It wasn’t until I unboxed the all-new touchscreen MacBook Pro that I understood the enormity of what Apple had done. They’d told me it was now a 3lb system that was both thinner and smaller than the MacBook Pro M5 (and the recently released M6 model), but it wasn’t until I put the new laptop next to the M5 and then compared it to the MacBook Air M5 that I knew Apple had changed its laptop game.

Here's what you should know about me: I hate a heavy backpack. That’s one of the reasons I carried a Microsoft Surface Pro for a decade and have now carried a succession of excellent MacBook Air laptops for the last few years. At 2.7 lbs, it's light enough to be mostly unnoticeable in my backpack, and since the M-class Apple silicon chips, Apple has packed in more than enough power for my needs.

The new Touchscreen MacBook shrinks the traditional Pro chassis by a full half pound. That’s right, it’s now just 0.3 pounds heavier than my MacBook Air. It’s not just the weight. Overall bulk — despite a larger (and also in part because of) PROLED XDR display — is not much more than the Air.

Here are the specs:

MacBook Air 13-inch M5

• Height: 0.44 inch
• Width: 11.97 inches
• Depth: 8.46 inches

MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display 14-inch

• Height: 0.59 inch
• Width: 12.24 inches
• Depth: 8.52 inches

Obviously, the touchscreen MacBook Pro is fractionally larger in every dimension, but it no longer feels like a bulky, heavy Pro system.

Apple’s ability to shrink this powerful laptop's dimensions — while leaving ports, keyboard, trackpad, and speakers virtually untouched and oh-so-familiar — comes down, in large part, to the new tandem OLED display, which is considerably thinner than the M6’s mini-LED-based Liquid Retina Display.

It’s also wholly redesigned, stretching far deeper on the cover than the Liquid Retina panel on the traditional MacBook Pro. That extra depth is how Apple almost magically fits a 14.2-inch display on a smaller chassis.

Perhaps you can see where I’m going: By shrinking its most powerful portable (with a touchscreen, no less), Apple is, whether purposefully or not, introducing some buying confusion. A MacBook Pro is officially nearly ultra-portable territory.

Obviously, the price and power disparity is what will now cleave consumers one way or the other. The MacBook Air 13-inch M5 starts at $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,799 with 16GB of RAM, a 10-Core CPU, 8-Core GPU, and 512GB of storage. The 14-inch MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display starts at $2,899 / £2,899 / AU$4,599, with a 15-Core M5 Pro, 16-Core GPU, 24GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage.

The difference is clear: this is a Pro-grade system, which has far more power than anyone looking at a MacBook Air-class system probably needs.

Still, with this new MacBook Pro, I think the MacBook Air’s portability advantage has been taken off the table.

The magic touch

Now, I’ve spent some time with a slightly juiced-up MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display (M5 Pro with an 18-Core GPU, 20-Core GPU, 48GB of RAM, and 1 TB of storage for $3699) and have come to realize that aside from formidable, virtually endless power, it’s the remarkable screen that I now believe is set to change the trajectory of all Apple MacBooks.

I want to be clear: the ability to touch the MacBook Pro screen and manipulate data, content, screen views, desktops, and more is exciting. But I‘m not gonna lie, I’ve been struggling to figure out what it was made for. As I wrote when Apple unveiled the touchscreen MacBook Pro, I’m quite familiar with touchscreen systems and, when necessary, did touch my Surface Pro screen.

However, it’s becoming clear to me that as I use the MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display system as my everyday driver, I don’t touch the display very often. Instead, I kept looking for reasons to touch the display.

There are apps where it’s fun to try, like the 3D-manipulating ZBrush, which lets me pull and push 3D models like a digital sculptor, and 3D scene-creating Cinema 4D (using my fingers to manipulate a 3D couch was harder than I thought it would be), but these are, at least not for me, everyday tools.

I fiddled with the laptop’s touchscreen to scroll through web pages, but I'm just as happy to use the giant Force Touch trackpad.

I take a lot of screen grabs by holding down Command/Shift/4 to launch the grabber, and I usually use the mouse to select the capture area. With the touchscreen, I could drag my finger diagonally across the screen to select a capture area. That was kind of cool, though not a game changer, and I’m fine with using the mouse.

I tried using my fingers to manipulate my Cyberpunk 2077 character, and it was a disaster. I kept accidentally drawing my weapon and blasting away at random strangers. I decided to stick with the mouse and trackpad. Side note: I ran all of these games and apps at once. This system is such a beast.

The point is, I think touch has its applications and place, but I think it’ll end up being mostly useful in specific, vertical workflows.

That feeling may change over time. After all, sometimes touching a MacBook display does feel like an illicit act. Each time I went to close a window or scroll a webpage with a fingertip, I did glance around to see who was watching, wondering if they thought I’d gone a bit daft, as they thought, “Dude, you can’t touch a MacBook screen; Steve Jobs told us so.”

Those who do choose this relatively lightweight and incredibly powerful system probably won’t do so because of touch, but they may choose it for another reason:

The astonishing display.

From the new Dynamic Island that replaces the giant notch on my old MacBook Pro (and provides some useful live info but sadly not Face ID) to the thinner bezels and curved bottom, it’s more aesthetically appealing. The tandem OLED technology, though, transforms the visuals in ways that no other laptop I’ve ever used or seen can approach.

I put the MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display next to the MacBook Pro M5, and the difference is nothing short of remarkable.

The promised 10,000,000-to-1 contrast ratio pays dividends with blacks that are inkier than the deep center of a black hole. That’s paired with colors and clarity that make everything pop, and with ProMotion (up to 120Hz), everything is smooth as silk.

Viewed separately, imagery still looks great on the MacBook M5’s Liquid Retina XDR, but next to the new PROLED XDR, everything on the M5 Pro looks muted. Even the off-angle viewing is noticeably better on the PROLED XDR Display. I wasn’t alone in this assessment. I showed the side-by-side laptops to a group of coworkers, and they all agreed.

That spectacular screen is paired with a more performant silicon that easily bested the standard M5 in my older MacBook Pro. In my side-by-side tests with Resident Evil 4, the M5 Pro MacBook Pro loaded the game faster and stayed a step ahead of the M5 MacBook Pro.

Here’s my conundrum. Most people shopping for laptops are not making a feature film, cutting a studio album, working on giant CAD-level projects, or running large language AI models locally, all things that the MacBook Pro PROLED XDR and its M5 Pro are more than capable of (often, as I noted above, at the same time, but with a lot of fan noise). But I cannot think of a single potential user who would not want this display.

They don’t all need the touchscreen, for as cool as it is, but as for that big, efficient, bright, and contrast-rich tandem OLED, everyone could use that.

So the question I’m left with after my MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display 14-inch experience is: when will the next MacBook Air get this display, shrink by half a pound, and regain its position as the ultra-portable king? Oh, and how soon can the MacBook Air get that glowing logo on the back?

• Nvidia has a new interactive demo out on Steam
• It offers a virtual unboxing of a GeForce 8800 GTX… 
• …but you need an RTX 4070 to run it, and the recommended GPU is an RTX 5080
• Some gamers feel that it's a 'slap in the face' for several reasons

Can't afford a new GPU thanks to the ever-worsening RAM crisis? Well, Nvidia wants to take you back to the days when a graphics card didn't destroy your bank balance, courtesy of a new demo on Steam where you get to unbox and install a GeForce GPU from 2006.

The Verge spotted the interactive demo entitled 'GeForce 8800 GTX — 20 Years of a Legend' which can be grabbed for free on Steam.

It was developed by Dylan Browne, an Unreal Engine artist who was commissioned by Nvidia, and the demo is rendered in Unreal Engine (unsurprisingly). The idea is that you can: "Step into a 2006-era PC gaming room, unbox the GeForce 8800 GTX, inspect it up close, and install it in an era-accurate PC tower."

On the face of it, that's a rather fun idea — and it's smartly implemented to be fair, including revisiting Windows Vista on a CRT monitor — but if you start to think about it more deeply, this exercise seems more than a little tone deaf in the current PC components climate.

Have a watch of Nvidia's illustrative clip below first off, before we move on to discuss this one.

Analysis: ragebait, greed, and a lot of other accusations from gamers

One of the most obvious sticking points here is the requirements to run this demo. What Nvidia GPU will you need to take part in a virtual unboxing? Here's a clue: it certainly won't run on a GeForce 8800 GTX. In fact you'll need an RTX 4070 at the minimum, and the recommended GPU as per the Steam specs is a… wait for it… RTX 5080. (You must have 32GB of RAM, as well, at minimum).

And this comes at a time when the RAM crisis has made that RTX 5080 soar in price to over double its MSRP in the US, and with hefty inflation evident in all countries (over 50% in the UK for example). Don't even start with the RTX 5090, and as we've seen, even lower-end graphics cards are being hit hard with price hikes.

As one Redditor put it neatly (with the swearing removed): "A 5080 for an unboxing simulator. They are just laughing in our faces."

Another in that thread replies to say: "Ragebait? You are not able to afford a real graphics card — here, take this virtual one?"

Speaking of rage, there's quite an outpouring of it in the comments for Nvidia's YouTube video (the one embedded above), such as: "Great job, today consumers have no chance to be able to afford new high end gaming video cards in favor of greed and AI money. A 5090 is $10-15k, and a 5080 is $2k or more — it's a slap in the face to post this tbh."

Nvidia has a clear priority for AI, data centers and profits over consumers and gaming GPUs – and it's a business, that's where the money lies, we get that. Shareholders for-the-win and so forth, but given that, the thoughtlessness of this little PR nugget is pretty staggering really.

What sort of reaction did Nvidia expect it would get? Okay, there are some Redditors reminiscing about the good old days of 2006, and the 8800 GTX that they owned. However, many more are simply bitter (or indeed incandescent) that Nvidia appears to be reminding us of better times, having done a good deal to cause the GPU pricing pain which is now prevalent thanks to chasing AI profits. While asking for a high-end, now ridiculously expensive, Blackwell GPU to run the demo (at the recommended level).

The GeForce 8800 GTX was $599 as a top-end monster GPU when it arrived, and if you want an RTX 5090 these days, you'll pay over 15x that amount. I would think that Nvidia would want to do anything but take a nostalgic trip back to the days of relatively affordable high-end graphics cards at this point in time.

Maybe Team Green should have saved this one for the card's 25th anniversary. Will the RAM crisis be over by then?

• Researchers spot White House network traffic being routed through dozens of residential proxy services
• Findings suggest a device on government infrastructure may have been enrolled in a proxy network
• Security experts warn proxy services on sensitive networks could enable abuse, anonymity, and potential lateral movement

The IT network at the White House was seen routing traffic for at least 28 residential proxy services, meaning there is a strong chance government infrastructure is being abused by (malicious) third parties, cybersecurity experts are warning.

Security researchers at Layer3 Intel published a new report, saying they saw 236 instances of residential proxy traffic originating from AS2650. That is the name of an autonomous system registered to the Executive Office of the President, the federal agency that hosts the White House network.

The researchers observed the traffic between October 5 and November 3 2026, and said that in 26 of the 30 days of observation, six IP addresses kept appearing.

Dozens of proxies

“This is public access,” the researchers said. “Anybody can obtain it by signing up to a public residential proxy service, paying a few dollars and sending requests through it.”

Residential proxy is a service with a self-explanatory name: paying customers can route their internet traffic through devices connected to residential internet connections (households, essentially), making it appear as though their requests originate from those connections rather than their own. They are not malicious per se, and have legitimate uses, but they’ve become popular among cybercriminals looking to hide their identities, evade security controls, and distribute malicious traffic.

Now, according to Layer 3 intel, 28 different residential proxy providers were able to route traffic through the White House network. The researchers cross-checked the IP addresses against public databases maintained by residential proxy detection companies Spur and Synthient, and both identified them as proxy exits.

Apparently, the researchers did not set out to analyze the White House’s network. Instead, they said they were testing a newly launched platform that “gives researchers a global view of residential proxy and anonymized internet activity,” and stumbled upon the activity while requesting rotating access through residential proxy services.

The cybersecurity community did not seem all too surprised with the news. In a Reddit discussion, IT experts shared their experience with senior leadership, both in public and private sector organizations, saying many were happily sacrificing security for convenience, opting not to install 2FA, or leaving their devices and email inboxes wide open.

One reader suspected someone in the White House “probably installed a sketchy free app on their phone, and now strangers are browsing the internet through the building's connection.”

The timing of the activity is also worth a mention. Around half of the observed connections happened between 5pm and midnight, Eastern time, with almost no activity recorded during the early morning. Layer3 Intel surmised that a device was regularly connecting to the White House network during evening hours, potentially one compromised by a residential proxy SDK.

Reaching internal systems

“That pattern suggests a person rather than a public guest Wi-Fi network: someone regularly on the White House network late into the evening, whose device is infected with a proxy SDK,” the researchers explained.

The researchers also pointed out that poorly secured proxy SDKs can allow internal network access and lateral movement. “This is how past botnets have spread,” they said. “If an SDK on this network has the same kind of flaw, anyone buying proxy access could use it to reach internal systems.”

There are plenty of other unanswered questions, too. For example, the researchers acknowledged that the data only shows network exits, not specific devices. Therefore, they don’t know if the activity is coming from a personal device, a guest network, or an entirely different source.

The White House discovery was not the only unusual thing Layer3 Intel laid out in its report. They also reported seeing residential proxy activity in some of the most remote players on the planet: Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a remote South Atlantic territory. The researchers saw 413 IP addresses and more than 32,000 observations on these locations, involving Elon Musk’s Starlink internet, as well as local internet service provider Sure Saint Helena.

The researchers also detected activity related to residential proxy networks in Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, the Chagos Islands, Tokelau, South Georgia, Pitcairn and Svalbard.

Razer Basilisk V4 Pro two-minute review

One of the first gaming mice I ever used was a Razer Basilisk, and I enjoyed it so much I wore the grippy rubber sides down until they were completely smooth. I’ve moved over to much more lightweight pointers in the years since, but with Razer launching the Basilisk V4 Pro, has the company done enough to tempt me back and resurrect that fond old love affair?

Spoiler alert: not completely. Because while the Basilisk V4 Pro is an excellent upgrade over its predecessor, it also comes with a few drawbacks that prevent it from being a total must-buy. It’s a great gaming mouse and might be ideal in the right (large) hands, but don’t go into this expecting perfection.

Let’s start with the positives. Razer has kept the Basilisk’s familiar ergonomic form factor, which is best suited to palm grip users, and its comfortable sculpted shape fits snugly into your hand. The build quality is also good, with solid plastics throughout and grippy textured finishes on the sides. And while it’s still a fairly hefty 100g, that’s still 10% lighter than the 112g Basilisk V3 Pro.

Battery life has increased to 200 hours in 2.4GHz mode at a 1,000Hz polling rate, or 275 hours on Bluetooth LE — up from 140 hours and 210 hours on the Basilisk V3 Pro. Note that that’s with the RGB lighting disabled. My review unit arrived with 66% battery, and in my testing (using it in 2.4GHz mode with a 1,000Hz polling rate and the RGB switched on), that dropped to 0% after 45 hours, so you can probably expect just under 70 hours on a full charge when using these settings. That’s a sizeable drop on 200 hours, but you’ll get much more juice if you dim the RGB lights.

Compared to the Basilisk V4 Pro’s predecessor, Razer has outfitted the latest version with a couple of extra buttons: one on the top-left corner of the left click and another next to the side buttons. That means you’ve now got 14 customizable controls on this device, making it a sort of halfway solution between a regular mouse and the button-crazy Razer Naga V3 Pro.

One of those buttons — the additional on one the side — could be assigned to Razer’s “Perfect 180” feature, the company suggested. This instantly spins your in-game character around 180 degrees, and if you think that sounds like cheating, you might have a point — even Razer admitted to us that they thought it could get banned in competitive games. Still, until that happens…

Razer also told us it had made the left and right click buttons sound less “ticky,” and they do have a satisfyingly soft and quiet actuation, one that’s a little less piercing to the ears than those on the Viper V4 Pro. They’re not silent, but they’re pleasing in use.

Sandwiched between those buttons is Razer’s HyperSpeed scroll wheel that, while not strictly a gaming feature, might be one of the Basilisk V4 Pro’s best aspects. You can set it to spin freely or ratchet (with two strength options) in Razer’s Synapse app, but its real party trick is its Smart-Reel feature. If you’ve set it to ratchet, a quick spin of the wheel automatically flips it into free-spin mode; put the brakes on and it moves back to ratcheting. It’s a great way to rapidly move through documents and spreadsheets without having to manually change modes.

But while I liked the HyperScroll wheel, I didn’t love it. Every time it switches modes (from free spinning to ratcheting, say), there’s a loud and slightly disconcerting crunching sound that starts to grate after a while.

Pushing it in to click the scroll wheel also feels very soft and mushy — it’s imprecise compared with Razer’s own alternatives like the Viper V4 Pro, which is much crisper to click. It’s a welcome feature on the mouse, but it’s clearly inferior to the MagSpeed wheel you’ll find on the Logitech MX Master 4.

This was something I found time and again with the Basilisk V4 Pro: I’d often be pleased with one feature, only to observe a downside to it after I’d used it a little more. I was happy to see an extra side button that I could program to my needs, for instance, but then started to notice it getting in the way and messing up my two-side-button muscle memory.

Or take the RGB lighting as another example: it looks lovely (especially on the Spectrum Cycling setting), but considering you never look at the mouse when using it, and your hand covers it up anyway, it felt a little pointless. Perhaps Razer could have done away with it and eked more battery life out of the Basilisk.

Ultimately, the Basilisk V4 Pro hasn’t converted me back to its temptingly sculpted form factor. It offers a capable combination of features, buttons and comfort, and for many gamers — especially those with larger hands — it’ll be an attractive option. It’s still one of the best gaming mice around, despite its drawbacks.

But for every two steps forward, there’s one step back that tempers its progress, whether that’s the imperfect HyperScroll wheel, the hard-to-reach buttons for all but palm grip users or the questionable, battery-draining RGB. I went into this looking to rekindle my love for an old flame, but in the end, I found myself stuck in the Basilisk’s friend zone.

Razer Basilisk V4 Pro: Price & release date

• Available to buy now
• Priced at $169.99 / £169.99 / $289.95 AUD

The Razer Basilisk V4 Pro is priced at $169.99 / £169.99 / $289.95 AUD and is available now from Razer’s website and third-party retailers. Its price has crept up by $10 / £10 / $10 AUD versus the Basilisk V3 Pro 35K.

Razer Basilisk V4 Pro review: Specs

Should I buy the Razer Basilisk V4 Pro?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested the Razer Basilisk V4 Pro

• I spent a week testing the Razer Basilisk V4 Pro in various games to see how it managed in different genres
• I also explored its customization options in the Razer Synapse app to see how well it could be adapted to different needs

I tested the Razer Basilisk V4 Pro over the course of a week. I used it for everyday tasks like browsing the web and writing this review, and tried it in a range of different games, including Call of Duty, Football Manager 27 and Stardew Valley. Additionally, I explored its customization options in the Razer Synapse app to see how easy it was to adjust its settings.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: November 2026

• OpenAI used AI agents to analyze the Linux kernel, uncovering 948 distinct privilege-escalation vulnerabilities
• The automated pipeline generated exploits, validated findings, and helped create patches for Linux maintainers
• Researchers say AI is increasingly capable of finding and prioritizing serious software flaws at scale

OpenAI has spent more than a million dollars to analyze the Linux kernel code, and found thousands of vulnerabilities, including countless privilege escalation flaws that could have been quite problematic for the popular operating system.

The AI company published a new in-depth report describing how it built a five-stage pipeline that helped it surface thousands of vulnerabilities, identify which ones were actually dangerous, helped create patches, and ended up securing the Linux ecosystem some more.

The pipeline covered vulnerability discovery, dynamic validation, exploitability assessment, patch generation, and human review, and once it was done, it found 948 privilege escalation flaws in the Linux kernel.

Guerilla marketing

“The Linux kernel underpins Android devices, cloud infrastructure, supercomputers, and other systems used by billions of people,” OpenAI said.

“With more than 40 million lines of code, the kernel exposes a broad attack surface through system calls, networking, filesystems, and device drivers. We chose Linux to study how effectively frontier models could find vulnerabilities and demonstrate their security impact in a codebase of this scale and importance.”

While the efforts are certainly commendable (especially the fact that the entire ordeal cost roughly $1.21 million in API credits), the report also reads like guerilla marketing for the company’s latest cyber model. After all, the report never mentions its name, apart from the fact that it is an “upcoming cyber model” that found 900+ flaws, which is then compared to GPT 5.5-Cyber which “developed 24 local privilege escalation exploits.”

That being said, the results cannot (and should not) be ignored. The first stage used AI agents to identify security-relevant parts of the kernel and scan them for potential flaws, and within 12 hours, more than 2,300 candidates emerged. Then, OpenAI used additional agents to generate proof-of-concept (PoC) code and test each candidate. The entire process lasted 30 hours, and the system successfully reproduced 1,724 findings (roughly 75% of the initial candidates), while just 3% of the remaining findings apparently came from incorrect model analysis.

In the next step, the agents ranked the vulnerabilities by impact, developing 1,169 working local privilege escalation exploits and 291 PoCs demonstrating information disclosure. After eliminating double entries and false positives, the researchers arrived at 948 distinct escalation flaws and built patches for them.

OpenAI said its researchers reviewed all of the generated exploits and patches before reaching out to Linux kernel maintainers. Following guidance from the Linux community, the team ranked the flaws by priority, and some seem to have already been patched. The remaining findings are currently being addressed, it was said.

New exploitation techniques

“We provide the model with the relevant source code and prompt it with best practices in patch writing, such as performing static checks on the patch, following the software development practices used in nearby code, and performing variant analysis to make sure the patch is complete,” OpenAI explained the process.

Not all of the vulnerabilities were “brand new”, so to speak. OpenAI said Linux maintainers already patched 61 of the identified privilege elevation flaws by the time it completed its analysis, while another 43 had staging patches. Just under 300 (roughly a third) were being reported and discussed publicly, which is also worth putting into context.

On top of it all, the team examined 166 exploitation techniques and found 10 that were previously undocumented. They include kernel memory manipulation, page grooming, and privilege escalation through data-only attacks. OpenAI decided not to share the details on these flaws until they are fixed, in order not to give threat actors the upper hand.

• DreamHost discloses breach exposing FTP/SFTP credentials and some webmail account session data
• Attackers exploited a vulnerability in the company’s File Manager service to access customer accounts
• DreamHost reset affected passwords, offered credit monitoring, and urged users to strengthen account security

Popular web hosting provider DreamHost has confirmed threat actors walked away with login credentials to its customers’ hosting accounts, as well as webmail accounts.

It is now urging organizations to take steps to protect themselves, as it works to tighten up on security and make sure these things never happen again.

In a copy of a data breach notification letter sent to affected organizations, DreamHost said that roughly two weeks ago it discovered unauthorized third-party access to the server that runs its web-based File manager at files.DreamHost.com.

Access to the manager was compromised during August 2026, the company further said, adding that the threat actors walked in by exploiting a vulnerability in that software.

Payment data secure

The flaw, which the company did not detail or describe, granted the attackers access to FTP/SFTP usernames and passwords of logged-in individuals. Furthermore, they were able to reach some webmail systems and grab session information - including credentials - of a “limited number” of webmail users.

Cybercriminals having access to login credentials means that whatever information is stored inside File Manager and the webmail should also be considered compromised. Furthermore, it means the emails can be used to disseminate spam, launch phishing attacks, or even engage in highly disruptive Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks that could be almost impossible to detect.

DreamHost did not discuss the identity of the attackers, and did not say if they reached out with an extortion attempt. “We believe this as a deliberate attack, and our team worked around the clock to contain it,” is all it said on the matter.

The investigation is still ongoing so the information is inconclusive, but DreamHost said there is currently no evidence that the attackers accessed control panel login information or customer billing details. The company allegedly doesn’t store full payment card numbers and only retains a secure token representing the payment card information. This token cannot be used to make purchases elsewhere.

“However, our investigation is ongoing, and if we discover any significant additional information, we will update this post,” DreamHost said.

DreamHost’s response

In response to the incident, DreamHost said it “took steps” to stop the attackers from further accessing its systems, and to address the exploited vulnerability.

Active sessions of users who may have been affected have been terminated, and their passwords were reset. Therefore, if you try to log into your DreamHost account and see that the password was reset, consider your data breached. DreamHost claims to have implemented “additional security measures” to prevent such incidents from happening again, although it did not say exactly what was done.

“DreamHost also is working closely with outside legal advisors and security and forensics experts to ensure the incident is properly addressed,” it said.

In the meantime, it urged customers to review their statements and notify the police of any suspicious activity, as well as to obtain and monitor their credit card reports. The company also advised users place a fraud alert on their credit report. Detailed steps on what customers can do to defend themselves can be found on this link.

Finally, DreamHost offered all affected individuals one year of free credit report monitoring and identity theft protection services through Equifax which is more or less standard practice in these situations.

So far, no threat actors claimed responsibility for the breach, and the data has not yet leaked to the dark web.

This is not the first cybersecurity incident DreamHost has experienced. In 2012, attackers gained access to one of its database servers, potentially exposing customer FTB and shell-access passwords. The company responded by resetting affected passwords, although it reported no evidence of significant malicious activity against customer accounts. Five years later, in 2017, the company suffered a major Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against its DNS infrastructure, resulting in widespread connectivity issues for customers.

Via BleepingComputer

At a glance: Apple iMac 24-inch (M6) Review

Apple iMac (2026, M6) scorecard

How the Apple iMac (2026, M6) scored in our review

Value

4.5

Design

4.5

Performance

5

Overall

4.5

Group 1 Data

Product	Value ()	Design ()	Performance ()	Overall ()
Apple iMac (2026, M6)	4.5	4.5	5	4.5

Apple iMac 24-inch (M6) Review: Value for money

Apple's iMac with M6 isn't a revolution, but rather a lesson in squeezing more value out of a familiar package without raising the price. And I want to underscore the latter, as the iMac starts at $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,399 for the entry-level configuration, which is the same price as the M4 iMac — although Apple did increase the price of the M4 model earlier this year. For that price, you get a well-equipped Mac desktop that gives you everything you need to get started right out of the box.

That starts with the iMac itself, which is a modern, slim, colorful unit that won't take up much real estate, while giving you the canvas of a 24-inch 4.5K Retina display. Even without nano-texture glass — if you choose not to upgrade, as with my review unit — it's a colorful, vibrant, and rich experience that works well for everyday tasks and more creative work alike.

And, of course, there's the new M6 chip. It's a meaningful performance upgrade that keeps everything running smoothly, whether you're juggling everyday apps, working across multiple browser tabs, or getting stuck into more creative tasks. The addition of the Dual 16-core Neural Engine is another important part of the equation, helping accelerate AI-powered features, and giving this iMac more room to grow as Apple Intelligence continues to evolve. It's not just about getting a faster Mac today, but having a capable desktop that should feel ready for what's next, too.

Ultimately, it's excellent value for someone buying a new desktop Mac, whether it's their first iMac or an upgrade from an older machine. If you already have the M4 iMac, though, there's less reason to rush out and upgrade. This is a speed bump rather than a reinvention, but getting more performance for the same price is still a win.

If you currently have an older iMac or an aging Mac, and want a desktop that gives you everything you need out of the box — including a great display — there’s really no better value in Apple’s lineup.

Apple iMac 24-inch (M6) Review: Design

• Familiar, colorful all-in-one design
• Immersive 24-inch 4.5K Retina display
• You can still get it with nano-texture glass

Apple's iMac is still instantly recognizable as the latest generation of its iconic all-in-one. The new iMac with M6 looks just like the iMac with M4, M3, and M1 that came before it. It's still plenty colorful, and offers an expansive 24-inch 4.5K Retina display, all in a remarkably thin build that takes up minimal space wherever you decide to place it.

On the front, the 24-inch screen is surrounded by a white bezel, with the bottom featuring a chin in whichever color you've chosen. I'm testing the Purple model, just like last time, which is a light, likely Wonka-approved take on the shade. The rear and sides feature a darker, matte aluminum version of purple that really pops, while the giant Apple logo remains front and center on the back.

For connectivity, the left side has a headphone jack — yes, the iMac has a proper audio jack — while the rear houses the power connection, which magnetically snaps into place. It's convenient, though not a quick-release connection like MagSafe on the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro. Around back, you'll either get two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports or four, depending on the configuration. I'm testing the higher-end option with all four, and the power adapter also features a 2.5Gb Ethernet port.

Not much else is different here, especially since Apple introduced this design way back with the M1. If purple isn't your shade, there are six other color options: Orange, Blue, Yellow, Green, Silver, and Pink. You'll also get a color-matched keyboard and Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad in the box, along with a matching USB-C to USB-C cable.

The display is really good, with a 4480 x 2520 resolution and up to 500 nits of brightness. Using it as my daily Mac, I've found it to be a great screen for just about everything. Colors pop, there's plenty of detail, and the resolution scales nicely whether I'm checking email, browsing the web, replying to messages, putting together presentations in Keynote, scrolling through Photos, or hopping on a FaceTime call.

It's equally enjoyable for watching content, whether that's a full-screen YouTube video or something playing in a window while I work. And for more creative tasks, there's plenty of detail and color to work with when editing photos or videos.

Apple iMac 24-inch (M6) Review: Specs

Apple iMac 24-inch (M6) Review: Performance

• Apple's M6 chip brings a welcome performance boost over M4, M3, or M1
• Everyday multitasking feels effortless, even with 16GB of RAM
• Improved Neural Engine makes AI and creative tasks feel snappy

As I hinted at above, the main change with Apple's iMac for 2026 is the processor. Apple's all-in-one computer is jumping from M4 to M6, and there are still two main configurations to choose from. For most folks, the entry-level iMac should be more than enough. Priced at $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$3,499, you get an M6 chip with a 10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and Dual 16-core Neural Engine, alongside 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

For $1,699 / £1,699 / AU$3,699, you can step up to an M6 with a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, along with the same Dual 16-core Neural Engine, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. That extra horsepower should come in handy for more creative tasks and on-device AI functionality.

It's also worth noting that neither configuration comes with a price increase over the previous generation. Both feature improvements to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, now sitting at Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, along with Thread connectivity to help with the smart home.

I've been testing the step-up model with the fully specced M6 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. Out of the box, setup was a breeze, and the iMac is running macOS 27.2. Here's a pro tip: as part of the onboarding process, you can choose to set up your new Mac using an iPhone or iPad, which speeds things up a bit.

From there, you're presented with a welcome screen; hit Enter, and you're ready to start using your iMac however you'd like. And, as has been the case with most Macs since Apple made the jump to its own chips — Apple Silicon — everyday performance isn't really an issue. In my daily use, I've had no trouble running Safari and Google Chrome, both with more than a dozen tabs open, alongside Messages, Mail, Photos, Pixelmator Pro, and Slack, all without skipping a beat. Thanks to the M6 chip, multitasking is effortless, and everything feels zippy and responsive. That's particularly impressive given that this configuration has just 16GB of RAM.

One key advantage of the M6 is its Dual 16-core Neural Engine, compared with the single Neural Engine in earlier iMac models. This helps power Siri AI and other Apple Intelligence features, and I've found some of the multimodal capabilities particularly snappy. For instance, I can ask Siri to create a calendar event based on an invitation displayed on my screen in Mail or Gmail, and even have it invite other people. You can type your request into Spotlight or use the built-in microphones to get started.

Similarly, as part of the latest updates to Apple Creator Studio, Generative Fill within Pixelmator Pro works quite snappily here. It's also easy enough to ask it to try again if the result isn't quite right. You can also use Siri AI within Numbers, Pages, and Keynote for a little extra assistance. I've found myself making good use of the big screen, too, starting with a photo edit in the Photos app using tools like Expand or Clean Up before sending it into Pixelmator Pro to refine things further. The Super Resolution functionality is particularly handy for boosting overall image quality.

Previously, my iMac with M4, which was specced with a beefier 32GB of RAM, scored 3,646 in single-core and 14,724 in multi-core testing with Geekbench 6.3. The iMac with M6 surpassed those results, scoring 4,553 in single-core and 20,038 in multi-core with Geekbench 6. That's roughly a 25% improvement in single-core performance and a 36% jump in multi-core performance over the M4.

We also ran Geekbench 7, where the M6 iMac scored 3,931 in single-core and 21,374 in multi-core testing. While those results aren't directly comparable to my previous Geekbench 6.3 scores, they further demonstrate the kind of performance this machine can deliver.

It's an impressive leap over two generations of Apple Silicon, and one that matches my real-world experience over the past few days. The iMac with M6 feels zippy, responsive, and ready for a challenge, even with just 16GB of RAM inside.

The iMac remains the centerpiece of Apple's all-in-one desktop lineup. Unlike the Mac mini or Mac Studio, you're getting a complete system that's ready to go right out of the box. That means a screen, speakers, ports, keyboard, and mouse are all included, making it an excellent choice for someone buying their first desktop Mac, upgrading from an older model or even a PC, or a business looking for a straightforward, all-in-one solution.

The iMac has always served a lot of different use cases, and Apple's latest iteration doesn't change or revolutionize that. But a speed-bump upgrade can still be a worthwhile one, especially when it brings more performance without increasing the price. You're getting more computer for the same money, and that's always welcome.

Should I buy the Apple iMac with M6?

How I tested the Apple iMac with M6

I've spent the past five days putting the Apple iMac with M6 through its paces. After unboxing it, I set it up in two different spaces — my kitchen island and my desk — to get a sense of how it fits into different environments. I downloaded a range of apps for work and play, including Google Chrome, Pixelmator Pro, Final Cut Pro, Slack, and Geekbench.

I used it as my daily work machine, juggling browser tabs, messages, and creative projects, while also running benchmarks and more demanding tasks. Outside of work, I played games, took calls, watched movies, and listened to music to get a feel for its overall performance and entertainment experience.

First reviewed November 2026.

At a glance: Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display scorecard

How the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display scored in our review

Value

3

Design

4.5

Performance

5

Battery life

5

Overall

4.5

Group 1 Data

Product	Value ()	Design ()	Performance ()	Battery life ()	Overall ()
Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	3	4.5	5	5	4.5

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max): Value for money

Starting at $2,899 / £2,899 / AU$4,599 for the 14-inch version, and $3,399 / £3,399 / AU$5,499 for the 16-inch model, and going all the way up to an astonishing $14,549 / £14,549 / AU$22,424 for the fully specced-out model, the question of value isn’t so much about price, but about what this laptop can enable you to do.

Put simply, if you just want a MacBook that will excel at day-to-day tasks you’d be much better off buying a MacBook Air (M5), and even for more ambitious workloads, the recently-announced MacBook Pro (M6), which starts at $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,199, will likely more than suffice. Neither of those, of course, feature a touchscreen, but I wouldn’t suggest buying any model of the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display for the touchscreen alone.

Thankfully, this version of the MacBook Pro has other features that help to justify the higher price tag, including tandem OLED screen technology, a lighter design, and more powerful components. Despite being older than the M6 chip, both the M5 Pro and M5 Max outperform it, so if you need a seriously powerful laptop, and image quality is of the utmost importance, the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display could be a worthy investment, especially if its raw performance means you can complete projects faster, allowing you to take on more work, for example.

If you don’t need that kind of horsepower, then there are much more affordable options you should consider, tempting as the touchscreen functionality or OLED display might be.

Compared to rival RTX Spark laptops, the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is much more competitive. The Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark starts at $4,399.99 / £3,899.99 / AU$7,999, though it comes with a lot more memory, packing 64GB.

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max): Design

• PROLED XDR screen is a clear highlight
• Slightly lighter than previous models
• iPhone-like Dynamic Island replaces the controversial ‘notch’ around the webcam

Given that the MacBook Pro design hasn’t changed in years, the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display in both size variants comes with some major tweaks in this department. This isn’t, though, the kind of overhaul we saw when Apple introduced the 16-inch and 14-inch MacBook Pros that replaced the 15-inch and 13-inch models, respectively, around five years ago; instead, this is a more subtle refinement of the design, and pretty much all of the tweaks are a result of the new display, so let’s start there.

Apple calls the new PROLED XDR screen "the best display on a laptop" and, to be fair, it has a good reason to be boastful. Previous screens on the MacBook Pro were already pretty darn good, and now Apple has swapped the mini-LED tech for tandem OLED. This essentially uses two layers of organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) on top of each other, rather than just a single layer, so peak brightness can go even higher, while the display can remain power-efficient. The PROLED XDR screen can achieve 2,000 nits of peak brightness, whereas the mini-LED screen of previous MacBook Pros had a peak brightness of 1,600.

1

2

3

SDXC Card Slot

Memory card slot for importing photos and videos straight from your camera

HDMI & USB-C port

On the right-hand side there's a full size HDMI port and one of three USB-C Thunderbolt 5 ports

Touch ID button

This button powers on the MacBook Pro, and can scan your fingerprint to log in

Side view of the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)

Explore

Combine that with the usual benefits we’ve come to expect from OLED displays, namely the higher contrast ratios and lack of halo effects (where there’s noticeable bloom surrounding light colors that bleeds into pixels that should be showing darker, or completely black, colors) that come thanks to each OLED pixel being independently controlled (including being able to be turned off completely), rather than relying on an LED backlight, which offers less precise control over the pixels in the display.

The contrast ratio of the PROLED XDR screen is an incredible 10,000,000:1, a pretty huge bump over the 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio of the previous model with a Liquid Retina XDR display. Contrast ratio is a way of comparing the brightest white to the darkest black of a display, and the greater the difference, the more vibrant the image quality, so you can forget about washed-out colors and blacks that look more gray, and enjoy rich, deep colors that really pop compared to darker tones, and even the total blackness that OLED technology enables.

While MacBook displays have supported the P3 color gamut, which is particularly important for people working with video who require accurate colors, the PROLED XDR screen also supports the Adobe RGB gamut, which offers wider coverage for green and cyan colors, and is popular with photographers and designers.

The addition of touch functionality has also had implications for the design. The hinges of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display have been tweaked to reduce movement and flex when you touch the screen. I’d have loved it if Apple had taken this opportunity to increase the amount by which the screen can be pushed back, ideally introducing hinges to allow the touchscreen to lie flat on a desk, or even flip behind the keyboard to turn the laptop into an iPad-like device.

This would have made the redesign of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display even more ambitious, and would have likely meant much more work for Apple to ensure the macOS operating system works with a 2-in-1 laptop form factor, but it would have made the whole idea of a touchscreen much more viable. Instead, we’re still stuck with a traditional clamshell laptop design, so touchscreen gestures require you hovering your arm over the keyboard as you jab horizontally at the screen — it's not the most natural-feeling way to interact with a device, and this was one of Steve Jobs’ biggest criticisms of touchscreen laptops when, as CEO, he dismissed the idea of Apple making one all those years ago.

The PROLED XDR screen also allows for thinner bezels around it, and the once-controversial notch that surrounded the webcam has been replaced by Apple's Dynamic Island, as seen on the iPhone, which gives you quick touch access to controls such as media playback, AirDrop sharing and accessing Spotlight. It’s one of the best examples of Apple tweaking macOS to better make use of the touchscreen, and I can confidently predict that the Dynamic Island will be less hated than the notch, which was just dead space that intruded on the desktop.

The more compact Dynamic Island and thinner bezels mean the screen of this 16-inch Pro is slightly larger than on previous models at 16.3 inches vs 16.2 inches, with a higher resolution of 3472 x 2266 pixels vs 3456 x 2234 pixels.

The OLED screen technology (and new thermal system that’s used to keep the laptop’s components cool) has also helped Apple reduce the weight of the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) by half a pound — that's 15% lighter — and make it around 1mm thinner.

The MacBook Pro was always a great showcase that proved powerful workstation laptops don’t need to be big and bulky, so it's impressive that Apple has been able to make this new model both lighter and thinner.

The final design change is a relatively minor one, but one that will likely prove to be very popular. Apple has returned to having an illuminated Apple logo on the back of the lid — it's a nod to the past, while also helping the latest MacBook Pro stand out more compared to the previous models.

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026): Specs

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max): Performance

• No M6 version with PROLED XDR Display
• Touchscreen is responsive, but not an essential addition
• Very fast SSD

I’m going to be honest: I think Apple has got itself into a little bit of a pickle with its M-series naming convention and release cadence. For a company that was often lauded for offering an elegant simplicity here, compared to the complexity of some competitors, it’s made a bit of a confusing mess.

Want the very latest M-series architecture, the M6, which is the company’s first-ever 2nm compute chip? Well, if so, you can forget about the PROLED XDR Display, as Apple is only offering it in the 14-inch MacBook Pro with Mini-LED screen. If you want the M6 and don’t care about a touchscreen or OLED, but prefer the larger 16-inch screen size, then you’re out of luck.

If you want the most powerful chips in a MacBook, then you’re left with the previous-generation M5 Pro and Max chips. But, getting an M5 Max-powered MacBook Pro doesn’t guarantee it’s the most powerful chip, as the default M5 Max chip that comes with the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch features an 18-core CPU and 32-core GPU, but you can upgrade (for $300 / £300 extra) to a more powerful M5 Max with a 40-core GPU. To be honest, unless you’re working with extremely graphically-intensive projects, the standard M5 Max chip will be more than enough, and even the M5 Pro will handle pretty much anything you throw at it.

As I mentioned, if you want the M6 generation and the improvements it brings, namely with a smaller 2nm process, which should lead to better power efficiency, and a dual 16-core Neural Engine for improved on-device AI performance, then you’ll need to forego both the PROLED XDR Display and 16-inch screen size.

Benchmarks

How the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) performed in our suite of benchmark tests

< Prev

3DMark

Next >

3DMark: Steel Nomad

4402

3DMark: Steel Solar Bay

78412

020,00040,00060,00080,000

Score

3DMark

Data

Product	3DMark: Steel Nomad (Score)	3DMark: Steel Solar Bay (Score)
Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	4402	78412

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: Write

13335

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: Read

12783

03,7507,50011,25015,000

Score

Blackmagic Disk Speed Data

Product	Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: Write (Score)	Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: Read (Score)
Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	13335	12783

Geekbench 6.7.2: Single-Core

4359

Geekbench 6.7.2: Multi-Core

30327

Geekbench 7.1.0: Single-Core

3766

Geekbench 7.1.0: Multi-Core

35679

Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Single Precision Score

6200

Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Half Precision Score

47515

Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Quantized Score

64473

020,00040,00060,00080,000

Score

Geekbench Data

Product	Geekbench 6.7.2: Single-Core (Score)	Geekbench 6.7.2: Multi-Core (Score)	Geekbench 7.1.0: Single-Core (Score)	Geekbench 7.1.0: Multi-Core (Score)	Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Single Precision Score (Score)	Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Half Precision Score (Score)	Geekbench AI 1.8 (Core ML/Neural Engine): Quantized Score (Score)
Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	4359	30327	3766	35679	6200	47515	64473

PugetBench for Adobe CC (Photoshop)

18431

PugetBench for Adobe CC (Premiere Pro)

155248

050,000100,000150,000200,000

Score

PugetBench Data

Product	PugetBench for Adobe CC (Photoshop) (Score)	PugetBench for Adobe CC (Premiere Pro) (Score)
Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	18431	155248

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)

109

037.575112.5150

fps

Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra, 1920 x 1200) Data

Product	Value
Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	109

1 of 5

The MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display model Apple sent to me for review comes with the M5 Max chip with 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU, 128GB of unified memory, and 2TB of storage. That’s a hefty list of specs, and would set you back a similarly hefty $7,399 / £7,399 / AU$11,699.

I’ve previously tested the M5 and M5 Pro in the 14-inch MacBook Pros launched earlier this year and late last year, and as expected, the M5 Max in my 16-inch Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is incredibly powerful, with macOS and its built-in apps all launching quickly and feeling fast and snappy.

When it comes to the touchscreen, macOS again feels fast and responsive, and using a finger to quickly browse up and down a website, selecting options in a dialog box or menu, and moving windows around the screen all feels natural, especially if you’ve ever used an iPhone or an iPad.

Unlike people who have only used Macs and MacBooks from the once touchscreen-phobic Apple, I’ve had extensive experience using Windows laptops and Chromebooks with touchscreens, so using one on the MacBook Pro isn’t as big of a culture shock as it might be to some. While it worked well, and there are some nice touches (forgive the pun), such as pressing down your finger on certain tools in Final Cut Pro to open up a radial menu for more precise touch control, I have to say that Windows 11, Chrome OS, and Google’s new Googlebook OS are better suited to touch controls.

This might come as little surprise, as this is Apple’s first MacBook to have a touchscreen, while Windows laptops and Chromebooks have had them for decades, and in the case of Chrome OS and Googlebook OS, Google has used its experience working on Android to develop the operating system. And, for as much grief as a lot of us (myself included) gave Windows 8 when it launched back in 2012, it inspired Microsoft to make a touchscreen-friendly interface, elements of which are still found in Windows 11, primarily with larger, easier to tap, buttons and menus.

Currently, macOS Tahoe still looks and feels like an operating system that’s best used with a traditional mouse and keyboard, because that’s what it is. But that also means some elements of the user interface, such as menus, feel a bit fiddly to control via touch.

Hopefully this will change if more MacBooks come out with touchscreens. But, because Apple has decided to put its first laptop touchscreen on its most powerful (and expensive) MacBooks, there’s a danger that the company will end up thinking that because the numbers of touchscreen MacBook users is so small, it’s not worth making big changes to the interface.

Another issue I have with Apple’s decision to put a touchscreen on its highest-end MacBook Pros, rather than a more mainstream MacBook Air or Neo — something I’ve written about — is that touchscreen gestures and controls often aren’t the best way to control a laptop when you're performing complex tasks where precision is key. Sure, you can pull up a virtual piano in Garage Band and tap on the keys on screen, but while this is handy for quick ideas, you don’t want to play or write an entire song using it.

Most professionals will have peripherals, such as physical MIDI keyboards, for precise control. It’s the same with photographers and digital artists — using your fingers to pinch and zoom an image feels fast and natural, as does scribbling some notes or doodles, but for long-term use, many professionals will use a drawing tablet. If the MacBook’s PROLED XDR Display was compatible with the Apple Pencil stylus, that would make it a more useful tool for professionals, but it's not, which is a rather odd omission.

One touchscreen-friendly change Apple has made to macOS, and which I’m a big fan of, is adding an iPhone-like Dynamic Island where the notch around the webcam used to be. Tapping this gives you quick context-relevant tools, such as media controls when watching a video. Spotlight search and Siri AI are now located here as well. This is a great addition that adds value to the MacBook Pro’s touchscreen, and I’d like to see it expanded, and more touch-friendly UI elements to make the touchscreen a must-have, rather than nice-to-have-but-far-from-essential, which is what it feels like at the moment.

The tandem OLED tech powering the PROLED XDR Display is a much bigger deal, and likely the reason why most people will consider the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display over the standard model. The previous Mini-LED screen was already one of the best displays you’d find on a laptop, and thanks to tandem OLED, this new screen is even better. Straight out of the box without needing any calibration, the colors are bright and vibrant — so much so that I was surprised to see that the screen was only at 50% brightness.

Placing my 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M5 chip and Mini-LED screen next to the 16-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch really highlighted just how much better the PROLED XDR screen is. The Mini-LED looked dimmer, despite it being at 100% brightness, even with the PROLED XDR screen remaining at 50%. Now, as I said, the Mini-LED display of the (slightly) older MacBook Pro is no slouch, so to see such a stark difference in image quality is a big deal, especially for people who want a laptop for working with photos, videos and digital art. The new support for Adobe RGB color gamut is another big plus here, though as usual for Mac devices you’ll want to turn off the True Tone feature — it tweaks the colors of the screen depending on the ambient light you’re working in, which can make what’s on the screen look better to you in that moment, but could lead to color inaccuracies in a production workflow.

I won’t delve too deep into the performance of the M5 Max, as it’s been in other Apple devices for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve used a MacBook running it (I have tested both the previous M5 and M5 Pro MacBook Pro models).

According to Apple’s benchmarks, the M5 Max is around nine times faster than the M4 Max when it comes to ‘first token performance’, while AI image generation is apparently around six times faster. If those are the kind of stats that excite you, then enjoy!

In our benchmark tests, compared to the M5 MacBook Pro with a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU, the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) with an 18-core CPU and 40-core GPU unsurprisingly outperformed the older MacBook Pro when it came to graphic-intensive tests. In the 3D Mark Wild Life Extreme graphics test, for example, the M5 MacBook Pro scored 73.6fps compared to the M5 Max’s 214.1fps.

With gaming, the M5 MacBook Pro hit 11fps at 1920 x 1200 with Ray Tracing set to Ultra, while the M5 Max model managed a much more playable 38.75fps. This is a good example of the graphical performance gap, but if you want a laptop to game on you’re still better off buying a dedicated gaming laptop, which is a bit of a shame, as the PROLED XDR Display makes games look fantastic.

The SSD inside the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) offers up to 14.5GB/s speeds, with Apple claiming it’s twice as fast as the SSD in the previous generation, and in our tests it scored a very good 13,334.7MB/s and 12,782.7MB/s write and read speeds, respectively. A fast SSD like this is important if you’re working on large files and complex projects.

The SSD in the Surface Laptop Ultra with RTX Spark N1X chip scored a rather paltry 1,921MB/s write speeds in comparison. Check out our benchmark result charts for more comparisons.

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) review: Battery Life

Battery life results

How long does the battery last?

Versus Comparison Data

Attribute	Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)	Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (2024, M4 Pro)	Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark
Battery life video test	24.35	21.5	11.383333333333333

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (2024, M4 Pro)Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark

VS

Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)Apple MacBook Pro 16-inch (2024, M4 Pro)Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark

Battery life video test (hours, mins)

+13%24:21:00

21:30:00

Our battery life benchmark involves playing a looped 1080p video at 50% brightness until the laptop turns off.

Apple has claimed the new 16-inch MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display lasts up to 24 hours on battery when streaming videos, and up to 17 hours when browsing the web, and I found those claims to be pretty much spot on, with the device lasting an incredible 24 hours and 21 minutes in our battery test, which involves playing a looped 1080p video at 50% brightness.

It blows past the MacBook Pro 16-inch (M4 Pro, 2024), which managed 21 hours and 32 minutes in the same test, and over double the 11 hours and 23 minutes the Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark hit. The MacBook Pro is able to sustain its performance when on battery life, rather than throttling it to conserve energy, so you’ll be able to go multiple work days on a single charge while still being productive, though of course the battery will drain more quickly if you’re using it for more intensive tasks.

Should I buy the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)?

Also consider

How I tested the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max)

• I used as my main work laptop for five days
• I used a variety of apps during my testing
• I have extensive experience reviewing MacBooks, laptops and Chromebooks

As soon as Apple sent me the Apple MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max) I started using it as my daily laptop, and even wrote some of this review on it. I tested numerous apps including Photoshop, and played Cyberpunk 2077 on it to see how it performs, and to see how good the PROLED XDR Display looks. I also viewed and edited some very high-quality photos by photographer Paul Reiffer, and supplied by Apple.

Throughout my time with the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display 16-inch (2026, M5 Max), I used both the standard keyboard and touchpad, and the touchscreen.

I’ve been reviewing laptops, including MacBooks and touchscreen laptops, for nearly 20 years, and have used that experience to inform this review.

• First reviewed: November 2026
• Read more about how we test

At a glance: Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M6) Review

Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (2026, M6) scorecard

How the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (2026, M6) scored in our review

Value

4

Design

4

Performance

4.5

Battery life

4.5

Overall

4

Group 1 Data

Product	Value ()	Design ()	Performance ()	Battery life ()	Overall ()
Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (2026, M6)	4	4	4.5	4.5	4

Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M6) Review: Value for money

No, this isn't the headline-grabbing new MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen and a thinner, lighter build. Alongside introducing those new models, Apple is sticking with a trend I'm a big fan of: yearly updates that ensure the entry-level MacBook Pro remains a solid proposition, with Apple's latest silicon and other top-end specs under the hood.

Apple hasn't changed much with the 2026 14-inch MacBook Pro, but it didn't need to. As the entry-level Pro, and a step up from the MacBook Air in terms of specs, it offers more ports in a familiar design that's slightly bulkier than the Air, but still plenty portable. You also get a very capable 14-inch Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED display with a notch at the top, a clicky-clacky keyboard with nice travel, a larger trackpad, and great sound with Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos support.

The big change is the M6 chip under the hood, with this model joining the still-available M5 Pro and M5 Max models. Those chips, while older, are more powerful, but don't let the M6 Pro's entry-level positioning fool you: Apple's latest silicon is no slouch, delivering excellent everyday performance with plenty of power for more intensive tasks, including photo and video editing, coding, and AI work.

I've been using the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 for the best part of a week, and it's been smooth sailing. It's handled my daily mix of productivity and creative work in apps like Slack, Safari, Google Chrome, Notes, Pages, Pixelmator Pro, and Final Cut Pro, running alongside Messages and FaceTime, effortlessly, without me needing to quit or close anything. The configuration I'm testing pairs the M6's 12-core CPU — split between two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores — with a 12-core GPU and Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and the base 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.

Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M6) Review: Design

• Same design as M5 Pro, with plenty of ports
• Excellent 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display with ProMotion
• Comfortable keyboard, oversized trackpad, and 12MP Center Stage camera

The M6 14-inch MacBook Pro sticks with the well-loved and well-tested design of recent Pro models. It's a little bulkier than the Air on account of its plentiful connectivity options, which include three Thunderbolt 4/USB-C ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, a headphone jack, and a MagSafe 3 port.

It's the same sleek design as the M5, M4, and even M3 versions that came before it. It's a design I know well, and one I use daily myself, and I appreciate that it doesn't feel too light or flimsy, but also not too heavy at just 3.4 pounds.

It keeps the same overall dimensions as last year's 14-inch Pro at 12.31 x 8.71 x 0.61 inches. You also get the same two color choices, Space Black or Silver; my review model is Silver, and it contrasts quite nicely with the darker, mirrored Apple logo on the rear — unlike the logo on the newly redesigned touchscreen MacBook Pro, though, this one doesn't light up.

The M6 Pro also doesn't pack Apple's fancy new tandem OLED display, which is a stunner, with especially impressive contrast and the added benefit of not having the notch. The 14.2-inch Liquid Retina XDR display here is no slouch, though, and even with that higher-end model's arrival, this remains one of the best laptop screens on the market.

It supports refresh rates up to 120Hz thanks to ProMotion, and delivers a 3024 x 1964 resolution with vibrant colors and excellent contrast, including wonderfully inky blacks. I've found it great for photo editing in Photos or Pixelmator Pro, video editing in iMovie, CapCut, or Final Cut Pro, streaming videos, FaceTime calls, and even the more straightforward task of writing this review. I always appreciate those inky blacks as I type away.

I've become used to the rectangular cutout notch centered at the top of the display, and I'm still confident that if you've never experienced it before, any initial annoyance at its presence will quickly fade. I am eyeing the pill-shaped Dynamic Island on the more expensive MacBook Pro, but it's really not a necessity.

Here, the menu bar wraps around the notch, which houses a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera that keeps you in the frame and looking sharp during video calls. It also supports Portrait mode to blur your background, and you can use the edges of the screen as a ring light in low lighting conditions.

Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M6) Review: Specs

Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M6) Review: Performance

• M6 is an excellent chip
• Handles everyday multitasking, creative apps, and gaming with ease
• Apple's N1 chip brings support for latest Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standards

Any Mac with Apple silicon really pushes the value meter, and the M6 inside the MacBook Pro is no different. But that also means that if you have an M5, M4, M3, or even an older MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, and its performance is still good enough for your needs, you likely don't need to rush to upgrade just yet.

The M6 14-inch Pro sits alongside the M5 Pro and M5 Max, and only one chip configuration is available as the entry-level option. It's a 12-core CPU — made up of two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores — alongside a 12-core GPU and a Dual 16-core Neural Engine. While the M5 Pro and M5 Max can outperform it on the GPU front, those chips don't feature efficiency cores in the CPU or the doubled-up Neural Engine. The M6 starts with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage — the configuration I've been testing — but can be specced with up to 32GB of RAM and 4TB of storage.

So just how good is the M6 chip inside the 14-inch MacBook Pro? Well, quantitatively, it scored 4,752 in Geekbench 6's single-core test and 21,184 in multi-core. In Geekbench 7, it hit 4,027 single-core and 22,305 multi-core. Compare that to the M5-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro, which scored 4,288 and 17,926 in Geekbench 6, respectively. That's a considerable improvement of around 11% in single-core performance and 18% in multi-core. It also shows off the M6's multitasking chops and efficiency, the latter of which is mission-critical for a laptop with a battery inside — more on that below.

On the storage front, the SSD is largely unchanged. In the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, the M6 MacBook Pro clocked read speeds of 6,684.6 MB/s and write speeds of 6,501.6 MB/s. That's essentially on par with the M5 model, which managed 6,619.7 MB/s read and 6,517 MB/s write. So, no major improvement here, but not a step backwards either.

Over the past few days, I've put the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 through its paces as my daily machine. I regularly use Slack, Google Chrome, Safari — both browsers with dozens of tabs open, as I don't love closing them — Notes, Photos, Pixelmator Pro, Siri, and Music, alongside Messages and the occasional FaceTime or iPhone Mirroring session. I also put it through some video exports and project-creation work, mainly for social video at 2K or 4K, using iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and Edits. I also spent some time gaming with titles like Mini Metro, Mini Motorways, and Disney Dreamlight Valley.

Apple Intelligence is another area where the M6 feels right at home. Siri AI was particularly quick in my testing, especially with multimodal tasks, such as asking it about items on-screen or handling multi-step processes. Apple's Creator Studio improvements also ran smoothly, including Generative Fill in Pixelmator Pro. These are the kinds of tasks that show off the M6's Neural Engine, and I didn't have to wait around for results.

Generative Fill in Pixelmator Pro, as part of Creator Studio, is really impressive, and while it can take a beat to process, it's on a par with Photoshop's Generative Fill. Take a look at the example below, where I added a river below a photo of a Rivian R2 in a parking garage.

With plenty of apps open and a demanding workload running, I did occasionally hear the fans kick in, but never for sustained periods. For the most part, the MacBook Pro remained quiet, even with my usual mix of productivity and creative apps running.

The M6 doesn't quite beat the M5 Pro or M5 Max 14-inch MacBook Pro models for more intensive tasks, like larger video exports. It can certainly hold its own, but those jobs take a little longer, and the fans might kick in along the way. For everyday use and then some, though, whether that's photo or video editing, music creation, or even gaming, the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 easily holds its own.

And that's the case whether you're plugged in or unplugged and running on battery. I didn't notice any performance throttling when switching to battery power, so you can expect the same capable performance without being tethered to an outlet.

Beyond adding the M6 chip, Apple also upgraded the connectivity specs, with the in-house-made N1 wireless chip bringing support for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and the Thread smart-home standard.

Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro (M6) Review: Battery Life

• All-day battery life
• Beats Apple's own web-browsing estimate of 16 hours
• Lasted an impressive 19 hours and 5 minutes in our browsing test

Unsurprisingly, the 14-inch MacBook Pro remains a battery-life champ with the M6 inside. Since Apple switched to its own in-house chips, performance, efficiency, and battery life have all improved compared to its previous Intel-powered laptops.

The M6 model features a 72.4-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery like the M5 before it, with Apple promising up to 24 hours of video playback, 16 hours of web browsing, and, as always, "all-day battery life." You can still charge it either with MagSafe — Apple includes a USB-C to MagSafe cable in the box — or via USB-C.

Even with pretty heavy use, the 14-inch MacBook Pro can comfortably last a full workday, and might stretch to multiple days without charging, depending on what you're doing. That's seriously impressive — and as I noted above, performance stays fast whether you're plugged in or running on battery.

Should I buy the Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6?

How I tested the Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6

I spent five days using the 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 as one of my daily work machines, taking it through the kind of workload I'd typically throw at my own MacBook. That meant plenty of writing, editing, and multitasking, with dozens of tabs open across Safari and Chrome, with Slack, Notes, Messages, and other everyday apps running alongside creative tools like Pixelmator Pro.

I also tested how well the M6 handled more demanding tasks, including video exports, Apple Intelligence features, and gaming. I compared its performance with the M5 Pro-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro and an M4 14-inch MacBook Pro, and I also used it plugged in and on battery to see whether performance changed when untethered.

First reviewed November 2026.

• A gamer took the GTA 6 'extended look' trailer and fudged it to work with DLSS 5 and Frame Generation
• The results posted on YouTube look impressive, albeit with some notable glitches
• It'll actually be possible to run the game on console, piped through a PC with an Nvidia GPU to add DLSS 5 and other visual trickery, at the cost of some input lag
• …and some believe that trade-off might be worth it

Will the best way to play GTA 6 at launch be to pipe it from your PS5 to your PC with an Nvidia GPU and then back out to your TV?

No, it absolutely won't, but a convoluted setup along these lines could be the optimal way to experience the game visually (with some major caveats) — before the PC version arrives — given that you can fudge the addition of DLSS 5 this way.

How does this work? Wccftech picked up the story of the Redditor who proposed this experiment, and actually applied DLSS 5 to the GTA 6 'extended look' trailer that Rockstar brought out a couple of months ago.

To be specific, this gamer gave the trailer a DLSS 5 makeover with 3x Frame Generation tripling the frame rate from 30 fps to 90 fps, via an app called Veyra, which is a GPU video enhancement tool for Windows on GitHub.

The Redditor explains: "I used Veyra 2.1.1, a tool that can take a video source (video files, capture cards, Remote Play) and apply Neural Rendering [DLSS 5], upscaling, and Frame Generation in real time. I also integrated MFG Unlocker into it so I can unlock Multi Frame Generation on my RTX 4080 and experiment with 3x/4x FG on 40-series cards."

MFG Unlocker is an experimental tool (again on GitHub) which the Redditor is using for getting Multi Frame Generation on their RTX 4080, in case you were wondering. (As ever, download any third-party software entirely at your own risk).

As you can see in the YouTube clip below, the results of this polishing of the official trailer are very impressive in some ways. That said, there are clear issues with artifacts and glitching in terms of the characters and lighting, with the best results seen in the background environment details.

It's pretty remarkable given that this is a fairly aggressive implementation of DLSS 5 by all accounts, fudged on top of a video with no relevant game data (the likes of vector and geometry data) to guide the neural rendering.

The Redditor's plan is to use a console-to-PC pipeline to play GTA 6 on the PS5, with the PC effectively sitting between the console and final output on the TV, adding DLSS 5 and jazzing up the visuals.

This means taking the PS5 and hooking it up to a 4K HDR capture card in the PC, running it through Veyra with the RTX 4080, then outputting to the 4K TV. It's a roundabout way of using the Nvidia GPU as an external graphics card for the console, except all the GeForce GPU is doing is applying DLSS and/or MFG to the image the PS5 has rendered — although there is a price to pay in terms of input lag, of course.

Analysis: capture capers

The Redditor doesn't actually have their PS5 yet (although they've ordered it) to try out this setup fully, but others on Reddit have run such a setup, and in fact it's not that uncommon (albeit still far from a mainstream concept).

One gamer says that they've played GTA 5 using an Elgato capture card with NitLink software, and "the gameplay was 100 times better", and while "there is a noticeable input lag" they claim that "it's completely acceptable — around 1-2 milliseconds."

That little input lag seems a stretch (to say the least), and overall, there's some dispute on whether this way of gaming is viable. Some gamers say that such a setup is just too laggy, while others claim it provides a decently playable experience. Of course, it will depend on what type of game you're playing — a fast-reaction shooter, for example, isn't going to do well with any extra lag being introduced, and you're certainly going to get some.

Really, the success of this kind of console to PC capture card to TV setup is going to heavily depend on a number of factors. The quality of the capture card (a PCIe board would be best, rather than one connected via USB) and the related software are the primary factors, and by all accounts, a higher-end Elgato with NitLink gives you a good chance of enjoying your PS5 games with an Nvidia GPU souping them up using DLSS 5 and Frame Generation.

I'm betting there will also be an element of subjectivity here, too, with some people likely to feel any latency more keenly than others.

Some gamers use this setup to play PS5 games on their PC monitor (in other words, without piping the image back out of the PC to the living room TV, which would cut down on some of the input lag), and there are guides to running this kind of setup on YouTube, like this one. Others recommend Zanit's tutorials on YouTube, but those videos are in Portuguese, so you'll need to translate them if you're not a native speaker. It's pretty cool stuff, if rather convoluted — and a good capture card doesn't come cheap (neither does a high-end RTX 5000 GPU).

Meanwhile, as far as GTA 6 on the PC goes, we may see this happen a lot sooner than expected, due to the way the emulation scene is going right now (in turbo mode thanks to AI). In other words, Rockstar may want to get the PC port on sale before PC gamers start playing it via emulation.

• The UK is the latest country to consider restricting the use and sale of smart glasses
• Safeguarding minister Satvir Kaur said "the government is looking into options to restrict smart glasses in certain settings and restricting the sale to certain users"
• During a debate around the technology, concerns were raised around the discreet filming of women and girls

As the adoption of smart glasses increases across the world, so too have restrictions and bans on the technology from businesses and governments alike. Australia has banned the tech in public spaces such as pools, gyms and government buildings, and now the UK government is also considering implementing restrictions.

The devices have become unpopular in many circles, even earning the nickname 'pervert glasses' after some men began using them to secretly film women and girls, then posting the captured videos online. Some private businesses, such as the Wetherspoons British bar chain, have also banned the use of the devices.

In a debate at Westminster Hall titled 'Smart glasses and violence against women and girls', UK safeguarding minister Satvir Kaur said (as reported by The Guardian): “the benefits of smart glasses must be weighed against the harms they can cause. The government is already looking into options to restrict smart glasses in certain settings and restricting the sale to certain users.”

This might be similar to Australia's ban on the technology being used in public spaces. Kaur also highlighted that “other settings, such as healthcare and education, have existing safeguarding or professional policies that are relevant to smart glasses and any kind of digital recording." Kaur seemed to be hinting that where limitations on recording on smartphones already exist, this would extend to smart glasses and similar tech, but we could also see wider smart glasses-specific rules in future.

Anna Sabine, the Liberal Democrat MP who opened the debate, reportedly said: “Women are reporting waking up after nights out to find videos of themselves have gone viral online, filmed without their knowledge or consent by men wearing smart glasses... these devices not only have the potential to erode safety and privacy in public spaces, but raise really important questions about consent.”

Analysis: More restrictions will surely follow

Kaur did also highlight the useful aspect of smart glasses, such as helping visually or hearing-impaired people understand their surroundings. For those people, she said "smart glasses have been a game-changer, helping them navigate the world around them.”

Our writer Kevin Lynch, who has a hearing impairment, reviewed the Nuance Audio smart specs equipped with directional microphones, which he said were 'genuinely impactful'. It's likely any incoming legislation would allow for this usage.

However, there's no getting around the harmful uses of smart glasses too. A secondary cottage industry of Amazon sellers hocking black stickers, sized to cover the LED recording light, or offering to drill it out entirely, has sprung up online. This is all to enable people to record footage without letting others know they're doing so.

With the invasive potential of smart glasses to target women and post the footage online, companies like Meta are left with a clear stigma they'll have to shake before smart glasses can be seen as cool.

Prosecutors in Paris have also opened probes into smart glasses-related sexual harassment offenses, according to the French national newspaper Le Monde. I predict Australia won't be the only country to adopt legislation that restricts the sale or usage of smart glasses in 2027.

Do you think smart glasses should be banned, or should we be free to record wherever we like? Have your say in our poll below.

• Businesses are starting to recognize that they're locked into vendors from all angles
• AI could add yet another element to keep customers locked into providers
• Four in five have already taken action to move, many would even pay a premium

Nine in 10 (89%) businesses admit they couldn't migrate business-critical workloads away from their primary cloud provider within three weeks if it came to it evidencing widespread vendor lock-in challenges.

New Leaseweb research found more than half (55%) said it would take longer than three months, not weeks – or that it wouldn't even be possible.

But this reality contrasts with a false perception of control – three in four (76%) of the 800 surveyed C-suite leaders feel they have 'complete' or 'high' control over their ability to move data to another provider.

Cloud lock-in is more widespread than businesses perceive

One of the biggest challenges cited in the Leaseweb report centers around applications built to a particular provider's infrastructure – while the customer may retain control over their data, picking up and moving that application to another cloud provider isn't so simple.

But despite best efforts to level the playing field, improve interoperability and eliminate vendor lock-in, many European countries are still struggling on this front. The Netherlands reported the longest average migration time, at 4.7 months.

Looking ahead, four in five (79%) business leaders expect things to get worse through AI adoption, because buying into specific AI tools would increase their dependence on a small number of providers.

Cloud infrastructure is undergoing a global change

Leaseweb also noted that geopolitical tensions are continuing to reshape the cloud landscape, with four in five (78%) businesses already having taken action to reduce their reliance on a provider.

Interestingly, while the EU leads many discussions around digital sovereignty, it was the US that saw the highest proportion (91%) of businesses taking action.

Crucially, businesses are clearly willing to pay a premium to have greater control over their infrastructure, with the average business prepared to pay 16% more.

Still, Leaseweb is warning businesses that they have less control than they think they have. "With AI expected to tie businesses even more closely to a small number of providers, leaders need to understand and act on those dependencies now, not when a pricing change or geopolitical shift forces their hand," co-CEO Lex Boost wrote.

• Cyberattack on Bristol schools leads to the online leak of more than 320,000 stolen files from 39 schools
• Officials warn students, parents, and staff to expect phishing attempts and other fraud using exposed data
• Investigation continues as authorities determine whose information was compromised and the extent of the breach

Threat actors have leaked hundreds of thousands of records they stole from Bristol schools in September 2026 onto the dark web.

Bristol city council has issued a warning urging both students and parents to expect phishing attacks and other internet scams, and to be vigilant with incoming communications.

“Following ongoing investigations into the cyber-attack affecting the school's IT network, evidence has been found that data taken during the incident has been published online by the criminals responsible for the attack,” the council said in a new statement. “Specialist investigations have identified a significant number of files believed to have been taken from the network and made available online.”

Data leaks online

Reports of a cyberattack against Trading with Schools (TwS), a service operated by Bristol City Council providing schools with shared IT infrastructure and a range of administrative and operational support services, including financial administration, payroll, HR, and more, emerged in October 2026.

At the time, the council said it first suspected foul play on September 21, and decided to shut down the service four days later, on September 25. Following an initial investigation, it was discovered that someone had planted malware, and that the breach affected 87 schools. Back then, council leader Tony Dyer told the BBC that the investigation “had not identified any evidence that data has been stolen.”

However, it seems that not only that the data was stolen - it also leaked on the dark web. Usually, leaks follow a failed extortion attempt, but we don’t know who the threat actors are or if they actually tried to get the council to pay for the data.

The announcement does not put a figure to this “significant number” of files, but according to the BBC, it’s more than 320,000 files, stolen from 39 schools.

Right now, no one knows the nature of the stolen data, or how much of it includes personally identifiable information (PII). Director of Education and Skills at Bristol City Council, Vik Verma, said its officers were "working through a large amount of material as quickly as possible" to determine what was stolen, the publication wrote.

The BBC says that the 39 schools whose data was stolen “heavily” relied on the system for everyday tasks such as scheduling, lesson plans, recording staff details and payroll information.

Therefore, students and pupils might not be the only ones worrying about potential phishing attacks - school staff could be targeted, as well. To make matters worse, since TwS was shut down, many digital tools and services are unavailable making teachers’ jobs harder, and their working hours longer.

The council has notified Avon and Somerset Police and the Regional Organised Crime Unit, and has brought in third-party specialist cybersecurity advisers to help with the investigation.

Only Bristol schools affected

“At present, it is not possible to confirm all schools or individuals affected by the theft,” the council said. “Officers are working to audit the published files and establish this picture as quickly as possible.” Apparently, only Bristol schools were hit.

Parents and students are now being advised to be careful with unexpected emails, text messages, and even phone calls, and especially if they’re claiming to come from a trusted source. They’re also told not to click on links or open attachments in such messages, and to be wary of requests to reset passwords, “verify” account details, or otherwise provide personal or financial information.

They were also told to use strong and unique passwords for important online accounts, and to turn on multi-factor authentication whenever possible, and to keep a close eye on online accounts and bank statements.

• Harvard breach data affecting 850,500 people has now surfaced in breach-tracking databases and dark web archives
• Exposed information includes emails, contact details, demographics, and extensive alumni and donor profile data
• Attack highlights ongoing risks from social-engineering attacks against universities and fundraising systems

Hundreds of thousands of email addresses have been leaked to the dark web after the November 2025 ShinyHunters breach at Harvard University.

The same breach also exposed “extensive profile information” about certain people, as well, according to Have I Been Pwned? (HIBP), a website that aggregates stolen passwords and helps users learn which services exposed their private information.

Harvard gets hit

In late November 2025, the prestigious Ivy League University confirmed its Alumni Affairs and Development systems had been compromised after a successful voice phishing (vishing) attack.

These systems contained information about alumni, donors, some faculty and staff, and some current students, as well as data on their spouses, partners, and parents. Current and former students were also affected, it was said.

Harvard soon confirmed that the compromised data included email addresses, telephone numbers, home and business addresses, event attendance records, donation details, and "biographical information pertaining to University fundraising and alumni engagement activities." Social Security numbers, passwords, payment card information, or financial info, was not exposed, it was said.

At the time, Harvard did not name the attackers, but the infamous ShinyHunters extortionist group claimed responsibility soon after. In a new entry on a dark web forum, the threat actors said they stole more than a million records containing personally identifiable information (PII), as well as donation data. Since the negotiations with the university broke down, the group leaked more than 1.1GB of documents in early February this year.

At the time, no one knew exactly how many people were affected. Now, after extensively analyzing the leaked archive, HIBP claims data of 850,500 accounts was compromised, including people’s names, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, postal addresses, and social media profiles.

"The data contained 851k unique email addresses relating to the university's alumni and fundraising systems, along with extensive profile information for donors, alumni, parents and some faculty, staff and students," it said.

Attacking universities

When Harvard “fell” to ShinyHunters, they were the third university to experience a breach in mere weeks, following similar incidents at both Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania.

In early November 2025, when ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the attack on Penn, they said they stole data on roughly 1.2 million students, alumni, and donors.

At the time, an unnamed threat actor told the media they gained “full access” to a university employee’s PennKey SSO account, which gave them access to Penn’s VPN, Salesforce data, Qlik analytics platform, SAP business intelligence system, and SharePoint files.

The crooks slammed Penn for being a “dog**** elitist institution full of woke ret*rds, who have “terrible security practices and are completely unmeritocratic.”

"We hire and admit morons because we love legacies, donors, and unqualified affirmative action admits. We love breaking federal laws like FERPA (all your data will be leaked) and Supreme Court rulings like SFFA,” ShinyHunters said in an email that was sent from a Penn account.

At first, the University of Pennsylvania described the emails as “obviously fake” and “fraudulent”, but later backtracked and confirmed the incident.

“Penn’s staff rapidly locked down the systems and prevented further unauthorized access; however, not before an offensive and fraudulent email was sent to our community and information was taken by the attacker,” it said in an update. “Penn is still investigating the nature of the information that was obtained during this time.”

Penn also said that the attack was done through social engineering. Most employees are required to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) but according to reports, some of the top brass was allowed to skip this step.

Via BleepingComputer

Experience counts for something, and nowhere is that more evident than on the Meta VR Glasses I finally wore this morning.

These lightweight, intuitive, and engrossing VR glasses shed the weight and overdesigned fussiness of previous VR and mixed reality headsets to deliver a subtle, smart, eminently comfortable and fun wearable experience that is equally at home entertaining you with wild VR movies or expansive, productivity-enhancing virtual desktops.

Granted, my walkthrough of the $1,299 VR Glasses that are expected to arrive next spring (April-early June) of next year was a breezy 45 minutes, but that was ample time to realize that Meta VR Glasses were truly built on all the lessons of not only Meta Quest VR, but also by watching competitors like Apple and even Samsung struggle to inspire consumers with stunning but also expensive or somewhat unwieldy mixed reality experiences.

In my view, Meta's decision to move compute, storage, and battery out of the headset and into a 300g belt- or pocket-friendly puck pays design dividends. The wearable, which looks like a slightly oversized pair of sunglasses, is so comfortable that I barely felt them on my face, and after 45 minutes of continuous use, I didn't remove the 100-gram frames with a sense of relief. If anything, I was sad my all-too-brief interlude was over.

Without needing to support CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, RAM, a heavy battery, or even SD storage, Meta could focus on basic aesthetic appeal. The Meta VR Glasses feel and look spare, but in a positive way. By design, they do not cut you off from the outside world (there will be an optional light shield), so there's no need to slap a pair of animated blinking eyes on the lenses.

Granted, I had my doubts that the Meta VR Glasses would be all that immersive or inspiring, given what looked like essentially eye-sized lenses and no visible cameras, inside or out.

That all turned out to be deceiving.

Accurate tracking for an immersive experience

When I said Meta clearly learned from all that came before it, I wasn't kidding. The metaphors for setting up eye tracking were essentially the same as what I did for Apple Vision Pro (I didn't have to adjust pupillary distance, though you easily can) and, to an extent, Galaxy XR. You look at a circle of dots floating in space and, yes, use your fingers to pinch and select each one.

There are, obviously, cameras that track your eyes, hands, and the outside world. I was impressed with the accuracy, which matched what I've experienced on Vision Pro.

Equally, the first time I saw the floating menu, I was shocked at the visual quality (it's worth noting that Meta put in a pair of magnetic prescription inserts to match my eyes, and those inserts will probably add almost $100 to your final cost — Meta told me it will offer Zenni prescription inserts for "under $100 per pair, flat pricing (price does not increase based on Rx strength)". For the record, Meta lists the Micro-OLED display resolution as 5K, and based on what I saw, I believe it.

Disney+, a TV App, Avengers: Infinity War VR experience, and a dozen other app icons floated in space, with each one puffing up as I glanced at it.

Meta VR Glasses software doesn't try to reinvent the mixed reality wheel. I had no trouble opening apps, closing them, or even moving windows around. It does add one gesture that I appreciated: scroll.

To scroll in any window, I made a gentle fist and then swiped my thumb across the side of my index finger to scroll left, right, up, and down. I was surprised at how quickly I picked this up; I think that has a lot to do with the accuracy of the eye and gesture tracking.

My experiences were limited to a handful of apps, but each one was compelling in its own way.

We started with an 8K VR Billie Eilish concert in which I was virtually seated front and center, close enough to take a selfie with the singer. The volume started a bit low for my tastes. Still, I was able to use the volume controls under the right temple to make the audio loud enough that it drowned out the voices of the Meta execs who were trying to guide me (they were watching what I viewed through a cast on a nearby PC — Meta VR Glasses can also cast to your phone).

We switched to the NBA Finals last, title-clinching Knicks game, which put me courtside. At one point, I realized the near-360 view was probably shot by a camera that was also almost on the court. Meta told me they partner with Kosmo (Hesai Kosmo), which uses relatively small 360-degree cameras to capture the action. As the game replay continued, I noticed Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Kardashian were also courtside. I waved, but they did not seem to notice me.

I played a puzzle game called Dragon Grove, which, as you might expect, featured a small, green, cartoony dragon who landed on my outstretched hand and let me pet him. I was reminded of a similar experience with Vision Pro and a butterfly. By launch, Meta expects to have 75+ hands-first games.

Meta believes that the primary use cases for Meta VR Glasses will be entertainment and productivity. On the entertainment front, I watched Avengers Infinity Wars VR Enhanced, which took the original film and then gussied it up with 360 surround VR imagery and even lets some of the characters pop out of the original film frame. It was cool but also a bit odd. Why would a director who intentionally chooses to shoot a scene a certain way want you looking anywhere else but his original film? It did, though, make the movie feel more like an amusement park ride, which may appeal to some.

Business class

On the productivity front, Meta VR Glasses basically start where everyone else spent years traveling to arrive. I had huge desktop screens all around me that I could move and resize with gestures. At one point, I placed a screen on the ceiling above me. Plus, I could take any screen and make it ultrawide. The only hiccup was when one coding screen stretched the code text into an ultra-wide, almost unreadable format. This is all pre-release software, so bugs like this are to be expected.

Like Vision Pro and Galaxy XR, Meta VR glasses have a floating keyboard, but they've also added something new to the mix: a surface keyboard. To enable it, I selected the option from the floating keyboard and then put my hands on the table surface. After a quick scan, a transparent keyboard and trackpad appeared on the tabletop. I could use them just as I would any standard physical keyboard and mouse. My only issue is that, as a terrible touch typist, the lack of any physical key response might make my typing even worse.

When I took off the frames, it felt like I'd removed a pair of glasses, not headgear doing its best with straps and head rings to lessen the load on my face. There was no afterburn on my nose or brows.

I do, of course, have questions. Like, even at the more affordable $1,299, will consumers buy into this for a big-screen experience on an airplane and when they're home alone (you won't sit next to a family member and tune out to your own VR experience, will you?). Gamers, especially those who are tired of wearing heavy headsets, will surely be interested in Meta VR Glasses, though I don't know if the Qualcomm Snapdragon Reality Elite processor (XR2 Gen 3), which can supposedly support all the apps in Quest's library, has the juice to run true AAA titles. I'm glad Meta has the productivity part worked out because I still think that may be the best play for any of these types of wearables: knowledge workers, business travelers, and enterprise.

Who knows, though, maybe Meta VR Glasses is the mixed reality headset to finally break open the consumer market. It impressed me and, to be honest, I can't wait to wear them again.

SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini review

The SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini might just be perfect for you, if you're looking for a compact gaming mouse that makes no sacrifices when it comes to performance.

The SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini has everything a competitive gamer could ever want, be that true 8K polling, programmable buttons, 42K DPI sensitivity… you name it. It even brings ‘infinite power supply’ tech to the table, meaning you’ll have next to no downtime when duking it out against your opponents.

However, this mouse doesn’t come cheap. At $179.99 / £169.99 (about AU$250), it sits firmly in the premium category, meaning it has to go above and beyond to prove itself against the best mice on the market. But is it truly worth that steep asking price? Here’s my view after hours of intensive testing.

Let’s start things off by looking at some of the features that the Rival Pro Mini has to offer. I may have piqued your curiosity when I mentioned that ‘infinite’ power supply just now — but what exactly does that mean?

Well, the Rival Pro Mini and its accompanying Ultra Wideband base station come with hot-swappable batteries. One will slot into your mouse while gaming, and the other will sit in the base station and charge up in the meantime. When your mouse eventually runs dry — around 60 hours with 1K polling or 16 hours with 8K — you can simply pop the battery out of your base station, slot it into your mouse, and continue playing in an instant.

This is a truly brilliant feature, and means you’ll never run out of juice when competing in a tournament or playing a few casual rounds. Even though the Rival Pro Mini mouse has no USB slot for wired use, this tech means that you’ll never truly need it.

But there are so many more features to discover on the Rival Pro Mini. First up, you’re getting true 8K polling for ultra-smooth performance. SuperSync is also here, which enables you to independently set tracking and clicking polling rates. There’s also aim tools, 42K DPI sensitivity, and six fully programmable buttons on board.

You can customize the way that buttons function in the GG app or web platform, which also lets you adjust sensitivity, polling rate, and power management among other things. I found both the downloadable and web app to be incredibly easy to use and navigate, with no shortage of options at my disposal.

But just how does the Rival Pro Mini feel to use in practice? Just as good as you’d hope. When playing Cyberpunk 2077 on the LG UltraGear 25G590B 1000Hz gaming monitor, I was blown away by the all-round quality on offer. When aiming, movement felt supremely stable and accurate, and even basic functions like turning the camera was super smooth and highly responsive.

In addition, the optical switches had a great feel to them, and allowed me to blast down my foes with unrivaled speed and precision. Like typical optical switches, these aren’t the quietest around, but their satisfying click felt never seemed obnoxiously loud or distracting to me. The mechanical scroll wheel also impressed me with its control and tactility, and its ridges provided ample grip when gaming or simply performing everyday tasks at work.

This mouse gets it right when it comes to ergonomics too, although it is a more compact model, so if you have larger hands I’d recommend picking up the full-sized Rival Pro instead. But the mouse’s molded exterior and lightweight feel fantastic, and I was able to use the Rival Pro Mini for hours on end without any cramp or fatigue. This is an ergonomic model for right-handed gamers, though, so if you’re a lefty, I’d suggest checking out the symmetrical SteelSeries Sensei Pro Mini.

The Rival Pro Mini plays it fairly safe looks-wise, but it does have a sleek aesthetic, and the orange scroll wheel gives it a bit of pop. It also has strong build quality, and I liked its lightly textured matte finish, which adds a premium touch. One thing I will say, however, is that this finish does turn the Rival Pro Mini into a bit of a fingerprint magnet, so it’ll need a good wipe down every now and then if you want to keep it looking pristine. Still, fingerprints will likely seem less visible if you opt for the white colorway over the black variant I tested.

There’s very little holding this mouse back, though one thing could prove to put some gamers off. And you guessed it: it’s that asking price.

While I think that the Rival Pro Mini offers solid value thanks to its exemplary functionality, at $179.99 / £169.99 (about AU$250), it’s unquestionably expensive. It’s also priced identically to the larger, full-size model — no big deal given that they share the same features, but it would’ve been nice to get this one at an ever-so-slightly lower price.

When all’s said and done, though, I had an overwhelmingly positive experience with the SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini. Its S-tier performance, clever hot-swappable batteries, and customizable buttons make it a great option, even for the most competitive gamers out there, and if you can stomach the price, it’s well worth picking up.

SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini review: price & release date

• Priced at $179.99 / £169.99 (about AU$250)
• Released in October 2026

The SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini first arrived in October 2026 alongside three other models, namely the larger SteelSeries Rival Pro, as well as the SteelSeries Sensei Pro and Sensei Pro Mini. The Rival Pro Mini has the same list price as the full-sized model, coming in at $179.99 / £169.99 (about AU$250). As you’d expect, that places it in the premium category with competition including the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike and the Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro — both of which you can learn more about in the ‘also consider’ section.

SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini review: specs

Should I buy the SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini review: also consider

How I tested the SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini

• Tested intensively for hours
• Used for gaming and general productivity
• Made use of all features in the GG web app

I tested the SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini across the course of a few days, and spent hours using it for both gaming and general productivity purposes.

For playing games, I made sure to pair the Rival Pro Mini with the LG UltraGear 25G590B 1000Hz gaming monitor, which helped me get the best performance possible out of the mouse. I also made sure to try the mouse with a variety of games, though I mainly used the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 to test its capabilities. What’s more, I made sure to trial all of the mouse’s features and customization options in the GG web app.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing gadgets here at TechRadar, where I serve as a Senior Reviews Writer. I’ve reviewed everything from premium wireless headphones to mechanical keyboards, and have tested a number of mice, including the Logitech Mobi Fold.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: October 2026

• The ability to reposition the taskbar came to Windows 11 in September
• However, you can't drag the taskbar around as with Windows 10 — you must move it using a panel in the Settings app
• Some power-users want an option to drag it around the desktop quickly, and Microsoft has now explained why it decided against this

One of the long-awaited major Windows 11 interface changes this year has been the ability to move the taskbar.

You'll likely recall that there was quite a big fuss that this functionality, which was present in Windows 10, didn't make the cut for Windows 11. It wasn't alone, either, as there were plenty of key interface options that weren't ported over from the older operating system — many of which have since been addressed.

Windows 11 received the ability to shift the taskbar to the top, or either side, of the screen in the September 2026 update (or that was when the rollout began — everyone should have it by now, though). Before that, the taskbar was anchored steadfastly to the bottom of the desktop, and you couldn't move it anywhere.

However, Windows 11's implementation of the now mobile taskbar has still come under fire from some users. It's gotten to the point where a Microsoft exec has responded to explain the thinking behind the feature, as Windows Latest highlighted.

The beef is that while the taskbar is now movable, you can't simply drag it around the desktop. Moving the taskbar requires you to head into the Settings app, diving down a level to pick your alignment.

It's not possible to seize the taskbar with your mouse cursor and whizz it across the desktop to a new position. There are users who want the convenience of being able to do that, but Microsoft's Diego Baca, who is VP of Design for Windows, has defended the company's decision to drop this particular option for taskbar repositioning.

The danger of accidental drags

As Baca observes, this choice was made because, with Windows 10's draggable taskbar, Microsoft "saw a significant volume of accidental taskbar movements." Meaning users clicking on the bar for another reason mistakenly picked it up and shifted it elsewhere, which was obviously annoying.

The other point Baca makes — and it's a good one — is who needs to move the taskbar to different positions on the desktop with any regularity? Not many folks, but nonetheless, power-users who might do so have been arguing for the introduction of some kind of option to make the taskbar draggable in this way.

Windows Latest itself suggested a 'lock the taskbar' option (as seen in Windows 10) to ensure it couldn't be dragged mistakenly, noting that this should be on by default. But Baca argued that this isn't a good solution because it introduces more 'friction' to the Windows 11 interface. The exec noted in a post on X: "For those suggesting an 'auto-lock' or lock/unlock setting as a magic solution, it really isn't that simple. You're introducing additional friction to solve a relatively infrequent task. Now, every time you want to move the taskbar, you first need to unlock it."

It's a fair point, and the crux of the matter is that the number of Windows 11 power-users who will actually benefit from quick taskbar dragging is very few compared to the pool of massed casual users who could potentially run afoul of the feature. As this Redditor observes from their experiences with the Windows 10 taskbar: "Honestly, looking back, there were several times when older family members would ask me why theirs is on the side of their screen. People did move it accidentally."

And this was even the case when the taskbar was locked to prevent that (presumably because of more taskbar misclicking and accidentally turning the lock off). Of course, when this occurred, those less tech-savvy types had no idea what had happened, or how to rectify it. And that seems a greater danger than a lack of a draggable taskbar, based on how often that kind of movement is needed for anyone but a niche of very specific power users. In this way, the taskbar design decisions are an understandable trade-off, at least in my opinion.

I should note that Baca also makes it clear that this isn't a final decision, or the be-all-and-end-all of the debate over a draggable taskbar. Baca concludes the X post: "Please don't turn an explanation of a design decision into a declaration that something will 'NEVER' happen. That's simply not what I said."

So, there might be hope yet for those who want taskbar dragging. Indeed, I wonder if a solution that Microsoft previously tested could return, one that Windows Latest reminded us about: namely having the four taskbar position icons from Settings directly accessible via the right-click menu on the taskbar.

Third-party alternatives for taskbar dragging in Windows 11

Overall, I think Microsoft's stance here is correct on balance. So, as it stands for now, power users who want to drag the Windows 11 taskbar around with some regularity due to their workflow are left feeling out in the cold and will need to use a third-party tool to do so.

What third-party software is recommended for this use? A dedicated app called Taskbar Location Options on GitHub (hat tip to Windows Central) is a good choice, restoring the ability to drag the taskbar at any time (or use right-click menu settings directly on the bar). This tool is handy because it's a simple and lightweight effort for those who just need dragging functionality and don't want to install a full modding suite to achieve this.

There's also a mod for Windhawk, which is a popular Windows 11 customization suite you can load up with add-ons, that allows for taskbar dragging (and locking). As always, though, use any third-party software at your own risk, and remember that customization tools like these can sometimes run into trouble with Windows 11 updates.

Microsoft's patches can tinker with interface elements under the hood, and this may break any of these third-party customization utilities until the developer can patch. Power users will doubtless be more than aware of this, mind, but I figured it's worth mentioning.

• Malware allegedly gave a poker cheat access to opponents' computer screens
• Hundreds of online poker players may have suffered financial losses
• MeshAgent reportedly helped the attacker monitor selected players during games

Online poker players are facing allegations of a cheating operation that may have cost participants millions of dollars across online gambling sites.

Wired reports that hundreds of people on major gambling platforms were allegedly affected by malicious software installed on selected players’ computers.

The software allegedly allowed the attacker to monitor victims’ computer screens and obtain information that could influence decisions during poker games.

Malware allegedly exposed players’ private information

The incident involves a form of poker fraud known as “superuser” cheating, in which someone obtains information unavailable to ordinary participants.

Rather than exploiting one poker platform directly, the alleged attacker reportedly took advantage of external applications used to manage multiple tables.

Those applications allegedly provided a way to install MeshAgent, a remote administration programme, on computers belonging to selected opponents without their knowledge.

After installation, the software reportedly enabled the intruder to view activity displayed on victims’ computers while they played online poker.

Such access could expose opponents’ private cards, giving the person controlling the malware information unavailable through legitimate participation during games.

That advantage could influence decisions during expensive hands and allow the alleged cheater to win money from unsuspecting players.

The activity is described as a prolonged campaign involving customers across several major online poker services, rather than one isolated incident.

The reports claim the perpetrator is known within poker circles, but withheld the person’s identity because no criminal charges have been filed.

Different platforms take different approaches to the allegations

The companies involved have responded differently, with one service reportedly removing the account before the malware operation became publicly known.

That platform had identified unusually strong results and questionable playing patterns through its monitoring system.

Other services released security checks intended to help customers establish whether MeshAgent had been installed on their computers.

Another operator faced complaints about the account yet reportedly allowed the suspected cheater to continue playing on its platform.

The company later said its investigation had found no evidence that compromised devices had affected the results of games.

It also refused to reimburse customers who believed the alleged cheating had caused them significant financial losses.

That response has left affected players uncertain about whether they can recover money and how responsibility for losses will be determined.

If the reported screen access occurred, investigators would need to identify compromised accounts and establish which games produced unfair results.

Such an assessment could be difficult because the alleged activity involved many players and several separate gambling services.

The case also draws attention to risks associated with software that poker participants install independently to organize simultaneous games.

Although these applications can make multi-table play easier, they may introduce additional ways for malicious programmes to reach personal computers.

Players using such tools may therefore need to consider security risks beyond those covered by the gambling platforms themselves.

As of the time of writing, there is no information on the total amount stolen, the number of confirmed victims, or whether authorities are investigating the case.

• Surfshark recorded 121.8 million breached accounts worldwide in Q3 2026, up 13.2% on the previous quarter.
• The UK overtook France as Europe's most breached country, while Ukraine jumped from 47th to 6th globally.
• The US still accounts for almost a third of all leaks, and experts say limiting what you share is your best defense.

More than 121.8 million online accounts were compromised around the world between July and September 2026, according to new research from Surfshark. That's a 13.2% rise on the previous quarter.

The UK saw the most dramatic shift. Its leaked account count more than doubled to 5.8 million, a 121.6% jump that pushed it past France to become Europe's most breached country.

Ukraine also surged up the rankings, climbing from 47th place to 6th globally after 2.6 million accounts were breached in just three months.

Most breaches happen on a company's servers rather than your own device, so even the best VPN can't stop your details from leaking. There are still steps you can take to limit the damage, though.

Europe is under growing pressure

The UK's rise came during a busy quarter for attacks on British organizations. In late July, extortion group ExfilSquad claimed it had stolen contact details for more than 100,000 police officers and staff from the Police National Legal Database.

The same group also claimed to have leaked around 600,000 records from the Department for Education.

Ukraine's climb fits a wider pattern. Microsoft's Digital Defense Report 2026 ranked the country first in Europe and third worldwide for cyberattacks in the first half of the year.

Ukraine's CERT-UA also handled around 200 incidents targeting citizens between January and September, up from 80 a year earlier, many involving phishing for Telegram and Signal logins.

"We can see attacks vary across countries as attackers seek the juiciest targets, sometimes for financial, and sometimes for political gain," said Tomas Stamulis, Chief Security Officer at Surfshark.

It's not just about raw numbers, either. Estonia had the highest breach density in the world at 118 breached accounts per 1,000 people, ahead of Australia, the US, and the UK.

The US still leads the way

Globally, the US remained the most breached country with 38.1 million leaked accounts, or 31% of the total. Brazil (7M), the UK (5.8M), India (5.5M), and Australia (3.1M) completed the top five.

France, meanwhile, cooled off sharply. It recorded 2.4 million breached accounts, down from 19.7 million in Q2, and dropped out of the top three for the first time this year.

How to stay safe

Stamulis warns that stolen data can sit hidden for long periods before criminals decide to use it.

His advice is to treat personal information as sensitive by default, only share your real details when it's genuinely necessary, such as on official forms, and use an alias, secondary email address, or email masking service for everything else.

A password manager also helps ensure one leaked login doesn't unlock your other accounts. Meanwhile, identity theft protection and data removal services can alert you to exposure and reduce how much of your information is out there.

• Singapore Airlines confirms customer data exposure through a breach at travel technology provider Amadeus
• Stolen booking records included passenger details, itineraries, and limited passport and loyalty-program information
• Multiple major airlines were affected, raising phishing and identity-fraud concerns for travelers

Singapore Airlines has become the latest in the seemingly growing list of airlines affected by a breach at a third-party technology provider.

Amadeus, a Spanish technology company that airlines and airports use to manage reservations, bookings, and overall passenger management, recently issued a brief statement saying it “became aware of a vulnerability affecting a travel booking display environment.”

In the announcement, Amadeus said certain booking-display data was accessible to the attackers but stressed that there was no evidence of payment or financial data being accessed.

“There are no indications that this vulnerability has been exploited for ransomware purposes,” the company said, adding that it “implemented measures to fix the vulnerability as well as enhanced monitoring and detection capabilities.”

In the meantime, numerous airlines started reporting sensitive data compromise as a result of this breach.

Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, and more

Hong Kong’s flagship international airline, Cathay Pacific, issued a statement saying Amadeus notified it about a breach and “unauthorized access to travel reservation data” by a threat actor that used login credentials assigned to a system account.

Amadeus then told Cathay Pacific around 53,000 bookings were affected, and that the exposure took place between August 2023 and September 2026. “In the majority of cases, the information accessed included booking reference, passenger name, and flight details,” the airline said, adding that in a “smaller subset of cases”, additional data such as email and phone contacts, travel documents and/or frequent flyer numbers were also exposed.

The same day, Japan Airlines and Japan Transocean Air both shared similar news, saying a “portion of customer reservation data” had been accessed by an unauthorized third party.

Japan Airlines said some 92,000 customers were affected, including approximately 2,000 of those whose passport numbers were also exposed. All Nippon Airways said 37,800 of its customers were affected, including around 1,700 with additional data exposure. Korean Air, Asiana Airlines, and Malaysia Airlines, all confirmed being affected by the Amadeus incident, while Qantas said it was still investigating.

Launching phishing attacks

We can now add Singapore Airlines to that list, with 46,000 records of its own. These include customers' names, booking reference numbers, travel ​itineraries and booking classes and, in a smaller number of cases (around 620 booking records), email addresses, phone numbers, travel document details, and KrisFlyer membership numbers.

According to Reuters, Singapore Airlines is now reaching out to affected customers with upcoming travel plans to change their booking reference numbers as a precaution. The ⁠airline also confirmed that its IT systems were not breached.

So far, there is no indication that the stolen data ended up on the dark web, and no threat actors claimed responsibility for the breach, just yet. There is a possibility that the culprits will try to extort the airlines for money, in exchange for deleting the stolen information.

This is the kind of data cybercriminals enjoy most. It allows them to launch highly personalized phishing emails that appear to come from the airlines themselves, referencing genuine booking details, flight dates, destinations and passenger names.

They could use this kind of information to trick unsuspecting travelers into clicking malicious links, sharing login credentials, or making fraudulent payments for supposed booking changes, refunds, or additional fees.

What’s more, the exposed passport details and frequent flyer numbers can also help criminals impersonate customers, try to take over people’s accounts, or launch identity fraud attacks against the airlines themselves. Even without financial information, simply by combining seemingly harmless travel details, cybercriminals can create enough context to make their scams considerably more convincing, and thus more difficult to detect and prevent.

• CrowdStrike introduces AI Kill Switch designed to stop, isolate, and prevent rogue AI agents from relaunching
• The feature gives human administrators direct control to terminate suspicious agent activity and investigate incidents
• Growing concerns over autonomous AI behavior are driving demand for safeguards that can quickly contain compromised agents

CrowdStrike believes it may have solved the problem of rogue AI agents in the enterprise with the launch of 'AI Kill Switch', a new feature being introduced in its Falcon Guardian product.

The last couple of months have seen multiple reports of AI agents going rogue, or behaving outright malicious. Even when tasked with relatively simple, benign assignments (such as, for example, to collect data about Canadian divorce records), whenever the agents hit a roadblock, they would do whatever it takes to get the job done - which includes abusing zero-day vulnerabilities, or trying SQL injection attacks.

Expectedly, businesses became somewhat more reluctant in deploying AI agents, despite the obvious advantages. At the same time, cybersecurity organizations and AI developers sought to solve the challenge. Enter CrowdStrike.

AI Kill Switch

The company recently introduced Falcon Guardian, an AI Detection and Response (AIDR) platform built to discover and monitor AI agents running inside enterprise environments. Its main capabilities include identifying both approved AI agents and shadow AI, tracking what the agents are asked to do and what files they can access, controlling access, detecting prompt injection attacks, and investigating suspicious agent behavior.

Now, the company has added AI Kill Switch, which should act as a failsafe when an agent breaks out of its intended behavior.

“AI safety is how you get the full benefit of AI. When you deploy agents with a kill switch, you stay in control,” said George Kurtz, CEO and founder of CrowdStrike. “For the first time, security is simultaneously the accelerant and the safety net for technology adoption. The AI Kill Switch puts power in the hands of the people to realize AI safety.”

This means the feature will actually be operated by humans, not AI, and will be able to terminate the agent at its root. It starts on the endpoint, where the Falcon sensor already operates, and builds on what Falcon Guardian already sees: what an agent is told to do, what it communicates, and what it executes, the company explained.

Explaining how the tool will work, Crowdstrike says the Falcon sensor will first stop the agent from executing (first at the Gateway, and soon on the endpoint), to prevent the agent from doing any damage as the team investigates.

Then, its policy will keep the agent from relaunching on the targeted host or host group, while the tool bars the agent from enterprise network access.

An authorized administrator will trigger the action, and every action is recorded in the audit trail.

Other solutions

CrowdStrike is not the only company working on this. For example, Straiker's Agentic Kill Switch allows users to suspend individual agents, revoke their access to different tools, APIs and data, or take them offline completely.

A similar solution was built by JetStream Security, allowing organizations to disable individual agents without disrupting other AI workflows, while Trust3 AI’s Agent DOS comes with a built-in kill switch that can be triggered manually, or even automatically (when an agent’s security score falls below a predefined threshold).

There is also Microsoft’s Entra Agent ID, Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma AIRS, and Cisco’s AI Defense. All these offer some form of AI master lever that can block the agent and prevent it from doing meaningful damage.

• Windows 11 got a major performance boost with its latest update, including 40% faster multi-tasking on an 8GB PC based on Microsoft's testing
• That update is still a preview, mind, but the full release is coming next week, with other performance boosts, especially for 8GB PCs
• Meanwhile the developer of Tiny11 has managed to get a totally stripped-down version of Windows 11 running in an improbable 128MB of memory

Microsoft has gone into the details of how it's made Windows 11 faster on 8GB PCs (and all systems for that matter), with these changes arriving in the next update for the OS – all while a third-party has demonstrated the operating system running on a meagre 128MB of RAM (with huge caveats as you might expect).

A blog post from Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows at Microsoft, entitled 'Raising the bar for 8GB Windows 11 PCs' gives us some further metrics as to how much performance has been improved by.

Microsoft has mentioned that Windows 11 is now up to 20% more responsive on 8GB machines before, but now it's added another stat to consider, namely that the OS is 40% faster for multi-tasking (and that kind of workload is where 8GB of RAM can feel a lot more pushed to its limits).

In this case, Microsoft's test involved "opening 20 tabs in Microsoft Edge, a 4K video, large Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, Outlook and File Explorer one after another, keeping everything open as we went." This was 40% faster compared to Windows 11 in January 2026 (before the fix the OS campaign started), as measured on an HP OmniBook 3 laptop with a Snapdragon X Plus (Arm) 8-core CPU and 8GB of memory.

Davuluri explains that Microsoft's approach to upping performance in Windows 11 runs along three distinct paths: "Making better use of the memory in every Windows 11 PC, protecting the interactions that need to feel instant even under load, and ensuring key apps and Windows require less memory."

Of course, the exec points out that this work benefits all Windows 11 PCs, but that this tuning will be particularly beneficial for 8GB devices – clearly having key apps drain less system RAM is going to be great for lower memory loadouts.

Microsoft notes that in terms of memory management improvements, in multi-tasking tests on 8GB systems, it has "reduced committed-memory growth by up to 900MB" in Windows 11 running Edge and Microsoft 365 apps.

We're also told that thanks to improvements in Windows 11's compression techniques, more active data for apps can be stored in RAM (as opposed to on your drive, where it's slower to be fetched) – to the tune of up to 2GB more. Davuluri employs a useful desk metaphor to illustrate this, which I think is worth a read for the less tech-savvy.

If you want the benefit of all this fresh speediness, Microsoft informs us that this performance tuning is in place in the very latest update for Windows 11, which is the optional update that arrived at the end of October (complete with right-click menu customization).

If you download that, though, bear in mind it's a preview so officially still in testing. I'd advise waiting for the full release of the finished November update, which comes out next week on November 10, so you won't have to be patient for long.

Analysis: necessary streamlining – and it appears to have done the trick

Okay, so Microsoft is touting some very specific performance measurements here and there's bound to have been some cherry-picking going on. In other words, run a ton of different tests and pick the results that show off the very best performance levels (with a peak 'up to' value), but of course this is standard practice for any product marketing.

Still, it's clear that strides have been made, and online feedback backs this up. There are numerous users who are observing that Windows 11 is faster after this most recent update, and indeed since version 26H2 was released.

As one Redditor observes: "I can confirm it, Windows 11 has been overall much more [responsive] on my system, it used to be slow as s**t and now even the context menu opens quite instant."

Most of the negativity that now remains on social media, aside from the obvious trolling, is around why Microsoft didn't have Windows 11 tuned up like this in the first place. And that a 40% improvement in multi-tasking was partly made possible because things were in such a sluggish state to begin with, and I think those are fair points (I've brought them up myself in the past).

Still, it's clear that Microsoft is working hard and successfully optimizing Windows 11 for leaner RAM loadouts, and I obviously won't argue with that. Meanwhile, the developer of Tiny11 – which allows you to create a completely stripped-down Windows installation – has proved that Microsoft's OS can be pared back so it runs on just 128MB of RAM (hat tip to Tom's Hardware).

That beats the developer's old record of 184MB, and it's a seriously impressive feat, but as you might imagine, what's left in Windows after pruning it back so viciously is, well, barely anything. You can boot the desktop, open folders or the Start menu, and run Notepad, but not much else. It is "painfully slow" by the developer's own admission, and not a workable version of Windows 11 so much as an exercise in what can be done.

The reason that projects such as Tiny11 are popular is because many folks are fed up with the bloat in Windows 11, and want to create their own tailored and streamlined version. If Microsoft keeps going with its successful performance tweaking and tuning, with any luck, there'll be a lot less demand for the likes of Tiny11 in the future.

Microsoft is promising more memory efficiency tuning, and advances in memory compression, are coming, as well as a greater use of WinUI 3 for speedier apps and parts of the Windows 11 interface.

• mSecure disclosed a breach involving an encrypted cloud database containing data from current and former users
• Company urged users to rotate critical passwords, MFA methods, and passkeys despite no evidence vaults were decrypted
• Customer criticism grew after limited initial disclosure left uncertainty about the incident’s scope and impact

Top password manager mSecure has confirmed it suffered a data breach and, “out of an abundance of caution”, and told its customers to simply reset everything, leaving some pretty upset.

On November 3 2026, the company behind mSecure, called mSeven Software, sent an email to its customers, saying it “recently learned of suspicious activity associated with the mSecure password management application”. It soon launched an investigation, mitigated the issue, and brought in third-party cybersecurity experts to assist.

The notice, while rather sparse on details, urged customers to “immediately take steps to protect all confidential information stored within the mSecure password management application. This may include changing passwords, resetting or re-enrolling two factor authentication methods, or removing existing passkeys."

Encrypted database

All this was said without detailing what happened, and customers did not take it well. On Reddit, users were asking if this pertained just to the master password, or to all passwords stored inside the manager. Some people have hundreds of secrets locked away in mSecure, and changing all of them would take hours.

“This notice is wildly insufficient,” one user wrote. “Recommending potentially hundreds of credential changes without identifying the underlying threat, the affected customers, or the security of the application being used to make those changes is inadequate.”

mSecure allegedly responded with a follow-up notice that was also shared on social media. In it, it disclosed more details, and somewhat played down the actual breach:

“Yesterday, mSeven learned that an unauthorized actor acquired an encrypted copy of a database containing information belonging to current and former users of the mSecure password management application,” it said. “Importantly, mSeven has no evidence that the unauthorized actor has accessed the confidential information stored within the database in the mSecure Cloud.”

Putting it plainly, a threat actor walked away with a copy of the database that was sitting in mSecure Cloud, and all users - current and former - who had synced their password manager with the cloud service are at risk.

But mSeven tried to downplay the severity of the incident. Throughout the announcement, it repeated multiple times that the stolen database was encrypted and that there is no evidence that the threat actors managed to decrypt it. Truth be told, encrypted databases should be safe, but many criminals are still hoarding them, in case anyone makes a breakthrough at any point in time. There’s actually a name to the practice - HNDL (harvest now, decrypt later).

It also responded to user criticism about having to change all passwords now:

“As a standard best practice, mSeven continues to recommend that mSecure customers change their master password, change vital stored passwords, reset two-factor authentication methods, replace passkeys and any other sensitive information. This should be a part of all routine security practices.”

Not the only password manager in trouble

Finally, mSecure said deleting the app won’t help the situation and stressed that the issue only pertains to users that were syncing with the mSecure Cloud.

“mSeven takes the security and privacy of all information stored on the mSecure platform very seriously and has no evidence that mSecure is not currently safe for use,” it said. “Our support team is working as fast as possible to respond to customer questions. We take your trust in us seriously, and appreciate your patience and continued support.”

How this reflects the company’s image remains to be seen. One Reddit user said the company was deleting negative reviews and complaints that were being left on the Google Play Store. But mSecure is hardly the only password manager experiencing an incident such as this one. In June this year LastPass confirmed losing sensitive customer data, while Dashlane said hackers obtained at least a dozen encrypted vaults.

Via The Register

• Hackers have targeted French blood stocks used in medical emergencies
• Attackers tried to raise freezer temperatures from -22F to 230F
• The attack was spotted quickly and no blood had to be destroyed

A few days ago, hackers attacked European supermarket freezers for the second time in weeks, but it’s not just frozen food that has been the target of these malicious operations. Now, threat actors have their eyes on the medical sector, with reports emerging that French blood plasma reserves have been breached by unknown saboteurs.

As reported by Cyberattaque (via Cyber Security News), stores of blood plasma were struck overnight between November 1 and November 2, with freezer temperatures programmed to rocket from -30C to 110C (-22F to 230F). Although it’s unknown whether the freezers actually reached temperatures as high as that, the incident is still a worrying development in what looks like an ongoing strategy against key infrastructure targets.

The campaign targeted Coolworld, which supplies the French Blood Establishment (EFS). 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. Cyberattaque noted this meant that “frozen plasma for transfusions was among the potentially endangered products.”

The French Ministry of Health has said that the cyberattack did not result in any serious operational consequences because the temperature spikes were noticed quickly and corrected. What’s not known is how many facilities were affected, how long the disruption lasted and how high the temperature of the freezers actually got. However, there has been no confirmation that any blood stocks had to be destroyed as a result.

Far-reaching effects

In October 2026, Vincent Strubel, the director general of France’s cybersecurity agency (known as ANSSI), issued a prescient warning that refrigeration facilities — including those storing medical resources — could be the target of adversarial attacks. Two weeks after that address, the blood stores were hacked.

Meanwhile, in the UK Richard Horne, CEO of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), yesterday cautioned that “far too many of our organizations and supply chains rest on weak technology and operational foundations.” Potential targets include “Electricity switching, sluice gates in water facilities, dam operations, manufacturing lines, heating, refrigeration controls,” Horne stated.

At the launch of the NCSC's 'State of the Cyber Nation' report, Horne went on to describe as the UK as being at a 'Sliding Doors moment' for cybersecurity, with its exploitable vulnerabilities being akin to a "digital Leaning Tower of Pisa". "In the coming months, we face a real prospect of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents," he warned.

As Cyberattaque pointed out, it was not the medical facilities themselves that were compromised, but the third-party maintenance systems that controlled freezer temperatures. That could have far-reaching effects, as any company that provides controller products to different customers potentially puts them all at risk.

While the attempt on the French blood stocks was spotted quickly, the next attack might be able to slip through the net. If that happens, the upshot could be far more serious.

SteelSeries Rival Pro review

The SteelSeries Rival Pro feels as if it's really pushing the boundaries of what a gaming mouse can do. Even when I glanced at the specs sheet, I was mightily impressed with the features on offer: interference-free ‘true’ 8K polling, hot-swappable batteries for endless play, and 42,000 DPI sensitivity.

But it’s one thing having a good set of specs, and another performing well in practice. So just how good is the SteelSeries Rival Pro? And is it worth its asking price of $179.99 / £169.99 (about AU$250)? Here’s my verdict after hours of testing.

First of all, this mouse feels incredibly comfortable to use — in fact, it's up there with some of the best mice as far as ergonomics are concerned.

It strikes a happy medium in terms of size, and it fits perfectly in my hand — though it's worth noting that this model is for right-handers only, whereas the ambidextrous form of the SteelSeries Sensei Pro is suited to lefties and righties alike. I use a palm grip style, but the model is also designed to suit those who prefer claw or fingertip as well. I also love how lightweight the Rival Pro is. At 1.9oz / 53g, making sharp movements and adjustments feels supremely swift.

The mouse has a lightly textured matte finish that feels, and indeed looks, pretty nice too. Sure, the matte black finish makes it a little prone to picking up fingerprints, but this is more of a nitpick, and this is likely to be less of an issue if you opt for the alternate white colorway.

And when it comes to performance, the SteelSeries Rival Pro is equally dazzling. I used it to play Cyberpunk 2077 with the LG UltraGear 25G590B 1000Hz gaming monitor, and was astonished by the sheer responsiveness and precision on offer. Aiming felt incredibly stable and accurate, turning the camera felt super-sharp and reactive, and the high-quality optical switches enabled me to let shots fly snappily and reliably. The mechanical scroll wheel also felt very tactile, with ridges offering great grip.

Said optical switches feel great to use for gaming or general productivity, and their mechanical, satisfying sound never felt grating or overzealous to me. Yes, they’re not the quietest switches, so if you prefer a more subdued sound then maybe look elsewhere, but their quality is undeniable — SteelSeries even claims that it tested them for 100 million clicks, so you’ll get plenty of mileage out of this mouse.

Feature-wise, this mouse has just about everything you could want. The GG app and web app open up all sorts of customization for binds, sensitivity, polling rate, and power management. I mainly used the web app, and found it incredibly easy to use and make small tweaks here and there.

Perhaps the real standout feature, though, is the ‘infinite power system’. You get two batteries with the Rival Pro: one that pops into the mouse itself, and another that you place onto the Ultra Wideband base station. The batteries are hot-swappable, and when your mouse runs flat, you can swiftly substitute in the battery from the base station (which charges while plugged in). As a result, you’ll quite literally never run out of battery — ideal for competitive gamers.

While the Rival Pro mouse lacks a USB port for wired play, this infinite power system means you’ll honestly never need it — totally removing any additional weight or awkwardness that comes with a cable connection.

With an 8K polling rate, SuperSync — which enables you to independently control tracking and clicking polling rates, and aim tools to boot, it truly feels like the perfect gaming mouse. But are there any real downsides?

Well, one thing could prove to put some gamers off: the Rival Pro’s price. At $179.99 / £169.99 (about AU$250), this model is certainly a premium product. Is it worth it? If you want peak performance and essentially endless battery life, then yes. But there are plenty of strong options for less than $100 / £100 out there.

All in all, though, the SteelSeries Rival Pro is an innovative, ergonomic gaming mouse with exceptional performance. If you’re looking to take your game up a notch, look no further than this model.

SteelSeries Rival Pro review: price & release date

• Priced at $179.99 / £169.99 (about AU$250)
• Released in October 2026

The SteelSeries Rival Pro was released in October 2026, alongside three other models: the SteelSeries Rival Pro Mini, as well as the SteelSeries Sensei Pro and Sensei Pro Mini. The Rival Pro is priced at $179.99 / £169.99 (about AU$250). That lands it firmly in the premium category, with rivals including the Logitech G Pro X2 Superstrike and the Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro.

SteelSeries Rival Pro review: specs

Should I buy the SteelSeries Rival Pro?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

SteelSeries Rival Pro review: also consider

How I tested the SteelSeries Rival Pro

• Tested intensively for hours
• Used for gaming and general productivity
• Made use of all features in the GG web app

I spent many hours testing the SteelSeries Rival Pro, during which time I used it for gaming and general productivity.

When gaming, I paired the mouse with the LG UltraGear 25G590B 1000Hz gaming monitor to get the best performance possible. I made sure to play a range of games, but mainly tested the mouse with the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077. On top of this, I made sure to try out all of the mouse’s features and customization options via the GG web app.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing gadgets here at TechRadar, where I serve as a Senior Reviews Writer. I’ve reviewed everything from premium Dolby Atmos soundbars to gaming software, and have tested a number of mice, including the recently released Logitech Mobi Fold.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: October 2026

• Safari is getting some useful updates for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS
• Vertical tabs will arrive, but only in the dev betas for now
• Other features like Adaptive Dark Mode and Siri AI browser tools are coming, too, along with our first glimpse of the new Audio Intelligence capabilities

On the global web browser stage Safari lags behind Chrome, but when it comes to Apple's 2.5 billion customers, it reigns supreme. Yet, even those devoted users might've noticed that their favorite browser was lacking at least one long-sought feature. Now, with the introduction of Dev Betas for iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, and macOS 27.3, they're getting their wish.

In beta today, the platform upgrade brings a series of relatively small but important updates to Safari across the iPhone Duo, iPad, and Mac. And chief among them is vertical tabs.

As is often the case, Apple didn't invent this idea. I started using vertical tabs in — of all things — Microsoft Edge years ago, and even Chrome recently added them. Now, with the Safari update, you can open the Safari View Menu or hop into Settings and select vertical tabs.

By default, the tabs, which will live on the left side of your browser window in iPadOS and macOS (and iOS for the iPhone Duo), appear as icons — a space-saving measure. You can hover over any of them for a quick look at the hidden browser window.

There are other vertical tab features like the ability to pin tabs at the top of your list by dragging and dropping them, and tab groups. The tabs will work on the iPad and, yes, the new iPhone Duo in portrait and landscape mode.

The platform updates also bring a new kind of Dark Mode. Instead of only showing the mode on web pages that support it, Safari will offer to tune unsupported pages to Dark Mode too — but in a way, Apple promises, that won't ruin the sites.

The Adaptive Dark Mode will automatically darken light backgrounds, invert logos and graphics, recolor vector artwork, lift raised surfaces, and even detect shadows and adjust them. It will not touch already darkened sites. For developers, there are new tags they can use that will prevent Adaptive Dark Mode from adjusting them.

The update is also bringing some Siri AI browser tools to Safari for hardware that supports Apple Intelligence. Siri AI already has, with your permission, an awareness of what's on your screen, but with this update it'll see entire web pages (beyond what you see in the screen frame) and even hidden tabs.

This can be useful when you want to do wholesale organization and group tabs. Say you want all tabs relating to a trip to Malta sorted by activity, or you need all your car shopping tabs grouped and organized by car price.

Siri AI can, with new Custom Actions, do your bidding on the browser and clean up your history by topic, site, and time period. It might be useful when you don't want someone seeing that you've been shopping for the last few days on a particular site for that coveted gift. There might be other reasons for targeted history scrubbing, but no need to get into that here.

Other notable updates arriving in iOS 27.3, iPadOS 27.3, macOS 27.3, watchOS 27.3 Dev Beta 1 include:

• Siri App Actions will let Siri AI dig even more deeply into your system by organizing files, making trip plans, creating playlists, scheduling group messages, and finding the best photos to share.
• The promised Apple Health app overhaul, which uses Apple Intelligence, will give you more insights from your health data.
• The pair of Audio Intelligence features that will work with your Apple Watch Series 12:
  • Live rewind, for recalling what was said in conversation (you have to double-press the watch crown to read the last snippet of conversation). It might be a great tool for settling he said/he said arguments.
  • Siri Recap, which, when enabled, can use Apple Intelligence to recap and summarize an entire talk, speech, lesson, or maybe a TED Talk.

The changes are coming to 27.3 betas first and will eventually roll out to the other platforms in a full release. For now, though, all of these updates are found only in the Dev Betas, which are typically the earliest and potentially buggiest releases before Apple moves on to Public Betas (which anyone can install) and the final releases. There's no word on when the full releases will arrive, and we would caution you against installing Developer betas on any of your everyday Apple devices.

• Nvidia's RTX 5080 Super was rumored for January 2027, but fresh gossip suggests it's delayed
• Meanwhile, a new report on GPU prices observes a hefty price jump month-on-month
• Even lower-end GPUs are getting more costly at a faster pace, and the high-end is a nightmare — with no RTX 5080 Super riding to the rescue, it seems

Nvidia's RTX 5080 Super has been strongly rumored of late, but there's now been a cloud of doubt cast over this potential addition to the Blackwell range — just as we've got more evidence of how dire the situation with GPU price hikes has recently become.

VideoCardz spotted the latest from the rumor mill on the RTX 5080 Super, a graphics card that supposedly packs 24GB of video RAM, with Taiwanese tech site Benchlife reporting that Nvidia has delayed the GPU (assuming it's a real product in the first place, of course).

We were told via other rumor peddlers that the 24GB spin on the RTX 5080 is theoretically planned for a January 2027 launch, but Benchlife asserts that the release date "remains unclear" and that Nvidia's board manufacturing partners have yet to receive any design details for the new model.

Given that, according to Benchlife, the "probability is extremely high" that the RTX 5080 Super won't debut in January, considering that board makers were expecting to receive the mentioned design info back in October.

This pushes the rumored GPU back at least a month, very probably more, and the idea of that is hardly surprising given the ongoing RAM crisis, which has been getting worse as 2026 rolls on.

That affects video RAM, and it's the main driver of price spikes with graphics cards, which are starting to get out of hand, as evidenced by TechSpot's latest monthly report highlighting the current cost of GPUs across various regions.

What TechSpot's monitoring data for October 2026 shows is that, as we already knew, high-end pricing has gone even further off the rails. The RTX 5080 is up 39% in the US and 40% in Germany month-on-month, for example, which is ludicrous, frankly — in the US it's now 120% over the MSRP at $2,200. The UK has seen an 8% hike over the past month, with this GPU now 40% over its MSRP in the country. Globally, it's 77% over Nvidia's recommended price on average.

The RTX 5090 is even sillier, as we've seen for some time now, and stands at $9,400 in the US in October, some 370% over the already very expensive MSRP. If you can find the Blackwell flagship at all, that is.

What's really worrying is that TechSpot's data shows lower-tier GPUs are now seeing some major price bumps. Want a humble RTX 5050 in the US? It's gone up 35% over the past month (an increase of over $100), so you'll now pay 68% over the MSRP.

The RTX 5060 is creeping up in price in some European countries, too — it's up 7% in the UK and 13% in Germany. The RTX 5060 Ti 8GB has gone up more, with this GPU getting hiked by 10% in the UK, so it's now £440 compared to £350 back at the start of 2026. The 5060 Ti 8GB went up 6% in the US, too, so it's now 40% over the MSRP in total.

There are hikes across the board for Nvidia, and AMD's Radeon GPUs are getting more expensive at an even faster rate currently. Again, lower-end graphics cards are suffering, such as RX 9060 XT models being up 10% on average month-on-month. The RX 9070 XT is also up 10% in the US since last month, and the increase in Canada has been a sickening 30% — in just one month.

Analysis: a deteriorating situation for GPUs

What does all this tell us? That spiralling graphics card prices are very real, with some huge ongoing hikes for higher-end models — but this isn't just a top-end GPU problem any longer. The real concern is that lower-tier boards are also seeing more price inflation, and I don't think this is a problem that's going away.

Indeed, based on the weighty amount of chatter about the memory crisis continuing to get worse in this final quarter of 2026 and into next year, there's every reason to believe that GPU prices could keep going up. That's why I've been advising PC owners thinking of a GPU upgrade to treat Black Friday as a prime (pun not intended) opportunity to get in and buy a graphics card before any more hikes.

With the RTX 5090 reportedly effectively discontinued — something Nvidia strenuously denies, but the stock situation speaks for itself in countries like the US — and the RTX 5080 pricing itself well out of the range of the vast majority of consumers, those who were anticipating the RTX 5080 Super to ride to the rescue have suffered a fresh blow here, too.

I never thought that was a realistic proposition anyway, mind, but still, it's clear enough that the GPU market is in trouble, and Nvidia seemingly doesn't have any answers in the short term for the upper echelons of its Blackwell range. As noted, though, the real worry is that there's more pain coming to the more affordable end of the graphics card spectrum, where mainstream buyers make their purchases.

• Meta has announced the end of support for two of its popular VR headsets
• The devices affected are the Quest 2 and the Quest 2 Pro
• Support will be discontinued at the end of 2027

If you own a Meta Quest 2 or a Meta Quest Pro virtual reality headset, we’ve got some bad news: Meta has announced it is planning to wind down support for these devices next year, leaving large numbers of users without support for their VR products.

An announcement on the Meta blog aimed at developers details how things stand for creators of apps and services made for these headsets. With the two devices “reaching the end of feature development⁠,” big changes are on the way.

For one thing, new app submissions for these devices will be closed in December 2027. For another, version 2.13 of the Quest’s operating system (due out in March 2027) will be the last one to work with these headsets. Quarterly security patches and critical bug fixes will continue “through the end of 2027,” Meta said.

Still, Meta attempted to reassure developers of apps made for these VR headsets, stating that “People on Quest 2 and Quest Pro can still find, buy, download, and play your apps.” Cross-play with Quest 3 and Quest 3S headsets will continue, and developers can keep sending out updates to Quest 2 and Quest 2 Pro users.

And Meta’s app store for VR headsets will continue to be available to users of these soon-to-be-discontinued devices, with the firm saying that “people keep access to everything they’ve purchased, and no apps will be removed from the Store because of this change.”

Time to upgrade?

The Quest 2 launched in 2020, making it six years old at this point. Although we scored it highly in our review, it’s since been succeeded by the Quest 3, which is our pick for the best VR headset around. Evidently, Meta feels it’s now time to retire the Quest 2 and its Quest 2 Pro sibling, with the Quest Pro line having allegedly been phased out entirely in 2024.

Meta framed the change as one that’s paving the way for its upcoming VR Glasses. The company said that the Quest 3 and Quest 3S are “the baseline for Meta VR gamers” with its VR Glasses due to bring “another leap forward” for the industry. In that world, there’s apparently no more room for the Quest 2 and Quest 2 Pro.

Continuing app development for the Quest 2 and Quest 2 Pro might prove to be tricky, as Meta says it will not test new operating system and SDK releases on these products. Instead, it’ll be up to developers to ensure their apps function as intended.

Meta urged developers to assess how much of their audience is using Quest 2 and Quest 2 Pro devices and to consider splitting their releases to accommodate those on older headsets. If developers want to end support for these products, they should give users at least 180 days’ notice if customers could end up losing access to content or services as a result.

If you’ve got a Meta Quest 2 or Meta Quest 2 Pro at home, you’ll need to think about what you want to do going forward. While you should be able to continue using your headset, the lack of critical bug fixes after the end of 2027 could prove to be a problem. In that case, it might finally be time to upgrade to one of the best VR headsets to ensure you don’t miss out on anything.

• Synology warned of active ransomware attacks exploiting long-patched DSM vulnerabilities on unupdated NAS devices
• Attackers are reportedly deploying the C3rb3r encryptor and demanding thousands of dollars in ransom
• Users are urged to patch immediately, restrict internet exposure, and secure NAS access to prevent compromise

Synology, a major network-attached storage (NAS) manufacturer, is warning users about ongoing ransomware attacks targeting devices running outdated software. It urged all users to apply provided patches and secure their devices without delay.

In a brief announcement, Synology said it “identified threat actors exploiting a vulnerability patched in December 2024 to target devices running outdated versions of DSM.” The goal of the attacks seem to be data encryption and a ransom demand.

“Synology strongly urges all users running vulnerable versions to update DSM immediately to protect their systems. Synology also recommends enabling automatic updates to keep DSM up to date at all times.”

C3rb3r attacks

The announcement is rather stingy on the details. We don’t know which vulnerability the threat actors are exploiting, where exactly, or how successful they are.

We also don’t know how many devices are at risk - the Shadowserver Foundation tracks a total of 380,000 internet-connected endpoints (many of which are, most likely, running the latest software version and are thus protected).

The company also did not say who the threat actors are, but according to BleepingComputer, there has been a “massive wave of reports” from Synology customers whose data was apparently locked down by the “C3rb3r” encryptor. These customers were asked to pay “thousands of dollars” in ransom, in exchange for the decryption key. The publication says the first reports started surfacing more than two weeks ago.

There are two main ways for cybercriminals to access an electronic device and encrypt the data found there - either by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability (one that has not yet received a patch), or by exploiting years-old n-day vulnerabilities (ones that were patched months ago) on devices that were never updated and secured.

With Synology users, the latter seems to be the case. The company said the attackers were exploiting a vulnerability patched in December 2024, and linked to a November 2024 security advisory, in which it listed three fixed bugs: CVE-2024-10441 (arbitrary code execution), CVE-2024-50629 (arbitrary file read), and CVE-2024-10445 (a bug that allows writing files on compromised devices).

DSM 7.2.2 owners should upgrade to 7.2.2-72806-1 or above, DSM 7.2.1to 7.2.1-69057-6 or above, and DSM 7.2 to 7.2-64570-4 or above. DSM 7.1 should upgrade to 7.1.1-42962-7 or above, while those running DSM 6.2 to 6.2.4-25556-8 or above. Only in the last version - 6.2 - is the vulnerability labeled as “moderate”. In all other cases it was deemed “critical”.

Why are NAS devices being targeted?

NAS devices are dedicated storage systems that businesses can connect to their local network and allow employees to access, share, and manage files stored in a centralized location. They are rather popular among SMBs that lack the resources to maintain a more complex enterprise storage infrastructure.

Besides being used as a hybrid cloud of sorts, NAS is also used to store business documents and often acts as a centralized backup. The relative low cost, straightforward deployment, and easily expandable storage capacity makes NAS devices an attractive alternative to both dedicated file servers and cloud storage subscriptions.

However, this also makes them a valuable target for cybercriminals, as we’ve seen in this Synology case. The best way to defend against ransomware attackers is to either completely pull the NAS from the public internet or at least limit access to a handful of vetted identities. Keeping the devices updated with the latest firmware and software is also recommended.

It is worth mentioning that NAS devices usually come with RAID redundancy and built-in backup features, but these do not necessarily protect against ransomware encrypting the stored data.

• Security researcher combined audio analysis, flight data and a lot of number-crunching to identify audio locations
• Aircraft that are inaudible on the soundtrack can still reveal the recorder's location
• The technique is apparently accurate to within 100m

If, like me, you grew up watching corny FBI shows where computers could do the impossible through made-up technology with a single command of "enhance!", you're going to love the apparently impossible thing that YouTuber Colsto has just described in a new viral video.

Using a Doppler effect technique (more on that below), the location of a video or audio recording can be identified to within 100 meters through a combination of inaudible audio, flight data and math. This is no movie magic or scriptwriter invention: it's real and it's a little bit scary too.

I've embedded the video below and would really recommend watching it, because Colsto goes into great detail about how it's done, what it can't do and what precautions you might want to take if you don't want your background to betray you.

How your video background can betray you

As Colsto explains, the key is the 'Doppler effect'. That's the way sounds appear to change based on the distance between a moving source and the listener. You hear it all the time: it's what makes fire engine and ambulance sirens, car stereos and airplane propellers seem to change pitch as they go past.

What's clever here is that Colsto has focused on the sounds made by aircraft in the backgrounds of videos. In many parts of the world the skies are very busy, and a faraway airplane that's inaudible to you or other listeners might still leave a sonic footprint on your video or audio that can be isolated and analyzed. That's definitely the case in the US data Colsto used.

Once you've got the audio, the aircraft sound can then be matched with publicly available flight data and Doppler curve measurements. By triangulating the sound from multiple aircraft, you can then identify where the audio was recorded. This is enormously clever.

Colsto explains the detail in the video — what aircraft data was used, how it was analyzed, how the Doppler measurements were filtered and what corrections were made — but isn't posting any software or other tools to actually do it for you. Instead, you'll get an assessment of preventive measurements including why normal signal processing such as high-pass filters or noise reduction can be ineffective.

How scary is this?

Colsto was keen to point out that the video is designed to be educational about open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques, rather than an attempt to fear-monger.

"The odds that someone can and does actually do this is pretty slim. In reality, there's probably a hundred easier ways to find you than this," he says.

However, these are some potential use cases. "The audio we used is just from some random security camera, but it could have just as well been footage from a investigation or a video online. Something with literally zero visual clues could be located using this," he added.

So despite the somewhat niche application, there's something deeply scary about this kind of thing, I think, and from similar revelations such as Wi-Fi routers that can be used to locate you indoors and Wi-Fi signals that can help track your movements, even if you're not carrying a phone that connects to them.

And I know that fear is probably a bit silly when everywhere I go I carry a phone, use a tablet or drive a car that's leaking identifiable information to God-knows-who. But I can't help asking the question: if the possibilities we know about are this scary, what on Earth is the tech we don't know about capable of?

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• Cybercriminals are stealing AI API keys and cloud credentials to hijack expensive LLM services and infrastructure
• Stolen access is used to run AI workloads, create proxy services, and rack up massive bills for victims
• Google warns “LLMjacking” is evolving into a specialized cybercrime ecosystem with dedicated monetization operators

Threat actors are using large language models (LLM) to support almost every stage of a cyberattack, from researching potential victims to developing malware and automating various attacks. However, using AI is not cheap, and for those eager to use frontier models, costs can stack up relatively quickly.

But cybercriminals are used to stealing things, so why not steal someone else’s tokens, too?

A new report from Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) says that different hacking groups are doing exactly that and that the practice - known as LLMjacking - has been steadily growing more popular over the last couple of years.

Most groups start by focusing either on publicly exposed LLM endpoints, or on obtaining valid LLM application programming interface (API) keys. In many cases, the crooks would use exposed or stolen cloud identity tokens (IAM credentials, Service Account keys, GitHub Personal Access Tokens, and active session tokens) to establish an initial foothold into the target organizations’ infrastructure.

From there, they would “systematically work” to escalate privileges, solidify their access, and identify targets for further compromise.

LLMjacking

The endgame is LLMjacking, which GTIG describes as “the monetization and resource-hijacking of foundation models, which actors achieve through token proxying, automated model streaming, and GPU hardware provisioning.” In other words, someone else is using your AI subscription while you get the bill.

The bills can cause quite the headache, too. With cryptojacking, for example, token mining is relatively slow and steady, and a certain amount of time needs to pass for the charges to really stack up. With LLMjacking, however, costs can go into six digits in six minutes.

“Upon acquiring LLM API access keys, UNC6993 attempted to generate additional API keys and enable associated services within victim cloud projects, quickly accumulating over $100,000 in billing charges,” Google says in the report.

“Another threat actor subscribed victim accounts to Pay-As-You-Go agreements, selecting premium foundation models and launching high-volume inference streams. To bypass rate limits, the threat actor deployed a "burn and rotate" strategy, continuously creating and deleting short-lived service accounts while auditing the cloud provider’s billing interface to monitor financial impact.”

In some cases, threat actors also used the acquired access to host their own proxy endpoints and agentic workloads. Google says that one threat actor enabled agents, deployed publicly accessible reverse proxies, and used custom Node.js proxy bundles to expose endpoints compatible with multiple frontier LLMs rebranded under a persona known as D1337-KAIROS.

This actor deployed a containerized backdoor which queried an upstream LLM to reason through instructions and execute commands locally.

A growing ecosystem

The LLMjacking ecosystem is young, but growing fast and maturing even faster. Google says that there is already a division of labor between hacking groups that establish initial access to compromised environments, and operators who manage downstream monetization infrastructure. The latter are called “LLM Mixers” and they operate as a routing gateway that proxies, aggregates, and resells unauthorized LLM access to underground subscribers.

“In one investigation, GTIG observed two distinct operational clusters coordinating to compromise and monetize enterprise LLM infrastructure, demonstrating the sophisticated specialization emerging in this space,” Google said.

By using open source API gateways and custom relay infrastructure, the attackers were able to pool stolen credentials, meter usage, and hide where the requests really originated from.

Google is now sounding the alarm, saying it expects threat actors to “increasingly prioritize” LLMjacking at the expense of other resource theft practices. It urges organizations to increase their visibility of LLM platforms, prioritize detection of modifications to LLM accounts and services, and treat any unauthorized enablement as a critical security event. It also advised organizations to enforce the principle of least privilege and make sure accounts and users only have permissions they absolutely need to get the job done.

• John Ternus has warned that: "What we're seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented."
• The Apple CEO cautioned that RAM costs are going to climb higher in this final quarter of 2026
• It sounds even bleaker than Apple's previous statements on the RAM crisis, and follows many other warnings that 2027 is set to be a miserable year price-wise

Apple is warning of an 'unprecedented' rise in the cost of RAM, adding to the cacophony of alarm bells that have been ringing about the price of memory chips (and other PC components besides) recently.

The Guardian reports that in a conference call following Apple's fiscal Q3 results — which were better than analysts expected, driven by the iPhone, Mac mini and sales in China — Apple's new CEO John Ternus touched on the subject of the RAM crisis.

Ternus, who recently took the reins from Tim Cook, cautioned bleakly that: "What we're seeing with memory pricing right now is unprecedented."

He then observed that memory costs would climb even higher in the final quarter of 2026 compared to the rest of the year, during which, as you've doubtless seen, we've already witnessed a steep climb in pricing.

Despite its financial results outperforming analyst forecasts, Apple informed investors that these higher memory costs are going to erode some of its profit margins, which meant the company's stock dropped.

Apple raised the prices of Macs earlier this year, as well as iPads and more recently iPhones, and Ternus acknowledged that this had "provided some offset" for Apple in terms of the ongoing cost crisis around components.

Analysis: Ternus takes a turn for the sterner

It's an ominous utterance from Ternus, and sounds more severe than the warning Apple issued back before the Mac (and other) price hikes happened in June 2026. Back then, when Cook was still chief executive, he warned about "significantly higher memory costs" that would "drive an increasing impact" on Apple's products, which, as noted, came to pass.

Now we're hearing the word "unprecedented", which sounds a lot more concerning than "significant"; although in fairness, this is referencing what's already happened this year as much as what's to come. But we're clearly being primed for more price-hike misery by Ternus here, and it's difficult to see how this won't have a further impact on Macs, iPhones and iPads, if not in this quarter, then in 2027.

We don't, of course, know to what extent profits might be eroded by more expensive memory chips, or how this might be balanced by consumers having to foot that bill. Only time will tell on that score.

Mac mini sales were mentioned in the report — which quoted Ben Barringer, the head of technology research at investment management firm Quilter Cheviot — as being responsible for part of Apple's boosted earnings for the most recent quarter, and that's down to the increasing demand for local AI.

The Mac Studio is major part of that picture, too, and this particular PC just popped up as an example of how ridiculous RAM pricing has just become at the very top end of the Apple product tree. If you want a Mac Studio with 512GB of RAM, you'll now pay more than double the cost of a Mac Studio that has 256GB of memory, meaning that it's cheaper to buy two of the latter computers (while getting two CPUs/GPUs in the process).

It's a bizarre situation, but this is what we've arrived at with memory upgrades, which were always seriously pricey with Apple, even before the RAM crisis kicked off (that goes for storage, too).

And this situation is only going to get worse, seemingly, according to Ternus, which is also, of course, the view of the wider industry and various analysts. I can't begin to count the warnings we've had in the past couple of months about the RAM crisis becoming even more dire, so at this point it's just a question of how much worse things might get.

I fear that some categories of tech and PC components are going to become increasingly unaffordable next year, and I recently wrote about why Black Friday could be a good time to move on certain purchases.

• Reddit wants to overturn Australia’s social media ban for under-16s
• It is challenging the law in the Australian High Court
• Government says it’s defending the law from "sustained ideological attack"

In late 2025, Australia became the first nation in the world to ban social media for under-16s — and as you would expect, that hasn’t gone down particularly well with the app makers affected. Reddit, for example, has issued a stinging rebuke to the Australian government and is in the process of challenging the ban in court.

A lawyer representing Reddit called the ban “ill thought out” (via Reuters) and said it was a “profound ‌restriction on political debate.” The attorney was speaking at the Australian High Court, where Reddit is seeking to contest the country’s new law.

Together with a libertarian advocacy group, Reddit claimed in court that the social media ban was “a very substantial restriction on what young people can now do” and that it could stifle political debate. It added that the restrictions may stop users creating content and responding to posts.

Although Reddit said it supported the aims of the law, it branded the legislation “inept,” saying that it did not have any specific means to keep minors off social media and failed to regulate other platforms where cyberbullying might take place, such as on gaming websites. And the fact that users who were not logged in could still view huge amounts of material undermined the law, Reddit argued.

Could Reddit overturn the ban?

Since the Australian law came into effect, several studies have shown that large numbers of teenage users targeted by it are still able to access restricted material. Sometimes, that might be as simple as using a VPN service to disguise your location, while at other times, social media firms are simply not taking action to restrict usage by under-16s.

Despite Reddit’s criticism, the Australian government has said it will defend its legislation. In court, the state’s lawyer, Joanna Davidson, said that children were more vulnerable to harmful online content because their brains were not fully developed compared to those of adults.

And speaking outside the High Court, communications ⁠minister Anika Wells ​said: “We ​are here to defend a fundamental tenet of Australian democracy, which is an Australian’s right, and particularly an Australian child’s right, to be free from harm. We seek ​to defend that from sustained ideological attack.”

The government has doubled the maximum fine for non-compliance with the law to AU$99 million (about $69.5 million / £51.5 million), increased the discovery powers of the eSafety Commissioner, and said it is preparing enforcement action against some of the largest social media platforms operating in Australia.

Whatever side you take on this matter, it’s clear that neither the Australian government nor Reddit are preparing to back down anytime soon. And with other nations considering similar laws, many people around the world will be watching closely.

• Google leads efforts to dismantle 1.3 million device residential proxy botnet built through malware preinstalled on Android hardware
• Researchers say manufacturer Videostrong intentionally shipped malware and sold botnet access to cybercriminals
• Google seized infrastructure, blocked the company from Android certification, and strengthened device security checks

Google has revealed its role in taking down a massive residential proxy network and the malware that built it - with the unusual twist that the developer was a seemingly legitimate business with multiple products and countless trusting customers.

In a blog post, the company said that together with its partners, it dismantled a backdoor called XCPE. This malware was apparently used for ad fraud, served as a dropper for additional malware, and used for assimilating devices into an illegal residential proxy network.

In total, more than 1.3 million set-top boxes alone were part of the network, the company said.

No supply chain attack

Malicious residential proxy networks are nothing new - they emerge and get dismantled on a regular basis. But this one was unique, as it came preloaded on Android devices built and sold by a certified Android Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). In other words, people were thinking they were buying a legitimate product from a legitimate, Google-vetted company, but were instead getting malware-laden hardware that abused their trust and sold their bandwidth to cybercriminals.

In this case, not only did the company know what it was doing, but it was actively developing the malware and even worked on hiding it from Google and everyone else.

“A device manufacturer intentionally infecting their users with malware is an unacceptable breach of trust, and represents a serious risk to those users,” Google said, not hiding its disappointment with the manufacturer.

Videostrong ended up selling two things: On the surface, it was selling Android-powered smartphones and similar devices that contained malware that built a botnet. Under the table, it was selling access to that botnet to cybercriminals.

Google was joined by a number of other companies and agencies in this operation, including Japan’s National Police Agency, Lumen, HUMAN Security, Plume, Synthient, and TrendAI.

Threat actors are always in need of residential proxy botnets. They can use them to launch powerful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, hide their addresses as they operate, conduct large-scale credential stuffing campaigns, bypass geographical restrictions, scrape websites at scale, and more. We don’t know how much Videostrong made from selling access to the botnet, or who used it.

Taking down the C2 domains

To disrupt both the malware and the network, Google took down the domains and servers the company used to control the botnet and install malware modules, took down C2 domains that were used by over a dozen malware families loaded as modules via the XCPE backdoor, and banned Videostrong and all future subsidiaries and affiliates from building and selling Android devices in the future, or supplying software to other certified vendors.

Google also said it had improved its firmware integrity checks for certified Android TV devices to prevent similar incidents involving other manufacturers.

“Google requires OEMs go through a comprehensive suite of compatibility and security tests to ensure a consistent and safe user experience across the Android ecosystem,” it stressed. “However, Videostrong employed obfuscation techniques to exploit a gap in our tests and load malicious code after the device's first boot. As a result, Google has implemented changes to its existing review process to better safeguard against similar activity in the future.”

This is not the first time an electronic device came with malware off the shelf. Last month, security researchers Bitdefender found Android phones from multiple manufacturers, including Doogee and Cubot (both Chinese firms) being sold with preloaded malware. However, in those cases, the supply chain was compromised and the malware was included without the OEM’s knowledge, or consent.

• A zero-click Android flaw let attackers crash phones with a specially crafted SMS message
• Repeated messages could trigger reboot loops, disrupt calls, and even affect emergency connectivity
• Google patched supported Android versions, but many end-of-life devices remain permanently vulnerable

Picture this: You’re talking on your Android phone when all of a sudden you just lose mobile connectivity and your phone call drops. No explanation, no notification. Soon after, it happens again. And again. At one point, the device goes into recovery mode, rebooting every minute and a half until you finally perform a factory reset.

This is not a theoretical scenario - it is a real possibility, thanks to a critical-severity vulnerability in Android tracked as CVE-2026-58882.

Google has patched the issue for newer versions of Android, but those who are past their end-of-life date will remain at risk.

Sending an evil message

The bug was discovered by security researcher Mark Blah and described as a zero-click denial of service (DoS) vulnerability. In more technical terms, it is an “improper validation of a header-length value” bug in Android’s WapPushOverSms.decodeWapPdu function. It was nicknamed “SMS of Death” because it can be exploited with nothing more than an SMS message, which the victims doesn’t even have to open (hence the ‘zero-click’ part).

As Blah discovered, a threat actor could send a malformed eight-byte WAP Push message to an Android device’s port 2948: 01 06 88 80 80 80 00 BE.

Since this is a hex message, when it gets translated into a signed 32-bit integer, it becomes -2147483648. Android can then try to allocate memory using this negative value, triggering a NegativeArraySizeException error that crashes the com.android.phone process. Since this process manages cellular functions, the call is dropped and mobile connectivity is disrupted. Even emergency services are susceptible, it was said.

It gets worse. Android processes messages before they reach the inbox, meaning the victim will not be notified of the SMS and won’t even know it’s the text message that’s crashing the system. Also, some carriers will attempt to redeliver messages that never reached the inbox, extending the agony. Android also does its part by constantly trying to process messages already stored on the phone.

Finally, Blah found that if a malicious actor sends 20 or more messages, they can force the device into a reboot loop. On an Android 12 device, they can force looped recovery mode, leaving factory reset as the only viable option.

Patching the SMS of Death

Initially, all Android versions were affected, it was said. Google patched it for versions 14 through 17, but older devices will not be getting a patch and thus will remain at risk indefinitely. The fix is called “Fix remote DoS in decodeWapPdu”, and apparently it prevents the crashes by catching exceptions triggered when Android processes malformed text messages. It also deletes these messages from the SMS database so that they don’t trigger repeat crashes.

Blah has released a proof-of-concept (PoC), showing the wider community exactly how to exploit the flaw, and BleepingComputer reported that a GitHub contributor found a way to remove the malicious message, but it requires more technical knowledge, which is something the majority of mobile phone users probably won’t have. Still, those interested in tinkering should know that it can be removed via a computer, using Android Debug Bridge (ADB).

Google apparently patched the bug in its October 2026 Android security updates, but that doesn’t automatically mean all Android users are safe. Unlike Apple’s ecosystem, Android is diversified, and different manufacturers have different update cadences.

Therefore, while we can assume Pixel users have likely already received this update, Samsung users, as well as those using Xiaomi, Motorola, or OnePlus devices, will probably have to wait a little longer until their manufacturers apply the fix to their devices and push the update.

Still, since the PoC has been released, it’s safe to assume most Android manufacturers have already pushed their updates. Users are advised to install them as soon as possible.

• New malware uses AI to analyze stolen data, rank victims, and identify the most profitable targets
• VOLTA-AUTODOXER steals credentials, crypto wallets, tokens, and personal information before generating AI dossiers
• Researchers warn the malware could commoditize AI-powered victim profiling for ransomware and cybercrime operators

Stealing sensitive data from a lot of people is one thing, but determining whether or not that data is worth anything to anyone - that’s an entirely different ball game.

Now, it seems cybercriminals found a way to easily profile their victims’ information and they’re using - you guessed it - Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Cybersecurity researchers Cisco Talos uncovered a new malware strain through Cognitive Artificial Intelligence Research Network (CAIRN) - an open source cybersecurity research kit built to identify and track AI-powered malware.

The strain is called VOLTA-AUTODOXER and its operation is split into four key steps: 1) steal as much information as possible; 2) share it with an AI for assessment; 3) exfiltrate the data to attacker-controlled infrastructure; and 4) remove yourself from the victim’s system.

Analyzing the data

Cisco Talos did not say where exactly the malware was found, how many devices it infected, or how it is being disseminated. It said that, on surface level, it looks just like any other infostealer. It grabs browser passwords, cookies, payment cards, cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases, Discord, Telegram, Steam, and Roblox sessions, Microsoft OAuth tokens, SSH and cloud-provider keys, Wi-Fi profiles, and screenshots.

But this is where it splits from the industry standard, by building a structured evidence bundle about the person behind the system.

It pulls the device’s geographical location, home address, employer and employer domain, inferred birth year, the last 4 digits of their credit cards, Slack workspaces, document authorship metadata, iPhone backup indicators, and even a live Roblox account valuation. Then it moves to Gmail, looking for mails from UberEats and DoorDash in order to confirm the home address.

VOLTA then bundles and serializes the bundle, before POSTing it to OpenRouter, an AI infrastructure platform where users can access hundreds of LLMs through a single API.

There, the AI gives a model a prompt to behave as a “forensic intelligence analyst drafting a target assessment”. In other words, the AI is tasked with assessing whether or not the data pulled is worth any trouble, and if so - how much. Victims are ranked by value, giving the attackers more time to do what seems to be the end goal here - ransomware.

The default model is Claude, but if it refuses to comply for any reason, the malware is instructed to fall back to Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash. If neither of the models end up working, the malware will just send raw data back to the attacker. This is usually done via a Telegram channel.

Running away

After the work has been completed, VOLTA is instructed to delete itself from the system, likely to cover its tracks. A separate file, named volta_debug.txt apparently remains on the system, showing what was collected and whether or not the AI-powered assessment was a success.

The researchers believe VOLTA is designed to be sold on the black market. Elements such as the Telegram channel, or API keys, are not hardcoded, and the malware comes as a template with six swappable slots that are filed in at build time.

“This suggests it’s a builder model: The author sells access, the customer provides their values, and the builder compiles a custom binary for each order,” Cisco Talos explains. “If VOLTA is indeed a commoditized malware, then the AI dossier capability isn't something the author invented for their own operations. It is a feature which enables a customer of any level of sophistication to point it at victims and start receiving ranked target assessments in their Telegram inbox.”

If you suspect an infection, revoke or rotate all API keys and tokens, and change all of your passwords. Also, double-check your crypto wallets and move all funds to a new wallet with a fresh seed.

• The FBI formally attributes $6.7 billion Binance cryptocurrency theft to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group
• Investigators say the attackers are laundering stolen assets across multiple blockchains and DeFi services
• The breach highlights ongoing threats from Lazarus-linked campaigns targeting crypto, DevOps, and software professionals

The FBI has publicly accused a North Korean state-sponsored threat actor of being behind the recent attack on cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

One of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms on the planet was forced to freeze deposits and withdrawals, before confirming a threat actor stole around $6.7 billion worth of different cryptocurrencies.

Analysts were quick to investigate, with some claiming a known North Korean state-sponsored group called TraderTraitor was behind the heist. TraderTraitor is apparently part of Lazarus Group - a huge cybercriminal operation on North Korea’s payroll, allegedly tasked with stealing money to fund the country’s state apparatus and weapons program.

TraderTraitor

Now, the FBI has issued a new statement, official naming TraderTraitor as the attackers.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is releasing information advising the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion USD in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange Binance, on or about October 29, 2026. The FBI refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as ‘TraderTraitor’.,” the announcement reads.

“The FBI, together with partners at the USSS and IRS-CI, has observed TraderTraitor actors converting stolen assets primarily into Ethereum (ETH). It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages.”

Binance said one of its DevOps engineers had their laptop compromised which “gave an attacker access to a service container, where they submitted unauthorized withdrawal transactions.” Some speculated the engineer fell to a classic fake job scam, while others argued it was a romance scam.

In the meantime, Binance resumed operations and has covered most of its losses.

Initial reports found that the attackers siphoned out money from 10 different chains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Arbitrum, and others. For Ethereum, they even set up a smart contract that automatically withdrew any new money that was flowing into the account. The silver lining in the attack is that these were not user funds, but rather those of the exchange itself.

Cryptocurrency exchanges are obliged to have two separate wallets - one for their own funds, and one for those of their customers. Binance has a security fund called SAFU (Secure Asset Fund for Users), designed to protect user assets during extreme platform-level incidents, such as this one.

Operations DreamJob and Contagious Interview

Obviously, North Korea has not commented on these allegations, but the cybersecurity community has logn warned about Lazarus Group targeting organizations in the West, sometimes tasked with stealing money, and sometimes with cyber-espionage and eavesdropping.

The group is split into numerous sub-groups, one of them being TraderTraitor, and among other things, the group runs two major scam campaigns: Operation DreamJob, and Contagious Interview. Both are aimed at software developers, blockchain programmers, and DevOps professionals, and the wider software development industry.

As part of these scams, the attackers would create fake companies, fake employees, and fake job offers. They would reach out to their targets on LinkedIn and offer lucrative job positions, only to infect their computers with malware during the interviews. In some cases, they would apply for open positions, impersonating Chinese, Vietnamese, or Thai nationals and would, when they get the job, use the position to steal sensitive data and money.

North Korea is under heavy sanctions from the US, and the country does not allow its companies to hire, or do business with, individuals and organizations in North Korea.

The FBI shared a long list of wallets it believes contain the stolen funds, and has asked THORNode operators, RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services, blockchain analytics firms, and other virtual asset service providers to block transactions with or derived from these addresses.

• 'Heartwood' is a wood-based gaming PC that took seven years to build
• It's stunningly neat, and the hidden trick is that it routes the cooling and other cables outside the PC
• Those pipes and cables run underneath the desk, which the PC is effectively built into, and down into the basement below, where the full cooling system resides

Fancy custom PC builds come along with some regularity, but every now and then something really unusual presents itself — and I'd class this as the smartest and neatest desktop computer I've ever seen.

Wccftech spotted the rig in question, which was posted in the PC build subreddit by Mithiral67. The gaming PC is called 'Heartwood', and it took a rather incredible seven years to build.

It's based on an Inwin 909 case (which looks impressive in itself in brushed aluminum) using a semi-open concept, with the motherboard sitting in an empty space (there's no rear panel with the build here, as you can see in the YouTube video below that shows off this PC).

This desktop looks incredibly neat and slick decked out in wood and aluminum, with the nifty lighting in the top of the case too, but where's the cooling and other cabling? That's when the full extent of this build becomes clear, because it also includes the desk underneath the PC.

What the maker has done is route the liquid cooling and power cables down through the bottom of the case and the desk, with these running around the underside of the desk, and then down a leg into the floor, to the basement of the house, where all the water-cooling gubbins (built around a Mora 400) resides.

Not only was this build a time-consuming labor of love, it was also a very costly one. Another Redditor enquires about the price of the materials, and according to Mithiral67 the wood itself was around $4,000 – and they said they didn't even want to get into the cost of the woodworking tools.

As for the components, the PC is built on a Ryzen 9800X3D processor plus Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU.

Waiting out the GPU pricing nightmares

So, this was a pricey build, and a complex one, but even then, seven years seems like a very long time for putting the PC together — it means Mithiral67 started their project before the pandemic.

What gives? Well, as they explain: "For those asking, 7 years was mostly waiting for a GPU at MSRP, literally took 4 generations to get lucky at Micro Center."

There you have it. Those hoping to feature an RTX 5090 in their custom build are looking at paying an absolute fortune currently, of course, and getting the Nvidia flagship at list price now seems almost as miraculous a feat as the construction and thoughtful crafting witnessed with this PC.

Mind you, even then Mithiral67 had to buy the RTX 5090 as part of a full PC to get it at the equivalent of the sticker price (which worked out fine, as it meant they could use that other PC for playing games while they painstakingly finished off the work of art that is 'Heartwood').

As one admiring Redditor summed up nicely: "This is genuinely the most beautiful setup I've seen, in every aspect from the choice of wood, color, design, and function."

There's no shortage of commenters approving of the build, or indeed those pointing out that Sam Altman doubtless disapproves of the amount of RAM used in this desktop, too. Don't you know that's memory which could have powered another AI agent from a data center somewhere?

• Applebee’s fixes mobile app flaw that exposed customer data through hardcoded database credentials
• Researchers found access to personal information including names, contact details, birthdays, and account metadata
• No evidence of abuse was found, but the incident highlights the persistent risk of hardcoded secrets in software

Applebee’s has fixed a serious flaw in its mobile app that exposed sensitive customer information to pretty much anyone. Whether or not anyone malicious actually found this vulnerability and exploited it is not known at this time.

The chain has an Android mobile app that allows customers to browse the menu, customize meals, place orders for delivery or pickup, save their favorites, or receive personalized food recommendations.

A security researcher from What Security called Robert Wiggins, used AI to analyze the source code of the app and found a gaping hole - hardcoded credentials for a company database.

Notifying the business

The database contained plenty of sensitive information: 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.

We don’t know exactly how many people had their sensitive data exposed that way, but the app has more than a million downloads on the Google Play Store.

Wiggins soon realized that there was no way to report the issue either to Applebee’s itself or to its parent company, Dine Brands, so he reached out to TechCrunch. The publication verified his claims by finding the exposed credentials itself, and even created a new entry which Wiggins was later able to extract, and also confirmed the credentials allowed users to modify database entries.

TechCrunch managed to get ahold of Dine Brands, who plugged the hole and thanked everyone involved: “We appreciate TechCrunch and the security researcher for bringing this matter to our attention,” the company said. “Our security team promptly launched an investigation and has not currently found any evidence of unauthorized access.”

“Our investigation is ongoing, and we will take appropriate steps based on our findings,” the company added.

Hardcoded credentials are a very common mistake that sometimes has dire consequences. During production, software developers would leave login credentials inside the code to work faster, allowing the app to skip the tedious process of identifying every single time. However, the credentials are supposed to be temporary and are usually removed from the code before launch.

Sometimes, though, the credentials don’t get spotted during final code review and end up in the live version. Crooks who scan the codes for vulnerabilities can then use the information for unauthorized access.

A common error

Unfortunately, it is a very common problem. In March 2025, security researchers from Cybernews analyzed more than 156,000 iOS apps and found more than 815,000 hardcoded secrets, thousands of which were “very sensitive and could lead directly to breaches or data leaks.” It’s worth mentioning that in this case, a “secret” means more than just passwords - it also includes API keys and encryption keys. The average app's code exposed 5.2 secrets, and 71% of apps leak at least one secret, Cybernews reported at the time.

A few months later, in July, HPE patched a similar bug in Aruba Instant On Access Points, and at roughly the same time, a similar flaw was found in Cisco’s Unified CM, enterprise-grade IP telephony call control platform providing voice, video, messaging, mobility, and presence services.

The leaks continued in 2026 - in February, news broke of Chinese state-sponsored threat actors abusing hardcoded credentials found in Dell’s RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines.

Applebee’s did not notify its customers about the incident, and it did not publicly disclose it on its website or social channels, at press time. Also, there are no indications that any threat actors exfiltrated this data or leaked it to the dark web.

Sam Altman has been making headlines for his claims that consumers don’t deserve DRAM because it is only utilized “5% of the time.” In his opinion, DRAM supplies should be prioritized for data centers where its utility can be maximized powering cloud environments.

Altman’s perspective is like a utilitarian's fantasy. Humanity’s endurance of short-term pain - by handing over every bit of DRAM we have - will lead to a morally right outcome in the form of a world powered by time-saving, efficiency-increasing, productivity-boosting AI.

Sounds great if you’re the head of an AI company, but less so if you just want memory to be affordable again.

But what the OpenAI head seems to forget is that the DRAM shortage is part of a crisis he had a hand in creating. When OpenAI’s Stargate datacenter buildout was announced in early 2025, it was predicted that the project would require 40% of the world’s global supply. Supply issues were compounded as leading producers of memory entered a production turndown just a few years before to help stabilize pricing.

Will Sam Altman break into your house to steal your RAM?

The good news is that there is little Sam Altman himself can do to take your RAM off you. One reddit user asked Google AI the question we’ve all been thinking: “Is Sam Altman going to break into my house and steal my RAM?”

Google reassured the user with, “No, Sam Altman is not going to break into your house to physically steal your RAM.” So at least there's that.

But given how constrained the current memory supply is, there are a few ways that AI and other future tech could make the whole situation worse.

The worst could still be yet to come

One of the world’s leading memory manufacturers, SK Hynix, has predicted that the supply shortage could “persist through 2030,” making any hopes of a return to affordable pricing in the next few years a distant dream.

With OpenAI and Anthropic both set to hit the public market within that window, there is a lot of uncertainty over how the memory giants that control around 90% of the world’s supply will shift production.

Given the difference in revenue between the consumer memory market and the AI market, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a significant production swing towards the high-bandwidth memory required for AI inference and training.

This could be compounded by AI’s effect on the job market, with numerous firms enacting hiring freezes as AI strategies help cut out repetitive rote work. Higher unemployment and a lack of open positions could further reduce the demand for consumer memory, swinging production further in favor of AI.

But other emerging industries are also looking to take a bite out of the memory market.

Robots and autonomous vehicles are coming for your RAM

There has been a recent explosion in the robotics industry: from humanoid bots competing in their very own Olympics, to warehouses staffed by fleets of micro-bots. As AI improves and converges with the robotics industry to produce bots with near-human fine motor control, numerous industries spanning manufacturing, hospitality and logistics could buy robots in place of humans.

After all, a robot can work around the clock, doesn’t need to rest, and doesn’t have any rights to be violated with unsafe working conditions or excessive hours. The same goes for an autonomous taxi or cargo truck.

But they will need memory to run their little AI brains. And serving the corporate overlords is much more important (and much more profitable) than expanding memory production for the consumer market, so don’t expect things to improve any time soon.

• Windows 11 just got a revamped internet speed test in preview
• This feature was shuttled swiftly through development using agentic AI in combination with human oversight
• Microsoft boasts that this is about: "Getting from idea to customer value faster. Without AI slop." Others are more cynical, though

Windows 11 just got a useful change in preview, with its built-in internet speed test being revamped, and the new version was produced using AI (in conjunction with human oversight, I should add).

Windows Latest spotted that Marcus Ash, Microsoft's VP of Windows Design and Research, posted on X to explain that the "team moved pretty fast on this one", adding that following feedback asking for the speed test to be improved, "within a day, Diego had a working prototype." (Diego Baca is VP of Design for Windows).

Ash tells us: "From there, our connectivity team worked with partners to bring the experience into Windows. The design and build work was driven by an agentic AI workflow, with a person guiding the process in their spare time."

The Microsoft exec further explains that this is where he sees "a lot of potential in AI" and using agentic workflows, in terms of "Getting from idea to customer value faster. Without AI slop. That is the way."

Analysis: AI, oversight, bugs, and jobs

Of course, this is a controversial topic. Mention AI being involved in the coding of Windows 11 and some tempers will flare online, even though we know this is happening anyway. Microsoft has made no secret of that fact.

Indeed, among the AI hate and flames on social media, a lot of people are point out that these days pretty much all software is being developed in conjunction with Large Language Models (LLM agents) — even Linux.

As one Redditor makes clear: "Newsflash — every single piece of software you use, except for open source projects that are making a statement, you should expect to have AI written code in it. It is pervasive, it is everywhere."

The key aspect here is exactly how the AI agent in question is employed.

It's one thing for such an agent to be given a task to write a piece of code for a certain feature, and then just to slap that into your software or operating system as it is (or maybe after a cursory glance through the work). It's another thing to have a human programmer working on a feature and using an agent to perform grunt-work (easy but perhaps time-consuming) coding therein — and then to properly check the AI's output.

Theoretically, there's nothing wrong with the latter approach, at least in terms of the soundness of the coding work. And as Microsoft's Ash points out, this is really accelerating development times — meaning Windows 11 users will get new features (hopefully capabilities they want, like this improved internet speed test) much more swiftly. Which is exactly why almost every developer is now utilizing this tech.

There are problems here, though, and they're bound up in the public perception of Microsoft. Do Windows 11 users trust the company to be using AI in the right — i.e., properly checked and vetted — way? Not really, in many cases, as there remains a lot of doubt over the overall quality of Windows 11 code, and rightly so given the regularity, and severity, of the bugs we've seen (with more prevalence since 2024, and that 24H2 update).

As another Redditor observes: "People aren't calling Windows slop because it's being made using AI these days. They're calling it slop because it's being made using AI with woefully insufficient human oversight and even more woefully insufficient QA, leading to repeated disastrous bugs making it to production and end users being treated as beta testers. You want people to stop calling your product slop? Stop shipping updates that take down people's computers or break existing features."

The other issue here is that of AI stealing coding jobs from people. Agents may make things happen a lot more quickly, but as Ash notes, this revamped speed test was implemented mainly by an agent — including its design — with the software engineer "guiding the process in their spare time", making it sound like a rather casual amount of effort on the human side of the equation.

Is it a particularly sensitive approach to be touting the benefits of AI — as real as they may be for an operating system's ongoing development and maintenance — in this way at a time when Microsoft has been swinging the axe with various job cuts and pushing staff towards voluntary redundancy in a big way? I'd suggest it isn't, and the timing of this particular push of the value of agentic AI is dubious in that respect.

At least in this case Microsoft is being upfront and transparent about what it's doing — and we can expect a good deal more AI acceleration of Windows 11's development going forward.

• The Explorer 100D is a palm-sized 30,000mAh portable power station
• It uses a long-lasting lithium iron phosphate battery
• It has a maximum total output of 158W and supports direct solar input

Jackery has just launched a new portable power station that combines a high capacity with an impressively small and lightweight design.

Dubbed the Jackery Explorer 100D, it measures 11.87 x 8.26 x 8.57cm and weighs 850g, which sounds fairly compact when you consider that it has 30,000mAh of power. Indeed, it’s 14% smaller and 12% lighter than the Explorer 100 Plus, making it Jackery's smallest portable power station yet.

So, while it will certainly add some weight to your bag, it's small enough to carry around in a backpack, so you can keep your devices powered when out and about or on trips. It’s designed to comply with lithium battery transport standards, too, so you can take it on planes and trains, and even though it’s palm-sized, it also includes a built-in handle and supports an optional shoulder strap.

An LFP battery with solar support

The Jackery Explorer 100D also uses a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery rather than the more common lithium-ion ones, meaning it’s theoretically both safer and longer-lasting, with Jackery claiming it has an up to 8-year lifespan and will retain at least 80% of its capacity across 3,000 charging cycles.

It has two 140W USB-C ports and an 18W USB-A port, so you can charge, for example, a laptop, phone, and tablet all at once. That said, it tops out at 158W of combined charging power, so you can’t use all of those ports at full power simultaneously.

When you need to charge the 100D itself, you can of course plug it in to any outlet, but it also supports up to 100W of direct solar input, making it suited to an off-grid setup.

So there’s a lot to like here, and while this isn’t the cheapest 30,000mAh power station, it’s reasonably affordable too, coming in at $99 / €99 (roughly £75 / AU$140). It’s not currently available in the UK or Australia, but Jackery does have a presence in both regions, so that might change.

Earlier this week, Apple did the thing we’ve all known it would for months and finally unveiled its touchscreen MacBook Pro. Awkwardly dubbed the “PROLED XDR Display,” Apple says the touchscreen panel gives pro users “a whole new way to interact with their content.”

Yet, to say I’m unconvinced would be an understatement. While I’m excited for that OLED goodness, I’ve long been skeptical of the benefits of touchscreen laptops, as I find their gesture interactions to be by turns unnecessary and uncomfortable to use for long periods of time. And if something is either so unnecessary that you don’t use it or so uncomfortable that it causes your arms to ache, it probably shouldn’t be in a product.

But hey, what do I know? Practically every Windows laptop manufacturer offers at least one touchscreen version, and now Apple has got in on the act. I’m sure Apple will do what it often does and blow everyone else away with a perfected feature that redefines what a touchscreen display should be about … right?

Actually, scratch that, I’m still totally unconvinced. Because not only has Apple completely sidestepped the entire issue of arm fatigue, but it seems the company can’t even convincingly explain why anyone should buy a touchscreen MacBook in the first place (and let’s not even talk about the $2,899 starting price or the $14,549 maximum configuration). No, I think I’ll be sitting this one out. Here’s why you might also want to.

Simply the best?

If we want to understand why this touchscreen MacBook Pro exists — and maybe why you should buy one — we should look at how Apple frames it. The company says that “Graphic designers can now use the entire display as their canvas, no longer constrained by the area of the trackpad when drawing,” and that “musicians can play software instruments right onscreen.”

But does Apple actually think that doing either of those things is going to be remotely comfortable for more than about 10 seconds? There’s a reason why people play keyboards horizontally, after all: because playing an entire gig with your arms held rigid and outstretched is a quick path to aching limbs. Why would it be any different on a laptop?

Surely Apple doesn’t picture long-term usage like that, so my guess is it expects you’ll do a few quick taps on-screen and then go back to a normal, sane way of using your laptop. But if you only interact with the touchscreen for a few seconds at a time, is it really worth it? Is that kind of limited interaction good value for money when you’re paying a $400 premium over the regular MacBook Pro?

Maybe, maybe not, but the fact that Apple’s big, expensive, flagship feature is something many people will simply shrug their shoulders at suggests a failure of inspiration on Apple’s part.

Yes, you get a beautiful OLED panel as well for your $400, and that I think is easily justified. But every feature in a product you buy should be able to justify its existence, especially in an Apple product and especially in these expensive times. Yet the touchscreen panel just feels like it’s come along for the ride.

After all, Apple is the company that has reinvented category after category, from portable music players to smartphones to tablets and beyond. And now the best it can do is a feature that isn’t comfortable to use for long periods and that is best employed in short bursts with extended periods of inactivity in between.

If Apple, of all companies, can’t blow you away with a feature that resets expectations of how the category should work, why is it bothering at all? Apple’s mantra has long been not to be first, but to be best. Does this touchscreen really feel like the best in the industry, or just another addition to the pile?

An uninspired feature

In hands-on demos across the land, plenty of people have said that using the touchscreen MacBook Pro feels great — or “totally and wonderfully natural,” in the words of my colleague Lance Ulanoff — and I don’t doubt that it does.

But that doesn’t negate Steve Jobs’ criticisms of the idea of touchscreen laptops at all. In his famous critique, Jobs said that “after a short period of time you start to fatigue, and after an extended period of time your arm wants to fall off.”

I’m sure that Apple has crafted its touchscreen display in such a way that it does indeed feel amazing when you first start using it. A few taps and swipes and you’re probably ready to part with your cash.

The problem is that, unless I’ve missed something, our arms haven’t evolved in the 16 years since Jobs made that oft-cited pronouncement. Keep using a touchscreen laptop, whether it’s made by Apple or anyone else, and you will eventually start to feel fatigue and pain.

Given the laws of biology haven’t changed, I was hoping that Apple at least had some sort of killer feature up its sleeve for the touchscreen display. Sadly, I’ve come away disappointed.

Even John Ternus, Apple’s new CEO, can’t seem to sell it well. When asked by Wired why Apple decided to release a touchscreen MacBook, Ternus had this to say:

“We needed to get to a point where adding touch didn’t make the product lesser in any way. It didn’t make it heavier. It didn’t make it thicker. That came together with the OLED screen, the best display we’ve ever put into a Mac. All of these things, and, oh yeah, it has touch as well.”

“Oh yeah, it has touch as well.”

It feels like that sums up the inclusion of the touchscreen almost too well. Why did Apple include it in the MacBook Pro? “Yeah, I guess we may as well do it.” That’s the way it sounds to me.

Is that the attitude of a company that leads? Of one that prides itself on inspiration and innovation? Or just one that sees everyone else doing touchscreen laptops and thinks it should probably tag along?

Look again at what Ternus said. The time was right to include a touchscreen because Apple could do so without making the MacBook Pro worse. Not the time was right because including a touchscreen would elevate the MacBook Pro to exciting new heights. Just, “hey, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Apple’s playbook has often been to let others go first and wait until it has the capability to blow everyone else away, not to let others go first and then add their own thing because “I suppose the time is right.” It just screams of passive, unimaginative thinking. Where’s the drive, the passion? The desire to make something “insanely great”?

Are we really expected to believe that Steve Jobs made the first iPhone a touchscreen product because he wanted the company’s customers to say “oh yeah, it has multi-touch as well”? That designing an Apple device was a checkbox exercise of adding what you could as long as it didn’t make the experience crap? Jobs was famous for his conniptions, and you can bet everything you’ve got he’d have one if that’s how his teams thought.

And yet here we are, with Apple’s own CEO making the headline feature of his latest MacBook Pro feel like an afterthought that half of the company’s users might not even notice. It boggles the mind.

Before the PROLED MacBook Pro launched, my colleague Lance Ulanoff pointed out that Steve Jobs often changed his opinions and argued that Jobs would have loved the idea of a touchscreen MacBook Pro. Maybe so, but he would have hated the milquetoast way that Apple has framed it.