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Arafat sermon translated into 37 international languages Arab NewsApple has announced two new translation APIs at its annual World Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which ran from June 10 to June 14, 2024.
While consumers were the audience for the newly unveiled Apple watch translation gadget, this API announcement is firmly targeted at app developers who wish to reach a wider user base.
In a video peppered generously with the words “easy”, “simple”, and “useful”, Apple Senior Engineer Louie Livon-Bemel showed how app developers can leverage Apple’s machine translation engines in their own products.
The example given is for user-generated content — in this case, user reviews — which Livon-Bemel describes as a scenario where “localization alone isn’t sufficient.”
Developers can implement the first “simple API” with just a few lines of code to display a translation overlay — triggered by a user pressing a button — for any selected, single text instance in the user interface. It’s the work of just a couple of minutes.
A second “flexible” text translation API has been made available to enable inline translation — more suitable for cases of multiple instances of text such as a set of user reviews — or for content that changes over time.
Because the APIs draw on the same models that underpin the Apple Translate app and iOS system-wide translation, language coverage mirrors what Apple users are already familiar with.
This set of supported languages comprises 21 languages including Hindi, for which support was added this year. (Not all combinations are supported, however.)
The first “simple” API has already shipped, according to Livon-Bemel, who encouraged developers to “adopt this in production apps.”
Conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court have decided that more Americans must die in mass shootings because they have a quibble over the word “function.”
In striking down the 2018 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) regulation banning bump stocks, which effectively turn semiautomatic rifles into machine guns, the court’s six conservative justices not only put their ideological preconceptions ahead of rational policymaking. They also privileged an arrogant, misplaced confidence in their own technical expertise over a federal agency’s thoughtful effort to prevent the grotesque slaughter of innocents.
Will this ruling allow demented killers to fire more than 1,000 rounds in 10 minutes? Not our problem, said the six conservatives. We know how guns work, and we consulted several dictionaries about what words mean.
You have to look at the blandly technical language of Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion to appreciate how bloodless this ruling is. Thomas goes on and on about gun mechanics, as if the only issue is establishing that bump stocks might not make semiautomatic rifles exactly as lethal as machine guns. Liberals are regularly accused of being too ideological and too technocratic. This is a ruling of right-wing ideological technocrats utterly indifferent to the consequences of an approach that blithely floats above reality.
“A semiautomatic rifle equipped with a bump stock does not fire more than one shot ‘by a single function of the trigger,’” Thomas writes. “With or without a bump stock, a shooter must release and reset the trigger between every shot. And, any subsequent shot fired after the trigger has been released and reset is the result of a separate and distinct ‘function of the trigger.’ All that a bump stock does is accelerate the rate of fire by causing these distinct ‘function[s]’ of the trigger to occur in rapid succession.”
Read that phrase again: “All that a bump stock does …”
Yes, “all that a bump stock does” is allow killers to shoot many more people much more efficiently. Machine guns were banned because they were so lethal. The ATF’s bump stock regulation grew out of the experiences of mass shootings, which have demonstrated their lethality. But experience does not matter to the well-protected justices.
Thomas added to the sense that the court sees this as little more than a disquisition in a drawing room, flaunting references to the Oxford English Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary and Webster’s New International Dictionary on the meaning of the word “function.”
The clash between the drawing room and real life was brought home by the first sentences of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s powerful dissent: “On October 1, 2017, a shooter opened fire from a hotel room overlooking an outdoor concert in Las Vegas, Nevada, in what would become the deadliest mass shooting in U. S. history. Within a matter of minutes, using several hundred rounds of ammunition, the shooter killed 58 people and wounded over 500. He did so by affixing bump stocks to commonly available, semiautomatic rifles.”
She then moved quickly to the consequences of the conservatives’ bizarre dogmatism: “Today, the Court puts bump stocks back in civilian hands.” Writing for herself and Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor referred to the dictionary, too, but, more importantly, Congress’s intent when it banned machine guns in the first place. In the process, she offered a far more compelling account of what bump stocks do.
“Congress’s definition of ‘machinegun’ encompasses bump stocks just as naturally as M16s,” she wrote. “Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences.” Sotomayor concluded by bringing the court down from the clouds of theory and back to the brutalities she invoked at the outset. “The majority’s artificially narrow definition,” she wrote, “hamstrings the Government’s efforts to keep machineguns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.” It is as simple as that.
Defenders of the court majority will no doubt say that Congress can clarify the law by banning bump stocks directly, and of course that is what should happen now. But will congressional conservatives, who fall over themselves to venerate Donald Trump, be eager to restore a policy instituted by his administration? Call me skeptical.
It is, however, instructive to contemplate what it means for this majority — bolstered by three of Trump’s own nominees — to place itself to the former president’s right (or at least to the right of Trump in 2017). In any event, congressional action should not be necessary, and this decision will drive home just how distorted and radical conservative jurisprudence on guns has become.
Mass shootings bring avoidable suffering to our nation and ought to shame us. But this Supreme Court majority is not shamed. It prefers to page through dictionaries, pretend its members hold advanced engineering degrees and sniff superciliously at even the most modest and practical regulatory efforts to stop the killing. And all the while, it will be protected from accountability the next time a mass shooter affixes a bump stock to his weapon and starts firing.
Black hair is a testament to ever-changing styles and unique expressions. From elegant twists and protective braids to timeless afros and natural curls, each hairstyle carries cultural significance and personal narrative. In Metro Detroit, a stylist and salon owner has created the “world’s first-ever” Natural Hair Dictionary, celebrating these styles and affirming the beauty of every individual’s hair journey.
Mo Williams, founder of Such a Natural, a Black-owned hair salon in Metro Detroit, has authored and published the “world’s first-ever” Natural Hair Dictionary, a new book that defines exactly what natural hair and hairstyles are.
The Natural Hair Dictionary’s: Natural Hair Style List includes titles, descriptions, and more than 60 original photographs defining natural hairstyles.
“The NATURAL HAIR DICTIONARY® is taking the steps necessary to become a global resource, not only to the novice but also as a tool for those already in the natural hair industry to help educate clients, prospects, family and friends,” said the website.
According to the website, they’re also working on more editions that will expand on other types of hairstyles including protective styles and extensions.
Since its release, the book has received some good reviews. “Excellent book! Very informative,” said Kimberly Allen, Michigan Board of Cosmetology and cosmetology instructor. “The book is a true gift, it explains the intricacies of everything from braided updos to micro twists. A must-have for anyone interested in natural hair,” Journalist Kahn Santori Davison said about the natural hair dictionary.
The creator of the book will be holding a book talk at the Detroit Public Library Jefferson branch located at 12350 E. Outer Dr. on June 24. The all-ages events will take place from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
The Natural Hair Dictionary’s: Natural Hair Style List is available for purchase locally in the Detroit, Michigan area at The Van Dyke and 27th Letter Bookstores. Don’t worry if you’re nowhere near Detroit, it’s also available on Amazon and NaturalHairDictionary.com.
A personal blog I follow, Kink & Coil has a similar hair dictionary. It covers the classification of hair types, hair care methods, kinds of styles, hair slang and abbreviations, and more. There are also children’s books available like My Natural Hair Dictionary on Amazon that encourage kids of color to discover the meaning of natural hair terms.
“From afros to wash and go’s, young readers will traverse the alphabet, encountering various natural hairstyles, hair-care products, and tools. With the help of bright, brilliant illustrations depicting life, family, and nature, kids will also learn about parts of speech and pronunciation,” according to the book’s description.
A newly translated manuscript has now been confirmed to have been the oldest one about Jesus Christ’s childhood.
The document was identified as the earliest surviving copy of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, with the discovery achieved by Dr. Lajos Berkes from Humboldt University and professor Gabriel Nocchi Macedo from the University of Liege in Belgium. The two dated the manuscript to somewhere between the 4th and 5th centuries, beating the previously held record for the oldest manuscript on Jesus’s childhood by about 600 years.
“Our findings on this late antique Greek copy of the work confirm the current assessment that the Infancy Gospel according to Thomas was originally written in Greek,” Macedo said.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas details stories of Jesus’s childhood but is considered outside the canon of Biblical scripture and is not included in the Bible itself. Despite this, the stories from this gospel were widely popular during the Middle Ages.
The document was considered insignificant for the longest time before being translated due in part to the clumsy handwriting on it. Initially, it was believed to have possibly been a letter or a shopping list due to the nature of the handwriting.
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“We first noticed the word Jesus in the text,” Berkes said. “Then, by comparing it with numerous other digitized papyri, we deciphered it letter by letter and quickly realized that it could not be an everyday document.”
The story mentioned in this document is the story of the “vivification of the sparrows,” which tells the story of Jesus molding birds out of clay before bringing them to life with a simple hand clap.
