Latest news with #Bixby
GSM Arena
22-05-2025
- GSM Arena
Samsung's Galaxy apps now work on non-Galaxy Windows computers
Samsung's suite of apps, including the likes of Notes, Gallery, and Cloud are now available to non-Galaxy Windows machines. This wasn't the case until now - only Samsung's own laptops could use these proprietary apps. But users are reporting that they are now able to download the apps to non-Samsung Windows devices. You can find Galaxy Notes on the Microsoft Store on your Windows device and download it, no Galaxy Book needed. Some apps require you to sign in to your Samsung Account in order to work. Galaxy Notes gives a disclaimer upon launch that it has been optimized to run on Galaxy Books and that other machines could have some issues. You'll find a surprising number of apps in the Microsoft Store when you go into Samsung's dev account - Notes, Cloud, Gallery, Screen Recorder, Galaxy Buds, Bixby, Samsung Studio, and Phone to name a few. Via
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Portland Thorns' Bella Bixby on returning to play after motherhood: ‘It changes your body'
Bella Bixby entered Snapdragon Stadium Saturday night the same way she has entered every stadium for weeks — not just as Portland Thorns' starting goalkeeper but also mom to toddler Ruby, who was perched happily between her right arm and hip. For the 29-year-old, the 2025 NWSL season has been more than just returning to the field after the offseason. It has been a balancing act between being an elite athlete and a new mother — a transformation she does not sugarcoat. Advertisement 'It changes your body,' she tells . 'I think I underestimated how much pregnancy was gonna change my body.' Planning for a family was not a simple process for Bixby, especially with limited guarantees in her sport. That uncertainty lingered through the entire 2023 season, even before she started trying to get pregnant. After 14 years with her husband, Elliot, she knew it was time, but making the decision was hard. Her teammate Crystal Dunn just returned to play after having her son, Marcel. Another former teammate, Iceland's Dagny Brindisdóttir, who had a son at the time, was also able to come back to the team. Despite these role models, she was still unsure. 'I was anxious about what it might mean for my career,' she explains. 'Will I come back? Can I even do it? Is this going to be my last season?' A Portland native and an Oregon State alumnus, Bixby was drafted by the Thorns in 2017. After loan spells in Germany and Israel, she made her NWSL debut for the Thorns in the 2020 NWSL Challenge Cup – only to suffer an ACL injury and be sidelined for the rest of the tournament. Advertisement She returned in 2021 with a statement, setting an NWSL record for most consecutive shutout minutes (269) across her first three games, and earned a spot as one of three finalists for Goalkeeper of the Year that same year. In 2022, she helped lead the Thorns to an NWSL championship. The Thorns offered her a contract extension through 2025 (with an option for 2026), signaling the club's belief in her continued impact, especially following her return from maternity leave in 2024. The NWSL's new collective bargaining agreement (CBA), which included protections for mothers and extended support for families, gave Bixby more confidence that having a family earlier in her career was possible. 'The new CBA changed everything,' Bixby says. 'It's not just about me — it allows my husband to travel with us, so we don't have to be apart during these early years with Ruby.' But physically returning to play wasn't as simple for Bixby. Advertisement 'People think it's nine months and then you're done. But it is a much longer commitment on your body,' she says. 'My center of gravity changed, my hips are different, everything is different.' Before pregnancy, as an elite athlete, she felt there was nothing her body could not overcome with some rehab, hard work and time. But pregnancy and nursing affected her ligaments and joints, crucial parts of her body as a goalkeeper. 'There's a hormone that is in your body in high amounts when you're pregnant, it's called relaxin,' Bixby explains. While it prepares the body for childbirth by relaxing ligaments, especially in the pelvis, it's not ideal for a goalkeeper's body. Relaxin does not immediately go away after childbirth either, especially if the mother decides to nurse. 'By the time we get to October of this year, it'll have been two years since my body really has reset hormonally, which is insane to think about,' Bixby says. 'You really only think about pregnancy as a nine-month commitment to your body, but it's not.' Advertisement Since Ruby's arrival, it's not just her body that's changed; her entire routine has, too. 'I don't know what I did with all my time before,' Bixby laughs. While she calls Ruby the greatest gift, she doesn't downplay the reality of how motherhood has transformed her life. 'I used to sleep in till 10,' she says with a smirk. 'Now I'm up at six or seven —whenever Ruby is. I used to come home from training and just… decompress. Now I'm chasing a toddler.' Even with the upheaval, she still carves out time for recovery, nutrition, and sleep, all the non-negotiables of an elite athlete. Bixby is one of several NWSL players who have recently become mothers or are currently expecting. In February, Washington Spirit and U.S. women's national team midfielder Andi Sullivan announced that she and husband Drew Skundrich are expecting a baby girl. Bixby's teammate and U.S. forward Sophia Wilson announced she is having a baby with her husband, Arizona Cardinals' Michael Wilson. And last week, Chicago Stars and USWNT forward Mallory Swanson announced she is expecting a child. Advertisement While there might not officially be a best window of time for an athlete to get pregnant, this year has its perks, especially for the national team players between major tournaments. Bixby thinks that if there is a sweet spot, it is different for every player. She says the best is to come back in time to be cleared for preseason. 'That'll dictate when you want to get pregnant,' she explains. As more players announce pregnancies, Bixby sees the ripple effects of the league's evolving support for mothers. It's not just about what happens on the field anymore, it's about who's standing beside it. For her, this dual identity is a badge of honor, but she is still getting used to being the mom on the team. 'There is a misconception that motherhood changes you so much that you have to give up what you're passionate about,' she says. ' But this is our passion, and our dream. Some people, I'm sure, motherhood changes things for them. In my case, the moment I was pregnant, I was already picturing what it was going to look like to come back.' Advertisement This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Portland Thorns, Soccer, NWSL 2025 The Athletic Media Company
New York Times
11-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
In Trump's America, Every Parent and Child for Themselves
Last week, President Trump introduced the Special Education Simplified Funding Program as part of his 2026 budget proposal. The president's budget isn't binding, but it suggests that the way the administration proposes to allocate funds to the states could have an impact on the education of students with disabilities, both in classroom instruction and enforcement of minimum standards. For almost 50 years, parents of students with disabilities have relied on federal oversight to ensure that their children receive a fair education. But under the proposed budget, money earmarked for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) comes with a promise to limit the federal government's role in education and provide states with greater flexibility, which could mean drastically reducing oversight of how states will use that money. To me and many other parents of the 7.5 million public school students in the country served by IDEA, Mr. Trump's efforts to eliminate the Department of Education and potentially just give IDEA funding directly to the states is our worst nightmare. Last spring, a group of parents in Oklahoma filed a complaint with the State Department of Education against the Bixby School District, stating that the district had placed their children in segregated classrooms, and that it did not try instead to use supplementary aides and support services, thereby violating the law under IDEA. When students with disabilities are educated primarily in such segregated classrooms, they are often denied the full breadth of learning opportunities and interactions. Most significantly, they learn they do not belong among their peers. Nick and Kristen Whitmer chose to live in Bixby, a suburb of Tulsa, because of the school district's reputation for inclusive special education. This was what they wanted for their daughter, Adaline, who is 8 years old and has Down syndrome. But her experience last fall hadn't been what they hoped. Adaline spent less than half of her time at school in a general education classroom. She started her day there with a morning meeting with the other children. But after 10 minutes, a teacher guided her down the hall to the special education room. She rejoined other first graders for recess and lunch, but spent little time in an academic classroom with nondisabled peers. It was hard for Adaline to make friends with classmates. 'Adaline is not viewed as a member of the community,' Ms. Whitmer told me. 'She is a guest.' In preschool, Adaline had been placed in the Oklahoma Alternative Assessment Program, which is reserved for 'students with the most significant cognitive disabilities.' That meant that Bixby district administrators determined Adaline would not be given the opportunity to earn a high school diploma. Ms. Whitmer said that she pleaded with district representatives to put her daughter on the diploma track, but that they initially refused and began bringing a lawyer to meetings. After the state weighed in, and after intense advocacy, as of today Adaline is no longer in the alternative diploma track and is spending more time in a general education classroom in the morning. But all that could change. 'Is it the same for you?' Ms. Whitmer asked me. No, it's not. Like Adaline, my daughter has Down syndrome. Yet their educational trajectories couldn't have been more different. The discrepancies offer a glimpse of what is likely to become more common now that Mr. Trump has gutted the Department of Education and pledged to give full control to the states. My daughter, Louisa, goes to school in a rural college town in southwest Ohio. We have our share of challenges. But I never had to face a teacher or school administrator who openly resisted her inclusion in a classroom with nondisabled peers. Unlike in Oklahoma, removing students from a curriculum that would prepare them to earn a high school diploma requires written parental consent in Ohio. A bill to make it a parental decision in Oklahoma was recently signed by the governor. Before 1979, when the education of disabled children was in the hands of the states, many chose to not educate children with disabilities at all. A congressional investigation from 1972 found that 1.75 million children nationwide were turned away from public schools. Nineteen states provided a public education to less than a third of children with disabilities, and many had statutes that exempted such children from compulsory attendance laws. Congress implemented IDEA, then called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, in 1975 to guarantee that every child with a disability received a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. The Department of Education requires states to monitor how districts use the funding for disability-related services like specialized instruction, teacher training, speech and physical therapy, communication devices and classroom support staff. Oversight of a program as complicated as IDEA is challenging, but it has aimed to ensure that states are doing the right thing by providing the most inclusive education possible. To receive this funding, states are required to submit annual performance reports. The U.S. Department of Education uses 18 indicators to assess each state's compliance with IDEA, including graduation and dropout rates, post-school outcomes, parent involvement and the percentage of time students spend in a classroom with nondisabled peers. Based on those metrics, the Office of Special Education Programs (O.S.E.P.) evaluated whether states were meeting IDEA's requirements. But the 2026 budget proposes consolidating seven IDEA programs and using a 'simplified funding program,' which, while vague, suggests that the administration might be aiming to send the money to the states as block grants. This would likely allow school districts to use that money at their discretion. Acting on such changes to IDEA funding would require Congress to amend the law. The proposed restructuring could also reduce the federal government's power to intervene when states do not fulfill their responsibility under the law. Without more robust federal oversight, enforcement on the local level would continue to be uneven. Without a fully functioning Department of Education, states will not be held accountable for meeting even the minimum requirements of IDEA, and this landmark piece of legislation risks becoming essentially toothless, save for civil litigation. We will see an erosion of the promise of a free and appropriate public education for students with disabilities and fewer ways for parents and advocates to do anything about it. After what I have learned from the Whitmers and other parents around the country, I'm not sure why my family has been so lucky. But I do know that Louisa spends most of her time in classes with her peers, because of the creative thinking and support of compassionate educators. I also know that learning with her peers has had an astounding impact on her social and intellectual development. Louisa reads fantasy novels in her spare time. She is excited by the periodic table and the lab experiments she completes in small groups in her science class. She has sleepovers with friends. None of this would be possible if she was forced to learn in a segregated classroom. The significant disparities in Adaline's and Louisa's educations run counter to federal law. IDEA and several Supreme Court decisions have established a mandate for the education of students with disabilities — even those with the highest support needs. But states have been slow to end the practice of placing students in separate classrooms, even when parents like the Whitmers advocate for more time in a mainstream academic setting. As recently as 2022, the latest year for which data is available, only 67 percent of students with disabilities were spending at least 80 percent of their school day in a general education classroom. States have had 50 years to meet the standards of education promised in IDEA and its predecessor, yet those standards have never been universally met. In 2024, 24 states (including Oklahoma), six territories and Washington, D.C. were labeled 'needing assistance' for two or more consecutive years. States in that category are directed to use IDEA funds specifically for areas where they are not meeting requirements. Now that the Department of Education has lost nearly half of its staff members, too few are left to ensure that states meet their responsibilities to students with disabilities. If the Whitmers and other parents choose to file a due process claim with the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, there is most likely not enough staff left to investigate. IDEA has never been widely followed, and the Department of Education's bureaucracy wasn't perfect. But the lack of federal oversight will only worsen existing problems. It will make it even easier for states to interpret the law as they see fit. Those disparities could mean that many students with disabilities will lose the right to a free and appropriate education and their parents will lose the power to force change. Some parents who participated in the complaint against Bixby Public Schools told me that not enough has changed, and the cost to those parents, including for time off work and lawyers' fees, have been significant. As Ms. Whitmer put it, 'We've burned every bridge with everyone in the district.' But she pledges to keep on fighting. The alternative would be to acquiesce to the district's dim vision of her daughter's capabilities and her future.
Time Business News
10-05-2025
- Time Business News
The 10 Most Used Mobile Digital Assistants and What They Can Do
Developments in artificial intelligence have made these assistants smarter while also making them more personalized thus becoming more valuable than they have ever been. The following section offers a comprehensive breakdown of the leading ten Mobile Digital Assistants available in 2025 with their respective features. Siri from Apple experienced significant development since its original 2011 debut. One of the key improvements of Siri in the iOS platform involves proactive recommendations and enhanced support for HomeKit controls and third-party Mobile Apps integration. Send messages and make calls Users can create alerts by setting reminders and adding to their calendars as well as setting alarms. Operate smart home devices Offer directions and weather reports 'Hey Siri' activation allows users to execute tasks without their hands. The close relationship between Siri and Apple products ensures smooth user interaction that makes it stand as a top Mobile Digital Assistant in today's market. Google Assistant operates as the top AI-based Mobile Digital Assistant which connects to Android devices and smart home devices. The large data system maintained by Google enables this technology to deliver precise results that adapt to surrounding circumstances. Google Assistant provides answers through current online search results directly from the web. Translate languages in real-time Manage schedules and send messages Users can control their intelligent home systems through Google Home technology. The system generates ahead-of-time suggestions through monitoring user actions This mobile app has reached its peak of productivity because it boasts control of multiple Android smartphones along with Google applications. Amazon Alexa started as the first smart speaker assistant before expanding to mobile platforms, where it maintains its position as the most preferred smart home assistant. Play music, audiobooks, and podcasts Control voice-controlled smart home devices Shop products on Amazon Users can receive their daily news summaries together with weather updates from the platform. Establish automated task routines. Users can now access Alexa through mobile applications available for both Android and iOS systems. The consumer-focused features of Cortana have diminished but Microsoft maintains its enterprise-based Mobile Digital Assistant capabilities which specifically operate within Microsoft 365 settings. Users can schedule appointments and send reminders using the Outlook platform. Bixby recommends tasks according to scheduled events in your calendar Read and reply to emails Give productivity insights Cortana serves professionals well since Microsoft integrated it into Microsoft Office applications, although it no longer stands alone as a mobile application. The Mobile Digital Assistant, also known as Bixby, already exists preloaded on devices running Samsung smartphones and other Samsung smart devices. Bixby faced initial obstacles, but it established itself better through AI upgrades and device connection improvements. Manage device settings through voice Bixby Routines enables users to execute multiple sequential commands. The camera enables users to translate foreign text into their native language. The program suggests content or applications that match your current activities. Control Samsung SmartThings-enabled home appliances Over multiple millions of Galaxy phones Bixby operates as an integrated assistant and remains a major mobile application for Samsung users. Huawei launched Celia as its proprietary Mobile Digital Assistant because Google services were restricted for Huawei HarmonyOS and newer Android phone models. Set calendar events and reminders Make calls and send messages The camera will identify items as well as written content. Translate languages in real-time Control Huawei smart devices Huawei optimized Celia for its growing product ecosystem, which makes it compete effectively with worldwide Mobile Digital Assistants. Through its leadership status in Chinese AI platforms, Baidu operates DuerOS as a system that powers smart speakers alongside mobile applications. The system functions perfectly with Mandarin and operates optimally for digital purposes across China. The system allows users to execute proficient web searches across Chinese websites. Users can operate IoT devices and home appliances through their interface The system enables users to access music and story content. Enable hands-free navigation and communication. Baidu enables its services to integrate with its platform ecosystem DuerOS continues to stand as one of the most successful Mobile Digital Assistants in the regional Chinese market. The Mobile Digital Assistant XiaoAI belongs to Xiaomi and exists in both MIUI and the Mi smart home ecosystem. DuerOS delivers deep integration across the wide range of Xiaomi products. Control Xiaomi IoT devices Provide voice commands in Mandarin Offer music and weather updates The device enables users to set alarms, reminders, and call functions. The system improves its user profiles through observation of individual interactions. The exclusive Xiaomi assistant functions within their entire product ecosystem which makes it the dominant Mobile App for Asian users especially those in China. Yandex maintains Alice as its Mobile Digital Assistant, which has gained popularity throughout Russia. The AI employs conversational techniques to work alongside all Yandex services. Converse in fluent Russian Answer queries with search results Local users can access weather data alongside relevant news information through the assistant. Control compatible smart home devices Provide music playback via Yandex Music Alice demonstrates how regional Mobile App intelligence can successfully match up against international competitors. The Vlingo origin app evolved into Vi which has become a fitness-focused Mobile Digital Assistant that now works through smart wearables and health-based Mobile Apps. Exercisers can receive immediate support about workouts through the app during their physical activity Heart rate and steps data serve as health statistics for monitoring purposes. Give AI-powered fitness tips. The system can enable integration with external health and wellness solutions operated by third parties. Provide performance-based motivational cues. Vi establishes itself in the fitness section of Mobile Digital Assistants despite focusing on a specific market segment. These10 Mobile Digital Assistants represent groundbreaking progress toward future AI-based Mobile Apps, which will have built-in understanding and prediction capabilities of user needs. The rising need for natural language processing, together with 5G technology, will empower these assistants to deliver real-time assistance across every field, from patient care to educational services and entertainment to commercial opportunities. Smart companions are the new identity of Mobile Digital Assistants because these voice-controlled gadgets now help people simplify their digital world. The selection of your assistant primarily depends on which tech company you prefer between Apple, Google and Samsung and which language you need as well as the level of AI integration you want in your daily life. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Yahoo
Dallas Police Memorial honors fallen officers; one a Quinlan resident
DALLAS — The Dallas Police Department this week added two names to its police memorial, honoring Officers Gabriel Bixby and Darron Burks. They are the 94th and 95th Dallas officers to be memorialized. Bixby, 29 and a resident of Quinlan, died on Jan. 7. He was riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle westbound on State Highway 276 in Hunt County when a vehicle turned left into a private driveway and into his path. Bixby had served nearly seven years with the Dallas Police Department, assigned to the Northeast Patrol Division. He joined the force in 2018 and was known for his dedication to public service. At the time of his death, he was pursuing a bachelor's degree at East Texas A&M University and taking additional college courses through Trinity Valley Community College. He is survived by his wife, Annmarie, and their two young children. Colleagues described him as a committed officer who brought integrity, energy, and compassion to his work every day. Beginning Sunday, police departments and the communities they serve will mark National Police Week through May 17. The annual week serves as a reminder of the sacrifices made by those who wear the badge, organizers with the Fraternal Order of Police say. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation that designated May 15 as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week in which that date falls as Police Week.
