UPDATE: Very good video, well-worth viewing. It covers the MH370 incident with some new takes and also widens the discussion beyond that flight to what the technology means and where it may have come from. Lots of info in many directions with no dull sections. Ashton also laudably declares he is not looking for or taking money for his contributions, which is a good way to keep your mind clear of low interference. ABN
Tag: technology
Top politicians and Elon Musk know about secret technology
This entire scenario could also be nothing more than a psyop designed to freak out Russia and China, primary enemies of the Western cabal. I am enjoying this story and want to emphasize that it is just as likely Forbes has stumbled onto precisely what he thinks he has, a super technology. Is this tech something invented by humans or does it come from aliens or beings from other dimensions? That tech like this has the capacity to be the most powerful weapon ever controlled by humans is what makes it intimidating to Western rivals while also allowing for Western (apparent) recklessness. ABN
NOAA says tonight’s ‘cannibal’ solar storm could be worst in 165 YEARS and cause GPS and power outages – as they reveal exact time it’ll hit
Earth could suffer the worst solar storm in 165 years as six streams of plasma that erupted from the sun this week are set to make crash into our atmosphere tonight.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) revealed today that the worst-case scenario would be what happened during the 1859 Carrington event, which set telegraph stations on fire, cutting communications worldwide.
In our modern-day society, a geomagnetic storm of that magnitude could cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts and damage to critical infrastructure.
The event could also trigger magnificent nighttime auroras, or the northern lights, which will be visible in the US starting around 11pm ET and lasting through Saturday.
Scientists will know how severe the storm will be at around around 8 pm ET when the explosions of plasma racing through space will be nearly one million miles from our planet – and NOAA plans to issue alerts immediately.
Article provides a good, clear explanation. ABN
Astronomers say the first alien Dyson spheres may be discovered
Scientists continue to search for extraterrestrial civilizations, although they have not yet been successful. The authors of a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Academy of Sciences believe that technosignatures of potential aliens in the form of Dyson spheres may have already been discovered.
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical structure that could only be built by a highly advanced civilization. Such structures must be created around stars in order to harness all their energy.
According to the well-known Kardashev scale, only a Type II civilization could create something like this. As Focus has already written , scientists believe that humanity has not even reached the level of Type I civilization.
Study that shows these results: Project Hephaistos – II. Dyson sphere candidates from Gaia DR3, 2MASS, and WISE
Abstract
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is currently being pursued using multiple techniques and in different wavelength bands. Dyson spheres, megastructures that could be constructed by advanced civilizations to harness the radiation energy of their host stars, represent a potential technosignature, that in principle may be hiding in public data already collected as part of large astronomical surveys. In this study, we present a comprehensive search for partial Dyson spheres by analyzing optical and infrared observations from Gaia, 2MASS, and WISE. We develop a pipeline that employs multiple filters to identify potential candidates and reject interlopers in a sample of five million objects, which incorporates a convolutional neural network to help identify confusion in WISE data. Finally, the pipeline identifies 7 candidates deserving of further analysis. All of these objects are M-dwarfs, for which astrophysical phenomena cannot easily account for the observed infrared excess emission.
US Mulls Export Bans on AI Software to China
The US worries that models like ChatGPT could allow China to launch cyberattacks or even design biological weapons.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the US government might escalate its trade war with China by blocking US companies from selling powerful proprietary AI software models to China, along with the data used to train those models. The question is: What company in its right mind would sell its model to begin with?
AI Can Do Anything Better Than You
The US and China have been battling over computer chips since the Trump administration, and the fervor has increased with the advent of generative AI. The US has piled export bans on state-of-the-art chips essential to provide the computing power to run generative AI software. Keegan McBride, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a lecturer at the Oxford Internet Institute, said the US has fought to preserve its AI lead over China because it’s a rare area of technology where it’s had a head start. “The US has gotten trashed in other sorts of technological competitions with China, particularly if you think about things like 5G, and quantum [computing],” McBride said. “AI is a specific technology that is important, where [the US has] advantages pretty much across the board,” he added.
AI beats shrinks at social intelligence
Results: There were significant differences in Social Intelligence between psychologists and AI’s ChatGPT-4 and Bing. ChatGPT-4 exceeded 100% of all the psychologists, and Bing outperformed 50% of PhD holders and 90% of bachelor’s holders. The differences in SI between Google Bard and bachelor students were not significant, whereas the differences with PhDs were significant; Where 90% of PhD holders excel on Google Bird.
This is only going to go in one direction. ABN
Randy Travis – Where That Came From (Lyric Video)
Vaccine breakthrough means no more chasing strains
Every year, researchers try to predict the four influenza strains that are most likely to be prevalent during the upcoming flu season. And every year, people line up to get their updated vaccine, hoping the researchers formulated the shot correctly.
The same is true of COVID vaccines, which have been reformulated to target sub-variants of the most prevalent strains circulating in the U.S.
This new strategy would eliminate the need to create all these different shots, because it targets a part of the viral genome that is common to all strains of a virus. The vaccine, how it works, and a demonstration of its efficacy in mice is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“What I want to emphasize about this vaccine strategy is that it is broad,” said UCR virologist and paper author Rong Hai. “It is broadly applicable to any number of viruses, broadly effective against any variant of a virus, and safe for a broad spectrum of people. This could be the universal vaccine that we have been looking for.”
Does USA have a super-weapon or are they bluffing?
I have been saying for a long time that our top elite/ comitatus possess a super-weapon because that is the most likely explanation for their reckless foreign (and domestic) policies. What Forbes says below about ‘doomsday weapons’ and ‘absolute supremacy over the planet’ is plausible, in my view, though I do not agree that the elite is afraid they will lose power due to that technology. Who is going to disclose something so complex and how would they do it?
I enjoy Forbes’ work on MH370, but there is no way any of it will force disclosure of anything important. In one of his videos, Forbes shows an image made public by China. The image seems to indicate that China knows what Forbes is saying is right; that that’s what happened to the plane. The question arises, is our comitatus bluffing about their super-weapon? Are they intentionally frightening Russia and China with a bogus story that may cause them to be more restrained? That would be a kind of mind-control, which USA is a master at. I suppose Forbes may be in on the bluff and that’s why he rose to fame so quickly. I do like they guy, though, and hope he is as he presents himself. ABN
VASA-1: Lifelike Audio-Driven Talking Faces Generated in Real Time
This video was made from a single AI-generated image and will work with any suitable photograph.
We introduce VASA, a framework for generating lifelike talking faces of virtual characters with appealing visual affective skills (VAS), given a single static image and a speech audio clip. Our premiere model, VASA-1, is capable of not only producing lip movements that are exquisitely synchronized with the audio, but also capturing a large spectrum of facial nuances and natural head motions that contribute to the perception of authenticity and liveliness. The core innovations include a holistic facial dynamics and head movement generation model that works in a face latent space, and the development of such an expressive and disentangled face latent space using videos. Through extensive experiments including evaluation on a set of new metrics, we show that our method significantly outperforms previous methods along various dimensions comprehensively. Our method not only delivers high video quality with realistic facial and head dynamics but also supports the online generation of 512×512 videos at up to 40 FPS with negligible starting latency. It paves the way for real-time engagements with lifelike avatars that emulate human conversational behaviors.
This technology will work well in psychological games that use the faces of relatives and friends as well as fictional ones. The day will come when AI-generated characters will be able to play simple roles on their own. These roles will become more complex and creative as the tech evolves. Psychological games, especially when the user has a lot of control, will be fun and provide significant insights into how our minds are actually working. Gnarly psychologies, like narcissism or BPD, will benefit greatly from working through a variety of plots and scenarios.
Beyond self-help, the possibilities for deep works of art seem boundless. Whole novels with many variable plot-turns will raise the art of fiction to new levels of immersion and aesthetic reward. Coupled with brain-wave reading technology, AI characters will be capable of reacting to out mental and emotional states in ways no one has ever experienced before. I love where this is going. Of course there will be porn but the deepest transformative fun will be the realm of art and self-knowledge. ABN
AI creates molecules not found in nature that can alter human genes to cure even the rarest of diseases
AI is used to compose music, suggests recipes and make investment decisions, but a company has designed a system that can edit human genes.
California-based Profluent Bio developed a system capable of creating a range of bespoke cures for disease by developing molecules that have never existed in nature.
DailyMail.com spoke to Ali Madani, CEO of Profluent Bio, who said the AI-made gene editors have been tested in human cells, which demonstrated high levels of functionality while not editing unintended sites in the DNA.
The AI was trained on a database of 5.1 million CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins, allowing it to create potential molecules that could be used in gene editing.
The system then narrowed down the results to four million sequences, allowing it to identify the gene editor the team named OpenCRISPR-1.
Experiments showed OpenCRISPR-1 performed as well as Cas proteins, but it also reduced the impact on off-target sites by 95 percent.
Step closer to digital babies. ABN
Generative AI could soon decimate the call center industry, says CEO
A HOT POTATO: It’s no secret that certain types of jobs are more threatened by artificial intelligence than others. Call center workers fall into this category, and while we’ve already seen a few companies replace phone-based support staff with generative AI, there are warnings that the entire industry could be comprised mostly of chatbots in as soon as a year.
The grim prediction comes from K Krithivasan, head of Indian IT giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The second-largest company in India by market cap, it has more than 616,000 employees worldwide.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Krithivasan said AI will result in a “minimal” need for call centers. The CEO added that while “we have not seen any job reduction” so far, that will change as multinational clients adopt generative AI. The technology is expected to have a massive impact on the customer help center industry, which, according to a Gartner report in 2022, employs about 17 million people.
The Truth about Flight MH370: Decoding a Decade of Deception | Redacted with Clayton Morris
Terrific discussion, well-worth viewing. Forbes talks fast but explains everything very well. I needed to rewind more than a few times to be sure I had not missed anything. ABN
China is still years behind the U.S. despite Huawei’s breakthrough chips — Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Sunday downplayed Huawei Technologies’ latest microchip breakthrough, arguing that the U.S. remains far ahead of China in the critical technology.
The comments, which were delivered on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” align with her stance that the Biden administration’s restrictions on chip sales to China are working, despite an advanced made-in-China chip surfacing in a Huawei phone last year.
“It’s years behind what we have in the United States. We have the most sophisticated semiconductors in the world. China doesn’t. We’ve out-innovated China,” Raimondo said during the interview, which aired Sunday evening in the U.S.
American Buddhist Net 