This is truly revolutionary. Skimming is just the first step because not only
can it be used for skimming, but also for translation and presumably
transcription of the exchange. Everyone can speak their own language. It
shouldn't be too difficult for contests where phonetics and relatively few
words are used. The software can be fine tuned by skimming contests and
feeding the data into an AI neural network. It will soon outperform humans.
Logging programs will work like they do now on RTTY and you'll just grab the
translated and transcribed text off the screen and pop it into the entry
window.
Further automation to follow. Someday contests will be battles of algorithms.
Pretty cool.
73,Ken, AB1J
-----Original Message-----
From: Ron Notarius W3WN via CQ-Contest <cq-contest@contesting.com>
To: 'N4ZR' <n4zr@comcast.net>; 'reflector cq-contest'
<CQ-Contest@Contesting.COM>
Sent: Tue, Apr 2, 2019 6:43 pm
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Fort Meade Relents - Voice Skimmer Released
Pete,
Your timing was perfect.
I just had to add two pages to my club newsletter at the last minute, and had a
hole to fill.
Thanks!
73
-----Original Message-----
From: CQ-Contest [mailto:cq-contest-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of N4ZR
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2019 9:19 AM
To: reflector cq-contest
Subject: [CQ-Contest] Fort Meade Relents - Voice Skimmer Released
73, Pete N4ZR
Check out the Reverse Beacon Network
at <http://reversebeacon.net>, now
spotting RTTY activity worldwide.
For spots, please use your favorite
"retail" DX cluster.
Ham Radio News Network has learned that the United States Government has
decided to release into the public domain one of the crown jewels of the
National Security Agency - the Advanced Voice Recognition and
Translation System (AVRTS).
AVRTS has long been rumored to exist, but only recently, after its
disclosure by Wikileaks, did Fort Meade acknowledge its existence. A
spokesman, who declined to be quoted, told HRNN that AVRTS was first put
into service during the aftermath of 9/11, to keep up with increased
terrorist "chatter" on the world cell phone network. He explained that
this posed a substantial challenge to programmers because of the
variation in languages, as well as different accents in English, the
primary language of international communications. "Fortunately," he
said, "unremitting effort over a dozen years has produced near-perfect
transcriptions of virtually any voice and message."
Sources tell HRNN that AVRTS was initially one of the crown jewels of
the U.S. intelligence community, and secrecy was maintained despite
persistent rumors of its existence. In particular, amateur radio
operators (hams) noted the widespread popularity of the CW (Morse code)
Skimmer software developed by a Canadian researcher, and frequently
called for release of similar software for voice transmissions.
Finally, the NSA relented, and beginning today the software will be
available for download from the agency's website. An agency spokesman
elaborated "we are doing this to help phone operators compete, and hope
they will embrace the new technology." He insisted that ham operators
should not be deterred by the size and complexity of the software -
"What's a few terabytes of RAM these days?"
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