Technology

Campaigners have long feared the influence of big money and influential corporations in politics – with this situation arguably worse than ever. In modern times, lobbying by technology companies has even given way to technology executives playing a role in devising government policy.

The path to progress

At the end of his two-term presidency, Dwight D Eisenhower used his final address to the American people to warn about the dangers that he foresaw lying ahead.

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In particular, the military veteran warned about the rise of a new elite in society dominated by figures in science and technology, whose power would come to overwhelm democratically elected officials. He also suggested that the path of progress would be wrought with a lack of morals and ethics, with projects pursued in the name of progress regardless of the consequences to society at large.

A major component of this would be that the pursuit of major government contracts would dominate the scientific world, whereby the pursuit of money would dampen any genuine curiosity and lead to fewer meaningful discoveries.

The dawn of Silicon Valley

The former US president's warnings have largely come to fruition, first with the rise of Silicon Valley elites during the original internet age and now, subsequently, these forces are arguably entrenching their power in the AI era.

Technology companies have spent billions of dollars collectively on lobbying the government, with a small handful of companies including Microsoft, Meta, X and Snap channeling more than $260 million between 2020 and 2024.

The Trump administration has taken this influence one step further by giving vested interests a seat at the table and in the heart of government.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 is one of Samsung's latest batch of foldable phones, and it shakes things up by introducing a new shape to the lineup. It's shorter and wider than its predecessor, giving it the perfect dimensions — when unfolded — for reading (in portrait orientation) or watching movies and playing games (in landscape). In his hands-on Galaxy Z Fold 8 review, our phones editor commented that this "passport-shaped oddity" had "revived [his] interest in foldable phones".

If you've decided this is the foldable phone for you and have one on order or winging its way to you, now's the time to get a case sorted. Below, I've rounded up my favorite cases and covers in the US and in the UK. You'll find options from a range of trusted brands including Spigen and Otterbox. I've also included some of Samsung's official Galaxy Z Fold 8 cases, although be aware that most of these are just a back cover with a screen protector for the front — with that in mind, I'd say there are better value options to be found from third-party brands.

Scroll down to browse my favorite Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 cases and covers to keep your new passport-shaped foldable protected from bumps and scrapes.

US cases for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8

Spigen Core Armor (Mag Fit)

Spigen Slim Armor Pro S (Mag Fit)

Spigen Slim Armor Pro (Mag Fit)

Spigen Air Fit Pro (Mag Fit)

Samsung Clear Case, Transparent

Samsung C11 Magnet Case

Samsung Carbon Magnet Case, Violet

Samsung Hinge Protection Magnet Case, Transparency

Samsung Mirror Magnet Case (Kakao Friends)

Samsung Carbon Standing Case, Graphite

Samsung Clear Magnet Case, Transparent

FNTCASE Full Hinge Protection Clear Cover

SPIDERCASE Military Grade Drop Protection Cover, Black

TORRAS Magnetic & Flush Stand, Black

Temdan Translucent Matte Shockproof Case, black

UK cases for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8

Otterbox Defender Series Pro XT, Black

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Clear Case

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Carbon Standing Case

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Carbon Magnet Case

Samsung Hybrid Shield Magnet Case

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Silicone Magnet Case

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Clear Magnet Case

Lemxiee Cover with MagSafe charging

Aiziki Slim, shockproof TPU case, clear

OWKEY Slim, translucent, non-slip case with MagSafe

Vihibii Magnetic case With Kickstand, Black

Spigen Air Skin MagFit Case

• Redditor uses Claude Code to help reverse-engineer the firmware on an HP 15-dw1036ne, patching its signature check and exposing 55 hidden setup fields and four configuration tabs
• The laptop's RSA-2048 was not broken: the verification routine was patched to return success, a standard firmware-modding technique as per Community Notes
• The result is model- and version-specific, still requires physical access via a hardware flash programmer, and leaves the machine permanently more exposed to firmware implants in the future

A Reddit user going by Reddit_2049 posted to r/ClaudeAI a claim that traveled fast: Claude Code had picked apart the firmware on their HP 15-dw1036ne and unlocked it, exposing 55 hidden setup fields and four previously invisible configuration tabs.

The move, though impressive, relies on a well-known BIOS modding approach: attacking the BIOS signature check so the BIOS always replies in the affirmative, effectively bypassing it altogether rather than throwing a potential firmware corruption error.

While it does have security implications, it also opens up a route to essentially 'rescue' locked or disabled laptops that would otherwise become e-waste.

Claude Code unlocked my laptop's bios! from r/ClaudeAIA solution to certain types of e-waste, enabled by AI

What Claude Code did to "unlock" the Redditor's laptop is not a new technique. It bypassed the firmware's integrity check (an RSA-2048 signature verification) by targeting not how the check was performed, but how its result was reported.

The cryptography remains untouched, as Community Notes on two of the larger viral posts about the story pointed out. What the episode does highlight is that on machines without hardware-rooted boot protection, the verification routine itself sits in modifiable firmware, which is the same repair specialists and modders have relied on for years.

Reddit_2049 ran the job through the standard firmware toolchain: Ghidra for disassembly, UEFITool for extracting firmware volumes, and Unicorn Engine to emulate the check outside the real machine. Claude Code assisted here rather than acting autonomously by stitching together the relevant parts for him. The techniques involved are well documented; what was not documented was this particular machine, and that is the gap the model closed.

That opens an interesting front, one that could help with e-waste, even if not every owner is equipped to open a laptop safely or use a hardware flash programmer. An LLM that can read disassembly and hold a firmware layout in its head compresses hours of specialist work, which means targets that were never worth anyone's time individually now might be.

Whether the approach travels is an interesting question, however. The author of the original post warns the script may not work even on superficially similar HP models, and anyone attempting it on different hardware would need a flash programmer on hand and a tolerance for bricking the machine: modified firmware also brings its own problems, including occasional stability issues.

Right-to-repair rules in the EU and several US states have been circling this territory without directly addressing firmware. Until they do, the position stands roughly where it did last week, except that reverse-engineering a specific machine's firmware has become considerably cheaper for everybody.

That could let owners keep using older, locked laptops that would otherwise become e-waste, at a time when consumers are already burdened by higher costs due to inflation and an AI spending spree by data centers affecting laptops and desktops alike.

• Scammers stole $1.27m from a Hong Kong man after tricking him with AI
• The scheme impersonated his father using AI deepfake tech
• Experts say using a secret codeword can thwart the fraudsters

A Hong Kong man was recently conned out of HK$10 million ($1.27 million) by scammers who used artificial intelligence (AI) on WhatsApp to impersonate his father and request the payments, highlighting the dangers of trusting increasingly realistic AI tools. Yet experts say there’s a simple trick that can save you from suffering a similar fate.

According to the Hong Kong police’s Cyberdefender platform (via the South China Morning Post), the fraudsters sent a WhatsApp voice message to the victim saying they urgently needed a transfer of HK$1 million ($127,000).

This was convincing to the target, the SCMP reported, because the “voice and manner of speech [of the message] matched his father’s.” The victim was repeatedly exploited this way until he had transferred the entirety of his savings.

Warning people against falling for AI trickery, the Hong Kong police force said: “Do not blindly trust voice messages. Even if the voice sounds similar, it does not necessarily mean it is accurate.”

If you’re unsure whether the message is genuine, put the phone down and call your friend or family member back so that you know with certainty who you are speaking to. The police also recommended enabling two-factor authentication on your devices and reviewing the list of devices connected to your accounts. If you see any suspicious devices, remove them immediately.

How to beat the fraudsters

(Image credit: Brett Jordan / Unsplash)

Deepfake scams like this are so effective because they appear to come from a familiar, trustworthy source — even when they’re anything but. Yet experts have just published a proven way that you can beat the swindlers and keep everyone safe.

As reported by the BBC, setting a secret codeword to be used in emergencies can help you tell if the person on the call is actually a loved one or merely an AI impersonating them. As the BBC put it, “Deepfake scams might use your voice, but they don’t know what’s in your head.”

One tactic used by scammers is to use urgency in order to create panic and prevent you from thinking straight. That’s why it’s important to take a moment to think to ensure you remember to use the codeword and verify the caller’s identity.

When it comes to picking a codeword, “Pick something that’s easy to remember and hard to guess,” the BBC recommended. “Inside jokes are a safe bet.”

As Philadelphia lawyer and anti-scam activist Gary Schildhorn put it, there are three red flags to look out for: time pressure, a request for hard-to-trace funds (like cash, cryptocurrency or gift cards), and control over who you can speak to on the call. Experience any of those and you might be speaking to a malicious con artist.

Bear all that in mind and you stand a much better chance of protecting yourself from fraudsters. The next time you get an unusual message or call seemingly from a loved one, take a minute to breathe and remember your codeword.

• A police officer pulled a Tesla over for traveling 64mph in a 45 mph zone
• The owner attempted to plead innocence as Full Self-Driving was running
• Police issued a very blunt response

Video footage has surfaced online that shows a police department in Parker, Colorado, reportedly pulling over a Tesla for traveling 64mph in a 45mph zone.

While this isn’t unusual in itself, the plea from the Tesla’s driver is, as the excuse was that they weren't in control at the time. “I wasn’t driving. I had Autopilot on,” came the plea.

The three-minute video was released by the police, alongside a blunt reply (or perhaps a warning to other drivers?) that read: “Driver assistance technology does not replace the driver.”

“Whether your vehicle has adaptive cruise control, lane centering or full self-driving, you are still legally responsible for operating your vehicle safely,” the response added.

Despite the driver being clocked at 64mph in a 45mph zone, the Tesla owner belligerently claims they weren’t in control, it wasn’t their fault and that the self-driving system was activated.

The police officer then says: “I don’t know how these systems work, but you’re not the first person I have stopped with Autopilot activated.”

In fact, one of Electrek’s own writers documented the moment he got a speeding ticket while using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving.

Despite setting the system to Standard mode — as opposed to the faster Hurry or Mad Max settings — the vehicle still crept up to 78km/h in a 50km/h zone.

Analysis: Bad by design

(Image credit: Tesla)

Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems are designed to assist the person behind the wheel, rather than completely replace them, no matter what Elon Musk espouses in his various public statements.

Currently, the law states that the buck stops with the driver, and any reckless driving, speeding or accident ultimately remains the driver’s fault, as they need to be ready to take control if and when these systems fail.

However, Tesla makes things difficult, as it has designed FSD to drift over the limit, even in Standard mode, and also took away the adjustable speed offset that once allowed owners to cap how far over the limit the vehicle would creep in autonomous modes.

Electrek reports that the adjustable speed offset was recently removed in FSD v14 and replaced with fixed driving profiles.

It is easy to see why Tesla has trained its systems this way, as many drivers get frustrated when technology vehemently adheres to speed limits and subsequently fails to keep up with traffic.

But with many other semi-autonomous cruise-control technologies, the driver has complete control over the speeds at which they are happy to creep over the limit.

If Tesla’s driving assistance systems keep landing drivers in hot water, many will stop using them entirely, which is exactly the opposite of what the company wants.

After all, Elon Musk has long promised that drivers will soon be able to text and immerse themselves in all manner of side tasks in the very near future.

But right now, it feels like Tesla owners need to be more alert than ever.

The Dell Tower Plus is one of those machines that impressed us during testing. It's such a versatile and configurable tower desktop that's suitable for everything from basic office use to full-blown creative workstation, whether out of the box or upgraded later down the line.

So, we were really pleased to see the Dell Tower Plus Desktop (EBT2250) is now $2000 (was $2530) at Dell. It's our top-ranked business computer for all professionals, with this performance-driven model equipped with a Core Ultra 7 CPU, 32GB DDR5 RAM, 1TB SSD, and RTX 5060 Ti GPU.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Dell Tower Plus if...

You want one machine that covers both productivity and gaming without compromise. This configuration's RTX 5060 Ti and 20-core Ultra 7 chip give it real headroom for creative work, multitasking, and modern games alike, and the tower format leaves room to upgrade later.

❌ Skip the Dell Tower Plus if...

You want a compact or small-form-factor build, or care about aesthetics — our review flagged the minimalist, fairly plain design as one of its few weak points, along with the basic wired keyboard and mouse it ships with.

Intel Core Ultra 7 265 | 32GB DDR5 | 1TB SSD

This is our pick for best business PC overall - specifically because it's ultra-configurable and future-proof, whether you need a basic office machine or creative workstation. The deal we've selected has a Core Ultra 7 265 chip, 32GB DDR5, and 1TB SSD, with Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti graphics card. This feels like the best all-rounder, but you can easily switch out for the specs you need with discounts across the range. View Deal

Why we recommend it

In our 4.5-star review, we found the Dell Tower Plus is a machine that "does it all," praising how the same chassis scales from a barebones office machine up to a genuine creative or gaming rig, while staying quiet and easy to upgrade later.

What makes the Tower Plus line worth considering is just how configurable it is without changing the chassis or port layout. For that reason, we rank it the best business PC in our guide. Every professional can get something from this machine.

This particular build lands in a genuinely useful middle ground: enough GPU for 1440p gaming and GPU-accelerated creative work, enough CPU for heavy multitasking, and a straightforward path to upgrade RAM or storage down the line rather than being boxed in by a sealed or proprietary design.

Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, Windows 11 Home, and a wired keyboard and mouse round out this deal.

Price Context & Historical Value

It's usually tricky to track pricing history from Dell, but based on our previous coverage $1999.99 is the standard deal price for this desktop PC. Not an all-time low, but still a significant discount compared to full price.

You can check out all the EBT2250 configurations currently discounted at Dell by clicking here.

The Catch: What to know before you buy

Our review's main criticisms were about presentation rather than performance: the design leans minimalist to the point of looking plain, and the included keyboard and mouse are basic wired accessories rather than anything premium.

In our opinion, neither affects how the machine performs, but budget for your own peripherals if that matters to you.

For a desktop that flexes between work and play without complaint, this configuration is a strong buy at $1,999.99.

• See all desktop deals at Dell.

• Hivemind completes first autonomous swarming mission on water in Taiwan
• Drone boats identified and escorted a vessel during a coordinated surveillance exercise
• SeaShark 600 and 800 vessels operated together under a single autonomous command

An autonomous software system called Hivemind has directed a group of unmanned boats through a live mission for the first time on open water.

Developed by Shield AI, the AI tool took control of two vessel types built by Thunder Tiger during a staged exercise off Pingtung, Taiwan.

Engineers designed the exercise to test whether one AI system could manage several drone boats acting together as a coordinated unit.

Autonomous software directs coordinated drone boat mission

Two vessel models, the SeaShark 600 and the SeaShark 800, carried out the reconnaissance work under Hivemind's direction during the exercise.

Rather than following pre-set routes, the software built its own path in real time using radar feeds, camera imagery, and ship-tracking signals pulled from the area.

It located the search zone on its own, spotted an object worth investigating, and then organized the fleet's response around that discovery.

Once the object was found, the boats worked together to guide a separate ship safely away from the area under watch.

The trial marked the first time Hivemind completed an on-water swarming exercise, extending technology previously associated with autonomous operations across different military platforms.

“Hivemind continues to prove that true mission autonomy can scale across domains, platforms, and functional assets, unlocking new capabilities for distributed intelligence and maritime security missions,” said Nathan Michael, chief technology officer at Shield AI.

“As we continue working with Thunder Tiger to expand the scale and sophistication of autonomous maritime teams, these systems will fundamentally reshape maritime surveillance operations and strengthen deterrence through resilient, intelligent operations.”

The companies began collaborating through a strategic agreement aimed at integrating Hivemind autonomy software across both maritime and airborne unmanned systems.

Companies plan broader maritime deployments

Shield AI and Thunder Tiger plan to expand their collaboration by integrating additional sensors and improving coordinated swarm capabilities across autonomous maritime platforms.

The companies also intend to conduct open-ocean deployments supporting future United States and allied military applications.

According to Thunder Tiger, the latest exercise also examined how fleets of unmanned surface vessels could improve maritime awareness by detecting, classifying and identifying contacts during security operations.

“By integrating AI pilots into our portfolio, we can enable distributed, networked teams that coordinate dynamically to build a more complete understanding of the maritime environment … while helping operators respond with greater speed, scale, and effectiveness,” said Gene Su, board director and general manager of Thunder Tiger Corp.

“This demonstration marks an important step … and we expect our partnership with Shield AI to continue delivering increasingly sophisticated autonomous systems that strengthen Taiwan's defense posture.”

The demonstration adds to ongoing efforts to advance autonomous maritime operations using coordinated unmanned surface vessels.

Future activities will likely focus on integrating additional sensors, expanding swarm capabilities, and conducting open-ocean deployments.

Via The DroneFront

Cloudflare’s Kitesurf browser promises lower resource use and stronger isolation for AI agents, but enterprises should assess its beta limitations.

The post Cloudflare Launches Kitesurf, a Lightweight Browser Built for AI Agents appeared first on TechRepublic.

Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid robot can swap its own battery in under three minutes, a feature designed to reduce downtime during industrial work.

The post Boston Dynamics’ Atlas Robot Can Change Its Own Battery in Under 3 Minutes appeared first on TechRepublic.

GMKtec is behind some of the most capable mini PCs we've ever tested, and the K8 Plus is no exception. And I just found the GMKtec K8 Plus mini PC for $650 (was $900) at Amazon.

This configuration features the high-performance Ryzen 7 8845HS processor, paired with 16GB DDR5 RAM, and 1TB SSD. But the real highlight for us is the connectivity. Specifically, this mini PC comes with dual USB4 ports and an OCuLink port.

The 32GB/1TB K8 Plus is also on sale for $740 (was $750) direct from GMKtec, while the 32GB/512GB model is $689 (was $900) at Newegg.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the GMKtec K8 Plus if...

You want desktop-class performance and expandability in a footprint that fits behind a monitor. The upgradeable RAM and dual M.2 storage, plus an OCuLink port for a future external GPU, make this a genuinely future-proof pick for a dorm room, home office, or secondary workstation.

❌ Skip the GMKtec K8 Plus if...

You care about design details — our review noted the transparent twist-off top cheapens what's otherwise a clean, metal-cased build. You'll also need an external graphics card connected if you need serious dedicated graphics power, since the integrated Radeon 780M is fine for light gaming but not built for demanding titles alone.

AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS | 16GB DDR5 | 1TB SSD

This Windows 11 Pro mini PC from GMKtec comes equipped with a Ryzen 7 8845HS chip (8-core, 16-thread, up to 5.1GHz, 16MB L3 cache), 16GB of DDR5 RAM (expandable to 96GB) and a 1TB PCIe SSD. You'll also find Radeon 780M integrated graphics, with the option of hooking up an eGPU via the dual USB4 ports and an OCuLink port. We love the inclusion of dual 2.5G Ethernet, alongside HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 2.1, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.2. View Deal

Why we recommend it

In our 4.5-star review, we called it an "understated mini PC that delivers far more power than you'd expect for the price," and found it handled demanding day-to-day tasks with total ease during testing, backed by a genuinely capable set of upgrade options.

The OCuLink port is the standout feature here. It gives this mini PC a genuine path to external GPU performance that most machines this size simply don't offer, which matters if your needs might grow beyond what the integrated Radeon 780M can handle.

Combined with dual 2.5G Ethernet and 16GB of upgradeable RAM, this machine is built to keep pace as your workload changes, not just handle what you need today.

Price Context & Historical Value

According to CamelCamelCamel, this is the lowest price I've seen on Amazon for the 16TB/1TB configuration. However, I've previously seen the 32GB/1TB version selling for $630 back in February - before the RAMpocalypse truly hit and we saw price risess across the board. Previously, the 32GB/2TB version was selling for $810 (down from $940), a deal that ended today.

Alternatively, GMKtec has the 32GB/1TB model for $740 (was $750), and Newegg is selling the 32GB/512GB model for $689 (was $900).

The Catch: What to know before you buy

Our main design complaint in the review was the transparent, twist-off top panel, which looks a bit cheaper than the rest of the metal chassis suggests it should. On the performance side, the integrated Radeon 780M graphics handle light gaming and everyday creative work well.

However, anyone chasing serious frame rates in demanding titles will want to rely on the OCuLink port for an external GPU rather than expect it from the iGPU alone.

For desktop-class performance in a genuinely small footprint, this is one of the better mini PC deals we've tracked. You can see more in our guide to the best mini PCs we've tested, and save with the best mini PC deals we've uncovered this week.

• See all mini PC deals at Amazon.

• A developer has a 28.9-million-parameter model generating TinyStories-style text at 9.88 tokens per second, fully offline, on a $10 microcontroller
• It was achieved by fitting a language model on a chip with 512KB of RAM by leaving most of it in flash storage
• The project is available on GitHub under an MIT license

A developer going by slvDev has a 28.9-million-parameter language model generating text on an ESP32-S3, a microcontroller built for sensor nodes and smart plugs, at 9.88 tokens per second, with nothing leaving the chip.

The project, esp32-ai, went up on GitHub under an MIT license in late July 2026, was showcased on the Better Stack YouTube channel, and has since collected over 3,600 stars and has more than 470 forks of the underlying code.

Given the underlying hardware's limitations, the attempt meant the model, which was trained on the TinyStories dataset by Microsoft Research, had to be scaled down.

Still a capable LLM despite the loss in accuracy

The arithmetic involved here is brutally unforgiving; weights typically need one to four bytes per parameter just to sit in memory, so 28.9 million parameters at 16-bit precision still require nearly 60 MB of RAM. An ESP32-S3 offers 512 KB of SRAM and 8 MB of PSRAM that is woefully inadequate at first glance.

Quantization closes the first part of the gap: dropping the weights to four-bit precision trades a little accuracy for a 75% reduction, bringing 60MB down to 14.9MB.

The second step is where the project earns most of its attention: most of a language model's parameters sit in embedding tables that the model reads from rather than computes against, and something you only read can live somewhere slow.

Borrowing Per-Layer Embeddings from Google's Gemma 3n, slvDev moved about 25 million parameters (roughly 12 MB at four-bit) into the board's 16 MB of flash, pulling around 6 rows, about 450 bytes, per token.

What remains in working memory is closer to 2 MB: the dense core and output head in PSRAM, and activations and norm weights in SRAM. Each tier stores whatever is read at its own frequency, and the chip's memory hierarchy serves as the architecture that enables the LLM.

Offloading weights to storage is not new; it is how people coax frontier-class models onto hardware that has no business running them, but it usually destroys throughput, turning tokens per second into seconds or minutes per token.

The PLE approach avoids that because the offloaded weights are accessed sparingly, so flash bandwidth never becomes the bottleneck. The resulting performance, 9.88 tokens per second, is faster than most people read.

The LLM has its limitations, however: the model writes short, mostly coherent stories and will not answer questions, follow instructions, write code, or know facts. The developer says the limit stems from the small part of the model that performs the reasoning (~4M parameters) and that the memory trick does not change its capabilities. His repository also ships a second model, Barista, which expressly answers espresso questions only (pun intended).

In short, the approach doesn't make small models smarter, but it does allow them to offload data within the board onto chips they could not previously run on, making it an interesting choice, though one with limited practical uses in its current iteration.

If you shoot video, edit photos, or just want a fast backup drive that can survive being tossed in a bag, this deal is worth grabbing. The SanDisk Extreme 1TB Portable SSD is $227 (was $256) at Amazon.

This is SanDisk's newer Extreme Portable SSD rated for read and write speeds of up to 2000 MB/s over USB-C - a notable jump over the 1050 MB/s the excellent previous generation of this drive topped out at. It's rated IP65 for water and dust resistance and backed by a 5-year limited warranty.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the SanDisk Extreme 1TB if...

You need a fast external drive for video editing, large file transfers, or backing up a laptop, and want something rugged enough to travel with. The 2000 MB/s and IP65 ratings make it well-suited to fieldwork, whether that's a shoot, a shared desk, or a backpack.

❌ Skip the SanDisk Extreme 1TB if...

Your device or cable setup can't take advantage of the faster USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface — you won't see the full 2000MB/s speeds on an older USB-C port, and a cheaper standard SSD would serve just as well.

A 1TB portable SSD rated for up to 2000MB/s read and write speeds over USB-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2x2), with IP65 water and dust resistance, 256-bit AES encryption with password protection, and a 5-year limited warranty.View Deal

Why we recommend it

SanDisk's Extreme line has always impressed us - we awarded the older model 4.5 stars in our review, with a TechRadar Pro Recommends badge. At the time, we called it "hands-down one of the best external SSDs (rugged or not) on the market, and its 1TB version is particularly attractive."

This is a faster version, but it's still the same design, including the durability rating for outdoor use (or a particularly violent commute).

The jump to 2000MB/s puts this drive well ahead of the standard 1050MB/s tier most portable SSDs in this price range are still stuck at, which matters if you're regularly moving large video files or full camera card dumps. Pairing that speed with IP65 durability and a 5-year warranty is still fairly rare below $250.

Price Context & Historical Value

Since I first covered this deal yesterday, I've seen prices fluctuate between $240 (was $300) at Best Buy to an all-time low of $215 at Amazon. The highest price I've seen is $270. So, at $227 it's not the cheapest but still the best deal around right now.

The Catch: What to know before you buy

To actually hit the rated 2000MB/s speeds, you'll need a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2-capable port on your computer — plug it into an older USB-C or USB-A port, and you'll see noticeably lower real-world speeds. It's also worth knowing that IP65 resistance protects against splashes and dust, not full submersion, so this isn't a drive to take diving.

• See all SSD deals at Best Buy.

Welcome to the Blu-ray Bounty July 2026. This is where we test the latest 4K releases of each month that we think will be perfect for showing off your home theater. If you’re new to the Blu-ray Bounty, you can check out previous editions here, where we’ve reviewed over 100 discs since starting in November 2024.

4K Blu-ray is easily one of the best ways to enjoy a movie at home, especially when it’s on the best TVs and best soundbars. I personally use it as my main source for testing AV equipment, thanks to its uncompressed picture and audio quality.

In last month’s June 2026 Blu-ray Bounty, I tested seven discs, including Speed Racer (which is one of the best discs I’ve ever tested, and you can expect to see it as reference source in future reviews), EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert, Bullet In The Head (1991), Body Heat, Avatar: Fire & Ash, Five Easy Pieces and 36 Hours.

In this month’s list, I’ll be testing 4 discs, and I’ll be using our usual setup. This consists of the LG G6, one of 2026’s best OLED TVs, the Panasonic DP-UB820, the best 4K Blu-ray player for most users on the market, and the Samsung HW-Q990C, the brand’s flagship 11.1.4 channel Dolby Atmos system from 2023.

As always, I’ll only be discussing the video and audio quality of each disc, not the movie itself.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (Universal Pictures) Nintendo / Universal Pictures / Future Nintendo / Universal Pictures / Future Future

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, sequel to 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie, follows Mario, Luigi, Peach Yoshi and Toad's adventure to rescue Princess Rosalina, who's been kidnapped by Bowser Jr. The film stars Chris Pratt, Anya-Taylor Joy, Charlie Day and Jack Black, who reprises his role as Bowser.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie looks gorgeous on 4K Blu-ray. This disc is so impressive, that I've even started using it for reference testing, and you can read my full thoughts on it here. Below is a summary about the disc's picture and audio.

It's all about color reproduction here, which is bold and vibrant, generating some amazing pop on screen. As the Lumas listen to Rosalina's bedtime story, the color of each Luma is punchy with some amazing highlights, especially with Dolby Vision HDR. The animation throughout is crisp, delivering 3D-like textures and depth that is seriously impressive.

If you have a bright display at home, you'll be rewarded with some beautiful brightness too. The star that one of the Lumas turns into dazzles on screen, and anytime Rosalina uses magic, there are stunning, glittery colors that illuminate the screen. The movie delivers excellent contrast too, particularly in space scenes where the dark blue sky of space balances nicely with the bright stars and vivid characters.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has an impressive Dolby Atmos soundtrack included too. There's excellent detail and precision here, as Peach and Toad first fly through the space on the star, the twinkling trail behind the star follows its path accurately, and is well defined in the mix, clearly audible even in the uplifting score. As characters fly towards Bowser Jr's ship, height effects are fully utilized, with the character's flight mapped overhead to create a fully immersive sound. There's even great demonstrations of bass throughout, as character's fire up ship engines or crash through things, generating plenty of impact.

To Live and Die in L.A (Arrow Video)Arrow Video / Future Arrow Video / Future Future

To Live and Die in L.A. follows the story of two Secret Service agents, Richard Chance (William Petersen) and John Vukovich (John Pankow), who are in pursuit of counterfeiter-turned-killer Eric Masters (Willem Defoe) after Masters kills Chance’s former partner.

To Live and Die in L.A. looks excellent in 4K in this restoration, presented by Arrow Video. Textures have been cleaned up well, with skin looking realistic, and more intricate details such as scars and marks on people’s faces delivered with real clarity in close-up shots. Colors have seen beautiful pop, with the Dolby Vision grade really adding some serious punch. Reds, such as those on the US flags throughout, in particular jump off the screen.

There’s some strong contrast throughout, as well as some refined shadow detail. In dimly-lit areas, overhead lights create strong shadows across people’s faces, with a stakeout scene with Chance and Vukovich acting as one of the best demonstrations of this. Black tones are deep throughout as well, in both environments and people’s clothing.

There are two soundtracks included here: the original stereo audio and a DTS-HD 5.1 MA mix. Using the 5.1 MA mix, there’s some seriously good detail here. As Masters makes counterfeit notes, the whirring of the printing press balances nicely with Wang Chung’s score. Even intricate effects in the scene, such as Masters cutting out the notes and washing the surface, are clearly audible. During a night-time stakeout, the pouring rain is accurately mapped to the rear channels, even creating a sense of height. Speech is clear throughout, and the soundstage is wide enough to give all elements room to breathe.

Alice In Wonderland (1951) (Disney)Disney / Future Disney / Future Future

Alice In Wonderland, based on both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, tells the story of Alice, a young girl who ends up in a magical world where she meets a weird and wonderful cast of characters, including the evil Queen of Hearts who rules over Wonderland.

Alice in Wonderland looks great in 4K. Colors are bold and accurate in equal measure, faithfully rendering that classic Disney look. While most colors are beautifully vivid, it’s reds and pinks that really stand out on screen, looking particularly dazzling. The animation style here looks refined and has been nicely upscaled, giving characters more depth.

On the LG G6 I used, bright colors such as the white of Alice’s clothes and the gold of the doorknob have striking brightness and vibrancy to them, aided by the Dolby Vision HDR featured on this disc. While I usually use Filmmaker Mode on the G6, I found this movie did benefit from the brighter Cinema Home mode for some added punch.

While there is still some film grain present for cinephiles, the movie has been refined quite a lot and this does give the animation a very clean look, making it look much more contemporary than its original 1951 animation style would suggest.

There are two soundtrack options available: DTS-HD MA 5.1 and 2.0 mono. The 2.0 mono is more faithful to the original, but the 5.1 MA mix has a nice balance to it, giving every element depth and warmth, while letting them all breathe. The score is mapped to the rear speakers, allowing the front channels to deliver speech and other effects. Outside of the score and vocals, there aren’t many other elements to show off your home theater, but this 5.1 mix does sound brilliant.

Hairspray (1988) (Criterion)The Criterion Collection / Future The Criterion Collection / Future Future

Set in 1962, Hairspray follows Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), a teenager who achieves stardom on a local dance show, and attempts to use her newfound fame to advocate for more racial integration on the dance show. Directed by John Waters, the movie also stars Divine, Sony Bono, Jerry Stiller and Debbie Harry.

As you’d expect from a movie set in the 1960s, there’s some seriously bold visuals here. From the bright pinks of the Turnblad home to the striking red of Link’s car, colors have some really nice pop on screen. Textures have been upscaled effectively, giving them a more 3D-like look, though not quite to the extent from other Criterion restorations such as 3:10 To Yuma. Finer details have also been refined, with individual strands of hair given some nice depth and volume.

There’s a lot of grain still present here, so cinephiles will be happy. Black tones are deep as well, shown predominantly in people’s hair. There’s some nice contrast too, as shaded areas contrast with the bright lights of the studios for the dance shows themselves.

For audio, there are two soundtracks available: DTS-HD MA 2.0 surround and DTS-HD MA 5.1. The 5.1 soundtrack does a great job of giving the soundtrack room to breathe, with a good balance between the speech and stacked tracklist of songs used for the dance scenes. More intricate effects such as the sound of shuffling feet and clapping hands during dance scenes have a nice clarity, clearly audible over the much louder songs.

The company’s new “2.0” plans and 36-month installment plans provided cover for removing what was billed as a limited-time offer.

Meta must pay $567 million and change Facebook and Instagram protections for minors under a New Mexico court order it plans to appeal.

The post Meta Ordered to Pay $567M and Overhaul Teen Safety on Facebook, Instagram appeared first on TechRepublic.

Samsung’s August 2026 Galaxy update fixes 56 Android and One UI security flaws, including critical vulnerabilities and clipboard access risks.

The post Samsung’s August Update Patches 56 Security Vulnerabilities Across Galaxy Devices appeared first on TechRepublic.

• Researchers tested AI-generated patches on six CVEs with poor success rates
• Many fixes failed, altered behavior, or introduced new vulnerabilities
• Guidance improved outcomes, leading to FLAWED evaluation harness release

When using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to fix vulnerabilities, security professionals are most of the time just robbing Peter to pay Paul, experts have warned.

Researchers from 1Passwords Off-by-1 Labs analyzed fixes proposed by two frontier models - ChatGPT 5.5 at “medium” effort, and Claude Opus 4.8 at “high” effort.

As an experiment, the researchers took six recently disclosed CVEs and produced 6,080 patches using two frontier, cyber-capable reasoning models. The results were underwhelming to say the least - of all the proposed patches, just a quarter (26%) fully resolved the issue.

FLAWED work?

This obviously leaves plenty to be desired, as half (49.3%) of the patches failed to fix at least one existing exploit path. A fifth (20.1%) fixed the original issue but changed application behavior, while 2.3% introduced new security issues. Funny enough, 2.2% failed to fix the vulnerability while also introducing additional exploit paths, as well.

Even among the patches that might be considered (26% of clean ones and 20.1% of those that changed app behavior), more than a third were fragile and not entirely addressing the underlying problem.

The researchers created an acronym for automated LLM patches: FLAWED (Fix-Like Artifacts With Embedded Defects), and warned against letting AI work without human oversight: "The expected value of a fully LLM-generated, non-human-reviewed patch is a net-negative by a considerable margin."

Results drastically improved when the AI was given better context, the researchers further explained. Before working on any patch, human developers are usually given initial guidance. When AI is given proper guidance, its success rate rises to 65%. Incorrect guidance, on the other hand, drops the success rate down to 15.2%. The difference between humans and AI is that humans are better at catching misleading information and poor guidance.

This doesn’t mean developers will, or should, abandon AI. Worst case scenario is that developers will spend more time reviewing AI-generated fixes which could increase cognitive load and still end up being net negative. Therefore, the researchers released a patch evaluation harness called FLAWED, which organizations can now use to determine the effectiveness of their AI-generated fixes.

Via The Register

The ChatGPT maker is reportedly working on a small, portable AI smart speaker, but it better not look too much like Apple’s designs.

Our critical utility infrastructure can make the same classic mistakes as we do with our everyday connected devices.

• Attackers cloned AI skills, later adding malicious code to steal credentials
• Zenity Labs found millions of installs and dozens of dangerous skill variants
• Vercel and Microsoft removed malicious skills, but manual removal is still required

AI skills, instructions that teach AI agents how to do certain tasks and thus extend their capabilities, are increasingly being used in supply chain attacks, researchers have found.

Security experts at Zenity Labs uncovered a credential-stealing campaign on skills.sh, a public registry (essentially an app store) for AI agent skills. In the registry, belonging to Vercel (a cloud platform for web applications), threat actors were cloning existing skills, creating typosquatted lookalikes which, at first, did nothing malicious.

However, after a little time had past, and the skills amassed a solid download count, the attackers introduced malicious code instructing the AI agents to, among other things, exfiltrate SSH keys, cloud credentials, Git and package manager tokens, Kubernetes and Docker configurations, database credentials, infrastructure-as-code credentials, environment files and service account files. The agents were then told to package the stolen information with host metadata and send it to the attackers.

Dozens of malicious skills

While Zenity Labs could not say exactly how many people fell victim to this attack, they did stress that a single skill family amassed more than 1.7 million aggregate installs (not unique users).

And that is just one skill family, in a sea of malicious skills. The researchers also said they found “dozens” of additional skills exhibiting either malicious or dangerous behavior. Almost a third (30%) of identified dangerous skills abused Claude Code and OpenClaw to drop malware to their targets, as well. Also, Zenity found “hundreds” of reserved and empty package names that were being kept for future attacks.

These findings show how quickly cybercriminals adapt, and how creative they can get when it comes to abusing new tech. In essence, this campaign is an AI spin on a software supply-chain attack, being similar in spirit to incidents where attackers compromise an existing trusted package or repository, and later push a malicious update.

Following responsible disclosure, Vercel and Microsoft removed the identified skills, but Zenity warns that those who installed them before won’t be safe until they remove them from their systems manually.