• Russia's Starlink competitor faces serious problems placing its satellites into orbit
• Moscow may replace its troubled Rassvet-3 spacecraft with improved satellites
• Russia's proposed Rassvet-4 network involves 374 satellites across 17 orbital planes

Russia's attempt to establish a satellite internet network capable of challenging Elon Musk's Starlink is encountering serious deployment difficulties.

Its Rassvet-3 spacecraft have struggled to reach their intended orbital positions, raising questions about the project's ability to deliver reliable connectivity.

Moscow is now pursuing an apparent replacement through an improved satellite design called Rassvet-4, although several important details remain undisclosed.

Russia develops a replacement as its satellite constellation struggles

Russia has submitted documentation to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) concerning a proposed Rassvet-4 network involving 374 satellites operating approximately 800 kilometers above Earth.

The planned constellation would occupy 17 orbital planes, with each containing 22 spacecraft intended to provide satellite communications coverage across designated regions.

Although Russian authorities have not officially announced Rassvet-4 development, the filing suggests preparations for another generation within the country's planned satellite communications infrastructure.

The application could therefore concern an upgraded spacecraft rather than an entirely separate network, particularly given the difficulties affecting the existing Rassvet-3 deployment.

Bureau 1440, the company developing Russia's Starlink competitor, previously indicated in September that engineers were working on an improved Rassvet-3 version.

The proposed successor appears to incorporate technical changes following two launches that delivered 32 Rassvet-3 satellites into orbit during March and July 2026.

However, both launches encountered deployment difficulties, with several satellites struggling to reach their intended orbital positions at an altitude of 800 kilometers.

Two spacecraft have reportedly reentered Earth's atmosphere, leaving 30 satellites in orbit, although 26 had stabilized at approximately 508 kilometers by November 3.

These difficulties create additional uncertainty surrounding the schedule for establishing an operational network, particularly as Russia continues developing infrastructure intended to compete with established satellite internet providers.

New spacecraft could arrive without advance announcement

The ITU documentation shows limited information about Rassvet-4's communications equipment, including its operating frequencies and antenna beam configuration.

According to the filing, each spacecraft will incorporate 12 antenna beams, comprising seven transmission beams and five reception beams for communications operations.

Russian authorities could introduce the upgraded spacecraft during the next scheduled launch, potentially deploying them without previously announcing their arrival.

Meanwhile, objects resembling satellite communications terminals have reportedly appeared on Russian military drones, suggesting efforts to explore additional applications for the developing network.

Photographs of a Molniya-2 unmanned aerial vehicle carrying an unidentified object have raised speculation about possible satellite connectivity equipment being tested aboard military platforms.

Nevertheless, the object's identity has not been independently established, meaning its connection to Rassvet remains uncertain despite its apparent resemblance to communications hardware.

Via Defense Express

• 64GB RAM PCs fell 18% as memory costs climbed sharply
• 32GB systems also slipped, while 16GB machines gained ground in CPU-Z's survey
• 24GB RAM recorded the fastest growth, despite its tiny market share

Rising memory prices are changing how much RAM consumers are willing to buy, with fewer PC users opting for expensive, high-capacity memory.

A CPU-Z hardware survey shows that the number of computers with 64GB of RAM fell by 18% year over year, while 32GB systems declined by 2.5%.

Yet DDR4 still accounts for 54.5% of surveyed computers, compared with 32.9% for DDR5, suggesting the older memory standard remains far from disappearing.

Rising RAM prices are changing consumer preferences

The decline in larger memory capacities comes as AI infrastructure continues consuming substantial quantities of DRAM, putting pressure on supplies available to conventional PC manufacturers.

As memory becomes more expensive, buyers appear increasingly willing to settle for smaller capacities rather than pay premium prices for additional RAM.

The shift is particularly noticeable among 16GB computers, which recorded a 12.9% annual increase in the survey.

Systems with 8GB of RAM also grew by 5.5%, despite the capacity becoming increasingly inadequate for demanding applications and modern gaming.

Although 8GB computers have largely disappeared from mainstream performance-oriented builds, they remain relevant to older machines, basic office computers, and extremely inexpensive systems.

Meanwhile, 24GB PCs recorded an even stronger increase of 19.7%, suggesting that some buyers are choosing intermediate capacities instead of purchasing more expensive 32GB memory kits.

Despite these changes, 32GB remains the most common capacity among surveyed computers, accounting for 37.2% of CPU-Z's active user base.

Computers with 16GB followed with 33%, while 8GB systems represented approximately 11% of the surveyed population.

For years, 16GB has served as the standard capacity for many PC users, but 32GB has increasingly become the preferred choice for people running demanding applications and modern games.

The survey also reveals that 64GB computers account for 7.3%, compared with just 2.3% for 24GB systems.

Although 24GB experienced the strongest growth, its relatively small share indicates that this capacity remains considerably less common than established 16GB and 32GB options.

DDR4 still dominates as DDR5 adoption progresses

DDR4's continued dominance is partly explained by its long-established presence in desktop computers and laptops, with the standard remaining widely supported across existing hardware platforms.

DDR5 offers newer memory technology, but upgrading often requires compatible motherboards and processors, adding expenses for consumers considering a complete platform replacement.

Consequently, the continued popularity of DDR4 does not necessarily indicate that manufacturers are returning to the older standard or abandoning DDR5 development.

However, there is an important limitation to CPU-Z's findings because its hardware survey measures computers running the application rather than actual monthly PC sales.

Its statistics therefore describe the software's active user population and cannot establish precisely how consumers across the entire market are purchasing memory.

Nevertheless, the combination of declining 64GB adoption and increasing interest in smaller capacities suggests that memory affordability is becoming increasingly important when consumers choose their next PC.

Via Tom's Hardware

• Reballed memory could account for up to 9% of smartphones in 2027
• Rising DRAM prices are pushing phone makers toward reused memory
• Budget handsets currently account for most smartphones using reballed chips

Rising memory costs are pushing smartphone manufacturers toward an unusual form of component reuse, with refurbished memory expected to appear in more devices by 2027.

TrendForce estimates this approach will account for 3–4% of smartphones in 2026, before its market penetration increases to approximately 7–9% next year.

The shift is being driven by expensive mobile DRAM, which is increasing manufacturing expenses and putting additional pressure on brands serving price-sensitive buyers.

Reused memory offers manufacturers a cheaper route

Reballed memory comes from integrated circuits removed from existing circuit boards, then prepared for another installation after their original solder connections are carefully replaced.

Those connections use small metal spheres beneath the chip, allowing it to communicate electrically with the board while occupying very little physical space.

During reballing, technicians clear away the existing solder, prepare the contact surface, and attach a fresh set of appropriately sized replacement solder spheres.

The component can then be fitted to another board, although its suitability depends on its condition, handling history, and the quality of the refurbishment process.

TrendForce says 4GB LPDDR4X currently makes up most of the reclaimed supply, with use concentrated in inexpensive 4G handsets costing under CNY 1,299 (~$195).

Buyers in this category are particularly sensitive to retail prices, giving manufacturers an incentive to recover usable parts rather than rely entirely on newly manufactured memory.

Using previously installed chips can reduce component expenditure and help brands limit price increases, especially when customers have little room for more expensive smartphone models.

Although reballed memory is currently concentrated in cheaper smartphones, rising DRAM prices could encourage manufacturers to introduce it into more expensive models.

Higher memory costs could extend the practice

TrendForce expects memory price increases to accelerate in Q1 2027, adding pressure to manufacturers already managing expensive production.

That environment could encourage companies to consider older or lower specification parts in more costly products.

Even with faster adoption, reclaimed memory is expected to represent a small proportion of the total LPDRAM consumed by smartphones annually.

Consequently, its growing presence is unlikely to reverse the upward movement in contract prices, since its contribution to total memory demand remains limited.

The financial attraction also comes with technical concerns, particularly when manufacturers cannot establish consistent quality across components obtained from different suppliers and refurbishment channels.

Repeated heating can place stress on electronic packages, while damaged contacts or imperfect replacement work may affect electrical performance after installation inside smartphones.

Traditional reballing relies on heating solder until it melts, and component makers generally advise limiting devices to no more than three such heating cycles.

Laser-based methods can concentrate heat around solder contacts instead of warming the entire package, potentially reducing thermal exposure during component refurbishment and subsequent installation.

Manufacturers therefore face a choice between immediate savings and possible costs arising from failures, repairs, warranty claims, or dissatisfied customers over extended periods.

• Russia is adding antenna elements to its drones to resist jamming
• Russia already uses 16-element versions and is preparing production of 20-element ones
• Ukrainian specialists found 32-element antennas on Shahed drones during attacks on Kyiv

Russia is increasing the number of antenna elements fitted to its attack drones, making their satellite navigation systems more resistant to Ukrainian electronic warfare.

The upgrade complicates efforts to disrupt incoming weapons by interfering with the satellite signals they depend upon for navigation.

The navigation equipment, known as Kometa, produced by VNIIR-Progress, uses multiple receiving elements to maintain satellite connections when opposing forces transmit interference.

Russia increases antenna capacity as Ukrainian jamming becomes less effective

These components, commonly called patch antennas, help distinguish legitimate navigation signals from electronic interference, allowing drones to retain their intended flight paths.

Russia has already deployed versions containing 16 elements and is preparing manufacturing capacity for configurations containing 20 receiving elements.

However, Ukrainian specialists claim to have also identified Shahed attack drones carrying considerably larger 32-element arrangements during attacks against Kyiv.

Serhii Beskrestnov, an electronic warfare specialist advising President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on defense technology, explained how additional elements improve resistance against interference.

“The more elements, the more electronic-warfare signal sources the antenna can suppress,” Beskrestnov said.

The 32-element configuration reportedly combines two separate 16-element arrays, allowing the equipment to operate across different satellite navigation frequencies.

Russia's Kometa systems have also appeared in Geran drones, guided aerial bombs, Iskander-M and Kinzhal missiles, alongside the newer Filin cruise missile.

Per Ukrainian intelligence, Russian defense manufacturers ordered more than 100,000 modules in different configurations, covering several categories of guided weapons.

The scale of those purchases suggests that Russia intends to distribute improved navigation protection across multiple weapon platforms.

Ukraine explores alternative methods to defeat upgraded navigation systems

Despite the additional protection, Ukrainian specialists claim that larger antennas do not make Russian drones completely immune to electronic warfare.

The effectiveness of each Kometa configuration depends on its antenna arrangement, receiving elements, and processing algorithms that distinguish satellite signals from interference.

After studying the 32-element antenna purchased through secondary weapons markets, Ukraine claims to have a way to jam the antenna.

“By creating two systems — one operating in the L1 band and the other covering L2/L5 — we’ll be able to jam this antenna without any problems,” said Alkhimik, commander of Ukraine's Night Watch unit.

Another approach involves satellite spoofing, which manipulates navigation information rather than simply overwhelming legitimate signals with electronic interference.

Fly Group Ukraine has developed another countermeasure involving connected devices that transmit fabricated coordinates to approaching Russian drones.

The technique exploits their navigation systems, potentially causing onboard autopilots to redirect aircraft away from populated areas without detecting the manipulation.

“The drone continues to think it is flying toward its target, but its own autopilot, relying on the false coordinates, gradually changes course on its own and steers the craft away from cities into safe areas,” said Anatoliy Khrapchynskyi, development director at Fly Group Ukraine.

However, the effectiveness of these countermeasures against drones equipped with increasingly sophisticated navigation antennas remains uncertain, particularly as Russia continues upgrading its equipment.

If Ukrainian electronic warfare systems cannot reliably disrupt incoming drones, defending against them could require greater reliance on interceptor aircraft, specialized drones and expensive missile systems.

Via Defense News

• Unsanctioned AI use is increasing, according to a study of Google search data
• 50 terms were identified and their usage analysed, 48% more than two years ago
• The search terms point to use of shadow AI, in which AI tools are employed without corporate oversight or managerial approval

Employees are using AI in the workplace whether its use is approved or not. New research has revealed an increase in “shadow AI” – AI that isn’t really approved for use – and colleagues are relying on the technology to not only assist in work, but also cover their tracks.

The analysis was conducted by consultancy company Acora, which assessed 50 search terms in Google during the 12 months to September 2026. They found the terms were used 161,934 times, 48% more than in 2024 and a 250% increase over ChatGPT’s first year.

Google searches to delete AI chat history, circumvent blocks on AI tools, and to find free AI tools with no signup are among the terms to have increased. While students may be conducting some of these searches – another challenge entirely – there is a growing market for such tools, which could leave organizations looking to better implement AI policies with an even bigger challenge.

Shadow AI

Employing AI tools in the workplace ostensibly offers a productivity boost. The employee should ideally know if they are permitted to use AI, and have attended a session (in person or online) covering the policies and procedures around AI. While this is covered in most organizations, the pace of change with AI has left many businesses playing catch up.

So you have the results, as Acora’s research shows, of increased searches for “unblocked AI” (up 24% in 12 months) and “free AI no sign up” (up 36%) and “AI no sign up” (up 39%) in the same period.

Interestingly, searches for free AI note taking tools have also increased, up 28% on the previous year. If such tools are used in meetings, the information recorded could be stored on remote, unvetted servers, representing a data protection challenge for the organization.

The right controls?

Acora’s study highlights a growing concern: that businesses have AI policies that pay lip-service to the technology’s existence and rules over its use, but ignore the implications of overlooking its risks.

“AI transformation has reached the point where businesses are asking harder questions about what they can trust, how their data is being used and whether the right controls are in place," notes David Rabson, CEO of Acora.

“Concerns around trust, governance, security and data shouldn’t leave organizations stuck between ambition and action.” One solution is to help businesses close such gaps and implement “data foundations, governance and controls in place so they can adopt AI with confidence, rather than putting promising projects on pause.”

• Amplifon Americas disclosed a cyberattack that exposed personal, insurance, and healthcare-related information
• Stolen data included medical records and identifiers, with some individuals also losing Social Security numbers
• Company is offering identity protection services and warning affected users to watch for phishing and fraud

Healthcare company Amplifon Americas has disclosed suffering a cyberattack in which it lost sensitive customer data, including different healthcare information and Social Security numbers (SSN).

It is now urging customers to be careful with incoming emails, especially those related to Amplifon and its business.

The company said unidentified threat actors broke in on January 18 2026 at the latest and between then, and February 8, 2026, they were exfiltrating personally identifiable information (PII) the company has stored on its servers. Amplifon Americas spotted the intrusion on February 11, notified law enforcement and relevant agencies, and launched an investigation.

Amplifon attacked

The company did not explain exactly how the attackers made it inside its network, but it did say that it disabled “impacted accounts”. This would suggest that an employee account was compromised, likely via phishing or infostealer malware infections.

It also said it “promptly contained” the incident, and implemented mitigation measures such as “enhancing monitoring for signs of suspicious activity.”

Its investigation concluded on October 6 2026, and determined that the attackers stole people’s names, contact information, dates of birth, driver licenses (or other state identification numbers), other government-issued identification numbers, hearing or medical information, medical record numbers, dates of service, other health information, health insurance ID numbers, and other health insurance information.

Financial information, as well as SSNs, were exposed “for a limited number of individuals.”

Amplifon Americas is now notifying affected individuals and is offering 24 months of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.

“We are not aware of any fraudulent use of personal information as a result of this incident,” it said. “Nonetheless, it is always advisable to remain vigilant against suspicious behavior or attempts to misuse your personal information, which includes reviewing account statements and explanations of benefits. If you identify suspicious activity, you should contact the entity that maintains the information on your behalf.”

More than a million victims?

In its notification, the company did not say how many people had their files taken. However, according to The Record, a breach notice filed in Texas said 85,804 Texans were compromised, as were 1,027 individuals in Vermont. A similar notice was submitted in California, but without mentioning the exact number of people. Unfortunately the Office of the Maine Attorney General’s public-facing database, which used to hold an updated count on exposed individuals across the States, is still offline.

The Record also said “several” class action law firms said the total number of victims was 1,332,826, but this number is unconfirmed and Amplifon is not responding to media inquiries.

On the other end, no hacking groups have yet claimed responsibility for this attack. Usually, threat actors would publicly name and shame victim organizations, often sharing samples of the stolen files and threatening to release the full archive unless an extortion payment is made.

Healthcare organizations are among the most targeted firms mostly because of the large amounts of sensitive information they collect and store. Passwords can change, and payment details can expire. But medical histories, diagnoses, and other health records are often permanent, making them particularly valuable in identity theft and impersonation attacks.

• Adobe wants creatives to stand out for their uniqueness, so AI will handle the rest
• Third-party AI agents can connect to major CC apps to handle admin work
• Apps like Photoshop, Lightroom and Premiere are also gaining new AI tools

Adobe has revealed plans to expand its Creative Agent across more of its flagship Creative Cloud applications, including Premiere, Lightroom and InDesign, in a bid to give AI more autonomy to handle the less creative side of creative work.

Unlike generative AI, which acts upon single prompts, AI agents can handle longer and more complex, multi-step processes.

The company positions the use of AI as putting creatives in the director's chair, enabling them to offload tasks that aren't really part of the creative workflow to AI agents to free them up more time to focus on the truly creative elements of their jobs.

Adobe's rolling out AI agent access to more apps

"The ideas, taste, style and vision that creative professionals bring to their work are what make their work stand out," Adobe Product Marketing VP Deepa Subramaniam stressed.

Importantly, using AI agents doesn't make a creative's work less human. Some common use cases include applying effects across multiple clips, tracking masked subjects and adjusting colours and exposures in Premiere.

Together with the expanded rollout, Adobe is also opening up the doors to third-party AI agents via MCP, starting with its most popular apps – Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and After Effects.

Granting permission to third-party agents to directly work within these apps means users won't have to handle exports and jumping between multiple tools, but it also means things like Photoshop layers and Illustrator vectors will still be preserved.

On-stage at the conference, Anil Chakravarthy, who is set to become Adobe's CEO effective from December 1 2026, demonstrated a third-party AI agent turning a long-form podcast into multiple social media snippets – a demo that was met with much excitement and applause from the thousands of attendees on the ground.

Besides the more autonomous side of AI, Adobe hasn't completely ditched generative AI, which still plays a major part in creative workflows. Photoshop will be gaining new tools to add or adjust lighting within an existing photo. Generative restyle will also turn natural language prompts into adjustable sliders, helping to remove the traditionally steep learning curve often associated with Photoshop.

Premiere also gains new GenAI upgrades, like audio enhancement tools and a generative remove functionality for removing unwanted objects from a series of video frames, while Lightroom sees additions like blemish removal and a tool to artificially open a subject's eyes – perfect for group photos where creatives would already be handling many other variables.

While some general Creative Cloud features are now generally available, some more advanced tools like Lightroom Open Eyes and Premiere Generative Remove remain in beta.

• Anthropic reveals a host of updates for Claude to help users at work
• Claude can now join meetings, analyze data and more
• It can also effectively connect to third-party tools such as Adobe, Box and more

Anthropic has unveiled a host of updates for Claude which could see the AI platform play a much more integral role in some of your most common work tasks.

Among the next expansions are tools which allow Claude to join video calls as a participant, meaning it learns first-hand from your meetings and can start work immediately.

Joining its existing suite of office software tools are new Whiteboards, Sheets and Data services looking to help users work and create more effectively - and new interactive connectors will now allow Claude to work inside the full versions of common workplace apps such as Adobe, Atlassian and HubSpot.

What's new with Claude for enterprise?

"A year ago, Claude changed how developers work," Anthropic wrote in a blog post announcing the new tools. "Engineers stopped asking AI for snippets and started handing it whole tasks, which freed them to spend their time deciding what to build. For most other teams, work has stayed much the same: the email gets written a little faster, the meeting comes with a summary."

"Now the frontier is moving to knowledge work, and people are starting to hand Claude whole tasks too."

The most striking new addition is undoubtedly Claude Meetings, which will allow Claude to join video calls as a visible participant.

Claude follows the conversation and starts on the work as people talk, taking notes, drafting plans, outlining timelines on whiteboards, answering chat questions, and utilizing connected work apps while conversations happen - and when the call ends, the notes, action items and everything Claude made are waiting in claude.ai.

Also new is Claude Whiteboards, a shared, real-time board which helps teams turn brainstorms and retrospectives into structured plans, timelines, and action items, and integrates directly into Claude Meetings, and Claude Sheets, a spreadsheet tool which allows teams to build and edit trackers and budgets collaboratively with Claude, complete with tabs, formulas, and dropdown menus.

Finally, Claude Data (formerly known as Claude Dashboards) connects company data sources (such as CRMs and warehouses) to generate dashboards, data stories, and narrated videos, featuring beta capabilities like certified queries and live sharing.

Alongside this, new Interactive Connectors will allow full versions of partner tools (like Adobe, Atlassian, HubSpot, Salesforce, NetSuite, and Workday) to open directly inside Claude, which can take actions directly within these apps with user approval.

Connectors respect existing user permissions, and admins can utilize features like Claude auto-connect, usage controls, and Smart Reports to monitor team productivity and costs.

Claude Meetings, Claude Whiteboard and Claude Sheets are all still in beta, with Claude Data and Interactive Connectors generally available now.

• Researchers showed Microsoft Entra Agent ID blueprints can be abused to socially engineer malicious AI agents into organizations
• A single approved blueprint can spawn hundreds of agent identities with access to corporate resources
• Defenders should restrict third-party agent consent, apply least-privilege controls, and monitor agent creation events

When Microsoft first introduced Entra Agent ID as a way organizations can identify and monitor AI agents, it most certainly did not think it would be used to smuggle malicious agents into corporate environments. Yet, that’s where we are today.

Entra Agent ID is an extension of Microsoft Entra. It’s a system that allows companies to create AI agents, give them digital identities, and then decide which services and what data they can access. Expecting organizations to deploy dozens (if not hundreds) of these agents, Microsoft also introduced “agent blueprints”, essentially templates companies can use to create multiple AI agent identities, each with their own permissions.

In a new report, security researchers Proofpoint laid out how a threat actor could create a malicious blueprint in their own Microsoft environment and then - using classic social engineering techniques - convince a victim to approve it in their own environment. To make matters worse, when a malicious agent enters the environment, they can “clone” themselves, creating multiple additional identities, all tasked with doing different things.

How the attack plays out

Proofpoint found the attack starts with the attacker setting up a blueprint in a Microsoft Entra environment they control. They can configure its credentials and the permissions they want it to receive and also make sure it can be authorized by other organizations.

Then, they create a link that leads to a genuine Microsoft authorization page. Unlike your run-of-the-mill phishing attack, this one is different because the login page doesn’t need to be fake and spoofed. The attacker does, however, need to have some basic information about the target organization, such as their tenant ID and details about an existing user they can specifically target.

Then comes the fun part: the victim is presented with the link (this can be done via email, social networks, instant messaging platforms) which asks them to approve the blueprint and its permissions. The link is legitimate, and so is the popup prompting the approval - nothing suggests this is actually a highly sophisticated phishing scam.

If they click the link and approve the blueprint, the malicious AI is added inside their organization.

The higher-authority the target - the bigger the potential damage, since for organization-wide application permissions, the person approving must have the necessary admin privileges. Ordinary users may be able to approve certain delegated permissions, depending on company policy.

One of the first things the AI agent receives, once installed, is a permission called AgentIdentity.CreateAsManager. This allows the threat actor to create additional identities linked to the blueprint that’s now inside their target’s environment. A single blueprint can support up to 250 agent identities, which means there can be a swarm of malicious bots running around at the same time.

Raising awareness while limiting access privilege

The attacker then obtains access tokens for those identities, making them valid members of the company with approved access to different resources which they can then exfiltrate as they please.

“Organizations should raise user awareness of the risks associated with agent consent, particularly when granting permissions to ‘third-party’ agents from untrusted sources,” Proofpoint warned. “Much like user consent settings limit users from granting consent to third-party apps, these settings also extend to agent blueprints and their agent identities.”

Proofpoint stressed agent blueprint ID is consistent across all tenants that give their consent, which is a common indicator to detect or remove known malicious agents. Applying the principle of least privilege will help limit the impact, the researchers concluded, utilizing controls like Conditional Access policies for agents and Entra ID protection for agents. “For monitoring, agent and blueprint events are surfaced in the audit log, in a similar way to app consent operations,” the report concludes.

Seagate FireCuda Forge: 30-second review

Seagate has approached the latest iteration of its FireCuda Forge external HDD in an interesting new way for this drive format. Essentially, it combines the speed of an SSD and the storage capacity of an HDD in one device. While this has been done before, as it works as tiered or cached storage, this is usually seen in enterprise level hardware.

This works by having your main HDD, which in this case is a large 20TB drive, and then having a smaller but faster SSD. When you plug in the drive, instead of seeing the two as you would expect, you see only one.

As you copy files to the drive, the system uses the SSD to speed up transfers, while Seagate's Alkemi technology automatically prioritises frequently accessed files on the SSD and keeps less frequently accessed files on the HDD.

Getting started with the drive does require you to insert an SSD of your choice, as the main unit arrives with just the 20TB HDD installed, so you’ll need to purchase an SSD as well, which is something to consider when you look at the cost. Seagate supplied a 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSD, but the specifications show a 1TB limit. Another key factor is that the SSD should include DRAM cache.

Installing the SSD is easy enough, and once it's installed, I was able to plug the drive into the USB4 port of the GMKtec EVO-X5 Pro. Unlike the FireCuda X Vault that I looked at recently, which is bus-powered, the Forge requires its own power supply.

Initial tests showed this drive’s potential, and while the interface is USB4 and the M.2 SSD inside is the latest PCIe 5.0, the speed tests hovered around 2,000MB/s for both read and write.

This is far in excess of any HDD I have used in the past and showed that, while I could only see the single drive, the SSD was doing its job and enabling these much faster transfer rates.

As the test progressed, I started to see exactly what this drive was about, how it would fit into workflows and its limitations. The SSD enables fast transfers to and from the HDD. However, this is tiered storage with the clever Seagate Alkemi technology managing the data, so frequently accessed files are prioritised on the SSD, while less frequently accessed files are stored on the HDD. This meant that for a 4TB Premiere Pro project, opening up the initial project was admittedly fast, and then editing the file proved to be a fluid process. When I switched to the same edit on an older 5TB HDD I often use for editing, the editing was still smooth, but there were also slowdowns, especially during timeline rendering.

By the end of the test, the most notable advantage of the Forge was its backup speed compared with a standard HDD. Files could be transferred at near 2,000MB/s compared to the usual 200MB/s. Even as a working drive, it performed faster, and the workflow felt more fluid than I expected for a drive that uses an HDD for most of its capacity.

Seagate FireCuda Forge: Price & availability

The FireCuda pricing has yet to be officially announced but is expected to be around the £900 mark for the 20TB and then an addition £100 for the 1TB SSD.

• Score: N/A

Seagate FireCuda Forge: Design & build

The design and build of the FireCuda Forge reflects what I saw with the FireCuda X Vault earlier in the year. There are differences, but essentially, there’s no mistaking the similarities of this external hard drive family.

The overall look and design are solid, and the build quality and materials are exceptionally high. It’s not metal, but the plastics are well finished, and it felt solid enough as I unpacked it and set it on the worktop.

One of the first points that I noted about the drive is that it requires its own power source, and a power brick is included in the box along with a USB4 cable. Before plugging everything in, the drive needs an SSD installed, and the instructions state it has a 1TB limit. However, Seagate also included a 2TB FireCuda PCIe 5.0 module which seemed to work fine.

This is installed into the side of the unit, with four hex screws on the base holding the cover in place. Once you pull it free, you can access the SSD slot on the side of the machine. While Seagate includes a hex key in the box, you'll need to provide a cross-head screwdriver to install the SSD.

After installation, the drive can be plugged in and is ready to go, with the internal HDD being pre-formatted to the NTFS file system. According to the instructions, you can reformat the drive for macOS if needed, but either way, once connected, it’s ready to go. The drive officially supports Windows 11 and macOS 26 or later. Since it arrives formatted to NTFS, you'll need to reformat it to a Mac-compatible file system if you want normal read-and-write access on macOS.

In this test, I connected the drive to the GMKtec EVO-X5 Pro and then transferred data from an existing video project from a 5TB LaCie Tough Pro drive with an HDD inside and a 4TB LaCie Rugged SSD Pro5. I connected both to the other USB4 port on the mini PC, but not at the same time.

Aesthetically, the exterior casing is beautifully designed and features an LED light at the top. It also acts as a status light, showing the drive's basic activity, which is extremely useful.

Connections to the drive are limited, with a power socket for the AC adapter and a USB4 port for the data connection to the machine.

In terms of size, it includes a 3.5-inch drive inside that, like the SSD, is replaceable if you need more capacity or want to replace it in the future. The overall dimensions are 240.3 × 146.8 × 65.2mm, and it weighs in at 1.92kg.

• Design & build: 4.5/5

Seagate FireCuda Forge: Features

From the start, the tiered storage makes this drive far more than most, combining the best features of both SSD and HDD into one. The off-the-shelf unit arrives with a 20TB 3.5-inch HDD installed, but you can replace it later if you want. As well as this 20TB version, a smaller 8TB option is also available; aside from the capacity difference, the drive is also marginally lighter at 1.845kg.

However, while the drive arrives with a ready-to-go HDD installed, before the drive is recognised by the system, be that PC or Mac, it does need an NVMe M.2 2280 SSD to be installed, and this is not provided. The SSD you install must be PCIe Gen 3 or newer, with a maximum supported capacity of 1TB and minimum rated read and write speeds of 2,400MB/s and 2,000MB/s respectively. Seagate also recommends an SSD with DRAM cache.

The surprise here is that once the two drives, the pre-installed HDD and self-installed SSD, are fitted, you would normally expect them to appear as separate drives on the desktop or in the file manager when plugged in. However, because of the system's tiered design, those two drives combine into a single drive.

Seagate's Alkemi technology automatically manages the storage using dynamic tiering to organise data between the HDD and SSD. Essentially, those files being accessed by the user are made accessible on the SSD, speeding up the response time.

Seagate highlights maximum transfer rates of up to 2,500MB/s, but, as ever, this depends entirely on your configuration. Write speeds are also quoted at a very respectable 2,000MB/s.

Although the drive has only one data connection, it uses USB4, which proved to be compatible with Thunderbolt 3, 4, and 5.

• Features: 4.5/5

Seagate FireCuda Forge: Performance

Unlike most external drives, getting started with the FireCuda Forge wasn’t as simple as unboxing and plugging it in. While the drive comes with a large 20TB HDD, this cannot be accessed until an SSD has also been installed. The SSD, unlike the HDD, isn't included, so you'll also need to factor in the additional cost of a 1TB module. For a premium option, the FireCuda X1070 1TB SSD costs £179, though that is direct from Seagate, and I have found it elsewhere for much less.

Seagate officially supports SSDs up to 1TB. However, during testing, I installed the supplied 2TB FireCuda X1070 SSD and found that it worked.

Installing the SSD is relatively simple, with the four screws on the base of the machine being removed before the entire base and side cover are removed as one piece. This reveals the HDD, which you can replace later if needed. On the side of the unit is the slot for the SSD, which can be placed in and screwed into place. A small screw is provided in the box, but you’ll need to provide your own small cross-head screwdriver.

Seagate has also included two large thermal pads that stick to the back of the SSD module. Once everything is installed, the base can be reattached and screwed into place. Then attach the USB4 cable, which, at 50 cm, gives a good length between the machine and the drive. Then connect the power, and after a few seconds, the drive mounts. The initial mount took around 10 seconds, which I found to be about average throughout the test.

I started by running the benchmarks, and the initial results were exceptional for a drive of this type and showed how the SSD came into play with standard transfers.

Copying the files from the first external drive over to the HDD, it was obvious that the speed was being limited by the older drive, and any advantage that the drive should have had due to that SSD was being wasted on the slower technology being used at the other end.

However, as I switched to the small 4TB Thunderbolt 5 SSD, the speeds ramped up, and the transfer rate of the real-world files reflected some of the faster transfer speeds that were highlighted in the benchmarks.

Compared with my usual archival storage, there’s really no comparison to be had, and after a video shoot, connecting up the OWC CFexpress Type B card reader and transferring just over 1TB of data to the drive happened in around 12 minutes. Testing this with a more standard HDD, that same data took around 1 hour and 20 minutes, so a significant difference when you’re backing up the files after a shoot.

In the standard backup-and-transfer process, the drive is significantly faster than a standard HDD. However, this isn’t always the case.

The SSD is limited to 1TB, and as I increased the amount of data being copied to the drive, I noticed a slowdown. When I copied the 1.2TB of data over, the system appeared able to maintain high transfer speeds by managing the data between the SSD and HDD, despite the SSD's 1TB capacity limit. However, when I transferred 4TB from an external SSD to the drive, the first part of the transfer was at a similar speed before it started to slow. It was still significantly faster than a traditional HDD, however.

I then used the FireCuda Forge as a working drive, and the potential here really impressed me. Most of my video edits are around the five-minute mark, so are under or close to 1TB. Compared to editing from a standard fast HDD over USB4, which is possible, but where there are often some slight delays as timelines render, here it was the same as editing on a straight SSD.

Again, there is that 1TB limit, and when I opened an old project that I have had timeline rendering issues with in the past, I found that combination of speed and capacity was extremely useful. I can't see exactly what the unit is doing, but it appeared to transfer the data in use onto the SSD when needed, giving the speed you would expect from the format. However, reaching for clips and footage that hadn't been used until then caused a brief slowdown. Once loaded, the speed was again far faster than you would expect compared with files on a standard HDD.

Since I pulled the files from an HDD, I did a quick side-by-side comparison, and the difference in speed and workflow was notable. So while the drive might not hold the entire project, it still sped up the process, and no doubt having additional storage that can hold several video projects at once will be beneficial, with transfer rates that far exceed a standard large-capacity drive.

The final test was two-tiered. The first was storing game files for Steam, and the second was storing the LLMs for Lemonade. On the game front, while the drive can store the files, load times were much longer than when they were stored on the local SSD. However, once loaded, speeds were good, so if your internal drive is limited, then this is a good way to offload the files.

Using the drive to store the LLMs proved to be a good use, especially right now, when I seem to swap and change between models to get the results I want. While it's not as fast as the internal SSD, the convenience of all that space was definitely beneficial, although model load times were slower.

The major benefit of this drive is speedy file offloads. If you’re downloading to the drive from other fast SSDs, memory cards and other media, and you need it to do so at speed, which many photographers and videographers do, then this is a great solution.

For most other users, while the initial speed is beneficial, that data still has to be copied to or from a more traditional HDD at some point, and that can slow the progress. However, it only became an issue when I pushed the system well beyond what I would realistically do. Otherwise, this HDD can provide the speed of an external SSD with the capacity of an HDD.

• Performance: 4.5/5

Should you buy the Seagate FireCuda Forge?

This is the first tiered storage drive I have used, and the test results are impressive. It did take me a while to get my head around the workings of the drive: the fact that the drive featured two internal drives, the 20TB HDD and a smaller 2TB SSD (limited to 1TB), yet they both appear as one and not in a RAID configuration.

Having to supply your own SSD is a bit odd, but given the memory cost and the size limit, it probably makes sense. I have several old 1TB SSDs with DRAM cache that would have done the job, so this step was probably added to keep the drive cost down.

While official pricing has yet to be announced, the FireCuda Forge will need to justify its cost compared with a standard 20TB external HDD, with Seagate's own 20TB Expansion desktop drive costing around £300 at the time of writing. However, what you do get with the FireCuda Forge is a far more capable drive, with transfer rates much closer to an external SSD, yet with the capacity of an HDD. Whether that justifies the additional cost will depend on the final pricing.

There are limits to this speed. However, for the most part in this test, the drive acted like a huge 20TB SSD. The slower HDD speeds only kicked in when I accessed multiple files that exceeded the 1TB limit, such as switching from one Premiere Pro project to another.

In real-world use, you’re unlikely to notice much difference between this and a smaller, fast SSD, and Seagate really seems to have got that balance right. The one time I did experience a slowdown was when copying 4TB of video data from a Thunderbolt 5 drive. Still, even then, it had such a head start on a standard drive that, again, the FireCuda Forge still provides far greater performance.

If you’re in the market for a large-capacity, fast-transfer external drive without upgrading your network or looking at NAS solutions, the FireCuda Forge is an impressive option, although its overall value will depend on the final price.

Buy it if...

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• Sega disclosed a third-party breach that exposed nearly 2.2 million customer email addresses through a marketing service provider
• Around 92,000 additional records related to email distribution were also compromised in the incident
• Sega and its provider warned users about phishing risks, though no misuse of the leaked data has been confirmed

Gaming giant Sega has disclosed suffering a third-party cybersecurity incident that exposed email addresses of almost 2.2 million people, as well as other details of at least 92,000.

The company is now investigating deeper, to confirm the details of the leaked information.

What happened

Sega is one of many Japanese companies using the services of Arara, a technology firm providing digital marketing and customer engagement services.

One of its services is called Arara Message, an email distribution platform that businesses can use to send newsletters and other communications to millions of people. This also means Arara was managing contact information on behalf of those organizations, including email addresses, names, and often phone numbers and membership details.

In early November 2026, Arara reported its email distribution infrastructure suffering a compromise. Apparently, a combination of a web server vulnerability and “other system weaknesses” allowed unidentified threat actors to access 97 servers that stored data of up to 380 corporate customers.

The attackers accessed (and most likely exfiltrated) more than 81 million email addresses, together with people’s names, dates of birth, phone numbers, postal addresses, and membership numbers. Not every customer had all of this data exposed - it varied from person to person.

In a subsequent report, Arara added that the attackers compromised a separate environment containing additional 3.38 million email addresses and more than 400,000 customer records containing PII. They ended up sending more than seven million phishing emails spoofing various credit card companies, forcing the company to temporarily shut down the service on October 31 2026.

Many large organizations had their newsletter contacts exposed. Asoview reported approximately 15.82 million records, while electronics retailer Bic Camera reported 15.2 million. Fast-food chain MOS Burger disclosed the exposure of some 7.5 million email addresses, while cinema operator Shochiku Multiplex Theaters 3.3 million.

Sega under fire again

Among them were also video game giant Sega and its subsidiary Sega Fave, who disclosed approximately 2.2 million affected email addresses.

“Sega Corporation uses Arara Corporation's distribution system to distribute certain email newsletters related to products and services of our company and its group company, Sega Fave Corporation. It has recently been discovered that Arara Inc. was subjected to unauthorized access by a third party, and the email addresses of customers used to distribute the email newsletter were leaked externally,” the company said in a short announcement.

The company said that as of November 9, it can confirm 2,196,044 emails as compromised, together with 92,273 other items “related to distribution”.

Information that has not been leaked at this time include customer names, dates of birth, gender, addresses, phone numbers, credit card information, and login passwords.

“At this time, no misuse of the leaked information related to this case has been confirmed,” Sega said. “The email address registered with the "SEGA Account" uses a different distribution system and is therefore excluded from the leaked information.”

This is Sega’s second major cybersecurity incident this month after its Sega Fave arcade game network services were recently brought offline and are, according to BleepingComputer, still unavailable as the company works on maintenance and safety checks.

On November 2, Sega Fave said an unidentified threat actor accessed its servers supporting its ALL.Net and Aime arcade gaming network services but later stressed that these two incidents were unrelated. Online gameplay, Sega Lucky Kuji Online, and new Sega ID registrations, were all brought offline for investigation.

So far, no threat actors claimed responsibility for the breach. Both Sega and Arara warned their users about possible phishing emails and urged them not to click on any links or download attachments from emails claiming to come from the companies.

Via BleepingComputer

• Wyndham’s Android app exposed customer data and login tokens through hardcoded credentials embedded in the code
• Researchers found access to millions of records, including names, emails, member IDs, and active authentication tokens
• Wyndham fixed the issue after disclosure, but the scope of exposure and any prior access remain unclear

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, one of the world’s largest hotel chains, has admitted it experienced an embarrassing cybersecurity incident that exposed personally identifiable information and even mobile app login tokens, possibly for millions of people.

The hotel confirmed the news to TechCrunch after an independent researcher tipped off the publication about the security mishap.

Security researcher Robert Wiggins from What Security analyzed Wyndham’s Android app and found a set of hardcoded credentials. Those are credentials that are baked into the app’s code and are usually a leftover artifact from earlier development phases. While building an app, software developers would include admin credentials into the code to work faster and not have to log in every time they want to test a feature or a tool.

These credentials are usually removed in the final audit, just before the app is shipped. However, they are sometimes forgotten, which leaves a revolving double door back access for even the lowliest skilled cybercriminals.

Customer data and login tokens

In this case, the credentials granted Wiggins access to an internal company database containing customer names, email addresses, Wyndham member numbers, and JWTs - customer login tokens that allow users to remain logged into their apps.

These tokens would prove invaluable to malicious actors, since they would allow them to access user instances without knowing their credentials (granted that they are still active and not expired or revoked).

Personally identifiable information, as well as Wyndham files and documents that were also stored in the database, could be used to create highly customized, tailored phishing lures, which could trick victims into installing malware, making fraudulent transactions, or granting attackers access to their employer’s corporate environment.

Wiggins apparently tried reaching out to the hotel but could not find the right channel, so he asked the media for help. When TechCrunch made contact, the company confirmed the security blunder but stressed that the issue had already been resolved.

“Our team has taken steps to address the issue,” a Wyndham spokesperson told the publication. “Our security teams have no evidence of any unauthorized access.”

The issue may be resolved, but plenty of questions remain unanswered. For example, we don’t know how many people had their data exposed this way. Wiggins says the database has “millions of entries”, but he could not determine a more concrete number. Wyndham claims it has 129 million enrolled rewards members.

Wiggins' streak

We also don’t know for how long the database remained exposed this way. When were the credentials hardcoded into the app, and which versions kept them? The company also said there was no evidence of unauthorized access but declined to elaborate. Without a proper audit of server logs, we cannot know for certain if anyone viewed, or downloaded, the information before Wiggins’ discovery.

So far, it doesn’t seem as if Wyndham disclosed the leak publicly, or shared details with its customers whose data was exposed. Usually, incidents like this one need to be reported to appropriate authorities, including data watchdogs and regulators such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the European Securities and Markets Authority, or national data protection authorities.

This is the second instance of hardcoded credentials Wiggins found in just as many weeks. In early November, it was disclosed that the American casual dining restaurant chain Applebee’s kept hardcoded credentials in its Android mobile app, exposing customer names, their email addresses (both verified and unverified ones), dates of birth, phone numbers, ZIP codes, veteran status, the number of logins, dates of account creation, and the IP address of the most recent login session, to anyone who knew where to look.

Just as with Wyndham, we don’t know the exact number of people whose data was exposed this way, but it’s safe to say they are in the millions.

• Zurich analysis of insurance claims has found that AI is behind 20% of fake claims
• A complex pattern of seemingly unrelated false claims are believed to be coordinated by AI
• Generative AI has been employed by organized crime rings to create fake evidence for non-existent incidents

AI has been driving a worrying rise insurance fraud, new analysis by insurance giant Zurich and AI analytics experts at Quantexa has claimed, with complex, organized crime rings have employed generative AI to make to fabricate supporting evidence in 1 in every 5 fake claims.

Scams as diverse as crash for cash and serial claimants were intelligently analyzed with repeated elements flagged for investigation. AI’s use as both a generative tool for fakery and as a tool to detect patterns and highlight criminality demonstrates how the technology is taking criminality and detection into a new era.

The analysis has so far led to £17.9 million in fake claims detected, a small number when compared to the £1.34 billion of fraudulent claims made in 2025.

Fighting fraud

Incredible volumes of fraudulent insurance claims have been detected over the past 12 months. Zurich UK found £109.3 million in total of faked claims, with £17.9 million of that identified using advanced analytics and AI. Some 4,359 fraudulent claims were uncovered, in motor, property, and casualty insurance portfolios. Claims identified as fraudulent increased 22% from 2022’s figure of 3,562 claims to 4,359 in the past 12 months.

“Insurance fraud in the UK is becoming more sophisticated, more organized and increasingly technology-enabled," noted Scott Clayton, Head of Claims Fraud at Zurich UK and Chair of IFB. "Criminal networks are constantly adapting their tactics, whether that's staged accidents, ghost broking, fabricated claims or the use of AI-generated evidence.

Explaining how AI has helped combat the £109.3 million of fraud uncovered in 2026, he added “Connected data is transforming the fight against fraud, helping us expose hidden relationships, identify organized networks and protect honest customers from footing the bill for criminal activity.”

This appears to be an industry-leading combination of advanced analytics and human judgement by specialist investigators to tackle what is considered a rapidly evolving threat.

Clayton says that Zurich is the first insurance company in the UK to unify data from “Companies House, Equifax, industry intelligence and the Insurance Fraud Register to give us a much richer picture across every claim. That helps us identify crucial connections and information that might otherwise be difficult to spot.”

For years, the software industry operated under one core assumption: writing code was the primary bottleneck in software development. As a result, companies poured enormous resources into hiring developers, refining development processes, and building tools that could shorten the journey from idea to product.

Then generative AI arrived.

For the first time, the industry gained a technology capable of solving the very problem it had spent decades trying to overcome. The ability to write code – once the industry’s most constrained resource – is now faster, more accessible, and dramatically more efficient.

But if our ability to generate code has increased so dramatically, why aren’t software organizations moving at the same pace?

AI-enabled development offers a more nuanced story. AI coding agents can handle work that previously required additional engineering capacity, from creating the foundations of an application to generating tests and accelerating implementation. A group of two or three people can try out an idea that might once have required a much larger team, more specialized skills, and considerably more time.

But speed is only part of the story. The more important change is that AI expands the ambition of each team.

A 2025 study by researchers at Tilburg University found that while AI coding tools increase output, they also increase the burden on senior developers. After analyzing thousands of open-source projects, the researchers found that experienced developers spent significantly more time reviewing AI-generated code, while their own coding output declined by nearly 20%. In other words, AI accelerates code creation, but it does not eliminate the need for human expertise to govern, validate, and maintain that code over time.

The implications extend well beyond senior developers. They force us to rethink what we actually measure.

More code doesn’t mean more progress

Excess code is only the symptom. The real challenge is keeping it under control. As codebases continue to grow, the question becomes even more pressing: if software can be built faster than ever before, why are organizations still struggling to move at the same pace? Because in enterprise software, writing code is only the beginning.

Every change must go through quality assurance, security reviews, regulatory compliance, and complex integration processes. Those steps cannot be accelerated at the same pace as code generation.

As AI speeds up development, what happens after the code is written becomes even more critical.

Organizations are measured not by how much code they produce, but by their ability to run stable, secure, and maintainable systems over time. That is why the defining challenge of the coming years will not be a shortage of developers, but managing complexity at scale.

AI changes the unit of innovation

AI coding agents are a major reason for this shift. They allow smaller groups to take on work that previously required a larger roster, without narrowing the ambition or depth of what they attempt.

That changes the unit of innovation. Progress is no longer determined only by how many people can be working on an idea.

The implications extend beyond individual developers. As AI changes the role of software engineers, team leaders need to consider not simply how quickly teams can produce code, but how effectively they can define problems, validate results and apply human judgement.

The real question is no longer how much software an organization can produce. It is how much of that software can be operated, maintained, and continuously evolved over time.

What happens after the code is written

The easier it becomes to generate code, the easier it becomes to generate complexity. Organizations can introduce new capabilities at unprecedented speed, but every additional component brings new requirements for testing, security, integration, monitoring, and long-term maintenance. AI shortens the path to writing software. It does not shorten the path to building reliable enterprise systems.

That is the new bottleneck in software development – not the ability to generate more code, but the ability to manage the complexity that code creates.

This is where governance, oversight and maintainability become increasingly important. A prototype is not a finished product, and it should not be treated as one. It still requires validation, product discipline, security, reliability, and a clear understanding of the customer or business need it serves.

The opportunity is to turn AI from a separate initiative into an everyday operating model for innovation, while maintaining the standards organizations expect around security, reliability, governance, and measurable business value.

This also means looking beyond traditional measures of development output. In a world where AI writes a growing share of the code, how many features were delivered, how many tasks were completed, and how quickly projects moved forward tell only part of the story. The ability to run stable, secure and maintainable systems over time matters just as much.

AI has solved one of software’s biggest challenges: generating more code in less time. Now the industry faces a harder question: how do we prevent speed from becoming technical debt?

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• France blames Iran for recent cyberattacks against supermarket freezers
• October 2026 attack saw food ruined and multiple fires across France
• Iran denies involvement, but France orders its ambassador to Paris to explain

The French government has accused Iran of being behind the recent cyberattacks which hit freezers in supermarkets across Europe.

More than 700 grocery stores were affected by the attack in October 2026, spoiling food and even causing fires as fridges and freezers saw their temperatures hiked up to over 50C.

France has now laid the blame for the attack at the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), saying the incident was "unprecedented in both its scale and its level of aggression".

Iran blamed for attacks

“This is an unprecedented campaign in terms of its scale and level of aggressiveness, thus constituting the first cyber offensive campaign carried out purely for the purpose of sabotage on national territory,” France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot said.

He added that the incident, "marks the first large-scale cyber-attack aimed at sabotage on our national territory, and it constitutes a major attack on the nation's interests and the security of the French people".

The attacks affected French supermarket chains Casino, Leclerc, Coopérative U, Metro, Carrefour, and Intermarché groups, with food losses estimated in the tens of millions of euros, a report by France’s Cyber Crisis Coordination Centre (C4) found.

The attacks were followed by a second incident a few days later, with supermarkets in other European countries hit, before a third attack saw French blood plasma reserves targeted.

The latter incident saw Coolworld, which supplies the French Blood Establishment (EFS), targeted. The EFS is responsible for collecting, preparing and distributing blood and blood products in France, many of which are used in essential surgeries and medical operations.

Fortunately, the cyberattack did not result in any serious operational consequences because the temperature spikes were noticed quickly and corrected.

Iranian hacking groups such as the IRGC have been blamed for several high-profile cyberattacks in recent months, many of which have targeted industrial facilities and systems.

This includes a UK power generation plant being taken offline for several days in August 2026, and in the same month, more than 30 Minnesota water utilities were hit in a coordinated attack blamed on Iranian-affiliated actors.

“The Iranian cyber threat against French interests is not new,” the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs added. “Iran has already carried out several destabilizing acts against us, notably targeting the weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2023 and the organization of the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.”

Barrot said the French government had summoned the Iranian ambassador to Paris to "lodge a very strong protest against this extremely grave act".

Iran has yet to respond officially, but some Iranian media outlets have dismissed the allegations as baseless.

Ten years ago, one of the telecoms industry’s biggest infrastructure challenges was rolling out 4G. Since then, telecoms has transformed – and the environment our infrastructure operates in has changed with it.

Summer 2026 was the UK’s hottest on record. In the first nine months of 2026 alone we’ve faced heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and flash-flood warnings. And climate projections suggest conditions like these will become increasingly familiar.

For those of us responsible for the critical national infrastructure people rely on every day, that means thinking about resilience in an entirely different way – shifting the focus from a single network to the continuity of the service people rely on.

In telecoms, the physical impacts of climate change can quickly become real issues for our customers. And while operators are already taking steps to prepare their networks – from backup power and cooling to flood protection and longer-term climate risk planning – resilience doesn’t begin and end at the boundaries of an individual network. It has to be thought about in the context of the UK’s digital infrastructure system.

The Telecommunications Security Act has already required operators to take a more systemic approach to identifying risks and preparing for disruption. Climate risk now needs the same operational discipline to ensure the connectivity that keeps our economy and national security running stays reliable.

We need to think beyond the resilience of individual networks

Our networks don’t exist in isolation. We are all connected to a much wider digital ecosystem, and increasingly dependent on other critical infrastructure too. Transport is an obvious example. Telecoms networks depend on roads and transport links remaining accessible so engineers can reach critical sites.

That means we need to look beyond the resilience of individual networks and think about the resilience of the system as a whole.

Climate risks don’t arrive neatly one at a time, and the impact of an event in one part of our critical national infrastructure can quickly be felt elsewhere. We’ve seen this come to life in extreme weather events. A heatwave can increase cooling demand at the same time as the power system is under strain, and flooding can damage equipment and prevent engineers from reaching it.

Each individual operator – whether that be the telecoms company or highways authority – has plans for each disruption scenario. The challenge is that those plans need to work when the same event puts several dependencies under pressure at once.

Working together, with government, regulators and the other infrastructure industries we depend on is therefore more vital than ever. Climate adaptation is a strategic national issue. We need to start treating it as one.

Adaptation has to change the infrastructure decisions we make today

Thinking differently about climate resilience also means thinking differently about the decisions we make today. Identifying climate risks is important, but simply recognizing or reporting them isn’t enough. The real value comes when those risks start to influence how businesses plan, invest and operate.

Telecoms infrastructure is built to operate for years, often decades. We can’t predict the exact weather at a particular site in 2040, but we can make decisions now that remain sensible across a credible range of future conditions and identify what would trigger a different course through climate scenario planning.

Climate considerations therefore need to be part of long term decisions from capital investment and network planning to executive governance. That isn’t always straightforward.

One of the challenges with climate change is its unpredictability. We can see patterns in the science and data, but there isn’t a neat, linear pathway that tells a business exactly what conditions its infrastructure will face in five, ten or twenty years’ time. A lot of the impact we are experiencing today is unchartered territory for humanity as a whole, let alone infrastructure.

Part of the answer is translating climate risk into the language businesses already use to make decisions. For telecoms, that means talking about resilience, reliability, efficiency and investment – and recognizing that these priorities are often more closely connected than we might think.

We’ve seen that with net zero. Many of the actions needed to decarbonize networks are also ones that can make them more efficient, more reliable and more resilient. Reducing energy consumption is an obvious example: it can lower emissions while improving efficiency and reducing exposure to energy costs. Rather than treating net zero, adaptation and network resilience as separate agendas, we should increasingly look at where the same infrastructure decisions can help deliver all three.

After all, telecoms is first and foremost an infrastructure business. And if we are investing in infrastructure that will be operating for years to come, resilience to a changing climate needs to be part of how we decide what – and where – to invest.

Uncertainty is often treated as a reason to wait. But when investing in long-lived infrastructure, I believe it should be a reason to keep our options open.

Adaptation needs greater priority

For years, the climate conversation in telecoms has rightly focused on how we reduce our impact on the climate. But as its physical effects become increasingly visible, we need to give the other side of that conversation much greater attention too: how a changing climate will affect the infrastructure we all rely on.

No individual operator has the full picture. The systems telecoms depend on span different companies, sectors and regulatory frameworks, which makes climate resilience a shared challenge as well as an individual one.

A more collaborative approach could help strengthen resilience across sectors. That could include common climate scenarios, cross-sector stress testing, agreed restoration priorities, clearer protocols for sharing information during disruption.

In the event of a storm, power resilience is an example. Imposing a higher duty of cooperation and data sharing between Distribution Network Operators and telecoms companies would help mitigation to be deployed appropriately.

Government and regulators also have a role in convening this work – however, we cannot wait for climate adaptation to become another compliance exercise. We should compete on service and innovation, while collaborating on risks no company can manage alone.

We can’t know exactly what conditions our networks will face in the decades ahead. But we do know that the climate they operate in is changing. The challenge now is to make sure the infrastructure we invest in today is ready for the world it will need to operate in tomorrow.

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• Norway has temporarily halted new data centers from connecting to its power grid
• Restrictions could continue until late 2027 until regulations catch up
• Norwegian government also reveals plans for new licensing system for data center operators

Norway has temporarily halted the building of new data centers in the country as it looks to limit the fast roll-out of new AI facilities.

System operator Statnett and the Norwegian government confirmed the move will look to halt the rapid expansion of power-intensive data centers across the country until regulations are in place.

The Norwegian government also revealed plans to introduce a new licensing system to regulate the expansion of large-scale cloud operators, instead favoring facilities which serve vital areas such as defense, police and emergency services, health services and other critical infrastructure such as the mobile network and the financial system.

"Control the growth"

“We want data centers in Norway, but we can’t have all types of data centers,” Digitalization Minister Torgeir Micaelsen said.

“We must therefore control the growth and ensure that Norway gets the data centers we actually need — those that provide the greatest societal benefit.”

The announcement will pause any new data center developments - but any projects already approved for a grid connection, or those already connected, will be unaffected.

Norway has become a popular location for new data centers, and Statnett said it expects the restrictions to be in place until at least August 2027, as fluctuating data center loads could destabilize grid operations across the country.

Statnett said it believes around 800MW of data centers are currently connected in the Norway, with an additional 4.2GW is reserved, and 9.1GW is in the capacity queue.

However around 18GW is currently being requested for connection - over a third of the country's peak power demand.

Norway has already imposed a temporary ban on the establishment of new data centers used to mine cryptocurrencies, and is already the site of existing and planned data centers from big players such as Microsoft, Nscale, TikTok (through Green Mountain), and CoreWeave.

The news comes at a critical time for data center developers, with opposition to new facilities spreading across the world.

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

Via DataCenterDynamics

• SpaceX wants to add 10GW of data center capacity during 2027
• Analysts believe Musk's aggressive construction schedule could become reality
• Colossus 2 is already demonstrating the scale of SpaceX's ambitions

SpaceX claims it could add an extraordinary amount of artificial intelligence computing capacity within the next 18 months, potentially matching Google's cumulative development over decades.

Elon Musk believes his company can install 10 gigawatts of additional data center capacity in 2027, an ambition that has attracted skepticism.

However, analysts believe the proposed expansion is achievable, citing construction progress, internal manufacturing capabilities, and access to dedicated power generation equipment.

SpaceX's construction pace could change the data center race

According to SemiAnalysis, SpaceX could increase its computing infrastructure from approximately 3GW to more than 10GW through developments planned across several locations.

If achieved, that expansion would represent approximately 10GW of additional capacity within 18 months, matching what Google accumulated throughout its entire existence.

The analysts point to the rapid development of Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 as evidence that Musk's ambitious construction schedule remains achievable.

Colossus 2 offers a particularly important example, with its electricity generation capacity reportedly increasing from 0.4GW in January toward 2.4GW by December.

The facility reportedly includes 89 gas turbines capable of generating approximately 2.5GW, alongside 1,377 Tesla Megapack battery systems installed across the property.

However, environmental restrictions will eventually limit the permitted output from those turbines to approximately 1.24GW, creating additional requirements for electricity supply.

The facility is also expected to receive approximately 1.2GW from the electricity grid, although analysts estimate another 300MW remains necessary.

Battery storage could help address that difference by supplying additional electricity when demand fluctuates, alongside possible contributions from external power sources.

SpaceX reportedly has temporary permission from Mississippi authorities to operate additional turbines, provided the company phases them out by July 2027.

Tesla's manufacturing capabilities could give SpaceX an advantage

One factor potentially accelerating construction is SpaceX's relationship with Tesla, which could provide access to manufacturing capabilities and electrical infrastructure components.

SemiAnalysis suggests Tesla may be producing modular mechanical and electrical equipment, allowing installation teams to deploy completed systems without waiting for conventional suppliers.

Such an arrangement could reduce procurement delays affecting competing developers, particularly when specialized power equipment and other essential infrastructure remain difficult to obtain.

The analysts also identified approximately 9GW of potential computing capacity across the facilities included in their assessment of SpaceX's development pipeline.

Musk previously stated that Colossus 2 already operated 550,000 GPUs as of September 25, although the exact distribution across individual buildings remains uncertain.

Other developments, including Gun Range and Project SPAM, also appear to be advancing, with aerial photographs showing substantial construction activity.

Nevertheless, completed buildings do not automatically translate into operational computing capacity, particularly when electrical connections, cooling systems and server installations remain outstanding.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella previously explained this problem, saying, “You may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can’t plug in. In fact, that is my problem today.”

SpaceX must also secure sufficient GPUs, memory components and power generation equipment before its ambitious deployment schedule can become reality.

Even with substantial manufacturing resources, regulatory restrictions, construction materials and local opposition could complicate expansion across multiple locations.

Via Tom's Hardware

• AMD guided Q4 2026 revenue to about $17 billion, above Intel's $15 to $16 billion forecast, which would make it the larger company in terms of raw revenue for the first time
• Data center sales nearly doubled to $8.5 billion in Q3 as Instinct MI455X GPUs and Helios racks started shipping
• The lead, interestingly, is in revenue, not volume: Intel still ships about two-thirds of x86 CPUs, and AI accelerators are set to outsell Epyc inside AMD this quarter

AMD has told investors to expect fourth-quarter 2026 revenues of around $17 billion, plus or minus 3%.

If that lofty forecast holds, AMD would bring in more money than Intel in a single quarter for the first time in the two companies' decades-long rivalry.

For context, AMD's outlook arrived with a record third quarter in which revenue rose 45% year over year to $13.4 billion, even as Intel, which reported a week earlier, has guided to between $15 billion and $16 billion for the same three months.

A numbers game in revenue, not volume as data centers do the heavy lifting

Using the midpoint of both companies' estimates and assuming both predictions come true, AMD is essentially set to generate $1.5 billion more in revenue than its traditional chipmaking rival.

Much of this comes from AMD's data center gains: Data center revenue climbed 97% to a record $8.5 billion, or 64% of total sales, up from 47% a year earlier, with the segment's operating margin widening to 34%.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said Q3 was the first quarter AMD shipped Instinct MI455X accelerators and Helios racks for revenue, with Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Oracle bringing their first racks online.

Revenue shipments of 2nm Epyc "Venice" processors also began, although, as TechRadar Pro reported at launch, the full Venice stack will not ship until 2027, so there is potentially more uplift in the pipeline assuming demand remains on track.

The picture elsewhere was mixed at best: Client revenue rose 7% to $2.9 billion, gaming fell 40% to $773 million on weaker console chip sales, and embedded grew an impressive 29% to $1.1 billion.

For Q4, CFO Jean Hu guided data center revenue up about 50% sequentially, which Tom's Hardware puts at roughly $12.8 billion, with client and gaming down more than 20% and embedded up by double digits. She added that Q4 will be the first quarter in which AMD's data center AI business, meaning Instinct GPUs and racks, outsells its server CPUs, and by a wide margin.

Intel's numbers, on the other hand, are not essentially a clean baseline, even if AMD comes out ahead regardless: Its outlook accounts for lost output from the October 14 explosion at Fab 28 in Kiryat Gat, Israel, which killed two workers and shut the plant for around two weeks. "Our guidance includes an impact of roughly $300 million to revenue," CFO Dave Zinsner told analysts, according to Calcalist, almost all of it in 10nm server products. Add that back to Intel's high end, and you get $16.3 billion, still below AMD's estimated floor.

The crossover does not seem to have been on the cards so soon, however: Wall Street was looking for about $17.05 billion from Intel, according to Futurum, and around $16.2 billion from AMD, per Opening Bell Daily. As recently as April, consensus estimates had AMD surpassing Intel in revenue in 2027, and AMD's moves seem to have been considerably ahead of analyst estimates, resulting in the stock surging more than 100% YTD despite a steep AI selloff lately.

The move is a revenue milestone, not a volume one; Intel still ships most x86 processors, holding 65.9% of the market in Q2 2026, according to Mercury Research figures reported by HotHardware. AMD's revenue also includes businesses Intel does not run at comparable scale, from Xilinx-derived embedded chips and console silicon to, above all, Instinct accelerators, making for a skewed direct comparison between the two, especially as the latter is reaping AI bonuses at a scale the former cannot currently hope to match.

In fairness, AMD's data center segment has outearned Intel's equivalent group before: TechRadar Pro reported the first such quarter in Q3 2024, when AMD's $3.5 billion edged past Intel's $3.3 billion, but its recent revenue explosion has carried AMD into what seems to be an insurmountable short-term lead. In Q3 2026, it was $8.5 billion, compared with $7.3 billion for Intel's Data Center and AI group. But with GPUs set to overtake Epyc inside AMD this quarter, the overall crossover owes more to a market Intel has barely entered than to the CPU fight that defined the rivalry. Intel's own data center accelerator, the GPU D-series formerly codenamed Crescent Island, is still upcoming.

Other factors

It would also be a mistake to read Intel's forecast as an exodus of customers: Intel's Q3 revenue rose 21%, and its data center group grew 78%, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the immediate priority is to "unlock additional supply to meet extraordinary demand for our Xeon family."

Part of Intel's problem is capacity, layered on top of a PC slump that is hitting both firms: AMD is planning for PC unit shipments to fall by a double-digit percentage in 2027.

AMD CEO Lisa Su was candid about the fact that AMD cannot build everything it could sell. "It is true that demand is higher than supply," she told analysts.

The Q4 forecast rests on a roughly 50% sequential jump in data center sales, much of it from a rack platform that shipped for revenue for the first time last quarter.

That ramp has costs: Inventory rose about $3 billion to $11.5 billion, and free cash flow was a relatively measly $554 million. AMD's biggest AI deals also come with customer warrants, which produced a $1.1 billion non-cash charge in Q3 that the company expects to grow. Likewise, revenue is concentrated in a handful of frontier labs and hyperscalers even as circular financing concerns continue to grow.

AMD now expects data center sales to make up more than 80% of revenue in 2027 and server CPU revenue to double. Delivering that depends on partners such as HPE, which became Helios' first major OEM backer and has since said Vultr will deploy the first Helios systems it builds. It also depends on the extra capacity Su has promised for 2027, which TechRadar noted is aimed at AI rather than consumer chips.

If both companies land inside their ranges, AMD will have outearned Intel for the first time. The more telling story is where that money comes from: not a knockout in the old CPU war, but a shift in the industry's revenue toward accelerators and racks that now fill data centers.

• A Hong Kong-led venture plans a 168m, 20,000-seat LED sphere in Hangzhou for ¥8 billion (~$1.2 billion)
• Its 72,000m² exterior screen would be a third larger than the Las Vegas Exosphere, the biggest of its kind, at least on paper
• The project is still at the planning stage, with no construction dates, screen vendor or display specs announced

A developer in eastern China has unveiled plans for a spherical entertainment venue that looks to beat the Las Vegas Sphere on every headline measurement, for less than half the price.

The catch is that, so far, the project amounts to a signing ceremony, a rendering and a set of very ambitious forecasts.

The project, dubbed the Eye of the World in English, was reported by AV Magazine after its public debut on October 30 2026 at a services-sector conference in Hangzhou's Qiantang District.

A bigger sphere on paper

According to City Express, the plan calls for a sphere roughly 168 meters across and 122 meters tall, skinned in about 72,000 square meters of exterior LED, with a 270-degree wraparound screen and 20,000 seats inside.

It would occupy a 56,000-square-meter plot on the Qiantang River in the Jinshazui New Town area, with around 160,000 square meters of neighboring land earmarked for supporting development.

On the spec sheet, the comparison is flattering when one compares it to the Las Vegas Sphere. AV Magazine puts the Las Vegas venue at 157 meters in diameter and 112 meters tall, with a 54,000-square-meter Exosphere and 17,600 seats, which makes the Hangzhou design about 7% wider and 9% taller, with a third, more exterior screen. The seating gap, however, is narrower than it looks, as Las Vegas reaches around 20,000 when its floor is set up for standing crowds.

The headline budget is ¥8 billion (~$1.2 billion), against the $2.3 billion Las Vegas eventually cost, and the project's forecast annual revenue is ¥2.6 billion, or $400 million. At the (relatively harsher) exchange rate implied elsewhere in Chinese coverage, the two figures come closer to $1.1 billion and $360 million.

The venture pairs Hong Kong-based Xinshi International Investment Co. with Vision Eye (Hangzhou) Digital Entertainment Technology Co., and Invidis reports that it is led by Huang Junhao, investment president of the former and general manager of the latter. He says the domestically designed project will show that Chinese applied technology and cultural innovation have reached "world-leading levels," and at the launch he described it as "a spectacle of unimaginable size and unimaginable form."

Interestingly, for an LED project, the most telling detail is what's missing: The invidis report also notes that no vendor or installer has been appointed for either the exterior screen or the interior wraparound display, that design, zoning and infrastructure arrangements are still in progress, and that no construction start or completion date has been given.

Nobody has published a resolution, pixel pitch or playback architecture either, and that matters, because the systems behind a screen like this are as demanding as the panels themselves.

In Las Vegas, TechRadar Pro reported that 150 Nvidia RTX A6000 GPUs drive nearly 750,000 square feet of LED with three layers of 16K video at 60 frames per second, fed by a Hitachi Vantara system of 27 nodes and 4PB of flash storage delivering 400GB/s.

The structure won't be simple either: One analysis notes that Las Vegas used parametric modeling to optimize its geodesic lattice shell and cast-steel nodes, cutting weight by around 40%, and warns that a larger sphere demands even tighter tolerances, where millimeter-level errors could show up as visible seams or patches of uneven brightness. Any claim to be the world's largest, it concludes, depends on the engineering meeting the paper specifications.

An analysis on a Chinese publication, The Paper's government affairs channel, argues the cost gap with Las Vegas rests on China's domestic LED sphere supply chain, which now has a track record of delivery, and that the real difficulty is keeping brightness, color, and seams consistent across tens of thousands of square meters of curved outdoor LED through direct sunlight and temperature swings.

The launch coverage on Sohu flags acoustics as another headache: a concave sphere focuses sound unevenly, and any absorptive treatment has to sit inside the lattice shell without breaking up the screen.

A bloated forecast with questionable demand in tow?

The commercial forecasts look even bolder than the project at hand: The developer expects 9 million to 13 million visitors a year. Spread evenly, that is roughly 24,700 to 35,600 people every day, so even the low end exceeds a sellout of the 20,000-seat bowl 365 days a year.

The Paper's analysis supplies useful context. In 2025, Hangzhou's entire performing arts sector drew about 10.25 million attendees across 19,194 shows and took ¥3.12 billion at the box office.

One venue is forecasting roughly the whole city's 2025 audience and revenue, totaling about 83% of that box office total, though the projected figure presumably also includes advertising, sponsorship, and food and drink. The same analysis also describes The Eye of the World as "still just a drawing, with construction yet to begin."

The owner of the original isn't standing still. Sphere Abu Dhabi, on Yas Island, carries a $1.7 billion construction budget and will match Las Vegas with a capacity of up to 20,000, depending on configuration, a 16K-by-16K interior screen, and 167,000 speakers, with completion due by the end of 2029. A 6,000-seat venue at National Harbor in Maryland is targeting 2030.

Sphere is also lining up the technology behind its screens. Announcing a multi-year partnership with media server specialist Disguise in September, Sphere executive vice president Ryan Dolan tied the deal to "offering these experiences to audiences in new Sphere venues around the world."

TechRadar Pro's June 2026 coverage of China's first Sphere-style domes analyzed a completely different story about going smaller and cheaper: Qianjiang's Tiangong Nova, with 7,500 square meters of exterior LED, and Shanghai's West Bund Starry Sky, budgeted at ¥1.2 billion for around 3,000 visitors at a time.

Hangzhou keeps prices low and scales up, but not everyone thinks the world needs it. Discussing China's smaller domes on an AVNation panel, AVIXA's Jennifer Weaver asked: "Massive replicas of the Vegas sphere all over the place? Probably not." Hangzhou is betting they are wrong; for now, though, it has a rendering, a riverside plot, and a set of forecasts, while the original, by all accounts, remains busy every day of the year as a revenue-generating juggernaut, bolstered, at least in part by a much more affluent audience to boot.

• The FAA will eliminate floppy disks across more than 400 facilities
• America's air traffic modernization program has received $12.5 billion from Congress
• Outdated technology has repeatedly disrupted American air traffic operations

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is preparing to retire technology that has remained part of American air traffic operations for decades, including floppy disks.

The agency plans to complete the transition by the end of 2028, replacing outdated information systems still operating at more than 400 facilities nationwide.

The FAA had to modernize its technology after repeated technical failures and aging infrastructure raised concerns about the reliability of America's air traffic management network.

FAA finally moves to replace decades-old technology

Reports from Reuters claimed the FAA will introduce the Enterprise Information Display System, consolidating four separate platforms introduced during the 1980s.

The replacement will give controllers access to essential operational information through one interface, reducing their reliance on older equipment and disconnected systems.

These changes will cover weather information, flight alerts and other operational updates that controllers need when coordinating aircraft movements across American airspace.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency wanted to eliminate manual procedures and improve how important information reaches personnel working inside control facilities.

“We’re moving away from outdated, manual processes and replacing technology that once relied on floppy disks with a modern system that allows controllers to instantly share critical flight alerts, restricted airspace schedules and pilot reports,” Bedford said.

Although floppy disks largely disappeared from everyday computing more than 25 years ago, American aviation facilities have continued relying on them.

Their production had already declined substantially by 2010, making the continued dependence on these storage devices particularly unusual for critical aviation infrastructure.

Congress approved $12.5 billion in 2025 for air traffic technology improvements, while Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wants another $30 billion.

The additional funding would support further modernization as the agency attempts to address several weaknesses affecting its existing operational technology

Aging infrastructure continues to expose weaknesses in American air traffic management

The floppy disk replacement represents only one part of the FAA's modernization challenge, with communication failures also disrupting flight operations.

In an October 23 2026 memo reviewed by Reuters, the agency warned airports about outages associated with damaged fiber optic connections.

One incident occurred on October 13, when a severed cable outside Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport interrupted information exchanges between FAA facilities.

The disruption forced authorities to temporarily stop departures, demonstrating how vulnerable essential aviation services remain when individual communication connections fail.

Another incident occurred in September 2026, when separate failures involving Philadelphia and New Jersey disrupted thousands of flights across the Northeast.

The FAA also continues relying on aging Compaq computers and replacement components purchased through eBay to maintain certain operations.

Furthermore, its facilities largely operate independently, using separate analog computing equipment rather than a fully integrated communication environment.

Explaining the situation, Bedford said "every facility is a silo," describing the difficulties created by disconnected operational systems.

The agency is also replacing paper flight strips, which controllers have traditionally used to monitor aircraft movements and maintain operational records.

That transition began in 2022, with 27 of the 49 major airports already abandoning paper records, although completion remains scheduled for 2028.

• Russian hosting provider Beget was subject to a cyberattack on November 1st, 2026
• While 1000s of websites were hit, cloud storage, VPS hosting, and Kubernetes servers were wiped
• The attack came amidst a spate of drone and online attacks targeting Russian tech companies, presumably by Ukraine-based attackers or anti-Putin elements within Russia

A “massive cyberattack” took Russian web hosting company Beget’s entire operation offline, with abnormal activity recorded immediately ahead of the incident. All levels of its infrastructure were affected, with websites, cloud storage facilities, VPS hosting, and even hosting for Kubernetes containers knocked offline.

The impact of the attack took several days for the company’s experts to assess, with estimates that over 1,000 servers need to be physically checked. This indicates either lasting damage from the attack or infrastructure that was already weakened, perhaps by unpatched exploits.

Beget has been the subject of EU sanctions due to it providing hosting services to authorities in the Russian-occupied Ukraine regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk.

Recovering data

Responding to news of the attack, Beget issued a defiant statement, boldly stating “We are not giving up and are continuing to look for ways to recover this data.”

"Restoring all services will take a considerable amount of time, as more than 1,000 servers must be manually inspected.”

The organization told Kommersant (translated from Russian) that most data should be recoverable from backups for the majority of its virtual hosting and cloud infrastructure, adding “We continue to work on data recovery, but due to significant volumes, this process will require a long time.”

However, Beget’s response to the attack is hampered by how it organizes and prioritises data, with many customers not using disaster recovery plans.

Anatoly Sazonov, Head of the Department of Compliance with the requirements of the Softline Group of Companies, told Kommersant, “Beget’s mass failure is an example of a systemic risk that arises from a high business dependency on a single provider. If a website, corporate mail, databases and other services are posted on one site, the provider’s problems can paralyze several areas of business work at once.”

EU sanctions

Beget was founded in 2007 and has become the second largest domain registrar in Russia for .ru domains, overseeing 14.7% of the market alongside providing web hosting, cloud computing, and other services.

As is standard, Beget has encouraged customers to change their passwords and remove and update and access keys, credentials, or other sensitive information that may have been uploaded to its cloud servers.

Beget has already had a difficult year, having been targeted by EU sanctions for providing hosting services in Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine. Whether the domain registrar and web hosting company was targeted because of this, or as a more general piece of cybercrime, remains to be seen.

• Google commits $17 billion despite mounting resistance to American data center expansion
• Voters rejected 40 of 41 data center-related ballot measures during the midterms
• Wyoming is getting Google's first data center despite growing political uncertainty

Google is moving forward with a $17 billion investment in Wyoming, despite growing political opposition to large-scale data center developments across America.

There has been intense resistance from local communities, which seem to be concerned about electricity use, water consumption, noise, and other effects.

Recent midterm election results have intensified those concerns, with several outcomes suggesting that opposition to data center expansion is gaining political traction.

Political resistance has not slowed Google's Wyoming investment

Alphabet's Google announced plans on Thursday to establish its first Wyoming data center, working alongside four energy and infrastructure partners.

The development involves Tallgrass Energy, Black Hills Energy, American Electric Power and Related Digital, with construction expected to bring substantial investment into Laramie County.

Wyoming offers a politically favorable environment for the project, having given Donald Trump more than 70% of its presidential votes during the 2024 election.

However, political support at the state level does not necessarily eliminate concerns emerging from communities experiencing the consequences of expanding computing infrastructure.

During this week's midterm elections, candidates opposing data center developments secured victories in important contests across Texas and Georgia.

Only one of 41 data center-related ballot measures decided during the week produced an outcome favorable to the industry's interests.

The developments come as investors reconsider the financial and political risks associated with increasingly expensive AI infrastructure projects across the U.S.

According to recent reports, Microsoft has declined to extend a multibillion-dollar arrangement involving AI infrastructure provider Nscale in Texas.

Energy strategy and community commitments underpin the development

Google's proposed facility will incorporate a planned 702MW fuel-cell installation, supplied by American manufacturer Bloom Energy and contracted through AEP.

The system will generate electricity from natural gas through electrochemical processes, with carbon capture and storage technology intended to limit associated emissions.

Captured carbon dioxide will be transported for permanent underground storage at Tallgrass Energy's nearby Eastern Wyoming Sequestration Hub.

Google said the development would increase its contracted carbon capture capacity to almost 1 gigawatt, building upon an earlier American project announced last fall.

The company also plans to obtain electricity from gas-fired generators operated by Tallgrass Energy and Black Hills Energy.

“We’re committed to partnering with communities to build data centers the right way. We will pay for 100% of the power we use, and when we build data centers, we’ll cover the infrastructure needs directly driven by our growth,” Google said in a blog post.

Water consumption is another important consideration, particularly because large computing facilities can place additional pressure on supplies available to surrounding communities.

Google intends to operate the Wyoming installation using air-cooling systems, avoiding the substantial water requirements associated with conventional evaporative cooling arrangements.

The company has also promised investments in local water replenishment programs, although community engagement has just started and Google has received feedback from over 200 residents.

Local participants want clear information about employment opportunities, economic contributions, educational support, and the cumulative consequences of the data center.

Google expects the development to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax payments for Laramie County and School District 1.

Its community programs will support science and technology education, professional training, entrepreneurship and skilled trades development across Wyoming.

• The average tech worker earns £60,600, but half of them also have a side hustle
• 49% have a hybrid working routine, enabling flexibility for side hustles
• The workers who need the money the most generally have the least flexibility

IT workers might be among the best paid, with UK employees earning an average of £60,600 - but one in two actually take on extra work alongside their full-time roles, new research has claimed.

This compares with barely a third (30%) of all full-time workers, making IT workers among the most likely to have side hustles – 23% freelancing and 7% having a more traditional second job, according to a Careerminds study.

But the reasons aren't so clear, because three in five (58%) earn at least £50,000 annually and IT is the least likely sector to experience payday-to-payday financial pressure – so if it's not money struggles that's causing them to get side hustles, what is it?

Tech workers earn good salaries but are still more likely to have side hustles

The report implies workers may just want to increase their disposable income or save more, but tech workers are also in an unfairly unique position because virtually half (49%) of them follow hybrid working routines, compared with just 4% in hospitality. This extra flexibility could allow them to sell their sought-after skills on a freelance basis.

"Some jobs naturally lend themselves to freelance work," certified professional career coach Amanda Augustine wrote. "If you're a developer, for example, you might be able to take on a project in the evening or over the weekend."

But while IT workers typically earn healthy wages, nearly half (47%) of UK adults in full-time employment say they run out of money before payday, doing so on average 7.9 days early.

To that tune, one in five have cancelled subscriptions (21%), declined social plans (21%) or even skipped a meal (20%) just to help them keep that money for living expenses.

"The people who need additional income the most aren't necessarily the ones who have the flexibility, time or energy to take on more work," Augustine warned, noting that struggling workers from the least flexible sectors may be at an unfair disadvantage.

Careerminds implies we're at the beginning of a challenging period, where certain workers and individuals may not be in such a good position to earn an extra income.

• Half of workers use AI to appease their bosses even when it's not helping
• One in three say they've held back negative feedback about AI
• AI ROI figures are being skewed because of these false figures

Half (52%) of workers admit to having used AI despite believing they could complete the same task faster without it.

This comes as two in three (63%) workers say their employers now actively encourage or expect AI use for at least some tasks, with as many as 39% even highlighting their AI use to managers despite believing it didn't help their outcome.

The data from JobAssist ultimately points toward workers seeing AI use as a box-ticking exercise and something that's beneficial to their professional reputation and potentially career prospects – even though they don't see it as something that can always help.

Workers are boasting about their AI use to keep managers happy

Furthermore, nearly a third (31%) admitted to continuing using AI even after deciding it had not improved speed or quality, implying that workers might be worried that something could happen if they don't demonstrate a use of it.

A similar number (34%) also held their hands up to avoiding negative feedback around AI given that leadership encourages its adoption.

"If employees hesitate to report disappointing results, managers may receive an overly favorable account of how well their AI initiatives are working," the report summarizes, urging workers to be more open and honest about when they find AI to be most effective.

For businesses, false adoption figures could mean that AI ROI might be overstates. But with employers relying on these statistics to guide their AI strategies, it could mean that they end up wasting money investing in the wrong areas.

"Companies can measure whether employees are using AI, but those measurements cannot establish whether the technology is improving their work," JobAssist concludes.

8849 TANK 5 Pro: 30-second review

The Tank 5 Pro has but one purpose - it adds thermal imaging to the Tank 5 and changes almost nothing else from the prior design. 8849 admits as much on its own website - the only difference between the two phones, it states, is the thermal camera.

This design was already the most complete rugged projector phone on the market. It had a flagship chip, a gorgeous screen and a battery that recharges in about 90 minutes. The Pro keeps all those strengths and adds one more: thermal imaging.

You get a FLIR Lepton 3.1R sensor with a 95-degree field of view. 8849 claims that is a world first for a phone. Most thermal phones manage 50 or 57 degrees. A wider view means you see more of a room, a wall or a fuse board without having to move the device around.

The price of that view is resolution. The sensor delivers 160 x 120 native pixels. Software upscaling takes it to 480 x 360, and visible light edges are overlaid to help you read the image. It is useful, but it will not rival a dedicated high-end imager.

So who is it for? Electricians, builders, surveyors, solar installers and rescue teams spring to mind. Anyone who has ever wondered where the draught is coming from might also apply. If you will never point it at a hot pipe, save your money.

Would I consider this one of the best rugged smartphones? That depends on how much functionality you want in a single handset, but it deserves some recognition for its unique feature set.

8849 TANK 5 Pro: price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $1150/£885/€809
• When is it out? Available by November 20 2026
• Where can you get it? Direct from the maker or via an online retailer

8849 has announced that this phone will be available from November 15, 2026 in the USA, with other regions from November 20, 2026, directly from the maker.

There are three SKUs: 16GB+512GB, 18GB+512GB and 18GB+1TB - US pricing for the three is $1149/ $1,199/$1,299, respectively. In the UK, that’s £885/£924/£1001, and in the EU those prices are €1.045,95/€1.091,95/€1.182,95.

Where is it cheapest? America obviously. It’s more than $20 per SKU in the EU and $45 more in the UK, making that location the most expensive place to buy.

Not sure why the UK gets the thin end of that wedge, but that’s the price 8849 decided.

I’ve noticed that 8849 has ditched the 16GB model of the original Tank 5, and it now only comes in the 18GB+512GB option for $999.99, £770 or €910,95 depending on your region.

That makes the inclusion of a Thermal camera an extra $200, £154 or €181 for each area.

But if it were my money, I’d buy the 16GB+512GB Tank 5 Pro model, as most people would never notice the difference, and it’s only $150 more than the 18GB+512GB Tank 5, and it has the thermal camera.

Competition is thin. Rugged phones with thermal cameras exist, but none that I know of also pack a projector that I’m aware of. The Oukitel WP70 Ultra offers thermal imaging and a 16,000mAh battery, but it’s not released, and no price has been confirmed.

The real comparison is with a standalone thermal imager, like those by ThermalMaster, but these typically start at around $250 for a USB-connected camera.

What these add-on cameras lack is the ability to merge the thermal data with conventional light camera data for image fusion, which makes for much better readability.

Obviously, this isn’t a cheap phone, but in terms of specifications and features, it seems like good value, especially if you live in America.

Unfortunately, the flip side of being in the USA is that the service providers are notoriously anti-consumer, and you will need to be on AT&T to use the Tank 5 or Tank 5 Pro. Curiously, other 8849 phones and tablets support Verizon and T-Mobile only.

In Canada, you can use Bell, Rogers, Videotron, Freedom, and Telus. In the UK, most will work, including EE, H3G, Sky, Telefonica(O2), Virgin, Vodafone and Gamma. Australians can use Optus, Telstra and VHA. Major carriers in other countries are supported, so you should be good if you check the supported frequencies before buying.

• Value score: 4/5

8849 TANK 5 Pro: Specs

8849 TANK 5 Pro: Design

• Thick and heavy
• Vents for the projector on both sides
• Now with a thermal camera

Hold the Tank 5 Pro, and it feels exactly like the Tank 5, which is good if you want something that feels built to double as a sledgehammer. The chassis blends brushed metal plates, rubberised corner armour and polycarbonate panels. It’s built for abuse, and if you drop it on your foot, you'll be the one giving, not the Tank 5 Pro.

The dimensions are identical to the Tank 5 at 177.1 x 87 x 33.8mm. So is the weight at 715g. That is surprising. A thermal module with its own shutter and optics has to go somewhere, and it must weigh something. Well, when I weighed it, the scales said 733g, so the thermal electronics don’t snub the laws of physics.

The thermal lens sits top right in the centrally positioned camera cluster, with the IR emitter below it. The visible light sensors are on the left. What’s great about this arrangement is that the primary sensor is physically close to the thermal camera, so when the two images are overlaid, there is almost no difference in the viewing angle between them, producing a good alignment when the data is merged.

The camping light bar, night vision lens, and four infrared LEDs remain in a V-shape in the middle of the back, which prevents this phone from offering wireless charging. Given the battery size, that wasn’t a practical option, so it's not a real loss.

The projector vents still split the left frame in two, and the right frame still has its second grille and fingerprint power key.

My verdict about this phone design remains unchanged, because the form factor is almost identical, and it's slightly heavier.

To be precise, this isn't a pocket phone, but one better suited to a belt holster or vehicle mount. Those travelling on foot wouldn’t take long to conclude this wasn’t the best phone to carry any distance.

One new note on the Tank 5 I made related to the thermal camera. 8849 recommends an operating range of 0°C to 35°C for the phone. That is fine for a summer survey, but not being able to handle below-zero temperatures might be an issue. It is less helpful for a winter loft inspection, which is exactly when thermal imaging earns its keep. However, if you want to warm up the Tank 5 Pro, running the projector for a couple of minutes will noticeably raise the device's temperature. And the thermal sensor has a range of -10°C to 400°C.

Design score: 4/5

8849 TANK 5 Pro: Hardware

• MediaTek Dimensity 9400e
• AMOLED display
• 17600 mAh fast charge battery

The Dimensity 9400e remains the star of this show, as it was on the Tank 5. It is a 4nm flagship chip, and it sits far above the mid-range silicon found in most rugged phones. The Immortalis G720 MC12 GPU keeps games and sustained workloads moving.

As I’ve already mentioned, this phone comes in three flavours, matching 16GB or 18GB of RAM with 512GB or 1TB of storage. My review hardware has 18GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. And I noticed that the only Tank 5 SKU now comes with this much memory.

The 6.73-inch AMOLED display is also unchanged. It runs at 3200 x 1440 with a 120Hz refresh rate and 3000 nits peak. My only complaint about this screen is that it needs a reflection-reducing coating or screen protector, but it can still be seen outdoors, thankfully.

Thermal work often means bright roofs and sunlit walls, and this screen copes most of the time. Protection is still Panda Glass rather than Gorilla Glass Victus, which remains a disappointment, if you like the latter.

The battery is 17,600mAh, built as two 8800mAh cells. That is how 120W charging works. A full charge takes about 90 minutes, and reverse charging at 25W turns the Pro into a field power bank.

There is a small caveat, and I only noticed it with this phone, not its predecessor. After charging at 120W for 90 minutes, the charger gets hot to the touch. I suspect this also happened with the Tank 5, but for whatever reason I didn’t notice.

In my experience, electronics that get hot eventually fail, so keep your receipt.

Another area worth mentioning is connectivity, since this platform supports WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0, dual-frequency GPS, and eSIMs.

When I covered the Tank 5, the specs said Bluetooth 5.4, and now, magically, it's become version 6.0. Not sure what, if anything, changed there, but now both phones say the same BT 6.0 capability.

The eSIM shares the second SIM interface, so you can pair it with a Nano SIM and a microSD card, making a microSD less of a deal.

Overall, this is a terrific spec for a rugged phone.

• Hardware score: 4.5/5

8849 TANK 5 Pro: Cameras

• 50MP main + 50MP telephoto + 50MP night vision + Thermal camera
• 32MP on the front
• Five cameras in total

The 8849 Tank 5 has four cameras:

Rear camera: 50MP Samsung ISOCELL S5KGN1SP, 50MP OmniVision OV50C40, 50MP OmniVision OV50D40, FLIR Lepton 3.1R Thermal camera
Front camera: 32MP OV32B40

Here I’m going to focus exclusively on the Thermal sensor, because you can read my opinion of the other sensors in my Tank 5 review.

The Pro uses a FLIR Lepton 3.1R, which captures 160 x 120 native pixels, 19,200 calibrated temperature points. VividIR fuses frames in real time and upscales the image to 480 x 360. MSX overlays edges from the visible camera, making pipes, wires, and structures easier to read.

Those numbers sound modest, because they are. This is a compact sensor, not a professional handheld imager. Treat it as a very capable tool for finding problems, not for documenting them to survey grade.

Where it diverges from many phones that include a thermal sensor is the field of view, as 95 degrees is exceptionally wide. Typical thermal phones offer a 50 to 57-degree view, according to 8849, and that wider field is super-useful when you are working in a confined space. In a small room or a loft, that could be a big gain. You see more per frame, so you can scan faster and miss less, hopefully.

There is a trade-off, and it is simple maths. Spread 160 pixels across 95 degrees, and each pixel covers about 0.6 degrees. At 10 metres, one pixel spans roughly 10cm. That is my calculation from the stated field of view, not an 8849 figure. A small target at distance will be a handful of pixels, so that’s less of an issue.

I estimated that the nearest that this sensor will focus is about 15cm, which probably isn’t near enough to easily track problematic components on a circuit board unless they’re big.

Thermal sensitivity is under 50mK, or 0.05°C. That lets the Tank 5 Pro pick out subtle differences, such as damp patches or a warm pipe behind plaster.

There are two gain modes. High gain covers minus 10°C to 140°C, with finer detail for building work. Low gain stretches to 400°C for engines, machinery and flames.

Despite the resolution limitations of this sensor, what makes it exceptionally easy to use is the MyFLIR Pro app, which comes pre-loaded onto the phone.

As you might expect, it offers spot and area temperature readings, alarms, nine colour palettes, photo, video and time-lapse capture and picture-in-picture. Images are compatible with FLIR devices and FLIR Thermal Studio Suite for desktop analysis. That is a proper workflow, and it sets the Pro apart from cheaper thermal add-ons.

For those who need thermal accuracy, it’s a mixed bag. In high-gain mode, accuracy is ±5 °C or 5%, whereas in low-gain it's double that. To put that in simpler terms, low-gain isn’t suitable for soufflé baking if your oven isn’t reliable.

In terms of Emissivity, there are four choices: matte (recommended, semi-matte, semi-gloss and glossy (not recommended. These settings allow you to match the texture of the object you are scanning, avoiding wildly inaccurate readings.

In video capture, the rate is only 7.9 fps, but with these devices, less than 9 fps is normal.

The team behind MyFLIR has focused on making it easy to use, and it certainly ticks those boxes. It still won’t compete with a dedicated camera for flexibility and accuracy, but for jobs like plumbing and working on engines, it's more than adequate.

8849 TANK 5 Pro Camera samples

• Camera score: 4/5

8849 Tank 5: Performance

• 4nm SoC
• Premium performance

Not sure if there is much value in comparing the Tank 5 Pro and the Tank 5, since under the hood it’s the same hardware. But if only to prove that, I cycled the benchmarks, and they’re within 1% of each other in most tests.

The Tank 5 Pro is a high-performance phone, as was its father before it, but what these numbers can’t show is the impact of running the thermal camera, as they don’t show the impact of using the conventional sensors or the projector.

Those tests are beyond the remit of this review, but undoubtedly the projector is a major drain on power, based purely on how warm the phone becomes when running it. The thermal sensor is much less demanding, and with 17600 mAh to play with, most users are unlikely to notice much impact.

The Tank 5 Pro is a powerful phone, so there is no change from its predecessor.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

8849 Tank 5: Final verdict

The Tank 5 Pro is the most capable rugged projector phone yet made, and it puts the cherry on that cake by being able to see heat.

Without question, the thermal camera is the reason to buy, as it makes the Tank 5 Pro the complete package. It isn’t the highest-resolution thermal solution around, but the 95-degree view makes it quick to use, and the FLIR software makes it credible.

Nothing else has changed, including the drawbacks. The phone is very heavy. The projector still needs darkness. And an update policy that 8849 now says covers five years needs to be proven. But given how competitive the rugged phone market has become, launching phones on a two-year life cycle probably isn’t enough for more savvy purchasers.

The choice is straightforward. Need thermal imaging? Buy the Pro. Do not need it? Buy the Tank 5 and pocket the extra cash. Well, not pocket it, since the phone definitely won't fit then, if it does now.

Should I buy a 8849 Tank 5?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more ruggedized devices, we've reviewed the best rugged tablets, the best rugged laptops, and the best rugged hard drives

• Researchers found over 1,400 exposed ARTEX instances online, with many linked to offensive security tooling
• ARTEX combines AI agents with reconnaissance capabilities and has been increasingly adopted in real-world attacks
• Some operators accidentally exposed malware, exploits, credentials, and internal infrastructure through misconfigured servers

Around 1,500 malicious instances of ARTEX were found on the internet, available to anyone who knew where to look, experts have warned.

Security researchers Censys said they identified 1,465 hosts running exposed ARTEX consoles. Of those, 155 (roughly 10%) were also running at least one tool commonly used in cyberattacks, including Cobalt Strike, Vshell, or Adaptix C2. They also found 32 publicly accessible directories on ARTEX hosts, some of which exposed exploit binaries, post-exploitation tools, and other sensitive files.

Usually, the ARTEX console does not require public-facing access, the researchers said, stressing that overall global deployment is “likely higher”.

Hijacking ARTEX

ARTEX is a legitimate penetration testing tool hijacked for malicious purposes, meaning at least some of these instances were set up by threat actors.

The story of ARTEX is similar to that of the now infamous Cobalt Strike. It was released by a developer called Autumn-27, who also authored ScopeSentry - a tool Censys describes as a “widely used Chinese asset-discovery and vulnerability-scanning platform”.

The researchers described ARTEX as an “AI agent layer on top of that recon foundation”. In other words - it is an LLM-powered version of Scope Sentry that syncs assets found by the tool’s domains, subdomains, IPs, ports, and endpoints.

ARTEX was released in late July 2026 and quickly gained popularity. On October 7, security researchers CrowdStrike reported seeing it used in malicious attacks and a day later, the developer distanced themselves from the illicit activity and stressed the tool was built for testing within authorized asset scopes. They then turned it into a closed-source tool with no further releases. However, despite the repository being taken down, Censys claims archived copies, translations, and different rebrands are still circulating.

Since then, numerous researchers observed it being used in different attacks. The CrowdStrike report described an unidentified threat actor using ARTEX to target South Korean financial institutions. The attacker, believed to be a financially-motivated Chinese actor (as opposed to being a state-sponsored one), compromised a broker-facing loan inquiry service at one bank and an employee mobile system at another. In both instances, they walked away with sensitive data.

They used ARTEX with DeepSeek v4.1-flash as their primary AI model, while also running Claude Code and Grok. The researchers found the operation in part because the attackers left publicly accessible directories where they exposed prompts, session histories, and ARTEX configuration files.

Censys later said the directories had been left exposed in mid-August, roughly seven weeks before CrowdStrike published its findings. File names also suggested they were targeting payment and gaming services, as well.

At one point Microsoft linked it to Storm-0940, a China-aligned threat actor responsible for compromising ConnectWise Cloud Backup customer environments. Apparently, the threat actors used ARTEX to automate scanning, password spraying, and OAuth application abuse, peaking at 2,900 sign-in attempts per minute at one point. Some Microsoft’s customers were allegedly seeing privileged cloud access granted in less than three hours.

Exposing their own infrastructure

Now, Censys says ARTEX is being paired with other offensive tools. At least 70 hosts were seen running both ARTEX and CyberStrikeAI, and others were seen deploying PentAGI, HexStrike AI, and RedAmon. Ironically enough, the researchers also found some actors had inadvertently exposed sensitive information through poorly secured directories. One installation exposed the operator’s entire home directory, including SSH configuration files and shellac command history, while others contained Windows lateral movement tools, malware implants, reverse-shell scripts, and exploit code.

Censys also stressed that not all of the exposed instances are malicious. They also said that roughly 650 of the detected hosts belonged to two groups of identically configured hosting infrastructure, leaving approximately 815 unique installations.

• Attackers are actively exploiting the Plex2Shell vulnerability chain to compromise internet-exposed NAS devices
• QNAP urges immediate updates, as older Plex Media Server versions allow remote code execution and full device takeover
• Systems exposed before patching may already be compromised and require credential resets and full remediation

QNAP has issued a security advisory warning users to install the latest version of the Plex Media Server app on their Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices.

It says older versions are being actively abused in the wild using the dreaded Plex2Shell vulnerability chain.

“Plex has confirmed that these vulnerabilities are being actively and widely exploited,” the company said in the advisory. “QNAP urges all users running Plex Media Server on a QNAP NAS to update immediately and to review their devices as described below.

What is a QNAP NAS and what does it have to do with a flaw in Plex?

A Network Attached Storage device is a dedicated system allowing users to store, back up, and share files across a network. Essentially it’s a series of hard drives connected to a local network for easy access. Consumers and businesses alike often use it as an alternative to subscription-based cloud storage models, and sometimes even to stream audio and video files.

One popular way to do that is via a software application called Plex Media Server, which allows users to organize and stream their personal collection of movies, TV shows, music, and other multimedia content. By installing Plex on their NAS, and a compatible player app on a smartphone and similar device, users can access their media libraries over a local network or remotely via the internet.

This last part - via the internet - is where trouble was recently found.

Earlier in November 2026, Plex disclosed having fixed four vulnerabilities in Media Server versions 1.43.2 and older: CVE-2026-96652, CVE-2026-96654, CVE-2026-96655, and CVE-2026-96656. Separately, these four are relatively dangerous. Chained together, they allow unauthenticated threat actors to execute arbitrary code with the highest privileges, remotely. In other words, they can use Plex Media Server to take over the QNAP NAS and, if they choose to, access and steal sensitive content found there. These four have been given the nickname Plex2Shell.

Plex released a fix in September 2026, and a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit was made available a few weeks later. Since then, multiple security companies reported seeing Plex2Shell abused in the wild, mostly to install proxy software and cryptocurrency miners. The latter might not be particularly useful, given that most miners require powerful GPU units, but the former could prove lucrative.

Patching Plex

A proxy network allows cybercriminals to route their traffic through legitimate residential infrastructure, helping them not just to hide their identities and whereabouts, but also to launch disruptive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. As such, residential proxy services are always in demand, and can earn their operators a hefty sum.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added all four bugs to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog on October 20, and gave Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies a mere three-day window to apply the fix or stop using Plex entirely.

That being said, Plex addressed the flaws in Media Server version 1.43.3 (build 1.43.3.10861), which can now be downloaded via QNAP’s App center. The company confirmed that the bugs exist only in Plex Media Server, QTS and QuTS operating systems were not affected. Still, Plex said if the NAS device was reachable from the internet while running older versions of the software, updating is not enough and the NAS should be treated as compromised.

Those users are advised to complete a clean reinstall, compromise check, and credential reset.

The exact number of internet-accessible QNAP NAS devices is difficult to determine, but according to figures from BitSight, there are tens of thousands of them, right now. That does not mean all of them are vulnerable (many might not be running Plex Media Server to begin with), but the theoretical attack surface is quite large.

Via BleepingComputer

Timekettle LiveTalk AI Translation Earbuds: 30 second review

The ideal translation device would translate live as you talk, so a conversation in two different languages can happen naturally. This was the concept of the fictional Babel fish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, although in that case the earbud was a fish that you stuck into your ear.

The Timekettle LiveTalk on the surface promises this live-talk potential with near-instant text translation, plus audio. The earbuds have several different translation modes that are selected through the TimeKettle App, and, of course, AI is built in to boost the humanisation of those translations.

The way translations work depends on which of the four modes you choose. Whether you’re talking to someone face to face, in a meeting, listening to discussions, tuning in to multimedia content in another language online, or on a phone or video call, you must select a pickup mode before you start. From there, you can select normal speech-to-text translation, which, with a strong Wi-Fi or mobile signal, is fast once the initial translation starts. The more interesting part is activating audible voice translation as well.

The actual audio voice is good, and you can select either male or female. If you have in mind that this will be just like BabbleFish translating live with the audio in your ear, think again. The delay is 7 seconds; this means you still have that start-stop approach to conversation at best. It’s more like having a translator standing with you rather than live translation.

The speech-to-text translation is faster, but in either case, alongside the slight wait, you still have that disconnect. One of the most interesting features is sharing the earbuds: each person in a two-way conversation has an earbud, with speech and translation happening. The effect is good once you learn to speak in short bursts of no more than 7 seconds, although you can speak for longer; the translation will start to kick in, and due to the delay, having someone talking to you and the translation at the same time, translating some 7 seconds later, can all be a lot to take in and a bit confusing.

At present, however, when you factor in the different translation approaches and the range of translation options, these small, easy-to-use earphones perform surprisingly well for other situations such as watching live presentations, some multimedia content and quick conversations.

Timekettle LiveTalk AI Translation Earbuds: Price and Availablity

At present, the TimeKettle Live Talk AI Translation Earbuds retail for £129 and are available directly from the TimeKettle website as well as other major online retailers such as Amazon.

• Score: 4.5/5

Timekettle LiveTalk AI Translation Earbuds: Design

The earphones arrive in a compact Star Silver charging case; that colour profile is essentially white with a slightly pearlescent finish. The supplied case is of a nice design and helps keep the earbuds clean and topped up with charge.

The case itself is simple, with the TimeKettle logo on top, but otherwise minimalistic, with the compact design measuring 65 x 74 x 22 mm and weighing 78g. This makes the design easily pocketable, and the closing mechanism is solid, meaning that when closed, it stays closed. Otherwise, on the exterior there’s just the single USB-C port along the rear edge for the power cable. The cable is also supplied in the box.

Opening up the case, the two over-the-ear buds are magnetically held in position in the case, with charging contacts that enable the two buds to be charged in the case in the usual way.

Alongside the hardware is the app, simply named ‘Timekettle’, and this is where the majority of the adjustments and settings for the translation mode, style and language can be made. This is all clearly laid out, and after the initial Bluetooth connection, you can get straight into using the buds and start translating.

Before you start a conversation, you need to select the type of translation you want, and there are four main types: Face to Face, Live Listening, Voice Call Translation, and Multimedia Translation.

Once you select the translation scenario you want, you can go to the main translation screen. At the bottom is a play button that needs to be pressed to start the live translation; this isn’t initially apparent. However, after the first use, the workflow becomes clear: the play button starts the translation process and doesn’t play back audio. For each of the modes there are also a series of options and these are all well laid out and clear to use.

• Design: 4.5/5

Timekettle LiveTalk AI Translation Earbuds: Features

The earbuds themselves are nicely designed, and along with a solid feel to the case, they all feel like a premium product.

The earbuds follow the open-ear hook design, which is comfortable and also lets you hear conversations around you. At 6.9g per bud, they’re also extremely lightweight.

The electronics inside have also been fine-tuned for translation and playback, with dual-microphone air-conduction voice pickup and a dedicated translation EQ that helps to enhance the audio captured.

Through the app, you can also access six EQ preset modes for music. While using these earbuds for more than just translation seems obvious, it isn’t always the case; and it’s great to know that you can use these for calls and as an all-day option rather than just being isolated to translation use.

My review sample arrived in the Star Silver colour profile, but if that doesn’t appeal, then they’re also available in two other colours; Polar Black or Deep Sea Blue.

For connectivity, the earbuds use Bluetooth and support dual connections so that you can connect to both your phone and computer at the same time. There’s also plenty of compatibility with applications such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and many more.

Battery life, once fully charged, is surprisingly good, with around eight hours per charge and the case providing power for a top-up charge. The earbuds are rated for 4 hours of translation or 8 hours of music playback per charge, with the charging case extending total translation use to approximately 16 hours. Timekettle also advertises up to 35 hours of total battery life, while a quick 10-minute charge provides an additional 2.5 hours of use.

I’ve reviewed many of these translation devices. Timekettle has been one of the more consistent players in the market, with a full feature set that makes its devices useful in the real world and a viable, more advanced alternative to Google Translate.

Google Translate is, of course, free. In contrast with the Live Talk earbuds, there’s an outlay for the product and then often an additional cost for the extended use of the translation service, although with 200 minutes a month included for free, that does give you plenty of scope for use. The paid tiers just extend the translation amounts if you need the functionality for business, for instance.

The first major difference between Live Talk and Google Translate is real-time, two-way translation, with the text translating quickly as the conversation happens. This doesn’t differentiate it from Google much at first, other than that I found the transcription speed faster. The translation accuracy was essentially the same, but LiveTalk also offers 25 offline language pairs through downloadable language packs. This is useful when travelling without a reliable connection, although Google Translate also supports offline translation.

Although without the AI boost, the translations are a little more formulaic. The translation through the TimeKettle App is easy to read, and I found the user interface is far more user-friendly than Googles.

But then, with a quick tap of the voice button, that face-to-face conversation is not only translated into text but also spoken directly into your ear. The translation speed to text is fast, although it depends on your connection speed and ambient noise; it's impressive nonetheless, but the translated audio is notably slower.

In the app, you select the translation environment you need: Face to Face for one-on-one conversations, Live Listening for lectures and meetings, Voice Call, or Multimedia Translation.

Currently, it supports up to 54 languages and 108 regional accents. For example, there’s French and French Canadian. While the system works best with an online connection, it also offers 25 language pairs that can be used offline. The system also uses the Babel OS 3.0 AI translation engine, which you can switch on and off; testing showed it improved translation quality and speed.

One of the features that impressed me was the automatic language detection, although you can still manually select the languages you want, for example, English to French.

Some of the most useful transcription features include real-time speech-to-text transcription with bilingual transcription that’s displayed on the phone’s screen. You can also ask for AI-generated meeting summaries and other summary templates for different situations; this is a feature that I have liked on AI note-taking devices in the past.

As ever, transcription has paid tiers, but the free tier is surprisingly good: up to 200 minutes of translation a month, covering all four translation modes.

Other paid plans include the Unlimited Plan at £9.99 a month and a yearly option at £99.99 a year.

• Features: 4.5/5

Timekettle LiveTalk AI Translation Earbuds: Performance

The LiveTalk earbuds arrive in a compact charging case, and before starting the test, I left them overnight to ensure both the earbuds and the charging case were fully charged.

Once fully charged, I ran through the setup process, which involved downloading the app, opening the charging case with the earbuds inside, and tapping the Connect Device option. At that point, the LiveTalk hardware was detected. There was a little to-and-fro with the app and checking the Bluetooth connection, but overall it was well guided and connected quickly.

On the home screen, you have four translation modes: Face to Face, Live Listening, Voice Call, and Multimedia Translation. I started with the multimedia translation.

I found that getting started with this feature took some work. Initially, activating translation while you play back a video in French is simple. Just activate the Multimedia mode, click play, which sets the app up for translation as soon as it hears the vocals, then go to the media source, in this case, YouTube, and tap play. The video then starts to play, and about three seconds later the text translation appears, followed by the audio translation, which starts about seven seconds after the original word is spoken.

The written transcription and vocal translation are accurate, but the audio delay takes some getting used to, and it’s surprising how quickly things can move on in a YouTube video. The text translation, on the other hand, is almost instant.

There were a couple of issues, though: the original audio and the translated audio came through at the same time, albeit with a 7-second delay on the translation. With the default settings, the original video drowned out the translated audio. In the settings, it’s easy to find the translated audio volume. However, the original audio slider wouldn’t move on iOS, so I had to turn down the phone’s volume to balance the audio. That seemed a little convoluted, but it worked.

Once that was done, and slightly ignoring the delay, it did actually make it possible to watch videos with the translated audio coming through the earbuds. The delay is around seven seconds; while it’s fine for watching business presentations in another language, it wouldn’t be so useful for watching the latest French or Swedish drama. There’s also the issue that there is only one voice, so in one video, as it switched between the two presenters, they both had the same voice, making it difficult to determine which of the two was speaking. In this instance, that wasn’t an issue, but if you’re watching a drama, subtitles might still be the better option, even with the delay. To be honest watching a full drama with the earbuds isn’t really the intended use, but I was interested to see what would happen.

Next, moving on to Face to Face, and here you have two options. The first is to share the earbuds, with each person in the conversation wearing one. I tested this by being the English speaker while a friend who speaks French wore the other. In this situation, you assign the left to, say, French and the right to English.

Again, there is a delay, although this time it was five seconds. Another point I noted was that if you speak for more than five to six seconds, the translation starts for the person you’re speaking to. This obviously makes sense, but it can be hard to understand when the person speaking to you is in French, and the translation comes through at the same time in English, just five seconds behind.

The other option is to wear both earphones, with the other person using the phone. This is a bit of a mix-and-match approach, and in the end, just reverting to the text translation on the phone, which is extremely quick, worked well without the distraction of the delayed audio translation.

Another point is that when I first tried this, I was in a crowded café, and the translation worked well at first. But as the noise in the café built up, the translation became less accurate, often picking up audio from people around us, which became an issue.

Moving on from Face to Face, I used Live Listening, which worked well, although there was again a delay. Here, I had a colleague read a few paragraphs of French in the hall below the office. The translation of what came through was again delayed by about five seconds; however, that delay was far less distracting. Again, the text transcription appeared much faster, although in a lecture, the benefit of looking at the presenter or the person you have come to see is far more valuable than sitting in a live lecture looking at your phone. While it isn’t ideal, it does work well.

The final option was the LiveTalk Voice Call Translation. This option was surprising, as I think my mind is still attuned to slow video calls. To start the conversation, I had to switch from Speaker to Timekettle LiveTalk in FaceTime's speaker output options, and then the original and translated audio started coming through. Again, as with Multimedia mode, I had to adjust the phone’s audio.

The only other point is, again, remembering to assign the correct voice to the right person.

Alongside direct translation, these earbuds offer a few other options. First, every translation is transcribed so you can check it later, along with the original audio recording. You also get AI summaries, which could be really useful. However, during this test, when I tapped the Generate button, the key points for most translations appeared, giving a decent overview of what was being said. However, the AI Minutes seemed a little more temperamental, with ‘Generation failed’ appearing on quite a few of the discussions that I had.

Another feature I liked about these earbuds is that they can be used all day and for multiple tasks, since they’re not limited to AI translation. The open design hooks around your ears and sits just above the ear opening, leaving your ear canal unblocked so you can hear everything around you clearly. This means you can wear them during normal video meetings, while listening to music, and when making calls. If you’re used to inear or cans this does feel different, but is ultimately a more work friendly design.

I also found the battery life pretty decent, and the 4 hours Timekettle quotes for translation are pretty much on the mark.

• Performance: 3.5/5

Timekettle LiveTalk AI Translation Earbuds: Score card

TimeKettle LiveTalk: Final Verdict

At the start of the test, I was initially impressed with the translation speeds, especially for the speech-to-text, which is almost real-time as long as you have a decent network connection. As I progressed through the test and the four modes, I had mixed results.

The translation quality was good from English to French, and vice versa, and the audio translation was also better than I expected; you can tell it's a computerised voice that lacks some of the tone and emotion you would expect from a human, but it's still impressive.

The most exciting part of using these headphones was the conversation aspect, and the hope that, like the Babel fish, I could simply stick one in my ear and start conversing in other languages. Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite possible. The delay was just too great, and with the person speaking and the translation coming at you at the same time, it’s just a little too much to take in all at once.

I found that the speed of the speech-to-text translation worked far better, and with the AI enhancement, there was less direct translation, and what was translated became more natural. However, this isn’t too far removed from Google Translate, although the speed and accuracy do seem to be better, and of course the big advantage is that you can use it offline with the language packs.

The points that really stood out were the speed of translation and the live translation for events and seminars; while there is that seven-second delay, it just isn’t so noticeable.

For multimedia and video conferencing as well, once you work out how to reduce the speaker's volume, that becomes far more useful, and it’s surprising how much easier it can be for speakers in their native languages to express themselves through translation. However, you’re always aware of that five- to seven-second delay.

While it still has some way to go before it offers live speech-to-audio translation, it is getting close. If you travel abroad regularly and often get involved in short conversations, this will be incredibly useful. Otherwise, as a speech-to-text translator and for understanding live events in other languages, it does work well, and I found it more convenient than Google Translate for continuously translating large volumes of spoken words without having to stop and start.

• Crédit Mutuel Arkéa confirms cyberattack led to the theft of roughly $133 million from the bank itself
• Attackers reportedly converted stolen funds into cryptocurrency and laundered them across multiple services and blockchains
• Bank says customer assets were unaffected, while investigators continue probing the third-party compromise

Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, a major French banking and financial services group, has confirmed it recently suffered a cyberattack that resulted in the theft of around $133 million.

The stolen money apparently did not belong to customers, but rather to the bank itself, and was converted into cryptocurrency to be siphoned out more easily.

The attack was first spotted by ZachXBT, a cryptocurrency analyst and blockchain fraud investigator who issued an alert on November 2 2026. “An EU entity is suspected of losing $106M+ from multiple centralized exchange accounts yesterday (Nov 1),” he said at the time. “The suspected stolen funds were withdrawn as USDC & USDT by an illicit actor.”

Blockchain as the tech of choice for both sides

It appears the attackers converted fiat currency into different cryptos before sending them out. As ZachXBT explained, the threat actor was “aggressively swapping” USDC (a stablecoin currency, one whose value is pegged to that of the US dollar) for ETH (Ethereum) and transferring the tokens to instant exchanges such as WellWallet and Keyrex. Some of the funds were converted to XMR (Monero, a known privacy-first token whose transactions are notoriously difficult to track) via Wagyu, and later bridged “across multiple chains.”

The irony is pbvious - blockchain and cryptocurrencies are often perceived as the go-to platforms for financial fraud and while many defend it by saying the fraud conducted via fiat is magnitudes larger, the fact remains the crooks transferred dollars to cryptos during theft.

On the other hand, the attack was not even discovered (at least publicly) until it hit the public blockchain where analysts like ZachXBT were able to see it and report on it.

A day later, ZachXBT issued an update, saying he identified an additional $27M+ of withdrawals, bringing the total amount stolen to $133M+.

“My working theory is a large financial institution in Western Europe was exploited and it’s currently being covered up,” he said. “No proper incident disclosure has resulted in $30M+ being laundered away which could have been frozen by EU law enforcement,” he added, suggesting that Crédit Mutuel Arkéa handled the situation poorly.

In his reports, however, he never mentions the name of the organization targeted. Crédit Mutuel Arkéa released a brief statement on November 4, saying it suffered an attack which it later managed to contain.

“As soon as this attack was detected [...] the decision was made, as a precautionary measure, to temporarily suspend certain transactions in order to secure operations and prevent any further fraudulent movements,” the announcement reads.

“This incident is closed and is now under control. Operations are being gradually resumed over the course of the morning, after the group and its subsidiaries ensured that checks had been carried out and enhanced security measures had been put in place.”

Not Lazarus

In an FAQ published a day later, the company said the attackers “went through the platform of one of our service providers and thus reached Crédit Mutuel Arkéa directly.” It did not want to say which service provider that is, but ruled out Fortuneo since that name was apparently being mentioned in local press.

The attackers used Arkéa's own account to carry out transactions with other banking players, it said, confirming that customer funds are safe and unaffected.

“We would like to reassure all our customers that this incident has no consequences for their assets. It only led to a delayed execution of certain transfer operations,” the FAQ further states.

The bank did not want to confirm the amount of money that was stolen, but commenting on ZachXBT’s $133 million figure, said it can “simply validate the order of magnitude.” In other words - it’s a close estimate.

So far no threat actors claimed responsibility for this attack, and chances are none will. ZachXBT believes this was not the work of notorious North Korean actors Lazarus Group.

Via BleepingComputer

• Iris Ohyama discloses breach affecting 7.7 million individuals after attackers compromised its ecommerce platform
• Exposed data included personal details and some encrypted passwords, prompting password reset recommendations
• Company continues investigating the attack, with no ransom demand, attribution, or confirmed misuse reported

Major Japanese consumer goods manufacturer Iris Ohyama has confirmed suffering a cyberattack which saw it lose data on 7.7 million people.

The company first disclosed the breach on October 29, 2026 when it confirmed “unauthorized access on the e-commerce site” Iris Plaza. At the time, the company said its investigation was ongoing, and that it would temporarily suspend the site to ensure customer safety. While it was looking into possible data leaks, it stressed that credit card information was not taken.

A week later, Iris Ohyama came forward with a more detailed report, in which it said that on October 28, if found “suspicious files” on an external cloud service it used. The subsequently launched investigation confirmed that the attackers stole sensitive data on 7.7 million people, which included member data on approximately 5.8 million people, and non-member data on 1.9 million.

Member data included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, genders, dates of birth, and encrypted passwords (for some users). The non-member data was limited to names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Hashed passwords and stolen credentials

The fact that the passwords were encrypted is good news, since it means the accounts cannot be accessed that easily. However, the company did not say which encryption or hashing method it used, so it is possible that the attackers could break some of them offline. It is thus no wonder the company warned users to update their login credentials, especially for those who use the same password for other services.

Those that do use the same passwords across various platforms are also at risk of having all of them compromised, since threat actors are known for trying out the stolen combinations across a multitude of services.

We don’t know who targeted Iris Ohyama, and to what end. No threat actors have yet claimed responsibility for this attack, the data has not yet leaked to the dark web, and we’ve found no evidence it was used in phishing or social engineering attacks.

In a statement given to BleepingComputer, the company said it received no direct communication from the threat actors, no ransom demands, and did not know who they were.

We also don’t know which third-party cloud service Iris Ohyama used, which malware was used, or how it was planted there. In the meantime, the company notified the country’s data protection watchdog agency, as well as local law enforcement authorities.

Targeting Japanese organizations

Over the last few months, Japanese organizations have experienced a barrage of cyberattacks, targeting firms of different sizes and in different industries. Just last month, we reported on an attack on GMO, a data breach incident at Japanese Burger King, and a malware attack on Daiichi Kosho. The GMO attack was particularly worrisome, since the company urged its customers to “unplug any cords connected to your PC”.

Burger King Japan also recently lost sensitive data on 11.18 million customers, most of which were using the company’s official smartphone app, while a malware attack on Daiichi Kosho’s supply chain resulted in the compromise of 8.7 million of both customers and employees.

All of these are large organizations and major enterprises, and Iris Ohyama is no exception. The company is a large consumer goods manufacturer, known for household appliances and everyday products, and has been around for decades offering air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, kitchenware, lighting, pet food and accessories, as well as different food products like rice and water.

For the financial year 2025, the company reported an annual revenue of $1.53 billion, with a headcount of more than 6,300. It also has a substantial international presence, with manufacturing and distribution operations in the US, Europe, China, and South Korea.

As organizations look to embrace a new generation of autonomous AI agents which can access enterprise systems, make decisions and interact with other AI agents, new questions are emerging around how these systems are governed and secured.

As the governance of agentic AI and non-human identities rapidly one of the most significant challenges organizations will facein the coming years, we spoke to Umashankar Lakshmipathy, EVP and Head of Cloud, Infrastructure, and Security Services, EMEA, Infosys, to find out more.

• As organisations move from AI assistants to autonomous AI agents, what new security and governance challenges are emerging?

The move towards autonomous AI agents creates new security and governance challenges because these systems can make decisions and take actions with limited human involvement. Unlike AI assistants that primarily generate information or recommendations, agents can access enterprise data, use applications and tools, communicate with other agents and act on behalf of people or business processes.

This greater autonomy increases the potential business impact of an error, manipulation, or security compromise. An agent may have a valid identity and legitimate system access but could still take action that falls outside its intended purpose. The risk becomes more significant when agents operate across several systems, as one incorrect decision can trigger a sequence of actions that are difficult to detect, explain or reverse.

Organisations must therefore govern more than the AI model. Every agent needs a defined business purpose, an accountable owner and clear limits on the data, systems, and actions available to it. Sensitive or high-impact activities require stronger safeguards, while organisations need sufficient visibility to trace an outcome back to the person or process that initiated it, the agent that acted and the tools it used.

This represents an important evolution in AI governance. Organisations must continue to manage the quality and safety of AI-generated content, but they must now also control the decisions and actions that autonomous agents can execute. Getting that balance right will be essential to achieving the productivity benefits of agentic AI without creating unacceptable operational, financial, or regulatory risks.

• As agentic AI adoption grows, why are “non-human identities” becoming such an important issue for enterprises? What are the risks and opportunities when AI agents begin communicating and making decisions with other AI agents?

Non-human identities are becoming an important enterprise issue because a growing proportion of digital activity is performed by applications, APIs, service accounts, automation and AI agents rather than by employees. AI agents increase the significance of these identities because they can interpret information, make decisions and initiate actions, rather than simply execute predefined instructions.

This makes visibility, ownership, and access management essential. Organisations need an accurate inventory of the non-human identities operating across their environment, together with a clear understanding of their business purpose, accountable owner and access to systems and data. Without this foundation, excessive permissions, long-lived credentials, and identities that remain active after their original purpose has ended create material security exposure.

Communication between agents creates significant business opportunities. Specialised agents can work together to automate complex processes across customer service, operations, software engineering and cyber defense. A process that previously required several teams and systems could potentially be coordinated by a group of agents operating at much greater speed.

However, agent-to-agent collaboration also creates chains of dependency and trust. A compromised or poorly governed agent could pass inaccurate information through a workflow, influence another agent’s decisions or attempt to use a more privileged agent to perform an action that it could not execute directly. These risks can multiply when organisations cannot establish which agent initiated an action or under whose authority it was performed.

Organisations should therefore enable agent collaboration within defined business and security boundaries. The identity, authority and purpose of each agent should be evaluated independently rather than allowing trust or access rights to pass automatically from one agent to another. This approach allows enterprises to benefit from multi-agent automation while preserving control and accountability across the complete business process.

• How can organisations strike the right balance between giving AI agents autonomy and maintaining appropriate oversight and control?

The appropriate level of autonomy for an AI agent should be determined by the business impact of its activities, the sensitivity of the information involved and how easily its actions can be reversed. Applying the same level of oversight to every agent would either create unnecessary friction or leave higher-risk activities insufficiently controlled. For example, an agent that analyses public information or produces an internal summary can operate with relatively light oversight. An agent that accesses customer information, changes production infrastructure, makes regulatory decisions or initiates financial transactions requires much tighter boundaries.

However, organisations should introduce autonomy progressively. Some agents will remain assistive and provide recommendations for people to consider. Others may prepare actions that require human approval. More mature agents can operate independently within approved limits, escalating situations that fall outside their normal authority. Agents performing highly predictable and well-controlled activities may eventually be given broader autonomy, provided their actions remain visible, governed and capable of being stopped.

Human oversight remains important, but requiring approval for every action would undermine the efficiency that agentic AI is intended to deliver. It can also lead to approval fatigue, where reviews become routine and provide little meaningful protection. Human involvement is most valuable for actions that are financially significant, legally sensitive, difficult to reverse or outside the agent’s established operating boundaries.

The aim is not to give agents the maximum possible autonomy. It is to give each agent enough autonomy to deliver business value while keeping its decisions within an acceptable level of risk. Routine and reversible activities can be automated, while consequential decisions remain subject to stronger safeguards and clear organisational accountability.

• Are existing cybersecurity, identity and governance frameworks sufficient for the age of agentic AI, or do organisations need a new approach?

Existing cybersecurity, identity and governance frameworks provide a strong foundation for agentic AI, but they are not sufficient without further adaptation. Organisations do not need to replace established capabilities such as Zero Trust, identity governance, privileged access management and AI risk management. They do, however, need to apply these capabilities more dynamically to agents that can make decisions and take actions at machine speed.

Many traditional controls were designed around granting access to a person, application or service and reviewing that access periodically. Agentic AI introduces a more dynamic operating model. An agent may access several data sources, invoke multiple tools, interact with other agents and make numerous decisions during a single business process. Authentication alone cannot establish whether every subsequent action is appropriate.

Existing frameworks therefore need to be extended in several practical ways. Every agent should have a unique identity, an approved business purpose, an accountable owner and a managed lifecycle. Its authority should be limited to the task it is performing and should not remain active for longer than necessary. Stronger safeguards should apply when an agent accesses sensitive information, uses privileged tools or attempts an action with a significant business impact.

Organisations must also be able to reconstruct how an outcome was produced. This means maintaining a clear record linking the originating person or business process to the agents involved, the data and tools they used, the actions they took and the resulting outcome. This visibility is essential for oversight, investigation, regulatory assurance and rapid intervention when something goes wrong.

The required approach is therefore an evolution of existing security and governance rather than the creation of a separate control environment for AI agents. By extending established frameworks to govern agent identity, authority, and actions continuously, organisations can scale agentic AI while maintaining coherent enterprise-wide control.

The early rush to encourage employees to use AI wherever possible led to a new way of measuring productivity based on the consumption of AI tokens, or technically the underlying AI foundation model tokens. Employees who did not use AI were immediately visible through their AI consumption bill, or lack thereof, while high consumption was treated as a positive signal. The number of tokens consumed became a badge of honor.

For a while, more AI usage suggested more productivity and innovation. Some organizations even began treating AI activity as a proxy for employee engagement. This led to the phenomenon of ‘tokenmaxxing’, with the unintended consequence of AI costs growing out of control and raising a more difficult question: what does successful AI adoption actually look like and how do you measure it?

The latest Pulse of Work 2026 research points to the gap between adoption and value. While 88% of employees say AI has benefited them and estimate it saves them an average of 2.3 hours every day, four in five say they are not using it to its full potential and 69% do not fully understand how it applies to their role. Meanwhile, 60% feel pressure to use AI regardless of whether it is the right tool for the task.

These findings reinforce two points that should already be clear: one, AI activity is a poor proxy for business value, and two, organizations need to become more deliberate about where and how they use AI tools.

More AI does not automatically mean better work

The knee-jerk reaction to equate AI usage with success is understandable. Instant answers, automation of repetitive tasks and the removal of administrative burden from busy employees are clear and tangible benefits.

But problems emerge when AI becomes an expectation in every initiative rather than a considered decision that accounts for where human judgement is needed, which model is appropriate and what the associated cost will be.

When employers celebrate AI adoption without defining where it genuinely adds value, a problematic incentive structure develops. Employees naturally reach for AI more often, sometimes without considering whether it is the right tool, whether the output needs significant review or whether the cost of the model is proportionate to the task. Without clear parameters or support, the likelihood of misuse goes up.

Experimenting with AI should not be discouraged. In fact, it should be actively encouraged and is a crucial part of using this transformative technology for the greatest impact.

However, it’s important to also train employees so that they take a cost-conscious approach and leverage the right models for the type of task - using lower-cost models such as Gemini Flash and Claude Haiku for most tasks and only using the more expensive and powerful models such as Claude Opus and Claude

Fable for more complex tasks. The challenge comes when organizations encourage and reward use without putting the same energy into providing the proper training, guidance on cost-conscious adoption and development opportunities for their employees.

Productivity depends on workflow design

The biggest productivity gains come from identifying the scenarios where AI removes friction without compromising quality. Administrative work and removing toil remains an obvious starting point. Scheduling, email management, customer communications and routine documentation can all give employees time back for higher-order work.

From there, the real opportunity is helping employees build on their existing skills using AI to pressure-test ideas and move faster. That’s when the human-AI partnership works as it should, with technology extending what people can do rather than becoming a substitute for their judgement.

Role-specific guidance is what makes this possible. Although AI capabilities continue to improve rapidly, every function uses technology differently. A finance professional faces different governance requirements from a software engineer, and customer service teams need different safeguards from HR teams. AI training should account for such differences.

This is also why organizations should stop expecting employees to discover the best applications of AI independently. If people are spending time looking for ways to make AI useful, testing tools without guidance or working out how new capabilities fit into existing processes, some of the potential productivity gain is being lost before the technology has even delivered an output.

A better approach is to redesign workflows around genuine business outcomes. That means identifying where AI can remove unnecessary effort, then giving employees the tools and guidance to use it within the context of their role.

It also means making useful, approved AI available within the systems employees already use. When AI is integrated into daily workflows, people are more likely to apply it to safe, high-value use cases rather than seeking out unsupported alternatives.

Quality has become the missing metric

One of the highest hidden costs of widespread AI adoption is the additional burden of review and correction. AI can produce an answer quickly, but speed has limited value if employees then have to spend significant time checking whether that answer is accurate, complete or appropriate.

This is particularly important as AI-generated content becomes embedded in everyday work. A poorly reviewed output can create more work for another employee, introduce errors into a business process or undermine trust in the technology altogether. The productivity calculation therefore needs to account for what happens after the AI generates its answer.

Output quality, and ultimately, quality outcomes, should become part of the AI architecture itself. That means building review processes into workflows, introducing governance where decisions carry higher risk and ensuring employees understand the importance of validating AI responses before those responses become business decisions.

Done well, these safeguards should not stand in the way of adoption or slow employees down. They should give employees the confidence to use AI more effectively and adjust involvement where greater scrutiny or human judgement is needed. By implementing automated verification steps and role-specific parameters, IT leaders give teams the guardrails they need to drive productivity without compromising accuracy and trust.

The organizations creating value are building confidence

The biggest shift required now is cultural. Employees need clarity about when and how AI should be used, confidence that they are making appropriate decisions and practical support when new capabilities are introduced.

That support must extend beyond learning how to use a particular tool. Employees need to learn the best practices of reviewing AI-generated work for accuracy and bias, when to trust or question an output and when creativity or human judgement should take precedence.

Policies are key in achieving this by establishing consistency, but role-specific training, guidance and continuous learning ultimately determine whether those policies translate into everyday behavior.

For IT leaders, responsible adoption means creating the conditions for that confidence. They need enough visibility and oversight to manage security, compliance and quality, without introducing so much friction that employees simply look for workarounds.

The same principle applies to the technology itself. Organizations need tools that fit naturally into existing workflows and give employees the right capabilities for the work they are actually doing. AI adoption becomes much harder to manage when employees have to piece together their own collection of tools without clear guidance on what is approved, appropriate or secure.

At the macro scale, organizations need to treat responsible adoption as an ongoing process rather than a one-off rollout. As AI tools and capabilities continue to evolve rapidly, the guidance around them needs to keep pace.

The organizations creating lasting value from AI will therefore ask very different questions from those focused on token consumption.

Is work becoming more accurate? Are employees making better decisions? Are the most optimal models being used for the type of task? Are we achieving reliable, quality outcomes and optimizing the AI costs to get there? Are repetitive tasks being automated while human expertise is being applied where it creates the greatest value?

When leaders provide the tools, context and confidence employees need, productivity and ROI will naturally follow.

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• Ethical toilet paper company Who Gives A Crap exposes customer information following data breach
• Customers across UK, US and Australia affected
• Company warns users to be on their guard for scam or phishing attacks

Toilet paper firm Who Gives A Crap has told customers it has suffered a major data breach which leaked user information across three major markets.

In an email sent to customers seen by TechRadar Pro, the company apologized for the "unwelcome news" and promised to be "as clear as we can about what we know".

It noted that customers in its home country of Australia were affected, along with users in the UK and US - although users in its Canadian market were not affected.

"Unwelcome news"

"I’m writing to inform you that your personal information was accessed without authorisation in a security incident at one of our marketing software providers," the email told customers.

User first and last names, email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses were all hit in the breach, as was the total amount the user had spent with Who Gives A Crap.

The company said it did not know whether the stolen information was copied or downloaded, but did say payment details, order details and passwords had not been affected.

In a seperate blog post, Simon Griffiths, Co-Founder & CEO, Who Gives A Crap, said it had been informed by an unnamed "US-based software provider" that an "unauthorized party" had accessed systems holding information from its online store.

"The provider has said that access began on 30 October 2026, was identified on 31 October 2026 and was secured on 1 November 2026," the company added.

Who Gives A Crap said it had disconnected the affected provider from its systems, and changed access credentials. It was also communicating with the affected provider to understand the details of their investigation in order to determine if there is any further action required, and said that it would be engaging with the relevant regulatory authorities as required.

"Your account with Who Gives A Crap is secure and was not directly accessed, so you don’t need to take any action with your account," it told customers, warning them that the main risks now would come from criminals sending out scam or phishing messages using their real details to look convincing.

"We have no evidence of misuse so far, but please be extra cautious," it added.

When people think about autonomous vehicles, they tend to picture city streets, motorways, robotaxis or factories. Yet one of the most demanding environments for autonomous technology is somewhere very different: the farm.

At first glance, a field might appear easier to navigate. There are no traffic lights, relatively little traffic and fewer obvious obstacles. In reality, agriculture presents an extraordinarily complex environment for automation.

A machine needs to distinguish between an object blowing across a field and an animal in its path. It must operate when visibility is reduced by dust or rain and navigate environments such as dense crops, where assumptions developed for road transport do not necessarily apply.

This is why the rise of the autonomous farm is about much more than removing the driver from the cab.

A smart factory without a roof

A modern farm can increasingly be viewed as a smart factory – but one without a roof. Industrial automation generally operates under controlled conditions. Agriculture does not. Weather, soil conditions and crop development continuously change the operating environment.

At the same time, many agricultural jobs have narrow windows dictated by weather and plant growth. When conditions are right, work needs to happen immediately.

Autonomy has the potential to make these limited windows more productive. For example, autonomous tractors designed for tillage operations can use multiple cameras positioned around the machine to provide a 360-degree view of their surroundings. By combining computer vision, cameras and AI, such machines can navigate the field without requiring somebody to remain continuously in the cab.

But capturing images is only one part of the challenge. Those images need to become decisions. As images stream from the cameras, a high-speed processor evaluates the visual information. A neural network then classifies what the cameras see and determines whether the area is safe to drive over. In advanced autonomous systems, this type of decision can be made within a fraction of a second.

This illustrates an important point about applied AI: intelligence is valuable when it translates data into a useful decision quickly enough to affect the physical world.

From machine operator to operations manager

Autonomy also changes the role of the person running the farm. Farmers today are entrepreneurs, operations managers and increasingly data managers. Machinery, field and operational data can help them understand what is happening across the business, plan work and make better-informed decisions. As machines become more autonomous, farmers no longer necessarily need to be physically present in every cab to maintain oversight.

Cloud-based platforms provide the connection between the autonomous machine and its operator. Once a machine is positioned appropriately, an autonomous job can be started remotely through an app. Farmers can then access live video, images, data and metrics about the operation and adjust parameters such as speed. If the system identifies an obstacle, job-quality anomaly or machine-health issue, the operator receives a notification and can respond remotely.

The significance is not simply remote control, but remote visibility. Instead of one person being tied to one machine, the farmer can increasingly oversee work as part of a connected operation. The machine performs the task, sensors and cameras observe what is happening, connectivity makes that information available elsewhere, and the farmer remains in control of the wider process.

Autonomy cannot be one-size-fits-all

Agriculture is also remarkably diverse. Farm sizes, field structures, crops, soils and production systems vary significantly. Technology therefore has to combine standardization with enough flexibility to accommodate different operating realities and farmers’ needs.

That applies to adoption as much as operation. Autonomy cannot depend entirely on farmers replacing their existing machinery with new ones. Adoption therefore needs to accommodate both new and existing machines. Some machines can be autonomy-ready from the factory, while retrofit solutions can provide a route for certain existing equipment to adopt the technology.

This matters because the autonomous farm will not arrive overnight. It will emerge incrementally as machines, software, connectivity and data become more closely integrated.

Keeping the human in control

It can be tempting to frame autonomous farming primarily as a story about replacing human labor. That misses the more important change. AI and automation cannot remove weather, biology or economic uncertainty from agriculture. What they can do is help farmers manage that complexity.

An autonomous tractor taking care of tillage does not eliminate the farmer. It changes where human attention is required. Rather than continuously executing one task from inside a cab, the farmer can monitor operations, respond to exceptions and concentrate on decisions elsewhere in the business.

That is perhaps the most important lesson from the autonomous farm for the wider technology industry. Successful automation is not simply about making a machine capable of working without a person beside it. It is about combining AI, sensing, connectivity and human judgement into a system so that each plays to its strengths – giving farmers better information, greater visibility and more time to make the decisions that matter.

More time for what matters

The added value doesn’t just come when the machine drives across the field completely autonomously. AI tools can already ease the burden on farmers during peak work periods. But even with an autonomous tractor, the farmer isn’t completely out of the picture overnight.

He can tackle other tasks during the day while the machine handles soil preparation at night, for example. This helps ease the pressure of tight time constraints to some extent.

The autonomous farm is therefore not a farm without farmers. It is one where machines increasingly handle execution, data provides visibility, and people have more time to make the decisions that matter.

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• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confesses to affair with suspected Chinese spy
• Nvidia board says it has opened an internal investigation into Huang's behavior
• Company shares down 5% in pre-trading following news

Nvidia has opened an internal investigation into its CEO Jensen Huang after he was accused of having an affair with a suspected Chinese spy.

Huang has apologized for his actions in a letter to Nvidia staff, with the company saying it would now look into the incident, but was confident that no internal or national security secrets were compromised.

Nvidia shares were down 5% pre-trading on Monday, which might seem small, but it is one of the world's biggest companies, valued at around $4.50 trillion following its key role in powering the AI boom.

Jensen Huang affair

The Nvidia CEO is suspected of having an affair with Alice Huang (no relation), an executive for Megaspeed, a Singapore-based IT and cloud company currently under investigation for smuggling Nvidia GPUs into China.

Suspicion around an extra-marital relationship first arose in 2025, when US intelligence agencies watching Megaspeed and Alice Huang reported her relationship with the Nvidia CEO.

The New York Times published an initial report on the affair in November 2026, which Huang had called "groundless speculation", but the CEO was then called to Congress to give a closed-door briefing about the incident.

“Recent reports raise significant national security concerns regarding the PRC’s access to sensitive U.S. technology and information,” said Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar, who is also chairman of the House Select Committee on China.

“It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which US national security has been placed at risk."

Nvidia's board has issued a statement saying it would now begin "an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort."

"The Board prioritises US national and economic security, which is paramount to the interests of Nvidia and its shareholders," it added.

"While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, the Board's inquiry will examine all available information.

"Jensen fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it."

In his statement, Huang, who said he was "fully committed" to Nvidia, confessed, "I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry," he said in a letter to staff.

"Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.

"To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust."

Analysis: What next for Nvidia and Jensen?

The question now is what happens to Huang - one of the most visible and central figures of the current AI boom.

Nvidia has been transformed from a gaming graphics card provider into one of the world's most important companies in recent years, with Huang's dynamic leadership helping power much of that.

This prominence has led him to become a central figure in world debates on technology, with Huang celebrated by President Trump (who has already come out in support of Huang, calling him "a fine person") on several occasions.

We have seen leaders and CEOs lose their jobs for far less than this in recent years, so will Nvidia's board be prepared to do the unthinkable and remove the leader which made the company what it is?

• China puts its first commercial 800V DC data center power system into operation
• Envision converts 10kV grid electricity directly into an 800V DC supply
• New power architecture combines solid-state transformers with battery storage for AI facilities

China’s Envision claims to have put an integrated 800-volt direct-current power architecture into commercial operation at an AI facility in Inner Mongolia.

The installation is located at the Galaxy AI campus in Ulanqab, where trials of its Dubhe controller and supporting energy model began in August 2026.

The company describes the deployment as the first commercial use of this configuration, although independent performance figures have not yet been disclosed publicly.

A different route from grid electricity to computing hardware

Conventional facilities generally convert incoming electricity through several stages before delivering power suitable for servers and accelerators, adding equipment and potential conversion losses.

Envision’s design instead uses a solid-state transformer to convert 10-kilovolt medium-voltage alternating current directly into an 800-volt direct-current distribution line.

The company says this arrangement reduces conversion steps, improves electrical efficiency and allows power equipment to occupy substantially less physical space within data centers.

A higher-voltage distribution network can also reduce the amount of copper required for cabling, potentially lowering material requirements as computing installations expand rapidly.

The architecture includes battery storage intended to respond rapidly when processor demand changes, while also supplying temporary backup during unexpected interruptions.

Envision says the storage system can provide immediate support over seconds and maintain backup capability across periods measured in several minutes.

Its controller coordinates the transformer and batteries within milliseconds, aiming to manage sudden changes in electricity consumption from GPUs.

That coordination matters because AI workloads can cause substantial swings in demand, placing additional pressure on electrical infrastructure supplying densely packed computing equipment.

The company also says its arrangement can accommodate higher-density server racks, allowing operators to install more computing capacity within a given floor area.

Ambitions extend beyond the first installation

Envision’s Galaxy facility is expected to grow to 3 gigawatts, with the company saying its eventual capacity could serve one million AI accelerators.

Envision also intends to introduce the technology through Mission Gobi, an initiative seeking 5 gigawatts of renewable-powered computing capacity by 2030.

That programme is focused on desert locations, where the company expects renewable generation and energy storage to support large computing developments.

The system has been designed to work alongside renewable electricity sources, while its batteries are intended to balance supply and changing computing requirements.

However, the company has not provided independently verified measurements quantifying efficiency improvements, installation costs or savings compared with conventional power systems.

The announcement does not also establish how the architecture performs under sustained full-load conditions or across facilities with substantially different hardware configurations.

The deployment therefore marks a commercial milestone for Envision, while the scale of its claimed operational advantages awaits detailed independent evidence.

Via Tom's Hardware

• Georgia Tech student says his homemade Reaper aircraft reached 491 mph
• Three working prototypes reportedly sustained the same claimed top speed for four minutes
• The $13,000 aircraft carried a 2.6-pound payload during its fastest run

A Georgia Tech aerospace engineering student says his experimental jet-powered model aircraft reached 491 mph, potentially setting a new record for remotely controlled planes.

Tomas Salvo independently developed the Reaper and reported on X that it carried a 2.6-pound payload during its fastest recorded run.

If independently verified, the claimed result would surpass the 465 mph mark set in 2017 by German pilot Niels Herbrich's Inferno aircraft.

Student builds a fast jet-powered aircraft

Salvo began developing the project in February 2025, designing and assembling its prototypes independently while living in university accommodation at Georgia Tech.

He has produced three operational versions, each reportedly capable of maintaining 491 mph for four minutes using a full fuel supply.

The drone uses a 250-newton turbojet, alongside a custom air intake and a titanium exhaust nozzle produced through 3D printing.

Its outer structure consists of molded carbon-fibre sections, while laser-cut parts form internal components.

The design can leave a launch rail or truck-mounted launcher before climbing to 6,600 feet (2,000 metres), within 20 seconds.

Salvo also says the aircraft can travel 31 miles (50 kilometres) when operating at its maximum speed, and that the project is “a reliable and repeatable system,” and repeated trials have produced closely matching performance results.

The development effort reportedly cost approximately $13,000, an amount Salvo funded personally while pursuing the project as a student.

He intends to conduct further flights and refine the aircraft, hoping eventually to exceed 500 mph (800 km/h).

Salvo’s post also attracted the attention of Prescott Paulin, Director of Industry Engagement at the Department of War’s Research and Engineering office.

Paulin, who leads industry engagement for the Pentagon CTO’s Mission Capabilities team, publicly invited the student to visit the department.

The Boom Prize offers a much larger speed challenge

The Reaper project also enters a field where amateur aircraft builders can compete for a substantial reward offered by Boom Supersonic.

The company's chief executive, Blake Scholl, announced a $750,000 cash award alongside $50,000 in company shares for a qualifying supersonic flight.

Entrants must fly a radio-controlled, fixed-wing aircraft faster than Mach 1 for at least five seconds before bringing it down safely, and complete the required performance twice on the same day, using one aircraft, for their submission to satisfy competition rules.

The challenge excludes rocket propulsion, onboard oxidisers and aircraft designed for one-time use, requiring competitors to use air-breathing engines instead.

Eligible propulsion systems include turbojets, turbofans and ramjets, while corporate sponsorship or venture capital funding disqualifies competing teams.

The rules also exclude projects connected to aerospace businesses or directed by professional aerospace engineers, restricting participation to amateur competitors.

Applicants must be American citizens, permanent residents or people who have received legal asylum in the United States.

A judging panel includes former Boeing chief executive Phil Condit, SpaceX co-founder Tom Mueller and astrophysicist Scott Manley.

The competition remains open until 2030, giving builders several years to develop aircraft capable of meeting its demanding flight and landing conditions.

Although Salvo says he hopes to pursue the $800,000 award, the reported 491 mph performance alone does not satisfy its supersonic requirement.

• Nvidia wants to convert more than 130 existing telecom properties to data centers
• Brightspeed's struggling business could become central to Nvidia's expansion strategy
• The proposed network could extend across as many as 20 states

Nvidia is exploring an unusual route into the AI infrastructure market, reportedly considering older telephone facilities as locations for compact regional computing operations.

The proposal involves Apollo Global Management and Brightspeed, a broadband operator whose property portfolio could provide sites across as many as 20 American states.

Repurposing telecom buildings could give Nvidia access to existing infrastructure without requiring every facility to be built from an empty nearby plot of land.

Nvidia targets alternative expansion route

Reports from The Information claim Nvidia has contacted Apollo about converting more than 130 Brightspeed properties into smaller facilities dedicated to running artificial intelligence applications.

Brightspeed is backed by Apollo and reportedly close to bankruptcy, although the proposed arrangement and its commercial terms have not been publicly confirmed.

Reports indicate that the properties collectively offer approximately 1 gigawatt of electrical capacity, potentially supporting substantial investment in Nvidia's next-generation server systems for future deployments.

Nvidia reportedly recently sent Brightspeed a written proposal and requested further information, alongside opportunities to inspect locations under consideration for possible conversion directly.

Amid concerns about data center expansion, there have been political calls for temporary restrictions from Democratic candidates in states including Texas.

Retrofitting existing properties may face fewer planning obstacles than entirely new developments, although local approvals would still be needed for cooling and other upgrades.

Nvidia has reportedly discussed beginning renovations with suppliers during the first quarter of 2027, using systems built around its upcoming Vera Rubin platform.

Unlike enormous training campuses, Nvidia reportedly describes the proposed locations as an inference network, intended to operate models that have already completed their initial training.

That distinction could make smaller sites useful to cloud operators and artificial intelligence developers needing computing capacity closer to customers and existing networks.

Nvidia's smaller AI facilities still face commercial and operational questions

Potential users could include OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX, although the report does not establish whether discussions about this particular network have taken place.

It also remains uncertain how many Brightspeed properties would be converted, who would own the equipment, or which customers would ultimately lease computing capacity.

Zac Smith, Datum's chief executive, told The Information that older telecom buildings can “unlock underutilized power,” although aging equipment may raise operating costs.

Smith also cautioned that older facilities may cost more to operate because their equipment can require additional maintenance and replacement during operation.

The reported discussions follow a decline of more than 9% in Nvidia shares during Thursday's trading session, marking their steepest daily drop since January 2025.

The drop occurred during a wider retreat in chip stocks, as investors assessed regulatory uncertainty surrounding the pace and scale of new computing developments.

Nvidia shares were reportedly down 3% year to date, despite renewed retail interest online that pushed Stocktwits sentiment from neutral into bullish territory

• Bosgame opens orders for its $6,199 Ryzen AI-powered compact workstation
• The M5 MAX combines AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 with substantial memory
• Bosgame equips its mini PC with an additional PCIe 4.0 storage slot

BOSGAME has opened orders for the M5 MAX, a compact workstation built for artificial intelligence tasks and other jobs that consume memory.

The mini PC runs on AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 processor, paired with 192GB of LPDDR5 memory soldered directly to the motherboard.

Storage comes with a 2TB solid-state drive using a PCIe 4.0 interface, giving the system fast internal storage from the outset.

Memory, storage, and cooling inside the chassis

Large language models, image generators, and data analysis applications can require substantial memory resources, making the system's hardware configuration particularly relevant to these workloads.

The available M.2 2280 expansion slot supports another PCIe 4.0 drive, allowing owners to increase storage capacity without replacing the factory-installed drive.

BOSGAME also incorporates a three-fan cooling arrangement, although the company has not released thermal measurements or acoustic results showing how effectively it handles sustained workloads.

This configuration could also interest executives at companies such as OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, whose businesses generate revenue from customers accessing models hosted in their own data centers.

Running compatible AI models locally could give some users an alternative to repeatedly paying for remote computing services, although the economics depend on hardware costs and actual workloads.

Extensive connectivity includes OCuLink and dual 10GbE networking

The BOSGAME M5 MAX comes with two USB-C ports supporting data transfer rates of up to 40Gbps each.

Both ports also support DisplayPort Alt Mode, allowing compatible monitors to connect through these interfaces alongside other peripherals.

Screens can also be connected through DisplayPort 2.1 or HDMI 2.1, with the latter using TMDS signalling.

Three USB-A ports operate at 10Gbps each, providing faster connections for external storage devices and other high-speed peripherals.

A fourth USB-A port is limited to 480Mbps, a rate better matched to keyboards, mice and other devices that send only small amounts of data.

Wired networking comes from two RJ-45 jacks rated at 10GbE, allowing simultaneous connections to separate high-speed networks.

Wireless access runs through Wi-Fi 7, while Bluetooth 5.4 handles pairing with headsets, keyboards and other nearby devices without cables.

An OCuLink 4i port built on PCIe 4.0 allows external hardware to connect through a cable, providing an additional expansion option beyond the machine's internal storage slots.

Furthermore, a UHS-II reader accepts SD cards, which suits photographers and video editors who move large files between cameras and the workstation.

Two 3.5mm jacks handle audio, allowing compatible headphones, speakers and microphones to connect directly to the machine.

The specification sheet includes several features associated with conventional workstation desktops, including substantial memory, dual network connections and external hardware expansion.

However, the $6,199 asking price makes comparisons with conventional workstations and other compact AI computers particularly important.

Though preorders are currently active, BOSGAME has not announced a shipping date or provided details about the machine's physical dimensions, operating system and warranty coverage.

Via Guru3D

• Lenovo and HP show no readily purchasable RTX 5090 desktop configurations
• Amazon advertises an available ASUS RTX 5090 graphics card for $7,679.80
• Several retailers list RTX 5090 cards at more than twice launch prices

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5090 is becoming increasingly difficult to purchase across the United States, with Lenovo and HP facing availability problems affecting their premium desktop computers.

A quick check of both manufacturers' US online stores found no readily purchasable desktop configurations equipped with Nvidia's flagship consumer graphics processor.

The situation extends beyond manufacturer websites, as several major retailers are also displaying expensive standalone RTX 5090 graphics cards as unavailable.

Lenovo and HP struggle with RTX 5090 availability

HP's OMEN MAX 45L illustrates the high cost of obtaining a complete computer equipped with the graphics processor through manufacturer-operated stores.

The company lists its RTX 5090 configuration at $7,999.99, offering an AMD Ryzen 9 processor, 64GB memory, and 4TB of combined storage.

Despite its premium specifications, HP's US website identifies the desktop as out of stock, preventing customers from purchasing the advertised configuration.

Lenovo's US online store also showed no readily purchasable RTX 5090-equipped desktops during the availability investigation.

The difficulties extend to standalone graphics cards, which offer consumers an alternative to purchasing expensive complete computers from established manufacturers.

The growing scarcity of Nvidia's RTX 5090 is driving substantial price increases, with graphics cards originally launched at $1,999 now appearing at several retailers for considerably higher amounts.

Newegg lists several RTX 5090 graphics cards sold directly by the retailer as unavailable, including MSI's Suprim model and ASUS's TUF Gaming edition.

Although neither card is currently available directly from the retailer, their listed prices stand at $5,899.99 and $5,099.99, representing increases of approximately 195% and 155%, respectively.

B&H Photo Video reports similar availability problems, with its ASUS TUF and MSI Gaming Trio OC RTX 5090 models temporarily out of stock.

The retailer lists the two graphics cards at $4,599.99 and $4,499.99, respectively, representing increases of approximately 130% and 125% over Nvidia's original launch price.

Amazon currently has the ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 5090 available for purchase at $7,679.80, approximately 284% above Nvidia's original launch price.

Independent manufacturers still offer expensive alternatives

However, the availability problems affecting Lenovo and HP do not mean US consumers can no longer purchase complete computers containing RTX 5090 graphics cards.

Best Buy continues advertising several configurations from independent computer manufacturers, including Skytech and CLX, with available purchasing options.

One Skytech Tempest desktop combines an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, 32GB memory and the RTX 5090 for $8,999.99.

Another Skytech Blaze 5 configuration costs $9,379.99, while a CLX SET desktop featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 9900X3D carries a $9,849.99 price.

Newegg also advertises Skytech computers containing the graphics processor, including configurations priced between $9,299.99 and $9,699.99.

Dell similarly maintains RTX 5090 availability through its Alienware Area-51 desktop range, although some configurations exceed $10,000.

One version featuring Intel's Core Ultra 9 285K processor, 32GB memory and 2TB of storage costs $10,499.99.

Another configuration featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 processor, 64GB memory and 4TB of storage carries a $13,499.99 price.

The growing difficulty of purchasing individual graphics cards also matters because the RTX 5090 serves professional computing applications beyond conventional gaming.

Its 32GB GDDR7 memory makes the graphics processor attractive for local AI development, graphics rendering, and other demanding computing workloads.

Although Nvidia has not officially confirmed permanently ending RTX 5090 production, consumers increasingly face fewer reasonably priced purchasing opportunities.

The shortage therefore affects gamers and professionals seeking powerful computing hardware, particularly those preferring individual graphics cards instead of expensive prebuilt computers.

• More than 90% of public comments oppose new American data centers
• Water consumption remains the biggest concern among data center opponents
• Rural and urban communities oppose data centers for different reasons

Public resistance to data center construction is spreading across the United States, with local government meetings recording overwhelming opposition to proposed developments.

A new database containing more than 10,000 public submissions indicates that communities remain largely unconvinced about hosting these facilities.

Residents' objections focus on the effects of data center construction, particularly water consumption, electricity costs and environmental pollution.

Local opposition cuts across political and geographical divisions

The American Sentiment website, operated by San Francisco AI startup Prophecy Gov, examined 10,202 public comments collected during 906 meetings across 417 local governments.

Its findings cover 48 states with 90.5% of submissions opposing data center developments and only 7% expressing support. Another 2.5% of the comments consisted of questions about the proposed developments, while 73% of meetings recorded no expressions of support from residents.

Even where favourable opinions emerged, opponents outnumbered supporters by approximately six to one.

The resistance crosses political affiliations, with Republican and Democratic counties recording almost identical levels of opposition.

However, disagreements over specific concerns varied according to community characteristics, with rural residents frequently discussing farmland and property rights.

Urban and suburban participants more commonly raised concerns involving pollution, electricity expenses, government accountability and inadequate disclosure.

Water consumption attracted the greatest attention among opponents, particularly following reports of substantial withdrawals by individual computing developments.

One project reportedly consumed 29 million gallons in May 2026, prompting nearby residents to notice reduced pressure across their local water supplies.

Microsoft subsequently claimed that its newer artificial intelligence facilities consume approximately the same annual water volume as restaurants.

Nevertheless, these competing claims have not eliminated public concerns about resource consumption and the potential consequences for surrounding communities.

Technology companies and industry leaders face growing scrutiny

Public criticism has also extended to major technology companies associated with artificial intelligence and large computing infrastructure projects.

Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft featured among the companies mentioned during discussions about proposed developments.

SpaceX and xAI chief executive Elon Musk received the most personal references, followed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel ranked third, ahead of Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Despite the attention given to artificial intelligence, only 21% of submissions mentioned AI, meaning most objections concerned other aspects.

Concerns about electricity costs, environmental pollution, water availability and local development therefore featured prominently throughout the collected discussions.

Support also varied considerably among occupational groups, with union workers expressing substantially greater acceptance of new facilities.

Approximately 79% of commenters identifying as union workers supported data centre construction, compared with just 3% of property owners and residents.

Even among people employed directly in the data centre industry, only 40% supported the construction of additional facilities, with these figures indicating employment opportunities have not necessarily translated into widespread public acceptance of new data centre projects.

• Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic say they will honor one robots.txt group as a cross-company opt-out from AI training
• It governs how content is used rather than whether bots can crawl it, defaults to allowing training, and does nothing for content already scraped
• Anthropic has started implementing it, OpenAI promises to do so in the coming months, Microsoft starts February 1, 2027, and Google targets 2027, while Meta is supportive but uncommitted

Google and Microsoft have joined OpenAI and Anthropic in promising to honor a single line in robots.txt that tells AI developers whether a website's content can be used to train their models.

Until now, a site that wanted to say no had to write a rule for each company's crawler, and sometimes for several crawlers run by the same company. The shared signal is meant to replace that sprawl with a single entry that every participating provider reads the same way.

That is genuine progress for overworked webmasters, but the promise is narrower than much of the coverage suggests: The new line states a preference about how content may be used rather than stopping bots from fetching it; it is not an approved standard, does nothing about content already collected, and none of the four major players fully honor it yet.

Doing the bare minimum with differing definitions of what the commitment entails

OpenAI's announcement drew much of the attention, but the company casts itself as one participant among several in an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) effort, and the mechanism isn't its own. It comes from an Internet-Draft published the same day by Kevin Kelley of Anthropic, which names a policy token, "__usage_ai-training", in the User-Agent line of an otherwise ordinary robots.txt group.

Training is defined by the IETF's AI Preferences (AIPREF) working group as the process of changing a generative model's learned parameters, excluding models used purely for tasks such as classification or ranking. OpenAI describes what it will honor as "foundational generative AI training," which sounds narrower than the draft's definition.

Calling it a standard may be premature: The IETF's own tracker labels the document an individual draft that the IETF has not endorsed, and that has no formal standing, and it lapses on May 3, 2027 unless revised.

Anthropic is the only one of the four major AI players to say it has started. OpenAI aims to implement the signal over the next few months but has given no date. Microsoft will begin honoring the shared preference as it crawls from February 1, 2027, while Google is aiming for 2027.

Each company is also wiring the line into its own controls differently. Google says that when a site uses the shared token to opt out without separately specifying Google-Extended, it plans to treat that "as if the publisher had disallowed Google-Extended." Because Google-Extended also governs grounding in Gemini Apps, a site that only wants to stop training could lose its citations and clicks in Gemini answers too, and Search Engine Journal notes that Google's documentation describes no way to separate the two.

Interestingly, Microsoft goes the other way. It adopts the shared line for training but adds a separate, page-level AI Grounding preference, including a DisallowExtended option that keeps content available to its own products such as Copilot while excluding the grounding services it sells to other businesses.

Meta, not one of the four, has been warmer than it has been about its commitment. Its VP of communications, Andy Stone, called the common signal "an important step," but SiliconANGLE reports the company has not committed to honoring it. The timing is awkward: Meta has pushed back to November 20 revised commercial terms that would let it crawl websites linked to its business accounts, after a backlash forced it to strip training from the listed uses.

With training removed but not expressly banned, Sam Quigley of the News/Media Alliance told the Mercury News last month, "It's still potentially on the table."

Opting out of AI data scraping: wishful thinking or a step in the right direction?

Much of the coverage has billed this as a way to opt out of being scraped outright, but it really isn't.

The draft is explicit: "This policy token is not a directive for crawling behavior." Bots can keep fetching every page, and the draft merely permits a crawler that gathers content only for training to skip pages it can't use. Stopping the crawlers themselves still takes the per-bot rules sites rely on today, which is why OpenAI, Google and Anthropic all stress that their existing controls aren't going anywhere. Microsoft puts it most plainly: "These settings govern use of content, not crawl access."

These further caveats matter at a time when the commitment itself is both voluntary and interpretations and pledges vary across the board even as certain players have higher exposure than others.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, and both companies are invoking fair use in their defense. Anthropic, whose engineer wrote the draft, agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle authors' claims over pirated books used in training, and Penske Media, owner of Rolling Stone, sued Google over AI Overviews in 2025.

It also relies on crawlers choosing to comply; the draft lets private agreements override it, and in 2025 Cloudflare accused Perplexity of disguising its crawlers to scrape sites that had blocked it, a charge the latter denied.

Microsoft's place in the coalition is arguably the most awkward: In 2024, its AI chief Mustafa Suleyman described open-web content as "freeware" for training, carving out only sites that explicitly object, which is roughly the exception this signal now formalizes. Unsealed filings in the Times case also show that a Microsoft director, Brent Hecht, described AI scraping in a 2023 internal memo as possibly "the largest theft of labor in human history."

The wider market, meanwhile, has been moving toward enforcement and payment rather than polite requests. Cloudflare has blocked AI crawlers by default for new customers since July 2025 and lets participating sites charge them per crawl. Google also says the shared token aligns with the EU's code of practice for general-purpose AI, which treats robots.txt as publishers' primary machine-readable opt-out, a sign that regulators, not just goodwill, are pushing the big labs to listen. For bots that ignore robots.txt entirely, we have rounded up heavier options, from login walls to IP rate limiting.

For now, one line that the biggest AI companies agree to read is a real step forward for honest crawlers and the people who run websites. But it is a request rather than a lock; it only looks forward, and it comes with none of the payment publishers have spent years fighting for.

Over the last few years, Zoom has probably had one of the most intriguing journeys in the business world.

After booming during the pandemic, the company has since expanded its offerings to cover a huge range of enterprise needs, with contact center services alongside traditional video conferencing and expanding AI tools.

As the company looks ahead to its new AI-enabled evolution, I went to the Zoom Experience Centre in London to find out more.

Refusal to compromise

“When we look at EMEA, we think the landscape is shifting in how organizations think about the technology they rely on,” Louise Newbury-Smith, Zoom’s Head of UKI, explains.

“For years, the pattern has been pretty similar, an organization would adopt a platform and then have to manipulate their own way of working around that platform - we really want to reverse that.”

“There is still some of that friction…(but) what’s changing is that organizations are starting to refuse to compromise - they want platforms to work the way they want to work.”

Zoom opened its UK data center in November 2025, greatly improving the situation for organizations in the region, as data residency choices which didn't exist before are now in place, meaning the likes of local councils, NHS trusts and financial services firms can store their data locally.

Newbury-Smith notes that the EMEA region is not a secondary market for Zoom, but high growth opportunity, a point echoed by Nick Tidd, Head of Global Channel GTM, who said the region offers, “a truly remarkable opportunity for our customers and for our partners, when you look across the product portfolio.”

This opportunity is hooked onto AI, particularly the growing importance of the context layer, a situation where Zoom is ideally placed, Tidd says.

“Think of how Zoom is positioned across the product portfolio - capturing all of those conversations…(and) putting them into the context to capture them in the workflow is where we are very different to others.”

This move was expanded by Leo Boulton, Zoom’s Head of Product, Solution and Industry Marketing, who ran us through the company’s recent releases and product announcements, highlighting the importance of context in Zoom’s concept of “conversation to completion” in its new Unified Context Layer.

“Conversations come natural to us - the way that we work is through conversations, it’s just a natural part of how humans are,” he noted, “so getting the job done should also be a natural thing - not something that requires a change in behavior, but something that should naturally just be part of our everyday work.”

If this doesn’t happen, workers will resist change, Boulton notes - particularly when it comes to AI, which is why Zoom is looking to embed intelligence into work itself.

Context has become a critical part of improving AI performance and usefulness in recent months, and Zoom wants to ensure its tools are as up to date as possible - but this requires some key elements.

“Before AI can truly understand how people work and operate, we have to guarantee it has the highest-quality raw materials,” Boulton points out. “The conversation must be crisp, clear and understood with genuine eye contact – because only with the best ingredients can AI deliver the most value.”

Zoom has been working hard to improve the quality and fidelity of its audio and video for calls and meetings, including the upcoming launch of a real-time “voice smoothing” tool known as “touch up my voice” and a pose correction tool enabling for greater eye-to-eye contact to boost interpersonal connections.

The better your agents understand your business, the more effectively they can work for you, Boulton notes, as he demonstrated how users will soon be able to benefit from a live assist feature which offers proactive suggestions during a call, such as telling you to speak slower or faster.

Zoom Chat is also getting a significant upgrade, making it what Boulton said should be a shared space where people and agents will interact and work together.

“We don’t expect our customers to live entirely inside Zoom,” he said. “True adoption only happens when tools feel natural, which is why our context layer is open by design – bringing the intelligence directly into whatever interface people already choose to work in.”

So it’s clear that Zoom wants to be so much more than your classic video conferencing and chat platform - and its ability to get the most out of your information could make it a very handy tech partner going forward.

“The direction is super clear,” Newbury-Smith concludes, “we're building and serving our customers where they are.”

• AI interviews are discouraging people from fully participating in the job application process
• Jobseekers who are already employed are less likely to accept an AI interview
• 58% of people who attended an AI interview despite reservations would refuse if other jobs were lined up

Automated interviews are becoming a turn-off for jobseekers, particularly if they already have a job, new research has revealed.

A survey from Use.AI of people looking for work in the UK, US, Canada, European Union, and Latin America found nearly a third (29%) of people already in work had withdrawn from a hiring process that involved an AI interview.

Meanwhile, just 14% of those without work withdrew, demonstrating the importance of finding work when unemployed.

Available for consideration

Intriguingly, while the specific figures concerning the 6731 survey subjects differ across all regions, the pattern of a split between those already employed and those who are not is repeated.

Use.AI’s findings indicate that a candidate’s willingness to participate in an AI interview can depend on several factors, including financial security and what other options the jobseeker already has.

Most of the jobs you see advertised today have AI filtering to hopefully determine the best candidates. The businesses going one step beyond this and detaching themselves from the interview process seem to be making a mistake.

“Employers spend considerable effort checking whether their screening systems evaluate candidates fairly. They should be equally interested in who decides to enter those systems in the first place,” said Matthew Freire, Managing Director of Use.AI.

“Offering applicants an alternative route to a human interviewer would allow companies to examine whether the format itself is influencing who remains available for consideration.”

Replacing hiring experts and people who know the job as interviewers may have saved time and money in the short-term. But if no one wants to be hired by a company that relies on AI interviews, then productivity is lost, and along with it, profit.

Automated Recruitment

Searching for a new job increasingly requires the submission of a resume for screening. Those CVs or applications might then find their way to a human, and a call may be scheduled. But many companies are relying on in-house and third party AI interviewers. It isn’t only potential employers, either – some recruitment agencies are staffed by AI interviewers, too.

All of this makes the job application process increasingly challenging, particularly if you’re someone who relies heavily on body language and facial signals. Succeeding in an interview often means building a rapport with the people on the other side of the table or display, and this is something that simply isn’t possible when the person asking the questions isn’t a person at all.

The graphical representation of a programmed LLM may appear smart and attractive, and they have the questions read to ask. But it is ultimately an elaborate piece of form-filling that doesn't demonstrate a person's ability to establish instant rapport and translate that into working relationships.

• Google global head of data center energy says space data centers could cost up to 100 times more than terrestrial ones
• Amanda Peterson Corio's remarks came weeks after Google launched its first Suncatcher prototype, a roughly 1kW satellite that has since run Gemma 4 on an orbiting TPU, one chip at a time
• Corio says the real bottleneck on Earth is permitting rather than power, the same politics that backers of orbital compute claim they can escape

Google has spent the past month showing off AI chips working in orbit, but the executive responsible for powering its data centers back on Earth has just put a sobering price on the idea.

Speaking at The Information's recent WTF Summit in Napa Valley, Amanda Peterson Corio, Google's global head of data center energy, said data centers in space could cost up to 100 times as much as those built on the ground.

Her advice to the rest of the industry was simple and (pun intended) grounded: "Let's explore all the terrestrial options before we go extraterrestrial."

A very expensive proposition?

The remarks land at an awkward moment, because Google is testing exactly this kind of hardware right now. Its first Project Suncatcher prototype, built with satellite operator Planet, launched on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare mission on October 1.

Google recently also announced its Hello World milestone: an onboard Gemma 4 model, running on a TPU, wrote a short haiku about being in space, which was downlinked as the satellite passed over Svalbard, Norway.

The company bills this as the first AI response from a data center-class TPU in orbit. That is a carefully measured claim, given that Starcloud put an Nvidia H100 into orbit a year ago and was running AI models on it within weeks.

Scale is the bigger caveat and one that can be easily overlooked amidst the hype: The satellite carries four TPUs but generates only about 1kW of solar power, so it can run just one chip at a time for roughly 20 minutes per session, according to The Next Web. A single 1 GW AI campus, the kind now under construction on the ground, draws about a million times that much power.

Google has described Suncatcher as a "moonshot" since it was unveiled a year ago, and project lead Travis Beals told NPR on launch day that he did not expect orbital compute to become cheaper than the terrestrial kind within the next five years.

Not the first or last skeptic of orbital datacenters

This did start a somewhat interesting conversation on Wall Street; Short seller Jim Chanos read Corio's statement as $5 trillion per gigawatt of compute, and posted on X that the gap between her view and the estimates of SpaceX management and bulls "should give pause to anyone trying to model this business out."

TIKR pushed the arithmetic further by examining recent claims: SpaceX's CFO told investors last month that new compute pays for itself in under a year at current rental rates. Built in orbit at up to 100 times the cost and rented at the same price, TIKR calculated that payback stretches to as long as a century, or about a decade even at a tenth of Corio's stated ceiling.

That matters because orbital compute underpins part of SpaceX's roughly $1.8 trillion market value at the time of writing. The company has asked the FCC for permission to launch up to a million data-center satellites, and Musk has posted that the orbital compute SpaceX deploys each month will probably overtake terrestrial compute around the end of 2028. Yet SpaceX's own IPO paperwork warned investors of "significant technical complexity and unproven technologies," and said its orbital data centers might never become commercially viable.

Corio is hardly the first skeptic. OpenAI's Sam Altman called the idea "ridiculous" under current conditions earlier this year, even as Nvidia lined up a Space-1 Vera Rubin module aimed squarely at orbital data centers.

This is an extremely interesting take from Google's end. Alphabet is one of SpaceX's largest outside shareholders, with a stake disclosed at 6.11% at the end of 2025, according to Bloomberg, and Google has reportedly been in talks with SpaceX about launching future Suncatcher hardware. Its energy chief has questioned and potentially poured cold water on a thesis that props up part of an asset Alphabet owns, while Google's own moonshot depends on cheap SpaceX launches arriving on schedule.

Corio's broader argument, somewhat ironically, was about the ground rather than the sky. According to The Information, she said the US has enough power and that the real bottlenecks are permitting and grid interconnection studies.

She blamed much of the local backlash against data centers on newer, less experienced developers, without naming any, and said Google prepays for grid upgrades over 15 to 20 years in more than 9 states, posts restoration bonds, and has stopped using nondisclosure agreements with local governments.

There is, however, a problem with this argument: Established firms such as Oracle have also faced local resistance, which complicates the idea that inexperienced newcomers are the problem. The backlash is anything but marginal: opposition has spread across the US, and Data Center Watch counted 75 projects worth about $130 billion delayed or blocked in the first quarter of 2026 alone.

There is a political angle built around these arguments that keeps orbital data centers in play, and SpaceX is essentially building on that promise. After this week's midterm elections, in which data center construction was a campaign issue in several races, including the contest for Texas governor, Musk posted, "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now."

Leaving the planet does not, however, mean leaving the permit queue; SpaceX's million-satellite request and Blue Origin's 51,600-satellite Project Sunrise both need FCC approval, and debris and spectrum concerns give regulators and rivals plenty to object to, just at a higher altitude. If power really is plentiful and permission is the bottleneck, as Corio argues, then orbit's main selling point is jumping that queue, and by her numbers it is a very expensive way to do it.

For now, until someone flies more than a kilowatt-scale test bed and publishes what it actually costs, the multiple between orbit and the ground, whether it turns out to be 3x, 10x, or as much as 100x, remains an educated guess. Corio's stated ceiling is arguably as unproven as Musk's timetable. Only one of those numbers, however, is already priced in considerably into a stock's current valuation, and SpaceX investors will be waiting for financials to back its CEO's claims with bated breath to say the least.

• Ericsson wants mobile networks to detect and track low-flying drones
• Cell towers could become additional surveillance tools against unauthorized aircraft
• AT&T and Erillisverkot have already tested Ericsson's network sensing technology

Ericsson is developing technology that could allow telecommunications networks to detect and follow drones without depending entirely on dedicated surveillance equipment.

Its Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) system analyses radio signals bouncing off flying objects, using existing cellular infrastructure to identify their movements.

The company plans to begin limited commercial trials in 2027 before expanding availability to additional customers during 2028.

Ericsson turns cellular infrastructure into drone detection equipment

The technology uses radio transmission equipment at multiple cellular sites to identify objects flying within their coverage areas.

When signals encounter a drone, some energy returns towards receiving stations, allowing the network to examine the resulting reflections.

By comparing information collected from different locations, the system can estimate an object's position and follow its movements.

Ericsson says this approach could help identify small, fast-moving aircraft flying close to the ground, where conventional surveillance equipment sometimes faces difficulties.

The technology requires specialised radio equipment, computing resources and software rather than functioning automatically on every existing mobile network.

Its hardware requirements include Massive MIMO antennas, which use multiple transmission and reception elements to handle complex radio signals.

This technology has already been tested by AT&T around Arlington, Texas, while Finland's Erillisverkot also conducted similar trials.

Ericsson claims that both exercises successfully identified multiple drones and followed their movements using the network-based sensing approach.

Mobile networks could help address growing drone security threats

The proposed system comes as unauthorized drone flights increasingly disrupt airports and raise security concerns around military installations and other sensitive locations.

Flights at Jersey Airport in the Channel Islands near the UK were disrupted over Halloween weekend after repeated unauthorised drone sightings raised safety concerns.

Military facilities have also reported increasing incidents, prompting authorities to consider additional measures against unidentified aircraft approaching protected locations.

In Britain, military personnel have received legal authority to disable unauthorised drones detected around certain military installations.

Existing protection arrangements frequently depend on specialized detection equipment, although installing sufficient coverage across extensive territories can become expensive.

Ericsson believes cellular infrastructure could provide additional surveillance capabilities without requiring authorities to construct entirely separate monitoring networks.

“Mobile networks are useful as drone detection solutions because their antennas are already covering low elevations, close to ground level where drones often fly, unlike traditional radar,” said Ian Fogg, research director at CCS Insight.

“The new spectrum that should arrive with 6G will also make it easier to deploy sensing on wide channels, which further improves detection accuracy,” said Ian Fogg.

Beyond security applications, the technology could also monitor shipping movements, vehicle traffic and changing weather conditions around infrastructure.

However, Ericsson's proposed system is intended to complement established surveillance equipment rather than eliminate the need for radar installations.

The company must still establish how accurately its technology performs under different conditions, particularly where buildings, terrain and competing signals complicate detection.

The deployment will provide opportunities to assess whether mobile network sensing can deliver dependable results outside controlled testing environments.

Via The Register

• Raspberry Pi has raised the 16GB Pi 5's price by $80 to $385, more than triple its $120 launch price
• Company CEO blames lack of alternative 16GB DRAM supply, compounded by wider component shortages
• Raspberry Pi called the hikes temporary, but memory makers expect tight supply to last until 2028 to 2030

Raspberry Pi has raised the price of its 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 yet again, and the flagship board now sits far from the brand's budget roots.

In a blog post, company CEO Eben Upton confirmed an $80 increase that takes the board to $385, which is more than triple the $120 it cost at launch in January 2025.

The 16GB variants of Compute Module 5 increase by $40 in the same round, while the Raspberry Pi 500+, the company's keyboard computer that also offers 16GB of RAM, remains at its existing price.

A far-reaching memory crisis dictates prices

The threefold figure is cumulative rather than a single jump: The November 2026 increase on its own amounts to roughly 26%, but the rest built up over a run of rises that began in December 2025, when the 16GB Pi 5 went from $120 to $145. February added $60, leaving the board 70% more expensive than at launch, and April added a further $100.

That April 2026 round also brought a new 3GB Raspberry Pi 4, introduced to give buyers a cheaper middle option, with Upton saying at the time that the LPDDR4 memory used in the Pi 4 and Pi 5 had risen sevenfold in price over the previous year.

November's change also comes barely a month after Raspberry Pi raised prices on its 2GB boards by $12.50 each, having decided that shielding those models from earlier price increases was no longer sustainable.

Upton's explanation is more specific than a general complaint about RAM prices. He blamed "a lack of alternative supply for 16GB DRAM, compounded by other ongoing component shortages," which suggests the bottleneck is sourcing at that particular density rather than cost alone.

Raspberry Pi, for its part, has been qualifying additional memory suppliers through 2026 to widen its options, and the wording implies those alternatives remain thinnest at the top of the range.

Interestingly, despite the price increases, demand hasn't fallen but rather grown considerably. Direct sales of the Pi 5 rose 47% in the half, and Raspberry Pi says demand for the 8GB variants continued to grow despite higher prices.

For buyers, the new pricing produces some odd comparisons. The 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 lists at $175, which means the extra 8GB on the 16GB model now costs $210, more than an entire 8GB board.

The spared-but-similarly-specced Pi 500+ sharpens the point. For $25 more than the bare 16GB board, it pairs the same processor and memory with a 256GB NVMe SSD and a mechanical keyboard. It's no substitute for embedded projects that need the bare board's footprint, but for desktop use, the standalone 16GB Pi 5 is now difficult to justify once one considers the cost of a standalone SSD alone, even if the keyboard is considered a non-factor.

Buying a cheaper board and upgrading it isn't a workaround either, since Raspberry Pi firmware locks boards to the memory capacity they shipped with. For those who don't need 16GB at all, we have found that an 8GB starter kit can often be a better buy than the board on its own.

Upton's own advice is to avoid paying for memory you don't need by choosing lower-density variants or older models, or by optimizing applications. He also warned that some sellers are exploiting the shortage by inflating prices or misrepresenting products, and urged buyers to stick to approved resellers.

A "temporary" crisis might be an understatement

Raspberry Pi continues to describe the memory squeeze as temporary and says it intends to roll back its increases once costs fall. Its own definition of temporary is fairly elastic, though.

In the company's September results, Upton described the current cycle as "a large, but ultimately typical, instance of a phenomenon that periodically affects the industry," with meaningful new supply not expected until 2028.

Memory makers are gloomier still. SK Hynix titled a section of its third-quarter results "Memory supply shortage to persist through 2030," and Micron has warned that shortages could run into 2028 or beyond.

TrendForce, whose latest outlook Upton linked in his post, expects DRAM suppliers to keep prioritizing server products through the fourth quarter, leaving the wider market undersupplied even as contract prices rise slowly.

The entry-level boards, however, remain a bright spot, with the 1GB Pi 4 and Pi 5 still at $35 and $45, respectively. Rising prices risk putting the Pi out of reach of schools and kids, and for now the bottom of the range is still holding the line. At the top, though, the 16GB Pi 5 has become a premium product by necessity rather than design, and the CEO's optimism might not be shared by many consumers in the market for one in the near future.

• Accenture reportedly publishes new research paper littered with what appear to be AI-hallucinations
• The Leapfrogging Development paper has 15 inaccuracies that have been identified so far
• Accenture, which has been demanding its employees embrace AI, has denied that the errors were due to the technology

Top consultancy firm Accenture is under fire once again for publishing papers that include proven AI hallucinations.

The most notable of these, written in collaboration with IE University in Madrid, is titled “Leapfrogging Development: Unlocking Africa’s Potential in Global Value Chains with Artificial Intelligence” and has 15 inaccuracies.

The AI hallucinations were found by AI-detection software publisher GPTZero, which regularly performs analysis on significant new reports. It lists a total of 31 inaccuracies across three papers, with the lion’s share found in that single policy paper.

Spotting the fakes

GPTZero has plenty of previous experience in spotting citation issues with reports from large organizations. A similar scenario developed around auditing giant PwC in August 2026, with GPTZero highlighting their reports as making inaccurate and false claims.

With the Accenture-linked “Leapfrogging Development” report, GPTZero determined 15 AI hallucination inaccuracies, along with a further four flawed citations – that is, citations that don’t exist, exist with a different name, or simply don’t support the report.

“GPTZero contends that hallucinated citations are a clear and present danger to researchers, academics, consultants, students, and anybody else who happens to search the internet for information.”

Previous reviews of reports and research tainted with AI hallucinations have proved that any fake claims that appear in public documents that are published by well known organizations can be recycled and repeated. It’s like an internet version of “Chinese whispers.”

GPTZero adds that “Over time, these recycled hallucinations can ‘poison the informational well,’ even if the original publication is never read by humans.”

In short, AI hallucinations are more dangerous than thought, and Accenture seems prone to publishing them.

Dangerous citations

While the Leapfrogging Development report is the main issue discovered by GPTZero, it is not the only problem. Three documents were reviewed in total.

“Using an automated pipeline and our Hallucination Detector," reported GPTZero, "we surfaced three Accenture products containing a combined 31 hallucinated sources, numerous fabricated claims, and other likely signs of AI generation. To avoid making the same mistake as Accenture, a real human verified each hallucination.”

Speaking to The Telegraph (paywall), an Accenture spokesman claimed the issues surface by GPTZero were down to human error, adding “There is no evidence to support the conclusion that they were generated through AI hallucination. The report is being corrected ahead of a re-release. We will always embrace the opportunity to strengthen the quality of our reports.”

Accenture has recently specified its employees use AI more productively. While these papers are collaborative and produced beyond Accenture’s usual in-house process, they highlight continued AI-related struggles for the firm.

• Adobe for Startups enables new companies founded within the last five years to get its products for free
• Eligible companies will get 12 months of free access to Adobe’s AI-heavy tools
• Firefly Pro Plus, Acrobat Studio, and Semrush are available with the offer

Adobe is launching a new free suite of tools for new businesses, aiming to deliver easy solutions to founders that won’t break their startup budget.

Adobe for Startups will be open to eligible companies founded in the past five years, who will be able to use Firefly Pro Plus, Acrobat Studio including Adobe Express Premium, and Semrush completely free for 12 months.

Marketing the incentive as a way to build branding as early as possible, Adobe is inviting any business founded within the past five years and with under $15 million in funding to apply.

Creation, productivity, marketing

Approved applications to Adobe for Startups will get Adobe Firefly Pro Plus, its all-in-one creative AI studio, which lets you ideate into images, video, and audio. With Acrobat Studio, AI Assistant and Adobe Express Premium are provided for easy content creation and publishing.

Meanwhile, Semrush gives you access to search intelligence and marketing options, illustrating how you business is found online and how it can be optimized.

While program terms and criteria may differ depending on business location, Adobe for Startups offers a useful software platform for growth – and it will help ensure that startups are looking at Adobe's creative AI offering rather than those of competitors like Canva.