Author: Carter

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysSummer blackouts happen more often than you might think.Assess your backup power needs and essential devices.Solar panels provide grid independence and long-term savings.Even though winter blackouts can be worse due to cold, rain, and shorter days that slow down repairs, power cuts actually occur most often in summer.This happens because of several factors: increased electricity use from air conditioning, soaring temperatures that cause transformers to overheat and power lines to droop, and an outdated electrical infrastructure designed decades ago when energy demands and severe weather were less common.Also:…

The Automated Tire SmartBay swaps two tires at once without detaching the wheels from the car. | Credit: Automated Tire Inc. Looking to bring today’s service garage into the future, Automated Tire Inc. has officially stepped out of stealth mode to reveal SmartBay — an AI-driven robotic system that takes over the job of changing tires and inspecting vehicles. By swapping out hands-on, injury-risk work with cutting-edge computer vision and robotics, the platform can slash service times by up to half, getting them down to around 30 minutes, according to the startup. This allows one technician to oversee three bays…

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how businesses manage regulatory compliance. Background checks happen instantly. Payroll systems catch errors on their own. Predictive tools spot when employees are likely to quit before they hand in their notice. Modern HR platforms now provide automated answers for almost every legal obligation – from responding to GDPR data requests to filing workplace safety reports.Yet one critical area stubbornly resists digitization. For UK tech firms whose edge in the market hinges on recruiting global AI talent, the compliance task that matters most is still stuck in the past: managing sponsor licences.This produces a troubling contradiction. The…

# Introduction For the past ten years, Pandas has served as the go-to tool for Python-based data tasks. When working with in-memory datasets, its speed and familiarity are so well-established that most developers never consider exploring alternatives. But as soon as you begin handling millions of rows, its limitations become obvious: sluggish groupby operations lasting multiple seconds, intermediate duplicates that eat up memory, and window functions implemented as Python loops instead of optimized C or Rust vectorized code. Polars is a DataFrame library written in Rust and built on Apache Arrow. It treats parallel processing and lazy evaluation as core…

Key takeaways:Bitcoin is having difficulty pushing past $84,000, but as long as it stays above the 20-day EMA, bulls still hold the upper hand.Many leading altcoins have retreated, showing that bears continue to sell during price rallies.Bitcoin (BTC) dipped at the beginning of the week, yet buyers are working to keep the price above $81,500. According to crypto sentiment tracker Santiment, the current balance of optimistic versus pessimistic social media commentary stands at 1.5:1. This hints that the present rally might lack staying power, since moves driven by widespread confidence often lose steam quicker than those building amid doubt.On the…

TeamPCP, the group responsible for a recent wave of supply chain attacks, has been connected to the tampering of npm and PyPI packages from TanStack, UiPath, Mistral AI, OpenSearch, and Guardrails AI as part of a new Mini Shai-Hulud campaign. The compromised npm packages were altered to contain a hidden JavaScript file (“router_init.js”) that profiles the system it runs on and activates a powerful credential stealer. This stealer targets cloud services, cryptocurrency wallets, AI tools, messaging platforms, and CI/CD systems like GitHub Actions. Multiple security firms—including Aikido Security, Endor Labs, SafeDep, Socket, StepSecurity, and Snyk—report that stolen data is sent…

AWS has officially launched Claude Platform on AWS, making Anthropic’s native Claude Platform accessible directly through customers’ existing AWS accounts.AWS claims to be the first cloud provider to natively integrate the Claude Platform. This service enables developers and organizations to leverage Claude APIs, the Claude Console, and early-access beta features without needing separate Anthropic accounts.AWS and Anthropic’s cloud tiesThis launch builds on prior AWS-Anthropic collaborations. In November 2024, Anthropic confirmed Amazon’s total investment in the company had reached US$8 billion, with AWS becoming its primary cloud and training partner.Amazon and Anthropic further strengthened this partnership in April 2026. Amazon announced…

Guest post by Jared Miller, President of ENODA Ventures Inc.During a recent call with a top executive at a leading IoT connectivity platform, the topic shifted to manufacturing strategy. He confidently stated: “Oh yeah, we simply build a SIM into the device with a global bootstrap.”He spoke as if it were a finished solution. Everyone on the call agreed. And that reaction is precisely the problem.What he described is not In-Factory Profile Provisioning. It is not even remotely close. Yet his view mirrors the stance of most of the IoT industry today: confusing the practice of soldering an eUICC onto…

As a programming tool, Claude Code stands out as an exceptional assistant and has significantly boosted my productivity as an engineer—likely making me several times more efficient. That said, Claude Code extends far beyond coding tasks. It excels in areas like building presentations—easily generating them through code in languages such as Python or LaTeX. It also handles non-technical work, including managing sales outreach or constructing a knowledge base, which is the focus of this article. An LLM-driven knowledge base is a game-changer for efficiency, letting you retrieve critical information in seconds. Here, I’ll walk you through setting one up, why…

Last year, climate scientist Zeke Hausfather was experimenting with climate data visualizations, searching for fresh and striking ways to illustrate just how rapidly the planet is heating up. He was brainstorming with an artificial-intelligence tool, having it quickly code and generate new designs. Together, they created inventive tree-ring-style charts — with months arranged around each ring, annual circles expanding outward over time, and colors representing temperature. Then Hausfather posed a question to the AI: what if these charts were rendered in 3D?The outcome was what Hausfather calls a thermal helix animation — a visualization of temperature spiraling upward through time,…