The tech market doesn’t need to be soaring up and to the right to foster healthy M&A activity. Deals can get done even in down markets. But can M&A thrive in an uncertain market? That’s a harder question. The venture market soured in 2022 as fundraising and exits largely dried up. Since then, venture investors have been waiting in the wings for exits, both M&A and IPOs, to return. While the past few years didn’t deliver, heading into 2025, there was reason to be hopeful. Late-stage startup valuations had started to recover, and a handful of strong deals gave the impression that a rebound might be underway. On top of that, the Trump administration painted itself as far more M&A-friendly than Joe Biden’s, which had previously blocked several high-profile deals on antitrust grounds. Deals did start flowing at the beginning of 2025. According to PitchBook data, there were 205 U.S. startup acquisitions in the first quarter alone, and many of them were notable. In March, CoreWeave agreed to pay $1.7 billion for Weights&Biases. The following week, ServiceNow announced its plans to acquire Moveworks for $2.9 billion. And later that month, Google announced it was buying cybersecurity startup Wiz for $32 billion in March. Other first-quarter acquisitions included the sale of proptech Divvy Homes to the investment firm Brookfield for $1 billion and the sale of Next Insurance to Munich Re for $2.6 billion. But then everything started to change in April. On April 2 — dubbed “Liberation Day” – Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs against nearly every major trading partner. Tech companies saw their stock plummet and Q1’s progress started to look like a blip. A week later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on these tariffs, but the market now sits in a state of limbo. “Heading into 2025 as you may recall, people were almost giddy, thinking things are really going to pick up in 2025,” Stellar Tucker, a managing director at Truist Securities, told TechCrunch. “I don’t think much of that has really materialized. The outlook right now is pretty tepid for 2025, which is unfortunate, because I think everyone went into 2025 thinking it was going to be a much better year than the past few that we’ve been suffering through.” Volatile valuations There are a few reasons why a volatile or uncertain public market can stall M&A activity. For one, many of the most active acquirers — large public tech companies — are directly affected by the tariff uncertainty. Their stock prices have taken hits, and some of their core products or supply chains could face tariff impacts. “The large public companies, they’re going to have a really tough time with depressed valuations in their stock,” said Kyle Stanford, the director of U.S. venture capital research at PitchBook, in an interview with TechCrunch. “Even if they have cash, they don’t want to put it to work in an uncertain market and kind of spook investors,” Stanford said. Added Stanford, stock buybacks are “probably something that they look at instead of company purchases.” Another hurdle is price. For the past few years, uncertainty around valuations has lingered, with many late-stage startups no longer worth their frothy 2021 valuations. But what they are actually worth isn’t concrete either. “There’s a lot of back-and-forth leading to significant uncertainty,” said Ronan Kennedy, who leads the capital advisory team for the investment firm B Capital. “Businesses don’t want to make a decision when waiting a few days could have led to a different decision” or valuation. Not a total deal drought Despite the slowdown, some deals will get done. Thomas Earnest, a partner at the law firm Mintz who focuses on tech fundraising and M&A, told TechCrunch that any company that has opportunistically put feelers out to sell this year is likely putting a pause on that effort. It’s a sharp contrast from what Earnest told TechCrunch just a few weeks back when he predicted an uptick in M&A. “The world was a much different place in January than it was in March, and now we’re in a totally different place than we were three weeks ago,” Earnest said. “You’re not gonna go buy a house if you [fear] that in a week’s time it’s gonna be worth 20 or 30% [less] than what you paid for it, and I think that really could ring true in the M&A market.” That said, not all M&A is driven by opportunity. Earnest said startups that are unable to raise their next round of funding will still need to pursue acquisitions, likely at lower valuations. “They’ve probably been trying to hold out for the venture market to come back, and if it doesn’t, then those companies are gonna need to get comfortable with either down rounds or acquisitions at discounts,” Earnest said. “I think that you’ll see deal volume there.” Well-capitalized AI companies that are private and pumped up with cash are likely to snap up smaller companies, too, Earnest added. Just one case in point: OpenAI, which just raised a $40 billion funding round at the end of March, is rumored to be acquiring AI coding startup Windsurf for $3 billion. As the second quarter unfolds, PitchBook’s Stanford fears that the events of the first few weeks of April could have already slidelined M&A activity for the rest of the year. He added that if these tariffs resume in early July — after the 90-day pause —  or new trades deals are struck in the meantime, it may not matter much. That stability likely wouldn’t come until the summer, a historically slow period for activity. Then comes fall, the fourth quarter, and the end-of-year holiday slowdown. That leaves a tiny window for strong M&A deals to get done. “I think the prospect of a stable 2025 seems pretty low at this point just because of the changes,” Stanford said. “We all know how much the news has changed in the past two weeks, what and how small or steep, who’s getting exceptions or what’s not getting exception. And [it] really creates a lot of uncertainty.” Topics

Those shopping for the design-inclined know the MoMA Design Store Soho is the place to go. The more-than-just-a-museum-gift-shop, opened in 2001 at 81 Spring Street in a 19th-century building with cast iron columns and masonry walls concealed by past renovations. Peterson Rich Office (PRO) has been selected to redesign the 6,600-square-foot, 2-story space in New York’s preeminent shopping district, and reveal its historic innards. The renovation by PRO will reimagine the ground floor space, MoMA said in a statement, to “better reflect how visitors engage with retail and design today.” It aims to create balance between the historic architecture, and reveal its 19th century elements that have long been kept from sight. “MoMA Design Store has consistently served as a vital platform for bringing museum-quality design into everyday life,” PRO cofounder Nathan Rich told AN. “For PRO,” Rich added, “this renovation represents more than a project—it’s an opportunity to honor both MoMA’s legacy of design excellence and Soho’s storied architectural heritage. We’re crafting a space where innovation meets history, ensuring the Design Store continues to inspire New Yorkers and visitors alike for generations to come.” One of the most noticeable changes to MoMA Design Store Soho will be a new entrance for improved sight lines between the shop and the surrounding neighborhood. Today’s Spring Street entrance will be swapped out with storefront windows; the north wall will feature a large, commissioned artwork that catches eyeballs and draws people in. Aside from exposing these features and new exterior arrangements, PRO imagines modern lighting systems, thoughtful display structures, and “intentional negative space” “MoMA Design Store plays a vital role in extending the Museum’s mission beyond its walls—connecting our audiences to the values of good design through everyday experiences,” MoMA COO James Gara said in a statement. “This renovation strengthens that connection, creating a renewed cultural and retail destination rooted in both MoMA’s legacy and Soho’s creative energy.” Toward that end, the redesigned Soho store will have new displays that highlight current exhibitions and programming at the flagship. “The new Soho store will be a more flexible, immersive, and intuitive environment,” added Jesse Goldstine, MoMA Retail general manager. “We’re not only better showcasing the products we believe in, we’re strengthening the store’s relationship to the Museum while offering moments of joy and discovery to everyone who walks through our doors.” MoMA Design Store Soho will close to the public on May 16 for renovations to begin, and reopen later this fall.

Wangari Mathenge, “Re-Membering (Folded In Time)” (2025), oil on canvas, 57.99 x 82.01 inches Here’s What We’re Excited to See at EXPO CHICAGO 2025 April 21, 2025 Grace Ebert This week marks the beginning of Chicago’s art world Olympics as the largest fair returns to Navy Pier. From April 24 to 27, EXPO CHICAGO will host hundreds of galleries, site-specific projects, talks, and multi-disciplinary programming both downtown and across the city. To help you navigate, we’re sharing the artworks we’re most looking forward to seeing. And, if you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, use the code COLOSSAL25 for $5 off. 1. Wangari Mathenge with Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (London) The Chicago-based, Kenyan artist will present a collection of vivid new paintings that speak to the immense amount of information generated through her intensive research process. Surrounded by books, plants, and brightly patterned East African Kanga fabrics, Mathenge’s figures lounge among objects that transcend colonial narratives. Ilhwa Kim, “Calculative Flight” (2024), hand-dyed hanji paper, 132 x 164 x 13 centimeters 2. Ilhwa Kim, Gordon Cheung, and Zheng Lu with HOFA (London) We’ve long been enamored by Kim’s roving, rolled-paper compositions that delineate dense pathways through broader expanses. Her dynamic works will be on view alongside Cheung’s decadent paintings and Lu’s stainless steel splashes. Florence Solis, “Makahiya VI” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches 3. Florence Solis with The Mission Projects (Chicago) Beginning with digital collage before moving to acrylic and canvas, Solis renders ethereal portraits of women infused with Filipino folklore. Delicate leaves and flowers entwine with coiled hair, while veils shroud the figures in luminous coverings, binding each with a protective, yet restrictive layer. Suntai Yoo, “The Words” (2024), acrylic on canvas, 91 x 117 centimeters 4. Suntai Yoo with Galerie Gaia (Seoul) Fragmented, surrealist landscapes figure prominently in Yoo’s paintings, which frequently pair common objects like books, bicycles, and apples with Korean letters. The artist is particularly interested in metaphor and how distinct items interact to create meaning. Desmond Beach, “The Guardian of the Small & Sacred” (2025), digital painting, woven Jacquard loom, hand and machine sewn pieceworked fabric, 47″x 47 inches 5. Desmond Beach with Richard Beavers Gallery (Brooklyn) Mixing digital painting with patchwork quilts, Beach creates bold, forward-looking portraits. The Baltimore-born artist invokes the ways that trauma can be harnessed for resistance and collective solidarity. Jimmy Beauquesne, “Phase 3. Knight of infinite resignation” (2023-2024), colored pencils on paper, hand-cut metallic frame, 62 x 41 x 2 centimeters 6. Jimmy Beauquesne with Fragment (New York) Nested inside hand-cut metallic frames, Beauquesne’s colored-pencil works imagine a dreamy, apocalyptic world that drips with fantastic details. The nine pieces form a narrative of humanity’s transformation sparked by phantasmagorical change. Next article

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Certified Overspending: Synology is known for its NAS appliances (network-attached storage) and other related products. While the company doesn't manufacture its own disk drives, it is now selling a "certified" line of HDDs for "maximum" reliability and compatibility. The next high-end NAS line from Synology will require the use of the company's branded hard disk drives. The manufacturer announced the change in a recent press release, stating it will increasingly rely on a proprietary ecosystem for upcoming storage products. This new requirement will affect NAS models in the Plus series launching in 2025 and beyond, Synology said. NAS appliances using Synology-branded hard drives will reportedly offer customers several benefits, including higher performance, improved reliability, and more efficient support. However, the Plus Series line of 3.5-inch HDDs are essentially standard drives sourced from established manufacturers like Toshiba and Seagate. These drives use conventional magnetic recording technology to ensure consistent performance during I/O operations. Plus series NAS models released before 2025 will remain compatible with traditional, non-certified hard drives – though this does not apply to XS Plus or rack-mounted models. Even hard drives already in use with older Plus NAS appliances should continue to function "without restrictions," but they may lose access to certain features in the future. Some of these restrictions include the inability to create storage pools and the loss of access to official support. Synology has indicated it will not assist customers using "incompatible" storage media. Additional features that will soon be limited to Synology-branded drives include volume-wide deduplication, lifespan analysis, and automated firmware updates. Also see: QNAP and Synology buying recommendations in our Best Storage 2025 list // Related Stories Synology has confirmed the need for branded drives, stating that its "Product Compatibility List" will be updated with additional hard drive models. These drives have been "thoroughly vetted" through extensive testing and a rigorous validation process designed to minimize failures and compatibility issues over time. Customers will also be able to submit third-party drives for testing, offering a chance for those units to meet Synology's "stringent" standards and be validated for use. This, the company believes, provides a flexible enough ecosystem for users unwilling to pay a premium for Synology-branded drives, though the company presents this new proprietary approach as a significant improvement for the sake of reliability.

Much of Zach Cregger’s Weapons has been clouded in secrecy. Warner Bros. has kept images, videos, characters, and plot details under lock and key … until now. The studio has released the first teaser trailer for Weapons, and the spine-tingling footage previews a terrifying mystery. The video begins with a shot of an alarm clock that reads 2:17 a.m. As the ticking noise intensifies, a man says to a concerned parent, “Mr. Graff, I can understand your passion, and I don’t mind having these conversations with you, because God forbid, if it was my child, I’d be demanding answers too.” Recommended Videos 17 of 18 children from the same class left their homes one night in the small town of Maybrook. These children were caught on video sprinting through their neighborhoods. What they are running towards and why they are doing it remains unknown. Related “Those kids walked out of those homes,” another character, who sounds like Josh Brolin, says in response to the disturbing video. “No one pulled them out.” The teaser ends with the question, “What do you see that I don’t?” The video reveals the URL to a website for more information, Maybrookmissing.com. The site includes a brief new post about what happened that fateful night as the case “continues to baffle investigators.” Warner Bros. Weapons stars Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. Cregger writes and directs Weapons, the highly anticipated follow-up to Barbarian, one of the surprise hits of 2022. Warner Bros. believes Weapons has the potential to be a big hit. New Line Cinema, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., won the rights to Weapons in a heated bidding war for approximately $38 million. Warner Bros. reaffirmed their belief in Weapons by moving its release date from January 2026 to August 8, 2025. The latter was the release date for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which moved to September 2025. Editors’ Recommendations

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Losing track Trump can’t keep China from getting AI chips, TSMC suggests As Trump eyes chip controls, TSMC fears its tariff-proof era will end. Ashley Belanger – Apr 21, 2025 1:33 pm | 20 Credit: JHVEPhoto | iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus Credit: JHVEPhoto | iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more As the global artificial intelligence (AI) race presses on amid a US-China trade war, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)—a $514 billion titan that manufactures most of the world's AI chips—is warning that it may not be possible to keep its customers' most advanced technology out of China's hands. US export controls require chipmakers to monitor shipments and know their customers to restrict China's access to AI chips. But in a recently published 2024 report, TSMC confirmed that its "role in the semiconductor supply chain inherently limits its visibility and information available to it regarding the downstream use or user of final products that incorporate semiconductors manufactured by it." Essentially, TSMC expects that it plays too big a role in the semiconductor industry to stop all the possible unintended end-uses of the semiconductors it manufactures. Similarly, it appears impossible to track all the third parties determined to skirt sanctions. And if TSMC's hands are truly tied, that ultimately means that the US can't effectively stop the latest AI tech from trickling into China. That remains a problem for TSMC, since, back in October, a research firm called TechInsights took apart an AI accelerator from China-based and US-sanctioned Huawei and found that TSMC had produced the AI chip made by Nvidia that powered the product, Bloomberg reported. The semiconductor company increasingly risks sanctions for failing to comply with export controls, TSMC's report said, even if it seemingly has nothing to do with its customers diverting shipments into China. At that time, TSMC promptly notified US officials of the feared national security risk, confirming that one of its customers' chips "might have been diverted to a restricted entity or incorporated into a restricted entity’s product," TSMC's report said. However, although the company fully cooperated with the resulting US and Taiwan government probes, TSMC said, there currently appears to be no perfect solution to deter recurring violations. "Despite TSMC’s best efforts to comply with all relevant export control and sanctions laws and regulations, there is no assurance that its business activities will not be found incompliant with export control laws and regulations," TSMC said. Further, "if TSMC or TSMC’s business partners fail to obtain appropriate import, export or re-export licenses or permits or are found to have violated applicable export control or sanctions laws, TSMC may also be adversely affected, through reputational harm as well as other negative consequences, including government investigations and penalties resulting from relevant legal proceedings," TSMC warned. Trump’s tariffs may end TSMC’s “tariff-proof” era TSMC is thriving despite years of tariffs and export controls, its report said, with at least one analyst suggesting that, so far, the company appears "somewhat tariff-proof." However, all of that could be changing fast, as "US President Donald Trump announced in 2025 an intention to impose more expansive tariffs on imports into the United States," TSMC said. "Any tariffs imposed on imports of semiconductors and products incorporating chips into the United States may result in increased costs for purchasing such products, which may, in turn, lead to decreased demand for TSMC’s products and services and adversely affect its business and future growth," TSMC said. And if TSMC's business is rattled by escalations in the US-China trade war, TSMC warned, that risks disrupting the entire global semiconductor supply chain. Trump's semiconductor tariff plans remain uncertain. About a week ago, Trump claimed the rates would be unveiled "over the next week," Reuters reported, which means they could be announced any day now. TSMC is apparently already bracing, as industry estimates suggest that tariffs could cost chipmakers more than a billion dollars over the next year, Reuters reported. Additionally, China's increased restrictions on access to the raw materials TSMC needs to manufacture chips could spike costs, TSMC said. "Any increase in the use of export control restrictions and sanctions to target certain countries and entities, any expansion of the extraterritorial jurisdiction of such measures, or complete or partial ban on semiconductor products sales to certain entities could impact not only TSMC’s ability to continue supplying products to those customers, but also our customers’ demand for our products, and could even lead to changes in semiconductor supply chains," TSMC warned. Trump's semiconductor tariffs will be based on the results of a probe into potential impacts on national security and the economy. Ars could not immediately reach TSMC to confirm if the company has submitted comments as part of that probe. But while the company's outlook for growth otherwise seems rosy, with AI demand increasing globally, its annual report warned that fines for non-compliance are a top emerging risk, along with risks of building new fabs and potential claw-backs or disruptions in government incentives (like the CHIPS Act, which Trump claims he wants to gut or cut). Currently, TSMC's "operations have not been materially affected by the expanded export control regulations or the novel rules or measures adopted to counteract them," TSMC said. "Nevertheless, depending on future developments in global trade tensions, such regulations, rules, or measures may have an adverse impact on the Company’s business and operations, and TSMC may incur significant legal liability and financial losses as a result." Ashley Belanger Senior Policy Reporter Ashley Belanger Senior Policy Reporter Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience. 20 Comments

Joao-Pierre S. Ruth, Senior EditorApril 18, 20259 Min ReadElevated view of Gillette Stadium, home New England Patriots, NFL Team. Playing against Dallas Cowboys, October 16, 2011, Foxborough, Boston, MAVisions of America LLC via Alamy Stock PhotoThe gridiron action of the New England Patriots naturally takes center stage in the public eye, but when the team’s owner, holding company The Kraft Group, wanted to update certain tech resources, the plan encompassed its extensive operations.Michael Israel, CIO for The Kraft Group, discussed with InformationWeek the plan for networking upgrades -- facilitated through NWN -- at Gillette Stadium, home field for the Patriots, as well as the holding company’s other business lines, which include paper and packaging, real estate development, and the New England Revolution Major League Soccer club.Talk us through not only the update effort for the stadium, but what were the initial thoughts, initial plans, and pain points that got the process started for the company.The roots of the business are in the paper manufacturing side. We have a paper, cardboard recycling mill in Montville, Conn. I have 10 cardboard box manufacturing plants from Red Lion, Pa. up through Dover, N.H., in the northeast. International Forest Products, which is a large commodities business which moves paper-based products all over the world. When we talk about our network, we have a standardized platform across all of our enterprise businesses and my team is responsible for maintaining and securing all of the businesses.Related:We have a life cycle attached to everything that we buy and when we look at what the next five years brings to us, we were looking and saying we have the host of networking projects coming up. It will be the largest networking set of upgrades that we do from a strategic point over that period. So, the first of which NWN is currently working on is a migration to a new voice over IP platform. Our existing platform was end-of-life, moving to a new cloud-based platform, new Cisco platform. They are managing that transition for us and that again covers our entire enterprise.[We're] building a new facility for the New England Patriots, their practice facility, which will be ready next April. Behind that we have FIFA World Cup coming in next June-July [in 2026] and we have essentially seven matches here. It’s the equivalent of seven Super Bowls over a six-week period.Behind that comes a refresh of our Wi-Fi environment, refresh of our overall core networking environment. Then it’s time for a refresh of our firewalls. I have over 80 firewalls in my environment, whether virtual or physical. And to add insult to injury, on top of all of that, we may have a new stadium that we’re building up in Everett for our soccer team, which is potentially scheduled to open in 2029 or 2030.Related:So as we were looking at all of this, the goal here is to create one strategic focus for all of these projects and not think about them individually. Sat down with NWN saying, “Hey, typically I will be managing two to three years in advance. We need to take a look at what we’re going to do over the next five years to make sure that we’re planning for growth. We’re planning to manage all of this from standards and from a central location.”Putting together what that strategic plan looks like over that period of time and building a relationship with NWN to be able to support it, augment the staff that I have. I don’t have enough resources internal to handle all of this myself. And that’s a large endeavor, so that’s where this partnership started to form.Can you describe the scale of your operations further? You mentioned hosting the equivalent of several Super Bowls in terms of operations at the stadium.If you take the stadium as a whole and we focus there for a second, for Taylor Swift concert or a FIFA event coming in -- for Taylor Swift, we had 62,000 unique visitors on our Wi-Fi network at one time. There’s 1,800 WAPs (wireless access points) supporting the stadium and our campus here now.Related:I got a note on my radio during one of the evenings saying there’s 62,000 people. I said, “How can that be? There’s only 52,000 guests.” Well, it turns out there was a TikTok challenge in one of our parking lots and there were 10,000 teenagers on the network doing TikTok. These are the things that we don’t plan for, and FIFA is going to be a similar situation where typically we’re planning for how many people are physically sitting in the stadium for a FIFA event. Our parking lots are becoming activation zones, so we’re going to have to plan to support not just who's physically entering and scanning tickets and sitting in the bowl, but who’s on the grounds as a whole.And that’s something that we haven’t had to do in the past. It’s something that some of the warmer stadiums down in the South or in the in the West Coast who host Super Bowls, they're used to that type of scenario, but there are 16 venues throughout North America that are supporting FIFA and many of them, like us, we’re not used to having that large-size crowd and your planning to support that is critical for us as we start to do this. We are now 15 months away, 14 months away. We’re in high gear right now.What led the push to make changes? The interests are of the guests to the stadium? The team’s needs? Or was it to meet the latest standards and expectations in technology and networking?If you think about the networks, and it’s kind of irrelevant whether it’s here at the stadium or in our manufacturing plants, the networks have physically been -- if it’s plugged in, if it’s a Wi-Fi attachment, etcetera, you can track what is going on and what your average bandwidth utilization is.What we were seeing over the last year with the increased adoption of AI, with the increased adoption of IoT in these environments, you’re having more devices that are missio- critical, for example, on a Wi-Fi network, whereas in the past -- OK, there’s 50,000 people in my bowl and they’re on TikTok; they’re on Instagram; they’re doing whatever. We want them to have a good experience, but it’s not mission critical in my eyes. But now, if you’re coming to the gate and we’re adopting systems that are doing facial recognition for you to enter and touching a digital wallet and shredding your ticket and hitting your credit card and doing all these things -- they need to be lightning fast.Michael IsraelIf I’m doing transactions on mobile point of sale terminals, half of my point-of-sale terminals are now mobile devices hanging off of Wi-Fi. There’s all almost 500 mobile point of sale terminals going around. If they are spinning and waiting to connect, you’re going to lose business. Same thing in my manufacturing plants where my forklifts are now connected to Wi-Fi. We’re tracking the trailers as they come in and watching for demurrage charges and looking at all of these pieces. These are these are IoT devices that weren’t on the network in the past and if the forklift isn’t connecting, the operators are not being told where to put the materials that they’re grabbing.Basically, they stop until they can reconnect. I can’t have that.The focus and the importance of the network continues to outpace what we think it’s going to do, so what I did last year is kind of irrelevant because as the applications and as the needs are inherently changing, we are society doesn’t like to wait.If someone’s looking to buy something and that point-of-sale terminal is processing and processing -- we did a project last year with autonomous purchasing, where you enter a concession stand and you pick things off the shelf, and it knows what you’re taking. Most stadiums have it at this point in time. But when we started that project, the vendor -- their merchant was actually processing in Europe and the time to get an approval was 11 seconds. If you walked up to one of my regular point-of-sale, belly-up concession stands, the approval was coming in two and a half seconds. We turned around and said you can’t wait nine seconds. People are in a queue line to get an approval on a credit card. We dug into it and found well, we’re hopping here, here, here and it’s coming from Europe.We had to get with that vendor and say, “You need to change how you’re processing.” It’s a question we hadn’t asked before, but had to get it back in line because, this is not necessarily just a technology piece here, but if you’re holding up a queue line, that’s not a satisfactory relationship. If you think about every person going into that concession stand -- 11 seconds, 11 seconds, 11 seconds -- for every six people, you’re delaying a minute. These are the things that as we’re going through planning sessions, it’s not necessarily, “Oh, it’s the latest technology, but what’s the speed of transaction, what’s the speed of throughput?”  We have to be very diligent throughout that process.How far out do you typically plan your IT budget? How often do you reassess to see what the ROI has been for a project such as this?Typically, I am looking 18 months into the future. This is one of the rare times where I'm actually looking 36 to 48 months into the future because of everything that’s kind of stacked up one after another, and I don’t have the latitude if one starts to slip that -- I can't take a 5-year set of projects and make it 9 years. I got to have the depth to say, “Hey, we’re going to finish this, but be ready because while we’re finishing up this voice over IP project, we’re now in FIFA planning. We’re now in network consolidation planning.” They’re just stacked up one after another behind that and the decisions we make now are going to impact what we’re doing in 12 months, 24 months, etcetera.Where do things stand right now in terms of this project? What’s on the road map ahead?Right now, we are in the heart of our voice over IP migration, which is the first major project we’ve set forth with NWN. We’re expecting that to be finished before football season starts. And then we’ll have an overlap of a couple of months and planning out what our core network upgrades are going to look like -- we’ll be in the planning phases, and they’ll start in late fall, early winter, right before football season ends.About the AuthorJoao-Pierre S. RuthSenior EditorJoao-Pierre S. Ruth covers tech policy, including ethics, privacy, legislation, and risk; fintech; code strategy; and cloud & edge computing for InformationWeek. He has been a journalist for more than 25 years, reporting on business and technology first in New Jersey, then covering the New York tech startup community, and later as a freelancer for such outlets as TheStreet, Investopedia, and Street Fight.See more from Joao-Pierre S. RuthReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like

Blood pressure reduction is associated with lowered risk of dementiaShutterstock / grinny Bringing down high blood pressure reduces the risk of dementia and cognitive impairment, according to a large study of people in China. Many studies have linked high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, with a greater risk of developing dementia. Some research has also indicated that a side effect of blood pressure treatment may be lower dementia risk. Advertisement Now, Jiang He at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and his colleagues have directly looked at the effectiveness of medicines that reduce blood pressure on dementia and cognitive impairment. They studied 33,995 people in rural China who were all 40 or older and had hypertension. The participants were split into one of two random groups, each with an average age of about 63 years old. The first group received, on average, three anti-hypertensive medication such as ACE inhibitors, diuretics or calcium channel blockers to aggressively ensure their blood pressure stayed down. They also had coaching on home blood-pressure monitoring and on lifestyle changes that could help keep blood pressure down, including weight loss and reducing intake of alcohol and salt. Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday. Sign up to newsletter The other set, treated as the control group, got the same coaching and a more usual level of treatment for the region, involving just one medication on average. At a follow-up appointment after 48 months, the participants had their blood pressure tested and were measured for signs of cognitive impairment using standard questionnaires. Concerns about hypertension start when a person’s systolic pressure exceeds 130 millimetres of mercury (mmHg) or diastolic pressure goes over 80 mmHg – that is, blood pressure higher than 130/80. On average, people who received many medications had dropped their blood pressure from 157.0/87.9 down to 127.6/72.6 mmHg, while the control group managed to take it from 155.4/87.2 down just slightly to 147.7/81.0 mmHg. The researchers also found that compared with the control group, 15 per cent fewer people on multiple medications received a dementia diagnosis during the study, and 16 per cent fewer had cognitive impairment. “The findings from this study demonstrated that blood pressure reduction is effective in reducing the risk of dementia in patients with uncontrolled hypertension,” says He. “This proven-effective intervention should be widely adopted and scaled up to reduce the global burden of dementia.” “For many years, a lot of people have known that blood pressure is a likely risk factor for dementia and this has provided super compelling evidence of the clinical benefit of blood pressure reduction medications,” says Zachary Marcum at the University of Washington in Seattle. Raj Shah at Rush University in Chicago says that adding to the evidence that treating high blood pressure can help stave off dementia is helpful, but it is just one piece of the dementia puzzle, because multiple factors influence the brain’s abilities as we age. “We should treat high blood pressure for multiple reasons,” says Shah. “For people’s longevity and well-being and so they can age healthily over time.” Marcum also says that to avoid dementia, people should think more widely than just about blood pressure. He says there are other known risk factors that are linked to an increased risk of dementia, including smoking, inactivity, obesity, social isolation and hearing loss. And different factors become more influential at different stages of life. To reduce the risk of dementia, “there’s got to be a holistic approach over the course of a lifetime”, says Shah. Journal reference:Nature Medicine DOI: 10.1038/s41591-025-03616-8 Topics: