Technology

An exposed WP-SHELLSTORM server revealed tools, logs, cloud credentials, and thousands of webshells used in a large website hacking campaign.

The post Exposed Server Reveals 25,000 Compromised WordPress Websites appeared first on TechRepublic.

Learn what Google’s major AI models do, including Gemini, Veo, Imagen, Nano Banana, Gemma, Lyria, Chirp, and Gemini Nano.

The post Google AI Models Explained: Gemini, Veo, Nano Banana & More appeared first on TechRepublic.

Shiny movie, shiny phone.

• AMD's Versal Premium Gen 2 Memory on Package launch formally ends HBM in its adaptive SoC lineup
• The move represents a ~65% bandwidth cut from the discontinued Versal HBM's 840 GB/s, clocking in at just 288 GB/s
• AMD is painting this as a win, citing better availability, a smaller form factor, efficiency wins, and guaranteed memory supply for the next 15 years

The AI boom may have just eaten AMD's own lunch, thanks to an HBM shortage that forced it to resort to lower-bandwidth LPDDR5x for its Versal Premium Gen 2 Memory on Package offerings.

AMD recently announced the Versal Premium Gen 2 Memory-on-Package family, which leverages up to 32GB of LPDDR5x memory directly onto the chip package.

The move, which effectively cuts bandwidth by 65% compared with previous-generation Versal offerings that use HBM, is seen by many as the need of the hour as memory supplies dwindle amid overwhelming demand.

A needs-based move to lower-bandwidth memory

AMD's move is calculated, even if it comes at a significant performance cost to the chip designer. HBM memory supply is strained, and even within AMD's own lineup, its more profitable (and more demanding) Instinct datacenter GPUs have priority for HBMs' current and future iterations.

AMD is therefore both a beneficiary and a casualty of the same AI demand wave that creates opportunities on one end but constrains supply for other segments, such as its consumer-grade hardware, gaming, and SoC divisions.

AMD's Versal lineup stems from Xilinx, which it acquired in 2022. Xilinx shipped its first on-package memory FPGAs, the Virtex UltraScale+ HBM parts, in 2018 with up to 16 GB of first-generation HBM. The follow-up Versal HBM series, a variant of the Versal Premium line, supported up to 32 GB of HBM2e with 840 GB/s bandwidth.

The problem for AMD isn't just sourcing supply for its new Versal FPGAs, something it calls an Adaptive SoC (System-on-Chip), but the fact that these are extremely long-tail products. In other words, support, dedicated supply, and accessories must remain available to consumers for a long time if they are to embrace and continue working with a particular FPGA class, which complicates matters.

AMD discontinued its last-generation Versal lineup in September 2025, citing HBM2E supply constraints rather than any issues with the chips themselves, and offered no alternatives to customers, stating only that "final orders (LTB) for Adaptive SoC parts will be accepted until June 30, 2026, subject to material availability."

The new Versal lineup effectively addresses this gap, stating that it has a 15-year lifecycle and citing "memory longevity" as the reason for its pivot to LPDDR5X.

AMD's move does bring it some other advantages despite the obvious bandwidth chokepoint: LPDDR5X has better availability than HBM for the foreseeable future, and it also operates at industrial temperatures, whereas HBM tends to be stacked in ways that require advanced cooling. Not only does LPDDR5X run cooler, often passively so in most configurations, but thanks to sporting only 4 memory chips onboard, it is over 60% smaller than comparable FPGAs.

The newer FPGAs will be considerably cheaper to manufacture than their HBM alternatives in current market conditions, and with Chinese memory suppliers such as CXMT also eyeing the same market, Versal Gen 2 might be the long-stay that its predecessor was initially intended to be in a rapidly changing market.

• OpenAI has brought big changes to ChatGPT’s desktop app
• ChatGPT and Codex have been merged into a single app
• Users are unhappy with many of the new updates

OpenAI has been running its Codex vibe coding platform as a separate tool from the regular ChatGPT app for a while now, but that’s all changed with the artificial intelligence app’s latest update. The two products have been merged into one ‘super app’ — but many users are deeply disappointed with the move.

If you download ChatGPT today — or update an existing installation — you’ll find an app that looks very different to the one you’re used to, which could be particularly disorienting if you’ve used the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot for some time now.

For example, you’ll now find a new toggle in the top-left corner of the app that lets you switch between ‘ChatGPT Work’ and ‘ChatGPT Codex.’ Instead of containing buttons for your library, projects, and apps, the left-hand sidebar now houses scheduled tasks and plugins. Projects and tasks sit below in their own sections.

What used to be the ChatGPT app still exists, but has been renamed to ChatGPT Classic. The standalone Codex app, meanwhile, has become the main ChatGPT app. Both ChatGPT Work and ChatGPT Codex share plugins, and while both are capable of similar tasks, Codex shows more of the technical details that Work obscures in a bid to be more user-friendly.

An unpopular moveThe old ChatGPT app showing projects and a long list of recent conversations in the left-hand sidebar.FutureThe new ChatGPT with hidden recent chats and an empty list of projects. Where did they go?Future

Unfortunately for OpenAI, this major change has not gone down too well. Apple pundit John Gruber, for example — long a fan of OpenAI’s decision to make ChatGPT a native Mac app that conformed to macOS conventions — described the change as “the day OpenAI f*cked up the ChatGPT Mac app.” He also pointed out that while the old ChatGPT app weighed in at a lightweight 159MB, the new edition has ballooned to 1.5GB.

I’m certainly not a fan of the new-look ChatGPT either. I have little interest in Codex and use ChatGPT to work through problems, often revisiting old conversations to add new details. Yet in the new app, your recent conversations are hidden and require many more clicks to access. Only your five most recent threads are shown, and to access more you have to click Chat > See All to uncover them. Previously, they were right there waiting for you in the sidebar.

As well as that, my existing projects seem to have totally disappeared. I only had a couple, but they were related to a small-claims case I was involved in, so seeing all my relevant threads scattered and disorganized in a long list of chats is a major pain. For anyone juggling a plethora of projects, this change could be disastrous. And what’s more, Custom GPTs also seem to have vanished into the ether.

I know I’m not alone in my disappointment. Over on Reddit, OpenAI’s decision has not been well received, with user powprodukt summing up the mood by saying: “ChatGPT projects and custom GPTs are the heart of why I use that app. Without these features there is no feature parity.”

Other users took issue with the new user interface, with Kaotic987 exclaiming “Christ almighty, this is so bad!” Eriane, meanwhile, cynically suggested that OpenAI “vibe coded everything without testing it.”

Whether you even get ChatGPT Classic seems up for debate. It’s available for Windows in the Microsoft Store and can be downloaded separately from the new ChatGPT app. On macOS, however, I updated to the new edition and ChatGPT Classic is nowhere to be seen. Luckily, I backed up the old app before updating, so I can still access it, which might be the way to go if you’re a Mac user and don’t want to lose all your projects and custom GPTs.

The move to combine ChatGPT and Codex into a form of ‘super app’ has already alienated plenty of users, myself included. From the questionable user interface to the absence of projects and custom GPTs, there’s a lot for OpenAI to work on before it can get the app back to a good place.

In a complaint filed Friday, Apple accuses OpenAI of illegally accessing information about unannounced products.

• Xiaomi has launched its first NAS, a dual-base storage solution that comes in three different storage capacities
• The Xiaomi Smart Storage was not planned but was brought into being by customers eager to own one after a mistaken label indicated one was being designed
• The Xiaomi Smart Storage device attracted a reported 30,000 net orders within its first hour of crowdsourcing

Network-attached storage seems to be the new frontier for Chinese heavyweight Xiaomi, which has come a long way from its roots as a software developer focused on a heavily modified version of Android.

While many of Xiaomi's moves when it comes to investments and product lineups often surprise others given the breadth of its offerings, many of which are unrelated to each other, a NAS drive feels like a relatively timid product line to focus on.

The product sees Xiaomi directly compete in an industry that was previously dominated by Synology, QNAP, Ugreen, and Huawei in the region, with users essentially asking it to bring its plans to fruition.

A 'happy accident' for Xiaomi fans

The firm, whose catalog already spans a Nürburgring-bothering electric supercar, rice cookers, nose-hair trimmers, electric scooters, and the phones that started it all seems to have stumbled upon the possibility of having its own NAS, now known as 'Xiaomi Smart Storage', purely by accident.

The idea surfaced by accident in May 2025, when a schematic labeled "10G NAS" appeared in promotional imagery for the company's networking-switch range. Chinese consumers, however, reacted loudly enough that Xiaomi's ecosystem general manager, Chen Bo, publicly committed to building one, delivering a finished, crowd-funded option roughly 13 months later.

Xiaomi's crowd-funded NAS offering comes in 3 different sizes or configurations: the entry-level 4TB SKU (¥ 2299), the mid-range 8TB SKU (¥ 2899), and a top-of-the-line 16TB SKU (¥ 4699). All of these options include the dual-bay Xiaomi Smart Storage with two equal-sized hard drives.

The NAS comes fairly well-equipped, offering USB 3.0, HDMI, a 2.5-gigabit Ethernet port, and support for both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA drives, and capable hardware reportedly under the hood (a Realtek RTD1619B, a quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 clocked to 1.7GHz, with 2GB of DDR3L and 8GB of eMMC).

Xiaomi seems equally committed on the software side of the spectrum; It has also published a companion app on both Apple's App Store and Google Play, while offering support for its Mi Home ecosystem application from the get-go.

This has allowed the company to rack up an impressive 30,000 orders in the first hour the NAS drive went live on its crowdfunding site as consumers buy into Xiaomi's brand value and ecosystem promise alike, even as storage prices continue to head up thanks to AI-centric demand.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for July 11, No. 1,848.

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for July 11, No. 1,126.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for July 11 No. 860.

• Check Point Research reports education faced 4,816 weekly ransomware attacks in June 2026, up 16% YoY, keeping it the most targeted sector
• Risks stem from open networks, thin budgets, and reckless GenAI use, with 1 in 26 enterprise prompts leaking sensitive data and 85% of orgs affected
• Latin America saw the sharpest rise (27%), while government and telecoms also absorbed heavy volumes, showing attackers’ focus on high‑exposure industries

Every week in June, organizations in the education industry around the world faced 4,816 ransomware attacks. This is up 16% compared to the same month last year, and means this sector remains the most popular target among cybercriminals.

This is according to “A New Ransomware Leader Emerges as June 2026 Attack Volumes Climb Worldwide”, a new in-depth report on the state of ransomware, published by security experts Check Point Research (CPR).

As per CPR’s new paper, education is a popular target because of “open campus networks, constant device turnover, and thin security budgets”. In other words, it’s a low-hanging fruit, especially compared to other industries like government, technology, or healthcare. But these are not the only reasons why hackers target education more than any other industry. It is also because of how employees behave which, by using GenAI recklessly, substantially increases security risk.

Latin America bearing the brunt

“It is about what employees place into prompts: customer records, internal documents, infrastructure details, legal material, financial data, or HR information that may be copied into public or unmanaged GenAI tools,” CPR explains.

“1 in every 26 GenAI prompts from enterprise networks carried a high risk of sensitive data leakage, equal to a global exposure rate of 3.9%,” the paper reads. “85% of organizations that regularly use GenAI tools were affected by high-risk prompt activity,” and “a further 27% of prompts contained potentially sensitive information.

This mostly affects organizations in Latin America who reported, on average, 3,501 weekly attacks (up 27% compared to June 2025). APAC followed at 3,060 (up 5%), and Africa posted 3,008 weekly attacks (down 9%).

Besides education, ransomware operators are also targeting government institutions (2,836 weekly attacks - up 5%), and telecoms (2,835 weekly attacks - up 13%).

“Together these three sectors continue to absorb a disproportionate share of global attack volume, a pattern that has held steady across recent months even as the specific numbers shift,” CPR concluded.

If you're looking to hop on the latest trend, there are some things you should know first.

Browser capabilities will still exist, though, in OpenAI's desktop AI.

• The K100XR can travel at over 220 mph (354 km/h) and has a range of 1.9 miles (3 km)
• Nordic Air Defense has demonstrated the K100XR engaging in a live interception
• Three K100XR interceptors cost less than a single Stinger missile

Drone warfare has presented numerous challenges over the past few years, mostly demonstrated in Ukraine’s defense and retaliation against the Russian invasion, a prolonged conflict that started in 2022. Stopping drone attacks has proved difficult, but that could be about to change.

Defense startup Nordic Air Defense, along with its partners, have unveiled the K100XR, a portable counter-drone system that can intercept and destroy attack drones, such as the Iranian-built devices employed by Russia.

Recently the subject of a live “Demo Day,” the Nordic Air Defense has taken the K100XR beyond the conceptual stage and demonstrated the drone – which can travel faster than a Black Hawk attack helicopter – before a media audience.

Counter-drone vs. Stinger missile

Working in partnership with Volvo Defense, as well as Polish firms WB Group and Tantalit, Nordic Air Defense has taken the K100XR from concept – as revealed in 2025 – to a working prototype, capable of reaching speeds over 220 mph (354 km/h) which makes it faster than the 183 mph (294 km/h) Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter.

But the speed that this compact 12-inch long drone offers as a response to drone attacks is only part of the story. It can maintain its general position for over 20 minutes, thanks to the fact it relies on not jet, but propeller-based propulsion. The K100XR can reach altitudes of 3,300 feet (just over 1 km) and uses AI to identify and track enemy drones, completely autonomously.

As the AI is embedded within the drone, once it is launched the K100XR requires no continuous input from a human controller. Nordic Air Defense claim that three of these counter-drone devices costs less than a single Stinger missile, which typically costs around $480,000.

Can the K100XR realistically play a part in drone defense?

Following the event, the company issued a statement online, noting “The K100XR is designed to meet that challenge by combining high speed, advanced maneuverability, autonomy and a low cost per kill. Demo Day marked an important milestone for Nordic Air Defence.”

Several theaters are opening up that rely on this technology, from the Iranian crisis in the Middle East to NATO’s response to Russia’s expansionism and belligerence on the EU border (which may explain the interest of Nordic Air Defense’s Polish partners). These largely use low cost Iranian Shahed-type drones, essentially single-use kamikaze devices loaded with explosive payloads. Nordic Air Defense’s Demo Day illustrated how the K100XR can deal with these threats, which makes the “low cost per kill” factor significant.

While the scalability of the operation remains unknown, the cost of K100XR drones versus a Stinger is a clear advantage and will likely be a major deciding factor in whether it can prove a more effective deterrent or response to drone warfare.

Via Defense Blog

The WeWard app encourages movement before you get your TikTok fix.

Soarin' has taken flight over California and across the world. Now, to celebrate the USA's 250th, it's visiting landmarks from sea to shining sea.

iOS 27 beta code hints that Lucid and Xiaomi vehicles could gain Apple Car Key support, though compatible models and launch timing remain unconfirmed.

The post Apple Wallet Car Key Support Could Expand to Lucid, Xiaomi Vehicles appeared first on TechRepublic.

• Report claims China's AI consumption is now over 100 trillion tokens per day, up from 100 billion in justtwo years
• Enterprise customers are increasingly paying per usage, not per seat
• General consumers will likely keep their fixed, monthly pricing

AI token consumption in China has increased "more than 1,000-fold" in around two years, with National Bureau of Statistics data claiming daily token consumption rose from 100 billion at the start of 2024 to 100 trillion by the end of 2025.

By March 2026, China was consuming around 140 trillion tokens per day, which SCMP illustrates as 100,000 tokens per person per day if every single Chinese citizen, including children, pensioners and non-workers, were to use AI.

"Today, the token economy is emerging," Yin Hao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a recent Beijing conference, the South China Morning Post reported.

AI consumption-based pricing could replace per-seat pricing

With users consuming more tokens than ever before, AI providers are now under pressure to cover the growing costs. Industry experts like Hao now believe that token-based pricing could soon replace traditional subscription models.

This could see subscribers paying a fee based on how much AI they actually use, rather than paying a fixed monthly charge per user.

AI providers globally are also increasingly recognizing growing token consumption and are adapting their pricing strategies to match, including OpenAI and Anthropic. Others, like Zendesk, are charging per meaningful outcome rather than per seat or per token.

However, for now, these pricing shifts are primarily affecting enterprise customers consuming huge amounts of tokens. General consumers logging into their preferred chatbot, like ChatGPT or Gemini, are unlikely to be affected as compute becomes cheaper.

Anthropic’s AI-run espionage report shows why enterprises need stronger governance for AI agents, MCP connectors, and enterprise data access.

The post Claude Code Espionage Campaign Exposes a New Enterprise AI Risk appeared first on TechRepublic.

Despite a step forward, don't expect the next level of TV panels to be widely marketed anytime soon.