Author: Carter

**Edge Computing in Manufacturing: Why Factory Computers Are Competing with AI Data Centres** Edge computing has become the go-to solution for many challenges on the factory floor. Instead of transmitting camera footage and sensor data to a distant cloud server—and waiting for a response—plants deploy small computers directly beside machines. This setup delivers answers in milliseconds, keeps the line running even when the internet fails, and reduces bandwidth costs. However, this year has brought a new dynamic. The cost and availability of these factory computers have shifted, and the cause lies outside manufacturing itself. — ### Why a Factory Computer…

**Exploring DuckDB’s New Quack Protocol: Concurrent Reads and Writes Across Remote Databases** The DuckDB team recently introduced **Quack**, a new communication protocol designed to enable DuckDB databases on different servers to communicate over HTTP in a client/server arrangement. At a high level, Quack allows a DuckDB instance on one server to query or write data to a DuckDB instance on a remote server. Importantly, this capability is distinct from distributed query processing—Quack does not distribute a single query across multiple nodes, but it does enable coordination between separate DuckDB servers. In this article, we explore how Quack can be used…

**The Future of Tokenized Finance: US-UK Coordination and Its Impact** In a significant move for the global financial landscape, the United States and the United Kingdom have unveiled a joint roadmap to coordinate oversight of digital assets and tokenized securities. This collaboration marks a pivotal step in bringing traditional financial markets into the digital age. But what does this mean for the future of trading, and how will it affect institutions and individuals looking to navigate this evolving space? At the heart of this development is the concept of **tokenization**—a process that is reshaping how we think about asset ownership…

**4 Reasons This Could Be the Most Important Week of August for Bitcoin and XRP** Bitcoin (BTC) trades at half its record price. XRP (XRP) has lost roughly 73% from its own peak. Four events this week could decide whether either one escapes that range. Both drifted lower again over the past seven days. Washington delivers a presidential crypto meeting, Federal Reserve minutes and a debut regulator panel. Japan adds two data prints. — ### 1. Trump Meets Crypto Leaders at the White House on Wednesday Trump is expected to attend in person. The heads of both US market regulators…

In my RAG-ING Ahead series I  cloud-native retrieval stack: speech and document processing, chunking, embeddings, Azure AI Search, and an assistant layer sitting on top of it. That series answered the question I had at the time, which was essentially ‘how do I get a language model to answer questions about documents it was never trained on’?  The stack still works. Retrieval-Augmented Generation remains the most practical way to ground a model in private, domain-specific or recently changed information without retraining anything.[1] If you have a corpus and you need answers from it, RAG is still where you start.  But I have been…

Guest: Congressman Don Beyer (D) Title: Representative, Virginia’s 8th District Summary: Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than many institutions can adapt. For Congress, the challenge is deciding where government should step in and where it should stay out while the technology’s full impact is still emerging. The Federal Drive with Terry Gerton provides expert insights on current events in the federal community. Read more interviews to keep up with daily news and analysis that affect the federal workforce. Reach out to Terry and the Federal Drive producers with feedback and story ideas at FederalDrive@federalnewsnetwork.com. Interview transcript Terry Gerton You’ve recently…

In brief Gemini 3.7 Flash built a playable browser game from a single prompt in 2 minutes and 13 seconds, a task Gemini 3.6 Flash failed outright three weeks earlier. It failed our bridge logic puzzle with the same wrong answer as Claude Fable 5, and stopped short of actually calculating the math problem it correctly set up. The model runs at 75 cents per million input tokens through December 31, half of 3.6 Flash’s rate, before doubling to $1.50 on January 1. Google shipped Gemini 3.7 Flash on August 13, generally available in more than 160 countries on day…

**Strategic Hiring Committees Take Root at the Department of Defense** The U.S. Department of Defense has begun bringing on civilian hires through the strategic hiring committees established by the Trump administration’s executive order last October. However, questions remain about the impact of these committees on the defense workforce, nearly a year after their creation. Since the order’s enactment, DoD has hired more than 29,000 civilians in the eight months that followed, according to the most recent federal data running through June. This includes about 7,400 Air Force and Space Force employees since the Air Force’s hiring committee launched in January…

**In the Wild: What People Are Installing, Watching, and Searching For** The ever-evolving landscape of AI tools and trends is a fascinating space, and keeping tabs on real-world usage offers a unique perspective on what’s truly resonating with users. This week, we observed some significant shifts in consumer behavior, from groundbreaking accessibility features to the burgeoning trend of self-hosted AI. Here are the key movements happening right now. One of the most impactful developments is the arrival of sign-language dictation in mainstream applications. Google DeepMind’s SL2T model, capable of transcribing American Sign Language into text directly within Gboard and Live…

**How Robotics is Revolutionizing Stroke Rehabilitation** Someone in the U.S. experiences a stroke every 40 seconds. For many survivors, the rehabilitation journey is extremely long and defined by physical limitations, inconsistent access to therapy, and the challenge of rebuilding neural pathways that have been disrupted or damaged. A new generation of technology that is revolutionizing stroke recovery is now augmenting traditional therapies. Robotic rehabilitation systems are becoming more mainstream and they are increasingly becoming practical clinical tools capable of accelerating neuroplasticity, personalizing therapy, and extending rehabilitation beyond the confines of hospitals and outpatient clinics. As healthcare systems grapple with rising…