Author: Admin

Your organization is already hiring digital workers. Now, the question is whether IT is actually managing these “people-like” systems as part of the workforce, or as just another application in the tech stack. Far from just another AI tool, AI agents are becoming digital coworkers that need the same lifecycle management as human employees: onboarding, supervision, performance reviews, and eventually, responsible decommissioning. Many companies are already deploying agents to handle customer inquiries, process invoices, and make recommendations. The mistake is treating agents like software instead of managing them like team members. IT is the natural leader to take on this…

Smart Data Collective is exploring why flexibility has become one of the most essential skills for modern data scientists. It is no longer enough to simply master algorithms or statistics; you must be ready to pivot as technology, tools, and expectations change rapidly in the data world. You are living in a time when datasets grow larger every day and new machine learning frameworks appear almost monthly, forcing constant adaptation. There are few fields that reward versatility and openness to change as much as data science.A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics states there were about 245,900 data scientist…

Monetizing DBaaS with VMware Data Services Manager: A Guide for Cloud Service ProvidersThe demand for Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) is exploding as enterprises prioritize digital transformation, application modernization, and efficient operations. For Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), this presents a significant revenue opportunity, and VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) is a powerful platform for capitalizing on it.VMware DSM simplifies the provisioning, lifecycle management, and monitoring of open-source and commercial databases (like PostgreSQL, MySQL, Microsoft SQL (Tech Preview) across a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environment. By offering this solution, CSPs can transform infrastructure management into a high-value, self-service data offering. The Value Proposition for…

Google is suing more than two dozen unnamed individuals allegedly involved in peddling a popular China-based mobile phishing service that helps scammers impersonate hundreds of trusted brands, blast out text message lures, and convert phished payment card data into mobile wallets from Apple and Google. In a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York on November 12, Google sued to unmask and disrupt 25 “John Doe” defendants allegedly linked to the sale of Lighthouse, a sophisticated phishing kit that makes it simple for even novices to steal payment card data from mobile users. Google said Lighthouse has harmed…

Fitness apparel maker Lululemon has added a 2030 renewable energy goal for top suppliers while downgrading procurement plans that called for including at least 25 percent of “preferred” materials by weight in 100 percent of its products by 2030. Under the revision, the company will now seek to hit 90 percent over the same timeframe. “Integrating sustainability into the rhythm of production creation is a hard thing to do,” said Noel Kinder, Lululemon’s senior vice president of sustainability. The new energy target calls for 50 percent of the electricity consumption of tier 1 and tier 2 business partners to be…

When we launched the Secure Future Initiative (SFI), our mission was clear: accelerate innovation, strengthen resilience, and lead the industry toward a safer digital future. Today, we’re sharing our latest progress report that reflects steady progress in every area and engineering pillar, underscoring our commitment to security above all else. We also highlight new innovations delivered to better protect customers, and share how we use some of those same capabilities to protect Microsoft. Through SFI, we have improved the security of our platforms and services and our ability to detect and respond to cyberthreats. Fostering a security-first mindset  Engineering sentiment…

JPMorgan Chase says it’s been billed a total of $142 million in legal fees for the defense of Charlie Javice and Olivier Amar, respectively the founder and chief marketing officer at financial aid startup Frank. JPMorgan acquired Frank for $175 million in 2021, but earlier thai year, Javice and Amar were found guilty earlier of defrauding the bank by inflating Frank’s customer count, with Javice sentenced to seven years in prison. JPMorgan is now seeking to overturn a judge’s order requiring the bank to pay the pair’s legal fees, as reported in The Wall Street Journal. Michael Pittinger, a lawyer…

Precise control over surface properties is crucial for the design of nanocarriers in biomedical applications. These properties influence biological interactions. Functional co-monomers can be used to tailor the surface chemistry of nanocarriers synthesized in radical heterophase polymerization in aqueous phase. However, achieving similar control over nanocarriers derived from natural materials in inverse miniemulsion, such as protein nanocapsules, remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate how the surface functional group density of protein nanocapsules can be tuned systematically by varying the hydrophobicity of the continuous phase during the synthesis via the click reaction between hydrophilic azide-modified proteins and a hydrophobic dialkyne crosslinker. By…

CSS selectors never cease to amaze me in how powerful they can be in matching complex patterns. Most of that flexibility is in parent/child/sibling relationships, very seldomly in value matching. Consider my surprise when I learned that CSS allows matching attribute values regardless off case! Adding a {space}i to the attribute selector brackets will make the attribute value search case insensitive: /* case sensitive, only matches “example” */ [class=example] { background: pink; } /* case insensitive, matches “example”, “eXampLe”, etc. */ [class=example i] { background: lightblue; } The use cases for this i flag are likely very limited, especially if…

After a flurry of initial investments in artificial intelligence (AI) projects, including generative and agentic AI implementations, many organizations are facing mixed results and coming to hasty conclusions about AI’s utility. The harsh reality of early experimentation has blunted expected productivity gains and new revenue streams. A recent MIT report suggests that despite investments of $30 billion to $40 billion into generative AI, 95 percent of organizations are realizing zero returns. It is unsurprising therefore that in its 2025 Hype Cycle, Gartner has placed generative AI in the Trough of Disillusionment. When organizations fail to see immediate ROI from a…