Day: November 27, 2023

How Do You Prove An AI Didn’t Make Your Art?

November 27, 2023 by 92 Comments

In the world of digital art, distinguishing between AI-generated and human-made creations has become a significant challenge. Almost overnight, tool sets for generating AI artworks became commonly available to the public, and suddenly, every digital art competition had to contend with potential submissions. Some have welcomed AI, while others demand competitors create artworks by their own hand and no other.

The problem facing artists and judges alike is just how to determine whether an artwork was created by a human or an AI. So what can be done?

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Voice-Over-LTE: The Reason Why Your Phone May Soon Stop Working

November 27, 2023 by 45 Comments

Although wireless standards like 3G, 4G, and 5G are mostly associated with mobile internet, they also include a phone (voice) component. Up till 4G this was done using traditional circuit-switched telephony service, but with this fourth generation the entire standard instead moved to a packet-switched version akin to Voice-over-IP, called VoLTE (voice-over-LTE). Even so, a particular phone can choose to use a 4G modem, yet still use 3G-style phone connections. Until the 3G network is shutdown, that is. This is the crux of [Hugh Jeffreys]’s latest video.

In order to make a VoLTE phone call, your phone, your provider, the receiving phone and the intermediate network providers must all support the protocol. Even some newer phones like the Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) do not support this. For other phones you have to turn the feature on yourself, if it is available. As [Hugh] points out in the video, there’s no easy way to know whether an Android phone supports it, which is likely to lead to chaos as more and more 3G networks in Australia and elsewhere are turned off, especially in regions where people use phones for longer than a few years.

The cessation of such basic functionality is why in most countries 2G networks remain active, as they are being used by emergency services and others for whom service interruptions can literally cost lives, as well as countless feature phones and Internet of Things devices. For some phones without VoLTE, falling back to 2G might therefore still be an option if they support this. With the spotty support, lack of transparency and random shutdowns, things may however get rather frustrating for some the coming years.

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Tiny Speaker Busts Past Sound Limits With Ultrasound

November 27, 2023 by 15 Comments

Conventional speakers work by moving air around to create sound, but tiny speakers that use ultrasonic frequencies to create pressure and generate sound opens some new doors, especially in terms of maximum achievable volume.

A new design boasts being the first 140 dB, full-range MEMS speaker. But that kind of volume potential has less to do with delivering music at an ear-splitting volume and more to do with performing truly effective noise cancellation even in a small device like earbuds. Cancelling out the jackhammers of the world requires parts able to really deliver a punch, especially in low frequencies. That’s something that’s not so easy to do in a tiny form factor. The new device is the Cypress, from MEMS speaker manufacturer xMEMS and samples are aiming to ship in June 2024.

Combining ultrasonic waves to create audible sound is something we’ve seen show up in different ways, like using an array of transducers to focus sound like a laser beam. Another thing ultrasonics can do is cause sensors in complex electronics to become unhinged from reality and report false readings. Neato!