FromSoftware games are infamously challenging. In a FromSoft action-RPG, it's not just bosses that will one-shot players, it's regular enemies too, and that high level of challenge has caused a bit of a stir in recent years. But Doom: The Dark Ages, surprisingly, might have the key to solving this ongoing FromSoftware difficulty debate.

A story driven singleplayer first person with a tactical approach to the game's pacing. Made with Unreal Engine 5. Longer description coming soon

Creators claim Megan can automate up to 78% of frontline recruitment tasks.

PayPal fined $2 million by financial regulators for cybersecurity shortcomings.

The city of Los Angeles has rightfully gripped the nations attention this month as wildfires rage on. While the devastation induced by our changing climate demands superhuman effort to squelch it, the transportation sector (stubbornly responsible for the greatest share of U.S. emissions) is ironically observing a significant milestone. January 24, 2025, marked the centennial of the implementation of the Traffic Ordinance for the City of Los Angeles. This 35-page bureaucratic document redefined the use of Americas streets, tailoring them to the benefit of the automotive industry.American streets were once dominated by people. A documentarytravelogue of New York Citycaptured by Scenska Biografteatern from 1911 is crowded with pedestrians crisscrossing streets in their daily routines. Trollies, carriages, and the occasional automobile jostle by, unhindered by traffic signals or centerlines. To us today, it can seem chaotic, but the pace of the street is slow, and people navigate each other with fluency. San FranciscosA Trip Down Market Street, shot just a year before the 1906 earthquake, shows the view from a streetcar, picturing the Ferry Building at the streets end obscured by intertwining streetcars, horses, bicyclists, cars, and people. Pedestrians stand undaunted in the center of the street, waiting to board the slow-moving streetcar. A boy playfully darts in front of the train, as if he is challenging it to a game of tag. Growing up in American cities meantplaying in the streets, even in the countrys most dense neighborhoods.Back then, people shared the roadway with streetcars and bikes. In the early 1900s, Los Angeles had the most extensive electric streetcar system anywhere. From Minneapolis and Chicago to Washington D.C. and New York City, bicycles were used by women and men commuting to work in the 1890s. And they were not alone. As Evan Friss chronicles inThe Cycling City, people rode bikes in U.S. cities as much as they now ride in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, the best cycling cities in the world.This was all before the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance was passed. The Ordinance was written by Miller McClintock, then a doctoral student of municipal government at Harvard University, who was recruited by a champion of the automobile industry, Paul Hoffman. Hoffman had dropped out of the University of Chicago to sell Studebakers at 18-years-old. At 33, he was close to making his first million dollars in the industry and had been appointed chairman of the Los Angeles Traffic Commissiona body responsible for regulating streets. For the first time, the Ordinance prioritized cars on the citys increasingly congested roadways. It quickly became the template for the country.With a contemporary eye, the provisions created by the Ordinance may seem more logical than they were to city dwellers at the time. Historian and author Peter Norton has spent his career researching the automobile era and has well documented it in his booksFighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American CityandAutonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving. Norton has scoured letters to the editors of local newspapers, written by everyday people who passionately argue for their place on American streets, just as it was being usurped. With the anniversary of the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance approaching, I interviewed him to understand its significance.Norton says that sharing streets always required negotiation, but before the Ordinance, the pedestrian had the absolute right to the street, to stroll into it at any point, and to cross it anywhere she chose . . . even a child had the right to the street. This was a social norm, but as Nortons research suggests, it was also defended by judges in U.S. courtrooms throughout the country. For example, inFighting Traffic, he cites a Philadelphia judge who, in 1924, lectured drivers in his courtroom, saying, It wont be long before children wont have any rights at all to the street. He determined that motorists deserved restraint if they could not assume the responsibility of ensuring childrens safety and resolved, Something drastic must be done to end this menace to pedestrians and to children in particular.It may be hard to imagine today, in a country where thevast majority of people commute by car, but in Los Angeles and many U.S. cities in the early 20th century, most people didnt use cars to get around. The majority of American women didnt get drivers licenses until the 1960s, and if a family owned a car, men usually monopolized the use of it. People generally walked, rode streetcars, or biked. Norton argues that while the transition to auto-dominated streets is often seen as the arc of progress stimulated by consumer demand, it was actually a well-crafted campaign produced by those with an interest in selling automobiles.The Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance changed who was prioritized on city streets. Between 1914 and 1922, the number ofcars on the streets of Los Angeles quadrupled. To continue to boost sales, the automobile industry required an edge over its competition with the streetcar and one of its advantages was speed. At the time, a streetcar traveled at approximately 10-15 miles per hour, and without dedicated lanes, at even slower speeds when they were blocked by cars. In the Ordinance, McClintock imposed a 35-mile-per-hour threshold almost everywhere except for a few limited cases. But 35 miles per hour was unprecedented in the early 20th century. According to Norton, most cities held motor vehicles to 810 mile per hour speeds. In his words, the automotive industry realized that, If drivers cannot go faster than a streetcar, then theyre not going to buy a car, especially if they have a streetcar service available to them . . . So, we cannot afford to let speed be the culprit in traffic safety.Instead of focusing on speed, the Ordinance decried recklessness. Most importantly, it pinned reckless behavior on pedestrians rather than speeding cars. The Ordinance calls out jaywalkers, criminalizing pedestrians who do not obey signals or who walk outside crossings. Jaywalking, once used as derogatory slang, was employed formally to fix attitudes against wayward pedestrians. McClintock writes that, High-speed motor traffic makes the practice known as jay-walking almost suicidal instead of questioning the imposition of hurtling motor vehicles on streets occupied by people. As Norton suggests, You could use exactly the same facts that hes using to say that driving at speed is homicidal.The Los Angeles Record decribes the new Ordinance as less brutal way of abolishing jaywalkers than previous methods.In the 1920s, traffic injuries and fatalities were climbing. In his bookFighting Traffic, Norton observes that between 1920-1929 motor vehicles killed more than 200,000 people in the United States (approximately four times the death toll of the previous decade), long before most adults drove. Horrifically, many of those killed were the most vulnerable, including the elderly and children, especially in dense cities where the casualties were the highest. The public was naturally concerned about safety and the Ordinance addressed their concerns about the dangers of mixing cars and pedestrians, saying, These conflicts account for the great majority of the accidents and fatalities in Los Angeles and in every other city.However, the Ordinance co-opts safety as a tactic to make more room for cars. For the control and protection of pedestrian traffic, McClintock suggests restricting pedestrians to striped crosswalks, raised platforms on wide roads called safety zones, and even tunnels created to protect schoolchildren from motor vehicles. He overlooks the social life of the street and even requires that pedestrians not stop or stand on the sidewalk except as near as physically possible to the building line to remedy what he calls the too frequent congestion of pedestrian traffic by casual groups gathering on the sidewalk.The Ordinance didnt change city streets by itself. It was accompanied by a clever public relations campaign targeted at cultural norms and advanced by E.B. Lefferts, president of the Automobile Club of Southern California. Lefferts designed the campaign to succeed where other cities had failed. As Norton documents, Lefferts told an audience at the Chicago convention of the National Safety Council that the Ordinance worked because We have recognized that in controlling traffic, we must take into consideration the study of human psychology, rather than approach it solely as an engineering problem. As Norton summarizes, Lefferts tactics aimed to make people feel embarrassed, perhaps ashamed . . . to feel the sting of ridicule.Radio broadcasts aired a public education campaign about behavior on the street, the Boy Scouts were deployed to issue cards to offenders, letting them know they were jay-walking. Ultimately, the police were emboldened to blow whistles at anyone attempting to cross the street against the signal or outside marked areasshaming them into submission. Norton discovered multiple cases where people were humiliated by police officers who picked up pedestrians . . . (mostly women) and put them on the curb. Those who protested this new treatment were arrested.The Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance established that streets would not be shared but dominated by cars. It was essentially a land grab. Once the roadway was secured for the benefit of motor vehicles, they were the heavyweight champion on streets that had once been for everyone. The Ordinance required that pedestrians were subject to the same directions and signals as govern the movement of vehicles without acknowledging that they were exceptionally vulnerable. Facing the mass of a speeding car, no other users of the roadway could compete in the physical battle to claim the streets.By upping speeds on American streets and designing them for accelerating cars, motordom prevailed. Even today, Norton says, we still hold the view that you try to make fast driving safe instead of signaling to drivers that they need to be paying attention and slowing down.The logic of the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance soon made its way into the Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance, which passed in 1928 under the direction ofHerbert Hoover, then the Secretary of Commerce, in close consultation with the automobile industry. It became the template for similar ordinances throughout the country. As Norton maintains, Just about everywhere you go when youre dealing with the local rules . . . theyre descended from this ancestor, the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance.McClintock went on to author a proposal for foolproof highways, in the mid-1930s, promising safety through gradual turns, grade separations, and streets for the exclusive use of the automobileagain with the promise of increasing speeds. Those highways would ultimately bring more cars into the hearts of urban areas, with a growing human toll. Outpaced by cars, and bullied to the margins, bicyclists also lost their place on the road. Eventually,streetcar tracks were pulled up, some replaced by buses. However, mass transit was increasingly restricted as tax dollars secured by theHighway Trust Fundwere unevenly divided by an 80-20 split favoring spending on highways.Unfortunately, dedicating streets to cars did not guarantee safety. In 2021, more than43,000 peopledied on U.S. roads. Cars have become larger, faster, and heavier, making them even more deadly, especially to children. In America, from the time a child can walk until she reaches adulthood, being hit by a car has been thenumber one cause of deathfor many decades (surpassed only recently by firearms).Norton objects to our collective history told as if auto dominance was the inevitable direction of progress. He has uncovered the mass of people who urged the country in a different direction. It was ordinary Americans from all walks of life, rich and poor, Black, Brown and White, male and female who were objecting to their loss of the use of the street. Among them was Philadelphian Barnett Bartel who, as the Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance was being deliberated, urged Hoover to protect people on roads. Bartel describes the appalling loss of his sons to what he identifies as murderers. Bartels 9-year-old was killed on his walk home from school by a truck that jumped the curb on his walk home from school, and his 18-year-old was run over by a car on his bike in a hit-and-run and left to bleed to death.Bartel was one of many bereaved parents whose letters crowded the local papers. Their protests continued in the 1950s when women-led baby carriage blockades obstructed streets so children could play safely outside. Norton acknowledges that it is incredibly helpful to recover these lost perspectives because then we can step out of the perspectives that we grew up in, and that we were socialized into, and look at them afresh with new eyes and possibly see opportunities.Asjaywalking laws are repealedin cities and states across the country, ascongestion pricingremoves automobiles from the heart of the largest U.S. city to pay for transit, as pandemic-eraopen streetsevolve into new permanent urban parkways, and as a new administration hangs its hat on advancing freedom, Norton encourages us to reconsider the 100-year history ushered in by the Los Angeles Traffic Ordinance. He suggests a new version of our history that avoids the false advertising that Americans have always had a love affair with the automobile. Perhaps with the new space allotted on our streets, and the laws that govern them, we will reclaim the cultural history we gave up and the freedom of choice we once exercised so that at any age,we can walk, bike, and ride where we want to. If we recover that history, says Norton, we empower ourselves in choosing alternative futures.This story was originally published byNext City, a nonprofit news outlet covering solutions for equitable cities. Sign up for Next Citysnewsletterfor their latest articles and events.

On a typical day, you cant turn on the news without hearing someone say that Congress is broken. The implication is that this dereliction explains why the institution is inert and unresponsive to the American people.Theres one element often missing from that discussion: Congress is confounding in large part because its members cant hear the American people, or even each other. I mean that literally. Congressional staff serve in thousands of district offices across the nation, and their communications technology doesnt match that of most businesses and even many homes.Members district offices only got connected to secure Wi-Fi internet service in 2023. Discussions among members and congressional staff were at times cut short at 40 minutes because some government workers were relying on the free version of Zoom, according to congressional testimony in March 2024. The information systems Congress uses have existed largely unchanged for decades, while the world has experienced an information revolution, integrating smartphones and the internet into peoples daily personal and professional lives. The technologies that have transformed modern life and political campaigning are not yet available to improve the ability of members of Congress to govern once they win office.Slow to adaptLike many institutions, Congress resists change; only the COVID-19 pandemic pushed it to allow online hearings and bill introductions. Before 2020, whiteboards, sticky notes, and interns with clipboards dominated the halls of Congress.Electronic signatures arrived on Capitol Hill in 2021more than two decades after Congress passed the ESIGN Act to allow electronic signatures and records in commerce.The nation spends about US$10 million a year on technology innovation in the House of Representativesthe institution that declares war and pays all the federal governments bills. Thats just 1% of the amount theater fans have spent to see Hamilton on Broadway since 2015.It seems the story of American democracy is attractive to the public, but investing in making it work is less so for Congress itself.The chief administrative office in Congress, a nonlegislative staff that helps run the operations of Congress, decides what types of technology can be used by members. These internal rules exist to protect Congress and national security, but that caution can also inhibit new ways to use technology to better serve the public.Finding a happy medium between innovation and caution can result in a livelier public discourse.A modernization effortCongress has been working to modernize itself, including experimenting with new ways to hear local voices in their districts, including gathering constituent feedback in a standardized way that can be easily processed by computers.The House Natural Resources Committee was also an early adopter of technology for collaborative lawmaking. In 2020, members and committee staff used a platform called Madison to collaboratively write and edit proposed environmental justice legislation with communities across the country that had been affected by pollution.House leaders are also looking at what is called deliberative technology, which uses specially designed websites to facilitate digital participation by pairing collective human intelligence with artificial intelligence. People post their ideas online and respond to others posts. Then the systems can screen and summarize posts so users better understand each others perspectives.These systems can even handle massive group discussions involving large numbers of people who hold a wide range of positions on a vast set of issues and interests. In general, these technologies make it easier for people to find consensus and have their voices heard by policymakers in ways the policymakers can understand and respond to.Governments in Finland, the U.K., Canada, and Brazil are already piloting deliberative technologies. In Finland, roughly one-third of young people between 12 and 17 participate in setting budget priorities for the city of Helsinki.In May 2024, 45 U.S.-based nonprofit organizations signed a letter to Congress asking that deliberative technology platforms be included in the approved tools for civic engagement.In the meantime, Congress is looking at ways to use artificial intelligence as part of a more integrated digital strategy based on lessons from other democratic legislatures. Finding benefitsModernization efforts have opened connections within Congress and with the public. For example, hearings held by videoconference during the pandemic enabled witnesses to share expertise with Congress from a distance and open up a process that is notoriously unrepresentative. I was home in rural New Mexico during the pandemic and know three people who remotely testified on tribal education, methane pollution, and environmental harms from abandoned oil wells.New House Rules passed on January 3, 2025, encourage the use of artificial intelligence in day-to-day operations and allow for remote witness testimony.Other efforts that are new to Congress but long established in business and personal settings include the ability to track changes in legislation and a scheduling feature that reduces overlaps in meetings. Members are regularly scheduled to be two places at once.Another effort in development is an internal digital staff directory that replaces expensive directories compiled by private companies assembling contact information for congressional staff.The road aheadIn 2022, what is now called member-directed spending returned to Congress with some digital improvements. Formerly known as earmarks, this is the practice of allowing members of Congress to handpick specific projects in their home districts to receive federal money. Earmarks were abolished in 2011 amid concerns of abuse and opposition by fiscal hardliners. Their 2022 return and rebranding introduced publicly available project lists, ethics rules, and a search engine to track the spending as efforts to provide public transparency about earmarks.Additional reforms could make the federal government even more responsive to the American people.Some recent improvements are already familiar. Just as customers can follow their pizza delivery from the oven to the doorstep, Congress in late 2024 created a flag-tracking app that has dramatically improved a program that allows constituents to receive a flag that has flown over the U.S. Capitol. Before, different procedures in the House and Senate caused time-consuming snags in this delivery system.At last, the worlds most powerful legislature caught up with Pizza Hut, which rolled out this technology in 2017 to track customers pizzas from the store to the delivery driver to their front door.Lorelei Kelly is a research lead at Modernizing Congress at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Our 21st-Century Architecture: 25 Years 25 Buildings pick for 2019 is Goldsmith Street in Norwich, designed by architecture studio Mikhail Riches with Cathy Hawley.In the competition's 27-year history, there has never been a more popular Stirling Prize winner than Goldsmith Street, a development of 105 council homes delivered for Norwich City Council.Designed by London studio Mikhail Riches and architect Hawley, it is the only social-housing scheme ever to win the coveted annual award, given to the UK's best new building.Goldsmith Street was the most significant building of 2019The Stirling jury called the project a "modest masterpiece" and "high-quality architecture in its purest, most environmentally and socially conscious form".News about the decision reverberated around the built-environment world, and architects in particular rejoiced."It might not look groundbreaking, but this little neighbourhood represents something quietly miraculous," wrote The Guardian's architecture critic Oliver Wainwright.The Daily Telegraph's Ellis Woodman called it "a triumph for radical ordinariness".Goldsmith Street doesn't, thankfully, reinvent the housing wheel, and it doesn't need toPiers Taylor in DezeenGoldsmith Street, and its spectacular Stirling Prize win, was a significant moment on multiple levels that reverberated beyond the UK.Firstly, as a contemporary realisation of the terraced street, high in density but low in height, with space for pedestrians and gardens prioritised over car parking, it set a new standard for housing design.UCLA-based architecture theorist Dana Cuff called it "a clear demonstration that design ingenuity is the key to achieving great affordable housing"."The project is ingenious particularly in terms of the site plan, which is the starting point and most important aspect of housing," she told Dezeen for this piece.The development consists of 105 council homes arranged in low-rise streetsIt represented a remarkable departure from the majority of housing currently built in many parts of the world: sparse, characterless units delivered by large corporations.Mikhail Riches and Hawley's design was selected by the council because they were the only architects to propose a streets-based approach rather than slabs of apartment blocks.Using the example of a nearby neighbourhood of desirable Victorian terraces, the architects were able to persuade planners to agree to a street width of 14 metres, rather than the 21 metres usually mandated.These narrower streets made it possible to achieve the housing density required, while also sacrificing less space to cars."Not only is the scheme a delight by anyone's standards, it also offers a roadmap for precisely the type of housing the UK needs huge amounts of," architect Piers Taylor wrote in Dezeen. "Goldsmith Street doesn't, thankfully, reinvent the housing wheel, and it doesn't need to."Mikhail Riches and Hawley's design prioritises space for people over carsIn addition, Mikhail Riches and Hawley were widely praised for their commitment to the details. For instance, carefully arranged stairs mean that even upstairs flats have a front door that opens onto the street.Meanwhile, the rooftops are angled to avoid blocking of sunlight to adjacent terraces all year round. Other touches include perforated brick balconies and bronze screens hiding bin stores.Any residential project of such quality would be a significant achievement, but as social housing built to provide secure tenancies to people on low incomes, Goldsmith Street is extremely rare.This little neighbourhood represents something quietly miraculousOliver Wainwright in The GuardianSocial housing has only been delivered in relatively tiny numbers in England for more than a decade. But with its emergence, Goldsmith Street helped reignite the international conversation about the value of the tenure, and became a bellwether for a growing architecture movement committed to building excellent, low-cost homes for public good.It also demonstrated what can occur when architects are placed in the driving seat. Unusually for a project of this type, Mikhail Riches and Hawley worked directly with the council as client, rather than through a contractor under a design-and-build setup.This approach a brave one by Norwich council, which was delivering its first housing in decades and had struggled to get the project moving during the financial crisis gave the architects far more agency to negotiate on matters such as street width.In another brave move, the council tasked the architects with meeting Passivhaus standards a very high bar of thermal efficiency that means buildings require only minimal energy to heat and cool.The architects were able to persuade planners to green light a smaller gap between terraces. Photo by Rod EdwardsEnergy bills are therefore 70 per cent cheaper than the average UK household, and residents have spoken about the profound effect of such warm, affordable homes on their lives. Some reported clearing debts, reduced need for medication and no longer having to use food banks.By achieving these standards without compromising on aesthetics, Goldsmith Street helped to change perceptions about Passivhaus buildings."In the architecture world, Passivhaus is a byword for clunky boxes with fat rendered walls and tiny windows, representing a kind of socks-and-sandals, ironed hair-shirt approach to design," the Guardian's Wainwright wrote. "But Goldsmith Street shows that it doesn't have to be so grim."Overall, it was a Stirling winner that simultaneously demonstrated the power of architecture, the potential of social housing, the possibilities of residential design and the practicality of low-energy building."Goldsmith Street shows architecture can advance sustainability, affordability and liveability all while making a sophisticated formal solution," summarised Cuff.Read: Explore the Stirling Prize-winning Goldsmith Street housing in 360-degree interactive tourCommentators, including Wainwright and Taylor, were especially pleased after the previous year's prize had gone to Foster + Partners' 1.3 billion London headquarters for Bloomberg, which made controversial claims about being the world's most sustainable building despite using large amounts of material shipped from around the world."The whole country breathed a sigh of relief that the prize didn't go to an 'iconic' piece of architecture in a time where more than anything we don't need more iconic buildings," said Taylor.Interest in the project was so great that the council became worried about the impact of intrigued rubberneckers on local residents.Goldsmith Street is the only social housing project to have won the Stirling PrizeDespite the universal praise, Goldsmith Street has so far not precipitated a flood of similar projects much to the disappointment of Mikhail Riches co-founder Annalie Riches."Actually it was quite a low-cost project, it wasn't expensive," she told Dezeen in an interview last year. "And I thought, 'well, now everyone's going to be doing this we've shown it can be done'. But it's not that easy."Its status as social housing also remains vulnerable to the Right to Buy, a controversial policy that allows council tenants to purchase their homes at a discount.The housing and climate crises continue to worsen, but Goldsmith Street remains a ray of hope, a cherished morsel of evidence that we can do better.Did we get it right? Was Goldsmith Street the most significant building completed in 2019? Let us know in the comments. We will be running a poll once all 25 buildings are revealed to determine the most significant building of the 21st century so far.This article is part of Dezeen's 21st Century Architecture: 25 Years 25 Buildings series, which looks at the most significant architecture of the 21st century so far. For the series, we have selected the most influentialbuilding from each of the first 25 years of the century.The illustration is byJack Bedford and the photography is by Tim Crocker unless otherwise stated.21st Century Architecture: 25 Years 25 Buildings2000:Tate Modern by Herzog & de Meuron2001:Gando Primary School by Dibdo Francis Kr2002:Bergisel Ski Jump by Zaha Hadid2003:Walt Disney Concert Hall by Frank Gehry2004:Quinta Monroy by Elemental2005:Moriyama House by Ryue Nishizawa2006:Madrid-Barajas airport by RSHP and Estudio Lamela2007:Oslo Opera House by Snhetta2008:Museum of Islamic Art by IM Pei2009:Murray Grove by Waugh Thistleton Architects2010:Burj Khalifa by SOM2011:National September 11 Memorial byHandel Architects2012:CCTV Headquarters by OMA2013:Cardboard Cathedral by ShigeruBan2014:Bosco Verticale by Stefano Boeri2015:UTEC Lima campus by Grafton Architects2016:Transformation of 530 Dwellings by Lacaton & Vassal, Frdric Druot and Christophe Hutin2017: Apple Park by Foster + Partners2018: Amager Bakke by BIG2019: Goldsmith Street by Mikhail Riches and Cathy HawleyThis list will be updated as the series progresses.The post Mikhail Riches's Goldsmith Street was the most significant building of 2019 appeared first on Dezeen.

Comic book artists have each put their own stamp on our favourite blue hedgehog.

The source of more than half of all wildfires in the Western US remains unknown, so the US Forest Service has teamed up with computer scientists to create tools that can find answers.

Plus: A hacker finds an issue with Cloudflares systems that could reveal app users rough locations, and the Trump administration puts a wrench in a key cybersecurity investigation.