• Taika Waititi's new movie Klara and the Sun has a first-look trailer
• It teases Jenna Ortega as the titular AI companion, playing what's called an Artificial Friend
• Klara and the Sun arrives in theaters on October 23, 2026

Klara and The Sun got its first trailer recently, and the new movie quickly grabbed my attention. Even though stories of AI companions are everywhere, this one has done a lot to stand out from the crowd.

Before we get into that, here's a quick synopsis. Taika Waititi's Klara and The Sun is an adaptation of the novel of the same name, centering around an Artificial Friend (Jenna Ortega) and the human she was bought for, Josie (Mia Tharia).

Take a look at the trailer below ahead of the movie's release on October 23, 2026.

Why I'm excited for Klara and The Sun

Stories about AI companions are hardly new, and you'd be forgiven for growing a little tired of them. Whether it's sci-fi classics like A.I. Artificial Intelligence or horrors like Companion, lifelike androids are nothing new.

But I quickly found myself interested in Klara and the Sun after seeing the trailer and reading up on it. The original novel by Kazuo Ishiguro explores a dystopian world where children are genetically engineered for enhanced academic ability.

There's plenty of downsides to this, including social isolation. Children learn at home through on-screen tutors so they spend a lot of time stuck indoors. Enter the Artificial Friends, companions that can be purchased for the home where they'll keep children company without needing to be cared for like a pet would.

It's a bleak existence, but there's also something hopeful about Klara and the Sun. The trailer teases an unlikely bond between the titular AI companion and Josie, her human friend.

Outside of the interesting premise I'm also impressed by the cast. Supporting roles are played by Amy Adams, Natasha Lyonne, and Steve Buscemi, so we have some great talent attached to this.

I'm really excited to dive deeper into this world, especially since I have enjoyed Waititi's previous work such as Jojo Rabbit. I'm hoping that Klara and the Sun is just as good.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal review: Price & release date

• List price: $1,299.99 / £999.99
• Released March 2026

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal comes in at $1,299.99 / £999.99 — while it’s far from cheap, it’s pretty good value for what it offers. That being said, there are other robot vacuum cleaners with equally impressive features and better software at a similar price point.

Plus, you’ll need to maintain some parts of the vacuum; in particular, refills for the multi-floor cleaner ($13.99 / £14.99) and the odor-neutralizing puck ($9.99 – $14.99 / £7.99 – £15.99), as well as the usual replacement for things like side brushes and mop pads. Over time, these can add up, but you’ll scarcely find a robovac that doesn’t come with added costs at similar prices these days.

• Value: 4/5

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal review: Design

Out of the box, you’ll find the vacuum, base, power chord, an anti-odor puck, one refill bottle of Shark’s multi-floor cleaner, two side brushes, plus the usual array of instructions and warranty documents.

The base stands at 17 x 18 x 14 inches / 43.2 x 45.7 x 35.6 cm, and comes in either black or white — mine was the latter, and I think it looks a lot more premium than the tackier black colorway. Enclosed in the lid of the base are the 2.74-litre / 96.65oz clean and 1.18-litre / 41.62oz waste water tanks, which lift out easily thanks to the retractable handles, as well as the bagless dirt compartment — I really appreciate that Shark opted for this so there’s one less thing to routinely replace.

You can remove the container with the press of a button situated on the side of the dock, and it’s also HEPA-filtered. There’s also a set of two filters you’ll need to clean every 1-2 months, depending on how often you use your robot vacuum, and a slot for one of Shark’s anti-odor pucks should dusty smells be an issue for you.

The vacuum itself is a fairly standard, rounded 2-in-1 robot vacuum, but a little tall and hefty at 5.35 inches / 13.6cm tall. The top houses its raised puck for LiDAR sensing, which works in tandem with the front of the device, where the cameras and other sensors, including a camera as well as LED and UV lights, to navigate your home and spot messes ripe for cleaning.

If you’d rather not use the app, you can use the four touch-sensitive buttons to activate mop and vacuum modes, send the vacuum home and connect to the Wi-Fi. A soft bumper surrounds the edges of the vacuum to prevent damage from any collisions, which are remarkably rare thanks to its top-tier obstacle avoidance, and you can remove its dust bin and mop plate from the rear of the device.

On the underside, you’ll find the wheels, brush bar, side brush, and a singular, flat mop pad. These aren’t my favorite type — a rondel will typically offer a deeper clean, better post-clean drying and less water waste. However, Shark has designed the robot vacuum to wiggle this mop pad to agitate dirt, which goes some of the ways to make up the difference.

Of note is that the vacuum seems to be a total dust magnet. I have mine placed beneath a desk, where I wouldn’t expect excessive levels of dust — however it’s constantly lined with a thick layer of the stuff.

• Design: 4/5

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal review: Performance

Setup for the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal is pretty simple; using the app, you’ll connect the vacuum to your Wi-Fi, give it a name (I loved some of the suggestions like Clean Latifah), and after that, the robot vacuum will run its first mapping pass. Broadly, mine was accurate; my apartment has a slightly tricky layout for robot vacuums, including a half-tiled, half-carpeted kitchen-living room, and lots of doors to dodge.

After this first pass, the app will offer you a second mapping run, this time to detect flooring types. If you plan to regularly mop hard floors and have carpets or rugs to avoid, make sure to get this out of the way during setup; I couldn’t find any way to update this map after the fact.

Cleaning tests

I performed my standard pickup tests using oats, cornflour and brown rice to compare performance to other robot vacuums I’ve tested, and the results were a mixed bag. When setting the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal off for a standard, vacuum-only clean, I was immediately impressed as it zig-zagged across my floors, leaving them visibly refreshed — plus, it’s pretty quiet in action.

On hard floors, it excels thanks to a combination of its side brush, solid suction and the jet of air it blasts at hard-to-reach debris, ensuring floors are spick and span post-clean. On carpet, it’s slightly less impressive, especially in the edge cleaning department, but it still does a decent enough job. Its pickup of larger debris was very impressive on carpet, leaving little to nothing behind, but there was a small amount of powdery debris left behind on my medium-pile rugs — hair, however, is no problem, be it human or pet.

Next up, I tried a regular combination clean with vacuum and mopping, and that’s where my experience with the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal became a bit more mixed. The robot vacuum first fills its water tank at the base, proceeding to concurrently vacuum and mop your floors rather than splitting out the tasks. This helps to save time and battery; however, it does increase the risk of soggy carpets.

To avoid this, the robovac will lift its hind to keep the mop pad from drenching carpets — this reduces its effectiveness on carpets, though, as it crushes the side brush, and sometimes, while navigating, it will spin round and spit water across the floor, too. However, once it reaches hard floors, the results are pretty impressive; the mop pad agitates spills and stains with a back-and-forth scrubbing motion, and will reach into corners to make sure every spot is well-cleaned.

It does use a lot of water, though, and especially if you’re cleaning up larger spills, that means the PowerDetect UV Reveal can leave a streaky mess in its wake. I noticed this even more so when there was lots of debris to vacuum up during the clean; the PowerDetect UV Reveal left a clump of soggy oats behind like an owl pellet as well as white streaky marks across the floor, but I wouldn’t typically recommend regularly using your robot vacuum to collect large volume spills anyway. I have especially reflective kitchen tiles, so I noticed this a lot; on my less shiny bathroom tiles, it wasn’t as much of a problem.

Powering up to a higher suction or mopping setting does result in a more thorough cleaning job, especially on carpets, but it’s worth noting that this seems to make the excess water usage more noticeable.

Object detection and navigation

When the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal works, it really works, but I encountered a fair few bugs and limitations that do impact its overall effectiveness — for example, when doing a combination clean, it sometimes skips cleaning certain areas and rooms, or neglects to clean areas I’ve specifically asked it to.

Its LiDAR scanner makes accurate room maps, though they’ll be a bit odd-looking if you have lots of furniture at floor level. That’s unavoidable, to a degree, but I wish it had investigated those areas more closely to find the real edges of the walls; that way if furniture moves around your home, you wouldn’t need to remap.

Its object detection is incredible — perhaps too good, as the robot vacuum avoided my low-hanging (but not floor-length) curtains like the plague, giving wide berth to even the most inconsequential of obstacles. Generally, it’s not too much of a problem, but improved smarts would mean there’s slightly less preparation required pre-clean to ensure your entire floor gets cleaned properly. I was also massively impressed by the ease with which it lifted itself over and cleared thresholds, chair legs, and the like, leading to quicker cleans.

UV detection

After its standard cleaning cycles, the robovac will return to its base, but the cleaning isn’t over quite yet. It’ll issue an ominous warning once it’s refreshed itself: "I detected stains. I'm heading back out to aggressively attack them."

Here’s where the magic of the PowerDetect UV Reveal is really on show; as it cleans, it flares a blue UV light, with which you can see for yourself the stubborn and sometimes invisible stains on your floor, which it will then return to after a standard cleaning run. It was pretty cringe-inducing to watch it navigate areas I hadn’t cleaned recently and see just how much grime was there.

Dock

After the job’s complete, it’ll return for a final time to the base and begin the mop pad maintenance process quietly in the background with just a low humming noise, washing it with hot water before drying it to reduce contamination. In my testing, the robovac lived up to its estimated 3-hour battery life; a 45-minute clean on standard settings dropped the battery by 25%. A full recharge takes roughly 4 hours, and the vacuum won’t perform new tasks when at less than 20%.

• Performance: 4/5

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal review: Software and app

The app is quite restrictive when it comes to home and schedule customization; you can only have one map, so multi-floor cleaning isn’t possible, no-go zones are always rectangular and you can only create two schedules per day.

I also noticed that the robot vacuum would often get confused when it initiated a clean, forging straight to the corner of my living room and spinning there for a good few minutes before figuring out its path to the hallway. On closer inspection, this happened most frequently when I sent it to clean somewhere other than its home room; for some reason, it wanted to head straight through my wall instead of around and through the doorway.

I couldn’t find a quiet mode, either, meaning if you ever wanted to use the vacuum at night or when little ones are sleeping, they might awaken to an ominous threat from your robovac.

These issues, among other software quirks, make for the primary complaint I have surrounding the Shark PowerDetect UV reveal; its app and on-board smarts hold back an otherwise high-performance robot vacuum.

• Software: 2.5/5

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal review: Specs

Should I buy Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal?

Buy it if…

You value well sanitized floors
With its UV detection, the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal offers peace of mind and broadly great results, especially in the mopping department… if you can handle slow-drying floors.

You have pets
Again, the UV detection comes in clutch here for invisible pet messes, but it’s also a deft hand at hair collection.

You have a large home
With its great battery life and efficiency, the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal is unlikely to run out of juice before finishing the job even in larger homes.

Don’t buy it if…

You have lots of wooden floors or shiny tiles

While it’ll clean these floor types within an inch of their life, the residual water and cleaning solution could warp or damage wooden floors and leave streaky marks on particularly reflective ones.

You have lots of carpet
Don’t get me wrong, this is an accomplished vacuum for carpets, but if you want to do combination cleans, you might end up with a few soggy spots left in its wake.

You want to vacuum multiple floors — or other smart features

I liken the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal to a power washer in the hands of a caveman; it’s only as good as the software allows it to be, and with frustrations like single-floor mapping, ignored instructions and

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal review: Also consider

How I tested the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal

I tested the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal for two weeks in my home, completing my standardised pickup, edge cleaning and mopping tests in addition to simulating tests for features like UV detection. I used the app, making a map of my home and testing various features like scheduling and room-by-room cleaning tasks, closely observing the vacuum when in use to note any navigation or performance issues during testing.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed June 2026

• The Coalition studio creative director Matt Searcy says Active Reload is an "iconic" part of the Gears of War series
• He explains that the team moved the mechanic to the middle of the screen in E-Day because "it feels better"
• Searcy adds that players can learn Active Reload "much more easily" when it's placed there

Gears of War: E-Day is set to bring back the series' iconic Active Reload mechanic, but The Coalition has made some design changes.

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest 2026, studio creative director Matt Searcy discussed new features that have been built with Unreal Engine 5, such as larger environments, like an entire city, a jump button, improved animations, and a rebuilt cover system and traversal mechanics that feel "smoother than they've ever felt before."

"All those cover mechanics are there; they just feel smoother than they've ever felt before," he said, "and then around that we just gave little new ways for you to interact with the environment, for you to traverse, options for you to take new flanking routes, just to open up our maps a little bit more. It's made for some pretty amazing additions to the gameplay, but also the world."

Searcy also touched on Active Reload, a feature almost like a mini-game, which allows players to manually reload their held weapon rather than wait for the magazine to run out of ammo.

In E-Day, the mechanic has been moved from the top of the screen to the middle by default, which Searcy said works better.

"So active reload is a huge part of Gears," Searcy said. "[It's] an iconic feature. We've moved it by default to the middle of the screen. It feels better [from] what we've played; we've tested it as part of your shooting experience."

The creative director confirmed that players can move Active Reload back to its original place at the top of the screen, but notes that there are some extra "cool" details with natural reload and other additional reload mechanics.

"Every single shell is being reloaded," he said, "so some of the weapons have additional reload mechanics." For example, players can interrupt the reload and keep playing with two or three shells if they're halfway through and then "use them really quick to like get out of danger," or they can wait until the end to get their Active Reload bonus.

He added that players will noticeably use the mechanic "telemetry-wise" and use it way more than they did when it was at the top of the screen "because you can learn it much more easily [when] it's in your face."

Gears of War: E-Day is scheduled to launch on October 6 exclusively for Xbox Series X and Series S.

Matt Searcy told TechRadar Gaming that he believes making the game an Xbox exclusive was the best decision — something not all Xbox Game Studios teams are aligned on.

As a gaming gadget reviewer, there's a roster of gaming gear I rely on literally every day. So if you're looking for some recommendations for products to upgrade your gaming setup this Prime Day, I've got plenty of tips for you!

• View the full Amazon Prime Day sale

You might not be surprised to hear this but I'm a serious gaming nerd. As I write this, I have at least six gaming devices within 10 feet of me and more hidden away upstairs. I use at least one or two of these consoles every day — and that's totally ignoring my favorite accessories. So here's just a handful of the gadgets I currently couldn't game without.

Currently, my personal fave accessory in my home setup is the wonderfully engineered ASUS ROG Raikiri II controller. You can buy the ASUS ROG Raikiri II at Amazon for $143.99 (was $189.99) — that's an epic bargain in my eyes.

When it comes to consoles, I'd definitely recommend the superb performance and graphical fidelity of the Xbox Series X Digital Edition, which you can currently get at Amazon for $574.99 (was $649.99).

The Nintendo Switch 2 is also well worth it, particularly before its price hike this September — and you can net yourself the Choose Your Game Bundle at Amazon for $499, which allows you to get it with a digital download of Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, or Pokémon Pokopia into the bargain.

But while it's not purely a gaming device, my biggest tip this sale might be the fact you can grab the TCL QM8K 65-inch at Amazon for $997.99 (was $1,499.99). Given it's both seriously vibrant and crammed with great gaming features, that's a seriously good discount.

Based in the UK? Don't worry! I've dug up the best equivalent UK deals and prices I could find for all of these items below. And if you want the drop on other top price reductions out there, I've got a pro-tip for you — check out our Amazon Prime Day UK deals roundup for the hottest bargains.

More Prime Day deals in the US

• Amazon Devices: Fire Sticks & Echo from $18
• Amazon Haul: viral gadgets, tech & appliances from $1.99
• Apple: MacBooks, AirPods & AirTags from $29
• Beauty: 50% off toothbrushes & hair tools
• Cheap TVs: smart TVs from $69.99
• Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99
• Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung
• Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199
• Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186
• Patio: outdoor furniture, rugs & decor from $19.99
• Sports: 50% off fitness gear, treadmills & clothing
• Vacuums: Dyson, Shark & Bissell from $34

• Star Wars: Galactic Racer will feature a combination of vehicle parts "in the trillions"
• Creative Director Kieran Crimmins says the game has "unbelievable depth"
• He adds, "There may not be an arcade racer with that much depth in it ever made"

Fuse Games has revealed that Star Wars: Galactic Racer has a combination of moving parts that is "in the trillions."

Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Summer Game Fest (SGF), Fuse Games co-founder and CEO Matt Webster and Creative Director Kieran Crimmins shared how the studio designed a Star Wars racing game with a narrative that balanced what fans are already familiar with while also adding to the universe in a meaningful way.

Webster touched on the accessible planets where the races will take place, such as iconic planets like Tatooine, and others like Lantaana and Jakku, as well as the game's "runs-based" campaign structure and vehicle customization with over 300 parts.

That's a lot of options which will certainly offer a lot of player freedom, but according to Crimmins, the game at large goes beyond that. The creative director said that he spoke to one of the game's designers at SGF and asked how many combinations of moving parts there are in the game, and he was told, "It's in the trillions."

"I can't really calculate it at that point, because the amount of mechanical depth we've got in both the parts, the racer styles, the abilities, the upgrades, and then the different environmental effects that are on the planets, is an unbelievable depth."

"We've never had that much depth in a game we've made," he added. "I would argue there may not be an arcade racer with that much depth in it ever made. This might not be the biggest one possible, and that's something we really wanted to give back to the genre."

Coming back to how the team balanced the new and old of Star Wars, Crimmins explained that it wants people who are familiar with the franchise to have those "touch points," but it also looked at it from "more of a fantasy fulfillment point of view."

"It's like when we watch the movies, we watch the TV shows, or we play the games," he said. "What are the vehicle fantasies that are represented in this universe, which there are a lot of, and then, how do we get the right word, the right worlds, the right parts, the right vehicles? So that we can give as many of those different fantasies as possible."

One of those new vehicles is the skim speeder, which offers fast mobility and is something the Fuse Games knew needed to do a "knife-edge" turn in races.

"We made a vehicle that was able to do that and give, what I feel is a very authentic Star Wars experience, but it is a completely new vehicle, so something new to the Star Wars canon."

Star Wars: Galactic Racer launches on October 6 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

• Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster confirms Star Wars: Galactic Racer has a runs-based structure in the campaign
• Webster says "consequential decision-making" is built within the campaign
• Creative Director Kieran Crimmins says that when the team prototyped the system, "it felt right" for Galactic Racer

Star Wars: Galactic Racer will feature a runs-based structure within the campaign, which Fuse Games has said will involve "consequential decision-making."

That's according to Fuse Games co-founder and CEO Matt Webster, who told TechRadar Gaming during an interview at Summer Game Fest 2026 (SGF) that while he and the team love arcade racing games, "you can't make one really in the same way as you did all those years ago," because game genres have adapted and evolved.

Webster said the team wanted to bring something fresh to Galactic Racer, and the runs-based structures, which "are built for replayability and racing thrives on replayability," and in other games, the "meta" is car collection. So instead, the team shook things up by bringing back "consequential decision making and consequence back into the experience."

Creative Director Kieran Crimmins added that "consequence" was the "key" for Galactic Racer, saying, "We want every decision to matter, every upgrade to matter, every vehicle to matter, every race to matter, and like the runs-based structure allows us to do that, like we've never done in an arcade racing before."

"Not only have you got to keep on top of the curve with your build and your skill and your track knowledge, but also you get to reset every time," Crimmins continued.

In other arcade racers, the developer explained, cars can be upgraded to max level, but then players will realize they haven't experienced 99% of the other systems. And while they can always be revisited, the runs-based structure "allows you to do that with consequence."

"It gives you a reason to try all those different builds, a reason to experiment, and also a reward if you get your synergies right, you get your build right, and you get your knowledge right," Crimmins said.

"Then that's what actually wins the game, so it was incredibly compelling to us to have a structure that not only changed the way that you play, but changed the way that you play that was advantageous for the feelings that you get in a racing game, and like anything, the way we made it is we prototyped it and it felt right.

"This is an innovation we think we can bring to the genre."

During the interview, Crimmins also revealed that the game will feature a combination of moving parts that are "in the trillions," across racer styles, the abilities, the upgrades, and then the different environmental effects that are on the planets.

"It's an unbelievable depth," the creative director said.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer arrives on October 6 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S, and PC.

Insta360 Luna Ultra: One-minute review

Despite being Insta360’s first vlogging camera with multiple Insta360 firsts, the Luna Ultra, overall, feels like a polished and bold product. Its triple chipset ably supports powerful features — especially the gimbal-stabilized 8K 30p video with 10-bit color depth and 4K 120p slow motion video recording, Log color profile, autonomous subject tracking autofocus and 32-bit float audio.

With dual 20mm f/1.8 and 60mm f/2.0 lenses, each with its own sensor, you truly are getting two cameras in one. And having enjoyed the Luna's ultra-wide and impressive 3x telephoto versatility for a month, it will be hard for me to go back to a single-lens compact vlogging camera.

The detachable remote module — which features the two-inch OLED touchscreen, main camera controls and built-in microphone — has, understandably, won many admirers. It's such a clever and well-implemented design feature that truly enhances the user experience, especially for solo vlogging.

Initially I had a few minor niggles navigating various camera settings, and it certainly paid dividends to spend time customizing the Luna Ultra to the way I like to shoot. It's also notably bulkier than DJI's Pocket 4 vlogging cameras, and pricier than single-lens alternatives.

Despite its infancy in this space, Insta360 has to its credit already produced crucial supporting accessories — including tripod and battery grips, plus the Insta360 Mic Pro wireless mic for top quality audio — meaning you can stick within the Insta360 ecosystem and enjoying the best possible user experience and compatibility, including full Bluetooth support.

Yes, DJI has been in the compact vlogging camera space for much longer and has refined its Pocket series with every iteration, but the Luna Ultra enters with a bang and is an impressive alternative.

Insta360 Luna Ultra: price and release date

• Full release on June 12 2026
• Available in black or white with prices starting at $769.99 / £649 / AU$1,229.99
• Multiple bundles to choose from, including the Creator Bundle

"We're not going to compete on price" is what Insta360's co-founder Max Richter told me at a pre-launch event for the Luna Ultra, the company's first vlogging camera and DJI Osmo Pocket series rival.

And the Luna Ultra is much pricier than previous Pocket cameras. However, those were single-lens models and, like DJI's most recent Pockets, the single-lens Pocket 4 and dual-lens Pocket 4P, the Luna comes in two varieties: the single-lens Pro and the dual-lens Ultra.

Prices for the Ultra start at $769.99 / £649 / AU$1,229.99. That’s a fair whack more than the latest single-lens models, but you are truly getting two cameras in one device.

Insta360 sent me the Creator Bundle to review, which includes multiple extras such as the Mic Pro transmitter and battery grip and costs $969.99 / £829 / AU$1,549.99. I expect the dual-lens Osmo Pocket 4P to cost less than the Luna Ultra, but it won't be available in the US because of the DJI ban.

Both Luna models are available in black or white versions, and in a further variety of bundles that cater for various use cases; Standard, Essential, Endurance, VLOG, POV and Creator.

• Price score: 4/5

Insta360 Luna Ultra specs

Insta360 Luna Ultra: design

• First compact vlogging camera to land with dual lenses, ahead of the Pocket 4P
• Similar design cues to the DJI Pocket series (but a little larger), with stick-like form factor and camera supported by a three-axis gimbal
• Unique detachable controller which includes a two-inch OLED screen and built-in mic

The Luna Ultra’s form factor is familiar — it's a bit like the compact, stick-like design of DJI’s Pocket series. DJI isn’t happy about it, by the way; it has filed a lawsuit accusing Insta360 of patent violations (which Insta360 has responded to with a countersuit).

However, there are some key design differences. Lunas are slightly larger than Pocket models. Not majorly so, but the difference is clear when you hold them side by side as I did (albeit the dual-lens Ultra alongside the single-lens Pocket 4).

In practice, I didn’t really feel that the Luna’s extra weight and size negatively affected its handling — it’s easy in the hand for on-the-go vlogging. If you want the absolute smallest option, however, DJI is your best best. Even the dual-lens Pocket 4P is smaller.

There’s a good reason why the Luna cameras are bigger, and that’s for a super clever and unique feature: a detachable remote control, which is a module that packs the camera's main controls and rotatable two-inch OLED screen. Simply squeeze the red buttons on either side of the Luna, and the module pulls away from the body.

The module has a 20m transmission range and operates exactly the same way as if it’s on the camera, with the touch display offering a remote view, and the main camera controls on hand, including gimbal, zoom and record. Transmission range is impacted by the surroundings — I found the feed froze inside 15 meters when other people passed in front of me in a busy urban space — but I could see it happening on the screen in my hand and could rectify the situation.

What’s really neat is that the module has a built-in microphone, so you can easily check your frame and present to the camera. It’s certainly better than using the on-camera mic, though a wireless mic such as Insta360’s own Mic Pro with its customizable E Ink display is an even better pick for audiophiles. The camera has direct Bluetooth support for this mic and Insta360’s Mic Air. The video below gives an idea of what the module is like to use remotely.

I really appreciated how much easier it was to frame my shots with the controller module in hand. There’s also smart subject tracking and autofocus (more on this in the performance section), meaning the camera can track you as you move around, within the gimbal’s range, keeping you or your subject centered in the frame. Controlling the Luna using the module and tracking is like having your own cameraperson filming you, provided you can find a secure surface to rest the camera on or a support to fix it to.

On that note, the Luna Ultra can stand freely on flat surfaces, while the battery grip, which extends battery life plus the physical height of the camera, features tiny flip-out tripod feet for extra stability.

The battery grip is larger than the regular tripod grip and extends the battery life of the camera, which was already impressive being rated at up to four hours of 1080p filming. Not bad for a 1,550mAh unit that can be recharged to 80% in just 23 minutes.

At first I had a few niggles with the handling of the Luna Ultra from how it comes straight from the box. Beyond finding it physically clunkier than the Pocket 4, I needed to change various settings to taste, such as its behavior when rotating the two-inch touchscreen.

Overall, however, I can't find much fault with the Luna Ultra's design, which is seriously impressive for a first generation product.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Insta360 Luna Ultra: Performance

• Triple chipset, with 4nm and AI chips ensures smooth operation
• Smart subject tracking and autofocus, but it's not perfect
• Can get a little warm when using the most powerful features

The Luna Ultra is equipped with a triple chipset, comprising powerful 4nm and AI chips. As such, I never really experienced any performance issues, even shooting a lot of 8K video (though never for more than 10 minutes at a time).

The camera does get a little warm when using power-hungry features such as 8K video, and I did see a lag when switching from the 12x zoom back to 1x using the stepped zoom control on the touchscreen. However, those were my only issues.

In addition to regular 8K video, the Luna Ultra has a range of shooting modes, including; Slow Motion up to 240fps (in Full HD), Timelapse, TimeShift and Barrel Roll. I've included some slow motion clips in a sample video below.

Both Luna cameras accept a micro SD card up to 1TB, and include 47GB internal storage — less than DJI’s Osmo Pocket 4 / 4P, which have more than double the capacity. I shot plenty of video clips and photos directly onto the internal memory, and still had plenty of space left over — the maximum 120Mbps bitrates of video files are fairly low and don't take up too much memory.

And there’s plenty more for audiophiles, namely a decent wind guard for the camera’s internal four-mic array, plus 32-bit float audio. This pro-level setting avoids clipping, and is ideal for unpredictable and noisy environments, but for simpler audio edits, the 24-bit setting is probably your best bet.

The quality of the detachable module's built-in mic impressed me, though for the clearest pickup it's pretty fussy about how close you hold it and the angle it's pointed in.

Subject tracking is impressively sticky, though I did find that it switches to a new subject a little more easily than the DJI Pocket 4. In one situation, I was walking with the camera tracking me when other people came between me and the camera and tracking stopped.

In another scenario as I held a product up to the camera for it to focus on, the camera focused back on my face in the background all too keenly when I came back into view. In such a scenario, I think DJI's tracking performs better.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Insta360 Luna Ultra: Image and video quality

• Dual 20mm f/1.8 (1-inch sensor) and 60mm f/2.0 (1/1.3-inch sensor) cameras are effectively like having a decent zoom
• 8K 30p and 4K 120p video with color grading-friendly I-Log profile — a first for Insta360
• 9MP photos are decent enough, especially in RAW format, and can be upped to 37MP in UltraPhoto mode

The Luna Ultra ups the ante in this camera category with 8K video — double the resolution of the Osmo Pocket 4, which shoots in 4K. It’ll shoot 8K up to 30fps, complete with Dolby Vision (aka HDR) and I-Log color profile.

This is the first Insta360 camera with Log, a flat color profile that pros like to use to maximize the color grading potential and for the most dynamic range possible from their camera, which in this case is up to 14 stops.

DJI has billed the Pocket 4P as having 17 stops dynamic range with its new D-Log2 profile — I look forward to comparing the footage of both cameras to see which is better once I have my hands on the Pocket. 4P.

Insta360 thinks its night mode is superior to DJI, with its PureVideo mode boosting dynamic range in 4K 60p videos. That’s another comparison test I’m looking forward to conducting. From the shots I've taken at night in this mode, detail looks impressively sharp, though of course no match for the quality of daytime footage.

Insta360’s Leica partnership goes beyond the Luna’s Leica-branded lenses and into various Leica color profiles. If you like the simplicity of attractive color profiles with no need for color correction, then the Luna has some great alternatives to Log.

I was impressed with the 3x telephoto camera — provided the subject isn't too far away, it's possible to throw depth of field for punchy portraits. I'm talking upper body shots with notable shallow depth of field.

The zoom of that lens can be further extended with a 6x 'lossless' zoom, a term that suggests you shouldn't notice a drop in image quality — I certainly didn't. I can't say the same for the 12x digital zoom setting, which looks a little more pixelated on close inspection. Still, that 12x zoom is a handy addition should you really need to zoom closer.

Honestly, having enjoyed the variety of two lenses in such a small camera, and how impressive the quality of the telephoto camera is (the sensor is bigger than the main sensor in most smartphones), I know I'll struggle if I have to go back to a single-lens compact vlogging camera.

Video is, of course, the primary use for the Luna Ultra, but it shoots decent-quality 9MP photos too, in JPEG and RAW format, albeit with just eight-bit color depth. I've included a couple of scenarios below, taking JPEG and RAW (DNG format) photos simultaneously at night and in daylight, with the 1x and 3x lenses.

I haven't edited the RAWs so you can see the kind of processing that takes place for JPEGs. All the photos are 9MP, but there is also an UltraPhoto mode which quadruples resolution to 37MP.

Insta360 Luna Ultra photo gallery

• Image and video quality score: 5/5

Insta360 Luna Ultra: testing scorecard

Should I buy the Insta360 Luna Ultra?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Insta360 Luna Ultra: also consider

How I tested the Insta360 Luna Ultra

• Insta360 supplied me with the Luna Ultra Creator Bundle, which includes 2x grips, Mic Pro transmitter, soft carry case and more
• I tested the camera regularly for a month shooting day and night, mainly focusing on video content. I've tried the monitor in various configurations
• I was testing the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 simultaneously, and could draw comparisons

I had early access to the Luna Ultra Creator Bundle ahead of its launch, and tested the kit out over the following weeks before writing this review. During this review period, I also had the single-lens DJI Osmo Pocket 4, meaning I was able to make comparisons.

The camera shoots decent still photos with RAW format editing flexibility, but my main focus video performance. I've shot horizontal and vertical vlogging-style videos in the various resolutions and frame rates available in each format, and experimented with various color profiles.

I've made sure to try out all of the accessories supplied to me and the various configurations of the detachable monitor. I've checked the camera and detachable monitor's audio quality, and how easily and reliable it pairs with an Insta360 Mic Pro wireless mic.

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

For a long time, security teams have been dealing with the same problem: a constant stream of security alerts, but not enough context.

Missing details like user behavior, asset importance, or related activity, means there’s a heavy reliance on analysts to work out what actually matters.

This doesn’t just slow teams down; it puts real pressure on teams and limits how much they can realistically review or understand.

Agentic AI changes this dynamic.

Instead of looking at alerts in isolation, these systems can piece activity together, understand what’s happening in context, and in some cases take action on their own.

Often, issues are resolved before they ever need to be escalated. That removes a lot of the manual effort that’s shaped security operations for years.

But while a clear improvement, it doesn’t remove risk—it shifts it.

As systems improve, scrutiny declines

A useful comparison is aviation. As systems become more reliable, people naturally step back. Not because they’re careless, but because constantly double-checking something that’s almost always right starts to feel unnecessary. Over time, trust stops being something you actively think about and becomes something you assume.

The same thing is starting to happen in cybersecurity. As these systems prove themselves, teams spend less time questioning individual decisions. The environment feels calmer, and the lack of issues reinforces that sense of control. The real risk isn’t frequent failure, it’s that when something does go wrong, it’s less likely to be challenged.

Alert fatigue comes from having to pay attention to too much, too quickly. What follows is something different: a gradual drop in attention, where growing confidence in the system weakens the instinct to double-check.

A model built on two interdependent layers

The structure of security operations starts to shift as well. Instead of everything hinging on human decision-making, you end up with two connected layers. People set the intent – defining policy, access and boundaries – while agents interpret it and act on it, often much faster than any person could.

Both layers can be influenced. Traditional attacks aimed at people don’t go away, but there’s now another surface to think about: the data, prompts, and workflows that shape agent behavior. If those inputs are manipulated, the system can still produce actions that look valid, because they follow its internal logic.

At the same time, the distance between decision and execution increases. Human operators aren’t as involved in the moment an action happens, which makes it harder to spot when something isn’t quite right. In practice, each layer ends up relying on the other for validation.

When that assumption holds, the system works efficiently. When that works, everything runs smoothly. When it doesn’t, the gap between them can be hard to see in real time.

How risk scales in an agentic environment

Risk doesn’t just increase in this kind of environment, it spreads differently. Each agent has its own identity, permissions, and decision-making logic, and they’re often connected. Actions taken in one part of the system can trigger responses elsewhere, creating chains of automated behavior.

That means a single bad input or flawed decision doesn’t stay contained. It can move quickly across systems without anyone stepping in. The issue isn’t just speed, it’s how connected everything is. Small mistakes can have much bigger consequences because they’re carried through multiple layers of automation.

Why identity and access need to change

How agents are set up today adds another layer of risk. In many cases, they’re treated as extensions of the user, with the same credentials and access. It’s convenient, but it also widens the blast radius if something goes wrong.

A more resilient approach is to treat agents as their own entities. Give them distinct identities, limit what they can do to specific tasks, and make sure their actions can be tracked and reversed if needed, without affecting everything else.

It’s less about efficiency and more about putting the right foundations in place for systems that are increasingly acting on their own.

Maintaining control as reliance increases

One of the trickier aspects is that failure doesn’t always look like failure. Fewer alerts and faster resolutions can make it feel like risk has gone down, when in reality oversight may just be less active.

Staying in control comes down to how these systems are designed and used. High-impact actions still need some form of verification, even if most routine work doesn’t. It also matters that teams can see not just what an agent did, but how it arrived there—what inputs it used and how it interpreted them.

The ability to step in is just as important. If stopping or overriding an automated process is slow or awkward, it probably won’t happen in time when something goes wrong. That kind of intervention needs to be simple enough to use under pressure.

More broadly, the role of the security professional shifts. It’s not just about spotting obvious problems anymore, but recognizing when something that looks fine might still need a second look.

A quieter, more concentrated risk

Agentic AI will do a lot to reduce alert fatigue, which has weighed on security teams for years. The trade-off is that risk becomes less visible and more concentrated in the space between what people intend and what machines actually do.

In systems that work correctly most of the time, the real challenge isn’t constant failure. It’s what happens when something does go wrong and whether the usual signals that would catch it are still there.

We've reviewed, rated, and ranked the best firewall software.

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

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

Under the Radar is our way of highlighting great games that might have passed you by. Through a regular mix of news stories and features, we'll cover everything from high-quality indie gems to AAA experiences or ports that were buried by busy release schedules.

The only requirement is that we think whatever we’re writing about is truly interesting and worthy of your attention, so buckle up because things might well get weird…

• Trump wants to have scientifically relevant quantum computers as soon as 2028
• PQC migration pilot must have been completed by the end of 2027
• Quantum promises to prevent attacks and aid discovery simultaneously

US President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders to push the US forward in quantum tech in a bid to prepare government systems against future cybersecurity risks.

The first EO is to establish a coordinated national effort to "develop the first ever quantum computer powerful enough to initiate the era of quantum-enabled scientific discovery and accelerate quantum capabilities for commercial applications."

The Departments of Energy, War, Commerce, and the Intelligence Community, industry and research leaders are all set to be involved as the country seeks to press on with its quantum plans.

Trump signs executive order to accelerate quantum computing plans

Among the benefits Trump envisions coming from future quantum computers are a number of spatial awareness improvements, including navigation through military environments, detecting submarines, underground structures and other hidden infrastructure, and improving battlefield awareness.

Trump's second EO focuses on the nationwide "nationwide migration to post-quantum cryptography," coordinated between the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the National Cyber Director.

The White House warned that quantum developments threaten the security of government networks, banks, healthcare, military systems and other critical infrastructure, ordering a pilot scheme to have been completed by the end of 2027. Some of the earliest migrations are set to have happened by 2030-2031, the administration added.

Quantum also promises some positive impacts spanning manufacturing, drug discovery, energy and agriculture, with the President seeing earlier investment in quantum giving the nation a competitive advantage.

But in as little as two years and before PQC rollout, the administration hopes to achieve scientifically relevant quantum computing, targeting 2028.

The increasingly popular AI assistant Claude has gone down for many today, with Anthropic confirming that it's "investigating" an issue.

The problems started at around 10.02am ET / 3.02pm BST, when a spike in reports appeared on Downdetector. At the time of writing, those reports are still climbing and have hit over 8.000 in the US.

The Claude Status page has confirmed a "elevated error rate" across models, but says "a fix is being implemented". Here's the latest news on Claude's issues today...

Lots of red is never a good sign

This is the current situation on Anthropic's Status Page for Claude — there's good and bad news.

While there are indeed "elevated error rates" across "multiple models" on Claude, as I've also experienced, it seems the company has already got a fix in the pipeline.

Let's hope that means it gets resolved as quickly as the last outage we saw on June 2...

Problems across all models

Today's Claude issues aren't restricted to just one model unfortunately — we're seeing issues across all models, and on both paid and free accounts.

Right now, Claude is either "contemplating" its answers indefinitely or telling us "this model isn't available right now". According to Downdetector, the issue is also affecting both the chat interface and Claude Code.

Is the fix working?

It's early days, but today's reported Claude issues have just taken a small dip on Downdetector — they're still high at over 6,000 in the US at the time of writing, but that's down from a high of 7,119 just over half an hour ago.

Hopefully, that's the work of Anthropic's engineers, with the latest post in Claude's Status page stating that "the issue has been identified and a fix is being implemented".

It still isn't working for me, but the signs are promising that it'll spring back into life soon...

This looks more worrying

While reports of Claude issues on Downdetector have dropped slightly in the last half an hour, they're still very high — and Anthropic's status page (above) is showing a "major outage" across all of its platforms, except Claude for Government.

That means Claude's chat interface, Claude Code, Claude Cowork and its API are all having issues right now, which makes this is a pretty broad outage affecting many.

Seeking solace in memes

Some Claude models are down, and I hope you aren’t too from r/ClaudeAI

As the Claude issues continue for many, Reddit is responding the only way it knows how — with comforting memes.

The could be promising news on the horizon, though — Anthropic's latest post on the Claude Status page (at 10.53am ET / 3.53pm BST) says that "a fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results".

That often means a swift improvement, but can also be a false dawn, so I'm keeping a close eye on my account in the hope that it'll be the former.

We're well over the hour mark

Claude is still very much down for me and thousands of others — and it's now well over an hour since the problems started at around 10.53am ET / 2.53pm BST.

The latest from Anthropic's status page is still that "a fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results'. So far that hasn't been reflected in the numbers, but in theory we should see an improvement pretty soon.

Bigger than the last outage

We don't have to look back too far for the last significant Claude outage — that was just three weeks ago on June 2. But this one is definitely bigger.

Those previous issues were related to its latest Opus 4.6 model, but this outage is across all models and all Claude platforms — except for those fortunate to be on Claude for Government.

I don't know about you, but this feels like a good opportunity to check out the latest Prime Day deals in the US and UK's best Prime Day deals, too. Forgive me the plug, but a cut-price Ninja Slushi is looking very tempting right now while I wait for Claude to reboot...

Claude is still struggling for many

While the number of reported Claude issues on Downdetector is dropping — in the US, they're now at about the half the peak from an hour ago — thousands are still struggling to get it working, including many of us at TechRadar.

For me, there are some signs of life — rather than completely blanking my prompt or giving me a "this model isn't available right now" error message, Claude is now 'thinking' when I ask it something.

But that thinking time still ultimately goes nowhere, which suggests Anthropic's fix still isn't fully working — and the company indeed says that it's still "continuing to monitor for any further issues".

• Portugal vs Uzbekistan Kick-Off time: Tuesday, June 23 | 6pm BST / 1pm ET / 3am AEST (Wed)
• Watch free on ITV (UK) / SBS (AUS) / CazéTV's YouTube (Brazil)
• Unlock your free streams with Norton VPN (60-day money back guarantee)

When Joao Neves scored in just the sixth minute against DR Congo, there was a general expectation that Portugal would go on to make their opening World Cup 2026 game a thrashing. But that wasn't to be for six-time World Cup participant Cristiano Ronaldo's side, as they were held to an unexpected draw after appearing to ease off following the early lead despite enjoying 75% possession.

Portugal now face 54th-ranked World Cup debutants Uzbekistan at Houston Stadium, and anything less than three points will be a disappointment. Much of the spotlight will be on the 41-year-old CR7, who has come under intense scrutiny both online and from pundits after the opening game. He finished the match with just 25 touches and failed to register a single shot on target. In fact, his last World Cup goal came against Ghana in Portugal's opening match of the 2022 tournament.

But it's fair to say Ronaldo wasn't the only underwhelming aspect of Portugal's performance. Several fans even accused Bruno Fernandes of not passing the ball enough to Ronaldo. Wow! However, Roberto Martinez's men will have to block out the outside noise if they are to mount a serious challenge for the trophy.

Debutants Uzbekistan, on the other hand, are coming off a 3-1 defeat to Colombia after failing to register a single touch in the penalty area during the first half. Now up against A Seleção das Quinas, the White Wolves will rely on captain Eldor Shomurodov, Manchester City centre-back Abdukodir Khusanov, and 22-year-old Abbosbek Fayzullaev to put up a formidable fight.

On paper, Portugal have one of the best squads in the tournament, and should be more than a match for today's opponents. Fail to deliver again, however, and they face a very tricky final game against a decent Colombia side.

So, read on as we show you exactly how to watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan for free from anywhere in the FIFA World Cup 2026.

How to watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan for free

Portugal vs Uzbekistan is available to watch for free in multiple countries, including the UK, Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland and Turkey.

• 🇬🇧 UK: BBC (English commentary)
• 🇦🇺 Australia: SBS On Demand (English commentary)
• 🇧🇷 Brazil: CazéTV's YouTube (no account required)
• 🇧🇪 Belgium: RTBF / VRT
• 🇫🇷 France: M6
• 🇩🇪 Germany: Das Erste
• 🇮🇪 Ireland: RTÉ Player (English commentary)
• 🇳🇱 Netherlands: NOS
• 🇵🇹 Portugal: TVI
• 🇨🇭 Switzerland: SRF Play / RTS Play / RSI Play
• 🇹🇷 Turkey: TRT

Abroad? Can't access your free stream? Unblock your free World Cup stream with Norton VPN — more on that below.

Use a VPN to watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan live streams

It’s the World Cup, and if you’re traveling, you might discover your usual Portugal vs Uzbekistan stream is suddenly unavailable due to geo-restrictions.

Don’t worry, that’s exactly where a VPN can help. A virtual private network lets you connect to servers around the world so you can securely access your usual World Cup coverage as if you were back home.

We recommend Norton VPN. Here's why:

How to watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan in the US

US viewers can watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan on Fox and Telemundo (Spanish comms).

You can watch every World Cup game on Fox, FS1 and Telemundo which are available on cord-cutters like YouTube TV (free trial), Hulu+Live TV, Sling (select markets), Fubo or DirecTV.

Those looking for a streaming service instead can watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan on Fox One (3-day free trial). Telemundo is available via Peacock as well.

Visiting the US from the UK? You can still watch your World Cup stream for free thanks to Norton VPN (try for 60 days).

How to watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan in the UK

UK customers are in luck as they can stream Portugal vs Uzbekistan for free on ITV. Live coverage is on ITV1 and ITVX.

You require a TV Licence and a valid UK postcode for an account (e.g. SE1 7PB).

Norton VPN can unlock your stream if you're abroad today.

How to watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan in Australia

Portugal vs Uzbekistan will be shown for free in Australia on SBS On Demand.

The streaming platform has every game of the tournament for free, making it the perfect place for your World Cup viewing.

Traveling for work or on holiday? A VPN like Norton VPN can help unlock your free stream.

How to watch Portugal vs Uzbekistan in Canada

In Canada TSN will be broadcasting Portugal vs Uzbekistan.

You can live stream via the TSN+ streaming platform, which costs CA$8 per month or CA$80 per year.

Outside of Canada? Use Norton VPN whilst you're traveling away from home to unlock your stream.

Portugal vs Uzbekistan: Match Information

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

There is a growing tendency to frame advances in artificial intelligence through the lens of breakthroughs: new models, new architectures, new capabilities.

Innovation is often measured by what is invented, and how quickly.

But in some domains, this framing misses the point entirely.

Financial crime is no longer a collection of isolated incidents, it has evolved into an organized, adaptive, and increasingly industrialized system.

Criminal networks operate across geographies, leverage automation, and continuously refine their methods: they test, iterate, and scale, just as any high-performing organisation would.

In such an environment, the question is not whether an AI system is innovative. It is whether it can operate at the same level of organisation, speed, and adaptability as the threats it is designed to counter.

When Innovation Meets Reality

Most AI breakthroughs do not survive contact with real-world systems.

In controlled environments, models perform well. Data is structured, assumptions hold, and evaluation metrics are stable. But reality introduces a different set of constraints: incomplete information, shifting behaviors, latency requirements, regulatory oversight, and adversarial actors actively attempting to exploit weaknesses.

Financial and state systems, in particular those related to fraud and risk, represent one of the most demanding environments for AI. Decisions must be made in milliseconds, errors carry direct financial and reputational consequences, and the underlying patterns are constantly evolving. Not randomly, but intentionally.

Fraud is not a static problem. It is an adaptive one.

This is where many innovations fail. Not because the underlying ideas are flawed, but because they are not designed to operate under sustained pressure or with the necessary agility to adapt.

The Complexity of the Problem

The industrialization of frauds changes the nature of the response required.

It is no longer sufficient to detect known patterns or react to past incidents. Systems must identify behaviors that have not been seen before, anticipate emerging tactics, and operate continuously across multiple channels and geographies.

This requires more than isolated innovation. It requires systems that can learn, adapt, and scale, not once, but continuously. And behind those systems, it requires something even more fundamental: a culture capable of producing and sustaining that level of performance over time.

The way of the patent

Innovation that exists only on paper has limited impact. Innovation that survives deployment, that continues to perform as conditions change, is what ultimately defines effectiveness. In financial crime prevention, the gap between these two is critical.

In recent years, the financial sector has significantly increased its investment in AI and machine learning, with a sharp rise in patent activity across the industry. From large banks to specialized technology providers, there is a growing recognition that intellectual property can capture and formalize advances in detection, decisioning, and risk management.

According to recent data, AI-related patent filing in the financial sector grew by over 250% in the past five years: from big banks to small startups working in the space, there is a clear interest in adding the value of patents to the business.

But patents, in this context, should not be understood as an end in themselves.

They are not simply indicators of inventive capacity. They are signals of something more structural: the ability to repeatedly transform ideas into capabilities that operate reliably in real-world systems.

Strong ideas

If you obtain one patent, it suggests a strong idea. If you obtain ten, it suggests a strong team. If you obtain one hundred, it suggests a strong culture.

A culture in which ideas are not only generated, but challenged, tested, refined, and integrated into systems that must function under real-world constraints.

This distinction becomes tangible when looking at what such innovation enables in practice.

It allows financial institutions to analyze behavior across extended time horizons in real time, not only evaluating a transaction in isolation, but understanding how it relates to patterns built over weeks or months. It enables a shift from static rule-based detection to continuous behavioral modelling, improving both the precision of anomaly detection and the speed of response.

In environments where decisions must be made in milliseconds, these capabilities are not incremental improvements. They determine whether institutions can intervene while fraudulent activity is unfolding, rather than reacting after the fact.

Some of these approaches are already being deployed at scale within large financial institutions, enabling significantly faster decision execution and more robust behavioral insight across complex transaction environments.

From this perspective, patents are not about invention alone. They are about building the conditions under which innovation can endure and translate into systems that perform under pressure.

From Invention to System Performance

For an idea to matter in this context, it must pass through several layers of validation. It must be new. It must not be obvious. And it must be useful, not in theory, but in the systems that institutions rely on every day. This last dimension is often overlooked.

Usefulness, in a real-world financial system, means the ability to operate reliably at scale, under constraints, and in the presence of adversarial behavior. It means integrating into complex infrastructures, supporting decision-making in real time, and remaining robust as both legitimate usage and criminal tactics evolve.

In other words, innovation is not defined by invention. It is defined by sustained system performance.

Matching the Scale of the Threat

The industrialisation of financial crime introduces a structural asymmetry. On one side, highly organised networks operate with speed, coordination, and adaptability.

On the other hand, defensive systems have historically been fragmented, reactive, and constrained by legacy architectures. Closing this gap is not a matter of incremental improvement. It requires a shift in how systems are designed, built, and evolved.

The level of innovation required is defined by the level of organisation of the threat.

And as that threat continues to industrialize, the systems designed to counter it must do the same.

Beyond Breakthroughs

This does not diminish the importance of research. On the contrary, it reinforces it. Breakthroughs are necessary, but they are not sufficient.

What ultimately matters is the ability to translate those breakthroughs into systems that function reliably in the real world, systems that can operate continuously, adapt dynamically, and maintain performance under pressure.

In financial crime prevention, this is not an abstract challenge. It is an operational reality. And it is one that will define the effectiveness of institutions, the resilience of financial systems, and, ultimately, the level of trust those systems can sustain.

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

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

• Meta paused its internal Model Capability Initiative (MCI) after an employee flagged exposure of sensitive data from mouse movement and activity tracking
• Program allegedly collected prompts, private conversations, performance data, and even tax/medical info in unencrypted form
• Meta says no improper access confirmed but is investigating; some employees still see the program running during the pause

Meta is pausing an employee-tracking program after one of the employees flagged it as exposing sensitive data.

The company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, was apparently running an internal program that was tracking employee mouse movements and digital activity. Called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), this program allegedly started in April with the goal of training Meta’s AI models through employee behavior recordings.

According to a memo released on launch, the purpose of the program was to improve the company’s AI models in areas where they struggled to replicate how humans interacted with computers, such as picking from a dropdown menu, or using different keyboard shortcuts.

Personal tax and medical information exposed?

"This is where all Meta employees can help our models get better simply by doing their daily work," the memo said at the time.

Reuters reported that an employee filed a high-priority security incident report (SEV) over the program’s exposure of employee data, including "full ​prompts and transcriptions, private ​conversations, people & performance ⁠data, DSS sensitivity ratings (1-4)." The same publication also said the program was collecting “more information than initially described” and stored it in unencrypted form.

"I have accessed both personal tax and medical information through ⁠my ​work computer, as have many thousands of employees,” the employee allegedly said. “​We were told this data would be protected and only used for valid business purposes after aggressive ​filtering."

Now, Meta confirmed pausing the program to investigate these claims.

"We have carefully designed this program ​with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that ​any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we're pausing it while we investigate," company spokesperson Tracy Clayton was cited saying. The company did not say for how long the program will be paused but stressed that it would take time to stop it for everyone, so some employees might still see it running.

As of Monday afternoon, the program was still running for some people, Reuters confirmed.

Via Reuters

• Tata Electronics confirmed a cyberattack but said operations remain unaffected, despite threat actor World Leaks claiming 630GB of alleged data
• Archive reportedly includes Apple/Tesla schematics, passport scans, and proprietary files; researchers found references to Pegatron, Foxconn, and Qualcomm too
• Reuters noted Tata is being extorted, though ransom details remain unclear; leaked files suggest sensitive manufacturing and engineering data exposure

Tata Electronics, the electronics and semiconductor manufacturing arm of the Tata Group conglomerate, confirmed suffering a cyberattack, but said it did not affect its operations. The scale of the breach, however, could be rather extensive.

"A few weeks ago, Tata Electronics identified a cybersecurity incident on some of our systems,” the company said in a statement to Reuters. “Our response protocols were deployed immediately, and the incident has had no impact on our operations across businesses, which remain unaffected," it said, without going into details.

This statement came almost two weeks after a threat actor called World Leaks posted a large database on its data leak site, claiming to have come from Tata Electronics, and affecting companies such as Apple and Tesla.

Sensitive files confirmed

According to Reuters, roughly a third of all iPhone production in India is done by Tata Electronics. The company supplies Apple with back panels, enclosures, and circuit board parts, among other things. For Tesla, it’s been supplying it with chips, circuit board assemblies, and vehicle motor controller units, since 2025.

World Leaks uploaded an archive of 204,341 files, weighing 630.4GB. Allegedly, it contains numerous confidential and proprietary data, including Apple and Tesla schematics, passport scans, and other sensitive files.

Reuters said Tata was being extorted for the files but did not say how much money the threat actors were demanding, or if the negotiations were progressing in any way.

Some security researchers analyzed the leaked files and said that they contained information about manufacturing and engineering processes from these two companies. Among the researchers were Cybernews, who claim to have seen “hundreds of references to Apple and Tesla”, a folder named “com.apple.factorydata”, as well as documents labeled as proprietary or confidential.

Cybernews also found files referencing other companies, too: Pegatron, Foxconn, and Qualcomm, to name a few. However, there is no evidence that any of these companies had been breached.

Via Cybernews

In case you missed it during its West End run earlier in 2026, there's good news for international theatre fans: Les Liaisons Dangereuses will be in select cinemas worldwide from June 25, before heading to the National Theatre at Home streaming service later in the year.

This is all thanks to National Theatre Live, whose productions have been seen by more than 13 million people across the globe. I'm one of these, having seen everything from Hansard to All My Sons in theaters and local community centers.

The goal is to make British theater more accessible, which is fantastic news if you're international or just (rightfully) can't afford paying up to £120 for a ticket. Out of all of the productions I've seen, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is one that you absolutely cannot afford to miss.

For us peasants, this translates to Dangerous Liaisons, which you've likely seen in the 1988 movie of the same name starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich. This time, Lesley Manville and Aiden Turner take on the respective roles of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont.

During its three-hour (I know) runtime, viewers experience a whirlwind of drama, deceit, unrequited love, and outright chaos. The staging is exquisitely minimal yet dramatic thanks to its use of moving mirrors, with our cast included in mass choreographed dance numbers interspersed throughout.

Frankly, it's like nothing I've ever seen. So when the National Theatre invited me on an exclusive tour behind-the-scenes during one of its two filming days for NT Live, I was as giddy as a five-year-old.

National Theatre Live: Les Liaisons Dangereuses was shot with the same cameras used to film your favorite Netflix movies

Here's how it works. For productions that aren't beamed into cinemas live, filming happens across two performances in the same week.

This way, editors can splice together the best cuts of scenes, meaning that if there's a mark on the floor or a prop out of place, you won't notice. The idea is to replicate the

When I walk into the theater on the second day of shooting, a total of seven cameras are rehearsing their placements for later in the evening. They're all a part of ARRI camera systems, which are the same kind that film all the latest Netflix movies. Small world, huh?

Most of them have a stationary position, with the camera closest to the stage operating on a dolly (which is essentially a small piece of track it can move up and down). Instead of being operated hands-on like on a movie set, the dolly camera is operated remotely from a portable control room.

So where is this mysterious crew? Instead of being packed into the auditorium, they're (literally) parked outside in two mobile van units. The first acts like a screen studio you'd see on an actual TV set, monitoring each camera through numbered live feeds. Next door is the audio mixing unit — meaning if someone coughs in the audience, it will be removed.

Basically, it's all the pleasure of being at the theater without any of the annoyances. I'm almost jealous of whoever gets to see it on screen, zooming into painful and poised movements in a way that I just couldn't see, even with my best glasses on two rows from the front.

You might be wondering what happens when a production is beamed totally live into cinemas without editing or delay, such as Inter Alia with Rosamund Pike in 2025. The process is almost the same, except that the NT team has to book a satellite to use in order to do so. According to my tour guide, that means a lot of bartering with international TV channels.

Regardless of how it is recorded, you can guarantee getting the best theatre experience possible. And if that hasn't sold you... Lesley Manville and Rivals' own Aiden Turner?! Come on.

• Valve has said it's "rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it's more compatible with desktop hardware"
• The company also made it clear that it's collaborating closely with Nvidia for better GPU compatibility
• The aim is to make SteamOS more widely deployed on DIY PCs away from the Steam Machine, and this is tempting some gamers to ditch Windows 11

Valve has underlined how it's improving SteamOS to allow gamers to make their own version of the Steam Machine should they wish, which is already prompting some excited chatter on Reddit about abandoning Windows 11.

The Verge reports that Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais (an engineer who often gives interviews) made it clear that the company is busy "rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it's more compatible with desktop hardware" and also "collaborating with Nvidia very closely" on ensuring better compatibility with Team Green's GPUs.

Before you get too excited, though, the caveat that Griffais attached is that Nvidia support isn't coming anytime soon – meaning not this year – but that it's "certainly something that we're working on in the background".

Valve just released SteamOS 3.8 which prepared the ground for the new Steam Machine, arriving with some key changes to ensure a better experience with Intel CPUs, as well as Nvidia GPUs (or indeed all discrete graphics cards, which will benefit from "greatly improved video memory management").

The introduction of KDE Plasma version 6.4.3 with Wayland support is important, too, very much upping the desktop game and bringing in better support for external displays and VRR in SteamOS, among other boons.

In short, with SteamOS 3.8, Griffais notes that "you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want."

All of which is paving the way for more PC gamers who are fed up with Windows 11 and Microsoft to make the switch over to SteamOS as an alternative operating system (especially those who aren't running an AMD-powered system).

Despite it being still relatively early days in this effort (as noted regarding the work with Nvidia GPUs), some gamers are already happily declaring that they're ready to ditch Microsoft's platform for SteamOS.

One Redditor tells us: "Decided to go all in and wipe my main 2TB drive and install this [SteamOS]. Just got it installed and tried a couple games, working very well so far. Going to make myself stick with it instead of slithering back to Windows."

Here's another gamer who says: "The minute SteamOS gets Nvidia support, there is going to be a large mass exodus of users in the gaming space off of Windows."

In a similar vein, a further Reddit thread informs us: "I found that some of my Steam games which played fine on Windows 10, actually played far worse on Windows 11. I decided to switch back to Linux Mint and give Steam another go on that after having tried it a few years ago, and to my surprise, those games all worked great now. So I've stuck with Mint and every game I have in my Steam library runs well without issue. Value has really been doing a great job of bringing gaming to Linux."

And in that same thread, a Redditor observes: " The instant this [SteamOS] becomes stable with driver[s], I'm jumping out [of] Windows." (Not literally).

Analysis: Steamy Windows

It appears this is prompting more than a few gamers to reconsider their position with Windows 11, but we clearly shouldn't get carried away yet. SteamOS has a long road ahead of it as a rival to Windows 11, as it remains very much a niche proposition, but clearly Valve is pushing hard to make it a much more compelling alternative.

The good thing is that even if you don't intend to go near the Steam Machine – and you believe it's well overpriced, as many do (thanks to the memory crisis) – the launch of the device could still benefit you, as SteamOS continues to take strides forward. As Valve observes, you can just build your own Steam Machine-style PC, or to avoid the RAM crisis price hikes, simply repurpose an existing rig you have (perhaps with a choice upgrade or two grabbed in a sale).

With notable strides being taken here – and some progress being made in terms of getting anti-cheat games to run, too, in certain cases, although there's still plenty of work to be done here – we can be hopeful that SteamOS adoption could be accelerated considerably.

However, Windows 11 remains dominant by a long, long way in the PC gaming world, although SteamOS gaining traction could worry Microsoft for the longer-term, and prompt further efforts to make Windows 11 better for gamers – which again would be a win, albeit an indirect one.

Full disclosure: I am writing this before Amazon Prime Day. If the iPhone Air is not currently on sale in your region, then you should only pay its $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 asking price if a) you have a bottomless supply of cash or b) you simply must own Apple’s most beautiful iPhone (and make no mistake: the iPhone Air is Apple’s most beautiful iPhone).

But I will eat my hat if there aren't any meaningful deals on the iPhone Air by the time you read this. It's already been discounted by as much as 30% in both the UK and Australia this year, and as such, I have a hunch that Amazon will run similar deals during its annual Prime Day sale (if you’re in the US, look out for carrier-based offers on Apple’s best iPhones).

• Browse the full Amazon Prime Day sale

If you can snag the iPhone Air for around 20% less than its retail price this week, I’m utterly convinced that it’s the best-value phone purchase you could make right now — for two reasons.

Firstly, you will not find a nicer-looking — and nicer-feeling — phone than the iPhone Air without spending silly money on one of the best foldable phones. The Air measures just 5.64mm at its thinnest point and is some 41g lighter than the iPhone 17 Pro, despite boasting a larger 6.5-inch display.

You might not think you care about having a thin and light phone — I also didn’t to begin with — but trust me: once you start using a device of such svelte proportions, you won’t want to go back to a regular-sized phone.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a recent picture of me with a group of tech content creators showing off our current phones of choice:

All four of us test the best phones for a living, and all four of us settled on Apple's super slim iPhone as our personal handset of choice.

The second reason why a discounted iPhone Air is the best-value phone purchase you can make right now is less obvious. Not only is this Apple’s most beautiful iPhone, but it’s also its most powerful: like the iPhone 17 Pro, the Air boasts an A19 Pro chipset and 12GB of RAM.

Now, I don’t usually highlight chipsets as a reason to buy phones — the iPhone 17e’s A19 chipset, for instance, is plenty fast enough for most people — but the iPhone Air's A19 Pro chipset and 12GB of RAM combination has suddenly become more significant than most people realize.

Here's an extract from a recent article in which I explain why the iPhone Air is future-proofed in a way that only the iPhone 17 Pro can match:

At WWDC 2026, Apple announced its all-singing, all-dancing Siri AI assistant, which will soon be available on all Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhones (read: the iPhone 15 Pro and upwards) as part of iOS 27. But only three iPhones will get the very best version of Siri AI — and the iPhone Air is among that number.

Specifically, only the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air will get Siri voice customization and more advanced systemwide dictation, because only these phones run on Apple’s AFM Core Advanced model and 12GB of RAM.

Admittedly, these two features aren’t reason enough to buy a top-end iPhone — the former gives you the ability to customize the expressiveness and pace of Siri’s voice, while the latter makes Siri more effective at converting speech into accurate text — but I would bet my (non-existent) house that Apple locks several additional, more significant features behind this AFM Core Advanced paywall in future versions of iOS.

In other words, like the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, the iPhone Air will soon support more software features than any other iPhone — and the gap between model capabilities will only grow wider as more hardware-exclusive features are announced.

I genuinely believe this under-the-radar feature makes the iPhone Air almost worth its regular $999 / £999 / AU$1,799 asking price, but if you can pick it up for significantly cheaper than that during Prime Day, it’s a bona fide bargain.

• Meta unveils $299 / £269 / AU$599 smart glasses (Meta Glasses) designed with EssilorLuxottica
• They match Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses on virtually all features
• They add adjustable nose pieces, and a lot of design and color choices

"It’s pretty easy to make glasses that don’t look good, it turns out," chuckled Meta CTO and Head of Reality Labs, Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth, shortly after unveiling a bumper crop of new Meta eyeware, simply called Meta Glasses, all fashioned in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica.

Bosworth says the team argues over "every gram, every quarter of a millimeter" in an effort to bring ever lighter, ever more comfortable, and ever more fashionable AI eyewear to the market. With this foray into making frames with a slightly less well-known brand than Ray-Ban, Meta is bringing the new frames — Adventurer, Fury, and Starfire Kylie [Jenner] Edition — to market at a somewhat startling price: $299 /£269 / AU$599 (not counting prescriptions).

No one size or style fits all when it comes to eyewear, Ankit Brahmbhatt, Meta's Senior Director of Product for AI glasses, told me as he walked me through some of the new frames. There are, he added, eight colorways and 26 different style options.

Ogling the style choices

As I looked around the room in the Manhattan event space, I spotted black, something like ivory, tortoiseshell, deep black, green, and a dark maroon. The frames range from larger and almost boxy-looking to thinner and lighter frames. In fact, many of the EssilorLuxottica frames are so relatively thin and light that you might miss the cameras hidden in the front, and the slightly thicker stems to accommodate components and batteries, and mistake them for normal frames.

Kylie Jenner's cat-eye-style frames are particularly fetching, and surprisingly looked halfway decent on me.

Brahmbhatt told me Meta worked closely with Jenner to develop the design, adding signature touches like a tiny gem in the frame, a mirror in the case, and even Kylie Jenner's voice in the Meta AI.

There are structural changes new to the Essilor Luxottica frames. The nose piece adjusts with a push to three different positions, the stems are bendable at the ends (Bosworth noted that the wires are coated with a kind of cellulose plastic), and the stems actually flex outward. I tried on almost every style I could find, and they were all quite comfortable.

One of the biggest changes, though, is the addition of a small button behind the traditional Meta AI glasses button that you might use to capture a photo or start a video: it's a tiny Meta AI summoning button, and I used it interchangeably with saying, "Hey, Meta."

More and better AI

This is also the first set of Meta AI glasses to feature a Meta AI system backed by the company's more robust Muse Spark models, which provide a more conversational voice, better context awareness, and the ability to tap into the zeitgeist by checking out social media (at one point I asked Meta AI if there was chatter online about fake food, and it confirmed that many were talking about it on social media).

I tried the new Meta AI in a few scenarios, and it ably identified whatever I was looking at (I could hear it snap a picture before the analysis), launched a music playlist based on my surroundings, and translated Arabic print for me.

That all of this comes in for under $299 (Ray-Ban Meta frames start at $379), and without compromising on the 3K video-shooting quality, 12MP photos, microphones, array, or speakers, is remarkable; but these are still relatively early days in the wearable AI space.

Getting it right and making it safe

Design is "really important if you want people to wear them as daily driver glasses," said Meta Head of Industrial Design Peter Bristol, who joined Bosworth on stage and took some questions from reporters.

In perhaps a nod to how thick and oversized AI glasses can look, the pair talked about how they made subtle changes to the designs, slimming down the frames, or simply making them look thinner by, for instance, adding a chamfer along the top edge of the frames, near the brow.

A good design means less friction, which Bristol believes can help with AI adoption.

For Meta, the goal is to "reach every corner of the market," said Bosworth, but that approach does come with risks.

When asked about growing concerns about the privacy of these glasses (there have been reports of people wearing them to illegally photograph women and even tampering with the glasses to turn off the LED "I'm filming you" light), Bosworth acknowledged these issues, but reminded us that Meta had actually "pioneered putting LED on the glasses," and talked about the anti-tampering technology they put in Gen 2 Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. But, he added, it's "a cat and mouse game."

As for what the future holds, I pointed out to Bosworth and Bristol that, while they now have a lot of styles, not everyone wears, or wants to wear glasses. What about smart contacts?

"Absolutely, that one’s top of mind for the design team," said Bristol, adding, "We are thinking and trying the other potential paths, but it’s a complicated space, so glasses is front and center for us.”

Bosworth agreed with the premise of my question, admitting that he’s not a glasses wearer, but is happy to wear Meta AI glasses “because they brought a lot of value — but I’m aware that I’m doing it.

"The design team is absolutely captivated by this question. What are the other ways that we can deliver this capability to people who don’t have glasses on?"

• AdGuard VPN is now available to download straight from the Mac App Store
• The app utilizes Apple’s native NetworkExtension for smoother integration
• The Mac version lacks a few extra features due to Apple's restrictions

Finding the best VPN for your Apple device just got a little bit more convenient. AdGuard VPN has officially launched a dedicated app on the Mac App Store, allowing users to secure their internet traffic with a simple, one-click installation.

Until now, Mac VPN users wanting to protect their online privacy with AdGuard had to navigate to the provider's website, download a standalone installer, and set up the software manually. While this process is standard for many tech-savvy individuals, the App Store offers a faster, more familiar, and often more trustworthy experience for the average consumer.

By bringing its software directly to Apple's official marketplace, AdGuard VPN is aiming to make robust digital privacy more accessible to a broader audience. Users can now easily manage their subscriptions, handle automatic app updates, and completely uninstall the service without ever leaving the Apple ecosystem.

What the App Store release brings to macOS

Beyond the obvious convenience of a streamlined download, the new Mac App Store edition of AdGuard VPN has been specifically built around Apple's modern VPN framework.

The app utilizes Apple's native NetworkExtension framework for its VPN management. This architectural choice helps ensure that the software integrates seamlessly with macOS, minimizing system conflicts while strictly complying with Apple's latest security and platform requirements.

Nikita Kanaev, Product Manager for AdGuard VPN, explained the strategy behind the new launch: "For us, launching on the Mac App Store is about bringing AdGuard VPN closer to Mac users and giving them the installation experience they already expect, fast, native, and fully integrated into Apple’s ecosystem."

However, there is a minor catch for power users.

Because Apple enforces strict platform restrictions on software distributed through its storefront, the new Mac App Store version differs slightly from the traditional desktop application.

AdGuard notes that the standalone release remains its most "feature-complete version," though the development team plans to minimize the differences between the two iterations over time. At the time of writing, these include the ability to purchase a two-year subscription (available on the standalone desktop app only).

Crucially, AdGuard's split tunnelling feature that let you exclude VPN traffic from specific applications — called App Exclusions — is also not available for the Mac App Store version of the app. The Website Exclusions tool, however, is accessible on both versions.

To know more about all the technical distinctions, you can consult AdGuard’s official Knowledge Base.

Is AdGuard VPN any good?

If you aren't familiar with the provider, our latest AdGuard VPN review highlights a service that has steadily grown its security capabilities since spinning out from its popular ad-blocking roots.

Rather than relying solely on standard protocols like OpenVPN or WireGuard, the service went open-source with its own custom VPN protocol. This proprietary technology is specifically designed to disguise your VPN connection as regular HTTPS web traffic, making it incredibly difficult for strict network administrators or local firewalls to detect and block your connection.

The provider has also been on a relentless development spree across multiple platforms over the past year.

Beyond rolling out accessibility-first updates for its Mac app and prioritizing usability for Windows users, AdGuard has aggressively expanded its ecosystem. The company recently released a completely revamped app for iPhone, and even ventured into the metaverse by launching VPN and ad-blocker extensions on Meta Quest.

With its long-awaited arrival on the Mac App Store, AdGuard is clearly cementing its position as an incredibly flexible and user-friendly option for Apple loyalists looking to boost their daily digital privacy.

• Atonemo has launched the new NTS Radio Player box
• It connects to your speakers and to online radio
• You can also stream to the box from your phone

If you find the abundance of choice on streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music a little overwhelming, consider this new gizmo from Swedish electronics firm Atonemo: its minimal design features just two buttons and one dial, to connect you to curated online radio stations run by NTS.

It's called the Atonemo NTS Radio Player (via Deezen), and it hooks up to your speaker system of choice via a 3.5mm analog line-out port (and there's an AUX to RCA adapter in the box if you need it).

Once connected, you can press one of the buttons to tune into either NTS Channel 1 or NTS Channel 2. The dial, meanwhile, gives you access to 16 'infinite mixtape' feeds from NTS, with icons matching the mood of each one: these mixtapes include Sheet Music (the violin icon), Sweat (the water drops icon), and Island Time (the sunshine icon).

There's a mixtape for most types of mood and most types of music, pulled directly from the NTS site. The device offers 24-bit / 192 kHz lossless audio quality, gapless playback, and a 10-band graphic equalizer that can be accessed through the app.

Bring your own tunes, too

According to Atonemo co-founder and radio player designer Noah Constantinou, the gadget follows the Japanese concept of 'omakase' — that's where in a restaurant you let the expert chef choose the dishes, rather than selecting them yourself.

If you don't want the NTS DJs to pick your music, you can also stream your choice of tunes to the radio player from your phone using Google Cast, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, or Tidal Connect. In that regard it doubles up as an easy way of connecting your phone to a set of speakers (which Atonemo's standard Streamplayer also does).

"I think people miss tactile objects," Constantinou told Dezeen. "We have become so used to putting screens on everything when it is in many cases not necessary, and even sometimes counterproductive."

Judging by the Reddit reactions, Constantinou is right: "such a cool idea" and "I gotta have it" are just two of the many positive takes on this new gadget. The device will set you back $179 / £129 / AU$250 and can be ordered online now.

The defining feature of the AI era is the speed at which AI tools have become a significant part of our working lives. Whether that’s generating content, summarizing data or automating routine tasks, AI’s speed is collapsing timelines that once took hours, days or weeks into seconds.

This is more than just a technological advancement. The rapid adoption of AI has encouraged a culture defined by instant gratification and a shift towards immediacy and expectation.

This culture shift is one of the most powerful forces shaping AI adoption, driving innovation, unlocking productivity and redefining competitive advantage.

Yet, bubbling beneath the surface are risks at a scale we’re only just beginning to understand. Employees are inputting sensitive data into AI systems, automating processes without fully understanding security implications and increasingly trusting outputs that are not properly authorized.

While organizations are increasingly confident in AI’s capabilities, the technology risks outpacing regulation and compliance. This leaves businesses vulnerable to unwarranted data risk and more cyberattacks.

The self-sustaining acceleration loop

AI is being powered by rising demands for speed and productivity. As these models become more intuitive, they remove barriers to use and are woven into everyday workflows.

That creates a feedback loop where speed becomes the priority and anything that slows it down, be it governance, security checks and/or compliance, look like obstacles rather than necessity.

At the same time, organizations are feeding these systems sensitive information with little visibility or control over where it goes, who is using it, or why. This isn’t always deliberate, but a byproduct of urgency.

We’ve seen this before. Convenience wins until the consequences catch up. From weak passwords to rushed cloud migrations, speed has often outpaced security. AI is following a similar trajectory, only faster and at a greater scale.

Regulation and compliance in catch up mode

Regulatory frameworks are also struggling to keep pace. By the time legislation is proposed, debated and implemented, the technology it aims to govern has often evolved. This leaves regulators reacting to yesterday’s risks rather than getting ahead of tomorrow’s flaws. In cybersecurity, that’s a losing game.

The gap between innovation and oversight is widening, and gaps are where threats thrive.

Cybercriminals are already using AI to scale attacks, automate reconnaissance and generate highly convincing phishing campaigns, with AI tools lowering the barrier to entry while increasing the attack surface.

As regulatory blind spots widen, threat actors won’t wait. They will move faster than the systems designed to stop them and exploit every delay.

Reframing the conversation

This is not a case against AI. Its benefits are real and, in many cases, unavoidable. The issue is imbalance, where advancement is favored and regulation and security are compromised.

We are moving too fast without the foundations to support it. As AI becomes embedded in core business processes, small gaps can scale into serious risks.

To unlock AI’s full potential without amplifying risk, we need to reframe how we think about progress. Organizations must understand their data flows in AI environments: what is used; where it goes; and how it is protected. Visibility and governance are not optional, they are the baseline.

Security must also be built in from the outset, not retrofitted. This requires alignment across technical teams, leadership and risk functions. AI cannot sit in a silo, it needs to be integrated into broader security and compliance frameworks, supported by closer collaboration between the industry and regulators.

Slowing down to move forward

To sustain momentum, we may need to slow down and create space for regulation to catch up. Building in governance, validating data use and embedding security controls will introduce friction, but it’s the kind that builds trust and resilience.

While the suggestion to slow down may feel like trying to stop a juggernaut with a stick, taking time now to pause and reflect is vital if we’re not to keep amplifying dangerous risk. A short pause now gives space to assess what is happening, what is needed which allows organizations to take back control.

Right now, AI is accelerating faster than our ability to manage the risk it creates. We need to adjust our priorities before the gap between security and speed becomes too wide to bridge.

We've ranked and reviewed the best antivirus software available.

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

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

I test a whole heap of gaming headsets, and have done so for nearly a decade now. I've also worked with a whole load of excellent freelancers who offer brilliantly clear, thoughtful, analytical, and fair takes on the products we test as a collective.

And I've agreed with every single review we've published in my time here at TechRadar Gaming — up until now. While very accurate and full of great advice, especially when the headset launched, I think my writer Phil's (who is one of the best in the business) review of the Audeze Maxwell 2 scored the gaming headset too low with a four-star rating.

I think it's a five-star headset.

Simply put, it is the best-sounding gaming headset I have ever used. After using it for a few months as a daily driver, nothing has come close before or since — even some of my absolute favorites can't hold a candle to it on sheer audio quality, detail, richness, and balance.

As a result, I have been recommending the headset at every opportunity possible. For anyone looking to upgrade their audio and take a step up, no matter your platform, this is absolutely worth the price tag — even at full price.

The whole audio spectrum is served so well by the Maxwell 2's 95mm planar magnetic drivers and design that I have been immersed further into my games, picked up details I didn't realise were there, and been blasted by a full-bodied richness that's just so dang enjoyable.

Further backing this up was my recent visit to Audeze in California, where I got to see the magic, science, and philosophy up close and personal. Hearing the approach that Audeze takes to audio, as well as learning about the planar magnetic tech under the hood, including the patented SLAM technology too, only cemented my newfound opinion on this quality set.

No headset is perfect, of course, and folks will point out that its mic is just OK, or that it's weightier than other headsets — though I think we all have a tendency to be too afraid of heavier headsets, or think that heavy = bad — but the default audio quality, out of the box, is so good that it definitely, absolutely, categorically outweighs all of the potential negatives.

At launch, Phil pointed out the fact that the original Maxwell was still available and this posed a bit of a problem for the Maxwell 2, as it offered also-excellent audio but was much cheaper. However, there are genuine improvements over the Maxwell 1 that the 2 offers (like SLAM), and now, a few months after release, the OG model is harder to find, making the case for going to the Maxwell 2 even stronger.

If you want premium gaming audio, then there is none better on the market right now.

• A Reddit user has created a touch-sensitive mouse mat with built-in buttons
• The Kage GhostPad device can be programmed with different functions
• It will enter crowdfunding soon, but already looks to be expensive

Over the years, there have been various devices that put quick computing controls at your fingertips — think the Elgato Stream Deck, for example, or standalone numpads built for your keyboard. But all of these things take up space on your desk, quickly making it crowded and cluttered. Now, though, one enterprising PC user thinks they’ve come up with a solution.

Posting on Reddit, user cmajmus revealed a mouse mat they’ve apparently been working on for the last two years. Dubbed the Kage GhostPad, this isn’t just any old desk pad — this one is equipped with 16 touch-sensitive buttons that put quick PC controls at your fingertips.

The buttons are built into the pad and sit under its surface, something cmajmus says means there are “No buttons, no bumps.” Once you press one of the active zones, “it triggers whatever you’ve mapped to it: keyboard shortcuts, macros, media keys, MIDI notes, gamepad inputs, even launching apps,” the creator says.

You can customize what each button does using a browser-based companion app once the desk pad is plugged into your PC using a USB cable. You’ll be able to drag and drop functions onto each zone, set pressure thresholds, add custom icons, and more.

And on the side, you’ll find a detachable LCD module that shows the device’s active mode, assigned shortcuts and any status indicators, helping you see what the GhostPad is up to at a glance. And you can “divide the surface into programmable zones,” cmajmus states, each with its own set of controls that can be switched between as needed.

Convenience at a cost

The GhostPad’s creator explained that they were motivated to create it due to “frustration with having a Stream Deck, macro pad, MIDI controller and numpad all eating desk space.” They then added: “I wanted one thing that does all of it and disappears visually.”

Some Reddit users were curious about how the product prevents accidental touches, such as if you bump your hand against the mat or place an object on its surface. To this, cmajmus said that you can “turn off some zones if your keyboard overlaps” while also claiming that you can “have 0.5L of beer on it” without triggering any of the buttons.

If you don’t like how the GhostPad looks — or if it becomes worn down over time — you can swap out the top surface with a variety of different visual options. And while the pad isn’t machine washable, the creator says it is water resistant and can be washed using gentler methods.

Reaction seems to have been positive on Reddit. User Jfaun said it was “one of those things I see and am shocked it doesn’t already exist and I never thought of it myself", while another called it "ridiculously cool". XLB135, meanwhile, opined: “As a minimalist with literally nothing on my desk other than a phone stand and a small bamboo box of notecards, this is very appealing to me.”

The GhostPad’s creator revealed in a different Reddit thread that the product will begin crowdfunding in a “few months.” You can also pre-order the device on its website, with “early bird” pricing set at €129 (about $147 / £111 GBP / $211 AUD).

That makes it very pricey for a mouse mat, but if you think it could save you money on accessories like a Stream Deck (not to mention the desk space), you might feel it’s worth it.

• New Grand Theft Auto 6 details have been spotted
• Fans have seemingly discovered an easter egg referencing Vice City's Tommy Vercetti
• A Marvel's Wolverine actor has also reportedly been cast in the game

Ahead of the game's pre-order availability this week, new Grand Theft Auto 6 details have been discovered, including a new cast member and a strange easter egg that could have a connection to another GTA game.

First, let's talk about the easter egg, which was spotted in the game's second trailer by TheGameVerse (via IGN) following some deep analysis of every single frame.

While the trailer was posted over a year ago, the split-second nod was easily missed. But if you pause at the 33-second mark, you can spot it.

As protagonist Jason Duvall backhands a store clerk, just behind his head, you can see a lizard wall ornament that appears to be wearing a blue floral shirt. Upon closer inspection, it's believed to be the same shirt worn by fan-favoriteVice City character Tommy Vercetti.

Not a huge easter egg if it was Rockstar's intention, but the game is sure to feature many more nods to the wider GTA franchise.

The second detail comes courtesy of IGN and seems to confirm that actor Brett Gipson, who plays Sabretooth in Marvel's Wolverine, has joined the cast of GTA 6.

The actor recently updated his resume, stating that he will play a character named Ellis, but there's no information on his role in the game.

The cast of GTA 6 has been kept pretty under wraps since its announcement, and we still don't know who will be playing co-protagonists, Jason and Lucia.

Rockstar has now officially confirmed that GTA 6 pre-orders will begin on June 25 ahead of the game's launch on November 19, while also revealing the game's official cover art.

No price has been set just yet, but if you're looking to pre-order a copy, here are some PS5 and Xbox gaming accessory upgrades that we'd recommend before you play.

• Nothing has just revealed its biggest Phone (4b) teaser yet
• It's a lower-end alternative to the Nothing Phone (4a), which makes us wonder whether it was originally planned to be a CMF model
• It'll be announced on July 7

Something strange is going on at Nothing — just a few days ago the company announced that there wouldn’t be any new CMF phones this year, but now it’s back with a teaser for the first in a new line of phones, dubbed the Nothing Phone (4b). And there are reasons to think this is the CMF Phone 3 Pro in all but name.

The main teaser for the Nothing Phone (4b) comes from Nothing’s official X account and includes sketches of various possible designs, thereby not actually giving much away. But it also says that we’ll learn more on July 7 at 11am BST, which is 3am PT / 6am ET / 8pm AEST.

We do know a bit more already though, as Nothing’s co-founder Akis Evangelidis has explained on X that “the B Series builds on the success of the A Series by expanding into a new segment, while maintaining a clear product hierarchy.”

More tellingly, they added that “the A Series remains our most premium line below our flagship products, which doesn't carry a letter designation.” That’s a roundabout way of saying that the Nothing Phone (4b) will be lower end than the Nothing Phone (4a), and you know what else would have been lower end? The canceled CMF Phone 3 Pro.

A CMF phone at a higher price?

So why would Nothing repackage the CMF Phone 3 Pro as the Phone (4b)? Well, Nothing has stated that we won’t see any new CMF phones this year thanks to the ongoing RAM crisis, which has meant that “we can't build a phone that feels like a genuine step forward at a price that makes sense for CMF.”

What they might be able to do though is sell that phone at a price that makes sense for the more premium Nothing brand. So in other words there’s a chance this is the CMF Phone 3 Pro, just at a higher price than Nothing could get away with while using CMF branding.

Of course, that’s just speculation. It’s entirely possible that along with the budget CMF Phone 3 Pro, Nothing was also working on the budget Phone (4a), and that it just happened to tease the latter mere days after canceling the former. But the timing does seem odd.

We’ll probably never know for sure whether this was originally designed as a CMF model or not, but we should at least learn more about the specs, features, and perhaps pricing of this phone very soon.

• Netflix's Gears of War movie has a confirmed plot
• According to Entertainment Weekly, the movie will be an origin story for Delta Squad
• This does mean that the game's protagonist, Marcus Fenix, may not appear in the Netflix adaptation

Gears of War is headed to Netflix, and we finally have some confirmed plot details about the new movie adaptation.

According to reports from Entertainment Weekly, the Netflix Gears of War movie will be an origin story for Delta Squad, the main infantry team in the original video game series.

Entertainment Weekly revealed that the official logline for the movie is simply: "The origin story of Delta Squad, a ragtag crew of soldiers who wage a desperate war for survival against the Locust, a race of subterranean creatures set on destroying humanity."

Speaking about the movie, Matt Booty, Xbox's executive vice president and chief content officer, told the site: “The game really is about the bonds between teams. It's about brotherhood at its core.

"When you go visit the studio, their tagline is ‘Never Fight Alone.’ So when you think about that for a dramatic narrative, it's a pretty good starting point.”

Will Gears of War feature Marcus Fenix?

Considering Marcus Fenix is the protagonist of the first three games in the Gears of War video game series, many of us are wondering if he will show up in Netflix's Gears of War movie.

It's too early to say for now, as we don't have casting confirmation for the project, so we can't confirm which characters will appear. But if Marcus is absent and the plot focuses wholly on life before him, this may come as a disappointment for fans.

We can't accurately pinpoint how Netflix's Gears of War will fit into the franchise's timeline until more information is released. If it focuses more on the first game, then we might see Marcus after all.

If it doesn't, then this is certainly not the first time a video game adaptation has moved away from the original protagonists. Recently, Prime Video's Fallout chose not to focus on the Lone Wanderer or The Courier, and Zach Cregger's Resident Evil has a brand-new leading character too.

We will just have to wait patiently to see how Gears of War plays out on Netflix.

• A memory expert has predicted big RAM price hikes this year
• They say we could see hikes of 40% to 50% in Q3, and further 30% to 40% rises in Q4
• They predict that 2027 is also going to be painful, with a 40% to 45% increase year-on-year

There's more fuel to the fire for the theory that the RAM crisis is going to get worse, and a lot worse going by this latest forecast — though I'd take it with some seasoning.

Wccftech spotted that Jukan on X highlighted a report from Jefferies, an investment banking firm that has been talking to an analyst in the world of memory who made these bleak predictions.

They include the expectation that memory pricing will increase in a big way as 2026 rolls onwards — we're talking a 40% to 50% hike in Q3 (compared to this quarter) and a further 30% to 40% rise in the last quarter of 2026.

Price hikes are "likely" to continue through 2027, the expert believes, with potentially a 40% to 45% increase year-on-year, which would leave RAM prices at a staggering level come the close of next year.

Only then will we get an easing of pricing in 2028, with memory prices potentially falling by up to 20% due to a combination of slowing demand and more production capacity coming online (with investment in the latter that's underway now finally coming to fruition).

Elsewhere on X, P Equity Research shares more of the Jefferies report, which underlines how cloud giants are apparently locking down 50% of total memory production (potentially rising to 70%), signing long-term contracts requiring massive (40%) prepayments. Due to this, consumer electronics makers are facing "severe pressure" and even leaner memory supply going into next year.

Analysis: running the doom gauntlet

This is the most doom-laden RAM industry prediction I've seen in some time, and there have been a few of those recently. In the order of 40% and then 30% price increases (at minimum) over the next two quarters would be a shocker — bordering on unthinkable.

Other forecasts are calling price rises, too, but not to this extent. As Wccftech points out, another investment research firm, Aletheia Capital, predicts rises of 30% and perhaps up to 15% in Q3 and Q4 respectively, and Jukan on X points to a current consensus of 20% then 30% hikes respectively.

Granted, that doesn't look good either, but the view of the expert that Jefferies spoke to feels rather alarmist in comparison. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: in the consumer world, there's only so much price hiking that people will stand for before they just close their wallets and buying activity starts drying up to a large extent (save for absolutely essential purchases). How much higher can RAM prices go, frankly, before we see those kinds of hardened consumer attitudes coming into play? Not a lot higher, I'd argue.

Although granted, it seems like the talk of price hikes easing off sooner rather than later is now being completely drowned out by the RAM pessimists. The expert who spoke to Jefferies also observes that Chinese memory chip makers won't come to the rescue to help correct RAM supply outside of Asia in the foreseeable future (meaning this year or next) either, a view we've heard echoed elsewhere, and one that (sadly) makes sense.

Meanwhile, following fallbacks to DDR3 memory in the past, we're also seeing that even ancient DDR2 RAM is having a resurgence in popularity in some scenarios, with prices for that memory shooting up as a result according to TrendForce.

As The Verge reports, Valve also just underlined how hard it is to buy RAM at anything approaching a reasonable price – with no room for negotiation whatsoever with memory suppliers, which impacted the cost of the Steam Machine (as predicted).

So yes, everything seems to be backing up the recent cloud of gloom cast on the PC industry by Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, who observed that the RAM crisis will be around for "quite a few years", hinting that it's a demon we'll have to live with for the rest of the decade, pretty much.

Yet I still think this latest report goes a step too far with the doom mongering, and that consumers will simply vote not to open their wallets at all (in the main) at some point in the not-so-far-off future. It is, however, clear enough that more misery is coming in some form as 2026 rolls on, so we'll have to batten down the hatches for now and see how bad the storm gets.

Meantime, if you are in the market for certain components — certainly a new laptop or MacBook — I'd suggest you make a move before too long, as I discussed at length last weekend.

• Five Eyes alliance warned frontier GenAI models will enable advanced cyberattacks against businesses and governments within months
• Statement stressed cyber risk is now a leadership and business continuity issue, requiring whole‑of‑society response
• Comes amid concerns over Anthropic’s Mythos Preview and other models already showing offensive potential despite guardrails

In just a few months, high-end Generative Artificial Intelligence models (GenAI) will be capable of running cyberattacks on big businesses and government organizations, Five Eyes is warning.

The Five Eyes is an intelligence-sharing alliance between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Formed after the Second World War, it allows the five countries to closely cooperate on intelligence and matters of national security.

Earlier this week, Five Eyes issued a new warning, saying that AI will help improve cyber defense over time, but will also accelerate the speed, scale, and sophistication, of threats: “Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. The timeline is not years, it is months,” the warning reads. “In this environment, cyber resilience is integral to advancing business continuity, market confidence, and long-term value.”

All hands on deck

Five Eyes is now saying that the industry needs all hands on deck to address what’s increasingly becoming a burning issue:

“A whole-of-organisation and whole-of-society response is required,” it said. “Cyber risk can no longer be treated as a purely technical issue. This is a core business risk and leadership responsibility.”

In early April, news broke that Anthropic’s latest AI model, Mythos Preview, was so good at exploiting software vulnerabilities, that the company could not release it to the public. Instead, it only shared it with a handful of US enterprises, to give them a head start against threat actors.

While skeptics said it was nothing more than a publicity stunt, similar to what OpenAI pulled off with ChatGPT 2.0, companies that used it (for example, Mozilla), confirmed that it was, indeed, powerful enough that it needs to be kept in check.

Even models available today, despite all the guardrails, are being regularly leveraged by bad actors in different cyberattack scenarios.

Via The Guardian

Enterprises are deploying agentic AI at a pace that has outrun their ability to govern it.

Gartner predicts the average Fortune 500 enterprise will have over 150,000 agents in production by 2028, up from fewer than 15 in 2025.

Yet only 13% of organizations think they have the right governance in place to manage them.

The result is an execution gap: agents deployed in isolation, producing outputs nobody acts on, automating tasks rather than business processes and delivering unclear business value as a consequence.

Governance failures are an execution problem. Agents that can't interface safely with enterprise systems can't automate business processes in any meaningful way. They stay isolated helpers: producing artifacts, fielding customer queries, handling individual tasks.

The execution gap — the distance between what agentic AI promises and what it actually delivers inside the enterprise — remains largely unaddressed.

In 2026 and beyond, the guardrail problem poses an existential risk for enterprises. Adoption has outpaced controls, meaning that agentic AI is scaling faster than robust security measures can be implemented.

The speed of tech progress

The speed of tech progress can no longer stand as a rationalization for falling behind, and enterprises must address it before agentic becomes uncontrollable. Getting guardrails right will separate enterprises that realize full autonomy from those that stall out in pilots.

First, autonomy amplifies risk. Just because agentic AI can act on its own doesn't mean it requires zero human oversight. Autonomy does not equal autopilot. For agentic AI to generate real ROI, agents must do more than reason and respond. They must execute inside the business. That means interfacing directly with enterprise systems: ERP software, finance platforms, supply chain tools and the workflows that run the organization. Without that integration, agents remain one step removed from the work that actually matters.

Operational speed can compromise safety, compliance and reliability. Agents work at a blazing clip and on a more granular level than RPA. But speed becomes a moot point if agentic adoption leads to vulnerabilities such as sensitive data exposure.

Security and IT teams haven’t universally adapted to the new risk landscape. Among the risks agentic poses, "shadow AI" has emerged as a consequence of employees using unauthorized, unsanctioned AI tools or applications. When proper IT oversight or approval gets bypassed, it sets the stage for noncompliance and severe reputational damage. Departmental AI agents are proliferating without central oversight, creating security hazards and fragmented intelligence.

Governance lags far behind adoption. In this case, the guardrail gap might as well be a lack. Surveying more than 3,000 IT and business leaders worldwide, Deloitte found that just one in five enterprises reported mature governance to manage the risks of agentic AI. Autonomy without governance is a liability. This is particularly critical as we move toward the era of programmable finance, with Gartner predicting that 20% of monetary transactions will be programmable by 2030.

How to Lay the Rails Right

Agentic systems perform across a wide range of functions. When building guardrails, there must be no shortcuts. Guardrails bolted on after the fact can't account for the ways agents actually fail: corrupting data, contradicting decisions made elsewhere in the business and creating conflicts between teams acting on different outputs. Controls need to be built into how agents execute, instead of layered on top.

1. Practice measured orchestration

When enterprises accelerate AI adoption by stitching isolated tools across departments, security gaps grow harder to manage — because there’s no unified layer to anchor guardrails to. Start by scoping the broader business objective your agentic system needs to serve, not just the task.

Once you've determined what your agentic system will handle and which structured outputs will return to the workflow, built-in validation and guardrails become platform-level capabilities rather than afterthoughts bolted onto each individual agent.

2. Build governance capabilities

Without clear boundaries, agentic AI collapses. First, determine which decisions it can make independently versus those that need human approval. Real-time monitoring systems that flag anomalies and audit trails that capture the full chain of agent actions will enable accountability and continuous improvement.

3. Scale deliberately

No matter how sexy the pilot, agentic AI needs time to mature within the enterprise; you want to spot potential issues before they appear, not after. Start with lower-risk use cases and easy, single-task wins, as with fraud detection and remediation or vendor reconciliation. Avoid intricate processes with hundreds or thousands of inputs, such as the financial close of a business.

4. Guardrail gap = skills gap

While agentic AI excels at reasoning, the execution of reliable, repeatable business processes still demands deterministic systems — and human oversight to bridge the two.

To ensure smooth agentic operation in an enterprise, train your employees to move from triage, menial activities and repeated manual steps to judgment, governance and strategic decision-making roles. They absolutely require those skills. Scrum and Tiger teams can solve early problems and address early lessons, then pinpoint how agentic addresses your needs.

Putting it All Together: A Guiding Guardrail Principle

Yes, agentic AI scales productivity, but without strong guardrails, agentic AI scales risk even faster. Strategic observability and deterministic guardrails are required to ensure that non-deterministic AI stays compliant with regulatory and business standards, with reliable audit trails as well as rules for exactly when to escalate a decision or task to a human for complex exceptions or strategic oversight.

In the rush to embrace agentic, remember that the attendant tasks don’t represent a series of punch-list items. Veterans of software adoption and replacement projects know that it’s a holistic process where human actions and digital components fall into place with methodical synchrony.

Agentic AI, while it has altered the face of enterprise technology forever, rewards the same discipline every transformative technology before it has: lay the foundations carefully, and you won’t be fighting fires when it scales.

We list the best IT automation software.

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

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

• Around half of UK retail workers don't feel confident with GDPR tasks
• One in five haven't received formal compliance training
• Many workers can't remember what their training involved

Nearly half (44%) of UK retail workers say they're not confident in handling sensitive customer data or don't know how to process it correctly, raising potential compliance issues, per Virtual College research.

According to the data, nearly one-fifth (19%) of retail workers have never received formal compliance training despite handling customer banking details, contact information and other personal data daily.

And those who have been trained say it's been sporadic without regular updates – only one in three (30%) have been trained within the last six months, with a further 11% trained 7-11 months ago.

Retail workers aren't up to speed on GDPR

The report raises questions around the frequency and effectiveness of such training, because nearly one in five (17%) couldn't remember what their last compliance training covered. Only 13% say it covered safeguarding.

And while training is still being delivered to many, only around half (49%) say they'd feel 'somewhat confident' in responding correctly to a compliance situation.

This data also comes at a similar time to Government data revealing that more than two in five (43%) businesses have experienced some kind of cyber breach or attack in the past 12 months, highlighting the vulnerability of personal and sensitive information.

"Ongoing, bite-sized training keeps compliance knowledge fresh and helps employees stay confident in fast-changing regulatory environments," Business and Strategy Director Jamie Ashforth wrote, urging employers to conduct regular audits to identify gaps.

Per the report, UK companies paid £490 million in compliance failure fines in 2025, but broader impacts of regulatory investigations and knock-on reputational damage are also highly plausible outcomes.

Ashforth suggests businesses should prioritize high-risk compliance areas first, including data protection and safeguarding. "Clear processes and regular reinforcement give employees the confidence to raise concerns and act appropriately when issues arise."

Cloudzy isn’t your run-of-the-mill web hosting provider. It specializes in cloud infrastructure and fairly bare-bones Virtual Private Server (VPS) plans. That means you get reasonably priced access to excellent hardware and resources, provided you have the technical skills to handle them.

The good news is that many things can be pre-configured, and you have a broad choice of options in everything from the choice of operating system (OS) to web apps. We’re not just talking about WordPress, but also advanced options like Forex platforms.

You also have an excellent range of server location options, though perhaps not as comprehensive as Google Cloud or AWS, which are on a different pricing tier altogether. What we didn’t like, though, was the discounts Cloudzy offers based on your location choice, which we felt was a bit unfair to customers who might require specific regions for efficiency and localization.

Be warned, though - Cloudzy is not really aimed at casual users building their first website. While you can technically host anything here, the core audience appears to be users who need virtual servers for web apps, trading bots, VPN setups, and the like.

Plans and pricing

Cloudzy primarily focuses on VPS hosting rather than traditional shared hosting packages. At the bottom of its offerings are Cloud VPS plans similar to those offered by hosts like DigitalOcean, Linode, and VULTR.

At Cloudzy, though, you get a broader range of pre-deployment options. For example, you can decide to go with a pure OS-only deployment, or get your server started with a full LAMP-stack supported web app, or almost anything else.

Cloud VPS plans start at 1 vCPU with 512MB RAM, 20GB of NVMe storage, and 1TB bandwidth/mo. This scales up to a whopping 16 vCPU, 64GB RAM, 1.5TB NVMe storage, and 16TB of bandwidth for $199.97/mo.

While there is no additional charge for pre-deployment options, your final price may be adjusted depending on server location. It’s likely that Cloudzy does this to help balance their location loads, but it’s unfortunate for customers who may be penalized because of their requirements for where their servers are located.

Aside from Cloud VPS, Cloudzy also offers more specialized solutions like high-performance GPUs, GPU-optimized servers, AI servers, and dedicated servers. Again, all of these options are fairly technical, especially their dedicated bare-metal servers.

Ease of use

The Cloudzy dashboard is a straightforward way to manage your servers. However, it’s more practical than informational. You can use it to deploy, rebuild, or configure instances. Server monitoring isn’t in the cards, though, and you’ll have to deploy any of those solutions on your individual servers if you need them.

When we initially discussed the pre-deployment option, it might have been misconstrued as saying Cloudzy is easy to use. That isn’t really the case. Once the deployment is made, you’ll still have to manage the stack on your own. For example, you have to keep your server OS and applications up to date and security-hardened, not just manage your web app.

This is typically done via SSH into the server (root access is provided). If you know what you’re doing, it’s easy-peasy. If not, you’re probably going to face an oncoming disaster.

Again, we don’t recommend Cloudzy as a first hosting provider for someone completely unfamiliar with VPS environments. If you’re looking for a first entry to the Cloud, try something with more management features like Cloudways. That, however, will cost a bit more, so be mentally prepared.

Speed and reliability

Cloud providers are always thought to be all-powerful, but keep in mind that much of it still depends on the hardware and configuration. For example, on the surface, Cloudzy offers some pretty good standard cloud VPS plans. However, the processing power on these compared to their high-performance options is very different. For example, the 2GB standard cloud VPS plan we tested includes a 2.25GHz AMD processor, while a comparable high-performance plan includes 4.2GHz processors.

The biggest surprise, though, is that Cloudzy is using AMD Ryzen 9 processors for their Cloud VPS plans. Servers typically run AMD EPYC chips, which are the dedicated server versions commonly used in web hosting. The Ryzen family is intended more for regular consumers or enthusiasts.

It’s possible that this led to the slightly disappointing test results below.

WordPress benchmark test

The standard WordPress benchmark test was run on our prebuilt WordPress site to maintain consistency. Results at Cloudzy were a letdown, with initial results showing worse performance than some budget shared hosting alternatives we’ve seen.

Siege test

On our load test, Cloudzy performed like a champ, acing results with increasing loads of 5, 9, and 15 concurrent users. It ran rock-solid and completed all transactions quickly. If we were to use this as a comparative factor against the easier benchmark test, Siege results should take priority as a more realistic indicator.

Customer support

Cloudzy offers customer support via tickets (for existing customers), a knowledge base, and, more interestingly, WhatsApp. Don’t be fooled by the WhatsApp chat support option, though. You don’t get an instant response.

Their knowledge base is also quite Spartan, with only 73 guides available. These articles are very straightforward and relatively technical, so you may have to know what you’re doing just to follow the language. It can be a challenge, but those are the preconditions for this type of hosting anyway.

Overall, the vibe you get from customer support is very corporate. We felt a notable disappointment here, especially coming off our recent Freehostia review. That was a free hosting plan, yet it came with near-instant customer support that was both polite and effective.

The competition

DigitalOcean is one of the most popular cloud infrastructure providers for developers and startups, and is similar in product offerings to Cloudzy. Compared to Cloudzy, DigitalOcean has a more mature ecosystem and a more professional customer dashboard. However, Cloudzy may appeal more to users looking for simpler pricing and lower-cost VPS deployments.

Linode has built a strong reputation among developers for reliability and straightforward cloud hosting services. Compared to Cloudzy, Linode offers more enterprise-level polish and documentation, though pricing can sometimes be higher for equivalent resources.

For those who want a fully hands-off approach, Hostinger is a beginner-friendly choice. Although primarily cheap for shared hosting, you can also get VPS hosting and other plans. Hosting is priced aggressively and offers strong localization expertise for ideal customer support.

Final verdict

To be honest, Cloudzy is a fairly run-of-the-mill cloud hosting provider. We don’t feel that it excels in any particular area, even though the host itself seems professional enough. What really turned us off was their slow customer support, even for sales queries.

Performance-wise, Cloudzy runs fine, even with Ryzen chips instead of enterprise-grade EPYC chips. It’s just that the choice left us feeling disappointed that they would cut corners in that way. We recommend considering one of the many cloud alternatives if you’re in the market for a budget, hands-on hosting plan.

• The UK is experiencing another heatwave, with temperatures expected to exceed 35°C
• Nintendo Switch users should be reminded of the risks of overheating their console
• Nintendo has previously said that the consoles can "malfunction" in temperatures above 35°C

As we enter another UK heatwave, Nintendo Switch users should be reminded of the risks of overheating their console.

Recent weather reports have forecast that temperatures in certain parts of the UK will exceed 35°C this week, reaching as high as 40°C.

An amber warning has been issued, in addition to a rare red extreme heat warning, for some regions and those spending time outside should be prepared for the sweltering heat. Even those indoors should take similar precautions to stay cool, especially if they have any running hardware that can contribute to the heat.

Whether it be a PC, PS5 console, or Xbox Series X, these devices do run the risk of overheating, particularly during a heatwave. The same goes for Switch and Switch 2 consoles, which Nintendo has previously cautioned can "malfunction" if temperatures are above 35°C.

"Using a Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2 in places with high temperatures may cause the console's temperature to rise," the company said in a post shared last year.

"This could potentially lead to malfunctions, so please use it in locations between 5–35°C. Lately, there have been consecutive days exceeding 35°C. Please take care when using it outdoors."

For this reason, we'd highly recommend avoiding using your Switch or Switch 2 when temperatures are at their highest.

In other news, Nintendo has officially announced The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, and it launches this year on Switch 2.

If you're hoping to pick the console up before the game drops, the Switch 2 just got an absurd Amazon Prime discount thanks to Amazon Prime Day.

• Report finds public support for workplace robots is growing – especially for physical or dangerous tasks
• Willingness to accept a robot inside the home grows with real-life exposure
• Familiarity and clear governance are essential to overcoming public fear

Technological capabilities may no longer been the limiting factor when it comes to how and where robots can be deployed, with new Hexagon research revealing public support isn’t always there.

The company found much of the public is becoming more accepting of robots in the workplace, but only where they’re used for practical, physical or dangerous jobs.

However roles which require empathy, judgement or human interaction are still where support remains low.

Robots are most accepted in practical labor use cases

For example, more than half (56%) of the 1,000+ UK adults surveyed said they’d accept robots in lifting and transporting heavy items. Carrying and delivering any items (38%) and monitoring hazards and dangerous environments (34%) also received reasonable support.

With airports, some supermarkets and other public places now employing robots, 31% would even support their use in cleaning shared spaces.

Though the research fails to detail perception by age bracket, the company surveyed an equal number of UK children to reveal that heavy lifting, carrying and delivering is even more accepted among under 18s.

However, while repetitive physical work is generally well-accepted, 82% of UK adults want humans to care for sick, elderly and young people.

Only 5% say they’d choose a robot caregiver, making this the lowest support for any of the tasks included in the report. Even children seem reluctant to have non-human personal interactions, with 79% preferring human caregivers and 8% willing to choose a robot instead.

But Hexagon Technology Ethicist Dr Blay Whitby argues a simple reframing could skew these figures: “Ask people if they want to be cared for by a robot, and most say no… Ask if technology should help them remain independent in their own home for longer, and most say yes.”

Associate Professor in Moral Psychology Dr Jim Everett sees robots more as “assistive devices” in care homes and classrooms, rather than human replacements.

Exposure can drastically shift public perception

For now, the public still sees robots as industrial automation roles. More than half agree their natural homes are factories (53%) and warehouses (53%) – fewer consider them at home in hospitals and clinics (34%) or classrooms (30%).

Fear of the unknown could be another blocker, with only 28% of UK adults believing that having a robot colleague would be exciting – nearly half (46%) say it would be frightening. Humanoid forms are clearly unsettling, with twice as many preferring machine-like robots (27%) compared with human-like robots (14%).

Sci-fi fears about robots taking over could also be influencing public perception. Nearly all UK adults (88%) want clear rules governing what robots can do.

“Industrial environments are where the tasks for robots are the most defined, the safety cases are mature, and governance is in public view,” Hexagon CTO Burkhard Boeckem concluded.

Global comparisons back the fear of the unknown theory – while 30% of UK adults have encountered robots in real life, 75% have in China. A country that’s nearly twice as likely (63%) to accept robots into the home compared with the UK (32%).

For most of the last forty years, data center performance gains came from one place: smaller transistors. Moore's Law and Dennard scaling did the work.

Each new generation of silicon delivered more performance at the same or lower power, and thermal was a maintenance problem, not a performance limiter.

Cooling sat in the background. Operators measured it through PUE, optimized for it where convenient, and otherwise treated it as overhead.

That world is over.

Dennard scaling broke years ago, transistor efficiency gains are leveling off, and AI accelerator TDPs have climbed from 700 watts in the H100 generation to over 1,400 watts in current Blackwell deployments, with NVIDIA's upcoming Rubin platform expected to push further.

Thermal is no longer something that happens after the architectural decisions. It is now the binding constraint on how much performance a chip can sustain, and it is becoming one of the most strategic choices an AI data center operator can make.

Why this matters now

The macro numbers explain why this matters now. Data centers already consume up to 4.5 percent of total U.S. electricity production, a figure projected to reach 12 percent by 2028. McKinsey estimates global data center spending could approach $7 trillion by 2030, and that data center power demand will reach 220 gigawatts in the same window.

None of that capacity arrives quickly. New transmission lines and substations now take five to ten years to permit and build, which means operators cannot simply order more power when they need to scale.

The result is a hard pressure to extract maximum performance from the power they already have under contract. That pressure is what is reshaping how the industry thinks about cooling.

Cooling is no longer just an afterthought

For years, cooling was measured as an efficiency loss, captured through metrics like Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) that quantified how much energy was burned on overhead before reaching the IT load. Today, the more meaningful metric is how much useful compute you extract per unit of power. NVIDIA's Jensen Huang now describes this as "performance per watt" or "tokens per watt" for AI workloads, and cooling plays a direct role in both halves of that equation.

Direct-to-chip liquid cooling has become the new baseline because it removes heat far more effectively than air. But even direct-to-chip is being pushed to its limit by 1,000+ watt accelerators, and most current deployments still require facility water around 30 degrees Celsius to stay within ASHRAE W2 and W3 envelopes, which means chillers running for much of the year in warm climates.

Better thermal management has effects on both sides of the tokens-per-watt equation. It reduces facility overhead, so more of the contracted power reaches the rack. And it allows chips to operate closer to their full thermal headroom, sustaining higher performance for longer.

Those gains compound. Recent UCLA study has shown that combining a 17 percent improvement in facility efficiency with a 15 percent gain in server-level performance per watt from better thermal management translates to roughly 35 percent more tokens per watt within the same power envelope. In a 10 megawatt facility, that is more than a megawatt of additional usable compute, with no additional grid commitment.

At GTC 2026, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made this argument explicitly. He told the audience that beyond the silicon roadmap, infrastructure-level optimization across power and cooling represents another factor of two in performance still on the table. "There's no question in my mind there's a factor of two in here, and a factor of two at the scale we're talking about is gigantic," he said.

That gain does not come from a smaller transistor. It comes from rethinking how power and thermal energy move through the rack. Recent UCLA study suggests that at least one third of that infrastructure-level gain is attributable specifically to cooling. Cooling is no longer a support function. It is a primary lever for performance.

Water is becoming a hard constraint

Power is not the only pressure point. Water is emerging as an equally critical and often more immediate constraint on data center expansion. Traditional cooling architectures often rely on evaporative processes that consume vast amounts of water. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, large data centers may use up to 5 million gallons per day, comparable to the daily water use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.

This is drawing notice from regulators and communities in already water-stressed areas. The result is longer permitting cycles, higher project risk, and in some cases new developments paused entirely. States and municipalities are also implementing stricter reporting requirements and adjusting electricity rate structures specifically for data centers.

Operators now have to factor water alongside power into site selection. Facilities that minimize energy waste and reduce or eliminate water consumption are better positioned to navigate this environment.

The shift toward next-generation cooling

In response, the industry is entering a new phase of cooling innovation. Air cooling is no longer sufficient for high-density AI workloads. Liquid cooling has become the baseline, but within liquid cooling, not all approaches deliver the same efficiency or scalability.

The next wave of innovation focuses on improving heat transfer at the source: removing thermal energy more effectively at the chip level while reducing system-wide overhead. Some of these approaches draw on heat transfer techniques refined in other high-density power industries such as nuclear power generation, where the challenge of moving large amounts of thermal energy from a constrained physical space has been studied for decades.

The goal is straightforward. Better cooling enables higher rack densities, allows operation at higher facility water temperatures, and reduces or eliminates reliance on water-intensive heat rejection. Just as importantly, the next generation of cooling architectures is being designed to integrate with existing data center footprints, so operators can evolve their infrastructure rather than rebuild it from scratch.

NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform, announced at CES 2026, was a clear signal of where this is heading. Vera Rubin is designed for 45 degree Celsius supply water, which means dry coolers can do most of the heat rejection year-round and mechanical chillers become optional in most climates. That is a fundamental shift in how cooling infrastructure will be designed for the next decade.

A defining moment for data center design

The data center industry is at an inflection point. AI compute demand is accelerating, and every resource needed to support it, power, water, physical space, is becoming harder to secure. Cooling sits at the intersection of all three.

It determines how efficiently power is used, how much water is consumed, and ultimately, where infrastructure can be deployed. The operators that recognize this now will have a sustained advantage. How to keep data centers cool under AI workload pressure has become one of the most strategic decisions in modern infrastructure.

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Generative AI has moved quickly from experimentation into early production use in many enterprises. However, very few can confidently forecast what it’s going to cost them in six months.

For a technology that has consumed so much board-level attention and capital, that reflects a lack of certainty, and one that some technology leaders may privately recognize as true of their own organizations.

The spend is real and the direction is clear, but the number at the end of the year can remain genuinely uncertain.

To capture a glimmer of the confidence driving the infrastructure race, Amazon’s CEO has indicated it expects to spend heavily on IT infrastructure to support AI, with an estimated $200 billion in AI capital spending, arguing it is “not going to be conservative” in how it invests in the tech.

In practice, what makes AI different from the infrastructure investments that came before it is not the scale of the commitment but the nature of the consumption.

Cloud computing was unpredictable when it arrived too, but it eventually settled into patterns that finance teams could learn to model. AI hasn’t settled in the same way yet, and much of the reason comes down to how it is being used.

A great deal of enterprise AI use remains exploratory, which is part of what makes forecasting harder. And unlike cloud, which stayed largely within technical teams for years before spreading, AI is moving across the whole organisation almost immediately. That changes everything about how you try to govern it.

The limits of financial visibility

On the surface, some forms of AI appear to offer what earlier infrastructure lacked: clean, granular, real-time data and what it costs. But across the rapidly growing landscape of technology providers leveraging AI in some way, many do not.

In some cases, token-based pricing is precise in a way that early cloud billing never was, and for finance teams accustomed to working with far less, it can feel like a step in the right direction for solving the visibility problem.

We unfortunately still have a long way to go, since simply understanding what was spent last month tells you very little about what will be spent next quarter, particularly once adoption moves beyond the teams who originally shaped the business case.

One must consider that teams across legal, HR, and customer operations are not thinking about token economics (tokenomics). They’re only thinking about whether the tool works.

Cost exposure builds not through any single decision but through dozens of small expansions, each reason in isolation, none of them reflected in a comprehensive forecast. By the time anyone joins the dots, the demand curve has already moved.

Extending the disciplines that already exist

The organizations who are doing a better job managing AI spend have tenured experience managing consumption-based technology. IT asset management (ITAM) teams for example often have more experience dealing with more fixed constructs like users or seats, which makes the consumption-based nature of AI far more challenging.

FinOps teams on the other hand have grounded experience in managing consumption that originated in public cloud. FinOps teams may therefore better positioned to deal with the new tsunami of AI consumption and spending, ensuring that it is governed as adoption scales.

FinOps has also been broadening its scope beyond the initial roots in public cloud, with AI cost management now sitting firmly within that remit for many, a shift reflected in how the FinOps Foundation is increasingly incorporating AI into its guidance. Part of that expansion is about forecasting demand that behaves differently from conventional workloads.

There is also growing interest in whether AI itself can support FinOps practices, particularly in anomaly detection, optimization and, over time, forecasting, as consumption patterns become harder to model.

The challenge is applying FinOps practices early enough so that governance shapes how AI scales, rather than scrambling to restore control once spend has already outpaced oversight.

The compounding difficulty of legacy environments

For organizations whose technology estates were built around consistency, extending governance into AI is harder than it sounds.

AI-first organizations design with cost in mind from the beginning, treating inference the way they would any other product input, with economic constraints shaping architecture decisions before commitments are made.

Retrofitting AI into legacy infrastructure means something different. Existing commercial commitments and operating models do not adapt quickly to a consumption model that is inherently variable, and that friction has a direct bearing on cost.

The difficulty is often that AI is being introduced into environments built around very different assumptions about how demand behaves, and that is part of what makes forecasting harder.

The challenge is not simply new spend, but expenditure ballooning in environments where oversight and control are already difficult to maintain.

Organizations navigating this will tend to run controlled experiments before broad rollout and are deliberate about how adoption spreads. In practice, that is often about containing unmanaged adoption early, before usage patterns, costs and dependencies become harder to unwind.

That same exposure increasingly carries beyond internal governance. As AI appears more often in customer procurement conversations, questions that were once largely internal are starting to be probed externally too.

For organizations whose governance has not kept pace, those questions can force a level of clarity they may not yet be prepared to provide.

From activity metrics to business outcomes

Beyond governance and cost control, there remains a harder question, which is whether AI investment is producing meaningful business value. Most leadership teams are not yet in a position to answer that with confidence, and the metrics currently reaching the board are not making it easier.

Model usage, inference volumes and compute consumed describe activity without explaining value. It is easy to build a compelling board update from consumption data without addressing whether any of it is moving the business.

What gets closer to an answer is understanding whether individual inferences are delivering something a customer would pay for, or something that meaningfully reduces cost or risk.

Incremental business outcome per pound or dollar of AI spend is a harder measure to produce, but it is closer to the economics that matter because it requires a clearer position on what AI is actually delivering.

That is precisely where many organizations are still finding the work harder than it looks, particularly as AI deployment moves ahead of the models used to understand cost and value.

That disconnect matters more as the market expands, because where those economics remain unclear, cost exposure can build in ways that are harder to recognize early and harder to contain later.

For many enterprises, the challenge ahead is scaling AI without allowing spend to outrun the value it is meant to create.

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Agentic AI is moving rapidly from boardroom ambition to enterprise reality.

Gartner forecasts that roughly 40% of enterprise applications will incorporate task-specific AI agents this year, up from just 5% last year.

This surge forces every CIO, CISO, and technology leader to consider: What should AI be allowed to access, and how should it operate once inside the enterprise?

Many organizations begin by embedding AI agents directly into legacy systems, connecting them to backend databases, APIs, and workflows in the name of speed.

While this inline approach can work in modern, well-governed environments, it often bypasses the approval workflows and controls that legacy systems were built around. Agents can access restricted data, skip approvals, or execute transactions without a complete, attributable record.

The result is a growing governance gap. Decisions tied to sensitive data can’t be reliably reconstructed or defended with the same confidence as human-driven work. Even advanced models stall in pilots because organizations can’t prove how outcomes were produced.

The solution is not to slow AI adoption. It’s to change how AI interacts with the systems that already run the business.

When AI bypasses the system, it breaks it

Consider a finance workflow in an ERP software system. An agent updates vendor bank details and pushes a payment through a fast-track path, bypassing a required approval step and segregation-of-duties check. Later, when the transaction is questioned, the organization can’t prove who approved the change, why it was made, or whether proper controls were followed.

That’s where accountability breaks down. Changes are made inside core systems, but the evidence is incomplete, inconsistent, or disconnected from the system of record.

Emulated human behavior offers a more secure and practical path. These agents operate exactly as a human employee would: logging in with standard credentials, navigating the existing user interface, reading screens in context, following established workflows, and executing tasks while remaining fully subject to every control already in place.

No new APIs. No raw backend data exposure. No rewriting of decades-old business logic or security rules. The guardrails designed to protect against human error or misuse — validations, permissions, approvals, and audit logging — remain 100% intact.

This UI-first approach is especially effective for organizations running mission-critical processes on older platforms. Building secure, governed APIs for legacy systems is expensive and time-consuming, often leaving out protections built into the interface layer.

While emulated human agents may not match the speed of direct backend calls, they provide far more valuable enterprise advantages: immediate deployability, ironclad accountability, and zero disruption to proven controls. Secure operation doesn’t require avoiding AI. It requires rethinking how it fits into the systems around it.

Preparing for emulated human in the enterprise

Three priorities can help organizations prepare for the emulated human approach as AI scales into critical workflows.

1. Place AI at the points where work happens

Most enterprise AI strategies assume deeper backend integration creates better automation. In environments shaped by legacy systems, it often does the opposite: introducing new complexity while bypassing the workflows and controls already built into the interface layer.

Instead, focus AI at the points where it can operate without requiring systems to be rebuilt. This approach dramatically reduces integration overhead, limits exposure of core systems, and allows AI to scale within existing operating models rather than forcing costly modernization.

2. Align AI accountability with human accountability

Agents should operate under named identities and the same policies as employees. They preserve approval workflows, follow role-based permissions, and generate the same audit artifacts — including log entries, change histories, tickets, and recorded approvals — that organizations already rely on to review human activity.

This removes the dangerous two-tier governance model where AI operates under different standards than employees. Organizations can maintain visibility, accountability, and established compliance and risk management controls as AI takes on greater responsibility.

3. Design for adaptability rather than brittle automation

Traditional robotic process automation (RPA) relied on rigid, click-by-click scripts that broke the moment screens changed or exceptions appeared. Emulated human agents interpret context in real time, adjust to variation, and continue operating, just as skilled employees do.

That adaptability is essential in dynamic enterprise environments where policies change, exceptions are common, and systems are rarely static. Instead of constant break/fix maintenance, organizations gain AI that can operate more resiliently inside real-world workflows.

Scaling AI with the systems already in place

As agentic AI scales, enterprises will be judged not only by the intelligence of their systems but by their ability to govern them. The pressure to balance innovation with control will only intensify.

The most durable strategies will be those that embed AI safely within the systems already in place, rather than racing around them. When an agent’s actions can be audited and justified with the same rigor applied to a human colleague, it’s finally ready for production.

That’s how secure, scalable AI will be defined in the enterprise.

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Every small business is looking for an edge.

For some, that means protecting margins. For others, it means finding new customers, sourcing better products, entering new markets or simply running the business with less friction.

More often, it means trying to do all of these things at once. Knowing which opportunity deserves attention first and having the time and resources to act on it has always been a challenge.

For decades, this has forced smaller businesses into a trade-off: choose one priority and hope this is the right decision or waste all your time and money and miss an opportunity elsewhere.

The era of agentic business changes this. According to the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), more than half of UK SMEs (54%) are now actively using AI – an increase from 35% in 2025.

In recent times, the technology has moved from passive assistance - writing, summarizing and answering questions – to autonomous execution.

AI is therefore no longer limited to responding only when prompted but can operate continuously in the background.

A wide spectrum of business functions

In this way, AI agents can now handle a wide spectrum of business functions end-to-end. This includes building digital storefronts, writing product listings, offering dynamic pricing, providing customer service, generating market research, and supporting with marketing.

The real value lies not in overnight task automation but better decision-making with less friction and fewer blind spots. In fact, according to the same BCC research, SMEs using AI report strong net productivity improvement expectations (+71%), while those planning to adopt or unsure show far lower optimism. Importantly, agentic AI is levelling the playing field with larger companies.

The latter have historically had an advantage because they can afford dedicated teams for each business function. SMEs, on the other hand, have had to rely on lean teams, founder instinct and whatever time was left after the urgent work was done. Within agentic businesses, there is immediate access to capabilities which once required high headcount or expensive IT systems.

Examples include testing a new product category, launching into a new market or trialing a marketing campaign with far less operational risk than before. Rather than spending weeks gathering information manually or coordinating across multiple systems, AI agents can help businesses identify opportunities and execute tasks in real time.

Crucial for smaller businesses

In addition, agentic AI has been crucial for smaller businesses looking to grow internationally. It can help them localize product listings and marketing content for different markets, coordinate supplier communications across time zones, and analyze regional demand trends in real time. This reduces much of the operational complexity traditionally associated with cross-border trade and gives SMEs greater confidence to explore new markets that may previously have felt out of reach.

So, the SME conversation around AI needs to move beyond productivity. Saving time matters, but it is not the full story. The bigger opportunity lies in performance: simplifying complexity, reducing avoidable risk, helping businesses act on information earlier.

For an SME, one missed supplier issue, one misread market signal or one poorly timed product decision can have an outsized impact. Becoming an agentic business helps reduce that exposure with complex information easier to monitor, compare and act on. However, it does not remove the need for human judgement. In fact, it raises the value of that judgement by giving business owners clearer options and more time to focus on strategy.

The most successful uses of AI will not be the most futuristic but the most useful, offering practical, transparent information, built around real commercial pain points. The first wave of AI helped SMEs create faster, but the next wave will help them operate smarter.

For SMEs, the question is no longer whether AI can help. It is how quickly they can put AI agents to work on the decisions that determine how they compete, grow and scale.

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Gigabyte MO32U24: Two-Minute Review

Gigabyte’s gaming monitors have been hit and miss lately, but I had high hopes for the 32-inch, 4K, 240Hz MO32U24, which uses a 4th-generation QD-OLED panel and has a new, HDR-boosting feature called HyperNits.

Is this the one?

Like Gigabyte’s other non-Aorus-branded gaming monitors, the MO32U24 has a sober design that eschews RGB and geometric flourishes for a basic-looking stem and stand. That’s no bad thing, as many buyers will want a monitor that suits gaming, multimedia and work.

It’s easy to assemble (one clip and a thumbscrew), there’s a generous amount of adjustment in every direction and the small-footprint stand will suit competitive gamers who sit right up close to the screen.

QD-OLED screens banished spidery text a generation ago and this fourth-gen version is no different. Even fine fonts look sharp and the UHD resolution means you can comfortably work with four windows or large spreadsheets all day without straining your eyes.

The screen also uses Gigabyte’s ObsidianShield coating, which ‘boosts true-black performance’ and improves scratch resistance. It has a semi-gloss finish and does an impressive job of reducing reflections.

However, I was particularly interested to see how the HyperNits brightness enhancement affected the 1,000-nit HDR performance. Gigabyte says it “intelligently enhances overall brightness… while preserving highlight details.” In reality, it makes the MO32U24’s excellent HDR a bit better.

While some details still get lost in large, bright areas, an impressive amount of detail simultaneously remains visible in highlights and shadows: bright lights (fire, lightning, candles, windows and torches) shine piercingly out of true-black backgrounds without blowing out.

This noticeably improves multimedia immersion (especially in open-world games). I also liked that I could leave it activated when working without going blind.

Meanwhile, colors are bright and saturated and transitions are smooth and noise-free. The 240Hz refresh rate and the rapid 0.03ms pixel response banish blurriness around rapidly moving objects and only god-tier pro-FPS players might complain. G-Sync prevents image tearing.

Gigabyte’s OSD is intuitive, responsive and all the usual presets and gaming features are easily accessed via a joystick button. Gigabyte’s Game Assist features include an on-screen timer and refresh rate display, on-screen crosshairs, a sniper-zoom box, green-screen night vision and flash dimming. Some are useful, but others feel gimmicky.

Potentially of more interest to FPS players is the customizable Tactical Switch button, which drops the display area to 24 or 27 inches, sets the resolution to 1440p, Full HD or HD and/or changes the aspect ratio to 4:3 or 5:4.

Beyond that, there are considerable automated OLED care options that don’t get in your way, a full set of ports (including a two-port USB hub) and two 5-watt speakers, which provide useful audio for day-to-day multimedia use (but have very little bass).

In more recent years, Asus has dominated in this space, but no longer. It has a few quirks, but the Gigabyte MO32U24 has the chops where it matters.

Gigabyte MO32U24: Price & availability

• How much does it cost? $1,000 / £800 / AU$1,499
• When is it available? The Gigabyte MO32U24 is out now
• Where can you get it? It’s available in the US, UK, Australia and other regions

The Gigabyte MO32U24 is available now in most regions. It’s a premium model, so it’s not cheap. Furthermore, the global price spread is quite wide and it sits in a crowded segment where prices for rivals and previous-gen models are changing frequently (and significantly) in sales.

This means the value proposition is hard to pin down. Nonetheless, you do get a lot of gaming monitor for your money and it’s currently one of the very best on the market.

• Value: 4 / 5

Gigabyte MO32U24: Specs

Gigabyte MO32U24: Design

• Utilitarian design with small base footprint
• Responsive and intuitive OSD controls
• Generous amount of tilt, swivel, pivot and height adjustment

Some gaming monitors have over-designed, spiky stands that take up more space than is necessary on your desk in order to make a statement — often with RGB lighting to hammer home the point.

The Gigabyte MO32U24 is more sober (unlike siblings from its Aorus sub-brand) in that its no-nonsense stem, base and bezel are relatively plain-Jane in their appearance, but are arguably better for it.

The stem easily clips onto the screen and the small-footprint base attaches to it via a single thumbscrew. You’re left with a solid stand that doesn’t wobble unless you shake the whole desk.

The whole monitor doesn’t look flashy, which will suit those who want to use it for office work in an office environment. However, esports players can still sit right up close to it with their keyboards.

I’m not quite sure what happened to the Gigabyte Control Center app. It used to be very good at adjusting all your monitor settings from the Windows desktop.

The latest version is barely functional, so you need to access settings using the joystick button at the base. Mercifully, it's intuitive and responsive and you can set up multiple (one- or two-click) shortcuts to your most commonly used features.

To its left is the off switch. To the right is the ‘Tactical Switch’ which can instantly change the display size, resolution and aspect ratio to suit esports players or activate one of the monitor’s other Game Assist features.

Those Game Assist features include multiple styles of on-screen crosshair that can be moved around the screen. These are particularly useful for games like Hardcore CoD (even though it feels like it’s close to cheating).

There’s an Eagle Eye zoom ‘sniper’ box which can magnify an area of the screen (it’s adjustable but sits in the middle by default). I’d say this really was cheating if I found it usable in any way whatsoever, but my testing found it to be little more than annoying.

There’s also Night Vision mode which changes the whole display to ‘night vision green’ for people who want to pretend they’re in real-life special forces, or something.

Flash dimming is provided to stop virtual flash-bangs combining with the high, peak brightness and burning your retinas. Not everything is available when HDR is selected, though.

You can also use Game Assist to simply show a Timer, Counter or Refresh Rate (and move this information around the screen).

The Resolution Settings can drop the screen to 27 or 24 inches to suit FPS players who sit right up close. The available resolutions range from 1440p to 1024 x 768, with aspect ratios ranging from 16:9 through 5:4 to 4:3.

Other gaming adjustments include numerous image presets that are all adjustable. There's also AI Black Equalizer, which flattens contrast to stop enemies hiding in shadows and highlights. There are also VRR and Anti-Flicker modes to smooth out motion for console players. The monitor also supports G-Sync and FreeSync Premium Pro to prevent image tearing.

Other features include Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture, which can make use of all four inputs (2x HDMI, DP and USB-C) plus KVM settings that let you use the same peripherals on multiple connected devices.

Also included is an extensive collection of OLED Care options that are mostly automatic and unobtrusive. You can easily check on the screen’s status, manually activate pixel cleaning cycles and select settings that automatically dim logos and static images.

Ultimately, there’s nothing notable missing and even the most demanding tinkerers should be able to easily find display settings to suit their needs.

• Design: 5 / 5

Gigabyte MO32U24: Performance

• Outstanding HDR performance
• Fine text and low-reflection coating make it great for work
• Bright, vibrant colors and contrast boost game immersion
• Fast refresh rate and pixel response time suit FPS players

The Gigabyte MO32U24 has so many settings that every type of user should be able to quickly find a combination (by choosing a single preset or manually adjusting multiple settings) that suits their needs, whether they’re gaming or working.

Office workers will warm to sharply rendered fine fonts, a low-reflection, semi-gloss coating and a resolution that affords comfortable work with four windows at once.

When it comes to multimedia, the semi-gloss screen reduces reflections without dulling the impact of the panel’s bright colors, true blacks and outstanding contrast like a matte screen would.

Its HDR performance, which is augmented with Gigabyte’s ObsidianShield coating and HyperNits brightness enhancement, is outstanding as it can simultaneously display details in very bright and very dark scenes at once. While some details can get lost in particularly large, bright areas, it's rarely a problem.

Top tip — I recommend using the Windows HDR Calibration tool (in the Microsoft Store) to set it up, but I also recommend not following its instructions entirely — don’t make the black and white boxes disappear into each other — you’ll get a much better image if you leave the two reference images visible.

The 240Hz refresh rate and fast QD-OLED pixel response time ensure that rapidly moving objects are rendered nearly pin-sharp. I’ve seen even better performance on even faster screens, but those rarely offer the all-around graphical attributes that are also available on the MO32U24.

I never expect much from built-in monitor speakers and the two 5-watt speakers didn’t challenge this view. It’s handy to have them for casual social-media video watching but don’t expect great musical fidelity or punchy bass.

• Performance: 5 / 5

Should you buy the Gigabyte MO32U24?

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BenQ MA270S: Two-Minute Review

With Microsoft seemingly intent on turning Windows into malware, Macs are increasingly appealing. But while the Apple tax is increasingly diminishing in the consumer laptop space, it’s rife when it comes to compatible monitors.

PC-focused alternatives have different colors, pixel densities and features that rarely play well with Macs, meaning users frequently fight losing battles matching what they see on their MacBook screen with a third-party monitor. But BenQ has taken note.

There are several models in BenQ’s new specialist Mac range. Most have 4K resolutions, are 27 or 32 inches in size, have 60Hz refresh rates and offer glossy or matte finishes.

There are two outliers: the 120Hz MA320UG and this, the glossy, 5K-resolution MA270S.

Setup is simple, with the clip-on stem affixing to the base with a single thumbscrew. There’s a generous amount of adjustment (including 150mm (5.9in) height and 90° bi-directional pivot) which, unlike Apple, BenQ doesn’t charge extra for.

There’s also an unApple-like plethora of ports including two HDMI, two Thunderbolt 4 and four USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (two USB-C and two USB-A), with up to 96 watts of USB-C power delivery — so one cable can connect and charge a laptop.

The USB-A ports also offer 7.5W charging. They also facilitate KVM functionality to connect multiple devices. Apple’s monitors don’t.

Once connected, BenQ’s factory-calibrated screen instantly resembled the display of the MacBook sitting next to it. Like Apple’s own monitors, the MA270S has a native 5K resolution of 5120 x 2880, giving it a much higher pixel density (218 PPI) than 27-inch, 1440p PC equivalents (~109 PPI).

By default, macOS scales the interface to look like 2560 x 1440, which keeps text crisp without making everything tiny.

The IPS screen is very impressive with near-OLED levels of color saturation and LED-backlight-derived (almost completely) true blacks. Multimedia looks good at default settings (vibrant colors, respectable contrast and minimal noise in gradients), but turning on HDR significantly improves everything: more details simultaneously show up in shadows and highlights and all transitions become smooth.

The brightest highlights can blow out (with no easy fix), though, and note that the glossy coating can turn into a black mirror when displaying dark content.

A common curse of Retina displays is their sluggish speeds and the MA270S is no different. The slow, 5ms response time marries with a 60Hz refresh rate (it actually goes up to a Spinal Tap-esque 70Hz) to smear fast-moving objects across the screen, so forget about eye-friendly, fast-and-frantic gaming.

There’s no integrated webcam, but the two 3-watt speakers (surprisingly for a monitor) have well-rounded fidelity and sound good, despite not getting loud.

Despite having a joystick button, most advanced image settings are controlled by BenQ’s impressive DisplayPilot 2 app. The customizable options can easily swap between color modes and toggle settings like Low Blue Light.

Its FocuSync settings match Mac Focus adjustments and enable you to change core monitor settings using Mac settings. You can also auto-sync different color modes with different applications.

BenQ MA270S: Price & availability

• How much does it cost? $900 / £1,000 / AU$1,699
• When is it available? It’s out now
• Where can you get it? It’s available in the US, UK, Australia and other regions

While it’s not a cheap monitor, the BenQ MA270S is significantly cheaper than Apple’s own Studio displays and, therefore, serves as a much-needed, more affordable, third-party alternative in a monopoly market.

• Value: 4 / 5

BenQ MA270S: Specs

BenQ MA270S: Design

• Simple, adjustable, three-part stand
• Impressive number of ports
• No built-in webcam

Apple users have always been an aesthetically appreciative bunch, and so they’ll warm to the color scheme of the BenQ MA270S, which apes that of a standard silver MacBook.

The stand is simple to assemble and offers a generous amount of movement in every direction. It's remarkable that Apple charges more for a feature like this — it’s standard on many PC displays.

The multiple ports (which offer different degrees of charging power) mean multiple devices can be simultaneously connected. Furthermore, a single keyboard and mouse can be shared across them using KVM functionality — unholy magic in the eyes of some Apple users.

The joystick button at the base of the screen only provides access to brightness, volume and input selections. To access more comprehensive settings, you’ll need the BenQ DisplayPilot 2 app and the OSD handily provides a QR code to locate it on BenQ’s own website (it’s not in the App Store).

It provides access to basic brightness settings, eye comfort and HDR, but also FocuSync settings on your Mac.

Another feature is the rubberized pad on the base of the stand. It provides slightly superior softness and friction compared to the plastic stand, so you may be more tempted to rest your phone on it.

The only element that some users might miss is a built-in webcam. Apple’s own monitors have them, but purchasers of the BenQ MA270S will have to buy a separate unit or use the one in their MacBook.

• Design: 4 / 5

BenQ MA270S: Performance

• Bright, sharp, Retina display
• Glossy finish that can become reflective
• Slow response time and refresh rate

The best thing you can say about the BenQ MA270S is that it just works. Just connecting it to your MacBook provides you with a matching image of your MacBook’s screen without having to fiddle with countless settings.

The screen displays very sharp text, colors are very bright and vibrant, and contrast is generally impressive. However, bright areas and highlights can blow out rather easily when HDR is engaged.

The big drawback is that the 70Hz refresh rate is nowhere near enough to stop the sluggish 5ms pixel response time from smearing most moving objects across the screen. As such, it’s not good for gaming.

Unusually for a monitor, the two 3-watt speakers offer well-rounded fidelity with a modicum of bass. They don’t get particularly loud, though.

• Performance: 4 / 5

Should you buy the BenQ MA270S?

Buy the BenQ MA270S if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

Want more options? Check out our guide to the best monitors for MacBook Pro.

• Many European consumers actively avoid American tech giants for privacy reasons
• Social media and cloud storage are priorities for consumers
• EU companies only have 15% of the European cloud market

Four in five European consumers say it matters whether or not businesses use European technology, confirming that digital sovereignty has now become a priority for the masses.

A study by Proton of 3,000 UK, France and Germany consumers shows that they’re beginning to view a company’s digital infrastructure as part of its brand and values, rather than a back-office decision that has no impact on customers.

As a result, nearly half (45%) said they would actively avoid companies that store customer data with US firms, with more concern over privacy and security than price or quality.

Digital sovereignty speaks volumes to consumers

This also aligns with European Commission ‘Eurobarometer’ data revealing that three-fifths (58%) of the bloc’s citizens would be willing to switch to an EU-based digital service provider, even if that meant paying a higher fee.

The report argues this reliance on US hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft, Google and Meta can no longer be seen as a neutral business decision in the eyes of European customers, who are increasingly concerned over privacy, surveillance and geopolitical dependence.

Social media (48%), email (46%), messaging apps (40%) and other services that directly handle personal communications and information were seen as the most at-risk among consumers, Proton found. Other than communications, cloud storage (38%) was another great worry, along with browsers (31%).

Two in three (65%) now also believe that European small businesses should prioritize European tech providers over US ones, and not from a supporting local companies point of view. Consumers are more interested by sovereignty, keeping investments within Europe and reducing reliance on foreign tech vendors.

As many as four in five (83%) now worry about society’s dependence on Big Tech and how a small number of hyperscalers now dominate the market. Attitudes have shifted rapidly, Proton says, because of deteriorating US-Europe geopolitical tensions and the continued debate over US surveillance laws which prevent vendors from being able to fully offer sovereign options.

The US CLOUD Act is a specific worry for European citizens, because it allows US law enforcement to access data held by American technology companies, even if it’s stored within European data centers.

Customer data use is also a growing concern, where their information may be being used to train AI models that only serve to help those US giants.

The reality of US tech reliance

All of this comes amid growing US dependence, with three-quarters (74%) of publicly listed European companies relying on US tech providers, per an earlier Proton report.

Google and Microsoft alone account for 84% of the global office productivity market, with Amazon, Microsoft and Google jointly taking up a 66% of the cloud market. Proton’s full report details how European providers only hold a collective 15% of the European cloud market.

“Buying tech from the US used to seem like a no brainer,” Proton COO Raphael Auphan admitted, indicating an understanding of why European consumers are so deeply reliant on US software.

Tariffs on European exports, NATO tensions and American criticism over EU regulation – all of which falling under Trump’s presidency – are to blame, the Swiss company says.

But Auphan now describes relying on US tech as a “commercial liability” for businesses. “It's increasingly clear that consumers care about digital supply chains, and US tech is becoming a weak link.”

“The EU runs on Microsoft,” Finnish MEP Aura Sally said at the 2026 Open Source Policy Summit. “The US could turn us off inside one hour.”

However, an overnight migration away from US hyperscalers isn’t such an easy move, and while Proton is trying to offer some paths with the recent addition of Gmail migration with zero downtime, a full stack move could take years, buying well-funded American tech giants time to come up with more regional solutions to prevent customers from wanting to migrate in the first place.

• Hackers reportedly breached Russia's Glaz/Groza combat control platform
• Attackers gained access to manuals, patents, and training materials
• Telegram groups reportedly handled software updates and user support

Ukrainian hackers have reportedly breached the Russian Glaz/Groza combat control system, gaining access to data and internal materials linked to the platform.

The incident has drawn attention because Groza is used to coordinate reconnaissance, targeting, and battlefield communications between different military units.

Information released following the breach suggests that attackers obtained technical documentation, training resources, and other operational records connected to the system.

Telegram-based administration raises security questions

According to the “Where is Russia today” community, the compromised materials included instructions, patents, videos, and extensive user documentation.

Groza serves as one of Russia’s command-and-control applications, helping connect drone operators, field commanders, and artillery units during military operations.

The software is designed to shorten the period between identifying a potential target and directing fire against it.

The hack revealed that support and software distribution functions were reportedly managed through Telegram groups used by administrators and military personnel.

Those channels were allegedly responsible for providing application updates and assisting users with operational issues.

The reported reliance on Telegram for elements of administration has prompted scrutiny because combat management systems typically handle sensitive battlefield information.

Maps integrated into the platform enable personnel to record the locations of friendly and opposing forces, helping users maintain operational awareness.

Following the breach, attackers reportedly altered portions of the mapping data and inserted images of the Ukrainian flag alongside other messages.

Reports from the group behind the disclosure indicated that affected users encountered persistent disruptions while attempting to access or restore application functionality.

“Numerous complaints from users about the breach have been recorded: they cannot connect to the application, are unable to remove images that keep reappearing, and administrators are trying to fix the problem,” the group stated.

Internal documents and training materials reportedly exposed

Beyond the visible disruptions, the breach reportedly exposed a substantial collection of supporting materials related to the combat management platform.

The Ukrainian hackers discovered hundreds of pages of user guides explaining the operation of the application and its various functions.

The disclosed information also included a training video that allegedly demonstrated the system operating in real time.

A patent connected to Groza was reportedly among the recovered materials, providing details regarding how the system functions and interacts with other technologies.

The patent documentation is said to contain information concerning the platform’s architecture, intended users, and integration with related military systems.

Such materials could potentially offer insight into the broader structure supporting the software environment.

The operational impact of the breach has not been independently verified, and the extent of any resulting disruption remains uncertain based on currently available information.

Via Militarnyi

• Jordan vs Algeria Kick-Off time: 4am BST (Tue) / 11pm ET (Mon) / 1pm AEST (Tue)
• Watch free on ITV (UK) / SBS (AUS) / CazéTV's YouTube (Brazil)
• Unlock your free streams with Norton VPN (60-day money back guarantee)

Both Algeria and Jordan will be looking for a win to stay alive in the FIFA World Cup 2026 as they face off at the San Francisco Bay Area Stadium in a crucial Group J fixture. There's plenty riding on this – loser goes home.

Algeria were blown apart 3-0 by Argentina in their opening fixture, as Lionel Messi's sublime hat-trick did the damage, but the Fennecs will draw inspiration from their stunning 1-0 win over the Netherlands in the World Cup warm-up friendlies. Anis Hadj Moussa scored the winner that day and started against Argentina ahead of former Man City star Riyad Mahrez in a surprise decision from head coach Vladimir Petrovic. German-based duo Mohamed Amoura and Ibrahim Maza must also step up.

World Cup debutants Jordan equalised through Ali Olwan against Austria and stayed in the game until the 76th minute but a late own goal and a penalty ultimately condemned them to a 3-1 defeat. Jamal Sellami's men are on a six-game winless run, conceding at least twice in each fixture. Much rests on Rennes forward Musa Al-Taamari's individual ability as they seek the same determination they displayed against the Austrians.

So, read on as we show you exactly how to watch Jordan vs Algeria for free from anywhere in the FIFA World Cup 2026.

How to watch Jordan vs Algeria for free

Jordan vs Algeria is available to watch for free in multiple countries, including the UK, Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland and Turkey.

• 🇬🇧 UK: ITV (English commentary)
• 🇦🇺 Australia: SBS On Demand (English commentary)
• 🇧🇷 Brazil: CazéTV's YouTube (no account required)
• 🇩🇿 Algeria: ENTV
• 🇧🇪 Belgium: RTBF / VRT
• 🇩🇪 Germany: ZDF
• 🇮🇪 Ireland: RTE Player (English commentary)
• 🇳🇱 Netherlands: NOS
• 🇨🇭 Switzerland: SRF Play / RTS Play / RSI Play
• 🇹🇷 Turkey: TRT

Abroad? Can't access your free stream? Unblock your free World Cup stream with Norton VPN — more on that below.

Use a VPN to watch Jordan vs Algeria live streams

It’s the World Cup, and if you’re traveling, you might discover your usual Jordan vs Algeria stream is suddenly unavailable due to geo-restrictions.

Don’t worry, that’s exactly where a VPN can help. A virtual private network lets you connect to servers around the world so you can securely access your usual World Cup coverage as if you were back home.

We recommend Norton VPN. Here's why:

How to watch Jordan vs Algeria in the US

US viewers can watch Jordan vs Algeria on FS1 and Telemundo (Spanish comms).

You can watch every World Cup game on Fox, FS1 and Telemundo, which are available on cord-cutters like YouTube TV (free trial), Hulu+Live TV, Sling (select markets), Fubo or DirecTV.

Those looking for a streaming service instead can watch Jordan vs Algeria on Fox One (3-day free trial). Telemundo is available via Peacock as well.

Visiting the US from the UK? You can still watch your World Cup stream for free thanks to Norton VPN (try for 60 days).

How to watch Jordan vs Algeria in the UK

UK customers are in luck as they can stream Jordan vs Algeria for free on ITV. Live coverage is on ITV1 and ITVX.

You require a TV license and a valid UK postcode for an account (e.g. SE1 7PB).

Norton VPN can unlock your stream if you're abroad today.

How to watch Jordan vs Algeria in Australia

Jordan vs Algeria will be shown for free in Australia on SBS On Demand.

The streaming platform has every game of the tournament for free, making it the perfect place for your World Cup viewing.

Traveling for work or on holiday? A VPN like Norton VPN can help unlock your free stream.

How to watch Jordan vs Algeria in Canada

In Canada, TSN will be broadcasting Jordan vs Algeria.

You can live stream via the TSN+ streaming platform, which costs CA$8 per month or CA$80 per year.

Outside of Canada? Use Norton VPN whilst you're traveling away from home to unlock your stream.

Jordan vs Algeria: Match Information

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

• HPE reveals rack-scale system containing 81,920 CPU cores
• AMD Venice processors power HPE’s next-generation Cray infrastructure
• One 42U rack delivers unprecedented levels of computing density

During its recent HPE Discover 2026 event, the company revealed new Cray GX5000 hardware featuring next-generation AMD EPYC Venice processors, with specifications that push server density well beyond current deployments.

The system combines multiple compute blades, liquid cooling infrastructure, networking hardware, and memory resources inside a single 42U rack configuration.

HPE revealed a Cray GX5000 configuration designed to deliver up to 81,920 CPU cores in one rack.

Dense compute architecture pushes rack capacity higher

The HPE Cray GX5000 platform follows the AMD EPYC 9965, a 192-core processor that represented one of AMD’s highest-core-count server CPUs before Venice arrived.

While the EPYC 9965 increased processor-level density, the Venice-based system takes a broader approach by combining multiple CPUs, memory resources, and cooling infrastructure inside a single rack.

At the center of the system is the HPE Cray GX250a compute blade, which houses eight AMD EPYC Venice processors.

The compute blade incorporates power delivery, liquid cooling channels, memory subsystems, storage devices, and networking components within a compact design.

HPE stated that a fully populated rack can deliver 81,920 CPU cores, although exact processor configurations were not disclosed.

Based on the rack specifications, the system reportedly uses 80 multi-node motherboards and can support as much as 1.28PB of RAM.

Each Venice processor connects to 16 memory channels, creating substantial memory bandwidth for large-scale computing workloads.

The memory modules themselves are liquid-cooled and appear to use standard DIMM form factors.

Photographs from the event showed local Samsung E1.S EDSSF SSDs mounted above several processor cold plates.

HPE representatives indicated these drives serve as high-speed scratch storage for temporary data processing tasks.

The installed DRAM modules, storage devices, and node identifiers suggest that the displayed hardware was operational rather than a nonfunctional demonstration unit.

That distinction is significant because earlier Venice demonstrations appeared closer to prototype systems than production-ready deployments.

Venice CPUs and networking define the platform

The rack incorporates Slingshot 400 networking hardware, with HPE indicating future compatibility with Slingshot 800 technology.

Networking modules are mounted within side pods connected to processors through dedicated interfaces designed for high-bandwidth communication.

The front-facing networking arrangement also simplifies cable management by changing how optical connections are routed throughout the rack.

HPE also displayed a coolant distribution unit capable of handling 1.6MW of cooling capacity for large installations.

Such cooling requirements reflect the growing power densities associated with modern high-performance computing infrastructure and increasingly complex CPU designs.

AI tools, scientific simulations, engineering analysis, and large LLM deployments are among workloads requiring this level of computational density.

The company did not disclose detailed specifications for AMD's unannounced Venice processors, although available figures suggest unusually high core counts.

Calculations based on the stated 81,920-core rack capacity imply processor densities exceeding current EPYC generations by a substantial margin.

Although AMD has not released the specs or performance figures for Venice, the projected core density of the HPE system has led to speculation that the processor could become one of the most powerful x86 CPUs produced.

A lot could change before the official launch, but the Cray GX5000 platform indicates that AMD and HPE are pursuing higher compute density within the same rack footprint.

Via ServeTheHome

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,400 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.

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

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

Quordle today (game #1611) - hint #1 - Vowels

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

Quordle today (game #1611) - hint #2 - repeated letters

Quordle today (game #1611) - hint #3 - uncommon letters

Quordle today (game #1611) - hint #4 - starting letters (1)

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

Quordle today (game #1611) - hint #5 - starting letters (2)

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

Quordle today (game #1611) - the answers

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1611, are…

• ARDOR
• DADDY
• SERVE
• SHEAR

This game could not have been easier, with just three vowels and two words beginning with the same letter, but I still came close to making it three losses in a row.

I should have solved DADDY earlier, but I lacked confidence and went with “madly” instead.

A messy game, but I’m relieved to be back on track.

Daily Sequence today (game #1611) - the answers

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1611, are…

• SMOKY
• ROBOT
• SLEEK
• CLIFF

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1610, Monday, 22 June: WAXEN, APNEA, CHIME, WAVER
• Quordle #1609, Sunday, 21 June: ABBOT, NOTCH, DREAD, LURID
• Quordle #1608, Saturday, 20 June: SLAIN, TAMER, VIPER, FALSE
• Quordle #1607, Friday, 19 June: ALOUD, POINT, GLOBE, GROIN
• Quordle #1606, Thursday, 18 June: LATCH, BRAWL, STEEL, CRUSH
• Quordle #1605, Wednesday, 17 June: HOIST, PLUSH, GROUP, LEMUR
• Quordle #1604, Tuesday, 16 June: SLAIN, PLUCK, PINTO, SLICE
• Quordle #1603, Monday, 15 June: GAUNT, SNEAK, ROUTE, POKER
• Quordle #1602, Sunday, 14 June: WIMPY, WISPY, VIRAL, NYLON
• Quordle #1601, Saturday, 13 June: DEALT, STEED, BELIE, GULLY
• Quordle #1600, Friday, 12 June: TENTH, SHOAL, JELLY, UNIFY
• Quordle #1599, Thursday, 11 June: GAMMA, SPILL, SALVE, RURAL
• Quordle #1598, Wednesday, 10 June: BELIE, TEACH, GUEST, NOOSE
• Quordle #1597, Tuesday, 9 June: VENOM, UNITE, SHIRT, ANGER
• Quordle #1596, Monday, 8 June: CURSE, DROVE, SNOWY, DEBUG
• Quordle #1595, Sunday, 7 June: QUERY, AXION, LILAC, SWORD
• Quordle #1594, Saturday, 6 June: SIEVE, PHONY, GIVER, KNOWN
• Quordle #1593, Friday, 5 June: RECUR, SCOUT, SCOWL, CHORD
• Quordle #1592, Thursday, 4 June: ENSUE, YACHT, CURRY, NASTY

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

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

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

NYT Connections today (game #1108) - today's words

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• MONEY
• YANKEES
• HOTEL
• FOXTROT
• MODERN
• FIREPLACE
• POPULAR
• DEED
• EMPEROR
• FEATURED
• TOKEN
• TAP
• RECENT
• SWING
• EARTH
• TRENDING

NYT Connections today (game #1108) - hint #1 - group hints

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

• YELLOW: Moving to music
• GREEN:Parts of a popular board game
• BLUE: Organizing website material
• PURPLE: A manly thing that almost rhymes with “ankles”

Need more clues?

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

NYT Connections today (game #1108) - hint #2 - group answers

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

• YELLOW: DANCE STYLES
• GREEN: IN A MONOPOLY BOX
• BLUE: CONTENT SORTING OPTIONS ONLINE
• PURPLE: THINGS WITH MANTLES/ MANTELS

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

NYT Connections today (game #1108) - the answers

The answers to today's Connections, game #1108, are…

• YELLOW: DANCE STYLES FOXTROT, MODERN, SWING, TAP
• GREEN: IN A MONOPOLY BOX DEED, HOTEL, MONEY, TOKEN
• BLUE: CONTENT SORTING OPTIONS ONLINE FEATURED, POPULAR, RECENT, TRENDING
• PURPLE: THINGS WITH MANTLES/ MANTELS EARTH, EMPEROR, FIREPLACE, YANKEES

• My rating: Hard
• My score: Perfect

The phonetic alphabet featuring HOTEL, FOXTROT and crucially Yankee — not YANKEES — was today’s trap/joke and were it not for the easy to spot DANCE STYLES I may well have fallen for it. 

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is also the name of a great album by Wilco, but I digress…

I got the blue group next, thinking that all four words described seemed like labels you’d put on a report rather than CONTENT SORTING OPTIONS ONLINE, which considering I do quite a lot of Content Sorting I really should have seen.

The final group I found was IN A MONOPOLY BOX, although I can’t say I have ever thought of the street name cards as being a DEED.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Monday, June 22, game #1107)

• YELLOW: DOMINANT ALPHA, HEAD, LEAD, PRIMARY
• GREEN: MULTIPLICATION INDICATORS BY, TIMES, X, •
• BLUE: PRONUNCIATION DESCRIPTORS SHORT, SILENT, SOFT, STRESSED
• PURPLE: STARTING WITH EXPLOSIVE ONOMATOPOEIA BANGKOK, BOOMER, POPSICLE, POWDER

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

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

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

NYT Strands today (game #842) - hint #1 - today's theme

NYT Strands today (game #842) - hint #2 - clue words

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

• FOOT
• LOCKER
• TABLE
• GEAR
• ROAR
• BRAT

NYT Strands today (game #842) - hint #3 - spangram letters

NYT Strands today (game #842) - hint #4 - spangram position

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

NYT Strands today (game #842) - the answers

The answers to today's Strands, game #842, are…

• FOOD
• BLOCK
• ARMOR
• BUILDING
• PORTAL
• STORAGE
• TOOL
• SPANGRAM: MINECRAFT

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

Typically, Aladdin and the version of A Whole New World performed by the late, great Peabo Bryson dominated my first thoughts when tackling today’s puzzle.

However, instead of a “a magic carpet ride” our search was focused on the created worlds of MINECRAFT, something I learned after spotting the spangram immediately.

From here it was a case of trying to remember all of the terminology connected with the game, nearly all of which I’ve forgotten after a brief interest courtesy of two obsessed-with-Minecraft nephews; FOOD was my first spot, of course.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Monday, June 22, game #841)

• CREEPS
• JITTERS
• SHIVERS
• WILLIES
• BUTTERFLIES
• SPANGRAM: GOOSEBUMPS

Time flies when you're shopping bargain prices! June has flown by, with just a week left for July to come calling. That means if you need to pick up any work-related items and claim them in the upcoming tax returns, you need to do it in the next 7 days.

There are still plenty of EOFY sales going strong, but most of those deals will end on June 30, although a few brands and retailers will continue into July. However, you'll need to wait till your FY 26/27 tax lodgement to claim those purchases.

As we've done all month long, my team and I are still looking to dig up those choice EOFY tech deals that are worth your hard-earned cash. They may not be the absolute best price we might have historically seen, but if there's good value in the purchase, we'll tell you about it.

Take, for example, the 25% discount on the sublime Samsung HW-Q990H Dolby Atmos soundbar and the massive 45% saving on the Sonos Ace headphones. Or how about taking AU$70 off the Nintendo Switch 2? I've also found huge discounts of over 60% on the excellent Dreame X40 and Dreame L10S Ultra Gen2 robot vacuums, making this EOFY season a prime opportunity to add a fully-automated home cleaner into your life.

If you're looking for something specific, you can browse our picks of the best EOFY laptop deals or take a look at the best EOFY phone deals as well. I've even tracked down as many of the best Dyson EOFY deals as I possibly could, while another colleague is keeping an eye on all the best Apple EOFY deals too.

Not matter what you buy right now, just hold on to the receipt for tax purposes.

EOFY 2026 top retailers

• Amazon: big discounts on headphones, vacuums and more
• Appliance Online: save hundreds on kitchen and home appliances
• Bluetti: use exclusive code Future7AFF to save 7% off heavy-duty power stations
• Breville: up to AU$1,000 off + extra 10% off with our unique codes
• Dell: 13% off Alienware, XPS and Dell Plus products with code FUTURE13%
• Dyson: up to AU$651 off on Dyson tech – extra 5% off with code CFSAVE5
• HP: up to 50% off select laptops
• JB Hi-Fi: save over a grand on robovacs, TVs and more
• Kogan: huge discounts across TV, gaming and appliances
• Kleva Range: bonus gift with minimum spend
• Lenovo: up to 47% off select PCs and more
• Myer: Stocktake sale now live with up to 45% off tech
• Optus: up to AU$800 off latest flagship phones
• Samsung: up to AU$637 off Galaxy devices
• Secretlab: extra AU$200 off with minimum spend
• Sonos: up to 25% off speakers and soundbars, 33% off the Ace headphones
• The Good Guys: 'epic' EOFY deals on appliances, TVs & more

Best EOFY 2026 deals

Best EOFY 2026 deals — Editor's picks

Headphones & speakers

Laptops & PC peripherals

• Click here for more of the best EOFY 2026 laptop deals

Phones & tablets

• Click here for more of the best EOFY 2026 phone deals

NBN & mobile plans

Vacuums

• Click here for all the best Dyson EOFY 2026 deals

Kitchen appliances

Other appliances

TVs & soundbars

• Click here to see more of the best EOFY TV and soundbar deals

Cameras

Wearables

Gaming hardware

Office furniture

7 days left! Well, that's 7 days until June 30, so it's the last stretch of EOFY sales and deals. If you've been procrastinating over purchasing any work-related tech, you're running out of time. You'll need the receipts by June 30 to be able to claim them as deductions in this financial year's tax lodgement. And if you get something back in your returns, that's extra savings right there, so don't let this chance pass you by.

So get a wriggle on, folks! Otherwise you'll be waiting another year to claim those tax deductions.

(F)old on! Just AU$799 for a flip phone

Where Samsung's fabulous flip phone, even when discounted, currently carries a four-figure price tag, you can get a 2025 release of the Motorola Razr for much less. And while it has some small compromises compared to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7, the Razr 60 is still a great foldable, and fantastic value at just AU$799 — that's AU$100 cheaper than earlier during EOFY.

It has better battery life than its predecessor and is even more durable. And with the Motorola Razr 70 still not getting a launch window in Australia, the Razr 60 makes for an excellent foldable upgrade at a mid-range price.

Its front screen is slightly smaller (3.6 inches) than the 4.1-inch display on the Flip 7, but it can run most apps on that tiny screen. It's not as powerful as the Flip 7, but for all your basic needs, including doomscrolling, it handles perfectly well.

And, honestly, at this price, it's hard to complain.

Motorola Razr 60 (256GB): AU$1,199 now AU$799 at JB Hi-Fi

• Go back to top🔺

Light it up – smart floor lamp for just AU$119.99

I've come across plenty of smart lights in my time, having reviewed a fair few of them. But none have offered as much bang for buck as the Nanoleaf Matter Smart Floor Lamp.

I had initially set it up in my open-plan living and dining area but it's not bright enough for that larger space. However, now that I've moved it to my bedroom, it's a lovely addition. It's moody when I want it to be, becomes a reading light just before bedtime, and it's a fantastic wall washer.

I would easily recommend it at full price, but it's under AU$120, so why not indulge?

Nanoleaf Matter Smart Multicolour Floor Lamp: AU$149.99 AU$119.99 at Nanoleaf

• Go back to top🔺

Time to Switch it on

It's not the 10% discount we saw last week on Amazon, but then a deal like wouldn't last long, would it? Yet, if you can save even a little now, you'll be clear of the price hike coming in September, but you'll be getting a game bundle with the Nintendo Switch 2.

You can choose between the Mario Kart World Bundle at JB Hi-Fi or, for something newer, the Pokémon Pokopia bundle on Amazon, both of which will save you 7% on the usual retail price.

Whichever game bundle you opt for, it's the console that's the star of the show if you're a Nintendo fan. As we said in our Nintendo Switch 2 review, it takes everything we loved about the first generation, and applies greater power and upgraded 4K screen, to deliver a truly wonderful gaming experience.

Nintendo Switch 2 bundles: AU$769.95 now AU$719 on Amazon and at JB Hi-Fi

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EXCLUSIVE: Breville discount code

If you didn't already know, we've managed to get Breville to give our readers an extra discount.

Whether you want a new coffee machine, a food processor, or even that fancy new Breville toaster, our readers can grab a unique single-use promo code from our dedicated Breville Australia coupon code page and apply it at checkout to secure an additional 10% discount on anything.

That's right, our promo code applies sitewide, even on already-discounted items on the Breville website.

You'll also get free shipping on anything above AU$49. So buying direct from Breville is a no-brainer with our exclusive code.

Grab you coupon code here

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It's about to get steamy

I already use the Philips 5000 Series Dual Basket Airfryer with Steam, but it's much too large for my tiny kitchen and so I'd been eyeing this updated version. Moreover, the non-stick coating of my air fryer's basket (which is non-toxic thankfully) is coming off, but I have it on good authority that the ceramic coating on the newer version is more long-lasting.

Honestly, I even prefer the design of this newer 5000 Series air fryer over my current dual-basket one. The metallic trim and the little window is enticing, although the side water tank is a little off putting. Still, that's a small price to pay for having steam as a cooking option which, let me tell you, is really useful. I use it on my current one often, making steamed fish parcels and dumplings.

I'm quite sure it will cook just as well as my dual-basket Philips, so I would whole-heartedly recommend it... and I'm rather tempted to buy it myself.

Philips Airfryer 5000 Series with Steam: AU$499 AU$348 on Amazon

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• Analyst report claims primary smartphone market is expected to decline 14.8% in 2026
• Entry level smartphone prices have already risen more than 50% this year
• Refurbished smartphone sales grew 4% year-on-year during the first quarter of 2026

The global smartphone market is heading toward a difficult 2026 as rising component costs force manufacturers to increase device prices, new research has claimed.

New findings from FDM CCS Insight note the primary smartphone market is expected to decline by 14.8% in 2026 as memory shortages continue affecting production.

The decline follows a 4.4% year-on-year contraction in the primary smartphone market during 1Q26, despite manufacturers and retailers building inventory earlier.

Memory shortages push buyers toward refurbished smartphones

As consumers search for cheaper alternatives to new devices, the demand for refurbished smartphones is expected to increase but so is the price.

FDM CCS Insight reports that some entry-level smartphones have already experienced price increases exceeding 50% compared with the previous year.

“Many consumers will hold onto their phone for longer, and these effects will be much more pronounced for consumers buying phones under $500,” said Ben Hatton, Research Analyst at FDM CCS Insight.

“Some consumers will need a new phone…and so we do expect more demand for refurbished smartphones as many are priced out of the new device market.”

The memory shortage driving these price increases is largely attributed to surging demand from AI data centers and AI-accelerated computing infrastructure.

These facilities compete for the same DRAM and NAND flash production capacity that smartphone manufacturers depend on, leaving less supply available for consumer devices.

Memory components now represent more than 30% of the bill of materials for some smartphones, increasing pressure on manufacturers.

The impact is expected to continue to affect low- and mid-range devices as companies adjust pricing strategies throughout the year.

The secondary smartphone market has already started benefiting from changing consumer behaviour, with organized sales increasing by 4% year-on-year during 1Q26.

FDM CCS Insight forecasts this market segment will expand by 15.4% globally during 2026 as demand shifts away from new devices.

However, stronger demand could also create higher refurbished smartphone prices as available supply struggles to match consumer interest.

Supply challenges could determine refurbished market growth

The refurbished market faces a major challenge because expanding supply depends heavily on trade-ins, buybacks, and upgrade programmes.

FDM CCS Insight expects premium smartphones, particularly devices priced above $750, to continue driving much of the available trade-in supply.

These devices are less affected by current pricing pressures, allowing manufacturers and retailers to maintain stronger upgrade incentives.

"The secondary market has an opportunity to serve some of the demand that will be unfulfilled by the primary market. The major challenge in the near term is to grow supply during a fallow period of flagship launches,” Hatton said.

“Countries with mature trade-in programmes will be in a much stronger position to capitalize on this opportunity and maintain higher growth rates in the secondary market over the rest of the year.”

The shift suggests that consumers may increasingly evaluate refurbished smartphones as alternatives when new device prices continue rising.

“Demand continues to heavily outweigh supply in the global secondary market. Trade-in discounts, early upgrade offers and more-lucrative trade-in promotions will be key to unlocking the market's full growth potential in 2026 and 2027," he added.

Whether this trend produces sustained growth will depend on supply availability, pricing stability, and how manufacturers respond to changing market conditions.