Apple is continuing to investigate making roller screens for iPhone and iPad, where a user can pull at the ends to make the display large or small as needed.It won't look like this - but it could. Apple's patent includes drawings similar to this. (Scroll source: Fae on Wiki CommonsPicture Caesar, or more probably a minion, standing at the Colosseum, holding forth the decree of the land, read from parchment stretched out between two cylinders. Now change Caesar to Tim Cook, switch Apple Park for the Colosseum, and you're seeing how Apple might introduce a future roller iPhone.It's not likely to happen at this year's iPhone 17 launch, and actually it may never happen at all. Apple's latest exploration of this roller display idea comes in a newly-granted patent, and Apple applies for thousands of patents a year. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

The EU architecture community is mourning the loss of Kristin Feireiss-Commerell, the founder of the vital Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin and a significant name in the realms of architecture and urban development, after her passing recently at the age of 82. Feireiss-Commerell, whose advocacy with Helga Retzer led to the museum’s creation in 1980, was also active in other pursuits within architecture, including serving as the Commissioner for the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale twice. The Aedes Architecture Forum has staged over 500 exhibitions since its founding. "Their respective institutions only sporadically touched upon the topic of the built environment," the museum said in 2020. "In founding Aedes, both women were merely following their intuition that engaging in a discussion of architecture and urban space as important facets of everyday life with a broader public was a worthwhile endeavour: an open dialogue that would reflect changing societal conditi...

The total number of construction starts was shown to have gone up 3% in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1.1 trillion, according to the latest Dodge Construction Network data.  According to the new March index, the number of nonresidential starts grew by 6%, whereas residential starts decreased by 5% and nonbuilding starts increased by 9%. On a year-to-date basis, starts were down 1% from last year. Nonresidential starts were down 9%, residential starts were down 5%, while nonbuilding starts were up by 16% over the same period.  For the 12 months ending March 2025, total construction starts were up 4% from the 12 months ending March 2024. Residential starts were up 2%, nonresidential starts were up 3%, and nonbuilding starts rose 8% over the same period.  Related on Archinect: Dodge Momentum Index sees 7% pullback caused by weaker commercial planning"Construction activity grew over the month, but sector-specific data continued to show mixed trends," Eric Gaus,  chief e...

A Minecraft Movie has been proving itself to be quite successful. According to IGN, the movie has now made more than $700 million in the worldwide box office. This weekend will also mark the fourth one for A Minecraft Movie staying in theatres. Over this last weekend, A Minecraft Movie made $41 million in the domestic box office, making $16 million on Friday and $15.8 million on Saturday. Sunday saw it make an another $9.5 million, according to the stats provided by Box Office Mojo. In totality, A Minecraft Movie has made more than $343 million in the domestic box office, and $374 million in the international box office. This totals up to more than $717 million in the worldwide box office. Currently A Minecraft Movie is trailing behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is the highest grossing movie to be adapted from a video game franchise so far, having made $1.3 billion when it was still in theatres. Interestingly, A Minecraft Movie had beaten The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘s opening box office results, having made $157 million in the domestic market, compared to The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘s $146 million opening weekend. For the sake of comparison, The Super Mario Bros. Movie ended up being the most profitable movie of 2023. The movie was able to beat out heavy hitters of the year, including Barbie, Oppenheimer, and even the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The movie was made with a total budget of around $400 million, with $100 million of the production cost being split 50-50 by Nintendo and Universal. A sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie has also been confirmed to be in the works. While not too many details have been revealed so far, the movie is being targeted for release some time in 2026. Back in October, Toad voice actor Keegan-Michael Key spoke about how the sequel will be “broader in scope” than its predecessor. In light of A Minecraft Movie‘s success, it is likely that talks for a sequel might have begun behind the scenes. Microsoft Gaming head Phil Spencer has previously spoken about wanting more movies and TV shows adapted from video games in the past. In an interview, Spencer spoke about learning from the mistakes Microsoft had made when it came to the Halo TV series. “We’re learning and growing through this process, which is giving us more confidence that we should do more,” said Spencer back in March. “We learned from doing Halo. We learned from doing Fallout. So all of these build on themselves. And obviously we’ll have a couple that miss. But what I’d say to the Xbox community that likes this work is, ‘You’re going to see more, because we’re gaining confidence and we’re learning through this.’” In the meantime, we’ve also been seeing plenty of adaptations getting quite popular on the small screen. More recently, HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us kicked off its second season. Amazon also saw quite a bit of success for its adaptation of Fallout.

The first seasonal event for Capcom’s Monster Hunter Wilds will begin today with Festival of Accord: Blossomdance. It offers free (and paid) content but players must first progress through the game enough to unlock the Grand Hub. They’ll find the space sporting Spring-themed decorations while the Diva offers a new song. New meals will be available, and upon obtaining tickets, players can craft the new Sakuratide α (which grants bonus tickets as rewards) and Felyne Papier-Mâché α Palico armor sets. Event quests like Arch-Tempered Rey Dau also return for a limited time on April 29th. Players will also receive two Lucky Vouchers and three Barrel Bowling Vouchers daily. Other notable cosmetics include a new Seikret appearance, nameplate, background, pose, Pop-up Camp decorations, gestures, and more, all obtained by logging in. There’s also the Blossomdance DLC Pack, which offers new stickers, poses, weapon charms, a new Seikret decoration and the Spring Blossom Kimono for Alma. The Blossomdance festival is available until May 6th, but stay tuned for updates on other new content (including the next Capcom collab).

A cyclist rides in a bike lane on University Avenue in Toronto, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Laura Proctor Premier Doug Ford’s government has been ordered to keep its hands off three major Toronto bike lanes until a judge can decide whether a plan to remove them is unconstitutional. The injunction handed down April 22 was heralded as a win by the cyclist group challenging Ontario’s bid to rip up the lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue. “It’s definitely a win for anyone who wants fact-based and data-driven decisions,” said Michael Longfield, Cycle Toronto’s executive director. “I hope this gives the province an opportunity to maybe pause and reverse this legislation and instead work on real solutions that will keep Torontonians and Ontarians moving.” A spokesperson for Ontario’s transportation minister said the government intends to respect the court’s decision. Design work will continue so the government can start removing the bike lanes “as soon as possible should the decision uphold the legislation,” wrote spokesperson Dakota Brasier. Ford’s Progressive Conservative government gave itself the power last year to remove 19 kilometres of protected bike lanes, over the objections of the city. It passed a law that also requires cities to seek provincial approval to install new lanes that cut into vehicle traffic. The province suggested that targeting bike lanes on the three major roadways would help reduce Toronto’s traffic congestion. Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Schabas, who heard a challenge of the law brought by Cycle Toronto and two cyclists, appeared to be skeptical of that justification. “There is evidence that their removal will have little or no impact on the professed objectives of the legislation as stated by the minister of transportation,” Schabas wrote in April 22’s injunction ruling. The ruling said despite the government’s claim that there was an urgent need to cut congestion, it presented no evidence about the process to remove the lanes or plans on what would go in their place. Not granting the pause would mean the government could try to dismantle the bike lanes before he has time to decide the case, Schabas wrote. “It is likely that the bike lanes are more easily removed than rebuilt or restored,” his ruling said. Those challenging the law argue that it violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that removing bike lanes puts lives at risk. April 22’s injunction ruling said the legal challenge raised “important and complex constitutional issues” and Schabas had not yet formed a “final view on the matter.” But the evidence before him after last week’s hearing, he wrote, is that removing the bike lanes could cause increased collisions, injuries and even deaths of cyclists. Ford’s recent re-election campaign included fresh promises to reduce traffic congestion in Toronto. He has cited the Bloor Street bike lane, not far from his own home, as part of what’s contributing to gridlock. Lawyers for the cyclists used the government’s own internal documents to poke holes in that argument last week. They presented internal ministry documents that stated the government’s plan may not reduce congestion. An engineering report commissioned by the government found any congestion benefits would be negligible or short-lived, a lawyer for the cyclists pointed out in court. The same report found bike lanes were predicted to reduce crashes among all road users by between 35 and 50 per cent. Schabas’s ruling said the government “relied on anecdotal evidence and the opinion of a real estate management professor who does not appear to directly address the key issue of whether removal of the bike lanes will in fact alleviate congestion.” The judge’s ruling said the government’s own internal advice suggested accident and injuries were likely to increase if the lanes were removed. — With files from Liam Casey. The post Ontario ordered to pause Toronto bike lane removal until Charter case decided appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Cool Finds Conservators Are Puzzling Together Ancient Roman Murals Found in Hundreds of Pieces Excavated from a nearly 2,000-year-old villa in Valencia, Spain, the broken-up murals once formed fresco decor The broken walls of the villa are covered in frescoes, or paintings made on wet plaster. Vilamuseu In the ruins of an ancient Roman villa in Spain, researchers have unearthed over 4,000 fragments of murals painted in the early second century. Now, experts are conserving and reassembling these puzzle pieces to revive the decorative walls of this Roman outpost built during the reign of Emperor Trajan. The villa, known as Barberes Sud, is located in Villajoyosa on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, near Alicante. Its latest excavation—carried out by the local municipal archaeology service, housed at the Vilamuseu, and Alebus Historical Heritage Company—covered more than 9,000 square feet. According to a translated statement by the Vilamuseu, archaeologists determined the villa contained an industrial section, a multi-room atrium and a large garden surrounded by “stately,” “richly decorated” rooms. Today, only the foundations of these rooms remain.Their collapsed walls were made of compacted clay and covered in frescoes—watercolor paintings made atop wet plaster. The researchers carefully collected, numbered and documented the painted fragments from a collapsed wall in one of the rooms, then brought them to the Vilamuseu’s restoration laboratory for reconstruction. So far, experts have pieced together 22 of the 866 pieces of one painted panel from the wall. The fresco depicts draped green garlands, cartoonish birds and red motifs. Other fragments from the site appear to have flaked off large columns that once supported the villa’s porticoed garden: They’re composed of curved stucco gouged with decorative vertical lines, meant to make the columns fluted. The excavation covered over 9,000 feet. Vilamuseu The Barberes Sud villa was built nearly 2,000 years ago by Romans, near a road connecting the Roman settlement of Alonís, or Allon, to the sea. The empire had conquered the Iberian Peninsula—now modern Spain and Portugal—between 218 B.C.E. and 19 C.E., fighting first to expel Carthaginians from the land, then various tribes. Dubbed Hispania, the peninsula became an important, incorporated Roman region. Several senators would come from Spain, including Trajan and Hadrian, who later became successive emperors. The fragments are being conserved in Vilamuseu’s restoration laboratory for reconstruction. Vilamuseu The Romans left their mark on the region of modern Villajoyosa. Previous excavations have unearthed Roman baths built in 85 C.E., and a second-century Roman funerary tower still stands near the coast. As Artnet News’ Min Chen reports, the tower’s dedicatee is believed to be a prominent Alonís resident named Lucio Terencio Mancino. Researchers are photographing the pieces at uniform scale, so they can be digitally fit together. Vilamuseu In 1999, divers found a Roman shipwreck off the coast of Villajoyosa. Known as the Bou Ferrer, it’s one of the largest Roman shipwrecks ever found in the Mediterranean. It sank in the first century while carrying a massive cargo of fish sauce: 2,500 amphorae filled with fermented anchovy, mackerel and horse mackerel. The recent excavations of the Barberes Sud villa have helped researchers discern the ancient residence’s layout. Conservators will continue to restore and fit together its broken murals, in an effort to see more of the villa’s rich decoration. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More A two-person startup by the name of Nari Labs has introduced Dia, a 1.6 billion parameter text-to-speech (TTS) model designed to produce naturalistic dialogue directly from text prompts — and one of its creators claims it surpasses the performance of competing proprietary offerings from the likes of ElevenLabs, Google’s hit NotebookLM AI podcast generation product. It could also threaten uptake of OpenAI’s recent gpt-4o-mini-tts. “Dia rivals NotebookLM’s podcast feature while surpassing ElevenLabs Studio and Sesame’s open model in quality,” said Toby Kim, one of the co-creators of Nari and Dia, on a post from his account on the social network X. In a separate post, Kim noted that the model was built with “zero funding,” and added across a thread: “…we were not AI experts from the beginning. It all started when we fell in love with NotebookLM’s podcast feature when it was released last year. We wanted more—more control over the voices, more freedom in the script. We tried every TTS API on the market. None of them sounded like real human conversation.” Kim further credited Google for giving him and his collaborator access to the company’s Tensor Processing Unit chips (TPUs) for training Dia through Google’s Research Cloud. Dia’s code and weights — the internal model connection set — is now available for download and local deployment by anyone from Hugging Face or Github. Individual users can try generating speech from it on a Hugging Face Space. Advanced controls and more customizable features Dia supports nuanced features like emotional tone, speaker tagging, and nonverbal audio cues—all from plain text. Users can mark speaker turns with tags like [S1] and [S2], and include cues like (laughs), (coughs), or (clears throat) to enrich the resulting dialogue with nonverbal behaviors. These tags are correctly interpreted by Dia during generation—something not reliably supported by other available models, according to the company’s examples page. The model is currently English-only and not tied to any single speaker’s voice, producing different voices per run unless users fix the generation seed or provide an audio prompt. Audio conditioning, or voice cloning, lets users guide speech tone and voice likeness by uploading a sample clip. Nari Labs offers example code to facilitate this process and a Gradio-based demo so users can try it without setup. Comparison with ElevenLabs and Sesame Nari offers a host of example audio files generated by Dia on its Notion website, comparing it to other leading speech-to-text rivals, specifically ElevenLabs Studio and Sesame CSM-1B, the latter a new text-to-speech model from Oculus VR headset co-creator Brendan Iribe that went somewhat viral on X earlier this year. Side-by-side examples shared by Nari Labs show how Dia outperforms the competition in several areas: In standard dialogue scenarios, Dia handles both natural timing and nonverbal expressions better. For example, in a script ending with (laughs), Dia interprets and delivers actual laughter, whereas ElevenLabs and Sesame output textual substitutions like “haha”. For example, here’s Dia… …and the same sentence spoken by ElevenLabs Studio In multi-turn conversations with emotional range, Dia demonstrates smoother transitions and tone shifts. One test included a dramatic, emotionally-charged emergency scene. Dia rendered the urgency and speaker stress effectively, while competing models often flattened delivery or lost pacing. Dia uniquely handles nonverbal-only scripts, such as a humorous exchange involving coughs, sniffs, and laughs. Competing models failed to recognize these tags or skipped them entirely. Even with rhythmically complex content like rap lyrics, Dia generates fluid, performance-style speech that maintains tempo. This contrasts with more monotone or disjointed outputs from ElevenLabs and Sesame’s 1B model. Using audio prompts, Dia can extend or continue a speaker’s voice style into new lines. An example using a conversational clip as a seed showed how Dia carried vocal traits from the sample through the rest of the scripted dialogue. This feature isn’t robustly supported in other models. In one set of tests, Nari Labs noted that Sesame’s best website demo likely used an internal 8B version of the model rather than the public 1B checkpoint, resulting in a gap between advertised and actual performance. Model access and tech specs Developers can access Dia from Nari Labs’ GitHub repository and its Hugging Face model page. The model runs on PyTorch 2.0+ and CUDA 12.6 and requires about 10GB of VRAM. Inference on enterprise-grade GPUs like the NVIDIA A4000 delivers roughly 40 tokens per second. While the current version only runs on GPU, Nari plans to offer CPU support and a quantized release to improve accessibility. The startup offers both a Python library and CLI tool to further streamline deployment. Dia’s flexibility opens use cases from content creation to assistive technologies and synthetic voiceovers. Nari Labs is also developing a consumer version of Dia aimed at casual users looking to remix or share generated conversations. Interested users can sing up via email to a waitlist for early access. Fully open source The model is distributed under a fully open source Apache 2.0 license, which means it can be used for commercial purposes — something that will obviously appeal to enterprises or indie app developers. Nari Labs explicitly prohibits usage that includes impersonating individuals, spreading misinformation, or engaging in illegal activities. The team encourages responsible experimentation and has taken a stance against unethical deployment. Dia’s development credits support from the Google TPU Research Cloud, Hugging Face’s ZeroGPU grant program, and prior work on SoundStorm, Parakeet, and Descript Audio Codec. Nari Labs itself comprises just two engineers—one full-time and one part-time—but they actively invite community contributions through its Discord server and GitHub. With a clear focus on expressive quality, reproducibility, and open access, Dia adds a distinctive new voice to the landscape of generative speech models. Daily insights on business use cases with VB Daily If you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI. Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

Google’s plan to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome is officially over. In an update on Tuesday, Google Privacy Sandbox VP Anthony Chavez says the company has decided “to maintain our current approach to offering users third-party cookie choice in Chrome.”For years, critics have argued that Google’s Privacy Sandbox could harm advertisers and violate privacy laws, while the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) told users to opt out of the program, saying it “is still tracking your internet use for Google’s behavioral advertising.” Last week, a US judge found that Google “willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts” in the advertising technology industry, and the competition regulator in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has been investigating its evolving series of proposals to address concerns that they might give Google an unfair advantage.Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative was announced in 2020 with plans to block third-party cookies in Chrome by default, similar to Firefox and Safari. It has made several changes to the initiative over the years, such as proposals like its Topics API to assign interests to users based on their web activity and other tools it said could target ads while still offering some privacy. But following years of delays and scrutiny, Google said last year that it would let users choose whether to opt into a cookie-less Chrome. Now, it appears the initiative has come almost completely to an end.Related“As we’ve engaged with the ecosystem, including publishers, developers, regulators, and the ads industry, it remains clear that there are divergent perspectives on making changes that could impact the availability of third-party cookies,” Chavez writes, adding that Google “will not be rolling out a new standalone prompt for third-party cookies.”The Movement for an Open Web (MOW), which filed a complaint with the CMA about the initiative in 2020, said Google’s latest update is an “admission” that the Privacy Sandbox is over.“Google’s intention was to remove open and interoperable communications standards to bring digital advertising traffic under their sole control and, with this announcement, that aim is now over,” MOW co-founder James Rosewell said in an emailed statement to The Verge. “They’ve recognised that the regulatory obstacles to their monopolistic project are insurmountable and have given up.”See More:

Tesla has shared new images of its first retro drive-in restaurant location in Los Angeles.  The company’s CEO Elon Musk dreamt up the idea of a 1950s-themed “Tesla Diner” and Supercharger hub, complete with employees on rollerskates, as far back as 2018. More recently, Musk described it as a “Grease meets Jetsons with Supercharging,” as reported by The New York Times. Last week, The Real Deal reported that Tesla is nearing completion with the diner located on Santa Monica Boulevard. It features two floors, rooftop seating, a bar, two drive-up movie screens, and 30 Supercharger stalls. Tesla got the permit for the diner seven years ago. At the time, California was the de facto home of Tesla and a champion of its electric vehicles, but since then, the company has moved its headquarters to Texas, Musk has gotten into far-right politics with his deep involvement in the Trump Administration, and revenue is tanking as seen in today’s earnings report.