British architect Dennis Crompton, best known as one of the founders of the experimental collective Archigram, has died at the age of 89.His collaborator Peter Cook announced the news of his death on 21 January in an Instagram post, in which he described Crompton as "Archigram keeper of the flame".Crompton was born in Blackpool in June 1935 and decided he wanted to be an architect at 12 years old.He went on to study architecture at Manchester University, becoming a founding partner of Archigram in 1961 with Cook, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, David Greene and Michael Webb.Archigram was known for its experimental projects such as Instant CityArchigram was originally founded as a magazine, but it later evolved into a collective known for its radical architectural concepts informed by emerging technologies.Though Archigram never completed a building as a group, the collective rose to prominence throughout the 1960s and informed the work of architects including Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster.Influential Archigram didn't complete a buildingIn an exclusive Dezeen video series with Archigram in 2020, Crompton said he believed that many of Archigram's ideas could have been physically realised."There is a practical side to what Archigram members do, it's not just highfalutin, funny, pretty colourful drawings and so on," he said in the video."Had all been well, we would have built a building in Monte Carlo in the 1970s. As it happens, in 1974, there was a tremendous international financial crisis and our clients suddenly weren't able to continue with the project, so it was cancelled."Read: "There is a practical side to Archigram, it's not just funny drawings," says Dennis CromptonArchigram was eventually disbanded in 1975, prompting Crompton to establish Archigram Archives, which he continued to curate for the rest of his life.In 1994, he and Herron used the archive to assemble the landmark exhibition called Archigram: Experimental Architecture 1961-74, held in Vienna.Archive now located in M+ museumToday, the archive, which comprises tens of thousands of drawings and models produced by the group, is owned by the Herzog & de Meuron-designed M+ museum in Hong Kong, which acquired it in 2019.At the time, Crompton welcomed the move, after he had been keeping the group's work under beds and in "various cupboards"."Now it will be all together in a place which is young and enthusiastic," he said.Aside from his work for Archigram, Crompton was a teacher at the Architectural Association (AA) and Bartlett School of Architecture in London.Crompton's passing follows the recent death of Colin Fournier, associate member of Archigram, in 2024 and his co-founders Chalk in 1988 and Herron in 1994.Earlier this year, the industry also lost the Japanese architect Hiroshi Hara, who died aged 88. The architect was best known for designing Osaka's Umeda Sky Building and the Kyoto Station.The post Archigram co-founder Dennis Crompton dies aged 89 appeared first on Dezeen.

I know next to nothing about skateboards, except that one (and only) time I got on one, I fell down and nearly broke something. So after that incident, I was relegated to just watching my neighbors skate and over the years would occasionally catch it on YouTube for some tournaments. I see the boards though as pretty cool, especially the ones that have been artistically designed (which is most of them).Designer: Zieta StudioIf youre like me and you think skateboards are cool, particularly the longboards, then youll be interested in this piece called Bolid. Well, its not a longboard that you can actually use but rather, it uses the design of one as the basis for this structural mirror. This was originally designed for Italian brand Pirelli but soon you can have one in your home if you want to display a longboard that stands as an actual mirror. Bolid is made with the FiDU proprietary technology, using sheets of steel to create your desired longboard shape. So you have an oblong and dynamic shaped object with two versions. The silver innox version has aluminum trucks and white wheels while the emerald green finish has green or black wheels. You can mount it on your wall or just place it against the wall, although the latter will have the risk of it falling over and maybe breaking. So its safer to just have it permanently fixed on your wall or you can just leave it lying around and hope that no one would think that they can actually skate on it. While its a sculptured mirror, you probably wont be able to use it as a full mirror given its shape and the polished surface finish. Sure theres still some reflection that you can look at but you best stick to your actual mirror if youre trying to put on make up or you want to look at your entire fit. This is more of an aesthetic piece of furniture for those that want to have longboards propped against their walls just for the vibe. Even the product photos show Bolid as more of a piece of art that you can display in your home rather than an actual mirror. As they say, this design actually defies classification.The post Bolid is a longboard-shaped structural mirror that gives cool vibes first appeared on Yanko Design.

Everything we expect from the next updates to Epic Games' engine.

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The creators of a new test called Humanitys Last Exam argue we may soon lose the ability to create tests hard enough for A.I. models.

MacworldAmong the less-publicized features introduced late last year in iOS 18.2 is a massive change to the Mail app. For longtime users of the Mail app, it was a shock to the system and definitely takes some getting used to. But if that hasnt happened, theres good newsyou can change it back to the old way.The new Mail app breaks the Inbox into several categories: Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. The categories are fairly self-explanatory:Primary:Personal and other time-sensitive messages.Transactions:Purchases, receipts, and shipping messages.Updates:Newsletters, mailing lists, and social updates.Promotions: Coupons, sales announcements, and spam that doesnt land in junk.Once you start using iOS 18.2, the new Mail will be on by default and messages will automatically begin routing to their respective categories. Any folders will remain, of course, but your Mail experience is definitely different.For one, your Mail badge will only show the count for messages in the Primary category, which means dozens of messages could go unread for hours or even days. And since everything is done automatically, some important messages might get routed to the wrong category. However, all time-sensitive messages will appear in the Primary view even if theyve been routed to other categories.If you dont trust it or just plain dont like it, the good news is you can change it back to the old way with very little trouble. In your inbox, tap the three-dot menu at the top-right and youll see an option for List View. Tap it and youll return to the old way of doing things with a chronological inbox.For now, the new Mail is only for the iPhone and iPad, but its coming soon to the Mac in macOS 15.4.

MacworldI know the road is well-trod by now, but yes, were back to talk about Apple Intelligence once again. Why? Well, for better or worse, it seems to be pretty much all that Apple wants to talk about these days, and when the company has put this much time, energy, and, yes, marketing attention onto a single feature, then scrutiny is, also for better or worse, what you get.While the features under this Apple Intelligence banner have had their fair share of problems so fareverything from inaccurate news summaries to misidentifying spousesnone of that seems to have slowed Apples adoption of the technology. With the news that the upcoming iOS 18.3 and macOS 15.3 updates will activate Apple Intelligence by default, the company continues to plow full speed ahead, directly into a minefield thats also somehow replete with both asteroids and icebergs.Apple Intelligence agencyApples AI features exist in a Schrdingeresque limbo: the company continues to label them as betas (in increasingly fine print, it seems) while simultaneously using them to sell its products. Go to Apples website right now, and the top spot on the companys homepage is a banner for the iPhone 16 Pro with the subtitle Hello, Apple Intelligence. The company is having its cake Genmoji and eating it too.Unsurprisingly, this stems mainly from its business concerns. AI is on the tip of everyones tongue right now, and Apple both has to be seen to be relevant and, moreover, has to be relevant by incorporating said features. The company was caught flat-footed in the AI groundswell and has had to scramble to catch up, which means telling everybody loudly that it has now caught up, even if it hasnt.From a purely technological standpoint, the change to make Apple Intelligence opt-out rather than opt-in makes sense from a couple of standpoints. One, it eliminates any steps for people who have Apple Intelligence capable devices, making those features immediately available to people who might not have otherwise known they were there or spent the time figuring out howor even ifto turn them on. As an ancillary benefit, enabling these features expands the pool of people using them, which helps the company gather analytics and metrics, in turn feeding into improving those features.Is there a risk for Apple in making this move? Sure. Some people will be confused or unaware of what the features are doing and might end up with unexpected or misleading results, despite Apples attempts to provide caveats. Some people will be upset that the features were enabled without their explicit permission. (You dont have to look far on social media these days to see similar uproars about more innocuous capabilities that people have lumped in with generative AI.) But to Apple, the benefits clearly outweigh any potential downsides.The same cant necessarily be said for users.Fight for the usersLets start with this: I dont believe AI features to be a total waste of time. There are obvious utilities to machine learning algorithms of the kinds that Apple has been employing for years and even generative AI and Large Language Models can be tremendously useful within certain contexts. But those technologies are also not without their costs, including everything from the unauthorized use of intellectual property to their not infrequent errors to the environmental impact.Apple Intelligence features can be useful, but they can also be frustrating.AppleAnd this is where Apples move to enable Apple Intelligence by default raises an eyebrow. Given the contentious nature of these features, there is understandable frustration to users immediately having their devices start utilizing this functionality without their say-so. Its not dissimilar from Googles recent choice to start serving up an AI overviewoften with hilariously bad informationat the top of its search results. Like Apple, Google is struggling to prove its relevance in a field that risks leaving it behind, but its a move that I would argue has made Googles product worse, and even cheapened their brand overall. Thats a risk for Apple too, and its a company that lives by its reputation more than most.But its not all downside: for every person upset about Apples choice to automatically enable Apple Intelligence, there may be another who benefits from the addition of its proofreading tools or delights in making Genmoji, and might never have found those features had they not been on by default.Gimme an A, gimme an I, what does it spell? AI.dunno?Its not as if there isnt precedent for this on Apples part. The company has long taken a paternalistic approach to its users, whether it be in swapping scrolling direction on the Mac, insisting that people held its phones wrong, or getting rid of small phones. It probably shouldnt be surprising that the company would go down this roadbut that doesnt mean its not disappointing.Like it or not, Apple Intelligence isnt going anywhere. The company has one more set of promised features to deliver before the presumably next round is unveiled at Junes Worldwide Developers Conference, and there exists the possibilityslim, perhapsthat those capabilities might prove the whole endeavor worthwhile. But dont be surprised if the number of Google searches for how to turn off Apple Intelligence start climbingjust remember that putting glue into your phone is never the answer.

Chinese AI developer DeepSeek has unveiled an open-source version of its reasoning model, DeepSeek-R1, featuring 671 billion parameters and claiming performance superior to OpenAIs o1 on key benchmarks.DeepSeek-R1 achieves a score of 79.8% Pass@1 on AIME 2024, slightly surpassing OpenAI-o1-1217, the company said in a technical paper. On MATH-500, it attains an impressive score of 97.3%, performing on par with OpenAI-o1-1217 and significantly outperforming other models.On coding-related tasks, DeepSeek-R1 achieved a 2,029 Elo rating on Codeforces and outperformed 96.3% of human participants in the competition, the company added.For engineering-related tasks, DeepSeek-R1 performs slightly better than DeepSeek-V3 [another model from the company], which could help developers in real-world tasks, DeepSeek said.DeepSeek-R1 is available on the AI development platform Hugging Face under an MIT license, allowing unrestricted commercial use.The company also offers distilled versions of R1, ranging from 1.5 billion to 70 billion parameters, with the smallest capable of running on a laptop. The full-scale R1, which requires more powerful hardware, is available via API at costs up to 95% lower than OpenAIs o1.As a reasoning model, R1 would self-check its outputs, potentially reducing errors common in other models. Although slower, reasoning models offer increased reliability in fields such as physics, science, and math.Accelerating the AI arms raceThe race for building language models has intensified especially with changing geopolitical realities.While OpenAI and other US-based firms definitely have the first mover advantage, China has been investing a lot in AI to build its capabilities to become a good second mover, saidSharathSrinivasamurthy, associate vice president atIDC.In real-world enterprise applications, DeepSeek-R1s performance on key metrics translates to improved capabilities in mathematical reasoning, problem-solving, and coding tasks.Although this suggests that DeepSeek-R1 could potentially outperform OpenAIs o1 in practical scenarios requiring these specific competencies, the eventual outcome still depends on various factors within the broader AI ecosystem, such as the AI readiness of data, RAG and agent support, ModelOps and DevOps toolchain integrations, cloud and data infrastructure support, and AI governance, said Charlie Dai, VP and principal analyst at Forrester.Moreover, while R1s claims of superior performance are appealing, its true effectiveness remains uncertain due to a lack of clarity about the data it has been trained on.The models are only as good as the data they are trained on, Srinivasamurthy said. With restrictive policies in China on data consumption and publication, there is a possibility that the data might be biased or incomplete.Srinivasamurthy also noted that the true potential of LLMs lies in handling multiple modalities like text and images. While many models have achieved this, R1 has room to grow to become a comprehensive solution.Potential for enterprise useDeepSeek-R1s MIT license, allowing unrestricted commercial use and customization, along with its lower costs, positions it as an appealing and cost-effective option for enterprise adoption.However, enterprises may need to factor in additional costs associated with the MIT license, such as customization, fine-tuning, and adapting the model to meet specific business needs for a higher ROI, according to Mansi Gupta, senior analyst at Everest Group.Businesses outside China may also be reluctant to use their data to train the model or integrate it into their operations due to regulatory challenges affecting AI adoption. Enterprises must carefully assess the geopolitical risks tied to using R1, particularly for global operations, Gupta said. This includes navigating Chinese regulations and conducting thorough compliance assessments and risk analyses. Ultimately, the adoption of R1 will depend on how well enterprises can optimize the trade-off between its potential ROI and these geopolitical and regulatory challenges.