Poolhouse, an effort from the Topgolf founders to build entertainment clubs around the game of pool, has raised $34 million. Much like Steve and Dave Jolliffe revolutionized golf with Topgolf, they plan to do the same by revolutinizing pool. Not only do they plan to create fancy clubs with quality restaurant food, they also plan to incorporate augmented reality technology to broaden the appeal of the pool-playing experience, said Andrew O’Brien, CEO of Poolhouse, in an interview with GamesBeat. The seed round was led by Sharp Alpha, a U.S. leisure-focused venture capital investor, and DMG Ventures, which is DMGT’s consumer venture capital fund. Other participants include Emerging Fund, (investors in F1 Arcade, Flight Club and Batbox), David Blitzer (owner of the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils), Simon Sports (a co-owner of Ipswich Town F.C.), and Active Partners, an early investor in Soho House. On top of that, Signature Hospitality Group, one of Australia’s largest hospitality brand operators, has taken an equity stake and signed a franchise agreement with Poolhouse. Visionary concept Poolhouse is the result of four years of development by the Jolliffe brothers, the founders of Topgolf, which was merged with Callaway at a valuation of $2.1 billion in 2021. They will use the new capital to accelerate the company’s ambitious plan to revolutionize the game of pool. That’s sounds ambitious, but they have already done that for golf. Poolhouse combines its patented technology with a vibrant, vintage Las Vegas-inspired ambiance, offering guests of all skill levels an engaging experience with a diverse library of interactive pool games. The drinks offering is being curated with the Venning brothers from Three Sheets, a staple on the World’s 50 Best Bars list, who have helped define the cocktail culture in London and beyond for the last decade.Poolhouse’s proprietary technology alongside its world class food and beverage offering will meet consumers’ growing demand for high quality unique experiences. So far, they’re not revealing pictures of it yet or their technology, as they still have eight months to go before the fist opening and want to keep their competitive advantage a secret, O’Brien said. “We’re not just building venues, we’re building technology that we can place into any venue where there’s a pool table,” O’Brien said. And just as Topgolf bought the digital online golf game World Golf Tour, there could be a digital play via the Poolhouse app, he said. That includes a way to auto-handicap players across the world. Global expansion plans You can expect Poolhouse to expand the way that Topgolf did. Poolhouse will roll out its own venues, starting with a 21,500 square feet site by London’s Liverpool Street Station, the United Kingdom’s busiest rail station. The company will also license its technology to hospitality operators around the world, with discussions progressing in the Middle East, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe. Steve Jolliffe, co-founder of Poolhouse, said in a statement, “Poolhouse is the most ambitious and scalable concept my brother and I have created, representing the pinnacle of our lifelong work. Today, more people play at Topgolf than on traditional golf courses in the U.S., and we aim to make an even greater impact on the world of pool. While we have a strong track record of incorporating technology into golf balls, this project has been our most challenging endeavor yet.” The tables will have both open room locations as well as semi-private booths, as people prefer to play pool in different ways. Some prefer to be seen, some not. The food will be tapas style, where people can share everything with each other. It won’t do just a burger, but something more like a Wagyu burger. There won’t be much other entertainment, as the focus will be on pool. “Everything is going to be designed to be delicious and shareable, and it will span the cuisines of the world,” O’Brien said. “We really are looking for an amazing F&B experience.” The company has about 20 people now and it will likely expand beyond 100 as it opens its first place. Much of the job is finding the right real estate. He noted that locations in California are enormously expensive compared to other locations. But there are plenty of other places around the country with the right costs, demographics, tourism and corporate presence. He added, “The Jolliffes are the best at this. They’ve developed something here which is just so attractive to every walk of life, including corporates and families and couples and and we’re trying to find locations that are at the right balance. It’s different from Topgolf, where you’re talking about a giant $40 million to $60 million venue outside the city limits.” O’Brien said there will be 19 pool tables in the venue. And I hear there will also be a 20th secret table for high rollers, via invite only. He noted that pool is global, with millions of players playing every week in places like China, the U.K. and the U.S. As for the tech, he would not say what it was but said it is is “smart technology” combined with traditional pool tables. O’Brien said the goal is to open the first venue in London in January 2026. And he expects that the company will invest heavily in U.S. locations as well. The company will likely have its own internally owned venues and it will sell franchises as well. Leadership Poolhouse is run by CEO Andrew O’Brien and it was founded by Steve and Dave Jolliffe. The Jolliffes have assembled a heavyweight team, led by Irish CEO Andrew O’Brien, a board member at F1 Arcade and formerly of Credit Suisse, and COO Matt Fleming, who has held senior positions at Vagabond Wines and Be At One. The rest of the senior team brings experience from industry leaders such as Puttshack, Bounce, Flight Club, and Swingers. Leading the culinary vision is a former Executive Chef from the Gordon Ramsay Group. O’Brien met the Jolliffes in January 2023, and he admired the dominance of Topgolf, which has an 85% market share in its category. He eventually learned they were working on something new. “In terms of transforming sport, they’ve definitely done that. And what they did to golf ranges with Topgolf, that’s what they’re going to do to pool houses. “Hopefully we will bring together sufficient experience to deliver something really special here, and we’ve managed to close a decent funding round,” O’Brien said. “It’s really exciting what we’re doing. And the design of the venue is going to be spectacular. It’s a vintage Vegas. That’s going to be the theme. It’s like American dive bars. There are going to be ultra premium feels, like stepping back in time.” Stakeholder insights Sharp Alpha has a penchant for investing in smart teams. “We are very bullish on the growth in demand for third place experiences,” said Lloyd Danzig, managing partner at Sharp Alpha, in an interview with GamesBeat. “We see demand surging due to fundamental shifts in consumer preferences. People are drinking less. They’re lonelier. They want to get back out into real life, connect with people who have similar interests, put down their phones, turn off notifications.” He added, “And while they want to have a drink or two, they don’t necessarily want heavy alcohol consumption to be the centerpiece for socialization and entertainment. That’s why you’re seeing the growth of a lot of new experiential, community-based entertainment concepts that are seizing much of the market.” Danzig also said this is why his company loves investing in gaming. “We think competitive entertainment, or forms of entertainment that get the adrenaline flowing, is the best at capturing people’s attention and at delivering a connection to those around them. And so that’s why we’ve spent a lot of time in what some people are calling the eater-tainment, or the competitive socialization space, which is the space of Topgolf, Putt Shack and other concepts which take a conventional activity, add a proprietary technology angle that delivers a unique and new gamification layer, and then typically pair it with a food and beverage or hospitality concept to create a third place for leisure.” Those are all concepts Sharp Alpha is bullish on. “Then we met Poolhouse, which plays into many of the thesis ideas in this category. They are a concept that is conducive to high ticket food and beverage spend,” Danzig said. “They are conducive to corporate event spend, which is critical to delivering margin. And they have proprietary white label technology that can be sold at scale to hotels, casinos and other entertainment venues that want tech enable their pool tables. And so that’s part of the broader software enabled vision.” He said the Jolliffe brothers are “legendary engineers and entrepreneurs” from the U.K. who founded Topgolf and were the inventors of its technology. “They did the same for Putt Shack, which is tech-enabled mini golf, and Poolhouse is what they have been working on in stealth mode for the last four years. And then we brought on a team of seven executives from F1 Arcade, Putt Shack and Topgolf to staff and run the day to day operation,” he said. “So that combination of incredible team and playing into thesis upon which we are bullish is what got us interested in this opportunity, and we are thrilled to be joined with such an amazing group of strategic co-investors who will help make this an amazing reality.” Danzig declined to talk about exactly what was appealing about the “gamification” layer in Poolhouse, but he said Topgolf certainly used tech like augmented reality to showcase where your ball was likely to land at various golf courses. And it enables games like “closest to the pin” or who can knock down virtual targets that don’t exist in physical reality. There are also side quests for competition and more. He said Smart Alpha has spent much of the last 18 months evaluating nearly every concept in this competitive socialization space, as well as the broader third space. O’Brien said, “The Poolhouse experience heralds the most significant transformation in the history of a near 700-year-old sport. The Jolliffe brothers changed the landscape of golf with Topgolf, and they are set to do the same to pool.” Taos Edmondson, partner at DMG Ventures – “Poolhouse’s technology is staggeringly good and customers are going to be blown away when it opens its doors to the public. Demand for experiences is booming, particularly among younger generations. The addressable market will be vast, both through Poolhouse’s own venues and licensee venues.” For inquiries, please contact the following email address, poolhouse@fsc.uk.com. GB Daily Stay in the know! Get the latest news in your inbox daily Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured.

Galaxy S24 owners will have to wait a little longer to get Android 15. Samsung has, by all accounts, halted the rollout of its long-awaited One UI 7 update following the discovery of a bug that prevented some Galaxy S24 owners from unlocking their phones.  The pause was first reported by leaker and tipster Ice Universe, who said that a “serious bug” had been found. While the complaints seem to have specifically come from South Korean owners of Galaxy S24 series handsets, Samsung has played it safe and paused the rollout across all models worldwide. While some users will have already downloaded the update to One UI 7, using the app CheckFirm we’ve confirmed that the update is no longer listed on Samsung’s servers as the latest firmware version across several Galaxy devices, with older patches appearing instead. Samsung hasn’t confirmed the pause in the rollout, nor plans to issue a fix for users who have already downloaded the One UI 7 update. We’ve reached out to the company for comment. The update, which brings Android 15 and a host of AI updates, began rolling out to Galaxy S24, Z Fold 6, and Z Flip 6 handsets on April 7th, with the US getting the patch on April 10th. It’s been available on Galaxy S25 models, along with updates to the cheaper Galaxy A series, since those phones went on sale in February. The paused rollout follows a lengthy delay in the update’s release to older phones. It arrived seven months after Android 15 was made available to developers, and two months after the S25 series launched running the software.

Latest   Machine Learning Asynchronous LLM Calling, using OpenAI SDK and Gemini 2.0 Flash 0 like April 13, 2025 Share this post Last Updated on April 14, 2025 by Editorial Team Author(s): Hadi Rouhani Originally published on Towards AI. – A Universal Approach in Calling LLMs from various brands This member-only story is on us. Upgrade to access all of Medium. Hadi Rouhani · Subscribe Published in Towards AI ·5 min read·17 hours ago 19 Listen Share More Looking to hide highlights? You can now hide them from the “•••” menu. Okay, got it Access to the Github Repository: Link I worked on a production application that uses GPT-4o to generate summaries from a RAG system. Stakeholders requested testing Gemini 2.0 Flash to compare responses and assess user feedback. This led me to realize the need for a universal approach in an era of multiple LLM APIs. I discovered that the OpenAI Python SDK supports most LLM APIs, allowing you to specify the base URL of the desired API. This flexibility greatly optimizes the core functionality of applications. For my use case, the backend service relied entirely on Azure OpenAI and other Azure resources, such as Azure AI Search and CosmosDB. We needed a solution to smoothly switch the generation model from OpenAI to Google’s Gemini API (or Vertex AI API for enterprise use). In this article, I walk you step by step, how to seamlessly switch between models using only OpenAI sdk library in Python. A few benefits of this approach: Less dependency libraries to be installed (think about that lightweight docker container app!)Switching between models… Read the full blog for free on Medium. Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming a sponsor. Published via Towards AI Towards AI - Medium Share this post

It’s fair to say Verdansk is breathing new life into Call of Duty Warzone, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The internet had declared Activision’s now five year-old battle royale “cooked” before the nostalgia-fueled Verdansk turned things around. Now, the internet has declared Warzone “back.” Didn't Activision nuke Verdansk? It doesn't seem to matter, as lapsed players who fondly remember Warzone as their lockdown game are returning to the map that started it all, and those who stuck with the game through thick and thin over the past five years are saying Warzone is more fun now than it’s been since it exploded onto the scene in 2020.This back-to-basics gameplay experience was a deliberate design decision on the part of developers Raven and Beenox. Pete Actipis, game director on Warzone at Raven, and Etienne Pouliot, creative director at Beenox, both worked on the multi-studio effort to bring Warzone back. In this sweeping interview with IGN, the pair discuss how they went about it, the success of Verdansk’s Casual mode, reveal whether they considered limiting operator skins to mil-sim for a more 2020 feel, and answer the crucial question: is Verdansk here to stay?Read on to find out.IGN: I imagine I fit the typical profile, which is someone who played a lot of Warzone during lockdown and was enticed back by the return of Verdansk. Was that the point of all this, to get lapsed Warzone fans back in the game? And now it’s been out for a while, is that what you’re seeing happening?Pete Actipis: We hit our fifth year anniversary for Warzone and we wanted to bring back Verdansk for quite some time now. It just felt like the right timing. When we were talking about bringing it back, it wasn't just bringing back the map. It was more than that. Over the last five years we have learned a lot, experimented with a lot. The one thing you can say about Warzone, it's constantly changing for good or for bad. It is something that we just try to keep evolving. And we listen to the players and we take some shots and sometimes they land, sometimes they don't. But when we talked about bringing Verdansk back, it was very important for us to bring back a nostalgic moment in time as best as we could and be respectful of that as well.During Covid it was just a special time in the world, it was crazy, it was something that we all experienced together individually, but Warzone created this social experience in a way that was pretty new to Call of Duty. So we wanted to pay homage to that as best as we could. We looked at every single component of what made Warzone special back in 2020 and we wanted to really treat it right.I'll let Etienne talk about the map side of it, but at least on the gameplay side, we wanted to make sure that we looked at all the design principles and all the reasons that we added the things that we did back then, and are they still viable? Are those still fun mechanics and loops? And if we were to bring them back, we wanted to make sure we did it with the right intent. And that's why I think it's stuck around so well. Post-launch, right now it's getting great feedback from the community. They seem to really be enjoying it. We're players too, so we wanted to build an experience that we fell in love with back in 2020. So yeah, it's worked out. We're really careful about what we do to the game right now because we hit that sweet spot of that nostalgia bit and people seem to be enjoying it. So we're pretty excited by it as players too.Etienne Pouliot: We know that gaming in general goes pretty fast. Five years of Warzone just went by really, really fast, and we've tried so many things. But each day Verdansk was still in the discussion and in the bucket of ideas of, ‘oh we will need to return to that place someday.’But it was just not a matter of, 'oh we're going to port that thing toward that new engine or that new Call of Duty.' It was really more like, ‘let's bring the best version of Verdansk.’ So, just to be sure that we remade everything from the ground, the sky, the player visibility, the audio. There is a lot of stuff that we put a lot of energy in. And we see the result right now. We were playing the game and we were like, 'yeah, it feels great.'So we were just eager to give it to the player. And the answer is really successful right now. So we are really, really happy. And just like Pete mentioned, I think it's only a beginning and we'll continue to challenge ourselves to see if we need to make some changes, improvements.PlayIGN: The online sentiment does look positive right now, and you’ll know that the online sentiment across places like Reddit and social media has certainly not always been positive about Warzone. Is that something that you're seeing in the data? Are you seeing more people returning to play Warzone?Pete Actipis: It has been pretty successful, and I think you can tell in the experience, right? Look, I'll take it when Reddit says positive things about Warzone! That is an anomaly and I'm excited by it. Like Etienne said, we recreated Verdansk to be the best experience possible. But then we didn't stop there. This is the starting point. It is not an anomaly for where Warzone is going.We knew there was going to be a lot of new players or lapsed players, word of mouth of like, 'hey come check out Verdansk.' We added this Casual mode, which is doing really well for us. We wanted players to come in and re-experience it at their pace, or experience it for the first time in a safe way where they don't feel like they're getting sweated out or outplayed. We were very careful with crafting this experience this season, and the data is showing us that it's been really successful and we just hope to keep that momentum going into the future.Etienne Pouliot: Yeah, it's really impressive how much Call of Duty touches different players from all different backgrounds. We've seen that during the pandemic and we've seen that today. So it's really a privilege to work on that level of successful franchise. We have that approach of, we want as many players as we can. So having that Casual mode, having more quality of life, having more ways to have a stable, performant game is really important. Down the rest of that chapter and so for the rest of Warzone, how can we be a place to welcome new players and make sure that if you were there back then you will return to what you love?IGN: Casual mode is where I’m playing right now as a lapsed player returning to Warzone. However, I am starting to see the sweats maybe looking at Casual mode and going, ‘we can have some fun here.’ You can tell when you're playing it when someone shouldn't be there, this is too easy for you. Are you seeing that internally?Pete Actipis: The whole spirit of the Casual mode was to give people that were scared about getting into a time commitment or a game commitment or a skill commitment with Warzone, but do it on their terms. The nice thing about this is, this is the first rev of it. It just went live and we're going to look at the data, we're going to evolve it over time to make sure it retains the design principles and spirit that we wanted it to have. So if we see sweats come in there wrecking the whole server, then we will have to come up with plans against that. It's still pretty new right now. I think it's still giving players what they need in it right now, and we'll just keep monitoring and involving it. But it's a fun mode. I can't lie - I enjoy playing it myself and I can play with people that never played Call of Duty before. It's a little less intimidating that way, and I think that's what makes it so appealing for myself.Etienne Pouliot: And you get the sense of learning the tension of the game. It's not just you get thrown away and after that you go to the Gulag and that's it, it's done. Internally we have a lot of great players, and maybe we call them 'demon players.' It's funny to just have those discussions with them about the game and how they see it, how they approach it. And on my side, me I'm more on the downfall skill player - I was great before and now I'm just getting worse and worse. So I think it's really important to just have those conversations with those great players and see how we can tweak that experience in a way that everyone gets something out of it.And I'm pretty sure that we have a lot of players who are going to get inside ranked down the road of BR. So I see that as a more broad, different mode to just engaging depending on your skillset.IGN: Yeah, I guess when ranked starts, the sweats will probably gravitate towards that and they'll have had their fun. I want to talk to you about Call of Duty lore. I remember reporting on Warzone and how everything became unified and all the different brands became mashed together in a timeline. And I remember in 2021 you blew Verdansk up, and it was publicly said: ‘this is never coming back.’ And I believed it! So are we just supposed to go, ‘you know what, actually it doesn't really matter, it's about the fun.’ Or have you come up with a story explanation for how we're back?Pete Actipis: I don't want to spoil any sort of narrative story bits. And that's not confirming nor denying either way. It's just, what we wanted to do for this moment was take a pause from any sort of timelines or anything like that and just say, 'look, let's just celebrate this moment in time and just have a great time with it.' If and when we introduce a narrative we may or may not figure out if we have to resolve this. But again, I'm not trying to spoil anything or say or mislead in any direction. But this season's launch was just, let's have a fun moment and go back to the nostalgic bits.Etienne Pouliot: And I don't know if you've seen some clips around it, but all I can say is that there is stuff in the map that I'm pretty sure that players who know the map will definitely find some bits of information. And after that they can figure it out. But at the same time it's important to acknowledge some of the historical moments of five years of Warzone. So Verdansk is part of that five year celebration.PlayIGN: A lot of people are wondering, is Verdansk here to stay? Is it like a celebration, one-shot type thing that you're doing, or is this something that players can expect longer term and you iterate on it on that basis?Pete Actipis: We brought Verdansk back for a reason. It wasn't just to bring it back for a season and kind of say goodbye to it again. A lot of effort went into it. So for the time being Verdansk is sticking around and this is just the beginning of the Verdansk 2025 journey, and then we'll see how things go from there. So again, no confirmation or anything on the strategy on the maps moving forward, but we love Verdansk. It was a nostalgic map that we loved and it's fun to play on, and so we just want to keep investing on it and continue to make it a better experience for our players moving forward for at least the time being.IGN: I’ve seen players go back to unlock Price’s ghillie suit from Modern Warfare 2 now Verdansk is back. Have you seen this?Etienne Pouliot: Yeah, I've seen that.IGN: People are asking each other how to get it again, going back to Modern Warfare 2 or even buying it to unlock the ghillie suit.Etienne Pouliot: It's really interesting how the community is engaging with the game. We have the chance of having all the different operators from Modern Warfare 2, Modern Warfare 3, and all the different games. It's something that I really love from the game, is that all the different battle passes and Blackcell, I can change every time my loadout and my operator. And sometimes I even use really, really old weapons that maybe are not meta, but I have the feeling that I'm back, I'm there the way I want to play. So I'm pretty sure a lot of people are just using all the different content we gave them across all those years and having fun right now.Pete Actipis: On launch day I went back and picked an old Ghost costume that looked very similar to the launch trailer versions. I'm like, 'okay, I'm back in it too.' That's part of the fun, picking your operator and the look and trying to relive that moment as you remember it.IGN: I’ve been having old debates again about whether to play aggressive or just camp on a rooftop and snipe, or just hide, in the same old places. When you were thinking about bringing back the map, did you consider tweaking it in such a way to encourage certain gameplay types or gameplay styles, or did you want to recreate it as accurately as possible so the same gameplay styles in the same places would happen once again?Etienne Pouliot: We wanted to recreate those moments, but again, we've learned a lot. So just to give you a quick example: player visibility is really better right now than back then. Maybe people will remember Roze, but there were a lot of dark corners. That was an experience that a lot of people were not attracted by. So we've made slight adjustments like this to make sure it's fun for everyone.And another thing is audio was really, really, really important for us. So just making sure that you understand from each corner where you're in this, where will be the enemy, and how you need to react. So again, just making sure that it's the best Verdansk version we will deliver. That was the goal and I think that we are on the right path to continue.Pete Actipis: We also didn't want change too much because then it wouldn't be what you remembered in Verdansk. The map itself had a lot of that sandbox-y kind of like, 'do I want to play long range and go camp at the top of ATC Tower or the top of Stadium roof with a helicopter?' There was a lot of play potential, a lot of opportunities for close range, long range, you name it; great fighting in the woods areas north of Quarry, or south west of Hills.To make that a reality we went back into the core experience and made sure we were able to pay those moments off. So we retuned the circle back the way it worked originally. So we allow these wild swings for these first and last circles so you can get more of these dynamic and crazy experiences where you're, the first part of the match you're playing in a dense area, maybe like Downtown, and then it ends somewhere where there's an opening, and you're like, ‘oh crap, I got to go hit my loadout again, let's go get some money so we can acquire a loadout so I can get more of a mid to long range weapon to be able to handle late game.’And we also made vehicles more impactful, so we had to remove things like the redeploy drone beacons and all the other fast travel mechanics, to make the rotations a little bit more difficult, which made you think of, ‘how do I want to move with my team and what kind of weapons do I need to carry and what sort of equipment do I carry?’All of those things might look like individual things, but they all compound together to really form the experience. And so we were very careful. It was like, ‘what's the experience that we really want to go after when we brought back Verdansk?’ So then that started peeling back the onion of, ‘okay, we have to change this, we should change this and this and this.’ And so all of it together as the sum of the parts of that beat that we were going after.IGN: I wanted to get some insight into TTK (Time to Kill) and how you approached what you wanted to achieve there for Verdansk coming back. It feels shortened to me, but exactly what happened there, and why did you make the changes you made?Pete Actipis: Comparatively to last year, the Urzikstan year, it is a faster TTK. It's pretty equivalent - I don't know the exact numbers offhand - but the original experience and what we wanted to go back for now was make it more of a casual, friendly kind of, ‘if I'm not good at hitting straight shots, I have an opportunity, I'm not going to get destroyed every gun battle.’ There's also a lot more excitement of like, ‘oh, I have an opportunity to get a kill.’That being said, it is not like we're trying to remove skill from the game. There's still a lot of skill involved in this game, but it's approachable, which is the key difference there. And part of this was not only how do weapons handle, but then also how does your movement handle in response to that? Do I feel like I can engage in combat and get a bead on somebody and react to how someone's moving or get away from shots?So movement and gunplay are very tied to the hip. And this is again the peeling onion approach. We like right now where the TTK sits. We will evaluate as the game progresses and see what our fans think. We're always evolving and we'll react appropriately based on that. But right now it seems like people are enjoying it. I know TTK is... some people either love it or they hate it. It depends on their player type. It's okay to be opinionated. That's cool! We're just trying to do what's best for the community at large.PlayIGN: My first Verdansk match back I was in the plane and there were four of us getting ready to jump out, and one of the players was a giant Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and the other was this fairy thing. I was like, 'this is not how Warzone was back in lockdown.' Was that on your minds as you were thinking of rekindling the feeling exactly as it was back then, when some of these crazy skins weren't so prevalent in the game? Did you ever think at any point that actually, just for the relaunch, at least at the start, we're going to limit it to mil-sim [military simulation] stuff, or some of the stuff that people remembered? Or was that just never a consideration for you?Pete Actipis: We talked about everything. We left no stone unturned really. But we wanted to create the best version of Verdansk possible. And part of that is just understanding the reality of where we're at. We're in a Black Ops 6 year. So at the end of the day we still are dealing with differences in loadouts and weaponry and even operators. We tried to pay homage and pay off the spirit of that nostalgic experience as best as possible. But our intent was never to be a facsimile of that old experience. It was supposed to be the best version of Verdansk and Warzone to date.Part of that was respecting players’ purchases. As a player, I've invested X amount of time, money, whatever it is, and this is who I like to play with. Okay, we could have restricted weapons and operators, but then it creates this big friction moment for players who are like, 'I just want to play the game. I want to have fun in my mode.' I know some players might have more of a stance on it, like, ‘I want it to be pure mil-sim.’ But the spirit was to make it welcoming for all players.Etienne Pouliot: I remember sometime with my friend, we were like, 'yeah, today we all buy a different turtle and we wanted to be the four turtles winning a match. It was pretty crazy. So I think just having those possibilities in front of the player.Mil-sim - one of my friends is really hardcore, he plays only with one attachment. That's his rule. Because he feels that it's cheating. He's like, 'no, it's not a usable case of a weapon. So I will only use one.' And I'm like, ‘okay man, if you want to do it, but I will never go toward that path.’So I think that just having all those different possibilities so you can engage the way you want. And after that, like Pete just mentioned, I think that it's really important for us to respect all the time and money you spend in the game and making sure it's still worth it for you.IGN: Your friend must be very good at Call of Duty if they can get by with just one attachment.Etienne Pouliot: Yeah, it's really incredible how many people I've seen through all the years that they have such a great skill that from my point of view I'm like, ‘hey, are you using something else that I'm not aware of?’ But yeah, you're a true player.IGN: That does lead me on to one of the final questions I wanted to ask. Activision has increased communication around cheating in Warzone and made changes recently, like with crossplay. But are you seeing any improvements now with Verdansk coming back?Pete Actipis: To be honest with you, that's not our area of expertise, the whole cheating side. I would defer those questions to the Ricochet team and how that stuff has been working out. Anecdotally, the games have been feeling good. I don't feel like I'm getting cheated on. I think that's even what our streamers are saying. But again, that's not really a data point.Etienne Pouliot: And something just to add, it's just that it's always something on top of our mind. So we're just making sure that the right person speaks with the right team and makes sure that we put a lot of effort. Because everything we saw from the community, it's important for us too. So just making sure that yeah, we will put all the energy needed to prevail and making sure the game is at the right condition that we want.IGN: Do you have any message to the community about your plans for Warzone in 2025 now that you've gotten to a place where there's positive sentiment? What can players expect?Pete Actipis: First of all, thank you for either coming back or continuing with us on this Warzone journey. We are players too and we strive to make the game as good as possible. The launch of Verdansk, the simplification of our systems and our mechanics and just the flow, is the beginning. We're going to cultivate the game and we're pretty excited for our roadmap moving forward. We've got some great surprises that I'm not going to spoil today in store, but we hear the community and we want feedback. We listen. We take all opinions. We have our own, and we like hearing what the players think and feel. The passion is really important for us because that fuels us. We're excited to continue on with our journey here.Etienne Pouliot: Yeah, totally. The first thing is just to thank all the players for all the love. And even the bad things. I think it's important to know both sides of the community. We're all passionate, and we have a lot of great ideas that are coming down the path. Warzone has so much room to continue to grow and opportunity in front of us. So I just hope that with all the different players we will get to those moments, and after that they will stick as memories for them for quite a long time.Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

DescriptionPatrique Mercier Recruitment, a premier agency dedicated to matching talented individuals with outstanding job opportunities in their native languages, is excited to offer an entry-level position for a Dutch Speaking Customer Service representative in the Business Software & CRM Solutions Department in sunny Greece!In this role, you will have the opportunity to engage with clients to provide exceptional support and assistance regarding our software and CRM solutions. As a key member of our team, you will contribute to maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction and ensuring clients maximize the value of the solutions provided.ResponsibilitiesProvide front-line assistance to Dutch-speaking clients regarding business software and CRM solutions.Respond to customer inquiries via phone, email, and chat in a timely and professional manner.Assist clients with software functionality, troubleshooting, and general inquiries.Document customer interactions and maintain accurate records in the CRM system.Collaborate with team members to ensure swift resolution of customer issues.Provide feedback to management on potential process improvements based on customer interactions.Engage in training and development opportunities to enhance product knowledge and service skills.RequirementsFluency in Dutch and English; knowledge of additional languages is an advantage.Willingness to relocate to Greece - remote work only within GreeceStrong communication and interpersonal skills.Customer-focused mentality with a desire to help and support clients.Ability to quickly learn and adapt to new software tools and solutions.Detail-oriented with strong organizational skills.Team player who is willing to assist others.Basic technical knowledge or experience in software-related fields is a plus but not required.A positive attitude and willingness to learn in an entry-level role.BenefitsPrivate Health InsuranceTraining & DevelopmentPerformance Bonus2 Extra Salaries Per YearFully Paid TrainingCompetitive Salary by Greek standardsFully Paid Relocation Package ( flight, transfer and the first 2 weeks hotel accommodation )Free Greek Lessons, Engagement Activities

One day, in the near or far future, an asteroid about the length of a football stadium will find itself on a collision course with Earth. If we are lucky, it will land in the middle of the vast ocean, creating a good-size but innocuous tsunami, or in an uninhabited patch of desert. But if it has a city in its crosshairs, one of the worst natural disasters in modern times will unfold. As the asteroid steams through the atmosphere, it will begin to fragment—but the bulk of it will likely make it to the ground in just a few seconds, instantly turning anything solid into a fluid and excavating a huge impact crater in a heartbeat. A colossal blast wave, akin to one unleashed by a large nuclear weapon, will explode from the impact site in every direction. Homes dozens of miles away will fold like cardboard. Millions of people could die. Fortunately for all 8 billion of us, planetary defense—the science of preventing asteroid impacts—is a highly active field of research. Astronomers are watching the skies, constantly on the hunt for new near-Earth objects that might pose a threat. And others are actively working on developing ways to prevent a collision should we find an asteroid that seems likely to hit us. We already know that at least one method works: ramming the rock with an uncrewed spacecraft to push it away from Earth. In September 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, showed it could be done when a semiautonomous spacecraft the size of a small car, with solar panel wings, was smashed into an (innocuous) asteroid named Dimorphos at 14,000 miles per hour, successfully changing its orbit around a larger asteroid named Didymos.  But there are circumstances in which giving an asteroid a physical shove might not be enough to protect the planet. If that’s the case, we could need another method, one that is notoriously difficult to test in real life: a nuclear explosion.  Scientists have used computer simulations to explore this potential method of planetary defense. But in an ideal world, researchers would ground their models with cold, hard, practical data. Therein lies a challenge. Sending a nuclear weapon into space would violate international laws and risk inflaming political tensions. What’s more, it could do damage to Earth: A rocket malfunction could send radioactive debris into the atmosphere.  Over the last few years, however, scientists have started to devise some creative ways around this experimental limitation. The effort began in 2023, with a team of scientists led by Nathan Moore, a physicist and chemical engineer at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sandia is a semi-secretive site that serves as the engineering arm of America’s nuclear weapons program. And within that complex lies the Z Pulsed Power Facility, or Z machine, a cylindrical metallic labyrinth of warning signs and wiring. It’s capable of summoning enough energy to melt diamond.  About 25,000 asteroids more than 460 feet long—a size range that starts with midsize “city killers” and goes up in impact from there—are thought to exist close to Earth. Just under half of them have been found. The researchers reckoned they could use the Z machine to re-create the x-ray blast of a nuclear weapon—the radiation that would be used to knock back an asteroid—on a very small and safe scale. It took a while to sort out the details. But by July 2023, Moore and his team were ready. They waited anxiously inside a control room, monitoring the thrumming contraption from afar. Inside the machine’s heart were two small pieces of rock, stand-ins for asteroids, and at the press of a button, a maelstrom of x-rays would thunder toward them. If they were knocked back by those x-rays, it would prove something that, until now, was purely theoretical: You can deflect an asteroid from Earth using a nuke. This experiment “had never been done before,” says Moore. But if it succeeded, its data would contribute to the safety of everyone on the planet. Would it work? Monoliths and rubble piles Asteroid impacts are a natural disaster like any other. You shouldn’t lose sleep over the prospect, but if we get unlucky, an errant space rock may rudely ring Earth’s doorbell. “The probability of an asteroid striking Earth during my lifetime is very small. But what if one did? What would we do about it?” says Moore. “I think that’s worth being curious about.” Forget about the gigantic asteroids you know from Hollywood blockbusters. Space rocks over two-thirds of a mile (about one kilometer) in diameter—those capable of imperiling civilization—are certainly out there, and some hew close to Earth’s own orbit. But because these asteroids are so elephantine, astronomers have found almost all of them already, and none pose an impact threat.  Rather, it’s asteroids a size range down—those upwards of 460 feet (140 meters) long—that are of paramount concern. About 25,000 of those are thought to exist close to our planet, and just under half have been found. The day-to-day odds of an impact are extremely low, but even one of the smaller ones in that size range could do significant damage if it found Earth and hit a populated area—a capacity that has led astronomers to dub such midsize asteroids “city killers.” If we find a city killer that looks likely to hit Earth, we’ll need a way to stop it. That could be technology to break or “disrupt” the asteroid into fragments that will either miss the planet entirely or harmlessly ignite in the atmosphere. Or it could be something that can deflect the asteroid, pushing it onto a path that will no longer intersect with our blue marble.  Because disruption could accidentally turn a big asteroid into multiple smaller, but still deadly, shards bound for Earth, it’s often considered to be a strategy of last resort. Deflection is seen as safer and more elegant. One way to achieve it is to deploy a spacecraft known as a kinetic impactor—a battering ram that collides with an asteroid and transfers its momentum to the rocky interloper, nudging it away from Earth. NASA’s DART mission demonstrated that this can work, but there are some important caveats: You need to deflect the asteroid years in advance to make sure it completely misses Earth, and asteroids that we spot too late—or that are too big—can’t be swatted away by just one DART-like mission. Instead, you’d need several kinetic impactors—maybe many of them—to hit one side of the asteroid perfectly each time in order to push it far enough to save our planet. That’s a tall order for orbital mechanics, and not something space agencies may be willing to gamble on.  In that case, the best option might instead be to detonate a nuclear weapon next to the asteroid. This would irradiate one hemisphere of the asteroid in x-rays, which in a few millionths of a second would violently shatter and vaporize the rocky surface. The stream of debris spewing out of that surface and into space would act like a rocket, pushing the asteroid in the opposite direction. “There are scenarios where kinetic impact is insufficient, and we’d have to use a nuclear explosive device,” says Moore. MCKIBILLO This idea isn’t new. Several decades ago, Peter Schultz, a planetary geologist and impacts expert at Brown University, was giving a planetary defense talk at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, another American lab focused on nuclear deterrence and nuclear physics research. Afterwards, he recalls, none other than Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb and a key member of the Manhattan Project, invited him into his office for a chat. “He wanted to do one of these near-Earth-­asteroid flybys and wanted to test the nukes,” Schultz says. What, he wondered, would happen if you blasted an asteroid with a nuclear weapon’s x-rays? Could you forestall a spaceborne disaster using weapons of mass destruction? But Teller’s dream wasn’t fulfilled—and it’s unlikely to become a reality anytime soon. The United Nations’ 1967 Outer Space Treaty states that no nation can deploy or use nuclear weapons off-world (even if it’s not clear how long certain spacefaring nations will continue to adhere to that rule). Even raising the possibility of using nukes to defend the planet can be tricky. “There’re still many folks that don’t want to talk about it at all … even if that were the only option to prevent an impact,” says Megan Bruck Syal, a physicist and planetary defense researcher at Lawrence Livermore. Nuclear weapons have long been a sensitive subject, and with relations between several nuclear nations currently at a new nadir, anxiety over the subject is understandable.  But in the US, there are groups of scientists who “recognize that we have a special responsibility as a spacefaring nation and as a nuclear-­capable nation to look at this,” Syal says. “It isn’t our preference to use a nuclear explosive, of course. But we are still looking at it, in case it’s needed.” But how?  Mostly, researchers have turned to the virtual world, using supercomputers at various US laboratories to simulate the asteroid-­agitating physics of a nuclear blast. To put it mildly, “this is very hard,” says Mary Burkey, a physicist and planetary defense researcher at Lawrence Livermore. You cannot simply flick a switch on a computer and get immediate answers. “When a nuke goes off in space, there’s just x-ray light that’s coming out of it. It’s shining on the surface of your asteroid, and you’re tracking those little photons penetrating maybe a tiny little bit into the surface, and then somehow you have to take that micro­meter worth of resolution and then propagate it out onto something that might be on the order of hundreds of meters wide, watching that shock wave propagate and then watching fragments spin off into space. That’s four different problems.”  Mimicking the physics of x-ray rock annihilation with as much verisimilitude as possible is difficult work. But recent research using these high-fidelity simulations does suggest that nukes are an effective planetary defense tool for both disruption and deflection. The thing is, though, no two asteroids are alike; each is mechanically and geologically unique, meaning huge uncertainties remain. A more monolithic asteroid might respond in a straightforward way to a nuclear deflection campaign, whereas a rubble pile asteroid—a weakly bound fleet of boulders barely held together by their own gravity—might respond in a chaotic, uncontrollable way. Can you be sure the explosion wouldn’t accidentally shatter the asteroid, turning a cannonball into a hail of bullets still headed for Earth?  Simulations can go a long way toward answering these questions, but they remain virtual re-creations of reality, with built-in assumptions. “Our models are only as good as the physics that we understand and that we put into them,” says Angela Stickle, a hypervelocity impact physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. To make sure the simulations are reproducing the correct physics and delivering realistic data, physical experiments are needed to ground them. Every firing of the Z machine carries the energy of more than 1,000 lightning bolts, and each shot lasts a few millionths of a second. Researchers studying kinetic impactors can get that sort of real-world data. Along with DART, they can use specialized cannons—like the Vertical Gun Range at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California—to fire all sorts of projectiles at meteorites. In doing so, they can find out how tough or fragile asteroid shards can be, effectively reproducing a kinetic impact mission on a small scale.  Battle-testing nuke-based asteroid defense simulations is another matter. Re-creating the physics of these confrontations on a small scale was long considered to be exceedingly difficult. Fortunately, those keen on fighting asteroids are as persistent as they are creative—and several teams, including Moore’s at Sandia, think they have come up with a solution. X-ray scissors The prime mission of Sandia, like that of Lawrence Livermore, is to help maintain the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. “It’s a national security laboratory,” says Moore. “Planetary defense affects the entire planet,” he adds—making it, by default, a national security issue as well. And that logic, in part, persuaded the powers that be in July 2022 to try a brand-new kind of experiment. Moore took charge of the project in January 2023—and with the shot scheduled for the summer, he had only a few months to come up with the specific plan for the experiment. There was “lots of scribbling on my whiteboard, running computer simulations, and getting data to our engineers to design the test fixture for the several months it would take to get all the parts machined and assembled,” he says. Although there were previous and ongoing experiments that showered asteroid-like targets with x-rays, Moore and his team were frustrated by one aspect of them. Unlike actual asteroids floating freely in space, the micro-­asteroids on Earth were fixed in place. To truly test whether x-rays could deflect asteroids, targets would have to be suspended in a vacuum—and it wasn’t immediately clear how that could be achieved. Generating the nuke-like x-rays was the easy part, because Sandia had the Z machine, a hulking mass of diodes, pipes, and wires interwoven with an assortment of walkways that circumnavigate a vacuum chamber at its core. When it’s powered up, electrical currents are channeled into capacitors—and, when commanded, blast that energy at a target or substance to create radiation and intense magnetic pressures.  Flanked by klaxons and flashing lights, it’s an intimidating sight. “It’s the size of a building—about three stories tall,” says Moore. Every firing of the Z machine carries the energy of more than 1,000 lightning bolts, and each shot lasts a few millionths of a second: “You can’t even blink that fast.” The Z machine is named for the axis along which its energetic particles cascade, but the Z could easily stand for “Zeus.” The Z Pulsed Power Facility, or Z machine, at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, concentrates electricity into short bursts of intense energy that can be used to create x-rays and gamma rays and compress matter to high densities.RANDY MONTOYA/SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORY The original purpose of the Z machine, whose first form was built half a century ago, was nuclear fusion research. But over time, it’s been tinkered with, upgraded, and used for all kinds of science. “The Z machine has been used to compress matter to the same densities [you’d find at] the centers of planets. And we can do experiments like that to better understand how planets form,” Moore says, as an example. And the machine’s preternatural energies could easily be used to generate x-rays—in this case, by electrifying and collapsing a cloud of argon gas. “The idea of studying asteroid deflection is completely different for us,” says Moore. And the machine “fires just once a day,” he adds, “so all the experiments are planned more than a year in advance.” In other words, the researchers had to be near certain their one experiment would work, or they would be in for a long wait to try again—if they were permitted a second attempt.  For some time, they could not figure out how to suspend their micro-asteroids. But eventually, they found a solution: Two incredibly thin bits of aluminum foil would hold their targets in place within the Z machine’s vacuum chamber. When the x-ray blast hit them and the targets, the pieces of foil would be instantly vaporized, briefly leaving the targets suspended in the chamber and allowing them to be pushed back as if they were in space. “It’s like you wave your magic wand and it’s gone,” Moore says of the foil. He dubbed this technique “x-ray scissors.”  In July 2023, after considerable planning, the team was ready. Within the Z machine’s vacuum chamber were two fingernail-size targets—a bit of quartz and some fused silica, both frequently found on real asteroids. Nearby, a pocket of argon gas swirled away. Satisfied that the gigantic gizmo was ready, everyone left and went to stand in the control room. For a moment, it was deathly quiet. Stand by. Fire. It was over before their ears could even register a metallic bang. A tempest of electricity shocked the argon gas cloud, causing it to implode; as it did, it transformed into a plasma and x-rays screamed out of it, racing toward the two targets in the chamber. The foil vanished, the surfaces of both targets erupted outward as supersonic sprays of debris, and the targets flew backward, away from the x-rays, at 160 miles per hour. Moore wasn’t there. “I was in Spain when the experiment was run, because I was celebrating my anniversary with my wife, and there was no way I was going to miss that,” he says. But just after the Z machine was fired, one of his colleagues sent him a very concise text: IT WORKED. “We knew right away it was a huge success,” says Moore. The implications were immediately clear. The experimental setup was complex, but they were trying to achieve something extremely fundamental: a real-world demonstration that a nuclear blast could make an object in space move. “We’re genuinely looking at this from the standpoint of ‘This is a technology that could save lives.’” Patrick King, a physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, was impressed. Previously, pushing back objects using x-ray vaporization had been extremely difficult to demonstrate in the lab. “They were able to get a direct measurement of that momentum transfer,” he says, calling the x-ray scissors an “elegant” technique. Sandia’s work took many in the community by surprise. “The Z machine experiment was a bit of a newcomer for the planetary defense field,” says Burkey. But she notes that we can’t overinterpret the results. It isn’t clear, from the deflection of the very small and rudimentary asteroid-like targets, how much a genuine nuclear explosion would deflect an actual asteroid. As ever, more work is needed.  King leads a team that is also working on this question. His NASA-funded project involves the Omega Laser Facility, a complex based at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. Omega can generate x-rays by firing powerful lasers at a target within a specialized chamber. Upon being irradiated, the target generates an x-ray flash, similar to the one produced during a nuclear explosion in space, which can then be used to bombard various objects—in this case, some Earth rocks acting as asteroid mimics, and (crucially) some bona fide meteoritic material too.  King’s Omega experiments have tried to answer a basic question: “How much material actually gets removed from the surface?” says King. The amount of material that flies off the pseudo-asteroids, and the vigor with which it’s removed, will differ from target to target. The hope is that these results—which the team is still considering—will hint at how different types of asteroids will react to being nuked. Although experiments with Omega cannot produce the kickback seen in the Z machine, King’s team has used a more realistic and diverse series of targets and blasted them with x-rays hundreds of times. That, in turn, should clue us in to how effectively, or not, actual asteroids would be deflected by a nuclear explosion. “I wouldn’t say one [experiment] has definitive advantages over the other,” says King. “Like many things in science, each approach can yield insight along different ‘axes,’ if you will, and no experimental setup gives you the whole picture.” MCKIBILLO Experiments like Moore’s and King’s may sound technologically baroque—a bit like lightning-fast Rube Goldberg machines overseen by wizards. But they are likely the first in a long line of increasingly sophisticated tests. “We’ve just scratched the surface of what we can do,” Moore says. As with King’s experiments, Moore hopes to place a variety of materials in the Z machine, including targets that can stand in for the wetter, more fragile carbon-rich asteroids that astronomers commonly see in near-Earth space. “If we could get our hands on real asteroid material, we’d do it,” he says. And it’s expected that all this experimental data will be fed back into those nuke-versus-­asteroid computer simulations, helping to verify the virtual results. Although these experiments are perfectly safe, planetary defenders remain fully cognizant of the taboo around merely discussing the use of nukes for any reason—even if that reason is potentially saving the world. “We’re genuinely looking at this from the standpoint of ‘This is a technology that could save lives,’” King says. Inevitably, Earth will be imperiled by a dangerous asteroid. And the hope is that when that day arrives, it can be dealt with using something other than a nuke. But comfort should be taken from the fact that scientists are researching this scenario, just in case it’s our only protection against the firmament. “We are your taxpayer dollars at work,” says Burkey.  There’s still some way to go before they can be near certain that this asteroid-stopping technique will succeed. Their progress, though, belongs to everyone. “Ultimately,” says Moore, “we all win if we solve this problem.”  Robin George Andrews is an award-winning science journalist based in London and the author, most recently, of How to Kill an Asteroid: The Real Science of Planetary Defense.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" Dutch architecture firm OMA has won the competition to rejuvenate the historic Selman Stërmasi Stadium and its surrounding in the heart of Tirana, Albania. The design expands the current football park and transforms it into a catalyst of closer connections among various city neighborhoods.The scheme, led by OMA Managing Partner and Architect David Gianotten, reimagines the stadium, which was constructed in 1956. The stadium is a key component of an urban plan aimed at connecting the Blloku and Komuna e Parisit neighborhoods. This mixed-use development’s layered design, with its new constructions and ample open areas, alludes to the mountainous terrain of Albania.At the entrance of the scheme lies a triangular plaza, along with new mixed-use areas that encompass apartments of different sizes, a hotel, offices, and retail and F&B establishments. The stadium's seating capacity has been raised from 9,500 to 15,000. Additionally, a new arena bowl has been added, providing unobstructed views and reducing the distance between spectators and the pitch."Football is a cornerstone of urban culture and national identity across Europe and around the world, and we feel it especially intensely here in Tirana," said David Gianotten, Managing Partner and Architect at OMA. "Our design is meant to accelerate the exciting changes taking place in the city, while fostering closer bonds within and between neighborhoods and communities here," Gianotten added.The open areas, which can be adjusted for match days and daily life, are enclosed by the stadium and surrounding structures. The triangular plaza can serve as a fan zone or a venue for spontaneous activities. The design of the new block alludes to the Stadium of Amantia, adapting this Illyrian structure from the third century BCE to fit a contemporary urban context. Characterized by stacked stone slabs and a pitch carved out of its mountainous site, the ancient stadium was built in what is now southern Albania. The structures in the new Selman Stërmasi Stadium block are covered with natural stone and organized to create peaks and terraces."By integrating the stadium into a new urban development, we wanted to connect two distinct areas of the city through a shared culture of football as well as spontaneous activities," said OMA Associate Kees van Casteren."The ancient stadium, built in what is today southern Albania, was characterized by stacked stone slabs and a pitch carved out of its mountainous site. In the new Selman Stërmasi Stadium block, the buildings are clad in natural stone and arranged to form peaks and terraces, creating an urban mountain range around the pitch," said David Gianotten. "A high-rise residential tower on the triangular plaza, visible from Bulevardi Dëshmorët e Kombit, serves as both a landmark and a modern menhir. The result invokes both classical antiquity and geological time for a new national project in a changing city," Gianotten added.Site planProgramProgramProgramConcept diagramSectionSectionDavid Gianotten and Kees van Casteren from OMA led the competition design, working alongside LOLA Landscape Architects, Royal Haskoning DHV, and Petrit Halilaj.OMA’s design was chosen from submissions by Foster + Partners, FAR frohn&rojas, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, and Zaha Hadid Architects.OMA-designed the New Museum expansion in collaboration with Cooper Robertson, will open to the public this fall. In addition, OMA and Andrea Tabocchini Architecture remodeled the Gallery of the Kings at Turin’s Museo Egizio in Italy.Project factsProject: New Selman Stërmasi StadiumStatus: Competition (First Prize)Client: Albania Investment Construction, Diagonal Projektim & ZbatimLocation: Tirana, AlbaniaSite: 6 ha.GFA: 120.000 m2 (excluding basement)Program: 15.000-seat Stadium 15.700 m2, residential 30.800 m2, retail 29.700 m2, offices 16.700 m2, hotel 11.900 m2, F&B 7.900 m2, conference 4.800 m2, spa 2.500 m2Partner: David GianottenAssociate-in-charge: Kees van CasterenTeam: Ana Otelea, Antonie van Vliet, Gerrit Knappers, Jorge Cerdo Schumann, Najla AlayoubbiVisualization: Stefania Trozzi, Diego IaconoCollaborators Landscape architect: LOLA Landscape ArchitectsStructures, sustainability, cost consultancy: Royal Haskoning DHVArt: Petrit HalilajAll images & drawings courtesy of OMA.> via OMA 

The 24 million showcase structure opened to visitors yesterday (13 April) with the theme ‘Come Build the Future’. It features a fully dismountable and relocatable modular system designed for ease of transportation after the Expo ends in October. This includes the overall structure, floorplates and external cladding, which WOO and ES Global say have been designed to be relocatable with minimum transportation. WOO’s façade design features perforated aluminium strands ‘to invoke the punched cards used in early calculating machines’. These are intertwined via a weaving technique, inspired by the textile industries that fuelled the 19th-century industrial revolutions in both Manchester and Osaka.Advertisement The façade pattern, meanwhile, references pixels – with the structure’s architectural form inspiring the name and appearance of the pavilion’s mascot, PIX. The digital mascot takes visitors to the pavilion on a 20-minute journey showcasing British innovation as well as examples of how the UK works with other countries and cultures to ‘shape what’s next’. The gamified experience is part of a ‘story-first’ approach, which, say the organisers, makes the 2025 UK pavilion the ‘first fully narrative-driven World Expo showcase’ creating an ‘emotive, immersive experience designed to leave visitors inspired and uplifted’. The UK Department for Business and Trade awarded the pavilion’s original concept and creative direction to design studio Immersive International in March 2023. Following a competition later that year, it commissioned structure specialist and delivery partner ES Global working with WOO Architects to turn the concept into a physical design. An earlier iteration of WOO’s design, unveiled in March last year, featured LED screens on the pavilion’s exterior. That design was updated at the beginning of the year to include the weave pattern.Advertisement Emma Owens, director of WOO and lead designer of the UK Pavilion, commented:  'The pavilion's design celebrates Britain at a pivotal moment; our global reputation for innovation and creativity shines through, while the playful facade reflects our innate curiosity and ability to find opportunity in every challenge. This is a space where a rich historic narrative comes alive, and we hope it inspires conversations about British resilience and industriousness for years to come  She conintued: 'Borrowing from iconic designs from industrial design to textiles, our work on the UK pavilion is inspired by our nation’s rich heritage of innovation, technology and creativity. We hope that visitors will agree that the UK Pavilion stands as an eye-catching and elegant structure at Expo 2025 Osaka.’ Immersive International chief executive John Munro said: ‘This pavilion is really a snapshot of how we approach experiential masterplanning. We have built an experience that speaks to people on an emotional level – one that lingers long after they leave. ‘Our approach at Immersive has always been about storytelling first. Technology is the amplifier. It’s what turns ideas into encounters, and space into memory. ‘The pavilion is a place where visitors don’t just learn about British innovation; they feel it. They see themselves in it. We always try to make places that feel alive – places that people want to come back to because they feel part of something bigger, and a space they can connect in.’ The Department for Business and Trade’s Expo director for the UK, Ceri Owen-Bradley, added: ‘From day one, this pavilion has been a truly collaborative effort. We’ve worked hand-in-hand with Immersive International, ES Global and Woo Architects, bringing together creative and technical expertise from across the UK. This close teamwork and shared creativity have been essential to achieving the pavilion’s ambitious goals.’ WOO Architects is a King’s Cross-based practice, born in 2014 out of the design team for the London 2012 Olympics, while ES Global specialises in ‘semi-permanent, sustainable structures’, including six venues for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. ES Global previously said the same ‘kit of parts’ used at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games would be used in Osaka for the Australian Pavilion. The firm has also worked to deliver the USA pavilion, designed by  Trahan Architects. Other architects involved in this year’s World Expo include Foster + Partners, which has designed the Saudi Arabia pavilion; British Museum revamp winner Lina Ghotmeh, who has designed Bahrain’s pavilion; and 2025 RIBA Royal Gold Medal winner SANNA, which is behind the Better Co-Being pavilion. Previous UK pavilions for World Expos include Heatherwick Studio, Wolfgang Buttress and BDP’s pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo, which was awarded the event’s ‘best in show’ prize.

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April 13, 2025A Long Day on Uranus, a Better Method of Making Coffee and Disputed Dino DeclineA fluid study homes in on the best method to make a cup of coffee, scientists use the Hubble Telescope to reassess the length of a day on Uranus, and we discuss more of the latest in science in this news roundup. Anaissa Ruiz Tejada/Scientific AmericanSUBSCRIBE TO Science QuicklyRachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s catch up on some of the science news you might have missed last week.We’ll ease into things with a new study on a subject that’s bound to perk you up: coffee. Up until now the best way to learn more than you ever wanted to know about pour-over coffee was to ask literally any guy at a party in Brooklyn. But a study published last week in the journal Physics of Fluids brings some actual science into debates over how to brew the perfect pot of joe.Using transparent silica gel particles in place of coffee grounds, researchers captured high-speed footage showing exactly how water flows through a pour-over setup under different conditions. They determined that the best way to brew a strong cup of coffee was to maximize the contact time between water and coffee grounds while also allowing for plenty of mixing so as much coffee as possible was extracted. The team says the key is to pour slowly—to maximize contact—and from a greater height to increase the water velocity. A slim stream of water from a gooseneck kettle can help optimize this process. As those dudes from parties in Brooklyn have probably already told you. If you get it right, the researchers say, you can actually get a stronger cup of coffee using a smaller quantity of grounds. They recommend experimenting by subtracting a small amount from your usual bean count—maybe a couple of grams per serving—and then trying cups brewed at different pour heights until you find a strength you like.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Now that we’re all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, let’s move on to another troubling story of cuts in federal funding for research. Last Tuesday the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that the Trump administration will pull around $4 million in research grants for climate change-related projects from Princeton University. According to a press release from the Department of Commerce, the projects funded by these grants “are no longer aligned with the program objectives” of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and “are no longer in keeping with the Trump Administration’s priorities.”One of the targeted projects focuses on how water supplies might fluctuate as global warming progresses. The Department of Commerce stated that “using federal funds to perpetuate these narratives does not align with the priorities of this Administration,” which is, frankly, chilling language to use when talking about climate change research. The press release also accused some of the slashed projects of increasing “climate anxiety,” which is a phrase that’s increasingly being used to cast folks’ concerns over very real evidence about the climate crisis in a hysterical light.Speaking of environmental threats: a study published last Thursday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment found that less than 10 percent of the plastic made worldwide in 2022 contained recycled materials. The world produced more than 400 million tons of plastic that year. And some estimates say that amount will more than double by 2050. The new study also found that just around 28 percent of all plastic waste made it to the sorting stage and only half of that plastic was actually recycled. While China had the highest plastic consumption overall in 2022, the U.S. had the highest amount of usage per person, according to the researchers. On average, each individual in the U.S. consumed about 476 pounds [216 kilograms] of plastic that year.Now, obviously plastic usage is a massive, complex, systemic problem that high income countries around the world need to address, so this isn’t me trying to make you feel guilty about your ever-growing pile of old takeout containers. But if you’ve been looking for something to motivate you to start making some slightly less convenient choices in the name of using less plastic—carrying reusable straws and silverware with you, finding a local bulk grocery store that lets you use your own containers—maybe these new findings can fire you up to make a change.Now let’s check in with a cosmic neighbor. The Small Magellanic Cloud is a galaxy not far from our own, and a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series suggests that things might be getting a little hectic over there. Within the SMC, researchers tracked the motion of roughly 7,000 stars, each one more than eight times the mass of our own sun. The team found that the stars were moving in different directions on the galaxy’s respective sides. The scientists think that the gravitational pull of the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud—which, to state the obvious, is the bigger of the two galaxies—might be pulling the SMC apart. The researchers say that studying how the SMC and LMC interact with both each other and with the Milky Way will help us understand how galaxies form and behave.In other space news, it turns out that a day on Uranus lasts slightly longer than we thought. A study published last Monday in Nature Astronomyused data from the Hubble Space Telescope to estimate the ice giant’s rotation rate with unprecedented accuracy. Our prior estimate of 17 hours, 14 minutes and 24 seconds came from Voyager 2’s 1986 flyby of Uranus. That figure relied on measurements of the planet’s magnetic field and radio signals emitted by its auroras. For a better estimate scientists used more than a decade’s worth of Hubble data to track the movement of Uranus’s auroras, which helped them zero in on the actual location of the planet’s magnetic poles. The researchers’ findings added a whopping 28 seconds to Uranus’s previously estimated rotational period. And hey, every second on Uranus is precious.We’ll wrap up with some new findings on the demise of the dinosaurs. Some earlier research has suggested that dinosaurs were already on the outs before that infamous asteroid struck the killing blow. But a study published last Tuesday in Current Biologyargues that the dinosaurs were doing just fine before that pesky space rock came along, thank you very much.Researchers analyzed the North American fossil record for the 18 million years preceding the mass extinction event in question—about 8,000 fossil specimens in total. That fossil record does indeed seem to show that dinosaur populations started declining millions of years before the asteroid hit. But the new study suggests it’s not the dinosaurs themselves that declined but simply their mark on the fossil record. The researchers argue that geological changes made dinosaur fossils less likely to be preserved in places where archaeologists could one day access them. It’s certainly not the end of this debate, but it’s now a little more plausible to imagine that, had things gone down a little differently, we might still have dinosaurs roaming the Earth today—other than birds, of course.That’s all for this week’s news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk about a trendy disinfectant that sounds almost too good to be true: hypochlorous acid. Tune in to get the full scoop on this so-called miracle molecule.Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!