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A new airplane silently broke the sound barrier. It looks nothing like NASA’s X-59

Fast Company Tech

From the moment Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier for the first time in 1947, zipping from New York to Paris in less than three hours became every travelers dream. On our first flight, we expected to break the sound barrier without a sonic boomthat was our prediction, Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, tells me.

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How to Improve Donor Retention: 3 Surprising Strategies from Top-performing Nonprofits

Nonprofit Tech for Good

If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company. It sounds small, but it can tell you exactly why your supporters care. These former supporters may just need a genuine, thoughtful message reminding them why they connected with you in the first place. Donor retention can feel like a never-ending cycle.

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‘Retail blackout’ sounds exciting, but stores closing on Easter Sunday is nothing unusual

Fast Company Tech

Never underestimate the news media’s ability to amplify the mundane with urgent-sounding headlines. Over the last week or so, a number of news organizationsmostly from outside the United Stateshave reported on a so-called “retail blackout” that is set to take place on Sunday, April 20, which is Easter Sunday.

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Why do LLMs make stuff up? New research peers under the hood.

Ars Technica

From a human perspective, it can be hard to understand why these models don't simply say "I don't know" instead of making up some plausible-sounding nonsense. While human understanding of this internal LLM "decision" process is still rough, this kind of research could lead to better overall solutions for the AI confabulation problem.

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Tennessee just made an invisible update to its tourism site—and it’s brilliant

Fast Company Tech

This led VML and the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development to launch Sound Sites an initiative to replace the alt text on the states official tourism website with lyrical verse from one of Tennessees best natural resources: songwriters. Our tagline for the state is Sounds Perfect.

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Young Coders Are Using AI for Everything, Giving "Blank Stares" When Asked How Programs Actually Work

Futurism

No doubt chalkboard-pounding algebra teachers once grumbled about calculators, and no one would question their place now. In Goel's heyday, the place to do just that was StackOverflow. It's sound logic. But Goel's gripe isn't against AI necessarily more so that it provides too tempting of a crutch.

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These Tiny Liquid Robots Merge and Split Like ‘Terminator’

Singularity Hub

The gummy-candy-like blobs are controlled using sound waves and can slip through grated fences, chomp up debris, and skim across solid and liquid surfaces. Some versions can even shuttle ingredients from one place and release their cargo in another. The team used sound waves to steer the robots around for more difficult tasks.

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