DeepSeek and other Chinese companies violated its terms by using Claude to train their models, she explains in a post on X.

One more thing

How sounds can turn us on to the wonders of the universe

Astronomy should, in principle, be a welcoming field for blind researchers. But across the board, science is full of charts, graphs, databases, and images that are designed to be seen.

So researcher Sarah Kane, who is legally blind, was thrilled three years ago when she encountered a technology known as sonification, designed to transform information into sound. Since then she’s been working with a project called Astronify, which presents astronomical information in audio form.

For millions of blind and visually impaired people, sonification could be transformative—opening access to education, to once unimaginable careers, and even to the secrets of the universe. Read the full story.

—Corey S. Powell

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)

+ Team USA’s Amber Glenn’s Chappell Roan ice skating routine is inspired.
+ I love that the new Silent Hill video game is inspired by a spooky Scottish fishing village.
+ It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever be eaten by a snake. But it’s not impossible…
+ All aboard the heavy metal cruise!