Britain's competition watchdog said Tuesday that it's opening a formal antitrust investigation into Google's search and search advertising business.

Artificial intelligence was everywhere at CES in 2025, but in the coming months, its going to be a more permanent part of the Las Vegas landscape.This March will see the soft opening of the Otonomus Hotel, which strives to be different than your typical Vegas hotel room or suite. Located less than 10 minutes from the citys famous Strip, the Otonomus leans heavily into AI as its differentiating factor.We are the first true AI-powered hotel in the world, says Philippe Ziade, founder and CEO of Otonomus. Travelers dont want a one-size-fits-all experience. They want the thrill of creating a personalized experience.With a base price of $300 per night, Otonomus hopes to mimic the Airbnb model, where travelers can find a property that suits their personality, while adding the consistency of a hotel experience. The flagship Las Vegas location, which is located about 2 miles west of Allegiant Stadium at the south end of the Strip, will showcase two proprietary AI systems.FIRO is the AI-powered booking engine, which optimizes the hotels room allocations while maximizing revenue. KEE is an AI-powered app that acts as everything from the guests room key to their own concierge.Booking a stay at Otonomous will be a bit different than getting a room at a Strip hotel or any of the chains youre familiar with. Through FIROs efficiencies, you can book anything from a one-bedroom (with living room) to a six-bedroom suite. The system will then configure adjoining rooms to create what youre looking for. (The hotel can accommodate roughly 1,100 guests.)From there, the personalization begins. Want daily cleaning? A room across from the pool? Maybe youd prefer to stay in a quiet area? Tell the system what you want and it can be yours (with a slight upcharge for each personalized element).Once youve made your reservation, the hotel begins an onboarding process, gathering as much information about you as it can. Through a gamified Q&A session, it will ask a series of questions (offering perks such as a free drink at the bar). Assuming you give it your permission, it will also scrape the internet and social media sites for information on you, analyzing that data to personalize (and monetize) your stay. FIRO will build an avatar based off the data it gathers to project what you may or may not want on your vacation.Check-in will be automatic. Theres no front desk. Instead, everything is managed through the app.Want room service or more toilet paper? KEE lets you place orders, which are delivered via a robot butler. The AI keeps track of everythingfrom the temperature you like to maintain in the room to when you head in and out. That data is retained to further customize your stay on your next visit.When your visit is over, Otonomus will ask what you liked or didnt like, examining the gaps between its projection and your actual stay to teach the AI.That learning about what the customer wants and trying to anticipate needs is one of the differentiators between Otonomus and other hotels. Other chains might know your number of stays and which on-property restaurants you visited, but they dont use that information to customize your stay or have your favorite drink waiting for you.After its soft opening, the Las Vegas Otonomus will have its official opening in Mayand Ziade says hes already in the permitting stage of a second Otonomus in the city, this one close to downtown Las Vegas. Down the road, he says, Otonomous could open in other cities and countries. (Right now, it has its eyes on Dubai.)Beyond maximizing revenue with customization options, Otonomus also has lower costs than some of its competitors. Labor expenses are lower since theres no check-in desk and cleaning is done by appointment only. The off-Strip location means the land costs are lower and the hotel doesnt have to use union workers.Honing and training the AI wont be cheap, of course, but Ziade is counting on the technologys benefits to lure travelers who are looking for a unique experience during their visit to Las Vegas.Were not just using AI for the sake of using AI, he says. Were reinventing hospitality by delivering exactly what each guest wants.

A grass-topped roof of compacted earth appears to float above this glazed restaurant near Parma, Italy, designed by Turin-based studio Carlo Ratti Associati for tomato company Mutti.Named Quisimangia, or Here We Eat, the restaurant will operate as a public restaurant by night and a staff canteen by day, serving workers at the nearby Mutti factory that is currently being redeveloped by Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) following a 2017 competition.Looking to "fully immerse" diners in the surrounding landscape, CRA's design for the restaurant involved excavating the site to create a slightly sunken interior, with the leftover soil used to create a thick green roof.Carlo Ratti Associati has completed a restaurant for tomato company Mutti"The canteen is conceived as a clod of earth lifted from the ground, with a green roof crafted from compacted earth sourced directly on site," the studio told Dezeen."This bold gesture creates a space where diners are fully immersed in the surrounding vegetation, literally dining at the level of the meadow," it continued.Connecting to a former tavern facing the adjacent road, which has been repurposed as the canteen's kitchen, the glazed dining hall curves gently to overlook a 1.1-hectare garden designed by landscape architect Paolo Pejrone.Soil from site excavations were used to create the restaurant's roofCurving bar-style seating lines the dining hall's fully-glazed facade, elevating diners to be almost level with the grass outside, while in the centre of the space, tables are organised around a central serving area.Earth excavated from the site was compressed to create the raw edge of the canteen's roof, which is elevated five metres above the dining areas on slender black steel columns and planted with local vegetation.Read: Junya Ishigami hides mud-covered house and restaurant below ground level in Japan"The defining moment is the elevated earth roof a poetic yet practical statement," the studio said."This architectural gesture blurs the line between building and landscape, immersing diners in an unexpected relationship with the land."The restaurant's fully-glazed facade is lined with bar-style seating"The vertical cut, inspired by the French ha-ha concept, creates surprise while maintaining uninterrupted views," CRA added."The canteen becomes less of a building and more of an extension of nature itself, elevating both the experience and the environment."The walls and ceilings have black finishesInside, the walls and ceilings of the dining areas have a black finish, which combined with the full-height glazing, enhances the floating effect of the roof when viewed from the outside.CRA also looked to incorporate recycled materials into the interiors. The distinctive red floors are formed of a combination of resin and tomato skins, while in the kitchen hundreds of Mutti cans were used to create a feature in the large road-facing window.Other projects completed by CRA for Mutti include a home for the company's CEO, Francesco Mutti, which was designed with the late architect Italo Rota around a 10-metre-tall ficus tree.Elsewhere, the studio recently revealed its plans to overhaul the postmodern European Parliament building in Brussels, with a design featuring a latticed framework and a rooftop botanical garden.The photography is by DSL Studio.The post Carlo Ratti Associati shelters Mutti restaurant with "clod of earth lifted from the ground" appeared first on Dezeen.

As someone who wants to always be early at the airport and do early check-ins, my carry-on luggage and the stuff I bring with me has to be fully functional. I sometimes struggle with accessing things especially when Im on the go and carrying several things at once. It would be nice to have well-designed luggage that is not just sturdy but also thinks about how people actually use them when at the airport and even on the plane.Designers: Jianshen Yuan, Dingyu Xiao, Boyuan Pan, me me (Suosi Design)The Capsule Luggage is a concept focusing on the needs of business travel. The designers looked at the different pain points that travelers encounter like easy access to important things like laptop, rain gear, travel pillows, and even drinks. They made simple tweaks to how the luggage is designed to make things easier as you travel, compared to using backpacks, tote bags, or even the usual luggage.Based on the product renders, the luggage has a small, easy to open and access compartment where you can place your laptop or tablet. Oftentimes when youre waiting or when youre on the flight already, thats what you reach for first so this is convenient. Theres also a built-in cup holder at the back where you can place your coffee cup or water bottle when youre going around the airport. There are no other renders that show the unique features of this concept but it probably has some other things that make it different from the usual. It has light semantics and a highly recognizable silhouette and its minimalist design should make it good for both leisure and business travelers. The post Capsule Luggage concept makes it more convenient to travel first appeared on Yanko Design.

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Paying US federal and state taxes online can be confusing, and one wrong move can result in penalties or extra money owed. We break it down so you can have the most worry-free tax filing possible.

MacworldAfter a busy 2024, Apple is gearing up to launch a full slate of new products throughout 2025, including new iPads, Macs, and, of course, iPhones. But even bigger than a new iPhone SE or iPhone 17 Air, Apple is expected to take a big first step into the smart home.According to Mark Gurmans latest Power On newsletter, Apple is gearing up to lay the foundation for a new smart home ecosystem that includes three main products: a new HomePod mini and Apple TV set-top box, and a brand-new smart home hub. The latter device will usher in a brand-new category for Apple and compete with the likes of the Echo Show and Nest Hub.Gurman says the products will likely arrive toward the end of the year, despite earlier rumors that the smart home hub could land in the spring. Its still possible, however, that the home hub gets a preview at a spring event ahead of a release later in the year.Not much is known about the new HomePod mini or Apple TV, but Gurman reports that they are being developed with Apples smart home platform in mind. The current Apple TV 4K hasnt received an update since 2022, while the HomePod mini is still on its first-gen model from 2020. Both products have some smart home capabilities built in, but neither is marketed as a smart home device.Apple Intelligence is likely to feature heavily in the devices as well, though how remains to be seen. On the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, it requires an A17 Pro, A18, or M-series chip with at least 8GB of RAM, far below the specifications for the current HomePod mini and Apple TV 4K.Or they could use the smart home hub for Apple Intelligence tasks, which is almost certain to meet the requirements. Gurman says the devices new operating systemcodenamed Pebble and informally known as homeOSis heavily tied to Siris App Intents feature coming to Apple Intelligence in iOS 18.4 and expanding in iOS 19.All of this points to a fall release, possibly alongside the iPhone 17 but more likely at its own event dedicated to the smart home. That will set the stage for 2026, which Gurman reports will bring a new, more conversational Siri digital assistant and Apple-made smart home accessories, including a security camera and Face ID-powered doorbell.

Audits are never fun whether youre talking about a tax audit, energy audit, or industry compliance audits. But theyre necessary. And when it comes to mobile device management (MDM) deployments, theyre extra important, because mobile devices are endpoints that can expose your company to the security dangers and risk letting corporate data leak out.Heres what to consider as you plan an MDM audit and what to include.What do you need to achieve with an MDM auditAuditing something as broad as your MDM environment with its mix of identity products, federated cloud services, MDM solutions themselves, policies and groups, app inventories and the devices themselves can get, well, complicated.This means your first step is to determine what an MDM audit should cover.If youre confident in auditing other aspects of your IT stack, or your entire stack is from one vendor say youre a fully Microsoft shop with a stack built around Entra and Azure, both of which you already have audit programs for then you might just need to focus on Intune and your mobile device policies and configurations.But if you mix and match cloud services from multiple companies and your MDM solution is from a different vendor than everything else, youll need to look at your MDM links to everything else (and possibly how all your other systems link to each other). Auditing systems individually wont give you a holistic understanding of how they work together.If your company is subject to various compliance regimes (such as GDPR or HIPAA, for example), some subjects might be defined for you. Either way, set the scope of the audit so it can capture the systems, policies, user groups, device types, apps, user experiences and even the backend tools used in your environment.As with any audit, standard procedures need to be considered. Ideally, these basic processes will follow the model of other audit procedures already in place. There will always be some variation different systems have different functions and require measuring different metrics. But there should be some connective thread that runs through how you capture audit data, process it, report your findings and list corrective steps that need to be taken based on the results. An MDM audit will obviously focus on different things than a server or network security audit, but all three should come from the same basic template.As you consider the scope of an audit and its processes, make notes of the specific questions you need to answer and the data points you need to answer them. If this is your first MDM audit, brainstorming areas of importance and looking to outside resources such as your MDM (and related service) vendor can help define exactly what you need to ask. Be sure to consider each idea carefully to see whether its really significant or simply mission creep.If youve performed MDM audits in the past, youll want to review whether they captured the relevant information or let things fall between the cracks. And even if past audits went well, remember the mobile landscape and threat environment changes quickly. So youll need to account for any major changes such as the recent proliferation of generative AI since your last audit and decide whether your previous scope needs to be adjusted.The logisticsmatterHow the audit is done from a logistical perspective also matters. Some can be carried out simply by examining and testing back-end systems and have no real or direct user-facing components. MDM audits might require some fieldwork, virtual or in-person, to gather accurate data. And if various teams or groups of employees or managers need to be consulted or might be impacted during the audit, youll want to establish that up front for both the audit team and anyone affected.Who is the auditor(s)?The next step is determining who will conduct the audit. With something as broad as MDM, which touches several different domains network access, app licensing, user and group management, device and procurement from multiple vendors, endpoint security, user experience, general and mobile-specific policy requirements and so on it can be difficult to establish exactly whos ultimately responsible.This means MDM audits are often best done by a team where various stakeholders are represented.Should you consider a pre-audit?In some cases, you might know going into the process that there are areas that are problematic. These could include policies youve been meaning to update; the criteria on which you authorize user access to resources; how you manage or group users and devices; and significant updates mobile OS and app versions, backend systems that you have yet to get around to doing.Dealing with these known issues before the full audit occurs can make the entire process easier and shorten your departmental to-do list.The items you want to captureEvery audit will vary based on your needs and environment. The following isnt an exhaustive list, but these areas should be part of any MDM audit:Logs: Application and system logs from the MDM itself, and logs involving MDM interactions with devices and other services.Policies: Auditing MDM policies include the policies themselves (are they appropriate to your environment, security and user needs) and whether or not they are enforced as intended. As MDM provides a wealth of policy configurations and restrictions, this will be one of the major focus areas for an audit and it should be done across every major device/user demographic across an organizationDevice and network security: Broadly speaking, you need to ensure that information being transferred between devices and your network is secure, visible and functions appropriately regardless of how devices are connecting (corporate Wi-Fi, home or public W-Fi and cellular) as well as device integrity/malware checking.Device and data controls: One crucial feature of any MDM system is the ability to separate work and personal apps, settings and content. Rules related to this functionality should be clearly established and tested as widely as possible across your device fleet and user community. This can include encryption at rest and in transit andprocedures for handling things such as remote lock and remote wipe.Device enrollment and lifecycle processes.Mobile OS and app updates: Make sure these are consistent throughout your fleet and environment.Suspicious activity monitoring and reaction: What counts as suspicious activity can vary greatly, as can the intended reactions.After the auditAfter youve completed the audit, take time to sift through the results. Its also good to have multiple sets of eyes and perspectives on the data; an audit should be more than just a list of boxes to check. Seeing which criteria have been met or unmet is critical, but the question ofwhythe results are what they are is equally important. If there are devices or apps that are out of compliance, youll need to know that and understand why if youre going to remedy the issues. Your ultimate report should include this background and potential challenges during remediation.Remember, an audit isnt just about seeing where you miss the mark. Sometimes youll discover areas where your organization beats expectations, shows improvement from an earlier audit or helps you see your baseline compared to your overall industry. If something works well, you want to understand why. It might be something you can incorporate more broadly throughout your organization.The last major step is to create an action or remediation plan. (This is especially important if youre in an industry subject to regulation such as financial services or healthcare.) What this plan will look like can vary significantly from company to company and even from audit to audit.The most important thing is that this plan be actionable. Each item should be specific, have metrics that allow you to ensure it is being addressed and have a timetable for resolution. The main reason for an audit in the first place is to identify issues and make serious improvements. Performing an audit and then letting the results sit in a drawer is nothing more than audit theater you go through the motions, but dont act on the results.

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.While nuclear reactors have been generating power around the world for over 70 years, the current moment is one of potentially radical transformation for the technology.As electricity demand rises around the world for everything from electric vehicles to data centers, theres renewed interest in building new nuclear capacity, as well as extending the lifetime of existing plants and even reopening facilities that have been shut down. Efforts are also growing to rethink reactor designs, and 2025 marks a major test for so-called advanced reactors as they begin to move from ideas on paper into the construction phase.Thats significant because nuclear power promises a steady source of electricity as climate change pushes global temperatures to new heights and energy demand surges around the world. Heres what to expect next for the industry.A global patchworkThe past two years have seen a new commitment to nuclear power around the globe, including an agreement at the UN climate talks that 31 countries pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. However, the prospects for the nuclear industry differ depending on where you look.The US is currently home to the highest number of operational nuclear reactors in the world. If its specific capacity were to triple, that would mean adding a somewhat staggering 200 gigawatts of new nuclear energy capacity to the current total of roughly 100 gigawatts. And thats in addition to replacing any expected retirements from a relatively old fleet. But the country has come to something of a stall. A new reactor at the Vogtle plant in Georgia came online last year (following significant delays and cost overruns), but there are no major conventional reactors under construction or in review by regulators in the US now.This year also brings an uncertain atmosphere for nuclear power in the US as the incoming Trump administration takes office. While the technology tends to have wide political support, its possible that policies like tariffs could affect the industry by increasing the cost of building materials like steel, says Jessica Lovering, cofounder at the Good Energy Collective, a policy research organization that advocates for the use of nuclear energy.Globally, most reactors under construction or in planning phases are in Asia, and growth in China is particularly impressive. The countrys first nuclear power plant connected to the grid in 1991, and in just a few decades it has built the third-largest fleet in the world, after only France and the US. China has four large reactors likely to come online this year, and another handful are scheduled for commissioning in 2026.This year will see both Bangladesh and Turkey start up their first nuclear reactors. Egypt also has its first nuclear plant under construction, though its not expected to undergo commissioning for several years.Advancing alongCommercial nuclear reactors on the grid today, and most of those currently under construction, generally follow a similar blueprint: The fuel that powers the reactor is low-enriched uranium, and water is used as a coolant to control the temperature inside.But newer, advanced reactors are inching closer to commercial use. A wide range of these so-called Generation IV reactors are in development around the world, all deviating from the current blueprint in one way or another in an attempt to improve safety, efficiency, or both. Some use molten salt or a metal like lead as a coolant, while others use a more enriched version of uranium as a fuel. Often, theres a mix-and-match approach with variations on the fuel type and cooling methods.The next couple of years will be crucial for advanced nuclear technology as proposals and designs move toward the building process. Were watching paper reactors turn into real reactors, says Patrick White, research director at the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit think tank.Much of the funding and industrial activity in advanced reactors is centered in the US, where several companies are close to demonstrating their technology.Kairos Power is building reactors cooled by molten salt, specifically a fluorine-containing material called Flibe. The company received a construction permit from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for its first demonstration reactor in late 2023, and a second permit for another plant in late 2024. Construction will take place on both facilities over the next few years, and the plan is to complete the first demonstration facility in 2027.TerraPower is another US-based company working on Gen IV reactors, though the design for its Natrium reactor uses liquid sodium as a coolant. The company is taking a slightly different approach to construction, too: by separating the nuclear and non-nuclear portions of the facility, it was able to break ground on part of its site in June of 2024. Its still waiting for construction approval from the NRC to begin work on the nuclear side, which the company expects to do by 2026.A US Department of Defense project could be the first in-progress Gen IV reactor to generate electricity, though itll be at a very small scale. Project Pele is a transportable microreactor being manufactured by BWXT Advanced Technologies. Assembly is set to begin early this year, with transportation to the final site at Idaho National Lab expected in 2026.Advanced reactors certainly arent limited to the US. Even as China is quickly building conventional reactors, the country is starting to make waves in a range of advanced technologies as well. Much of the focus is on high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, says Lorenzo Vergari, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. These reactors use helium gas as a coolant and reach temperatures over 1,500 C, much higher than other designs.Chinas first commercial demonstration reactor of this type came online in late 2023, and a handful of larger reactors that employ the technology are currently in planning phases or under construction.Squeezing capacityIt will take years, or even decades, for even the farthest-along advanced reactor projects to truly pay off with large amounts of electricity on the grid. So amid growing global electricity demand around the world, theres renewed interest in getting as much power out of existing nuclear plants as possible.One trend thats taken off in countries with relatively old nuclear fleets is license extension. While many plants built in the 20th century were originally licensed to run for 40 years, theres no reason many of them cant run for longer if theyre properly maintained and some equipment is replaced.Regulators in the US have granted 20-year extensions to much of the fleet, bringing the expected lifetime of many to 60 years. A handful of reactors have seen their licenses extended even beyond that, to 80 years. Countries including France and Spain have also recently extended licenses of operating reactors beyond their 40-year initial lifetimes. Such extensions are likely to continue, and the next few years could see more reactors in the US relicensed for up to 80-year lifetimes.In addition, theres interest in reopening shuttered plants, particularly those that have shut down recently for economic reasons. Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan is the target of one such effort, and the project secured a $1.52 billion loan from the US Department of Energy to help with the costs of reviving it. Holtec, the plants owner and operator, is aiming to have the facility back online in 2025.However, the NRC has reported possible damage to some of the equipment at the plant, specifically the steam generators. Depending on the extent of the repairs needed, the additional cost could potentially make reopening uneconomical, White says.A reactor at the former Three Mile Island Nuclear Facility is another target. The sites owner says the reactor could be running again by 2028, though battles over connecting the plant to the grid could play out in the coming year or so. Finally, the owners of the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa are reportedly considering reopening the nuclear plant, which shut down in 2020.Big Techs big appetiteOne of the factors driving the rising appetite for nuclear power is the stunning growth of AI, which relies on data centers requiring a huge amount of energy. Last year brought new interest from tech giants looking to nuclear as a potential solution to the AI power crunch.Microsoft had a major hand in plans to reopen the reactor at Three Mile Islandthe company signed a deal in 2024 to purchase power from the facility if its able to reopen. And thats just the beginning.Google signed a deal with Kairos Power in October 2024 that would see the startup build up to 500 megawatts worth of power plants by 2035, with Google purchasing the energy. Amazon went one step further than these deals, investing directly in X-energy, a company building small modular reactors. The money will directly fund the development, licensing, and construction of a project in Washington.Funding from big tech companies could be a major help in keeping existing reactors running and getting advanced projects off the ground, but many of these commitments so far are vague, says Good Energy Collectives Lovering. Major milestones to watch for include big financial commitments, contracts signed, and applications submitted to regulators, she says.Nuclear had an incredible 2024, probably the most exciting year for nuclear in many decades, says Staffan Qvist, a nuclear engineer and CEO of Quantified Carbon, an international consultancy focused on decarbonizing energy and industry. Deploying it at the scale required will be a big challenge, but interest is ratcheting up. As he puts it, Theres a big world out there hungry for power.

Snhetta has offered an update on construction progress at the Busan Opera House in Busan, South Korea. The Norway-based firm won the competition for the schemes design back in 2012, proposing a new opera house along the citys northern seaport.Over a decade later, new photographs show construction advancing at the site, with the facade structure being installed. The distinctive roofline of the scheme is now visible, following Snhettas design for a geometry of two opposing curves. While the lower arching curve bridges the site and anchors the project to the ground, the upper curve embraces the sky, with the opera space formed by the interplay of the two surfaces. https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"...