Tech Meme

Benj Edwards / Ars Technica: Microsoft unveils VALL-E, a text-to-speech AI model trained on 60K hours of English speech that can simulate a person’s voice from three seconds of sample audio  —  Text-to-speech model can preserve speaker’s emotional tone and acoustic environment.  —  On Thursday, Microsoft researchers announced … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Microsoft acquires Fungible, which makes data processing units for data centers and has raised over $300M; reports from December say the deal is worth ~$190M  —  In December, reports suggested that Microsoft had acquired Fungible, a startup fabricating a type of data center hardware known … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Damir Yalalov / Metaverse Post: VALL-E: Microsoft’s new zero-shot text-to-speech model can duplicate everyone’s voice in three seconds  —  Since the release of the first text-to-speech (TTS) model, researchers have been looking for ways to improve the way these systems generate speech.  The latest model from Microsoft … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Juro Osawa / The Information: Sources: Douyin e-commerce spending in China grew 76% YoY to ~$208B in 2022; TikTok users in Southeast Asia more than quadrupled their spending to $4.4B in 2022  —  TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is making inroads in e-commerce.  Consumers in China last year spent 1.41 trillion yuan … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Mitchell Clark / The Verge: Meta plans to stop releasing software updates and drop some social features for the original Quest, which debuted in 2019, but will fix critical bugs until 2024  —  Meta is planning to stop supporting the original Quest VR headset with new software updates, and soon anyone using the older hardware … Lees verder op Tech Meme

VentureBeat: Dallas-based Worlds, whose “digital twins” of industrial companies’ floor operations help boost productivity, raised a $21.2M Series A1 led by Moneta Ventures  —  Worlds Enterprises, a company that builds digital twins of floor operations for industrial companies to let them become … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jon Fingas / Engadget: Meta rolls out a Variance Reduction System, its AI ad-targeting tech meant to comply with its DOJ settlement and reduce discrimination in housing ads, in the US  —  Meta is acting on its vow to reduce ad discrimination through technology.  The company is rolling out a Variance Reduction System … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Javier Paz / Forbes: A breakdown of Binance’s known assets, using data from Nansen and others, estimates the exchange has around $50B, including ~$10B in BNB, down 24% from November  —  The outflow of cash from Binance is worse than the CEO Changpeng Zhao indicated last month, and it’s become considerably more severe since then, a Forbes analysis shows. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Rachel Syme / New Yorker: A profile of Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s global head of TV who leads its hyper-aggressive strategy to adapt successful show formats to different parts of the world  —  Bela Bajaria, who oversees the streaming giant’s hyperaggressive approach to TV-making, says success is about “recognizing that people like having more.” Lees verder op Tech Meme

Chainalysis: A look at the US government’s crypto-related sanctions strategy, the types of entities sanctioned, and the impact of the sanctions on the crypto crime ecosystem  —  Agencies like the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and its equivalents … Lees verder op Tech Meme