“In nine experiments involving 1,800 participants, researchers found that people consistently underestimated how interesting and enjoyable conversations about boring topics would be.”
US star is still on rebel tour but the desired focus on teams is not something that is catching on with supporters
Moments before Bryson DeChambeau teed off to open LIV Golf’s first American tournament of the year, at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, the public address announcer bellowed “Long! LIV! Golf!” to try and electrify a modest crowd by the first tee.
The irony wasn’t lost on the devoted group who skirted work and school to enjoy a sunny afternoon just 40 miles outside Washington DC: this was the first tournament since the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund confirmed it would no longer fund the outfit that it once imagined as the world’s premier collection of professional golfers. Before that news was finalized, the league postponed a tournament scheduled to take place in New Orleans at the end of June.
Continue reading...Trump also issues new deadline for EU to implement trade deal terms before raising tariffs to ‘much higher levels’
The US trade court on Thursday ruled against Donald Trump’s latest 10% global tariffs, finding across-the-board tariffs were not justified under a 1970s trade law.
The US court of international trade ruled in favor of small businesses that challenged the tariffs, which took effect on 24 February. The ruling was 2-1, with one judge saying it was premature to grant victory to the small business plaintiffs.
Continue reading...Bill Foley’s Cannae Holdings Inc expected to complete deal
Billionaire Foley to provide ‘significant’ investment
Exeter’s members have voted in favour of selling the club to the American owners of AFC Bournemouth. Cannae Holdings Inc, part of billionaire Bill Foley’s investment empire which also includes the Black Knight Sports and Entertainment group, is now set to take full control of the Chiefs and provide “significant” multi-million-pound funding
Exeter, who rose from lower-league anonymity to claim a European and domestic title double in 2020, have previously been a members-owned club since their foundation in 1871. At a special general meeting, however, members voted by a comfortable majority to approve the club’s sale with long-time chairman Tony Rowe having negotiated a landmark deal with the new US backers.
Continue reading...
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Wearables have really come full circle. The early Fitbits didn't have screens, but the move to smartwatches put a screen on everyone's wrist. Now, devices like Whoop and Hume are designed as data trackers first and foremost without so much as a clock. Google's newest wearable jumps on that trend: The Fitbit Air doesn't have a screen, but it does have a suite of health sensors that pipe data into the new Google Health app. And if you want, Google has a new AI-powered health coach in the app ready to tell you what that data means (maybe).
The Fitbit Air itself is a small plastic puck about 1.4 inches long and 0.7 inches wide. It slots into various bands that hold the bottom-mounted sensors against your wrist. There's no display pointing upward, so the entire device is covered by the fabric or plastic of the band. It's a streamlined and potentially stylish look -- in uncharacteristic fashion, Google has plenty of colors and style options available, including a special-edition Steph Curry version. You may have heard chatter about Curry being seen teasing a new screenless Fitbit, and this is it. [...]
The Fitbit app is getting a major makeover and a new name. An update in the coming weeks will transform that app into Google Health, featuring a new interface with a more extensive Material Expressive aesthetic and redesigned menus and tabs. You also won't see Fitbit branding in as many places -- the Fitbit Premium subscription will become Google Health Premium. Without a subscription, the app still does all the basic things, like tracking your health stats, automatically logging workouts, and showing it all in a pretty dashboard. With the Premium subscription, you get all the features from Fitbit Premium plus the new AI Health Coach. It's a chatbot, so you can ask it about any health or wellness topics, and the answers are grounded in your health data. The Fitbit Air launches May 26 for $99.99, includes a Performance Loop band, and comes with three months of the new Google Health Premium that replaces Fitbit Premium and adds Google's AI Health Coach.
Meanwhile, Google Health Premium will cost $10 per month or $100 per year, though it's included with AI Pro or AI Ultra. Non-subscribers can still use basic tracking features. Ars also notes that when Google Fit shuts down later this year, users will need to migrate their data to Google Health.
The Fitbit Air itself is a small plastic puck about 1.4 inches long and 0.7 inches wide. It slots into various bands that hold the bottom-mounted sensors against your wrist. There's no display pointing upward, so the entire device is covered by the fabric or plastic of the band. It's a streamlined and potentially stylish look -- in uncharacteristic fashion, Google has plenty of colors and style options available, including a special-edition Steph Curry version. You may have heard chatter about Curry being seen teasing a new screenless Fitbit, and this is it. [...]
The Fitbit app is getting a major makeover and a new name. An update in the coming weeks will transform that app into Google Health, featuring a new interface with a more extensive Material Expressive aesthetic and redesigned menus and tabs. You also won't see Fitbit branding in as many places -- the Fitbit Premium subscription will become Google Health Premium. Without a subscription, the app still does all the basic things, like tracking your health stats, automatically logging workouts, and showing it all in a pretty dashboard. With the Premium subscription, you get all the features from Fitbit Premium plus the new AI Health Coach. It's a chatbot, so you can ask it about any health or wellness topics, and the answers are grounded in your health data. The Fitbit Air launches May 26 for $99.99, includes a Performance Loop band, and comes with three months of the new Google Health Premium that replaces Fitbit Premium and adds Google's AI Health Coach.
Meanwhile, Google Health Premium will cost $10 per month or $100 per year, though it's included with AI Pro or AI Ultra. Non-subscribers can still use basic tracking features. Ars also notes that when Google Fit shuts down later this year, users will need to migrate their data to Google Health.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
on the water photography has added a photo to the pool:
This museum is located in Nagasaki, the only port that remained open to international trade throughout the Edo period, when Japan was closed to the rest of the world. As a result, this museum boasts a wonderful collection of art from Spain and Portugal.
The site conditions were quite unusual, with a canal running right through the center of the premises. To integrate the canal with the art museum, I [Kengo Kuma] created an intermediate space alongside it that serves as a promenade for city residents as well as a place to appreciate art. This space is protected from the strong sun by stone louvers that create a breezy, pleasant shade. I developed a new type of supporting structure for the stone louvers using solid steel columns. Nagasaki, located in southern Japan, is known for its Colonial-style verandas with wooden latticework. The stone louvers I used here are a contemporary version of this traditional architecture; they are also a critical response to contemporary Japanese architecture that ignores both indigenous climate and landscape.
A box-shaped glass bridge crosses the canal. All visitors to the museum walk over this bridge, experience the water, and then continue into the gallery. The entire roof area acts as gallery space as well, and commands a beautiful view of Nagasaki Port.
Source: Kengo Kuma website
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is exploring developing a pair of smart glasses that would “supplement” the agency’s facial recognition Mobile Fortify application, which lets officers scan someone’s face to verify their citizenship, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official. Another person who attended a conference where a senior ICE official spoke about the plans also described them to 404 Media.
The smart glasses, if they came to fruition, would be yet another technological escalation in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. 404 Media previously revealed ICE and Customs Border Protection (CBP) were using the internal app Mobile Fortify to scan peoples’ faces, and instantaneously query a wide range of government databases to decide whether to detain the person or not.
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Do you know anything else about tools or data ICE is using? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
Matthew Elliston, assistant director of Law Enforcement Systems & Analysis at ICE, said in a meeting the plan to create smartglasses was to “supplement Mobile Fortify,” the DHS official said. 404 Media granted the official anonymity as they weren’t permitted to speak to the press.
Separately, during the 2026 Border Security Expo which took place this week, Elliston was speaking. A participant asked Elliston what technologies the agency was looking for, according to Kenny Morris from the American Friends Service Committee who attended the conference. Elliston’s answer included “wearable heads up displays,” Morris said.
Elliston then said that assaults against ICE officials were up 1400 percent (similar figures have been disputed in press reports), and that smartglasses would let officers be hands-free to respond to any threats, Morris said.
404 Media first heard about ICE’s plan to use smart glasses to supplement Mobile Fortify several months ago from the DHS official. At the time, no written documentation of the plan was available. Last month, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein published a budget document which mentioned DHS’s plan to “deliver innovative hardware, such as operational prototypes of smart glasses, to equip agents with real-time access to information and biometric identification capabilities in the field.”
404 Media first revealed the existence of Mobile Fortify using leaked ICE emails. It is installed on DHS officials’ work phones, and performs facial recognition on somebody after an ICE official points their phone camera at a person. User manuals for the tool showed the app instantaneously runs a subject’s face against a bank of 200 million images, then pulls up their name, nationality, date of birth, unique identifiers such as their “alien” number, and whether an immigration judge has determined they should be removed from the country.
404 Media has documented ICE and CBP officials using the smartphone app on American streets, found ICE believes people cannot refuse to be scanned by the app, and that the app misidentified one woman, twice.
A DHS spokesperson told 404 Media in an email “At this time, no funds have been committed to any form of ‘smart glasses.’”
“The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is constantly assessing the needs of ICE and other DHS components to assist law enforcement officers in the field. These discussions involve privacy offices, chief information officers, and attorneys to ensure that any technology that DHS utilizes is within the full scope of the law,” the spokesperson added.
As we’ve reported, CBP officials have been seen multiple times wearing Meta’s Ray-Ban smartglasses during immigration operations. This is despite a ban on personal recording devices. A CBP spokesperson told 404 Media in an email “Recordings may only be done on government sanctioned devices. Officers and agents may wear personally purchased sunglasses.”
Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told 404 Media that “DHS has been funding research into face-mounted surveillance goggles for quite some time, including Hololens systems designed to help CBP to supposedly ‘see terrorists.’ As the technology advances, it's not surprising that so has DHS's ambitions.”
“But at worst, we're talking about a technology that invades your privacy if an ICE or CBP officer even looks at you, but even at best, we're looking at a project that, like lots of DHS tech, just wastes taxpayer money on shiny gadgets,” he added.
Framing and Filling: Ko Liang-Chih Solo Exhibition ?????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? The key visual centers on enlarged and cropped fragments of calligraphic strokes as its primary elements. The outlines, rendered in vermilion ink, echo the theme of the Framing and Filling technique. Interspersed color blocks in matching hues within the strokes further express the technique's extensibility and creative potential. A bold vermilion circle serves as a visual endpoint, symbolizing the culmination and concentration of creative energy within this exhibition.