Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything tore apart the Nintendo Switch 2 to show us its internals and then stress-tested the screen with pliers to see how durable it is.

As AI faces court challenges from Disney and Universal, legal battles are shaping the industry's future | Opinion Silicon advances and design innovations do still push us forward – but the future landscape of the industry is also being sculpted in courtrooms and parliaments Image credit: Disney / Epic Games Opinion by Rob Fahey Contributing Editor Published on June 13, 2025 In some regards, the past couple of weeks have felt rather reassuring. We've just seen a hugely successful launch for a new Nintendo console, replete with long queues for midnight sales events. Over the next few days, the various summer events and showcases that have sprouted amongst the scattered bones of E3 generated waves of interest and hype for a host of new games. It all feels like old times. It's enough to make you imagine that while change is the only constant, at least it's we're facing change that's fairly well understood, change in the form of faster, cheaper silicon, or bigger, more ambitious games. If only the winds that blow through this industry all came from such well-defined points on the compass. Nestled in amongst the week's headlines, though, was something that's likely to have profound but much harder to understand impacts on this industry and many others over the coming years – a lawsuit being brought by Disney and NBC Universal against Midjourney, operators of the eponymous generative AI image creation tool. In some regards, the lawsuit looks fairly straightforward; the arguments made and considered in reaching its outcome, though, may have a profound impact on both the ability of creatives and media companies (including game studios and publishers) to protect their IP rights from a very new kind of threat, and the ways in which a promising but highly controversial and risky new set of development and creative tools can be used commercially. A more likely tack on Midjourney's side will be the argument that they are not responsible for what their customers create with the tool I say the lawsuit looks straightforward from some angles, but honestly overall it looks fairly open and shut – the media giants accuse Midjourney of replicating their copyrighted characters and material, and of essentially building a machine for churning out limitless copyright violations. The evidence submitted includes screenshot after screenshot of Midjourney generating pages of images of famous copyrighted and trademarked characters ranging from Yoda to Homer Simpson, so "no we didn't" isn't going to be much of a defence strategy here. A more likely tack on Midjourney's side will be the argument that they are not responsible for what their customers create with the tool – you don't sue the manufacturers of oil paints or canvases when artists use them to paint something copyright-infringing, nor does Microsoft get sued when someone writes something libellous in Word, and Midjourney may try to argue that their software belongs in that tool category, with users alone being ultimately responsible for how they use them. If that argument prevails and survives appeals and challenges, it would be a major triumph for the nascent generative AI industry and a hugely damaging blow to IP holders and creatives, since it would seriously undermine their argument that AI companies shouldn't be able to include copyrighted material into training data sets without licensing or compensation. The reason Disney and NBCU are going after Midjourney specifically seems to be partially down to Midjourney being especially reticent to negotiate with them about licensing fees and prompt restrictions; other generative AI firms have started talking, at least, about paying for content licenses for training data, and have imposed various limitations on their software to prevent the most egregious and obvious forms of copyright violation (at least for famous characters belonging to rich companies; if you're an individual or a smaller company, it's entirely the Wild West out there as regards your IP rights). In the process, though, they're essentially risking a court showdown over a set of not-quite-clear legal questions at the heart of this dispute, and if Midjourney were to prevail in that argument, other AI companies would likely back off from engaging with IP holders on this topic. To be clear, though, it seems highly unlikely that Midjourney will win that argument, at least not in the medium to long term. Yet depending on how this case moves forward, losing the argument could have equally dramatic consequences – especially if the courts find themselves compelled to consider the question of how, exactly, a generative AI system reproduces a copyrighted character with such precision without storing copyright-infringing data in some manner. The 2020s are turning out to be the decade in which many key regulatory issues come to a head all at once AI advocates have been trying to handwave around this notion from the outset, but at some point a court is going to have to sit down and confront the fact that the precision with which these systems can replicate copyrighted characters, scenes, and other materials requires that they must have stored that infringing material in some form. That it's stored as a scattered mesh of probabilities across the vertices of a high-dimensional vector array, rather than a straightforward, monolithic media file, is clearly important but may ultimately be considered moot. If the data is in the system and can be replicated on request, how that differs from Napster or The Pirate Bay is arguably just a matter of technical obfuscation. Not having to defend that technical argument in court thus far has been a huge boon to the generative AI field; if it is knocked over in that venue, it will have knock-on effects on every company in the sector and on every business that uses their products. Nobody can be quite sure which of the various rocks and pebbles being kicked on this slope is going to set off the landslide, but there seems to be an increasing consensus that a legal and regulatory reckoning is coming for generative AI. Consequently, a lot of what's happening in that market right now has the feel of companies desperately trying to establish products and lock in revenue streams before that happens, because it'll be harder to regulate a technology that's genuinely integrated into the world's economic systems than it is to impose limits on one that's currently only clocking up relatively paltry sales and revenues. Keeping an eye on this is crucial for any industry that's started experimenting with AI in its workflows – none more than a creative industry like video games, where various forms of AI usage have been posited, although the enthusiasm and buzz so far massively outweighs any tangible benefits from the technology. Regardless of what happens in legal and regulatory contexts, AI is already a double-edged sword for any creative industry. Used judiciously, it might help to speed up development processes and reduce overheads. Applied in a slapdash or thoughtless manner, it can and will end up wreaking havoc on development timelines, filling up storefronts with endless waves of vaguely-copyright-infringing slop, and potentially make creative firms, from the industry's biggest companies to its smallest indie developers, into victims of impossibly large-scale copyright infringement rather than beneficiaries of a new wave of technology-fuelled productivity. The legal threat now hanging over the sector isn't new, merely amplified. We've known for a long time that AI generated artwork, code, and text has significant problems from the perspective of intellectual property rights (you can infringe someone else's copyright with it, but generally can't impose your own copyright on its creations – opening careless companies up to a risk of having key assets in their game being technically public domain and impossible to protect). Even if you're not using AI yourself, however – even if you're vehemently opposed to it on moral and ethical grounds (which is entirely valid given the highly dubious land-grab these companies have done for their training data), the Midjourney judgement and its fallout may well impact the creative work you produce yourself and how it ends up being used and abused by these products in future. This all has huge ramifications for the games business and will shape everything from how games are created to how IP can be protected for many years to come – a wind of change that's very different and vastly more unpredictable than those we're accustomed to. It's a reminder of just how much of the industry's future is currently being shaped not in development studios and semiconductor labs, but rather in courtrooms and parliamentary committees. The ways in which generative AI can be used and how copyright can persist in the face of it will be fundamentally shaped in courts and parliaments, but it's far from the only crucially important topic being hashed out in those venues. The ongoing legal turmoil over the opening up of mobile app ecosystems, too, will have huge impacts on the games industry. Meanwhile, the debates over loot boxes, gambling, and various consumer protection aspects related to free-to-play models continue to rumble on in the background. Because the industry moves fast while governments move slow, it's easy to forget that that's still an active topic for as far as governments are concerned, and hammers may come down at any time. Regulation by governments, whether through the passage of new legislation or the interpretation of existing laws in the courts, has always loomed in the background of any major industry, especially one with strong cultural relevance. The games industry is no stranger to that being part of the background heartbeat of the business. The 2020s, however, are turning out to be the decade in which many key regulatory issues come to a head all at once, whether it's AI and copyright, app stores and walled gardens, or loot boxes and IAP-based business models. Rulings on those topics in various different global markets will create a complex new landscape that will shape the winds that blow through the business, and how things look in the 2030s and beyond will be fundamentally impacted by those decisions.

By CHRIS McGOWAN Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Final Destination Bloodlines, the sixth installment in the graphic horror series, kicks off with the film’s biggest challenge – deploying an elaborate, large-scale set piece involving the 400-foot-high Skyview Tower restaurant. While there in 1968, young Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) has a premonition about the Skyview burning, cracking, crumbling and collapsing. Then, when she sees these events actually starting to happen around her, she intervenes and causes an evacuation of the tower, thus thwarting death’s design and saving many lives. Years later, her granddaughter, Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), inherits the vision of the destruction that could have occurred and realizes death is still coming for the survivors. “I knew we couldn’t put the whole [Skyview restaurant] on fire, but Tony [Lazarowich, Special Effects Supervisor] tried and put as much fire as he could safely and then we just built off that [in VFX] and added a lot more. Even when it’s just a little bit of real fire, the lighting and interaction that can’t be simulated, so I think it was a success in terms of blending that practical with the visual.” —Nordin Rahhali, VFX Supervisor The film opens with an elaborate, large-scale set piece involving the 400-foot-high Skyview Tower restaurant – and its collapse. Drone footage was digitized to create a 3D asset for the LED wall so the time of day could be changed as needed. “The set that the directors wanted was very large,” says Nordin Rahhali, VFX Supervisor. “We had limited space options in stages given the scale and the footprint of the actual restaurant that they wanted. It was the first set piece, the first big thing we shot, so we had to get it all ready and going right off the bat. We built a bigger volume for our needs, including an LED wall that we built the assets for.” “We were outside Vancouver at Bridge Studios in Burnaby. The custom-built LED volume was a little over 200 feet in length” states Christian Sebaldt, ASC, the movie’s DP. The volume was 98 feet in diameter and 24 feet tall. Rahhali explains, “Pixomondo was the vendor that we contracted to come in and build the volume. They also built the asset that went on the LED wall, so they were part of our filming team and production shoot. Subsequently, they were also the main vendor doing post, which was by design. By having them design and take care of the asset during production, we were able to leverage their assets, tools and builds for some of the post VFX.” Rahhali adds, “It was really important to make sure we had days with the volume team and with Christian and his camera team ahead of the shoot so we could dial it in.” Built at Bridge Studios in Burnaby outside Vancouver, the custom-built LED volume for events at the Skyview restaurant was over 200 feet long, 98 feet wide and 24 feet tall. Extensive previs with Digital Domain was done to advance key shots. (Photo: Eric Milner) Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein directed Final Destination Bloodlines for New Line film, distributed by Warner Bros., in which chain reactions of small and big events lead to bloody catastrophes befalling those who have cheated death at some point. Pixomondo was the lead VFX vendor, followed by FOLKS VFX. Picture Shop also contributed. There were around 800 VFX shots. Tony Lazarowich was the Special Effects Supervisor. “The Skyview restaurant involved building a massive set [that] was fire retardant, which meant the construction took longer than normal because they had to build it with certain materials and coat it with certain things because, obviously, it serves for the set piece. As it’s falling into chaos, a lot of that fire was practical. I really jived with what Christian and directors wanted and how Tony likes to work – to augment as much real practical stuff as possible,” Rahhali remarks. “I knew we couldn’t put the whole thing on fire, but Tony tried and put as much fire as he could safely, and then we just built off that [in VFX] and added a lot more. Even when it’s just a little bit of real fire, the lighting and interaction can’t be simulated, so I think it was a success in terms of blending that practical with the visual.” The Skyview restaurant required building a massive set that was fire retardant. Construction on the set took longer because it had to be built and coated with special materials. As the Skyview restaurant falls into chaos, much of the fire was practical. (Photo: Eric Milner) “We got all the Vancouver skyline [with drones] so we could rebuild our version of the city, which was based a little on the Vancouver footprint. So, we used all that to build a digital recreation of a city that was in line with what the directors wanted, which was a coastal city somewhere in the States that doesn’t necessarily have to be Vancouver or Seattle, but it looks a little like the Pacific Northwest.” —Christian Sebaldt, ASC, Director of Photography For drone shots, the team utilized a custom heavy-lift drone with three RED Komodo Digital Cinema cameras “giving us almost 180 degrees with overlap that we would then stitch in post and have a ridiculous amount of resolution off these three cameras,” Sebaldt states. “The other drone we used was a DJI Inspire 3, which was also very good. And we flew these drones up at the height [we needed]. We flew them at different times of day. We flew full 360s, and we also used them for photogrammetry. We got all the Vancouver skyline so we could rebuild our version of the city, which was based a little on the Vancouver footprint. So, we used all that to build a digital recreation of a city that was in line with what the directors wanted, which was a coastal city somewhere in the States that doesn’t necessarily have to be Vancouver or Seattle, but it looks a little like the Pacific Northwest.” Rahhali adds, “All of this allowed us to figure out what we were going to shoot. We had the stage build, and we had the drone footage that we then digitized and created a 3D asset to go on the wall [so] we could change the times of day” Pixomondo built the volume and the asset that went on the LED wall for the Skyview sequence. They were also the main vendor during post. FOLKS VFX and Picture Shop contributed. (Photo: Eric Milner) “We did extensive previs with Digital Domain,” Rahhali explains. “That was important because we knew the key shots that the directors wanted. With a combination of those key shots, we then kind of reverse-engineered [them] while we did techvis off the previs and worked with Christian and the art department so we would have proper flexibility with the set to be able to pull off some of these shots. [For example,] some of these shots required the Skyview restaurant ceiling to be lifted and partially removed for us to get a crane to shoot Paul [Max Lloyd-Jones] as he’s about to fall and the camera’s going through a roof, that we then digitally had to recreate. Had we not done the previs to know those shots in advance, we would not have been able to build that in time to accomplish the look. We had many other shots that were driven off the previs that allowed the art department, construction and camera teams to work out how they would get those shots.” Some shots required the Skyview’s ceiling to be lifted and partially removed to get a crane to shoot Paul Campbell (Max Lloyd-Jones) as he’s about to fall. The character Iris lived in a fortified house, isolating herself methodically to avoid the Grim Reaper. Rahhali comments, “That was a beautiful location [in] GVRD [Greater Vancouver], very cold. It was a long, hard shoot, because it was all nights. It was just this beautiful pocket out in the middle of the mountains. We in visual effects didn’t do a ton other than a couple of clean-ups of the big establishing shots when you see them pull up to the compound. We had to clean up small roads we wanted to make look like one road and make the road look like dirt.” There were flames involved. Sebaldt says, “The explosion [of Iris’s home] was unbelievably big. We had eight cameras on it at night and shot it at high speed, and we’re all going ‘Whoa.’” Rahhali notes, “There was some clean-up, but the explosion was 100% practical. Our Special Effects Supervisor, Tony, went to town on that. He blew up the whole house, and it looked spectacular.” The tattoo shop piercing scene is one of the most talked-about sequences in the movie, where a dangling chain from a ceiling fan attaches itself to the septum nose piercing of Erik Campbell (Richard Harmon) and drags him toward a raging fire. Rahhali observes, “That was very Final Destination and a great Rube Goldberg build-up event. Richard was great. He was tied up on a stunt line for most of it, balancing on top of furniture. All of that was him doing it for real with a stunt line.” Some effects solutions can be surprisingly extremely simple. Rahhali continues, “Our producer [Craig Perry] came up with a great gag [for the] septum ring.” Richard’s nose was connected with just a nose plug that went inside his nostrils. “All that tugging and everything that you’re seeing was real. For weeks and weeks, we were all trying to figure out how to do it without it being a big visual effects thing. ‘How are we gonna pull his nose for real?’ Craig said, ‘I have these things I use to help me open up my nose and you can’t really see them.’ They built it off of that, and it looked great.” Filmmakers spent weeks figuring out how to execute the harrowing tattoo shop scene. A dangling chain from a ceiling fan attaches itself to the septum nose ring of Erik Campbell (Richard Harmon) – with the actor’s nose being tugged by the chain connected to a nose plug that went inside his nostrils. “[S]ome of these shots required the Skyview restaurant ceiling to be lifted and partially removed for us to get a crane to shoot Paul [Campbell] as he’s about to fall and the camera’s going through a roof, that we then digitally had to recreate. Had we not done the previs to know those shots in advance, we would not have been able to build that in time to accomplish the look. We had many other shots that were driven off the previs that allowed the art department, construction and camera teams to work out how they would get those shots.” —Nordin Rahhali, VFX Supervisor Most of the fire in the tattoo parlor was practical. “There are some fire bars and stuff that you’re seeing in there from SFX and the big pool of fire on the wide shots.” Sebaldt adds, “That was a lot of fun to shoot because it’s so insane when he’s dancing and balancing on all this stuff – we were laughing and laughing. We were convinced that this was going to be the best scene in the movie up to that moment.” Rahhali says, “They used the scene wholesale for the trailer. It went viral – people were taking out their septum rings.” Erik survives the parlor blaze only to meet his fate in a hospital when he is pulled by a wheelchair into an out-of-control MRI machine at its highest magnetic level. Rahhali comments, “That is a good combination of a bunch of different departments. Our Stunt Coordinator, Simon Burnett, came up with this hard pull-wire line [for] when Erik flies and hits the MRI. That’s a real stunt with a double, and he hit hard. All the other shots are all CG wheelchairs because the directors wanted to art-direct how the crumpling metal was snapping and bending to show pressure on him as his body starts going into the MRI.” To augment the believability that comes with reality, the directors aimed to capture as much practically as possible, then VFX Supervisor Nordin Rahhali and his team built on that result. (Photo: Eric Milner) A train derailment concludes the film after Stefani and her brother, Charlie, realize they are still on death’s list. A train goes off the tracks, and logs from one of the cars fly though the air and kills them. “That one was special because it’s a hard sequence and was also shot quite late, so we didn’t have a lot of time. We went back to Vancouver and shot the actual street, and we shot our actors performing. They fell onto stunt pads, and the moment they get touched by the logs, it turns into CG as it was the only way to pull that off and the train of course. We had to add all that. The destruction of the houses and everything was done in visual effects.” Erik survives the tattoo parlor blaze only to meet his fate in a hospital when he is crushed by a wheelchair while being pulled into an out-of-control MRI machine. Erik (Richard Harmon) appears about to be run over by a delivery truck at the corner of 21A Ave. and 132A St., but he’s not – at least not then. The truck is actually on the opposite side of the road, and the person being run over is Howard. A rolling penny plays a major part in the catastrophic chain reactions and seems to be a character itself. “The magic penny was a mix from two vendors, Pixomondo and FOLKS; both had penny shots,” Rahhali says. “All the bouncing pennies you see going through the vents and hitting the fan blade are all FOLKS. The bouncing penny at the end as a lady takes it out of her purse, that goes down the ramp and into the rail – that’s FOLKS. The big explosion shots in the Skyview with the penny slowing down after the kid throws it [off the deck] are all Pixomondo shots. It was a mix. We took a little time to find that balance between readability and believability.” Approximately 800 VFX shots were required for Final Destination Bloodlines. (Photo: Eric Milner) Chain reactions of small and big events lead to bloody catastrophes befalling those who have cheated Death at some point in the Final Destination films. From left: Kaitlyn Santa Juana as Stefani Reyes, director Adam Stein, director Zach Lipovsky and Gabrielle Rose as Iris. (Photo: Eric Milner) Rahhali adds, “The film is a great collaboration of departments. Good visual effects are always a good combination of special effects, makeup effects and cinematography; it’s all the planning of all the pieces coming together. For a film of this size, I’m really proud of the work. I think we punched above our weight class, and it looks quite good.”

Users relying on Asus routers may still be exposed to a stealth backdoor campaign, even after updating firmware.Asus routerAsus routers have been compromised in a stealth backdoor campaign that persists even after firmware updates, according to cybersecurity firm GreyNoise. The firm disclosed its findings May 28 after coordinating with government and industry partners.GreyNoise first discovered the campaign March 18, 2025, using its AI-powered network analysis tool, Sift. The system flagged anomalous HTTP POST requests targeting internet-facing Asus routers running factory firmware. Continue Reading on AppleInsider | Discuss on our Forums

A Nintendo Switch user is sharing an incredible and harrowing story about how their console managed to survive and keep working after being exposed to a house fire. Since its global debut in 2017, the Nintendo Switch has been one of the hottest consoles in the video game industry, with fans flocking to its revolutionary combination of handhelds and home consoles. The Switch currently stands as the third best-selling video game console of all-time, sitting only behind the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo's own DS. Now, one fan's Switch console has proven surprisingly resilient.

By Peter D. Geldart (Petra Books, 2025) The post-WWII years brought a need to house returned veterans and their new families, along with an excitement about new types and forms of housing. Working in the spirit of the age, 35-year-old Ottawa architect James Strutt in 1959 worked with six clients on round houses—a set of designs intended to reduce building costs by using materials most efficiently, while creating modernist, open-plan spaces.  The designs, inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller and Frank Lloyd Wright, were for single-floor structures in which a curve of rooms and an open living-dining area surround a central hexagonal service core built of concrete block. The whole is topped by a geometrically complex roof, shaped using tongue-and-groove Western Red Cedar to create a hyperbolic paraboloid, or saddle-like shape. Strutt’s own family home of 1956, built according a similar scheme over six weeks for less than $1,800, survives in the Gatineau Hills, near Ottawa, and is being rehabilitated by the National Capital Commission. Author Peter D. Geldart’s family were the original residents of a Strutt-designed round house. Geldart, who has a background in architecture, gives a thorough overview of the architectural drawings of the six round houses using Strutt’s original hand-drawn materials, now held at the National Archives of Canada. These show variations on the theme, with schemes varying from 1,400 to 2,000 square feet, and extra wings swapped out for carports.  By publishing this material, Geldart hopes to contribute to a contemporary revival of Strutt’s ideas. “Is the concept of a ‘low-cost house of 1,000 sq. ft.’ viable in the 21st century?” he asks. “While the house was built to the standards of the day, it can now be built using modern materials and techniques.”  As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine  The post Book Review: The Round Houses of 1959 Designed by Architect James Strutt appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Asus' routers and popular and well-reviewed. As such, there's a good chance you have one of its devices powering your home wifi. If you do, you should probably check on it, since thousands of Asus' routers are now compromised. What happened?Cybersecurity company GreyNoise published a blog post about this router attack on Wednesday. GreyNoise says attackers used brute-force login attempts (running millions of login attempts until the right match is found) and authentication bypasses (forcing your way in around traditional authentication protocols) to break into these routers. Notably, hackers used authentication bypass techniques that aren't assigned CVEs (common vulnerabilities and exposures). CVEs are labels used to track publicly disclosed security vulnerabilities, which means the security vulnerabilities were either unknown or known only to a limited circle.Once in, hackers exploited the Asus router's CVE-2023-39780 vulnerability to run whatever commands they wanted. Hackers enabled SSH (secure shell) access through Asus' settings, which let them connect to and control the devices. They then stored the configuration—or backdoor—in NVRAM, rather than the disk of the router. The hackers did not leave malware behind, and even disabled logging, which makes their attacks difficult to detect. It's not clear who is behind these attacks, but GreyNoise did say the following: "The tactics used in this campaign—stealthy initial access, use of built-in system features for persistence, and careful avoidance of detection—are consistent with those seen in advanced, long-term operations, including activity associated with advanced persistent threat (APT) actors and operational relay box (ORB) networks. While GreyNoise has made no attribution, the level of tradecraft suggests a well-resourced and highly capable adversary."How did GreyNoise find out?Sift, GreyNoise’s AI technology, first detected an issue on March 17, noticing unusual traffic. GreyNoise uses fully emulated Asus profiles running factory firmware to test for issues like these, which let researchers observe the attackers' full behavior, reproduce the attack, and discover how the backdoor was installed. Researchers at the company received Sift’s report the following day, and began researching, coordinating with “government and industry partners.” GreyNoise reported that, as of May 27, nearly 9,000 routers were confirmed compromised. The company is pulling that data from Censys, which keeps tabs on internet-facing devices throughout the world. To make matters worse, the affected devices only continue to increase: As of this piece, there were 9,022 impacted routers listed on Censys' site. Luckily, GreyNoise reports that Asus patched the security vulnerability in a recent firmware update. However, if the router was compromised before the patch was installed, the backdoor hackers put into the router will not be removed. Even if this is the case, you can take action to protect your router.If you have an Asus router, do thisFirst, confirm your router is actually made by Asus. If it is, log in to your router via your internet browser. Logging into your router varies by device, but according to Asus, you can head to www.asusrouter.com, or enter your router's IP address into your address bar, then log in with your Asus router username and password. Asus says if this is the first time you've logged into the router, you'll need to set up your account.From here, identify the "Enable SSD" settings option. (You may find this under "Service" or "Administration," according to PCMag.) You'll know the router is compromised if you see that someone can log in via SSH over port 53828 with the following key: ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAo41nBoVFfj4HlVMGV+YPsxMDrMlbdDZ (the rest of the key has been cut for length).Now, disable the SSH entry and block these IP addresses: 101.99.91.151101.99.94.17379.141.163.179111.90.146.237From here, factory reset your router. Unfortunately, the patch alone won't be enough, since the attack survives any update. A total reset is the only way to be sure your router is protected. However, if you see your router was not affected here, install the latest firmware update ASAP. Unaffected routers that install the latest patch will be protected from this type of attack going forward.

The Swiss Federal Railways’ repair works in Zürich are being lightly transformed for new commercial uses Workers at the Swiss Federal Railways’ (SBB) central repair works in Zürich used to climb the roof of its halls and practise handstands. It was as good a place as any to do gymnastics: out in the open air, with a view to the Käferberg rising across from a tangle of railway tracks and the river Limmat. A photograph from 1947 survives in the SBB archives, showing a light turf growing on the roof – most of the buildings that make up the works had been constructed about 30 years earlier, between 1906 and 1910 – and a group of young apprentices exercising under the stern supervision of a foreman. The photograph captures the beginning of the repair works’ heyday. SBB was formed in 1902, the result of an 1898 referendum to nationalise the nine major private railway companies operating in Switzerland at the time. The construction of the Zürich repair works began soon after, with an office building, a workers’ canteen, shower rooms, workshops, stores and carriage halls laid out across a 42,000m2 site flanked by Hohlstrasse to the south‑west and the railway tracks connecting Zürich Central and Altstetten stations to the north‑east. Here, rolling stock could easily be redirected to the works, and transferred into its functional, skylit brick halls with the use of a lateral transfer platform.  In the postwar decades, the works came to employ upwards of 800 staff, and served as the SBB’s main repair works, or Hauptwerkstätte – there were smaller ones in Bellinzona, Chur, Yverdon-les-Bains and other locations, established by the private railway firms before nationalisation. In the same period, SBB gained international fame for its early electrification drive – the landlocked confederation lacks fossil fuel deposits but has hydropower aplenty – and modern industrial design. The Swiss railway clock, designed in 1944 by SBB employee Hans Hilfiker, is now used in transit systems around the world, and the network’s adoption of Helvetica for its graphic identity in 1978 contributed to the widespread popularisation of the typeface – long before the first iPhone.  At the turn of the millennium, SBB was turned into a joint‑stock company. All shares are owned by the state and the Swiss cantons, but the new company structure allowed the network to behave more like a private enterprise. Part of this restructuring was an appraisal of the network’s sizable real-estate holdings, which a new division, SBB Immobilien, was set up to manage in 2003. Around the same time, the Hauptwerkstätte in Zürich was downgraded to a ‘repair centre’, and plans were drawn up to develop the site, which was vast, central and fashionably post‑industrial – and so ripe for profitable exploitation. The revenue generated by SBB Immobilien has only become more important to the network since then, as its pension fund – long beset by market volatility and continuous restructurings – relies heavily on it. When, in 2017, SBB and the city and canton of Zürich organised a competition for the redevelopment of the old repair works, Swiss architecture practice Baubüro In Situ was selected as winner ‘for its expertise in adaptive reuse, sustainable circular practices and participatory approach’, says an SBB Immobilien spokesperson. For SBB, it was important that the redevelopment, now dubbed Werkstadt Zürich, made use of the railways’ enormous catalogue of existing materials and components. (SBB even has its own online resale platform, where, for example, four tonnes of gravel, a disused train carriage or a stud welding machine can be acquired for a reasonable sum.) For the canton, it was imperative that the scheme make room for local manufacturing in line with a broader drive to bring production back into a city dominated by services.  Founded in Basel by Barbara Buser and Eric Honegger in 1998, Baubüro In Situ (previously Baubüro Mitte) was in a unique position to meet such a brief, as it operates alongside what it terms its three ‘sister companies’: Unterdessen (founded in 2004, to organise ‘meanwhile’ uses for buildings and sites), Zirkular (established in 2020, focusing on materials and circular construction), and Denkstatt Sàrl, an urban think tank run by Buser and Honegger together with Tabea Michaelis and Pascal Biedermann. All informed the masterplan for Werkstadt Zürich, which will complete its first phase this year.  The Zürich offices of the four companies have been housed in various spaces on the repair works site since 2017, while the project has been ongoing. For the past year, they have had a permanent home on a new mezzanine level constructed around the internal perimeter of the works’ cathedral‑like carriage hall. This level is accessed via two central staircases composed of reused components from SBB’s network – I‑beams of various profiles, timber, metal tube railings – which, as has become a trademark of Baubüro In Situ’s work, come together in an artfully mismatched whole. ‘The main thing this office does is as little as possible,’ says Vanessa Gerotto, an interior architect at the firm. SBB still uses parts of the site, as is evident from train tracks that crisscross it. ‘They do repairs in some of the halls,’ explains Gerotto. ‘But they have reorganised, relocated and compacted their repair sites,’ so that approximately 18,450m2 have been freed up for commercial use at Werkstadt Zürich, including a swathe of units in the carriage hall. Here, as in other areas where they are no longer needed, SBB’s tracks have been retained but filled in with concrete and smoothed over.  Businesses have slowly filled Werkstadt Zürich as new units have been completed, and are mostly rarefied, small‑scale producers of luxury consumables: there is a chocolatier, a granola‑maker, a micro‑brewery, a gin distillery and a coffee roastery, as well as a manufacturer of coffee machines. The first commercial tenant, however, was somewhat more in keeping with the original programme of the site: the Swiss outdoor equipment brand Transa moved its repair workshop into one of the spaces in Werkstadt Zürich’s magazine building, to the south of the site, in 2023. Here, a team of 13 craftspeople repair and waterproof Gore-Tex clothing, backpacks, tents and sleeping bags that individual customers either drop off or mail to them, or that official partnering brands send directly to the centre.  ‘The Transa team is currently working on a new set of curtains for the Baubüro In Situ’s offices across the yard’ This part of Werkstadt Zürich was also the first to be renovated. Baubüro In Situ, working closely with colleagues at Zirkular, undertook a substantial interior fit‑out of the triple-height space, located in the western part of the magazine wing. A new timber mezzanine was added to maximise use of the space for the client, who did not require a double-height ground floor space. This was designed to be structurally independent from the shell of the building, so that the listed structure was not impacted.  However, the weight of the mezzanine necessitated new foundations, which needed to support a load of 100kN per timber support. There were not any suitable concrete elements available on site at Werkstadt Zürich, so the teams opted for what Zirkular architect Blanca Gardelegui admits was an ‘experimental’ move, reusing concrete from a demolition site in Winterthur. Here, slabs were cut using a diamond blade saw and stacked on site using a crane. ‘Additional work,’ explains Pascal Angehrn, architect at Baubüro In Situ, ‘came from the temporary storage of the blocks,’ and their transport. Once the blocks had been fitted into place, new concrete nevertheless had to be poured around the timber supports. This meant that, although efforts were made to reuse a wide variety of components and fittings – heaters, doors, plumbing fixtures, lights and stone windowsills – the fit‑out did not meet the architects’ own best‑case scenario of 50 per cent greenhouse gas savings, compared with using new materials and components for the renovation. Instead, they calculated the savings to sit at around 17 per cent. ‘Concrete is one of the most challenging materials to recycle,’ says Gardelegui. ‘The idea is not to do something perfectly, but to learn from the process.’ Finally, the teams introduced a wide staircase into the centre of the space, using the timber from the cut-out mezzanine flooring to make up its steps. Upon moving in, the staff at Transa’s repair centre embraced the architects’ spirit of reuse, creating their own furniture from pallets, and uplholstering with insulation cut‑offs. Tobias Stump, a member of staff at the centre, explains that their team is currently working on a new set of curtains for Baubüro In Situ’s offices across the yard.  ‘The idea is not to do something perfectly, but to learn from the process’ Werkstadt Zürich has the atmosphere of a creative testing ground, where materials get shifted around and reconfigured as needs and uses change. There is genuine camaraderie among the new commercial tenants: they make curtains for each other; organise monthly ‘open factory’ days; and have even recreated the 1947 photograph of the gymnasts on the roof. But antics on the roof may not be viable much longer. The next phase of Werkstadt Zürich involves the construction of vertical extensions atop the halls and magazine wing, densifying the site for further financial gain. Bland, brand new residential towers loom just off site, a little further up Hohlstrasse. Altstetten is gentrifying rapidly, part of the city’s continual remaking of itself.

James Gentz has seen birds aplenty on his East Texas rice-and-crawfish farm: snow geese and pintails, spoonbills and teal. The whooping crane couple, though, he found “magnificent.” These endangered, long-necked behemoths arrived in 2021 and set to building a nest amid his flooded fields. “I just loved to see them,” Gentz says. Not every farmer is thrilled to host birds. Some worry about the spread of avian flu, others are concerned that the birds will eat too much of their valuable crops. But as an unstable climate delivers too little water, careening temperatures and chaotic storms, the fates of human food production and birds are ever more linked—with the same climate anomalies that harm birds hurting agriculture too. In some places, farmer cooperation is critical to the continued existence of whooping cranes and other wetland-dependent waterbird species, close to one-third of which are experiencing declines. Numbers of waterfowl (think ducks and geese) have crashed by 20 percent since 2014, and long-legged wading shorebirds like sandpipers have suffered steep population losses. Conservation-minded biologists, nonprofits, government agencies, and farmers themselves are amping up efforts to ensure that each species survives and thrives. With federal support in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, their work is more important (and threatened) than ever. Their collaborations, be they domestic or international, are highly specific, because different regions support different kinds of agriculture—grasslands, or deep or shallow wetlands, for example, favored by different kinds of birds. Key to the efforts is making it financially worthwhile for farmers to keep—or tweak—practices to meet bird forage and habitat needs. Traditional crawfish-and-rice farms in Louisiana, as well as in Gentz’s corner of Texas, mimic natural freshwater wetlands that are being lost to saltwater intrusion from sea level rise. Rice grows in fields that are flooded to keep weeds down; fields are drained for harvest by fall. They are then re-flooded to cover crawfish burrowed in the mud; these are harvested in early spring—and the cycle begins again. That second flooding coincides with fall migration—a genetic and learned behavior that determines where birds fly and when—and it lures massive numbers of egrets, herons, bitterns, and storks that dine on the crustaceans as well as on tadpoles, fish, and insects in the water. On a biodiverse crawfish-and-rice farm, “you can see 30, 40, 50 species of birds, amphibians, reptiles, everything,” says Elijah Wojohn, a shorebird conservation biologist at nonprofit Manomet Conservation Sciences in Massachusetts. In contrast, if farmers switch to less water-intensive corn and soybean production in response to climate pressures, “you’ll see raccoons, deer, crows, that’s about it.” Wojohn often relies on word-of-mouth to hook farmers on conservation; one learned to spot whimbrel, with their large, curved bills, got “fired up” about them and told all his farmer friends. Such farmer-to-farmer dialogue is how you change things among this sometimes change-averse group, Wojohn says. In the Mississippi Delta and in California, where rice is generally grown without crustaceans, conservation organizations like Ducks Unlimited have long boosted farmers’ income and staying power by helping them get paid to flood fields in winter for hunters. This attracts overwintering ducks and geese—considered an extra “crop”—that gobble leftover rice and pond plants; the birds also help to decompose rice stalks so farmers don’t have to remove them. Ducks Unlimited’s goal is simple, says director of conservation innovation Scott Manley: Keep rice farmers farming rice. This is especially important as a changing climate makes that harder. 2024 saw a huge push, with the organization conserving 1 million acres for waterfowl. Some strategies can backfire. In Central New York, where dwindling winter ice has seen waterfowl lingering past their habitual migration times, wildlife managers and land trusts are buying less productive farmland to plant with native grasses; these give migratory fuel to ducks when not much else is growing. But there’s potential for this to produce too many birds for the land available back in their breeding areas, says Andrew Dixon, director of science and conservation at the Mohamed Bin Zayed Raptor Conservation Fund in Abu Dhabi, and coauthor of an article about the genetics of bird migration in the 2024 Annual Review of Animal Biosciences. This can damage ecosystems meant to serve them. Recently, conservation efforts spanning continents and thousands of miles have sprung up. One seeks to protect buff-breasted sandpipers. As they migrate 18,000 miles to and from the High Arctic where they nest, the birds experience extreme hunger—hyperphagia—that compels them to voraciously devour insects in short grasses where the bugs proliferate. But many stops along the birds’ round-trip route are threatened. There are water shortages affecting agriculture in Texas, where the birds forage at turf grass farms; grassland loss and degradation in Paraguay; and in Colombia, conversion of forage lands to exotic grasses and rice paddies these birds cannot use. Conservationists say it’s critical to protect habitat for “buffies” all along their route, and to ensure that the winters these small shorebirds spend around Uruguay’s coastal lagoons are a food fiesta. To that end, Manomet conservation specialist Joaquín Aldabe, in partnership with Uruguay’s agriculture ministry, has so far taught 40 local ranchers how to improve their cattle grazing practices. Rotationally moving the animals from pasture to pasture means grasses stay the right length for insects to flourish. There are no easy fixes in the North American northwest, where bird conservation is in crisis. Extreme drought is causing breeding grounds, molting spots, and migration stopover sites to vanish. It is also endangering the livelihoods of farmers, who feel the push to sell land to developers. From Southern Oregon to Central California, conservation allies have provided monetary incentives for water-strapped grain farmers to leave behind harvest debris to improve survivability for the 1 billion birds that pass through every year, and for ranchers to flood-irrigate unused pastures. One treacherous leg of the northwest migration route is the parched Klamath Basin of Oregon and California. For three recent years, “we saw no migrating birds. I mean, the peak count was zero,” says John Vradenburg, supervisory biologist of the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex. He and myriad private, public, and Indigenous partners are working to conjure more water for the basin’s human and avian denizens, as perennial wetlands become seasonal wetlands, seasonal wetlands transition to temporary wetlands, and temporary wetlands turn to arid lands. Taking down four power dams and one levee has stretched the Klamath River’s water across the landscape, creating new streams and connecting farm fields to long-separated wetlands. But making the most of this requires expansive thinking. Wetland restoration—now endangered by loss of funding from the current administration—would help drought-afflicted farmers by keeping water tables high. But what if farmers could also receive extra money for their businesses via eco-credits, akin to carbon credits, for the work those wetlands do to filter-clean farm runoff? And what if wetlands could function as aquaculture incubators for juvenile fish, before stocking rivers? Klamath tribes are invested in restoring endangered c’waam and koptu sucker fish, and this could help them achieve that goal. As birds’ traditional resting and nesting spots become inhospitable, a more sobering question is whether improvements can happen rapidly enough. The blistering pace of climate change gives little chance for species to genetically adapt, although some are changing their behaviors. That means that the work of conservationists to find and secure adequate, supportive farmland and rangeland as the birds seek out new routes has become a sprint against time. This story originally appeared at Knowable Magazine. Lela Nargi, Knowable Magazine Knowable Magazine explores the real-world significance of scholarly work through a journalistic lens. 0 Comments