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• Swiss government confirms attackers breached BIT’s SharePoint servers
• Investigators suspect exploitation of recent SharePoint flaws
• No sensitive or confidential data is believed to have been stored on the platform

Cybercriminals broke into the IT network of the Swiss government and stole data from roughly 200 accounts. As a result, the Swiss government disconnected some of its servers from the wider internet and launched an investigation.

In an announcement, the Swiss government said that on July 28 2026 its security specialists noticed “abnormalities” in the Federal Office for Information Technology and Telecommunication’s (BIT) SharePoint servers.

Three days later, on July 31, the investigators determined that the attackers accessed data found in around 200 accounts, both user and technical.

Two vulnerabilities

The investigation is currently ongoing, the agency said, adding that it is getting support from Microsoft, as well. So far, the identity of the attackers is unknown, and the stolen data has not yet leaked to the dark web.

“No confidential information or particularly sensitive personal data may be stored on the SharePoint platform,” the announcement reads.

While BIT has not yet determined the initial access vector, it suspects it to be one of two flaws in SharePoint that Microsoft fixed last month:

“In mid-July, Microsoft announced several vulnerabilities in SharePoint,” it says in the announcement. “After the publication of the corresponding security updates, the FOITT immediately started work on importing them into its own systems.”

“The cyberattack was carried out by previously unknown actors, which was presumably made possible by exploiting these vulnerabilities in the SharePoint software.” It did not say which vulnerabilities those are, but in its report, BleepingComputer says that it could be one of these two: CVE-2026-56164 (an actively exploited privilege escalation vulnerability), or CVE-2026-50522 (a critical remote code execution flaw later exploited to steal SharePoint machine keys and maintain access after servers were patched).

Given its popularity among businesses of all sizes, SharePoint is a major target for cybercriminals. So far, no threat actors claimed responsibility for the attack, or demanded any ransom in exchange for the stolen data.

Via BleepingComputer

Suno, the most popular AI music creation tool, spent years making it incredibly easy to generate music. Now it's introducing download limits, watermarking and fingerprinting to stop people flooding streaming services with AI slop.

That suggests something important to me: even the companies building generative AI are starting to realize unlimited AI creation comes with unintended consequences.

Suno CEO, Mikey Shulman, shared a blog post about the company's principles for building the future of music responsibly. He says “AI should help people create something new, not imitate someone else’s work. This philosophy has guided how we’ve built our models and platform from the start.”

(Image credit: Suno)Great music is made by people

In a section titled “Our Principles”, Shulman says that “great music is made by people”.

The principles themselves aren't new. What's new is that Suno is now dedicating significant engineering effort to limiting abuse rather than simply enabling creation.

In his blog post Shulman writes “We will soon introduce a new downloads policy designed to limit the ability to mass distribute songs on streaming platforms, while preserving the professional, creative, and personal ways people use Suno. These changes won’t affect the vast majority of our users, but they will make large-scale abuse much harder.”

Schulman continues: “In the coming weeks, we will also be adopting new audio watermarking and fingerprinting technology so we can partner even more closely with distribution platforms on combatting fraud and misuse.”

That evolution fits the broader trend we’ve been covering from the music streaming services like Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, and Qobuz, who have started to fight back against AI-generated music flooding their platforms.

Managing the consequences

Streaming giant Tidal has published a comprehensive AI policy with the strapline "Promoting Fairness and Economic Empowerment in the Era of AI-Generated Music". Tidal will identify it, tag it and crucially, not pay any streaming royalties for it.

Spotfiy has introduced measures to prevent fraudulent streams and AI impersonation . Deezer announced that over half of all new daily uploads to its site are AI — up from 44% in April and just over 30% at the end of last year. It launched a free site to scan your playlists for AI in June. Qobuz has announced that it is taking a human-first approach to its recommendations and “developing detection and monitoring systems to identify AI-generated content and fraudulent streaming patterns.”

This announcement from Suno feels more significant than another AI company publishing a set of principles. It marks a shift in priorities. For the first few years of generative AI, success was measured by how much content these systems could produce. Now it looks like success is being measured by how effectively companies can prevent that content from overwhelming everything else.

The AI music industry is moving from maximizing generation to managing the consequences of generation, and it's about time.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving. Across industries, many organizations are increasingly deploying AI into systems that must run continuously, securely, and at scale.

As AI adoption accelerates, one thing is becoming clear: infrastructure planning cannot wait.

AI workloads are becoming more interconnected, distributed, and operationally integrated across cloud, data center, and edge environments. Infrastructure planning now requires organizations to align compute, networking, software, memory, and operational requirements across increasingly complex environments.

As a result, many enterprises are beginning infrastructure planning sooner rather than later.

The cost of waiting

As AI becomes more integrated into everyday business operations through continuous inference and agentic AI systems, infrastructure demands are evolving significantly.

Modern AI deployments increasingly require:

• Continuous inference running around the clock
• Multi-agent systems coordinating across applications and databases
• Real-time orchestration across cloud, data center, and edge environments
• Strong governance, security, and operational efficiency

These workloads require more than raw compute performance. They require balanced infrastructure where compute, networking, software, memory, and operational workflows work cohesively at scale.

Because of this, enterprises are beginning AI infrastructure planning earlier, recognizing that planning, testing, and Proof of Concepts (PoCs) for complex systems like this take time.

At the same time, the cost of delaying AI infrastructure planning is becoming more apparent. Delays can slow deployment readiness and postpone AI-driven benefits such as productivity gains and operational automation. As AI demand continues to rise, organizations are prioritizing earlier planning to secure the compute capacity needed to support long-term AI growth.

As AI infrastructure becomes more complex, infrastructure planning needs to begin earlier than traditional IT upgrade cycles. Evaluating workloads, validating deployment models, and ensuring scalability across environments takes time and time is of the essence if we want to be ahead of our competitors.

AI is now a systems challenge

The conversation around AI infrastructure often begins with Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). But as deployments scale, AI performance depends not on individual components, but on how the entire system operates together.

Modern AI infrastructure relies on Central Processing Units (CPUs) for orchestration and data movement, GPUs for large-scale parallel compute, high-speed networking for low-latency communication across systems, and open software platforms for portability and scalability.

As AI systems become more distributed and inference-driven, orchestration and system balance become critical. CPUs play a pivotal role in managing workload coordination, memory access, and GPU utilization, ensuring infrastructure operates efficiently under sustained demand.

This shift reflects a broader industry reality: AI is no longer just a GPU problem. It is a full-stack infrastructure challenge that organization must tackle early on.

Planning for distributed AI

AI is also scaling in multiple directions at once.

Some workloads are expanding into large, centralized clusters, while others are moving closer to where data is generated – including edge deployments such as in factories or hospitals, and AI-enabled endpoints like the PCs.

For organizations, this creates unique infrastructure considerations around hybrid cloud, on-premises deployments, edge AI, compliance, and latency-sensitive applications.

This diversity underscores the importance of infrastructure strategies designed for modularity, portability, and adaptability that necessitates upfront planning.

Openness and flexibility matter more than ever

As AI innovation accelerates, organizations are prioritizing infrastructure flexibility to support rapidly evolving models, frameworks, and deployment environments.

Open ecosystems can reduce integration complexity while supporting broader compatibility across software frameworks, cloud environments, and deployment architectures. They also provide greater flexibility to evolve infrastructure strategies over time while helping avoid the migration costs that can come with highly closed or single-vendor environments.

For many organizations, openness is no longer just a developer preference. It is becoming an important consideration for balancing performance, operational efficiency, cost optimization, and long-term infrastructure investment.

This is another reason infrastructure planning must happen early. Building AI environments that remain scalable, portable, and adaptable over time require long-term thinking around openness and interoperability from the beginning.

Infrastructure readiness will define the next phase of AI

The next phase of AI growth will reward organizations that take a proactive approach to infrastructure planning.

Organizations that delay infrastructure planning may find it more challenging to deploy AI tools down the road, not only due to not having ample time to plan and test, but not securing the compute resources needed early on.

The cost of waiting is becoming ever clearer.

Ultimately, the companies that succeed in the next phase of AI will not necessarily be those with the largest clusters, but those that plan early and build balanced, scalable, and open infrastructure designed to support continuous innovation in an increasingly AI-driven economy.

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Polls show most Americans think young adults today have it harder financially than past generations. A majority of parents help their grown children with expenses, even if it hurts their own finances.

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Deaths and close calls while fighting wildfires have strained an already on-edge workforce. They've also raised questions about policies and priorities amid an intense wildfire season.

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Plus, if you know what "TMZ" stands for, you'll get at least on question right this week!

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Hundreds of thousands of civilians in el-Obeid are being battered by relentless drone strikes and face critical water shortages and a worsening cholera outbreak, while women and girls are reporting high rates of sexual violence.

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Every four years, football's best players are tested on the world's biggest stage.

Less visible is the test taking place behind the scenes.

As billions tune in, broadcasters and streaming platforms face their own high-stakes challenge: delivering seamless live experiences at a scale few events can match.

FIFA estimates that around 5 billion people engaged with the 2022 World Cup, with the final alone reaching nearly 1.5 billion viewers worldwide.

In 2026, that audience has been presented with an even bigger tournament: 48 teams playing 104 matches across Canada, Mexico and the United States.

More than 54 million viewers across the three host countries watched their national teams' opening matches, while the United States' game against Paraguay drew a combined 27.5 million across FOX and Telemundo, the most-watched FIFA World Cup match ever broadcast in the country.

By the end of the group stage, 4.64 million spectators had filled 99.7% of available seats. That scale is a real-time stress test for every part of the live-video ecosystem.

From passive viewing to active participation

Beyond sheer audience size, the difference lies in how fans consume it. They no longer simply watch. They move between platforms, share highlights, expect instant access to key moments and want experiences tailored to their own interests.

Streaming is no longer just a distribution channel; it's a product in its own right. Brazil’s group-stage match against Haiti reached 51.3 million viewers across Globo's wider media ecosystem, while CazéTV set a worldwide YouTube record for the most-watched football match streamed on the platform.

World Cup content generated 11 billion video views across social media platforms during the group stage alone, and official broadcasters published more than 44,000 pieces of content on TikTok.

A modern match is simultaneously a live program, a source of social clips, a statistics feed and a second-screen experience.

Rethinking the production workflow

That shift starts with the production workflow. The same match is now produced simultaneously for stadium scoreboards, connected TVs, mobile apps and global streaming platforms, with capture, ingestion, encoding and delivery all part of a single content pipeline.

Sixteen optical tracking cameras installed in each stadium can produce more than 150 million data points per match, helping officials review incidents and giving media partners new ways to produce highlights.

The real challenge is bringing together live delivery, audience data, advertising, captions, multi-language audio, and interactive experiences alongside tracking, commentary, graphics, and officiating data.

What fans expect: reliability, personalization, speed

For viewers, success comes down to three things: reliability at scale, personalization and speed. Fans will tolerate a lot, but they won't forgive a stream that buffers during a decisive goal or runs so far behind live play that social media spoils the moment.

Personalization must happen without undermining performance, delivering different recommendations, languages, statistics, camera feeds and advertising while maintaining the resilience of a mass broadcast.

AI is reshaping live sports production

Artificial intelligence is central to delivering those expectations. Rather than replacing production teams, AI is enabling rights holders to produce and distribute content at a scale that would previously have required far larger operations. Automated highlight clipping is one of the clearest examples: AI can identify key moments, package them and distribute them within minutes.

For rights holders, the difference between publishing a goal two minutes after it's scored rather than twenty is the difference between leading the conversation and chasing it. Match summaries, commentary, captions and translations can also be generated automatically, and platforms can match each fan with the content they are most likely to watch next.

A glimpse of the future: personalized sports at scale

The broader ambition is visible at the top of the game. The PGA TOUR now turns each week's action into roughly 7,000 AI-generated highlight clips across dozens of markets, so a fan can follow one player or catch up on key moments without waiting for the main broadcast. The 2026 World Cup has produced a similarly vast library of stories. A record 215 goals were scored during the group stage, an average of three per match.

Tournament debutants Cabo Verde went undefeated, with Kevin Pina scoring the country's first World Cup goal, while Japan's 4-0 victory over Tunisia was both the 1,000th match in World Cup history and the biggest ever by an Asian team. These are exactly the kinds of stories that automated tagging, rapid clipping and intelligent recommendations can bring to the right audience.

Immersive viewing and accessibility

The next generation of live sports streaming will be defined by richer viewing experiences. Multi-view streaming allows fans to follow simultaneous matches, while alternative camera angles and player-specific feeds provide greater control over how the action is consumed.

Real-time data integration can bring live statistics directly into the viewing experience without interrupting the match. AI is also making captioning, translation, and audio description production-ready at scale, allowing broadcasters to localize live coverage without a proportional increase in costs.

However, human oversight remains essential for names, sporting terminology, and cultural context.

The technology behind global scale

Supporting all of this requires resilient IT infrastructure and scalable delivery platforms capable of broadcast-quality reliability and low latency, even as millions connect simultaneously. It also requires organizations to move beyond fragmented technology stacks.

A unified architecture makes content easier to reuse: one live signal can support a full broadcast, mobile highlights, social clips, advertising inventory, archive content and personalized recommendations.

Furthermore, protecting that content is just as important as delivering it. Live sport is uniquely vulnerable to piracy because its commercial value exists almost entirely during the match. Digital Rights Management remains the foundation, but forensic watermarking is becoming increasingly important, embedding invisible identifiers so pirated feeds can be traced and removed while the event is still live.

What's next: The future of live sport at scale

The World Cup ultimately highlights that live video has become a complex, data-driven product where success is no longer defined solely by picture quality or reach, but by how effectively AI, unified content workflows. and scalable technology work together under pressure.

The challenge for the industry is not understanding what works at World Cup scale, but applying those lessons consistently across every live event.

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When was the last time you met your newest hire in person?

For many organizations, particularly those operating remotely, the answer is increasingly never. With one in five companies worldwide adopting a fully remote model, hiring virtually has become increasingly popular, enabling businesses to access global talent pools and scale faster than ever before.

But in removing geography as a constraint, it has also stripped away one of the most fundamental layers of trust: the ability to verify, face-to-face, who you are actually employing.

This shift is giving rise to a new and largely under-recognized threat, the “deepfake employee”, where threat actors use synthetic identities, voice cloning, and real-time deepfake video to pass interviews and secure legitimate employment.

Accelerated by advancements in AI, it is now possible to create convincing digital personas at scale, lowering the barrier to entry for fraud and enabling highly organized operations to target corporate hiring pipelines.

In practice, these attacks can be surprisingly difficult to detect. A candidate may appear on a video interview with a natural-looking face and voice, answer questions fluently, and provide what seem to be legitimate credentials. Behind the scenes, however, AI tools can subtly alter facial expressions, sync lip movements to a cloned voice, or even feed real-time responses.

To the hiring manager, there is little reason to suspect anything is wrong. The deception often only becomes apparent much later, if at all, when activity inside the organization begins to raise concerns.

This risk is already playing out in the real world. In a recent experiment, a cybersecurity expert used AI to create deepfake personas – one a white man similar to himself and another of an Asian woman, and successfully secured two separate tech roles, beating hundreds of other candidates.

Using AI-generated credentials, real-time voice modulation and live deepfake video, both synthetic identities progressed through interview stages undetected, with employers unaware they were interacting with an entirely fabricated candidate.

Cloudflare’s latest threat research highlights the scale and sophistication of this activity. Organized “remote worker” fraud operations are using fabricated identities, deepfake-assisted interviews and remote access “laptop farms” to infiltrate payrolls. In some cases, multiple individuals operate behind a single employee identity, maintaining persistent access while appearing as one consistent, legitimate user.

Once hired, these actors are no longer external attackers. They become insider threats with valid credentials, company-issued devices and trusted access to systems. As Cloudflare notes, by the time these individuals are identified, they are already operating inside the perimeter, often blending in with normal business activity.

What needs to change

With nearly 60% of organizations having experienced deepfake-driven incidents, and 48% reporting damage from AI-generated impersonation or misinformation, it is clear that identity infrastructure has become a primary attack surface. Attackers are shifting away from “breaking in” to “logging in” using legitimate credentials obtained through deception.

At the heat of this issue is the flawed assumption that identity can be verified once and then trusted indefinitely.

In physical environments, identity is rarely in doubt. You can see who walks through the door, recognize familiar faces and detect inconsistencies in behavior. In virtual environments, however, organizations rely almost entirely on screen names, login credentials and video, none of which reliably confirm who is actually behind the screen.

Accounts can be shared, credentials can be compromised, and even live video can be manipulated.

This creates a critical vulnerability at the point of hire. A candidate may present documentation, pass background checks and complete onboarding, but in a world of synthetic identities, that initial verification is no longer enough.

Building continuous identity assurance

To address this challenge, organizations need to move beyond static identity checks and towards continuous identity verification. This means verifying not only who someone is who they say they are and that they are a real human at the point of hire, but ensuring that the same individual remains present and authentic throughout their interactions with the organization.

The strongest form of defense lies in continuous biometric verification of the user’s identity. Rather than relying on a single factor, such as facial recognition or voice authentication alone, fused biometrics combines multiple identity signals, such as facial characteristics, voice patterns and behavioral cues, into a single, layered verification process, verifying directly that a real, live human is there.

It is no longer enough to confirm a person’s identity at a single moment in time. Organizations need confidence that the same individual is consistently present across every critical interaction, from interviews and onboarding, through to system access and sensitive transactions. Without this continuity, identities can be shared, replaced or hijacked without detection.

Fused biometric verification can create layered validation that is significantly harder to replicate or manipulate, enabling it to detect and block attempts to impersonate users through synthetic voices, deepfakes, or recorded audio and video.

While a single modality might be fooled by a sophisticated synthetic input, combining biometric modalities; facial recognition, voice recognition, and speech pattern recognition, it becomes significantly harder for fraudsters to mimic an identity.

Advanced biometric verification technologies are trained on large datasets of both genuine and synthetic voice samples, enabling them to recognize subtle acoustic differences between natural and deepfake voices. This helps organizations detect voice-cloning attempts, even when the audio sounds convincing to human listeners.

Crucially, fused biometric verification can operate passively in the background, consistently verifying that the right person is accessing systems, enabling smoother, lower-friction experiences and reduces the need for frustrating repeated verification attempts.

As organizations continue to embrace remote work and digital-first operations, cybercriminals will increasingly find new vulnerabilities to exploit. The question is no longer just how to keep threats out, but also how to ensure that those already inside are truly who they claim to be.

In a world where identities can be fabricated, cloned and manipulated with ease, trust cannot remain static. It must be continuously proven.

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Trump issues new orders to limit birthright citizenship, Iran shares details of an agreement with Oman to reopen Strait of Hormuz, Trump under pressure to find a breakthrough with Iran.

• Ministers in the UK are consulting on workplace monitoring technologies
• Employers may have to ask permission to implement surveillance tools that ensure employees are working as contracted
• The consultation includes references to the use of artificial intelligence-assisted monitoring

The British government’s Make Work Pay strategy to overhaul employment rights and end exploitative work practices has opened consultation on workplace monitoring technologies, with the Department for Business and Trade seeking to establish whether existing rules covering things like biometric surveillance, keystroke logging, and productivity scoring are fit for purpose.

Current rules over the use of workplace monitoring technology (WMT) may be fit for purpose, but the consultation aims to establish whether non-statutory guidance, a formal code of practice, or a legal framework is required.

The consultation – which also cites artificial intelligence as a tool to assist monitoring, closes September 30, 2026.

Identifying WMT

Workplace monitoring technologies have developed with the pace of digital expansion in offices and factories, with notable examples including email and web tracking, along with controversial tools such as keystroke logging, and screen and app monitoring.

Mobile workers and couriers are also subjected to GPS monitoring, while access to workplaces is typically subject to biometric credentials, a modern-day version of “clocking in.”

So, monitoring practices in the workplace are nothing new, and CCTV has long been used to observe location, activity, and appropriate behavior. Responses to the consultation will no doubt include concerns over the expansion of these technologies into the remote workspace, where tools like keystroke loggers and screen monitoring are considered intrusive.

Meet the AI boss

Furthermore, some new considerations, such as automated decision-making (ADM, which can make decisions without human involvement) and algorithmic management (tools that can, for example, alter shifts based on availability and performance) will also come under review with the consultation.

The consultation announcement states:

"AI and innovation are central to the government’s strategy for growth. The Chancellor has prioritised AI adoption, as where the biggest gains lie for UK growth, and has set the ambition for the UK to be the fastest adopter of AI in the G7. To support rapid and responsible adoption, we are focused on creating the right conditions, providing the necessary infrastructure and managing the technology transition fairly and carefully."

Additional regulatory requirements

While the consultation is welcome and gives employers and employees the chance to deliver their thoughts – and affords the Labour government the opportunity to underline its Make Work Pay policies – the end result will inevitably means more regulatory work for employers.

Non-statutory guidance would be the preference, as this has a smaller impact in a workplace that already has to consider GDPR and the EU AI Act. Larger organizations also need to accommodate local employment laws. But there is every chance that the eventual decision will result in the introduction of a statutory policy governing workplace monitoring technologies, particularly where AI is concerned.

• AI is opening to the door to advertising on streaming TV platforms for SMBs
• 37% of small and medium businesses feel cross border campaigns are more accessible thanks to AI
• SMBs see AI as key tool in remaining competitive in the future

Barriers to cross-border and multi-region advertising are being broken by AI, according to a new survey by Amazon Ads.

Surveying 4,100 respondents across 14 countries, the results found nearly three-quarters (73%) of UK SMBs have found that AI advertising tools make streaming TV an affordable and accessible platform for their promotional messaging.

The questions focus on the difference between advertising accessibility in 2026 compared with 3 years ago, when 69% found cost to be the main barrier against streaming TV advertising access.

How does AI help SMBs advertise?

Now, over half of SMBs (54%) interested in advertising on TV believe that AI tools can enable them to reach new audiences and increase brand awareness (53%). Meanwhile, a majority of SMBs believe AI can be instrumental in expanding their competitiveness.

Amazon Ads employs AI tools to create and manage AI campaigns, as well as improve opimization and targeting. It offers image and video generation solutions to create realistic visuals and uses a chatbot (“conversational agent”) to develop concepts and scripts with the advertiser.

The survey also found 68% of UK SMBs found AI advertising has supported growth, and 52% highlight that it has supported expansion into other countries. Of those surveyed, 37% stated that cross-border campaigns seemed out of reach just three years ago.

"What we're seeing is a real shift in confidence among small and medium-sized businesses," noted Cyril Clerget, General Manager of Global SMB Advertising at Amazon Ads. "AI-powered tools are helping them explore advertising channels — like streaming TV — that once felt out of reach.”

The survey has also found that 88% of SMBs are planning to use AI for creating adverts, and 74% aim to use the technology to produce streaming ads. Interestingly, the survey also found that 45% intend to use AI for competitor analysis in the future.

Is AI the future of affordable advertising?

Affordable AI tools seem to be an attractive prospect for SMBs wishing to aim for streaming TV. Over the past few years, radio advertising has become more targeted thanks to increasing numbers of digital stations, with advertisers able to tailor to specific demographics.

Streaming TV offers a similar curation, and 75% of surveyed UK SMBs see AI as the answer to improving their future competitiveness.

The shooter was a student and deaths and injuries were reported.

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Judge Bryan Biedscheid said in a ruling late Thursday that the bulk of the money will be used for treatment services for young people.

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Amazon has discounted the 256GB Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra to AU$1,597, dropping it by AU$502 from its AU$2,099 RRP.

That's the same price Amazon is charging for the smaller 256GB Galaxy Tab S11, and AU$2 less than the AU$1,599 it costs direct from Samsung.

This isn’t quite the lowest price we’ve seen for the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra on Amazon, with the 256GB model briefly dropping to AU$1,547 in June.

Still, today’s AU$1,597 price is only AU$50 more, plus the 512GB model is down to AU$1,799 from the AU$2,449 RRP and the 1TB version has dropped from AU$2,949 to AU$2,299.

Thanks to this discount, the 256GB Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra currently costs the same as Amazon’s smaller Galaxy Tab S11, making this the model I’d choose if you've been pining for the larger 14.6-inch display. Otherwise, the standard S11 may still suit you better if portability is the priority — the 128GB version is 21% off RRP, at AU$1,099.View Deal

Amazon is the simpler option if you just want an easy purchase and fast delivery, but other retailers such as JB Hi-Fi also have the S11 Ultra for just a few dollars more.

Another option worth checking out is Samsung’s current trade-in offer, which could work out cheaper if you have an eligible tablet. Samsung is selling the 256GB Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra for AU$1,599 and, until 26 August, is adding a guaranteed AU$500 bonus credit on top of your device’s assessed trade-in value.

One catch – your old tablet must be eligible for Samsung’s trade-in program and retain an assessed value above AU$0.

But, I hear you ask, what makes the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra truly worth the rather large price tag?

In our Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra review, we said we’d be “hard-pressed to find a bigger and better display on an Android tablet”. The 14.6-inch AMOLED screen earned a full 5/5 in our testing, with enough brightness for outdoor use, while the included S Pen and expansive display make it particularly well suited to watching movies, gaming and drawing.

Our reviewer also found Samsung’s One UI software made excellent use of the big screen for multitasking, with the tablet handling a video call, game and floating YouTube window at the same time without slowing down.

Battery life impressed too, lasting 11 hours while streaming 1080p video at full brightness, helping explain why the S11 Ultra remains our best premium Android tablet pick in our buying guide.

No tablet is perfect, and the main caveat for the S11 Ultra from our testing is the MediaTek Dimensity 9400+ chipset, which we found disappointing considering the RRP is over AU$2,000.

Yes, it's a clear improvement over the Tab S10 Ultra and handles games well, but it falls well short of competitors like the M5 iPad Pro for outright processing power.

That said, while the current AU$502 discount does not fix the performance shortfall, at AU$1,597 rather than AU$2,099, it makes our review criticisms considerably easier to swallow. Especially when the closest equivalent iPad Pro is AU$2,599.

So overall, I think that at the current discount, the S11 Ultra is an easy recommendation for those who want the biggest possible screen for movies, games, drawing and multitasking.

• Xiaomi officially launches SkyNomad N70 and N90 SUVs
• Both pair a 1.5-liter gasoline engine with huge 76 kWh NMC battery packs
• Hybrid technology allows for more than 1,000 miles of driving

Fresh off the success of the SU7 and YU7 all-electric models, which offer the sort of performance and range to compete with Porsche’s Taycan, Chinese tech company Xiaomi is now moving into the world of hybrid SUVs.

Teased a few weeks ago, the company has now taken the wraps off the roughly $35,000 (in China, that is) SkyNomad N70 and N90, two hulking SUVs that are capable of seating either five or seven people in a variety of luxurious configurations.

Shirking the pure EV powertrain of Xiaomi's previous efforts, the SkyNomad sub-brand uses a Changan-derived 1.5-liter gasoline engine and a huge 76 kWh NMC battery pack to offer substantial range.

According to China’s generous CLTC testing cycle, the Xiaomi SkyNomad N90 Max offers a combined range of up to 1,705 km — or 1,060 miles.

(Image credit: Xiaomi/SkyNomad)

Customers in China also have the option of a more affordable 52 kWh battery pack, but when the larger of the two is specified in the five-seat N70, pure electric range is almost 314 miles, according to the CLTC testing cycle.

If you crunch the numbers and remove some of the CLTC's generosity, it equates to around 250-miles on the UK and Europe's WLTP cycle. That's still enough to shame many pure EVs.

Alas, Xiaomi hasn’t announced plans to sell its SkyNomad models outside its domestic market yet, but it has previously stated that it hopes to introduce the SU7 and YU7 models to the UK and Europe by 2028.

Analysis: only a bargain in China

(Image credit: Xiaomi/SkyNomad)

As we have seen with BYD’s luxury brand, Denza, the price of high-performance or luxury Chinese EVs isn’t so appealing once you factor in local taxes and import duties.

It was revealed recently that the supercar-baiting Denza Z, for example, will start at a staggering £142,900 in the UK (around $200,600) and rises to £172,900 (around $233,000) for the top-spec Racing variant. It costs around $100,000 in China.

We can expect to see a similar pattern with models like the SkyNomad N70 and N90 should they arrive in Europe, especially since they come fitted with the sort of battery pack that many rival pure-electric vehicles use today.

Those hoping for something that drastically undercuts the likes of Audi’s Q7, the Volvo XC90 or even Kia’s slightly more affordable EV9 and Hyundai’s Ioniq 9 could be a tad disappointed when official European pricing is eventually announced.

The Shards is guaranteed to have audiences talking, for better or for worse, as Bret Easton Ellis' controversial semi-autobiography comes to the small screen.

But, in my opinion, Ryan Murphy teaming up with Ellis has given him the chance to shine once again. Fans of Murphy's work were left disappointed and baffled in recent months after his abysmal Hulu series All's Fair aired, which has a seriously low Rotten Tomatoes score of just 6%.

Thankfully, The Shards feels closer to what Murphy was doing with the anthology series American Horror Story, and the result is an addictive, bloody and over the top series which shows that Murphy and Ellis are an excellent creative duo.

The Shards is certainly not for everyone, but I'm sure it will find a dedicated audience among Hulu subscribers. Those who can put up with intentionally insufferable protagonists are rewarded with a stylish, tasty peek into life as a privileged student in the 1980s, set in a sunny LA neighborhood.

The nine-part series follows a fictionalized version of Bret Easton Ellis, who is 17 and in his final year at the elite Buckley prep school. Igby Rigney, known for his work on Netflix's Midnight Mass, plays this version of the thriller author.

We open with Bret going to see The Shining, smoking a cigarette and driving a convertible, as he narrates all the luxury clothing he's wearing. Rigney's almost bored-sounding narration would feel out of place anywhere else, but here it fits perfectly as he talks about his life, one that many viewers will never have and might desperately covet. Despite having everything, there's no enthusiasm to his voice at all.

Opposite Rigney, Homer Gere stars as Robert Mallory, a new arrival at Buckley whose unsettling presence coincides with the activities of a serial killer known as The Trawler. Gere is fantastic in The Shards, dominating every scene he's in, and making us feel very uncomfortable from the moment we see him.

The unsettling dynamic between Bret and Robert forms much of The Shards, supported by an equally good cast playing fellow students around them. Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber), is a popular girl and cheerleader who soon develops a thing for Robert, much to the annoyance of her long-term boyfriend Thom (Graham Campbell).

Bret's girlfriend, Debbie (Hayes Warner), is a teen rebelling against her movie director father, adding to the already complex layers of this dysfunctional friend group.

The first two episodes were released together, but unfortunately it's a weekly release from then on. I have a feeling some people might be gutted they can't binge-watch it because it's easy to become invested in what's happening. The Shards is a dazzling experience where you feel like a fly on the wall watching these spoiled teens, wondering what's going to happen to them next, even if you probably should look away.

It's a visceral, no-holds-barred look into this 80s society which finds itself rapidly torn apart, sometimes literally. Indeed, those looking for Bret Easton Ellis' brand of gratuitous violence will find it here, making The Shards an interesting blend of teen drama and horror movie, with some grisly results.

Even if you haven't read The Shards, if you know you're a fan of Ellis' other works like American Psycho, I think this will be right up your alley. It ticks all the right boxes for what we'd expect from him, after all.

At the time of writing, The Shards season 2 has not been confirmed, which means the season finale's ending will prove frustrating if we don't get more. Though Ellis' book has a similar ending, I'm hopeful that The Shards will choose to take the story further as it feels like it's been written with a second season in mind.

As a standalone season though, it's entertaining and shocking in equal measure. The Shards is a welcome addition to Ryan Murphy's filmography, and I hope he does more like this because I have certainly missed him when he's at his bloody best.

The Shards is guaranteed to have audiences talking, for better or for worse, as Bret Easton Ellis' controversial semi-autobiography comes to the small screen.

But, in my opinion, Ryan Murphy teaming up with Ellis has given him the chance to shine once again. Fans of Murphy's work were left disappointed and baffled in recent months after his abysmal Hulu series All's Fair aired, which has a seriously low Rotten Tomatoes score of just 6%.

Thankfully, The Shards feels closer to what Murphy was doing with the anthology series American Horror Story, and the result is an addictive, bloody and over the top series which shows that Murphy and Ellis are an excellent creative duo.

The Shards is certainly not for everyone, but I'm sure it will find a dedicated audience among Hulu subscribers. Those who can put up with intentionally insufferable protagonists are rewarded with a stylish, tasty peek into life as a privileged student in the 1980s, set in a sunny LA neighborhood.

The nine-part series follows a fictionalized version of Bret Easton Ellis, who is 17 and in his final year at the elite Buckley prep school. Igby Rigney, known for his work on Netflix's Midnight Mass, plays this version of the thriller author.

We open with Bret going to see The Shining, smoking a cigarette and driving a convertible, as he narrates all the luxury clothing he's wearing. Rigney's almost bored-sounding narration would feel out of place anywhere else, but here it fits perfectly as he talks about his life, one that many viewers will never have and might desperately covet. Despite having everything, there's no enthusiasm to his voice at all.

Opposite Rigney, Homer Gere stars as Robert Mallory, a new arrival at Buckley whose unsettling presence coincides with the activities of a serial killer known as The Trawler. Gere is fantastic in The Shards, dominating every scene he's in, and making us feel very uncomfortable from the moment we see him.

The unsettling dynamic between Bret and Robert forms much of The Shards, supported by an equally good cast playing fellow students around them. Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber), is a popular girl and cheerleader who soon develops a thing for Robert, much to the annoyance of her long-term boyfriend Thom (Graham Campbell).

Bret's girlfriend, Debbie (Hayes Warner), is a teen rebelling against her movie director father, adding to the already complex layers of this dysfunctional friend group.

The first two episodes were released together, but unfortunately it's a weekly release from then on. I have a feeling some people might be gutted they can't binge-watch it because it's easy to become invested in what's happening. The Shards is a dazzling experience where you feel like a fly on the wall watching these spoiled teens, wondering what's going to happen to them next, even if you probably should look away.

It's a visceral, no-holds-barred look into this 80s society which finds itself rapidly torn apart, sometimes literally. Indeed, those looking for Bret Easton Ellis' brand of gratuitous violence will find it here, making The Shards an interesting blend of teen drama and horror movie, with some grisly results.

Even if you haven't read The Shards, if you know you're a fan of Ellis' other works like American Psycho, I think this will be right up your alley. It ticks all the right boxes for what we'd expect from him, after all.

At the time of writing, The Shards season 2 has not been confirmed, which means the season finale's ending will prove frustrating if we don't get more. Though Ellis' book has a similar ending, I'm hopeful that The Shards will choose to take the story further as it feels like it's been written with a second season in mind.

As a standalone season though, it's entertaining and shocking in equal measure. The Shards is a welcome addition to Ryan Murphy's filmography, and I hope he does more like this because I have certainly missed him when he's at his bloody best.

It’s an exciting time to be a Samsung phone fan right now with the recent launch of its new foldable range, including a brand new form factor for the Galaxy Z Fold 8.

Pre-orders are still ongoing, but with prices starting from AU$1,949, not everyone will be springing for these premium phones.

If you’re in the market for something much more affordable, then you’re in luck — the Samsung Galaxy S26 is currently at its all-time low price of AU$992 on Amazon, or a whopping 36% off.

Costing less than Apple’s budget phone — the AU$999 iPhone 17e — the base model Samsung Galaxy S26 is a true flagship device with three camera lenses, 12GB of RAM and the full Galaxy AI suite. This deal handily beats the previous all-time low of AU$1,098 we saw during EOFY and Prime Day. Amazon has the Black, Cobalt Violet, Sky Blue and White colours available for this price.View Deal

Our Samsung Galaxy S26 review praised the bright AMOLED display, reliable 3-lens camera setup and surprisingly long battery life given its relatively small 4,300mAh capacity. It also has a 6.3-inch screen, perfect for those who like smaller-sized handsets.

Storage options now also start at 256GB, up from the predecessor’s 128GB. That change, plus the other improvements over the S25, meant the S26 came with a price increase from AU$1,399 to AU$1,549.

Aussies also miss out on the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset found in the US model, having to settle for an Exynos 2600 processor. Our reviewer also noted the relatively slow 25W charging speed and the lack of full Qi2 wireless charging support, commenting that this phone is only worth buying when it’s on sale.

And that’s why this phone is an easy recommendation for less than AU$1,000, despite its shortcomings. It’s a solid entry-level flagship with the specs to back it up, which also comes in an increasingly rare 6.3-inch size.

Also discounted at the Samsung store

Not a fan of the default colours on sale at Amazon? The Samsung Australia store also has the handset discounted for AU$999, and that includes the store-exclusive Pink Gold and Silver Shadow colours. You can also purchase the handset through a monthly repayment plan and trade in an old device to save even more.View Deal

The news that Amazon’s smarter AI assistant, Alexa+, is finally making its way to Australia could well be exciting news for many Aussies. After all, we’ve had to wait a fair amount of time for the upgraded digital assistant, as it launched in the US way back in February 2025, and arrived on UK shores in March of this year.

If you’re already embedded in Amazon’s ecosystem, whether that be through ownership of Echo smart speakers and displays or Ring home security cameras, you’d be forgiven for thinking Alexa+ might never make it Down Under. If so, you may have never felt the need to upgrade your various Amazon devices to newer generations.

Now with the official rollout of Alexa+ in Australia, that could mean your devices aren’t compatible. In truth, the list of incompatible devices is relatively short (which I have to say is quite remarkable and deserves brownie points for Amazon), but regardless, the latest generation Alexa-enabled devices will offer the best Alexa+ experience.

So, if you want to add Alexa+ to your home to become an AI-powered digital assistant capable of performing all manner of tasks, from answering simple queries to placing Amazon orders on your behalf or even notifying you when packages are delivered to your home (and are captured on a Ring camera), then any of these nine Echo devices will be worthy additions to your home.

Also note that you'll need a subscription to Alexa+. It's free if you're already a Prime member, otherwise it costs AU$29.99p/m. Considering an Amazon Prime membership is just AU$9.99p/m, you'd be saving money.

Amazon Echo Studio (2025)

Amazon Echo Studio

Amazon Echo Dot Max

Amazon Echo Dot (5th Gen)

Amazon Echo Spot (2024)

Amazon Echo Hub

Amazon Echo Show 8 (4th Gen)

Amazon Echo Show 11 (2025)

Amazon Echo Show 15