Featured Links - September 18. 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Frenchman's Bay

The AI Detection Arms Race Is On. "And college students are developing the weapons, quickly building tools that identify AI-generated text—and tools to evade detection."

1987 Nuclear Mars Mission. "A crewed Mars mission requiring 5 Energia launches." They dreamed big. But the Soviet Union collapsed before they could become reality.

AI-Assisted Language Translation of Speaking, Including Mouth Movements. "HeyGen's Video Translate tool will convert videos of people speaking into videos of them speaking one of several different languages (incl. English, Spanish, Hindi, and French) with matching mouth movements." This is amazing but has disturbing implications. 

Thousands of scientists are cutting back on Twitter, seeding angst and uncertainty. "A Nature survey reveals scientists’ reasons for leaving the social-media platform now known as X, and what they are doing to build and maintain a sense of community."

USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix. "Alive and still quite vigorous considering its age." I was on USENET a lot up until about 2000 and wrote this article about it. I may revisit it if I can find a decent free server. 

Welcome to the Unapocalypse. "Where SciFi and Design intersect." New Substack from SF author and futurist, Karl Schroeder. 

A 350-Year-Old Theorem Can Explain The Quantum Properties Of Light. "Physicists have applied classical mechanics rules to light – with success."