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Salesforce’s flagship AI agent platform is struggling to convince customers of its value, according to an investment bank. The SaaS giant has bet the farm on AI agents, hoping they will fetch and carry data from its systems into a conversational UI, according to its vision of headless CRM. The cornerstone of the strategy is Agentforce, which the vendor promises will help customers build, test, deploy, manage, and orchestrate AI agents in the enterprise. However, a report from KeyBanc Capital Markets cites its recent CIO survey, which found customers did not view the CRM plan favorably. "Our checks and customer conversations have not been strong, nor has the feedback been on Agentforce. What we can piece together in the disclosed numbers does not signal building momentum and, most recently, our CIO survey delivered another blow with Salesforce being a standout for the wrong reasons," the report says. The report, authored by Jackson Ader, the investment bank's managing director for software equity research, and three other analysts, says KeyBanc Capital Markets view of Salesforce was not down to the negative perception of software companies generally — the so-called SaaS-pocalypse. "We attend more Salesforce partner and customer events than any other company in our coverage, and feedback from those customers has been consistent in two ways: 1) customers' data is not in order to do meaningful AI work; and 2) Agentforce, as a product, just isn't there," it claims. "Partners we speak with are just now beginning to convert Agentforce proof of concepts into deals in the pipeline, and more CIOs in our survey expect to deprioritize Salesforce within their IT budget than the other way around over the coming 12 months." A Salesforce spokesperson told The Register: "Agentforce is the fastest-growing product in Salesforce history, with customers like Engine, Falabella, and AAA going live in weeks, not months. We’re focused on helping customers move faster, including through forward-deployed engineers and out-of-the-box agents." The KeyBanc report says Salesforce is presiding over "aggressive price increases" while the majority of customers are "not willing to pay for AI capabilities through their CRM provider." Salesforce, nonetheless, has retained a commanding position in the CRM market, the investment bank says. Speaking of pricing, back in January, Gartner warned Salesforce users that a capped enterprise agreement for its AI and data platforms may not be available when they come to renew these deals, potentially meaning customers could struggle to predict costs and understand value – although Salesforce strongly disputed this contention at the time. Bill Patterson, Salesforce EVP, Corporate Strategy, told us at the time, "The claim that we are moving away from capped agreements is inaccurate." Meanwhile, an earlier report from global equity research firm Bernstein said Agentforce was "still in early stage of adoption" and would not drive Salesforce’s growth in the short term. "Consumption-driven monetization at AgentForce will take longer than most expect. We also believe that AgentForce will be most successful in the company’s core CRM market and not that well-used outside the core as there are other AI platforms and many SaaS vendors and the hyperscalers are offering their own AI functionality," the report says. Wall Street bettors seem to share this bearishness toward the company in general, sending its stock down over 36% this year. ®

Chief penguinista Linus Torvalds has declared that Linux is not an "anti-AI" project, telling contributors who object they can either walk away or fork the kernel. On lore.kernel.org, the archive for Linux kernel mailing lists, reformed potty mouth Linus was responding to a discussion about some negative sentiments toward AI. It is one area where Torvalds said he was willing to “absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer … Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that they can do the open-source thing and fork it." “Or just walk away.” Ever the pragmatist, Torvalds described AI as a tool, “just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one. It may not have been that ‘clearly’ even just a year ago, but it’s no longer in question today. “Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn’t actually used it.” In October 2024, the Linux kingpin branded 90 percent of AI as marketing hype, saying he hated the hoopla generated by the tech industry. He said at the time: “I really don’t want to go there, so my approach to AI right now is I will basically ignore it.” He predicted things would change in five years, though he has softened his stance in 21 months. AI can be a “somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer workloads and just from an ‘it keeps finding embarrassing bugs’ standpoint,” Torvalds conceded this week. “But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing ‘La La La, I can’t hear you’ at the top of your voice like some people seem to do.” The solution, he said, is to make sure LLM tools help maintainers rather than cause them pain. “We’re not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore people who try to argue against other people from using it.” The kernel project continues to be about technology, Torvalds added, and while the social angle of developing open source software is an important aspect, it is a “side benefit, not the point of the project.” “In the kernel community we do open source because it results in better technology, not because of religious reasons. And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of new tools.” The seeming shift in stance was evident when The Register's SJVN spoke to senior Linux maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman in March: he told us AI-assisted bug reports and code review had improved dramatically. "Something happened a month ago, and the world switched. Now we have real reports… All open source projects have real reports that are made with AI, but they're good, and they're real." Torvalds in May said AI tools were only useful if they help “rather than cause unnecessary pain and pointless make-believe work.” Some maintainers in open source have complained of burnout - not helped by AI slop bug reports - and others worry about the quality of vibe-coding. Work still lies ahead before AI consistently proves it's more help than hindrance. “AI isn’t perfect,” said Torvalds in the mailing-list post on Tuesday. “But Christ, anybody who points to the problems at AI [sic] had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at themselves at the same time. Because it’s not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.” Quite right. ®

A Mozilla-commissioned report is claiming that Microsoft is indulging in all manner of bad behaviors to nudge users toward its Edge browser. However, judging by market share statistics, any potential efforts in that direction are not going too well for the Windows giant. The Over The Edge 2.0 report, commissioned by Mozilla, was published earlier this week and documents design choices from Microsoft that sent users into the arms of Edge. It also looked at differences in Microsoft's approach in Germany (as a stand-in for the European Economic Area (EEA) ), India, the UK, and the US. The conclusion? "Microsoft still does not allow users to download, set as the default, or keep using alternative browsers without harmful interference." This might take the form of an "All you need is right here" banner in Bing when attempting to download alternative browsers, the pre-pinning of Edge to the Windows taskbar, and "misleading" wording, which, according to the report, could trick users into making Edge their default. Then there is AI. The report's authors found that Copilot ignores the default browser when opening links, and that Copilot data-sharing toggles are preselected to ON in the US and India. The above highlights another finding in the report – where Microsoft has been forced to make changes (in the EEA), it has done so. The "All you need is right here" banner, for example, does not appear in the EEA, but does in the UK, the US, and India. There's also no injected Edge banner on the Chrome download page, and Windows Search doesn't automatically use Edge instead of the default browser. The Browser Choice Alliance applauded the report and criticized the tactics documented in it: "The researchers' findings in 'Over the Edge 2.0' reveal how Microsoft continues to use manipulative tactics to push users toward Edge, limiting users' ability to choose and run their chosen browser. "The report demonstrates how Microsoft deploys harmful patterns against users on Windows 11 devices at a global scale. We call on Microsoft to respect its users and stop using the Windows ecosystem to steer users toward its own browser in ways that restrict user choice, undermine web freedom, and unfairly tilt the playing field away from fair competition and innovation." Other browser makers were also scathing regarding the practices the report accuses Microsoft of employing. Bruce Lawson, Vivaldi's Technical Communications Officer, told The Register, "We're glad Mozilla's independent researchers confirm what we've been telling regulators for years … Microsoft is very reluctant to compete on the merits of its own browser product, so abuses its dominance of the Windows ecosystem to manipulate users. "The threat of scrutiny in EU means that it's not quite so bad in Europe, but it's still not a level playing field - and we continue to urge the UK, Australian and Japanese regulators to step in and make their markets fair. Vivaldi will be happy to co-pilot the code changes need, to avoid Microsoft having any unfortunate Copilot involvement. "We know how 'well' those projects turn out." The Register approached Microsoft for comment, but the Windows giant did not respond. The alleged antics found in the report, if true, do not appear to be serving Microsoft particularly well. While the company does not publish official figures, Statcounter (which has tracking code on more than one million websites globally and records billions of page views) shows Edge's market share hovering at just over 10 percent – a decline from 13 percent in June 2025. Mozilla's Firefox, on the other hand, has grown its share to 6.44 percent from 5.84 percent a year ago. Thus, if Microsoft is adopting the dubious design practices its competitors are accusing it of, it doesn't appear to be working particularly well. If Statcounter is to be believed, then even with all the alleged nudging and steering from the Windows giant, Edge remains that thing customers use to download an alternative. A spokesperson at Mozilla sent us a statement: "Firefox is competing hard and growing on many platforms, but looking specifically at Edge market share on Windows - which is the relevant market - the researchers note that Edge was the only browser to gain share on Windows over the last two years. This led the authors to say (on page 10 of the report): "We hypothesise that previous harmful patterns have played a role in this growth."®

Het aantal arrestaties van ICE bereikte deze maand een recordhoogte van tweeduizend personen per dag, bleek begin deze maand. Vorige week en deze week werden migranten gedood na fatale beschietingen door ICE. Wie waren de twee mannen die nu door ICE zijn doodgeschoten?

Kinderen van migranten maken in Nederland hun onderwijsachterstand binnen één generatie met 50 à 60 procent goed, zo blijkt uit nieuw onderzoek. Niet de migratieachtergrond, maar het opleidingsniveau van de ouders blijkt bepalend voor de ontwikkeling van vaardigheden.

Wie kent dit nog van vroeger?

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We wisten van de gevaren van een overvol stroomnet, we wisten van het ongemak, we wisten van de kaarsjes op tafel. Maar dat de gevolgen zó mensonterend zouden zijn kon niemand bevroeden. De ramp die het arme Utrecht vandaag treft is niet te overzien: "Met het warme weer draaien de airco's in de bibliotheek op de Neude overuren. En dat heeft gevolgen. Want omdat de bibliotheek maar een bepaalde hoeveelheid stroom per dag mag gebruiken, stonden de roltrappen vandaag uit." Wat zijn we in godsnaam voor land geworden waar mensen niet eens meer met de roltrap naar hun gewenste boek kunnen zoemen. Het paleis van kennis, kunde, vermaak en vervoering blijft dan wel bereikbaar via trap en lift, maar wie erop staat zich louter middels roltrap tot het boekendom te vervoegen wacht de totale hel. Besef dat Trump niet eens president was geworden zonder functionerende roltrap. Voordat het te laat is een hartenkreet richting premier Jetten: LOS DIE STROOMCRISIS NOU EENS OP!

​De Amerikaanse immigratiedienst ICE probeert met man en macht de aandacht af te leiden van de moord op een onschuldige man in Texas vorige week. Daarom schoten ze deze week een andere onschuldige man dood in Maine.

“Het nieuws gaat snel en de aandachtsspanne is kort”, vertelt een woordvoerder van ICE. “We zetten daarom alles op alles om mensen snel weer te laten vergeten wat er is gebeurd.” De moord op de 26-jarige man in Texas moet afleiden van de moord op de 52-jarige man in Maine vorige week, die weer moet afleiden van de moord op de 37-jarige vrouw in Minnesota, die dan weer moet afleiden van de 7 doden die daaraan vooraf gingen. “Wij handelen sowieso alleen uit zelfverdediging, dus dan loopt het aantal natuurlijk snel op.’’

ICE blijft inmiddels volop verkeerscontroles uitvoeren en heeft het aantal arrestaties per dag verdubbeld naar tweeduizend. Ook de ICE-agent van het incident van gister zal zo snel mogelijk weer op actief worden gesteld. “We moeten ophef over de laatste moord natuurlijk voor blijven.”

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