Technology

Technology is constantly evolving, and with that comes increasing pressure on those working in the sector. It's no surprise, then, that technology ranks among the industries with the highest levels of work-related stress, contributing to around 550,000 working days lost over three years according to the Health and Safety Executive in 2024.

Stress rarely appears overnight. It builds over time through heavy workloads, unclear expectations, limited support and constantly shifting priorities. Too often, leaders only recognize the problem once an employee has reached burnout.

Managing stress shouldn't be seen solely as an individual's responsibility. Leaders play a vital role in creating environments where people feel supported, can raise concerns early and have the tools they need to manage pressure before it becomes overwhelming.

By recognizing the warning signs and making a few practical changes, leaders can help prevent stress from escalating into burnout.

1. Understand how and why individuals respond differently

Two employees can face exactly the same challenge but respond in completely different ways. One useful way of understanding these differences is through Kirton's Adaption-Innovation (KAI) Theory. Developed by psychologist Dr Michael Kirton, the theory suggests people naturally approach change and problem-solving in different ways.

More adaptive individuals tend to prefer structure, established processes and incremental improvements, while more innovative individuals are often more comfortable with ambiguity, risk taking and finding entirely new solutions. Most people fall somewhere between the two.

Neither style is better than the other, but each can bring different sources of stress. More adaptive employees may struggle with unclear roles, changing priorities or a lack of structure, while more innovative employees can become frustrated by rigid processes or repetitive work.

Understanding how individuals prefer to work allows leaders to allocate work more effectively, helping employees perform at their best while reducing unnecessary pressure.

2. Create a culture of asking questions

Many employees struggle to admit when they need help. We are often taught this is a sign of weakness and an indicator of capability.

Creating a culture of trust changes that. When people feel comfortable raising concerns, asking questions or admitting they are struggling, problems can be addressed before they become unmanageable.

Leaders set the tone. Asking for feedback, acknowledging your own mistakes and responding positively when employees raise concerns all help create psychological safety within a team. An open culture also makes it much easier to recognize when someone is beginning to struggle.

Changes such as withdrawing from colleagues, becoming more irritable, missing deadlines or struggling to prioritize work are often viewed as performance issues, when they may actually be signs of mounting stress.

Regular conversations, rather than relying solely on formal performance reviews, give leaders the opportunity to identify these warning signs early. Simple adjustments, such as redistributing workloads, clarifying priorities or removing unnecessary obstacles, can prevent stress from developing into burnout.

3.Observe your team to identify stress early

Stress rarely appears suddenly. It can build gradually, making it difficult to recognize until it begins to affect an employee's wellbeing or performance.

While you may be aware that a particular task or deadline is likely to create pressure, it can be harder to spot when longer-term stress is beginning to affect your team. Changes in behaviour can be early warning signs. An employee may start to withdraw from colleagues, become more irritable or defensive, miss deadlines or struggle to prioritize their workload.

As leaders, we can be quick to interpret these changes as performance issues. However, they may be indicators that someone is experiencing stress and needs additional support.

Regular check-ins, rather than relying solely on formal performance reviews, give leaders an opportunity to understand what's happening and address problems early. By noticing these changes, leaders can redistribute workloads, adjust expectations or remove obstacles before stress develops into burnout.

4. Give your employees control

Many employees experience stress because they feel they have little control over their work. Those in the technology sector often face tight deadlines, changing priorities, and high expectations. While we cannot remove all these pressures, we can provide autonomy to employees to help them be more successful.

Greater autonomy doesn't mean removing direction altogether. Leaders still need to set realistic expectations and help teams distinguish between what's genuinely urgent and what can wait. As a leader, you need to help your employees set realistic goals. You can help employees recognize what is urgent and prioritize their tasks effectively.

Employees who provide input and contribute in this way feel more in control and experience a higher level of buy in to team goals.

5. Create a culture that prioritizes recovery

We often mistake short-term performance for sustainable outcomes. However, we require time to recover not just as a reward, but as consistent practice. Employees need to be encouraged to take time to recuperate.

As a leader, the tone you set is seen and mimicked. If you’re not taking regular breaks, working at all hours of the night, and pushing through exhaustion, your employees will feel they need to do the same. Consider your own habits and then promote celebrating breaks, disconnection outside of working hours, using leave time, and establishing work-life balance.

It is easy to say, “do as I say not as I do.” However, this culture starts with you. Taking time to recover yourself helps you avoid burnout and be a better leader overall. It will also lead to long-term sustained performance over short bursts of success.

Stress will always be a part of the workplace. The goal is not to remove stress, but to prevent burnout and sustain performance.

As a leader, the ability to help your employees reduce stress is a shared responsibility between the individual, yourself, and your team. By understanding how individuals solve problems, creating an environment of trust, observing stress early on, increasing employee autonomy, and promoting recovery time, your organization can retain talent and build a healthier and more productive workforce.

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

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• Meta reaches agreement to allow Prospect union access to UK employees
• New reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025 come into force in October 2026
• Despite slipping steadily, UK union membership could see a major bounce back

Meta has reached an agreement with Prospect union to allow access to its UK employees to speak about membership opportunities.

The move comes as a deadline for compliance with new union membership rules under the Employment Rights Act 2025 looms in October 2026.

Under the agreement, Prospect will have access to all 5,000 of Meta’s UK employees, allowing the union to talk to Meta workers about the benefits of union membership and recruit workers.

New union rules strengthen UK workers

A spokesperson for Meta said, “Employees who want to find out more about union membership have a straightforward way to do so. Meta's industrial relations team already works with employee representative groups in multiple markets, and we are approaching this in the same way.”

Initial trade union reforms as part of the Employment Rights Act 2025 took effect in February of this year. But subsequent reforms, due to take effect on 30 October, add additional requirements for employers to inform workers of their right to join a union, provide greater access for unions to workplaces, add additional protections for union representatives, and give workers greater protections when taking industrial action.

Meta is therefore providing Prospect with access to Meta employees ahead of the deadline, which Mike Clancy, General Secretary of Prospect, said “is to Meta’s credit that they have struck this voluntary deal with Prospect, rather than waiting for the new Right of Access to kick in, sending a positive message to staff that they are open to engaging with a union.”

Prospect currently has over 160,000 UK workers within its membership pool, covering technology, broadcasting, creative industries, defense and education.

The beginnings of a UK union bounce back?

According to official statistics from the UK Department for Business & Trade, union membership has been on a steady decline. In 1995, 28.8% of those in employment belonged to a union. But by 2025, this number has reached a historic low of just 19.9%.

Ahead of the reforms introduced by the Employment Rights Bill, union membership as a percentage of those in employment rose to 20.4% in 2025, potentially being bolstered ahead of the Bill’s formal introduction.

There are a number of reasons for the steady decline in union membership - some good, and some bad. The UK economy shifting away from industrial industries that traditionally held union-heavy employment is one of the most significant factors.

But Anti-union legislation introduced under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership during the 1990s also weakened the power of unions significantly. Unions lost legal protections against strikes, outlawed sympathy strikes, and introduced mandatory secret votes on union leadership ahead of strike action.

New rules introduced as part of employment protections and regulations - such as the minimum wage introduced in 1998 - have also reduced the need for unions to negotiate fair pay or organise industrial action in events of extreme unfairness.

Looking forward, the rapid introduction of AI to UK industries and the fear of job displacement are also likely fueling union membership in the UK.

Apple’s M6 Mac mini starts at $899, while the M5 Pro costs $1,699. Here’s what the extra $800 adds and who should pay for it.

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Epson’s new LS models are laser-lit and cheaper than the flagship LS11000.

Ask a UK bank for investment advice, and you get a lawful recommendation. If it was negligent, you will have the right to make a claim using the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Ask ChatGPT, or, more fashionable, Claude, the same question and you get nothing. Just an answer, but it will be delivered with a more confident tone, no matter whether it's right or absolutely wrong.

Despite that, more than a quarter of UK consumers now say they trust AI chatbots for money advice. The Financial Conduct Authority found this figure and flagged it as a live concern in its most recent review.

Other surveys found even higher figures. STRAT7 found 55% of UK adults have used AI for financial guidance, Sky News reported 40%, and EY's global study measured Gen Z adoption at 68%. Whatever the precise number is, the direction is the same.

People have started to trust AI more and more in their financial decisions. But the debate about it has, so far, been asking the wrong question.

What is the wrong question?

Most publications today focus on accuracy, and what everyone wants to know is whether the AI's advice is good. But is it?

In one study, there were five real financial scenarios passed to major chatbots, and the output was compared to certified financial planners. The result was unsurprising, though. The bots reliably missed emotional and situational context, so personal decisions turned to rough spreadsheet logic that missed important input.

Sky News has conducted a similar test, where three chatbots were given £16,000 in real savings. What they found was that the recommendations were US-biased and incomplete.

Most alarming, it was an investigation which found Claude incorrectly described Binance as FCA-registered when advising a beginner on cryptocurrency. Binance was, in fact, ordered to cease UK-regulated activity back in 2021.

AI’s misleading outputs sound disturbing, but what is even worse is that it is only one part of the problem. Things get harder after the incorrect advice has already been given, acted on, and gone wrong.

So, when it happens, who takes the blame? Nobody is the answer, although it’s quite uncomfortable to hear.

The FCA has noted the same. In its 2026 report, the regulator confirmed that LLM platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude sit entirely outside its regulatory remit. This means that consumers using them for financial guidance are not receiving regulated advice. Therefore, they have no access to the Financial Ombudsman Service (or the Financial Services Compensation Scheme) if things go wrong.

That said, the safety net simply does not apply the moment consumers paste a question into a chatbot.

The regulatory gap explained

To understand why this gap exists, let’s understand how UK financial regulation actually works. The regulatory perimeter is activity-based, not technology-based. This means what matters most is what is being done, not how.

A firm that provides personalized recommendations on the purchase, sale, or holding of certain assets is engaged in regulated activity, regardless of whether those recommendations are provided by a person or an algorithm.

The problem is that AI chatbots occupy a new space. They are not marketed as financial advisers, so they don't claim to be regulated. And technically, in most cases, they are not offering advice in the strict legal sense — they are responding to open questions.

Again, this ambiguity was addressed in the FCA report. The Mills Review highlights that AI platforms may influence consumers’ financial decisions without clearly implementing regulated actions. As a consequence, this creates a serious blank space between the actual financial impact and the protection provided by regulatory authorities.

The review's main recommendation was for the FCA to officially revise the scope for receiving financial recommendations developed using AI tools. So, this process is ongoing, and further updates will be available only after a few months, or even more.

The consumer protection problem and what fintech can do

While there is no law so far protecting ordinary people, what should we do? Can fintechs close this gap, at least for now?

First of all, waiting for the FCA perimeter check to be completed is not a strategy. It’s better to start by separating information from personalization, especially if your company has an AI assistant.

The thing is that the boundaries of recommendations depend on whether the conclusion is adapted to the specific circumstances of a particular person. The tool that generally explains what an ETF is is in a completely different regulatory status than the one that says how much you should invest in funds.

Also, make sure the disclaimer does real work. The footer text “not financial advice,” located below a specific recommendation, will not pass regulatory checks. The FCA evaluates content, not form. If the output data looks like a personalized recommendation, the tiny disclaimers will not reclassify it.

Although many people use AI today, do not overuse it to earn trust. An analysis of more than 330 million reviews showed that mentions of interaction with AI are rated, on average, at just 1.7 points, compared to 3.7 points for reviews that do not mention AI.

Final words

Surely, there will be some people who continue to use AI directly for financial advice, and their number will grow. For them, I can say only one thing: be careful about who you trust with your earnings. If no one is accountable, maybe not treating it as a rulebook will save you from losses.

But fintechs should start building the accountable version of their business, with an audit trail and a human above the AI layer. So when the machine says "yes," someone is actually standing behind that answer.

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• Apple unveils its Music Hall in Battersea Power Station, London
• Space for live music, but also a place for recording said music
• All performances can be recorded in Spatial Audio

If you love listing to acoustic sets, live recordings or unplugged sessions from your favorite artists, then Apple Music's new announcement might make it your go-to streaming service for this kind of recording.

London's Battersea Power Station, an iconic Art Deco power station once famous for its use in Pink Floyd album artwork (that's since been turned into a rather soulless shopping mall) now plays host to the Apple Music Hall. This, of course, levels up the location's artistic merits, joining the The Cinema in the Power Station, which this writer argues is the best movie theater he's ever been to.

Apple Music Hall is a 600-seater venue, with a 48-speaker surround sound system (that's 12.5 people per speaker, if the venue is at capacity). But its appeal isn't just for people who can hop on the London Underground's Northern Line and navigate the winding halls of the Power Station.

The space also houses a production facility, which can be used for live or post-performance mixing. That means performances at the Apple Music Hall can be recorded and mixed incredibly quickly, letting Apple Music listeners at home enjoy the set with Spatial Audio and video recordings too.

Apple has confirmed that its Music Hall performances will be live-streamed, so you can tune in easily. It didn't specify that this'll only be to Apple Music subscribers, but (given the heavy investment in such a a venue) it'd be odd for the company to let just anyone tune in and listen.

A place to listen to music

(Image credit: Apple)

Music streaming services are starting to realise that intentional listening is more meaningful than algorithmically-picked background noise which you tune out of. Only a few months ago, Spotify opened a Listening Lounge in London, which is a room with a high-end stereo set-up so you can enjoy quality music in an acoustically-tuned environment.

Listening Lounge is a bit different to the Apple Music Hall, because it's not for live music and you can't simply buy tickets to go, but they share a common theme: it's nice to sit down and spend all of your mental capabilities enjoying music. These will be live streams that you don't put on in the background; you can sit down and enjoy the performances as they happen.

The addition of live artists gives the Apple Music Hall a little extra juice — and if the brand manages to book some good artists, the live streams could be outstanding. I don't mean popular artists, but those with a flair for live performance that'll make the recordings transcend their studio equivalents.

Thankfully, London's a city full of artists, with every street hosting theater bars, record store gigs and open mic nights. Apple doesn't need to open the purse strings and look for the big names, or rely on people with loads of TikTok followers, to get a talented line-up.

No artists have been announced for the venue yet, but after its full opening on September 28, perhaps we'll hear some names. And if, like me, you're a local who might consider going to a gig there, signing up for a newsletter on the Apple Music Hall website will keep you in the know.

Silent Hill: Townfall’s setting of St. Amelia is based on a real place. I went to visit.

In March, Google moved its own post-quantum cryptography (PQC) migration deadline forward to 2029, a full six years ahead of NIST's guidance, and two ahead of the NSA's requirement for national security systems. It was a terrific bit of security signaling, but now it is backed up by a new product-by-product roadmap organized around three risk domains, with milestones attached to named services.

For anyone whose job touches digital trust, the most significant of those three domains is Google’s attempt at enhancing foundational capabilities for cryptographic agility: building flexible systems that can adopt new cryptographic standards with minimal engineering effort as those standards evolve.

The message is that organizations should prepare for a future in which standards, certificate formats, and operational requirements continue to evolve, and evolve regularly, requiring cryptographic agility.

Why quantum risk is already a digital trust problem

Adversaries are already harvesting and storing encrypted data today on the assumption that a future quantum computer will decrypt it (harvest now, decrypt later). Anything with a long confidentiality tail, from health records to national archives to intellectual property, is already exposed to a machine that does not yet exist.

Quantum-resistant algorithms, like ML-DSA, solve the cryptographic problem, but they introduce much larger keys and signatures. Deployed through today's public key infrastructure (PKI), they would inflate or possibly break the systems behind secure connections. Legacy systems and high-latency networks would feel it most.

What is a Merkle Tree Certificate (MTC)?

At the time this article is being written, the most significant development in Google's roadmap may be the easiest to miss. Under Domain 2, Integrity and non-repudiation, a single line reads:

“Google Trust Services, Merkle Tree Certificates, 2028”.

Merkle Tree Certificates (MTCs) are a new kind of website domain certificate designed to keep secure connections fast in the coming era of quantum computers. Today a website proves its identity by presenting a certificate that carries several digital signatures, and the quantum-resistant versions of those signatures are so bulky they would slow down every secure connection on the internet.

MTCs solves this by having the certificate authority (CA) record everything it issues in a public, tamper-evident log, organized as a Merkle tree. Rather than carrying heavy signatures, the website presents a short trail of digital fingerprints showing its certificate sits in that log, and the browser checks the trail against a summary of the log it already received through its normal software updates.

Of note, MTCs do not abandon X.509. They are X.509 certificates, carrying a proof where a signature used to sit, issued alongside conventional directly-signed certificates rather than replacing them.

The result is a certificate that stays small, stands up to quantum computers, and is publicly verifiable by default. For the regular everyday person: we get to keep using the internet fast and uninterrupted with quantum resistance underneath.

MTCs make transparency structural

In today's web PKI, transparency is bolted onto issuance as a separate step. The CA signs a certificate, submits it to independent CT logs, and collects SCTs, each of which is a log's signed promise to publish the certificate within a fixed window. A misbehaving or compromised log can vouch for a certificate that never becomes visible to the monitors watching for misissuance.

MTCs change that relationship. The CA certifies by logging, and a certificate is literally a proof that its entry appears in the CA's public issuance log, verified by the browser on every connection. If it is not in the log, it is not a certificate. Under MTC, transparency does not merely survive the post-quantum transition. It comes out stronger.

Who is developing Merkle Tree Certificates

When the vendor with the dominant browser share proposes a new certificate format and a new root store to hold it, it is reasonable to ask whether the rest of the ecosystem is being consulted or simply informed.

However, MTCs are not Google's alone. At the time of writing, the IETF draft's authors span Google, Apple, Cloudflare, and Geomys. Cloudflare has been involved from the outset, CAs including Sectigo have contributed to the underlying research, and Let's Encrypt publicly committed to MTCs in June 2026. The result will be an open standard any CA can implement, controlled by no single vendor.

The organizations that will shape post-quantum web trust are the ones in the working group now. Root programs, CAs, and large implementers who stay outside it will inherit decisions rather than influence them. That choice is available to everyone, and the window is open today.

How organizations should prepare for MTCs

Google’s 2028 date for MTCs deserves a roadmap's usual caveats. Google ties it to standardization work still in progress at the IETF, and dates like these move. The direction, however, resembles something that seems settled.

Chrome's planned Quantum-resistant Root Store will support quantum-resistant certificates only in the MTC format, not as post-quantum signatures bolted into traditional X.509. Compact classical signatures and X.509 served the web extraordinarily well for three decades, but with the dawn of quantum computing, we are due for a redesign.

For everyone else, the practical implication of Google's roadmap is not that you need MTCs. It is that you need to be capable of adopting them (or whatever else emerges) without a multi-year engineering program. Which is precisely the cryptographic agility Google put at the foundation of its own plan.

In concrete terms, organizations should focus on:

• A complete inventory of certificates and cryptographic assets, because you cannot migrate what you cannot see
• Automated certificate lifecycle management, because shorter certificate lifetimes will make manual processes untenable well before quantum computers arrive
• A written post-quantum roadmap from your CA, which every organization should be asking for

The full scope of what MTCs can do is still coming into focus, and they may not be the only answer the industry ultimately adopts. What is already clear is that organizations that invest in cryptographic agility, certificate lifecycle management, and complete visibility today will be best positioned to adapt as post-quantum standards mature.

The future of digital trust will belong to organizations that can evolve as quickly as the cryptography they depend on.

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• Daredevil: Born Again will end with its third season
• Marvel has wielded the ax on its longest-running live-action Disney+ show
• Its showrunner has also left with the final season deep into post production

Daredevil: Born Again will end with its third season after Marvel called time on the Charlie Cox and Vincent D'Onofrio-led TV show.

Rumors first emerged in the US morning yesterday (September 21) when X/Twitter user HablemonsdecineX claimed it had been canceled. Almost instantly, numerous industry insiders with spotty track records quickly jumped on the bandwagon to insist they'd heard similar things.

TechRadar approached Marvel and Disney for comment on its supposed axing, but didn't receive an immediate response. However, a few hours after Hablemonsdecine's original post, The Hollywood Reporter (THR) published its own piece indicating Daredevil: Born Again season 3 would be the show's last hurrah.

A Disney spokesperson has since told me that THR's article is accurate, so Born Again season 3, which will air on Disney+ sometime in March 2027, will be its final outing.

Why was Daredevil: Born Again canceled after three seasons?

I’ve now lived through two Daredevil Season 3 cancellations. You can’t hurt me anymoreSeptember 21, 2026

Outside of Marvel headquarters, nobody knows for sure — but there's one major reason why it's likely been consigned to the scrap heap.

Indeed, the show's second season suffered a significant drop in viewership compared to its debut outing on Disney+. Per audience measurement experts Luminate, Born Again season 2 accumulated 4.5 million views across its first five weeks in March. Compare that to the 8.4 million that season 1 accrued across the same time period in early 2025 on one of the world's best streaming services, and the Marvel Phase 6 program's audience share fell by a seemingly unrecoverable 47% in the space of 12 months.

I wrote about this last year but Charlie and Vincent only ever signed on for 3 seasons. It’s sad to see it end again but I’m very grateful we got 3 additional seasons. There’s always a possibility that they do come back for more. The ball is in Marvel’s court to make a new deal https://t.co/f83pEFHn6RSeptember 21, 2026

For all intents and purposes, Born Again season 2's dramatic drop in viewers didn't appear to spook Marvel executives. That's because its third — and now final — season was not only greenlit prior to its forebear's release, but also entered full production mere days before season 2 premiered on Disney+.

Furthermore, it seems that the decision to throw the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) TV show in the trash was only just made. According to Deadline, its cast and crew were informed of its cancellation on the same day that said news broke. It's unclear if Marvel's top brass spent months deliberating over the show's future before culling it, or if it was more of a spur-of-the-moment decision.

One thing that might have fast-tracked its demise is the departure of showrunner Dario Scardapane.

Per THR, Scardapane, who was brought on to rescue Daredevil: Born Again following reports that Marvel wanted to rework the entire show in late 2023, is said to have parted ways with the comic giant. Scardapane's exit comes with the show's third season deep into its post-production phase, too, thereby leaving the Born Again team without its creative figurehead. There's no word on who, if anyone, will fill the void and get the series' final installment over the line.

Why Daredevil: Born Again's cancellation couldn't have come at a worse timeComment from r/marvelstudios

With Born Again's time coming to an end, Marvel now has a two-fold problem on its hands.

For one, season 3 was seemingly set to herald a new dawn for the street-level corner of the MCU. Indeed, with the likes of Luke Cage and Iron Fist set to join the eponymous vigilante, Wilson Fisk, and Jessica Jones in making the leap from the Netflix Marvel-Verse to the MCU, fans had hoped that more gritty and grounded MCU stories would branch off of Born Again's forthcoming season.

Admittedly, that could still happen. However, if Marvel no longer has confidence in its longest-running live-action series, what hope do we have of seeing a Jessica Jones TV revival or — whisper it quietly — a Heroes for Hire project?

Comment from r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers

The other major issue Marvel has to contend with is actively promoting Daredevil: Born Again season 3.

New York Comic-Con (NYCC) has been used to market and/or announce many of the comic titan's forthcoming Disney+ offerings. And, with NYCC 2026 due to take place between October 8 and 11, it's highly likely that Marvel will hold its usual panel to reveal more details about its 2027 TV line-up.

With Born Again season 3 confirmed to be the show's last entry, will Marvel show and/or tell us anything significant about it? Or will it shift its focus to its animated programs, such as X-Men 97 season 3 and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man season 2, and subsequently ignore the giant Daredevil-shaped elephant in the room? I guess we'll find out in a few weeks' time.

For now, catch up on everything else we know so far about Daredevil: Born Again season 3.

The Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 feels like the PC gaming handheld of 2026. An enhanced version of the original Xbox-branded Ally X, this is shaping up to be one of the best-looking, ergonomically fantastic, and brilliantly performing handheld games consoles — and I went hands-on with it at Gamescom last month and liked it. A lot.

Coming to it as someone who hasn’t truly jumped in with both feet to PC gaming handhelds — basically none of them play nice with my hands due to being bulky and heavy — even a short time with the newest, flashiest version of Asus’ Xbox handhelds has left a permanent mark. One that might make me a PC handheld convert.

Much will be made of its price tag and purchase options — either $1,299 / £1,299 on its own, or $2,299.99 / £2,299.99 as a bundle with the new ROG XREAL R1 glasses — but after experiencing all its enhancements and features, and seeing how games run on it, it really could be a hit.

Looks and feels the part

(Image credit: Future)

Even though I know that this is a similar handheld to its predecessor, this thing is a joy to hold and use from a design perspective.

The overarching form is the same as the original Ally X, but the new translucent finish is a thing of beauty. It gives it an almost see-under-the-hood kind of vibe, and does a great job of making it stand out from its largely black-and-white competitors.

The gold accents are even more fantastic in real life and up close than in pictures, too, with the rings around each thumbstick and the shine of the four small buttons on the front, as well as the ‘ROG 20th Anniversary’ plate, and the stripe down the back really popping out of the otherwise black aesthetic.

(Image credit: Future)

That translucent back also has an incredibly grippy feel — you won’t need to add an external case here. As someone who always has to worry about that with gamepads and phones, this was extremely welcome; the rubberised, tactile wings of the controller really are conducive to maintaining a solid grip.

The inputs remain great too, with rounded face buttons, lovely triggers and bumpers that are all a joy to interact with, as well as excellent Tunnel Magnetoresistance (TMR) thumbsticks that offer a tangible upgrade over the analogue sticks of its predecessor. Though, I’d have liked to have seen some microswitch button tech in the X20 as a similar upgrade as well.

The star of the show, though, is, of course, that slightly bigger, but much better, screen. Offering an increase of 0.4 inches, but a huge leap up to OLED in panel tech, the new screen is vibrant and has colors that really pop and contrast. The boost to color gamut and HDR it offers makes for a genuine visual treat, and you know you’ll be covered in all situations with a brightness of up to 1400 nits to tap into.

But has the guts to match

(Image credit: Future)

The performance remains excellent as it was on the X20; games might never have looked better on a handheld screen.

The OLED panel is a joy to use, with fantastic colors and contrast, and the extra bump in the VRR to FreeSync Premium Pro is also welcome and a great feature. As a result, Forza Horizon 5 looks comfortably better, by a strong margin, compared to the handheld I am most used to, my PlayStation Portal, in sheer image quality and vibrancy, while getting comfortably north of 60 frames per second.

Using the TMR thumbsticks was great too: every move feels much more responsive, smooth, and instant compared to my Portal or a Steam Deck, and the extra durability the sticks offer over analog ones is superb too.

The Asus ROG Ally X20 is a fantastic bit of kit, and offers a compelling route into handheld PC gaming — perhaps one of the most complete offerings — even for me, as someone who has yet to jump in and can’t ever find the right device for the job.

So far it might be the PC gaming handheld I’ll consider buying most if I commit to going mobile. It’s not a transformation of the PC handheld experience that the ROG Xbox Ally X offers, but it’s an excellent refinement.

The Philippines launched 11 Gemini-powered AI tools inside eGovPH, expanding digital government services for citizens and public-sector workers.

The post Philippines Puts Google Gemini Into eGovPH With 11 AI Tools for Public Services appeared first on TechRepublic.

Twitter is not back, and we'll surely never see the likes of it again. In its place, we have X, and now, Tweet.app. You can be forgiven for the confusion. Many who still use X think their posts are tweets, but the still-pay-to-play platform from Bluebird, Inc. is now called Tweet.

It's a tale far too rich to contain in, say, a classic 140-character tweet, but I'll attempt to unpack it here, with insights from Bluebird, Inc. President and General Counsel Stephen Coates.

"I call it the 'Tweenix,' " Coates tells me, after I noted that Tweet.app's new blue logo looks a little like a phoenix. The imagery is apt. It signifies classic Twitter rising from the ashes, but also Bluebird's initial success and then failure to revive 'Twitter', before ultimately launching Tweet.app a few weeks ago.

Two years ago, Bluebird began the skunkworks project to revive Twitter, a brand Elon Musk effectively killed when he bought Twitter in 2022 and then in 2023 rebranded it to X, leaving vestiges of the old 'Twitter' scattered throughout the services, a fact that played a crucial role in Bluebird's ability to revive the brand.

Coates told me that after his company tried to file for a cancellation of the 'Tweet' and 'Twitter' trademarks in December of last year, X quickly filed a federal injunction. In the meantime, Bluebird launched Twitter.now. Months later, the judge ruled that because X still had "formerly Twitter" on the Apple App Store listing, it had brand rights. Coates called the ruling surprising, but Bluebird quickly pivoted and rebranded to Tweet.

The company, he told me, has no plans to go after the iconic Twitter bird logo, even though it's not well protected as a brand by X. Hence, the Tweenix.

Tweet, though, still seems like a risky name. Coates told me, "We're optimistic... It seems highly likely we’ll prevail on 'Tweet'."

Bluebird, Inc. President Stephen J. Coates (Image credit: Bluebird, Inc.)

That remains to be seen. When you sign up for Tweet, you must acknowledge that you know it's not affiliated with X. Search Tweet in the App Store, and the first result is still X. However, Tweet.app operating relatively under the radar might help it avoid further scrutiny from X and Elon Musk.

It has, by Coates' measure, just about 8,000 users. "[That's] pretty good, considering it's paid," Coates told me. The platform is so small that you could conceivably read all the tweets — I'm not sure that's a selling point, but Coates said there are "already community and inside jokes."

The company is using the income from those users to pay its small team of 10 employees and contractors as it builds the platform and tweaks the moderation filters, something Coates considers of critical importance.

Tweet.app, which does resemble old-school Twitter, is currently using AI to scale its moderation, including its still-in-beta Vera tool, which measures content for misinformation and applies a score. Eventually, Tweet.app members will have a dial connected to those ratings to automatically filter out their desired level of misinformation.

That's right, Tweet.app won't be in the business of rooting out all fake news. The creed will be, "Freedom of speech but not freedom of reach," said Coates.

FutureFutureFuture

Where Twitter, under former CEO Dick Costolo, whom Coates worked under, struggled with how to be a town square when there was one guy shouting obscenities in the corner, Tweet.com will let the guy shout, but also let users hide the obscenities they don't want to see in their feeds.

If it works, all of it will be powered by this AI. "I call it AI for good. We're not creating tools that will create AI outputs," said Coates, who has worked as counsel for Meta, Reddit, and TikTok.

None of this, of course, ensures success. Classic social media, including Twitter, was built on viral moments, like the Arab Spring, the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and selfies that broke the internet.

I call it AI for good. We're not creating tools that will create AI outputs

Stephen Coates

Coates acknowledged the power of these "inflection" moments, but reminded me that you can't predict them. Tweet.app is happy to grow slowly. Coates knows that paying members will be more deeply engaged than people who simply hop on the platform for free. "At some point will it be open to everyone? I certainly hope so," he told me.

I asked Coates why we need this or any other new social media. He told me that he sees room for reinvention, with space for social media that gives users control. "We're empowering them to control the algorithm," which is an idea that well-established social media platforms have only recently approached.

As the other upstart micro-blogging social media platform, Bluesky, moves away from the town square concept, Coates sees an opportunity to build an alternative to the only other big open platform: X.

"There's room for more. I think people will come for the nostalgia of Twitter and tweeting and stay for the control and experience. It’s a grand experiment."

HP’s new partnership with OpenAI shows what companies need to consider as they move agentic AI from small-scale pilots into broader enterprise use.

The post HP & OpenAI Partnership Shows What Enterprise Agentic AI Requires Beyond the Model appeared first on TechRepublic.

Google Wallet offers broader Android flexibility, while Samsung Wallet goes deeper on Galaxy features, migration, IDs, and access tools.

The post Google Wallet vs Samsung Wallet: Which Should Galaxy Users Choose Heading Into 2027? appeared first on TechRepublic.

• CISA added three Linux kernel flaws (CVE‑2025‑39682, CVE‑2026‑53266, CVE‑2025‑39964) to KEV catalog
• Red Hat confirmed active exploitation; agencies given rare three‑day patch deadline expiring Sept 21, 2026
• Bugs enable DoS, privilege escalation, or data corruption; patches available, limited mitigations for two flaws

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has added three Linux flaws to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, signaling abuse in the wild and giving government agencies a deadline to patch or stop using the flawed product entirely.

The three bugs in question are tracked as CVE-2025-39682 (severity score 9.8/10 - critical), CVE-2026-53266 (severity score 8.8/10 - high), and CVE-2025-39964 (severity score 7.8/10 - high). All three have already been patched in the Linux kernel. CVE-2025-39682 was fixed in stable releases 6.1.149, 6.6.103, 6.12.44 and 6.16.4, while CVE-2025-39964 was fixed in 5.10.245, 5.15.194, 6.1.154, 6.6.108, 6.12.49 and 6.16.9. CVE-2026-53266 has been fixed upstream and backported to supported stable/distribution kernel branches, including 5.10.259, 6.1.176 and 6.12.94.

The first issue is an improper check for unusual or exceptional conditions vulnerability in the TLS receive patch which could allow unauthenticated threat actors to launch memory disclosure or denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. The second one (CVE-2026-53266) is an out-of-bounds write vulnerability in the ebtables Source Network Address Translation (SNAT) Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) rewrite patch which allows local attackers to escalate privileges or mount DoS attacks.

The last one (CVE-2025-39964) is a race condition flaw that allows concurrent writes to the same AF_ALG socket, which allows local malicious actors to crash the system or corrupt cryptographic operation results, leading to data integrity issues and possible DoS states.

Attacks in the wild

Red Hat acknowledged that all three are being abused in real-life attacks. “This CVE is high risk and there are known public exploits leveraging this vulnerability. Address this vulnerability with high priority,” it said in all three advisories.

However, there are no details as to who is currently using these exploits, against whom, and to what cause. There are currently no separate reports of cyberattacks referencing any of the abovementioned vulnerabilities.

However, CISA still reacted. All three flaws were added on September 18, 2026, and all three have a small three-day deadline for patching that expires on September 21. Usually, CISA would grant Federal Civilian Executive Branch (FCEB) agencies a three-week deadline to patch up, with just exceptionally dangerous flaws getting a shorter window. That being said, these flaws are likely extremely dangerous.

In theory...

In a hypothetical scenario, a threat actor could target a Linux system using kernel TLS (kTLS) by sending a specially-crafted TLS record that triggers CVE-2025-39682 and causing either a crash, or even arbitrary code execution. Attackers that already have a low privilege foothold on the target endpoint could use CVE_2025-39964 to escalate privileges, while on systems using the affected bridge/netfilter configuration, CVE-2026-53266 could be used for privilege escalation, as well.

According to the Red Hat advisory, there is a chance that CVE-2025-39682 is remotely triggerable, but only when the system is using the affected kTLS receive path. The other two flaws are exclusively local vulnerabilities.

Besides fixes, two out of the three flaws also have possible mitigations. For the improper check one, users should prevent module tls from being loaded. For the out-of-bounds write one, users are advised to disable ARP hardware address rewriting in ebtables SNAT rules, or remove ebtables SNAT rules that operate on ARP traffic on bridge interfaces. The final vulnerability, currently does not have a working mitigation, and the only way to stay secure is to apply the provided patches.

Linux kernel vulnerabilities are generally considered serious, but the severity still depends on the flaw and how the affected kernel is deployed. Earlier this year, security researchers disclosed four local privilege escalation flaws, called DirtyAH6 (CVE-2026-80844), TUNderflow (CVE-2026-81000), PPPoEject (CVE-2026-68121), and DiagSpill (CVE-2026-74469).

Via The Hacker News

Paramount has reached a settlement in the 12-state antitrust suit, clearing the path for its proposed $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

The point of the unsafe prompts was to test what happens when you hand physical agency over to LLMs.

For Stuart Fails to Save the Universe viewers who have been waiting for things to feel exactly like The Big Bang Theory... your moment has arrived.

Sure, we've had a whole host of cameos from the original show (though three notable faces have yet to turn up), but zipping from unhinged universe to unhinged universe has been a world away from the science sitcom we know and love.

But what if I said that there's a key reason why this week's episode could be straight out of 2007? And when does Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 9 arrive on HBO Max?

What time can I watch Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 10 on HBO Max?

For US viewers, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 10 will drop on Thursday, September 24 at 6pm PT/9pm ET.

Internationally, you're looking out for these times:

• US – Thursday, September 24 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• Canada – Thursday, September 24 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
• UK – Friday, September 25 at 2am BST
• India – Friday, September 25 at 6:30am IST
• Singapore – Friday, September 25 at 9am SGT
• Australia – Friday, September 25 at 11am AEST
• New Zealand – Friday, September 25 at 1pm NZST

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

(Image credit: HBO Max)

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

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

The AI-generated star spoke Cantonese, plotted “treasons” and baffled news anchors.

• HKUST (Guangzhou) and HK PolyU researchers' InjectEave beams a radio carrier at devices so their own circuits leak analog audio
• The leaked audio has already been decrypted by the device itself, making encryption offer no protection against such an approach
• The 30m headline needed a pricey amplifier pushing output to 10 W, while standard ranges of 1 to 6m were measured by detecting a test tone

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University have shown that everyday headphones, a desk phone, and a handful of smart-home gadgets can broadcast what they are doing simply by using a radio signal.

The technique, called InjectEave, was presented at USENIX Security 2026 in Baltimore, and multiple outlets have since covered the researcher's claim that the attack "can recover headphone audio from up to 30 meters away, including through walls".

The claim may be accurate, but it has limitations, including the need for specialized equipment that is often very noticeable in most settings.

An impressive technical show with plenty of limitations in tow

Conventional electromagnetic eavesdropping waits for a device to leak. That works poorly for audio, because speech sits below 20 kHz while a device's wiring radiates efficiently only at megahertz or gigahertz frequencies.

InjectEave chooses to close the gap by transmitting a carrier signal at the target. According to the paper, nonlinear components such as amplifiers, analog-to-digital converters, switching MOSFETs, and power converters mix the secret signal onto that carrier, and the device's own traces and cables radiate the result back to a receiver.

Because the leak happens in the analog path, after audio has been decoded, the project page states that "InjectEave is immune to digital defenses such as encryption, masking, and randomization." Encryption in any form on a wireless headset is irrelevant, since the attack directly targets the signal driving the speaker, not the radio link.

The team demonstrating this used a USRP B210 software-defined radio, two antennas, a Siglent spectrum analyzer, and a laptop to set up their proof of concept, which could, as they noted, "eavesdrop on the majority of these devices from over 2m away and through walls, with a maximum distance of 30m for recovering intelligible headphone audio".

This isn't the first time the technique has been used, even as the researchers have built on it considerably; the idea originates from "The Thing," a Soviet bug given as a gift to the US ambassador in Moscow in 1945, which was passively powered remotely as a listening device.

InjectEve, however, does not involve planting anything; instead, it leverages existing work on interference-induced leakage and impedance-based backscatter, and distinguishes itself by recovering coarse digital data rather than continuous analog waveforms, allowing users to 'listen in' without added steps.

The same approach applies to wired headphones, which are also prone to leaking microphone audio; researchers concluded that their sound cards were the primary source of the leaks, which were being sent back over very short distances.

The threat is somewhat tempered by the fact that it can capture what users hear but, with wireless headphones, cannot hear what the user is saying. The attacker also has to transmit continuously and use a high-powered (10W) transmitter to reach the full 30-meter range, even though capturing and rendering speech is harder than the tones the test used to prove the approach worked.

The attacker also needs to know the target model and profile a matching unit first, although they managed to get a profile to transfer cleanly across three identical UGreen headsets, suggesting this might be easier than one would assume.

The researchers say they reported the findings to the affected manufacturers but, "as we have not yet received a response," withheld the table's frequencies and stripped injection control logic from their released code. One shouldn't be too hopeful, however, as no software update can fix an analog leak, and it is relatively limited in practical abuse cases.