AOC sells the 16T20, priced at $47.49 (was $70), as a 16-inch portable monitor, though the panel itself measures 15.6 inches on the diagonal. Resolution sits at 1920 by 1080, the panel type is IPS, and the refresh rate tops out at 60 Hz. AOC lists a 4 ms gray-to-gray response time, 178-degree viewing angles, a rated brightness of 250 nits, and a static contrast ratio of 1200:1. Color depth is 6-bit, which works out to 262,000 colors. Independent tests have come in a little short of the brightness claim, and the color range is narrower than a desktop monitor built for photo work. For email, documents, video calls, and a movie on a hotel desk, the panel holds up well enough that the low price starts to make sense.

The screen weighs approximately 1.5 pounds on its own and slightly more than 2.4 pounds with the magnetic smart cover. It’s also not particularly thick, measuring approximately 0.4 inches. At 13.9 inches wide by 8.8 inches height, the footprint is just about the size of an average laptop bag. The clever cover folds up into a simple stand that, while not as smooth as a metal kickstand, does the job. It folds up nicely to protect the glass in a bag, eliminating the need for a separate foot. There are VESA 75 by 75 holes in the back if you wish to attach a decent arm to this thing later, and don’t worry, the package comes with a three-year warranty.

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You can connect this thing to one of two full-featured USB-C ports, which can also handle power and video via the DisplayPort Alt Mode thing. So all you need is one cord from a laptop or phone that already outputs video, and your screen will be ready to go. There is also a Mini HDMI port for older machines and game consoles, as well as a 3.5mm jack next to the pair of 1-watt speakers. So, the box includes the cover and one USB-C cable, but don’t forget the Mini HDMI lead if you want to connect this to a console. The power demand is actually rather modest. One measurement put it at under 4 watts at full brightness. That is easy on a laptop battery, even during a long travel. Just keep in mind that there is no internal battery, so you will need to draw power from your host device or a wall adapter.

Game consoles can use the Mini HDMI input, and everything looks good at 1080p and 60 Hz, but don’t expect it to keep up in competitive play. That refresh rate and response time will begin to seem somewhat constrained. It’s better suitable as a portable screen for a Switch or a casual session than as a gaming display. Office work is the true sweet spot here. Windows and Mac both see this as another monitor and do not require a driver installation, and the narrow bezels keep it compact enough for a backpack sleeve. There are some simple buttons around the edge to navigate a menu that takes a while to learn, but once you do, the low blue light option is useful when evening reading becomes too hard on the eyes.

Curriculum and edtech providers are rapidly incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into instructional materials with little or no evidence that the AI add-ons improve student learning, according to a new brief from EdReports, a nonprofit that reviews pre-K-12 instructional materials. Only one of the 10 vendors in the study included third-party evidence that the AI features they embedded improved educational outcomes. 

“I knew that there wasn’t going to be much evidence, but I was surprised at how little there was,” says Courtney Allison, chief academic officer for EdReports. She says the report underscores a growing challenge: behind-the-scenes AI updates make it difficult for schools to ensure product efficacy. 

“This has been a problem for a while with digital tools, and it’s only accelerated with AI,” echoes Brittany Miller, executive director of the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting, an organization that helps school districts link edtech procurement directly to academic outcomes. “Tools are growing quickly, and the market is getting crowded and confusing.”

Sara Kloek, vice president of education and youth policy with the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), notes that the research “just may not be there yet” for some of the vendors incorporating AI into educator- or student-facing products.

The Study and Impact

For the qualitative study, EdReports selected 10 K-12 curriculum and edtech providers. Four were “among the top 10 publishers” of purchased instructional materials in the country, three were mid-sized curriculum providers and three were digital-first edtech companies. EdReports reviewed each company’s AI-enabled products, key features and claims about their use. The researchers notified the companies about the review and kept their identities anonymous.

The blurred lines between AI-enabled course materials and materials without AI can affect classrooms, observes Jean-Claude Brizard, president and CEO of Digital Promise, a global nonprofit working to expand equitable education opportunities. The worst-case scenario, he says, is that “quality assurance at adoption no longer guarantees quality at instruction.” 

Even identifying whether instructional materials contain AI can be challenging, since it can be introduced without notification from the vendor. “Something as mundane as understanding where that communication was from the vendor that had the new product updates” becomes crucial, says Lora Kaiser, executive director of the Center for Education Market Dynamics, a nonprofit market intelligence organization that aims to improve outcomes for underserved students by expanding the adoption of high-quality instructional materials. 

Kaiser wants vendors to give schools a choice about accepting any new AI updates. “Is it a feature I can opt in to?” she says. “For our teachers and our students, anytime that little AI enhancement pops up, that’s an instructional decision. We should know, as a fact, that it’s grounded in evidence, and understand how it impacts instructional integrity for students.”

The “Evidence” Gap

The EdReports brief also states that while existing frameworks frequently analyzed AI integrations for privacy and safety, there was a lack of consistent ways to determine if AI can strengthen learning or preserve curriculum coherence. This can present a roadblock to creating evidence of educational efficacy.

A lack of agreement on what “evidence” means in the first place compounds the problem, says Katie Boody Adorno, founder and CEO of Leanlab Education, a nonprofit that codesigns research between edtech companies and schools.

“I think the biggest takeaway from the report is that we need to move away from just checking a box around safety and evaluation, and more toward quality: What are the arbiters of quality, and how are we measuring and communicating that?” she asks.

Matt Moyer, principal of Rupert Elementary School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, says his school uses some edtech tools with AI embedded in them. “My take on tools like that is there’s some good in them, but I’m not yet convinced they lead to results outside the usage of that tool itself, which I think is what the report was getting at,” he says.

“What’s been interesting is realizing, over the last couple of years, that some tools we were already using had AI built in that we simply hadn’t been told about,” Moyer continues. Even when product pitches from edtech vendors do mention AI, he says the conversations are usually built around “what’s best about their AI compared to someone else’s.”

While educators want evidence that course materials actually work, Miller of the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting points out a crucial missing piece: how those tools are implemented. 

“The study doesn’t really account for what a student actually does when they engage with the materials,” she says. “I think it’s a matter of sending the right signals from the buyer side to the market: You actually have to help us implement this more effectively, or we’ll see the exact same pattern we’ve seen over the last 20 years — a shiny new object that doesn’t get implemented well, which is why we can’t build evidence.”

How Vendors and Schools Can Respond

Kloek advises edtech vendors to update their products to align with the latest cybersecurity best practices. She recommends SIIA’s seven Principles for AI in Education, a framework to guide the edtech industry’s implementation of artificial intelligence. 

The principles suggest that AI technology prioritizes instructional needs, educational equality, student data protection and transparency. The principles also suggest that edtech companies that are building AI tools should engage with education institutions on new AI developments, adopt best ethical practices for accountability and work to improve AI literacy among students and educators.

Kloek says SIIA is looking to update the principles to include additional transparency documents for edtech on how to communicate to school districts and parents what their products do and the purpose behind the tools.

“Ultimately, though, the district decides how these tools are used and can decide whether that’s appropriate and aligns with the district’s plans for AI or for technology generally,” Kloek says.

Leanlab Education’s Katie Boody Adorno believes that edtech vendors need to offer more specific data to back up their claims. 

“You see a lot of companies saying [their products are] ‘based on cutting-edge research,’ meaning they built the tool around a loose interpretation of some foundational research, often from a university setting,” she says. 

EdReports’ chief academic officer Courtney Allison suggests districts and schools start demanding more from their vendors. 

“Buyers need to ask the question, ‘What does this badge or this membership or this certification actually demonstrate?’” she says. “They also must start the conversation by asking themselves, ‘What’s the instructional vision for the students?’”

Principal Matt Moyer believes evidence from an edtech vendor tends to raise more questions than it answers. He counsels school and district leaders to ask vendors about the sample size of the research they conducted about their product, the researchers and parameters of the study, and other pointed questions. 

“Educational leaders should look at these claims and ask what they actually translate to, because I’ve seen plenty of cases where a number meant something different once you dug into it,” he says.

Digital Promise’s Jean-Claude Brizard suggests schools search online directories, such as the EdTech Index or LearnPlatform, for vetted providers and evaluate them for data privacy, usability and educational value. 

“Current quality frameworks were built for fixed materials, like curricula,” Brizard explains. “As edtech and AI integration accelerates, we need a more dynamic system of measuring quality and efficacy.”

A marketing image for Samsung’s Bespoke AI refrigerators. Credit: Samsung

I must be getting old, because the concept around most IoT injections into otherwise perfectly usable home devices has me wanting to get all these smart-devices off of my lawn. Call me a luddite if you like, but I just don’t think my toothbrush needs to be connected to the internet.

And if you ask me how smart my refrigerator needs to be, my answer would be that it needs to be as precisely smart as required to keep my food cold. But if you’re Samsung, the fridge needs to be connected to the internet, potentially expose your personal information to the wider internet, and show you ads on a fancy screen on the fridge door. This is all done in the name of achieving… something? What that something is, and why it would be of use to me, is a mystery of Sherlockian proportions.

But because of that internet connection, sometimes Samsung “smart” fridges can’t even keep the damned food from spoiling.

Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update. Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung’s Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later.

Affected fridges “suddenly lost power and stopped functioning immediately after” trying to issue a firmware update through SmartThings, Samsung’s smart home platform, per Star News Korea. The SmartThings app then showed the devices as offline. Some users said that their fridge’s internal display was stuck showing the message “Checking SmartThings app during update.”

Ah, the old “the firmware update spoiled my food” scenario. Samsung was quick to point out that this had only occurred in Korea, which I imagine was lukewarm comfort to the Koreans who suddenly found a fridge filled with spoiled food. It has also failed to detail exactly why this occurred and what it is doing to prevent it in Korea, or any other market for that matter.

And this was particularly troublesome as all of this spoiled food came to be just as the Korean holiday for the autumn harvest was being celebrated.

“Customers only trusted Samsung Electronics and made an official update, but it is so absurd and embarrassing that they can’t even use refrigeration and refrigeration functions before the Chuseok,” a forum user wrote, per a Google-provided translation.

Some Samsung forum users said support agents initially told them that there are limited technicians and executives available, and a repair person might not be available until October.

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“The customers who bought Samsung refrigerators have had their holidays completely ruined, while those Samsung employees are just having a good time at home,” a Samsung forum member wrote.

So the question now is precisely on what grounds does Samsung get to call its fridges “smart” if they’re designed such that their primary function can’t be enjoyed for a month or so because someone at the company had, to borrow a phrase from Jurassic Park, butter fingers?

Filed Under: firmware update, iot, smart fridge, south korea, spoiled food

Companies: samsung

The Technical University of Denmark (DTU) says information belonging to up to 200,000 users may have been exposed after hackers accessed its identity and access management system and downloaded a large amount of data.

​The university says the attacker used compromised credentials to log into DTUBasen, its identity and access management (IAM) system, allowing access to more than two decades of user data.

In a disclosure on Friday, DTU confirmed that it cannot “determine precisely what information was downloaded or how many people have been affected.”

However, the Danish university notes that DTUBasen stores information for nearly 40,000 active users and around 160,000 former users.

Next of kin data also exposed

Potentially exposed information for current users includes Danish civil registration numbers (CPR), full names, home addresses, and profile pictures, as well as work email addresses, job titles, office locations, and other employment-related details.

The dataset also contained the names, relationships, and telephone numbers of users’ next of kin, when provided by active users.

DTU notes that in the case of former users, details about home addresses, profile pictures, and information about next of kin are automatically deleted after six months.

“This is a serious attack on DTU, and we deeply regret the uncertainty it is causing for the people whose information may have been affected,” says University Director Bjarke Bak Christensen.

“Our first priority has been to establish the extent of the attack, limit its consequences, and ensure that those affected are notified and know what steps to take,” the director added.

DTU warns that cybercriminals could use the exposed CPR numbers and other personal data for identity fraud and to make phishing attacks more convincing.

Not all notified directly

Potentially impacted individuals will be notified through e-Boks, the official mailbox system that DTU uses for sharing documents and notices with students and staff.

However, the university says it will notify all current and former employees, but not all current and former students whose CPR numbers are held by DTU.

“DTU only holds CPR numbers for a small number of guests and external partners and does not hold CPR numbers for next of kin whose contact details have been registered in DTUBasen,” the organization says.

The public dicslosure is part of DTU’s effort to reach potentially affected individuals it cannot contact directly, and the university is urging people to share it with former employees, students, guests, and external partners.

The organization says that anyone who has been an employee, student, guest, or external partner of DTU since 2003 may be affected by the data breach.

They are advised to be cautious of emails, text messages, and phone calls from individuals who appear to know about their connection with DTU or have access to personal information about them.

Passwords and sensitive information should not be disclosed in replies to unexpected communications, and sudden authentication requests or logins should be treated as suspicious.

Additionally, it is recommended to change the passwords for any other services that use the same credentials as the DTU account and place a credit alert on the affected CPR number.

Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.

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[This is a sponsored article with the Singapore Government Partnerships Office.]

“Help others whenever you can, even if you feel you have little to give.”

For much of his life, Mohamed Satria Bin Sadon, 41, had always reflected on this lesson from his father, but never felt he was in a position to act on it while still building his own career. 

That changed when his father passed away, just before Satria started his job at Google.  

After some time into his career, Satria had the opportunity to speak with several secondary school and ITE students, where he asked them about their future aspirations. Their answers were grounded in what they knew: gig workers, delivery riders—familiar paths that provided steady income.

Then he mentioned he worked at Google. The room erupted with questions. “How do people get a job in such a big international company right here in Singapore?”

At that moment, Satria saw the disconnect clearly. His experience in tech has shown him that while countless people use technology daily, few understand the vast opportunities within the tech industry. These students had potential—they just needed to see the pathways.

To widen those pathways, Satria knew he would need others in the industry to step forward as well. With his career stable and his father’s lesson now guiding him, Satria reached out to friends and colleagues in the tech industry. 

The response was encouraging, with many eager to give back. And thus, in Mar 2022, the Intelligence Specialist officially founded Malay-Muslims in Tech (MMiT) with a group of tech friends and practitioners.

Bridging the knowledge gap

“There is a common misconception that you need to be a ‘techie’ to work at a tech company,” shared Satria. 

“The reality is that tech requires professionals from every specialisation—marketing, legal, HR, and crisis management. We want to show people what goes on behind the screen of the apps and platforms they use daily.”

As such, MMiT was created to bridge this knowledge gap, exposing people of all ages to real possibilities within the tech industry and helping them envision potential futures for themselves, regardless of background.

This became even more important as the tech landscape grew increasingly uncertain. 

With news of layoffs in recent years, workers face greater challenges in holding onto existing roles or breaking into the industry. Yet even amid the uncertainty, new opportunities continue to emerge for those equipped with the right knowledge and skills.

The early days of the initiative looked promising, but layoffs tested MMiT’s momentum. This led the MMiT team to realise that they needed to amplify their community impact, and one key way was to work with like-minded organisations. 

Yayasan MENDAKI, a pioneer self-help group set up in 1982 to uplift the Malay-Muslim community in Singapore, became a foundational partner. Its support helped MMiT launch some of its first initiatives, including a series of talks, hackathons, and panel sessions.

As MMiT’s community grew, so did its network of collaborators. Yayasan MENDAKI launched its own Professional Networks (PN) initiative, including a network focused on the tech sector. Satria was involved with the tech network for around two years before returning his full focus to MMiT.

“As word of the community spread organically, more people and organisations became eager to connect and collaborate with us,” Satria said. This growing network of partnerships made it easier for MMiT to expand its event offerings while continuing to serve the community effectively.

Beyond MMiT, Satria also worked on a technology-focused initiative during his time at Yayasan MENDAKI called Digital Minaret. Piloted at Masjid Omar Kampong Melaka in May, the initiative aimed to uplift less privileged residents of Jalan Kukoh by equipping them with practical digital skills.

The programme brought participants together at the mosque for hands-on sessions covering AI basics and social media marketing, equipping them with practical skills they could put to use for themselves.

Today, MMiT’s core team of eight to 10 volunteers from various tech companies meets almost weekly to plan and run projects. 

They have impacted nearly 5,000 participants across a wide demographic, from youth entering the workforce to working adults seeking career advancement. Their efforts even earned a mention in the 2023 National Day Rally speech.

MMiT’s approach encourages every team member to lead their own initiatives and cultivate partnerships, creating organic expansion into diverse functions beyond tech. 

Many participants have discovered new networks, forged new partnerships, and even found business opportunities, either directly or indirectly through MMiT. These successes constantly motivate Satria and his team to continue their work.

Along the way, several personal stories have reinforced that motivation. “There are two that really stuck with me that show the range of people we’re reaching,” said Satria. 

The first was about two individuals who met at an MMiT event and later came together to start an AI company, one of them having just been laid off. “To know our community could help them start a new chapter is just incredible,” he shared.

Another memorable instance came from a parent whose child, after trying VR glasses at an MMiT event, suddenly became interested in coding. “Hearing that we’re sparking that kind of curiosity in kids, while also helping professionals launch new ventures, is what makes all this worthwhile.”

It takes just one person to make a difference

On the ground, MMiT runs regular cybersecurity sessions and hackathons, and is developing an AI-powered reading app to help children practise phonics and improve their pronunciation.

Its next major initiative is a community platform for people working in tech, which Satria describes as “LinkedIn with a community focus”. Launching as both an app and website, it will bring together community feeds, a member directory, job board, mentorship opportunities, resource libraries, and innovation labs all under one platform.

The platform is expected to launch in the upcoming months, starting with tertiary students before expanding to young and mid-level professionals.

It will be open to people from all backgrounds, and the team also hopes to work with agencies and other organisations on these initiatives, while continuing to expand its reach through new partnerships.

“There’s a common saying that one person cannot make a difference, but I fundamentally disagree,” Satria said. 

If you see a problem you believe you can help solve, I urge you to try. What begins as a single, focused effort can create a ripple effect, and with the right support, that ripple can grow into a powerful multiplier effect, creating change you never thought possible.

Mohamed Satria, founder of MMiT

You can explore MMiT and its initiatives here, and see how the community is already making a difference.

And if you feel inspired to do something for your community, visit the Singapore Government Partnerships Office to find out how you can get started. 

• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

• Those buying an RTX 5090 at Micro Center now have to fill out a declaration form
• This includes having a government-issued photo ID scanned by the retailer
• Some approve of the policy as it’s an anti-scalping measure, but others view it as an annoyance or a pointless move

If you’re buying an Nvidia RTX 5090, or a PC with the graphics card inside, over in the US, you may have to fill out an official form to declare that you don’t intend to export and resell the GPU – or at least you will at Micro Center.

PC Gamer spotted the ‘advanced computing product purchaser declaration’ which a Redditor was forced to complete and sign – including a scan of their driving license for ID – when buying a PowerSpec AI90 workstation PC with an RTX 5090.