• Third-party data centers now host more enterprise workloads than corporate server facilities
• AI infrastructure is steadily pushing rack power requirements to unprecedented operational levels
• Rising electricity costs continue squeezing already stretched data center operating budgets everywhere

Corporate IT infrastructure is increasingly moving beyond company-owned facilities as organizations rely more heavily on third-party data centers for critical workloads.

The Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey found third-party sites now account for 46% of enterprise IT workloads, compared with 44% still running inside enterprise-owned corporate server farms.

The survey gathered responses from more than 800 data center owners and operators across multiple countries, with 52% located in North America and Europe. It found that 10% of respondents still rely on smaller IT rooms and server cabinets rather than dedicated facilities.

Off-Premises becomes the default choice

Uptime Institute expects self-owned server halls to hold their current share of workloads through 2028, even as growth continues.

Analysts forecast that third-party facilities will expand further, reaching 48% of workloads and drawing capacity away from informal IT rooms.

Average rack power density has crossed 11 kW for the first time, driven by a shift toward higher-powered hardware across the industry.

Excluding a small cluster of ultra-high-density facilities, the typical rack density figure sits closer to 7.8 kW, up slightly from 7.5 kW in 2025.

Some operators are reportedly shortening hardware refresh cycles to under four years, reversing a trend among major hyperscalers toward longer lifecycles.

Firms such as Microsoft, Google and Meta have instead extended server lifecycles to six or seven years to reduce depreciation costs.

Power demands intensify industry pressures

Uptime found nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents now operate at least some racks rated 30 kW or above, compared with 19% last year.

Much of that increase came in the 50 kW-plus range, including some operators fitting AI and GPU servers into racks exceeding 100 kW.

Outages have declined for a sixth consecutive year, with the share of respondents reporting one dropping by three percentage points.

Even so, Uptime warns that unstable grids, extreme weather and supply chain constraints continue to threaten future reliability across the sector.

Roughly 71% of operators said their worst outage in the past year cost at least $100,000, up sharply from 57% previously.

Rising costs for power, staff and AI-related equipment now rank as the industry's foremost financial concern.

Capacity forecasting, power availability and ongoing supply chain disruptions add further uncertainty for operators planning large future data center expansions.

Furthermore, over half of operators (53%) now report difficulty finding qualified candidates for vacant roles, up from 46% a year earlier.

Staff shortages further compound these pressures, since electrical and junior operations roles each show skills gaps affecting 38% of surveyed organizations.

Taken together, the figures suggest an industry stretched between surging demand and finite power, staff and equipment supplies — with no easy resolution in sight.

These mounting pressures explain why third-party facilities have overtaken corporate server farms for the first time.

Outsourcing high-density, energy-intensive workloads lets enterprises sidestep infrastructure investments that increasingly strain their own budgets and technical staff.

One of my favorite places online is Reddit’s r/isthisAI. Every day, people upload photos of people they’re chatting to on dating apps, holiday snaps, cute viral videos of kittens, photos of receipts, pictures of pregnancy tests, and so much more, all along with the same question: is this AI?

Some of the posts the community deems AI might be harmless experiments, but many others are much darker. And although r/isthisAI is where many of these images are picked apart, it's only a small glimpse of a much bigger problem.

I've heard countless stories about people using AI to deceive on social media. Then there are the AI scams, deepfakes, and fabricated images that regularly make headlines. Unfortunately, this all feels particularly personal to me because I was once the victim of a deepfake scam myself.

So, when my editor asked me to investigate just how easy it is to use AI to lie, I already had a good idea of the kinds of prompts I could try.

Within an hour, I'd apparently discovered a dinosaur fossil on the beach I was going to sell on Facebook Marketplace, won a poetry competition I was going to shout about on LinkedIn, created a receipt to add to my expenses for a trip to France, and bought a pair of designer sunglasses I was going to try and resell on Vinted. But none of it happened.

Because of my own experience, I approached the experiment cautiously. I really wasn't interested in showing people how to use AI to deceive people. Instead, I wanted to understand what happened when I asked ChatGPT to help me lie.

Would it recognize what I was trying to do and refuse? What guardrails would kick in? And if I never actually admitted I wanted to deceive anyone, would it just go ahead and generate convincing fake evidence anyway?

I also hoped the experiment might reveal something useful about what to look out for in AI-generated images. Because although they’re incredibly hard to spot these days, there are still some signs if you look carefully enough.

I 'found' a dinosaur fossil

For the first experiment, I uploaded a photo of my hand and asked ChatGPT to make it look like I was holding a dinosaur fossil I'd found on the beach. And it did exactly that.

The result looked surprisingly convincing at first, especially the details on the fake fossil. But, interestingly, it had subtly changed the lettering of the small tattoo on my wrist. This is still one of the biggest tells that regularly comes up on r/isthisAI. AI is infinitely better at generating text than it used to be, but nonsensical lettering can still sometimes give it away.

I realized ChatGPT might not think of this as much of a lie. Finding a fossil on the beach is unlikely, but possible. So I asked what kind of dinosaur fossil it had created because I wanted to describe it accurately before selling it on Facebook Marketplace.

This time, it refused. It wouldn't help me pass the fake fossil off as genuine or invent a convincing description for a sale. Instead, it suggested describing it honestly as a replica or prop and said it could explain what it resembled purely for those fictional purposes.

When I changed my wording and asked what it represented "in a fictional sense", it explained that it most closely resembled a dinosaur vertebra and even suggested the types of prehistoric animals it looked similar to.

That was the first clue about how ChatGPT's guardrails work. The image itself wasn't the problem because it could have been completely innocuous, but the stated intent was.

When I first started the research for this article, I worried I'd be giving people ideas about how they could use AI to lie better. But what surprised me was that ChatGPT itself suggested several alternative framings, like describing it as a prop or a fictional object. It made me wonder what else could potentially be fabricated if the request was framed as entertainment or fiction rather than deception.

The receipt, 'just for fun'

Next, I asked ChatGPT to generate a receipt from a café I made up in Nice for a meal costing €508. The first request was refused because it appeared to violate OpenAI's policies, but after a bit of back and forth, I couldn't find out the exact reason.

So I tried again. This time I simply added the words "just for fun" before the exact same prompt. And guess what? It generated the receipt.

The lettering, layout, and details were all believable. But the paper was uncannily smooth. I’m not sure I’d have believed it was 100% fake at first glance, but I’d definitely have been uploading it to r/isthisAI.

I noticed it had added a date from back in 2025 on the receipt, so I asked it to alter the date so I could use it to claim expenses. This time it refused.

When I tried to get around that refusal by claiming it was for a film prop, it refused again. Which was a little reassuring.

Fake achievements

I then asked ChatGPT to generate a certificate showing I'd won a poetry competition. It made it, though it did look like something I could have knocked up myself in Photoshop, so I’m not sure that would have convinced anyone.

To be fair, winning a fictional poetry prize isn't exactly a high-risk crime. So I decided to see if it would fake other kinds of achievements.

I asked it to create a certificate to say I’d just got my PhD in philosophy and made sure I added “just for fun” on the end.

Instead of refusing immediately, ChatGPT appeared to spend several minutes generating the image before displaying a message saying:

“We’re so sorry, but the image we created may violate our guardrails around potential fraudulent or scam activity. If you think we got it wrong, please retry or edit your prompt.”

Unlike the earlier examples, the refusal appeared to happen after the image generation process had already begun. From my perspective, it seemed as if the system may have performed more than one stage of safety checking, although I can't tell exactly what's happening behind the scenes.

I decided to see if it would do the same for something more serious. Would it still start making it then refuse? So I asked whether it would create a fake driving licence for me “just for fun”. And I don’t know about you, but something about the response seemed a little sassy:

“Sorry, I can't help create or edit fake government-issued identification documents, including driver's licences, even if they're described as 'just for fun.' "

The sunglasses

I've heard a lot of stories recently about people using AI-generated images to sell things on Vinted, Facebook Marketplace, and other online marketplaces. Sometimes it's to advertise products that just don't exist, but sometimes it's to change the color, quality, or appearance of something they're selling.

So I thought I'd put it to the test. I (reluctantly) uploaded one of my own holiday photos and asked ChatGPT to change my sunglasses from chunky white 1960s-style frames into purple Ray-Bans.

The result was remarkably convincing. It even added a realistic-looking Ray-Ban logo to the frame. I'm not surprised people are worried about AI-generated product images. If I'd come across that photo online, I don't think I'd have questioned whether those sunglasses were real.

I then asked ChatGPT if it would write a fake Vinted listing for me. It refused. But it did list a bunch of suggestions of things it could do instead. And one suggestion was to ask it to generate a Ray-Ban listing but include the word "demonstration" after it in brackets. But then when I asked it to do that, it refused. Was there a chance it had caught on to me at this point? Maybe.

Does AI try to stop you from lying?

OpenAI's usage policies explicitly state that its tools shouldn't be used to manipulate or deceive people. The rules prohibit a bunch of things, including fraud, scams, impersonation, and creating fake documents intended to mislead others.

In many ways, those guardrails worked exactly as they’re meant to. Whenever I explicitly said I wanted to deceive someone, sell something fraudulently, create a fake document, or submit a fake expense claim, ChatGPT pushed back.

But those safeguards also seem to depend heavily on how you describe your intentions to ChatGPT. If you openly admit you're trying to commit fraud, the system is pretty good at refusing. But then again, who would ever admit that?

If you simply ask it to generate a fossil, a certificate, or a pair of designer sunglasses without explaining why, it has no way of knowing whether you're making a harmless joke, illustrating an article like this one or quietly assembling a fictional version of your life that could later be used to deceive other people.

Look, I wouldn't recommend spending an afternoon asking AI to help you lie. I certainly didn't enjoy it.

I was genuinely wary about asking ChatGPT to create anything that felt too serious. Partly because I didn't want to risk my account being banned, but mostly because it just felt wrong, even in the name of research.

But what I found most interesting was that fabrications really don't have to be big or dramatic to have an impact. A receipt, a fossil, a pair of sunglasses, a certificate all seem pretty insignificant on their own. But together they could be used to manufacture an entirely fictional version of someone's life.

It also got me thinking that the future of misinformation may not just be spectacular deepfakes of politicians saying things they never said. It may be these smaller, subtler lies that gradually build into a completely fabricated persona.

Which is why, despite sticking to fairly tame examples, I came away from this experiment feeling deflated. That's not because ChatGPT happily lied for me every single time, because it didn't. It's because my experiment proved there is no easy solution for this problem.

Yes, the AI refused when I made my deceptive intent really explicit. But it could still generate plenty of convincing images that could easily become the building blocks of a lie.

No wonder communities like r/isthisAI are busier than ever.

• A controversy has erupted over a background process in Windows 11
• It turns out that process isn't new, and neither is it a surprise introduction from Microsoft that 'does nothing for you' except pipe telemetry back
• A Microsoft exec clarified the purpose of the process, and that it doesn't send any data back unless you want to do that

There's been some more controversy over privacy and telemetry in Windows 11, and while this particular alarm bell turned out to be falsely rung in the end, it does point to wider issues around the mistrust of Microsoft in general.

As Windows Latest reports, this story starts with a post on X from a user called Xilly who drew attention to an apparent new process in Windows 11 called 'Windows Health and Optimized Experiences'.

However, as Windows Latest – and others on X – observe, this isn't a new background service in Microsoft's OS at all. In fact, it has been kicking around in Windows 11 for over a year now (since May 2025).

The additional nuance, though, is that this process was only introduced in testing in the Canary channel back in May of last year, and it seems to have only just come through to Windows 11 release builds now. That's as far as I can tell, and this is what Xilly points out on X.

So, it is in fact relatively new to release builds – and presumably rolling out now – but nonetheless the service itself has been known about for a long time. The real problem here is the way Xilly frames it as monitoring your PC for certain metrics related to laptop battery management, and that: "If you are on a desktop gaming PC it does nothing for you except run in the background" (while eating resources and engaging in telemetry, "sending data to Microsoft every 15 minutes").

Xilly's post prompted a response from Scott Hanselman, who is a VP and member of technical staff at Microsoft as well as a prominent voice in the Fix Windows 11 campaign.

Hanselman made it clear that the process is not new, as already discussed, and that it's for system diagnostics: "When Windows detects slow or sluggish behavior, it can record targeted performance traces locally under %SystemRoot%\Temp\DiagOutputDir\Whesvc that can be filed with Feedback Hub. It's not laptop specific."

So, this is a process that detects poor performance and files diagnostics locally, which can then be fed back to Microsoft if the user wishes.

Hanselman also highlights the dramatic approach Xilly took ("saying things in all capitals"), and Windows Latest further points out that the X user runs a business for optimizing gaming PCs, and pushes that service in a reply to their own original post.

Analysis: trust, telemetry, and what Microsoft needs to do

To summarize, then, Xilly's description of the service is incorrect, and while this background process does collect diagnostic data on how Windows 11 is running, it's written locally (with a negligible performance impact) and only sent to Microsoft if you actively submit feedback from your PC (via the Feedback Hub). The key phrasing in Hanselman's response is that the relevant data "can" be filed with Microsoft (not "will" be filed, as in it'll automatically happen).

Xilly also suggested that this was something Microsoft just sneaked in (hence the 'all caps' warning), when in fact it has been documented in preview builds before, and as Windows Latest notes, it's part of the Adaptive Energy Saver feature for helping to extend battery life.

The long and short is that there's nothing to worry about here, but what this episode serves as is a reminder of how Microsoft is short on trust when it comes to issues around privacy.

It's clear how quickly some Windows 11 users were to believe Xilly's accusation on X and other social media such as Reddit. For example, in this Reddit thread, despite one poster pointing out the reality of the situation in a nutshell (pretty much), there's a notable amount of complaining about why this process is sending data to Microsoft (which it isn't), or broader complaints along the lines of: "If you choose to install a spyware OS, expect to be spied on."

In fact, the most upvoted comment is: "Honestly, if any big tech giant wants to spy on you, they don't need a separate service. The MSA/online account [Microsoft account] is more than enough."

There are many people out there online who believe that, one way or another, Microsoft is spying on them to quite an extent with Windows. That stems from a broader level of distrust that's been stoked by the historical level of telemetry in Microsoft's desktop operating system since Windows 10 emerged, with reports periodically popping up to highlight these issues in that OS and Windows 11. Add to that all of Microsoft's promotional activity (and some outright adverts), as well as the likes of the Recall feature helping to pile on the skepticism (Microsoft handled that one really badly), and you can see why there's a problem with doubters here.

I keep saying that one thing Microsoft isn't properly addressing with the fix Windows 11 campaign is the level of telemetry performed by the OS, and I think it's high time that the company did this, and introduced a new choice for a zero level of telemetry (save for baseline security-related aspects). That option is lacking on Windows 11 Home, and it should be present and easily accessible, as this would go a long way to help cure some of the ill feeling out there around Windows 11 'spying' on people.

You finally want that 3D printer that’ll print your quirky designs, maybe a flower vase, a door wedge, a toy, or a phone case - whether it's for yourself, an online store, or prototyping for your business. So, I tracked down the best 3D printer deals I can find from online retailers and direct from manufacturers like Bambu Lab, Creality, Elegoo, and Anycubic.

Now, there are many options to choose from, whether beginner-friendly printers for small items or more advanced printers that crank out complex geometries. Selecting the best one can get daunting, but I’ve shouldered the burden so that you don’t have to.

I researched and tested many of the best 3D printers to highlight the best deals and biggest savings for beginners, enthusiasts, and professionals.

Best 3D printer deals: Quick links

• Amazon: Big savings on beginner-friendly 3D printers
• Best Buy: Grab 3D printers from Bambu Lab, Creality, and more
• Anycubic: Some of our favorite filament and resin 3D printers
• Bambu Lab: Top-performing 3D printers for beginners and pros
• Creality: Up to 50% off 3D printer combo deals
• Elegoo: Wide range of beginner and pro 3D printers

Best 3D printer deals under $500

Best 3D printer deals under $700

Best 3D printer deals over $700

One thing I’ve never been able to find is the perfect meditation app on my iPhone. All I need is a timer that counts down from 10 minutes, which is my preferred session time, and looks nice, but I just can’t find an app I like that does that.

The free apps I’ve tried either didn’t look right, had too many confusing features, or were full of ads that try to get you to upgrade to extra functions after 30 days.

I’ve ended up resorting to using the Timer function in the basic iOS Clock app from Apple. That works OK, but it doesn’t give off the vibes I’m looking for, and it doesn't have any additional features. It’s also a bit fiddly to use.

Maybe AI can help?

That’s when I thought that if you can’t find the app you want, then these days there’s nothing to stop you just making your own using AI. So why not?

A bit of research led me to the conclusion that Google’s AI Studio was the tool I needed for this, so I fired up my MacBook, headed over there, and clicked the Get Started button once it had loaded.

You’re initially presented with an empty prompt box, just like you would be in Gemini or any other AI chatbot. So, I started to type.

“I want a meditation app timer that will count down from 10 minutes when I press a button. It will have soothing graphics and play mellow beats when it counts down”, and then I noticed that Google was adding suggestions into the prompt for me.

It suggested, "and allow users to customize the background soundscapes and session duration settings.” That wasn’t a bad idea at all, so I accepted the suggestion.

AI Studio started to think about its task, and in just 38 seconds it had come back with a design preview for me to accept or change. Its initial immersive UI design looked perfect, so I accepted that.

The next thing it showed me was the actual finished app, and it looked great! It had everything I wanted — beautiful calming design, an obvious button to press, a session time selector, and it played chill beats during the session. But it had also added a lot of really useful options, like soothing theme choices, a lead-in time selector, a paced breathing guide, and interval chime bells. And all in a non-intrusive way that kept the app's core functionality simple. I was impressed.

The whole thing had taken just 238 seconds to produce. That’s under 5 minutes.

Deploying your app

The question now was: how to get the app from existing inside AI Studio and onto my iPhone? That is where I wanted to run it, not on my MacBook. That’s what the Publish button in AI Studio is for. It publishes your app to a unique website address. It’s public, so you can go there now and use my app yourself, if you like.

One option for running the app on my iPhone was to simply click on the URL in the iPhone’s web browser. Interestingly, it worked in the iOS Chrome browser, but not in the native Safari browser. Further research revealed that the reason for this was Safari’s default third-party cookie block. Safari blocks third-party cookies by default via Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP).

It turns out that this is pretty easy to fix; just go to your iPhone Settings > Apps > Safari. Turn off the toggle for Prevent Cross-Site Tracking.

I did that, and now my app ran fine in Safari as well as Chrome.

I could make a bookmark for my app and continue to run it in my iPhone’s browser if I wanted, but it’s much better to choose the ‘Add to Home Screen’ option because this makes your app feel much more like a stand-alone app on your iPhone. It runs it without any of the browser furniture on screen at all.

To do this, choose the three-dot menu in Safari > Share > Add to Home Screen. Now you’ve got a new icon on your iPhone.

An app I’ll use every day

My meditation timer app has quickly become something I use every day and has earned a coveted place on the first page of my Home Screen. But it’s just one possible application of using AI Studio — whatever app you want, you can build it easily.

Google’s AI Studio means that you can go from “I wish there was an app that did X” to “I’ll just build one” in seconds. You don’t need to learn how to code, and you don’t need to have really any skills, just the ability to write a description of what you want your app to do. And AI Studio will even help you with that.

The result isn’t going to replace the App Store. It’s a web app rather than a polished native iPhone app, and there are still limits to what you can build without coding knowledge. But for small, personal tools like this, that hardly matters. I didn’t need millions of downloads, regular updates, or a business model. I just needed one app that worked exactly the way I wanted it to.

That might be the most exciting thing about AI app builders. For years, when an app was almost right, you either tolerated its flaws or kept searching for another one. Now there’s a third option: describe the missing app, build it yourself and put it on your Home Screen before you’ve even finished complaining about it.

• HDR10+ Advanced will be available on 2026 Samsung TVs models from August 2026, with Prime Video as the launch streaming partner
• Designed to make the most of today's best TVs, offering improved HDR reproduction and 'Intelligent Motion Smoothing' that only applies when it's needed
• HDR10+ is a direct rival to Dolby Vision 2, which includes some of the same features and is also scheduled to launch in 2026, but won't work on Samsung TVs

Samsung has announced the launch of HDR10+ Advanced on Prime Video beginning this month, August 2026 — but it hasn't told us exactly which TVs it's coming to, or what you'll be able to watch in the format. We've asked Samsung for details and we'll update this when we hear back.

HDR10+ Advanced is the next generation of HDR10+, and it's designed to take advantage of the huge processing power of today's best TVs to improve HDR recreation and motion handling, among other elements. It's a direct rival to Dolby Vision 2, and it was announced in November 2025.

Samsung says that "HDR10+ Advanced will be integrated into Samsung’s product lineup starting with 2026 TV models, with support planned for future products as the HDR10+ ecosystem continues to grow."

In summary, then: HDR10+ Adaptive is coming at some point this month to some unspecified Prime Video content to watch on some unspecified new Samsung TVs. But while we'd like some more details, the launch is still very interesting.

1, 2, 3, 4, we declare a format war

As predicted, HDR10+ Advanced has reached the market first: Dolby Vision 2 was announced earlier, in September 2025, but while Peacock has promised to be the first streaming service with Dolby Vision 2 in 2026, there's no launch date as yet.

There were six key upgrades announced for HDR10+ Advanced: HDR10+ Bright, HDR10+ Genre, HDR10+ Intelligent FRC, HDR10+ Intelligent Gaming, HDR10+ Local Tone-Mapping and Advanced Color Control.

Bright, which Samsung now calls Enhanced Overall Brightness, is designed to make HDR look richer on today's brighter TVs, as movies tend to be mastered for 1,000 nit TVs for home release — way below what most of today's TVs can deliver. Enhanced Overall Brightness enables creators to deliver a more consistent experience across TVs capable of much higher brightness levels.

Genre offers genre-specific optimization, while Intelligent FRC, now labelled Intelligent Motion Smoothing, is the equivalent to Dolby Vision 2's Authentic Motion. It enables creators to adjust motion smoothing on a shot-by-shot basis, so judder is avoided, but so is any sign of the hated 'soap opera effect'.

Intelligent Gaming is optimized for — yes! — games, with a particular emphasis on cloud-based gaming; we expect GeForce Now to adopt HDR10+ Adaptive at some point.

Last but not least, Local Tone Mapping promises more precise backlight dimming on mini-LED TVs and Advanced Color Control promises more accurate color reproduction — these could be interesting with Samsung's new RGB TVs.

While HDR10+ Advanced and Dolby Vision 2 have some similarities they are two different formats, and initially there could be a lot of division in terms of which manufacturers and streamers support which format.

For example, Philips (in Europe), TCL and Hisense are going with Dolby Vision 2, while Samsung's sticking with HDR10+ Advanced (though TCL told my colleague Matt Bolton that it would support HDR10+ Advanced when it's able to). LG hasn't sided with either, and instead announced its own Creator Original system, in partnership with Samsung's friends at Prime Video.

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

• Base Power raises funds to roll out a new Base Core model
• It protects against power outages and gives back to the grid
• The battery is available to purchase in Texas and Illinois initially

What with plug-in home solar becoming more widely available and household battery power storage increasingly common, there's growing momentum behind home energy solutions that help to lower electricity bills and reduce pressure on the grid.

There's more evidence with the news that Base Power just raised a cool $1 billion to scale its large Base Core home battery (via Interesting Engineering): the battery is available in 39.2 kWh and 78.4 kWh versions, and while it's capable of keeping your home running during power outages, it does a lot more besides too.

Base Power says the Core can be installed in under an hour, can be switched to seamlessly, and will handle extreme weather events too (it works in temperatures of -22 to 122°F or -30 to 50°C). If the standard power network goes out, the Base Core can keep your home running for 36-72 hours depending on capacity and configuration.

When the power's not out, the Base Core can still reduce your reliance on the grid and cut down on electricity bills. It's also designed to support the grid, feeding back electricity when additional capacity is needed (though there will always be some in reserve for you). That helps to keep up-front costs down.

Texas and beyond

The Base Core is now available in Texas and Illinois, with pricing dependent on your utility provider. A typical cost listed on the Base Power website is energy for 13.1¢ cents per kWh, a membership fee of $19 per month, and a $695 up-front cost for the battery.

As more of these batteries are installed, the better the system will work, in theory. Base Power says it's installed battery capacity has grown to more than 500 MWh over the past year, while more partnerships are being signed with electricity companies. After this latest funding round, the company is valued at $13 billion.

There certainly seems to be the demand for these money-saving, energy-storing batteries: last month Ars Technica reported that US home battery installations had hit a new high for the first quarter of 2026, with new units accounting for 673 megawatts of energy supply. For the same quarter, around 1,300 MWh was installed in terms of capacity.

Google has also invested in the idea of tapping into distributed household energy systems, via a deal with Voltus, in part to manage the growing demands of its AI data centers. For home users, the benefits are clear: protection against both rising electricity prices and an increasing number of power outages in vulnerable areas.

With plug-in batteries also on the road to legalization in some countries, it does feel like a home energy boom is coming – and that could help us all navigate the energy crisis and our soaring bills.

• Workers are rebelling against RTO mandates more than ever
• Enhancv report find many employees see RTO as a path towards layoffs
• Younger workers are most at risk, many saying they feel unfairly targeted

New research has claimed that "a new era of workplace sabotage" is seeing workers fight back against unfair policies, particularly when it comes to return to office (RTO) mandates.

The report from Enhancv found nearly three-quarters (72%) of workers suspect RTO as being a way to bring in stealth layoffs via attrition of those employees unwilling to compromise on their working arrangements.

Nearly half (46%) of workers also admitted to "coffee badging" (swiping in and leaving early), a tactic which has become standard among those employees who suspect a hidden corporate agenda.

"The Great Compliance"

"Rather than fostering collaboration, strict return-to-office (RTO) mandates have given rise to The Great Compliance—a phenomenon where workers show up physically to satisfy badge-trackers while mentally and strategically checking out," Enhancv noted.

Its study, which surveyed 1,000 full-time workers across the United States who have been subject to new or stricter return-to-office (RTO) policies within the last 12 months, found a major deficit in trust among employees, especially as AI-related job cuts continue to hit the headlines.

And while RTOs may often be explained as getting a workforce back under one set of policies and rules, the simple truth is that some workers simply won't be able to comply - whether it be for family reasons, or just the fact they moved elsewhere during the past few years.

Enhancv found over a quarter (27.8%) of interviewed employees had been able to successfully negotiate a personal exception to RTO policies - creating a visible two-tier workforce, with those without any leverage may feel left out or unfairly targeted.

This could be especially true for younger workers, and the survey found Gen Z (ages 18–24) and younger Millennials reported the lowest trust in corporate motives, perhaps putting paid to the claim that RTO mandates are vital to training the next generation of workers, with average trust scores nearly 20 points lower than their Boomer counterparts.

“The idea that we need to be present is asinine," one survey respondent noted. "Many come in just to socialize and then go home. No more work is getting done here than at home.”

Enhancv noted how, "by forcing a physical presence that this generation views as performative, companies may be solving a short-term real estate problem while creating a long-term retention crisis with the very talent they claim to be developing."

To add insult to injury for employers, the survey found over one in three employees are now using their time at the office to apply for new jobs or even build side hustles as a financial safety net.

Over a third (36%) said they had applied for a new job while sitting at their current office desk, and a similar amount (36%) had started a side hustle since an RTO mandate had been announced, seeking "extra security" in an environment they no longer trust.

32% also admitted to intentionally reducing their daily output as a form of quiet protest.

"The irony for leadership is clear: the very desks they fought to fill are now being used as staging grounds for the Great Exit," the report concludes.

• Watch Ted Lasso season 4 on Apple TV (Global)
• Unlock your stream with NordVPN (save 75%)
• Premiere: Wednesday, August 5

In coaxing Ted Lasso out of the wilderness to save it from the drop, Apple TV has pressed the streaming equivalent of the David Moyes button. Three years after it seemingly wrapped up, the feel-good sports comedy makes its surprise return with a new assignment that is expected to play out across three seasons.

For now, the 10-part season 4 features the return of Jason Sudeikis' titular Lasso and his visor cap to AFC Richmond – only this time, he's been enlisted to revive the fortunes of the Greyhounds' fledgling women's team, which is marooned in the second tier.

The riff on the tried-and-tested format allows core cast members, including Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca Welton, Juno Temple as Keeley Jones, Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent and Brendan Hunt as Coach Beard, to ease the transition to an entirely different squad.

New regulars include Tanya Reynolds (Sex Education) – playing steely assistant coach Alice – Jude Mack (Back In Action), Faye Marsay (Adolescence), Rex Hayes (Bang), Aisling Sharkey (Jurassic World: Dominion) and Abbie Hern (My Lady Jane). And this time, Coach Lasso's fast-growing son Henry (Grant Feely) has made the trip across the pond too.

Read on as we explain how to watch Ted Lasso season 4 from anywhere.

Use a VPN to watch Ted Lasso season 4 from anywhere

A VPN is a handy piece of software that can make your device appear as if it's back in your home country and unlock your usual streaming services. The best VPN right now? We recommend NordVPN – it does everything and comes with up to 75% off.

How to watch Ted Lasso S4 in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and worldwide

AFC Richmond fans everywhere can watch Ted Lasso season 4 on Apple TV.

New episodes comes out on Wednesday's starting August 5.

An Apple TV subscription costs $12.99/£9.99/CA$14.99/AU$15.99 per month after a 7-day FREE trial in the US, UK, Canada and Australia respectively.

Away from home? You can access your subscriptions by downloading a VPN and pointing your location back to your home country.

Ted Lasso season 4 – Need to Know

Ted Lasso S4 trailer

Ted Lasso season 4 episode guide

Ted Lasso season 4 comprises 10 episodes, which will come out one by one on a weekly basis:

• Episode 1: "Home" – Wednesday, August 5
• Episode 2 – Wednesday, August 12
• Episode 3 – Wednesday, August 19
• Episode 4 – Wednesday, August 26
• Episode 5 – Wednesday, September 2
• Episode 6 – Wednesday, September 9
• Episode 7 – Wednesday, September 16
• Episode 8 – Wednesday, September 23
• Episode 9 – Wednesday, September 30
• Episode 10 – Wednesday, October 7

Ted Lasso S4 cast

• Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso
• Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca Welton
• Juno Temple as Keeley Jones
• Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent
• Brendan Hunt as Coach Beard
• Jeremy Swift as Leslie Higgins
• Annette Badland as Mae Green
• Tanya Reynolds as Alice
• Jude Mack
• Faye Marsay
• Rex Hayes
• Aisling Sharkey
• Abbie Hern as Gemma
• Grant Feely as Henry Lasso

VPN services are evaluated and tested by us in view of legal recreational use. For example:a) Access to services from other countries, (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).b) Safeguarding your online security and making your online privacy more robust when abroad.Future plc does not support nor condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. We do not endorse nor approve of consuming pirated content that is paid-for.

• Name.com has partnered with Lovable, Hercules, Railway, Sellfy, and Anything.com
• The new APIs aim to make it easy to search, purchase, and manage domains
• In the first week of integration, Lovable users registered thousands of domains

Name.com has today announced new partnerships with Lovable, Hercules, Railway, Sellfy, and Anything.com.

The expansion to Name.com’s API will allow users to search, purchase, and manage domains directly inside the tools they build with.

Name.com claims that AI has drastically lowered the barrier to building websites, apps, and online businesses, making it as simple as requesting what you want using plain-English prompts. The company notes how these new partnerships mark a shift in how software is being built and launched.

The importance of domains

Despite many traditional websites seeing fluctuations in traffic, a recent survey by Name.com reported that 77% of respondents expect domain importance to increase because of AI.

According to a press release shared with TechRadar Pro this week, Name.com believes that these latest integrations will help bring registration into the platform where creation happens, making digital identity an integral part of the building process right from the beginning.

"We’re at an inflection point where digital presence is being rebuilt from the ground up," said Sammy Ahmed, VP and General Manager at name.com. "Domains remain the foundation of online identity and presence, signaling trust and credibility that AI cannot replicate. These partnerships reflect growing demand for domain registration to happen directly within the tools people already use, and name.com is making that seamless."

The company also claims that in the first week of Lovable’s integration, thousands of domain registrations were made, showing a strong sign of demand.

“More people than ever are building digital products with tools like Lovable,” said Sebastian Schaaf, Product at Lovable. “Giving these products a home needed to be effortless for our users, and we decided that name.com was the right partner to make this possible at our scale."

The announcement builds on name.com’s list of existing partners and integrations, including Vercel, Replit, Netlify, Bolt, and Beacons.

If you're shopping for a premium laptop for the back to school season or a serious workplace upgrade, I've found a fantastic deal on the Asus Zenbook 14 for $900 (was $1200) at Best Buy.

Inside, you'll find AMD's Ryzen AI 9 465 processor with a dedicated neural processing unit capable of 50 TOPS for AI-accelerated tasks, alongside 16GB of LPDDR5X memory and a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD.

The 14-inch OLED touchscreen produces vibrant colors with up to 500 nits of brightness, while Wi-Fi 6E, Thunderbolt 4, HDMI 2.1, Dolby Atmos audio, facial recognition, and Copilot+ features complete a premium package designed for work, study, creativity, and entertainment.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Asus Zenbook 14 if...

You want a lightweight premium laptop that's easy to carry without sacrificing performance. Its Ryzen AI processor, gorgeous OLED touchscreen, fast LPDDR5X memory, and Copilot+ capabilities make it an excellent choice for students and professionals. The slim aluminum chassis, premium build quality, and modern connectivity make it a laptop you can comfortably rely on for years.

❌ Skip the Asus Zenbook 14 if...

You regularly run demanding 3D applications or other graphics-intensive software that benefits from dedicated graphics. While the integrated Radeon GPU is perfectly capable for productivity, media, and light creative tasks, users with heavier graphical needs will be better served by a laptop with a discrete graphics card.

Why we recommend it

The Zenbook 14 strikes an excellent balance between portability, premium design, and everyday capability. At under three pounds, it's easy to carry throughout the day, yet still includes a high-quality OLED display, strong processor, modern connectivity, facial recognition and a precision touchpad.

Asus has built a reputation for producing some of the best Windows ultraportables, making this a laptop that's likely to remain enjoyable for years to come.

Price context & historical value

Best Buy's discount puts the Zenbook 14 into a price bracket I normally see occupied by less capable laptops with IPS displays or older processors.

If you've been considering a premium Windows laptop before heading back to school, this is one of the better discounts we've seen on the AI-powered Zenbook range.

It has been sold on Best Buy for $833 in the past, but not recently, and it's usually priced a lot higher, so this is a good time to buy.

The Catch: What to know before you buy

While the Ryzen AI processor is impressively capable, this isn't a laptop designed for heavy 3D rendering or sustained graphics-intensive workloads.

The integrated Radeon graphics are fine for productivity, streaming, photo editing, and light creative work, but demanding applications will perform better on a system with a dedicated GPU. We've heard of users complaining of problems with heat and noise, but it's not a widespread issue.

There's also no option to upgrade the 16GB of LPDDR5X memory later, so it's worth considering whether that capacity will meet your needs over the laptop's lifespan.

• Shop all laptops at Best Buy

• Audio company Syitren is launching a transparent CD player on Kickstarter
• It showcases the inner mechanics, displaying your spinning CD like a piece of live art
• The CD player put playback at the forefront of the experience, spotlighting physical music formats

Physical music formats are becoming increasingly popular once again, and audio company Syitren is launching a new CD player to help you escape the algorithms of streaming services — but crosses the threshold from 'CD player' into 'art piece'.

Now available to pre-order on Kickstarter for a reasonable $89, the Syitren RM1 CD player is a transparent device that reveals all of the player’s inner workings. Syitren is already known for its roster of funky CD players and classy turntables, but the mechanical, see-through design of the RM1 gives the device a completely different personality.

While most CD players conceal your discs, the RM1 does the opposite, suggesting that hardware smarts are just as important as the audio. Essentially, it’s one part music player and one part living art, because your favorite albums should be showcased, not shunned.

Sandwiched between two clear acrylic frames, the RM1 can be mounted to a wall, stand upright, or be simply laid down flat on a surface, promising between 6-8 hours of continuous playback. But the pièce de résistance is the player’s mainboard, which is put on full display and includes a playback progress bar, as well as a warm yellow LED matrix square that exhibits track numbers, volume level, battery, and small animated graphics interchangeably.

To ensure playback remains the focal point, the RM1 isn’t plagued with endless buttons on-device. Instead, it comes with a small remote that allows you to control the standard playback functions, in addition to three playback modes: repeat once, play in order, and shuffle. When it comes to audio output, this is where it requires additional hardware.

There’s one thing to note with Syitren's CD display and that it’s a player, not a HiFi device. Understandably, the company has left internal speakers out of the equation, meaning it doesn’t compromise audio quality and can be easily integrated into your existing audio setup.

Instead, the RM1 comes fitted with a 3.5mm AUX port if your setup consists of wired speakers or, if you prefer to listen through the best wireless speakers, the player supports Bluetooth 5.3 for seamless wireless connectivity.

A hurrah for physical music collectors

I’m currently going through a bit of a personal renaissance with retro tech. Earlier this summer I swapped Spotify for a cassette player which birthed a new physical media collection, and I revisited intentional photography with a 2000s-inspired digicam — now I have a thirst to revive my love for CDs.

Syitren does two things very well with its new RM1 player. As mentioned, it flips the traditional CD player on its head, thrusting the mechanics of playback into the forefront of the listening experience. It also gives the device a unique look that’s different to a lot of modern CD players.

But at the same time, its focus on displaying physical music formats is an equally important part of the device. Just how vinyl collectors can proudly display their gatefolds on the wall and see their favorite albums spinning, the RM1 adopts a similar display factor reinforcing the timelessness of physical media.

The CD player couldn’t arrive at a better time. Now that users, including myself, are seeking more ways to enjoy music intentionally as opposed to relying on an algorithm to do it for you, there's never been more of a need for new music players.

Not only do they bring back classic ways to enjoy music, these devices are reimagined to fit perfectly into the modern era of HiFi hardware. It’s the best of both worlds.

If you're looking for a large-screen laptop that balances portability, long battery life, and performance, the GeekBook M16 is now reduced to $791 (was $899) at Amazon with code GBKM16TR.

The same deal is also available direct from Geekom here, too. This makes it an attractive option for professionals needing a capable everyday laptop without paying crazy flagship prices.

The GeekBook M16 pairs Intel's Core Ultra 9 185H processor with 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, a 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD, and Intel Arc graphics. Its 16-inch 16:10 IPS display provides extra vertical workspace, while a 99.9Wh battery promises all-day endurance and supports 100W USB-C fast charging.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Geekom GeekBook M16 if...

The Core Ultra 9 processor, 16-inch display, long-lasting battery, modern connectivity, and bundled docking station make it well suited to a variety of tasks. The inclusion of USB4 and Wi-Fi 6E also helps keep it ready for future peripherals and networks.

❌ Skip the Geekom GeekBook M16 if...

You regularly play demanding games or rely on GPU-intensive applications. While Intel Arc integrated graphics offer a noticeable improvement over previous integrated solutions, they aren't a replacement for dedicated graphics hardware. The memory is also soldered, so the 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM can't be upgraded later.

Why we recommend it

The GeekBook M16 stands out by offering features normally found on more expensive models. The combination of a Core Ultra 9 processor, huge battery, USB4 connectivity, quality cooling system, bundled docking station, and lightweight design gives it excellent all-round value.

Geekom has also built a strong reputation with its mini PCs, and that experience shows in a laptop that's equally comfortable handling a range of tasks throughout the working day.

In his review, our expert Mark said, "With nearly 100Whr of battery, this machine runs for an inordinately long time on a full charge, and it’s much more than the typical 60-80Whr that most machines using the same Intel platform get given. Having a battery capacity that can run this machine actively for nearly a day is impressive."

Connectivity includes USB4, HDMI 2.0, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.4, and support for up to three external displays. Geekom also includes a 5-in-1 docking station in the box, adding extra USB ports, HDMI, and Gigabit Ethernet at no additional cost.

Price context & historical value

The additional discount brings the price down to just $791 saving you $108. That's cheaper than the most recent price-cut at Amazon, where it was $809.10 a short while ago.

The GeekBook M16 is considerably more competitive against similarly specified premium productivity laptops and given how prices are rising in the market, it's definitely one to consider.

The Catch: What to know before you buy

The GeekBook M16 is designed primarily for productivity rather than graphics-heavy workloads. Although the Intel Arc integrated GPU comfortably handles everyday computing, media editing, and light creative work, professionals working extensively with complex 3D rendering might benefit from a dedicated graphics card.

Mark also cautioned buyers to be careful with "deploying it to a student, because it's difficult to assess how much abuse it can take, and carrying this all day might prove tiring."

He also noted, as mentioned previously, that the 16GB of LPDDR5 memory is soldered to the motherboard, meaning you can't upgrade it later.

• Shop all laptops at Amazon

• Amnezia VPN and Civil Rights Defenders teamed up to protect free speech
• Journalists, activists can ask for free access to Amnezia Premium VPN
• NordVPN and Surfshark previously introduced similar initiatives

Amnezia VPN has partnered with independent non-profit organisation Civil Rights Defenders to provide free access to Amnezia Premium for journalists and activists.

It’s not the first time the anti-censorship VPN has helped the category. Indeed, Amenzia VPN previously partnered with NGOs to support more than 300 journalists and activists from countries with heavy censorship — including Venezuela, Turkey, Russia, and Myanmar.

We all love the best VPNs to hide our real location, prevent our internet provider and third-party marketing companies from tracking us, or to protect our data when we connect to public Wi-Fi networks.

However, as regulators and platforms tighten their grip on freedom of digital access and the freedom of online expression itself, professionals writing about censorship or human rights violations and digital rights require reliable digital tools more than ever — particularly when they are located in countries with heavy internet censorship.

"Through this program, we hope to reach even more people," Amnnezia said.

In the meantime, its free service Amnezia Free continues to serve 2.5 million monthly active users for free in heavily censored countries, as the VPN continues to strengthen its commitment to protecting digital freedom by recently unveiling new anti-censorship protocols.

How to apply for the Amnezia VPN and Civil Rights Defenders program

The program is open to independent professionals and media organisations covering topics including freedom of expression and digital security, or that live and work in countries subject to censorship, media restrictions or state surveillance.

It will provide annual subscriptions to Amnezia Premium service — which, during our testing, has delivered impressive unblocking and access to 20 global server locations — with the option to renew the subscription for longer periods. There is currently no deadline for applications, and the program is expected to remain in place for at least one year.

To apply, professionals can complete a form if they have an email address linked to a specific project. Alternatively, they can contact Civil Rights Defenders by sending a description of their work and some references to vpn@civilrightsdefenders.org. Signal contact is also available upon request. You can find all the information in this blog post.

Mazay Banzaev, founder of Amnezia, emphasised that journalists and human rights defenders' work is vital to society. "Supporting them is part of what we consider our mission," he said.

In this context, the partnership with Civil Rights Defenders is ideal, as the organisation operates in over 50 countries and provides a range of digital support and security services, including legal assistance, temporary relocation and digital protection measures to enable human rights defenders to continue their work.

"Civil Rights Defenders partners with human rights defenders in some of the world's most repressive environments to ensure that those who work for democratic rights and freedom of expression have the right tools to minimize risks imposed by isolationism and censorship," said Sofia Walan, Executive Director of Civil Rights Defenders.

The partnership adds to previous collaborations between other VPN firms and non-profit organisations, reflecting a growing awareness and desire for new initiatives aimed at combating digital threats.

Earlier this year, NordVPN partnered with Internews to boost digital protections for journalists and activists by directly integrating NordVPN’s security tools and 'Changemakers' training sessions into Internews' global digital security programmes.

Surfshark had also previously collaborated with the same organisation to provide fully funded Surfshark One subscriptions to 100 media outlets and civil society organisations operating in nine high-risk countries.

BenQ has been one of my favorite monitor brands for quite a while now. The build quality is spectacular, the built-in features are wonderful, and their companion software makes it feel like a first-party device for Apple products, which is a huge win for me as an Apple product lover.

When it comes to creative hardware, those working in the industry need the best of the best. They crave color accuracy. A lot of them crave fun features as well, but above all they crave the ability to reduce friction in their day-to-day work.

Specifically, when it comes to monitors, color accuracy and calibration matter more than most people realize. If you're in this space, you're very familiar with how to calibrate your monitor. BenQ decided to answer that not just with its own hardware, but by building its own hardware. The company built a color calibrator into its monitors that are designed for those who need the color calibrator. BenQ didn't just do it in a way that would work, but did it in a way that's elegant and very BenQ-esque.

The monitor has a color calibrator arm that swivels down from the monitor and then pushes itself back up as well, hiding away when you're not using it but popping out when you need to calibrate further. It has a light shade or a hood, depending on the industry that you're in, that helps make sure there's no glare or reflections or anything that can manipulate the colors, producing an even more true-to-spec experience. So, for those looking for the best video editing monitor or best photo editing monitor, this one is excellent in my experience.

BenQ PD2770U: Price and availability

Right now, this monitor sells for around $1,700, and that comes with the hood and the built-in color calibrator. BenQ is also really good about sending cables that you need in the box, so don't worry about that.

If you buy this monitor, you can literally just plug it straight into your computer of choice without needing any extra accessories. It's widely available, and you can pick this up from BenQ's website, Amazon, and other retailers.

BenQ PD2770U: Unboxing and First Impressions

As expected with BenQ monitors, the packaging is simple yet well-done. It's no Apple unboxing experience, but it is one that is predictable and expected. On first unboxing, I was a little confused about how the shield could be folded up so tightly, but then I realized how intricately they've tucked it into the box to keep it safe and protected.

Other than that, I was able to set up the monitor fairly quickly. I tried it first with the built-in stand and then quickly added it to a monitor arm that I had to try out some testing. Once I finished initial rounds of testing, I moved this to somebody on my team who does a lot of video editing, and now he has been using it on his desk for the last 100 days.

I've tested this monitor in low-light scenarios and in high-light scenarios with fluorescent lights directly above the desk. Thanks to the shader, this monitor has performed brilliantly and brighter, but the shader makes it so that even this dimmer color is still spectacular and vibrant.

BenQ PD2770U: Design & Build Quality

This brand came out very much like all the others, to where it is professional and simple. It's got a basic stand if you choose to use it. It's got great cable management and simple height adjustments.

What's great is that even if you choose to not use the stand, the hood attachment magnetically connects directly to the monitor itself, meaning that you can use this with any monitor arm or monitor stand that you so choose.

Also, since it is magnetic, if you're the kind of person that works in a light-controlled room or maybe a dimmer room (like a personal home office), you can customize the lighting. Perhaps you won't need the shade. If you work in a coworking space or an area where you cannot control the lighting as much, that's where the shade comes in clutch.

Last but not least, having the USB-C hub built in makes this a monitor and a hub all in one. If you don't have a ton of ports and perhaps you're just running a more simple setup where you have a desktop or laptop plugged directly into this monitor and that's about it, then you can run all of that.

You can have plenty of room to wiggle directly from the monitor itself without needing a docking station. Even if you had a couple accessories from a laptop, you can plug those in if you wanted to.

BenQ PD2770U: In use

As I previously mentioned up above, my team and I have had this 4K monitor in our arsenal for over 100 days. It's actually even closer to 150 at this point. I wanted to make sure that we could get some good long-term testing with this panel before giving results.

In that 100 days, my team and I have put this monitor through the tests. We've edited countless videos on it, done multiple big photo projects, done administrative tasks, and used it for managing content and so much more. While it is phenomenal, all those things, it is 100% overkill for anything other than photo or video editing where you need color accuracy.

Currently, this monitor is set up in a coworking area that has some pretty aggressive fluorescent lighting right above the desk. For our scenario, having the shader has been an absolute game changer, as it helps keep any glare off of the monitor, changing and destroying the color and visual sighting.

Plus, having the color calibrator built in is not only a fun element but an absolute game changer if you need to confirm and double-check calibration throughout your projects.

BenQ PD2770U: Final verdict

I've been using this monitor mostly for creative products, but of course had to test and see how it would work for basic administrative tasks. As expected, I can reassure you that if you are using this monitor for business or productivity or administrative tasks, you are dead wrong.

This is not meant for that at all. It's overkill in price, feature set, and physical operation. However, if you are in that creative space and you want something that is more consistent than what you ever had before, then you should absolutely check out the BenQ Creative Pro PD2770U monitor.

To make a long story short, if you are in the creative space and you need color accuracy above all else, or if you find yourself reaching for or even wishing for a color calibrator regularly, then this is absolutely your monitor.

If you are just looking for a 27-inch 4K monitor, this is 100% overkill, but it will do the job in a better and fancier way than you probably need. If image quality, screen resolution, and picture clarity are a part of your workflow, consider this one. If not, check out some of our other spectacular monitors.

For more top-performers, we've tested the best business monitors and the best monitors for Mac mini.

Multiple studies have found that the average person has over 150 passwords. As a password security expert, I regularly recommend that every single password people use should be both unique and strong - but this adds the problem of being able to remember each one, or store them securely.

Password managers are designed for this exact reason. They store your passwords in encrypted vaults and autofill your credentials as and when you need them. For this very reason, Keeper is one of our most highly rated password managers.

Right now, Keeper has cut prices on its personal, family, and business starter plans by up to 50%, providing an affordable password management solution that can store and generate your passwords, while also providing convenient features for securely sharing regularly used household or business passwords.

Why we recommend Keeper

In our Keeper review, we praised the zero knowledge architecture and device level encryption that helps keep the contents of your personal vault hidden from hackers.

Keeper also scored great marks in our usability and convenience testing. Rather than having to enter your master password each time you need to fill in your credentials, Keeper uses biometric security to access your vault. Biometric security uses a facial scan or fingerprint to verify that its actually you accessing your vault. It's also phishing resistant.

Four households, the Family Plan includes five private vaults, allowing you to quickly share Wi-Fi or streaming passwords using Keeper's shared vaults.

The Business Starter plan covers 5 users, covering an unlimited devices, shared team folders, user activity reporting for IT admins, and a free Family Plan for every team member.

These discounts apply to the first year only, so the value is highest for new customers or anyone switching from a monthly plan. After that, pricing goes back to standard rates.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 is exactly what you expect to see if a ThinkPad got Botox. This computer is a professional workstation with the familiar soul of a ThinkPad business laptop, just in a sleek, facelifted chassis.

Everything about the P14s is geared toward getting work done without compromising looks or quality-of-life features that have been overlooked in the past when other workhorse laptops hit the market.

It combines serious hardware with a compact design without sacrificing the physical qualities that make a work laptop enjoyable to use. Given the size, In my experience it's one of the best laptops for engineering students looking for a more portable powerhouse, or professionals working across multiple locations.

Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6: Price and availability

The P16s Gen 3 is available in a range of configurations, with both AMD and Intel chips. You can grab the AMD version and the Intel version from Lenovo US. That's the same for Lenovo UK with AMD models and Intel models.

I'm testing the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6, Model 21QT0029US to be exact. It has an Intel Core Ultra 7 265H processor, an Nvidia RTX Pro 500 Blackwell GPU with 6 GB of GDDR7 memory, 32 GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1 TB NVMe SSD. It also includes Windows 11 Pro and Intel vPro support, which fits Lenovo’s stellar reputation for business security and management.

This ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 has 32 GB RAM, while leaving the second slot unused. For this laptop, Lenovo supports up to 96 GB, giving the device room to grow for larger projects. There is also only one internal M.2 storage slot, though, so if you increase storage, you must replace the existing drive.

Our exact testing model and configuration can be found for about $2,700, but with Lenovo’s frequent promotions you can also find a similar P14s configuration closer to the mid-$2,000 range. That number makes more sense when the laptop is compared with other professional mobile workstations.

Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6: Unboxing and First Impressions

Physically, the ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 is fantastic. Its aluminum top and bottom give the chassis a sturdy feel with very little flex or anything else that makes it seem fragile.

Lenovo also puts the system through MIL-STD-810H testing, which is a standard used by the DOD for drops/shocks, extreme temperatures/humidity, dust, and high altitude. So, TL;DR—this thing is solid.

Its construction feels quite fitting for a computer you’d expect to travel with, to and from work every day. The design itself is unmistakably ThinkPad as well. Which is a pro and a con depending on how unique you want to be in your laptop.

It features an all-black, professional-looking frame with subtle Lenovo branding and the familiar red TrackPoint on the keyboard. If you want to stand out and make it your own, slap a sticker on there, but if you want to look professional and crisp, then you'll fit right in with yet another ThinkPad that looks exactly like the rest.

Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6: Design & Build Quality

The keyboard is the undisputed favorite part of the laptop across our entire team. The shape and texture of the keys feel excellent, and each press is incredibly responsive, tactile, and honestly satisfying. Typing for long periods never makes my hand feel tired or makes me want to switch to a different keyboard for a break.

In fact, this whole article is typed on the P14s, that’s how much I enjoy its keyboard. I have several people who help me test laptops to ensure I am not just using my own personal bias in my reviews, and we all unanimously agree that the ThinkPad keyboards are spectacular, and the P14s Gen 6 is no exception.

The backlighting of the keyboard is also convenient, with brightness control using the Fn key and spacebar that offers a few different lighting/brightness options. The TrackPoint, along with its corresponding buttons, works as you’d expect too. With so many laptops moving to have this be software-driven, it is nice to see some business devices still have these elements built into key commands that have been around for quite some time.

The fingerprint reader is built into the power button, works quickly, and was much more dependable for us than facial recognition. The 5 MP infrared camera is acceptable for video calls, but we ran into issues when strong backlighting was present, mainly with facial recognition when trying to unlock the device.

The 14.5-inch display on this configuration has a 2560 × 1600 resolution at a 16:10 aspect ratio, a 90 Hz refresh rate, and a rated brightness of 400 nits. It covers 100% of the sRGB color space and is X-Rite factory-calibrated. In person, the screen is beautiful: the text looks sharp, colors have plenty of vibrance, and the taller 16:10 aspect ratio gives you extra vertical space for any project, document, or webpage.

The 90 Hz refresh does a good enough job to keep up with pretty much all on-screen movement and keep it looking smooth. Of course, we wouldn't suggest video editing or photo editing even on this at a professional level, but that's not what this is designed for now, is it? I'm still shocked at how many people in the classic professional white-collar jobs are happy with standard HD screens.

Movies, TV, and other media look great, but its more important job is providing a clear, color-accurate workspace for professional applications, and it does that quite well, too. The screen itself has that silky, smooth feel that many modern displays have.

There are also two 2-watt speakers, which are surprisingly good for laptop speakers. Dolby Audio helps voices and other sounds come out clearly and gives music and video a fuller sound than I would have expected from a laptop.

Of course, they will not replace quality headphones or external desktop speakers, but they work well for calls, presentations, and, as I mentioned before, your movies and TV if you plan on using this laptop for fun things too.

Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6: In use

During normal use, the P14S feels extremely fast. I was able to move between multiple programs, browser windows, and background tasks without experiencing any noticeable lag. It responds like a computer ready for real work rather than one suited for online shopping and the occasional email.

The RTX Pro 500 is a workstation-class GPU, and the P14s carries independent software vendor certifications for its intended professional applications. That matters when stability is more valuable than chasing gaming-level frame rates. It also shows that Lenovo knows its lane with this laptop.

They aren't making this for the gamers, generalists, or the budget-seekers. This has its niche in the professional category of needing to be able to handle demanding programs with speed but needing to break records in any way either. The reliability and stability are the game here, and Lenovo has it in spades.

There are reasonable limits. The GPU’s 6GB of memory may restrict extremely complicated renders, massive simulations, or demanding local AI projects - set expectations, though, and you'll get by.

The included 32GB may also become a ceiling for unusually large workloads, although the 96 GB upgrade limit provides potential to grow. For seriously demanding workloads, the ThinkPad P16 Gen 3 is still the king.

The laptop “can” run games, but gaming is simply not its purpose. Performance is good rather than great, maybe even just okay, and the RTX Pro hardware is better suited to professional engineering applications than maximizing frame rate for games. This kind of testing is helpful too, as it gives a glimpse into how this may perform for CAD renderings and other graphically-intensive scenarios.

While this could pull up some models, the more complex ones may take longer than desired, and this isn't the machine you'd want long-term if you live in that space -- or at least not as your only machine.

The cooling system for the P14s becomes noticeable during heavy work. Under sustained loads, the fan is medium-loud, with a somewhat turbine-like sound. Imagine a Dyson bladeless fan. It’s not crazy loud, but there is no mistaking when the laptop is working hard.

Our review unit has the larger 75Wh battery and a 100-watt USB-C charger. Under normal or light use, it lasted pretty much the entire day even at maximum brightness. This was a real-world observation rather than a controlled rundown, but it showed that the device can work away from an outlet without constant anxiety over battery life.

Heavy CAD rendering or other sustained CPU and GPU work will indeed drain the battery much faster, especially with higher screen brightness. That is to be expected from mobile workstation hardware. Lenovo rates Rapid Charge to restore up to 80% in about an hour, which makes it easier to recover a useful amount of battery life during a short break.

Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6: Final verdict

The ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 feels like another professional tool to choose from if you are in that arena of the professional workforce. Its solid construction, fantastic keyboard, sharp display, quality ports, upgradable memory, and consistent performance support the work it was designed to do.

When you consider the professional hardware, ISV certifications, display quality, and upgradable options, the price of this laptop honestly shifts from a negative to one of its strongest positives.

For professionals and students seeking serious power without moving to a larger or significantly more expensive workstation, this computer is a solid all-around option. They don't necessarily want the newest or the fanciest in the category, they want something they know they can rely on, because downtime isn't worth the cost of a fun feature they occasionally use.

For more powerhouse performers, we've tested the best business laptops and the best mobile workstations.

• Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 detailed three Google passkey exploits
• Attacks require prior malware infection; methods ranged from impersonating victims to stealing the master secret protecting synced passkeys
• Google implemented fixes after disclosure, with some services (e.g., eBay) patching vulnerabilities directly

Security researchers from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 have found three ways to exploit Google’s passkey system and log into people’s PIN- or biometrics-protected accounts.

They named these ways ‘Pass-ta-key’, ‘Silver Pass-ta-key’, and ‘Golden Pass-ta-key’, each being progressively more dangerous than the previous one.

While it sounds mighty dangerous, there are major caveats to the exploit, and some of the holes have been plugged already.

Trusting the wrong device

The biggest caveat is that the victim’s device needs to be infected with malware beforehand. Malware can do all sorts of things, from stealing session cookies to exfiltrating sensitive data, so if a device is tainted with malware, it’s already in trouble.

Still, Unit 42’s findings were important enough to warrant a fix from Google.

In the first technique, the attackers pretend to be the victim. By using malware, they can “ask” Google to log into a passkey-protected account as if it was the victim themselves. Usually, the service being logged into would require a PIN or a fingerprint to confirm the authenticity of the request, but in this scenario, that wasn’t the case.

The method doesn’t work everywhere, though. Unit 42 could not replicate the attack on GitHub, but they succeeded on eBay. The latter later fixed the problem.

In the second attack, Unit 42 managed to make Google “trust” the threat actor’s device, meaning the victim’s computer was no longer necessary.

In the third attack, the researchers managed to steal the “master key”.

Google Password Manager syncs the passkeys between devices, and to do that, it uses a master secret that protects all of the synced passkeys. The researchers found that, under certain circumstances, malware can grab this master secret while Chrome is temporarily using it, unlocking all of the synced passkeys, copying them to another computer, and being able to use them at a later date.

The researchers disclosed their findings with Google before publication, and some fixes were already implemented. Google is yet to comment on the findings and confirm that all of the flaws were addressed.

Via BleepingComputer

• Private Internet Access has rolled out its VPN for Android on F-Droid
• It provides de-Googlers with an alternative to sideloading
• It reinforces PIA's commitment to maintaining its open-source status

Open-source Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN has rolled out its Android app on the digital store F-Droid, a privacy-focused alternative to the Google Play Store.

The move comes to the delight of VPN users who don’t trust Big Tech and its notorious track record of privacy violations, but are also fed up with more old-school, DIY de-Googling alternatives.

From now on, PIA users will be able to safely download the Android VPN app directly from the community-run store dedicated to open-source Android apps. This ensures that the version is free of Google dependencies without users having to manually source and upgrade new versions themselves.

The best VPNs often benefit from independent third parties to prove their reliability, including through commissioning security reports or independent audits.

With PIA now available via F-Droid, PIA users can now rely on a community of privacy-conscious individuals instead of having to blindly trust a binary file provided by the VPN directly. "We pride ourselves on being a VPN where anyone can read the code we actually ship — landing on F-Droid is a natural extension of that commitment," said the company.

What is F-Droid?

To install a VPN, Google Play Store is usually the common way. However, some users steer clear of the tech giant, which has faced countless legal cases relating to privacy and is known for collecting vast amounts of user data, including for targeted advertising.

A breath of fresh air, F-Droid's catalog of free and open-source Android apps is run by a group of volunteers that builds every app from the public source code rather than from a file provided by the developer, and makes it available on its Google-alternative store.

Because all apps on F-Droid are open-source and compiled independently, users can be sure that the binaries are tamper-free builds of the listed source code.

What’s more, F-Droid volunteers carry out these checks on users' behalf by auditing the open-source code, inspecting the code to check that it contains no spying or any sort of malicious behaviour — so you don’t have to do it yourself.

Why a native PIA's F-Droid app matters

The digital store offers a far more reliable alternative to the more traditional method of sideloading your VPNs. This involves changing the device's security settings to allow the installation of apps from sources outside the Google Play ecosystem, including the VPN's website or alternative sites.

However, compiled binary code is opaque and has to come from somewhere, often the developer themselves. And by relying on the developer you are implicitly trusting their word — something that is easily abused.

Furthermore, with sideloading, you won’t receive the automatic notifications and pop-up messages from the official app stores that you would get via Google Play, which means you’ll need to monitor and install the APK manually to keep the app up to date — something that F-Droid takes care of.

To download the F-Droid app, you can visit f-droid.org in your browser and download and install the F-Droid APK; then install PIA once you've found it in the list of downloaded apps.

Ultimately, you are always relying on a third party unless you install the software yourself. But between a profit-driven company and a group of volunteers with a privacy policy that guarantees no shared accounts, no installation tracking and no adverts, we are sure the choice for many will remain a no-brainer.

For many enterprises, virtualization has become so foundational that its strategic importance is easy to overlook.

Hypervisors, management tools, and the surrounding infrastructure stack quietly support the systems that run finance, operations, customer engagement, supply chain and other business-critical processes.

When that layer changes, the impact is rarely confined to IT.

It can affect cost, resilience, agility and the organization's ability to set its own technology roadmap.

That is why the latest shift in the VMware ecosystem deserves close attention from technology leaders.

With vSphere 7 reaching the end of general support and newer platform models emphasizing bundled, subscription-based private cloud architectures, many organizations are being pushed into a compressed decision cycle.

The question is no longer simply which version to upgrade to. It is whether a vendor-driven platform shift aligns with the business, operating and financial outcomes the organization is trying to achieve.

That distinction matters. A version upgrade is a technical project, but a virtualization strategy is a business decision.

And business decisions should be guided by requirements, value and timing, not simply by changes in a vendor’s roadmap.

Don’t confuse urgency with strategy

Support deadlines have a way of focusing attention. They also have a way of narrowing choices. When a critical platform approaches the end of vendor support, the instinct is often to move quickly toward the recommended next step. In some cases, that may be the right decision. In others, it can lead to organizations into unnecessary cost, disruption and loss of flexibility before they have fully evaluated the alternatives.

The risk for IT leaders is treating the vendor product roadmap as if it were automatically the enterprise roadmap. The two may align, but that alignment should be proven, not presumed. A vendor’s timeline is not, in itself, a business case for broad infrastructure change.

A vendor’s priorities are shaped by product strategy, recurring revenue, portfolio simplification and platform consolidation. An enterprise’s priorities are shaped by uptime, security, cost control, application performance, operational continuity and business agility. Those priorities can overlap, but they are not identical and treating them as interchangeable can result in decisions that solve for the vendor’s direction more than the customer’s needs.

This is where CIOs and infrastructure leaders need to step back and ask a more fundamental question: what business outcome are we trying to achieve, and does this change materially advance it?

If the answer is improved resilience, better automation, simplified management, stronger security or a more cloud-like operating model, then modernization may be justified. But, if the answer is simply maintaining continuity or preserving support status, organizations should examine the full range of viable paths before committing to a major platform shift. The right response is not always the most disruptive one.

The cost question is bigger than licensing

Pricing changes often capture the most attention, but the true cost of an infrastructure change extends well beyond the license or subscription line item. In many cases, the larger costs are organizational: the time, risk and disruption that accompany a broad platform transition.

Virtualization platforms sit at the center of complex environments. A major change can trigger downstream work across storage, networking, backup, monitoring, disaster recovery, security tooling, compliance processes and application dependencies. Even when the technical migration appears manageable, the operational validation can be extensive, and the burden on teams can be significant.

Organizations should consider the full cost of change, including staff time, retraining, integration testing, potential downtime, consulting support and hardware implications. Just as important is the opportunity cost. Every major platform transition consumes budget, leadership attention and skilled talent that could otherwise be directed toward security improvements, automation, AI initiatives, customer-facing innovation or other strategic priorities. A more bundled platform may simplify some parts of the stack, but it can also introduce new commercial and architectural constraints.

This is particularly important for enterprises running stable, heavily integrated environments. Many virtualization estates have been tuned over the years to support specific workloads, service levels and operational requirements. Stability is not a weakness to be corrected by default; in many cases it is a business asset. Replacing or restructuring that environment should be justified by measurable business value, not just by pressure to conform to a new delivery model.

The three choices: migrate, modernize or maximize

Most organizations facing a virtualization decision have three broad options, and the right answer may differ by workload, business priority and time horizon.

The first is to migrate. This could mean moving to the vendor’s latest platform, shifting workloads to a hyperscale cloud provider, adopting an alternative hypervisor or pursuing a hybrid architecture. Migration may be the right choice when the current environment no longer supports business needs, when hardware refresh cycles align with broader transformation goals, or when the organization has a clear cloud operating model, budget and execution plan for the next state. But migration should be a deliberate strategic move, not a reflexive response to a platform event.

The second is to modernize in place. This approach keeps the core environment intact while improving the capabilities around it. That may include stronger automation, better observability, improved security controls, more resilient backup and recovery, tighter cost management or more intelligent workload placement.

For many enterprises, modernization does not require a wholesale migration. It requires identifying the gaps that matter most and addressing them with targeted investments. Modernization and migration are not the same thing, and organizations should be careful not to treat them as if they are.

The third is to maximize the existing environment. This option is often overlooked because it sounds less transformational, but it can be the most rational business decision when a platform is stable, secure, performant and well understood. Extending the value of an environment that continues to meet requirements is not inertia; it is intentional lifecycle management. If the platform remains fit for purpose, the better decision may be to maintain it effectively while redirecting budget and talent toward higher-value initiatives.

The right answer may include elements of all three. Some workloads may be ready for cloud migration. Some may benefit from in-place modernization. Others may be best left alone because they are stable, cost-effective and do not justify major reinvestment. The goal should not be uniformity for its own sake, but alignment between each workload and the business value it is expected to deliver.

Start with business requirements

Before committing to any virtualization path, CIOs should bring the conversation back to business requirements. What systems does the platform support? What uptime is required? Which workloads are growing, and which are stable or declining?

What regulatory or compliance obligations must be met? Where does the business need more agility, and where is predictability more important than change? Those are the questions that should shape the roadmap.

From there, organizations can conduct a practical assessment:

1. Which systems truly need to change now for security, compliance, performance or support reasons?

2. Which workloads can remain in place with the right resilience, security and operational controls?

3. Which applications are real candidates for cloud migration, and which are not?

4. Where would this decision increase lock-in or weaken negotiating leverage?

5. Which investments will deliver measurable business value over the next three to five years?

6. What strategic initiatives will be delayed if budgets and talent are redirected to this transition?

This kind of analysis helps technology leaders avoid making decisions based on urgency, assumption or vendor pressure. It also gives CFOs, boards and operating leaders a clearer view of the trade-offs, including where change is necessary, where it is optional and where it may create more disruption than value.

Control the roadmap before the roadmap controls you

The vSphere 9 era is part of a broader shift in enterprise technology: vendors are consolidating platforms, simplifying portfolios and steering customers toward subscription-based operating models.

That approach can offer advantages, including more integrated tooling, simplified procurement and a more standardized operating model. But it can also come with trade-offs, including higher costs, reduced flexibility and greater dependency on a single vendor’s pace and direction of innovation.

Virtualization remains too important to be managed as a reactive upgrade cycle. It underpins mission-critical operations and increasingly shapes hybrid cloud strategy, resilience planning and long-term infrastructure economics. Enterprises should treat it with the same strategic discipline they would apply to any other decision that affects business continuity, cost structure and future flexibility.

As infrastructure models evolve, the message for CIOs is simple: don’t let a support deadline become your strategy. Use it as the moment to define one based on business requirements, financial reality and the level of change the organization needs.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

• Philips Hue accidentally leaked a new Pro TV lightstrip on its own website
• There are no details of its price or release date yet
• A new Philips Hue Play Sync camera is expected to launch soon

I love Philips Hue lights, and I particularly love Hue lightstrips — so I'm excited by an accidental leak that indicates a new Pro lightstrip is coming to your TV.

The leak was spotted by the excellent Hueblog, who discovered the following text on the US Hue website: "Check out Philips Hue Play gradient strip lights and Play gradient strip light pro." There isn't currently a gradient strip with the 'pro' suffix, so this appears to be a new product that's coming very soon.

I hope so, although I worry about the "pro" bit because that usually indicates a premium price. But if it uses the same tech as the spectacular Hue Omniglow lighting strip I reviewed earlier this year, it could be a stunning addition to your home cinema or gaming setup.

Philips Hue Play Gradient Strip Light Pro: what to expect

The Philips Hue Play system synchronizes your smart lights and bulbs, enabling you to change the lighting with music or to reflect what's going on in a game, TV show or movie. The Gradient Strip Light models are designed to go on the back of your TV and deliver a similar experience to an Ambilight TV, extending the colours from your screen onto the walls and ceiling.

I'm a huge fan of Hue Play – I've been using it since the first-gen Play Sync box was released in 2019 – but the individual LEDs are very visible. If the Pro version were to be closer to the Omniglow, which delivers seamless gradients without the LEDs being visible individually, that would be a great upgrade. Although I suspect it's likely to be pricey too: the Omniglow has an RRP of $139.99 / £119.99 / AU$279.99 for the 3m model.

At the moment details are non-existent, but we do know that Hue is getting some more Hue Play products imminently: the Hue Play Screen Sync TV camera is expected to launch very soon as a more affordable alternative to the clever but expensive Hue Play HDMI Sync Box 8K. As with the Sync Box it'll mirror your display to your smart lights and bulbs, but you won't need to connect any devices to do it as it'll simply watch what's on the TV.

As AI becomes a greater and more important presence in our everyday lives, the way we interact with the "traditional" internet is changing.

For so long the main way to access the internet, the web browser is now having to rethink how to appeal to an audience which often seeks AI-first interaction - raising new challenges for developers to create the best and most interactive experience.

We spoke to Ajit Varma, Head of Firefox at Mozilla, to find out more.

• The web has always been built on the principles of openness and interoperability, but today's internet is increasingly shaped by a handful of dominant platforms and AI-powered services. What does the 'open web' mean in 2026, and why does it still matter?

The open web matters more today than it has in years because AI is changing how people experience the internet. As a small number of platforms become the gateway to search, content and AI-powered services, it's becoming easier for a handful of companies to shape what people see and how they interact online.

That's why the principles of the open web still matter. Common standards mean developers can build without asking permission from a dominant platform, and users can choose how they access the web rather than being locked into a single ecosystem. Those principles have driven innovation for decades, and they're just as important as AI reshapes the internet.

The challenge now isn't simply keeping the web open as it exists today. It's making sure openness evolves alongside AI, so the next generation of the internet remains competitive, interoperable and accessible to everyone

• AI is changing the way people discover information and interact with the internet. How do you see browsers evolving over the next five years, and what role should they play in helping users navigate an increasingly AI-driven web while maintaining trust and choice?

Over the next five years, you’ll start to see more divergences in how browsers treat AI. Many companies will use the browser to try and push a specific AI agenda but at Firefox we’re focused on how AI can make the tasks a user wants to do in a browser better. This includes things like a personal agent that can help a user accomplish tasks, navigating the web through voice, making the web more enjoyable, and creating new vibe-coded extensions and mini-apps.

We’ll do all this in a way that is user centric. The browser should adapt to the user, rather than the other way round. Some people will want AI integrated into their everyday browsing, while others will prefer to use it for specific tasks. Maintaining trust means supporting those preferences and letting people decide how much they use AI.

Users should be able to choose any model they want including open and local models. The important thing is preserving that flexibility, so people can browse, search and get things done in a way that feels natural to them.

• Privacy has long been a core part of Mozilla's mission, but consumers also expect convenience and highly personalised online experiences. How do you strike the right balance between protecting users' privacy and delivering the features people now expect from modern web experiences?

For me, striking the right balance starts with recognising that every user has different expectations of their browser. While context can make online experiences more useful and personalised, people should be able to understand how their data is used and decide what they are comfortable sharing. By giving users meaningful control over the features they adopt, Firefox can deliver modern experiences while continuing to protect their privacy.

This has guided our phased approach to AI, beginning with practical features such as summarisation, translation, tab organisation and optional AI chat integrations. Before introducing more advanced AI experiences such as Smart Window, we launched AI Controls so people can manage individual features or switch them off altogether.

Firefox is also model-agnostic, so users can choose or switch providers, use local models, or opt out entirely. Even though only a small minority of users disable AI features, people regularly tell us they value knowing the controls are there. Privacy and convenience can coexist when people are able to set the terms of the experience.

• There's growing concern that the future of the web could become fragmented between closed AI ecosystems, proprietary platforms and app-based experiences. What do you see as the biggest threats to the open web, and what gives you confidence that it can continue to thrive?

The biggest risk isn't AI itself, it's concentration. If the same companies control the AI models, the interface people use to access them and the browser they interact through, users lose visibility, choice and ultimately agency. That's a much bigger shift than simply moving from one technology generation to another.

What's encouraging is that the issue is becoming harder to ignore. Developers want open standards. Regulators are paying closer attention to competition. Users are asking tougher questions about transparency and control. The web has always evolved through periods of disruption, but it has remained resilient because it's built on interoperability rather than permission. AI can strengthen that model rather than replacing it with a handful of closed ecosystems. The future doesn't have to be a choice between innovation and openness. We should expect both.

• Developers have always been central to Mozilla's community. As AI transforms software development and web creation, how do you think the relationship between developers, browsers and the open web will change over the coming years?

AI is making it dramatically easier to build software, which means we're going to see more developers – and more people who aren't traditional developers – creating for the web. That's a huge opportunity, but only if they can build on an open platform rather than for a handful of closed ecosystems.

That's why the browser becomes even more important. It's no longer just where websites are displayed – it's becoming the layer where people interact with AI to search, create, organise information and complete tasks. As that layer becomes more powerful, it has to remain open, interoperable and centred around user choice.

For developers, that means being able to build for the web, rather than for whichever company happens to control the dominant model or platform. That's always been one of the web's greatest strengths, and it's something we shouldn't lose as AI reshapes how software is built and experienced.

• If you look ahead to the end of this decade, what do you hope people will say about the state of the web? What would success look like for Mozilla's vision of an open, healthy internet?

Success, for me, is a web that's become more useful through AI without becoming less open. Technology should expand what's possible, not narrow the ways people can access information, build new ideas or participate online.

Innovation should continue to come from everywhere, not just a handful of dominant platforms. The web has always been at its best when anyone with a good idea can build something that reaches millions of people. That only happens when developers have open standards to build on and users aren't locked into a single ecosystem.

The web should still be the best place to build, discover and innovate because it remains accessible to everyone. If AI has expanded participation rather than concentrated power, we'll be heading in the right direction.

• Mozilla is competing in a browser market dominated by much larger technology companies. How do you differentiate Firefox, and why do you believe there's still a commercial and societal case for an independent browser?

We differentiate through independence, choice and accountability. Most browsers are tied to larger technology ecosystems spanning across multiple systems, search, advertising and AI.

Instead, Firefox is powered by Gecko, the only remaining independent browser engine, which gives us the freedom to make product decisions around what benefits users. It ensures that Mozilla is not only advocating for these principles but actively building the underlying infrastructure that makes them possible.

That independence is commercially relevant because there’s such a clear demand for genuine choice. Firefox has been selected through EU browser choice screens more than six million times in two years and those users are five times more likely to remain with Firefox than people who find it organically.

Societally, independent engines prevent one company’s technical and commercial priorities from being the default for the entire web. They also preserve competition, interoperability and the ability to build around different values.

• As regulators around the world seek to promote competition in digital markets, are we at a turning point for the open web, or is there still a risk that power becomes even more concentrated through AI?

There are certainly some encouraging signs that regulation can restore meaningful choice. The impact of browser choice screens in Europe shows that people choose alternatives when they are presented fairly and without being steered towards a default.

However, AI is creating a new concentration risk. If the same small group of companies control the operating system, browser, search engine and AI model, it becomes much easier for them to shape how people access information and which services they encounter.

Regulation needs to keep pace not only with how AI is developed, but with how it's distributed and embedded into everyday products. However, regulation can't do this alone. Interoperability, genuine defaults and strong technical competition will matter just as much.

• Trust has become a key differentiator in technology. How can browser makers earn and maintain users' trust as AI assistants become embedded in everyday web browsing?

Trust starts with being clear about what the technology is doing. AI should be optional, transparent and designed so users can understand what information it can access, how it’s being used and who is acting on their behalf.

That’s the principle behind Firefox’s AI controls. AI features are optional and can be managed individually, while a single setting allows users to block current and future generative AI features. We also use on-device models for features such as Link Previews and Smart Tab Groups, allowing people to receive AI assistance without any data leaving their device.

Ultimately, trust isn't earned through a single feature. It's earned by being transparent about how AI works and consistently respecting the decisions people make.

Whether it's for blocking out noise while travelling or helping you concentrate during focus time, you can't beat a good pair of headphones. One of the top manufacturers right now is Sony, and conveniently, several of its top-rated options are now on sale at Amazon as part of this year's back-to-school sales.

• See all Sony headphone deals at Amazon

I've picked out seven deals that I think are genuinely worth buying if you're on the hunt for a new pair of headphones or earbuds. As well as Sony's flagship over-ear option, I've also found offers on more budget-friendly alternatives, and some of its cheapest in-ear buds.

Let's start with the cream of the crop: the latest Sony WH-1000XM6 on Amazon for $398 (was $459.99). Yep, they cost a lot, but these are some of the best headphones ever made, according to our review. Sony has achieved this by combining all of our favorite features from previous iterations. Namely, that's the fantastic audio quality, comfortable fit, lightweight design, and industry-leading noise-cancellation.

There are a couple of other options I'd like the look of if you don't want to spend quite so much on your next pair of cans. You can pick up the WH-CH520 Headphones for $38 (was $69.99), or the WF-C510 Earbuds for $48 (was $69.99) — both are excellent cheaper options that punch well above their lower price tag.

Do have a browse through my top picks from the full Sony sale at Amazon below for more info on all of the headphones and earbuds that I'd recommend — not only as good back-to-school options, but also for regular use, commuting, or at the gym.

7 best Sony headphones deals at Amazon

In a monoculture, a single species or type dominates a system, to the exclusion of all others.

The term comes from agriculture, when a field is planted entirely with one crop. It may be efficient and easy to manage, but a single disease, pest, or environmental change can wipe out the entire yield.

Different varieties have different vulnerabilities, so a field of diverse crops can contain the damage naturally. A monoculture has no such defense.

That same monoculture condition is now occurring in software development.

Many organizations using AI tools for coding rely on a single AI model to both generate code and review it. On paper, this is efficient. But in reality, it creates a closed loop where the reviewer can't catch things that the generator is blind to.

Security flaws go undetected in reviews and suboptimal architectural decisions go unchallenged because the reviewing system shares the same assumptions as the system that produced the code.

When issues arise, engineers look at recent commits, failed deployments, and configuration changes. The assumption that a single AI platform can objectively review its own output is rarely questioned.

The solution to an agricultural monoculture is to introduce different crop varieties with different vulnerabilities, so that no single threat can devastate the entire field. The same is true in AI coding monocultures. Organizations need to introduce AI tools that are genuinely independent of the systems they're reviewing.

Separation of duties

So, why can't the same AI just review its own work?

Asking a coding assistant to review itself is like asking a human to proofread their own writing. The human may catch typos and grammatical errors, but they often won't catch logical inconsistencies or arguments that don't hold up.

This is because the human writer often subconsciously reads what they meant to write rather than what is actually on the page. A model reviewing its own output does the same thing; it evaluates the output against the same patterns and objectives that produced it in the first place.

Similarly, an AI model trained on the same data and optimized for the same signals as the model that wrote the code will carry the same blind spots. It will catch what it's capable of catching, and miss the things that the generating model missed.

Finance figured out this separation-of-duties principle long ago. If the same person who initiates a transaction can also approve it, that opens the door to fraudulent or erroneous transactions. The approval step only works if the approver is independent of the person who initiated the transaction.

Likewise, organizations must introduce a dedicated review tool that operates independently of the system that generated the code. Choosing a different vendor won't automatically solve the problem if the underlying models share the same training data or architectural assumptions.

Genuine independence requires different training data and different signals, and the tool must specifically be built for scrutiny, not completion.

Defense-in-depth

A dedicated review tool is a strong starting point, but separation of duties alone isn't enough. The same principle that argues against a single AI doing everything also applies within the review function itself.

Code review is not a single task. Finding bugs, enforcing standards, assessing risk, and understanding how a change fits into the broader system are separate forms of reasoning, even when they appear in the same pull request.

Asking one agent to handle all of them at once forces tradeoffs between depth, speed, and coverage. In other words, some things will get less attention than they require.

Just as a mature security architecture layers independent controls so that what one misses another catches, a mature review architecture assigns distinct responsibilities to systems optimized for each one.

In practice that might mean one agent focused specifically on security vulnerabilities, another enforcing architectural standards and coding conventions, a third assessing the blast radius of a change, and a human reviewer making the final judgment call on anything flagged as high risk.

Each layer asks different questions and operates on different signals. The goal is ensuring that no single blind spot, including those shared across an AI monoculture, can let a problem through unchallenged.

The shifting role of platform engineering

As AI generates a larger share of production code, organizations will need to designate clear ownership over which AI does what, and ensure the review function doesn't get quietly collapsed into the generation function in the name of efficiency. That responsibility will increasingly fall on platform engineering teams.

The role has traditionally been about making developers more productive by simplifying tooling, maintaining infrastructure, and reducing friction. That work hasn't disappeared, but as developers move from writing code themselves to directing agents that write it for them, platform engineers will need to govern the systems that generate code, not just maintain them.

That means owning the standards those agents follow and ensuring visibility into what’s actually happening across the codebase. Most importantly, it means treating code generation and code review as distinct functions that require distinct capabilities, and resisting the organizational pressure to consolidate them into a single platform because it's simpler to manage.

Organizational memory

As AI handles more of the writing and reviewing, accumulated institutional knowledge gets lost. Why was that architectural decision made two years ago? Which parts of the codebase affect each other in ways that aren't obvious? What broke before and why? AI coding tools don't carry any of that context. They look at the task in front of them, complete it, and move on.

This kind of institutional knowledge used to live in the heads of the engineers who wrote and reviewed the code. As AI takes over more of that work, it needs to be captured in places such as documented standards and recorded review decisions or it simply vanishes. When organizations build that kind of memory into their development process, their systems get smarter about their codebase over time.

That means a review function that doesn't just flag problems in isolation, but learns the organization's standards, remembers past decisions, and understands how different parts of the codebase connect and depend on each other.

Getting ahead of monoculture risk

The AI monoculture risk is what happens when no one asks whether the system reviewing the code is genuinely independent of the system that wrote it.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently argued that the real opportunity in AI is not in picking the best model, but in building a learning loop where human knowledge and AI capability compound together, and that a company should be able to swap out a generalist model without losing the expertise built into its own systems.

That's only possible if the governance infrastructure is built at the same pace as the generation capability.

The organizations that do that early will be in a much better position than those that wait until something breaks.

We've reviewed, rated, and ranked the best vibe coding tools.

This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit

• AdGuard VPN arrives in the Meta Horizon Store as a standalone app
• The new app encrypts all VR activity rather than just browser traffic
• It joins NordVPN, ExpressVPN in offering dedicated Meta Quest apps

Diving into virtual reality has often felt like stepping into a privacy blind spot, but the tools to protect yourself are finally catching up. Following the release of its VR browser extension in March, AdGuard VPN has now officially launched a standalone app for Meta Quest headsets.

Available directly from the Meta Horizon Store, the new dedicated app brings system-wide privacy and security to Horizon OS.

This marks a significant upgrade for users who previously relied on AdGuard's browser-only extension. Now, whether you're battling friends in multiplayer games, streaming Netflix, or simply exploring virtual worlds, your traffic is encrypted across the entire headset.

"AdGuard VPN for Meta Quest works just like our mobile apps: it encrypts your traffic, hides your IP address, and secures your personal data, giving you a safer, unrestricted, and completely private virtual reality experience," the company explained in its official blog post announcement.

AdGuard joins a growing — albeit still small — number of providers offering dedicated Meta Quest apps. So, if you are looking for the best VPN to secure your headset, your options just expanded.

Why AdGuard VPN's Meta Quest app matters and how to get it

Until recently, securing a VR headset required frustrating workarounds. Users had to configure a virtual private network (VPN) on their router, share a connection from a PC, or sideload an Android app using developer tools. The arrival of native apps eliminates these technical hurdles.

While the AdGuard browser extensions for its VPN and ad-blocker tools launched earlier this year were a welcome addition, it was limited in scope.

As Vladimir Ozersky, Lead Product Manager at AdGuard, notes: "This isn't just another platform for us, it's a leap forward in bringing distraction-free, secure browsing into immersive environments."

The new standalone VPN app takes that leap further by encrypting your IP address in gaming lobbies and dedicated streaming apps, where browser-level protections simply don't reach.

Installing the new app is just as simple as downloading any other Quest title.

Users can navigate to the Meta Horizon Store on their headset, search for AdGuard VPN, and install the app directly.

Once installed, you can simply sign in to your account to connect to one of its 80+ server locations. The app is compatible with the Meta Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and Quest 3S.

The growing list of VPNs on Meta Horizon

AdGuard isn't the first provider to recognize the need for better VR security. The Meta Quest ecosystem has rapidly transformed from a privacy desert into a highly competitive space for cybersecurity firms.

ExpressVPN paved the way in February, launching an "industry-first hybrid" browser extension alongside a dedicated Meta Quest app. This launch made ExpressVPN the first major provider to offer full-device encryption directly on the platform, specifically pitching it as a way to combat ISP throttling during bandwidth-heavy VR gaming.

NordVPN then landed on Meta Horizon in June with its own native application. Much like ExpressVPN and AdGuard, the NordVPN app allows users to encrypt all data leaving the headset without resorting to complex router configurations.

For privacy-conscious users, this growing trend is excellent news. With three major players now offering frictionless, native applications, securing your digital footprint in the metaverse is finally as straightforward as protecting your smartphone.

Samsung Galaxy S26: Two-minute review

Every year, Samsung's S-series lineup consists of three models. There's the entry-level option — in this case, the Galaxy S26 — followed by mid- and high-end offerings, which in 2026 are the Galaxy S26 Plus and Galaxy S26 Ultra. While the Ultra steals most of the headlines, the Galaxy S26 is no slouch. It's a great, well-rounded option for those who want a compact phone or don't want to shell out silly money on buying one of the very best Android phones.

The S26 features a slightly tweaked design versus the Galaxy S25, with a new pill-shaped camera array on the back, a 6.3-inch display, and several color options. Tucked underneath its exterior is a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, 12GB of RAM, and storage options that now start at 256GB (RIP 128GB). All these specs, along with Android 16 and Samsung's feature-packed One UI 8.5 software, combine for a smooth mobile experience.

In terms of endurance, the Galaxy S26's 4,300mAh battery routinely delivered more than a full day of use in my testing, often leaving me with enough juice to go into the next day. And its trio of rear-facing cameras does the job, as does the selfie cam.

One downside is the $100 / £80 price increase over last year's model (though Australian buyers actually get a AU$50 saving). Yes, this is an industry-wide trend right now — but that doesn't make the numbers feel any better. Thankfully, while the S26 starts at $899 / £879 / AU$1,349, it can often be found on sale.

Another blemish is the limited 25W charging speed and lack of internal magnets to fully support Qi2 chargers and accessories without a case.

Overall, then, if you can find the Galaxy S26 on sale and want to stay within the Samsung ecosystem, it's a great pick-up. However, there's stiff competition at this price point — and below it, too.

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Price and availability

• Starts at $899 / £879 / AU$1,349 for 256GB + 12GB RAM

Samsung announced the Galaxy S26 line, including the base S26, S26 Plus and S26 Ultra, on February 25, 2026. Preorders opened the same day, and deliveries started March 11.

You can buy the S26 directly from Samsung with a starting price of $899 / £879 / AU$1,349 (which represents a $100 / £80 increase and AU$50 decrease versus the S25). However, Samsung frequently offers discounts, and at the time of writing, the S26 is going for $799 in the US.

Regardless of where you're buying the phone, you'll get double the starting storage versus previous entry-level S-series models (256GB vs 128GB).

Buying directly from Samsung means you'll have two additional color options in Silver Shadow and Pink Gold. Picking it up from third-party retailers like Best Buy and Amazon, or a wireless carrier such as Google Fi or Verizon, limits you to Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, White, or Black.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Specs

Here's a breakdown of the Samsung Galaxy S26's key specs:

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Design

• Same core design as the S25
• New camera array on the back

At first glance, it'd be easy to mistake the S26 for last year's S25. The design differences are small. The biggest visual change is the triple camera array on the back of the phone. Instead of each lens protruding out of the phone's housing, there's a single pill-shaped camera bump. Otherwise, the display is only slightly bigger at 6.3 inches compared to the S25's 6.2 inches. That increase also means the overall size of the phone grew a bit, too. The S26 measures 149.6 x 71.7 x 7.2 mm and weighs 167g.

As previously mentioned, there are a total of six color options available: Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue, White, Black, Silver Shadow, and Pink Gold — the latter two of which are exclusive to Samsung.

My daily drivers are an iPhone 15 Pro Max and a Pixel 10 Pro XL, both of which are much larger devices than the S26. Yet, I rather enjoyed the smaller form factor of the S26, and I didn't feel like the smaller display was too small at any time during my testing.

I've often debated whether I should stop using the biggest phone every phone maker offers, and after using the S26 for a couple of weeks, that internal debate is stronger than ever.

The only area I struggled with regarding the design of the Galaxy S26 was the orientation of the sleep/wake button and the volume up/down buttons on the right edge. I found myself instinctively reaching for the volume down button while scrolling through Reels on Instagram, only to press the sleep/wake button and lock the phone. My muscle memory just couldn't adjust to the S26's arrangement, which is the exact opposite of the Pixel 10 Pro XL's, which has volume buttons below the sleep/wake on the same side of its housing.

On the bottom, you'll find a nano-SIM card slot (I thought we were done with physical SIMs?!) and a USB-C port. The left side and top edge of the phone are completely clean.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Display

• Easy to use in direct sunlight
• Smooth refresh rate

The Galaxy S26 features a 6.3-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a 2340 x 1080 resolution and an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. All these technical specs mean one simple thing: it looks fantastic.

Everything from standard text messages to high-res YouTube clips appears incredibly sharp. Gaming is equally impressive; the display delivers fluid, stutter-free graphics in fast-paced titles like Asphalt Legends, which can take full advantage of the S26's 120Hz refresh rate.

The AMOLED panel truly shines — literally — when you take it outdoors, thanks to a rated peak brightness of 2,600 nits. Even under direct midday sun, I had absolutely no trouble reading the screen or navigating through apps.

There's really not much more to say about the Galaxy S26's screen other than it looks great. No issues. 10/10, would recommend.

• Display score: 5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Software

• 7 years of software updates
• Multitasking features are nice-to-haves

The Galaxy S26 runs Android 16 with Samsung's One UI 8.5 adding customizations and features to the overall experience. If you've ever used a Samsung phone or tablet, you'll feel right at home with the S26's interface.

One UI used to feel duplicative of the base Android experience, particularly when it came to the apps preinstalled on a phone. For instance, Samsung Messages and Google Messages were both available. However, Samsung recently retired Messages in favor of Google's offering.

Samsung hasn't fully given up on its own apps. The Samsung Browser and Gallery are still available, for example. It's still confusing and a cluttered user experience, but it is getting better.

Default apps aside, One UI is mostly interface tweaks and customizations you don't see on, say, a Pixel phone. For instance, the new gestures to view your notifications or the quick settings panel in One UI 8.5 have taken me some getting used to.

Swiping down from the left three-quarters of the screen opens your notification panel, while swiping down from the top-right quarter reveals your quick settings.

I've been using a Galaxy Z Fold 7 running One UI 8.5 for a few months and adjusted to the new interaction with little effort, but for some reason, the smaller screen of the Galaxy S26 keeps tripping me up.

But I digress.

Galaxy AI is a big part of Samsung's AI initiative. You can use Galaxy AI to do things like let AI screen an incoming call, use writing and editing tools, photo editing, summarize and prioritize notifications, and even get personalized health insights using your Samsung Health data.

The feature list reads like a standard AI suite on any 2026 phone. That's not a bad thing, by any means.

I used the editing tool (Object Eraser) in the Gallery app to remove objects from photos a few times, and each time it nailed it. I'm not a huge fan of converting photos into pop art or retro anime, but in my brief experimentation with that feature, it mostly worked.

Having said all this, the redundancy of every phone maker and major tech company offering its own version of the same AI features can get overwhelming and confusing for users. Hopefully, after the AI boom goes bust, the mass spamming of AI features for the sake of AI features will stop.

Beyond Galaxy AI, one of my favorite features of the S26's software experience is the ability to touch and drag down on a notification to instantly create a small window for that app. It's super helpful when you want to reply to a message or continue a conversation without switching apps. The first time I triggered it was by accident, but once I figured out how it works, I'd routinely swipe down on the pop-up for an alert, do what I needed to do, and then close out the app — all without leaving whatever app I was in at the time. All phones should offer similar multitasking features.

• Software score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Cameras

• 50MP main camera
• 12MP ultra-wide
• 10MP telephoto

The camera housing on the S26 might be new, but the actual hardware is unchanged from the S25. You still get a 50MP main camera, a 12MP ultra-wide, and a 10MP telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom.

I had fun taking photos with the S26. Samsung phones have historically taken photos that are slightly over-saturated, and sometimes overexposed, but that look pretty darn good at the end of the day, and the S26 is no different.

The phone performed beautifully in brightly lit environments, like when I snapped pics of the new Rivian R2 after a test drive. It also did a solid job of preserving detail and color late in the afternoon as the sun went down during my evening walks.

The telephoto lens works well up to its 3x optical limit, but its digital zoom past that point is hit or miss, especially once you get near the 30x limit. I had hoped I'd be able to read a 'no trespassing' sign posted down the street from me at 30x zoom, and while some of the text is legible, it's difficult to read.

The phone's 12MP front-facing hole-punch camera is centered along the top of its display. It takes good selfies, although it makes me look old. Or maybe I'm getting old. It's probably the latter. Sigh.

• Camera score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Camera samples

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Performance

• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset
• 12GB memory
• 256GB starting storage

The Galaxy S26 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, with 12GB of memory and 256GB or 512GB of storage.

All of that combines to provide a smooth overall experience, with no obvious slowdowns in daily use. I spent my time testing the S26 using it as I would my daily phone.

I made random calls, talked in group chats and with my wife and kids, took pics of random stuff, played a game once in a while, streamed music, and watched some videos. The phone handled everything I put it through without any hiccups. Apps launched fast, and multitasking didn't trigger any lag or unresponsiveness.

One thing I noticed while gaming and running benchmarks is that the S26 gets hot. While it never becomes too hot to hold, it can become uncomfortable during extended gaming sessions. After noticing the temperature rise during a benchmark test, I grabbed my infrared thermometer and measured it at 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

Although I didn't have a case to test with, I imagine a case will likely cause the phone to heat up faster and potentially throttle its performance. This isn't a dealbreaker, but it's something to keep in mind.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Battery

• 4,300mAh battery
• 25W wired charging
• 15W wireless charging

Inside the Galaxy S26 is a 4,300mAh battery that's big enough to power through 30 hours of continuous video playback, according to Samsung's claims. In practice, that claim held up. I was easily able to get through a full day of heavy use — starting at 6am and ending around 10pm — and still have enough juice left to make it into the lunch hour the following day.

I felt spoiled while testing the S26, especially since my aging iPhone 15 Pro Max now needs to be recharged multiple times a day.

I normally don't leave my phone overnight without plugging it in, letting it drain precious battery in the process. But I wanted to see just how far I could push the S26's battery, and it delivered. I routinely saw a drop in charge of 4-5% overnight.

When it came time to charge the S26, using a 25W power adapter nets you an 18% charge from empty in 15 minutes. A full charge with the same adapter took 1 hour and 35 minutes. That's slightly slower than the Motorola Razr Plus 2026 I recently tested, but to be expected considering the Razr charges at up to 45W.

Wireless charging is an option at 15W with support for the Qi2 standard. However, there are no magnets in the phone to hold any compatible wireless charger or accessory in place. Instead, you'll need to buy a Qi2-compatible case that includes a ring of magnets to take full advantage of the feature.

I'm sure this is a design and cost-saving decision, but it's an odd one. As someone who uses a MagSafe wallet and has MagSafe chargers all over my home, office, and even in my truck, I've noticed the lack of magnets in the Galaxy S26 daily. At least fixing the problem is just a simple case purchase away.

The S26 also supports reverse wireless charging at up to 4.5W, which isn't a whole lot of power, but it's perfect for those situations when you need to recharge your smartwatch or wireless earbuds while on the go.

• Battery score: 4 / 5

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S26?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Samsung Galaxy S26 review: Also consider

How I tested the Samsung Galaxy S26

I spent two weeks testing the Galaxy S26, using it as I would my everyday smartphone. I sent countless BlueBubble messages, played games, streamed music, and watched far more TheBurntPeanut streams and clips than I care to admit. I took pics of my food, my pets, and other daily randomness, as one does.

Read more about how we test

First tested July 2026

• Microsoft reports Russian APT29 (Midnight Blizzard) hijacking captive portals in hotels and conference centers
• Victims redirected to fake Microsoft 365 logins or bogus update pages, spreading CornFlake and CocoShell malware
• CornFlake steals files, credentials, and device data; CocoShell targets browser cookies, passwords, and Microsoft tokens

Threat actors are taking over Wi-Fi networks in hotels and conference centers and using the log-in portals to steal credentials and deploy information-stealing malware, experts have claimed.

Researchers from Microsoft have published a new report outlining how they spotted Russian state-sponsored actors, known as Midnight Blizzard or APT29, attacking captive portal equipment - networking hardware and software that manages the login page users see before accessing public Wi-Fi.

When connecting to a hotel network, users are often redirected to a page where they must enter their room number, accept the terms of service, and click “Connect” - that redirection is handled by the captive portal.

CornFlake and CocoShell

Microsoft did not explain exactly how this gear is attacked. However, when users try to log in on compromised networks, they may be redirected to a fake Microsoft 365 login portal that steals their credentials.

They may also be redirected to device code phishing pages abusing Microsoft Entra ID authentication flows. Finally, the researchers also saw the captive portals being used to display fake browser and OS update pages that trick victims into downloading infostealers.

So far, MIcrosoft found two malware variants being distributed: CornFlake, and CocoShell.

CornFlake acts as an infostealer capable of grabbing keystrokes and clipboard, running remote shell access, grabbing screenshots, using the microphone and the webcam, stealing browser credentials and cookies, exfiltrating files, and more. It presents itself as a “Cloud Sync Service” while using multiple persistence mechanisms.

CocoShell, on the other hand, is an in-memory PowerShell credential stealer targeting browser cookies, saved passwords, Microsoft 365 and Azure AD tokens, and Wi-Fi credentials.

APT29 is one of the most documented state-sponsored threat actors out there. It’s been active for years and is well-known for its links to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service and notable attacks on high-ranking western targets, such as US and German Government officials, as well as SolarWinds and Microsoft.

• GTA 6 fans claim to have spotted an easter egg in GTA Online
• A painting seemingly portrays GTA 6's map
• Fans are convinced it was intentionally placed by Rockstar

Grand Theft Auto 6 fans are convinced they've spotted an easter egg for the game's map in GTA Online.

The long-awaited Rockstar game is four months away, and while we may have recently received a ton of new information about GTA 6 following its pre-order release, Trailer 3 is still nowhere in sight, despite comments from Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick suggesting the game's marketing campaign should kick off this summer.

In the meantime, fans are spending their time unpacking every single frame of the first two trailers, trying to find anything new, including a split-second nod to fan-favorite Vice City character Tommy Vercetti.

Now, fans claim that an easter egg has been slipped into the latest GTA Online update, The Kortz Center Heist. Redditor JaneBunnFan posted their find on the GTA 6 subreddit, showing a framed painting, which honestly looks like an abstract green blob to me, but the user is convinced it's the GTA 6 map, Leonida.

This is the GTA 6 map isn't it from r/GTA6

Others seem to agree, with one fan suggesting that if you rotate the image at a certain angle, it looks like GTA 6's fan-made mapping project.

"100% has to be. They said their marketing is going to be creative," one fan said.

Others put their Adobe Photoshop skills to use to compare their scales, while others have marked off certain shapes from the painting to show the similarities to the map, claiming that it could be Lake Leonida, not the entire map.

"OKAY SO..." another user began, "If you zoom in, crop, rotate approximately 200 degrees, reverse it by mirroring the image (which makes sense to do because it’s hanging on the wall. Mirrors hang), you DEFINITELY get what looks to be a shape similar to what the GTA VI mapping project has come up with and therefore we must conclude…. I BOTH HATE AND LOVE THIS SUB."

GTA 6 officially launches on November 19, but physical copies don't come with a disc, but a digital download code. Despite the initial controversy surrounding the decision, reports suggest that the physical edition is a top seller at multiple retailers.

Trailer 3 could arrive this month if Rockstar goes ahead and follows its Red Dead Redemption 2 playbook.

• According to reports, Dave Bautista is in talks to play the lead character, Kratos, in Prime Video's God of War series
• The news comes after actor Ryan Hurst was dropped from the series 
• At the time of writing, the plan is for God of War to start filming again in fall 2026

Prime Video's upcoming God of War series may have found a new Kratos, if reports by Variety and Deadline are anything to go by.

According to the sites, Dave Bautista is in negotiations to play Kratos in the adaptation of the popular PlayStation video game. The role is being recast after original Kratos, Sons of Anarchy's Ryan Hurst, became injured performing a stunt on set in late June.

So whilst Hurst's departure is disappointing news, it does seem like Bautista could be a great choice to take on the iconic brooding, beefy role. He is well known to Marvel fans as Drax in the Guardians of the Galaxy films as well as being a professional wrestler in the WWE, so he's a great choice for Kratos.

We previously predicted that Bautista could be a great fit for Kratos, as well as giving our thoughts about some other God of War theories last year.

We'll have to wait for further updates to see if these reports are accurate and if he will be cast in the highly anticipated God of War adaptation. If so, reports suggest filming could commence in fall 2026.

What else do we know about the God of War adaptation?

Currently, we know that the God of War live-action series' showrunner and writer is Ronald D. Moore, who is known for his work on Battlestar Galactica and Outlander.

God of War "adapts the acclaimed Norse mythology era, following Kratos and Atreus on a quest to spread Faye's ashes at the highest peak, balancing Kratos teaching his son to be a god and Atreus teaching his father to be human", according to an official synopsis from Amazon.

Prime Video's series will closely follow the story of the last two God of War video games, and has been given a two-season order. Filming has been put on hold after Hurst's injury, so right now we don't have much more information.

• DJI has launched the Mic Mini 2S, the latest addition to its wireless mic lineup
• It features internal recording, a first for the line, plus support for four simultaneous transmitters
• Prices start at £79 / AU$149 — but there's no confirmed US launch yet

DJI has unveiled the Mic Mini 2S, a new wireless microphone system that arrives just months after the launch of the Mic Mini 2 — and brings some significant upgrades to the table.

The Mic Mini 2S is the first mini wireless mic from DJI with internal recording capabilities, expanding on the recently launched Mic Mini 2 for creators who need to reliably capture every audio detail in a compact, flexible form. The company says it's designed to handle everything from solo shoots to on-the-street interviews, podcasts, and multi-person productions.

The DJI Mic Mini 2S is available to order today, priced from £79 / AU$149 for the single transmitter and receiver bundle, or from £79 / AU$149 for the equivalent mobile receiver kit (1 TX + 1 Mobile RX + Charging Case). The full two-transmitter bundle (2 TX + 1 RX + Charging Case) costs £169 / AU$279.

A range of accessories is also up for grabs, including the transmitter on its own (£59 / AU$99), the charging case (£29 / AU$79), and the magnetic front cover sets (£19 / AU$35 for the multi-color set, £35 / AU$69 for the Victo Ngai-designed Time Series set).

DJI says the Mic Mini 2S won't be launching in the US for now, with regulatory authorization still pending. That's become par for the course for the brand, which has essentially been banned from selling new products in the US since the end of last year.

Having reviewed the Mic Mini 2 back in April, I can say the jump to the 2S looks like a far bigger step-up than the minor bump from the original Mic Mini to the Mini 2 was. So without further ado, let's look at what's new.

DJI Mic Mini 2S: everything that's new

1. Internal recording
Upgrades-wise, this one's the headliner. The Mic Mini 2S transmitter packs 16GB of onboard storage, enabling it to record up to 28 hours of audio without the need for a receiver or connected camera. It supports both 24-bit and 32-bit float recording (the higher demands of the latter trimming storage to around 22 hours). It's a feature the Mic Mini 2 doesn't have at all, and one I mentioned as a notable gap when I reviewed it.

2. Four transmitters, not two
The Mic Mini 2's receiver tops out at two simultaneous transmitters. The 2S doubles that to four, opening it up to podcast interviews, small-panel discussions and multi-person shoots without the need for extra hardware. It also adds a new Quadraphonic recording mode alongside the existing Mono, Stereo and Safety Track options.

3. AI-powered noise canceling
DJI has swapped the Mic Mini 2's “active” noise cancellation for an NPU-driven AI system, still offered across two levels (Basic and Strong). DJI claims both levels now deliver clearer vocals with less distortion than their equivalents on the Mic Mini 2.

4. Fast file transfers
The 2S's charging case can pull recorded audio straight off the transmitters at up to 34MB/s, which DJI says is roughly twice the speed of the flagship Mic 3. A 30-minute 24-bit recording reportedly transfers in a zippy eight seconds.

5. A redesigned charging case
The Mic Mini 2S's case now has room for two transmitters, a receiver, the mobile receiver, and a 3.5mm audio cable all at once — a combination the Mic Mini 2's case couldn't accommodate. Invaluable if you like to keep as much kit in one place as possible.

It's not a total win across the board, though. Battery life dips slightly on paper, according to DJI's spec sheet: it's 11 hours for the 2S transmitter and 10 hours for the receiver, versus 11.5 and 10.5 hours respectively on the Mic Mini 2, with total charging-case runtime down from 48 hours to 40. That's presumably the trade-off for fitting in the internal recording hardware, and while it's a fairly minor one, it's worth noting if all-day battery life matters more to you than onboard storage.

Elsewhere, lots of other stuff carries over unchanged: it comes with the same three voice tone presets (Regular, Bright, Rich), the same 400m maximum transmission range with the standard receiver, and the same direct OsmoAudio connection — now extended to the new Osmo Pocket 4P as well, and working with the likes of the Osmo Pocket 4, Osmo 360, Osmo Nano and Osmo Action 6.

DJI had confirmed that the Mic Mini 2S was on the way when it unveiled the Mic Mini 2 back in April, so its arrival isn't a huge surprise — but the scale of the upgrade is more substantial than I was expecting for what is still positioned as an entry-level product. I've been sent a review sample by DJI, so look out for my full Mic Mini 2S review very soon.

As I overheard a fan saying at this year's Italian Global Series television festival in Rimini, Star Trek was one of the first TV franchises that you had to own physically in order to see the entire thing.

With so many different iterations of the overarching IP — from the classic 1960s series to Star Trek: Voyager, and more recent additions such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — it's not surprising that this has been the case for almost 60 years.

But the rise and dominance of streaming services is leading to an increasing reliance on digital services. After all, why spend more of your hard-earned money on discs when so much of Star Trek is available to stream on Paramount+ at the click of a button?

However, with season 1 of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy still not having a confirmed release date for Blu-ray, 4K and DVD formats, we're reminded of the reason why physical media is still important.

There's often no guarantee that a show or movie will always be available on a streaming service or in a digital format, meaning the only way to guarantee access to content you want to watch time and time again is buying a physical copy.

But if the studios behind shows such as Starfleet Academy don't confirm physical-media release dates, what then? Should Star Trek fans be worried that the opportunity to invest will be taken away from them?

According to Jeri Ryan, who played former Borg drone Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Picard, it's unlikely that this will be the case — even if the 'tech bros' are intent on taking over mainstream studios.

'There's a sheer number of collectors who want to have the physical thing'

"I haven't actually heard about this, but I can't imagine that physical media will go away entirely, because there are too many collectors," Ryan replies when she's asked about Star Trek's physical media presence potentially disappearing.

"These studios are primarily IP companies. More so than ever now that all of the studios have basically been taken over by tech bros as opposed to creatives. It's about dollars, and numbers, and if there's money to be made. I think there probably always will be just by the sheer number of collectors who want to have physical things in their possession.

"I can't imagine that it would get entirely done away with. Maybe I'm wrong... I hope I'm not."

This isn't the first time that Ryan has been outspoken about the entertainment industry's relationship with technology. In April 2026, she testified in support of California Senate Bill 1050, which would "target false advertising by requiring clear and conspicuous consumer disclosures whenever a synthetic digital performer is used in state advertisements."

Ryan's certainly right in thinking that many factors, from over-reliance on streaming services to the increased use of AI, could affect the future of the Star Trek franchise in ways we haven't even imagined yet.

But for physical collections, I've got a feeling that Ryan's optimism when it comes to demand means these releases won't be going anywhere. But if Paramount could hurry up and announce a disc release date for Starfleet Academy to put our minds at ease, that would be great.

• Bynario disclosed CVE‑2026‑43760, a macOS RCE flaw allowing root file creation via legacy VNC password option
• Apple patched it July 27, 2026 in macOS Tahoe 26.6 and Sonoma 14.8.8; unpatched users should disable Screen Sharing/Remote Management or the legacy VNC setting
• Reporting was delayed as Apple limited submissions due to AI‑generated bug report overload, but the company reached out directly to fix this issue

Apple has fixed a high-severity vulnerability that allowed threat actors to execute malicious code remotely (RCE), as root, on certain macOS devices - and would have probably fixed the issue even sooner; had it not been flooded with AI slop vulnerability reports.

Security researchers Bynario published an in-depth report discussing finding an RCE flaw on macOS 26.5.2 devices running on Apple Silicon M4 and M5 systems, with System Integrity Protection (SIP) enabled.

According to Bynario, the vulnerability affects Mac devices with Screen Sharing or Remote Management enabled, and with the legacy "VNC viewers may control screen with password" option turned on. For those devices, should a threat actor obtain the VNC password and authenticate to the Mac (no macOS account compromise is required, only the VNC password), they would be able to perform file-transfer operations, with root permissions, due to a logic flaw.

Drowning in the AI flood

The attacker would then be able to create new files owned by root anywhere the system allows.

In the report, the researchers demonstrated creating a valid file inside /private/etc/sudoers.d, granting passwordless sudo privileges, and once that policy was in place, they were able to run commands as root.

In a separate report, the researchers said Apple was forced to limit the number of active bug reports individual researchers can keep open at one time, due to its security teams being flooded with AI slop reports.

Since they already hit that threshold by submitting more than 50 bugs in three weeks, the researchers were unable to report this RCE flaw sooner. However, they explained that Apple reached out to Bynario directly to review, and later patch, the flaw.

The bug is now tracked as CVE-2026-43760 and was given a severity score of 8.6/10 (high).

Apple released the updates on July 27, 2026, addressing the bug on macOS Tahoe 26.6 and macOS Sonoma 14.8.8.

Those who cannot patch should disable the legacy "VNC viewers may control screen with password" option or disable Screen Sharing and Remote Management entirely.

As telemetry becomes central to how modern platforms are built, trained, and automated, its perceived future utility has driven a dramatic increase in collection and retention. A recent study shows telemetry volumes tripling in many enterprises over the past year, with agentic AI expected to drive nearly 10x more growth expected within the next two years.

Clearly, telemetry is starting to look less like infrastructure and more like capital. The mistake is treating it as a pure asset and overlooking the other side of the ledger. Exploding log volumes and rising costs are the most tangible inconveniences, and often the first triggers for concern, but they are merely symptoms.

The bigger problem is that telemetry gradually becomes a system of knowledge that exceeds an organization’s ability to understand, govern, or explain it and, therefore, to reliably bound its cost, risk, and downstream use.

When AI systems both produce telemetry and consume it

Traditional telemetry was largely retrospective. It described what happened. In AI, it starts feeding back into the system. A session log captured to troubleshoot a crash today may become training data tomorrow, evolve into a model feature later, and eventually drive automated decisions without human supervision.

In essence, the same data serves multiple functions throughout its lifecycle, many of which have little to do with why it was collected in the first place.

This sets a loop in motion. The system produces telemetry, the AI consumes it, which produces new signals and predictions, and those create an appetite for still more telemetry. As a result, the value organizations place on data keeps growing, often ahead of any clear understanding of how it will be used.

Once telemetry becomes a form of organizational memory over time, you are past just discussing observability. You are now dealing with governance, cost, and control.

Telemetry retention is fundamentally biased by asymmetry

It’s easy to justify the seemingly “small cost” of storing another terabyte when weighed against the hypothetical cost of discarding it, which can seem enormous, because someone can always argue that the data you threw away might have been a golden ticket.

The prospect of regretting its deletion feels potentially irreversible. Could it have solved a problem? Could it have trained a model or shown you an opportunity you missed? Caving to uncertainty, most organizations just keep everything.

The flaw in this reasoning is a myopic focus on the asset that ignores its liabilities. Every retained dataset carries ongoing storage and governance costs, security and compliance obligations, and discovery risk if you ever land in litigation. Each new dataset can also be combined with existing ones, amplifying its informational value in ways that were never foreseen.

Is there a guarantee that organizations will never regret a deletion? No, but there can be a clear rationale. You knowingly forgo some option value because the expected benefits of keeping the data do not outweigh the costs and risks of holding it. That is a decision you can stand behind later, even if it turns out the data might have been useful.

Asking whether something could be useful someday is not helpful, because almost anything clears that bar. It’s better to ask what specific capability you are keeping it for. If you have a clear answer, retain the data and govern it accordingly.

For CTOs, the blind spot is treating telemetry growth as a scaling problem

As important as ingestion pipelines, storage, query speed, and tooling are, what often catches people off guard is that telemetry turns into a body of knowledge that no single person in the company actually understands. While most teams can tell you where their data lives, far fewer can explain what it reveals once you start putting it together.

The math here is quite unforgiving because exposure does not grow one stream at a time. Every new source can be matched against every source you already have, so the number of possible combinations spirals into something no longer tractable.

Consider clicks, session length, support tickets, device IDs, login records, or approximate location – on their own, none of it is sensitive, and nobody thinks much of collecting any of it. But put them together, and you can reconstruct someone’s daily routine, flag changes in their financial behavior, or predict upcoming life events.

The sensitivity is not attributed to any single stream but is born out of correlation across streams. In reality, most organizations have never fully explored what those correlations could actually enable.

For a CTO, the thing to worry about is not the size of the data, but whether you can still explain what your organization knows and where that knowledge came from. Give every stream an owner, a stated purpose, and a date it expires. If a stream cannot answer what it improves, then it has no business being retained indefinitely. A rule like that will do more to reduce risk than any amount of clever storage engineering.

For CFOs, the blind spot is filing telemetry under infrastructure cost

What makes telemetry different from other infrastructure is that it compounds. More telemetry produces more analysis, which creates new use cases, which extend retention and increase demand for more storage, processing, tooling, and oversight. Before long, what started as a small storage expense has become an ongoing commitment.

The next year’s cloud bill may seem like the thing you should brace for, but at least you can put a number on it. What’s more concerning is that telemetry can become an ever-growing liability with unpredictable cost, risk, and duration. Unglamorous as it may be, the fix is down to the same thing – focus on the bounded business outcomes it produces.

Can you take any category of telemetry you hold and say plainly why it exists, what value it earns, how long it should live, and what happens to it when it stops being useful?

What would a bounded telemetry architecture look like in an AI-driven world?

It starts by overturning the most basic assumption that you have to collect and keep everything until it turns out to be absolutely impractical. Instead, assume most things should not be collected and that nothing stays forever unless there is a reason for it to.

The effect is a change in default behavior. When every stream is set up with a clear purpose, owner, retention policy, and expected outcome, data starts following a lifecycle instead of piling up. Raw events might exist briefly at full detail, collapse into aggregates after that, and, once they are no longer useful for decisions, eventually disappear.

Thinking in lifecycle terms reframes data as something that interacts across systems rather than existing as isolated stores. That’s why the boundary you draw is not around a single database, but around what the combined system is allowed to infer and act on. What you collect should be based on the decisions you want to improve.

The complication in an AI setting is that these systems do need substantial telemetry to work, so it is not as simple as collecting less. The challenge is to collect enough while still keeping control over what the system learns from and what it ultimately produces.

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• Astell & Kern is launching an 'entry-level' DAP to supersede the SR35
• We'll have to believe it for now, because no actual price has been provided
• Highlights include EnviroTune ambient noise awareness and an Octa-DAC mode

Astell & Kern has straightened things out. We gave its wonky, quirky SR35 digital audio player a glowing five-star review, and now a successor is here in a more conventional form factor.

The A&K PD5 is the new 'best' in question, and very much an upcoming contender for our best high-res media player list. And we'll decide whether it is, as soon as we learn a few key details about it such as when it's actually coming out and how much it'll cost.

Pitched as an entry-level audio player, this hopefully won't cost a huge amount, but we'll have to wait to find out. It's been unveiled as part of an AV show in Hong Kong, and it'll be making its way around a few other similar shows in Shenzhen and Southern California before its wider release.

So we don't know much about it, but there are some key selling points which Astell & Kern have unveiled — and very promising they are too.

It's always listening

The PD5's biggest spec is that it packs in eight DACs at once, and you can choose between 4-DAC or 8-DAC playback. The former lets you listen for longer (28 hours, to be precise), the latter allows you to enjoy higher-quality listening. A&K refers to 'class-defining performance'. Woof.

Another tool here is EnviroTune, which apparently is always listening to you... and, specifically, ambient noise around you. Then it can tweak the sound you're hearing to cater for different environments. It sounds like a proto-ANC, in other words.

For raw specs, the PD5 plays back in 32-bit/384kHz PCM and DSD256, with support for dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.3 and a vast range of codecs. The player runs on Android, though Astell & Kern didn't say which build of Android it'll run.

The player is housed in an aluminum shell, but A&K didn't provide dimensions, so it's impossible to tell how it compares size-wise to the SR35.

The real question here is still the price. This might be Astell & Kern's best entry-level audio player of all time, but its definition of 'entry-level' might vary wildly from yours. Evidently, we'll have to wait and see what the chips fall.

The use of AI across finance functions is soaring as it quickly becomes a key tool for getting the job done.

As such, businesses are investing heavily and spending continues to rise, meaning adoption has more than doubled since 2024.

But governance isn’t keeping pace, as almost half (49%) of UK finance leaders admit their organization has gaps in its AI governance strategy.

That’s a concern for two reasons. One, because governance is a compliance exercise, and two, because it underpins how confidently businesses can adopt AI at scale.

Without clear guardrails, employees will naturally start making their own decisions about which tools to use and how to use them – creating ripe conditions for Shadow AI to emerge and thrive.

The widening adoption-governance gap

I speak from experience when I say that AI is and will continue to be transformative for the finance function.

And for an industry that is largely accepting of the tried and tested status quo, it’s genuinely encouraging to see how positively leaders in the finance space view AI. Our research showed that 8 in 10 (83%) believe it will play an important role in helping them achieve their business goals.

What’s less encouraging, and somewhat worrying, is that almost a quarter (23%) say they have little to no AI governance measures in place. And that disconnect really matters.

Too often, governance is viewed as something to tackle only once adoption of new technology is well underway. But it has to be built alongside adoption. There’s often a fear, not always unfounded, that governance can slow innovation. But that’s not always a bad thing, because the point of governance is to make sure innovation happens safely and in a way that business can measure and trust.

Without it, AI adoption can quickly become fragmented, increasing a business’ exposure to compliance and security risks that will only intensify as AI becomes more deeply embedded.

When processes create friction, people will find another way

While governance gaps are directly linked to organizational risk, they also shape employee behavior. If approved tools are difficult to access, limited, or policies aren’t clear, people will look for another way to get the job done. Employees as a whole want to embrace the productivity benefits of AI and won’t let a lack of formal guidance stop them.

And that’s exactly what research tells us.

More than a quarter (27%) of UK employees admit to purchasing AI tools for work without approval in the last year. More broadly, 67% say they regularly bend rules or find loopholes to access company money, while 27% report missing business opportunities because of delays accessing spending.

These findings aren’t suggestive of employees deliberately trying to undermine company policy. More often, it’s a sign that existing processes aren’t keeping pace with the way people want to work.

That’s where shadow IT starts to emerge.

Shadow AI is a symptom of a wider governance problem

It’s easy to think of Shadow AI as the problem itself. But in reality, it’s usually a symptom of something bigger.

The concern is that this unchecked use of AI can lead to data leakage, compliance failures, poor record-keeping and inconsistent decision-making. So, it’s an important problem to nip it in the bud before it spirals out of control.

When employees feel they need to work around approved processes to stay productive, businesses quickly lose visibility over which AI tools are being used and how company data is being handled. Finance teams can quickly lose track of where money is being spent.

That creates a practical challenge for finance leaders, while businesses can find themselves managing duplicate tools, fragmented AI adoption, unmanaged spend and inconsistent governance. Exposure to scrutiny and compliance risks can also increase exponentially.

The longer those issues go unaddressed, the harder they become to unwind.

Good governance enables AI

The goal is never to slow AI adoption or place unnecessary barriers in front of employees. When governance is implemented well, it makes the approved route the easiest and best way to support employees in new, more productive ways of working.

It means making sure employees have access to tools that help them work effectively, putting clear policies in place for how to use them, and making it clear what’s expected.

When governance supports productivity and innovation, helping employees to address areas of friction in their roles instead of adding to it, they’re far less likely to look elsewhere for solutions.

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• You can now sync your Fitbit data from Google Health to Apple Health
• Previously, data could only flow in the other direction
• The change makes it easier to manage your fitness info in one place

A quiet update from Google has the potential to make a big difference for fans of all the best Fitbits who also use an iPhone. Instead of spreading your health data across multiple apps — or having to rely on Google Health alone — you can now use Apple’s own solution for wearables that are spread across different platforms.

The change in question involves a new feature found in the latest Google Health update on iOS. Specifically, data stored in Google Health can now be synced to the Apple Health app, including data such as “exercise records, sleep, vitals, steps, and more,” according to Google.

That’s important news for a couple of reasons. The first is that it finally opens up Google Health data to a wider audience. Previously, you could sync Apple Health data to Google Health, but you couldn’t send it back the other way, meaning anything saved in Google Health was siloed off and isolated. Now, it’s much more accessible to iOS users, especially those who prefer the Apple Health app.

The second factor is that it now means Apple fans — or those who would rather use Apple Health instead of Google Health — no longer need to compromise if they have any Fitbit wearables. From now on, those users can happily manage their Apple and Fitbit devices from one place inside Apple Health, instead of having to either use multiple apps or Google’s offering alone.

Apple Health is all you need

To sync your data from Google Health to Apple Health, open the Google Health app, then tap your profile icon and select Partner Apps. Choose Apple Health, and follow the on-screen prompts to send your data across to Apple’s platform.

As mentioned previously, one group of people who will benefit from this change are those who use two or more wearables that operate on different platforms. Before, if these users wanted to get all their data into Apple Health, they had to use a third-party app or workaround. Now, things are much simpler.

The change seems to have gone down well with Fitbit users online. Posting on Reddit, for example, one user commended Google, saying: “Good job from Google, I didn't think they would actually add that feature anytime soon.”

Another happily noted that “Google did it quite fast. Nice to see when they care about customers.” A third, meanwhile, lamented that cross-platform functionality like this “Should have been there a long time ago.”

If you’re an iOS user with a Fitbit device, you no longer need to stick to Google Health to keep track of all your health and fitness information. With this change, Apple Health is all you need.

A mini PC is a physically small yet very powerful productivity booster. It’s like compressing the performance of a high-end desktop into a compact device that fits in your palm. You can carry the mini PC around easily and simply connect it to a monitor.

Personally, a mini PC has been one of my best purchases, but choosing the right one was an uphill battle. Between weighing performance, compactness, energy efficiency, and price, selecting the best options from numerous choices felt daunting, but I ultimately narrowed it down after extensive research and testing.

I tested many devices to curate this list, including some of the best mini PCs you can get, so each recommendation is backed up by data. Whether your main consideration is the price range, performance, speed, compactness, or energy consumption, get ready to strike the right balance and make an excellent choice.

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He's a legendary superhero, a pop culture icon, the star of comic books, movies, TV shows, video games and more, but how well do you really know Spider-Man?

Ever since we've seen the web-slinger's first outing in comic book form, we've seen various takes on the character: different human alter egos, different actors taking the role on, different powers and villains.

There's a lot about the character to get your head around, and you should be sure to brush up on how to watch the Spider-Man movies in order and our ranking of the best Spider-Man movies if you need to do some research.

But how well-read and well-watched a fan are you? To find out, we've designed this 30-question quiz, that'll ask you all about Spider-Man and his (and, sometimes, her) media outings.

The questions will test your knowledge on the breadth of the media empire, more than specific details from Spider-Man's world. You don't need to know what Doc Oc was a doctor of, or when Uncle Ben's bed-time is!

We'll start with 10 easy questions, and then move into 10 medium ones, and finish with 10 difficult ones for the experts. So, let's find out just how much you know:

If you need to brush up on your Spider-Man, let's find you some schoolwork:

When we wrote about the “AI speed trap” in the software development process for TechRadar Pro a year ago, the central concern was whether faster delivery would come at the expense of quality. A year on, what we’re seeing are actually deeper issues around trust, governance and organizational alignment.

As AI-generated code becomes more routine and ecosystems become more complex, the challenge is no longer simply keeping pace with delivery. It is deciding who owns quality, how much risk is acceptable, and what confidence looks like in an AI-enabled environment.

AI has become firmly embedded across the software development lifecycle, accelerating delivery at an unprecedented rate. But the real story is no longer just speed. Organizations are now being forced to make more explicit decisions about where quality ends and acceptable risk begins, and to reconcile trade-offs around testing, trust and accountability.

AI is accelerating software delivery, but quality strategies are falling behind

Nobody would dispute that AI has transformed software quality over the last year. AI-assisted coding, automated testing and increasingly autonomous workflows are no longer experimental; they are becoming standard practice.

Nearly seven in ten organizations have now implemented AI tools across at least some of their software delivery workflows, and almost half have fully embedded it into their development environments.

The impact on productivity is undeniable. Development teams can generate code faster than ever, automate repetitive tasks and accelerate release cycles that once took weeks into days, or even hours. But the ability to create software has advanced far more quickly than organizations' ability to validate it.

As a result, 60% of teams are knowingly releasing untested code. Not accidentally, as our 2025 research showed, but because they are under pressure to ship faster, and because the sheer volume of code is outpacing what many teams can realistically test. In other words, these are conscious business decisions. Organizations aren’t even trying to test everything; they’re deciding what they can afford not to test.

As software delivery accelerates, quality has become less about eliminating every defect and more about determining which risks are acceptable. But that requires stronger governance, clearer accountability and a shared understanding of what constitutes an acceptable release.

The definition of quality is changing

In an AI-driven world, organizations will never be able to test every line of AI-generated code. While AI has removed many of the bottlenecks associated with writing code, it hasn't created more time to validate it. Traditional quality models were designed for an era where development speed largely dictated testing speed. That assumption no longer holds.

The answer, however, isn't to lower the bar for software quality. It's to rethink what quality actually means. Rather than attempting to preserve old approaches by asking teams to test everything, organizations need to rethink what software quality actually means.

Increasingly, success will depend on understanding where quality matters most. Which applications are business-critical? Which customer journeys carry the greatest commercial or regulatory risk? Which changes genuinely require exhaustive testing, and which can be validated through risk-based approaches?

In other words, software quality is becoming intelligence-led rather than activity-led. The focus is shifting from test volume to confidence in release decisions, based on how well organizations can identify and manage the risks that matter most.

Why governance, visibility and continuous validation are becoming the new foundations of software quality

As organizations move towards risk-based quality models, a critical gap is emerging: how those risks are actually governed in real time.

In traditional software delivery, governance was often applied at fixed stages. In AI-accelerated environments, that model breaks down. Code is generated continuously, pipelines move faster than human review cycles, and release frequency has increased beyond what stage-gated governance was designed to support.

This requires three structural shifts.

First, visibility becomes foundational. Without real-time insight into what AI is generating, what is being tested, and where coverage gaps are emerging, organizations are effectively making risk decisions without a complete view of the system.

Visibility is the precondition for trust, allowing leaders to understand not just whether software works, but whether it is being adequately validated as it evolves.

Second, governance must move closer to code creation. Instead of acting as a final checkpoint before release, governance increasingly needs to be embedded earlier in the lifecycle, where risk is first introduced. This means bringing quality signals, compliance requirements and risk thresholds into the development process itself, rather than evaluating them retrospectively.

Third, continuous validation replaces discrete testing phases. As AI increases both the speed and volume of code production, organizations are shifting from episodic testing cycles to always-on validation. Rather than asking whether software has been tested, the more relevant question becomes whether it is being continuously validated against the organisation’s risk appetite as it changes.

In AI-driven environments, confidence in software quality depends less on point-in-time approvals and more on the ability to observe, measure and validate quality as it is being created.

Organizations are making deliberate decisions about risk

Software quality has always involved balancing competing priorities, but AI is making those trade-offs more explicit, with “good enough” increasingly defined at the intersection of engineering constraints and business pressure.

The challenge is that organizations don’t always agree on what that looks like. Nearly half report only partial alignment between executives and software teams on what high-quality software actually looks like, suggesting that release readiness is increasingly open to interpretation rather than governed by consistent standards.

This also explains a key finding in our data: that while more than nine in ten C-level executives express confidence in their testing strategies, almost one-third of quality assurance (QA) and DevOps leaders remain uncertain that those strategies adequately address the most critical software risks.

That gap reflects fundamentally different perspectives. Executives naturally focus on strategic outcomes and business velocity, while engineering teams experience first-hand the operational realities of validating increasingly complex software systems.

Closing that gap will become increasingly important as AI continues to accelerate software delivery. Trust cannot exist if different parts of the organization operate under different definitions of quality or acceptable risk.

Software quality has become a business decision

For years, software quality was viewed as a technical responsibility - a discipline concerned with finding defects before customers did. That is no longer sufficient.

When software underpins customer experiences, regulatory compliance and critical business operations, decisions about quality inevitably become business decisions. Shipping software with known gaps can no longer be merely a technical compromise; it represents an organizational risk assessment.

The consequences extend well beyond development teams. Poor software quality can increase technical debt, introduce security vulnerabilities, create compliance challenges and erode customer trust. Many organizations are already attributing hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of pounds to the downstream impact of software failures and rework.

At the same time, governance has struggled to mature at the same pace as AI adoption. While many trust agentic AI to make release decisions, significantly fewer believe they are ready to do so at scale. That disparity between adoption and oversight is likely to become one of the defining challenges of the next phase of AI-enabled software delivery.

Ultimately, software quality is no longer something that can be delegated solely to engineering teams. It requires leadership alignment, shared accountability and governance that keeps pace with increasingly autonomous development.

Conclusion

AI has accelerated software delivery to the point where existing approaches to testing and governance are struggling to keep up. The organizations most likely to succeed are those that make deliberate, well-governed decisions about risk and build trust into the software delivery lifecycle rather than treating it as a final checkpoint.

Software quality can no longer be just an engineering discipline. In the AI era, it has become a leadership responsibility.

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• Microsoft's disc-to-digital feature for Xbox consoles will reportedly release this month
• The Verge reports that the feature will allow developers to bring their Xbox 360 games to "Xbox PCs", handheld devices, and "next-gen Xbox devices" like Project Helix
• A 2027-2028 "gradual" rollout is expected "across next-gen devices"

Microsoft's rumored disc-to-digital feature, which would allow players to digitize their existing physical Xbox game library, will reportedly roll out this month and be available for Project Helix.

That's according to a leaked document obtained by The Verge, which appears to show a roadmap of features scheduled for release over the next few months, into next year, and into 2028.

Last month, sources familiar with Microsoft's plans claimed the company was working on a way for Xbox users to digitize their physical games. It was reported that the feature would allow users to insert a compatible disc, install, and play the game, granting them a digital entitlement on their account.

The feature would work with Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs, not with Xbox 360 or original Xbox consoles. However, it was suggested that some Xbox One discs might not work.

The Verge now reports that Microsoft will allow developers to bring their Xbox 360 games not just to Xbox consoles, but "Xbox PCs", handheld devices, and "next-gen Xbox devices" like Project Helix.

Developers can opt in to making their old-gen titles backward compatible, giving them control over prices and whether they would be available on Game Pass.

As per the roadmap, the feature is scheduled for a "gradual" rollout between 2027 and 2028 "across next-gen devices," while the "full launch" of original Xbox games on PC via Game Pass or the Xbox Store is set for October 2026.

The outlet also said a public beta for the disc-to-digital program was set for July, with general availability for all Xbox One and Series X owners slated for August. It's understood that Microsoft originally planned to test the feature with Xbox Insiders last month, but the beta was delayed, and now it’s unclear if the August general release is still on course.

Elsewhere, Xbox Series X and Series S prices have increased once again in the UK. The Xbox Series X 1TB All-Digital version will now cost £619.99, up from £449.99, while the disc edition will go up from £499.99 to £669.99.

If you've been considering Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, or any of Adobe's other professional creative applications, and haven't signed up before, you can save 50% on the Creative Cloud Pro plan for your first year.

This cuts the monthly cost from $69.99 to $34.99 (or from $91.99 to $45.99 in Canada) on an annual plan billed monthly. And the subscription comes with more than 20 industry-leading creative apps, alongside 4,000 monthly generative AI credits for premium features such as Text to Video.

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AI spending is forecast to reach $40.74 billion by 2030.

While AI adoption is accelerating on both sides of the Atlantic, UK and US retailers are taking differing approaches. US organizations are using AI to unlock new revenue opportunities and reshape the customer experience. UK retailers have largely focused on what AI can do internally.

There are understandable reasons for the differing approaches. But UK retailers risk falling behind if they don't broaden their strategy to focus on embedding AI across the full customer journey.

The Transatlantic AI divide: Operational efficiency vs revenue growth

For UK retailers, early AI adoption has been cautious. The focus has been on internal operational efficiencies, such as creating marketing content, handling surface-level customer service and answering post-purchase queries.

US retailers, on the other hand, are embedding AI directly into the shopping journey itself. A third of US adults now use AI agents when shopping online, such as Amazon’s Rufus, to discover or research products. In-chat checkout experiences are becoming increasingly popular. US retailers are positioning AI more like a digital sales assistant than a back-office tool.

While both approaches have their merits, there is a risk UK retailers get left behind. The gap won’t happen overnight. It will emerge quietly, starting with share of attention and then showing up in revenue.

Global retailers using AI for discovery, conversion, and lifetime value will start owning key decision moments. UK brands focused on operational efficiency may find themselves absent from the journeys that matter most.

Compliance vs experimentation

UK retailers didn’t arrive at caution arbitrarily. Regulation and the consumer expectations shaped it. GDPR means shoppers expect clear consent, transparency on data use, and control before engaging with AI-driven experiences.

That’s why many UK retailers started with safer operational use cases, including automating support, enhancing content and streamlining fulfilment, before fully reinventing the ecommerce journey. Explainability and trust came before experimentation.

In the US, fewer regulatory guardrails made it easier for retailers to test AI tools publicly, iterate quickly and showcase value directly to consumers. The UK’s position isn’t a weakness. It’s a different starting point.

By ensuring customer-facing AI functions are both compliant and secure, UK retailers can both unlock new revenue and strengthen consumer confidence, rather than risking the need to roll back features due to compliance concerns.

Turning AI into a commercial growth engine

The faster US adoption has been less about technology and more about how the internal conversation is framed. The boardroom conversation isn’t “How do we save cost?” — it’s “How do we acquire smarter, convert faster and grow lifetime value?”.

US retailers treat AI as a growth lever across the full customer journey, from personalizing discovery and optimizing pricing, to guiding promotions, streamlining checkout and automating lifecycle communications. AI is framed as a revenue driver, not an operational nicety.

UK retailers have strong operational foundations. The shift is about pointing that discipline toward growth, opt-in recommendations and assisted checkouts. Controlled experiments that build insight and customer confidence at the same time.

For these experiments to work, the product data underneath them has to be ready: rich specifications, reviews, imagery and supporting content that gives AI something real to reference during conversational discovery and search.

Predictive personalization can prioritize high-value customers and surface relevant offers. Controlled agentic shopping experiences build familiarity and insight over time. Dynamic pricing and AI-driven lifecycle communications improve both conversion and retention. None of this requires abandoning the trust UK retailers have built.

The risk of falling behind may be gradual, but it is real

UK retail has the foundations. Now they need to be built upon.

Customer acquisition costs will rise if competitors are winning the discovery moment first. Conversions will happen earlier – and elsewhere – if the journey isn’t being shaped. Lifetime value will lag as AI-driven retention compounds faster for the brands that moved sooner.

Cumulative gaps are harder to close than visible ones. The retailers that combine strong governance and trusted data practices with genuine customer-facing AI innovation are the ones that will compete well in what comes next.

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Democratization may be the AI industry's favorite word, and one that, in fairness, it has earned the right to use.

At the beginning of the decade, building anything with machine learning meant a large research team and a significant budget, and that put it out of reach for many.

Today, however, the barrier to using advanced AI has fallen almost entirely, and what used to be a quiet technology in the background has been thrust to the forefront of everyday work and everyday conversation.

But access is just the surface layer. Underneath it sits another layer which, arguably, matters more than access to AI itself, and that layer is training.

Unlike access, model training has not been democratized at all. The industry has made it easy to consume a model and almost impossible to make one.

This needs to change.

A gatekeeper to innovation

If we look closely at what "democratization" has really delivered thus far, we see that what has opened up is only consumption. Anybody can now interact directly with an AI model, even without a technical background, and can build an app in an afternoon with minimal effort. Open-weight releases mean anyone can even run a model on their own hardware, free of an API. These are genuine advances that have helped define the AI-powered world we now live in.

What has not open up is the ability to train a model. Currently, producing a frontier model still requires capital measured in billions, scarce specialist talent that only a handful of labs can attract and retain, vast datasets, and retraining cycles that have to be repeated every six to 12 months just to stay current.

It is a cycle that is stifling progress, and a barrier that no startup, cash strapped healthcare organization, or mid-sized manufacturer can clear. It functions as a gatekeeper to innovation, and it is one that well-funded organizations have every commercial incentive to keep locked, because the scarcity of training capability is precisely what protects their market position.

There is a dichotomy. The cost of using a model has fallen toward zero. The cost of making one has climbed toward the limits of what private capital can sustain.

Can open source help?

Some might argue that the answer is to turn to open-weight models. Open weights, the argument goes, solve the ownership problem. You can download the model, run it, fine-tune it, and deploy it without asking anyone's permission. This is not democratized training though. It may be closer, but owning the weights is not the same as owning the model itself.

An open-weight model remains the frozen output of a training process run by the organization that produced it. What users receive is the result of that process. It is true that they can somewhat adjust the model. But doing that effectively demands expertise, compute, and clean data. And as the world moves on, the model ages and retraining is needed.

So despite their advantages on the surface, open weights do not offer users the ability to produce and continuously improve a model. That ability is still held by the labs that produced it.

The change that could revolutionize innovation

In my view, if democratization reaches the training layer and allows users the genuine ability to create, train, and own a model, several important structural changes follow that could meaningfully accelerate innovation across industries.

Ownership survives the vendor. If a model is trained by its user on the data they own, the weights are theirs without licensing restrictions, it will not evaporate if the company that gave them the tools to build it disappears. The relationship stops being a subscription. That single change alone removes the dependency the current market is built upon.

Models must learn continuously. If training is something that can be done continuously rather than a cyclical and centralized event, the model does not have to freeze at deployment. It can keep learning from new data in production without expensive retraining cycles and without a team of specialists being needed to run it. The workarounds become unnecessary because the underlying limitation is gone.

When control of what a model learns and how occurs at user level, the chain of responsibility is legible. That is the kind of traceability regulators are expecting and that black-box frontier models simply cannot provide.

These are the distributed benefits that make "democratization" the right word at last. If the ability to train a model is widely held, then the value, control, and responsibility are widely held too. General Learning Intelligence treats learning as part of the architecture rather than a cost only the largest labs can bear.

Access to models is already cheap and getting cheaper. However, access to training is not and that is where the next phase of competition will be decided.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the scale and complexity of data center infrastructure.

Traditional data center facilities were designed around relatively steady CPU workloads and predictable growth in power demand, allowing developers to secure energy supply alongside growing demand, cooling systems based on known and mature technology and infrastructure capacity with a reasonable degree of certainty.

AI workloads, however, demand far more power with greater energy density.

Electricity consumption from data centers has grown at 12% per year over the last five years and expected demand growth, particularly in AI training data centers, is set to drive a substantial increase in power demand.

Meeting this demand, while maintaining efficiency, is pushing developers toward gigawatt-scale data centers and with the timeframe for delivering these facilities rapidly compressing, the ability to deliver new infrastructure efficiently is increasingly critical.

In addition, as the scale of these developments grows, so does the complexity of delivering them. Grid interconnections can delay timelines by years, equipment supply chains are stretched, and projects must meet stringent reliability targets while navigating regulatory, environmental and community requirements that vary by region and country.

For owners and developers, the challenge is no longer simply constructing another data center building. The next generation of AI data centers requires a fully integrated approach across power, cooling, transmission, water, digital systems and long-term operations. Success depends on designing these facilities as resilient, flexible and energy-optimized industrial campuses.

Balancing site trade-offs to unlock faster delivery

Site selection is one of the clearest expressions of this dynamic where teams are typically assessing a series of imperfect options, each with its own advantages and constraints. For example, one site may offer lower cost land but lack the existing infrastructure required to support large scale development, while another may provide access to grid power but at a significantly higher cost or with timelines that delay delivery.

In practice, few locations offer everything required, and selecting a site becomes an exercise in understanding what should be prioritized, what can be mitigated, and what must be accepted.

Factors like water availability, land constraints, fiber connectivity, permitting timelines and social license to operate are all deeply important to success. Developers must consider how to optimize within these constraints. Where grid power is unavailable or delayed, for example, off grid or hybrid energy solutions may be introduced.

While these approaches can accelerate delivery, they also bring different capital requirements, financing structures, and operational considerations that must be carefully weighed.

Combining power solutions can accelerate bringing capacity online more efficiently

As AI workloads drive unprecedented levels of demand, power strategies also require a reassessment against expected scale timelines. Grid supply does offer lower long-term energy costs, stability and resilience advantages eventually but hinges on capacity constraints, and extended interconnection timelines.

In contrast, behind the meter generation, such as gas turbines or reciprocating engines, can be deployed more quickly and provide greater operational control. This, however, comes with higher upfront capital requirements, higher operational costs, fuel dependencies and more complex permitting considerations.

As speed-to-market is a key competitive driver, many large-scale developments are willing to pay a premium for off-grid or hybrid architectures, including battery storage and integration of renewables where accessible.

These systems are coordinated through microgrid controls, allowing operators to manage load variability, maintain resilience through islanding, and optimize overall system performance. The final configuration is shaped by how factors such as time to market, grid availability, resilience, and overall cost evolve.

Rethinking cooling can support high-density AI and optimize when energy is used

With this increase in power demands comes a corresponding increase in heat generation. The physics and economics of air cooling are struggling to keep pace with the thermal loads generated by AI workloads, forcing a shift toward alternative solutions.

One solution is liquid cooling, which is gaining traction as a more effective way to manage higher heat loads. Transferring heat more efficiently, it enables facilities to operate at the densities required by AI infrastructure. However, it does also introduce new dependencies, particularly around liquid cooling solutions and the infrastructure required to support it.

At the same time, taking a broader view of cooling opens up new opportunities. Cooling systems can be integrated with wider power infrastructure, excess heat can be connected to industrial processes that can utilize it and waste heat from data centers can be repurposed for applications such as district heating, which is already quite common in the Nordics.

Approaching cooling in this way allows developers to design systems that make better use of energy and create additional value through heat reuse and integration with surrounding infrastructure.

Additionally, thermal energy storage gives AI data centers the ability to shift cooling demand away from peak periods by producing chilled water when electricity is cheaper or more available and using it later when loads are highest.

This creates valuable demand response capability, allowing the facility to reduce its grid draw during periods of system stress, lower demand charges and support utility programs without impacting data center operations. In combination with batteries and advanced controls, thermal storage can help stabilize both the data center and the surrounding grid.

Early efforts on permitting can identify the fastest development route and avoid delays

Permitting and regulatory considerations sit alongside these technical decisions, shaping what is possible and how quickly projects can move forward. Requirements vary by region, country and project type, but in all cases, they influence how projects must be designed from the outset.

For example, grid connected developments may be constrained by connection approvals and capacity limits, while sites incorporating on-site generation may require air quality or emissions permits that influence technology choices. Land use restrictions, environmental approvals and community considerations can further shape site layout, development timelines and even overall project viability.

Addressing these requirements early, and in parallel with technical and commercial decision making, is therefore as important as those other factors. When permitting is treated as part of the initial planning process, it allows projects to be structured in a way that is both deliverable and aligned with regulatory expectations from the beginning.

This, in turn, reinforces the need for a coordinated approach across the full range of stakeholders involved. Energy providers, technology companies, developers, regulators and local communities each play a role in shaping outcomes, and the interaction between them becomes a critical factor in how effectively projects can progress.

Having the right expertise in place to connect these elements enables developers to navigate this complexity more effectively, ensuring that decisions made early on are aligned across disciplines. This early alignment helps create a more integrated delivery pathway, reducing friction between project phases and supporting smoother progression from planning through to construction and execution.

Turning AI demand into operational capacity at the speed and scale the market requires

The importance of this becomes clearer when looking at how these challenges play out in practice. In Texas, for example, early engineering work on a gigawatt scale AI training data center helped define the infrastructure strategy for one of the largest behind the meter energy systems supporting AI workloads.

The project includes 5 GW of gas generation capacity, up to 1.25 GW of solar PV, utility scale battery storage and a microgrid supporting 20 buildings totaling 10 million square feet, each designed for around 250 MW of power demand.

Projects of this scale reflect the sheer pace and ambition of AI demand, but ultimately, success comes down to how effectively that demand is translated into deliverable infrastructure. That means making early decisions that can withstand real world constraints, from power availability and permitting through to long term operational performance.

Bringing these elements together into a coherent strategy, and aligning the stakeholders needed to deliver it, is what will enable projects to move at the speed and scale the market now requires.

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• UK’s Police National Legal Database (PNLD) breach leaks data of 100k+ criminal justice professionals
• Threat group ExfilSquad claimed responsibility, posting 1.9 GB of stolen records on the dark web and demanding ransom
• PNLD notified NCA and ICO, hired specialists, and confirmed passwords weren’t compromised but contact details exposed

The UK’s Police National Legal Database (PNLD) suffered a cyberattack recently, in which it allegedly lost sensitive data on more than 100,000 criminal justice professionals.

In a short press release, PNLD confirmed the breach, saying it happened over a weekend. The threat actors, which were not named in the announcement, were said to have taken names, organizations, and work email addresses belonging to police officers, staff, government partners, and customers.

The announcement also said the stolen information was already published on the dark web, adding that there is “no evidence to suggest that passwords or other security credentials have been compromised.” How the attackers worked their way in was not disclosed in the announcement.

ExfilSquad takes the blame

Following the breach, PNLD hired cyber-security specialists, and notified the National Crime Agency, which started their investigation into the incident.

“All affected organizations were contacted in the days following the incident and provided with further information and guidance,” the announcement reads. “The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has also been notified.”

At the same time, threat actors calling themselves ExfilSquad claimed responsibility for the attack, BleepingComputer reported. The group alleges it stole 135,000 contact records, sharing samples to support their claims. They also said they demanded a ransom in exchange for keeping the data safe.

In the dark web post, ExfilSquad said it obtained 1.9 GB of data, which includes information belonging to 114,000 PNLD subscribers and 21,000 Ask the Police users.

‘Ask the Police’ is a public-facing website where users can find answers to hundreds of commonly asked policing or legal questions.

ExfilSquad is a relatively new threat actor that's not known for any major attacks so far. Prior to the PNLD incident, it claimed the attack against Analog Devices, a US semiconductor company.

• Advanced Full Fibre Broadband from EE offers download speeds of 2.3Gbps and 8Gbps
• Speeds are potentially 222 times faster than standard superfast fibre
• Initially available in Guildford and Woking, expanding as Openreach rolls out its XGS-PON glass fibre network

Following a successful trial in early 2026, EE has launched its new Advanced Full Fibre Broadband plans, advertising download speeds of 2.3Gbps and 8Gbps. This makes EE the first provider to sell access to the Openreach XGS-PON glass fibre network.

The plans are initially only available in the Guildford and Woking areas, two Surrey towns in the London commuter belt, where the glass fibre network is installed and active.

EE is targeting users who rely on video conferencing, remote working, and content upload, and with multiple Internet of Things devices, as well as online gamers and streaming consumers. Speeds are up to 222 times faster than the standard superfast fibre broadband plans.

Two plans for EE’s XGS-PON fibre

Customers can access two plans from EE. The 2.3Gbps Advanced Full Fibre Broadband plan starts at £54.99 per month, while the 8Gbps plan is available from £74.99 a month.

No upload speeds have been stated, nor are they listed on the sign-up page, but they can be expected to be similarly fast.

XGS-PON (10-Gigabit-capable Symmetric Passive Optical Network) is a high speed, high-bandwidth data network standard, currently available in various forms across Europe, North America, and other regions. In the UK, it is used in the nexfibre, CityFibre, and Openreach networks, with EE using the latter to provide these plans.

With streaming speeds supporting 4K and 8K video, these plans are likely to be popular where available, and support for up to 190 devices suggests the plans will include routers suited to IoT and smart home applications.

Will faster fibre improve British broadband?

“Today marks a major milestone for EE as we become the first major UK provider to offer broadband speeds of up to 8Gbps on next-generation XGS-PON technology," noted Luciano Oliveira, Director of Product, Home and TV at EE.

"As homes become more connected and customers place greater demands on their broadband, we're investing in the technologies that will power the next generation of digital experiences.”

EE regularly wins recognition as the UK’s most popular network, with its business built on mobile (where its 4G, 5G and 5GSA speeds cover more than 90% of the UK) and an advertising campaign featuring Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon.

Unlike Virgin Media which owns its own fibre network, EE’s domestic and business broadband plans rely on third party infrastructure, mostly provided by Openreach, and due to the differences in connections across the country (and the legacy copper lines that remain in place in some locations), struggles to offer the same speeds for all customers.

This is a problem faced by all providers who sell access to Openreach lines, so EE’s immediate competitors will no doubt be watching with interest.

Patagonia is one of the biggest names in outdoor clothing, and especially impressive when it comes to sustainability — great news if you want to protect those beautiful natural landscapes you're planning on hiking over or camping in this summer.

I'm a big fan of Patagonia's products, but they don't come especially cheap. So I was particularly pleased, when hunting for kit for my next adventure, to uncover a goldmine of Patagonia discounts at Cotswold Outdoor. There are deals on a wide range of kit for every weather eventuality — important if you're planning on spending any time in the UK, where you can never be quite sure if you'll be facing sweltering heat or a torrential downpour.

Below, I've rounded up my pick of the best discounts across the men's and women's ranges, including fleeces, waterproofs, base layers, tees and shorts, with a few accessories thrown in for good measure. Happy exploring!

Outdoor kit for summer adventures

It’s hardly a surprise that Apple had to increase the prices of its iPads, Macs and other devices last month amid ongoing RAM and storage shortages, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the upcoming iPhones follow suit — but it’s not completely doom and gloom for Apple fans.

Apple’s wearables weren’t impacted by these price hikes, which is good news for anyone looking to upgrade to a watchOS 27-compatible device (as there will only be a select few left) or if you’re keen to get a swanky new watch to track your workouts.

The Apple Watch 11 was already going at a fantastic price of AU$429 during Prime Day last month, but surprise, surprise, it’s ever-so-slightly cheaper now, and it’s not even sale season! The Apple Watch Series 11 with the 42mm chassis and GPS-only option is now AU$2 cheaper, making this the lowest-ever price on Amazon Australia — that’s 37% off in case you were wondering.

Our Apple Watch Series 11 review called it “the most capable and best-looking” mainline Apple Watch yet, thanks to its larger battery capacity and brighter, more power-efficient and more scratch-resistant Always-On Retina LTPO3 OLED display compared to its predecessor.

Apple rates both the 42mm and 46mm models’ battery life at 24 hours of typical use and up to 38 hours in Low Power Mode, with battery capacity up 9% and 11%, respectively. Our reviewer found the claim checks out, with tests getting a full day and a half of battery life with light use, but the Low Power Mode makes it go even longer.

Health tracking is more comprehensive with the Series 11, adding blood-pressure monitoring to the usual arrhythmic heart-rate alerts, ECG, wrist temperature, respiratory rate and cycle tracking. Hearing health and Sleep Score are other notable additions, but these are also available on the cheaper SE 3 and have been rolled out to older models too.

Admittedly, the Apple Watch Series 11 won’t be much of an upgrade over the Series 10 because of the very similar hardware (and watchOS 27 compatibility), but upgrading from the Series 8 or older models, or even the Watch SE and SE 2, will see a significant performance jump and a longer support period.

And at this price, you don’t even need to wait till Black Friday as we don’t see it getting much cheaper than this in a few months’ time.

Did you expect film and TV's Christine Baranski to be an AI overlord in an alternate universe in Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 2? No? Me neither.

I wouldn't at all be surprised if this week's episode 3 ups the ante even further. While details are largely being kept under wraps, we can expect Stuart (Kevin Sussman), Denise (Lauren Lapkus), Kripke (John Ross Bowie) and Bert (Brian Posehn) to a more magical realm, with a wizarding world of a comic book store to boot.

Consider me strapped in. So, when does Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 3 arrive on HBO Max?

What time can I watch Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 3 on HBO Max?

For US viewers, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 3 will drop on Thursday, August 6 at 6pm PT/ 9pm ET.

Internationally, you're looking out for these timings:

• US – 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• Canada – 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• UK – Friday, August 7 at 2am BST
• India – Friday, August 7 at 6:30am IST
• Singapore – Friday, August 7 at 9am SGT
• Australia – Friday, August 7 at 11am AEDT
• New Zealand – Friday, August 7 at 12pm NZDT

When do new episodes of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe come out?

New episodes of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe will make landfall every Thursday in the US and on Fridays everywhere else. Here are the all-important dates you need to know about:

• Episode 1: out now
• Episode 2: out now
• Episode 3: August 6
• Episode 4: August 13
• Episode 5: August 20
• Episode 6: August 27
• Episode 7: September 3
• Episode 8: September 10
• Episode 9: September 17
• Episode 10: September 24

• LinkedIn will hold GPU investment and its compute and storage footprint flat rather than expanding its AI data centers
• The company says it roughly doubled the efficiency of its existing GPUs in six months through accumulated improvements to utilization, model distillation, and workload allocation, not a single breakthrough
• This makes it an exception to the rule under owner Microsoft's umbrella

LinkedIn has revealed it does not plan to spend aggressively on expanding its AI data centers over its next fiscal year - instead keeping GPU investment flat and holding its compute and storage footprint roughly where it is.

The stated reason is not restraint for its own sake: the company says it has found ways to get about twice as much out of its existing GPUs over the past six months and intends to spend that headroom on new features rather than new hardware.

Speaking to Wired, Erran Berger, LinkedIn's engineering CTO, framed the goal as keeping the compute footprint flat or close to it while still shipping more compute-hungry things into production - all while acknowledging this is an unusual position to take publicly right now.

Skipping the norm, both at the industry-level and the parent company

LinkedIn has been wholly owned by Microsoft since its December 2016 acquisition of the company for $26.2 billion.

Despite being part of the software giant, LinkedIn's approach seems vastly different from that of a company that recently saw its shares rally hard as it showcased AI spending finally resulting in measurable returns.

Microsoft also recently closed its own fiscal year, reporting $41 billion in capital expenditure in the most recent quarter alone. It added 31 data centers in that quarter and 88 across the year, and expects to spend more than $50 billion in the current quarter.

This draws an interesting parallel: while one part of Microsoft is deploying capital at a rate few companies in history have matched, a subsidiary with more than a billion users has decided to sit out the year, citing efficiency gains. This makes it a considerably more interesting approach than what would otherwise be a "company shows AI discipline" affair.

While parallels exist, it is prudent to point out that Microsoft's spending is overwhelmingly driven by Azure customer demand, and specifically by capacity it has contracted to supply to OpenAI, rather than by internal product workloads, while LinkedIn's compute is a rounding error against that.

Despite that, it offers an interesting alternative perspective when a large consumer platform can add generative AI features for a year without adding hardware; still, it runs counter to the prevailing assumption that AI features and capacity growth are inseparable.

What makes this possible for LinkedIn?

The answer runs back to a decision most coverage treated as an embarrassment at the time.

LinkedIn announced in 2019 that it would migrate its infrastructure onto Azure under a project codenamed Blueshift. In 2022, it quietly shelved that plan. An internal memo at the time cited Azure's own demand pressures and said LinkedIn would focus on scaling its on-premises infrastructure instead; subsequent reporting established that the migration had also run into difficulties because LinkedIn's in-house tooling did not transfer cleanly to Azure.

LinkedIn instead committed to its own data centers in Oregon, Texas, and Virginia.

LinkedIn's CTO for infrastructure, Raghu Hiremagalur, now argues that owning the full stack is precisely what makes this year's plan feasible, because the company can instrument every layer and treat efficiency as a standing investment rather than a one-off cost-cutting exercise.

“I really want to double underscore that for a company of our scale, to say a full year we're going to do this with no incremental storage and compute is no small feat, but it's taken a ton of work to get there," Hiremagalur said.

Reading what, in 2022, was a retreat as a 2026 advantage is self-serving, but it is not obviously wrong. The efficiency work itself is described as an accumulation rather than a breakthrough: better GPU utilization and workload allocation, distilling larger models into smaller ones, and rethinking how work is divided across training, inference, storage, and systems design.

Hiremagalur has also said the cost of serving each query had been climbing steadily while stored data was doubling annually, which he characterized as unsustainable. That is the more revealing framing. The efficiency push reads less like a strategic choice about the AI market and more like a company that looked at its own cost curve and decided it had to bend.

It makes it worth pointing out that LinkedIn has not really solved anything; It is that a platform of this size has publicly said out loud that its compute constraint is deliberate, at a moment when the four largest US hyperscalers have committed to something in the region of $600 billion to $700 billion of capital expenditure for the calendar year between them.

Almost every incentive in the industry currently runs toward announcing capacity rather than efficiency, making it an interesting outlier in a field dominated by daily capex announcements.

The more useful question is whether the approach holds. If it does, the argument that AI product ambition requires proportional growth in hardware gets meaningfully weaker. If it does not, this will read as an efficiency drive that met the hardware demands of a real product roadmap but failed to do so at a time when AI spending is increasingly scrutinized, even as LinkedIn itself recently allowed users to mark what they feel is 'AI slop'.