Use AI to recreate a loved one’s voice

Mark in Washington, D.C., wrote in with a question that absolutely pulled at my heartstrings:
“Kim, I love your newsletter and shows on WTOP 103.5 FM. My dad passed away recently, but I have all his voicemails on my phone. Is there any way to recreate his voice so my two young kids can hear him read their favorite bedtime stories?”
Smarter seat belts soon
Remember when you’d sit in your dad’s car sans seat belt? Me, too. Well, Volvo’s working on adaptive seat belts that tighten or loosen based on your size and how serious the crash is. So if you’re smaller, it eases up to protect your ribs.
2x
That’s how much more fat is burned when you lift weights first during a workout. New research suggests that your body taps fat faster because it flips to fat-burning mode mid-session after draining your glycogen stores. Basically, it’s metabolic alchemy; bench-press first, then bike your way to abs.Â
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$1.8 million
Shaq’s price tag for promoting a crypto collapse. Unlike Brady and Curry, Big Diesel stayed on the hook thanks to a wild goose chase to serve him legal papers. He pitched FTX as legit, then claimed he didn’t get crypto at all. Now he’s settling, no guilt admitted, but the check clears just the same.
#1
Where America ranks in online vulgarity among English-speaking countries. Yes, “land of the free” also means land of the free to say anything we want. Turns out, 1 in every 2,800 words typed by Americans online is a swear, making us the reigning champs of digital potty mouths.
2 wolves
That’s the entire “pack” of lab-grown dire wolves Colossal Laboratories has unleashed. Made with a gray wolf base, 14 tweaked genes and a heavy pour of Game of Thrones fanfic (named Ghost and Khaleesi). Some of the dire-specific genes were too dangerous to include. Frankly, if we can make French bulldogs, we can make anything.
135
Dead Sea Scroll fragments redated by AI with a better eye than your average historian. The system, named Enoch after the biblical prophet, was trained on radiocarbon-dated samples and subtle handwriting quirks invisible to humans. Then it read the Dead Sea Scrolls and confidently told researchers they were late by 100 years.
59 minutes
How long DJI’s new Matrice 400 can stay airborne, with gear. It hauls 13 pounds, lands on moving ships, dodges obstacles and spots power lines in thermal mode. With 10 antennas and a backup relay system, it beams footage over 25 miles, through cities, forests or whatever else is in the way, even the guy screaming, “No drones!” into the sky.
1/15 teaspoon
That’s how much water your average ChatGPT question supposedly guzzles to answer you. According to Sam Altman, One query = a light sip. But multiply that by billions, and suddenly the servers need a Hydro Flask the size of Lake Michigan.