Author: Admin

Almost half (46%) of Irish SMEs say business activity is stronger than it was this time last year, and up sharply from 30% in Q1 of this year, according to the latest Linked Finance Business Optimism Index, signalling the strongest trading momentum in more than a year. The latest quarterly survey of Irish SMEs, conducted by Ipsos B&A on behalf of Linked Finance, also found overall business confidence remained resilient, with optimism in the sector edging up from 63.46 in Q1 to 63.92 in Q2. Irish SMEs report strong trading Businesses are also more optimistic about the months ahead than…

Today we’re pleased to announce the launch of Deep Learning with R, 2nd Edition. Compared to the first edition, the book is over a third longer, with more than 75% new content. It’s not so much an updated edition as a whole new book. This book shows you how to get started with deep learning in R, even if you have no background in mathematics or data science. The book covers: Deep learning from first principles Image classification and image segmentation Time series forecasting Text classification and machine translation Text generation, neural style transfer, and image generation Only modest R…

This year, many data teams have added AI agents to their roadmaps. The excitement is real: an agent that turns a two-day analysis into a two-minute conversation can change how analysts and business teams work together. But agents are only as reliable as the data foundation beneath them. Point them at raw tables or outdated metadata, and they may sound convincing while being wrong. This article outlines a practical framework for generating and deploying governed semantic views on Snowflake. Why Agent Quality Breaks Down Three failure patterns show up repeatedly once agents move from demo to production: Governance gets traded…

Taiwan is investigating 17 Chinese-funded companies suspected of illegally recruiting engineers in semiconductors, AI, batteries, and defense. Authorities searched 64 locations and questioned 114 people between July 13 and August 4, according to reporting published Friday. Investigators are focusing on hidden Chinese ownership, unauthorized offices, and local fronts allegedly used to hire engineers. Taiwan is treating access to experienced high-tech workers as part of protecting its technology sector, alongside controls on chips and technical know-how. How the alleged recruiting networks operated The current 17-company investigation centers on companies suspected of recruiting Taiwanese engineers without authorization while using fake engineering offices…

A 26-year-old Canadian man once described as one of the most consequential cybercrime threat actors of 2024 has pleaded guilty to computer fraud and conspiracy to hack and extort more than 165 organizations that used the cloud provider Snowflake. Connor Riley Moucka, of Kitchener, Ontario, also admitted to stealing call and text history records of more than 100 million AT&T customers. A surveillance photo of Connor Riley Moucka, a.k.a. “Judische” and “Waifu,” dated Oct 21, 2024, 9 days before Moucka’s arrest. This image was included in an affidavit filed by an investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The…

Mostly, conversations around connected workers begin with wearables like smart helmets, smart watch, panic buttons, and biometric bracelets. This is where most press coverage and vendor activity has happened. While the industry has been building the ‘connected worker’ concept around new hardware, it has overlooked a sensor that has already been mounted on nearly every wall of the jobsite: the CCTV camera.   The main purpose of installing CCTV cameras is security surveillance and not worker connectivity, so they do not generally get mentioned in conversations on connected workers. I see this as a category mistake, not a technology one.…

Samsung Electronics today announced that the new Galaxy Z series and Galaxy Watch lineup are beginning to roll out worldwide. Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Fold8, Flip8, Watch Ultra2 and Watch9 are available through carriers, retailers, Samsung.com and Samsung Experience Stores, with sales beginning Aug 7 in select markets and expanding globally. Strong early demand reflects growing excitement for Samsung’s latest Galaxy Z series, with pre-orders for the new lineup having increased by more than 30% compared with the previous generation. Graphite was the most popular color overall for Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra and Galaxy Z Fold8, while Pink led pre-orders…

I was deep into a Claude Code session on a .NET codebase when a doubt interrupted the work. Four subagents were already running against a response-pipeline refactor, results were arriving out of order, and the session had started to feel harder to reason about than the code itself. That is usually the moment I stop trusting the vague sense that things are “probably fine.” Sometimes the code is the problem. Sometimes the architecture is. Occasionally the workflow itself deserves inspection. This time I decided it was the workflow. At first I thought I already knew the question. Were four subagents…

Enterprises will soon be able to access the OS directly through Cloudflare or via a “select group” of partners that will build tailored offerings on Cloudflare’s architecture, the company says. Because it is open source, organizational processes, internal system connections, and context aren’t locked into a vendor product or AI model provider. Customers can use whatever models they choose. Cloudflare OS is built on Cloudflare Workers, Dynamic Workers, Durable Objects, and Access, the company’s zero trust network access (ZTNA) tool that verifies every user and request. Agents start with zero permissions by default and are only granted access to tools…

Governments are tightening control over AI infrastructure as companies spend heavily to compete at the frontier. This week, data and AI evangelist Christina Stathopoulos examined how policy, capital, product risk, and scientific research are shaping AI development.She explored AI sovereignty, Google’s infrastructure spending and product risks, the singularity debate, and several developments in mathematical and scientific research. The episode covered Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s argument about open weight models, US restrictions targeting foreign-made humanoid robots, OpenAI’s researcher access program and Astra model, Claude Fable 5’s role in a long-standing math problem, and Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold reorganization. AI sovereignty now reaches…