Aug 30
The Chandrayaan-3 rover is the first to leave its track marks on the Moon’s south pole, and the six-wheeled explorer has made a breakthrough discovery that could have major implications for establishing a future lunar habitat.
Aug 30
Most of us could stand to learn a new trick or two in the kitchen. Getting to grips with a new technique doesn’t have to be difficult though, especially if you have the right equipment on hand. To wit: we reckon the Anova Precision Cooker 3.0 is the best sous vide machine you can buy right now, and best of all, it’s on sale. The device has dropped by 25 percent to $149 at Amazon.
This is the latest standard model of Anova’s sous vide machines. It’s one of the best prices we’ve seen for it to date — it has dropped a little lower in the past but this is still a solid deal all the same.
The Precision Cooker 3.0 is a great all-rounder that’s easy to use. It can handle all the basics of cooking things like meats and eggs. The latest model includes digital touch controls, a stainless steel and water-resistant IPX7 design and a longer power cord than previous iterations. There’s WiFi connectivity, while the eight-liter-per-minute flow rate means it can bring water to the correct temperature faster than a lot of rival gizmos.
Anova teamed up with highly regarded chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt to feature a wealth of fully tested sous vide recipes in its app. And hey, if you’re not exactly sure how to get started with sous vide, you’re in luck: we have a handy guide just for that.
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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-anova-precision-cooker-30-is-50-off-right-now-151510851.html?src=rss
Aug 30
Metallic Spheres Found On The Ocean Have Interstellar Origin, Harvard Professor Reveals
Posted in: Today's ChiliMetallic spheres discovered on the Pacific ocean floor have been identified as potentially having an interstellar origin, according to Harvard professor Avi Loeb. Investigating a meteor that had fallen into the Pacific Ocean, Loeb and his team have retrieved these small metallic objects, raising questions about their extraterrestrial nature.
While it’s uncertain whether these spheres are natural or artificial in origin, the team is confident that they differ significantly from any alloys within our solar system. The success of the expedition underscores the significance of venturing into new territories in science for fresh discoveries.
Harvard Professor Avi Loeb’s team confirms the interstellar origin of fragments from a meteor that hit Papua New Guinea waters in 2014. (Images: Avi Loeb)
Led by Loeb, the research team partnered with EYOS Expeditions for a two-week mission aboard the Silver Star boat. Backed by entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson’s $1.5 million investment, the team aimed to recover remnants of a unique meteorite named IM1, which had entered Earth’s atmosphere in 2014.
Although data from this meteorite went unnoticed for years, Loeb’s findings and subsequent studies provided validation for its interstellar origins.
In June, Avi Loeb and his team examined the magnetic sled haul on a rainy night. (Image: Avi Loeb)
Over 700 Spheres Retrieved
The latest expedition resulted in the retrieval of over 700 submillimeter-sized metallic spherules, showcasing a significant discovery. Early analysis indicates that some spherules contain a unique composition of heavy elements, labeled as “BeLaU,” which doesn’t match terrestrial or solar system-based alloys.
While the precise origin is yet to be determined, this finding sheds light on the possibility of these objects originating from an exoplanet’s iron core. Research continues across multiple laboratories to unveil the origins of these metallic spheres. With a paper already submitted for publication, the discoveries from this expedition mark a significant step forward in our understanding of interstellar materials.
Metallic Spheres Found On The Ocean Have Interstellar Origin, Harvard Professor Reveals
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Aug 30
Whether you’ve been eying a new couch or a coffee machine, now’s the time to grab ’em at a discount.
Aug 30
Google Leaks a Pixel 8 Pro Pic
Posted in: Today's Chili
Sometimes, product leaks feel like shots in the dark, dependent on sources of dubious nature who have all the motivation and ability to fake people out. And then there’s Google, who seems a little bit too willing to drop hints of its still-unannounced Pixel 8 Pro phone. The tech giant accidentally uploaded an image of…
Aug 30
Samsung Electronics is releasing a food and recipe app powered by AI with 160,000 recipes readily available to users, the company announced on Wednesday. The app, called Food, builds on its previous acquisition of Whisk, a food database that Samsung acquired in 2019.
Aug 30
Rosamund Pike teases a more human turn for Moraine in Wheel of Time’s second season. A Lego Jurassic Park special is coming to Peacock. Plus, LaKeith Stanfield takes on Nazareth’s other disciples, and hints for the final episodes of Doom Patrol. Spoilers now!
Aug 30
Hurricane Idalia Makes Landfall in Florida, Cutting Off Power to Over 200,000 Households
Posted in: Today's Chili
Hurricane Idalia made landfall over Florida this morning as a high-end Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds over 100 miles per hour.
Aug 30
Quirky game publisher Panic’s first-ever digital games showcase is about to kick off. The event, dubbed the Panic Games Showcase, can be streamed directly on Panic’s YouTube channel starting today at 1PM ET, or you can come back right here to catch all the action.
The showcase will feature a 20-minute video presentation with Panic’s games publishing roadmap, including new looks at previously announced games Nour: Play With Your Food and Despelote. During the event, you can also expect to hear about new unannounced titles, along with new game development partnerships. While there are no further details on upcoming games, we do know there will be no mention of the Playdate. It’s likely that the games being discussed at this event will be for PC or more popular gaming consoles, like the PS5 and Nintendo Switch.
With this event, Panic is hoping to gain more recognition as a full-fledged game publisher by showing off the games in its pipeline. Despite its smaller size, Panic is known for pushing unconventional but interesting games that really capture players. Untitled Goose Game is one example of that, as is just about everything that’s been released for Panic’s Playdate hardware.
In a press release, co-founder Cabel Sasser expressed his excitement about the Panic Games Showcase. He also hinted at a wide variety of games, saying viewers will come away excited about at least one new game that piqued their interest.
“A lot of people out there know us as makers of Mac software like Transmit and Nova. And some people know us as the creators of the Playdate handheld video game system. And honestly, not very many people know us as the publisher of Firewatch and Untitled Goose Game”, Sasser said. “We thought it’d be fun to put on a little show and let the world know about the wonderful games we’ve been working on publishing, from amazing developers all around the world.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/watch-panics-first-games-showcase-here-at-1pm-et-163024545.html?src=rss
Aug 30
Google wants an invisible digital watermark to bring transparency to AI art
Posted in: Today's ChiliGoogle took a step towards transparency in AI-generated images today. Google DeepMind announced SynthID, a watermarking / identification tool for generative art. The company says the technology embeds a digital watermark, invisible to the human eye, directly onto an image’s pixels. SynthID is rolling out first to “a limited number” of customers using Imagen, Google’s art generator available on its suite of cloud-based AI tools.
One of the many issues with generative art — apart from the ethical implications of training on artists’ work — is the potential for creating deepfakes. For example, the pope’s hot new hip-hop attire (an AI image created with MidJourney) going viral on social media was an early example of what could become more commonplace as generative tools evolve. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how something like political ads using AI-generated art could do much more damage than a funny image circulating on Twitter. “Watermarking audio and visual content to help make it clear that content is AI-generated” was one of the voluntary commitments that seven AI companies agreed to develop after a July meeting at the White House. Google is the first of the companies to launch such a system.
Google doesn’t go too far into the weeds about SynthID’s technical implementation (likely to prevent workarounds), but it says the watermark can’t be easily removed through simple editing techniques. “Finding the right balance between imperceptibility and robustness to image manipulations is difficult,” the company wrote in a DeepMind blog post published today. “We designed SynthID so it doesn’t compromise image quality, and allows the watermark to remain detectable, even after modifications like adding filters, changing colours, and saving with various lossy compression schemes — most commonly used for JPEGs,” DeepMind’s SynthID project leaders Sven Gowal and Pushmeet Kohli wrote.
Google DeepMind
The identification part of SynthID rates the image based on three digital watermark confidence levels: detected, not detected and possibly detected. Since the tool is embedded into the image’s pixels, Google says its system can work alongside metadata-based approaches, like the one Adobe uses with its Photoshop generative features, currently available in an open beta.
SynthID includes a pair of deep learning models: one for watermarking and the other for identifying. Google says the two trained on diverse images, culminating in a combined ML model. “The combined model is optimised on a range of objectives, including correctly identifying watermarked content and improving imperceptibility by visually aligning the watermark to the original content,” Gowal and Kohli wrote.
Google acknowledged that it isn’t a perfect solution, adding that it “isn’t foolproof against extreme image manipulations.” But it describes the watermark as “a promising technical approach for empowering people and organisations to work with AI-generated content responsibly.” The company says the tool could expand to other AI models, including those tasked with generating text (like ChatGPT), video and audio.
Although watermarks could help with deepfakes, it’s easy to imagine digital watermarking turning into an arms race with hackers, with services that adopt SynthID requiring continual updating. In addition, the open-source nature of Stable Diffusion, one of the leading generative tools, could make industry-wide adoption of SynthID or any similar solution a tall order: It already has countless custom builds that can run on local PCs out in the wild. Regardless, Google hopes to make SynthID available to third parties “in the near future” to at least improve AI transparency industry-wide.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-wants-an-invisible-digital-watermark-to-bring-transparency-to-ai-art-164551794.html?src=rss
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