An Amazon listing has revealed the first look at the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary for 2024 – and its exclusive minifigure, complete with 25th anniversary printing.
This year’s LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary Updated Edition has just been revealed on Amazon, as well as the identity of its exclusive minifigure: Darth Maul, complete with 25th anniversary printing. That makes him stand out from other minifigures released for the 25th anniversary celebrations for LEGO Star Wars this year, with those that have been revealed so far coming without printing but keeps him in line with minifigures from the 20th anniversary in 2019.
While it’s not 100% guaranteed that the Darth Maul on the cover is the one included in the dictionary, the LEGO Marvel Visual Dictionary had its exclusive minifigure up front and centre, so the same could easily apply here.
He’s kitted out in a cowled hood that appears to hide his horns and (predictably) dressed in all black and closely resembles his 1999 minifigure. Judging from the same preview picture on the cover that offers a look at his back printing, he should also come with a double-bladed lightsaber.
This isn’t the first time that Darth Maul has been included in a LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary, having been the exclusive minifigure back in 2020 as well. Even more recently, Maul was also included in a LEGO Star Wars magazine in 2022. If the pictures are to be believed, however, the Sith will have a different look from those two iterations in this release.
You can pre-order the LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary Updated Edition for £18.39 right now ahead of its release on April 4, 2024, saving yourself 8% on its RRP of £19.99.
Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by buying your LEGO Star Wars sets using our affiliate links. Thanks!
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Rachael Davies
I write about all the very best fandoms – and that means LEGO, of course. Spending so much time looking at and talking about LEGO sets is dangerous for my bank balance, but the LEGO shelves are thriving. You win some, you lose some.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Grand Rapids Public Schools is now using artificial intelligence software to translate videos and better reach Spanish-speaking families in the district.
The Spanish video blogs of Superintendent Leadriane Roby are posted on the district website in addition to the original English version.
The videos are uploaded to a website that processes the clip and creates the new version. GRPS pays $1,500 a year for the subscription.
News 8 spoke with Roby Tuesday as she was recording an upcoming video.
“We were missing a target audience when we did not have an access point for them,” Roby said. “The first time that I saw it. I was like, that person’s voice sounds like me and even kind of the intonation and different things and I was like, ‘How did they do that?’ and so I was amazed by it.”
The superintendent does not speak Spanish but about 40% of the students in the district do and 28% say it is their preferred language at home.
Grand Rapids Public Schools staff work on AI-generated video that translates information into Spanish. (Courtesy GRPS)
The videos also make it clear AI was used, according to Leon Hendrix, the executive director of communications.
“We want to make sure that folks know that this is a computer-assisted translation so we put that right on screen anytime we use this,” Hendrix said.
As impressive as the technology may be, Hendrix said it is not putting GRPS translators out of work.
“We also make sure this message is reviewed by someone who is a native Spanish speaker for accuracy, for clarity, before it’s ever published,” Hendrix said.
GRPS is also looking for ways the software can be used to help students learn.
“In education, we’re always learning and growing and we have to embrace technology. We can’t be afraid of it because what ends up happening is we kind of put up these barriers of we can’t do anything with it or we’re afraid to kind of engage in it and our young people sometimes get ahead of us and we should be learning right along with them,” Hendrix said.
In January, iHeartMedia announced plans to use generative AI tools to translate five to 10 existing shows into a number of different languages by the end of this quarter. But the company has pushed back that timeline.
iHeartMedia is now shooting to launch those translated shows by the end of the first half of 2024, a company spokesperson told Digiday.
“We have been experimenting. It’s getting better. Not quite to the level we need it to be to say, ‘Let’s roll it out.’ But it’s making fast-paced gains in terms of the quality. And we anticipate probably this year that we’ll get stuff of that quality… But we’ll know a lot more by probably the next couple of earnings calls,” iHeartMedia’s CEO Bob Pittman said in a fourth quarter earnings call on Feb. 29.
While podcast networks like iHeartMedia, Spotify and PodcastOne have publicly announced plans to debut AI-generated audio translations, few have gone live yet (Spotify has released a handful of test episodes).
Execs at Spotify, which announced in September it was launching a pilot program with a few podcasters to test AI-generated voice translations, didn’t mention that program at all in the company’s Q4 earnings call on Feb. 6. A Spotify spokesperson told Digiday there was nothing new to share on that front yet.
The question of quality is leaving agency execs unsure of AI’s translation ability. One podcast ad agency exec, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, told Digiday they would only be interested in buying ads around that content if the quality was “really good” and if it had an audience — neither of which they’d seen evidence of yet.
But they said they could see the logic behind why podcast networks were testing this. If a podcast network had a million downloads a month, for example, generative AI tools could translate shows at a relatively low cost and add an additional 100,000 impressions a month, which could be monetized with programmatic ads, they said.
However, direct translations of the colloquialisms, analogies and cultural nuances in podcast shows can be difficult to do well with generative AI tools, they said. The technology generally works by cloning a podcast host’s voice and augmenting it to read the show’s transcript in a different language.
But some podcast companies are going ahead with debuting translated shows to test how well they attract an audience. PodcastOne is working on rolling out “a handful” of podcasts translated into Spanish, according to Rob Ellin, CEO of parent company LiveOne. He did not share when the translated episodes will debut.
The company is working with AI translation company Rask AI to augment the voices of some of its podcast hosts into Spanish. PodcastOne is starting with translating the true crime podcast “Bad Bad Thing.” Ellin said the accuracy of those translations is overseen by PodcastOne’s talent and production team, but he declined to share further details.
“We haven’t proven it’s a money-maker yet, but we’ve definitely proven that the sound is good, the quality is good. We want to keep getting better,” Ellin said.
At the audio industry event Hot Pod Summit last week in New York City, The Verge’s editor-in-chief Nilay Patel tested the quality of AI-generated audio live. He played a number of audio clips and presented the audience with a six-question quiz: Was that clip AI-generated or not?
The results were mixed: the first question had three options and only 11% of attendees chose the correct AI-generated clip. Other questions ranged from a 50/50 vote split to 60-70% voting for the correct answer.
But for one question, Patel played an audio clip in Spanish — and 95% of attendees correctly said the voice was AI-generated. When Patel asked the audience how the translation sounded, one person shouted: “That was awful!”
So why are publishers testing this, if the quality isn’t up to snuff? Because it’s a cost-effective way to expand podcast shows internationally and into non-English language markets, execs said.
“It is uneconomic to do it manually — because there’s so many episodes of so many podcasts, there’s so many languages — and AI is really the solution,” Pittman said during iHeartMedia’s recent earnings call. But he added, “How quickly we’ll be able to monetize it and get it out there? I don’t think we have any projections yet.”
Some podcast hosts disagree with the cost-savings argument. Marshall Poe, podcast host and founder of New Books Network, translates a number of his company’s shows into Spanish the old-fashioned way — by hiring Spanish-speaking podcasters. Forty percent of New Books Network’s listeners are not in the U.S., according to Poe. But he doesn’t think using AI tools would save much time or money, because he’d need people to verify the accuracy of the translated podcasts anyway, he said.
Translating podcast hosts’ voices into different languages would also likely require podcast networks to renegotiate contracts with those hosts, noted Aricia Skidmore-Williams, co-host of three Wondery podcasts including “Even the Rich.”
“I would want to have some kind of assurances if… AI is going to be a part of our contract,” she said.
Amazon has updated their product listing for the upcoming LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary Updated Edition and it has been revealed that the exclusive minifigure will be Darth Maul. We don’t know what Darth Maul look like but he’ll be hooded and have the 25 Years of LEGO Star Wars printed on the back. He’ll also come with his double lightsaber. The book is scheduled to be released on April 2 and you can pre-order it today.
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Advocates say California’s immigrant citizens who need it should get ballots and voting help in their own language.
California lawmakers are considering a bill that would expand language assistance and election services to immigrants who don’t speak English fluently, but a group representing voter registrars throughout the state says it will cost counties too much money.
California has the nation’s highest proportion of households that speak languages other than English. Nearly 3 million voting age Californians have limited English knowledge.
Assemblymember Evan Low, the Cupertino Democrat who co-authored Assembly Bill 884, said he hopes it will increase voter participation and strengthen democracy in California.
“California is one of the most diverse states and leads the nation in language diversity,” he said, “so it is important that we lead the way to providing in-language ballots and voting materials to reduce barriers and enfranchise more Californians.”
The bill, which passed the Assembly in late January and is before the Senate, would require California’s Secretary of State to identify the languages spoken by at least 10,000 voting-age individuals in a county who don’t speak English fluently, including groups not covered by current federal voting rights laws, such as Middle Eastern or African immigrants.
The Secretary of State would then have to provide language assistance, including a toll-free hotline and funding for county language coordinators, in areas where the need is most acute.
If the proposal succeeds, it would require San Diego County, for instance, to translate voting material into Somali and at least 20 other languages, the bill’s sponsors say.
“We want voters to trust the government and that boils down to a voter in any community being able to understand what is happening in their own community,” said Pedro Hernandez, a policy director at California Common Cause, which cosponsored the bill.
If it is successful, the bill would go into effect in 2025, too late for next Tuesday’s primary and the November general election.
Immigrant voting rights
Federal and state laws are meant to ensure all eligible voters can vote, regardless of English proficiency. However many foreign-born American citizens face significant language barriers when casting their ballot.
Under current state law, there’s no requirement to provide voter information guides or translated materials about voter registration in languages not covered by the federal Voting Rights Act, which passed in 1965 but was expanded in 1975.
Federal law covers Spanish and languages spoken by Asian, Native American or Alaskan citizens. It requires counties to provide election material to population groups which meet specific size thresholds; groups must comprise more than 10,000 voting-age citizens or 5% of all voting-age citizens in a county.
A sign outside the San Diego Registrar of Voters reads “vote here” in several languages. Counties would have to translate more ballots and help more immigrant citizens vote under a new bill. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters
California has lower population thresholds, requiring translations of sample ballots for greater numbers of eligible voters, but not other services such as votable ballots in other languages or poll workers who speak other languages, advocates said. Thousands of immigrants still lack equal access to the polls, advocates said, because they rely on languages not covered under federal laws.
Under state law, in each year with an election for governor the Secretary of State must determine the voting precincts where 3% or more of the voting age population is citizens in “language minority” groups who can’t vote without English language assistance.
The Secretary of State relies on census data to make language coverage determinations. But the Census Bureau provides limited data on small populations, claiming privacy protections, advocacy groups said.
In 2022, when California Secretary of State Shirley Weber initially decided to reduce the number of languages required to be translated from 27 to 10 in some precincts, her press secretary, Joe Kocurek, attributed it to the reduced Census data.
Days later, after CalMatters published a story on the issue, Weber reversed her decision. She told CalMatters at the time: “This drastic change was extremely troubling both to me and to the counties who provide services to these voters, because reduced language assistance has the potential to disenfranchise voters who may not receive voting materials in the appropriate language.”
Overlooked voters
For Safiyo Jama, passing the American citizenship test meant she can play a role in a democratic system she has long admired. In 2012, when Jama voted in her first U.S. election, other African immigrants in the San Diego area asked her to provide translations and voting assistance.
“They wanted to know what this candidate would do; they wanted to know which candidate was best for all of us,” said Jama, a 40-year-old Somali immigrant. “If there were ballots in Somali, more people would vote.”
Safiyo Jama, a San Diego resident from Somalia, translates and helps fellow Somali immigrants when they vote. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters
Thousands of Somali refugees like Jama immigrated to San Diego County in the 1990s, as civil war ravaged the East African nation. Decades later at least 1,400 voting-age Somali residents in the county have self-identified as having limited English proficiency, though voting rights advocates say that’s likely an undercount.
A recent report by voter advocates says the federal government’s definition of “language minorities” overlooks many voters who speak African or Middle Eastern languages.
For instance, there are 659 precincts in Los Angeles County containing Arabic speakers, but only 123 meet the state’s threshold for providing translated materials and services. Because Arabic is not covered under federal law, election offices are not mandated to provide election services in Arabic, the report said.
In contrast, Korean voters in neighboring Santa Barbara County, which has 12 precincts covered for translated voting material in Korean, receive language support because the voters with limited English proficiency live in highly concentrated population areas, the report said.
The system therefore benefits communities that are residentially segregated, advocates said.
That could change under the proposal. For instance the bill would mandate San Diego County provide translated voting material in Arabic.
According to the San Diego Registrar of Voters, the county already translates sample ballots into Arabic, as well as Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Somali, Persian and other languages. Officials would not answer questions about the bill.
Advocates said translated sample ballots are useful, but they still pose difficulties for eligible voters who don’t speak English well. The lack of assistance in their specific language and having to rely on friends, family, even children to provide translation are the main reasons these eligible voters don’t register in the first place, advocates said.
Some voting material was in Vietnamese at the San Diego Registrar of Voters on Feb. 13, 2024. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters
Fiscal concerns
Though the bill passed in the Assembly, it triggered financial concerns as lawmakers face a projected multi-billion-dollar budget deficit.
An Assembly Appropriations Committee analysis said the bill’s implementation would initially cost $28.8 million in fiscal 2024-25 and annually about $15.2 million, including language identification and translation duties, voter outreach, upgrades to phone systems and a voter registration database.
The Secretary of State’s office did not respond to CalMatters’ questions about the proposal’s potential costs.
A statewide group representing county registrars and election officials, the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials, said it supports the goal of providing voters with election materials in their preferred language, but it opposes this bill due to financial concerns, said Bob Page, its legislative committee co-chair.
“For many counties that currently have more state-covered languages than federal-covered languages, increasing language service requirements could be expected to more than double the county’s language service costs and demand on labor,” the association wrote in a letter to Assemblymember Chris Holden, the Pasadena Democrat who chairs the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Today eligible voters can register to vote online and by mail. California requires all counties to mail voters a ballot ahead of an election. Voters can return them by mail or drop them off at a ballot box or voting center, or they can vote in person.
“If they don’t sign the bill I will keep helping my community, because they want to vote and that’s their right.”
Safiyo Jama, An american citizen from somalia who helps others vote by translating election materials
In precincts where the 3% language threshold is met, a county must provide translated sample ballots and translated instructions to voters. But some advocates said that’s not enough.
“You can’t use a sample ballot to vote on,” said Deanna Kitamura, senior staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a bill co-sponsor. “You’re holding up the sample ballot in your language and then you’re having to look at it and mark the English ballot, which you use to vote on.”
Building trust
Kitamura testified in November to an Assembly committee that a 2015 study found language assistance increased Latino voter registration by 15% and expanded voter turnout by 15% in Asian American communities. When San Diego County started providing language assistance, voter registrations rose by more than 20% among Filipino Americans and by almost 40% among Vietnamese Americans, Kitamura said.
Other states have expanded assistance to voters whose languages aren’t covered under federal law. Oregon and Minnesota, for example, provide online voter registration in Somali. California does not.
“In order for California to build trust, it has to be a multiracial and multilingual democracy, which means prioritizing and centering in language access,” said Hernandez at Common Cause.
Common Cause was one of a dozen organizations that participated in the California Language Access Workgroup launched in 2021. As part of its agenda, the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, an organization serving refugee communities, held listening sessions in 2022 to gauge the needs of Somali American voters in San Diego County. Rahmo Abdi, director of campaigns for the San Diego group, said listening session participants felt unsure and worried about making a wrong voting decision that could hurt their communities.
That’s why multilingual assistance honors the choice of every eligible voter, Abdi added.
“We don’t think we need to wait for federal law to get more access for our community, that’s why we are fighting locally to expand language services,” Abdi said.
Rahmo Abdi, at the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans, is pushing local officials to expand ballot languages and election assistance for citizens who rely on languages other than English. Photo by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters
Jama attended many of those listening sessions, volunteering as an interpreter. She said she plans to vote in the presidential primary Tuesday, and she will continue helping those who don’t speak English.
“Even if they don’t sign the bill I will keep helping my community, because they want to vote and that’s their right,” said Jama. “That’s democracy.”
This story has been updated to reflect the latest amendment to the bill, which would require that state and county election officials translate election materials into the languages of voting age people who are not proficient in English, if those citizens number 10,000 or more, or they are at least 5% of the voting age population of a county.While federal law requires translations into a limited number of languages, this bill is expected to require California counties to translate more materials into more languages than federal law requires.
Wolverine Boots and Apparel on Feb. 29 launched "Woman-Made," a campaign that spotlights the accomplishments of women in the skilled trades and looks to build a more inclusive future, per a press release.
A 90-second hero video combines person-on-the-street interviews about the term "woman-made" and highlights female figures in the trades, including the woman who oversaw construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, the inventor of the circular saw and others.
To boost the effort, the 140-year-old brand launched a Change.org petition to add the term "woman-made" to the dictionary and partnered with HGTV personalities Mika and Brian Kleinschmidt and nonprofit Girls Garage.
Dive Insight:
Boot maker Wolverine is kicking off Women's History Month with a purpose-driven campaign centered around gendered language that undermines inclusivity in the skilled trades, namely the absence of "woman-made" in the dictionary alongside "man-made."
The campaign's hero video features people-on-the-street interviews around the term that are set in front of the Brooklyn Bridge, a structure whose construction was overseen by engineer Emily Warren Roebling. Also shown are sketches of Roebling along Norma Merrick Sklarek, the architect who designed Terminal One at LAX airport, Tabitha Babbitt, the inventor of the circular saw and others.
The effort includes a Change.org petition — which had nearly reached its modest goal of 500 signatures as of press time — that seeks to add "women-made" to the Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster and Dictionary.com. Change.org petitions have remained a playful way for brands to draw attention to purpose-driven campaigns.
“In addition to our goal of getting 'woman-made' added to the dictionary, we hope to inspire girls and women around the globe to have the confidence to pursue any passion, especially within the skilled trades where women are drastically underrepresented,” said Lauren King, director of brand marketing at Wolverine.
To amplify its efforts, Wolverine partnered with real estate developer and star of HGTV's "100 Day Dream Home" Mika Kleinschmidt and her husband Brian to spotlight women in the trades and encourage men to be allies of the cause. The brand also partnered with and donated $25,000 to Girls Garage, a nonprofit design and construction school for girls and gender-expansive youths ages 9-18.
While several brands faced backlash last year around the tactic, purpose-driven marketing remains crucial for brands looking to connect with consumers amid an industry-wide shift from performance marketing to brand building. Apparel brands Athleta and Spanx both used the start of Women’s History Month to launch purpose-driven campaigns.
The “Woman-Made” campaign arrives on the heels of Wolverine’s tie-up with the Red Bull Scramble Series for a merchandise collecting, showing the brand reaching out to an audience off-road racers and fans.
Nvidia has now banned running CUDA-based software on other hardware platforms using translation layers in its updated licensing terms. This appears to be designed to prevent both the ZLUDA initiative and, perhaps more critically, some Chinese GPU makers from utilizing CUDA code with translation layers. We've pinged Nvidia for comment and will update you with additional details or clarifications when we get a response.
Longhorn, a software engineer, noticed the updated terms. "You may not reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble any portion of the output generated using Software elements for the purpose of translating such output artifacts to target a non-Nvidia platform," a new clause in CUDA 11.5 reads.
Being a leader has a good side and a bad side. On the one hand, everyone depends on you; on the other hand, everyone wants to stand on your shoulders. The latter is apparently what has happened with CUDA. Because the combination of CUDA and Nvidia hardware has proven to be incredibly efficient, tons of programs rely on it. However, as more competitive hardware enters the market, more users are inclined to run their CUDA programs on competing platforms. There are two ways to do it: recompile the code (available to developers of the respective programs) or use a translation layer.
For obvious reasons, using a translation layer like ZLUDA is the easiest way to run a CUDA program on non-Nvidia hardware. All one has to do is take already-compiled binaries and run them using ZLUDA or other translation layers. ZLUDA appears to be floundering now, with both AMD and Intel having passed on the opportunity to develop it further, but that doesn't mean translation isn't viable.
Several Chinese GPU makers, including one funded by the Chinese government, claim to run CUDA code. Denglin Technology designs processors featuring a "computing architecture compatible with programming models like CUDA/OpenCL." Given that reverse engineering of an Nvidia GPU is hard (unless one already somehow has all the low-level details about Nvidia GPU architectures), we are probably dealing with some sort of translation layer here, too.
One of the largest Chinese GPU makers, Moore Threads, also has a MUSIFY translation tool designed to allow CUDA code to work with its GPUs. However, whether or not MUSIFY falls under the classification of a complete translation layer remains to be seen (some of the aspects of MUSIFY could involve porting code). As such, it isn't entirely clear if the Nvidia ban on translation layers is a direct response to these initiatives or a pre-emptive strike against future developments.
For obvious reasons, using translation layers threatens Nvidia's hegemony in the accelerated computing space, particularly with AI applications. This is probably the impetus behind Nvidia's decision to ban running their CUDA applications on other hardware platforms using translation layers starting from CUDA 11.5.
The clause was absent in the CUDA 11.4 release, so it looks like running applications compiled using CUDA 11.4 and earlier compilers on non-Nvidia processors using translation layers is still fine. To that end, Nvidia won't achieve its goal of preventing everyone from running software developed for its hardware on other hardware platforms using layers like ZLUDA in the short term. Longer-term, the company will certainly place legal barriers for running CUDA programs via translation layers on third-party hardware, which could have a positive effect for Nvidia and a negative one for AMD, Intel, Biren, and other developers of AI compute hardware.
Recompiling existing CUDA programs remains perfectly legal. To simplify this, both AMD and Intel have tools to port CUDA programs to their ROCm (1) and OpenAPI platforms, respectively.
As AMD, Intel, Tenstorrent, and other companies develop better hardware, more software developers will be inclined to design for these platforms, Nvidia's CUDA dominance could ease over time. Furthermore, programs specifically developed and compiled for particular processors will inevitably work better than software run via translation layers, which means better competitive positioning for AMD, Intel, Tenstorrent, and others against Nvidia — if they can get software developers on board. GPGPU remains an important and highly competitive arena, and we'll be keeping an eye on how the situation progresses in the future.
Freelance News Writer
Anton Shilov is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
