The Huntington Homestead in Scotland, Connecticut, was the birthplace and boyhood home ofSamuel Huntington(17311796), aFounding Father, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a distinguished statesman during the Revolutionary War and early Republic. The remarkably well-preserved site includes an eighteenth century house on its original foundation surrounded by acres of farmland and is now protected as a museum. The house was built sometime between the transfer of land in 1715 from Deacon Joseph Huntington to his son Nathaniel, and Nathaniels marriage in 1723 to Mehetabel Thurston. As originally constructed, the house consisted of a two-story structure with an end chimney on the west end and one large room on each floor. By the time of Nathaniels death in 1767, the house had been doubled in size with the addition of two rooms west of the chimney, giving the house its current five-bay form. The Georgian style Colonial-era home features a symmetrical facade, twelve-over-twelve windows, and a saltbox roof and is one of the finest Colonial-era homes in this part of the state.

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Boldly going: The US Space Force has awarded $13.7 billion in contracts to SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin under the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 program. The contracts run through 2029 and mark the first time three companies will simultaneously handle top-priority military satellite missions signaling a new era of competition in defense space launches. SpaceX secured the largest share of the contracts, landing $5.9 billion for 28 launches. Meanwhile, ULA snatched $5.4 billion for 19 missions, and Blue Origin received $2.4 billion for seven. These launches will carry sensitive payloads such as National Reconnaissance Office spy satellites into orbits that require advanced technical precision. As its first attempt at an NSSL award, Blue Origin's inclusion alongside veteran contractors underscores the shifting dynamics of the military launch industry.A closer look at the financials reveals notable cost differences between providers. SpaceX's average price per launch is around $212 million well below ULA's $282 million and Blue Origin's $341 million. These figures include not just the launches themselves but also added services like fleet surveillance and mission-specific studies.SpaceX will deploy its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets for these missions.The NSSL Phase 3 program splits launches into two tracks: Lane 1 for commercial-style missions and Lane 2 for high-stakes national security payloads. The recent awards fall under Lane 2, demanding rigorous performance and security standards to minimize risks. This structure opens the door for newer providers in Lane 1 while reserving Lane 2 for systems that can meet the program's most complex requirements.Phase 3 represents a significant expansion over its predecessor, with an anticipated 84 missions scheduled between fiscal years 2025 and 2029 nearly double the number conducted during Phase 2. Of these, 54 missions are allocated to Lane 2, underscoring the importance of this segment in maintaining national security.ULA is using its newly certified Vulcan Centaur rocket.Each provider will use its flagship rockets for these missions. SpaceX will deploy Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, while United Launch Alliance will rely on the newly certified Vulcan Centaur, phasing out its older Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. Blue Origin will use its New Glenn, which completed its maiden flight earlier this year but still needs additional certification before handling Lane 2 missions.The competitive dynamics of military space launches have shifted significantly over the past decade. While ULA once dominated this sector, it now faces fierce competition from SpaceX's reusable Falcon boosters, which offer a more cost-effective alternative. Since gaining eligibility to bid on military contracts in 2015, SpaceX has captured over 40 percent of NSSL missions, solidifying its role as a key partner for the Pentagon.Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket completed its maiden flight earlier this year.Blue Origin is making strides in this domain but faces hurdles. The company needs at least one more successful flight of its New Glenn rocket to achieve full certification for Lane 2 missions, with that milestone expected by late 2026. Meanwhile, ULA certified its Vulcan rocket after two successful test flights. Designed for complex orbital maneuvers and long-duration missions, ULA hopes the rocket will differentiate it from competitors. // Related StoriesIn addition to Lane 2 missions, Lane 1 provides opportunities for newer players like Rocket Lab and Stoke Space to enter the military launch market with lower-risk payloads destined for low-Earth orbit. These less demanding missions have fewer certification requirements, fostering broader participation while maintaining cost efficiency.

Table of ContentsTable of ContentsBeauty runs deeper than the looksYou deserve performance, not potentialThe OS situationI am a huge fan of slim and light laptops. That preference is borne more out of my professional lifestyle than a necessity for absolute silicon firebreathers. I believe a laptop should be, well, light on your lap, or hands, unless you need all that firepower in a mobile form factor.Thats the reason gaming laptops exist, or those thick workstations such as the HP ZBook with an Nvidia RTX A500 series graphics card. For the rest, a thin laptop can do the job just fine, with its quirky set of compromises. Finding the right slim laptop, however, is the tricky part.Recommended VideosI recently spent a few months with a rather experimental kind of slim laptop from Dell. The XPS 13 configuration I picked runs Windows on Arm, and serves an equally unconventional processor the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite. It was fast, sleek, and filled the 12-inch MacBooks ache for me.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsUnfortunately, it isnt the most practical laptop out there. I realized that even more so, after adopting the M4 MacBook Air as my daily workhorse. At the end of the day, I came to the conclusion that Apples machine is the more practical, slim and light laptop, without any serious compromises. One of the most arresting aspects of the Dell XPS 13 is its standout looks. The metallic chassis is sharp, sturdy, and has an understated coat of paint on top of it. Lift up the lid, and you will be greeted by a beautiful screen with one of the slimmest bezels you will come across on a laptop, a gapless keyboard, and a seamless glass touchpad with force touch feedback.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsThink of it as borrowing Apples tech stack, but executing it more tastefully. That also happens to be the biggest undoing of the Dell laptop. Ever since Dell adopted the futuristic design, users have cultivated a love-hate relationship with the keyboard-trackpad combo.The infinity trackpad takes a bit of time getting used to, but if you look at the Dell community forum, there are a healthy bunch of users complaining about technical issues. From malfunctioning haptic feedback to one of the edges losing its touch sensitivity, the reports are diverse.Then theres the gapless keycap situation. Once again, the user community is undecided on whether its the software that often breaks the keyboard, or if its the engineering to blame. Ideally, users should not be burdened with flashing the BIOS of their laptop to try and fix keyboard woes.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsThe typing experience is also divisive. I grew used to it within a day, but a healthy few of my industry peers have reported that the XPS 13s beautiful keyboard deck is easy on the eyes, but not so much from a functional lens.For me, the XPS 13s zero lattice keyboard and the capacitive function row keys at the top did the job just fine, but its hard to look past the valid concerns. The MacBooks Ive used so far, havent given me any such headache in years.The new MacBook Air arguably has the best combination of a touchpad and keyboard on any laptop out there. On the M4-powered refresh, you get a fantastic build, beautiful design, solid keyboard, sharp display, and no lingering weak spots.Id rather side with reliability, especially when Im spending north of a thousand dollars on a laptop.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsI dived into my XPS 13 experience hoping for a smooth experience, especially after seeing all those comparison charts depicting the Snapdragon X Elite racing ahead of Intel and AMD silicon. It scored above the M3 MacBook Air at multi-core performance, but cant quite level up at single-core and GPU-heavy workloads.Running the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme test, for example, shows the Snapdragon silicon lagging behind by a healthy 36% after repeated runs. For me, benchmarks dont really do justice to a laptops true potential, unless it has been tested on a realistic workflow. Thats where the Dell XPS 13 lost the race.The configuration I tested offered 16GB of RAM and plenty of storage. It was able to handle my workflow spread across Slack, Chrome, Trello, Microsoft Teams, Asana, and Gmail, while Spotify handled streaming duties. Initially, I didnt run into lags or UI freezing woes.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsBut things changed after a few updates. While trying to reboot after the first OS update, I ran into a Windows installation error, which spiraled into a bootloop problem. I tried a few troubleshooting steps shared on the Windows community, but none of them could solve the unexpected system error problem I was facing with Windows on Arm.Dell support tried to fix it on a phone call, but ultimately decided to recall the laptop to avoid any further damage. Another accompanying issue was the constant whirring of the fan and a weird noise at each restart, as if something was stuck within the fins.After the windows installation issues were resolved, merely a month into setting up the laptop as my daily driver, I started noticing some unexpected hiccups. When connected to an external display and spreading my workflow across Chrome, I began running into unexpected lags and jitters.Mark Coppock / Digital TrendsApp windows often became non-responsive, or the system simply couldnt register keyboard and trackpad inputs. A machine with this kind of firepower shouldnt run into such stutters, and certainly not when you are paying a minimum of $1,300 for a laptop.The latest-gen MacBook Air, on the other hand, has only lifted the game even further. Apple is now offering 16GB of RAM for the same $999 asking price, and coupled with the advanced M4 silicon inside, this machine sets a new standard for laptop performance.The M4 also enables mesh shading, Dynamic Caching, and hardware-accelerated ray-tracing. Moreover, Apples own OS-level optimizations ensure that the MacBook Air is better than ever at demanding tasks such as video editing and coding.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsThe performance hiccups I faced with the entry-level M3 MacBook Air (with 8GB RAM) are gone on its M4 successor. Id gladly take that upgrade, because it blends a higher performance with improved functional reliability. I cant say the same for Dells sleek XPS 13, and Im not sure who is to blame here.I had high hopes with the second incarnation of Windows on Arm, led by Qualcomm and its promising Oryon cores atop the Snapdragon X Elite laptop. The silicon has done its job just fine, bringing Qualcomm roughly in the same performance league as the venerable M-series processors by Apple.Moreover, beating Intel in its first attempt at native benchmarks is no small feat. Thats where the problems begin. You dont buy a laptop based on its synthetic benchmark performance alone, or its sheer future potential. You spend real money on a laptop based on what it can accomplish out of the box. Apple did a fantastic job of transitioning macOS from x86 to Arm. Windows, on the other hand, has struggled.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital TrendsA Microsoft community member told me that the biggest challenge right now is convincing developers to embrace Prism emulation and optimize their stack for Windows on Arm. Adobe, for example, has done a decent job at optimizing its suite of professional software for Windows on Arm.But there are a few caveats. Take Premiere Pro, for example. In my most recent run on a Copilot+ PC powered by Snapdragon silicon, I couldnt run ProRes RAW files or enable AC3 audio playback. Plus, it runs in emulation mode, so a performance hit is expected compared to native Windows on Arm support.Adobe After Effects is not supported, while InDesign and Illustrator have just entered the beta phase. Adobe Express and Adobe Firefly still run in emulated format, and arent native to Windows on Arm, yet.Mark Coppock / Digital TrendsGoing deeper into the realm of specialty software, your experience will be a hit or miss with emulators and gaming clients. Likewise, corporate VPNs, CAD software, and virtual machines remain a weak spot.Due to non-optimization, many platforms cant fully tap into the NPU aboard Qualcomms silicon. You might even run into limitations at something as basic as printing documents, due to hassles with Arm64-specific printer drivers.The M4 MacBook Air, on the other hand, serves you none of those hassles. macOS is a mature platform, with its own set of well-known limitations and perks. You arent making a leap of faith with this one. You arent uncertain about software-specific compatibility. Its either there, or it simply isnt. And thats what matters. At the end of the day, if a $999 laptop doesnt raise any red flags, while a laptop that costs far higher asks for your trust (and patience with well-known software-hardware woes), the choice is pretty obvious.Editors Recommendations

Aimee Lou Wood attended "The White Lotus" premiere in February 2025. IMAGO/imageSPACE via Reuters Connect 2025-04-06T20:37:19Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Aimee Lou Wood discussed filming "The White Lotus" season 3 in Thailand.Wood said the cast "accidentally' melded with their on-screen characters.Costar Jason Isaacs said there was "drama" among the cast in a separate interview.The line between fiction and reality blurred for "The White Lotus" cast this season.Actor Aimee Lou Wood discussed the dizzying situation in an interview with The Sunday Times ahead of the season three finale, which premieres tonight on HBO and HBO Max.This season of "The White Lotus" was filmed in Thailand, where the star-studded cast lived by themselves at the Four Seasons in Koh Samui for seven months.The cast includes Walton Goggins, Natasha Rothwell, Lalisa Manobal, and Wood, who plays Chelsea."The thing that I craved the most was a kitchen," Wood told The Sunday Times. "I wanted to be able to walk to the shops and buy groceries and make food. My self-esteem wasn't great because I wasn't being a normal person. I wasn't doing my own washing, folding my clothes. I started to feel like I was in The Sims."Wood said the unique filming conditions caused the cast to slip too far into their characters. The outlet said the cast would hang out together outside filming and realize they'd regurgitated a character's speech."There was a bit of leakage. We were all accidentally Method," Wood said, referring to Method acting. "It has happened every season. Everyone has lost their marbles a little bit."Wood also spoke about the accidental Method acting during a recent podcast episode of "The Run-Through with Vogue.""I think I was accidentally Method, 'cause Mia, who was doing my hair, halfway through was like, 'Baby, you need to go home, 'cause I dunno if I'm talking to Chelsea or Aimee,'" Wood said. "And I was like, 'I don't know who I am.' And there was a lot of personal mirroring going on [with Walton]. We've not had the same lives as them, but everyone's essence is pretty similar to their character apart from Patrick [Schwarzenegger]. He's nothing like Saxon."Representatives for Wood did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.Jason Isaacs, who plays Timothy Ratliff, told Vulture there was some "drama" behind the scenes."It was like a cross between summer camp and Lord of the Flies but in a gilded cage. It wasn't a holiday," he said in March. " Some people got very close, there were friendships that were made and friendships that were lost. All the things you would imagine with a group of people unanchored from their home lives on the other side of the world, in the intense pressure cooker of the working environment with eye-melting heat and insects and late nights.""What happens in Thailand stays in Thailand, but there's an off-screen White Lotus as well, with fewer deaths but just as much drama," Isaacs added.Recommended video

It's been a long time coming, but the Minecraft movie is here and building mountains of cash for Warner Bros.

Entreverdes House / 24 7 ArquiteturaSave this picture! Adriano PacelliHousesBrazilArchitects: 24 7 ArquiteturaAreaArea of this architecture projectArea:445 mYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2024 PhotographsPhotographs:Adriano PacelliManufacturersBrands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers: Indusparquet, Art Vidros, Aru Madeiras, BPS Construes, Brumi Climatizao, Casa Armani, Esplane, Instituto Jardim, Lder Interiores, MAV do Brasil, Maxximus Marmoraria, Mediterrnea, Nossa Marcenaria, OBRA FCIL, Pedras Capricrnio, Portobello, Unio TcnicaMore SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. With the arrival of the pandemic, many families sought a better quality of life in residentialcondominiums in country cities, and in this case, it was no different.Save this picture!Entreverdes House is located on a plot with an 8-meter slope, 50 meters deep, and a privileged view of a dense permanent preservation area. The starting point of the project was the creation of a lateral ramp for vehicles in order to hide the cars from the street and avoid the construction of three floors. The proposal aimed to overcome the slope with the help of the car, promoting a more fluid distribution of the familys needs.Save this picture!Seen from above, the project reveals an attractive play of full and empty spaces, winding paths, grassy areas, a green roof, skylights, landings, stairs, and landscaping that integrates with the residence.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!At all moments while designing this project, we reflected on the relationship between the house with the surrounding woods and how pleasurable it would be for this landscape to serve as a backdrop for the residents in the spaces where they spend the most time.Save this picture!Save this picture!The wise choice to position the ground floor at the highest level allowed by the condominiums regulations not only strengthened the desired connection with the forest but also met our desire to place the leisure area at the front of the plot, ensuring privacy from those walking by on the street.Save this picture!Save this picture!A concrete box, partially cantilevered, houses the pool so that it is not visible from the street or the sidewalk.Save this picture!The structure is made up of a mixed system of concrete and metal truss beams, with masonry closure, creating an interesting aesthetic in the volume.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The residence consists of private areas on the upper floor, where we also designed a bleacher so that the family could enjoy a pleasant and privileged space to contemplate the view and engage in outdoor activities.Save this picture!Located 5 meters above the street, the ground floor houses the leisure area at the front of the plot, providing greater sun exposure, privacy from the neighbors behind, and closer contact with the forest.Save this picture!In addition to the living and service areas, the house includes an office and a guest suite on the ground floor. Two side voids next to the living room allow abundant light and ventilation to enter almost every room, which closes to the west and opens to the north and south.Save this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessAbout this office24 7 ArquiteturaOfficeMaterialsSteelConcreteMaterials and TagsPublished on April 06, 2025Cite: "Entreverdes House / 24 7 Arquitetura" [Casa Entreverdes / 24 7 Arquitetura] 06 Apr 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028709/entreverdes-house-24-7-arquitetura&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

We've rounded up the best binoculars for bird-watching currently on the market, complete with our expert reviews on the pairs to buy.

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