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AudioLM, developed by Google researchers, generates audio that fits the benignant of the prompt, including analyzable sounds similar soft music, oregon radical speaking, successful a mode that is astir indistinguishable from the archetypal recording. Crucially, it doesn’t necessitate labor-intensive transcription oregon labeling dissimilar astir different AI-generated audio. Find retired more, and perceive to the sounds it created, here.
—Tammy Xu
I Was There When: AI mastered chess
I Was There When is an oral past task that’s portion of our award-winning In Machines We Trust podcast. It features stories of however breakthroughs and watershed moments successful artificial quality and computing happened, arsenic told by the radical who witnessed them.
In the latest episode we conscionable 1 of the world's top chess players, Garry Kasparov, and perceive wherefore his nonaccomplishment against IBM’s Deep Blue machine 25 years agone inactive matters today. Listen to it connected Apple Podcasts, oregon wherever you usually spell for podcasts.
Is a covid and flu "twindemic" coming?
If you’re feeling a spot nether the weather, remainder assured, you’re not alone. For those of america successful the Northern Hemisphere, it’s conscionable that clip of year. That’s partially wherefore wellness authorities connected some sides of the Atlantic are urging radical to get vaccinated—against some the flu and covid-19.
In caller months, we’ve heard warnings of a flu and covid “twindemic” connected the horizon. Should we beryllium worried? Let our elder biomedicine newsman Jessica Hamzelou walk you done the risks.
Jess’s communicative is from The Checkup, her caller play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things wellness and tech-related. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 This is what beingness successful the metaverse is like
It mightiness beryllium beauteous fun—if you tin spend it. (NYT $)
+ But Meta employees themselves aren’t convinced. (The Verge)
2 A wintertime covid question looks likely
And this time, we’re doing next-to-nothing to halt it. (Ars Technica)
+ Long covid is inactive disabling millions of Americans. (Axios)
+ How the Chinese doc who sounded the alarm implicit covid spent his last days. (NYT $)
3 Elon Musk has 3 weeks to bargain Twitter
If helium doesn’t spell done with it successful that timeframe, it’s backmost to the courtroom. (Quartz)
+ What happens now? (The Guardian)
+ Lost way of each the twists and turns? Here’s a useful timeline. (FT $)
+ Musk says he’ll crook Twitter into a ‘super app’. Here’s however these apps work. (BBC)
4 Self-driving cars inactive look to beryllium connected the roadworthy to nowhere 🚗
Even aft $100 cardinal has been poured into their development. (Bloomberg $)
+ Uber is inactive betting it tin marque robotaxis work. (The Verge)
+ The large caller thought for making self-driving cars that tin spell anywhere. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Google has unveiled 2 text-to-video AI systems
The videos they nutrient are impressive, and vaguely unsettling. (The Verge)
+ This is what the adjacent procreation of AI looks like. (MIT Technology Review)
6 An influencer is suing TikTok implicit scam ads that usage her videos
This benignant of fraudulent selling is rife online—and there’s a increasing governmental statement successful favour of a crackdown. (WP $)
7 Crypto speech Binance says hackers stole $100 million
This is yet different illustration of a ‘bridge’ onslaught betwixt 2 blockchains. (WSJ $)
+ These commonplace hacks show however information is an afterthought successful the crypto industry. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Boston Dynamics has pledged not to weaponize its robots
Great, but the adjacent question is: however bash they halt customers from doing it? (Axios)
9 This is wherefore you can’t tickle yourself
Your encephalon knows what’s coming. (Wired $)
10 It’s chill to hatred connected candy maize online
If you unrecorded successful the US, it’s simply intolerable to debar astatine this clip of year. (The Atlantic $)
Quote of the day
“I sent it to the full team. We did that—look astatine that.”
—Elena Adams, the pb technologist for NASA’s asteroid-smashing DART spacecraft, tells the New Yorker what she did with the scope images of the aftermath of the collision past week.
The large story
India’s h2o situation is already here. Climate alteration volition compound it.
Severe droughts person drained rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers crossed immense parts of India successful caller years, pushing the nation’s leaky, polluted h2o systems to the brink.
More than 600 cardinal Indians look acute h2o shortages. Seventy percent of the nation’s h2o proviso is contaminated, causing an estimated 200,000 deaths a year, and immoderate 21 cities could tally retired of groundwater arsenic aboriginal arsenic adjacent year.
Climate alteration volition surely marque the occupation worse. It’s uncertain what relation higher temperatures person played successful caller droughts, arsenic the clime models person chiefly predicted progressively aggravated Indian monsoons. But the longer-term forecast is that the extremes volition go much extreme, threatening much predominant flooding and longer droughts. Read the afloat story.
—James Temple
We tin inactive person bully things
A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line or tweet 'em astatine me.)
+ This list of the world’s 50 champion bars is guaranteed to beryllium hotly contested. Only 1 mode to check, I suppose… I’d amended battalion my bags!
+ The moustache is officially backmost successful fashion.
+ Don’t adjacent deliberation astir visiting determination caller without doing a vibe check on Google Maps.
+ Here’s however agelong it takes to overgarment an tremendous (and earnestly impressive) mural.
+ Stephen King—of comedy.
English (US) ·