A new A.I. model, released by a scrappy Chinese upstart, has rocked Silicon Valley and upended several fundamental assumptions about A.I. progress.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek said it was hit by a cyberattack, prompting the company to restrict user registrations and manage website outages as demand for its AI assistant soared.According to the companys status page, DeepSeek has been investigating the issue since late evening Beijing time on Monday.

Marina Tabassum has been selected as the architect for the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion in London. The Bangladeshi architect and her firm Marina Tabassum Architects will be the 24th designers of the Serpentine Pavilion, an annual event that began with Zaha Hadids commission in 2000.Titled 'A Capsule inTime,' the pavilion will open on June 6th, 2025. Building on Tabassum's contemporary architectural approach rooted in place, climate, culture, and history, the design of the pavilion seeks to create a dialogue between permanence and ephemerality. The design features four wooden capsule forms with translucent faades, inspired by park traditions and arched garden canopies, which filter light to create a dynamic interplay of light and shadow. A central court aligns with Serpentine Souths bell tower, anchoring the design to its surroundings.Rendering of the proposed 2025 pavilion. Image credit: Marina Tabassum Architects via SerpentineA key feature of the pavilion is its kinetic element...

Ever played a racing game that focuses exclusively on the racing aspect and avoids any unnecessary gimmicks or micro-transactions, and respects its roots to the T? I am not sure about you but for me, Tokyo Xtreme Racer fits that bill, a game I have been playing a lot over the last few days. For those who are unaware, the Tokyo Extreme series has been around for almost three decades and primarily focuses on night-time street racing on Tokyos Shuto Expressway. Its Japanese title literally translates to Metropolitan Expressway Battle, an indication that you have go to head-to-head against your rivals and defeat them by either damaging their car or taking a substantial lead over them.The gameplay in Tokyo Xtreme Racer is extremely straight forward. Featuring a battle system called as Spirit Battle, you need to wipe out your opponents health by luring them into making a mistake, crash into them or overtake them and extend the lead over a certain distance. Initial races in the game are 1v1 encounters which begin by getting behind your rivals and flashing your headlight. As noted previously, this gameplay mechanic is simple but extremely addictive at the same time."Featuring a battle system called as Spirit Battle, you need to wipe out your opponents health by luring them into making a mistake, crash into them or overtake them and extend the lead over a certain distance."Taking place in a map which is stretched across 180kms of Shuto Expressway, there are plenty of rivals that you can face-off against, each with varying levels of competence and AI behaviors. This can result into races that can be completed within seconds or some that could last several minutes resulting into a challenging, mouse and cat like experience. You could easily crash into barriers or into ongoing traffic, thereby losing the lead and thereby the match. In fact, your competitor AI can also make the same mistakes and give away the lead to you. Its this unpredictable system that makes racing in Tokyo Xtreme Racer a blast.At its core, Tokyo Xtreme Racer is an arcade experience, but its backed up by some engaging progression mechanics. As you race and win more duels, you will be awarded with skill points which can be used to unlock more vehicles, garage space, new parts and even improve attack and defense parameters of the vehicle. While most of these addons like unlocking parts or increasing vehicle stats make sense in the context of a racing game, some of the stuff like limiting capacity to earn money behind certain skill barriers is absurd. If you do not upgrade this skill type, you will not be able to earn any more money beyond a certain point. You would need to continuously upgrade that skill type so that you do not lose your race credits. Its a weird mechanic that makes no sense at all, and I question and wonder about the logic behind such a system.Tokyo Xtreme Racer also allows you to buy new vehicle parts and even adjust several settings of your vehicle. Its not as detailed as say something like Gran Turismo 7, but its an option for players who want to control some of the finer settings of the vehicles. You can also customize various sections of the vehicles like bumpers and tyres with new cosmetic fittings. Want a cool neon light coming out from all the sides of your vehicle? The game has you covered. All in all, despite being an arcade game, Tokyo Xtreme Racer surprisingly had an in-depth progression and customization mechanic."Tokyo Xtreme Racer also allows you to buy new vehicle parts and even adjust several settings of your vehicle."Tokyo Xtreme Racer also features a story that is told through unvoiced text lines and basic imagery. However, this was one of the least interesting parts of the experience as the game makes no effort in engrossing the player in its plot. Its so basic that the game would be completely fine without it. Hopefully, more will be revealed about the story in the final version, but as it stands now, I found its inclusion to be quite worthless.As noted earlier, Tokyo Xtreme Racer features 180 kilometers worth of the Shuto Expressway to race upon. The map is divided into ramps, and they can be unlocked once you pass through them. However, the game implements a rather inconsistent fast travel system. Once you unlock a ramp, you can only fast travel to it by going through the garage. However, when you are on the track, you cannot fast travel to any ramps of your choice. This made mission completion a tedious endeavor as each rival is located in a different area of the map. So, you have to either drive to reach there (mind you, some of the locations are quite far away) or quit and go back to garage and fast travel to nearest ramp.Another fundamental design flaw is that the games map lacks intermediate diversions. Assume that you are on one side of the road and want to make your way on to the opposing side. You have two ways to do this and both of them are tedious. You can go back to garage and fast travel to the nearest ramp or just travel to a diversion that will likely be miles away from your current location. In a racer that is focused on fast and quick action, these weird design choices deter it from reaching its full potential. Hopefully, these obstructions will be removed or redesigned in the final release. In its current, they merely serve to artificially increase the gameplay time.In its early access release, Tokyo Xtreme Racer features only a handful of soundtracks. They get the job done and jibe well with the action but hopefully the list will be expanded upon with future updates. Visually, the game is going for a unique but a nostalgic art style that is reminiscent of the PlayStation 2 era. After all, not every game has to be a Forza or a Gran Turismo in terms of graphics. The Tokyo Xtreme Racer series has always had its own identity, its own look and feel, and I am glad it sticks to that. The game is also pretty light on PC requirements, and I was able to run at a stable 60fps with every setting maxed out at 4K resolution.As noted earlier, Tokyo Xtreme Racers gameplay is based on draining your opponents health bar. However, when cars crash into each other, there is no visual damage indicator. There is no need for complex damage physics like the ones seen in the F1 games, but at least static damage marks and destruction vfx effects should have been implemented. This is a little detail, but something that will make the racing even more immersive."In its early access release, Tokyo Xtreme Racer features only a handful of soundtracks."Tokyo Xtreme Racer, according to the developer, will be in early access for four months, so, hopefully, the team will be able to aforementioned issues through updates. At the time of writing this review, I havent been able to find a roadmap for the game, so its difficult ascertain what kind of updates are coming in the future.So, the current state of the early access version of Tokyo Xtreme Racer is largely satisfying. There are a few design issues in terms of map layout, fast travel and locking max currency limit behind multiple skill barriers, but there is a lot to like here. The sense of speed, the visuals and performance, the simple yet addictive gameplay and its adherence to the series roots is what makes Tokyo Xtreme Racer standout from the competition.This early access version of the game was reviewed on PC.

The Knickerbocker Theater's roof collapsed under the weight of snowfall, resulting in 98 deaths. Photo by Herbert A. French / Buyenlarge / Getty ImagesAround 9 p.m. on the evening of January 28, 1922, a massive blizzard caused one of the deadliest disasters in Washington, D.C. history.Snow had already been falling for over 24 hours when patrons made their way into the Knickerbocker Theater. This 1,700-person venue was the largest movie house in the nations capital at the time, and one that writer Kevin Ambrose has called the Titanic of Washington theaters. An estimated 500 moviegoers had gathered to see a showing of the silent comedy Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford while outside, the snow continued to accumulate.Just after the shows intermission, tragedy struck. The weight of the snow that had collected atop the theater caused its flat roof to buckle, splitting it down the middle and onto the movie houses concrete balcony. The latter came crashing down as well, trapping dozens of men, women and children beneath a maelstrom of steel and masonry. 1917 photograph of the Knickerbocker Theater Public domain via Wikimedia CommonsWhile people in the surrounding area rushed to the theater to help, the buildup of snow caused many nearby streets to remain obstructed, hindering rescue efforts. Eventually, more than 600 firefighters, soldiers and Marines arrived on the scene, with Army Major George S. Patton (later famous for helping lead the Allies to victory during World War II) tasked with overseeing the operation. The following day, rescuers were still trying to sort through the wreckage to reach those whod been seated in the theaters orchestra section.A total of 98 people were killedincluding former Congressman Andrew Jackson Barchfeld, as well as several notable political and business leadersand 133 injured by the collapsed roof. Later dubbed the Knickerbocker Storm, the weather event remains both one of the largest snowfalls (28 inches in total) and deadliest architectural catastrophes on record in Washington. The buildings collapse was also one of the deadliest structural engineering failures in United States history.Snow Covered Negligence: The Knickerbocker Theater DisasterWatch on The city government, both houses of Congress and the city coroner all launched investigations into the cause of the Knickerbockers roof collapse. All came to the overall conclusion that it was the result of poor design. The buildings construction had included the use of arch beams as roof support, and they simply buckled beneath the weight of the snow. Both the theaters architect, Reginald Gearewho also designed Washingtons Lincoln Theaterand its owner, Harry Crandall, later died by suicide. The Knickerbockers collapse and the investigation that followed eventually paved the way for improvements in the citys building codes, such as the mandated use of steel I-beams and greater roof support.A year after the collapse, architect Thomas Lamb built the Ambassador Theater in the remaining shell of the Knickerbocker, retaining its original facade. In 1969, the building was torn down and later replaced with a bank, followed by a public plaza. Soon, the site may become affordable housing that includes both a public plaza and displays acknowledging the deadly Knickerbocker collapse.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: American History, Architecture, Cities, Congress, Natural Disasters, On This Day in History, Snow, Theater, Washington, D.C., Weather

Large Language Models (LLMs) have become an indispensable part of contemporary life, shaping the future of nearly every conceivable domain. They are widely acknowledged for their impressive performance across tasks of varying complexity. However, instances have arisen where LLMs have been criticized for generating unexpected and unsafe responses. Consequently, ongoing research aims to align LLMs more closely with human preferences while fully leveraging their extensive training data.Methods such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) and Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) have proven effective. However, they still require iterative training, which is often impractical. Researchers are therefore focusing on modifying inference approaches to match the performance of training-based optimization methods. This article explores the latest research that enhances human preference alignment during inference time.Researchers from Shanghai AI Laboratory have introduced Test-Time Preference Optimization (TPO), a novel framework designed to align LLM outputs with human preferences during inference. This framework can be conceptualized as an online, on-policy learning paradigm, where the policy model continuously interacts with a novel reward model to refine its outputs.TPO incorporates a mechanism to leverage interpretable textual feedback for preference optimization instead of conventional numerical scoring. To achieve this, authors translate reward signals into textual rewards through critiques. The model then generates suggestions by the transformed rewards and updates its outputs to align with the signals during testing.During the actual test, the newly generated responses are scored at each inference-time optimization step, and the extreme ends of response quality are classified as chosen or rejected outputs. The model then learns the strength from the best or chosen outputs and the shortfalls of rejected responses to compile a textual loss. The model then generates suggestions or textual gradients for the next iteration. TPO thus improves the output iteratively based on interactions with text rewards.The authors used aligned and unaligned policy models to validate the concept and determine whether the model had undergone preference optimization during training. Two key models included in the study were Llama-3.1-70B-SFT, an unaligned model that did not undergo preference optimization during training, and Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct, an aligned model trained with preference optimization. Additionally, experiments spanned many datasets to evaluate instruction following, preference alignment, safety, and mathematical reasoning.Results from these experiments confirmed that a few TPO optimization steps significantly improved performance in both aligned and unaligned models. When comparing TPO-based inference optimization with traditional training optimization approaches, researchers found that the unaligned Llama-3.1-70B-SFT model outperformed its aligned counterpart Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct after undergoing TPO epochs. Furthermore, applying TPO to an aligned model with as few as 22 billion parameters achieved an LC score of 53.4% and a WR score of 72.2%Conclusion: The research team introduced TPO, an online, on-policy learning framework to align outputs from LLMs by human preference. This framework optimized the responses in inference time and eliminated the hassle of retraining and weight updates. Additionally, TPO offered high scalability and flexibility, making it a promising approach for future LLM works.Check out the Paper and GitHub. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. Dont Forget to join our70k+ ML SubReddit. Adeeba Alam Ansari+ postsAdeeba Alam Ansari is currently pursuing her Dual Degree at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, earning a B.Tech in Industrial Engineering and an M.Tech in Financial Engineering. With a keen interest in machine learning and artificial intelligence, she is an avid reader and an inquisitive individual. Adeeba firmly believes in the power of technology to empower society and promote welfare through innovative solutions driven by empathy and a deep understanding of real-world challenges. Meet 'Height':The only autonomous project management tool (Sponsored)

Thousands of people across the world come to EDUopinions to research schools every day. Its where they get advice, inspiration, and plan for what matters most. Our mission is to help those prospective students find their ideal schools and create their dream futures. In your role, youll be challenged to take on work that upholds this mission and pushes EDUopinions forward.EDUopinions is looking for Student Ambassadors who want to gain invaluable social media marketing and content creation experience. Being an EDUopinions Ambassador means representing EDUopinions and creating an authentic experience for our audience prospective students looking for university rankings and reviews.The Ambassador Program is responsible for bringing honest student reviews to the EDUopinions platform by creating social networking and student outreach campaigns to achieve database objectives. Our goal is to build an inclusive and diverse online student community that provides advice and feedback regarding the university experience at different higher education institutions around the world.An EDUopinions Ambassador will work alongside the Reviews Manager and other student ambassadors, getting exposure in social media campaign strategy and user-generated content creation and gaining firsthand experience in a remote start-up environment. This is a contract role.ResponsibilitiesThink creatively about new ways to engage students through online and offline channelsEncourage students and alumni to share their honest opinions regarding their studies.Provide feedback on challenges and opportunities.QualificationsEnjoys talking to students and grads about higher educationExperience in and understanding of social media platformsMotivated self-starter who takes initiativeBenefitsPartners set their own schedules and are paid based on performance.Fully remote team.Hands-on experience with social media marketing, online networking, and campaign performance dashboard. Related Jobs See more All Other Remote jobs

Foster + Partners' Millenium Bridge in London Source:&nbsp ShutterstockFoster + Partners Millennium Bridge in central London is facing millions of pounds worth of refurbishment works ahead of its 25th birthday Among other works, the iconic pedestrian bridge across the River Thames requires resurfacing, as its aluminium decking has become slippery after years of footfall.The City Bridge Foundation is procuring a contractor to carry out the works to the 325m-long suspension bridge which could cost up to 3.5 million to ensure [that it] remains safe for people to use.The Millennium Bridge was completed in June 2000 but almost immediately closed for 18 months due to lateral movement caused by synchronised footfall.AdvertisementThe structures second spruce-up will involve three strands: all steel areas to be painted and all suspension cables to be re-tensioned, on top of the re-surfacing works.The City Bridge Foundation said: Owing to high footfall over the bridge, the slip-resistance of the top surface of the deck has reduced and in some places the texture has completely worn away.The project will introduce a new surface coating to each deck plank to improve this slip-resistance.The body said in a tender notice that contractors should explore alternative solutions and approaches in order to keep the crossing open as much as possible.The notice added: As a key river crossing it is important that disruption to the users of the bridge is minimised throughout the work.AdvertisementA City Bridge Foundation spokesperson said: Millennium Bridge marks its 25th birthday this year and, with thousands of people walking over it every day, that inevitably takes its toll.The aluminium bridge deck is beginning to become worn, meaning it is now smoother and more slippery than it used to be, so we need to act now to ensure the bridge remains safe for people to use.To ensure the work is as sustainable as possible, were asking potential contractors to remove, clean and replace all the existing aluminium bridge deck panels, which will be covered with a non-slip coating.The work, which we expect to begin by the spring, will also see repainting of the metallic surfaces of the bridge and tightening-up of the suspension cables which support the bridge deck.Were currently considering proposals from a number of companies and, when we have appointed a contractor, will announce further details of when the work will start, how long it will take and any temporary closure that might be required.Designed by Foster + Partners and Arup, the Millennium Bridge links St Pauls Cathedral with the Tate Modern gallery.After its disastrous start, the crossing was re-opened to the public in February 2002 with significant modifications, such as tuned mass dampers to reduce both vertical and horizontal vibrations and viscous dampers to resist sway movements.The tender opportunity has closed to bids and the contract is slated to begin in February. Source:Dafinka/ShutterstockThe Millennium Bridge2025-01-28Greg Pitchercomment and share

Studio Saar and Andrew Kirby Architects' plans for Saxonvale, Frome Source:&nbsp Hayes Davidson for Studio Saar.Somerset Council has boosted plans by two West Country practices for a major new neighbourhood in Frome by agreeing to sell a fought-over site to the social enterprise backing the scheme The local authoritys executive committee voted unanimously in favour of the deal with Mayday Saxonvale Development, which has consent for proposals drawn up by local firm Studio Saar and Totnes-based Andrew Kirby Architects. The scheme is being billed as the UKs first community-led masterplan at scale.The latest decision will see the long-derelict 5ha plot sold to the social enterprise by the end of March for an undisclosed fee.It comes six months after the council rejected a rival bid for the site from Mayday Saxonvale in favour of an offer from Acorn Property Group, which, unexpectedly, pulled out of the deal the next day. The BBC reported at the time that Acorn bosses said they were abandoning plans for the site because the local community [did] not wish to work with them.AdvertisementAcorn had previously won approval for plans to build 300 homes on the town-centre site in 2021, but that scheme came unstuck after a judicial review. A judge found Mendip District Council had not correctly followed its own planning policies by allowing fewer affordable homes and lower-than-acceptable employment space.Jonny Buckland part of the Mayday Saxonvale team and co-founder of Studio Saar, which has offices in Frome as well as Udaipur in India said he was overjoyed at the local authoritys latest decision.He said: Although some might see this as a leap of faith, we now have the chance to show how a community which knows what is best for its town can take ownership and co-design a 5ha brownfield site.The Mayday team has campaigned so hard and given so much time to secure this site and we are committed to ensuring the future needs of the town can be met as the scheme develops.The Studio Saar and Andrew Kirby scheme features 182 residences, including terraced family homes, so-called tiny homes and flats in distinctive residential neighbourhoods.AdvertisementPlans also include 11,000m2 of commercial workspace, as well as community-owned assets, including a hotel, studio space and lido.Leader of Somerset Council Bill Revans said the social enterprise convinced us that they have a business plan that will deliver for the people of Frome.He added: Its proposals are innovative and exciting and we look forward to seeing what happens next.Mayday Saxonvale is to enter a joint venture with sustainable developer Kiss House to purchase the plot and bring forward the scheme.The Reading firm will act as building and construction partner for the project, using innovative building systems and technologies, while London-based B Corp Stories will act as development manager.Mayday Saxonvale director Paul Oster hailed an exciting milestone for the scheme, saying: Kiss Houses expertise in sustainable development and commitment to low-carbon construction aligns perfectly with our vision. Together, we will create a model for sustainable, community-led development in the UK.Kiss House director Mike Jacob added: Our joint venture with Mayday Saxonvale will lead the way with a new approach to sustainable development at scale.This project will be the first of many by Kiss House to demonstrate what is possible in achieving low-carbon developments in the UK.Mendip District Council had previously approved Nash Partnership plans drawn up for Acorn but this decision was overturned at the judicial review.2025-01-28Greg Pitchercomment and share