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The emergence in the last week of a particularly effective voice synthesis machine learning model called VALL-E has prompted a new wave of concern over the possibility of deepfake voices made quick and easy — quickfakes, if you will. But VALL-E is more iterative than breakthrough, and the capabilities aren’t so new as you might think. Whether that means you should be more or less worried is up to you.

Voice replication has been a subject of intense research for years, and the results have been good enough to power plenty of startups, like WellSaid, Papercup and Respeecher. The latter is even being used to create authorized voice reproductions of actors like James Earl Jones. Yes: from now on Darth Vader will be AI generated.

VALL-E, posted on GitHub by its creators at Microsoft last week, is a “neural codec language model” that uses a different approach to rendering voices than many before it. Its larger training corpus and some new methods allow it to create “high-quality personalized speech” using just three seconds of audio from a target speaker.

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Although the crypto ecosystem has faced its fair share of bumps, venture capitalists are still bullish about the space and continue to look at decentralized finance (DeFi) as a promising opportunity.

TechCrunch surveyed six crypto-focused investors about the road ahead for crypto adoption, their sentiment toward DeFi and how the focus in that subsector (by both investors and founders) is growing.

The total value locked (TVL) on DeFi protocols has fallen roughly 77% from all-time highs around $180 billion in December 2021 to about $41 billion on Wednesday, according to DeFiLlama data. But that hasn’t stopped founders, developers and investors from diving into the space.

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UltraAir will enable the exchange of large amounts of data using laser beams in a network of ground stations and satellites in geostationary orbit at 36,000 km above the Earth.

Aerospace corporation Airbus and Dutch high-tech industrial supplier VDL Group will jointly develop and manufacture a laser communication terminal for aircraft, known as UltraAir, according to a press release by the first company published on Tuesday.

The concept is based on a project led by Airbus and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). The two companies will now prepare a demonstration of a prototype and a first flight test in 2024.

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The new algorithm could render mainstream encryption powerless within years.

Chinese researchers claim to have introduced a new code-breaking algorithm that, if successful, could render mainstream encryption powerless within years rather than decades.

The team, led by Professor Long Guilu of Tsinghua University, proclaimed that a modest quantum computer constructed with currently available technology could run their algorithm, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Wednesday.

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Unlike James Webb, the Habitable World Observatory will be serviceable by robots in space.

NASA has revealed new details about the successor to the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope. The multi-billion dollar Habitable World Observatory (HWO) will be tasked with searching for Earth-like exoplanets from space, and it is likely to launch at some point in the early 2040s. The new details came to light during this week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society, as per a Science.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The multi-billion dollar Habitable World Observatory (HWO) will be tasked with searching for Earth-like exoplanets from space, and it is likely to launch at some point in the early 2040s. The new details came to light during this week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society, as per a Science report.

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“Putting together this 3D map of the Local Bubble will help us examine superbubbles in new ways.”

Did you know that we live in a bubble? Sure, some of us do, but we’re talking about another one. An enormous 1,000-light-year-wide “superbubble” called the Local Bubble. Astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) have now unveiled a first-of-its-kind map that reveals the bubble’s magnetic field.

Sounds incredibly fascinating.

Many of us might not have heard of superbubbles before. The Local Bubble isn’t the only one.

Continue reading “Astronomers mapped the magnetic field of the space bubble surrounding us” | >

What do snakes do when their burrows are inundated with flood water? The same thing as humans—they move.

Snakes in California have been seen swimming through the state’s flooded streets, but that’s nothing compared to South Australia.

The flooding of the Murray River in Australia has closed off roads, inundated homes and cut off communities across the country. It has also displaced local wildlife from their homes, resulting in an increase in snake encounters across the country.

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Rats and mice have been the backbone of biomedical research for decades—including research to understand cancer and pioneer new treatments.

New drug compounds are tested for safety and effectiveness in animal models before being approved for clinical trials in humans.

But scientists at like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Sloan Kettering Institute are working to develop nonmammalian alternatives that could reduce the number of rodents used in —a positive result in its own right, and one that could also lower costs and accelerate results.

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