After detailing the VFX work on The Last of Us Season 1 in 2023, Alex Wang returns to reflect on how the scope and complexity have evolved in Season 2. With close to 30 years of experience in the visual effects industry, Fiona Campbell Westgate has contributed to major productions such as Ghost in the Shell, Avatar: The Way of Water, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Nyad. Her work on Nyad earned her a VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature. Collaboration with Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann is key to shaping the visual universe of The Last of Us. Can you share with us how you work with them and how they influence the visual direction of the series? Alex Wang // Craig visualizes the shot or scene before putting words on the page. His writing is always exceptionally detailed and descriptive, ultimately helping us to imagine the shot. Of course, no one understands The Last of Us better than Neil, who knows all aspects of the lore very well. He’s done much research and design work with the Naughty Dog team, so he gives us good guidance regarding creature and environment designs. I always try to begin with concept art to get the ball rolling with Craig and Neil’s ideas. This season, we collaborated with Chromatic Studios for concept art. They also contributed to the games, so I felt that continuity was beneficial for our show. Fiona Campbell Westgate // From the outset, it was clear that collaborating with Craig would be an exceptional experience. Early meetings revealed just how personable and invested Craig is. He works closely with every department to ensure that each episode is done to the highest level. Craig places unwavering trust in our VFX Supervisor, Alex Wang. They have an understanding between them that lends to an exceptional partnership. As the VFX Producer, I know how vital the dynamic between the Showrunner and VFX Supervisor is; working with these two has made for one of the best professional experiences of my career.  Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO How has your collaboration with Craig evolved between the first and second seasons? Were there any adjustments in the visual approach or narrative techniques you made this season? Alex Wang // Since everything was new in Season 1, we dedicated a lot of time and effort to exploring the show’s visual language, and we all learned a great deal about what worked and what didn’t for the show. In my initial conversations with Craig about Season 2, it was clear that he wanted to expand the show’s scope by utilizing what we established and learned in Season 1. He felt significantly more at ease fully committing to using VFX to help tell the story this season. The first season involved multiple VFX studios to handle the complexity of the effects. How did you divide the work among different studios for the second season? Alex Wang // Most of the vendors this season were also in Season 1, so we already had a shorthand. The VFX Producer, Fiona Campbell Westgate, and I work closely together to decide how to divide the work among our vendors. The type of work needs to be well-suited for the vendor and fit into our budget and schedule. We were extremely fortunate to have the vendors we did this season. I want to take this opportunity to thank Weta FX, DNEG, RISE, Distillery VFX, Storm Studios, Important Looking Pirates, Blackbird, Wylie Co., RVX, and VDK. We also had ILM for concept art and Digital Domain for previs. Fiona Campbell Westgate // Alex Wang and I were very aware of the tight delivery schedule, which added to the challenge of distributing the workload. We planned the work based on the individual studio’s capabilities, and tried not to burden them with back to back episodes wherever possible. Fortunately, there was shorthand with vendors from Season One, who were well-acquainted with the process and the quality of work the show required. The town of Jackson is a key location in The Last of Us. Could you explain how you approached creating and expanding this environment for the second season? Alex Wang // Since Season 1, this show has created incredible sets. However, the Jackson town set build is by far the most impressive in terms of scope. They constructed an 822 ft x 400 ft set in Minaty Bay that resembled a real town! I had early discussions with Production Designer Don MacAulay and his team about where they should concentrate their efforts and where VFX would make the most sense to take over. They focused on developing the town’s main street, where we believed most scenes would occur. There is a big reveal of Jackson in the first episode after Ellie comes out of the barn. Distillery VFX was responsible for the town’s extension, which appears seamless because the team took great pride in researching and ensuring the architecture aligned with the set while staying true to the tone of Jackson, Wyoming. Fiona Campbell Westgate // An impressive set was constructed in Minaty Bay, which served as the foundation for VFX to build upon. There is a beautiful establishing shot of Jackson in Episode 1 that was completed by Distillery, showing a safe and almost normal setting as Season Two starts. Across the episodes, Jackson set extensions were completed by our partners at RISE and Weta. Each had a different phase of Jackson to create, from almost idyllic to a town immersed in Battle.  What challenges did you face filming Jackson on both real and virtual sets? Was there a particular fusion between visual effects and live-action shots to make it feel realistic? Alex Wang // I always advocate for building exterior sets outdoors to take advantage of natural light. However, the drawback is that we cannot control the weather and lighting when filming over several days across two units. In Episode 2, there’s supposed to be a winter storm in Jackson, so maintaining consistency within the episode was essential. On sunny and rainy days, we used cranes to lift large 30x60ft screens to block the sun or rain. It was impossible to shield the entire set from the rain or sun, so we prioritized protecting the actors from sunlight or rain. Thus, you can imagine there was extensive weather cleanup for the episode to ensure consistency within the sequences. Fiona Campbell Westgate // We were fortunate that production built a large scale Jackson set. It provided a base for the full CG Jackson aerial shots and CG Set Extensions. The weather conditions at Minaty Bay presented a challenge during the filming of the end of the Battle sequence in Episode 2. While there were periods of bright sunshine, rainfall occurred during the filming of the end of the Battle sequence in Episode 2. In addition to the obvious visual effects work, it became necessary to replace the ground cover. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO The attack on Jackson by the horde of infected in season 2 is a very intense moment. How did you approach the visual effects for this sequence? What techniques did you use to make the scale of the attack feel as impressive as it did? Alex Wang // We knew this would be a very complex sequence to shoot, and for it to be successful, we needed to start planning with the HODs from the very beginning. We began previs during prep with Weta FX and the episode’s director, Mark Mylod. The previs helped us understand Mark and the showrunner’s vision. This then served as a blueprint for all departments to follow, and in many instances, we filmed the previs. Fiona Campbell Westgate // The sheer size of the CG Infected Horde sets the tone for the scale of the Battle. It’s an intimidating moment when they are revealed through the blowing snow. The addition of CG explosions and atmospheric effects contributed in adding scale to the sequence.  Can you give us an insight into the technical challenges of capturing the infected horde? How much of the effect was done using CGI, and how much was achieved with practical effects? Alex Wang // Starting with a detailed previs that Mark and Craig approved was essential for planning the horde. We understood that we would never have enough stunt performers to fill a horde, nor could they carry out some stunts that would be too dangerous. I reviewed the previs with Stunt Coordinator Marny Eng numerous times to decide the best placements for her team’s stunt performers. We also collaborated with Barrie Gower from the Prosthetics team to determine the most effective allocation of his team’s efforts. Stunt performers positioned closest to the camera would receive the full prosthetic treatment, which can take hours. Weta FX was responsible for the incredible CG Infected horde work in the Jackson Battle. They have been a creative partner with HBO’s The Last of Us since Season 1, so they were brought on early for Season 2. I began discussions with Weta’s VFX supervisor, Nick Epstein, about how we could tackle these complex horde shots very early during the shoot. Typically, repetition in CG crowd scenes can be acceptable, such as armies with soldiers dressed in the same uniform or armour. However, for our Infected horde, Craig wanted to convey that the Infected didn’t come off an assembly line or all shop at the same clothing department store. Any repetition would feel artificial. These Infected were once civilians with families, or they were groups of raiders. We needed complex variations in height, body size, age, clothing, and hair. We built our base library of Infected, and then Nick and the Weta FX team developed a “mix and match” system, allowing the Infected to wear any costume and hair groom. A procedural texturing system was also developed for costumes, providing even greater variation. The most crucial aspect of the Infected horde was their motion. We had numerous shots cutting back-to-back with practical Infected, as well as shots where our CG Infected ran right alongside a stunt horde. It was incredibly unforgiving! Weta FX’s animation supervisor from Season 1, Dennis Yoo, returned for Season 2 to meet the challenge. Having been part of the first season, Dennis understood the expectations of Craig and Neil. Similar to issues of model repetition within a horde, it was relatively easy to perceive repetition, especially if they were running toward the same target. It was essential to enhance the details of their performances with nuances such as tripping and falling, getting back up, and trampling over each other. There also needed to be a difference in the Infected’s running speed. To ensure we had enough complexity within the horde, Dennis motion-captured almost 600 unique motion cycles. We had over a hundred shots in episode 2 that required CG Infected horde. Fiona Campbell Westgate // Nick Epstein, Weta VFX Supervisor, and Dennis Yoo, Weta Animation Supervisor, were faced with having to add hero, close-up Horde that had to integrate with practical Stunt performers. They achieved this through over 60 motion capture sessions and running it through a deformation system they developed. Every detail was applied to allow for a seamless blend with our practical Stunt performances. The Weta team created a custom costume and hair system that provided individual looks to the CG Infected Horde. We were able to avoid the repetitive look of a CG crowd due to these efforts. The movement of the infected horde is crucial for the intensity of the scene. How did you manage the animation and simulation of the infected to ensure smooth and realistic interaction with the environment? Fiona Campbell Westgate // We worked closely with the Stunt department to plan out positioning and where VFX would be adding the CG Horde. Craig Mazin wanted the Infected Horde to move in a way that humans cannot. The deformation system kept the body shape anatomically correct and allowed us to push the limits from how a human physically moves.  The Bloater makes a terrifying return this season. What were the key challenges in designing and animating this creature? How did you work on the Bloater’s interaction with the environment and other characters? Alex Wang // In Season 1, the Kansas City cul-de-sac sequence featured only a handful of Bloater shots. This season, however, nearly forty shots showcase the Bloater in broad daylight during the Battle of Jackson. We needed to redesign the Bloater asset to ensure it looked good in close-up shots from head to toe. Weta FX designed the Bloater for Season 1 and revamped the design for this season. Starting with the Bloater’s silhouette, it had to appear large, intimidating, and menacing. We explored enlarging the cordyceps head shape to make it feel almost like a crown, enhancing the Bloater’s impressive and strong presence. During filming, a stunt double stood in for the Bloater. This was mainly for scale reference and composition. It also helped the Infected stunt performers understand the Bloater’s spatial position, allowing them to avoid running through his space. Once we had an edit, Dennis mocapped the Bloater’s performances with his team. It is always challenging to get the motion right for a creature that weighs 600 pounds. We don’t want the mocap to be overly exaggerated, but it does break the character if the Bloater feels too “light.” The brilliant animation team at Weta FX brought the Bloater character to life and nailed it! When Tommy goes head-to-head with the Bloater, Craig was quite specific during the prep days about how the Bloater would bubble, melt, and burn as Tommy torches him with the flamethrower. Important Looking Pirates took on the “Burning Bloater” sequence, led by VFX Supervisor Philip Engstrom. They began with extensive R&D to ensure the Bloater’s skin would start to bubble and burn. ILP took the final Bloater asset from Weta FX and had to resculpt and texture the asset for the Bloater’s final burn state. Craig felt it was important for the Bloater to appear maimed at the end. The layers of FX were so complex that the R&D continued almost to the end of the delivery schedule. Fiona Campbell Westgate // This season the Bloater had to be bigger, more intimidating. The CG Asset was recreated to withstand the scrutiny of close ups and in daylight. Both Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann worked closely with us during the process of the build. We referenced the game and applied elements of that version with ours. You’ll notice that his head is in the shape of crown, this is to convey he’s a powerful force.  During the Burning Bloater sequence in Episode 2, we brainstormed with Philip Engström, ILP VFX Supervisor, on how this creature would react to the flamethrower and how it would affect the ground as it burns. When the Bloater finally falls to the ground and dies, the extraordinary detail of the embers burning, fluid draining and melting the surrounding snow really sells that the CG creature was in the terrain.  Given the Bloater’s imposing size, how did you approach its integration into scenes with the actors? What techniques did you use to create such a realistic and menacing appearance? Fiona Campbell Westgate // For the Bloater, a stunt performer wearing a motion capture suit was filmed on set. This provided interaction with the actors and the environment. VFX enhanced the intensity of his movements, incorporating simulations to the CG Bloater’s skin and muscles that would reflect the weight and force as this terrifying creature moves.  Seattle in The Last of Us is a completely devastated city. Can you talk about how you recreated this destruction? What were the most difficult visual aspects to realize for this post-apocalyptic city? Fiona Campbell Westgate // We were meticulous in blending the CG destruction with the practical environment. The flora’s ability to overtake the environment had to be believable, and we adhered to the principle of form follows function. Due to the vastness of the CG devastation it was crucial to avoid repetitive effects. Consequently, our vendors were tasked with creating bespoke designs that evoked a sense of awe and beauty. Was Seattle’s architecture a key element in how you designed the visual effects? How did you adapt the city’s real-life urban landscape to meet the needs of the story while maintaining a coherent aesthetic? Alex Wang // It’s always important to Craig and Neil that we remain true to the cities our characters are in. DNEG was one of our primary vendors for Boston in Season 1, so it was natural for them to return for Season 2, this time focusing on Seattle. DNEG’s VFX Supervisor, Stephen James, who played a crucial role in developing the visual language of Boston for Season 1, also returns for this season. Stephen and Melaina Mace (DFX Supervisor) led a team to Seattle to shoot plates and perform lidar scans of parts of the city. We identified the buildings unique to Seattle that would have existed in 2003, so we ensured these buildings were always included in our establishing shots. Overgrowth and destruction have significantly influenced the environments in The Last of Us. The environment functions almost as a character in both Season 1 and Season 2. In the last season, the building destruction in Boston was primarily caused by military bombings. During this season, destruction mainly arises from dilapidation. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I understand how damp it can get for most of the year. I imagined that, over 20 years, the integrity of the buildings would be compromised by natural forces. This abundant moisture creates an exceptionally lush and vibrant landscape for much of the year. Therefore, when designing Seattle, we ensured that the destruction and overgrowth appeared intentional and aesthetically distinct from those of Boston. Fiona Campbell Westgate // Led by Stephen James, DNEG VFX Supervisor, and Melaina Mace, DNEG DFX Supervisor, the team captured photography, drone footage and the Clear Angle team captured LiDAR data over a three-day period in Seattle. It was crucial to include recognizable Seattle landmarks that would resonate with people familiar with the game.  The devastated city almost becomes a character in itself this season. What aspects of the visual effects did you have to enhance to increase the immersion of the viewer into this hostile and deteriorated environment? Fiona Campbell Westgate // It is indeed a character. Craig wanted it to be deteriorated but to have moments where it’s also beautiful in its devastation. For instance, in the Music Store in Episode 4 where Ellie is playing guitar for Dina, the deteriorated interior provides a beautiful backdrop to this intimate moment. The Set Decorating team dressed a specific section of the set, while VFX extended the destruction and overgrowth to encompass the entire environment, immersing the viewer in strange yet familiar surroundings. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO The sequence where Ellie navigates a boat through a violent storm is stunning. What were the key challenges in creating this scene, especially with water simulation and the storm’s effects? Alex Wang // In the concluding episode of Season 2, Ellie is deep in Seattle, searching for Abby. The episode draws us closer to the Aquarium, where this area of Seattle is heavily flooded. Naturally, this brings challenges with CG water. In the scene where Ellie encounters Isaac and the W.L.F soldiers by the dock, we had a complex shoot involving multiple locations, including a water tank and a boat gimbal. There were also several full CG shots. For Isaac’s riverine boat, which was in a stormy ocean, I felt it was essential that the boat and the actors were given the appropriate motion. Weta FX assisted with tech-vis for all the boat gimbal work. We began with different ocean wave sizes caused by the storm, and once the filmmakers selected one, the boat’s motion in the tech-vis fed the special FX gimbal. When Ellie gets into the Jon boat, I didn’t want it on the same gimbal because I felt it would be too mechanical. Ellie’s weight needed to affect the boat as she got in, and that wouldn’t have happened with a mechanical gimbal. So, we opted to have her boat in a water tank for this scene. Special FX had wave makers that provided the boat with the appropriate movement. Instead of guessing what the ocean sim for the riverine boat should be, the tech- vis data enabled DNEG to get a head start on the water simulations in post-production. Craig wanted this sequence to appear convincingly dark, much like it looks out on the ocean at night. This allowed us to create dramatic visuals, using lightning strikes at moments to reveal depth. Were there any memorable moments or scenes from the series that you found particularly rewarding or challenging to work on from a visual effects standpoint? Alex Wang // The Last of Us tells the story of our characters’ journey. If you look at how season 2 begins in Jackson, it differs significantly from how we conclude the season in Seattle. We seldom return to the exact location in each episode, meaning every episode presents a unique challenge. The scope of work this season has been incredibly rewarding. We burned a Bloater, and we also introduced spores this season! Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of? Alex Wang // The Jackson Battle was incredibly complex, involving a grueling and lengthy shoot in quite challenging conditions, along with over 600 VFX shots in episode 2. It was truly inspiring to witness the determination of every department and vendor to give their all and create something remarkable. Fiona Campbell Westgate // I am immensely proud of the exceptional work accomplished by all of our vendors. During the VFX reviews, I found myself clapping with delight when the final shots were displayed; it was exciting to see remarkable results of the artists’ efforts come to light.  How long have you worked on this show? Alex Wang // I’ve been on this season for nearly two years. Fiona Campbell Westgate // A little over one year; I joined the show in April 2024. What’s the VFX shots count? Alex Wang // We had just over 2,500 shots this Season. Fiona Campbell Westgate // In Season 2, there were a total of 2656 visual effects shots. What is your next project? Fiona Campbell Westgate // Stay tuned… A big thanks for your time. WANT TO KNOW MORE?Blackbird: Dedicated page about The Last of Us – Season 2 website.DNEG: Dedicated page about The Last of Us – Season 2 on DNEG website.Important Looking Pirates: Dedicated page about The Last of Us – Season 2 website.RISE: Dedicated page about The Last of Us – Season 2 website.Weta FX: Dedicated page about The Last of Us – Season 2 website. © Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025

In Rancho Palos Verde, California, the disassembled Wayfarers Chapel designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, has been stored away since last July, following damage from landslides. A potential site for the ecclesiastical structure has been found. The proposed site would expand the footprint of the serene property and protect its structures from further damage caused by land movement.  In the 1970s, a landslide at the site destroyed the chapel’s visitor center, and the geologic movement was inactive for a while. However, in the past few years activity began accelerating at an unprecedented rate. In February 2024, the Wayfarers Chapel announced that it would close its doors due to land movement in the area. The shuttering left a displaced congregation and devastated brides in its wake, but there was still hope of a return. Then, in May 2024, it was announced that the only way to maintain the structure was to disassemble it. Land movement had caused glass panels to shatter, the metal framing to warp, and cracks to form in the concrete. Though leadership initially wanted to rebuild on site, the worsening conditions proved this was no longer a viable option. In July 2024, with the help of Architectural Resources Group, the church was meticulously disassembled with each part numbered and labeled. Many of the irreplaceable materials used to construct the original chapel were salvaged. The pieces have since been kept in storage, waiting to be rebuilt.  The chapel was disassembled and stored for preservation. (Architectural Resources Group) The chapel’s new site must carry similar characteristics to the old one to uphold its National Historic Landmark designation. The prospective site, Battery Barnes, shares the original site’s coastal views of the Pacific, while situating the reassembled chapel outside the Portuguese Bend. Built in 1943 as part of the U.S. Army’s coastal fortification plan, the Battery Barnes’s connection to World War II could also be highlighted throughout the use of the land.  The glass chapel will be reconstructed using the salvaged original materials. (Architectural Resources Group/Courtesy Wayfarers Chapel) Wayfarers Chapel also plans to take advantage of the expanded footprint of the proposed site. During an episode of “RPV City Talk,” the chapel’s communications director Stephanie Cartozian shared that the organization hopes to rebuild the chapel along with the lost visitor center, as well as constructing a museum, archival center, and restaurant. The campus would also see the addition of public restrooms for hikers, expanding on its community accessibility.   Currently, Wayfarers Chapel is fundraising to cover the rebuild, with part of the funds going toward securing the site. Unlike wildfires, earthquakes, or flooding, landslides are not considered disasters in the State of California. Thus, along with fundraising efforts, local lobbying efforts are being made to add landslides to the list of covered emergencies, which could create a path to governmental assistance.

Asia-Pacific could face a shortfall of 15 to 25 gigawatts of data center capacity by 2028, even as the region’s installed base expands from 13.3 GW today to 30 GW over the next two to three years, according to a report by CBRE.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.While most people think of smart cameras as just a part of their security system, they’re also a good way to monitor the things growing in your yard. In most cases, the cameras you already have set up for security can be doing double duty as a tool to keep track of what's happening in your garden.I believe we’re on the cusp of smart cameras becoming a much bigger part of the gardening experience. For the last few years, smart bird houses have exploded in popularity. One of those companies, Bird Buddy, has launched an entirely new line of cameras specifically for micro-viewing experiences in the garden. Their Petal cameras, expected to be available next year, should be positioned closer to the ground than most security cameras, and are meant to capture bees, insects, and butterflies, as well as the growth of your plants. Using AI (as a subscription service), the camera will allow you to assign names to your plants and even communicate with them. Still, there is a lot you can do with security cameras already on the market. Remote monitoring Credit: Amanda Blum In an ideal world, you could pack up for vacation and your yard would take care of itself—but a smart camera can allow you to remotely keep an eye on what’s happening and monitor for any damage. What’s impressive to me is how well my solar-powered cameras maintain their connection, even during low temperatures and freezing rain.  I've been impressed at how much detail I can get from small plants through my cameras. Credit: Amanda Blum Cameras allow you to keep an active watch on your yard. Not only will your security camera let you know if your trusted waterer drops by while you're gone as promised, but you can actually see how your plants are doing and if additional help is needed.  I’m always impressed at how good the zoom is on the cameras I use around my yard; I can actually tell if a tomato is ripe or if broccoli is ready to be picked. Last year, when I couldn’t get outside because of a sprained ankle and had someone helping in the garden, being able to see what they were doing and communicate with them via my security camera was invaluable. It’s much more effective than trying to describe what you need or want. Catch pestsGarden pests are frustrating for a wealth of reasons. To start with, you often don’t know what kind of pest you’re dealing with, and it’s nearly impossible to catch them in the act. Smart cameras are perfect for this, because they give you fly-on-the-wall ability to passively watch. Motion detection does most of the work for you. My security camera let me know I had raccoons in my yard last winter. They weren’t doing any damage (yet), but it helped influence how I design my garden and chicken coops. The cameras identified the cat that had chosen my garden to use as a litter box, checking in each night around 1 a.m. I’ve been chasing down a rat for the last two weeks, and the cameras do a spectacular job of catching his activity, which tells me where to add traps and what I may be doing that is enabling him. Other uses for smart cameras in your yard Credit: Amanda Blum The most invaluable service I’ve gotten from my cameras are how I use them to monitor backyard pets. I could not figure out how my newly adopted doberman was escaping from the yard, so I installed security cameras, and discovered she was climbing a five-foot tall chain link fence. I’ve got three cameras installed in my chicken coop, and they tell me when there are eggs to be grabbed, if a chicken is becoming broody, if everyone got into the coop at night, and if that pesky rat has cracked into the chicken food. When I first got my chickens, I couldn’t figure out which bird was laying which color egg, but the cameras helped. And now that I have a beehive, being able to see the activity going in and out of the hive is a helpful to monitor the health of the hive, and if a rodent of any kind tries to get in, I’ll know immediately. How to choose a camera for your yardI’ve tried smart cameras from almost every major brand, and I’ve figured out some things. First, in almost all cases, I want a PTZ (point, tilt, zoom) camera. These allow you to use your phone as a remote control and move the camera around, often almost 360 degrees, to zoom in on what you want. This is far superior to a fixed range camera. It’s simply annoying to have something going on just outside of the range of your camera and not be able to do anything to adjust it remotely. Additionally, I look for an app that makes it easy to watch clips. While I think Reolink cameras are affordable and functional, their app forces you to watch a horizontal clip on a vertical screen, so details are incredibly small. The Ring app has a lot of bloat, bringing neighborhood alert notifications to your phone. I enjoy the Aqara, Switchbot, and Eufy apps for getting to the video quickly and easily. Lastly, as you add cameras to your collection, being able to remain free from subscription costs is a real bonus. For that reason, I have largely switched over to Eufy cameras, which—if connected to a Home Base—don’t need a subscription. What I use in my yard: I replaced all my floodlights with this camera for overhead views Eufy Wired Floodlight Cam $199.99 at Amazon $219.99 Save $20.00 Shop Now Shop Now $199.99 at Amazon $219.99 Save $20.00 I place these wireless cams anyplace I want a 360 view of what's happening in my yard. Eufy Solar Powered Wireless Camera $259.99 at Amazon $349.99 Save $90.00 Shop Now Shop Now $259.99 at Amazon $349.99 Save $90.00 I have this epoxied into three spots in my chicken coop. Eufy Indoor PTZ Camera $34.88 at Amazon Shop Now Shop Now $34.88 at Amazon Just added this to monitor my beehive. Eufycam S3 Pro $439.99 at Amazon $549.99 Save $110.00 Get Deal Get Deal $439.99 at Amazon $549.99 Save $110.00 All my cameras sync to the homebase so I don't need a subscription. Eufy HomeBase $149.99 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $149.99 at Amazon SEE 2 MORE Where to place your camera Credit: Amanda Blum All security cameras are either hardwired or wireless. You might already have exterior floodlights on your home, and wired security cameras can use those connections, replacing the lights (many units come with floodlights). In this case, your connection is likely high up, and can’t be moved easily. So long as it’s high up, you likely have a good field of vision of your yard, but make sure to consider plants that grow in the summer, and if they’ll block your view. If you don’t have these connections available and don’t want to pay an electrician to create them, you need wireless cameras. But I actually prefer my wireless cameras. First, the solar power on most of them is astounding. I live in the Pacific Northwest, a place with seven months of gloom, and my cameras always stay powered. Second, being wireless means you can move your camera around to find the perfect spot. Usually all you need is to screw the base into the spot you want the camera. Don’t be afraid to try different spots, when I was chasing down how my dog escaped, I had to keep moving the camera. I attached the camera to a 2x4, and moved the wood around the yard, leaning it against whatever was near until I found the right range of vision. 

Meta (Nasdaq:META) is restructuring its AI division into two distinct units, AI Products and AGI Foundations, marking its most significant internal overhaul as it races to compete with OpenAI and Google. The move, detailed in an internal memo from Chief Product Officer Chris Cox and reported by Axios, appoints Connor Hayes to lead AI product integration while Ahmad Al-Dahle and Amir Frenkel will co-direct long-term AGI research. The restructuring comes amid mounting crises, including the delayed Llama 4 Behemoth model and the departure of key Llama architects to competitors like Mistral AI. This marks Meta’s second major AI reorganization since CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2023 attempt to “turbocharge” generative AI efforts, which saw the company fall further behind rivals despite early promise. “Structural changes alone won’t solve Meta’s AI challenges,” said Amandeep Singh, practice director at QKS Group. “While the new AGI Foundations unit creates clarity, retaining elite talent requires a seamless pipeline from research to real-world deployment. Meta has struggled with fragmented pipelines and unclear priorities,” added Singh. Talent exodus and technical setbacks The restructuring follows talent losses that have exposed fundamental weaknesses in Meta’s AI strategy. Only three authors remain from the original 14-person Llama research team, according to Business Insider. Internal surveys cited by The Information reveal plummeting morale in Meta’s AI division, where employees cite resource constraints and sluggish progress. “Talent follows momentum, and right now, momentum lives where research decisions directly shape deployed capabilities,” noted Singh. This talent drain coincides with technical setbacks, most notably the underperforming Llama 4 model, which has struggled with reasoning and mathematical tasks. These combined challenges have left Meta playing catch-up in the race toward artificial general intelligence, despite its early open-source advantages. The company’s strategy, bolstered by initiatives such as Llama for Startups and the recent Llama API launch, aims to attract developers and differentiate it from competitors’ proprietary models. But analysts caution these initiatives alone may not be enough to win enterprise trust. The enterprise adoption dilemma While Llama’s cost advantages remain attractive to businesses, growing concerns about its governance controls and the looming copyright lawsuit over training data are giving enterprises pause. “Companies love Llama’s affordability but expanding safety gaps and legal risks are becoming hard to ignore,” Singh said. “For mission-critical applications, many will ultimately choose more reliable, if more expensive, options like GPT or Gemini.” These cost benefits can lose their appeal when weighed against operational risks. Meta’s reorganization attempts to mitigate these concerns through specialized teams, one deploying generative AI across products, another advancing AGI research, but analysts remain skeptical about whether structural changes alone can solve deeper issues. Unlike Microsoft’s turnkey OpenAI integration or Google’s enterprise-ready Vertex AI platform, Meta lacks both the sales infrastructure and compliance pedigree for regulated industries. As Singh argued, “Enterprise AI adoption hinges on proven compliance frameworks, operational reliability, and mature support systems. Meta still needs to build that trust at Fortune 500 scale.” Meta’s race to close the AGI gap “Meta’s AGI push focused on models with reasoning, multimedia, and voice capabilities aligns with the broader industry trend toward multimodal AI as a catalyst for enterprise transformation,” said Surjyadeb Goswami, research director for AI and Automation at IDC Asia Pacific. He noted that open-source models are critical to enabling cost-effective, transparent, and customizable deployments, especially as organizations deepen their GenAI investments. For Meta to truly capitalize on this opportunity and succeed in its AGI bid, it must rebuild trust especially for enterprise adoption. Singh highlighted the need for Linux-like community stewardship, OpenAI-level safety protocols, and robust enterprise tooling. “Balancing openness with responsibility is Meta’s real challenge, especially as models approach general-purpose cognitive capability.” Meta now needs to show this reorganization yields meaningful improvements in model performance, talent retention, and enterprise adoption to validate its new approach. “Meta’s open-source vision is bold, but execution is everything,” Singh concluded.

From Tokyo to Taipei, Ho Chi Minh to Seoul, Asia Pacific has long been a powerhouse in global esports. However, until now, the region's role in the League of Legends ecosystem lacked a central stage. That's all about to change with the inception of League of Legends Championship Pacific (LCP), Riot Games' ambitious new league for APAC. This is the game developer's most significant step yet in unifying its fragmented competitive landscape. To bring that vision to life, Riot partnered with brand and digital studio Koto to craft an identity that would speak to fans across cultures, languages, and gaming styles. The result is a full-spectrum design system shaped by the region, for the region, and built to evolve alongside the fast-moving world of esports. "At its heart, this project was about building pride and momentum," says Koto creative director Melissa Baillache. "Riot made it clear from the beginning: they wanted to give fans a brand that belongs to them." The LCP brand makes that intent clear from the get-go. Under the platform What We're Made Of, Koto constructed an identity rooted in regional passion, from Japan's Oshi-style fandoms to Southeast Asia's hyper-social esports culture. The line isn't just a slogan; it's a rallying cry, making it clear that APAC isn't just participating in global esports – it's here to lead. Designing for competition and community Visually, the brand needed to deliver across an incredible range of touchpoints, from social teasers and broadcast graphics to merch, memes, and fan-created content. The design system is centred on The Pinnacle: a five-player emblem representing unity and competitive intensity. Rendered in molten, 3D finishes, it's a symbol of regional ambition and the raw energy of top-tier play. That energy carries through a modular graphic system inspired by League's own gameplay, specifically the three in-game lanes that structure how matches unfold. This system offers a flexible yet distinctive frame for everything from stat-heavy broadcast overlays to highlight reels and in-arena hype moments. The motion language is just as purposeful. It's fast, focused, and reactive, designed to mirror the breakneck pace of in-game action and the way fans consume esports content in real-time. Whether counting down to kick-off or amplifying a clutch play, the system pulses with immediacy. Voice with impact Koto also worked to develop a voice that cuts through the noise of a crowded digital space. LCP's tone is raw, energised, and emotionally charged, with tight headlines and punchy copy that speaks directly to fans. It's not just branding; it's storytelling engineered for social moments, match trailers, post-game celebrations, and everything in between. The studio's verbal system extends to campaign slogans, hashtags, and commentary-style callouts, all of which work together to build momentum, fuel rivalries, and stoke regional pride. A custom typeface that sets the tempo At the core of the visual identity is LCP Ignite, a custom variable typeface designed to capture the rhythm and sharpness of League gameplay. Inspired by the 'fired up' ethos of competitive play, it flexes across every format, from match stats and player quotes to dynamic on-screen graphics. Given the region's linguistic diversity, the system also includes a suite of secondary typefaces (including Archivo, Kinkakuji and Thonglor Soi 4 Nr) to ensure legibility and consistency in languages across APAC. The goal here was to create a type system that speaks to everyone, from die-hard fans to casual mobile viewers wherever they are. Fuel for fandom Koto's system goes beyond expectations by creating tools that grow with the community. A suite of icons and illustrations—all drawn from the strokes and geometry of LCP Ignite—provides creative fuel for Riot and fans. These assets flex across platforms, helping commentators, players, and creators build content that feels cohesive but never prescriptive. Gerald Torto, senior strategy director at Koto, says: "The goal with LCP was to frame the league not just as a competition, but as a cultural force. The energy and sentiment captured in the idea 'What We're Made Of' is a fitting platform. It gives APAC an unapologetic and proud voice that looks ahead to an exciting future." The scale of the system matches that ambition. Alongside Riot's APAC PubSports team, Koto delivered a complete brand toolkit with hundreds of assets – spanning physical, digital, and broadcast formats – built to scale across seasons, teams, and evolving tournament formats. Setting the stage for APAC's next era What sets this project apart is its commitment to longevity. LCP is a vast infrastructure investment into the future of competitive gaming in APAC, and the brand has already begun rolling out teaser campaigns, test broadcasts, and live events, setting the stage for a new chapter in League of Legends. As Koto continues to expand its presence in the region, the LCP identity is a strong signal of what's possible when global ambition meets regional nuance. It's also a showcase of what the Sydney studio brings to the table: cross-cultural fluency, strategic storytelling, and a flair for building scalable, high-impact identities with soul. With the official launch of LCP now live, Riot and Koto are inviting the world to witness what the region is made of.

Imagine: China deploys hundreds of thousands of autonomous drones in the air, on the sea, and under the water—all armed with explosive warheads or small missiles. These machines descend in a swarm toward military installations on Taiwan and nearby US bases, and over the course of a few hours, a single robotic blitzkrieg overwhelms the US Pacific force before it can even begin to fight back.  Maybe it sounds like a new Michael Bay movie, but it’s the scenario that keeps the chief technology officer of the US Army up at night. “I’m hesitant to say it out loud so I don’t manifest it,” says Alex Miller, a longtime Army intelligence official who became the CTO to the Army’s chief of staff in 2023. Even if World War III doesn’t break out in the South China Sea, every US military installation around the world is vulnerable to the same tactics—as are the militaries of every other country around the world. The proliferation of cheap drones means just about any group with the wherewithal to assemble and launch a swarm could wreak havoc, no expensive jets or massive missile installations required.  While the US has precision missiles that can shoot these drones down, they don’t always succeed: A drone attack killed three US soldiers and injured dozens more at a base in the Jordanian desert last year. And each American missile costs orders of magnitude more than its targets, which limits their supply; countering thousand-dollar drones with missiles that cost hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars per shot can only work for so long, even with a defense budget that could reach a trillion dollars next year. The US armed forces are now hunting for a solution—and they want it fast. Every branch of the service and a host of defense tech startups are testing out new weapons that promise to disable drones en masse. There are drones that slam into other drones like battering rams; drones that shoot out nets to ensnare quadcopter propellers; precision-guided Gatling guns that simply shoot drones out of the sky; electronic approaches, like GPS jammers and direct hacking tools; and lasers that melt holes clear through a target’s side. Then there are the microwaves: high-powered electronic devices that push out kilowatts of power to zap the circuits of a drone as if it were the tinfoil you forgot to take off your leftovers when you heated them up.  That’s where Epirus comes in.  When I went to visit the HQ of this 185-person startup in Torrance, California, earlier this year, I got a behind-the-scenes look at its massive microwave, called Leonidas, which the US Army is already betting on as a cutting-edge anti-drone weapon. The Army awarded Epirus a $66 million contract in early 2023, topped that up with another $17 million last fall, and is currently deploying a handful of the systems for testing with US troops in the Middle East and the Pacific. (The Army won’t get into specifics on the location of the weapons in the Middle East but published a report of a live-fire test in the Philippines in early May.)  Up close, the Leonidas that Epirus built for the Army looks like a two-foot-thick slab of metal the size of a garage door stuck on a swivel mount. Pop the back cover, and you can see that the slab is filled with dozens of individual microwave amplifier units in a grid. Each is about the size of a safe-deposit box and built around a chip made of gallium nitride, a semiconductor that can survive much higher voltages and temperatures than the typical silicon.  Leonidas sits on top of a trailer that a standard-issue Army truck can tow, and when it is powered on, the company’s software tells the grid of amps and antennas to shape the electromagnetic waves they’re blasting out with a phased array, precisely overlapping the microwave signals to mold the energy into a focused beam. Instead of needing to physically point a gun or parabolic dish at each of a thousand incoming drones, the Leonidas can flick between them at the speed of software. The Leonidas contains dozens of microwave amplifier units and can pivot to direct waves at incoming swarms of drones.EPIRUS Of course, this isn’t magic—there are practical limits on how much damage one array can do, and at what range—but the total effect could be described as an electromagnetic pulse emitter, a death ray for electronics, or a force field that could set up a protective barrier around military installations and drop drones the way a bug zapper fizzles a mob of mosquitoes. I walked through the nonclassified sections of the Leonidas factory floor, where a cluster of engineers working on weaponeering—the military term for figuring out exactly how much of a weapon, be it high explosive or microwave beam, is necessary to achieve a desired effect—ran tests in a warren of smaller anechoic rooms. Inside, they shot individual microwave units at a broad range of commercial and military drones, cycling through waveforms and power levels to try to find the signal that could fry each one with maximum efficiency.  On a live video feed from inside one of these foam-padded rooms, I watched a quadcopter drone spin its propellers and then, once the microwave emitter turned on, instantly stop short—first the propeller on the front left and then the rest. A drone hit with a Leonidas beam doesn’t explode—it just falls. Compared with the blast of a missile or the sizzle of a laser, it doesn’t look like much. But it could force enemies to come up with costlier ways of attacking that reduce the advantage of the drone swarm, and it could get around the inherent limitations of purely electronic or strictly physical defense systems. It could save lives. Epirus CEO Andy Lowery, a tall guy with sparkplug energy and a rapid-fire southern Illinois twang, doesn’t shy away from talking big about his product. As he told me during my visit, Leonidas is intended to lead a last stand, like the Spartan from whom the microwave takes its name—in this case, against hordes of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. While the actual range of the Leonidas system is kept secret, Lowery says the Army is looking for a solution that can reliably stop drones within a few kilometers. He told me, “They would like our system to be the owner of that final layer—to get any squeakers, any leakers, anything like that.” Now that they’ve told the world they “invented a force field,” Lowery added, the focus is on manufacturing at scale—before the drone swarms really start to descend or a nation with a major military decides to launch a new war. Before, in other words, Miller’s nightmare scenario becomes reality.  Why zap? Miller remembers well when the danger of small weaponized drones first appeared on his radar. Reports of Islamic State fighters strapping grenades to the bottom of commercial DJI Phantom quadcopters first emerged in late 2016 during the Battle of Mosul. “I went, ‘Oh, this is going to be bad,’ because basically it’s an airborne IED at that point,” he says. He’s tracked the danger as it’s built steadily since then, with advances in machine vision, AI coordination software, and suicide drone tactics only accelerating.  Then the war in Ukraine showed the world that cheap technology has fundamentally changed how warfare happens. We have watched in high-definition video how a cheap, off-the-shelf drone modified to carry a small bomb can be piloted directly into a faraway truck, tank, or group of troops to devastating effect. And larger suicide drones, also known as “loitering munitions,” can be produced for just tens of thousands of dollars and launched in massive salvos to hit soft targets or overwhelm more advanced military defenses through sheer numbers.  As a result, Miller, along with large swaths of the Pentagon and DC policy circles, believes that the current US arsenal for defending against these weapons is just too expensive and the tools in too short supply to truly match the threat. Just look at Yemen, a poor country where the Houthi military group has been under constant attack for the past decade. Armed with this new low-tech arsenal, in the past 18 months the rebel group has been able to bomb cargo ships and effectively disrupt global shipping in the Red Sea—part of an effort to apply pressure on Israel to stop its war in Gaza. The Houthis have also used missiles, suicide drones, and even drone boats to launch powerful attacks on US Navy ships sent to stop them. The most successful defense tech firm selling anti-drone weapons to the US military right now is Anduril, the company started by Palmer Luckey, the inventor of the Oculus VR headset, and a crew of cofounders from Oculus and defense data giant Palantir. In just the past few months, the Marines have chosen Anduril for counter-drone contracts that could be worth nearly $850 million over the next decade, and the company has been working with Special Operations Command since 2022 on a counter-drone contract that could be worth nearly a billion dollars over a similar time frame. It’s unclear from the contracts what, exactly, Anduril is selling to each organization, but its weapons include electronic warfare jammers, jet-powered drone bombs, and propeller-driven Anvil drones designed to simply smash into enemy drones. In this arsenal, the cheapest way to stop a swarm of drones is electronic warfare: jamming the GPS or radio signals used to pilot the machines. But the intense drone battles in Ukraine have advanced the art of jamming and counter-jamming close to the point of stalemate. As a result, a new state of the art is emerging: unjammable drones that operate autonomously by using onboard processors to navigate via internal maps and computer vision, or even drones connected with 20-kilometer-long filaments of fiber-optic cable for tethered control. But unjammable doesn’t mean unzappable. Instead of using the scrambling method of a jammer, which employs an antenna to block the drone’s connection to a pilot or remote guidance system, the Leonidas microwave beam hits a drone body broadside. The energy finds its way into something electrical, whether the central flight controller or a tiny wire controlling a flap on a wing, to short-circuit whatever’s available. (The company also says that this targeted hit of energy allows birds and other wildlife to continue to move safely.) Tyler Miller, a senior systems engineer on Epirus’s weaponeering team, told me that they never know exactly which part of the target drone is going to go down first, but they’ve reliably seen the microwave signal get in somewhere to overload a circuit. “Based on the geometry and the way the wires are laid out,” he said, one of those wires is going to be the best path in. “Sometimes if we rotate the drone 90 degrees, you have a different motor go down first,” he added. The team has even tried wrapping target drones in copper tape, which would theoretically provide shielding, only to find that the microwave still finds a way in through moving propeller shafts or antennas that need to remain exposed for the drone to fly.  EPIRUS Leonidas also has an edge when it comes to downing a mass of drones at once. Physically hitting a drone out of the sky or lighting it up with a laser can be effective in situations where electronic warfare fails, but anti-drone drones can only take out one at a time, and lasers need to precisely aim and shoot. Epirus’s microwaves can damage everything in a roughly 60-degree arc from the Leonidas emitter simultaneously and keep on zapping and zapping; directed energy systems like this one never run out of ammo. As for cost, each Army Leonidas unit currently runs in the “low eight figures,” Lowery told me. Defense contract pricing can be opaque, but Epirus delivered four units for its $66 million initial contract, giving a back-of-napkin price around $16.5 million each. For comparison, Stinger missiles from Raytheon, which soldiers shoot at enemy aircraft or drones from a shoulder-mounted launcher, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop, meaning the Leonidas could start costing less (and keep shooting) after it downs the first wave of a swarm. Raytheon’s radar, reversed Epirus is part of a new wave of venture-capital-backed defense companies trying to change the way weapons are created—and the way the Pentagon buys them. The largest defense companies, firms like Raytheon, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin, typically develop new weapons in response to research grants and cost-plus contracts, in which the US Department of Defense guarantees a certain profit margin to firms building products that match their laundry list of technical specifications. These programs have kept the military supplied with cutting-edge weapons for decades, but the results may be exquisite pieces of military machinery delivered years late and billions of dollars over budget. Rather than building to minutely detailed specs, the new crop of military contractors aim to produce products on a quick time frame to solve a problem and then fine-tune them as they pitch to the military. The model, pioneered by Palantir and SpaceX, has since propelled companies like Anduril, Shield AI, and dozens of other smaller startups into the business of war as venture capital piles tens of billions of dollars into defense. Like Anduril, Epirus has direct Palantir roots; it was cofounded by Joe Lonsdale, who also cofounded Palantir, and John Tenet, Lonsdale’s colleague at the time at his venture fund, 8VC. (Tenet, the son of former CIA director George Tenet, may have inspired the company’s name—the elder Tenet’s parents were born in the Epirus region in the northwest of Greece. But the company more often says it’s a reference to the pseudo-mythological Epirus Bow from the 2011 fantasy action movie Immortals, which never runs out of arrows.)  While Epirus is doing business in the new mode, its roots are in the old—specifically in Raytheon, a pioneer in the field of microwave technology. Cofounded by MIT professor Vannevar Bush in 1922, it manufactured vacuum tubes, like those found in old radios. But the company became synonymous with electronic defense during World War II, when Bush spun up a lab to develop early microwave radar technology invented by the British into a workable product, and Raytheon then began mass-producing microwave tubes—known as magnetrons—for the US war effort. By the end of the war in 1945, Raytheon was making 80% of the magnetrons powering Allied radar across the world. From padded foam chambers at the Epirus HQ, Leonidas devices can be safely tested on drones.EPIRUS Large tubes remained the best way to emit high-power microwaves for more than half a century, handily outperforming silicon-based solid-state amplifiers. They’re still around—the microwave on your kitchen counter runs on a vacuum tube magnetron. But tubes have downsides: They’re hot, they’re big, and they require upkeep. (In fact, the other microwave drone zapper currently in the Pentagon pipeline, the Tactical High-power Operational Responder, or THOR, still relies on a physical vacuum tube. It’s reported to be effective at downing drones in tests but takes up a whole shipping container and needs a dish antenna to zap its targets.) By the 2000s, new methods of building solid-state amplifiers out of materials like gallium nitride started to mature and were able to handle more power than silicon without melting or shorting out. The US Navy spent hundreds of millions of dollars on cutting-edge microwave contracts, one for a project at Raytheon called Next Generation Jammer—geared specifically toward designing a new way to make high-powered microwaves that work at extremely long distances. Lowery, the Epirus CEO, began his career working on nuclear reactors on Navy aircraft carriers before he became the chief engineer for Next Generation Jammer at Raytheon in 2010. There, he and his team worked on a system that relied on many of the same fundamentals that now power the Leonidas—using the same type of amplifier material and antenna setup to fry the electronics of a small target at much closer range rather than disrupting the radar of a target hundreds of miles away.  The similarity is not a coincidence: Two engineers from Next Generation Jammer helped launch Epirus in 2018. Lowery—who by then was working at the augmented-reality startup RealWear, which makes industrial smart glasses—joined Epirus in 2021 to run product development and was asked to take the top spot as CEO in 2023, as Leonidas became a fully formed machine. Much of the founding team has since departed for other projects, but Raytheon still runs through the company’s collective CV: ex-Raytheon radar engineer Matt Markel started in January as the new CTO, and Epirus’s chief engineer for defense, its VP of engineering, its VP of operations, and a number of employees all have Raytheon roots as well. Markel tells me that the Epirus way of working wouldn’t have flown at one of the big defense contractors: “They never would have tried spinning off the technology into a new application without a contract lined up.” The Epirus engineers saw the use case, raised money to start building Leonidas, and already had prototypes in the works before any military branch started awarding money to work on the project. Waiting for the starting gun On the wall of Lowery’s office are two mementos from testing days at an Army proving ground: a trophy wing from a larger drone, signed by the whole testing team, and a framed photo documenting the Leonidas’s carnage—a stack of dozens of inoperative drones piled up in a heap.  Despite what seems to have been an impressive test show, it’s still impossible from the outside to determine whether Epirus’s tech is ready to fully deliver if the swarms descend.  The Army would not comment specifically on the efficacy of any new weapons in testing or early deployment, including the Leonidas system. A spokesperson for the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, or RCCTO, which is the subsection responsible for contracting with Epirus to date, would only say in a statement that it is “committed to developing and fielding innovative Directed Energy solutions to address evolving threats.”  But various high-ranking officers appear to be giving Epirus a public vote of confidence. The three-star general who runs RCCTO and oversaw the Leonidas testing last summer told Breaking Defense that “the system actually worked very well,” even if there was work to be done on “how the weapon system fits into the larger kill chain.” And when former secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, then the service’s highest-ranking civilian, gave a parting interview this past January, she mentioned Epirus in all but name, citing “one company” that is “using high-powered microwaves to basically be able to kill swarms of drones.” She called that kind of capability “critical for the Army.”  The Army isn’t the only branch interested in the microwave weapon. On Epirus’s factory floor when I visited, alongside the big beige Leonidases commissioned by the Army, engineers were building a smaller expeditionary version for the Marines, painted green, which it delivered in late April. Videos show that when it put some of its microwave emitters on a dock and tested them out for the Navy last summer, the microwaves left their targets dead in the water—successfully frying the circuits of outboard motors like the ones propelling Houthi drone boats.  Epirus is also currently working on an even smaller version of the Leonidas that can mount on top of the Army’s Stryker combat vehicles, and it’s testing out attaching a single microwave unit to a small airborne drone, which could work as a highly focused zapper to disable cars, data centers, or single enemy drones.  Epirus’s microwave technology is also being tested in devices smaller than the traditional Leonidas. EPIRUS While neither the Army nor the Navy has yet to announce a contract to start buying Epirus’s systems at scale, the company and its investors are actively preparing for the big orders to start rolling in. It raised $250 million in a funding round in early March to get ready to make as many Leonidases as possible in the coming years, adding to the more than $300 million it’s raised since opening its doors in 2018. “If you invent a force field that works,” Lowery boasts, “you really get a lot of attention.” The task for Epirus now, assuming that its main customers pull the trigger and start buying more Leonidases, is ramping up production while advancing the tech in its systems. Then there are the more prosaic problems of staffing, assembly, and testing at scale. For future generations, Lowery told me, the goal is refining the antenna design and integrating higher-powered microwave amplifiers to push the output into the tens of kilowatts, allowing for increased range and efficacy.  While this could be made harder by Trump’s global trade war, Lowery says he’s not worried about their supply chain; while China produces 98% of the world’s gallium, according to the US Geological Survey, and has choked off exports to the US, Epirus’s chip supplier uses recycled gallium from Japan.  The other outside challenge may be that Epirus isn’t the only company building a drone zapper. One of China’s state-owned defense companies has been working on its own anti-drone high-powered microwave weapon called the Hurricane, which it displayed at a major military show in late 2024.  It may be a sign that anti-electronics force fields will become common among the world’s militaries—and if so, the future of war is unlikely to go back to the status quo ante, and it might zag in a different direction yet again. But military planners believe it’s crucial for the US not to be left behind. So if it works as promised, Epirus could very well change the way that war will play out in the coming decade.  While Miller, the Army CTO, can’t speak directly to Epirus or any specific system, he will say that he believes anti-drone measures are going to have to become ubiquitous for US soldiers. “Counter-UAS [Unmanned Aircraft System] unfortunately is going to be like counter-IED,” he says. “It’s going to be every soldier’s job to think about UAS threats the same way it was to think about IEDs.”  And, he adds, it’s his job and his colleagues’ to make sure that tech so effective it works like “almost magic” is in the hands of the average rifleman. To that end, Lowery told me, Epirus is designing the Leonidas control system to work simply for troops, allowing them to identify a cluster of targets and start zapping with just a click of a button—but only extensive use in the field can prove that out. Epirus CEO Andy Lowery sees the Leonidas as providing a last line of defense against UAVs.EPIRUS In the not-too-distant future, Lowery says, this could mean setting up along the US-Mexico border. But the grandest vision for Epirus’s tech that he says he’s heard is for a city-scale Leonidas along the lines of a ballistic missile defense radar system called PAVE PAWS, which takes up an entire 105-foot-tall building and can detect distant nuclear missile launches. The US set up four in the 1980s, and Taiwan currently has one up on a mountain south of Taipei. Fill a similar-size building full of microwave emitters, and the beam could reach out “10 or 15 miles,” Lowery told me, with one sitting sentinel over Taipei in the north and another over Kaohsiung in the south of Taiwan. Riffing in Greek mythological mode, Lowery said of drones, “I call all these mischief makers. Whether they’re doing drugs or guns across the border or they’re flying over Langley [or] they’re spying on F-35s, they’re all like Icarus. You remember Icarus, with his wax wings? Flying all around—‘Nobody’s going to touch me, nobody’s going to ever hurt me.’” “We built one hell of a wax-wing melter.”  Sam Dean is a reporter focusing on business, tech, and defense. He is writing a book about the recent history of Silicon Valley returning to work with the Pentagon for Viking Press and covering the defense tech industry for a number of publications. Previously, he was a business reporter at the Los Angeles Times. This piece has been updated to clarify that Alex Miller is a civilian intelligence official. 

​​In a quiet residential pocket of Southwest Portland, a mid-century ranch house has been transformed into a family home that embraces its landscape, celebrates material craft, and amplifies the Pacific Northwest’s nuanced natural light. Led by Jeff and Jenny Guggenheim of Guggenheim Architecture and Design Studio, the project reimagines a dated layout with a new architectural clarity — one defined by intimate volumes, warm materials, and integrated moments of delight. “This project began with the desire to create a more functional kitchen and a larger living room that did a better job embracing the backyard,” said Jeff Guggenheim. From that foundational brief, the design grew into a full reorganization of the home, centered on spatial flow, daylight, and a connection to nature. A House That Unfolds The original home, while structurally sound, lacked visual and spatial cohesion. The design team addressed this by establishing a new living room addition as the project’s anchor. “We used the living room as the anchor point,” Guggenheim explained, “and brought similar materials throughout the house to create a consistent aesthetic.” This strategy informed every subsequent design move, from the cabinetry details to the new openings created through Marvin doors and windows. “We didn’t want the house to feel like one part was remodeled and the other wasn’t,” Guggenheim said. “We wanted it to feel like it was all built at the same time.” Cohesion was therefore prioritized in the spatial layout, with a focus on subtle transitions between rooms. “When we’re designing a home, we think about flow and cohesiveness — how you might pass through different spaces and ensuring that those spaces all relate to each other,” he said. “There are threads of similarity that hold it together.” The Joy of Whimsical Architecture Though grounded in modernism, the house also reflects the spirit of the young family that lives there. “Early on in our design process, our client requested spaces that were modern yet warm, and also contained an element of whimsy,” Guggenheim explained. “They have two younger kids and this is a family home.” Whimsy is introduced through unexpected spatial gestures and opportunities for interaction, such as the inclusion of the Marvin Skycove, an innovative glass alcove that extends beyond the envelope of the home. “It’s a window that you can occupy,” Guggenheim said. “You can imagine curling up and reading a book in it, or just looking out at the clouds and daydreaming.” The Skycove supports what the client described as “moments of delight” — an idea that became a conceptual touchstone throughout the design process. “That was the first design meeting I’ve ever been in where we had a client request moments of delight,” he recalled. “How do you create that? Sometimes it’s as simple as a place to sit and read or a dining space that opens to the outdoors.” Windows That Frame Experience Daylight and ventilation played a pivotal role in shaping the home’s interior experience. The kitchen features a Marvin Awaken Skylight positioned directly above the island and sink. The Awaken Skylight is designed to enhance both natural and artificial light in the home, pairing venting capabilities with built-in, tunable lighting that adjusts throughout the day to mirror the changing color temperature of daylight. “We recognized right away that natural light was going to be very important,” Guggenheim said. “We put the skylight front and center, as it gets great morning daylight. When you wake up, you want to make your coffee and be greeted by the rising sun.” In other areas of the home, Marvin’s range of products allowed for functional variation while maintaining a unified aesthetic. “One thing that our office really appreciates about the Marvin product lines is that they all work so well together,” he noted. “We can pick and choose depending on the use of that window, and people can move through the space and feel like they belong to the same design language.” For Guggenheim, windows and doors are more than just architectural components—they are instruments for memory and belonging. “These are the apertures to time and experience,” he said. “You see the sun rise through them and the sunset through them. You see the moon, the stars. Those are the touchpoints that bring delight into a space.” Rooted in the Pacific Northwest While the home’s interiors were comprehensively reimagined, its relationship to the street and neighborhood was handled with care. “We didn’t really make any large changes to the street-facing side,” Guggenheim explained. “The house feels very appropriate to the neighborhood. It doesn’t stick out. That was really important to us.” The home’s exterior scale and material palette allow it to blend naturally into its surroundings while hinting at something more refined within. “I was driving away from here recently and I thought, it’s really nice that the house can be this high level of design but still respectful to its neighbors,” he added. Natural materials, from white oak cabinetry to cast concrete fireplaces, reinforce the project’s grounding in place. “Everything was meticulously crafted,” said Guggenheim. “Everyone who came to the site cared deeply about what they were creating — and that included the window systems.” The ability to match that craftsmanship through Marvin was essential. “It would have been inappropriate to spec a window that didn’t rise to the same level,” he said. “We wanted doors and windows that could complement our cabinetry and its details and also meet the expectations we had for all the other trades on our site.” For Guggenheim, that trust in product is paramount. “Our clients have a lot of trust in us and what we do for them,” he concluded. “And with this in mind, I like to specify Marvin products because I trust that they’re going to be quality, function well, and be well supported through their lifetime.” For architects seeking to create these kinds of connections for their clients, visit Marvin.com. Project photography by 22 Waves. The post Portland Renewal: A Modern Family Home Defined by Light, Craft and Connection appeared first on Journal.

Photogrammetric reconstruction of the submarine USS F-1 on the seafloor west of San Diego, California. CREDIT: Image by Zoe Daheron, ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. In 1917, two US submarines collided off the coast of San Diego and submarine USS F-1 sank to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, along with 19 crew members aboard. The horrible accident, whose wreckage was discovered in 1975, represents the US Naval Submarine Force’s first wartime submarine loss. Now, researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have captured new footage of the 1,300 feet-deep underwater archaeological site. “They were technical dives requiring specialized expertise and equipment,” Anna Michel, a co-lead of the expedition and chief scientist at the National Deep Submergence Facility, said in a statement. “We were careful and methodical in surveying these historical sites so that we could share these stunning images, while also maintaining the reverence these sites deserve.” The high-definition imagining and mapping of the USS F-1 took place during a deep-sea training and engineering mission in February and March. The missions aimed to train future submersible pilots and test the human-occupied vehicle Alvin and autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry.  The team captured never-seen-before images and videos and conducted a sonar survey, which essentially consists of mapping a region by shooting sound waves at it and registering the echo. Imaging specialists combined the 2D images into a 3D model of the wreck—a technique called photogrammetry. Using photogrammetry reveals measurements not just of the submarine but of the marine life that over the past century has claimed the vessel as its own.  Photogrammetric reconstruction of the submarine USS F-1 showing the sub’s stern and propeller. CREDIT: Image by Zoe Daheron, ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “As a Navy veteran, making this dive—together with another Navy veteran and a Navy historian—was a solemn privilege,” said Office of Naval Research Program Officer Rob Sparrock, who was in Alvin when it went down to the wreck. “There was time to contemplate the risks that all mariners, past and present, face. It also reminded me of the importance of these training dives, which leverage the knowledge from past dives, lessons learned and sound engineering.” The researchers also investigated a Navy torpedo bomber training aircraft that went down in the region in 1950. After the dives, they held a remembrance ceremony aboard the research vessel Atlantis during which a bell rang once for each of the crew members lost in 1917.  “History and archaeology are all about people and we felt it was important to read their names aloud,” said Naval History and Heritage Command Underwater Archaeologist Brad Krueger, who also dove in Alvin. “The Navy has a solemn responsibility to ensure the legacies of its lost Sailors are remembered.”

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. This giant microwave may change the future of war Imagine: China deploys hundreds of thousands of autonomous drones in the air, on the sea, and under the water—all armed with explosive warheads or small missiles. These machines descend in a swarm toward military installations on Taiwan and nearby US bases, and over the course of a few hours, a single robotic blitzkrieg overwhelms the US Pacific force before it can even begin to fight back. The proliferation of cheap drones means just about any group with the wherewithal to assemble and launch a swarm could wreak havoc, no expensive jets or massive missile installations required.The US armed forces are now hunting for a solution—and they want it fast. Every branch of the service and a host of defense tech startups are testing out new weapons that promise to disable drones en masse. And one of these is microwaves: high-powered electronic devices that push out kilowatts of power to zap the circuits of a drone as if it were the tinfoil you forgot to take off your leftovers when you heated them up.Read the full story. —Sam Dean This article is part of the Big Story series: MIT Technology Review’s most important, ambitious reporting that takes a deep look at the technologies that are coming next and what they will mean for us and the world we live in. Check out the rest of them here. What will power AI’s growth? Last week we published Power Hungry, a series that takes a hard look at the expected energy demands of AI. Last week in this newsletter, I broke down its centerpiece, an analysis I did with my colleague James O’Donnell. But this week, I want to talk about another story that I also wrote for that package, which focused on nuclear energy. As I discovered, building new nuclear plants isn’t so simple or so fast. And as my colleague David Rotman lays out in his story, the AI boom could wind up relying on another energy source: fossil fuels. So what’s going to power AI? Read the full story.—Casey Crownhart This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Elon Musk is leaving his role in the Trump administration  To focus on rebuilding the damaged brand reputations of Tesla and SpaceX. (Axios)+ Musk has complained that DOGE has become a government scapegoat. (WP $)+ Tesla shareholders have asked its board to lay out a succession plan. (CNN)+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)2 The US will start revoking the visas of Chinese students Including those studying in what the US government deems “critical fields.” (Politico)+ It’s also ordered US chip software suppliers to stop selling to China. (FT $)3 The US is storing the DNA of migrant childrenIt’s been uploaded into a criminal database to track them as they age. (Wired $) + The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age. (MIT Technology Review)4 RFK Jr is threatening to ban federal scientists from top journals Instead, they may be forced to publish in state-run alternatives. (The Hill)+ He accused major medical journals of being funded by Big Pharma. (Stat) 5 India and Pakistan are locked in disinformation warfare False reports and doctored images are circulating online. (The Guardian)+ Fact checkers are working around the clock to debunk fake news. (Reuters)6 How North Korea is infiltrating remote jobs in the USWith the help of regular Americans. (WSJ $) 7 This Discord community is creating its own hair-growth drugsMen are going to extreme lengths to reverse their hair loss. (404 Media) 8 Inside YouTube’s quest to dominate your living room 📺 It wants to move away from controversial clips and into prestige TV. (Bloomberg $) 9 Sergey Brin threatens AI models with physical violence The Google co-founder insists that it produces better results. (The Register)10 It must be nice to be a moving day influencer 🏠 They reap all of the benefits, with none of the stress. (NY Mag $) Quote of the day “I studied in the US because I loved what America is about: it’s open, inclusive and diverse. Now my students and I feel slapped in the face by Trump’s policy.” —Cathy Tu, a Chinese AI researcher, tells the Washington Post why many of her students are already applying to universities outside the US after the Trump administration announced a crackdown on visas for Chinese students. One more thing The second wave of AI coding is hereAsk people building generative AI what generative AI is good for right now—what they’re really fired up about—and many will tell you: coding. Everyone from established AI giants to buzzy startups is promising to take coding assistants to the next level. Instead of providing developers with a kind of supercharged autocomplete, this next generation can prototype, test, and debug code for you. The upshot is that developers could essentially turn into managers, who may spend more time reviewing and correcting code written by a model than writing it from scratch themselves.But there’s more. Many of the people building generative coding assistants think that they could be a fast track to artificial general intelligence, the hypothetical superhuman technology that a number of top firms claim to have in their sights. Read the full story.—Will Douglas Heaven We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + If you’ve ever dreamed of owning a piece of cinematic history, more than 400 of David Lynch’s personal items are going up for auction.+ How accurate are those Hollywood films based on true stories? Let's find out.+ Rest in peace Chicago Mike: the legendary hype man to Kool & the Gang.+ How to fully trust in one another.