As a watch and technology design enthusiast, Ive always been fascinated by how innovation can transform everyday objects into extraordinary experiences. The Veil watch is a perfect example of this transformative power. This avant-garde timepiece has turned my expectations upside down by giving the humble watch strap a revolutionary new purpose.The Veil, crafted by Przemysaw Wolnicki at Argarosa Poland-based design powerhouse known for pushing the boundaries of visualization and prototypingchallenges the very essence of traditional watchmaking. Its futuristic design captivates with a strap that does more than just secure the watch to your wrist; it becomes the display itself.Designer: Przemysaw WolnickiImagine a world where the strap is no longer an afterthought but a key player in the time-telling process. The Veil offers a dual display: a classic digital readout on the dial and a projection of time onto the strap that elegantly runs over the watch face. This dual functionality isnt just about aesthetics; it redefines how we interact with our watches.Now, as a design enthusiast, I cant help but ponder the possibilities of experimenting with different strap materials. Could a leather strap enhance the watchs elegance, or would a silicone strap add a sporty touch? Each material could potentially affect the way the time is displayed, offering a new layer of personalization and style.However, with innovation comes practical considerations. What happens if the strap becomes dirty? In the case of the Veil, cleaning becomes an essential part of maintenance. Fortunately, most modern watch straps are designed to be easily cleaned or even replaced, ensuring that the display remains clear and functional.The Veils vibrant color palette and absence of visible pushers suggest a sleek, streamlined design that prioritizes simplicity and elegance. While it primarily displays time digitally, theres room for additional features like date display, alarm settings, or notifications, hinting at the multifaceted functionality that could be embedded within this innovative device.For me, the Veil isnt just a watch; its a statement piece that reflects the evolving landscape of design and technology. It challenges traditional perceptions and invites us to rethink how we engage with personal timepieces. As it continues to captivate the imagination of watch enthusiasts and design aficionados alike, the Veil underscores the endless possibilities in reimagining everyday objects, making it a truly groundbreaking addition to the world of horology.Argaros, based in Katowice, Poland, specializes in bringing innovative product ideas to life, and Veil is its first foray into watch design. If this is any indication, a wristwatch with a strap display could redefine how watches function in everyday life. Veil is thus a leap in the field that often sees straps as an accessory. While it doesnt aim to compete with the feature-packed smartwatches of today, Veil carves out its own niche one where simplicity, elegance, and rethinking are unified so that we can imagine more possibilities.The post This Rather Clever Watch turns its Woven Strap into a Textured Display first appeared on Yanko Design.

From silicone, metal and leather to transparent, opaque, wireless charging, or shimmering ones; there are endless types of smartphone cases out there. When everything else has found its way onto the smartphone cases, its time a retro marble machine is slapped onto the back of your phone so you can take breaks between social media scrolls and stay entertained even on the flip side of the phone. Now that is a case thatll be a conversation starter, anytime anywhere.The interesting smartphone case, which appears to have been created for iPhone 16 Pro, is meticulously designed and developed by @karakurist, a Japanese YouTuber (channel name: KARAKURI Channel) known for creating mechanical art from scratch. All his creations are unique and this one is right up there, since youll be using the thing for most of the day.Designer: KARAKURI ChannelA marble machine slotted onto the guts of a smartphone case for the iPhone may sound and appear simple, but frankly, after watching the detailed DIY video, I can say, it is no mean feat. This amazing smartphone case with a marble machine is completely 3D printed all the miniature gears and 32 different detail parts are made using the printer. Everything snaps into place with the help of tiny screws and the friction of the gears against each other.What appears to the eyes is a transparent maze with tiny 4mm ball bearings rolling around with the help of complex gears and a built-in motor. Users can play the game as long as the motor is running, which is interestingly powered by the phones own USB-C port Perhaps then no external device or charging is supported in the process when you are enjoying the marble roll. There is a safety mechanism in place so that it spins freely in case the gear gets stuck when the spring stretches.The marble machine is a thoughtful attachment for the 3D printed case, which has a hollowed-out section in the middle and top right, where the attachment snaps in or out in one go. The designer is mindful enough to have a separate slot to store a small charging cable, so you dont have to look around for one. The detachable aspect means you dont permanently have to have the marbles rolling in the back of your phone; you can choose when to shift entertainment from the screen to the flip side!The post Marble Machine-inspired iPhone Case Turns Your Phones Back into an Entertaining Game first appeared on Yanko Design.

The City of Chicago has granted approvals to the new $7 billion RIOS and Field Operations-led redevelopment of spaces surrounding the United Center. The 1901 Project, which covers 55 acres will be conducted in two phases through 2040, adds a new 6,000-seat music hall, 233-key boutique hotel, mixed-used building, and 10-acre public park in its first half followed by more retail, hospitality, office spaces, and a large housing component in the second.The first phase of construction is scheduled to begin this year with a $400 million budget and progress through the end of 2028. Image: Studio Ladder, courtesy RIOSImage: Prolog, courtesy RIOSImage: Prolog, courtesy RIOSImage: courtesy Prolog and RIOS

This edition of Bustler's curated picks of noteworthy architecture and design competitions features four calls seeking the best in housing design, creative artwork by architects and designers, innovative and sustainable proposals for the redesign of State Tax University's Main Campus in Irpin, Ukraine, and student-led conceptual design proposals for structures that utilize one or more of the five platonic solids found in sacred geometry.For the complete directory of newly listed competitions, click here.

The Monarch of the Glen is an oil-on-canvas painting of a red deer stag completed in 1851 by the English painter Sir Edwin Landseer. It was commissioned as part of a series of three panels to hang in the Palace of Westminster in London. As one of the most popular paintings throughout the 19th century, it sold widely in reproductions in steel engraving, and was finally bought by companies to use in advertising. The painting had become something of a clich by the mid20th century, as the "ultimate biscuit tin image of Scotland: a bulky stag set against the violet hills and watery skies of an isolated wilderness", according to the Sunday Herald. The work is now in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh.Painting credit: Edwin LandseerRecently featured: Chartres CathedralGarlicCattle tyrant and capybaraArchiveMore featured pictures

January 25: Feast day of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (Eastern Christianity) and Dwynwen (Wales); Tatiana Day (Russia)Nellie Bly1515 FrancisI, a great-great-grandson of CharlesV, was crowned king of France in the Reims Cathedral.1725 Privateer Amaro Pargo was declared a hidalgo, a member of the Spanish nobility.1765 Port Egmont, the first British colony in the Falkland Islands, was founded.1890 American journalist Nellie Bly (pictured) completed a circumnavigation of the globe by land and sea in a then-record-breaking 72 days.1998 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam detonated a truck bomb at the sacred Buddhist Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, killing 17 people.Mihrimah Sultan (d.1578)Anna Gardner (b.1816)Jane Bathori (d.1970)Seunghee (b.1996)More anniversaries: January 24January 25January 26ArchiveBy emailList of days of the yearAbout

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn MoreSeason 4 of a TV show is not something I write about very often, given my focus is video games. But Season 4 of Mythic Quest is another matter. Debuting with the first two episodes on January 29 on Apple TV+, the show brings back the workplace comedy about a video game studio. The ensemble cast returns with stars including Rob McElhenney (as the mercurial creative director Ian Grimm) and Charlotte Nicdao (tech leader Poppy Li) and more. The show is good at skewering the sometimes ridiculous culture of video game industry, and its on the mark as it was originally created by Ubisoft.The show is silly as usual, but I like how one of the opening scenes is about Play Pen, a user-generated content gimmick aimed at reviving the studios core online game. By the second episode, the users are all busy making sex games and the studio has to figure out what to do about it. David enlists the help of the studios ethics committee to find the answer. And, of course, AI is the next big trend that gets skewered in the show. Game tester Rachel (played by Ashly Burch) has now been appointed the head of monetization for the studio. She will be hard-pressed to be more evil than Brad Bakshi (played by Dani Pudi) at making money.The studios boss David Brittlesbee (played by David Hornsby, executive producer) continues to be caught in between the studio leads and the corporate headquarters. Its still all-too-real when it comes to references to silly things in the game industry. Under preview, Ive been checking it out.The opening show, Boundaries, spells out the new responsibilities and boundary lines being drawn by the characters as their lives change. Ian and Poppy have rejoined the studio after striking out on their own. But Poppy, ever the programming workaholic, now isnt working as hard because she has a new boyfriend. Its interesting in that the show recognizes real-world game development problems, like too much crunch, or long work hours, often unpaid. So, of course, Poppy creates an AI version of herself to do work for her and help Ian with his middle-of-the-night strokes of brilliance. The season will have 10 episodes, with the final one dropping on Apple TV+ on March 26. Mythic Quest is executive produced by McElhenney and Charlie Day under their RCG banner, Michael Rotenberg and Nicholas Frenkel on behalf of 3Arts, and Margaret Boykin, Austin Dill, and Grard Guillemot for Ubisoft Film & Television. Hornsby and Megan Ganz also executive produce. The series is produced for Apple TV+ by Lionsgate, 3 Arts Entertainment and Ubisoft. The first three seasons of Mythic Quest are now streaming globally on Apple TV+.In the new season, the show also has an expansion of the Mythic Quest universe, Side Quest, which explores the lives of employees, players and fans who are impacted by the game in an anthology format. If you need a rest from CNN/Fox News all the time and our current political landscape, I recommend Mythic Quest as a nice diversion. Daily insights on business use cases with VB DailyIf you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI.Read our Privacy PolicyThanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here.An error occured.

OpenAI used its own o1-preview and o1-mini models to test whether additional inference time compute protected against various attacks.Read More

All I know is Im good for my $80 billion.Rarely does a one-liner so perfectly capture the state of the moment. Here, you have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying hes not in the details about Stargate, the supposedly multi-hundred-billion AI infrastructure project driven by his marquee investment, OpenAI.Nadella not being read in on the nebulous details of Stargate says a lot about how much Microsoft and OpenAI have drifted apart. Microsoft is mentioned in the Stargate press release since OpenAIs models are still exclusive to Azure. But the most striking aspect of Stargate is not that the money isnt there for it yet; its that OpenAIs biggest backer has decided to not participate in what Sam Altman is calling the most important project of this era. As Nadella made clear on CNBC this week, hes running his own, $80 billion AI infrastructure buildout and, going forward, OpenAI can get additional compute with his blessing elsewhere.While it received fewer headlines this week, I found Nadellas response to Elon Musk on X even more illuminating. In his response to Musk saying, on the other hand, Satya definitely does have the money, Nadella responded: And all this money is not about hyping AI, but is about building useful things for the real world!That post can only be interpreted as a dig at Altman. Nadella could have funded Stargate for OpenAI. He didnt. What does he know that the rest of us dont?The splashy Stargate unveiling at the White House certainly accomplished its goal, which was clearly getting everyone to talk about big numbers. The headlines it generated prompted Mark Zuckerberg to make sure everyone ended the week knowing his data center will be even bigger than Stargate.In a Friday post on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg said that Metas planned 2GW data center in Louisiana is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan, with a map view of the square footage overlaid on the city to send the point home.From his post (my emphasis added): Well bring online ~1GW of compute in 25 and well end the year with more than 1.3 million GPUs. Were planning to invest $60-65B in capex this year while also growing our AI teams significantly, and we have the capital to continue investing in the years ahead.I have no doubt that Altman, Masayoshi Son, and Larry Ellison will be able to raise the billions they need to lessen OpenAIs dependence on Microsoft for compute. (The US government isnt giving money to Stargate, which makes the optics of announcing it alongside Trump all the more bizarre.) Ultimately, this all points to the theme that is quickly coming to define 2025: Big Tech sees AI as the most existential technology of the coming era and will keep spending like hell to make sure OpenAI doesnt completely run away with it.Steve Huffman, Illustration by William Joel / The Verge | Photo by Greg Doherty/Variety via Getty ImagesAMA with spezFew companies had as good of a 2024 as Reddit. Since going public last March, the companys stock has soared 300 percent, giving the social network a valuation of $32 billion.Its an about-face from where Reddit was before going public, when its moderators were raging against its hurried platform changes and there was backlash to the company selling its data to Google and OpenAI.With those controversies now seemingly in the rear-view mirror, Reddit is focused on growing its user base, staying profitable, and using AI to help people search its site more easily. I caught up with CEO Steve Huffman at CES a few weeks ago to hear his priorities for 2025, how hes leading Reddit, his thoughts on the AI scaling debate, content moderation, and moreThe following interview has been edited for length and clarity:Your IPO did very well. What have the last nine months or so been like for you personally?We have a saying at Reddit that good numbers make good meetings. So weve had some good meetings.Preparing to go public was intense. Its telling the story over and over and over, which I enjoy doing, but its a lot of work. I think more than most new companies, we are in the public company rhythm already: close the quarter, do the audits, do the board meeting, earnings, and all of that. So it hasnt been a major change for us from an operating point of view.Its a really exciting time for the new investors and employees. You wont catch us complaining. What I keep telling the company is that everyone should be very proud of the work theyve done and dont take these moments for granted. I just tell them, look, enjoy the view. If you look at our history, there are lots of ups and downs. No doubt there are challenges in our future.With your market cap where it is now, are you thinking of making swings you didnt think you could make a year ago?There are two classes of things that we would do. One is to execute the core strategy. Weve got to hire. Weve got to build. I think were very reasonable in terms of our investment size. The one sentence strategy for us is to grow the product and stay profitable.What can you do with a high stock price? Maybe you can look at M&A that you wouldnt otherwise. Id say thats not really our orientation right now because the acquisitions weve done over the last two years have been these 25-to-50-million-dollar deals. Its kind of a sweet spot for us to get tech and teams. Id say were always watching the market, but were not pursuing anything big or crazy right now because I like the core strategy. I think we can do what we want to do within our current capabilities.Whats the main product focus for Reddit this year?The first is the core of Reddit, which is community conversations. Everyone has a home on Reddit, but do you see that home in your first session? Theres a whole other dimension to our work, which is Reddit as an information source. Reddit has all of this incredible information. For the users who have a question that needs an answer, can we give them that answer? We just got into testing Reddit Answers. Im finding that really helpful for searches about current events. A year from now, its a monetization product. Its one of the few products where it kind of scratches every itch, so itll be a big focus.What do you make of this debate about whether the AI industry has run out of data?I think wed have a different answer to that question literally every month. We want to have good relationships with other people in this space. Were open for business.At the same time, we want to maximize the value we get out of our own data. We have not experienced conflict between the two at this point. I love the [data licensing] relationships we have the major ones being Google and OpenAI. At this point, we dont need to make any particular partnership. Id say theyre all nice to have but nothing is existential for us.One of the challenges is that the AI companies dont know what product theyre building. Its not a bad thing. They are iterating themselves. ChatGPT itself, the central product in this conversation, was a demo. Then, a year later, its the most important piece of enterprise technology on Earth with questionable economics. That makes it very exciting. I dont think any of these companies would be offended to hear me say that.You were one of the first social media CEOs I saw to be very critical of TikTok. How does a US ban affect Reddit?If you look at Reddits traffic graph over the last 19 years, you will not see the rise and fall of any particular platform. I think every content type should work on Reddit. Video on Reddit is largely camera-out what Im looking at as opposed to camera-in, or who am I? Thats social media. I think the ban is the right thing to do for reasons Ive mentioned that honestly have nothing to do with competition.With Metas moderation changes, the broader conversation around social media feels like its changing right now.For the last 10 years, people have been talking about whether speech is the problem, which is a crazy thought. You cant have freedom without speech. I think that detour through questioning and relitigating core values of America, hopefully that era is coming to a close.Are people playing politics? Of course, people always are. On the topic of moderation, we always just try to do things the right way, which, not coincidentally, are aligned with American values. Its a Democratic platform. We believe very much in the power of people and the wisdom of crowds and voting processes. That is Reddit. So Im glad to see a return to where we have been most of my life, which is an appreciation for free speech.ElsewhereCompetitors pounce on TikTok: With TikTok no longer available in US app stores and its in-app functionality technically constrained, everyone is doing their damndest to take advantage of the situation. Meta pre-announced its Capcut competitor and is trying to lure creators away with cash. Substack, Bluesky, and X are all making moves to encourage more video consumption. Meanwhile, President Trump says hes OK with Elon Musk or Larry Ellison buying it. ByteDance is saying it wants to do a deal but seems increasingly backed into a corner. Ellison may have the guarantee that Oracle wont be fined out of existence for violating the law right now, but Apple and Google have shown they are going to follow the letter of the law. With TikTok still not available to download in the US, its competitive threat to Meta, YouTube, and others decreases every day.Trump gets to work for Big Tech: Why are Zuckerberg and other CEOs bending the knee? Look no farther than the comments the president made at the World Economic Forum this week, where he trashed the EUs Digital Markets and Services Acts as a form of taxation. This kind of push back is exactly what Meta and other US companies have been praying for. Well see if it works for them.More headlines: OpenAI released its AI agent called Operator for pro-tier subscriberstold X employees that user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and were barely breaking even.... Apple reorged again as it plays catch-up in AI Google is putting another $1 billion into Google Cloud via Anthropic and acquired part of HTCs Vive team to beef up its Android XR efforts (yes, get ready for the return of Glass)gave an update on its push to compete with Robloxrare investment in Databricks.More linksWhat led to the DOGE falling out between Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk.A profile of DeepSeek, the Chinese firm that has a bunch of CEOs worried about how much theyre spending on models.Dan Shippers hands-on experience using OpenAIs Operator agent.The Humanitys Last Exam AI dataset.Brian Armstrongs takeaways from Davos.A whistleblower is claiming Amazons $400 million deal for most of Covariant AI was a reverse acquihire designed to avoid antitrust scrutiny.Nvidia is the top tech company in Glassdoors latest list of the top places to work.The rise of the MAGA-bro podcast.If you havent already, dont forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line, all of our reporting, and an improved ad experience on the web.As always, I want to hear from you, especially if your data center is even bigger. Respond here, and Ill get back to you, or ping me securely on Signal.Thanks for subscribing.

Apple is making an executive change to try and improve its AI efforts and Siri. Kim Vorrath, who recently helped get the Vision Pro software out the door and has been at Apple for 36 years, has been brought over to Apples artificial intelligence and machine learning division and will serve as a top deputy to AI boss John Giannandrea, Bloomberg reports.The company made a big splash about its AI / Apple Intelligence efforts at WWDC last year, but they havent had the same impact as things like OpenAIs ChatGPT or Googles Gemini. Apple has also been slowly rolling out what it announced, and a big Siri upgrade that lets it understand whats happening on your screen and take action may not arrive until iOS 18.4. And the companys AI-powered news notification summaries will be put on pause with iOS 18.3 after criticism that the summaries were incorrect.By bringing on Vorrath, whose resume at Apple includes work on the original iPhone software group, over to the AI team, it appears Apple wants to bring more rigor to Apples AI development. It also indicates that Apple may see AI as a bigger deal for its future than the Vision Pro.Bloomberg also reports that the artificial intelligence group is focused on revamping the underlying infrastructure of Siri and improving the companys in-house AI models this year, per a memo from Giannandrea.