Author: admin

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department plans to lay off over 1,300 of its employees as part of an effort to halve the organization’s staff — a prelude to President Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle the agency.Department officials announced the cuts Tuesday, raising questions about the agency’s ability to continue usual operations.The Trump administration had already been whittling the agency’s staff, though buyout offers and the termination of probationary employees. After Tuesday’s layoffs, the Education Department’s staff will sit at roughly half of its previous 4,100, the agency said.The layoffs are part of a dramatic downsizing directed by Trump as…

The intersection of robotics and AI continues to attract attention from investors and Big Tech alike. The latest indicator? Dexterity, a startup specializing in industrial robots with “human-like” finesse, has raised $95 million at a post-money valuation of $1.65 billion, per Bloomberg. The investment, which includes backing from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sumitomo Corp., highlights the growing demand for machinery powered by AI and comes amid a wave of excitement from companies like Meta and Apple, which are reportedly exploring investments into AI-powered humanoid robots, and startups like humanoid robot makers Figure AI and Apptronik that have recently secured enormous…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is canceling studies about ways to improve vaccine trust and access, a move that comes in the midst of a large measles outbreak fueled by unvaccinated children.Researchers with grants from the National Institutes of Health to study why some people have questions or fears about vaccines and how to help those who want to be vaccinated overcome barriers are getting letters canceling their projects.The step — first reported by The Washington Post, which cited dozens of expected cancellations — is highly unusual, as entire swaths of research typically aren’t ended mid-stream.“It is the policy…

Software maker Adobe on Tuesday released fixes for at least 35 security flaws in a wide range of products, including serious code-execution bugs in the widely deployed Acrobat and Reader applications. As part of its scheduled Patch Tuesday rollout, the San Jose, Calif. company called immediate attention to a high-severity bulletin documenting at least nine security defects in Adobe Acrobat and Reader for Windows and macOS. The company flagged multiple critical-severity issues and warned that successful exploitation could lead to arbitrary code execution and memory leaks. Adobe is also pushing users to prioritize an available security update for Adobe InDesign,…

Waymo on Tuesday announced it is expanding its service to include another 27 square miles of coverage around the San Francisco Bay Area.With the expansion, Waymo will now take passengers around Mountain View, Los Altos, Palo Alto and parts of Sunnyvale, California. The Alphabet-owned company opened its robotaxi service to the general public in San Francisco in June.Waymo will initially limit the availability of its Silicon Valley service to users of the Waymo One app who are residents with ZIP codes in the area, the company said. Waymo plans to serve more riders across the region over time. The fleet of…

A UK government analysis of current best practices for OSS and supply chain risk management finds weaknesses in current standards and makes five recommendations to improve matters. The Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) has published a report (PDF) titled Open source software best practice and supply chain risk management. It finds weaknesses in current practices and makes recommendations on how to improve things. The weaknesses include a lack of industry-specific practices (affecting both sector and company size), no consensus on managing OSS components, no formal process for judging OSS component trustworthiness, and the outsized influence of large tech…

Cato Networks has discovered a new IoT botnet that targets TP-Link Archer routers through the exploitation of a vulnerability discovered two years ago.  The botnet has been linked with moderate confidence — based on an IP address and strings found in malware binaries — to an unnamed Italian threat actor, which is why Cato has called it Ballista, the name of a missile launcher used by the Roman empire. Cato first saw Ballista on January 10 and the most recent activity was observed in mid-February, but the security firm believes the botnet is still active. Ballista has targeted organizations in…

On Tuesday, OpenAI released new tools designed to help developers and enterprises build AI agents — automated systems that can independently accomplish tasks — using the company’s own AI models and frameworks. The tools are part of OpenAI’s new Responses API, which lets businesses develop custom AI agents that can perform web searches, scan through company files, and navigate websites, much like OpenAI’s Operator product. The Responses API effectively replaces OpenAI’s Assistants API, which the company plans to sunset in the first half of 2026. The hype around AI agents has grown dramatically in recent years despite the fact that…

Speaking at the SXSW conference in Austin, tech investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban shared his thoughts on how AI technology can help small businesses outperform their competition. In short, he told the crowd that AI was not the answer, in and of itself; it’s meant to serve as an aid that can help entrepreneurs by making it easier to get started growing their businesses and answering questions along the way. Cuban suggested that today’s entrepreneurs should spend “every waking minute learning about AI” because of its potential. “There’s so much changing that rapidly,” he said, adding that it’s different for…

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) — California gaming giant Blizzard Entertainment announced Thursday that its popular event BlizzCon is coming back after several years off.The celebration of all things Blizzard, which will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center, is scheduled for September 2026. Blizzard last held the event in 2023. Next year’s BlizzCon will include staples like its opening ceremony — which typically includes big game announcements — as well as panels and other experiences. Johanna Faries, president of Blizzard Entertainment, said BlizzCon is part of Blizzard’s role as an entertainment company that stretches beyond the boundaries of making games. BlizzCon,…