Industry forces led by Apple and Google are pushing for a sharp acceleration of how often website certificates must be updated, but the stated security reason is raising an awful lot of eyebrows.Website certificates, also known as SSL/TLS certificates, use public-key cryptography to authenticate websites to web browsers. Issued by trusted certification authorities (CAs) that verify the ownership of web addresses, site certificates were originally valid for eight to ten years. That window dropped to five years in 2012 and has gradually stepped down to 398 days today.The two leading browser makers, among others, have continued to advocate for a much faster update cadence. In 2023, Google called for site certificates that are valid for no more than 90 days, and in late 2024, Apple submitted a proposal to the Certification Authority Browser Forum (CA/Browser Forum) to have certificates expire in 47 days by March 15, 2028. (Different versions of the proposal have referenced 45 days, so its often referred to as the 45-day proposal.)If the CA/Browser Forum adopts Apples proposal, IT departments that currently update their companys site certificates once a year will have to do so approximately every six weeks, an eightfold increase. Even Googles more modest 90-day proposal would multiply ITs workload by four. Heres what companies need to know to prepare.Why the push for shorter SSL certificate lifespans?The official reason for speeding up the certificate renewal cycle is to make it far harder for cyberthieves to leverage what are known as orphaned domain names to fuel phishing and other cons to steal data and credentials.Orphaned domain names come about when an enterprise pays to reserve a variety of domain names and then forgets about them. For example, Nabisco might think up a bunch of names for cereals that it might launch next year or Pfizer might do the same with various possible drug names and then eight managerial meetings later, all but two of the names are discarded because those products will not be launching. How often does someone bother to relinquish those no-longer-needed domain names?Even worse, most domain name registrars have no mechanism to surrender an already-paid-for name. The registrar just tells the company, Make sure its not auto-renewed, and then dont renew it later.When bad guys find those abandoned sites, they can grab them and try and use them for illegal purposes. Therefore, the argument goes, the shorter the timeframe when those site certificates are valid, the less of a security threat it poses. That is one of those arguments that seems entirely reasonable on a whiteboard, but it doesnt reflect reality in the field.Shortening the timeframe might lessen those attacks, but only if the timeframe is so short it denies the attackers sufficient time to do their evil. And, some security specialists argue, 47 days is still plenty of time. Therefore, those attacks are unlikely to be materially reduced.I dont think it is going to solve the problem that they think is going to be solved or at least that they have advertised it is going to solve, said Jon Nelson, the principal advisory director for security and privacy at the Info-Tech Research Group. Forty-seven days is a world of time for me as a bad guy to do whatever I want to do with that compromised certificate.Himanshu Anand, a researcher at security vendor c/side, agreed: If a bad actor manages to get their hands on a script, they can still very likely find a buyer for it on the dark web over a period of 45 days.That is why Anand is advocating for even more frequent updates. In seven days, the amount of coordination required to transfer and establish a worthy man-in-the-middle attack would make it a lot tighter and tougher for bad actors.But Nelson questions whether expired domain stealing is even a material concern for enterprises today.Of all of the people I talk with, I dont think I have talked with a single one that has had an incident dealing with a compromised certificate, Nelson said. This isnt one of the top ten problems that needs to be solved.That opinion is shared by Alex Lanstein, the CTO of security vendor StrikeReady. I dont want to say that this is a solution in search of a problem, but abusing website certs this is a rare problem, Lanstein said. The number of times when an attacker has stolen a cert and used it to impersonate a stolen domain is small.Getting a handle on faster site certificate updatesNevertheless, it seems clear that sharply accelerated certificate expiration dates are coming. And that will place a dramatically larger burden on IT departments and almost certainly force them to adopt automation. Indeed, Nelson argues that its mostly an effort for vendors to make money by selling their automation tools.Its a cash grab by those tool makers to force people to buy their technology. [IT departments] can handle their PKI [Public Key Infrastructure] internally, and its not an especially heavy lift, Nelson said.But it becomes a much bigger burden when it has to be done every few months or weeks. In a nutshell, renewing a certificate manually requires the site owner to acquire the updated certificate data from the certification authority and transmit it to the hosting company, but the exact process varies depending on the CA, the specific level of certificate purchased, the rules of the hosting/cloud environment, the location of the host, and numerous other variables. The number of certificates an enterprise must renew ranges widely depending on the nature of the business and other circumstances.C/sides Anand predicted that a 45-day update cycle will prove to be enough of a pain for IT to move away from legacy read: manual methods of handling scripts, which would allow for faster handling in the future.Automation can either be handled by third parties such as certificate lifecycle management (CLM) vendors, many of which are also CAs and members of the CA/Browser Forum, or it can be created in-house. The third-party approach can be configured numerous ways, but many involve granting that vendor some level of privileged access to enterprise systems which is something that can be unnerving following the summer 2024 CrowdStrike situation, when a software update by the vendor brought down 8.5 million Windows PCs around the world. Still, that was an extreme example, given that CrowdStrike had access to the most sensitive area of any system: the kernel.The $12 billion publisher Hearst is likely going to deal with the certificate change by allowing some external automation, but the company will build virtual fences around the automation software to maintain strict control, said Hearst CIO Atti Riazi.Larger, more mature organizations have the luxury of resources to place controls around these external entities. And so there can be a more sensible approach to the issue of how much unchecked automation is to exist, along with how much access the third parties are given, Riazi said. There will most likely be a proxy model that can be built where a middle ground is accessed from the outside, but the true endpoints are untouched by third parties.The certificate problem is not all that different from other technology challenges, she added.The issue exemplifies the reality of dealing with risk versus benefit. Organizational maturity, size, and security posture will play great roles in this issue. But the reality of certificates is not going away anytime soon, Riazi said. That is similar to saying we should all be at a passwordless stage by this point, but how many entities are truly passwordless yet?What happens when a website certificate expires?There is a partially misleading term often used when discussing certificate expiration. When a site certificate expires, the public-facing part of the site doesnt literally crash. To the site owner, it can feel like a crash, but it isnt.What happens is that there is an immediate plunge in traffic. Some visitors depending on the security settings of their employer may be fully blocked from visiting a site that has an expired certificate. For most visitors, though, their browser will simply flag that the certificate has expired and warn them that its dangerous to proceed without actually blocking them.But Tim Callan, chief compliance officer at CLM vendor Sectigo and vice chair elect of the CA/Browser Forum, argues that site visitors almost never navigate past the roadblock. Its very foreboding.That said, an expired certificate can sometimes deliver true outages, because the certificate is also powering internal server-to-server interactions.The majority of certs are not powering human-facing websites; they are indeed powering those server-to-server interactions, Callan said. Most of the time, that is what the outage really is: systems stop. In the worst scenarios, server A stops talking to server B and you have a cascading failure.Either way, an expired certificate means that most site visitors wont get to the site, so keeping certificates up to date is crucial. With a faster update cadence on the horizon, the time to make new plans for maintaining certificates is now.All that said, IT departments may have some breathing room. StrikeReadys Lanstein thinks the certification changes may not come as quickly or be as extreme as those outlined in Apples recent proposal.There is zero chance the 45 days will happen by 2028, he said. Google has been threatening to do the six-month thing for like five years. They will preannounce that theyre going to do something, and then in 2026, I guarantee that they will delay it. Not indefinitely, though.C/sides Anand also noted that, for many enterprises, the certificate-maintenance process is multiple steps removed.Most modern public-facing platforms operate behind proxies such as Cloudflare, Fastly, or Akamai, or use front-end hosting providers like Netlify, Firebase, and Shopify, Anand said. Alternatively, many host on cloud platforms like AWS [Amazon Web Services], [Microsoft] Azure, or GCP [Google Cloud Platform], all of which offer automated certificate management. As a result, modern solutions significantly reduce or eliminate the manual effort required by IT teams.

Well, Ill be: Its a new year! Already. Somehow. I think. (For full disclosure, Im still at least 77% asleep from my traditional end-of-year hibernation/hiatus. Kindly forgive any mid-sentence snores or nonsensical outbursts.)While most of the world is obsessing over Shiny New Stuff for 2025, though with the avalanche of awkwardly overlapping announcements known as the annual Consumer Electronics Show, along with all the never-ending crowing over almost-functional AI flummery personally, I like to think of the new year as a perfect opportunity to take stock of stuff you already have, give it all a good old-fashioned tune-up, and get it ready to work even better for you in the months ahead.Especially with Android devices now being supported with current software for longer than ever, youve got every reason to think about your phone(s) and tablet(s) the same way you do your car(s). In both those arenas, a teensy touch of easy occasional maintenance goes an impressively long way in keeping your tech in tip-top shape.And with Android, you really dont need much. In fact, so long as your device hasnt been involved in a metaphorical fender-bender, you dont even need a mechanic just about 20 minutes of time and the willingness to get your fingers a little greasy (metaphorically speaking) with some simple cobweb-clearing spruce-ups.So pop open your hood, pull on the nearest pair of oil-stained coveralls, and get ready to get your hands (metaphorically) dirty: Its time to step into the garage and get your mobile device back in fighting form for the coming year.Make your way through the following six steps and if youre hungry for even more advanced Android awesomeness after that, check out my free Android Shortcut Supercourse to uncover tons of new time-saving tricks.Step #1: Uninstall unnecessary apps Time required: 3 minutesThis first step may sound silly, but believe you me, it can make a mountain of difference: Whether theyre apps that came preinstalled or programs you downloaded once upon a moon, theres a decent chance youve got at least some unused items lurking in the mustier corners of your favorite Android gizmo. And guess what? Those forgotten icons do more than just collect virtual dust. They actively work against your need for Android-oriented speed.First, superfluous apps take up space both in the physical sense of your phones internal storage and in the sense of clutter that makes it tougher to find what you actually want at any given moment. But beyond that, abandoned apps often take a toll on a phones performance and stamina by needlessly eating up resources. And beyond that, they also open the door to some easily avoidable privacy compromises.You can probably scan through your app drawer pretty quickly and figure out which programs you havent opened in the past month or two. If you see something you arent using or something you really dont need touch and hold its icon and then look for the Uninstall option that appears around or above it. Remember, you can always reinstall it later if the need ever comes up.And if an app cant be uninstalled, it probably came preinstalled on your device and is baked into the system courtesy of your phones manufacturer and/or carrier. You should still be able to disable it, though: Either long-press it and then touch the i icon that appears or find and tap its title within the Apps section of your system settings. Then, look for the Disable command, tap it with gusto, and send the thing off to app hell precisely where it belongs. Bonus tip: Want a helping hand in identifying your unused apps? Grab Googles standalone Files app (which notably may not be the same as the Files app that came preinstalled on your phone). Open it once, then set yourself a reminder to check back on it in a month. By then, Files will have built up enough data to be able to tell you which apps you arent actually ever using and to give you a super-simple way to get rid of all of em with a few quick taps.The Files app by Google makes it easy to identify and then uninstall apps you arent actively using.JR Raphael, IDGJust be sure to think through its recommendations carefully before uninstalling anything. Sometimes, the Files app will flag an app as unused if you havent explicitly opened it in a number of weeks even if its something you actually do rely on as a background utility. But its a helpful starting point for this part of the process and a great way to get your tech-tinged tune-up going.And speaking of stuff that runs in the backgroundStep #2: Lock down resource hogs Time required: 5 minutesMaybe theres an app you genuinely do use but that drags your phone down with over-the-top background activity in other words, doing stuff you dont need it to do while you arent actively looking at it. Facebook and Instagram are both notorious for this sort of obnoxious behavior, and theyre anything but the only offenders.Lucky for us, though, even when an app is poorly designed in this way with abusive background activity and no easy option to stop it you can still reclaim control. Start by opening up the Battery section of your system settings and finding the app-by-app battery usage breakdown. (On some devices, you may have to tap the three-dot menu icon in the upper-right corner of the Battery settings to uncover that option.) Thisll work best if you do it toward the end of a day, when your phone has plenty of activity to analyze.Tap any app with high battery usage and then see how much of its activity is happening in the background while you arent actively using it. For any programs with high amounts of background activity, ask yourself: Is this app doing something in the background that actually matters? For instance, do you really need Facebook or any other social media and news tools to be refreshing their feeds while you arent looking at em? Probably not. But lots of apps like those do that by default and end up draining your devices battery and monopolizing its horsepower as a result.For any such items you come across, youve got two options: Look in the apps own settings to see if theres a way to turn off its background activity or, provided your phone is running 2017s Android 8 release or higher (which, by golly, itd better be!), use Androids own background restriction option within your phones Battery settings or Apps settings to shut it down at the system level.Disabling an apps background usage can cut down on unnecessary resource use and make your entire phone feel faster.JR Raphael, IDGLets check one more place, just to round things out: Head over to the Network & Internet section of your system settings (or the Connections section, if youre on a Samsung phone) and tap the line labeled Data usage or, if dont see that line, tap either Internet or Mobile network and then tap the gear icon next to your carriers name followed by App data usage. (On some devices, you might see App data usage or possibly Mobile data usage right on that initial screen.)However you get there, you should find a list of how much data different apps have been using as of late. Select any apps with high amounts and see how much of their data transferring is going on in the background. If an app is using a significant amount of background data for no apparent reason, take away its ability to do so by deactivating the Background data toggle on that same screen which will in turn free up precious processing power and battery juice in addition to stopping the needless drain on your mobile data plan.With both parts of this step, just be sure to use common sense and avoid disabling background permissions for any system-level tools things like your Phone app or Android OS as well as for any apps that genuinely need such capabilities in order to operate (like a messaging app, for instance, which wouldnt be able to look for new incoming messages if it didnt have background data and battery access).Step #3: Nuke annoying notifications Time required: 4 minutesThis next step is less about system performance and more about your own sanity and ability to get stuff done. Notifications are distractions, after all and odds are, your phones giving you plenty of attention-demanding alerts that are ultimately slowing you down.Think about all the notifications that show up on your Android device and then think carefully about how many of em provide you with truly pertinent info that warrants the interruption. Do you need to know about every breaking news story the second it happens instead of finding that info when you actively seek it out on your own? What about social media mentions or incoming emails? Only you can decide what makes sense for you, but Id be willing to wager you have at least a couple (and more likely a coupon dozen) types of notifications youd be better off without.If you think of any such examples, march into the Notifications section of your system settings and tap App notifications. You can then select any app youve got and either turn off all of its alerts, at the system level, or disable only certain types of alerts its able to generate for instance, leaving on notifications for direct messages in LinkedIn but shutting off all the other types of interruptions that service loves to send your way.You can also get even more nuanced and change the way certain types of alerts appear maybe setting an apps less important notifications to show up silently so youll see em eventually but wont be bothered when they arrive. Bonus tip: Provided your phone is running Android 9 or higher, theres a quick n easy way to find your worst notification offenders: Head into that same Notifications section of your system settings, tap App notifications, and then look for the Most recent bar or the All dropdown at the top of the screen.Tap that, then tap the selector at the top of the screen and change it to Most frequent and then, youll see an ordered list of exactly which apps are interrupting you the most. You can tap on any apps name from that list to jump directly to its notification controls and tell it to kindly hush its virtual beak.Your Android notification panel doesnt have to be an inefficient, clutter-filled source of stress.JR Raphael, IDG And if you want even more notification-improving intelligence, check out my free Android Notification Power-Pack to explore six next-level notification enhancers thatll make any Android device instantly more effective.Step #4: Clear out your storage Time required: 3 minutesAndroid phones often have limited amounts of local storage especially when youre working with an old Android device or one thats more on the midrange to lower-end side of the spectrum. So the next step in our speed-up will clear out the clutter and free up some of your devices precious local space. Thatll give you more room for future downloads and app installs, of course, but it can also help your phone run a heck of a lot more smoothly.The biggest storage-sucking culprit, not surprisingly, tends to be content from your camera so if you arent already using Google Photos excellent cloud-syncing capability, head into the apps settings and set that up now. Then, you can safely erase all the local copies of your photos and videos and still access them as if they were on your device. Plus, you can get to em fromother phones or computers, too.The rest is refreshingly easy: Remember that Google Files app we were talking about a minute ago? Open it up and look through the cards on its Clean screen. Theyll show you a bunch of smart suggestions for stuff you can clean up and delete, ranging from junk files and duplicates to already backed-up photos, videos, and other files you arent using and likely dont need. You can review all of the suggestions and then click a button to sweep any of the associated files away without ever leaving the app.Youll have a smoother and quite possibly speedier Android experience with less stuff clogging up your storage.JR Raphael, IDG Bonus tip: If youre using a Google-made Pixel phone, look for the Smart Storage option within the settings area of the Files app (which you can get to by tapping the three-line menu icon in the apps upper-left corner and then selecting Settings). Activating that will allow your phone to automatically remove already-backed-up photos and videos whenever your storage is running low or after the files have been on your device for a certain amount of time taking all the heavy lifting out of your hands and making the ongoing maintenance almost entirely effortless.Step #5: Spruce up your home screen Time required: 4 minutesAlmost done! Up next is a simple step thats all about organization, speed, and the resulting efficiency thatll bring you all by getting your home screen tidied up and in optimal working order.An organized home screen makes it faster and easier to get to the stuff you use the most and realistically, for most of us, thats a relatively small number of items. Remember: This isnt iOS! You dont have to treat your home screen as a generically cluttered grid of every single thing youve got installed.So look at every item on your home screen and think carefully about how often you use it. If it isnt something you open at least once daily or close to it, take it off. That way, your home screen will act as an efficient launching pad for your most essential apps, shortcuts, and widgets the stuff you actually access on a regular basis and then everything else can be pulled up quickly as needed via your scrolling alphabetical app drawer. Bonus tip: If you really want to take your home screen efficiency to the next level, consider exploring some of the many excellent custom Android launchers that are out there and waiting. They replace your standard home screen environment with something much more customizable for your specific work flow and preferred methods of getting stuff accomplished, and they can make any phone feel meaningfully faster, more efficient, and also just more pleasant to use.Step #6: Flip Androids secret superspeed switch Time required: 1 minuteLast but not least is one of the most powerful speed-boosters for any Android device, no matter how new or high-end it may (or may not) be.Its a secret switch that puts your phone into a little-known and deeply buried turbo mode of sorts. Itll take you virtually no time to find and activate, and trust me: Youll notice a definite difference the second you do.Ive got all the info you need in this quick n simple guide.And with that, my dearest darling, your speed-seeking Android adjustments are complete. Give yourself a hearty pat on the back and grab a well-deserved donut and get ready for your phone to roll out of the shop and rev its engine all over the world.Ready for even more advanced Android knowledge? Come check out my free Android Shortcut Supercourse next. Youll learn tons of time-saving tricks for your freshly optimized phone!

MIT Technology Reviews Whats Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of themhere.For the last couple of years weve had a go at predicting whats coming next in AI. A fools game given how fast this industry moves. But were on a roll, and were doing it again.How did we score last time round? Our four hot trends to watch out for in 2024 included what we called customized chatbotsinteractive helper apps powered by multimodal large language models (check: we didnt know it yet, but we were talking about what everyone now calls agents, the hottest thing in AI right now); generative video (check: few technologies have improved so fast in the last 12 months, with OpenAI and Google DeepMind releasing their flagship video generation models, Sora and Veo, within a week of each other this December); and more general-purpose robots that can do a wider range of tasks (check: the payoffs from large language models continue to trickle down to other parts of the tech industry, and robotics is top of the list).We also said that AI-generated election disinformation would be everywhere, but herehappilywe got it wrong. There were many things to wring our hands over this year, but political deepfakes were thin on the ground.So whats coming in 2025? Were going to ignore the obvious here: You can bet that agents and smaller, more efficient, language models will continue to shape the industry. Instead, here are five alternative picks from our AI team.1. Generative virtual playgroundsIf 2023 was the year of generative images and 2024 was the year of generative videowhat comes next? If you guessed generative virtual worlds (a.k.a. video games), high fives all round.We got a tiny glimpse of this technology in February, when Google DeepMind revealed a generative model called Genie that could take a still image and turn it into a side-scrolling 2D platform game that players could interact with. In December, the firm revealed Genie 2, a model that can spin a starter image into an entire virtual world.Other companies are building similar tech. In October, the AI startups Decart and Etched revealed an unofficial Minecraft hack in which every frame of the game gets generated on the fly as you play. And World Labs, a startup cofounded by Fei-Fei Licreator of ImageNet, the vast data set of photos that kick-started the deep-learning boomis building what it calls large world models, or LWMs.One obvious application is video games. Theres a playful tone to these early experiments, and generative 3D simulations could be used to explore design concepts for new games, turning a sketch into a playable environment on the fly. This could lead to entirely new types of games.But they could also be used to train robots. World Labs wants to develop so-called spatial intelligencethe ability for machines to interpret and interact with the everyday world. But robotics researchers lack good data about real-world scenarios with which to train such technology. Spinning up countless virtual worlds and dropping virtual robots into them to learn by trial and error could help make up for that.Will Douglas Heaven2. Large language models that reasonThe buzz was justified. When OpenAI revealed o1 in September, it introduced a new paradigm in how large language models work. Two months later, the firm pushed that paradigm forward in almost every way with o3a model that just might reshape this technology for good. Most models, including OpenAIs flagship GPT-4, spit out the first response they come up with. Sometimes its correct; sometimes its not. But the firms new models are trained to work through their answers step by step, breaking down tricky problems into a series of simpler ones. When one approach isnt working, they try another. This technique, known as reasoning (yeswe know exactly how loaded that term is), can make this technology more accurate, especially for math, physics, and logic problems.Its also crucial for agents.In December, Google DeepMind revealed an experimental new web-browsing agent called Mariner. In the middle of a preview demo that the company gave to MIT Technology Review, Mariner seemed to get stuck. Megha Goel, a product manager at the company, had asked the agent to find her a recipe for Christmas cookies that looked like the ones in a photo shed given it. Mariner found a recipe on the web and started adding the ingredients to Goels online grocery basket.Then it stalled; it couldnt figure out what type of flour to pick. Goel watched as Mariner explained its steps in a chat window: It says, I will use the browsers Back button to return to the recipe.It was a remarkable moment. Instead of hitting a wall, the agent had broken the task down into separate actions and picked one that might resolve the problem. Figuring out you need to click the Back button may sound basic, but for a mindless bot its akin to rocket science. And it worked: Mariner went back to the recipe, confirmed the type of flour, and carried on filling Goels basket.Google DeepMind is also building an experimental version of Gemini 2.0, its latest large language model, that uses this step-by-step approach to problem solving, called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. But OpenAI and Google are just the tip of the iceberg. Many companies are building large language models that use similar techniques, making them better at a whole range of tasks, from cooking to coding. Expect a lot more buzz about reasoning (we know, we know) this year.Will Douglas Heaven3. Its boom time for AI in scienceOne of the most exciting uses for AI is speeding up discovery in the natural sciences. Perhaps the greatest vindication of AIs potential on this front came last October, when the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize for chemistry to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper from Google DeepMind for building the AlphaFold tool, which can solve protein folding, and to David Baker for building tools to help design new proteins.Expect this trend to continue next year, and to see more data sets and models that are aimed specifically at scientific discovery. Proteins were the perfect target for AI, because the field had excellent existing data sets that AI models could be trained on.The hunt is on to find the next big thing. One potential area is materials science. Meta has released massive data sets and models that could help scientists use AI to discover new materials much faster, and in December, Hugging Face, together with the startup Entalpic, launched LeMaterial, an open-source project that aims to simplify and accelerate materials research. Their first project is a data set that unifies, cleans, and standardizes the most prominent material data sets.AI model makers are also keen to pitch their generative products as research tools for scientists. OpenAI let scientists test its latest o1 model and see how it might support them in research. The results were encouraging.Having an AI tool that can operate in a similar way to a scientist is one of the fantasies of the tech sector. In a manifesto published in October last year, Anthropic founder Dario Amodei highlighted science, especially biology, as one of the key areas where powerful AI could help. Amodei speculates that in the future, AI could be not only a method of data analysis but a virtual biologist who performs all the tasks biologists do. Were still a long way away from this scenario. But next year, we might see important steps toward it.Melissa Heikkil4. AI companies get cozier with national securityThere is a lot of money to be made by AI companies willing to lend their tools to border surveillance, intelligence gathering, and other national security tasks.The US military has launched a number of initiatives that show its eager to adopt AI, from the Replicator programwhich, inspired by the war in Ukraine, promises to spend $1 billion on small dronesto the Artificial Intelligence Rapid Capabilities Cell, a unit bringing AI into everything from battlefield decision-making to logistics. European militaries are under pressure to up their tech investment, triggered by concerns that Donald Trumps administration will cut spending to Ukraine. Rising tensions between Taiwan and China weigh heavily on the minds of military planners, too.In 2025, these trends will continue to be a boon for defense-tech companies like Palantir, Anduril, and others, which are now capitalizing on classified military data to train AI models.The defense industrys deep pockets will tempt mainstream AI companies into the fold too. OpenAI in December announced it is partnering with Anduril on a program to take down drones, completing a year-long pivot away from its policy of not working with the military. It joins the ranks of Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, which have worked with the Pentagon for years.Other AI competitors, which are spending billions to train and develop new models, will face more pressure in 2025 to think seriously about revenue. Its possible that theyll find enough non-defense customers who will pay handsomely for AI agents that can handle complex tasks, or creative industries willing to spend on image and video generators.But theyll also be increasingly tempted to throw their hats in the ring for lucrative Pentagon contracts. Expect to see companies wrestle with whether working on defense projects will be seen as a contradiction to their values. OpenAIs rationale for changing its stance was that democracies should continue to take the lead in AI development, the company wrote, reasoning that lending its models to the military would advance that goal. In 2025, well be watching others follow its lead.James ODonnell5. Nvidia sees legitimate competitionFor much of the current AI boom, if you were a tech startup looking to try your hand at making an AI model, Jensen Huang was your man. As CEO of Nvidia, the worlds most valuable corporation, Huang helped the company become the undisputed leader of chips used both to train AI models and to ping a model when anyone uses it, called inferencing.A number of forces could change that in 2025. For one, behemoth competitors like Amazon, Broadcom, AMD, and others have been investing heavily in new chips, and there are early indications that these could compete closely with Nvidiasparticularly for inference, where Nvidias lead is less solid.A growing number of startups are also attacking Nvidia from a different angle. Rather than trying to marginally improve on Nvidias designs, startups like Groq are making riskier bets on entirely new chip architectures that, with enough time, promise to provide more efficient or effective training. In 2025 these experiments will still be in their early stages, but its possible that a standout competitor will change the assumption that top AI models rely exclusively on Nvidia chips.Underpinning this competition, the geopolitical chip war will continue. That war thus far has relied on two strategies. On one hand, the West seeks to limit exports to China of top chips and the technologies to make them. On the other, efforts like the US CHIPS Act aim to boost domestic production of semiconductors.Donald Trump may escalate those export controls and has promised massive tariffs on any goods imported from China. In 2025, such tariffs would put Taiwanon which the US relies heavily because of the chip manufacturer TSMCat the center of the trade wars. Thats because Taiwan has said it will help Chinese firms relocate to the island to help them avoid the proposed tariffs. That could draw further criticism from Trump, who has expressed frustration with US spending to defend Taiwan from China.Its unclear how these forces will play out, but it will only further incentivize chipmakers to reduce reliance on Taiwan, which is the entire purpose of the CHIPS Act. As spending from the bill begins to circulate, next year could bring the first evidence of whether its materially boosting domestic chip production.James ODonnell

Crew members of the original staff of Annapurna Interactive will be taking on new responsibilities in the form of a new company. As a result, the new company will essentially absorb Take-Two Interactives independent publishing label, Private Division.This takeover of Private Division comes a couple of months after Take-Two Interactive had announced selling the label to a buyer that was, at the time, undisclosed. According to a report by Bloomberg, the buyer of Private Division is an Austin, Texas-based equity firm named Haveli Investments.Since then, the report indicates that Haveli has tasked former staff members from Annapurna Interactive with running Private Division. This includes unreleased game from Private Division, like Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game. Other games that will be taken on by this new company include Kerbal Space Program and its sequel, and an unannounced title from the studio behind the Pokmon games, Game Freak.Haveli Investments itself has not yet made any announcements or statements about the new company, which will essentially include a mix of employees from Private Division and former workers from Annapurna Interactive.Back when Take-Two had originally sold Private Division, CEO Strauss Zelnick referred to the move as a strategic decision that would allow the company to focus its resources on its main upcoming projects, and said that its strengths lied more in the AAA space than the indie market.We made this strategic decision so that we could focus all of our resources on growing our core and mobile businesses for the long term, said Zelnick in November. Were really best at these big AAA experiences. We have the biggest intellectual properties in the interactive entertainment business and some of the biggest intellectual properties in the overall entertainment business, and to make sequels to existing beloved franchises, as well as create new hit intellectual properties, is our mission.Quite a few games had been released under the Private Division label since it was originally created back in 2017. This includes games from a variety of markets, from indie titles like OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome, to more ambitious games like Kerbal Space Program 2 and The Outer Worlds.Annapurna Interactive, on the other hand, had quite a tumultuous year, with most of its staff having resigned from their jobs back in September in the wake of a power struggle between its leadership. The company still currently exists, but hasnt announced any new titles. The company is reportedly still developing Silent Hill: Townfall, which doesnt yet have a release date.

html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"SideFX has begun releasing custom Houdini tools developed for Project Grot, its in-house tech demo intended to showcase procedural world-building techniques for game development.So far, two tools have been released: one for generating procedural ruins, and one for procedural strands of flesh, both also available as .hda files that can be used in Unreal Engine.Project Grot: showcasing art-directable techniques for building game worlds procedurallyLike 2022s Project Titan, Project Grot is an in-house tech demo designed to test procedural workflows for creating 3D environment content for use in games.The art-directed scene depicts an ancient, cave-like environment, partially filled with lava, and with walls and rocks connected with unnervingly organic-looking strands of flesh.It was created by a team of five artists working under a two-month deadline, with the custom procedural tools created in Houdini then used to lay out the level inside Unreal Engine 5.Procedural ruins and procedural flesh tools now available to downloadSo far, two of those custom procedural tools have been released publicly, the first being one for generating procedural ruins.Shown in the video above, it enables artists to turn rough blockout geometry into detailed high-poly meshes by painting areas of procedural damage on their surfaces using vertex colors.The other, shown in the video at the top of the story, generates procedural webs of flesh.It makes use of raycasting to shoot curves between surfaces in the scene that will later become flesh, then clusters curves based on proximity to give an organic structure to the results.The Project Grot homepage also hosts videos without downloadable supporting files on creating the volcanic landscape and lava, and creating a rock-generation tool.Price and system requirementsThe Project Grot tools are available free as Houdini .hip files and .hda files that can be imported and edited in DCC applications compatible with Houdini Engine, including Unreal Engine.To use the .hda files inside Unreal Engine 5, you will need the Houdini Engine for Unreal plugin. It is now included in the Houdini installer, and is free for use on commercial projects, but only works with commercial licenses of the software, not free Houdini Apprentice licenses.You can find pricing and system requirements for Houdini in this story on Houdini 20.5.Read more about Project Grot on the SideFX websiteDownload the free Project Grot procedural ruins tool for Houdini and Unreal EngineDownload the free Project Grot procedural flesh tool for Houdini and Unreal EngineHave your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.

Lenovo Legion Go S is first officially licensed third-party PC handheld to use SteamOSConsole will launch in May for $499Image credit: Lenovo/Steam News by Sophie McEvoy Staff Writer Published on Jan. 8, 2025 The recently announced Lenovo Legion Go S is the first third-party PC handheld licensed to use Valve's SteamOS.In a blog post, Valve said the operating system that runs on Steam Deck has been updated to fully support the Legion Go S, a smaller version of Lenovo's Legion Go which launched in 2023.As reported by The Verge, the SteamOS Legion Go S will be released in May for $499. A Windows 11 version of the console will launch this month.Valve said it is also planning to expand the capabilities of SteamOS to other third party devices. It will be shipping a beta version of SteamOS for users to download and test.No timeframe has been announced for the SteamOS beta.

Jar of Sparks halts production on debut game as it looks for new publisherStudio was founded in 2022 as a first-party developer for NetEaseImage credit: Jar of Sparks News by Sophie McEvoy Staff Writer Published on Jan. 8, 2025 Seattle-based studio Jar of Sparks has stopped development on its first project as it looks for a new publisher.In a statement posted to LinkedIn, founder and CEO Jerry Hook said team members would be "exploring new opportunities" as the studio looks for a publishing partner "who can help bring [its] creative vision to life.""Throughout this journey, our passionate, driven, and innovative team took bold risks and pushed boundaries, striving to create something truly new and exciting for the industry," wrote Hook."As we prepare for this next step, our talented team members will be exploring new opportunities."It is unclear how many employees have been affected by the decision.In a separate post on LinkedIn, Hook noted that the studio would be "working over the next few weeks to find all of [its] team new homes" as the project comes to a close.Jar of Sparks was announced in 2022 as an in-house studio for NetEase led by Hook. He was joined by creative director Paul Crocker, executive producer Greg Stone, and gameplay director Steve Dyck.Hook previously worked for 343 Industries as head of design on Halo Infinite. He also worked as business director for the Destiny franchise at Bungie and spent 11 years at Microsoft.

Chris Kerr, News EditorJanuary 8, 20252 Min ReadImages via Lenovo / ValveSteamOS is officially expanding beyond the Steam Deck with the arrival of the Lenovo Legion Go S.The Legion Go S was unveiled at CES 2025 and will become the first officially licensed third-party handheld to leverage Valve's operating system.Notably, Valve has pledged to fully support the device to "improve compatibility with other handhelds." It will ship a beta version of SteamOS that can be used on other handheld devices before the Legion Go S launches in May 2025.That's big news for anybody who wants to start tinkering with the operating system on third-party hardware. "The same work that we are doing to support the Lenovo Legion Go S will improve compatibility with other handhelds," said Valve."Ahead of Legion Go S shipping, we will be shipping a beta of SteamOS which should improve the experience on other handhelds, and users can download and test this themselves. And of course we'll continue adding support and improving the experience with future releases."Valve pitches a 'seamless experiences' across third-party devicesValve explained it wants SteamOS to "provide the same seamless experience customers expect" across an array of hardware. As it stands, the OS only officially ships on Steam Deck, but Valve is committed to expanding support.The operating system is Linux based and according to Valve "runs the vast majority of the Steam library" thanks to a Proton compatibility layer. "This allows developers to ship games for Windows without worrying about porting to Linux, and games will seamlessly work on SteamOS," added the company.Titles that run well on SteamOS are handed a 'Deck Verified' seal of approval by Valve so Steam Deck owners know what sort of experience they're likely to have before splashing the cash.The Steam Deck had sold "multiple millions" of units as of November 2023.That vague metric was dished out by Valve, which hasn't provided precise sales figures but has boasted about increasing production over the years. It has also expanded the Steam Deck lineup with the launch of an OLED model.About the AuthorChris KerrNews Editor, GameDeveloper.comGame Developer news editor Chris Kerr is an award-winning journalist and reporter with over a decade of experience in the game industry. His byline has appeared in notable print and digital publications including Edge, Stuff, Wireframe, International Business Times, andPocketGamer.biz. Throughout his career, Chris has covered major industry events including GDC, PAX Australia, Gamescom, Paris Games Week, and Develop Brighton. He has featured on the judging panel at The Develop Star Awards on multiple occasions and appeared on BBC Radio 5 Live to discuss breaking news.See more from Chris KerrDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

Home appliance manufacturer Bosch is showing off its first Matter-enabled appliance on the show floor at CES this week. The 100 Series Frech Door Bottom Mount Refrigerator launched in November and should be available to buy in the US this spring. The fridge retails for $2,500 and has a chip on board that supports Matter. A firmware update to the smart home standard will come this summer, says Eelco Lammertink of BSH, which owns Bosch, Siemens, Thermador, and Gaggenau.The 100 series is the sister product to the Matter-enabled Siemens XXL Fridge I spotted at IFA in Berlin last November. That built-in model will come to the European market on a similar timeline. Lammertink tells me BSH plans to bring Matter to all its appliances across its Bosch, Siemens, and Thermador lines, starting with refrigerators this year, one more appliance category next year, and three in 2026.This Bosch fridge will work with Samsung SmartThings and Amazon Alexa this year. Bosch was demoing the integrations at CES via a SmartThings map view on the screen behind it and an Echo Show on the table. Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The VergeThe 100 Series will support Matter 1.3, allowing you to control the temperature remotely and receive notifications from the fridge on your smart home platform of choice. That way, a smart speaker can announce when the door has been left open, if you want. While many smart fridges already have these features, with Matter, the connection between the appliance and the ecosystem becomes local making it faster and more secure. Currently, only Samsung SmartThings and Home Assistant support appliances in Matter, but Lammertink tells me that Amazon will support them this year. There is no word on Google Home or Apple Home yet.Lammertink says the plan is to bring energy reporting and energy management capabilities to the fridge. This would enable it to be part of a Matter-enabled whole home energy management system. Sadly, he said they won't be updating existing appliances to Matter (bad news for my Thermoador range and dishwasher.) The challenges are too big, he said. We just can't risk bricking your fridge.What is Matter?Matter is a smart home interoperability standard designed to provide a common language for connected devices to communicate locally in your home without relying on a cloud connection. It is built to be secure and private, easy to set up, and widely compatible.Developed by Apple, Amazon, Google, and Samsung (and others), Matter is an open-sourced, IP-based connectivity software layer for smart home devices. It works over Wi-Fi, ethernet, and the low-power mesh networking protocol Thread and currently supports most of the main device types in the home. These include lighting, thermostats, locks, robot vacuums, refrigerators, dishwashers, dryers, ovens, smoke alarms, air quality monitors, EV chargers, and more.A smart home gadget with the Matter logo can be set up and used with any Matter-compatible ecosystem via a Matter controller and controlled by more than one with a feature called multi-admin. Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple Home are some major smart home platforms supporting Matter, along with hundreds of device manufacturers.

Washington state is suing T-Mobile for allegedly failing to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities that enabled a hacker to expose the personal data of 79 million people nationwide. The consumer protection lawsuit filed by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday stems from a cyberattack that began in March 2021 and went unnoticed until T-Mobile disclosed the breach in August.The filing asserts that T-Mobile failed to address certain security vulnerabilities that the company was aware of for years, and did not properly notify more than two million Washington residents who were impacted by the breach. The lawsuit accuses T-Mobile of downplaying the severity of the breach, which exposed the personal information of current, former, and prospective customers including their names, phone numbers, physical addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and drivers license / ID numbers.The notifications that T-Mobile issued about the data breach violated the Consumer Protections Act by omitting key information that made it difficult for people to assess if they were at risk of identity theft or fraud, according to the filing. The lawsuit also says that T-Mobile did not meet industry standards for cybersecurity for years prior to the hack, and used obvious passwords to protect accounts that could access consumer information.This significant data breach was entirely avoidable, Ferguson said in a statement. T-Mobile had years to fix key vulnerabilities in its cybersecurity systems and it failed.This isnt the first time that Washington state has taken action against T-Mobile, with Ferguson having successfully persuaded the company to make clear the limitations of its no-contract wireless service plan back in 2013.Fergusons latest lawsuit is seeking compensation for customers impacted by the 2021 breach and a court order that would force T-Mobile to bring its cybersecurity practices in line with industry standards, alongside improving transparency and communication around future data breaches. This follows T-Mobile paying $350 million in 2022 to settle a class-action lawsuit stemming from the 2021 hack, and a further $15.75 million fine last year over an FCC investigation into its repeated cybersecurity incidents.