Technology

When it comes to the best Prime Video shows and best Disney Plus shows, Fallout and Percy Jackson and the Olympians sit comfortably on our lists. With both expected to return for second seasons both platforms have unveiled a brand new cast member for each show, with Macauley Culkin joining the post-apocalyptic drama and Andra Day joining Disney’s Greek deity fantasy.

Premiering on Prime Video just this year, Fallout proved to be an authentic adaptation of the popular video game, making it one of Prime Video’s top three most-watched titles. But although details of its second season have yet to be unveiled, Macaulay Culkin’s addition to the cast is confirmed and he'll allegedly be playing a “crazy genius-type character”, according to Deadline.

Ella Purnell as Lucy in Prime Video's Fallout. (Image credit: JoJo Whilden/Prime Video)

Culkin’s new character will join an already star-studded cast featuring Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias, and Walton Goggins - whose Outstanding Lead Actor Emmy nomination was just one of 17 that Fallout accumulated this year. Given the successful run of its first season which attracted 65 million viewers in its first 16 days, Fallout season two sure does have a reputation to live up to.

However, Fallout is just one of the shows on the best streaming services returning with an updated cast as Oscar nominee Andra Day is set to play the role of Athena in the next season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians on Disney Plus. Day will step into the shoes of the Greek goddess of wisdom – an integral character in Rick Riordan’s series of novels – playing the mother of Annabeth Chase (Leah Sava Jeffries), one of Percy’s (Walker Scobell) closest friends.

The news that Day would be joining the cast of the Disney Plus show was announced at the D23 event in Brazil, followed by a video (see below) posted to social media with Day in character. Disney also announced more cast members for season two including Tamara Smart and Daniel Deimer, who are lined up to play Thalia Grace (the daughter of Zeus) and Percy’s half-brother Tyson.

A post shared by Percy Jackson (@percyseries)

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Despite the absence of release date details, we know that season two of Percy Jackson and the Olympians will be based on Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, the second book in Riordan’s fantasy series. One year after the events of the first season, Percy returns to Camp Halfblood to find that it’s under threat from Kronos. Along with his shifting friendships and the missing case of his friend Grover (Aryan Simhadri), Percy learns that he has a long-lost half-brother Tyson, who happens to be a cyclops.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is expected to return for a second season sometime in 2025 on Disney Plus.

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• Marvel has released new teasers for Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts
• Cap 4's trailer reveals our best look yet at Harrison Ford's Red Hulk
• The pair will close out Phase 5 of the comic book giant's cinematic universe

2025 is going to be one of the busiest 12-month periods in Marvel Studios' history – and, if trailers for two of its new movies are anything to go by, the comic-book giant could be in for another stellar year.

Fresh off announcing a packed 2025 Disney Plus TV show lineup in late October, Marvel debuted new looks at two of the three films it'll release next year at last Saturday's (November 9) D23 Brasil Expo presentation. The movies in question? Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts, which will arrive in theaters on February 14 and May 2 respectively.

With Sam Wilson's first big-screen outing as Captain America leading the charge, it'll come as no surprise to learn that this Marvel Phase 5 film's latest batch of footage came by way of an official trailer. It's one of the more creatively original teasers that the Disney subsidiary has spliced together in a long time, too, with conflicting snippets of footage, which show off its largely duplicitous cast of characters (Wilson notwithstanding), speaking to its political-thriller vibes. Cap 4's latest teaser comes four months after Brave New World's initial trailer debuted a first look at Harrison Ford's Red Hulk, who's revealed in all his glory in this new round of footage.

As for Thunderbolts, the second of three Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) flicks received a lengthy special-look teaser. The three-minute-long video opens with an extended clip from the film, which shows Bucky Barnes appearing to save Yelena Belova, Red Guardian, US Agent, and Ghost from some unidentifiable bad guys, only for Bucky to turn the tables on the supposed rescuees.

The teaser, which arrives less than two months after Thunderbolts' first trailer unveiled an official look at Lewis Pullman's Bob and Yelena Belova's anti-hero squad, evolves into a more traditional trailer after that, with quick-cut footage that shows its morally complex characters working together as they trade quips and sarcastic barbs. The video also confirms who owns Avengers Tower now, with Valentina Allegra De Fontaine having bought the New York landmark in the wake of Tony Stark's demise in Avengers: Endgame.

Ending on a high?

Weird as it is to say, Thunderbolts could be a surprise hit for Marvel in mid-2025 (Image credit: Marvel Studios)

Anyone who's frequented these parts will be aware that, ever since MCU Phase 5 began with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in February 2023, my confidence in Marvel has waned.

Yes, there have been customary successes for the comic titan. In 2024 alone, Marvel has given us one of the best Disney Plus shows of all time in X-Men 97. That animated series was recently joined on the TV front by highly-rated WandaVision spin-off Agatha All Along, whose popularity grew week-on-week. Add in the box-office juggernaut that was Deadpool and Wolverine, an MCU movie I really enjoyed even if some didn't, and 2024 has seen Marvel succeed in its attempts to course-correct after a – by its lofty standards – terrible 2023.

Indeed, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Loki season 2 notwithstanding, small- and big-screen duds in the form of Secret Invasion and The Marvels continued to showcase Marvel's inconsistent creative approach to its cinematic juggernaut since 2019's Avengers: Endgame. Yes, there were also great films and series that followed Avengers 4 between July 2019 and January 2023 – including WandaVision, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Shang-Chi to name just three.

For every good project, though, there was a bad and/or divisive one, such as Thor: Love and Thunder and – although I liked it – She Hulk: Attorney at Law. Throw in the 2023 Hollywood strikes and other issues that have plagued the studio, and Marvel has not only been fighting fires for years now, but also suffered numerous hits to its previously untouchable reputation.

Based on Cap 4 and Thunderbolts' new teasers, though, it seems the MCU's latest phase will end with a bang, rather than a whimper. And even if it does go out on a low note, it won't sound the MCU's death knell, with eagerly anticipated films like The Fantastic Four: First Steps and two more Avengers movies, plus exciting Disney Plus shows including Daredevil: Born Again, also on the way. Even so, Marvel can't afford to keep churning out critical and commercial duds, so it'll hope 2025 doesn't start as badly as 2023 did.

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• Sony seems to be redoubling efforts on single-player game output
• The company claims it will release "major" single-player games every year
• Ghost of Yōtei and Death Stranding 2 are coming in 2025

Sony has pledged to continue its single-player game output on PS5 and - seemingly - future PlayStation hardware.

As reported by IGN, Sony finance and IR head Sadahiko Hayakawa expressed the desire to keep up single-player game release on PlayStation consoles during an investor call.

According to Hayakawa, Sony plans to “continue releasing major single-player game titles every year from next fiscal year onwards.” To back this up, Hayakawa highlighted Sucker Punch's Ghost of Yōtei and Kojima Productions' Death Stranding 2: On the Beach - both of which are slated to launch in 2025 exclusively for PS5. We also can't neglect to mention Astro Bot, which launched this year to near-universal acclaim.

As for what we can expect in 2026 and beyond, well that's a little up in the air. We know that Insomniac Games is hard at work on its Wolverine title, and beyond that, PlayStation Studios has no shortage of development houses including Guerrilla, Naughty Dog, Bluepoint Games, Bend Studio, Housemarque, and Bungie to name but a few.

It is a bit of a relief to hear that Sony plans to keep up with single-player games releases especially after its form on live-service titles. While Helldivers 2 continues to enjoy a healthy playerbase, the same cannot be said of the canceled The Last of Us multiplayer game or Concord - which abruptly shut down two weeks after it launched. That said, Bungie's Marathon and the Horizon multiplayer title are also still in development, so expect even more stabs at the live service model in the future.

It's also very likely that future first-party PS5 games will receive PS5 Pro enhancement features such as better framerates at higher resolutions and support for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) which dynamically adjusts image quality as you play for the smoothest possible experience.

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• The new M4 Mac mini’s power button is placed underneath the chassis
• It’s not the only strange design choice made by Apple recently
• Apple VP Greg Joswiak states that it’s due to the reduced size of the Mac mini

The new M4 Mac mini will be Apple’s smallest Mac ever and wields plenty of power, but not without a few odd design choices - and one that seems to have particularly upset some users is that the power button has been moved to the bottom of the tiny PC.

However, Apple seems ready to defend its decision. As noted by IT Home (in Chinese), a video posted on the Chinese social media platform Bilibili shows Apple’s VP Greg Joswiak address the matter when questioned, revealing the reasoning behind the design choice - it was simply down to the reduced size of the Mac mini and the idea that “you pretty much never use the power button on your Mac”.

Joswiak also said “I can’t remember the last time I turned on my Mac,” which suggests that Apple’s official position is that most users should leave the system in sleep mode instead. While this is certainly an option for Mac mini owners, it may not sit well with some users (especially considering most traditional desktop PCs and their prominent power button positions).

(Image credit: gizmochina) Will this impact the M4 Mac mini in any capacity?

There’s no doubt that the new placement of the power button is a bit of an odd choice, and we noted as much in our M4 Mac mini review, but it’s nowhere near as strange as what we’ve seen with the new Magic Mouse’s charging port still on the bottom and brand-new M4 Macs omitting Wi-Fi 7. Besides a minor change to how you power on your M4 Mac mini, this shouldn’t impact your experience in any significant manner.

Considering the reduction of the Mac mini’s size coming from the 2023 M2 chip version, this seems to be a small but worthy sacrifice - if placing the power button in a more convenient area meant losing out on the smallest Mac ever, then I stand by Apple’s decision here.

Despite this, I must say that leaving your Mac mini (or any of the best computers, for that matter) in sleep mode constantly probably isn’t the best idea - while it may be more convenient to dive right back into your tasks, it isn’t ideal for saving power (even if it isn’t using much in sleep mode) and periodically shutting down and restarting your devices is good for their performance as it enables you to apply any updates and refreshes your system cache.

While some of the design choices made in the new Mac mini may be worthy of scratching your head at, the power that the M4 chip provides in performance across the board and a price tag starting at just $599 (£599 / AU$999) still leaves this being one of the best Macs ever made.

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• A leaked benchmark has appeared for the ROG Phone 9
• The score points to a jump in AI processing performance
• Asus will unveil the gaming phone on November 19

The Asus ROG Phone 9 is likely to be one of the best gaming phones of the year, and we know it's being officially launched on November 19. Now a new benchmark leak gives us some idea of just how powerful this handset could be.

As spotted by MySmartPrice, the Asus ROG Phone 9 has shown up on the Geekbench ML database. The ML (machine learning) benchmark tests how well a phone can handle a variety of artificial intelligence tests, and the Asus device scored 1812.

For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S24 scored 1243 in the same test, so we're looking at a pretty substantial leap forward as far as AI goes – even if the Asus ROG Phone 9 won't have all of the Galaxy AI software tricks offered by Samsung.

We'll have to wait and see if the phone comes with Gemini Nano on board – that's the local AI model developed by Google, which helps run AI tasks (such as image and speech recognition) on-device without sending anything to the cloud.

Specs appeal

The Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro launched in 2024 (Image credit: Future)

The benchmark listing also confirms that the Asus ROG Phone 9 will run the new Snapdragon 8 Elite processor from Qualcomm – something we already knew – and will boast a huge 24GB of RAM to further improve performance.

Those spec bumps help to explain the high AI processing score: if you read our Asus ROG Phone 8 review, you'll see it tops out at 12GB of RAM, and has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor inside, which launched at the start of 2024.

However, the current Pro model does hit the same 24GB of RAM mark – see our Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro review for details – so it's likely that we're looking at the Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro here, rather than the standard version.

We were particularly impressed with what the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro had to offer, so we're eager to see what its successor is going to bring with it – and as soon as Asus makes all the details official, you'll be able to read about it on TechRadar.

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Samsung is working on some kind of XR hardware and, while it has yet to detail the product publicly, a newly published patent (spotted by 91mobiles) has given us our best look yet at what it’s working on – as well as teasing that Samsung is unsure what form its XR gadget should actually take.

That’s because the patent describes “electronic devices” which “may be AR glasses and/or a head-mounted device.” This suggests that at this time Samsung is either unsure what kind of XR device it should release, or that it is working on both a Samsung XR headset as well as AR glasses to compete with the likes of the Meta Orion AR glasses.

This vagueness continues throughout the patent description, with Samsung describing the device as potentially having a processor, a display for seeing virtual overlays on the real world, some communications abilities – so it can wirelessly communicate with local devices, like a controller, and the internet – and movement sensors for head tracking, among other ‘standard’ XR device specs.

A battery problem

Scanning through the translated document (the patent was initially filed in Korean) one noticeable omission is the mention of any internal battery, which could suggest the device will need to be connected to a compatible Samsung phone or battery pack to function. A phone connection would align with the approach Xreal glasses have taken, and would be a more achievable target for Samsung’s first AR glasses outing rather than a completely standalone product.

Batteries add a lot of bulk to a wearable, and would force Samsung to have to balance functionality, battery life, and comfort – a tough act considering its relative inexperience in this area of tech.

A wired connection to a phone would also increase the glasses’ reliance on a Samsung/Android device to function, which seems like something Samsung and its partner Google would want as a way to convince techies to leave the AR glasses-less Apple behind.

Connecting to a battery pack would also make sense as the likes of the Xreal glasses do burn through a phone’s charge somewhat rapidly. A battery pack would also allow a user to rely on their phone and glasses without one drastically reducing the remaining battery life of the other.

Still no mention of software

For me, this patent also doesn’t go into much detail on what is by far the most important feature: software. I’m fairly confident Samsung’s hardware will be at least ‘fine’ given its expertise in phones and TVs. For me the biggest question is how will it handle software.

I’ve tested a number of standalone VR headsets, and some wired AR glasses too, and my main critique is most of them don’t offer you enough things to do with them, save one. In my experience Meta’s Horizon OS is ahead by a mile thanks to its huge catalog of software, excellent exclusive apps, and clean layout.

Samsung and Google (who appears to be developing an AR android) need to seriously stick the landing. Either give us some amazing apps out the gate, or keep the price cheap and affordable (ideally do both). Exclusive AR apps would help justify a more premium price, while conversely a lower cost would help to convince people the XR device is worth trying even if it doesn’t do much at first.

We’ll have to wait and see what Samsung announces in the coming months in terms of its software and hardware. There were rumors it might show off a developer kit this year – to tie into the promise of a reveal Samsung and Google made back in July – though as the year comes to a close we might have to settle for a 2025 showcase – though even that might require some luck according to other recent leaks.

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• The rumored Samsung Galaxy Z Flip FE may come equipped with the Exynos 2400 chipset
• The Exynos 2400 also features in some regional versions of the Galaxy S24
• Samsung has yet to confirm the existence of the Z Flip FE or any of its specs

The rumored Samsung Galaxy Z Flip FE could come equipped with the same chipset as some of the company’s flagship Galaxy S24 models.

New tipoffs from noted leaker Jukanlosreve point towards the Samsung Exynos 2400 for the company’s long-suggested cheaper flip foldable, the same chipset issued to Samsung Galaxy S24 handsets in large swathes of Europe and Asia.

In North America, the Galaxy S24 comes equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy, commonly considered the class leader for Android chipsets.

Samsung’s foldable lineup is currently exclusively equipped with Snapdragon chipsets, reflected in the devices’ high price tags and premium positioning – in fact, both the Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6 feature in our lists of the best folding phones and best Samsung phones.

As for why the rumored Z Flip FE would use an Exynos chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 may be prohibitively expensive to put into a lower-priced foldable device, or it may simply be easier for Samsung to keep up a supply of Exynos chips.

Alternatively, this could be part of an Apple-style push to reduce reliance on third-party chipset manufacturers – as Android Police notes, Jukanlosreve also suggests that the rumored Z Flip 7 will use an Exynos chipset, too, albeit the updated Exynos 2500 version.

Flipping the script on Samsung foldables

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 in blue  (Image credit: Philip Berne / Future)

We’ve been hearing rumors of a cheaper Galaxy Z Flip phone for months now, and lately, we’ve heard a lot about other potential expansions to Samsung‘s folding phone lineup.

Back in May, we reported that a cheaper version of the booklet-style Galaxy Z Fold had likely been cancelled, but that an FE rendition of the Z Flip was still possible.

More recently, we’ve heard continued rumors of the Z Flip FE launching alongside either the Z Flip 7 or a new tri-fold Galaxy device, though we’re yet to hear of a convincing release date.

At a starting price of $1,099 / £1,049 / AU$1,799, the Z Flip 6 is the cheapest Samsung foldable and the likely candidate for a budget-conscious rework, though we wouldn’t expect it to be particularly cheap by conventional pricing standards.

Phone makers charge a premium for the utility, novelty, and complexity of folding devices, and as such we would expect a cheaper Galaxy Z Flip to cost as much as, if not more than, a conventional flagship phone.

As of now, this is all based on unconfirmed rumors, and as such there’s no sign of any official explanation from Samsung.

In any case, for the latest official announcements as we hear them, be sure to check in with our Samsung phones coverage.

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• The iPhone SE 4's camera module will reportedly enter mass production in December
• This iPhone component usually enters mass production around three months before the phone launches
• That would mean a launch around March, which is in line with previous leaks

It’s looking ever more likely that the iPhone SE 4 will launch soon, as following reports that Apple has begun placing orders for the display, we’re now hearing that the camera module might enter mass production in December.

This is according to South Korean site AjuNews (via @Jukanlosreve), which claims that LG Innotek will start mass-producing the camera modules for the iPhone SE 4 in December.

The site adds that LG Innotek usually begins mass production of iPhone camera modules around three months before the launch of the phone they’re destined for, which would mean we’re likely to see the iPhone SE 4 in or around March.

Exclusive: Apple’s camera partner, LG Innotek, has decided to start mass production of the camera module for the iPhone SE4 in December. They are currently conducting tests ahead of mass production.LG Innotek typically supplies camera modules about three months before a…November 11, 2024

While we’d take these claims with a pinch of salt, this does line up with previous leaks, the most recent of which comes from Mark Gurman (a leaker with a great track record), who claimed in October that we’d see the iPhone SE 4 sometime between March and June.

A new design and plenty of power

So, there’s a good chance the iPhone SE 4 will be with us soon, and based on other leaks, we have a decent idea of what to expect from it, too.

Leaks suggest the iPhone SE 4 will have a larger 6.1-inch display than the 4.7-inch iPhone SE (2022), though there’s some disagreement over whether it will have a notch or a Dynamic Island. Either way, though, that should be an upgrade on the dated design of the current model.

It also looks likely to have a single-lens camera, and it may support Apple Intelligence, which would mean at least an A17 Pro chipset and 8GB of RAM. That would make for a significant power upgrade on the iPhone SE (2022).

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• The new L'OR Barista was created by Italian design company Alessi
• Its pleated finish is the work of designer and architect Michele De Lucchi
• It goes on sale this week for £159.99 (about $200 / AU$300)

French coffee company L'OR has unveiled a new pod-based espresso machine that will bring a touch of Italian style to your kitchen.

Capsule-based coffee makers are a handy way to enjoy espresso without the mess of weighing and grinding beans, but they sometimes look rather bland and utilitarian compared to a manual espresso machine. That's not the case with the new L'OR Barista, which has a striking pleated-effect case created by Italian design company Alessi.

The ridged finish of the L'OR Barista by Alessi was created by artist, architect and designer Michele De Lucchi. De Lucchi, known for his experimental creations, has designed and restored buildings in Japan and throughout Europe, and has received scores of product design awards throughout his career.

(Image credit: L'OR) Double shots

The L'OR Barista by Alessi can take standard-size coffee pods, including L'OR and Nespresso capsules. It's also compatible with L'OR Barista XXL capsules, which contain twice as much coffee as a regular pod. This lets you easily make a double shot of espresso (ideal for cappuccinos and lattes), or pour two shots at once using the machine's double spout.

The new machine will be available this week direct from L'OR and from John Lewis for £159.99 (about $200 / AU$300), and will roll out more widely over the coming months.

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• Intel acknowledges Arrow Lake CPUs underperformed at launch
• A full and detailed audit is going to take place as to why this happened
• Fixes for the issues are coming, promising significant performance gains

Intel’s Core Ultra 200S processors have got off to a shaky start, it’s fair to say, and Team Blue has acknowledged this – and pledged that fixes are coming.

The new Arrow Lake desktop CPUs – comprising of the Core Ultra 9 285K, Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 5 245K – have been greeted with a lukewarm reception, particularly for gaming performance, and reviews have been rather varied in the benchmark results they’ve uncovered in this respect.

Robert Hallock, who is VP of marketing at Intel, spoke to Hot Hardware, and said the company takes full responsibility for the initial launch performance of Core Ultra 200 chips being under par compared to Intel’s own expectations (and prerelease hype).

Hallock told the tech site that “our wounds with Arrow Lake not hitting the performance we projected were self-inflicted.”

The Intel marketing guru added: “I can’t go into all the details yet, but we identified a series of multifactor issues at the OS level, at the BIOS level, and I will say that the performance we saw in reviews is not what we expected and not what we intended. The launch just didn’t go as planned. That has been a humbling lesson for all of us, inspiring a fairly large response internally to get to the bottom of what happened and to fix it.”

Hallock underlined that while he couldn’t give specifics, Intel plans to conduct a full audit and will present an itemized list of Arrow Lake problems, explaining every single glitch, along with its performance cost, and what the company is going to do to fix these issues.

Analysis: Intel’s continued run of bad form in 2024

Intel is being refreshingly honest, or Hallock is, rather, which is good to see – and something of a growing theme of late for Team Blue, we’ve noticed. With all the problems Intel has been running into in recent times – throughout this year – this appears to be the decided tactic to try to rebuild trust with the computing public.

Will it be enough? The trouble is that the perception is increasingly becoming one of Intel stumbling from one blunder to another, at least with its desktop CPUs (laptop chips are a different kettle of silicon, and Lunar Lake has landed as a major success, in the main).

We’ve had all the messiness around 13th and 14th-gen desktop CPUs being wonky and unstable (and while that’s finally been put to bed, some folks may still be worried), and now with the 15th-gen on the desktop, there’s a new set of problems at launch. And anecdotally, across various forums, we’ve noticed a fair few complaints from folks who’ve upgraded to the Arrow Lake platform (the CPU has a new socket, requiring a new motherboard) hitting various teething issues which sound unpleasant to say the least.

All in all, with continued issues seeming to crop up around Intel’s desktop processors, creating a general air of uncertainty, these products will hardly be inspiring confidence in the PC community. Intel needs to come back with a strong response here, and a full, transparent audit on Arrow Lake will be a good start – hopefully with the issues fixed down the line, as promised.

We should temper expectations, of course, and it’s not likely that this will be some kind of miracle cure for the performance of the Core Ultra 200S range. However, it promises to deliver a ‘significant’ boost on the gaming front. Also, Hot Hardware’s tweaking of a Core Ultra 9 285K flagship – comprising of memory tuning, Windows configuration adjustments, and disabling some CPU features – reportedly did witness impressive results, at least for some PC games. As ever, gains may vary based on the individual game, and, of course, the configuration of your PC.

However, fundamentally, Arrow Lake still remains more about pushing forward with efficiency than generational performance leaps when it comes to gaming, and that obviously isn’t going to change with some patching work. Here, the predecessor flagship, the Core i9-14900K (or indeed the 13900K) is still likely to remain a better bet, particularly considering pricing (with previous-gen price tags dropping), as was shown in the gaming tests during our review of the new Core Ultra 9 285K.

Furthermore, all this is compounded by the release of AMD’s peppy new Ryzen 9800X3D on the PC gaming front (when stock issues settle down for that CPU, which is a sizeable caveat currently).

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• LG’s stretchy screen now boasts 50% elongation for… bodycon clothing?
• It can fold, bend and twist without damaging the display
• It's the shape of things to come

We've been following LG's quest to make practical, stretchable displays for some time now. And a new report states that while Apple is also experimenting with the tech (as we discovered earlier this year, Apple has patented its own "Stretchable Display") LG has beaten it, and flexible display rivals such as Samsung, to the punch.

LG has announced a new stretchable display prototype, and it's much more bendy than anything we've seen from the firm in the past: where previous prototypes could be stretched out by 20%, this prototype can achieve the kind of deformation that even the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards might consider a bit of a stretch: it can expand by over 50%.

What is a stretchable display for?

LG's stretchable display is designed to change shape according to what you want your device to do. It doesn't just stretch; it can be twisted and folded too, all without damaging the screen. While the image above shows extreme examples, one application might be a tablet that rolls into a foldable phone, or a phone that becomes a wearable.

There are even applications in clothing. LG's concepts include smart displays attached to the uniforms of firefighters to provide real-time information to them and their team, although the announcement skips over the heat protection requirements such a display would require.

The new display uses a micro-LED light source, an improved silicon substrate that's also used in contact lenses, and a new wiring design. The result is a promised lifespan of 10,000 stretches without damaging the display.

We're still a long way from the commercialization of this technology. But it's still enormously exciting; we've seen the future, and it's stretchy.

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With the cost of living crisis and the recent introduction of a means tested winter fuel payment, many in the UK are looking for guidance and support this winter- but scammers are taking advantage of the confusion by sending fake ‘winter heating allowance’ and ‘cost of living support’ texts.

The texts have been sent to UK residents, encouraging the recipient to click on a link that takes them to a webpage made to mimic the official GOV.UK website, where they are prompted to fill in a form with personal information and payment details.

Scammers often try to create a sense of urgency to panic victims into action without the time to think through the implications or details that may look out of place. This scam is no different, with the text telling victims that this is the ‘last notice’ before the deadline.

600 domains identified

Researchers from BleepingComputer identified 597 unique domains related to this campaign, which shows how far reaching the threat is. Similar campaigns have been observed in Lancashire and Belfast, using fake regional support networks to trick victims.

“Please note that the government has decided that the Winter heating_allowance and Cost of Living_support for 2024 have been fully implemented, you have met the requirements,” the text obtained by researchers reads.

“Please be sure to fill in the application information as soon as possible, we will release the money to you within 3days, please note that check, this will be the last notice to you, the online application channel deadline is November 12,” it continued.

By promising a payout but imposing a fake deadline, the scammers create a false sense of urgency so that victims don't are hurried into entering sensitive information.

Phishing scams are on the rise, and are becoming harder to spot, we always recommend taking your time, not clicking any links from untrusted sources, and always getting a second opinion if you aren’t sure.

Via BleepingComputer

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• PS5 Pro pre-orders are “slightly stronger” than the PS4 Pro
• The console’s high price tag seems not to have impacted sales
• PS5 is still on track to sell 18 million units by the end of the fiscal year

Sony Group President Hiroki Totoki has discussed the PlayStation 5 Pro at a recent conference after the company’s latest earnings release.

According to a new report by Nikkei Asia, Totoki described the PS5 Pro as “a high-end product targeted at core customers” which didn't have “a large sales plan to begin with.” He went on to say that he believes it is “performing slightly stronger than the pre-orders of the PS4 Pro during the same period”.

He then concludes that the console’s relatively high price tag is not “adversely affecting the product's sales plan."

The PS5 Pro released earlier this month and is now readily available to buy. It costs $699.99 / £699.99, a price that raised some eyebrows when it was initially revealed and led some to speculate that it could impact sales.

Unlike the original PS5, a disc drive and vertical stand is also not included with the PS5 Pro out of the box. These need to be purchased separately, which further increases the total investment for players who need them.

Totoki also commented on the sales of the PS5 as a whole, a figure that includes the PS5 Pro, and stated that it is on track to meet its sales target of 18 million units by the end of the fiscal year.

According to Totoki, this has so far been achieved “without implementing a permanent price drop as we did for the PS4,” which would suggest that there aren’t any plans for a major PS5 price cut to drive up sales in the near future.

Elsewhere, the developer of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 stated that the PS5 Pro version of the game was the “quintessential version”. Sony has also patented a PlayStation controller with a dedicated rewind button - which might hint at a new feature for an upcoming console or future PS5 controller.

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