Apple's seemingly dotting the 'I's and crossing the 'T's before the official launch of the next-gen Powerbeats Pros

Although President-elect Donald Trump could choose to not enforce the law, it's unclear whether third-party internet service providers will support the app.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court voted Friday to uphold a law that will require TikTok to shut down as soon as Sunday, unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, agrees to sell the app.The court agreed with the U.S. government that it is within its rights to try to mitigate the national security risk that Congress has decided TikTok poses.There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikToks data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary, the justices wrote in an unsigned decision. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners First Amendment rights.The decision is a devastating blow for TikTok, as well as free speech advocates who have long warned that cutting off Americans access to TikTok would set a dangerous precedent for government suppression of speech. The Supreme Courts ruling is incredibly disappointing, allowing the government to shut down an entire platform and the free speech rights of so many based on fear-mongering and speculation, said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLUs National Security Project. By refusing to block this ban, the Supreme Court is giving the executive branch unprecedented power to silence speech it doesnt like, increasing the danger that sweeping invocations of national security will trump our constitutional rights.The case before the court concerned the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law last year. The law did not explicitly ban TikTok, but instead would effectively force the app to shut down by prohibiting any app stores or hosting services from doing business with foreign adversary controlled applications. Under the law, TikTok, ByteDance, and any of its affiliates are included in that classification, and violators risk penalties of $5,000 per user if they fail to comply. The only escape hatch for ByteDance would include a divestment that satisfies the presidents national security concerns. (TikTok did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment.)During oral arguments last week, the U.S. solicitor general argued that, in this way, the law side-steps First Amendment concerns, because all of the same speech thats happening on TikTok could happen post-divestiture.The justices agreed. It is not clear that the Act itself directly regulates protected expressive activity, or conduct with an expressive component. Indeed, the Act does not regulate the creator petitioners at all. And it directly regulates ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok Inc. only through the divestiture requirement, the decision reads. TikTok, they wrote, had not identified any case in which this Court has treated a regulation of corporate control as a direct regulation of expressive activity or semi-expressive conduct. We hesitate to break that new ground in this unique case.The justices emphasized throughout that their decision should be read narrowly, due to the particulars of the case namely TikToks scale and susceptibility to foreign adversary control.A law targeting any other speaker would by necessity entail a distinct inquiry and separate considerations, they wrote.Justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonia Sotomayor each wrote their own concurring opinions. In his concurrence, Gorsuch emphasized that the court had not endorsed the governments argument that it has the right to prevent the covert manipulation of content on TikTok. One mans covert content manipulation is anothers editorial discretion, Gorsuch wrote. And yet, he said he was persuaded that the law before us seeks to serve a compelling interest: preventing a foreign country, designated by Congress and the President as an adversary of our Nation, from harvesting vast troves of personal information about tens of millions of Americans.Just what will happen next is still unclear. TikTok has previously said that, if the Supreme Court sided with the government, it would shut down this Sunday, as required under the law. While the app would not disappear from users phones, they could reportedly see a pop up notification beginning Sunday, informing them about the ban. Some users, preparing for this possibility, have already fled in protest to another Chinese app, Rednote, illustrating the challenge of playing whack-a-mole with consumer applications.Its still possible that President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated Monday, will issue an executive order that would suspend enforcement of the ban. In an interview on Fox this week, Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, who is Trumps pick for national security advisor said, I dont want to get ahead of our executive orders, but were going to create this space to put that deal in place. In a sign of Trumps allegiance to the company, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to join fellow tech executives including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg at the inauguration Monday.Still, such an order would, itself, likely be subject to legal challenges, and app store giants like Apple and Google, as well as hosting providers, may be skittish about openly flouting the law, despite the new presidents assurances that it wont be enforced.In Congress, meanwhile, Democratic Senator Ed Markey introduced his own bill to extend the deadline for the ban by 270 days, but the bill has faced opposition from conservatives, including Arkansas senator and China hawk Tom Cotton. On Thursday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer joined in calling on his colleagues to push forward an extension, writing on Bluesky that its clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer for TikTok.We will continue working to keep TikTok alive, protect content creators livelihoods, protect against [Chinese Communist Party] surveillance, and protect national security, he wrote. I will work with the Trump Admin to find a solution.

Our 21st-Century Architecture: 25 Years 25 Buildings pick for 2011 is the National 9/11 Memorial, designed by Michael Arad of Handel Architects a powerful symbol of loss, remembrance and healing.The most significant building of 2011 was not actually a building in fact, it was almost the opposite. Few events loom so large in the 21st century as the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center towers in September 2001.Completed 10 years later, the National 9/11 Memorial takes the form of two granite-lined reflecting pools that trace the former footprints of the Minoru Yamasaki-designed skyscrapers.It represents an architecture of absence, a sort of wound in the urban fabric that pointed to the horror of that day and its legacy.Taking cues from other abstract modern monuments, it signalled a sense of closure in the aftermath of the attacks, a new era for New York City and the complexities of rebuilding in such a dense environment.The National 9/11 Memorial was designed by Michael Arad of Handel Architects. Photo courtesy of the 9/11 Museum & Memorial, Jin Sup LeeAfter local officials decided that there should be no buildings on the site, in 2004 a call was put out for designs for a memorial, in line with the masterplan by American architect Daniel Libeskind.The competition, which attracted almost 5,200 entrants, was won by a relatively unknown Israeli-American architect named Michael Arad.His design, called Reflecting Absence, took a minimalist, non-representational approach to memorialising the tragedy, calling to mind both Maya Lin's Vietnam War Memorial and Peter Eisenman's Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.The memorial is part of the wider Ground Zero redevelopment site. Photo courtesy of Handel ArchitectsInsistent on sparing no expense for the memorial and the redevelopment around it, the local and state governments set up the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) to oversee the distribution of funds and construction.Soon, the complexities of the infrastructure downtown, the need to appeal to the public and the families of victims and the multiple different agencies, politicians and other architects involved with the project created difficulties for the memorial. This was compounded by Arad's apparent intransigence on any edits to his design.A New York magazine piece in 2006 reported Arad feuding constantly with his primary collaborators Max Bond Jr of Davis Brody Bond and landscape architect Peter Walker, as well as with government officials and architects Libeskind and Santiago Calatrava.Its mysterious disappearance captures and holds your attention in a way most unusual for the static medium of conventional architectureMartin Filler for Slate"Design, it seemed, couldn't create unity; it led only to intractable differences of taste," wrote Ted Loos, emphasising the complexity of such a public project.Many of the planned skyscrapers at the Ground Zero site also seemed to be stalling at the time due to power struggles between developers and the government.However, Arad was embedded into local studio Handel Architects, where he still works today, and progress on the memorial went forward, in part due to championing by then-mayor Michael Bloomberg.It rests in a park designed with landscape architect Peter Walker. Photo courtesy of Handel ArchitectsToday two massive granite-and-steel lined reflecting pools sit on a site surrounded by groves of swamp oak trees. All around the two pools, waterfalls constantly flow, with the water running over serrated weirs, flowing eventually into another void in the bottom.Around the perimeter of the pools are bronze parapets with names of victims engraved clear through, backlit and temperature-controlled so the metal is never too hot or cold to touch.Surrounding the pools, the whole of the public plaza was lifted above street level on a concrete and steel podium topped by granite pavers.Read: 9/11 anniversary: how the World Trade Center site was rebuiltOn one side of the grove is a sculptural, Snhetta-designed pavilion that provides entry to the subterranean 9/11 museum designed by Davis Brody Bond and Aedas.Despite the confusion and lack of coordination among the stakeholders, the memorial was widely considered a success by critics.Martin Filler was astounded at "how this stunning result emerged from such a fraught and contentious process"."The propulsive aural and visual excitement of the three-story-deep waterfall and its mysterious disappearance captures and holds your attention in a way most unusual for the static medium of conventional architecture," he wrote.The surrounding parapet is engraved with the names of the victims. Photo courtesy of the 9/11 Museum & Memorial, Jin Sup LeeMore than 10 years on, it seems that the complex public-private reviews for the memorial led to its strength as a piece of the built environment.Reflecting on the legacy of 9/11 in 2021, Libeskind told Dezeen he thought the destruction in New York had made people pay more attention to architecture, placing more emphasis on citizen input for larger projects.It might be seen as fitting, then, that the 9/11 memorial seems to exemplify this public input and complexity.Arad's design functioned beyond the scope of normal client-architect relationships it was constructed not just for the local stakeholders, but for the whole city, and the nation. It is architecture as wound, reminder and healing.You wouldn't mistake it for an ordinary park or urban piazza, but it isn't a cemetery, eitherPaul Goldberger for the New YorkerWriting for the New Yorker upon its opening, critic Paul Goldberger said that the memorial had managed to somehow turn the void of the tallest buildings in the city into something "monumental"."You wouldn't mistake it for an ordinary park or urban piazza, but it isn't a cemetery, either," considered Goldberger."You feel a sense of dignity and repose, and you see the shapes of the renewed city in the rising skyscrapers, as you should."In the 10 years since the memorial's completion, most of the remaining developments around the structure have gone in, and as Goldberger notes, life in Lower Manhattan has gone on.The memorial represents a sense of architectural perseverance despite complex stakeholder input, but it also embodies a massive historical shift.The state of the world has been indelibly affected by 9/11, with wars ongoing, surveillance ever-increasing and trust eroding, and these two voids serve as markers of that shift of who, and what, we've lost.Did we get it right? Was the The National 9/11 Memorial the most significant building completed in 2011? Let us know in the comments. We will be running a poll once all 25 buildings are revealed to determine the most significant building of the 21st century so far.This article is part of Dezeen's21st-Century Architecture: 25 Years 25 Buildingsseries, which looks at the most significant architecture of the 21st century so far. For the series, we have selected the most influentialbuilding from each of the first 25 years of the century.The illustration is byJack Bedfordand the photography is byNick Merrickunless stated otherwise.21st Century Architecture: 25 Years 25 Buildings2000:Tate Modern by Herzog & de Meuron2001:Gando Primary School by Dibdo Francis Kr2002:Bergisel Ski Jump by Zaha Hadid2003:Walt Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry2004:Quinta Monroy by Elemental2005:Moriyama House by Ryue Nishizawa2006:Madrid-Barajas airport by RSHP and Estudio Lamela2007:Oslo Opera House by Snhetta2008:Museum of Islamic Art by I M Pei2009:Murray Grove by Waugh Thistleton Architects2010:Burj Khalifa by SOM2011: National 9/11 Memorial by Michael AradThis list will be updated as the series progresses.The post The National 9/11 Memorial was the most significant building of 2011 appeared first on Dezeen.

A California-based company called MarsCharge is dedicated to developing EV infrastructure. To design their flagship product, a freestanding commercial charger that can top off two EVs at once, they turned to industrial design consultancy DesignStein Studios. After extensive industry feedback, MarsCharge realized that there was a huge demand for large, standalone EV charging station chargers that actually work. The client built a highly-engineered prototype freestanding DC fast charger that can fully charge most EVs in approximately 20 minutes, which is nearly twice as fast as most standalone DC fast chargers, and arguably one of the fastest on the market today. However, they found it lacking a beautiful design and easy-to-use interface. Styling was paramount. Our client did not want a clunky, boxy-looking charger like most of what exists on the market today. After collaboration with them, we selected three design themes that would embody the charger's design: Monolithic, Annular and Premium. Monolithic designs aren't simply large, their presence stops you in your tracks. Annularity promotes a natural, swooping flow, eliminating the slightest hint of "boxiness" in our design. Premium structures stand alone. You know them when you see them. Together, these Mood Board elements became the inspiration for our sketches.MONOLITH, ANNULAR, PREMIUM With our mood board completed, we explored multiple design directions (below). The first drawings below, with the pencil sketches behind them, are the initial configurations: Our client loved them, and through the collaborative process we encourage with all our clients, they evolved into these detailed concepts: The video below has the full story on how we employed our process with MarsCharge, and helped them use this design to increase their profitability.You can see more of DesignStein Studio's work here.

Any bookworm worth theirwell, bookhas probably experienced this at one point or another, probably when they were kids. Your parents or guardians have turned the lights off because its bedtime already. But you know you cant put your book down because you cant wait until morning to find out what happened. So you dive under the covers and use a flashlight to continue reading until the wee hours of the morning. Of course that doesnt do wonders for your eyesight, but whats a bookworm to do?Designer: Onurhan DemirGood thing we now have some solutions that can help bookworms out. Or at least, we have some concepts that can make it easier. This is a concept for a 2 in 1 lighting design. It is a rechargeable flashlight that can also become a reading lamp that you can use when you want to finish reading a book in the dark. Unlike regular flashlights which can be a bit inconvenient as youre holding a book and turning the page, this one makes it easier as you can clip it to your book. Hopefully the clip can also hold on to thick books, which some bookworms prefer reading sometimes.When in its flashlight mode, it looks like a regular flashlight with its spherical body. It seems a bit small though so I dont know if its something that can be used for a long time. When you want to use it as a reading lamp, you just flip open the clip underneath and then attach it to your book and continue reading even if you dont have the main lights on or if you dont have a desk reading lamp. The product renders show different colors like gray, white, and orange, with the gray one also having orange highlights. Again, we dont know how long the rechargeable light will last, so maybe your thick book will not be finished in one sitting. Now I dont know if the reading lamp function has something that will not damage your eyes so much, as this is still a concept. It would be nice to have that feature though, especially if theyre targeting readers. I mean, most heavy readers develop bad eyesight eventually, so tools like this should not exacerbate our already burdened eyes. But at least, this concept will help free our hands when holding a book, especially if were still reading under the covers. The post 2-in-1 lighting device serves as flashlight and reading lamp first appeared on Yanko Design.

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Without doubt, the remedy Congress and the President chose here is dramatic, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion. Whether this law will succeed in achieving its ends, I do not know.

Metas Instagram and Googles YouTube are getting ready to welcome TikTok users, as the Supreme Court upheld a law that effectively bans the Chinese-owned app from the United States.

MacworldFor a large number of Mac users who are still on Intel-based Macs, theres one very good reason why theyre not switching over to Apple silicon. They do a good amount of work that requires them to switch over to Windows, and Intel Macs are best suited for that.But a major breakthrough is in the works: the folks at Parallels have revealed a new proprietary emulation engine that allows for Intel-based virtual machines in Parallels Desktop 20.2. Using Parallels, users can run x86 versions of Windows 10 or 11,Windows Server 2019 or 2022, or Linux on an M-series Mac.The new feature is provided as a technology preview in Parallels Desktop 20.2, which means its very much a work in progress and has limitations. For example, it only works with 64-bit versions of the Windows operating system, though you can run 32-bit apps within those OSes. The company also says the performance is slowreally slow, with boot times ranging between two and seven minutes. USB devices arent supported yet, theres no sound, and Windows updates may fail to install. Parallels has an article that details what you need to know about using x86 Windows emulation.Even with the limitations, Parallels emulation is a huge deal. The introduction of the M1 Mac in 2020 came with the inability to run x86 versions of Windowsit couldnt be done through virtual machine software like Parallels, and Apple killed the Boot Camp feature that allows users to boot into Windows and run the OS natively on Mac hardware. Eventually, virtual machines were able to support Windows on ARM, but thats not ideal in many situations for people who need to work in real Windows.The Standard Edition of Parallels Desktop for Mac is available as a $100/100 per-year subscription, or as a one-time fee of $129.99/129.99. The Pro Edition and Business Editions are subscription-only for $120/120 and $150/150 per year, respectively. Student pricing is also available.