TechRadar News

• The first episode of Paradise is streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus earlier than expected
• Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson and James Marsden lead the cast of the exciting new series
• Originally intended to be a three-episode premiere, episodes 2 and 3 will be released on January 28 instead

If you've been eagerly awaiting Hulu and Disney Plus' new series Paradise, then you're in luck because you can now stream the pilot episode after two of the best streaming services decided to do a surprise drop. We initially expected the series to premiere on January 28 but Disney is brightening our Monday with an exciting new episode to sink our teeth into. The episode is now available on Hulu in the US, and Disney Plus in other territories.

Paradise has been on my watchlist since it was first teased, and early critics' reactions place it at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, which means it could well earn a place on our best Hulu shows and best Disney Plus shows roundups. The streamers have been going hard to promote the show too, as a recent social media clip playfully teased the first episode's drop, mirroring Severance season 2 which has been dominating social media recently promoting the new Apple TV Plus series.

The secret is out! Stream the first episode of Paradise NOW on Hulu and Disney+ before the three-episode premiere on 1/28. pic.twitter.com/9GpVpiLdoPJanuary 27, 2025

What do we know about Hulu's Paradise?

According to the official synopsis: "Paradise is set in a serene, wealthy community inhabited by some of the world’s most prominent individuals. But this tranquility explodes when a shocking murder occurs and a high-stakes investigation unfolds.”

Without giving too much away, episode 1 has a cliffhanger so hopefully the decision to release the pilot early will have fans keen to watch more. A first episode is meant to make a big impression and by the sounds of things, it's definitely done that!

The series was created by This is Us' Dan Fogelman and stars huge names like Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, James Marsden, and Sarah Shahi. It looks like an essential watch if you love a good political thriller like the recent Netflix sensation The Night Agent.

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• United Healthcare data breach affected around 190 million people
• The number initially hovered at around 100 million
• The majority of the victims have been notified already

The number of people affected by the 2024 Change Healthcare cyberattack is almost double the previous estimates, and now sits at approximately 190 million, the company has admitted.

“Change Healthcare has determined the estimated total number of individuals impacted by the Change Healthcare cyberattack is approximately 190 million,” said Tyler Mason, a spokesperson for UnitedHealth Group.

“The vast majority of those people have already been provided individual or substitute notice. The final number will be confirmed and filed with the Office for Civil Rights at a later date.”

ALPHV and RansomHub

Hackers would usually abuse this data in phishing attacks, business email compromise, wire fraud, and other forms of cyberattack, but so far it hasn’t happened, Mason added.

He said the company was, “not aware of any misuse of individuals’ information as a result of this incident and has not seen electronic medical record databases appear in the data during the analysis.”

In this context, it is worth saying that the company paid the ransom demand to the attackers.

When Change Healthcare suffered a ransomware attack in early 2024, it was believed an affiliate of the ALPHV operation was behind the attack. ALHPV, AKA BlackCat, was a notorious operator that worked on a as-a-service model, sharing the spoils with whomever managed to breach a victim and deploy their code.

However, when an affiliate struck Change Healthcare, and managed to extort it for $22 million, things changed. Instead of sharing the spoils, ALPHV’s operators took it all and disappeared from the face of the earth. The affiliate, which was left holding gigabytes of sensitive data, later rebranded to RansomHub, and became one of the greater threats.

They demanded a second payment, but it is unclear if that ever happened. RansomHub did remove Change Healthcare’s entry from its data leak site, suggesting that the victim firm may have paid it.

Via TechCrunch

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• Changes have been spotted in the Google Sounds app
• Pixel owners will soon be able to take more control over haptics
• The update could arrive alongside the Android 16 update

iPhones currently beat Android devices in the way they let you set specific ringtones and vibrations for specific contacts on your phone – though it seems Google has plans to catch up to some of this functionality on the best Pixel phones.

As spotted by tipster Nail Sadykov (via Android Authority), an upcoming version of the Google Sounds app lets you choose vibrations in the same way you can choose ringtones through the Sound and vibration menu in Settings.

It's not the full contact-specific customization available on iOS, but it's another step closer. There are 12 vibration patterns to choose from for your apps and alerts, including Swoop, Snare, Heartbeat, Swirl, Buzz and Bumps.

Being able to take more control over vibration alerts is certainly a welcome upgrade: it means you can increase or decrease the strength of the buzzes your phone is making, based on your personal preference.

Built-in updates

How the updated options could look (Image credit: Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority)

Note that the Google Sounds app is actually built into the Pixel software: it's not something you can download and install separately. You should be able to find it from Settings by tapping Apps > See all apps.

When you select Sounds you should see the version number at the bottom of the screen. The current version at the time of writing is 3.1, while the updates to vibration customizations have been spotted in version 3.2.

Exactly when Google plans to push the upgrade out to phones remains to be seen: with Android 16 now in the beta phase, it's possible that we won't get these options until Android 16 is officially launched in the next few months.

Your options will vary if you're using a non-Pixel device, depending on the features your phone's manufacturer has decided to add in. In the case of Samsung Galaxy phones, for instance, you can make use of Samsung's own Sound Assistant app.

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• AMD's new Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU reportedly outperforms Nvidia's RTX 4070 laptop GPU
• This is thanks to the Radeon 8060S iGPU, with 40 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores
• It stems from AMD's marketing, while we await tests from users

While Nvidia is set to dominate the desktop GPU space against AMD and Intel with its new RTX 5000 series GPUs, new claims from Team Red hint at the perpetual underdog potentially putting up a bigger fight in the laptop GPU arena.

As highlighted by Notebookcheck, AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor will reportedly surpass Nvidia's RTX 4070 laptop GPU, thanks to the Radeon 8060S iGPU offering up to 68.1% better performance in games - at least, according to AMD. This chip will utilize 40 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, and Team Red's marketing materials (pictured below) showcase its performance boosts over the ROG Flow Z13 in several games using the RTX 4070 laptop GPU at native 1080p.

Considering the consistent domination from Team Green over the last few years in both the desktop and laptop GPU regions, this could be significant for AMD if it proves to be legitimate - one of the most notable performance leaps is present in Cyberpunk 2077 (which just received an update for DLSS 4 support), but without using any upscaling. If we want a real idea of how well this new laptop chip will perform against Nvidia’s discrete GPUs, we’ll need to wait for performance results when both DLSS and FSR are active for the respective GPUs.

Since Team Red's new Max+ 395 processor uses RDNA 3.5 architecture rather than RDNA 4, FSR 4 likely won’t be available on laptops that use the APU. As of now, that new upscaling method is exclusive to RDNA 4 GPUs, but that could change as time goes on.

(Image credit: AMD) What does this mean for the future of gaming laptops, or even handhelds?

Since the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 APU is built primarily for laptops, any discussion of it finding its way to handheld gaming PCs is void for now - what this does mean, however, is that AMD may now finally compete with Nvidia within the gaming laptop space.

With games like Borderlands 3 potentially having a 44 fps difference and Hitman 3 maintaining a 62 fps difference over Team Green's midrange laptop GPU at native 1080p, we could be in for a major performance surprise. As previously mentioned, upscaling tools such as DLSS will play a huge factor in real-world performance differences, especially if the Max+ 395 doesn't have access to FSR 4, while all RTX GPUs will have access to DLSS 4 and the RTX 4070 notably also has access to Nvidia’s Frame Generation tech, which AMD presumably didn’t deign to use for this comparison... no surprises there.

Regardless, it's great for consumers. Even if the RTX 5000 series desktop GPU lineup blows AMD's new RDNA 4 GPUs out of the water - which they probably will - Team Red could have a secret weapon in the form of the Ryzen AI Max+ 395, especially given the sky-high pricing of Nvidia’s new cards. But laptops using AMD's new high-end APU certainly won't be cheap either…

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• An official Samsung blog post seemingly confirms that a Bluetooth-enabled S Pen for the S25 Ultra is on the way
• The new S Pen is not yet listed on any Samsung storefronts
• The stylus will be sold separately to the S25 Ultra itself

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked has been and gone, but we’re still basking in the excitement of having the long-rumored Samsung Galaxy S25, Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra officially revealed.

However, amid news of new upgrades and refreshed designs, we noticed a downgrade for the S25 Ultra that will leave some fans of Samsung’s highest-end flagship feeling puzzled – the loss of Bluetooth support for the S Pen stylus.

But fear not, S Pen fans: a new announcement suggests that Samsung could release a Bluetooth-enabled S Pen for the S25 Ultra after all – but it’ll cost you extra.

A footnote affixed to a recent post on Samsung’s Business Insights blog states “Bluetooth-enabled S Pens sold separately”, which suggests Samsung will soon offer the peripheral at an additional cost.

It’s not yet known whether the new Bluetooth-enabled S Pen will offer any new features, or simply give users access to the remote control and gesture features offered by the S24 Ultra's S Pen.

The S24 Ultra came with a Bluetooth-enabled S Pen that allowed users to make use of various gestures to control the phone remotely; for instance, you could trigger the camera, open apps, and navigate the phone’s UI.

The S Pen in the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (Image credit: Future / Philip Berne)

The specs sheets released following Samsung Galaxy Unpacked confirmed that Samsung has axed Bluetooth compatibility from the S Pen included with the S25 Ultra, relegating the stylus to its original purpose as a drawing and writing tool.

Android Authority notes that the remote gestures enabled by the S Pen weren’t very popular, which would have impacted the decision to remove them. It's also possible that Samsung sought to allocate resources towards more marketable features, like an upgraded ultra-wide camera or enlarged display.

Still, some users will surely feel a tinge of disappointment at having to cough up more money to counter this downgrade, especially considering the S25 Ultra’s starting price of $1,299 / £1,249 / $2,149.

We’ve been otherwise impressed with Samsung's newest flagship so far – be sure to check out our hands-on Galaxy S25 Ultra review, as well as our hands-on Galaxy S25 review and hands-on Galaxy S25 Plus review for our first impressions of all three new devices.

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• The alleged customer information of 19 million TalkTalk customers has been discovered online
• However the authenticity of the breach has come into question
• TalkTalk says it is investigating the claims

British broadband and TV giant TalkTalk is investigating a possible data breach after alleged customer information was found for sale on a cybercrime forum.

Reports from The Register have confirmed this breach is suspected to have originated through a third-party vendor, and could affect up to 19 million former and current customers of TalkTalk.

The hacker who posted the data using the handle ‘b0nd’, claims the data contains personally identifiable information (PII), here’s what we know so far.

Another Telco target

The data is said to include PII such as email addresses, full names, IP addresses, phone numbers, and subscriber PINs.

"As part of our regular security monitoring, given our ongoing focus on protecting customers' personal data, we were made aware of unexpected access to, and misuse of, one of our third-party supplier's systems, however, no billing or financial information was stored on this system,” TalkTalk told The Register.

"Our security incident response team is continuing to work with the supplier regarding this matter and protective containment steps were taken immediately.”

However the authenticity of the breach has already been called into question, largely due to the size of the dataset, which contains 18.9 million individual’s data, significantly larger than the firm’s current customer base.

Calculations from The Register estimated that since its inception in 2003, TalkTalk has never amassed as many customers as the dataset claims to contain.

"Our investigations are ongoing, however, we can confirm that the number of potential customers referred to in certain online posts is wholly inaccurate and very significantly overstated," TalkTalk added.

TalkTalk is unfortunately no stranger to data breaches, as it suffered a ‘significant’ cyberattack back in 2015, which led to up to 150,000 of its UK based customers’ data exposed - landing the firm a £400,000 GDPR fine for failing to implement “the most basic cyber security measures,” which allowed hackers to “penetrate its systems with ease.”

It's not the only major telecommunications firm to run into difficulty lately, with up to 9 firms breached by Chinese state actors in a 'major incident' late in 2024.

What to do after a breach

If you think your data may have been compromised in this or any other data breach, there are a few ways you can protect yourself and mitigate any damage.

If your information has been exposed, this leaves you at risk of attackers using your data to commit identity theft, so closely monitoring your bank accounts and credit reports is crucial. Alternatively, checking out our list of best identity theft protections can simplify the process for you.

Without identity theft protection services, if you do notice any suspicious activity on your accounts, you’ll need to call your bank immediately, freeze your credit, change your passwords, and likely file police reports - which can be a rather gruelling process.

Also a concern, are social engineering attacks, most often in the form of sophisticated phishing scams. Once attackers have access to your PII, they can construct scams specifically for you, posing as family members or services that you use regularly.

To protect yourself from these, the key is being vigilant. Ensure to double check the credentials of any emails, texts, or calls you receive - especially ones which are unexpected and require action.

If you’re being offered a deal which is too good to be true or being hit with an emotional plea - be extra cautious in verifying the identity of the sender, and don’t hand your information over to someone you don’t know.

Be extremely careful when clicking links on emails, as this can lead to viruses or malware installed on your device, and can result in further information being taken.

Data breaches are an unfortunate inevitability for anyone with an online presence, so to proactively take steps to protect yourself, making sure you have a strong password is a great way to stay secure. Especially important is making sure you don’t repeat passwords for multiple sites, since this means if one password is exposed in a breach, it's contained to just that one site, protecting the rest of your data.

For security, a great tool is a multi-factor authentication app, which provides an extra layer of safety for any sensitive information. Yes, they can be a bit of a hassle when you’re scrambling for your phone to access the right code, but they're a whole lot more convenient than having your bank details stolen.

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• Marvel Snap is back in the US
• Affected players will be able to receive compensation package
• Everyone else will also receive bonus rewards

Mobile superhero card game Marvel Snap was one of the unexpected casualties of the brief US TikTok ban, becoming inaccessible to users in the US between January 19 and 25. This was due to the fact that its publisher, Nuverse, is a subsidiary of TikTok owner ByteDance.

Thankfully, the game is now back online in the region and the developer Second Dinner has outlined a generous compensation package not only for those affected by the outage but also for all Marvel Snap players.

As explained in a recent X / Twitter post, the studio wants to thank fans for their “dedication, patience, and support” and make good with those who missed out on time-based content.

This is on top of a separate package to “welcome back players, new and old, with some extra goodies”. These will be delivered to in-game inboxes sometime this week.

If you are a US player over collection level 500, you can expect to receive the following:

• 2 Spotlight Keys
• 5000 Season Pass XP
• 4150 Credits
• 6200 Collector’s Tokens
• 1000 Gold
• 5 Gold Conquest Ticket
• 3 Infinite Conquest Ticket
• 4000 Conquest Medals
• 1 Mystery Variant
• 6 Premium Mystery Variants
• 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare)
• 3 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare)
• 155 x5 Random Boosters

If you are a US player under collection level 500, you will get:

• 6 Mystery Series 3 Cards
• 5000 Season Pass XP
• 7150 Credits
• 1000 Gold
• 1 Mystery Variant
• 6 Premium Mystery Variant
• 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare)
• 3 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare)
• 155 x5 Random Boosters

The offering for non-US players is similar, though slightly less generous. Those over collection level 500 will receive:

• 2 Spotlight Key
• 3000 Collector’s Tokens
• 1500 Credits
• 1 Mystery Variant
• 1 Premium Mystery Variant
• 1 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare)
• 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare)
• 155 x3 Random Boosters

If you’re outside the US and under collection level 500, then expect:

• 6 Mystery Series 3 Cards
• 3000 Credits
• 1 Mystery Variant
• 1 Premium Mystery Variant
• 1 Cosmic Gold Border (Super Rare)
• 1 Cosmic Red Border (Super Rare)
• 155 x3 Random Boosters

These are, frankly, incredibly lavish offerings that will provide a massive boost to players who get them. That said, there are some eligibility requirements to bear in mind here.

To qualify for the US rewards, you will need to have an account that was created in the US or recorded account activity in the US 30 days prior to the outage. If you are a US player who used a VPN to play during the downtime, you will still be able to receive the US rewards.

To be eligible for the rest, you simply need to have an account that was created before Jan 20, 2025, and not qualify for the US offering. It is not possible to receive more than one compensation package.

Interestingly, the message also says that the developer intends to partner with a new publisher and “bring more services in-house” to try and avoid similar issues in the future.

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• Britain lags behind Germany when it comes to "digital health", report claims
• Smaller businesses tend to rank less favorably, Zoho finds
• Those who focus on AI are considered ‘healthier’

Although an increase of nine percentage points has been observed compared with the previous year, still only 28% of UK businesses reported good "digital health" in 2024, new research has claimed.

Moreover, more than one in three reported average digital health (36%), and another third had poor digital health (36%), a report from Zoho found, claiming larger businesses seemed more prepared than smaller businesses.

Zoho revealed 40% of large businesses had good digital health, compared with 27% of medium businesses and just 18% of small businesses. However, while Britain was outpaced by Germany, with an average score of 33%, other European countries like Spain (27%), France (20%) and the Netherlands (19%) lagged way behind.

Small European businesses don’t have great digital health

The report explored the correlation between good digital health and attitudes – it found that businesses with good digital health were more likely to see artificial intelligence as critical (46%) compared with average (24%) and poor (65%) health businesses.

More than half (54%) of the British businesses analyzed plans to invest heavily in artificial intelligence.

However, Britain’s digital transformation is still underway, with one in three operating at least half of their operations digitally and a further one in four running the majority of their operations digitally.

Customer experience, efficiency, and improved employee experience were all highlighted as key focus areas for digitization in the year ahead.

“Good digital health is a critical foundation in order to realize ROI from investment in digital tools and technology," noted Zoho UK Managing Director Sachin Agrawal.

Agrawal added vendors should, “take a long-term view in their relationship with customers” to help them deploy tools, educate users, and drive adoption more effectively, thus increasing their ROI.

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• Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man's creator has defended the show's animation style
• Some Marvel fans have criticized how the series looks from a movement viewpoint
• Jeff Tramell says viewers should judge it after watching the whole season, rather than a two-minute trailer

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man's showrunner has defended its animation style in the wake of fierce fan criticism.

Speaking to TechRadar ahead of the Marvel show's premiere on January 29, Jeff Tramell implored viewers to "give it a chance" after some fans reacted negatively to how it looks. Tramell, who also acts as the series' head writer and one of its executive producers, wants people to watch all 10 episodes before they comment on the animation techniques that have been used.

Ever since the Disney Plus animated series was first shown exclusively to D23 Expo 2024 members last August, fans have had plenty to say about the choice of animation. In the aftermath of said footage leaking online, threads on r/MarvelStudios, r/SpiderMan, r/MarvelStudiosSpoilers and other Reddit pages were full of comments labeling character movements as "weird", "off-putting", "awful", "rough", and "lazy".

Fans haven't held back over what they think about the show's animation style (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney Plus)

The negativity grew exponentially once the animated show's first trailer – one of six big entertainment stories you might have missed over the 2024 holiday season – was released, too. Once the teaser was revealed in late December 2024, new threads on r/SpiderMan, r/MarvelStudios, r/MarvelStudioSpoilers, and other Reddit pages were similarly packed with people's opinions on its animation. Indeed, from those saying Marvel was "trying too hard" and that the backgrounds look "empty", to even harsher critiques suggesting it looked "ugly" and "dogs**t", fans didn't hold back as they passed judgment on the series' animation style.

For what it's worth, some observers who don't believe the animation is as bad as it looks. Additionally, large swathes of Marvel's global fanbase have reacted positively to the show's art style, which honors the artistry of iconic Spider-Man comic book illustrators Steve Dikto and John Romita Jr. Even so, it seems the majority of viewers have already made up their minds about the Marvel Phase 5 TV show's animation.

See you in class!Stream the two-episode premiere of Marvel Animation’s #YourFriendlyNeighborhoodSpiderMan January 29 only on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/LbC5yH7w1dJanuary 24, 2025

Tramell, though, isn't giving up hope that those dissenters may change their minds once Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man launches on Disney Plus. Indeed, he believes that, once audiences see how the show looks and feels from a full episode standpoint, rather than the trailer's cut-together format, some fans may admit they too quickly and harshly judge its aesthetic.

"We wanted to set the show apart [from other Spider-Man animated shows]," Tramell told me. "Regardless of how you feel about the show, you have to there's nothing that looks like it. There's no Spider-Man that looks like our Spider Man. I think it's important to have one that's ours, and that feels unique [and] very much of its own thing. So, we really wanted to find something that set us apart from everything else, and kind of drives audiences towards us. So if you see our Spider-Man in a line-up, you're like 'that's Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man'.

"I think our style grows on you," he continued. "So, I would say 'give it a chance'. I know there were a lot of initial thoughts about how it looked in the two minute teaser, but I'll also say that teaser is super cut up. Once the show comes out, you'll see those scenes don't play in the way that they play in that trailer. So, just give it a shot, watch it, and let it grow on you. If it doesn't, that's fine, too. I love our look and I think everyone else who gives it a shot will do as well."

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• Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has committed to supporting the Nintendo Switch 2
• He also revealed that he congratulated Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa on the console’s reveal
• This likely means more Xbox franchises coming to Nintendo platforms

Good news multi-platform gamers, it looks like Xbox will go all in on supporting the Nintendo Switch 2. This comes from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who recently spoke on the Gamertag Radio podcast.

Spencer said that he has a “game-first not platform-first” mindset, though quickly clarified that Xbox hardware is still "fundamental to what Xbox is” and here to stay. He added that he isn’t a fan of “trying to gatekeep the games” from other platforms.

He also revealed that he had messaged Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa around the console’s reveal, giving him a “big congrats”. He said that he is a fan of Nintendo’s innovation and will “always applaud the moves that they make” and that he is “really looking forward to supporting them with the games that we have.”

These words shouldn’t come as much surprise, as they coincide with a wider multi-platform push by Xbox. The original Nintendo Switch is already home to a number of Microsoft games, including Minecraft, Ori and the Blind Forest, and its sequel Ori and the Will of the Wisps. These were joined by Pentiment and Grounded, after an announcement by Phil Spencer in February 2024 that more games would be coming to other platforms.

As for which games could be coming to Nintendo Switch 2, it’s still up in the air. We know that at least one Call of Duty title is highly likely, as Microsoft committed to bringing the franchise to Nintendo platforms in a legally binding ten-year agreement back in February 2023. Major Xbox franchises such as Halo, Gears of War, and Forza Horizon also seem like obvious choices to make the leap, but we’ll just have to wait and see what Microsoft has in store.

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• Rumor has it that Nvidia is leaving its graphics card making partners thin on margins with RTX 5000 boards
• This could mean that pricing comes in above the MSRP for those third-party boards more often than not
• A previous rumor also suggested this, and while this remains speculation, hearing the notion again isn’t particularly comforting

The launch of next-gen GPUs has been beset by rumors of possible pitfalls for both Team Green and Team Red – and we’ve just heard another gloomy piece of speculation regarding Nvidia’s RTX 5000 graphics cards.

The contention from Wjm47196 on Chiphell (the Chinese forum isn’t always the most reliable source, but this particular leaker has been right in the past) is that Nvidia’s putting the squeeze on its third-party graphics card making partners, potentially pushing up pricing of their RTX 5000 boards.

Wjm47196 believes that Nvidia has left those partners with very slim margins in terms of the cost of the components for the Blackwell graphics cards, which is evidently coming uncomfortably close to the MSRPs set by Team Green (leaving little room for profit).

Now, with their higher-end products, graphics card manufacturers always lump a hefty premium on top of the MSRP, which is the price you pay for higher clock speeds (thanks to better cooling, and build quality) and an overall faster GPU.

But the problem is that with the entry-level models sporting baseline specs, these card makers are going to struggle to produce anything that’s at, or close to, the MSRP. So, prices could be jacked up more than with the baseline RTX 4000 models, if this rumor is right.

Potentially adding insult to injury is that as Wccftech (which spotted this) points out, Nvidia’s own Founders Edition graphics cards – models which are guaranteed to be at the MSRP – could be very low on stock too. In short, options might be very hard to find at the MSRP level, which would be disappointing.

(Image credit: Nvidia) Analysis: Stock and pricing woes adding up to a real headache?

Obviously, this is not what PC gamers on the lookout for a next-gen GPU want to hear. We’re told that part of the reason for margins being so slim for board makers is the price of GDDR7 video RAM, which has significantly upped the overall cost associated with the components for Blackwell graphics cards (known as the BoM or Bill of Materials). That cost is, of course, inevitably passed on to the consumer.

So, we have a couple of worries with the RTX 5000 series now. Firstly, there have been persistent rumors about how stock is going to be thin on the ground at launch, and the volume of the chatter around this is definitely concerning.

But now, on top of that, is the idea that third-party RTX 5000 graphics cards will be priced somewhat above the MSRP level in the main, a notion which is backed up by recently spilled purported prices from a Finnish retailer (which listed Gigabyte’s RTX 5080 models, with only one at the recommended price).

While all of this remains gossip, essentially, all the separate pieces add up to a worry that the $999 MSRP (in the US) that Nvidia pinned on the RTX 5080 – which was the most pleasantly surprising revelation on the price front, given the rumor mill was claiming it’d be 20% more than that, at least – will pretty much be a pipe dream. As the Founders Edition could sell out very quickly, as might any third-party RTX 5080s at the MSRP level, which may not be many, by all accounts.

Add plenty of salt, naturally, but the more I hear about the upcoming Blackwell GPU launch, the more I’m getting concerned that buying one of these graphics cards is going to be a much more difficult – and pricier – proposition than it should be. Particularly if we do end up in a scenario where stock is lean, MSRPs are jacked up in the first place, and price gougers are coming in on top of that.

There is, of course, always AMD’s RDNA 4 rivals, at least for those who don’t need a high-end GPU, but that launch has been an odd one full of unpredictable twists and turns of its own.

AMD’s RX 9070 models won’t arrive until March now, but perhaps the reason Team Red is taking its time to get things right is not only because this is a good idea – and maybe a new philosophy at the firm – but also because AMD has time, given how Nvidia’s RTX 5000 launch is shaping up.

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You have the power to take charge of your data. This is the theme of this year's Data Privacy Week, an annual event that aims to raise awareness about online privacy.

Data Privacy Week 2025, which takes place between January 27 and 31, is all about helping you take control of your data—whether that data is the websites you visit, the apps you use, or any other identifier information you may willingly (or not) share when using the internet.

Here at TechRadar, we proudly advocate online privacy and want to help you regain agency over your online data. Over the week, we'll be giving you everything you need to support your journey. This page will be home to all of our latest advice, experiences, and privacy tool recommendations. Check back regularly for more from Data Privacy Week 2025 on TechRadar.

The best cheap VPN: Surfshark
The first rule of taking back control over your data is minimizing the information you share online in the first place. Surfshark is one of the best VPN tools on the market that can help you do that. For as little as the equivalent of $2.19 a month, you'll get premium privacy across unlimited devices for a very tiny price. Take Surfshark for a test drive with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

▶ Read more in our full Surfshark reviewView Deal

Data Privacy Week: the privacy risks of being online

Huge US data broker hack compromises privacy for millions worldwide
The Gravy Analytics hack, a breach of a US data location broker that holds data from millions of iPhone and Android users worldwide, was another reminder of the great dangers of data collection.

Is 10,000 steps a day worth your personal data? How 80% of fitness apps are selling your privacy
Researchers found alarming data collection rates among today's top fitness apps. Strava and Fitbit came out as the most data-hungry, collecting 84% of all potential data points.

Data Privacy Week: how to take your privacy back

How to clean up your digital footprint: 3 privacy-boosting tips
Minimizing your online data trail is key to protecting your digital privacy. Here are three easy steps to help you do that today.

How to protect yourself and your data online
While you can’t become 100% invisible online unless you’ve never logged into a website before, you can still get very close to removing your information from the internet. Here's how.

Data Privacy Week: all the tools you need to know

Want to hit restart on your online presence? Here's 5 tools you need to stay truly private online
It's easier than you think to hit the reset button on your online presence. So, we've given you all the tools you need to get started on a more secure online experience.

What are the benefits of using a VPN in 2025?
Whether you're new to VPNs or a seasoned pro, there's always more to learn about the benefits of virtual private networks. Here's everything a VPN can help you with this year and going forward.

Best secure VPN 2025
Looking to secure yourself online without any doubts? Here are our top-ranking secure VPNs you can get your hands on this year. We've used our proprietary testing and expert experiences to ensure you're not left wondering if your VPN will do the job.

• GPU-like PCIe card offers 10PFLOPs FP4 compute power and 2GB of SRAM
• SRAM is usually used in small amounts as cache in processors (L1 to L3)
• It also uses LPDDR5 rather than far more expensive HBM memory

Silicon Valley startup d-Matrix, which is backed by Microsoft, has developed a chiplet-based solution designed for fast, small-batch inference of LLMs in enterprise environments. Its architecture takes an all-digital compute-in-memory approach, using modified SRAM cells for speed and energy efficiency.

The Corsair, d-Matrix’s current product, is described as the “first-of-its-kind AI compute platform” and features two d-Matrix ASICs on a full-height, full-length PCIe card, with four chiplets per ASIC. It achieves a total of 9.6 PFLOPs FP4 compute power with 2GB of SRAM-based performance memory. Unlike traditional designs that rely on expensive HBM, Corsair uses LPDDR5 capacity memory, with up to 256GB per card for handling larger models or batch inference workloads.

d-Matrix says Corsair delivers 10x better interactive performance, 3x energy efficiency and 3x cost-performances compared with GPU alternatives, such as the hugely popular Nvidia H100.

A leap of faith

Sree Ganesan, head of product at d-Matrix, told EE Times, "Today’s solutions mostly hit the memory wall with existing architectures. They have to add a lot more compute and burn a lot more power, which is an unsustainable path. Yes, we can do better with more compute FLOPS and bigger memory, but d-Matrix has focused on memory bandwidth and innovating on the memory-compute barrier."

d-Matrix’s approach eliminates the bottleneck by enabling computation directly within memory.

"We’ve built a digital in-memory compute core where multiply-accumulate happens in memory and you can take advantage of very high bandwidth - we’re talking about 150 terabytes per second," Ganesan explained. "This, in combination with the series of other innovations allows us to solve the memory wall challenge."

CEO Sid Sheth told EE Times the company was founded in 2019 after feedback from hyperscalers suggested inference was the future. “It was a leap of faith, because inference alone as an opportunity was not perceived as being too big back in 2019,” he said. “Of course, that all changed post 2022 and ChatGPT. We also bet on transformer [networks] pretty early on in the company.”

Corsair is entering mass production in Q2 2025, and d-Matrix is already planning its next-generation ASIC, Raptor, which will integrate 3D-stacked DRAM to support reasoning workloads and larger memory capacities.

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Dyson tends to make quite a fuss when it releases a new vacuum (and rightly so). But towards the end of 2024 we spotted what looked like a brand new cordless vacuum that had been stealth-launched, with no fanfare: the Dyson Digital Slim.

It's not a flagship model, and at the time of writing it was only available direct from Dyson in the US, although there are Amazon listings in both the US and AU. It looks to be a pared-back, slimmed-down, more budget-friendly alternative to the brand's flagship models. (It's not to be confused with the Dyson V12 Detect Slim, another non-flagship model, which launched alongside the Dyson V15 Detect in 2021.)

We haven't had a chance to test this one out ourselves yet, so ahead of our official review, here's everything we know about the Dyson Digital Slim, and how it compares to the rest of the best Dyson vaccums...

Dyson Digital Slim: design & features

As you might have guessed from the name, one USP here is that this is a more streamlined stick vacuum option. The Digital Slim is lighter than any of the flagship Dyson stick vacuums, with a shorter overall height. It also has the smallest dust cup – one that's small enough to be annoying if you have a larger home or are dealing with lots of dirt or pet hair. Although one saving grace is that the bin-emptying mechanism is the current, simplified design found on the newest models.

Dyson is widely considered to be one of the best cordless vacuum brands, and you're getting all the standard benefits of other stick models. Namely, it's easy to maneuver with a super-pivotable floorhead, it comes with an optional wall dock for charging, there's no cord to fuss around with, and it can easily be converted into a handheld by removing the wand and adding a detail tool.

The Digital Slim has a straightforward emptying mechanism, and can be charged directly or via a wall dock (Image credit: Dyson)

It's operated via a trigger, which needs to be continuously depressed. Only the newest Gen5detect replaces this with a more finger-friendly one-touch button. You can choose between three suction modes – low, medium and high.

Information is conveyed via a small LCD screen on the main body of the vacuum. This will tell you how much battery you have left (in hours and minutes) and which mode you're using, as well as alerting you of any maintenance tasks that need doing – for example, if the filter needs cleaning. That screen is a relatively modern addition in the Dyson vacuum range, first introduced in 2019 with the Dyson V11.

An LDC screen provides information, and there's a multi-floor floorhead with anti-hair wrap features (Image credit: Dyson)

The Digital Slim has an inline design, where the wand, bin, cyclones and motor are all stacked one after the other. This was introduced with the Dyson V11, and is designed to maximize suction efficiency.

Under the hood, there's a Hyperdymium motor that rotates at 120,000rpm. That's actually a better motor than you'll find on the Dyson V8, the oldest flagship model in the current lineup, although Dyson says it generates slightly less suction than that model overall. Filtering is in line with older flagships – designed to capture 99.99% of particles as small as 0.3 microns.

At a maximum of 40 minutes, the battery life matches the V8. That increases to 60 minutes on the V11 and V15, and to 70 minutes on the Gen5detect, but it's important to note that the extra power comes with the payoff of extra weight. 40 minutes of cleaning (or less, if you need to amp up to medium suction model) should still be plenty for most smaller homes.

The Digital Slim typically comes with a Multi tool (left) and Crevice tool (right) (Image credit: Future)

In terms of Dyson tools and floorheads, it's a minimal selection included with the Digital Slim. The floorhead is a Motorbar with hair-detangling features, and suitable for use on both hard floor and carpet (there's no extra Fluffy floorhead, specialized for hard floor use). You'll also get a Combination tool, which includes a smaller nozzle and brush for general detail cleaning, and a longer Crevice tool for getting into narrow spaces. Other tools may be compatible, and the extras can vary depending on retailer, so it's worth double-checking what's included before you buy.

As you'd expect, you're not getting the fancier features that come with the newest Dyson stick vacs. There's no automatic suction adjustment based on floor type or dirt levels, no real-time reports on what's being sucked up, and no laser-equipped Fluffy floorhead for illuminating dust on your hard floors. However, for many, these kinds of features aren't essential.

Dyson Digital Slim: price & availability

The Dyson Digital Slim started appearing online in fall/winter 2024. At the time of writing, it was only available to buy direct from Dyson in the US, at a list price of $499.99 but discounted to $249.99 (also at the time of writing). It's also on sale via Amazon US, with the same discount. In Australia, it's not available to buy direct from Dyson, but does have an Amazon AU listing, with a price of AU$813.26. It's currently not available in the UK.

At list price, that places the Digital Slim between the V8 (at $469.99) and the V11 (at $569.99). However, if we take the discounted price, it's the cheapest Dyson cordless stick vacuum option by some margin.

At TechRadar, our mid-range price bracket for vacuums is $250-$500. Anything above that is premium, and below is budget – so at it's discounted price, the Digital Slim would be considered a budget model. It's more advanced than most of today's best cheap vacuums, with features like the LCD screen for information.

Dyson Digital Slim: specs

Below, we've compared the Digital Slim with the least advanced Dyson stick vacuum in the current lineup (the Dyson V8), the newest and most advanced (the Dyson Gen5detect), and a mid-range model (Dyson V11).

Should I buy the Dyson Digital Slim? Considering buying it if...

You have a small home

The Digital Slim is smaller and nimbler than other Dyson vacuums. That, and the fact it has a smaller dust cup and shorter runtimes, make it more suited to smaller homes. View Deal

You're on a budget

At full price the Digital Slim is roughly in line with the Dyson V8, but it's regularly discounted to half price, dropping it into the budget price bracket (just!) and making it excellent value for money for what you're getting. View Deal

Don't buy it if...

You have shedding pets

The small dust cup and relatively low power compared to other Dyson stick vacuums means we wouldn't recommend this model to pet owners. Our guide to the best vacuums for pet hair has plenty of alternative recommendations. View Deal

You have a large home

The small dust cup and shorter runtimes mean the Digital Slim isn't the best choice for larger homes – you'll find your cleaning sessions interrupted by bin-emptying and recharging.View Deal

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,000 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1098) - hint #1 - Vowels How many different vowels are in Quordle today?

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 5*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1098) - hint #2 - repeated letters Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 0.

Quordle today (game #1098) - hint #3 - uncommon letters Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #1098) - hint #4 - starting letters (1) Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 0.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1098) - hint #5 - starting letters (2) What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• W

• O

• B

• T

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #1098) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1098, are…

• WATER
• ORBIT
• BRIDE
• TOUCH

I decided to change my start words today and it resulted in a fail. Usually I start with AUDIO and STEER, but today I went with RADIO and SURGE. My thinking – which, on reflection, is totally illogical – was that I was wasting a letter by using a double E, but I still wasted a letter anyway by using R twice. D'oh!

Tomorrow, I’m returning to my tried and trusted start words, even though I feel there must be a better pair out there.

Completing the Daily Sequence made me feel better.

How did you do today? Let me know in the comments below.

Daily Sequence today (game #1098) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1098, are…

• ENSUE
• STAID
• DETOX
• RELAX

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1097, Saturday 25 January: GIVER, GROOM, GUSTO, MAKER
• Quordle #1096, Friday 24 January: GRIND, STOCK, SERVE, TOUCH
• Quordle #1095, Thursday 23 January: RUGBY, SASSY, WORRY, BANAL
• Quordle #1094, Wednesday 22 January: SLANT, TRUNK, WOOZY, EATEN
• Quordle #1093, Tuesday 21 January: CHART, VIGOR, PRINT, SPAWN
• Quordle #1092, Monday 20 January: SIXTY, THONG, TATTY, ROBIN
• Quordle #1091, Sunday 19 January: WREST, RINSE, SCOUR, CANNY
• Quordle #1090, Saturday 18 January: BLARE, ITCHY, BICEP, PIPER
• Quordle #1089, Friday 17 January: CATCH, WEARY, SWOON, LATHE
• Quordle #1088, Thursday 16 January: PARTY, BLUNT, TWEED, PLANT
• Quordle #1087, Wednesday 15 January: RISEN, PLATE, RURAL, ENVOY
• Quordle #1086, Tuesday 14 January: SWARM, SCRAP, ONION, BELCH
• Quordle #1085, Monday 13 January: EYING, GIDDY, CHEAP, PETAL
• Quordle #1084, Sunday 12 January: BRIEF, PETAL, WOMAN, FELON
• Quordle #1083, Saturday 11 January: ASCOT, FIBER, ROGUE, SMELL
• Quordle #1082, Friday 10 January: BIGOT, INLET, LEECH, TUNIC
• Quordle #1081, Thursday 9 January: RESET, HUMOR, TENOR, IMAGE
• Quordle #1080, Wednesday 8 January: MINCE, SADLY, RISEN, VOUCH
• Quordle #1079, Tuesday 7 January: CREED, FILET, ROUTE, TAPER
• Quordle #1078, Monday 6 January: PIVOT, WOOLY, GRUNT, GROOM

Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need clues.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Connections today (game #595) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• RAVEN
• SILO
• HITCH
• PROMO
• TRAILER
• DISCOG
• FISH
• TRACTOR
• BALLY
• FARM
• CLOISTER
• GATHER
• SEPARATE
• HUNT
• AXLES
• SECLUDE

NYT Connections today (game #595) - hint #1 - group hints

What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: Nourish ourselves 
• GREEN: Segregate 
• BLUE: 18-wheeler 
• PURPLE: Places to boogie 

Need more clues?

We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #595) - hint #2 - group answers

What are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: WAYS TO GET FOOD 
• GREEN: KEEP APART 
• BLUE: PARTS OF A BIG RIG 
• PURPLE: DANCE EVENTS PLUS A LETTER 

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #595) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #595, are…

• YELLOW: WAYS TO GET FOOD FARM, FISH, GATHER, HUNT
• GREEN: KEEP APART CLOISTER, SECLUDE, SEPARATE, SILO
• BLUE: PARTS OF A BIG RIG AXLES, HITCH, TRACTOR, TRAILER
• PURPLE: DANCE EVENTS PLUS A LETTER BALLY, DISCOG, PROMO, RAVEN

• My rating: Moderate
• My score: Perfect

Pure luck got me over the line without making any mistakes today. I had no idea what a BIG RIG is, but AXLES, HITCH, and TRAILER all sounded like they must be part of something mechanical and I took a chance on adding TRACTOR.

I would never have got DANCE EVENTS PLUS A LETTER. I’m trying to rewire my Connections thinking process so I see these tricky groups, but I always go to the most obvious links – and in this case I was thinking PROMO and DISCOG had something to do with music; back in the day when I was a music journalist we’d called an artist’s Discography their Discog, and a Promo was a record you’d be sent ahead of official release. The actual connection was, inevitably, a little more complicated!

How did you do today? Let me know in the comments below.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Saturday, 25 January, game #594)

• YELLOW: SCHOOL PERIODS CLASS, HOMEROOM, LUNCH, RECESS
• GREEN: FEATURES OF A SKI RESORT LIFT, LODGE, MOGUL, SLOPE
• BLUE: WORDS DERIVED FROM JAPANESE EMOJI, GINKGO, KARAOKE, TYCOON
• PURPLE: WORDS AFTER THE PREFIX "TRI-" ANGLE, CYCLE, DENT, POD

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.

It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #329) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Ore so they say

NYT Strands today (game #329) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• PAIN
• COMA
• CLAD
• MULE
• TEAL
• BELL

NYT Strands today (game #329) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram?

• Vital elements

NYT Strands today (game #329) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First side: top, 3rd column

Last side: bottom, 4th column

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #329) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #329, are…

• NICKEL
• IRON
• COBALT
• CADMIUM
• ALUMINUM
• TITANIUM
• SPANGRAM: PURE METAL

• My rating: Easy
• My score: 1 hint

It was pretty obvious from the theme clue what we were looking for today and, of course, my biggest fear was that I would have to spell out ALUMINIUM – or rather, ALUMINUM as those of you in the United States would have it. A few very obvious – and much easier to find and spell – PURE METALs were left out of the puzzle, including Gold, Copper, Zinc and Silver.

As I was completing the game my mind wandered to the heavy metal genre, and the thought that it was named that after IRON Maiden – iron being a particularly heavy metal. But actually, Google tells me it comes from the song Born to Be Wild by the '70s band Steppenwolf, which includes the phrase “heavy metal thunder”. So today I learned two things – that, plus how to spell ALUMINUM.

How did you do today? Let me know in the comments below.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Saturday, 25 January, game #328)

• BALLOON
• COFFEE
• SUCCEED
• COMMITTEE
• WHIPPOORWILL
• SPANGRAM: LETTERS

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now out of beta so is a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

As expected, OpenAI has released its first autonomous AI agent, called Operator this week. Operator can act independently from you on your computer using a web browser doing pretty much anything that can be done in a web browser.

So, it can perform tasks like booking a restaurant table or buying groceries. You just tell it what you want it to do, and off it goes like a faithful Internet-enabled butler that potters away until the task is complete or it needs to come back to you with a question. Say, there’s no table available at 7.00pm, would Sir or Madam mind a 7.45pm table instead?

Of course, Operator doesn’t call you Sir or Madam, but it might as well. For all intents and purposes, this is the Internet butler that we were promised almost 30 years ago when Ask Jeeves was around.

Do you remember Ask Jeeves? It was a search engine from 1997 that had an image of an actual butler who stood ready and willing to find things for you online. The character was named after Jeeves, Bertie Wooster's valet in the fictional works of P. G. Wodehouse. Instead of typing in search terms, Ask Jeeves encouraged you to search for things using natural language questions, like “Find me the perfect accompaniment to a roast dinner.”

Of course, we all know that Google won the search engine war, and in 2006, Ask dropped the Jeeves persona and just became Ask.com. But somehow, we’ve come full circle with AI, and thanks to technologies like ChatGPT search and Perplexity, searching using natural language requests is back in fashion. As our Internet butlers, except now we call them AI agents...

The Ask Jeeves search engine. AGI is the real goal

It’s no secret that Sam Altman and OpenAI are really interested in AGI, artificial general intelligence, also often referred to as superintelligence. This is the ultimate goal for OpenAI, and why it was founded. Chatbots like ChatGPT might have taken the world by storm, but their popularity is almost like an unintended consequence (a theme I’ll return to later) of the race toward AGI.

In a video to promote the release of Operator, one of the OpenAI employees sitting next to Sam Altman comes right out and says, [Operator is] "about removing one more bottleneck in our path to AGI.”

While agents are clearly exciting, they’re not the destination for OpenAI; they’re just one more step along the path. AGI has the potential to change our world radically. Once we have created an artificial intelligence that’s smarter than we are, logically it should be able to construct even smarter versions of itself, and the level of intelligence rises rapidly.

We’ve just got to hope that it doesn’t decide to wipe us out. Not to worry you, but Geoffory Hinton, often referred to as the ‘Godfather of AI,’ recently upped his odds of technology wiping out humanity to 20%.

OpenAI's Operator in action. (Image credit: OpenAI)

And this is where we return to the theme of unintended consequences. Many experts see AI agents as a threat. While speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, artificial intelligence pioneer Yoshua Bengio warned that AI agents could be catastrophic for humanity.

Speaking to Business Insider, he said, "All of the catastrophic scenarios with AGI or superintelligence happen if we have agents." Bengio would rather we continue towards building AGI without using agents, which allows them to do things autonomously. "All of the AI for science and medicine, all the things people care about, is not agentic," Bengio said. "And we can continue building more powerful systems that are non-agentic."

Humanity's downfall

So, could it really be that something designed to act like an Internet butler and do menial tasks like help me buy my groceries accidentally gives AI the power to take over the world?

For now, it’s hard to imagine how an automated program that slowly plods through the process of booking me a table at a restaurant using a web browser is going to end in humanity's downfall, but AI agents will live or die by one thing - if people actually use them – and I’m not entirely convinced they will.

Personally, I don’t feel ready to hand over my credit card details to a computer program that will buy things for me to save me time because I’m just not sure I’m ever going to trust it not to make a mistake. Would you?

Perhaps OpenAI needs to give its Operator a more human face if it wants me to trust it, and as it turns out, I believe that good old Jeeves might be looking for a job these days...

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• What is Artificial General Intelligence? Can AI think like humans?
• Entering the next era of AI: AGI is closer than you think
• ‘Well the end of aging and death wouldn’t be bad’: Professor who coined the term AGI for superintelligence thinks we’ll get human-level AI in ‘three to five years’

Black Mirror season 7: key information

- Launching on Netflix in 2025
- Will be six episodes
- No official trailer, but a 30-second teaser released
- New and returning cast confirmed
- First ever sequel episode based on season 4’s USS Callister
- No official plot synopsis revealed
- Brooker “in it for the long haul” for future seasons

Black Mirror season 7, the highly-praised and darkly satirical anthology Netflix series, will return in 2025. In true puzzling and curious fashion in keeping with the show’s ethos, we don’t have an exact release date or official plot details, but we have managed to gather intel about season 7 that’ll be sure to excite.

It's one of the best Netflix shows, offering a wealth of sci-fi scenarios spanning dystopias and tackling themes of surveillance, AI, and societal issues, to name but a few. For season 7, the show looks set to return with more chaotic and thought-provoking tales on the best streaming service.

Plus, there's an all-star cast already confirmed, which features returning characters in an unprecedented move for Black Mirror with the first-ever sequel. With a show like this, you're never quite sure what to expect, but we've scoured high and low for everything you need to know about Black Mirror season 7 from release date, to confirmed cast, to plot synopsis, and more news and rumors.

Black Mirror season 7: is there a release date?

Black Mirror S7 - coming 2025. #GeekedWeek pic.twitter.com/dZcfNQHc4cSeptember 19, 2024

While there’s no official release date just yet for the new season of Black Mirror, we know that Black Mirror season 7 will be released on Netflix in 2025.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in May 2024, Brooker revealed they were: “in mid-production at the moment, and it’s all quite mad right now.” While the first four seasons of Black Mirror released in differing months, season 5 and season 6 both came out in June. While we wouldn’t want to predict anything Brooker does, we’ll take a rough guess and say (hope) that we may see Black Mirror season 7 in the summer.

Black Mirror season 7: has a trailer been released?

This is by no means an official trailer, but we’ll even watch a 30-second teaser that pretty much shows a loading screen the entire time just to get a hint of what Black Mirror has in store next.

The clip reveals six episodes loading up for season 7, as well as a brief glimpse of a file titled: “INFINITY” and the USS Callister logo. We’ll delve into more on what this means in our cast and plot synopsis below. Full trailers for Black Mirror usually arrive mere weeks before the new season’s release, so we’ll be sure to update here when we can.

Black Mirror season 7: confirmed cast

The biggest Black Mirror season 7 news so far - the return of USS Callister (Image credit: Netflix)

Potential spoilers follow for Black Mirror season 7.

Black Mirror is renowned for its stellar cast list, which changes in every episode, thanks to its anthology style. And, during Geeked Week 2024, the Black Mirror season 7 lead cast was revealed and Brooker calls it: “embarrassingly stacked”:

• Milanka Brooks as Elena Tulaska
• Waleed Hammad as Po
• Osy Ikhile as Nate Packer
• Jimmi Simpson as Walton
• Paul G. Raymond as Kabir Dudani
• Cristin Milioti as Nanette Cole
• Edward Pishiyski Chlerich as Walton Clone
• Billy Magnussen as Valdack
• Siena Kelly as Maria
• Rosy McEwen as Verity
• James Nelson-Joyce as Kano
• Awkwafina as TBC
• Peter Capaldi as TBC
• Emma Corrin as TBC
• Patsy Ferran as TBC
• Paul Giamatti as TBC
• Lewis Gribben as TBC
• Rashida Jones as TBC
• Chris O’Dowd as TBC
• Issa Rae as TBC
• Tracee Ellis Ross as TBC
• Harriet Walter as TBC

Thanks to What’s On Netflix, we know a little more about some of the roles listed above, but the rest it seems we’ll have to wait to see. The report reveals that two of the characters, Verity (Rosy McEwen) and Maria (Siena Kelly) will play old schoolmates, who weren’t really mates at all, working together at the same company - an international snack company called Savorita. This episode will reportedly be titled: “Ring of Truth”.

We also know that Milanka Brooks, Billy Magnussen, Paul G. Raymond, Cristin Milioti, Osy Ikhile, and Jimmi Simpson are all cast members from season 4’s USS Callister episode. And why are their names here again? Well, we’ll delve into that exciting plot news below.

Black Mirror season 7: story synopsis and rumors

The crew of the USS Callister - minus two - star in Black Mirror season 7 (Image credit: Netflix)

Full spoilers follow for previous Black Mirror seasons below.

The biggest announcement for Black Mirror season 7 so far was made during Geeked Week 2024 where creator Charlie Brooker revealed: “We’ve got six episodes this time, and two of them are basically feature-length. Some of them are deeply unpleasant, some are quite funny, and some are emotional.”

The last time fans were treated to six episodes was back in season 4 and that is very relevant when it comes to what Brooker said next: “Fans of the show will recognize the cast of a certain spaceship from one of our episodes reappearing. We’ve done a sequel for the first time in Black Mirror history. Normally, I kill off all the characters at the end of an episode, and I kept some of ‘em alive. I’m growing as a human.” And, that episode is season 4’s USS Callister.

It’s no secret that Brooker loves to utilize shock and awe in his story-telling and in USS Callister he killed off Robert Daly, played by Jesse Plemons. Plemons’s name being vacant from the season 7 cast list all but confirms his death was final. Plus, the official synopsis for the episode is: “USS Callister will return… Robert Daly is dead, but the crew of the USS Callister, their problems are just beginning.”

Creator Charlie Brooker has more sci-fi tales to tell (Image credit: Netflix)

But, why now? According to Brooker who spoke to THR, it’s always been on the cards: “It was something we were looking at for quite a long time. There were various iterations it went through, various versions we wanted to do and were discussing on and off for several years. But there are a lot of schedules to sort out, and then the pandemic got in the way. It was something that looked like it wasn’t going to happen, and so I was delighted when it did.”

While we know about one episode of season 7, news on the ground regarding the others is, in true Black Mirror style, kept mysteriously under wraps. Though Brooker teased in May 2024: “We are doing something really cool right now that we’ve never done before - but I can’t say what it is.” We wouldn’t want to guess given how unique and perpetually shocking each Black Mirror episode is, but it's true to form for the sci-fi series.

When it comes to season 7 as a whole, Brooker revealed to Tudum, that it will feel: “a little bit OG Black Mirror.” He said: “It’s back to basics in many ways. They’re all sci-fi stories, but there’s definitely some horrifying things that occur, but maybe not in an overt horror-movie way. There’s definitely some disturbing content in it.”

The beauty of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror is the wealth of directors brought on to tackle different episodes and amidst the cast list reveal, there's Ally Pankiw (season 6's, Joan is Awful), Luke Taylor & Chris Barrett (Cautionary Tales), Haolu Wang (Bodies), Toby Haynes (season 4's, USS Callister), and David Slade (Black Mirror: Bandersnatch) all listed. While that doesn't tell us the plot, it gives us an idea of the kind of directors and style we can expect for Black Mirror season 7.

Will there be more seasons of Black Mirror?

We'd love to see more Black Mirror, and so would Charlie Brooker (Image credit: Netflix)

With six seasons under his belt and a seventh on the way, the question emerges as to how much more there is to come from Brooker, but thankfully The Hollywood Reporter posed this very question to the man himself. With an anthology series, the possibilities are seemingly endless, though he said: “I’m sure I’ll find out when we’re not doing any more seasons! It will be made apparent to me at some point, I’m sure. But I’m in it for the long haul. I’m not going anywhere.”

After taking over Black Mirror from Channel 4 in 2015, the fate of the show now belongs to Netflix - though there’s been no official news from them yet as to whether a season eight is coming.

For more Netflix-based coverage, read our guides on 3 Body Problem season 2, Stranger Things season 5, Arcane season 2, and One Piece season 2.

• GeneralPurpose.8xlarge delivers 32 virtual cores and 128GB memory plus 275GB storage
• This is far cheaper than Azure or Google Cloud, but more expensive than onprem if you plan to keep it for 6 months or more
• You will - of course - need a separate computer to access that virtual workstation

AWS has expanded its WorkSpaces desktop-as-a-service offering with the introduction of two new workstation-grade instance types.

The company says these new instances will provide its customers with powerful cloud desktops for resource-intensive Windows workloads.

The new instance types, GeneralPurpose.4xlarge and GeneralPurpose.8xlarge, feature 16 and 32 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) with 64GB and 128GB of memory, respectively. Both include a 175GB root volume and 100GB for user file storage.

Windows-only

Amazon is positioning the two new offerings as being ideal for developers, scientists, financial analysts, and engineers who need to run demanding applications.

“Developers can handle large compilation and development tasks with tools like Visual Studio, IntelliJ, and Eclipse, while engineers and scientists can run complex simulations with MatLab, GNU Octave, R, and Stata,” the company says.

The GeneralPurpose.8xlarge instance is AWS’s first to offer 32 vCPUs but it’s not cheap. With Windows licensing, the 32 vCPU version costs $590 per month, while the 16 vCPU model is priced at $295 monthly. Hourly rates of $4.56 and $2.28 are also available for an additional $19 monthly fee.

Three’s no mention of pricing for Linux users, so it looks as if this is a Windows-only offering for now. Users with their own Windows licenses (BYOL) can save a small amount – the 32 vCPU version drops to $544 ($4.40 an hour) while the 16 vCPU model is $272 ($2.20 an hour).

Although AWS’s 32-core virtual workstation offers competitive hourly rates compared to Azure and Google Cloud, it remains pricier than on-premises options for extended use. Additionally, users will obviously still require a separate device to access these cloud desktops.

In parallel to this announcement, AWS also introduced updates to its EC2 Image Builder, allowing Microsoft Windows ISO files to be directly converted into Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), simplifying the process of using existing Windows licenses with Amazon WorkSpaces.

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