Called Yngsj, this serene holiday retreat in Southern Sweden is designed by Johan Sundberg Arkitektur. This single-story haven, built for a London-based Swedish family, replaces a deteriorating summer cottage that once occupied the wooded plot near the Baltic Sea coastline. The architects chose a palette of natural materials to harmonize with the surrounding landscape. The structure features a timber frame wrapped in Siberian larch cladding, with vertical pilasters.Material selection and light coloration were used to create a delicate balance in the building, establishing a contemporary architectural statement, while allowing it to blend with the natural surroundings. The home is named after its location in the Scania country, and it serves as the familys tranquil escape from urban life, offering a seamless connection to Swedens coastal wilderness.Designer: Johan Sundberg ArkitekturStudio founder Johan Sundberg used horizontal lines and simplicity in his design approach, carefully avoiding what he calls veering into minimalism. His inspiration draws from what he considers the golden era of Scandinavian and early British modernism, creating a space that feels both contemporary and timeless. I aimed to reduce complexity but avoid reductionism, creating a house that stands out while still adapting to its surroundings, he said.The Yngsj house is positioned on a small mound and stretches northward, rising above the ground on slim steel pillars that give the structure a floating appearance. This clever elevation ensures the home sits delicately on the natural terrain. The underside features triple-layered larch panels that help the building blend seamlessly with the surrounding forest environment. This architectural approach creates a harmonious relationship between the man-made structure and its wooded setting.The northern elevated section of the Yngsj house accommodates the more private areas, featuring bedrooms with expansive windows that offer stunning views across the treetops. The southern portion houses the entrance, kitchen, and communal spaces, creating a natural flow between social and personal zones. In the central sectionof the home is a cleverly recessed section that creates space for a west-facing outdoor dining terrace that captures the sunset. This allows residents to enjoy their meals while sitting in the warm sunset glow.Inside, the interior showcases oak floors, trimmings, doors, and custom carpentry work. The ceiling and its overhanging elements are connected through the use of larch, which serves a dual purpose creating visual continuity while providing sound-absorbing properties throughout the home. These carefully selected natural materials contribute to the warm, inviting atmosphere of this lovely retreat. The kitchen, entirely in oak, adds a warm, mysterious quality to the interior it became delightful, darker, and a bit more mysterious than I first imagined, said Sundberg.Strategically placed skylights illuminate the corridor leading to the bedrooms and bathrooms, covering the space with natural light and creating a better connection to the outdoor environment. Wooden blinds offer some privacy, enabling the residents to create a snug and bunk-like atmosphere when they feel like it. Sundberg states that the corridor skylights are one of the homes most successful design elements.The raised section of the home creates outdoor space beneath the structure, including a sheltered area that houses a ping-pong table. This elevated design serves a dual purpose offering additional space while protecting against potential future storms that could elevate water levels by up to three meters along Scanias coastlines. Sundberg also says that the completed residence embodies the Scandinavian mindset of its London-based Swedish owners. The home achieves a delicate balance, as it feels both airy and cozy, and serves as a year-round retreat, where residents can relax and reconnect with nature.The post Floating Forest Retreat Blends Scandinavian Modernism With Nature & Features Expansive Treetop Views first appeared on Yanko Design.

Remember when the smartphone just meant that a phone had internet connectivity and an app store? Thats literally how we described the first smartphone but that criteria is long-gone. Phones today are REALLY smart almost too smart. They have powerful processors, complex algorithms running the cameras, and are almost all filled with at least one form of an AI assistant that goes above and beyond what voice assistants could do 10 years ago. Phones today are deadly smart and that might just be scary to some people.Theres no denying that smartphones are incredibly useful, but theres a case to be made for phones that just retain the bare basics. After all, you wouldnt be able to accidentally add a journalist to a group chat discussing national war plans if you had a secure dumb phone, right? Well, for people who want a phone that does exactly what it needs to do without being a powerful, data-guzzling, soul-sucking, time-wasting, addictive slab of metal, the Light Phone III is the latest dumb-phone on the block. Building on over a decade-long legacy, the much-awaited third edition of the phone comes back with some design refinements, including a black-and-white OLED screen instead of the e-ink one from previous generations, and now even a camera that gives you more of a phone experience without necessarily feeling like a compromise. TikTok and Instagram not included.Designer: LightThe e-paper screen is gone, replaced with a 3.92-inch black-and-white OLED display. Its sharper, faster, and more legible in any lighting, which might sound like a small thinguntil you remember how sluggish and washed-out the previous screen could get. Navigation is now snappier, typing is less of a chore, and the interface feels less like a prototype and more like a statement.Internally, its grown up too. The bump to 6GB of RAM (from just 1GB in the II) makes everything smoother. A Qualcomm SM4450 chip powers it, paired with 128GB of storage, which is overkill for a phone that wont let you install TikTok or stream Netflix. But its welcome overkillenough headroom for basic tasks like messaging, navigation, music, podcasts, and taking the occasional photo without freezing mid-action.Yeah, theres a camera now. Just one. And it doesnt try to be clever. No HDR. No night mode. Just a fixed focal length and a two-stage shutter button like the ones youd find on an old Canon PowerShot. Its more about documenting than capturing content, which feels radically refreshing in a world obsessed with perfect angles and AI touch-ups.The form factor itself is a callback to a time when phones fit in your hand and your jeans pocket. Its about the width of an iPhone but shortercompact enough to text one-handed, substantial enough to not feel like a toy. Its also heavier than the Light Phone II, thanks to a larger, user-replaceable battery and a more premium build. Thats rightuser-replaceable battery. Try finding that on any mainstream phone these days without grabbing a heat gun and a prayer.Theres a fingerprint sensor embedded in the power button, stereo speakers, a USB-C port, and an NFC chip for contactless payments. The GPS uses Here instead of Google Maps, which means it actually honors your privacy instead of mining your location history. Thats a pattern hereevery feature feels intentional, stripped down to its most ethical version.If the budget iPhone 16Es price made you squirm, the Light Phone IIIs $799 price tag should really sting. Thats nearly three times the launch cost of the Light Phone II, and even with the $599 pre-order deal, its clearly not for price-conscious buyers. But thats also kind of the point: the Light Phone III isnt trying to compete on specs or price. Its offering a different contract entirelyless screen, fewer distractions, more peace. For a price that a small subset of people will pay just so that they can stay connected without their device collecting bucketloads of data on them for training/marketing purposes.The post This $799 Phone Wont Steal Your Time or Your Data Meet the Light Phone III first appeared on Yanko Design.

Maintenance release can't come soon enough.

WIRED has found four new Venmo accounts that appear to be associated with Trump officials who were in an infamous Signal chat. One made a payment with a note consisting solely of an eggplant emoji.

This week on Uncanny Valley, our hosts ask what impact religion will have on Silicon Valley.

A new Friends Tab will feature posts from a users friends and relatives, which was the original mission of the app.

MacworldNow we know that June 9 is the day Apple will kick off WWDC 2025. Ive been covering WWDC since before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, and this year is shaping up to potentially be the most interesting and certainly most dramatic version of Apples most important event of the year.If you didnt know already, WWDC (which stands for Worldwide Developers Conference) is important for more than just developers. Its literally Apples New Years Day, the day that the company rolls out its plans for all of its platforms for the next year. With the impending release of iOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, and the rest, we are at the tail end of last years cycle. Work at Apple is now shifting even more to the stuff well be using over the next year, beginning with the announcement of new features and new decisions on June 9.Last years event, which featured the rollout of Apple Intelligenceincluding, yes, some features that never ended up shippingwas certainly dramatic. But at the same time, we all pretty much knew what was coming: Apple was desperate to be seen as a player in the AI game, and so it was going to blow that horn as loud as it could. This years fascination is more subtle: What now? Doubling down on Apple Intelligence? Apologizing for last years, er, overexuberant promises? Changing direction? Staying the course? The last year has flipped the table on Apples usually conservative and careful platform-building plans. This years possibilities are wide open.The elephant in the roomLast years rollout of Apple Intelligence wasnt subtle, and by most accounts, it was a rush job after the company realized it was behind in the LLM game. This last year has been bumpy, with some features working okay, others embarrassing Apple, and of course, some not showing up at all. Its never been more evident that Apple is not a company that is capable of rushing operating-system features into production in a matter of a few months. (Maybe it should be, but thats a different topic.)Apple felt the pressure to jump on the AI bandwagon and its been a bumpy ride ever since.AppleBut its been more than a year since that fateful decision was made, nearly ten months since WWDC 2024, and five months since Apple Intelligence began shipping to customers. So, what has Apple learned from this entire experience? This is the key question, and while the company wont tell us the answer directly, we should all watch closely to see how it alters its approach.My guess is that Apple will consider its primary goal of WWDC 2024to create broad knowledge of Apple Intelligence as a brand name that makes Apple vaguely seem in the AI gameto have been achieved. Those who are knowledgeable about the current state of AI will roll their eyes and cite dozens of ways in which Apple is nowhere near the cutting edge of AI, and theyre not wrong. But I think that in the broadest perception of Apple as a company, consumers are vaguely aware that Apple says it has AI. And even people closer to the tech industry have to admit that Apple seems to have a huge desire to get into the AI game, even if its stumbled out of the blocks.Thats why this coming year, Apple Intelligence will probably shift to more of a clean-up and consolidation phase. The last year was messy. Bits of Apple Intelligence were jammed into places where they didnt quite fit or make sense. I hope that Apple will refine the existing tools, ship updated (and hopefully much improved!) versions of its own models, and also focus on shipping the stuff it promised last year that it couldnt deliver this yearif it can. If it cant, if those features prove to be elusive, that will continue to be a black eye for Applebut it needs to own it and move on.As a result, I expect that Apple will only announce a small number of new Apple Intelligence-derived features, not the fusillade of features we got last time. After a year, I hope that the company will understand better what its capable of accomplishing in a single year.WWDC 2025 needs to prioritize the needs of developers. AppleWhat about developers?Lost in all the Apple Intelligence hype last year was the somewhat astonishing fact that at its developer conference, Apple unveiled a load of AI features that offered almost no way for app developers to get in the game. The biggest story for developers at WWDC 2024 was App Intents, which would allow apps to better integrate with all the features that Apple has now admitted it cant ship. So in hindsight, WWDC 2024 had almost nothing for developers at all.This needs to change, and WWDC 2025 is the place for it to happen. App developers should view Apple platforms as the best places to build AI-enhanced apps. Thats good for Apple. The company has invested a lot in creating hardware thats pretty solid for running AI applications (thanks, Neural Engine). The next step should be offering developers access to Apple-blessed ML models on its devices, and easy systemwide integration with external models from Apple and third parties. Apple built Apple Intelligence for itself; its time to turn the tables and let the app developers start innovating.Speaking of external models, Apple has spent a year with a single integrationto ChatGPT. Its a great model thats very useful for lots of stuff, but its not without serious competition. Apple should announce that its integrating many more models, letting users choose their favorite or allowing the operating system to pick the right tool for various jobs. The company also needs to get over its overwhelming fear of users using these toolsthe current implementation of ChatGPT integration requires multiple warning steps unless you dig into settings and shut them all off.By all means, Apple needs to give users the ability to opt out of all AI queries and content. But given how broken Siri is these days, it might also want to make it much easier to opt in and kick most queries to remote sources. Until Apple has a chance to beef up Siri, the Siri agent should only offer to perform the most basic functions and kick everything else out to an LLM. Its a quick fix, even if it will require Apple to swallow a little pride.Apple needs to allow the integration of other AI models besides ChatGPT.FoundryAnd then theres SiriApple just rearranged the executive ranks and put Mike Rockwell in charge of Siri. If youre hoping for major Siri announcements at WWDC 2025, though, I have a stern warning.We all want Siri to be fixed. But if Rockwell is just now being put in charge, it means that any announcements for Siri fixes in the next year would probably be just as rushed as the Apple Intelligence features were last year! As a result, I expect that Apple will be a little less aggressive on Siri, while still making some promises for early in 2026. As I detailed a few paragraphs ago, perhaps the best solution is to turn more Siri queries over to other LLMs in the meantime just to stop the bleeding.I realize the temptation to make big claims about changes to Siri will be great. But we were just here last year. I hope Rockwell rights the ship, and Siri gets in gear, but I want to see Apple show that its learned its lesson about overpromising and underdelivering.A new design? Sure!There have been lots of recent reports that this years OS updates will feature a new design language. It sounds good to me. Heres how the cycle goes: A company releases a major new redesign. It pushes things a bit too far in the interest of making change. Over the course of a few years, the most extreme stuff gets sanded off, and everyone settles in. Then many years pass, and new doodads get added here and there as one-off additions until a decade passes and your clean new design is now a monstrosity. Its time for a new, consistent design.While a lot of people are reporting that the new design language is based on visionOS, I dont think thats the case. My guess is that Apple has been spending years working on this design, and its been built from the ground up to work across all of its devices including, logically, the new Vision Pro. But Vision Pro shipped before the new design was ready to roll out elsewhere, so it became a testbed for some of the ideas of the new design. As a result, I expect aspects of this design to be reminiscent of visionOSbut theyre all from a common source, not just being copied from visionOS.I do think that its time for a fresh design, and for Apple to extend its design philosophy across all of its operating systems. While a lot of Mac users might cringe at the idea that the Mac is going to just end up looking like an iPad, I actually think that this process should be a good thing for Mac users. A good, thoughtful design system should take into account the things that make all of Apples devices uniquewhile bearing a family resemblance and working similarly, like theyre all from the same company. I would argue that a lot of the most glaring design sins in macOS in the past few years have come from iOS designs just getting sprayed into macOS without a whole lot of thought. If Apples designers have done their jobs, this time around, the Mac will be considered along with iOS, and theyll make the right decisions for each of Apples platforms.Its been said that the new OS design language is taking cues from visionOS, but that isnt entirely accurate.AppleAnother thing to keep in mind: Apple is really good at playing the long game. Over the last few years, Ive had several conversations with Apple executives who have explained that when Apple designs a new processor, it knows exactly what devices will be using that processor. This is one of the advantages of the Apple silicon approach. Well, Apples new design language presumably has been designed with some understanding about where the company is going with its product designs in the future, not just in 2025. If Apple is planning a folding iPhone, this design should have factored that in. If there are touchscreen Macs on the horizon, this would be the time for the design to take that into account.Finally, a lot of pundits will say that Apples new design, when its revealed in June, is a smokescreen designed to distract people from Apples rough time with Apple Intelligence. This argument is about as convincing as saying that Apple changed the iPhones design a month before shipping, or altered the design of a chip six months before it arrived. So much of what Apple does takes years of pre-planning to accomplish, and that includes this new design.But that said, if the new design gets people talking about something other than the broken promises of Apple Intelligence, Apples not going to complain one bit.Catch up with the latest on WWDC 2025 and everything you need to know before Apples big event.

MacworldApple Intelligence and Siri have been making a lot of noise lately, and all for the wrong reasons. In this episode of the Macworld Podcast, we talk about how Apple has made a mess of things, resulting in delays, management changes, and bad PR.This is episode 927 with Jason Cross, Michael Simon, and Roman Loyola.Watch episode 927 on YouTubeListen to episode 927 on Apple PodcastsListen to episode 927 on SpotifyGet infoFor more information about the topics discussed on the show, click on the links below.Apples next-gen Siri might be delayed until 2027Siri isnt an assistant, its an embarrassmentIs Siri really that bad? Yes, yes it isApple ousts Siri boss, finally taking failures seriouslySubscribe to the Macworld PodcastYou can subscribe to the Macworld Podcastor leave us a review!right here in the Podcasts app. The Macworld Podcast is also available on Spotify and on the Macworld Podcast YouTube channel. Or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader at: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/macworldTo find previous episodes, visit Macworlds podcast page or our home on MegaPhone.Apple

Apples Safari browser has a really useful password management feature, which is now also available as a standalone app called Passwords. If youve ever taken a look at it, you may have seen a section calledSecurity Recommendationswhere youll find a collection of all the accounts and passwords that might have been compromised.If you havent already, its time to take those collections seriously, because generative AI (genAI) adoption means the scale and nature of the threats posed by purloined passwords and broken IDs is about to grow far greater. Thats because, armed with stolen emails and passwords, criminals will find it relatively easy to throw those credentials at the most popular online services.If they know you, they know, youThey do this already, of course. If you have a known email address and password you still use that is now being sold on the dark web (for about $10 a collection), its a no brainer for attackers to try it out on a range of different services. Sometimes they may get lucky.Augmented efficiency just means that using genAI, those same attackers can plough through more of these credentials even more swiftly, enabling them to trundle through huge collections of stolen accounts and passwords fast. Stolen credentials were the big attack vector last year,according to Verizon, and were used in around 80% of exploits.There are around15 billion compromised credentialsavailable online.The vast majority of these are useless, which means credential stuffing attacks might not generate much of a success rate. When they do succeed, most victim learn from the experience and secure everything pretty quickly, meaning a very small number of that 15 billion are truly vulnerable. All the same, from time to time they get lucky. And getting lucky now and then is what makes that part of the account login exploitation industry tick.Money in the middleThese attacks generatemillions of dollars of losses every year. With billions on the planet, theres probably another fool coming in a minute or two, and you dont want it to be you. Thats why you should spend a little time and audit Apples Security Recommendations regularly, as you dont want a service you use that happens to have its hooks on your personal, payment, health, or other valuable data to be abused.Thats true for everyone, but for enterprise users theres a dual challenge. We all know that employees (including business owners) are and will always be the biggest security weakness in the system. The phishing industry has evolved to exploit this.But that tendency is equally threatening when it comes to account IDs, and together poses a double-whammy threat once empowered by AI. How many company-related accounts have slipped and to what extent do these two vulnerabilities work together?If someone atIworkatthisbusiness.comfoolishly used their work email and complex work password to secure their access totrivialbuthackedwebsite.com, how long might it be until someone figures that out and sees if they can use this data to crack your corporate systems?Phishermans bluesThese attacks dont even need to be that smart; they can simply be used to analyze personal patterns to help craft super-effective phishing attacks against specific targets. Really sophisticated attackers could turn to a little agentic AI to gather any available social media data on entities they designate as ripe for attack, helping them create really effective phishing emails Spear AI, as it may one day be recognized.Artificial intelligence will help with all of this. Its really good at identifying patterns in disparate data sets, and analyzing the data thats already been exfiltrated into the world will be a relatively trivial task it all just comes down to the questions the machines are asked to answer. They can even use identified patterns in passwords to predict likely password patterns based on user data for brute force attacks. I could go on.Passwords are not the only fruit, of course.If you are wise youll be using 2FA security and/or Passkeys on all your most important websites, and certainly to protect any with access to your financial details or payment information. Along with different forms of biometric ID, the industry is shifting to adopt more resilient access control systems though, of course, subverting those systems is just a new challenge in the cat-and-mouse security game. Only recently, we learned of a new AI attack designed tocompromise Google Chromes Password Manager, and there will be more attacks of this kind. Thats even before you consider the significance of attacks madeagainst enterprise AIin their own right.Death to security complacencyThe main takeaway is this: You should act on the warnings given to you by Apples Security Recommendations tool. You should avoid re-using passwords, no matter where it is. You should use a Password Manager and other forms of security, such as 2FA, and you should very much beware if you receive an email from a trusted source that contains a link to something that sounds like it was made for you; chances are, it was.Most of all, I want you to check the credentials that have been leaked, change them, close accounts, and delete payment information from any service you dont intend to use again. As a person or enterprise, you certainly need to build a response plan for what to do if an account is compromised, or suspected to be compromised; security training even for your most experienced employees is almost certainly going to be of value. Most of all, never, everuse one of these passwords.Alternatively, ignore Safaris friendly warning and leave yourself open to having your genuine account credentialsbeing sold online for up to $45 a time.Why not take the time to secure your accounts? The tools are right there in your browser. What are you waiting for?You can follow me on social media! Join me onBlueSky, LinkedIn, andMastodon.

The UK governments grand plan for AI in the public sector is struggling in the face of growing technological challenges, a report by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC), a bipartisan group of elected members of parliament, has found.Many of these problems will be familiar to anyone who has tried to make AI work inside an organization: the dead hand of obsolete systems, poor quality data, and a chronic lack of skilled people to implement the technology.But beyond these issues lies another problem that could prove just as difficult: the monopolistic power of tech vendors that control the AI technology the government so badly desires.Coming only weeks after the Government Digital Service (GDS) was created to drive AI, the committees initial assessment in the AI in Government report is a sobering reality check.For the birdsThe committees report identifies several areas of concern, starting with poor-quality data locked away in out-of-date legacy IT systems. Of the 72 systems previously identified as being legacy barriers, 21 hadnt even yet received remediation funding to overcome these problems, it found.It also noted a lack of transparency in government data use in AI, which risked creating public mistrust and a future withdrawal by citizens of their consent for its use. Other problems included the perennial shortage of AI and digital skills, an issue mentioned by 70% of government bodies responding to a 2024 National Audit Office (NAO) survey.Additionally, government departments were running AI test pilots in a siloed way, making it difficult to learn wider lessons, said the committee.The government has said it wants to mainline AI into the veins of the nation, but our report raises questions over whether the public sector is ready for such a procedure, said committee chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.Unfortunately, those familiar with our committees past scrutiny of the governments frankly sclerotic digital architecture will know that any promises of sudden transformation are for the birds, he added.AI oligopolyTheres a lot at stake here. AI is often talked up by the ministers as the key to overhauling the state, getting it to work more efficiently and cheaply. Its a story that has become hugely important in many countries. If progress slows, that promise will be questioned.In its report, the committee drew attention to the market power of a small band of AI companies. The tech industry has a tendency towards monopolies over time, it said, but with AI it was starting from this position, which might lead to technological lock-in and higher costs, hindering development in the long term.According to the Open Cloud Coalition (OCC), a recently formed lobby group of smaller cloud providers backed by Google, the UK governments struggles with AI mirror what happened with cloud deployment from the 2010s onwards, which included the lack of competition.This report shows that the dominance of a few large technology suppliers in the public procurement of AI risks stifling competition and innovation, while also hampering growth, exactly the same problems weve seen with cloud contracts, commented Nicky Stewart, senior advisor to the OCC.Cloud and AI are symbiotic, she noted, and the domination of one or both by a small group of mostly US tech companies risks building monopolies it might be difficult to escape from.Without reform, the government will remain over-reliant on a handful of major providers, limiting flexibility and access to innovative, leading edge technology, whilst locking taxpayers into expensive, restrictive agreements, she said.Sylvester Kaczmarek, CTO at OrbiSky Systems, a UK company specializing in integrating AI into aerospace applications, agreed that supplier dominance could stifle innovation, but remained just as skeptical of AIs projected cost savings. Implementation was always where technologies proved themselves, he pointed out.Are savings over-sold? Most likely, in the short run, said Kaczmarek. There is a lot of groundwork to be laid before large-scale, reliable AI deployment can safely deliver meaningful savings. [governments need to] prioritize realistic roadmaps and more comprehensive value.