Every yearThe Architects Newspaper seeks to celebrate the best companies, contractors, and consultants that are moving the AEC industry forward, and the search is now officially underway for 2025. This annual program, ANs Best of Practice Awards, is open for entries until March 28, 2025 at midnight ET. Best of Practice looks into the breadth and merit of firmsincluding architects, contractors, sustainability and facade consultants, engineers, fabricators, interior designers, developers, and landscape architectsto spotlight those who not only champion an aesthetic vision, but also social and sustainable goals. To participate in this program is to join the ranks of honored companies that are moving the needle in the design worldboth in terms of the offices own design and culture and the companys design output overall. Winners receive a trophy commemorating the award, and both winners and runner-ups are featured online, on AN social media channels, and inANs Best of 2025 print issue, promoting the honored practices to ANs audience of over 1 million readers.All types of AEC companies based in North America are celebrated. The architect, interior designer, and landscape categories are each subdivided by seven regions (with some additionally divided by size), while the rest remain non-regional. The full list of 2025 categories are:Architects (Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large and New firms)Acoustic Consultant/EngineerDeveloperFabricatorFacade ConsultantGeneral ContractorGraphic Design & WayfindingInterior DesignerLandscape ArchitectLighting DesignerMEP EngineerPhotography StudioRender & VisualizationStructural EngineerSustainability ConsultantTechnologyGet started on applications now to take advantage of the reduced Early Bird entry fee, offered until February 28, 2025. To uplift new companies of all kinds, AN also offers an additional discount for firms founded within the last five years with the code EMERGING. Learn more about the submission process and details here, and stay tuned for the upcoming 2025 jury announcement.

Artificial Intelligence Newsletter Fox News AI Newsletter: AI health tech will transform your fitness routine Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents By Fox News Staff Fox News Published January 15, 2025 12:40pm EST close US company using 'secret weapon' for its artificial intelligence Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports on what the United States and Israel are doing to stay ahead of adversaries in A.I. on 'Special Report.' Welcome to Fox News Artificial Intelligence newsletter with the latest AI technology advancements.IN TODAYS NEWSLETTER:- Best cutting-edge health and fitness tech from CES 2025- Nvidia pushes back on Biden admin's 'misguided' AI order- Biden White House announces 'final rule' on AI chip exports before Trump hand-off, drawing industry blowback ISleePad (ITRI)FUTURE HEALTH TECH: CES 2025 has once again showcased a remarkable array of health and fitness technology that promises to transform our well-being.'UNPRECEDENTED AND MISGUIDED': Tech giant Nvidia is pushing back on a new executive order by the Biden administration that seeks to preventartificial intelligence technologies developed in the U.S. from falling into the hands of adversarial countries.'CHIP' ON THEIR SHOULDER: The Biden White House on Monday announced its "final rule" placing export controls on artificial intelligence chips before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next week, drawing swift condemnation from industry leaders who argue the Democratic administration is effectively undermining America's leadership in the emerging technology. FILE - Amazon Web Services data center is seen on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024, in Boardman, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)'LEAD THE WORLD': President Biden on Tuesday signed an ambitious executive order that he says will keep both national security and climate change in mind while fast-tracking the build-out of large-scale artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.HOTTEST TICKET IN TOWN: A select group of tech industry titans and venture capitalists will gather in Washington, D.C., this week to welcome the incoming Trump administration and celebrate new opportunities for global innovation in artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship.CUTTING-EDGE HUMANOID TECH: Chinese startup Pudu Robotics has unveiled its latest creation, the D9 humanoid robot, designed to revolutionize the way we work and interact with machines. D9 humanoid robot (Pudu Robotics)FOLLOW FOX NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIASIGN UP FOR OUR OTHER NEWSLETTERSDOWNLOAD OUR APPSWATCH FOX NEWS ONLINEFox News GoSTREAM FOX NATIONFox NationStay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future with Fox Newshere. This article was written by Fox News staff. Related Topics

Production Perig - stock.adobe.cNewsCyber security dovetails with AI to lead 2025 corporate IT investmentCyber security and GenAI top enterprise IT investment plans for 2025, whether singly or together, according to research from Enterprise Strategy GroupByBrian McKenna,Enterprise Applications EditorPublished: 15 Jan 2025 15:26 Cyber security, whether singly or in tandem with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), dominates enterprise IT investment plans in 2025, according to Informa TechTargets Enterprise Strategy Groups annual spending intentions research.The research, based on responses from 1,351 IT and business professionals worldwide, found that cyber security outpaces all other categories of initiative, with a dramatic expansion of AI and analytics also climbing in importance. The majority of the organisations surveyed 28% of which came from the EMEA region expect to maintain or increase their spending across all major technology categories in 2025, with cyber security most likely to see spending increases, followed by customer experience and application development.Around three-quarters of respondents in EMEA and North America said they would increase IT investment overall in 2025 compared with 2024. The research was carried out in the third quarter, which is when many organisations are working on their investment plans for the next year.Generative AI vied with cyber security as an area for investment, with security being an area to which GenAI is being applied more and more. Data management emerged as a related area, for which GenAI leads the investment pack.In terms of business initiatives, cyber security (49% overall) was well ahead of efforts to reduce costs (36%), improve data analytics and business intelligence (35%), and increase automation of business workflows (35%). Cyber security was top in EMEA (44%) and North America (51%), which might indicate the direction of travel for EMEA. Again under the heading of business initiatives, improving operational resilience against cyber attacks stood at 29% for North America and an almost identical 28% in EMEA.Among the most important IT initiatives for the year, strengthening cyber security tools and processes outdistanced all others by a wide margin at 27% overall (25% for EMEA, 30% for North America), followed by the use of AI and machine learning (16%), and using data analytics for real-time business intelligence and customer insight (14%).Within cyber security, the survey revealed that zero-trust network access (ZTNA) tops organisations plans for most significant cloud security investments in 2025. Firewalls (including next-generation firewalls) are the top target for network security investments, while multifactor authentication is the top identity-related security technology.In terms of cloud investment planning, respondents identified ZTNA as one of their most significant planned cloud security investments in 2025 (48% versus 41% in 2024). This was followed by cloud data security and data loss prevention (38%), and application programming interface (API) security (37%).The growth of API usage in recent years to support modern applications and connect various systems and services has sharpened this focus, according to the authors of a report based on the research, Bill Lundell and Christian Perry. This is because API-reliant microservices ecosystems can be complex and difficult to fully secure.The rise of AI more generally is stark, as shown by the surge of organisations identifying AI as a technology initiative thats become significantly more important to their future (44% versus 28% last year). It now ranks closely alongside cyber security (59%) and cloud (38%).As the AI locomotive steams ahead, organisations are rapidly circling budgets around GenAI technologies to accelerate automation and eliminate inefficiencies across nearly all elements of their IT and business environments, said Lundell and Perry.GenAI continues to rise as a target for significant spending, with 53% planning investments in 2025 (up from 46% in 2024).The dominance of GenAI over other technologies as an investment target in the information management space is another clear indication that organisations are prioritising the technology regardless of their existing AI strategies, said Lundell and Perry. 53% are planning GenAI investments in data management in 2025, up from 46% in 2024.Read more about cyber security investment plans for 2025Cybersecurity investments are set to increase in 2025, according to Enterprise Strategy Groups annual spending survey, and data loss prevention is leading the priority pack.10 cyber security predictions for 2025: AI will still be a hot topic this year, but dont miss out on other trends, including initial access broker growth, the rise of vCISOs, tech rationalisation and more.The basics drive 2025 identity security investments: New identity security tech might steal headlines, but it seems the basics get the most attention from businesses.In The Current Issue:Interview: Wendy Redshaw, chief digital information officer, NatWest Retail BankPreparing for AI regulation: The EU AI ActDownload Current IssueThe UK government's AI plan covers all the bases but needs a dose of pragmatism Computer Weekly Editors BlogData engineering - TetraScience: From lab to enterprise, what scientific data teaches us CW Developer NetworkView All Blogs

If you've ever wanted to try Arch Linux but were afraid of the installation process, there's a handy script to help ease this task.

Get inspired by the innovative brand campaigns with stand-out results that won big at the annual TikTok Ad Awardsand learn who took home the top prize.

WTF?! OpenAI's latest AI model, o1, has been displaying unexpected behavior that has captured the attention of both users and experts. Designed for reasoning tasks, the model has been observed switching languages mid-thought, even when the initial query is presented in English. Users across various platforms have reported instances where OpenAI's o1 model begins its reasoning process in English but unexpectedly shifts to Chinese, Persian, or other languages before delivering the final answer in English. This behavior has been observed in a range of scenarios, from simple counting tasks to complex problem-solving exercises.One Reddit user commented, "It randomly started thinking in Chinese halfway through," while another user on X questioned, "Why did it randomly start thinking in Chinese? No part of the conversation (5+ messages) was in Chinese."The AI community has been buzzing with theories to explain this unusual behavior. While OpenAI has yet to issue an official statement, experts have put forward several hypotheses.Some, including Hugging Face CEO Clment Delangue, speculate that the phenomenon could be linked to the training data used for o1. Ted Xiao, a researcher at Google DeepMind, suggested that reliance on third-party Chinese data labeling services for expert-level reasoning data might be a contributing factor. // Related Stories"For expert labor availability and cost reasons, many of these data providers are based in China," said Xiao. This theory posits that the Chinese linguistic influence on reasoning could be a result of the labeling process used during the model's training.Another school of thought suggests that o1 might be selecting languages it deems most efficient for solving specific problems. Matthew Guzdial, an AI researcher and assistant professor at the University of Alberta, offered a different perspective in an interview with TechCrunch: "The model doesn't know what language is, or that languages are different. It's all just text to it," he explained.This view implies that the model's language switches may stem from its internal processing mechanics rather than a conscious or deliberate choice based on linguistic understanding.Tiezhen Wang, a software engineer at Hugging Face, suggests that the language inconsistencies could stem from associations the model formed during training. "I prefer doing math in Chinese because each digit is just one syllable, which makes calculations crisp and efficient. But when it comes to topics like unconscious bias, I automatically switch to English, mainly because that's where I first learned and absorbed those ideas," Wang explained.While these theories offer intriguing insights into the possible causes of o1's behavior, Luca Soldaini, a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, emphasizes the importance of transparency in AI development."This type of observation on a deployed AI system is impossible to back up due to how opaque these models are. It's one of the many cases for why transparency in how AI systems are built is fundamental," Soldaini said.

PlayStation Plus has added even more titles into its lineup, including several older PlayStation 2 games that are steeped in nostalgia. The heaviest hitter in the bunch is God of War: Ragnark, which Extra and Premium subscribers can claim for no extra charge thing month.PS Plus is a PlayStation subscription service that gives subscribers access to games every month. This month brings a respectable lineup of both modern and classic titles. Grand Theft Auto V is a chance to experience one of the most profitable gaming franchises of all time if you havent played it yet, whileOrcs Must Die 3 blends shooters and tower defense into one irresistible combination. Heres the full list.God of War: RagnarkLike a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His NameAtlas Fallen: Reign of SandSD Gundam Battle AllianceSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice LeagueGrand Theft Auto VWarhammer 40K: Sparine Marine 2 TrialSayonara Wild heartsANNO: MutationemOrcs Must Die 3Citizen SleeperPoker ClubIndiana Jones and the Staff of Kings (PlayStation Plus Premium)Medievil II (PlayStation Plus Premium)Recommended VideosThere are several highlights in the bunch. God of War: Ragnark continues the story of Kratos and Atreus through the backdrop of Norse mythology, while Like a Dragon Gaiden tells even more of Kazuma Kiryus saga after he faked his own death.Please enable Javascript to view this contentAtlas Fallen: Reign of Sand lets you experience the game with all of the bonus content from the Reign of Sand expansion added in, including a New Game+ mode and newer quests.Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is available, too, just in time to play through its final story update. Fair warning: the update has caused no small amount of controversy, and fans are divided.The rest of the titles are older or just flew under the radar a bit more, but theyre all worth checking out.Citizen Sleeper is a must-play for fans of narrative-driven cyberpunk games, whilePoker Club is just a fun way to pass the time and polish up your Texas hold em skills before that next trip to Vegas.Editors Recommendations

The devil's work is never done The trailer for Daredevil: Born Again is here "The city can't be unchecked. Sometimes peace needs to be broken. And chaos must reign." Jennifer Ouellette Jan 15, 2025 12:23 pm | 21 Credit: Marvel Studios Credit: Marvel Studios Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn more Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock returns in Marvel's new series Daredevil: Born Again. Daredevil is among my favorite stories in the Netflix Defenders universealong with Jessica Jonesin large part because Wilson Fisk (aka Kingpin, played to perfection by Vincent D'Onofrio), was such an incredibly complex and even occasionally sympathetic villain in the first and second seasons. I'm far from alone in this assessment, which explains why it was such a blow to fans when Netflix canceled the critically acclaimed Daredevil (and the rest of its Defenders series) in 2018, despite the showrunners' plans for a fourth season.Charlie Cox's titular vigilante hero has since made a couple of cameos in other Marvel projects, most notably as a one-night stand for Tatiana Maslany's She-Hulk in 2022. That kept hope alive that Daredevil might be revived and/or re-imagined. The hope has paid off because Marvel Studios just released a trailer for the new nine-episode series Daredevil: Born Again. And the studio has already confirmed a second season as part of the MCU's Phase Five.D'Onofrio's Fisk (who also appeared in the limited series Echo and Hawkeye) is back, of course. Per the official premise: "Murdock, a blind lawyer with heightened abilities, is fighting for justice through his bustling law firm, while former mob boss Wilson Fisk pursues his own political endeavors in New York. When their past identities begin to emerge, both men find themselves on an inevitable collision course." Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) has come up in the world since his vigilante days as Daredevil. Marvel Studios Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) has come up in the world since his vigilante days as Daredevil. Marvel Studios Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio): "Its not entirely unpleasant seeing you again." Marvel Studios Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio): "Its not entirely unpleasant seeing you again." Marvel Studios The band's back together! Marvel Studios The band's back together! Marvel Studios Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio): "Its not entirely unpleasant seeing you again." Marvel Studios The band's back together! Marvel Studios Also returning are Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page and Elden Henson as Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt's BFF and law partner, as well as Ayelet Zurer as Fisk's wife Vanessa Marianna and Wilson Bethel as the psychopathic former FBI agent Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter, who once masqueraded as Daredevil. Jon Bernthal will reprise his role as Frank Castle/The Punisher, and Matt will get a love interest in a woman named Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva).In addition, Mohan Kapur reprises his MCU role as Yusuf Khan, while Kamar de los Reyes plays Hector Ayala/White Tiger. The cast also includes Michael Gandolfini, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki M. James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Jeremy Earl, and Lou Taylor Pucci.The trailer mostly consists of Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk (now the mayor) having a tense conversation in a diner now that they've both, in Fisk's words, "come up in the world." Their conversation is interspersed with other footage from the series, including the trademark brutal fight scenescomplete with bones breaking in various unnatural ways. And yes, we get a glimpse of a bearded Frank Castle/The Punisher in attack mode ("Frank! Would you mind putting the hatchet down?").Fisk insists that as mayor, his intent is to serve the city, but Matt "can't shake the feeling that you're gaming the system." Matt admits he abandoned his vigilante ways after "a line was crossed." Fisk naturally believes we all have to "come to terms with our violent nature" and insists that sometimes "peace must be broken and chaos must reign." As for Matt, sure, he was raised a devout Catholic to believe in grace, "but I was also raised to believe in retribution." We're ready for another showdown between these two.Daredevil: Born Again drops on March 4, 2025, on Disney+. Credit: Marvel Studios Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 21 Comments

US TikTok users are flocking to Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, also known as Red NoteCheng Xin/Getty ImagesA looming TikTok ban in the US has prompted many of the apps American users to try other Chinese-owned social media apps such as Red Note and Lemon8. These host short-form videos and photos and have recently become the most downloaded mobile apps on the US Apple App Store and Google Play store.But Red Note the English name for the Chinese app Xiaohongshu

Meta has released a new AI model that can translate speech from 101 different languages. It represents a step toward real-time, simultaneous interpretation, where words are translated as soon as they come out of someones mouth. Typically, translation models for speech use a multistep approach. First they translate speech into text. Then they translate that text into text in another language. Finally, that translated text is turned into speech in the new language. This method can be inefficient, and at each step, errors and mistranslations can creep in. But Metas new model, called SeamlessM4T, enables more direct translation from speech in one language to speech in another. The model is described in a paper published today in Nature. Seamless can translate text with 23% more accuracy than the top existing models. And although another model, Googles AudioPaLM, can technically translate more languages113 of them, versus 101 for Seamlessit can translate them only into English. SeamlessM4T can translate into 36 other languages. The key is a process called parallel data mining, which finds instances when the sound in a video or audio matches a subtitle in another language from crawled web data. The model learned to associate those sounds in one language with the matching pieces of text in another. This opened up a whole new trove of examples of translations for their model. Meta has done a great job having a breadth of different things they support, like text-to-speech, speech-to-text, even automatic speech recognition, says Chetan Jaiswal, a professor of computer science at Quinnipiac University, who was not involved in the research. The mere number of languages they are supporting is a tremendous achievement. Human translators are still a vital part of the translation process, the researchers say in the paper, because they can grapple with diverse cultural contexts and make sure the same meaning is conveyed from one language into another. This step is important, says Lynne Bowker of the University of Ottawas School of Translation & Interpretation, who didnt work on Seamless. Languages are a reflection of cultures, and cultures have their own ways of knowing things, she says. When it comes to applications like medicine or law, machine translations need to be thoroughly checked by a human, she says. If not, misunderstandings can result. For example, when Google Translate was used to translate public health information about the covid-19 vaccine from the Virginia Department of Health in January 2021, it translated not mandatory in English into not necessary in Spanish, changing the whole meaning of the message. AI models have much more examples to train on in some languages than others. This means current speech-to-speech models may be able to translate a language like Greek into English, where there may be many examples, but cannot translate from Swahili to Greek. The team behind Seamless aimed to solve this problem by pre-training the model on millions of hours of spoken audio in different languages. This pre-training allowed it to recognize general patterns in language, making it easier to process less widely spoken languages because it already had some baseline for what spoken language is supposed to sound like. The system is open-source, which the researchers hope will encourage others to build upon its current capabilities. But some are skeptical of how useful it may be compared with available alternatives. Googles translation model is not as open-source as Seamless, but its way more responsive and fast, and it doesnt cost anything as an academic, says Jaiswal. The most exciting thing about Metas system is that it points to the possibility of instant interpretation across languages in the not-too-distant futurelike the Babel fish in Douglas Adams cult novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. SeamlessM4T is faster than existing models but still not instant. That said, Meta claims to have a newer version of Seamless thats as fast as human interpreters. While having this kind of delayed translation is okay and useful, I think simultaneous translation will be even more useful, says Kenny Zhu, director of the Arlington Computational Linguistics Lab at the University of Texas at Arlington, who is not affiliated with the new research.