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Researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs warn that crucial medical research is in jeopardy unless the Trump administration reverses course on cuts.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla)

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with Trump ally Steve Bannon about the president's agenda at home and abroad.

(Image credit: Nickolai Hammar/NPR)

President Trump promised a new "golden age" for the United States. But his first 100 days in office have left the economy looking tarnished.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla)

Telecommunications is an inherently data-driven industry. Traditionally, great focus has been placed on gaining data visibility into the core and transit areas of the network. This approach has provided valuable insights for throughput optimizations, speed, and general performance.

Regardless of promises of speed, customers are mainly concerned about whether or not they’re able to watch streaming services, play live games, and connect with colleagues and loved ones via video calling - sometimes simultaneously. To solve for optimized performance and a great customer experience, telecommunication companies are shifting their focus toward further enhancing their last-mile visibility.

Historically, service providers have used the last-mile data they collect to identify the worst-performing connections and pinpoint the group of customers most at risk of churning to another provider. However, if approached correctly, last-mile performance intelligence can offer more than just a way to mitigate churn.

Today, when consumers visit the marketing and sign-up pages of telcos or internet service providers, they are typically presented with maps showing broad network coverage and similar pricing between providers, indicative of both the competitiveness of the telecommunications landscape and the utility-like nature of many of its services. On paper, there is often little to differentiate providers from a marketing perspective.

This is where the opportunity lies. Service providers are in a unique position by virtue of owning and operating the networks that connect users with the applications and services they’ve come to rely on in their daily lives. By rethinking their relationship with last-mile data, additional benefits - beyond customer retention - are ripe for the taking when it comes to intelligent fault diagnosis, customer communication, and differentiated services.

How incomplete last-mile data can impact decisions

One of the most important aspects of data-driven decision-making is that the source data underpinning the decision is clean, comprehensive, and has good lineage. This goes to its quality and reliability as the foundation for decision-making.

With more comprehensive last-mile data, service providers and carriers can make better informed decisions regarding new product launches, network planning, capacity, and capital allocation. For example, telcos and service providers will make significant moves around optimization of services for the needs of specific market segments - such as gaming, or industrial companies with IoT needs, and so on.

This kind of optimization has long been a promise of network slicing technology, and many telcos and providers now have this in their arsenal. Yet, the biggest challenge may be determining the best customer cohorts to target with this level of optimized services. This is a problem that is addressable in part by having more comprehensive last-mile data to analyze and base these decisions on.

Incomplete last-mile data also makes it harder to determine where a proposed investment in network infrastructure or capacity would have the biggest performance improvement. By contrast, in circumstances where the telco or service provider is collecting last-mile data from every active service, from every home or premises, they have a much more comprehensive understanding of how their services land, and where improvements most need to be made.

Last-mile intelligence as a differentiator

Telcos and service providers have always had options available to them to collect last-mile data: whether that’s TR-069 on customer premises equipment, or specific broadband monitoring boxes.

The key opportunity ahead lies in the improved capability within service provider environments to correlate and use last-mile intelligence.

For instance, last-mile network intelligence can significantly enhance the ability to deploy maintenance strategies proactively. By continuously monitoring the last-mile connections, service providers can identify potential issues before they escalate into major problems, reducing downtime and improving overall service reliability. This proactive approach not only helps in maintaining customer satisfaction but also reduces operational costs associated with emergency repairs and customer support.

Service providers can also use last-mile insight to analyze usage patterns and preferences to tailor their offerings for a higher level of personalization that can lead to deeper customer satisfaction and loyalty, as customers feel their specific needs are being met.

In a market where pricing and coverage are often similar, last-mile intelligence can be a key differentiator. Service providers that can demonstrate superior last-mile performance through transparent reporting, value-add services, and customer testimonials can gain a competitive edge. This transparency builds trust and can be a deciding factor for customers choosing between providers.

Where will richer data take you?

With insights into all last-mile connections, service providers can access a valuable dataset that has long been overlooked. This knowledge can enhance customer experience and inform a wider range of commercial decisions, resulting in comprehensive strategies that are supported by a clearer understanding of the last-mile situation and the needs of their subscribers.

We rate the best network monitoring tool.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

With fiber internet available to over half the city, Plano's internet choices are more plentiful and affordable than much of the state.

This review first appeared in issue 342 of PC Pro.

Lenovo’s P series of laptops is designed for speed, with more expensive configurations than this offering discrete workstation-class Nvidia processors to tie in with its ISV certification. The P14s is a slimline version, which means less powerful chips and – in this case at least – integrated graphics. But don’t imagine it’s slow: turn to the graphs and you will see the ThinkPad P14s vying for top position in many tests.

That’s despite the fact it includes a Ryzen 5 processor with six cores compared to the 12 found in the Core i7-1260P, with AMD’s strength due to them all being fast performance cores. Lenovo supports the AMD Ryzen Pro chip with 16GB of high-bandwidth LPDDR5 memory, although this is soldered to the board; if you want more, upgrade to 32GB at the time of ordering for an extra £90. You can replace the 512GB SSD yourself, with a handful of crosshead screws in your way, but doing so will void the generous three-year warranty.

This laptop’s greatest performance came in our battery tests, lasting for over 16 hours in both our video-rundown and light-use benchmarks. Left idling, it kept going for an astonishing 20 hours. It’s reasonably light at 1.4kg, albeit no match for the similarly long-lasting HP Elite Dragonfly G3 (1.1kg) and Dynabook Portégé X40 (1kg).

The P14s’ keyboard lacks the finesse of the ThinkPad T14s, with a harsher feel to the keys and no backlight, but the glass-coated trackpad is just as glorious and they share near-identical IPS panels. Both provide 1,920 x 1,200 pixels with a matte finish and, while it lacks the vividness of an OLED screen, the P14s covered a fine 81% of the DCI-P3 gamut compared to 71% for its sibling. With a contrast of over 1,800:1, clean whites and a peak of 409cd/m2, it’s one of the best screens here.

Lenovo squeezes six connectors onto the left edge: a 3.5mm jack, HDMI, USB-A port, two USB-C ports (not Thunderbolt 4, merely USB 3.2 Gen 2) and an always useful Ethernet port. The right-hand side is dominated by the vent necessary to keep the processor cool, but Lenovo still finds room for a second USB-A port and a smart card slot.

This isn’t an exciting laptop – music sounds harsh, for instance – but it has plenty to offer business users, including a high-quality 1080p webcam, which supports Windows Hello, within the thick top bezel. If you need to square the circle of strong performance and supreme battery life, it’s the best choice here.

We've listed the best laptops for graphic design and the best laptops for drawing and digital art.

Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) has become a hot commodity, with companies around the world enjoying access to multiple rapidly-growing, full-spectrum data marketplaces provided by the likes of IBM and Google, as well as S&P Global, Snowflake, and others.

What is underpinning their rising popularity is the fact that hedge funds, investors, and financial services companies are increasingly discovering how they can leverage these rich datasets to make informed decisions.

Governments around the world have also been quick to adopt DaaS practices, especially when it comes to data monetization drives in such fields as health care and smart city projects.

My aim with this article is to explain what DaaS is, what it is packing “under the hood”, and what data collection alternatives are currently available to businesses and organizations.

What is DaaS?

In a nutshell, Data-as-a-Service is a cloud-based type of software that provides users with multi-source data on demand via APIs, rather than as a standalone product. In other words, by paying a subscription fee based on data usage, businesses gain access to numerous data sets rated by other users, making it easy for them to find what they need.

DaaS facilitates the consolidation of enterprise data in one place and, unlike other data management frameworks, doesn’t require users to have extensive on-premises IT infrastructure or expertise to store, manage, retrieve, and otherwise handle massive amounts of data. As of 2024, there are a total of 60 publicly traded DaaS companies.

As with any other technology, DaaS comes with its own set of pros and cons. On the pro side, it has been used to reduce licensing costs, streamline workloads by leveraging cloud services, speed up software development, create enterprise benchmarking reports, and boost the efficiency of business intelligence.

DaaS’s cons, meanwhile, include risks like data privacy breaches, security violations when dealing with sensitive data, and the low quality of granular, niche data types.

What powers DaaS?

DaaS makes extensive use of alternative data. How do we define that though? Traditional data can be defined as pretty much all publicly available, structured data produced under legal and official supervision. This would include data from statistics departments, press releases, financial statements, and so forth.

Alternative data, on the other hand, is typically unstructured, stored in multiple different formats (from blocks of text to video clips), and extracted for specific purposes. Some businesses — particularly financial services and investment companies — are highly reliant on exactly this type of data already. A key reason for this is that alternative data often contains unique investment signals that aren’t present in its traditional counterpart.

The most common method of collecting alternative data is called web scraping, which dates back to around 1989. In basic terms, web scraping uses specialized software to copy large amounts of unstructured public data from websites automatically and transfer it to a central database or spreadsheet, where it is converted into structured data, for later analysis. This form of data gathering is arguably the main engine behind the power of DaaS marketplaces.

Web scraping has been rapidly rising in popularity over the past decade. As global competition continues to heat up, more and more companies are turning to web scraping to make better-informed business decisions and gain an edge over their market opponents. And with vast amounts of data being generated every single day — around 2.5 quintillion bytes, to be precise — the ways of collecting alternative data and putting it to good use are potentially limitless.

To sum up, DaaS marketplaces often use web scraping to collect alternative data, which may contain unique signals, and provide their customers with powerful cloud infrastructure they can use to analyze it according to their individual needs.

SaaS, DaaS, or… ?

Businesses and organizations have three ways of acquiring the alternative data they need. Let’s take a brief look at each in turn.

Web scraping with SaaS

The first method entails the use of web scraping software (e.g., via a customized scraper API) and an ethical proxy network from a reliable provider. This in-house approach comes with a substantial learning curve and requires a good deal of maintenance — e.g., when a website changes its HTML structure and content, the scraping pipelines can break. There are also potential legal issues, such as accidentally scraping sensitive data.

The main benefit of web scraping with SaaS is that you actually control the data you get. Which means that it’s easier to control its quality, to target specific data, and to maintain security, privacy, and compliance, especially if you’re gathering sensitive information. In addition, you get your data fast, at relatively low cost, and it comes in a structured form.

Buying ready-made datasets

The second method is to buy ready-made datasets that match your needs. While this does mean that you’ll be dependent on a specific vendor (or vendors) for updates and support, as well as somewhat limited customization options, you also get many benefits. For instance, since you’re buying a finished product, you can start using it immediately — no in-house data collection required, and no infrastructure-related overhead.

Ready-made datasets are relatively cheap, as licensing or subscription fees replace substantial upfront investments. Additionally, since you’re getting your data pre-packaged by a reputable vendor, it’s going to be of high quality. This is because companies that sell datasets use various data validation techniques to ensure its accuracy.

Sourcing from a DaaS marketplace

Finally, you may opt for getting your data from a DaaS marketplace, which combines data collection, storage, and management. Since we’ve already covered “vanilla” DaaS, it might be worthwhile mentioning Big Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS) here. In basic terms, what you get with BDaaS is not simply more data, but also a whole data analytics package designed to help companies extract the insights they need.

Given that, according to current projections, the BDaaS market value will reach over $52 billion by 2026, you might want to keep an eye on this in the future. For now, however, if you don’t have much experience in working with data, it’s probably best to sit this one out.

Final word

Ultimately, which method is best depends on your needs. Can you get the data you require in the form of standalone datasets? Does it make sense to collect it yourself using a custom SaaS web scraper? Or perhaps you need access to larger pools of data via something like BDaaS?

Before making that all important decision, make sure you’ve established exactly what type of data you actually require, and what is the easiest, most cost-effective way of obtaining it.

We list the cheapest proxy services.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

A bill scheduled for House and Senate votes on Wednesday would add an additional 0.75% to the daily room rate tax starting Jan. 1.

(Image credit: Jennifer Sinco Kelleher)

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for April 30.

Trump has made many changes to immigration policy in his first 100 days. Here are five you should know about.

(Image credit: Ariana Cubillos)

Noem was dining in Washington, D.C. when her purse went missing. Authorities believe at least two people worked together on a string of purse robberies in the city.

(Image credit: Alex Brandon)

The new Switch update lets you loan out games for up to 14 days.

Trump used his time on stage to luxuriate in the crowd's adoration, blame Joe Biden for various national problems, and insist that he, as president, is not getting the credit he deserves.

(Image credit: Scott Olson)

One executive order President Trump signed this week aims to expand legal protections for police accused of misconduct, seeking to establish pro bono legal assistance from private sector attorneys.

(Image credit: Evan Vucci)

The university's president convened two panels to study campus antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias last year. Harvard said it will begin implementing at least some of the reports' recommendations.

(Image credit: Charles Krupa)

Hansi Flick's team look to move a step closer to the treble as they host Internazionale.

Xfinity is our top ISP recommendation for York residents. If it isn't available in your area, consider these options.

• New website
• New panel
• New products

A2 Hosting is now hosting.com with a whole new website, promising new features and an updated hosting panel.

Hosting.com started life as A2 Hosting in 2001. The (old) name is a reflection of the place where it all started, Ann Arbour, in Michigan. The company was founded by Bryan Muthig and grew into a successful hosting company hosting 2M+ websites in over 40+ locations.

On the surprise transition, CEO Seb De Lamos said, "Super excited that A2 Hosting which for so long has been this paramount of hosting performance, amazing customer support, and so much more, that we've been able to take it and turn it into something which takes it to the next level."

The move is a reflection of the growth that Hosting.com has sustained and is purported to boost the brand increasing global recognition and build a larger interconnected community which will provide more opportunities to connect and learn.

Different name same values

Change can be scary but Hosting.com reassures users, "while our name is changing, our dedication to providing fantastic support and the reliable products you've come to expect remains the same." Adding, "You'll still have access to the same robust hosting solutions and the same team of experts ready to assist you 24/7."

In a blog post, Hosting.com stresses that this isn't about abandoning roots but rather expanding and growing the business on a global stage. The core values of reliability, speed, and customer satisfaction at the heart of A2 Hosting remain in Hosting.com.

Along with the different name, Hosting.com says other changes include greater resources which will be invested in infrastructure and technology to better support customer needs.

There will also be a new hosting panel. At first glance and a poke around the website a lot seems to have changed. Product names are new, the features included in plans are different and older products like dedicated hosting are hidden from the home page.

(Image credit: Hosting.com)

Hidden services still exist, you just need to find them via site:hosting.com via Google because they're not readily available from the home page. For example, one Hosting.com user reported to be disappointed with not being able to find Node.js hosting but a quick site:hosting.com "Node.js" reveals that this is still a service from Hosting.com.

This is a significant rebrand for Hosting.com and I'm looking forward to reviewing new products and services and seeing whether the changes can deliver on the promise of enhanced hosting features and infrastructure of an already well known and liked host.

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• My now out of date and soon to be updated Hosting.com (formally A2 Hosting) review
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Fifty years after the end of the war, Hanoi says nearly 200,000 Vietnamese soldiers are still missing. Some of their families are now calling on the U.S. to help find them.

• Meta has launched a new standalone app for its Meta AI assistant, powered by Llama 4
• The app connects across Meta platforms and devices, including Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses
• The Meta AI personalizes its behavior based on your Instagram and Facebook activity

Meta AI is moving into its own space with the launch of a new standalone app. Fueled by Meta's new Llama 4 AI model, the new app is simultaneously a standalone product and a replacement for Meta View, which was previously used to connect to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Meta’s making a big play here, positioning voice interactions as the most intuitive and natural way to interact with your AI. The app supports hands-free chatting and even includes a demo of full-duplex speech, a feature that lets you talk and listen at the same time.

That's very useful considering how keen Meta is to connect Meta AI with the company’s larger product portfolio, especially the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. These AI-enabled spectacles will now operate through the Meta AI app, replacing the Meta View app they currently rely on.

That means you can start a conversation on one platform and easily transition to another. All you need to do is open the Devices tab on the app and replicate your settings and saved information.

(Image credit: Meta)

Ask a question through your smart glasses, get a reply from Meta AI, and then pick up that same thread on your phone or desktop later. You can switch from voice chat in your glasses to reading the conversation in your app's history tab. For example, you could be on a walk and ask Meta AI through your glasses to find a nearby bookstore. The answer will be saved in your Meta AI app for later review.

The other major element of the Meta AI app is the Discover feed. You can see publicly shared things like successful prompt ideas and images they've generated on the feed, then remix them for your own purposes.

Additionally, the desktop version of Meta AI is also getting revamped with a new interface and more image generation options. There's also an experimental document editor for composing and editing text, adding visuals, and exporting it as a PDF.

Meta AI all over

Meta has spent many months spreading Meta AI across Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp, but now, this is the first time Meta AI isn't hosted within another mobile app.

The AI’s connection to Meta’s other apps does give it an edge (or a flaw, depending on your view) by allowing it to adapt its behavior based on what you do on those other apps. Meta AI draws on your Instagram and Facebook activity to personalize its answers.

Ask it where to go for dinner, and it might suggest a ramen spot your friend posted about last week. Ask for tips on an upcoming vacation, and it’ll remember you once posted that you love to “travel light but overpack emotionally” and suggest an itinerary that might fit that attitude.

Meta clearly wants Meta AI to be central in all your digital activities. The way the company pitches the app, it seems like you'll always be checking in with it, whether on your phone or on your head.

There are obvious parallels with the ChatGPT app in terms of style. But Meta seems to want to differentiate its app from OpenAI’s creation by emphasizing the personal over the broader utility of an AI assistant.

And if there’s one thing Meta has more of than nearly anyone, it’s personal data. Meta AI tapping into your social data, voice habits, and even your smart glasses to deliver responses designed for you feels very on-brand.

The idea of Meta AI forming a mental scrapbook of your life based on what you liked on Instagram or posted on Facebook might not appeal to everyone, of course. But if you're concerned, you can always put on the smart glasses and ask Meta AI for help.

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