Ears

The voice on the phone seemed frighteningly real -- an American mother heard her daughter sobbing before a man took over and demanded a ransom. But the girl was an AI clone and the abduction was fake.The biggest peril of Artificial Intelligence, experts say, is its ability to demolish the boundaries between reality and fiction, handing cybercriminals a cheap and effective technology to propagate disinformation. In a new breed of scams that has rattled US authorities, fraudsters are using strikingly convincing AI voice…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain In the ever-changing digital landscape, bloggers have risen to prominence as influencers, playing an important role in helping consumers pick and choose the products and services on which they want to spend their time and money. However, even with the many disparate social media apps that distract consumers from "traditional" blogs, there remains a huge number who have influence across many…

When you hear, what do you see and feel? Filmmaker Sam Green (“The Weather Underground”) asks that question with an affable intensity in his immersively designed documentary “32 Sounds.” This philosophically minded trip across life’s vast sonic array also elucidates why paying better attention to what enters the ears — and how it fuels our understanding of the world — might just make our whole damn journey through time and space that much more meaningful.Music sparks memories, noises can quicken movements, and someone…

Google is calling on recruits to help repopulate coral reefs. Its new project, a collaboration with marine biologist Steve Simpson and marine ecologist Mary Shodipo, wants your help training AI to recognize aquatic wildlife sounds in hopes of replenishing them and raising awareness of the ocean’s troubled habitats. The Earth’s coral reefs have been declining at a concerning pace thanks to climate change, overfishing and pollution. Higher water temperatures from our rapidly changing atmosphere can cause coral to release…

Razer Leviathan V2 Pro MSRP $400.00 “The Razer Leviathan V2 Pro is the best PC soundbar you can buy, but that assumes you want a PC soundbar in the first place.” Pros Head tracking works great Balanced subwoofer sound Razer Synapse is excellent Easy to control Cons Limited to PC…

Remarkably unremarkable I find scrolling shoot-’em-ups to be one of the most difficult genres to talk about, right up there with puzzle games. It’s a formula that has been utilized many times, and frequently the changes are very small. Most of the time, you maneuver your spaceship, unicorn, or spaceship with boxing gloves around on an automatically scrolling background until a much larger boss shows up. I can’t say that Axelay is much different. The formula could be described as a close companion to Life Force or Abadox…

Life-saving intensive-care incubators play a critical role in a newborn’s start to life, but researchers have found that they may also be exposing babies to louder, resonating sounds that increase the risk of damaging their sensitive hearing.While noise in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and its impact on its vulnerable patients has been the subject of many studies, these new findings shed new light on the incubators in which the babies spend their first days, weeks or sometimes even months in.In the collaborative…

Plastic cutlery, abandoned tents, artists flown in to perform … the traditional music festival has not been a bastion of eco-friendliness. Now several UK and European events are introducing measures to reduce their impact, using locally sourced food, low-emission transport and renewable energy. Sustainability-minded shows range from new-generation affairs, such as Italy’s Terraforma, to veterans like the Isle of Wight festival.Green Gathering, MonmouthshireThe family-friendly Green Gathering festival (3-6 August) usually…

Awards season is good at magnifying the public personas of participants. This goes for winners (Ke Huy Quan of Everything Everywhere All at Once becoming a dangerously energetic puppy) and attendees (Hugh Grant as the spectacularly grumpy opposite of Ke Huy Quan), but arguably nobody pulled off this trick with more panache than Bill Nighy at the Oscars.Nominated for best actor for his still and unshowy role in Living – a performance that was always going to be overshadowed by the grotesqueries of Elvis and The Whale –…

Still feeling groggy from the daylight saving time change? Well, we’ve got some deals to help jolt you awake.The WF-1000XM4 may be an alphabet soup of a name, but these excellent-sounding earbuds have a sleek design in a compact case with conveniences like wireless charging and advanced features like support for Sony’s high-bitrate LDAC codec. They also have some of the best battery life around, with up to eight hours of continuous playback so you can wear them for a whole workday without worrying about needing a charge.…