Architects and educators most impactful contributions to housing justice are often too quotidian to gain attention. But this is precisely the type of work that makes a real difference in residents lives. Luckily theres a conference for that. Presented by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA), last months Intersections Research Conference: New Housing Paradigms illuminated the potential of small-scale, engaged housing design interventions. The program underscored how architectural skills can help alleviate housing inequities. The Austin, Texas conference convened housers to share vital research and design projects that otherwise might be overlooked. Participants from academia and practice examined housing as a process, a product, and a place through lectures, panels, workshops, and local tours. Chaired by Martin Httasch and Elizabeth Mueller of the University of Texas at Austin, with John J. Clark of Realm Architecture and Development and Florida Atlantic University, and hosted by the UT Austin School of Architecture, the event highlighted how architects can shape policy, revitalize historic housing models, effectively collaborate with residents, and design beautiful social housing.Architects Influencing Built Environment RegulationsOne compelling example of under-the-radar housing work came from the Delta Design Build Workshop (Delta DB), which has rehabilitated almost 200 homes of low-income homeowners in rural Mississippi. Beyond delivering architectural interventions like roof replacements and foundation work that yield energy savings and improved resident health, Delta DB also handles the complex task of securing Home Repair government grants. Employing her architectural knowledge, founding partner Emily Roush-Elliott expertly translates homeowner needs into successful scopes and budgets, in turn enabling impactful design. Delta DB takes on work that other people dont want, and gets down and dirtyliterally. When a client with mobility issues complained of a roll-in shower that had never worked, Roush-Elliott crawled underneath the house and discovered that the plumbing was not hooked up. She admitted, I often roll into city offices really dirty. The history and emerging future of housing in Austin is not what you would expect. Austin was the first city in the U.S. to create a housing authority after the passage of the national 1937 Housing Act. But discriminatory planning histories have contributed to displacement Austin was 30 percent Black in the 1870s and is now just 7.5 percent Black. Responding to these spatial injustices, AIA Austins Housing Advocacy Committees successful policy reform campaigns offer a case study in how architectural expertise can influence built environment regulations. The Advocacy Committees in-depth research and reform proposals helped lead to policy changes, including Austins adoption of the HOME (Home Options for Middle-income Empowerment) Initiative, a series of code amendments designed to facilitate a wider range of housing options. The architects on the committee adeptly illustrated the physical and economic ramifications of lines of building code, thus influencing policy.Arelene Elwood and Shelby Blessing of Mobile Loaves and Fishes lead a tour of Community First! Village. (Karen Kubey)A visit to Community First! Village, a 393-resident tiny home development, uncovered valuable lessons for housing design processes. Mobile Loaves & Fishes (MLF), a nonprofit started in 1998, opened Community First! in 2015. While the group originally planned the development as an RV park, architects advised, Maybe if youre making permanent housing, it shouldnt have wheels!After partnering with AIA Austin DesignVoice on Tiny Victories 1.0, a 2014 pro bono microhome design competition, MLF realized that the resulting built tiny homes were successful only when they met specific residents needs. Designing for a generic occupant was not enough. The 2018 Tiny Victories 2.0, for the villages expansion, began then with a participatory design process, pairing architects with individual resident-clients. This produced a range of specific designs to be replicated, including Thoughtbarns 186-square-foot Daves Tiny Tall-Grass Retreat, designed for a resident named Dave and available for anyone else wanting to maximize privacy.Working with Marginalized GroupsThe best work of the conference was countercultural. Rather than serving the powers that be, the academic, research, and built work was produced in solidarity with marginalized groups who rarely have access to adequate housing, much less architectural services. Laura S. Wainer, from The City College of New York shared insights from her studio course Mi Casa, Mi Futuro in a panel that I moderated. Framed by the international right to housing, the studio collaborated with immigrant-focused nonprofit Make the Road and produced housing designs that support community control and collective ownership. Speculative, adaptive designs for collective housing emerged as a powerful theme. Two memorable projects transform everyday apartment building types to allow for shared spaces and care activities. Daniel Jacobs of University of Houston and Brittany Utting of Rice University reimagined the typical Houston drive-in apartment, transforming ground-floor parking into shared outdoor kitchens and repurposing courtyards as ecological havens. Los Angeles Shadow Housing by Jeffrey Liu of California Polytechnic State University, with Haylie Chan, features a common rooftop with walls angled to cast shadows, creating shifting shaded and sunny spaces for programs like lunchtime collective cooking and eating and afternoon co-working.Historical architectural research on eras of government commitment to affordable housing production resonated with current advocacy around decommodified housing. Architects Against Housing Alienations Adrian Blackwell of the University of Waterloo, and Sara Stevens of the University of British Columbia, shared research on False Creek in Vancouver and St. Lawrence in Toronto. These 1970s Canadian social housing developments were designed for walkability and community, but nixed deep affordability in favor of mixed incomes and tenuresa harbinger, Blackwell and Stevens argue, of neoliberalism. Dragana Zoric of Pratt Institute traced Yugoslavian developments from 1949 to 1974, when the country built two million housing units, depicting the restructuring of society reflected in evolving domestic architectures.Exploring Other Affordable Housing and Design StrategiesA productive, energizing Housing Studio Knowledge Sharing Workshop organized by Lynne Dearborn of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Christina Bollo of the University of Oregon, and Tom Collins of Ball State University, facilitated the exchange of pedagogical strategies among housing studio educators from North American institutions. A new online platform, Housing Design Teaching Network, promises to keep the conversation going.Lawrence Scarpa and Jeffrey Huber of Brooks + Scarpa offered a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into the design of the firms 10,000 affordable housing units to date, from successful policy advocacy to creative negotiations with contractors. Super Bowl champion turned furniture designer Michael Bennett showcased his work with Studio Kr, emphasizing multiscalar designs that preserve African American and diasporic cultures.In a keynote address, Shaun Donovan, CEO and President of Enterprise Community Partners and former HUD Secretary, traced how his architectural education has informed his commitment to design excellence in government and now the nonprofit sector. He highlighted initiatives like New Housing New York and Rebuild by Design and discussed how his organization champions quality housing design through programs like Enterprise Green Communities. The discussion really got going when students from The American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS)whose conference was at the same timepiped up with well-prepared, provocative questions. Asked to name the biggest obstacle in his work, Donovan cited local resistance to social housing. He called for architects to break through: Its much easier for people to imagine the worst if they cant see something. Seeing is believingthats something that designers have a particularly powerful way to help people understand.Donovans exhortations echoed the most inspiring elements of the conference. New Housing Paradigms affirmed the sometimes invisible yet critical roles that architects and educators play in advancing housing justice. The event set a hopeful tone for a growing movement toward improved and expanded social housing options. As Donovan implored the audience, Folks like me, we call ourselves housersand we need more people to join us.Karen Kubey is Assistant Professor, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto; and Convener, American Institute of Architects Right to Housing Working Group.

Up until its abrupt closure last year, the now defunct University of the Arts (UArts) in Philadelphia was an active contributor to the design scene in Pennsylvania and beyond. The news of UArtss sudden closure was announced in May 2024, shortly after the Middle States Commission on Higher Education elected to withdraw its accreditation; it came as a shock to students, faculty, and staff. Without anyone to occupy the Center City campus, the vacant buildings represent a legacy of what once was. That is, until recently. Last week, Scout, a women-owned development and design company based in Philadelphia, successfully acquired the historic Hamilton and Furness buildings on the Avenue of the Arts with a winning bid of $12.25 million, $250,000 more than its original bid. The acquisition is the result of community support, local advocacy, and the leadership of both local and state politicians who have lent their support to the cause.Hamilton and Furness Hall have stood in the Central City of Philadelphia since UArts, then called the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, was founded in 1876. Over a century later, both buildings were transferred to the school for just $1 as part of a 1994 sale.Hamilton Hall, used by UArts as an academic space, is a Greek Revival building designed by John Haviland and built in 1826 with additional wings added by William Strickland and Frank Furness in 1838 and 1893 respectively. It is considered the oldest extant building located on Broad Street. Furness Hall was designed as a dormitory by Frank Furness in 1875. It also served as a residence hall on the UArts campus, with spaces for students to study, socialize, and live during their time at the university.Scouts plan for the reuse of the former UArts buildings closely resembles the firms work on Bok, a local project that transformed a shuttered 340,000-square-foot vocational high school into workspaces for Philadelphia makers, businesses, nonprofits, and artists. Though Scout will be working with a smaller footprint, the programming remains similar: preserving existing workspaces as studios for artists, small businesses, and other craftspeople. Additionally, the dorms will be converted into subsidized housing for artists with a residency program.The arts are a critical force in every citybringing creativity, resilience, and joy. Artists help us all to understand and reflect on hardship, trauma, and hope in new ways, Scout shared in a press statement. They challenge us to see the world differently, to push boundaries, and to imagine new possibilities. These buildings, steeped in history and culture, will continue to be spaces where artists and makers thrive, ensuring that Philadelphia remains a vibrant and innovative center for creativity.Todays colleges and universities serve as a connective, cultural tissue for the communities they inhabit, with a reach that goes beyond the boundaries of their campus. Scout, the only arts-focused organization to bid on the property, represents a commitment to maintaining the cultural development and impact of the Avenue of the Arts for years to come.When AN reported the news of UArtss closure back in June 2024, the future of its campus buildings was uncertain. With four residence halls, six academic buildings, 10 performance venues, and 12 gallery spaces, the former UArts campus has a lot to offer the community. At the time of writing, five of the nine available buildings have been awarded to the highest bidder in Delawares U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

All images from the Art21 New York Close Up film, Guadalupe Maravillas Mariposa Relmpago,' Art21, shared with permissionIn a Retrofitted School Bus at the U.S.-Mexico Border, Guadalupe Maravilla Heals Through VibrationsFebruary 26, 2025ArtFilmGrace EbertGuadalupe Maravillas multi-disciplinary practice is rooted in a simple premise: sound is medicine.The artist is known for works that merge sculpture, performance, instruments, and healing, one such project being the elaborately retrofitted school bus titled Mariposa Relmpago. Part of Maravillas Disease Throwers series, the large-scale coach is devoid of bench seats and ubiquitous yellow paint and instead features an open cab lined with chrome panels. More than 700 found objects adorn its body, from cutlery and a worn pair of sandals to large gongs.Mariposa Relmpago, which translates to lightning butterfly, is also the subject of a new film from Art21. The short documentary recounts Maravillas experience of immigrating to the United States as an unaccompanied child to escape the civil war in his native El Salvador. He often returns to the objects and spaces that informed his journey in his practice, harnessing the energy of each and transforming them into sites of recuperation and relief.The film features images of the elaborately decorated vehicles that characterized Maravillas childhood and inspired this project. I wanted to bring a school bus from El Salvador to the United States, and I wanted to have the same migratory path that I had as a kid, he says in the film.After its Boston debut in 2023, Mariposa Relmpago has continued to travel around the U.S., particularly across West Texas and the border with Mexico. At Ballroom Marfa, border control agents joined the general public in a sound bath ceremony on the bus. My community sees them as very threatening, the artist says, but I realized that I wanted to do a ceremony for border patrol agents because its not just about healing those that have been hurt but also healing other more complex situations as well.As we collectively grapple with the consequences of the current administration, Maravillas works take on a new level of importance. I think everyone needs to heal something, he adds.Part of Art21s New York Close Up series, this film follows the nonprofits 2021 documentary featuring Maravillas outdoor sound baths at Socrates Sculpture Park. The artist is currently working at Recycled Artists in Residency in Philadelphia, where hes creating his own instruments. Follow his work on Instagram.Next article

Recommended By Greg Wehner Fox News Published February 26, 2025 5:21pm EST close Debris from SpaceX Starship streaks through the sky SpaceX's Starship exploded during an unmanned test flight. Debris from the explosion streaked through the sky, leaving people on the ground amazed and confused. (Greg Munch/TMX) Elon Musks SpaceX is preparing to launch the eighth flight test of Starship from Boca Chica, Texas, which could blast off as soon as this Friday as long as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gives its approval."Starship Flight 8 flies Friday," Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, said in a post on X Sunday.For the first time, the upcoming flight has a planned payload deployment and multiple experiments on re-entry geared toward returning the upper stage booster to the launch site to be caught.The launch will also include the return and catch of the Super Heavy booster that will blast the rocket off the launchpad.STARSHIP UPPER STAGE LOST ON SEVENTH TEST FLIGHT, DEBRIS SEEN SPEWING IN SKY Starship Flight 7 launches from Starbase, Texas, before its upper stage was lost. (Associated Press)During the flight test, Starship will deploy four Starlink simulators, which are about the same size as next-generation Starlink satellites, SpaceX said.The Starlink simulators will be deployed in the same sub orbit as Starship and are expected to burn up upon re-entry.While Starship is in space, SpaceX also plans to relight a single Raptor engine. Starship Flight 7 launches from Starbase, Texas. (Associated Press)If all goes as planned, the launch window will open at 6:30 p.m. ET.The launch comes more than a month after SpaceX launched Starship Flight 7 from the Starbase test site in Boca Chica, which resulted in Starship experiencing a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" nearly 12 minutes into the flight.The Super Heavy booster descended back to Earth, where it maneuvered to the launch and catch tower arms at Starbase, resulting in the second ever successful catch of Super Heavy.Starship, however, was not as successful. "Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn," SpaceX said in a statement Jan. 16. "Teams will continue to review data from today's flight test to better understand root cause. With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and todays flight will help us improve Starships reliability."SpaceX has investigated what caused Starship to break apart, though the investigation remains open.For Starship Flight 8 to blast off, the FAA must give its approval, which could come in a few ways.In 2023, the FAA issued a five-year license to SpaceX for launches from Texas, which is revisited for every launch in case modifications need to be made for things like the trajectory of the rocket. The FAA could grant approval once mission specifics and license modifications are made, the FAA told Fox News Digital.But also lingering is the open investigation into the Starship Flight 7 mishap. To fly again, the investigation needs to be closed, and the FAA must accept the findings. Specifically, the FAA weighs whether the incident put public safety at risk.At the time of this writing, the investigation had not been closed, and the FAA had not given approval. Still, it is common for the approval to be issued a day or two before launch, the FAA noted.SpaceX did not respond to Fox News Digitals request for comment on the matter.Fox News Digitals Louis Casiano contributed to this report. Greg Wehner is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital.Story tips and ideas can be sent to Greg.Wehner@Fox.com and on Twitter @GregWehner.

adamparent - FotoliaNewsUS intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard probes UK demand for Apples encrypted dataA secret order issued by the UK against Apple would be a clear and egregious violation, if it provides backdoor access to Americans encrypted data, says US Director of National IntelligenceByBill Goodwin,Computer WeeklyPublished: 26 Feb 2025 21:34 The US presidents most senior advisor on intelligence and security has warned that any attempt by the UK to require tech company Apple to create a backdoor that would allow the UK access to the encrypted data of Americans would be a clear and egregious violation.The US Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said in a letter published today that she shared concerns raised by Congress over reports that the UK has issued an order against Apple that could undermine Americans privacy and civil liberties.Her intervention comes three days after Apple announced that it would no longer provide UK smartphone and iPad users with its Advanced Data Protection service, which allows users to encrypt their data on Apples iCloud.Apple made the move following disclosures that the UK was seeking access to encrypted data stored on Apples iCloud service anywhere in the world.In a letter to senator Ron Wyden of Colorado and representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, Gabbard disclosed that she had not been informed of the order either by the UK government or Apple and had only learned about it in the media.The UK.s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, also known as the Snoopers Charter, which I understand would be at issue, allows the UK to issue a gag order, which would prevent Apple or any company from voicing their concerns with myself, or the public, she told Wyden and Biggs.Gabbard, the recently appointed US Director of National Intelligence, acts as the executive head of the US intelligence community, which includes the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies. She is also the principal advisor to president Donald Trump on intelligence matters.In a move likely to raise tensions between the UK and the US just as prime minister Keir Starmer arrives in Washington for a high profile meeting with the US president, Gabbard said that she shared concerns that such a move by the UK would open up a serious vulnerability for cyber exploitation by adversarial actors.Senator Wyden and representative Biggs, who sit on opposite sides of the political divide in Washington, wrote to Gabbard asking the administration to kick the UK out of the 65-year-old UK.-USA Five Eyes signals intelligence sharing agreement if the UK does not withdraw the demand to Apple, Computer Weekly reported on 13 February.Gabbard told the two politicians that she had directed her counterparts in the intelligence community at the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency to provide insights regarding the publicly reported actions of the UK and that she would subsequently engage with UK officials.She said she had directed a senior intelligence officer to work with her departments Office of Civil Liberties, Privacy, and Transparency and Office of Partner Engagement to assess the implications of the UK compelling a US company to create a back door that would allow the UK government to retrieve private content.Gabbard had also asked lawyers to provide a legal opinion on the implications of the UK.s reported demands against Apple on the bilateral agreement between the UK and the US under the US Cloud Act which allows law enforcement reciprocal access to data held in each country for fighting serious crime.Upon initial review of the US and UK bilateral Cloud Act Agreement, the United Kingdom may not issue demands for data of US citizens, nationals, or lawful permanent residents nor is it authorized to demand the data of persons located inside the United States, she wrote.Any information sharing between a governmentany governmentand private companies must be done in a manner that respects and protects the US law and the Constitutional rights of US citizens, the letter adds.I look forward to ensuring the UK government has taken necessary actions to protect the privacy of American citizens, consistent with the CLOUD Act and other applicable laws, irrespective of any press reporting, she said.While the US intelligence relationships with foreign partners are of vital importance to US national security, Gabbard said that her obligations as Director of National Intelligence include protecting both the security of our country and the God-given rights of the American people enshrined in the US Constitution.Computer Weekly previously reported that Wyden and Biggs who first raised concerns about Apple with Gabbard, are on opposite sides of the political divide.Wyden is a liberal democrat who has campaigned for healthcare and the environment; Biggs is a loud Trump supporter and a noted organiser of the MAGA squad. Wyden, from Oregon, serves on the Senate Intelligence and Finance Committee; Biggs, from Arizona, chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance. They argue that weakening American cybersecurity is particularly shortsighted following Chinas Salt Typhoon hack of US phone networks, which included tapping president Trump and vice president Vances calls.US Security officials have advised Americans to use encrypted services to secure their calls, texts, and other communications against foreign hackers and criminals, in response to the Chinese attack.Wyden and Biggs urged Gabbart to re-evaluate US-UK collaboration on cybersecurity and intelligence sharing if the UK did not immediately reverse its position.The bilateral US-UK relationship must be built on trust. If the UK is secretly undermining one of the foundations of US cybersecurity, that trust has been profoundly breached, they wrote in a letter to Gabbard on 13 February.They cite a report by the UK Parliaments intelligence oversight committee in 2023, which found that the UK gained more from sharing intelligence with the US, than the US gained from sharing intelligence with the UK.The report stated the UK benefits greatly from a mutual presumption towards unrestricted sharing of [Signals Intelligence] between the US and UK and that [t]he weight of advantage in the partnership with the [National Security Agency] is overwhelmingly in [the UK.s] favour, according to their letter.The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, served Apple with a Technical Capability Notice, in January, ordering it to provide the government with back door access to material stored by Apple users on its encrypted cloud service.The notice, first reported by the Washinton Post, was issued under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. It is a criminal offence for a technology company to reveal the existence of any technical capability notice served against it.The Investigatory Powers Act, gives powers to the government to issue Technical Capability Notices to remove or modify electronic protection applied by tech companies to communications data, under Section 253, part 5(c).In The Current Issue:An action plan for net zero compatible with budget constraintsWhat is Dunelm doing for women in tech?Download Current IssueF5 AppWorld 2025: Day #1 keynote & live show report CW Developer NetworkSLM series - Syndicode:How to use the right (model) tool for the job CW Developer NetworkView All Blogs

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Maria Diaz/ZDNETAmazon's early-year Devices and Services event took place today, and the company made it clear that AI will continue to be at the center of its hardware universe. Driving the buzzword of the century is Alexa, arguably the most popular virtual assistant in the world. SVP of Devices and Services Panos Panay suggested that millions of new customers use it every day during the event. Also: Everything Amazon announced at its Devices and Services event todayAnd that's likely true: Alexa is at the core of Amazon's most prominent hardware products, including Echo speakers and Fire TVs. Today, the company showcased what's next for its virtual assistant, now named Alexa+, as it looks to compete with the likes of Google, OpenAI, and others. The new Alexa will be "something that understands you, that can actually take action," Panay teased, and it will work with tens of thousands of services from Amazon partners. Here's a rundown of the best new features coming with Alexa+ and how much it will cost. 1. Multimodal, agentic interactions Powered by LLMs, Alexa+ can now process visual information via your device's cameras to understand and answer questions. In one instance, Alexa was asked to describe the crowd's excitement and enthusiasm at the event by leveraging the Echo Show 15's front-facing camera. While its responses were two to three sentences long, they were descriptive and dictated in a fairly approachable tone.The agentic capabilities of Alexa+ extend to browsing, with the ability to navigate the internet via Alexa.com and complete tasks for you on Amazon-partnered websites. For example, Alexa was asked to book a professional repairman for a damaged appliance. It then searched for a nearby repair service and booked an appointment via Thumbtack. Also: 16 incredibly useful things Alexa can do on Amazon EchoIn another demo, a presenter worked with Alexa to build out a shopping list, suggesting items to add or remove throughout the conversation. Surprisingly, the feature supported shopping partners beyond Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh. As Alexa responds, a flowing blue animation appears on the bottom of the device screen. This new change reflects Amazon's more expressive UI. 2. Conversational chain of commands Besides responding more naturally, with sprinkles of humor, another big unveiling showed how Alexa can now fulfill tasks throughout your daily apps and services, including your calendar and emails. It can book a dinner for you and send invitations for that to your closest contacts, too. We've seen similar agentic capabilities with Google's Gemini. Also: Ring just made outdoor security more affordable with its new $100 2K cameraIn a demo, the virtual assistant was asked to recommend local pizzerias, to which it pulled top-rated storefronts via Yelp. Another example included asking Alexa to remember things, such as "Mary likes Greek and Indian food and is vegetarian but doesn't like peanut butter." It did just that without a question. 3. Refreshed home screen on Echo Show Amazon also unveiled a series of new widgets alongside its refreshed Echo Show home screen, including ones that surface recipes, recent apps, weather, shopping lists, and connected smart home devices. The adaptive display leverages the larger screen real estate to display relevant information depending on whether you're far away from the device or closer to it. For example, the Echo Show will display photos and personalized content from afar and switch to a more detailed layout when you approach it. 4. Conducting music with voice For a music demo, Panay asked Alexa, "What's the song Bradley Cooper sings... it's like in a duet?" to which it answered, "Shallow with Lady Gaga from the movie *A Star Is Born*." More impressively, you can now dictate where music is playing from if you have multiple Alexa-enabled speakers in your house. Also: The best Alexa devices of 2025: Expert tested and recommendedFor example, you can ask Alexa to play music on the left or right, with the assumption that speakers are mounted in designated areas. We'll have to see exactly how reliable this is in real-world tests. And for Amazon's last trick, Panay asked Alexa to skip to the scene in the movie when "Shallow" is sung, and it did -- on the second try. 5. Improved Ring integration Alexa now supports AI-powered video search, allowing it to process recordings by Ring cameras to answer questions. In a live demo, Panay asked the assistant whether anyone had taken out the dog yesterday or the day before, to which it sifted through past video libraries to determine the answer. 6. Dense document processing "You can now share just about anything with Alexa," said Mara Segal, Director of Alexa. That includes dense legal documents, handwritten notes, school schedules, PDFs, and more, from which the assistant can process the content and answer related questions. Also: How I feed my files to a local AI for better, more relevant responsesIn another example, a school schedule was uploaded, and Alexa was asked to add dates for soccer practices to the calendar and suggest snacks that could be brought to them. 7. Explore and Stories with Alexa Amazon's focus on kids-centric services extends to Alexa+, which now includes the Explore and Stories features. In a demo, the assistant was asked to create a story about funny animals. It followed up with a story about "Benny the Bearded Dragon," accompanied by a series of AI-generated artwork. How much does Alexa+ cost? The upgraded Alexa service will cost $19.99 a month or be free if you're an Amazon Prime member. It will officially roll out over the next few weeks and "subsequently in waves in the coming months," according to Amazon. What Amazon Echo devices will support Alexa+? Amazon says that Alexa+ will be available on all Echo devices, including the Show 8, 10, 15, and 21, with the exception of certain older generation Echo devices like Echo Dot 1st Gen, Echo 1st Gen, Echo Plus 1st Gen, Echo Tap, Echo Show 1st Gen, Echo Show 2nd Gen, and Echo Spot 1st Gen, where you can continue to use the original Alexa.According to its press release, "You'll also be able to try Alexa+ on your web browser, the Alexa app, compatible Fire TVs and Fire tablets. This experience is not currently supported on Alexa Built-in devices and Amazon Astro, however we look forward to expanding Alexa+ to additional devices in the future."Featured

Franois Locoh-Donou, president and CEO of F5. F5Platforms dominate technology. We talk about Microsofts family of software application development platforms from .Net to Windows to Office as platforms upon which developers build new apps and services. Throughout the world of open source, we consider Linux and its variants to be solidified platforms with accompanying toolsets to create and innovate on top of. We then move to major databases, enterprise resource planning suites and data management brands as platforms upon which we can create platform-aligned services, usually shaped by the source DNA on which they run. Further along, we can also consider other major entities in technology as platforms i.e. Google Maps is a platform technology that can be integrated into other applications, or indeed built on top of.Platforms also come about when the core technology proposition from a vendor has become so expansive, multifarious and functional that it exists as a foundation upon which to build digital services. At this level, the platform also underpins the lifeblood of working operations in a live production IT environment. We can reasonably place multi-cloud application security and delivery company F5 in this platform category i.e. over its three decades in business, the company has now purpose-built a highly integrated set of technologies that now work in orchestrated union as a pure platform play and one that is, therefore, greater even than the sum of its parts.But if we are to suggest F5 ranks at this status, how does the company aim to justify its position on the platform podium?Shape Of A PlatformIn specific terms, the company has now detailed its F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform, an Application Delivery Controller technology solution that converges high-performance load balancing and traffic management with advanced application and API security capabilities into a single platform.Before we dive into the newly empowered and converged offering on show here, do we really understand what an application delivery controller is and know why theyre so special in the world of network management, network protection and server-level connectivity for todays multi-cloud world?An ADC is a technology designed to handle load balancing, security and related aspects of network-level management and application delivery control from user and device authentication to firewalls to security patching and operational health reporting. Once built as dedicated hardware appliances to reside inside network installations, ADCs graduated to become software-based services and then ultimately became virtualized services to exist in the service-based computing universe of the hybrid cloud.With the latest iteration of its technology - and the companys stance firmly aligned to that of platform provider - F5 says it has worked through the three ages of ADC to now deliver what it can call ADC 3.0 i.e. a purpose-built application delivery control platform that is capable of meeting the extraordinary demands (a reference to massive data workloads, massively distributed and fragmented technology landscapes and the need to align to massively complex algorithmic logic next to the new breed of agentic AI functions) of modern applications.But again, lets keep ourselves in check here, the company is talking about the era of ADC 3.0 as we stand today, so how did we work through the previous two ages of this technology and what does that teach us about where we are now?A Brief History Of Application Delivery ControlIn the 1990s, F5 introduced application delivery controllers to keep applications secure in the burgeoning computing environments that were fuelled by what we now consider to be the early stages of the web itself. This was the era of ADC 1.0 and we have continued to develop our core products throughout, including F5 BIG-IP which is a software and hardware suite that optimizes application traffic by distributing load across multiple servers, ensuring high availability, performance and security, said Franois Locoh-Donou, president and CEO of F5. BIG-IP has always been a platform in many senses of the term because it consolidates multiple functions into one technology and it has programmability, but lets move onward to ADC 2.0 to connect our story.The CEO explains how the technology industry moved through the millennium into the 2010s. At this point, there was a consensus in the belief that all enterprise applications would go to the public cloud. This would mean that the cloud service provider hyperscalers (and we know who the big three are today) would handle all the load balancing and authentication and so on. Customers were attracted to the idea that ADC services in this arena would always be up-to-date, eminently scalable and cost-effective and they were, but thats not the end of the story.At that ADC 2.0 point in history, F5 was selling predominantly to on-premises deployments [private cloud] and to enterprise deployments where the customer did want to refactor its applications to fit the ADC 2.0 services offered by the cloud hyperscaler."This reality was twinned with the realization that not everything needed to be in the public cloud to take advantage of its scalability and ability to burst additional services, especially where workloads were consistent and more predictable, or where sovereign cloud mandates and regulatory compliance stipulations stipulated that public cloud services from certain geographies were not permissible, explained Locoh-Donou.The Ball Of FireThis story leads us to a state where networks were (and still are) called upon to drive highly distributed, highly fragmented and highly variegated applications. Protecting this surface area is what F5 executives call the ball of fire and its dangerous because point solutions attempting to protect IT services at so many different levels will inevitably lead to unpatched attack surfaces. All of this has led us to the need for ADC 3.0 technologies to reset the status quo and work at a more varied level of form factors.Imagine a healthcare installation that has a deep data requirement to serve an MRI scanner or some other highly complex piece of equipment. That tier of data would most likely be served by an on-premises private cloud layer to protect personally sensitive information and healthcare records. Yet, people who use that service might use their mobile healthcare app to book their appointments. This would require connectivity across public cloud networks that deliver software-as-a-service to customer endpoints, with some of the app data even perhaps coming from an external content delivery network. Additionally, this story might also feature a tier of additional app services (in the hospital, or on the users device) that stem from a containerized Kubernetes-based backend. This means protection needs to be applied across a whole selection of form factors which would therefore have to include (taking them in order) hardware, SaaS public cloud and, thirdly, containerization layers.Applying network protection across all those layers with point solutions is a bad idea, says F5; so this is the core rationale behind why the companys plication Delivery and Security Platform has come about.Our platform [in your healthcare example] enables a single pane of glass to deliver policies, patches and additional parameters across the entire spectrum of form factors, even in the most variegated computing environments, said Locoh-Donou. In a ball of fire environment, we also have to contend with the fact that AI services are making applications hyper-distributed, hyper-connected, hyper-hybrid and increasingly hyper-autonomous. But this is why we have engineered our platform with what we call the F5 AI Gateway. We will observe that connection being made by any element of AI and we will insert security in that connection to make sure theres no data exfiltration, there's no prompt injection, there's no abuse of the model with our ADC 3.0 sofware. This stops customers from having to go out and deploy yet another point solution to solve this new problem. That's the beauty of the technology itself i.e. with ADC 3.0, we can always integrate new functionalities things when needed.The companys forthcoming 2025 State of Application Strategy Report tells us that within three years, an estimated 80% of all apps will be AI-enabled. But, although AI is here most enterprises are poorly prepared or equipped to handle the massive amounts of data, complex traffic patterns and new attack vectors that are inherent in AI applications. The new F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform has been engineered and built to address these challenges as an ADC offering for enterprises operating hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructures.Painful Point PackagesBuilt specifically to combat the point solutions that CEO Locoh-Donou says can be so painful in the realm of network health and management, the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform converges what might typically be piecemeal point solutions to address critical needs including load balancing, multi-cloud networking, web application security and API security, with AI gateway capabilities.The platform is API-driven and enables consistent policies for every app. Its deployment flexibility means it can be deployed anywhere in any form factor to run across todays diverse IT environments and offer single policy-based unified managementacross all locations to reduce complexity. It offers analytics to improve performance and strengthen the security of complex applications and offers fully programmable data planesthatenable automated deployment so organizations can effectively adapt to changing needs.CEO Locoh-Donou mentioned the new F5 AI Gateway offering. This is a technology designed to streamline interactions between applications, APIs and large language models and hekp promote and enable the adoption of AI inside an enterprise. This containerized technology optimizes performance, observability and protection capabilities. It gives IT operations and security teams a path to adopting AI services with improved data output quality.The Networked Road AheadThe road ahead for enterprise technology vendors who work anywhere near the market F5 operates in is characterterized by perhaps five factors: a need to wholly embrace hybrid multi-cloud realities; a need to be fully cognizant of artificial intelligence and the capabilities of agentic AI functions to perform software code-level tasks and instructions autonomously; a need to provide the so-called single pane of glass approach that tech vendors love to lay claim to, but actually do so with an ability to work at every level of todays massively differentiated, distributed and diverse network deployments; an innate appreciation for containerization in the composable world of Kubernetes and its multifarious configuration parameters; and a need not to be seen as security company, but as a cloud-native AI-empowered enterprise platform player that partners with the biggest and is still capable of working with open source hobbyists if thats where the next big thing comes from.We could extend this list and add the next phase of AI development and talk about the need to dovetail with small language model technologies, quantum computing and the major moves among the cloud hyperscalers designed to automate and provide continuous computing controls, but five is numerically convenient for this story and anyway, you can count it on one hand. Once again perhaps, the network is the computer, but now its a more networked network.Franois Locoh-Donou, president and CEO of F5. F5

Alexa Plus is here but it's only supported by four Echo products as of now, and won't be supported by more than half a dozen Echo devices.

Key TakeawaysChegg has sued Google, claiming AI Overviews reduced its traffic and revenue by displaying answers directly in search results.Chegg is struggling financially, though. $6.1M net loss, a 24% revenue drop, and stock trading at just above $1.Google denies harm, arguing AI Overviews drive traffic to more sites. Also, users find the feature helpful for quick, reliable answers.Chegg, an edtech company that provides online learning resources, sued Google in federal district court. It claimed that Googles AI-generated summaries have adversely affected its revenue and traffic.The AI-generated summaries, or overviews, appear whenever you search for a query on Google. The intention of this feature is to combine the best pieces of information from multiple pages and present them to you so that its easier and quicker to find an accurate answer.Cheggs AccusationsChegg, however, believes that this feature has transformed Google into an answer engine instead of a search engine. Google uses the data on platforms like Chegg and displays it at the top (in overviews), keeping users from visiting real websites (like Chegg) and thereby reducing engagement on their pages.According to Chegg, Google isnt the only one stealing from them. In 2023, the then-CEO claimed that the advent of ChatGPT had significantly reduced student engagement on its platform.The anti-AI propaganda takes a break when Chegg itself partners with Meta Llama, OpenAI, and Mistral to make the platform AI savvy. It also offers AI-powered learning tools in addition to renting and selling textbooks.According to the evidence presented by the company, Googles AI overview feature uses around 135 million questions and answers from Chegg without any attribution. They also pointed out how this feature could be responsible for the lower search engine ranking of the platform.Chegg also referenced a federal judges ruling from last August that confirmed Google has a monopoly in search. This ruling came from a 2020 DOJ lawsuit, which claimed Google stays on top by making it hard for others to compete and reinforcing its own dominance.Cheggs Financial Condition and Its FrustrationRationalizing Cheggs claims becomes easier when we analyze the companys consistent downfall. It has reported a $6.1 million net loss on $143.5 million in fourth-quarter revenue, which translates to a whopping 24% decline year over year.The company is trading at just above $1 per share after the companys stock crashed. It was once worth billions, but its valuation is now under $200 million due to fewer students signing up. This means reducing demand for the learning platforms paid services.Lets unpack why Chegg thinks Google is responsible for its losses:Chegg made its money by helping students with their homework. It built a community of experts and students who could help each other out.With AI helping out students for free, the company lost a major chunk of its clients.Chegg has hired Goldman Sachs to explore the next steps, which would be either to sell the company or go private. Management projected first-quarter revenue of $114-116 million, falling short of analysts $138.1 million target.An Unfair Accusation?Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites a Google spokesperson clarifiedAlso, Google Overviews rightly mention the sites its pulling data from. So, to say that it doesnt credit the original content providers would be unfair.Also, overviews, while helpful, are mere summaries of the actual answer. For detailed answers, the user must head over to the source article, which, as a matter of fact, benefits from its placement in Overviews.Looking from the point of view of a user, Google AI Overview is one of the best things that AI has given us because it not only saves a lot of time but also directly provides reliable and verified information at the top.Google has not directly commented on the matter but will defend itself in court.Add Techreport to Your Google News Feed Get the latest updates, trends, and insights delivered straight to your fingertips. Subscribe now! Subscribe now Vlad is Techreport's in-house Executive Editor. With over a decade of experience in tech content, he's passionate about computer hardware, an advocate of online privacy, and strongly believes in the open-source, scarce-money nature of cryptocurrency. When hes not working, hes traveling with his partner and their cat, learning Python, or reading good books. He never owned a PC he did not build. View all articles by Vlad Melnic Our editorial processThe Tech Reporteditorial policyis centered on providing helpful, accurate content that offers real value to our readers. We only work with experienced writers who have specific knowledge in the topics they cover, including latest developments in technology, online privacy, cryptocurrencies, software, and more. Our editorial policy ensures that each topic is researched and curated by our in-house editors. We maintain rigorous journalistic standards, and every article is 100% written byreal authors.