NETWORKING

ZDNET’s key takeaways The Xiaomi Smart Band 9 is available now for $50 on Amazon. It’s a solid fitness tracker with great battery life that covers the basics in a slim form factor. It might not fit everyone, and the entry-level tracking data lacks the deep, personalized insights you’ll find on more expensive devices. If you want all the features of a smartwatch but can’t commit to a big, bulky watch face, you might be…

MirageC/Getty Images Earlier this month, Google’s quantum computing scientists demonstrated a breakthrough that indicates quantum computing is for real — and will be able to find its place among other kinds of computers as a valuable resource. But much remains to be done.  Google’s latest quantum chip, which is called Willow and fabricated in the company’s Santa Barbara research facility, is a memory chip. It doesn’t actually process any functions; it simply stores a bit to…

ZDNET’s key takeaways The Asus ProArt P16 is available now, starting at $1,900. It pairs powerful hardware with a suite of customizable options designed for creatives. The deep personalization requires engagement from the user, the huge trackpad won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, and the ultra-glossy display tends to glare. Asus’ ProArt series consists of sleek laptops with high-end hardware for creatives. At the top of the line is the new AMD-powered ProArt P16, which…

ZDNET Alt text has been around for a long, long time. If you’ve never heard of it, the explanation is simple: Hover your cursor over an image. Essentially, alt text is what appears on a web page if an image fails to load. With well-crafted alt text, even those with vision impairments will have the necessary context for the images. This is an important feature that everyone should be using. It’s simple, doesn’t add much…

ZDNET Windows 10’s end of life is coming in 2025 and that means you have to hope your machine can run Windows 11, buy a new computer, or try something different — like Linux. Linux shouldn’t be considered a last-choice alternative, either, because it’s every bit equal to Windows or MacOS. It’s reliable, secure, user-friendly, and free. What more do you want? Also: This Linux distro I recommend to power users takes a unique approach…

ZDNET One of the things about many user-friendly Linux desktops is that they can sometimes feel slightly limited. Take, for instance, GNOME. Yes, you can extend the feature set with the help of extensions, but GNOME is GNOME; it’s a minimalistic take on the desktop that I find very efficient. Not everyone feels the same. Of course, there’s KDE Plasma, which offers more flexibility than GNOME but will always be KDE Plasma. And then… there’s…

The platform will support multitenancy, allowing it to cater to various use cases or customers. It can also be deployed on a customer’s premises, either through a permanent private on-site network or portable private network connectivity. Additionally, the platform will be capable of scaling on demand to meet the specific application needs of the customer. “We’re leveraging our network’s unique strengths including private networks and Verizon’s global industry leadership in private MEC, combined with Nvidia’s…

Only 21 of the enterprises who offered AI network comments were doing any AI self-hosting, but all who did and almost all of those who were seriously evaluating self-hosting said that AI hosting meant a specialized cluster of computers with GPUs, and that this cluster would have to be connected both within itself and to the main points of storage for their core business data. They all saw this as a whole new networking challenge….

ZDNET Chrome OS was a novelty when it first arrived on the scene. Most pundits claimed it was nothing more than a browser, and it took Google plenty of time to prove them wrong. At this point, Chrome OS is much more than a browser, but it still seems slightly limited, and removing those limitations can take a bit of know-how. Google understands this and hopes to simplify life for everyone involved — including itself…

ZDNET Increasingly, we hear about AI agents being the new “digital workers” — a concept that arose before agentic or generative AI hit the mainstream in areas such as robotic process automation. Digital workers are designed to serve the discipline and obedience, but just like human workers, they, too, have their quirks. Also: 15 ways AI saved me time at work in 2024 – and how I plan to use it in 2025 The movement toward a digital workforce…