Free Republic

At its annual re:Mars conference today in Las Vegas, Amazon’s Senior Vice President and Head Scientist for Alexa, Rohit Prasad, announced a spate of new and upcoming features for the company’s smart assistant. The most head turning of the bunch was a potential new feature that can synthesize short audio clips into longer speech. In the scenario presented at the event, the voice of a deceased loved one (a grandmother, in this case), is used to read a grandson a bedtime story. Prasad notes that, using the new technology, the company is able to accomplish some very impressive audio output...

Australian scientists have created the world's first-ever quantum computer circuit – one that contains all the essential components found on a classical computer chip but at the quantum scale.

Changing your idea of what robots can do – that’s the slogan of Boston Dynamics. Founded in 1992 by Marc Raibert as a spin-off company from MIT, its early days were spent making training videos for the navy. Only later did the company begin delving into the world of robots – amassing a level of expertise unsurpassed throughout the industry.In fact, Boston Dynamics’s achievements look like the opening montage from a science fiction movie. Starting with the cumbersome BigDog – a quadruped robot designed for the military – the company has seen each new generation of robots surpass the last...

In early 2020, the Global Elite launched its long-planned coup to capture control of the human population by killing off a substantial proportion and technologically imprisoning those left alive as transhuman slaves. A primary intended outcome of this agenda is to enable the Elite to own and completely control use of the Earth’s remaining resources. Using the World Economic Forum (WEF) as its primary agent, and with the complicity of key international organizations and all national governments (after some hiccoughs requiring the assassination of five national presidents), the Global Elite has gone about progressively implementing the many components of its...

From Talos, the giant bronze automaton who guarded the princess Europa in ancient Greek myths, to Cylons and Terminators, the idea of artificial humans has both fascinated and creeped us out for centuries. Now, we're closer than ever to making a robot look remarkably like a human, with the development of living robot skin. This icky-looking substance is water repellent, self healing, and has a texture just like our own skin. Because it's actually made of human skin cells. "I think living skin is the ultimate solution to give robots the look and touch of living creatures since it is...

He was draggin’ that wagon. An artist created a virtual traffic jam in Berlin by pulling a wagon with 99 cellphones in it. Simon Weckert posted a YouTube video with a split screen that showed him pulling a small red wagon through a mostly empty street. It also showed Google Maps had lit the street up red, falsely signifying that the barren thoroughfare was packed with traffic. <0p> “Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic,”...

"When light spreads in an inhomogeneous medium, it undergoes scattering. This effect quickly transforms a compact, directed beam into a diffuse glow, and is familiar to all of us from summer clouds and autumn fog alike," Professor Alexander Szameit of the Institute for Physics at the University of Rostock describes the starting point of his team's considerations. Notably, it is the microscopic density distribution of a material that dictates the specifics of scattering. Szameit continues, "The fundamental idea of induced transparency is to take advantage of a much lesser-known optical property to clear a path for the beam..." This second...

Modern Technology is often a wonderful thing making everyone much more productive. However, often times it comes back to bite you in the rear end, this couple didn't realize their camera was on while using Zoom to view a bat mitzvah. The young lady who was celebrating her Bat Mitzvah certainly has a story to tell for the rest of her life. To the Middle-Aged Couple, 45 MINUTES, really...

According to new research, deep learning models based on artificial intelligence can identify someone’s race merely by looking at their X-rays, which would be impossible for a human doctor looking at the same photos. The findings raise several serious concerns concerning AI’s role in medical diagnosis, assessment, and treatment: Could computer algorithms mistakenly apply racial bias when analyzing photographs like these? An international team of health researchers from the United States, Canada, and Taiwan tested their AI on X-ray images that the computer program had never seen before after training it with hundreds of thousands of existing X-ray images annotated...

An alien species is headed for planet Earth and we have no reason to believe it will be friendly. Some experts predict it will get here within 30 years, while others insist it will arrive far sooner. Nobody knows what it will look like, but it will share two key traits with us humans – it will be intelligent and self-aware. No, this alien will not come from a distant planet – it will be born right here on Earth, hatched in a research lab at a major university or large corporation. I am referring to the first artificial general...

Vast regions of Japan’s digital universe are stuck in the early aughts. Online banking, airline booking, major newspapers, you name it: Services that have been streamlined by the digital revolution in much of the world are, in Japan, still plagued by convoluted drop-down menus that lead to dead ends, and detailed forms that need to be printed, filled out by pen, and even returned by fax. In a country that justifiably prides itself on excellent customer service, something happens when it comes to relaying information through a user interface displayed on a flat screen. Japan’s high-quality, mostly physical public infrastructure...

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has approved Uganda’s plan to build East Africa’s first nuclear power station. Next step: getting $100 billion… China enters the chat… A statement from the government of Uganda said Aline des Cloizeaux, the IAEA’s director for Africa, had told Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni of the approval on Monday. Des Cloizeaux is reported to have said: “We have concluded that Uganda is ready for the plant. We in the agency are ready for all the support through training so that the project becomes reality.” An International IAEA team of experts conducted an eight-day mission to...

youtube video on graphene batteries. Hat tip to bellflower Follow the link above for the video.

The Biden administration has proposed a technical—but critical—change to U.S. patent policy that could have been drafted in Beijing. In fact, a Chinese front organization has formally endorsed the proposal, which will gut protection for an especially important type of American patents. Last December, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, along with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, issued the Draft Policy Statement on Licensing Negotiations and Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments. The Draft Policy, according to the Justice Department, would lead to "widespread and efficient...

House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff are refusing to upload the contents of Hunter Biden’s recovered laptop in a searchable format into the congressional record, according to a new report. Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) first moved to enter the laptop — which the younger Biden allegedly left with a Delaware repair shop — during a March 29 hearing. Though the committee chairman, Representative Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), initially planned to object to the request, he allowed the laptop to be entered into the record. Now, staffers appointed by Nadler are saying they cannot upload the laptop due to technological limitations,...

Were the Romans close to an Industrial Revolution? (Part 1) | February 25, 2022 | toldinstone

The war in Ukraine has threatened to worsen an already concerning shortage in semiconductor chips. "Three of the major companies in the world [for neon] are based between Mariupol, which has been ravaged by the war, and there’s two, I believe, in Odesa," Dusin Carmack, research fellow for cybersecurity, intelligence and emerging technologies at the Heritage Foundation, told FOX Business. "It’s going to be maybe three to six months before you see major impact … but if this is an extended war, this is going to cause supply chain issues." The U.S. has suffered a semiconductor shortage that has contributed...

DALLAS — Yes, those 7-foot-tall machines at Dallas Love Field are watching you. They want to make sure you’re wearing a mask if you’re boarding a flight or not parking too long at the curb if you’re picking up a returning traveler. Love Field is testing out two Security Control Observation Towers at the airport, one near baggage claim and another near security checkpoints, to figure out whether robotic assistants can both help customers get around and warn passengers who are breaking rules. The robots can also contact airport security and operations in case more help is needed. While not...

The Roman Gadget Archaeologists Can't Figure Out | March 29, 2022 | Sideprojects

The Sunshine State is the new Silicon Valley. Florida solidified its standing as a national tech hub last year — adding more new companies in the sector than any other state. According to a report from the trade group CompTIA, Florida added 2,715 tech businesses last year — ahead of both Texas and California. Florida had the second-highest number of tech jobs added last year at 10,522 — second to Texas which gained 10,851 positions. Much of Florida’s tech growth was concentrated in Miami, which added 2,072 positions in the field last year. New York — which still ranks third...