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• Krisp reduces noise on calls using machine learning, and it’s coming to Windows soon

  If your luck is anything like mine, as soon as you jump on an important call, someone decides it’s a great time to blow some leaves off the sidewalk outside your window. 2Hz’s Krisp is a new desktop app that uses machine learning to subtract background noise like that, or crowds, or even crying kids — while keeping your voice intact. It’s already out for Macs and it’s coming to Windows soon. I met the creators of Krisp, including 2Hz co-founder Davit Baghdasaryan, earlier this year at UC Berkeley’s Skydeck accelerator, where they demonstrated their then-prototype tech. The tech involved is complex, but the idea is simple: If you create a machine learning system that understand what the human voice sounds like, on average, then it can listen to an audio signal and select only that part of it, cutting out a great deal of background noise. Baghdasaryan, formerly of Twilio, originally wanted to create something that would run on mobile networks, so T-Mobile or whoever could tout built-in noise cancellation. This platform approach proved too slow, however, so they decided to go straight to consumers. “Traction with customers was slow, and this was a problem for a young startup,” Baghdasaryan said in an email later. However, people were loving the idea of ‘muting noise,’ so we decided to switch all our focus and build a user-facing product.” That was around the time I talked with them in person, incidentally, and just six months later they had released on Mac. It’s simple: you run the app, and it modifies both the outgoing and incoming audio signals, with the normal noisy signal going in one end and a clean, voice-focused one coming out the other. Everything happens on-device and with very short latency (around 15 milliseconds), so there’s no cloud involved and nothing is ever sent to any server or even stored locally. The team is working on having the software adapt and learn on the fly, but it’s not implemented yet. Another benefit of this approach is it doesn’t need any special tweaking to work with, say, Skype instead of Webex. Because it works at the level of the OS’s sound processing, whatever app you use just hears the Krisp-modified signal as if it were clean out of your mic. They launched on Mac because they felt the early-adopter type was more likely to be on Apple’s platform, and the bet seems to have paid off. But a Windows version is coming soon — the exact date isn’t set, but expect it either late this month or early January. (We’ll let you know when it’s live.) It should be more or less identical to the Mac version, but there will be a special gaming-focused one. Gamers, Baghdasaryan pointed out, are much more likely to have GPUs to run Krisp on, and also have a real need for clear communication (as a PUBG player I can speak to the annoyance of an open mic and clacky keys). So there will likely be a few power user features specific to gamers, but it’s not set in stone yet. You may wonder, as I did, why they weren’t going after chip manufacturers, perhaps to include Krisp as a tech built into a phone or computer’s audio processor. In person, they suggested that this ultimately was also too slow and restrictive. Meanwhile, they saw that there was no real competition in the software space, which is massively easier to enter. “All current noise cancellation solutions require multiple microphones and a special form factor where the mouth must be close to one of the mics. We have no such requirement,” Baghdasaryan explained. “We can do it with single-mic or operate on an audio stream coming from the network. This makes it possible to run the software in any environment you want (edge or network) and any direction (inbound or outbound).” If you’re curious about the technical side of things — how it was done with one mic, or at low latency, and so on — there’s a nice explanation Baghdasaryan wrote for the Nvidia blog a little while back. Furthermore, a proliferation of AI-focused chips that Krisp can run on easily means easy entry to the mobile and embedded space. “We have already successfully ported our DNN to NVIDIA GPUs, Intel CPU/GNA, and ARM. Qualcomm is in the pipeline,” noted Baghdasaryan. To pursue this work the company has raised a total of $2 million so far: $500K from Skydeck as well as friends and family for a pre-seed round, then a $1.5 M round led by Sierra Ventures and Shanda Group. Expect the Windows release later this winter, and if you’re already a user, expect a few new features to come your way in the same time scale. You can download Krisp for free here. ... Read More

• Pew: Social media for the first time tops newspapers as a news source for U.S. adults

  It’s not true that everyone gets their news from Facebook and Twitter. But is now true that more U.S. adults get their news from social media than from print newspapers. According to a new report from Pew Research Center out today, social media has for the first time surpassed newspapers as a preferred source of news for American adults. However, social media is still far behind other traditional news sources, like TV and radio, for example. Last year, the portion of those who got their news from social media was around equal to those who got their news from print newspapers, Pew says. But in its more recent survey conducted from July 30 through August 12, 2018, that had changed. Now, one-in-five U.S. adults (20%) are getting news from social media, compared with just 16 percent of those who get news from newspapers, the report found. (Pew had asked respondents if they got their news “often” from the various platforms.) The change comes at a time when newspaper circulation is on the decline, and its popularity as a news medium is being phased out – particularly with younger generations. In fact, the report noted that print only remains popular today with the 65 and up crowd, where 39 percent get their news from newspapers. By comparison, no more than 18 percent of any other age group does. While the decline of print has now given social media a slight edge, it’s nowhere near dominating other formats. Instead, TV is still the most popular destination for getting the news, even though that’s been dropping over the past couple of years. TV is then followed by news websites, radio, and then social media and newspapers. But “TV news” doesn’t necessarily mean cable news networks, Pew clarifies. In reality, local news is the most popular, with 37 percent getting their news there often. Meanwhile, 30 percent get cable TV news often and 25 percent watch the national evening news shows often. However, if you look at the combination of news websites and social media together, a trend towards increasing news consumption from the web is apparent. Together, 43 percent of U.S. adults get their news from the web in some way, compared to 49 percent from TV. There’s a growing age gap between TV and the web, too. A huge majority (81%) of those 65 and older get news from TV, and so does 65 percent of those ages 50 to 64. Meanwhile, only 16 percent of the youngest consumers – those ages 18 to 29 – get their news from TV. This is the group pushing forward the cord cutting trend, too – or more specifically, many of them are the “cord-nevers,” as they’re never signing up for pay TV subscriptions in the first place. So it’s not surprising they’re not watching TV news. Plus, a meager 2 percent get their news from newspapers in this group. This young demographic greatly prefers digital consumption, with 27 percent getting news from news websites and 36 percent from social media. That is to say, they’re four times as likely than those 65 and up to get news from social media. Meanwhile, online news websites are the most popular with the 30 to 49-year old crowd, with 42 percent saying they get their news often from this source. Despite their preference for digital, younger Americans’ news consumption is better spread out across mediums, Pew points out. “Younger Americans are also unique in that they don’t rely on one platform in the way that the majority of their elders rely on TV,” Pew researcher Elisa Shearer writes. “No more than half of those ages 18 to 29 and 30 to 49 get news often from any one news platform,” she says.   ... Read More

• How Searching star John Cho became convinced computer screen movies weren’t just gimmicks

  When the horror flick Unfriended came out in 2015, it seemed more like a stunt than a legitimate movie. The entire movie took place on a computer screen, with audiences watching from a first-person point of view as a user navigated from Facebook to Spotify and back again, all while chatting on a group Skype call. The movie serves up a modern take on I Know What You Did Last Summer, as a group of friends are picked off by a righteously angry former victim. But against all odds, the movie was actually entertaining and compelling, and it was followed by more “screen movies,” as producer Timur Bekmambetov called them at the time. But neither Unfriended nor its dour 2018 sequel could have prepared audiences for Aneesh Chaganty’s Searching,... Continue reading… ... Read More

• New Godzilla: King of the Monsters trailer showcases humongous monster showdown

  Godzilla: King of the Monsters is gearing up to be a voracious showdown between some of cinema’s most infamous monsters, and a new trailer for the film demonstrates just how those fights will shape up. The new trailer’s focus is on the impending battle between good kaiju and bad ones. King Ghidorah, the three-headed beast; giant insect Mothra; and Rodan, another peculiar-looking flying monster, are all prepared to launch attacks on each other. Look, Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla wasn’t exactly a cinematic masterpiece, but if Godzilla: King of the Monsters is just two hours of big monsters fighting each other, which is what this trailer promises, then I’ll be happy. Godzilla: King of the Monsters is a direct follow-up to 2014’s G... Continue reading… ... Read More




• People of the Year 2018: Game Workers Unite

  In a year full of game development horror stories, the pro-union group gained traction that could give creators the leverage they've lacked... Read More

• Three studios delay - or cancel - their Steam launches in favour of Epic Games Store

  Coffee Stain's Satisfactory no longer coming to Valve's marketplace, while Team17 and Double Damage delay their titles... Read More