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.

Three questions about the future of US climate tech under Trump

Donald Trump has officially been in office for just over a week, and the new administration has already issued a blizzard of executive orders and memos.

Some of the moves could have major effects for climate change and climate technologies—for example, one of the first orders Trump signed signaled his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the major international climate treaty.

The road map for withdrawing from the Paris agreement is clear, but not all the effects of these orders are quite so obvious. There’s a whole lot of speculation about how far these actions reach, which ones might get overturned, and generally what comes next. Here are some of the crucial threads that I’m going to be following. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

This quantum computer built on server racks paves the way to bigger machines

The news: A Canadian startup called Xanadu has built a new quantum computer it says can be easily scaled up to achieve the computational power needed to tackle scientific challenges ranging from drug discovery to more energy-efficient machine learning.

Why it matters: Xanadu envisions a quantum computer as a specialized data center, consisting of rows upon rows of these servers. This contrasts with the industry’s earlier conception of a specialized chip within a supercomputer, much like a GPU. But this work is just a first step toward that vision. Read the full story.

—Sophia Chen

Vote for the 11th breakthrough

Earlier this month, we unveiled our annual list of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025, encompassing everything from promising stem-cell therapies to robots that learn quickly. Now, we’re asking you to help us choose the 11th honorary technology we should keep an eye on over the next 12 months.

Cast your vote for one of the four extra exciting breakthroughs before 1 April. Readers of The Download will be among the first to know once we announce your pick. 

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Trump advisers were blindsided by Elon Musk’s team’s offer to federal workers
Officials weren’t consulted about plans to induce civil service workers to resign. (WP $)
+ The radical sweeping measures are just the beginning. (Vox)
+ The email workers received cribs from Musk’s controversial Twitter memo. (Ars Technica)
+ If Musk gets his way, the US government could end up like X. (NY Mag $)

2 Meta has agreed to pay Trump $25 million
To settle the censorship lawsuit Trump brought against it back in 2021. (CNN)
+ Mark Zuckerberg predicts 2025 will be a big year for Meta’s government relations. (Insider $)+ Facebook is still focused on winning over creators to make it cool again. (The Information $)

3 How tech workers are quietly fighting the rise of MAGA 
While their employers are shifting rightwards, workers are resisting. (NYT $)

4 Microsoft and Meta have defended their AI spending
DeepSeek’s success has raised serious questions about Big Tech’s AI budgets. (Reuters)
+ Zuckerberg claims not to be worried by the Chinese startup’s rapid rise. (The Verge)
+ How a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Mr Beast is getting serious about buying TikTok 
The YouTuber is a part of an investor group that’s secured more than $20 billion. (Bloomberg $)

6 How the US plans to use space lasers to destroy hypersonic missiles
It bears more than a passing resemblance to Ronald Reagan’s 1983 program. (FT $)
+ How to fight a war in space (and get away with it) (MIT Technology Review)

7 Waymo’s autonomous taxi service is expanding to new US cities
San Diego, Las Vegas, and Miami are on the list. (WSJ $)
+ Self-driving Tesla taxis will hit Austin’s road in June, apparently. (TechCrunch)
+ EV batteries boast an incredibly long lifespan. (IEEE Spectrum)

8 The perfect cryptographic machine is possible
It’s just a bit of a pain to build. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Cryptography may offer a solution to the massive AI-labeling problem. (MIT Technology Review)

9 This mobile game is helping scientists identify new deep-sea species
Verifying ocean creatures can take decades, but AI and gaming speeds up the process. (Bloomberg $)
+ There’s an incredible amount of life down in the depths. (Quanta Magazine)

10 How the internet fell in love with capybaras
The world’s largest rodent is a social media sensation. (New Yorker $)

Quote of the day

“Hold the line! Don’t resign!”

—US federal workers rally together on Reddit to protest the Trump administration’s offer for them to take ‘deferred resignation’.

The big story

The race to fix space-weather forecasting before next big solar storm hits

April 2024

As the number of satellites in space grows, and as we rely on them for increasing numbers of vital tasks on Earth, the need to better predict stormy space weather is becoming more and more urgent.

Scientists have long known that solar activity can change the density of the upper atmosphere. But it’s incredibly difficult to precisely predict the sorts of density changes that a given amount of solar activity would produce.

Now, experts are working on a model of the upper atmosphere to help scientists to improve their models of how solar activity affects the environment in low Earth orbit. If they succeed, they’ll be able to keep satellites safe even amid turbulent space weather, reducing the risk of potentially catastrophic orbital collisions. Read the full story.

—Tereza Pultarova

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.)

+ Happy birthday to the one and only Phil Collins—74 years young today.
+ Great news for Britain’s loneliest bat: he may have found a mate at long last.
+ After years in the cocktail wilderness, the Black Russian is coming in from the cold.
+ Death to members clubs!