Why does FM sound better than AM?
The original form of radio broadcast was amplitude modulation (AM). With AM radio, the changes in the amplitude of the carrier wave carries the signal you want to broadcast. Frequency modulation (FM) came later. With FM radio, changes to the frequency of the carrier wave carry the signal. I go
Read moreDirector Morgan Neville is steering clear of generative AI after ‘Roadrunner’ backlash
One of the most attention-grabbing aspects of “Roadrunner,” the Morgan Neville-directed documentary about Anthony Bourdain, was Neville’s use of generative AI to replicate Bourdain’s voice. Looking back now, Neville told Wired that he saw this as a “fun” way to “keep [Bourdain’s] voice going in the film.” But his approach
Read moreX blocked hacked JD Vance dossier links after the Trump campaign flagged it
Illustration by Laura Normand / The Verge The Presidential campaign of Donald Trump asked X to stop links to a story containing VP nominee JD Vance’s hacked dossier from circulating before X chose to block them, reports The New York Times. X had cited its “rules on posting unredacted private
Read moreShifted reciprocal
It’s interesting to visualize functions of a complex variable, even very simple functions like f(z) = 1/z. The previous post looked at what happens to triangles under the reciprocal map w = 1/z. This post will look at the same map applied to a polar grid, then look at the
Read moreSpaceX successfully catches returning Starship booster
For the first time, SpaceX not only launched its mammoth Starship, but also returned the booster to the launch site and to caught it with a pair of oversized “chopsticks.” This test flight — the fifth in the Starship development program — took place Sunday morning at the company’s Starbase
Read moreApple might release a $2,000 Vision headset next year
Apple’s Vision Pro hasn’t exactly reshaped the market, but the company isn’t giving up on headsets that combine the digital and real worlds. A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple’s next big mixed reality release could come as early as next year, with the launch of a
Read moreThe promise and perils of synthetic data
Is it possible for an AI to be trained just on data generated by another AI? It might sound like a harebrained idea. But it’s one that’s been around for quite some time — and as new, real data is increasingly hard to come by, it’s been gaining traction. Anthropic
Read moreThe original source code for Backyard Baseball is long gone. Mega Cat Studios remastered the game anyway.
Backyard Baseball 1997 is back in all of its nostalgic glory, sliding onto Steam like Pablo Sanchez when he steals a base. But before Mega Cat Studios could remaster the cult favorite PC game, founder James Deighan had to sift through almost thirty years of detritus. Playground Productions, a children’s
Read moreData center tech is exploding but adoption won’t be easy for startups
The data center industry is expanding rapidly to keep up with the flywheel growth of AI. While these data centers are necessary AI infrastructure, they store an AI company’s compute, they are expensive to build, seemingly more so to run, and they are a huge energy suck. Startups are looking
Read moreMeet the Chinese ‘Typhoon’ hackers preparing for war
Of the cybersecurity risks facing the United States today, few loom larger than the potential sabotage capabilities posed by China-backed hackers, which top U.S. officials have described as an “epoch-defining threat.” In recent months, U.S. intelligence officials said Chinese government-backed hackers have been burrowing deep into the networks of U.S.
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