Amazon is planning a massive new big-box store near Chicago to blend online convenience with physical retail, escalating its rivalry with Walmart.

The post Amazon’s New Retail Strategy Takes Aim at Walmart appeared first on TechRepublic.

Porcelain dinnerware has long been shaped by the logic of industrial production. Uniform forms, limited color palettes, and standardized finishes dominate the contemporary table, reducing porcelain to a neutral backdrop rather than an active part of the dining experience. This porcelain dinner set positions itself in deliberate contrast to that reality. It proposes a quieter, more thoughtful vision in which craft, material honesty, and visual sensitivity redefine how everyday meals are experienced.

At the core of the design lies a simple but powerful idea: food presentation should be as engaging as flavor. Dining is not only an act of nourishment, but also one of attention, rhythm, and atmosphere. By merging handcrafted processes with functional versatility, the set bridges modern living and nostalgic familiarity. It feels contemporary in its restraint, yet warm in its tactile and visual language.

Designer: Monte Porcelain

The collection consists of four pieces designed as a cohesive system: a glass, a bowl, a deep plate known as the Saturn plate, and a service or supla plate. Rather than assigning each object a single rigid purpose, the designer embraced multi-use functionality. This approach reflects evolving dining habits, where objects are expected to adapt fluidly across meals, occasions, and spaces.

The glass is conceived as more than a vessel for drinks. Its form allows it to function equally well as a dessert or snack bowl, encouraging informal and flexible use. The bowl supports a wide range of meals, from soup and salad to breakfast cereal and hot appetizers. Along its upper edge, engraved firefly patterns introduce a subtle decorative layer. These motifs are filled with glaze, ensuring a smooth, sealed surface that interacts gently with light, adding depth without distracting from the food itself.

The Saturn plate is designed for both sauced and non-sauced dishes, such as pasta and main courses. Its flat-edged form frames the food cleanly, while the patterned base enriches the visual composition of the plate. The service plate anchors the set, offering generous proportions suitable for main course presentations or layered pasta services. Together, the four pieces create a table setting that is expressive yet balanced.

Material integrity and production ethics play a central role in the project. White porcelain, often referred to as bone porcelain, was selected for its suitability for food contact, durability, and timeless visual quality. Each piece was cast using high-quality porcelain clay in plaster molds, then fired at 1230 degrees with transparent glaze. The firefly patterns were engraved using a special technique and selectively colored or left transparent, allowing light to pass through while remaining fully sealed and hygienic.

The project was developed over an eight-month period, beginning in June 2024 and completed in February 2025 at the Monte Porcelain Ayvalık Workshop. Every stage of production was carried out by hand, including molding, casting, glazing, and painting. Throughout the process, a fair production approach was maintained, with careful consideration for environmental responsibility and respect for nature. No living creatures were harmed at any stage.

Dishwasher safe, food safe, and designed for long-term daily use, the set demonstrates that handcrafted objects can be both poetic and practical. Recognized within international design contexts such as the A’ Design Award & Competition, this dinnerware collection repositions porcelain as an active participant in the dining ritual. It invites users to slow down, notice light and texture, and rediscover the quiet pleasure of thoughtfully designed everyday objects.

The post Handcrafted Porcelain Dinnerware Redefines Everyday Dining Through Craft, Light, and Ritual first appeared on Yanko Design.

Jusqu’à ce matin, je pensais que l’esport était une activité consacrée à 100% aux jeux vidéos et en fait non !! Je viens de découvrir qu’il y a des mecs qui font des compétitions de tableurs Excel à Las Vegas, devant des centaines de spectateurs en IRL et des 60 000 personnes sur YouTube, avec diffusion sur ESPN et une même une ceinture de champion façon catch à remporter !

Bienvenue dans le monde merveilleux du Microsoft Excel World Championship.

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Ce truc existe depuis une douzaine d’années, mais ça a vraiment décollé en 2021 quand le Financial Modeling World Cup s’est associé avec Microsoft pour créer un format plus spectaculaire. Parce que regarder des gens faire de la modélisation financière pendant des heures… Disons que c’est pas le contenu Twitch le plus palpitant. Du coup ils ont totalement gamifié le truc !

Et c’est en décembre 2024 que s’est tenue la finale au HyperX Arena de Las Vegas avec un prize pool de 60 000 dollars avec comme grand gagnant Michael Jarman, un Canadien de Toronto qui bosse comme directeur de modélisation financière chez Operis. Le mec a détrôné Andrew Ngai, surnommé “The Annihilator”, qui avait remporté les trois éditions précédentes.

Competition and Markets Authority’s classification grants it expanded authority to tackle potential competition issues across the nation’s app and mobile markets.

The post UK Regulator Confirms Apple and Google Hold ‘Strategic Market Status’ appeared first on TechRepublic.

When Li Hao’s Pop Star View Platform first appeared in the landscape, it probably broke a few people’s brains. This isn’t your typical public art installation that politely sits in a corner being contemplative. Instead, it’s a massive crystalline beast that looks like it crash-landed from Krypton, all faceted surfaces and impossible geometry that shifts from alien fortress to disco ball depending on the light. The structure is based on an icosahedron, but Li Hao has exploded and reconstructed it into something that feels both mathematically precise and completely otherworldly. You’re looking at what happens when someone takes sacred geometry and runs it through a kaleidoscope filter.

The visual impact is absolutely bonkers in the best possible way. Those iridescent panels catch and fracture sunlight into a spectrum that would make a prism jealous, creating this constantly shifting light show that transforms throughout the day. At sunset, the thing becomes a beacon of pure color that radiates across the landscape like some kind of interdimensional lighthouse. The dichroic glass or film coating on each facet creates that oil-slick rainbow effect, where purples bleed into teals, oranges melt into magentas, and the whole structure seems to pulse with its own internal energy.

Designer: Li Hao

What’s brilliant about Pop Star is how it plays with scale and perception. From a distance, it reads as this monolithic alien artifact, but as you get closer, the complexity of the internal structure reveals itself. Those black steel frames create a secondary geometric pattern within each colored panel, adding depth and visual texture that keeps your eye engaged. The mesh or perforated elements in some sections let you see through the structure, creating layers of transparency that make the whole thing feel less solid and more like a hologram materializing in space.

Creating a structure this large with so many angled surfaces while maintaining structural integrity requires serious computational design work. Each joint has to handle complex load distributions, and the panel mounting system needs to accommodate thermal expansion while keeping those pristine edges aligned. The fact that it doubles as a viewing platform means the internal framework has to support human traffic, adding another layer of complexity to what could have been just a sculptural statement.

Pop Star View Platform earned its Golden A’ Design Award by doing something most public art fails at: it creates genuine wonder without being pretentious about it. Whether you’re a design nerd who appreciates the mathematical elegance or just someone walking by who stops dead because holy shit, what is that thing, the installation delivers. It’s Instagram-ready spectacle with serious conceptual depth, proving that sometimes the most effective way to make people think about space, light, and perception is to build something so visually arresting they can’t look away.

The post Step Inside this Giant Kaleidoscope That Feels Like it Descended From Krypton first appeared on Yanko Design.

Amis hackers, cyber-ninja et autres geeks de tous poils, sortez vos claviers et annulez tous vos rendez-vous car le France Cybersecurity Challenge (FCSC) 2025 commence aujourd’hui même à 14h ! C’est l’occasion ou jamais de prouver que vous êtes le Neo de la cybersécurité française et attention, ce n’est pas juste un CTF de plus, c’est carrement le championnat national qui peut propulser votre carrière ou simplement vous offrir le frisson de défier les meilleurs.

If Google or Apple is deemed to have Strategic Market Status in the U.K., the government might force it to make the user data it collects available to competitors, or give publishers more control over how their data is used.

If Google is deemed to have “Strategic Market Status” in the U.K., the government might force it to make the user data it collects available to competitors, or give publishers more control over how their data is used.

The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority has concluded that Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic does not create a relevant merger situation and has closed its investigation.

Google owns four prominent ad tech tools, and the Competition and Markets Authority said it is using its industry dominance to prevent competition from rivals.

Vestager’s tenure drew both praise and criticism — particularly from U.S. tech giants.