The 404 coins discovered in a muddy field near Bunnik, a village in the Netherlands, in 2023 and 2024 National Museum of AntiquitiesAs they swept over the muddy fields of Bunnik, a village in the Netherlands Utrecht Province that once marked the northern edge of the Roman Empire, in 2023, two metal detectorists unearthed a remarkably extensive and diverse haul of coins from the first century C.E.Their finda collection of 404 gold and silver coins of Roman, British and North African originis the first of its kind unearthed on the European continent, according to a statement.For Gert-Jan Messelaar and Reinier Koelink, the men with the metal detectors, the historic discovery came as something of an accident. They were combing the fields for a local fruit growers lost tractor key in Houten when they decided to give up and go over to a nearby field in Bunnik, where they had previously found a few coins, reports RTV Utrechts Bas Teunissen. Reinier Koelink (left) and Gert-Jan Messelaar (right) originally found the coin stash after an unsuccessful hunt for a local farmer's tractor key. Cultural Heritage Agency of the NetherlandsKoelink made the first find: a golden Celtic coin resting near the surface of the mud. The pair found a few more loose coinsincluding the largest Roman coin ever found in the provincebut their metal detectors would not stop beeping. Messelaar finally stuck his hand into a shallow hole in the ground, where he uncovered a stash of hundreds of coins. Bingo, he recalls thinking, according toKoelink and Messelaar used clumps of mud to keep the coins together before bringing the haul back home, where they carefully cleaned, sorted and reported their findings to cultural heritage authorities. Then, they celebrated.We opened a bottle of champagne, Messelaar tells the Guardians Daniel Boffey. You never find this. Silver RomandenariiNational Museum of AntiquitiesFollowing the detectorists initial discovery of 381 coins in the summer of 2023, the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency, with the help of Koelink and Messelaar, conducted additional excavations in the surrounding areas, finding another 23 coins.Now, the grand total of 404 coins will now join a permanent exhibition titled The Netherlands in Roman Times at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden.Dated to between 200 B.C.E. and 47 C.E., 360 of the coins are Roman in origin. Of these, 288 are denarii, the standard silver coin, and 72 are aurei, a denser, golden coin that was originally worth 25 denarii. A Romanaureusgold coin with a portrait of Emperor Claudius National Museum of AntiquitiesMany of the Roman coins bear the portrait of Emperor Claudius, who reigned between 41 and 54 C.E. One depicts Julius Caesar, while another even rarer coin shows the likeness of Juba, the ruler of Numidia, a kingdom in northern Africa that roughly corresponds to modern-day Algeria.Two of the Claudius coins dated to between 46 and 47 C.E. are from identical dies, suggesting they were distributed to Roman soldiers as military pay, write Anton Cruysheer, an archaeologist with the Utrecht Landscape and Heritage Foundation, and Tessa de Groot, an archaeologist with the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, for UtrechtAltijd.The 44 non-Roman coins are perhaps the most notable of the entire stash. The golden alloy coins, known as staters, bear the inscription CVNO, the first four letters of Cunobelinus, the Latin name of Celtic King Cunobelin, who reigned between roughly 10 and 42 C.E. in southeastern Britain.Grote muntvondst uit Romeinse tijdWatch on Cruysheer and de Groot argue that the eclectic composition of the hoard strongly suggests a connection to the conquest of Britain under Aulus Plautius, a Roman general who Claudius dispatched to cross the Channel and invade the island in 43 C.E.The wide range of dates of the Cunobelin staters, including four posthumously issued coins, indicates that the stash was removed from circulation in one fell swoop, like Roman troops looting the newly conquered territory, according to UtrechtAltijd.Combined with the Roman coins used as military pay, the entire stash strongly resembles spoils of war. Discovered less than a foot beneath the surface, where it was probably buried in a leather pouch that has since decayed, the cache was left in a region where Roman troops were known to have amassed before the invasion of Britain.This is the first time that physical evidence of the return of the troops has been found, Cruysheer tells the Guardian. Apparently, they came back with all sorts of things. That is new information. The obverse and reverse of the same ancient British coin National Museum of AntiquitiesGet the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Nvidia confirmed that its CEO Jensen Huang met with U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss U.S. technology and AI leadership.Read More

Player First Games announced today that the upcoming season of its live-service fighting game MultiVersus will be its last. Season 5 will run from February 4 through May 30, after which the game will only be available to play offline. Starting today, players will no longer be able to spend money on in-game transactions, and after Season 5 ends, itRead More

On January 9th, 56-year-old Peter Akemann flew his DJI Mini 3 Pro drone far beyond the legal limit of his ability to see and into a Super Scooper water dumping plane fighting the Los Angeles Palisades wildfires, grounding it for repairs after punching a hole in its left wing. Now that authorities have traced the drone back to him, he agreed Friday to plead guilty possibly escaping a year in jail in exchange for 150 hours of community service in support of wildfire relief and the roughly $65,000 it cost to repair the plane.According to the plea agreement (PDF via Courthouse News), his drone flew quite a distance and punched quite a hole:While the Firefighting Aircraft was conducting its firefighting missions, defendant drove to the area near the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, and parked his vehicle on the top floor of a parking structure. Defendant launched the Drone and flew it toward the Pacific Palisades to observe damage caused by the Palisades Fire. At the time, the Federal Aviation Administration had issued Temporary Flight Restrictions that prohibited drone operations near the Southern California wildfires, including the Palisades Fire. Defendant flew the Drone at least 2500 meters away from its launch point and lost visual sight of the Drone while flying it. Thereafter, the Drone collided with the Firefighting Aircraft, causing an approximately 3-inch-by-6-inch hole in the left wing of Firefighting Aircraft.The Hollywood Reporter writes that Akemann isnt just any old drone pilot, but rather the former president and chief technologist of video game developer Skydance Interactive and the co-founder of Treyarch, a studio known for its Call of Duty and Spider-Man games. THR writes that he recently left his role at Skydance, which would be news in and of itself. Both the Akemann pleading guilty and the game developer are Peter T. Akemann. A LinkedIn page for Akemann no longer exists, and an X social media page for a Peter T. Akemann has been scrubbed.It is possible that the US District Court will not accept Akemanns plea agreement, which his lawyers are making jointly with the US Attorneys Office, in which case he faces a year of jail time, a year of supervised release, and either up to a $100,000 fine or twice the gross loss resulting from the offense, whichever is greater.Akemanns attorneys told ABC News hes now deeply sorry for the mistake he made by flying a drone near the boundary of the Palisades fire area on January 9, 2025, and for the resulting accident and accepts responsibility for his grave error in judgment.They also added that there are mitigating factors that will come to light during the court proceedings, including Mr. Akemanns reliance on the DJI Drones geo fencing safeguard feature and the failure of that feature.DJI recently eliminated its most restrictive forms of geofencing, potentially letting drone pilots fly over active wildfires and government buildings like the White House when it might have previously stopped them automatically. That said, DJI recently explained to us that even the earlier versions of its software would not have stopped someone from flying over a temporary no-fly-zone, like a wildfire, unless that person let their drone download the updated temporary flight restriction lists first.See More:

YouTube is expanding the availability of its dedicated community space feature to more creators on the site, giving them more opportunities to connect with their fans without needing to lean on another platform like Discord. Only available for access via mobile devices, Communities first launched during the Made for YouTube event last fall, letting the creators write posts with images and text while also enabling fans to start discussions. Weve been testing Communities with a small group of creators and have heard positive feedback, which is why were excited to keep expanding access, says todays post from YouTube. Creators can monitor and moderate via a Community Hub in the YouTube Studio app that combines the activity from their channel, and can also offer suggestions for replies to fans.YouTube is also renaming its previously existing Community tab to Posts to try to keep things clear between the two things:The tab will work just as it does today, just with a new name. Creators can still share updates and announcements via posts and viewers can engage by commenting on those posts like they always have!Creators will still need an invitation to access Communities, which will come in an email and as a banner on their channel pages on the YouTube app. Once received, creators will be invited to Go to Community to learn more and then allow them to enable the features.

How to Explain Black-Box Deep Learning Models in Computer Vision and NLP 0 like January 31, 2025Share this postAuthor(s): Chien Vu Originally published on Towards AI. Explaining a black box Deep learning model is an essential but difficult task for engineers in an AI project. Lets explore how to use the OmniXAI package in Python to examine and understand how an AI model makes decisions.This member-only story is on us. Upgrade to access all of Medium.Image by authorWhen the first computer, Alan Turings machine, appeared in the 1940s, humans started to struggle in explaining how it encrypts and decrypts messages. Since then, explainability has become an essential part of the development process, especially in machine learning field.Explainability leverages user interfaces, charts, business intelligence tools, some explanation metrics, and other methodologies to discover how the algorithms reach their conclusions.As Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) have rapidly grown, various complicated and state-of-the-art algorithms in many fields, such as healthcare, education, or finance, have been developed and implemented in the real world. Hence, explainability became even more important given the bigger impact of these models on humans and society.However, the term Black box can be seen frequently in Deep learning as the Black-box models are the ones that are difficult to interpret. There 3 main reasons why these models are labeled as black boxes:A machine learning task often uses a single performance metric to optimize the learning process, and this metric might not be able to describe the real-world issue fully. Therefore, understanding the why behind a models decisions is essential for the development of Read the full blog for free on Medium.Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming asponsor. Published via Towards AITowards AI - Medium Share this post

iOS 18 introduced a major redesign to Control Center across iPhone and iPad. Here are the three controls that have made a big difference for me over several months of use.#1: AirPods noise cancellationApple offers a built-in method for toggling AirPods noise cancellation in Control Center. But its not great.When AirPods are connected, you can long-press the volume slider to view the current noise cancellation setting. Then if you want to make a change, you have to tap a couple more times to do that.Replacing that hassle, I use a simple Shortcuts control that automatically enables noise cancellation mode with a single tap.All you need is a basic shortcut like this one, featuring the Set Noise Control Mode action. Then, add the Shortcuts control to Control Center and configure it appropriately.Now, whenever Im unsure whether my AirPods Pro 2s noise cancellation is turned on, I just hit my new Control Center buttonno further taps necessary.#2: Vehicle Motion CuesOne of the most remarkable iOS 18 feature additions, for me at least, is Vehicle Motion Cues.The new feature fixed my vehicle motion sickness, and I turn it on via Control Center every time I get in the car as a passenger.Heres how the feature works per Apple:Research shows that motion sickness is commonly caused by a sensory conflict between what a person sees and what they feel, which can prevent some users from comfortably using iPhone or iPad while riding in a moving vehicle. With Vehicle Motion Cues, animated dots on the edges of the screen represent changes in vehicle motion to help reduce sensory conflict without interfering with the main content. Using sensors built into iPhone and iPad, Vehicle Motion Cues recognizes when a user is in a moving vehicle and responds accordingly.Vehicle Motion Cues has been great on my iPhone, but Ive used it even more often with my iPad. Throughout the work day, I can hop in the car with my wife driving, open Control Center in iPadOS, and hit the Vehicle Motion Cues control.The little animated dotsplus a cellular connectionremarkably make working on the go a seamless experience.#3: Background sounds for ambient noiseWhether Im working from my iPad in the car, or sitting at home or in a coffee shop, ambient noise is a must.There are plenty of white noise-type apps on the App Store, such as Portal or Endel. But iOS for years has offered its own built-in ambient noises too.In iOS 18, two new Background Sounds were added, as was a dedicated Control Center toggle.I especially love the new Fire sound, and turn it on and off throughout the day with a quick tap in Control Center.To set up your Background Sounds control, just search in Control Center or navigate to the Hearing Accessibility section.What are your go-to Control Center controls? Let us know in the comments.Best iPhone accessoriesAdd 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

From time to time, I see some nostalgic posts about the good old days when iPods were everywhere. Personally, the iPod was responsible for getting me to like Apple products. But years after the iPod was discontinued, I dont think people really want the iPod back even though they claim they do and heres why.The iPod brand was officially killed in 2022 when Apple officially discontinued the iPod touch with a press announcement saying that music lives on. However, I think the iPod was dead long before that. More specifically, in 2017, when the company discontinued the iconic iPod nano and shuffle.Now that the iPod is gone, some people naturally miss it and say Apple should bring it back. To be honest, while I understand the sentiment, I also think the idea of an iPod no longer makes sense.A recap of the iPods historyFirst, lets recap the history of the iPod. The first iPod was introduced in 2001, at a time when computers were clunky, sound systems werent exactly portable, and phones werent smart. The idea of having a super portable device that could fit a thousand songs in your pocket was incredible. Ill never forget the feeling when I used an iPod for the first time.As technology evolved, Apple also introduced different versions of the iPod. Years later, the company launched the even smaller iPod nano and the tiny iPod shuffle. And iPod sales grew significantly, accounting for 40% of Apples revenue in 2006 but the world was about to change, and Apple knew it.Phones were becoming smarter, gaining more features. It wouldnt be long before iPods were no longer needed. When Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone in 2007, he often said that the iPhone would be the best iPod. After all, it combined all the good things users already loved about the iPod with a smartphone. And time has shown that Jobs was right.I was one of the people who used to carry both an iPhone and an iPod with me in the early days. The iPhones built-in storage was quite limited at the time, so for a while it still made more sense to keep a specific device for listening to music. But the iPhone evolved, the era of streaming came along, and most people no longer felt the need to have a device solely for that.iPod sales peaked in 2008 with almost 60 million units sold and began to fall in 2009, two years after Apple introduced the first iPhone. In 2014, the last year in which Apple revealed iPod figures as a separate category, the company had sold just 14 million units. Year after year, people stopped buying iPods until they disappeared.Do people really want the iPod back? I dont think soSome of the people who want the iPod back argue that Apple is losing money by not reviving such an iconic product. The thing is, I think Apple knows that it probably wouldnt sell that much iPod if it was ever relaunched.Think about the iPhone mini there were a lot of people who said they loved smaller phones and wanted them back. Apple listened to these people, but the figures showed that the vast majority of people didnt care for the iPhone mini. Sales were quite low compared to other models, and the iPhone mini was also eventually discontinued.I carry around an upgraded iPod Classic ocasionally. It is a pain carrying a bunch of devices, but I love that the iPod has zero distractions. It does a single thing - play music. The best part is its music I own. Theres no monthly fee involved, no bluetooth or wifi to track me, no phoning home.I know its not perfect because I end up having my phone on me, and I like having my Apple watch on me. But at least my iPod cant hurt me. View all commentsSure, a new iPod would certainly sell well at first, since a lot of people would buy it just for nostalgias sake. But its no longer a long-term business.Again, I understand the nostalgia factor. I still keep my 3rd generation iPod nano on my office desk to remind me of the good memories. Its nice to turn it on and listen to music on it sometimes, but every time I do, I also understand why the iPod is gone. In todays world, what we really want is a device that does everything.And as Apple said, the iPod concept lives on in other devices. Not just on the iPhone, but also on our iPads, HomePods, and Apple Watch. If you think about it, Apple Watch is essentially a modern-day iPod nano. You can put music on it and use it without your iPhone nearby. And to be honest, even though I have a cellular Apple Watch, I never leave home without my iPhone.But what about you? What are your thoughts on the iPod? Let me know in the comments section below.Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

The US Department of Agriculture under Donald Trump is taking a bold new stance toward climate change: out of sight, out of mind.A new report byPolitico reveals a concerted effort to scrub any mention of "climate change" from the USDA website. On Thursday, a memo circulated instructing site managers to "identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change," according to Politico. It also mandated that employees identify web content related to climate change and document it for further inspection.The move could lead to the deletion of information from the Forest Service, Rural Housing and Utility Services, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, among other subagencies. The memo has also circulated to the EPA, according to reporting by JacobinIt's a particularly troubling sign as our climate shows signs it is buckling under the weight of our carbon footprint, increasing everything from the severity of wildfiresto the frequency of major hurricanes. That our new executives are scrubbing all proof that the US government once acknowledged those dangers is pretty disturbing, to say nothing of the laws they're looking to pass.With every new administration comes a host of small style changes to government sites, which can indicate policy directions under newly appointed agency heads. Not content just to rearrange some copy, though, Trump has taken to altering entire landing pages and scrubbing information that doesn't align with his agenda.The DHS site, for example, has scrubbed mentions of Ukraine, information on Border Security office and enforcement locations, and tabs regarding EEO/Diversity, Ethics/Standards of Conduct, as well as Civil Rights and Civil Liberties relating to Customs and Border Patrol.Since he's taken office, Trump has also removed the Spanish-language translation of the White House site, along with disclaimers and accessibility options for the disabled. That site also got a fancy new landing page, proclaiming "AMERICA IS BACK" under a prominent profile of Trump.But not every government site has removed information. Soon after his inauguration, Trump's team added an official DOGE site, populated with AI-generated slop art and copy that reads: "Department of Government Efficiency. The people voted for major reform."And backin meatspace, the Trump admin has also taken to pulling down portraits of previous Secretaries of State, including the two who served under Trump's first term. In the US Agency of International Development, staffers were baffled to discover Trump staffers had removed all pictures of federal aid programs, leaving only empty frames lining the halls.It's a fitting analog to the kind of cuts the president is making to outsource, downsize, and otherwise end long-standing federal functions.On Wednesday, Trump had security officers forcibly remove the inspector general of the USDA from her office, after she challenged her firing as unlawful. That office, conveniently, had been investigating Musk's Neuralink venture, as well as issues of animal abuse and food safety.She's just one of 17 inspectors to be sacked by the new administration, and it remains to be seen who if anyone Trump will appoint to take their place. If his recent moves are any indication, it might be a 21-year-old Musk intern whose favorite word is "yes."Share This Article

Earlier this month, as Aftermath first reported, the G/O Media-owned business news website Quartzquietly started churning out a huge number of AI-generated news articles. Surprise: its news bot is already publishing outrageous errors.For example, the publication's AI-powered "Quartz Intelligence Newsroom" byline pushed out an article yesterday confidently declaring that NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have now been stranded on the International Space Station (ISS) for months due to the extraordinary failure of Boeing's Starliner, are still in space because their mission was intentionally "prolonged" so they could conduct maintenance on the ISS."Their mission, originally intended for a shorter duration, was prolonged to accommodate a series of crucial maintenance tasks outside the ISS," reads the AI-generated news hit.As anyone with a passing interest in NASA or the private space sector knows, this is completelyand utterly wrong.Though Williams and Wilmore, who were originally meant to be in space for about a week, are assisting other ISS crewmates with research and maintenance spacewalks, their many-months-longer-than-expected stay wasn't at all intentional.Instead, their return has been repeatedly postponed because of colossal failures on Boeing's behalf. In short, their protracted ISS visit wasn't necessary for "maintenance tasks." It's all the result of a massive Boeing screwup that stranded two humans in orbit.But you wouldn't know that from Quartz's AI-generated article, which completely bungles the facts of the astronauts' situation and incredibly ignores Boeing's central role in the debacle entirely.Even the headline of the AI-generated article, "The Boeing Starliner astronauts took their first spacewalk," is incorrect. Yes, the duo conducted their first spacewalk together yesterday. But both astronauts are spacewalk veterans. Williams, in fact, set the new record as the woman with the most minutes in the vacuum of space on this most recent adventure; she even took part in a previous spacewalk to conduct maintenance on the ISS just two weeks ago.In addition to all that blatantly inaccurate information, there are subtler errors in the article as well.Each Quartz AI post includes a list of citations at the very top, which in theory provides important context for readers. But instead, the bot mangles the credit by saying the piece "incorporates reporting" from a person named "Bill McEwen," linking back to a website called GV Wire. And while there is a Bill McEwen listed as an editor of GV Wire, the article itself is actually by theAssociated Press meaning it's the AP's reporting,which should have been given the credit, instead of slapping the name of a random employee on it. (That AP article, by the way, seems to be where the error about the "first" spacewalk came from; the Quartz AI basically stole it and took out the word "together," rendering it no longer accurate.)In other words, from top to bottom, this article is a confident-sounding mess of AI slop. And though the website does include a wretched disclaimer at the foot of each AI-spun article noting that the AI is "experimental" and will probably make mistakes, it forces the question: what purpose does this thing really serve that doesn't outweigh the reputational harm it's incurring?In reality, it's obviously a traffic play. G/O's executives want clicks, and they don't care if they're spreading blatant misinformation to get them. In their mind, throwing other people's journalism into a woodchipper and publishing whatever paraphrased chum comes out the other side is a viable business strategy.If that sounds unfair, remember that this is just the latest of many attempts by G/O to push AI products onto its various websites, which have repeatedly ended in preventable, embarrassing errors and incurred rage by the company's human journalists. As those human employees have made very clear, the staff at G/O publications want to do journalism and, in turn, do right by readers.We reached to G/O Media with questions, but haven't heard back.Share This Article