Author: Carter

Database performance issues are never isolated to the database alone. Across enterprise organizations, they manifest as breached service-level commitments, postponed product launches, demoralized engineering teams, and escalating operational vulnerabilities. The ripple effects on the business side can be severe — dissatisfied customers, increased churn and conversion challenges, and ultimately, revenue loss. I’ve witnessed this pattern firsthand while collaborating with enterprises that build and operate massive data platforms, whether as a customer, a partner, and now at Microsoft. When engineers are compelled to toggle between SQL editors, monitoring dashboards, cloud consoles, and documentation merely to pinpoint a sluggish query, the true…

By Stephen Douglas, Head of Market Strategy, Spirent. As 5G enters its refinement and expansion stage across much of the globe, the competition is already underway to reach the next frontier in telecommunications: 6G. 5G already accomplishes a great deal — offering reduced latency, simpler IoT device architectures, and the capacity to support up to a million tightly concentrated connections within small areas — yet these capabilities alone won’t be sufficient to deliver the futuristic IoT ecosystem we’re frequently promised is imminent. Groundbreaking advances such as city-wide digital twins, holographic and immersive telepresence experiences, coordinated autonomous drone fleets, and seamless…

At this very moment, for $14,000, you can purchase a humanoid robot. There’s no formally reviewed safety certification, no validated standard testing protocol in place. What you’re getting is a machine that can exert physical force and make autonomous decisions on the fly. And the systems designed to verify its behavior are still struggling to keep pace with what it’s actually capable of. That’s not a knock on the engineers developing these systems. The intelligence side of robotics is progressing at a pace that truly warrants the enthusiasm it receives: sharper perception, more dependable locomotion, quicker inference, and tighter control…

In brief Stablecoin transaction volume exceeded $28 trillion in 2025, outpacing Visa and Mastercard combined, yet founders and venture funding remain heavily concentrated in the U.S. and Europe. The true demand lies in emerging markets, where stablecoins serve as a financial lifeline: Nigeria counts over 26 million crypto users, and in Argentina, stablecoin purchases account for more than half of all exchange trades. Alex Witt, General Partner at Verda Ventures, contends that investors backing founders in Lagos, São Paulo, and Manila today stand to capture the largest stablecoin gains of the coming decade. Many people assume the stablecoin opportunity is…

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETFollow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.ZDNET’s key takeawaysAn outdated Android phone can double as a DIY streaming device. Built-in casting delivers a smoother experience compared to full-screen mirroring. A TV-style launcher simplifies browsing through streaming apps.After 15 years of reviewing gadgets, I’ve accumulated a mountain of old tech stashed in bins and drawers all over my home.I tend to hold onto devices like phones longer than necessary because there’s always a small voice in the back of my mind wondering whether they might become collectibles someday or, perhaps, whether I could still…

The FBI and CISA have issued a warning about a phishing campaign aimed at Signal users that has connections to Russian intelligence services. This campaign has now progressed to stealing Signal Backup Recovery Keys, which enables attackers to gain access to victims’ past messages. This latest public advisory serves as an update to a previous warning from March 2026, which cautioned that threat actors were going after users of popular messaging apps—especially Signal—through phishing efforts meant to take over accounts rather than bypass end-to-end encryption. “RIS cyber threat actors continue to masquerade as automated CMA support accounts in updated phishing…

This week, Meta introduced Astryx to the world. It’s an open-source design system that’s currently in Beta. The project started life inside Meta’s monorepo, where it matured over the course of eight years. Under the hood, it relies on React and StyleX — Meta’s compile-time CSS engine. TL;DR Astryx is Meta’s open-source React design system built for AI agents, currently in Beta. It combines StyleX-based styling with a CSS-variable theming system that includes ten built-in themes. A dedicated CLI and MCP server enable AI agents to scaffold and document user interfaces. It’s battle-tested across Meta’s products, though it’s still early…

When a borrower confirmed they qualified for a Paycheck Protection Program loan, the lender handled the application. For PPP loans that met the criteria, the Small Business Administration backed the entire loan amount. Federal financial risk could kick in before a government eligibility review compared that self-certification against outside records. PPP eventually added more protections, but the core lesson from its original design still holds. In early June, the House of Representatives advanced a package of anti-fraud legislation. Several bills cleared the chamber, including the TRUE Accountability Act by a unanimous 384-0 vote and the Federal Fraud Prevention Workforce Training…

Authored by Marc Kavinsky, Lead Editor at IoT Business News.Quectel has unveiled the FCM365X, a small-scale wireless module built on NXP’s RW612 microcontroller that brings together dual-band Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth LE 5.4, Zigbee, and Thread capabilities for smart home and industrial IoT applications.Short-range IoT development is shifting away from the idea of picking just one radio technology and toward the challenge of making multiple radios work together smoothly. A connected appliance, sensor hub, or industrial controller might rely on Wi-Fi for internet connectivity, Bluetooth LE for initial setup, and a mesh networking protocol like Thread or Zigbee for energy-efficient local…

is a unique form of casual conversation, commonly seen in workplace settings near the water cooler. In these moments, workers tend to exchange all sorts of company rumors, urban myths, folk tales, questionable scientific views, overly personal stories, or even complete fabrications. Absolutely anything gets shared. In my Water Cooler Small Talk posts, I explore bizarre and usually scientifically flawed viewpoints that I, my friends, or someone I know have overheard at work—opinions that genuinely left us at a loss for words. So, here is the water cooler take from today’s post: We’ve developed a RAG application that’s performing really…