That may all be true, but as the open office trend has grown, so has an entire industry of products designed to correct all of the problems they present for employees who struggle to focus, hear one another, and enjoy any measure of privacy in their distraction-riddled environments.

Sound-dampening privacy pods provide a compromise between the new open office ethos and hallways lined with separate enclosed rooms for each employee. Enter the headquarters of just about any large company today, and what you’ll see is almost certainly a wide open space filled with modular pods designed for small meetings or solitary concentration.

At an office like AirBnb’s San Francisco headquarters, these “pods” might actually take the shape of padded illuminated niches cut into a giant wooden “ship” or house-shaped booths for private phone calls, but you don’t have to have the budget of a multi-billion-dollar corporation to make the concept work for your space.

The “Planet for Two” by Ukrainian design duo MZPA is a portable solution that can be placed in any open space for instant privacy, and it’s cool-looking, too. Built to fit two people (as its name suggests), this geodesic meeting room is made from connected triangles of plywood, powder-coated metal connectors, and a plush fabric mattress in customizable colors. It’s based on a previous design called “The Planet,” which itself accommodates a single user.

The designers envision both of these geometric pods as multipurpose rooms-within-rooms that can be used for meetings, lounging, brainstorming, phone calls, or even in place of a desk for employees who work more efficiently in less open environments. Communication is key in any business, they note, and while open office plans seem like they should foster more of it, too much noise and activity can make people feel like they have to shout over each other to be heard, worsening the problem.

Available for delivery anywhere in the world, the Planet for Two retails for $5,700 and comes with a built-in LED lamp, speaker system, USB charging port for electronic devices, and even a few optional solar panels so you can place it outdoors if you like. It’s easy to imagine these pods fitting right into places like airports, cafés, and college campuses.

“It’s great for moments when you need to stay alone, gather your thoughts and focus, and have a cup of coffee,” say designers Julia Kononenko and Artem Zakharchenko.

More than anything, pods like the “Planet for Two” demonstrate the need for offices to remain flexible to both the diverse needs of staff and changing trends in office interior design. Give your employees enough privacy and quiet, and they might not have to resort to such desperate tactics as noise-cancelling helmets that look like a joke from a comedy set in outer space.

The post Planet for Two: Expanding Geodesic Pod Offers a Cozy Soundproofed Refuge first appeared on Dornob.

The idea for Muuw started during the pandemic when Tommy Truup, an expert in steel fabrication, decided he wanted to create work-from-home spaces that could also act as backyard retreats. Truup founded Muuwspace and designed his ideal one-room escape, with a shape inspired by beehives and the carbon structures in human cells.

Three of the pod’s six walls are floor-to-ceiling windows, so the 100-square-foot space feels much more expansive than it really is. Insulated glazing from Saint-Gobain features a metallic blue external reflection so you can maintain privacy and avoid getting overheated.

The cabin is constructed from durable galvanized steel, insulated fully for all climates, and capable of withstanding a heavy snow load on its roof. It also boasts luxurious floor heating, a quiet speed-controllable ventilation system, dimmable LED lights inside and out, a triple-glazed aluminum entry door, wall-integrated speakers, five electrical sockets, and two separate USB charging sockets. It even comes with an attached terrace with a frame made of hot dip galvanized steel.

A variety of interior finishes are available for the Muuw backyard work pod, including oak laminate on the ceiling and walls. The outdoor deck and screen at the entrance of the pod can be made of ash or pine wood. Buyers customize the Muuw to their liking and send the order to Muuwspace’s factory, where it’s built and delivered to the installation site in separate pieces. Assembly takes just one or two days depending on access to the installation site, which could be a backyard, garden, terrace, or even remote land. The whole thing is delivered on the back of a truck.

“Muuw can be used as an add-on to your main home or placed in a completely separate area of your choice – depending on whether you’d use it for focused work, productivity, reading, self-development, hobbies, or full relaxation,” the company says. “The interior is a calming, personal space – fitting snugly inside the building’s hexagonal structure. Each Muuw space boasts modern interiors and vast, panoramic views.”

“The unique exterior design also feels incredibly contemporary, using minimalistic materials combined with warm, traditional wood that’s sure to attract everyone’s attention. Just picture yourself stood in the Muuw, looking out over the horizon – we guarantee it will provide you with the feeling that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, with relaxation being the key to productivity and accomplishment.”

Pricing for each Muuw pod starts at $32,000, depending on the options you choose. Muuwspace is currently able to deliver and assemble the pods throughout Europe and the United States, including the UK, Ireland, Norway, and Switzerland. It takes 8 to 16 weeks to receive your Muuw after ordering.

The post Upgrade Your Home Office with the Muuw Backyard Work Pod first appeared on Dornob.

For starters, most tents are designed for outdoor adventures, but they could have many more uses with just a few tweaks. The “Crucoon,” a cocoon-style tent by Crua, adds one major feature to a standard tent: the ability to block out the world around you. Instead of thin nylon, it’s topped with an insulated cover that reduces the transmission of both light and sound while still keeping out the elements. On top of that, it’s inflatable, so you don’t even have to assemble tent poles.

The design sort of looks like somebody tossed their down sleeping bag over their tent to darken the interior — but the reality is much better than that. The air beam construction means you can set up the Crucoon in less than 60 seconds with a manual air pump. It has two doors for versatility and ventilation holes covered in insect mesh for fresh air. The insulation is covered in rip-stop nylon, treated with durable water repellent, and infused with graphene, a lightweight, durable, breathable, and antibacterial thermo-regulator.

Crua is best known for previously designing an insulated tent, which itself can be surprisingly hard to find. The company envisions Crucoon being used for all kinds of different purposes: as a nap pod, a play space for kids, a study room, or a tent for camping in super cold conditions (though they recommend covering it with a tarp or another tent in rainy weather, since it’s not completely waterproof). You could set it up on top of a bed in a shared hostel room for darkness and privacy, or use it as a warm and cozy emergency shelter inside your home if the power goes out in a winter storm. There’s also another potential use for the Crucoon that Crua doesn’t specifically call out: as a dark, quiet place for people with autism to self-soothe.

“When I designed the first Crua tent in 2014 it was simply out of necessity,” says Derek O’Sullivan, founder and CEO of Crua. “I couldn’t find a tent that offered me any reasonable level of insulation. I wanted a correctly insulated tent so that my family’s camping experience could be a memorable one. From that first tent, spawned several new insulated tents in all shapes and sizes. From a 5 to 6 person ‘Family’ tent to the ‘Solo’ individual insulated tent. Now, we are moving beyond just the tent. We would like to introduce you to the Crucoon… this is not just a tent, it’s so much more. It’s your private space when you are on the go. There is practically no end to where the Crucoon can go. We can’t wait to get these into your hands and see all the places you’ll go with the Crucoon!”

The Crucoon can be purchased alone or with the Full Kit, which includes one customized self-inflating mattress and two graphene-infused sleeping bags. The mattress can either be zipped together into one extra-plush sleeping pad, laid out flat as a double mattress, or unzipped as two separate single mattresses. When it’s in double mode, it can be inserted into a zippered compartment in the Crucoon’s base. The sleeping bags can also be zipped together, and feature hoods and hidden pockets. In the near future, Crua plans to offer other add-ons like a rain fly, tarp, and inflatable pillow.

The Crucoon recently raised over $170,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter, with backers getting special early bird pricing and access, but it’ll also be available at a retail price of $499 later this year.

The post Crucoon: Insulated Tent Blocks Light and Sound to Provide a Safe Space Anywhere You Go first appeared on Dornob.

Nicholas and Stanley spent every weekend working on the house over the course of 15 years, making use of found and recycled materials and allowing their plans to grow and change as they went. Today, the home looks nothing like the cottage it once was, or like any other house on the street. It’s entirely unique. And while the jagged black exterior isn’t for everyone, it suits them perfectly, and it’s more welcoming inside than you might imagine.

“We changed so much from when we started at the age of 25 to when we finished at the age of 40,” Stanley told Dwell. “By being hands on and playing around with ideas, we came up with a lot of stuff that we wouldn’t have if we were sitting at the drawing board and pushing to get things done quickly. And, as young architects, getting your hands dirty is the best way to learn.”

Collecting materials from warehouses and country yard sales, the couple began adding vertical exterior cladding made of Oregon timber beams. They staggered the heights of each board to mimic the way a city skyline rises and falls. It also extends higher than the actual roofline, providing enough privacy for a rooftop bath. They kept the gabled form and scale of the original home but opened and expanded it, creating new nooks and crannies both inside and out. The gable shape is echoed with a pergola on the rear facade. Zig-zag shapes along the exterior walls create space for large expanses of windows without sacrificing privacy.

Inside, the jagged black motif is repeated, and black is used to anchor many interior elements within an airy, light-filled space that’s otherwise painted white. This color palette, plus the incorporation of materials like a welded steel framework to which they attach elements like hammocks, gives the former cottage an industrial feel. Over the years, some mezzanine areas that were open have been partially enclosed to create newly private rooms, while low ceilings were eliminated. But the entire home maintains an open traffic pattern, with most rooms, including bathrooms, flowing into each other without doors.

Believe it or not, after all that, the couple decided they were ready for something new altogether. They put their one-of-a-kind home on the market and purchased a new property on the same street in order to start their creative process all over again.

The post Splinter Society Gives a Melbourne Home a Spiky Black Makeover first appeared on Dornob.

“This project was an opportunity to make new experiences within the Gomos building system: in each house, all the technical installations (water, electricity, and climatization) were concentrated in just one module and extended to the other models externally,” the architects say. “This procedure was standardly repeated in the whole project, accelerating its production/assembly process.”

Summary’s Gomos building system consists of concrete modular elements that simplify the building process. Derived from the way ordinary sewer pipes are constructed, the system is redesigned in order to make it habitable while preserving the stability and rapid deployment abilities of the concrete shells. It takes just a few days to assemble the buildings once they arrive on site.

Summary calls this system “evolutionary,” explaining that each module leaves the factory completely ready to live in, including all interior and exterior finishes, insulation, windows, water and electricity, and even built-in furniture. The system is designed to be flexible, so the structures can be sized up or down or given slightly different proportions according to the user’s needs.

In Paradinha, this translates to a series of angular modern buildings sheltered from the harsh sunlight and set at just the right angles to take advantage of the views. To the casual observer, the location of each one may seem a bit random, as if they were scattered across the plot and allowed to remain where they fell. But in reality, they were carefully arranged to follow the contours of the landscape and create privacy for the inhabitants of each one.

“They are distributed across the plot according to the natural configuration of the terrain, altering it as little as possible,” say the architects. “The old stone walls and the existing trees were preserved — the houses were carefully placed around them. Combining this apparently arbitrary positioning with different orientations allowed the houses not to block each other’s views. From the balconies, behind the wooden slates, we can see the forest and, in some cases, the river.”

The project proves that modularity doesn’t have to mean cookie-cutter identical structures all in a row. The concrete prefab cabins consist of four different shapes and sizes, ranging from 300 square feet to 625 square feet. Some are oriented horizontally, others vertically, their layout determined by pre-existing trees and landscape features. Each one features inscrutable concrete facades pierced by geometric windows, with one all-glass facade screened with latticed wood for shade in the heat of the afternoon.

“Resorting to prefabricated structures was not just a choice, but the only efficient option we had to simplify the building process within such conditions,” the architects explain.

The post Modular Concrete Cabins Offer Guests Privacy and Picturesque Views in Portugal first appeared on Dornob.

“Arizona is at the leading edge of states making mobile IDs available to the public, and we are pleased to work with Apple and give Arizonans the choice, convenience, and security of adding their driver’s license to their Apple Wallet,” says Eric Jorgensen, director of the Arizona Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Division. “Beyond being innovative and exciting, a digital version of a driver’s license offers increased security and privacy for our residents, making it something everyone should consider.”

“We’re thrilled to bring the first driver’s license and state ID in Wallet to Arizona today, and provide Arizonans with an easy, secure, and private way to present their ID when traveling, through just a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch,” adds Jennifer Bailey, Apple’s Vice President of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet in a statement. “We look forward to working with many more states and the TSA to bring IDs in Wallet to users across the US.”

To utilize this secure and time-saving feature, Apple users simply open the Wallet on their iPhone and tap the + button at the top of the screen. Then they select “Driver’s License or State ID” and follow the easy on-screen instructions. This involves uploading the front and back of the driver’s license or state ID card, which is then sent securely to the state. The user will also be prompted to take a selfie so the state can verify that the person adding the card is the same one on the ID. One extra step for fraud prevention requires users to make a series of facial and head movements for authentication. It is the responsibility of the authorizing state to verify and approve all digital IDs in Wallet.

Going digital with Apple Wallet provides greater privacy and protection, as it uses biometric verification using Face ID or Touch ID, ensuring that only the person who added the card to the device can view or present it. When going through airport security, these users can digitally send their ID information through encrypted communication to the identity reader, without having to unlock or even show their device.

The Travel Security Administration applauds the beginning of the digital ID shift. “This new and innovative mobile driver’s license and state ID initiative with Apple and states around the country will enable a more seamless airport security screening experience for travelers,” says David Pekoske, TSA Administrator. “This initiative marks a major milestone by TSA to provide an additional level of convenience for the traveler by enabling more opportunities for touchless TSA airport security screening.”

As announced last September, other states in the first roll-out phase will be Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and Utah. Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and the territory of Puerto Rico are also set to approve this feature in the near future, as well.

The driver’s license and state ID in Wallet feature is currently available for iPhone 8 models or later running iOS 15.4, and Apple Watch Series 4 or later running watchOS 8.4 or newer. Not all airports allow digital IDs at their TSA checkpoints. Apple advises travelers to confirm program availability before flying.

The post Arizona Becomes First State to Adopt Digital Driver’s Licenses Through Apple Wallet first appeared on Dornob.

At the heart of the restaurant’s COVID-compliant layout is a steel framework supporting two levels of dining booths, staggered so separate parties aren’t ever seated directly beside or underneath each other. The metal is clad in teak-finish Russian Birch plywood so it looks like solid timber. In between each “node” is a collapsible shutter that can be closed for privacy and safety. Accented with living plants and soft, warm lighting, these eating zones feel cozy and welcoming, with the aim of making indoor dining feel comfortable again to the public post-pandemic.

Arora first got the idea for a two-level dining framework after traveling to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, where stilted houses made of bamboo line the streets and alleyways. But the layout of the restaurant is inspired by Dwarka, the neighborhood where the new restaurant is located. More specifically, the designers took an overhead view of the town’s grid and translated its houses into dining booths and its streets into aisles.

“Restaurants play a pivotal role in our collective post-pandemic future, and to be able to return to them safely, they must be empowered to be active participants in the building of trust,” say the architects. “It’s time we welcome you to our latest product: ‘Social with distancing.’ Masked waiters, tables placed six feet apart, and fluted glass are all the elements that realize a half Vietnamese-half contemporary space set in New Delhi, India.”

“Renesa’s new design introduces India’s first COVID response restaurant that responds to the ‘new normal,’ redefining the boundary between communal and booth seating in restaurants. Designed before the pandemic, the idea was translated and evolved into the benefit which seemed revolutionary at the time – but is now what the market is demanding. We call it a space conceptualized pre-pandemic, designed during and for the pandemic, and sustainable beyond the pandemic.”

The designers repurposed materials and furniture from other Social locations for this project, including granite tabletops, leather benches, and teak wood tables, to complement and contrast the new restaurant’s terrazzo flooring and concrete paver cobblestones forming decorative circles. Cane-back chairs, bamboo blinds, and bricks made with rice straw add to the desired “rural yet revitalizing vibe.” And of course, various parts of the restaurant are still being kept empty to comply with COVID safety guidelines, but in the future, they can be filled in with additional seating.

It’s a smart concept for a variety of reasons, even putting the (highly likely) possibility of future pandemics aside. The two-level dining concept makes excellent use of space, fitting in plenty of customers without making them feel crammed together, and the lower level still lends itself well to guests with accessibility needs. It’ll be interesting to see whether more restaurants follow suit with similar concepts as we all adapt to this new normal.

The post New Delhi’s “Social” Restaurant Adapts to the New Normal of Distanced Dining first appeared on Dornob.

Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning company Shigeru Ban Architects, the two sets of glass-walled restrooms are part of the Tokyo Toilet Project, an initiative launched by the Nippon Foundation to increase public restroom use by dispelling stereotypes that they are “dark, dirty, smelly, and scary.” The new see-through lavatories, which become opaque when locked, were designed to address these specific issues. “There are two things we worry about when entering a public restroom, especially those located at a park. This first is cleanliness, and the second is whether anyone is inside,” the architects explain on the project website.

The transparent walls allow passers-by to judge the tidiness of the toilets without even entering. They also make it obvious if the facilities are in use or not. When a bathroom stall is locked, crystals in the tinted glass are realigned by an electric current, restricting most of the light from passing through. This creates a frosted look, giving the occupants sufficient privacy. As soon as the door is unlocked, the walls become transparent again.

Another measure of safety intersecting with art is the way the restrooms “light up the park like a beautiful lantern” at night. Each toilet compartment glows in its own vibrant shade: lime green, tangerine, violet, aqua, or fuchsia. Adding to the mystique of these toilets, the walls between the stalls are also mirrored. Reviews on this feature have been mixed, though, as it seems to give users a strange feeling of being watched.

These particular installations, located in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Fukamachi Mini Park and Haru-no-Ogawa Community Park, are just two of 17 new restrooms commissioned by the Nippon Foundation in its efforts to “build public toilets that can be used by anyone.” The project dovetails with a countrywide push to make the city more hospitable before the now-postponed Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

“When Japan succeeded to host the Olympic and Paralympic 2020, the word ‘omotenashi’ (a Japanese word that means to wholeheartedly look after guests) was repeatedly presented as the symbol of Japanese hospitailty,” said Mihoko Ueki, project coordinator for the Nippon Foundation’s social innovation team, in a recent interview.

“However, if you take a look at the public toilets, most of them are not accessible for everyone regardless of gender, age, or disability. Considering that, we thought that we [could not truly] show the guests from overseas ‘omotenashi’ as the symbol of Japanese hospitality.”

According to a government survey, up until 2016, 40 percent of Japan’s public restrooms only had squat stalls, requiring trucks to suck out waste and dispose of it elsewhere. Since then, 332 public facilities have been refurbished with more modern, hygienic toilets.

The new Shigeru Ban lavatories certainly fit the desired profile for cleaner, state-of the art toilets with their colorful outer shells and crisp interiors of white tile and chrome. To date, three other public restrooms have been unveiled, including the “Squid Toilet” by designer Fumihiko Maki, itself a courtyard of stalls under a curved roof housed within a children’s playground known as the “octopus park.” Second is the “Modern Kawaya (river hut)” by designer Masamichi Katayama and his studio Wonderwall Inc., and third is the Origata (traditional Japanese method of gift wrapping) toilet, created by designer Nao Tamura. A total of 12 more facilities will be installed by the end of August 2021.

The post Tokyo Designers Bring Transparency to Public Restrooms — Literally first appeared on Dornob.

But the individual workstations we sit at could change, too, and that’s not necessarily such a bad thing. It’s an opportunity to ditch the one-size-fits-all approach and customize these spaces to better suit our needs. Enter “Olli” by Pair, a workspace solution that’s designed to evolve with you.

Made to be as flexible as possible, the Olli system includes modular elements like desks, chairs, meeting tables, coat racks, benches, screens, peg boards, and storage along with “Olli,” a base module with built-in outlets. All of the “Sidekick” elements slot quickly and easily onto the Olli beam (and each other) in hundreds of different ways. Workers can be seated a full six feet away from each other, but still be close enough to chat. Screens slide out of the way and back in place with a flick of the wrist.

They also let you redesign your own workspace whenever you like. Want to add a plant, or some extra books? Block out an annoying bright overhead light? Get some privacy from that one guy who’s always staring at you? Just reconfigure or add new elements to the mix.

The elements themselves are sleek, contemporary, and colorful — a far cry from a lot of the furniture commonly found in offices. “Serif,” for instance, is a simple table for small meeting rooms and communal spaces that comes in a variety of powder coated finishes. “Toast” is a portable sound-dampening privacy screen on a metal tension stand. “EOR” is a lounge sofa with a high back. They’re all perfect for pandemic protocol, even if the designers didn’t necessarily intend them to be when they started.

Pair originally planned to launch their latest workplace collection at the industry’s annual furniture trade show, NeoCon, but was forced to cancel at the outset of the pandemic. All of the company’s employees had to work from home, and there was no room for anyone to experiment with staging the collection in their own spaces. To get around the problem — and show off what the collection can do — they created miniatures of every module, with each product designer building their own configurations at home. The results are pretty cute.

“Companies are still navigating what the future office will look like for them,” says Pair product designer Hillary. “The intent and reasoning for its need will definitely change. I’m confident the office will always hold a place in our future.”

“One of my favorite quotes is, ‘There is nothing wrong with change if it’s in the right direction’ and I am proud to say Olli answers to that,” says Pair product design engineer Samantha. “When we return to the workplace, it will inevitably be a different experience; with Olli’s versatility, organizations can virtually ‘future-proof’ their spaces.”

The post Customize Your Own Workspace Setup With Modular Systems From Pair first appeared on Dornob.

Make it Comfy

Image via Natascha Janina

Plenty of soft surfaces will encourage you to use your outdoor space a lot more. Naturally, you’re going to want plenty of cushions and pillows on your patio chairs and benches. For extra lux lounging, get a stylish fringe hammock like this one from Anthropologie, or spring for a pair of zero-gravity outdoor lounge chairs, which effortlessly support your body for a weightless feel.

Make it Private

Image via Better Homes & Gardens

A little extra privacy can help make your yard feel like more of a sanctuary. While privacy fencing is a great option, there are less expensive ways to achieve the same effect. Curtains made of an outdoor-safe fabric, like those sold by West Elm, are the fastest and easiest way to pull this off. Alternatively, you can try planting a fast-growing vining plant like Boston ivy, clematis, wisteria, star jasmine, or hops up a trellis for a sense of separation that will still allow air flow. For smaller areas, you’ll find that a vertical garden with plant pots attached to a sturdy surface is a great way to add some fresh greenery.

Bring In Some Color

Image via Rugs.com

Summer’s abundance of flowers and fruit provides plenty of inspiration for seasonal outdoor spaces, and you can bring these colors into your home in the form of annual blooms, outdoor rugs, a fresh coat of paint, or even a hand-painted mural on your fence. Look for vivid, juicy tones of pink, red, yellow, purple, and orange for a nice contrast against the green of your yard. IKEA is a great source of colorful cushion covers for as little as $1.99.

Create a Focal Point

Image via CB2

A fire or water feature provides something to congregate around and brings in ambiance, whether you choose a dramatic rectangular fire pit, a smaller tabletop gel fuel fire bowl, a grand water fountain, or just a solar birdbath fountain.

Cool Things Off

Image via Hey Wanderer

Short on space for a full-sized pool but wishing for something sturdier than an inflatable? Consider a stock tank! Sold at farm equipment stores, most of these round galvanized tanks are eight feet in diameter or less. Even in hot weather, the water stays cool thanks to the reflective metal, and it’s easy to convert them to a clean and clear swimming pool with a filter pump. You can even connect one to a propane water heater as a DIY hot tub for a smooth transition into cold weather when summer’s over. No space or cash for a pool? A $9.95 rainbow mister will help you cool off, and kids and dogs love them.

Bring the Vibe Inside

Image via Martha Stewart

A lot of these ideas will work even if all you have is a balcony — but what if you don’t have any outdoor space at all? You can transform your living room or dining area into a summer oasis by applying the same concepts. Switch out your table linens for brighter, airier styles, create floral or herbal centerpieces for your tables, toss some beach-themed throw pillows onto the couch, and hang summer objects like straw hats, beach towels, and oars.

The post 6 Ways to Spruce Up Your Outdoor Space for Summer first appeared on Dornob.

Major tech companies including IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft have agreed to stop selling facial recognition systems to law enforcement until legislation is passed regarding how the technology will be handled going forward. The debate is squarely centered around human rights at a time when the topic is front and center due to the ongoing protests across the nation sparked by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and many other Black Americans at the hands of the police. For that reason, tech companies are insisting on well-defined regulations regarding how and when police will be able use facial recognition innovations in the future.

Microsoft president Brad Smith commented: “We need Congress to act, not just tech companies alone.” It’s not the first time Smith has spoken out about the potential for misuse of the technology. Two years ago, in another blog post, he explained that “unless we act, we risk waking up five years from now to find that facial recognition services have spread in ways that exacerbate societal issues. By that time, these challenges will be much more difficult to bottle back up.”

There are two main reasons theses companies pulled back plans to release the tech into police departments while insisting on legislative action. The first is due to the current focus on both racial injustice and police brutality. These companies are taking a moral stance against both and are trying to protect the public from them.

The second reason for the decision is that myriad reports have shown that commercial facial recognition algorithms are less accurate when it comes to darker skin, frequently misidentifying minorities and people of color. And since the goal of the technology is to make the job of the police easier, and not to result in false matches or propagate inaccurate stereotypes, that seems like a pretty big problem. Having individual privacy and discrimination protections in place not only safeguards the public, but insulates the companies providing the technology, too.

The reality is that in general, technological innovation is far outpacing appropriate legislation. For example, Amazon’s widely popular Ring doorbells can also provide facial recognition information, and the company already partners with around 1,300 police departments across the nation. Although it’s ready to launch new products, Amazon Ring announced this month that it would be putting a one-year hold on selling new tech to law enforcement in order to give the courts time to implement protections.

Also this month, IBM announced that it was no longer investing in the research and development of facial recognition technology. Instead, CEO Arvind Krishna publicly expressed an interest in working with lawmakers to advance social justice and police reform, stating, “We believe now is the time to begin a national dialogue on whether and how facial recognition technology should be employed by domestic law enforcement agencies.” He added, “IBM firmly opposes and will not condone uses of any technology, including facial recognition technology offered by other vendors, for mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms, or any purpose which is not consistent with our values.”

The post Big Companies Freeze Sale of Facial Recognition Technology to US Police Departments first appeared on Dornob.

The rapid spread of the video of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis helped galvanize protests around the United States and the rest of the world, inciting calls for racial justice and police accountability. Now that we all carry cameras in our pockets, it’s a lot easier to document and broadcast events that might otherwise be swept under the rug.

Posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms have mobilized supporters, raised money, and organized impactful events. And when police responded with violent repression of peaceful protestors and journalists alike, thousands of people livetreamed the injustice as it happened, convincing many more Americans that there is in fact a real problem with the institution that needs to be addressed.

Traditional journalism is still an integral element of democracy, but it does have the effect of filtering information through the editors’ or owners’ own potential biases and agendas. When presented with video evidence posted to social media by individual citizens, people can see what happened for themselves and make up their own minds. A small-town conservative newspaper may choose not to print editorials about racism or police brutality, but posts on social media can’t be contained, and in many cases, they’ve led to protests in some of the most rural areas of the country.

At the same time, thousands of posts push wild conspiracy theories that George Floyd isn’t really dead, billionaire George Soros is bussing in “antifa” to riot and loot, “antifa” is an organized network of domestic terrorists rather than a loose coalition of people who stand against fascism, and other blatant untruths.

It certainly doesn’t help that the President himself, who benefitted from Russian agents swaying the 2016 presidential election on Facebook, contributes to the misinformation. While Twitter has begun flagging Trump’s tweets for false statements and “glorifying violence,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg personally stands in the way of holding the President accountable on his own platform. Meanwhile, in many other countries, protestors are vulnerable to internet disruption as a government response to dissent, showing just how easily access to content can be shut off.

Social media can backfire in other ways, too. On June 2, about 28 million people posted black squares to their Facebook or Instagram accounts and pledged to be silent as part of #BlackOutTuesday, ostensibly in support of Black Lives Matter. Not only did the posts do nothing to advance the cause, they also drowned out important information about the movement. Even worse, some influencers are using the protests as a backdrop for their own content.

Ultimately, while social media is an important tool for modern fights against injustice (especially in the middle of a pandemic), it’s no substitute for in-person activism, and it must be used wisely. We should all be taking a moment to question the veracity of what we’re posting before we post it, and consider the potential consequences of false information.

To endure longterm, activism has to transcend social media. If you’re looking to move past “slacktivism” to ensure that movements like the George Floyd Rebellion maintain momentum after the internet shifts its attention to something else, there are lots of ways to take meaningful action. Donate money, register people to vote, show up to protests and meetings in person if you can, put pressure on your local officials, join a local organization fighting for the cause, and listen to the voices of people most affected by injustice.

Images courtesy of Geoff Livingston (1, 2), Elvert Barnes (4)

The post Social Media Mobilizes Protests, But Only Action Can Sustain Them first appeared on Dornob.

FluSense is welcomed as a useful health surveillance tool. In a UMass-Amherst press release, co-author Tauhidur Rahman explained that “this may allow us to predict flu trends in a much more accurate manner.” Rahman is a UMass-Amherst Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Sciences. He also advises Forsad Al Hossain, the PhD student and lead author of the FluSense study that has been recently published through the Association for Computing Machinery.

Why is this invention important now? In recent months, signs of coughing have taken on a new significance as the COVID-19 pandemic rages across the globe. With this UMass-Amherst detector, coughs and other symptoms associated with the flu or flu-like ailments can be monitored much more closely.

How does FluSense work? The published study describes the device as employing an analytic array that consists of a microphone, thermal camera, Raspberry Pi, and “neural computing engine.” This neural computing engine gathers information on speech and cough sounds, then analyzes the data together with “changes in crowd density” in real-time.

Most unique about FluSense is the way it takes advantage of edge computing technology, which has continued to gain popularity as millions of devices connect through the Internet of Things, or IoT. Hewlett Packard describes edge computing as “a distributed, open IT architecture that features decentralized processing power, enabling mobile computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. In edge computing, data is processed by the device itself or by a local computer or server, rather than being transmitted to a data center.”

In other words, FluSense computes, analyzes, and stores its data in real-time, right where it is collected instead of thousands of miles of away at some central database. And as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) notes, there are a number of benefits to that. For one, edge computing minimizes the risks of latency, data loss, or redundancy, which translates to improved information security and reliability. It also helps with computational efficiency, acceleration, and optimization of data processing. Finally, with no need for costly bandwidth, decentralized tech optimizes data flow and maximizes operational costs.

When speaking on FluSense’s internal components, Al Hossain further revealed that his team was “trying to bring machine-learning systems to the edge. All of the processing happens right here. These systems are becoming cheaper and more powerful.”

According to Healthcare IT News, several FluSense detectors were tested from December 2018 to July 2019. They “were encased in a rectangular box about the size of a large dictionary,” then placed in a number of clinic waiting rooms at UMass University Health Services. From data compiled that included “more than 350,000 thermal images and 21 million non-speech audio samples,” FluSense “accurately predict[ed] daily illness rates at the university clinic.”

“I’ve been interested in non-speech body sounds for a long time,” Rahman explained. “I thought if we could capture coughing or sneezing sounds from public spaces where a lot of people naturally congregate, we could utilize this information as a new source of data for predicting epidemiologic trends.”

Because the device is portable, FluSense’s data can be collected in many different settings, not just the healthcare environments of physician offices’ waiting rooms, clinics, and hospitals, but also in large public spaces. In this way, FluSense can be leveraged to “expand the arsenal of health surveillance tools used to forecast seasonal flu” and other outbreaks or pandemics, cites Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

Andrew Lover, a UMass-Amherst Infectious Disease Epidemiologist and Assistant Professor, added that the team “[has] the initial validation that the coughing indeed has a correlation with influenza-related illness. Now we want to validate it beyond this specific hospital setting and show that we can generalize across locations.”

The UMass-Amherst press release shared that future studies with FluSense will likely be seeing how it performs in other public arenas and even more challenging geographic locations.

The post New Portable AI Device Tracks Flu and Pandemic Data from Coughing Sounds first appeared on Dornob.

On Friday, Apple and Google announced a system they’ve co-created that allows users to voluntarily share data through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) transmissions and approved apps from health organizations. The pair of iOS and Android application programming interfaces (APIs,) set to be released in mid May, will help public health officials determine who an infected person has been in contact with in an effort to prevent them from infecting others.

Apple’s official statement on the new tracing system explains: “to further this cause, Apple and Google will be launching a comprehensive solution that includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technology to assist in enabling contact tracing. Given the urgent need, the plan is to implement this solution in two steps while maintaining strong protections around user privacy. First, in May, both companies will release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities. These official apps will be available for users to download via their respective app stores.”

“Second, in the coming months, Apple and Google will work to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform by building this functionality into the underlying platforms. This is a more robust solution than an API and would allow more individuals to participate, if they choose to opt in, as well as enable interaction with a broader ecosystem of apps and government health authorities. Privacy, transparency, and consent are of utmost importance in this effort, and we look forward to building this functionality in consultation with interested stakeholders. We will openly publish information about our work for others to analyze.”

Image courtesy of Elvert Barnes/Flickr Creative Commons

Unsurprisingly, this system (and others like it) is raising a lot of concerns about privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. The American Civil Liberties Union notes that the systems could offer public health benefits, but only if widespread, free, and quick testing is available, and the tool is voluntary, protects privacy, and stores data on an individual’s device rather than in a centralized repository.

“A well-designed tool would give people actionable medical information while also protecting privacy and giving users control, but a poorly designed one could pose unnecessary and significant risks to privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. To help distinguish between the two, the ACLU is publishing a set of technology principles against which developers, the public, and policymakers can judge any contact tracing apps and protocols.”

The policies they recommend, at minimum, also call for information to be shared only within public health efforts that are fully transparent about what data they’re acquiring, from where, and how it’s being used. They also stress that the data should be deleted when there’s no longer a need to hold it, and that policies must be in place to ensure tracking does not outlive the fight against COVID-19.

The post Apple and Google Team Up on a Coronavirus Contact Tracing System first appeared on Dornob.

Unless you’re a literal hermit living in a remote place with little human contact, it’s nearly impossible to stay “off the grid,” so to speak, when it comes to facial recognition databases. But for now, at least, there are a few ways to stymie the technology, and one of them involves obscuring your features in ways that the software finds confusing.

The Incognito Mask by Polish designer Ewa Nowak offers an easy way to do just that. Looking like a pair of strange sculptural sunglasses, the accessory is made of brass and features a vertical piece that sits on your forehead and two circles that hang over your cheeks, just below your eyes.

It may look a bit ridiculous, but according to Nowak, it actually works. She uploaded images of models wearing the device to Facebook, and its algorithms were unable to detect the wearers’ faces.

She explains: “The project touches on the subject of social surveillance and protection of one’s own image in public places. The object is designed to protect the image against [the] face recognition algorithms used in modern cameras installed in public space[s]. It is a kind of mask made of brass, shaped to the shape of the face.”

“The three elements on it make the human face unrecognized by the camera. This project was preceded by a long-term study on the shape, size, and location of mask elements so that it actually fulfill[ed] its task. When testing solutions, I used the DeepFace algorithm, which is used by Facebook. The second part of the project is a kind of object — a joke, a mirror hood [likening] the user to the environment.”

This kind of “face camouflage” confuses cameras by making it hard for them to discern features. This technique can also be used with makeup and hairstyles, as modeled by the open-source face detection toolkit CVDazzle, which derives its name from the cubist-inspired designs used by the World War I naval camouflage system Dazzle. Facial recognition algorithms rely on the identification and spatial relationship of key facial features like the symmetry of eyes and tonal contours of cheeks and noses.

Unfortunately, only a few people will want to walk around looking quite so avant-garde — at least for the time being. Perhaps fashion will evolve in the near future with these kinds of privacy-protecting styles in mind. Nowak’s Incognito Mask has the benefit of being easy to put on and take off, which is particularly handy if you’re trying to be relatively inconspicuous.

Who knows — maybe this is the future of fashion for those who don’t want to be relentlessly tracked at every moment. Or maybe facial recognition technology will advance far enough to see beyond such tricks, and we’ll have to fight for our privacy in ways that are a little more direct.

The post Evade Facial Recognition Software With This Anti-AI Mask first appeared on Dornob.

In 2016, 20 percent of urban survey participants said there are places where they feel more at home than the spaces they live in. In 2018, that figure rose to 35 percent. Does this change reflect a reduction in the quality of our homes and their ability to meet our needs? Or does it speak to a broader phenomenon that might actually portend positive changes in how we view our communities?

One of IKEA’s key findings is the fact that 64 percent of people around the world would rather live in a small home in a great location than a large home in a less-than-ideal location. Another is that 60 people of people say they’re ready to create a life at home that’s different than the one they were brought up in.

Some of the ways in which our sense of home has changed over recent decades include an increase in the number of people who work from home, longer work hours with fewer vacations, bathing outside the home multiple times per week (at work or the gym, for instance), and taking in roommates or AirBnB guests to make extra income.

A lot of complex factors go into our sense of home. To explore them, IKEA identified five core emotional needs: privacy, security, comfort, ownership, and belonging. These needs are universal, but vary in importance individually depending on our personalities, age, who we live with, and where we are in the world.

If we live with a big family, for example, our homes might not be able to give us a feeling of privacy. Our sense of both ownership and security certainly depend on whether we’re homeowners or renters, our relationships with our landlords, and how often we have to move. Our sense of belonging might shift if we go from living with loved ones to living with strangers, or vice-versa.

When our homes can’t sufficiently meet these needs, we look to our surrounding neighborhoods and communities — and that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it could help us build a greater overall sense of belonging, insulate us from emotional hardships relating to tough transitions in our home situations, and teach us to grow as people.

“Your network of spaces and places might be big or small, and maybe you have your own home at the heart of it, and maybe you don’t,” reads IKEA’s report. “There’s no one-size fits all. The important thing is that everyone deserves to experience that feeling of home. The things we have learned through this year’s research will help us develop products, show furnishing solutions, and design home experiences that take us closer to our vision.”

Sure, IKEA’s “Life at Home” report is mostly market research meant to help them sell more products. But there’s also value in thinking about those core emotional needs and what we could change in our homes and lives to feel a greater sense of peace and contentment.

The post Life at Home: IKEA Report Reveals What Makes Us Comfortable first appeared on Dornob.