All posts tagged: loud

POC Obex Connect Headset Review: Loud and Clear

POC Obex Connect Headset Review: Loud and Clear

Published by skeptic

I spend most of my winter weekends in Colorado snowboarding at resorts around the state. The best part for me is the social aspect—there is no tea hotter than that spilled on the chairlift. But if you’ve ever been skiing or snowboarding, you know that sometimes communication is limited, like when they’re zooming ahead of me. (It’s cool, it’s only my second season!) If I’m practicing on my own, it’s also nice to have some entertainment. I’ve used Bluetooth earbuds to listen to podcasts and music when I ride, and I’ve tested some helmet audio systems, but the sound is typically meh. I’ve never really gotten into regularly listening to anything on the slopes. Recently, I had the chance to try the POC Obex Connect headset, a helmet audio and communication system the brand recently launched with Harman Kardon. The audio quality of this thing blew my mind and officially turned me into someone who always needs a few soundtracked runs every time they snowboard. Go With the Flow The Obex Connect headset can be …

Research-Proven Ways People Who Talk Out Loud To Themselves Are Better Off

Research-Proven Ways People Who Talk Out Loud To Themselves Are Better Off

Published by skeptic

Almost everyone keeps up some type of dialogue with themselves. It’s completely natural. Per WebMD, for about 25% of people, this dialogue occurs out loud. Many people have a negative view of people who talk to themselves out loud. According to Medical News Today, this is likely due to the fact that it is generally associated with serious mental health issues. However, there are quite a few benefits to talking to yourself out loud. Here are seven ways people who talk out loud to themselves are better off than the average person: 1. You’re able to better work through what’s going on in your mind Andrea Piacquadio | Pexels University of Wisconsin psychology professor Gary Lupyan explained that talking through things out loud actually helps you find some clarity amidst the jumble of your thoughts. When you literally talk things through, it’s easier to solve problems and find comfort. “It’s like giving your thoughts a chance to breathe and take shape,” Betania Vidal wrote for OK Diario. Sometimes, thinking is just not enough. Just like …

Publishing’s Silence on Neil Gaiman Allegations is Loud

Publishing’s Silence on Neil Gaiman Allegations is Loud

Published by skeptic

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Where is Publishing’s Response to the Neil Gaiman Allegations? On Monday, New York Magazine revealed this week’s cover story: Lila Shapiro’s deeply reported investigation into sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman. It’s a piece months in the making—news first broke of the allegations last July—and which many of us in publishing had been waiting for. Gaiman issued a response on his blog yesterday, which several of his accusers described as, “the same non-apology that women in this situation have seen so many times before.” This morning, the NYT‘s Elisabeth Egan and Alexandra Alter reported on the allegations and Gaiman’s response and noted that, “While some of Gaiman’s television and film projects were dropped following the initial allegations, the responses from his publishers, agents and professional collaborators have been far more subdued.” “Subdued” is a generous description. Mainstream publications including The …

Ed Sheeran beats copyright appeal over claim Thinking Out Loud ripped off Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On | Ents & Arts News

Ed Sheeran beats copyright appeal over claim Thinking Out Loud ripped off Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On | Ents & Arts News

Published by skeptic

An appeals court has upheld a ruling that Ed Sheeran’s hit song Thinking Out Loud did not illegally copy the Marvin Gaye classic, Let’s Get It On. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, New York, agreed with a lower-court judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by Structured Asset Sales (SAS), which owns rights to the 1973 Gaye song that previously belonged to the late co-writer Ed Townsend. SAS had made the allegations against Sheeran, his record label Warner Music, and music publisher Sony Music Publishing.

User Confused When AI Unexpectedly Starts Sobbing Out Loud

User Confused When AI Unexpectedly Starts Sobbing Out Loud

Published by José

In a bizarre video, an AI music generator appears to be sobbing like a human, surprising the Reddit user who posted it. Posted to r/SunoAI, a subreddit dedicated to the music-generating software of the same name, u/BloodMossHunter posted a 24-second clip showing the AI sounding like it’s crying, which doesn’t seem to have been part of the user’s prompt. As other users noted, emotional-sounding outbursts and other creepy bits of audio appearing randomly at the ends of these AI-generated songs seem — terrifyingly, perhaps, depending on your perspective — to be a fairly common occurrence with the software. In one comment, for instance, a user shared a Suno-generated song that they’d published on Spotify that at the end includes horrific echoey screams of “no!”. In another, u/SkyDemonAirPirates shared a song titled “Ignorance Was Bliss” that they published to Suno’s website in which a glitchy female voice asks the listener if they’re “still alive” before laughing maniacally. “The ghost in the machine, I guess,” another user responded. “Yikes.” In another chilling anecdote, u/SkyDemonAirPirates said that they’d …

Bizarre New iPad Pro Ad Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Bizarre New iPad Pro Ad Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

Published by skeptic

Yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared the brand-new preview of the “thinnest iPad” to date, the iPad Pro, praising its portability and capacity. Capitalizing on the “thin” aspect, the promo commercial, titled “Crush!” has been turning heads and could also be accused of crushing the human spirit. The commercial plays to the song “All I Need is You” by Sonny & Cher, opening up with a metronome and a record player. Then, the scene broadens out to show a platform in the middle of a room piled with an array of gadgets and knickknacks, like a drum set, cans of paint, a trumpet, piano, bust of a Greco-Roman figure, a globe, chess set, and other goods that the mind naturally associates with human creativity and intellect. Above the arrangement, a massive metal plate slowly descends, crushing it all into a pulp and compressing it into the all-new 2024 iPad Pro. The viewer watches as a guitar gets mashed to splinters, a wood sketching model gets bent backward, and the clay bust of a human head …

Read me a story: why reading out loud is a joy for adults as well as kids | Books

Read me a story: why reading out loud is a joy for adults as well as kids | Books

Published by skeptic

Neither of us can remember exactly how it happened, but we both agree we were probably a little drunk. It was December 2016. We had been dating for eight months. Even with the booze we were, by many measures, still shy around each other, fearful of spoiling the magic. Which is why neither I nor my partner can fathom the conversation that landed us either in bed or on the sofa with him reading A Christmas Carol out loud to me for an hour. It wasn’t something either of us had ever done with another adult. It wasn’t something we’d heard of adults in the real world ever doing. But the book kept getting read – always by my boyfriend, out loud to me, who listened with total fixation. It was finished before we left to be with our respective families for the Christmas break. And when we returned to be together again in January, we decided we wanted to do it again. Seven years later, reading together is something we do regularly throughout the …

Opera’s Aria chatbot can now generate images and read its answers out loud to you

Opera’s Aria chatbot can now generate images and read its answers out loud to you

Published by skeptic

Jack Wallen/ZDNET Opera on Monday announced that you can now ask the browser’s Aria chatbot to draw images and even read text answers out loud to you, if you’re okay with using Opera’s developer edition. The new image generation feature doesn’t require you to do anything special at the prompt — simply type what you want Aria to generate and it will do so. For example, if you want an image of a cat riding a bike, simply type “Draw me an image of a cat riding a bike.” Aria will quickly present you with such an image. You can then copy the image to your clipboard, but do note the copied image will also include a black frame, the prompt, your profile icon, the Aria icon, and the words OPERA – ARIA AI at the bottom. To avoid all this, you can right-click the image and select Save As, which will save just the generated image. Also: Opera Workspaces is tab management perfection I’ve noticed that the Regen button (which is supposed to generate …

Civil War Sound Editor on Whether Garland’s A24 War Movie Is Too Loud

Civil War Sound Editor on Whether Garland’s A24 War Movie Is Too Loud

Published by Sam

In notching A24’s highest-grossing opening weekend to date, Alex Garland’s debate-stirring combat film Civil War has made plenty of noise — both figuratively and literally. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny and Wagner Moura, the project has spurred conversation over its depiction of a small group of journalists witnessing the violently divided U.S. en route to collecting $25.7 million at the domestic box office this weekend. Among the buzziest elements of the film has been its sound design, as Civil War’s use of jarring battle noise, along with the impactful contrast between its onslaught of gunfire and moments of dead silence. It all adds to the chaos and tension. Civil War supervising sound editor Glenn Freemantle, an Oscar winner for 2013’s Gravity, tells The Hollywood Reporter that he and frequent collaborator Garland were in lockstep in how to best create the film’s dystopian world. “First of all, he said, ‘War is chaos. It’s ugly. I’m sure the guns are just fucking loud, and they’re not pretty,’” Freemantle recalls. “That was a concept where everything was going …

Trump blows the MAGA whistle — and his signal is heard loud and clear

Trump blows the MAGA whistle — and his signal is heard loud and clear

Published by skeptic

It may seem superfluous to say this, but it needs saying: He means it. Donald Trump meant it when he called his mob to Washington in December of 2020 by telling them, “Be there, will be wild!” and he means it right now when he tells the mobs at his rallies that the members of the January 6 Committee belong in jail, and if he is elected in November, he will have his Department of Justice “go after” President Biden and his family. Donald Trump is dangerously escalating the rhetoric he is using to rile up his followers at his rallies. On Saturday in Dayton, Ohio, he saluted those convicted of violently attacking police officers and doing damage to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.  He called them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” And he executed a military-style salute as a loudspeaker played a version of the National Anthem sung into a telephone in a federal prison by felons convicted of crimes at the Capitol. Let’s stop right there and discuss what it means for Donald …