A long, winding dirt road leads to Contrada Conazzo, a farm in the Enna region of Sicily that is owned by Sara Prato and her family. The ruin of the 14th-century Castello di Pietratagliata hulks in the distance, but the land is otherwise dominated by this masseria, one of the most unexpected properties photographer Guido Taroni and I came across while researching our -forthcoming book, Inside SicilyIn the entry hall of Sara Prato’s 1940s country home in Sicily’s Enna region, a marble staircase leads to a landing with a soaring rectangular window in glass block. The adjacent fresco, original to the house, features imagery of workers in a wheat field; the floor features a mix of marbles.Inside Sicilyat AmazonThe house, built in 1943, is a relic from a time of transition, when new industrial methods were being pioneered to uphold an older mentality, in which every element—from the foundation to the furniture—was designed and crafted for its purpose. Prato remembers when her family moved into the masseria. “The house was new,” she says. “We must have been the first people for miles with running water and electricity.” While she and her late brother, the architect Antonio Prato, were alive during the construction of the house, their family has been farming the land for generations.Designed by the chief municipal engineer of Palermo, the home is strikingly modern, with a few whimsical flourishes characteristic of Italian Art Deco. The gatehouse is adorned with medieval-style fishtail merlons, a gesture that acts as a feint: Once you’re in the courtyard, decoration has been reduced to classical elements as seen through the filter of Italian rationalism. The main structure is flanked by stables on one side and a dopolavoro on the other—a space where workers gathered after long days in the fields—and the five-sided semicircular archway is made from blocks of actual travertine as well as a trompe l’oeil version made of concrete.Guido TaroniIn the kitchen, cornflower-blue subway tile contrasts with cabinetry, woodwork, and a table painted in a brighter shade of cyan. The floor is terrazzo.Inside, much of the original decoration was entrusted to Carmelo Comes, a midcentury painter and ceramist whose work can be found in many public buildings across Sicily. He created frescoes throughout, depicting allegorical figures and laborers tending the land—idealized visions of Sicilian rural life. Comes also designed the elaborate ceiling murals, including a zodiac-patterned one in the sitting room. Everything, from the oak table with aluminum legs to the terrazzo floors to the etched glass and chrome chandeliers, was custom made for the house in the 1940s. In an approach reminiscent of Piero Portaluppi’s Casa Corbellini-Wassermann in Milan, the property is a true gesamtkunstwerk: entirely conceived and designed at a time when the term “modernity” was still finding its definition.Around 80 years prior to the construction of Contrada Conazzo, Sicily was conquered by Garibaldi and unified with Italy. Prior to that, the native Sicilians had been dominated by waves of Phoenician, ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, French, and Spanish invaders. It was only in 1946 that Sicily was made an autonomous region within Italy. When this house was built, anxiety and aspirations for the future were held in equal measure. The visionary design of the home seems especially courageous against that backdrop.Sara and her daughter Marianna Nicolosi Asmundo today continue their family’s stewardship. And while the land remains an active farm, the property no longer hums with daily activity. Even in this quieter state, the masseria retains an energy: a readiness for renewal. ◾This story originally appeared in the May 2025 issue of Elle Decor. SUBSCRIBE #inside #casa #tosca #historic #sicilian

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More The importance of databases to modern enterprise AI operations cannot be overstated. Data helps to train and ground AI, and multiple research reports show that without proper data, AI efforts tend to fail. With trends like vibe coding and agentic AI, it’s also increasingly important to have database technology that can be spun up as needed in a serverless approach to modern development efforts. In that environment, it should come as no surprise that databases are a particularly valuable commodity.  This week, that fact was on display with Databricks‘ acquisition of privately held serverless PostgreSQL startup Neon, which was founded in 2022. The deal is reportedly valued at a staggering billion, which is shocking given that barely two years ago, the company raised million in a series B round of funding. What is also particularly interesting is that Databricks itself is a data vendor, with its data lakehouse platform. At various points in the company’s history, it has positioned itself as an alternative to traditional databases, providing a data lake structure where users can make queries. So what was missing, and why did Databricks need to spend a billion dollars? What does it mean and say about what enterprise AI really needs? Functionally, it’s all about meeting developers’ needs to build agentic AI applications. According to Neon, over 80% of the databases created on its platform were created by AI agents. What is serverless PostgreSQL and why does it matter? While Neon is a startup, the core database technology that it’s based on is not new. PostgreSQL is one of the oldest and most established open-source database platforms, dating back to 1996. It’s a relational database technology, meaning it has tables and rows alongside extremely stable features that organizations have trusted for decades. The core open-source PostgreSQL database is now updated in a yearly release cadence. The most recent stable update was PostgreSQL 17, which debuted in Sept. 2024. As an open-source technology, PostgreSQL has enjoyed broad adoption and contributions. At one point, it was often compared to other proprietary relational database options, including Oracle as an alternative option. In 2025, though, PostgreSQL stands on its own. DB-Engines currently ranks PostgreSQL as the fourth most popular database in use today, behind Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle. The state of PostgreSQL 2024 report from Timescale identifies the open-source database’s rising prominence as the database of choice for AI applications. The database’s well-established and understood nature and broad availability are among the numerous factors that make it attractive. PostgreSQL on its own is just the database, though. Running it as a serverless offering is an operational and deployment activity. The promise of any serverless database is ease of operations. Rather than requiring a dedicated database deployment that continually runs with dedicated resources, serverless is spun up on demand as needed. It’s a deployment option that is particularly attractive to developers as a way to build applications quickly. AI-based development is even more appealing as databases can be built and deployed programmatically. The serverless PostgreSQL landscape has a lot of vendors Every cloud hyperscaler has some form of PostgreSQL service and has for years.  Google has multiple offerings, including AlloyDB, Microsoft has Azure Database for PostgreSQL, while AWS has Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and Amazon Aurora. Each of them also has some flavor of serverless offering, that is, a database available on demand. Numerous smaller vendors exist, including Timescale, EDB and NetApp Instaclustr. In fact, nearly two years ago, Databricks acquired serverless PostgreSQL vendor bit.io, which was also an early rival of Neon. As it turns out, the goals and capabilities of bit.io are quite different from Neon. “Together with the Neon team, we look forward to building the most developer and AI-agent-friendly database platform,” Phil Shin, senior director of corporate development and ventures at Databricks, told VentureBeat. “In contrast, the bit.io acquisition was not actually about Postgres but targeting developer experiences, especially in the trials and self-service process.” Shin added that the bit.io acquisition had a big impact on Databricks’ seamless signup experience.  How serverless PostgreSQL fits into the enterprise database landscape While Neon has only been around for a few years with its serverless PostgreSQL implementation, commercial vendor EDB has been in business since 2004. EDB has a series of its own commercially supported PostgreSQL offerings. Matt Yonkovit, VP of Product for EDB, told VentureBeat that the acquisition of Neon is a strong vote of confidence in Postgres as a foundational technology for AI and analytics.  “It reinforces what we’ve long believed: Postgres is increasingly central to modern data stacks,”  Yonkovit said. “Serverless is a great fit for dev/test environments and for quickly jumpstarting AI projects—but as those use cases scale, enterprises need the performance, compliance, and control of a sovereign platform.” Yonkovit noted that serverless is well-suited for short bursts and smaller workloads. It can scale up and down quickly or shut off entirely when idle, which significantly reduces costs associated with compute, power and storage. However, in his view, there are tradeoffs. “A significant challenge with serverless is that sovereign data management can become messy because you can’t control where the data is processed unless you have a well-restricted pool of resources,” Yonkovit said. The power of serverless PostgreSQL for agentic AI Neon’s serverless PostgreSQL approach separates storage and compute, making it developer-friendly and AI-native. It also enables automated scaling as well as branching in an approach that is similar to how the Git version control system works for code. Amalgam Insights CEO and Chief Analyst Hyoun Park noted that Databricks has been a pioneer in deploying and scaling AI projects.  “One of the big challenges in AI is managing the storage and compute associated with the data,” Park told VentureBeat. “Each of these needs will be increasingly hard to predict in an agentic world where end-user prompts and requests may quickly lead to unexpected demands in storage or compute to solve the problem. Park explained that Neon’s serverless autoscaling approach to PostgreSQL is important for AI because it allows agents and AI projects to grow as needed without artificially coupling storage and compute needs together. He added that for Databricks, this is useful both for agentic use cases and for supporting the custom models they have built over the last couple of years after its Mosaic AI acquisition.  What it means for enterprise AI leaders For enterprises looking to lead the way in AI, this acquisition signals a shift in infrastructure requirements for successful AI implementation. Data is critical for AI; that’s not a surprise. What is particularly insightful, though, is that the ability to rapidly spin up databases is essential for agentic AI success. The deal validates that even advanced data companies need specialized serverless database capabilities to support AI agents that create and manage databases programmatically.  Organizations should recognize that traditional database approaches may limit their AI initiatives, while flexible, instantly scalable serverless solutions enable the dynamic resource allocation that modern AI applications demand.  For companies still planning their AI roadmap, this acquisition signals that database infrastructure decisions should prioritize serverless capabilities that can adapt quickly to unpredictable AI workloads. This would transform database strategy from a technical consideration to a competitive advantage in delivering responsive, efficient AI solutions. Daily insights on business use cases with VB Daily If you want to impress your boss, VB Daily has you covered. We give you the inside scoop on what companies are doing with generative AI, from regulatory shifts to practical deployments, so you can share insights for maximum ROI. Read our Privacy Policy Thanks for subscribing. Check out more VB newsletters here. An error occured. #billion #database #bet #what #databricks

Generate crowds of people with this Blender add-on 🤼 Have a look at Procedural Crowds Pro, a Geometry Nodes-powered add-on for Blender that features over 30 unique photoscanned character models to easily generate and customize crowds. Options include an audience crowd, a circle crowd, follow curve, a marching formation, a random crowd, and more. #proceduralart #blender #blender3d #b3d #gamedev #indiedev #3dart #3dmodeling #gamedevelopment

Cinematic Animation Director Alireza Fattahi shared a breakdown of his impressive cinematic scene made with photoscanned objects in Unreal Engine 5 and talked about the nuances of rendering hyper-realistic objects and scenarios. Full breakdown: https://lnkd.in/di9qcQ4J #unrealengine #unrealengine5 #ue #ue5 #games #videogames #gameindustry #gamedev #gamedevelopment #maya #lighting #rendering #rendering3d #postproduction