Riley Walz installed a solar-powered Android phone in San Francisco's Mission district to capture street music using Shazam 24/7, akin to Shot Spotter's gunshot detection but for music.
This "culture surveillance" records real-time music trends without consent, capturing a diverse range of genres and artists, including tracks like "You'd Better Believe It" by The Manhattans and "LALA" by Myke Towers.
The device provides a continuous feed of popular music, offering insights into the area's musical landscape.
Bop Spotter is a project that records 10-minute audio chunks in airplane mode, uploads them to a server, and splits the audio into 15-second chunks for Shazam's API to identify songs.
The project has sparked discussions about privacy, gentrification, and the cultural implications of loud music in public spaces.
The setup is power-efficient, with the phone's battery dropping to 70% by morning, and it uses solar power to sustain itself.
Google’s NotebookLM has introduced a new feature called Audio Overview, which generates custom podcasts using AI hosts to discuss provided content.
Powered by Gemini 1.5 Pro LLM and enhanced by Google Research's SoundStorm, these ten-minute podcasts feature natural-sounding dialogue and convincing audio conversations.
The feature was demonstrated at Google I/O, and notable figures like Thomas Wolf and Jaden Geller have explored its capabilities and internal workings, revealing insights into prompt engineering and script generation.
NotebookLM's AI-generated podcasts provide an innovative way to consume information, with adjustable technical levels to cater to different knowledge bases.
Critics argue that the AI-produced content can feel shallow and formulaic, lacking the depth and personality of human-created podcasts.
Despite criticisms, the technology is promising for summarizing complex materials and making them more accessible, particularly for those who prefer audio formats.
Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047, a bill intended to regulate large AI models, due to concerns it only targets the largest and most expensive models without addressing high-risk deployments.
Critics argue the bill could stifle innovation and unfairly target open-source models, while Newsom calls for evidence-based, adaptable regulations that ensure safety without hindering technological progress.
The veto has ignited a debate among tech leaders, AI safety advocates, and legislators on the optimal approach to AI regulation.
Y Combinator (YC), a leading early-stage venture capital fund and accelerator, has shifted its focus from exclusivity to growth, leading to a decline in its prestige.
Sam Altman's strategy to scale YC by accepting more companies diluted its reputation, similar to how Harvard maintains its status through exclusivity.
Recent examples, like funding PearAI, an AI code editor clone, suggest YC is compromising on due diligence, which could deter innovative startups from applying in the future.
Y Combinator (YC) has transitioned from a renowned startup accelerator to focusing more on growth, raising concerns about its quality.
A former YC alum observed that YC now resembles a venture capital (VC) firm, emphasizing ideas with high return potential, as seen in rejection emails centered on product strategy and scalability.
The alum also pointed out the trend of hype-driven investments, where generating excitement can secure substantial funding, even for companies with dubious substance, sparking debates about whether YC's new approach undermines its original mission of supporting passionate founders.
Visual Studio Code, although open-source, contains proprietary elements that pose legal risks for users who deviate from Microsoft's intended use.
Open-source forks like VSCodium and OpenVSCodeServer lack access to Microsoft's marketplace and face legal challenges, highlighting the difficulties in offering similar services without legal repercussions.
Microsoft's strategy of transitioning from products to services, exemplified by GitHub Codespaces, is leading to a more closed ecosystem, making it challenging for open-source projects to compete.
Visual Studio Code (VSCode) faces criticism for its weak ecosystem and security issues, including non-sandboxed extensions and insecure remote repository access.
Users express concerns over Microsoft's proprietary extensions, which are incompatible with third-party VSCode distributions, limiting open-source use.
Despite these issues, many users still appreciate VSCode's features, though skepticism about Microsoft's long-term intentions persists.
A user shared their experience of learning to weld and building a giant mushroom structure for a music festival, highlighting the creative process and the joy of seeing people interact with it.
Another user discussed their frustration with the high costs of DocuSign, leading them to develop an alternative platform, GoodSign, which charges per document sent rather than requiring a subscription.
A couple shared their journey of opening a new bookshop in their community, detailing the challenges and excitement of setting up the store and connecting it to their point of sale system.
Kris Kristofferson, the influential songwriter and actor, has passed away at 88, known for hits like “Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “Me and Bobby McGee.”
He was a key figure in the "outlaw" country movement and also had a successful film career, including roles in "A Star Is Born" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid."
Kristofferson's legacy includes his contributions to music and film, his formation of the supergroup the Highwaymen, and his enduring impact despite battling Lyme disease later in life.
The Arch Linux team is collaborating with Valve, which uses Arch Linux for its Steam Deck's SteamOS 3, to improve both Arch and SteamOS.
Valve is providing build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave, addressing significant challenges for Arch Linux and enhancing its distribution.
This partnership underscores Valve's commitment to the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community, potentially leading to better security, structured releases for Arch Linux, and improved gaming performance on SteamOS 3.
The Arch Linux team is partnering with Valve, likely due to Arch's lightweight nature and rolling release model, which is ideal for gaming with minimal performance overhead.
Valve prefers Arch over other distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora because of Arch's quick updates, minimal modifications, and non-profit status.
This collaboration aims to enhance Arch's security and structured releases, aligning with Valve's need for a flexible, up-to-date system for the Steam Deck, despite concerns about the rolling release model's stability for production systems.
AI companies are experiencing a surge in innovation, with success hinging on talent retention, business relationships, and funding.
The return on investment (ROI) for AI spending is currently low, with common applications like chatbots and developer tools not yielding significant revenue.
The AI market is highly competitive, with both large and small companies striving for dominance, and the future profitability of AI remains uncertain.
Liquid AI has introduced Liquid Foundation Models (LFMs), a new generation of generative AI models that offer state-of-the-art performance with a smaller memory footprint and more efficient inference.
LFMs are available in 1B, 3B, and 40B parameter categories, optimized for various hardware and applications, including video, audio, text, and time series data.
These models outperform similar-sized models in benchmarks, are suitable for diverse industries, and will be available on multiple platforms, with a product launch event scheduled for October 23, 2024, at MIT Kresge, Cambridge, MA.
Liquid Foundation Models has released its first series of generative AI models, sparking significant discussion in the tech community.
Critics argue that the models are closed-source and only available via API, which limits their potential compared to open models like GPT-4 and Claude 3.5.
The release has been controversial due to perceived selective benchmarking, excluding competitive models like Qwen2.5, raising concerns about transparency and fairness.
Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program designed to sync files between multiple computers, prioritizing data safety, security, and user-friendliness.
It supports various platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and Docker, with GUI implementations available for ease of use.
From version 0.10.15, Syncthing release binaries are GPG signed, ensuring authenticity and security, with detailed documentation and source code available under the MPLv2 License.
Syncthing is an open-source, continuous file synchronization tool that prioritizes privacy and security.
Users have reported issues with conflict files and syncing large datasets, but many find it highly reliable for general use across multiple platforms.
Syncthing supports peer-to-peer transfers and encrypted folders, making it a popular choice among tech enthusiasts for secure and efficient file synchronization.
FFmpeg 7.1 has been released, featuring a significant number of new codecs and over 2700 commits, indicating robust project health.
Users discuss the complexities of using FFmpeg, highlighting the benefits and pitfalls of using tools like ChatGPT for command generation and the importance of understanding FFmpeg's options.
The release includes discussions on GPU vs. CPU encoding, the advantages of Vulkan API for hardware access, and the performance of various video codecs like HEVC and AV1.
Screenpipe has released version 0 of its documentation and introduced a plugin system called "pipe" for creating, sharing, and installing plugins directly from the app interface.
New features include perfect audio input/output on Windows, Linux, and MacOS, multi-monitor capture, and support for Whisper Distil large v3 for speech-to-text (STT).
Screenpipe now offers native OCR for Apple and Windows, a Linux desktop app, and a video embedding feature where AI provides links to video recordings in chat.
Screenpipe is a new open-source tool for 24/7 local AI screen and mic recording, sparking significant privacy concerns.
Users and commentators highlight the potential for sensitive information leaks and the need for consent, especially in workplaces and regions with strict privacy laws.
The tool's self-hosted nature and user control are seen as advantages over similar proprietary solutions, but the ethical and legal implications remain a hot topic of debate.
The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack (v2.2) is the largest collection of classic text mode, system, and BIOS fonts from DOS-era IBM PCs and compatibles.
The pack includes TrueType (.ttf), bitmap (.fon), and web (.woff) remakes for over 200 character sets, featuring pixel-perfect reproductions and multi-lingual Unicode enhancements.
The collection is free under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, with the latest version (v2.2) released on November 21, 2020.
The Ultimate Oldschool PC Font Pack includes classic console fonts, such as the GPLv2 Solarize 12x29 PSF from Sun SPARCstation, which were used in early Linux development.
The pack supports multiple character sets, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Pinyin, and users are nostalgic about their favorite fonts like Corona.
There is a discussion on the desire for these fonts in .psf format for Linux consoles, especially for 4K displays, and a debate on the copyright status of bitmap versus vector fonts.
New research by Wellesley College professor Mike Wiest and his team suggests that anesthesia works by binding to microtubules inside neurons, supporting the quantum model of consciousness.
This study could improve our understanding of anesthesia, consciousness in coma patients and animals, and the effects of drugs and diseases on the brain.
The research, co-authored by several Wellesley students, was published in eNeuro on September 1, 2024.
New research indicates a potential link between anesthesia, microtubules, and consciousness, supporting the quantum model of consciousness.
The study observed that rats administered a microtubule-binding drug took longer to become unconscious under anesthesia, suggesting microtubules' involvement in consciousness.
Critics argue the findings are speculative and do not conclusively rule out other mechanisms, highlighting the lack of strong evidence for the quantum consciousness theory.