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Witness first-hand how your mountain of waste plastic expands over the years and what impact your food has on the rainforests. Virtual reality gives you a front-row seat to the impact of unsustainable behavior. Communication scientists Marijn Meijers and Hande Sungur have developed highly effective virtual worlds that give people an up-close and personal experience of how sustainable and unsustainable conduct make a substantial difference…


You walk around a supermarket and whenever you take a product from the shelves, a pop-up appears with information about the environmental impact of your choice, for example, clearcutting of tropical rainforest to cultivate the palm oil in your chocolate spread. You travel through time to see how much plastic waste your everyday products create in the future, and travel back to see how your mountain of waste shrinks when you make more sustainable decisions.

VR is shown to have a positive effect on sustainability.

The first findings from Meijers and Sungur’s projects are in and the results are positive. “Research into the VR supermarket shows it gets the message across more effectively and gives people the feeling that they have control over the problem,” says Meijers. “They clearly see how buying eco-friendly products contribute to a more sustainable world and that unsustainable choices have a negative effect. This positive effect on the participants’ behavior continued to be reflected in their real-world shopping habits after two weeks.”

Deepfake videos are well-known; many examples of what only appear to be celebrities can be seen regularly on YouTube. But while such videos have grown lifelike and convincing, one area where they fail is in reproducing a person’s voice. In this new effort, the team at UoC found evidence that the technology has advanced. They tested two of the most well-known voice copying algorithms against both human and voice recognition devices and found that the algorithms have improved to the point that they are now able to fool both.

The two algorithms— SV2TTS and AutoVC —were tested by obtaining samples of voice recordings from publicly available databases. Both systems were trained using 90 five-minute voice snippets of people talking. They also enlisted the assistance of 14 volunteers who provided voice samples and access to their voice recognition devices. The researchers then tested the two systems using the open-source software Resemblyzer—it listens and compares voice recordings and then gives a rating based on the similar two samples are. They also tested the algorithms by using them to attempt to access services on voice recognition devices.

The researchers found the algorithms were able to fool the Resemblyzer nearly half of the time. They also found that they were able to fool Azure (Microsoft’s cloud computing service) approximately 30 percent of the time. And they were able to fool Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition system approximately 62% of the time.

The four astronauts set to blast off Oct. 30 to the International Space Station visited Cape Canaveral over the weekend for a test run inside SpaceX’s new Crew Dragon Endurance spacecraft, one of the last training events before they return to Florida on launch week.

Commander Raja Chari, a U.S. Air Force colonel, leads NASA’s Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station. Chari and the mission’s other three astronauts visited Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Saturday for the Crew Equipment Interface Test, a customary pre-flight training event officials equate to a “test drive” or “walk through” of the spacecraft.

The four-person crew will launch on the third NASA crew rotation flight to the space station, and the fifth human flight on a Crew Dragon spacecraft overall, including a 2020 test flight and the all-civilian Inspiration4 mission last month.

When asked about his thoughts on young people starting out in the crypto space, whether it be with digital coins or other assets like nonfungible tokens (NFTs), Dell says that “if I was a teenager right now, I’d probably be all over that.”

In fact, he’s personally invested in a few blockchain enabling technologies, the 56-year-old tells CNBC Make It. “I think it’s super interesting. There’s still a lot to be worked out in terms of what the investment looks like, and what type of investment it is for everyone, but I think it’s interesting.”

That goes for his company as well. “We’re helping a lot of customers implement blockchain at sort of the enterprise level,” Dell says.

https://youtu.be/Z4SXarl6i1k The James Webb Space Telescope will be the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Webb’s flight into orbit will take place on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. Webb is the next great space science observatory, designed to answer outstanding questions about the Universe and to make breakthrough discoveries in all fields of astronomy. Webb will see farther into our origins – from the formation of stars and planets, to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe.

A New Zealand city seems to have left itself vulnerable to a revenge hex.

The city council of Christchurch announced that it will stop paying its official wizard $16,000 ($10,400 USD) a year in December, New Zealand news site Stuff reported.

Ian Brackenbury Channell (aka the Wizard) has been serving as the city’s appointed necromancer since the olden days of 1998. Over the past few decades he has made a total of $368,000 (roughly $258,825 USD) “to provide acts of wizardry and other wizard-like-services — as part of promotional work for the city of Christchurch.”

I’m confused. At 34:20 he says he says people in clinical trials had there age reversed 2 years (I assume he is talking about thymus rejuvenation) and it is additive so people who had it 4 times went back 8 years. Ok. AND?! I mean am I missing something here? Is this not what we are after? I’m 50 now, so if I did it 13 times will I be 24 again?


My guest today is a revolutionary thinker and ground-breaking scientist who’s on a mission to make you younger. He’s Australian biologist and Harvard professor David Sinclair, author of Lifespan: Why We Age – And Why We Don’t Have To. David is one of the world’s leading scientific authorities on longevity, ageing and how to slow its effects.

#feelbetterlivemore.