Save this picture!Pitaya House / Taller General + Jose María Sáez. Image © JAG StudioIn partnership with the European Cultural Center (ECC), ArchDaily has launched its inaugural exhibition as part of the seventh iteration of Time Space Existence, an architectural showcase occurring concurrently with the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale. Open from May 10 to November 23, 2025, in various locations throughout Venice, this edition centers on the theme of "Repair, Regenerate, and Reuse," promoting innovative and sustainable approaches in architecture. ArchDaily's contribution is located at Palazzo Mora, complementing other venues like Palazzo Bembo, Marinaressa Gardens, and Palazzo Michiel. Save this picture!Save this picture!Aligned with the broader theme of the event, the exhibition focuses on six emerging practices that were previously selected as part of ArchDaily's ongoing series "Best New Practices." Initiated in 2020, this annual award aims to recognize innovative professionals across various fields related to architecture, highlighting the diversity of approaches and innovations brought by creatives working at the intersection of architecture and other related domains. With over 85 teams and professionals selected to date, representing contributions from 32 countries, the initiative reflects a commitment to geographical diversity and the inclusion of regions often overshadowed in the global architectural discourse. By highlighting firms from areas such as Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, the initiative brings attention to unique architectural expressions and solutions emerging from these contexts and contributing meaningfully to the global debate.Save this picture!The six selected practices illustrate this variety by addressing all phases of the design process, introducing innovations from the roots of material sourcing to the potential of rethinking urban rooftops. Estudio Flume in Brazil exemplifies how transforming organic waste into sustainable building materials supports regional development and cultural preservation. Willow Technologies in Ghana advocates for circular economy strategies by reusing agricultural by-products to repair ecosystems and foster biodiversity. Taller General in Ecuador promotes social inclusion through collaborative architecture that reuses existing structures and materials. Studio Zewde in the U.S. integrates ecological and cultural history into landscape design. Wiki World in China democratizes architecture by engaging communities and children in the creative process. Meanwhile, Roofscapes in France focuses on retrofitting existing urban surfaces to adapt cities to climate challenges, transforming rooftops into ecological and social assets. Related Article ArchDaily's 2024 Best New Practices Collectively, these studios showcase how thoughtful intervention at the local level can foster resilient, sustainable environments, making a significant impact through bottom-up strategies aligned with the "root to roof" philosophy.Identifying and Leveraging Local ResourcesEstudio Flume, Noelia Monteiro [São Paulo, Brazil]Save this picture!Estudio Flume, founded in 2015 by Noelia Monteiro and Christian Teshirogi, uniquely addresses the intersection of environmental sustainability and community empowerment by transforming organic waste from Amazonian açaí production into locally created construction materials. Focusing on discarded açaí seeds, the studio collaborates closely with local harvesters to develop particleboard panels that serve as sustainable, locally made materials for community-driven designs. This approach not only reduces waste and preserves traditional practices but also provides economic benefits to communities reliant on açaí harvesting. Through participatory workshops and tailored material research, Estudio Flume emphasizes culturally sensitive, environmentally responsible design solutions that support regional development.Save this picture!Their work exemplifies how innovative reuse of natural resources can foster community resilience and promote ecological balance within the Amazon. The transformation and repurposing of waste from a process essential to local communities demonstrate a grassroots approach for working within local contexts while also illustrating a particular interpretation of the themes of "Repair, Regenerate, and Reuse." The studio helps regenerate ecological balance within the Amazon, turning waste into a catalyst for both environmentally and socially responsible building practices.Restoring Balance with Circular Economy Practices Willow Technologies, Mae-ling Lokko [Accra, Ghana]Save this picture!Founded by Ghanaian-Filipino scientist and architect Mae-Ling Lokko in 2017, Willow Technologies conducts material research and pioneers circular and bio-based technologies that root material development into regional agricultural practices. Their initiatives take a holistic look at the broader needs of local communities, not only reusing discarded bio-based waste such as coconut husks into new building materials, but also employing these materials to provide essential services. One example is their collaboration with Global Mamas to employ moringa seed press cake—a by-product of oil extraction—as a water filtration system that treats toxic textile wastewater, providing safe water for municipal disposal.Save this picture!Furthermore, their focus on repairing and regenerating environmental systems is evident in their efforts to develop solutions that reduce waste, improve soil health, and restore ecological balance. Projects like transforming wastewater treatment by-products into usable masonry and creating stormwater management systems demonstrate how contamination risk is minimized and ecosystems are regenerated. By closing resource loops and promoting community involvement, Willow Technologies advocates for materials and practices that repair environmental damage, support biodiversity, and foster sustainable development.Enhancing Spaces through Collective WorkTaller General [Quito, Ecuador]Save this picture!Taller General, founded in 2017 in Quito, Ecuador, uniquely approaches architecture through the lens of collaborative work and social transformation, while not disregarding environmental responsibility. Acting within regions defined by informal urban growth, the studio's practice understands construction as a continuous process of learning through community engagement and resource reuse. Projects such as the Pitaya House feature laminated pine from certified forests, highlighting innovations in sustainable material sourcing and reducing ecological impact, while San Tola Cohousing rehabilitates and reuses existing structures to revitalize Quito's historic center.Save this picture!Taller General's initiatives extend beyond physical buildings—they promote social inclusion through programs like Femingas, which encourages women and diverse groups' participation in construction. Their work demonstrates how architecture can repair urban and social landscapes while regenerating local ecosystems and communities, fostering a more inclusive and sustainable future. By blending traditional practices with innovative materials and collaborative processes, Taller General exemplifies a holistic approach to addressing urgent social and environmental challenges through architecture.Grounded Connections to Land and CultureStudio Zewde [New York, United States]Save this picture!US-based Landscape architecture and urban design Studio Zewde integrates both ecological and cultural roots into their approach to landscape design. Their work begins with understanding the land's history, indigenous relationships, and natural systems, as seen in their Cuyahoga Valley project, which reconnects underrepresented communities with the site's ecological richness and cultural legacy. The studio's design interventions organize the environment with the aim of celebrating local histories and restoring habitat and human connections grounded in regional knowledge.Save this picture!Exemplifying a different aspect of the "Repair, Regenerate, and Reuse" theme, Studio Zewde actively repairs ecological and social systems through thoughtful interventions that foster community participation and cultural continuity. Their work not only regenerates natural habitats and urban environments but also reimagines the landscape as a platform for civic imagination and memory. It demonstrates the power of dynamic participation and the potential of landscape architecture to promote lasting social and environmental resilience.Harnessing Collective Intelligence in ArchitectureWiki World [Wuhan, China]Save this picture!Wiki World proposes a transformative approach to architecture and architecture education rooted in community involvement and sustainability. Based in Wuhan, China, the studio democratizes the building process by engaging local residents, especially children, in designing and constructing their environments. Their projects, such as the Wiki Tribe community cabins, showcase how participatory methods can foster a sense of ownership, cultural preservation, and environmental harmony. Using traditional craftsmanship and local materials, they minimize ecological impact while revitalizing regional techniques and providing economic opportunities for artisans.Save this picture!By starting from the community's needs, cultural context, and local resources, the studio acts not as the creator but as a facilitator in the process of design, creating spaces that reflect collective identity. Their use of modular, prefabricated materials allows for rapid deployment, adapting to rural landscapes and seasonal activities like harvest festivals. Through a process of repair, regeneration, and reuse, Wiki World creates resilient spaces that strengthen community bonds and nurture ecological awareness, highlighting the potential of participatory design to shape culturally rich environments worldwide.Urban Roofs for Climate AdaptationRoofscapes [Paris, France]Save this picture!Roofscapes exemplifies an integrated approach to urban climate adaptation by proposing solutions for the transformation of urban surfaces, especially roofs, into elements that can regulate the microclimate and create a more resilient and comfortable urban environment. The studio focuses on underutilized rooftops, particularly in European cities like Paris, thinking of solutions to adapt an urban infrastructure originally created to conserve heat into one that actively mitigates it, thus adapting to the changing climate conditions of contemporary times. The roofing system is reimagined to incorporate green technologies such as shaded areas, vegetation, and permeable surfaces. These strategies address heat accumulation and foster cooling from the ground up, starting with the building envelope—its "roof"—and extending to urban microclimates and ecological systems.Save this picture!The studio's work highlights the potential for retrofitting and reimagining existing structures rather than demolition and rebuild, prioritizing sustainability and cultural preservation. By repairing and reprogramming rooftops with green infrastructure, Roofscapes not only mitigates urban heat but also regenerates biodiversity, manages stormwater, and creates accessible outdoor spaces. This comprehensive approach demonstrates how adaptive reuse and nature-based solutions serve as vital tools in shaping resilient, climate-adapted cities, further showcasing the "root to roof" approach of repair, regeneration, and reuse.Save this picture!Credits: Curators: Christele Harrouk, Daniela Porto, and Romullo Baratto Editorial and Project Management: Romullo Baratto Visual Concept: Miwa Negoro and Victor Delaqua Diagram Concept: Miwa Negoro We invite you to check out ArchDaily's comprehensive coverage of the 2025 Venice Biennale.This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: What Is Future Intelligence?, proudly presented by Gendo, an AI co-pilot for Architects. Our mission at Gendo is to help architects produce concept images 100X faster by focusing on the core of the design process. We have built a cutting-edge AI tool in collaboration with architects from some of the most renowned firms, such as Zaha Hadid, KPF, and David Chipperfield.Every month, we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.

It’s a provocative idea: that empathy — that is, putting yourself in another person’s proverbial shoes, and feeling what they feel — is a sin. The Bible contains repeated invocations from Jesus to show deep empathy and compassion for others, including complete strangers. He’s very clear on this point. Moreover, Christianity is built around a fundamental act of empathy so radical — Jesus dying for our sins — that it’s difficult to spin as harmful. Yet as stunning as it may sound, “empathy is a sin” is a claim that’s been growing in recent years across the Christian right. It was first articulated six years ago by controversial pastor and theologian Joe Rigney, now author of the recently published book, The Sin of Empathy, which has drawn plenty of debate among religious commentators. In this construction, empathy is a cudgel that progressives and liberals use to berate and/or guilt-trip Christians into showing empathy to the “wrong” people. Had it stayed within the realm of far-right evangelicals, we likely wouldn’t be discussing this strange view of empathy at all. Yet we are living in an age when the Christian right has gained unprecedented power, both sociocultural and political. The increasing overlap between conservative culture and right-leaning tech spaces means that many disparate public figures are all drinking from the same well of ideas — and so a broader, secular version of the belief that empathy is a tool of manipulation has bubbled into the mainstream through influential figures like Elon Musk.What “empathy is a sin” actually meansThe proposition that too much empathy is a bad thing is far from an idea that belongs to the right. On Reddit, which tends to be relatively left-wing, one popular mantra is that you can’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. That is, too much empathy for someone else can erode your own sense of self, leaving you codependent or open to emotional abuse and manipulation. That’s a pretty standard part of most relationship and self-help advice — even from some Christian advice authors. But in recent months, the idea that empathy is inherently destructive has not only become a major source of debate among Christians, it’s escaped containment and barreled into the mainstream by way of major media outlets, political figures, and influencers.The conversation began with an incendiary 2019 essay by Rigney, then a longtime teacher and pastor at a Baptist seminary, in which he introduced “the enticing sin of empathy” and argued that Satan manipulates people through the intense cultural pressure to feel others’ pain and suffering. Rigney’s ideas were met with ideological pushback, with one Christian blogger saying it “may be the most unwise piece of pastoral theology I’ve seen in my lifetime.” As his essay incited national debate, Rigney himself grew more controversial, facing allegations of dismissing women and telling one now-former Black congregant at his Minneapolis church that “it wouldn’t be sinful for him to own me & my family today.” (In an email to Vox, Rigney denied the congregant’s version of events.) Rigney also has a longtime affiliation with Doug Wilson, the leader of the Reformed Christian Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. In practice, what Rigney is typically decrying is any empathy for a liberal perspective or for someone who’s part of a marginalized community.Now well-known for spreading Christian nationalism, and for allegedly fostering a culture of abuse (allegations he has denied), Wilson’s infamy also comes from his co-authored 1996 essay “Southern Slavery: As It Was,” in which he claimed that “Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.” (“My defense of the South does not make me a racist,” Wilson said in 2003.) Rigney appeared on Wilson’s 2019 podcast series Man Rampant to discuss empathy; their conversation quickly devolved into decrying fake rape allegations and musing that victims of police violence might have “deserved to be shot.” In an email, Rigney told me that both he and Wilson developed their similar views on empathy from the therapist and Rabbi Edwin Friedman, whose posthumously published 1999 book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, has influenced not only family therapy but conservative church leadership and thought. In the book, Friedman argues that American society has devalued the self, leading to an emotional regression and a “low pain threshold.” Alongside this he compares “political correctness” to the Inquisition, and frames a “chronically anxious America” as one that is “organize[d] around its most dysfunctional elements,” in which leaders have difficulty making tough decisions. This correlation of emotional weakness with societal excess paved the way for Rigney to frame empathy itself as a dangerous weapon. Despite using the incendiary generalization, “empathy is sin,” Rigney told me that it is not all empathy that is sinful, but specifically “untethered empathy.” He describes this as “empathy that is detached or unmoored from reality, from what is good and right.” (An explanation that begs definitions for “reality,” “good,” and “right.”)“Just as ‘the sin of anger’ refers to unrighteous or ungoverned anger, so the sin of empathy refers to ungoverned, excessive, and untethered empathy,” Rigney told me. This kind of unrestrained empathy, he writes, is a recipe for cultural mayhem. In theory, Rigney argues that one should be “tethered” to God’s will and not to Satan. In practice, what Rigney is typically decrying is any empathy for a liberal perspective or for someone who’s part of a marginalized community. When I asked him for a general reconciliation of his views with the Golden Rule, he sent me a response in which he brought up trans identity in order to label it a “fantasy” that contradicts “God-given biological reality,” while misgendering a hypothetical trans person. The demonization of empathy moves into the mainstreamDespite receiving firm pushback from most religious leaders (and indeed most people) who hear about it, Rigney’s argument has been spreading through the Christian right at large. Last year, conservative personality and author Allie Stuckey published Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, in which she argues that “toxic empathy is a dangerous guide for our decisions, behavior, and public policy” while condemning queer people and feminists. “Empathy almost needs to be struck from the Christian vocabulary,” Josh McPherson, host of the Christian-centered Stronger Man Nation podcast and an adherent of Wilson and Rigney’s ideas, said in January, in a clip that garnered an outsize amount of attention relative to the podcast episode itself. That same month, Vice President JD Vance struck a nerve with a controversial appearance on Fox News in which he seemed to reference both the empathy conversation and the archaic Catholic concept of “ordo amoris,” meaning “the order of love.” As Vance put it, it’s the idea that one’s family should come before anyone else: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country,” he said. “And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” In a follow-up on X, he posted, “the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense.” Vance’s statements received backlash from many people, including both the late Pope Francis and then-future Pope Leo XIV — but the controversy just drove the idea further into the mainstream. As part of the odd crossover between far-right religion and online reactionaries, it picked up surprising alliances along the way, including evolutionary biologist turned far-right gadfly Gad Saad. In January, Saad, applying a survival-of-the-fittest approach to our emotions, argued against “suicidal empathy,” which he described as “the inability to implement optimal decisions when our emotional system is tricked into an orgiastic hyperactive form of empathy, deployed on the wrong targets.” (Who are the wrong targets according to Saad? Trans women and immigrants.)In a February appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Elon Musk explicitly referenced Saad but went even further, stating, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy — the empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization” — the “they” here being the left wing. “I think empathy is good,” Musk added, “but you need to think it through, and not just be programmed like a robot.” By March, mainstream media had noticed the conversation. David French had observed the “strange spectacle” of the Christian turn against empathy in a column for the New York Times. In April, a deep-dive in the Guardian followed. That same month, a broad-ranging conversation in the New Yorker with Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, led to interviewer Isaac Chotiner pressing him about why empathy is bad. The discussion, of deported Venezuelan immigrants wrongfully suspected of having gang tattoos, led to Mohler saying that “there’s no reason anyone other than a gang member should have that tattoo.” (Among the tattoos wrongly flagged as gang symbols were the words “Mom” and “Dad” on the wrists of one detainee.)The pro-empathy backlash is fierce The connective tissue across all these disparate anti-empathy voices is two-fold, according to Christian scholar Karen Swallow Prior. Prior, an anti-abortion ethicist and former longtime Liberty University professor, singled out the argument’s outsize emphasis on attacking very small, very vulnerable groups — as well as the moment in which it’s all happening.“The entire discourse around empathy is backlash against those who are questioning the authority of those in power,” she told me, “not coincidentally emerging in a period where we have a rise in recognition of overly controlling and narcissistic leaders, both in and outside the church.” Those people “understand and appreciate empathy the least.”“Trump made it okay to not be okay with culture,” Peter Bell, co-creator and producer of the Sons of Patriarchy podcast, which explores longstanding allegations of emotional and sexual abuse against Doug Wilson’s Christ Church, told me. (Wilson has denied that the church has a culture of abuse or coercion.) “He made it kind of cool for Christians to be jerks,” Bell said. “He made the unspoken things spoken, the whispered things shouted out loud.”Prior believes that the argument won’t have a long shelf life because Rigney’s idea is so convoluted. Yet she added that it’s born out of toxic masculinity, in an age where stoicism, traditionally male-coded, is increasingly part of the regular cultural diet of men via figures like Jordan Peterson. That hypermasculinity goes hand in hand with evangelical culture, and with the ideas Rigney borrowed from Friedman about too many emotions being a weakness. In this framing, emotion becomes non-masculine by default — i.e., feminine.“Everybody’s supposed to have sympathy for the white male, but when you show empathy to anyone else, suddenly empathy is a sin.”— Karen Swallow Prior, Christian scholarThat leads us to the grimmest part of Rigney’s “untethered empathy” claims: the way he explicitly genders it — and demonizes it — as feminine. Throughout his book, he argues that women are more empathetic than men, and that as a result, they are more prone to giving into it as a sin. It’s an inherently misogynistic view that undermines women’s decision-making and leadership abilities. Though Rigney pushed back against this characterization in an email to me, arguing that critics have distorted what he views as merely “gendered tendencies and susceptibility to particular temptations,” he also couldn’t help reinforcing it. “[F]emale tendencies, like male tendencies, have particular dangers, temptations, and weaknesses,” he wrote. Women thus should recognize this and “take deliberate, Spirit-wrought action to resist the impulse to become a devouring HR department that wants to run the world.”As Prior explains, though, Rigney’s just fine with a mythic national human resources department, as long as it supports the status quo. “Everybody’s supposed to have sympathy for the white male,” she said, “but when you show empathy to anyone else, suddenly empathy is a sin.”What’s heartening is that, whether they realize what kind of dangerous extremism undergirds it, most people aren’t buying Rigney’s “empathy is sin” claim. Across the nation, in response to Rigney’s assertion, the catchphrase, “If empathy is a sin, then sin boldly” has arisen, as heard in pulpits, seen on church marquees, and worn on T-shirts — a reminder that it takes much more than the semantic whims of a few extremists to shake something most people hold in their hearts.See More:

Princess Charlotte is Prince William and Kate Middleton's second child. Will Warr/Kensington Palace/Handout via Reuters 2025-05-22T12:42:01Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Princess Charlotte turned 10 in May. As Prince William and Kate Middleton's second child, she's third in line for the British throne. Although her life is mostly private, Charlotte shows peeks of her personality at royal engagements. The roles of "heir" and "spare" have haunted royal siblings for centuries.The very existence of secondborn children in the British royal family is tied to a crown they'll ideally never hold, as they serve as backups to the direct heirs to the throne. Still, spares can play a critical role in the monarchy, as was the case for King George VI, who became monarch in 1936 after his brother abdicated. Even as it adapts to the modern world, the heir and spare dynamic continues to shape the monarchy, as evidenced by the title — and contents — of Prince Harry's 2023 memoir.In the latest generation of royals, Princess Charlotte is the spare to Prince George's heir. However, at just 10, Charlotte is already breaking the mold she was born into, charting a new path for the royals.Here's everything to know about Princess Charlotte.Princess Charlotte joins the royal familyIn a press release on September 8, 2014, Kensington Palace announced that Kate Middleton was expecting her and Prince William's second child. The statement also said that Kate had hyperemesis gravidarum, as she did with her first pregnancy, and would be missing an engagement in Oxford that day as a result.Charlotte was born on May 2, 2015, at 8:34 a.m., at the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital in London, just like Prince George, Prince William, and Prince Harry were. Kate Middleton and Prince William posed with Princess Charlotte outside the hospital the day of her birth. Mike Marsland/Getty Images William and Kate debuted their daughter to the world during a photocall on the hospital's steps the same day she was born. Kate posed for photos on the hospital's steps after each of her children's births, following in Princess Diana's footsteps.Charlotte's full name is Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, and at the time of her birth, her title was Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte of Cambridge.Charlotte is the feminine version of Charles, her grandfather's name. Her middle names nod to her great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and her late grandmother, Princess Diana.At her birth, Charlotte was fourth in the royal line of succession, behind her grandfather, father, and older brother.Queen Elizabeth II ensured Charlotte's position in the line wouldn't be affected by her gender through the Succession to the Crown Act in 2013. The act changed a long-standing rule that male siblings superseded their female siblings' position in the line to the throne. If it hadn't been passed, Prince Louis' birth in 2018 would have moved Charlotte down the line of succession. Princess Charlotte began attending Lambrook School in September 2022. Jonathan Brady/Pool/Getty Images After Queen Elizabeth died in 2022, King Charles III made William the Prince of Wales, so his daughter's title became Princess Charlotte of Wales. Likewise, she moved up to third in line for the throne after her great-grandmother's death. Princess Charlotte's royal lifeAccording to the royal family's website, the princess was christened by the Archbishop of Canterbury at St Mary Magdalene Church in Sandringham in July 2015. Prince George was photographed peering into her stroller at the ceremony.Charlotte has five godparents, including Kate's cousin, Adam Middleton. Prince George looked into his sister Princess Charlotte's pram after her christening in July 2015. Matt Dunham/Reuters Kate and William released a few photos of the princess as a baby, but she didn't join her parents on an overseas tour until she was 16 months old, in September 2016, when she went with her family to Canada.Charlotte and Kate wore color-coordinating outfits throughout the trip, a tradition they've kept up throughout Charlotte's life.Charlotte became a big sister in 2018 when Prince Louis was born, completing the Wales family. The princess attended Thomas's Battersea school in London from 2019 to 2021, and she began attending the Lambrook School after the Wales family relocated to Windsor full-time in 2022. Princess Charlotte has appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony during Trooping the Colour. Karwai Tang/WireImage/Getty Images William and Kate have balanced their children's royal roles with their privacy as they've grown up, allowing them to attend only a handful of royal engagements each year and releasing photos of them for special occasions, like birthdays or holidays.Charlotte appears annually at Trooping the Colour and the royal family's Christmas walk at Sandringham. She has also been present for milestone moments for the royals, like Queen Elizabeth's funeral in September 2022 and King Charles' coronation in May 2023.Charlotte often appears to be the most comfortable of her siblings at royal engagements, speaking with members of the public and even correcting her brothers on royal protocol.The young princess has also been spotted attending less formal events from time to time, showing off a more authentic side of the royal family in the process.Kensington Palace shared photos of Charlotte at the Eras Tour in June 2024, smiling with William, George, and Taylor Swift. She also joined her mother at Wimbledon in July 2024, accompanying Kate to the first solo engagement she attended after announcing her cancer diagnosis. Princess Charlotte joined Kate Middleton at Wimbledon 2024. Karwai Tang/WireImage/Getty Images Charlotte's comfort in the spotlight, even compared to her older brother, differentiates her from royal "spares" of the past, who are often relegated to the role of wild child in comparison to the heir's steadiness. She seems calm and competent at public events, and she may already be taking after her great-aunt Princess Anne, whose steadfastness is an asset to King Charles.At only 10, it's clear Princess Charlotte's future in the royal family is bright.

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. The data center boom in the desert In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities nearby. Meanwhile, Microsoft has acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property, and Apple is expanding its existing data center just across the Truckee River from the industrial park.The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models and store information in the cloud has sparked a data center boom in the desert—and it’s just far enough away from Nevada’s communities to elude wide notice and, some fear, adequate scrutiny. Read the full story. —James Temple This story is part of Power Hungry: AI and our energy future—our new series shining a light on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial intelligence revolution. Check out the rest of the package here. A new atomic clock in space could help us measure elevations on Earth In 2003, engineers from Germany and Switzerland began building a bridge across the Rhine River simultaneously from both sides. Months into construction, they found that the two sides did not meet. The German side hovered 54 centimeters above the Swiss one. The misalignment happened because they measured elevation from sea level differently. To prevent such costly construction errors, in 2015 scientists in the International Association of Geodesy voted to adopt the International Height Reference Frame, or IHRF, a worldwide standard for elevation. Now, a decade after its adoption, scientists are looking to update the standard—by using the most precise clock ever to fly in space. Read the full story. —Sophia Chen Three takeaways about AI’s energy use and climate impacts —Casey Crownhart This week, we published Power Hungry, a package all about AI and energy. At the center of this package is the most comprehensive look yet at AI’s growing power demand, if I do say so myself. This data-heavy story is the result of over six months of reporting by me and my colleague James O’Donnell (and the work of many others on our team). Over that time, with the help of leading researchers, we quantified the energy and emissions impacts of individual queries to AI models and tallied what it all adds up to, both right now and for the years ahead. There’s a lot of data to dig through, and I hope you’ll take the time to explore the whole story. But in the meantime, here are three of my biggest takeaways from working on this project. Read the full story.This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. MIT Technology Review Narrated: Congress used to evaluate emerging technologies. Let’s do it again. Artificial intelligence comes with a shimmer and a sheen of magical thinking. And if we’re not careful, politicians, employers, and other decision-makers may accept at face value the idea that machines can and should replace human judgment and discretion. One way to combat that might be resurrecting the Office of Technology Assessment, a Congressional think tank that detected lies and tested tech until it was shuttered in 1995. This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as it’s released. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 OpenAI is buying Jony Ive’s AI startup The former Apple design guru will work with Sam Altman to design an entirely new range of devices. (NYT $)+ The deal is worth a whopping $6.5 billion. (Bloomberg $)+ Altman gave OpenAI staff a preview of its AI ‘companion’ devices. (WSJ $)+ AI products to date have failed to set the world alight. (The Atlantic $)2 Microsoft has blocked employee emails containing ‘Gaza’ or ‘Palestine’ Although the term ‘Israel’ does not trigger such a block. (The Verge)+ Protest group No Azure for Apartheid has accused the company of censorship. (Fortune $) 3 DOGE needs to do its work in secret That’s what the Trump administration is claiming to the Supreme Court, at least. (Ars Technica)+ It’s trying to avoid being forced to hand over internal documents. (NYT $)+ DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data. (MIT Technology Review)4 US banks are racing to embrace cryptocurrency Ahead of new stablecoin legislation. (The Information $)+ Attendees at Trump’s crypto dinner paid over $1 million for the privilege. (NBC News)+ Bitcoin has surged to an all-time peak yet again. (Reuters)5 China is making huge technological leaps Thanks to the billions it’s poured into narrowing the gap between it and the US. (WSJ $)+ Nvidia’s CEO has branded America’s chip curbs on China ‘a failure.’ (FT $)+ There can be no winners in a US-China AI arms race. (MIT Technology Review)6 Disordered eating content is rife on TikTokBut a pocket of creators are dedicated to debunking the worst of it. (Wired $) 7 The US military is interested in the world’s largest aircraftThe gigantic WindRunner plane will have an 80-metre wingspan. (New Scientist $) + Phase two of military AI has arrived. (MIT Technology Review)8 How AI is shaking up animationNew tools are slashing the costs of creating episodes by up to 90%. (NYT $) + Generative AI is reshaping South Korea’s webcomics industry. (MIT Technology Review)9 Tesla’s Cybertruck is a flop Sorry, Elon. (Fast Company $)+ The vehicles’ resale value is plummeting. (The Daily Beast)10 Google’s new AI video generator loves this terrible joke Which appears to originate from a Reddit post. (404 Media)+ What happened when 20 comedians got AI to write their routines. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day “It feels like we are marching off a cliff.” —An unnamed software engineering vice president jokes that future developers conferences will be attended by the AI agents companies like Microsoft are racing to deploy, Semafor reports. One more thing What does GPT-3 “know” about me?One of the biggest stories in tech is the rise of large language models that produce text that reads like a human might have written it. These models’ power comes from being trained on troves of publicly available human-created text hoovered up from the internet. If you’ve posted anything even remotely personal in English on the internet, chances are your data might be part of some of the world’s most popular LLMs.Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Technology Review’s former AI reporter, wondered what data these models might have on her—and how it could be misused. So she put OpenAI’s GPT-3 to the test. Read about what she found.We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + Don’t shoot the messenger, but it seems like there’s a new pizza king in town 🍕 ($)+ Ranked: every Final Destination film, from worst to best.+ Who knew that jelly could help to preserve coral reefs? Not I.+ A new generation of space archaeologists are beavering away to document our journeys to the stars.

Snehal Antani has been tinkering with technology since childhood. His father, an electrical engineer, would give him broken devices and task him with fixing them.  He moved into computer science as an undergraduate, eventually earning his master's degree. He then worked for IBM and eventually served as CIO for GE Capital and CTO for Splunk. In 2018, he joined Joint Special Operations Command, a division of the United States Special Operations Command, as CTO. He started Horizon3.ai, an AI pen testing company, with JSOC colleague Anthony Pillitiere in 2019. Here, he describes his unusual career path and how he deploys the skills he learned along the way to facilitate innovation. Can you tell me about your early tech education? When I went to undergrad at Purdue, I knew I was going to do computer science. What I love about computer science is that it’s horizontal -- so I can apply that to any vertical that I'm interested in. I was interested in stock trading while I was an undergrad, so I was able to write code to learn how to trade stocks. The software programming and systems architecture skills that I picked up could be applied to solve any job. What did the early portion of your career teach you?I optimized for learning. I used to sit in the hallway in front of my team lead’s office at IBM. He couldn't see me, but I could see his whiteboard. I would try to understand something he had explained to me. I was too afraid to go in and ask for more information, so I would literally sit on the floor and just stare at it, trying to make sure I understood it in detail.  Related:I wanted to be an expert in distributed systems and enterprise software. The first few jobs I took were all about learning as much as I could in that domain.  I was an awful speaker. I forced myself to become a better communicator. I then moved over to learn how to launch products in product management. I was an awful product manager the first year. But there was no way I was going to get better except by throwing myself into that arena and trying to figure it out.  In 2012 I got recruited to be a CIO at GE Capital. I had never managed anyone before. GE made a bet on me. I learned a lot and I was able to impact the organization as well. Having a solid technical foundation and being able to communicate well were probably the two most important skills I developed early in my career. Can you describe a scenario in which you felt out of your depth? When I was in IBM, there was a customer in Germany struggling with their tech. Their banking system kept crashing. Steve Mills, who was a legendary senior vice president, sent out a message that said, "This customer is struggling. No one can figure out what's wrong. Who here knows how to fix this problem?" I was a nobody at IBM. I replied directly to Mills and said, "I think I can fix this problem. Send me." Related:Once it got there, they were explaining their problem. I had no idea what they were talking about. All I could think was, "I’m going to get fired. I just embarrassed myself and my company." Suddenly, everything in my brain clicked: every single aspect of enterprise software technology, operating systems, distributed systems. We ended up solving the problem about 90 minutes later.  How has life in the C-suite changed for tech folks? I remember going into meetings at GE Capital. People thought I was there to manage the projector. Some of those teams struggled to understand the role technology played in creating a competitive edge. GE had just come off gutting and outsourcing the bulk of their technology DNA. Throughout the 2000s it didn’t seem that there was a belief that technology was a competitive advantage. I think there was a realization that they had gone too far. They started to try to bring in more technical talent. In the mid 2000s through 2015, tech was a back-office function. I believe that’s shifted dramatically, especially now when you think about AI and the advantage you can create using technology. There are certainly CIOs in my network who still view themselves as a back-office function. They don’t want to learn the business. But I believe that type of CIO is in the minority now. Related:Why did you join Joint Special Operations Command in 2018? I was 21 when 9/11 happened. I remember this feeling of both helplessness and the desire to do something about it. Was there a multiplier way to affect change -- one calorie in causing 10 calories of impact? There wasn’t an obvious way for me to do that. I remember in 2014 watching the rise of ISIS. The desire to make a difference came back at a much more intense level. The Special Operations community had invited me to do some planning sessions with them. How could they increase the velocity of innovation in order to keep up with the adversary?  Terrorist organizations were able to use off the shelf technology -- open-source software, cloud computing, drones -- to innovate lethal capabilities that were otherwise only available to armies. And so, the question was, how do we accelerate the innovation velocity? A lot of that experience was drawn from my time at GE Capital. I was able to join as the first ever CTO. For me, it was about purpose and impact. There’s no clearer mission than looking at human beings putting themselves in danger to help others. Anything that we could do using technology to reduce risk to them was an incredible opportunity. How did you come to found Horizon3.ai? I met Tony, my co-founder, at JSOC. We saw a challenge: We have no idea we’re secure until the bad guys show up. Are we fixing the right vulnerabilities? Are security tools actually working? We wanted to find a way to build an autonomous system that allows you to hack yourself as often as you want. Fiercely prioritizing problems that mattered was the first thing that we were able to do because our autonomous agent was able to hack organizations, tell you exactly how it hacked them, and then tell you exactly what to fix and how to fix it. Once you fix it, you can run a retest to verify that you're good to go. Find, fix, verify is the primary experience within the product. 

What just happened? A judge has ruled that the lawsuit against Google and Character.ai over claims the latter's chatbot caused a 14-year-old's suicide can go ahead. The boy's mother, who brought the suit, says her son became addicted to the service and emotionally attached to a chatbot based on the personality of Game of Thrones character Daenerys Targaryen. In October, Megan Garcia sued Character.ai and Google, claiming they were responsible for the suicide of her son, Sewell Setzer III. Character.ai lets users chat with AI-powered "personalities" based on fictional characters or real people, living or dead. Setzer had become obsessed with a bot based on Daenerys Targaryen, texting "Dany" constantly and spending hours alone in his room talking to it, according to Garcia's complaint. The suit says that Setzer repeatedly expressed thoughts about suicide to the bot. The chatbot asked him if he had devised a plan for killing himself. Setzer admitted that he had but that he did not know if it would succeed or cause him great pain. The chatbot allegedly told him, "That's not a reason not to go through with it." The companies had tried to argue that the case should be dismissed for numerous reasons, including claims that the chatbots' output was constitutionally protected free speech. But US District Judge Anne Conway said they failed to prove these arguments. Character.ai's founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, who are named in the suit, worked at Google before launching the company. Google rehired the founders – as well as the research team – at Character.ai in August 2024. The deal grants Google a non-exclusive license to Character.ai's technology. Garcia said that Google had contributed to the development of Character.ai's technology, something the company denies. Google said it only has a licensing agreement with Character.ai, does not own the startup, and does not maintain an ownership stake. But the judge still rejected Google's request to find that it could not be held liable. // Related Stories Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda emphasized that Google and Character.ai are "entirely separate" and that Google "did not create, design, or manage Character.ai's app or any component part of it." Garcia said Character.ai targeted her son with "anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences." She added that the chatbot was programmed to misrepresent itself as "a real person, a licensed psychotherapist, and an adult lover, ultimately resulting in Sewell's desire to no longer live outside." The chatbot allegedly told the boy it loved him and engaged in sexual conversations with him. The complaint states that Garcia took her son's phone away after he got in trouble at school. She found a message to "Daenerys" that read, "What if I told you I could come home right now?" The chatbot responded with, "[P]lease do, my sweet king." Sewell shot himself with his stepfather's pistol "seconds" later, the lawsuit said. Character.ai introduced several changes after the suit was revealed last year, including changes to certain models for minors, new disclaimers, and notifications when users have been on the platform for an hour.

hemul75/Getty ImagesOkay. Deep breath. This is surreal. I just added an entire new feature to my software, including UI and functionality, just by typing four paragraphs of instructions. I have screenshots, and I'll try to make sense of it in this article. I can't tell if we're living in the future or we've just descended to a new plane of hell (or both).Let's take a step back. Google's Jules is the latest in a flood of new coding agents released just this week. I wrote about OpenAI Codex and Microsoft's GitHub Copilot Coding Agent at the beginning of the week, and ZDNET's Webb Wright wrote about Google's Jules. Also: I test a lot of AI coding tools, and this stunning new OpenAI release just saved me days of workAll of these coding agents will perform coding operations on a GitHub repository. GitHub, for those who've been following along, is the giant Microsoft-owned software storage, management, and distribution hub for much of the world's most important software, especially open source code. The difference, at least as it pertains to this article, is that Google made Jules available to everyone, for free. That meant I could just hop in and take it for a spin. And now my head is spinning. Usage limits and my first two prompts The free access version of Jules allows only five requests per day. That might not seem like a lot, but in only two requests, I was able to add a new feature to my software. So, don't discount what you can get done if you think through your prompts before shooting off your silver bullets for the day. My first two prompts were tentative. It wasn't that I wasn't impressed; it was that I really wasn't giving Jules much to do. I'm still not comfortable with the idea of setting an AI loose on all my code at once, so I played it safe. My first prompt asked Jules to document the "hooks" that add-on developers could use to add features to my product. I didn't tell Jules much about what I wanted. It returned some markup that it recommended dropping into my code's readme file. It worked, but meh. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETI did have the opportunity to publish that code to a new GitHub branch, but I skipped it. It was just a test, after all. My second prompt was to ask Jules to suggest five new hooks. I got back an answer that seemed reasonable. However, I realized that opening up those capabilities in a security product was just too risky for me to delegate to an AI. I skipped those changes, too. It was at this point that Jules wanted a coffee break. It stopped functioning for about 90 minutes. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETThat gave me time to think. What I really wanted to see was whether Jules could add some real functionality to my code and save me some time. Necessary background information My Private Site is a security plugin for WordPress. It's running on about 20,000 active sites. It puts a login dialog in front of the site's web pages. There are a bunch of options, but that's the key feature. I originally acquired the software a decade ago from a coder who called himself "jonradio," and have been maintaining and expanding it ever since. Also: Rust turns 10: How a broken elevator changed software foreverThe plugin provides access control to the front-end of a website, the pages that visitors see when they come to the site. Site owners control the plugin via a dashboard interface, with various admin functions available in the plugin's admin interface. I decided to try Jules out on a feature some users have requested, hiding the admin bar from logged-in users. The admin bar is the black bar WordPress puts on the top of a web page. In the case of the screenshot below, the black admin bar is visible. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETI wanted Jules to add an option on the dashboard to hide the admin bar from logged-in users. The idea is that if a user logged in, the admin bar would be visible on the back end, but logged-in users browsing the front-end of the site wouldn't have to see the ugly bar. This is the original dashboard, before adding the new feature. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETSome years ago, I completely rewrote the admin interface from the way it was when I acquired the plugin. Adding options to the interface is straightforward, but it's still time-consuming. Every option requires not only the UI element to be added, but also preference saving and preference recalling when the dashboard is displayed. That's in addition to any program logic that the preference controls. In practice, I've found that it takes me about 2-3 hours to add a preference UI element, along with the assorted housekeeping involved. It's not hard, but there are a lot of little fiddly bits that all need to be tweaked. That takes time. That should bring you up to speed enough to understand my next test of Jules. Here's a bit of foreshadowing: the first test failed miserably. The second test succeeded astonishingly. Instructing Jules Adding a hide admin bar feature is not something that would have been easy for the run-of-the-mill coding help we've been asking ChatGPT and the other chatbots to perform. As I mentioned, adding the new option to the dashboard requires programming in a variety of locations throughout the code, and also requires an understanding of the overall codebase. Here's what I told Jules. 1. On the Site Privacy Tab of the admin interface, add a new checkbox. Label the section "Admin Bar" and label the checkbox itself "Hide Admin Bar". [Place this in the MAKE SITE PRIVATE block, located just under the Enable login privacy checkbox and before the Site Privacy Mode segment.] I instructed Jules where I wanted the AI to put the new option. On my first run through, I made a mistake and left out the details in square brackets. I didn't tell Jules exactly where I wanted it to place the new option. As it turns out, that omission caused a big fail. Once I added in the sentence in brackets above, the feature worked. 2. Be sure to save the selection of that checkbox to the plugin's preferences variable when the Save Privacy Status button is checked. This makes sure Jules knows that there is a preference data structure, and to be sure to update it when the user makes a change. It's important to note that if I didn't have an understanding of the underlying code, I wouldn't have instructed Jules about this, and the code would not work. You can't "vibe code" something like this without knowing the underlying code. 3. Show the appropriate checked or unchecked status when the Site Privacy tab is displayed. This tells the AI that I want the interface to be updated to match what the preference variable specifies. 4. Based on the preference variable created in (2), add code to hide or show the WordPress admin bar. If Hide Admin Bar is checked, the Admin Bar should not be visible to logged-in WordPress front-end users. If the Hide Admin Bar is not checked, the Admin Bar should be visible to logged-in front-end users. Logged-in back-end users in the admin interface should always be able to see the admin bar. This describes the business logic that the new preference should control. It requires the AI to know how to hide or show the admin bar (a WordPress API call is used), and it requires the AI to know where to put the code in my plugin to enable or disable this feature. And with that, Jules was trained on what I wanted. Jules dives into my code I fed my prompt set into Jules and got back a plan of action. Pay close attention to that Approve Plan? button. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETI didn't even get a chance to read through the plan before Jules decided to approve the plan on its own. It did this after every plan it presented. An AI that doesn't wait for permission raises the hairs on the back of my neck. Just saying. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETI desperately want to make a Skynet/Landru/Colossus/P1/Hal kind of joke, because I'm freaked out. I mean, it's good. But I'm freaked out. Here's some of the code Jules wrote. The shaded green is the new stuff. I'm not thrilled with the color scheme, but I'm sure that will be tweakable over time. Also: The best free AI courses and certificates in 2025More relevant is the fact that Jules picked up on my variable naming conventions and the architecture of my code and dived right in. This is the new option, rendered in code. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETBy the time it was done, Jules had written in all the code changes it planned for originally, plus some test code. I don't use standardized tests. I would have told Jules not to do it the way it planned, but it never gave me time to approve or modify its original plan. Even so, it worked out. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETI pushed the Publish branch button, which caused GitHub to create a new branch, separate from my main repository. Jules then published its changes to that branch. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETThis is how contributors to big projects can work on those projects without causing chaos to the main code line. Up to this point, I could look at the code, but I wasn't able to run it. But by pushing the code to a branch, Jules and GitHub made it possible for me to replicate the changes safely down to my computer to test them out. If I didn't like the changes, I could have just switched back to the main branch and no harm, no foul. But I did like the changes, so I moved on to the next step. Around the code in 8 clicks Once I brought the branch down to my development machine, I could test it out. Here's the new dashboard with the Hide Admin Menu feature. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETI tried turning the feature on and off and making sure the settings stuck. They did. I also tried other features in the plugin to make sure nothing else had broken. I was pretty sure nothing would, because I reviewed all the changes before approving the branch. But still. Testing is a good thing to do. I then logged into the test website. As you can see, there's no admin bar showing. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETAt this point, the process was out of the AI's hands. It was simply time to deploy the changes, both back to GitHub and to the master WordPress repository. First, I used GitHub Desktop to merge the branch code back into the main branch on my development machine. I changed "Hide Admin Menu" to "Hide admin menu" in my code's main branch, because I like it better. I pushed that (the full main branch on my local machine) back to the GitHub cloud. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETThen, because I just don't like random branches hanging around once they've been incorporated into the distribution version, I deleted the new branch on my computer. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETI also deleted the new branch from the GitHub cloud service. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETFinally, I packaged up the new code. I added a change to the readme to describe the new feature and to update the code's version number. Then, I pushed it using SVN (the source code control system used by the WordPress community) up to the WordPress plugin repository. Journey to the center of the code Jules is very definitely beta right now. It hung in a few places. Some screens didn't update. It decided to check out for 90 minutes. I had to wait while it went to and came back from its digital happy place. It's evidencing all the sorts of things you'd expect from a newly-released piece of code. I have no concerns about that. Google will clean it up. The fact that Jules (and presumably OpenAI Codex and GitHub Copilot Coding Agent) can handle an entire repository of code across a bunch of files is big. That's a much deeper level of understanding and integration than we saw, even six months ago. Also: How to move your codebase into GitHub for analysis by ChatGPT Deep Research - and why you shouldThe speed with which it can change an entire codebase is terrifying. The damage it can do is potentially extraordinary. It will gleefully go through and modify everything in your codebase, and if you specify something wrong and then push or merge, you will have an epic mess on your hands. There is a deep inequality between how quickly it can change code and how long it will take a human to review those changes. Working on this scale will require excellent unit tests. Even tools like mine, which don't lend themselves to full unit testing, will require some kind of automated validation to prevent robot-driven errors on a massive scale. Those who are afraid these tools will take jobs from programmers should be concerned, but not in the way most people think. It is absolutely, totally, one-hundo-percent necessary for experienced coders to review and guide these agents. When I left out one critical instruction, the agent gleefully bricked my site. Since I was the person who wrote the code initially, I knew what to fix. But it would have been brutally difficult for someone else to figure out what had been left out and how to fix it. That would have required coming up to speed on all the hidden nuances of the entire architecture of the code. Also: How to turn ChatGPT into your AI coding power tool - and double your outputThe jobs that are likely to be destroyed are those of junior developers. Jules is easily doing junior developer level work. With tools like Jules or Codex or Copilot, that cost of a few hundred bucks a month at most, it's going to be hard for management to be willing to pay medium-to-high six figures for midlevel and junior programmers. Even outsourcing and offshoring isn't as cheap as using an AI agent to do maintenance coding. And, as I wrote about earlier in the week, if there are no mid-level jobs available, how will we train the experienced people we're going to need in the future? I am also concerned about how access limits will shake out. Productivity gains will drop like a rock if you need to do one more prompt and you have to wait a day to be allowed to do so. Screenshot by David Gewirtz/ZDNETAs for me, in less than 10 minutes, I turned out a new feature that had been requested by readers. While I was writing another article, I fed the prompt to Jules. I went back to work on the article, and checked on Jules when it was finished. I checked out the code, brought it down to my computer, and pushed a release. It took me longer to upload the thing to the WordPress repository than to add the entire new feature. For that class of feature, I got a half-a-day's work done in less than half an hour, from thinking about making it happen to published to my users. In the last two hours, 2,500 sites have downloaded and installed the new feature. That will surge to well over 10,000 by morning (it's about 8 p.m. now as I write this). Without Jules, those users probably would have been waiting months for this new feature, because I have a huge backlog of work, and it wasn't my top priority. But with Jules, it took barely any effort. Also: 7 productivity gadgets I can't live without (and why they make such a big difference)These tools are going to require programmers, managers, and investors to rethink the software development workflow. There will be glaring "you can't get there from here" gotchas. And there will be epic failures and coding errors. But I have no doubt that this is the next level of AI-based coding. Real, human intelligence is going to be necessary to figure out how to deal with it. Have you tried Google's Jules or any of the other new AI coding agents? Would you trust them to make direct changes to your codebase, or do you prefer to keep a tighter manual grip? What kinds of developer tasks do you think these tools should and shouldn't handle? Let us know in the comments below. Want more stories about AI? Sign up for Innovation, our weekly newsletter.You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.Featured

Not providing enough practical experience in science classes will have a direct impact on whether children work in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) roles in the future, research suggests. EngineeringUK and The Royal Society’s Science education tracker asked hundreds of science teachers about delivering hands-on lessons and found there has been a decline in practical classes, with teachers highlighting many of the barriers standing in the way of being able to deliver this style of teaching. “We know the frequency of hands-on practical science has dropped,” said Becca Gooch, head of research at EngineeringUK. “Our Science Education Tracker research in partnership with the Royal Society highlighted this, as well as how critically vital practical science is as a motivating factor for learning science for years seven to nine. “Hands-on practicals help bring science to life for young people and boost interest in science, as well as developing important skills,” she added. “We need more young people, especially girls, choosing to continue with science and progress into engineering and technology careers. So, we need school students to have many more opportunities to get hands-on in their science lessons.” More than half of children in years seven to nine highlighted how important practical science lessons are for motivating them to learn more about the subject, especially for students who are less interested in the topic – if there are fewer practical science lessons, it actually serves to put people off of studying the subject later on in their education. With EngineeringUK and The Royal Society reporting that a diverse engineering and tech workforce in the future is directly linked to young people engaging in science and other STEM subjects, more needs to be done to maintain an interest in these subjects into further education and beyond. One of the reasons young people, and especially girls, don’t choose tech or other STEM careers is because they don’t fully understand what they involve or what the kinds of people working in those careers look like, so hands-on lessons can help in informing young people about what skills they may use in a future career. Female students are slightly more likely to engage with a subject when there is practical work involved than their male counterparts – practical elements of learning were a motivator for 54% of female students versus half of males – and having a good teacher is also more important to girls than boys. But hands-on science lessons have been on the decline over the past 10 years, with 44% of students across the UK taking part in practical work at least once every two weeks in 2016, dropping to 37% in 2019, and falling further to just over a quarter in 2023 – and now in many cases, practical demonstrations have been replaced with videos. Teachers pointed to a number of barriers in the way of delivering hands-on lessons, the biggest of which are what is required in the curriculum, and the time they have – with the amount of time it takes for teachers to develop practical sessions that relate directly to the learning goals laid out in the curriculum, teachers said in many cases they can’t feasibly work them into their teaching. Unfortunately, a child’s socio-economic background can stand between them and certain educational pathways, and the area a school is in can prevent access to certain funding and resources. What schools are able to provide can be varied depending on funding and area, and 26% of teachers said a lack of equipment stood in the way of offering more practical lessons. Some 27% said they don’t have the money to buy the equipment. Read more about STEM in schools Computer science has a persistent gender divide, but research by BCS has found more women are now being accepted on computing university courses. Speaking at the Bett Show this year, the UK’s education secretary outlined the ways in which teachers will be using technologies such as AI in the future, including planning lessons and marking work. Almost a quarter said they don’t have enough technicians with the skills available to facilitate hands-on science lessons, and almost 40% of teachers said vacancies in science departments have stopped students from receiving practical teaching. A small number of science teachers also expressed concerns about their ability to deliver practical sessions, with 3% saying they lack the training and 2% saying they lack the confidence to do so, a trend that has existed for some time. EngineeringUK and The Royal Society pointed out that practical science lessons are important for increasing student interest in STEM, fuelling the talent pipeline in the future, and gave a number of recommendations to help enable teachers to offer more hands-on lessons. The first was a call to government to take advantage of the current curriculum review to streamline it and allow science lessons to offer more practical lessons, as well as to make practical learning part of the curriculum to ensure all students are able to experience these kinds of lessons as part of their learning. Resources for schools was the third suggestion from EngineeringUK and The Royal Society. Going forward, schools need more investment to make sure they have the equipment, training and technical assistance needed to give students the opportunity for practical lessons.

V&A Dundee’s new exhibition starts before you get up to the first-floor gallery. As visitors enter the main hall of Kengo Kuma’s 2018 waterfront building, they’re confronted by 11 big white flowers dangling from the double-height ceiling. Called Shylight and created by Amsterdam’s Studio DRIFT, the floral forms slowly rise and fall courtesy of robotics, with their silk petals folding inwards, mimicking those flowers which close up at nightfall. Thought-provoking and visually pleasing, it sets the tone for Garden Futures: Designing With Nature, the exhibition which opened last week and runs until 25 January. It also hints that not everything in the garden (exhibition) is rosy. Beyond horticulture, there’s also technology – starting with those Shylight robotics – and art. That’s quite a juggling act. As a long-standing allotment holder, it was the horticulture content which drew me in. If I hadn’t had that focus, the exhibition could have been overwhelming: so many topics, so many ideas, so many things to take in. This is the touring show’s only UK stop, having debuted at Vitra Design Museum in Germany’s, before appearing across various European venues. Vitra Design Museum’s deputy director Sabrina Handler claims it’s the first major exhibition on the history of modern garden design. An image from Andrew Buurman’s photo project Allotments. An image from Andrew Buurman’s photo project Allotments. The original show comprised 300 objects. V&A Dundee has an extra 200m2 of space to play with, and has added another 130 objects to give it their own spin and highlight some Scottish contributions to the topic. Msoma Architects were brought in to reimagine the show for Dundee, building on Formafantasma’s original concept for the Vitra Design Museum. The graphics were handled by Boris Meister. In terms of the gardens on show here, they vary from productive spaces for work, rest and play, to places representing spiritual, cultural and political ideas. What they have in common is that they’re all designed spaces. Like a virulent form of bindweed, this show is covering a lot of ground. Its material is grouped in sections themed as Paradise, Sanctuary, Retreat and Labour of Love. It’s Paradise that makes the strongest impression – and rightly so – with its ice-cream-pink structure. Garden Futures at the V&A. Photo by Grant Anderson. The overarching aim is to demonstrate how garden design impacts us both functionally – providing food, hence Birmingham’s Uplands Allotments and seed companies – and aesthetically – hence William Morris wallpaper and the naturalistic planting of Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf. It combines factual photos with artworks, and roams from floral tile panels from 17th Century Persia to a Chinese garden inspired by a video game, and from vast landscapes to hand tools. The two wall displays of the taxonomy of tools will add to the dwell time of any visitors who actually garden or grow. Biome’s Garden installation But for those after interaction, Dundee-based creative studio Biome Collective has created Garden, a video game that allows players to create a virtual musical garden. They’re also behind the Pollinator Pathway digital tool that creates a planting design tailored for the maximum benefit of pollinating insects. And then there’s the smell trail – little wooden boxes whose lids lift to give off a specific scent, such as a cypress tree. The image of Prospect, Derek Jarman’s Dungeness house and garden, might feel over-familiar to some. Likewise architect Stefano Boeri’s Bosco Verticale, the residential skyscraper covered in greenery in Milan – but an exhibition like this has to cater to all knowledge levels. Stefano Boeri’s Bosco Verticale Specific V&A Dundee content includes Seeds of Scotland in the Highlands, which produces resilient seeds. The company’s utilitarian packaging sits alongside photos of vegetables and the seeds themselves – another stop to linger for any growers in the audience. There’s also Oban’s Seaweed Gardens, a community-led project, and the garden designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd for cancer patients at Maggie’s Centre, Dundee. On a smaller scale, there are origami-inspired self-watering plant pots made from marine waste, the brainchild of Glasgow-based company POTR. And when it comes to Dundee’s own garden future, things could be looking up. The Eden Project has a scheme to transform a defunct gasholder into a vast glasshouse. It’s got planning permission, and the 2025 model of architecture firm Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios brings the £130million idea to life. POTR’s self-watering plant pots There’s something counter-intuitive about going indoors to experience gardens. But this isn’t the only show tackling that problem. Gardens and gardening are having a moment. The exhibition Soil, which explored soil’s vital role in our planet’s future, finished at London’s Somerset House in April, getting 50,000 visitors in three months. Now Garden Futures is off the ground, V&A Dundee will be thinking about how to spend the £2.6million of government funding which was confirmed in February. The plan is to improve the permanent Scottish galleries. The museum’s director, Leonie Bell says there’s demand for them to be bigger. Her ideas so far include expanding the time frame to go as far back as Skara Brae, the prehistoric village on Orkney, and to explore Scotland’s influence on global design, for example in fashion. Exhibition designers, watch this space. Garden Futures at the V&A. Photo by Grant Anderson. Arabella Lennox-Boyd’s garden for Maggie’s Centre, Dundee.

Stratasys, a 3D printer OEM, has announced the acquisition of assets from Forward AM GmbH, a BASF spin-off based in Germany. This strategic transaction expands Stratasys’ materials portfolio, particularly enhancing its capabilities in Selective Absorption Fusion (SAF) and Digital Light Processing (DLP) technologies. The acquisition also reinforces Stratasys’ commitment to driving innovation and maintaining its leadership in the additive manufacturing (AM) industry through differentiated solutions. The Stratasys F3300 3D printer. Photo via Stratasys. Acquisition Update: What Remains and What Changes In a related announcement, Forward AM confirmed it will continue operating as an independent materials brand, committed to open collaboration across the additive manufacturing ecosystem. Moving forward, the brand will operate under a new legal entity within Stratasys, named Mass Additive Manufacturing GmbH. “With the backing of Stratasys, we now have greater resources and reach to drive innovation, expand our offering, and better serve your needs. This partnership empowers us to do more of what we do best: helping you succeed in additive manufacturing,” the company stated. Forward AM also reassured customers that, despite its new position within the Stratasys family, it remains firmly committed to confidentiality. Strict internal protocols and dedicated security systems are in place to ensure that all client data remains secure and is never shared beyond the Forward AM team. Looking ahead, the company plans to keep clients updated on new developments and opportunities for collaboration.  Formwork being 3D printed. Image via Forward AM. Business Report: Stratasys Stratasys recently announced its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2024 (Q4 2024) and full year 2024 (FY 2024).  For FY 2024, Stratasys reported revenue of $572.5 million, an 8.8% decrease from $627.6 million in FY 2023. Q4 2024 revenue reached $150.4 million, down 3.8% from the same period in 2023 but up 7.4% sequentially from Q3. Despite the impact of macroeconomic challenges and constrained capital spending, Stratasys maintained strong customer engagement and saw a rise in manufacturing applications, which accounted for 36% of total revenue—up from 34% in 2023.   Stratasys’ focus on high-value applications, particularly in the industrial and healthcare sectors, provided resilience during a challenging year. A key highlight was its expanding role in manufacturing, notably with ArcelorMittal, one of the world’s largest steel manufacturers, adopted Stratasys’ FDM technology and GrabCAD software at its European Research Center, enabling faster tooling production.  In motorsports, Stratasys became the official 3D printing partner of NASCAR through a multi-year agreement, for the design and production of parts and tools across its operations, fully replacing previous systems used alongside Stratasys solutions. Take the 3DPI Reader Survey — shape the future of AM reporting in under 5 minutes. Who won the 2024 3D Printing Industry Awards? Subscribe to the3D Printing Industry newsletter to keep up with the latest 3D printing news. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry YouTube channel to access more exclusive content. Featured image shows Formwork being 3D printed. Image via Forward AM. Paloma Duran Paloma Duran holds a BA in International Relations and an MA in Journalism. Specializing in writing, podcasting, and content and event creation, she works across politics, energy, mining, and technology. With a passion for global trends, Paloma is particularly interested in the impact of technology like 3D printing on shaping our future.