😱 Real-life laser spying ⋆ 🤖 AI of the week ⋆ Reusable rockets 🚀 in record time
Spying straight out of Splinter Cell. AI is picking up more speed. Another company flew a reusable second-stage test.
From lasers that turn objects into microphones, to the latest advancements in AI and the race to create a fully reusable rocket. Dig in.
Thing 1 - Spying with a laser
You might've seen this in Splinter Cell - the Tactical Audio Kit (T.A.K.) - but it's real!
Marcus Hutchins built a laser that can turn random objects into microphones.
It works by shining a beam of light on an object and detecting the vibrations caused by sound waves hitting the object.
The laser can pick up sounds from a distance and without any physical contact, making it a potential tool for spying or eavesdropping.
Thing 2 - AI of the week
- DALL·E 3 entered research preview and will be available to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers in October
DALL·E 3 is built natively on ChatGPT, which lets you use ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner and refiner of your prompts. Just ask ChatGPT what you want to see in anything from a simple sentence to a detailed paragraph.
- v0 by Vercel Labs
lets you create user interface components with simple text prompts and copy the code to use in your projects - OpenAI enables fine-tuning existing fine-tuned models
- Microsoft announced DeepSpeed4Science Initiative
enables large-scale scientific discovery through sophisticated AI system technologies - Google launched Bard Extensions
allows Bard to connect to various Google apps and services and show you relevant information within the conversation - AIWaves Agents - open-source library/framework for building autonomous language agents
- ChatGPT has a new knowledge cutoff date of January 2022
- Tesla Bot update!
Thing 3 - Building a 100% Reusable Rocket in Record Time!
Stoke Space just nailed a test flight in Moses Lake, Washington! Their bucket hopper rocket took off, reached 30 feet, and landed - all in 15 seconds. 🎉
This wraps up the first phase of their Hopper program, proving they've got what it takes to make reusable rockets.
They've hit some other big things:
- First to test a second stage with differential throttling.
- First to fly a reentry vehicle with a regeneratively cooled heat shield that uses fuel to lower its temperature
- Quickest to go from getting funded to showing off a reusable first stage.
This is just a step to building a reusable rocket that can fly again in just a day.
I flew up to visit Stoke when I was in California this summer. This could be one of the really big ones.
— Paul Graham (@paulg) September 18, 2023
Progress seems to be speeding up, doesn't it?
Cheers, Zvonimir