Poodle crossbreeds have grown overwhelmingly popular, sparking controversy in dog parks and kennel clubs alike. The features of doodles such as Peaches (above), a goldendoodle, have become the canine equivalent of Instagram face. Meet the Breeds, the American Kennel Club's annual showcase of purebred dogs, took place over two eye-wateringly cold days in early February at the Javits Center, in Manhattan. About a hundred and fifty of the two hundred and five varieties recognized as official breeds by the A.K.C., the long-standing authority in the U.S. dog world, were in attendance for the public to ogle, fondle, and coo "So cute!" to, including the basset fauve de Bretagne, a hunting hound from France that's one of three newly recognized breeds recently allowed into the purebred pantheon. Some of the dogs had competed in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show earlier in the week, and past champions had their ribbons on display. In spite of the frigid weather, pavilions hosting the more popular breeds--the pug, the Doberman pinscher, the Great Dane, the St. Bernard--were packed. Lesser-known varieties, such as the saluki, the Löwchen, and the Lapponian herder, drew sparser crowds. There were exhibition spaces for each breed, and on the back walls were three adjectives supposedly describing that particular type of dog's temperament. There is, in fact, no evidence that temperament is consistent within a breed, but the idea is deeply rooted in dogdom. I stopped to caress the velvety ear leather of a pharaoh hound ("Friendly, Smart, Noble"), a sprinting breed once used to hunt rabbits in Malta; accept kisses from a Portuguese water dog, bred to assist with retrieving tackle ("Affectionate, Adventurous, Athletic"); and have my photograph taken with a Leonberger, a German breed from the town of Leonberg, in southwest Germany ("Friendly, Gentle, Playful"). No one was supposed to be openly selling dogs, but, if you asked, the breeders would share their information. Excluding what are known as companion dogs, like the Leonberger, most of the animals at the show were designed for a purpose that is no longer required of them. In Great Britain, foxhounds are legally barred from chasing foxes. Consider the fate of the otterhound, an ancient variety with a noble heritage which was once used in the U.K. to hunt river otters, which were prized for their thick fur and disliked by wealthy landowners because they ate fish in their stocked ponds.

Many training data attribution (TDA) methods aim to estimate how a model's behavior would change if one or more data points were removed from the training set. Methods based on implicit differentiation, such as influence functions, can be made computationally efficient, but fail to account for underspecification, the implicit bias of the optimization algorithm, or multi-stage training pipelines. By contrast, methods based on unrolling address these issues but face scalability challenges.

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The Biden administration is rolling out its first whole-of-government plan to counter threats posed by drones to the United States, as malicious actors are increasingly using unmanned aircraft systems to commit crimes and conduct illegal surveillance, industrial espionage and more, a senior administration official said Monday. The official said that over the last decade, drones, known as unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), have become a "regular feature of American life," noting they are used for recreation, research and for commerce. The official warned, though, that the proliferation of the technology has introduced "new risks" to public safety, privacy and homeland security.

What the Library of Congress can't offer, for the most part, is the opportunity to play the games in its collection. "We just don't have the infrastructure in place right now," Gibson says. It's also a product of the institution's approach to preservation: In some cases, game titles in the collection arrive still packaged in shrink-wrap--and when they do, they're likely to stay that way. Ultimately, Gibson would love to create digital copies of some items but that would have as much or more to do with the instability of optical media than a plan to make games playable. By and large, this is preservation for preservation's sake: an attempt to ensure that everything the library archives in its Culpeper, Virginia, facility will endure for as long as possible.