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4 four ways to overcome the skills crisis and prepare your workforce for the age of AI

Sanja Baljkas/Moment via Getty Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Only 10% of companies have the right skills. Business leaders must start upskilling talent now. AI is the key to learning new workplace skills Only 10% of human resources (HR) and learning and development (L&D) professionals believe their teams possess the necessary skills to meet business goals within the next one to two years. That's the conclusion of Skillsoft's Global Skills Inte

Anker issued a recall for five popular power banks back in June - here's the latest update

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Back in June, several Anker power banks were called for safety issues. The list included the popular PowerCore 10000 power bank. We've listed the steps to follow if you own one of the recalled products. Anker has had a rough summer. Between June and July 2025, the company issued two separate recalls for a number of power banks over the past few weeks. This has prompted a question from o

I Built an Event-Sourcing Database Engine: Meet Genesis DB

Yearly Monthly For special people or special institutions with special needs (1) Use it whenever, wherever - for all your projects. (2) Your data is always yours. You can read it anytime - no license needed. Writing's the only thing behind a paywall once you hit 10,000 events. And thanks to the open CloudEvents standard, migrating to another system is easy. (3) Offline usage is also possible with a monthly or yearly payment. You will receive an offline license key for this special purpose.

Move Aside, Chatbots: AI Humanoids Are Here

This week, WIRED learned that OpenAI is ramping up its efforts in robotics—specifically, by hiring researchers who work on AI systems for humanoid robots. Humanoids, robots built to resemble us and perform daily tasks, were famous for their clumsiness just a few years ago. Senior writer Will Knight tells us about how that's rapidly changing on today's episode cohosted by Michael Calore and senior correspondent Kylie Robison. Mentioned in this episode: OpenAI Ramps Up Robotics Work in Race Towa

Users are annoyed by this Google Phone change, but it may be working as intended

Alex Walker-Todd / Android Authority TL;DR Google’s Phone app has historically forced a portrait orientation while making calls. Users have recently noticed that this no longer holds true, and some devices set to auto-rotate will turn even in calls. We’re not seeing this behavior consistently across devices, and it’s unclear if it’s truly intended. The vast majority of your smartphone usage probably takes place in portrait mode, ideal for one-handed operation. When we’re turning our phones f

Apple celebrating new iPhone launch with stunning ‘Pro’ and ‘Air’ retail art

Apple’s new iPhone 17, iPhone Air, Apple Watch, and AirPods lineups debut tomorrow. Apple is preparing for the festivities with special displays at its retail store, including a stunning design at Apple BKC in Mumbai, India. Tim Cook posted the above image on social media this afternoon. Kush Thakkar also posted a handful of photos and videos on Threads today showing the special structures at Apple’s BKC store. Apple will also likely have special displays up at other flagship stores around the

Follow your favorite sites and creators in Google Discover - now with just one click

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Learn Your Way: Reimagining Textbooks with Generative AI

Grounded in learning, built for the student Our approach is built on two key pillars that work together to augment the learning experience: (1) generating various multimodal representations of the content, and (2) taking foundational steps toward personalization. The seminal dual coding theory states that forging mental connections between different representations strengthens the underlying conceptual schema in our brain. Subsequent research indeed showed that when students actively engage wi

The New ‘Critical Role’ Trailer Ushers in Campaign 4

Change is coming to Critical Role with its fourth major campaign: a new setting, more cast members, and Dimension 20‘s Brennan Lee Mulligan at the helm make things more different than they’ve been in some time for the decade-old Actual Play series. Ahead of Campaign 4’s debut in three weeks, the first real trailer gives an idea of what to expect with this new dynamic. It largely consists of Mulligan narrating as the assembled players actually play the game—it’s Dungeons & Dragons again, the go-

US government charges British teenager accused of at least 120 ‘Scattered Spider’ hacks

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday unsealed federal charges against British teenager Thalha Jubair, who prosecutors accuse of being involved in at least 120 cyberattacks, including the U.S. Courts system, and the extortion of dozens of U.S. companies. Jubair, 19, was arrested on Tuesday at his home in East London, according to a statement by the National Crime Agency. He appeared in court on Thursday morning in London alongside another teenager, Owen Flowers, 18. Both are accused of inv

Best early October Prime Day TV deals 2025: All time low prices from Samsung, LG, and more

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Mysterious Object From Beyond Solar System May Be "Seed" Traveling Galaxy and Creating New Planets, Paper Finds

Astronomers have been fascinated after spotting an object earlier this year that came from interstellar space as is now hurtling through our inner solar system. Since then, they've been using powerful telescopes to study the mysterious object, trying to understand its unusual composition and exact origins. Most agree that it's probably a comet, albeit an unusual one, though at least one has posited that it could be a remnant of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization — a colorful claim, but o

A pivotal meeting on vaccine guidance is underway—and former CDC leaders are alarmed

On Thursday, an advisory CDC panel that develops vaccine guidance met for a two-day discussion on multiple childhood vaccines. During the meeting, which was underway as The Checkup went to press, members of the panel were set to discuss those vaccines and propose recommendations on their use. Monarez worries that access to childhood vaccines is under threat—and that the public health consequences could be dire. “If vaccine protections are weakened, preventable diseases will return,” she said.

I wore the viral $2,000 Hypershell X Ultra exoskeleton, and it supercharged my legs

Prakhar Khanna/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways The Ultra X offers 1000 watts of power, which is the most for a Hypershell exoskeleton. It is made for people with an active lifestyle. The Hypershell is now available to purchase for $1,999. This year, IFA 2025 was mostly about smart home innovations, but I also got a refreshingly new demo at the Berlin tradeshow that hasn't left my mind since I returned home. I wore the Hypershell X Ultra exo

Top Best Buy deals ahead of Amazon Prime Day 2025: My 23 favorite sales before October

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Tesla is looking to redesign its door handles following trapped-passenger report

Tesla is looking into redesigning the way to open its car doors in an emergency following several accidents where passengers were reportedly trapped in burning vehicles because rescuers could not open them. Even without an accident, other Tesla owners have reported having to break their own car windows after buckling their children in and then being unable to get in the car again, according to an investigation launched by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, citing owner complai

Automatic differentiation can be incorrect

ISCL Seminar Series The Numerical Analysis of Differentiable Simulation: How Automatic Differentiation of Physics Can Give Incorrect Derivatives Scientific machine learning (SciML) relies heavily on automatic differentiation (AD), the process of constructing gradients which include machine learning integrated into mechanistic models for the purpose of gradient-based optimization. While these differentiable programming approaches pitch an idea of “simply put the simulator into a loss function a

Numeral raises $35M to automate sales tax with AI

Sam Ross, the co-founder and CEO of Numeral, came up with the idea for his sales tax compliance startup while traveling the world after having worked as a product manager at Airbnb. “This was early 2018, where you didn’t have remote work like you do today,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. Direct-to-consumer businesses were a big trend then, so he supported his travel dreams by running several self-funded e-commerce brands from the road. He operated an online jewelry store and still maintain

This versatile Insta360 8K, 360-degree action camera just hit an all-time-low price

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

Wildfire smoke is an insidious and growing public health threat

is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home , a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals. Wildfire smoke is the air quality nightmare of our generation, eating away at previous gains made by cracking down on industrial emissions and tailpipe pollution. Constant exposure to smoke is becoming a chronic threat even in places that historically haven’t had many wildfire

An Afternoon at the Recursive Café: Two Threads Interleaving

An Afternoon at the Recursive Café: Two Threads Interleaving Scene: A cozy coffee shop called "Lambda Grounds" where the Wi-Fi password is "currying123" and the baristas wear t-shirts with arrows pointing right. ALEX, a curious philosophy student, sits across from CLAUDE, a mysterious figure who might be an AI, a very pale computer science professor, or possibly a sentient stack overflow answer. Steam rises from their cups in patterns that look suspiciously like lambda calculus expressions. AL

Automatic Differentiation Can Be Incorrect

ISCL Seminar Series The Numerical Analysis of Differentiable Simulation: How Automatic Differentiation of Physics Can Give Incorrect Derivatives Scientific machine learning (SciML) relies heavily on automatic differentiation (AD), the process of constructing gradients which include machine learning integrated into mechanistic models for the purpose of gradient-based optimization. While these differentiable programming approaches pitch an idea of “simply put the simulator into a loss function a

Geizhals Preisvergleich Donates USD 10k to the Perl and Raku Foundation

Geizhals Preisvergleich Donates USD 10,000 to The Perl and Raku Foundation Today The Perl and Raku Foundation is thrilled to announce a donation of USD 10,000 from Geizhals Preisvergleich. This gift helps to secure the future of The Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund. Perl has been an integral part of our product price comparison platform from the start of the company 25 years ago. Supporting the Perl 5 Core Maintenance Fund means supporting both present and future of a substantial pillar of Modern

I Love Hallmark Movies, but This New Netflix Flick Shakes Up the Rom-Com Formula

You could argue that the newly released Miranda Cosgrove romance movie, The Wrong Paris, which arrived on Netflix last week, could have been a Hallmark movie. As someone who covers a lot of streaming and television content, I've watched at least 100 Hallmark movies over the course of my career, and the plot of The Wrong Paris, at least on paper, is the perfect Hallmark film. In it, a broke artist named Dawn (Cosgrove) applies to a dating show, thinking it takes place in Paris, France, but to he

Google and PayPal team up on agentic commerce

In Brief PayPal announced on Wednesday a new multi-year partnership with Google that will see the payments giant using Google’s AI technology to create new AI-powered shopping experiences. PayPal’s solutions, meanwhile, will be integrated across Google’s products, and PayPal will work with Google Cloud on hosting and improving its technology infrastructure. The companies did not detail what specific types of agentic shopping experiences they would work together to create, but said Google would

New Report Finds That China's Space Program Is Rapidly Outstripping NASA

While the sitting US government strips NASA of its expert leadership and funding, it seems China is more than happy to take up the mantle. A new report from the Commercial Space Federation, a lobbying group fighting for the interests of the privatized space industry, found that China's space program is experiencing a meteoric rise, and will soon pose a significant challenge to the US' dominant position in space. Posed as a "risk assessment" of the pressure Chinese competition puts on "American

Best early Amazon Prime Day laptop deals 2025: My 30 favorites sales ahead of October

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean? ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or

This new app lets you easily track power outages nearby - and it's free

Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's takeaways The Ting app lets you track power outages at a hyper-local level. Anyone can use the free map, even those without a Ting device. Ting says 95% of US homes have a Ting sensor within a mile. If you want to know as soon as the power goes out in your city, there's a new free tool that lets you keep an eye on things. The Ting company, which makes a smart device that plugs into an outlet, monito

The quality of AI-assisted software depends on unit of work management

The craft of AI-assisted software creation is substantially about correctly managing units of work. When I was new to this emerging craft of AI-assisted coding, I was getting lousy results, despite the models being rather intelligent. Turns out the major bottleneck is not intelligence, but rather providing the correct context. Andrej Karpathy, while referencing my earlier article on this topic, described the work of AI-assisted engineering as “putting AI on a tight leash”. What does a tight le

These Smoked Human Remains May be the Oldest Mummies Known to Science

Researchers have discovered what they believe to be the earliest evidence of artificial mummification known to science, pushing back the timeline for the burial ritual to far before the time of the ancient Egyptians. Hunter-gatherers in Southeast Asia who lived some 20,000 and 4,000 years ago buried their dead in tightly crouched or squatting positions. Not only that, but these communities also practiced a form of mummification that involved drying out the human remains over a fire, as research