Technology

Am I surprised that Reacher season 4 isn't just dominating Prime Video, but the internet itself? No. Am I surprised that fan opinions feel more contradictory than ever? Absolutely.

In case you've not caught up yet, new episodes are following Reacher (Alan Ritchson) as he becomes embroiled in a CIA conspiracy after suspecting a woman on a New York City subway train is actually a suicide bomber. Unlike our first three seasons, this political espionage plot has got us thinking in a way we're not used to.

But of course, there's not that much thinking happening. The general story arc of Reacher getting involved in something that's much bigger than he first thought and punching his way out of it is very much alive and well.

Reacher coming close to — yet never quite reaching — The West Wing or The Diplomat levels of political severity seems to be causing a new tear in the fabric of the fandom. Some Reddit users have branded season 4 as the worst of all time, while others think that it's Reacher's strongest outing since season 1.

I've got a feeling that this all comes down to one important point... and it's something we've forgotten (or we are choosing to overlook). On top of that, it begs a question: do we no longer allow our TV programs to be silly for silly's sake?

Letting Reacher be a bit of an idiot is key to getting the most out of season 4

(Image credit: Prime Video)

Let's face it: Reacher is a borderline idiotic, light-hearted crime drama that was never meant to be anything else. It's as superficial as superficial gets, and anybody looking for something grittier or more meaningful underneath is baseline is sadly misguided.

If I'm being completely honest, this is something I found grating when I first discovered Reacher-world. We're spoilt for choice when it comes to gripping crime dramas, both on streaming services and linear TV. So surely to be the best, a show needs to be critically engaging at all times, leaving no stone unturned in the process.

We expect everything to be Sherlock-levels of enigma-solving in order to be worth our time, but is this actually the case? Reacher season 4 is just the latest installment to prove otherwise... if you're willing to accept the series for what it is.

The actual storyline, and whatever whodunnits need solving along the way, is the least important cog in the machine. Reacher himself is what draws viewers in (and keeps them watching), with his authentic mix of a troubled military background, hidden personality and abs chiseled to high heaven the unique selling point that keeps on giving.

All in how he interacts and builds meaningful relationships with his sidekicks for the season, and you're watching for the people, not the plot. There has yet to be a single connection that Reacher has fostered that I haven't enjoyed or been invested in, and that speaks volumes about what we're actually watching.

Yes, we want to see Reacher pumping iron before battering a load of bad guys, making the lives of those around him better in the process. No, we don't actually need anything else. If Reacher season 5 sticks to this tried and tested format, there won't be any less satisfaction — but will you be open to it?

• Metro 2039 will have a speaking protagonist called The Stranger at the center of the game's story
• Executive producer Jon Bloch says players will learn how the character feels about unfolding events
• He adds that a silent protagonist wouldn't have allowed 4A Games to tell the story properly

Unlike the core Metro trilogy, Metro 2039 will feature a new speaking protagonist, The Stranger, which allowed 4A Games to tell a darker, more personal story.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming about the real-life impact the Russia-Ukraine war has had on the studio's upcoming game, creative director Andriy Shevchenko and executive producer Jon Bloch also touched on the sequel's new protagonist and how his motivations are at the center of the story.

"We've also gone way darker with the story," Bloch said. "It's a lot more personal story. The story is directly about our protagonist, The Stranger, about him, about his history, about the things he struggles with, about his singular motivation for what he's doing."

Artyom is the established main character of the preceding games, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, and Metro Exodus, and is a silent protagonist, while Metro 2039's The Stranger is fully voiced, allowing players to hear his thoughts throughout.

According to Bloch, this shift enabled 4A Games to more deeply explore who the character is, how he feels about unfolding events, and "what's inside of him."

"It goes hand in hand with telling a personal story," he added. "If we stuck with the silent protagonist method, we wouldn't be able to tell this story properly."

Metro 2039 will release in February 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Metro 2039 will feature the return of the claustrophobic metro tunnels
• Executive producer Jon Bloch says the game "goes back to the roots" of the series
• However, the team didn't want to "ditch everything that we did in Metro Exodus," and the game will still offer open-world zones

Metro 2039 executive producer Jon Bloch has explained how 4A Games has balanced the return of claustrophic metro tunnels and open-world zones.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, Bloch explained that it was a priority to bring back the tunnels, which were mostly absent from the previous game, Metro Exodus, since most of the experience takes place above ground.

"Metro 2039 goes back to the roots," he said, "and brings back a lot of that deep, dark, claustrophobic, thick atmosphere tunnels, like the spookiness, all that stuff that we love from those first two games."

Bloch continued, saying, "We didn't want to ditch everything that we did in Metro Exodus that was great and all the things that we learned. So there are different elements throughout the game.

"This game is a story-driven game. It's like we've said before, it's a very personal story. He's [The Stranger] on a singular mission, and in order to tell that kind of story, we're able to actually utilize a lot of the design methodologies from the earlier games. And in order to really make sure that the story is compelling, it's immersive."

Creative director Andriy Shevchenko added that the games are all in the same universe and the team took "the best parts" from each for Metro 2039, explaining that players will feel "freedom" and the danger from the open-world zones.

"Every step forward, the farther away you are from your station or from your safe place, the more dangerous it's supposed to be," Shevchenko said. "But as John mentioned, we are a story-driven game, and to drive story without bottlenecks or our pure metro corridors is almost impossible."

The developer reiterated that it's impossible to translate that sense of danger in just an open world, saying, "That's one of the reasons we're getting back to our dark underground roots."

Metro 2039 arrives in February 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. The developers have also confirmed that the team has prioritized optimization across all platforms, not just PC.

• Executive producer Jon Bloch reveals Metro 2039's audio system has been rebuilt and "reimagined"
• Bloch says the new system supports the game's "dense atmosphere"
• 4A Games' newest game engine also offers a sense of realism in both visuals and audio

4A Games has confirmed that Metro 2039's audio system has been rebuilt to offer a deeper sense of immersion.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming, where creative director Andriy Shevchenko and executive producer Jon Bloch discussed Metro 3039 at length, the pair revealed that the newest version of the studio's engine has allowed the team to take things to the next level, whether that's improving the visual density of the game, having full ray-tracing, or an overhauled audio system.

When asked how the audio design is key to bringing the game's post-apocalyptic world to life, Bloch called it "hugely important," and said the audio team will come in after the level designers have completed their work to add in all the effects players will hear.

"They need to see what elements are in there," Bloch explained. "If there's water that needs to be dripping or, you know, if there's a machine in the corner, like that kind of stuff, like they have to wait for level artists to do their thing first.

"But it's hugely important, and it's one of the reasons why we spend so much time and energy overhauling the audio system; the entire audio system has been rebuilt."

Bloch continued, explaining that the audio system hasn't necessarily been built from the ground up, but built upon and "reimagined in a way to really support thick, dense atmosphere" on top of the refined visuals.

"The audio system is more dense," the developer said. "There's a lot more going on. There are a lot more things you can hear. There's a lot more variety when it comes to, you know, even simple things like footsteps on different materials on the ground. Every bush makes a sound when you touch it.

"The dynamics of how the player moves and what you hear in his equipment and his suit, like things that might normally be forgotten as a really important thing in some games, like the level of detail, the granularity that the audio department can get to is more than we've ever been able to do in Metro games, certainly."

Metro 2039 launches in February 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Metro 2039 creative director Andriy Shevchenko says the new game engine allows for "billions" of objects
• Executive producer Jon Bloch reveals it enables 4A Games to create a realistic and dense world
• Bloch says the team is working to optimize the game for lower-spec, as well as high-spec, systems

Metro 2039 creative director Andriy Shevchenko has revealed that 4A Games' latest game engine allows for "billions" of assets to create a dense, realistic world.

In a new interview with TechRadar Gaming, Shevchenko, alongside executive producer Jon Bloch, discussed how the new engine enabled the team to overhaul the game's audio system, enhance ray-tracing, and improve visual immersion by increasing the density of objects and characters.

"We're able to push so much more into the world to make it that much more realistic, that much more alive feeling, that much more tactile," Bloch said, adding that these improvements also come with challenges of balancing these features and ensuring the game is "performant."

"I would say probably the most striking on the surface thing is going to be the density of what you see in the picture of all the objects," he said.

Shevchenko added that during the development of Metro Exodus, the game engine could support up to 30 million objects, but it supports "billions of objects" for Metro 2039.

"It's all to give freedom for level art, level design, all [the] people working on this level, [to] do whatever you want," the creative director said. "We have almost endless limits. And we are reaching these limits every time."

As Bloch said, these impressive technical leaps also come with challenges, with Shevchenko explaining that there's some "black magic of balancing" and "getting rid of something really unnecessary and focusing on really cool things. But it's a really user-friendly engine," with "limits only in your head."

Metro 2039 will be multiplatform, launching on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC, and Bloch explained that it's one of the team's priorities to make sure the game is optimized across all platforms.

"We don't develop on PC and then port later to consoles," he said. "We're developing constantly across everything that we're going to support. So from day one, we're running on console, and so we're keeping all that in mind.

"We're optimising to the low end, to the lowest spec, and then also trying to push things as far as we can with the other platforms that allow us to push, particularly obviously with PC when new kinds of video cards come out; we're like, 'Oh, what can we do with this now?' While still making sure that the lower-spec hardware can still handle things."

Metro 2039 arrives in February 2027.

• Metro 2039 creative director Andriy Shevchenko discusses how the Russia-Ukraine war has impacted the game
• The developer says, "We are not afraid to call evil evil"
• He adds that there are "no gray zones" in the story

Metro 2039 creative director Andriy Shevchenko has shared how the events of the Russia-Ukraine war have manifested in the upcoming first-person shooter.

The next installment in the Metro series was revealed earlier this year and is expected to deliver another dark survival story set in the heart of the Moscow metro, where the last survivors of the nuclear apocalypse struggle to exist.

At the time, Bloch explained that the team at Ukrainian studio 4A Games had everything planned for the next chapter, until it all changed in 2020, and "more significantly in 2022" with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

As a result, the studio "changed the story to be even more about choices, actions, consequences, and what you have to pay to have a future."

"Now war is our reality, and our message has shifted to be about the circumstance, the cost of silence, the horrors of tyranny, and the price of freedom," Shevchenko said.

Now, in a new interview with TechRadar Gaming alongside executive producer Jon Bloch, the developers explained how the real-life impact of the ongoing war has influenced the game's messaging and the story's moral core.

"We are not afraid to call evil evil," Shevchenko said. "If you see evil, we now have a protagonist [The Stranger] who can talk, who can share his own thoughts. He will call this character, this situation, this story element evil. It is bad. And there are no gray zones."

While neither could delve into the details, the creative director said the game will feature enemies, and the antagonist, Führer Hunter, has enemies as well, and "the enemies must be destroyed from both sides."

"But who is your enemy?" he teased.

Metro 2039 is slated to launch in February 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

• Plug-in solar kits become legal in the UK from August 27
• These lower-cost solar panels are ideal for renters and flat owners
• We want to hear from you in our poll below — will you be buying one?

Plug-in solar kits become legal in the UK from August 27, which makes that date a pretty significant one in the UK's energy history.

That's because these kits are, in theory, a much more affordable and user-friendly way to bring the bill-cutting benefits of solar power to your home. The UK government estimates that plug-in panels could save households up to £70-£110 a year on their energy bills.

For renters and flat owners with little roof space, they represent a long-awaited new alternative to pricey rooftop installations. Instead, as their name suggests, you can theoretically plug them directly into your mains electricity, and place them outdoors in places like balcony railings, fences, garden sheds or patios.

However, despite their promised savings, early plug-in solar kits aren't exactly cheap. Early options that have gained regulatory approval, such as the UKSOL Plug-In Solar Pro Compact 460W Ground Mount Kit, will start at £699 from retailers, and it isn't yet clear when we'll be able to buy them directly from the likes of Lidl, Amazon and Currys.

(Image credit: Getty Images / imageBROKER / Robert Poorten)

Other potential drawbacks include limitations on where you can actually install plug-in solar (in some cases, you may need planning permission) and the fact that you can't currently connect your panels to a battery, without professional help. For many, plug-in batteries are the real game-changer, and some will be waiting for those to become legal before diving into plug-in solar.

But now we want to hear from you — are you planning to buy a plug-in solar kit when they become legal on August 27? Vote in our poll below and let us know your thoughts in the comments too.

• Company chiefs are farming off more work to AI than their underlings, a new study suggests
• Almost 40% of C-suite leaders are relying on AI to complete tasks, despite privacy and security implications
• The survey, by Adobe Acrobat, explored the use of AI in workplaces across the UK

New research has demonstrated a an apparent disconnect between AI use and responsibilities concerning sensitive data.

Adobe Acrobat's “The Rise of AI Documents in the Workplace” report surveyed 2,000 UK adults on their use of AI in the workplace, claiming found that almost 75% of C-suite leaders are happy to share their work documents with AI tools for tasks that include marketing, translating, and data analysis. These are all documents that are likely to hold confidential information.

Conversely, just 20% of non-management employees are comfortable with this type of AI use, with a sizeable chunk (almost two-thirds) avoiding AI tools completely.

Wide AI adoption

The report highlighted several revelations about the adoption of AI within companies in the UK. While the 74% of C-suite leaders using AI might be a surprise, it’s just the first of several stats from the report that paint a picture of widespread AI adoption in among company chiefs.

Within that group, 37% use AI to save between 3 and 5 hours of work each week, and 35% use the technology to perform analytical tasks (which might include data).

Yet the figures concerning employees outside of the C-suite paint a different picture. Here, 59% don’t use AI tools at all. This figure is not unusual throughout the report, which illustrates that in most cases, AI use among those with “non management responsibility” is considerably lower – often more than 50% less.

Could this be due to a general reluctance to use AI, or perhaps something more specific, such as feeling AI use is banned, or its use might highlight weaknesses within a team?

Secure-suite?

The results also highlight concerns over AI use and training, with 19% of respondents highlighting a “lack of training or clear guidance.” This is something that probably needs addressing, not least from a security and privacy angle.

For IT departments and anyone tasked with information management and data security, the report’s findings make for difficult reading. The obvious conclusion to draw is that company chiefs are dropping sensitive information into AI chatbots, potentially saving time – but also risking other issues.

Adobe Acrobat’s survey found 22% of organizations adopting AI tools had data security and privacy as their biggest concerns and challenges. Similarly, 20% were concerned about accuracy and errors generated in AI outputs.

• Xiaomi opens reservations at JD.com for the Xiaomi Smart Storage, its first NAS, with prices starting at CNY 2,699 for a 4 TB two-bay unit
• The box pairs the same entry-level Realtek RTD1619B chip Synology used in its 2023 DS223 models with more generous RAM and faster networking than what Synology offered, in addition to an HDMI port
• The China-only launch gets considerably cheaper per terabyte as one moves up the storage ladder and currently ships in three different trims (4TB, 8TB, and 16TB)

Xiaomi has opened reservations on JD.com for its Xiaomi Smart Storage, its first Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, ahead of general availability, running from August 27 to September 26 2026.

The reservations follow an earlier crowdfunding phase, Xiaomi's usual route to market in China for new product categories, which rewards the urgency and scarcity that often come with steep discounts on its products.

Three configurations are listed for the Smart Storage NAS, all bundled with drives out of the box: the entry model is CNY 2,699 for 4 TB, made up of two 2 TB hard disks; the middle option is CNY 3,499 for 8 TB; and the top configuration is CNY 5,499 for 16 TB.

(Image credit: Xiaomi)A small, capable NAS with a competitive price tag in tow

The Xiaomi Smart Storage NAS is priced extremely competitively when you factor in US NAS drive prices. Its baseline 4TB SKU, which uses 2 x 2TB HDDs, costs ~$402, while the 8TB and 16TB trims, both using a similar dual-HDD configuration, cost $521 and $818, respectively (converted using Google's published mid-market rates).

For context, one of the cheapest 8TB NAS drives on Amazon costs about $250, and the highest-end Xiaomi offering includes two of these, suggesting you get a capable NAS without drives for about $300 at the top end of the offering.

The math is even more skewed when one considers that two 2TB NAS HDDs cost nearly as much as the entry-model NAS offering, making Xiaomi's offering essentially free, at least by US standards once you deduct the cost of storage.

The dual-bay unit is small compared to other NAS offerings, at 200.5 by 85 by 161 mm and about 2.3 kg, wrapped in an aluminum alloy frame. Its two SATA bays accept either 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drives, and it runs a Realtek RTD1619B quad-core ARM processor with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of onboard storage, plus 2.5-gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, and USB-A.

The underlying RTD1619B isn't new: it is the same quad-core Cortex-A55 running at 1.7 GHz that Synology put in the DS223 and DS223j, its entry-level two-bay boxes, back in 2023. Anyone expecting Xiaomi's first NAS to arrive with something exotic will be disappointed.

That said, Xiaomi has been noticeably more generous with the chip than Synology was. The DS223j shipped with 1 GB of RAM and the DS223 with 2 GB, both over a single gigabit Ethernet port. Xiaomi gives users 4 GB and a 2.5-gigabit port, plus an HDMI output that neither Synology model has. This makes it a meaningfully better configuration on the same foundation, and the HDMI port makes sense since the Realtek part descends from the company's media processor line and supports media playback.

Xiaomi advertises a relatively modest maximum capacity of 60TB (2 x 30TB drives) and also sells a companion UPS accessory for 349 CNY. Xiaomi's competitors have been advertising 124 TB and 132 TB support on similar hardware. The reservation window for Chinese customers interested in grabbing it closes on August 27. Independent testing and any verdict on the software that Xiaomi integrated will have to wait until units are in reviewers' hands, however.

You can link your entire family together with Luffu’s new wearable and app ecosystem.

The world’s most widely used messaging app adds stronger two-step verification and allows for more than one passkey.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is worried that powerful companies are dominating the evolution of AI
• Altman has also expressed concern over AI’s potential for acting autonomously and possibly escaping human control
• The comments are believed to be a reference to his rival, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

Are too few companies wielding undue influence on the direction of AI? That seems to be the belief of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who has warned against a scenario where the people don’t have a say in how AI changes the world. Speaking to the David Senra podcast, Altman expressed a desire to see "society and the models... co-evolve."

While this may seem desirable, a byproduct of this thinking might be harder to accommodate. Altman also expanded on his view that governments should not regulate AI, expressing a view that prefers the existence of liberty over the possibility of safety.

Altman is the latest tech founder to appear on David Senra’s weekly podcast, which started in 2025 with Spotify’s Daniel Ek as the guest.

Evolving together

Altman’s view is he sees AI evolving alongside human acceptance of the technology. “Society and the model will evolve together,” he said. “The right approach is for people to deeply control the future.”

However, he revealed that things haven’t moved quite as fast as he thought they might when OpenAI first released GPT-4. “I thought when we got to GPT-4, which was back in 2023, that very quickly after that there was going to be much more disruption.” One of Altman’s expectations back then was software businesses being more widely and directly impacted by AI.

While the inertia in the economy has reduced the impact in that regard (for the moment, at least), Altman is excited about AI’s ability to unlock small business opportunities. “We are about to see the greatest boom in people starting smaller businesses than we have ever seen… AI is empowering that.”

Liberty and open models

Altman’s view of liberty and the need for open models puts him in direct opposition to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who, in June 2026, stated that the latest Mythos model could prove a risk to the financial sector and infrastructure and present a challenge to cybersecurity.

For Sam Altman, this is the wrong way around. “There are a lot of people who are so nervous about the magnitude of those risks and get so taken by that and feel a need to protect the world,” he said. “Like, you know, ‘We should trade off a lot of liberty for safety.’”

Interestingly, most major Chinese AI companies release open-weight (the open source of AI) models, enabling them to match Anthropic and OpenAI. While Anthropic is yet to release an open weight model, OpenAI has released two: gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b.

But will the people and small businesses derive long-term advantage from OpenAI’s liberty-based open models or stick with Anthropic’s closed, "safe" models?

• The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition has released a preview of select winning images for its 62nd year
• Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London
• The full set of 100 winning images will be exhibited at the Museum following the full winners’ announcement on October 16

The winners announcement of the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is one of my favorite dates in the photographic calendar. It seems like every year the winning and commended photographers outdo themselves in capturing vivid, fascinating stories from the natural world.

One thing I also love doing is poring over which cameras the winning photographers are using to capture their spectacular shots. As such, when the Museum released this set of preview images to whet our appetites ahead of the full announcement, I headed straight to the caption information — and discovered to my great interest that the two most-used cameras on the list so far are both Nikon DSLRs!

The full list of cameras used to capture the sixteen shots on the full list is a real mixed bag. As well as a selection of pro and prosumer mirrorless and DSLR cameras, there’s also a DJI Mavic drone and a Leica Q3 43 compact. However, the two cameras that featured most prominently — with two images apiece, representing a quarter of the full list — were the ten-year-old Nikon D500 and the Nikon D850!

(Image credit: © Dewald Tromp / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

The highly commended image ‘Eye of the Storm’ by Dewald Tromp from South Africa, depicting a chameleon battling its way through a sandstorm in Nigeria (above), was captured using the Nikon D850, as was American Ralph Pace’s image of a sea hare gliding through eelgrass in Monterey Bay (below).

(Image credit: © Ralph Pace / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

Jack Crawford in the UK has been highly commended in the 15-17 Years bracket for his perfectly timed moment of a swift flying underneath the looming bulk of a 747 — shot on a Nikon D500 (below).

(Image credit: © Jack Crockford / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

And Canadian Shane Gross strapped his Nikon D500 into an Aquatica AD500 underwater housing to capture his highly commended, half-in half-out image of a school of bigeye trevally off the coast of the Seychelles (below).

(Image credit: © Shane Gross / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

One thing’s for sure — the DSLR isn’t dead just yet!

If you want to be able to see these images for yourself when the exhibition begins in October, you can grab tickets here.

The D850 and D500

The Nikon D850 is a hugely popular full-frame DSLR. (Image credit: Future)

The Nikon D850, released in 2017, is a wildlife photography legend. A full-frame DSLR with a generous 45.7MP resolution, its 153-point AF system may not be as sophisticated as the flagship mirrorless cameras that have succeeded it, but it’s still incredibly tenacious and accurate for moving subjects.

With its pitch-perfect handling and large optical viewfinder, the D850 is a joy to shoot with and has captured many spectacular wildlife images since. There’s a reason that when Nikon came to release its mirrorless wildlife specialist the Z8, the manufacturer branded it as a new D850.

The smaller, more affordable Nikon D500. (Image credit: Future)

The D500, meanwhile, was released a year earlier — meaning it has just marked its ten-year anniversary! Even so, this capable APS-C shooter made a reputation for being a speedster, thanks to its 10fps burst rate that could go up to 200 RAW files, as well as its simply superb autofocus system. As such, it has been embraced over the years by many wildlife photographers without the budget for the D850 — and as this year’s WPOTY results go to show, this stunning camera still has its share of devotees.

Geralt’s story wraps up with new enemies, a mysterious region and a send-off before Ciri takes the spotlight in The Witcher 4.

The idea of ownership is becoming a relic of an earlier era.

• AI authorship is increasingly employed for web pages, Pew Research Center report claims
• Over 33% of pages published since the launch of ChatGPT reportedly show signs of AI generation
• Of the 10,000-page sample used in the study, 10% of pages had signs of AI authorship

An incredible 35% of web pages published since the launch of ChatGPT show signs of AI authorship, new research has claimed.

A study from the Pew Research Center, which used automated tools to assess a sample of 10,000 web pages, also found that in the entire sample – based on data from the Common Crawl project – almost 10% of all pages had signs of AI creation.

The “How Much of the Internet Is Written With AI?” report also found that certain types of websites are more likely to feature some AI generation, while detecting some of the key fingerprints of AI-generated text, which goes beyond em dashes.

AI is writing more and more web pages

The report – which was compiled using a machine learning model tasked with looking for signs of AI authorship – found that 9.6% of all pages in the sample of 10,000 appeared to have been written by AI. While that may seem a small amount, the sample from Common Crawl dates back to the beginning of the World Wide Web, over 30 years ago.

In keeping with other research (such as AI on the Internet), the data indicates that “large shares of recently published pages on the internet were likely written or substantially edited by AI.”

Reassuringly, the data highlights the interesting point that the majority of the suspected AI-generated web pages published in 2026 are .com domains and, as such typically commercial. In contrast, just 1% are .edu (US-based educational facilities) and 0.8% are .gov.

Is it written by AI?

Using its evaluation of 490,000 English-language web pages, the Pew Research Center also established some more useful indicators (“common features”) of AI text generation.

The em dash is regularly held up as an example of AI writing, as is the use of the Oxford comma. The em dash appears “twice as frequently” in pages published since 2023, while Oxford commas have a 63% increase. The report authors note that these aren’t solitary indicators (“Humans use these in their writing too!”)

Other “tells” offer a more reliable giveaway of AI-generated writing, as demonstrated by the report. Certain words and trends are listed by the research, including "delve," "interplay," and "testament," which have apparently “more than doubled in usage.” The report lists numerous examples of “AI-typical vocabulary.”

Meanwhile, the negative parallelism, which you might have seen as “it’s not just X, it’s Y,” has almost trebled in use.

It might be increasingly difficult to identify an AI-generated web page these days, but if it comes from a .edu or .gov domain, it is overall more likely to have been written by a human.

• IBM connects two box-shaped cryogenic modules into a single environment and cooled them below 15 millikelvin, linked by a thermally shielded tunnel carrying quantum cables between cells
• The cooling technology is established dilution refrigeration; what is new is an enclosure that offers up to twelve times more wiring area and lets modules sit side by side with shorter interconnects in tow
• IBM plans to install Nighthawk chips later this year, with a roadmap targeting 1,000 programmable qubits by 2027 and establishing fault tolerance in 2029

IBM has joined two cryogenic modules into a single environment at its Poughkeepsie facility and cooled the combined system to below 15 millikelvin, bringing it as close to absolute zero as possible.

The company said this was an important milestone on the road to IBM Quantum Starling, the fault-tolerant machine it intends to deliver in 2029.

IBM said the temperature is more than 180 times colder than deep space, and it is only part of the announcement, which furthers quantum computing considerably.

A story beyond temperature

Superconducting qubits need to sit a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, and a dilution refrigerator gets them there. To date, IBM has housed these inside tall cylindrical cryostats, one processor per can, an approach that dictates how every IBM Quantum System One in the field currently operates.

IBM has not replaced the refrigerator but rather modified the container: its new cryogenic cells are box-shaped, built from solid aluminum panels and framing, roughly three times the size of a kitchen fridge.

Their rectangular shape has an advantage: they can stand in a tight row rather than being spaced out as cylinders must be, and openings in the side walls let quantum cables run from one cell into the next. Multiple layers of thermal shielding wrap those cables to form what IBM calls a protected cryogenic tunnel, keeping the link between processors at operating temperature rather than forcing signals out through a warm gap and back down again.

IBM's achievement is demonstrating that it can run two previously independent cooling cells as one low-temperature environment, while offering 0.53 square meters of available wiring space and 2.75 cubic meters of vacuum chamber volume per cell.

IBM says this is up to twelve times more wiring room than its most widely used systems and addresses the constraint that has been quietly throttling superconducting quantum computers: every qubit you add needs control and readout lines running down into the cold, each line carries heat, and a cylinder runs out of cross-section long before one runs out of qubits.

Not only is IBM's new approach much more scalable than its previous ones, but it's goal here is different than what one would think at first glance given that It has already hit 1,000 qubits (its Condor processor already did so physically on a single chip in December 2023); its new approach is to have programmable qubits usable for computation across linked processors, a much different task than what IBM has already demonstrated.

Its 2027 target refers to qubits you can actually address and run a calculation on, spread across several chips linked together. That is a harder thing to deliver than a raw count, and IBM's roadmap, which also aims to have a fault-tolerant machine by 2029, is a reach by any measure, but one that is promising for a company that is at the forefront of quantum computing research and has just shown a bleeding-edge cooling enclosure to further its cause.

• The Future Games Show will return with three digital showcases at Gamescom 2026
• It will air on August 26, offering a look at over 40 games
• FGS Live From Gamescom will immediately follow, and the FGS Best Of Gamescom will return on August 30

Opening Night Live has officially wrapped, but there's plenty more to come from Gamescom 2026, as the Future Games Show will return with three digital showcases — here's how you can watch.

Future Games Show at Gamescom is the first of the three broadcasts and will air the same day the industry event kicks off, on August 26 at 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 6PM BST / 7PM CEST / 1AM CST.

You can tune in to the digital showcase at Twitch, YouTube, X, TikTok, Facebook, and GamesRadar+.

Hosted by Resident Evil Requiem stars Nick Apostolides and Angela Sant’Albano, fans can expect a guide through more than 40 games, including 13 world premieres, exclusive reveals, and developer deep dives "from some of the industry’s most exciting and creative studios."

Some of those include a behind-the-scenes look at Tides of Annihilation from Eclipse Glow Games, a closer look at samurai swordplay action game Onimusha: Way of the Sword, a new trailer for Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault from Digital Sun Games, and a trailer for Trees Hate You, a comedy adventure, and many more.

FGS Live From Gamescom will immediately follow the main showcase on August 26, hosted by FGS channel presenters Nathan and Jules, and feature more world premieres, trailers, news, and interviews from the Gamescom Koelnmesse convention centre.

This includes Apart, a new third-person adventure horror game from Turnkey Games; Nivalis Nights, a slice-of-life sim set in a cyberpunk city; a cozy coop horror game called Haunted Paws; We Are So Cooked, a 1-4 player co-op physics-stealth game; and the sequel to retro first-person shooter (FPS) Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun.

Finally, FGS Best Of Gamescom will return on August 30 at 10AM PDT / 1PM EDT / 6PM BST / 7PM CEST / 1AM CST, and bring viewers the "best of" the Gamescom show floor, including gameplay demos, booth tours, exclusive developer interviews, and a recap of all the week’s biggest announcements.

• The first trailer for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past has been revealed at Gamescom
• The trailer showcases Geralt, a new region, monsters, and a weapon
• CD Projekt Red level design lead Miles Tost confirms, "This is Geralt's last adventure before we pass the torch on to Ciri" in The Witcher 4

CD Projekt Red has unveiled the first look at The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's third and final expansion, Songs of the Past, and it looks incredible.

Songs of the Past, which is being co-developed with Fool’s Theory, a studio whose leadership is made up of The Witcher 3 veterans, was revealed during Opening Night Live at Gamescom. While we still don't have a specific release date, the expansion's first trailer gave us a taste of what to look forward to.

We see Geralt of Rivia returning for a brand-new journey as he explores a new region, Letten, takes on creepy monsters, and wields a new chain weapon that can grapple enemies, first showcased in the first Witcher game.

CDPR Level design lead Miles Tost took to the stage during Opening Night Live at Gamescom to share a few more details about the game, including what players can expect.

"We had this idea for one more story with Geralt for a while, but we couldn't quite figure out how to fit it into our busy schedule," Tost said. "Luckily, our friends from Fool's Theory and they hired a bunch of old veteran Witcher three developers, including my mentor, Peter Jennings, and here we are today."

He continued, saying, "This is Geralt's last adventure before we pass the torch on to Ciri, and we wanted to go out with a bang. So this chain is a weapon that is new in the game, but many people, perhaps hardcore Witcher fans, will realize that this is a weapon we first showed in The Witcher 1 intro, and we will talk about that in many more things here at Gamescom."

On Letten, Tost called it "a whole new, unique region that has a unique identity," filled with quests, new monsters, adventures, and exploration.

"Just like the things that Witcher fans love," he said. "But it's an almost uncannily idyllic place that, however, has a dark secret lurking just underneath the surface. And as it is a Witcher game, this kind of secret requires a true professional witcher to solve."

Alongside the expansion trailer, the studio also announced The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, a free upgrade featuring all-new improvements and revamped gameplay features, arriving on September 29 for all platforms.

The developer also confirmed that all those features will be in Songs of the Past as well.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past is slated to launch in 2027, followed by The Witcher 4, which CDPR has confirmed is targeting a 2028 release window.

Every time that a new Garmin smartwatch appears we know that our list of the best Garmin watches on the market is likely to be disrupted, and from what we've seen so far that certainly seems to be the case with the brand new Fenix 9 and Fenix 9 Pro.

These wearables take over from the Fenix 8 and the Fenix 8 Pro at the very top of Garmin's product range, but are they the right buy for you? How much do they offer above and beyond the older models, and how do they compare to what's already available?

If you're weighing up a potential Fenix 9-themed upgrade, here's what you need to know in terms of what's new and what you get for your money.

All the models

If you're interested in a new Garmin Fenix 9, there's no shortage of models to pick from: there's the standard Fenix 9 in three sizes, the Fenix 9 Pro in three sizes, and the Fenix 9 Pro with InReach in three sizes.

On top of that (try and keep up at the back), there's a Fenix 9 Pro Solar model in two sizes, and a Fenix 9 Pro Solar with InReach model in two sizes.

Our comprehensive pricing table might make everything a little easier to digest.

Garmin Fenix model

43mm

47mm

51mm

Garmin Fenix 9

$999.99 / £859.99 / AU$1,599

$999.99 / £859.99 / AU$1,599

$1,099.99 / £949.99 / AU$1,749

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro

$1,099.99 / £949.99 / AU$1,749

$1,099.99 / £949.99 / AU$1,749

$1,199.99 / £1,029.99 / AU$1,899

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro Solar

N/A

$1,099.99 / £949.99 / AU$1,749

$1,199.99 / £1,029.99 / AU$1,899

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro with InReach

$1,199.99 / £1,029.99 / AU$1,899

$1,299.99 / £1,199.99 / AU$2,049

$1,399.99 / £1,209.99 / AU$2199

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro Solar with InReach

N/A

$1,199.99 / £1,029.99 / AU$1,899

$1,299.99 / £1,199.99 / AU$2,049

You can also check out the key specs of the Fenix 9 and Fenix 9 Pro models below: we've compared the two 43mm OLED versions to make it a little easier to understand.

Component

Garmin Fenix 9 (43mm AMOLED)

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro (43mm AMOLED)

Price

From $999.99 / £859.99 / AUTBC

From $1,099.99 / £949.99 / AUTBC

Dimensions

43 x 43 x 13.8 mm

43 x 43 x 13.3 mm

Weight

61g

62g

Case/bezel

Titanium, fibre-reinforced polymer

Titanium

Display

416 x 416 px, AMOLED

416 x 416 px, AMOLED

GPS

Multi-band, GPS + Beidou + Glonass + Galileo + QZSS + SatIQ

Multi-band, GPS + Beidou + Glonass + Galileo + QZSS + SatIQ

Battery life

10 days (49 hours activity mode)

10 days (up to 50 hours activity mode)

Connection

Bluetooth, ANT, Wi-Fi

Bluetooth, ANT, Wi-Fi

Water resistant?

Yes, 10ATM

Yes, 10ATM

Memory

64GB (7,000 songs)

64GB (7,000 songs)

(Image credit: Garmin)Mapping upgrades

The on-board map is of course core to a lot of outdoor activities with the Fenix 9 series, and there are some useful-looking tweaks coming here. They include a new perspective view, which lets you see what's coming up more easily, at various different zoom levels, and there's more storage across the board with more map content already preloaded.

There's extra RAM inside these watches compared to their predecessors too, which Garmin says will make getting around the map on your wrist more fluid and responsive — panning is apparently now 30% faster, for example. Those are genuine improvements that should be noticeable if you're making the jump up from an older Garmin Fenix smartwatch.

New activity features

(Image credit: Garmin / Future)

There are some new activity features to talk about. The Fenix 9 watches offer stamina zones and stamina curves, to check how your endurance levels change over time, in relation to your training and fitness. The rucking features have been expanded meanwhile, to support pack changes during activities, and to enable more specific target metrics.

There's good news for regular indoor rowers. The new wearables are able to read data off selected machines directly, covering power curves and power zones, while the watches are able to calculate VO2 Max and certain other metrics from rowing sessions — which wasn't the case before. It means more detailed fitness insights from your rowing sessions.

Improvements to LiveTrack and location tracking

(Image credit: Future)

We're already big fans of the Garmin LiveTrack feature, which lets you share your real-time location, route, and associated stats with other people, and it's getting better on the LTE version of the Fenix 9 Pro. Sharing can now be done inside Garmin Messenger from your wrist, with some preset messages available, and improved notifications.

There's also a brand new feature called Garmin Locate, which again works through Garmin Messenger from the other end: Here a contact requests your location, as a one-time share, if they need to know where you are. It's all a bit more elegant and social, but it does mean you're getting gently pushed more towards Garmin's own messaging platform.

(Image credit: Garmin)Garmin Epic

An 'Epic' is a new idea from Garmin, arriving with the Fenix 9 series. Essentially, it lets you selected group activities and workouts together, almost like a folder in a filing cabinet: the examples Garmin gives are backpacking trips, cycling stage races, and strength plans. Data from individual sessions can be collected in an Epic, and viewed and analyzed together.

At first glance, it looks like an interesting expansion of what you can do with your Garmin, and you can create these Epics from past activities too — potentially letting you unlock new insights from records going back years. Notes and photos can be added along the way as well, together with health data collected between the main activities of each Epic.