Marks and Spencer (M&S) leadership believes that it may take at least another month to fully recover following a ransomware attack that it now looks likely will cost it at least £300m. It has also emerged that the incident may have begun through the systems of a third-party supplier of IT services, where tech support staff had their credentials stolen via social engineering, according to CEO Stuart Machin. The admission that the attack began via social engineering lends credence to the theory that the Scattered Spider hacking collective is indeed behind the attack. The gang has previously used similar techniques against other targets. According to Reuters, the initial target of the cyber attack may have been Tata Consulting Services (TCS), which runs the M&S IT helpdesk. Pushed by reporters on this on results day, Machin declined to state if this was accurate, and Computer Weekly understands TCS has also made no comment. Nor did Machin reveal whether or not M&S has paid off its attackers, stating advice from incident responders. He did, however, say that M&S has heavily invested in cyber tooling in the past 24 months which may have helped it spot and respond to the attack quicker. He also said M&S had not “left the door open” to its hackers. “Over the Easter bank holiday it became clear that we were facing a highly sophisticated and targeted attack,” said Machin in a prerecorded video accompanying the retailer’s latest results. “We called in several cyber experts and assembled the best support team including technology partners and notified the authorities immediately. “As a result we were able to take control of the situation very quickly and take the right actions to protect the business, our customers, our suppliers, and keep our shops empty and trading. This meant proactively taking down some of our systems which resulted in short-term disruption – but we think that was the right thing to do.” Jason Gerrard, senior director of systems engineering at cyber resilience company, Commvault, said M&S’ experience was a useful reminder to others that the ability to recover fast must be built into cyber resilience plans. “Behind the scenes, teams are scrambling to rebuild systems, trace breach origins, and restore customer data with forensic precision – all while execs are juggling regulators, insurers, auditors and shareholders,” said Gerrard. “The longer it takes to return to ‘normal’, the more that ‘normal’ drifts further away,  both in business operations and public perception. While recovery takes 24 days on average, some organisations don’t achieve business-as-usual for over 200 days. “This headline-grabbing downtime should be a warning to others that preparation for such a scenario is vital. Having a tried and tested recovery plan in place and identifying your Minimum Viable Company (MVC) ahead of time can help to reduce some of the damage that can very quickly spiral out of control,” said Gerrard. “Understanding your MVC – the essential systems needed to stay operational – is central to achieving cyber resilience and maintaining continuous business, even amidst a cyber attack. “The true power of the MVC model is not simply about responding to threats – it builds future-ready organisations that can adapt, recover, and lead.” Timeline: UK retail cyber attacks 22 April 2025: A cyber attack at M&S has caused significant disruption to customers, leaving them unable to make contactless payments or use click-and-collect services. 24 April: M&S is still unable to provide contactless payment or click-and-collect services amid a cyber attack that it says has forced it to move a number of processes offline to safeguard its customers, staff and business. 25 April: M&S shuts down online sales as it works to contain and mitigate a severe cyber attack on its systems. 29 April: The infamous Scattered Spider hacking collective may have been behind the ongoing cyber attack on M&S that has crippled systems at the retailer and left its ecommerce operation in disarray. 30 April: A developing cyber incident at Co-op has forced the retailer to pull the plug on some of its IT systems as it works to contain the attack. 1 May: Co-op tells staff to stop using their VPNs and be wary that their communications channels may be being monitored, as a cyber attack on the organisation continues to develop. 1 May: Harrods confirms it is the latest UK retailer to experience a cyber attack, shutting off a number of systems in an attempt to lessen the impact. 2 May: The National Cyber Security Centre confirms it is providing assistance to M&S, Co-op and Harrods as concerns grow among UK retailers. 7 May: No end is yet in sight for UK retailers subjected to apparent ransomware attacks. 13 May: M&S is instructing all of its customers to change their account passwords after a significant amount of data was stolen in a DragonForce ransomware attack. 14 May: Google’s threat intel analysts are aware of a number of in-progress cyber attacks against US retailers linked to the same Scattered Spider gang that supposedly attacked M&S and Co-op in the UK. 20 May: Cold chain services provider Peter Green Chilled, which supplies the likes of Aldi, Sainsbury’s and Tesco, has been forced to halt operations after succumbing to a ransomware attack. Meanwhile, M&S says it has now moved into full recovery mode and is trying to get back on its feet. Machin said: “Customers should be able to shop in our stores as normal. Our food business is delivering stock to stores in the normal way and all customers should find much better availability and should find what they need. Stock is flowing well. “But of course, in fashion, home and beauty, online orders are still paused but our plan is to reopen online in the coming weeks. It is a complex operation so it is going to take us some time to bring up our online systems.” Looking ahead, Machin said M&S would use the cyber attack as a net positive, bringing up a previously-announced digital transformation plan and condensing a two-year plan into just six months. “This has been a challenging time,” said Machin. “[but] our business is in good shape with strong performance, strong foundations, and a solid financial footing. This has bolstered our resilience meaning we can recover at pace and regain momentum. “We will draw a line under this and move on to business as usual,” he said. Besides thanking M&S staff and suppliers for their hard work and support, and customers “who have given us so much help and encouragement”, Machin also gave thanks to his peers in the business world. “So many chief executives have called me over the past few weeks who have all gone through similar events,” said Machin. “They told me firstly this will be one of the most challenging situations you face as a CEO. Secondly they told me we need to watch out for burn-out ... in the first few weeks. And thirdly they said to me it will take longer [to recover] than you would like and you would hope for, and it could be a distraction in the short-term. “We’re only four and a half weeks into this incident. It feels like four and a half months if I’m honest,” he added.

Isabel Lane is this year’s William “Bill” Menking Travel Award winner. Lane is a graduate student at Pratt Institute in the Urban and Community Planning program, a department in the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment. Lane will travel to Quebec, Canada, where she’ll engage with farmers, planners, and policymakers to explore Montreal’s urban agricultural production. Lane will examine the extensive, province-wide food system that supports the region, which is 50 percent self-sustaining, Pratt said in a statement. The goal is to export this knowledge back to New York State, and potentially replicate this strategy in local urban and rural communities, bolstering low-cost, healthy produce access. “As a young person, one of Bill Menking’s many roles included organizing for farmworker unions; later, as an architect, he was not simply concerned with the final form, but with the labor conditions in its construction,” Lane said. Lane continued: “Tributes to Bill Menking portray him as a teacher who challenged his students to engage with big, cross-disciplinary questions and never distract from their work’s social implications. This is reflective of Pratt’s School of Architecture’s purpose—to prepare its students to meet moments “of consequence” with firm principles and technical proficiency towards progressive ideals. In this moment of excitement and traction for urban agriculture at scale, I hope that my travels allow me to share with the Pratt community a critical analysis of the opportunities and risks of planning for urban agriculture through the frameworks of social, racial, and environmental justice.” Before entering Pratt, Lane worked on a homestead farm in Maine. She continues this work today as an intern at the Urban Farm on Randall’s Island. All of these lived experiences inform her current research project at the intersection of food equity, resiliency, labor, and social justice. The selection committee that awarded Lane was led by Pratt professor Meredith TenHoor, assistant professor Yuliya Dzyuban, and assistant professor Mark Heller. The travel award was inaugurated in 2023 to honor The Architect’s Newspaper cofounder Bill Menking, who spent three decades teaching at Pratt in addition to organizing in the Architecture Lobby, steering the Storefront for Art and Architecture, researching radical Italian design, and a long list of many other feats. There is also a reading room indebted to Menking at Pratt. The 2024 recipient of William “Bill” Menking Travel Award was Quinn Gregory. He traveled to Amsterdam to research how messengers, planners, academics, and architects have impacted progressive street designs in big cities. Menking passed in 2020, the travel award helps honor his legacy.

Sen. Ron Wyden sent a letter to fellow Senators on Wednesday, revealing that three major U.S. cellphone carriers did not have provisions to notify lawmakers about government surveillance requests, despite a contractual requirement to do so.  In the letter, Wyden, a Democrat and longstanding member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that an investigation by his staff found that AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon were not notifying Senators of legal requests — including from the White House — to surveil their phones. The companies “have indicated that they are all now providing such notice,” according to the letter. Politico was first to report Wyden’s letter. Wyden’s letter comes in the wake of a report last year by the Inspector General, which revealed that the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018 secretly obtained logs of calls and text messages of 43 congressional staffers and two serving House lawmakers, imposing gag orders on the phone companies that received the requests. The secret surveillance requests were first revealed in 2021 to have targeted Adam Schiff, who was at the time the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “Executive branch surveillance poses a significant threat to the Senate’s independence and the foundational principle of separation of powers,” wrote Wyden in his letter. “If law enforcement officials, whether at the federal, state, or even local level, can secretly obtain Senators’ location data or call histories, our ability to perform our constitutional duties is severely threatened.”  AT&T spokesperson Alex Byers told TechCrunch in a statement that, “we are complying with our obligations to the Senate Sergeant at Arms,” and that the phone company has “received no legal demands regarding Senate offices under the current contract, which began last June.” When asked whether AT&T received legal demands before the new contract, Byers did not respond. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Wyden said in the letter that one unnamed carrier “confirmed that it turned over Senate data to law enforcement without notifying the Senate.” When reached by TechCrunch, Wyden’s spokesperson Keith Chu said the reason was that, “we don’t want to discourage companies from responding to Sen. Wyden’s questions.”  Verizon and T-Mobile did not respond to a request for comment.  The letter also mentioned carriers Google Fi, US Mobile, and cellular startup Cape, which all have policies to notify “all customers about government demands whenever they are allowed to do so.” US Mobile and Cape adopted the policy after outreach from Wyden’s office. Chu told TechCrunch that the Senate “doesn’t have contracts with the smaller carriers.” Ahmed Khattak, a spokesperson for US Mobile, confirmed to TechCrunch that the company “did not have a formal customer notification policy regarding surveillance requests prior to Senator Wyden’s inquiry.”  “Our current policy is to notify customers of subpoenas or legal demands for information whenever we are legally permitted to do so and when the request is not subject to a court order, statutory gag provision, or other legal restriction on disclosure,” said Khattak. “To the best of our knowledge, US Mobile has not received any surveillance requests targeting the phones of Senators or their staff.” Google and Cape did not respond to a request for comment.  As Wyden’s letter notes, after Congress enacted protections in 2020 for Senate data held by third party companies, the Senate Sergeant at Arms updated its contracts to require phone carriers to send notifications of surveillance requests.  Wyden said that his staff discovered that “these crucial notifications were not happening.” None of these protections apply to phones that are not officially issued to the Senate, such as campaign or personal phones of Senators and their staffers. In the letter, Wyden encouraged his Senate colleagues to switch to carriers that now provide notifications.

A duck stands in a fedora and a trench coat, delivering a noir-style monologue about how his recent divorce has fueled his bread addiction. If this image doesn't tickle you, then you'd better give Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping a miss. If it does, oh boy, do we have the recommendation for you. Much like developer Happy Broccoli's predecessor, The Secret Salami, Ghost of Glamping sees you thrown into the petty crime-ridden world of Eugene "The Duck Detective" McQuacklin, a grizzled PI who serves as both the game's protagonist and narrator. Reluctantly accompanying his reptilian roommate on a holiday to a nearby haunted glamping site (yes, really), McQuacklin is once again left to face Lady Crime, as a seemingly minor mystery surrounding some stolen camping chairs soon spirals into something much bigger. This time around, there's a blackmailed influencer, stolen state secrets, a kidnapping, and a run-in with the supernatural to contend with, all of which can only be solved by interviewing suspects, hunting for clues, and then plugging the right bits of information into the 'Deducktions' page of McQuacklin's trusty journal. It's a simple gameplay loop, and while some of the 'fill in the blank' investigations turn to a bit of trial and error as you fill the prompt sentence with a list of accumulated nouns to finally find the right answer, Ghost of Glamping manages to walk the fine line between predictability and surprise. We saw some plot twists coming from a mile off, but we appreciated how other threads were gradually pulled over the ~two-hour runtime. There's a hint system standing by, in case the evidence has really stumped you, and the game can be flipped between 'Story' and 'Sleuth' modes at any time (the former flags your incorrect Deducktions to nudge you in the right direction), but anyone familiar with the likes of Ace Attorney or Professor Layton shouldn't have too much trouble cracking the case. And that's okay! Ghost of Glamping isn't the kind of mystery that'll get under your skin and refuse to let you go until you unmask its villain. In fact, its plot is almost secondary to its presentation. McQuacklin's melodramatic monologues (all fully voice-acted, we should add), the adorable Paper Mario-style cutout sprites, the toe-tapping jazz soundtrack, and the laugh-out-loud loading screens that boast such 'facts' as "Most ducks live in houses because they are filthy rich" all add up to a bitesized mystery that oozes charm. Come on, there's even a dedicated quack button! You'll easily polish it off in an evening, and you'll feel all the better for it. Happy Broccoli has once again pulled together a simple yet satisfying mystery that brings plenty of smiles and a handful of surprises. Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got to don our fedoras and go deliver a brooding speech in the rain.

The Last Braindance? Cyberpunk 2077's sequel includes a new city that "feels more like Chicago gone wrong", and I'm now wondering how the USA's collapse might have affected Michael Jordan's legacy Look, all I'm saying is that the declaration of martial law might have made that last three-peat a bit tougher to pull off. Image credit: VG247/CD Projekt News by Mark Warren Senior Staff Writer Published on May 21, 2025 Cyberpunk 2077's sequel will let us take a detour from the returning Night City to visit a new location which feels a bit "like Chicago gone wrong". Naturally, this news has me questioning how Cyberpunk's timeline might have affected the most prominent basketball dynasty of the 1990s. The tiny nugget of info we got about this second city comes from Mike Pondsmith, creator of the Cyberpunk TTRPG series that CD Projekt's futuristic RPGs are based on. It's the first bit of concrete info about the game - beyond just where it's at in the production process - we've gotten for a while. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Speaking to Tvgry during this year's Digital Dragons Conference, Pondsmith touched on his current relationship with CD Projekt's Cyberpunk devs. He's "not as involved directly with the sequel as he was with the first Cyberpunk, but he does still pop by the studio to look at scripts and offer his views on stuff like new cyberware made for Project Orion. For instance, he revealed that when he was there recently, he "spent a lot of time talking to one of the environment guys, and he was explaining how the new place in Orion - because there's another city we visit, I'm not telling you any more than that, but there's another city we visit." "Night City's still there," Pondsmith continued, telling us more, "I remember looking at it and going 'yeah, I understand the feel that you're going for in this, and this really does work - it doesn't feel like Blade Runner, it feels more like Chicago gone wrong'. I said 'yeah, you know, I can see this working.'" Watch on YouTube This chatter starts at around the three hour and 45 minute mark of the video embedded above, if you want to check it out for yourself. I don't know if you'll do the same, but the mention of a Cyberpunk city that might be a bit like Chicago got me wondering what the existing Cyberpunk lore says about the actual Windy City. According to the series' Fandom Wiki (which does note that it needs more citations), Chi-town was "left in a state of absolute devastation" by the collapse of the United States that occurs between 1996 and 2008 in the Cyberpunk timeline, and was subsequently ravaged by a "catastrophic bio-plague" created by the federal government itself. By 2077, the city's "implied to have undergone some level of reconstruction" by rumours of it being connected to Night City via the transcontinental maglev rail network that Cyberpunk 2077's database describes as "currently inoperational", but subject to revitalisation efforts by Night Corp. Cool. But here's the thing. If Chicago started to fall apart in 1996 - the year that martial law was declared across the USA in Cyberpunk lore - do Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls win the 1996, 1997, and 1998 NBA championships to cement themselves as arguably the greatest basketball dynasty of all-time? That's assuming Jordan and the Bulls even exist in the Cyberpunk universe, but I think it's worth exploring anyway. The situation is this as far as I can tell - the aforementioned martial law runs from 1996 to 1999, so Jordan and co have that to contend with, in addition to a 1998 midwest drought and the collapse doing so much damage that "an estimated 90%" of Chicago is abandoned by the end of it in 2008. It's MJ though. I'm still banking on him to beat the Jazz in the finals, even if he's got to dribble past bio-plagues and hostile cybernetically-augmented soldiers to do it. Do you think his airness still ends up with six rings on his weird cyber-fingers? Also, how do you feel about visiting this second city in Cyberpunk 2? Let us know below!

At the Ricardo residence in the ’50s sitcom I Love Lucy, over-the-top housewife Lucy and Ricky, her excitable husband, were always getting into some sort of entertaining hijinks. But life at home for the married actors who portrayed them, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, was much different. “They were very busy,” the late stars’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz, explained in a 2011 interview. “From probably the age of birth up through seven, they weren’t home a lot [aside from] very late at night and weekends.”When Ball wasn’t at work alongside her husband on the hit television comedy, “she was very businesslike about running her house,” their daughter said. The couple, who eloped in November 1940 after a whirlwind romance, bought an abode about 10 miles north of Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley, where they stayed for 15 years. Their domestic lives as Lucy and Ricky—broadcast into dwellings nationwide for six seasons—made them stars, but their actual home lives were still captured by the occasional photoshoot. Read on for a roundup of images of the TV-famous duo in their element as they raised a family in the 1950s.Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images1/21Desilu ranchShortly after Ball and Arnaz eloped, they purchased their beloved five-acre ranch in Chatsworth, California, a suburban neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley area. The couple paid around $16,000 in 1941 for the home, designed by architect Paul R. Williams, and named it Desilu, a portmanteau of their names and later the title of their production company. Ball and Arnaz made the property their own by adding a slew of amenities, including a swimming pool, which Arnaz filled with floating gardenias for a surprise party for Ball’s 30th birthday in 1941.Photo: George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images2/21Animal companionsBall and Arnaz weren’t the only two who lived at Desilu ranch. The Devonshire Street abode also hosted a bunch of the couple’s animal friends. The two adopted a handful of dogs, cats, chickens, and a cow known as the Duchess of Devonshire. According to Madelyn Pugh Davis, I Love Lucy writer and Ball’s personal friend, “[Ball would] fall in love with the chickens and wouldn’t kill them. She had the oldest chickens in the Valley.”Photo: FPG/Getty Image3/21Lucy’s design styleBall decorated Desilu in a style she once described as “early Victorian” meets “bastard American.” The single-story home featured whitewood siding and a long driveway that led to the main house, which was surrounded by eucalyptus and peppertrees. This 1945 photograph showcases Ball’s affinity for floral prints, which cover the walls.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images4/21Lucy and Desi’s growing familyBall and Arnaz’s two children grew up at the San Fernando Valley area property. Here, Ball and Arnaz celebrate the first birthday of their daughter, Lucie Arnaz, whom they welcomed on July 17, 1951. Ball was expecting—and showing—when she and Arnaz shot the pilot episode of I Love Lucy, but the show made no mention of the pregnancy.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images5/21Arts and craftsWhile Ball was known for putting in endless hours at work, she embraced the opportunity to savor her time off. A woman of many hobbies, the comedian loved painting in her spare time. She was no stranger to setting up an easel and canvas by the pool at home, where she could draw inspiration from the natural beauty of picturesque Southern California.Photo: Graphic House/Archive Photos/Getty Images6/21America’s sweetheartsAfter I Love Lucy premiered in October 1951, Ball and Arnaz soon became America’s favorite couple, both onscreen and off—and, according to Arnaz, it was all thanks to his wife. “There’s nobody else that can do what Lucy does with her face, with her walk,” he said, according to Warren G. Harris, author of the biography Lucy & Desi: The Legendary Love Story of Television’s Most Famous Couple. However, the two had their disagreements: Their estate had a small guesthouse that was said to have been used by Arnaz whenever they argued. In 1944, Ball filed for divorce. After it was granted, the two quickly reconciled, making the divorce null and void by California law.Photo: CBS via Getty Images7/21Working from homeGiven the San Fernando Valley ranch was not too far from Hollywood, it offered a prime location for I Love Lucy’s promotional photo needs, like this November 1951 shoot in the couple’s living room. Their mantel, beneath a collection of plates hanging on the wall, made a warm backdrop for a series of images ahead of the holidays; it was sparsely adorned for one shot, then set for a New Year’s–themed photo, and reset for some yuletide-themed press, festooned with various ornaments and matching stockings for Christmas.Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images8/21The heart of the homeBall loved to be in the kitchen, as seen in this 1952 photograph. “She fashioned herself as a homemaker of sorts [and] really enjoyed when she could get in the kitchen and make chicken and dumplings,” daughter Lucie said in 2011. “She worried a lot about her household and how the kids were being taken care of and whether the garage was being cleaned out and the homework was being done.”Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images9/21Hollywood famous hostessEntertaining celebrity friends at dinner parties was one of Ball’s favorite activities, according to Sarah Royal, author of A.K.A. Lucy: The Dynamic and Determined Life of Lucille Ball. Arnaz would cook for their guests, and after meals, friends would gather for coffee that was passed over through a serving hatch, a common midcentury feature between a kitchen and a dining room, through which dishes could seamlessly go in and out of the kitchen.Photo: Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images10/21Kicking backThe couple sure made working from home look fun as they kicked back in their living room while checking scripts for a forthcoming TV shoot in this 1952 snapshot. From a set of rattan chairs clad in a floral print to the Asian-inspired silk seat in which Arnaz reclines here, the couple found a way to infuse their home with furniture that functioned for both work and play.Photo: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images11/21Desi’s Cuban design influencesIn this 1953 photograph, Ball was expecting the couple’s second child. Arnaz, meanwhile, was always striving to make their family’s house feel like home. Inspired by his Cuban roots, he had a few small buildings erected on the property—including a game room, a poolhouse, and a barbecue pit—to mirror the sprawling ranch-style aesthetic he was familiar with growing up in Santiago de Cuba. Lemon and orange trees, which Arnaz planted, surrounded the home’s exterior.Photo: KM Archive/Getty Images12/21A new additionLucie’s younger brother, Desiderio Alberto “Desi Jr.” Arnaz IV, was born in 1953. The little one was ready for prime time before he could even walk. In fact, Desi Jr. appeared with his famous mother on the first national issue of TV Guide on April 3, 1953, under the headline “Lucy’s $50,000,000 baby.” In 2019, Lucie told Good Morning America that she and her younger brother savor the sweet memories of time at home with their mom. “Home and being together is a fond and favorite memory—if she made me a grilled cheese sandwich and we sat in the living room and we talked, that is a great moment in my memory,” Lucie said.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images13/21Star-studded pool partiesBall and Arnaz enjoyed hosting and were known for having their Hollywood pals over. The Los Angeles Times reports that they’d throw parties for famous friends such as Clark Gable and William Holden, and Arnaz would serve his signature spaghetti sauce.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images14/21Fun and gamesArnaz’s idea to have a game room constructed on their property meant nights often involved lively games of cards for the couple. The duo could frequently be found cutting a deck at home, whether in their game room or at their kitchen table. Here, the couple plays cards while seated on their rattan furniture. Art imitates life, or vice versa: One episode of I Love Lucy famously showed Lucy playing poker with Arnaz’s friends.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images15/21The Roxbury Drive home’s I Love Lucy cameoBall and Arnaz purchased a Beverly Hills home in 1955 for $85,000. The couple reportedly spent six months renovating the dwelling, located at 1000 North Roxbury Drive. The exterior was used in an episode of I Love Lucy when Lucy and Ethel get off a bus to see actor Richard Widmark’s house.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images16/21Leaving the Desilu ranchOne year after purchasing their Beverly Hills home (which offered the couple privacy, as its backyard was walled in), they sold the Desilu ranch to onetime child actress Jane Withers. Ball remained very fond of the ranch; according to the late actor’s publicist, the pair would sometimes drive by the property for a passing glimpse.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images17/21Dropping inIn fact, at least on one reported occasion after Withers purchased the property, Ball allegedly waltzed right in. One day, the sitcom actress happened to be in the area and decided to pop by for a visit—though it turned out Withers wasn’t home to host her. Realizing she still had the keys to her former abode, Ball unlocked the door, entered, and was eventually caught in the living room when Withers returned. It’s been said that Ball wasn’t a fan of the redecorating.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images18/21A musical homeMusic and dancing were a big part of Arnaz and Ball’s lives, both in their onscreen roles as entertainers as well as in their time relaxing at home, as seen in this 1955 photo. When they first met, Arnaz asked Ball if she knew how to rumba and, according to Harris’s Lucy & Desi biography, added: “I can teach you quickly, but only on condition that you go out with me tonight.”Photo: Gene Lester/Getty Images19/21Family timeIn this 1957 shot, Ball plays with her son in the backyard of their home. “Because she was a working mom in the ’50s, there probably was a lot of guilt involved in not being home with the kids because you’re supposed to be,” said daughter Lucie. “She played a very funny person in her show—very crazy, outrageous person—and all my friends used to think that my mother was really like that. But at home, of course, she wasn’t like that at all. She was very responsible.”Photo: Gene Lester/Getty Images20/21Lucy in the gardenIn her time at home in California, Ball fostered a lifelong love of gardening. Her Beverly Hills home, with its walled-in backyard, added an extra layer of privacy for her to dig into her hobby. The plot was lined with lush landscaping, potted plants, and mature trees. The pastime carried over to the small screen in one episode of I Love Lucy, which showed the sitcom star facing off against the other members of the local club to take home the honor of best garden. Ball later made an onscreen appearance in one of the country’s most famous gardens in the 1974 musical Mame, where she danced by the fountain at the botanical gardens at The Huntington in San Marino, California.Photo: Archive Photos/Getty Images21/21Lucy after DesiBall, pictured here in 1960—the same year she and Arnaz divorced—would have the Beverly Hills estate for the rest of her life. A year after the split, Ball married comedian Gary Morton. The two purchased a New York City apartment in the fall of 1983. It was the first place the two furnished together, Ball told AD in May 1984, adding she’s been so “comfortable” in her properties on the West Coast and wouldn’t allow Morton to “change anything about them.”

You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here Xbox exclusive cinematic adventure game Senua’s Sage: Hellblade 2 is making the jump from Xbox Series to PS5 in a new Enhanced Edition port. Following the likes of Indiana Jones, Forza Horizon 5 and, surprisingly, Gears of War, the gorgeous Ninja Theory game is making its PlayStation debut. Announced by Ninja Theory and Xbox, the stunning Hellblade sequel will be playable on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro with a slew of new features. Xbox and PC owners will also receive all the Enhanced Edition features as a free update. Hellblade 2: Enhanced Edition announced Announced on the one-year anniversary of the game, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 Enhanced Edition will release sometime this Summer. The new version of the game will include “some new features”. Studio head Dom Matthews confirmed that the new version of the game is “optimised for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro”, teasing further enhancements for Sony’s more powerful console. Other than that, Ninja Theory has not confirmed any specific enhancements for the new version of the game. It’s not known if there will be any additional story content or optional combat/puzzle arenas, just “added features and immersive haptic feedback”. “We have such incredible fans of Ninja Theory on PlayStation going all the way back to the days of Heavenly Sword,” Matthews said in the announcement video. “And we’re so pleased that we can welcome PlayStation fans back to Senua’s story.” Ninja Theory does have a storied history with PlayStation hardware. The aforementioned Heavenly Sword was a key title for the PlayStation 3 and proved very popular (despite being a bit on the rough side). Now that the studio is owned by Xbox, many gamers assumed its new releases would be exclusive to PC and Series consoles. However, just like pretty much everything outside of Halo, that’s not the case. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II Platform(s): PC, Xbox Series S/X, Xbox Series X Genre(s): Action, Action Adventure Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

May 21, 202510 min readSleep Better with New Drugs, Select Cannabinoids and Wearable DevicesDrugs that target wakefulness, molecules in cannabis and wearable devices that modulate brain activity could help people with insomniaBy Rachel Nuwer carlofranco/Getty ImagesThis Nature Outlook is editorially independent, produced with financial support from Avadel.Miranda cannot remember a time in her life when she did not have insomnia. The 23 year old, who asked for her last name to be withheld, started struggling with sleep when she was a child. As she’s grown older, it’s only become worse. She takes “a myriad of medications” each night, she says, but usually still cannot fall asleep until the early hours of the morning. “I can’t get up and be functional until halfway through the day,” she says. She had to drop out of university because she couldn’t attend classes, and she can’t hold down a job. Her insomnia exacerbates other medical conditions as well, including migraines and the pain condition fibromyalgia. “It’s hugely debilitating,” she says. “It affects everything.”In the United States, about 12% of adults have been diagnosed with chronic insomnia — when a person struggles to sleep for more than three nights each week for at least three months, and experiences daytime distress as a result. Research suggests that the worldwide figure is 10–30%. It also often co-occurs with and creates a vicious cycle with other conditions, including chronic pain, depression and anxiety.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Fortunately for Miranda and millions of others with chronic insomnia, new treatments are arriving. The emergence of a class of pharmaceuticals that induces sleep through a different brain pathway from existing drugs is a welcome development, and molecules in cannabis and specialized medical devices to promote sleep are also showing potential as sleep aids. Soon, those struggling with sleep could have a range of new options available to help.Imperfect solutionsCognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is usually the recommended first treatment. This specialized talking therapy focuses on establishing healthy sleep behaviours and addressing thoughts that can interfere with sleep. But CBT-I is not covered by all health-care insurance plans in the United States. In the United Kingdom and parts of Europe, public health-care systems usually provide it, but waiting times can be long. This is because, around the world, there is a limited availability of therapists, says Andrew Krystal, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco. “We keep hiring new people, but almost immediately their schedules are completely filled and the wait list is a year.”CBT-I also doesn’t work for everyone. Miranda has tried it and has received conventional talking therapy for over a decade, with limited success. “It only helps so much,” she says.Pharmacological interventions are the next line of defence, Krystal says. Benzodiazepines and a class of medicines called Z-drugs, which include zolpidem (Ambien), are among the most prescribed insomnia medications. These sedative hypnotics enhance the effects of the neurotransmitter GABA, thereby dampening brain activity. They also reduce anxiety. But they can create a hangover effect and increase the risk of falls in older people. These drugs also have the potential for misuse and can cause dependence. Some studies have even found an association between long-term use of Z-drugs and benzodiazepines and an increased risk of death.Miranda tried Ambien, but says that she quickly became chemically dependent. She eventually weaned herself off it and switched to benzodiazepines, but she began developing a tolerance to them, too — she once wound up in hospital with withdrawal symptoms after she tried to cut back on her dosage. “They’re horrible drugs to be on,” she says. But she cannot fall asleep without them. Each night, she now takes two benzodiazepines, as well as gabapentin, an anticonvulsant medication that is sometimes given off-label for insomnia.Physicians frequently provide other off-label prescriptions for insomnia, including trazodone, which is approved for depression. Over-the-counter products such as antihistamines are also used for sleeplessness. None are ideal, however, because they have not been evaluated as sleep aids, says Emmanuel Mignot, a sleep-medicine researcher at Stanford University in California.Miranda has experience with many of these products. When she first developed chronic insomnia as a child, her paediatrician recommended melatonin, which is available without a prescription in the United States. It helped her fall asleep, but it did not keep her asleep. During her teenage years, different neurologists prescribed off-label antidepressants and other mood medications, including trazodone and mirtazapine. But they came with what she calls “torturous” side effects: she felt constantly anxious and exhausted during the day, and her memory became “incredibly foggy”.Blocking wakefulnessMignot was studying narcolepsy, a chronic disorder that affects sleep–wake cycles and causes people to fall asleep suddenly, when he inadvertently helped to pave the way towards the latest means of treating insomnia. He discovered that dogs with narcolepsy have a genetic mutation that affects one of two receptors used by the neurotransmitter orexin, the primary role of which was initially thought to be the regulation of appetite. Mignot then found that people with narcolepsy lack orexin, confirming the chemical’s main job: promoting wakefulness. If drugs could be developed to prevent orexin from binding to its receptors, Mignot thought, then people with insomnia would become “narcoleptic for one night”.In 2007, researchers at the pharmaceutical firm Actelion (part of which is now Idorsia Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland) showed that blocking orexin’s two receptors induced sleep in rats, dogs and people. In 2014, the biopharmaceutical company Merck, received US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the first dual orexin receptor antagonist (DORA) drug, suvorexant (Belsomra). In 2019, another DORA drug — lemborexant (Dayvigo) — was approved, followed, in 2022, by daridorexant (Quviviq).Compared with benzodiazepines and Z-drugs, which inhibit activity all over the brain, DORA drugs affect only the neurons activated by orexins (see ‘Blocking wakefulness’). “The beauty of it is it does nothing but block the stimulation of wakefulness,” says neurologist Joe Herring, who heads neuroscience clinical research at Merck in Rahway, New Jersey. “It’s a physiologically better way to promote sleep.”Alisdair Macdonald/NatureDaridorexant is the only DORA drug for which data are available about daytime functioning, says Antonio Olivieri, chief medical officer at Idorsia, which produces daridorexant. In clinical trials, Idorsia showed that, compared with those given a placebo, people who received daridorexant experienced significant improvements in daytime insomnia symptoms the following day. Data reported in the approvals database of the FDA also indicate that daridorexant has the lowest fatigue and drowsiness scores of the three DORA drugs, possibly because it leaves the body the quickest.So far, there have been no one-to-one comparisons of DORA drugs. “Ideally, you’d have direct evidence of how those drugs compare to each other,” says Daniel Buysse, a sleep scientist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania. “But we rarely have such evidence, so instead, we have to rely on statistical techniques that allow you to make indirect comparisons.” It’s also difficult to say definitively how DORA drugs compare with older treatments for insomnia, but Buysse says that drug registration trials suggest that DORA drugs have fewer adverse cognitive or hangover effects compared with benzodiazepines and Z-drugs, as well as less potential for dependence and misuse. The European Insomnia Guideline 2023 placed daridorexant as the next recommended insomnia treatment after CBT-I.The main drawback to DORA drugs, Buysse says, is not medical but financial: their high cost keeps them out of reach of many people who could benefit from them. “There are many patients I would like to prescribe these drugs for, but I know in order for them to get one of these medications we’ll have to go through trials of several other drugs before the request will be considered,” Buysse says. DORA drugs are also available only in a few countries, so far.Given her long history of insomnia, Miranda was given a prescription for suvorexant. Her psychiatrist recommended the drug to her about a year ago. “I was really sceptical that an anti-wakefulness drug would be any different to a pro-sleep drug,” she says. But she quickly felt the difference, and has now come to see the drug as “a saviour”. Without the drug, she says, “I’d probably be on a much higher benzodiazepine dose than I am.” She hopes her suvorexant dose can continue to increase, so that some of her other medications can be reduced.Expanding availabilityOther drugs that target the orexin system are in the clinical pipeline. Seltorexant, for example, is being developed by the US pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson for people with both major depressive disorder and insomnia. Around 70% of people with depression have insomnia, so having a medication that treats both of those disorders “has the potential to fill an important gap”, says Krystal, who has consulted for Johnson & Johnson on the drug. In a phase III trial, participants who took the drug experienced meaningful improvement in both sleep and depressive symptoms, with an antidepressant effect that seemed to be independent of the participants getting better sleep. Seltorexant might have an antidepressant effect because it is designed to block only one of the two types of orexin receptor, Krystal adds, whereas other DORA drugs block both receptor types.Investigations of already-approved DORA drugs are also expanding into other populations. Merck has sponsored investigator-led studies of suvorexant in people with insomnia as well as depression or substance-use disorders, and Idorsia is sponsoring studies of daridorexant’s safety and efficacy in sub-groups of people who have insomnia and other conditions.In 2020, suvorexant became the first medication to be approved for treating sleep disorders in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Insomnia is often a precursor to and co-morbid with Alzheimer’s, and the disease seems to manifest differently in people with the condition. In one study comparing older people with insomnia with those with both insomnia and Alzheimer’s, people with both conditions had a number of extra changes to their sleep patterns, including less time spent in deep sleep — sometimes called slow-wave sleep because that describes the pattern of the brain’s electrical activity during these intervals. Sleep problems in people with Alzheimer’s also seem to have a causal role in increasing levels of toxic substances in the brains of those individuals. Preliminary data suggest that suvorexant could also help to reduce toxic brain proteins. The results of a follow-up study testing that finding are expected in 2026.In the weedsSleeplessness is already among the most common conditions for the medicinal use of the drug cannabis. Miranda, for example, supplements her nightly pharmaceutical regimen with a cannabis tincture that contains a few of the plant’s 100-plus cannabinoids (she lives in a state where cannabis use is legal). “It’s definitely a key player in my sleep-medication arsenal,” she says.Yet, scientifically, little is known about which cannabinoids — if any — promote sleep, and what a safe and effective dose is. “Tens of millions of people around the world are probably using cannabinoids for insomnia, but we have very little good-quality evidence to support that,” says Iain McGregor, director of the Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics at the University of Sydney in Australia.McGregor is investigating cannabinol (CBN), a molecule that develops in cannabis as the psychoactive component tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) oxidizes. His group reported that CBN increased sleep in rats to a similar degree as zolpidem, but without the drug’s known negative side effect of suppressing rapid-eye-movement sleep. Unpublished data of a single-night trial with 20 people with insomnia disorder show that people fell asleep 7 minutes faster after taking 300 milligrams of CBN compared with those taking a placebo; participants also reported subjective improvements in sleep and mood. Although 7 minutes “doesn’t sound like a lot”, it is on a par with what benzodiazepines and Z-drugs typically accomplish, says Camilla Hoyos, a sleep researcher at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, who led the work. McGregor, Hoyos and their colleagues are aiming to follow up the work with a large, community-based trial in which people with insomnia take either CBN or a placebo for six weeks at home.As for cannabidiol (CBD) and THC — the most well-known cannabinoids — the prospects for efficacy against insomnia are doubtful, at least for the doses used in trials so far. Several small studies have failed to find a sleep benefit from taking CBD. In one experiment, researchers observed that participants in a study who received 10 milligrams of THC and 200 milligrams of CBD actually slept for 25 minutes less compared with when they received a placebo. Several other company-sponsored trials of low-dose CBD for insomnia were not published, McGregor adds, because they found no significant improvement. “It’s been one failure after the next,” he says.Insomnia’s new frontiersThe search for more effective insomnia treatments continues in other realms, as well. Some research groups are experimenting with different receptors that they hope could lead to new classes of drugs. Gabriella Gobbi, a clinical psychiatrist and research neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, for example, has homed in on one of the brain’s two melatonin receptors, MT2. “We want to find an alternative mechanism without any addiction liability and with fewer side effects, especially for use in children and elderly people,” she says. A molecule that the team developed that binds to MT2 increased the time that rats spent in deep sleep by 30%. Gobbi aims to launch clinical trials in the next two to three years.A few companies and health systems, including the US Department of Veterans Affairs and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, have also created or are developing digital platforms for delivering CBT-I. These apps take users through regimens that are tailored to their symptoms. SleepioRx, for example, is a 90-day digital programme that has been evaluated in more than two dozen clinical trials and has showed efficacy as high as 76%. This includes helping people to fall asleep faster, sleep better throughout the night and feel better the next day. In August 2024, the programme, developed by Big Health in San Francisco, California, received FDA clearance. A 2024 meta-analysis of 15 studies that compare in-person and electronically delivered CBT-I concluded that the two approaches were equally effective.Uptake among physicians has been slow so far, Krystal says. But once practitioners catch on, he adds, “I can imagine a world where you have digital care as your first stop, and if that’s not successful, you see a therapist.”Some studies suggest that insomnia can stem from a high level of underlying brain activity during sleep. This raises the question of whether reducing this activity could treat insomnia, says Ruth Benca, a psychiatrist at Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina. Companies and academic research groups are beginning to test this proposition with wearable devices that use auditory tones or mild electrical stimulation to increase slow-wave activity in the brain. Some devices are already on the market, and evidence suggests that they can increase the duration of deep sleep. Last June, for example, researchers at Elemind Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, confirmed that auditory stimuli delivered in sync with specific brain-wave rhythms generated in a headband allowed people who usually struggle for more than 30 minutes to fall asleep to shave an average of 10.5 minutes off that time.In the coming years, according to Benca, researchers hope to learn enough about insomnia’s causes and treatments to be able to recommend personalized therapies based on an individual’s specific demographics, genetics and co-morbidities. These are the frontiers people are working at, she says.Even after a lifetime of struggling to find safe and effective help, Miranda says that she still holds out hope that better treatments for insomnia are on the horizon. “I can’t be on these medications forever,” she says. “They’re going to take years off my life.”

The AJ’s special LGBTQ+ issue – out tomorrow – explores thought-provoking discussions about queer culture, about whose voices are heard, about who gets to occupy space – and where, says Emily Booth The AJ’s going Out. And, really, you can’t miss it, given our amazingly colourful cover for this month's issue (photography by Wilson Hennessy, laser cuts by Luka Rocyn, art direction by the AJ’s ever-talented Maria Rodriguez). Indeed, our special edition (out tomorrow, 22 May) has been a whole team effort, led by our brilliant colleagues Gino Spocchia, Rob Wilson and Fran Williams, with a mission to explore, spotlight and, most importantly, celebrate the LGBTQ+ community’s rich contribution to architecture. The magazine lands just in time for Pride month, though we’re conscious that the issues raised within these pages go far beyond a single point in the diary. Advertisement We’ve endeavoured to share a wide range of voices through profiles, interviews, features, photographs and opinion pieces – while being acutely aware we can’t reflect every person, practice or project from such a diverse community. Source: Wilson HennessyBehind the scenes for the cover shoot Within the pages are thought-provoking discussions about queer culture, about whose voices are heard, who gets to occupy space – and where. Space is political, and that feels especially so at present. The RCA’s Gem Barton, who leads the Architecture LGBT+ Academic Champions Network (ACN), has a striking take: ‘To queer is to disrupt. To queer is to stretch, bend, reimagine and reject inherited structures that no longer serve us — if they ever did.’ Despite progress in LGBTQ+ visibility it can still sometimes feel like hard-won inclusivity has fallen behind. There are not, for example, many large practices led by an outwardly LGBTQ+ individual. Even today, coming out can be hard. So, from Gino’s excellent pieces featuring the community’s champions and leaders, looking at why we need LGBTQ+ housing, and even taking a deep dive into nightclub design; and from a special Sketchbook offering, to a detailed diary of upcoming events: we hope that the profession finds much affirmation and inspiration as the AJ goes Out. The May edition of the AJ will be published tomorrow. Subscribers will be able to read the digital edition here, or copies of the printed magazine will be available to buy here. An AJ subscription is better value – click here to view our packages.  Architecture LGBT+ 2025-05-21 Emily Booth comment and share TagsArchitecture LGBT+

The Discogs Platform team is focused on several objectives: building and supporting performant, cost-effective, reliable infrastructure; developer experience tooling and mentorship; and creating "golden paths" for organization-wide standards and velocity. As a key member of the Platform team, the Senior Site Reliability Engineer - Data will be working closely with other Discogs engineering squads to develop and optimize scalable, well-planned relational database architectures, drive best practices and stability for our use of Kafka and change data capture, and contribute to the Platform team’s operations.LocationThis is a remote position. Open to candidates located in OR, WA, CA, CO, TX, ILCompensationStarting Base Salary Range: $130,000 - $140,000 yearlyWhat You’ll AccomplishReasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.Stewarding Discogs’ data stores as a key subject matter expertLeading efforts on the reliability and design patterns of our Kafka and Kafka Connect implementationsEstablishing data contracts and clear communication standards between CDC producers and consumersWorking closely with engineering squads to refactor and re-architect MySQL database schema and indexing for long-term scalability, performance, and cost effectivenessMentoring engineering squads on Platform best practices for MySQL, Kafka, and other software development lifecycle areas Writing documentation and runbooks that contribute to the engineering organization’s knowledge baseWorking in a containerized, orchestrated environmentContributing to the Platform team’s disciplines of site reliability and operations, supporting both our squads and Platform’s central infrastructureParticipating in on-call rotation, responding to incidents, and troubleshooting data and other operations issuesWhat You’ll ContributeMinimum Education and ExperienceA Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or similar area of focus, or equivalent relevant work experience.5+ years of experience working with Kafka and relational database management systems (RDBMS).6+ years experience in Ops, DevOps, Site Reliability, Platform or other systems roles.Required Skills & Abilities:Relational database schema design, query performance optimization, administration (MySQL, Percona Server, AWS RDS)Kafka: Cluster administration (Strimzi), Kafka Connect (Debezium, JDBC)CI/CD (GitHub Actions)GitOps (ArgoCD)Kubernetes (EKS, Kustomize, Karpenter, administration, application manifests)AWS and cloud development (VPC, EKS, RDS, S3)Observability (Datadog, Sentry)Scripting (Shell, Python)Track record of collaboration and mentorshipExcellent written communication and documentation skillsContinuous learningOwnership and proactive approach to solving large problemsPreferred:Infrastructure-as-code (Terraform)Elasticsearch (ECK administration, scaling, performance)Python (SQLAlchemy, FastAPI)GraphQL (schema design, Apollo federation)REST APIHashicorp VaultRedisMemcachedNoSQL DatabaseData Lake/WarehouseData GovernanceData SecurityThe Platform team covers a wide range of technical topics and we'd love to hear about your skills beyond this list!Apply NowLet's start your dream job Apply now Meet JobCopilot: Your Personal AI Job HunterAutomatically Apply to Remote DevOps and Sysadmin JobsJust set your preferences and Job Copilot will do the rest-finding, filtering, and applying while you focus on what matters. Activate JobCopilot