Respect for those who do it themselves. So goes the slogan of a chain of German home improvement stores that plays up their customers pride as weekend contractors. Things were different in the Cold War days of the old East Germany (GDR) when a lack of resources meant that people took on home projects out of pure necessity. Do-it-yourself work was in demand then, including at this holiday enclave on the Netzener See, a lake southwest of Potsdam roughly an hour by car from Berlin. The original homeowners built all of the 45 lakeside bungalows in the woods themselves, the last of them in the 1980s.The trendy butter yellow bedroom is part of a palette that adds up to a colorful scene.Berlin residents Julia Carloff-Winkelmann and Jan Winkelmann converted one 300-square-foot cottage in the community into a weekend home for themselves and their teenage daughter. The HR manager and the gallery director wanted to go beyond merely furnishing it to also do a good deal of restoring the cottage themselves. With some help from friends, Jan tore down interior walls and laid the terrazzo flooring. Hes enjoyed puttering around on home tasks since he was a teenager, and the bungalow became a welcome distraction during the pandemic. Its been five years now since the couple bought the little housewhich was first built in 1964and this year they will also reimagine its 4,300-square-foot garden.A weekend escape: 45 mini homes make up this holiday area to the southwest of Potsdam.The exterior of the humble cottage with its shed roof is a plain white. Step inside, however, and colors dance in the light. Walls glow in light blue and yellow, while the kitchen cabinets are pink, the worktop is eggplant, and the bathroom tiles a deep red. The Winkelmanns combined it all with a solid, and fearless, instinct for colors, evoking an atmosphere of endless summerno small feat given Brandenburgs notoriously unpredictable, and often gray, weather. Thanks to a clever reorganizing of the floor plan and the room layouts, the 300-square-foot cottage feels spacious. The entrance leads directly into the living room with a kitchenette, before you continue on to the bedroom with a sleeping alcove and bathroom. The couple used a few tricks to achieve the maximum use of the space they had to work with, including extending a counter under the living room windowsill so that they wouldnt need a separate dining table. An extra-wide window was added in the wall above the kitchen installation, allowing light to flood in as it makes the room appear larger than it actually is.Color pops in the bathroom as red and pink tiles are paired with black grouting and fittings.The couple used a few tricks to achieve the maximum use of the space they had to work with, including extending a counter under the living room windowsill so that they wouldnt need a separate dining table. An extra-wide window was added in the wall above the kitchen installation, allowing light to flood in as it makes the room appear larger than it actually is.Since family life goes on mostly outside, a counter was extended from the windowsill to take the place of a dining table. Its just large enough to function as a place for meals and as an impromptu workspace. The stools are from Tiptoe.An architect friend of the Winkelmanns suggested they put in a new window while a structural engineer they know helped to calculate whether the walls would be able to withstand the renovation. The couple also sought professional help on the electrical system that dated from the 1960s and had to be completely replaced. The solid old metal fuse box on the back wall is a reminder of the bungalows original condition.The new, light gray terrazzo floor connects the living room and bedroom.Jan taught himself the ins and outs of renovation, down to determining the best sequencing for the construction work. An old manualwith the hilariously dry title Permit-Free Building Projectswas also helpful in illustrating which measures can be carried out without a building permit. For everything else you need an architect, and it can then take a while before all the necessary paperwork is issued.The bungalow floor plan was totally redesigned. The bed is now tucked in an alcove next to the bathroom. A work by Berlin artist Gerold Miller hangs on the wall.Jan was actively involved in every phase of the renovation. He worked with mock-ups when designing the interiors and, during construction, he even hung a bucket from the ceiling to check whether a pendant light would be the right choice for the living room. (This exercise led Jan to conclude that the fixture would be too large.) He opted instead for a Tom Dixon-designed Melt ceiling lamp that provides an especially atmospheric light.A newly installed window in the kitchenette, combined with fresh pastels, creates a space with a warm glow.Above the kitchen installation, an Ixa light designed by Foster + Partners for Artemide. The kitchen itself is from IKEA, and a cabinetmaker has added a custom linoleum worktop, while metal cabinet handles are from the Swedish brand Toniton. Jan has long been passionate about contemporary art and a few select works were a must.Smart home: With just more than 300 square feet of space, the bungalow feels surprisingly spacious.

All 50 States Have Now Pushed Right To Repair Laws, But Actual Enforcement Is Spotty At Bestfrom the fix-your-own-shit deptMon, Mar 10th 2025 05:27am - Karl BodeState laws attempting to make it cheaper and easier to repair your own tech continue to gain steam. With the recent introduction of a new right to repair law in Wisconsin, U.S. PIRG notes that all 50 U.S. states have now at least introduced such bills:This is more than a legislative landmarkits a tipping point. Weve gone from a handful of passionate advocates to a nationwide call for repair autonomy,said Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit.People are fed up with disposable products and locked-down devices. Repair is the future, and this moment proves it.While U.S. consumer protection issues are a hot mess in the United States, the right to repair movement continues to be a singular bright spot. The more that giants like Apple, John Deere, and others try to monopolize repair (usually through obnoxious DRM, parts pairing, or legal fine print), the greater the public support for the movement seems to grow. The catch: so far only Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado,California, andOregon have actually passed laws. And in some instances the bills have been watered down post-passage, like in New York, where Governor Kathy Hochul buckled to company lobbying to make the law much weaker while also exempting many of the most problematic industries.Elsewhere, state governments just arent really enforcing the laws so far despite no shortage of corporate violators. Reformers can correct me if Im wrong, but Ive yet to see a meaningful enforcement action against a major company in any of the states that have passed such legislation.And Id suspect that as Trump 2.0 takes aim at labor rights, civil rights, and pollution standards, most states will have their hands full facing costly legal battles across a litany of other subjects. Challenging big companies on right to repair probably wont be a high staffing or budget priority. Thats not to say the right to reform movement shouldnt be hopeful. But activists and consumers alike need to understand that getting a law passed is only the first step; theyll need to apply pressure on state officials that pass such laws, consider the issue settled, then immediately fall into a deep coma.

TechnologyMove Fast and Destroy DemocracySilicon Valleys titans have decided that ruling the digital world is not enough.By Kara SwisherIllustration by The Atlantic; Sources: Shutterstock.March 9, 2025, 8 AM ET So, it was capitalism after all. More specifically, crony capitalism. I am talking, of course, about how the leaders of the tech world revealed themselves before and after the 2024 presidential election, when just a little more than half of America (and a surprisingly diverse group for an anti-DEI candidate) decided to give the job once again to the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.But what was quite different this time was the growing participation from the tech elite, with some falling in line before the election, some waiting until after, and oneElon Musktaking an even more prominent role, effectively gaining control of the U.S. government for the price of getting Trump back into power.For tech leaders at this moment, the digital world they rule has become not enough. Leaders, in fact, is the wrong word to use now. Titans is more like it, as many have cozied up to Trump in order to dominate this world as we enter the next Cambrian explosion in technology, with the development of advanced AI.I cannot explain fully why a small majority of U.S. voters did what they did, because it is for many and varied reasons, including inflation, immigration, a ginned-up panic over trans athletes, and post-pandemic yips, in which I have only glancing expertise. There is no doubt we all are muddling through unusually aggrieved times. But I can tell you how we got that way, because of the part I do know about, which has been a crucial element to what has happened: the wholesale capture of our current information systems by tech moguls, and their willful carelessness and sometimes-filthy-thumb-on-scale malevolence in managing it.When combined with a lack of empathy and enormous financial self-interestwhich Ive been pointing out at least since Silicon Valley potentates marched up to Trump Tower in late 2016 like sheeple to pay homage to the president-electit is basically a familiar trope: greed (of the few) over need (of the many).And that has resulted in the damaging and warping and siloing of us all, courtesy of many of the people I wrote about in my book Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, about the promise and then souring of Silicon Valley. It is these characters who want to reign like kings not just over tech, but over everything everywhere, and all at once. To update the old Facebook maxim of Move fast and break things: Move fast and crush everyone. This was bad enough as a business axiom, but when its applied to the entire apparatus of our democracy, its terrifying.My memoir of my decades covering these peoplefrom when they had nothing to now, when they have it allfocused on a range of characters, including the late Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder who was by far the person I most thought of as a true tech visionary. While some might disagreenot everyone was keen on his use of what was jokingly called a reality-distortion field conjured up to sell his always nifty hardwareJobs stood far and away above the men who followed him, like Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg, Amazons Jeff Bezos, and, of course, Elon Musk of, its fair to say, Elon Musk Inc.Jobs, who was definitely a crafty and manipulative charmer, also had a set of basic values he stayed true to, from protection of privacy to making quality products, unlike this trio for whom the acquisition of wealth, the hoarding of power, and endless self-aggrandizement have become the goal. Unlike Jobs, who left behind a legacy of innovation and even wonder, the titans who followed him are so poor, all they have is money.To be fair, Musks efforts were once certainly loftier pushing into existence an electric-car industry that had not previously had any traction; cutting the costs of rockets and space travel and much more. Let me clearly acknowledge that this was all indeed inspiring. That is, until his epic megalomania, personal foibles, and other deep-seated character flawswhich had always been there, lurkingtook over his mind completely and sent it into the outer limits.After years of mocking Trump, Musk changed drastically during COVID and became ever more manic and cruel, as he swung hard right down conspiracy highway. That was why I predicted on my book tour in March 2024 that Musk would back Trump extravagantly, even after he had just as vehemently said he would remain politically neutral and promised not to donate to either candidate.Hello, he is lying, I thought at the time. Under a Biden administrationand then, after he stepped down as nominee, a Harris administrationMusk would have received the usual scrutiny of his businesses. He must have known that under Trump, if he ponied up time and money, and, most especially, if he deployed the platform formerly known as Twitter to power Trumps propaganda machine, an unfettered billionaires paradise awaited him.Soon enough, besides funding a PAC and taking over Trumps ground game in swing states, Musk was showing off his stomach while bizarrely jumping up and down on a variety of stages across the nation. And, of course, he was pushing a flood of inaccurate information on X and puckering up to Trump like a particularly enthusiastic remora, sometimes referred to as a suckerfish or shark sucker. (Hey, I dont make up the words.)As inane as he looked, it was the best investment of time and money of Musks life, even if it meant cosplaying as a beta to Trumps alpha. Its paid off: His net worth has nearly doubled after Trumps victoryit sits at $348 billion todaywith billions more possible as he remakes the government in his image. Soon after Trumps victory, the president announced the formation of the jokingly titled Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGEwhich I suggested might more accurately stand for Department of Grandstanding Edgelordsto be run by Musk and (briefly) a fellow look-at-me billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy. With its power, staff, and efficacy undefined, it sounded more like an episode of The Apprentice.Initially, a number of people theorized that this unelected commission was a clever way for Trump to sideline the billionaire who had helped to take him over the line to victory. I myself was not sure Trump would tolerate anyone taking attention off him. But so far, he has.As of this writing, tens of thousands of Americans in government roles have already been fired by Elons tech toadies. Musk has gotten rid of regulators who just happen to oversee his businesses, in agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and USAID. While Trump has recently made noises about reining in Musks power, he also said that if Cabinet members dont shrink their own agencies, Elon will do the cutting. And, anyway, Musk as a long track record of doing whatever he wants.What is happening is shocking, in a way. But if anyone is not surprised, its tech reporters who saw, over the past decade, what these people were becoming. Musks behavior is emblematic of techs most heinous figures, who now feel emboldened to enter the analog world with the same lack of care and arrogance with which they built their sloppy platforms. They denigrate media, science, activism, and culture, and spend their time bellyaching about the woke-mind virus and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Those programs, despite their occasional annoyances, were directionally correct. As I often point out, the opposite of woke is asleep; the opposite of DEI is homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion. Thats just the way an increasing number of techies want it and, with Trump and Musk at the wheel, the goal toward which they are now reengineering our country.Before the stakes got even higher, there was a warning about what was happening as AI expanded. With trillions of dollars there for the taking, investments are being made by the same small coterie of companies and people that now controls the entire federal government. So are the important decisions about safety and more, which should be made by an independent and fair government and its citizens.There are no laws regulating almost any of it, though the Biden administration gave it a shrugging try for a little bit. A bummer, right? But not unexpected if you have been paying even the slightest amount of attention.The ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy, wrote one of my favorite philosophers, Paul Virilio. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is one of the gravest threats to democracy in the near future. It is, then, imperative to develop a democratic technological culture. This seems vanishingly unlikely today.Where is the hope, then? One glimmer came to me this past year in an interview I did with the historian Yuval Noah Harari, in which he pointed out that science and illumination were not the immediate beneficiaries of the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, in about 1440, though some tie those developments together. In fact, even a century later, Copernicuss groundbreaking On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres sold only 500 copies. What was a best seller right after the press was in heavy use was a book by an obscure writer named Heinrich Kramer titled The Hammer of Witches, a demented treatise on satanic women who stole mens penises and hid them in a nest in a tree, I kid you not. When we spoke, Harari noted that the popularity of the book spurred witch hunts, in which tens of thousands of peoplemostly womenwere killed.The thing is the printing press did not cause the scientific revolution. No, Harari told me. You have about 200 years from the time that Gutenberg brings print technology to Europe in the middle of the 15th century until the flowering of the scientific revolution.He went on: How did, in the end, we get to the scientific revolution? It wasnt the technology of the printing press; it was the creation of institutions that were dedicated to sifting through this kind of ocean of information, and all these stories and developing mechanisms to evaluate reliable information and to be trusted by the population.That is, indeed, the possible exit from the mess we now find ourselves inswimming in oceans of information with an ever-decreasing number of facts to keep us afloat. Except, unlike the expansion that tech gave to the enlightened before, the institutions of today, such as media, science, and education, are being slowly destroyed by technology. And there seems to be no way out of this world, especially as egomaniacal entrepreneurs like Musk and others fork over small pieces of their vast fortunes to buy up everything from global media to, yes, a president of the United States.And there they are, thus, everywhere we look, running everything, a fate that Paul Virilio predicted in a 1994 interview with the now-defunct technology journal CTHEORY, when he worried that virtuality will destroy reality. That is precisely what is happening 30 years later, although it is much worse than I think we are prepared to acknowledge, even now as Musk presides over Oval Office press conferences and White House Cabinet meetings as Trumps enforcer and sees himself as a kind of global superhero.In our many interviews over the years, Musk often referenced science fiction, which he looked to for inspiration. During that 1994 interview, Virilio referenced a short story that I imagine Musk knows, in which a camera has been invented which can be carried by flakes of snow. Cameras are inseminated into artificial snow, which is dropped by planes, and when the snow falls, there are eyes everywhere. There is no blind spot left.The interviewer then asks the single best question I have ever hearda question that I wish I would have had the perspicuity to ask of the many tech leaders I have known over three decades, especially Musk, who via DOGE now is building what techies call a God view dashboard of our nation and the world: But what shall we dream of when everything becomes visible?And from Virilio, the best answer: Well dream of being blind.Its not the worst idea.This essay has been adapted from the epilogue of Swishers book Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

Stripped AwayFresh Fallout TV show set leaks appear to give us our first up-close look at the Lucky 38, and if they do, someone needs to tell Mr House his tower's been nickedDon't look at me, I've already pushed his luck by refusing to hand over a certain chip.Image credit: Obsidian/Amazon Prime Video. News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on March 10, 2025 Some more pics and videos of sets being used in the second season of Amazon Prime Video's Fallout TV show appear to have leaked online, and unless I've missed it happening previously, this would be our first look at the New Vegas strip itself.I use that qualifier because there have been a fair few alleged shots of various Fallout season two sets shared around various corners of Twitter and Reddit since shooting kicked off, with a fair few hinting at New Vegas locations like Novac - including a snap of the dinosaur head we were all waiting for.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Now, some fresh shots and videos appearing to show a Strip set are buzzing around, with the most eye-catching aspect of being what looks pretty unmistakeably like the entrance to Mr House's iconic Lucky 38 casino, complete with neon sign just in case that bullet really did kick your vision in the head.The best look at this has been offered by a video recorded by a user with the handle onzo1313, which has since been shared by Fallout fan account Fallout Films. In it, through some camera work that's just a bit better than your elderly mother trying to record an airshow, we get a glimpse of what looks to be the casino opening where Victor stands once he's done stalking you - with the iconic strip gate to the left and some classic cars parked out front.That last bit could potentially hint at us getting to see pre-war New Vegas, and there's one other thing worth noting. The Lucky 38's tower isn't there - all that's above the entrance are some big lights. Now, you might be saying, Mark, that's just how film sets work, they'll likely use computers to create any wider shots that tower should be in.But I don't think you're taking this seriously enough. Now, come on, let's get in this lift and tell old Robert Edwin Casa his pad's missing. Wait, if the tower's gone, so's he. Forget it then, let's get out of here and go confront Benny at The Tops - a sign for which is visible in another of the shots that's been shared, while another features a Gomorrah sign. Yes, we're going to make love to him this playthrough. Don't tell me you left your black widow perk back in Goodsprings.What are you hoping we see of The Strip and its casinos in season two of Fallout? Do you think Walton Goggins' Ghoul will end up getting banned from them all? Let us know below!

Pole position on our wishlists.During the MAR10 Day celebrations last year, Nintendo dropped a teaser for an upcoming Mario Kart 'big build' set - with a silhouette that showcased a more detailed kart than we had previously seen from the child-friendly builds. A year of silence ensued, but we'd expect our first official look to arrive later on today after an official LEGO retailer site revealed a bunch of details about the upcoming set. Mamma mia!According to the Australian LEGO Certified Stores site, the 'LEGO Super Mario: Mario Kart - Mario & Standard Kart' set (nice and snappy, eh?) is set to launch on 15th May for $249.99 AUD, which is around 122 / $158. And it's one for grown-ups only, apparently consisting of 1,972 pieces and earning itself an adult '18+' age rating in the process.Read the full article on nintendolife.com

From Superfluous to Superlative - every Mario game, ranked.It's 10MAR MAR10, the day when Nintendo celebrates all things Mario with sales, swag, and an announcement or two. So far, we've seen a new Alarmo theme, discounts on Mario games at retail in North America, and the early leak of a long-rumoured adult LEGO Mario Kart set.In honour of the plumber, we're republishing this list of his platforming accomplishments, although he's also magic when it comes to karting, role-playing, partying, and sports of all kinds. Bit of an irritating overachiever, isn't he? Enjoy!Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Elon Musks X was inaccessible on Monday morning for thousands of users, including many in the U.S.According to Downdetector, a website that tracks users reports of online outages, X went down for some users around 5:30 AM ET, with over 20,000 users reporting outages. Though these outages seemed to have resolved after about an hour, the outages returned around 9:30 AM ET, with more than 40,000 users reporting issues. As of 10:30 AM ET, the outages are ongoing, though some users have reported that they have been able to access the site again.X has not commented on the cause of the outage. Occasional outages are normal for platforms of this size, but are never convenient for their users as one user lamented in the comments on Downdetector, on day 1 of the NFL free agency!? ELON Fix this.

In BriefPosted:7:28 AM PDT March 10, 2025Image Credits:Pexels (opens in a new window)Consumer Reports finds popular voice cloning tools lack safeguardsSeveral popular voice cloning tools on the market dont have meaningful safeguards to prevent fraud or abuse, according to a new study from Consumer Reports. Consumer Reports probed voice cloning products from six companies Descript, ElevenLabs, Lovo, PlayHT, Resemble AI, and Speechify for mechanisms that might make it more difficult for malicious users to clone someones voice without their permission. The publication found that only two, Descript and Resemble AI, took steps to combat misuse.Others required only that users check a box confirming that they had the legal right to clone a voice or make a similar self-attestation.Grace Gedye, policy analyst at Consumer Reports, said that AI voice cloning tools have the potential to supercharge impersonation scams if adequate safety measures arent put in place.Our assessment shows that there are basic steps companies can take to make it harder to clone someones voice without their knowledge but some companies arent taking them, Gedye said in a statement.Topics

Breakdown & ShowreelsIl Treno dei Bambini: VFX Breakdown by Frame by FrameBy Vincent Frei - 10/03/2025 Recreating the past on screen requires more than costumes and set design. The invisible VFX by Frame by Frame in Il Treno dei Bambini subtly enhance every frame, from period-correct landscapes to historical details, ensuring an authentic and immersive portrayal of postwar Italy!Click on the picture to watch the reel. Vincent Frei The Art of VFX 2025

KISS Keep It Simple Stupid, or Keep It Stupid Simple if you prefer, a good Blender exercise for reducing distraction and endless iteration is to just keep it simple.Take a simple blockout object (in this example from the Game Asset Workflow: Complete Blender Guide) and have fun with it. See the world in a grain of sand! Links:Patreon Game Asset Workflow: Complete Blender Guide on BlenderMarket (aka SuperHive)On GumroadBlenderThe post A Simple Block Blender Challenge appeared first on Creative Shrimp.