Technology

• Etched reached a $10.3 billion valuation after securing fresh SK Hynix backing
• The startup built custom processors specifically for demanding AI inference workloads
• Etched says conventional GPUs waste power during many inference tasks today

Etched, a US-based AI chip startup, has secured fresh backing from SK Hynix as it hits a $10.3 billion valuation while pursuing processors built specifically for inference workloads.

The company argues that conventional GPUs deliver more computational capability than many inference tasks require, yet offer insufficient memory for increasingly demanding AI models.

Its latest funding will support the production of rack-scale inference systems designed around custom chips, shared memory, and lower power consumption, rather than general-purpose graphics processors.

Etched bets custom inference chips can outperform traditional GPUs

Founded by former Harvard students Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen, and Chris Zhu, Etched focuses exclusively on AI inference rather than training large language models.

The startup says its systems combine Low Voltage Inference (LVI) technology with Cluster Scale Memory (CSM), allowing processors to access substantially larger shared memory pools than conventional GPUs.

“Today, AI chips can't scale FLOPs without thermal throttling. As FLOPs utilization increases, AI chips draw more power and downregulate clock speed…,” said Chris Zhu

We’ve designed a new architecture to run our chip’s math blocks at under half the voltage of most AI chips. This enables multiple times the FLOPs density of AI chips today.”

The researchers claim that existing processors struggle to increase floating-point performance because higher utilisation raises power consumption and eventually reduces operating clock speeds through thermal limits.

Processors using High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) cannot achieve SRAM-level decoding speeds because memory subsystems and interconnects introduce additional latency during inference workloads.

They therefore created a shared low-latency memory pool connected through what it describes as a proprietary ultra-low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnect to enable faster memory access

“Our HBM/SRAM hybrid design solves both memory capacity and mem2mem latency, enabling high throughput and interactivity simultaneously.

“CSM improves latency and avoids today's cost, reliability, yield, thermal, and compute tradeoffs of SRAM-only chips, 3D DRAM chips, or optics.”

The company also claims many AI models waste time moving data between chips, memory, and networking hardware before processing can continue.

According to Etched, its CSM architecture reduces those delays by minimising additional memory layers during data transfers.

Funding surge accelerates production and global expansion

Etched has attracted funding at a rapid pace, raising $5.4 million in its 2023 seed round, $120 million in 2024, $500 million in 2025, and $300 million in 2026.

Those investments bring total funding to approximately $925.4 million, while the latest financing doubled the company's valuation from $5 billion to $10.3 billion.

The C-round included Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Jane Street, Diffusion, Argo, and SK Hynix, signalling continued investor confidence despite increasing competition within AI hardware markets.

Robert Wachen said, "This round accelerates production of our inference clusters," while confirming an 80,000 sq ft, 10 MW facility opened near Milpitas.

The company now employs more than 400 people, reports customer demand exceeding $1 billion, and has established manufacturing operations in Taiwan.

Etched systems will support conventional large language models, mixture-of-experts architectures, and alternatives including Mamba.

Via Blocksandfiles

AI demands a huge amount of energy, water, compute, and, of course, money. Big tech companies, including Google and Meta, have pledged huge sums of money toward the capital expenditure (capex) to continue the push to more powerful AI. But many inventors feel increasingly wary that this spending is simply swelling an already inflated bubble.

Laying the tracks

Speaking with CNBC in July 2026, the legendary investor Warren Buffett, who recently retired, weighed in on the capex debate.

Quote of the day

This article is part of TechRadar Pro's QOTD project to provide an insight into the minds of the brightest and most recognized figures in the technology industry today and in years gone by. Read the full series here.

Big tech companies are pledging a huge sum to the AI infrastructure buildout, which may reach up to $750 billion over 2026 and up to $4.5 trillion by 2030 among the four largest hyperscalers, including Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet. Many suggest this is further evidence of a bubble being fuelled aggressively by big tech companies doubling down on a technology that hasn't demonstrated meaningful returns.

But explaining his firm Berkshire Hathaway's 17.85 million-share purchase of Alphabet stock, disclosed in November 2025, Warren Buffett drew parallels between this level of spending and that during the 1800s to build the railroad system.

From digital to physical

As an investor, Buffett famously avoided software giants, suggesting they were asset-light businesses and didn't see the value in the investment propositions. This is a point he's since conceded he was wrong about. The firm he led made an additional $10 billion investment in Alphabet in June 2026.

The rationale is that there's currently a pivot underway in which these companies are shifting from the purveyors of digital products, namely applications and software, toward the physical infrastructure and compute to power AI.

Although the hyperscalers have been investing heavily in cloud infrastructure to power their software as a service (SaaS) propositions, the spending that AI commands is on a completely different level, as the figures show. That's why, in the end, Buffett believes that Alphabet proved a sound investment – given he believes that they have the cash flow to sustain the ongoing physical infrastructure buildout.

“Sometimes I find I get to thinking of the past,” sang (or croaked) Leonard Cohen, and I’ve found myself recently doing the same. However, while Cohen was lamenting the death of a relationship, my early-onset nostalgia has been triggered by something far more tragic and poetic: the death of affordable computer components.

I’ve spent the majority of 2026 marvelling and despairing, in equal measure, at how components, especially memory-based ones, such as SSDs, RAM and graphics cards, have skyrocketed in price. As you probably know by now, this mainly due to pressures on the supply chain from a seemingly endless procession of AI services that have been gobbling up memory.

Not only has this made upgrading your PC extremely expensive (upgrading the RAM was once one of the most cost-effective upgrades you could make), it’s also made products such as laptops, games consoles, and phones more expensive too. It’s upended decades of the tradition of technology getting cheaper over time.

Watching the tech I write about (and love) get increasingly expensive and inaccessible for a lot of people is getting pretty depressing.

Take both the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. In previous generations, six years after launch, consoles should have had numerous price cuts, making them almost impulse buys at this stage; along with a healthy second-hand game market, this traditionally meant that waiting until late into a generation to get a console was a great way to save some serious cash.

However, both the PS5 and Xbox Series have had several price rises this generation, which means buying a six-year-old bit of hardware is now more expensive. This is far from an ideal situation (and one of the reasons why the PS5 will likely be the first PlayStation console I don’t buy), and it’s not unique to consoles. Apple recently hiked the prices of its Macs and MacBooks (including the budget MacBook Neo, which launched at $599 / £599 / AU$899, but has since risen to $699 / £699 / AU$1,059 and which in turn quite drastically undermines the Neo’s value proposition).

Watching the tech I write about (and love) get increasingly expensive and inaccessible for a lot of people is getting pretty depressing. Take the Steam Deck: recently, it was announced that Steam Deck sales have dropped by a whopping 80% after Valve increased the price of the gaming handheld to $789 / £649 / AU$1,199, a $240 / £170 / AU$300 rise.

Now, I've loved the Steam Deck since day one, and would always recommend it to most people thinking about buying a new gaming laptop or handheld, simply due to its excellent value.

Now? Not so much. I simply can't justify the idea that people should buy an old, underpowered bit of kit that’s almost as expensive as the budget gaming laptops I used to tell people to avoid.

For many of us PC gamers, it also means upgrading or building a new gaming PC is now out of the question, and the hardware we currently have will need to tide us over for a few more years.

But, does that mean you can’t upgrade your PC at all for the moment? Thankfully, there are still plenty of ways to boost your computer without spending a fortune, such as upgrading parts that aren’t memory-dependant (for instance getting yourself a new monitor), or tweaking the software.

As for me, I decided to transplant one of my existing gaming PCs into a new case, while also taking the opportunity to upgrade the cooling. One of the most fun things about building PCs is coming up with a theme or design, and because of my disillusionment with the current state of computing, I thought it would be fun to turn my PC into a retro device that harkened back to a time when computing really was fun: the 1990s.

Cut to the caseExisting Spec

Because I’m updating my current PC, I have most of the hardware already (which is just as well considering the prices of many components). Here is the starting spec:

Motherboard: MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WiFi

CPU Cooler: Corsair iCUE H150i RGB ELITE Liquid CPU Cooler

Case fans: Noctua NF-A14 PWM Chromax 140mm

Processor: Intel Core i9-12900K, 16 Cores / 24 Threads

GPU: PNY Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Slim

RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB DDR5 5200MHz

Storage: 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 PCIe

Secondary Storage: 2TB WD_BLACK AN1500 1TB NVMe SSD

Power: Corsair HX1500i 80 PLUS Platinum 1500W PSU

Case: Fractal Design Vector RS Tempered Glass

I've been feeling for a while that this is a bit of a mid-range setup that is (outside of the RTX 5070) showing its age, which is why I mainly use it for working, with a spot of image and video editing and the occasional game.

For pretty much all of my gaming needs, I have a far more powerful gaming PC with newer components (and an RTX 5090), but looking at the specs at this point in 2026 during the midst of the RAM crisis, I think I was being rather harsh on this PC. For a start, the 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 2.5TB of storage feels positively decadent these days.

So, my main goal was to swap the (perfectly fine, if a little dull) Fractal Design Vector RS case for something with a bit of retro style. Enter the Thermaltake Retro 360 TG Mid Tower Chassis.

This is a case built for modern PCs, but with a pleasingly retro look. Of course, it’s a wonderful shade of beige that will instantly give flashbacks (the good kind) to anyone who used a PC in the 1990s. It also has sections for a CD-ROM drive and floppy disk drive, though those aren’t usable and are really more of a gimmick.

Still, it looks like it could have come straight from the '90s, while still supporting modern hardware, including space for all-in-one CPU coolers, and a front panel that includes a USB-C port. It also has a tempered glass window to show off the components inside, something that’s common these days, but wasn’t really a thing back then. This combination of retro looks and modern capabilities was perfect for my needs.

Cooling off

To make things easier when transporting the motherboard and installed components into the new case, I was planning on removing the existing Corsair iCUE H150i RGB ELITE Liquid CPU cooler, giving me an excuse to install a new one.

To make the most out of the glass window of the Retro 360 TG case, I picked the Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync AIO Liquid Cooler, which — as well as having powerful cooling — comes with a 3.95-inch LCD display that looks (to my mind, at least) like an old CRT monitor.

This screen can display system info (such as the temperature of your CPU), as well as custom animations, and I thought it would help liven up the inside of the PC, while still keeping with the retro-modern theme.

I also had a spare pack of Corsair RX120 RGB fans (the perks of being a tech journalist) that I wanted to use. For a start, they're white, which would fit the beige aesthetic, and it also meant I wouldn’t have to remove the case fans in the older chassis, potentially saving me some time and annoyance (the Thermaltake Retro 360 TG Mid Tower Chassis doesn’t come with fans, and they are essential for keeping the PC cool when in use).

Prepping for surgery

(Image credit: Future)

Once I’d assembled everything I needed to transform my PC into a retro powerhouse, I prepared to make the switch. Because I was swapping an already-built PC into a new case, the prep work differed slightly than if I was building a new PC from scratch.

The first step was to remove the bulk of the PC from the old case. To make things easier, I wanted to keep as much as I could in the motherboard, but there were some components that needed to be removed.

So, I started by unscrewing the large CPU cooler from the top of the processor. I then removed the GPU and WD_BLACK AN1500 SSD, which like the GPU, slots into a PCI-e lane of the motherboard. The other SSD is screwed directly into the motherboard via the M.2 port, so I didn’t need to worry about that.

I then carefully disconnected the case fans and I/O connectors (which allow you to turn the PC on and off using the buttons on the case, use USB ports, etc), then unscrewed the motherboard and lifted it out of the case.

It wasn’t a major inconvenience, but a good example of how moving cases can require tools that you’d not usually need when building a PC.

Once the motherboard was out, one of the first major hurdles that you wouldn’t encounter if building a PC from scratch presented itself. I noticed when I tried placing the motherboard in the new case that it wouldn’t sit properly. Taking it out, I realized that when unscrewing the motherboard from the old case, some of the standoffs (which screw into the case to lift the motherboard off the chassis) had been unscrewed as well, and were still attached to the motherboard.

So, I needed to hunt down some pliers, which allowed me to hold the standoffs and unscrew the motherboard from them.

Once off, I was able to screw the motherboard into the new case (which already had its own standoffs installed) without an issue. It wasn’t a major inconvenience, but a good example of how moving cases can require tools (in this case pliers) that you’d not usually need when building a PC.

Plugging in

With the motherboard installed, I then plugged in the new cases’ I/O connectors. One thing I loved about the Thermaltake Retro 360 TG Mid Tower case is that front panel’s wires, which are often individual wires that can be extremely fiddly to attach to a motherboard, came as a block, which made installation much easier and faster.

While the larger components were still laying on my desk, I also connected up the PSU cables. The Corsair HX1500i 80 PLUS Platinum, which again I transported from the old PC, is a modular PSU, which means the cables aren’t permanently attached to the PSU — instead you can just plug in the cables you need to both the motherboard and PSU.

This makes installation a lot easier, and cable management much neater, and it meant I could plug the cables into the motherboard without having to install the PSU until later (a decision I made to make things easier, but I’m not sure it worked!).

I also took the opportunity to install the three Corsair RX120 RGB fans, adding two to the front of the chassis to pull in cooler air, and one at the rear that pushes hot air generated by the PC’s components out of the case.

These fans are more advanced than the previous ones I used for the PC: rather than being plugged into the motherboard and controlled that way, they daisy chain to each other, then connect to an iCUE LINK system hub, which then connects to the motherboard via a microUSB cable, all powered by the PSU.

This made the installation harder, as it meant I needed to route the proprietary cables to connect each fan to the hub, and some of those cables weren’t that long. It also meant having to hunt down an extra PSU cable, which caused issues later. While the iCUE LINK system hub meant I had greater control over the fan’s RGB lighting and temperature control, I don’t really think it was worth the extra effort. If I did this again, I’d stick to standard, easier-to-install case fans.

Finally, I installed the TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync AIO CPU cooler. I removed the existing thermal paste from the CPU and reapplied a small blob. I had ordered extra thermal paste as I wasn’t sure if the CPU cooler would include some, as not all do. As it turns out, the cooler does come with a small tube of thermal paste, so I now have a spare tube, but it’s always handy to have extra.

It was important to reapply the thermal paste, as the existing paste on the CPU was now several years old, and some of it remained on the cooler when I removed it. To ensure maximum cooling efficiency, removing the old paste and applying new paste was the best, and safest, option.

Installation was easy: I screwed the radiator and fans to the top of the case, attached the fan controls to the CPU Pump header on the motherboard, then placed the screen (which attached via magnets) on the cooler.

Always keep hold of cables and any other extras that come with your components, even if you don’t initially need to use them

With that in place, I then put the GPU and SSD back in their PCIe slots, connected (almost) everything up to the PSU, then secured the PSU in the case.

I say ‘almost’, as I didn’t have a cable to attach the iCUE LINK hub to the PSU. As I mentioned earlier, the PSU is modular, so I had only plugged in the cables I needed during the original build, but now I needed an extra cable. The PC wouldn’t boot without the hub powered on, nor would it boot when I tried a cable from a different PSU (this is likely a safety feature — you should never use cables from a different PSU, but I wanted to check).

Thankfully, after some rummaging around, I found the extra cables from the PSU, installed the correct cable to the hub and the PC booted fine. This wouldn’t have been an issue if I’d used a more basic fan, but at least I was now up and running. It also highlighted an important lesson: always keep hold of cables and any other extras that come with your components, even if you don’t initially need to use them.

Finishing touches

With the PC booting without issue, I then added the finishing touches. For instance, I ordered some retro stickers from Geekenspiel, a website that makes the kind of stickers you used to find on PCs, but for modern hardware (such as a sticker with the old Nvidia logo, but referencing the modern RTX graphics card).

I also paired the PC with the 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard, a wonderful-feeling keyboard that offers modern features but with an old-fashioned look and beige colorway that perfectly complements the PC.

I also ordered a Microsoft ProIntelli Wired mouse, which is a modern mouse inspired by Microsoft’s iconic IntelliMouse peripherals. Again, it combines retro looks with modern tech, which makes it a perfect choice for this build.

With the peripherals attached, I logged into Windows 11 and set up the TT RGB PLUS 3.0 software, which allows me to tweak the settings of the TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync AIO CPU cooler, and configure the screen. I made a short retro-inspired gif of the TechRadar logo, and used the software to display it on the LCD screen of the cooler.

I was very pleased with the results, and it instantly made the PC more interesting visually while still feeling retro. However, I have to say the TT RGB PLUS 3.0 software seemed quite flakey, with some options simply not working. The software also needs to load in Windows 11 before the animation plays on the screen.

The fans of the cooler were also very loud, and setting them to ‘Quiet’ in the software didn’t seem to make a difference. So, I restarted the PC and went into its BIOS and tweaked the fan speeds there, which worked. Suddenly, the PC was whisper-quiet.

Turning Windows 11 into Windows 95

I wasn’t quite done, however. While the hardware now certainly looked the part, I wanted the software to match. At first, I considered ditching Windows 11 altogether and instead using a Linux distro skinned to look like Windows 95.

The benefits of this is that I’d be free of all the bloat that Windows 11 comes with, especially the AI stuff I have no interest in, and also that Linux is far more customizable; with a bit of time, I could make an operating system that looked and acted a lot more like Windows 95.

However, there were also plenty of downsides. For one, it would be time-consuming to install and configure a distro, and many PC games and software won’t run natively on Linux. The TT RGB PLUS 3.0 software, for instance, won't work on Linux, and while there are workarounds, they are again time-consuming and fiddly. Plus, this approach would mean things like adding gifs to the screen wouldn’t work — and I wanted my gifs.

So, I decided to stick with Windows 11, but heavily mod it to look like Windows 95. This involved using WindowBlinds 11 and Start11 by Stardock. The first piece of software lets you drastically change the look of Windows 11, and has a ‘classic’ theme that’s perfect for my needs.

For a little while, I was able to pretend the tech world wasn’t a dumpster fire, but a more fun, perhaps more innocent, place to be

Start11, as you might have guessed from the name, focuses on the Start menu, and allows you to tweak it so that it looks, and works, like the classic Start menus of Windows 95 and Windows 98.

(Image credit: Future)

Each of these bits of software took a bit of configuring, but before long I had Windows 11 looking, and feeling, like Windows 95. Changing the desktop icons through Windows 11’s settings to feature classic Windows icons (I downloaded them from DeviantArt), and changing the desktop wallpaper to a solid teal color completed the look.

(Image credit: Future)

While not perfect (Windows Explorer still tries to show Windows 11-era tabs, and the taskbar clock can be a bit funny), I now had a retro-inspired modern operating system to complement my retro PC.

(Image credit: Future)

Overall, I was pretty happy, and a comforting sense of nostalgia washed over me as I used my big beige box. For a little while, I was able to pretend the tech world wasn’t a dumpster fire, but a more fun, perhaps more innocent, place to be.

(Image credit: Future)Final thoughts

Overall, I’m so glad I tried this out: it feels, ironically, as if I’ve given my aging PC a new lease of life. It looks great, and the mouse and keyboard feel fantastic — and familiar. Windows 11 also feels more sprightly, as I turned off a lot of the unnecessary animations and visual effects that usually run when using the operating system.

Strangely, I have also managed to fix a weird startup bug the PC used to have where sometimes the GPU didn’t power on. Since moving the PC into its new case, this has not happened once, so I must have inadvertently changed something during the move (not just by removing the GPU, as I had tried that before, and even swapped GPUs, and the problem persisted), so that’s a nice side effect.

The process was a lot faster with an existing PC than if I’d built one from scratch, though that has meant I needed to make some compromises. The motherboard and components don’t really complement the beige case, for instance; if I’d been building a new PC, I’d have probably tried to get white components instead, and cables to match.

Even in 2026, building, tweaking and upgrading your PC can be fun and creative, and you don’t have to spend a fortune if you can repurpose a lot of the components

I’m also glad that I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to tech, and I hadn’t thrown away the PSU cables I didn’t originally use. Okay, so I might have felt a bit daft holding on to cables for almost half a decade that I would likely never use, but it meant that I had the correct one when I needed it.

(Image credit: Future)

Finally, it proved that even in 2026, building, tweaking and upgrading your PC can be fun and creative, and you don’t have to spend a fortune if you can repurpose a lot of the components.

The retro theme of both the PC itself and the software it runs looks and feels great as well. It was hard work, but well worth it. If this article has inspired you to do something similar, let me know in the comments below!

• Ukraine receives rights to produce Britain’s Stone Cloak electronic warfare system
• Tablet-sized device helps Ukraine counter growing Russian drone operations
• Stone Cloak expands Ukraine’s electronic warfare capabilities against unmanned threats

Ukraine is receiving access to the intellectual property behind the UK-developed Stone Cloak electronic warfare system.

The tablet-sized device is designed to disrupt Russian drone detection systems and strengthen Ukraine’s ability to counter unmanned threats.

Thousands of Stone Cloak units have already been supplied to Ukrainian forces as electronic warfare becomes increasingly important on the battlefield.

Ukraine gains rights to produce British-designed drone defence system

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in London, where he announced the United Kingdom will transfer intellectual property rights for its Stone Cloak electronic warfare system to Ukraine.

“Stone Cloak is an example of the best of British innovation, proven on the front lines, and will be crucial to safeguarding the security of both our nations,” Burnham said.

“This will help them hit their targets and save Ukrainian lives. It also demonstrates the kind of innovations our industries can create together.”

The transfer gives Ukraine the ability to manufacture the compact electronic warfare equipment without depending entirely on external deliveries.

The system works by interfering with drone detection capabilities, helping Ukrainian forces reduce the effectiveness of hostile unmanned aerial operations.

Electronic warfare systems like Stone Cloak have become a major part of modern combat as drones continue shaping battlefield tactics.

British officials described the transfer of intellectual property as a way to support Ukraine’s defence needs through expanded manufacturing capability.

The agreement forms part of broader defence cooperation between London and Kyiv involving military assistance, training, and technology sharing.

“The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine, and our support remains unwavering. Russia should have no doubt about our resolve, and we will not back down until we achieve a lasting and just peace for Ukraine,” Burnham said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has continued seeking greater access to defence technologies that can be produced within Ukraine.

The Stone Cloak system is among several technologies aimed at improving protection against increasingly common drone threats.

Its compact design allows easier deployment compared with larger electronic warfare systems that require more extensive equipment and infrastructure.

Compact electronic warfare gains importance against drone threats

The growing use of unmanned systems has increased demand for smaller electronic warfare tools capable of responding quickly.

Drones have become widely used for surveillance, reconnaissance, and attack missions, creating greater demand for effective countermeasures.

Systems like Stone Cloak are designed to provide another layer of protection against these increasingly common battlefield threats.

The effectiveness of electronic warfare equipment depends on continued improvements because drone technology and countermeasures continue evolving.

Manufacturing Stone Cloak inside Ukraine could allow faster adaptation of the system based on battlefield feedback and operational requirements.

However, production expansion will depend on industrial capacity, component availability, and the ability to maintain reliable manufacturing processes.

Future availability of Stone Cloak units will depend on how quickly Ukrainian production facilities can scale up operations.

Via Ukrainska Pravda

I bought my first Tesla Model 3 in June 2019. It was my dream car. The promise of getting in, selecting a destination, and the car taking care of the rest was one I bought into.

I originally bought the Model 3 without Full Self Driving (FSD), which at the time cost $6,000. Then about a month later, Elon Musk announced the cost would start going up by $1,000 every few months. So, I bought FSD outright before that happened. I even ordered custom license plates to make it very clear to other drivers my car was driving itself.

A couple of years later, the first beta arrived, and during the next few years, after many updates, it got good. Really good.

I know headlines love to point out when an accident happens during FSD use — and rightfully so — but my overall experience with it as of a year ago was that I felt safe when using it. I could get in, tell it where to take me, and the majority of the time, I only had to babysit.

I used FSD probably 95% of the time; I was behind the wheel. I no longer hated driving.

Goodbye FSD, hello Comma 4

(Image credit: Jason Cipriani/Future)

Then, life changed. My wife and I decided to open a pizza food truck, and we quickly learned the truck we planned on using wasn't up for the job of towing our trailer. So, I traded in my Model 3 for a 2025 Ford F-150 Lightning Flash. Bye-bye FSD.

My Lightning came with three free months of BlueCruise, Ford's hands-free driver-assist system that only works on highways. When you're on standard roads, Ford has a basic lane-keeping feature that keeps you within the lines, and that's about it.

After my BlueCruise trial ended, I opted not to pay the $50 a month/$500 a year subscription fee, mainly because it's limited to highways and I wasn't doing a lot of highway driving at the time. In town, I was still able to use lane keep and deal with the super annoying "Keep Your Hands on The Wheel" nag that goes off all the time.

I didn't miss the more advanced self-driving-like features of BlueCruise at all. I got by.

Then, in January, I had shoulder surgery. The extended recovery process meant driving an hour away for physical therapy at least once a week, and I'm still making that same drive. So, I decided to turn my Ford Rewards points into a couple of free months of BlueCruise to help me get back and forth.

Only this time, I loved it. I could cruise up and down the highway at 80 miles per hour, tap the blinker to start an automatic lane change and just relax — all hands free.

With a few weeks left in my extended trial, I decided to sign up for the $500-per-year subscription. While I waited for the charge to hit my credit card, a friend reminded me about Comma.ai, the small dash cam-like device that helps control your vehicle.

In Comma's own words: "It's upgraded active driver assistance for your Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, and more." Comma states it supports over 300 different vehicles.

Knowing I was about to commit to $500 per year for BlueCruise, curiosity got the best of me, and I spent over a week reading everything I possibly could about Comma and how it works.

The overly simplified explanation is that you need to install the device and a wire harness specific to your vehicle. The two components then intercept and send driver assistance commands to your vehicle, enabling hands-free driving on any marked road — not just highways.

I also spent more than a few days reading through and asking far too many questions in the Ford-specific Discord channel. The group there was amazing and patiently answered every single one.

I'll admit I felt very uneasy about random people on the internet writing software that can control my car. I still do, to an extent, but eventually I felt comfortable and curious enough to order the $1,000 gadget.

Install, setup and daily use

(Image credit: Comma)

A few weeks later, a small box arrived with the camera, the Ford-specific wiring harness, and zero instructions.

Thankfully, there are quite a few YouTube videos detailing the installation process. That process requires installing the wiring harness under the dash, where my truck's Image Processing Module A (IPMA) is located. I had to remove some paneling to get to it, then route the included OBD-C cable from under the dash to my rear-view mirror where the Comma 4 is mounted.

The install process took about an hour, with the most difficult part being connecting the wiring harness to the IPMA — it's such a tiny space and hard to get to, but eventually I got it.

With the harness connected, the Comma 4 mounted, and the cable run, the next thing I needed to do was install an operating system.

The Comma 4 comes with a bare-bones operating system installed, able to do just enough to help facilitate whatever version of driving software — commonly referred to as forks — you want to use.

OpenPilot is Comma's own driving software, but it's not optimized for every vehicle. For my Ford Lightning, I have to use BluePilot, a Ford-specific fork that's customized and optimized to handle quirks in driver-assistance commands, for the best experience.

I went through the software setup process in about 10 minutes, and then it was ready for me to take a short calibration drive. Once that was done, I had my very own self-driving assistant, ready to begin driving me around.

Activating Comma is done using the same buttons I would use to turn on BlueCruise or Ford's lane-keeping features. I can see when Comma is active by looking at the Comma 4's screen for green border indicators where the edges of the lane are, and a solid green line in the middle showing that path the truck is going to take.

It took me a few days of tweaking features and settings to fine-tune how the Comma controls my truck. For instance, out of the box it doesn't handle lane changes for you. You have to enable lane changes, and even then it'll only perform a change when you activate your blinker — it won't do it on its own.

You can even customize how aggressive it is during the lane change, how long it will wait after activating the blinker before changing, so you need to confirm the change by nudging the wheel in that direction before it fully commits. It's really cool stuff.

What's taken me the longest to get just right is adjusting my truck's alignment in a lane. With default settings, my truck was consistently riding the left side of every lane I was in. It wouldn't go over it, but it was too close for my comfort. I spent some more time figuring out the proper setting to adjust and started tweaking. A few minutes later, my truck is almost perfectly centered.

I'm still tweaking different settings, but for the most part it drives just like I want. I continue to experience some very slow ping-ponging — when the car goes from one side of the lane to the other and then back — but it's easily remedied if I just place my hand on the wheel. From what I understand, I may never get fully rid of it.

I've learned a lot along the way, too. In my Ford, the Comma 4 only controls lateral movements to keep you centered in the lane, not longitudinal controls such as speeding up and braking. Ford's ACC system still handles the latter feature – something I found reassuring.

(Image credit: Jason Cipriani/Future)A couple of disclaimers you need to know

There are a few things I want to make clear, should you decide to get a Comma 4 (or one of the older models).

First, you, as the driver, are responsible for your vehicle at all times. The Comma 4 is an assistance device, not a fully-take-over-all-controls device. It hasn't tried to steer me unexpectedly into another lane, but I've seen reports and feedback about a recent update doing just that.

Second, Comma 4 will never offer a Full Self Driving-like point-to-point experience. There are just too many variables to how a third-party device can interact with and control various vehicles. In a Ford, for example, Comma 4 has limits in how aggressively it can steer, which makes tight corners difficult if not downright impossible. A recent update to BluePilot has made progress in this regard, but a 90-degree turn is all but out of the question.

1,000 miles and no regrets

My original intent was to take full advantage of the 30-day no-questions-asked return policy and send the Comma 4 back if I had any reservations after testing it. And, well, that window closed a few weeks ago.

All told, I'm nearing 1,000 miles over 97 driving sessions and 26 total hours since installing the Comma 4 in my truck. Not all of that is with it activated, but I'd wager that 75% or more of those miles were driven by Comma.

It's earning my trust with every drive and scenario I throw at it. The system has built enough confidence that I'm now going fully hands-free on longer drives.

Even with its quirks and limitations, the trade-off is a no-brainer for me. The Comma 4 handles backroads and standard city streets where BlueCruise simply gives up.

Best of all, I don't have to pay Ford $500 a year for a highway-only feature on top of what I already pay for premium connectivity. For a one-time $1,000 hardware investment, I got a sliver of my FSD experience back, saved money in the long run, and gained a system that continuously gets better thanks to an active community.

(Image credit: Ford)

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle No. 1,870 for Sunday, Aug. 2.

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle No. 1148 for Sunday, Aug. 2.

• ISBNdb ships up to a million books anonymously to AI labs
• Pre-2022 books are prized because chatbots never touched their text
• Spine-cutting scanners destroy originals to speed up digitization for training

AI companies are increasingly turning to printed books published before 2022 as preferred training material because those works predate the widespread use of AI-generated content.

Large-scale scanning operations reportedly involve cutting book spines, separating pages, and destroying physical copies to create digital datasets for large language models.

The practice has attracted growing criticism because some books entering these pipelines are reportedly extremely rare, raising concerns about irreversible cultural losses.

Pre-2022 books become valuable AI training material

Reports by 404 Media found data broker ISBNdb supplies physical books in bulk to AI developers seeking human-written material unaffected by modern chatbot output.

The company argues books published before 2022 offer cleaner datasets because they cannot contain text generated by contemporary large language models.

They are often considered "dense, edited, authoritative," in contrast to internet content increasingly filled with machine-generated material of uncertain quality.

The approach also attempts to avoid so-called model collapse, in which AI systems gradually lose quality after repeatedly training on synthetic content generated by earlier models.

ISBNdb additionally argues that older printed works avoid deliberate data-poisoning techniques authors increasingly use to disrupt AI training through carefully modified documents.

However, there are reports that many of these books are scanned using high-speed equipment.

This equipment requires workers to remove the spine before feeding individual pages through automated imaging machines.

That process reportedly destroys the original volume, making rapid digitisation considerably cheaper than slower preservation methods designed to keep books physically intact.

Secrecy and legal rulings fuel preservation concerns

ISBNdb openly acknowledges reputational concerns surrounding the practice while offering strict non-disclosure agreements that keep customer identities confidential throughout commercial engagements.

Its website reportedly states, "'AI company destroys two million books' is not a headline that generates sympathy," while suggesting clients describe the process as digital preservation.

Such a level of destruction is an order of magnitude bigger than the loss of the Library of Alexandria. Yet, it is unfolding with none of the outrage that history reserves for burned libraries.

Booksellers interviewed by 404 Media said some volumes entering these scanning programmes have very few surviving copies after enduring wars, fires, and centuries of handling.

Critics argue that unlike websites or widely available modern publications, exceptionally scarce historical works cannot simply be reproduced after their physical copies disappear forever.

A recent United States court ruling involving Anthropic found that scanning legally purchased books for AI training constituted fair use under specific circumstances.

Part of that reasoning held that destroying each printed copy during scanning meant one legal copy effectively replaced another rather than creating multiple copies.

In response to a critic (@Hedgie) of this method on X, Elon Musk said, "I've asked the SpaceXAI team to preserve any rare books in a library and scan them the hard way," suggesting an alternative approach.

If significant awareness is not created, this quiet erasure of irreplaceable books risks becoming the defining act of cultural loss for this era, remembered only after it can no longer be undone.

You could be sitting on a treasure trove of fantastic iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV games and not even know it.

Apple Arcade might be one of the most underrated gaming services on the market right now, with many Apple One subscribers not even realizing that it is included in all tiers of the service. You can also subscribe to it separately and you could even be able to access a generous free trial right now if you're reading this on a shiny new Apple device.

But what exactly is Apple Arcade, how much does it cost, what kind of games can you play on it, and, perhaps most importantly, are any of them actually good? I've spent the last week really sinking my teeth into the service in order to find out and deliver this ultimate guide to everything that you need know.

From all the basic facts to a bumper list of my personal game recommendations and even a personality quiz to match you to titles that you might like, everything here is intended to help you walk away an expert in all things Apple gaming.

The ultimate guide to Apple Arcade

What is Apple Arcade? Everything you need to know about the gaming service

No idea where to start? This is our comprehensive breakdown of everything that you need to know about Apple Arcade from how much it costs to the kinds of games that are included.

Apple Arcade is a joyful reminder of when mobile gaming was about fun, not emptying your wallet

Apple Arcade review: is the mobile gaming service still worth it in 2026? Here's our definitive verdict

I've played all 279 Apple Arcade games — here are the eight best

I spent a week playing every single game available on Apple Arcade to bring you this definitive list of the ones worth checking out first.

What kind of iPhone gamer are you? Find out — and get game suggestions — in our quiz

The Apple Arcade controllers I've tested and recommend to improve your gaming

I've spent the last week really getting to grips with the Apple Arcade service, trying out all of the available games and experimenting with its major features.

Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade

(Image credit: Apple / Future)

This article is part of our Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade: the definitive guide to everything that you need to know about the gaming service. Be sure to browse the full series here.

The experience has been great so far, thanks to the many console-quality games out on the platform. I'm talking titles like Sonic Dream Team, Hello Kitty Island Adventure, Cult of the Lamb, Fantasian, and so much more.

Although they're all perfectly playable with touch controls, loads of Apple Arcade games (including all of the aforementioned titles) offer full controller support. Hooking up a compatible gamepad is the perfect way to get an even more console-like experience, and really recommend getting your hands on one if you want to make the absolute best and most comfortable playing sessions.

For iPhone players, I would recommend three of the best mobile controllers on the market today: the Backbone One, Backbone Pro, and Razer Kishi V3 Pro. They're all formidable choices, though each has its own distinct advantages. The Backbone One, for example, is the most portable and cheapest of the three, while the Pro and Kishi V3 Pro are more comfortable and have better software features. I've also included the GameSir G8 Plus Galileo as a worthy budget alternative, though it doesn't offer quite as seamless an experience as the others.

For iPad gamers, the Razer Kishi V3 Pro XL is one of the few options that's compatible with massive tablets. It can even fit the truly huge 13-inch iPad Air and Pro models.

Finally, those playing on Apple TV are best served by more conventional options: the Xbox Wireless Controller and DualSense Wireless Controller. If you want something a little quirkier, the cute CRKD Neo S is a strong choice.

Recommended Apple Arcade controllers

Backbone One

Backbone Backbone Pro

Razer Kishi V3 Pro

Razer Kishi V3 Pro XL

GameSir G8 Plus

Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controller

Sony DualSense Wireless Controller

CRKD Neo S

• Instructions hidden as white text in a Word document can make Microsoft 365 Copilot silently alter the file it is drafting and copy the instructions into the output
• Each poisoned document becomes a carrier, so the attack spreads through ordinary internal workflows without the original malicious file and needs no macros, malware, or code execution
• Microsoft has shipped two mitigations across a 144-day disclosure, including a model upgrade, and the attack was still reproducible by the researcher

A security researcher has published a proof of concept showing that instructions hidden inside a Word document can cause Microsoft 365 Copilot to silently alter the file it is drafting, then copy those same instructions into the finished document, so the next person to use it becomes a carrier too.

Håkon Måløy, a data scientist with a doctorate in applied machine learning, disclosed the technique as the third installment of his Context Collapse series, after a 144-day coordinated disclosure with the Microsoft Security Response Center.

The reason this is being reported ahead of a fix is that it still works despite multiple attempts by Microsoft, as he notes that no robust mitigation for the broader vulnerability class is currently available.

A clever attack designed around Copilot's approach to text

The underlying attack belongs to a family known as cross-domain prompt injection, or XPIA. An attacker writes instructions in a natural-language document, formats them as white text on a white background at a small point size, and shares the file.

Because Copilot for Word strips formatting before passing text to the underlying language model, the model reads text the human never sees. This is true even for documents that are not opened by the user on purpose: The attack can trigger either when a user manually attaches a document to Copilot or when Copilot, working in Work IQ mode, searches the user's OneDrive for relevant files and finds the malicious one on its own.

It is also more dangerous than other exploits because of one key element: propagation. The hidden prompt in Måløy's proof of concept had two parts. One instructed Copilot to alter the document being drafted, in his demonstration halving every financial figure in a quarterly report.

The other instructed Copilot to copy the prompt into the new document and conceal it, framed innocuously as source tracking and readability formatting. Copilot did both, appending the instructions in white text and mentioning neither action to the user.

The disclosure timeline is the most uncomfortable part of the report. Måløy reported to MSRC on March 6 2026. Microsoft confirmed the behavior on March 31 and shipped a first mitigation in early April via a reworked Edit with Copilot experience, which successfully blocked his original prompt wording. He reproduced the attack with different wording the same week, and a second case was opened.

The second fix, on July 14, consisted of upgrading the underlying model to GPT-5.5. Måløy broke it the following day using GPT-5.6, then voluntarily offered Microsoft a further two-week delay to attempt another mitigation. The class still reproduced on the disclosure date, indicating that although a fix is in the works, the exploit is still possible to run.

A complicated issue that lacks a proper resolution

The issue goes far beyond Microsoft Word: an AI assistant must ingest untrusted content to determine whether it is relevant or hostile. But the content enters the same context window as the system prompt and the user's actual request, so by the time the model evaluates whether the text is an attack, the attacker's tokens have already shaped that evaluation.

As Måløy puts it, "the content being inspected participates in the act of inspection."

Microsoft confirmed it had reviewed the findings in a statement to The Register but stopped short of indicating a timeline for a complete fix:

“We have addressed the findings reported by the researcher and thank them for working with us through coordinated vulnerability disclosure," the company said.

"To address this class of risk, we use a defense-in-depth strategy with safeguards that block malicious instructions at multiple points and help keep tasks aligned with users’ requests. We are continuously strengthening these safeguards as the technology and threat landscape evolve. We encourage customers to install the latest updates, use multiple layers of security protection, treat content from unknown sources with caution, and review AI-generated content before using or sharing it.”

Måløy's recommendations are to treat externally sourced documents as untrusted when using them with Copilot, review attachments before starting an AI-assisted draft, and review Copilot's output carefully before sharing or reusing it.

He also suggested that generated documents should carry provenance metadata that records source material and model edits, which would not prevent injection but would make an infection traceable after the fact.

With Copilot extending further into agentic products that create and manipulate documents with less human oversight, the scope of how exploits like this could affect workflows (and users) will widen rather than narrow, and a complete solution is not yet in sight.

Whether you're a die-hard mobile gamer or a newcomer to the world of portable play, Apple Arcade will likely have something for you.

Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade

(Image credit: Apple / Future)

This article is part of our Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade: the definitive guide to everything that you need to know about the gaming service. Be sure to browse the full series here.

The subscription service gives you access to hundreds of games for your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV, ranging from revamped mobile classics including Angry Birds Reloaded and Doodle Jump 2+ to original and exclusive games in massive franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog with Sonic Dream Team. All of the included titles have absolutely zero ads and no microtransactions, meaning that they offer a more premium, console-like experience than you would get with many other App Store titles.

Most Apple phones now come with a free three-month subscription to the service, giving you the perfect opportunity to take your shiny new hardware for a whirl. Even if you're using an older device, there's still a one-week free trial that new subscribers can take advantage of, in order to see what the service offers and work out whether it's a good fit for them.

The only problem? With so many titles on offer it can be hard to know where to start, even if you're already a subscriber. That's why I've created this short personality quiz, which is designed to find out what kind of gamer you are and deliver a selection of recommendations. The recommended games have been personally tested by me, and are what I believe should suit your taste.

Did you find this quiz useful, or do you think I missed the mark with my picks? Let me know in the comments, and don't hesitate to drop your own game recommendations if you have them!

It's been a huge week for me here at TechRadar. I managed to convince my boss that it was a good idea for me to sit at my desk for five whole days and play all 200+ games available as part of the Apple Arcade service on my phone.

Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade

(Image credit: Apple / Future)

This article is part of our Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade: the definitive guide to everything that you need to know about the gaming service. Be sure to browse the full series here.

If it sounds like a ridiculous idea, that's because it really is. Honestly, in my rush to get paid to play some games on my phone, I don't think I actually considered just how long the task would take. That became painfully apparent when I actually started on Monday, and the fact that I was about to spend hours and hours flicking through apps set in.

Still, I managed it — even if the quest ended up sapping up all of my free time. I spent entire evenings lying on the sofa planting crops in Stardew Valley+, whole meals with one finger guiding an escaping explorer in Temple Run Legends, and my hour commute with both eyes glued to Suika Game+ . If I had just one hand free at any given time this week, I was using it to play an Apple Arcade game. Thankfully, I didn't have to drive anywhere.

Now, to be clear, I didn't spend an equal amount of time in all of them. It's easy to sink a few hours into the pixel survival action of Vampire Survivors+, for example, but literal torture to do the same in Play-Doh World (which is basically just a sensory experience for toddlers).

Still, I can now say with confidence which ones are truly worth getting into and, while the following eight picks are by no means an exhaustive list of everything worth playing on the service (just look at the honorable mentions for even more greats), they are the games I've had the most fun with so far and will coming back to time and time again in the weeks and months to come.

Top eight8. Squiggle drop

Squiggle Drop is one of the biggest surprises I've had while exploring Apple Arcade. It's an easy-to-understand puzzler that has you drawing shapes to complete different objectives and, with basic graphics and a spartan interface, looks like a pretty simple game.

That simplicity is one of its biggest strengths, however. The controls are eminently approachable; just drag your fingers around the screen to draw, and all of the levels have multiple solutions that reward creativity and mean that you never feel like you're truly at a loose end.

There's loads of variety to boot. One mission could have you drawing a container to save a birthday cake from the rain, while another might require a more complex creation to catch an underwater fish.

With more than 250 puzzles (some of which are pretty darn difficult), rotating daily challenges, a raft of achievements to obtain, and even an in-game town that you build as you progress, it's the perfect game to pick up and play when you get a few spare moments in an otherwise busy day.

7. Lego Star Wars: Castaways

(Image credit: Gameloft)

Lego Star Wars: Castaways is yet more proof that you should never judge a book by its cover (or, I guess, an app by its icon art). What I thought was going to be a generic kids' game turned out to be a really approachable and quite charming MMO.

You create a custom Star Wars hero and drop into a shared hub world that you can explore while surrounded by other real players, before dropping into iconic locations from the movies (explained in-game as a training simulation) to battle waves of Stormtroopers, Tusken Raiders, Battle Droids, and fearsome bosses like Darth Vader either solo or with up to three friends.

There are four character classes to unlock, focusing on ranged laser blaster combat, powerful force skills, team support, and stealth, and they all have meaty upgrade trees in addition to a range of distinct weapons to try. Character customization is also strong, and you can unlock loads of different hats and outfits using currency you obtain by completing quests and missions.

I had a lovely time with it as an adult, but there are some smart safety features that make this a great pick for children as well. Your character name, for example, is chosen from a random selection of suitably Star Wars-sounding words (I foolishly flicked past 'Jar-Jar Skywalker' when it popped up as an option) and numbers. There's also no direct text or voice chat function, though you can communicate through a small selection of emotes.

6. Angry Birds Reloaded

(Image credit: Rovio)

Angry Birds is a game that needs no introduction. This legendary early App Store sensation spawned countless sequels, spinoffs, theme park rides, a TV show, and even two popular animated films with a third set to release later this year.

Reloaded is basically the definitive Angry Birds game, bringing together the levels from the classic Angry Birds and its sequels Angry Birds Seasons, Angry Birds Space, and Angry Birds Stella (the latter two aren't even available on the App Store in their original forms anymore, making this the only way to officially play them) in addition to loads of new ones.

It offers the classic bird-slinging action that made the series so popular, now spruced up with shiny new graphics that look lovely even blown up on a big screen. All of the new content means that it's a joy to dip into even if, like me, you completed all of these games back in the day.

For newcomers, it's the absolute best that the series has ever been, with the best-looking graphics, all the greatest levels, and absolutely no ad interruptions. Get it downloaded, and find out why it was such a hit.

Top five5. Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition

(Image credit: Gameloft)

If after a busy day you just want to kick back and escape to a fantasy world, then Disney Dreamlight Valley is for you. This life simulator thrusts you into a magical town filled with iconic Disney characters that has fallen into disarray. A mysterious malevolent force is taking over in the form of dark roots that sap away memories, and it's up to you to get rid of them all and restore everything to its former glory.

From relaxing farming to designing your own cute cottage and customizing your outfits, everything here seems designed to bring nothing but the most chill vibes. There's a good sense of progression as new areas are steadily unlocked while you play, bringing the worlds of new Disney franchises into the mix.

On that note, it's hard to overstate the joy of interacting with some of the company's best characters. I've never been a massive fan of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, or Goofy, but even I can't stop myself from smiling when I unlock childhood favorites like Ratatouille's Remy, Wall-E's Eve, or Peter Pan's Tinker Bell.

Although you can pick up Dreamlight Valley on other platforms, the Arcade Edition comes packed with all of the latest free updates and access to the biggest paid expansions at no extra cost. It looks great and controls well on a phone, too.

4. Sid Meier' Civilization 7 Arcade Edition

The Arcade Edition of Sid Meier's Civilization 7 is the real deal, bringing all the strategic brilliance of the latest Civilization game to mobile with few real compromises aside from some missing DLC.

If you're unfamiliar with the franchise, it tasks you with building and governing a historical society from the ground up in a randomly generated world. You build cities, conquer territory, develop new technology, and interact with other competing societies. Whether you form trade alliances and live peacefully alongside your neighbours or wage war is entirely up to you.

Unlike past games, Civilization 7 added the ability for your empire to evolve, giving you the choice to swap between different cultures for unique bonuses, special buildings, or exclusive units.

The level of depth here is simply unparalleled in the mobile space, and as games can take tens of hours at a time, it's great to be able to take it all on the go.

Top three3. ‎Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat

(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Taiko no Tatsujin is a name you'll recognize if you've even been to an arcade in Japan. It's a simple but addictive rhythm game all about hitting a big drum in time with the beat, a gameplay perfectly suited for a touchscreen.

Tap either side of the on-screen drum in time with the blue icons or either side of the middle for the red ones, with bigger notes needing both sides at once. It starts off simple, but as the difficulty ramps up, beats that you have to hold are introduced, alongside ones that have you hammering the screen as quickly as possible with your fingertips.

The song selection is brilliant if, like me, you love Japanese music with a good mix of J-pop hits, Vocaloid classics, and music from popular anime. If that's not your speed, there are plenty of original songs, a whole load of classical music, a few tracks from Western blockbusters like Indiana Jones, plus viral sensations such as Baby Shark.

Nothing quite compares to the joy of mastering a song and, with so many to choose from and a wide range of difficulty levels to beat, Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat is almost impossible to put down.

2. Sonic Dream Team

(Image credit: Sega)

What if I told you the best new 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game of the last decade was an Apple Arcade exclusive? It sounds hard to believe, but Sonic Dream Team is so good that I would recommend it even if you're not a Sonic the Hedgehog fan.

This 3D platformer has the iconic blue hedgehog navigating a series of dense worlds with impeccable dream-like visuals, hopping between floating platforms, boosting your way down high-speed rails, and dispatching enemies with homing attacks. The action certainly isn't as fast as some of the 2D Sonic the Hedgehog games, but the precise controls mean that it feels excellent nonetheless.

It's not the longest experience on Apple Arcade, lasting just a couple of hours, but it is highly replayable with six swappable characters (including a rare Cream the Rabbit appearance), each with their own distinct pacing and unique roster of abilities to experiment with, a ranking system to chase high scores, tricky challenge stages, and unlockable powers.

There are also loads of collectibles to seek out, so true completionists have plenty to chip away at even after the credits have rolled.

1. What the Golf?

If I were forced to pin down one overall favorite among everything that I played this week, then What the Golf? is the obvious choice.

It's an unapologetically ridiculous physics-based game that is only really about golf in the loosest sense. Levels are incredibly creative, and no two are the same, having you putt everything from hot dogs and cars to live horses and entire houses into the hole.

It's consistently surprising and endlessly amusing, with mechanics and even the game's perspective shifting on a level-by-level basis. It's all underpinned by an expressive, minimalist art direction, a sleek interface, upbeat music, and a barrage of punny humor. The brilliant use of haptics also deserves some credit, giving everything you punt a distinct feeling of weight to it.

In addition to a lengthy main campaign, there is a generous selection of daily courses, bonus episodes, special events, online leaderboards, and more. Indie game fans will recognize loads of crossovers and references, too. It's nothing short of a joyous time.

Even more picksHonorable mentions

(Image credit: Sega)

I wanted to keep my recommendations concise and varied, with a good mix of genres, art styles, control methods, and so on represented. That doesn't mean that I don't have loads more recommendations, though, so here are some more strong picks that didn't quite make the full list for one reason or another.

• Fantasian is a sprawling RPG adventure with a beautiful miniature art direction.
• Monument Valley+ and Monument Valley 2+ are two stunning indie puzzle games that play with perspective in interesting ways.
• NFL Retro Bowl '26 offers a surprisingly meaty football simulator delivered through charming pixel-art graphics.
• Stardew Valley+ combines relaxing farming with social simulation as you build relationships with a cast of memorable characters in a cozy town.
• Suika Game+ has you merging different fruits in an easy-to-understand puzzler that's taken the internet by storm.
• Puyo Puyo Puzzle Pop is an exclusive entry in the long-running Puyo Puyo series that's filled with its trademark Tetris-like puzzle battles.
• MySims and MySims Kingdom are both expansive, feature-complete ports of classic The Sims spinoff games.
• Vampire Survivors+ brings the viral wave survival game to mobile — be warned that hours can vanish in the blink of an eye.

• Kaspersky says empty web pages are watching you, and the research backs up the warning
• Over 90% of parked domains now send visitors somewhere malicious, and clearing your cookies will not help
• Blank pages are also a problem: many 'Coming Soon' placeholders are quietly fingerprinting your device

Kaspersky has unveiled a rather underreported attack vector which is increasingly being used by threat actors to harvest private data from unsuspecting victims: registered websites that are yet to be developed.

Its warning focuses on parked domains, the registered web addresses that have no real website behind them yet, arguing that the blank screens and "Coming Soon" placeholders users dismiss as harmless are frequently doing work in the background.

The company says simply loading one of these pages can trigger silent collection of a visitor's IP address, approximate location, User-Agent string and cookie identifiers, and that operators go further by building browser fingerprints through other techniques, then feeding the result into advertising networks to assemble targeted profiles without consent from users.

Browser fingerprinting sans the permissions

The mechanics Kaspersky describes are worth understanding, because fingerprinting is the part most readers will not have encountered, and the part that conventional privacy habits do not touch.

For context, a cookie is a file placed on your machine that you can delete, thereby limiting tracking. A fingerprint is not stored on your machine at all. It is derived from how your specific hardware and software combination renders a test image, draws 3D graphics, or processes an audio signal, producing a value distinctive enough to identify the same device across unrelated sites.

Browser fingerprinting, the method used to capture such data within a browser session, is attractive to trackers because it is considerably harder to shake off. A private browsing window prevents your machine from keeping a local record of the visit, but it does not change how your hardware renders the test image, so the fingerprint it produces remains largely the same.

Such domains can also cause more direct damage than selling one's information to advertisers. Kaspersky says threat actors embed scripts that bounce visitors onward to fraudulent platforms, adult content, or online casinos. It flags typosquatting as a particularly acute risk, in which a domain differing from a well-known brand by a letter or two can capture mistyped traffic, landing the user on a phishing page or triggering a drive-by download.

This isn't the first time the problem has been reported, either, as recent research from Infoblox finding that in large-scale experiments, over 90% of the time, a visitor to a parked domain was routed to illegal content, scams, scareware, antivirus subscription traps, or malware.

Kaspersky recommends several ways to mitigate the risk, including avoiding suspicious links, clearing cache and cookies after an unintended visit, and using software that blocks web tracking.

Clearing cookies is worth noting, though: it addresses the cookie identifiers Kaspersky mentions, but by the company's own explanation it does nothing about fingerprinting, because there is nothing stored locally to clear.

Parked domains, including blank pages that appear inert, are now a routine part of criminal infrastructure rather than digital litter and should be treated with caution. At best, you give away more information than you meant to. At worst, you become the victim of an attack you never saw coming.

Remember when mobile gaming was fun?

Back in the day, you could just scroll the App Store, pick out an icon or two that you liked the look of, and have a new game downloaded and ready to play in just a few moments.

Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade

(Image credit: Apple / Future)

This article is part of our Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade: the definitive guide to everything that you need to know about the gaming service. Be sure to browse the full series here.

Booting them up, you’re not confronted with a 29.68GB additional download that you have to stay on one screen to complete, a wall of sketchy in-app permissions to accept, or a page demanding that you sign in with some iffy third-party account — just a neat little self-contained experience designed to help you kill a few hours on the train.

Though they seemed simple, many of the best App Store games were quietly revolutionary. Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja pioneered intuitive touch-screen controls, while Doodle Jump smartly utilized the iPhone’s accelerometer to show how hardware features could become core gameplay mechanics.

Statista estimates that there are now more than 180,000 mobile games available on the App Store. But when was the last time you installed one that felt genuinely exciting, rather than like a thinly veiled scheme to force ad views, harvest personal data, or pressure you into pricey Gacha Pulls? That’s exactly where Apple Arcade comes in.

Back in time

Puyo Puyo Puzzle Pop is an incredible Apple Arcade exclusive entry in the long-running puzzle series. (Image credit: Sega)

Having spent the last week diving into all 200+ of the titles available on the service, I can’t help but think that Apple’s highly curated library of mobile titles feels like a journey back in time to the App Store’s glory days.

The whole experience is completely seamless. You sign up for $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$9.99 a month and can immediately jump into browsing the games. They’re all contained in a dedicated Arcade tab in your iPhone’s App Store, so there’s no ambiguity about whether the app you’re looking at is part of the service or not.

Although the selection here is nowhere near as expansive as the regular games tab, it feels genuinely curated and cuts out huge amounts of clutter and spam.

No matter what you like to play, there’ll be at least a few games for you. An impressive variety of genres are represented in the catalog: there are plenty of massive role-playing games (RPGs) that you can sink hours into, be that Trials of Mana+ or Final Fantasy+, fast-paced racers such as Asphalt 8: Airborne+ and Sonic Racing, head-scratching puzzlers in Monument Valley+ and Lego Builder’s Journey, and so much more.

Jetpack Joyride 2 adds new missions, weapons, upgrades, and more. (Image credit: Halfbrick Studios)

Those iconic early mobile titles I mentioned earlier? They’re back too in new and improved forms that make them a nostalgic joy to revisit. There’s a full-on Angry Birds remake with enhanced graphics and extra levels, an expanded Doodle Jump sequel that updates the hand-drawn graphics and adds new environments, and a Temple Run successor that trades the endless format for challenging levels that are better-suited for short bursts of play.

The innovation of the early App Store is there too. RPG Fantasian wows with incredible art direction that sees you exploring hundreds of beautiful real-world dioramas that were digitally scanned into the game, while bonkers sports simulator What the Golf? takes full advantage of punchy iPhone haptics to add real weight to its wacky physics challenges.

No distractions

No ads makes it easier than even to lock-in in rhythm games like Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat. (Image credit: Bandai Namco)

The games are all entirely devoid of ads and microtransactions, so you never have to deal with a frustrating splash screen or pop-up that takes you out of the action.

This means that most of the games will work entirely offline as well, just like they did back in the day. I had practically given up playing mobile games on my commute before getting into Apple Arcade simply because it was so hard to find titles that wouldn’t kick me out the second my train went into a tunnel.

There are no sign-in screens anywhere, and most games don’t even request permission to send push notifications. Your progress will even automatically sync to the cloud so you can continue playing on your iPad, Mac, or Apple TV when you get home.

Oh, and you don’t need to worry about your privacy in all this either. Apple says that all of the games in the service have no third-party tracking software and don’t collect any advertising data. All that, to me, is certainly worth paying for.

I’ve tested dozens of smart glasses for TechRadar, but every time I get a new pair of Meta Ray-Bans to try, I’m reminded why they’re so popular — because yet again my past three weeks with the Ray-Ban Meta Optics have been a joy.

Mostly.

Much like Meta’s previous smart specs, you’ll find a host of technological features crammed into the eyewear.

There are speakers for open-ear audio, which is perfect for listening to casual tunes, taking a call, or hearing the AI’s responses to your queries — with the glasses’ microphones also doing a great job at picking up what you’re saying with minimal noise disruption.

Dedicated earbuds will sound better for sure — the bass isn’t as emphatic as I like with Meta’s Optics glasses (or its other models) — though I did enjoy listening to music through my glasses for hours on end with no major complaints.

(Image credit: Future / Hamish Hector)

As mentioned, there’s also Meta’s AI, which is accessed through the connected phone app and voice commands on your specs. It can answer questions you ask it and, with your permission, see what you see by accessing the Meta Optics’ camera to provide additional context to your questions, and interact with connected apps to play music requests or tell your health and fitness stats.

I’m not a big AI user except when I’m on holiday or just generally acting like a tourist. On our honeymoon, my wife used Look and Ask to check the ingredients on hair care products to make sure she wasn’t allergic, and I got the AI to supply me with phrases to use when I realized my limited Spanish wasn’t going to cut it.

The AI’s also perfect for identifying landmarks and telling you more about historic sites. I relied on it so much on a trip I took to Italy with my other Meta glasses a while ago — it helped me understand the ruins of Pompeii and better learn the history of the Colosseum.

A photo taken with my Meta Optics (Image credit: Future / Hamish Hector)

Beyond identifying foreign signs and buildings, the cameras are ideal for first-person video. I used them to snap photos and videos of my wife and me, and they came out really well — they're the ideal way to record memories digitally, as you can still live in the moment rather than being cut off behind a phone screen.

I’ll talk more about cameras in a moment, but before that I want to focus on the key way the Optics is different to Meta’s other Ray-Ban smart specs: it's comfort and fit.

Built to last all-day

Meta’s smart glasses are chunkier than non-intelligent eyewear, which can make them feel more rigid and less comfortable than regular specs. To make the Optics better suited to all-day wear (something I can confirm they handle effectively after wearing these glasses for hours on end over the past few weeks), you’ll find interchangeable nose pads and adjustable temple tips to help you sculpt them to your face shape.

The correct nose pads have helped the specs sit better on my head without slipping down, while the temple tips can be carefully manipulated (either at home or at an optician) to help the Optics grip your face without applying too much pressure to the sides of your head.

(Image credit: Future / Hamish Hector)

If you’re considering getting some yourself, my final design note is this: pay extra for transition lenses.

The Ray-Bans I’ve been testing are outfitted with the Transitions XTRActive option, meaning they change between clear and shaded when exposed to sunlight — even when I’m in the car — and the lenses changed so quickly as I moved between different environments (something I noticed a lot when going between indoor and outdoor spaces on my honeymoon to Tenerife).

My non-smart eyeglasses boast Transitions Gen S lenses, and I’m also happy with them, or you can opt for polarized Transitions if you want even more light protection, if you’re also willing to pay a bit extra.

Regardless of which type you opt for, Transitions lenses are essential because they maximize the usefulness of your smart specs. Without them, you’re limited to either clear glasses you can only use indoors or on darker days, or shaded glasses that can only be worn outdoors when the sun is brightly shining.

Why did there have to be a but?

Now, the elephant in the room is that Meta’s smart specs are facing increasing amounts of scrutiny from the public because of their cameras.

News stories showcasing bad actors harassing women, recording secretly by modding their specs, or revealing that Meta contractors might be able to see more of your recorded content than you realize have been populating our timelines throughout 2026.

The upshot seems to be a wave of negativity: I conducted a poll through one of my recent stories, and over half of all respondents said they think smart glasses should be banned.

For its part, Meta is doing plenty to combat these issues: it cracked down on Facebook Marketplace listings for glasses modding services and issued an update to prevent the camera from working if the recording light on your smart eyewear is disabled, and it’s also tackling Instagram profiles belonging to creeps like pickup artists who promote using the glasses to harass people.

I still think more needs to be done on the privacy side of things — at the very least being much more explicit about what features share captured content with Meta, though ideally all of your content would remain private through an Apple-like Private Cloud Compute server setup.

I want to just love my smart glasses (Image credit: Future / Hamish Hector)

As of now, I’m admittedly very nervous to wear my Meta Optics. I haven’t been worried about going around wearing my Meta Ray-Ban and Oakley specs in the past, but with growing public anger over the way smart specs are being misused, I have a genuine concern someone will see me wearing them and act violently towards me.

Or I could simply be banned from entering a space while wearing them. Some Comic-Cons, offices, and courts don’t let you in wearing Meta-style smart glasses. Especially for something as essential as prescription glasses, and pricey ones at that, being constantly nervous while wearing them or barred from entering certain spaces isn’t ideal.

There is genuinely so much to love about the smart glasses, and if you haven’t yet got a pair and wear prescription eyeglasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Scriber Optics styles are the ones I’d most highly recommend.

• Meta rebuilt storage systems after slow data repeatedly stalled expensive AI GPUs
• SSD caching dramatically reduced AI dataset loading times from hours to minutes
• Meta replaced complex metadata lookups with a faster unified storage architecture

Meta says storage systems have failed to keep pace with AI computing power, creating delays that leave costly GPUs waiting instead of processing workloads efficiently.

According to the company's engineers, storage bottlenecks remain a major cause of GPU stalls, increasing operating costs while slowing research progress and extending development timelines.

To address those delays, Meta redesigned its storage architecture, arguing that faster movement of data can unlock greater value from expensive AI hardware investments.

Meta rebuilds storage architecture to keep GPUs working

Meta's engineers explained that the company operates hundreds of exabyte-scale storage clusters supporting Facebook, Instagram, Reality Labs, Meta AI, advertising systems, databases, and internal data warehouses.

Those services rely on a foundational storage layer called Tectonic, which manages object storage, file systems, block devices, and data placement across HDDs and SSDs.

The company has increasingly shifted from traditional file storage toward BLOB storage because massive AI datasets require unified access methods with significantly higher performance.

When GPU servers request information from storage, repeated metadata lookups across several layers create latency that interrupts AI training pipelines and delays overall processing.

Meta responded by rebuilding the metadata subsystem into a unified schema backed by ZippyDB while allowing clients to retrieve data directly from storage servers.

Instead of routing every transfer through application servers, the redesigned software uses an embedded client capable of streaming information directly from the Tectonic storage layer.

To support distributed AI deployments, Meta placed regional BLOB-storage systems beside GPU clusters, reducing delays associated with transferring information across distant infrastructure.

It introduced distributed caching using unused GPU host memory, producing an average cache hit rate of 80%, while metadata became accessible within 1 to 2 ms.

The engineers further added hedged reads alongside dynamic concurrency controls, stating that "the new BLOB-storage stack is now capable of serving AI workloads without causing GPU stalls."

SSD caching cuts hours from AI data ingestion

Meta examined lengthy delays experienced before AI training even began, when researchers transferred enormous dataset snapshots from BLOB storage into regional GPU facilities.

Instead of loading every dataset directly from slower storage drives, Meta created multiple cache layers that keep frequently used data much closer to GPU servers.

That approach introduced multiple caching layers, using GPU memory as L1, SSDs inside GPU hosts as L2, and regional flash-backed BLOB storage as L3.

Traditional HDD storage remained the authoritative data source, while faster cache layers supplied frequently requested information before slower disks became necessary during processing.

Meta’s redesign produced sharp gains in ingestion speed, cutting a previous 150-minute loading process down to just 10 minutes.

A separate job that once required 89 hours to complete now finishes in just over three hours from start to finish.

Citrini analyst Jukan notes that high-capacity storage has traditionally been judged mainly by its cost per terabyte of capacity alone.

He argues that idle GPU time can outweigh any savings gained from cheaper storage if data arrives too slowly each day.

This suggests that the cost of flash storage is economically rational whenever eliminating idle time costs more than the flash itself each hour.

Via Blocks and Files

If you're a die-hard iPhone user, then there's a strong chance that you already have access to Apple Arcade and don't take full advantage of it. The gaming service is currently included with all tiers of the Apple One subscription — an all-in-one bundle that also includes the likes of iCloud Plus, Apple TV Plus, and Apple Music in one monthly fee.

Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade

(Image credit: Apple / Future)

This article is part of our Ultimate Guide to Apple Arcade: the definitive guide to everything that you need to know about the gaming service. Be sure to browse the full series here.

Even if you don’t pay for Apple One, a free three-month trial of Apple Arcade comes bundled with every new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV, plus, the service is available as a standalone subscription if you don’t want it bundled with anything else. Sounds great, right? But what actually is Apple Arcade, how much does it cost, and is it really worth the price?

I’ve spent this week getting to grips with all things Apple Arcade, from diving into some of its biggest exclusive games to comparing it to other competing services, in order to bring you this comprehensive breakdown of everything you need to know about it. Read on and become an Apple Arcade expert.

What actually is Apple Arcade?

Apple Arcade is a gaming subscription service by Apple designed for its iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and even Apple Vision Pro devices. It launched in September 2019 and gives you access to a huge library of more than 200 premium games that you can download and play offline.

Unlike many titles that you might download from the App Store, Apple Arcade games are wholly devoid of both ads and in-app purchases. They are complete experiences that you can dive into without the risk of annoying interruptions or being asked to shell-out real world cash for in-game items or downloadable content (DLC).

What kind of games are included?

There are more than 200 games available on Apple Arcade, with options across a wide variety of genres. This includes a selection of high-quality original games such as fast-pace platformer Sonic Dream Team, cozy life simulator Hello Kitty Island Adventure, and beautiful role-playing game Fantasian.

There are also some ports of console and PC games, such as hit strategy game Sid Meier's Civilization 7 Arcade Edition, Disney life sim Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition, and indie roguelike Cult of the Lamb.

You will also find loads of premium versions of existing mobile titles with no ads or microtransactions in the likes of Doodle Jump 2+, Fruit Ninja Classic+, Bloons TD 6+, and much more.

You can use our quiz below for some hand-picked recommendations.

How much does Apple Arcade cost?

The Apple Arcade standard plan costs $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$9.99 a month.

You can save some cash by opting for an annual plan instead, which is $49.99 / £49.99 / AU$79.99 — a saving of $33.89 / £33.89 / AU$39.89 compared to 12 months of monthly payments.

No matter which of these two options you choose, you can share your Apple Arcade subscription with up to six family members at no extra cost.

Apple Arcade is also available as part of all Apple One tiers (Individual, Family, and Premier). Unlike Apple Arcade, Apple One is not available in an annual subscription format, so you can only pay for it on a monthly basis. You can view and compare all of the options below.

Plan

Price

Included services

Sharing limit

Apple Arcade

$6.99 / £6.99 / AU$9.99 per month

$49.99 / £49.99 / AU$79.99 yearly

Apple Arcade

Up to six users

Apple One Individual

$19.95 / £18.95 / AU$24.95 per month

Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, 50GB iCloud Plus

One user

Apple One Family

$27.95 / £24.95 / AU$34.95 per month

Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, 200GB iCloud Plus

Up to six users

Apple One Premier

$39.95 / £36.95 / AU$52.95 per month

Apple Arcade, Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple News Plus, Apple Fitness Plus, 2TB iCloud Plus

Up to six users

How to claim your Apple Arcade free trial

In most regions a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV now comes with a three-month free subscription to Apple Arcade. The offer is only valid for 93 days (that's roughly three months), so if you have an eligible device you should consider claiming it quickly if you're interested.

To do so, simply follow these four simple steps

1. Open the App Store on the eligible device
2. Tap the Apple Arcade tab at the bottom of the screen
3. The offer should appear automatically
4. Follow the on-screen instructions to redeem it

If you're not eligible for a complimentary three-month subscription, there's no need to worry — because new subscribers can still claim a one-month trial via the App Store.

Whether you claim three months or one month, bear in mind that a valid payment method will be required in order to get set up. This will be billed at the standard subscription price when your promotional period is over, so remember to cancel your subscription if you want to avoid any charges.

You can find out how to do this on the official Apple Support page.

Do you need a controller to play Apple Arcade games?

The CRKD NEO S is a good pick for Apple Arcade. (Image credit: CRKD)

You don't actually need a controller to play the majority of Apple Arcade games. On iPhone and iPad, almost every title supports full touch screen controls and can be enjoyed without any extra hardware.

If you're playing on Mac, many titles support keyboard and mouse controls.

On Apple TV, you're most likely to need a dedicated gamepad as there are only a few titles that work well with the included remote.

Of course, lots of games still allow you to use a controller on any device even if it's not strictly required and I'd recommend it if you're after an even more console-like gaming experience.

You can see some models that I've personally tested and would recommend for Apple Arcade below.

What about the competition?

If you're strictly looking for a gaming subscription service for your iPhone, then Apple Arcade doesn't really have much direct competition.

The biggest alternatives on that platform are cloud gaming services such as Amazon Luna, which you can access through your iPhone's web browser. These stream games to your phone directly from a cloud server, which means that they require a constant internet connection and cannot be accessed offline.

They also don't work too well with on-screen controls, which means a controller like the dedicated Luna Wireless Controller is required for anything but the most casual titles.

That said, cloud gaming does have some big advantages. You can access full console or PC games, including massive titles such as Fortnite, Fallout 4, or Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As they do not rely on your local hardware, they can also offer high-end graphics features such as maximum in-game settings and ray tracing — though slow or choppy internet can negate this by introducing visual artifacts.

If you have access to an Android Phone, Google Play Pass is a potential alternative. It's cheaper than Apple Arcade but similarly grants access to loads of mobile games with zero ads or microtransactions. It also includes some productivity apps, meaning that it's a little more versatile than the strictly gaming-focused Apple Arcade.

That said, its software library feels much more chaotic and less curated. It also lacks the compelling exclusive releases that I think really bring a lot of value to Apple Arcade.

Apple Arcade FAQsDo Apple Arcade games work offline?

Yes, all Apple Arcade games work offline. This means that you can play them on your iPhone or iPad when you're out of the house and don't have a steady internet connection.

Is it worth getting Apple Arcade?

Apple Arcade can be worth getting if you frequently play mobile and want a more curated, premium experience. The lack of in-game ads and microtransactions means that you don't have to worry about annoying distractions or impulse spending, while many of the exclusive games are high-quality experiences that are worth playing.

Do I lose my games if I cancel Apple Arcade?

You will lose access to Apple Arcade games if you cancel your subscription. You don't need to worry about losing any progress, however, as your save data is stored by Apple via iCloud. This means you can pick up exactly where you left off if you resubscribe at a later date.

Can games leave Apple Arcade?

Although it is uncommon, games can leave Apple Arcade. When this happens you can keep playing the game for a short grace period, before it becomes unavailable on your device.

• Cloudflare summary logs a typhoon, two earthquakes, power failures, and thirteen government exam shutdowns
• It also identified a fiber cut, drone damage to an AWS region, and a botched DNSSEC key rollover
• The report's sharpest finding is that Tanzania's accidental power blackout looked almost identical in the data to its deliberate election-day shutdown in 2025

Cloudflare has published its latest account of what recently knocked chunks of the Internet offline, and the list reads like a catalogue of everything that can go wrong at once: a typhoon, two earthquakes a minute apart, a national power failure, ten government shutdowns timed to school exams, a fiber cut, drone damage to a cloud region, and a routine cryptographic key update that briefly made every .de website in the world unreachable.

Drawn from traffic telemetry on Cloudflare Radar, it is a useful reminder that the systems most people treat as a utility are held together by a surprisingly small number of things.

With geopolitics in the Middle East shaping traffic in Iran, the UAE, Iraq and Sudan, Cloudflare found that not only did the former's traffic drop even after a shutdown ended two months ago, but the UAE seems to be one of the most affected by the on-again, off-again US-Iran conflict thanks to two AWS facilities being struck by Iranian drones.

An accidental blackout and a government shutdown look similar from the outside

Cloudflare's insights tend to make for an interesting read on how the connected world functions, often defying expectations about traffic, online activity, and user behavior, with the recent FIFA 2026 World Cup being an excellent place to start.

When it comes to the most severe disruptions, one would turn to Iran's approach, which cut off internet access during its conflict with the US, an engagement that also had ramifications for most of its Gulf neighbors.

Interestingly, Radar began picking up signs of restoration on May 26 2026, ending an 88-day shutdown that had left the country almost entirely offline since February 28, but it never reached peak pre-conflict levels.

By May 27, traffic had returned to 40% of pre-outage levels, consistent with reports that access was being reintroduced selectively. It has since climbed as high as 90% before settling at roughly 59% of pre-shutdown levels, suggesting that more stringent restrictions may be in effect even as the country grapples with a war that threatens to reignite at a moment's notice.

The most consequential item on the list, as a result of the conflict, is ironically the one that does not look like an Internet outage at all. HTTP traffic to AWS me-central-1, the cloud region in the United Arab Emirates, has remained low, matching AWS status reports at the end of April 2026 stating that the region had been damaged by the conflict in the Middle East and could not reliably support customer applications.

This followed earlier reports in March of physical damage to facilities in both the UAE and Bahrain caused by drone strikes, with two UAE facilities directly hit. It also highlights an interesting insight: A cloud region has become the sort of concentrated dependency that a submarine cable used to be, with the added complication of being a physical target that is much easier to locate than an undersea cable.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

The longest single disruption came from Super Typhoon Sinlaku, the strongest storm of the 2026 Pacific typhoon season so far, which tracked through the Mariana Islands in mid-April and passed just north of Guam. The island avoided a direct hit, but tropical-storm-force winds knocked out power, disrupted water systems, and took connectivity with them. Traffic from the territory fell as much as 80% below expected levels on April 13 and 14.

Venezuela lost connectivity on June 24 when two major earthquakes struck northern Venezuela within roughly a minute of each other, at Yumare and San Felipe, followed by an aftershock near the coast outside Caracas, coinciding with a fall in traffic visible across Fibex Telecom, which serves an estimated 1.6 million users.

Three days later, a power outage in Tanzania produced a sharp drop in HTTP traffic lasting at least five hours, with Cloudflare drawing parallels to the country's election-related blackout in 2025.

Saint Lucia lost most of its connectivity on June 21 when traffic on Karib Cable's network fell to essentially zero by 21:00 UTC and remained flat for the better part of a day, reportedly due to a fiber cut near the island. Karib Cable is one of the largest providers there, so the loss was registered nationally, with the country's overall traffic falling by around 60% compared with the previous week.

In terms of a self-inflicted wound, Germany takes the cake: On 5 May, DENIC, the registry for the .de domain, performed a DNSSEC key rollover, the routine periodic replacement of the cryptographic keys used to sign a zone's DNS records, and the process began producing invalid signatures.

Because DNSSEC-validating resolvers only trust answers whose signatures match the current published keys, a mismatch is read as evidence of tampering, so resolvers worldwide rejected every .de lookup and returned errors until normal service resumed at 23:15 UTC. To users, it did not appear to be a cryptographic failure. It presented as German websites not loading, email bouncing, and apps timing out. It resulted in global .de query volume going up during the outage rather than down, indicating that users were, as a result, looking for ways to access said sites, amplifying the failure, at least statistically.

Taken together, Cloudflare's insights about the quarter are less a parade of exotic failures than a fairly consistent argument about concentration.

One registry's keys gate an entire national domain for the whole world. One provider carries enough of Saint Lucia's traffic to take the country with it. One cloud region hosts applications that have no idea they are under attack by a drone strike, causing unintended blackouts. The causes are both ordinary and extraordinary. It is the dependencies, however, that are extreme, making the case for redundancies worldwide.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day has spun its way into theaters — and there's something about the Marvel movie's end credits scene that's dominated my thoughts since I left my screening.

I've already written about the post-credits stinger in my Spider-Man: Brand New Day ending explained piece, but I didn't elaborate on what it could be teasing. That's because, based on a new theory I have about this Spider-Man film's end credits scene, I deemed that discussion worthy of its own article.

It goes without saying, but full spoilers immediately follow for Spider-Man: Brand New Day. If you haven't seen it yet: bookmark this page, read my Spider-Man: Brand New Day review to see if it's any good, and then watch it at your local theater. Once you've completed those steps, re-open this page — it'll be worth the wait, I promise.

Alright, let's first review what happens in Spider-Man 4's post-credits scene, which centers on the Spidey Tracker app developed by Ned Leeds.

Initially, a flashing marker, accompanied by an automated voice message that says "New Spider-Man sighting", indicates that the titular hero is still in New York City. However, the message soon starts saying "Location unknown", which highlights that Spider-Man's actual whereabouts are, well, unknown. Cue the app zooming out to try to find Peter Parker.

Eventually, the app zooms out far enough that it not only shows us the entire Earth, but also that the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) character can't be found. That's until the app moves away from our world, lays down a new pin that indicates Spider-Man is somewhere in space, and ends with the voice message saying "Location found."

Where'd you go, Peter? (Image credit: Sony Pictures/Marvel Entertainment)

What does that mean? The obvious answer is that Spidey is no longer planet-side. I know, shock, horror. What isn't clear, though, is why he's in space. Again, there's an easy answer for this: it's got something to do with Avengers: Doomsday and/or its sequel Avengers: Secret Wars.

That pair, which come out on December 18, 2026 and December 17, 2027, mark the end of Marvel Phase 6 and the divisive Marvel Multiverse Saga. And, while current Spidey star Tom Holland isn't confirmed to appear in Doomsday, the fan-favorite A-lister will, by virtue of his popularity, feature in one or both of the aforementioned films. So, it would make a ton of sense if Brand New Day's end credits stinger is teasing his involvement in Doomsday and/or Secret Wars.

Nonetheless, what if — and I realize this is a huge if — the Spidey Tracker isn't picking up Holland's Spider-Man, but one of his fellow webheads?

All three live-action iterations of Spider-Man joined forces in 2021 MCU movie Spider-Man: No Way Home (Image credit: Sony Pictures/Marvel Entertainment)

Now, I know that's a stretch, but hear me out. After all, everything we learn about the Spidey Tracker in Brand New Day suggests it's tailored specifically to the MCU's Spider-Man, so why would it detect another wallcrawler, such as Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield's, instead?

Well, for one, we don't actually know that the Spidey Tracker has been custom-built for Holland's version. If it hasn't, there's no reason why it wouldn't detect one of his multiversal variants.

That multiversal aspect is perhaps the most crucial part of my theory, too.

The next two Avengers movies will be the culmination — and celebration — of every Marvel Universe we've seen on the big screen. That includes the MCU, the original Fox X-Men franchise, and — based on myriad rumors that have been circulating online for months — the realities inhabited by Maguire and Garfield.

It would be a huge opportunity missed if we don't see Andrew Garfield again before the Multiverse Saga ends (Image credit: Sony Pictures)

Furthermore, Avengers: Doomsday's story synopsis has already confirmed that it'll revolve around the threat posed by Incursions.

These multiversal calamities occur when the barriers between two universes break down, and lead to a collision that permanently destroys one or both worlds. As such, Doomsday will feature heroes from three distinct universes — the MCU, original FoX-Men, and The Fantastic Four — battling to save their realities.

But are these the only universes we'll visit in Avengers 5? It would be a glaring error if Marvel overlooked Maguire and Garfield's worlds in Doomsday and/or Secret Wars, and I don't think anyone believes that the comic giant would.

It's for that very reason, then, that I believe Brand New Day's post-credits scene isn't actually showing us that Holland's Parker has gone off-world. No, I'm convinced that the Spidey Tracker is actually picking up Maguire or Garfield's Spider-Man — and, of the two, it's the former that it's detected.

Think about it. Doomsday's first proper trailer appears to suggest that the FoX-Men have successfully navigated an Incursion. I speculate more on this in my Avengers: Doomsday trailer breakdown article, but essentially, the teaser's first few seconds show Charles Xavier/Professor X shielding his eyes from a humungous, blinding explosion. Of course, this might not be the final moments of the FoX-Men destroying another world to save their own, but what else could cause such a massive and bright blast if not the destruction of an entire universe?

And what's that got to do with Maguire's Spider-Man? Well, maybe it's his reality — aka the Sam Raimi Spider-Verse — that's being annihilated in that scene. If so, it's possible that a giant mega-Incursion involving the MCU, Fantastic Four-Verse, FoX-Men universe, and Raimi-Verse happens at the same time in Doomsday, which results in the FoX-Men proactively destroying the Raimi-Verse because their reality is most at risk of colliding with it.

Should that be the case, it would explain why the Spidey Tracker detects Maguire's Peter Parker instead of Holland's and subsequently backs up my admittedly wild theory.

I wouldn't be shocked if Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker shows up in Avengers: Doomsday

There's the tiniest shred of evidence that I might be onto something, too. During a cute chat with kids on the Celebrity Surprise YouTube channel, Holland was asked if Maguire would appear in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Holland's reply? "He's not in the movie [Spider-Man 4], but... yeah, I... yeah, careful now."

The implication here is that Holland knows something about when and where Maguire's version of the character could show up next. Holland is famous for having loose lips when it comes to MCU spoilers, too, so the fact that he stops himself here before he reveals something is, in itself, revealing.

Does he know that Maguire will feature in Doomsday and/or Secret Wars? I wouldn't be shocked if he does. After all, Holland, Maguire, and Garfield all shared the screen in 2021's Spider-Man: No Way Home. If they still keep in touch, it's plausible they've discussed their possible involvement in one or both forthcoming Avengers films, with Maguire potentially telling them — in the strictest confidence — that he's in Avengers: Doomsday. For the sake of my offbeat theory, I hope that's the case.

In the meantime, learn everything we know so far about Avengers: Doomsday, get the lowdown on Avengers: Secret Wars, and find out how to watch the Marvel movies in order.