An anonymous reader shares a report: In an average year, Spotify Wrapped is a sharing-optimized novelty hinging on nostalgia for a time that’s barely passed. But in 2020, this data mirror instead presented many users with unexpected empirical evidence of their pandemic coping mechanisms: a strange hit parade of ambient music, background noise and calming sound effects that soothed them through…
Tag: sound effects
Seals are making ‘Star Wars’ noises at each other underwater, and we have no idea why
Antarctica’s Weddell seals communicate with each other in a high-pitched underwater language reminiscent of Star Wars sound effects, a new study finds. Source: https://www.livescience.com/weddell-seal-ultrasonic-star-wars-noises.html
Twitch Users Protest Its DMCA Policy By Streaming Videos With Homemade Sound Effects
Wednesday Twitch warned its users to delete any videos containing copyrighted music. PC Gamer reports on what happened next: Since October, Twitch has been deleting significant quantities of videos over copyright claims, leaving the affected streamers with no way to respond or issue counter-claims. Twitch eventually explained that the number of DMCA notifications it receives from major record labels has surged,…
Nintendo’s New Mario Kart Makes Your Living Room the Race Track
Nintendo is about to release its biggest product for the holiday season, where it will be up against new-generation consoles from rivals Microsoft and Sony. An early look at the new Mario Kart game for the Switch, featuring augmented reality and your living room as the race track, indicates that Nintendo will be just as competitive. From a report: In Mario…
Thieves’ Guild: a BBS Game With the Best 1990s Pixel Graphics You’ve Never Seen
“The sky is clear, the breeze is strong. A perfect day to make the long sea voyage to Mythyn,” writes BBS history blogger Josh Renaud. “You prepare your galley, hire a crew of sailors, and cast off. But a few hours into your trip, the dreaded words appear: ‘Thou seest rippling waters…'” He’s describing the beginning of a 27-year-old game that…
AI Can Make Music, Screenplays, and Poetry. What About a Movie?
Want a movie where a protagonist your age, race, sexuality, gender, and religion becomes an Olympic swimmer? You got it. Want a movie where someone demographically identical to your boss gets squeezed to death and devoured by a Burmese python? Your wish is its command. From a report: Want to leave out the specifics and let fate decide what never-before-imagined movie…
New AI Dupes Humans into Believing Synthesized Sound Effects Are Real
Slashdot reader shirappu writes: A study published on June 25th in IEEE Transactions on Multimedia looked at creating an automated program to analyze the movements in video frames and create sound effects to match the scene. In movies and television, this work is called Foley and is considered an important part of crafting the experience, but is also time consuming and…
CBS’ Overzealous Copyright Bots HIt Star Trek Virtual Comic-Con Panel
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: San Diego Comic-Con — like just about every large conference, convention, and gathering in 2020 — has had to switch to an online-only virtual format this year due to the continuing pandemic. Media companies that usually have a large presence at events like SDCC worked hard to create streaming alternative content –…
Listen to Earth’s magnetic song
Scientists have created a recording of the eerie ‘song’ that Earth sings when it’s hit by a solar storm. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/listen-to-earths-solar-storm-magnetic-song…
Hologram-Like Device Animates Objects Using Ultrasound Waves
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Researchers in Southampton have built a device that displays 3D animated objects that can talk and interact with onlookers. A demonstration of the display showed a butterfly flapping its wings, a countdown spelled out by numbers hanging in the air, and a rotating, multicolored planet Earth. Beyond interactive digital signs and animations,…