Helompo

Humanity has taken yet another step toward the inevitable war against the machines (which we will lose) with the creation of Vall-E, an AI developed by a team of researchers at Microsoft that can produce high quality human voice replications with only a few seconds of audio training.

Vall-E isn’t the first AI-powered voice tool—xVASynth, for instance, has been kicking around for a couple years now—but it promises to exceed them all in terms of pure capability. In a paper available at Cornell University (via Windows Central), the Vall-E researchers say that most current text-to-speech systems are limited by their reliance on “high-quality clean data” in order to accurately synthesize high-quality speech.

“Large-scale data crawled from the Internet cannot meet the requirement, and always lead to performance degradation,” the paper states. “Because the training data is relatively small, current TTS systems still suffer from poor generalization. Speaker similarit…

Update July 14, 2023: Updated with new thermal images for the OneXFly under gaming loads.

Original story July 14, 2023: The OnexPlayer OneXFly is looking like it might be bringing everything I want together in a modern handheld gaming PC. I’m waiting to get my hands on a review unit ahead of the launch of the new lightweight device, but I’ve just got hold of some new images which make it look way more portable than the likes of the Steam Deck or ROG Ally.

Using the same AMD Radeon Ryzen 7 7840U as the AOKZOE A1 Pro I recently reviewed, the OneXFly ought to perform around the same as both it and the ROG Ally. Which is to say it should be a supremely capable mobile gaming slab.

But the key difference is that the OneXFly has been wrapped in a far smaller chassis, theoretically making it easier to slip in a pocket (though I’d recommend wearing a belt—this thing still weighs over half a kilo). That smaller scale is immediately…

Watch On

The latest addition to Hitman’s roster of Elusive Targets is a notorious figure indeed: He’s called The Disruptor, but you might know him better as multi-time MMA champion Conor McGregor.

Somewhat surprisingly (or very surprisingly, depending on how you feel about these things), McGregor is not actually the villain in this scenario. Instead, he’s a multi-millionaire MMA fighter signed for a fight with Tim Quinn, the CEO of tech company Quantum Leap, who’s recently taken an interest in MMA and considers himself a legit contender for the upper ranks. Bit on the nose there, eh?

Anyway, despite his supreme self-confidence Quinn is definitely not ready to run with the big dogs. Alas, because he’s extremely rich, nobody is willing to tell him no, but company executives also don’t want him humiliated in the ring because that might damage the share price. Thus, the obvious move: Hire Agent 47 to wack McGregor—sorry, The Disruptor—before he can clean Quinn’s …

Ever wondered why AMD has never made an all-in-one chip like those it engineered for the latest consoles from Microsoft and Sony and stuffed it in a laptop? Wouldn’t that pretty sweet? Well, something along those lines is actually happening, allegedly.

The big rumour involves a new APU from AMD codenamed Strix Halo. If anything, it’s even better than transplanting a console SoC into a PC laptop. According to Moore’s Law is Dead—admittedly not always the most reliable of sources—Strix Halo will be the first PC APU with a hefty 256-bit memory bus.

All previous APUs from AMD, and indeed Intel, including AMD’s new Ryzen Z1 APU in the Asus RoG Ally, have made do with a mere 128-bit bus and not a lot of bandwidth to share between the CPU and graphics. We’ve therefore often wondered why AMD didn’t do a console-style APU with a 256-bit bus and therefore the potential for decent graphics performance.

Strix Halo is supposedly that APU. Not only does it have that …

Career RPG designer and project lead on the original Fallout game, Tim Cain, has released a near-17 minute video on his YouTube channel to talk about the Hollywood premiere of the Fallout TV show. Cain had a lot of praise for the new series, but also expressed frustration with how fans project onto and treat many of the people who have worked on Fallout.

Cain was invited by Bethesda’s Todd Howard to the premiere event at the Chinese Theater in LA, and seemed to enjoy the big budget celebration of the Fallout series. As for the show itself, Cain had nothing but praise for the premiere, which consisted of the season’s first two episodes. “I was literally at the edge of my seat,” he said.

Cain appreciated the performances and storytelling, but singled out how the show nailed the Fallout “vibe” as its biggest achievement. “I was just looking at all the props,” he said of one scene. “I realized after a few minutes went by that I had not followed the dialogue at all, because I…

The answer to today’s Wordle is only an easy click away now you’re here, ready and waiting to go if you need it. And if you don’t, you might still like to spend some time checking out our handy tips section, or mulling over a clue for the May 4 (1050) puzzle instead.

I didn’t take an especially short route to today’s solution, but I did enjoy myself. This was one of those puzzles that always gave me just enough to work with, but never quite enough to immediately give the game away. I did end up having a happy, productive, time working my way down the board to the Wordle answer, though.

Today’s Wordle hint

Wordle today: A hint for Saturday, May 4

This word can refer to an object’s monetary worth or something important, or prized. A quiet evening would be of high _____ to someone after a busy day, for example. 

ViewViewViewView

Is there a double letter in Wordle today? 

There are no double letters in today’s Wordle. …

Star Wars Outlaws prompted a collective sigh last week when it was revealed that the single player, open world adventure will have a season pass in addition to the nowadays common “play the game early” incentive attached to pricey special editions. For an extra $40 with the Gold Edition—for a total of $110—the season pass gets you two post-launch expansions, some cosmetics, and an exclusive day one mission called Jabba’s Gambit. 

The latter bonus triggered widespread fuming, as it was possible to jump to the conclusion—based on some perhaps ambiguous wording—that this mission was the one and only Jabba the Hutt mission in the game. Look at the headlines, after all: 

• You Need The Season Pass To Play ‘Star Wars: Outlaws’ Jabba The Hutt Mission
• Star Wars Outlaws Puts Jabba Mission Behind A Paywall
• Star Wars Outlaws Jabba The Hut Mission Locked Behind Paid Season Pass

B…

Take a half hour or so out of your day, because though it’s now November the truth is that spooky season never ends. So here’s a bit of spoopiness for you: Indie whodunit detective adventure Tommy Gun Witches is a free game you can grab off of itch.io and it’s a pretty good time.

Created by indie dev Cosmic Void, it’s a supernatural mystery where you’re clicking around and chatting up witnesses to figure out a crime that only you have the special skills to solve. (Actually, probably lots of other people could solve it, but it’s your problem.

“You play as a detective who investigates crimes committed by witches, gremlins, devils, you get the picture,” says the creator.

“Witches were banished to another dimension, yet some have managed a surreptitious return. A recent murder oddly mirrors their distinctive methods. It’s up to you to unravel the threads of the enigmatic murder puzzle,” they continue.

I quite liked my time with Tommy Gun Witches, which doesn…

The most prominent subreddit devoted to discussions of Nintendo Switch piracy—as well as emulation—was banned on Tuesday, after more than three years on the platform. The community was first created in May 2020, and as of June 10, its latest snapshot on the Wayback Machine, it had accrued more than 69,800 members

In recent weeks the subreddit had grown dramatically and may have become too high-profile for its controversial subject matter: it had just over 37,000 members on May 1, when I reported that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had leaked onto pirate sites. Over the last month and a half r/NewYuzuPiracy became the de facto home for discussions centered around modding Tears of the Kingdom, at least for players who pirated the game. 

As I wrote before the game’s official launch, it was a messy situation for emulation developers, who usually take great care to distance themselves from any public connection to piracy. In addition to openly disc…