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003 Weekly TrendDown The most insane tech stories from Jan 22-28, 2024. (via 003 Weekly TrendDown - by The Brigade - TrendDown)

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002 Weekly TrendDown The most insane tech stories from December 11 - 17, 2023. (via 002 Weekly TrendDown - by The Brigade - TrendDown)

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Rep the Brigade.

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Dark matter makes up about 85 percent of the total matter in the universe, which is more than five times as much as all ordinary matter. We believe that it played an important role in the formation of galaxies, although it has never been directly observed - since it doesn't seem to interact with other matter or reflect/absorb light. So we have no idea what it is.

(via The largest underground lab in the world is studying dark matter - YouTube)

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Florida-based IHMC Robotics teamed up with Boardwalk Robotics to build Nadia. Thankfully this isn’t an autonomous AI robot, for now at least. The robot (Nadia), IHMC Robotics, and Boardwalk Robotics are not actually affiliated with the UFC. That was just a joke. Although we’d pay to see a couple robots throw down.

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Neuralink has started human clinical trials for their Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) device called N1. The company just secured another $43 million in funding, bringing their total capital raised to more than $320 million. The PRIME Study (short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface) is for patients that have limited or no ability to use both hands due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Neuralink says it plans to perform 11 surgeries in 2024, 27 in 2025, 79 in 2026 and more than 22,000 by 2030. Once approved by the FDA, each implant surgery is expected to cost around $40,000 including exams, the device and labor. The company forecasts annual revenue as high as $100 million within five years (2028). In the short-term Neuralink is aiming to treat serious brain diseases, but the eventual goal is to provide human enhancement and achieve "symbiosis with artificial intelligence.” 😳

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The TrendDown: Robot dogs are getting friendlier, Google fakes their AI demo, Meta stole your photos to train their AI, a massive robot factory is opening in the US, holograms can now fit in your pocket, DNA data storage is here, and we are one step closer to a breakthrough in fusion power. Plus a lot more.

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Check out my Flipboard magazine, Coronavirus Updates (null)

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“Imagine, for example, that you’re ordering KFC using KFC’s Alexa skill, but instead of the default Alexa voice replying to you, it’s Colonel Sanders himself.

The brand voices are offered through Amazon Polly, an AWS service that previously supplied neural network-based text-to-speech services for companies to use to add realistic voices to their applications. Now, though, Amazon is offering its neutral network-based TTS technology to create custom voices for a specific brand based on recordings of voices of an actor or actress picked by the brand in partnership with Amazon.“

(via Amazon is helping brands build custom text-to-speech voices for their Alexa skills - The Verge)

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Scientists from Google and the Janelia Research Campus in Virginia have published the largest high-resolution map of brain connectivity in any animal, sharing a 3D model that traces 20 million synapses connecting some 25,000 neurons in the brain of a fruit fly.

The model is a milestone in the field of connectomics, which uses detailed imaging techniques to map the physical pathways of the brain. This map, known as a “connectome,” covers roughly one-third of the fruit fly’s brain. To date, only a single organism, the roundworm C. elegans, has had its brain completely mapped in this way.

(via Google publishes largest ever high-resolution map of brain connectivity - The Verge)

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“A Hype Train starts when a viewer or group of viewers contribute materially to a channel past a certain streamer-designated threshold. Twitch calls it a “spike in support events from different viewers in a channel” — basically an uptick in bits or subs — which kicks off a countdown timer. As the timer ticks down, viewers who donate above a minimum of 100 bits ($1.40 USD) will fill a meter that distributes emote rewards for everyone who’s donated. If the meter fills up before the timer ends, a new level is unlocked. And the more you donate, the more it fills. It’s also not just for charity; any partner or affiliate channel that has the feature enabled can have a hype train start.”

(via Twitch is launching Hype Train this afternoon, which means you’ll get emotes for going off in chat - The Verge)

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“That new $699 e-scooter, called the Air T15, is different from the ones that Segway-Ninebot provides to the e-scooter-sharing services around the world in that it doesn’t have a throttle. Instead, Segway-Ninebot says riders will simply kick the Air T15 along, and the e-scooter will instantly calculate “the friction and condition of the road and automatically adjusts your speed so you can maintain a constant rate of travel.” Speeding up will be as simple as giving the pavement a few more kicks, while slowing down will be managed by tapping on the rear wheel brake. In other words, it’s like an electric scooter with cruise control.”

(via Segway-Ninebot unveils an electric kick scooter with cruise control - The Verge)

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(via You’ll Only Understand This Clever Dracula Ad After Sunset – Adweek)

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“German musician Remute has made and released music on a variety of old mediums, but his newest effort marks a quirky milestone: The Cult Of Remute is claimed to be the first music album made entirely for the Super Nintendo’s sound chip and released on an SNES cartridge.”

(via This electronic album was made for the SNES and you can buy it as a cartridge - The Verge)

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“The company says it envisions the vehicle being used to let people navigate places like theme parks, airports, campuses, and maybe even some cities.“