Cat lovers, assembleweve discovered something to help create a balanced and cohesive living environment for you and your furry feline friends. Dubbed Meowtain, this design investigates the concept of home as a space where humans consider the well-being of their pets alongside their own quality of life.This project seeks to elevate daily experiences by examining the role of furniture in the home, boosting emotional health and overall well-being. Meowtain serves as a unique and functional furniture design that meets the needs of humans and cats alike. It makes an effort to form a living space that feels comfortable and comforting to both.Designer: Shu WangMeowtains internal structure was meticulously crafted using a combination of plywood and metal components, ensuring durability and strength. To create a plush and inviting feel, the design incorporates layers of foam, batting felt, and boucle fabric, providing a comfortable and aesthetic appeal that invites interaction.The design features three upper layers, inspired by the graceful contours of terrace fields, which are ingeniously stacked on a central pole. This arrangement allows the layers to pivot freely, enabling a variety of configurations that adapt to different needs and preferences. The swiveling functionality is displayed by the metal pole hardware, making it easier to engage with the mechanism. The act of transforming the layers into different positions becomes rewarding and delightful, adding an element of play to the experience.The furniture piece also features arms that move with smooth precision, striking an ideal balance between flexibility and firmness. This ensures stability when used as a backrest, providing reliable support while still allowing for enough movement to accommodate different postures and preferences. While designing the piece, the designer wanted to avoid any clear and instant associations with the conventional definition of cat furniture. To achieve this, feline-inspired elements were very subtly integrated into the design. Features like backrest forms extending into space and stacking around a central pole bring to mind the structure of a cat tree.Upholstered arms that can gently wrap around the human body form a pretty cozy and inviting sensation, which offers a sense of comfort and relaxation. At the same time, the choice of materials and the varying heights of the piece make it appealing for cats to engage with as well. This embrace highlights the relationship between furniture and the body, fostering a connection that resonates both physically and emotionally. The Meowtain serves as a comfortable furniture design for humans, while also offering some engagement and amusement to your kitties. Currently, this design seems like a concept, but I am pretty sure a product like this would be welcomed with open arms into households with cats.The post This Furniture Design For Cats & Humans Steers Clear Of The Conventional Definition Of Cat Furniture first appeared on Yanko Design.

The cease-work order at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wont just affect lawsuits and enforcement actions. It will stall regulation that could govern tech companies like Apple and Google.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed the complaint on behalf of US federal workers, arguing that DOGEs data access is illegal and should be cut off.

The Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America on Apple Maps for users in the United States after a mapping database update and further criticism from Republican lawmakers.Apple Maps slowly being updated with Gulf of Mexico name changeIt appeared that Apple would take a half-step in renaming the Gulf of Mexico by showing Gulf of America when users searched for the term, but that wasn't enough. After the official database run by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN) finally updated with the new name, Apple is changing the name to satisfy the Republican lawmakers.According to a report by Bloomberg on Tuesday afternoon, Apple will make the change for all Apple Maps users around the globe. It's not yet known what form that update will take. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Announced on Tuesday, Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 improve massively on the original, with heart beat monitoring the biggest and most important feature addition to Apple's audio lineup in years. And, we've been using them for a while.Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 review: The new, updated modelInitially introduced in May 2019, the Beats Powerbeats Pro offered many of the useful elements you'd find in AirPods, but in a package made for high-intensity workouts. Made with an ear hook, they could be securely mounted to the user's ear with little fear that they'd fly off during a particularly vigorous workout.Over five years later, and after some pre-launch teasing, Apple subsidiary Beats has brought out a brand new version. One that not only makes refinements to the existing form, but one that also takes a massive step towards being a multi-purpose wearable device. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

Archinect kicked off 2025 by asking a bunch of folks (ranging from the AIAs Chief Economist and the CEO of the American Society of Landscape Architects, to architects and academics like Martha Lewis or Judith Sheine) to share their predictions and insights for the year ahead. In Donna Sinks opinion, "Peggy Deamer's and Bryan Lee's are the best. A couple-few are very dinosaurian".Plus with the help of Enoch Sears, Niall Patrick Walsh reviewed five common ways architects charge fees for design services and offered up five tips for structuring fees. gwharton added "Another important aspect of this is the importance of good operational systems and management to make sure you can deliver profitablyYou may have plenty of fee and a clear scope, but if your process is so ineffective that you can't move the project forward, complete phases, and deliver value consistently and on time, then you are still going to lose money."NewsDrew Haley Smith, a 2023 B.A. graduate of Auburn University...

The Trump administrations imposition of a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports is expected to increase the cost of construction and create delays and higher costs of completion for many projects in the United States.In response, the AEC industry is decrying it as a major blow to economic prospects as brighter skiesbegin to appear on the horizon following an 18-month downturn. Either way, construction spending had been expected to slow through the end of 2026 according to recent AIA reports. In 2024, the U.S. imported over 26 million metric tons of steel products, including just over 9.1 million tons from Canada and Mexico combined, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. (h/t Construction Dive).

Stellar Blade developer Shift Up has revealed through its recent earnings report that it made 219.8 billion in revenue over the previous year. This translates to roughly $151.4 million, and is a 30.4 percent increase over its reported revenues from 2023, according to Game World Observer.With revenues having gone up, the studio also announced 145.58 billion (roughly $102.3 million) in profits, which was up by 33.8 percent year-over-year. This rise in revenue and profits has made 2024 a record year for the studio. Net profits for the studio were up as well, amounting to 142.6 billion (roughly $98.2 million).Of note is that, while mobile gacha game Goddess of Victory: Nikke generated plenty of money 153 billion (roughly $105.4 million) and accounted for 69.6 percent of total revenue, its revenue was actually lower compared to last year by around 7 percent.Third-person action game Stellar Blade also made a fair amount of money, totalling up to 62.8 billion (roughly $43.2 million). The studio stated that the upcoming PC release of Stellar Blade will likely perform even better than the console version. The studio stated that the game is currently in its optimisation phase, and the studio is even working on getting it running smoothly on the Steam Deck.Among other things, Shift Up credited the games various updates, as well as the NieR: Automata collaboration event from back in November for the success of Stellar Blade.Currently, the PC version of Stellar Blade doesnt have a release date, though the studio has stated that it is targeting a 2025 launch for the platform. In the meantime, check out our review of the PS5 release.

Developer Kinetic Games has revealed its plans to bring more content to co-op horror title Phasmophobia moving forward in 2025. In a blog post on its own website, the studio has revealed that two major updates are planned for Phasmophobia, along with new maps as well as reworks to older maps, and even seasonal events.To kick things off, Phasmophobia will be getting the Chronicle update, which is a new way for players to record evidence of the various hauntings they investigate. Players will be able to post videos and photos of their investigations, and will be appropriately rewarded depending on how valuable this evidence is.The second major update planned for the game will be a revamp for the player characters. As part of the update, players will get new models for their characters with improved animations. There will also be new customisation features, which will be coming in an update planned for 2026.On the maps front, Phasmophobia will be getting a new map. While the studio has avoided spoiling things by giving us too many new details, it has stated that this new map will be a small one of comparable scale to the various houses in the game. The studio has also stated that future maps will also be relatively small, which allows for the development of more maps at a quicker pace.When it comes to maps getting updated, the studio is currently working on updated versions of Bleasdale Farmhouse, Grafton Farmhouse, and 6 Tanglewood Drive. Bleasdale Farmhouse will be the first of these to come out, set for release in March. The redesign of these maps has been described by the studio as complete artistic overhauls of each map, including new assets and animations, a high level of visual detail as well as a few layout changes.The new seasonal events planned for 2025 will implement feedback the studio got for its events last year, and will be kicking things off with a new take on the Easter event. Halloween and Winter will also see their own events, and will involve players investigating alongside the Blood Moon cult, and even taking on Krampus later in the year.While Kinetic Games is working on these updates and content releases for this year, it has also spoken about more content planned for Phasmophobia in 2026. This will include what the studio refers to as Horror 2.0, as well as new maps and other reworks.While we arent ready to talk about all of those right now, we are hard at work at making sure that when we do, theyll be worth the wait, wrote the studio.Phasmophobia is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. The game can also be played on PC through a VR headset for extra horror vibes. Check out our Early Access review of the PS5 release from last year for more details. You can also read our coverage of the horror titles success in our report of its console launch getting more than a million players just a month after launching.

Charles Darwin (12February 1809 19April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many scientists initially favoured competing explanations that gave only a minor role to natural selection, and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. This photograph of Darwin by Julia Margaret Cameron was taken around 1868.Photograph credit: Julia Margaret Cameron; restored by Adam CuerdenRecently featured: Dolderbahn RailcarAlpine ibexFragaria vescaArchiveMore featured pictures