IBM is buying data infrastructure company Confluent for $11 billion in cash in a bid to bolster its data and automation products as ever more companies move their tech operations to the cloud and deploy AI technology.

Paramount has launched a $108.4 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, calling Netflix's $83 billion arrangement to purchase the entertainment giant's studios and streaming service "inferior." The Paramount proposal, unlike Netflix's, would also include the linear networks owned by WBD.

Paramount says its deal offers a "superior alternative to the Netflix transaction," citing the potential for a long regulatory approval process "with an uncertain outcome." In an interview with CNBC's David Faber, Paramount Chairman and CEO David Ellison dodged a question about whether his father, Larry Ellison, would sell shares to fund th …

Read the full story at The Verge.

If anything, Microsoft is consistent at, it is filing new patents, and there’s one that went live recently. Windows Latest found a new patent titled “IN_EAR AUTHENTICATION” that imagines buds with a new built-in authentication that would make it difficult for anybody to steal your buds, and the idea could also be modified to use as a Windows Hello method.

Microsoft is not exactly out of the hardware business. It still makes Surface laptops, but the company is no longer innovating. Or to put it simply, Surface has lost its original purpose, which was to guide manufacturers with new form factors.

Regardless, that does not mean Microsoft cannot patent new ideas. It’s also worth noting that some of the unexpected ideas have turned into a real product, such as the Surface Duo or Neo (got canned).

This particular patented bud is interesting because it could actually authenticate who you are using the shape of your ear, your blood flow, and how sound bounces around inside your ear canal. Microsoft’s inventors describe the buds as “biometric authentication and personalization earbuds.”

Why are these buds special?

In the patent, Microsoft says the buds can  “determine and use user-specific (e.g., unique) biometric markers… to authenticate users, enable or adjust earbud operation(s) based on authentication, and/or personalize earbud operation(s) for users.”

The idea is to build biometric authentication directly into Surface-style earbuds, so they can use in-ear sensors to quietly check who is wearing them and then adjust how they work.

The patent describes a system that uses the shape of your ear, your blood flow and how sound bounces around inside your ear canal to verify your identity and personalize audio experiences at the same time, instead of just playing sound like a dumb Bluetooth accessory.

The patent explains that “upon insertion, earbuds automatically authenticate the user by analyzing the user’s biometric markers in comparison to one or more authenticated user biomarker profiles.”

That’s a lot more than today’s “in-ear detection”. You are not going to find these features on the original Surface buds, or newer Apple AirPods and Galaxy EarBuds.

That means when you take the buds out of the case and use them, it’ll connect to Windows 11 immediately, and simply check if it’s really you. Once the buds verify it’s you, it signals Windows or any device to enable your personalized music experience.

It describes an earbud “communicatively coupled/connected to one or more host devices” and adds that these hosts can be “a mobile phone (e.g., ‘smart phone’), a wearable computing device… or a stationary computing device such as a desktop computer or PC (personal computer), or a server.”

Since the buds has authentication, could it be also used for Windows Hello? Perhaps, but this is not mentioned in the patent. Right now, you can unlock your computer with face, fingerprint, or PIN instead of your inner ear.

How can an earbud authenticate?

You might wonder how an earbud could be used to authenticate a user mean.. buds go inside your ears, right? It does not have a fingerprint senor nor an iris scanner, then how does it work?

Windows Latest found that Microsoft has three main biometric sources in these patented buds:

• pressure patterns
• blood flow
• and acoustic response.

These metrics, coupled with buds’ built-in pressure sensors, which can read how your ear physically presses on them, enable authentication.

The document says earbud components include “pressure/force sensors configured to detect the (e.g., unique) pressure patterns caused by the earbud user’s ear (e.g., inner ear canal and/or outer ear).”

These sensors are arranged in patterns: “an array of pressure/force sensors arranged in layers, rows, columns, etc.” The profiler module then “generates a first biometric marker from the pressure samples” and stores that as part of an “in-ear biometric profile of the authorized user.”

There’s also an in-ear heart-related sensor, and these sensors “generate blood volume samples… [and] measure blood volume variation in the ear canal.”

The patent notes that “blood volume changes in the user’s ear… is generally unique to each individual,” and those signals are used to “create a blood flow/heartbeat/blood pressure profile… to compare to a blood flow/heartbeat/blood pressure profile for an authorized user.”

However, this fancy idea is still a patent. We don’t know if Microsoft’s leadership ever realize the potential in the hardware businesses, especially at a time when the company is not getting big on the Xbox console business.

What do you think? Should Microsoft start making innovative hardware again?

The post New Microsoft patent shows off Surface Earbuds that authenticate you from inside your ear appeared first on Windows Latest

At the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, we sat down with Dana Lawson, CTO of Netlify, ahead of her upcoming talk.

As technology accelerates, the way we build and deploy applications is transforming at its core. Leading that transformation is Dana, who has guided engineering teams through major transitions at GitHub, Heptio, and now Netlify.

In our conversation, she shared her vision for the future of web development and what engineers will need to succeed in the next few years.

The composable, agent-driven future

Lawson sees the future of web architecture moving decisively toward composability and automation-driven responsiveness. She highlights three trends that will redefine development over the next three to five years.

First, companies are dismantling monolithic applications in favor of micro-frontends. Teams now design for both human users and AI agents, forcing them to rethink performance from the ground up.

Second, composable architecture is taking hold, a headless, microservice-inspired approach that makes systems extensible and resilient:

The goal is easy extensibility, because we genuinely don’t know what’s coming next.

The third, and most disruptive, shift centers on how data gets consumed. AI agents, not humans, are calling APIs, which drives an intense need for speed. Edge computing, caching, and edge-first rendering are no longer best practices; they are now baseline requirements.

Scale your team with trust, not bureaucracy

To meet these new technical demands, engineering leaders must rethink how they scale teams. Lawson argues that traditional models like Spotify’s are giving way to leaner, flatter organizations.

“The expectation is that individuals in tech can now do more,” she says. This shift favors teams with fewer layers of management, broader spans of control, and higher autonomy. To sustain velocity and creativity, Lawson emphasizes three cultural pillars:

• Adopt a growth mindset and integrate AI tools into daily workflows.
• Develop design sensibility, what Lawson calls “taste,” as engineers move toward live, one-click prototyping.
• Maintain alignment across horizontal teams, since less bureaucracy means coordination becomes both harder and more crucial.

Does the full-stack developer still exist?

As complexity spreads across the frontend, backend, and edge, many question whether the “full-stack developer” still exists. Lawson insists the role is not obsolete; it is evolving.

“Agents have now unlocked us to be truly full-stack,” she explains. Developers can master one domain and rely on AI to fill gaps in another, removing the friction of cross-team handoffs.

Lawson compares this moment to the rise of DevOps:

It’s the same premise. Twenty-six years ago, SysAdmins felt threatened by DevOps. It evolved, and now we’re one step further. Developers are gaining even more control of their systems.

In her view, the developer role is not disappearing – it is expanding. As barriers to entry drop, citizen developers such as PMs, designers, and entrepreneurs are joining the ranks. Professional engineers must adapt, sharpening their skills and embracing the new, AI-augmented workflow.

Agents can do the work, but humans still run the show

Even with smarter tools and modular architectures, Lawson sees one major challenge left: closing the “last mile” of getting an idea online.

Modern coding tools have simplified development, but deployment and management still demand effort, especially from new developers. As companies introduce AI into their pipelines, Lawson advises them to apply the same security and compliance guardrails used during the DevOps revolution.

You want to make sure you’re not leaking data or secrets, and that you’re not trusting agents blindly.

Teams need transparent documentation, well-defined context files, and clear rules for how code moves through the development lifecycle.

For Lawson, the next generation of technologists must focus as much on soft skills as on code. As agents take over more execution, human collaboration becomes the differentiator. She encourages young developers to lean into teamwork, communication, and empathy, skills that will define success in an increasingly horizontal industry.

The post Unlock Your True Full-Stack Potential with AI Agents appeared first on ShiftMag.

There's a distinct shift in how enterprises are talking about their AI solutions. Speed and flashiness are giving way to steadier, slower, more focused AI strategies for companies, where market fit and proof points are more important than ever.

TL;DR

Fleet started as our attempt to explore a new generation of JetBrains IDEs, developed in parallel with those based on the IntelliJ Platform. Over time, we learned that having two general-purpose IDE families created confusion and diluted our focus. Rebuilding the full capabilities of IntelliJ-based IDEs inside Fleet did not create enough value, and positioning Fleet as yet another editor did not justify maintaining two overlapping product lines.

Starting December 22, 2025, Fleet will no longer be available for download. We are now building a new product focused on agentic development.

Fleet vs. IntelliJ-based IDEs

For many years, JetBrains focused on IntelliJ-based IDEs, which served as the primary environment for most developers. When we started Fleet, our goal was to explore a lighter architecture, a modern UI model, and a more flexible environment free from decades of legacy architectural decisions. It was a worthwhile experiment, and from both a technical and design perspective, it was a success. Many Fleet components now power JetBrains IDEs, and several UX and UI concepts have been adopted throughout our product lineup.

However, Fleet did not succeed as a standalone product. We could neither replace IntelliJ IDEA with Fleet nor narrow it into a clear, differentiated niche. We suddenly had two IDE families aimed at largely the same audience, with overlapping purposes. Users kept asking which one to choose, and the answer was never short or satisfying. Two similar products created friction and raised questions about ownership and long-term investment.

What we tried with Fleet

We initially positioned Fleet as a lightweight multi-language IDE and then as an editor with smart coding assistance. For some time, we seriously considered whether Fleet could become a second flagship IDE family alongside IntelliJ-based tools. User feedback was consistent: If you already work with IntelliJ IDEA, Rider, WebStorm, PyCharm, or any other JetBrains IDE, switching to Fleet required a strong reason – and Fleet did not offer enough value to justify the transition from IDEs you already know and love.

When AI matured, we explored Fleet as an AI-first editor. We built new workflows and conducted large-scale user research to understand potential differentiation and long-term value. We confirmed that another AI editor would not stand out, especially in a market filled with AI-first VS Code forks. It became increasingly clear that the best path forward was to strengthen AI workflows in our existing IDEs. However, rapid progress in AI revealed a different niche where Fleet fits much more naturally.

What this new niche looks like

While we worked on AI within the editor, a new development workflow began to take shape. Developers started delegating meaningful tasks to agents – updating tests, cleaning code, refactoring modules, exploring unfamiliar code paths, and even building new features. These tasks run asynchronously and return full patches. The developer doesn’t write the code themselves. They guide the agent and review its output. This is fundamentally different from the classic IDE workflow, which is based on immediate feedback, synchronous control, and a single stable local state.

The agentic loop relies on structured task definition, context assembly, multiple asynchronous runs, isolated execution, and review-first workflows. Combining them in a single tool results in a disjointed experience, so the Fleet team chose to stop competing with IDEs and code editors and instead build a product focused on agentic workflows. This led to a pivot to a new product: an agentic development environment. Based on the Fleet platform, this new environment will ship as a new product with a new name. The technology, team, and long-term direction continue – but the product identity and the target market evolve.

What changes for current Fleet users

We will stop releasing any further updates for Fleet. Distribution will also end, so you will no longer be able to download Fleet from the Toolbox App or other channels starting December 22, 2025.

If you have already downloaded Fleet, you can continue using it. However, some features that rely on our server-side services, including AI Assistant, may stop working over time.

We will continue to share updates about the new product as the work progresses. Stay tuned!