The Download: Gaming climate change, and Boeing’s space mission leaks

—Casey Crownhart

There are two things I love to do at social gatherings: play board games and talk about climate change. Don’t I sound like someone you should invite to your next dinner party?

Given my two great loves, I was delighted to learn about a board game called Catan: New Energies, coming out this summer. It’s a new edition of the classic game Catan which has players building power plants, fueled by either fossil fuels or renewables.

So how does an energy-focused edition of Catan stack up against the board game competition? And what does it say about how we view climate technology? Read the full story.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

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

1 Boeing’s first crewed space mission has three helium leaks
But the spacecraft is stable enough to continue on its mission. (CNN)
+ Delays have added $1.4 billion in costs to the program. (WP $)
+ But its success demonstrates NASA has an alternative to SpaceX. (The Atlantic $)

2 How an AI-generated news outlet gained millions of readers
The now-defunct BNN Breaking looked like a standard news service. But its articles bore all the hallmarks of AI. (NYT $)
+ These six questions will dictate the future of generative AI. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Crypto miners are renting out their data centers to AI clients
AI needs chips and power, and miners are happy to oblige—for a price. (Bloomberg $)
+ Bitcoin mining was booming in Kazakhstan. Then it was gone. (MIT Technology Review)