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1010Benja won’t apologize for using AI. | Image: 1010Benja / Instagram I would never go so far as to say there's no place for AI in music (I'm a fan of Holly Herndon, after all). But I generally find music made with generative AI to be offensively boring , especially the outputs of Suno . So I'm having a bit of a tough time processing the fact that I actually quite enjoy 1010Benja's " Semiramis' Dream ." Benja has been unapologetic about his use of generative AI on his latest EP, Time Has Nothing To Do With What You Choose… The other three tracks can't quite hold a candle to what you find on 2024's Ten Total . But the opener "Semiramis' Dream" is infectious. It explodes out of the speakers with a jungle beat and Be … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/entertainment/967678/1010benja-semiramis-dream-suno-ai-music

ICE agents hide behind masks while skulking through the halls of immigration court | Image: Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images According to the New York Times , federal agents have been told that the FBI will no longer be investigating confrontations involving ICE agents. The DHS and DOJ denied the change in policy to The Times. The reported change in guidance follows renewed scrutiny of violence by ICE agents who have killed two people in the last two weeks. The shootings in Maine and Texas were just the latest civilian deaths at the hands of ICE agents, who have attempted to intimidate witnesses following its recent spate of high-profile killings. The new guidance would end FBI investigations of assaults against DHS agents. The government has aggressively pursu … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/policy/967674/fbi-wont-investigate-ice-assaults

The 2018 Solar Car Challenge was the last time participants took their designs out on the open road. | Image: Lehman Marks / Solar Car Challenge On July 19th, dozens of teams of high school students will begin a five-day, 630-mile road race from Fort Worth to Fort Stockton in Texas. But this is not your typical contest. The students design and build the cars themselves, using off-the-shelf parts and 3D printed materials. The winner is the team that accumulates the most driven miles. And the only fuel they can use to power their Frankenstein-looking vehicles comes from that mass of incandescent gas that hangs in our sky: the Sun. This year is the 30th anniversary of the annual Solar Car Challenge , a contest that brings together high school students from around the country with the on … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/transportation/966701/solar-car-challenge-high-school-student-race-texas

Dave Eggers attends the "The Turning Point: To Be Destroyed" premiere. | Image: John Lamparski/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival Last year, Sam Altman invited author Dave Eggers to give a talk to around 200 OpenAI staffers. The man has written countless novels , screenplays, pieces of journalism, started McSweeney's , and founded multiple schools and nonprofits that support writers and the arts more broadly. So one might expect he'd roll into the company's offices and offer tips on being relentlessly prolific, or how to excel in multiple fields. Instead, he apparently laced into the company. According to the Financial Times , Eggers told the staff: "The effect of ChatGPT on educators' lives is catastrophic. Whether you intended to do it or not, you've made every teache … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/967630/dave-eggers-openai-chatgpt-sil...

The Pixel 10a shipped with a last gen processor. | Photo: Dominic Preston / The Verge Mystic Leaks suggests that the Pixel 11a will return to featuring a flagship-grade processor with the Tensor G6. Rather than the Tensor G5 found in the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro , the Pixel 10a shipped with the previous generation Tensor G4. That was a huge disappointment since, typically, the Pixel a lineup kept the modern processor, but cut corners in other places to keep costs down. The Tensor G6 is rumored to feature the same PowerVR DXT-48-1536 GPU as the G5, but it should still be an improvement over the Mali-G715 in the Tensor G4. The big upgrade is that the G6 moves on from Samsung's Exynos modems and instead uses a MediaTek M90 modem. Tha … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/tech/967612/google-pixel-11a-tensor-g6-leak

Now, if you want to, you can use Google's 3D emoji in your own creations. The company shared some details about how it went about designing the little pictograms and why, as part of World Emoji Day on Friday. Things you might not necessarily worry about in a 2D illustration suddenly become very important when you're talking about a 3D model. Is a smiley face a sphere? A mask? A flat disc? In addition to offering a behind-the-scenes look at Google's design process, it also announced that it would be completely open-sourcing the emoji set: We're handing over raw .OBJ files to the community so they can use them to build immersive VR worlds, … Read the full story at The Verge. source https://www.theverge.com/design/967606/google-open-source-3d-emoji