Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)Editor's note: This article was originally published in December 2023 as a review in progress. We had hoped to return to Palia once it hit version 1.0, but it's still not there at the time of writing. Therefore we're revisiting one year on to see how things have changed with some new text up top and a score below.A full year on from its initial beta launch, now feels like as good a time as any to revisit Palia to see whats changed. The good and bad news is well, not that much.On the good side, a steady drip of performance improvements and quality-of-life updates have made for an overall better play experience, while relatively minor content drops have brought things like two-story houses and the conclusion of the main storylines Prologue. Theres never been more to do in Palia and all the content is that extra bit more enjoyable due to various nips and tucks that have streamlined things.Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)However, version 1.0 still feels like its quite a while off. Though the next major explorable area (called the Elderwood) is supposedly due to shake things up when it releases sometime in early 2025, most of the content updates thus far have amounted to baby steps beyond the version we reviewed a year ago. Loading times and performance hiccups are still a pervasive issuePalia runs on the Switch, but wed hardly suggest this as the ideal platform to play it on. The underlying gameplay is still essentially the same as it was; the lack of significant expansions or additions makes this current version feel more like what wed expect out of a months progress, rather than a full year.Now, Palia hasnt had the titanic resources of a behemoth like Genshin Impact dev Hoyoverse powering developmentSingularity 6 was hit by multiple rounds of layoffs in the last year, reducing its staff to just a few dozen before it got acquired by Daybreak Game Company. This in mind, it's apples and oranges to compare its progress to that of other live service games, especially considering that there aren't a whole lot of competitors in the cosy farm-sim MMO space at the moment.Even if its progress this year has felt lacking, Palia is still an all-around decent social farm sim. Its definitely got its jank and it still very much feels like a game that has yet to reach the vaunted 1.0 status, but people are playing (even if it's not exactly bustling) and theres some real magic and charm here that makes it an enjoyable experience in its current form. Who knows, maybe another year or two of progress will see this little sprout finally blossom into something fully formed and beautiful. At the very least, its still worth a download to see what you think.Original text [Wed 20th Dec, 2023 18:00 GMT]: Two years ago, a new developer called Singularity 6comprised of various ex-Riot, Sony, and Blizzard staffannounced Palia, a Massively Multiplayer Community Sim that would aim to bring together the best parts of Stardew Valley and World of Warcraft. Since then, the title has been in early access on PC, and even though its still yet to arrive at its 1.0 release, a Switch version has arrived as part of the continued development. After spending some time with it, Palia shows a lot of promise, though it also notably still feels like an unfinished game.The gameplay loop in Palia feels like it falls neatly between the grindiness of an MMO and the sedate pace of a farm sim. You engage in all the expected homesteading tasks, such as fishing, cooking, and tilling your field, to not just acquire gold to spend on some better furniture for your house, but also to progress an ongoing series of chained questlines from various NPCs that gradually lead you deeper into the world of Palia. Youre encouraged to take things at your own pace and engage in the activities that interest you, though fulfilling quests is usually the quickest way to secure yourself some renown currency that can later be spent at a shrine to increase your focus meter. Focus is what you get when you eat food you cook for yourself, and this consumable resource will ensure that your labor will be rewarded with additional experience for as long as it lasts.Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)Borrowing a bit from the Rune Factory games, Palia also sells itself as an RPG-lite experience, wherein completing various tasks will fill up an experience bar that will further your effectiveness in that skill. Theres no combat to speak of herethough the bug-catching minigame calls to mind the catching mechanics of Pokmon Legends: Arceusbut it still feels satisfying to build your character according to the tasks that interest you. Most tasks also involve some sort of minigame to change up the gameplay, such as having to keep fish within a narrow zone as you reel them in or having to manually till away the soil on a plot of land.The nearby village of Kilima is home to several NPC residents you can get to know and eventually romance, and we particularly appreciated the use of branched dialogue trees here. You can pick responses according to air, fire, water, and earth, which will not only shape that NPCs perception of your personality, but leads to your character generally taking on more traits that align with the element for which youve selected the most responses. Its not the kind of system that pigeonholes you into a specific personality type over time, but we enjoyed how this spruces up conversations by adding a light gameplay element to responses.Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)All of this is well and good for a single-player game, but it bears mentioning that the multiplayer elements feel quite downplayed, to the point that we cant help but wonder why Palia was pitched as an MMO at all. Sure, you can see a few other players roaming around the map and theres a shared chat where you can talk with each other. However, you cant even do something as basic as directly trading materials with other players, though you can make use of a roundabout requests system to exchange goods across the server. Meanwhile, shared activities feel a bit like public events in Destiny, wherein anyone who participates in something like mining a specific node for ore will benefit from the drops it gives out.It would maybe feel odd to have some outlandish farming equivalent to raids to participate in as group content, but it feels like this is a multiplayer game that really struggles to implement its multiplayer features. Why can players visit your home, but only help you with watering crops? Why is there a server item request feature, but no way to directly trade with other players? Perhaps these things are on the roadmap, but Palia is full of weird decisions like this where one cant help but wonder if development resources wouldve been better spent on making this a more fully featured single-player title.Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)As you might expect from a pre-1.0 release, Palia feels very much like a work in progress. At launch, there are only two explorable zones beyond your instanced housing plot, and neither is particularly sprawling. And though theres a fair bit to do between the various tasks and quests available to you, it really begins to run out of steam about a dozen or so hours in as you start to get more into the grind of acquiring resources and waiting for various maker machines to finish converting materials after a fixed amount of real-world time has passed. Make no mistake, there are some good farm sim mechanics here and the potential for a great game is certainly there, but the current build feels like an anemic proof-of-concept of some grand experience that may or may not ever materialize.As for its visuals and performance, Palia is kind of dicey on Switch. The Fortnite-esque art style certainly looks nice, but the resolution gives everything an overly fuzzy appearance in both docked or handheld modes, while muddy textures abound and take an extra few seconds to load no matter where you go. Meanwhile, the frame rate is all over the place, and while this isnt as much of a bother in a game as slow-paced as this, it can be annoying watching things turn into a slideshow for a few seconds when you try to turn the camera as youre running across a field. We didnt note any crashing issuesthough returning to the Switchs home screen for more than a few seconds will boot you and force you to log back inbut Palia overall still feels like a game thats only just barely holding it together on Switch.Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)As a free-to-play live-service game, microtransactions naturally have got to show up somewhere, and here they manifest in a basic cosmetic shop. You can buy things like outfits and gliders either individually or as part of themed bundles, but it bears mentioning that the prices seem kind of high for whats being offered. Buying the bundle will knock off a few bucks, but youre still looking at paying anywhere from $8 to $17 for clothes in a game that isnt very multiplayer-centric. Fortunately, gameplay-related progress isnt gated behind paying real money, but we still wish the cosmetics economy were a little better balanced.

Image: Square EnixJapanese publication Famitsu has held its traditional end-of-year interview round-up with game creators, speaking to 158 different people about their hopes and aspirations for 2025.The replies weren't totally focused on games some of the interviewees spoke about what they were looking forward to seeing in the worlds of movies, music and tech in 2025 but it was interesting to note that two of the Square Enix staffers included in the round-up mentioned Switch 2.When asked what he was looking forward to the most in 2025, Akitoshi Kawazu, creator and general director of the SaGa series, said:It's not a work, but the successor to the Nintendo Switch that Nintendo will announce in 2025 and the corresponding market strategy that Nintendo will develop. I'm looking forward to it as both a user and a creator.Square Enix co-worker Takaya Ishiyama, director of PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, added:The successor to the Nintendo Switch is coming out, right? Before the announcement of a new hardware, there are many moments of suspense and excitement from the perspective of both creators and players.Switch 2 hasn't been officially shown off yet, but we've seen plenty of hints at what it might look like recently. "It's feast or famine, really"Set your AlarmosEverything about the "Switch successor"[source famitsu.com, via x.com]See AlsoShare:01 Damien has been writing professionally about tech and video games since 2007 and oversees all of Hookshot Media's sites from an editorial perspective. He's also the editor of Time Extension, the network's newest site, which paradoxically is all about gaming's past glories. Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...Related ArticlesPSA: Switch 2 Is Getting Revealed In The Next 100 DaysSet your AlarmosFinal Fantasy Team Wants To Hear Your Thoughts About The SeriesFill out the Final Fantasy questionnaireNieR:Automata Surpasses Another Sales Milestone, Plans For 2025 TeasedThe 15th anniversary takes place next yearThe HD-2D Series 'Octopath Traveler' Hits Another Sales MilestoneHere's some new artwork to celebrate

One last mega-deal closed out an eventful 2024. On Tuesday, World Wide Technology (WWT), a tech services company based in St. Louis, announced it has agreed to acquire Canadian IT provider Softchoice in a deal that values the latter at C$1.8 billion (~$1.25 billion).The deal, which is all-cash, was unanimously approved by Softchoices board, but has yet to be voted on by the companys shareholders. Its also subject to court approval and customary closing conditions; the firms expect it to be finalized in late Q1 or early Q2 2025. If it isnt, Softchoice could be on the hook for a C$49 million (~$34 million) termination fee. Its board has retained the right to consider other offers, however. In a statement, Jim Kavanaugh, WWTs co-founder and CEO, said that Softchoices software, cloud, cybersecurity, and AI capabilities will complement WWTs existing product portfolio.Softchoice has been a transformative player in the IT industry for over 35 years, he said, and [this acquisition will] enable us to create even greater value for our clients striving to achieve their digital transformation goals.Softchoice was founded in 1989 by David Holgate and Jone Panavas to supply hard-to-find software products to enterprise customers. The company grew and evolved over the years, and now is one of the largest tech solutions and services providers in North America, according to Softchoices website.In 2013, private equity firm Birch Hill acquired Softchoice for C$412 million (~$286 million), per Crunchbase. Close to a decade later, in 2021, the company filed for an initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) that valued it at around C$1.15 billion (~$800 million).Softchoices financials have been fairly strong as of late. In Q3 2024, the company reported a 10% year-over-year increase in gross profit and 8% uptick in net income, driven by an expanding customer base. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) was $23.2 million for the quarter, up 2.2% from Q3 2023.WWT says its offer represents a total shareholder return of around 62% over Softchoices initial public offering price. Should the deal go through, Softchoice will delist from TSX.We are excited to join WWT, Softchoice president and CEO Andrew Caprara said in a press release. Its scale and global reach, customer base of large organizations, and industry leading infrastructure solutions are a perfect complement to our software and cloud focused solutions, our Canadian presence, and our strength in the North American mid-market.WWT, founded in 1990 by Kavanaugh and David Stewart, helps customers and partners conceptualize, test, and deploy tech solutions, including projects involving cloud computing, data center infrastructure, and app development. The companys annual revenue hovers around $20 billion, and it employs a workforce of more than 10,000 people.Softchoice is WWTs third acquisition in its history. In 2010, WWT acquired Baltimore, Maryland-based Performance Technology Group. And in 2015, WWT bought software company Asynchrony.

Ah, 2024: the year we debated how to pronounce hawk tuah, pondered the health benefits of eating rocks, and held space for a Broadway showstopper. It was a year when the discourse could feel shockingly pure and joyful at least for a few minutes, before we all came tumbling back down to reality.Online culture was more inescapable than ever this year, but where and how we engaged with that culture became increasingly fragmented. So here are the eight viral, much-memed moments that captured the year for me but feel free to let me know what I missed!A Willy Wonka experience turns sourAn organization calling itself the House of Illuminati promised a magical, Willy Wonka-themed experience, with AI-generated fliers advertising everything from Encherining Entertainment to an Imagnation Lab [sic]. The reality proved a bit less enchanting basically, just a sparsely decorated Glasgow warehouse. But while the experience may have been a letdown for anyone who actually paid for a ticket, it provided a seemingly unending source of bleakly hilarious images for online posters.Image: X/Disappointed OptimistGoogle decides its healthy to eat rocksAI-generated content literally moved to the top of our search results, with Google pushing an AI Overviews feature that proved less than entirely reliable. Some of the results that went viral in the first few days after launch included instructions to add glue to pizza, stare into the sun for up to half an hour, and eat one small rock per day. And while Google quickly removed the most high-profile of the groan-worthy results, the debacle illustrated how dumb an AI-centric future could actually be.The internet celebrates Brat summerMore than just an album, Charli XCXs Brat was a vibe, defined by lime green and a celebration of being (in the artists words) that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes. If that sounds a bit vague, dont worry about it: Its brat. Youre brat. Thats brat. For a brief, shining moment, even Kamala Harris was brat.The Olympics are fun againThe 2020 Summer Olympics took place in the shadow of a pandemic (the games didnt even happen until 2021), but this years event marked a return to delightful form. For American viewers, it helped that streaming service Peacock figured out how to showcase the events glorious variety. There were genuinely heartwarming moments, like Celine Dions performance of an Edith Piaf classic, but the internets true heroes were more offbeat, from the unflappability of Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec to the wild moves of Australian breakdancer Raygun.Moo Deng bites her way into our heartsWith a name meaning bouncy pork, this pygmy hippopotamus quickly became, according to a Today Show host, the hottest new It girl on the planet. Footage of Moo Deng living her life in Thailands Khao Kheow Open Zoo took over the internet, thanks to her diminutive size, her feisty-but-harmless bites, and her cute screams. Of course, even something as seemingly pure and delightful as a cute baby hippo had its dark side, as the zoo had to deal with tourists throwing things at poor Moo Deng.The stars of Wicked hold space and fingersWicked was everywhere this fall, as a massive marketing push turned the film into the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation ever. But the biggest moment from the campaign was emphatically unscripted, with stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande seemingly overwhelmed when a journalist told them people are taking the lyrics to Defying Gravity and really holding space with that creating the unforgettable image of Grande reaching over and clutching one of Erivos fingers.The Hawk Tuah girl monetizes her 15 minutes of fame2024s most 2024 celebrity was Hailey Welch, a young woman who became famous for her colorful answer to the question, Whats one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time? Welch decided to capitalize on her notoriety by selling merch, starting a podcast, and even launching the HAWK memecoin. That last part ended badly, with the majority of tokens sold off in what appears to be a classic crypto rug pull. (Welch has denied any wrongdoing.)Bluesky goes from open source underdog to serious social media competitorBluesky opened to the public in February, and a few months after creating an initial identity as scrappy, leftist alternative to X, it shot to the top of the app charts first in Brazil (where X was briefly banned), then in the United States (after Donald Trump won the presidential election with backing from X owner Elon Musk). This, perhaps inevitably, led to hand-wringing thinkpieces about liberal echo chambers, as well as questions about how Blueskys newfound popularity might dilute its good vibes and glorious weirdness.

For the past few years, TechCrunch has looked back at some of the worst, badly handled data breaches and security incidents in the hope maybe! other corporate giants would take heed and avoid making some of the same calamities of yesteryear. To absolutely nobodys surprise, here we are again this year listing much of the same bad behavior from an entirely new class of companies plus, some bonus (dis)honorable mentions from the year that you mightve missed.23andMe blamed users for its massive data breachLast year, genetic testing giant 23andMe lost the genetic and ancestry data on close to 7 million customers, thanks to a data breach that saw hackers brute-force access to thousands of accounts to scrape data on millions more. 23andMe belatedly rolled out multi-factor authentication, a security feature that could have prevented the account hacks.Within days of the new year, 23andMe took to deflecting the blame for the massive data theft onto the victims, claiming that its users did not sufficiently secure their accounts. Lawyers representing the group of hundreds of 23andMe users who sued the company following the hack said the finger-pointing was nonsensical. U.K. and Canadian authorities soon after announced a joint investigation into 23andMes data breach last year.23andMe later in the year laid off 40% of its staff as the beleaguered company faces an uncertain financial future as does the companys vast bank of its customers genetic data.Change Healthcare took months to confirm hackers stole most of Americas health dataChange Healthcare is a healthcare tech company few had heard about until this February when a cyberattack forced the company to shut down its entire network, prompting immediate and widespread outages across the United States and grinding much of the U.S. healthcare system to a halt. Change, owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, handles billing and insurance for thousands of healthcare providers and medical practices across the U.S., processing somewhere between one-third and half of all U.S. healthcare transactions each year.The companys handling of the hack caused by a breach of a basic user account with a lack of multi-factor authentication was criticized by Americans who couldnt get their medications filled or hospital stays approved, affected healthcare providers who were going broke as a result of the cyberattack, and lawmakers who grilled the companys chief executive about the hack during a May congressional hearing. Change Healthcare paid the hackers a ransom of $22 million which the feds have long warned only helps cybercriminals profit from cyberattacks only to have to pony up a fresh ransom to ask another hacking group to delete its stolen data.In the end, it took until October some seven months later to reveal that 100 million-plus people had their private health information stolen in the cyberattack. Granted, it must have taken a while, since it was by all accounts the biggest healthcare data breach of the year, if not ever.Synnovis hack disrupted U.K. healthcare services for monthsThe NHS suffered months of disruption this year after Synnovis, a London-based provider of pathology services, was hit by a ransomware attack in June. The attack, claimed by the Qilin ransomware group, left patients in south-east London unable to get blood tests from their doctors for more than three months, and led to the cancellation of thousands of outpatient appointments and more than 1,700 surgical procedures.In light of the attack, which experts say could have been prevented if two-factor authentication had been in place, Unite, the U.K.s leading trade union, announced that Synnovis staff will strike for five days in December. Unite said the incident had an alarming impact on staff who have been forced to work additional hours and without access to essential computer systems for months while the attack has been dealt with.It remains unknown how many patients are affected by the incident. The Qilin ransomware group claims to have leaked 400 gigabytes of sensitive data allegedly stolen from Synnovis, including patient names, health system registration numbers, and descriptions of blood tests.Snowflake customer hacks snowballed into major data breachesCloud computing giant Snowflake found itself this year at the center of a series of mass hacks targeting its corporate customers, like AT&T, Ticketmaster, and Santander Bank. The hackers, who were later criminally charged with the intrusions, broke in using login details stolen by malware found on the computers of employees at companies that rely on Snowflake. Because of Snowflakes lack of mandated use of multi-factor security, the hackers were able to break into and steal vast banks of data stored by hundreds of Snowflake customers and hold the data for ransom.Snowflake, for its part, said little about the incidents at the time, but conceded that the breaches were caused by a targeted campaign directed at users with single-factor authentication. Snowflake later rolled out multi-factor-by-default to its customers with the hope of avoiding a repeat incident.Columbus, Ohio sued a security researcher for truthfully reporting on a ransomware attackWhen the city of Columbus, Ohio reported a cyberattack over the summer, the citys mayor Andrew Ginther moved to reassure concerned residents that stolen city data was either encrypted or corrupted, and that it was unusable to the hackers who stole it. All the while, a security researcher who tracks data breaches on the the dark web for his job found evidence that the ransomware crew did in fact have access to residents data at least half a million people including their Social Security numbers and drivers licenses, as well as arrest records, information on minors, and survivors of domestic violence. The researcher alerted journalists to the data trove.The city successfully obtained an injunction against the researcher from sharing evidence that he found of the breach, a move seen as an effort by the city to silence the security researcher rather than remediate the breach. The city later dropped its lawsuit.Salt Typhoon hacked phone and internet providers, thanks to a U.S. backdoor lawA 30-year-old backdoor law came back to bite this year after hackers, dubbed Salt Typhoon one of several China-backed hacking groups laying the digital groundwork for a possible conflict with the United States were discovered in the networks of some of the largest U.S. phone and internet companies. The hackers were found accessing the real-time calls, messages, and communications metadata of senior U.S. politicians and high-ranking officials, including presidential candidates.The hackers reportedly broke into some of the companies wiretap systems, which the telcos were required to set up following the passing of the law, dubbed CALEA, in 1994. Now, thanks to the ongoing access to these systems and the data that telecom companies store on Americans the U.S. government is advising U.S. citizens and senior Americans to use end-to-end encrypted messaging apps so that nobody, not even the Chinese hackers, can access their private communications.MoneyGram, the U.S. money transfer giant with more than 50 million customers, was hit by hackers in September. The company confirmed the incident more than a week later after customers experienced days of unexplained outages, disclosing only an unspecified cybersecurity issue. MoneyGram didnt say whether customer data had been taken, but the U.K.s data protection watchdog told TechCrunch in late September that it had received a data breach report from the U.S.-based company, indicating that customer data had been stolen.Weeks later, MoneyGram admitted that hackers had swiped customer data during the cyberattack, including Social Security numbers and government identification documents, as well as transaction information, such as dates and the amounts of each transaction. The company admitted that the hackers also stole criminal investigation information on a limited number of customers. MoneyGram still hasnt said how many customers had data stolen, or how many customers it had directly notified.Hot Topic stays mum after 57 million customer records spill onlineWith 57 million customers affected, the October breach of U.S. retail giant Hot Topic goes down as one of the largest-ever breaches of retail data. However, despite the massive scale of the breach, Hot Topic has not publicly confirmed the incident, nor has it alerted customers or state offices of attorneys general about the data breach. The retailer also ignored TechCrunchs multiple requests for comment.Breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, which obtained a copy of the breached data, alerted close to 57 million affected customers that the stolen data includes their email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, purchases, their gender, and date of birth. The data also included partial credit card data, including credit card type, expiry dates, and the last four digits of the card number.Bonus dis(honorable) mentions:AT&T denied a massive data breach until it couldntAT&Ts first data breach of the year saw more than 73 million customer records dumped online, three years after a hacker posted a smaller sample on a known cybercrime forum. AT&T persistently denied the cache belonged to the company, saying it had no evidence of a data breach. That was until a security researcher discovered that some of the encrypted data found in the dataset was easy to decipher. Those unscrambled records turned out to be account passcodes, which could be used to access AT&T customer accounts. The researcher alerted TechCrunch, and we in turn alerted AT&T, prompting the phone giant to mass-reset the account passcodes of some 7.6 million current customers and notify tens of millions more.SEC fines four cyber companies for downplaying their own breachesNot even cybersecurity companies are immune from breaches, but how four firms handled their cybersecurity scandals this year prompted regulators to impose rare fines for their misconduct. The companies, Avaya, Check Point, Mimecast, and Unisys paid a collective $6.9 million in fines for a range of violations that included negligently downplaying and minimizing the damage of their own breaches stemming from the 2019 SolarWinds espionage attack, per the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.In May, a spyware app called pcTattletale was hacked and its website defaced with downloadable links to archives of data stolen from the companys servers, exposing data on some 138,000 customers who signed up to use the surveillance service. Instead of notifying affected individuals of the breach and those whose devices were compromised without their knowledge the companys founder told TechCrunch that he deleted everything because the data breach could have exposed my customers. pcTattletale, which subsequently shut down following the breach, is the latest in a long list of stalkerware and spyware makers that have lost or exposed data on spyware victims in recent years.Brainstack outed its involvement with mSpy after breachAnother prolific spyware, mSpy, also had a major data breach this year that exposed emails sent to and from the customer support email system dating back to 2014. The emails also exposed the real-world Ukrainian company, Brainstack, that was secretly behind the operation. The company did not dispute the claim when contacted by TechCrunch. Weeks later, Brainstack issued a takedown notice to the hosting provider of DDoSecrets, a transparency collective that hosts a copy of the leaked mSpy data, demanding that the web host takes down the site for hosting confidential corporate data belonging to MSpy, a brand of our company. The web host, FlokiNET, denied the request and instead published the takedown notice, which confirmed that Brainstack was behind mSpys operation as the prior evidence suggested.Evolve Bank, a financial giant that provides service to a number of growing fintech startups, revealed in May that it was hacked by the LockBit ransomware gang, exposing private financial data on around 7.6 million people. As affected startups began to scramble to understand the scale of the breachs impact on their businesses, Evolve opted to send a cease and desist letter to the writer of a respected financial newsletter who was reporting on the ongoing incident, who continued to do so despite the banks spurious legal threat.

Pilaster PuzzleSix Columns, a home by 31/44 Architects for cofounder Will Burges, is raw and warm at onceByJack Murphy December 31, 2024Located outside London, Six Columns features a brick frontage and sloped roof (Nick Dearden)SHARERuins have long been a capital-R Romantic source of inspiration for architects. The formal references and physicalspoliaof prior epochs often serve as the inspirational building blocks for tomorrows architecture. Lately, one contemporary flavor of this inspirational search has flourished among British architects who generationally follow practices like David Chipperfield or Caruso St John and among whom the legacy of figures like Louis Kahn still lingers. Here a sense of solemn spatial expression is joined with a still-life appreciation of domestic messiness and the tightening belts of the U.K.s climate goals. One of the best expressions of this sensibility is Six Columns, a ground-up home designed by Will Burges of31/44 Architectsfor his family. The residence, massed in three wings, occupies a sloping, trapezoidal site outside of London that used to be a side garden. Perhaps at a distance it looks typical with its brick frontage and sloped roof, but up close things veer into more expressive territory. At the ground level, bricks are set in a staggered texture or with small vertical apertures, and one encounters a (perhaps unnecessary?) column that proudly supports a beam on the way to the front door, which itself is set next to a green-marble panel that feels like a Milanese facade. Above, six (perhaps eponymous?) columnspilasters, technicallyare set on either side of a wide glazed opening that brings light into the stairwell.Read more about the house on aninteriormag.com. United Kingdom

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A periodical store in Santa Fe, NMGetty ImagesAs 2024 comes to a close, here's a look back at some of the tech stories that caught my eye in the past year. These articles deliver perspectives on enterprise AI adoption and implementation, the growing pains of digital infrastructure, new cybersecurity vulnerabilities, how overlooking past warnings about technological dependence can lead to devastating failures and how the new business and social dynamics in an increasingly AI-driven world.AI and The Last MileBy Hollis Robbins, Anecdotal, November 15As AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily decision-making, Robbins introduces the concept of the "last mile," the crucial 5% to 15% gap between algorithmic recommendations and human judgment. She argues that while AI promises to democratize services, it's creating a new form of inequality where human insight becomes a luxury good, suggesting AI might inadvertently be creating a new kind of digital divide.How Companies Can Use AI to Find and Close Skills GapsBy Brian Eastwood, MIT Sloan Management Review, June 10A study from MIT's Center for Information Systems Research reveals how companies like Johnson & Johnson are using AI-powered "skills inference" to quantify skills proficiency, identify gaps, and transform workforce development. The research shows this approach has increased participation in professional development programs by 20% while providing executives with valuable heat-map data that assists in strategic workforce planning. It also introduces the concept of a "career lattice" rather than a traditional career ladder.MORE FOR YOUEnterprise Philosophy and The First Wave of AIBy Ben Thompson, Stratechery, September 24Thompson draws a compelling parallel between AI's enterprise adoption and the first wave of computing in the 1960s and 70s. While most AI discussions focus on consumer applications and employee productivity, he argues the real transformation will mirror how mainframe computers revolutionized back-office operations. The piece suggests that like early computing, AI's most significant initial impact will come from top-down enterprise implementation rather than grassroots adoption.Scaling: The State of Play in AIBy Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing, September 16Mollick breaks down AI development through the lens of "scaling laws," the observation that larger AI models consistently outperform smaller ones. He introduces a novel generational framework for understanding AI models and reveals that beyond increasing model size, AI capabilities can be enhanced through increased "thinking" time during operation, suggesting two distinct paths for future AI advancement.Boards Need a New Approach to TechnologyBy Tarun Khanna, Mary C. Beckerle, and Nabil Y. Sakkab, Harvard Business Review, September-OctoberMost corporate boards remain too focused on defense when it comes to technology, emphasizing security and digitization while missing broader opportunities in areas such as new materials, space science, and genomics. Drawing from experiences at companies like AES and Altria, the authors make the case for dedicated board technology committees to help identify and prioritize new opportunities, mitigate appropriate risks, and shepherd core technologies through development. As only 36% of Fortune 100 boards currently have such committees, the authors argue that more companies need to shift to a more offensive stance toward technology.The Great Repatriation? IT Leaders Reset Cloud Strategies to Optimize ValueBy Mary K. Pratt, CIO.com, July 22As companies mature in their cloud journey, many IT leaders are strategically moving select workloads back from public cloud to on-premises environments. About 80% of organizations anticipate some level of repatriation in the next year, driven by concerns over costs, data privacy, and compliance. This represents a refinement of cloud strategies rather than a wholesale rejection, with companies adopting more nuanced hybrid approaches that place workloads where they make the most sense, whether in public cloud, private data centers, or edge computing environments.Pagers Attack Brings to Life Long-Feared Supply Chain ThreatBy Eva Dou and Gerrit De Vynck, The Washington Post, September 19A devastating attack in Lebanon in which thousands of pagers were rigged to explode has exposed critical vulnerabilities in global electronics supply chains. The incident goes beyond previous supply chain infiltrations, like the NSA's interception of Cisco devices or Israel's past use of rigged cell phones for targeted assassinations. The event demonstrates the increasing difficulty and complexity of securing modern electronics against adversaries, challenges which could accelerate efforts by some organizations to relocate critical technology manufacturing domestically.Y2K Sent A Warning. The CrowdStrike Outage Shows We Failed to Heed ItBy Zachary Loeb, TIME, July 24The CrowdStrike software update failure, which caused widespread Windows outages across various industries earlier this year, mirrors the disasters predicted during Y2K. While Y2K was averted through concentrated effort, its key warning about systemic vulnerability went unheeded. The article suggests that, like Y2K, the CrowdStrike incident offers another opportunity to address the "shortsighted thinking" in technology infrastructure and increasing dependence on interconnected systems that can allow for scenarios where a single point of failure can cascade into widespread disruption.Bill Gates Never LeftBy Ashley Stewart, Business Insider, April 30A revealing investigation shows that despite his public departure following misconduct allegations in 2021, Gates remains deeply influential at Microsoft, particularly in shaping its AI strategy. Through internal memos and private meetings, he has been quietly orchestrating Microsoft's AI transformation, including its crucial partnership with OpenAI, all while CEO Satya Nadella publicly distances the company from its founder. The article argues that this behind-the-scenes involvement has been crucial to Microsofts emergence as an AI leader.Looking for AI Use-CasesBy Benedict Evans, ben-evans.com, April 17Evans suggests that while chatbots show immense promise, widespread adoption still faces two key challenges: technical limitations and use-case discovery. Drawing parallels to VisiCalc's success with accountants in 1982, he suggests that rather than becoming a universal tool, AI might follow SQL's path, becoming a powerful underlying technology packaged into thousands of specific applications that solves distinct problems for particular users.Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.