O Plant-based Ton That Dam Cafe Restaurant / xưởng xépSave this picture!© xưởng xépRestaurant, Adaptive Reuse•Nguyễn Thái Bình, Vietnam Architects: xưởng xép Area Area of this architecture project Area:  160 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2023 Photographs Photographs:xưởng xép Lead Architect: Lam Bao More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. Tucked away within the dense fabric of the city, this modest and unassuming market offers a distinct counterpoint to the surrounding high-rise office buildings. Amid the city's rapid pace of development, its continued presence acts as a memory anchor—a place where familiar, everyday spaces persist, sustained by the enduring engagement of the local community.Save this picture!Save this picture!Set against that backdrop, the restaurant approaches the site as a careful addition—one that doesn't seek to stand out, but instead contributes a new rhythm to a space already rich with use and memory. The design builds upon the existing values of the old house, transforming them into a spatial experience that responds to contemporary needs.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!On the ground floor, the original timber beam structure—characteristic of traditional Chinese-influenced housing—is retained and repurposed as a dining area with a notably low ceiling. This spatial arrangement fosters a sense of intimacy, evoking the feeling of traditional communal meals: low tables, shared food, and a sense of togetherness.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!In contrast, the upper floor presents a loftier, more open volume, with the original roof structure preserved almost entirely. Natural light is filtered in through lightweight materials—such as wire mesh, planted foam panels, and subtly integrated lighting. Large-scale pendant lights are positioned in dialogue with the exposed timber, providing both a gentle sense of enclosure and a visual rhythm that ties the interior to the building's overall structure.Save this picture!Save this picture!The project is guided by an ethos of restraint, continuity, and reinterpretation. The new space does not override the old; rather, it seeks to clarify and reframe its value through a more contemporary and refined design language. The transitions between spatial layers, materials, and functions are intentionally composed—allowing the new architecture not only to settle naturally within the neighborhood, but to coexist and carry forward the narratives already deeply embedded in the site.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Ton That Dam, Ward Nguyen Thai Binh, Dist 1, HCMC, VietnamLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this office Published on May 31, 2025Cite: "O Plant-based Ton That Dam Cafe Restaurant / xưởng xép" 31 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030545/o-plant-based-ton-that-dam-cafe-restaurant-xuong-xep&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

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Women weren’t allowed to officially serve in combat jobs when Emelie Vanasse started her ROTC program at George Washington University. Instead, she used her biology degree to serve as a medical officer — but it still bothered Vanasse to be shut out of something just because she was a woman. “I always felt like, who really has the audacity to tell me that I can’t be in combat arms? I’m resilient, I am tough, I can make decisions in stressful environments,” Vanasse said.By 2015, the Obama administration opened all combat jobs to women, despite a plea from senior leaders in the Marine Corps to keep certain frontline units male only. Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters that, “We cannot afford to cut ourselves off from half the country’s talents and skills.”The policy change meant that women could attend Ranger school, the training ground for the Army Rangers, an elite special operations infantry unit. When Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver became the first women to graduate from the school in 2015, Vanasse taped their photos to her desk and swore she would be next, no matter what it took. She went on to become one of the first women to serve as an Army infantry officer and graduated from Ranger school in 2017. After the Pentagon integrated women into combat jobs, the services developed specific fitness standards for jobs like infantry and armor with equal standards for men and women. Special operations and other highly specialized units require additional qualification courses that are also gender-neutral. To continue past the first day of Ranger school, candidates must pass the Ranger Physical Fitness test, for which there is only one standard. Only the semi-annual fitness tests that service members take, which vary by branch, are scaled for age and gender.Despite that, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has continued to insist that the standards were lowered for combat roles. In a podcast interview in November, Hegseth said, “We’ve changed the standards in putting [women in combat], which means you’ve changed the capability of that unit.” (Despite Hegseth’s remark, many women worked alongside male infantry units in Iraq and Afghanistan, facing the same dangerous conditions.)In the same interview, Hegseth said that he didn’t believe women should serve in combat roles.In March, Hegseth ordered the military services to make the basic fitness standards for all combat jobs gender-neutral. The Army is the first service to comply: Beginning June 1, most combat specialties will require women to meet the male standard for basic physical fitness, something most women serving in active-duty combat roles are already able to do.Vanasse told Noel King on Today, Explained what it was like to attend Ranger School at a time when some men didn’t want to see a woman in the ranks. What is Ranger School?I went to Ranger School on January 1, 2017. I woke up at 3 am that day in Fort Benning, Georgia, shaved my head, a quarter-inch all the way around, just like the men. Took my last hot shower, choked down some French toast, and then I drove to Camp Rogers, and I remember being very acutely aware of the pain that the school would inflict, both physically and mentally. I was also very aware that there was kind of half of this population of objective graders that just kind of hated my guts for even showing up. They hated you for showing up because you’re a woman?Back in 2016 and 2017, it was so new to have women in Ranger School. I used to think, I don’t have to just be good, I have to be lucky. I have to get a grader who is willing to let a woman pass. I had dark times at that school. I tasted real failure. I sat under a poncho in torrential rain and I shivered so hard my whole body cramped. I put on a ruck that weighed 130 pounds and I crawled up a mountain on my hands and knees. I hallucinated a donut shop in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains and I cried one morning when someone told me I had to get out of my sleeping bag. But I think all of those experiences are quintessential Ranger School experiences. They’re what everyone goes through there. And I think the point of the school is that failure, that suffering, it’s not inherently bad, right? In a way, I like to think Ranger School was the most simplistic form of gender integration that ever could have happened because if I was contributing to the team, there was no individual out there that really had the luxury of disliking or excluding me. When you wanted to give up, what did you tell yourself? What was going through your head? I don’t think I ever considered quitting Ranger School. I just knew that it was something that I could get through and had the confidence to continue. I had a thought going in of What could be so bad that would make me quit? and the answer that I found throughout the school was, Nothing. Did you ever feel like they had lowered the standards for you compared to the men who were alongside you?No. Never. I did the same thing that the men did. I did the same Ranger physical fitness test that all the men took. I ran five miles in 40 minutes. I did 49 pushups, 59 situps, six pullups. I rucked 12 miles in three hours with a 45-pound ruck. I climbed the same mountains. I carried the same stuff. I carried the same exact packing list they did, plus 250 tampons for some reason. At no point were the standards lowered for me. Whose idea was it for you to carry 250 tampons? It was not mine! It was a misguided effort to have everyone very prepared for the first women coming through Ranger School.In Ranger School, there’s only one standard for the fitness test. Everybody has to meet it, and that allows you to get out of Ranger School and say, “Look, fellas, I took the same test as the men and I passed.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is saying that Army combat jobs should only have one standard of fitness for both men and women. And there’s part of me that thinks: Doesn’t that allow the women who meet the standards to be like, look, We met the same standards as the men. Nothing suspicious here, guys. I think gender-neutral standards for combat arms are very important. It should not be discounted how important physical fitness is for combat arms. I think there’s nuance in determining what is a standard that is useful for combat arms, right? But it’s an important thing. And there have been gender-neutral standards for combat arms. In things like Infantry Basic Officer Leader Course, which is the initial basic training for officers going into the infantry, there are gender-neutral standards that you have to meet: You have to run five miles in 40 minutes, you have to do a 12-mile ruck. All of those standards have remained the same. Pete Hegseth is specifically referring to the Army Combat Physical Fitness test, and to a certain extent I agree, it should be gender-neutral for combat arms. But I think there’s nuance in determining what exactly combat arms entails physically.Secretary Hegseth has a lot to say about women, and sometimes he says it directly and sometimes he alludes to it. What he often does is he talks about lethality as something that is critically important for the military. He says the Army in particular needs more of it, but he never really defines what he means by lethality. What is the definition as you understand it? There’s a component of lethality that is physical fitness and it should not be discounted. But lethality extends far beyond that, right? It’s tactical skills, it’s decision-making, it’s leadership, it’s grit, it’s the ability to build trust and instill purpose and a group of people. It’s how quick a fire team in my platoon can react to contact. How well my SAW [Squad Automatic Weapon] gunner can shoot, how quickly I can employ and integrate combat assets, how fast I can maneuver a squad. All of those things take physical fitness, but they certainly take more than just physical fitness. There’s more to lethality than just how fast you can run and how many pushups you can do.To an average civilian like myself, I hear lethality and I think of the dictionary definition, the ability to kill. Does this definition of lethality involve the ability, physically and emotionally and psychologically, to kill another person? Absolutely. And so when Secretary Hegseth casts doubt on the ability of women to be as lethal as men, do you think there’s some stuff baked in there that maybe gets to his idea of what women are willing and able to do?Yes, possibly. I think the [secretary’s] message is pretty clear. According to him, the women in combat arms achieved success because the standards were lowered for them. We were never accommodated and the standards were never lowered.What’s your response, then, to hearing the Secretary of Defense say women don’t belong in combat? It makes me irate, to be honest. Like, it’s just a complete discounting of all of the accomplishments of the women that came before us. Do you think that if Secretary Hegseth could take a look at what you did in Ranger School, and he could hear from you that there were no second chances, there were no excuses, there was no babying, the men didn’t treat you nicer just because you were a woman, do you think he’d change his mind about women serving in combat? I’d like to think he would, but I’ve met plenty of people whose minds couldn’t be changed by reality. I’d love it if he went to Ranger School. He has a lot of opinions about Ranger School for someone who does not have his Ranger tab.What is a Ranger tab, for civilians? A Ranger tab is what you receive upon graduating Ranger School, which means you have passed all three phases and you are now Ranger-qualified in the military.You have that. And the Secretary of Defense doesn’t. He does not, though he has a lot of opinions about Ranger School.See More:

Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, talks about AI regulation. FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP via Getty Images 2025-05-31T21:40:40Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, has some ideas on open-source regulation. LeCun thinks open-source AI should be an international resource. Countries must ensure they are not "impeding open source platforms," he said. AI has surged to the top of the diplomatic agenda in the past couple of years.And one of the leading topics of discussion among researchers, tech executives, and policymakers is how open-source models — which are free for anyone to use and modify — should be governed.At the AI Action Summit in Paris earlier this year, Meta's chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, said he'd like to see a world in which "we'll train our open-source platforms in a distributed fashion with data centers spread across the world." Each will have access to its own data sources, which they may keep confidential, but "they will contribute to a common model that will essentially constitute a repository of all human knowledge," he said.This repository will be larger than what any one entity, whether a country or company, can handle. India, for example, may not give away a body of knowledge comprising all the languages and dialects spoken there to a tech company. However, "they would be happy to contribute to training a big model, if they can, that is open source," he said.To achieve that vision, though, "countries have to be really careful with regulations and legislation." He said countries shouldn't impede open-source, but favor it.Even for closed-loop systems, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said international regulation is critical."I think there will come a time in the not-so-distant future, like we're not talking decades and decades from now, where frontier AI systems are capable of causing significant global harm," Altman said on the All-In podcast last year.Altman believes those systems will have a "negative impact way beyond the realm of one country" and said he wanted to see them regulated by "an international agency looking at the most powerful systems and ensuring reasonable safety testing." Recommended video

TechTarget and Informa Tech’s Digital Business Combine.TechTarget and InformaTechTarget and Informa Tech’s Digital Business Combine.Together, we power an unparalleled network of 220+ online properties covering 10,000+ granular topics, serving an audience of 50+ million professionals with original, objective content from trusted sources. We help you gain critical insights and make more informed decisions across your business priorities.Preparing Your IT Infrastructure for the AI EraPreparing Your IT Infrastructure for the AI EraThis session highlights AI's unique requirements and why a traditional IT infrastructure won't be enough to support it.Brandon Taylor, Digital Editorial Program ManagerMay 31, 20255 Min ViewWith AI's unique capabilities comes unique IT infrastructure and data management needs in the modern landscape. In this archived keynote session, Eve Logunova-Parker, founder and CEO of Evenness, reveals strategies and best practices for preparing your systems and scaling your infrastructure to support advanced AI applications. This segment was part of our live webinar titled, “How to Prepare Your IT Infrastructure For AI.” The event was presented by InformationWeek on May 20, 2025.Watch the archived “How to Prepare Your IT Infrastructure For AI” live webinar on-demand today.About the AuthorBrandon TaylorDigital Editorial Program ManagerBrandon Taylor enables successful delivery of sponsored content programs across Enterprise IT media brands: Data Center Knowledge, InformationWeek, ITPro Today and Network Computing.See more from Brandon TaylorWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like

Best of the rest Research roundup: 7 stories we almost missed Also: drumming chimpanzees, picking styles of two jazz greats, and an ancient underground city's soundscape Jennifer Ouellette – May 31, 2025 5:37 pm | 4 Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin. Credit: David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin. Credit: David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. May's list includes a nifty experiment to make a predicted effect of special relativity visible; a ping-pong playing robot that can return hits with 88 percent accuracy; and the discovery of the rare genetic mutation that makes orange cats orange, among other highlights. Special relativity made visible Credit: TU Wien Perhaps the most well-known feature of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity is time dilation and length contraction. In 1959, two physicists predicted another feature of relativistic motion: an object moving near the speed of light should also appear to be rotated. It's not been possible to demonstrate this experimentally, however—until now. Physicists at the Vienna University of Technology figured out how to reproduce this rotational effect in the lab using laser pulses and precision cameras, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Physics. They found their inspiration in art, specifically an earlier collaboration with an artist named Enar de Dios Rodriguez, who collaborated with VUT and the University of Vienna on a project involving ultra-fast photography and slow light. For this latest research, they used objects shaped like a cube and a sphere and moved them around the lab while zapping them with ultrashort laser pulses, recording the flashes with a high-speed camera. Getting the timing just right effectively yields similar results to a light speed of 2 m/s. After photographing the objects many times using this method, the team then combined the still images into a single image. The results: the cube looked twisted and the sphere's North Pole was in a different location—a demonstration of the rotational effect predicted back in 1959. DOI: Communications Physics, 2025. 10.1038/s42005-025-02003-6  (About DOIs). Drumming chimpanzees A chimpanzee feeling the rhythm. Credit: Current Biology/Eleuteri et al., 2025. Chimpanzees are known to "drum" on the roots of trees as a means of communication, often combining that action with what are known as "pant-hoot" vocalizations (see above video). Scientists have found that the chimps' drumming exhibits key elements of musical rhythm much like humans, according to  a paper published in the journal Current Biology—specifically non-random timing and isochrony. And chimps from different geographical regions have different drumming rhythms. Back in 2022, the same team observed that individual chimps had unique styles of "buttress drumming," which served as a kind of communication, letting others in the same group know their identity, location, and activity. This time around they wanted to know if this was also true of chimps living in different groups and whether their drumming was rhythmic in nature. So they collected video footage of the drumming behavior among 11 chimpanzee communities across six populations in East Africa (Uganda) and West Africa (Ivory Coast), amounting to 371 drumming bouts. Their analysis of the drum patterns confirmed their hypothesis. The western chimps drummed in regularly spaced hits, used faster tempos, and started drumming earlier during their pant-hoot vocalizations. Eastern chimps would alternate between shorter and longer spaced hits. Since this kind of rhythmic percussion is one of the earliest evolved forms of human musical expression and is ubiquitous across cultures, findings such as this could shed light on how our love of rhythm evolved. DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.019  (About DOIs). Distinctive styles of two jazz greats Jazz lovers likely need no introduction to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery, 20th century guitarists who influenced generations of jazz musicians with their innovative techniques. Montgomery, for instance, didn't use a pick, preferring to pluck the strings with his thumb—a method he developed because he practiced at night after working all day as a machinist and didn't want to wake his children or neighbors. Pass developed his own range of picking techniques, including fingerpicking, hybrid picking, and "flat picking." Chirag Gokani and Preston Wilson, both with Applied Research Laboratories and the University of Texas, Austin, greatly admired both Pass and Montgomery and decided to explore the underlying the acoustics of their distinctive playing, modeling the interactions of the thumb, fingers, and pick with a guitar string. They described their research during a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA. Among their findings: Montgomery achieved his warm tone by playing closer to the bridge and mostly plucking at the string. Pass's rich tone arose from a combination of using a pick and playing closer to the guitar neck. There were also differences in how much a thumb, finger, and pick slip off the string:  use of the thumb (Montgomery) produced more of a "pluck" compared to the pick (Pass), which produced more of a "strike." Gokani and Wilson think their model could be used to synthesize digital guitars with a more realistic sound, as well as helping guitarists better emulate Pass and Montgomery. Sounds of an ancient underground city Credit: Sezin Nas Turkey is home to the underground city Derinkuyu, originally carved out inside soft volcanic rock around the 8th century BCE. It was later expanded to include four main ventilation channels (and some 50,000 smaller shafts) serving seven levels, which could be closed off from the inside with a large rolling stone. The city could hold up to 20,000 people and it  was connected to another underground city, Kaymakli, via tunnels. Derinkuyu helped protect Arab Muslims during the Arab-Byzantine wars, served as a refuge from the Ottomans in the 14th century, and as a haven for Armenians escaping persecution in the early 20th century, among other functions. The tunnels were rediscovered in the 1960s and about half of the city has been open to visitors since 2016. The site is naturally of great archaeological interest, but there has been little to no research on the acoustics of the site, particularly the ventilation channels—one of Derinkuyu's most unique features, according to Sezin Nas, an architectural acoustician at Istanbul Galata University in Turkey.  She gave a talk at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA, about her work on the site's acoustic environment. Nas analyzed a church, a living area, and a kitchen, measuring sound sources and reverberation patterns, among other factors, to create a 3D virtual soundscape. The hope is that a better understanding of this aspect of Derinkuyu could improve the design of future underground urban spaces—as well as one day using her virtual soundscape to enable visitors to experience the sounds of the city themselves. MIT's latest ping-pong robot Robots playing ping-pong have been a thing since the 1980s, of particular interest to scientists because it requires the robot to combine the slow, precise ability to grasp and pick up objects with dynamic, adaptable locomotion. Such robots need high-speed machine vision, fast motors and actuators, precise control, and the ability to make accurate predictions in real time, not to mention being able to develop a game strategy. More recent designs use AI techniques to allow the robots to "learn" from prior data to improve their performance. MIT researchers have built their own version of a ping-pong playing robot, incorporating a lightweight design and the ability to precisely return shots. They built on prior work developing the Humanoid, a small bipedal two-armed robot—specifically, modifying the Humanoid's arm by adding an extra degree of freedom to the wrist so the robot could control a ping-pong paddle. They tested their robot by mounting it on a ping-pong table and lobbing 150 balls at it from the other side of the table, capturing the action with high-speed cameras. The new bot can execute three different swing types (loop, drive, and chip) and during the trial runs it returned the ball with impressive accuracy across all three types: 88.4 percent, 89.2 percent, and 87.5 percent, respectively. Subsequent tweaks to theirrystem brought the robot's strike speed up to 19 meters per second (about 42 MPH), close to the 12 to 25 meters per second of advanced human players. The addition of control algorithms gave the robot the ability to aim. The robot still has limited mobility and reach because it has to be fixed to the ping-pong table but the MIT researchers plan to rig it to a gantry or wheeled platform in the future to address that shortcoming. Why orange cats are orange Credit: Astropulse/CC BY-SA 3.0 Cat lovers know orange cats are special for more than their unique coloring, but that's the quality that has intrigued scientists for almost a century. Sure, lots of animals have orange, ginger, or yellow hues, like tigers, orangutans, and golden retrievers. But in domestic cats that color is specifically linked to sex. Almost all orange cats are male. Scientists have now identified the genetic mutation responsible and it appears to be unique to cats, according to a paper published in the journal Current Biology. Prior work had narrowed down the region on the X chromosome most likely to contain the relevant mutation. The scientists knew that females usually have just one copy of the mutation and in that case have tortoiseshell (partially orange) coloring, although in rare cases, a female cat will be orange if both X chromosomes have the mutation. Over the last five to ten years, there has been an explosion in genome resources (including complete sequenced genomes) for cats which greatly aided the team's research, along with taking additional DNA samples from cats at spay and neuter clinics. From an initial pool of 51 candidate variants, the scientists narrowed it down to three genes, only one of which was likely to play any role in gene regulation: Arhgap36. It wasn't known to play any role in pigment cells in humans, mice, or non-orange cats. But orange cats are special; their mutation (sex-linked orange) turns on Arhgap36 expression in pigment cells (and only pigment cells), thereby interfering with the molecular pathway that controls coat color in other orange-shaded mammals. The scientists suggest that this is an example of how genes can acquire new functions, thereby enabling species to better adapt and evolve. DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.03.075  (About DOIs). Not a Roman "massacre" after all Credit: Martin Smith In 1936, archaeologists excavating the Iron Age hill fort Maiden Castle in the UK unearthed dozens of human skeletons, all showing signs of lethal injuries to the head and upper body—likely inflicted with weaponry. At the time, this was interpreted as evidence of a pitched battle between the Britons of the local Durotriges tribe and invading Romans. The Romans slaughtered the native inhabitants, thereby bringing a sudden violent end to the Iron Age. At least that's the popular narrative that has prevailed ever since in countless popular articles, books, and documentaries. But a paper published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology calls that narrative into question. Archaeologists at Bournemouth University have re-analyzed those burials, incorporating radiocarbon dating into their efforts. They concluded that those individuals didn't die in a single brutal battle. Rather, it was Britons killing other Britons over multiple generations between the first century BCE and the first century CE—most likely in periodic localized outbursts of violence in the lead-up to the Roman conquest of Britain. It's possible there are still many human remains waiting to be discovered at the site, which could shed further light on what happened at Maiden Castle. DOI: Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2025. 10.1111/ojoa.12324  (About DOIs). Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 4 Comments

Published May 31, 2025 10:00am EDT close iPhone users instructed to take immediate action to avoid data breach: 'Urgent threat' Kurt 'The CyberGuy' Knutsson discusses Elon Musk's possible priorities as he exits his role with the White House and explains the urgent warning for iPhone users to update devices after a 'massive security gap.' Data breaches are no longer rare events but a persistent problem. We’ve been seeing regular incidents at public-facing companies across various sectors, including healthcare, retail and finance. While bad actors are certainly to blame, these corporations aren’t entirely without fault. They often make it easy for hackers to access user data by failing to protect it properly. A recent example came to light when a cybersecurity researcher discovered an open database containing over 184 million account credentials. Illustration of a hacker at work. (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)How the database was uncovered and what it containedCybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler has revealed the existence of an open database that contains 184,162,718 million account credentials. These include email addresses, passwords, usernames and URLs for platforms such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Snapchat. The information also covers banking services, medical platforms and government accounts. Most shockingly, the entire dataset was left completely unsecured. There was no encryption, no authentication required and no form of access control. It was simply a plain text file sitting online for anyone to find.19 BILLION PASSWORDS HAVE LEAKED ONLINE: HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELFFowler located the database during routine scanning of publicly exposed assets. What he found was staggering. The file included hundreds of millions of unique records containing user credentials linked to the world’s largest technology and communication platforms. There were also account details for financial services and official portals used by state institutions.The file was not protected in any way. Anyone who discovered the link could open it in a browser and instantly view sensitive personal data. No software exploit was needed. No password was asked for. It was as open as a public document. Illustration of a hacker at work. (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)Where did the data come fromFowler believes the data was harvested using an infostealer. These lightweight tools are favored by cybercriminals for their ability to silently extract login credentials and other private information from compromised devices. Once stolen, the data is often sold on dark web forums or used in targeted attacks.After reporting the breach, the hosting provider quickly removed access to the file. However, the owner of the database remains unknown. The provider did not disclose who uploaded it or whether the database was part of a legitimate archive that was accidentally published. Fowler could not determine whether this was the result of negligence or an operation with malicious intent.To verify the data, Fowler contacted some individuals listed in the records. Several confirmed that the information was accurate. This confirmation turns what might seem like abstract statistics into something very real. These were not outdated or irrelevant details. These were live credentials that could allow anyone to hijack personal accounts in seconds.1.7 BILLION PASSWORDS LEAKED ON DARK WEB AND WHY YOURS IS AT RISK Login on a tablet. (Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson)6 ways to protect yourself after a data breach1. Change your password on every platform: If your login credentials have been exposed, it’s not enough to change the password on just one account. Cybercriminals often try the same combinations across multiple platforms, hoping to gain access through reused credentials. Start by updating your most critical accounts, email, banking, cloud storage and social media, then move on to others. Use a new, unique password for each platform and avoid variations of old passwords, as they can still be predictable. Consider using a password manager to generate and store complex passwords. Our top-rated password manager delivers powerful protection to help keep your accounts secure. It features real-time data breach monitoring to alert you if your login details have been exposed, plus a built-in data breach scanner that checks your saved emails, passwords and credit card information against known leak databases. A password health checker also highlights weak, reused or compromised passwords so you can strengthen your online defenses with just a few clicks. Get more details about my best expert-reviewed Password Managers of 2025 here.2. Enable two-factor authentication: Two-factor authentication, or 2FA, is a critical security feature that drastically reduces the risk of unauthorized access. Even if someone has your password, they won’t be able to log in without the second verification step, usually a one-time code sent to your phone or an authenticator app. Enable 2FA on all services that support it, especially your email, financial accounts and any service that stores sensitive personal data.3. Watch for unusual account activity: After a breach, it’s common for compromised accounts to be used for spam, scams, or identity theft. Pay close attention to signs such as login attempts from unfamiliar locations, password reset requests you didn’t initiate or unexpected messages sent from your accounts. Most platforms allow you to review login history and connected devices. If you see something off, take action immediately by changing your password and revoking suspicious sessions.4. Invest in personal data removal services: You should also consider a data removal service. Given the scale and frequency of breaches like the one described above, relying on personal caution alone is no longer enough. Automated data removal services can provide an essential extra layer of defense by continuously scanning for and helping eliminate your exposed information from data broker sites and other online sources. While no service promises to remove all your data from the internet, having a removal service is great if you want to constantly monitor and automate the process of removing your information from hundreds of sites continuously over a longer period of time. Check out my top picks for data removal services here. Get a free scan to find out if your personal information is already out on the web.5. Avoid clicking on suspicious links and use strong antivirus software: One of the most common post-breach threats is phishing. Cybercriminals often use information from leaked databases to craft convincing emails that urge you to verify your account or reset your password. Never click on links or download attachments from unknown or suspicious sources. Instead, visit websites by typing the URL directly into your browser. The best way to safeguard yourself from malicious links is to have strong antivirus software installed on all your devices. This protection can also alert you to phishing emails and ransomware scams, keeping your personal information and digital assets safe. Get my picks for the best 2025 antivirus protection winners for your Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices.6. Keep your software and devices up to date: Many cyberattacks exploit known vulnerabilities in outdated software. Operating systems, browsers, antivirus programs and even apps need to be updated regularly to patch security flaws. Turn on automatic updates wherever possible so you’re protected as soon as fixes are released. Staying current with your software is one of the easiest and most effective ways to block malware, ransomware and spyware from infiltrating your system. Kurt’s key takeawaySecurity is not only the responsibility of companies and hosting providers. Users need to adopt better practices, including unique passwords, multifactor authentication and regular reviews of their digital footprint. The careless exposure of over 184 million credentials is not just a mistake. It is an example of how fragile our systems remain when even basic protection is absent. In an era where artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and global connectivity are reshaping technology, it is unacceptable that plain text files containing financial and governmental credentials are still left sitting online.CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPDo you feel that companies are doing enough to protect your data from hackers and other cyber threats? Let us know by writing us atCyberguy.com/ContactFor more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Cyberguy.com/NewsletterAsk Kurt a question or let us know what stories you'd like us to cover.Follow Kurt on his social channels:Answers to the most-asked CyberGuy questions:New from Kurt:Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. All rights reserved.   Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson is an award-winning tech journalist who has a deep love of technology, gear and gadgets that make life better with his contributions for Fox News & FOX Business beginning mornings on "FOX & Friends." Got a tech question? Get Kurt’s free CyberGuy Newsletter, share your voice, a story idea or comment at CyberGuy.com.

William Morris Biscuit Set. All images courtesy of Ella Hawkins, shared with permission Dr. Ella Hawkins Reimagines Ancient Artifacts and Prized Objects as Edible Replicas May 31, 2025 Grace Ebert Academic research is notoriously niche and often opaque, but Dr. Ella Hawkins has found a crowd-pleasing way to share her studies. The Birmingham-based artist and design historian translates her interests in Shakespeare performance, costume, and matieral culture into edible replicas. Hawkins bakes batches of cookies that she tops with royal icing. Decorating takes a scholarly turn, as she uses tiny paintbrushes and a mini projector to help trace imagery of William Morris’ ornate floral motifs or coastal scenes from English delftware. Rendering a design on a single cookie can take anywhere between two and four hours, depending on the complexity. Unsurprisingly, minuscule calligraphy and portraits are most demanding. Ancient Greek Pottery Sherds Hawkins first merged baking and her research about a decade ago while studying undergraduate costume design at the University of Warwick. She decided to bake cupcakes based on Shakespeare productions that her class examined. “It felt like a fun way to look back at all the different design styles we’d covered through the year,” she tells Colossal, adding: I carried on decorating cakes and cookies based on costume design through my PhD (mainly as goodies to give out during talks, or as gifts for designers that I interviewed), then branched out and spent lots of time doing cookie versions of other artefacts to keep busy during the pandemic. She has since published an academic book on the topic and is a senior lecturer at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. But she also continues to translate artifacts and prized objects held within museum collections into delicious canvases. There’s a set made in collaboration with Milton’s Cottage, a museum in the country house where John Milton finished his epic Paradise Lost. Anchored by a delicately crosshatched portrait evoking that of the frontispiece, the collection contains typographic titles and signs that appear straight from a 17th-century book. Delftware Tiles Hawkins ventures farther back in history to ancient Greece with a collection of pottery sherds inspired by objects within the Ashmolean Museum. With a bowed surface to mimic a vessel’s curvature, the irregular shapes feature fragments of various motifs and figures to which she applied a sgraffito technique, a Renaissance method of scratching a surface to reveal the layer below. The weathered appearance is the result of blotting a base of pale brown-grey before using a scribe tool to scratch and crack the royal icing coating the surface. She then lined these etchings with a mix of vodka and black food coloring to mimic dirt and wear. (It’s worth taking a look at this process video.) Other than a select few preserved for talks and events, Hawkins assures us that the rest of her cookies are eaten. Find more of her work on her website and Instagram. Medieval Tiles, inspired by The Tristram Tiles, Chertsey, Surrey, England (c. 1260s-70s) Milton’s Cottage Biscuit Set developed in collaboration with Milton’s Cottage Outlander Biscuit Set Elizabethan Gauntlet Biscuit Set Next article

It’s no surprise that many big, left-leaning social media accounts have recently joined Bluesky — but a new analysis from the Pew Research Center attempts to quantify that shift. This comes as an update to Pew’s news influencer report released in November 2024, which did not include Bluesky in its numbers. The report focused on a relatively small group of 500 influencers, all of whom have more than 100,000 followers on at least one major platform and post regularly about current events. For this Bluesky-centric update, Pew looked at those same influencers (as opposed to accounts that may have found a big audience on Bluesky exclusively) and saw that in February/March, 43% of them had an account on Bluesky. Just over half (51%) of those accounts were created after the 2024 presidential election. There’s a big divide between influencers on the right and the left, with 69% of the left-leaning accounts (the ones that explicitly identified as liberals or Democrats and expressed support for Kamala Harris or Joe Biden before the presidential election) making the jump to Bluesky, while only 15% of the conservative ones did the same. This movement wasn’t necessarily at the expense of X (formerly Twitter). While X owner Elon Musk’s alliance with now-President Donald Trump seemed to drive new users to Bluesky, 82% of the influencers tracked by Pew still had an account on X, down only slightly from 85% in summer 2025. In other words, even if left-leaning influencers are dipping their toes into Bluesky, most of them (87%) haven’t abandoned X. Pew also says most influencers continue to post more regularly on X than on Bluesky. However, Bluesky activity does appear to be picking up — the number of influencers on Bluesky who are actually posting grew from 54% in the first week of January to 66% in the last full week of March. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. 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

Image: Ollie Reynolds / Nintendo LifeLast year, we were kindly sent a sample of 'The Most Relaxing Video Games' from Ryan Janes, a lovely book that delved into a collection of games handpicked to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Now, Janes is back with another book, this time looking at some of the best PvP games ever made – in fact, it's straight up called 'The Best Competitive Multiplayer Games', how about that! Much like the first book, this one doesn't merely list out a bunch of games and have done with it, but instead incorporates a lot of Janes' own personal history and anecdotes, making for a pleasant read from start to finish.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube814kWatch on YouTube It also happens to be chock-full of Nintendo titles; obvious choices like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Nintendo Land, and Splatoon 3, but also games that might fly under the radar in the modern age: Pikmin 3, Warioware, Inc.: Mega Party Game$!, and Kirby's Dream Course, to name but a few. Other platforms are represented too, mind you, with classics like Tekken 3, The Typing of the Dead, and Marvel Snap all featured. If you picked up Janes' first book and enjoyed it, then this is more of the delightful same. It's got lots of interesting facts that you might not have known before, plenty of cool choices that we perhaps won't have considered ourselves, and the product itself remains high quality and pleasantly big; a lovely coffee table book, then. Images: Ollie Reynolds / Nintendo Life Images: Ollie Reynolds / Nintendo Life Image: Ollie Reynolds / Nintendo Life The Best Competitive Multiplayer Games is available now via Pen and Sword. Huge thanks to Ryan Janes for sending a sample for our perusement. Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information. Have you nabbed this book already? What do you make of it? Let us know your thoughts with a comment in the usual place.