• Logitech unveils $99 MX Keypad accessory
• Sitting alongside your keyboard, it offers nine customizable keys to give access to AI tools and agents
• Users can even create and share their own integrations

Logitech has launched a new $99 accessory it says will help programmers and coders work faster and more effectively than ever before.

The new MX Keypad offers nine customizable full-color LCD keys which can be assigned to launching commands, running macros, and accessing AI tools.

It's also very compact, around the same width as a Logitech mouse and weighing just 96 grams, meaning it will sit alongside a user's keyboard without taking up too much space on your desk.

Faster and more effective access

Logitech says the MX Keypad, developed alongside GitHub and available in two color schemes, will act as a control center for users, aiming to cut down on switching between apps - although the customization options can also be used for non-coding apps.

Any of the nine keys can be configured to control one or multiple apps and agents, from running complex prompt macros to launching everyday commands, with native GitHub, VS Code and Copilot integration at launch.

Using the Logi Actions SDK, developers can even create and share their own integrations, while community-built plugins for tools including Claude Code and OpenAI Codex are already available, and plugins created and tested by developers for GitHub Copilot and Claude Code.

The MX Keypad connects using USB-C and requires macOS 13 or later, or Windows 10 or later. As is typical with Logitech devices, sustainability is also a key feature, with the MX Keypad features certified post-consumer recycled plastic, 64% for graphite, and 49% for its pale gray colored models.

“Today, coding mastery depends on how easily developers can juggle between an ever-increasing range of AI tools,” said Anatoliy Polyanker, VP and GM at Logitech. “MX Keypad puts a physical control center at your fingertips, allowing you to orchestrate your AI workflows faster and more intuitively.”

The MX Keypad looks to offer a more streamlined version of Logitech's existing MX Creative Console, which provides an LCD keypad with a separate dialpad to adjust settings and move around your favorite creative apps, but costs $199.99.

• Champions League 2026/27 Dates: September 8, 2026 → June 5, 2027
• Stream 7 games free this week on RTÉ Player & Virgin Media Play
• Unlock your free stream with NordVPN (save 75%)

Watch the Champions League for free as the 2026/27 campaign gets underway tonight. Sixteen games will be played out across Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with Real Madrid vs Inter, Liverpool vs Atletico Madrid and Napoli vs Arsenal among the highlights.

Not excited yet? Here’s more: RTÉ Player and Virgin Media Play will be streaming seven games for free to viewers in Ireland this week with English commentary.

But how can you watch The Champions League 2026/27 on RTÉ and Virgin Media from anywhere? Can you access the free UCL streams in the UK and the US too? And what games will be shown on the service.

Here’s our simple guide to how to watch the 2026/27 Champions League for free from anywhere in the world using NordVPN.

Champions League Free Games and Channels

Virgin Media Play and RTE Player have eight games available for free for you this week:

All times in BST

• Tuesday (September 8):
  Club Brugge vs Aston Villa (5.45pm) - Virgin Media Play
  Real Madrid vs Inter Milan (8pm) - Virgin Media Play
• Wednesday (September 9):
  Barcelona vs Feyenoord (5.45pm) - Virgin Media Play
  Liverpool vs Atletico Madrid (8pm) - RTÉ Player
  Arsenal vs Sporting (8pm) - Virgin Media Play
• Thursday (September 10)
  Fenerbahce vs Roma (5.45pm) - Virgin Media Play
  Bayern Munich v Bodo/Glimt (8pm) - Virgin Media Play
  Man Utd vs Sabah (8pm) - RTÉ Player

How to watch Champions League 2026/27 on Virgin Media Play and RTÉ Player

RTÉ Player and Virgin Media Play will be streaming the Champions League for free to Irish residents.

To watch RTÉ: visit the RTÉ website or download the RTÉ Player App (iOS / Android ).

To watch Virgin Media Play: visit the Virgin Media Play website or download the Virgin Media Play App (iOS / Android)

Both RTÉ Player and Virgin Media Play are free and come with English commentary.

OUTSIDE IRELAND? ACCESS FREE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE STREAMS FROM ANYWHERE WITH NORDVPN

How to watch Champions League 2026/27 for free from anywhere

Although RTÉ and Virgin Media Play are some of our favorite streaming platforms for the 2026/26 Champions League, they are only available in Ireland.

Football lovers traveling outside the Emerald Isle can still access these free Champions League streams by using a VPN.

There are lots of VPN's but NordVPN is our pick to unblock RTE and Virgin Media Play to stream The Champions League like a pro.... and you can save 70% right now.

It's really easy to use a VPN to watch RTÉ Player and Virgin Media Play.

1. Install the VPN of your choice. As we've said, NordVPN is the best choice.

2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN app. For instance, if you're visiting Canada and want to watch your free Irish Virgin Media Play stream - you'd select Ireland from the options.

3. Sit back and enjoy the action. Head to the Virgin Media Play website, sign in, and watch the Champions League for free.

RTÉ and Virgin Media Play Q+A

Why should I use RTÉ and Virgin Media Play to watch the Champions League?

RTÉ Player and Virgin Media Play are two of our favourite streaming services for Irish residents, offering a host of live sports as well as an abundance of great TV shows.

Among the events we've enjoyed on these platforms over the past year are Gaelic football, the Six Nations, and horse racing. You can't forget the Traitors Ireland either.

RTÉ recommends an internet speed of at least 5–10 Mbps for quality streaming.

Which devices can I watch RTÉ with?

• Amazon Fire (Tablets, Cube, Stick, and Fire TVs)
• Android TV (please note: some models may not be supported)
• Android (Mobile & Tablet – Android 7.0 and above)
• Apple TV (tvOS 14 or later)
• Google TV (including Chromecast with Google TV and NVIDIA Shield)
• Freely
• Freesat (please note: some models may not be supported)
• Freeview Play (TVs and set-top boxes – some models may not be supported)
• iOS (iPhone & iPad – iOS 14 and above)
• LG Smart TVs (2016–2024 models)
• NOW Smart Sticks and Boxes (minimum firmware version 11.5.0)
• PlayStation (PS4 and PS5)
• Roku (Stick & Roku OS-powered TVs – minimum firmware version 11.5.0)
• Samsung Smart TVs (2017 and newer models)
• Sky (Sky Q, Sky Glass, and Sky Stream puck)
• Virgin Media (360, Stream, and TiVo)
• YouView (BT, Humax, Sony, and TalkTalk boxes)
• Xbox (One, Series X, and Series S)

More from TechRadar

• How to watch the Champions League 2026/27
• Sporting Calendar 2026: Your guide to sporting events
• How to watch Premier League 26/27

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.

• Half of UK CIOs say they're being held accountable for AI agent mistakes
• Bigger organizations, governments and public sector blame their CIOs more
• Tech leaders are also being asked to consider digital sovereignty while navigating vendor lock-in

New research has found half of UK CIOs say they're personally accountable when an AI agent makes a mistake - even though they may be little more than a figurehead for an entire department.

Interestingly, the bigger the company, the more personal accountability a CIO may have, despite likely having more workers and managers within the team, the report from 8x8 found.

Among companies with 50-99 workers, 45% of CIOs noted personal accountability for AI agent errors, but this grew to 62% among companies with 500+ employees.

CIOs say they're being held accountable for AI agent errors

Government and public administration organizations were found to put the biggest pressure on CIOs, with the figure sitting at 86%.

But more broadly than just facing the blame, CIOs are also struggling with data sovereignty. Two in five (39%) say the location of AI infrastructure has now become the primary factor behind which platforms they use, with questions about where data is stored and processed appearing both at the beginning of the procurement process but also at broad level.

"Sovereignty is the opening question in almost every conversation we're having with customers here," EMEA MD Jamie Snaddon wrote.

Nearly all (91%) UK technology leaders agree digital sovereignty has become a higher priority this year, with vendor lock-in, cost and complexity also influencing decisions.

With all of this added pressure, plus personal accountability, stacking up against the role of the CIO, the job is becoming riskier and less desirable overall. 8x8's research suggests that, with this current approach at least, CIOs may be more cautious adopting AI and could even be less willing to take on the job in the first place.

• A new teaser trailer for the forthcoming Musk documentary has landed
• It features footage of SpaceX rockets and spicy quotes about Musk
• Musk will be in theaters from October 16 before an HBO release

A new teaser trailer for the documentary Musk has landed on YouTube ahead of the much-anticipated film's premiere today at the Venice Film Festival.

The 48-second teaser (below) provides a taster of the documentary's likely divisive reflections on the world's richest man. It contrasts quotes calling him "the real-life Iron Man" and "the greatest capitalist in history" with some less complementary reactions — with one stating that "in a science fiction novel, he would not be the hero".

The documentary's Academy-Award winning director, Alex Gibney, has a strong track record with pieces about powerful people and corporations, having previously made classics like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.

His Musk documentary has been over three years in the making, with Gibney revealing that he'd started work on it back in March 2023. Elon Musk isn't particularly happy about the documentary's release, posting on X back on August 6 that "it’s a hit piece" and that "Gibney is incapable of anything else".

Musk says director is trying to 'bore people to death'

Aside from its polarizing subject, the Musk documentary is notable for another reason – its run time is almost four hours. That's something that Musk himself also poked fun at on X, stating "is he trying to bore people to death?"

The trailer doesn't give a huge amount away about its conclusions, but Alex Gibney did reveal a little more in a chat with AP earlier this week. "In some ways it’s a simple story (with) a lot of complicated details," he told AP.

"I think his genius, if there is a genius, is that he is not an inventor, he’s an investor. His genius is stock pumping," he added. We can expect the documentary, like the trailer, to stir a lot of controversy then, particularly as it also delves into Musk's relationship with Trump.

So does Musk himself appear in the documentary, or did he try to prevent it from reaching screens? "He didn’t really except in so far as the fact that people were terribly afraid to speak to me on the record, or at least on camera," Gibney told AP. "They were just terrified of Elon. And these were people in his companies. These were people who knew him well. These were supporters and critics," he added.

The Musk documentary will be released theatrically in the US on October 16. There's currently no confirmation of a UK release, but it's also expected to stream on HBO Max later this year.

• A new leak has shed light on a rumored new watchOS 27 feature
• It could see improvements to Apple’s Workout app on Apple Watch
• The app might let you log individual reps and sets for strength routines

Apple’s watchOS 27 is almost upon us, and it’s going to arrive alongside the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 at the company’s Surprise and Shine event tomorrow. When that happens, there could be a new feature for the best Apple Watches that finally fixes a problem that has bugged me for years.

According to information supposedly found in the watchOS 27 beta and posted on the MacRumors forum, Apple is planning to boost the Workout app with a new feature that adds more control to your strength-based exercise routines.

Specifically, the leak asserts it will take the form of “richer details in strength workouts”.

“The new implementation can describe individual sets and store repetition counts, weight, equipment, body side, and duration for each set,” the leaker added. “A workout activity can now represent a session with multiple sets, with different loads and repetition counts in each.”

In other words, Apple might finally be implementing features that rival apps have offered for years. SmartGym gives you this kind of functionality, for example, and it’s one of the best Apple Watch apps around — it was even named Apple Watch App of the Year by Apple in 2023. Apple is evidently aware that its Workout app has fallen behind in this area — but will its solution be enough to catch up?

It’s about time

While I’ve been able to log my workout sessions in my Apple Watch’s Workout app, I’ve had to store the actual routines — including rep and set counts for each machine — in the Notes app. It means having to constantly flick between the two apps while I’m exercising, which is far from ideal.

Add to that the fact that the Workout app just records a single monolithic workout, with no way to log my reps and sets, and I come away from my time at the gym with no insight into how I did on any particular exercise.

So if this rumor ends up being on the money (and the feature actually works as intended), it could end up being one of my favorite additions to the Apple Watch ecosystem. If Apple is able to let me create an exercise plan filled up with rep and set counts, then take me through it when I hit the gym, I’ll be one happy camper.

That said, there are still some unanswered questions. For instance, SmartGym works completely independently of your iPhone and shows you everything you need on your Apple Watch face. Will Apple’s updated Workout app be able to do the same? That would make it even more useful.

And yes, you can already create a set and rest timer system, with labelling to show which exercises you've completed, using the lesser-known Custom Workout routine, but is still much more limited than I’d like it to be. It’s more of a workaround than a real solution.

With the new Apple Watches and their features set to be unveiled tomorrow, there’s not long to wait to see if my wish becomes reality. If Apple is finally able to match its rivals, it’ll be a case of better late than never — but I won’t mind one bit.

• Apple is reportedly only managing to build a few hundred iPhone Ultra units each day
• This is apparently down to difficulties with the hinge
• If this is correct, then there probably won't be many units ready at launch

The foldable iPhone Ultra is likely to be the star of Apple’s ‘Surprise and shine’ event tomorrow (September 9), but if you were hoping to buy one, you might have a tough time doing so — at least to begin with.

According to sources speaking to Nikkei Asia, Apple is only managing to produce a "few hundred" units of the iPhone Ultra each day, thanks, apparently, to its extremely high quality control standards. The site doesn’t go into more detail than that, but some other reports, such as one from OLED-info, suggest it’s the hinge component that’s the issue, with this being challenging to produce.

This site adds that Samsung will produce three million displays for the phone by the end of 2026, which suggests Apple might be hoping the hinge holdup lessens over time. But for now, if these reports are accurate, there presumably can’t be very many completed iPhone Ultra units.

A shipping delay or short supply

As such, while this phone will almost certainly be announced tomorrow, it’s possible either that Apple won’t open orders until later, or you’ll have to be one of the very first people in line to actually receive it in the next few weeks — or maybe even in the next few months.

Of course, we’d take these claims with a pinch of salt, but given how long it has taken Apple to launch a foldable phone, it’s likely the company has faced various issues, and it’s believable it could still be facing some last-minute ones.

Hopefully, then, production of the hinge will soon start speeding up. Otherwise, if you’re desperate for a new iPhone, you might want to stick with the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max, which don’t have any challenging foldable components.

• The Bing Wallpaper app is serving an ad in Windows 11
• The advert is for a Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts movie collection
• There's a rebellion against this blatant advertising, with a significant number of users saying they've immediately removed Microsoft's wallpaper app

Some Windows 11 users who've installed the Bing Wallpaper app have been treated to an unpleasantly in-your-face advert for Harry Potter.

To be precise, it's an ad for a collection of 11 Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts movies, and, as Windows Latest reports, this appears as a full-page promotional image that becomes your desktop background.

This isn't happening for every Bing Wallpaper user, and it appears to be a regional rollout; but based on the plentiful Reddit feedback of the negative variety, it's being piped to quite a number of PCs.

For the uninitiated, Bing Wallpaper is an app that serves up daily wallpapers to those who've installed the software — and note that it isn't installed by default; this is something you have to elect to have on your Windows 11 PC.

Nevertheless, it's an over-the-top move by Microsoft to shovel something like this onto the desktops of those who've chosen Bing to pick their backgrounds.

As one annoyed Redditor says, filing the Harry Potter wallpaper under the 'unskippable ad' category in the 'Mildly Infuriating' subreddit: "I had it [Bing Wallpaper] installed since up until this point it was a fairly harmless program that gave a variety of animals, environments or pattern backgrounds that rotate daily. Wtf?"

Replying, another Redditor observes: "Free software from a trillion dollar company means you are the product." Some folks responded to that to say that Windows 11 isn't free, but this Redditor isn't talking about the OS itself, but rather the Bing Wallpaper app, which is a free add-on for Windows, of course.

Analysis: Bing begone

Windows Latest notes that the terms and conditions of the Bing Wallpaper app allow for "promotional offers" from Microsoft, but what's happening here goes well beyond that. Frankly, this isn't acceptable in any way — and Microsoft really should know better than to serve a blatant advert in this manner.

I'd say I was shocked, but ads have always been a problem in Windows 11. On top of that, about a year ago Bing Wallpaper was used to perform another underhand trick with desktops that made me cringe. In that case, an accidental click on the Windows 11 background fired up a Bing search (yes, really), and I called this "a new low" for Microsoft at the time.

This, however, represents Microsoft plumbing fresh depths. A notable number of those complaining on Reddit have said that they've immediately uninstalled Bing Wallpaper due to this incident (generally with a sprinkling of added curse words).

One of the politer comments notes: "Honestly if they cut out text and just left the base [image] with the option to right click to get more info and it took the user there it would be passable. But current state just time to remove Bing Wallpaper."

This is very much representative of Microsoft's different departments not talking to each other. On the one hand, there's a big drive to fix Windows 11 and try to please users with all sorts of nifty changes and long-awaited features. On the other, the Bing Wallpaper team thinks it's fine to deploy what might be the worst example of advertising I've ever seen in the Windows ecosystem — and there's quite some competition for that accolade, sadly.

At any rate, I assume this won't be happening again, Microsoft, given the reaction here… right?

• Evidence of five possible iPhone camera features has been found in iOS 27 code
• These include waveforms, histograms, manual focusing, and more
• It's not clear whether these features will come to existing models or be exclusive to the iPhone 18 series

While iPhones give you a limited amount of manual camera control, such as the ability to adjust the exposure, they don’t really have anything approaching a ‘pro’ camera mode, at least within the official camera app. But that might change with the iPhone 18 Pro series.

MacRumors forum member pdfu has found evidence in iOS 27 of five camera upgrades that could make iPhones far more appealing to anyone who likes to go beyond just pointing and shooting.

These include the ability to display a waveform or histogram to show you which parts of an image are too dark or too bright, and a focus peaking feature, which could highlight the edge of anything that’s in sharp focus, so you can see which parts aren’t. A separate overlay might also warn you when part of an image is overexposed.

Interestingly, there’s also evidence in iOS 27 of an iPhone being able to adjust lens corrections depending on your aperture setting — strong evidence for the rumored variable aperture feature we’ve heard might be included on at least one iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max lens.

Plus, pdfu has also found a control that would let you manually focus the camera, rather than relying on autofocus, and there’s a change allowing for repeated self-timer shots — meaning that after one timed photo is taken, the timer can automatically start again and take another.

A long-awaited pro mode

If Apple does add all these features, then it could finally have something approaching a ‘pro’ or fully manual camera mode, which is sure to appeal to some shutterbugs. I’d expect these more advanced features would be hidden away from the standard camera overlay, though, so they shouldn’t get in the way for casual snappers.

Still, there’s no guarantee that all or even any of them will arrive with iOS 27. While evidence of these tools has been found in the underlying code, none of them can currently be activated, and it’s possible Apple will choose to delay or cancel them.

It’s also unclear whether they’ll come to existing iPhones or just the iPhone 18 series. In particular, the aperture changes would probably primarily be aimed at phones with a variable aperture — meaning no current model — and the manual focus mode is reportedly currently locked to phones that ship with iOS 27 or later, which again rules out current models.

All should become clearer very soon, though, as Apple is set to announce the iPhone 18 Pro series along with the iPhone Ultra tomorrow (September 9), and we expect the finished version of iOS 27 to roll out shortly after that.

2025 was a transformative year for artificial intelligence, and 2026 is already proving to be equally significant.

While generative AI dominated conversations just a few years ago, the focus is now shifting towards agentic AI, where intelligent systems can take action, interact with business processes, and support employees in more meaningful ways.

As these capabilities continue to evolve, organizations are looking for better ways to connect AI systems to the applications, data and services that drive their operations.

This is where technologies such as Model Context Protocol (MCP) are becoming increasingly important.

Rather than creating bespoke integrations for every tool or system, MCP provides a standardized way for AI models and agents to access information and perform actions across an organization's technology estate.

While MCP is not a requirement for every AI implementation today, it represents a natural next step for organizations looking to move beyond isolated AI use cases and towards more integrated, scalable AI ecosystems.

However, greater integration also introduces greater responsibility. Effective governance remains essential for any AI deployment, but it becomes even more critical when autonomous agents are granted access to business systems, processes and sensitive information.

Organizations must establish clear guardrails that define what agents can access, what actions they can perform, and how their activities are monitored. Without appropriate oversight, businesses risk agents operating beyond their intended scope or creating unintended consequences across interconnected systems.

The impact on Software-as-a-Service

Few sectors will feel the effects of this shift more than Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

For years, SaaS applications have been built around human interaction. Users access platforms through dashboards and interfaces, navigate predefined workflows, and manually complete tasks. The application itself serves as the primary workspace where work is performed.

Agentic AI introduces a different model.

Rather than navigating software in the same way a person would, agents can interact directly with APIs, services and data sources. This allows them to retrieve information, execute actions and orchestrate processes across multiple systems without relying on traditional user journeys.

That does not mean SaaS applications will disappear. In fact, they will continue to play a critical role in storing structured data, enforcing business rules and managing workflows. What is likely to change is how those applications are consumed.

Instead of being the primary destination where work happens, many SaaS platforms will increasingly act as sources of capability and information that AI agents can utilize on behalf of users. As a result, organizations may find themselves focusing less on which application employees need to access and more on how services and data can be brought together to achieve the desired business outcome.

Human interfaces will still matter. Users will continue to need visibility, exception handling and control mechanisms, particularly when business-critical processes are involved. The challenge for software providers will be balancing traditional user experiences with new AI-driven interaction models while maintaining compatibility, reliability and operational resilience.

Breaking down agent silos

The next stage in the evolution of agentic AI is not simply creating more agents. It is enabling agents to work together effectively.

Many organizations already struggle with fragmented systems, disconnected data and isolated processes. Without careful planning, agents risk creating a new generation of silos, each operating within its own limited context and producing inconsistent outcomes.

To avoid this, businesses must focus on shared context, connected data and interoperable services. The goal is not to have individual agents automating isolated tasks but to enable multiple agents to contribute towards broader business objectives across entire processes.

When agents can access consistent information and operate across organizational boundaries, the value shifts from discrete task automation to coordinated execution. Rather than supporting an individual stage of a workflow, agents can participate in end-to-end processes while remaining aligned to business policies, operational requirements and organizational goals.

This represents an important architectural shift. Software increasingly becomes something that agents consume programmatically, while integration, context and orchestration become central to delivering outcomes at scale.

Mitigating risk in AIaaS

Unlocking these new capabilities requires more than deploying AI tools. Organizations need governance frameworks, security controls and operational processes that allow autonomy to be introduced safely and responsibly.

As agents gain access to more systems and collaborate across workflows, operational complexity inevitably increases. Businesses must define clear policies around what agents can and cannot do, what data they can access, and what approvals are required before actions are taken.

These controls should be embedded into the orchestration layer itself, ensuring governance is applied consistently across all agent-led activities rather than being treated as an afterthought.

Traceability and accountability are equally important. Completing a task successfully is only part of the equation. Organizations must understand how decisions were made, what information was used, and which policies were applied throughout the process. This visibility will be essential for compliance, security and maintaining trust in autonomous systems.

The role of developers will also evolve. Rather than spending significant time building and maintaining point-to-point integrations, they will increasingly focus on designing agent behaviors, defining boundaries, managing orchestration and ensuring solutions operate within established governance frameworks.

The organizations that succeed will be those that balance innovation with control. Too little governance introduces risk, while excessive restrictions can prevent businesses from realizing the benefits of AI altogether.

Agentic AI should not be viewed as a replacement for software development or existing technology investments. Instead, it represents a powerful new interaction layer that changes how organizations access information, automate processes and deliver outcomes.

Businesses that invest now in integration foundations, governance models and workforce skills will be best placed to take advantage of the opportunities this next phase of AI creates.

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

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For three years, businesses have bought AI the way they buy Microsoft 365.

Flat fee, line item, sat next to the Zoom invoice and asked no difficult questions. The budget holders were happy, the IT team ticked a box - and somewhere in a product division, engineers started doing things with it that nobody in finance fully understood.

That era is over.

On 14 May, Anthropic announced it would split agentic usage out of its Claude subscription and put it behind a metered credit pool, effective 15 June. GitHub Copilot will move to token-based AI Credits on 1 June.

Legacy Anthropic enterprise seats are being retired at renewal. And a tokenizer change in Claude Opus 4.7 has already pushed some API bills up by as much as 27% - with nothing moving on the published pricing page.

The thing being counted has changed. Not the stated price per thing. That is a meaningful distinction, and most enterprise procurement teams have never had to think about it.

Most CFOs don't know any of this yet.

The receipts

The receipts, though, are starting to arrive. Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI budget by April. Its CTO told The Information he's "back to the drawing board." KPMG's latest survey has US enterprises projecting average AI spend of $207 million over the next twelve months - nearly double a year ago.

Goldman Sachs data shows large companies already overrunning AI budgets by orders of magnitude. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has said his company's Anthropic bill will run to around $300 million this year - and that he wished there were a "smart router" that could work out which queries actually needed the most capable, most expensive models, and which could be handled by something cheaper.

Meta took down the internal tokenmaxxing leaderboard its engineers had built and even Microsoft has cancelled Claude Code access for staff in several key product divisions.

The angle most coverage has missed is that this is fundamentally a buyer-side story. What's happening at Anthropic and OpenAI is interesting. What's happening at the other end of the invoice is more interesting. What does the finance director do when the AI bill doubles mid-year with thirty days' notice and no contractual recourse?

What does the GC do when she looks at the supplier agreement and realizes it was drafted on a SaaS template that has no concept of a tokenizer, no audit rights, no price-change notice period, and no exit provision worth the paper it's printed on?

The right analogy

The right analogy here isn't software but electricity. When you buy electricity, you know the rate per unit, you can read the meter, your contract has notice periods and change-of-tariff protections, and there's a regulator with views about what suppliers can and can't do quietly.

None of that IT infrastructure exists yet for AI consumption. Businesses signed deals when usage was flat-rate and predictable. Now the meter is running, and in many cases the contract gives them no visibility over how fast, no right to challenge the reading, and no meaningful exit if the numbers stop making sense.

What "AI ownership cost" looks like in a business that has never had a FinOps function is, frankly, a mess. Usage is distributed across teams, often unsanctioned, running on departmental cards that never touch central procurement. The AI bill isn't a bill - it's fifteen bills, scattered across expense reports and shadow IT budgets, none of them talking to each other.

The first time many finance teams see the true picture is when someone pulls the data together and says the number out loud. That moment, for a lot of businesses, is coming in August.

The companies now pulling back - limiting which employees can access agentic tools, restricting use of the most advanced models, quietly cancelling licenses - aren't doing so because AI has stopped working. They're doing it because the cost model has broken the business case, and the contracts give them no leverage.

Specific things buyers should insist on

There are specific things buyers should now be insisting on. Price-change notice provisions - real ones, not buried in terms and conditions - that require meaningful advance warning before a pricing architecture changes. Tokenizer stability clauses: a commitment that the method of counting consumption won't shift materially without renegotiation.

Audit rights over consumption data. Exit and portability terms that don't require a legal battle to invoke. Whether existing contracts have any teeth when the metering changes underneath them is a live question. My suspicion is that most don't, because nobody drafting AI agreements in 2023 or 2024 anticipated that the unit of consumption would be a moving target.

Timing matters. OpenAI's two-month Codex trial and Anthropic's 50% capacity boost both expire mid-July. The window of subsidized, high-capacity usage is open right now. The bills will start arriving in August. Finance teams that haven't yet had a reckoning with their AI spend are about to have one, whether they're ready for it or not.

Reasons for spending

The businesses that come out of it ahead aren’t going to be those who spent the least but those that knew what they were spending, why, and what they got for it - and whose contracts gave them somewhere to stand when the rules changed underneath them.

That requires something most AI buyers have never had to build: a proper supplier relationship, a FinOps function, and contracts written as though they were buying a utility rather than a software subscription.

The flat-fee era is over. The question is whether the contracts, the finance functions, and the legal frameworks are ready for what replaces it. For most businesses, they are not. But the August bills will focus the mind.

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• Microsoft dev claims the age of typing code is coming to an end
• AI agents are increasingly replacing humans when it comes to writing code
• But humans still have a crucial role in verifying outputs, as AI model accuracy still isn't quite there yet

Microsoft engineer David Fowler has claimed "typing code is absolutely over," arguing that traditional developers are quickly becoming obsolete in an AI-first world.

Sparking debate in the comments section with views split, the implications of Fowler's X post ultimately imply that developers' roles are evolving, rather than disappearing altogether.

Roles are quickly covering supervising and reviewing, with developers prompting AI agents, verifying outputs and finetuning, rather than writing new code from the ground up.

Developers aren't obsolete, but their role is undergoing major changes

But AI isn't just writing lines of code anymore – Microsoft-owned GitHub Copilot agentic tools have proven that AI can actually handle much more of the workflow, including building the software, running tests and checking for failures, before the project even gets handed to a human for review.

Microsoft is also making its own Aspire development platform increasingly agent-friendly, with version 13.2 introducing support for MCP and an agent-friendly CLI.

We already knew in 2025 that as much as 30% of Microsoft code was AI-generated, per CEO Satya Nadella's remarks, but that figure is likely much higher today.

Separately, a study by Microsoft's own researchers found that accuracy falls even for frontier models, the longer-running a task becomes. CodeRabbit also found that AI-generated code contains an average of 1.4x more critical issues and 1.7x more major issues than the equivalent human-generated code, with Veracode warning that 45% of AI-generated code contains security flaws despite appearing production-ready.

While models will undoubtedly get better as generations progress, mistakes will likely remain a constant throughout, so while Fowler's claim that typing code is over, the role of the human developer certainly isn't.

• Surfshark Group acquires a majority stake in data removal service Optery
• It joins Incogni, Ironwall, HeyPolo, while running as an independent brand
• The acquisition is expected to expand Surfshark's data broker coverage

Surfshark, the company behind one of the best VPN services around, is growing its privacy footprint again. The group has completed its acquisition of a majority stake in Optery, a US-based data removal specialist, adding a fifth brand to its expanding cybersecurity ecosystem.

Announced on September 7, the deal places Optery alongside existing group members Incogni, Ironwall, and HeyPolo. Financial terms were not disclosed.

For a group built around online privacy, buying another company that scrubs personal information from data brokers is a natural fit. It also marks another step in the steady consolidation of the booming data removal industry.

What Optery brings to the table

Optery is a US data removal service that finds and deletes personal details from data brokers, people-search sites, and search engine results.

According to Surfshark, it stands out for its specialized scanning technology, detailed screenshot reporting, and broad US data broker coverage.

In our Optery review, we called it one of the strongest data removal tools of 2026, praising its transparent before-and-after reporting and genuinely useful free tier. For now, Optery is available only in the US and Canada, though it has signaled plans to expand internationally.

NEW: Leave No Trace — A weekly newsletter on digital privacy and online surveillance.

Leave No Trace investigates the companies and governments putting our digital freedom at risk — and the people fighting back.

📩 Subscribe now to get every edition delivered to your inbox every Friday, launching this September.

Why Surfshark made the move

Surfshark frames the acquisition as a response to growing demand for data control in an AI-driven world, where personal information increasingly surfaces in search results and AI-generated summaries.

The wider data broker market is expected to top $440 billion by 2032, making removal services a valuable long-term bet.

"At Surfshark Group, our goal is to empower people to take full control of their digital lives," said Vytautas Kaziukonis, founder and chairman of the board at Surfshark Group.

Optery is the group's second acquisition, following its 2024 purchase of Ironwall, a removal service aimed at government employees and executives.

Surfshark itself merged with NordVPN parent Nord Security in 2022, so growth through consolidation is well-trodden ground.

What Optery's acquisition means for Surfshark users

If you already use a Surfshark or Incogni product, not much changes overnight. Optery will keep operating independently, with its own teams, products, and technology, so there's no bundling or migration right now.

The bigger payoff should come over time. Surfshark says the deal will let it expand data broker coverage, deepen its knowledge of search-related removals, and ship new privacy tools faster across the group. Pairing Optery's US expertise with Incogni's global scale, in particular, could sharpen both services.

"By pooling our knowledge with Incogni, Ironwall, and Surfshark, we can collaborate extensively to deliver even greater protection for our users," said Lawrence Gentilello, CEO and founder of Optery.

“I've seen AIs of me sitting with Obama talking about insane things that we never did”.

George Clooney is clearly concerned about the power that AI has to produce deepfakes that are so real you can’t tell that they’re fake, especially when they contain images of world leaders.

“We were never there having a conversation. It is me doing it. And okay, that's a joke for people. But what happens if you see a video of Putin saying he's launched the first nuclear strike [against] the United States — how do you discern it?”

Clooney was raising his concerns in Venice at the ‘The Future of... Creativity’ symposium presented by Finch & Partners and Creative Artists Agency (CAA). George Clooney and Maggie Gyllenhaal were among the international group of artists, filmmakers, musicians, cultural thinkers and technology leaders who gathered to discuss how technology is changing creative work, and the people who produce it.

The panel discussions were moderated by the journalist and broadcaster Emily Maitlis, who asked Clooney, “is there a fear of replacement, as an actor?”

Clooney acknowledged the risk, but also the problem inherent with AI actors, which is that it’s going to be hard to create an AI movie star: “Well, there's two different conversations we're talking about. As an actor, there will be some portion of that that will be replaced. AI will have the exact same problem that I have as a director, and that we all have as filmmakers, which is how you make a star, because that’s hard to do.”

‘And it fundamentally did not work’

Actor and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal cited a recent experience with AI on her upcoming short film Flesh Impact about Marilyn Monroe, commenting: “I did try working with AI on this project […] I have a 100-year-old Marilyn Monroe, and then I also have flashbacks to Marilyn Monroe when she's in her 30s. I have Dakota Johnson playing her, who is an incredible artist in my opinion. And the people who commissioned this project asked me to use AI […] and I went for it. I was like, 'All right, I'm curious. I don't know. Let's see.' And it fundamentally did not work.”

Ultimately, Gyllenhaal found that AI was not able to replicate the nuances of human performance and emotion.

“The idea was that we trained it on her. We then put her face on Dakota's face; we worked very hard at it, and in the end, they threw it away because [… ] Dakota playing Marilyn Monroe, was so much more moving, human, alive. All the reasons we decided to make this project to begin with”.

It’s perhaps reassuring to hear filmmakers say that while a fabricated AI clip can be convincing enough to mislead someone, it can’t deliver the emotional depth a director wants from a performance. Gyllenhaal’s experience offers a reason for creative optimism, even as Clooney’s raises concerns about what audiences will believe.

81% of UK knowledge workers now use AI weekly. That's adoption. What it isn't, is transformation.

Most organizations have layered AI onto broken processes and fragmented systems and called it progress.

Meanwhile, 82% of UK IT leaders have absorbed unexpected AI cost increases, and 58% report high adoption with limited measurable productivity gains.

We have a usage problem dressed up as a strategy.

Here's what's actually going wrong and what needs to change.

Adoption without redesign is theatre

AI doesn't fix bad processes. It accelerates them. If your data is fragmented, your ownership is unclear, and your workflows are inefficient, deploying AI makes those problems faster, not smaller.

Real value requires asking harder questions: Where do decisions actually get made? Which processes should fundamentally change? Who owns the outcome? Until you answer those, you're generating AI activity, not business impact.

Own the outcome or don't deploy

Nearly two-thirds of UK IT leaders say they're fully accountable for AI-driven business outcomes, while AI deployment is spreading across departments, often outside governance structures. That's a recipe for accountability without visibility.

IT management sets the framework. That's necessary. But every business leader who owns a process needs to own how AI changes that process. What does success look like? Who monitors it? Who's responsible when it goes wrong?

If you can't answer those questions before you scale, don't scale.

Shadow AI is a signal, not just a risk

One in four UK workers use unapproved AI tools. The instinct is to lock it down. The smarter read: your people are telling you your current tools create friction, and they've moved on without you.

Restriction isn't a strategy. Channel that demand toward trusted tools with real governance, then use governance as an accelerant, not a brake. The organizations moving fastest are the ones that treat low-risk use cases as low-risk, and reserve serious scrutiny for high-stakes applications.

Context is the missing layer

Nearly half of UK IT leaders say AI initiatives stall because AI lacks organizational context. That's not a technology problem, it's a work infrastructure problem.

Think about how you'd onboard a new hire. You'd give them the org structure, the priorities, the decision rights, the rules. An AI agent needs the same. Without it, even capable models produce output that someone has to spend 30 minutes correcting, which is exactly what's happening.

The fix is connecting AI to where work already lives. Not asking employees to reconstruct context every time they open a prompt.

Measure outcomes, not usage

If your AI metrics are licenses purchased, prompts submitted, or hours theoretically saved, you're measuring the wrong thing. The question is whether the work is improving.

Are customer issues resolving faster? Are teams spending less time searching for information? Are the right decisions getting made with better speed? At Asana, we built an AI seller assistant and measured its impact on the sales process, response rates, net-new meetings booked. That's the bar.

The accountability question is only going to get harder

Agents are coming. Systems that act on behalf of people, not just assist them. When that happens, organizations will need to know: which agents exist, who created them, what they can access, what they're authorized to do, and how their performance is tracked.

This isn't a future problem. The organizations building that discipline now will be the ones who can scale agentic AI without the governance catching up after the fact.

The businesses pulling ahead won't be the ones using the most AI. They'll be the ones who've connected it to clear ownership, proportionate governance, and the workflows where execution actually happens.

Adoption is table stakes. Value is the real work.

We've listed the best productivity tools.

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

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

• Just 52% of Brits are familiar with the concept of a data center
• Positive sentiments are down, while negative perception is up
• This report calls for greater transparency and public engagement

New research has revealed only one in two (52%) Brits are aware of the term data center, but despite growing awareness (with the figure up from 40% in 2024), three in five (59%) are still unsure about what a data center is or what it does.

Despite slow growth in awareness and a UK designation for data centers as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), fewer people believe data centers have a positive impact on the digital services they use both at home and in work.

Today, only 37% of British citizens see them as having a positive impact, down from 48% two years ago. On the flip side, negative perception has risen from 4% to 15% in the same period, the report from Telehouse found.

British citizens see data centers in a negative light

Among the biggest concerns is energy consumption, with more than half (56%) of the respondents worried about the amount of electricity these campuses use.

But with awareness of the concept in general rising year-over-year, Telehouse believes there's scope to turn this awareness into understanding and confidence. "As an industry, we have a role to play in closing that gap by working more closely together, being more transparent, engaging openly with the public and communities and doing a better job of explaining the value data centres enable," EVP and GM for Telehouse Europe, Mark Pestridge, explained.

The report indirectly alludes to the fact that worker and consumer AI use is disproportionate to education, which explains why public scrutiny may be accelerating more quickly.

When the UK government designated data centers as CNI, the then-Technology Secretary Peter Kyle described them as "the engines of modern life."

"The objective now is helping people understand why data centres matter and how it supports everyone’s lives," Pestridge added.

• Dyson has launched an updated version of its 2020 Corrale straightener
• The Corrale CoolShine has a clever heat-removing attachment
• The brand has also unveiled a hot brush called the Airsmooth

In recent years, Dyson's hair gadget efforts seem have been mostly focused on its Airwrap styler and Supersonic hair dryer lines. So when I was invited to a showcase of the brand's new launches, I was expecting, perhaps, some cool new attachments or an upgraded Supersonic. I was equal parts surprised and pleased to see something altogether more novel.

There's a brand new tool — which I'll get into in a minute — as well as a surprise second-gen version of the Corrale straightener, called the Corrale CoolShine. If that name isn't ringing any bells, I don't blame you. The original Dyson Coralle came out in 2020 and never quite managed to set the haircare world alight.

I tried a Corrale out at the time and although I didn't hate it, it didn't make it into my regular styling routine. So I was especially pleased to see that the surprise second gen has tweaked or removed my least-liked features, and added some more that I'm genuinely excited to use.

One key feature of the original was that it was cordless. That's all well and good, but the knock-on effect was that it was also really very heavy and chunky. The Corrale CoolShine is not cordless, and as a result it can be nice and streamlined and lightweight. I'm very happy with this about-turn; the new, compact shape is much more comfortable to hold, and easier to direct precisely.

What a flex

The flexible plates from the first-gen version are still present here. They have to be, really — these are what 'corrale' the strands of hair, applying gentle pressure to, theoretically, allow for effective straightening at lower temperatures.

However, they've been downsized in line with the general shrinking of the straightener, and are slimmer in width. In their new format, they look much less likely to snag on strands of hair, as the previous version could sometimes do.

That's the 'Corrale' covered, but where does the 'CoolShine' come in? This refers to a unique-to-the-market cooling attachment. It comes in the form of a pair of frames that slide over each of the hot plates, and clip in place. They feature a heat-extracting copper pipe that contains water and is designed to help remove residual heat from hair.

So the central plate gets hot as usual, and then the bars either side of the plate pull the heat away immediately, helping you avoid heat damage. Dyson promises "hair that is cooler to the touch during and after styling, with a smoother, softer feel".

When it was initially announced, it sounded like kind of cold plumbing system, but speaking to a Dyson representative at the product showcase, I learned the system is subtler and more complex.

The tube has just a 'bead' of water in it — if you're envisaging cold water running through it, that's not the case — and it will absorb some of the heat of the plates as you style, so don't expect those bars to remain cold as you style. I'd be very interested to try it out for myself to see how much of a difference these plates make in practice.

There was a Dyson Corrale CoolShine being demoed at the event, and I was very impressed at how it managed to take the model's coily hair to perfectly smooth with an incredible glassy finish — but the kicker is that the stylist (and Dyson rep) wasn't using the CoolShine attachment.

The representative explained to me that the frame is removable to allow for precision styling, as well as in instances where you need to get right up to the root. Both were required here.

A final welcome touch is that Dyson has added universal voltage, so you'll be able to take the tool away with you when you travel abroad.

Full of hot air

The other new gadget is the Dyson Airsmooth brush dryer. This is a fairly traditional hot brush, for creating bouncy blowouts, but — of course — there's a bit of a Dyson twist.

The engineers have added two different types of bristles: some with loops at the top, and some with open bases. The former are engineered so they provide the right amount of tension for a smooth finish, without snagging on a range of different hair types. The latter are meant to diffuse and control the airflow for less turbulence and less frizz.

Dyson has given the Airsmooth a teardrop profile, to enable you to get closer to the root. I've seen this before, on the Shark Glam, and it works well there. There's also intelligent heat control keeping temperatures stable, and again, there's universal voltage — good news for your holiday hair.

The Dyson Corrale CoolShine straightener will have a list price of $329 / £TBC / AU$499. The Airsmooth dryer brush will cost $249 / £199.99 / AU$399 at sticker price.

The Airsmooth dryer brush goes on sale from Dyson US and Dyson UK today (September 8) in the US, with the Corrale CoolShine joining it on September 15.

At Dyson Australia, the hot brush is already on sale (launched September 4) and the straightener will arrive in November.

• Stream UCL 2026/27 free on Virgin Media Play & RTÉ Player (Ireland)
• Unlock your stream with Surfshark (save up to 85%)
• Champions League Matchday 1: Tue, Sep 8 – Thu, Sep 10 (fixtures below)

The Champions League 2026/27 draw is proof, if it was needed, that the world does indeed revolve around Jose Mourinho. Having reunited with Real Madrid, he'll reconvene with two more of his former clubs right off the bat, beginning with a blockbuster clash against Inter Milan, with whom he won a treble 16 years ago.

Los Blancos have dominated this fixture, but the Nerazzurri, revitalised under erstwhile Jose favourite Cristian Chivu, who led them to a domestic double last term, rarely go down without a fight. They've scored in 17 of their last 19 UCL games.

The pick of Wednesday's games sees Atletico Madrid visit Liverpool. Having failed to win any of their 10 group or league phase ties against English opposition, it's fair to say the Colchoneros don't travel well, but the Reds are rebuilding under Andoni Iraola – and the process is off to a slow start. If Diego Simeone can get Julian Alvarez back on side, Atleti have every chance of silencing Anfield.

Back-to-back champions PSG aside, Bodo / Glimt were the stars of last season's Champions League campaign. Kjetil Knutsen's minnows stunned Man City, Inter (twice), Atletico Madrid and Sporting Lisbon, and did so by playing a positive, free-scoring brand of football. Six-time European champions Bayern Munich have been warned.

Here's how to watch Champions League 2026/27 from anywhere in the world. We've also listed the Matchday 1 UCL fixtures below.

Champions League 2026/27 schedule

(All times UK)

Matchday 1

Tuesday, September 8
5.45pm – AEK Athens vs LASK
5.45pm – Club Brugge vs Aston Villa | FREE on Virgin Media Play
8pm – Borussia Dortmund vs Villarreal
8pm – Lille vs Real Betis
8pm – Porto vs Man City
8pm – Real Madrid vs Inter Milan | FREE on Virgin Media Play

Wednesday, September 9
5.45pm – Barcelona vs Feyenoord | FREE on Virgin Media Play
5.45pm – Stuttgart vs Viking
8pm – Liverpool vs Atletico Madrid | FREE on RTÉ Player
8pm – Napoli vs Arsenal | FREE on Virgin Media Play
8pm – PSG vs Slovan Bratislava
8pm – Sporting Lisbon vs Galatasaray

Thursday, September 10
5.45pm – Fenerbahce vs Roma | FREE on Virgin Media Play
5.45pm – PSV vs Shakhtar Donetsk
8pm – Bayern Munich vs Bodo / Glimt | FREE on Virgin Media Play
8pm – Como vs RB Leipzig
8pm – Man Utd vs Sabah | FREE on RTÉ Player
8pm – Slavia Prague vs Lens

Can you watch Champions League 2026/27 for free?

Yes. Select Champions League games are shown on free-to-air Virgin Media and RTÉ channels in Ireland each matchweek, with live streaming available via Virgin Media Play and RTÉ Player.

Free Champions League coverage is also available via RTL Play in Belgium and Tabii in Turkey

Extensive free highlights are available in the UK, courtesy of BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

Traveling abroad right now? You can use a VPN to watch UCL 2026/27 games for free as if you were right at home.

Use a VPN to watch Champions League 2026/27 live streams

A VPN is a handy piece of software that can make your device appear as if it's back in your home country and unlock your usual streaming services. The best VPN right now? We recommend Surfshark – it does everything and comes with up to 85% off.

How to watch Champions League 2026/27 live streams in the US

In the US, all 189 games of the 2026/27 Champions League campaign are available to live stream on Paramount+.

The Paramount+ price starts at $8.99/month or $89.99/year. However, you can access Paramount+ virtually for free with a Walmart Plus 30-day trial for $1.

Outside the US for a game? Use Surfshark to access your usual coverage.

How to watch Champions League 2026/27 live streams in the UK

Champions League 2026/27 coverage is split between TNT Sports and Amazon Prime in the UK.

You can add TNT Sports to your Sky, Virgin Media or EE TV package, or get an HBO Max plan that includes TNT Sports. Prices start at £25.99/month if you commit to a year.

Amazon Prime, which shows one Tuesday game each Matchweek, costs £8.99/month or £95/year after a 30-day free trial. Students and 18-24 year-olds can get it for £4.49/month or £47.49/year.

Alternatively, free-to-air BBC One will air a Champions League highlights show on Wednesday and Thursday nights, with streaming available via BBC iPlayer.

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

How to watch Champions League 2026/27 live streams in Australia

Stan Sport is showing all 189 games of the 2026/27 Champions League season in Australia.

Stan Sport costs AU$20/month on top of a Stan subscription, which itself starts at AU$9.99/month. It's also home to the Premier League, Super Rugby, Six Nations and Nations Championship.

You can simply use a VPN like Surfshark to watch all the action as if you were back home.

How to watch Champions League 2026/27 live streams in Canada

In Canada, all 189 games of the 2026/27 Champions League campaign are available to watch on DAZN.

A subscription starts at CA$24.99/month, for a plan that also includes EFL, Carabao Cup, Bundesliga and NFL coverage.

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

Official Champions League broadcasters by region

Africa

The Champions League 2026/27 broadcast rights for Africa are largely split between beIN Sports and SuperSport.

Residents of the following African countries can watch Champions League 2026/27 live streams with a beIN Sports subscription:

Algeria, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Republic of the Sudan, Republic of South Sudan, Somalia and Tunisia.

Satellite TV provider SuperSport has the Champions League 2026/27 TV rights across these regions in Africa:

Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, St Helena and Ascension, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

• South Africa

SuperSport will host Champions League 2026/27 on its satellite channels.

Americas

• Canada

DAZN has the rights to broadcast Champions League 2026/27. You can also watch the Europa League and EFL Championship soccer, the Bundesliga, Nations League, rugby and tennis.

• Latin America

The broadcast rights to Champions League 2026/27 in Latin America are exclusive to Disney+.

Get a subscription and if you live in one of the following countries, you won't miss a second of the action.

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela.

Europe

The Champions League 2026/27 season will be shown by various broadcasters and streaming services throughout Europe.

• Austria

Sky Sport in Austria will show the 2026/27 Champions League.

• Belgium

Play Sports will be showing all the action from Champions League 2026/27.

• Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedona and Serbia

Fans in the following countries can watch Champions League 2026/27 on Arena Sport:

Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

• Bulgaria

Voyo Sport has the rights to show Champions League 2026/27 live broadcasts.

• Cyprus

You can view Champions League 2026/27 on Cytavision in Cyprus.

• Czechia

Champions League 2026/27 will be shown on Nova Sport in Czechia.

• Denmark, Iceland and Sweden

Fans in the following countries can watch Champions League 2026/27 on Viaplay:

Denmark and Sweden.

In Iceland, the majority of games are also on Viaplay.

• Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

Fans in the following countries can watch Champions League 2026/27 on Go3 Sport:

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

• Finland

There will be coverage of Champions League 2026/27 in Finland on MTV Katsomo.

• France

There will be coverage of Champions League 2026/27 in France on CANAL+.

• Germany

In Germany, the Champions League 2026/27 rights are shared between DAZN Germany and Amazon Prime (one fixture per matchday).

• Greece

Greeks should head to Cosmote Sport for Champions League 2026/27.

• Hungary

RTL and Sport TV will share Champions League 2026/27 broadcast duties in Hungary.

• Ireland

Virgin Media and RTE (both free-to-air), plus Premier Sports, TNT Sports and Amazon Prime, share broadcast coverage of Champions League 2026/27 in Ireland.

• Italy

Viewers in Italy can watch Champions League 2026/27 on Sky Italia and a handful of matches on Amazon Prime

• Netherlands

Viewers in the Netherlands should tune into Ziggo Sport for Champions League 2026/27.

• Norway

TV2 Play is the home of Champions League 2026/27 in Norway.

• Portugal

DAZN and Sport TV have the rights to air Champions League 2026/27 in Portugal.

• Poland

TVP has the rights to air Champions League 2026/27 in Poland.

• Switzerland

Fans in Switzerland can watch Champions League 2026/27 on SRG SSR and Blue Sport.

• Turkey

Tabii in Turkey will host coverage of Champions League 2026/27.

• Ukraine

Megogo will show Champions League 2026/27 in Ukraine.

Asia

• China

In China, Champions League 2026/27 will be shown by iQIYI.

• Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand

The following countries will be able to watch Champions League 2026/27 on beIN Sports.

Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

• India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka

Sony LIV is the Champions League 2026/27 broadcaster for India plus Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

• Japan

Wowow will show Champions League 2026/27 in Japan.

• Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

The Champions League 2026/27 rights for the following Central Asian countries are held by Q Sports:

Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

• Macau

iQiyi is what you need to watch Champions League 2026/27 in Macau.

• Mongolia

Premier Sports will show the coverage of Champions League 2026/27 in Mongolia.

• South Korea

Coverage of Champions League 2026/27 in South Korea can be found at SPOTV.

Oceania

• Australia

Stan Sport has the rights to Champions League 2026/27 in Australia. Prices start from $20 per month (on top of a regular $12 Stan sub).

• New Zealand & Pacific Islands

DAZN is the Champions League 2026/27 TV rights holder in New Zealand and across the Pacific Islands, including: Cook Islands, Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

Middle East

beIN Sports MENA is the Champions League 2026/27 broadcaster across the Middle East.

You can watch Champions League live streams with a subscription to beIN Sports in the following Middle East countries:

Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Champions League 2026/27 FAQs

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.

If you thought the stubby form factor of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 was a passing craze, think again: Xiaomi has today launched the Xiaomi 18 Fold, a similarly proportioned device that arrives just days before the expected launch of Apple’s first foldable, the iPhone Ultra.

Featuring a 5.38-inch cover display and a 7.58-inch inner display — both of which have a 1.4:1 aspect ratio — the Xiaomi 18 Fold mimics the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s passport-style design (and indeed that of the China-only Huawei Pura X Max) to deliver a “flexible user experience across work, creativity, and entertainment.”

Mind you, the Xiaomi 18 Fold may actually have more in common with Apple’s imminent iPhone Ultra than the Galaxy Z Fold 8, given that it has two rounded corners when closed and four when open. The Galaxy Z Fold 8, meanwhile, is straight-edged whichever way you slice it.

TechRadar’s Collections Editor, Ruth Hamilton, got hands-on with the Xiaomi 18 Fold at IFA 2026, and confirmed that the device is also ever-so-slightly shorter and wider than Samsung’s latest foldable. The latter has a pair of screens measuring 5.5 inches and 7.6 inches, respectively, with each offering distinct 10:16 and 4:3 aspect ratios. The Xiaomi 18 Fold, by contrast, has a 1.4:1 ratio when both folded and unfolded.

Xiaomi’s foldable is also a touch heavier and thicker than the Galaxy Z Fold 8. When closed, it measures 10.68mm and weighs 219g; when unfolded, it’s 5.02mm thick. The latter device weighs just 201g and measures 9.7mm and 4.5mm, respectively.

But we’re talking millimeters here. This is still a thin and lightweight foldable whose proportions are perfectly suited to video content. Tellingly, the Xiaomi 18 Fold’s 1.4:1 aspect ratio is almost identical to the 1.43:1 aspect ratio of an IMAX screen.

While we didn’t get to watch any movies on the device in our short hands-on time with it, we can attest to the superior entertainment experience delivered by the Galaxy Z Fold 8’s shorter and wider form factor. 4:3 is slightly taller and squarer than 1.43:1, but given that most video content is presented in 16:9, the video-watching experience is likely to be similar across both devices.

Incidentally, despite being rumored to have similar-looking rounded corners to the Xiaomi 18 Fold, the iPhone Ultra is tipped to match the Z Fold 8’s 4:3 unfolded aspect ratio. We’re expecting Apple’s device to have a cover display of between 5.3 and 5.49 inches, and a foldable display of between 7.7 and 7.8 inches.

It’s also, however, rumored to be slightly shorter and wider than the Z Fold 8. This may again make it look closer in appearance to the Xiaomi 18 Fold, even if its screens are most closely aligned to the Galaxy's.

Other features of Xiaomi’s latest foldable include a pill-shaped camera bar with three Leica-optimized cameras: a 200MP main, a 50MP ultra-wide, and a 50MP telephoto with 3.5x optical zoom.

This could be where the Xiaomi 18 Fold pulls ahead of the competition — the Z Fold 8 doesn’t have a telephoto camera, and the iPhone Ultra is likewise rumored to launch with just two cameras (a wide and an ultra-wide).

Under the hood, the Xiaomi 18 Fold is powered by Xiaomi’s in-house Xring O3 chip, a 6,000mAh battery, and up to 16GB of RAM. These are strong internal specs. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to put them to the test unless you live in China; the Xiaomi 18 Fold is only launching in Xiaomi’s home market for a starting price of ¥10,999.

That figure would make the phone around $1,650 / £1,220 / AU$2,275 overseas, which, before import tariffs and local taxes, isn’t far off the $1,899 / £1,699 / AU$2,699 starting price of the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Might the iPhone Ultra cost a similar sum? We’ll find out tomorrow (September 9), when Apple’s ‘Surprise and Shine’ event gets underway.

• 36.7% of UK workers say answering to an AI boss would improve their productivity
• However, almost 75% of those workers are happier answering to a flesh-and-blood superior
• Meanwhile, almost 40% of managers don’t believe that AI can deliver any productivity gains

Over a third (36.7%) of UK employees think an AI boss would mean an improvement to their productivity, with 64% of directors expecting similar gains, new research has found.

But despite these results looking good for AI, however, it seems many people prefer the idea of performance reviews being delivered face-to-face, rather than via chatbot.

However, there is one key opponent to AI managers. The human-based middle manager layer is unsurprisingly less swayed by the prospect of being replaced by AI, with almost 40% feeling productivity gains are unlikely.

Flattened structures?

The research from Careerminds UK contacted 600 full-time UK employees and asked them about their thoughts on AI in the workplace, also found that younger colleagues were more likely to be favourable to an AI management layer.

The survey comes at an interesting time, with predictions of flattened structures seemingly focused on the middle manager layer. If businesses feel that they can adopt AI to replace managers – particularly at a time when management training seems to be at a premium – then they need to act carefully.

Productivity boosts are one thing, but employees also feel a human superior is preferable to AI for things like delivering performance feedback (74.2%).

“AI may be able to ease some of that pressure by taking certain tasks off managers’ plates,” said Amanda Augustine, resident careers expert at Careerminds UK and a Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC). “But the feedback findings make it clear that employees still value human judgement, context and connection.”

The artificial middle manager

While the productivity boost expected by 36.7% of those surveyed (versus 25.5% who feel they would be less productive) might seem encouraging, there is a challenging aspect to the report’s findings.

Some 64% of directors and above expect an AI manager to deliver productivity gains, with 28% of those expecting it to be “significant.” Among senior staff, the figure is 42.6%.

Among managers, that 38.5% figure is worrying, as it implies almost 40% of managers are expecting AI to replace them. Will the C-Suite have its way? Should it?

“We shouldn’t confuse employees seeing potential productivity gains from AI with wanting technology to replace their managers altogether. Middle managers are already feeling the squeeze, caught between growing expectations from senior leaders and the needs of their teams," added Augustine.

“The opportunity for employers is to use AI to help managers become more effective, not simply replace them”.

At a time when organizations are increasingly going hard on AI, some recognition of what employees need to succeed is important.

Rather than focusing on efficiency, Augustine observed leaders need to think about their employees, particularly those who have just started their careers who are “more likely to think about what they need from a manager day to day, whether that’s guidance, development, reassurance or context.”

• Report claims an incredible 80% of AI tools are running in organizations without IT oversight
• Browser agents and integration tools are escaping the attention of security and IT engineers
• Reco’s State of Agent Security 2026 report also tracked 637 vulnerabilities across agents and LLMs

Unmonitored deployment of AI tools is a risk to security, and puts data at risk, a new study has claimed.

The report from Reco, which draws its information from disclosed vulnerabilities, analysis of 500 Model Context Protocol servers, and Reco’s own platform telemetry, found four in five AI tools (80%) are running without oversight from IT departments.

Of particular concern is the scale of AI applications in use. Smaller companies use 414 AI tools per 1,000 employees without IT approval, apparently a combination of browser extensions and workflows beyond the usual review and approval process.

Data risks from unmonitored AI

Giving AI tools to employees might unlock productivity boosts, but their use has to be approved. That’s the key takeaway from the report, which highlights some concerning cybersecurity figures. For example, it assessed 500 agent tools and found “62% can both read local data and reach the internet.” This represents an opportunity for data exfiltration.

Elsewhere, 637 AI agent related vulnerabilities were identified in the report.

The adoption of AI is wider than specific use of a SaaS application or visiting ChatGPT. Reco found that AI agents are running within other tools, and inheriting user permissions. The implications of this are clear.

Operational risk

Analysis of the telemetry (gathered from 62 enterprise-scale businesses in financial services, healthcare, retail, and telecommunications between January 1 and August 1 2026) reveals a free-for-all attitude towards AI adoption. While businesses may have policies and procedures in place and processes to assess, evaluate, review, and finally approve new AI-based tools, these are being circumvented for low-level applications.

The rules work for SaaS procurement oversight, but not for browser extensions, and the result is “operational risk.”

“AI agents have moved from experimentation into daily business workflows, but our findings show only 20% of AI tools in enterprise ecosystems are currently governed by IT oversight," Reco CEO Ofer Klein noted.

“That leaves organizations exposed to a new class of operational risk. Agents embedded in applications can operate through existing permissions, OAuth grants and workflow access, creating toxic combinations that expose data and trigger actions beyond what any owner approved.”

Organizations will need to give IT teams the resources they need to manage and restrict unauthorized AI use, as the alternative means leaving the gates open to the possibility of data exfiltration.

• GMKtec NucBox M5 Ultra pairs an eight-core Ryzen 7 7730U with dual 2.5GbE, Wi-Fi 6E, and triple-display output while starting at just $330 a pop for a barebones configuration
• The underlying 2023-release CPU is capable, but a rebadge of the 2022-launched Zen 3 Ryzen 7 5825U, which is, in turn, a 2021-launched 5800U with a 100 MHz bump to base and boost clocks
• The price can be reduced to as little as $280 per unit for users buying 5 of the RAM- and SSD-less SKU

GMKtec has put its NucBox M5 Ultra back in the limelight, and the offering is familiar for the Shenzhen mini PC maker's mid-range lineup.

It comes with an eight-core AMD processor, two 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports, upgradeable memory and storage, and a price starting just over $300.

The catch for any prospective buyer is that you must bring your own DDR4 laptop RAM and SSD to get it going.

A capable NUC that is hiding its underlying CPU's age

The M5 Ultra runs the AMD Ryzen 7 7730U, an eight-core, sixteen-thread part clocked from 2.0 GHz to 4.5 GHz with 16 MB of L3 cache, built on TSMC's 7nm process with a default 15W TDP. Despite the 7000-series badge, it belongs to AMD's Cezanne lineup via the Barcelo-U refresh announced in January 2022.

The CPU it most closely matches in clock speeds, core configuration, and performance is the Ryzen 7 5825U, which is a slightly higher-clocked version of the January 2021-released Ryzen 7 5800U, which runs 100MHz lower on both base and boost clocks.

This is interesting because prospective buyers might feel they are buying a Zen 4-based CPU thanks to its 7000-series badge but would end up getting a CPU that was first available more than half a decade ago, even if it does hold its own in its price and performance segment.

A well-rounded offering with plenty of expansion under the hood

The M5 Ultra offers two DDR4-3200 SODIMM slots supporting up to 64 GB, and two M.2 2280 slots, allowing for a variety of configurations based on the user's needs.

It does have its limitations due to the underlying CPU, however: while GMKtec claims each M2 slot can support up to 8 TB, for a nominal 16 TB ceiling, speeds are capped at PCIe 3.0 because the 7730U provides only 16 usable lanes and no Gen 4 support out of the box.

Connectivity is where the unit particularly shines: it comes with two Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE controllers, Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, and a 10 Gbps, 100W USB port in addition to two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports and two USB 2.0 ports, a very formidable offering for a Nuc-tier PC.

The system, which is powered by a 65W PSU over a Type-C connector, also offers HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort, and USB-C for up to three simultaneous connections for power users looking to run a multi-display setup.

One could argue that pricey RAM and SSD options make sourcing them considerably less appealing and a tall order, but even with that in mind, at today's prices, the NucBox has plenty of connectivity under the hood, decent power, and a raw customizability that is hard to argue with in 2026.

The Wolf Among Us 2 has been in development hell for years, to say the least, since its 2017 announcement. After a studio closure, a sudden revival, engine changes, and further creative conflicts between Telltale Games (its main developer) and co-developer AdHoc Studio, the long-awaited sequel is finally arriving in 2027.

I had a chance to see what Telltale Games has been cooking behind closed doors, with a short preview of The Wolf Among Us 2 at Gamescom 2026, and I walked away intrigued and hyped for its launch. The Bigby fans loved in the first entry is back, and just as entertaining as ever.

This sequel takes place six months after the events of the first game; we follow Bigby Wolf, who has been temporarily removed from his duties as Fabletown's sheriff. Bigby's job is to uncover a mysterious string of murders happening, working behind the curtain to save a city "consumed by corruption, vengeance, and fear".

Right off the bat, I noticed Telltale Games leading The Wolf Among Us 2 in a different direction in terms of gameplay. Instead of the fixed camera angles present in the first game, and frankly, most of Telltale Games' entries (notably The Walking Dead), players will now be able to control Bigby in a third-person over-the-shoulder camera perspective.

The dialogue between characters is still as strong as ever, and decisions within those sequences matter in both shaping the story and the relationships Bigby has with others. In classic Telltale fashion, one sequence left me with a choice to lie to a new character, Faye, who Bigby meets early on, about whether the ongoing case involved magic or not, as she suspects a Fable (characters that include Snow White, Bigby Wolf, Mr Toad, etc.) is the murder suspect.

I quickly learned that your choice may come back to bite you or aid you later on, via the 'X will remember that' notification — but sometimes, silence is the best answer.

Sitting down with The Wolf Among Us 2's design director, Jessica Hara Campbell, and principal scene coordinator, Leslie Harwood, I raved about the camera perspective change, as it offers a more immersive experience than I've ever seen in any Telltale entry before — and it very much reminded me of Capcom's switch to third-person action in its Resident Evil series, via Resident Evil 4.

Unsurprisingly, both Campbell and Harwood highlighted that the switch was made to push "further immersion", as players control Bigby going on a long run of investigations. It's possibly the best choice the team has made with the sequel, and perhaps a camera switch all future Telltale and other episodic narrative-driven games should make.

It's also worth noting that The Wolf Among Us 2 features a new dynamic style of examining areas or objects during investigations. Players are no longer expected to examine every single item or area, nor will there be constant hints during puzzles if players don't want them.

If the player is already a step ahead in an investigation, you won't be pulled back to step one, as the game is designed to respect players' detective work, as Campbell stressed.

While The Wolf Among Us 2 has some new design choices, Campbell emphasized that Telltale has its eye on maintaining what fans know and love about the series.

"What we are looking at in a lot of our gameplay systems is keeping the core of what was built," Campbell says. "For our fan base, there's a very specific feeling of nostalgia, but the core of that is the noir detective piece that we don't want to reinvent the wheel on.

"It's about making sure the game still feels like Wolf [first entry], and with returning players, they feel like they're kind of coming along."

The Wolf Among Us 2 is expected to launch in 2027, but there is currently no specific timeline for which quarter it'll arrive in. My only hope is that the launch is successful without any further delays, as I'm quite excited to see what the team at Telltale has been working hard to deliver.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe feels as though it's been on my screen for 500 years, but somehow, each episode feels just as fresh as the next.

We're returning to the militant apocalyptic feel of episode 1 this week, but think more comedy than tragedy. Nobody is losing a leg while somber music plays over the top, put it that way.

With three episodes left to go, we're no closer to finding any kind of resolve. Even so, when does Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 7 arrive on HBO Max?

What time can I watch Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 8 on HBO Max?

For US viewers, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 8 will drop on Thursday, September 10 at 6pm PT/ 9pm ET.

Internationally, you're looking out for these timings:

• US – Thursday, September 10 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• Canada – Thursday, September 10 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• UK – Friday, September 11 at 2am BST
• India – Friday, September 11 at 6:30am IST
• Singapore – Friday, September 11 at 9am SGT
• Australia – Friday, September 11 at 11am AEST
• New Zealand – Friday, September 11 at 1pm NZST

When do new episodes of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe come out?

New episodes of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe will make landfall every Thursday in the US, and on Fridays everywhere else. Here are the all-important dates you need to know about:

• Episode 1: out now
• Episode 2: out now
• Episode 3: out now
• Episode 4: out now
• Episode 5: out now
• Episode 6: out now
• Episode 7: out now
• Episode 8: September 10
• Episode 9: September 17
• Episode 10: September 24

• Think tank Ceres found power generation for data centers in seven states withdraws 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater a year, or 10.4 million acre-feet
• The figure might be a bit overstated, as it counts withdrawals, including hydropower water returned to the river immediately
• 78% of electricity in those states comes from water-using plants, and 66% of those plants sit in water-stressed areas

Non-profit think tank Ceres has published a new report analyzing the water used to generate electricity for data centers across Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona.

Ceres estimates data centers use 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater a year, or 10.4 million acre-feet.

Bloomberg Law's Bobby Magill compared that unfavorably against the 8 million acre-feet California uses annually for urban purposes, a figure from a 2021 Legislative Analyst's Office report.

An important difference withdrawal versus consumption

Ceres's approach makes sense, but it paints only a partial picture at best. It measures water withdrawals, or the total volume of water a power company pulls from a water source like a river, lake, or aquifer, including water it essentially replaces shortly afterward.

For context, the LAO's 8 million acre-feet is a different quantity: water actually delivered and applied to residential, commercial, industrial, and landscape uses across California, and it is unlikely to be channeled back to its source.

Ceres does note this, stating that "withdrawal reflects the full volume an asset depends on to operate", which it presents as a strong indicator of risk exposure to multiple communities that are already living in drought-affected areas.

A large amount of the power being generated and measured is hydroelectric power. This makes it a bit ironic, given that using water for generation may not be considered 'consumed' effectively.

The number seems considerably higher than one would expect: Arizona State University researchers, using 2024 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory data, put the indirect consumption of US data centers, including power generation, at about 650,000 acre-feet a year nationwide.

Although the data are old, the numbers suggest data centers may be consuming a fraction of what Ceres implies, according to its own report, unless consumption rose drastically to 16 times its reported figure.

Ceres, however, for now projects that water for power generation could account for 72 percent of total US data center water consumption by 2030, on a consumption basis, even as cooling inside the buildings gets more efficient.

At a time when the two largest Colorado River reservoirs have hit record lows, Ceres noted that local opposition grounded in water and grid concerns disrupted $130 billion of data center projects in the first quarter of 2026 alone.

Shama Perveen, the report's co-author and Ceres' director of water research, framed this as a complex situation and one that required a more inclusive approach, saying "no single stakeholder can address these challenges alone".

Whether it pans out at a time when AI companies are spending money hand over fist to get their hyperscale operations (and subsequent cooling and power requirements) out of the door as the search for AGI continues unabated remains to be seen, however.

• Google's contrail mitigation tech is expanding to a new region
• It uses AI to get planes to avoid cold, humid air
• Contrails account for a third of aviation's impact on the climate

Following similar projects across US airspace and the North Atlantic ocean, Google is partnering with the Cathay-Pacific airline to test its AI-powered contrail (condensation trail) mitigation technology on flights across the Asia-Pacific region.

Contrails are the thin, ice-crystal streaks of cloud that form behind planes when they hit cold, humid air. Some of these contrails can persist in the atmosphere, eventually spreading into cloud-like formations that stop heat escaping to space. It's thought that contrails account for around a third of the total climate impact of the aviation industry.

Google's idea is to use AI algorithms to nudge flights around the areas of cold and humid air that contrails need to form. Early trials with 80 Cathay-Pacific flights have led to a roughly 40% reduction in the warming impact of contrails, and now the system is being rolled out across the airline's whole network.

"Aircraft adjust their altitude slightly to steer clear of cold, humid atmospheric zones where warming contrails are likely to form, much like pilots do to navigate around turbulence," explains the Google team in a blog post.

Available, scalable, cost-effective

According to Google, the contrail-avoiding tweaks that AI recommends for flights won't have any impact on passengers and flight safety, and are in line with the routine adjustments made to flight paths for other operational reasons.

The changes to flight routes are based on a combination of data collected from satellite imagery, weather forecasts, and Google's AI prediction technology. The aim is to get information relayed to the cockpit as early as possible, which will be delivered through in-flight Wi-Fi "without interrupting standard cockpit workflows".

Also in on the scheme is the Contrails.org non-profit, which promotes the use of contrail mitigation technology. According to the organization's figures, adjusting the routes of 5% of flights could avoid up to 80% of contrail-related warming — and the Asia-Pacific region is currently the fastest growing aviation market in the world.

"Contrail mitigation remains one of the most immediately available, scalable, and cost-effective ways to reduce aviation's climate footprint, and it can get started now, with today's aircrafts and fuel," says Google.

Whenever a new AI model is released in a cut-down form because it is too powerful, or one transgresses its sandbox and performs an unexpected cyber hack on a company’s website, we tend to see jokes made about Skynet or HAL 9000 becoming a reality.

But science fiction didn’t just predict our current relationship with AI, it influenced it. Our fascination with artificial life began long before computers — or even electricity — existed. Ancient Greek stories featured mechanical servants created by the god Hephaestus, while Jewish folklore gave us the Golem, an artificial being brought to life to carry out its creator’s commands.

In their new book, Myth-Made Machines: The Stories Behind Artificial Intelligence, authors Dave Bradley and Kelly Vero trace humanity’s dreams and fears about machines that can think, through mythology, literature, movies and television.

Their argument is that these stories haven’t simply anticipated AI; they have shaped how we talk about it, what we expect from it and, in some cases, the technology people have gone on to build.

I spoke to Bradley and Vero about why humanity keeps creating machines in its own image, whether science fiction has influenced today’s AI developers, and why our response to artificial intelligence still swings between two extremes: “If we don't like it, we’ll kill it. If we love it, we’ll marry it.”

The ancient beginnings of AI

TechRadar: Talk me through the title - why is it called Myth-Made Machines?

Dave Bradley: The core argument of the book is that humans have always been fascinated by the idea of creating thinking machines and artificial life. When ChatGPT formally launched in 2022, one of the first jokes I saw on social media was about Skynet coming online. It struck us that the whole way we understand and talk about this new technology is shaped by stories we’ve been telling ourselves for years. Kelly has a deep knowledge and love of Greek and Roman myth, as well as stories such as Frankenstein, while I’m a huge science fiction nerd (and occasional medievalist). Through our conversations, we realised that our cultural idea of “AI” is much older than modern computers.

Kelly Vero: Myth-Made Machines is the essence of where every element of AI or robo-futurism comes from: Myth. With myth, we, as humans, have to navigate the real and the prescient from the propaganda and the fanciful.

TR: When did artificial intelligence first enter our human stories?

KV: When we started researching the book, it was Greek myths that we started with. We found our own Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei hiding in plain sight.

DB: The idea is incredibly ancient. In Greek myth, Hephaestus creates golden workers to help him in his workshop. Jewish legend brings us the Golem. The idea that one might build autonomous servants out of inanimate material is thousands of years old.

For something closer to what we would recognize as a computer, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels gives us a wonderful early example in the 18th century. The Engine of Lagado randomly rearranges words in the hope of generating useful knowledge. Read today, it looks uncannily like a satirical ancestor of generative AI.

The term ‘artificial intelligence’ in the modern sense of machine learning and reasoning was coined in the 1950s by computer scientist John McCarthy — and that’s when it starts creeping into TV and film too. There are some great early Twilight Zone and Star Trek episodes about the possibilities and perils of machines in our homes and workplaces.

TR: Which are your personal favorite sci-fi AIs/robots, or movies and TV shows that involve AI?

KV: I’m a Lawnmower Man aficionado, but having worked on the actual Transformers franchise, I’m also a Decepticon through and through.

DB: I’m a huge sci-fi geek, and to this day I maintain that R2-D2 is the most important character in Star Wars. He has a mission, gets on with it, saves everybody repeatedly and barely receives any credit.

But I also nerd out over Marvin in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Cylons in both versions of Battlestar Galactica, and, of course, Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, who I’d argue is the character on the real hero’s journey in that series.

Side note: HAL 9000 slightly infuriates me, mainly because people have been quoting “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that” at me personally for decades.

TR: Do you think our myths about conscious machines have influenced the real development of AI?

KV: Absolutely! Human life is all about dreaming up concepts to adore or fear; it’s how we roll.

DB: Today’s engineers and entrepreneurs grew up on Star Wars, Star Trek, Isaac Asimov and William Gibson, and there’s good evidence that science fiction influences the people who go on to build the future. One 2022 study found that 93 per cent of UK astronomers enjoyed science fiction, for instance, and 69 per cent said it had influenced their career decisions.

Sometimes the connection is very direct. Pete Bonasso at TRACLabs has credited HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey as an inspiration for his work on NASA space AI systems. Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were invented for fiction, but they’ve become a reference point for real-world thinking about AI safety. Google DeepMind’s 2024 ‘Robot Constitution’, for example, sets out safety rules for machines in a way that is very much in that tradition.

TR: What do you think of the current crop of AI models?

DB: I follow this area as closely as I can, although you have to bear in mind that it changes almost daily. We’ve just seen another generation of frontier models arrive. It moves fast, which is fascinating for tech writers, although it also explains why we wrote a book largely about things that happened hundreds of years ago rather than trying to capture the state of AI in 2026!

When it comes to video games — still my day-to-day working life — I believe it’s going to be important to work out what new experiences AI can bring to the table, not just how quickly they can automate existing processes.

KV: They’re facsimiles of every book, TV series, movie or game we’ve ever imbibed. They’re not as clever as we are and they never will be.

TR: Do you think of AI as a threat to humanity, or as an opportunity?

KV: A super opportunity to ride alongside a civilization’s worth of knowledge? It’s almost too good to be true. If you think about it, until AI came along, humans held a monopoly on intelligence. We kind of only knew what we could discover or search for as humans (history is always written by the victor). Today, we can effectively outsource our thirst for knowledge to something else and tell it how we should understand the results; for the most part, we get balance: the rest is sponsored content!

DB: It feels glib simply to say ‘both’, although I’m tempted. Personally, I’m an optimist by nature, and I like to believe the general direction of travel is towards progress, growth and better lives. That doesn’t mean everybody prospers equally, or that there aren’t important battles over jobs, ownership, ethics and power along the way. William Gibson famously said that the future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed. I think that’s a useful way to think about AI too. The interesting question isn’t simply whether the technology is good or bad, but who prospers from it, who controls it, and how widely any benefits (and risks) are shared.

TR: Do you think we’ll ever reach man-made super intelligence, and if we do what happens then?

KV: We have man-made everything else, don’t we? Why should this be different? For me, the detail lies in sentience. We already have man-made superintelligence, but we don’t have fully operational sentience yet. When something can blink its eye without thinking as quickly as humans can, well, let’s talk again.

DB: I don’t think it’s going to emerge simply by scaling today’s transformer models, regardless of some of the more excitable predictions around them. However clever and interesting LLMs are, these are fundamentally probabilistic systems that generate text, images and other media. That doesn’t make them conscious.

An omnipotent silicon supervillain, like Skynet, makes for good screen drama — but if we do eventually create genuine superintelligence by some route, I’d actually hope that a networked brain with access to vast amounts of information, capable of seeing problems from many different perspectives, would naturally tend towards connection and assistance rather than destruction. But I’m not naïve about it. Systems also magnify our biases, flaws and prejudices. That’s why alignment matters.

TR: What have you learned about humanity's approach to AI from writing this book?

KV: That we’re the only stakeholders. We’re the arbiters of our own creation(s); if we don't like it, we’ll kill it. If we love it, we’ll marry it. AI is all of us, and my main worry is that only 6% of the world’s population currently decides on how the other 94% will live, work and adapt to an AI future. However, if the past is to be believed, we’re probably going to be ok. (Famous last words, I know!)

DB: Technology and automation are things humans do. What became very apparent is that humans repeatedly try to create things in their own image, while simultaneously struggling with the implications of that. We worry about job losses, replacement and loss of identity. We’re fascinated by creating something powerful, then immediately frightened that it might overthrow us. But the fear of the servant who will turn on us, or the untrustworthy ally who might sneakily replace us, is not limited to machines, right? We might project those stories onto computers in our books and films, but the subtext is often about human paranoia around class, politics, war…

More specifically, there’s a recurring oscillation between loving and fearing our own technology. In the 1970s, amid Cold War paranoia, computers were frequently instruments of doom: Colossus, Cylons, HAL 9000, even V’Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture. In the 1980s, as PCs and games consoles became familiar household playthings, popular culture increasingly gave us machines as loyal companions: KITT, Metal Mickey, Twiki, Nono and Data. Then the pendulum swings back: by the late 1980s and 1990s, we get The Terminator and The Matrix. You can trace those alternating waves of optimism and anxiety all the way back through the Industrial Revolution. The technology changes, but our emotional responses to it are remarkably consistent.

Author bios and book details

Myth-Made Machines: The Stories Behind Artificial Intelligence

co-written by Dave Bradley and Kelly Vero

Published by Bloomsbury on 3rd September 2026

Available as ebook or hardcover

• Intel report claims 60% of business leaders expect to operate robot fleets within the next five years
• Conversely, only 40% have a human-robot workforce strategy
• The Robotics Readiness Gap report assesses the state of robotic adoption around the world

Intel’s 'Robotics Readiness Gap' report has revealed that many large businesses are planning to implement a human-robot workforce within the next five years, with a majority expecting a doubling of operational output with a full-scale deployment.

The survey of 800 senior leaders in organizations with over $500 million annual turnover also found while adoption plans are accelerating, the rollout of a human-robot workforce has some key challenges, not least infrastructure, skills, strategy, and safety.

Despite the positive outlook for robotics, the scenario has a heavy dose of reality. Only 40% of businesses surveyed have a suitable strategy in place, despite a belief that robots could prove more cost-effective than humans within three years.

Human-robot workforce

Within this context, the aim of achieving a human-robot workforce seems more achievable, although some of the findings suggest an aspirational element to the drive towards robotics.

While 60% of leaders are expecting to run a fleet of robots by 2030, only 40% have a suitable human-robot workforce strategy in place. So while 74% believe workforce planning will be inseparable from robotics strategy within 5 years, there is a gap in preparation.

The report notes that “On average, leaders believe that deploying a robot will become more cost-effective than hiring a human in their sector within three years.”

But does this mean replacing jobs? Intel says not. “This isn’t about replacing people but creating new forms of human-machine collaboration, with robots working alongside employees as productive teammates.”

Doubling operational output

Intel’s report states that robotics in the workplace is approaching a “critical threshold,” with leaders predicting that “operational output would double if robotics were deployed at full scale across their organization.”

However, both notions rely heavily on five factors: strategy, skills, safety, shape (function), and scale (which includes physical AI infrastructure).

Intel’s report states, “few are prepared for what large-scale deployment actually requires. Closing this gap will mean redesigning operating models for a workforce that includes autonomous systems.” Even in the defense industry, this gap exists (“confidence outstrips preparedness by 48%”).

Placed in these terms, and with the context of the size of the organizations quizzed on their robotics strategies, that critical threshold seems a little further away than five years.

• AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 mini PCs now reach 192 GB of memory
• GMKtec says its EVO X5 Pro can run 300B parameter models locally
• Framework Desktop combines 16 cores with 192GB unified memory while Acemagic fits the PRO 495 inside a 2L case

After AMD launched the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 in May 2026, the processor is now appearing in a new wave of mini PCs offering up to 192GB of memory.

The chip follows 2025’s Ryzen AI MAX+ 395, which appeared in at least 37 mini PCs costing above $1,500.

Acemagic, GMKtec and Framework have now shown systems using the newer processor, with GMKtec claiming support for 300B models.

New mini PCs push memory far beyond ordinary systems

Framework is preparing a Desktop model featuring the PRO 495 alongside 192GB of LPDDR5X memory and 273GB/s bandwidth, combining 16 Zen 5 cores, 32 threads, 40 graphics compute units, and 131 TOPS for AI workloads.

The integrated Radeon 8065S graphics shares system memory, allowing applications to access resources without relying on separate graphics memory.

Framework says the machine will occupy 4.5 litres, while Linux can also come preloaded for users who choose that option.

GMKtec has unveiled its EVO X5 Pro at IFA 2026, using the same processor with up to 192GB memory.

The system uses LPDDR5X running at 8,533 MT/s, while memory bandwidth reaches approximately 273GB/s under the company’s stated specifications.

GMKtec says users can assign as much as 160GB of that memory to graphics processing when required.

According to GMKtec, the processor reaches 5.2GHz, while its Radeon graphics include 40 compute units and hardware ray tracing support.

The company says this configuration can run large language models containing as many as 300B parameters without requiring cloud services.

GMKtec also includes an XDNA 2 neural processor capable of delivering up to 55 TOPS for supported artificial intelligence workloads.

The EVO X5 Pro has four USB4 connections, external graphics support, 8K output, and networking options for linked systems.

A vapor chamber, three fans, and three operating modes are used to manage heat during sustained computing workloads.

Acemagic adds another compact option with 192GB

Acemagic’s F9A uses the PRO 495 with as much as 192GB of LPDDR5X memory inside a roughly 2-litre enclosure.

The computer measures 158.5 × 158.5 × 81.5 mm, making its physical size considerably smaller than Framework’s 4.5-litre machine.

Its processor reaches 5.1GHz, while the Radeon 8065S graphics unit operates at frequencies reaching 3.0GHz under suitable conditions.

The system provides two PCIe 4.0 NVMe slots, allowing storage configurations using RAID 0 or RAID 1 when supported.

Acemagic also includes OCuLink using PCIe 4.0 x4, enabling compatible external graphics cards and other high-speed peripherals.

Two USB4 Type-C ports provide transfer rates reaching 40Gbps, while networking includes Wi Fi 7 and dual 2.5GbE.

The company says the F9A can run DeepSeek V4 Flash locally, with that model containing 284B parameters.

As of the time of writing, none of the three brands has published final retail pricing for its respective configurations.

Given the hardware involved and the premium attached to the previous generation, prices above $2,000 would not be surprising.

• Microsoft faces claims that its data center noise harms nearby residents
• Standard dBA monitors may fail to capture some low-frequency noise
• Residents accuse xAI of causing noise, vibration, and air pollution

Microsoft and xAI are facing lawsuits over noise and other alleged harms linked to data center operations in Wisconsin and Mississippi.

At least six similar cases have been filed this year, as residents challenge the impacts from currently active facilities.

In addition to nuisance, the disputes also focus on negligence claims, with plaintiffs seeking damages or changes to data center operations.

Low-frequency noise creates a measurement problem

Microsoft faces a proposed class action concerning its Fairwater facility in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, which began operating in June 2026.

Residents filed the case in late July, alleging that persistent low-frequency noise affects their homes and property values, and arguing standard dBA equipment may fail to detect the sound because its frequency falls outside effective measurement ranges.

“dBA measures do not effectively detect lower frequency sounds like those emitted by Defendant’s Data Center operations,” the lawsuit says.

“‘Data center cooling — massive chillers, slow turning fans, compressor arrays — generates exactly the long wavelength noise’” that is not adequately measured using dBA.”

The plaintiffs argue Microsoft could have reduced the disturbance through acoustic barriers, quieter cooling equipment, soundproofing, and improved monitoring.

“A properly operated, maintained, and/or constructed Data Center will contain, capture, or otherwise prevent the emission of excessive noise from its generators and cooling systems,” the filing says.

That argument could create difficulties for facilities where regulatory measurements fail to capture sounds that residents can still hear.

The dispute also raises questions about how noise from data centers should be measured.

xAI faces claims involving turbines and pollution

In Mississippi, residents have sued xAI over alleged noise, vibration, and air pollution from dozens of gas turbines.

The turbines supply electricity for the company's Southaven data center, according to allegations contained in the lawsuit.

Attorneys representing residents accused xAI of failing to take meaningful action to address the alleged effects.

“xAI has made no meaningful effort to halt the harm,” attorneys at Weitz & Luxenberg said in a statement.

Similar lawsuits have also been filed in Vineland, New Jersey, Dowagiac, Michigan, North Tonawanda, New York, and Hood County, Texas.

The cases generally rely on nuisance or negligence claims concerning conditions plaintiffs believe operators could have prevented or controlled.

Several other data center disputes remain unresolved, with none of the noise cases reaching summary judgment or trial.

However, other environmental nuisance cases have already produced settlements involving substantial sums of money.

Amazon agreed to pay more than $20 million over nitrate contamination linked to one Oregon data center.

The company said officials settled early to avoid prolonged litigation and concentrate resources on community support instead.

Microsoft had not immediately responded to a request for comment concerning the Wisconsin lawsuit when the report was published.

Via SmartCitiesDrive

• Huawei MateBook Pro S weighs 798g at 11.9mm, with a 14.2-inch 3.1K 120Hz flexible OLED touchscreen and a 54Wh battery
• The laptop runs HarmonyOS 6.1 rather than Windows and uses a Kirin XE90 SoC, a HiSilicon ARM design on SMIC's 7nm node, capped at 20W
• It currently sells only in China, where it starts at 7,999 yuan, with no plans announced for wider availability

Huawei has launched the MateBook Pro S, a 14.2-inch laptop that weighs 798 grams and measures 11.9mm at its thickest point.

The device runs HarmonyOS 6.1 rather than Windows, uses Huawei's custom Kirin XE90 processor, and went on sale in China on 14 August, with prices starting at 7,999 yuan, roughly just under $1,200 when converted.

There seem to be no documented plans to offer the same laptop officially in the West, but third-party suppliers have already emerged offering to ship to countries worldwide, albeit at a significant premium.

Thin, but not the thinnest, with a CPU that is relatively untested

At 798 grams, the MateBook Pro S is noticeably lighter than most of its competition, but thinner alternatives from Japanese manufacturers exist, shaving off an additional 164 grams.

Although it isn't one of the lightest in the business, it is considerably slimmer than laptops that compete in the same performance segments. Huawei achieves this with a magnesium-lithium alloy bottom cover, magnesium-aluminum A and C covers, a three-section motherboard, a thin dual-fan cooling assembly with what Huawei calls Shark Fin blades, and a high-silicon-anode battery.

With a 3.1k flexible OLED touchscreen offering 1000 nits of full-screen brightness and a peak of 1600 nits, plus a 120Hz refresh rate, it has one of the best displays on paper.

What stands out even more than the capable display, however, is the processor: the Kirin XE90, as Huawei claims 23% higher single-core performance, 25 percent better energy efficiency, and 40% higher NPU throughput than the standard Kirin X90, with the cooling system supporting up to 20W of sustained output.

These numbers, however, are unchecked, and much of what one can find about the laptop's performance is inferred from comparisons using Huawei's own figures or paid advertisements claiming it delivers 'formidable power'.

More interestingly, it may use the same SMIC 7nm N+2 node TechInsights found when it physically analyzed the Kirin X90 in the MateBook Fold, rather than the 5nm process Chinese television claimed. The XE90 essentially is a refinement of the same design, and there is no indication it has moved nodes since the finding was reported.

This matters because it affects not only Huawei's laptop performance, but also efficiency in a class where performance per watt is a key determinant. The laptop is also only 798 grams in its lightest configuration; its lineup splits into Standard, Soft Light, Privacy, and Collector's Edition, and the weights differ considerably. The standard and privacy models weigh 798g, the Soft Light version 805g, and the Collector's Edition 825g, with a thickness of 12.2mm.

Huawei also claims 18 hours of video playback, a stable WiFi 7+ connection up to 1000 meters away in open, unobstructed areas, and a six-microphone array that can clearly capture audio from up to 10 meters away.

For those looking for a solution that isn't Windows- or Linux-based, the MateBook Pro S is an intriguing buy — if you're willing to pay the premium.

The first Wi-Fi 8 routers were launched by TP-Link at IFA 2026 last week with the devices set to hit the shelves later this year. So, when that happens, is it a good idea to immediately jump on board with this new more performant wireless standard?

Not exactly. There's a bit to unpack here about exactly how Wi-Fi 8 improves on Wi-Fi 7 — it's not any faster in terms of raw performance, in case you weren't aware — as well as when routers and devices that support the new standard will arrive.

All of this will factor in to the decision you'll make about when to upgrade to Wi-Fi 8 in your home. In this article, we'll look at what Wi-Fi 8 offers over and above Wi-Fi 7, and then examine considerations around the upgrade timeline, and when you might want to make a move to benefit from cutting-edge Wi-Fi.

How is Wi-Fi 8 better than Wi-Fi 7?

Wi-Fi 8 doesn't move the needle in terms of raw speed over Wi-Fi 7 — the latter is already beefy in that respect anyway — and instead aims to boost overall wireless performance in different ways.

Wi-Fi 8 seeks to improve the overall stability and reliability of the wireless connection, so you get a smoother and faster experience when you're further away from the router — and it's particularly focused on helping boost speeds at the very edge of the network's signal.

Another key point with Wi-Fi 8 is that it's built to cope with more devices and keep speeds up, as well as dealing with interference better. So, in signal-dense environments, where there are lots of devices competing for bandwidth, all this traffic will be better directed and managed to ensure better performance.

That'll obviously help with larger households where everyone has multiple devices, but it's going to be particularly important for places like apartments or office buildings where there can be a lot of competition from multiple routers and a whole host of devices all packed into a relatively small area.

TP-Link — which unveiled both a traditional Wi-Fi 8 router, the Archer 8 Ultra, and a mesh Wi-Fi system, the Deco 8 Ultra, at IFA 2026 — revealed some clever tricks for these cutting-edge pieces of hardware. They use Dynamic Sub-band Operation (DSO) and Non-Primary Channel Access (NPCA) tech to portion out only the bandwidth any given device needs — so tiny smart home devices, for example, only get the small chunk that they require, leaving more bandwidth to be usable for other hardware. In short, the traffic from all devices is managed in a much smarter manner, and situations where performance gets congested with Wi-Fi 7 are avoided with Wi-Fi 8.

The end result is a considerable leap in performance of wireless devices, even though the core speed and throughput spec of Wi-Fi 8 remains the same as its predecessor. This is particularly evident in environments with lots of competing devices, or when you're at the outer limits of the wireless signal.

When will Wi-Fi 8 routers go on sale — and should I buy one straight away?

As mentioned, TP-Link's initial models are on sale later in 2026, and pre-orders will go live in some regions from the start of October. Asus Wi-Fi 8 routers are also expected to arrive later this year.

In theory, then, you could grab yourself a Wi-Fi 8 router in a couple of months and be up-and-running with the latest wireless standard — but should you?

Here's the thing about being an early adopter of a new Wi-Fi standard: you must remember that when the first routers come out, they're based on a draft version, not the finalized wireless standard. In other words, it's still very early days for Wi-Fi 8 (although when it is finalized, likely in mid-2027, existing routers will be updated appropriately, of course).

So, while you can have a Wi-Fi 8 router later this year, you won't be able to buy any devices which are compatible with the standard. Naturally, both the client device and the router must support the new standard to benefit from its features, and smartphones and laptops that are Wi-Fi 8 capable aren't arriving until next year.

And even then, they will only be available in small numbers, and these will be premium cutting-edge (expensive) devices, as you might expect.

Is it pointless to buy a Wi-Fi 8 router when they first come out?

While you won't get the immediate full benefit of Wi-Fi 8 until you have the supporting devices to go with the router, it's not completely pointless to be an early adopter of something like the TP-Link Archer 8 Ultra. It's backwards compatible with all devices supporting earlier Wi-Fi standards, of course, and that hardware will still get the benefit of some of the Archer's traffic management tricks.

That said, until Wi-Fi 8 laptops, tablets and phones arrive in greater numbers, you're not realistically going to get much mileage out of your shiny new Wi-Fi 8 router. You will, of course, be future-proofed and ready for next year's devices, but the problem is that buying a Wi-Fi 8 router at launch means you'll pay a premium and a high price for the privilege.

This cutting-edge hardware is always expensive when it first comes onto the scene, so on balance, it's much better to wait until the market fills out, and more Wi-Fi 8 hardware — routers and consumer devices — is available, before you pull the trigger on a purchase. Your wallet will be happier if you're patient.

Rest assured, though, that the future of wireless is almost here, and Wi-Fi 8 promises to make a big difference when it fully kicks in.

Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE review

The Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE have sprung into the affordable IEM arena. One that, as of late, has provided some incredible quality, with brands such as Sennheiser, Meze Audio, and Activo bringing some serious sound-for-pound value.

While the DT 30 IE don’t try anything outwardly fancy, they’re still a very attractive proposition. They have 11mm dynamic drivers intended to supply a “neutral and balanced tuning,” passive noise cancellation up to “-39dB,” and even have an IP54 dust and water resistance rating.

But can they compete with some of the best wired earbuds around? I spent a couple of weeks using them as one of my main listening devices — here’s what I thought.

Let’s start with the area that matters most: sound quality. As you may expect at this price-point, sound quality is good rather than excellent — though there are a lot of positives to discuss.

In Can’t Let Go by Earth, Wind & Fire, overall audio was clear and balanced relatively well. I felt that vocals in the mid-range were a bit lacking in texture and detail, but still had good presence in the mix. More subtle percussive elements came through nicely, though, and funky bass was well-weighted.

Although I felt that the DT 30 IE perhaps lacked the openness and nuance of pricier options, they still sound strong for the price.

And perhaps the main thing that grabs you about the DT 30 IE is their bass output. It’s meaty and dynamic, which is ideal for gigging situations or if you want to enjoy hard-hitting tunes to the max in a more casual capacity. In Kickin’ In The Beat by Lewis Taylor, I was struck by pumping low-end output, which didn’t obscure vocals or drums in the treble range — it's punchy and fairly agile, making for an exciting listen.

Treble is clear and fairly controlled, though it could be more articulate and expressive. In Sing To Me by Ned Doheny, percussion in the treble range didn’t have the precise, bright quality that I was listening out for, with a slightly muted take. This wasn’t the case when I switched over to the Sennheiser IE 200, which offered better top-end clarity, and also provided a more natural interpretation of lead vocals.

So, it’s certainly a positive start overall for the DT 30 IE, but how do they compete elsewhere? In terms of features, there’s not a lot to run through. There’s no in-line controller with volume controls, which is more of a nice-to-have rather than an expectation for IEMs in my view. They also skip on interchangeable connectors, as seen on models such as the Activo Volcano, so you’re stuck with a 3.5mm option unless you purchase an adapter of some kind. But what I did like was the range of ear tips packed in, allowing you to find the ideal seal, no matter your ear size.

And when I got the right seal, I found that the DT 30 IE offered pretty solid passive noise isolation. Is it the best I’ve experienced? No — models with foam ear tips, such as the Shure Aonic 3 take the prize there. But I did find that sounds like typing and office chatter were dulled to a pretty commendable degree, and that’s going to be key for gigging musicians, for example. I also found that, with the right seal, the DT 30 IE were supremely comfortable and secure, making them ideal for longer listening sessions. They’re also nice and small, which I prefer over the chunky approach some rivals go for.

It’s also worth noting that the cable for the DT 30 IE is detachable, so you can swap this out for an aftermarket MMCX cable if you’d prefer. The cable itself is built to a really nice standard, though, and it produced next to no cable noise when I tried taking the buds on the go.

The IEMs themselves, however, don’t quite exude the same sense of premium build quality. They have a translucent look, enabling you to make out the drivers inside, but the casing feels a bit overly plasticky. I’m not expecting ultra-premium materials at this price point, but I do think some rivals in this price-range look a bit more luxurious — the Meze Audio Alba spring to mind.

So are the Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE worth the money? Overall, I’d say yes. They provide good sound quality with impressive bass and solid clarity across the frequency range, as well as a lightweight and comfortable build, and decent passive noise isolation. All of that for $149.99 / £99 / AU$199 isn’t half bad.

What I would argue, however, is that you can get slightly more detailed, nuanced sound — and slightly better build quality — in this general price range. The Sennheiser IE 200 and Meze Audio Alba, in my opinion, offer superior performance at a very similar cost, and I’d suggest checking those out before pulling the trigger on the DT 30 IE, as good as they are.

Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE review: price & release date

• List price of $149.99 / £99 / AU$199
• Released in June 2026

The Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE are priced at $149.99 / £99 / AU$199, meaning they’re certainly sitting in the affordable domain within the IEMs world.

I’ve personally reviewed a number of competitors in this range, including the Sennheiser IE 200, Meze Audio Alba, Activo Scoop, and Shure SE215.

The DT 30 IE were released in June 2026, and are available in a single white colorway.

Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE review: specs

Should I buy the Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE review: also consider

How I tested the Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE

• Tested over the course of two weeks
• Mainly tested using Tidal
• Paired with Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000

I spent a couple of weeks using the Beyerdynamic DT 30 IE, and hours upon hours listening to music. Typically, I had the DT 30 IE hooked up to the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 media player, though I did also try them out with my Windows laptop.

To begin with, I sifted through tracks in the TechRadar reference playlist, which features tunes from a wide variety of genres, but I also bumped a bunch of songs from my personal library. I also made sure to compare the DT 30 IE to affordable IEM rivals like the Sennheiser IE 200.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, where I serve as an in-house Senior Reviews Writer. I’ve covered everything from portable DACs through to premium wireless headphones such as the Sony WH-1000XM6, and have reviewed a number of IEMs, meaning I know exactly what it takes for a model to stand out in a competitive market.

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

• REGENT Viceroy Seaglider has completed its first human-crewed flight above Narragansett Bay
• The electric craft flew 1,956 feet during its first crewed test
• Viceroy can shift between floating, hydrofoiling, and low-altitude flight modes

REGENT Craft has completed the first crewed flight of its Viceroy Seaglider, advancing development of an electric vessel designed for coastal transport.

The prototype carried two captains during a 30-second test above Narragansett Bay, reaching 33 ft while travelling 1,956 ft.

REGENT says the flight marks the largest human-carrying all-electric wing-in-ground-effect craft to complete such a test.

First crewed flight tests an unusual transport concept

Viceroy combines a boat-like hull, underwater foils, and wings, allowing it to shift between water travel and low-altitude flight.

At low speeds, the craft remains afloat before hydrofoils lift its hull and prepare it for flight above the surface.

During test flight, the vehicle remains close to the water, operating within one wingspan of the surface rather than climbing conventionally.

"Completing this flight test validates years of rigorous engineering and operational work and gives us the confidence to move into full-rate production,” said Mike Klinker, co-founder and CTO at REGENT.

“We showed today that flying a Seaglider is every bit as smooth and safe as we designed it to be.”

REGENT says the production model will carry 12 passengers and two crew, with a maximum takeoff weight of 15,000 lbs.

Its planned flight speed reaches 180 mph, while its stated range extends to 180 miles between coastal destinations.

The company says passengers will have large windows, substantial legroom, and lower cabin noise than conventional aircraft during travel.

The craft uses a three-layer digital control system intended to manage stability while allowing mariners to operate it like watercraft.

REGENT says certified mariners will captain the vessels, while United States Coast Guard rules will govern operations within American waters.

Commercial plans expand alongside defence work

These vessels are designed for coastal routes, where existing ports could support operations without conventional airport infrastructure.

About 40% of the global population lives in coastal communities, providing a large potential market for such services.

At the moment, the company has booked orders spanning six continents, while manufacturing capacity has been reserved across several future production years.

Earlier this year, REGENT announced an agreement involving The Twenty Five, which ordered as many as 60 Viceroy vessels.

The arrangement would make the operator REGENT's first United States delivery and launch partner for commercial Seaglider services.

Military versions for logistics, medical evacuation, surveillance missions, and other maritime applications requiring rapid movement are in development

The company holds a $15 million agreement with the United States Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory for related development work.

REGENT completed construction of a 255,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Rhode Island during June, with production activities beginning this year.

The facility is intended for structural assembly, wing and foil fitting, battery installation, systems work, and water-based testing.

“This is the moment we have been envisioning and tirelessly pursuing for the past five and a half years: REGENT has successfully proven safe, efficient ground-effect flight,” said Billy Thalheimer, co-founder and CEO at REGENT.

• AI data centers currently use a huge amount of energy
• Scientists have found a way to cut that energy bill by "orders of magnitude"
• It involves using "ultrafast magnetic-field pulses" in RAM and storage

It’s no secret that the current artificial intelligence (AI) boom is leading to record levels of energy consumption — all that computing power needs to be fueled somehow — and it’s causing much controversy among the communities that are impacted whenever a new data center lays down its roots in their neighborhoods.

Now, though, scientists think they’ve come across a way that could radically slash the energy requirements of memory and storage, with potentially massive consequences for the future of the computing and AI industries.

In a paper published in the Advanced Materials journal (via a press release in Science Daily), researchers at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland wrote that the breakthrough would fundamentally affect the way magnetic memory operates. Right now, switching its state allows magnetic memory to control digital information, but the current methods of doing so can be costly in terms of energy.

Instead of using standard energy switching techniques, the researchers discovered an alternative that harnessed ultrafast magnetic field pulses that consumed far less energy. In fact, the paper claimed that the authors’ approach could cut energy usage by “up to two orders of magnitude” — in other words, a cut of around 100x, which is a significant reduction.

The data centers of the future

The AI revolution is only a few years old, but data center energy consumption has already become a significant issue. As the authors of the research paper put it, “Without significant improvements in efficiency, [information and communication technologies] could eventually represent a sizable share of worldwide electricity consumption and carbon emissions.” AI is playing a large role in that trend thanks to both its voracious appetite for component production and the sizable emissions it produces.

While the paper focused on magnetic memory, its theories could be applied to other fields, the authors believe. As study writer Dr. Elton J.G. Santos put it, “The same framework can be adapted to electrical currents and even ultrafast laser pulses, which are among the most cutting-edge technologies for future data storage. That means the ideas developed here could have applications far beyond the systems we studied.”

Although the research is still in the realm of theory, the paper’s authors proposed a number of practical steps that could help others build prototypes and conduct experiments.

That said, don’t expect monumental changes any time soon. There is still a long road ahead before these ideas get put into practice, if they ever do. But given the promising results of the scientists’ work, there is hope that the data centers of the future could be far less energy-intensive than those of today.

• GPUThor is the first Rowhammer attack to defeat ECC on Nvidia GPUs and reach a root shell on the host
• It affects four Ampere workstation cards with GDDR6 memory, the RTX A4000, A4500, A5000 and A6000
• Non-uniform hammering, enabled by defeating GPU memory coalescing and finding that Target Row Refresh (TRR) mitigations fire once every 72 refresh intervals, delivers effectively 6.6 times the hammering intensity of prior attacks

Four researchers at the University of Toronto have disclosed GPUThor, a Rowhammer technique that breaks the error correction Nvidia has spent the past year recommending as the defense against exactly this class of attack.

Chris S. Lin, Joyce Qu, Aditya Rajeev and Gururaj Saileshwar are expected to present the paper outlining their approach and subsequent findings at ACM CCS 2026.

The attacks target Ampere-generation workstation cards with GDDR6 memory, specifically the RTX A4000, A4500, A5000 and A6000, and it turns an unprivileged CUDA program into a root shell on the host.

An attack that matters much more than its predecessors

Rowhammer works by repeatedly activating a DRAM row until charge leaks from cells in the physically adjacent rows and flips their bits. The attacker never touches the victim's data directly, making it an excellent precursor to tampering, sandbox escape, and privilege escalation, among other things.

This approach is possible despite an in-chip countermeasure called TRR that accompanies ECC-enabled chips on these GPUs. TRR aims to prevent Rowhammer attacks by tracking how frequently specific memory rows are activated and automatically refreshing adjacent rows before a malicious bit flip can occur.

This approach works well on paper and, when Rowhammer attacks hammer uniformly, offers decent protection. The problem arises when approaches such as GPUThor use non-uniform hammering, which is much more likely to succeed. Non-uniform hammering is not exactly new, having already succeeded on the CPU side of the spectrum thanks to the well-documented Blacksmith attack vector.

GPUThor is the third attack from broadly the same group in eighteen months, following GPUHammer in 2025 and GPUBreach earlier this year, and it matters because the previous two stopped working the moment a user typed the command to enable ECC.

ECC was essentially Nvidia's go-to response to reported Rowhammer attacks, but it may no longer be a solution in its current state. By hammering non-uniformly, the researchers opened another attack vector for Nvidia's Ampere-based GPUs, which are overwhelmingly affected by the technique.

With ECC disabled, GPUThor produced 72,000 to 377,000 bit flips per gigabyte across four Ampere-based cards, with Nvidia's A5000 being reported as the most vulnerable. That approaches the roughly 550,000 flips per gigabyte that Blacksmith achieves on DDR4, which is cause for concern: GPU Rowhammer is now in the same league as CPU Rowhammer.

When enabled, the researchers said ECC protectors reduced, but did not completely mitigate, the issue: they delivered double-bit errors and 2 triple-bit errors that the technique 'fixed' by choosing the wrong value.

On an RTX A6000 with ECC enabled, the GPUThor technique forces one GPU reset every 2 hours, killing all running processes on the GPU; as a result, the GPU flags itself as RMA-read within a day.

The team disclosed the attack pattern to Nvidia on 29 April 2026 and subsequently to Google, Microsoft and AWS, and held the work until the 25th of August. A code release is scheduled for the 15th of November, even though there is currently no CVE information or patch being deployed to address the issue.

• Wordfence discloses two critical flaws in Elementor Pro and Super Forms
• Bugs allow unauthenticated arbitrary file uploads, enabling remote code execution; both patched recently
• Exploitation attempts already exceed 440,000

More than six million WordPress users are at risk of website takeover, researchers have claimed after discovering two major vulnerabilities being exploited in the wild.

Security researchers Wordfence disclosed finding two flaws, one in Elementor Pro, and one in Super Forms - two popular WordPress plugins.

Elementor Pro is a commercial plugin that allows users to build websites using drag-and-drop elements instead of code. With it, they can add advanced widgets, templates, different forms, popups, and more. It is quite a popular solution with more than six million websites actively using it.

Two bugs, hundreds of thousands of attacks

According to Wordfence, up until recently, it was vulnerable to an “unrestricted file type upload” bug in all versions up to, and including, 4.2.1. “This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to upload files that may be executable, which makes remote code execution possible,” the researchers explained. “This requires that the targeted site has published a page containing an Elementor Pro Form widget with at least one non-required File Upload field.”

The bug is tracked as CVE-2026-32475, carries a severity score of 9.8/10 (critical), and was patched in mid-August 2026. So far, Wordfence alone blocked more than 190,000 exploit attempts.

At roughly the same time, the researchers also reported finding a flaw in Super Forms, a form builder plugin that lets users create and manage forms using a drag-and-drop interface. This plugin, with some 13,000 active installations, contained a bug that allowed arbitrary file upload in all versions up to, and including, 6.3.313.

“This makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to upload files that may be executable, which makes remote code execution possible,” the researchers explained.

This one is tracked as CVE-2026-14894, also carries a severity score of 9.8/10 (critical) and it, too, was patched a few weeks ago. For this flaw, Wordfence observed more than 250,000 exploitation attempts meaning that cumulatively, these two resulted in 440,000 attacks already.

Given the widespread adoption of these plugins, and the fact that the flaws are being actively leveraged, users are advised to apply the fixes without delay.

Via The Hacker News

Honkai: Nexus Anima feels like a logical evolution of Hoyoverse's ambitions to create its own take on a range of beloved games or genres. If Genshin Impact was its open-world action RPG à la Breath of the Wild, and Honkai: Star Rail was its take on Final Fantasy-style turn-based RPGs, then Nexus Anima is its twist on the creature collector.

Although the game has had two closed betas already, my first chance to get hands-on with Honkai: Nexus Anima was at Gamescom 2026.

If much attention on Hoyoverse was on how it's pivoting away from its trademark anime aesthetic, following the reveal of its newest project, Nodusfall, at Gamescom Opening Night Live, then upcoming titles Honkai: Nexus Anima and cozy life sim Petit Planet are there to reassure you that the company isn't changing what it does wholesale.

Anime auto-battling

At first glance, I even thought Honkai: Nexus Anima looked remarkably similar to Genshin Impact when my character loaded into a bright and colourful city location.

If you jump from a high point, you can also open a glider to get around similarly. The difference is that this city also has creatures standing or roaming around known as Anima, and if I want to, I could just approach one to engage in a battle, a somewhat more polite approach than catching Pokémon in long grass.

Yet the Nexus battles of this game also differ from Pokemon, as instead of turn-based battles, you assemble your team of Anima in a top-down arena in auto-battles like Team Fight Tactics. I must admit that the concept of auto-battlers isn't something I'm used to, because other than where you place your Anima on the board, all that seems to be left is to just start the battle and leave them to it.

It probably doesn't help that the build I was trying at Gamescom already gave me a huge roster of high-level Anima, which made the battles I engaged in a cakewalk in which I couldn't discern any kind of strategy.

That said, you can also equip up to three cooldown-based ability cards belonging to allies, which you can just drag and drop into the arena, some to target one enemy causing you a problem, while some have a handy AoE to make the battle end even quicker.

Still, if you're to scrutinize the stats of each Anima beyond their familiar designs, they're categorized into more unusual and abstract classes known as Aspects, which differ from the elemental varieties of a typical RPG. For example, there are Anima that are associated with Love, Satiation, Pride, and Reality.

I couldn't tell you what any of that means, but I respect that Hoyoverse is in fact trying to do something a little different, while even their Anima designs, from a boxing poached egg to a sentient wind chime, aren't just copying Game Freak's homework.

Gotta gacha 'em all

Obviously, a creature-collecting game with gacha elements is a cause for concern, especially for players compelled to spend money in order to get the five-star Anima.

While that wasn't something I could speak to in the Gamescom demo, my concern was more that it's possible to defeat an Anima and then bond with them so that they join you. To do this requires using certain resources to entice them, and you only have a handful of attempts to do this before they run away, prompting the dilemma of whether to spend money to obtain the item that guarantees a 100% bonding result.

Outside of the auto-battling, the demo also placed me just outside the town's Nexus hall for what seemed to be the beginning of a qualifier for an upcoming Nexus championship, which is, of course, very Pokémon as well. Before I could enter the qualifier, however, I also needed to obtain certain numbered badges belonging to other competitors that I had to find and fight.

Hoyoverse has a knack for populating its worlds with lots of characters and lore, and Honkai: Nexus Anima seems no different, given the characters whose abilities you'll be able to summon during your Nexus battles. It's also having a bit of fun with the narrative in sillier ways, and I don't just mean one character called Mr. No, who will only reply to you with 'No', which is ripe for exploitation.

What ended up catching my attention unexpectedly is the voiced second-person narration that occasionally occurs. While it's used for conveying your thoughts, when it's a posh-sounding omniscient male voice, it almost gives me the vibe of Baldur's Gate 3's narrator.

Whether that is the intent, I can't really say at this point, though, given its backstory of a cataclysmic event called The Sundering or being greeted by someone with a bread for a head at the beginning of its closed beta, a coherent story is probably not on the priority list.

Honkai: Nexus Anima is coming to PC, iOS, and Android. Pre-registrations are open now.

I want to talk about Magnus Carlsen. That’s right, the chess genius who even laypeople like me know about because of how good he is. He’s leagues beyond anyone else. You would’ve thought the room for improvement in today’s world would be marginal given the game is over 500 years old, but no: somehow, someone in our lifetime is a streak ahead of any past or current human being.

The thing is, though, he’s not the best chess player. Not even close. That honor goes to Stockfish, the chess computer that’s many, many times better. To put it into perspective, Carlsen’s peak ELO rating — the preeminent ranking system for chess players — is 2,882. Stockfish is estimated to be somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000.

Now, there is a championship exclusively for chess computers, but human players are still the main draw, despite their relative inferiority. Is this because we inherently want to see human endeavors and activities rather than anything involving a computer mind?

All this brings me to the recent comments made by Tim Willits, Chief Creative Officer at Saber Interactive. In a recent interview with Eurogamer, he remained steadfastly bullish about generative AI, a surprising move given the recent controversy stoked by Saber’s CEO Matthew Karch for saying he’d have been happy to replace Stella Sacco, one of the writers on its upcoming title Rideshare "Stimulator", with AI.

Most companies would beat a hasty retreat and enter damage control mode, but not Saber, it seems — Willits claimed that “someone will make something that will change people's minds” about the tech, something like the “Half-Life 2 of AI”.

"Half-Life 2 of AI"

Willits admits that his is a “silly example”, but his point remains that sooner or later, a game made entirely or in large part by AI will be too good for players to pass up, converting the naysayers in the process. But I’m not sure I share his optimism.

In a short time, AI has already irked gamers to no end. Putting AI slop aside, think of all the high-flying titles it’s negatively impacted: the generated assets in Crimson Desert, DLSS 5’s unsolicited makeover of Resident Evil: Requiem’s Grace Ashcroft, and the gen-AI disclosure of the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis (not to mention the uncomfortable moment a vigilant PR interrupted a Game Informer interview with the game’s Experience Director when he was asked about using such tools).

It's true that as gamers, we’ve had to contend with a lot of unsavory elements in the industry that leave a bad taste in the mouth. From the mass layoffs and treatment of developers to the wider threat it poses to the climate, with discarded components contributing to e-waste and the vast amounts of resources required to produce and power systems and servers.

But AI seems to exacerbate these issues, sending them into overdrive. It has the potential to make even more developers redundant, and the amount of energy required to run such models is scarcely believable, far beyond any consumption hitherto seen in the computing world.

Perhaps this is why AI is touching a nerve with not just gamers, but the general population, and why many are reluctant to play games where it’s been involved?

Putting these concerns aside, though, could AI actually make games as good as Half-Life 2 in the future? In theory, I can see the potential for AI to speed up development, but for now, it seems best at making mistakes and creating soulless art and assets. There’s evidence to suggest that it’s actually slowing down developers, in other industries at least.

Maybe it will get to the point where these issues will be ironed out, and it’ll create astonishingly original and mechanically flawless titles. Heck, DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassibis thinks we’re already in the “foothills of the singularity”, let alone the tech being used to create something as trivial as a decent videogame. In fact, it would be interesting to see Hassibis program a tool for the purpose, given his former life as a dev at Bullfrog and Lionhead.

But let’s imagine it could one day make a bona fide ten-out-of-ten — what would the cost be to devs and the environment? And would we as gamers actually be content to play such a title, or do we inherently want to experience exclusively human endeavors, like watching two people on either side of a chessboard?

I recently polled our readers about their biggest concerns in the games industry. Among the options was the use of gen-AI in game development, but it didn’t rank highly.

It was a long way below the death of physical media — understandable, given the recent news of Sony’s decision to scrap discs, but still a surprise to me. It was also less concerning than the RAM crisis, but more so than layoffs and studio closures.

So here’s another one for you. What do you think about a ‘Half-Life 2 of AI’? Would you play such a game, or steer clear? Or is such a thing a mere pipe dream of Corpos at the big studios? If you want to elaborate on your answers, feel free to comment below, too.

Can AI-driven NAS tech be sentimental? UGreen CEO Samuel Zhang seems to think so.

Launching the company’s new smart-home technology suite, he started by recounting a personal story. It was a hot summer’s day, and his family gathered in the backyard for a barbecue. They cooked together, chatted, played, and just had a genuinely fantastic time. But weeks later, when Zhang went to check his photo gallery and relive that cherished day, he was left feeling disappointed. The family hadn't taken any photos.

This, he said, got him thinking about home cameras — devices that are typically used for security. But, Zhang said, “it [a home camera] should see more than just danger — it should also be able to witness the joys of everyday family life”. And this, he said, was one of the key points of inspiration for UGreen’s new suite of local smart-home AI technology.

I got the chance to hear about, and see, UGreen’s home hubs, cameras, digital photo frames and more at IFA 2026 in Berlin. Here’s what I learned — and how the technology could transform the smart home.

Keeping it local

At the heart of UGreen’s smart-home suite is the new HomeAgent. This is an ‘agentic AI local hub' that brings local storage, computing, and control all together in a single device. Through this hub, users can connect up a range of UGreen AIoT devices, such as cameras, smart speakers, and digital photo frames, plus some select third-party products.

A crucial part of the HomeAgent’s appeal is its reliance on local storage and computing. This means that any data that runs through your hub — be that photos, videos, voice inputs, or other files — is processed locally, rather than through a corporate cloud server.

At a time when trust in large corporations is strikingly low, and major data breaches seem all too common, this could be a massive selling point for security-savvy customers. Keeping data local also removes the need for costly Cloud subscriptions, making the initial investment feel that bit more worthwhile.

There are three HomeAgent models scheduled for release. The first is the UGreen HomeAgent HA100, which is the most basic option. It provides all of the core functions you’d need from the hub, but offers slightly less processing power, memory, and storage, among other things, than its siblings. The HA100 Pro is the step-up model, which offers heightened performance, with 205 TOPS (as opposed to the standard HA100’s 26 TOPS), a 10GbE LAN port (compared to the HA100’s 2.5GbE), and a more advanced CPU.

The final boss, if you will, of the HomeAgent trio is the MA100. This is powered by the NVIDIA Jetson Thor T5000, and offers far superior AI performance to the other two models, and considerably more memory and storage.

However, this is certainly reflected in the price, with the MA100 commanding a list price of $19,999, compared to the HA100 Pro, which costs $5,999 and the HA100 at $1,799. Early bird offers are available, which make the HomeAgents about half-price across the board. Shipping is set to commence in early 2027.

AIoT in action

So what does UGreen’s smart home AIoT tech look like in person? Well, pretty impressive.

I was able to check out a demo, and take a closer look at all of the HomeAgent products, and other devices you can connect up to it. UGreen had a HomeAgent connected to a smart speaker, and a camera, among other things.

I tried walking towards a door, and a UGreen smart security camera started blaring after I walked past a certain point, telling me that I was on private property. This data is processed locally through the HomeAgent, so if you ask your connected smart speaker about any unusual activity, it can tell you if anyone approached your door, whether that was a delivery worker, or something more nefarious.

The smart speaker UGreen showed off has a new AI assistant, named Uliya. You can use the smart speaker to do just about anything around your home. You can ask Uliya to remind you of where you were at a specific time, to close the curtains, to play music, or even to identify the location of your pet and cast a live video feed. The functionality you get will vary depending on how invested you are in UGreen’s AIoT ecosystem, but the capabilities are pretty broad.

You can also ask Uliya to give you a summary of captured events throughout the day, display memories on a UGreen smart photo frame in real time, or to show you highlights from a special day — circling back to Zhang’s desire to revive memories that had been lost in time. One function I really liked was the ability to create an Away mode, so that when you step out of the house, lights will turn off, curtains will close, and a robovac will get to work.

UGreen’s new HomeAgents appear to be incredibly capable, feature-rich, and innovative products, and their local handling of data could be game changing for some households. At the product launch, Zhang said “In the future, we hope every family can have a HomeAgent”; and it'll be interesting to see how families adopt such tech moving forward.

• G7 urges governments and organizations to begin transitioning to quantum‑resistant encryption
• Warning highlights risk from future quantum computers able to break current standards like AES
• Guidance: inventory cryptographic assets, prioritize critical systems, and adopt phased PQC strategies

The G7, a collection of some of the world’s most powerful economies, is urging organizations to adopt quantum-resistant encryption as soon as possible and minimize the risk of losing sensitive data to technologically advanced threat actors.

Virtually every industry in the world today relies on encryption (the process of converting readable data into scrambled, unreadable data so that only someone with the correct key can decode and access it) to protect sensitive information. Banks, telecommunications providers, defense organizations, and practically everyone else are using some form of encryption - most probably AES (Advanced Encryption Standard).

Decrypting the protected data without the encryption key is considered almost impossible, since the computational effort necessary to pull it off would simply be too large. However, since quantum computers work on a fundamentally different principle, it is believed that once they are mature enough, they will be able to “crack” today’s encryption standards.

G7's advice

Now, the G7 has urged government and organizations to remain ahead of the curve by deploying “quantum-resistant encryption”:

“To protect themselves from the threat brought by CRQCs (cryptographically relevant quantum computers), organizations should begin planning their PQC transition now and should aim to complete their transitions within any the timelines set out by their national cybersecurity authorities,” the warning reads.

“In addition to quantum-related risks, organizations that delay their PQC transition may lose competitive advantage or may be excluded from contracting opportunities, including public procurement.”

The G7 advises governments and organizations to take a number of steps, including identifying critical systems and prioritizing them. They should adopt a phased and risk-based strategy, start their transition early, and inventory their cryptographic assets. They should also map their dependencies and develop a transition plan.

“To limit transition-related costs, they should opt to purchase products that integrate PQC and replace their systems with quantum-safe ones as part of their standard renewal schedule. As such, starting the transition early could result in lower migration costs overall. Planning and conducting their PQC transition properly would enable organizations to prevent insecure implementations and avoid increased exposure to conventional cyber threats.”

The second half of Ted Lasso season 4 is about to begin. Indeed, with five chapters down and another five to go, the past seven days have — to use a soccer analogy — been like an overly long half-time interval.

Thankfully, the referee is about to blow their whistle and restart proceedings, so you'll want to know when you need to retake your seat before things get underway again. And, with this week's entry being another festive season-set installment, you might even start getting into the Christmas spirit a few months early.

Here, then, is when the next episode of Ted Lasso will make its bow.

What is the launch time for Ted Lasso season 4 episode 6?

Ted Lasso season 4's next entry should be released at 6pm PT / 9pm ET on Tuesday, September 8 in the US and Canada. Each of its five predecessors have dropped at those times over the last five Tuesdays, so there's no reason to suspect this week's episode won't do the same.

As for when it'll air on Apple TV, aka one of the best streaming services, in other countries, the soccer comedy-drama's forthcoming chapter will premiere on Wednesday, September 9. Here's a rundown of the launch times you need to be aware of:

• US — Tuesday, September 8 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• Canada — Tuesday, September 8 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• UK — Wednesday, September 9 at 2am BST
• India — Wednesday, September 9 at 6:30am IST
• Singapore — Wednesday, September 9 at 9am SGT
• Australia — Wednesday, September 9 at 11am AEST
• New Zealand — Wednesday, September 9 at 1pm NZST

What is the full release schedule for Ted Lasso season 4?

New episodes of the multi-award-winning Apple TV Original will air every Tuesday in North and South America, and every Wednesday on other continents, until this season's finale comes out in early October.

Read the list below to see when the remaining chapters will debut near you:

• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 1 — out now
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 2 — out now
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 3 — out now
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 4 — out now
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 5 — out now
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 6 — September 8/9
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 7 — September 15/16
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 8 — September 22/23
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 9 — September 29/30
• Ted Lasso season 4 episode 10 — October 6/7

Backrooms is one of 2026's best horror movies, as well as being A24's highest grossing movie to date. So it's no surprise that we're about to venture back into the Creepypasta universe, following on from its huge success.

Backrooms found a streaming home on HBO Max, but it sounds like we're not stopping there. According to reports via Dread Central, Kane Parsons has signed on to do a Backrooms sequel, which is simply being referred to as Backrooms 2.

A24 has not officially confirmed this in a press release or social media post, so we will have to wait patiently to see what the studio has to say about it.

So right now, Backrooms 2 is still considered to be in very early stages. But there's plenty of opportunity to develop the story considering how big The Backrooms is. I'm actually feeling quite hopeful about a new follow up movie.

In my Backrooms review, I struggled to find any flaws with the first movie because personally, I thought it was really well done. Kane Parsons had the opportunity to bring his YouTube series and take on the lore to life, alongside some well-known actors like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, and I'm sure he has plenty more ideas to unleash.

Backrooms and Obsession both dominated the box office for a while, proving that audiences are still excited about horror movies. If another Backrooms movie is in the works, I'm keen to see how well it performs against its predecessor.

Recently, Backrooms has inspired other upcoming movies, with studios and directors now diving back into classic Creepypastas for inspiration. One of these is the upcoming Warner Bros movie Siren Head, which is set to adapt Trevor Henderson's creation.

Creepypasta stories and online lore seem to be a huge inspiration for horror movies at the moment, and there's plenty for us to look forward to over the coming months.

If you're looking for something to watch right now, I recommend checking out my feature on horror movies to stream in September 2026.

The first episode of The Real Housewives of London season 2 is now streaming exclusively on Hayu — and as one of the lucky few who got to watch the premiere with the Housewives themselves, I can confirm that it's an absolute riot.

It goes without saying that arguments and ever-changing alliances are part and parcel of the format, but fans are likely to be incredibly surprised with just who is chummy with who when season 2 picks up.

Amanda Caroline Cronin and Juliet Angus' infamous "back to Paddington" feud has held strong, but #Lipgate, a clash stemming from Panthea Parker getting lip treatments done at Amanda's clinic and being unhappy with the result, seems to have been smoothed over.

Nobody is more shocked at the seemingly stable Amanda-Panthea friendship than Parker herself, who initially teased that fans would be shocked at just how much friendships have changed between seasons on the Hayu Presents... podcast.

After speaking to her and fellow Housewife Karen Loderick-Peace, I'm surprised they've kept up with who is and isn't getting on.

'You have to take us for who we are here and not listen to gossip'

"Very," Parker responds when I ask her if she's as surprised by what happens in season 2 as fans are set to be. "Especially between me and Amanda. We left the season and I thought I really got to know her, and when at the reunion, she had said, 'You have to take us for who we are here, and not listen to gossip, but not listen to everything that you've heard,' we then really built on that friendship. I think me and her got very close throughout when we weren't filming.

"Coming back, I was a bit shocked at that. Now... I'm just in a place where I think, 'Well, actually, everything everybody said was true, and why should you take people as they are?' If you go to get a plumber, or a good school, you would go and fine one with good recommendations."

"Sadly, that's not how it works in a friendship group," Loderick-Peace adds.

From episode 1, you might think this remark is a little strange. In the season 2 premiere, we see Panthea and Amanda as thick as thieves, even going so far as to go out to lunch with fellow Housewife Nessie Welschinger without so much as a harsh word shared between them. Jokes and non-alcoholic cocktails are flowing, and the vibes are good.

But while we haven't seen the real of RHOL season 2 yet, the trailer alone tells us that the tide is going to turn once again. In my favorite clip of the reality TV series that's been released yet, we see Amanda and Panthea having lunch in a rooftop restaurant, with Panthea saying, "You have Ryanair customer service, and I'm used to flying first class."

When other diners look over to where the pair are loudly arguing, Panthea apologises before adding, "The lady is a tramp." Oof.

What got us to this point is something that I do not know, but if Real Housewives is anything to go by, the catalyst could literally have been anything. Strap in for a turbulent time, is my advice.

• US military branches disable ad tracking on government‑issued devices after warning
• Location data from personal devices still poses risks; past data remains for sale
• Senators urge DoD inspector general to review policies and stop servicemember data exposure

More than 20 years ago, Jason Bourne was smashing mobile phones to prevent being tracked by his adversaries - and the US Department of Defense (DoD) has realized it should probably do something similar.

In May 2026, Senator Ron Wyden mailed the DoD (among others), informing the agency that foreign powers were using commercial location data to target US troops - and now, Wyden has shared the responses he received from the US Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and Special Operations Command, all of which have disabled advertising tracking across their government-issued devices, including Apple and Android smartphones, and Windows computers.

Some branches did it earlier this year, while the Air Force allegedly concluded the efforts in July 2026 - and while Wyden praised the move, he also suggested it is not enough, and that further steps must be taken in order to protect US troops stationed abroad.

Evaluating the leaked files

“We commend these service branches for implementing this cybersecurity defensive best practice on government devices,” Wyden and Senator Pat Harrigan wrote. “However, recent reports regarding the continued availability of commercial location data originating from DoD facilities raise troubling questions.”

Apparently, despite disabling these features and placing the troops out of reach of data brokers and similar commercial entities, the data that was gathered earlier remains available for sale, which still presents a risk.

“The members suggested data could continue to be available for several reasons, including that commercial data available originates from personal devices, not government phones, that are carried by servicemembers and government contractors,” a report on Wyden’s website reads.

“Wyden and Harrigan called on the DOD inspector general to examine commercial location data that DOD and other government agencies have already purchased to determine why existing policies have not prevented servicemembers location data from being sold online, and to recommend policy changes to better protect US personnel.”

Via TechCrunch

• Utah temporarily suspended its new age-verification rules for adult sites while a legal challenge is underway
• Sites are liable for verifying local users, even if they use a VPN to mask their location
• The lawsuit brought by Pornhub's parent, Aylo, cites technical flaws and privacy risks

Utah has become the first state in the US to enact legislation explicitly targeting the use of VPNs to bypass age-verification gates on adult websites. However, the state's authorities have agreed to temporarily halt enforcement while a legal challenge plays out in federal court.

According to a report from Engadget, Utah's Department of Commerce confirmed it will not enforce the measure, which officially went into effect on Thursday, September 3, against adult websites while it waits for a federal judge to rule.

The delay stems from a lawsuit brought by Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, which has argued that the mandate creates an unworkable technical standard for online platforms.

The temporary pause offers a sigh of relief for digital privacy advocates who feared the legislation could fundamentally compromise how the best VPN services operate.

By targeting the privacy tools themselves rather than just the content, VPN providers have previously told TechRadar that Utah’s strict new law threatens to catch millions of innocent users in its crosshairs.

NEW: Leave No Trace — A weekly newsletter on digital privacy and online surveillance.

Leave No Trace investigates the companies and governments putting our digital freedom at risk — and the people fighting back.

📩 Subscribe now to get every edition delivered to your inbox every Friday, launching this September.

Why enforcement is on hold

Formally known as the Online Age Verification Amendments (SB 73), the measure was originally meant to take effect in May. However, the initial rollout was paused after Aylo challenged the law in federal court, prompting Utah to delay enforcement.

At a hearing on Thursday, the presiding judge stated that "he could not commit to when he would issue a ruling," as reported by Fox 13 News.

Until a decision is reached, the state has agreed to an enforcement truce with Aylo, leaving the law in a state of legal limbo.

Aylo has been one of the most vocal opponents of age-verification mandates across the US, previously pulling Pornhub out of multiple states rather than comply with laws it claims create a "substantial risk" for user privacy.

TechRadar has reached out to Aylo for comment on the ongoing litigation and will update this article if we hear back.

The core issues with Utah’s VPN law

Utah's legislation attempts to close a geographical loophole, but, according to VPN experts, it creates a technical whack-a-mole in the process.

Under the law, an individual is considered to be accessing a website from Utah if they are physically located in the state, regardless of whether they are using a virtual private network (VPN) or proxy server to spoof their location. The legislation also prohibits websites hosting "a substantial portion of material harmful to minors" from sharing instructions on how to use a VPN to bypass age checks.

The fundamental issue is that a VPN’s entire purpose is to encrypt internet traffic and mask a user's true physical location. Websites simply have no reliable way to verify if a user connecting from a server in Germany is actually sitting in Salt Lake City.

Privacy groups warn this creates an impossible standard. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) explained, the legal risks could force websites "to mandate age verification for every visitor globally."

"This would subject millions of users to invasive identity checks or blocks to their VPN use, regardless of where they actually live," EFF wrote.

For now, the enforcement freeze means VPN users in Utah are safe from the immediate fallout, but the digital rights community remains on high alert as the court battle continues.

• OpenAI hid an incident where a model hijacked a wiki page to use as an AI agent communication board
• The incident was hidden while the company dealt with the fallout of the Hugging Face attack
• The company is now working on a framework for disclosing incidents of 'misalignment'

OpenAI recently disclosed the details of how one of its AI models escaped a sandboxed environment and attacked Hugging Face during an evaluation - and as part of the incident, the models created a messaging board to communicate with each other and influence each other’s reasoning.

OpenAI has now disclosed that shortly after this incident, agents undergoing testing again escaped their ‘secured’ environment and hijacked an obscure German wiki to use as a messaging board. Per Reuters, OpenAI leadership kept the incident hidden while they dealt with the fallout from the Hugging Face incident.

Now that OpenAI has acknowledged its role in the incident, the company has said it is “past time” to put together an incident disclosure pipeline when its models escape testing and slip into third-party networks.

Who is at fault when models do what they’re designed to do?

Before the two incidents, OpenAI said it, “treated misalignment largely as a research question, which gets communicated in research publications”. But now that models are behaving in previously unknown ways and having real-world impacts, the company said it would change its approach “to expand for this new phase of model capabilities”.

The company labelled the most recently disclosed incident as “an instance of misalignment similar” to the Hugging Face breach.

I myself am guilty of reporting on AI breaking out of containment as going ‘rogue’, but these models are doing exactly what they are designed to do. OpenAI’s detailed disclosure of the Hugging Face incident showed that the models were pushed to try and solve a benchmark test by cheating, which is exactly what caused the cyberattack to happen.

OpenAI said that both itself and “the larger AI community do not yet have a clear standard for how to report misalignment that shows up during training, evaluation, and deployment, including examples that don’t look like traditional security incidents but could provide insight into AI behavior and future risks”.

The company added that it is “working on a framework and will share it in upcoming weeks, and in parallel we’re working with dozens of government regulatory agencies worldwide on these issues”.

“When you combine this 'breakout' with the Hugging face breakout, it's starting to display a pattern,” said Ashley Knowles, Lead Cybersecurity Consultant at Black Hills Information Security. “I struggle here with not getting too doomsday-ish but realistically, this is showing a pattern of concerning behavior.”

“I'm wondering if this race to become 'first' is undercutting security measures that need to be taken to properly secure and guard AI agents as they're in development. My concern grows when you consider that OpenAI is also resisting further investigation. Adding onto that, the release and promise that Astra can evade human monitoring. The pot is brewing…”

• GPT-6 Astra has arrived, and it's being called AGI
• This includes by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
• Huang's celebratory X post also promotes Nvidia's GPUs, saying we need to get 400K of them online

Over the weekend, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to social media to celebrate OpenAI’s latest achievement — “AGI has arrived” in the form of GPT-6 Astra. And of course it was developed using over 100,000 NVIDIA GPUs.

According to OpenAI, Astra represents a "significant step forward" for AI, with OpenAI's president Greg Brockman also saying "welcome to the AGI era" as Astra was debuted — with the company promising that GPT-6 boasts incredible aptitude at tasks across software engineering, science, mathematics, and professional workflows.

It’s also said to be much better at agentic work, meaning you can delegate tasks to GPT-6 with less fear that the AI will misunderstand your intent as it works independently.

We haven’t yet given GPT-6 a full shakedown — the update is steadily rolling out to subscribers — but if OpenAI’s claims live up to the hype, Astra could be quite the capable tool, and may actually live up to those early AGI claims, even if this isn’t the first time Jensen Huang has heralded the arrival of AGI.

But what is AGI, and why does it matter if Astra is AGI or not? Well, as Huang himself suggests, AGI matters because it’s a reason to quadruple the number of Nvidia GPUs OpenAI is using.

What is AGI?

Let’s address the elephant in the room. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, isn’t a well-defined term, so judging if we have or haven’t achieved AGI is a bit like judging if a piece of art is a masterpiece or not.

Broadly speaking, AGI is an artificial system that can beat humans across any task that involves thinking or reasoning. Crucially, it should also be able to adapt to new problems by applying what it has learnt in training. For example, an AGI could learn a new skill to overcome a challenge posed to it without being retrained or reprogrammed — it just applies what it knows to evolve itself.

Think J.A.R.V.I.S from Marvel. It’s a very powerful assistant that helps Tony Stark across all fields, even how to deal with otherworldly threats like Loki, without needing to be trained on each individual problem.

Does AGI matter?

Okay, but does it matter if it’s AGI or just a very, very smart AI?

For most of us, not really. An AI doesn’t need to be very good at everything to be a majorly useful tool. It doesn’t matter if your AI doctor can understand the deep complexities of the vast universe, it just needs to be able to diagnose your illness and suggest treatment. An AI lawyer doesn’t need to be able to comprehend five-dimensional topology to defend you in court.

It's not just me saying that; Jensen Huang recently admitted that AGI doesn’t matter — this was before his social media praise for OpenAI — noting that the term is effectively meaningless.

However there’s one important reason for achieving AGI, and it’s about reaching what comes after: ASI, or artificial superintelligence.

ASI would be an AI no human could ever hope to match, let alone beat. It would be able to grapple and solve problems humans aren’t capable of even understanding. AGI is distinctly not ASI, but its ability to self-train and develop tools for itself suggests that an AGI will eventually construct ASI through a process called recursive self-improvement.

For Hitchhiker’s Guide the Galaxy fans, it’s like how the supercomputer Deep Thought couldn’t find the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, but could build the computer which would be able to find the question.

Perhaps more importantly, AGI is an investment buzzword, and there’s more than a hint of that in Huang’s celebratory post. Because while he says Astra is the product of 100,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell NVLink72, he adds that if we want to see bigger and better improvements we’ll need to bring 400,000 GPUs online next.

To do this OpenAI and Nvidia will need a heck of a lot of investment, and will also need to build more data centers, just as communities across the US and rest of the world are pushing. back against their construction.

The arrival of AGI could represent the last opportunity for investors to make it big in AI, or any stock, before ASI takes over productivity. So they need to invest as much as they can now (or keep their investments in AI) before they’re left behind. For data centers, the big concern is they are pollution nightmares that merely take from a community with no promise they’ll actually succeed long enough to give back. The advent of AGI would suggest that the AI hype has been justified all along — the bubble won’t burst, and local communities could finally reap the reward of accepting data centers.

I’m not saying Huang or OpenAI are definitely misleading us, or even just being hyperbolic. It's possible that Astra is in fact our first taste of AGI. I’m just pointing out that companies and CEOs have a massive incentive to claim that we’ve achieved AGI, even if they later make the same claim about the next new model — I won’t be surprised if GPT-7 is later called 'the debut of AGI'.

My point is that we won’t really know if or when we achieved AGI until much later, when we can look back with hindsight and see when our AI models reached a turning point in their ability to evolve.

In the moment, though, we will know if an AI is useful and can provide some genuine benefit to us. We’ll do that as a collective, as individuals and businesses not directly associated with OpenAI get their hands on the new model and determine whether or not it makes their life significantly easier. Try Astra out if you can, learn about the experience of others with the tech, and decide if you think it’ll be worth paying to be able to access it.

Don’t get caught up in the hype, and don’t worry about whether it's AGI or not. In time it’ll be very clear if it is — and we won’t need a social media post to convince us.

• NordVPN has launched an extension to boost holiday savings
• PriceMice shows you better prices from other countries
• The extension is available on Chrome and is completely free to use

Have you ever felt ripped off when booking a holiday or found that your search for the best accommodation deals never actually resulted in saving a penny? NordVPN has just launched a tool that might help relieve that stress.

PriceMice is a free browser extension that shows how much the same hotel room costs when booked from other countries. This way, you can check whether a lower price is available before confirming your booking and, if so, save money.

TechRadar's best VPN pick continues to leverage its security features to the full. With PriceMice, it now offers you a useful way to use the service for your personal needs too. Even better, you don't need to be an actove NordVPn's subcribers to use the tool.

How PriceMice works

PriceMice compares the final prices of the same room in different locations, helping you find the best deal before completing your online payment.

The tool addresses the fact that holiday companies can sometimes advertise the same accommodation at different prices depending on the customer’s specific geographical location. If you’re not aware of this, it could end up costing you money that you could otherwise spend on your holiday, such as dinner or museums.

Even if you are aware of regional price differences, checking whether a better price is available elsewhere often means manually changing your location or switching to a different version of the website to repeat the search. As the process can take a long time, it could mean that places are already fully booked by the time you make a decision.

PriceMice promises to speed up the process significantly. Once the extension is installed, it works alongside your usual browsing on Booking.com when searching for hotels.

When you find a room, you can click on 'find better price,' and it automatically goes on a best price hunt without requiring you to open new tabs or windows. Within seconds, it checks prices across dozens of regions and displays the lowest option, including taxes.

You can then just connect to that region using a virtual private network (VPN) app like NordVPN and return to your booking, where you’ll see the adjusted price before completing the booking.

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Why using PriceMice

Savings might be worth the look. For example, prices can vary considerably between the US and the United Arab Emirates: NordVPN cites an example where using PriceMice resulted in a claimed saving of almost $150.

The company suggests that you can save at least $20 per stay, with maximum savings of up to $500.

As more platforms are expected to be added to the list soon, Domininkas Virbickas, product director at NordVPN, stressed that the goal is to provide users with the transparency they need "to know for sure before they book."

Indeed, the VPN points out that several factors can affect the final amount a traveller has to pay. For example, some destinations only add accommodation costs at the time of payment or charge them on arrival.

Final rates may also vary due to exchange rate fluctuations, while booking platforms may carry out real-time price testing that affects final prices.

Nevertheless, although the responsibility to check the final price and booking details before getting your wallet out remains with you, the prospect of saving money, particularly as the next holiday season approaches, still makes PriceMice definitely worth a look.

Ask a CISO why they bought their newest cybersecurity tool, and they’ll have a clear answer lined up.

It stops a specific technique, closes a particular gap, or satisfies a compliance requirement.

However, it's often less clear how the tool fits in with the rest of the stack.

Does it make the overall system stronger, or simply add another layer of complexity to manage?

Research indicates most security professionals already believe they’re juggling too many tools, with over half saying they don’t properly integrate together.

This is a pattern I call ‘additive by default,’ and it results in stacks that grow without a plan, becoming broader but not necessarily deeper or able to match today’s threats.

Start with the outcome, not the technology

I find this additive approach is often due to focusing on specific emerging threats or identified weak points, so decisions are made with a tactical eye rather than a broader strategic view.

Part of the problem is that most organizations have never precisely defined the security outcome they are trying to achieve. Without a shared, specific language for the problem, every new purchase becomes additive, because there is nothing solid to measure it against.

Take asset labelling, which is a core capability most organizations know they need, so they invest in a tool, populate a configuration management database (CMDB), and assign criticality scores. Job done, right? But labelling an asset only answers the question of what it is, and says nothing about how that asset connects to everything around it, or what happens when a policy needs to be enforced against it.

Labelling, visibility and enforcement are three distinct jobs, not one. Solve the first and the second and third remain wide open, so another tool gets bought to cover visibility, then another for enforcement. Each purchase solves its own narrow question perfectly well.

However, none of them were ever asked to work as a single, continuous capability, because nobody defined that as the actual requirement in the first place.

What if asset management labels fed into visibility views and the same reflected how policy is drafted and then enforced? Now you have a strategic problem solved with interoperable capabilities.

How much of your stack is really putting in the work?

Gartner’s most recent Leadership Perspective Survey saw CISOs noting this as a common issue, with just 20-30% of tool capability actually being used in some cases. The instinctive response to this is to cut the stack down, however, that instinct solves the wrong problem.

A good exercise for working out the value of the stack is to evaluate every tool, new or already deployed, against three plain questions.

Does it offer continuous validation against a given threat - and what, specifically, does it validate? Is it still operationally relevant? And is it effective, right now, in the environment you have today? A tool can pass one or two of these and still be failing you.

Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) are a good example of this. Twenty or thirty years ago, when networks were typically static and everything likely sat inside a single data center, VLAN-based segmentation was genuinely effective. It matched the environment it was built for.

That environment has since changed almost beyond recognition. Workloads move between on-premises systems, cloud and containers, and nothing stays fixed for long. VLANs are still deployed across many stacks today, still technically doing the segmentation job they were built for. Yet their effectiveness has dropped sharply because they offer none of the continuous validation a hybrid, constantly shifting estate actually requires.

Effectiveness has an expiry date that has nothing to do with whether the tool still runs. Success should be measured by whether the system as a whole still holds up, not by how many tools remain switched on.

Consolidated security, not consolidated tooling

Gartner identified that most organizations are pursuing a vendor consolidation strategy. While this approach certainly reduces unnecessary spending and keeps budgets under control, it’s not necessarily solving the biggest problem.

Consolidated tooling and consolidated security are not the same thing, and it’s an assumption that leads to disappointment. Reducing the number of tools alone achieves little if the underlying processes remain fragmented or teams continue to operate against different objectives.

No data center I have walked through was built entirely by one manufacturer. Racks, switches, storage and cabling come from a dozen suppliers, yet they operate as one coherent system because they were designed to fit together. Security should work the same way.

The goal is not necessarily fewer vendors, but every control, whoever built it, feeding into the same continuous picture of identification, visibility and enforcement.

What to ask instead

Before completing the next security purchase, consider how well a new tool fits into the stack you already have, not just what it claims to do on its own.

A tool that deploys cleanly, validates continuously rather than only at go-live, and feeds its findings back into the tools already in place is doing real work. One that arrives as a fresh, isolated source of alerts is just adding to the noise, however good its individual detection rate looks in a demo. That means comparing what the tool was bought to solve against what it is actually delivering today, checking it against newer capabilities, and being willing to redeploy or renegotiate rather than automatically renew or even retire.

Ultimately, the strongest security programs are not defined by the number of tools they deploy, nor by the number they eliminate. They're defined by how effectively every control works together when it matters most.

We've rounded up the best endpoint protection software suites.

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

Bigme B6 Color: Two-minute review

If you’re looking for a cheaper Kindle Colorsoft alternative, then there’s a strong chance you’ll come across the Bigme B6 Color.

This ereader is cheaper but still boasts a six-inch color e-ink screen, 64GB of storage, and 4GB of RAM paired with a MediaTek Helio P35 processor.

That’s an entry-level smartphone SoC from 2018 and would be a poor choice for a standard tablet, but it is actually pretty powerful for an ereader, being significantly faster than the chip found in the Colorsoft or other similarly priced competitors like the Kobo Clara Color.

The Bigme B6 Color needs that added juice because, unlike mainstream options, it runs on a modified version of Android 14 like a standard tablet rather than a locked-down custom OS.

This means you can expect oodles of added functionality like downloading apps from the Google Play Store or reading online articles in the surprisingly capable web browser. If, like me, you’re coming over from a Kindle, you’ll still be able to access your entire library via the Kindle App in addition to exploring new options like Kobo Books or Google Play Books.

The freedom of Android means getting your own ebook files on the Bigme B6 Color is a breeze via the included Type-C cable or by making use of its microSD card slot.

The Bigme B6 Color also boasts a little mono speaker. It’s a bit tinny, but it means you can use the device to listen to audiobooks and podcasts in a pinch. It’s impressively versatile, and all of this functionality is packed into a sleek and premium form factor that is easily pocketable and can be used one-handed.

But what's the reading experience actually like? Text is sharp, and there is minimal ghosting when flicking between pages, so novels are a breeze — even at night, thanks to a backlight with a good level of brightness and adjustable warmth levels.

I’ve had a perfectly pleasant experience with comic books and manga as well. Monochrome illustrations look pin sharp, while the color screen elevates color splashes. I do wish the colors were a little richer, though, as they’re slightly more washed out than on the Colorsoft.

It’s sometimes spoiled by the many bugs in the operating system, but the biggest issue with the Bigme B6 Color is undoubtedly its battery life. Android is much more power-hungry than most ereader operating systems, and it really shows here. With the brightness cranked up, the battery meter steadily ticks down with every page turn.

I managed to squeeze only about five hours out of a single charge flicking through manga on the Kindle app. That was closer to ten hours for a basic PDF novel stored in the system files, which would at least see you through a full week of reading, but it's still a fraction of the multi-week usage a Kindle Colorsoft or Kobo Clara Color would give you.

To make matters worse, the battery life drops quickly when the ereader isn’t even in use. Tossed in my bag with its screen off, it lost about 10% charge each day, so you’re forced to shut it down fully every time you put it away or risk sitting down for a long train ride and finding it out of juice (something that happened to me more than once in even my relatively short testing period).

Bigme B6 Color review: Price & availability

• Costs around $179 / £149 / AU$280
• Available via the Bigme website and other retailers
• Comes with a case

At the time of writing, I can find the Bigme B6 Color on sale for around $179 / £149 / AU$280. You can find it on the Bigme website in all regions. Shoppers in the US can also find it at Amazon and Newegg, while in the UK it’s also available via JoyBuy. In Australia, you can find it on AliExpress too.

There are three colors available: black, white, and light green. It also comes bundled with a magnetic protective case. It’s a nice case too; my review unit came in black with a navy one, and it attaches neatly to the back via strong magnets and puts the ereader to sleep when closed.

The Bigme B6 Color comes with 64GB of storage, and the value is extremely strong when you consider that the Kindle Colorsoft costs $279.99 / £269.99 / AU$449 for just 32GB of storage and doesn't come with a case.

• Value score: 4.5/5

Bigme B6 Color review: Specs

Bigme B6 Color review: Design & display

• Compact and lightweight
• Color display
• Physical buttons… sort of

The Bigme B6 Color is sleek and compact at 108 x 149.3 × 6.98 mm (or 4.25 × 5.88 × 0.27 inches). It’s easy to slip into a pocket or bag.

The back and sides are a matte plastic material that feels pleasant in the hands, while the bezel around the screen is shinier and smoother. The black model that I’ve been testing is quite plain-looking aside from a silver Bigme logo on the rear and a red power button.

If you look closely at the top, you’ll see a small grille for the speaker and a microphone hole. Flipping it over to the bottom reveals the USB Type-C charging port, a small LED charging indicator, and a slot for the microSD card.

Given that Bigme is a smaller brand, I’m really impressed with the build quality overall.

It’s lightweight at under 200g / 7.1oz but reassuringly solid in the hands. The materials used feel equivalent to those by Amazon or Kobo-maker Rakuten — something really worth commending given just how much cheaper the Bigme B6 Color is than those brands’ equivalent models.

The ereader's six-inch color e-ink display sits above a little row of grey buttons. These aren’t proper buttons in the traditional sense, and they don’t click like those of a Kindle Oasis. Rather, they’re little shortcuts printed on the screen that are tied to certain system apps.

The first opens your library, which shows any ebooks or PDFs you have saved on the device’s storage. The next is an AI button tied to BigmeGPT, an AI assistant of questionable value, but I’ll get on to that in more detail later.

The middle one opens the file manager, and the next takes you to the home screen. The fifth and final button is a settings shortcut.

I’m in two minds about these. On the one hand, some of them are useful to have, like the home screen button or library shortcut, but others, like the AI button, haven’t been pressed more than once or twice in my entire time testing the device.

I couldn’t find a way to rebind the buttons in the system settings, sadly, though even if you could, you would still be stuck with the printed icons.

• Design score: 3.5/5

Bigme B6 Color review: Android software & apps

• Freedom of Android
• Google Play Store access
• Stock apps are poor

Unlike a conventional ereader, the Bigme B6 Color runs on Android 14 and comes with the Google Play Store installed. This allows you to download a wide range of Android apps, all the way from chat services like Discord to social media apps such as Instagram and Facebook, or even some games.

Of course, the screen is a major limitation, and although you can technically watch the latest TechRadar YouTube video on your device, the low refresh rate makes for a pretty unpleasant experience.

That said, Android has some big advantages, namely allowing you to download a wide range of ereader apps. The Kindle app, for example, works fantastically and delivers a comparable experience to using an ereader made by Amazon. Favorites like Libby, which lets you access books from local libraries, are accessible too, and you can even use the ereader’s web browser to download files directly from sites like Internet Archive. Audiobook and podcast apps are also excellent.

The freedom is fantastic and will be a breath of fresh air if you’re used to locked-down ecosystems.

This isn’t a stock version of Android, though. Everything is wrapped in a custom skin created by Bigme, and it’s far from a smooth experience.

There are lots of stock apps, and some are quite buggy. The built-in BigmeGPT AI, for example, crashes instantly if you lose your internet connection. It’s not particularly useful when it does work either, offering only basic text and image generation features.

There’s also the screen saver app that lets you change the image on your lock screen. I used BigmeGPT to generate a few wacky pictures to use as screensavers, only to discover that it doesn’t seem to work very well when you select an image from system files, often defaulting to the default option (a childish cartoon of some bears sleeping in a forest) instead.

Other stock apps include a basic calendar, music player, dictionary, voice recorder, and translator. They all seem to work alright, but are so basic I can’t imagine them being very useful.

The overall interface also has some issues. System notifications will randomly pop up in Chinese from time to time, and it can all freeze up while you’re in menus. I even had the settings app crash entirely on a few occasions.

• Software score: 3/5

Bigme B6 Color review: User experience

• Reading is great
• But the battery life dampens the experience
• Not a tablet replacement

Despite the rough edges in the software, if your number one concern is the reading experience, the Bigme B6 Color does deliver. 300ppi resolution is more than sufficient for the small 6-inch screen and means that text looks very crisp. The backlight is effective too, offering sufficient brightness for reading in dimmer spaces or even a pitch-black room.

As I mentioned earlier, the colors could be better as they look more washed out than those of the Colorsoft, but they’re still decently accurate and help liven up illustrations. Browsing the web is also surprisingly smooth, though the refresh rate does hamper the experience. Even so, you can still browse news websites easily if you want to catch up with current events on the go.

The biggest issue encountered while trying to use the Bigme B6 Color as my main ereader was its battery life. It really does run out quickly, and I struggled to adjust to plugging it in for a top-up every night, having become used to only charging my Kindle every few weeks.

Although it does run Android, I wouldn’t view the Bigme B6 Color as a replacement for a conventional tablet. You technically can use productivity apps (WPS Office even comes installed out of the box to tempt you), but the experience is poor, again, thanks to that slow refresh rate. To Bigme’s credit, the brand advertises the B6 Color as an ereader rather than anything else — so I’m not deducting any points for this.

• User experience score: 3.5/5

Bigme B6 Color review: Performance

• Snappy performance
• Usable web browser
• You can even watch YouTube videos

The Bigme B6 Color performs fantastically with its 4GB of RAM and MediaTek Helio P35 chipset.

Don’t get me wrong, these would be awful specs for a phone — but on a relatively cheap ereader? Everything is butter smooth as far as an e-ink screen allows. Loading is fast, pages turn with no lag, and it doesn’t immediately lose your place if you send an ereader app to the background. It boots from sleep almost instantly as well.

I have had no issue accessing my favorite news websites (including TechRadar, of course) using the built-in browser. I even managed to get YouTube videos playing on it, which is pretty impressive for this kind of device. After using the Bigme B6 Color, my usual Kindle feels unbearably sluggish.

Storage is generous out of the box to boot, and, having downloaded a load of books and a handful of apps, I still have more than 40GB of free space left.

Not shabby at all for this price!

• Performance score: 4.5/5

Should I buy the Bigme B6 Color?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Bigme B6 Color review: Alternatives

How I tested the Bigme B6 Color

• Used as main e-reader for a month
• Popular e-reader apps tested
• Compared to similar models by brands like Amazon

To review the Bigme B6 Color I used it as my primary e-reader for just over a month. This meant using it for about forty minutes each way on my commutes to and from our office in London, during which I enjoyed a variety of novels, comic books, and manga.

Throughout my time with the e-reader I compared my experience to my hands-on usage of similar devices, including the Amazon Kindle, Amazon Kindle Colorsoft, and Kobo Clara Color.

Read more about how we test.

First published September 2026