Minneapolis Fed president Kashkari weighs in on CBDC: ‘Handwaving word salad’When asked about CBDCs during a conference on transportation, Kashkari had a response on the tip of his tongue, and it wasn’t encouraging for CBDC fans.

Alphabet’s Intrinsic launches Flowstate, a robotic app development platformThe hottest corner of the robotic space right now isn’t the robots themselves. Those companies have done an excellent job getting their systems out into places like warehouses and factories, but the broader question of actually managing and programming them is a bit fuzzier. Proprietary software for these robotics systems is generally difficult to develop for and won’t work with third-party systems.
When it was announced back in 2021, Alphabet X graduate Intrinsic offered the following insight into its plans:
Over the last few years, our team has been exploring how to give industrial robots the ability to sense, learn, and automatically make adjustments as they’re completing tasks, so they work in a wider range of settings and applications. Working in collaboration with teams across Alphabet, and with our partners in real-world manufacturing settings, we’ve been testing software that uses techniques like automated perception, deep learning, reinforcement learning, motion planning, simulation, and force control.
This morning, the company announced its first product, Flowstate, a development platform designed to deliver on some of those promises. The software is designed to help non-roboticists develop workflows for these hardware systems.
“Our first product is a solution builder,” CEO Wendy Tan White tells TechCrunch. “With Intrisic Flowstate, what we’re saying is: you can design it, build it and deploy it. We’re very aware the world is still early in the skills available. They can’t be put together in this workflow that we’re offering. We’re also going to allow skills to be available, too. We want the broader ecosystem to start to be involved. One of the advantages of coming out of Alphabet is some of the more sophisticated skills like vision and force feedback where you require some machine learning or even deep reinforcement learning. We’ve been able to create some of those skills as well. What you’ll find in flow state is not just the solution builder itself, but a library of skills, some of which don’t exist or are not easy to access today.”
At the core of the system is a graphical tree that allows users to string together more complex workflows. Existing skills include pose estimation, manipulation, force-based insertion and path planning. The platform will also be opened to third-party developers who can design their own skills to be integrated into flows.
Image Credits: Intrinsic
The other big piece of this is simulation. It’s the key most robotics deployments these days, affording users the ability to run scenarios simultaneously in a virtual world to determine real-world outcomes. The platform uses Gazebo, an open-source platform stewarded by Open Robotics, which also managed the robotic operating system, ROS. The connected for-profit arm, Open Source Robotics Corporation, was acquired by Intrinsic last December.
“What we’ve done with the acquisition is the core engineering team that used to work under OSRF (Open Source Robotics Foundation) is now working on Intrinsic,” says Brian Gerkey, the Open Robotics CEO who now serves as the director of Open Robotics at Intrinsic. “You should think of Intrinsic as perhaps one of the more important, but really just one player within the ROS ecosystem. We happen to employ a bunch of engineers and we’ve committed to supporting them to develop and contribute back to the ROS community.”
The news follows a massive round of layoffs felt across Alphabet, including Every Day Robotics. “The EDR (Every Day Robotics) team has moved in with what became (Google) Brain,” she explains. “That product has merged with Google Deep Mind. We were working a lot with DeepMind already. The fully integrated Google DeepMind team fully intends to help us build more skills, including ones that would have been used with EDR potentially.”
Tan White says that in spite of a 40-person reduction of Intrinsic’s workforce, the company wasn’t majorly impacted by layoffs. Rather, she explains, the shakeups were part of a small pivot within the company.
“We made some specific layoffs,” she says. “We graduated and we’ve actually made a couple of acquisitions. We were getting clear on what this project was. There were a couple of projects that were more hardware based, and we made a choice to not focus on that. That’s what the layoffs were actually about. It was to focus on the software and the AI part of what we’re doing and that first product. I think what confused the external world at that time is we were obviously doing the acquisition with Open Robotics. They were related in the sense that we’ve decided we want to be software focused, which is where Open Robotics fit in really well.”
The company also acquired Vicarious in April of last year. Tan White says around 80% of that team is currently still working for Intrinsic. “Their expertise in certain applications has been critical,” she adds. “Some of the applications you’re going to see in the skills we have are based on the Vicarious Code.”
Flowstate is now available as a beta. Intrinsic says it had more than 100 signups in the first hour of going live.
Alphabet’s Intrinsic launches Flowstate, a robotic app development platform by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Submit to Hollywood Independent Music AwardsThe first annual Hollywood Independent Music Awards (HIMA) will be presented Thursday, August 17th at the historic Avalon Hollywood in California. The deadline to submit music for nomination consideration is June 1st (11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time)

The HIMA honors independent artists, composers, songwriters, record labels, and technical recording professionals around the globe for their creative contributions to independent music.

The HIMA is an extension of the Hollywood Music in Media Awards (HMMA), which is an annual event celebrating the songs and scores in all visual media including film, TV, video games, commercials, trailers, music videos, documentaries, and other new visual media. For over a decade, the HMMA has included independent music categories in its awards program. Many independent artists attribute the HMMA as a significant catalyst for their music careers. With exponential growth of the HMMA, and increased engagement from indie artists around the globe, the need for a stand-alone platform to specifically recognize independent music was undeniable. 

Founder and executive producer of both the HMMA and HIMA, Brent Harvey, says “The HIMA will have the same level of production, stature, and fun as the HMMA. We’re even using the same venue and production team. It’s going to be a blast. We’ll have quite a few surprises throughout the show!”

Music submissions, visit: himawards.com/music-submission/

Music Submission

TikTok isn’t where ‘stars get started’. Stars start themselves.Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd on the claims made about artist development by digital platforms, and the reality
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HYBE just released a K-pop track sung in six different languages using AI voice technologyHYBE releases 'first-ever multilingual track produced in Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese'
Source

RELEASE DETAILS
Release title:
Winter rain
Main artist name:
Le Thi Ha
Release date:
11th May, 2023
https://publme.lnk.to/Winterrain
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #instrumental

SonuScore Origins Bundle 2 Vol. 6-10 Immerse yourself in cultures across the world with these inspiring pairs and create a musical journey for your listeners. Unlock the potential of these instruments that are often not found... Read More

RELEASE DETAILS
Release title:
Immense love
Main artist name:
Le Phu
Release date:
9th May, 2023
https://publme.lnk.to/Immenselove
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #instrumental

Unsolved problems of web3, dapps and p2p. Decentralized?
Just FYI.

The global Dance Music scene is growing - report by MIDiA.
#MusicIndustry #dance #electronic #Music

Only 42% think creators should be paid when AI uses their musicAccording to a new survey, just 42% of Americans beleive that songwriters and other creators should be compensated when AI uses their work. While creators and rightsholders will consider 42%. Continue reading
The post Only 42% think creators should be paid when AI uses their music appeared first on Hypebot.

Superbooth 2023: Melbourne Instruments Nina Melbourne Instruments debut their new flagship synth with brushless-motor based knobs, the Nina.

Superbooth 2023: Aodya Anyma Omega Desktop Aodyo announce a desktop version of the Anyma Omega.

Superbooth 2023: Modal Carbon8 Modal show a prototype Carbon8 synthesizer.

Elon Musk appoints new Twitter CEO, NBCU’s Linda YaccarinoThe rumors are true: Elon Musk has chosen NBCU leader Linda Yaccarino as the next CEO of Twitter.
Musk confirmed Yaccarino’s new role in a tweet this morning, a day after he announced that he had completed his search for a new CEO.
“Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app,” wrote Musk.

I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.
Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app. https://t.co/TiSJtTWuky
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023

Yaccarino announced on Friday morning that she was leaving her role as chairman of Global Advertising & Partnerships at NBCU. Yaccarino worked at NBCU since 2011. Before that, she spent nearly 20 years at Turner as an executive vice president in advertising. In 2018, she was appointed by former president Donald Trump to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.
It’s smart to put a well-known advertising executive at the helm of Twitter, since Musk’s leadership has tanked that key facet of Twitter’s business. Musk said he will stay on as chairman and “CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.” With erratic content moderation policies and inconsistent, sometimes misleading verification systems, Twitter has bled advertisers. The company has also laid off critical teams for revenue generations, like its sales team.
Musk and Yaccarino already seem to have a bit of a rapport. Last month, Yaccarino interviewed Musk at an advertising conference in Miami, where she seemed complimentary of the business mogul.
“Elon has committed to being accessible to everyone for continual feedback,” she said onstage. “He’s also opened up himself to also participate in the new transparency and safety rules he posted yesterday. Just remember, freedom of speech does not mean freedom of reach.”
She also pointed out to Elon that “the people in this room are [Twitter’s] path to profitability.” Since its inception, Twitter’s most effective way to make money has been advertising, and Musk’s attempts to monetize the blue check have not been successful.
We don’t know whether the two of them were in negotiations at the time, but Yaccarino seemed motivated to sanitize the Twitter brand, encouraging audience members to voice their concerns to Musk in an Q&A. She echoed Musk’s viewpoint on freedom of speech as it pertains to advertisers, which is that freedom of speech doesn’t mean “freedom of reach.”
“If freedom of speech, as he says, is the bedrock of this country, I’m not sure there’s anyone in this room who could disagree with that,” Yaccarino said when interviewing Musk. “Could I get a round of applause for that?”
This story is developing…

Linda Yaccarino leaves NBCUniversal, adding fuel to the Twitter CEO fire

Elon Musk appoints new Twitter CEO, NBCU’s Linda Yaccarino by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch