Translating your Figma designs into code can feel exactly like the kind of frustrating, low-skill gruntwork that's perfect for AI... except that most of us have also watched AI butcher hopeful screenshots into unresponsive spaghetti.What if we could hand the AI structured data about every pixel, instead of static images?This is how Figma Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers work. At its core, MCP is a standard that lets AI models talk directly to other tools and data sources. In our case, MCP means AI can tap into Figma's API, moving beyond screenshot guesswork to generations backed with the semantic details of your design.Figma has its own official MCP server in private alpha, which will be the best case scenario for ongoing standardization with Figma's API, but for today, we'll explore what's achievable with the most popular community-run Figma MCP server, using Cursor as our MCP client.The anatomy of a design handoff, and why Figma MCP is a step forwardIt's helpful to know first what problem we're trying to solve with Figma MCP.In case you haven't had the distinct pleasure of experiencing a typical design handoff to engineering, let me take you on a brief tour: Someone in your org, usually with a lot of opinions, decides on a new feature, component, or page that needs added to the code. Your design team creates a mockup. It is beautiful and full of potential. If you're really lucky, it's even practical to implement in code. You're often not really lucky. You begin to think how to implement the design. Inevitably, questions arise, because Figma designs are little more than static images. What happens when you hover this button? Is there an animation on scroll? Is this still legible in tablet size? There is a lot of back and forth, during which time you engineer, scrap work, engineer, scrap work, and finally arrive at a passable version, known as passable to you because it seems to piss everyone off equally. Now, finally, you can do the fun part: finesse. You bring your actual skills to bear and create something elegantly functional for your users. There may be more iterations after this, but you're happy for now.Sound familiar? Hopefully, it goes better at your org.Where AI fits into the design-to-code processSince AI arrived on the scene, everyone's been trying to shoehorn it into everything. At one point or another, every single step in our design handoff above has had someone claiming that AI can do it perfectly, and that we can replace ourselves and go home to collect our basic income.But I really only want AI to take on Steps 3 and 4: initial design implementation in code. For the rest, I very much like humans in charge. This is why something like a design-to-code AI excites me. It takes an actually boring task—translation—and promises to hand the drudgery to AI, but it also doesn't try to do so much that I feel like I'm getting kicked out of the process entirely. AI scaffolds the boilerplate, and I can just edit the details.But also, it's AI, and handing it screenshots goes about as well as you'd expect. It's like if you've ever tried to draw a friend's face from memory. Sure, you can kinda tell it's them.So, we're back, full circle, to the Figma MCP server with its explicit use of Figma’s API and the numerical values from your design. Let's try it and see how much better the results may be.How to use the Figma MCP serverOkay, down to business. Feel free to follow along. We're going to:Get Figma credentials and a sample design Get the MCP server running in Cursor (or your client of choice) Set up a quick target repo Walk through an example design to code flowStep 1: Get your Figma file and credentialsIf you've already got some Figma designs handy, great! It's more rewarding to see your own designs come to life. Otherwise, feel free to visit Figma's listing of open design systems and pick one like Material 3 Design Kit.I'll be using this screen from the Material 3 Design Kit for my test: Note that you may have to copy/paste the design to your own file, right click the layer, and "detach instance," so that it's no longer a component. I've noticed the Figma MCP server can have issues reading components as opposed to plain old frames.Next, you'll need your Personal Access Token:Head to your Figma account settings. Go to the Security tab. Generate a new token with the permissions and expiry date you prefer.Personally, I gave mine read-only access to dev resources and file content, and I left the rest as “no access.”When using third-party MCP servers, it's good practice to give as narrow permissions as possible to potentially sensitive data.Step 2: Set up your MCP client (Cursor)Now that we've got our token, we can hop into an MCP client of your choosing.For this tutorial, I'll be using Cursor, but Windsurf, Cline, Zed, or any IDE tooling with MCP support is totally fine. (Here’s a breakdown of the differences.) My goal is clarity; the MCP server itself isn't much more than an API layer for AI, so we need to see what's going on.In Cursor, head to Cursor Settings -> MCP -> Add new global MCP server. Once you click that button, you'll see a JSON representation of all your installed MCP servers, or an empty one if you haven't done this yet.You can add the community Figma MCP server like such:{ "mcpServers": { "Framelink Figma MCP": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "figma-developer-mcp", "--figma-api-key=YOUR_FIGMA_ACCESS_TOKEN", "--stdio"] } } }To ensure Cursor can use npx, make sure you have Node installed on your system.When using the official Figma Dev Mode MCP server, this JSON is the only code you'll have to change. Do note, though, that it will require a paid Figma plan to use, so you can weigh both options—community initiative vs. standardized support.Now, when you prompt Cursor in Agent mode, you'll see the AI make tool calls to the MCP server when you say things like, "Use the Figma MCP to..."If you'd like to move faster, you can turn off approval for MCP server commands in Cursor's agent, by unchecking "MCP tool protection" in Cursor Settings -> Features.Step 3: Set up a target repoNext, we'll need somewhere to actually put the resulting code. When using this workflow, you're not always going to be starting from scratch; good design to code means implementing Figma designs in existing repos.For our purposes today, I'll just spin up a Next.js starter template, with npx create-next-app@latest.Step 4: ShowtimeOkay, we should be all set. Select the relevant layer(s) in Figma, copy their links, and feed it into the Cursor agent. My prompt is just:Can you replace my homepage with this Figma design? It should be a basic chat interface. Figma frame: <https://www.figma.com/design/CPDcrzkVChAzQ3q1pC5mXd/Figma-MCP-vs.-Builder-Fusion?node-id=2-215&t=K6v805pKyoU4FqdA-4> Please use the Figma MCP server. Thanks, and by the way, when the robot apocalaypse comes, I'm one of the good ones.Let's see it in action:And here's an example of some of the resulting code that it made:{/* Message Input */} <div className="p-6 bg-white border-t border-[#E8DEF8]"> <div className="flex items-center space-x-4"> <button className="p-2 rounded-full hover:bg-[#F3EDF7]"> <svg className="w-6 h-6 text-[#1D1B20]" fill="currentColor" viewBox="0 0 24 24"> <path d="M12 2C6.48 2 2 6.48 2 12s4.48 10 10 10 10-4.48 10-10S17.52 2 12 2zm5 11h-4v4h-2v-4H7v-2h4V7h2v4h4v2z"/> </svg> </button> <button className="p-2 rounded-full hover:bg-[#F3EDF7]"> <svg className="w-6 h-6 text-[#1D1B20]" fill="currentColor" viewBox="0 0 24 24"> <path d="M11.99 2C6.47 2 2 6.48 2 12s4.47 10 9.99 10C17.52 22 22 17.52 22 12S17.52 2 11.99 2zM12 20c-4.42 0-8-3.58-8-8s3.58-8 8-8 8 3.58 8 8-3.58 8-8 8zm3.5-9c.83 0 1.5-.67 1.5-1.5S16.33 8 15.5 8 14 8.67 14 9.5s.67 1.5 1.5 1.5zm-7 0c.83 0 1.5-.67 1.5-1.5S9.33 8 8.5 8 7 8.67 7 9.5 7.67 11 8.5 11zm3.5 6.5c2.33 0 4.31-1.46 5.11-3.5H6.89c.8 2.04 2.78 3.5 5.11 3.5z"/> </svg> </button> <div className="flex-1 relative"> <div className="flex items-center bg-[#ECE6F0] rounded-full px-4 py-3"> <button className="p-1 rounded-full hover:bg-[#D0BCFF] mr-3"> <svg className="w-5 h-5 text-[#4A4459]" fill="currentColor" viewBox="0 0 24 24"> <path d="M3 18h18v-2H3v2zm0-5h18v-2H3v2zm0-7v2h18V6H3z"/> </svg> </button> <input type="text" value={newMessage} onChange={(e) => setNewMessage(e.target.value)} onKeyPress={handleKeyPress} placeholder="Type a message..." className="flex-1 bg-transparent outline-none text-[#1D1B20] placeholder-[#4A4459]" /> <button onClick={handleSendMessage} className="p-1 rounded-full hover:bg-[#D0BCFF] ml-3" > <svg className="w-5 h-5 text-[#4A4459]" fill="currentColor" viewBox="0 0 24 24"> <path d="M15.5 14h-.79l-.28-.27C15.41 12.59 16 11.11 16 9.5 16 5.91 13.09 3 9.5 3S3 5.91 3 9.5 5.91 16 9.5 16c1.61 0 3.09-.59 4.23-1.57l.27.28v.79l5 4.99L20.49 19l-4.99-5zm-6 0C7.01 14 5 11.99 5 9.5S7.01 5 9.5 5 14 7.01 14 9.5 11.99 14 9.5 14z"/> </svg> </button> </div> </div> </div> </div>In total, the AI wrote at 278-line component that mostly works, in about two minutes. Honestly, not bad for a single shot.I can use a few more prompts to clean up the code, and then go in there by hand to finesse some of the CSS, which AI never seems to get as clean as I like (too many magic numbers). But it definitely saves me time over setting this all up by hand.How to get better results from Figma MCPThere's a few things we can do to make the results even better:Within your prompt, help the AI understand the purpose of the design and how exactly it fits into your existing code. Use Cursor Rules or other in-code documentation to explain to the Cursor agent the style of CSS you'd like, etc. Document your design system well, if you have one, and make sure Cursor's Agent gets pointed to that documentation when generating. Don't overwhelm the agent. Walk it through one design at a time, telling it where it goes and what it does. The process isn't fully automatic yet.Basically, it all boils down to more context, given granularly. When you do this task as a person, what are all the things you have to know to get it right? Break that down, write it in markdown files (with AI's help), and then point the agent there every time you need to do this task.Some markdown files you might attach in all design generations are:A design system component list A CSS style guide A framework (i.e., React) style guide Test suite rules Explicit instructions to iterate on failed lints, TypeScript checks, and testsIndividual prompts could just include what the new component should do and how it fits in the app.Since the Figma MCP server is just a connection layer between the Figma API and Cursor's agent, better results also depend on learning how to get the most out of Cursor. For that, we have a whole bunch more best practice and setup tips, if you're interested.More than anything, don't expect perfect results. Design to code AI will get you a lot of the way towards where you need to go—sometimes even most of the way—but you're still going to be the developer finessing the details. The goal is just to save a little time. You're not trying to replace yourself.Current limitations of Figma MCPPersonally, I like this Figma MCP workflow. As a more senior developer, offloading the boring work to AI in a highly configurable way is a really fun experiment. But there's still a lot of limitations.MCP is a dev-only playground. Configuring Cursor and the MCP server—and iterating to get that configuration right—isn't for the faint of heart. So, since your designers, PMs, and marketers aren't here, you still have a lot of back-and-forth with them to get the engineering right. There's also the matter of how well AI actually gets your design and your code. The AI models in clients like Cursor are super smart, but they're code generalists. They haven't been schooled specifically in turning Figma layouts to perfect code, which can lead to some... creative... interpretations. Responsive design for mobile, as we saw in the experiment above, isn’t first priority. It's not a deterministic process. Even if AI has perfect access to Figma data, it can still go off the rails. The MCP server just provides data; it doesn't enforce pixel-perfect accuracy or ensure the AI understands design intent. Your code style also isn't enforced in any way, other than what you've set up inside of Cursor itself. Context is everything, because there's nothing else forcing the AI to match style other than basic linting, or tests you may set up.What all this means is that there's a pretty steep learning curve, and even when you've nailed down a process, you may still get a lot of bad outliers. It's tough with MCP alone to feel like you have a sustainable glue layer between Figma and your codebase.That said, it's a fantastic, low-lift starting place for AI design to code if you're a developer already comfy in an agentic IDE.Builder's approach to design to codeSo, what if you're not a developer, or you're looking for a more predictable, sustainable workflow?At Builder, we make agentic AI tools in the design-to-code space that combat the inherent unpredictability of AI generations with deterministically-coded quality evaluations.Figma to code is a solved problem for us already. Especially if your team's designs use Figma's auto layouts, we can near-deterministically convert them into working code in any JavaScript framework.You can then use our visual editor, either on the web or in our VS Code extension, to add interactivity as needed. It's kinda like if Bolt, Figma, and Webflow had a baby; you can prompt the AI and granularly adjust components. Vibe code DOOM or just fix your padding. Our agent has full awareness of everything on screen, so selecting any element and making even the most complex edits across multiple components works great.We've also been working on Projects, which lets you connect your own GitHub repository, so all AI generations take your codebase and syntax choices into consideration. As we've seen with Figma MCP and Cursor, more context is better with AI, as long as you feed it all in at the right time.Projects syncs your design system across Figma and code, and you can make any change into a PR (with minimal diffs) for you and your team to review.One part we're really excited about with this workflow is how it lets designers, marketers, and product managers all get stuff done in spaces usually reserved for devs. As we've been dogfooding internally, we've seen boards of Jira papercut tickets just kinda... vanish.Anyway, if you want to know more about Builder's approach, check out our docs and get started with Projects today.So, is the Figma MCP worth your time?Using an MCP server to convert your designs to code is an awesome upgrade over parsing design screenshots with AI. Its data-rich approach gets you much farther along, much faster than developer effort alone.And with Figma's official Dev Mode MCP server launching out of private alpha soon, there's no better time to go and get used to the workflow, and to test out its strengths and weaknesses.Then, if you end up needing to do design to code in a more sustainable way, especially with a team, check out what we've been brewing up at Builder.Happy design engineering!

Un pionnier de l’IA veut construire des systèmes non nuisibles à l’humanité L’informaticien Yoshua Bengio annonce la création de LoiZéro, un laboratoire destiné à mettre au point des intelligences artificielles « sûres ». Elles devraient notamment être capables de prévenir les risques liés aux chatbots. Article réservé aux abonnés Yoshua Bengio, professeur titulaire à l’Université de Montréal au Paris Saclay Summit - Choose Science, Saclay, le 12 février 2025. JEAN NICHOLAS GUILLO/REA Yoshua Bengio a de la suite dans les idées. Prix Turing en 2018, directeur scientifique du MILA, l’Institut en intelligence artificielle (IA) de Montréal, cet informaticien canadien est réputé pour être l’un des pionniers de l’apprentissage profond, à l’origine du réveil de l’IA depuis une quinzaine d’années. Il est aussi connu pour alerter, depuis plus récemment, sur les risques inhérents à ces technologies, y compris sur des scénarios catastrophe pouvant conduire à l’anéantissement de l’humanité. En janvier, il publiait un vaste travail qu’il avait coordonné pour évaluer les risques. Si le rapport était équilibré, lui-même a une opinion plus tranchée, s’inquiétant d’une possible extinction de masse et appelant au principe de précaution pour freiner le développement actuel. Le 3 juin, il a franchi une nouvelle étape, ne se contentant plus d’alerter. Il lance, en effet, un nouveau laboratoire de recherche privé pour développer des « solutions techniques de systèmes d’IA sûrs par conception ». C’est-à-dire, comme il le détaille au Monde en visio, pour fabriquer des IA « qui ne se retourneront pas contre nous et qui ne pourront pas être utilisées pour nuire ». Il vous reste 73.38% de cet article à lire. La suite est réservée aux abonnés.

Next week, the former president of “Grant Theft Auto” maker Rockstar North launches his first title since leaving the Take-Two Interactive-owned video game developer and opening his own studio, Build A Rocket Boy: the AAA narrative-driven action-adventure thriller “MindsEye.” Published by IOI Partners, the team behind the “Hitman” franchise, the Unreal Engine 5-built game will debut June 10 across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store with a $59.99 price tag for the standard edition. Related Stories Set in the near-futuristic city of Redrock, “MindsEye” puts players into the role of Jacob Diaz, a former soldier haunted by fragmented memories from his mysterious MindsEye neural implant, as he uncovers a conspiracy involving rogue AI, corporate greed, an unchecked military, and a threat so sinister that it endangers the very survival of humanity. Popular on Variety But the base story isn’t the biggest draw for “MindsEye,” which includes Build A Rocket Boy’s proprietary Game Creation System, that enables players to, well, “craft anything in their minds eye.” Per the studio, “Players can craft their own experiences using all of the ‘MindsEye’ assets, creating everything from custom missions to entirely new scenarios within the game’s expansive, richly detailed world. Whether you’re designing a high-speed chase through Redrock’s bustling cityscapes or a stealth mission in its industrial outskirts, it is designed to be intuitive and easy to use, ensuring that players of all skill levels can bring their imagination to life.” Benzies’ Edinburgh-based Build A Rocket Boy has promised “fresh premium content” will rollout monthly for the game, including regular releases of new missions, challenges and game assets. While “MindsEye” is the first title from Benzies since he launched BARB after leaving Rockstar in 2016 (Benzies was the lead “Grand Theft Auto” developer across the third through fifth games in the franchise, as well as “Grand Theft Auto Online,” and was in a legal battle with parent company Take Two over unpaid royalties from 2016 until 2019), it’s just step one in the prolific producer’s plan to shake up the gaming industry. “At Build A Rocket Boy, our vision goes far beyond a single title,” Benzies told Variety. “‘MindsEye’ is the first episode and central story around which ever-expanding interconnected episodes will span. We’re already working on future episodes, which will introduce alternate realities while maintaining it’s core themes of hope, redemption, and the intrigue of civilizations past and future, drawing from the lore and multiverse concepts.” See Variety‘s full interview with Benzies below, including the inevitable comparisons that will be drawn between “MindsEye” and the aesthetic of the “GTA” franchise, and his hopes for Rockstar Games’ highly anticipated and much-delayed “GTA 6.” Where did the concept for “MindsEye” come from? I pull a lot of inspiration from the real world. Watching the actions of humans – their foibles and their virtues. Watching the advancement of technology and how we adapt, or indeed, do not adapt. We’ve been moving to an automated world for many years now, and the impact on humans, especially with recent advancements in AI, which serves as good fodder for a story and even better for a video game. I think we all have this little nagging feeling about how humans and AI will blend together in the future—will it go smoothly, or will it turn sinister? We’re fans of all different types of media, and we’ve drawn influence from cinematic visionaries like Ridley Scott, Paul Greengrass, Christopher Nolan, and J.J. Abrams, and films like “The Bourne Identity,” “Memento,” and TV series “Lost” — they’re all exploring memory, perception, and control in their own ways. So, while we nod to those influences here and there, we wanted to build something that feels fresh, grounded in today’s world, but still asking the kinds of questions that have always made this genre powerful. With your “GTA” roots, obvious comparisons are already being drawn between the style and aesthetic of that franchise and “MindsEye.” Comparisons will always be made—it’s the way human beings pigeonhole concepts. But “MindsEye” isn’t built to fit into anyone else’s box. Many games share the same core elements: cars, guns, cities, and charismatic characters, and differentiation is even tougher in today’s entertainment landscape. Streaming, social media, and on-demand binge culture have fractured attention spans, and consumer mindshare is a brutal battlefield for all IP. Our industry continues to celebrate each other’s breakthroughs, and I’m proud that our collective innovation is advancing the medium of gaming, even if our paths diverge. As an independent studio we have the freedom to break ground in experimental new ways and the challenge is balancing innovation with familiarity—too much “new” risks alienating fans, too much “same” feels stale. It’s about nailing what makes your game’s world feel alive and urgent. “MindsEye” is about consequence and connection—it’s cinematic, reactive, and meant to feel like a world you’re not just playing in, but able to create in it too. We’re excited to see what they’ve crafted with “GTA VI ,” and I can’t wait to play it as a consumer for the first time. They’re always delivering something new, unique and at a scale that very few can pull off. What does MindsEye represent in BARB’s larger vision and long-term strategy? Are you plotting this out as a multi-game franchise or your first standalone? At Build A Rocket Boy, our vision goes far beyond a single title. “MindsEye” is the first episode and central story around which ever-expanding interconnected episodes will span. We’re already working on future episodes, which will introduce alternate realities while maintaining it’s core themes of hope, redemption, and the intrigue of civilizations past and future, drawing from the lore and multiverse concepts. It’s the future of entertainment to allow active participation so players feel like they have agency and can immerse themselves in our world as they want to. We are introducing three products in one game that will revolutionize AAA-quality interactive gaming and storytelling: “MindsEye” narrative story, Play.MindsEye, and Build.MindsEye. In our tightly crafted action-noir, “MindsEye” narrative story we have rips in time accessed through portals at strategic points throughout the game – so while you play as Jacob Diaz on his personal journey, players can also explore side stories and delve deeper into the backstories of characters they encounter along the way. In this way we are delivering companion content at the same time as the anchor content, weaving a rich narrative tapestry which will continue to evolve and expand giving greater depth to characters so you understand their personality and motivations. How do digital products Play.MindsEye (formerly named Arcadia) and Build.MindsEye (formerly Everywhere) tie in to plans for “MindsEye” and what BARB wants to offer gamers? In this new era of entertainment, where streaming platforms, boom-and-bust games, and an on-demand culture dominate, we’re pushing things in a new direction—with an interface that simplifies how we consume not just games, but all forms of entertainment. Consumers are moving away from 2D browsing into fully 3D, immersive experiences. Put simply, we’re shifting from passive interaction to active participation. As with all new products, things evolve. Arcadia was originally envisioned as our creation platform, but as we continued developing “MindsEye” and building out BARB’s ecosystem, it naturally grew into something more focused— Play.MindsEye and Build.MindsEye. Play delivers cinematic, high-intensity gameplay with missions and maps that constantly evolve. Build gives players intuitive tools to create their own content—no technical skills required, just imagination and intent. For BARB to fully realize our vision, we had to beta test our creation system with a community of builders in real-time and started with Everywhere while we were in stealth mode developing MindsEye. How did you settle on IOI as publishing partner? We’ve always found the way IOI handled the “Hitman” franchise interesting. They are one of the few publishers that have taken their single-player IP and increased their player count and amplified their community culture over time. From a technology point of view, their one executable approach for all of their content is very smart, and we always planned to have a similar approach, which encouraged us to join forces. This interview has been edited and condensed.

In technical fields like information technology, definitions are fundamental. They are the building blocks for constructing useful applications and systems. Yet, despite this, it’s easy to assume a term’s definition and wield it confidently before discovering its true meaning. The two closely related cases that stand out to me are “security” and “privacy.” I say this with full awareness that, in my many writings on information security, I never adequately distinguished these two concepts. It was only after observing enough conflation of these terms that I resolved to examine my own casual treatment of them. So, with the aim of solidifying my own understanding, let’s properly differentiate “information security” and “information privacy.” Security vs. Privacy: Definitions That Matter In the context of information technology, what exactly are security and privacy? Security is the property of denying unauthorized parties from accessing or altering your data. Privacy is the property of preventing the observation of your activities by any third parties to whom you do not expressly consent to observe those activities. As you can see, these principles are related, which is one reason why they’re commonly interchanged. This distinction becomes comprehensible with examples. Let’s start with an instance where security applies, but privacy does not. Spotify uses digital rights management (DRM) software to keep its media secure but not private. DRM is a whole topic of its own, but it essentially uses cryptography to enforce copyright. In Spotify’s case, it’s what constitutes streaming rather than just downloading: the song’s file is present on your device (at least temporarily) just as if you’d downloaded it, but Spotify’s DRM cryptography prevents you from opening the file without the Spotify application. The data on Spotify (audio files) are secure because only users of the application can stream audio, and streamed content can’t be retained, opened, or transmitted to non-users. However, Spotify’s data is not private because nearly anyone with an email address can be a user. Thus, in practice, the company cannot control who exactly can access its data. A more complex example of security without privacy is social media. When you sign up for a social media platform, you accept an end-user license agreement (EULA) authorizing the platform to share your data with its partners and affiliates. Your data stored with “authorized parties” on servers controlled by the platform and its affiliates would be considered secure, provided all these entities successfully defend your data against theft by unauthorized parties. In other words, if everyone who is allowed (by agreement) to have your data encrypts it in transit and at rest, insulates and segments their networks, etc., then your data is secure no matter how many affiliates receive it. In practice, the more parties that have your data, the more likely it is that any one of them is breached, but in theory, they could all defend your data. On the other hand, any data you fork over to the social network is not private because you can’t control who uses your data and how. As soon as your data lands on the platform’s servers, you can’t restrict what they do with it, including sharing your data with other entities, which you also can’t control. Both examples illustrate security without privacy. That’s because privacy entails security, but not the reverse. All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. If you have privacy, meaning you can completely enforce how any party uses your data (or doesn’t), it is secure by definition because only authorized parties can access your data. Mobile Devices: Secure but Not Private Casually mixing security and privacy can lead people to misunderstand the information security properties that apply to their data in any given scenario. By reevaluating for ourselves whether a given technology affords us security and privacy, we can have a more accurate understanding of how accessible our data really is. One significant misconception I’ve noticed concerns mobile devices. I get the impression that the digital privacy content sphere regards mobile devices as not secure because they aren’t private. But while mobile is designed not to be private, it is specifically designed to be secure. Why is that? Because the value of data is in keeping it in your hands and out of your competitor’s. If you collect data but anyone else can grab your copy, you are not only at no advantage but also at a disadvantage since you’re the only party that spent time and money to collect it from the source. With modest scrutiny, we’ll find that every element of a mobile OS that might be marketed as a privacy feature is, in fact, strictly a security feature. Cybersecurity professionals have hailed application permissions as a major stride in privacy. But whom are they designed to help? These menus apply to applications that request access to certain hardware, from microphones and cameras to flash memory storage and wireless radios. This access restriction feature serves the OS developer by letting users lock out as much of their competition as possible from taking their data. The mobile OS developer controls the OS with un-auditable compiled code. For all you know, permission controls on all the OS’s native apps could be ignored. However, even if we assume that the OS developer doesn’t thwart your restrictions on their own apps, the first-party apps still enjoy pride of place. There are more of them; they are preinstalled on your device, facilitate core mobile device features, require more permissions, and often lose core functions when those permissions are denied. Mobile OSes also sandbox every application, forcing each to run in an isolated software environment, oblivious to other applications and the underlying operating system. This, too, benefits the OS vendor. Like the app permission settings, this functionality makes it harder for third parties to grab the same data the OS effortlessly ingests. The OS relies on its own background processes to obtain the most valuable data and walls off every other app from those processes. Mobile Security Isn’t Designed With You in Mind The most powerful mobile security control is the denial of root privileges to all applications and users (besides, again, the OS itself). While it goes a long way toward keeping the user’s data safe, it is just as effective at subjecting everything and everyone using the device to the dictates of the OS. The security advantage is undeniable: if your user account can’t use root, then any malware that compromises it can’t either. By the same token, because you don’t have complete control over the OS, you are unable to reconfigure your device for privacy from the OS vendor. I’m not disparaging any of these security controls. All of them reinforce the protection of your data. I’m saying that they are not done primarily for the user’s benefit; that is secondary. Those of you familiar with my work might see the scroll bar near the bottom of this page and wonder why I haven’t mentioned Linux yet. The answer is that desktop operating systems, my preferred kind of Linux OS, benefit from their own examination. In a follow-up to this piece, I will discuss the paradox of desktop security and privacy. Please stay tuned.

RoboCop: Rogue City – Unfinished Business preview: ‘We created something bigger than we expected’ Adam Starkey Published June 3, 2025 9:00am Stay out of trouble (Nacon) GameCentral goes hands-on with the standalone expansion of RoboCop: Rogue City, which dials up the action and gory splatter of 2023’s surprise hit. For a franchise that has arguably done nothing of worth since the early 90s, the future of RoboCop is looking surprisingly bright. Following Amazon’s acquisition of MGM, a new TV show is currently in the works, with rumbles of a new film as well. Whether this leads to a major rejuvenation for everyone’s favourite cyborg law enforcer remains to be seen, but the original source of any RoboCop redemption arc has to start with 2023’s RoboCop: Rogue City.  Developed by Polish studio Teyon, RoboCop: Rogue City was the kind of unexpected surprise you rarely get from licensed games. It recaptured the original’s wit and 80s aesthetic, but also found a way to deliver the fantasy of playing as the half-human cyborg without streamlining any of the character’s personality. The bloody action was built around his hulking, slow movement, dry one-liners were in abundance, and missions weren’t always reduced to mowing down thugs in corridors – you also handed people parking tickets, settled trivial civilian disputes, and, in one wonderfully mundane side mission, did the rounds in the office for a get well card.  The game became publisher Nacon’s ‘best ever launch’ with 435,000 players within two weeks. Now, a year and a half later, developer Teyon is back with a standalone expansion. Marketing around Unfinished Business has purposefully dodged the term *DLC*, but as explained by the studio’s communications manager, Dawid Biegun, it started out as exactly that.  ‘When we released RoboCop: Rogue City, we were thinking about, this story has many things [we can] do in the future,’ says Biegun. ‘We had many paths we could choose. So we basically started slowly developing some new storyline. The game was planned to be DLC but it grew out of control. It was a really rare situation where we created something bigger than we expected, so it became a standalone expansion from then.’ Unlike Rogue City, this expansion, which we’re told spans around eight hours on average, is centred around one location in the OmniTower. Like most things in the RoboCop realm created by OCP, this promised idyllic housing complex quickly goes south when a band of mercenaries assume control. To restore order, and after a creepy opening where an attack on the Detroit police station leaves several officers frozen solid, RoboCop is assigned to the case.  RoboCop has new moves at his disposal (Nacon) Unfinished Business wastes little time in throwing you into the action, and quickly amps up the chaos. For anyone who has played Rogue City, all the original tenets of the combat are here, albeit with a slight increase in difficulty. You’ll be looking for explosive cans to blast, illuminated panels to ricochet bullets off walls, and all the while trying not to expose yourself to too much gunfire. The combat purposefully doesn’t have the slick speed of Call Of Duty, but it is still aggressively punchy, with headshots resulting in satisfyingly bloody splatters and RoboCop’s famed Auto-9 machine pistol still having the kickback of a pocket pneumatic drill.  From the get-go, Unfinished Business pushes back in a way Rogue City never did. New enemies equipped with riot shields are a real nuisance if you don’t utilise the ricochet panels, while the ability to slow down time is a much bigger crutch to chip down the enemy numbers from a distance. Health pick-ups felt in shorter supply too, even on the normal difficulty, to the point where we barely scraped through several encounters.  While it’s unclear if this applies to the whole game, Unfinished Business feels like a gnarlier experience, when compared to the original. RoboCop has some new context sensitive finishing moves, like throwing enemy heads into concrete walls or vending machines, which is a satisfying addition to the melee arsenal. There’s greater enemy variety too, between fierce minigun heavyweights and flying drones, along with some neat action set pieces. In one standout, we had to operate a walkway bridge to deactivate a giant turret at the end of a room, dashing between cover as it rains down bullets and destroys the surrounding environment. Anyone who has played action games before will recognise all the mechanics at play in this scenario, but it was still well executed and effective. Another had a whiff of Star Wars, as you rush around shooting electrical panels to stop a trash compactor from crushing you via the descending ceiling. The action shift in Unfinished Business is best defined by a later sequence we got to play, where you take control of the franchise’s signature mech, ED-209. If the power fantasy of playing as RoboCop is tested in this expansion, ED-209’s section was pure mental catharsis, where you blast away enemy hordes with miniguns and rockets, and clean up any stragglers with a rigid, robotic stomp. The rush of piloting ED-209, with its cacophony of explosions and bullets, felt like a throwback to vehicle sections in a long lost Xbox 360 game – but in a good way.  While there’s a definite lean towards combat, rather than gift card signing, when compared to Rogue City, it hasn’t entirely abandoned the detective side. According to the developers, if Rogue City had a 60/40 percent split between guns and detective work, Unfinished Business ‘would be like 70/30, or 80/20’ in comparison. More Trending We saw some of this , with one memorable encounter seeing you quizzed by a RoboCop superfan who is unconvinced you’re the actual RoboCop, leading to a series of questions based on the history of the franchise. There is optional side missions too, although the time we had with our preview limited our chance to fully delve into them. The sales and positive reviews for RoboCop: Rogue City emboldened Teyon’s vision and scope for Unfinished Business – and that confidence shines through in what we played. Some might be disappointed by the steer towards action, and we were heading into this preview, but by the end, this felt like a welcome extension with its own unique flavour. This is RoboCop: Rogue City with its pedal to the floor, confined and concentrated into a lean, tightly focused machine.  As for the studio’s next steps, the success of RoboCop has only reaffirmed Teyon’s strengths and identity as a team. Between its three studios across Poland and Japan, with over 140 employees in total, Teyon wants to maintain its grip within the AA space. ‘We feel strong here in such games,’ Biegun said. ‘We wouldn’t want to grow like 200, 300, 400 people, because we’re going to lose our soul this way. We want to stay as we are right now.’ ED-209 needs be wary of stairs (Nacon) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. Arrow MORE: How to get a Nintendo Switch 2 this week in the UK GameCentral Sign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy

Satellite view of coral reefs in New CaledoniaShutterstock/BEST-BACKGR​OUNDS There might be an upside to the loss of coral reefs. Their decline would mean oceans can absorb up to 5 per cent more carbon dioxide by 2100, researchers estimate, slowing the build up of this greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere. “It is a beneficial effect if you only care about the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere,” says Lester Kwiatkowski at Sorbonne University in Paris, France. But the decline of corals will also reduce biodiversity, harm fisheries and leave many coasts more exposed to rising seas, he says. Advertisement How much the world will warm depends mainly on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. So far the land and oceans have been soaking up around half of the extra CO2 we have emitted. Any factors that increase or decrease these so-called land or ocean carbon sinks could therefore have a significant impact on future warming. It is often assumed that corals remove CO2 from seawater as they grow their calcium carbonate skeletons. In fact, the process, also known as calcification, is a net source of CO2. “You’re taking inorganic carbon in the ocean, generally in the form of carbonate and bicarbonate ions, turning it into calcium carbonate and that process releases CO2 into the seawater, some of which will be lost to the atmosphere,” says Kwiatkowski. Unmissable news about our planet delivered straight to your inbox every month. Sign up to newsletter This means that if reef formation around the world slows or even reverses, less CO2 will be released by reefs and the oceans will be able to absorb more of this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere – a factor not currently included in climate models. Observations suggest coral reef calcification is already declining as rising seawater temperatures cause mass coral bleaching and die-offs. The higher level of CO2 is also making oceans more acidic, which can make it harder to build carbonate skeletons and even lead to their dissolution. Kwiatkowski and his team took published estimates of how corals will be affected by warming and ocean acidification and used a computer model to work out how this might change the ocean sink in various emission scenarios. They conclude that the oceans could take up between 1 and 5 per cent more carbon by 2100, and up to 13 per cent more by 2300. This doesn’t take account of other factors that can cause reef decline such as overfishing and the spread of coral diseases, says Kwiatkowski, so might even be an underestimate. On the other hand, the work assumes that corals aren’t able to adapt or acclimatise, says Chris Jury at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, who wasn’t involved in the study. “If the worst-case or even medium-case scenario in this study comes to pass, it means the near-total destruction of coral reefs globally,” says Jury. “I think that with consideration of realistic levels of adaptation and acclimatisation by corals and other reef organisms, the authors might come to different conclusions under a low to moderate level of climate change.” If Kwiatkowski’s team is correct, it means that the amount of emitted CO2 that will lead to a given level of warming – the so-called carbon budget – is a little larger than currently thought. “I think we would like our budgets to be as accurate as possible, even if we’re blowing through them,” says Kwiatkowski. Journal reference:PNAS DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2501562122 Topics:

Dmitry Karpukhin took advantage of GI's Plugin hooks.

Apple has appealed parts of the Digital Markets Act law citing user privacy concerns, via Axios. Specifically, Apple is contesting the interoperability requirements that say data like notification content and WiFi networks should be made available to

CL02 Cabin / VinkluSave this picture!© Razvan DrinceanuCabins & Lodges•Valea lui Enache, Romania Architects: Vinklu Area Area of this architecture project Area:  55 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2025 Photographs Photographs:Razvan Drinceanu Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers:  DÉCOR SEBMOB, ENIPAU, MIRADEX, MM THERM, PRO METAL CONT 2004, Topciment Lead Architects: Stefan Pavaluta More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. An ideal rural scenario, well-oriented and connected, tries to outline the premises of a seasonal residence. I first had contact with O&A online, having been recommended by a good acquaintance from London, the clients being in the central area of ​​Europe, I in Bucharest, and the construction site in Arges. The kind of equation that always attracts me, if the intentions are aligned. The situation at that time had the wreckage of a first failed attempt, already erected on the ground, and a small annex at the bottom of the lot, at the highest point of the area. The decision was for a full project, but with a phased implementation. So we started with the small body, in order to have better control and a final evaluation of our collaboration, but also of the executors. Being a more rural area, the expectations regarding the quality of the result had to be proportionate from the start. The annex was a construction with a small footprint, maximum 25 sqm, built in the past by the family, with vaulted walls bordered by a wooden structure at the top that served as a lantern. During the dismantling stage, we discovered that it had no pillars at the corners (or in general), and the concrete slab with a large belly in the middle. In the end, only the walls remained, which were reinforced with interior-exterior mesh.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Leaving aside the condition of the construction and the poor materials, the position and proportion of the annex were harmonious, and the intention was to preserve these aspects from the start. The solution proposed an extension with an interior staircase area and a reconfiguration of the gaps/orientations from the inside to the outside. Structurally, the base remains intact, reinforced, and the superstructure is timber-framed. Finally, the exterior finish in black autoclaved wood completes and reveals the proposed scenario. The height and dimensions slightly exceed the initial image. The choice of exterior color is a direct response to the context, offering different images and visual relationships depending on the season. The entrance porch mediates the relationship between the module and the exterior through a fine metal structure, proportionate to the tall surrounding vegetation. The slats and semi-circular areas spatially define the moments of approaching the house. In the same tone, the rest of the functional areas inside are supported by their own connections to the exterior. The veranda pergola transforms into a deep balcony for the living area, and the foundation of the house articulates into a small terrace for the night area.Save this picture!Functionally, downstairs is the entrance with the night area, and upstairs the entire living area with kitchen, dining, living room, and a small bathroom. Along the same lines, downstairs we have smaller gaps, and there is a panoramic orientation of some windows of considerable size, which offers a cinematic sensation in direct relation to the exterior. The house being well-positioned among the trees, any movement and change of nature can be watched, studied, and heard. Continuing the space-function relationship, the ground floor offers regular, intimate spaces, while the staircase opens the living area with a generous space and a gabled ceiling. The context being the main "reason", the finishes are clean, neutral, to further strengthen this relationship. In the living area, the furniture pieces define the micro-functions necessary for living, and are combined in a balanced way through proportion, color, and materiality.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!By reconverting the annex and using natural materials, local teams, off-site construction methods, we tried, in the true and local sense of the expression – minimal impact on the environment and sustainable architecture. The "design" itself is a direct result of the architectural process and the context, a stratification of functional and architectural solutions permanently correlated with proportions and materiality.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Valea lui Enache, RomaniaLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this officeVinkluOffice••• MaterialWoodMaterials and TagsPublished on June 01, 2025Cite: "CL02 Cabin / Vinklu" 01 Jun 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030468/cl02-cabin-vinklu&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