file system
Windows 11 will lock the file system on some USB sticks and SD cards in 2027
The Dell Laptop Buying Guide UK: Which Dell Laptop Should You Buy? When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. In 2027, a particular file system will no longer be recognized or supported by Windows. Storage devices that use this file system will then be virtually unusable. Here's what you need to know.
SD cards cost way more now. Here's how to make yours last
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. SD cards cost way more now. Here's how to make yours last Memory card prices have jumped. Get the most out of yours by understanding how they die and what you can do to keep them going. Thanks to AI data centers, consumer SSDs, flash drives, and SD/microSD cards have doubled or even tripled in price.
The AI_INFN Platform: Artificial Intelligence Development in the Cloud
Anderlini, Lucio, Bianchini, Giulio, Ciangottini, Diego, Pra, Stefano Dal, Michelotto, Diego, Petrini, Rosa, Spiga, Daniele
Machine Learning (ML) is profoundly reshaping the way researchers create, implement, and operate data-intensive software. Its adoption, however, introduces notable challenges for computing infrastructures, particularly when it comes to coordinating access to hardware accelerators across development, testing, and production environments. The INFN initiative AI_INFN (Artificial Intelligence at INFN) seeks to promote the use of ML methods across various INFN research scenarios by offering comprehensive technical support, including access to AI-focused computational resources. Leveraging the INFN Cloud ecosystem and cloud-native technologies, the project emphasizes efficient sharing of accelerator hardware while maintaining the breadth of the Institute's research activities. This contribution describes the deployment and commissioning of a Kubernetes-based platform designed to simplify GPU-powered data analysis workflows and enable their scalable execution on heterogeneous distributed resources. By integrating offload-ing mechanisms through Virtual Kubelet and the InterLink API, the platform allows workflows to span multiple resource providers, from Worldwide LHC Computing Grid sites to high-performance computing centers like CINECA Leonardo. We will present preliminary benchmarks, functional tests, and case studies, demonstrating both performance and integration outcomes.
Aegis: Taxonomy and Optimizations for Overcoming Agent-Environment Failures in LLM Agents
Song, Kevin, Jayarajan, Anand, Ding, Yaoyao, Su, Qidong, Zhu, Zhanda, Liu, Sihang, Pekhimenko, Gennady
Large Language Models (LLMs) agents augmented with domain tools promise to autonomously execute complex tasks requiring human-level intelligence, such as customer service and digital assistance. However, their practical deployment is often limited by their low success rates under complex real-world environments. To tackle this, prior research has primarily focused on improving the agents themselves, such as developing strong agentic LLMs, while overlooking the role of the system environment in which the agent operates. In this paper, we study a complementary direction: improving agent success rates by optimizing the system environment in which the agent operates. We collect 142 agent traces (3,656 turns of agent-environment interactions) across 5 state-of-the-art agentic benchmarks. By analyzing these agent failures, we propose a taxonomy for agent-environment interaction failures that includes 6 failure modes. Guided by these findings, we design Aegis, a set of targeted environment optimizations: 1) environment observability enhancement, 2) common computation offloading, and 3) speculative agentic actions. These techniques improve agent success rates on average by 6.7-12.5%, without any modifications to the agent and underlying LLM.