Month: April 2023

Enlarge / A demo of Firefly AI generation in Adobe Premiere. (credit: Adobe)

On Monday, Adobe announced plans to add AI video synthesis tools to Premiere Pro and After Effects, reports Reuters. This follows an announcement last week that AI-powered text-based video editing will come to Premiere Pro in May.

Adobe's generative video effects will come courtesy of Adobe Firefly. Firefly, an image synthesis mode we previously covered in March, will expand to include video and audio generation tools. Premiere Pro is Adobe's flagship video editing application, a popular industry tool for assembling TV shows and Hollywood films.

Currently, performing certain special effects or editing tasks can often be labor-intensive. Adobe aims to streamline that process with generative AI assistance. In a demo reel posted on its blog, Adobe showed "Firefly for Video" generating a background soundtrack, generating sound effects, changing the visual season in a video, creating a visual effect on the word "molten," locating and brightening a person's face, and generating audio transcripts via text commands.

Enlarge / A picture from Josiah Garcia's Facebook profile.

US authorities say a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman applied for hitman work on the satirical RentAHitman.com website and later agreed to kill a fictional person in exchange for $5,000. Tennessee man Josiah Ernesto Garcia was arrested and charged with use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire, US Attorney Henry Leventis announced Friday.

"Garcia submitted an employment inquiry indicating that he was interested in obtaining employment as a hit man," the announcement said. "Garcia followed up on this initial request and submitted other identification documents and a resume, indicating he was an expert marksman and employed in the Air National Guard since July 2021."

Garcia's resume allegedly said his nickname, "Reaper," was "Earned from Military experience and Marksmanship." The resume said he was recognized as an expert marksman "for not missing a single bullseye on all of the targets and for shooting expert with 2 (or more) weapons," according to the FBI.

Enlarge / Empty traditional jars (onggi, 옹기), used for storing kimchi, gochujang, doenjang, soy sauce, and other pickled banchan (side dishes). (credit: OlkhichaAppa/CC BY-SA 3.0)

The fermented spicy cabbage known as kimchi is a staple of Korean cuisine, traditionally made in earthenware vessels known as onggi. These days most Korean households have kimchi refrigerators for that purpose, while on a commercial scale, kimchi is made via mass fermentation in glass, steel, or plastic containers. But is the kimchi made with these modern contraptions of equal quality to the traditional fermentation method? Many kimchi aficionados would argue that it is not, and now the pro-onggi faction has some science to back up that assertion.

It turns out that the porosity of the onggi's walls help the most desired bacteria proliferate during the fermentation process, according to a recent paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. “We wanted to find the ‘secret sauce’ for how onggi make kimchi taste so good,” said co-author David Hu of Georgia Tech. “So we measured how the gases evolved while kimchi fermented inside the onggi—something no one had done before.”

The handmade clay vessels known as onggi have long been used by Korean chefs to ferment foods, including ganjang (soy sauce), gochujang (red pepper paste), and doenjang (soy bean paste), as well as kimchi. The cabbage or daikon is sliced into small uniform pieces, which are coated with salt as a preservative. The salt draws out the water and inhibits the growth of many undesirable microorganisms. Then the excess water is dried and seasonings are added, often including sugar, which further serves to bind any remaining free water. Finally the brined cabbage is placed into an airtight canning jar, where it remains for the next 24 to 48 hours at room temperature. The jar is "burped" occasionally to release carbon dioxide formed during the fermentation process.

Enlarge / Photo illustration shows the Discord logo and the suspect, national guardsman Jack Teixeira, reflected in an image of the Pentagon in Washington, DC. (credit: STEFANI REYNOLDS / Contributor | AFP)

On Friday, Air Force National Guard airman Jack Teixeira was charged with two counts under the Espionage Act, alleging his unlawful gathering and unauthorized removal of top-secret military documents. These documents spread widely online after Teixeira allegedly spent months leaking classified information on a private Discord server. At his first court appearance, Teixeira was not required to enter a plea, but he is due back in court Wednesday, NBC News reported.

If he’s eventually found guilty, Teixeira could face up to 10 years in prison for each count, according to an affidavit from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s special agent Patrick M. Lueckenhoff. His affidavit did not detail all the information that the FBI has gathered on Teixeira, but Lueckenhoff said that it shared enough information to demonstrate “sufficient probable cause for Teixeira’s arrest.”

Since Teixeira’s arrest, many have wondered how the FBI tracked him down. Lueckenhoff’s affidavit provides a timeline for the FBI’s manhunt and confirms that Discord played a major role in his arrest.

Enlarge / A Savings dashboard in the Wallet app (left) lets users view their savings account balance and how much interest it has earned, among other things. (credit: Apple)

Apple today launched its first savings account, letting Apple Card credit card owners open a high-yield savings account through the company. The service, available through partner Goldman Sachs, offers a 4.15 percent annual percentage yield (APY) and has no minimum balance or deposit requirements or fees.

Apple first previewed the savings account a little over six months ago in October. As per today's announcement, Apple Card users who choose to open a savings account will see cash back earned from Apple Card purchases (up to 3 percent, depending on the merchant) automatically go into their savings account. If they don't like this, they can change where the cash back goes through the Apple Wallet app.

Savings account holders will be able to manage things via a Savings dashboard in the Wallet. The dashboard will let users link another (non-Apple) banking account for fee-less transfers in both directions, as well as conduct transfers to and from an Apple Cash Card.

Enlarge (credit: Seamind Panadda / EyeEm)

A survey of plastic waste picked up in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre—aka the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch—has revealed that the garbage is providing a home to species that would otherwise not be found in the deep ocean. Over two-thirds of the trash examined plays host to coastal marine species, many of which are clearly reproducing in what would otherwise be a foreign habitat.

The findings suggest that, as far as coastal species are concerned, there was nothing inhospitable about the open ocean other than the lack of something solid to latch on to.

Into the deep

The work isn't a complete surprise, given the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which swept a variety of debris, including entire docks and boats, across the Pacific Ocean and onto North American shores. Coming ashore with the wreckage were a number of Japanese coastal marine species, which indicated that they could survive for long periods adrift in the ocean—the longest officially recorded trip was six years, although the debris might have been in coastal environments for part of that time.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

By now, regular readers probably know that this year saw a major change to the Internal Revenue Service's Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, the consumer-facing incentive that aims to drive electric vehicle adoption here in the US. The tax credit was reformed by last year's Inflation Reduction Act and now places conditions on where a clean vehicle—a battery EV, a plug-in hybrid EV, or a hydrogen fuel cell EV—is manufactured, as well as the sourcing of its battery pack.

It was feared that these new rules would drastically reduce the number of eligible EVs once the sourcing requirements go into effect on April 18, and now we can confirm that is the case. From tomorrow, only 10 new vehicles will qualify for the full $7,500. Half of the list is made up of vehicles from General Motors but also includes two models from Tesla, Ford's electric pickup truck, and plug-in hybrids belonging to Chrysler and Lincoln.

The full list of vehicles that qualify for the $7,500 clean vehicle tax credit is: