Hasta La Ideas

The iMac Flow concept connects users with their computer like never before! From the fingerprint security scanner (similar to that of the iPhone) to the full-screen, multi-touch display, the design is highly focused on tactile input.

The touch display allows users to work more efficiently and faster with everyday tasks. You can connect specific settings and actions to every dactylogram. This opens limitless opportunities when working with office applications, graphic design and video games. With all that touching, this all-new iMac also features a system to accumulate additional energy using heat from human hands for supplemental power!

Its full screen display is made of sapphire glass with liquid hardware inside. All additional ports and connectors are removed, leaving the final unit as aesthetically minimal as possible. Interaction with other gadgets requires wireless connectivity and synchronization between devices.

Designer: Herman Haydin

Over the years, freelance journalist Judith Newman has interviewed too many celebrities to count. Writing about her encounter with Warren Beatty for the October/November issue of AARP The Magazine, she pays the 79-year-old Hollywood legend a great compliment. ‘Unlike 95 percent of the famous people I’ve interviewed, he is deeply curious about other people,’ she notes.

That is indeed a rare quality, among celebrities and regular folk. In addition to lunching with Beatty at the Sunset Tower for this assignment, Newman also met up with Annette Bening, who echos that observation about Beatty, her husband of 24 years:

“Some people pay lip service to listening to others and they’re really not listening,” Bening says. “He does. He loves actors, and while he’s shooting he’s always interested in what people are saying. He’s a terrific audience.”

Beatty on Thursday will have the curiosity tables turned when he participates in his first-ever Reddit AMA. All part of the early promotion for his new film Rules Don’t Apply, which opens Nov. 23.

Cover image courtesy: AARP (click to enlarge)

London Design Festival 2016: this furniture collection from designer Alessandro Zambelli features a puzzle of metal pieces that have been oxidised to different degrees (+ slideshow).

Commissioned by London gallery Matter of Stuff for its Curated by MOS exhibition, the Marque collection is inlaid with metal shapes that have subtle colour variation.

Zambelli achieved this variation by oxidising a single type of metal to different levels on each piece of furniture.

The “dry bar” is made from brass in warm brown hues, while its console is made from cooler iron and the side table has a green-patinated copper top.

Zambelli’s aimed to take a fresh approach to traditional marquetry with his collection.

“The use of inlaid metal is an homage to the Paris of the 20s and to the art-deco designs of Emile Ruhlmann and Jean Dunand, who were the main advocates of this style,” said Zambelli, who has previously worked with panels of geometric wood.

The art-deco period also inspired the light, curving metal forms in the furniture’s profile.

After oxidation, the sheets of metal were cut into geometric shapes and assembled like a jigsaw alongside pieces cut from complementary sheets.

The pieces are inlaid into wood to form the cabinet doors, tabletop and other details.

Zambelli developed the Marque furniture with the factory of specialty Italian metal manufacturer Toscari. Matter of Stuff paired Zambelli with the manufacturer for the Curated by MOS exhibition, which aimed to marry traditional Italian craftsmanship with contemporary design ideas.

Three up-and-coming designers developed pieces in marble and three in metal for the exhibition.

Also on display was a striped marble furniture collection by Polish designer Olga Bielawska, who created the illusion of tables draped in striped silk.

Other exhibiting designers were Nina Cho, Tim Vanlier, Tomas Libertiny and Studio Uufie.

The exhibition coincided with the London Design Festival, where oxidised metal made a recurring appearance. The material featured in copper-dusted homeware by Ariane Prin and patinated copper wallpaper by Piet Hein Eek.

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The thin columns and wood cladding that front this educational facility in a Pittsburgh park are designed to help the building fit in with its woodland setting (+ slideshow).

Designed by American firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the Frick Environmental Center is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and serves as a gateway to Frick Park – a 644-acre (260-hectare) park that was created in 1919.

A joint venture between the city and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, the centre is designed to achieve Living Building Challenge certification, which is awarded to projects that demonstrate a high level of sustainability in areas such as water and energy usage, materials and health.

The centre would be the world’s first municipally owned facility to achieve Living Building Challenge certification, according to the team.

Nestled into a hillside, the building is fronted by an allée of native trees, and is entered via a walkway and bridge. The rectilinear structure is topped with an expansive roof with deep overhangs supported by thin columns.

The glass and wood facades are designed to respond to the natural surroundings.

“The building’s exterior, clad in locally and sustainably harvested black locust, blends with the surrounding woods, evoking a tree-house quality,” said Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, a firm started in 1965 and based in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

Encompassing 15,600 square feet (1,450 square metres), the building serves as an education centre for public school children, as well as “hundreds of thousands of people” expected to visit each year. There is no entry fee.

The building contains classrooms, a “public living room” and gallery, offices, storage space and support areas for staff. The project also entailed the restoration of historic gatehouses and a fountain.

The pared-down interior features polished concrete floors, and tables and benches made of rough-cut wood.

Operable windows facilitate natural ventilation, while full-height glazing offers expansive views of the verdant park.

“Inspired by the clients’ mission to educate and engage, the project incorporates many of its sustainable features as interactive elements in the building and site design, providing children and families with hands-on environmental education, and fulfilling the centre’s role as a living classroom”, said the team.

The facility is engineered to consume 35 per cent less energy than a comparable building. It will achieve net-zero energy and water usage through elements such as ground-source heat pumps, radiant floors, a photovoltaic array and a system for capturing and reusing stormwater.

“To minimise the project’s carbon footprint, all building materials came from within a 1,200-mile radius of the site,” the team added.

The Living Building Challenge certification program is overseen by the Oregon-based International Living Future Institute. Buildings must be in operation for at least one year before being eligible for evaluation.

Other recent sustainable projects in the US include a net-zero energy home designed by students in a design-build programme at the University of Kansas, and an academic facility at Berkeley by Leddy Maytum Stacy that is topped with a roof entirely covered in solar cells.

Photography is by Nic Lehoux, unless stated otherwise.

The post Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s nature centre in Pittsburgh “blends with the surrounding woods” appeared first on Dezeen.

Raphael Satter, born in the Midwest, has been a Europe-based reporter for Associated Press since 2006. Today, he’s delivered a scary look at the Dark Web ramifications of that massive Yahoo hack.

Mass password breaches are bad but arguably security question breaches are worse.https://t.co/6IiJLY4dBz pic.twitter.com/WOfU8iQubI

— Raphael Satter (@razhael) September 27, 2016

The theft of some 500 million website user data sets occurred in late 2014. Over that holidays and into 2015, it likely spawned something known as “credential stuffing:”

This cybercriminal technique works by throwing leaked username and password combinations at a series of websites in an effort to break in, a bit like a thief finding a ring of keys in an apartment lobby and trying them, one after the other, in every door in the building. Software makes the trial-and-error process practically instantaneous.

Credential stuffing typically succeeds between 0.1 percent and 2 percent of the time, according to Shuman Ghosemajumder, the chief technology officer of Mountain View, California-based Shape Security. That means cybercriminals wielding 500 million passwords could conceivably hijack tens of thousands of other accounts.

From a yodel… to a wail. Read the rest of Satter’s piece here.