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Ukrainian officials on Thursday confirmed the death of freelance journalist Victoria Roshchyna, though the circumstances surrounding her death were unclear.

(Image credit: Alex Brandon)

As officials encouraged western Florida residents to evacuate from Hurricane Milton’s path, several folks stuck around and posted about the storm online—for better or worse.

Imagine if Peaky Blinders were set in the world of illegal boxing in Victorian London. That's exactly what the show's creator Steven Knight has been writing, and the new series is coming to Disney Plus in 2025. A Thousand Blows features a stellar cast and promises to be vibrant as well as violent.

Watch the teaser trailer below.

A Thousand Blows: what we know so far

A Thousand Blows premieres at the BFI London Film Festival on October 11. (Image credit: Disney Plus / Robert Viglasky)

The show features Malachi Kirby as Hezekiah Moscow, who travels from Jamaica to London's East End and finds himself embroiled in the criminal underworld. There, he meets Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), leader of the feared all-female gang 'The Forty Elephants', and encounters the even more feared Sugar Goodson, a legendary boxer played by Stephen Graham.

It looks great, and the wider cast includes Francis Lovehall as Hezekiah’s best friend Alec Munroe, Jason Tobin as Mr Lao and James Nelson-Joyce as Edward 'Treacle' Goodson. The Forty Elephants includes Hannah Walters as Eliza Moody, Darci Shaw as Alice Diamond, Nadia Albina as Verity Ross, Morgan Hilaire as Esme Long, Jemma Carlton as Belle Downer and Caoilfhionn Dunne as Anne Glover.

A Thousand Blows doesn't have a streaming date just yet, but it'll be coming to Hulu in the US and Disney Plus elsewhere in 2025. And if the trailer is anything to go by, it's going to be a big hit that might make the cut for our best Hulu shows and best Disney Plus lists.

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Microsoft has unveiled a suite of healthcare-focused AI tools designed to enhance efficiency within the industry by tackling the burden of administrative workloads.

The new tools include advanced medical imaging models, an AI-driven healthcare agent service and an automated documentation solution for nurses in order for the industry to tackle insufficient workforces, growing patient lists and increasing costs.

The newly added multimodal medical imaging foundation models promise to handle different types of data, including medical imaging, genomics and clinical records. Organizations will be able to build, fine-tune and deploy AI solutions using the healthcare AI models to plug gaps that are currently being left by inefficiencies, a lack of time and an overload of patients.

Microsoft wants to solve the healthcare crisis with AI

“By integrating AI into health care, our goal is to reduce the strain on medical staff, foster the collective health team collaboration, enhance the overall efficiency of healthcare systems across the country," noted Mary Varghese Presti, VP of Portfolio Evolution and Incubation at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences.

Microsoft has also promised to tackle the accessibility of healthcare data. Typically unstructured and with limited data management systems, the tech giant wants to overcome this challenge with its analytics and data platform, Fabric.

Key to this will be the conversational data integration from DAX Copilot, which automates the creation of clinical notes to reduce administrative workloads.

Joe Petro, Corporate VP of Healthcare and Life Sciences Solutions and Platforms at Microsoft, added: “Microsoft’s AI-powered solutions are helping lead these efforts by streamlining workflows, improving data integration, and utilizing AI to deliver better outcomes for healthcare professionals, researchers and scientists, payors, providers, medtech developers, and ultimately the patients they all serve.”

Currently in public preview, Microsoft hopes that the early look at its upcoming AI tools will serve as a powerful indication of its effort to become an integral part of healthcare systems globally.

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A high-ranking OnePlus executive has confirmed that the OnePlus 13 is on the way, with some major upgrades over the company’s previous OnePlus 12 flagship.

Head of OnePlus China Louis Lee (also known as Li Jie Louis) took to Weibo to deliver an update on the long-rumored phone, saying that the OnePlus 13 will come equipped with the “latest Snapdragon flagship chip”.

Android Authority speculates that this chip will likely be the rumored Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, though there’s a smaller chance that the post refers to the currently available Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Lee’s Wiebo post also notes that the OnePlus 13 will run ColorOS15, the Android wrapper used by Oppo and OnePlus phones in China. OnePlus phones use the similar OxygenOS wrapper in the rest of the world.

The post seems to confirm that the OnePlus 13 will launch “this month”, but because of the mention of ColorOS we think this refers to a China-only release date.

This tracks with OnePlus’ previous launch strategy: the OnePlus 12 was released in China in December 2023, with a global launch following in January of this year.

OnePlus 13 display rumors

Lee’s announcement follows months of rumors and leaks pertaining to the OnePlus 13, and one of the latest appears to list the display specs of the upcoming flagship.

Weibo tipster Digital Chat Station claims the OnePlus 13 will ship with an LTPO OLED display at a 2K resolution, with a refresh rate of 120Hz. The leaker also says the display's brightness will be “greatly improved”, and that the display will cover an ultrasonic fingerprint scanner.

Digital Chat Station adds that OnePlus may have redesigned the internal circuitry of the screen, though we don’t know what effect this will have yet.

This latest leak builds on a prior announcement from Lee, confirming that the OnePlus 13 will use the BOE X2 micro-curved display, slightly curved on all sides to provide better comfort in the hand.

In our OnePlus 12 review we called the company’s most recent flagship “the coolest phone you can buy”. It tops our list of the best OnePlus phones, and anticipation for its follow-up is high.

For now, though, the above is based on semi-official announcements and unofficial rumors, so be sure to keep up with our phones coverage for the latest updates.

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Global PC shipments rose just 1% in the most recent quarter, closing on September 30, as the industry showed more signs of slowdown, analyst reports have claimed.

Despite the figures from Canalys marking a fourth consecutive quarter of growth, PC shipments by volume are still down compared with the same period in 2022, 2021 and 2020.

During Q3 2024, 66.4 million devices were shipped, with consumers and enterprises largely favoring notebooks and mobile workstations, which accounted for four in five shipments.

PC shipments are growing, but very slowly

Despite staggered growth, there is hope that the looming Windows 10 end of life could generate a surge in upgrades. However, we’re just one year away from that deadline and Windows 10 deployment still stands at nearly two-thirds (63%), compared with Windows 11 (33%) which has been slow to amass business customer interest.

Lenovo continues to lead the way, accounting for around one-quarter (24.8%) of the market, with HP (20.4%) and Dell (14.8%) rounding up the top three. While Apple has slipped to fifth place to make way for Asus, a potential launch of M4-series Macs later in 2024 could give the Cupertino giant the uptick it needs.

“Commercial procurement is expected to remain elevated throughout the rest of this year, with 54% of channel partners surveyed by Canalys anticipating growth in their PC business in H2 2024 compared with the same period last year," noted Ishan Dutt, Principal Analyst for Canalys.

Dutt also noted that emerging AI-capable PCs are driving customers to upgrade to futureproof their hardware against artificial intelligence applications.

Separately, Jitesh Ubrani, an IDC Research Manager, added: “Newer AI PCs such as Copilot+ PCs from Qualcomm along with Intel and AMD’s equivalent chips as well as Apple’s expected M4-based Macs are expected to drive the premium segment in coming months.”

However, Research VP Linn Huang indicated that the takeoff of AI PCs could be slower than first anticipated, with the effects unlikely to be seen until 2026.

Acknowledging that demand has been tainted, Canalys predicts that the upcoming holiday season could prove positive for the industry.

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The best streaming services tend to approach new episodes in different ways, so while Netflix has long offered entire seasons in single binge-worthy bursts the likes of Prime Video and Apple TV Plus prefer to drop new episodes once a week. And now Disney Plus is getting in on the act with yet another way of scheduling seasons. Its new Spanish drama Return to Las Sabinas, the first five episodes of which are already available, will be getting one new episode every day for the next 65 days.

That's a lot of days and a lot of episodes for a streaming show, but Return to Las Sabinas is drawing from something already well established: the soapy dramas delivered daily by TV networks in most of the world. So while this is new territory for streaming and the best Disney Plus shows, it's very familiar to fans of daytime TV dramatics.

What is Return to Las Sabinas about?

It's about 50 hours – ho ho! The show is billed as an original daily melodrama in the vein of popular telenovelas, and it follows two sisters, Gracia and Paloma, who return to their childhood home to care for their father. There, Gracia reconnects with her first love – but her first love is engaged to somebody else, and his brother is still in love with Gracia. Drama, inevitably, ensues.

Telenovelas and similarly low-budget daytime dramas tend to be famed for their wobbly sets and wooden performances, but this show looks different: Deadline reports that it had a much bigger budget, a much longer shooting schedule and much more post-production time than typical daytime dramas. Director Jordi Frades says that "we want the people to find love, passion, drama, comedy and everything they like in a daily show, but maybe with a little upgrade”.

Return To Las Sabinas is streaming now on Disney Plus around the world and on Hulu in the US.

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Several benchmark refinance rates climbed this week, but rates are still well below last year's highs.

Some important mortgage rates increased. Here's what to expect if you're in the market for a home loan.

Getting broken up with over text is hard enough, but imagine if you received an AI summary of a breakup to give you the bad news. That’s what happened to one iPhone user with Apple Intelligence who’s now single and ready to mingle.

One of Apple Intelligence’s biggest features in iOS 18.1 is notification summaries which condenses messages, emails, and other pop-ups into easily digestible bullet points. Unfortunately, however, Apple Intelligence can't quite get the gist when it comes to having a touch of humanity.

Taking to X, user @spreen_co shared an image of his ex-girlfriend breaking up with him. The Apple Intelligence summary reads “No longer in a relationship; wants belongings from the apartment.”

He followed up with, “Yes this was real… Yes it happened yesterday… Yes it was my birthday.” The tweet went viral with 3.8 million views, which might soften the blow a little, but won’t replace his relationship.

for anyone who’s wondered what an apple intelligence summary of a breakup text looks like pic.twitter.com/4C0K1GcrbFOctober 10, 2024

Apple Intelligence notification summaries

(Image credit: Apple)

Apple Intelligence notification summaries are incredibly useful when they work, but they lack human empathy and often get the wrong end of the stick. I’ve written about notification summaries in the past, calling the tool the “one Apple Intelligence feature you'll want to turn off right away”.

In my testing, the funniest examples have popped up when multiple notifications of the same thing pile up. For example, my Ring doorbell notifications are often summarized into “5-7 people at your front door”, which is pretty hilarious considering it sounds like there’s about to be a home invasion.

When it works, however, notification summaries is probably the most useful Apple Intelligence feature that will grace your iPhone when iOS 18.1 launches later this month. Condensing information to give you a quick glance of things like a shopping list from your partner or a date and time to meet someone are what the feature excels at, it’s just a shame that it doesn’t quite understand what it means to be human.

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One of the biggest questions around the Samsung Galaxy S25 series is what chipsets these phones will use. Typically, Samsung uses a mix of Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets and its own Exynos chipsets. But leaks suggested that Exynos might not be in the mix this year, and instead a MediaTek chipset could be used by some Galaxy S25 models. Now though, it seems that Samsung might only use Snapdragon.

According to leaker @Jukanlosreve on X, Samsung is in negotiations with MediaTek and did originally intend to use a Dimensity chipset (likely the top-end Dimensity 9400) in the Samsung Galaxy S25, but now the main Samsung Galaxy S25 series will exclusively use a Snapdragon chipset instead (presumably the not-yet-announced Snapdragon 8 Gen 4).

However, MediaTek’s chipsets will still apparently make an appearance in a high-end Samsung phone, with the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE supposedly set to get one instead.

[Exclusive] The negotiations between Samsung and MediaTek, which initially aimed to include the Dimensity chip in the Galaxy S25, have shifted to placing the Dimensity chip in the S25 FE instead. The S25 will exclusively use Snapdragon chips.October 11, 2024

This is probably good news, because based on past form the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will likely be the most powerful of these chipsets. If every model in the main (non-FE) Samsung Galaxy S25 line gets a Snapdragon chipset everywhere then, that also avoids the issue of having the same phone be less powerful in some regions, as has sometimes been the case in previous years.

The one potential downside here is that this could mean the Samsung Galaxy S25 line is more expensive than previous models, as reports suggest the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is around $40 more expensive than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Of course, we’d take this leak with a pinch of salt, especially as @Jukanlosreve doesn’t really have a track record yet. Or at least, they don’t under that name, but they’re reportedly leaker Tech Reve using a new account, and that leaker has been right about many things.

A Samsung Galaxy S25 FE 'Slim'?

And back on the subject of the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, the South Korean site The Elec has said that this might be launched as a “slim” model, and that to make it slimmer, Samsung might make the battery thinner but increase its surface area.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 FE will also apparently have a 6.7-inch screen, like the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE.

In any case, at 8mm the S24 FE isn’t exactly thick anyway, but with rumors swirling that Apple is working on a thin iPhone 17 Air or iPhone 17 Slim, it wouldn’t be surprising if Samsung was preparing its own alternative.

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You can now use augmented reality (AR) to see how Philips Hue lights will look in your home before you invest in a full setup. A new update for the Philips Hue app will help you picture how your rooms will look equipped with color-changing bulbs, plus lamps like the Philips Hue Twilight and Philips Hue Bloom.

Philips Hue fixtures are some of the best smart lights around, but they're not a small investment, particularly if you're planning to install them in several rooms. Not only do you need the bulbs or lamps, you also have to buy a Philips Hue Bridge to connect to your home Wi-Fi network and control them all.

If you don't have one of the best smart speakers, you'll also want to pick up one of those to control the light with your voice – and maybe some motion or contact sensors, or a security camera so that your lights turn on when you get back from work. It all adds up rather fast.

If you're on the fence about going smart, the Philips Hue app can now help you decide. As The Verge explains, the updated app offers an AR tool that lets you see how the brand's various smart lights will look in your home, complete with different effects and colors. You can even see how a particular fixture would look with the rest of your lights switched off, so you can get an impression of the type of ambience it will create.

Hue goes there?

There are, however, a couple of catches. First of all, because the app's AR feature uses 3D mapping rather than simply superimposing images of products over a video feed from your phone's camera, it only works with the iPhone Pro and iPad Pro with LIDAR for the time being. Secondly, as The Verge discovered, it's not quite perfectly polished yet, and sometimes you may see a lamp seemingly floating rather than securely anchored to a floor or table.

Still, it seems like an excellent feature for anyone who's not sure about switching their lights to Hue bulbs, and whether it'll be a benefit for their particular space.

If you've decided that a Hue setup is right for you, or you're thinking of expanding your existing system, we've rounded up today's best deals on Hue bulbs and lamps for you below. Alternatively, you might choose to wait for next month's Black Friday deals, which usually include deep discounts on all kinds of smart lighting.

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Dancing humanoid robots, a Hollywood movie set and plenty of impromptu whooping – it could only mean one thing: Elon Musk finally held the robotaxi reveal he has been promising for years.

Staged in a sprawling "20-30 acre" Warner Brothers facility in California, the unveiling saw Musk arrive in what he predominantly referred to as 'Cybercab', although he did have a tendency to muddle that up with robotaxi on several occasions.

Sporting a demure gold paint job, the scissor-door saloon looked like the Cybertruck and Model S had spawned freakishly futuristic offspring, with LED headlights, laser projections on the road ahead and a distinct lack of steering wheel or pedals setting it apart from the rest of the Tesla range.

Musk demonstrated its abilities as he hopped inside one of his Cybercabs and took an awkward, trundling meander around the movie set to bursts of applause from his adoring fans. Occasionally it would stop for staged cyclists to pass, other times it would hesitate at junctions.

(Image credit: Tesla)

Once up on stage, Musk was characteristically light on details, stating that he had "50 autonomous cars" roving around the Warner Bros. lot, including Model Y vehicles set to an unsupervised autonomous driving mode.

After stating that traffic today “sucked” and that autonomous vehicles could be anywhere between 10-20 safer than humans, Musk again reiterated his vision of "personalised mass transport", which he suggested would be cheaper, safer and more convenient for everyone.

More importantly, it would give humanity back the time 'wasted' driving. Although Musk then joked that humanity would spend that time on their smartphones.

In terms of technology powering the vehicle, Tesla remained tight-lipped, with anyone tuning into the live stream of the event forced to pick out details and join the dots.

(Image credit: Tesla)

There was no sign of LiDar on any of the Robocab’s used in the demonstration, suggesting they relied solely on high-definition cameras to navigate the various, very controlled obstacles.

The Verge reported that the company was mapping the Warner Bros area in advance of the reveal, despite the company stating that it doesn’t rely on high-definition mapping for its Auto-Pilot and Full Self-Driving systems.

Musk did reveal that the Cybercab will go on sale and it will cost "less than $30,000", which is around £23,000 / AU$44,500, while he expects production for the vehicle to begin in 2026. However, that figure felt like it was plucked out of the air.

There was mention of inductive charging, with the Cybercab lacking any form of plug and relying solely on inductive plates to top up batteries. During one cutaway video, we also saw a team of robots vacuuming the interior of Tesla's autonomous vehicle and polishing the surfaces.

Any form of timeline is similarly vague and optimistic, as Musk predicts (or should that be hopes?) that both Texas and California will allow the company to operate Unsupervised Full-Self driving in those states next year, despite the fact that improvements in the company’s current SAE Level 2 supervised system have been marginal.

Analysis: Tesla is behind the times

(Image credit: Tesla)

Dan O'Dowd, founder of safety advocacy group The Dawn Project, spoke out after the Tesla We, Robot event, stating: "Tesla is not a player in the robotaxi market because they are prohibited from running on public roads. Tesla is limited to yawn-inducing demonstrations in Hollywood studios while its competitors’ robotaxis transport 100,000 paying customers around major American cities every week."

This firmly hits the nail on the head, because this is the major issue facing Tesla’s autonomous driving technology. 

Despite the company repeatedly over-egging its Auto-Pilot and Full Self-Driving capabilities, it is still only able to travel 70-odd miles before the systems disengage and require a human driver to take over for safety reasons, according to the community run Tesla FSD tracker. 

Compare this to Waymo's technology, which manages over 17,000 miles before any sort of disengagement. As a result, the company is rapidly expanding its operations across North America.

(Image credit: Tesla)

Rather than reveal the affordable EV that many Tesla and non-Tesla fans have been crying out for, Musk chose to wow the crowds with what he called the 'Robovan' – a fully autonomous, 20-seater transportation pod that looked like it had been lifted from a science fiction film.

There were also bold statements about his Optimus humanoid robots, which Musk claimed could be mass produced and then sold for $20,000 (around £15,000 / AU$30,000), going on to suggest they would be "the biggest product ever, of any kind".

Alas, as the cameras panned around to the humanoid robots supposedly tending the bar during the after party, all the dressed up props could do was stare into the abyss and wave at the crowd’s general direction.

A fitting metaphor for a once mighty company that feels as if it has lost its grip on reality.

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Theme parks and the airport in Orlando announced reopenings Friday, but officials warned more flooding could continue in the region over the coming days.

(Image credit: Giorgio Viera)

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Motorola makes some of the best foldable phones around, especially flip foldables – see our Motorola Razr Plus 2024 review for details – and it looks as though a future Razr handset might come with a motorized hinge.

This comes from a patent spotted by Notebookcheck, and while patented technology is never guaranteed to actually make it to consumers, patents do give us a good idea of what companies are working on and exploring.

The patent includes diagrams showing the motorized hinge in action during video calls. With a flip phone half closed and angled to show your face, for example, the hinge could automatically adjust to keep your face in the frame.

This would work whether the foldable was in 'tent' mode (with the hinge at the top) or in a more conventional 'laptop' mode (with the hinge at the bottom) – though the former option would require a relatively smooth surface to work effectively.

Accessories too

One of the diagrams showing the hinge. (Image credit: Motorola/USPTO/Notebookcheck)

As well as an integrated motorized hinge, the patent also mentions a separate clip-on motor that could be sold as an accessory – potentially enabling you to add the same functionality to an older phone like the Motorola Razr 2023.

Motorola suggests that this motorized solution would work better than features built into video-calling software, as it would enable users to be tracked with greater accuracy across a greater area – rather than relying on zoom and ultrawide cameras.

We can also imagine the hinge being used to automatically close the phone when you're done with it (or automatically open it when you need to see the screen) – perhaps through a voice command or a tap on your smartwatch.

Foldable phones are already incredibly complicated pieces of technology, so we'll have to wait and see whether or not Motorola can add even more complexity to the mix – but this patent does give us an idea of what the foldable phones of the future might look like.

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Windows 11 24H2 contains a bug (among others already spotted) that seemingly eats a sizeable portion of your drive space.

Windows Latest reports that the 24H2 update leaves behind an undeletable 8.63GB cache of files in its wake (a bit like a visitor who doesn’t know when it’s time to go home).

Normally, Windows 11’s Disk Cleanup feature would be able to remove these temporary files after the installation of 24H2, but if you try to do so, this doesn’t work due to the bug – the 8GB cache still remains.

The problem seems to be related to a new improvement made to Windows Update known as ‘checkpoint cumulative updates’ which were brought in with Windows 11 24H2. This is a system designed to trim down update sizes by providing more compact incremental cumulative monthly updates (though some will still be larger baseline updates – we go into this in more detail here).

The issue began with the release of Windows 11 24H2, and hasn’t been cured with the latest cumulative update for October, as folks are still complaining about the 8.6GB of files being eaten up.

Is there any way around this? The best bet is to play a waiting game

Is the bug actually grabbing 8.6GB of your drive, though? Well, we can’t be sure of that, as the 8.6GB of files might not really exist in their entirety on your drive (that’s just the size being reported, and Windows Latest notes the size might actually be smaller than this).

Even so, this is still lost drive space, which is certainly an annoyance – especially if you have a small system drive. So, what can be done?

Well, one option is a clean installation of Windows 11 24H2, which won’t leave any such cache behind – but that’s a lot of trouble to go to in order to swerve around this bug, and it’s hardly a practical solution.

A more sensible option is to wait for Microsoft to fix the problem, as the issue is now on the software giant’s radar, and a cure is going to be incorporated in a future update, we’re told. Hopefully the next cumulative update for 24H2, with any luck.

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Artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly critical factor in shaping cloud strategies for firms across the UK, new research has claimed, with almost all (98%) UK IT managers saying they will prioritize cloud investment in 2025.

A report by Red Hat found nine in 10 (88%) identified artificial intelligence as a key driver for increased cloud investments, however ongoing battles are likely to lead to a cautious approach.

Four in five (81%) highlighted the AI skills gap as a key concern for the coming year, including data science, large language models and generative AI, with three-quarters concerned about a lack of cybersecurity skills.

Cloud investment driven by AI

UK businesses also see enterprise open source solutions as a major advantage for AI, with more than half (53%) pointing at accelerated innovation as the top benefit, followed by cost efficiency (50%) and transparency (43%).

However as companies across the globe continue to address skills shortages, half of the more than 600 IT managers surveyed confirmed that they would be taking a balanced approach, focusing on new technologies and existing systems in equal measure.

Red Hat found cloud strategy priorities include centralizing cloud management (80%), security, compliance and sovereignty regulatory requirements (78%), preparing for AI adoption (77%) and evolving in line with business objectives (76%).

Despite best efforts to drive cloud investments, businesses are being held back by silos, with an overwhelming majority (96%) agreeing that siloed teams pose challenges when adopting cloud technologies.

“With the increasing prominence of AI in cloud strategies, we see from this survey that both IT managers and CTOs care about transparency when it comes to AI models: we believe that an open source approach can bring the transparency, modifiability and explainability needed for enterprise-ready generative AI," said Hans Roth, Senior Vice President & General Manager of EMEA at Red Hat.

Looking ahead, the research reveals that obstacles including data privacy and security, energy consumption and sustainability, infrastructure and AI model transparency must be addressed in order for CTOs to advance their generative AI initiatives, pushing cloud investments continually upwards.

With trailing twelve-month revenues reaching $283 billion halfway through 2024 and an annualized run rate of $300 billion, the cloud market continues to grow in double figure rates.

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In communications newly revealed, TikTok executives discuss being aware of the harms caused by their app. TikTok officials were warned of the app’s dangers to minors.

(Image credit: Sebastien Bozon)

Today's rates are likely the highest you'll see for some time.