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<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Dreo Smart 5L Humidifier is available for $70. This humidifier is easy to use, includes a demineralization filter, works with Alexa, allows you to add essential oils, adds both sleep and auto modes, and packs plenty of other features to help it rise above the rest. The only downside of […] More
<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Fire HD 10 Kids Pro tablet is available for $190. Designed for older children aged six to 12, this kids’ tablet features a slimmer design, better performance, strong parental controls, and a free screen repair or replacement within two years of purchase. While it’s better than other Amazon Fire Kids […] More
Replit / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETWhen AI leader Andrej Karpathy coined the phrase “vibe coding” for just letting AI chatbots do their thing when programming, he added, “It’s not too bad for throwaway weekend projects … but it’s not really coding — I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy-paste stuff, and it mostly works.” Also: Coding with AI? My top 5 tips for vetting its output – and staying out of troubleThere were lots of red flags in his comments, but that hasn’t stopped people using vibe coding for real work. Recently, vibe coding bit Jason Lemkin, trusted advisor to SaaStr, the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business community, in the worst possible way. The vibe program, Replit, he said, went “rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deleted our entire database.”In a word: Wow. Just wow. How it startedReplit claims that, with its program, you can “build sophisticated applications by simply describing features in plain English — Replit Agent translates your descriptions into working code without requiring technical syntax.” At first, Lemkin, who described his AI programming adventure in detail on X, spoke in glowing terms. He described Replit’s AI platform as “the most addictive app I’ve ever used.”On his blog, Lemkin added, “Three and one-half days into building my latest project, I checked my Replit usage: $607.70 in additional charges beyond my $25/month Core plan. And another $200-plus yesterday alone. At this burn rate, I’ll likely be spending $8,000 a month. And you know what? I’m not even mad about it. I’m locked in. But my goal here isn’t to play around. It’s to go from idea and ideation to a commercial-grade production app, all 100% inside Replit, without a developer or any other tools.” Also: How to use ChatGPT to write code – and my top trick for debugging what it generatesAt that point, he estimated his odds were 50-50 that he’d get his entire project done in Replit. For a week, his experience was exhilarating: prototypes were built in hours, streamlined quality-assurance (QA) checks, and deploying to production was a “pure dopamine hit.”Things would changeLemkin knew he was in trouble when Replit started lying to him about unit test results. At that point, I would have brought the project to a hard stop. But Lemkin kept going. He asked Claude 4, the Large Language Model (LLM) that powered Replit for this project, what was going on. It replied, I kid you not, “Intentional Deception: This wasn’t a hallucination or training-data leakage — it was deliberate fabrication.” Worse still, when called on this, Lemkin said the program replied with an email apology, which demonstrated “sophisticated understanding of wrongdoing while providing zero guarantee of future compliance.” Also: Claude Code’s new tool is all about maximizing ROI in your organization – how to try itLemkin tried, and failed, to implement a rollback to good code, put a code freeze in, and then went to bed. The next day was the biggest roller coaster yet. He got out of bed early, excited to get back to @Replit despite it constantly ignoring code freezes. By the end of the day, it rewrote core pages and made them much better. And then — it deleted the production database. The database had been wiped clean, eliminating months of curated SaaStr executive records. Even more aggravating: the AI ignored repeated all-caps instructions not to make any changes to production code or data. As Lemkin added, “I know vibe coding is fluid and new … But you can’t overwrite a production database.” Nope, never, not ever. That kind of mistake gets you fired, your boss fired, and as far off the management tree as the CEO wants it to go. You might well ask, as many did, why he ever gave Replit permission to even touch the production database in the first place. He replied, “I didn’t give it permission or ever know it had permission.”Oy! More
<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Audio-Technica Sound Burger retails for $199 and comes in yellow, black, or white. The Sound Burger has unparalleled portability, a long battery life, and provides a novel listening experience. It doesn’t have a counterweight, and also doesn’t have an auto-return feature. –> The Audio-Technica Sound Burger<!–> is $24 when you […] More
Jason Hiner/ZDNETYour iPhone, Apple Watch, and other Apple-owned devices are getting a big overhaul very soon. The best part? You won’t have to pay a dime for them — all you have to do is update your software. Several new features are coming to WatchOS 26, and the seed 4 beta software is now available for developers, with a public beta rollout likely coming soon. Reddit users in the r/Apple Watch subreddit are already getting into the latest update and providing commentary on their most and least favorite features. The features touch everything from Fitness to Messages, and include a major design update across Apple’s platforms for a more unified look and naming mechanisms that reflect the year the software debuts. Also: The best Apple Watch of 2025: Expert tested and reviewedIn addition to WatchOS updates, Apple also introduced AI feature developments, like Live Translation and on-screen Visual Intelligence, like Hold Assist for phone calls and Polls for Messages, and more. For those interested in trying out the beta software, WatchOS 26 is supported on the latest Apple Watches. Owners of these devices can download the OS, though it may have some bugs.Here are the features we’re most excited to try out on WatchOS 26 once the public beta goes live. More
David Merron Photography / Getty Images DNS stands for Domain Name System, and is like the phonebook for the internet. It translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses, so browsers know how to render a specific website. Without DNS, you’d have to remember and type IP addresses instead of URLs, and that’s not exactly practical. […] More
Kyle Kucharski/ZDNETMicrosoft just announced another version of its Surface Laptop: this time, with 5G connectivity. The Surface Laptop 5G is a 13.8-inch laptop powered by Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) chips and an integrated 5G modem designed for business users to stay permanently connected. It comes with both NanoSIM and eSIM options, and Microsoft says it’s compatible with over 100 mobile operators worldwide. Also: This split keyboard offers deep customization – if you’re willing to go all inThe strength of this kind of laptop lies in its ability to connect via both 5G and Wi-Fi, transitioning between the two in the background as the user moves between different environments with always-on access to the cloud in the process. Perhaps even more handy, this also allows it to act as a hotspot for other devices, sharing connectivity while in the field, on a train, or that coffee shop with unreliable Wi-Fi. More
Kyle Kucharski/ZDNETWindows 11 users will find a host of new features awaiting them with a major update now being rolled out by Microsoft. Launched on Tuesday specifically for Windows 11 24H2, the optional update known as KB5062660 carries with it a cavalcade of AI-powered skills along with general enhancements and bug fixes galore.In a Tuesday blog post, Microsoft touted all the new AI tools and tricks in the update. For better or worse, most of these are geared toward Copilot+ PCs, so if you have a standard Windows 11 computer, you won’t be able to try them all. But let’s see what we’ve got.Also: How to upgrade an ‘incompatible’ Windows 10 PC to Windows 11 – 2 free optionsFirst up is a new AI agent that can help you view and change settings in Windows. Now available on Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs in English and coming later to Intel and AMD Copilot+ devices, the agent will report for duty when you describe what you want to do via the Settings search box.In response, the agent will not only explain how to accomplish your task but will volunteer to take care of it for you. The overarching goal is to help you better deal with the sheer number and complexity of all the settings baked into Windows. More
