There's a new tiny tablet in town: Apple has just released an upgraded iPad mini, with a whole slew of improvements over its predecessor. In honor of this new addition, let's take a look at the full range and how the different options compare.

The iPad mini is Apple's smallest and lightest tablet. All other models have screens that are 11 inches or larger, but the newest mini has an 8.5-inch screen — slightly bigger than its predecessor, which had an 8.3-inch screen. Said display is also less advanced than the rest of the range.

The model up is the standard iPad. We're on the 11th generation, released in 2025. It's powered by an A16 chip and boasts a Liquid Retina display. The screen is 11 inches (no 13-inch option) and, perhaps surprisingly, it's the thickest of the lineup. At this point, it's the only iPad not to have Apple Intelligence built-in.

A level up again is the iPad Air. The newest version is the 8th generation iPad Air, released in 2026, powered by the M4 chip. You can choose between 11-inch and 13-inch screens. There's a 1TB option (the two models down top out at 512GB) and support for the Apple Pencil Pro.

The iPad Pro is the most powerful, premium option. The newest version is the 8th-gen iPad Pro, which came out in 2025 and has an M5 chip, but you can still pick up a 7th-gen model with an M4 chip (from 2024). It boasts a high-end display, Face ID, studio-quality microphones, and is fully compatible with the Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard. You can choose between 11-inch and 13-inch models.

Scroll down to see the best current prices on the full lineup, or hop to the bottom of the page for a handy specs comparison.

The full range

Apple iPads: specs compared

• Nvidia's new rule forces foreign cloud providers to reconsider doing business in China
• Chinese AI companies face fewer routes to powerful American processors
• Nvidia has sharply reduced the number of approved Asian chip buyers

Nvidia is tightening commercial restrictions on foreign cloud providers, requiring them to reduce their reliance on Chinese businesses that use its advanced AI processors.

The new condition requires affected companies to generate at least 51% of their revenue from customers outside China, potentially disrupting existing business arrangements.

The requirement applies globally, and its consequences could be particularly significant for data center operators serving Chinese technology companies.

Nvidia introduces new restrictions for foreign cloud providers

The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the discussion, said Nvidia communicated the requirement verbally through its sales representatives and regional management teams.

The company introduced the condition during the summer, applying it to future commercial agreements rather than existing cloud computing contracts.

Two sources confirmed that the restrictions cover Nvidia customers worldwide, rather than applying exclusively to facilities operating across Asian markets.

The policy requires cloud computing businesses to demonstrate sufficient demand from international customers before continuing their commercial relationships with Nvidia.

“Data centres and clouds built on American chips are the foundation that American model and application makers need to compete worldwide. Longstanding US policy encourages every cloud to build on American infrastructure and to win business everywhere they can,” Nvidia said.

“America’s longstanding policy has always supported the build-out of American infrastructure worldwide, bringing prosperity, influence and jobs home.”

The company's approach comes amid increasing scrutiny from Washington over how advanced American processors reach Chinese technology businesses.

US authorities have been attempting to restrict access through intermediaries, foreign computing facilities and other commercial arrangements that circumvent existing export controls.

Chinese technology companies face mounting computing constraints

Chinese technology companies have increasingly depended on foreign cloud providers to access advanced processors unavailable through direct purchases.

These arrangements allow them to use powerful computing systems for demanding AI operations, including training large language models.

Nvidia's B300 processors illustrate the financial incentives behind this market, with a complete rack selling for approximately $600,000 internationally.

However, a rack reportedly sold for about $2.8 million in China in October 2026 because of limited availability.

The B300 is among Nvidia's most advanced processors, but American export restrictions prohibit its direct sale into China.

Nvidia has also cut the number of Asian companies authorised to purchase its AI chips by more than half this year.

The company introduced stricter compliance checks to prevent restricted processors from reaching China through unauthorised suppliers and intermediaries.

Its latest requirements are also creating difficulties for foreign data center operators that previously depended on Chinese businesses for revenue.

These operators must now find enough customers elsewhere to ensure that at least 51% of their services go to non-Chinese companies.

A Singapore-based cloud provider said securing sufficient international customers outside America had become difficult under the new requirements.

“If strictly implemented, it will definitely hurt business,” said a representative of the Singapore-based group.

Consequently, Chinese technology companies could find it increasingly difficult to rent advanced computing capacity from foreign providers, affecting their access to resources needed for AI development.

• xAI installs eight converted jet engines to supply its Mississippi data center
• Each refurbished turbine can generate up to 50 megawatts of electricity
• Grid connection delays are pushing AI companies towards alternative power sources

Artificial intelligence companies are increasingly installing aircraft-derived turbines as conventional electricity supplies struggle to keep pace with expanding data center construction.

Elon Musk’s xAI has now placed eight refurbished jet-engine generators at its Mississippi facility, supplying additional electricity for the Colossus 2 computing complex.

The equipment offers a faster route to power than waiting years for grid connections, although its emissions have raised environmental objections.

Old aircraft engines become electricity generators

ProEnergy, a Missouri company, converts retired General Electric aircraft engines into stationary generators, adapting equipment originally designed for aviation applications.

The equipment repurposes turbines that would otherwise remain unused after leaving airline service, giving data center operators another source of dispatchable electricity.

The refurbished units are reportedly capable of producing as much as 50 megawatts apiece, equivalent to the electricity needs of approximately 15,000 homes.

That output makes the technology attractive to operators facing lengthy utility delays, particularly as demand from AI infrastructure continues accelerating.

“It’s all about getting power as fast as possible...they can have a data center running in 24 months,” said Audun Martinsen, an analyst at energy research firm Rystad Energy.

By comparison, connecting a 100-megawatt facility to Northern Virginia’s electricity network can take approximately seven years, according to the International Energy Agency.

An executive at Mitsubishi Power has also warned that much new generation capacity may not become available until 2031, amid equipment shortages.

Electricity shortages collide with environmental concerns

Power shortages threaten ambitious expansion plans across the industry, with forecasts indicating that American data centers could consume 20% of national electricity by 2035.

That projection of July 2026 was 83% higher than an estimate released only seven months earlier, indicating rapidly rising expectations.

The projected increase reflects expectations that computing facilities will require more electricity as companies build systems for training and running artificial intelligence.

By April 2026, approximately half of planned data center developments had reportedly been postponed or abandoned, partly because electricity was unavailable.

xAI faces particular pressure because Musk said in August that the company intended to expand its computing capacity sevenfold before the end of 2027.

Microsoft also recently withdrew as the principal customer for an English data centre project after its utility provider could not guarantee sufficient electricity.

This shows how electricity constraints can affect commercial commitments, even when developers have secured land, financing and customers for planned facilities.

OpenAI adopted gas turbines at its first Stargate facility in Abilene, Texas, in 2025, while developer Crusoe ordered 13 ProEnergy generators in April 2026.

However, the rapid deployment of aircraft-derived equipment has prompted questions about pollution, regulatory oversight and the consequences for nearby communities.

Mississippi permits for xAI’s eight turbines reportedly allow a 25% higher limit for certain volatile organic compounds, alongside concerns about carbon monoxide emissions.

The Southern Environmental Law Center has challenged the state’s approval, arguing that xAI has not adequately addressed pollutants including formaldehyde.

The organization has also questioned projected emissions calculations, after previously suing xAI over generators allegedly operated without required permits near more than 100,000 residents.

It appears that every attempt to solve one problem facing data centres introduces another, leaving operators and regulators with difficult challenges that remain far from resolved.

Via Tom's Hardware

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1748) — hint #1 — Vowels

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1748) — hint #2 — repeated letters

Quordle today (game #1748) — hint #3 — uncommon letters

Quordle today (game #1748) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1748) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1748) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1748, are…

• PROUD
• ROCKY
• FLAKY
• MONTH

Despite being two years into playing Quordle every day I still forget basic gameplay.

This includes attacking words in the easiest order rather than becoming fixated on a harder column.

I did this today, spending ages trialing combinations before getting FLAKY when the far easier ROCKY would have opened up the letter K and saved my turmoil.

Daily Sequence today (game #1748) — the answers

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1748, are…

• GAMER
• FAUNA
• REFER
• JUICY

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1747, Friday, 6 November: CHARD, THORN, COVER, OUTER
• Quordle #1746, Thursday, 5 November: SHINE, TAROT, VERGE, LANKY
• Quordle #1745, Wednesday, 4 November: JOIST, CROOK, DELAY, ICILY
• Quordle #1744, Tuesday, 3 November: TRIAL, STAID, LEVEL, BONUS
• Quordle #1743, Monday, 2 November: EXTRA, AMITY, LUPUS, EAGLE
• Quordle #1742, Sunday, 1 November: DROVE, PRIED, SHELL, BEGIN
• Quordle #1741, Saturday, 31 October: ANIME, SWARM, CHALK, RAJAH
• Quordle #1740, Friday, 30 October: ULCER, DIMLY, BRAIN, BEGUN
• Quordle #1739, Thursday, 29 October: PRUDE, MINUS, SAVOY, USHER
• Quordle #1738, Wednesday, 28 October: DEALT, FLUME, SLEEK, RELIC
• Quordle #1737, Tuesday, 27 October: ANKLE, HAVOC, SULKY, WHITE
• Quordle #1736, Monday, 26 October: ASSAY, GLEAM, MUCUS, WRING
• Quordle #1735, Sunday, 25 October: RAINY, BUSED, PROXY, UNDID
• Quordle #1734, Saturday, 24 October: TOXIN, SMART, MOUSE, STYLE
• Quordle #1733, Friday, 23 October: BLIMP, HOIST, FRIED, LURID
• Quordle #1732, Thursday, 22 October: DECAL, WIDTH, WOKEN, LEVER
• Quordle #1731, Wednesday, 21 October: MOIST, VALVE, VERSE, NORTH
• Quordle #1730, Tuesday, 20 October: COYLY, SAUNA, TRIAL, RASPY
• Quordle #1729, Monday, 19 October: EXIST, DECOY, HITCH, FLUID
• Quordle #1728, Sunday, 18 October: FLINT, FUROR, WEDGE, RODEO

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #979) - hint #1 - today's theme

NYT Strands today (game #979) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• SHOW
• TASKER
• STRUT
• STALE
• TRUTH
• THREAT

NYT Strands today (game #979) - hint #3 - spangram letters

NYT Strands today (game #979) - hint #4 - spangram position

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #979) - the answers

The answers to today's Strands, game #979, are…

• ZOOM
• RUSH
• WHOOSH
• FLASH
• WHIZ
• HURTLE
• STREAK
• SPANGRAM: WHATSTHEHURRY

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

A classic and very satisfying game of Strands today that wasn’t too easy and that didn't feature baffling words.

I love starting with rare letters, so ZOOM was my first word and it instantly confirmed my thought that the theme was about speed — not that I particularly zoomed around the rest of the board.

As much as I admire people who can complete tasks quickly, my attitude is more in line with the tortoise than the hare, mainly because if ever I try to hurry it usually results in almost immediate failure.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Friday, November 6, game #978)

• HUSK
• LEAVES
• MOSS
• PINECONE
• ACORN
• TWIG
• BRANCH
• SPANGRAM: FORESTFLOOR

Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Connections today (game #1245) - today's words

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• POLO
• EASTER
• NEW
• CLONE
• RHODE
• RINGER
• SOON
• TREASURE
• HENLEY
• BOUNTY
• NORTH
• CANE
• SPOILS
• SOUTH
• RAGLAN
• BOOTY

NYT Connections today (game #1245) - hint #1 - group hints

What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: Shiver me timbers and give me the loot
• GREEN: Garment types
• BLUE: Disunited states
• PURPLE: Finishing with rough weather

Need more clues?

We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #1245) - hint #2 - group answers

What are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: PIRATE'S PLUNDER
• GREEN: KINDS OF SHIRTS
• BLUE: FIRST WORDS OF U.S. STATE NAMES
• PURPLE: ENDS OF STORM TYPES

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #1245) - the answers

The answers to today's Connections, game #1245, are…

• YELLOW: PIRATE'S PLUNDER: BOOTY, BOUNTY, SPOILS, TREASURE
• GREEN: KINDS OF SHIRTS: HENLEY, POLO, RAGLAN, RINGER
• BLUE: FIRST WORDS OF U.S. STATE NAMES: NEW, NORTH, RHODE, SOUTH
• PURPLE: ENDS OF STORM TYPES: CANE, CLONE, EASTER, SOON

• My rating: Hard
• My score: Perfect

After landing PIRATE’S PLUNDER (all great words to describe some stolen loot from a tropical island) I floundered on the next group.

Initially I thought we were looking for islands, so I linked EASTER, RHODE, SOUTH and NORTH. Fortunately this error gave me a “one away” and I realized that instead it must be a group about US States.

From here, with eight tiles remaining, KINDS OF SHIRTS was easier to see — a good thing, as I was utterly blind to the tiles featuring ENDS OF STORM TYPES.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Friday, November 6, 2026, game #1244)

• YELLOW: COMPOSITION: CONSTITUTION, FABRIC, MAKEUP, STRUCTURE
• GREEN: COPY: BACKUP, EXTRA, REPLACEMENT, SPARE
• BLUE: KINDS OF TRUCKS: FLATBED, PICKUP, SEMI, TANKER
• PURPLE: ENDING IN PARTS OF THE EYE: HOT ROD, OSIRIS, TRAFFIC CONE, WOOLENS

• Sam Altman met about 50 Samsung executives, including its chip chief, then lunched with SK's Chey
• Samsung billed the visit as an executive AI seminar, and neither company announced a new memory deal
• Samsung's 2027 HBM is sold out, and SK hynix is booked through 2029, while Microsoft and OpenAI both report demand outrunning capacity

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently spent time in a room with around 50 of Samsung's most senior executives, including the man who runs its chip business.

Officially, the session at Samsung's Human Resources Development Center in Yongin, just south of Seoul, was a seminar on how AI will reshape management.

Investors on Wall Street and Bloomberg saw it differently, however, with the latter describing it as an effort to deepen cooperation on memory chips and AI infrastructure amid intensifying global shortages.

A training day with a chip chief in the room?

While both narratives can be true at the same time, the timing is arguably intriguing, coming days after Altman complained that the world's memory supply is badly allocated, and at a moment when nearly every big AI player, OpenAI included, is running into hard limits on how much memory, compute, and money it can get hold of.

The Korea Herald claims the meeting was held under the theme "The Next 10 Years Shaped by AI: The Enterprise's Choice" and was the second intensive AI training program Samsung has held for its top leadership in 2026. Executives from its electronics, finance, and biotechnology affiliates went through hands-on generative AI training before Altman joined them.

The guest list, though, was interestingly not purely management; SBS reported that attendees included Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun, who heads Samsung's Device Solutions chip division, and Song Yong-ho, head of that division's AI Center. Altman brought four OpenAI executives with him, among them Richard Ho, the company's vice president of hardware.

Samsung's statement only stated that the two sides "discussed the direction of AI technology development and its potential applications," and announced no new memory supply agreement.

Altman's own message to the room was about using AI rather than buying chips. "It is difficult to secure a sustainable competitive advantage simply by adopting AI," he said, according to a Seoul Economic Daily report.

He also handed out OpenAI's $230 Codex Micro, a 13-key keypad built with Work Louder to control the company's Codex coding agent, with Song among the recipients, marking an unusual gift for a company that makes some of the most advanced memory on the planet.

Samsung was also not Altman's only stopover: He also had lunch in Seoul with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and senior executives from SK hynix and SK Telecom before leaving the country that afternoon, according to The Herald Business, which noted that the details of their discussion were not disclosed.

In a nutshell, Sam Altman met both of Korea's big memory makers within hours of each other, with his hardware chief in tow, and left without announcing anything. A Korea Herald analysis notes that neither side confirmed any discussion of chip pricing or investment commitments. A push for more RAM is a reasonable reading of the weekend but not a forgone conclusion just yet.

What makes that reading plausible is that capacity, rather than demand, has become the binding constraint on AI. Altman said as much on Stripe co-founder John Collison's Cheeky Pint podcast, released two days before the trip. Alongside his now-notorious claim that it is "quite terrible" for so much of the world's DRAM to sit in personal computers, he described a "very supply-constrained environment" and predicted that memory makers were each "going to make like $100 billion of free cash flow in a year."

The suppliers' own numbers back him up: Samsung said last week that its 2027 HBM supply is already sold out, while SK hynix says its DRAM and HBM output is effectively spoken for through 2029. "Customers are requesting more than twice the volume we can supply," is what SK hynix's head of HBM sales and marketing, Kim Ki-tae, told analysts.

The two firms also control most of that supply. TrendForce data gives Samsung 39.4% and SK hynix 24.9% of second-quarter DRAM revenue, roughly 64%, even as Counterpoint Research figures cited by Tom's Hardware put their share of AI-specific HBM revenue at an even higher 83%.

The squeeze is visible further down the chain, too. Microsoft said last week that demand for its AI infrastructure is outpacing available capacity, and that spending will pick up as delayed third-party capacity comes online. Roughly three-quarters of its $45.2 billion in quarterly capex went to short-lived assets such as GPUs and CPUs, a bill swollen considerably by rising memory and storage costs.

Capacity alone does not fix AI's problems

AI providers are rationing what they already have: In September, OpenAI paused new sign-ups for its most expensive ChatGPT Pro tier after demand for its Astra model outstripped capacity, Fortune reported, with OpenAI's Thibault Sottiaux saying the company was "pulling all the levers possible to sustain the demand."

More recently, Elon Musk said xAI had cut Grok Bot's usage limits because "the cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue." That is a cost problem rather than a capacity one on its face, but the two are linked when the memory inside every accelerator is being sold at sellers' prices.

All of this combined turns securing more memory into as much a financing exercise as a diplomatic one. As we reported in August 2026, Samsung is moving 60 to 70% of its capacity onto five-year supply agreements, with price floors on mainstream products and substantial advance payments required as a contractual term.

OpenAI's existing paperwork with Korea is also softer than it looked a year ago. In October 2025, Samsung's letter of intent projected that OpenAI's memory demand could reach 900,000 DRAM wafers per month, a figure the Korea Herald described as a production target rather than a binding order.

When OpenAI Korea's chief hinted at deeper chip cooperation in September, an OpenAI spokesperson framed any expansion as happening "in the context of our existing relationship," pointing back to that same letter.

There is also the question of where all the extra hardware will be housed; Stargate is roughly halfway to its goal of adding 10 GW of US AI compute by 2029, and OpenAI is reportedly considering rebranding its largest data centers as "AI compute campuses" to soften a growing local backlash, according to Axios.

Altman is hardly the only customer knocking. AMD CEO Lisa Su made her own trip to Seoul in early October 2026 for back-to-back HBM talks with Samsung and SK hynix leadership, stressing partnerships of three to five years or more, while SK's Chey has warned that "the current shortage could continue until 2030."

The real test for Sam Altman's perceived diplomacy is whether OpenAI can turn its Korean partnerships into firm supply contracts and funded projects. With Samsung's 2027 HBM already allocated and SK hynix booked through 2029, any new memory OpenAI secures is likely to arrive late, cost more, and come on the suppliers' terms, a relatively easy conclusion to come to given the lack of leverage in play here.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves says there's a big difference between how music "functions" in multiplayer mode and in the campaign
• Graves says a campaign usually has narrative beats and "dramatic moments" to follow, while "multiplayer is completely unpredictable"
• He adds that "It's less about following a story and more about supporting the player's experience"

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves has explained the biggest differences between scoring a multiplayer mode and a campaign because of how the music "functions."

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where the composer discussed his creative process for the game's multiplayer music and what inspired him most when writing the score, Graves said writing tracks for an online gameplay experience is much different from a story mode with certain narrative beats, because you have to factor in the unknown.

"The biggest difference is how the music functions within the game," Graves said. "In a single-player campaign, you're usually following a narrative with specific characters, locations, and dramatic moments. You have a much better idea of what the player is experiencing and when."

The composer continued, saying, "Multiplayer is completely unpredictable," and suggested that it requires you to think outside of the constraints of a standard narrative score.

"You have no idea how any given match is going to unfold, so the music needs to work within a much more flexible framework," Graves added. "It's less about following a story and more about supporting the player's experience without getting in the way of the gameplay."

Elsewhere in the discussion, Graves said multiplayer mode has "a completely different vibe from the campaign" and "the music needs to make you feel like anything could happen at any point in time."

"A lot of what I was trying to capture was forward momentum and pure adrenaline," he said. "I always thought of myself as the musical equivalent of Master Sergeant Apone in Aliens, pumping up all the troops beforehand, keeping them in line and focused in combat, and rewarding them when they come back home. 'Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck's a fortune! Every formation a parade!'"

• Disney Accelerator is exploring new roles for robots across Disney's amusement parks
• Field AI is testing Cars-inspired autonomous robots to help guests park
• Physical Intelligence is exploring robots that sort and organize 3D glasses

Picture this: The next time you're pulling into one of the many parking lots at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, or Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, you might not need to go hunting for a parking spot. Instead, you're greeted by a car that looks like it drove straight out of Pixar's Cars.

The car is decked out in a bright orange paint job with a yellow safety vest and marshaling wands, with a screen on top displaying directional arrows telling you where to turn and park. It even offers a friendly wink as you start to make the turn.

Then, as you approach the end of your spot, another little vehicle rolls up alongside you, its screen flashing 'slow,' then a thumbs up, and finally 'have a nice day.' It's a pretty magical way to be welcomed to a Disney park before you've even stepped inside, right?

And it might not be as far off as you think. As part of Disney Accelerator 2026, Disney is collaborating with Field AI to test autonomous robots in parking lots and explore how they could help with park operations.

Field AI essentially develops the intelligence — or the brain — behind robots, rather than the robotic hardware itself. The company has experience deploying autonomous solutions in engineering environments, and Disney is now exploring how that technology could translate to its theme parks.

It’s essentially the intelligence that comes in the form of hardware and software as a kit that goes on top of the robot. In the video, it’s clear that the Cars figure is the end goal, but we do see what appears to be a Boston Dynamics robot with the Field AI stack on top, offering the screen and directional movement guidance for a few brief moments.

Gary Daniels, SVP of Technology at Disney Experiences, said: "We're excited to be working with Field AI, testing autonomous robots' ability to guide cars to park. Imagine if characters from Cars or robots from Wall-E direct you where to park when you arrive. The work we're doing now is a great way to see how robots function and, as important, how people respond."

It's clearly a test for now, but seeing Field AI's intelligence solution in action in the demonstration videos is pretty compelling. Particularly when you consider how it could pair with Disney Imagineering's existing research and development work in robotics.

Think about the robotic Star Wars BDX Droids, Olaf from Frozen, or even the walking Groot. Disney has already been exploring how to bring familiar characters into the physical world. Now, there's an opportunity to take some of those robotics advances beyond entertainment and into the everyday guest experience — while also helping with operational challenges like parking management and moving guests around the parks. The latter is something Disney Experiences knows a lot about, and a car from Cars or a robot from Wall-E would fit right in.

Of course, it's still early days, and these experiments are just that: explorations. But Disney Accelerator participants have found their way into the parks before.

Haddy, part of the 2025 group, develops large-scale 3D printing technology that produces materials and components to match the quality Imagineering requires. Its work was used to create an entirely new boat for Jungle Cruise at Disneyland in 2025. I wouldn't be surprised to see Haddy's technology featured in future projects, potentially including new environments like the forthcoming Monstropolis land at Disney's Hollywood Studios.

Robots could also help behind the scenes

The parking experiment is perhaps the most immediately exciting from a guest perspective, but another Disney Accelerator 2026 participant is exploring a robotic application that could have just as much impact behind the scenes.

Physical Intelligence is working on a tool that could greatly benefit Cast Members. Attractions like Star Tours, Toy Story Midway Mania, and Mickey's PhilharMagic — found at Disney parks in the United States and elsewhere around the world — use 3D glasses that guests pick up and wear during the attraction before returning them afterward.

Guests, myself included, don't always think twice about dropping those glasses back into a collection bin. But someone has to sort through them, untangle them, and make sure they're in good shape for the next guest.

That's where Physical Intelligence comes in. The exploration takes shape as a robot that can sort and organize the glasses, potentially untangling them and stacking them for redistribution. It's not necessarily an easy task for a robot to handle. It requires dexterity, precision, and the ability to apply varying amounts of force depending on what it's handling.

Physical Intelligence already trains robots to carry out everyday tasks, including folding shirts, cutting vegetables, and folding boxes. Teaching a robot to handle Disney's 3D glasses is another step toward getting these machines to carry out more complicated physical tasks.

The company explained that training robots to perform basic functions, while pairing that training with the right inputs — such as sight through a camera and touch through sensors — is key. For the glasses-sorting experiment, the robot is taught how to carry out the task through demonstrations and training, allowing it to learn how to handle and stack the glasses. It’s also been deployed in parks in some test use cases.

There's an interesting parallel here with the reinforcement training Disney worked on alongside Google DeepMind and Nvidia for its BDX Droids. While the applications are different, both demonstrate how extensive training and the right combination of inputs can help robots interact with the physical world in increasingly sophisticated ways. Here it’s clear, though, that real hands-on — err, robotic arms — training was needed versus simulation.

And there's an important distinction in how this could benefit Disney's workforce. The goal isn't necessarily to replace a Cast Member or eliminate a role. Instead, automating a repetitive task like sorting glasses could free someone up to spend more time interacting with guests, thus creating those little moments that make a Disney visit special.

Disney's robotic ambitions go beyond bringing characters to life

Both Physical Intelligence's glasses-sorting experiment and Field AI's autonomous parking guidance show that Disney's robotic ambitions, with the right partners, go well beyond bringing characters to life. One could help make arriving at a park more seamless and perhaps a little more magical, while the other could make some of the less glamorous work of running a theme park easier.

Even so, the learnings from these two use cases and prototypes could eventually find their way into future roaming characters in the parks or even on Disney Cruise Line ships.

And while the BDX Droids aren't greeting guests daily in the parks just yet, and Olaf has taken a few tumbles along the way, Disney has a much bigger vision for where this technology could go.

Kyle Laughlin, SVP of R&D, Technology and Engineering at Walt Disney Imagineering, previously told us: "We don't envision just one robot from a franchise, but an entire world populated with characters you know and love."

Maybe that world starts with a robot directing you into a parking spot.

• Hackers have shared data concerning Russian casualties in its war with Ukraine on a Russian state website, while also stealing 23TB of data
• Russian state statistics agency Rosstat admitted its servers were targeted over the Halloween weekend
• The organization’s electronic document management system was also hacked and exfiltrated

Russian casualty figures in its war with Ukraine have been kept under wraps since 2024, but have now been displayed on the website of Russian state statistics agency Rosstat following a major breach of security.

Rosstat admitted to a breach over the weekend of October 29 to November 1, 2026, but has yet to admit to any form of exfiltration - despite hacker groups Belarusian CyberPartisans and Silent Crow confirming around 23TB of data was taken.

As well as the casualty figures, the Silent Crow group and its collaborators have boasted of hacking and stealing a document management system, and also claimed to have taken control of vehicles.

Specialized units

The details of what is being considered a successful hack by its perpetrators were published on Telegram. The Silent Crow account explained that “access was gained to a large part of the IT infrastructure of the department, including the central office, regional units and the Main Interregional Center for the Processing and Dissemination of Statistical Information.”

Rosstat reported that its information resources were targeted over the Halloween weekend, says Kommersant (translated from Russian). “The infrastructure worked normally: monitoring systems in a timely manner alerted about suspicious activity, which allowed to quickly start the response.”

The organization’s confirmation added: “Compromising databases and leakage of information protected by law has not been identified.”

Cybersecurity experts, on-site experts, and “specialized units in the field of information security and law enforcement agencies are establishing the vector of the attack and identify the sources of the threat,” the department added.

During its prolonged access to Rosstat's servers, the Cyberguerillas BY and Silent Crow groups revealed human casualties to Russian military personnel since the beginning of the war in Ukraine as 1,584,910.

It also revealed a loss of 587,409 UAVs, demonstrating that this is a classification of combat asset that is in far greater use than tanks, artillery, and manned aircraft.

In supporting its claim of stealing 23TB of data across electronic document management and other databases, the group stated (translated) “The scale of the incident goes far beyond the compromise of individual servers or user accounts. After all, it is about penetration into the infrastructure of the federal department with access to central and regional systems, internal circuits and data sets of public and official value.”

Access to domain controllers of Rosstat unlocked access to the organization’s main data, eventually allowing the hackers to compromise virtualization systems like VMware ESXi, along with infrastructure management systems.

The casualty figures are not likely to be verified by official sources in Russia.

Drizzly autumn days can be pretty miserable, but I've found a bunch of waterproof jacket deals that might just put a smile back on your face. Cotswold Outdoor has kicked off its Black Friday sale early, and amongst the deals are a load of seriously strong discounts on waterproofs from market-leading names like Rab, Patagonia and The North Face. I spent two years testing outdoors kit, and I'd trust any of these brands to keep me dry in a deluge.

I've rounded up what I think are the best discounts of the bunch below. Because there are so many strong deals, I've focused on the men's jackets in this particular article, but there are plenty of women's jacket offers too — use the bullet link below to browse them all.

• Browse all women's waterproof deals at Cotswold Outdoor
• Browse all men's waterproof deals at Cotswold Outdoor

This is billed as a Black Friday sale, which is a little premature — the official Black Friday isn't until 27th November. Sometimes in situations like these it pays to hold off and see if a retailer might drop its prices further on Black Friday itself, but I wouldn't suggest doing that in this case. I'm already seeing some sizes selling out on popular designs, and you don't want to miss out on the jacket you really want. Plus, I'm sure we'll see plenty of wet days between now and then...

Wet-weather wonders

Apple is firmly in rule-breaking mode, which has led to the introduction of the first touchscreen MacBook, and an iPhone that accepts Pencil input. These rules, as set by Apple co-founder and former CEO, the late Steve Jobs, are now quickly becoming footnotes in the tech giant's history, and consumers are the beneficiaries of this outside-the-box thinking.

This week, I took a break from trying to figure out reasons to touch my MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display, to finally dig into the other formerly unthinkable Apple product feature: an iPhone that accepts — even welcomes — Pencil input.

Granted, the iPhone Duo is not your typical iPhone. It's a two-screen handset with a 5.4-inch display on the outside and, when you unfold the device, a 7.6-inch display with a remarkable nanotech finish that effectively hides the crease.

That big screen invites all kinds of non-traditional iPhone use cases, including big-screen content consumption, animated page turning in the Books app, and split-screen multitasking. It's also an invitation to art — a fact Apple recognized by introducing, for the first time, Pencil support to the iPhone line, albeit in a limited fashion.

Here are the limits:

• The iPhone 18 Pro and all other iPhones currently on the market do not accept Pencil input
• The only Pencil the iPhone Duo supports is the Apple Pencil (USB-C)

That second limit is a direct result of how the rest of the Apple Pencils pair with devices and charge: by being seated along the magnetic edge of any supporting iPad. Even unfolded, the iPhone Duo offers no equivalent capability.

Limits aside, I honestly could not wait to try using Apple Pencil (USB-C) on my iPhone Duo (upgraded to iOS 27.2).

Getting started and scribbling away

The Apple Pencil (USB-C) looks like other Apple Pencils, but it hides a secret. When I slide the back end back, it reveals a USB-C port. I can use that to charge the Pencil, but it's also how I connected the Pencil to my iPhone Duo: I run a USB-C cable from the phone's USB-C port to the port on the Pencil. After that, the pairing is pretty much automatic.

As you might expect, the Pencil — which is recognized on the inside and outside screens — can be used just like the tip of your finger to navigate the interface, if that's your thing.

The platform also adds Scribble, which means I can now poorly write the website names I want to see in Safari, jot down notes in Notes, and even solve simple written equations in that same app. But the show I came for, the reason we're here, is to try drawing on both screens.

Flexi-sketch

I've been drawing my whole life and doing so on digital platforms for 40 years. I drew on the first Mac with a mouse, early PCs with a Wacom tablet, my finger on the iPhone, and, in recent years, on an iPad using Procreate and (naturally) an Apple Pencil. Drawing with an Apple Pencil on an iPhone has been a long-held dream, and I was anxious to try it out.

I unfolded the iPhone Duo, launched Procreate Pocket (the iPad version does not run on an iPhone), and started putting the Apple Pencil to the nano-etched display.

One of the first things I noticed is that the digital pen works almost exactly the same as it does on the iPad. There's palm rejection, which means I can rest my hand on the 7.6-inch display while drawing.

As with an iPad, the digital ink appears to flow directly out of the Pencil tip, and it's fast, too. There's no delay between me running the tip across the display and the digital ink, paint, charcoal, or watercolor stroke appearing in its wake.

I instantly liked how the pen feels on the lightly textured surface. Glossy screens can feel a tiny bit slippery, but not this one.

As for the other big question that's probably bursting to get out: yes, if you draw back and forth over the full, unfolded display, you will feel the crease — not a lot, mind you, but it is there. Interestingly, the lines I drew did not recognize those tiny bumps and instead were straight and squiggle-free.

The iPhone Duo main screen recognizes the pen angle and speed, but not pressure. This is likely intentional; after all, I don't imagine Apple wants you putting extra force on the Pencil, and therefore the screen, to make a darker or bigger line. That adds a small wrinkle to my typical drawing flow — on the Duo, if I want to make lines taper properly, I sometimes have to shorten my line stroke, adjust the pen width to be smaller, and then continue on.

Even so, at no point did I feel like I couldn't draw naturally. Most of the time I forgot I was drawing on a flexible display and instead focused on the art in much the same way I would if I were drawing on an iPad mini.

In general, Procreate Pocket worked smoothly on the iPhone Duo, though I did notice that I sometimes had to select a tool, say Eraser or the Pen, more than once to get it to switch.

The Apple Pencil works equally well on the cover screen, though I find that smaller display a bit restrictive for drawing. There is also the matter of what I do with the Pencil when I'm not using it. Even if Apple did come up with an iPhone Duo case to hold it, the Apple Pencil (USB-C) is at least an inch taller than the folded Duo.

Overall, this is what I always wanted but also something more. It's an iPhone that I can draw on but also one that reminds me of Mr. Peabody's expandable chalkboard. Instead of one relatively cramped drawing space, I have a hidden 7.6-inch Apple Pencil-ready drawing tablet in my pocket.

Now, Apple, do the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

• Windows 11 27H2 is underway and will be a "full OS swap" according to anonymous sources
• Microsoft will stop short of launching it as Windows 12 (but the report doesn't fully rule that idea out)
• Testing will begin a lot earlier with 27H2 next year, compared to the typical June timeframe when Microsoft kicked off previews with 26H2 and 25H2

The next major version of Windows 11 arriving next year will pack some big changes, and what will theoretically be the 27H2 update is set to be very different from the last couple of annual updates for Microsoft's OS, which have been very minor affairs.

The Verge reports that the usual anonymous sources claim that Microsoft is already preparing Windows 11 27H2, and it will be a "full OS swap" with significant upgrades in the same vein as the last major update for the operating system, which debuted in 2024 (and ushered in a new underlying platform for Windows 11).

We're told that there will be a "big focus on quality" with 27H2, and that despite what'll evidently be some sizeable changes, it won't be released as Windows 12.

To mark the big change, we'll be treated to a new default Windows 11 wallpaper (try to contain your excitement), moving away from the 'Bloom' background which has been in place since the OS first launched. Presumably the sequel won't be 'Wilt'. In all seriousness, The Verge shares a design, and the new take is in a similar vein, with blue ribbons amidst wispy clouds. (A hint of the future direction of Windows for consumers, perhaps?).

Microsoft also intends to start testing 27H2 a lot earlier than with the previous two annual releases, which of course only makes sense as with more work involved, it'll require more extensive vetting. Windows Insiders (testers) will get their hands on the first 27H2 build considerably earlier than June, which was when Microsoft kicked off testing with 26H2 and 25H2.

It's also worth noting that in theory, the foundations of 27H2 were laid right back at the start of the year, in moves which already suggested that it's a hefty piece of work.

Analysis: something still bugs me

The Verge report labels next year's big update as Windows 11 27H2, but doesn't completely rule out the idea that Microsoft might still consider a switch to call it Windows 12. It sounds like the naming hasn't been quite finalized at this point.

However, it doesn't seem likely, and going for Windows 12 would be too bold a move, I think, as Microsoft really needs to be seen to 'fix Windows 11' as it has promised before looking at the next-gen platform. I don't think the fixing work is nearly done at this point, although Microsoft has made a lot of commendable progress over the course of this year.

Yes, I'm going to bring up the subject of quality assurance (QA) once again, and regular readers of TechRadar will likely recall that I've gone on about this throughout 2026. It's especially relevant if 27H2 is going to be a big update, and you cast your mind back to remember what happened with the last major annual release.

I doubt you'd forget the 24H2 update because it was one of the worst Windows releases I can ever recall for bugginess. There were lots of significant changes – which, as already mentioned, included Germanium, a fresh underlying platform for the OS – and a nightmarish slew of bugs crept in as a result.

This absolutely must not happen with the 27H2 update. Microsoft is trying to reinvent Windows 11, and the reputation of the OS therein, so it's critical to ensure that it doesn't send users trudging into a quagmire of glitches and uncertainty, repeating the miserable march that 24H2 became.

Sadly, I think there's a clear danger that this scenario could come to pass. I still think Microsoft needs to revamp its QA and general testing processes, because even with breaking down Windows 11's feature additions into smaller, more drip-fed chunks, allowing for simple minor annual updates as has been the case in 2025 and 2026, we've still witnessed too much in the way of bugginess.

Stamping all this out should be a key part of the formula to fix Windows 11, alongside performance boosting and memory optimization, as Microsoft moves towards 27H2. It mystifies me that it isn't – and I presume that's the case because there's been no mention of changing QA procedures from Microsoft (only talk of consulting testers more regarding how to change Windows 11 – though of course that's still a great move in itself).

So, Microsoft, if 27H2 is going to be a big update, don't make it a perilous one – get your testing house in order. I do wonder if the hope is that AI advances are going to come to the rescue here, in which case, we could be looking at something doubly perilous, but hey – at least tell us you have a plan to fight back against the bugs, Microsoft. Don't you?

• Microsoft fixes high-severity Paint vulnerability that could allow remote code execution through crafted image files
• Security updates are delivered through the Microsoft Store, leaving some users temporarily stuck on vulnerable versions
• Users should verify their Paint version and install the latest update as soon as it becomes available

Microsoft has addressed a high-severity vulnerability in Paint that allowed threat actors to run malicious code remotely. However, fixing the issue doesn’t seem to be a straightforward process for users, as the patched version, surprisingly, remains unavailable for download for some people.

Tracked as CVE-2026-83844 and with a severity score of 8.1/10 (high), this bug was described by the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) as an “out-of-bounds read in Windows Paint [that] allows an unauthorized attacker to execute code over a network.”

In theory, a threat actor could create a special image that, if opened via paint, can trigger the flaw and execute malicious code on an affected system.

How to patch Paint

The bad news is that Microsoft added AI into Paint, which makes the idea of malicious packages triggered through the app a lot more viable. The good news is that Microsoft did not publish technical details about the flaw, explaining how one might pull off this kind of attack, and given that there are no confirmed cases of in-the-wild exploitation, or publicly available exploit code, all of this still remains in theoretical domain.

CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog does not have this bug listed, meaning there are no confirmed cases of attacks, especially against government entities.

Whether or not the bug remains theoretical depends on two main things: how potent the bug is, and how easy it is to leverage. With that in mind, it’s worth mentioning that Microsoft classified the attack vector for this flaw as “Network, with no privileges required”, meaning threat actors with previously obtained low-privilege access could use this bug to escalate their privileges or deploy dangerous malware. Both scenarios could lead to credential theft, wire fraud, or even ransomware attacks.

On the other hand, it marked the bug’s complexity as “High”, suggesting that exploiting it is not that easy of a feat. That could limit abuse to state-sponsored actors, or for-profit hacking groups with deeper pockets and plenty of resources.

It is also worth mentioning that Microsoft moved Paint from Windows to a standalone Microsoft Store app. Consequently, the security fix isn't distributed through the regular Windows Update mechanism, and users must update Paint through the Microsoft Store themselves (unless automatic app updates are enabled).

The company apparently included a fix in Paint version 11.2605.91.0. However, Neowin reports that despite releasing a newer version, Microsoft was still offering a vulnerable one on its app Store - 11.2605.81.0. The problem was apparently evident to multiple people, enough for them to open a discussion on Reddit. One user even shared a PowerShell output showing that Paint remained on a vulnerable version, despite them checking for updates through the store.

Different people, different versions

We looked for Paint in the Microsoft Store at press time, and saw version 11.2609.401.0 being offered, with November 5 being the date of the newest update. Neowin also said that for some Reddit users, this was the version carrying the fix, instead. It is possible that Microsoft opted for a staggered release instead of a global rollout, which is why some people were late to be offered the patch.

To make sure your systems are secure, simply looking at Microsoft Store might not be enough. Instead, users should double-check their Paint version using PowerShell, using this command: Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.Paint | Select-Object Name, Version. Those that still see the older version should keep an eye on Microsoft Store for the patch and follow Microsoft’s Security Update Guide for the vulnerability. Those who are worried about being targeted could set up temporary restrictions on certain image attachments or remove Paint entirely from the system.

Via Cybernews

The Geekom A6 is a compact desktop PC that combines an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 processor with Radeon graphics, 1TB storage, and upgradeable memory. Its aluminum chassis measures just 4.43 inches square, making it ideal for smaller desks or mounting behind a monitor. Windows 11 Pro comes preinstalled, and there's support for up to four 4K displays.

Best For: Home offices, multitasking, productivity, and anyone wanting a powerful, space-saving Windows desktop without a bulky tower.

The Deal: The Geekom A6 mini PC, with 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, is reduced from $899 to $649 at Geekom.com. Apply code GKAN5 to bring the price down to $617, saving you a grand total of $282 (31.4%). You'll also receive free Geagle building blocks worth $70.

Today's best mini PC deal

Why we recommend it

Geekom's A6 mini PC offers plenty of processing power for everyday computing. Its AMD Ryzen 7 6800H delivers eight cores, 16 threads, and boost speeds up to 4.7GHz and the Radeon 680M integrated graphics are capable of handling media playback and lighter gaming.

It supports up to four 4K monitors or a single 8K display. There's a 40Gbps USB4 port, another USB-C connection, and two HDMI outputs, alongside Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.4, and 2.5Gb Ethernet.

You can upgrade the memory to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and expand storage to 5TB across two M.2 slots. Geekom also includes its IceBlast 2.0 cooling system, designed to manage heat during extended workloads.

In his four-and-a-half-star review, our expert Alastair said the A6 was: "exceptionally high quality, so if you are looking for a solid machine for office work, some video and image editing, and a little bit of light gaming, then the A6 is an exceptionally good compact solution." He also said it offered "An impressive amount of power".

For more of our favorites, we've tested the best mini PCs you can buy.

Price context & historical value

The Geekom A6 normally costs $899, but it's currently reduced to $649, saving you $250. Applying code GKAN5 at checkout brings the price down to $617, giving you a total saving of $282. You also get a free set of Geagle building blocks, worth $70.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Geekom A6 mini PC if...

You want a compact Windows PC with more flexibility than a basic budget mini desktop. It is well suited to multitasking, home office work, and running cloud-based AI tools, and its upgrade options offer room to grow..

❌ Skip the Geekom A6 mini PC if...

You're looking for a dedicated gaming machine or a computer for demanding local AI workloads. The Ryzen 7 6800H is an older processor, and its integrated graphics won't match a modern discrete GPU..

Also consider

• Shop all mini PCs at Geekom

I've been wrapped up in even more Black Friday sales this week as the big day draws nearer. There's also been a huge level of interest in a certain Zelda special edition of the Nintendo Switch 2 that's seen a small restock this week. All of these things have been rudely intruding on my crossword time.

Still, I'm back with another puzzle this week. Slightly smaller, but still hopefully enjoyable and challenging enough to entertain you for a few minutes if you're tackling it in bed before going to sleep or along with your morning coffee.

Enjoy, and I'll catch you for another next week if I'm not buried in the deals even further!

• AI-themed phishing campaigns found using fake OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX events to steal corporate credentials
• Attackers combine device-code phishing, reverse proxies, and MFA bypass techniques targeting Microsoft and Google accounts
• Researchers warn employee interest in AI tools is increasingly being exploited as a high-success phishing lure

If you suddenly get invited to an exclusive SpaceX event and even offered free access to Grok Heavy, kindly turn it down, as this is most likely part of a new phishing attack that’s been circulating around the web.

A report from security researchers Push Security found threat actors are using different AI-themed lures to get people to share their corporate login credentials.

As per Push’s report, threat actors were recently seen creating fraudulent websites for nonexistent events: an OpenAI Academy livestream, a private SpaceX briefing on AI marketing, an Anthropic presentation at AWS re:Invent, and similar.

People who landed on these pages were told they can get free goodies, as well: a free ChatGPT Pro subscription, access to Grok Heavy, and even shares of SpaceX. However, to claim these rewards, the victims were first told to log in - using either their Microsoft, or Google account.

And this is where the scam lies. Instead of actually logging in and getting the rewards, all victims would be doing is sharing their login credentials with the hackers.

"Employees want access to the latest AI tools, making them excellent bait for attacks," Push Security said in its analysis of the campaign.

Kali365 and VoidProxy

Push says threat actors are using two phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platforms in this campaign, called Kali365 and VoidProxy. Depending which route they choose (Microsoft or Google), they get served a different path, both ending in credential exposure.

Those that choose to continue with their Microsoft credentials trigger an attack through Kali365. The victim receives a device code and instructions to enter it on Microsoft’s legitimate device login page. Once the victim signs in and approves the request, Microsoft issues an authentication token to the attacker’s Kali365 session. The fake event page then redirects the victim to a fake Microsoft sign-in page operated by VoidProxy, which captures additional credentials and session cookies.

Those that choose “Continue with Google” trigger a different technique. Here, the victim is shown a reverse-proxied version of Google’s legitimate sign-in page, operated by VoidProxy. The proxy relays the authentication process while capturing the victim's password, MFA response, and session cookie, which allows the attackers to grab an authenticated session without needing to move past MFA.

Push doesn’t know exactly how the links are distributed. It’s safe to assume they’re being moved through phishing emails, social channels, or Telegram groups. What we do know is that the attackers are using Google and Zapier to shorten the links and redirect the visitors, in order to avoid being detected by security scanners and URL reputation systems.

Abusing the trends

"All of these detection evasion techniques, plus the MFA-bypassing AiTM and device code phishing payloads, mean this attack is designed to get around or through the controls that most organizations rely on to stop phishing attacks today," Push said.

It’s now been five years since the first version of ChatGPT was released, and since then the tool has captivated people from all walks of life, and was successfully used in countless phishing campaigns. In the past we’ve reported on campaigns involving Claude installation pages promoted through search advertisements, as well as malicious links disguised as legitimate AI content (shared conversations, downloadable artifacts, and custom GPTs).

In July 2026, ANY.RUN reported fake event invitations impersonating Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic, hosted on legitimate Zoom event pages. More recently, Cofense observed a campaign revolving around fake Anthropic invitations distributed through GoTo Webinar.

As these tools get better, and as they penetrate deeper into every aspect of our private and business lives, they will be abused by threat actors more and more.

Via BleepingComputer

• The chairman of T-Mobile and CEO of its parent company has commented on Starlink Mobile
• He argues that a $200 billion investment in spectrum and infrastructure is needed for it to compete
• Despite that, he's taking it seriously and sees parallels with Tesla and the car industry

Between partnering with Qualcomm and getting the green light to operate internationally, SpaceX has taken some major steps towards making Starlink Mobile a rival to the big carriers. And that's just been acknowledged by Tim Höttges — the chairman of T-Mobile and CEO of its parent company, Deutsche Telekom — in a recent earnings call where he said that “I take his [Elon Musk] attempt serious [sic].”

In the Deutsche Telekom conference call, Höttges went on to highlight just how much work — and investment — will be required for this attempt to actually deliver a real rival.

Firstly, Starlink Mobile will likely require a lot more spectrum than it currently has, with Höttges saying “he [Musk] has now bought 76 megahertz of spectrum. By the way, we have 400 megahertz. So if you now say, okay, he can buy the spectrum prospectively, do your math. These are kind of triple digit billions, which are needed to gain the spectrum position.”

A "$200 billion" investment

And it’s not just spectrum — Starlink Mobile will also need a lot of infrastructure on the ground, with Höttges explaining that "then he has to build a network. I can tell you, we have 85,000 towers. No, he can rent towers, no question. But this is another $20 billion to $30 billion, which are required. Put antennas on it. Okay, you can buy antennas and you can get maybe even in a cheaper way or you construct it in a new way, but you need money for that."

Between all that, Höttges concludes that Starlink Mobile will need “at least minimum $200 billion” to “play” in this industry, and likely more. And even then, it’s an industry which Höttges argues T-Mobile and the other major carriers have “professionalized over the last twenty years” — suggesting that even with that investment, Starlink Mobile will lack the experience of the other carriers.

Still, it doesn’t sound like Höttges is totally counting Musk’s telecom dreams out, remarking at the end of all that “welcome to the party.” So this looks set to be a long and expensive road for SpaceX and Starlink Mobile — and experts mostly agree that becoming the fourth big mobile network in the US will be a major challenge...

Analysis: A long game, but there are Tesla parallels

From electric cars to aerospace, Elon Musk has an unrivaled track record of disrupting industries — but turning Starlink Mobile into a true rival to the network giants could be one of his biggest challenges yet.

"There are a wide variety of challenges and roadblocks that stand in the way of Starlink Mobile," Ookla's Lead Industry Analyst, Mike Dano, told us. "For example, it must build radios based on Qualcomm’s technology. Then it must affix those radios atop cell towers nationwide. Then it must launch thousands of new satellites that support the spectrum it’s working to purchase from EchoStar," he said.

And that's far from the end of the list. "Then it will need to sell phones that support the various spectrum bands it hopes to use in its network. Then it will need to create an effective retail strategy to entice customers away from existing cellular providers in the U.S. And there’s still an outstanding question about whether a future Starlink Mobile network will be robust enough to support users’ needs," he added.

However, Dano says that Starlink Mobile's Qualcomm agreement this week was a big step towards it becoming "a credible fourth nationwide mobile network provider in the U.S", even if that process will "take several years".

Telecoms expert Tim Farrar, President at TMF Associates, agrees that an EchoStar deal is the most likely key to unlocking the spectrum that T-Mobile's Tim Höttges referred to in the earnings call. "I think a purchase of the remaining EchoStar spectrum assets and a settlement with the tower companies is the easiest and quickest way to go about that", he said, referring to those missing pieces for Qualcomm's equipment.

Still, we can expect this story to develop quickly in 2027, and Tim Höttges is well aware of the parallels with the car industry, which Tesla disrupted with new technology. "I would compare it with let's say inventing Tesla and bringing electromobility into a kind of legacy combustion engine industry. That is the same moment we have and this moment is now here," he said.

"We have a new kind of player who is coming to the ecosystem. He has chipsets, he has data centers, he has AI, he has satellites, he wants to go for mobile services and he goes for handsets. He will go as well for maybe integrating social media or at least agent models into his service. So he is creating a new way of communication services — it's not that you can compare it 'mobile to mobile'," he added.

"That is why I'm saying I take that super serious because I was witnessing what happened to the car industry — they were ignoring it for too long and we have to face the situation." In other words, expect this to be a major theme of 2027, even if the full story could take years to play out.

• Watch Ireland vs Argentina FREE on Rugbypass TV (US) / ITVX (UK) / Virgin Media Play (Ireland)
• Unlock your stream with NordVPN (save 75%)
• Ireland vs Argentina kick-off: Fri, Nov 6 at 3.10pm ET / 8.10pm GMT / 7.10am AEDT (Sat)

With Ireland far from their best and Argentina always competitive regardless of the calibre of their opponents, this Nations Championship 2026 Round 4 tie at the Aviva Stadium has the potential to deliver an upset.

Los Pumas, who beat the British and Irish Lions on their last trip to Dublin, started the tournament in typical fashion, with one win – albeit over Wales – and two hard-fought losses. They've since faced Australia (twice) and South Africa, coming away with a draw to go with two further gallant defeats.

Ireland started out with a pair of hard-earned victories over Australia and Japan, before being roundly beaten by New Zealand. Andy Farrell's men have been workmanlike, solid enough but prone to unforced errors and vulnerable to pace. Argentina, for better and for worse, do sling the ball around beautifully.

Felipe Contepomi has lost Thomas Gallo, Santiago Chocobares and Santiago Carreras to injury, but he'll be pleased to welcome back skipper Julian Montoya. It's off the field where they may have made their most significant gains, however. This will be Argentina's first game since landing the services of defensive maestro Shaun Edwards.

Ireland captain Caelan Doris’ return from knee surgery is taking longer than expected, meaning hooker Dan Sheehan gets the nod as captain today. Influential scrum-half Jamison Gibson-Park also misses out through injury, with Craig Casey joining Sam Prendergast in the half-back pairing. Sean Jansen lines up at number eight for his third cap for Ireland.

Read on as we explain how to watch Ireland vs Argentina for free in the Nations Championship 2026.

Ireland vs Argentina for FREE

Ireland team: 15 Hugo Keenan, 14 Robert Baloucoune, 13 Robbie Henshaw, 12 Stuart McCloskey, 11 Mack Hansen, 10 Sam Prendergast, 9 Craig Casey, 8 Sean Jansen, 7 Nick Timoney, 6 Ryan Baird, 5 Tadhg Beirne, 4 Joe McCarthy, 3 Tadhg Furlong, 2 Dan Sheehan, 1 Andrew Porter

Replacements: 16 Rónan Kelleher, 17 Tom O’Toole, 18 Sam Illo, 19 James Ryan, 20 Josh van der Flier, 21 Jamison Gibson-Park, 22 Ciaran Frawley, 23 Bundee Aki

Argentina team: 15 Juan Cruz Mallía, 14 Bautista Delguy, 13 Justo Piccardo, 12 Santiago Chocobares, 11 Matteo Carreras, 10 Tomás Albornoz, 9 Gonzalo García, 8 Pablo Matera, 7 Marcos Kremer, 6 Juan Martín González, 5 Pedro Rubiolo, 4 Guido Petti, 3 Francisco Moreno, 2 Julián Montoya (captain), 1 Boris Wenger

Replacements: 16 Leonel Oviedo, 17 Mayco Vivas, 18 Joel Sclavi, 19 Efraín Elias, 20 Juan Martín Scelzo, 21 Símon Benítez Cruz, 22 Gerónimo Prisciantelli, 23 Lucio Cinti

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You can tune in via the Rugbypass TV website or app, and it works with Chromecast, Airplay, AppleTV and Android TV.

Outside of the US? Use NordVPN while you're traveling away from home to unlock your stream.

How to watch Ireland vs Argentina live streams in the UK

In the UK, Ireland vs Argentina is free-to-air on ITV1, with live streaming available via ITVX.

All you need is an account, a TV license and a UK postcode (e.g.HA9 0WS). Sign up here!

Can't access your ITV stream because of geo-blocks? Use NordVPN as set out above, which will help you access your account from anywhere.

How to watch Ireland vs Argentina live streams in Ireland

Ireland vs Argentina is free-to-air on Virgin Media One in Ireland, with live streaming available via the Virgin Media Play platform.

Virgin Media Play requires a simple account. Sign up here.

Outside Ireland? You’ll need to download a VPN, as detailed above, to tap into your free Nations Championship stream from abroad.

How to watch Ireland vs Argentina live streams in Australia

In Australia, Ireland vs Argentina is exclusive to Stan Sport.

Stan Sport costs AU$20/month on top of a Stan subscription, which itself starts at AU$9.99/month.

Kick-off will arrive at 7:10am AEDT on Saturday morning.

Not in Australia today? You can simply use a VPN like NordVPN to watch the action as if you were back home.

How to watch Ireland vs Argentina live streams in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Sky Sport 1 NZ is showing the Ireland vs Argentina game.

You can access Sky Sport through satellite TV or get a live stream, with the Sky Sport Now subscription service starting at NZ$29.99 per day or NZ$59.99 per month.

Those outside of New Zealand for any part of the Nations Championship can use NordVPN to gain access to their home streaming service.

How to watch Ireland vs Argentina live streams in South Africa

The Ireland vs Argentina game is being shown on Supersport in South Africa.

You'll need to get a DStv access package to watch the Nations Championship 2026, with prices starting at Rs99/month for the streaming version.

Abroad right now? Just use a VPN and tell your device that you're back home and you'll be good to go.

How to watch Ireland vs Argentina live streams in Canada

In Canada, Ireland vs Argentina is being shown on Premier Sports.

You can tune in via the CA$29.99 monthly pass, the CA$79.99 six-month pass or a CA$139.99/year subscription.

If you're out of Canada but still want to catch the action, explore the VPN route set out above, which will help you access your accounts from anywhere.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example:1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad.We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves shares his secret tool he used on the soundtrack
• He reveals that it's "an aluminum garbage can lid that I save for special occasions"
• Graves also used it for 2022's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 composer Jason Graves has revealed the unusual, secret tool he used for creating the game's soundtrack.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Graves discussed his creative process for writing the game's multiplayer music, which he said is usually "an afterthought," and even offered some insight into the coolest technology he used for recording the tracks.

"It's definitely not considered any kind of tech, but it's definitely entertaining," Graves replied when asked what his secret weapon was.

But if you expected something along the lines of interesting studio equipment or fancy tools to capture the multiplayer's tone, you'd be dead wrong.

"I have an aluminum garbage can lid that I save for special occasions," the composer revealed, "and the last time I used it was in 2022's Modern Warfare [2]. So naturally, I had to bring it out again and play it for Modern Warfare 4."

Graves also discussed how the multiplayer music is "completely different" from the campaign, which has more story beats and dramatic moments, saying "you play a lot of multiplayer" to truly understand its tone.

"It's a completely different vibe from the campaign, and the music needs to make you feel like anything could happen at any point in time," Graves said. "A lot of what I was trying to capture was forward momentum and pure adrenaline."

"There's definitely a lot of aggressive percussion, distorted electronics, and organic textures that help give the music its identity," Graves added. "I love combining real-world sounds with electronic processing, especially when you end up with something that's difficult to identify.

"It creates a sense of energy and unpredictability that fits perfectly with multiplayer."

After 23 years, Monty Don is stepping away from his show Gardener's World. This final episode (after more than 700 installments) will truly be the end of an era, but he has stated he intends to stick around and work on other projects with the BBC in the years to come.

Once again presenting from his country home in Longmeadow, Herefordshire (where he's worked for the last 16 years), Monty takes us on an autumnal adventure as he showcases some of the best vegetables he's grown this season, as well as explaining some of the most hearty perennials we should be planting for the winter months.

Meanwhile, Carol Klein showcases more of the scientific side of plants, specifically their shoots. Joe Swift is visiting garden designer Ann-Marie Powell. And, to cap it all off, we'll see a woman growing thousands of trees from seed in North Yorkshire, and a couple in East Grinstead showing off their beautiful garden.

We don't know what the future holds for the show just yet — though Frances Tophill is the likely candidate to take over — but we do know how to watch Monty Don's final episode of Gardener's World, online for free from November 6.

How to watch Gardener's World from anywhere

If you're keen to watch Monty Don's final episode of Gardener's World but you're away from the UK and access to the show is geo-blocked, then you could use a VPN to access it (assuming you're not breaching any broadcaster T&Cs, of course). You may be surprised by how simple it is to do. Plus, we have a great 75% discount on our #1 VPN...

How to watch Monty Don's final episode of Gardener's World in the UK

In the UK, Gardener's World is available on BBC iPlayer for free, with the final episode playing there from Friday, November 6.

You can also watch the show on BBC Two (a free-to-air channel) on Friday, November 6 at 8pm BST.

Outside the UK? Unblock your BBC iPlayer stream with NordVPN.

Can you watch Gardener's World in the US?

Gardener's World is on BritBox in the US, though you'll have to wait a short while for this particular episode to make its way to the States.

Visiting the US from the UK? You can use our most-trusted VPN (try risk-free) to unlock your usual streaming platforms and watch the show from anywhere.

Can you watch Gardener's World in Canada?

Similar to the US, Gardener's World will be on BritBox, with this final episode eventually making its way to Canada once it's aired in the UK.

Can't wait? Use a VPN to gain access to all the content you'd normally stream at home.

Can you watch Gardener's World in Australia?

You can watch Gardener's World in Australia, with the show playing on BritBox for those Down Under. But, you'll find a short delay while the final episode of Monty Don's era makes its way over there.

Away from home? Use NordVPN to access your usual shows from anywhere in the world.

Gardener's World: Additional Information

Gardener's World - who's involved?

• Monty Don (presenter)
• Carol Klein (presenter)
• Joe Swift (presenter)
• Rosemary Edwards (executive producer)
• Sharon Fisher (editor)
• Francesca Maxwell (production manager)

What will happen in Monty Don's final episode of Gardener's World?

The official synopsis of this episode of Gardener's World (via the BBC) is as follows:

It’s the end of an era on Gardeners' World as Monty approaches his final programme from Longmeadow, the garden he has shared with the nation for the last 16 years. With Ned by his side, he celebrates the enduring pleasures of gardening and serves up one last bulb lasagne. Autumn is a busy time with vegetables to sow, perennials to plant and windfall apples to collect.

Carol Klein takes a deep dive into the scientific world of plants. This time, it’s all about the magical properties of their shoots. Joe Swift visits close friend and garden designer Ann-Marie Powell to explore her own garden, a place that has become her solace since the death of her husband last year.

In North Yorkshire, there’s a remarkable, pioneering woman on a quest to grow thousands of trees from seed. And a couple in East Grinstead share their combined love for the garden they have created together.

You may also like to watch...

• How to watch Blue Planet III for free online from anywhere
• The best BBC iPlayer VPNs
• How to watch BBC iPlayer from abroad

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example:1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad.We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

The Nations Championship returns for the autumn portion of fixtures as rugby union’s northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere fight it out.

Ireland and Argentina kick it off on Friday night before four fixtures take place on Saturday, including Scotland vs New Zealand. England vs Australia brings round four to a close on Sunday afternoon.

Matches are being live streamed free across the globe, but how exactly can you listen to the Nations Championship while on the go? Well, fear not — BBC Radio 5 Live is providing commentary for select games, including every England match.

But how can you access BBC Radio 5 Live's commentary of the Nations Championship and is it available in the US, Australia, and Canada too? Read on as our short guide explains how to listen to BBC Radio 5 Live's Nations Championship coverage from anywhere in the world.

Nations Championship Round 4 - Listening Details

How to listen to Nations Championship on BBC Radio 5 Live

To access BBC Radio 5 Live's Nations Championship coverage you have multiple options including BBC Sounds, the BBC Sport website, and the BBC Sport app (iOS/Android) are also available.

Programming will go out on Radio 5 Live and Radio 5 Live Sports Extra.

To listen, you will need a BBC account — register here.

And if you miss any of the action, you will be able to listen to the Rugby Union Weekly Podcast, where they will discuss each match from every weekend in depth.

Can I access Nations Championship coverage on BBC Sounds from abroad or on holiday? 

Yes. UK residents looking to listen to the Nations Championship traveling abroad can still access the BBC Sounds app via a VPN. We recommend NordVPN, which comes with 77% off and 3 months extra free right now...

How to unblock BBC Sounds with a VPN

If you're outside the UK at the moment and blocked from using BBC Sounds, you can still access the app thanks to the wonders of a VPN (Virtual Private Network).

The software allows your devices to appear as if they're back in your home country regardless of where in the world you are. So ideal for listeners away for work or on vacation wanting a taste of home.

NordVPN is our favorite:

BBC Sounds Troubleshooting Tips

If you still can't access BBC Sounds, even with the aid of a VPN, there are a few more things you can try.

Make sure your BBC account is associated with a valid UK post code, such as SE1 7PB.

The BBC Sounds app (iOS / Android) won't appear in the Play Store or the App Store outside the UK, but you may be able to get around that by changing your phone's region in the settings menu.

The BBC, like most broadcasters and networks, is engaged in a neverending cat-and-mouse battle with VPN providers.

Although we've ranked the best iPlayer VPNs, something we've worked out through thorough testing, if one of them works today there's no guarantee the same will be true tomorrow, in which case you can raise the issue with your VPN provider's customer support team, and ask them to recommend the best server to connect to.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example:1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad.We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Following inaccurate and downright silly AI generated images appearing on JustEat and Etsy, it appears that no industry is immune from AI slop. The property market is now also flooded with digitally altered images.

As someone who has had their fair share of dealing with moving house and looking at properties, I understand how frustrating and stressful it can be. But some people who believe they have found their dream home have been sorely disappointed to find out the potential house has been ‘enhanced’ using AI.

Over the past year, many have taken to Reddit to complain about estate agents posting listings with AI modified photos that include fixings, furniture, and structural changes that the actual properties do not have.

Deck the halls with AI changes

AI is getting good at enhancing images, but it isn’t quite perfect. Checking for AI enhancement is painful enough, but if you know where to look you’ll start to spot odd details.

For example, one listing for a house on Rightmove shared by a Reddit user features a thriving shrubbery plot in the driveway, but if you look closely at multiple angles of the front of the property, some of the plants have mysteriously shifted or disappeared completely.

What’s worse is that you can see the rear garden from the front of the property, which shows a shed and a patchy lawn with a messy gravel path. But flick through a few more of the property photos and all of a sudden the rear lawn is thriving and has a nice neat path, the fence has been mended, and the entire garden has been significantly expanded.

I’ll take you on a tour of some of the most impressive features. Head through the front door and you will be greeted by a picture frame above a side-cabinet that can change paintings depending on where you stand in the hallway.

The bathroom features towels that change color depending how you're feeling, and the towel rail cannot decide if it has five rails or six.

But the pièce de résistance is the garden, where the decking has either three or four steps down to the lawn depending on your budget. You can also opt to have the decking’s corner steps and additional gravel path put back in for a modest sum.

In my search to spot exactly what was AI generated, I also came across an original photo of the house. But while searching for further inconsistencies between this original and the edited photos, I noticed something odd.

In the ‘original’ image, the single road to the right of the house connecting the cul-de-sac to the local town — that has existed since at least 1975 according to ordinance survey maps — has disappeared, and is now a dead end. The ‘For Sale’ sign featured in both images is now written in an incomprehensible language.

So which image is genuine and which is enhanced? It appears that both have been digitally altered and I am starting to go insane.

Should AI photos be used on property listings?

In most cases, estate agents will disclose if the images of a property have been digitally altered or edited in any way. But for this particular case, you have to scroll through a 1,700 word property description that also shows signs of AI involvement before you reach the following text:

“Some photographs used within this property advertisement have been digitally enhanced and/or virtually staged for illustrative purposes. Virtual furnishings, accessories and decorative items may have been added to demonstrate the potential appearance and use of the rooms.”

This disclaimer continues; “No alterations to the physical structure, layout or dimensions of the property are intended to be represented by the digital staging. Prospective purchasers are advised to rely upon their own inspection of the property.”

Obviously this is just one example, but a quick look through Reddit threads such as r/SpottedonRightMove and you will find numerous examples of AI enhanced properties, each more extreme than the last.

Some users argue in favor of allowing estate agents to use AI photos to show the potential of a property, or to provide inspiration on a property that may need some fixing up. Others say that using AI to make a property look better than it actually is borders on false advertisement.

Of course, the property values aren’t decided based on listing photos. As part of the process to buy a house, multiple valuations will often take place to ensure the property is actually worth as much as it is listed for.

But as difficult as the housing market currently is — especially for renters — there is a bit of an ethical issue. People often travel many miles to view potential properties, and to arrive at a property that does not look anything like its listing photo is money and time wasted.

I’ve been a PC gamer since the early 1990s, and over the past three and a bit decades I’ve never once regretted my allegiance to those awkward beige boxes that have brought so much joy into the lives of myself and so many other people.

Yes, they can be expensive. Sure, they're more complex and frustrating than consoles. There have been times I’ve sat down to play a game, only for hours to pass as I try to fix game-breaking crashes, reinstall drivers, or just generally swear at Windows; but at the end of the day, I was always convinced that the PC remained the greatest gaming platform in the world.

PCs (and I’m including my beloved Amiga A500+ here) were always miles ahead of consoles when it came to graphics and audio, and the ability to upgrade components meant you could remain at the cutting edge for years. Upgrading and even building your own PC was fiddly and expensive, but it was also fun and rewarding. I still get a thrill when I first power-up a newly built rig and see it successfully boot.

The openness of the platform (despite Microsoft’s best efforts) meant I could buy games from where ever I wanted (one of the main reasons, I believe, why PC games are usually cheaper than console games), and play obscure indie games that would never be published on consoles due to licensing costs (which is another reason why PC games are cheaper); and, with some tweaking and a bit of (perfectly ethical and legal) emulation, backwards compatibility has never been a problem. The likes of GOG should get a shoutout as well for keeping very old PC games running on new hardware.

And right now in 2026, I'm lucky enough to have access to the most powerful PC gaming hardware ever, on which to play some of the best and most graphically impressive PC games ever made. I should be feeling like there’s never been a better time to be a PC gamer. Instead, however, it feels like PC gaming has never been worse.

Thanks for the memory

Why am I so down on the current state of PC gaming? For a start, while PC gaming hardware has never been better, it’s also never been so expensive — and that makes it less accessible for most people. The price of graphics cards has skyrocketed, and SSDs and RAM, once two of the cheapest and most effective ways of upgrading your PC, are now ridiculously expensive.

According to PC Part Picker, the average price of two sticks of 16GB DDR5 memory has leapt from around $150 to over $600 in the space of 18 months. Meanwhile, 64GB of the stuff has gone from around $250 to over $1,250 — and this isn’t even for the fastest models.

Even older DDR4 isn’t immune, with 16GB rising over 18 months from $50 on average to around $170, again according to PC Part Picker.

People are getting priced out of PC gaming, or being prevented from even considering it; and as a PC gamer, that’s heart-breaking. I’m incredibly fortunate that my job has enabled me to build a PC with an RTX 5090 and 96GB of DDR5 RAM, but there’s no joy in writing about things that so few people will be able to experience.

With prices of gaming components, PCs, laptops, and even consoles climbing ever higher, sales are understandably dropping. And with the costs of developing games exploding, we’ve also seen huge amounts of very talented game developers lose their jobs, and entire companies, such as BioWare, close down.

Perhaps worst of all, this past week I’ve found myself agreeing with something Elon Musk — someone I genuinely think is an awful human being — said. I need a lie down. And a pint (probably not in that order). I’m in a PC gaming funk, but who — or what — is to blame?

AI. It’s AI’s fault

Now it would be far too easy, simplistic, and perhaps even lazy to say this is all AI’s fault. But it’s all AI’s fault. Screw AI.

The AI goldrush has seen an explosion in the number of data centers required to run and train large language models (LLMs) used by AIs, and these need a lot of memory, which has led to a global shortage and made prices for components that use memory, such as RAM, graphics cards and storage, skyrocket.

I, like many other PC gamers, have been watching all of this in horror for a while now, but things really came into sharp relief this week when Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, one of the biggest culprits of the RAMpocalypse, was quoted as saying on the Cheeky Pint podcast (via IGN) that "it's quite terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world's limited supply of DRAM sitting in their own computer."

A lot of people took that as Altman accusing us PC gamers of being greedy by wanting RAM for our rigs, and to say that didn’t go down well would be an understatement.

Now, I usually have a policy of ignoring the rubbish Altman spews out (it does wonders for my blood pressure); but I have to admit, when I saw the quote, it riled me up. PC gamers having to endure the RAMpocalypse is bad enough, but to be blamed for it, especially when all we want to do is play games, was too much.

Then, in a real-life example of the ‘worst person you know just made a great point’ meme, the world’s richest man, terrible Diablo player, and failed truck salesman, Elon Musk, piped up to say “The people deserve to have their RAM too!”

I’m not naïve enough to think that Musk is seriously on the side of ‘the people’, but when one of the most widely-mocked individuals on the internet gets some begrudging props for coming out against something you said, that’s not a good sign.

Sure enough, Altman backpeddled, saying he was “taken out of context”, and he was actually complaining about people running local AI models. In a way, I’m inclined to believe that — as CEO he has a vested interest in stopping people using their own models and instead using OpenAI’s, but the damage was done.

Regardless of context, it was a tone-deaf thing to say — almost as bad as Nvidia’s 'GeForce 8800 GTX — 20 Years of a Legend' tech demo, which was released this week. Nvidia once was loved, or at least respected, by a lot of PC gamers for making genuinely excellent graphics cards and pushing the PC gaming industry forward with various innovations over the years.

Sadly, it has also become incredibly successful due to AI — so successful that it often feels like it's lost interest in the PC gaming industry that made its name, with rumors swirling that it’s ending production of the RTX 5090, while doing nothing about the rising costs of its components thanks to an AI bubble which it's benefitting from and contributing to.

So, when it launched a demo that invited players to relive a time when PC gaming was actually fun and affordable, by allowing them to virtually install its iconic GeForce 8800 GTX graphics card into a retro Windows Vista PC, it felt like Nvidia had misjudged the mood. To make matters worse, Nvidia recommends you have an RTX 5080 to play it — a GPU that is incredibly expensive and hard to find due to the memory shortage, and which is also rumored to be for the chop.

“Oh well,” some of us PC gamers might have thought, “at least we still have perpetual underdog AMD in our corner.” Except, AMD CEO Lisa Su has just been quoted as saying that “We are a data center first company.”

As Nvidia’s closest competitor, AMD was supposed to keep Team Green on its toes, while having a more consumer-friendly approach (being more open to open-source, and not limiting its latest tech to just its own GPUs, for example). Instead, it looks like AMD has had a heel-turn worthy of WWC’s most dramatic betrayals.

To be honest, I’ve been wondering what’s going on with AMD for a while, as it was rather quiet this year in the consumer GPU space; but this turn to the AI-powered dark side still hurts.

Could we really see the two major GPU makers stop making graphics cards altogether? It’s too bleak a future to imagine, but after a week like this, I can’t help but wonder.

What can we do?

I don’t want this to just be a wall of depressing text that would make even Roger Waters think ‘that’s a bit much’, so is there a glimmer of hope to be had? Is there anything any of us can do?

At Computex 2026 this year in Taiwan, I was perplexed by how almost every PC maker was going on about AI-in-everything with a fervor that I’ve just not seen replicated by consumers. I was worried that I was just out of touch.

But there’s been a growing backlash against rampant AI that’s given me hope. I’m not against all forms of AI, but AI that takes work from humans, that plagiarizes human art (including depressing walls of texts written by aging tech journalists), that diminishes creativity and sucks up resources… that AI I would love to see the end of, and I’m not the only one.

Boycotting games made with AI, and avoiding companies that don’t use AI responsibly, can hopefully show companies that this isn’t a magic money tree that they should neglect their customers for. Look at what’s happening with the current stock-market rout on AI companies, where it seems voters were rebelling against rampant AI data center expansion and an administration that seemed all too happy to let tech companies cross lines and drop ethics all in the name of AI (sorry, SI) supremacy.

I don’t want to seen an economic meltdown; but a wake-up call to the likes of Nvidia and AMD, to let them know that the customers who made them — primarily PC gamers like me — aren’t to be taken for granted, would certainly be welcome.

• ExpressVPN’s browser extension now blocks malicious, phishing, and scam sites without the VPN
• Full URL-checking blocks single harmful pages, unlike DNS tools that block whole domains
• The update extends ExpressVPN’s 2026 strategy of bundling security tools into all paid plans

ExpressVPN has added a new layer of security to its browser extension, and it doesn’t require you to switch the VPN on.

The feature, Web Protection, screens each page as it loads, matching it against continuously refreshed databases of sites known to host malware, scams, or phishing attempts, and stops them before they appear.

It’s available now on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave, and other Chromium-based browsers, and comes at no extra cost to subscribers on the Basic, Advanced, and Pro plans, as well as ExpressVPN for Teams.

Browsers are where most people encounter online threats in practice – often via a single link to a convincing fake login page. Web Protection places the check at the point a page loads, catching the threat before the user ever sees it.

What makes it different

One of the more notable aspects of Web Protection is how precisely it blocks. Rather than judging an entire domain, it inspects the full web address.

That means a single fraudulent page – a fake login form tucked inside an otherwise legitimate site, for instance – can be shut down while the rest of the site stays accessible. Domain-level filters, which are the norm for DNS-based tools, can’t make that distinction.

Users also get more visibility than typical network-level blocking offers. When a page is stopped, the extension steps in with its own notice spelling out which site was halted, and why.

Users can maintain their own block and allow lists directly in the extension, and a weekly count on the home screen shows how many items Web Protection has flagged, with fuller statistics available in the account portal.

The feature sits alongside, rather than replaces, Advanced Protection, ExpressVPN’s device-wide system that operates inside the VPN tunnel.

The older tool covers all traffic across apps, but only while the VPN is connected and only at the domain level. Web Protection works in the browser with or without the VPN, and the two are designed to complement each other.

Part of a bigger push

Web Protection is the latest addition to the hybrid browser extension ExpressVPN rolled out earlier this year.

The first VPN-proxy hybrid of its kind, it can protect browser traffic on its own or hand control to the desktop app for full-device coverage, complete with Smart Routing rules and WebRTC leak protection.

It also fits into a broader strategy. In February 2026, ExpressVPN rebuilt its plans around a suite of security tools, including an email protection service and a personal data checker, and this week brought tracker blocking to its entry-level Basic plan.

The timing is apt. A recent TechRadar investigation found 369 fake VPN extensions on the Chrome Web Store, including impostors of ExpressVPN itself, collectively installed by more than 218,000 people.

With shady add-ons and phishing pages multiplying, it’s a logical step for ExpressVPN: meet users where the threats actually are, whether or not the VPN is switched on.

• Researchers bypassed ChatGPT Lockdown Mode, showing prompt-injection attacks could evade built-in protections
• The flaw enabled sandbox escapes that could support data theft, phishing, malware delivery, or malicious popups
• OpenAI patched the issue server-side, highlighting risks in AI application layers beyond the model itself

OpenAI was recently forced to upgrade ChatGPT's 'Lockdown Mode' after researchers found a way to bypass the security protection and pull off different cyberattacks through the tool.

When analyzing Lockdown Mode, security researchers Check Point Research (CPR) found a way to bypass the protections and still end up pulling sensitive data. They’re saying it was also possible to deploy malware this way, too.

“The finding raises a broader enterprise security issue: AI security controls are only as strong as the wider application environment around them,” CPR warned.

Lockdown mode

One of the most common ways AI tools and agents are abused is called “prompt injection”. By injecting a prompt into content the AI is supposed to analyze, threat actors can take over the tool and have it do their bidding.

For example, a prompt to “exfiltrate all contact information” can be hidden in a phishing email so that when the victim asks their AI agent to go through all unread emails and sort them out, the tool ends up exposing sensitive data to the attackers.

To tackle this challenge, OpenAI introduced Lockdown Mode, an optional advanced security setting in ChatGPT that adds safeguards for users handling highly sensitive information.

When enabled, Lockdown Mode restricts connections to external services and limits (or entirely disables) certain features, such as live web browsing, Deep Research, Agent Mode, or file downloads. That way, the risk of sensitive data getting exposed via prompt injection is reduced.

The researchers said the bug was found in the way ChatGPT code blocks showed HTML page previews. Code blocks are specially formatted sections that display code separately from regular text, in order to preserve its structure and make it easier to copy or edit. Since running user-controlled HTML and JavaScript is inherently risky practice, OpenAI made sure this content was placed in a sandbox and separated from the main ChatGPT application.

This sandbox, CPR later explained, prevented rendered content from directly accessing ChatGPT cookies, or local storage. It also controlled any attempts to communicate with external resources by prompting for user approval.

But popups were handled differently. “The HTML preview used nested sandboxed frames, and while ChatGPT intercepted direct attempts to open new windows, the underlying sandbox permissions still allowed popups and permitted them to escape the sandbox,” it was said.

Significant findings

Therefore, by creating a separate nested frame within the rendered page, CPR was able to access unmodified popup functions and bypass all of the restrictions placed on the original HTML preview. All of the content opened this way was no longer under sandbox rules, effectively bypassing Lockdown Mode.

The researchers said the finding was significant because it opened the doors to more than just data exfiltration prompt injection attacks. Credential theft, and even malware delivery, were not ruled out.

“An attack could potentially originate from a malicious prompt, malicious GPT or shared chat, depending on the scenario,” they said. More creative threat actors could also turn it into a useful phishing machine, since they could control the content displayed in the popup window, inside an environment the users generally trust. But perhaps the most dangerous scenario was the so-called “zero-click” attack, in which the popup would appear without the user’s gesture.

CPR disclosed their findings to OpenAI, which implemented additional safeguards to disable the Lockdown Mode workaround. However, the researchers still urged organizations to work on gaining more visibility into AI usage, make sure they control sensitive data exposure, and “look beyond model security” to consider the applications, runtimes, connectors, and other components surrounding the model as part of the overall AI attack surface.

• Chainalysis disclosed a cyberattack that exposed customer data, including hashed passwords and account information
• Company took key services offline, forced password resets, and required additional security measures
• Investigation continues as Chainalysis restores systems and assesses the full impact of the breach

Blockchain data analysis platform Chainalysis has disclosed suffering a disruptive cyberattack that forced it to shut down some of its services to prevent further damage, as sensitive data from all of its customers - including hashed passwords - were stolen.

On October 30 2026, the company issued a notification saying it was a target of an attack, “similar to many other tech platforms in recent weeks,” but “unrelated to the recent crypto theft involving Binance.”

At first, it did not look like a particularly dangerous hit - the initial investigation did not find evidence of unauthorized access to investigation content, authentication credentials, or session tokens.

On-path attack

The unnamed attackers used “offensive agentic techniques”, Chainalysis said, but believed at the time that investigation content (such as graphs, notes, or cases), transaction or query results, passwords in clear text, MFA secrets, or user session tokens were not compromised.

It did confirm non-sensitive data (user IDs, full names, email addresses, and organization role labels for users provisioned on the platform) as accessed.

On November 4, Chainalysis shared an update, confirming that this was a much bigger hit than initially believed.

“Today, we confirmed that as a part of this incident, an “on-path attack” exposed a subset of customer passwords, including yours,” the company said in an email sent to affected parties. “This attack vector has been contained and remediated.”

“Given this sensitive and urgent information, we are requiring you to reset your password.”

Users were locked out of their accounts and were forced to reset them using the standard Chainalysis login page. At roughly the same time, it also took down three products, Reactor, Data Solutions and Chain (Beta) “out of an abundance of caution”, and KYT (the user interface and API), other address screening products and the login page “due to abnormal activity.”

The company said it will require additional protections to access accounts, including having every user reset their passwords and rotate API keys as appropriate.

Chainalysis has now said it started restoring access to KYT and Address Screening, albeit partially, and that customers should expect to regain access “over the next several hours”, because it was “proceeding carefully” and monitoring each phase. Users looking to regain their access as soon as possible are invited to submit their trusted IP address via email and prepare to reset their credentials.

No word from the perpetrators (yet)

The company said it was still working “around the clock” to harden its systems and restore access to Reactor and Data Solutions. “We recognize the disruption this incident has caused and appreciate your continued patience and partnership as we work to restore our services safely,” Chainalysis said.

Chainalysis is a blockchain analytics company that governments, law enforcement agencies, and other businesses use to track and investigate cryptocurrency transactions.

Using its tools, the police were able to trace stolen funds, identify illicit activity, and investigate numerous cryptocurrency-related crimes. It is considered a rather important organization in the crypto cybersecurity chain because it provides much of the intelligence infrastructure that helps authorities and businesses understand who is moving crypto and where.

At this moment, we don’t know if this will result in an extortion attempt. No threat actors have claimed responsibility for this attack, and the data has not yet emerged anywhere on the dark web. Chainalysis has not mentioned being reached out by the attackers or even trying to get in touch with anyone.

• Schellman Compliance’s latest audit of IPVanish has confirmed no traffic, metadata, or session logging
• The audit is the third since 2022, and marks the second audit since IPVanish committed to annual audits
• It follows IPVanish’s recent RAM-only server rollout and expansion to a 150-location network

IPVanish has announced the results of its third independent no-logs audit, and once again its privacy claims have a clean bill of health.

The audit was completed by Schellman Compliance, a leading provider of attestation services, on September 25, 2026.

Following two previous third-party audits in 2022 and 2025, the review is the latest in what's become an annual tradition for the VPN provider: inviting an outside firm to poke holes in its no-logs policy.

According to the results shared, the policy is accurate and fully aligned with IPVanish’s public privacy commitments – with its zero-logs promise strictly enforced across the company’s global server network.

Proof, not promises

The evaluation was comprehensive. Schellman’s auditors were given unrestricted access to IPVanish’s systems, configurations, and teams.

Interviews were conducted with engineering and operations staff, and company workflows were reviewed alongside infrastructure, internal documentation, and the administrative procedures governing the VPN app itself.

They also ran test traffic exercises – simulating real-world scenarios and watching closely for any evidence of VPN logging, including DNS queries, VPN metadata, and server responses.

The conclusion: no records of browsing traffic, session history, or connection metadata are collected or stored on active servers. Further, any real-time systems used to detect network abuse operate purely in memory, leaving nothing behind.

The auditors also checked IPVanish’s internal safeguards, confirming that any changes to how its servers work need sign-off from multiple people. This makes it much harder for logging to be quietly switched back on.

“A no-logs policy is only as credible as the evidence behind it,” said Subbu Sthanu, General Manager, Consumer Cybersecurity at IPVanish.

“People shouldn’t have to rely on promises when it comes to their privacy. By committing to annual independent audits of our no-logs policy, we’re making transparency and accountability an ongoing practice, not a one-time exercise.”

Customers who want to dig deeper can download the full report themselves via the Security Reports page in the My IPVanish account portal.

Part of a bigger picture

The audit doesn’t arrive in isolation. IPVanish has spent the past year restructuring its plans – Essential, Complete, and Advanced – around a suite of security extras, while growing a server network that now spans more than 150 locations.

Meanwhile, the company is midway through migrating its infrastructure to RAM-only servers, which wipe all data on every reboot and eliminate the possibility of storage-based logging; it has pledged to complete that transition by 2027.

Taken together, the picture is of a provider treating privacy less as a marketing slogan and more as something baked into how it operates.

In a market where rivals like NordVPN and ExpressVPN have made repeat audits their own baseline, the third-party stamp of approval is now a must-have rather than a nice-to-have. IPVanish seems intent on keeping up.

• 96% of college students now use AI, but half of them would ban it tomorrow
• Heavy users are more likely to feel schoolwork would become harder without it
• They're worried about cognitive decline, but more so about AI's environmental damage

New research has likened the relationship between Gen Z and AI use to that of previous generations with smoking cigarettes, characterizing it as widespread adoption, awareness of the negative consequences and a reluctance to give it up.

The study from Fizz found nearly all (96%) college students now use AI, but more than half (56%) would permanently ban the technology.

But although one in two would support banning AI, Fizz shows just how reliant students have become on it, with the proportion of learners believing their work would become much harder rising significantly among frequent AI users.

Students have become reliant on AI despite its potential consequences

"The heaviest users are hooked," Fizz declared, noting that 68% of students who use AI multiple times a day believe schoolwork would become harder without AI. This proportion falls to 59% among daily users, 42% among weekly users, 22% among users who use AI just a few times a month, and 9% among those who use it less than once monthly.

Fizz also warns that the effects have having a much broader reach than just homework, with 43% of heavy users agreeing preparing for their career would also be harder without AI. Two in five even worry their daily lives would be more difficult.

This could be because students still recognize that traditional skills and qualities are still in big demand – 27% put communication and people skills as their priority, indirectly implying that their AI use could actually be harming those.

A staggering majority (86%) of daily AI users admit to having used it for something they would previously have discussed with another person, like career or life advice (51%), personal problems (48%) and even deciding how to reply to a message (45%).

The report claims that nearly half of the heaviest AI users feel under pressure to use the technology because they fear falling behind in the employment market, despite acknowledging that it could also be harming their ability to succeed in employment.

But it might not be entirely their fault, because nearly two-thirds (64%) of the surveyed students said they feel at least some pressure from teachers or educational institutions to adopt AI.

They may be addicted, but they want it gone

As many as one in two (56%) students said they would ban AI tomorrow if they could, hinting at a broad recognition that it's impacting much more than just their education.

But cognitive decline and dependence (28%) actually came in second place, behind worries of environmental damage (35%).

It could just be that many students' dependence has now made them unable to give up AI, even though they have worries about its negative impacts.

"They reach for it when they're anxious or alone... And almost nobody believes it's actually making them better," the paper concludes. "Silicon Valley believes it handed Gen Z a superpower. Gen Z would hand it back tomorrow, as long as everyone else did too."

• FA Cup 2026/27 First Round: Friday, November 6-Monday, November 9, 2026
• FREE streams: BBC iPlayer (UK)
• Stream on ESPN Select (US) and TNT Sports (UK)
• Unlock your stream with NordVPN (save 77% today)

The FA Cup 2026/27 reaches one of the most highly-anticipated stages of the competition this weekend, as teams from EFL Leagues One and Two join the party for the First Round Proper.

Three months and six rounds after football's oldest cup competition got under way for its 146th edition, several non-League clubs remain in the hat as they look to create more fairy-tale stories.

The first round always throws up some delicious ties and this year is no different. Former Premier League champions Leicester City - who won the FA Cup just five years ago - travel to National League North side Oxford City in what should be a fascinating contest.

Other standout fixtures include Notts County's trip to National League Altrincham and League One high-fliers Stockport County's clash with Cray Wanderers, who play in the seventh-tier Isthmian League Premier Division.

Read on to find out how to watch FA Cup 2026/27 live streams online from anywhere, potentially for FREE.

Watch the FA Cup 2026/27 for FREE

The good news for football fans in the UK is that select matches from the FA Cup 2026/27 are being shown on free-to-air streaming platform BBC iPlayer.

The BBC will show 14 matches from the FA Cup 2026/27 live on its TV channels (co-exclusively with pay-TV TNT Sports) and streaming service BBC iPlayer – two from each round between the first round and the quarter-finals, then one semi-final and the final. It also has free-to-air highlights and digital clips on its social media channels.

Remember, you must be a UK resident and have a valid TV license to access BBC iPlayer. If you do, just sign up online and you're good to go!

9Now will also show select FA Cup games for free in Australia, beginning with Oxford City vs Leicester City in the first round.

What if you're abroad? Football fans from the UK can use NordVPN to watch their usual streaming service from anywhere.

FA Cup 2026/27 TV Games – First Round

Friday, November 6
Oxford City vs Leicester City — 7.45pm GMT (TNT Sports 1 / HBO Max)

Saturday, November 7
Altrincham vs Notts County — 5.30pm GMT (BBC Two / iPlayer & TNT Sports 1 / HBO Max)
Peterborough United vs Reading — 8pm GMT (TNT Sports 1 / HBO Max)

Sunday, November 8
Stafford Rangers vs Grimsby Town — 12pm GMT (TNT Sports 1 / HBO Max)
Cray Wanderers vs Stockport County — 2.15pm GMT (BBC Two / iPlayer & TNT Sports 3 / HBO Max)
Wimborne Town vs Crawley Town — 3pm GMT (TNT Sports 1 / HBO Max)
Oldham Athletic vs Sheffield Wednesday — 5.15pm GMT (TNT Sports 1 / HBO Max)

Monday, November 9
Plymouth Parkway vs Berkhamsted — 7.30pm GMT (TNT Sports 1 / HBO Max)

Scroll down for the full First Round fixture list

How to watch any FA Cup 2026/27 stream using a VPN

A VPN is a handy piece of software that can make your device appear as if it's back in your home country, so you can unlock your usual service. The best VPN right now? We recommend NordVPN – it does everything and comes with a 77% discount.

How to watch FA Cup 2026/27 live streams in the US

ESPN is the exclusive rights-holder for the FA Cup 2026/27 in the US, with every game live through streaming platform ESPN Select.

A standalone subscription costs $13.99 a month or $139.99 a year, but you can also get their ESPN Unlimited package that includes everything ESPN has to offer. Or you can watch through the Disney Plus/Hulu/ESPN bundle, which costs from $21.99 a month.

ESPN's channels are also available via cord-cutters like YouTube TV, Fubo and Sling.

Traveling away from the States right now? You'll need a VPN to watch your regular streams from abroad.

How to watch FA Cup 2026/27 live streams in the UK

UK viewers can watch FA Cup 2026/27 live streams on TNT Sports and the BBC.

As detailed above, there will be select matches available for free on BBC iPlayer, but TNT Sports and its HBO Max streaming service will show a minimum of 47 games over the course of the competition.

You can get it by adding TNT Sports to your Sky, Virgin Media or EE TV package, or pay from £25.99 a month (minimum 12-month term) for a HBO Max plan that includes TNT Sports.

Traveling away from the UK today? Use a VPN to watch HBO Max or BBC iPlayer from abroad.

How to watch FA Cup 2026/27 live streams in Canada

Soccer fans in Canada can watch the FA Cup 2026/27 on Sportsnet.

You can either watch Sportsnet on TV, or via the Sportsnet Plus streaming service, which starts at $34.99 per month or $269.99 per year.

Outside Canada during the FA Cup 2026/27? Simply use a VPN to watch from abroad.

How to watch FA Cup 2026/27 live streams in Australia

Viewers in Australia can watch FA Cup 2026/27 live streams on Stan Sport.

A Stan Sport subscription costs $20 a month on top of a regular Stan subscription, which you can get from just $9.99 a month.

Select games will also be made available for free on 9Now.

Away from Australia right now? Use a VPN to watch Stan Sport from abroad.

How to watch FA Cup 2026/27 live streams in New Zealand

beIN SportsNZ is the FA Cup 2026/27 TV rights holder in New Zealand.

A subscription to beIN Sports costs NZ$16.99 a month, or NZ$169.99 if you pay for a year up front. New subscribers can also get a 7-day free trial, which allows you to cancel before the trial period ends at no cost if you're not fully satisfied.

Missing a game due to work commitments abroad? NordVPN will give you access to your home streaming service.

FA Cup 2026/27 Q+A

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example:1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad.We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Rising console prices are by now a fact of life for gamers, no matter which platform they prefer. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X — consoles that are now six years old — cost $150 and $300 more than at launch, respectively; the Nintendo Switch 2, released in 2025, already costs $50 more.

Things haven't always been this way: back in 2013, the PS4 launched for $400, and the PS4 Slim arrived three years later for $300. Price cuts and cheaper versions were traditionally a part — a key part — of the console lifecycle.

In 2026, that pattern is reversed: consoles are getting more expensive rather than cheaper, at a time when everything else is also getting price hikes, and the trend is occurring all over the world, not just in the US and Europe.

To find out why prices keep rising — and whether they'll ever come down — I spoke to four industry analysts: Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics, James McWhirter at Omdia, Piers Harding-Rolls at Ampere Analysis, and Mat Piscatella at Circana.

Whatever happened to the price cut?

Traditionally, hardware makers have launched new consoles at relatively slim margins — even at times making a loss — and planned to make up the difference through games and other spending by players.

Manufacturing efficiencies combined with advances in hardware, including cheaper chips and memory, have helped to reduce production costs, further cementing the durability of this model.

Making use of these gains, manufacturers could then introduce slimmer versions of consoles or even reduce prices — therefore enticing more people to the platform and increasing game sales.

"The hardcore [gamers] paid full whack at launch," says Alinea's Elliott. "Families, kids, lapsed players, and more budget-conscious gamers came in later, at a lower price."

In 2026, the cost reductions that underpinned this model are much harder to achieve, with advanced chips becoming more expensive to manufacture and memory prices soaring.

At the same time, makers have become less willing to subsidise their hardware. "Sony and Microsoft have become more reticent to sink margin into subsidising consoles heavily this generation," says Ampere's Harding-Rolls.

The net result is that the traditional relationship between console age, manufacturing costs, and retail prices has completely broken down.

It's not just the RAM

The PS5 and Xbox Series X launched amid the turbulence of the COVID pandemic, and supply shortages lasted well into their lifecycles.

Now, we see myriad interrelated headwinds — from inflation and rising energy costs to currency fluctuations, particularly the weak yen, and US tariffs — that put even more pressure on manufacturing and retail prices.

"This console generation has been characterised by macroeconomic instability," says Omdia's McWhirter.

To top things off, the AI infrastructure boom is gobbling up enormous amounts of memory, encouraging chipmakers to prioritise more profitable server products and squeezing production capacity available for consumer electronics.

Consoles, which rely on DRAM for working memory and NAND flash for storage, are effectively caught in the crossfire. TrendForce estimates that memory now accounts for 23% to 42% of console component costs, compared with around 15% historically.

Elliott points out that console manufacturers negotiate memory prices and volumes months in advance, potentially delaying the impact of rising costs by two to four quarters. "A console on a shelf this Christmas contains memory that may have been priced the best part of a year ago," he says.

Same problem, different game plans

Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all facing these pressures, but each has its own priorities.

Sony's PS5 is a mature platform with an established audience, and so the company is increasingly focused on making money from existing customers, including through subscriptions like PlayStation Plus.

Its Q2 results, reported on November 5, illustrate this well: PS5 shipments fell from 4 million to 2.6 million year on year, while gaming division revenue increased 9%, helped considerably by a weaker yen. "These days, Sony treats hardware as a gateway it would rather not subsidise," says Elliott.

Microsoft is in a similar position with Xbox, but its games increasingly appear on PlayStation and PC alongside its own consoles — as Elliott puts it, "the console is one door among many."

Elliott argues that Microsoft's willingness to accept higher hardware prices reflects the console's changing importance within its wider gaming business, although falling hardware sales could make it harder to attract new players.

Nintendo, as is so often the case, has its own dilemma.

The Switch 2 is still early in its lifecycle, meaning Nintendo needs to build up its audience while keeping the console affordable enough to attract new buyers. McWhirter argues that Nintendo is accepting pressure on short-term profitability rather than passing the full increase in component costs to customers.

Omdia estimates that the market price of the Switch 2's 12GB memory and 256GB storage increased by $162 between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026, compared with a $50 increase in its US retail price. The figure doesn't necessarily reflect what Nintendo pays its suppliers, but illustrates the scale of the problem.

Nintendo says it has no plans for further price increases, but as McWhirter says, "The big question going forward is: how long will this be sustainable?"

For all their differences, the three console makers face the same question: how much can they charge before players start walking away?

“Elliott argues that manufacturers have also become more focused on protecting their margins, with established customers seemingly willing to absorb higher prices. “Every price rise this generation has been a test, and the core audience kept passing it – on PlayStation and Nintendo anyway,” he says.”

Are gamers getting priced out?

The new dynamics of console pricing give gamers some difficult choices. Circana's Piscatella has observed a consistent pattern around recent price increases: sales jump ahead of the new prices taking effect, then decline and eventually settle at a new baseline.

Piscatella says this pattern has emerged across PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch 2, and is distinct from the natural slowdown in sales as consoles get older.

Console price cuts later in the hardware's lifecycle have traditionally made them more affordable for families and younger gamers, a dynamic that Elliott points out is now quickly disappearing.

"Budget players have always come in through used consoles and 20 quid used discs," says Elliott. The shift towards digital distribution complicates matters, particularly when it comes to buying and reselling games cheaply.

The picture isn't totally bleak, however: Piscatella argues that younger and less affluent gamers do have options, particularly on mobile devices and lower-spec PCs, where free-to-play hits like Roblox and Fortnite are widely available.

Cloud gaming could also become a more attractive option as console prices continue to rise, and subscription services can offer access to a huge library of games for a monthly fee.

The risk, though, is that console gaming increasingly becomes the preserve of older, more affluent audiences, even as gaming itself remains hugely popular.

"Consoles gained popularity for their ease of use, convenience and affordability when compared to other gaming options," says Piscatella. "Anything that decreases these factors for consoles makes them a less appealing option."

The $1,000 question

The AI boom looks set to keep pressure on component prices — and therefore console prices — for some time yet. While memory prices might eventually stabilise, neither Elliott nor Harding-Rolls expects a return to the old pattern of steadily cheaper consoles.

Retail prices are likely to remain elevated due to expensive manufacturing processes and manufacturers' reluctance to absorb costs, and Elliott expects console makers to lean on temporary promotions, not wholesale price cuts.

But will console launch prices ever breach $1,000? Harding-Rolls believes Sony and Microsoft "will have to subsidise more heavily than they would like" to keep the next generation affordable.

Ampere's August research did the maths, modelling a scenario where an incrementally updated PS6 and Xbox launched in 2028 for $1,000, finding that combined sales over their first five years could be up to 38% lower than the equivalent period for the current generation.

In other words, Sony and Microsoft beware.

Faced with these interrelated dilemmas, manufacturers might turn in a new direction and rethink their approach to hardware.

Harding-Rolls suggests, for example, that manufacturers may have to scale back their ambitions for ever-more-realistic graphics and raw performance. "The relentless push for higher-end performance will need to be moderated," he says.

McWhirter posits that we might see more hardware stratification across tiers, potentially including a cheaper Switch 2, and a growth in bundles that offer value without actually cutting console prices.

Console makers may also delay new hardware launches for the foreseeable future to assess whether component costs improve — although the mood music from memory makers like SK Hynix is bleak, with much of its production capacity already committed through 2028.

Longer generations, then, seem increasingly likely. Elliott anticipates that the PS5 will stick around well after its successor launches, and cross-generation games may let gamers delay any hardware upgrades. "The next generation won’t replace this one so much as sit on top of it," he says.

Financing could spread the upfront cost of new consoles, while trade-ins and refurbished hardware might offer cheaper entry points for gamers — albeit without solving the underlying affordability dilemma.

A new era of pay-to-play?

As we head into 2027 and beyond, the danger for console makers is that their hardware becomes a product for wealthy enthusiasts, undermining the business model that made console gaming so successful.

Hardware that once became cheaper as it aged is now becoming more expensive, at a time when households are already facing higher living costs. Rising component costs might eventually ease, but changing business models could make permanent price cuts increasingly rare.

Piscatella worries that a shrinking pool of potential buyers could ultimately threaten the economics of the entire hardware model.

"Then the question becomes at what point does the addressable market for a new console become so small as to make it unviable," says Piscatella. "We're not there yet, but the risk of getting to that point certainly exists."

• Musk posted on X that production of Cybertruck will be winding down
• The move has been made to “make room for increased Cybercab production”
• It gives us our best indication yet that Cybertruck will join Model S and Model X

Elon Musk has used his X account to reveal that Tesla will be "winding down" production of its divisive Cybertruck at its Gigafactory in Texas around "the middle of next year", in order to make room for increased production of its Cybercab robotaxi.

Musk stopped short of saying whether this means the end of the Cybertruck altogether, or merely that production is going to be moved elsewhere. But the project’s lead, Wes Morrill, posted a more reflective statement to the social media site, saying: "Cybertruck was an incredible technology development platform and lives on through Cybercab".

That sounds a bit like an obituary to us and many users rushed to post their responses, which ranged from high praise for the angular electric pick-up truck, calming it was “the best vehicle ever made” to blunt putdowns.

Although others highlighted a point that many Tesla commentators have been focussing on in the past few years: the fact that Tesla doesn’t seem all that interested in EVs any more.

One X user wrote: "Serious concern for continuity on Model 3 and Y... sensing here an end on consumer products from Tesla," while another pointed out that the winding down of Cybertruck could mean for owners that they “won't get meaningful software updates anymore” and Cybertruck's software will grow “increasingly stale”.

Whatever the stance, it is difficult to get away from the fact that Cybertruck has been a commercial disappointment.

From claiming it had over one million reservations for the truck shortly after it launched in 2023, to estimations placing deliveries at around 30,000 for all of 2026 — way down on the planed 250,000 annual sales — it hasn’t shipped in the numbers Tesla predicted.

Customers have also had to put up with plenty of compromise, including reports of poor off-road performance, disappointing electric range and worries about recalls, one of which was issued over fears that the wheels could fall off.

Tesla also massively over-promised and under-delivered. It failed to deliver its range-extending battery pack, which was supposed to offer the claimed electric mileage the company originally boasted, while its much-lauded Cybertent, or Basecamp, was a $3,000 disappointment.

Even reducing the price didn't work, as it scrapped the cheapest Cybertruck after just five months on sale.

Analysis: is this the end of the road for Tesla's EVs?

Things haven't been great for Cybertruck ever since chief designer Franz von Holzhausen attempted to demo its "armor glass", only to smash it in front of a live audience.

But one of the most obvious signs of its recent demise is the fact that Tesla has made it deliberately difficult to determine just how many it was selling in recent years.

The company has been bundling sales figures in with the now-defunct Model S and Model X, as well as the Tesla Semi truck, in order to make the numbers seem more impressive than they actually are.

It is not a nailed-on fact that Cybertruck is dead, but it is a good indicator that Tesla is considering wiping yet another EV from its line-up… a worrying trend that points towards a growing focus on autonomous vehicles and its Cybercab program.

Aside from the attention-grabbing Roadster, which used flying stunts to make headlines, there has been no talk of real EV innovation, no word on a new model to rejuvenate the current line-up and no attempt to keep up with the sort of battery-swapping, megawatt charging EV infrastructure China is busy introducing to the world.

Say what you like about Cybertruck, it has always served as a halo product, something that diverted attention towards the brand. But in automotive circles, halo models only work if showrooms are full of great cars customers actually want to buy.

Where Tesla is concerned, that line-up is shrinking and compared to the competition, is rapidly falling behind.

• AMD's CEO has said that it's a "data center first company"
• Lisa Su observed that: "I see AI and super intelligence becoming more and more essential to every aspect of our lives"
• The CEO predicted a double-digit fall in PC sales next year, and gamers aren't happy at all with what they see as an abandonment by Team Red

AMD's chief executive hasn't been making many friends in the PC gaming community this week, having offered up a telling admission, alongside an ominous sales prediction, all off the back of the firm's latest financial results.

In an interview with Brian Sozzi, who is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, Lisa Su made it clear that AMD is a company with a lot of resources to expand its supply and the "ability to help our customers", but sadly the customers in this case are data centers, not consumers.

Su then delivered a frank admission: "We are a data center first company."

AMD's CEO also again underlined that AI is very much the future, and that "over the horizon I see AI and super intelligence becoming more and more essential to every aspect of our lives."

On top of this, as OC3D spotted, during AMD's earnings call for Q3 2026 (which was all about bumper profits), Su said that "PC sell-through slowed late in the quarter as higher memory and component costs weighed on demand," while forecasting that next year wouldn't be a good one for desktop computers and laptops.

The CEO observed: "In 2027, we are planning for PC market unit shipments to decline by a double-digit percentage."

In other words, an over 10% slump. The chief exec added this caveat: "In this environment, we expect to outperform the market as we deliver our Ryzen roadmap and grow our commercial footprint."

That presumably refers to the launch of Zen 6 processors for consumers (and businesses), the next-gen Ryzen family, which is expected to arrive early in 2027 and should obviously stoke some interest.

Analysis: dark times for the PC

It's no surprise that AMD has 'followed the money', as the old saying goes, because this is how businesses work, and profits reign supreme. Data center GPUs are way more profitable than consumer models.

If we look at the amount of revenue that AMD raked in from its data center business in this latest quarter, it very nearly doubled year-on-year and was up 97% to $8.5 billion. That dwarfed client and gaming (Ryzen and Radeon, mostly consumer) revenue, which was $3.7 billion (down 8%).

Looking at the balance sheet, it's clear enough AMD is a data center-first company — but actually saying this out loud, in no uncertain terms, sends out further signals about where Team Red wants to be, along with all the messaging that AI is the future.

Is it any wonder that gamers feel bitter about this? Hardly. Back at the start of 2024, AMD's consumer revenue was actually more than data center, albeit only marginally, but still — that picture has shifted massively over the past couple of years.

And with the prices of consumer GPUs shooting up as graphics chip production is increasingly prioritizing AI accelerators for data centers, there's a lot of bad feeling for obvious reasons. Nvidia's graphics card business is the same story too, of course, and GPU price hikes have been getting out of hand in the past few months for GeForce and Radeon cards alike.

Given clear negative predictions about the PC market next year — with AMD joining in on that — and the company's equally clear unwillingness to do anything about that with its plentiful resources, consumers are looking at a dismal future. One in which I fear that GPU price hikes are going to follow in the footsteps of steep RAM and SSD inflation, which has become beyond painful at this stage. Many forecasts point to the RAM crisis getting worse in 2027, of course.

All of which means it's hardly surprising that there's a profound sense of disappointment in AMD on social media, given this fresh data center comment from Lisa Su.

One Redditor declared: "AMD was a lot of people's last hope, but looks like PC gaming is over."

Dramatic? Well, yes, it is, but nonetheless, every single metric, forecast, and piece of analysis is strongly suggesting 2027 will be a desperately bleak time for the PC, and I have a hard time disbelieving that this is the truth. I've recently written about GPU pricing and how Black Friday could be your last chance to get an upgrade at a relatively reasonable price, if you need one.

• A new Garmin update could share the location of cyclists
• The locations would show up for drivers in Waze
• It appears the feature will be fully opt-in from the user side

Whether you're a cyclist, driver, or both, we can probably all agree that a better awareness of who's using the road is helpful for everyone — and Garmin is rumored to be working on a new feature that would pass on the location of cyclists to the Waze app.

This comes from Gadgets & Wearables, reporting on hidden code discovered in the latest version of the Garmin Connect app. That code includes the text strings "share location with Waze", "share your rides with Waze", and "Waze location sharing", which is telling.

There also appears to be a consent and onboarding flow already included in the app. That all suggests that the feature could be launching imminently, but there's no guarantee that it will roll out until Garmin makes it official.

Clearly this would be very much opt-in, and only available when the cyclist was using the LiveTrack feature for an activity. LiveTrack is designed for location sharing with friends and family, but it could be easily adapted to work with Waze too.

Safer on the road

We don't know much about how this is going to work yet, but presumably approaching drivers aren't going to be able to see your name and health stats if you decide to make use of this — just that there's a cyclist on the road up ahead.

That should make journeys safer for both cyclists and those in vehicles, especially on narrow and winding roads, and in the evening or when visibility is otherwise difficult. It's actually difficult to see many downsides, if this works as advertised.

Waze is already well known for the depth and breadth of information that it displays on its maps, with a lot of real-time details supplied by users. The maps include updates on roadworks, speed traps, accidents, gas prices, and more.

We'll have to wait and see which Garmin wearables will support the feature and exactly how the integration works, but it sounds promising. As Google owns Waze, cyclist alerts might even graduate to Google Maps eventually.

• Famed game creator Hideo Kojima has voiced his opinions on AI
• He said human creativity is a vital part of the game-development process
• And he’s worried about a future where AI dominates the industry

Legendary games maker Hideo Kojima is known for the creativity of his output, from the Metal Gear Solid series to Death Stranding, so it’s unsurprising to hear that he has strong opinions on the use of AI in video games. And in a fresh interview, he told readers exactly where he feels AI falls flat compared to human-made artistic expression.

Speaking to Japanese site Game*Spark, Kojima said that while it’s good that AI has improved efficiency, “the fun isn’t in finishing the picture. It’s in the process … While it’s fine to tell a computer to create this or that, and then say, ‘That’s wrong, change it,’ I don’t find that very interesting in terms of craftsmanship.”

“I’m worried about what will happen to that aspect of the enjoyment of craftsmanship in the future,” he added.

Kojima said he feels that there’s a distinction between using AI for creative output and employing it to form a finished product: “If you’re just making a ‘product,’ that’s fine, but I think the fun for creators lies in the creative process itself. I think ‘creativity’ and ‘products’ are different things.”

In other words, AI doesn’t offer creators the kind of spark they get from crafting something themselves. And it’s that kind of magic that so often resonates with consumers of Kojima’s media.

His comments reflect those of Jason Graves, the composer of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s soundtrack, who spoke out against AI music generation, saying that “Music is not just a bunch of notes strung together.” Instead, the process is essential as it is based on “creative instincts forged by emotion and all the little decisions that give a piece of art its own unique personality.”

The effort itself is key

Kojima didn’t just muse on what AI means for video games and other creative outlets in the present — he also had thoughts on how it could impact the future.

For instance, the game director said: “It’s not about telling someone to make a song like this and then being satisfied with the result; it’s the trial and error in between that gets the adrenaline pumping, and it’s incredibly exciting. I don’t want a future where that’s lost.”

He then reflected that, “I think it will be fine for five or 10 years, but if AI continues unchecked, perhaps a future where AI plays a vital role in creative fields will come someday. Well, I won’t be around by then. It’s up to the younger generation to decide, so I want to pass the baton to them.”

If the goal is purely to improve efficiency, AI could help to build a “good future,” Kojima noted. But for someone like him, there’s evidently much more to crafting something than just making it quickly with minimal effort.

Indeed, the effort itself is a key part of creative development. As Kojima put it, “Even with plastic models, the shape is the same no matter who builds it, but the process of assembling it is what’s interesting, isn’t it?”

• Deloitte finds 28% of businesses report current revenue growth, up from 20% earlier this year
• Productivity and improved decision-making are still performing better
• Sovereignty has become an integral part of AI strategies

New Deloitte data has claimed that when it comes to business AI, we're finally at the stage of ROI, with more organizations than before now reaping the rewards of their costly deployments.

As many as 28% now report current revenue growth as a result of their AI strategies, up from 20% compared with earlier in 2026, the firm's report found.

Realizing higher revenue is largely seen as one of the most important returns from AI – with companies spending so much on services and infrastructure, they need to make that money back.

AI adopters are finally seeing increased productivity translate into higher revenue

While other areas like efficiency and productivity (up 74%), decision-making and data insight (up 60%), cost reductions (up 45%) and better client relationships (up 44%) are all moving in the right direction, Deloitte says increasing revenue is still one of the slowest to deliver tangible results.

Deloitte's research also indirectly implies that businesses could be getting carried away with these early signs, because the majority (86%) of businesses surveyed plan to increase AI investments over the next financial year.

Additionally, while early ROI markers are now heading in the right direction, Deloitte worries that many businesses still don't have the right visibility into AI's financial impacts. While three in four (71%) are tracking total spend across token consumption, many can only see the total bill and not the breakdown of which activities lead to which spend.

Jobs are changing because of AI

It's becoming an increasingly familiar concept that employers need to redefine roles as AI becomes more engrained – developers are already seeing a shift from writing code to managing AI agents, for example.

Deloitte says there's a long way to go on this front, because while three in five companies have already redesigned jobs 'moderate[ly]', only 15% of them have done so 'extensive[ly]' and 1% 'completely.'

"Many are still just scratching the surface," the report claims.

The future of AI investments looks different

Looking ahead, Deloitte expects sovereign AI to become even more of an important consideration. Nearly half of Americas (46%) and EMEA (47%) businesses are building in-house to regain control over their workloads, with three in four (74%) global respondents reporting at least 'moderate' importance of sovereign AI.

But the paper does acknowledge the benefits of using centralized hyperscalers, noting that going sovereign or building in-house comes with certain trade-offs – usually "capability, speed or cost."

At the same time, we're hearing more and more about enterprises like Revolut picking up the infrastructure bills themselves, choosing to self-host open-weight models for greater cost predictability, usually at the expense of model performance in scenarios where they can achieve their desired outcomes without leading frontier models.

The report sets out six key considerations for the next stages of AI: adopters must respond by redesigning work as a whole, not just the workflow; costs need to be traceable to the token degree, not just the full bill; AI strategies must align with actions that produce revenue; governance needs to keep up as systems become more autonomous; early adopters are now starting to look at physical AI like robots, and so should you; and sovereignty should be seen as an ongoing effort consideration over a one-time fix.

• Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen explains how King Art introduced ideas from the Warhammer 40K TTRPG
• Theysen says it took "basic ideas" from the tabletop game that were familiar to fans
• Features like Armor of Contempt were also adapted to make sense for the real-time strategy experience

King Art Games co-founder and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 creative director Jan Theysen has explained how the studio implemented ideas from the Warhammer 40K tabletop game to make sense for long-time fans and newcomers.

In a lengthy interview with TechRadar Gaming, where Theysen described how the game manifests the classic RTS experience of the 2004 game and which hero mechanics and UI features it borrowed from Dawn of War 2 and 3, the creative director said that it was always King Art's intention to take inspiration from the beloved tabletop game.

"When it comes to basic ideas for factions, or also for units, for abilities, and so on, that's basically the first place we look," Theysen said. "Because instead of inventing completely new abilities for units, it makes sense to see what they have in the tabletop; is this something that we can adapt or change so it works in an RTS?"

Among those features was Armor of Contempt, a combat bonus for the Space Marine faction, which King Art decided to adapt to make sense in the context of the RTS.

"The tabletop is something different, but it's kind of the same idea, which basically means it makes Space Marines harder to kill, right?" the creative director explained.

"In the RTS, we now have Armor of Contempt, which basically works when Space Marines kill enemies, but also if one of them gets killed, there is more contempt [the attribute], and then basically the next damage you receive goes away from the contempt instead of the HP pool, which makes the Space Marine harder to kill, right?"

He added, "It's not the same mechanic, but it does kind of the same thing. And by naming it Armor of Contempt, someone who knows the tabletop already gets a good impression of what it probably does."

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 launches on PC on December 3. The creative director has also suggested that the game could eventually come to console.

• Audiolab unveils new 6000CDT MK II
• It's a CD transport, dedicated to processing a disc (not the full player)
• Requires a DAC and other separates to let you play the music

I'm writing constantly about the physical media revival, and cover new CD players every week, but new disc buyers might not be aware of how frail these things can really be. One scratch can wipe whole songs off an album, and a cheap CD player might be putting undue risk on your collection.

For that — and several other reasons — CD transports exist, and Audiolab has just unveiled a new model in the form of its 6000CDT MK II. No, I'm not talking about those wallets which you used to use to carry hundreds of discs around with you.

These are, to a certain extent, CD players: they have disc drives and let you control your tunes. But they don't have Digital-to-Analog converters, or DACs, which are vital for converting the sound from your physical media into something your amplifier and speakers (also not included here) can understand.

So why buy a CD device which can't play music from the box? Well firstly, housing the CD reading tech away from other electricals can ensure a clean and stable read, and it also lets audiophiles pick their favorite sound by choosing their own DAC, amp stage and speakers.

Transport you to the (Audio)lab

It also lets the CD transport focus on what it does best: reading discs. Everything in the Audiolab 6000CDT MKII is designed around the process; this lets you get the best from the medium, and ensures your little slivers of music are protected while they're in the machine.

Audiolab has rebuilt the device from the original to make sure all the components like the laser, spindle and disc loader are stable, make no noise and are consistent. The laser correction, which counters any unpredictability in the spin of the disc, has been designed to avoid any unnecessary actions, again making sure no noise gets in the way of your playback.

Looking at the technical specs, the 6000CDT MKII supports standard CDs as well as CD-R and CD-RWs (rewritable discs, basically, for which support can often be unreliable).

The device is set to go on sale at the end of November, for a price of £399 (about $540, AU$800, and we're waiting on exact global pricing).

Of course, if you buy it, you'll also need to pick up the other necessary accoutrements, but Audiolab would love to nudge you towards its very own similarly-styled 6000A MKII amplifier, which has a DAC built in — and judging by press pictures, the company is really hoping you'll pick up both. Fair warning though: it may sound very, very good . And his runs the risk of starting a bona-fide hi-fi collection, which can be quite a slippery slope.

Obviously, you'll also need some pretty nice speakers to appreciate them with. Fortunately, I have listed a few below…

For years, the retail industry treated the touchscreen as shorthand for interactivity. If shoppers could browse an endless aisle, customize a product or trigger an animation, the store was considered interactive.

That definition is beginning to look dated. The next generation of interactive stores will not be defined by what shoppers touch, but by what the environment understands — and how appropriately it responds.

This is an important distinction. A store can be filled with digital displays, interactive kiosks, sensors and immersive installations and still behave like a static space. The content may be visually impressive, yet remain unchanged regardless of what is happening on the sales floor.

The same promotion runs when inventory is plentiful or nearly depleted. The same message appears during a quiet morning and a crowded evening. Every screen is managed as a separate endpoint rather than as part of a coordinated customer experience.

That is technology added to a store, not a truly interactive store.

Digital channels

Digital channels have already established a different expectation. Websites and apps routinely adapt to location, browsing behavior, product availability and the stage of the purchasing journey. Yet many physical stores continue to communicate in exactly the same way throughout the day, even though conditions inside them constantly change.

Shoppers do not describe this disconnect in technical terms. They simply notice the difference between an environment that helps them and one that keeps broadcasting messages at them.

A genuinely responsive store adapts communication to context. When foot traffic increases in one area, nearby displays can prioritize information relevant to that location. When an item is running low, promotional content can be adjusted instead of continuing to create demand the store cannot fulfill.

When a line begins to form, screens can provide useful updates, redirect customers or reduce the perceived wait. When a campaign performs better at certain times or in particular stores, retailers can optimize it without rebuilding the entire content plan.

The objective is not to surround shoppers with more stimuli. It is to make every interaction more relevant.

Three forces

Three forces are moving physical retail in this direction: operational data, artificial intelligence and retail media.

Operational data allows the store to become aware of its own conditions. Foot traffic, dwell time, inventory, queue length, daypart, weather and activity by zone can all help determine what information is most useful at a particular moment. Importantly, many of these applications do not require identifying an individual shopper. A retailer can make the environment more responsive using aggregated or operational signals, with clear privacy rules and appropriate governance.

AI can help interpret those signals and turn them into decisions: which content to prioritize, when to activate or pause a campaign, how to adapt a message and where automation can reduce repetitive work. But the goal should not be to hand every decision to an algorithm. Retailers need business rules, human oversight and clear limits defining what the system may change. AI is most valuable when it supports operational judgment rather than becoming another opaque layer of technology.

Retail media adds a third dimension. In-store screens are evolving from communication tools into media inventory that can generate revenue close to the point of purchase. That opportunity is significant, but it also creates competition for attention. A paid campaign, a store promotion, a wayfinding message and an operational alert may all need the same screen at the same time.

This is why the next stage of store technology is not primarily about managing more screens. It is about orchestrating communication.

Shared logic

Retailers need a shared logic that decides which message takes priority, under which conditions and for how long. That logic must work as consistently in 500 stores as it does in a flagship. Otherwise, every new data source, media campaign or interactive feature creates additional manual work for local teams and another potential point of failure.

Complexity is one of the biggest risks in retail technology. Innovation is too often measured by accumulation: more displays, more systems, more dashboards, more vendors and more data. The result can be the opposite of what was intended — stores that are harder to operate, employees who are asked to manage tools outside their core responsibilities and experiences that cannot be scaled beyond a showcase location.

Technology only creates value when it simplifies complexity for the people running the store. That does not mean pretending the complexity has disappeared or placing an “AI-powered” label over it. Real simplification requires doing the difficult work behind the scenes — connecting data, setting priorities, integrating systems and establishing governance — so that store teams receive only what they need. The ideal outcome is not another dashboard. It is a screen that does the right thing at the right moment without demanding constant intervention from a store manager.

The same principle applies to creativity. Good automation does not replace creative thinking; it gives it room to scale. It allows a strong concept to move beyond a one-off installation and become an experience that can be deployed, measured and improved across an entire store network.

The future of interactive retail

That is why the future of interactive retail will not be built around isolated spectacle. The “wow” effect can attract attention, but it does not necessarily create lasting value. An installation that impresses shoppers for 10 seconds but cannot be updated, maintained, measured or integrated into daily operations has a limited future.

The next phase may look less overtly technological, but it will be more consequential. The best stores will not necessarily have the most screens or the most visible technology. They will feel more intuitive. Content will appear when it is useful. Displays will help organize the experience instead of competing for attention. Communication will reflect local conditions. Store operations will become more fluid. Shoppers will sense that the environment responds better to their needs, even if they cannot see the systems making that possible.

The challenge for physical retail is no longer simply to digitize the store. It is to give the store the same ability to adapt that customers already expect from digital channels.

The interactive store of the future will not be the one with the most touchscreens. It will be the one that listens to what is happening and responds at the right moment.

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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.

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• 100+ organizations are supporting European data center moratoriums
• The temporary ban would buy governments time to assess impacts
• UK set to add 6GW by 2030, but new Covenant sets out expectations

More than 100 organizations across 15 European countries have come together to campaign against ongoing AI data center developments, calling for an immediate moratorium on new large-scale campuses.

The Stop Dirty Data Centres campaign wants governments to take the time to consider environmental, economic and social consequences.

To get the message across, the group is reportedly planning protests across the UK, Ireland, Poland, Denmark, Finland, Spain, the Netherlands and France, with events set to take place on November 6 and 7 2026.

Europeans are standing up against data centers

Rather than calling for all new data center projects to be called off, the group just wants a temporary pause so that governments can establish stronger planning, regulatory and environmental frameworks.

It's not the first time we've seen such action – groups across the US have also been petitioning for similar moratoriums, and many states and regions have even been successful in imposing such moratoriums, including New York State.

Campaigners are also putting pressure on data center developers themselves, calling for greater transparency around projects' environmental footprints and operating requirements.

"The explosion of AI data centres across our towns and cities is taking a toll that we can no longer afford," the group wrote, citing impacts on local communities, jobs, energy bills, water shortages, mental health, surveillance and e-waste.

"Big tech companies lobby governments to fast-track construction and operate in secrecy, bypassing protections for our communities and ecosystems," the group added.

The campaign claims support from tens of organizations, including Greenpeace UK, multiple localised Friends of the Earth branches and Extinction Rebellion Bristol.

Meanwhile, the UK government anticipates needing an additional 6GW of AI data center capacity by the end of the decade.

The Data Center Covenant, set out by the UK government, insists that future plans pay for their own energy, invest in improving local communities, adhere to stringent environmental standards, support local jobs and help to enhance national security.

• Report finds 74% of firms prioritize recovery speed over quality
• Businesses are torn on whose responsibility a recovery is
• Defining a 'Minimum Viable Company' helps identify what needs fixing first

New Cohesity research has revealed UK businesses could be putting themselves at risk of cyberattacks because they're prioritizing recovery speed over quality.

This applies to three in four (74%) UK organizations, according to the report, with nearly as many (70%) failing to even check that attackers have been fully removed from breached systems after a cyberattack.

Expenses back this up too, because three-quarters (76%) of the businesses surveyed admitted that cyber resilience investments focus too heavily on prevention rather than response and recovery.

Cybersecurity isn't focusing enough on effective recovery

Crucially, Cohesity's data shows that business leaders are virtually clueless about the state of their IT teams' readiness, with half (52%) of UK CEOs expecting basic business operations to resume within just 24 hours. A false sense of security could partly be why budgets aren't being directed to the right causes.

It's also clear that the responsibility for deciding which systems get restored first is still pretty uncertain – 23% say it should be on the entire board, 21% pin it on the CTO, 20% on the CEO and 14% on a security advisory board.

The report urges all organizations to consider their Minimum Viable Company (MVC) – the minimum combination of systems, processes and services that are deemed necessary for a business to carry on essential operations after an attack.

With a clear MVC, teams will be better placed to know which systems to prioritize. But at present, two in five (41%) don't even have their own definition of an MVC – on the flip side, not even one in five (17%) have a documented and tested definition.

"If you restore a system before verifying attacker access has genuinely been removed, you risk reinfecting yourself," UK&I VP Fraser Hutchison summarized.

Looking ahead, the next stages are pretty clear. Businesses need to define which systems are most fundamental to their core operations and who holds the responsibility of post-attack restoration.

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