A new Star Wars series is in early development from Carlton Cuse and his son Nick Cuse. Any further details remain a mystery…for now. The senior Cuse is known for serving as co-showrunner on Lost, as well as his work on Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan and The Strain. The younger Cuse is known for his work on The Leftovers and Watchmen. This is their first project together. In other Star Wars series news, at the recent Star Wars Celebration 2025, Ahmed Best revealed the upcoming animated sequel series LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild Galaxy – Pieces of the Past. In the project, a new threat rises in the galaxy, and Sig Greebling and Darth Dev must combine their powers of Force Building and Sith Breaking to stop it. Alongside Jedi Bob, Yesi Scala, and Servo, they will journey into the deepest corners of LEGO Star Wars lore, uncovering pieces of all the galaxies that have come before… The Annie Award-nominated limited series, LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy was released last year on Disney+ Journalist, antique shop owner, aspiring gemologist—L'Wren brings a diverse perspective to animation, where every frame reflects her varied passions.

Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered a previously unknown crystal structure while studying a 3D printed aluminum alloy, a finding that could lead to stronger and more reliable additively manufactured components. The new phase, a quasicrystal with fivefold symmetry, was identified in an aluminum-silicon-zirconium alloy produced using laser powder bed fusion (LPBF). Quasicrystals are known to exhibit unusual properties such as high strength and low thermal conductivity, making them valuable for engineering applications.What are quasicrystals? Quasicrystals are solids with an ordered atomic structure that does not repeat periodically. Unlike conventional crystals, which form repeating patterns in space, quasicrystals follow mathematical rules without repeating, much like a Penrose tiling. Out of the 230 possible crystal space groups, quasicrystals fit into none.These structures are extremely rare in nature, found in places like meteorites. In 1982, Israeli scientist Dan Shechtman discovered artificially formed quasicrystals in a lab-made alloy, an achievement that won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011.Decades later, NIST researcher Andrew Iams identified a new quasicrystalline phase during a 3D printing process involving an aluminum alloy. The discovery was not intentional, it emerged from routine microscopic analysis of samples created via LPBF. Penrose tiling illustrating non-periodic symmetry. Image via Inductiveload / Wikimedia Commons. The discovery Iams observed that the crystal exhibited fivefold rotational symmetry, meaning the atomic arrangement looks the same when rotated 72 degrees around an axis. This type of symmetry is considered “forbidden” in traditional crystallography, where only symmetries like twofold, threefold, fourfold, or sixfold are permitted. By carefully rotating the sample under a transmission electron microscope, Iams found that the structure also displayed threefold and twofold symmetries when viewed from different directions. These multiple axes of symmetry, combined with the non-repeating atomic order, confirmed that the structure was a quasicrystal. Electron microscope image of the aluminum alloy. Quasicrystals found in the black dots sections. Image via NIST. Challenges in metal 3D Printing Although metal 3D printing allows for designs and material behaviors not possible with traditional manufacturing, it faces significant limitations, particularly with aluminum alloys.According to NIST physicist Fan Zhang, “High-strength aluminum alloys are almost impossible to print, as they tend to develop cracks, which make them unusable.” One of the key issues is temperature control. Aluminum melts at around 660°C, while the lasers used in LPBF can exceed 2,400°C. These extreme conditions can cause undesirable microstructures or thermal stresses, leading to part failure. In 2017, researchers at HRL Laboratories and UC Santa Barbara found that adding zirconium to aluminum powders helped stabilize the solidification process and reduce cracking, resulting in a printable aluminum alloy. The NIST alloy used in this recent study builds on that innovation, demonstrating how alloy design continues to evolve with additive manufacturing.Advancing aluminum alloys for additive manufacturing The discovery of a quasicrystal in a 3D printed aluminum alloy aligns with ongoing efforts to develop aluminum alloys optimized for additive manufacturing. Traditional high-strength aluminum alloys, such as Al7075 and Al6061, are prone to cracking during LPBF processes. To address this, researchers at HRL Laboratories introduced zirconium-based nanoparticles into aluminum alloys, enabling the production of crack-free, high-strength aluminum components via LPBF.Building on this, Constellium and Morf3D developed AHEADD CP1, an aluminum-iron-zirconium alloy tailored for LPBF. This alloy offers high strength and ductility, efficient processing, and simplified post-processing, making it suitable for applications like heat exchangers. These advancements underscore the importance of alloy development in overcoming the challenges of metal additive manufacturing, paving the way for more reliable and high-performance 3D printed components. What 3D printing trends should you watch out for in 2025? How is the future of 3D printing shaping up? Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to keep up with the latest 3D printing news. You can also follow us onLinkedIn and subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry Youtube channel to access more exclusive content. Featured image shows an electron microscope image of the aluminum alloy from the study. Image via NIST.

Madison Square Park is constantly buzzing with people. Tourists mill downtown to find the Flatiron shrouded behind scaffolding as New Yorkers on their lunch break sit on benches beneath the shade of trees. Parents push packed strollers as the children inside them marvel at hyperactive squirrels. Surrounded by some of New York City’s most important buildings, the park is more than a resting place, the park acts as a pathway—a route from one place to another. Gardens of Renewal, a new installation from landscape artist Lily Kwong, taps into this activity, encouraging reflection and reconnection, while imparting the urgent need to recognize our place within a larger ecological story. Gardens of Renewal occupies the Redbud and Sparrow Lawns on the east side of the park. The timely installation was designed by Kwong in collaboration with the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Landscape artist Lily Kwong’s work hopes to reconnect people with nature, providing a space of reflection. (Don Brodie/Courtesy Madison Square Park Conservancy) “I wanted to create a project that embodied peace, harmony, and interconnection to remind us that we’re connected to the natural world as part of an ecological community. And, that we’re all part of a human family,” Kwong said in Vogue. On Redbud Lawn, the Meditation Garden unfolds in a spiral pathway inspired by ancient labyrinths. Co-designed with the park’s horticulture team, the garden features pollinators, herbs, and 50 rare and endangered native plant species, highlighting the urgent threat of climate change. Beneath the shadow of the Metlife Tower’s ticking clock, the garden’s layout invites quiet reflection while fostering community connection and environmental awareness. For the more curious visitors, QR codes placed throughout the site offer supplemental material, including an illustrated plant field guide, a meditation soundtrack from Sandra Sears, and a curated playlist by DJ Fly Hendrix. For the wandering kids, the Children’s Garden on the Sparrow Lawn, offers an imaginative space for exploration with a library, stage, and interactive play structures. In coordination with the Kwong’s installation, throughout the summer, Sparrow Lawn will host a series of conversations, performances, and educational programming centered on valuing the natural world. In a world marked by climate anxiety, disconnection from nature, and a divisive political landscape, Gardens of Renewal provokes visitors to consider the politics surrounding the climate crisis, mass extinctions, and the erosion of environmental protections. Opening on Earth Day, Kwong’s Gardens of Renewal highlights the current political landscape and the imminent threat of climate change. (Rashmi Gill/Courtesy Madison Square Park Conservancy) “I see this garden—two small lawns in a big city on a big planet—as an act of resistance,” said Kwong, “Maybe it won’t stop the drilling of a new oil field, but it will protect and nurture your spirit. It will build community. It will provide vital habitat. It will provide space to explore and learn and grieve.” It’s apt that Gardens of Renewal opened for its four-month stay on Earth Day. Now, as the days grow longer and warmer, plants will flourish, bees and butterflies will flit among the blossoms, and passersby, many simply moving between 26th and 23rd Street, may find themselves drawn in by the quiet pull of this rare urban oasis. Committed to sustainability and the long-lasting impact of her projects, Kwong ensured that the plants used in Gardens of Renewal have a second life. After the installation’s conclusion, the Madison Square Park Conservancy will work with the Flatiron Nomad Alliance to replant the flora from Gardens of Renewal throughout the park and in nearby pits and planters. Just as the gardens will shift and transform throughout the summer, the diverse plant species will continue to thrive for seasons to come, offering food and shelter to the city’s non-human residents, highlighting nature’s resilience and regenerative power, even among a sea of skyscrapers. Lily Kwong’s Garden of Renewal is on view until September 1.

On the whole, U.S. national forests have comprehensive sustainable management practices, thanks in part to strong laws passed through the legislative process, such as the National Forest Management Act of 1976 and the Endangered Species Act in 1973. The U.S. is the largest producer of forestry products in the world. It is also the largest consumer in the world, and since it doesn’t produce enough, it is also the largest importer of wood products in the world. Wood is a global commodity, and different tree species are preferred for different products, so the U.S. is also one of the top wood exporters in the world, recent tariffs notwithstanding. But U.S. forests are not just valued as a resource, they are valued by people for the joy they give us and the recreation opportunities they provide. Some people value the integral role they play in our living planet—supporting biodiversity, building soil, filtering water, sequestering carbon dioxide, and releasing oxygen. U.S. regulations have recognized the important role of national forests in balancing timber harvesting, recreation, watershed protection, and wildlife conservation since the mid-20th century. The recent White House Executive Order requiring the Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production criticizes the policies that balance the use of our national forests and our purported inability to “fully exploit our domestic timber.” This order diminishes the value of our forests to that of just a commodity resource. This order runs the risk of us repeating mistakes our country has already learned. Increasing domestic timber production could be positive—for rural economies, fire thinning, and storing carbon—and if we are going to consume wood, shouldn’t we do it with our own forests? Long-term wood production can be increased through ecological forestry management, and a short-sighted approach to rapidly increase wood production by ignoring good forestry practices will have a detrimental impact on the long-term economic viability of our forests. Since the 1980s conservation groups and logging companies have worked more closely together, recognizing each other’s perspectives and shared values. Expediting the review of timber projects risks the insufficient evaluation of impacts to the vitality and productivity of the forests, as well as, to the habitats of endangered species, which is likely to see conservation groups and logging companies become confrontational once again. The Haven Domestic Violence Shelter in Bozeman, Montana, uses lightweight and glue-laminated timber in its framing and is clad with locally sourced Douglas fir timber from Montana. (MASS Design Group) As practitioners in the built environment, we encourage the use of domestic wood products as an opportunity to store carbon and support rural economies, but increased use of wood needs to be planned to balance the roles our forests have. If the intention of the order is for the U.S. to be more self-reliant regarding wood products and reduce the need to import wood, we propose ways in which this can be achieved without ravaging our national forests. 1. Reduce Overall Consumption of Building Materials: Reusing buildings and the materials that already exist in our cities is the greatest opportunity to reduce material consumption and the climate and ecological impacts associated with consumption. Adaptive reuse of existing buildings must be the preferred strategy for developers and designers. We will still need new buildings and existing buildings will need new material added to them. If we built fewer new buildings, more buildings could be made from wood without needing to increase overall wood consumption. 2. Broaden and Diversify Our Building Materials: Wood is not our only option to create carbon-storing buildings that support rural economies. Building materials can be made from agricultural fibers such as straw, hemp, and perennial grasses. These materials can be grown and harvested annually as by-products from higher value crops. They can be farmed in a way that regenerates soil health, while increasing yields and profits from our farms. These products can replace extractive mineral, metal, and petrochemical products ubiquitous in buildings now, and offer alternatives to wood-based products. Plenty of these products are available already: New Frameworks builds a straw-structural insulated panel from materials sourced within Vermont; Americhanvre use a spray applied hempcrete to insulate buildings internally and externally; and Bamcore produce a bamboo and eucalyptus nearly hollow structural wall panel. We’re working to scale these alternative products through the Bio-Based Materials Collective. 3. Utilize different tree species: Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest traditionally and regularly used about 300 plant species for myriad purposes, but wood in modern buildings is dominated by a handful of species like Southern Yellow Pine and Douglas Fir. We need a greater understanding and appreciation of the species we have in our various bio-regions, and as designers we need to specify for performance. We can also look outside of timberlands for wood. Each year in the U.S., 36 million trees are cut down in urban areas to make way for development. While urban trees have a lot of benefits, when they are cut down they could be utilized instead of disposed of. Organizations such as Cambium Carbon are identifying felled urban trees and feeding them into existing supply chains. Based in Halethorpe, Maryland, the organization works with municipalities, companies, and nonprofits to revolutionize tree management and reduce waste by salvaging lumber and creating “Carbon Smart Wood.” 4. Reduce Waste: Wood accounts for between 20–30 percent of all construction and demolition waste in the U.S. In the construction of a single-family home there is often between 2,500–5,500 pounds of wood waste. This is between two and four times the municipal waste generated by an average American per year. Reducing waste would decrease the need for new products, bring more value from our existing products, and potentially even reduce construction costs. Technology for reducing waste is already in practice. Urban Machine uses robotics solutions to reclaim wood, reducing the labour required to reuse wood members; and Dave Bennink’s Building Deconstruction Institute offers deconstruction services where they salvage wood framed buildings in panels, rather than individual pieces, preserving value that has already been added to the timber. The institute has trained hundreds in these practices and consulted on projects across the U.S. 5. Optimise Use: Reducing wood waste also means we have to optimize the designs for the products we have. The 69 buildings of the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture in Bugesera, Rwanda, were designed around a four-meter structural grid because this was the width of the kiln available. In the U.S., we are accustomed to conventional wood framing—2 inches by 6 inches spaced at 16 inches on-center, double top plates, triple headers, etc., but with advanced framing techniques we can easily reduce material use, and costs by as much as 30 percent. Offsite manufacturing methods also optimize material use, such as Luxembourg-based Leko Labs, and advanced manufacturing techniques, such as those by Chile-based Strong by Form, can produce stress-tailored material efficient components. A considered federal policy could scale the use of these technologies in the U.S. We can build sustainably while safeguarding forests. We ask anyone within the built environment ecosystem to engage with these strategies to protect the forests that so many others have protected till now. We implore the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture to create guidelines in addition to the order, acknowledging learnings from our past mistakes. We urge our colleagues to prioritize these ideas, regardless of what might be the outcome of federal action. James Kitchin is MASS Design Group’s Director of the Abundant Futures Design Lab. Chris Hardy is a design director at MASS Design Group.

“Makahiya IX” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 inches. All photos by Julieta Christy Sarmiento, courtesy of The Mission Projects, shared with permission In Luminous Portraits, Florence Solis Invokes Feminine Power Amid Constraint April 22, 2025 Art Grace Ebert When touched, the hypersensitive makahiya plant folds its minuscule leaflets inward, protecting itself from any potential threat. Florence Solis draws on this defensive response in an ethereal collection of portraits. Beginning with digital collages that meld figures and delicate, organic ornaments, the Filipino-Canadian artist translates the imagined forms to the canvas. Shrouded in dainty, beaded veils or entwined with botanicals, each protagonist appears bound and concealed, their bodies and faces obscured by hair or grass. “Sirena” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches As Solis sees it, the figures may be restricted, but they’re also able to find strength and transformation. “Filipino women, much like the makahiya, have been taught to yield, to soften, to take up less space,” she says. “And yet, beneath this quietness lies an undeniable force—one that persists, adapts, and reclaims space in its own way.” Working in saturated, often single-color palettes, Solis renders figures who appear to harness magical powers. She references Filipino folklore and the belief in the power of the everyday to lead to the divine, painting women rooted in tradition and myth, yet determined to see their transformation through. The vivid portraits shown here will be on view at EXPO CHICAGO this week with The Mission Projects. Find more from Solis on Instagram. “Sa Lupa (On Ground)” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches “Totem” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches “Makahiya VIII” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16 inches “Makahiya VII” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches “Alay (Offering)” (2025), acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches Next article

Vitalii Gulenok/istock via Getty News Secure Future Initiative reveals Microsoft staff focus IT security is now a metric in the Microsoft employee appraisal process By Cliff Saran, Managing Editor Published: 22 Apr 2025 16:45 Every Microsoft employee now has a metric dubbed “Security Core Priority” tied directly to performance reviews. This is among the changes the software giant has put in place to enforce security internally.  In a blog post outlining the steps the company has taken to harden internal security, Charles Bell, executive vice-president of Microsoft Security, wrote: “We want every person at Microsoft to understand their role in keeping our customers safe and to have the tools to act on that responsibility.” He said 50,000 employees have participated in the Microsoft Security Academy to improve their security skills and that 99% of employees have completed the company’s Security Foundations and Trust Code courses. In May 2024, Microsoft introduced a governance structure to improve risk visibility and accountability. Since then, Bell said Microsoft has appointed a deputy chief information security officer (CISO) for business applications and consolidated responsibility across its Microsoft 365 and Experiences and Devices divisions. “All 14 Deputy CISOs across Microsoft have completed a risk inventory and prioritisation,” he said, adding that this creates a shared view of enterprise-wide security risk. Bell said new policies, behavioural-based detection models and investigation methods have helped to thwart $4bn in fraud attempts. One example of where modelling can be used is in preventing an attacker that has gained access to one system from moving onto other systems inside the company network. Modelling IT assets using a graph can be beneficial in preventing attackers from successfully moving onto other IT assets once a system has been compromised. Microsoft said that modelling IT assets as a graph reveals unknown vulnerabilities and classes of known issues that need to be mitigated to reduce what it describes as “lateral movement vectors”. According to its April 2025 progress report, Microsoft has made “significant” steps in adopting a standard software developer’s kit for identity and ensuring 100% of user accounts are resistant to multi-factor authentication (MFA) phishing attacks. However, among the areas it’s still working on is protection of cryptographic signing keys and quantum safe public key infrastructure (PKI). Read more about employee cyber security Nationwide Building Society to train people to think like cyber criminals: Nationwide wants to help bring more diversity into UK cyber security skills base through partnership with training specialist. NHS staff lack confidence in health service cyber measures: NHS staff understand their role in protecting the health service from cyber threats and the public backs them in this aim, but legacy tech and a lack of training are hindering efforts, according to BT. To protect high-risk production systems, Microsoft said that in November 2024, it moved 28,000 high-risk users, working on sensitive workflows, to a locked-down Azure Virtual Desktop infrastructure, and is working to improve the user experience for these endpoints. Regarding network protection, the report shows that the company is working on implementing network micro segmentation by reimplementing access control lists. “Currently, 20% of first-party IPs [internet protocols] are tagged and 93% of first-party services have established plans for allocating IPs from tagged ranges and provisioning IP capacity,” Microsoft said. It added that it’s also introducing new capabilities to help customers isolate and secure their network resources. These include Network Security Perimeter, DNS Security Extensions and Azure Bastion Premium private-only mode. In terms of its internal software development practices, Microsoft said it’s been driving four standards to help ensure open source software (OSS) used in its production environments is sourced from governed internal feeds and free of known critical and high-severity public vulnerabilities. In the report, Microsoft said Component Governance, a software composition analysis tool that tracks OSS usage and vulnerabilities in OSS, has achieved broad adoption and is enabled by default. It also has an offering called Centralized Feed Service, which provides governed feeds for consuming open-source software. According to Microsoft, this has reached broad adoption. In The Current Issue: What is the impact of US tariffs on datacentre equipment costs? VMware backup: Key decision points if you migrate away from VMware Download Current Issue SLM series - Agiloft: Language models in contract lifecycle management – CW Developer Network ABBYY AI Summit 2025: Purpose-built AI for intelligent document processing – CW Developer Network View All Blogs

Do passcodes really protect you more from warrantless phone searches than biometrics? It's complicated.

Kerry Wan/ZDNETSamsung's One UI 7 is my favorite Android skin right now. It is fast, responsive, and intuitive. But nothing comes fine-tuned to your experience straight out of the box. You need to personalize your smartphone to make it more appealing. I change almost a dozen settings on every Samsung Galaxy phone to best suit my needs, and I believe these will elevate your user experience, too. From setting the highest available screen resolution to more privacy-focused features, here are 10 Galaxy phone settings (plus a bonus) that I recommend changing to enhance your Galaxy phone experience. Please note that some settings might be phone-specific.1. Turn off pop-up notifications Prakhar Khanna/ZDNETI do not like it when a message from a contact or an intrusive app notification pops up while I am in the middle of reading online or texting my favorite people. I get distracted easily. If a notification pops up, I tap on it and forget what I was doing. If you are anything like me, you should change this setting even before switching to gesture navigation. Go to Notifications > Notification pop-up style > Apps to show as brief > Toggle off All apps. 2. Switch to gesture navigation Unless you are setting up your new Samsung Galaxy phone from an older model, it defaults to the older three-button navigation system. If you like it, that is fine. But I find Android's gesture navigation more intuitive -- everything is a swipe away instead of an on-screen button. If you want that, you can change the system navigation to gestures by going to Settings > Display > Navigation bar > Swipe gestures. 3. Set to the highest screen resolution Prakhar Khanna/ZDNETSamsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra has the best display on a smartphone right now. Thanks to second-generation Gorilla Armor, it is less reflective and displays colors better than its predecessor. You get a sharp QHD+ screen, but it is not set to that resolution by default. You need to go to Settings > Display > Screen resolution to get the best available display experience. It will use more battery, but the Ultra is an efficient smartphone. Even after maxing out the screen resolution, I still get an all-day battery life. 4. Change the side key's function Smartphones no longer have a "power button." It is called a side key or side button now, and it is one of my most disliked changes in recent times. Phone companies have renamed the power button to accommodate their smart assistants on long press. Google's Gemini is available by other methods, and Bixby is not as useful anyway, so I suggest changing the side key's function to offer a power menu. You can do so by going to Settings > Advanced features > Side button > Long Press > Power off menu. 5. Adjust lock screen notifications Prakhar Khanna/ZDNETOne UI 7 has changed how notifications appear on your lock screen. It is set to show icons on the top left corner by default, which is a big change from the previous card view. I prefer apps to show notifications in the latter form. To change this, you can go to Settings > Notifications > Lock screen notifications > Cards. I also hide sensitive notification content on the lock screen because I do not want anyone to walk up to my phone and see my personal messages. To change this setting, you can opt for Hide content under the same Lock screen notifications menu. 6. Sign in or sign up for a Samsung account I juggle between different phones but keep coming back to Samsung phones for One UI. Having a Samsung account is a big part of the user experience on Galaxy phones. From Samsung Wallet to Samsung's own password manager, I have a lot of information saved in them. Many might want to turn to Google Passwords for better cross-device functionality, but I still recommend signing up for a Samsung account to access Galaxy Themes (more on this below) and the Galaxy Store. It will also benefit you when you move from one Samsung phone to another with a seamless transfer. 7. Install this app Prakhar Khanna/ZDNETI recommend installing the Good Lock app from the Galaxy Store. It enables a slew of Samsung-exclusive features on your phone. I found the best use case for it when I was reviewing the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It features a module called Home Up that has a One Hand Operation+ function. Since the new Samsung flagship is a big phone, I set up a swipe down from the right edge to access Quick Settings. You can do the same for six shortcuts within the Short swipe and Long swipe gestures, and access many more features within the Good Lock app. 8. Uninstall the bloatware Samsung Galaxy phones come with many apps that you might not use. Unlike previous years, you can now uninstall or at least disable them to save memory. For example, I do not have a Samsung TV and do not want the Microsoft CoPilot app on my phone, so I uninstall TV and CoPilot, respectively. Other apps I disable or uninstall include Facebook, Samsung Tutor, and OneDrive. 9. Customize the home screen Prakhar Khanna/ZDNETSamsung has some of the best widgets on a phone. I love the Calendar widget because I can adjust the transparency. As a result, it looks better and keeps the functionality intact without disturbing the layout of my home screen. I have it located on the top so everything is just a glance away, yet it never asks for attention -- unlike other opaque Calendar widgets. I also change my icon grid to the 5x5 layout to accommodate more icons on the bottom-most row. They are just a thumb tap away. Additionally, I apply my wallpaper color tones to the app icons for a more pleasing look. You can go to Wallpaper and style > Color palette and toggle it on to apply wallpaper colors to the whole system. It is not perfect, and some icons might still not be supported. However, it looks better than the basic colors. 10. Fix always-on display You get efficient displays on Samsung phones -- make use of them and enable everything, including the Always On display. I like having the time, day, and date information right there on the screen, available at a quick glance. Samsung defaults it to the Tap to show setting, meaning you need to tap on the screen for information. I recommend changing that to Always to make it more functional. Go to Settings > Lock screen and AOD > Always-on Display > Always. You can choose if you want to display the wallpaper or not -- I have set it to just display a black screen so it does not drain more battery. Bonus. Revert changes to the Notification Panel Prakhar Khanna/ZDNETSamsung changed its notification panel design to an iOS-like drawer. A right swipe down gives you access to Quick Settings, whereas a swipe down from the left side of the screen gives you access to notifications. However, if you like the previous design better, you can change it. I like having my notifications under Quick Settings, like the good old days. To revert this new design element, swipe down from the top right corner of the home screen > Pencil icon > Panel Settings > Together. You can also edit the top quick settings within this menu. A few other things I do on my Galaxy phones include changing the keyboard to Google Keyboard and sorting the home drawer icons in alphabetical order so it is easier to navigate. Samsung phones are some of the best on the market. While they do not promise over-the-top features, they are reliable and offer the most polished user interface with One UI. Just adjust these few settings, and you are all set. Enjoy your new Galaxy phone! 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The Northern Lights or aurora borealis may be visible in the U.S. this week due to a coronal hole and a "co-rotating interaction region" in the solar wind.

Welcome back to The Prompt, Buzzy AI coding tool Cursor's customer support bot replied to a programmer's query with a made up policy that doesn't exist. The snafu led to some users complaints.Getty AI coding software is all the rage. One particularly popular tool is Cursor, built by nascent AI startup Anysphere, which has become one of the fastest growing startups of all time. But even Cursor isn’t immune to hallucinations— AI’s tendency to make false statements and assert them as fact. A few days ago, a developer noticed that switching from one device to another kicked them out of Cursor’s coding platform. When the programmer reached out to the company’s customer support, an agent called “Sam” responded to them that this was expected behavior under a new policy change. Except there was no policy change. The response was made up by Cursor’s AI support bot. CEO Michael Turell confirmed this on Reddit after the AI’s response circulated on social media and elicited complaints from several programmers who often use multiple machines while coding. Some users commented that they were cancelling their subscriptions as a result. Truell apologized on Hacker News and said the user got a complete refund and that the company now ensures that AI responses are clearly labelled as such. Now let’s get into the headlines. BIG PLAYS OpenAI released a set of new AI models called o3 and o4-mini that can understand images, search the web and analyze data from uploaded documents. The company claims the models, which can crop, rotate and zoom into photos, are its most powerful “reasoning” models. Unlike previous iterations, the models consume more time (and compute) to process a query and are trained to figure out how to approach responding to an input. They also have access to external tools allowing them to independently carry out tasks on your behalf. People have since uploaded pictures of random places to ChatGPT and used it to figure out its exact location along with the GPS coordinates and directions to get there. Many have asked the model to respond as if it’s playing GeoGuessr, a popular game where players must find locations based on Google Street View images. Meanwhile, yet another social media trend has led to people using ChatGPT to create AI-generated action figures (with accessories) and Barbie dolls featuring their likeness. The ChatGPT-generated Barbies have various professions like realtor, tech troubleshooter and business coach. Artists have pushed back on the trend by hand drawing their own versions, the New York Times reported. POLITICS + ELECTION Ahead of the Canadian election, Amazon has been flooded with AI-generated books about Prime Minister Mark Carney and other political leaders, Bloomberg reported. Some of them contained incorrect information about the figures. The e-commerce giant took down most of the political books flagged by Bloomberg. This isn’t an isolated incident: people have published hundreds of titles, written with the help of generative AI tools, on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. AI DEAL OF THE WEEK Anthropic has made its first investment into an AI company called Goodfire, a San Francisco-based startup that has raised $50 million in a Series A round led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Lightspeed Ventures and others. The company is building a system to address the black box problem of AI— a gaping hole in our understanding of why AI models work in a certain way. The company aims to understand how neural networks function to unlock new ways to train AI models and improve their performance. DEEP DIVE Before creating Cursor, the wildly popular AI coding tool, Michael Truell was an 18-year-old MIT student, growing restless during his first taste of corporate life as an intern at Google. It was 2019, the summer after his freshman year, and Truell was sitting at the cafe of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, with Ali Partovi, who was recruiting for his vaunted Neo Scholars program, aimed at finding tech’s future crème de la crème while they’re still in college. Partovi, an early investor in Facebook, Airbnb and Dropbox, chatted with Truell about AI research and startup life. Then he gave the student a handwritten coding test — an easy task for Truell, who finished it in record time. After the meeting, Partovi got out his dossier and scrawled a circle with a star inside of it next to Truell’s picture: the investor’s shorthand indicating he was so impressed that he’d invest in any project Truell pursued. Truell would become a Neo Scholar, and three years later, Partovi would become the first-ever investor in his startup Anysphere, maker of Cursor. The company, which reportedly took just a year to reach $100 million in annualized revenue (and has since then doubled it), is among the fastest growing startups of all time. “Ali basically backed us when it was just the idea. We hadn’t really done anything else yet,” Truell told Forbes. “He's not afraid to spend time with and really bet on people before they're very proven.” Neo was founded in 2017 with its scholars program, which selects 30 members each year, giving them access to workshops, networking events and recruitment connections at big tech companies. Similar to the Thiel Fellowship, the program founded by billionaire investor Peter Thiel that doles out $100,000 grants to entrepreneurs to forgo college, Neo Scholars can also elect to take time off school to work on a project. But Neo’s version, which comes with a $20,000 grant, is optional and only lasts one semester — designed to be a much less intense commitment than skipping school entirely. Read the full story on Neo on Forbes. WEEKLY DEMO In February, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said his AI search company was skipping spending millions on a Super Bowl commercial and instead would give away $1 million to one lucky user who downloaded the app, asked five questions on it and referred it to their friends. But the company’s Android app has 10 major security vulnerabilities leading to impersonation attempts, account takeovers and data theft, according to a report by app testing company Appknox, Forbes reported. These gaps would allow anyone to make a clone of the Perplexity app and collect private user data. The findings are reported as Perplexity is in talks to integrate its AI assistant into smartphones manufactured by Lenovo and Samsung, Bloomberg reported. MODEL BEHAVIOR In the real world race between humans and AI, robots still have a long way to go. 21 humanoid robots scuttled alongside 12,000 humans in a half marathon held in Beijing. But only six crossed the finish line, Wired reported, with the rest failing for a variety of reasons including overheating issues.The fastest robot completed the race in 2 hours and 40 minutes, but only after falling down once and having its batteries swapped out thrice. It’s still baby steps out there for robots.