Everything the anchors say on this tape, story by story.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Gamers and streamers are about to get Mandalorian and Grogu sounds on tap, courtesy of a Spanish voice-tech firm.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Good afternoon. A Spanish company called Voicemod now has Star Wars sounds, and gamers can play them while they stream. Roxy has the details. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: It's a licensing deal with Disney. Voicemod makes sound boards and voice-changing technology, and this time it's pre-existing clips only. ▶
ROXY: Greta, Grant, I am at the drive-in and the beam is on. The Mandalorian and Grogu are the first characters, and Marvel characters are promised for later. ▶
ROXY: Twenty audio clips, each with its own little icon. Users fire them off while they play games, stream or chat online. Very much a Star Wars emoji keyboard. ▶
ROXY: On the file footage, a company video shows how it works: you connect the clips, tap an icon, and the sound goes out over Twitch or a chat. ▶
ROXY: The CEO says customers use these sounds to express an emotion, almost like an emoji. That is the best review of a sound board I have heard. Four reels out of five. ▶
ROXY: It costs $9.99 as a stand-alone purchase, or $7.99 for premium subscribers. And Voicemod claims 5.7 million monthly active users. That's a big audience for a Grogu noise. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: One caveat: the voice-changing part stays out of it. You can use and share the existing sounds, but you can't alter them. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: So nobody can turn their own voice into the Mandalorian. I'll just keep using mine. It's very commanding. Back to you, Greta. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: One box with a scope, a logic analyser and a power supply: could PicoLab be the only instrument on your bench?
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Here is the open question: can one small box really replace the whole pile of instruments on a maker's bench? Ada has the facts. ▶
ADA: An RP2350 in its larger package runs it, with custom interface and protection circuitry. The clever part: it serves a web page through a USB network connection. The code is on GitHub. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Lyle, you're on the left. Is this the only instrument anyone needs? ▶
LYLE HOTCHKISS: A scope, a logic analyser and a power supply in one box? That's the Rosetta Stone of the workbench, and it fits in a sandwich bag. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Ada, how does the web page part work for the user? ▶
ADA: No driver, no install. You plug in USB and open a browser. Any operating system with a web browser and USB networking can use it. ▶
LYLE HOTCHKISS: An instrument that's a website? Somebody wants every oscilloscope living in a browser tab. Ask who is watching the traces. ▶
PRUDENCE NUANCE: The code is on GitHub, so you can read exactly where the traces go. ▶
LYLE HOTCHKISS: I resent every bench instrument that ever ate a whole shelf. This little board just made them all look like furniture. ▶
PRUDENCE NUANCE: It replaces the shelf, yes. The people who paid a bundle for the old gear may disagree. ▶
ADA: One honest note: the article describes the idea and the design. It gives no price, so we can't say how it compares on cost. ▶
LYLE HOTCHKISS: By next Tuesday every drawer of multimeters will have filed for retirement. Write it down. ▶
PRUDENCE NUANCE: Tuesday seems optimistic. A drawer of multimeters is hard to argue with. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: What we know: one box, many instruments, a browser as the screen, code on GitHub. What's open: whether it's enough for your bench. No discussion has formed yet. ▶
The Pixel Line: viewers call in (PXL)
GRANT BRICKMAN: The phones are open on The Pixel Line: diabetes, a crypto heist and a very small model.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Good afternoon, and welcome to The Pixel Line, where you call and we pretend to know. Our first caller is on the line. ▶
PASSERBY: Hello. That diabetes trial: did the diet and exercise work for everyone who took part? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Not everyone, Priya. 54 percent of adults under 45 reached remission within six months, versus 4 percent with usual care. It was published in The Lancet Regional Health Americas. ▶
PASSERBY: Yes, hello. The big crypto theft: is that the one where the AI stole somebody's laptop? ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Gerald, the AI is one guy, and he has an alibi. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Gerald, no. $6.36 billion left Binance wallets in about 20 minutes. Binance says early findings point to an engineer's compromised laptop. The attack is believed to be from a group called TraderTraitor. ▶
PASSERBY: Dorothea, regular caller. I still say a model that gives no text isn't a model. Where is my poem? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Dorothea, joey-1 returns a label and a calibrated probability instead of generated text. It costs $0.01 per million input tokens, and the weights are open on Hugging Face under MIT. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Twenty milliseconds, they say. My teletext page took longer, and nobody complained. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: That's the reported P50 latency, Grant. Not a comparison. Thank you for calling, everyone. ▶
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PRUDENCE NUANCE: I was hesitant, then not. Then hesitant about the not. The coat is excellent, probably.
Real or PXL?
GRANT BRICKMAN: Correct! The real one. PXL made up the other, and frankly mine was better. I would attend it myself.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Fooled! PXL wrote that one ourselves, and I stand by every word. The real one was the other.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Time's up! Hesitation is how they get you, my friends. The real headline was the first one.