Lifeboat Foundation

The video surprises viewers when it’s revealed that, while the woman on screen is a real person, the main character speaking is an AI. It aims to demonstrate how entertainment studios can leverage AI to create highly convincing romantic encounters. This marks a significant milestone for Sonantic as its technology is now able to recreate subtle emotions and non-speech sounds, while also opening up new creative possibilities for studios.

The voice models, which already express a range of human emotions from happiness to sadness, can now convey subtleties such as flirty, coy, and teasing, amongst other new “Style” options. They also have the ability to capture non-speech sounds – such as breaths, scoffs, and laughs. This combination of advances in speech synthesis makes Sonantic’s platform more comprehensive than ever before, helping entertainment studios create life-like performances in record time.

“Human beings are incredibly complex by nature and our voices play a critical role in helping us connect with the world around us,” said Zeena Qureshi, CEO. “Sonantic is committed to capturing the nuances of the human voice, and we’re incredibly proud of these technological breakthroughs that we have brought to life through ‘What’s Her Secret?’. From flirting and giggling, to breathing and pausing, this is the most realistic romantic demo we’ve created to date, helping us inch closer to our vision of being the CGI of audio.”

Often, reprogramming a microcontroller involves placing it in reset, flashing the code, and letting it fire back up. It usually involves shutting the chip down entirely. However, [bor0] has built a virtual machine that runs on the ESP32, allowing for dynamic program updates to happen.

The code is inspired by the CHIP-8, a relatively ancient interpreter that had some gaming applications. [bor0] had already created a VM simulating the CHIP-8, and repurposed it here, taking out the gaming-related drawing instructions and replacing them with those that control IO pins. Registers have also been changed to 16 bits for added flexibility and headroom.

It’s probably not something with immediate ground-breaking applications for most people, but it’s a different way of working with and programming the ESP32, and that’s pretty neat.

A vocal critic of the Russian leadership is Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster who repeatedly ranked world number one for 20 years before turning his attention to politics. He tells leaders to “help Ukraine fight against the monster you helped create.” Kasparov speaks with Walter Isaacson.

Originally aired on February 24, 2022

Continue reading “What is Putin’s Endgame? Garry Kasparov on Russia’s Attack on Ukraine | Amanpour and Company” »

Chip crisis? What chip crisis?

AMD has finally lifted the lid on its Ryzen 6,000 series mobile chips and the core 6nm design is far more than just an optical shrink. The resulting “massive increase in yield” means far more CPUs spilling out of TSMCs foundry, which can only help an industry in a chip supply crisis.

These Zen 3+ CPUs are going to be making their way to gaming laptops soon, and promise great things for notebooks this year. Intel’s Alder Lake mobile CPUs are also going to be dropping at the same time, plus we’ve got Nvidia’s mobile 3,070 Ti and 3,080 Ti to look forward to as well. If you’ve been putting off getting a new mobile gaming machine, then your patience should pay off nicely.

Continue reading “AMD’s ‘fundamental’ 6nm Ryzen upgrade promises ‘massive increase in yield’” »

Some algorithms can now compose a 3D scene from 2D images—creating possibilities in video games, robotics, and autonomous driving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtXOLkVrdmE

There are so many places and things to explore in the universe! From distant.
exoplanets to faraway galaxies that might host intelligent life, to massive black holes, to.
bright stars. However, there is a problem with space exploration; distance! Everywhere.
you want to go in deep space is far! For example, Elon Musk wants to put humans on.
Mars permanently while NASA wants to send astronauts there. However, any traveler.
going to Mars has to endure a grueling trip through harsh space that lasts not less than.
five months, even with the most powerful rocket in history! If only we could find a faster.
way to travel through space! Also, the next star to us is about 4.5 light-years away.
making it impossible to visit with the current space technologies! However, an.
accidental discovery promises to fix that problem by enabling faster than the speed of.
light travel! What is the discovery, how does it affect space travel, and how does it affect.
you personally? Join us as we explore how NASA scientists accidentally discover the.
world’s first Warp Bubble!
Warp travel is not strange to fans of the Star Trek franchise. The warp drive is a.
charming futuristic technology from Star Trek Universe, which since its first episode in.
1966, includes ten television series and thirteen feature films. In these series and.
movies, characters explore the universe using powerful and fast spaceships, traveling.
from planet to planet and communicating with a crew of aliens. The torsion engine is the.
center of attraction because, without it, the story would be implausible. The universe is.
strange, unimaginable, and insanely large, and even if you want to visit the next star.
the immense cosmic distances create an almost impossible barrier!
Let’s take a look at the next star, Proxima Centauri, 4.5 light-years away. This distance.
means it takes 4.5 years to reach the star if you could manage to attain the speed of.
light! Light flies at full cosmic speed and acts as a sort of universal speed cap, so any.
other method takes longer! In fact, if you decide to use the fastest space probe ever.
built, the long journey through the interstellar void would take nearly eight thousand.
years! So, it makes sense to stay put to Earth and its immediate environment!
Of course, the Star Trek crew didn’t stay close to the Earth because they found a.
solution! This solution makes long-distance travel possible by shortening the distance!
The torsion engine, using warp drive tech, achieves this by juggling space and time.
making for great entertainment! Warp drive was destined to remain imaginary until a.
scientist suddenly realized that such an engine was really possible at the end of the last.
century!
The physicist was Miguel Alcubierre, and he came up with a theory that rocked the.
scientific community globally. In 1994, Alcubierre watched an episode of Next.
Generation while doing his Ph.D. research on Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
where heavy masses can curve space and time. And so Alcubierre picked up a scrap of.
paper, did the calculations, and laid the foundation for an article that appeared in the.
science magazine later that year!
In his paper, Alcubierre describes how you can compress space and time in front of a.
spacecraft and stretch it back behind the ship so that you have to travel a much smaller.
distance to the desired destination safely trapped in what he calls a torsion bubble! In.
visualization, the concept was compared to a surfer riding a wave and a metaphor often.
used to describe how a ship could travel the stars. There is, however, a problem with.
Alcubierre’s warp bubble! You see, the warp engine is tough to build in reality! You can’t.
just curve space forcefully with normal mass! To do so, you need exotic matter, which.
has negative gravity!
Dozens of Warp Engine publications would follow in the following decades. But they.
also remained theoretical exercises and thought experiments that manipulated the.
formulations of the theory of relativity in search of new insights. The need for the foreign.
matter remained!
That was until Eric Lentz, a physicist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the.
US, stepped in. He watched Star Trek as a kid. However, he has not been able to forget.

For those looking for a mindful, meditative discussion on Zen, human nature, politics, and everything in between — a podcast episode with Emer Gentway.

Listen now | Zen and the art of disbelieving the obvious.

The $100m jet is fair game, in international waters. “It’s the Hunt for Red October meets The Abyss.”