Author: Carter

For decades, the RFID industry has worked tirelessly to refine what’s embedded within the card — the microchip, the antenna, the data encoding, and the encryption protocols. We’ve evolved from MIFARE Classic to DESFire EV3, patched known security flaws, and developed credentials that are genuinely tough to crack. Yet we’ve paid surprisingly little attention to the material the card itself is made from. Since the 1990s, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) has been the go-to material for RFID hotel key cards. It’s inexpensive, prints easily, and behaves predictably from a structural standpoint. But there’s a hidden cost: the hospitality sector alone generates…

Johnson & Johnson created OTTAVA for operations like gastric bypass. Image: Adobe Stock Johnson & Johnson has shared findings from the initial clinical trial of its experimental OTTAVA robotic surgery platform. This forward-looking, multi-site study assessed how safe and effective the system is for performing gastric-bypass surgeries. According to J&J, the group of 30 patients achieved the study’s main safety and effectiveness goals within 30 days after their procedures. Every surgery was carried out entirely using the OTTAVA robot, with no need to switch to a traditional manual technique. Patients lost an average of 30 pounds (13.6 kilograms) by the…

Across 64 English councils and six 2026 scenarios, even the most extreme scenario shock amounted to just 13% of the median uncertainty range. Put simply: the model’s assumptions shifted the outcome less than past forecasting errors have. The most dramatic challenger surge I could configure falls within the range of noise the model has generated in previous elections. That’s not a flaw — it’s the finding. I developed this scenario model expecting clear distinctions between assumptions. I anticipated S3, the challenger surge, to stand out. I expected defensible rankings. Instead, I found a range where the strongest shock sits within…

Boltz, a top provider of non-custodial Bitcoin swap services, has officially rolled out USDC Swaps, allowing users to instantly convert Bitcoin into USDC—the regulated stablecoin issued by Circle—and vice versa. The feature is now live on all major Bitcoin layers, including the Lightning Network, accessible directly at boltz.exchange. “USDC Swaps represent a major milestone for the Bitcoin ecosystem. For the first time, anyone can seamlessly move between Bitcoin and the most trusted regulated dollar asset without creating an account, going through KYC, or handing over control of their funds,” said the Boltz team in a press release shared with Bitcoin…

Authored by Subramani Rao, Senior Manager of Cybersecurity Solutions Strategy at Acronis Chances are, your backup strategy won’t hold up during a ransomware attack. The reason is straightforward: attackers intentionally seek out and destroy backup systems before they begin encrypting data. In today’s threat landscape, backup infrastructure is frequently left exposed, easily reachable, and poorly defended — turning what should be your safety net into a critical vulnerability. Solutions like the Acronis Cyber Platform tackle this issue head-on by merging backup functionality with robust security measures such as data immutability, access safeguards, and threat detection. For a long time, backups…

# Introduction Claude Code Channels is rapidly emerging as a practical alternative to OpenClaw for those looking to connect Claude to chat platforms without the complexity of a full agent framework. It’s easier to set up, works directly with a Claude subscription, and provides a simple way to interact with a local Claude Code session via Discord. In this guide, you’ll learn how to set up Claude Code Channels on your local machine and link it to your Discord server. The most important thing to keep in mind from the beginning is that this setup relies on an active local…

Posted on May 6, 2026 by Ila Bandhiya, Middleware Having spent considerable time working with cloud-native infrastructure, I can say we’ve gotten pretty solid at agreeing on the theory. OpenTelemetry handles instrumentation, Prometheus manages metrics, Jaeger and Tempo cover distributed tracing, and Fluentd or Loki take care of log aggregation — over the years, the community has genuinely rallied around these tools. The technology has matured, and the standards are in place. So where does that leave teams right now? A February 2026 survey of 407 professionals — including DevOps engineers, SREs, platform engineers, cloud architects, and engineering leaders from…

Jack Wallen/ZDNETStay updated with ZDNET: Mark us as a preferred source on Google.Key highlights from ZDNETZorin OS stands out as an excellent and widely-used Linux distribution.With minor adjustments, you can tailor it to better suit your workflow.These optimizations are accessible to everyone and come at no cost.Should I ever move away from Pop!_OS, Zorin OS would be my top pick. It’s sleek, user-friendly, stable, and packed with personalization features that let me shape it exactly how I like. I can enhance its appearance, boost its speed, and streamline its performance. And with the launch of Zorin OS 18.1, the team…

The GENE026.5 robot brain enables dexterous, two-handed cooking. Source: Genesis AI After years of steady progress, robots are becoming far more skillful at handling objects, driven by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Genesis AI has now introduced GENE-26.5, a system it says grants robots “human-level physical manipulation capabilities.” The San Carlos, California-based company also revealed a method to “unlock unlimited amounts of data” and train GENE-26.5 at large scale. This method brings together two proprietary elements: a new data engine and a human-scale robotic hand that allows skills to be transferred directly from people to robots. “Together, these innovations remove the…

Hasan Piker dedicates seven to eight hours daily, every single day, to live-streaming on Twitch. The progressive political commentator began his career in 2013 as an intern (and occasional host) for the Young Turks. Over ten years on, he has become a major newsfluencer, leading Twitch’s Politics and Commentary category with the top channel. More than 3 million followers tune in for his analysis and wit regarding the decline of American power, international relations, and why Bernie Sanders would have been victorious. Some also find him quite attractive. Piker hits the gym every morning he can and eats a pound…