Yesterday, Samsung wowed the tech world with its global launch of the Galaxy S25 series. If youre eyeing these cutting-edge devices, heres why pre-ordering from Samsungs official store is your best bet.See Galaxy S25 Series at Samsung.comDouble Storage, Same PriceSamsungs ditched the 128GB option, recognizing modern needs for more space. Now, youre getting double the storage without paying extra: The Galaxy S25 Ultra 512GB is priced at just $1299, down from $1419, and matches the cost of the 256GB model. Same discount applies for the Galaxy S25 and S25+. This applies across the board get 512GB for 256GB pricing, or 1TB for the cost of 512GB. Its perfect for those who love capturing high-quality photos and videos.See Galaxy S25 Ultra at Samsung.comInstant Samsung CreditDepending on your chosen model, youll receive between $50 and $150 in instant Samsung credit. This bonus can be used on accessories that are already discounted. For instance, if you opt for the Galaxy S25 Ultra or S25+, you can snag the Galaxy Buds3 Pro for free using this credit. There are also substantial discounts on Galaxy Watches (including the most premium Watch Ultra) which ranges from 50% to 80% off.Massive Trade-In OffersTrading in your old smartphone can save you up to $900 on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Even if youre eyeing the base Galaxy S25 model, you can still get up to $500 in trade-in value (and $700 in trade-in value for a Galaxy S25+). This is an great opportunity to upgrade to the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor so that you can fully utilize all of Samsungs new AI features.See Galaxy S25 at Samsung.comExclusive Color OptionsSamsungs official website offers exclusive colorways for all three Galaxy S25 models (Titanium Jetblack or Jetgreen for the S25 Ultra, etc.). These unique shades arent available through any other retailer, giving you a chance to truly stand out with your new device.Samsung Rewards CashbackEarn 1.5% back in Samsung Rewards points on your entire purchase. While it might seem small, these points accumulate and can be used across Samsungs entire store, helping you save on future purchases.Guaranteed Timely DeliveryBe among the first to get your hands on the new Galaxy S25 series. Pre-orders through Samsungs official site are guaranteed to ship starting February 7th worldwide. This isnt always the case with other retailers who might struggle with stock issues.When you combine all these bonuses and advantages, the cost of these premium smartphones drops significantly.Lets break it down for the Galaxy S25 Ultra 512GB:Initial price: $1299 (already $120 off the original $1419)Potential trade-in: Up to $900 offInstant Samsung credit: $150Cashback: 1.5% of your purchaseAfter applying these pre-order discounts, youre getting Samsungs most premium Android device arguably the most advanced smartphone on the market for a fraction of its retail price. Remember, this is a very limited-time pre-order special that disappear in less than a week. Samsung reserves the right to end the offer at any time, we really recommend not to wait for too long.See Galaxy S25 at Samsung.comSee Galaxy S25+ at Samsung.comSee Galaxy S25 Ultra at Samsung.com

"You Have to Leave Some Space for the Future People to Interpret": In Conversation with Zhu PeiOver the last eight years, I have interviewed Beijing-based architect and educator Zhu Pei several times. His persistent quest to combine traditional planning and construction principles with innovative formal and spatial sensibilities intrigues me. His latest projects, including Zijing International Conference Camp (2022) and Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum (2020), are widely published and represent his most mature works. Yet, he is convinced that his best building is in the making. "This is going to be amazing! I feel so excited!" the architect told me, referring to his now under-construction Majiayao Ruins Museum and Observatory in Gansu province in Northwestern China. "I hate column-beam solutions. I want column-free spaces for the public building," he continued. Our conversation took place earlier this year on a video call, complete with dozens of relevant illustrations.Save this picture!The architect spoke to me from his house in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where he likes to spend time whenever it is possible to break from his responsibilities in Beijing, where Zhu Pei leads a ten-person practice and heads the Architecture School at the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts, CAFA. We discussed his upbringing in Beijing, his reasons for going into architecture, and the lessons he learned from his mentorsprofessors Guan Zhaoye, Yang Tingbao, and Charles Correa, under whom he studied at the University of California at Berkeley. Another fundamental figure for Zhu Pei is Le Corbusier. His Oeuvre Complete in Eight Volumes is a constant companion for the architect who owns several sets. Like Le Corbusier, Zhu Pei developed Five Points that define his philosophy. They constitute Incomplete Integrity, Sponge Architecture, Cave and Nest, Sitting Posture, and Structure and Form. All five are explained in detail in the video.Save this picture!In our conversation, Zhu Pei repeatedly compared architecture to art and nature. "If we don't treat architecture as art, it will disappear," he insisted. His work is a kind of bridge between tradition and innovation, gained knowledge and creativity, history and modernity. A courtyard and a garden are perpetual metaphors for Zhu Pei's architecture. He thoroughly explained the intentions behind the design of the Conference Camp, Imperial Kiln Museum, and Ruins Museum. All three projects exemplify such design strategies as leaving buildings incomplete and not fully occupied, seeking inspiration in traditional village settlements, breaking architecture into elements, reacting to local culture and climate, and, while relying on traditions, never bluntly following conversions. Related Article Beijing Architecture City Guide: 28 Projects to Understand Contemporary Architecture in a 3,000-Year-Old City In conclusion, Zhu Pei spoke about trying to forget what he has done in the past, the evolution of his work, how his practice operates, teaching, and being the dean at CAFA. Underlining architecture's multidiscipline nature and complexity, he concluded, "You have to love architecture!" Earlier this year, Zhu Pei's Exhibition, "Poetic Imaginations: Interweaving Architecture with Traditional Values," showcased six completed and under-construction projects at the Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin.Save this picture!Zhu Pei (b. 1962, Beijing, China) is one of China's leading architects. He completed his studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing and the University of California at Berkeley and founded Studio Zhu Pei in 2005. Apart from the abovementioned Imperial Kiln Museum, Performing Arts Center, and Ruins Museum, the architect's most notable works include Zibo Art Center (2020), CUBE Art Museum at 798 (2020), Shou County Culture and Art Center (2019), Minsheng Museum of Modern Art (2015), Taimiao Art Museum (2015), and Cai Guoqiang Courtyard House Renovation (2007). Zhu Pei taught at Harvard and Columbia Universities; he has been the dean and professor at the School of Architecture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, CAFA, in Beijing since 2018, and he is a visiting professor at Yale University. In addition to Aedes in Berlin, the architect's works have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Venice Biennales, Centre Pompidou, Victoria and Albert Museum, Kassel, and MAXXI.Save this picture!Save this picture!Vladimir Belogolovsky (b. 1970, Odesa, Ukraine) is a New York-based curator and critic who runs his Curatorial Project focusing on curating and designing architectural exhibitions worldwide.Image gallerySee allShow lessAbout this authorCite: Vladimir Belogolovsky. ""You Have to Leave Some Space for the Future People to Interpret": In Conversation with Zhu Pei" 23 Jan 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1026107/you-have-to-leave-some-space-for-the-future-people-to-interpret-in-conversation-with-zhu-pei&gt ISSN 0719-8884More interviews from ourYouTube ChannelSave!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Back in the days of yore, language translation was a highly specialized profession, critical for coordinating diplomacy or international trade. The first bilingual dictionary book, Vocabularius ex quo, was a German-Latin set of words published in 1467, while clay tablets containing lists of works in Sumerian and Akkadian date back as early as 2300 B.C.Language translation has become easier over the years in many cases thanks to the work of linguists and other anthropologists. The development of computers and eventually, artificial intelligence, has given a massive push to language translation, taking it out of the hands of specialists or weighty books and into our phones.But how has translation applications like Google Translate developed over time, and what were their predecessors?How Computer Translation StartedPeople have tried to use computers to translate languages since the mid-20th century.The idea of online translation was something that people strived for when computers began, says Jaroslaw Kutylowski, the CEO of DeepL, a company that provides translation services using neural systems.In fact, one of the first uses of computers for something beyond numbers was an experiment conducted in 1954 after several years of work by researchers at Georgetown University and IBM. The demonstration only translated around 250 words using six grammar rules mostly brief statements in Russian about science, law and military affairs that were converted into English in a matter of seconds.The possibilities of this program were limited though, and the translation required a lot of post editing. Not much progress was made for the next decade. In fact, experiments were so underwhelming that a report released in 1966 by the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee, set up by the U.S. government and made up of linguists and machine translation researchers, determined that there wasnt much hope in the near-term.The Committee indeed believes that it is wise to press forward undaunted, in the name of science, but that the motive for doing so cannot sensibly be any foreseeable improvement in practical translation, the report said.The Beginning of SYSTRANThe report effectively killed most work on translation for years, except for System and Translation (SYSTRAN). Peter Toma, a scientist who believed the road to world peace could be achieved through communication, started SYSTRAN in the late 1960s.The company worked with the U.S. Air Force, and used machines to translate instructions from Russian to English for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, a joint U.S.-Soviet space mission launched in 1975.SYSTRAN continued to develop their product, which was used by the online search engine AltaVista, which created Babel Fish in the late 1990s, and would later be bought by Yahoo! At least in the early days, the tool had limited translation abilities, only handling up to 150 words.Thats a lot of work, and it requires combined effort by linguists and coders, Kutylowski says, adding that it gets even more complicated with languages with incredibly complicated grammar like Japanese or Finnish.Google didnt catch up to Yahoo! until 2006, when it launched Google Translate. The latter has gotten increasingly sophisticated, moving from simple text translation online to phone applications. In 2014, Google acquired Word Lens, which allowed users to point their phone camera at written words on things like road signs or menus and get a translation. Word Lens also helped Google improve its ability to listen to spoken words and translate them.The Role of Artificial IntelligenceThe trouble was language translation remained an imperfect science at best. In general, the world of computer translation progressed from doing one word at a time, to short phrases, to sentences over a period of roughly half a century, says Kutylowski.But machines are still apt to miss things like context, making words with two or more meanings sometimes hard to translate. But in 2016, artificial intelligence had opened new possibilities for machine translation. Google began to work with neural machine translation, which essentially meant creating a neural network that wouldnt just translate words or phrases, but entire passages.DeepL started using neural networks to build a translation program to sell to international companies in 2017. Weve been in this gold rush of neural networks, Kutylowski says. Translation has such a broad application both in private and in business.To do this properly, he says that you need massive amounts of passages that have already been translated between one language and another. Experts ideally need scientific text, legal text, and all types of language that are translated to teach the machine learning systems how to better operate. Neural machine translation is an attempt to create neural systems that operate more like a human brain. Rather than teach it grammar, Kutylowski says, it just picks up the text and learns more like humans, who can pick up a language without implicitly learning any grammar rules.That overall learning process, and the overall operation of systems, goes towards the way that we as humans learn a language, he says.These systems are getting better and better at translating, but they will likely always have flaws. The trouble is, communication is an imperfect science, even for two humans that speak the same language. An online translating program can only be as good at translating as humans are at communicating in the first place.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:History of Information. The First Public Demonstration of Machine Translation OccursNASA. Apollo-Soyuz Test ProjectJoshua Rapp Learn is an award-winning D.C.-based science writer. An expat Albertan, he contributes to a number of science publications like National Geographic, The New York Times, The Guardian, New Scientist, Hakai, and others.

Stack CommerceShareWe may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn more After a few years of working on a laptop, I realized my posture had become distinctly turtle-ish. The screen is low, so I hunker down to look at it head-on. That means I dont sit straight and bring my head down low like Im hiding between my shoulders. At this point, my spine probably looked like a weird horseshoe.Thats why Ive been looking at the CASA HUB. Its an 8-in-1 aluminum foldable USB-C stand, and Im hoping itll keep me from putting my weird turtle spine through shell.This device stand works for tablets or lightweight laptops, already a huge plus. It has an adjustable aluminum design thats durable but doesnt take up too much space. Im hoping the adjustable angle really helps break some of my turtle tendencies.This hub is built for more than just comfort. It also comes with eight connectivity ports, including a 4K HDMI output, USB-C Power Delivery input, two USB-A ports, and SD/microSD slots. Translation: it makes switching between work, streaming, and creative projects ridiculously easy. This is really where it earns the price tag. $100 would be steep for an ergonomic stand on its own, but this thing basically makes laptops feel like desktops.What caught my eye was the hubs ability to support crisp 4K@60Hz resolution. Whether Im watching a movie, editing photos, or sharing my screen for work, the visuals promise to stay sharp and seamless. And the hub doesnt just stop at video output; its designed with simultaneous SD and microSD card use in mind, which means I can finally back up files from my camera without juggling adapters. As a Mac user, Im always looking for ways to cut down on adapters because, wow, Ive had to collect a lot.The CASA HUB 360 is also super portable. The lightweight, foldable design should make it easy to carry around, and the silicone pads keep it stable on any surface. Sorry to put all the local chiropractors out of business, but my back deserves this.Copy my idea and give your back a break.Get the CASA HUB 360 Foldable USB-C Hub while its on sale for $99.99. Thats the best price online, too.StackSocial prices subject to change.CASA HUB 360 8-in-1 Aluminum Foldable USB-C Hub Stand $99.99See Deal

ShareThis article was originally featured on The Conversation.Hidden beneath the dunes, a mysterious creature glides through the sand.This is not one of the giant worms of Arrakis in Frank Herberts sci-fi epic, Dune. Rather, its an enigmatic and tiny mammal found only in the deserts of Australia the marsupial mole.There are two related species of the marsupial mole.Notoryctes typhlops, or southern marsupial mole, is found across the deserts of central and southern Australia. It is also alsocalled itjaritjariby the local Indigenous Aangu peoples.Notoryctes caurinus, or the northern marsupial mole, is found in the deserts of northwestern Australia. It is also calledkakarratulby the local Indigenous Martu people.Until recently, these elusive animals have been nearly impossible to study. But ourrecent study in Science Advanceshas finally started to unravel the basis of their incredible desert power.Rarely observedMarsupial moles are small, about the length of a pencil, and weigh between 40 to 70 grams. They have a tubular body, yellow hair and limbs that barely protrude from their sides.Rather than building permanent tunnels like their namesakes in the northern hemisphere,they swim through the loose sands of Australias deserts.The subterranean lifestyle of marsupial moles, along with the vastness of the deserts they inhabit, means they are rarely observed. In fact, there are only a handful of sightings each decade.New technologies, new insightsNew DNA technologies can provide a window into the lives of cryptic species such as the marsupial mole that cant be studied effectively in the wild.To this end, our team worked with theAustralian Biological Tissue Collectionat the South Australian Museum to acquire two tiny tissue samples frozen more than a decade ago from a southern marsupial mole.From these, we extracted extremely long fragments of DNA needed to produce a genome assembly. This is a digital representation of every base or letter that makes up the marsupial moles genetic code.Because DNA contains both the instructions for how to make an organisms traits and a record of its evolutionary history, we were able to glean remarkable insights into this cryptic species.Unique adaptationsMarsupial moles have a variety of unique adaptations that help them survive in their harsh environment. For example, their eyes are tiny and located beneath their skin, making them functionally blind.By comparing the sequences of eye genes to those of related marsupials, we were able to show that marsupial moles first lost genes critical for the eyes lens. This probably happened because a clear image isnt very important underground.This was followed by genes for colour-sensing cone cells in the retina. After the eye had lost considerable function, the last genes to degrade were the ones active in rod cells, important for low-light conditions.In mammals living on the surface, these changes would likely be harmful. Yet, by occurring in the right order, the stepwise degradation of eye genes allowed the marsupial moles ancestors to change gradually without harming their fitness.This is a beautiful illustration of how both adaptations and disorders can share a similar genetic basis, with the line between them being shaped by their context.Other traitsSequencing the genome allowed us to study other traits in marsupial moles.For example, we showed that a key gene involved in testicles dropping during puberty is likely to have also degraded in this species. This may help to explain why male marsupial moles lack a scrotum and have their testes perched in their abdominal wall.We also found that marsupial moles have two copies of a gene encoding haemoglobin the molecule that carries oxygen in red blood cells. This is important because sand has low oxygen levels and poor air movement.Moreover, this duplicated haemoglobin gene is typically used in newborn mammals.The pouch of a marsupial is already a low-oxygen environment, so marsupial moles needed to evolve ways to avoid their young suffocating. Having more haemoglobin may help.Tracing the moles evolutionary heritageFor years the marsupial moles strange, specialised traits have frustrated attempts to determine precisely who its closest relatives actually are. But sequencing its genome has allowed us to trace its evolutionary heritage.To do this, we examined a special type of DNA sequence calledretrotransposons.These are short stretches of DNA that can make copies of themselves that get randomly inserted across an animals genome and passed down through generations.Our examination revealed marsupial moles are a sister group tobandicootsandbilbies, with carnivorous marsupials like theTasmanian devilbeing distant cousins.Long-term declineAlmost nothing is currently known about the population health of marsupial moles. However,deserts are among the ecosystems most threatened by climate change.Given this, we also sought to glean the first insights into how marsupial mole populations have changed over time.Using patterns of genetic diversity across the marsupial mole genome, we were able to show they have likely experienced a long-term decline in effective population size that began around 70,000 years ago. This corresponds with historical changes during the last glacial period, suggesting the decline was because of climate change rather than human actions.Its unclear precisely how genetic diversity lost over tens of thousands of years will affect the marsupial moles ability to continue its record of adaptation to extreme environments.However, these findings highlight that new, more expansive efforts to study marsupial moles through genetic methods may be needed to ensure they arent lost to the sands of time like too many other Australian mammals.

NewsAnimalsMole or marsupial? This subterranean critter with a backward pouch is bothGenetics finally reveal where this enigmatic animal belongs on the family tree This Australian mole, shown eating a centipede, may look like South Africas golden mole but it is more closely related to kangaroos than to the other moles of the world.Mike Gillam/Auscape/Minden PicturesBy Susan Milius33 seconds agoEvolving a dig-in-the-dark mole lifestyle comes with radical anatomical changes, making it hard even to guess the animals closest relatives. Thats why the true identity of Australias most enigmatic and cryptic mammal, the marsupial mole, has been called into question for decades.The two fit-in-your-hand Notoryctes species are elusive. Ive never handled, or even seen, a marsupial mole in my life, and I almost certainly never will, says Stephen Frankenberg, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Sightings are rare. Even in Australia, he says, plenty of people have probably never even heard of them.

Nature, Published online: 23 January 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00118-yAt-home DNA testing is no longer in high demand and critics have raised concerns about unreliable tests and privacy.

Nature, Published online: 23 January 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00183-3The particle-physics funder will provide financial incentives to encourage practices such as data sharing and transparent peer review.

It was a fun piece to work on. The character animations were created by a friend. submitted by /u/CG_K1NG [link] [comments]

David Consolo shared the process of developing a Pong-inspired arcade game during his time at Unreal Fellowship: Games, an intensive program led by industry professionals.Read here and apply: https://80.lv/articles/creating-pong-inspired-arcade-with-unreal-fellowship-games/#ue5 #unrealengine5 #indiedev #gamedev #arcade #pong