The Download: energy transmission and US threats against Chinese AI

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The power line that could reshape New York’s grid is hitting snags  During a heat wave on July 3, New York State’s grid imported enough electricity from Canada to meet about 9% of its total demand that day. Some of that power shuttled in on a 339-mile power line stretching from Quebec to Queens. It opened in May and is officially the longest underground transmission line in North America. It could provide up to 20% of New York City’s electricity demand, largely with abundant hydropower from Quebec. One wrinkle: The line has been down for most of this month, and some experts are concerned about how drought will affect the power supply feeding it.  Still, the line could help shape the future of our grid, if it can overcome these sorts of snags. Read our story to understand how. —Casey Crownhart This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech .  receive it in your inbox every Wednesday. This is the highest level of autonomy that we've seen in the use of a large language model for cyber operations." —Colin Shea-Blymyer, a cybersecurity research fellow at Georgetown University, tells NPR why the OpenAI hack on Hugging Face is so alarming.  One More Thing KAGAN MACLEOD Welcome to the dark side of crypto’s permissionless dream  Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen is a founder of THORChain, a blockchain through which users can swap one cryptocurrency for another and earn fees from making those swaps.   But is he responsible for what it’s used for? It’s a question that matters because in January last year, its users lost more than $200 million in cryptocurrency after THORChain transactions and accounts were frozen , which users believed was not supposed to be possible given the decentralized structure. It’s also been used $1.2 billion of stolen ethereum.  Thorbjornsen explains this all away as a function of THORChain’s decentralized and permissionless nature. Read our story exploring whether we should believe him or not.  —Jessica Klein 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.) + A musician developed an ingenious way to strum a guitar with an electric fan. + Ukraine's tunnel of love is a leafy green corridor of romance that’s straight out of a fairy tale. + The driver of a giant banana has been pulled over 100s of times, but still won’t ditch his treasured ride. + Ever wonder which albums and songs truly stand the test of time? The Greatest Music tries to answer that via an algorithm that analyses hundreds of "best of" lists.