Robotics

tyndyra/Getty Images Three major AI companies — normally rivals — appear to have found some common ground.  On Wednesday, Google announced via an X post that it will support Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP). This protocol lets AI systems — including agents — access data stores, developer spaces, and business applications for better performance. Specifically, […] More

Canva / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETCanva launched in 2012 and has become a widely used visual communication platform with over 230 million monthly active users. At its Canva Create annual conference, the company announced what it called its biggest product launch since its inception. Also: Adobe Photoshop is getting its first AI agent – here’s what it can do for youOn Thursday, Canva unveiled Visual Suite 2.0, which has new features that touch nearly every aspect of Canva’s current design platform. Artificial intelligence (AI) is sprinkled throughout these features to speed up workflows and unlock new capabilities, including a new design companion, Canva AI. For the roundup, keep reading below. “From reimagined workplace essentials to entirely new ways to create with your own design partner, we’re excited to continue making it easier than ever for anyone to bring their ideas to life,” said Melanie Perkins, Canva’s co-founder and CEO.1. Canva AI More

Introduced with iOS 18.2, Visual Intelligence is a cool AI-based feature. Just aim your phone at an object that has aroused your curiosity. Press a button, and you can run a Google web search or ask ChatGPT to describe, summarize, or answer specific questions about the mystery item.Previously, you had to activate and press the Camera Control to trigger Visual Intelligence, but that limited its scope to the iPhone 16 lineup. With iOS 18.4, you can use your iPhone’s Action button instead, expanding the feature to the iPhone 15 Pro, the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and the iPhone 16e.I have an iPhone 16 Pro, though; so why would I need to launch Visual Intelligence with the Action button? Well, depending on how I’m holding my phone and the object I’m framing, I sometimes find the Action button easier to access and press. Having both the Camera Control and Action button available gives me more flexibility when I want to call on Visual Intelligence.Also: This useful Apple Intelligence camera feature is coming to iPhone 15 Pro – here’s how it worksTo set this up on a supported iPhone, head to Settings and select Action Button. Swipe through the different options until you find the one for Visual Intelligence. Then just exit the Settings screen. Now point your phone at an object you’d like described and press down on the Action button. A screen pops up with two choices. Tap Ask to ask ChatGPT questions about the object; tap Search to run a Google search on it. More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The 2025 iPad Air is available in an 11-inch model starting at $600 and a 13-inch model starting at $800. The latest iPad Air features Apple Intelligence, an M3 processor, and some of the best performance I’ve seen on an iPad to date. But the iPad Air gets expensive quickly, with […] More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Lenovo Tab Plus retails for $330. Contrary to its small size, the model houses a booming eight-speaker system and a long-lasting battery. The MediaTek Helio chipset and dim display won’t be winning any awards. more buying choices If you’re in the market for a new tablet that won’t break the […] More

<!–> ZDNET’s key takeaways The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra is available for up to $800 off with a trade-in credit. This 14.6-inch tablet is a productivity powerhouse, packed with a strong processor and Galaxy AI tools perfect for work and play. The Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra isn’t super portable: it’s large and the keyboard […] More

SJVN / Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNETMany programmers are young enough that they never knew a world without Git and the developer sites built around it, like GitHub and GitLab. You should be glad, very glad, that Linus Torvalds felt forced to create a better version control system (VCS).Before that, I used first-generation Source Control Management (SCM) systems such as Revision Control System (RCS), which was… painful. Then along came the Concurrent Versions System (CVS) in 1986, and then Subversion (SVN) in 2000. That same year saw BitKeeper, the once open-source VCS that was Linux’s first SCM. Also: Microsoft at 50: Its incredible rise, 15 lost years, and stunning comeback – in 4 chartsBefore that, Torvalds had been content to keep Linux’s code straight by hand. But, by 1999, as developer Larry McVoy observed, Torvalds was on the verge of burning out. The problem? You couldn’t scale Torvalds. He needed the right tools to share the load. McVoy thought the answer was his own SCM program, BitKeeper. Torvalds wasn’t so sure. He wanted to keep doing it the way he’d always done it.The BitKeeper dilemmaFast forward to 2003, and it was another story. The Linux 2.4 kernel had been late, very late, in shipping, and the 2.6 release was going even slower. So, Torvalds finally moved to BitKeeper. At first, it worked great, but the fly in the ointment was always that BitKeeper was a proprietary program. True, there was a free version of BitKeeper that could only be used with open-source projects, but it came with significant problems. As Linux kernel developer and editor of the Linux Weekly News (LWN), Jonathan Corbet observed at the time, “Larry wanted to have his cake and eat it too. He truly wanted to support the development of free software — as long as that software didn’t threaten his own particular business niche. … Whenever BitMover [McVoy’s company] felt that its business model was threatened,” it changed its licensing terms ” to the point that the BitKeeper license became known in some circles as the ‘don’t piss off Larry license.'” Also: How to start using the new Linux terminal on your Android deviceAs Bryan Cantrill, a well-known developer, and Oxide Computer CTO, commented years later on Ycombinator, “The grand irony is that Larry was one of the earliest advocates of open sourcing the operating system at Sun … So on the one hand, you can view the story of BitKeeper with respect to open source as almost Greek in its tragic scope.”In 2005, Andrew Tridgell, a Linux kernel developer, attempted to reverse-engineer BitKeeper’s protocols to create an open-source BitKeeper client. That was what broke the camel’s back for McVoy, who subsequently pulled BitKeeper’s free version. Torvalds didn’t feel, however, that it was fair to blame McVoy for the break. In a Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKM) post, he wrote, “Don’t blame BitMover, even if that’s probably going to be a very common reaction. Larry, in particular, really did try to make things work out, but it got to the point where I decided that I don’t want to be in the position of trying to hold two pieces together that would need as much glue as it seemed to require.” Regardless of who gets the blame, Linux was left without an SCM. What to do? The creation of GitTorvalds’s answer was to create a true open-source VCS alternative: Git. In a mere 10 days, he developed a working version of Git, which was first committed on April 7, 2005. Of course, he’d been thinking about it for a while. The BitKeeper conflict had been brewing almost since the start. In a recent GitHub interview, Torvalds said he had been facing the question, “How do I do something that works even better than BitKeeper does but doesn’t do it the way BitKeeper does it?” Also: Linux Foundation’s trust scorecards aim to battle rising open-source security threatsAs Torvalds told me then, he didn’t want to change software configuration management tools; however, he had no choice but to abandon BitKeeper and create his own system. “The name itself really doesn’t have a meaning. Torvalds joked that it could be a “random three-letter combination that is pronounceable and not actually used by any common Unix command. The fact that it is a mispronunciation of get may or may not be relevant.” Or “stupid. contemptible and despicable. Simple. Take your pick from the dictionary of slang.” Or, “global information tracker: [if] you’re in a good mood, and it actually works for you. Angels sing, and a light suddenly fills the room.” Angels or not, Torvalds wasn’t sure at the time that Git would be the permanent replacement. “It’s a young project, and it just takes time for things to mature. That will go on for years, assuming none of the other open-source SCMs just eventually show themselves to be capable enough that we just end up deciding that Git was a good temporary bridge.” More

Westend61/Getty Images Every time I get a press release about AI agents, I get a slightly queasy feeling. It is not quite as bad as that dizzy feeling I get every time someone insists on pitching me about vibe coding, nor is it the nails on a chalkboard feeling I get every time a PR […] More