technology 24 for you

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

3 Skills That Will Matter More in the Age of AI

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/an-illustration-of-stylized-people-wearing-business-casual-clothing.webp?id=65257424&width=1200&height=600&coordinates=0%2C150%2C0%2C150"/> This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. <a href="https://engage.ieee.org/Career-Alert-Sign-Up.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sign up now</a> to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company <a href="https://www.parsity.io/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Parsity</a> and delivered to your inbox for free!If you have kids, they’re probably back in school right now after the summer break. Mine are too.My kids range from 9 to 20 years old, and lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what their future careers are going to look like.Some schools are embracing <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-in-the-classroom" target="_self">AI in the classroom</a>. Others are banning it completely. I’m not sure either side has figured out the right answer yet—<a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-engineer-skills" target="_self">I’m not sure any of us have</a>.What I do know is that <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-code-review-software-engineers" target="_self">AI is already changing how engineers, and nearly every other knowledge worker, does their job</a>. So I’ve been thinking: What skills do I actually want my kids to develop for an AI-augmented workforce?<h3>1. Learn to write</h3>The more I use AI, the more convinced I am that it’s a multiplier, not a substitute.Give a great researcher AI tools and they can accelerate their research. Give an experienced software engineer the same tools and they can build at an incredible rate. But put those tools in the hands of someone without foundational knowledge and you often get something else you’re used to seeing way too much of: slop.We’ve all seen the vibe-coded applications that barely work. Our inboxes are filled with emails that sound suspiciously identical. Teachers are reading papers that sound like they were all written by the same person. That “person” has the last name GPT.When everyone has access to the same tools, having an actual voice becomes a differentiator.Ironically, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ieee-course-technical-writing" target="_self">strong writing skills</a> might be MORE important because of AI, not less. Text is still the primary way we communicate with these models, so being able to clearly articulate what you want improves what you get back.But more importantly, writing teaches you to develop ideas of your own.AI can help you express your opinion. It shouldn’t manufacture one for you.<h3>2. Learn to speak</h3>Like written communication, speaking skills are now at a premium—but for a different reason. We live in a strange moment. We’re more digitally connected than ever, while often feeling increasingly isolated from one another. At the same time, we’re seeing renewed interest in conferences, meetups, communities, and in-person experiences.When human interaction feels scarce, communication becomes more valuable.So <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/improve-public-speaking-skills" target="_self">learn how to explain an idea in front of a room</a>. Learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. Learn how to tell a story. Learn how to listen. Learn how to persuade someone.There’s a timeless book, originally published 90 years ago, that teaches these interpersonal skills, and it’s probably more valuable for engineers than another white paper on how neural networks work: <a href="https://icrrd.com/public/media/31-10-2020-083612How%20to%20Win%20Friends%20and%20Influence%20People%20-%20Dale%20Carnegie.pdf" target="_blank">How to Win Friends and Influence People</a>.An AI can generate a presentation for you, but it can’t convincingly deliver it to a skeptical audience. That takes emotional intelligence.<h3>3. Learn to be bored</h3>This might be the hardest one.We have engineered <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tips-for-bored-engineers" target="_self">boredom</a> almost completely out of our lives. There’s always a podcast to listen to, a notification to check, a video to watch, a feed to scroll, or now an AI to talk to.Go for a walk without headphones. Eat without looking at a phone. Sit in the car without immediately reaching for something to fill the silence, and let your mind wander.Because boredom isn’t wasted time. It’s a breeding ground for original ideas.The danger I worry about isn’t that AI becomes too intelligent, but that we become too willing to outsource the uncomfortable parts of thinking.The students going back to school today will enter a workforce filled with technology that I couldn’t have imagined when I was their age. I have no idea what the dominant AI model will be by then or even what interacting with a computer will look like.That’s exactly why I don’t want to optimize their education around today’s tools. I want them to learn the skills that will outlive the tools.Write clearly. Speak confidently. Think independently.And every once in a while, embrace boredom.—Brian<h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-code-review-software-engineers" target="_self">AI Slop Is Changing How Engineers Review Code</a></h2>Software engineers have entered a new era of code review. The strategies they’re now testing will determine whether AI can actually provide code that’s faster and more reliable when you factor in the review process. If it can, what does that mean for the entry-level engineers who are still learning to code on their own? Read more <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-code-review-software-engineers" target="_self">here</a>. <h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/h-1b-visa-us-government" target="_self">U.S. Tech Firms Change Strategies to Hire International Talent</a></h2>In response to a barrage of actions by the U.S. federal government to limit legal immigration, tech companies are adapting their search for top talent. IEEE Spectrum looked into the responses to proposed changes, like higher fees for H-1B visa applications. Read more <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/h-1b-visa-us-government" target="_self">here</a>. <h2><a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/adaptable-engineer-core-skills" target="_self">What It Takes to Be an Adaptable Engineer</a></h2>As AI changes the job market and day-to-day work of engineers, young professionals are often told they need to be adaptable. But what does adaptability actually look like in practice? The skill has different definitions depending on who you ask, but with the right mindset and support from leadership, adaptability can help keep you afloat. Read more <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/adaptable-engineer-core-skills" target="_self">here</a>. Reference: https://ift.tt/2iuCn5f

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

IT mistake erases 11 years of viewing history for hospitals’ maternity records

A “human error” in the IT department led to Nottingham University Hospitals <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NHS_trust">NHS Trust</a> (NUH) losing data from maternity records over an 11-year span. The data loss occurred on August 18, the English hospitals announced in a <a href="https://www.nuh.nhs.uk/news/statement-nuh-data-loss-11205">blog post</a> on Monday spotted by <a href="https://www.theregister.com/databases/2026/09/22/nhs-trust-it-blunder-overwrites-11-years-of-maternity-records/5298130">The Register</a>. The blog said the problem is “the result of human error” during routine technical work while “creating a copy of a radiotherapy database for reporting purposes.” The post reads:<a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/09/it-mistake-erases-11-years-of-viewing-history-for-hospitals-maternity-records/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/09/it-mistake-erases-11-years-of-viewing-history-for-hospitals-maternity-records/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/W8MVhEG

Barbara Mazzolai Wants to Build a New Field of Robotics

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-a-woman-standing-in-front-of-greenery-holding-a-device-shaped-like-a-small-octopus-arm.png?id=67787635&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0"/> Throughout her career, roboticist <a href="https://www.iit.it/people-details/-/people/barbara-mazzolai" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Barbara Mazzolai</a> has turned to nature for inspiration. Now she wants to ensure the technology she builds gives back to the environment, too.After starting her career as a biologist, a chance opportunity saw Mazzolai switch streams to engineering and become an early pioneer of <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/bioinspired-robots" target="_blank">bioinspired robotics</a>. Building on her knowledge of biology’s ability to solve a diverse set of problems, she has developed robots based on octopuses, plant roots, <a href="https://opentalk.iit.it/en/iit-the-first-biodegradable-seed-robot-able-to-change-shape-in-response-to-humidity/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">and even seeds</a>. “I’ve always been fascinated by living organisms, [and] by the extraordinary variety of solutions in nature, selected by the evolutionary process,” she says.<h3>Barbara Mazzolai</h3> Employer: Italian Institute of TechnologyOccupation: Associate director for robotics; director of the Bioinspired Soft Robotics LaboratoryEducation: Master’s degree in biology, University of Pisa; master’s degree in eco-management and audit schemes, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna; Ph.D. in microsystems engineering, University of Rome Tor VergataBut Mazzolai, now the associate director for robotics at the <a href="https://www.iit.it/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Italian Institute of Technology, in Genoa</a>, also believes engineering needs to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics-climate-change" target="_blank">reckon with its own impact</a> on the natural world. That’s why she is advocating for a new field of research she calls “sustainability robotics.”In a manifesto <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-026-01260-6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">published in Nature Machine Intelligence</a> in July, she and her collaborators outline a vision for a new approach to designing robots that’s meant to improve the relationship between nature, humanity, and technology.“We need to reduce the footprint of our technology,” she says. “It’s really about thinking in a different way to open new possibilities for robotics [and] for society.” In this new mode of thinking, Mazzolai considers sustainability a core component of the design.<h2>A child of nature</h2>Mazzolai traces her fascination with the living world back to her childhood growing up on Italy’s Tuscan coast, close to the port city Livorno. Her father was a public-health inspector and a professional mycologist, and the family spent a lot of time exploring forests and learning about the local fungi and plants.After toying with the prospect of pursuing art, her other major passion, Mazzolai ultimately decided to enroll at the <a href="https://www.unipi.it/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">University of Pisa</a> in 1987 to study biology. She was particularly drawn to marine biology, but shortly before graduating with a master’s degree in 1995, she secured a research position at the <a href="https://www.cnr.it/en/institute/008/institute-of-biophysics-ibf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Italian National Research Council’s Institute of Biophysics</a> studying the cycles of heavy metals like mercury through both living and nonliving parts of the environment.This involved collecting and analyzing samples from water, soil, vegetables, and even humans to understand the impact these metals have on health and the environment. She balanced this work with studying environmental management at the <a href="https://www.santannapisa.it/it" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna</a>, in Pisa, graduating with a master’s degree in 1998.During that time, however, she learned that the university was recruiting biologists to help design new devices for environmental monitoring. She applied for and got the job in 1999 and began working as a research assistant under renowned bioroboticist <a href="https://www.embs.org/tbme/past-editorial-board-members/paolo-dario/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Paolo Dario</a>, first developing sensors and then robots meant to monitor air, water, and soil.Even before entering a doctoral program, Mazzolai was promoted to assistant professor in 2004 and shortly afterward made her first foray into bioinspired robotics. In collaboration with colleagues at Sant’Anna, she helped design a soft robot inspired by the octopus. “We proposed it as a paradigm for launching this idea of soft robotics: demonstrating that [robots] can be soft, but at the same time apply strong force to the environment, like the animal does,” she says.<h2>Back to school</h2>In 2007 Mazzolai enrolled in a Ph.D. in microsystems engineering at <a href="https://web.uniroma2.it/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Tor Vergata University of Rome</a>, which she balanced with her role at Sant’Anna. She was already relying heavily on microfabrication techniques to develop sensors for her robots, and she was keen to push that part of the field forward.While robots frequently feature sensors designed for perception, such as tactile or proprioceptive sensors, these systems typically focus on understanding the robot’s position in its environment, she says. “But there are few robots that integrate physical or chemical sensors to really understand the environment they move in,” she adds.“I’ve always been fascinated by living organisms, [and] by the extraordinary variety of solutions in nature.”Mazzolai was appointed as a team leader at the Center for Micro-BioRobotics of the Italian Institute of Technology in 2009, where she continued her work on the emerging field of bioinspired robotics. Two years later, she completed her Ph.D. and was promoted to director of the center.<h2>Planting the seeds</h2>Around this time Mazzolai says she became interested in using plants as a model for new kinds of robots, expanding bioinspiration beyond just animals. In particular, she was captivated by the ability of roots to efficiently explore the underground environment, and she imagined machines with the same deftness could have applications in both environmental modeling and <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/fertilizer-shortage-precision-agricultur" target="_blank">precision agriculture</a>. <img alt="photo of silver metallic coil wrapped around a green plant vine" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="de76a2caa4c0c991fc2540f7dfa4b498" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="305e3" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-silver-metallic-coil-wrapped-around-a-green-plant-vine.jpg?id=67787644&width=980"/> While many bioinspired robots mimic animals, plants also serve as a muse for Mazzolai. This tendril-like bot can coil around other structures like a vine. Italian Institute of TechnologyWhen she first proposed the idea, colleagues were somewhat skeptical of robots based on seemingly static organisms. But in reality, she says, plants move nonstop through a process known as indeterminate growth. “They really grow for their entire life,” she says. “They adapt their morphology, their behavior to the external environment; they repair, they sense, they communicate.”Trying to mimic a system that operates on such different principles to conventional robotics required some serious thinking, however. Mazzolai says that working in bioinspired robotics sometimes requires you to have “two separate brains”—one of a biologist and one of an engineer.The process often involves deep study of the target organism to learn the underlying principles that shape how it operates before trying to engineer a robot capable of mimicking them. “It’s not a copy of natural organisms,” says Mazzolai, because a living organism is both difficult to replicate and has different goals.In the case of plant roots, what makes them so efficient at exploring the soil is that they reduce friction by growing only at the very fine tip of the structure, while the thicker base of the root remains static. This significantly reduces the amount of energy required to push through the earth compared to that of a more conventional drill, which must push the entire structure from above.To realize this principle in a robot, her team developed a miniaturized 3D printer that sits at the machine’s tip and feeds thermoplastic filament through a heated nozzle to build a snakelike body behind it. This allows the robot to push through the soil efficiently. The tip also contains sensors that allow it to avoid obstacles and detect nearby nutrients or water.<h2>Making robotics sustainable</h2>After spending so much of her career borrowing from nature, Mazzolai is now eager to return the favor. Many modern technologies, including plastics and car batteries, have been developed with little thought about how they will affect the environment at the end of their life cycles, she says.She wants to ensure that robotics doesn’t follow the same path. This is the inspiration for what she and collaborators now call sustainability robotics. The approach has three central pillars: ensuring that robots have minimal impact on the environment; that they’re available to people from across the world and all socioeconomic backgrounds; and that they’re “symbiotic,” providing benefits to both humans and nature.More concretely, Mazzolai would like to incorporate the concept of a life cycle into the design of robots, so that at the end of their useful life these machines can be reused, recycled, or even biodegraded.While that might sound ambitious, she’s confident that all the ingredients to make it a reality are in place. And it’s a vision that she is certain will inspire future roboticists. “There are younger people who want to really work in this field because this is the future, their future,” she says. Facing the threat of ongoing environmental damage, “they want to develop something that can help.” Reference: https://ift.tt/FmGb8xa

The Future Is Fanless: 100% Heat Capture for Liquid Cooled AI Servers

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/close-up-of-copper-liquid-cooling-plates-and-heat-pipes-inside-an-electronic-device.jpg?id=67771117&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C104%2C0%2C104"/> This article is brought to you by <a href="https://www.coolitsystems.com/" target="_blank">CoolIT</a>.<a href="https://tsubaki-kabelschlepp.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"></a>Beyond 250 kW a server rack can no longer be cooled by a hybrid approach of liquid and air. At this density a 70/30 liquid-air split leaves 75 kW of air load. The air cooling system needed to move it brings cost and complexity few operators will accept. The answer is near-total heat capture. Liquid takes effectively all the heat, air falls below 1 percent of the load, allowing the server to run fanless.<a href="https://www.coolitsystems.com/" target="_blank">CoolIT</a> builds these loops today from modular coldplate blocks proven across six generations of fanless designs. Processor thermal design power (TDP) keeps climbing generation over generation. This rising heat load is now cascading into the memory, networking, storage, and power components that once ran comfortably on air.<h2>The heat escaped the chip</h2>For years the story stayed simple. Cool the processor and let air handle the rest. That balance has shifted. As TDP climbs, heat spreads outward from the processor and cascades into the components around it. Memory, networking, storage, and power now run hot enough to demand liquid of their own. Engineers designing the next generation of AI servers face a board where heat capture rises with every launch.Beyond 250 kW per rack, air cooling becomes the bottleneck. Near-total liquid heat capture enables fanless AI server designs built for the next generation of computing.<h2>New parts, new rules</h2>Unlike processors, which are cooled as flat rectangular packages, these peripherals come in a wide range of shapes, sizes, and mounting requirements, each with its own thermal limits. Some run cooler than the processor case temperature, others run hotter, which leaves them sensitive to a design tuned only for CPUs and GPUs. Operators need purpose-built solutions here, matched to the part rather than stretched across the board.CoolIT engineers meet this with a deep toolkit. Conductive plates, vapor chambers, heat pipes, and thermal transfer plates move heat from components closer to the liquid path. Riding <a href="https://www.coolitsystems.com/coldplate-technology/" target="_blank">coldplates</a> enable pluggable components. Each solution stays true to the component it serves. <iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s08q7gRiw5w?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe> CoolIT Customer Showcase: How GWDG Cools HPC & AI Systems with CoolIT’s Direct Liquid Cooling CoolIT <h2>One loop, one server</h2>Cooling the parts is one challenge. Uniting them is the real work. Full heat capture means folding every one of these solutions into a single server loop that distributes coolant effectively and remains easy to install. Connection reliability, coolant routing, and the time it takes to assemble the loop at rack integration determine whether a design thrives in production or stalls on the bench. CoolIT builds these loops from proven modular blocks, so operators gain performance and deployment speed within the same solution.<h2>Density forces the decision</h2>Rack power continues to climb toward 1 MW, and the case for liquid grows stronger at every step. A 70/30 split of liquid to air holds comfortably at lower density. Past roughly 250 kW it stops working. The 30 percent left to air becomes a 75 kW load inside a single rack, and moving that much heat demands a parallel air system whose cost and footprint few operators will accept. Adding density only widens the gap.As rack power continues to climb toward 1 MW, CoolIT’s modeling places full heat capture as the standard server design for flagship rack-scale products through 2028.The simpler, more efficient answer is to capture the heat in liquid and drop air to less than 1 percent of the total load. True 100 percent remains almost impossible to reach in the strictest sense, so the honest and achievable target is near-total capture. That distinction matters to engineers who value precision, and the direction stays clear either way. Full heat capture moves from a premium option to a mainstream requirement as density rises, and CoolIT’s modeling places it as the standard server design for flagship rack-scale products through 2028.<h2>CoolIT delivers it</h2>CoolIT scales heat capture all the way to 100 percent using modular coldplate building blocks proven across six generations of fanless server designs. Engineering teams are already working on <a href="https://www.coolitsystems.com/liquid-cooling-r-and-d/" target="_blank">designs for the maximum density racks</a> coming next. As the cascade spreads and racks grow denser, near-total heat capture becomes the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVqKMomit2E" target="_blank">design that keeps AI running</a>.<a href="https://www.coolitsystems.com/contact/contact/" target="_blank">Talk to CoolIT</a> about building a server loop engineered for total heat capture. Reference: https://ift.tt/EKuNHV8

Monday, September 21, 2026

Muse, Meta's extraordinarily privileged AI assistant, has a serious 0-day

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has gone to <a href="https://x.com/finkd/status/2097402102477701478">great lengths</a> to hype the security of its new AI assistant Muse, claiming it is “built from the ground up for privacy and security.” A zero-day vulnerability that gives locally run apps and terminal commands complete control of the agent raises serious doubts. Further raising questions, Amazon on Sunday began blocking Muse from its site. Meta <a href="https://ai.meta.com/muse/">introduced</a> Muse a few weeks ago. The assistant “books appointments, fills out forms and handles customer service,” “proactively takes tasks off your plate,” and can “make purchases, generate images, create documents, and connect with your favorite apps and services.” The macOS app (curiously, there’s no Windows version) also works with a user’s WhatsApp, email, calendar, and social media accounts. When a task requires a tool that doesn’t exist, Muse creates one on the fly. <h2>Meta doth hype Muse security too much</h2> Of course, for Muse to do any of these things, users must first give it access to their accounts. This includes authenticating the assistant to each service and, because the app runs on macOS, giving it permissions to a broad range of operating system-restricted device resources like writing files to disk, accessing the mic and camera, and monitoring location and calendars. Apple has spent years developing these defenses to prevent installed apps or commands entered into the terminal from accessing these resources, clearly because the company considers them a security threat. Muse completely undoes these default measures.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/muse-metas-extraordinarily-privileged-ai-assistant-has-a-serious-0-day/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/muse-metas-extraordinarily-privileged-ai-assistant-has-a-serious-0-day/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/ESGABLy

Parallel Reads and Write Optimization for Large-Scale Data Replication

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/black-text-logo-spelling-cdata-on-a-transparent-checkerboard-background.png?id=67794446&width=980"/> This White Paper gives data engineers and architects a practical overview of how parallel partitioned reads, write-path optimization, and cloud-native bulk loading reduce large-table replication times, and why replication speed has become a business concern as data volumes grow.<a href="https://content.knowledgehub.wiley.com/76-faster-replication-same-infrastructure/" target="_blank">Download this free whitepaper now!</a> Reference: https://ift.tt/KLtIF0u

Sunday, September 20, 2026

An undercover Google analyst infiltrated a notorious supply-chain hacking gang

Before two of its alleged members were arrested and charged in Australia last month, the hacker group known as TeamPCP <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/teampcp-software-supply-chain-attack-spree-github/">carried out a hacking spree</a> unlike any other in history. It tainted hundreds of open-source programs with its malware, stole developer accounts to perpetuate that software supply-chain hacking, and even released a <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/a-dangerous-worm-is-eating-its-way-through-software-packages/">Dune-themed self-spreading worm</a> to automate the process, ultimately breaching more than a thousand companies. Now Google’s threat intelligence group has revealed that during a key moment of TeamPCP’s rampage, the company’s own undercover researcher had infiltrated the group—allowing Google to monitor the hacking spree from the inside, warn breach targets, and even help disrupt the group’s attempts to exploit those victims. In a talk at security firm SentinelOne's LABScon research conference today, Google Threat Intelligence Group researcher Austin Larsen will present details on the company’s investigation—and infiltration—of TeamPCP amidst the group’s unprecedented, chaotic supply-chain hacking campaign. According to Larsen, Google eventually followed a trail of operational security mistakes allegedly made by one of the two Australians now accused of being leading members of the hacker group and passed on key identifying details to law enforcement. The company also received intelligence from ShinyHunters, another infamous cybercriminal group that TeamPCP partnered with, but which later turned on the supply-chain hackers. And perhaps most surprisingly, Larsen says that Google’s security subsidiary Mandiant had an undercover analyst—not himself—within the group’s inner circle from almost the beginning of TeamPCP’s time in the spotlight.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/an-undercover-google-analyst-infiltrated-a-notorious-supply-chain-hacking-gang/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/09/an-undercover-google-analyst-infiltrated-a-notorious-supply-chain-hacking-gang/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/Skn4p15