By Omair Khaliq Sultan The best earbud deals aren’t just cheap, they’re “why is this so fully loaded?” cheap. That’s the vibe here. Nothing Ear (a) is currently $58.99, down from $109.00 for a 46% discount, and it’s marked as a limited-time deal. For anyone who wants modern features like active noise cancelling, long battery life, and the ability […] The post This limited-time price drop makes Nothing Ear (a) a standout value appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

Many companies and organizations have in recent years cut back on the number of employees dedicated to support issues, believing that AI solutions can handle this task for more efficiently.

But Gartner Research is now saying demand for support from real people is likely to increase as early as next year — because customers prefer talking with humans.

“AI is simply not mature enough to completely replace the expertise, empathy, and judgment that humans offer,” said Emily Potosky of Gartner in a statement. “Relying solely on AI at this point is premature and could lead to unintended consequences.”

Gartner expects that half of the companies that have invested in AI support will recruit human staff in the coming year, thought it might be necessary to change the titles of those who are rehired.

Source:: Computer World

By Hisan Kidwai HP and Redington have just announced the inauguration of a new Centre of Excellence (CoE) in…
The post HP & Redington Launch Digital Printing Centre of Excellence in Chennai appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Omair Khaliq Sultan You no longer need an engineering degree to print a Baby Yoda. A few years ago, 3D printing was a hobby defined by troubleshooting: leveling beds with sheets of paper, unclogging nozzles, and tightening belts. In 2026, the technology has finally matured into an “appliance” phase. Modern beginner printers now calibrate themselves. They use sensors […] The post Beginner 3D printers: the “it just works” era is finally here appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Hisan Kidwai Getting a phone serviced can be a headache, as nobody likes to stand in long queues….
The post OPPO India Launches Service Center 3.0 Pro With Digital Check-In and Faster Repairs appeared first on Fossbytes.

Source:: Fossbytes

By Ana-Maria Stanciuc QT Sense, a deep-tech biotech startup building tools to study living cells, announced it has secured €4 million in funding to accelerate its Quantum Nuova platform, a technology that lets scientists observe cellular processes in real time and reveal biochemical activity linked to disease.  The funding includes a €3 million seed investment led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, with follow-on backing from existing investor QDNL Participations and an angel investor. In addition, the company received €600,000 from the ONCO-Q programme to support cancer research and €400,000 through the Quantum Forward Challenge for collaborative deployments with research partners. Most traditional lab methods…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Ana-Maria Stanciuc  Europe’s largest dedicated deep tech growth fund has taken a major step forward after closing the first tranche of its fundraising effort at €750 million. The fund, known as Kembara Fund I and managed by Spain-based Mundi Ventures, is aiming for a €1 billion target. It will invest in European companies developing breakthrough technologies in areas such as clean energy, AI, quantum computing, advanced materials, robotics, and space tech. A cornerstone of the fundraising so far is a €350 million commitment from the European Investment Fund, part of the EU’s attempt to strengthen local growth capital. Additional backing comes from…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Omair Khaliq Sultan Some workout headphones sound great… right up until they start slipping, trapping sweat, or making you feel sealed off from the world. That’s why bone-conduction headphones have a loyal following. They keep your ears open, stay stable, and feel more “wear and forget” on runs and walks. The Shokz OpenRun bone conduction headphones are $89.94, […] The post If you hate in-ear earbuds while running, these open-ear Shokz are $89.94 right now appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Omair Khaliq Sultan Most gaming headsets force you into one lane. They’re either great on PC, annoying on console, or they don’t play nicely with your phone. A tri-mode headset fixes that problem in a very satisfying way. The ASUS ROG Delta II Wireless Gaming Headset is $159.99, down from $259.99, a 38% discount, and it’s listed as […] The post One headset for everything: PC, console, and phone, now $100 off appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Ana-Maria Stanciuc If cinema has taught us anything about interacting with our own creations, it’s this: androids chatting among themselves seldom end with humans clapping politely. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 quietly decides it knows better than the astronauts. In Westworld, lifelike hosts improvise rebellion when their scripts stop making sense. Those stories dramatize a core fear we keep returning to as AI grows more capable: what happens when systems we design start behaving on their own terms? You might have heard the internet is worried about Moltbook, a social network made exclusively for AI agents. It’s an audacious claim:…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Apple has embraced agentic AI for developers, introducing direct support in Xcode 26.3 for both Anthropic’s Claude Agent and OpenAI’s Codex and making vibe coding now a platform feature for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It’s available to all Apple Developer Program members now and will be released “soon” on the App Store.

Xcode 26.3 follows on the heels of the introduction of a macOS app for Codex, but it delivers much more than Codex alone. The new integration opens up new opportunities for developers as Apple’s development environment can now autonomously support their work, from task management to coding to project architecture and more. It represents a major extension beyond the AI features introduced in Xcode 26. 

Apple is also thinking ahead in this support. Xcode 26.3 makes its capabilities available through Model Context Protocol, an open standard that gives developers the flexibility to use any compatible agent or tool with Xcode. This is a big step for Apple, which wants to position Xcode as a companion to the growing flock of AI development tools. 

The result is that developers can select the correct tool for their task, using models most suitable for their work, opening the door to intensified competition between agentic tools.

“At Apple, our goal is to make tools that put industry-leading technologies directly in developers’ hands so they can build the very best apps,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “Agentic coding supercharges productivity and creativity, streamlining the development workflow so developers can focus on innovation.”

In a post on the Anthropic website, that company explained the extent of the integration: “Developers get the full power of Claude Code directly in Xcode — including subagents, background tasks, and plugins — all without leaving the IDE.”

During briefings provided around the introduction, Apple confirmed it worked directly with both OpenAI and Anthropic to optimize the experience of using their models in Xcode. During this collaboration, particular attention was paid to reducing token usage and efficiency. Agents must be downloaded from within Xcode for this integration.

What can agents do in Xcode?

Built-in access to Claude Agent and Codex means developers can exploit the advanced reasoning of these models while building apps. It also means developers can switch between different available models, selecting the most appropriate one for their project, though it will be important to consider the terms of service offered by those models before using them in code.

Developers could use these tools to:

Search documentation.

Execute autonomous tasks.

Explore file structures, understand how the pieces connect, and spot necessary changes before writing code.

Update project settings.

Verify work visually by capturing Xcode Previews and iterating through builds and fixes — even capturing screenshots to show code functions properly.

Developers can also combine all these features, using AI to vibe code apps, build images, develop file structures and verify app behavior, iterating on the app. This lets them focus on improving the overall experience of the code.

Finally, the introduction of Model Context Protocol delivers much more than the press statement explains: as long as the IDE is running, users can browse and search Xcode project structure, read/write/delete files and groups, build projects (including structure and build logs), run fault diagnostics, execute tasks and more, using their choice of MCP-supporting agent models.  

What comes next?

There are some risks coming into view. Vibe coding at scale will happen, and when it does it will introduce a flotilla of rapidly-created apps, some of which might include security flaws if not verified and checked correctly. That’s even before you consider the tendency of large language models (LLMs) to hallucinate.

There is also the danger that the novelty and power of these applications might distract some developers who would traditionally put their energy into open-source projects, potentially undermining the integrity of those important projects. Stack Overflow use has collapsed as developers use chatbots instead of the knowledge bases the AI has already digested. 

Apple’s Xcode decision makes it inevitable that code running on the devices you own or that your company deploys will be partly built by AI. It’s an open question whether students learning to code today can reliably anticipate opportunities to make a living doing so in a decade’s time.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

The tech bigwigs and economists at the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos were clear-eyed about how AI is reshuffling the jobs landscape globally and disrupting national economies.

But the chatter around physical AI and robotics was more upbeat, with attendees saying robots with brains and intelligent sensors are likely to improve human productivity and manufacturing output. 

That, in turn, should improve economies — and in the long run create more jobs. 

Physical AI refers to the concept of AI manifesting in physical form, most notably as robots, though others foresee broader real-world outcomes, such as AI cameras that reduce crime or AI-driven sensors that bolster industrial output.

“You can now fuse your industrial capability, your manufacturing capability with artificial intelligence and that brings you into the world of physical AI or robotics,” said Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, during a fireside chat at WEF.

If anything, AI — including agentic AI and robotic automation — is more likely to  change the nature of what humans do than take jobs away, he said. Robots can do menial work such as typical administrative tasks, allowing humans to be more productive, Huang said. “We’re five million nurses short…. AI is increasing their productivity…. [And when], hospitals do better, they hire more nurses.”

Robots have the capacity to work non-stop, without tiring, yielding productivity gains that will increase the average output of economies, said tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. “My prediction is…we’ll make so many robots and AI that they will saturate all human needs,” the Tesla CEO said during a WEF discussion.  

He described how robots might be able to help care for elderly parents, which can be an expensive undertaking for humans, saying the robots can take the place of younger people.

Robots are also capable of doing jobs considered dangerous for humans, though  humans will still need to be involved, Daniela Rus, director at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), said during a panel session at WEF. (Many companies have roots at CSAIL, including Venti Technologies, where Rus is a board member and adviser.)

Venti has “entire fleets of robots that operate 24/7 without the need of human drivers,” Rus said. “Yet human drivers are also in the loop to step in when the weather is bad or when there is a lot of need for movement.”

China is considered further ahead in robot adoption than the US, where the robotics market is still growing. Tianlan Shao, CEO of China-based Mech-Mind Robotics, said his company had delivered more than 10,000 robots in the past year — the same number it produced during its first eight years of existence.

He argued that if a industrial robot is given a chainsaw, for example, humans might still be needed to make sure the robot sticks to task. “We need clear boundaries…, definitions, and rules,” Shao said.

Shao pointed to progress in the last 12 months of fusing AI into robots. “Now we can train this so-called world-model-like thing, aligning everything, including robot vision and robot motion, aligning everything in one specific space.” 

World models under development by the likes of Nvidia, Microsoft ,and Google are designed to improve the physical functionality of robots.  Researchers at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence have created a world model called PAN that tests action sequences in a safe, controlled simulation.

The growing importance of physical AI has been acknowledged beyond just the WEF.  Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise report, released in January, pointed to a widening adoption of physical AI. About 58% of companies surveyed by the consulting firm noted physical AI adoption, a figure expected to grow to 80% in the next two years.

The consulting firm sees physical AI as having a real-world component, meaning  technology that can sense and drive a physical outcome. Monitoring and security systems, for instance, are fast-growing areas for deployment, along with collaborative robotics.

“Physical AI as a terminology is relatively new, but the underlying foundation was laid 12 or 13 years ago — what’s different now is adding intelligence and autonomy on top of that physical foundation,” Beena Ammanath, global head at Deloitte AI Institute, told Computerworld.

The older underlying foundations of physical AI include IoT and robotic process automation, Ammanath said.

Despite the encouraging comments about physical AI, not everyone at WEF had rosy assessments for robotics. “Elon Musk also told us in 2017 that we will be falling asleep at the wheel in 2019,” Rus said, offering a cautionary note. “And we’re still not falling asleep at the wheel.”

The rise of humanoid robots will take time due to navigation, materials, dexterity and reasoning issues, Rus said. “It’s coming, but it’s not today,” he said.

WEF’s Chief Economists Outlook noted the growing value of companies that focus on humanoid robots — the mechanized machines that look like and function like humans and are a mainstay of science fiction.

“While far from general-purpose deployment on factory floors, humanoid robotics companies are attracting large valuations and investments,” the WEF said in its outlook for 2026. 

Source:: Computer World

By Ana-Maria Stanciuc Snowflake and OpenAI have struck a multi-year, $200 million partnership to bring OpenAI’s advanced models, including GPT-5.2, directly into Snowflake’s enterprise data platform. The collaboration is designed to let Snowflake’s large customer base, more than 12,000 organisations, build AI agents and semantic analytics tools that operate on their own data without moving it outside Snowflake’s governed environment. Under the agreement, OpenAI models will be natively embedded in Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence, making it possible to run queries, derive insights, and deploy AI-powered workflows using natural language interfaces and context-aware agents. Customers can analyse structured and unstructured data, automate…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Shikhar Mehrotra OpenAI acknowledges major outage as thousands report ChatGPT errors. Issues impact logins, voice mode, and response generation. A fix is currently in progress.
The post ChatGPT is down for a ton of users (Update: It’s back online) appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Omair Khaliq Sultan There are headphone deals that are “nice,” and then there are deals that land in the zone where you stop browsing and actually buy. Beats Studio Pro at $169.95 is that second kind. It’s down from $349.99, a 51% discount, and it checks the boxes most people care about for everyday listening: long battery life, […] The post Beats Studio Pro at $169.95 is the kind of headphone deal you don’t overthink appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends

In December, Mozilla CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo attracted a lot of attention by announcing that Firefox would become a “modern AI browser.”

In order not to alienate users, the company also promised a new setting that would make it possible to turn off some or all of the AI features, including the chatbot in the sidebar, automatic translations, tab grouping, and link previews.

It is now clear that the new AI settings will be added to Firefox 148, a version that will be rolled out to the public on Feb. 24. Mozilla unveiled the feature on Monday.

The YouTube clip below shows how it is supposed to work:

Source:: Computer World

Enrique Lores, president and global CEO of HP for more than six years, is leaving the company to take up a similar position at online payment giant PayPal on March 1. In his place, on an interim basis for the time being, Bruce Broussard, a member of the company’s board of directors since 2021, has already been appointed CEO of the technology company, although the company said in a statement that it is already looking for a permanent replacement for the Spanish executive.

“As Interim CEO, Mr. Broussard will advance the company’s strategic priorities by leveraging his proven operational, financial, and business management expertise as well as his deep knowledge of HP’s business,” the statement said, noting that Broussard is an executive with more than 30 years of experience in leadership positions at publicly traded companies, such as healthcare company Humana.

Lores is no stranger to PayPal, having served on its board of directors for nearly five years and as its chairman since July 2024. The Spaniard replaces former CEO Alex Chriss, who leaves the company in a delicate situation; in fact, the group has just announced a 15% drop in revenue in its last fiscal quarter. Furthermore, Lores’ appointment, as reported in a statement issued today by PayPal, “follows a detailed evaluation conducted by the Board of Directors on the current position of the company relative to its competition and the broader industry landscape. While some progress has been made in a number of areas over the last two years, the pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board’s expectations. The Board is confident that the appointment of Lores, a seasoned executive with more than three decades of technology and commercial experience, will provide the leadership necessary to lead PayPal into its next chapter.”

American dream

Enrique Lores is one of those paradigmatic cases of the long-awaited ‘American dream’ that argues that anyone can achieve success through hard work. Lores, born in Madrid and an electrical engineer from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, from which he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2024 for his professional career, began his professional activity at HP in 1989, 36 years ago. He started as an intern, but gradually rose to positions of importance in the fields of printing, personal systems, and business and industrial solutions.

Even in 2015, when the historic company made the decision to split into two companies, one focused on personal devices (PCs) and printing and the other, called HPE, on systems and infrastructure for businesses, it was Lores himself who led the Separation Management Office. More than six years ago, he became the president and CEO of HP. Under his leadership, he had to deal with issues such as an attempted takeover by competitor Xerox, which ultimately did not go through. In recent years, the executive has worked to adapt the PC world to advances in artificial intelligence. According to Gartner data for 2025, HP is the second-largest player in the global PC market, with a 21.5% share, surpassed only by Lenovo (27.2%) and followed by Dell Technologies (16.5%). In the field of printing, according to data from IDC, Gartner, and Canalys, the company is number one in the world.

Lores, one of the highest paid in the entire technology industry, announced his new professional direction today on his LinkedIn account. “I first joined HP 36 years ago as an intern engineer. Since then, HP has become part of my identity and my family’s history: my wife Rocío and I built our life in Palo Alto so that I could be part of the HP team, and my three children have only known life with HP,” he writes on the social platform, where he summarizes his professional career.

HP, he notes, has given him “the opportunity to grow tremendously.” A company, he emphasizes, that he defines as “its people.” “HP is a true school of talent, guided by a culture of innovation, collaboration, and shared dedication to making a positive impact. I am incredibly proud of what the HP team has achieved, and I have every confidence that Bruce Broussard and the incredible HP leadership team will propel the company forward and lead the future of work.”

He says he is looking forward to the “unique opportunity to serve as CEO of PayPal and have a lasting impact on the global payments industry.” “I am excited to get started, knowing that I am leaving behind a team that will drive HP’s success.”

Along with the changes at the top, the HP team has again reported its forecasts for the first quarter of its fiscal year and its full fiscal year 2026. The company expects diluted earnings per share under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) of between $0.58 and $0.66, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of between $0.73 and $0.81. For fiscal year 2026, HP continues to expect GAAP diluted net earnings per share of $2.47 to $2.77 and non-GAAP diluted net earnings per share of $2.90 to $3.20. For fiscal year 2026, HP expects to generate free cash flow of between $2.8 billion and $3 billion.

Source:: Computer World

By Ana-Maria Stanciuc If you look at the press releases and breathless commentary around the recent acquisition of xAI by SpaceX, you might think we’re witnessing a tectonic shift in technological destiny.  A $1.25 trillion “mega-company” is born, poised to reshape artificial intelligence, space infrastructure, satellite internet, and possibly the fate of humanity itself. That narrative, enthusiastically repeated across headlines, serves a purpose: it frames a somewhat messy corporate consolidation as inevitable progress.  But let’s take a closer look and separate actual substance from Silicon Valley myth-making. A mega-deal that’s really an identity crisis At its core, this acquisition solves one problem: xAI needed…This story continues at The Next WebOr just read more coverage about: SpaceX

Source:: The Next Web

By Ana-Maria Stanciuc OpenAI has given software developers a new desktop toy, and judging by the early reactions, it might feel like someone finally handed coders the Swiss Army knife they’ve been dreaming about or the kind of gadget that makes them wonder if they’re working with a robot coworker now.  The company rolled out the Codex app for macOS, a focused interface for managing AI coding agents, designed to let developers do more than just “generate a few lines of code.” Instead, Codex can juggle multiple tasks in parallel, run background workflows, and act on instructions that span hours or even days. …This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Shikhar Mehrotra Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu are handing out billions in cash and prizes to attract chatbot users, highlighting how fierce China’s AI race has become in 2026.
The post The AI Race is so hot that chatbot users are getting paid in real cash, iPhones, and TVs appeared first on Digital Trends.

Source:: Digital Trends