Author: Carter

If you’ve spent any time in data engineering, you’ve almost certainly faced this question before. Maybe once or twice. Okay, let’s be honest — probably more like a dozen times 😉 “Should we handle our data in batches or process it in real-time?” And if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably noticed the answer almost always begins with: “Well, it depends…” And that’s fair. It really does depend. But “it depends” only helps if you understand what it depends on. That’s exactly the gap I’m aiming to close with this article. Not another high-level comparison of batch versus stream processing…

Although Congress established the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee to monitor over $5 trillion in emergency COVID-19 funds, the PRAC is now moving into a fresh chapter of its oversight mission. The PRAC, a group of agency inspectors general formed in March 2020 under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, was initially set to wind down in September 2025. However, the pandemic watchdog continues its work and is now supervising another large wave of government spending. The One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, enacted last year, extends the PRAC’s operations through 2034 and grants the watchdog authority to monitor…

In brief Companies are developing quantum-proof wallets in anticipation of upcoming blockchain improvements. Strategies vary from enhancing MPC technology to implementing layer-2 solutions. Specialists point out that user habits and collaboration continue to be vulnerabilities in quantum upgrade deployments. Cryptocurrency firms are taking steps to protect their wallet and custody services from the looming threat of quantum computing, working to enhance user-facing systems more quickly than blockchains can update their underlying protocols.This move stems from an increasing belief that network-wide upgrades to blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum may take years to complete, leaving wallets vulnerable in the interim. Moreover,…

Adam Doud/ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeawaysI tested 5G on rural backroads and farmland over a three-day weekend. Verizon delivered the strongest overall network presence, with AT&T and T-Mobile trailing behind.T-Mobile was the sole provider that managed to secure a 5G connection at all.My mission to evaluate 5G performance has led me to a baseball game and long stretches of interstate between Chicago and Nashville. On every leg of the journey, I’ve carried three phones representing the three major US carriers to assess which offers the most reliable coverage. I went through this…

Hackers are exploiting Google Ads and authentic Claude.ai shared conversations in a current malvertising operation. People looking for “Claude mac download” might encounter paid search listings that display claude.ai as the destination site, yet redirect them to steps that install harmful software on their Mac. Google’s sponsored search result for ‘claude download mac’ (BleepingComputer) Shared Claude Chats exploited to attack macOS users The operation was discovered by Berk Albayrak, a security engineer at Trendyol Group, who posted his analysis on LinkedIn. Researcher warns about active malvertising campaign Albayrak found a Claude.ai shared conversation that masquerades as an official “Claude Code…

The open-source AI agent landscape has a new frontrunner. As of May 10, 2026, Hermes Agent — developed by Nous Research — has surpassed OpenClaw to claim the top spot on OpenRouter’s global daily app and agent rankings. Hermes is now producing 224 billion tokens per day on OpenRouter, compared to OpenClaw’s 186 billion, making it the most actively used open-source AI agent by current inference volume. This milestone represents more than just a leaderboard shuffle. OpenClaw’s founder, Peter Steinberger, moved to OpenAI in February 2026, while OpenClaw itself transitioned to an independent open-source foundation backed by OpenAI as a…

OpenAI has released a Codex Chrome extension for Mac and PC, designed to simplify browser-based tasks that were previously hard to manage through APIs or plugins. This launch reflects a broader pattern: since the introduction of “Computer Use,” most users have preferred working within a browser, enabling Codex to handle a wider range of web-based activities more effectively. What the Extension Actually Does Prior to this update, Codex could use an in-app browser — a self-contained browser environment within the Codex desktop app — along with a growing set of plugins for platforms like GitHub, Slack, Figma, and Notion. The…

The National Institutes of Health is turning to artificial intelligence to pull valuable insights from enormous volumes of health data — a move that could help the agency carry out research faster and provide new tools to assist healthcare providers. Susan Gregurick, NIH’s associate director for data science, said during Federal News Network’s AI & Data Exchange 2026 that progress in AI is starting to reveal insights from data spread across separate systems. “I think there’s just an incredible amount of excitement here,” Gregurick said. “I’ve noticed some truly promising trends in building AI technologies that can pull out hard-to-find…

Delays on Taiwan’s high-speed rail system are so uncommon that they immediately stand out. So when three Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp (THSRC) trains were stopped for 48 minutes during the Qingming holiday, the event was quickly flagged and investigated as a possible security breach. What first looked like a mysterious signalling problem has now been traced by officials to a 23-year-old university student. Authorities claim he used off-the-shelf software-defined radio (SDR) equipment to fake railway communications and activate emergency braking on several trains at once. As reported by The Taipei Times, the event took place at 11:23 PM on…

It takes a five-minute conversation and delivers eight neatly organized sections: Decisions, Action Items, Risks, Open Questions. Each section appears as though it was crafted by someone who was truly listening. But look at the original transcript, and you’ll discover that two of those sections were drawn from a single vague statement, one was completely fabricated, and three were filled in based on what the model expected a meeting summary should look like. The result is polished, well-formatted, and structurally identical to a summary of a meeting where those things genuinely occurred. This isn’t the typical hallucination issue. The model…