Technology

• Apple TV+ has a new limited-time deal that's an excellent savings
• Whether you're new or returning, there's a good chance you can get three months of streaming for just $2.99 a month
• The deal arrives shortly after Severance wrapped and before Your Friends & Neighbors premieres

While it’s not as good as the promotion Apple TV+ kicked off 2025 with, this one is likely as close as we’ll get. Better yet, it applies to both new and returning subscribers who meet the qualifications.

Right now, you can get three months of Apple TV+ for just $2.99 a month, totaling $8.97, to experience all the films and TV shows on the platform, such as Severance, Ted Lasso, and The Studio.

You’ll need to act pretty quickly, though, to score this deal. Apple’s making this latest promotion live today – April 8, 2025 – through the end of the day on April 24, 2025. You’re also not eligible for the deal if you’re eligible for three months of the service, meaning you recently bought an Apple device or your Apple TV+ is billed through a wireless carrier like AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon.

(Image credit: Apple TV+)

Yes, there are specific requirements, but if you meet them, you’ll score access to a growing library of content for a pretty great price. Basically, you’ll need to have just not been a subscriber to the service within the last month or so, reading between the lines.

With the Apple TV+ subscription, you get access to TV shows, movies, and documentaries, including all of the titles on our list of the best Apple TV+ shows to watch. Additionally, you’ll be able to stream select Major League Soccer games that are available for all users and Major League Baseball games at the end of the week, thanks to ‘Friday Night Baseball.’

Right now, we’re in the midst of The Studio, starring Seth Rogen and a laundry list of other celebrities. It’s a show that piqued my interest and that of my TechRadar colleagues. Additionally, Your Friends & Neighbors with Jon Hamm premieres on April 11. Still, you’ll also find other shows available with all episodes like The Morning Show, Silo, Mythic Quest, Ted Lasso, and countless others.

Apple TV+ is, you guessed it, easily accessible on Apple devices like the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV 4K through the Apple TV app. Still, it’s also available on Android and countless streaming players and smart TVs.

So, if you haven’t subscribed to Apple TV+ in quite some time or want to see what the hype about Severance or Ted Lasso is about, it’s an excellent time to give one of the best streaming services a try. You can score the $2.99 a month for three months subscription here.

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• OPHANIM combines everyday tech with high-end scientific imaging capability
• Antimatter detection is now possible using repurposed smartphone camera tech
• Gigapixel device could reveal fine details of particle collisions instantly

At CERN’s Antimatter Factory, the AEgIS collaboration is exploring a novel approach to detecting one of nature’s rarest phenomena: antiproton annihilation.

eeNews reports the team, led by Professor Christoph Hugenschmidt from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), has developed an experimental detector using sensors originally designed for mobile phone cameras.

Instead of creating a new sensor system from scratch, the researchers repurposed sixty 64-megapixel mobile camera sensors to form a 3.84-gigapixel array called OPHANIM, short for Optical Photon and Antimatter Imager. This composite detector can observe where antiprotons collide with matter, annihilating in a flash of energy.

From mobile phones to antimatter research

“For AEgIS to work, we need a detector with incredibly high spatial resolution, and mobile camera sensors have pixels smaller than 1 micrometer,” explains Francesco Guatieri, Principal Investigator at TUM.

To adapt the sensors for scientific use, the team had to employ intensive micro-engineering to remove the camera sensors of layers meant for mobile phone electronics.

“We had to strip away the first layers of the sensors, which are made to deal with the advanced integrated electronics of mobile phones,” says Guatieri. This process enabled the sensors to directly capture the light patterns associated with annihilation events.

Despite their origins, the mobile sensors do not compromise performance. In fact, the new detector offers a 35-fold improvement in real-time resolution over earlier methods.

“Previously, photographic plates were the only option, but they lacked real-time capabilities,” Guatieri adds.

“Our solution, demonstrated for antiprotons and directly applicable to antihydrogen, combines photographic-plate-level resolution, real-time diagnostics, self-calibration and a good particle collection surface, all in one device.”

The OPHANIM detector allows researchers to observe annihilation events in real time with a resolution of about 0.6 micrometres, fine enough to distinguish between different particles created during the process.

"This is a game-changing technology for the observation of the tiny shifts due to gravity in an antihydrogen beam travelling horizontally, and it can also find broader applications in experiments where high position resolution is crucial, or to develop high-resolution trackers," says AEgIS spokesperson Dr. Ruggero Caravita.

"This extraordinary resolution enables us also to distinguish between different annihilation fragments, paving the way for new research on low-energy antiparticle annihilation in materials."

The implications of this work extend beyond antimatter research. OPHANIM’s ability to track particles with such precision could benefit a wide range of experiments, all while offering a low-cost model built from existing consumer technology.

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Binge Severance or the new satirical series, The Studio, with a discount.

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• 8849 Tank 4 offers a large 11,600mAh battery for endurance
• Supports triple rear cameras including night vision
• 8849 Tank 4 supports 66W fast charging and 25W reverse charging

The rugged smartphone market is evolving, with many brands now integrating large batteries and even portable projectors into their devices.

Chinese brand 8849 is known for such devices, having previously released models like the 8499 Tank 2 Pro and Tank 3 Pro.

The company has now announced the 8849 Tank 4, a business smartphone that features a 100-lumen 720p DLP projector. It supports laser-assisted auto-focus up to 4 meters, micro-laser ranging, night vision camera, and an RGB camping light.

Projector phones are carving a niche

The 8849 Tank 4 sports a 6.78-inch AMOLED screen with a resolution of 1200 x 2650 and a 120Hz refresh rate. Measuring 174.3 x 85.4 x 23.9 mm and weighing 538g, it is only slightly smaller than the best rugged tablets on the market.

This phone is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 chip, paired with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of internal storage, expandable via TF card.

It houses an 11,600mAh battery, which is about half the capacity of the Tank 3 Pro, but still large for daily use. The device also supports 66W wired fast charging. While it lacks wireless charging, it compensates with 25W reverse charging via its Type-C 2.0 port.

For photography, the phone is equipped with a triple rear camera setup, including a 50MP Sony main sensor, a 64MP OmniVision night vision camera with infrared fill lights, and an 8MP 3x zoom lens.

Like other rugged smartphones, this device supports IP68 water and dust resistance. Connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6, dual SIM support, and compatibility with GSM to 5G NR networks, offering download speeds of up to 2.34Gbps.

Samsung once dabbled in the projector phone category with the Galaxy Beam released over a decade ago. However, the company ultimately exited the space due to high costs and limited adoption at the time.

Nevertheless, with new offerings like the 8849 Tank 4, as well as similar products like Oukitel WP100 Titan and Doogee V Max Play, projector phones may be poised for a comeback.

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• Ulefone Armor 30 Pro combines ruggedness with productivity
• A triple-camera setup in a rugged smartphone isn't that common
• 64MP camera and a 4W speaker reflect a shift in what rugged smartphones aim to offer

The best rugged smartphones often focus on strength and battery life, but in recent years, they’ve started to include features such as portable projectors and even dual displays.

The Ulefone Armor 30 Pro is a dual-screen rugged device featuring a 6.95-inch FHD+ main display with a 120Hz refresh rate. On the rear, it sports a 3.4-inch secondary screen with a 960x412 resolution, protected by Gorilla Glass.

While the displays can’t be operated independently, both run on Android, and the rear screen allows users to take selfies and video calls using the main camera system.

Big battery and a MediaTek processor

The device is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7050 chipset, paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. It supports 5G connectivity and AI-powered features.

As with many rugged devices, it houses a large 12,800mAh battery that promises extended usage. It supports 66W fast charging for quick top-ups and offers 10W reverse charging to power smaller devices like smartwatches or earbuds.

One major surprise feature is the Ulefone Armor 30 Pro's triple rear camera setup - which is pretty uncommon in this category. It includes a 50MP main sensor, a 50MP ultra-wide shooter, and a 64MP infrared night vision camera supported by four IR LED blasters.

The Armor 30 Pro is built for more than just survival in harsh environments. It features pogo pin connectors for accessories like endoscopes and microscopes, along with a dedicated shutter button for quickphoto capture.

Another unusual inclusion is a waterproof 4W loudspeaker, embedded in the hexagonal camera bump, that's capable of reaching up to 118dB. It’s an unusual choice for a device in this category, suggesting a shift toward entertainment and daily use, making it feel closer to a business smartphone than a traditional field device.

While not a typical productivity smartphone, the dual-screen layout and advanced sensor suite elevate its potential as a rugged tablet replacement for those who need portability with function.

The Armor 30 Pro will be available from April 14, priced at $379.99 on Aliexpress, $549.99 on the official store, €499.99 on Amazon, 33,015₽ on Ozon, and $499.99 on Mercado Livre.

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• UK-based Fractile is backed by NATO and wants to build faster and cheaper in-memory AI compute
• Nvidia's bruteforce GPU approach consumes too much power and is held back by memory
• Fractile's numbers focused on a cluster of H100 GPU comparison, not the mainstream H200

Nvidia sits comfortably at the top of the AI hardware food chain, dominating the market with its high-performance GPUs and CUDA software stack, which have quickly become the default tools for training and running large AI models - but that dominance comes at a cost - namely, a growing target on its back.

Hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta are pouring resources into developing their own custom silicon in an effort to reduce their dependence on Nvidia’s chips and cut costs. At the same time, a wave of AI hardware startups is trying to capitalize on rising demand for specialized accelerators, hoping to offer more efficient or affordable alternatives and, ultimately, to displace Nvidia.

You may not have heard of UK-based Fractile yet, but the startup, which claims its revolutionary approach to computing can run the world’s largest language models 100x faster and at 1/10th the cost of existing systems, has some pretty noteworthy backers, including NATO and the former CEO of Intel, Pat Gelsinger.

Removing every bottleneck

“We are building the hardware that will remove every bottleneck to the fastest possible inference of the largest transformer networks," Fractile says.

"This means the biggest LLMs in the world running faster than you can read, and a universe of completely new capabilities and possibilities for how we work that will be unlocked by near-instant inference of models with superhuman intelligence.”

It’s worth pointing out, before you get too excited, that Fractile’s performance numbers are based on comparisons with clusters of Nvidia H100 GPUs using 8-bit quantization and TensorRT-LLM, running Llama 2 70B - not the newer H200 chips.

In a LinkedIn posting, Gelsinger, who recently joined VC firm Playground Global as a General Partner, wrote, “Inference of frontier AI models is bottlenecked by hardware. Even before test-time compute scaling, cost and latency were huge challenges for large scale LLM deployments... To achieve our aspirations for AI, we will need radically faster, cheaper and much lower power inference.”

“I’m pleased to share that I’ve recently invested in Fractile, a UK-founded AI hardware company who are pursuing a path that’s radical enough to offer such a leap," he then revealed.

"Their in-memory compute approach to inference acceleration jointly tackles the two bottlenecks to scaling inference, overcoming both the memory bottleneck that holds back today’s GPUs, while decimating power consumption, the single biggest physical constraint we face over the next decade in scaling up data center capacity. In fact, some of the ideas I was exploring in my graduate work at Stanford University will now come to mainstream AI computing!”

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• Two US Senators have asked tech giants for more information on AI deals
• Even partial acquisitions could harm competition
• The FTC also noted potential competition issues

Two tech industry titans that have been the subjects of many an anticompetitive investigation are now being questioned over their partnerships with AI companies.

Democratic US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden are reportedly demanding information about the deals Google and Microsoft have with companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence.

The concern is that these strong partnerships could impact competition within the industry, violate antitrust laws, and ultimately lead to both fewer choices and higher prices for customers.

Microsoft and Google questioned over AI deals

In question are Microsoft’s deal with OpenAI and Google’s deal with Anthropic, with the Senators seeking financial details of payments made by AI firms to their cloud providers and information on whether the companies have exclusive rights to certain AI models.

Warren and Wyden also want to know whether Google or Microsoft have any intentions to acquire their respective AI partners.

“Partnerships between CSPs and AI developers, if left unchecked, may accelerate consolidation of the AI sector, ultimately driving up prices and choking off innovation,” the two said in their letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (via Reuters), and in their second letter to Microsoft and OpenAI’s CEOs, Satya Nadella and Sam Altman.

This isn’t the first time these specific companies have come under fire for their involvement with leading AI firms.

A separate January 2025 report by the Federal Trade Commission had already studied such partnerships, raising concerns about potential acquisitions which could spell out disaster for competition.

“As noted in the FTC and Department of Justice (DOJ)’s merger guidelines, even partial acquisitions may present 'significant competitive concerns' because of the effects on firms’ incentives and strategy,” the Senators continue.

TechRadar Pro has contacted all four companies for comments and context, but we have not received any responses as yet.

Via Reuters

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• A critical flaw was discovered in file transfer tool CrushFTP
• Experts claim the issue was being abused in the wild
• CISA added the flaw to its KEV catalog

A critical-severity vulnerability plaguing file transfer software CrushFTP was found being actively exploited in the wild.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the software, commonly used by organizations to handle large-scale file transfers, contained an authentication bypass vulnerability which allowed unauthenticated attackers to gain administrative access.

By specifically targeting the crushadmin account, threat actors could abuse the flaw to compromise the target system entirely.

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CISA adds it to KEV

The flaw is now tracked as CVE-2025-31161, and was given a severity score of 9.8/10 (critical)

It affects CrushFTP versions 10 before 10.8.4 and 11 before 11.3.1. Users are strongly advised to update to these versions immediately, and if they can’t, enabling the DMZ proxy instance can serve as a temporary workaround.

Security researchers have warned that the bugs were used in the wild to install remote management tools like AnyDesk and MeshAgent, The Hacker News reported.

CISA has also picked up on the news, adding the bug to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog (KEV). This means that Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies have a three-week deadline (until April 28) to apply the patch, or stop using CrushFTP entirely.

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A year before that, GoAnywhere MFT was breached and used to steal sensitive data from almost 130 organizations, and in January 2024, the same software was found to be vulnerable to a critical path traversal weakness flaw.

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Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Google Cloud Next 2025!

We're live in Las Vegas and ready for a packed few days hearing about Google's latest cloud and AI news.

The event kicks off tomorrow (Wednesday) with a keynote hosted by Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, who will be joined on stage by a host of guests, doubtless with much to tell us, so stay tuned for all the details as it happens!

Good morning from sunny Las Vegas! We're here for Google Cloud Next, and after a slighted delayed arrival into the city last night, are busy getting ready for the event kicking off tomorrow.

If you'd like a reminder of everything announced at last year's event, you can revisit our live blog here.