The Federal Aviation Administration said that domestic flights in the U.S. could resume shortly before 9 a.m. ET on Wednesday morning. The announcement ended a period of a roughly an hour that grounded all flights across the country as the agency struggled to fix technical problems with a system that provides pilots…
Nikki Main covers breaking news for Gizmodo. You can follow her coverage here, and email story ideas and tips to nmcaleese@gizmodo.com.
Microsoft’s latest research in text-to-speech AI centers on a new AI model, VALL-E. While there are already multiple services that can create copies of your voice, they usually demand substantial input. Microsoft claims its model can simulate someone’s voice from just a three-second audio sample. The speech can match both the timbre and emotional tone of the speaker – even the acoustics of a room. It could one day be used for customized or high-end text-to-speech applications, but like deepfakes, there are risks of misuse.
Researchers trained VALL-E on 60,000 hours of English language speech from 7,000-plus speakers in Meta’s Libri-Light audio library. The results aren’t perfect: Some are tinny machine-like samples, while others are surprisingly realistic.
Microsoft isn’t making the code open source, possibly due to the inherent risks. In the paper, the company said: “Since VALL-E could synthesize speech that maintains speaker identity, it may carry potential risks in misuse of the model, such as spoofing voice identification or impersonating.”
We’ve all seen the 1992 movie Sneakers, right? Right?!
– Mat Smith
Samsung’s first Unpacked event of 2023 takes place February 1st
Hyundai managed to put its ‘crab-walking’ e-Corner technology into an Ioniq EV
What an ‘oddball’ star in the Cygnus cluster can teach us about how masers are made
DJI’s lightweight RS 3 Mini camera stabilizer is designed to be used with one hand
‘TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge’ hits iOS and Android as a Netflix mobile exclusive
Amazon is expanding Prime to cover more of the web. The company says it’s making Buy with Prime “widely available” to eligible third-party sites in the US on January 31st. More shops can offer free shipping, streamlined checkout and simplified returns to Prime members. The theoretical advantages are clear: You get products with less hassle, while stores are more likely to turn visitors into paying customers. Amazon, meanwhile, is hoping to boost interest in Prime subscriptions. The catch, of course, is you have to pay for that pesky Prime sub.
NASA is handing out $175,000 initial study grants to 14 new projects potentially useful for missions in and beyond the solar system. TitanAir might be the most unusual one: a seaplane from Planet Enterprises’ Quinn Morley that could fly through the nitrogen-and-methane atmosphere of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan, and sail its oceans.
MIT’s Mary Knapp has proposed a deep space observatory that would use a swarm of thousands of tiny satellites to detect low-frequency radio emissions from the early universe, and UCLA’s Artur Davoyan’s idea could speed up exploration at the outer edges of space. His design would propel spacecraft with a “pellet-beam” of microscopic particles traveling at very high speed (over 74 miles per second) using laser blasts.
Meanwhile, the UK’s first efforts at space flight have ended in failure. Virgin Orbit’s historic Start Me Up mission launched from Spaceport Cornwall on January 9th as planned, but it failed to reach orbit. Apparently, the company tweeted, because of “an anomaly.” The mission carried payload satellites from seven commercial and government customers. They include a joint UK–US project called CIRCE (Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment) and two CubeSats for the UK’s Ministry of Defense. As noted by Ars Technica, this failure could have a huge impact on the company, which is struggling to launch enough missions to break even.
Bloomberg sources claim Apple is not only prepping its first cellular modem (now slated for late 2024 or early 2025) but also a combination of Bluetooth and WiFi chips to replace the Broadcom chip currently handling those duties in iPhones. While the exact reasoning for the transition wasn’t mentioned, it’s no secret Apple started designing its own silicon across multiple products.
GOP was once the party of fiscally responsible conservatives who prided themselves on being Christians. Now the party has become a group of Karens demanding to speak to a manager.
When I got an email from Gizmodo’s former editor-in-chief Joel Johnson asking if I’d be interested in writing for this site, it felt like winning the lottery. The year was 2013 and I was writing the Paleofuture blog for Smithsonian magazine while writing freelance articles on the side. According to Joel, not only…
The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures in the US until 9AM Eastern time while it’s restoring its Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system. On early Wednesday morning, the agency issued a notice through an Air Traffic Control System Command Center Advisory that the US NOTAM system has failed. “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected,” the FAA said in a tweet, along with the information that it was working to fix the outage. In follow-up tweets, the agency said that while some of the system’s functions are coming back online, it was still working to fully restore the system. Pausing all domestic departures will give it time “to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.”
Update 3: The FAA is still working to fully restore the Notice to Air Missions system following an outage.⁰⁰The FAA has ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9 a.m. Eastern Time to allow the agency to validate the integrity of flight and safety information.
— The FAA ✈️ (@FAANews) January 11, 2023
According to Simple Flying, this is the first time the US NOTAM system has failed, affecting flights across the country. People have been reporting delayed flights since at least the evening of January 10th, and Reuters says over 400 flights flying within, from and into the US had been delayed as of 5:31AM ET today, January 11th. It’s unclear whether the FAA will be able to fully remedy the issue by 9AM. As the news organization notes, a NOTAM contains information that’s essential to flight personnel. Some NOTAMs for long-haul international flights could have as many as 200 pages and include details, such as runway closures and low-altitude construction obstacles.
The FAA said its Notice to Air Missions system had “failed” and there was no estimate for restoration of the service.
The attacker wounded six people at Paris’ busy Gare du Nord train station, where the Eurostar trains arrive from London.
Before they inevitably murder us all in a genocidal campaign that can only be stopped by John Connor, robots will probably just get us all fired. Yes, it’s not exactly news that automation is coming for large swaths of the global labor force, but just when and how this automation will strike is still a hanging…
In mid-2021, medical technology company Masimo sued Apple over the Watch Series 6’s blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. Masimo accused the tech giant of infringing on five of its pulse oximeter patents after introducing a device that has the ability to measure blood oxygen saturation. Now, a US International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has ruled that Apple did indeed infringe on one of Masimo’s pulse oximeter patents.
While the judge has also concluded that the tech giant did not infringe on the other four patents involved in the case, the ITC will now reportedly examine whether to impose an import ban on Apple Watches with the feature, as Masimo had requested when it filed the lawsuit. Newer Apple Watches, namely the Series 7 and 8, Ultra and SE, have blood oxygen monitoring features, so the ITC’s decision will also affect them.
Masimo CEO Joe Kiani told MD+DI in a statement that his company is happy that the judge “took this critical first step toward accountability.” Kiani continued by saying that “Apple has similarly infringed on other companies’ technologies” and that the “ruling exposes Apple as a company that takes other companies’ innovations and repackages them.”
Meanwhile, Apple accused Masimo of being the one that copied its intellectual property in its statement to the publication. “At Apple, our teams work tirelessly to create products and services that empower users with industry-leading health, wellness, and safety features. Masimo is attempting to take advantage of these many innovations by introducing a device that copies Apple Watch and infringes on our intellectual property, while also trying to eliminate competition from the market. We respectfully disagree with today’s decision, and look forward to a full review by the commission,” a spokesperson said.
The judge’s decision was only an initial ruling that reflects the ITC’s findings during its investigation, and the final ruling for the case won’t be handed down until May 10th.
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