Google has added an agent step to its Opal tool for building AI-powered mini-apps. Powered by the Gemini 3 Flash model, the new agent in Opal enables autonomous workflows that plan, reason, and execute on the user’s behalf, Google said. Introduced February 24 and available to all Opal users, the agent step upgrades Opal workflows

Java Development Kit (JDK) 26, a planned update to standard Java due March 17, 2026, has reached its second release candidate (RC) stage. The RC is open for critical bug fixes, with the feature set having been frozen in December. The following 10 features are officially targeted to JDK 26: a fourth preview of primitive

It’s tough out here for a dev/tech writer. Back in the before days (that is, about two months ago), you could always find a variety of topics to write about. “Seven ways to improve your database design,” say. Or  “Five things I never do in code.”  There were a ton of things that developers were concerned

MariaDB may have started as a MySQL fork, following Oracle’s acquisition of MySQL, but with time it’s charted its own path. Over the last few major revisions, the open source RDBMS has added unique functions, greater compatibility with MySQL, and a suite of behaviors designed to make it a migration target for Oracle SQL users.

Anthropic has accused three Chinese AI developers of running large-scale campaigns to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude model to improve their own systems. The company claims DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax used a distillation technique, where a less capable model is trained on the outputs of a more advanced one. More than 16 million interactions

A Windows launch isn’t the end a process — it’s really just the beginning. Microsoft continually works on improving Windows 11 by fixing bugs, releasing security patches, and occasionally adding new features. In this story we summarize what you need to know about each update released to the public for the most recent version of

Nvidia is developing a system-on-chip (SoC) for Windows PCs, with Dell and Lenovo among the OEMs planning to build notebooks and desktops around the processor later this year. The chip would be based on the GB10, which Nvidia developed with MediaTek and launched in October 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with

For the first time, AWS has confirmed that one of its AI systems did indeed delete and recreate one of its environments in December, shutting down part of that service for about 13 hours. What happened behind the scenes — including an aggressive AWS statement against the media outlet that initially reported the issue —

Illustrating the extent to which it is willing to work with the Trump Administration — and as President Donald J. Trump prepares for tonight’s State of the Union address — Apple now says it will begin to make Mac minis in Houston later this year. The Macs will be made at the same factory where the company now

A suggestion by Anthropic that its Claude Code tool could be used to automate the modernization of an antediluvian programming language, COBOL, still an important sideline for IBM six decades after it was first deployed, sent IBM stock tumbling on Monday. The company suffered a 13.2%  drop in its stock price, its biggest fall since