As Sneako asked Jake Paul how many genders there are, the YouTuber's response caused significant controversy online

READING, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 10, 2023--

By pursuing funding equity in court, financially challenged Pennsylvania districts are following a well-traveled school reform path

Before Microsoft adds features and makes changes to Windows, the company relies on users to

China’s largest battery maker for electric vehicles has launched an aviation division in preparation to begin mass production of electric planes, according to reports. Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), which supplies batteries for Tesla, claims to have achieved the “holy grail” energy density required for commercial electric aircraft of 500 Watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg). The company announced the feat at the Auto Shanghai trade fair earlier this year, with chief scientist Wu Kai claiming that it was poised to begin production of a commercially viable battery for electric aircraft. “With an energy density of up to 500Wh/kg, it can achieve a high energy density and a high level of safety at the same time in a creative manner, opening up a brand-new electrification scenario of passenger aircrafts,” the company said in a statement at the time. “CATL can achieve mass production of condensed battery for electric vehicles in a short period of time.” CATL has now launched a joint venture with state-owned plane manufacturer Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), Yicai Global reported, following four years of research into the technology. The advent of electric aircraft has become a realistic prospect in recent years following several major battery breakthroughs that have the potential to overcome cost and capacity limitations. Israel-based startup Eviation completed the first flight of an electric commuter plane last year, taking off from an airport in Washington before touching down eight minutes later. The Alice aircraft is capable of transporting nine passengers and their luggage, or a tonne of cargo, and has been hailed as the first battery-powered plane viable for short-haul commercial journeys of up to 645km (400 miles). Regional airlines and logistics firms in the US have already ordered more than 200 Alice planes, with Eviation aiming to fulfil the orders by 2026. The Independent has contacted CATL for a production timeframe of its electric plane batteries. Read More Battery breakthroughs are about to trigger a transport revolution

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 18, 2023--

Not ready to show your real face in a Messenger or Instagram video call? You

Meta has created a new system that it says can generate convincing speech in a variety of styles – but will not release it for fear of the risks. The new tool is called “Voicebox” and can be set to create outputs in different styles, new voices from scratch as well as with a sample. It makes speech across six languages, as well as a variety of other tools such as noise removal. It says that it is a major development on previous speech systems that required specific training for each task. Instead, Voicebox can just be given raw audio and a transcription, and then be used to modify an audio sample. It is far more effective than its competitors, Meta claimed in its announcement. It can generate words with a 5.9 per cent error rate compared to 1.9 per cent from competitor Vall-E, for instance, and do so as much as 20 times more quickly. Meta said that it had been built on the foundation of a new model it called “Flow Matching”. That allows the system to learn from speech that has not been carefully labelled, so that it can be trained on more and more diverse data. Voicebox was trained on 50,000 hours of speech and transcripts that came from public domain audiobooks in English, French, Spanish, German, Polish, and Portuguese, Meta said. Now that it has been trained, it can be given an audio recording and fill in the speech from the context, Meta said. That could be used to create a realistic sounding voice from just two seconds of speech, for instance, potentially being used to bring voices to people who cannot speak or to add people’s voices into games. It could also be used to translate a passage of speech from one lanagueg to another in a way that keeps the style, Meta said, allowing people to talk to each other authentically even if they don’t speak the same language. It could also be useful in more technical scenarios, such as audio editing, where it can be used to replace words that were not properly recorded, for instance. But Meta said that the risks were such that it would not be releasing the model. It did not point to specific harms, but said that “as with other powerful new AI innovations, we recognize that this technology brings the potential for misuse and unintended harm”. Numerous reports have warned that such systems could be used to copy people’s voices without their consent and in ways that could be harmful, such as creating fake videos of news events or using people’s voices to pose as them during scam calls, for instance. “There are many exciting use cases for generative speech models, but because of the potential risks of misuse, we are not making the Voicebox model or code publicly available at this time,” Meta said in a statement. “While we believe it is important to be open with the AI community and to share our research to advance the state of the art in AI, it’s also necessary to strike the right balance between openness with responsibility.” It also pointed to a separate paper, published on its website, in which it detailed how it had built a “highly effective” system that can distinguish between authentic speech and audio that had been generated with Voicebox. Read More Mark Zuckerberg reveals what he thinks about Apple’s headset – and it’s not good Meta scrambles to fix Instagram algorithm connecting ‘vast paedophile network’ Reddit user’s protests against the site’s rules have taken an even more bizarre turn

One of the easiest Windows notebooks to carry around is Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Nano, with

CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 14, 2023--

SAVE £18: Until Sept. 20, new and returning customers can subscribe to Disney+ for £1.99

Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has issued his first public statement since the aborted march on Moscow, claiming he had never intended to overthrow Putin’s government. In his first public comments since Saturday’s dramatic events, he said the one-day mutiny was intended to be a protest at the ineffectual conduct of the war in Ukraine. Prigozhin spoke in an 11-minute audio message released on the Telegram messaging app. He denied trying to overturn the Russian state and said he acted in response to an attack on his force that killed some 30 of his fighters. “We started our march because of an injustice,” Prigozhin said in a recording that gave details about where he is or what his future plans are. A festering feud between Prigozhin and Russia’s military brass erupted on Saturday into a mutiny that saw the mercenaries leave Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in a southern Russian city and roll seemingly unopposed for hundreds of miles toward Moscow, before turning around after less than 24 hours. The Kremlin said it had made a deal for Prigozhin to move to Belarus and receive amnesty, along with his soldiers. There was no confirmation of his whereabouts Monday, although he was reportedly seen at a hotel in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. Russian media reported a criminal probe against Prigozhin continued, and some lawmakers called for his head. In a return to at least superficial normality, Moscow’s mayor announced an end to the “counterterrorism regime” imposed on the capital, when troops and armored vehicles set up checkpoints on the outskirts and authorities tore up roads leading into the city. Meanwhile, Moscow showed a video of defence minister Sergei Shoigu at a military headquarters in Ukraine. It was unclear when it was flmed.Prigozhin’s rift with the military dates back years, to Russia’s intervention in Syria, where Wagner forces also were active. Though the Prigozhin mutiny was brief, it was not bloodless. Several military helicopters and a military communications plane were shot down by Wagner forces, killing at least 15. Prigozhin denied there were any casualties on his side, but media reports indicated the airstrikes hit some Wagner vehicles, and messaging app channels featured images of the damage. Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? Wagner rebellion presents unique opportunity for Ukraine, experts say Kremlin denies Putin has fled Moscow as Russia president’s plane ‘disappears’