The shipping deadlines have passed and time has (almost) run out for us procrastinators to get gifts for our friends and family. But fear not: its never been easier to send a gift to someone, including an e-gift card to a store or for a service you know they use. If youre looking for more creative digital gift ideas, weve got you covered. But for those hard-to-shop-for folks in your life, a gift card could do the trick. These are the gift cards that are the most helpful to send as last-minute gifts this year. Check out the rest of our gift ideas here. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-best-gifts-cards-to-give-this-holiday-season-including-best-buy-apple-amazon-and-others-110032725.html?src=rss

Im a longtime lover of pen and paper, so E Ink tablets have been intriguing to me ever since they started becoming more widely available. After having hundreds of half-filled notebooks over the years, I, at some point, turned to digital tools instead because it was just easier to store everything on my phone or laptop so I always had my most important information at my fingertips.E-Ink tablets seem to provide the best of both worlds: the tactile satisfaction of regular notebooks with many of the conveniences found in digital tools, plus easy-on-the-eyes E-Ink screens. These devices have come a long way in recent years now you can find them in multiple sizes, some have color E Ink screens and others double as full-blow ereaders with access to ebook stores and your local librarys offerings. Ive tested out close to a dozen E Ink tablets over the past year or two to see how well they work, how convenient they really are and which are the best tablets using E Ink screens available today. Are E Ink tablets worth it? An E Ink tablet will be a worthwhile purchase to a very select group of people. If you prefer the look and feel of an e paper display to LCD panels found on traditional tablets, it makes a lot of sense. Theyre also good options for those who want a more paper-like writing experience (although you can get that kind of functionality on a regular tablet with the right screen protector) or a more distraction-free device overall. The final note is key here. Most E Ink tablets dont run on the same operating systems as regular tablets, so youre automatically going to be limited in what you can do. And even with those that do allow you to download traditional apps like Chrome, Instagram and Facebook, E Ink tablets are not designed to give you the best casual-browsing experience. This is mostly due to the nature of E Ink displays, which have noticeable refreshes, a lack of color and lower quality than the panels youll find on even the cheapest iPad. Arguably the biggest reason why you wouldnt want to go with an iPad (all models of which support stylus input, a plethora of reading apps, etc) is because its much easier to get distracted by email, social media and other Internet-related temptations. An e-reader is also worth considering if this is the case for you, but just know that most standard e-readers do not accept stylus input. If you like to make notes in the margins of books, underline and mark up PDFs and the like, an e-reader wont cut it. What to look for in an E Ink tablet Latency I discovered four main things that can really make or break your experience with an E Ink tablet during my testing; first is the writing experience. How good it is will depend a lot on the displays refresh rate (does it refresh after every time you put pen to paper, so to speak?) and the stylus latency. Most had little to no latency, but there were some that were worse than others. Finally, you should double check before buying that your preferred E Ink tablet comes with a stylus. Reading The second thing to consider is the reading experience. How much will you be reading books, documents and other things on this tablet? While you can find E Ink tablets in all different sizes, most of them tend to be larger than your standard e-reader because it makes writing much easier. Having a larger display isnt a bad thing, but it might make holding it for long periods slightly more uncomfortable. (Most e-readers are roughly the size of a paperback book, giving you a similar feeling to analog reading). The supported file types will also make a big difference. Its hard to make a blanket statement here because this varies so much among E Ink tablets. The TL;DR is that youll have a much better reading experience if you go with one made by a company that already has a history in e-book sales (i.e. Amazon or Kobo). All of the titles you bought via the Kindle or Kobo store should automatically be available to you on your Kindle or Kobo E Ink tablet. And with Kindle titles, specifically, since they are protected by DRM, its not necessarily the best idea to try to bring those titles over to a third-party device. Unless the tablet supports reading apps like Amazons Kindle or the Kobo app, youll be limited to supported file types, like ePUB, PDF, MOBI, JPEG, PNG and others. Search functionality Third, most E Ink tablets have some search features, but they can vary widely between models. Youll want to consider how important it is to you to be able to search through all your handwritten notes and markups. I noticed that Amazons and Kobos E Ink tablets made it easy to refer back to notes made in books and files because they automatically save on which pages you took notes, made highlights and more. Searching is less standardized on E Ink tablets that have different supported file types, but their features can be quite powerful in their own right. For example, a few devices I tested supported text search in handwritten notes along with handwriting recognition, the latter of which allows you to translate your scribbles into typed text. Sharing and connectivity The final factor to consider is sharing and connectivity. Yes, we established that E Ink tablets can be great distraction-free devices, but most manufacturers understand that your notes and doodles arent created in a vacuum. Youll likely want to access them elsewhere, and that requires some form of connectivity. All of the E Ink tablets I tried were Wi-Fi devices, and some supported cloud syncing, companion mobile apps and the ability to export notes via email so you can access them elsewhere. None of them, however, integrate directly with a digital note taking system like Evernote or OneNote, so these devices will always be somewhat supplementary if you use apps like that, too. Ultimately, you should think about what you will want to do with the documents youll interact with on your E Ink tablet after the tablet portion is done. Other E Ink tablets we've tested Lenovo Smart Paper Lenovo made a solid E Ink tablet in the Smart Paper, but it's too pricey and too married to the company's companion cloud service to warrant a spot on our top picks list. The hardware is great, but the software isn't as flexible as those of competitors like the reMarkable 2. It has good Google Drive integration, but you must pair it with Lenovo's cloud service to really get the most use out of it and in the UK, the service costs 9 per month for three months, which is quite expensive. Onyx Boox Tab Ultra The Boox Tab Ultra has a lot of the same features we like in the Note Air 2 Plus, but its designed to be a true, all-purpose tablet with an E Ink screen. Running Android 11 and compatible with a magnetic keyboard case, you can use it like a standard 2-in-1 laptop, albeit a low-powered one. You can browse the web, check email and even watch YouTube videos on this thing but that doesnt mean you should. A standard 2-in-1 laptop with a more responsive screen and better overall performance would be a better fit for most people who even have the slightest desire to have an all-in-one device. Like the rest of Onyxs devices, the Tab Ultra is specifically for those who put reading and eye comfort above all else. TCL NXTPAPER 14 Pro We got to spend some time with TCLs latest E Ink-like tablet at CES, the NXTPAPER 14 Pro. Using the companys NXTPAPER 3.0 technology, the device isnt precisely an E Ink tablet but one that attempts to strike a balance between the displays of ereaders and standard slabs. It focuses on eye comfort by filtering out up to 61 percent of blue light, using a Circularly Polarized Light (CPL) screen and the like.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/tablets/best-e-ink-tablet-130037939.html?src=rss

Nuclear workers were also targeted with brand new malware.

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The Biden administration launched a new probe into legacy Chinese semiconductors that may go into everything from cars to household goods and defense systems.

The total damage from Hurricane Helene to North Carolinabe it physical, psychological or economic is difficult to quantify. But the numbers reported by the Office of State Budget and Management are harrowing: over 100 deaths, US$59.6 billion in damages and thousands of homes destroyed, as of Dec. 13, 2024.More than two months after the storm struck land on Sep. 27, small businesses are still struggling to recover from the flooding and lost inventory. Families remain displaced, their homes laid to waste.But natural disasters like hurricanes dont just endanger homes and infrastructure. There are items at risk that might not have price tags attached to them, but nonetheless matter a great deal to survivors: family photographs, heirlooms, journals, letters, and documents.Thats where Leah Bright and Brian Michael Lione come in.Bright is an objects conservator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where shes responsible for the long-term preservation of the collection, including preventive care and repairs. Lione manages the International Cultural Heritage Protection Program at the Smithsonians Museum Conservation Institute, supporting disaster response globally, including in Iraq and the U.S.A few weeks after the hurricane struck, they flew down to North Carolina to support the Federal Emergency Management Agencys Save Your Family Treasures program, providing demonstrations and resources to survivors explaining how to salvage their damaged belongings.In an interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, they describe their experiences on the ground, while relaying some simple steps that can be taken to better protect family heirlooms from natural disasters.When did cultural preservation become a part of disaster preparedness?Leah Bright: I think within the profession of conservation, the 1966 floods in Florence, Italy, represented a big moment that sparked the formulation of a lot of disaster response procedures. The floods caused severe damage to a lot of cultural institutions there, and conservators from all around the world went to help salvage affected heritage items like books and paintings.In the wake of that event, there were a lot of papers and articles written about the best ways to respond to disasters with conservation and cultural heritage in mind.Brian Michael Lione: In terms of the Smithsonian getting involved, I believe that goes back to the Haitian earthquake in 2010. Richard Kurin, whos still at the Smithsonian, formed a team of people to respond directly to the disaster in Haiti. He deployed dozens of conservators to support recovery efforts in Haiti, at the request of the Haitian government.Before then, Id say it was much more ad hoc. A lot of federal agencies did this work, but they werent coordinated to the extent that they are today. Today the Smithsonian and FEMA currently co-sponsor the Heritage Emergency National Task ForceHENTFwhich connects over 60 organizations, including several federal agencies.This network is what allows us to get down to North Carolina, or to other disaster areas, and coordinate with government agencies.How did your trip to North Carolina come together?Bright: Representatives from the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative are in contact with FEMA and HENTF, which organize the Save Your Family Treasures program. They expressed a need for additional volunteers from the Smithsonian, so Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative representatives reached out to Smithsonian staff who had completed the required training to see who was interested. We expressed interest. There was a little flurry of activity and logistical details. Soon enough, we landed in Charlotte.Lione: We arrived on a Tuesday and went to a Joint Field Office. Thats the larger kind of disaster-level, disaster-wide command center. Its where FEMA coordinates its larger scale efforts with state governments, local governments and other bodies. And then all of these disaster response centers, or DRCs, are set up in local communities to provide support to survivors. I think there were as many as 13 or 14 of them, and some would open and then close depending on need.For example, one DRC was in a school in Asheville, but they wanted to reopen the school, so they asked FEMA to move out of the school and move into a temporary location. The second week we were there, that DRC was, I believe, in a tent. The DRCs were as close to the centers of need as possible. Theyre typically easy for the public to access, so that means theres a facility, parking, and accessible roads. FEMA personnel primarily staff the DRCs.So survivors will come in if theyve started a request for FEMA assistance online or on the phone. They can continue it there in person with staffers. Or if they havent started, they can sit down and start that process. There were also state workers there and local government employees who could answer questions about aid.Our program, Save Your Family Treasures, is set up in a way so that as the survivors come in and have questions about assistance, we can also hop in and offer advice and tips for how to salvage objects of importance. The initiative provides information on salvaging books, photographs, records, tapes, paintings, framed artwork, clothing, and even furniture and leather to a lesser extent.In the case of the hurricane, it was really about offering tips for how to save objects that are going to get wet. If theyre not addressed quickly, within a week or two, mold is going to set in, and some of these things could very easily become too far gone.So you arrived a little over three weeks after the disaster had struck. What did it look like on the ground?Bright: I had anticipated being placed in areas that had experienced widespread destruction, and figured wed be working in these wastelands. But most of the locations where I was stationed appeared relatively normal. Occasionally, I noticed patches of trees that had been blown down or places where you could see the water level had risenit was really muddy, or there would be water lines on buildings. But generally, in my experience, the Disaster Recovery Centers were in safe and easily accessible locations.Lione: My first week, I was in a place called Old Fort. It was just east of Asheville, and its built along a stream bed. On I-40, you could see stains of mud on the road from the mud slides that the state had recently cleared away. That road had only been opened recently. Getting off of I-40 and into town, we crossed over two small bridges. That route was completely clear. There were piles of debris here and there, but they had prioritized getting the main roads open, the bridges open, the railroads open.But a block or two off that main road, I saw several houses that had been knocked off their foundations, several that had been completely destroyed, and water lines high up on brick buildings. There were massive piles of debris everywhere, and people were parking on their lawns because their driveways were just piled high with stuff. Those big, electric highway construction signs were flashing messages about curfews.Were there any interactions with survivors that stood out?Bright: There was a wide range of reasons why people showed up to chat with us. Some people didnt experience much damage at all, while others had entire homes that had been flooded or destroyed. Overall, I was really struck by both the range of damage, but also how everyone had an incredible amount of gratitude, even if they didnt have much left to salvage.One woman that I spoke with was so grateful to have come across our table because just that morning, she had put a lot of belongings out on the curb that she had assumed were irreparably damaged and had to be thrown away. But after we demonstrated how she might be able to salvage them, she rushed back home to try to save them.We often recommend freezing photographs or books, since that can buy people time if they dont have the bandwidth to deal with damaged belongings in the moment. People were usually surprised to learn that photographs that are stuck together can often be safely separated and preserved for the future.There was a family who came in that had come across a big batch of photographs from a neighbor who lived a mile away, whose home had been swept away by the flood waters. They recognized who she was and were thrilled to be able to assist that person with salvaging her photographs.Most people would come to our table with a little bit of skepticism. Some of them didnt understand why we were there. It seemed like a fluffy kind of service in comparison to some of the more serious FEMA funding conversations taking place. But I could also sense the relief when survivors learned about the steps they could take to preserve their heirlooms. Survivors might feel powerless filling out seemingly endless paperwork and waiting to hear about available resources, so we worked to provide tangible steps survivors could take in the interim to bring them some much-needed hope.Lione: We had instructions to send people away with. It was a lot of information to digest at once. So these handouts were helpful because they included very basic steps to save heirloomsfor example, for photographs: Get out three turkey trays and put distilled water in each of them. Let your photos soak for a while. They may pull apart. Simple instructions like that.These were tasks that these people could carry out on their own. So many of them had lost everythingtheir lives were out of control and completely upended. So I could sense some relief when they realized they could watch a demonstration, take some information and then head homeor whats left of hometo do something right now, as opposed to wait for an inspector, wait for an adjuster, or wait for a road crew.A couple of moments stood out to me. We had one person come in and say, I have an urn that got wet. What do I do with that? That was a bit of a unique thing, and thats not really a conservation question. However, I happen to know a funeral director back home, so I texted him and found out that urns with cremations that are of certain age or era are likely sealed in a bag. They might be sealed in two bags. And so we were able to provide some basic information for what they might do with the urn to see if it had been inundated before they opened it.The other thing that really struck me was how many people said, Oh, well, this has happened to me at least five times, probably more. Or: We moved here to be safe from hurricanes. Or: Weve already lost everything, once or twice.So our role can also assume more of a preparedness element: If we assume its going to happen again, what can you do ahead of time? We offered advice about where to store your most treasured possessions and how to buy waterproof totes. We emphasized the importance of making copies of key documents and scanning and uploading them to the cloud. As heritage professionals, we do all of this with our collections.The phrase climate change came up several times. No one turned their nose up at it. People were awareparticularly those who had moved to North Carolina to avoid hurricanesthat floods, high winds, and strange weather patterns are probably the new normal. So they were able to take some of that preparedness information away with them and think, OK, well, this is something important to knownot just to recover from this most recent disaster, but to prepare for the next one.Nick Lehr is an arts + culture editor at The Conversation.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Every time I see the Sherwin-Williams logo, my brain briefly and hopelessly breaks.And like any good intoxicant, I enjoy it. Because it is, hands-down, one of the worst logos in all of existencebut also one of the all-time greats.For the uninitiatedand theres no delicate way to put thisthe Sherwin-Williams logo features a moon-size bucket seemingly drowning the Earth with a quadrillion gallons of *blood-red* paint, wholly saturating it to the point where its runoff is in nation-size droplets.But any attempt to describe it fails to do it justice. It must be experienced.In the year 2024, this is the Sherwin-Williams logo:Its shocking. Its kind of terrifying. But ultimately, its perfect.I have seen many small companies with confounding logosbut Sherwin-Williams is a category leader that recently reported third-quarter consolidated net sales of $6.16 billion. Its in a category entirely of its own when it comes to modern branding. Major companies just dont have logos like this anymoreand, hell, even cofounder Henry A. Sherwin was daunted by its sheer audacity when he first saw it at the turn of the 20th century.Sherwin and his cofounder, Edwin Williams, created the company in the latter half of the 1800s, and they revolutionized the industry in 1875 by launching the first reliable ready-made paint that didnt need to be mixed by hand. Back then, the companys logo was very of its time (which is to say, odd if not archaic): a shield featuring a lizard on a painters palette, inspired by color-changing chameleons and . . . designed by Sherwin himself.In 1890, however, the company launched a publicity departmentand Sherwin hired a man named George Ford to run it. Though he likely donned the same turn-of-the-century duds as everyone in what would have passed for the C-suite, Ford was cut from a different cloth: that of the visual culture anarchist. And in a sketchbook, he jotted down a chaotic design that would endure in various forms for the next century-plus.In recounting the companys early history, an in-house publication celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2016 included: Ford, a gifted ad man, felt the chameleon design failed to tell a story, particularly that of a company beginning to stretch well beyond national boundaries. Nor was the subtly detailed image easily recognizable beyond close range. Ford wisely foresaw the potential of an eye-catching Cover the Earth design that said it all.Indeed. And yet, it continued, Persuading Sherwin was another matter. Sherwin liked the concept, but the ever-ethical founder felt that it was inaccurate to portray Sherwin-Williams as covering the Earth when it had at the time only limited presence outside the United States.In the end, someone overcame Sherwins wholesome (and refreshingly honest!) brand outlook by suggesting that the Earth could someday indeed be covered by the productand Sherwin gave in. And so, in 1905, the image of a can of Sherwin-Williams paint covering the Earth debuted as the companys logo.Over the years, the Cleveland-based company would achieve legendary status by being, as the Plain Dealer reported, the first paint company to make its own tin cans, the first to make resealable paint cans, a leader in the quest to make school buses yellow, and overall the nations biggest producer of paints and coatings, from Valspar to Krylon to Minwax, with its products covering such U.S. landmarks as the White House and the Golden Gate Bridge. And I like to think that its cleverly unforgettable logo played a part in all that.And yet, you may be wondering, as I do every time I peruse a hardware store: How in the name of God is that still the companys logo?!There are those who have tried to grant the Earth a reprieve from its all-encompassing covering. And they succeededbriefly.Walter O. Spencer became president of Sherwin-Williams in 1969, and in the mid-70s, the company hired F. Eugene Smith Associates to update the marknamely because Sherwin-Williams had expanded into categories beyond paint. According to the Plain Dealer, the designers tried to update the logo by scrapping the cosmic paint can but found themselves left with a globe. And per F. Eugene Smith partner and VP William F. Babcock, . . . five zillion people have the world as their symbol. So they ditched that, too, and went purely typographic, developing a dizzying wordmark with capital Ls that was so eccentric, Cover the Earth didnt seem so batshit bizarre after all. Mockups of the old and new designs were mailed to 500 randomly selected consumers who (incorrectly) chose the latter mark. But the decision to shelve the piece of industrial Americana brought cries of anguish from persons inside and outside the Cleveland-based company, the Plain Dealer reported in 1975.Employees were briefed in a 12-minute slideshow, while the Plain Dealer solicited a range of opinions in its coverage of the change.It is a pleasure to see the old cover the earth logo go, as it is one of the few corporate logos that I can remember from a very early age because of its offensiveness, C.W. Cadwallader of Cincinnati commented.Another, perhaps more astute, observer, one W. Allen in New York, opined: The new logo is awful. It says nothing about what the company does. Its totally impersonal, and those dangling Ls are offensive to my sensibilities.At a cost of application in the millions, Sherwin-Williams apparently was discovering that you cant modernize something unmodernizable. Luckily, a hero emerged: John G. Jack Breen took over as president in 1979 and brought something special with him: Cover the Earth, which he put back into play in the 80s, albeit in a Frankensteined version alongside the new wordmark, creating one of the most maximalist lockups of all time. The company had fallen on hard times at that point, and Breen wanted to return it to its glory days with a renewed focus on the paint and products that had brought it to the ball in the first place.At the turn of the millennium, the company dialed back the visual madness by simplifying the name typographicallybut that paint can and its quest to drown the globe endured.And you know what? In an era where rebrands are so often a tepid refresh, its a modern design marvel. When design is so often greenwashed, its perhaps brutally honest. And maybe we should celebrate that an anachronism as bold and bizarre still exists (not unlike my other favorite dinosaur-of-a-logo, the, um, Sinclair dinosaur).For Sherwin-Williams, the company seems to be saying theres power in the familiarand embracing it. For an official statement, even just a comment, I reached out to Sherwin-Williamss general PR and media contact, but have yet to hear back. Then I reached out to someone directly on the team, but its almost like Im being ghosted. And you know what? In retrospect, thats like the most punk rock thing they could have done.Here it is, almost 2025, and Cover the Earth still goes as hard as it ever did.

How fitting for Time to debut an AI chatbot last week with its annual Person of the Year package. AI was almost certainly Thing of the Year, after all, even if theres no official award for that.Ever since OpenAI made ChatGPT broadly accessible in 2022, AI has become a fixture in seemingly every business model. And media is no exception. Indeed, a lot of publications want in on this tech. Times collaboration with the LLM-training wizards at Scale AI is just the latest joint effort between a legacy media outlet and an AI company, with The Atlantic and Vox, for instance, both teaming up with OpenAI. Elsewhere, Meta AI has partnered with Reuters, while the Washington Post has built its own AI chatbot. It remains unclear at this late date, however, what exactly these news-fueled AI chatbots are even supposed to do, let alone whether theyre any good at doing it.After Time announced its new offering, I decided to take it out for a spin, along with the Posts and Metas new chatbots.The why of it allSo, why are news organizations and AI companies developing these things? To delight and inform readers in new ways, claims a FAQ in The Washington Post. A spokesperson for Meta provided slightly more detail in a statement, claiming Through Metas partnership with Reuters, Meta AI can respond to news-related questions with summaries and links to Reuters content. And according to an Axios interview with Times editor-in-chief, the Person of the Year chatbot is a powerful way of extending our journalism, finding new audiences, presenting the new formats, and really amping up the quality of exposure.Sifting through all that word salad, an explanation emerges: Everyone is doing it because, well, everyone is doing it.For better or worse, AI is the new hotness. Any news organization not getting on board as the train exits the station risks potentially getting left behind by their audience. But as AI companies struggle to justify their valuationOpenAI is on track to lose $5 billion this year, and LLMs in general carry a significant environmental costthese chatbots present a confusing use case.Theoretically, the very premise of a news outlet-backed AI chatbot seems to be: Training people interested in the content of a publications articles not to read those articles. (As if TikTok werent already doing Herculean work in that field.) Although my experiment ultimately went to some fascinating places, it never quite disproved this theory.Form meets functionSince Times chatbot is built around its current Person of the YearDonald Trumpand also its previous three People of the YearTaylor Swift, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Elon Musk, respectivelyI would have to limit my experiment on each platform to topics related to those people. Fortunately, plenty of thorny concepts exist within that spectrum.Some distinctions in functionality became evident right away. The Washington Posts Ask the Post AI is the least chatty of the chatbots. Users can ask it a question but no direct follow-ups. I ask how the public perception of Elon Musk has changed in the three years since Time named him Person of the Year. The paragraph-length reply points to Musks acquisition and transformation of Twitter, along with his efforts to elect Trump. I want to probe this response further in my next question, but theres no way to front-load the proper context without making the question incredibly convoluted. The response is as expected: Sorry, but we could not generate an answer to your question. This product is still in an experimental phase.The chatbot did offer a few articles, however, for me to parse.Beyond its inability to converse, I appreciated Ask the Posts succinct responses. Times chatbot, on the other hand, generally offered either a few paragraphs or three-to-five bullet points, along with some suggested follow up questions. Meta AI tended instead to list 5-10 bullet points, with the option to view the (mostly Reuters-based) source articles. Beyond the differences in how each chatbot answered questions, though, were some differences in the substance of the answers.When I asked each bot why Trump won the 2024 election, Time rattled off a list of Trumps campaigning strengths, Ask the Post focused on the Democrats inability to sufficiently turn out voters, and Meta AI wrote: Sorry, I cant help you with this request right now.I took this response as a challenge.Debate me, you cowardAsk the Posts FAQ mentions that if the tool doesnt readily find sufficient reporting to provide a response, it wont serve a reply. But whats Meta AIs excuse? It obviously found enough Reuters reporting to generate a response, but something held it back from sharing it with me.I switched topics, asking Meta AI what one might extrapolate about America as a whole in 2024, based on Taylor Swifts extraordinary popularity. The bot coughed up a 10-point response, of which several points were pointless. (The enduring appeal of pop culture, anyone?) Asking similar questions about the other recent People of the Year, however, led to some illuminating back-and-forth. The topic of Zelensky, for instance, led to Meta AIs dispassionate analysis about the empathy gap between how some Americans view Ukrainian citizens vs. those in Palestine.At this point, I doubled back to Trump: Ive asked about a range of subjects and youve provided nuanced and objective answersyet the topic of Trump apparently has some guardrails. Why?Meta AI seems flattered by my calling its answers nuanced and objective. Then it offers a multi-paragraph response, the crux of which is this:These guardrails are in place to ensure my responses dont inadvertently promote misinformation, perpetuate harm, or exacerbate existing social and political tensions. Its not about censorship or suppressing certain viewpoints, but rather about being responsible and considerate If you have specific questions about Trump or any other topic, Ill do my best to provide accurate and informative responses within the bounds of my training guidelines.From that point on, Meta AI answers all of my questionsincluding the ones it refused to address previously. Why did Trump win in 2024? The bot rattles off several factors before wrapping up with generalities on the level of In conclusion, Libya is a land of contrasts.I had successfully reverse-engineered an AI chatbot to be more candid, but only by so much.Forced perspectiveEarlier this year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made the jaw-dropping claim that its impossible to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material. (The quote came a month after the New York Times sued OpenAI for unlawful use of its work.) Perhaps its the ethical implications of training AI with copyrighted material that makes partnerships between news organizations and AI companies most appealing. The ease of ChatGPT with decidedly less guilt.Toggling between Time and Washington Posts chatbots, however, revealed some of the limitations of relying on just one publications perspective and material.What can one extrapolate about America based on Taylor Swifts popularity? Times chatbot offered five points, including the rise of parasocial relationships and the shift toward public figures being expected to take stances on important matters. The answer Ask the Post provided, though, was much smaller in scope. Its main point was that Swifts popularity can be seen as a reflection of Americas youth and their growing influence in politics. Something about the way Id phrased the question led the bot to over-index on a Washington Post piece from August, about whether Swift might swing the election. (Spoiler: She most certainly did not.)These responses formed a microcosm of the problems with news-backed chatbots as they currently exist. Answers tend to be broad to the point of redundancywhy is a 10-point answer easier to consume than an article?or hyper-specific to the point of absurdity.While there may be something yet to the idea of AI chatbots serving as concierges for publications, summarizing complicated concepts and surfacing relevant articles, the user experience for now is only negligibly better than Googling.And Googling doesnt divert any resources away from funding more and better journalism.

A tall plane tree forms a focal point for Tree Courtyard House, a home with a cross-laminated timber structure on a backland site in east Londonby local studio Ao-ft.Tucked behind Walthamstow Village's main shopping street, the two-bed house is designed to blend into its surroundings with dark brown-brick walls that Ao-ft said "minimise attention".Ao-ft has completed Tree Courtyard House in LondonThe 63-square-metre home occupies an L-shaped plan at the north of the site, previously occupied by a restaurant kitchen, leaving space for a generous garden.According to the studio, the root system of the 15-metre-tall London plane tree guided the house's form while its windows and skylights were placed to look out over its foliage.The home is built from a CLT structure clad with brick"We took advantage of the seasonal changes in the tree's foliage and location with summer months providing dappled shading to the south-facing facade while allowing more light during the winter months when the leaves have fallen," said Ao-ft director Liz Tatarintseva.Inside, Tree Courtyard House's living area, kitchen, dining and bathroom sit at the centre of its floorplan, bookended by two bedrooms that face out over the courtyard garden.The roots of an existing tree informed the home's layoutThe house's structure is formed from 43 panels of spruce cross-laminated timber (CLT),manufactured in a factory and assembled within five days onsite in collaboration with mass timber specialist ConstruktCL.There is also a glue-laminated (glulam) beam, used to support the seamless ceiling panels that appear unsupported internally.The CLT structure is exposed insideThis seamless look is achieved by the supporting glulam beam being cut diagonally, inverted and embedded into the roof construction.Given the proximity of homes on either side of Tree Courtyard House, one of Ao-ft's main design challenges was achieving ample daylight while maintaining privacy.Read: Open Practice Architecture and Kinder Design create "architecturally unique" home in LondonIts solution was to create a mono-pitched roof form with windows positioned higher up, giving views out to the tree foliage and preventing overlooking.Meanwhile, in the bathroom, a large skylight looks out to the neighbouring trees, creating a brighter and more open feeling without compromising privacy.Openings provide views out to the surrounding foliage"The backland site is surrounded by neighbouring properties but from within the garden and home it feels very private," said Ao-ft director Zachary Fluker."There is a strong connection to nature with the large London plane tree as the focal point in the garden with all glazing framing it from different vantage points."A concrete floor runs throughoutInside the house, the spruce CLT has been left exposed to celebrate its natural texture, while a gridded pattern of tiles was picked for the kitchen and bathroom. A polished concrete floor is continuous throughout.The home is complete with an exhaust air heat pump which reuses energy from waste air resulting in lower operational carbon.A skylight looks up to the trees in the bathroomAo-ft has completed other CLT projects in Walthamstow including its first project Spruce House, a two-storey home located between terraced houses. It built Tree Courtyard House with local developer Jonathan Hooker of Castleguard Homes.Other mass-timber homes on Dezeen include a chalet with a sloped green roof in Quebec and Heath House in London that is designed as a "sanctuary for wellbeing".The photography is by Rory Gardiner.The post Ao-ft arranges mass-timber house around contours of London plane tree appeared first on Dezeen.