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3 smart ways business leaders can build successful AI strategies - before it's too late

Serg Myshkovsky/Photodisc via Getty Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET's key takeaways Business leaders should create a platform to test AI concepts. Encourage employees to take risks with AI, but proceed with care. Keep one eye on the market for new technologies that might be exploited. Making the most of AI is tough. MIT recently revealed that 95% of enterprises attempting to harness generative AI aren't seeing measurable results in revenue or growth. However, w

The Era of AI-Generated Ransomware Has Arrived

As cybercrime surges around the world, new research increasingly shows that ransomware is evolving as a result of widely available generative AI tools. In some cases, attackers are using AI to draft more intimidating and coercive ransom notes and conduct more effective extortion attacks. But cybercriminals’ use of generative AI is rapidly becoming more sophisticated. Researchers from the generative AI company Anthropic today revealed that attackers are leaning on generative AI more heavily—somet

FEMA Staffers Warned of Looming ‘Katrina-Level’ Disaster, Then Got Suspended

It’s been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast, killing nearly 1,400 people and displacing up to 1.2 million more. The storm’s impact overwhelmed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, revealing fatal flaws in its disaster response. The agency’s failure prompted Congress to overhaul FEMA largely through the ​​Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act (PKEMRA). This set higher expectations for its leaders and enhanced its autonomy within the Department of Homela

FreePBX servers hacked via zero-day, emergency fix released

The Sangoma FreePBX Security Team is warning about an actively exploited FreePBX zero-day vulnerability that impacts systems with the Administrator Control Panel (ACP) is exposed to the internet. FreePBX is an open-source PBX (Private Branch Exchange) platform built on top of Asterisk, widely used by businesses, call centers, and service providers to manage voice communications, extensions, SIP trunks, and call routing. In an advisory posted to the FreePBX forums, the Sangoma FreePBX Security

Why this $25 ratchet tool beats any multitool or Swiss Army Knife I've ever tested

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET I'm always on the lookout for a now toy -- ahem, I mean tool -- to add to my everyday carry (EDC) gear. New multitools, flashlights, and other cool tools are always on my radar. A few weeks ago, I happened to come across something that, the moment I saw it, I just had to have it. It was one of those gambles: "it might be good, it might be on the way back to Amazon by the end of the day". Also: 10 tiny tools I carry with me everywhere - how they work It turned out

Terraton wants to be the McDonald’s of biochar

If there’s one thing McDonald’s has done for the world, it’s made starting a burger restaurant relatively straightforward. Franchisees buy into the system, and in return they get equipment, marketing, and even an operating manual. Terraton wants to bring that same model to biochar, a technology that turns agricultural waste into a carbon dioxide-sequestering fertilizer. Terraton recently raised a $11.5 million seed round for it’s “business-in-a-box” approach to biochar project development, the

The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

A new study has re-examined the famous "Wow!" signal, finding that it likely has an extraterrestrial origin after all, and may have been even more intense than previously believed. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. On August 15, 1977, at the Big Ear radio telescope observatory at Ohio State University, a narrowband radio signal was received. A few days later, astronomer Jerry Ehman reviewed the data and noticed the signal sequ

This tiny ratchet beats any multitool or Swiss Army Knife I've ever tested - and it's only $25

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/ZDNET I'm always on the lookout for a now toy -- ahem, I mean tool -- to add to my everyday carry (EDC) gear. New multitools, flashlights, and other cool tools are always on my radar. A few weeks ago, I happened to come across something that, the moment I saw it, I just had to have it. It was one of those gambles: "it might be good, it might be on the way back to Amazon by the end of the day". Also: 10 tiny tools I carry with me everywhere - how they work It turned out

Show HN: FilterQL – A tiny query language for filtering structured data

FilterQL A tiny query language for filtering structured data 🚀 There are two main parts of this repository: the TypeScript library and the FilterQL language specification. Implementations in other languages are more than welcome! TypeScript Library Installation bun add filterql # or: npm install filterql Usage Define a schema for your data and create a FilterQL instance: import { FilterQL } from "filterql" // The schema determines what fields are allowed in the query const schema = { tit

AI Is Everywhere in Photoshop. These Are the Best Tools I Found While Editing Photos

Photoshop is chock-full of new tools powered by generative AI. I spend a lot of time reviewing AI image generators and other AI creative software, and I've learned that not all AI tools are built equal. So I knew I had to take Photoshop's AI for a spin to see how it stacked up. AI might not be right for every Photoshop project you do, especially if you're a professional creator who regularly uses the program. There are some good tools to help your creative workflows, but you need to spend time

A Dark Money Group Is Secretly Funding High-Profile Democratic Influencers

In a private group chat in June, dozens of Democratic political influencers discussed whether to take advantage of an enticing opportunity. They were being offered $8,000 per month to take part in a secretive program aimed at bolstering Democratic messaging on the internet. But the contract sent to them from Chorus, the nonprofit arm of a liberal influencer marketing platform, came with some strings. Among other issues, it mandated extensive secrecy about disclosing their payments and had restr

The "Wow!" signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful

A new study has re-examined the famous "Wow!" signal, finding that it likely has an extraterrestrial origin after all, and may have been even more intense than previously believed. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. On August 15, 1977, at the Big Ear radio telescope observatory at Ohio State University, a narrowband radio signal was received. A few days later, astronomer Jerry Ehman reviewed the data and noticed the signal sequ

One-shot vaccines for HIV and covid

Irvine and MIT professor J. Christopher Love, the senior authors of a paper on the work, had found that the combination helped generate more robust immune responses. In the new paper, they showed that the dual-adjuvant vaccine accumulated in the lymph nodes, where white blood cells known as B cells encounter antigens and undergo rapid mutations that generate new antibodies. The vaccine’s antigens remained there for up to a month, allowing the immune system to build up a much greater number and d

Lego Finally Returns to ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ With a 2,862-Piece ‘Black Pearl’

Yo ho, yo ho, a Lego life for me. The famous toy brand just officially revealed it’s returning to the world of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise with its biggest, most impressive set yet. “Captain Jack Sparrow’s Pirate Ship,” as it’s officially called, marks Lego’s return to the Disney pirate franchise after almost 10 years, and it’s starting off with a cannon blast. A 2,862-piece recreation of The Black Pearl, the ship Jack Sparrow was kicked off at the start of the first film and got

Google could be building a new nook for your Gemini creations (APK teardown)

Ryan Haines / Android Authority TL;DR Google is testing a new “My Stuff” section for the Gemini interface on Android. While its purpose isn’t clear, it could be used to store media generated using Gemini, separate from your chats. A similar section for storing AI-generated media is also present in ChatGPT, and it is known as “Library.” Gemini is already quite powerful as a virtual assistant, and is raking up new features as Google prepares to replace Google Assistant with it entirely. Recent

macOS dotfiles should not go in –/Library/Application Support

#macOS dotfiles should not go in ~/Library/Application Support One of my pet peeves is when command-line tools look for user configuration files in ~/Library/Application Support when running on macOS. In addition to offering poor ergonomics for users, I believe this behavior is incorrect according to the documentation which is cited to justify it. Instead, command-line tools should implement the XDG Base Directory Specification and look for configuration files in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME , which defaul

How to make things slower so they go faster

Synchronized demand is the moment a large cohort of clients acts almost together. In a service with capacity $\mu$ requests per second and background load $\lambda_0$, the usable headroom is $H = \mu - \lambda_0 > 0$. When $M$ clients align—after a cache expiry, at a cron boundary, or as a service returns from an outage—the bucketed arrival rate can exceed $H$ by large factors. Queues form, timeouts propagate, retries synchronize, and a minor disturbance becomes a major incident. The task is to

Pokemon TCG Pocket's Next Set Showcases Johto's Rarest Legendaries

The Legendary Beasts from the second generation of Pokemon games are roaring into the digital card game Pokemon TCG Pocket when its next mini-expansion, Secluded Springs, is released on Aug. 28. The smaller subset of digital cards supplements the recent Wisdom of Sea and Sky expansion, which focused on the rare Pokemon Ho-Oh and Lugia. (Older fans may remember them from the box art of Pokemon Gold and Silver, released all the way back in 1999.) While the official list of digital cards in the se

Playing every game of Wordle simultaneously

If you’ve fallen far enough down the Wordle rabbit hole you may have heard of Quordle, a version of Wordle where you solve four words at once. If you’re looking for more of a challenge, Britannica has you covered with Octordle, where you solve eight words at once. And of course any Wordler worth their salt should be able to handle sixteen words, like in Sedecordle. And no, it doesn’t stop there: Sexaginta-quattuordle isn’t real, it can’t hurt yo– One logical extreme of this trend would be to

Temporary suspension of acceptance of mail to the United States

Temporary Suspension of Acceptance of Mail to the United States Due to Changes in U.S. Customs and Regulations On July 30, 2025, the U.S. government issued an executive order titled “Termination of De Minimis Treatment for All Countries” regarding mail to the United States. Under this executive order, starting August 29, 2025, mail containing goods imported for personal use (taxable mail) will no longer be eligible for duty-free treatment, and tariffs will be imposed. On August 15, 2025, U.S.

Japan Post to temporarily suspend mail to US over end of de minimis exemption

Temporary Suspension of Acceptance of Mail to the United States Due to Changes in U.S. Customs and Regulations On July 30, 2025, the U.S. government issued an executive order titled “Termination of De Minimis Treatment for All Countries” regarding mail to the United States. Under this executive order, starting August 29, 2025, mail containing goods imported for personal use (taxable mail) will no longer be eligible for duty-free treatment, and tariffs will be imposed. On August 15, 2025, U.S.

How to Make Things Slower So They Go Faster

Synchronized demand is the moment a large cohort of clients acts almost together. In a service with capacity $\mu$ requests per second and background load $\lambda_0$, the usable headroom is $H = \mu - \lambda_0 > 0$. When $M$ clients align—after a cache expiry, at a cron boundary, or as a service returns from an outage—the bucketed arrival rate can exceed $H$ by large factors. Queues form, timeouts propagate, retries synchronize, and a minor disturbance becomes a major incident. The task is to

This simple phone habit could be doing more harm than you realize (and the quick fix)

Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. A friend of mine recently told me, "I always keep my phone on silent mode… which doesn't matter because I compulsively look at it every three minutes anyway." He's not the only one. From becoming a text addict to having full-blown smartphone dependency, the urge to look at and interact with our "flat things" has been deeply ingrained into our collective behavior for some time now. Also: How I'm bringing back physical m

Vibration Plates: Fitness Experts Explain the Best Way to Use This Workout Tool

When you're trying to lose weight or build muscle, figuring out what actually works can be frustrating. There are plenty of options, from lifting weights to cardio classes, and now vibration plates are part of the conversation. But does standing on a shaking platform really help you get stronger or shed pounds, or is it just another short-lived trend? To find out, we talked to personal trainers and other fitness experts. They explained how vibration plates are supposed to work, the benefits you

Best Heart Rate Monitors (2025), WIRED Tested and Reviewed

Compare Top 5 Heart Rate Monitors FAQS We tested and recommend all of the heart rate monitors below, which do a pretty impeccable job. But what do all these terms mean? Heart rate zones: If someone tells you they’ve been doing 80/20 training, they’ve been doing heart rate zone-based workouts. Heart rate zones are an easy way to break down your range of effort during exercise. Zones go from 1 to 5, with 5 indicating working at 90 to 100 percent of your maximum heart rate. Zone 2 represents tra

ThinkMesh: A Python lib for parallel thinking in LLMs

ThinkMesh ThinkMesh is a python library for running diverse reasoning paths in parallel, scoring them with internal confidence signals, reallocates compute to promising branches, and fuses outcomes with verifiers and reducers. It works with offline Hugging Face Transformers and vLLM/TGI, and with hosted APIs. Note: This is still in it's early development phase and breaking changes can sometimes occur Highlights Parallel reasoning with DeepConf‑style confidence gating and budget reallocation

Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing

What are we talking about? This line of code that appears in pretty much every single Arduino sketch/project: Serial.begin(115200); This line of code is everywhere - a quick search on GitHub finds over 450,000 instances of it. GitHub Search I started to question this when I was testing out my new boards. I was streaming audio from the board and noticed that the rate I was receiving data at bore no relation to the baud rate I was setting. Audio testing If we look closely at the image, we ca

The Trump administration’s big Intel investment comes from already awarded grants

Intel officially announced an agreement with President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday afternoon, following Trump’s statement that the government would be taking a 10% stake in the struggling chipmaker. While Intel says the government is making an “$8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock,” the administration does not appear to be committing new funds. Instead, it’s simply making good on what Intel described as “grants previously awarded, but not yet paid, to Intel.” Specifically,

Apple reportedly prepping enterprise AI support beyond ChatGPT

On personal iPhones, users can decide whether they want Apple Intelligence to connect to ChatGPT. But on corporate devices, things can be trickier. That’s why Apple is reportedly adding support for enterprise accounts, but in a way that extends beyond its current OpenAI partnership. Here are the details. As reported by TechCrunch, with the upcoming iOS 26 update, Apple will add “the ability to configure the use of an enterprise version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT,” which offers different privacy settin

If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

The World Wide Web (Web) emerged as a new medium in the mid-1990s. It was invented by Tim Berners-Lee at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1989, but its exploding popularity was also enabled by the release of the Mosaic Web browser in 1993 and the Internet becoming commercially available in 1995. A communication revolution was launched. Roughly 30 years later, the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in Nov. 2022 launched another revolution. High-quality generation of natural-lan