At Ignition Media, as we embrace 2024, we’re keenly aware of the evolving trends in web design that...

The post The Top Website Design Trends for 2024 appeared first on Ignition Media.

Netflix explained, "We launched this licensed collection of films in 2021 for three years. Those licenses have now expired."

These musicians bring both sensitivity and creativity to their work, blending tradition with innovation in a way that’s sure to make this concert an unforgettable experience.

Vistors to the North Coast 500 are being asked to sign a pledge amin concerns of speeding drivers

Holidaymakers hit in the pocket will visit somewhere else, warned Steve Heapy

The industry awards recognised the best cruise brands across several categories such as food, entertainment and family

Amsterdam is a city of contrasts, where historic charm meets vibrant modernity. A city break in Amsterdam offers a chance to explore picturesque canals, world-renowned museums, and eclectic neighbourhoods, all within a compact and walkable setting. In this guide, I’ll take you through an unforgettable three-day itinerary designed to capture the essence of Amsterdam. From strolling along cobblestone streets to indulging in Dutch delicacies, here’s how to make the most of your Amsterdam city break. Considering taking a cruise to Amsterdam? Arriving by sea is not only a unique way to start your adventure but also offers breathtaking views of the city from the water. Cruises often include extras like guided tours or exclusive shore excursions, making it a convenient option for those looking to experience Amsterdam’s maritime charm from the moment they arrive. Day 1: Uncovering Amsterdam’s Historic Canals and Culinary Scene Morning: Arrive and Settle In If you’re arriving by cruise, you’ll dock at the Port of Amsterdam, just a stone’s throw away from the city centre. Once you’ve disembarked and checked into your accommodation, it’s time to start exploring. Begin your visit with a leisurely walk through Amsterdam’s Canal Belt, a UNESCO World Heritage site that embodies the city’s rich history and iconic architecture. As you wander, you’ll find charming bridges, historic houseboats, and narrow townhouses adorned with ornate gables. Each canal has its own character, but Prinsengracht, Herengracht, and Keizersgracht are among the most famous. You’ll quickly see why these canals are one of Amsterdam’s most photographed attractions. Afternoon: Dive into Amsterdam’s Maritime History with a Canal Cruise One of the best ways to immerse yourself in the city’s history is to take a canal cruise. Various operators offer guided tours, ranging from hour-long excursions to multi-course dinner cruises. As you glide along the water, you’ll get a sense of how Amsterdam’s intricate canal system helped shape its trade and commerce over the centuries. Plus, you’ll enjoy views of iconic landmarks like the Anne Frank House, the Rijksmuseum, and Westerkerk from a unique vantage point. Evening: Sample Amsterdam’s Diverse Culinary Offerings Amsterdam’s food scene is as diverse as its population. For your first evening, treat yourself to a traditional Dutch dinner. Try local dishes like stamppot, a hearty blend of potatoes, vegetables, and sausage, or erwtensoep, a thick pea soup perfect for chilly evenings. If you’re in the mood for something sweet, don’t miss poffertjes—tiny pancakes dusted with powdered sugar. For a more eclectic dining experience, Amsterdam is home to countless international restaurants, reflecting its role as a global melting pot. You’ll find everything from Indonesian rijsttafel (a feast of small dishes) to Middle Eastern mezze. Many restaurants are located along the canals, offering atmospheric outdoor seating and views of the water. Day 2: Art, Parks, and Local Markets Morning: Explore the Treasures of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam is a haven for art lovers, and the Rijksmuseum is a must-visit. Housing masterpieces from the Dutch Golden Age, including Rembrandt’s The Night Watch and Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, the museum offers a comprehensive journey through Dutch art and history. Set aside at least a couple of hours to explore the galleries, as the collection is extensive. For an insider’s tip, arrive early to avoid crowds, especially if you want to get a close-up view of Rembrandt’s renowned pieces. If you’re visiting during spring or summer, don’t miss the museum’s garden, which features beautiful sculptures and tranquil spots for a mid-morning break. Afternoon: Discover Van Gogh’s Vibrant World and Stroll Through Vondelpark Just a short walk from the Rijksmuseum is the Van Gogh Museum, dedicated to the life and work of one of the most iconic artists in history. With over 200 paintings, including famous works like Sunflowers and The Bedroom, this museum provides an intimate look at Van Gogh’s creative genius and turbulent life. After you’ve soaked in Van Gogh’s vivid colours and swirling brushstrokes, take a break in nearby Vondelpark. This sprawling green space is a favourite among locals and visitors alike, offering a peaceful escape from the city’s hustle and bustle. Pack a picnic or grab a coffee from one of the park’s cafés, and spend some time people-watching, cycling, or simply soaking up the scenery. Evening: Dinner in De Pijp and a Stroll Through the Albert Cuyp Market For dinner, head to De Pijp, a lively neighbourhood known for its multicultural vibe and delicious food scene. Here, you’ll find everything from trendy eateries to traditional eetcafés, where you can enjoy hearty Dutch fare in a casual setting. While you’re in De Pijp, be sure to explore the Albert Cuyp Market, the largest outdoor market in Europe. With over 250 stalls selling everything from fresh produce and cheese to clothing and souvenirs, it’s a fantastic place to soak up the local atmosphere. Grab a snack like a freshly made stroopwafel, or pick up some Dutch cheese to take home as a tasty souvenir. Day 3: History and Shopping in Amsterdam’s Iconic Neighbourhoods Morning: Reflect on History at the Anne Frank House Begin your day with a visit to the Anne Frank House, where the young diarist and her family hid during World War II. The museum offers a poignant glimpse into the hardships faced by Anne and her family, as well as the resilience of those who lived through the era. Due to its popularity, it’s best to book tickets in advance to avoid long wait times. If you’re interested in exploring more of Amsterdam’s wartime history, consider adding a visit to the Resistance Museum, which offers further insights into the city’s experiences during the German occupation. Afternoon: Shop and Dine in the Negen Straatjes (Nine Streets) Next, head to the Negen Straatjes, or Nine Streets, a charming area within the Canal Belt known for its quirky boutiques, vintage shops, and cosy cafés. This is the perfect place to indulge in some retail therapy, with stores selling everything from high-end fashion and handmade jewellery to unique home decor and antique books. Take your time browsing the shops, and be sure to stop for lunch at one of the many cafés lining the streets. The area is famous for its atmospheric coffee shops and bakeries, offering everything from freshly baked pastries to artisanal sandwiches. For a sweet treat, try a slice of Dutch apple pie, which pairs perfectly with a strong espresso. Evening: Wrap Up Your Trip at a Cosy Brown Café As your city break in Amsterdam comes to a close, spend your last evening unwinding at a traditional Dutch brown café. These cosy pubs are named for their dark wood interiors and smoky atmospheres, and they’re a staple of local culture. Café Hoppe and Café De Dokter are both great choices, offering a warm ambiance and a selection of Dutch beers to sample. Whether you’re sharing a drink with friends or simply savouring a quiet moment, the relaxed atmosphere of a brown café is the perfect way to end your Amsterdam adventure. Tips for an Unforgettable Amsterdam City Break When to Visit: Spring and autumn are the best times to visit Amsterdam, as the weather is mild, and there are fewer tourists. Spring is particularly beautiful due to the blooming tulips, while autumn offers colourful foliage along the canals. Getting Around: Amsterdam’s public transport system includes trams, buses, and ferries, making it easy to navigate the city. However, the city centre is highly walkable, and cycling is a popular way to get around. Many hotels offer bike rentals, or you can rent one from a local shop. Accommodations: Amsterdam offers a wide range of accommodation options, from boutique hotels and cosy bed-and-breakfasts to trendy hostels and luxurious canal-side apartments. Consider staying in a central area like the Jordaan or De Pijp for easy access to the city’s top attractions. Must-Try Foods: Beyond traditional Dutch dishes like stamppot and haring (raw herring), Amsterdam is known for its cheese, with varieties like gouda and edam readily available. Street foods like patat (thick-cut fries) served with mayo and bitterballen (fried meatballs) are also popular, especially at local markets and pubs. Cultural Etiquette: While Amsterdam is known for its liberal attitudes, it’s essential to respect local customs. Keep in mind that cycling is a primary mode of transportation, so be cautious when crossing bike lanes, and always look both ways.

The post Amsterdam City Break: Discovering the Heart of the Netherlands in Three Magical Days appeared first on Geeky Traveller.

By Wallace White Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon lost his seat in a landslide to independent challenger Nathan Hochman, The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times reported. Gascon is projected to lose against Hochman in a crucial seat in one of America’s most crime-ridden cities, according to the AP and the LA Times […]

The post Soros-Backed George Gascon Loses Los Angeles DA Race In Landslide appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

By Julianna Frieman Republican senators competing for the majority leader position vowed Sunday to address President-elect Donald Trump’s demands ahead of his inauguration. Trump revealed Sunday that the Senate leader of his GOP majority must support recess appointments to assure his Cabinet positions be confirmed expeditiously and unobstructed. The three senators contending for the leadership […]

The post GOP Senate Majority Leader-Hopefuls Scramble To Address Trump Demands Ahead Of Inauguration appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

By Eireann Van Natta Dr. Anthony Fauci was granted $15 million in taxpayer-funded security as a private citizen, according to a new report. An agreement between the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided Fauci protection from Jan. 4, 2023 to Sept. 20, 2024, according to FOIA documents […]

The post Fauci Received 15 Million Dollars In Taxpayer Funds For Private Security Detail, Report Says appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

By Harold Hutchison Former Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf told CNN host Jim Acosta Tuesday that the incoming Trump administration would “initiate a pretty large program” to locate children the Biden-Harris administration lost track of. At least 85,000 children placed into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) are unaccounted for, […]

The post Former Trump Official Reminds Jim Acosta Of ‘Over 330,000 Children’ Biden-Harris Admin Lost Track Of At Border appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.

An anti-corruption charity finds significant concerns in £15.3bn worth of contracts awarded during the pandemic.

Children are among the thousands to have lost limbs in Gaza, forcing them to learn a new way of life.

The move comes after US officials were quoted saying they would not accept Hamas's presence in Qatar.

Mika Ap Ellis was reunited with her dad after 30 years of being estranged.

Sal Naseem tells the BBC he wasn't convinced Mr Kaba presented a sufficient danger to justify being shot.

2 ‘Moody’ Home Design Trends Generating Buzz

The trends of the Premier League season so far that make for interesting reading.

A military judge has canceled the Biden administration’s attempt to hand a plea deal to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other terrorists who Biden wanted to give a lighter sentence. Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had tried to make a plea deal with the terrorists that ran against their previous sentences by allowing them to […]

The post Military Judge Cancels Biden’s Attempt to Give Aid to Terror Masterminds of 9-11 appeared first on The Lid.

Arab and Muslim leaders demanded that Israel withdraw from occupied Palestinian territories as a precondition for regional peace, while denouncing "shocking" Israeli crimes in war-ravaged Gaza.

President Aliyev accuses West of hypocrisy for criticising country’s fossil-fuel dependence while buying its oil & gas.

velocityconf: Free webcast from our friends at @citrix 5/29 http://t.co/IOeY4U0wUP Learn to consolidate 40 load balancers and ADCs into single platform

Parents of kids with ADHD often say their kids miss social cues, such as when peers are bored, hurt or offended, according to Amori Mikami, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada. “It can lead to a lot of outbursts or temper tantrums or whining and complaining or arguing with the friend,” she said. Mikami researches peer relationships, specifically focusing on children with ADHD. Additionally, she developed a parental friendship coaching (PFC) model where parents of elementary school-age kids can learn to support their child in making friends.

Folk tales are meant to be flexible things, open-source stories infinitely moldable to the needs of teller and era. That’s the wonder of them — and of “The Skull,” an old Tyrolean yarn distilled to its droll essentials and marvelously reimagined by the Caldecott medalist (and national treasure) Jon Klassen. Klassen’s version, accompanied by a generous helping of his odd and beautiful illustrations, follows a young girl named Otilla who, one snowy night, “finally” runs away from home. She becomes hopelessly lost in a deep, dark forest.

Shopify's surge added fuel to Canada's strong market rally, helping its benchmark index cross 25,000 for the first time.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, under Donald Trump's administration, Trump said.

We recently hosted an engaging live discussion with industry experts from G2Crowd, Instapage and Subscription Insider, covering trends and growth tips for online businesses. Check out what these leaders had to say about what they learned last year in the software industry, where people are missing opportunities and what’s coming next.

Kenya's candidate for the top job at the African Union said on Saturday that if US president-elect Donald Trump does not want to work with Africa, the continent has "other friends".

PORT LOUIS, Nov 10 - Mauritius was holding a parliamentary election on Sunday with Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth and his main rivals all promising to tackle a cost of living crisis in the Indian Ocean archipelago.

    New workshop in London / remote Link - Enterprise AI workshop – Sep 2018 – in London or remote     AI / Deep Learning applications course/ mentoring program – hands-on experience with limited spaces I am pleased to announce a new course on AI Applications The course combines elements of teaching, coaching and [...]

  We have been working on this idea over the summer and have now launched the next stage of the AI labs in London Here are some more details. Think of AI labs – as a club for AI research AI labs addresses three problems a)  Today, even if you are working on Machine Learning [...]

If you have ever accidentally hit that key below the escape key during a game and a large, scary text… Continue reading All console commands for Brighter Shores

The post All console commands for Brighter Shores appeared first on ReadWrite.

July was a big month for model releases: There are new large models from Mistral and Meta, smaller multilingual models from Mistral and DeepL, another Mistral model that specializes in code generation, and a small version of GPT-4o. The security world saw another software supply chain disaster when CrowdStrike released a bad software update that […]

This month, we’ll give AI a rest. Alex Russell has finished an excellent series of posts titled “Reckoning.” It’s a must-read for web developers. If you want to understand why our networks and laptops are much faster than they were 15 or 20 years ago, but the web is slower, it comes down to one […]

The model release train continues, with Mistral’s multimodal Pixtral 12B, OpenAI’s o1 models, and Roblox’s model for building 3D scenes. We also have another important AI-enabled programming tool: Cursor is an alternative to GitHub Copilot that’s getting rave reviews. Security will never cease to be a problem, but this month seems particularly problematic. The Mirai […]

October had many language model releases. The mid-size models, and even the small models, are catching up to frontier models like GPT-4.5o in performance. But the release that blew us all away wasn’t a language model: It was Claude’s computer use API. Computer use allows you to teach Claude how to use a computer: how […]

There are laptops sold with NVidia's high-end 4090 graphics chip, but it's a power-constrained mobile version appropriate for portable machines. A Chinese-language blogger modded themselves a beast of a machine with a full desktop-class 4090 card. This thing weighs 15 pounds and its battery life is a Borgesian map of nothing (one must plug it in). — Read the rest

The post "Laptop" with full 4090 GPU weighs 15 pounds appeared first on Boing Boing.

A Minnessota maker named Caleb Olson built the Poopcopter, an autonomous drone that seeks out dog-doo and retrieves it for disposal.

He describes it as the "world's first aerial bound self-guided dog poop removal system." See it in action below.

"The Poopcopter is capable of scanning areas defined by a user, your backyard for example, and as it scans it's performing real-time computer vision using the camera which is inside the drone," Olson says. — Read the rest

The post The Poopcopter is a DIY autonomous drone that finds and collects dog-doo appeared first on Boing Boing.

Who Can Currently Afford to Buy a Home?

Last week I went up to San Francisco for the Winter Fancy Food Show. This annual trade show draws more than 1,400 food companies from 30 countries who come to SF to show off their newest food products to the retail and hospitality vendors and food media. Last year, I spent a lot of time at the […]

The article Favorite Finds from the Winter Fancy Food Show 2017 originated at EverInTransit.com

If killjoy leftists can wear their self-parodying and ridiculous 'Handmaid's Tale' outfits, then they can't complain when a MAGA voter plays the same game... only better.

The post MUST-WATCH: MAGA Voter Finds Hilarious Way To Sidestep Election Clothing Rules appeared first on Clash Daily.

Without a consequence-free hook-up culture, Planned Parenthood's business model collapses. The left's response to Trump's election is an existential threat... to itself!

The post OOPS: Planned Parenthood Sounds Alarm As Lefties Weaponize Abstinence appeared first on Clash Daily.

Staphylococcus aureus adhesion to the host's skin and mucosae enables asymptomatic colonization and the establishment of infection. This process is facilitated by cell wall-anchored adhesins that bind to host ligands. Therapeutics targeting this process could provide significant clinical benefits; however, the development of anti-adhesives requires an in-depth knowledge of adhesion-associated factors and an assay amenable to high-throughput applications. Here, we describe the development of a sensitive and robust whole cell assay to enable the large-scale profiling of S. aureus adhesion to host ligands. To validate the assay, and to gain insight into cellular factors contributing to adhesion, we profiled a sequence-defined S. aureus transposon mutant library, identifying mutants with attenuated adhesion to human-derived fibronectin, keratin, and fibrinogen. Our screening approach was validated by the identification of known adhesion-related proteins, such as the housekeeping sortase responsible for covalently linking adhesins to the cell wall. In addition, we also identified genetic loci that could represent undescribed anti-adhesive targets. To compare and contrast the genetic requirements of adhesion to each host ligand, we generated a S. aureus Genetic Adhesion Network, which identified a core gene set involved in adhesion to all three host ligands, and unique genetic signatures. In summary, this assay will enable high-throughput chemical screens to identify anti-adhesives and our findings provide insight into the target space of such an approach.

Cross-border conflict, evidence, policy and trends (XCEPT)

This five-year policy-focused research programme seeks to respond to the challenges of long-term cross-border conflicts by exploring the drivers behind them.

Protracted conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, Horn of Africa and parts of Asia, although usually arising from intra-state disputes, rarely remain contained within national borders. Their effects reverberate outward and external actors are drawn in.

The longer these wars last, the more difficult they are to resolve as the interests of international actors collide and the web of economic and political interactions which sustain violence and connect conflict across borders expand and deepen.

The Cross-border conflict, evidence, policy and trends (XCEPT) research programme brings together world-leading experts to examine conflict-affected borderlands, how conflicts connect across borders, and the drivers of violent and peaceful behaviour.

Chatham House provides research leadership to the programme, as part of the wider consortium, and our research explores:

• the intersection of conflict supply chains which sustain and embed violence
• coping supply chains for survival-based economic activity which occurs in the context of violence

Three geographic case studies will be supported by cross-cutting workstreams on gender and social inclusion, livelihoods, and border security. Each will produce analysis and recommendations to inform international policy responses to conflict across borders.

These case studies will focus on:

• armed actors and financial flows through Iraq and the Levant
• human smuggling across Libya, East and West Africa
• gold mining and weapons flows across Sudanese borderlands

The consortium is made up of a range of other organizations, including the Asia Foundation, the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, the Rift Valley Institute, Chemonics UK and King’s College London.

XCEPT is funded by UK Aid from the UK government.