From Lagos to Nairobi

I’ve been fortunate to have a few mentors who influenced the shape of my career at its formative stages. One of those people was Tom Mitchell, who unexpectedly passed away last November at the age of 76. I met Tom in February 1993 on a surprisingly pleasant weather day in Houston when I was interviewing…

While this is about the changes in the microprocessor market and the impact of tariffs, I’ve also been extremely disappointed in Microsoft’s AI rollout. Right now, I’m working in Microsoft Word on one of HP’s latest laptops, and it asked if I wanted AI to help write this month’s column. I gave initial direction on…

Researchers at the University of Waterloo’s Cheriton School of Computer Science in Canada found that modifying just 30 lines of code in the Linux kernel could cut data center energy consumption by 30% to 45%. Linux dominates data centers, where energy use is a growing concern. A more efficient Linux kernel could also lower operating…

A wave of disruption is sweeping through AI. Meta’s recent unveiling at LlamaCon 2025 of the roadmap for its Llama family of large language models (LLMs) paints a compelling picture, one where open source isn’t just a preference, but the very engine driving AI’s future. If Meta’s vision comes to fruition, we’re not just looking at incremental…

Most online retailers deploy analytics software that can generate insights into how shoppers engage — which products they search for, how they navigate categories and brands, which activity correlates with purchases, and so on. Because of these analytics tools, online retailers tend to assume that whenever they need to know how to optimize e-commerce search,…

AI may be ushering in a new breed of malicious threat actors who know even less about hacking than script kiddies but can produce professional-grade hacking tools. In a report released Tuesday, Cato CTRL, the threat intelligence arm of cybersecurity company Cato Networks, explained how one of its researchers, who had no malware coding experience, tricked…