The Download: the internet’s best weather app, and why people freeze their brains | MIT Technology Review

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. How a couple of ski bums built the internet’s best weather app  The best snow-forecasting app for skiers isn’t a federally-funded service or a big-name brand. It’s OpenSnow, a startup that uses government data, its own AI models, and decades of alpine-life experience to deliver the best predictions out there.  The app has proved especially vital this winter, one of the weirdest on record. It’s even made microcelebrities of its forecasters, who sift through reams of data to write “Daily Snow” reports for locations around the world.   We headed to the Tahoe mountains to hear how two broke ski bums became modern-day snow gods. Read the full story.  —Rachel Levin  Here’s why some people choose cryonics to store their bodies and brains after death  —Jessica Hamzelou  This week I reported on unusual research focused on the frozen brain of L. Stephen Coles.  Coles, a researcher who studied aging, was interested in cryonics—the long-term storage of human bodies and brains in the hope that they might one day be brought back to life. It’s a hope shared by many.  Over the past few years, I’ve spoken to people who run cryonics facilities, study cryopreservation, or just want to be cryogenically stored. All of them acknowledge that there’s a vanishingly small chance of being brought back to life. So why do they do it?  Read the full story to find out...