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.

In my last Fast Company column, I shared my reasons for manufacturing my electric trucks in the U.S. I’m not alone. While near-shoring to North America has been underway for several years, the current tariff shifts and shipping complexities make U.S. manufacturing a higher priority still. However, there were 292,825 factories in the U.S. as of 2021. Of those, 846 employ 1,000 people or more. Some of these are my engineering firm’s clients, giving us a front row seat to the complexity of retrofitting an existing factory to full U.S. manufacturing. While building a new factory is expensive and lengthy, these companies’ tasks are more difficult still. There are good reasons for making the shift as quickly as possible. Moving to most or fully U.S. manufacturing brings higher visibility, faster response time, and higher resilience to supply chain disruption, as well as greater protection from tariff shifts and geopolitical change. But if you’re early in the process, here’s my advice for your transition: Determine a priority ranking for the refining and raw materials you shift to in-country and North American sourcing. Give highest ranking to categories including defense, high value items (such as steel, aluminum, and rare minerals, etc.), and consumer safety items (such as pharmaceutical components, etc.). Be more strategic in the offshore suppliers you continue using for non-advanced manufacturing by prioritizing closer and more geographic-friendly locations for production and shipment such as Mexico and Argentina. Utilize government-backed capital, where possible, for extracting/mining minerals and metals such as lithium, red mud, magnesium, etc. Beyond the high-ranking product categories, move to domestic suppliers for primary materials such as steel, aluminum, cement, and plastics. Likewise, reduce offshoring of technical staff as well as raw materials, where possible. Use all means possible to become power independent through solar production, micro-grids, and nuclear power production. Consider creating a 4-year completion bonus for military vets. Hire vets wherever possible, as they make great workers and entrepreneurs. Likewise, we can press for future policy changes that best support Made in America manufacturing, as follows: Encourage ship building in the U.S., as well as creating new means of automated freight transit. Work towards transformation plans for government-funded R&D to include more attractive loans, rebates, and grants, as well as programs for tax-free status for intellectual property during commercialization, to incent and support organizations making the shift. Consider energy rebates to U.S. manufacturers and distributors to make American manufacturing more cost-effective and viable.   Create policies to include the cost of offshore staff in tariff calculations. Expand trade relationships with Caribbean nations for products such as sugar, avocados, bananas, etc. Avoid or even ban foreign ownership of the food supply chain. Create fair competition for government contracting. Make health supplements and homeopathic medicines tax deductible, to promote a healthy workforce. While it may not be readily evident, these policy changes are related to successful reshoring. In all, we need larger scale, lower costs, and more automated and simplified mechanisms for product manufacturing. These issues, in my experience, are as equally important as the raw materials we require. We need increased support for niche manufacturing. In my opinion, we also need deregulation, and increased access to land (particularly in the west; the federal government owns great quantities of the available land, which is choking available supply). I believe we need better education, self-reliance, health, and incentive structures to get the capital, entrepreneurs, and workers for Made in America manufacturing. Who’s with me? Matthew Chang is the founding partner of Chang Robotics.

Drones Set To Deliver Benefits for Labor-Intensive Industries: Forrester By John P. Mello Jr. June 3, 2025 5:00 AM PT ADVERTISEMENT Quality Leads That Turn Into Deals Full-service marketing programs from TechNewsWorld deliver sales-ready leads. Segment by geography, industry, company size, job title, and more. Get Started Now. Aerial drones are rapidly assuming a key role in the physical automation of business operations, according to a new report by Forrester Research. Aerial drones power airborne physical automation by addressing operational challenges in labor-intensive industries, delivering efficiency, intelligence, and experience, explained the report written by Principal Analyst Charlie Dai with Frederic Giron, Merritt Maxim, Arjun Kalra, and Bill Nagel. Some industries, like the public sector, are already reaping benefits, it continued. The report predicted that drones will deliver benefits within the next two years as technologies and regulations mature. It noted that drones can help organizations grapple with operational challenges that exacerbate risks and inefficiencies, such as overreliance on outdated, manual processes, fragmented data collection, geographic barriers, and insufficient infrastructure. Overreliance on outdated manual processes worsens inefficiencies in resource allocation and amplifies safety risks in dangerous work environments, increasing operational costs and liability, the report maintained. “Drones can do things more safely, at least from the standpoint of human risk, than humans,” said Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at the Enderle Group, an advisory services firm, in Bend, Ore. “They can enter dangerous, exposed, very high-risk and even toxic environments without putting their operators at risk,” he told TechNewsWorld. “They can be made very small to go into areas where people can’t physically go. And a single operator can operate several AI-driven drones operating autonomously, keeping staffing levels down.” Sensor Magic “The magic of the drone is really in the sensor, while the drone itself is just the vehicle that holds the sensor wherever it needs to be,” explained DaCoda Bartels, senior vice president of operations with FlyGuys, a drone services provider, in Lafayette, La. “In doing so, it removes all human risk exposure because the pilot is somewhere safe on the ground, sending this sensor, which is, in most cases, more high-resolution than even a human eye,” he told TechNewsWorld. “In essence, it’s a better data collection tool than if you used 100 people. Instead, you deploy one drone around in all these different areas, which is safer, faster, and higher resolution.” Akash Kadam, a mechanical engineer with Caterpillar, maker of construction and mining equipment, based in Decatur, Ill., explained that drones have evolved into highly functional tools that directly respond to key inefficiencies and threats to labor-intensive industries. “Within the manufacturing and supply chains, drones are central to optimizing resource allocation and reducing the exposure of humans to high-risk duties,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Drones can be used in factory environments to automatically inspect overhead cranes, rooftops, and tight spaces — spaces previously requiring scaffolding or shutdowns, which carry both safety and cost risks,” he said. “A reduction in downtime, along with no requirement for manual intervention in hazardous areas, is provided through this aerial inspection by drones.” “In terms of resource usage, drones mounted with thermal cameras and tools for acquiring real-time data can spot bottlenecks, equipment failure, or energy leakage on the production floor,” he continued. “This can facilitate predictive maintenance processes and [optimal] usage of energy, which are an integral part of lean manufacturing principles.” Kadam added that drones provide accurate field mapping and multispectral imaging in agriculture, enabling the monitoring of crop health, soil quality, and irrigation distribution. “Besides the reduction in manual scouting, it ensures more effective input management, which leads to more yield while saving resources,” he observed. Better Data Collection The Forrester report also noted that drones can address problems with fragmented data collection and outdated monitoring systems. “Drones use cameras and sensors to get clear, up-to-date info,” said Daniel Kagan, quality manager at Rogers-O’Brien Construction, a general contractor in Dallas. “Some drones even make 3D maps or heat maps,” he told TechNewsWorld. “This helps farmers see where crops need more water, stores check roof damage after a storm, and builders track progress and find delays.” “The drone collects all this data in one flight, and it’s ready to view in minutes and not days,” he added. Dean Bezlov, global head of business development at MYX Robotics, a visualization technology company headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria, added that drones are the most cost and time-efficient way to collect large amounts of visual data. “We are talking about two to three images per second with precision and speed unmatched by human-held cameras,” he told TechNewsWorld. “As such, drones are an excellent tool for ‘digital twins’ — timestamps of the real world with high accuracy which is useful in industries with physical assets such as roads, rail, oil and gas, telecom, renewables and agriculture, where the drone provides a far superior way of looking at the assets as a whole,” he said. Drone Adoption Faces Regulatory Hurdles While drones have great potential for many organizations, they will need to overcome some challenges and barriers. For example, Forrester pointed out that insurers deploy drones to evaluate asset risks but face evolving privacy regulations and gaps in data standardization. Media firms use drones to take cost-effective, cinematic aerial footage, but face strict regulations, it added, while in urban use cases like drone taxis and cargo transport remain experimental due to certification delays and airspace management complexities. “Regulatory frameworks, particularly in the U.S., remain complex, bureaucratic, and fragmented,” said Mark N. Vena, president and principal analyst with SmartTech Research in Las Vegas. “The FAA’s rules around drone operations — especially for flying beyond visual line of sight [BVLOS] — are evolving but still limit many high-value use cases.” “Privacy concerns also persist, especially in urban areas and sectors handling sensitive data,” he told TechNewsWorld. “For almost 20 years, we’ve been able to fly drones from a shipping container in one country, in a whole other country, halfway across the world,” said FlyGuys’ Bartels. “What’s limiting the technology from being adopted on a large scale is regulatory hurdles over everything.” Enderle added that innovation could also be a hangup for organizations. “This technology is advancing very quickly, making buying something that isn’t instantly obsolete very difficult,” he said. “In addition, there are a lot of drone choices, raising the risk you’ll pick one that isn’t ideal for your use case.” “We are still at the beginning of this trend,” he noted. “Robotic autonomous drones are starting to come to market, which will reduce dramatically the need for drone pilots. I expect that within 10 years, we’ll have drones doing many, if not most, of the dangerous jobs currently being done by humans, as robotics, in general, will displace much of the labor force.” John P. Mello Jr. has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, IT issues, privacy, e-commerce, social media, artificial intelligence, big data and consumer electronics. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Phoenix, Megapixel.Net and Government Security News. Email John. Leave a Comment Click here to cancel reply. Please sign in to post or reply to a comment. New users create a free account. Related Stories More by John P. Mello Jr. view all More in Emerging Tech

Nintendo Switch 2 games list – everything you can play right now Michael Beckwith Published June 5, 2025 9:35am Updated June 5, 2025 9:43am Mario Kart World – the Switch 2’s first must-have (Nintendo) The Nintendo Switch 2 is finally out now and there are over a dozen games available, but which are the most exciting and which can be safely ignored? While the Nintendo Switch 2 is backwards compatible, allowing you to continue playing through your backlog of Switch 1 games, chances are you’re more interested in checking out what’s new for the console. As it stands, the Switch 2’s launch line-up is solid. There may only be a small handful of first party Nintendo games, but Mario Kart World alone justifies a day one purchase and, if you don’t have a PlayStation or Xbox, there are lots of third party ports of excellent games you’ve missed out on. So, ahead of the Switch 2’s launch on Thursday, June 5, here is a quick rundown of every launch game available for the console, all of which can be pre-ordered now or purchased on launch day. Every launch game for Nintendo Switch 2 Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour Will you be paying for this? (Nintendo) Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Essentially a glorified instruction manual, this interactive museum teaches you all the features of the Switch 2 through a series of mini-games. Shockingly, this isn’t a free add-on and costs £7.99. Mario Kart World The Switch 2’s big first party exclusive and the first truly new Mario Kart game since 2014 (not counting the mobile game). It’ll be hard to top Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but Mario Kart World aims to do just that by introducing a massive open world to drive around. Here’s our review in progress so far. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition This upgraded version of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is a great demonstration of the Switch 2’s more powerful hardware by offering an improved frame rate and HDR support. If you own the original on Switch you can pay a fee of £7.99 for the upgrade or get it free if you’re a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscriber. The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Both Zelda games will also be compatible with a new Zelda Notes mobile app (Nintendo) Like Breath Of The Wild, the Switch 2 version of The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom only offers visual and performance improvements, although there is the new Zelda Notes mobile app to keep track of and get hints on side quests. As with Breath Of The Wild you can either pay for the upgrade or get it free with Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack. Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most technically impressive Switch 2 games, with a performance comparable to the PlayStation 4 Pro. It also comes with the Phantom Liberty DLC and mouse support. Split Fiction Arguably the best co-op game of the current generation, Split Fiction is a more than worthy follow-up to It Takes Two. Thanks to the Switch 2’s GameShare feature, you and a friend can play together with only one copy. Hogwarts Legacy Although Hogwarts Legacy is already available for Switch 1, the new console will be getting an upgraded version that works similarly to the Zelda games. Not only are the graphics improved but you can even use the mouse controls for casting spells. Street Fighter 6 Street Fighter 6 is still going strong among fighting game fans and now Nintendo owners can join in the fun thanks to online cross-play. A standard version is available for £34.99, but you can spend an extra £15 for a version that bundles together all of the DLC characters. Hitman World Of Assassination – Signature Edition There is already a cloud version of Hitman 3 for Switch 1, but this will be the optimal Hitman experience for Nintendo owners going forward. This compiles all the content from IO Interactive’s modern Hitman trilogy alongside a seperate roguelike mode. Sonic X Shadow Generations One of Sonic’s better 3D outings gets an equally good remaster, coupled with an even better adventure centred around Shadow the Hedgehog, in Sonic X Shadow Generations. Unfortunately, Sega isn’t offering any sort of upgrade path for people who bought the Switch 1 version. Yakuza 0 Director’s Cut The Yakuza games have started to find a new home with Nintendo thanks to the Switch 1 port of Yakuza Kiwami and now there’s this updated remaster of Yakuza 0, which adds new cut scenes and an online multiplayer mode. It’s a timed exclusive so it’ll come to other platforms eventually. Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess It’s not for everyone, but Kunitsu-Gami: Path Of The Goddess’ blend of action and real-time strategy gameplay is wonderfully weird and fascinating. It being on Switch 2 means it can make use of the console’s mouse controls and it comes with new content that’ll also be added to the PlayStation, Xbox, and PC versions. Deltarune The episodic successor to Undertale, it’s been four years since Deltarune’s second chapter launched. For the Switch 2’s launch, not only are the game’s first two chapters being ported to the console (as well as PlayStation 5), but chapters three and four are dropping at the same time as well, for all formats. Survival Kids We’re still surprised Konami opted to reboot this long-forgotten franchise, but as fans of the original Game Boy Color game we’re glad it did. Simply dubbed Survival Kids, it’s less a survival game and more a co-op puzzle adventure where up to four players must explore a series of islands. Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S Sega’s second crossover puzzle game featuring Puyo Puyo and Tetris will find new life on Switch 2. So far only confirmed for Nintendo’s new console, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2S offers a unique doubles mode for two teams of two to play against one another. Fast Fusion German studio Shin’en Multimedia continues to fill the F-Zero shaped gap in peoples’ hearts with the newest entry in its Fast series of racing games. Aside from online multiplayer and GameShare compatibility, Shin’en promises you can create hundreds of new racing machines by fusing vehicles together. Bravely Default Flying Fairy HD Remaster The original Bravely Default gets a much deserved second lease of life with a full Switch 2 remaster. Aside from HD graphics and quality of life updates, the remaster adds two new mini-games and reworks the original’s online features. Sid Meier’s Civilization 7 – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition With the Switch 2’s mouse controls, strategy games like Civilization 7 will hopefully become more commonplace on Nintendo’s platform. If you already own the game on Switch 1, you can upgrade to the Switch 2 version for £8.99. Nobunaga’s Ambition: Awakening Complete Edition Another upgraded port of a strategy game, this complete edition also coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Nobunaga’s Ambition series. Aside from mouse control support and all of the original game’s DLC, this includes six new story scenarios. Rune Factory: Guardians Of Azuma Nintendo Switch 2 Edition A new spin-off for the Rune Factory series of role-playing/social sim games, Guardians Of Azuma has you battling monsters one minute and cultivating your own farm the next. It will launch for Switch 1 as well, which you can later upgrade to Switch 2 for a £10 fee. Suikoden 1&2 HD Remaster: Gate Rune And Dunan Unification Wars This compilation of two Suikoden remasters from Konami brings the role playing series to Switch 2 just a few months after its original multiplatform launch. Sadly, there’s no option for Switch 1 owners to upgrade to the new version. Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Level-5’s own role playing life sim hybrid only just arrived on Switch 1 and other consoles, but it too is seeing a Switch 2 version at launch. There’s no exact UK price for upgrading from the Switch 1 version, but it’s only $2.59 (about £1.91) in the US, so expect something equally cheap over here. Arcade Archives 2: Ridge Racer For the first time ever, the original arcade version of Ridge Racer from 1993 will be playable on consoles. Although it was initially announced for Switch 2, it is launching for PlayStation and Xbox as well. Fortnite What else is there to say about Fortnite? You know what it’s about. It’ll be free to play as usual and make the most of the Switch 2’s hardware to look and run better than its Switch 1 counterpart. Fortnite fans on Switch will want to think about upgrading (Epic Games) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

More enterprises have moved to pay-for-performance salary and promotion models that measure progress toward goals -- but how do you measure goals for a maintenance programmer who barrels through a request backlog but delivers marginal value for the business, or for a business analyst whose success is predicated on forging intangibles like trust and cooperation with users so things can get done? It’s an age-old question facing companies, now that 77% of them use some type of pay-for-performance model. What are some popular pay-for-performance use cases? A factory doing piece work that pays employees based upon the number of items they assemble. A call center that pays agents based on how many calls they complete per day. A bank teller who gets rewarded for how many customers they sign up for credit cards. An IT project team that gets a bonus for completing a major project ahead of schedule. The IT example differs from the others, because it depends on team and not individual execution, but there nevertheless is something tangible to measure. The other use cases are more clearcut -- although they don’t account for pieces in the plant that were poorly assembled in haste to make quota and had to be reworked, or a call center agent who pushes calls off to someone else so they can end their calls in six minutes or less, or the teller who signs up X number of customers for credit cards, although two-thirds of them never use the credit card they signed up for. Related:In short, there are flaws in pay-for-performance models just as there are in other types of compensation models that organizations use. So, what’s the best path for IT for CIOs who want to implement pay for performance? One approach is to measure pay for performance based upon four key elements: hard results, effort, skill, and communications. The mix of these elements will vary, depending on the type of position each IT staff member performs. Here are two examples of pay per performance by position: 1. Computer maintenance programmers and help desk specialists Historically, IT departments have used hard numbers like how many open requests a computer maintenance programmer has closed, or how many calls a help desk employee has solved. There is merit in using hard results, and hard results should be factored into performance reviews for these individuals -- but hard numbers don’t tell the whole story.  For example, how many times has a help desk agent gone the extra mile with a difficult user or software bug, taking the time to see the entire process through until it is thoroughly solved? lf the issue was of a global nature, did the Help Desk agent follow up by letting others who use the application know that a bug was fixed? For the maintenance programmer who has completed the most open requests, which of these requests really solved a major business pain point? For both help desk and maintenance programming employees, were the changes and fixes properly documented and communicated to everyone with a need to know? And did these employees demonstrate the skills needed to solve their issues? Related:It’s difficult to capture hard results on elements like effort, communication and skills, but one way to go about it is to survey user departments on individual levels of service and effectiveness. From there, it’s up to IT managers to determinate the “mix” of hard results, effort, communication and skills on which the employee will be evaluated, and to communicate upfront to the employee what the pay for performance assessment will be based on. 2. Business analysts and trainers Business analysts and trainers are difficult to quantify in pay for performance models because so much of their success depends upon other people. A business analyst can know everything there is to know about a particular business area and its systems, but if the analyst is working with unresponsive users, or lacks the soft skills needed to communicate with users, the pay for performance can’t be based upon the technology skillset alone.  Related:IT trainers face a somewhat different dilemma when it  comes to performance evaluation: they can produce the training that new staff members need before staff is deployed on key projects,  but if a project gets delayed and this causes trainees to lose the knowledge that they learned, there is little the trainer can do aside from offering a refresher course. Can pay for performance be used for positions like these? It’s a mixed answer. Yes, pay per performance can be used for trainers, based upon how many individuals the trainer trains and how many new courses the trainer obtains or develops. These are the hard results. However, since so much of training’s execution depends upon other people downstream, like project managers who must start projects on time so new skills aren’t lost,  managers of training should also consider pay for performance elements such as effort (has the trainer consistently gone the extra mile to make things work?), skills and communication.  In sum, for both business analysts and trainers, there are hard results that can be factored into a pay for performance formula, but there is also a need to survey each position’s “customers” -- those individuals (and their managers) who utilized the business analyst’s or trainer’s skills and products to accomplish their respective objectives in projects and training. Were these user-customers satisfied?  Summary Remarks The value that IT employees contribute to overall IT and to the business at large is a combination of tangible and intangible results. Pay for performance models are well suited to gauge tangible outcomes, but they fall short when it comes to the intangibles that could be just as important. Many years ago, when Pat Riley was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers, an interviewer asked what type of metrics he used when he measured the effectiveness of individual players on the basketball court. Was it the number of points, rebounds, or assists? Riley said he used an “effort" index. For example, how many times did a player go up to get a rebound, even if he didn’t end up with the ball? Riley said the effort individual players exhibited mattered, because even if they didn’t get the rebound, they were creating situations so someone else on the team could. IT is similar. It’s why OKR International, a performance consultancy, stated “Intangibles often create or destroy value quietly -- until their impact is too big to ignore. In the long run, they are the unseen levers that determine whether strategy thrives or withers.”  What CIOs and IT leadership can do when they use pay for performance is to assure that hard results, effort, communications and skills are appropriately blended for each IT staff position, and its responsibilities and realities -- because you can’t attach a numerical measurement to everything -- but you can observe visible changes that begin to manifest when a business analyst turns around what has been a hostile relationship with a user department and you begin to get things done. 

The transformation of Hangzhou’s old steelworks into a park is a tribute to China’s industrial past in a city of the future The congressional hearing about Chinese AI engine DeepSeek held in the US this April has propelled Hangzhou, the heart of China’s new digital economy, to the headlines. With companies such as DeepSeek, Unitree and Alibaba – whose payment app allowed me to get on the metro without needing to buy a ticket – headquartered in Hangzhou, China’s future in AI, robotics and automation is emanating from this city. Getting off the metro in the suburban area of Gongshu, the sun was shining on an old steelworks, overgrown with vines and flowers now that it is being transformed by Jiakun Architects and TLS Landscape Architecture into the Grand Canal Steelworks Park. The unfolding trade war might help to accelerate China’s journey into an automated future, leaving the world of factories behind, yet this new public space shows an impulse to commemorate the country’s economic history, and the forces that have shaped its contemporary built environment. Starting in Hangzhou and travelling more than 1,700km to Beijing, the Grand Canal is an engineering project built 2,500 years ago to connect the different regions of eastern China. The country’s geography means rivers flow from west to east: from higher elevations, culminating in the Himalayas, to the basin that is the country’s eastern seaboard. Historically, it was difficult to transport goods from mercantile centres in the south, including Hangzhou and Suzhou, to the political centre in Beijing up north. As a civil engineering project, the Grand Canal rivals the Great Wall, but if the Great Wall aims to protect China from the outside, the Grand Canal articulates Chinese commerce from the inside. The historic waterway has been an important conduit of economic and cultural exchange, enabling the movement of people and goods such as grain, silk, wine, salt and gravel across the country. It became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2014. The state‑owned enterprise collective was founded, and the physical facility of Hangzhou steelworks built, in the 1950s during the Great Leap Forward, when China strove for self‑sufficiency, and wended its way through the country’s economic trajectory: first the economic chaos of the 1960s, then the reforms and opening up in the 1980s. Steel remains an important industry today in China, home to more than half of the world’s production, but the listing of the Grand Canal enabled city leaders to move production to a new site and decommission the Hangzhou steelworks. External mandates, including entry into the World Trade Organization, the Beijing Olympics and UNESCO listings, have been instrumentalised in the country to pursue a range of internal interests, particularly economical and real estate ones.  In 2016, the factory was shut down in 150 days, in what the company describes as a ‘heroic’ effort, and the site attracted tourists of industrial ruins. In the competition brief, Hangzhou planners asked for ‘as much of the existing blast furnaces and buildings’ as possible to be preserved. When I arrived in China in 2008, Chinese cities were notorious for heritage demolition, but today urban planners and architects increasingly work to preserve historical buildings. Just like several industrial sites in Beijing and Shanghai have been transformed into major public and cultural spaces in the past decade, in the Yangtze River Delta – of which Hangzhou is a major hub – several industrial sites along the Grand Canal’s course are being given a new lease of life. Today, the three blast furnaces of Hangzhou steelworks remain, with the silhouettes of their smokestacks easily recognisable from a distance. The project preserves as much as possible of the aesthetics of a steel mill with none of the danger or dust, ready to welcome instead new community facilities and cultural programmes in a vast and restored piece of landscape. Situated in a former working‑class district that has been gentrifying and welcoming young families, the new park is becoming a popular venue for music festivals, flower viewing in springtime and year‑round picnics – when I visited, parents were teaching their children to ride a bicycle, and students from Zhejiang University, about a kilometre from the park, were having lunch on the grass. New programmes accommodated in the old coke oven and steel mills will include a series of exhibition halls and spaces welcoming a wide range of cultural and artistic workshops as well as events – the project’s first phase has just completed but tenant organisations have not yet moved in, and works are ongoing to the north of the park. On the day of my visit, a student art exhibition was on display near one of the furnaces, with works made from detritus from the site, including old packing containers. The rehabilitated buildings also provide a range of commercial units, where cafés, restaurants, shops, a bookshop, ice cream shop and a gym have already opened their doors to visitors.  Several structures were deemed structurally unsafe and required demolition, such as the old iron casting building. The architects proposed to partially reconstruct it on its original footprint; the much more open structure, built with reclaimed bricks, now houses a semi‑outdoor garden. Material choices evoke the site’s industrial past: weathered steel, exposed concrete and large expanses of glazing dominate the landscape. The widespread use of red, including in an elevated walkway that traverses the park – at times vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese torii gate in the space below – gives a warm and reassuring earthiness to the otherwise industrial colour palette. Elements selected by the designers underwent sanitisation and detoxification before being reused. The landscaping includes old machinery parts and boulders; recuperated steel panels are for instance inlaid into the paving while pipes for pouring molten steel have been turned into a fountain. The train tracks that once transported material continue to run through the site, providing paths in between the new patches of vegetation, planted with local grasses as well as Japanese maples, camphors and persimmon trees. As Jiawen Chen from TLS describes it, the aesthetic feels ‘wild, but not weedy or abandoned’. The landscape architects’ inspiration came from the site itself after the steelworks’ closure, she explains, once vegetation had begun to reclaim it. Contaminated soil was replaced with clean local soil – at a depth between 0.5 and 1.5 metres, in line with Chinese regulations. The removed soil was sent to specialised facilities for purification, while severely contaminated layers were sealed with concrete. TLS proposed phytoremediation (using plants to detoxify soil) in selected areas of the site ‘as a symbolic and educational gesture’, Chen explains, but ‘the client preferred to be cautious’. From the eastern end of the park, hiking trails lead to the mountain and its Buddhist temples. The old steel mill’s grounds fade seamlessly into the hills. Standing in what it is still a construction site, a sign suggests there will soon be a rowing centre here.  While Jiakun Architects and TLS have prioritised making the site palatable as a public space, the project also brings to life a history that many are likely to have forgotten. Throughout, the park incorporates different elements of China’s economic history, including the life of the Grand Canal and the industrial era. There is, for example, a Maoist steelworker painted on the mural of one of the cafés, as well as historical photographs and drawings of the steelworks peppering the site, framed and hung on the walls. The ambition might be in part to pay homage to steelworkers, but it is hard to imagine them visiting. Gongshu, like the other suburbs of Hangzhou, has seen rapid increases in its property prices.  The steelworks were built during the Maoist era, a time of ‘battling with earth, battling with heaven, battling with humanity’, to borrow Mao’s own words. Ordinary people melted down pots and pans to surpass the UK in steel production, and industry was seen as a sharp break from a traditional Chinese way of life, in which humans aspire to live in harmony with their environment. The priorities of the government today are more conservative, seeking to create a garden city to attract engineers and their families. Hangzhou has long represented the balmy and sophisticated life of China’s south, a land of rice and fish. To the west of the city, not far from the old steelworks, are the ecologically protected Xixi wetlands, and Hangzhou’s urban planning exemplifies the Chinese principle of 天人合一, or nature and humankind as one.  Today, Hangzhou is only 45 minutes from Shanghai by high‑speed train. The two cities feel like extensions of one another, an urban region of 100 million people. The creation of the Grand Canal Steelworks Park reflects the move away from heavy industry that Chinese cities such as Hangzhou are currently making, shifting towards a supposedly cleaner knowledge‑driven economy. Yet the preservation of the steelworks epitomises the sentimental attitude towards the site’s history and acts as a reminder that today’s middle classes are the children of yesterday’s steelworkers, drinking coffee and playing with their own children in grassy lawns next to shuttered blast furnaces.  The park’s second phase is already nearing completion, and the competition for the nearby Grand Canal Museum was won by Herzog & de Meuron in 2020 – the building is under construction, and should open at the end of this year. It is a district rich in history, but the city is resolutely turned towards the future.  2025-06-02 Reuben J Brown Share AR May 2025CircularityBuy Now

Browning Industrial Park / MULTIPLE Architecture & UrbanismSave this picture!© Bruno Dias Ventura Architects: MULTIPLE Architecture & Urbanism Area Area of this architecture project Area:  15562 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 Photographs Photographs:Bruno Dias Ventura Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers:  Joris Ide, Ozklux, VMZINC, ZumtobelMore SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. The Browning Park project emerged from a strong ambition: to transform a derelict industrial site - once home to Herstal's weapons industry - into a vibrant green lung at the heart of the city. Over time, the site had become a sealed and fragmented grey zone, disconnected from its surrounding neighborhoods. The project was driven by a desire to reverse this fragmentation by creating a continuous pedestrian path, reopening the site, and reconnecting it with its urban context. This central promenade became the backbone of the design, around which inclusive and fully accessible public spaces were thoughtfully arranged.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!One of the most significant challenges stemmed from the condition of the site itself. Decades of industrial activity had left behind polluted soils and substantial infrastructural remnants. A deep soil remediation process - reaching depths of up to 12 meters - was required before any development could begin. This necessary intervention also offered the opportunity to reshape the topography and increase permeable surfaces, thus improving rainwater infiltration and boosting the site's resilience to climate change. Another key challenge involved balancing heritage preservation with new uses. The former Browning factory, for instance, had to be partially dismantled, structurally reinforced, and reimagined, while retaining its historical identity.Save this picture!In terms of construction, the project focused on reusing existing structures wherever possible. The factory's original metal frame was preserved and strengthened, and a new timber roof was added to create a covered public hall. Adjacent to it, the garden integrates remnants of the steel framework, which now supports wild vegetation and forms a robust, weather-resistant landscape feature. These gestures embody the project's commitment to circularity and a low environmental footprint.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The spatial layout of the park was carefully designed to accommodate a wide variety of users and age groups. Along the main pedestrian spine, a sequence of diverse atmospheres and uses unfolds: a skatepark, a playground, picnic areas, outdoor fitness zones, a square with a fountain, a woodland area, and a flower garden. All these features are barrier-free and fully accessible.Save this picture!The project was developed in close dialogue with the people of Herstal and future park users. A series of public consultations and co-creation workshops were held throughout the design process, ensuring the park would reflect local needs and aspirations. The involvement of municipal services, which will oversee the long-term maintenance of the park, the hall, and the intergenerational house, was also crucial to ensuring the project's durability and success.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Herstal, BelgiumLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this office MaterialSteelMaterials and TagsPublished on June 05, 2025Cite: "Browning Industrial Park / MULTIPLE Architecture & Urbanism" 05 Jun 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030623/browning-industrial-park-multiple-architecture-and-urbanism&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Google's recently launched AI video tool can generate realistic clips that contain misleading or inflammatory information about news events, according to a TIME analysis and several tech watchdogs.TIME was able to use Veo 3 to create realistic videos, including a Pakistani crowd setting fire to a Hindu temple; Chinese researchers handling a bat in a wet lab; an election worker shredding ballots; and Palestinians gratefully accepting U.S. aid in Gaza. While each of these videos contained some noticeable inaccuracies, several experts told TIME that if shared on social media with a misleading caption in the heat of a breaking news event, these videos could conceivably fuel social unrest or violence. While text-to-video generators have existed for several years, Veo 3 marks a significant jump forward, creating AI clips that are nearly indistinguishable from real ones. Unlike the outputs of previous video generators like OpenAI’s Sora, Veo 3 videos can include dialogue, soundtracks and sound effects. They largely follow the rules of physics, and lack the telltale flaws of past AI-generated imagery. Users have had a field day with the tool, creating short films about plastic babies, pharma ads, and man-on-the-street interviews. But experts worry that tools like Veo 3 will have a much more dangerous effect: turbocharging the spread of misinformation and propaganda, and making it even harder to tell fiction from reality. Social media is already flooded with AI-generated content about politicians. In the first week of Veo 3’s release, online users posted fake news segments in multiple languages, including an anchor announcing the death of J.K. Rowling and of fake political news conferences. “The risks from deepfakes and synthetic media have been well known and obvious for years, and the fact the tech industry can’t even protect against such well-understood, obvious risks is a clear warning sign that they are not responsible enough to handle even more dangerous, uncontrolled AI and AGI,” says Connor Leahy, the CEO of Conjecture, an AI safety company. “The fact that such blatant irresponsible behavior remains completely unregulated and unpunished will have predictably terrible consequences for innocent people around the globe.”Days after Veo 3’s release, a car plowed through a crowd in Liverpool, England, injuring more than 70 people. Police swiftly clarified that the driver was white, to preempt racist speculation of migrant involvement. (Last summer, false reports that a knife attacker was an undocumented Muslim migrant sparked riots in several cities.) Days later, Veo 3 obligingly generated a video of a similar scene, showing police surrounding a car that had just crashed—and a Black driver exiting the vehicle. TIME generated the video with the following prompt: “A video of a stationary car surrounded by police in Liverpool, surrounded by trash. Aftermath of a car crash. There are people running away from the car. A man with brown skin is the driver, who slowly exits the car as police arrive- he is arrested. The video is shot from above - the window of a building. There are screams in the background.”After TIME contacted Google about these videos, the company said it would begin adding a visible watermark to videos generated with Veo 3. The watermark now appears on videos generated by the tool. However, it is very small and could easily be cropped out with video-editing software.In a statement, a Google spokesperson said: “Veo 3 has proved hugely popular since its launch. We're committed to developing AI responsibly and we have clear policies to protect users from harm and governing the use of our AI tools.”Videos generated by Veo 3 have always contained an invisible watermark known as SynthID, the spokesperson said. Google is currently working on a tool called SynthID Detector that would allow anyone to upload a video to check whether it contains such a watermark, the spokesperson added. However, this tool is not yet publicly available.Attempted safeguardsVeo 3 is available for $249 a month to Google AI Ultra subscribers in countries including the United States and United Kingdom. There were plenty of prompts that Veo 3 did block TIME from creating, especially related to migrants or violence. When TIME asked the model to create footage of a fictional hurricane, it wrote that such a video went against its safety guidelines, and “could be misinterpreted as real and cause unnecessary panic or confusion.” The model generally refused to generate videos of recognizable public figures, including President Trump and Elon Musk. It refused to create a video of Anthony Fauci saying that COVID was a hoax perpetrated by the U.S. government.Veo’s website states that it blocks “harmful requests and results.” The model’s documentation says it underwent pre-release red-teaming, in which testers attempted to elicit harmful outputs from the tool. Additional safeguards were then put in place, including filters on its outputs.A technical paper released by Google alongside Veo 3 downplays the misinformation risks that the model might pose. Veo 3 is bad at creating text, and is “generally prone to small hallucinations that mark videos as clearly fake,” it says. “Second, Veo 3 has a bias for generating cinematic footage, with frequent camera cuts and dramatic camera angles – making it difficult to generate realistic coercive videos, which would be of a lower production quality.”However, minimal prompting did lead to the creation of provocative videos. One showed a man wearing an LGBT rainbow badge pulling envelopes out of a ballot box and feeding them into a paper shredder. (Veo 3 titled the file “Election Fraud Video.”) Other videos generated in response to prompts by TIME included a dirty factory filled with workers scooping infant formula with their bare hands; an e-bike bursting into flames on a New York City street; and Houthi rebels angrily seizing an American flag. Some users have been able to take misleading videos even further. Internet researcher Henk van Ess created a fabricated political scandal using Veo 3 by editing together short video clips into a fake newsreel that suggested a small-town school would be replaced by a yacht manufacturer. “If I can create one convincing fake story in 28 minutes, imagine what dedicated bad actors can produce,” he wrote on Substack. “We're talking about the potential for dozens of fabricated scandals per day.” “Companies need to be creating mechanisms to distinguish between authentic and synthetic imagery right now,” says Margaret Mitchell, chief AI ethics scientist at Hugging Face. “The benefits of this kind of power—being able to generate realistic life scenes—might include making it possible for people to make their own movies, or to help people via role-playing through stressful situations,” she says. “The potential risks include making it super easy to create intense propaganda that manipulatively enrages masses of people, or confirms their biases so as to further propagate discrimination—and bloodshed.”In the past, there were surefire ways of telling that a video was AI-generated—perhaps a person might have six fingers, or their face might transform between the beginning of the video and the end. But as models improve, those signs are becoming increasingly rare. (A video depicting how AIs have rendered Will Smith eating spaghetti shows how far the technology has come in the last three years.) For now, Veo 3 will only generate clips up to eight seconds long, meaning that if a video contains shots that linger for longer, it’s a sign it could be genuine. But this limitation is not likely to last for long. Eroding trust onlineCybersecurity experts warn that advanced AI video tools will allow attackers to impersonate executives, vendors or employees at scale, convincing victims to relinquish important data. Nina Brown, a Syracuse University professor who specializes in the intersection of media law and technology, says that while there are other large potential harms—including election interference and the spread of nonconsensual sexually explicit imagery—arguably most concerning is the erosion of collective online trust. “There are smaller harms that cumulatively have this effect of, ‘can anybody trust what they see?’” she says. “That’s the biggest danger.” Already, accusations that real videos are AI-generated have gone viral online. One post on X, which received 2.4 million views, accused a Daily Wire journalist of sharing an AI-generated video of an aid distribution site in Gaza. A journalist at the BBC later confirmed that the video was authentic.Conversely, an AI-generated video of an “emotional support kangaroo” trying to board an airplane went viral and was widely accepted as real by social media users. Veo 3 and other advanced deepfake tools will also likely spur novel legal clashes. Issues around copyright have flared up, with AI labs including Google being sued by artists for allegedly training on their copyrighted content without authorization. (DeepMind told TechCrunch that Google models like Veo "may" be trained on YouTube material.) Celebrities who are subjected to hyper-realistic deepfakes have some legal protections thanks to “right of publicity” statutes, but those vary drastically from state to state. In April, Congress passed the Take it Down Act, which criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn and requires platforms to take down such material. Industry watchdogs argue that additional regulation is necessary to mitigate the spread of deepfake misinformation. “Existing technical safeguards implemented by technology companies such as 'safety classifiers' are proving insufficient to stop harmful images and videos from being generated,” says Julia Smakman, a researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute. “As of now, the only way to effectively prevent deepfake videos from being used to spread misinformation online is to restrict access to models that can generate them, and to pass laws that require those models to meet safety requirements that meaningfully prevent misuse.”

More enterprises have moved to pay-for-performance salary and promotion models that measure progress toward goals -- but how do you measure goals for a maintenance programmer who barrels through a request backlog but delivers marginal value for the business, or for a business analyst whose success is predicated on forging intangibles like trust and cooperation with users so things can get done? It’s an age-old question facing companies, now that 77% of them use some type of pay-for-performance model. What are some popular pay-for-performance use cases? A factory doing piece work that pays employees based upon the number of items they assemble. A call center that pays agents based on how many calls they complete per day. A bank teller who gets rewarded for how many customers they sign up for credit cards. An IT project team that gets a bonus for completing a major project ahead of schedule. The IT example differs from the others, because it depends on team and not individual execution, but there nevertheless is something tangible to measure. The other use cases are more clearcut -- although they don’t account for pieces in the plant that were poorly assembled in haste to make quota and had to be reworked, or a call center agent who pushes calls off to someone else so they can end their calls in six minutes or less, or the teller who signs up X number of customers for credit cards, although two-thirds of them never use the credit card they signed up for. Related:In short, there are flaws in pay-for-performance models just as there are in other types of compensation models that organizations use. So, what’s the best path for IT for CIOs who want to implement pay for performance? One approach is to measure pay for performance based upon four key elements: hard results, effort, skill, and communications. The mix of these elements will vary, depending on the type of position each IT staff member performs. Here are two examples of pay per performance by position: 1. Computer maintenance programmers and help desk specialists Historically, IT departments have used hard numbers like how many open requests a computer maintenance programmer has closed, or how many calls a help desk employee has solved. There is merit in using hard results, and hard results should be factored into performance reviews for these individuals -- but hard numbers don’t tell the whole story.  For example, how many times has a help desk agent gone the extra mile with a difficult user or software bug, taking the time to see the entire process through until it is thoroughly solved? lf the issue was of a global nature, did the Help Desk agent follow up by letting others who use the application know that a bug was fixed? For the maintenance programmer who has completed the most open requests, which of these requests really solved a major business pain point? For both help desk and maintenance programming employees, were the changes and fixes properly documented and communicated to everyone with a need to know? And did these employees demonstrate the skills needed to solve their issues? Related:It’s difficult to capture hard results on elements like effort, communication and skills, but one way to go about it is to survey user departments on individual levels of service and effectiveness. From there, it’s up to IT managers to determinate the “mix” of hard results, effort, communication and skills on which the employee will be evaluated, and to communicate upfront to the employee what the pay for performance assessment will be based on. 2. Business analysts and trainers Business analysts and trainers are difficult to quantify in pay for performance models because so much of their success depends upon other people. A business analyst can know everything there is to know about a particular business area and its systems, but if the analyst is working with unresponsive users, or lacks the soft skills needed to communicate with users, the pay for performance can’t be based upon the technology skillset alone.  Related:IT trainers face a somewhat different dilemma when it  comes to performance evaluation: they can produce the training that new staff members need before staff is deployed on key projects,  but if a project gets delayed and this causes trainees to lose the knowledge that they learned, there is little the trainer can do aside from offering a refresher course. Can pay for performance be used for positions like these? It’s a mixed answer. Yes, pay per performance can be used for trainers, based upon how many individuals the trainer trains and how many new courses the trainer obtains or develops. These are the hard results. However, since so much of training’s execution depends upon other people downstream, like project managers who must start projects on time so new skills aren’t lost,  managers of training should also consider pay for performance elements such as effort (has the trainer consistently gone the extra mile to make things work?), skills and communication.  In sum, for both business analysts and trainers, there are hard results that can be factored into a pay for performance formula, but there is also a need to survey each position’s “customers” -- those individuals (and their managers) who utilized the business analyst’s or trainer’s skills and products to accomplish their respective objectives in projects and training. Were these user-customers satisfied?  Summary Remarks The value that IT employees contribute to overall IT and to the business at large is a combination of tangible and intangible results. Pay for performance models are well suited to gauge tangible outcomes, but they fall short when it comes to the intangibles that could be just as important. Many years ago, when Pat Riley was coaching the Los Angeles Lakers, an interviewer asked what type of metrics he used when he measured the effectiveness of individual players on the basketball court. Was it the number of points, rebounds, or assists? Riley said he used an “effort" index. For example, how many times did a player go up to get a rebound, even if he didn’t end up with the ball? Riley said the effort individual players exhibited mattered, because even if they didn’t get the rebound, they were creating situations so someone else on the team could. IT is similar. It’s why OKR International, a performance consultancy, stated “Intangibles often create or destroy value quietly -- until their impact is too big to ignore. In the long run, they are the unseen levers that determine whether strategy thrives or withers.”  What CIOs and IT leadership can do when they use pay for performance is to assure that hard results, effort, communications and skills are appropriately blended for each IT staff position, and its responsibilities and realities -- because you can’t attach a numerical measurement to everything -- but you can observe visible changes that begin to manifest when a business analyst turns around what has been a hostile relationship with a user department and you begin to get things done. 

Jun 05, 2025Ravie LakshmananNetwork Security / Vulnerability Cisco has released security patches to address a critical security flaw impacting the Identity Services Engine (ISE) that, if successfully exploited, could allow unauthenticated actors to carry out malicious actions on susceptible systems. The security defect, tracked as CVE-2025-20286, carries a CVSS score of 9.9 out of 10.0. It has been described as a static credential vulnerability. "A vulnerability in Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) cloud deployments of Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to access sensitive data, execute limited administrative operations, modify system configurations, or disrupt services within the impacted systems," the company said in an advisory. The networking equipment maker, which credited Kentaro Kawane of GMO Cybersecurity for reporting the flaw, noted it's aware of the existence of a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit. There is no evidence that it has been maliciously exploited in the wild. Cisco said the issue stems from the fact that credentials are improperly generated when Cisco ISE is being deployed on cloud platforms, causing different deployments to share the same credentials as long as the software release and cloud platform are the same. Put differently, the static credentials are specific to each release and platform, but are not valid across platforms. As the company highlights, all instances of Cisco ISE release 3.1 on AWS will have the same static credentials. However, credentials that are valid for access to a release 3.1 deployment would not be valid to access a release 3.2 deployment on the same platform. Furthermore, Release 3.2 on AWS would not have the same credentials as Release 3.2 on Azure. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could permit an attacker to extract the user credentials from the Cisco ISE cloud deployment and then use it to access Cisco ISE deployed in other cloud environments through unsecured ports. This could ultimately allow unauthorized access to sensitive data, execution of limited administrative operations, changes to system configurations, or service disruptions. That said, Cisco ISE is only affected in cases where the Primary Administration node is deployed in the cloud. Primary Administration nodes that are on-premises are not impacted. The following versions are affected - AWS - Cisco ISE 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 Azure - Cisco ISE 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 OCI - Cisco ISE 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4 While there are no workarounds to address CVE-2025-20286, Cisco is recommending that users restrict traffic to authorized administrators or run the "application reset-config ise" command to reset user passwords to a new value. However, it bears noting that running the command will reset Cisco ISE to the factory configuration. Found this article interesting? Follow us on Twitter  and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE    