A significant cyber breach at His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) that saw scammers cheat the public purse out of approximately £47m has been met with dismay from security experts thanks to the sheer simplicity of the attack, which originated via account takeover attempts on legitimate taxpayers. HMRC disclosed the breach to a Treasury Select Committee this week, revealing that hackers accessed the online accounts of about 100,000 people via phishing attacks and managed to claim a significant amount of money in tax rebates before being stopped. It is understood that those individuals affected have been contacted by HMRC – they have not personally lost any money and are not themselves in any trouble. Arrests in the case have already been made. During proceedings, HMRC also came in for criticism by the committee’s chair Meg Hillier, who had learned about the via an earlier news report on the matter, over the length of time taken to come clean over the incident. With phishing emails sent to unwitting taxpayers identified as the initial attack vector for the scammers, HMRC might feel relieved that it has dodged full blame for the incident. But according to Will Richmond-Coggan, a partner specialising in data and cyber disputes at law firm Freeths, even though the tax office had gone to pains to stress its own systems were never actually compromised, the incident underscored just how widespread the consequences of cyber attacks can be – snowballing from simple origins into a multimillion pound loss. “It is clear from HMRC's explanation that the crime against HMRC was only possible because of earlier data breaches and cyber attacks,” said Richmond-Coggan. “Those earlier attacks put personal data in the hands of the criminals which enabled them to impersonate tax payers and apply successfully to claim back tax.” Meanwhile, Gerasim Hovhannisyan, CEO of EasyDMARC, an email security provider, pointed out that phishing against both private individuals and businesses and other organisations had long ago moved beyond the domain of scammers chancing their luck. While this type of scattergun fraud remains a potent threat, particularly to consumers who may not be informed about cyber security matters – the scale of the HMRC phish surely suggests a targeted operation, likely using carefully crafted email purporting to represent HMRC itself, designed to lure self-assessment taxpayers into handing over their accounts. Not only that, but generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) means targeted phishing operations have become exponentially more dangerous in a very short space of time, added Hovhannisyan. “[It] has made [phishing] scalable, polished, and dangerously convincing, often indistinguishable from legitimate communication. And while many organisations have strengthened their security perimeters, email remains the most consistently exploited and underestimated attack vector,” he said. “These scams exploit human trust, using urgency, authority, and increasingly realistic impersonation tactics. If HMRC can be phished, anyone can.” Added Hovhannisyan: “What’s more alarming is that the Treasury Select Committee only learned of the breach through the news. When £47m is stolen through impersonation, institutions can’t afford to stay quiet. Delayed disclosure erodes trust, stalls response, and gives attackers room to manoeuvre.” Once again a service’s end-users have turned out to be the source of a cyber attack and as such, whether they are internal or – as in this case – external, are often considered an organisation’s first line of defence. However, it is not always wise to take this approach, and for an organisation like HMRC daily engaging with members of the public, it is also not really possible. Security education is a difficult proposition at the best of times and although the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) provides extensive advice and guidance on spotting and dealing with phishing emails for consumers – it also operates a phishing reporting service that as of April 2025 has received over 41 million scam reports – bodies like HMRC cannot rely on everybody having visited the NCSC’s website. As such, Mike Britton, chief information officer (CIO) at Abnormal AI, a specialist in phishing, social engineering and account takeover prevention, argued that HMRC could and should have done more from a technical perspective. “Governments will always be a high tier target for cyber criminals due to the valuable information they hold. In fact, attacks against this sector are rising,” he said. “In this case, it looks like criminals utilised account take over to conduct fraud. To combat this, multifactor authentication (MFA) is key, but as attacks grow more sophisticated, further steps must be taken.” Britton said organisations like HMRC really needed to consider adopting more layered security strategies, not only including MFA but also incorporating wider visibility and unified controls across its IT systems. Account takeover attacks such as the ones seen in this incident can unfold quickly, he added, so its cyber function should also be equipped with the tools to identify and remediate compromised accounts on the fly. Read more about trends in phishing Quishing, meaning QR code phishing, is an offputting term for an on-the-rise attack method. Learn how to defend against it. A healthy dose of judicious skepticism is crucial to preventing phishing attacks, said David Fine, supervisory special agent at the FBI, during a presentation at a HIMSS event. Exchange admins got a boost from Microsoft when it improved how it handles DMARC authentication failures to help organisations fight back from email-based attacks on their users.

Events Letterheads Per L'Horta: An Intimate International Meet The masses amass in Almàssera for an inspiring four days painting in the Valencian sun. Better Letters Jun 5, 2025 • 8 min read Letterheads Per L'Horta in Almàssera, Valencia, 1–4 May 2025. This time last month, over 45 guests from 11 countries were feeling the post-Letterheads blues after four days in the small town of Almàssera, just outside Valencia, Spain. Letterheads Per L'Horta was organised by Nico Barrios, and it was a wonderfully intimate experience, with a host of activities to enjoy and learn from.Something that made the event feel extra special was the involvement of people from the local community, who were just as much a part of it as those that had travelled from as far afield as Australia and Mexico to attend. This included bidding in the auction for a souvenir of the long weekend in May spent with friends, new and old.Almàssera and L'HortaAlmàssera is a small town set within a vast expanse of small-scale agricultural production. While each plot of land is known as a huerto (allotment), they are collectively referred to as horta, which doesn't really have a direct translation. The Horta Nord (North Horta) that surrounds Almàssera is the largest and best surviving example of this type of terrain.We were based in the town's Museu de l'Horta (Horta Museum), which consists of an old and a modern building with a yard between them that housed the panel jam area.A traditional alquería (farmhouse) in l'horta, a view down on the meet, and the tents protecting the panel jam area.Inside the modern building there was a selection of pieces from Juan Nava's 2022 Gráfica Urbana de Valencia (Urban Graphics of Valencia) exhibition. There was also a trip down memory lane for Valencian locals in the form of another exhibition, L'ombra de les lletres (the shadow of the letters), with photos of signs spanning the period 1880–2000.L'ombra de les lletres was originally curated by Tomàs Gorria in 2024. Pedal PowerAlmàssera, and the city of Valencia, are easily navigated by bicycle, which Nico used to facilitate a cycling tour of the old signs of l'horta. In addition to the stories of the individual companies advertised, he was also able to identify the painters responsible for some of the signs.The tour took guests into the heart of l'horta, which, as a largely agricultural area, boasts a surprising number of old and hand-painted signs.Panel JammingAfter a windy first day or so, the event was bathed in beautiful Mediterranean sunshine. The protective tents were essential, although those in the middle had to carefully manage their colour schemes in light of the red hue they cast across the easels.Getting painty in l'horta: Nathan Collis, Xis Gomes, Maria Cano, Mike Meyer, and Loughlin Brady Smith.Panels set to dry in the early evening sun.WorkshopsAcross the first three days, Thursday to Saturday, there was a series of lettering and calligraphy workshops that were also open to those outside of the Letterheads event proper.Pictured are workshops being led by Ester Gradolí, Juanjo López, and Joan Quiros.TV TimeThe meet was profiled in the local newspaper on the day before it opened, and then a TV crew turned up to cover proceedings.Local press coverage and Letterheads Per L'Horta host Nico Barrios being interviewed for the TV report. 0:00 /1:34 Letterheads Per L'Horta makes the news! If you look closely at the top of the paper that Daniel Esteve Carbonell is working on it says "Collons de rètol" (it's only a fucking sign) which clearly escaped the attention of the censors. Talks & DemosIn addition to workshops, the museum building also hosted a busy programme of talks. These were delivered by the Asociación de Diseñadores de la Comunidad Valenciana (Valencian Graphic Design Association), the errorerror.studio creative typography studio, graphic designer Juan Nava, and type designer Juanjo López.Juan Nava talking about the evolution of his Letras Recuperadas (Recovered Letters) project, previously featured here at bl.ag online.One of the highlights was hearing from veteran local sign painters Ricardo Moreno and Paco Vivó, both of whom appear in the Tipos Que Importan film that was screened. They were interviewed by Nico and brought a host of goods with them, including their sign kits, photographic portfolios, work samples, books, and other reference materials.Ricardo (in glasses) and Paco (with beard) were mobbed after talking about their lives on the brush in Valencia.Following the session, everyone moved outside to watch Paco Vivó paint one of the motifs that he produced many times in his career: the Pepsi-Cola bottle top.Paco Vivó painted his demonstration piece on a canvas which was subsequently sold in the auction.Meanwhile, over in the town square, David Vanderh had set up his screenprinting station to apply Nico's event design in a single colour to any material that the public brought to him.The live screenprinting was in just blue, while the official event t-shirt combined this with a striking orange.Panels on Show and on SaleOn the Sunday, a small exhibition was mounted with the panels that folks could bid on in the auction. This was an open invitation, with those from the neighbourhood stopping by to inspect and snag some goods.Panels getting ready for new owners in the charity auction.Panels by Veronika Skilte (Vermut), Joe Coleman (Mental on the Rental), Rachel E Millar (Rotulos, Gracias), and Victor Calligraphy.This panel (right) by Joe Coleman was inspired by the truck lettering that was a lucky incidental on the earlier cycling tour.The auction raised over 2,000€ in support of those affected by the devastating DANA floods in 2024.The assembled crowd were ready with open wallets as the auction got underway.The auction was expertly hosted by Mike Meyer and Nico Barrios, with Nil Muge logging all the winning bids and accounting for the cash payments.Thank YouAs with any event, the photos never show the challenges that must be overcome behind the scenes. Some of these were substantial but Nico took each one in his stride, maintaining a smile throughout. Thank you, Nico, for facilitating these special days that will live long in the collective memory.Letterheads Per L'Horta host Nico Barrios.Letterheads Per L'Horta was hosted by Nico Barrios with the support of the following organisations: AVV Carraixet d'Almàssera; Ajuntament d'Almàssera; BLAG; A.S. Handover; 1 Shot; ADCV; gráffica. Also check out the event's dedicated Instagram account, @letterheadsperlhorta, for even more photos and videos. More LetterheadsFuture Meets

“Is that concrete all around, or is it in my head?” asked Ian Hunter in “All the Young Dudes,” the song David Bowie wrote for Mott the Hoople in 1972. Concrete is all around us, and we haven’t quite wrapped our heads around it. It’s one of the indispensable materials of modernity; as we try to decarbonize the built environment, it’s part of the problem, and innovations in its composition may become part of the solution. Understanding its history more clearly, the Skyscraper Museum’s new exhibition in Manhattan implies, just might help us employ it better. Concrete is “the second most used substance in the world, after water,” the museum’s founder/director/curator Carol Willis told AN during a recent visit. For plasticity, versatility, and compressive strength, reinforced concrete is hard to beat, though its performance is more problematic when assessed by the metric of embodied and operational carbon, a consideration the exhibition acknowledges up front. In tall construction, concrete has become nearly hegemonic, yet its central role, contend Willis and co-curator Thomas Leslie, formerly of Foster + Partners and now a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is underrecognized by the public and by mainstream architectural history. The current exhibition aims to change that perception. The Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan features an exhibition, The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, which examines the history of material choices in building tall towers. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) The Modern Concrete Skyscraper examines the history of tall towers’ structural material choices, describing a transition from the early dominance of steel frames to the contemporary condition, in which most large buildings rely on concrete. This change did not happen instantly or for any single reason but through a combination of technical and economic factors, including innovations by various specialists, well-recognized and otherwise; the availability of high-quality limestone deposits near Chicago; and the differential development of materials industries in nations whose architecture grew prominent in recent decades. As supertalls reach ever higher—in the global race for official height rankings by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) and national, corporate, or professional bragging rights—concrete’s dominance may not be permanent in that sector, given the challenge of pumping the material beyond a certain height. (The 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa, formerly Burj Dubai, uses concrete up to 1,987 and steel above that point; Willis quotes SOM’s William Baker describing it as “the tallest steel building with a concrete foundation of 156 stories.”) For the moment, however, concrete is ahead of its chief competitors, steel and (on a smaller scale) timber. Regardless of possible promotional inferences, Willis said, “we did not work with the industry in any way for this exhibition.” “The invention of steel and the grid of steel and the skeleton frame is only the first chapter of the history of the skyscraper,” Willis explained. “The second chapter, and the one that we’re in now, is concrete. Surprisingly, no one had ever told that story of the skyscraper today with a continuous narrative.” The exhibition traces the use of concrete back to the ancient Roman combination of aggregate and pozzolana—the chemical formula for which was “largely lost with the fall of the Roman Empire,” though some Byzantine and medieval structures approximated it. From there, the show explores comparable materials’ revival in 18th-century England, the patenting of Portland cement by Leeds builder Joseph Aspdin in 1824, the proof-of-concept concrete house by François Coignet in 1856, and the pivotal development of rebar in the mid-19th century, with overdue attention to Ernest Ransome’s 1903 Ingalls Building in Cincinnati, then the world’s tallest concrete building at 15 stories and arguably the first concrete skyscraper. The exhibition includes a timeline that depicts concrete’s origins in Rome to its contemporary use in skyscraper construction. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) Baker’s lectures, Willis reported, sometimes pose a deceptively simple question: “‘What is a skyscraper?’ In 1974, when the World Trade Center and Sears Tower are just finished, you would say it’s a very tall building that is built of steel, an office building in North America. But if you ask that same question today, the answer is: It’s a building that is mixed-use, constructed of concrete, and [located] in Asia or the Middle East.” The exhibition organizes the history of concrete towers by eras of engineering innovation, devoting special attention to the 19th- and early-20th-century “patent era” of Claude Allen Porter Turner (pioneer in flat-slab flooring and mushroom columns) and Henry Chandlee Turner (founder of Turner Construction), Ransome (who patented twisted-iron rebar), and François Hennebique (known for the re-inforced concrete system exemplified by Liverpool’s Royal Liver Building, the world’s tallest concrete office building when completed in 1911). In the postwar era, “concrete comes out onto the surface [as] both a structural material and aesthetic.” Brutalism, perhaps to some observers’ surprise, “does not figure very large in high-rise design,” Willis said, except for Paul Rudolph’s Tracey Towers in the Bronx. The exhibition, however, devotes considerable attention to the work of Pier Luigi Nervi, Bertrand Goldberg (particularly Marina City), and SOM’s Fazlur Khan, pioneer of the structural tube system in the 1960s and 1970s—followed by the postmodernist 1980s, when concrete could express either engineering values or ornamentation. The exhibition highlights a number of concrete towers, including Paul Rudolph’s Tracey Towers in the Bronx. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) “In the ’90s, there were material advances in engineering analysis and computerization that helped to predict performance, and so buildings can get taller and taller,” Willis said. The current era, if one looks to CTBUH rankings, is dominated by the supertalls seen in Dubai, Shanghai, and Kuala Lumpur, after the Petronas Towers (1998) “took the title of world’s tallest building from North America for the first time and traumatized everybody about that.” The previous record holder, Chicago’s Sears (now Willis) Tower, comprised steel structural tubes on concrete caissons; with Petronas, headquarters of Malaysia’s national petroleum company of that name, a strong concrete industry was represented but a strong national steel industry was lacking, and as Willis frequently says, form follows finances. In any event, by the ’90s concrete was already becoming the standard material for supertalls, particularly on soft-soiled sites like Shanghai, where its water resistance and compressive strength are well suited to foundation construction. Its plasticity is also well suited to complex forms like the triangular Burj, Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118, and (if eventually completed) the even taller Jeddah Tower, designed to “confuse the wind,” shed vortices, and manage wind forces. Posing the same question Louis Kahn asked about the intentions of a brick, Willis said, with concrete “the answer is: anything you want.” The exhibition is front-loaded with scholarly material, presenting eight succinct yet informative wall texts on the timeline of concrete construction. The explanatory material is accompanied by ample photographs as well as structural models on loan from SOM, Pelli Clarke & Partners, and other firms. Some materials are repurposed from the museum’s previous shows, particularly Supertall! (2011–12) and Sky High and the Logic of Luxury (2013–14). The models allow close examination of the Burj Khalifa, Petronas Towers, Jin Mao Tower, Merdeka 118, and others, including two unbuilt Chicago projects that would have exceeded 2,000 feet: the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle (Cesar Pelli/Thornton Tomasetti) and 7 South Dearborn (SOM). The Burj, Willis noted, was all structure and no facade for a time: When its curtain-wall manufacturer, Schmidlin, went bankrupt in 2006, it “ended up going to 100 stories without having a stitch of glass on it,” temporarily becoming a “1:1 scale model of the structural system up to 100 stories.” Its prominence justifies its appearance here in two models, including one from RWDI’s wind-tunnel studies. Eero Saarinen’s only skyscraper, built for CBS in 1965 and also known as “Black Rock,” under construction in New York City. (Courtesy Eero Saarinen Collection, Manuscripts, and Archives, Yale University Library) The exhibition opened in March, with plans to stay up at least through October (Willis prefers to keep the date flexible), with accompanying lectures and panels to be announced on the museum’s website (skyscraper.org). Though the exhibition’s full textual and graphic content is available online, the physical models alone are worth a trip to the Battery Park City headquarters. Intriguing questions arise from the exhibition without easy answers, setting the table for lively discussion and debate. One is whether the patenting of innovations like Ransome bar and the Système Hennebique incentivized technological progress or hindered useful technology transfer. Willis speculated, “Did the fact that there were inventions and patents mean that competition was discouraged, that the competition was only in the realm of business, rather than advancing the material?” A critical question is whether research into the chemistry of concrete, including MIT’s 2023 report on the self-healing properties of Roman pozzolana and proliferating claims about “green concrete” using alternatives to Portland cement, can lead to new types of the material with improved durability and lower emissions footprints. This exhibition provides a firm foundation in concrete’s fascinating history, opening space for informed speculation about its future. Bill Millard is a regular contributor to AN.

As a Canadian who has spent the last two and a half years working as an intern architect in Helsinki, these questions have been on my mind. In my current role, I have had the opportunity to participate in numerous architectural competitions arranged by Finnish municipalities and public institutions. It has been my observation that the Finnish system of open, anonymous architectural competitions consistently produces elegant and highly functional public buildings at reasonable cost and at great benefit to the lives of the everyday people for whom the projects are intended to serve. Could Canada benefit from the adoption of a similar model? ‘Public project’ has never been a clearly defined term and may bring to mind the image of a bustling library for some while conjuring the image of a municipal power substation for others. In the context of this discussion, I will use the term to refer to projects that are explicitly in-service of the broader public such as community centres, museums, and other cultural venues. Finland’s architectural competition system Frequented by nearly 2 million visitors per year, the Oodi Central Library in Helsinki, Finland, has become a thriving cultural hub and an internationally recognized symbol of Finnish design innovation. Designed by ALA Architects, the project was procured through a 2-stage, open, international architectural competition. Photo by Ninara (flickr, CC BY 2.0) In Finland, most notable public projects begin with an architectural competition. Some are limited to invited participants only, but the majority of these competitions are open to international submissions. Importantly, the authors of any given proposal remain anonymous with regards to the jury. This ensures that all proposals are evaluated purely on quality without bias towards established firms over lesser known competitors. The project budget is known in advance to the competition entrants and cost feasibility is an important factor weighed by the jury. However, the cost for the design services to be procured from the winning entry is fixed ahead of time, preventing companies from lowballing offers in the hopes of securing an interesting commission despite the inevitable compromises in quality that come with under-resourced design work. The result: inspired, functional public spaces are the norm, not the exception. Contrasted against the sea of forgettable public architecture to be found in cities large and small across Canada, the Finnish model paints a utopic picture. Several award-winning projects in my current place of employment in Helsinki have been the result of successes in open architectural competitions. The origin of the firm itself stemmed from a winning competition entry for a church in a small village submitted by the firm’s founder while he was still completing his architectural studies.  At that time, many architecture firms in Finland were founded in this manner with the publicity of a competition win serving as a career launching off point for young architects. While less common today, many students and recent graduates still participate in these design competitions. On the occasion that a young practitioner wins a competition, they are required to assemble a team with the necessary expertise and qualifications to satisfy the requirements of the jury. I believe there is a direct link between the high architectural quality outcomes of these competitions and the fact that they are conducted anonymously. The opening of these competitions to submissions from companies outside of Finland further enhances the diversity of entries and fosters international interest in the goings-on of Finland’s architectural scene. Nonetheless, it is worth acknowledging that exemplary projects have also resulted from invited and privately organized competitions. Ultimately, the mindset of the client, the selection of an appropriate jury, and the existence of sufficient incentives for architects to invest significant time in their proposals play a more critical role in shaping the quality of the final outcome. Tikkurila Church and Housing in Vantaa, Finland, hosts a diverse range of functions including a café, community event spaces and student housing. Designed by OOPEAA in collaboration with a local builder, the project was realized as the result of a competition organized by local Finnish and Swedish parishes. Photo by Marc Goodwin Finland’s competition system, administered by the Finnish Association of Architects (SAFA), is not limited to major public projects such as museums, libraries and city halls. A significant number of idea competitions are organized seeking compelling visions for urban masterplans. The quality of this system has received international recognition. To quote a research paper from a Swedish university on the structure, criteria and judgement process of Finnish architectural competitions, “The Finnish (competition) experience can provide a rich information source for scholars and students studying the structure and process of competition system and architectural judgement, as well as those concerned with commissioning and financing of competitions due to innovative solutions found in the realms of urban revitalization, poverty elimination, environmental pollution, cultural and socio-spatial renewals, and democratization of design and planning process.” This has not gone entirely under the radar in Canada. According to the website of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), “Competitions are common in countries such as Finland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. These competitions have resulted in a high quality of design as well as creating public interest in the role of architecture in national and community life.” Canada’s architectural competition system In Canada, the RAIC sets general competition guidelines while provincial and territorial architect associations are typically responsible for the oversight of any endorsed architectural competition. Although the idea of implementing European architectural competition models has been gaining traction in recent years, competitions remain relatively rare even for significant public projects. While Canada is yet to fully embrace competition systems as a powerful tool for ensuring higher quality public spaces, success stories from various corners of the country have opened up constructive conversations. In Edmonton, unconventional, competitive procurement efforts spearheaded by city architect Carol Belanger have produced some remarkable public buildings. This has not gone unnoticed in other parts of the country where consistent banality is the norm for public projects. Jasper Place Branch Library designed by HCMA and Dub Architects is one of several striking projects in Edmonton built under reimagined commissioning processes which broaden the pool of design practices eligible to participate and give greater weight to design quality as an evaluation criterion. Photo by Hubert Kang The wider applicability of competition systems as a positive mechanism for securing better public architecture has also started to receive broader discussion. In my hometown of Ottawa, this system has been used to procure several powerful monuments and, more recently, to select a design for the redevelopment of a key city block across from Parliament Hill. The volume and quality of entries, including from internationally renowned architectural practices, attests to the strengths of the open competition format. Render of the winning entry for the Block 2 Redevelopment in Ottawa. This 2-stage competition was overseen directly by the RAIC. Design and render by Zeidler Architecture Inc. in cooperation with David Chipperfield Architects. Despite these successes, there is significant room for improvement. A key barrier to wider adoption of competition practices according to the RAIC is “…that potential sponsors are not familiar with competitions or may consider the competition process to be complicated, expensive, and time consuming.” This is understandable for private actors, but an unsatisfactory answer in the case of public, tax-payer funded projects. Finland’s success has come through the normalization of competitions for public project procurement. We should endeavour to do the same. Maintaining design contribution anonymity prior to jury decision has thus far been the exception, not the norm in Canada. This reduces the credibility of the jury without improving the result. Additionally, the financing of such competitions has been piece-meal and inconsistent. For example, several world-class schools have been realized in Quebec as the result of competitions funded by a provincial investment.  With the depletion of that fund, it is no longer clear if any further schools will be commissioned in Quebec under a similar model. While high quality documentation has been produced, there is a risk that developed expertise will be lost if the team of professionals responsible for overseeing the process is not retained. École du Zénith in Shefford, Quebec, designed by Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc Architectes is one of six elegant and functional schools commission by the province through an anonymous competition process. Photo by James Brittain A path forward Now more than ever, it is essential that our public projects instill in us a sense of pride and reflect our uniquely Canadian values. This will continue to be a rare occurrence until more ambitious measures are taken to ensure the consistent realization of beautiful, innovative and functional public spaces that connect us with one another. In service of this objective, Canada should incentivize architectural competitions by normalizing their use for major public projects such as national museums, libraries and cultural centres. A dedicated Competitions Fund could be established to support provinces, territories and cities who demonstrate initiative in the pursuit of more ambitious, inspiring and equitable public projects. A National Competitions Expert could be appointed to ensure retention and dissemination of expertise. Maintaining the anonymity of competition entrants should be established as the norm. At a moment when talk of removing inter-provincial trade barriers has re-entered public discourse, why not consider striking down red tape that prevents out-of-province firms from participating in architectural competitions? Alas, one can dream. Competitions are no silver bullet. However, recent trials within our borders should give us confidence that architectural competitions are a relatively low-risk, high-reward proposition. To this end, Finland’s open, anonymous competition system offers a compelling case study from which we would be well served to take inspiration. Isaac Edmonds is a Canadian working for OOPEAA – Office for Peripheral Architecture in Helsinki, Finland. My observations of the Finnish competition system’s ability to consistently produce functional, beautiful buildings inform my interest in procurement methods that elevate the quality of our shared public realm. The post Op-Ed: Could Canada benefit from adopting Finland’s architectural competition system? appeared first on Canadian Architect.

on june 18th, 2025, the david lynch collection auction event by julien’s auctions and turner classic movies takes place. The post david lynch artifacts, from movie memorabilia to his own furniture designs, head to auction appeared first on designboom

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Raspberry Pi Imager 1.9.4 released bringing performance improvements, bug fixes and more David Uzondu Neowin · Jun 5, 2025 05:12 EDT Raspberry Pi Imager 1.9.4 is now out, marking the first official release in its 1.9.x series. This application, for anyone new to it, is a tool from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It first came out in March 2020. Its main job is to make getting an operating system onto a microSD card or USB drive for any Raspberry Pi computer super simple, even if you hate the command line. It handles downloading selected OS images and writing them correctly, cutting out several manual steps that used to trip people up, like finding the right image version or using complicated disk utility tools. This version brings solid user interface improvements for a smoother experience, involving internal tweaks that contribute to a more polished feel. Much work went into global accessibility, adding new Korean and Georgian translations. Updates also cover Chinese, German, Spanish, Italian, and many others. Naturally, a good number of bugs got squashed, including a fix for tricky long filename issues on Windows and an issue with the Escape key in the options popup. Changes specific to operating systems are also clear. Windows users get an installer using Inno Setup. Its program files, installer, and uninstaller are now signed for better Windows security. For macOS, .app file naming in .dmg packages is fixed, and building the software is more reliable. Linux users can now hide system drives from the destination list, a great way to prevent accidentally wiping your main computer drives. The Linux AppImage also disables Wayland support by default. The full list of changes is outlined below: Fixed minor errors in Simplified Chinese translation Updated translations for German, Catalan, Spanish, Slovak, Portuguese, Hebrew, Traditional Chinese, Italian, Korean, and Georgian Explicitly added --tree to lsblk to hide partitions from the top-level output CMake now displays the version as v1.9.1 Added support for quiet uninstallation on Windows Applied regex to match SSH public keys during OS customization Updated dependencies: libarchive (3.7.4 → 3.7.7 → 3.8.0) zlib (removed preconfigured header → updated to 1.4.1.1) cURL (8.8 → 8.11.0 → 8.13.0) nghttp2 (updated to 1.65.0) zstd (updated to 1.5.7) xz/liblzma (updated to 5.8.1) Windows-specific updates: Switched to Inno Setup for the installer Added code signing for binaries, installer, and uninstaller Enabled administrator privileges and NSIS removal support Fixed a bug causing incorrect saving of long filenames macOS-specific updates: Fixed .app naming in .dmg packages Improved build reliability and copyright Linux-specific updates: System drives are now hidden in destination popup Wayland support disabled in AppImage General UI/UX improvements: Fixed OptionsPopup not handling the Esc key Improved QML code structure, accessibility, and linting Made options popup modal Split main UI into component files Added a Style singleton and ImCloseButton component Internationalization (i18n): Made "Recommended" OS string translatable Made "gigabytes" translatable Packaging improvements: Custom AppImage build script with Qt detection Custom Qt build script with unprivileged mode Qt 6.9.0 included Dependencies migrated to FetchContent system Build system: CMake version bumped to 3.22 Various improvements and hardening applied Removed "Show password" checkbox in OS customization settings Reverted unneeded changes in long filename size calculation Internal refactoring and performance improvements in download and extract operations Added support for more archive formats via libarchive Lastly, it's worth noting that the system requirements have changed since version 1.9.0: macOS users will need version 11 or later; Windows users, Windows 10 or newer; Ubuntu users, version 22.04 or newer; and Debian users, Bookworm or later. Tags Report a problem with article Follow @NeowinFeed

Once again, Sam Altman wants to show you the future. The CEO of OpenAI is standing on a sparse stage in San Francisco, preparing to reveal his next move to an attentive crowd. “We needed some way for identifying, authenticating humans in the age of AGI,” Altman explains, referring to artificial general intelligence. “We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and central.” The solution Altman came up with is looming behind him. It’s a white sphere about the size of a beach ball, with a camera at its center. The company that makes it, known as Tools for Humanity, calls this mysterious device the Orb. Stare into the heart of the plastic-and-silicon globe and it will map the unique furrows and ciliary zones of your iris. Seconds later, you’ll receive inviolable proof of your humanity: a 12,800-digit binary number, known as an iris code, sent to an app on your phone. At the same time, a packet of cryptocurrency called Worldcoin, worth approximately $42, will be transferred to your digital wallet—your reward for becoming a “verified human.” Altman co-founded Tools for Humanity in 2019 as part of a suite of companies he believed would reshape the world. Once the tech he was developing at OpenAI passed a certain level of intelligence, he reasoned, it would mark the end of one era on the Internet and the beginning of another, in which AI became so advanced, so human-like, that you would no longer be able to tell whether what you read, saw, or heard online came from a real person. When that happened, Altman imagined, we would need a new kind of online infrastructure: a human-verification layer for the Internet, to distinguish real people from the proliferating number of bots and AI “agents.”And so Tools for Humanity set out to build a global “proof-of-humanity” network. It aims to verify 50 million people by the end of 2025; ultimately its goal is to sign up every single human being on the planet. The free crypto serves as both an incentive for users to sign up, and also an entry point into what the company hopes will become the world’s largest financial network, through which it believes “double-digit percentages of the global economy” will eventually flow. Even for Altman, these missions are audacious. “If this really works, it’s like a fundamental piece of infrastructure for the world,” Altman tells TIME in a video interview from the passenger seat of a car a few days before his April 30 keynote address.Internal hardware of the Orb in mid-assembly in March. Davide Monteleone for TIMEThe project’s goal is to solve a problem partly of Altman’s own making. In the near future, he and other tech leaders say, advanced AIs will be imbued with agency: the ability to not just respond to human prompting, but to take actions independently in the world. This will enable the creation of AI coworkers that can drop into your company and begin solving problems; AI tutors that can adapt their teaching style to students’ preferences; even AI doctors that can diagnose routine cases and handle scheduling or logistics. The arrival of these virtual agents, their venture capitalist backers predict, will turbocharge our productivity and unleash an age of material abundance.But AI agents will also have cascading consequences for the human experience online. “As AI systems become harder to distinguish from people, websites may face difficult trade-offs,” says a recent paper by researchers from 25 different universities, nonprofits, and tech companies, including OpenAI. “There is a significant risk that digital institutions will be unprepared for a time when AI-powered agents, including those leveraged by malicious actors, overwhelm other activity online.” On social-media platforms like X and Facebook, bot-driven accounts are amassing billions of views on AI-generated content. In April, the foundation that runs Wikipedia disclosed that AI bots scraping their site were making the encyclopedia too costly to sustainably run. Later the same month, researchers from the University of Zurich found that AI-generated comments on the subreddit /r/ChangeMyView were up to six times more successful than human-written ones at persuading unknowing users to change their minds.  Photograph by Davide Monteleone for TIMEBuy a copy of the Orb issue hereThe arrival of agents won’t only threaten our ability to distinguish between authentic and AI content online. It will also challenge the Internet’s core business model, online advertising, which relies on the assumption that ads are being viewed by humans. “The Internet will change very drastically sometime in the next 12 to 24 months,” says Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania. “So we have to succeed, or I’m not sure what else would happen.”For four years, Blania’s team has been testing the Orb’s hardware abroad. Now the U.S. rollout has arrived. Over the next 12 months, 7,500 Orbs will be arriving in dozens of American cities, in locations like gas stations, bodegas, and flagship stores in Los Angeles, Austin, and Miami. The project’s founders and fans hope the Orb’s U.S. debut will kickstart a new phase of growth. The San Francisco keynote was titled: “At Last.” It’s not clear the public appetite matches the exultant branding. Tools for Humanity has “verified” just 12 million humans since mid 2023, a pace Blania concedes is well behind schedule. Few online platforms currently support the so-called “World ID” that the Orb bestows upon its visitors, leaving little to entice users to give up their biometrics beyond the lure of free crypto. Even Altman isn’t sure whether the whole thing can work. “I can see [how] this becomes a fairly mainstream thing in a few years,” he says. “Or I can see that it’s still only used by a small subset of people who think about the world in a certain way.” Blania (left) and Altman debut the Orb at World’s U.S. launch in San Francisco on April 30, 2025. Jason Henry—The New York Times/ReduxYet as the Internet becomes overrun with AI, the creators of this strange new piece of hardware are betting that everybody in the world will soon want—or need—to visit an Orb. The biometric code it creates, they predict, will become a new type of digital passport, without which you might be denied passage to the Internet of the future, from dating apps to government services. In a best-case scenario, World ID could be a privacy-preserving way to fortify the Internet against an AI-driven deluge of fake or deceptive content. It could also enable the distribution of universal basic income (UBI)—a policy that Altman has previously touted—as AI automation transforms the global economy. To examine what this new technology might mean, I reported from three continents, interviewed 10 Tools for Humanity executives and investors, reviewed hundreds of pages of company documents, and “verified” my own humanity. The Internet will inevitably need some kind of proof-of-humanity system in the near future, says Divya Siddarth, founder of the nonprofit Collective Intelligence Project. The real question, she argues, is whether such a system will be centralized—“a big security nightmare that enables a lot of surveillance”—or privacy-preserving, as the Orb claims to be. Questions remain about Tools for Humanity’s corporate structure, its yoking to an unstable cryptocurrency, and what power it would concentrate in the hands of its owners if successful. Yet it’s also one of the only attempts to solve what many see as an increasingly urgent problem. “There are some issues with it,” Siddarth says of World ID. “But you can’t preserve the Internet in amber. Something in this direction is necessary.”In March, I met Blania at Tools for Humanity’s San Francisco headquarters, where a large screen displays the number of weekly “Orb verifications” by country. A few days earlier, the CEO had attended a $1 million-per-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago with President Donald Trump, whom he credits with clearing the way for the company’s U.S. launch by relaxing crypto regulations. “Given Sam is a very high profile target,” Blania says, “we just decided that we would let other companies fight that fight, and enter the U.S. once the air is clear.” As a kid growing up in Germany, Blania was a little different than his peers. “Other kids were, like, drinking a lot, or doing a lot of parties, and I was just building a lot of things that could potentially blow up,” he recalls. At the California Institute of Technology, where he was pursuing research for a masters degree, he spent many evenings reading the blogs of startup gurus like Paul Graham and Altman. Then, in 2019, Blania received an email from Max Novendstern, an entrepreneur who had been kicking around a concept with Altman to build a global cryptocurrency network. They were looking for technical minds to help with the project. Over cappuccinos, Altman told Blania he was certain about three things. First, smarter-than-human AI was not only possible, but inevitable—and it would soon mean you could no longer assume that anything you read, saw, or heard on the Internet was human-created. Second, cryptocurrency and other decentralized technologies would be a massive force for change in the world. And third, scale was essential to any crypto network’s value. The Orb is tested on a calibration rig, surrounded by checkerboard targets to ensure precision in iris detection. Davide Monteleone for TIMEThe goal of Worldcoin, as the project was initially called, was to combine those three insights. Altman took a lesson from PayPal, the company co-founded by his mentor Peter Thiel. Of its initial funding, PayPal spent less than $10 million actually building its app—but pumped an additional $70 million or so into a referral program, whereby new users and the person who invited them would each receive $10 in credit. The referral program helped make PayPal a leading payment platform. Altman thought a version of that strategy would propel Worldcoin to similar heights. He wanted to create a new cryptocurrency and give it to users as a reward for signing up. The more people who joined the system, the higher the token’s value would theoretically rise. Since 2019, the project has raised $244 million from investors like Coinbase and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. That money paid for the $50 million cost of designing the Orb, plus maintaining the software it runs on. The total market value of all Worldcoins in existence, however, is far higher—around $12 billion. That number is a bit misleading: most of those coins are not in circulation and Worldcoin’s price has fluctuated wildly. Still, it allows the company to reward users for signing up at no cost to itself. The main lure for investors is the crypto upside. Some 75% of all Worldcoins are set aside for humans to claim when they sign up, or as referral bonuses. The remaining 25% are split between Tools for Humanity’s backers and staff, including Blania and Altman. “I’m really excited to make a lot of money,” ” Blania says.From the beginning, Altman was thinking about the consequences of the AI revolution he intended to unleash. (On May 21, he announced plans to team up with famed former Apple designer Jony Ive on a new AI personal device.) A future in which advanced AI could perform most tasks more effectively than humans would bring a wave of unemployment and economic dislocation, he reasoned. Some kind of wealth redistribution might be necessary. In 2016, he partially funded a study of basic income, which gave $1,000 per-month handouts to low-income individuals in Illinois and Texas. But there was no single financial system that would allow money to be sent to everybody in the world. Nor was there a way to stop an individual human from claiming their share twice—or to identify a sophisticated AI pretending to be human and pocketing some cash of its own. In 2023, Tools for Humanity raised the possibility of using the network to redistribute the profits of AI labs that were able to automate human labor. “As AI advances,” it said, “fairly distributing access and some of the created value through UBI will play an increasingly vital role in counteracting the concentration of economic power.”Blania was taken by the pitch, and agreed to join the project as a co-founder. “Most people told us we were very stupid or crazy or insane, including Silicon Valley investors,” Blania says. At least until ChatGPT came out in 2022, transforming OpenAI into one of the world’s most famous tech companies and kickstarting a market bull-run. “Things suddenly started to make more and more sense to the external world,” Blania says of the vision to develop a global “proof-of-humanity” network. “You have to imagine a world in which you will have very smart and competent systems somehow flying through the Internet with different goals and ideas of what they want to do, and us having no idea anymore what we’re dealing with.”After our interview, Blania’s head of communications ushers me over to a circular wooden structure where eight Orbs face one another. The scene feels like a cross between an Apple Store and a ceremonial altar. “Do you want to get verified?” she asks. Putting aside my reservations for the purposes of research, I download the World App and follow its prompts. I flash a QR code at the Orb, then gaze into it. A minute or so later, my phone buzzes with confirmation: I’ve been issued my own personal World ID and some Worldcoin.The first thing the Orb does is check if you’re human, using a neural network that takes input from various sensors, including an infrared camera and a thermometer. Davide Monteleone for TIMEWhile I stared into the Orb, several complex procedures had taken place at once. A neural network took inputs from multiple sensors—an infrared camera, a thermometer—to confirm I was a living human. Simultaneously, a telephoto lens zoomed in on my iris, capturing the physical traits within that distinguish me from every other human on Earth. It then converted that image into an iris code: a numerical abstraction of my unique biometric data. Then the Orb checked to see if my iris code matched any it had seen before, using a technique allowing encrypted data to be compared without revealing the underlying information. Before the Orb deleted my data, it turned my iris code into several derivative codes—none of which on its own can be linked back to the original—encrypted them, deleted the only copies of the decryption keys, and sent each one to a different secure server, so that future users’ iris codes can be checked for uniqueness against mine. If I were to use my World ID to access a website, that site would learn nothing about me except that I’m human. The Orb is open-source, so outside experts can examine its code and verify the company’s privacy claims. “I did a colonoscopy on this company and these technologies before I agreed to join,” says Trevor Traina, a Trump donor and former U.S. ambassador to Austria who now serves as Tools for Humanity’s chief business officer. “It is the most privacy-preserving technology on the planet.”Only weeks later, when researching what would happen if I wanted to delete my data, do I discover that Tools for Humanity’s privacy claims rest on what feels like a sleight of hand. The company argues that in modifying your iris code, it has “effectively anonymized” your biometric data. If you ask Tools for Humanity to delete your iris codes, they will delete the one stored on your phone, but not the derivatives. Those, they argue, are no longer your personal data at all. But if I were to return to an Orb after deleting my data, it would still recognize those codes as uniquely mine. Once you look into the Orb, a piece of your identity remains in the system forever. If users could truly delete that data, the premise of one ID per human would collapse, Tools for Humanity’s chief privacy officer Damien Kieran tells me when I call seeking an explanation. People could delete and sign up for new World IDs after being suspended from a platform. Or claim their Worldcoin tokens, sell them, delete their data, and cash in again. This argument fell flat with European Union regulators in Germany, who recently declared that the Orb posed “fundamental data protection issues” and ordered the company to allow European users to fully delete even their anonymized data. (Tools for Humanity has appealed; the regulator is now reassessing the decision.) “Just like any other technology service, users cannot delete data that is not personal data,” Kieran said in a statement. “If a person could delete anonymized data that can’t be linked to them by World or any third party, it would allow bad actors to circumvent the security and safety that World ID is working to bring to every human.”On a balmy afternoon this spring, I climb a flight of stairs up to a room above a restaurant in an outer suburb of Seoul. Five elderly South Koreans tap on their phones as they wait to be “verified” by the two Orbs in the center of the room. “We don’t really know how to distinguish between AI and humans anymore,” an attendant in a company t-shirt explains in Korean, gesturing toward the spheres. “We need a way to verify that we’re human and not AI. So how do we do that? Well, humans have irises, but AI doesn’t.”The attendant ushers an elderly woman over to an Orb. It bleeps. “Open your eyes,” a disembodied voice says in English. The woman stares into the camera. Seconds later, she checks her phone and sees that a packet of Worldcoin worth 75,000 Korean won (about $54) has landed in her digital wallet. Congratulations, the app tells her. You are now a verified human.A visitor views the Orbs in Seoul on April 14, 2025. Taemin Ha for TIMETools for Humanity aims to “verify” 1 million Koreans over the next year. Taemin Ha for TIMEA couple dozen Orbs have been available in South Korea since 2023, verifying roughly 55,000 people. Now Tools for Humanity is redoubling its efforts there. At an event in a traditional wooden hanok house in central Seoul, an executive announces that 250 Orbs will soon be dispersed around the country—with the aim of verifying 1 million Koreans in the next 12 months. South Korea has high levels of smartphone usage, crypto and AI adoption, and Internet access, while average wages are modest enough for the free Worldcoin on offer to still be an enticing draw—all of which makes it fertile testing ground for the company’s ambitious global expansion. Yet things seem off to a slow start. In a retail space I visited in central Seoul, Tools for Humanity had constructed a wooden structure with eight Orbs facing each other. Locals and tourists wander past looking bemused; few volunteer themselves up. Most who do tell me they are crypto enthusiasts who came intentionally, driven more by the spirit of early adoption than the free coins. The next day, I visit a coffee shop in central Seoul where a chrome Orb sits unassumingly in one corner. Wu Ruijun, a 20-year-old student from China, strikes up a conversation with the barista, who doubles as the Orb’s operator. Wu was invited here by a friend who said both could claim free cryptocurrency if he signed up. The barista speeds him through the process. Wu accepts the privacy disclosure without reading it, and widens his eyes for the Orb. Soon he’s verified. “I wasn’t told anything about the privacy policy,” he says on his way out. “I just came for the money.”As Altman’s car winds through San Francisco, I ask about the vision he laid out in 2019: that AI would make it harder for us to trust each other online. To my surprise, he rejects the framing. “I’m much more [about] like: what is the good we can create, rather than the bad we can stop?” he says. “It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’ve got to avoid the bot overrun’ or whatever. It’s just that we can do a lot of special things for humans.” It’s an answer that may reflect how his role has changed over the years. Altman is now the chief public cheerleader of a $300 billion company that’s touting the transformative utility of AI agents. The rise of agents, he and others say, will be a boon for our quality of life—like having an assistant on hand who can answer your most pressing questions, carry out mundane tasks, and help you develop new skills. It’s an optimistic vision that may well pan out. But it doesn’t quite fit with the prophecies of AI-enabled infopocalypse that Tools for Humanity was founded upon.Altman waves away a question about the influence he and other investors stand to gain if their vision is realized. Most holders, he assumes, will have already started selling their tokens—too early, he adds. “What I think would be bad is if an early crew had a lot of control over the protocol,” he says, “and that’s where I think the commitment to decentralization is so cool.” Altman is referring to the World Protocol, the underlying technology upon which the Orb, Worldcoin, and World ID all rely. Tools for Humanity is developing it, but has committed to giving control to its users over time—a process they say will prevent power from being concentrated in the hands of a few executives or investors. Tools for Humanity would remain a for-profit company, and could levy fees on platforms that use World ID, but other companies would be able to compete for customers by building alternative apps—or even alternative Orbs. The plan draws on ideas that animated the crypto ecosystem in the late 2010s and early 2020s, when evangelists for emerging blockchain technologies argued that the centralization of power—especially in large so-called “Web 2.0” tech companies—was responsible for many of the problems plaguing the modern Internet. Just as decentralized cryptocurrencies could reform a financial system controlled by economic elites, so too would it be possible to create decentralized organizations, run by their members instead of CEOs. How such a system might work in practice remains unclear. “Building a community-based governance system,” Tools for Humanity says in a 2023 white paper, “represents perhaps the most formidable challenge of the entire project.”Altman has a pattern of making idealistic promises that shift over time. He founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015, with a mission to develop AGI safely and for the benefit of all humanity. To raise money, OpenAI restructured itself as a for-profit company in 2019, but with overall control still in the hands of its nonprofit board. Last year, Altman proposed yet another restructure—one which would dilute the board’s control and allow more profits to flow to shareholders. Why, I ask, should the public trust Tools for Humanity’s commitment to freely surrender influence and power? “I think you will just see the continued decentralization via the protocol,” he says. “The value here is going to live in the network, and the network will be owned and governed by a lot of people.” Altman talks less about universal basic income these days. He recently mused about an alternative, which he called “universal basic compute.” Instead of AI companies redistributing their profits, he seemed to suggest, they could instead give everyone in the world fair access to super-powerful AI. Blania tells me he recently “made the decision to stop talking” about UBI at Tools for Humanity. “UBI is one potential answer,” he says. “Just giving [people] access to the latest [AI] models and having them learn faster and better is another.” Says Altman: “I still don’t know what the right answer is. I believe we should do a better job of distribution of resources than we currently do.” When I probe the question of why people should trust him, Altman gets irritated. “I understand that you hate AI, and that’s fine,” he says. “If you want to frame it as the downside of AI is that there’s going to be a proliferation of very convincing AI systems that are pretending to be human, and we need ways to know what is really human-authorized versus not, then yeah, I think you can call that a downside of AI. It’s not how I would naturally frame it.” The phrase human-authorized hints at a tension between World ID and OpenAI’s plans for AI agents. An Internet where a World ID is required to access most services might impede the usefulness of the agents that OpenAI and others are developing. So Tools for Humanity is building a system that would allow users to delegate their World ID to an agent, allowing the bot to take actions online on their behalf, according to Tiago Sada, the company’s chief product officer. “We’ve built everything in a way that can be very easily delegatable to an agent,” Sada says. It’s a measure that would allow humans to be held accountable for the actions of their AIs. But it suggests that Tools for Humanity’s mission may be shifting beyond simply proving humanity, and toward becoming the infrastructure that enables AI agents to proliferate with human authorization. World ID doesn’t tell you whether a piece of content is AI-generated or human-generated; all it tells you is whether the account that posted it is a human or a bot. Even in a world where everybody had a World ID, our online spaces might still be filled with AI-generated text, images, and videos.As I say goodbye to Altman, I’m left feeling conflicted about his project. If the Internet is going to be transformed by AI agents, then some kind of proof-of-humanity system will almost certainly be necessary. Yet if the Orb becomes a piece of Internet infrastructure, it could give Altman—a beneficiary of the proliferation of AI content—significant influence over a leading defense mechanism against it. People might have no choice but to participate in the network in order to access social media or online services.I thought of an encounter I witnessed in Seoul. In the room above the restaurant, Cho Jeong-yeon, 75, watched her friend get verified by an Orb. Cho had been invited to do the same, but demurred. The reward wasn’t enough for her to surrender a part of her identity. “Your iris is uniquely yours, and we don’t really know how it might be used,” she says. “Seeing the machine made me think: are we becoming machines instead of humans now? Everything is changing, and we don’t know how it’ll all turn out.”—With reporting by Stephen Kim/Seoul. This story was supported by Tarbell Grants.Correction, May 30The original version of this story misstated the market capitalization of Worldcoin if all coins were in circulation. It is $12 billion, not $1.2 billion.

As Country Living’s Senior Homes and Style Editor, I’ve seen my share of kitchens over the years, so I know what decorating ideas do and do not actually work in a kitchen. As well, I know which ideas are best for achieving the kitchen style you like, whether you want to embrace cottage style, have a farmhouse-style kitchen, create a British-inspired cook space, or make it something a little in between. Here at Country Living, we have been fans of cottagecore long before the internet deemed it cool. Of all the styles of kitchens, a cottage-style kitchen is tops for having the most personal charm and character (read: sink skirts, colored cabinetry, open shelving filled with personal one-of-a-kind collections, inviting breakfast nooks...). You see, cottage living is all about embracing imperfection and a timeless lived-in style. While those ideas might seem antithetical to kitchen design, they really are not. Even the newest, most state-of-the-art kitchens can benefit from patinaed, less-than-perfect accents. Below, I have rounded up some of the best (and designer-approved) ways to channel that humble cottage look in your kitchen. From ideas for painting your cabinetry to fresh approaches for backsplash tile, these ideas are guaranteed to make your space into something Beatrix Potter herself would envy! For more kitchen decorating ideas, check out these stories:1Lean Into Existing ArchitectureRikki Snyder for Country LivingIf your home is lucky (yes, lucky!) enough to have quirky architectural features, lean into them and allow them to inform your palette and decor as designer Christina Salway did in her wood-filled New York kitchen. TOUR THE ENTIRE HOUSE2Embrace a Cheerful PaletteBecky Luigart-Stayner for Country LivingNothing gives off cottage charm like an equally charming color palette. In this Alabama kitchen, soft, buttery yellow cabinetry pairs with a fruit-themed wallpaper to create a perfectly prim palette. Get the Look:Cabinet Paint Color: Sudbury Yellow by Farrow & BallWallpaper: Fruit by Morris & Co. TOUR THIS KITCHENAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below3Add A Stove CoveBecky Luigart-Stayner for Country LivingStove coves are a great way to add architectural interest to your kitchen. Back the inset space with beadboard, like designer Trinity Holmes did here, for added cottage appeal. TOUR THIS KITCHENRELATED: Here’s Everything You Need to Know About Stove Coves4Go Wild with WallpaperBrian Woodcock for Country LivingWhile it may seem counterintuitive, bold wallpaper is a great for adding character to smaller spaces. For cramped kitchens with little natural light, stick to brighter, tonal patterns such as the one shown here. Get the Look:Wallpaper: "London Rose" by House of HackneyRELATED: Our Best Kitchen Wallpaper Ideas EverAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below5Wrap the Room in Open ShelvingHelen Norman for Country LivingDoes your cottage kitchen lack serious storage space? No worries. Display your favorite ceramic finds on kitchen-spanning open-shelving like photographer Helen Norman did here in her farmhouse kitchen. RELATED: These Open Shelving Ideas Will Have You Ready to Rip Out Your Cabinetry 6Mix Your MaterialsHelen Norman, styling by Matthew GleasonIn this colorful cottage kitchen, worn woods and happily patinaed copper craft a curated-over-time feel that amps up the coziness factor. Mix up materials to easily give your kitchen a lived-in feel.TOUR THIS ENTIRE HOUSERELATED: 40 Pretty and Practical Kitchen Backsplash IdeasAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below7Build Out a Breakfast NookKirsten FrancisNo cottage kitchen is complete without a cozy breakfast nook. In this Connecticut kitchen, designer Stephanie Perez installed a banquette along her wall of windows and paired it with a chippy blue table. Hanging baskets add extra cottage charm. RELATED: Check Out All of Our Best Breakfast Nook Ideas8Mount a Peg RailJody BeckMix utilitarian appeal with classic style by mounting a peg rail along your kitchen’s workspace. While this works especially well with wood-paneled backsplash, it can be used with tile too. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below9Add Timeworn Character With Unlacquered BrassAnnie Schlechter for Country LivingChanging up the hardware in your kitchen is an easy and inexpensive way to give the space a fresh look. Swapping builder-grade knobs and pulls with unlacquered brass pieces will add timeworn character in an instant. (And, they’ll only look better over time!)RELATED: The Best Blue Paint Colors for Your Kitchen Cabinetry10Skirt Your SinkDavid Tsay for Country LivingTake a note from Heather Taylor and add a skirt to your sink! This quick upgrade, which can be DIY’d in just an afternoon, adds sweet cottage cheer to any kitchen. If you don’t want to DIY, get crafty with store-bought café curtains. RELATED: Sink Skirts Are the Nostalgic Trend Designers Are Loving Right NowAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below11Hang Café CurtainsStacy Zarin GoldbergIn fact, go all-in on café curtains! These humble window coverings are in the midst of a resurgence thanks to the rising popularity of happily twee decorating. Pick pretty patterns for a white kitchen or stick to calm neutrals in an already pattern-filled space. RELATED: See Why Designers Are Loving Café Curtains Right Now12Stick to Simple TileRead McKendreeIn a house with interesting architectural elements, pick simple finishes and allow the space’s character to shine through. In this 17th century New England cottage designed by Stephenie and Chase Watts, a simple white Zellige tile backsplash extends to the ceiling, allowing the warm wood beams and original flooring to take center stage. RELATED: Should Your Kitchen and Bathroom Tile Match? Designers Weigh InAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below13Go All-In on VintageMarta Xochilt Perez for Country LivingThrifted finds are the quickest way to bring character to an all-white cottage kitchen. Opt for vintage pieces inspired by your locale and lean into crustier, worn pieces for the ultimate curated look. TOUR THIS ENTIRE HOUSERELATED: 10 Old-School Finds That Add Instant Charm to a Kitchen14Match Your Trim To Your CeilingChase DanielLooking for a weekend project to up the design ante in your kitchen? Then it’s time to bring out a paint can! In this humble Texas cottage, a happy duck egg blue paint color was used on the trim, ceiling, and cabinetry to tie the space together with an easy, approachable feel. A reproduction wallpaper ("Larkspur 1872" designed by William Morris) adds just a pop of pattern. Get the Look:Trim and Ceiling Paint Color: Jamestown Blue by Benjamin MooreTOUR THIS ENTIRE HOUSEAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below15Pretty Up a Pass Through Dustin HalleckIf your cramped kitchen leaves little room for serving, look into installing a pass-through window! These are steeped in old-school charm and add foster a casual, come-as-you-are atmosphere. RELATED: These Old House Features Need to Make a Comeback Right Now16Paint Your FloorsDana GallagherIf channeling old-school charm is your preferred method of character-building, then try painting your floors! A classic black-and-white checkerboard pattern is a timeless choice, but the options are only limited by your imagination. Psst...old house owners, this is also a budget-friendly way to cover your wonky floors! RELATED: Everything You Need to Know About Painting Your Floors Advertisement - Continue Reading Below17Mount a Plate RackCarina OlanderDon’t overlook the power of a classic plate rack, which offers the same (if not better) organizational efforts as regular upper cabinetry or open shelving. Paint the plate rack to match your lower cabinetry or go with a contrasting wood stain. RELATED: 7 Kitchen Storage Mistakes You’re Definitely Making, And How to Fix Them18Go MoodyAli Harper for Country LivingNot every cottage kitchen needs to be light and bright. Lean into the cozy vibes of your home with a dark palette. This Alabama cottage features chocolate brown walls, which are complemented by unexpected hits of primary red and blue. Get the Look:Wall Paint Color: Dark Chocolate by Benjamin MooreRELATED: These Are the Best Brown Paint Colors, According to DesignersAdvertisement - Continue Reading Below19Use Salvaged Pieces Reid RollsAdd personality to your kitchen with unique salvaged pieces. Source them from your local architectural salvage yard or antique store, like designer Leanne Ford did with this repurposed china cabinet.TOUR THIS ENTIRE HOUSERELATED: 100+ Best Places to Shop for Salvage and Other Antiques and Vintage Online20Go for Butcher BlockDavid A. LandInstalling butcher-block countertops is a sure-fire way to add humble character to your cottage kitchen. Pair it with other wood accents, like designer Hadley Wiggins did here, for a timeless look.TOUR THIS ENTIRE HOUSERELATED: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Butcher-Block CountertopsAnna LoganSenior Homes & Style EditorAnna Logan is the Senior Homes & Style Editor at Country Living, where she has been covering all things home design, including sharing exclusive looks at beautifully designed country kitchens, producing home features, writing everything from timely trend reports on the latest viral aesthetic to expert-driven explainers on must-read topics, and rounding up pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted to know about paint, since 2021. Anna has spent the last seven years covering every aspect of the design industry, previously having written for Traditional Home, One Kings Lane, House Beautiful, and Frederic. She holds a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia. When she’s not working, Anna can either be found digging around her flower garden or through the dusty shelves of an antique shop. Follow her adventures, or, more importantly, those of her three-year-old Maltese and official Country Living Pet Lab tester, Teddy, on Instagram.  

Project Render. Image credit: The Bentway The Bentway has announced its summer 2025 season of programming headlined by a new public art exhibition, Sun/Shade, a dance performance atop a large sand dune, and a city-wide installation of a moving forest. From now until October 5, Sun/Shade will explore the city’s changing relationship with these natural features. The art exhibition aims to bring together a mix of artists, designers, and researchers from Toronto and beyond to deploy natural light and shadow as creative tools, to reveal how new thinking about familiar resources can improve urban life. The Gardiner offers a canvas for the new art exhibition and experimentation. Stretching over 6.5 km, the elevated highway’s canopy provides the city with its largest continuous shadow, making the area a natural haven for those seeking sun and shade. This space will provide the benefits of both elements while also serving as a gathering place for community events, public art, recreation, and lively celebrations throughout the summer. “As extreme urban heat events rise in Toronto and cities everywhere, it’s even more vital to create accessible spaces where communities can maximize access to shade and stay protected from harsh light,” said Ilana Altman, co-executive director of The Bentway. “This season of programming explores how we must adapt to our changing climate and reshape our public spaces to balance the benefits of both sun and shade. Our creative collaborators are prompting us to recognize shade as an essential public resource and embrace sunlight as a creative collaborator.” Visitors will be able to experience the world premiere of Sand Flight from Norway choreographer Ingri Fiksdal and theatre director Jonas Corell Petersen, where eight dancers and a 50-person choir will descend on a massive sand dune exploring new traditions for changing climates. Carrying on the theme is Moving Forest by Amsterdam’s NL Architects, a mobile project featuring a flock of 50 trees travelling throughout the city, will bring shade to sunbaked urban sites across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). A key dimension of Sun/Shade explores the importance of shaded spaces for public health, anchored by a new partnership with The Bentway’s official Sun-Safety Partner, the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. “Skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Canada, and the incidence of melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – is rising. The best way to prevent skin cancer is to protect your skin from the sun,” said Danielle Paterson, executive director of the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. “We are proud to partner with The Bentway on Sun/Shade, an amazing sun safety initiative that emphasizes the importance of accessible public shade in Toronto.” For more information, click here. The post Sun and shade take centre stage with The Bentway’s immersive summer program appeared first on Canadian Architect.

His EMI algorithm, an early form of artificial intelligence that he developed in the 1980s, prompted searching questions about the limits of human creativity.