MacworldHere it comes, barreling down on us full steam: 2025. Somehow weve already burned through a quarter of this century. Its been a good twenty-five years for Apple, to be sure, and from all the early indications it seems like the next year will continue the trend, insofar as such things can be predicted with any certainty.While there are plenty of rumors about what Apple might do in the next 12 months, the simple truth is that the company only has so much time and so much money. (To be fair, it is a lot of money.) Not everything can be a priority, and not everything that gets talked about will actually happen.Even amongst the things that do happen, some will always stand out in terms of their impact on the company and its customers. Looking ahead to 2025, Im thinking of a few that are most likely to have ramifications that move the needleeven if, in some cases, it may take a little time for the true effects to be felt.Home, at your commandIn 2024, Apple released the Vision Pro, a device that was decidedly cutting edge, but carried such a high price tag as to be out of the reach of all but the wealthiest Apple usersand for a company that tends to charge a premium for its products, thats saying something.Perhaps the rumored smart home device Apple may release will take its UI cues from CarPlay or another existing Apple device.AppleThe newest Apple product line rumored for 2025 seems of a decidedly different bent. The companys rumored to be working on a home command center that has variously been likened to a stationary iPad or a HomePod with a screen. Such a device would provide a central way to control smart home tech, as well as display ambient information like the weather or news headlines.There are plenty of questions about the nature of this device. My general rule of thumb is that Apples products are almost always simpler and less radical than you might hope. Theyre the kind of things that, in hindsight, look obvious, given the technology the company has already put out. Apple rarely reinvents wheels, and something like the Vision Pro is the exception, rather than the rule. So in this case, look to things like StandBy mode on the iPhone, tvOS, or CarPlay as examples of templates for this kind of deviceand dont be surprised if the tech it uses is an offshoot of one of those.Whatever this home command center is, will still likely end up being a niche product like the Vision Pro, but even so, it will at least be one that the average user may be able to afford.Depth chargeThe iPhone remains Apples cash crop, but even as it continues to account for the largest chunk of the companys revenue Apple has struggled to figure out how to expand the line. The Pro and Pro Max have been significant hits, yes, but the attempts at broadening the lower endthe mini and Plus phoneshave fallen more flat.If youve always thought the iPhone was too thick, 2025 may be your year.Chris Martin / FoundryThird times the charm: if you cant change the length or width, maybe depth is where its at. This year Apple reportedly intends to introduce a thinner iPhone, possibly called the iPhone 17 Air or Slim.That thinness is likely to come at a costin part literally. While it may be less than the $999 starting price of the Pro line, its probably going to be more expensive than the base $799 iPhonewhich would seem to position it around the same $899 price point as the current Plus. And such a slim design could mean some trade-offs in capability, including a simpler camera and perhaps lower battery life.As always, the big question is the story Apple intends to tell about this device. Why does it exist? Are people crying out for a thinner iPhone? Will the tradeoffs be worth it? Or is the company simply trying to cash in on the cachet of having a fancy new exterior? Well find out next fall.The call is coming from inside the phoneOne of the biggest Apple success stories of the past decade is the shift to building its own processors. Its allowed the company to not just elicit great performance from its products, but also great energy efficiency. By having control over the lowest level of the hardware, Apple can tie it all together in a package that was simply impossible to do with third-party chips.If cellular modems gets you excited, youll be thrilled with the upcoming iPhone SE.Willis Lai/IDGIt also speaks to a major part of Apples philosophy: that if something is important to your bottom line, you do it yourself.And so 2025 is reportedly going to see the next step along that path as Apple brings another key technology in-house: cellular modems. The company bought Intels modem business way back in 2019, and rumors have sprung eternal that it would incorporate its own cellular radios into its products ever since. But reports have also suggested that the engineering has proved more complicated than expected, hence continued deals with rival Qualcomm to use their modems.The time, however, may finally arrive in the form of an unassuming product: the fourth-generation iPhone SE. The low-cost iPhone, expected to be announced in the spring, may be the first to feature an Apple-built modem. Thats a canny move, since the SE isnt subject to nearly the same scrutiny as Apples flagship phone models, and probably doesnt ship in the same number of units. It gives Apple time to deal with unexpected problems without necessarily tanking its biggest product launch of the year. And even if its modem performance in the SE doesnt match up to the iPhone 16 line, well, SE customers are likely to be a less performance-conscious market than those buying the latest and greatest phones.Eventually those modems will probably make it into other Apple products, including iPads and Apple Watches and maybe, for the first time, Mac laptops. But it all starts with the little iPhone SE that could.The restOf course, 2025 will bring the usual other assortment of Apple news. Well see the last tranche of previously announced Apple Intelligence features, a likely revamp to the base-level iPad, and the debut of the M5 processor line. More recently weve also seen rumors of an updated HomePod mini and a revised Apple TV.But the biggest questions that remain for me are about the future of Apples software platforms. Will the impact of Europes Digital Markets Act continue to spread around the world, forcing Apple to change some of its longstanding business practices? Will we see the next step in the evolution of the Vision hardware, showing us Apples plan to push the line forward and bring it to more customers? And what will Apple focus on in its platform updates this yearwill AI still be the name of the game or will that bubble burst?2025 promises to be an exciting year for Apple and the tech industry, so buckle in: its going to be a bumpy ride.

The computing industry was founded with mainframes intended for the few. Bringing computers to the masses was the work of generations, such as the trailblazers we honor in this story. Whether they shrank transistors, crafted new programming languages, or connected people online and off, these software developers, hardware designers, and business executives took expensive, inscrutable technologies and made them accessible to all.As Computerworld looks back at 2024, we celebrate the lives and accomplishments of these fifteen remarkable IT pioneers who passed away this year but not before leaving their mark.Niklaus Wirth: Pascal pioneerFebruary 15, 1934 January 1, 2024Niklaus WirthTyomitchAfter earning a bachelors degree in electrical engineering, followed by masters and Ph.D. degrees, Niklaus Wirth began his career in teaching first at Stanford University, then at his undergraduate alma mater, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), where he remained from 1968 until his retirement in 1999.When tasked with starting the schools computer science department, Wirth found the programming languages available at the time too complex so he created his own. He released Pascal and its source code to the community in 1970 and introduced it to the classroom in 1971.The result was a success, recalled Wirth: It allowed the teacher to concentrate more heavily on structures and concepts than features and peculiarities that is, on principles rather than techniques. Pascal became an introduction to programming for generations of students though it was not merely an academic exercise.I do not believe in using tools and formalisms in teaching that are inadequate for any practical task, said Wirth. [Pascal] represented a sensible compromise between what was desirable and what was effective.During his time at ETH, Wirth took two sabbaticals to work at Xerox PARC. There, he encountered the Alto computer, his first time using a personal computer that he didnt need to timeshare with others. The experience inspired him to return to Switzerland and build his own personal computers and their accompanying software. Languages he developed for these computers included Modula-2 (1979) and Oberon (1988). Ultimately, Wirth was his own best student: One learns best when inventing, he said.Wirth was honored in 1984 with ACMs Turing Award and in 2004 as a Computer History Museum Fellow. He died at 89.John Walker: Design revolutionaryMay 16, 1949 February 2, 2024John WalkerShaan HurleyJohn Walker didnt find his success overnight: the son of a doctor and a nurse, he studied astronomy before switching to electrical engineering; founded the hardware company Marinchip Systems in 1976; and then co-founded Autodesk in 1982. The companys first product was an eponymous office automation program.It was AutoCAD that finally gave Autodesk and Walker their fame. Walker didnt invent computer-assisted design the term CAD was coined in 1959 but previous CAD software had largely been limited to more powerful mainframe computers; AutoCAD was one of the first implementations to be available to the masses.Originally developed as Interact CAD, AutoCAD was demoed for CP/M computers at the 1982 Comdex industry trade show, where it was met with wild acclaim. It ushered in a design revolution in architecture, engineering, interior design, manufacturing, and more. AutoCAD is still used and supported today, with the latest version having been released for Windows and macOS in May 2024.Walker himself was a talented software developer and author who enjoyed writing more than he did managing: shortly after Autodesk went public in 1985, he stepped down as CEO. He moved to Switzerland in 1991 and retired in 1994 at the age of 45.In retirement, Walker wrote many books, including The Hackers Diet: How to Lose Weight and Hair Through Stress and Poor Nutrition (which, notwithstanding its silly subtitle, is a serious book about how to lose weight, wrote Walker); and The Autodesk File: Bits of History, Words of Experience, an 889-page PDF that saw its fifth and final revision in 2017.Walker was 74 when he died from head injuries sustained from a fall at home.Herbert Kroemer: Taking big stepsAugust 25, 1928 March 8, 2024 srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?quality=50&strip=all 1000w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=214%2C300&quality=50&strip=all 214w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=768%2C1075&quality=50&strip=all 768w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=731%2C1024&quality=50&strip=all 731w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=498%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 498w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=120%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 120w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=60%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 60w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=343%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 343w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=257%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 257w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-03-kroemer-herbert.jpg?resize=179%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 179w" width="731" height="1023" sizes="(max-width: 731px) 100vw, 731px">Herbert KroemerJavier ChagoyaSome inventors have ideas ahead of their time; it takes decades for technology and society to catch up. Thats why it wasnt until 2000 that Herbert Kroemer received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in heterostructures dating back to the 1960s.Kroemer earned his Ph.D. at the age of 23 before joining a semiconductor research group in the German postal service in 1952. Charged with improving the rate and reliability of transistors (still fairly new at the time, having been invented in 1947), Kroemer proposed improvements that required technology that did not yet exist. Kroemers proposals were eventually implemented in what became known as heterostructure transistors.In 1963, while working at one of Silicon Valleys first high-tech companies, Varian Associates, Kroemer recommended using heterostructures for lasers as well, enabling them to operate continuously at room temperature. He received the patent for his idea in 1967, which led to the creation of laser diodes a technology with applications both small (disc players, barcode scanners) and large (satellite communications, fiber optics).In 1976, after eight years on the faculty at the University of Colorado, Kroemer moved to University of California, Santa Barbara, where he remained until his retirement in 2012.Kroemer once said, Small steps didnt really interest me. I was interested in big steps. Those big steps earned him not only the 2000 Nobel Prize, but also the 2001 Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the 2002 IEEE Medal of Honor. He was 95 when he passed.Daniel C. Lynch: Making connectionsAugust 16, 1941 March 30, 2024Daniel C. LynchInforma TechBringing people and ideas together and assuring they work well is what good leaders do. And thats what Daniel Lynch did throughout his career.After earning a masters degree in mathematics, Lynch worked in the United States Air Force, where he learned to program. That skill set led him to positions at Lockheed Martin and then Stanford Research Institute, where he encountered the ARPANET. The precursor to the internet inspired his passion for computer networking, and he helped replace the ARPANETs NCP protocol with TCP/IP, offering broader compatibility and networking.Nonetheless, early internet developers proliferated a variety of incompatible applications and protocols. To get them all talking to each other, Lynch founded Interop, an annual conference that launched in 1986 with internet pioneer Vint Cerf as the keynote speaker. The show was an instant success, providing a much-needed space for direct communication among industry peers.One of the early draws of Interop was the InteropNet, a local-area network (LAN) consisting of 120 miles of wires connecting 7,000 machines. With each of the shows vendors being part of the InteropNet, it was an opportunity to test how hardware and software from different manufacturers would or could talk to each other. Interop also published 117 issues of a monthly technical journal, ConneXions (19871996).Interop was sold to Ziff-Davis in 1991 and merged with their Networld event in 1994; the conference became known as Networld+Interop until 2005, when it again adopted the name Interop. The show hit its peak in 2001 with 61,000 attendees.In 1994 one year before he left Interop, and four years before PayPal was founded Lynch co-founded CyberCash, an online payment service. CyberCash filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and was acquired by VeriSign then, in 2005, by PayPal.Lynch was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2019. He died at 82 from kidney failure.Robert Dennard: Memory manSeptember 5, 1932 April 23, 2024Robert DennardFred HollandEntering college on a French horn music scholarship, Robert Dennard earned his bachelors, masters, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering. He then joined IBM as a researcher in 1954.At that time, storing a single bit of information in memory required six transistors a relatively expensive and limiting technique. In 1966, Dennard delivered dramatic improvements in speed and capacity when he invented the one-transistor memory cell. This design became the basis for dynamic RAM, or DRAM, which is used in practically all computing devices to this day.Dennard also worked on metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). In a 1974 paper he co-authored, Dennard described how transistors could become smaller (in accordance with Moores Law) while retaining the same energy consumption a principle that became known as Dennard scaling.Dennards innovations earned him the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 1988 and the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology in 2013. Yet Dennard remained humble, saying, Im a very ordinary person, with a very ordinary background and upbringing Its not enough to just think creatively. Once youve posed the question, youve got to answer the question.Dennard stayed at IBM until his retirement in 2014. He died at 91 from a bacterial infection.C. Gordon Bell: VAX visionaryAugust 19, 1934 May 17, 2024C. Gordon BellQueensland University of TechnologyIn 1958, after returning to the USA from a Fulbright scholarship teaching computer design in Australia, Chester Gordon Bell enrolled in a Ph.D. program at his undergraduate alma mater, MIT. But Bell was lured by Digital Equipment Corporation to drop out of school in 1960 and become DECs second-ever engineer. There, he contributed to the architecture of the PDP-1, PDP-5, and PDP-11 minicomputers and was the principal architect of the PDP-4 and PDP-6. The PDP-1 was DECs first computer, and although only about fifty were manufactured, it paved the way for the commercial success of later models.After a six-year hiatus to teach at Carnegie Mellon University, Bell returned to DEC in 1972 as vice president of engineering. During this stint, Bell co-architected and oversaw the development of the VAX series of superminicomputers, as DEC referred to them. Along with the PDP line, the VAX computers were so successful, they led DEC to become the industrys second biggest computer manufacturer.In 1983, Bell had a heart attack, which he blamed on the stress of working for DECs often overbearing co-founder, Ken Olsen. Bell retired from DEC but his career stretched on for decades more. He went on to be an assistant director at the National Science Foundation; vice president of research and development at Ardent Computer; and principal researcher at Microsoft, where he championed lifelogging recording and storing every aspect of ones life digitally.Bell also co-founded what is now the Computer History Museum of Mountain View, California; established the ACM Gordon Bell Prize to honor innovations in high-performance computing; and was granted the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 1991. He died at 89 from pneumonia.Lynn Conway: Breaking down barriersJanuary 2, 1938 June 9, 2024 srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-07-conway-lynn.jpg?quality=50&strip=all 751w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-07-conway-lynn.jpg?resize=225%2C300&quality=50&strip=all 225w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-07-conway-lynn.jpg?resize=523%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 523w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-07-conway-lynn.jpg?resize=126%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 126w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-07-conway-lynn.jpg?resize=63%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 63w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-07-conway-lynn.jpg?resize=360%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 360w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-07-conway-lynn.jpg?resize=270%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 270w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-07-conway-lynn.jpg?resize=188%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 188w" width="751" height="1000" sizes="(max-width: 751px) 100vw, 751px">Lynn ConwayCharles RogersWhile working at IBM on the Advanced Computing Systems project in the 1960s, Lynn Conway developed dynamic instruction scheduling (DIS), a computing architecture technique that enabled computers to perform multiple operations simultaneously, paving the way for the first superscalar computer.Conways reward: she was fired from IBM and all record of her work expunged all because shed come out to her employer as being transgender. With her career erased, Conway underwent gender-affirming surgery and began a new career under a new name.Despite the professional setback, Conway continued building a legacy of profound innovations. In 1973, while working at Xerox PARC with Carver Mead and Bert Sutherland, she co-developed very large-scale integration (VLSI), enabling microchips to hold millions of circuits kicking off a revolution in computer architecture and design. She returned to MIT, a school shed previously dropped out of in the 1950s after a physician threatened her with institutionalization, to teach the universitys first VLSI design course.Related reading: Unsung innovators: Lynn Conway and Carver MeadConway then worked at DARPA before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan, where she remained for 13 years until her retirement in 1998. She did not come out about her work at IBM until 2000, after which she became an outspoken advocate for transgender rights. Conway was heartened by the changing landscape compared to when she grew up, saying: Parents who have transgender children are discovering that if they let that person blossom into who they need to be, they often see just remarkable flourishing of a life force.In 2020, fifty-two years after Conway was fired, IBM issued a formal apology.She passed away at the age of 86 from a heart condition.Trygve Reenskaug: A model for successJune 21, 1930 June 14, 2024Trygve ReenskaugTrygve ReenskaugWhen Xerox PARC developed the Alto computer in 1973, it debuted a new paradigm: the graphical user interface (GUI), an abstraction between the user and the computers underlying data. To develop GUI programs, developers also needed a new model to work with.University of Oslo computer science professor Trygve Reenskaug was visiting PARC in 1979 when he came up with the solution: the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern. Originally designed in Smalltalk, an object-oriented language that was developed at PARC from 1972 to 1980, MVC eventually became popular for developing web applications, including in Ruby on Rails.MVC wasnt Reenskaugs only innovation: in 1963, he developed an early CAD program, Autokon, which was widely used in maritime and offshore industries. And in 1986, he founded software company Taskon, where he developed the software package OOram (Object-Oriented role analysis and modeling). OOram later evolved into data, content, and interaction (DCI), a software development model that continues to be used to this day, such as in Tinders mobile app.Reenskaug remained humble about his contributions, writing, I have sometimes been given more credit than is my due. He cited teammates Alan Kay, Jim Althoff, Per Wold, and Odd Arild Lehne, among others, who carried the baton before and after him.Reenskaug was 93 when he died.Bruce Bastian: Perfecting the wordMarch 23, 1948 June 16, 2024 srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?quality=50&strip=all 1000w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=223%2C300&quality=50&strip=all 223w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=768%2C1034&quality=50&strip=all 768w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=761%2C1024&quality=50&strip=all 761w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=518%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 518w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=125%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 125w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=62%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 62w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=357%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 357w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=267%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 267w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-09-bastian-bruce.jpg?resize=186%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 186w" width="761" height="1024" sizes="(max-width: 761px) 100vw, 761px">Bruce BastianB W Bastian FoundationIn 1979, while earning his masters degree in computer science at Brigham Young University, Bruce Bastian partnered with his professor, Alan Ashton, to co-found Satellite Software International. Their flagship product was word processing software that they had co-developed for the city of Orem, Utah. That program later became the new name of their company: WordPerfect Corporation.The WordPerfect software debuted several innovations, including function-key shortcuts, numbering of lines in legal documents, and a scripting capability. It went toe-to-toe with Microsoft Word, trouncing it in the MS-DOS era but proving slow to catch up in Windows, where Microsoft bundled Word in its Office suite. But over the years, versions of WordPerfect also proliferated for Atari, Amiga, Unix, Linux, Macintosh, and iOS devices.WordPerfect was acquired by Novell in 1994 and by Corel, now Alludo, in 1996. Only the Windows version is still supported, having been most recently updated in 2021; it remains popular, especially among lawyers.Bastian left the Mormon church in the 1980s when he came out as gay. He became a staunch advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights, sitting on the board of the nonprofit Human Rights Campaign and donating $1 million to defeat Californias Proposition 8 to outlaw same-sex marriage in 2008. His own nonprofit, the B.W. Bastian Foundation, continues to support organizations that further human rights and the LGBTQIA+ community.Im doing this for the kid in Idaho, growing up on a farm. I dont want him to go through the s I went through, Bastian told the Salt Lake Tribune.Bastian died at 76 from complications associated with pulmonary fibrosis.Lubomyr Romankiw: Magnetic personalityApril 17, 1931 June 27, 2024Lubomyr RomankiwQhuang75Born in Zhovkva, Ukraine (then part of Poland), Romankiw emigrated to Canada, where he attained citizenship and earned his bachelors degree in chemical engineering. After earning a masters and Ph.D. in metallurgy and materials in 1962 from MIT, he joined IBM.At that time, IBMs mainframes relied on drum storage for memory, which was slow, heavy, expensive, and limited to a few hundred kilobytes. In the 1970s, Romankiw partnered with co-worker David Thompson to invent magnetic thin film storage heads. The innovation spanned almost a dozen patents that reduced the size and increased the density of data storage devices. Any modern device that uses magnetic-head hard drives (as opposed to solid-state drives) still employs Romankiws innovations. His work earned him a place in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2012.Romankiw spent his entire career at IBM, earning the rank of IBM Fellow in 1986. He also became a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society in 1990. Among Romankiws other developments and 65 patents were inductive power converters and inductors for high-efficiency solar cells.He was 93 when he passed.Susan Wojcicki: Channeling innovationJuly 5, 1968 August 9, 2024Susan WojcickiTechCrunchWhen Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998, they needed office space. Management consultant Susan Wojcicki provided her garage and, over the years, so much more.Hired as Google employee #16, Wojcicki went on to play several defining roles in the company: she was Googles first marketing manager in 1999; she product-managed the launch of Google Image Search in 2001; she was AdSenses first product manager in 2003; and, while heading the nascent Google Video division, she initiated and managed Googles acquisition of competitor YouTube in 2006.In 2014, Wojcicki was appointed CEO of YouTube. Over the next nine years, she oversaw the services expansion into multiple countries, languages, and brands, including YouTube Premium, TV, Shorts, Music, and Gaming. The platforms annual advertising revenue now exceeds $50 billion.Throughout her career, Wojcickis work embodied the early days of Google, which she defined as incredible product and technology innovation, huge opportunities, and a healthy disregard for the impossible. She stepped down as YouTube CEO in February 2023, remaining in an advisory role at parent company Alphabet. She passed away 18 months later at age 56 from lung cancer.Roy L. Clay Sr.: Godfather of Silicon ValleyAugust 22, 1929 September 22, 2024Roy L. Clay Sr.Palo Alto Historical AssociationRoy Clay was one of nine children raised in a household without electricity or a toilet. He nonetheless grew up to become the one of the first Black Americans to graduate from St. Louis University, earning his degree in mathematics.After being denied a job interview at McDonnell Aircraft Manufacturing on account of his skin color, Clay persisted in applying until he finally got a job. He worked at McDonnell as a computer programmer for two years, then joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he wrote software to monitor an atomic explosions radiation diffusion. The reputation he developed there as a talented software developer landed him a job at Hewlett-Packard.At HP, Clay wrote software for and led the development of the companys first minicomputer, the 2116A, released in 1966. The computer and its immediate successors sold exceptionally well for decades, helping cement HPs leadership in the early computer industry. Rising through the ranks at HP, Clay helped expand its talent pool by hiring engineers from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).Clay left HP in 1971 to start a consulting firm that advised the likes of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a leading venture capital firm that helped shape Silicon Valley. In 1977, he formed his own company, ROD-L Electronics, a manufacturer of electrical safety test equipment. ROD-L hired a diverse workforce and offered employees a flex-time schedule as well as full tuition reimbursement. Said Clay, If youre not bothering to learn more, then youre becoming unproductive.Clay was a pioneer not just in IT, but in politics: he was the first Black council member for the city of Palo Alto, California (19731979) and was elected to the position of city vice mayor (19761977).As a trailblazer who worked tirelessly to diversify the tech industry, he earned the nickname Godfather of Silicon Valley an honorific he adopted for his 2022 self-published memoir, Unstoppable: The Unlikely Story of a Silicon Valley Godfather.Clay passed away at 95.Ward Christensen: Modem maverickOctober 23, 1945 October 11, 2024Ward ChristensenJason ScottWard Christensen spent his entire 44-year career as a systems engineer at IBM but it was his hobbies that earned him a place in history.In 1977, when Christensen needed to convert a CP/M floppy disk to an audio cassette, he developed a transfer protocol consisting of 128-byte blocks, the sector size used by CP/M floppies. The protocol proved so versatile and reliable for a variety of platforms that it evolved into XMODEM, which became a standard for transferring data files across dial-up modem connections, especially at slower speeds such as 300 baud.Christensens work on XMODEM earned him a sponsorship from the White Sands Missile Range to dial into the ARPANET. But he was frustrated by the organizations design-by-committee approach, where ideas languished. When Chicagos Great Blizzard of 1978 left Christensen and his fellow computing enthusiasts stranded in their homes, Christensen called his friend Randy Suess to develop a way for their local hobby computer club to meet virtually. The two collaborated, with Suess providing the hardware and Christensen the software. Within two weeks, the Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS) was up and running.CBBS became the first of tens of thousands of dial-up BBSes that proliferated over the next twenty years. BBSes formed some of the first online communities and became important shareware distribution nodes for early game companies. The groundbreaking innovation earned Christensen multiple awards and recognition, including a 1993 Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Christensen retired from IBM in 2012, after which he remained active in Build-a-Blinkie, a nonprofit that teaches basic computer hardware skills. I [can] think of no finer testimony to the soul behind this pioneer than the fact that up to the end of his life, he was teaching very young children how to solder together electronics to get them interested in science and engineering, said Jason Scott, creator of BBS: The Documentary.Christensen died at home from a heart attack at the age of 78.Thomas E. Kurtz: Keeping it BASICFebruary 22, 1928 November 12, 2024Thomas KurtzRauner Special Collections Library at DartmouthAfter earning his Ph.D., Thomas Kurtz joined Dartmouth College in 1956 as a mathematics professor and the director of the universitys computing center, which consisted of a single computer. Kurtz and colleague John Kemeny worked around this hardware limitation by developing the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System (DTSS), which operated from 1964 to 1999.Having solved the problem of the computers accessibility, Kurtz and Kemeny set out to improve its usability for students. Existing programming languages such as FORTRAN and COBOL could be esoteric, so the pair developed an alternative: Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, or BASIC. The school described the new language as a simple combination of ordinary English and algebra, which can be mastered by the novice in a very few hours There is enough power in the language BASIC to solve the most complicated computer problems.As a small, portable, easy-to-use language, BASIC proliferated, with variations for almost all platforms, becoming the introduction to software development for generations of computer users. It also launched countless careers and institutions: Microsoft BASIC was one of the first products from Microsoft when it was founded in 1975; the company later developed Applesoft BASIC to help launch Apple Computers Apple II personal computer. A young Richard Garriott used Applesoft to write the first Ultima computer role-playing game.Kurtz retired from teaching in 1993. He received the IEEEs Computer Pioneer Award in 1991 and was named an ACM Fellow in 1994. In 2023, he was inducted as a Computer History Museum Fellow, with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates presenting the award. Dartmouth College produced a documentary about BASIC for the languages 50th anniversary.Kurtz died at 96 from sepsis.Donald Bitzer: Platonic principlesJanuary 1, 1934 December 10, 2024 srcset="https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?quality=50&strip=all 2400w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=200%2C300&quality=50&strip=all 200w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=768%2C1152&quality=50&strip=all 768w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=683%2C1024&quality=50&strip=all 683w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=1024%2C1536&quality=50&strip=all 1024w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=1365%2C2048&quality=50&strip=all 1365w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=465%2C697&quality=50&strip=all 465w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=112%2C168&quality=50&strip=all 112w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=56%2C84&quality=50&strip=all 56w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=320%2C480&quality=50&strip=all 320w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=240%2C360&quality=50&strip=all 240w, https://b2b-contenthub.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/luminaries2024-15-bitzer-donald.png?resize=167%2C250&quality=50&strip=all 167w" width="683" height="1025" sizes="(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px">Donald BitzerNC State University College of EngineeringIn 1959, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaigns Control Systems Laboratory set out to develop a computerized learning system. They hired Don Bitzer, whod just earned his bachelors, masters, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the school.Bitzer accomplished what a committee could not, and the result was Program Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, or PLATO. The system was jam-packed with content, including tens of thousands of hours of course materials, Star Trek-inspired games, and a message board that constituted an early online community. The hardware, initially based on the ILLIAC I computer, was equally groundbreaking: PLATO was one of the first computers to combine a touchscreen with graphics, and it was an early example of timesharing an innovation University of Illinois mightve earned a patent for, had the paperwork not been misfiled.In 1964, the PLATO IV model debuted another innovation: the flat-panel plasma display. This alternative to traditional cathode-ray tube (CRT) displays, invented by Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and Robert Willson, rippled far beyond academic computers: decades later, it became the basis for flatscreen, high-definition televisions, used in computers and entertainment worldwide. For this work, Bitzer received a 2002 Technology & Engineering Emmy Award.In 1989, Bitzer joined the faculty of NC State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he remained until retirement. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2013, the National Academy of Inventors in 2018, and as a fellow of the Computer History Museum in 2022.He was a rare systems-level individual who could easily move between hardware and software, and wrangled both sets of people, all while evangelizing the entire PLATO platform to any individual or organization who would listen, said Thom Cherryhomes, creator of IRATA.ONLINE, a modern online community based on the PLATO system.Bitzer was 90 when he died at home.

More and more, there are Android tips and then there are Pixel tips.Owning a Google Pixel phone has become a ticket of sorts to a uniquely top-tier type of Android experience. With Googles pure vision for the way the operating system itself should work (and none of the experience-harming and often even privacy-compromising layers other device-makers love to lard into the software) not to mention all the extra bits of exceptionally helpful Googley goodness that are available only in the Pixel environment the Google Pixel increasingly represents Android at its best. And as anyone whos spent any amount of time living with a Pixel can tell you, nothing else comes close to comparing.Thats why I wanted to put together a special series of Pixel-specific tips to complement my collections of more general-interest Android tips and Google Android app tricks from 2024. Increasingly, some of the most interesting and beneficial bits of Googley intelligence are relevant only to those of us who are actively palming Pixels. And if youre lucky enough to be part of that group, you deserve to have the best Pixel experience possible.So here, without further ado, are the most memorable Google Pixel tips from Android Intelligence over the past year. Read em, remember em, and then do yourself a favor and come check out my free (and freshly updated!) Pixel Academy e-course to treat yourself to an entire treasure trove of advanced Pixel knowledge.2024s top Google Pixel tips15 new Android 15 features to find on your Google Pixel phoneThese experience-enhancing treasures are probably already present on your Pixel, but its up to you to find em.5 handy hidden tricks for Googles Pixel 9 Pro Fold (and Pixel Tablet, too!)If youve got one of Googles big-screen-packin Pixels, youll absolutely want to embrace these out-of-sight extras.The barely-mentioned Pixel 9 wonder thats completely won me overGoogles latest Pixel phones have plenty of high-profile features, but a tiny-seeming detail most people arent even mentioning might be the most meaningful addition of all.Google Pixel 9 vs. every past Pixel: To upgrade or not to upgrade?Some balanced and thoughtful advice on Googles Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro compared to every other Pixel model from someone whos lived with em all.9 hidden Google Pixel features for smarter callingLet your Pixel phone make your life easier with these exceptionally effective annoyance-eliminating options.Get early access to Googles Pixel Scam Detection systemStep up your scam-stopping intelligence with this free new feature for Googles Pixel phones.Bonus: A crafty new Chrome power-upIf youre using Chrome on your computer in addition to your Pixel, this easy add-on will bring a big boost to your browser-based productivity in the desktop domain.Hey, thanks for making the most of your precious Pixel with me over the past 12 months. Stay tuned for even more Pixel pondering in 2025!And in the meantime, dont let yourself miss an ounce of Pixel magic. Sign up for my free Pixel Academy e-course to discover tons more hidden features and time-savers for your favorite Pixel phone on demand and anytime you want.

As of 2023, nearly 2 billion metric tons of it were being produced annually, enough to cover Manhattan in a layer more than 13 feet thick.Making this metal produces a huge amount of carbon dioxide. Overall, steelmaking accounts for around 8% of the worlds carbon emissionsone of the largest industrial emitters and far more than such sources as aviation. The most common manufacturing process yields about two tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of steel. A handful of groups and companies are now making serious progress toward low- or zero-emission steel. Among them, the Swedish company Stegra stands out. (Originally named H2 Green Steel, the company renamed itself Stegrawhich means to elevate in Swedishin September.) The startup, formed in 2020, has raised close to $7 billion and is building a plant in Boden, a town in northern Sweden. It will be the first industrial-scale plant in the world to make green steel. Stegra says it is on track to begin production in 2026, initially producing 2.5 million metric tons per year and eventually making 4.5 million metric tons.The company uses so-called green hydrogen, which is produced using renewable energy, to process iron ore into steel. Located in a part of Sweden with abundant hydropower, Stegras plant will use hydro and wind power to drive a massive electrolyzer that splits water to make the hydrogen. The hydrogen gas will then be used to pull the oxygen out of iron ore to make metallic irona key step in steelmaking. This process of using hydrogen to make ironand subsequently steelhas already been used at pilot plants by Midrex, an American company from which Stegra is purchasing the equipment. But Stegra will have to show that it will work in a far larger plant.The world produces about 60,000 metric tons of steel every 15 minutes.We have multiple steps that havent really been proven at scale before, says Maria Persson Gulda, Stegras chief technology officer. These steps include building one of the worlds largest electrolyzers.Beyond the unknowns of scaling up a new technology, Stegra also faces serious business challenges. The steel industry is a low-margin, intensely competitive sector in which companies win customers largely on price.The startup, formed in 2020, has raised close to $7 billion in financing and expects to begin operations in 2026 at its plant in Boden.STEGRAOnce operations begin, Stegra calculates, it can come close to producing steel at the same cost as the conventional product, largely thanks to its access to cheap electricity. But it plans to charge 20% to 30% more to cover the 4.5 billion it will take to build the plant. Gulda says the company has already sold contracts for 1.2 million metric tons to be produced in the next five to seven years. And its most recent customerssuch as car manufacturers seeking to reduce their carbon emissions and market their products as greenhave agreed to pay the 30% premium.Now the question is: Can Stegra deliver?The secret of hydrogenTo make steelan alloy of iron and carbon, with a few other elements thrown in as neededyou first need to get the oxygen out of the iron ore dug from the ground. That leaves you with the purified metal.The most common steelmaking process starts in blast furnaces, where the ore is mixed with a carbon-rich coal derivative called coke and heated. The carbon reacts with the oxygen in the ore to produce carbon dioxide; the metal left behind then enters another type of furnace, where more oxygen is forced into it under high heat and pressure. The gas reacts with remaining impurities to produce various oxides, which are then removedleaving steel behind. The second conventional method, which is used to make a much smaller share of the worlds steel, is a process called direct reduction. This usually employs natural gas, which is separated into hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Both gases react with the oxygen to pull it out of the iron ore, creating carbon dioxide and water as by-products.The iron that remains is melted in an electric arc furnace and further processed to remove impurities and create steel. Overall, this method is about 40% lower in emissions than the blast furnace technique, but it still produces over a ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of steel.But why not just use hydrogen instead of starting with natural gas? The only by-product would be water. And if, as Stegra plans to do, you use green hydrogen made using clean power, the result is a new and promising way of making steel that can theoretically produce close to zero emissions.Stegras process is very similar to the standard direct reduction technique, except that since it uses only hydrogen, it needs a higher temperature. Its not the only possible way to make steel with a negligible carbon footprint, but its the only method on the verge of being used at an industrial scale.Premium marketingStegra has laid the foundations for its plant and is putting the roof and walls on its steel mill. The first equipment has been installed in the building where electric arc furnaces will melt the iron and churn out steel, and work is underway on the facility that will house a 700-megawatt electrolyzer, the largest in Europe.To make hydrogen, purify iron, and produce 2.5 million metric tons of green steel annually, the plant will consume 10 terawatt-hours of electricity. This is a massive amount, on par with the annual usage of a small country such as Estonia. Though the costs of electricity in Stegras agreements are confidential, publicly available data suggest rates around 30 ($32) per megawatt-hour or more. (At that rate, 10 terawatt-hours would cost $320 million.)STEGRAMany of the buyers of the premium green steel are in the automotive industry; they include Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, BMW, Volvo Group, and Scania, a Swedish company that makes trucks and buses. Six companies that make furniture, appliances, and construction materialincluding Ikeahave also signed up, as have five companies that buy steel and distribute it to many different manufacturers.Some of these automakersincluding Volvo, which will buy from Stegra and rival SSABare marketing cars made with the green steel as fossil-free. And since cars and trucks also have many parts that are much more expensive than the steel they use, steel that costs the automakers a bit more adds only a little to the cost of a vehicleperhaps a couple of hundred dollars or less, according to some estimates.Many companies have also set internal targets to reduce emissions, and buying green steel can get them closer to those goals.Stegras business model is made possible in part by the unique economic conditions within the European Union. In December 2022, the European Parliament approved a tariff on imported carbon-intensive products such as steel, known as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). As of 2024, this law requires those who import iron, steel, and other commodities to report the materials associated carbon emissions.Starting in 2026, companies will have to begin paying fees designed to be proportional to the materials carbon footprint. Some companies are already betting that it will be enough to make Stegras 30% premium worthwhile.STEGRAThough the law could incentivize decarbonization within the EU and for those importing steel into Europe, green steelmakers will probably also need subsidies to defray the costs of scaling up, says Charlotte Unger, a researcher at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, Germany. In Stegras case, it will receive 265 million from the European Commission to help build its plant; it was also granted 250 million from the European Unions Innovation Fund.Meanwhile, Stegra is working to reduce costs and beef up revenues. Olof Hernell, the chief digital officer, says the company has invested heavily in digital products to improve efficiency. For example, a semi-automated system will be used to increase or decrease usage of electricity according to its fluctuating price on the grid.Stegra realized there was no sophisticated software for keeping track of the emissions that the company is producing at every step of the steelmaking process. So it is making its own carbon accounting software, which it will soon sell as part of a new spinoff company. This type of accounting is ultra-important to Stegra, Hernell says, since we ask for a pretty significant premium, and that premium lives only within the promise of a low carbon footprint.Not for everyoneAs long as CBAM stays in place, Stegra believes, there will be more than enough demand for its green steel, especially if other carbon pricing initiatives come into force. The companys optimism is boosted by the fact that it expects to be the first to market and anticipates costs coming down over time. But for green steel to affect the market more broadly, or stay viable once several companies begin making significant quantities of it, its manufacturing costs will eventually have to be competitive with those of conventional steel.Stegra has sold contracts for 1.2 million metric tons of steel to be produced in the next five to seven years.Even if Stegra has a promising outlook in Europe, its hydrogen-based steelmaking scheme is unlikely to make economic sense in many other places in the worldat least in the near future. There are very few regions with such a large amount of clean electricity and easy access to the grid. Whats more, northern Sweden is also rich in high-quality ore that is easy to process using the hydrogen direct reduction method, says Chris Pistorius, a metallurgical engineer and co-director of the Center for Iron and Steelmaking Research at Carnegie Mellon University.Green steel can be made from lower-grade ore, says Pistorius, but it does have the negative effects of higher electricity consumption, hence slower processing.Given the EU incentives, other hydrogen-based steel plants are in the works in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe. Hybrit, a green steel technology developed by SSAB, the mining company LKAB, and the energy producer Vattenfall, uses a process similar to Stegras. LKAB hopes to finish a demonstration plant by 2028 in Gllivare, also in northern Sweden. However, progress has been delayed by challenges in getting the necessary environmental permit.Meanwhile, a company called Boston Metal is working to commercialize a different technique to break the bonds in iron oxide by running a current through a mixture of iron ore and an electrolyte, creating extremely high heat. This electrochemical process yields a purified iron metal that can be turned into steel. The technology hasnt been proved at scale yet, but Boston Metal hopes to license its green steel process in 2026.Understandably, these new technologies will cost more at first, and consumers or governments will have to foot the bill, says Jessica Allen, an expert on green steel production at the University of Newcastle in Australia.In Stegras case, both seem willing to do so. But it will be more difficult outside the EU.Whats more, producing enough green steel to make a large dent in the sectors emissions will likely require a portfolio of different techniques to succeed.Still, as the first to market, Stegra is playing a vital role, Allen says, and its performance will color perceptions of green steel for years to come. Being willing to take a risk and actually build thats exactly what we need, she adds. We need more companies like this.For now, Stegras plantrising from the boreal forests of northern Swedenrepresents the industrys leading effort. When it begins operations in 2026, that plant will be the first demonstration that steel can be made at an industrial scale without releasing large amounts of carbon dioxideand, just as important, that customers are willing to pay for it.Douglas Main is a journalist and former senior editor and writer at National Geographic.

In a year marked by political polarization, violent conflicts in the Middle East and Europe, and other crises, not all news stories presented a bleak portrait of the current moment. These accounts of surprise discoveries delighted our readers, leaving all of us to ask what awaits us next year. Spanning disciplines, historical eras, geographic locations and cultures, some of the artifacts highlighted below were first unearthed years ago but only documented now, while others were identified more recently. From Ramses IIs long-lost sarcophagus to the worlds oldest deep-sea shipwreck, these were 77 offascinating finds of 2024, as covered by Smithsonian magazine.Missing masterpiecesFor as long as humans have been making art, natural disasters, the ravages of time, theft and iconoclasm have threatened their creations survival. Though countless masterpieces have vanished over the millennia, many others remain hidden away, tucked in attics, basements and even thrift stores.Luck and a keen eye helped members of the public recover some of these missing artworks, leading them to take a second look at items dismissed by others as worthless. When Mat Winter was 11 years old, he rescued a print by Renaissance master Albrecht Drerrecalled. She was more than happy to give it to me because she wanted it to go to someone rather than just throwing it away. In September, more than a decade after Winters find, the 500-year-old print sold at auction for more than $40,000.Winter obtained his masterpiece for free. But others shelled out a small amount of money, which they later recoupedand then someupon discovering the true value of their finds. Similarly profitable (and culturally significant) purchases included a $20 box of vintage reels that contained a lost film starring silent movie star Clara BowVictorian brooch, acquired at an antique fair for $25, that sold for around $12,000 earlier this year. The woman who owned the jewelry only learned of its significance after seeing sketches of Flora Steel pictured with the Burges brooch she found in 2023 Gildings AuctioneersWhile some artworks emerged by chance, others materialized through technological analysis and scholarship. Advanced imaging tools and conservation uncovered a hidden self-portrait on the back of a Norman Cornish bar scene and drawings that may be among William Blakes earliest engravings. These doodles reveal personal, intimate moments that were not intended to be seen by anyone other than the artist, said literary scholar Mark Crosby, who spotted the possible Blake drawings while scanning the reverse side of 18th-century printing plates. For the first time since they were made, we can now see the practice work and doodling of the young apprentice.Outside of the realm of visual arts, a number of forgotten musical, literary and theatrical works resurfaced in 2024. Researchers trawling through libraries and archives stumbled onto an early ghost story by Dracula author Bram Stoker, a 12-minute composition written by a teenage Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart800 pages of sheet music from George Gershwins first full-length musical. Titled La, La, Lucille, the 1919 production was previously known through just a few surviving snippets of the score. Thanks to Jacob Kerzners chance discovery, Broadway fans can now hear what the shows songs would have sounded like with full orchestration. [Gershwin] was just 20 years old writing this show, Kerzner said. It feels like Gershwin just beginning to learn what makes a hit song, and just beginning to play around with some of his adventurous harmonies and syncopated rhythms.W.A. Mozart - Serenate ex C - Ganz kleine Nachtmusik KV648 (official release)Watch on Ancient artThe names of the artists who crafted these millennia-old works are unknown, but their creations live on, offering enduring glimpses into now-lost civilizations.In Pompeii, the Roman city razed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E., ongoing excavations have revealed a trove of archaeological treasures, including frescoes of such mythological figures as Phaedra, a Cretan princess who falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus; the twins Phrixus and Helle; and Helen of Troy and Paris, the doomed lovers whose romance sparked the Trojan War. Elsewhere in Pompeii, archaeologists found anancient shrine with brilliant blue walls and paintings of women representing the four seasons.5 Surprising Facts About PompeiiWatch on Off the shore of Naples, Italy, divers examined an underwater mosaic dated to around the third century C.E. The tiles once formed part of a porch at a luxury villa in Baiae, a city sometimes described as the Las Vegas of ancient Rome. The house toppled into the Gulf of Pozzuoli centuries ago, falling victim to a geological phenomenon known as bradyseism, in which the land surrounding a volcano alternates between periods of sinking and rising.Continuing the aquatic theme, archaeologists exploring Viroconium Cornoviorum, a Roman city in what is now northwestern England, excavated a colorful mosaic featuring dolphins and fish, which was likely installed in a wealthy familys home to impress important visitors. Its very much in line with the taste of the time, so this is someone who knows about fashion and what to put on your mosaics, archaeologist Roger White said. Theyre culturally attuned. Researchers uncovered this fresco of Helen of Troy and Paris in a newly excavated Pompeii dining room. Pompeii Archaeological ParkObjects of warMilitary conflicts tend to leave their mark on the landscape, dotting battlefields with weapons, armor and other traces of bloodshed. In 2024, archaeological evidence of armed conflicts spanned the ancient era through World War II. On the older end of the spectrum, mudbrick barracks possibly used by Ramses IIs army and the ruins of a temporary rest house dating to the reign of Thutmose IIIArchaeological digs also generated tangible traces of famous battles. In England, experts unearthed eight stone balls fired from catapults during Henry IIIs siege of Kenilworth Castle in 1266. The projectiles, which played a key role in the English kings 172-day siege of a beleaguered rebel stronghold, range in weight from that of a cabbage to that of a giant panda, the London Times reported. Across the Atlantic Ocean in Massachusetts, archaeologists dug up a set of much smaller projectiles: five musket balls fired during the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. These stones were shot from catapults during one of the longest sieges in British history. English HeritageShipwrecks bore witness to a 20th-century war that cleaved the world in two, separating countries into Axis and Allied powers. Researchers announced the discovery of the Ghost Ship of the Pacific, an American vessel that was repurposed by the Japanese after the latter seized control of the Indonesian island of Java during World War II. Soon, far-ranging Allied pilots began reporting the strange sight of an old American destroyer operating deep behind enemy lines, a press release said. The U.S. Navy recovered the ship at the end of the war, then deliberately sank it in May 1946.On the Scottish Isle of Arran, ecological restoration of a peatland revealedthe propeller blade of an ill-fated World War II plane. Because the device was found with a rope still tied around it, said Kate Sampson, the National Trust for Scotlands senior ranger on Arran, researchers suspect it was moved during cleanup of a wartime crash site in the 1940s or 1980s. Someone might have been dragging the propeller down the hill when it [sank] deep into the peat, not to be recovered until now, Sampson added. A high-resolution synthetic aperture sonar image of the USS Stewart, also known as the "Ghost Ship of the Pacific" Ocean InfinityPrehistoric peoplesPrehistory, broadly defined as the period between the invention of stone tools 2.6 million years ago and the development of writing systems in the fourth millennium B.C.E., can be difficult to parse given the lack of documentation available. But physical evidence of people who lived many millennia ago helps illustrate prehistoric life, underscoring surprising parallels with modern society.Some of the oldest finds recorded this year were a human-like jawbone and teeth embedded in a travertine floor tile in Europe. A dentist noticed the remains during a visit to his parents recently renovated home; the limestone used to craft the tile was quarried from Turkeys Denizli Basin, dating its formation to between 0.7 million and 1.8 million years ago. Scholars are now working with the dentist to remove the tile and determine the age of the jawbone and teeth.Skipping ahead hundreds of millennia, researchers uncovered stirring examples of prehistoric peoples artistic inclinations: a sand sculpture that may have been shaped to resemble a blue stingray around 130,000 years ago and a 130,000-year-old bear bone featuring Neanderthal carvings. The precise, parallel nature of the incisions in the bear bone suggests that they were a cultural practice that had meaning and function, and not, say, the product of unconscious personal habits like modern doodling, archaeologist Paul Pettitt said.Closer to 13,500 to 12,000 years ago, Paleoindian North Americans in what is now Wyoming carved needles out of small carnivores bones, a discovery that surprised modern archaeologists, whod expected the tools to be made out of bison or mammoth bone. Another unexpected find that shed light on prehistoric humans everyday lives came from Germany, where scholars analyzed a 5,000-year-old ceramic pot filled with the remnants of burnt porridge. Micro-CT scans of the bone needles and the other examples of bone they were compared against 2024 Pelton et al. / PLOS One under CC-BY-4.0Royal treasuresThe monarchs who commanded ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, medieval England and other realms wield much fascination for historians and the public alike. This years royal-related finds span continents and millennia, beginning with Ramses II, the Egyptian pharaoh who reigned in the 13th century B.C.E.After assessing a granite fragment uncovered in the Abydos necropolis in 2009, Egyptologist Frdric Payraudeau identified it as Ramses long-lost sarcophagus. One of three nested coffins crafted to hold the rulers remains, the granite sarcophagus housed a smaller alabaster sarcophagus that in turn contained a gilded wooden coffin. Archaeologists found the wooden coffin and Ramses mummy in a hiding place at the Deir el-Bahari temple complex in 1881, but the alabaster and granite sarcophagi were missing, likely looted by ancient tomb robbers. Thanks to Payraudeaus research, experts now know that the granite sarcophagus was reused by a high priest named Menkheperre around 1000 B.C.E., masking its connection to its original occupant. In other Ramses-centric news, an excavation in Egypt unearthed the upper half of an enormous statue of the pharaoh, which lines up perfectly with the lower section of a sculpture found nearby in 1930.In the Americas, the jade funerary mask of a Maya kingthrone room that may have belonged to a female ruler of the Moche culture illuminated the lives of ancient monarchs in modern-day Guatemala and Peru, respectively. The throne rooms murals tell us that powerful [Moche] women were not merely priestesses, but that they were leaders who wielded sociopolitical power as well, art historian Lisa Trever said. A painting of a crowned woman with scepter (upper left), a procession of men behind her carrying objects (upper right) and a textile workshop (below) on the wall of an ancient throne room in Peru Lisa TreverAmong the most famousor perhaps infamousroyal houses in world history is the Tudor dynasty, whose members ruled over England between 1485 and 1603. This year, two major discoveries connected to the Tudors came about in two very different ways. In Northamptonshire, locals had long heard tales of Collyweston Palace, a lost Tudor manor visited by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. These residents banded together to investigate the story, consulting the archives and experts to determine the palaces possible location. After years of research and digging, the group uncovered the base of a centuries-old wall and a foundation. The ruins have since been verified by scholars, providing closure for history enthusiasts who have long wondered about the local legend. Were just a bunch of amateurs really, with no money, no plans, just a lot of enthusiasm, said Chris Close, chair of the Collyweston Historical and Preservation Society, and against all the odds, we have unearthed this.While Close and his neighbors dedicated significant resources to finding Collyweston Palace, art historian Adam Busiakiewicz stumbled onto amissing portrait of Henry VIII entirely by chance. While scrolling through X in July, Busiakiewicz spotted a distinctive frame in the background of a photo taken at the local shire hall. Noticing the artworks resemblance to a set of portraits commissioned by a local politician in the 1590s, the art historian examined the painting in person and determined that it was, in all likelihood, a long-lost entry in the famous series. Social media is a crazy thing, Busiakiewicz said, because some people use it to watch cat videos and follow whats going on in the world, and then people like me just look at what people have hanging on their walls.Religious historyFascinating finds related to religious history tell a story of diverse belief systems from the polytheism of the ancient Greeks and Romans to Buddhism and Christianity.A marble statue of Hermes, the Greek messenger god, paired well with a temple built to honor the Roman emperor Constantines imperial ancestors (a practice that reinforced the idea that emperors were divine) in the fourth century C.E. Both discoveries date to the period when the Roman Empire was transitioning from polytheism to Christianity. Together, they show how some ancient resisted this change, whether by surreptitiously hiding a pagan statue in a sewer or constructing a state-sanctioned, yet decidedly not Christian, site of worship.An octagonal building uncovered in Armeniathe oldest Christian church in the country, and one of the oldest of its kind in the worldcomes from a similar period to these Roman finds, dating to around 350 C.E. Armenia is the oldest Christian state in the world, archaeologist Achim Lichtenberger said. Our monument attests to the early Christianization. This digital reconstruction of the Armenian church's now-degraded walls shows its original shape. Armenian-German Artaxata ProjectElsewhere in the world, a 4,000-year-old ceremonial temple in Peru is poised to shed light on early religious practices in the region. It features an elaborate carving of a mythological, bird-like creature that resembles a figure seen 500 years later, in the art of the Chavn culture. We still know very little about how and under which circumstances complex belief systems emerged in the Andes, said archaeologist Luis Muro Ynon. Now we have evidence about some of the earliest religious spaces that people were creating in this part of the world. In Egypt, meanwhile, excavations unearthed a hidden entrance to a 2,100-year-old templeIndigenous historyMexicos National Institute of Anthropology and History, the government agency responsible for preserving the countrys rich cultural heritage, shared a slew of impressive finds this year, including a mysterious ancient structure hidden beneath a Maya ball court, remnants of hallucinogenic plants that may have been left as ceremonial offerings, and carvedlimestone lids used in Maya beekeeping between 950 and the early 1500s.Other Indigenous cultures that left tangible traces of their presence ranged from the Nazca, a pre-Inca South American group known for creating the Nazca Lines, to Aboriginal Australians. Earlier this year, an artificial intelligence-assisted survey detected hundreds of previously unknown geoglyphsSmithsonian correspondent Sonja Anderson, the art depicts human-like figures, livestock, cats and even killer whales wielding weapons. The researchers' A.I. model can spot geoglyphs' outlines 20 times faster than humans. Masato Sakai et al. / PNAS, 2024In Australia, 2,000- to 3,000-year-old pottery fragments found on the island of Jiigurru challenged long-held notions that Aboriginal people didnt create pottery. As the researchers who examined the fragments wrote for the Conversation, these individuals were, in truth, intimately engaged in ancient maritime networks, connecting them with peoples, knowledges and technologies across the Coral Sea region, including the knowledge of how to make pottery. Finally, in Wisconsin, on the ancestral territory of the Ho-Chunk Nation, maritime archaeologists collaborated with Indigenous leaders to recover nearly a dozen ancient canoesLake Mendota. Spanning roughly 2500 B.C.E. to 1250 C.E., the vessels reinforce oral traditions that describe Indigenous peoples traveling by dugout canoe in the Great Lakes region.ShipwrecksSunken ships open portholes to centuries past, presenting eerily preserved glimpses of vessels at the moment they met their demise.In the Great Lakes, where more than 6,000 shipwrecks have claimed an estimated 30,000 lives, researchers identified the wreckage of the Adella Shores, a wooden steamship that vanished in 1909; the Margaret A. Muir, a 130-foot schooner that sank in Lake Michigan with its captains intelligent and faithful dog on board; and the Milwaukee, a steamship that collided with another vessel in 1886. Experts from the Michigan Shipwreck Research Association drew on newspaper reports to pinpoint the possible resting place of the Milwaukee, and they spotted the ship after just two days of searching the seabed with sonar technology. Jacob Sharvit and Karnit Bahartan examine two amphorae recovered from the world's oldest-known deep-sea wreck. Emil Aladjem / Israel Antiquities AuthorityFurther afield, a merchant vessel found off of Israels coast, about 5,900 feet beneath the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, made headlines as the oldest deep-sea shipwreck identified to date. Dated to the late Bronze Age, the wreck testifies to ancient sailors ability to navigate by looking at the stars, long before the development of tools like compasses and astrolabes. In China, apair of Ming dynasty merchant vesselssaid Guan Qiang, deputy head of Chinas National Cultural Heritage Administration.Canadian researchers unveiled one of the most significant maritime finds of the year in June, when they announced the discovery of the Quest, the steamship used by explorer Ernest Shackleton on his final expedition to Antarctica. Shackleton died of a heart attack on board the Quest in January 1922; crew members found his body in his bed. After Shackletons death, the vessel remained in use for 40 years, participating in seal hunting, Arctic research expeditions and rescue missions. On May 5, 1962, sea ice pierced the Quests hull, consigning it to a watery grave off the northeast coast of Canada. The team used sonar to search a 24-square-nautical-mile search area for the wreck of theQuest. Royal Canadian Geographical SocietyAmateur archaeologistsEvery so often, amateur archaeologistsdefined here as individuals without (or currently working toward) graduate degrees in the fieldhappen upon stunning historical treasures. Sometimes, these individuals deliberately set out to unearth rare artifacts, aided by metal detectors and other tools; in other instances, the discoveries take place purely by chance.In the first category, persistence paid off for metal detectorists in Wales and Denmark, who uncovered a 300-year-old silver thimble engraved with a message of enduring love and a 1,500-year-old gold ring that may be linked to the Frankish Merovingian dynasty, respectively. A father and son in Poland also enjoyed treasure-hunting success, chancing upon a cache of silver coins worth more than $120,000. The two were part of a metal-detecting group searching for traces of an ancient road in a forest north of Warsaw. At first, there was a great noise, because everyone who participated in the searchand there were a dozen of uscame running at the call of the discoverers, said Mateusz Sygacz of the Polish Husaria Treasure Hunters Association. We all realized that we had discovered something incredible. A metal detectorist discovered this silver thimble while scanning the grounds ofCarew Castle. National Museum CardiffOn the last day of a two-week dig in Scotland, volunteer John Ralph stumbled onto a 1,000-year-old kite-shaped ring associated with the early medieval Picts. I always had an interest in archaeology, and having recently retired and coming out of Covid, I was looking for something interesting to do, Ralph said. I saw a call on Facebook for volunteers for the dig at Burghead, and since it was the town I was raised in and my sister stays there, I just thought, Why not?In the realm of luck-driven finds, standouts included a young boy who found a Neanderthal hand ax while playing on a beach in England, a 13-year-old who spotted a Roman-era ring featuring an engraving of the goddess Minerva while hiking in Israel and a geography teacher who unearthed a rock carved with ogham scriptThe magical, the macabre and the mysteriousIn the realm of ritual and superstition, archaeologists uncovered lead scrolls bearing ancient curses and miniature axes likely used as votive offerings at a Roman-era villa in England, as well as graffiti carved by Roman prisoners who called on higher powers to punish their captors. May the fortune of those who suffer in this lawless place prevail, one message read. Lord, do not show mercy on the one who threw us in here. Another stated, Lord, make them die an awful death. A similarly vengeful call to action resurfaced at a medieval manor in England, where tour guide Rick Berry noticed the name of one of the estates former owners carved upside down above a crude drawing. When you get something like that, that is very much a curse, Berry said. Someone has cursed him.Some finds revealed this year raised more questions than answers. In Egypt, ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistivity tomography surveys identified an anomaly near the Great Pyramid of Giza. Featuring a shallow structure connected to a deeper one, the mysterious underground chambers point to the possibility of the presence of archaeological remains, researchers wrote in the journal Archaeological Prospection. It is important that they must be promptly excavated to establish their purpose. A dig in England, meanwhile, yielded yet another example of a Roman dodecahedron.more than 100 excavated throughout Europe. Dodecahedrons have long mystified archaeologists, who suggest the ancients used the items to predict the future and practice sorcery, or perhaps relied on them as measuring devices, calendars or weapons. Medieval-era witches' marks and a curse found at an English manor house English HeritageA more recent mystery investigated by experts centers on a 1924 expedition to Mount Everest. While filming a documentary on the mountain, a National Geographic team spotted the frozen foot and sock of Andrew Comyn Irvine, a British explorer who attempted to summit Everest with partner George Mallory. The pair vanished during their ascent, enabling Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary to proclaim themselves the first to reach Everests summit 29 years later, in 1953. A climber found Mallorys body in 1999, but Irvines fate remained unclear until now. The find doesnt confirm whether Irvine and Mallory beat Norgay and Hillary to the summit, losing their lives in the process, but it does represent a major development in the century-old mystery. I have lived with this story since I was a 7-year-old, when my father told us about the mystery of Uncle Sandy on Everest, said Irvines great-niece, Julie Summers. She added, Im regarding [the remains] as something close to closure.Death and taxesAs Benjamin Franklin once said, In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes. Archaeological finds bear out the statesmans words, testifying to how different civilizations viewed these universal experiences. The woman's remains were contained in two painted coffins, one stacked inside the other. Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and AntiquitiesOften, ancient burials offer evidence of funerary rituals designed to benefit the dead in the afterlife. In Poland, a dried-up lakebed held skeletal remains and more than 550 bronze artifactsLusatian culture, which was active during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. Analysis of the site suggests the community buried its dead in the lake between 1040 and 780 B.C.E., then added metal jewelry like beads and pendants during later rituals. Ornate jewelry also featured in a Roman burial ground in central Italy, where researchers uncovered gold necklaces and earrings, amulets, and silver rings adorned with amber. All these riches, and the fact that the bones show no sign of stress or physical labor, [indicates] these werent local farmers, but upper-crust members of Roman families coming from cities, said archaeologist Emanuele Giannini.Excavations in Egypt offered insights on the Middle Kingdom, an era often overlooked in favor of the New Kingdom. Idi, the only daughter of a powerful Middle Kingdom governor, was buried in the ancient city of Asyut in two nested coffins painted with advice on how she could find her way to the underworld. Near Luxor, archaeologists unearthed a necropolis that held the remains of several generations of an Egyptian family. Its the first Middle Kingdom tomb found in the area, as most burials from that time period were destroyed during the New Kingdom. The coins were found in the courtyard of a farmhouse in the small town of Wettin, Germany. State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-AnhaltTaxes, as represented more generally by currency, proved to be a constant across time. Coin caches unearthed this year demonstrated the diverse circumstances that inspired the wealthy to stash their money away: In western Turkey, a pot of gold coins dated to the fifth century B.C.E.said archaeologist Christopher Ratt. So only the gravest misfortune can explain the preservation of such a treasure.Gold and silver coins found beneath the floors of a home in EnglandFirst English Civil War, which took place between 1642 and 1646. The stash, which fetched more than $75,000 at auction, contrasted with 285 silver coins discovered in a former brewing town in Germany. That money likely belonged to the towns wealthy mayor, who was known to keep coins stashed around his property. It not only demonstrates the wealth of Wettins late-17th-century leader, but the wide-ranging trade connections that brought different coins into his possession, wrote Smithsonian correspondent Sonja Anderson.Games and recreation Researchers are particularly excited about the newly discovered chess piece, which is about an inch and a half tall. University of Tbingen / Victor BrigolaLife in long-ago societies wasnt all work and no play. Clues to how people of the past spent their free time abound, from a medieval chess piece and six-sided dieancient Roman villa in Albania that boasted an indoor pool. In England, divers exploring the River Tyne recovered a 2,000-year-old copper knife handle carved to resemble a gladiator. The figure appears to be left-handed, suggesting it was based on a real-life fighter, as the Romans believed left-handedness was unlucky and likely wouldnt have given this trait to a generic gladiator. Researchers dont know how the figurine ended up in the river, but they say its presence speaks to the cult of celebrity surrounding gladiators, who earned accolades for displaying prowess in the arena and apparently courted fans as far afield as Roman Britain.A mysterious toy found in Iceland evoked visions of children at play. Archaeologists excavating a farm site in Seydisfjordur uncovered a tiny stone figurine dated to the Viking Age. Crafted out of palagonite tuff, a type of volcanic rock, the object has sparked debate, with scientists and social media users alike offering their opinions on what animal it represents. Some say the toy depicts a dog, while others say its a horse, a bear or a pig. Scientists plan on studying the figurine further to determine its identity, although it may remain open for discussion, said excavation manager Ragnheidur Traustadttir.Everything elseSome remarkable finds revealed in 2024 didnt fit neatly into the aforementioned categories but still ranked among the most intriguing of the year. These eclectic discoveries included a 19th-century chocolate factory in Barcelona and the oldest wine ever found in liquid form, a 2,000-year-old, reddish-brown concoction unearthed in an ancient tomb in Spain.Other finds served as messages from the past, connecting 17th-century schoolgirls to modern archaeologists, who uncovered the students decorative paper cuttings beneath the floorboards of their former London boarding school. We have long known about the role of Sutton House as a girls school over its lifetime, but with few details about the classes, the pupils or teaching, said Kate Simpson, a senior collections officer at the National Trust. This discovery brings to vivid life one of the skills that pupils were taught and the painstaking process of handling, cutting and coloring such tiny pieces of paper. Preteen and teenage schoolgirls made these tiny paper cuttings in the 17th century. National Trust Images / James DobsonIn a reversal of the previous example, students volunteering at an archaeological dig in the French town of Eu stumbled onto a message in a bottle written by a French archaeologist whod excavated that same site 200 years earlier. Sometimes you see these time capsules left behind by carpenters when they build houses. But its very rare in archaeology, said excavation leader Guillaume Blondel. Most archaeologists prefer to think that there wont be anyone coming after them because theyve done all the work.Rounding out the incredible finds announced this year was a Q1 microcomputer from 1972one of the worlds oldest surviving desktop computers. Found by a cleaning crew in London, the device is the worlds earliest microcomputer, built with a single chip rather than multiple microchips. Few examples survive today, but the Q1 left its mark on the world, laying the foundation for todays everything devicethe modern computer now so ubiquitous in everyday life, said Paul Neve, an expert on early computers. We rely on computers for our work, communication, productivity and entertainment, but without the early trailblazers, none of these would exist. A 1972 Q1 desktop microcomputer Heritage AuctionsPhoto credit for top image: Illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos, clockwise from top left: brooch via Gildings Auctioneers; stingray-shaped rock via Helm et al. / Rock Art Research, 2024; gladiator figurine via English Heritage; jade mask via Francisco Estrada-Belli / Tulane University; Charles I coin via Dukes Auctioneers; gold coin viaNotion Archaeological Project, University of Michigan; dodecahedron via Norton Disney History and Archaeology Group; Neanderthal hand ax via Worthing Museum; paper cuttings by National Trust Images / James Dobson; dolphin mosaic via Paul Belford / Heritage Innovation; chess piece via University of Tbingen / Victor Brigola; Ming vase viaNational Cultural Heritage Administration; and marble statue viaDobrin Kashavelov / AFP via Getty ImagesGet the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Infinity Nikki gets its first major update soon, Infold Games has announced.The Shooting Star Season update lands on December 30 across PC, PlayStation 5, iOS and Android, and runs until January 23, 2025. It adds new adventures, limited-time events, and of course new outfits, which you can check out in the new trailer. Fans can also expect new storylines and platforming challenges. The tagline is: "Let shooting stars guide paper cranes on their journey of fulfilling dreams."Heres the official blurb:Stories of the past still echo in the wind, as new wishes begin a brand-new chapter. During the season of shooting stars, people come together beneath a starlit sky. May paper cranes carry each precious dream, shooting stars shine upon every heartfelt wish, and may every day of the new year shine as brilliantly as the stars in the sky.Infinity Nikki, downloaded over 20 million times since launch, is a free-to-play adventure dress-up game developed in China at Papergames and published by Infold Games. Its one of IGNs best-reviewed games of 2024, securing a 9/10. We said: Infinity Nikki has deep open-world exploration, a quirky story, and some of the most beautiful in-game outfits you'll ever see you just have to be ready to navigate a maze of menus to get them.For curious stylists and outfit collectors, we've got a guide to all Outfits in Infinity Nikki, plus all Ability Outfits, to help you avoid a fashion faux pas. As you explore Miraland and search for collectibles, keep an eye out for all the Whimstar locations, and make sure to check in with our Infinity Nikki daily tasks guide. Plus, there are plenty of Infinity Nikki launch rewards to claim, including some very generous promo codes you won't want to miss.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.

Tributes are being paid to Baby Driver actor Hudson Meek, who died aged 16 after falling from a moving vehicle.Meek played Young Baby in the 2017 action film directed by Edgar Wright and starring Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Jon Bernthal. He fell out of a moving vehicle in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama on December 19, and died two days later.Meek was best known for playing a younger version of Elgorts titular character in Baby Driver, but he also appeared in 2014s The Santa Con and episodes of the MacGyver reboot. Meek provided the voice for Young Yasuo in a 2020 cinematic for Riot Games League of Legends, and appeared in a number of adverts.Hudson Meek, centre-right, during the Deauville American Film Festival in September 2024. Photo by Francois G. Durand/Getty Images.An obituary revealed that some of the movies and TV shows Meek worked on will be released in 2025. "He absolutely loved spending time on set and having the chance to learn the names and stories of every member of the cast and crew," the obituary reads.In a Facebook post, his mother Lani Wells Meek said: His 16 years on this earth were far too short, but he accomplished so much and significantly impacted everyone he met. Birmingham performing arts academy Acting Out said in a statement: "We are all devastated at the loss of one of AOA's first and brightest stars. May you shine forever Hud. You will be deeply missed."A Celebration of Life service will be live-streamed Saturday, December 28 at 11.30am Central time.Photo by Francois G. Durand/Getty Images.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.

Christopher Nolan has taken viewers from the streets of Gotham City to the shores of Dunkirk, and from the deepest recesses of the dreaming mind to the edges of a black hole itself. Yet the announcement of his latest project has raised more than a few eyebrows. Homers Ancient Greek epic The Odyssey seems like a strange choice for a filmmaker who has devoted his work to puzzle box stories about troubled great men.As different as The Odyssey might be for Nolan, we do already know we can count on one thing. Hell have a great cast joining him on this journey. Even when we thought that Nolans next project would be Blue Thunder, we knew that he would be working again with Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, and Robert Pattinson, as well as adding Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Lupita Nyongo to his repertoire of players. Now that we know hes adapting The Odyssey, Homers story of Odysseus 10-year journey back to Ithaca after the Trojan War, we can begin to speculate about which character these actors will play. So without further ado, here are our best guesses of who is playing which roleMatt Damon as OdysseusThe King of Ithaca, Odysseus spent 10 years fighting the Trojans alongside other Greek heroes from the mythical Bronze Age. Think Achilles and the troubled Ajax. Although the Greeks won the Trojan War (remember the Brad Pitt movie on this score?), Odysseus nonetheless angered the sea god Poseidon in the aftermath. This is problem if you plan to travel home by sea. As a result, Homer tells us it took Ithacas monarch another 10 years to return home, the span of which makes up this story.More than his leadership and strength, Odysseus craftiness makes him a hero. He outsmarts his opponents time and again, whether by fooling an enormous cyclops by calling himself Nobody, or having his crew plug their ears with beeswax to block out the Sirens song (Odysseus being who he is, asked to be tied to the mast so he could hear their beckoning call).Damon made a name for himself by playing against his boyish looks as a genius janitor in Good Will Hunting and as an identity stealing hanger-on in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Nolan gave Damon a new wrinkle to play in Oppenheimer, whose Colonel Leslie Groves boiled with rage under his all-American exterior. This combination of playfulness and likable demeanor makes Damon a strong choice for Odysseus.Anne Hathaway as PenelopeNolan is famously a wife guy. He makes himself unavailable during family time between projects, and his wife Emma works closely with him as a producer. Nolan is also famous for struggling to write female characters, especially wives and daughters. Marion Cotillards Mal from Inception is the paradigmatic example, a mad woman who must remain locked away, even as Cobb strives to come back to their children.Penelope, however, is much more than just Odysseus worrying wife. She must hold Ithaca together in the Kings absence, a project made more difficult by a phalanx of suitors trying to convince her that the king has died and she must remarry.By this point, Hathaway has outlasted the charges that shes a try-hard theater kid and most recognize her as an observant performer who can play against her natural charm, a change of public perception won in part by stealing every scene as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. That quality makes her a good counterpart to Damons Odysseus, outwitting the suitors while holding Ithaca together. We also know that Nolan has had both Christian Bales Bruce Wayne and Matthew McConaugheys Interstellar astronaut cross oceans (or more) to reach her.Tom Holland as TelemachusPenelopes problems at home get worse when her son Telemachus decides to follow in his fathers footsteps and head to sea to find him. Theres a tragic quality to Telemachus decision, suggesting that the son is damned to make the same mistakes as the father.Like Damon, Holland can do much more than his boyish looks suggest. Unlike Damon, however, Hollands been limited by huge MCU roles and by making disastrous choices with almost every other project he joins. Holland acquits himself well in The Devil All the Time or Cherry, but those half-baked films fall far short of the actors ambitions. Hopefully, working with Nolan will give Holland the chance to move beyond Peter Parker. Telemachus wants to prove himself just like Holland does, which will allow the actor to find some emotional truth for the part.Charlize Theron as CalypsoOdysseus spends seven of his 10 years away trapped on the island Ogygia where hes a captive of the nymph Calypso. Calypso wants Odysseus as her husband, offering him immortality as a reward.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!Charlize Theron has played her share of determined and complicated characters, whether it be a human train wreck in Young Adult, an immortal vigilante in The Old Guard, or the Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road. In each of these cases, her hard stare and cutting remarks belie a deep vulnerability. Homer presents Calypso as a tragic figure, someone almost bound by her desire for Odysseus. She knows that he will never love her as much as he does Penelope, but she accepts that, as long as she can have him as a husband.Lupita Nyongo as CirceWhere Calypso fails Circe succeeds. After transforming his men into swine, the witch Circe manages to keep Odysseus with her for a year. Even though he claims to be steadfast in his love for Penelope, Odysseus cannot resist Circes beauty or the abundance of her home. Tired of fighting, he gives in to her.Lupita Nyongo is easily one of the most versatile actors working today, as seen in her triumphant dual performance in Jordan Peeles Us, strong voice acting turns in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Wild Robot, and her Academy Award-winning work in 12 Years a Slave. Nyongo knows how to transform herself for the occasion, sometimes using her beauty and intelligence to project an ethereal quality and sometimes bringing raw physicality to her characters. This range makes her the perfect choice to portray a sorceress who beguiles the hero.Zendaya as AthenaOkay, yes, Zendaya is a bit young to play such a powerful goddess. But, come one, Athenas a Goddessexactly how old should she look?More importantly, Zendayas proven herself adept at playing wise beyond her years and slight frame. Just look at Dune: Part Two and Challengers from earlier in this year where she brought rage and ambition to characters seen as just a pretty face by the men around them. Zeus daughter, Athena is Odysseus patron on Mount Olympus. She helps throughout his battles and sends other gods, such as Hermes, to intercede on his behalf. Furthermore, she also has an eye for Telemachus, giving a treat for celebrity gossip fans when they see Zendaya and Tom Holland share the screen again.Read more Robert Pattinson as PoseidonAs with Zendaya, Pattinsons a bit younger than those we usually associate with the gods. But also like Zendaya, Pattinsons worked against his handsome features to play complicated figures. And no one in The Odyssey is more complicated than Poseidon, Odysseus chief antagonist. Furious with Odysseus for blinding his son, the cyclops Polyphemus, Poseidon doesnt kill his rival and instead just messes with him.Even by the standards of the idiosyncratic gods, thats a weird choice, and Pattinson loves to be weird. Plus, if he gets to exercise some of the watery muscles he developed while making The Lighthouse, all the better.So far, thats all we have for confirmed cast members. The Odyssey isnt slated for release until 2026, which means that theres still a lot of work to do.But we know how much Nolan likes working with people he knows, so were almost guaranteed to see him bring back some old favorites. It would be fun to see Tom Hardy cover the top part of his face instead of the bottom to play a muttering version of Polyphemus the Cyclops. Its not hard to see a venerable performer like Tom Conti or Ken Watanabe play Zeus or one of the other gods. Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be great as Eurymachus, the most charismatic and duplicitous of Penelopes suitors.Or, we could be wrong about all of this. After all, this is just speculation, and Nolan has surprised us before. Well be watching closely as The Odyssey finds its way to theaters.The Odyssey is slated for a 2026 release.

The threat actor known as Cloud Atlas has been observed using a previously undocumented malware called VBCloud as part of its cyber attack campaigns targeting "several dozen users" in 2024."Victims get infected via phishing emails containing a malicious document that exploits a vulnerability in the formula editor (CVE-2018-0802) to download and execute malware code," Kaspersky researcher Oleg Kupreev said in an analysis published this week.More than 80% of the targets were located in Russia. A lesser number of victims have been reported from Belarus, Canada, Moldova, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Vietnam.Also referred to as Clean Ursa, Inception, Oxygen, and Red October, Cloud Atlas is an unattributed threat activity cluster that has been active since 2014. In December 2022, the group was linked to cyber attacks aimed at Russia, Belarus, and Transnistria that deployed a PowerShell-based backdoor called PowerShower.Then exactly a year later, Russian cybersecurity company F.A.C.C.T. revealed that various entities in the country were targeted by spear-phishing attacks that exploited an old Microsoft Office Equation Editor flaw (CVE-2017-11882) to drop a Visual Basic Script (VBS) payload responsible for downloading an unknown next-stage VBS malware.Kaspersky's latest report reveals that these components are part of what it calls VBShower, which is then used to download and install PowerShower as well as VBCloud.The starting point of the attack chain is a phishing email that contains a booby-trapped Microsoft Office document that, when opened, downloads a malicious template formatted as an RTF file from a remote server. It then abuses CVE-2018-0802, another flaw in the Equation Editor, to fetch and run an HTML Application (HTA) file hosted on the same server."The exploit downloads the HTA file via the RTF template and runs it," Kupreev said. "It leverages the alternate data streams (NTFS ADS) feature to extract and create several files at %APPDATA%\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\. These files make up the VBShower backdoor."This includes a launcher, which acts as a loader by extracting and running the backdoor module in memory. The other VB Script is a cleaner that cares about erasing the contents of all files inside the "\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.Word\" folder, in addition to those within itself and the launcher, thereby covering up evidence of the malicious activity.The VBShower backdoor is designed to retrieve more VBS payloads from the command-and-control (C2) server that comes with capabilities to reboot the system; gather information about files in various folders, names of running processes, and scheduler tasks; and install PowerShower and VBCloud.PowerShower is analogous to VBShower in functionality, the chief difference being that it downloads and executes next-stage PowerShell scripts from the C2 server. It's also equipped to serve as a downloader for ZIP archive files.As many as seven PowerShell payloads have been observed by Kaspersky. Each of them carries out a distinct task as follows -Get a list of local groups and their members on remote computers via Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI)Conduct dictionary attacks on user accountsUnpack ZIP archive downloaded by PowerShower and execute a PowerShell script contained within it in order to carry out a Kerberoasting attack, which is a post-exploitation technique for obtaining credentials for Active Directory accountsGet a list of administrator groupsGet a list of domain controllersGet information about files inside the ProgramData folderGet the account policy and password policy settings on the local computerVBCloud also functions a lot like VBShower, but utilizes public cloud storage service for C2 communications. It gets triggered by a scheduled task every time a victim user logs into the system.The malware is equipped to harvest information about disks (drive letter, drive type, media type, size, and free space), system metadata, files and documents matching extensions DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PDF, TXT, RTF, and RAR, and files related to the Telegram messaging app."PowerShower probes the local network and facilitates further infiltration, while VBCloud collects information about the system and steals files," Kupreev said. "The infection chain consists of several stages and ultimately aims to steal data from victims' devices."Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

The edge computing landscape has undergone significant expansion. This growth has been matched by an increase in innovative architectural options, enabling organizations to optimize edge deployments for performance, scalability and security.Embedded databases are becoming increasingly crucial for the growing edge and internet of things (IoT). They are integrated directly into software, providing data management for end-users without the need for separate database servers. This allows for more efficient and streamlined operations than the traditional alternatives of file systems and message queues. Additionally, embedded databases can significantly reduce the complexity and cost associated with managing large amounts of data in IoT applications.This localized approach, where the database is located on the device itself, is particularly beneficial for IoT devices, offering several advantages.Reduced latency is a significant advantage. By eliminating communication with remote servers, embedded databases process data swiftly, enabling real-time insights and actions. This instantaneous processing empowers timely decision-making.Device independence is another vital feature. Embedded databases allow devices to function autonomously, even without network connectivity. This capability is crucial for applications where internet access is intermittent or unreliable, ensuring uninterrupted operation.Related:Resource optimization is also achieved. Embedded databases are tailored to leverage the specific capabilities and resources of their host devices. This optimization leads to efficient utilization of processing power, memory and storage, maximizing device potential. As a result, tasks can be completed more quickly and efficiently, enhancing overall productivity.Furthermore, embedded databases provide a level of security by storing data locally on the device, reducing the risk of data breaches or unauthorized access. Overall, the combination of device independence, resource optimization, and autonomous functionality make embedded databases an essential component in today's technology-driven world.The IoT landscape is evolving, with applications becoming increasingly sophisticated and data intensive. Consequently, demand for high-performance embedded databases is rising. As more devices connect to the internet and generate vast amounts of data, the need for efficient data storage and retrieval solutions is becoming more critical.Embedded databases offer a solution that can handle the growing demands of IoT applications, ensuring that data is managed securely and effectively. The adoption of embedded databases is crucial for businesses and industries looking to capitalize on the benefits of IoT technology while maintaining high levels of performance and security.Related:To effectively support IoT applications, embedded databases must deliver exceptional capabilities. They must handle real-time processing at scale, managing continuous data streams from IoT devices to provide instantaneous insights and support time-sensitive actions. Additionally, embedded databases must have robust security measures in place to protect sensitive data from potential cyber threats. They must also be able to handle the complex data relationships and connectivity requirements that come with IoT applications.By meeting these demands, embedded databases can empower businesses to fully leverage the potential of IoT technology and drive innovation in their respective industries.Scalability is also crucial. As connected devices proliferate and data volumes surge, embedded databases must seamlessly accommodate growth without compromising performance. Ensuring that embedded databases can easily scale up to meet the increasing demands of IoT applications is essential for businesses to stay competitive in today's fast-paced digital landscape.Related:High-performance embedded databases fuel IoT innovation through real-time data analysis, enabling informed decision-making and groundbreaking products. They adapt to emerging trends, keeping businesses competitive and unlocking IoT's transformative potential for efficiency, productivity and growth.Selecting the optimal embedded database for IoT applications requires careful consideration of several critical factors.Performance is paramount. The chosen database must efficiently handle required data ingestion rates and deliver low latency for real-time processing, ensuring timely insights.Scalability is also vital. The database should seamlessly accommodate anticipated growth in device numbers and data volume without compromising performance.Ease of use is essential for streamlined integration and management. A user-friendly application programming interface and minimal maintenance requirements minimize complexity.Resource consumption must be optimized. The database should boast a compact footprint, minimizing its impact on device resources such as processing power, memory and storage. The database must operate dependably in challenging environments, guaranteeing data integrity, availability and resilience.The future of embedded databases in IoT looks bright. As the demand for real-time data processing and analysis at the edge continues to grow, embedded databases are likely to play an even more critical role in driving innovation and enabling new possibilities in various industries. Consider them now for your edge applications to get the power of the database at the edge and enable many more processing capabilities there.