Latest news with #Eclectic
Irish Examiner
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
How to get 'The White Lotus' look in your home interiors
As HBO's The White Lotus streams on Sky for a third season, the covetable décor co-stars with the cast. The social satire returns to our screens with the usual unfulfilled, jaded and entitled guests staying at a holiday resort, but the role played by the set design sometimes almost eclipses the action and always gets the trendsters talking up the looks. After lush tropical Hawaiian scenes in season one, and the dramatic, maximalist Sicilian location of season two, the action unfolds again in five-star surroundings, this time on a Thai island, with set design far from the maximalism of series one, which, incidentally, caused a surge of interest in the Sicilian ceramic vases known as testa di moro, with Etsy reporting a 20% increase in searches. Season three is at the Four Seasons, Koh Samui, where sleek sofas sit comfortably with traditional Thai cabinetry, and modern mattresses are happy bedfellows with four-posters draped in silk sheers. Bill Bensley, architect and interior designer of the hotel when it was built 25 years ago, described the vibe as, ''Thai vernacular set in a tamed jungle'. Production designer Christina Onori adds in textures, heritage woods and botanical prints for a mix of sophistication and relaxed boho. Think handcrafted, or the look of it, with rattan, ceramic lamps and painted shades. Lounging around There's a whole lot of lying around doing absolutely nothing across the episodes, but not like the start of a fortnight in Spain lying prone on a sun lounger to combat work fatigue. This is lounging as a lifestyle with requisite linen-upholstered daybeds and rattan sofas. The Aruba garden corner sofa, footstool, side and coffee tables set; €1,599, EZ Living Interiors. Get the look: Outdoor furniture which looks like it would be equally at home indoors is what you're aiming for. Get yourself an entire outdoor set with the Aruba corner sofa, footstool, and coffee and side tables; €1,599, EZ Living Interiors. Spring for the taupe Rafa long chair in teak, with its daybed design; €4,400, The Pavilion Garden Centre. Bring nature in In the era of bifold doors, we're loving spaces flowing between inside and out. Of course, we don't have summers of perpetual sun, but we excel at making the most of a few sunny hours and can achieve boutique hotel-style patios with textiles. The Edit's neutral cushions are high on texture with an artisan feel to help layer a summer look; from €28, Penneys. Get the look: Carolyn Donnelly's Eclectic collection has stripe and boxy blue and green cushions; €20, Dunnes Stores, or there's The Edit range of warm neutrals suggesting artisan handmade and a more elevated offering than we're used to from Penneys; from €28. Monkeys and murals Never fast-forward the opening credits, or you'll miss dramatic murals hinting at location and the ensuing drama. Monkeys feature, drawn and real, silently observing guest shenanigans from the trees. Add the theme to the décor without actually acquiring a new pet. Get the look: Try a sitting, standing or hanging monkey lamp; €285, or the Valuelights version in gold metallic; €45, B&Q. Make a bigger statement with an exotic addition to the bathroom with the Monkey Sanctuary wallpaper mural by Sir Edward, made to size; €49 per metre square, Colour chart Orange surprises in an otherwise muted palette, popping up in art, fabric and parasols. Its association with Buddhism and the quest for spiritual enlightenment might be lost on characters whose only quest is the next spa treatment, but it does bring cheeriness with it. A version of orange which has something in common with on-trend warm neutrals can introduce the colour with subtlety, like the Harvest Moon paint by Benjamin Moore; from €29, Albany. Get the look: For underfoot, the Fading World Medallion rug is a subtle touch; from €189, unless you go all in with Farrow & Ball's Drag wallpaper in uncharacteristically bright orange; €119.30, or tone things down with Benjamin Moore's Desert Moon paint in a nice flat version; from €29, Spoiler alert Look away now if you haven't watched the series yet, as we can't talk about The White Lotus without speaking of Tanya McQuoid-Hunt, played by Jennifer Coolidge. She's conspicuous by her absence this season thanks to her ex Greg, who is lying low at the resort, living on her money while staying out of the reach of the Italian police who want him in connection with her murder. Get the look: Pay homage to the character with the Tanya McQuoid-Hunt Legends Never Die poster; €18.35, and maybe add in another print: I Don't Even Have My Lorazepam, I'm Going to Have to Drink Myself To Sleep; €27.67, the latter based on a standout line delivered by Victoria, matriarch of the visiting dysfunctional Ratliff family, which despite all indications, actually leave the resort alive. Read More Jennifer Sheahan: How to use paint and pattern to transform any room
Metro
25-05-2025
- Business
- Metro
Here's how you can protect yourself from being scammed with deepfakes
People should create secret passwords with their friends and family so they are able to tell them from AI deepfaked impersonators, an expert has said. Former US government adviser and chief executive of cyber security firm Eclectic Cody Barrow said new measures were necessary to combat online criminals as AI had lowered 'the barrier to entry' . He said: 'AI is huge. It's not just hype. It's very easy to dismiss it as such, but it's really not.' He added he had come up with a password with his wife which only they would know, to make sure they are talking to themselves and not a scammer posing as one of them. 'My wife and I were actually just discussing this', he said. 'In recent months, we have (created) a secret code that we use that only the real me or the real her would know, so that if one of us ever receives a FaceTime video or WhatsApp video that looks and sounds like us, asking for money, asking for help – something very scary – we can use that code to verify that we're the right person. 'So the fact that I'm doing that indicates what I think of it, right? I think it's very real. 'We will see that it is much easier to generate deepfakes to fool people, to write phishing emails that look real. So I think it does lower the barrier to entry. It may also open the door to non-English speaking threat actors.' He said personal passwords could be helpful to more vulnerable users, such as older people and those without the best computer skills. His comments come after a series of major data breaches at large companies and organisations, including M&S and the Coop. M&S said its cyber attack was due to a 'human error' which allowed hackers to gain access via a third party in order to get into the retailer's systems and steal customers' data. The incident is costing the retailer £42million a week in lost sales after it suspended online orders on April 25. Mr Barrow said that with the ever increasing number of data breaches, it was likely a majority of people with an online footprint would have had their personal details compromised at some point. He said: 'It may sound dramatic here in May 2025, but I'm quite confident that within a number of years, if not months, people will look back and say, absolutely yes, I should have done that, and I do think everyone should do it, especially if you have either more elderly family members or younger family members – because we have a lot of younger people who don't actually understand this stuff either. 'Just about every human who's used a computer or the internet has an old email account that's been compromised at some stage when they had a non-secure password, which probably most people still do, and that email was compromised and someone stole their contact list. More Trending 'Then from that contact list, it's not hard to generate malicious tooling that can duplicate the likeness of someone on that list and then send you some sort of scam that makes it look like it's actually from that person.' Mr Barrow said the M&S hackers may have been aided by the fact they appeared to be native English speaks, but also warned predictable security set-ups, such as two-factor authentication could have assisted the cybercriminals in creating a realistic looking scam. 'The landscape that we're seeing now is that we're seeing a lot of people are really immunised and used to the security procedures they have to follow,' he said. 'They're used to having to enter their phone authenticator code and do all the prompts. And so it was relatively trivial for this threat actor, which speaks native English, to really trick people into going through those motions and abusing multi-factor authentication to get into these outlets.' Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page.
