Month: July 2023
A plugged-in Tesla can still make front page news somewhere
Local newspaper Ekalaka Eagle thinks it might be the first EV charged in town. | Image: Eric Dietrich / MTFP
A Tesla driver from California thought they could quietly borrow some joules in the EV-barren town of Ekalaka, Montana — population 400 or so — but their Model Y ended up on the front page of the local newspaper, dubbed a UEV (or unidentified electric vehicle). “Borrowed Volts,” read the article title in the Ekalaka Eagle, which mentions that it might be the first electric vehicle ever to charge in the town.
“It was just sitting there, so I plugged in,” the driver told the Montana Free Press.
The port was a NEMA 14-50, the kind often used to power RVs, and despite the passenger’s concern about charging at a random outlet, it was better than their original backup plan of finding a 120-volt plug that might take days to charge the vehicle. As they returned for a second round of charging and found the plug shut off, a local drove by and told them they’d made the front page of the newspaper.
The manager for the local utility co-op’s been thinking about adding EV chargers “in the next decade,” but state funds aren’t prioritizing the backroads that lead to the town.
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The Tesla driver may not have been in too much of a pickle, though. Based on the US Department of Energy’s EV station locator, the closest Tesla Supercharger was only about 70 miles away.
It’s possible that, if the driver were cruising at a higher speed on the highway during the trip, the vehicle could have started warning them to keep a lower steady speed to reach the next charger. (Although Teslas reportedly can paint a rosy picture of how far they can go on a single charge.) But even if they made it to the next station, they probably wouldn’t have had as good of a story to tell.
Personally, my favorite part of the story was when the driver and his travel partner were met with a room full of laughter at the power utility after they came in to “pay for the crimes of the UEV,” as the concerned passenger put it. No harm, no foul. They paid $60 for the charge — which included the cost of power for a musician who used the same port for a street dance event as part of the town’s dinosaur festival.
Local newspaper Ekalaka Eagle thinks it might be the first EV charged in town. | Image: Eric Dietrich / MTFP
A Tesla driver from California thought they could quietly borrow some joules in the EV-barren town of Ekalaka, Montana — population 400 or so — but their Model Y ended up on the front page of the local newspaper, dubbed a UEV (or unidentified electric vehicle). “Borrowed Volts,” read the article title in the Ekalaka Eagle, which mentions that it might be the first electric vehicle ever to charge in the town.
“It was just sitting there, so I plugged in,” the driver told the Montana Free Press.
The port was a NEMA 14-50, the kind often used to power RVs, and despite the passenger’s concern about charging at a random outlet, it was better than their original backup plan of finding a 120-volt plug that might take days to charge the vehicle. As they returned for a second round of charging and found the plug shut off, a local drove by and told them they’d made the front page of the newspaper.
The manager for the local utility co-op’s been thinking about adding EV chargers “in the next decade,” but state funds aren’t prioritizing the backroads that lead to the town.
Please enable JavaScript to view the alternative fueling station locator.
The Tesla driver may not have been in too much of a pickle, though. Based on the US Department of Energy’s EV station locator, the closest Tesla Supercharger was only about 70 miles away.
It’s possible that, if the driver were cruising at a higher speed on the highway during the trip, the vehicle could have started warning them to keep a lower steady speed to reach the next charger. (Although Teslas reportedly can paint a rosy picture of how far they can go on a single charge.) But even if they made it to the next station, they probably wouldn’t have had as good of a story to tell.
Personally, my favorite part of the story was when the driver and his travel partner were met with a room full of laughter at the power utility after they came in to “pay for the crimes of the UEV,” as the concerned passenger put it. No harm, no foul. They paid $60 for the charge — which included the cost of power for a musician who used the same port for a street dance event as part of the town’s dinosaur festival.
N.F.L. Increases Penalties for Sexual Misconduct in Light of Deshaun Watson Case
The league can more strictly penalize players for sexual assault involving coercion or threats, and its discipline can take into account patterns of conduct, after a judge who oversaw Watson’s hearing cited the policy’s limits.
The league can more strictly penalize players for sexual assault involving coercion or threats, and its discipline can take into account patterns of conduct, after a judge who oversaw Watson’s hearing cited the policy’s limits.
This free plugin uses AI to generate music samples from text prompts
The devs behind AI-based sample editing software Samplab are back with a free VST3 plugin that generates samples from text prompts. The appropriately-named TextToSample is a plugin that opens inside your DAW or as a standalone tool, allowing you to type, say, “bubbly synth melody” to create a, well, bubbly synth melody to do with as you see fit.TextToSample utilizes Meta’s open-source AI-based sound generation toolset, MusicGen, and was trained using data provided by the algorithm. You can also drag and drop pre-existing sounds into the plugin and have it generate related samples, in addition to typing out commands.The UI is extremely minimal and sparse, which makes it easy to use, but does present some inherent limitations. For instance, it doesn’t take pre-existing music on your track into account, so your first, second, and even third attempts will likely not match the tone you are going for. It also has trouble recognizing basic music concepts like keys, scales and BPM. Just like most AI-creation platforms, you aren’t going to get a perfect match right away. You’ll have to tweak, augment and provide further instructions, bit by bit, until satisfied.However, when you get there, it’s pretty darn fun, creating the kinds of happy accidents you’d never stumble into on your own. Check out the demo video and that little flourish of guitar at the tail end of the sample as an example.This is an AI tool in the year 2023, so there are some bugs. During experiments, we ran into issues like the plugin adding drums when we clearly stated that we didn’t want percussion. To that end, Samplab says the tool is not intended to “replace human musicians, which it’s not capable of doing anyway.” It’s free, though, so there’s no harm in checking it out, and the technology should improve as more people use it.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/this-free-plugin-uses-ai-to-generate-music-samples-from-text-prompts-165058168.html?src=rss
The devs behind AI-based sample editing software Samplab are back with a free VST3 plugin that generates samples from text prompts. The appropriately-named TextToSample is a plugin that opens inside your DAW or as a standalone tool, allowing you to type, say, “bubbly synth melody” to create a, well, bubbly synth melody to do with as you see fit.
TextToSample utilizes Meta’s open-source AI-based sound generation toolset, MusicGen, and was trained using data provided by the algorithm. You can also drag and drop pre-existing sounds into the plugin and have it generate related samples, in addition to typing out commands.
The UI is extremely minimal and sparse, which makes it easy to use, but does present some inherent limitations. For instance, it doesn’t take pre-existing music on your track into account, so your first, second, and even third attempts will likely not match the tone you are going for. It also has trouble recognizing basic music concepts like keys, scales and BPM. Just like most AI-creation platforms, you aren’t going to get a perfect match right away. You’ll have to tweak, augment and provide further instructions, bit by bit, until satisfied.
However, when you get there, it’s pretty darn fun, creating the kinds of happy accidents you’d never stumble into on your own. Check out the demo video and that little flourish of guitar at the tail end of the sample as an example.
This is an AI tool in the year 2023, so there are some bugs. During experiments, we ran into issues like the plugin adding drums when we clearly stated that we didn’t want percussion. To that end, Samplab says the tool is not intended to “replace human musicians, which it’s not capable of doing anyway.” It’s free, though, so there’s no harm in checking it out, and the technology should improve as more people use it.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/this-free-plugin-uses-ai-to-generate-music-samples-from-text-prompts-165058168.html?src=rss
Europe turns its new $1.5 billion space telescope on, and happily it works
“The spacecraft will soon reach its final position.”
Enlarge / Euclid’s Visible instrument (VIS) will image the sky in visible light (550–900 nm) to take sharp images of billions of galaxies and measure their shapes. This image was taken during the commissioning of Euclid. (credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA)
Nearly one month after launching into space, a European telescope has begun taking its first images and data of the Universe. And to the delight of scientists at the European Space Agency, everything seems to be working rather well.
As part of the months-long commissioning phase, both the telescope’s visual and infrared-light cameras have started snapping photos of the cosmos. Scientists who helped develop these cameras—VIS for visible light, and NISP for Near Infrared Spectrograph and Photometer—say the new instruments work superbly.
“We are very pleased that the commissioning phase of Euclid is progressing well,” Alessandra Roy, Euclid project manager at the German Space Agency at DLR, said. “The spacecraft will soon reach its final position at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth and begin scientific observations.”
Windows 11 Getting Multiple Monitor Refresh Rate Improvements
Microsoft is making it a lot more convenient to use multiple high refresh rate monitors with Windows 11. From a report: The software giant has started testing a Windows 11 update that automatically adjusts refresh rates on multiple monitors depending on what content is being displayed, which should improve power usage and could even result in some GPUs spinning up their fans less often. “We have improved refresh rate logic to allow different refresh rates on different monitors, depending on the refresh rate for each monitor and content shown on the screen,” explains Microsoft in a Windows Insider blog from last week. “This will help most with refresh rate-dependent multitasking, like playing a game and watching a video at the same time.” If you have multiple monitors that support high refresh rates then running them at their full potential often increases the power draw of your GPU. Nvidia RTX 30- and 40-series Founders Edition cards also have a zero RPM mode, which will keep the fans at zero even when you’re watching video content on a single monitor. If you add a second high refresh rate display, this often disables the zero RPM mode and means the GPU keeps its fans spinning if you have both monitors at high refresh rates.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft is making it a lot more convenient to use multiple high refresh rate monitors with Windows 11. From a report: The software giant has started testing a Windows 11 update that automatically adjusts refresh rates on multiple monitors depending on what content is being displayed, which should improve power usage and could even result in some GPUs spinning up their fans less often. “We have improved refresh rate logic to allow different refresh rates on different monitors, depending on the refresh rate for each monitor and content shown on the screen,” explains Microsoft in a Windows Insider blog from last week. “This will help most with refresh rate-dependent multitasking, like playing a game and watching a video at the same time.” If you have multiple monitors that support high refresh rates then running them at their full potential often increases the power draw of your GPU. Nvidia RTX 30- and 40-series Founders Edition cards also have a zero RPM mode, which will keep the fans at zero even when you’re watching video content on a single monitor. If you add a second high refresh rate display, this often disables the zero RPM mode and means the GPU keeps its fans spinning if you have both monitors at high refresh rates.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Minecraft players under threat from sneaky new malware
Running Minecraft with a server? You could find yourself a victim of an attack that enables RCE if you don’t patch now.
The Minecraft Malware Prevention Alliance (MMPA) has warned Minecraft players of a new vulnerability that can allow cybercriminals to run remote code and plant malware on victims’ devices.
Fortunately, despite being actively exploited, it is an attack that is familiar among the Java community and as such, developers are already well-informed when it comes to issuing a fix.
Not so fortunately, though, in the case of this attack, was the scale. According to MMPA, “a bad actor scanned all Minecraft servers on the IPv4 address space.” Following this, the group reckons that a malicious payload might have been deployed onto all affected servers.
Minecraft malware is widespread
The exploit, dubbed ‘BleedingPipe,’ allows full remote code execution on clients and servers running some Minecraft mods on at least versions 1.7.10/1.12.2 of Forge.
Among some of the known affected mods are EnderCore, LogisticsPipes, and BDLib, which have been fixed for the GT New Horizons versions. Others include Smart Moving 1.12, Brazier, DankNull, and Gadomancy.
Despite being a highly exploited vulnerability, MMPA says that no instances have been to this scale in Minecraft so far.
The group says: “We do not know what the contents of the exploit were or if it was used to exploit other clients, although this is very much possible with the exploit.”
Server admins are urged to regularly check for suspicious files, as well as apply updates and security patches as soon as they become available in order to protect players. Players, too, can check for suspicious files, with both jSus and jNeedle being recommended scanning tools.
More broadly, maintaining effective endpoint protection software on consumer machines and being prepared is always good practice.
Check out our roundup of the best firewalls
Counterpoint Says U.S. Smartphone Sales Are Down, But Mostly on the Android Side
Matthew Orf, writing for Counterpoint Research:
US smartphone shipments declined 24% YoY in Q2 2023, according to
Counterpoint Research’s Market Monitor data. This was the third
consecutive quarter of YoY declines. Android brands like Samsung,
Motorola and TCL-Alcatel saw the steepest declines in shipments,
while Apple’s shipments were more resilient. As a result, Apple’s
share of shipments increased YoY.
Android smartphone shipments declined 38% while Apple shipments
fell 6% YoY.
Samsung’s sales — according to Counterpoint — were exactly in line with Android overall, down 37 percent overall. You’d think they’d be up, not down, with all those foldables they sell. Another interesting tidbit: Counterpoint claims Google Pixel sales are up 48 percent year-over-year. If true, maybe, finally, Pixels are starting to get traction? I have to give Google credit for doggedly sticking with it.
Apple’s share of shipments in Counterpoint’s tallying has been 50+ percent for 4 consecutive quarters.
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Matthew Orf, writing for Counterpoint Research:
US smartphone shipments declined 24% YoY in Q2 2023, according to
Counterpoint Research’s Market Monitor data. This was the third
consecutive quarter of YoY declines. Android brands like Samsung,
Motorola and TCL-Alcatel saw the steepest declines in shipments,
while Apple’s shipments were more resilient. As a result, Apple’s
share of shipments increased YoY.
Android smartphone shipments declined 38% while Apple shipments
fell 6% YoY.
Samsung’s sales — according to Counterpoint — were exactly in line with Android overall, down 37 percent overall. You’d think they’d be up, not down, with all those foldables they sell. Another interesting tidbit: Counterpoint claims Google Pixel sales are up 48 percent year-over-year. If true, maybe, finally, Pixels are starting to get traction? I have to give Google credit for doggedly sticking with it.
Apple’s share of shipments in Counterpoint’s tallying has been 50+ percent for 4 consecutive quarters.
Microsoft Edge gets an even darker dark mode, and my eyes are grateful
The newest version of Edge offers a modern, sleek look, Bing-AI-driven updates, and Sidebar Extension support
Sources report that we can expect Microsoft to premiere a darker (dare I say edgier) look to its proprietary web browser, Microsoft Edge.
Now, Edge already has a dark mode, but this new theme will be even darker. At the moment, the dark mode is a combination of grey tones, and apparently it’s due to be replaced with a predominantly black theme. As a dark-mode connoisseur, I already have the existing dark mode enabled, so I’m intrigued to see what this will look like.
This new update is currently accessible to those with Edge Canary, the experimental version of Edge that Microsoft uses for consumer testing of new features. The darker theme aims to offer a browsing experience that works better in low-light surroundings; it’s also a step in line with many other browsers, programs, and apps now offering multiple dark settings.
Edge gets a serious boost
This update comes on the heels of the last big update for Edge, which saw the introduction of improved data security features and an improved “Edge Secure Network” browser VPN with up to 5GB of data, an increase from the previous 1GB. This gives the user additional privacy and provides protection by using Cloudflare’s encryption mechanism, ensuring that your information is safe against online threats.
Edge Canary is also introducing (or rather, reintroducing) specific mouse control gestures for the browser. To use these, you hold your right mouse button and move the mouse. This can be used to navigate between pages, navigation on a specific page (instead of scrolling), and manage tabs. You can trial this feature if you have access to Edge Canary by going to settings and enabling “Microsoft Mouse Gestures.” I’m interested in trying this out, as it may be a more intuitive way to navigate the browser.
There are more feature updates for Edge that we can expect in the near future, such as the integration of Bing AI into Edge’s right-click menu. Another big update is due to improve third-party extensions, allowing developers to create extensions specially made for the Edge Sidebar. In turn, this opens up a lot of possibilities for great functionality of the Sidebar as a tool that enhances the user experience.
I’m intrigued by these developments, with Microsoft making a strong push to make Edge a program that you can shape and mold into a highly-personalized browser, as well as an assistant-like tool suited for every individual user. Perhaps I’ll finally switch over from Chrome?