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Talking to Robert N. Charette can be pretty depressing. Charette, who has been writing about software failures for this magazine for the past 20 years, is a renowned risk analyst and systems expert who over the course of a 50-year career has seen more than his share of delusional thinking among IT professionals, government officials, and corporate executives, before, during, and after massive software failures.In 2005’s “Why Software Fails,” in IEEE Spectrum, a seminal article documenting the causes behind large-scale software failures, Charette noted, “The biggest tragedy is that soft

Innovation, expertise, and efficiency often take center stage in the engineering world. Yet engineering’s impact lies not only in technical advancement but also in its ability to serve the greater good. This foundational principle is behind IEEE’s public imperative initiatives which apply our efforts and expertise to support our mission to advance technology for humanity with a direct benefit to society. Serving society Public imperative activities and initiatives serve society by promoting understanding, impact for humans and our environment, and responsible use of science and technology. These initiatives encompass a wide range of efforts, including STEM outreach,

For the past decade, progress in artificial intelligence has been measured by scale: bigger models, larger datasets, and more compute. That approach delivered astonishing breakthroughs in large language models (LLMs); in just five years, AI has leapt from models like GPT-2, which could hardly mimic coherence, to systems like GPT-5 that can reason and engage in substantive dialogue. And now early prototypes of AI agents that can navigate codebases or browse the web point towards an entirely new fro

Introduced in 1930 by Lionel Corp.—better known for its electric model trains—the fully functional toy stove shown at top had two electric burners and an oven that heated to 260 °C. It came with a set of cookware, including a frying pan, a pot with lid, a muffin tin, a tea kettle, and a wooden potato masher. I would have also expected a spoon, whisk, or spatula, but maybe most girls already had those. Just plug in the toy, and housewives-in-training could mimic their mothers frying eggs, baking muffins, or boiling water for tea.A brief history of toy stovesEven before electrification, cast-iron toy stoves had become popular in the mid-19th century. At

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.SOSV Robotics Matchup: 1–5 December 2025, ONLINEICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNAEnjoy today’s videos! Step behind the s

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration records, in an average year over 2,500 medical device recalls are issued in the United States. Some of these recalls simply require checking the device for problems, but others require the return or destruction of the device. Once identified, the FDA categorizes the root cause of these recalls into 40 categories, plus a catchall of “other”: situations that include labeling mix-ups, problems with expiration dates, and counterfeiting.

The EPICS (Engineering Projects in Community Service) in IEEE initiative had a record year in 2025, funding 48 projects involving nearly 1,000 students from 17 countries. The IEEE Educational Activities program approved the most projects this year, distributing US $290,000 in funding and engaging more students than ever before in innovative, hands-on engineering systems.The program offers students opportunities to engage in service lea

For years, Gwen Shaffer has been leading Long Beach, Calif. residents on “data walks,” pointing out public Wi-Fi routers, security cameras, smart water meters, and parking kiosks. The goal, according to the professor of journalism and public relations at California State University, Long Beach, was to learn how residents f

From the honey in your tea to the blood in your veins, materials all around you have a hidden talent. Some of these substances, when engineered in specific ways, can act as memristors—electrical components that can “remember” past states. Memristors are often used in chips that both perform computations and store data. They are devices that store data as particular levels of resistance. Today, they are constructed as a thin layer of titanium dioxide or similar dielectric material sandwiched between two metal electrodes. Applying enough voltage to the device causes tiny regions in the dielectric layer—where oxygen atoms are missing—to form filaments that bridge the electrodes or otherwise move

Early in Levi Unema’s career as an electrical engineer, he was presented with an unusual opportunity. While working on assembly lines at an automotive parts supplier in 2015, he got a surprise call from his high-school science teacher that set him off on an entirely new path: piloting underwater robots to explore the ocean’s deepest abysses.That call came from Harlan Kredit, a nationally renowned science teacher and board member of a Rhode Island-based nonprofit called the