Technology

  A team of researchers at Google has found a way to dramatically improve computer-generated speech, substantially improving its cadence and intonation. It’s a step towards the kind of sophisticated speech synthesis that has, to date, existed entirely within the realm of science fiction. Computers, even when they speak, do …

  Since it was invented decades ago, ray tracing has been the holy grail for rendering computer graphics realistically. By tracing individual light rays as they bounce off multiple surfaces, it can faithfully recreate reflections, sub-surface scattering (when light penetrates through a bit of a surface like human skin, but …

Security circles were thrown into disarray late last year when serious bugs known as Meltdown and Spectre threatened to leak private data from computers around the world. The industry spent months developing patches while the public remained unaware of the danger. Updates only began rolling out early this year, and …

Facebook is under increasing scrutiny after the revelation that its lax privacy controls allowed UK-based Cambridge Analytica to skim data from 50 million user profiles. Like it or not, Facebook is a fixture on the web, and its business model involves building ad profiles on users like you. Mozilla is …

Nvidia has long held the pole position in GPGPU computing, particularly in scientific and HPC applications. The company’s long-term investment into CUDA and high performance computing have won it a number of spots in the supercomputing TOP500 and fueled the growth of its Tesla product line, including GPUs like the …

Virtual reality headsets are becoming increasingly common. Many smartphones now double as VR viewers, but the most powerful VR experiences are restricted to computers with beefy graphics cards. Headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive can produce amazing 3D worlds, as long as you don’t need to walk very far …

Sales momentum in the consumer space for HTC’s Vive VR headset may have been disappointing over the last year. But the company has been doing some brisk business in enterprise applications thanks to its early presence in the market, room-scale tracking, and flexible SDK. From listening to its most active …

Nvidia has kept its Volta architecture confined to the high-performance computing (HPC) space for years now, with only a handful of exceptions, like the $3,000 Titan V GPU. Now, the company is extending Volta into new markets, this time by bringing the card to workstations. The new GV100 packs 5,120 …

Android itself is open source and free to use, but Google’s “official” build of Android is the only one most people want to use. That’s the one that comes with the Play Store, Assistant, and all the other Google services. Device makers are supposed to get certified before bundling Google …

Both AMD and Nvidia have been enjoying rosy predictions and uplifted earnings from cryptocurrency mining, but financial analysts are afraid things could be turning south. Christopher Rolland, an analyst with Susquehanna, released a note today stating “We confirm a Bitmain Ethereum ASIC.” Supposedly 20 percent of AMD’s cryptocurrency sales and …