TL;DR: Grab a grade-A refurbished Apple Mac mini M2 (from 2023), with 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD, for just $459.99 (reg. $599) — inventory won’t last. Professionals looking to upgrade their workspace with Apple’s latest tech have a limited-time opportunity: a grade-A refurbished Apple Mac mini M2 (early 2023) is currently available at just $459.99 (regularly $599). For users who require fast, reliable performance in a compact footprint, this Mac mini offers an ideal balance of power, versatility, and affordability. At the heart of this sleek desktop is Apple’s impressive M2 chip, which provides outstanding performance enhancements over previous generations. With an 8-core CPU, a 10-core GPU, and a 16-core Neural Engine, the Mac mini effortlessly handles demanding tasks — such as 8K video editing, complex multitasking, graphic-intensive workloads, and even professional-level coding and software development. Professionals in creative fields will appreciate the Mac mini’s seamless integration with Apple’s ecosystem, allowing easy transfer of files through AirDrop, use of Universal Control to multitask across devices, or Sidecar for turning your iPad into a second screen. With built-in advanced privacy features, your data remains secure, protected by Apple’s Secure Enclave and system-wide malware defenses. Connectivity is another strength. The Mac mini M2 boasts Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 6E, HDMI output supporting resolutions up to 8K, Ethernet, USB-A ports, and a headphone jack — perfect for setting up powerful multi-display workstations or integrating seamlessly with existing setups. Its unified memory architecture ensures smooth transitions between heavy applications, dramatically improving workflow efficiency. This grade-A refurbished Mac mini is rigorously inspected and tested to ensure it performs like new, arriving in near-mint condition with minimal to no visible wear. This offers remarkable value for professionals who demand quality but prefer cost savings. Inventory is strictly limited, making this an opportunity worth acting on quickly. Get the refurbished Mac mini M2 for $459.99 (reg. $599) with free shipping. StackSocial prices subject to change. source

Alorica, a global leader in customer experience solutions serving Fortune 500 companies, has positioned itself at the forefront of AI innovation in customer service, developing solutions that directly address client needs while elevating agent capabilities. With operations around the world, Alorica leverages AI to transform how businesses connect with their customers. Michael Clifton, who joined as CIO and is now co-CEO, discusses his dual focus on commercial AI products as well as internal productivity, and provides fresh lessons learned on driving value from AI. At Alorica, you develop AI commercial products for your clients while leveraging AI for internal productivity use cases. What are some examples of your AI products? Our business is customer experience, whether we deliver that experience by phone, chat, web, and all the other channels our clients offer their customers for a seamless and enjoyable experience. So to maintain our value, we’re always evolving our products. In the context of voice, that means giving our clients’ customers the right information quickly, with a clear dialect, and with increasing levels of automation. source

By Spencer Brewer ( April 15, 2025, 10:31 PM EDT) — X Corp. systematically copied a startup’s video sharing technology while stringing it along with promises of a partnership, VidStream LLC told a Dallas jury during closing arguments Tuesday in a $632 million intellectual property suit that has spanned nearly a decade…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

In conversations, retailers tell us that they’re losing site traffic — anywhere from 15% to half over the past year. Reasons vary: One retailer asked us how to adapt to AI-integrated search, attributing their fall to conversational search features like Google’s AI Overviews displacing clicks that would, pre-ChatGPT, have landed on their site. Another attributed their site traffic’s decline to a powerful confluence of shifting search behaviors, macroeconomic uncertainty, and consumers’ persistent fickleness. These retailers, along with many like them, are on to something. Site traffic (and sales) are falling because: AI-integrated search facilitates zero-click searches. Conversational search features like Perplexity’s benefit consumers at retailers’ expense. Thirty-seven percent of consumers surveyed in Forrester’s Market Research Online Community already use conversational search features whenever they can. Scores of shoppers across America discover, compare, and commit to products and services without clicking through to retailers’ sites. As conversational search progresses to agentic search, where bots become sites’ main visitors, site traffic will fall further. Boycotts are impacting traffic and spend. Google Trends shows that the term “Target boycott” first spiked in popularity at the end of January, when Target announced the rollback of its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Retail Brew reports that Placer.ai data shows that Target’s year-over-year weekly foot traffic is down as much as 8.8% and was down the week of March 31 for the ninth week in a row. The terms “Amazon boycott” and “Walmart boycott” are spiking, too. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon stated that customers are exhibiting “stressed behaviors,” which has already cut more than $20 billion from the company’s valuation. US consumers are cautious due to economic uncertainty. Other movements such as “no buy 2025” are also limiting retailers’ traffic. US retail and food services sales were up slightly in February of this year (3.1%) versus the previous year, but the increase is almost equivalent to the rate of inflation over that time (2.8%). Consumers aren’t necessarily purchasing more, but they’re paying more. What to do about it: Play to your strengths. Market the areas of your assortment that are less commoditized or more essential to consumers. Do you have products “made in the USA”? Are you the exclusive distributor of certain product lines? Shift your focus to goods that are essential, specialized, or less competitive. Rethink search marketing measurement. The days of goaling search marketers on increasing traffic are over. Focus less on ranking, average position, and clickthrough rate. Measure search engine results page saturation, brand visibility, share of search, and share of web. Maximize real estate across search experiences by developing increasingly specific content, doubling down on E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) and upskilling SEO. Incentivize the win-win. Do some payment methods cost you less to process? Incentivize those — including cash. Make them more appealing by passing on discounts to consumers who use those methods. (Shout out to Lily Varon for this tip!) Are some fulfillment methods less expensive for you? Incentivize those — including customer pickup. Offer quick turnaround (such as providing same-day pickup if consumers order by a certain time) and make sure the curbside, locker, or in-store pickup experience is fast and easy. If you can skip fulfillment and shipping costs, share the benefits with customers. Dial back genAI if the short-term impact isn’t clear. This one is controversial, we know. Where else in commerce tech is anyone talking about less AI?! But … it’s expensive. While many retailers try to justify retaining their tech, vendors will have to provide cost concessions to win retention. Throttling down (but not eliminating) the use of genAI is one way to manage costs at a time when cash flow is in sharp focus. And remember, you don’t have to go it alone. We’re here for you. Book a guidance session with Nikhil Lai for your performance marketing (including SEM and SEO) needs and Emily Pfeiffer for your commerce, site search, and order management questions. source

President Donald Trump’s trade policies — particularly with major tech exporter China — stand to have a big impact on IT department budgets. While the saga of back-and-forth tariffs seems far from over, experts say there are ways CIOs can manage budgets to brace for outcomes. CIOs are under tremendous pressure with digital transformation needs rising — along with demand for GenAI — at a fever pitch. With a volatile geopolitical and economic landscape, IT leaders face a real headache when it comes to planning. The ongoing trade saga has many economists warning of a coming recession. Last week, JP Morgan increased their prediction on the likelihood of recession from 40% to 60%, while S&P Global pegged recession probability at 35%. The Trump administration tariff saga began in February, starting with new tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China — those tariffs were paused for 30 days and reinstated with some exemptions. Earlier this month, the administration announced a new package of “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of nations, which tariffs on China’s goods rocketing to 34%. After a severe US stock market rout, Trump paused the new tariffs (except) for those on China, sending stocks soaring back. The back-and-forth saw China retaliate, with Trump raising the total import levy for China’s goods to 145%; China shot back with 125% retaliatory tariffs on US imports. Late last week, Trump announced that certain electronics, semiconductors, phones, computers and flat screens would be exempted. However, on Sunday he wavered on semiconductor exemptions, and said that semiconductor tariffs would come soon. It’s unclear how long any exemptions would apply. Related:How to Tell When You’re Working Your IT Team Too Hard The trade war seems far from over, as China has so far refused direct negotiations with US leaders. Tech leaders are forced to try to keep up with a fluid situation with budgets that were already tight. The Cost of Trade Chaos “IT infrastructure will likely see significant price increases as major manufacturing nations face high tariff rates, especially in the US,” says Mark Moccia, vice president and research director for Forrester’s CIO practice. “The rising costs could balloon budgets and force CIOs to delay or prioritize the most important projects.” But with uncertainty about where the tariffs will land, IT leaders face a difficult task in adapting for increased costs. “Nobody has a clue where this is going to go,” Moccia tells InformationWeek in a live chat. “And it will change day-to-day. It’s really hard for CIOs to have to adjust in real time like that.” Related:3 Ways to Build a Culture of Experimentation to Fuel Innovation According to Deloitte, IT budgets for companies average 5.49% of revenue. With new AI projects taking a bite out of that spend, increasing hardware costs could be a significant drain on tight budgets. In March, China’s exports jumped 12.4% from a year earlier as businesses stockpile tech and other goods to get ahead of tariff increases, according to Reuters. Large businesses with more cash on hand were in a better position to stock up, Moccia says. What Can CIOs Do? Jim DuBois, consultant, author and former Microsoft CIO, thinks there may be a silver lining. “The willingness to pause tariffs seems to indicate that the tariffs are more a negotiating tactic than something planned to continue,” he tells InformationWeek in an email interview. “CIOs should be opportunistic about needed purchases in the current uncertainty, thoughtful about how they can influence their own company’s pricing, and double down on using AI to drive efficiency and cost savings.” Forrester’s Moccia, co-author of the firm’s report, “Technology Leaders: How to Thrive Through Volatility,” cautions against knee-jerk cuts that could impact the company’s prospects. “CIOs and other tech leaders will need to proactively analyze costs, diversify sourcing, optimize inventory and prioritize the projects that don’t sacrifice critical AI ambitions,” Moccia says, adding that staff reduction should be the last resort. “We urge CIOs to lean more heavily into other methods of spend optimization before drastically reducing labor expenses. Minimizing cuts to IT staff will allow for existing personnel to buy down more technical debt [and] improve data management capabilities to set up AI deployments for success.” Related:Today’s Technology Should Be Designed By and For All Minds Moccia says IT leaders can use lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We were in kind of a similar situation where we just didn’t really know where it was going — with economic chaos in the markets and supply chain constraints,” he says. “And those persisted for a while. So, you did see some similar behaviors where organizations that were thinking ahead and had the capital went out and bought a ton immediately and brought it in-house. They had what they needed to execute. And others just sort of paused, or maybe they didn’t have the capital to take advantage. It’s a similar scenario.” source

By Peter Afrasiabi ( April 10, 2025, 4:11 PM EDT) — Executive branch actions targeted at law firms are not new in our history, but such actions risk damaging the functioning of the legal system…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Enterprise retrieval augmented generation (RAG) remains integral to the current agentic AI craze. Taking advantage of the continued interest in agents, Cohere released the latest version of its embeddings model with longer context windows and more multimodality.  Cohere’s Embed 4 builds on the multimodal updates of Embed 3 and adds more capabilities around unstructured data. Thanks to a 128,000 token context window, organizations can generate embeddings for documents with around 200 pages.  “Existing embedding models fail to natively understand complex multimodal business materials,‬‭ leading companies to develop cumbersome data pre-processing pipelines that only slightly‬‭ improve accuracy,” Cohere said in a blog post. “Embed 4 solves this problem, allowing enterprises and their employees to‬‭ efficiently surface insights that are hidden within mountains of unsearchable information.‬” Enterprises can deploy Embed 4 on virtual private clouds or on-premise technology stacks for added data security.  Companies can generate embeddings to transform their documents or other data into numerical representations for RAG use cases. Agents can then reference these embeddings to answer prompts.  Domain-specific knowledge Embed 4 “excels in regulated industries” like finance, healthcare and manufacturing, the company said. Cohere, which mainly focuses on enterprise AI use cases, said its models consider the security needs of regulated sectors and have a strong understanding of businesses. The company trained Embed 4 “to be robust against noisy real-world data” in that it remains accurate despite the “imperfections” of enterprise data, such as spelling mistakes and formatting issues.  “It is also performant at searching over scanned documents and‬ handwriting. These formats are common in legal paperwork, insurance invoices, and expense‬ receipts. This capability eliminates the need for complex data preparations or pre-processing‭ pipelines, saving businesses time and operational costs,” Cohere said.  Organizations can use Embed 4 for investor presentations, due diligence files, clinical trial reports, repair guides and product documents.  ‭ The model supports more than 100 languages, just like the previous version of the model.  Agora, a customer of Cohere, used Embed 4 for its AI search engine and found that the model could surface relevant products. “E-commerce data is complex, containing images and multifaceted text descriptions. Being able to‬ represent our products in a unified embedding makes our search faster and our internal tooling more‬ efficient,” said Param Jaggi, Founder of Agora‬, in the blog post.  Agent use cases Cohere argues that models like Embed 4 would improve agentic use cases and claims it can be “the optimal search engine” for agents and AI assistants across an enterprise. “In addition to‬‭ strong accuracy across data types, the model delivers enterprise-grade efficiency,” Cohere said. “This allows it‬ to scale to meet the demands of large organizations.” Cohere added that Embed 4 creates compressed data embeddings to cut high storage costs.  Embeddings and RAG-based searches let the agent reference specific documents to fulfill request-related tasks. Many believe these provide more accurate results, ensuring the agents do not respond with incorrect or hallucinated answers.  Other embedding models that Cohere competes against include Qodo’s Qodo-Embed-1-1.5B and models from Voyage AI, which database vendor MongoDB recently acquired.   ‭ source

Feature management and experimentation is a broad set of capabilities that spans both software delivery and product management. With feature management, engineering teams can engage in the practice of progressive delivery wherein features are deployed with flags turned off, tested in production, and then gradually turned on to a progressively larger audience of users until the new feature is completely released. This mechanism can be used for new features, but the most common use case is safely managing continuous updates. Experimentation has a different purpose. Product managers use experimentation to run A/B tests to compare two similar products in production with KPIs such as engagement, return visits, sales, size of shopping carts, or telemetry on how quickly a user can complete a task. The combination of feature management and experimentation has been good for product teams. More often than not, however, feature flags are the domain of developers and experimentation is the domain of product and marketing. This is causing a shift in how the two roles are being served. For feature management, developers are the primary persona and, as such, look to feature management capabilities as an alternative and/or compliment to traditional test-in-production techniques such as blue-green and canary testing. This enables additional mechanisms to release new code into production. The developer persona views a feature management system almost as if it were part of the application architecture or infrastructure. For experimentation, a growing use case is personalization. The advent of AI is enabling experience designers to deliver experiences that are based on user behavior. The capabilities for A/B testing are there, but they serve a more sophisticated purpose: to tailor the experience to the user’s needs. This is not the realm of developers — it belongs to sophisticated experience designers who work with social science and marketing experts to create experiences that drive product usage and retainment. This brings us to the future of the Forrester Wave™ covering feature management and experimentation. It straddles two very different personas and two distinctly different use cases. The evolution of these two use cases is occurring rapidly but separately. For feature flags, it’s happening in integrated DevOps platforms and best-of-breed tools. For experimentation, it’s happening in experience design suites. While there are excellent vendor offerings that continue to serve both use cases, by and large, these use cases are being served by separate technology markets. For these reasons, we are retiring the Forrester Wave for feature management and experimentation. We will continue to cover elements of it in other Wave evaluations. To gain buyer insight when shopping for feature management capabilities, consult our upcoming Wave on DevOps platforms. To gain buyer insight on experimentation capabilities, check out our Wave on experience optimization solutions. To ask me questions about this change, clients can schedule an inquiry or guidance session with me. source

For the 2025 Specops Weak Password Report, researchers analyzed around 1.089 billion stolen passwords and found that the most commonly breached passwords consisted of eight characters. Alarmingly, out of the one billion compromised passwords, almost 230 million would be considered complex. This means they had a minimum of eight characters, a capital letter, a number, and a special character. This shows how advanced hacking techniques have become in recent years, reinforcing the need for a secure and reliable password management service. Password managers are designed to eliminate weak passwords and make it much harder for attackers to compromise credentials. In this article, we discuss five reasons why you should use a password manager. What is a password manager? A password manager is software that stores passwords, usernames, and other login information in an encrypted vault. They can be hosted on the cloud or on-prem and can cater to both individual users and organizations alike. Examples of password manager providers include Bitwarden, 1Password, Keeper, Dashlane, LastPass, and NordPass. For a more detailed guide, check out our full Password Manager Cheat Sheet that dives into password managers in-depth. While this all sounds neat and nifty, you may be asking, “Why not just use the trusty pen and paper?” to store all your passwords. Well, here are five reasons why a password manager is definitely worth considering. 5 reasons why you need a password manager 1. Your passwords are too simple This is the biggest reason, bar none. If you’re using passwords that you can easily remember (such as password, password123, happyhappyjoyjoy, etc.), you’re at risk. Why? Simple passwords are easier to crack. With the right tools (and enough horsepower), a hacker can crack those simple passwords in seconds or minutes. Because of this, you want to make sure that the passwords you use are hard (if not impossible) to remember. A good rule of thumb is that if you can easily remember a password, it’s probably easy to crack. The harder that password is to remember, the harder it is to crack. So when you use such difficult passwords, you need a vault to house them. That’s where a password manager comes into play. Dashlane password manager user interface. Image: Luis Millares 2. Password managers include random password generators Speaking of complicated passwords, you shouldn’t try to come up with complicated passwords on your own, or you’ll wind up with variations on your usual theme. Instead, you need a password manager that includes a random password generator to create very complicated passwords. Most password managers, such as Bitwarden, allow you to configure how complicated the password is. With these tools, you can generate passwords that are 20 random characters long or even unpronounceable, random phrases. Make use of these tools, and your passwords will be very complicated and, therefore, strong. Bitwarden password generator. Image: Luis Millares 3. You only need to remember one password With a password manager, you only need to remember one password — the one used to gain access to your stored passwords. This is called the Master Password. With this in place, you don’t have to worry about remembering all those new and highly complex passwords generated by the manager. Open the managing tool, type your Master Password and locate the password you need. The one caveat to this is to make sure your vault password isn’t simple. It doesn’t need to be overly complex, just not obvious. Creating a master password in NordPass. Image: Luis Millares 4. The numbers are against you How many accounts do you have which require a password? Tens? Hundreds? The more accounts you have, the more likely it is that the numbers are against you. Because of this, you probably use the same password for everything, which is a HUGE no no. You must use different passwords for every account. With that many different passwords, how are you going to remember them? You’re not (especially if those passwords are complicated). That’s another big reason to use a password manager. 1Password’s dashboard with stored credentials. Image: Luis Millares That’s another big reason to use a password manager, as these tools are designed to store hundreds of passwords and logins with ease. Remember reason 3? Only one password requires remembering! 5. Passwords will always be at the ready with device syncing Some password managers allow you to sync your password database across all of your devices. With this feature, you can access your passwords on your desktop, your  laptop, and your mobile devices. This way, you always have your passwords at hand. If you opt to use this feature, make sure you have your password database encrypted with a strong password. The last thing you need is for a bad actor to intercept your database and crack it via brute force. Enpass syncing functionality. Image: Luis Millares Bonus reason: It’s the wise thing to do Yes, using a password manager does add a step or two to the log-in process. But when your data and security are at risk, those extra steps are worth it. With each passing day you continue counting on those simple passwords, you run the risk of data theft. Be wise and use a password manager … before it’s too late. If you’re curious to learn more about password managers, I highly recommend checking out our Password Managers 101 video feature on the official TechRepublic YouTube channel. In that video, we dive into how password managers work, who they’re for, and what concrete benefits they provide businesses and individuals. SEE: IT Leader’s Guide to Cybersecurity Awareness Training (TechRepublic Premium) Choosing a password manager for your business Password managers provide strong, random passwords that are different for every site or service. Unlike eight-character passwords that can be cracked via brute force in short order, these passwords are unguessable by any known technology. But as recent hacks of password managers made clear, the technology isn’t infallible. Here are a few pointers to guide the decision on which providers to favor: Reputable vendor Don’t use a startup based in areas

The duties of C-suite tech leadership at enterprises are changing rapidly of late. AI shook up strategies at many companies and can lead to new demands on CIOs, CTOs, and others responsible for technology plans and use. The core principles that guide CIOs and CTOs can be essential for navigating such times, especially when organizations look to them for direction. In this episode, Matt Lyteson, CIO of IBM, and Phillip Goericke, CTO of NMI, share some key principles that define their respective roles at their organizations. They also discuss where they picked up some of the lessons that shaped those principles, how their jobs have changed since they got their starts, and whom they look to for inspiration as leaders — as well as what they wish they knew when they got started. Listen to the full episode here. source