The team of CJ Carr and Zack Zukowski recently used a recurrent neural network (RNN) to generate an infinite bass solo that they’re live-streaming on YouTube. The duo trained their neural network on a two-hour improvised bass solo by musician Adam Neely. “My strategy was to use the same bass, same pickup, same tone, improvise basslines over an 85 beats per minute drum groove, and keep everything in E-minor so the end result wouldn’t be too chromatic,” Neely explained on YouTube....

Footage of the category 4 Hurricane Sam rampaging across the Atlantic Ocean was recorded by a camera onboard the uncrewed surface vehicle (USV). The vehicle, called Saildrone Explorer SD 1045, was directed into the tropical cyclone to record conditions at the water’s surface. The strangely soothing footage belies the ferocity of the storm. The drone braved winds of over 120 mph and waves of 50 feet to capture data about Sam....

Discord is a great program if you’re trying to keep in touch with online friends — and in recent days that’s become more important than ever. It also gives you more options than just text and voice chat, which I recommend taking advantage of in order to alleviate isolation. For example, what could be a better tonic for loneliness and cabin fever than a good movie night with friends, or binge-watching a show together?...

It’s devastating when you learn about the death of a tool or service you cherished using, and dreamt you’d grow old with. It happens more than we’d like, and it doesn’t ever get easier. We asked you about the discontinued apps that you’re sad about, and wanted to raise a toast to our beloved tools. Google Reader Mentioning Google Reader on the internet always brings the strongest emotions out of millennials who grew up using Google’s web apps....

Eugenics can be described as the science and practice of improving the human race through the selection of “good” hereditary traits. Eugenics inevitably brings to mind the atrocities committed by the Nazis, who used eugenic ideology as the rationale for large-scale forced sterilization, involuntary euthanasia and the Holocaust. Given this sinister history, it’s bound to be alarming when government officials endorse eugenic ideas. The eugenics movement of the past has been thoroughly discredited on both moral and scientific grounds....

My favourite myth is that Teflon was developed by NASA. This seems reasonable, as it is an immensely heat resistant material – something that space missions require. However, it was invented by accident in 1938 by Roy Plunkett at DuPont when he was researching new refrigerants. Velcro is another misconception, having been invented in the 1940s in Switzerland by George de Mestral. Again, its huge usefulness in everyday life in space can’t be denied....

Dr. Brad Tucker, Astrophysicist, and Cosmologist at Mt Stromlo Observatory at the Australian National University, went to check it out. He found that the pieces of rocket debris were 3 meters long and weighed 20-30kg each. While it sounds like something cool to tell your grandkids, it points to a bigger problem – space junk. What is space junk, and why is it a problem? The term space junk refers to machines or debris left by humans in space and can be anything from dead satellites to paint flecks....

Individuals now have the opportunity to be a part of a community that collectively operates a protocol of interest as well as the chance to get paid for meaningful contributions that push the project forward. So let’s dive into what exactly DAOs are, how they work, and why I believe they are the perfect way for newcomers to join the space. Credit: https://daohaus.club/ My path into Web3 In early 2016, I began my own journey down the crypto rabbit hole with two simple yet distinct choices: allocate my savings account towards the traditional home renovation project, or use it for my first significant foray into the realm of relatively new, decentralized “financial instruments,” namely Bitcoin and Ethereum....

But the field of AI is much richer than just this one type of algorithm. Symbolic reasoning algorithms such as artificial logic systems, also pioneered in the ’60s, may be poised to emerge into the spotlight — to some extent perhaps on their own, but also hybridized with neural networks in the form of so-called “neural-symbolic” systems. Weaknesses of deep neural networks Deep neural nets have done amazing things for certain tasks, such as image recognition and machine translation....

This can be explained by the fact that successful entrepreneurship occurs in “fertile soil” – economic and social environments conducive to entrepreneurial activity. And in some places these environments – or ecosystems – are much better at generating and supporting entrepreneurial activity than others. An entrepreneurial ecosystem is a clustering of interconnected individuals, organizations, and bodies that facilitates and supports entrepreneurial activity. This ecosystem provides startup businesses with resources – money, people, markets, and infrastructure – within an open, inclusive culture that has supportive policies and leadership....

Fortunately, for some classification tasks, you don’t need to label all your training examples. Instead, you can use semi-supervised learning, a machine learning technique that can automate the data-labeling process with a bit of help. Supervised vs unsupervised vs semi-supervised machine learning You only need labeled examples for supervised machine learning tasks, where you must specify the ground truth for your AI model during training. Examples of supervised learning tasks include image classification, facial recognition, sales forecasting, customer churn prediction, and spam detection....

Once upon a time, I was the CEO of an online birthday calendar startup (yup, that used to be a thing). I was also the lead designer, developer, and salesperson, and support helpdesk employee, since I was the only one working there. I sort of inherited the company after it was built by a company which wanted to see it develop independently. The startup received some funding, and I was asked to run it from there....

However, we haven’t heard anything from Apple and a new report from Bloomberg suggests that we’re going to see the new iPads in April. If you’re expecting any visual changes to the iPad Pro lineup, you might be disappointed. The sizes — 12.9-inch and 11-inch — will remain the same, and there won’t be any major design shifts from the previous generation. One of the biggest updates Apple is introducing is a mini-LED display that’ll supposedly improve contrast ratios and brightness....

“Our goal is to make conversations on WhatsApp feel as close to in-person as possible, which means they shouldn’t have to stick around forever. That’s why we’re excited to introduce the option to use disappearing messages on WhatsApp,” the Facebook-owned chat app said in a statement. WhatsApp has been experimenting with this feature in the app’s code for a while now. However, as WABetaInfo has noted, these tests had disappearing times from seconds to hours....

The dangers of robots evolving beyond our control are well-documented in sci-fi movies and TV — Her, Black Mirror, Surrogates, I, Robot, need we go on? While this may seem like a far-off fantasy, FICO’s 2021 State of Responsible AI report found that 65% of companies actually can’t explain how specific AI model decisions or predictions are made. While AI is undeniably helping to propel our businesses and society forward at lightning speed, we’ve also seen the negative impacts a lack of oversight can bring....

After surviving attacks from employees, human rights groups, Harvard professors, and rival firms, the company now faces a more powerful foe: a quartet of US attorneys general. The bipartisan group of AGs sued Google on Monday for allegedly deceiving users to profit from their location data. “Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” said Karl Racine, the Washington DC AG who is leading the campaign....

Making something simple is hard, and it takes discipline. Our goal as designers is to inspire feelings of satisfaction or delight by meeting a need or solving a problem. It shouldn’t be about keeping people’s attention. Instead, success should look like reducing anxiety or giving people a way of doing things they didn’t know was possible. Or, allowing people to do something faster, to feel more carefree, or to be more independent....

But there’s one festive film franchise you aren’t gonna have that problem with: the James Bond movies. Why? Because, for some unknown reason, YouTube is hosting 21 of the famous spy movies that you can watch totally free. Well, if you’re in the US. Or, you know, have access to a VPN. The majority of the James Bond movies are included, but unfortunately it doesn’t come with any of the Daniel Craig capers (boo) or the final Brosnan movie, Die Another Day (woo)....

In a two-hour leaked audio recording obtained by The Verge, Mark Zuckerberg reveals what the company’s future plans are in regards to protecting its 30,000 content moderators and how it plans to harness technology to curb the issue of harmful content online. When Zuckerberg was asked about The Verge’s stories on content moderation, and how damaging it is to employees’ mental health, the Facebook CEO dismissed them as “a little overdramatic....

A silver lining in this is that transport planners and journalists are now writing enthusiastically about ’15-minute cities’, where people can live more fully and sustainably, close to home. This solution is exciting and necessary for many reasons. Yet experience shows that turning this vision of sustainable local life into a reality is not so easy – particularly in cities largely designed for cars. The complex machinery of land use and transport policy is hard to rewire....