Author: Geek Planet

Google’s NotebookLM is experimenting with a feature that could make studying feel a lot more like attending an actual class. A new Lecture mode can turn your uploaded notes, documents, and sources into long, spoken lectures (via Testing Catalog). It lets NotebookLM teach the material out loud instead of just summarizing it on screen. Instead of the shorter Audio Overviews users are already familiar with, this new mode is designed to produce a single, continuous lecture delivered by one AI narrator. When paired with the Long length option, the lecture can run for close to 30 minutes, mimicking the flow…

After months of speculation, Apple finally confirmed that it is partnering with Google for the much-awaited Siri overhaul. However, the announcement offered few details, only noting that the upgraded Siri will rely on Gemini as its foundation and that the AI features “will continue to run on Apple devices and Private Cloud Compute, while maintaining Apple’s industry-leading privacy standards.” A new report has now revealed additional details about what this partnership might entail. According to The Information (via 9to5Mac), Apple will use Google’s Gemini models to train the next-gen Apple Foundation Models and will have the option to tailor the…

Are you sharp enough to solve clever puzzles? To interpret clues beyond their apparent meaning? Doing so shows you have a high IQ on the nerd scale and might be a good computer programmer, mathematician or engineer. We offer puzzles each Monday here at MindMatters.ai. Good ones are often surrounded by obfuscations meant to derail thought trails and otherwise distract. Sharp minds can see through these distractions, focus on the problem and offer solutions. We call these puzzles Micro Softies after the ones Microsoft used to use to select programmers. Last Monday’s Micro Softy was inspired by an old CBS…

The holiday shopping season is the Super Bowl for most consumer brands. But in order to succeed, brands need to be training all year long, according to Traackr CEO Pierre-Loïc Assayag. “This is a year-long effort. There’s no such thing as succeeding during a period of time without having done the legwork beforehand,” he said. “For a creator post to resonate with their audience, there needs to be a sense of authenticity.” For its 2025 Holiday Shopping Report, the influencer marketing platform tracked the top brands according to VIT, Traackr’s proprietary metric for visibility, impact and trust, for the 2024…

Samsung is pushing lock screen customization a step further on Galaxy phones. A fresh LockStar update expands Samsung unlock animations, giving you a quick way to make your phone feel different every time you unlock it. It’s simple, and it’s instantly noticeable. The Galaxy Store notes for LockStar 8.5.00.8 highlight added “Unlock Animation” effects and One UI 8.5 support, alongside a few quality of life tweaks. There’s one catch, Samsung doesn’t spell out which models get every feature, or when it lands everywhere. Unlock animations take center stage The headline change is the new unlock effects menu inside LockStar, with…

The public unveiling of OpenAI’s ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, was met with justified astonishment along with unjustified hopes and fears that computers might be on the verge of artificial general intelligence (AGI), the ability to perform cognitive tasks as well as or better than humans. It is now apparent that AGI is not imminent and is not going to be achieved by scaling up ChatGPT or other large language models (LLMs). The core problem is that LLMs are stochastic text predictors—nothing more—and using more data, more parameters, and more compute is not going to give LLMs an understanding of…

Heavens! Are You an AI Denialist? Source link

Using the Gemini overlay on Android today comes with a major limitation that breaks the flow of multitasking. When you trigger Gemini using the hotword or by long pressing the power button, the assistant appears on top of whatever app you are using. But despite looking like an overlay, it does not behave like one. The moment you tap the background to return to another app, Gemini shuts down entirely. When you bring it back, the conversation is gone, and you have to start over, making longer or slower tasks frustrating to use. Google is now working on a fix…

This article, Journal of Medical Ethics: Let Organ Harvesting Surgeons Kill Patients | National Review, is republished from National Review with the permission of the author. The “dead donor rule” (DDR) is a legal and ethical mandate that requires vital organ donors to be truly dead before their body parts are procured. A corollary to the rule holds that people cannot be killed for their organs. The DDR promotes trust in the system and protects the vulnerable — but is flexible enough to permit living donations of one kidney and parts of a liver from altruistic donors. Utilitarian bioethicists have…

I’m always surprised how many nerds play musical instruments. There’s a lot of math in music. The western scale is based on natural acoustic harmonics from the physics of vibrating strings and resonant acoustics from sound columns. The ratio of the frequency of two adjacent notes on the piano or guitar is the twelfth root of 2. The spacing of the bridge to adjacent frets on a guitar has the same ratio. Changing frequencies forms melodies. There’s also rhythm. I’ve heard it said that our fondness of rhythm comes from listening to Mommy’s beating heart as a baby. (I read…