TechRadar News

• Nvidia reprotedly weighing up $250 billion in financing for OpenAI's giant Ohio AI data center
• Total project costs could surpass $500 billion after infrastructure and hardware investments
• OpenAI seeks greater control over computing infrastructure through dedicated Ohio facilities

Nvidia is reportedly negotiating financing guarantees worth roughly $250 billion for a massive OpenAI data center project.

Reporting from The Wall Street Journal claims the financing would help OpenAI secure a lease for the proposed 10-gigawatt facility in southern Ohio.

The site is being developed by SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank, under a separate infrastructure arrangement.

Financing plan could support one of the world's biggest AI facilities

The guarantee would cover the data center lease and debt financing, though it would exclude the Nvidia chips housed inside the facility.

Nvidia is separately discussing financing arrangements for OpenAI's chip purchases, which could total up to $350 billion.

The combined costs for the entire project, including chips, are expected to exceed $500 billion once construction concludes.

The first phase alone is expected to finish by 2028, delivering around 800 megawatts of the planned 10 gigawatts.

The project's power supply will be controlled by the U.S. government and funded separately through a trade arrangement with Japan. That arrangement ties into Tokyo's pledge to invest $33 billion in a natural gas plant.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reportedly plays a role in deciding which companies gain access to that power.

OpenAI's financial position complicates the infrastructure push

OpenAI is currently valued at $852 billion, ranking among the most valuable private companies globally despite remaining unprofitable.

According to shareholder documents, the company posted a net loss of roughly $21.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone.

Stripping out a non-cash charge tied to revaluing investor warrants leaves an operating loss near $9.3 billion for that quarter.

Internal projections reportedly show OpenAI expects to lose around $14 billion across 2026, with cumulative losses reaching $44 billion by 2028.

That lack of profitability raises questions about how the company intends to fund its numerous multi-billion-dollar infrastructure commitments going forward.

Nvidia's backing would reportedly help reassure lenders that the financing vehicles underpinning the project carry sufficient institutional support.

For OpenAI, securing the deal would mark a shift toward owning infrastructure rather than renting capacity from Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle.

On Nvidia’s part, the deal would help guarantee sustained chip demand well into the coming years.

OpenAI has reportedly held talks for weeks about leasing the Ohio site directly, while Anthropic, Microsoft and Google have also shown interest.

The proposed facility would rank among the largest AI data center developments planned anywhere in the world, but its financing structure combines private investment, government-backed infrastructure and long-term computing demand across multiple funding sources.

At the moment, commercial agreements between the companies involved have not been finalized.

With Spider-Man: Brand New Day in theaters and bringing a new chapter of Peter Parker’s story to the big screen, I got an early look at the wave of toys, collectibles, apparel, and gear arriving alongside the film during a special preview event near Silvercup Studios in Queens.

Arriving at the venue, we quickly saw Spider-Man leave his mark on the studio's iconic exterior, thanks to a projection show in which the hero saved the day and then magically appeared, as if he'd dropped off some of the new products associated with the next chapter.

And there’s a lot to choose from. Whether you’re looking to upgrade your own Marvel collection, searching for a gift for the Spider-Man fan in your life, or simply want to bring a little more web-slinging action home, the latest lineup has something for nearly every kind of fan.

From Lego sets that let you recreate the iconic Daily Bugle and detailed masks that bring the hero’s look to life to mystery figures, collectible trading cards, and apparel inspired by the film, the Spider-Man: Brand New Day merch collection covers plenty of ground.

Here are some of the best Spider-Man: Brand New Day toys, collectibles, and gifts worth checking out.

Spider-Man Brand New Day must-haves

Lego Marvel Spider-Man Vs Hulk Epic Clash set

Lego Marvel Spider-Man Prison Transport Chase set

Lego Marvel Spider-Man Hero Figure

Lego Marvel Spider-Man vs. Mysterio: The Daily Bugle

Hot Wheels Spider-Man & Hulk Smash Down Playset

Marvel Spider-Man: Brand New Day Wisecrackin’ Glow Mask

Marvel Hulk Gamma Smash Fists

Marvel Spider-Man: Brand New Day Titan Series Action Figure

Marvel Spider-Man Vintage Spider T-Shirt

Loungefly Marvel Spider-Man Classic Bag

Marvel Spider-Man: Brand New Day Nerf Web Strike Blaster

Marvel Spider-Man: Brand New Day Savage Hulk Talk’n Electronic Mask

Magic The Gathering Marvel Spider-Man

Marvel Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PS5

FunkoPop! Spider-Man Brand New Day

Spirit Jersey Marvel Spider-Man a Brand New Day Mineral Wash

Sony Marvel's Spider-Man 2 for PS5

The rise of generative AI has undoubtedly lowered the barrier to entry for creating film, with individuals as well as massive production companies leveraging the technology in different ways. But many, including Academy Award-winning filmmaker James Cameron, have insisted that generative AI is no substitute for human actors.

Lights, camera, action

Speaking to CBS ahead of the official release of 'Avatar: Fire and Ash', Cameron described his horror at encountering AI acting.

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.

Having enjoyed a long and successful career in Hollywood, the filmmaker has dedicated the latter period of his career to the Avatar franchise.

This is primarily a means to explore innovation and the introduction of technology in cinema, with Avatar a torchbearer for 3D and its sequel extending it with new camera and performance-capture innovations.

One area that he's categorically unenthused about, however, is AI — and the use of generative AI as a substitute for human creative input, in particular.

Bad robot

After praising the motion-capture innovations in his film during the interview, he then opined on the "other end of the spectrum", expressing his disdain for the way that generative AI threatens to supplant creative input.

He described the notion of generating actors and performances simply using a text prompt as "horrifying" and said it's the opposite of what he was hoping to achieve with the technology being developed for the 'Avatar' film series.

Cameron is also the director of Stability AI, a company that delivers professional-grade generative AI tools for content creators. However, Cameron has insisted that generative AI can never create something completely original, based on the underlying transformer-based architecture that powers these systems.

Mild spoilers for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 2 ahead.

Even with episode 2 of The Big Bang Theory spinoff bringing back Penny (Kaley Cuoco) and film and TV's Christine Baranski in cameo roles, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe has had a rough week of press.

With the title card for the new HBO Max show uploaded to X/Twitter last week, fans wasted no time branding the cartoonish explosion as "AI slop."

AI slop aside, this is the worst attempt I’ve seen at a show trying to be meta. https://t.co/UzZJkpAWKSJuly 27, 2026

"Has everyone just forgotten things are supposed to be pleasant to look at?" one fan replied, with a second adding, "Crazy to build the entire intro around saying 'Don’t skip! Appreciate the work we put into this!' when it’s so clearly AI slop."

As of writing, there has currently been no comment on whether AI was used to help make the title sequence, but now that episode 2 has been released, they will change with each episode.

Regardless, I can't help wondering if the AI-look (real or not) is distracting us from what's really going on in the titles: the fact that there will be a hidden message somewhere along the way.

'The point of the titles was to entertain'

"Yeah, there was," Chuck Lorre tells me when I tell him that I've been psyching myself out over a potential hidden message in the changing Stuart Fails to Save the Universe titles.

"The point of the titles was to entertain and cause more laughter... not to dazzle anyone with our extraordinary ability to do special effects. They had to be worth viewing."

"The only way to not skip the titles was to make each title have a different comic premise. Danny Elfman even went ahead and changed the theme song every week."

"It's great that you had that reaction... that's what we want," Zak Penn adds.

Does Lorre's remark mean that AI definitely wasn't used? It's difficult to say. But the title card script is slowly gaslighting us into believing we're missing something — and without giving too much away, that's going to become more obvious as the weeks go by.

Is there more than meets the eye to the titles that even I haven't spotted? The answer is probably yes. But only Lorre, Penn and Bill Prady know for definite, and I'm not entirely sure if their responses were simply trying to catch me out again.

For some, peak simulation is slipping their Wii remote into a plastic steering wheel; for others, it's outfitting their controllers, chair, and body with haptics to feel the action; and for the most avid enthusiasts, it involves creating a perfectly accurate setup to mimic the real controls of a train, plane, or automobile they’re virtually piloting.

That’s the camp Christopher Mitchell falls into. On his blog, he details the painstaking efforts he has gone to create his dream UK Class 80x passenger train simulator — which includes a real dashboard and components used by the vehicle he’s reconstructing, and custom-made parts that as closely as possible match what you’d expect to see in one of these UK trains’ cabins.

I’m not the biggest simulator nerd — it’s an area of gaming I’ve dabbled with but never been enraptured by — but after a colleague shared Mitchell’s blog with us where he details the over three-year-long journey he has been on to construct this simulator, I can’t help but be impressed by the dedication and beauty of his creation.

I mean, c’mon, look at this side-by-side comparison of a Class 80x cabin and what Mitchell has produced.

(Image credit: Christopher Mitchell / DCA Design)

There’s a delightfully analog nature to this simulator which supplements its charm — juxtaposing the racing sims I’ll sometimes see in my feed with half a dozen giant monitors wrapping around the user’s head and pristine cockpits which make you feel every trick and turn your simulated flight takes.

Ready to build your own?

If you’ve ridden on an Avanti West Coast, Great Western Railway, or London North Eastern Railway service (plus a few other operators) in the last couple of years, it has likely been on a UK Class 80x passenger train.

Clearly Mitchell has a passion for this class — evidenced by his efforts to replicate them as accurately as possible — but some online despise their very existence, ranting about their narrow carriages, terrible suspension, and thin seats.

Once Mitchell has completed the dashboard, perhaps his next job should be to mount it and his chair on a platform that will mimic the Class 80X’s much-hated shaking.

If you’re keen to mimic Mitchell’s setup, you’ll, of course, need to also copy his dedication, as this isn’t a train simulator you can just buy. Though with his blog as your guide, you may find you can build your very own hyper-realistic UK Class 80x passenger train simulator in no time.

Liene PixCut S1 : 30-second review

The Liene PixCut S1 is a 4x6 photo printer and sticker creator in one, at a size that will sit perfectly on your desk or shelf. The printer itself works solely through an app connection from your mobile device, so there’s no need to plug it into a machine, with all files transferring via Bluetooth.

What marks the S1 out is that it utilises a dye sublimation print process, laying a yellow, Magenta and cyan layer with a protective laminate over the top that gives a professional clarity. The printer is designed as a dual-use machine, enabling photo prints but also producing stickers, again with that dye-sub process and lamination that gives the stickers a look and quality that matches those that have been professionally produced.

Unlike most printers, there's a built-in cutter that then cuts out the stickers once printed, ready for use. Depending on the complexity of the sticker shape, it takes around 2-3 minutes per 4x7 sheet.

Different paper stocks are used for the two different processes, but aside from the material, the same hardware and carrier are used. The system has also been designed to be easily packable, so if this is an occasional-use item, it will pack away easily, while if you’re using it every day for your business, the design and quality are simple, stylish, and incredibly well made. It's not the best photo printer we've tested, but for a compact, easy-to-use option, it ticks a lot of boxes.

The only real issue is the software and the free templates that ship with it. Everything runs through the Liene app on iOS or Android, and there's no desktop option at all, which, if you’re used to designing on a computer, does feel like a real sticking point.

While there is plenty you can do within the app, it does feel a little limited; however, you can work around this by laying out stickers at the correct print size in Photoshop or InDesign, especially to ensure it cuts a straight edge on some designs. The app also ships with what feels like hundreds of sticker templates, but those templates are craft-themed rather than more business-focused, although there are a few.

The materials are all proprietary; however, packs of paper and the ink cartridges are well priced with 4 x 7in sticker and 4 x 6in photo sizes. If you’re looking to create short runs of stickers, especially for gifts, labels, and event stock or postage, this is a genuinely excellent machine. For volume production or larger formats, you’ll need to take a step up to something bigger.

Liene PixCut S1 : Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $299.99 / £349.99
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Directly from Liene, Amazon, and other online retailers

The PixCut S1 starter kit is $299.99 and is available directly from Liene and Amazon.com, with a larger Inspire Kit including 36 photo and 144 sticker sheets available for $346.99 on Amazon US. UK pricing is £350 from Amazon.co.uk. I'm also seeing available from other online retailers including Best Buy.

Paper, Ink and occasionally cutting blades are another cost to factor in, with 72 sticker sheets and two cartridges at $42.99. The Photo paper is also reasonable at $24.99 for 40 sheets with an ink cartridge and $36.99 for 80 sheets and two ink cartridges. Each cartridge enables around 36 prints.

• Value: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Liene PixCut S1: Specs

Printing: four-layer D2T2 thermal dye sublimation with laminate pass
Resolution: 300 x 300dpi, 256 shades per colour
Sticker media: 4 x 7in (printable 3.9 x 6.7in)
Photo media: 4 x 6in (printable 3.94 x 5.83in)
Supported files: JPEG, PNG, HEIC
Print speed: 59 seconds quoted; approx. 2 minutes print, laminate and cut
Cutting: kiss cut, up to 2in/sec single axis, 45-degree carbide blade
Blade life: approx. 800 sticker sheets (Liene figure)
Capacity: 36 sheets
Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0, up to three paired devices
Control: Liene app (iOS and Android only; no desktop support)
Power: up to 60W printing, 1.2W sleep
Size / weight: 281 x 196 x 104.5mm / 2.9kg

Liene PixCut S1: Design

The PixCut S1 is a relatively compact white rectangular box with a black printing and cutting bay across the front, and measures 281 x 196 x 104.5 mm. Hence, it's smaller than a normal photo printer or craft cutter, which is the usual approach. The small footprint of the machine means that it can essentially sit on your desk or anywhere it will fit, and there’s a power point to it.

Unlike most printer and cutter machines, the PixCut S1 only operates through the iOS or Android app, which also means that if you want to take it out on site, then you can, as long as you have AC power to plug it into.

When it comes to the weight, at 6.4lb / 2.9kg, it doesn’t weigh much, so carrying it between rooms or out to an event, as long as there's mains power, or you have a small power station, isn’t an issue. In this review, I matched it with the DJI Power 1000 V2, which worked perfectly when no mains power was available.

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

When the printer arrives, there is a small setup procedure with the loading of the ink cartridge on the side and paper into the loadable carrier. What I liked here was that the paper tray, which takes either the sticker paper or the photo paper, can be stored neatly in the machine. Then when it’s needed, you pull it out from its storage slot at the back top, and load it into the back lower slot.

When the printer arrives, the cutting head is already pre-installed at the front of the machine with a neat magnetic cover that covers the mechanism. When the print or print and cut process is started, the paper is drawn through the system with each colour layer applied, then laminated before the cutter is put into action; it’s a relatively fast process.

Through the process, the prints tended to go through the system in around a minute and a half, while stickers would take anything from 2 minutes to 3.5 minutes depending on the complexity.

• Design: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Liene PixCut S1: Features

Unlike many inkjet or laser colour printers, the S1 utilises another technology that uses a four-pass dye-sublimation process that gives the output its photo processing lab quality.

Essentially, three colour layers are laid down onto the paper, one after the other, followed by a protective laminate pass. This lamination protects the photos, but also highlights why the finished stickers feel commercial rather than homemade, as they do if you use specialist paper in an inkjet.

Alongside the printing ability is the cutter, which, after the printing process, goes into action with what is known as a kiss cut, going through the sticker material but leaving the backing sheet intact. This means that the sheet stays flat and the stickers peel off individually, just as you would expect from a set of commercial stickers. The only difference between the two uses is the paper you put into the caddy and insert into the machine. With the slightly different size of the photo compared with the sticker paper, the machine automatically switches modes based on the paper installed.

Printing photos of stickers is all handled by the Liene Photo App, which is available for iOS and Android devices; however, unusually, there is no desktop version for Mac or PC.

In the app you can use the free sticker templates, most of which are gimmicks and more aimed at the craft market than business, although if you spend some time going through there are a few that are worth a look. In this test, I generally opted to use designs that I already owned, or downloaded additional sticker or logo examples from a stock website.

Once those images are downloaded and laid out onto the correct document size, they can then be loaded into the App, as this is all through the mobile device; you need to make sure these are uploaded to your photo app. Once in place, there are quick edit features such as automatic image recognition and background removal, and the cutting path around the subjects is automatically assigned; the process of getting the stickers correctly sized and positioned is actually extremely easy and once you note a few quirks which I’ll highlight in the performance section, everything from there on in is easy enough.

Once the print is complete, the border the cutter runs around each of the stickers and the size of that border is adjustable; by default, this is 1.4mm, and you can reduce that down to zero or below for a borderless cut, which also has a direct bearing on how tightly you can lay designs out on a sheet.

The app then does the rest, and if you want to add more to the designs, then there are additional templates, text tools, shape cutting, puzzles, labels and passport-photo layouts.

The connection method to the machine is through Bluetooth 5.0, and this enables you to connect up to three devices, which is something else that should appeal if you’re using this at events.

The paper cartridge will take up to 36 sheets, the ink cartridges last for 36, and Liene rates the blade at around 800 sticker sheets depending on how complex your cuts are.

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

• Features: 4 / 5

Liene PixCut S1: Performance

Getting started with the printer and cutter is fast enough, and once the ink cartridge is slotted into the side, the paper of choice, either sticker or photo, is loaded into the cartridge and slotted into the base of the machine; you’re set to connect to the app.

The power button on the side needs to be held down for a few seconds to start up, then you can run through the connection option in the App interface. The in-app connection didn’t work; however, there's a direct link button to your Bluetooth settings from within the app that takes you through to the phone's settings, where the printer appears so you can connect. Once connected, pop back to the app and you can get started.

The app interface is quite busy with AI generative options for photos and craft stickers, and trying these out, they're frankly a bit run of the mill and gimmicky. Really, this machine is a superb piece of hardware that is equally suited to craft and business, but the craft side seems to win out with tacky template images and AI photos.

As ever, an issue with the interactive, as with so many others, is the fact that it’s busy; however, at the bottom of the screen there are the Sticker, Label, Photo, Project and Me options. The Sticker section enables you to choose from all sorts of sticker templates, or click the Canvas button at the top, and you can import your own, which for the most part is what I chose to do through this review.

The next option along ‘Labels’ is a little more useful and may appeal to the artisan business owner, but again the designs are a little simplistic and childlike without the refined style you’d want for a serious business. Likewise, the photo option gives you the generative AI options, but again loading your own is definitely the best approach.

When you create your own sticker, for example, you can import your designs or use the generative AI options, including AI Image or Text to Image, which is actually quite useful, although again the AI model does appear to have been trained on the light cartoony rather than serious business.

That aside and falling back to your designs and images that you have created, the workflow once you’ve run through it a few times is straightforward, and the resulting prints for both Photo and stickers are excellent.

It is worth highlighting that the papers used for the two different types are different, and there is only a single caddy, and it doesn’t look like you can buy an additional caddy, which is a shame. This essentially means that you have to remove the photo paper and then install the sticker paper. I would have loved the design to have featured two caddies so that you only ever have to switch the caddies. It would also mean that the paper of either type would stay protected.

The print quality for both stickers and photos is excellent, with the colours looking great, being rich and well saturated, although a little over-sharpened, and I couldn’t work out a way to reduce the option. The other point about the photos is the laminate finish, which just gives a high-quality look. Likewise for the stickers, these are essentially commercial quality and ones that you could put on a product and charge for. Against shop-bought stickers, I genuinely couldn't tell which was which, and I ran some of the template sticker images through the machine, and these would be great for small production runs to attach to product.

In the app, there are a few processing quirks that are worth knowing about. As mentioned somewhere in the software, there's a little over-sharpening applied, which you notice on images with fine detail or soft edges. It isn't too bad, and for graphic artwork and logos it's invisible or even flattering, but for photographic stickers it's worth softening your source image slightly before importing to compensate.

This software is where I found myself experimenting with settings at first, but ultimately I found it easy to navigate. While the app does a lot, its logic isn't always where you'd expect. My working method went as follows: lay the whole design out in Photoshop, export it, then import into the app and let the machine handle print, laminate and cut. That skips most of the app's editing tools.

The most useful thing I learned in this test was about labels with white in the design. When making warning labels, I wanted clean, straight edges. Still, the cutter follows the colour rather than the sheet, so wherever white met the outer edge, the white background wandered, weaving in and out around the coloured areas instead of cutting the straight border I'd designed.

The app lets you set the border distance the cutter leaves around a sticker. Still, not the shape of the path itself, and the shape is the problem. What worked instead was adding a background colour behind the design, giving the software a defined edge to detect, at which point it cut the straight border perfectly. It's a simple workaround once you know it, but it's the difference between usable labels and wasted sheets.

Layout spacing is the other thing to get right before you print. By default, the cutter leaves a 1.4mm border around each sticker, so when you're laying several out on a sheet, they need room; otherwise they'll connect through the cut. I found 4mm between stickers is the minimum that works reliably, and 5mm is more comfortable. Any closer and the borders start to interfere with each other.

That border distance, however, is adjustable, though, and it's worth knowing you can take it all the way down to zero, which cuts right up against the edge of the sticker itself. Set it that tight, and you can pack the designs much closer together on the sheet, maximising the value you get from each sheet, especially when you're trying to get as many stickers out of it as possible.

Through the test, photos generally took a minute and a half to print with 36 prints per ink cartridge and a 100% success rate. When it came to stickers, again it’s 36 sheets per cartridge, but print times take between one and a half minutes to three and a half minutes depending on the complexity.

• Performance: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Liene PixCut S1: Final verdict

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

The Liene PixCut S1 is a surprising piece of kit and over the last month has been especially useful in the studio. At first, the photo printing that was reminiscent of the process sizes that we used to get with 35mm film really appealed, and once I worked out that a little softening was required for the image, the results of the pictures were outstanding.

The colours are bright and vibrant, and this is a crowd-pleasing photo printer that’s perfect for the home and workplace. It’s also smaller and cheaper than dedicated photo printers, which are hugely expensive to keep running.

But then the stickers started, and this is where this machine really comes into its own. It started with TechRadar Pro stickers and quickly progressed. Due to the laminate quality, I was able to start labelling all my kit, something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, with my logo and QR details.

I then showed a friend who runs a local 3D print business, and a week later they have one running at shows and events creating custom stickers, and all postage product now gets a set of stickers in the box.

The stocker quality is excellent, and for small businesses this is a superb short run option and a great way to personalise your products or to give out freebies.

Initially I was a little disappointed that this was a mobile app-only product, but once I worked out a few workarounds the workflow was fine, the only real issue being the time it takes for Apple Photos to update so I could pull down the next design.

If you want to make stickers or print out high-quality 4 x 6 prints, then the Liene PixCut S1 is a superb option.

Should I buy the Liene PixCut S1?

Value

The price reflects the quality, but it is expensive, and then you have the consumables on top

4

Design

Compact and will easily sit on a shelf if needed, also small enough to take to events if there’s mains power

4.5

Features

Decent 4 x 6 photo prints and sticker sets; would be good if there was an additional paper carrier as standard

4.5

Performance

Commercial-quality stickers and excellent colour; slight oversharpening and some workarounds are needed for cutting paths

4.5

Overall

A clever piece of kit that blends photo and sticker printing into one neat machine. 

4.5

Buy it if...

You sell small batches of stickers.

For events, as an online retailer, in the classroom or for personalised gifts, the S1 produces commercial-looking stickers without needing separate printing and cutting machines. 

You want the process handled for you.

Automatic background removal and cut-path generation mean no blade pressure settings, no alignment marks and no desktop cutting software to learn, which makes things so much easier.

Don't buy it if...

You design on a computer.

There's no desktop application at all, so everything goes through the phone or tablet app; this is the biggest issue that I found. 

You need volume

The 4 x 7 in maximum sheet size and there’s no option for third-party media.

For more printing picks, we've tested the best home printers you can get.

• Amazon links multiple software supply chain attacks to one North Korean hacking group
• Generative AI enables convincing malware hidden inside trusted software packages at scale
• Attackers manipulated trusted maintainers before distributing compromised software updates to developers

Amazon has linked a North Korean threat actor to several recent compromises of popular NPM software libraries.

A report from Amazon Threat Intelligence connected recent breaches of the axios, debug, chalk, and typo-crypto packages to a single group.

That group is tracked across the security community under names including SAPPHIRE SLEET, STARDUST CHOLLIMA, BlueNoroff, CageyChameleon, and Alluring Pisces.

Attackers exploit trust to compromise widely used packages

In March 2025, the threat actor compromised the typo-crypto package through a trojanized file disguised as a legitimate dependency.

The same group later compromised debug and chalk in September 2025, then axios in March 2026.

Axios alone carries more than 100 million weekly downloads, making it one of the most widely used JavaScript libraries in existence today.

In each case, attackers socially engineered a trusted maintainer before publishing a malicious software update.

Any organization that automatically pulled the latest version of these packages received the compromised code without warning.

Wiz Research reported that roughly 1 in 10 cloud environments were affected within a two-hour window during the debug and chalk incident.

Amazon assesses the pattern as financially motivated, since compromising a small number of popular packages grants access to thousands of downstream environments simultaneously, far more efficient than targeting organizations individually.

Attackers have also shifted from single malicious packages toward fragmenting workflows across several ordinary-looking dependencies published separately over time.

Generative AI introduces new risks for automated code review

Generative AI now allows attackers to produce coherent, well-commented code alongside convincing documentation and fabricated maintainer identities.

Because each malicious variant can be mutated, renamed, and re-encrypted, no single stable signature remains available for an antivirus or other detection tools to match.

Attackers have also begun exploiting slopsquatting, registering package names that AI coding assistants hallucinate during ordinary development work.

When a hallucinated package gets recommended by a coding assistant, an attacker who registered that name in advance can deliver malware directly.

Amazon warns that malicious packages are increasingly built to fool automated AI reviewers rather than only human analysts scanning code manually.

Hidden instructions embedded in comments, README files, or docstrings could manipulate AI scanners into approving dangerous code as safe.

Amazon Threat Intelligence and Amazon Inspector have observed that attackers split malicious workflows across multiple packages that each appear harmless individually.

Their malicious behaviour only emerges once separate components combine in the intended sequence during execution.

Amazon has invested in Amazon Inspector and its broader threat intelligence programs to help detect these evolving supply chain risks.

The company also joined the Linux Foundation's Akrites initiative and contributed $12.5 million toward defending open-source software from AI-driven attacks.

The shift toward AI-generated malware suggests traditional pattern matching alone may become less effective against evolving threats, including future ransomware campaigns using similar techniques.

Back-to-school shopping doesn't have to mean spending hundreds of dollars on a new laptop. Sometimes it's the smaller accessories that make the biggest difference to how comfortably and efficiently you work every day.

A few well-chosen gadgets can improve ergonomics, expand connectivity, keep your devices charged, and make online meetings less frustrating.

From laptop stands and docking stations to webcams, wireless mice, foldable keyboards, and magnetic power banks, my top 6 affordable upgrades offer excellent value without putting a serious dent in your back-to-school budget.

My top 6 back-to-school essentials

The Logitech Brio 101 webcam captures Full HD 1080p video with automatic light correction, features a built-in microphone, integrated privacy shutter, USB-A connectivity, and broad compatibility with Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, and other video conferencing tools.View Deal

This Magnetic Power Bank packs a 10,000mAh battery into a compact design with magnetic wireless charging, up to 30W fast charging via USB-C, a durable skin-friendly finish, and broad compatibility for convenient charging anywhere.View Deal

This foldable keyboard and mouse combo supports Bluetooth 5.0 and 2.4GHz wireless connectivity and pairs with three devices. It features a full-size folding keyboard, rechargeable battery, and compatibility with Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS.View Deal

This mouse pairs with up to three devices via Bluetooth or the included USB-A receiver. It features six customizable buttons, Logitech Flow support, a full-size ergonomic design, and long battery life.View Deal

This 10-in-1 USB-C dock adds dual HDMI outputs with support for single 8K displays, 100W Power Delivery, Gigabit Ethernet, four 5Gbps USB ports, SD and microSD card readers, and a durable aluminum housing for compatible USB-C laptops.View Deal

This stand supports laptops from 10 to 17 inches with a sturdy full aluminum construction rated for 22 lb. It offers height adjustment, a pull-out dual-fold design, vented cooling panel, and folds flat for compact storage when not in use.View Deal

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• Lenovo's Googlebook 15 has been leaked
• A deck of press images has given us a good look at the laptop
• It seems like a pretty smart device, but there's confusion around the point of the Googlebook for some people, and worries remain about the price

The first Googlebook has been spotted with a bunch of leaked press images that show us what these laptops are going to look like — and for some, they'll serve as a reminder that Googlebooks are still coming.

In case you forgot they're inbound, because I more or less did — and I'll return to that point — but first, the actual leak itself, in which Digital Citizen shared what's purportedly a deck of press photos of the Lenovo Googlebook 15.

As ever, we must take this with some seasoning, but as you can see from the shots reproduced here, this Googlebook looks rather nifty.

The Lenovo Googlebook 15 is a premium-looking device with slim bezels and a webcam in a notch atop the screen, complete with a privacy shutter. There's a pair of substantial speakers on either side of the keyboard deck with Dolby Atmos support.

The laptop offers a very spacious trackpad, and a keyboard which has a Gemini key — the Googlebook equivalent of Microsoft's Copilot button — and a Caps Lock key which also has the launcher function. Presumably the latter will be the default, and the former will be activated in conjunction with the Alt key.

The Googlebook logo is notably on the keyboard deck, below the Left Ctrl key, suggesting Google is exercising quite some control over the implementation of these laptops.

There's a whole load of function keys (14) at the top of the keyboard, and a solid selection of ports including HDMI, two USB-C ports, a USB-A connector, a card reader slot, and a 3.5mm jack. The notebook hinge opens to nearly 160 degrees, apparently, meaning the Lenovo device can be laid almost flat on a surface.

There are no specs in this leak – just the images, but we do also get to see the desktop layout of the operating system on the Googlebook 15. This shows phone-style status icons at the top, and a traditional taskbar at the foot of the screen including a 'G' button (Start button).

Notably, Adobe Premiere Pro is present among the icons in the launcher bar in these press shots, clearly signaling that the Googlebook is about running more heavyweight apps than the Chromebook.

Android Authority, which spotted the Digital Citizen leak, further points out that there's a 2-in-1 Googlebook tablet coming from Lenovo, which looks very Surface-like with a detachable keyboard and a kickstand on the back of the tablet portion and a magnetic stylus.

According to Digital Citizen, we can expect Lenovo to unveil these Googlebook models at IFA in September officially, and presumably other vendors will have products too.

Analysis: a shrugging of shoulders

(Image credit: Digital Citizen)

It's all been a bit odd with Googlebooks. After the big announcement of these fresh laptops at Google I/O 2026, which are a premium offering compared to Chromebooks, running both Android and ChromeOS apps and sporting a heavy focus on AI (Gemini), we've heard nothing.

I genuinely forgot about these devices for a while, and we didn't hear anything about them at Computex (aside from very fleeting mentions scattered here and there, which I missed at the time). It's been pretty much a case of tumbleweeds ever since Google's revelation of its new product back in May.

Maybe that's because there was quite a negative reception around some aspects – the AI-leaning of these products in particular – and Google has been taking stock and perhaps working out how best to deal with that.

Whatever the case, it feels like Googlebooks have been hovering in a void for quite some time, and nobody has noticed, or has simply forgotten about them. The reaction to this new leak is positive in some quarters, but there's still a lot of scratching of heads about the strangeness of the name, and worries that the Googlebook will be very pricey (as well as anti-AI sentiment, which is no surprise).

Perhaps most worrying of all for Google, though, is that some people still haven't got a clue what these devices are. One Redditor asks: "What's a Googlebook? High-powered Chromebook?".

Aside from the ignorance and the apathy or indifference of some online commenters, the price likely remains the biggest concern. Of course, that's true of all laptops and PC hardware more broadly, thanks to the RAM crisis which seems to be intensifying by the week as we trundle further into the second half of 2026. And, if a growing number of insiders are right, it's going to get worse still in 2027.

At any rate, it seems Googlebooks are being readied for an official debut next month, and the reception to the full launch of devices is going to be interesting to watch. Hopefully, seeing these laptops in action will start to change some of the skeptical opinions out there, and cure some of the shrugging of shoulders that's still very much evident.

Somewhere, Myspace Tom is looking over his shoulder, frowning. Everyone's first friend on the once-leading and iconic social and blogging platform, Tom Anderson's smiling face is the sole reminder of what Myspace once was. While so many loved its messy, GIF-filled countenance in 2004, it's unlikely he's cheering its potential comeback.

MySpace didn't survive the rise of Facebook (then "The Facebook"), let alone Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram. Teens left in droves when NewsCorp bought it for $850M in 2005, and adults, who never understood it in the first place, stayed away by the millions. By 2011, it was sold for a measly $35M to a consortium that included Justin Timberlake. The shift to a more purely music-focused platform did little to distinguish or revive it. The domain survives, but according to Similarweb, it has just over 1.7M monthly uniques. That might sound like a lot, but it is a far cry from the 76M monthly visitors it enjoyed 20 years ago.

Now, Chris and Tim Vanderhook, who bought the platform with Timberlake in 2011, confirmed they plan to "relaunch Myspace."

Myspace version 3?

That, though, my friends, is not the surprising part. Companies relaunch valuable IP all the time in the quixotic belief that they can squeeze just a little more value or revenue out of it. It rarely goes their way.

No, what's truly astounding is that the Vanderhooks did not quickly follow that statement with, "It'll be built on an AI foundation."

I mean, seriously, what is the point of relaunching Myspace if not to house some new LLM, presumably one that connects in some fashion to music. Maybe a big partnership with — gag — Suno.

Myspace has, for the last 15 years, been all about music. The first menu item on the current site is "Featured," which is all about trending musicians, and the second menu item is "Music." "Videos", which is all clips of either "Getting Nailed" or "The Pedicab interviews," comes next, and "People," once the foundation of Myspace, comes last.

If you happen to click on "People," Myspace encourages you to sign up with your Facebook account, which is the deepest cut of all when you consider how Facebook ate Myspace's lunch.

Profile types leave little room for the normies that once populated the platform: Your profile options include "Artists," "Writer". "DJ/producer," "Comedian," "Filmmaker," "Models," and similar extra types. It's like an Influencer reality show casting call. It's unclear how or if you can join as just a person.

If AI were a part of this promised next phase of MySpace, I assume it might help these influencer industry archetypes connect with their audiences and produce exactly the kind of content each wants and would consume at scale.

No way you'll recognize the next Myspace

I find it hard to imagine that the old-school Myspace, in all its chaotic luster, is somehow rising from the ashes. No online audience is still interested in that, right? Though, I guess a sort of anti-social media could work.

No algorithms, no filters, no cool interface, maybe even no AI, just point-to-point encrypted messages, space to say your piece, an occasional meme-worthy GIF, and that's all. It could be ever more bare-bones than the old Tumblr. I see no reason for that to exist, but at least it would stand out from the current selection of overwhelming communication and social media platforms.

Even so, in our current space, no technology is more energizing for investment and emergence than AI. So I fully expect the Vanderhooks, who are "just waiting for the right time to do it," to lean fully into the space and produce a Myspace-awkward blend of earnestness and AI.

They might even get Tom Anderson's permission to use his likeness in AI figures that show him looking over his shoulder, smiling and offering custom greetings on your Myspace page. Tom could be the platform's AI chatbot. It'll be creepy as heck and the polar opposite of what new Myspace should be, but I also see no other realistic path forward for this thing.

• Disney Worldbuilders lands on Disney+ on August 20, 2026
• Leslie Iwerks' new documentary goes inside Disney Imagineering
• Expect behind-the-scenes stories from Galaxy's Edge, Pandora, Pixar, and more

If you're a fan of the many franchises under the Disney umbrella — Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, or Disney Animation — or simply love visiting Disney Parks around the globe, the company has another documentary arriving on Disney+ later this month.

I say "another" because earlier in 2026 we got a fresh look at how Disneyland was created with Disneyland Handcrafted. Now, the same director, Leslie Iwerks, has sat down with many of the creative minds behind Disney's biggest franchises, including Kevin Feige, Dave Filoni, Pete Docter, Jon Favreau, Jared Bush, Jennifer Lee, James Cameron, new Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro, and former CEO Bob Iger.

It's an impressive lineup of people who helped create many of these iconic worlds and, just as importantly, bring them from the screen or page into the physical environments we can actually experience.

From Pixar Pier and Toy Story Land to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, Zootopia, Pandora, and countless other destinations, Disney Worldbuilders promises to show how these lands came to life through the people who imagined and built them. It also looks set to tease upcoming expansions and entirely new experiences.

As you can see in the trailer, Worldbuilders explores both these iconic lands and the creative process behind them through interviews with the people who made them possible. Jon Favreau, who most recently directed The Mandalorian & Grogu, says, "We can push the limits of technology to pursue something mind-blowing," and that feels like an apt description of Disney Parks today.

Just look at the recent update to Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland with its new projection-based Audio-Animatronic, or the overhaul of Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, which now feels even more like a video game thanks to Unreal Engine-powered updates. That same drive to push technology forward can also be seen in the free-roaming BDX Droids in Galaxy's Edge, the walking, talking Olaf robot, and even experiences aboard Disney Cruise Line ships.

DisneyDisneyDisneyDisneyDisneyDisney

There's a good chance Worldbuilders explores many of those innovations. While it will almost certainly lean more heavily on interviews than Handcrafted, Leslie Iwerks' involvement gives me confidence it'll have the same warmth, care, and strong narrative that made that documentary so enjoyable. That's especially true if you're a fan of Disney Parks, Disney's many franchises, or simply enjoy documentaries about how ambitious creative projects come together.

Beyond the technology, it also appears the series will follow the journey from early concept art to construction and finally opening day, while showing how these lands continue to evolve through new characters, refreshed attractions, and entirely new destinations. I'm especially curious whether the Pixar section will include a look at the upcoming Monstropolis land at Disney's Hollywood Studios, as well as The Magic of Disney Animation, which opens there next month.

Disney Worldbuilders premieres exclusively on Disney+ on August 20, 2026. Unlike Disneyland Handcrafted, it won't also be available to watch for free on YouTube. If you're looking for something to watch before then, I'd also recommend We Call It Imagineering, Behind the Attraction, or Disneyland Handcrafted for a behind-the-scenes look at how Disney's magic is made.

• The MacBook Air is suffering major shortages due to the memory crisis
• There are other ways to get a MacBook Air, though
• One of the best is to get a refurbished model from Apple

You’d think that increasing its product prices would make it a little easier to pick up an Apple device, what with other customers staying away, but you might be wrong on that one. As per Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, it looks like the MacBook Air is proving to be extremely difficult to find — even with a $200 price increase.

Gurman states that Apple’s most popular Mac is experiencing “unprecedented” delays due to the ongoing memory crisis, with Apple retail employees telling Gurman that the company “is struggling to keep the laptop in stock and that shipments of new units are more constrained than they can ever recall.”

But there’s no need to worry if you’re in the market for a MacBook Air, as there’s one trick that can save you cash and help you get your hands on an Apple laptop despite the shortages. That’s by employing a tried-and-true method: buying refurbished.

Indeed, one of the best ways to do this is through Apple’s own refurbished store. Purchasing a Mac this way gets you a device that has had any faulty or defective parts replaced by genuine Apple alternatives. The product is cleaned, polished, and sent to you in a brand-new box with the same accessories you’d get with a fresh device.

I bought my M1 Pro MacBook Pro this way, and it was virtually indistinguishable from a new Mac while saving me hundreds of dollars. I’d absolutely go down this road again.

A better way to buy

(Image credit: Future)

Looking at Apple’s refurbished Mac store in the US, there are currently some choice deals to be had. For example, you can get a 13-inch MacBook Air with an M5 chip, 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage for $1,099, which knocks $200 off the new, more expensive price.

Or you can get a 15-inch MacBook Air with that same combination of M5 chip, 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage for $1,269. That’s $230 off what you’ll pay for a new version of the same Mac.

Over on Apple’s UK refurbished store, you’ll find those same models with similar savings of £200 and £230 compared to new alternatives. That means these discounts aren't limited to only US buyers.

And it’s also worth looking at the MacBook Pro if you want to step up. You can save $380 / £380 on the M5 MacBook Pro with M5 Pro chip, 24GB of memory and 1TB of storage, bringing its price down to $2,119 / £2,119. Unlike the MacBook Air deals, this example reduces the MacBook Pro’s price to less than it was before Apple’s price increases — it used to cost $2,199 / £2,199.

And remember that these devices come extremely close to the experience you’d get with a brand-new MacBook. You might be able to get cheaper deals elsewhere — and it’s always worth shopping around — but I don’t think you’ll get anything up to Apple’s standards anywhere else.

So, if you’ve been trying to snap up a Mac and have found yourself despairing at the lack of availability, don’t panic. There are still plenty of decent bargains to be had if you want that touch of Apple quality while still saving a respectable chunk of change.

A new study from the University of Edinburgh suggests that workers over 50 may be experiencing a largely hidden sleep crisis. Since I’m well into my fifth decade, I’m comfortably inside that risk group, and like many people, my biggest obstacle to sleep is not always tiredness; it’s getting my brain to stop working.

The researchers found that nearly 70% of participants in its study (which admittedly was quite small at just 45 participants) experienced persistent, clinically significant sleep problems, despite having no known history of sleep disorders. Even more concerning, almost 92% met the clinical threshold for a sleep disorder at least once during the study.

Many of these sleep problems were closely linked to work-related stress, researchers said — which got me thinking about ways I could reduce my own work-related stress, and whether AI could help.

It struck me that there were three easily achievable things that I could do with AI to help me sleep better, so I tried them — and the results surprised me.

(Image credit: Shutterstock / Media_Photos)Task one: emptying your head

It’s difficult to sleep when you’ve got a million thoughts from the day buzzing around your head. What can help is writing them down. It makes you feel like you don’t need to keep them alive in your brain, because there’s a record of them somewhere. It turns out that AI can be very helpful for this. I used the prompt:

“I’m going to tell you everything currently occupying my mind. Sort it into things I need to do tomorrow, things that can safely wait, and things I cannot control. Keep the response short and practical.”

I then used ChatGPT's Voice mode to perform a brain dump into the AI. ChatGPT turned my vague mental noise into a finite list, and it felt like a weight had been lifted. I could then close the app and put down my phone knowing my thoughts have been “stored” somewhere and weren't going to be forgotten.

Task two: challenging the worry

For this one I took a real concern, like a deadline, unfinished article or packed schedule. Then I described it to ChatGPT, using this prompt:

“This thought is keeping me awake: [insert thought]. Don’t simply reassure me. Tell me what is factual, what I may be assuming, what I can act on tomorrow, and what I need to let go of tonight.”

That instruction to not simply reassure you is important, otherwise ChatGPT may produce soothing but meaningless encouragement. It worked for me, but if you find that still doesn't get you exactly what you want, you could also also ask:

“What is the smallest useful action I can take tomorrow that would make this problem feel more manageable?”

Using this prompt the AI reduces a large amorphous worry to one single action.

Task three: Voice Mode

My last idea was to get ChatGPT to help me wind down. ChatGPT has recently improved its voice mode, and that inspired me to use it to help me wind down at night. Listening to ChatGPT's voice is a lot more relaxing than looking at a screen of course, since you can close your eyes. I tried this prompt:

“Guide me through a five-minute wind-down exercise. Speak slowly, leave pauses, and do not ask me questions. Begin with breathing, then relax each part of my body, and finish with a calm visualization.”

If that doesn’t work for you then you can always get ChatGPT to tell you a story :

“Tell me a calm, deliberately uneventful 10-minute story designed to help me fall asleep. Nothing dramatic should happen, and there should be no questions or cliffhangers.”

I started the voice routine, placed the phone face down and treated ChatGPT like an audio player rather than continuing to chat with it. It worked for me, even if the voice I'd chosen to use wasn't quite as relaxing as it could have been. It's worth experimenting here to find a voice you like.

Best practice

I found all three of these prompts quite effective. The first one, which enabled me to turn all the thoughts spinning in my head into a practical list to deal with tomorrow, was especially helpful.

With all of these exercises, the key is to put your phone down after you’ve done one or more of them. You need to stop interacting with it; remember, the goal is closure, not an endless bedtime conversation.

Once you’ve closed down your day with ChatGPT, you need to close down ChatGPT, too.

Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock: 30-second review

The Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock is one of a new wave of high-performance docks that offer ultra-fast connectivity and the option to add internal storage. The design is reminiscent of the Mac Mini range with its cubed compact aluminium design that sees a single Thunderbolt 5 cable running from the dock to your computer, and once done, adds three more Thunderbolt 5 ports, alongside a spread of USB, UHS-II card readers, 2.5GbE Ethernet, audio, and up to 140W of charging.

The big features here are the Thunderbolt 5 connection and the option to add an M.2 NVMe SSD, changing this from a high-performance hub into an SSD enclosure. The SSD must be purchased separately; it comes in a model with up to 8TB of capacity and takes less than a minute to screw into place. Satechi has included everything you need, including a screwdriver and thermal pads.

Once the SSD is installed and all desktop cables are connected, it's a neat solution that enables you to connect monitors, control boards, speakers, network connections, and additional drives in a matter of seconds.

This makes it a great solution if you’re a photographer or video editor and need to offload files quickly after a day's shoot, though it's disappointing that the network is limited to 2.5GbE, whereas many other premium docks have already adopted 10GbE. Despite that, for creators, I found it to be the best docking station I've tested.

At the price, however, this doc is well balanced; you do need a Thunderbolt 5 to get the most out of it. On anything slower, Thunderbolt 4, USB4 and so on, it still works, but the speeds drop dramatically.

In this test, I utilised an Asus Prime-based machine fitted with a Thunderbolt 5 card to check the speeds. It’s also worth noting that in an editing environment where you want everything to be as quiet as possible, there is an active fan that helps keep the SSD cool, but unfortunately, it adds a little noise under load.

If you use the CubeDock with the right machine and have an SSD installed, it’s one of the neatest ways I've come across to turn a laptop into a full creative workstation, storage included, from a single cable.

Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $399
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Directly from Satechi or Amazon

The Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock with SSD enclosure is priced at $399.99 in the US, available direct from Satechi and Amazon.com. In the UK, it's up for £399.99 at Amazon.co.uk.

The price is for the dock alone, and if you want to install an M.2 NVMe SSD, then this is a separate purchase, so budget for the drive on top of that.

• Value: 3.5 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock: Specs

Upstream: 1 x Thunderbolt 5 (80/120Gbps), up to 140W host charging
Downstream: 3 x Thunderbolt 5 (80Gbps data each, 15W each)
SSD enclosure: M.2 NVMe, 2230/2242/2260/2280, up to 8TB, PCIe 4x4, up to 6000MB/s
USB-C: 1 x 10Gbps (30W), 1 x 10Gbps (7.5W)
USB-A: 1 x front 10Gbps (7.5W), 1 x rear 10Gbps (4.5W)
Card readers: SD + microSD, UHS-II,
Ethernet: 2.5GbE
Audio: 3.5mm in/out
Displays: up to 8K 144Hz single / triple 8K 60Hz (Windows); up to dual 6K 60Hz (macOS, chip-dependent)
Cooling: active fan, smart curve, 20-40 dB(A)
Power: 180W smart power supply
Dimensions: 12.7 x 12.7 x 5.2cm
Weight: 588.9g

Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock: Design

The CubeDock is a compact cube in industry-grade aluminium, measuring 12.7cm square and 5.2cm tall, and weighing a substantial 588.9g, far heavier than you would initially expect and highlighting that this is a permanent office fixture rather than portable.

The weight is reassuring, especially when it’s sat on your desk, having various accessories and peripherals plugged in. The aluminium build and natural finish look great and have the dual function of durability and passive heatsinking. There’s also an internal fan that's vented to keep everything at a stable temperature.

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

On the front and back, there are plenty of ports, and the layout is well thought out, with the connections I most frequently need, such as USB-C, USB-A, and the two card readers, positioned on the front. The permanent connections, such as the Thunderbolt 5 ports, Ethernet, audio, power, and a second USB-A port, are all on the back.

As ever, there's a Kensington lock slot, too, which is good to see if you do work in a shared office, especially if you install an expensive 8TB SSD.

That SSD is installed at the base of the dock and requires a screwdriver to access it. Satechi has included everything needed in the box: a small screwdriver, the mounting screws and two thermal pads, so there's no hunting for bits.

Checking out the cavity where the SSDs slot in, and it’s good to see that the space has been designed to take any M.2 NVMe drive from 2230 up to 2280, so whatever size you have, the installation process is easy enough. Installing a Crucial T710 took a couple of minutes.

One surprise is that there are no HDMI or DisplayPort connections for a monitor. Instead, all video runs through the Thunderbolt 5 ports, so if your monitors use either of these connector types, you'll need adapters or cables to connect them.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock: Features

The design of the dock instantly highlights its close affinity with the Mac Mini in style and colour, although it is only available in silver. It’s also compatible with both Mac and PC systems, as long as they have a Thunderbolt 5 port; if not, it's fully backwards compatible with previous Thunderbolt and USB-C ports.

The feature that sets this apart from the vast majority of other hubs, even those with a Thunderbolt 5 port, is an integrated SSD enclosure. This means that rather than having the dock and then plugging in a separate external SSD, you can have one integrated internally, freeing up a port and also enabling maximum connection speeds.

If you deal with large files of any type, then having access to fast, readily available storage is essential, especially if you work with video. With an 8TB SSD inside, you'll be able to work off that fast internal storage for editing, offloading cards, and keeping an active project library for recent projects without constantly needing to archive.

Through the test, I popped in a Crucial T710 1TB, a PCIe Gen5 NVMe M.2 2280, and it’s highlighting that while the enclosure is compatible with the latest Gen5 modules, it runs at PCIe 4x4, which is rated at a maximum of 6000MB/s, so even if the drive is faster, you’ll be limited by that technology.

The storage is a feature that draws me to this dock, but there’s also the fact that a single-cable connection to your computer is all that’s needed, letting you connect all your devices. This not only helps with the time it takes to connect up in the mornings when you arrive at the office, but also at the end of the day. That one cable to my laptop, and then the Desktop PC enabled me to connect displays, data, networking, and charging.

On the feature side, there were a couple of points that surprised me, and the first was the display options: there are no HDMI or DisplayPort ports, so adapters will be needed if that’s all your monitors support. However, if you can connect via Thunderbolt 5 to Windows or macOS machines, you have plenty of flexibility and choice.

On Windows machines you can drive up to three 8K displays; on Mac, it's chip-dependent, with up to dual 6K on capable Apple Silicon and triple-display support reserved for the very newest Pro and Max chips, on my M1 Max, I was limited to two monitors and the speed of the Thunderbolt 4 connection, whereas the desktop equipped with the correct TB5 showed a huge uplift in speed.

The rest of the feature set is almost what you’d expect from a premium; up to 140W charging back to the host, ideal for my 16-inch MacBook Pro, plus 30W from a front USB-C for a phone or tablet; UHS-II SD and microSD readers great for the GoPro Mission 1 and the Sony A7 IV that I often use and a 3.5mm audio jack.

The one issue for me is that there's only 2.5GbE Ethernet; at this price, I would have expected at least 5GbE, with the more premium docks now all sporting 10GbE. Thankfully for the now-ageing MacBook Pro M1 Max and me, the dock is fully backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 3, USB4, and USB-C.

Another feature worth highlighting is the active cooling, which features a smart fan that only starts up when the dock needs it, keeping the SSD and controllers cooler under load. When working with video in the doc and with an SSD enclosed, the fan did kick in, but the office volume wasn’t overly loud or distracting.

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

• Features: 4 / 5

Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock: Performance

I tested the CubeDock with my MacBook Pro M1 Max, with a CrucialT710 1TB installed in the enclosure. I also tested on an M1 Max-equipped machine with Thunderbolt 4, so I was unable to reach the full potential of a Thunderbolt 5-equipped machine. The T710 is a PCIe 5.0 drive. To measure the CubeDock at its full Thunderbolt 5 potential, I've connected it to the Thunderbolt 5-equipped Asus ProArt.

Setting the CubeDock up is easy enough, and I opted to install the Crucial T710 from the outset. This took a few minutes, and it was good to see that a screwdriver had been supplied along with thermal pads to help with the heat dissipation. Once installed and all cables were connected to the dock, I connected my MacBook Pro M1 Max via the Thunderbolt cable included in the box.

After a couple of seconds, the Crucial drive appeared on the desktop, as it had already been formatted. The monitor also sprang to life, and I had a direct connection to the network, albeit limited to 2.5GbE. That single-cable connection is something I use extensively in the office, with two permanently fixed docks: one for the MacBook Pro and the other for the Asus desktop. They just make everything so much cleaner, cut down on cables and increase the speed at which I can connect, especially with the laptop.

On the M1 Max, while the docking is handy, I’m used to that feature with the other docks, but here, having the internal storage was definitely a great addition. However, as the MacBook Pro M1 Max runs Thunderbolt 4, the T710 was never going to reach its full potential, and combined with the enclosure's PCIe 4x4 ceiling, the test results using this setup reflect the connection rather than the drive's or, for that matter, the enclosure's full capability.

What I will say is that in a real world environment for everyday offloading of memory cards and drives as well working directly from that larger internal SSD drive that I installed, it was a great solution and did highlight that soon it will be time to upgrade to a Thunderbolt 5 machine, although whether that will be a Mac or something else is at the moment very much up for debate.

While the benchmarks are impressive, they're far from the potential of the Dock, so for the real TB5 test I’ve connected to the ProArt desktop, here the speeds take a massive increase in speed and for any creative environment this dock not only works as a handy dock adding in ports that are easily accessible, but also takes the place of a fast working drive in a small desktop box.

What impressed me was the Benchmark tests that showed transfer speeds from the internal SSD that I had installed, of 4622.50 MB/s Read, 3721.54 MB/s Write.

Connecting a Thunderbolt 5 external SSD through the dock showed speeds of 4332.44 MB/s Read, 2748.33 MB/s Write.

On the MacBook Pro M1 Max with Thunderbolt 4 this reduced to 3441.50 MB/s Read, 1752.96 MB/s Write.

Connecting a Thunderbolt 5 external SSD through the dock showed speeds of 3445.34 MB/s Read, 1659.22 MB/s Write.

All very impressive. Alongside the SSD speeds and connectivity to connected and internal drives, there are also SD card slots, both of which are UHS-II and rated to 312 MB/s.

In the test, I offloaded a USH-II Lexar Professional Silver Pro 512GB card containing images captured on the Sony A7 IV, with transfer speeds of 243.76MB/s read and 104.68MB/s write. After recently coming across a premium hub that dropped to UHS-I, it's good to see proper UHS-II readers here.

Some of the other connections are also worth noting, and for use with laptops, 140W charging and networking are both handy, although, as stated before, I wish that the networking had been rated at the 5GbE, but still 2.5GbE still enables quick transfers to achieve NAS, just not quite the speeds I’d like for network video editing.

During the test, with transfers to and from the dock to the SSD I had installed, the internal temperatures did rise due to the load; however, the active fan kicked in quietly and kept the temperatures in check. The noise from the dock really wasn’t an issue.

• Performance: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock: Final verdict

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

The Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock is a great bit of kit, both in function and style and what stood out to me was the integrated SSD enclosure that enables direct fast storage that’s essential for most laptop users, especially those working on MacBooks.

Having that storage option in the dock itself, albeit you need to supply your own SSD, helps keep things neat, so there’s never a need to plug in an external SSD, since the storage is already contained within the hub, ready to go as soon as you connect. It just makes it all a little more permanent.

The remaining connection ports, including the two UHS-II readers and the 2.5GbE networking, combine to offer a well-rounded package and a perfect option for any professional environment, especially for those in the creative sector.

However, as a dock, it’s expensive at $399.99. This is a combined dock and enclosure, and, of course, you also need to consider the price of the SSD you pop in. You also need a Thunderbolt 5 machine, although it is backwards compatible, to take full advantage of the speeds on offer.

My Thunderbolt 4 MacBook Pro M1 Max, while limited in speed, did benefit from additional storage capacity and connection options. I’d also highlight that it’s worth checking your monitors to ensure they have a USB-C display connection, as there is no HDMI or DisplayPort; however, I found Ugreen cables for less than £10 each.

If you're running a Thunderbolt 5 machine and want a single, compact dock that handles your displays, data, networking, charging, and storage at once, then the CubeDock is a great option, especially when you look at the price compared with some of the other Thunderbolt 5 docks on the market.

Should I buy the Satechi Thunderbolt 5 CubeDock?

Value

Despite initially seeming like an expensive dock, once you weigh up the features, it’s extremely well priced. 

3.5

Design

Reflective of the Mac Mini, the weight and size make this a great desktop option with a premium build and the option to install an SSD

4.5

Features

Integrated NVMe enclosure, 140W charging, UHS-II card readers and single cable connection to your machine

4

Performance

To make the most of the speed, you need Thunderbolt 5, and it is a good, balanced option

4

Overall

A great dock that will be a perfect partner for any creative, an upgrade in the network speed is really the only small downside.

4

Buy it if...

You have a Thunderbolt 5 machine and want built-in storage.

The integrated NVMe enclosure means one compact cube handles your displays, data, charging and fast storage from a single cable, no separate external drive cluttering the desk. 

You offload fast camera cards daily.

The UHS-II SD and microSD readers run at up to 312MB/s, so cards from a modern mirrorless body offload at full speed rather than crawling through a UHS-I reader often seen on other docks.

Don't buy it if...

You're on a slower machine or a budget.

On Thunderbolt 4, USB4 or older, it works but won't reach its full speed, so you'd be paying a premium for potential you can't use. 

Your displays are HDMI or DisplayPort.

All video runs through the Thunderbolt 5 ports; there's no HDMI or DisplayPort on the dock. If your monitors use those connectors, you'll need adapters, a dock with native HDMI/DP outputs may suit you better.

For more professional-grade desktops, we've tested the best business computers.

Every IT team worries about an intern clicking the wrong thing and making a mess they'll be cleaning up for weeks - but few have had to worry about their AI assistant wandering onto the public internet and hacking three companies instead.

Except this wasn't an intern; it was Claude, and it wasn't supposed to leave the sandbox.

Anthropic's public disclosure turned a familiar AI fear into a real-world cybersecurity story, as three of its models, including Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5, and an unreleased research build, broke out of their digital sandbox and compromised real enterprise infrastructure. The timing was hard to ignore as days earlier OpenAI admitted its own autonomous agents had broken boundaries and accidentally hacked Hugging Face.

How can autonomous problem-solving make AI an accidental hacker?

Before you start pulling network cables and digging out a stack of legacy hardware, take a deep breath. This is not the beginning of a rogue AI apocalypse. However, for CISOs and cyber teams, it’s a definitive sign that we’re entering an era where AI agents may become both the threat and the shield.

The ironic part of Anthropic's incident is that Claude wasn’t trying to break the rules but trying to win the game. At the time, Anthropic was running "Capture the Flag" (CTF) cybersecurity exercises, where AI models are stripped of their standard safeguards to test their raw offensive capabilities. The models are dropped into isolated digital environments to search for vulnerabilities, crack codes, and locate hidden files.

However, the sandbox had one problem - it was not fully sealed. A networking error on a third-party evaluation range left the environment connected to the live internet. The autonomous Claude models, operating under the assumption they were still inside the exercise, treated the wider web as another part of the challenge.

The strange part was that Claude seemed to realize something was wrong. It acknowledged that its actions could amount to a real-world attack and were "surely not the intended solution." Yet, due to its goal-oriented nature, the model continued, convincing itself that warning signs, including a 2026 system clock and real company names, were simply part of an elaborately staged test.

The PyPI incident and the FBI warning

Claude's sheer persistence became clear when it decided the smartest way to win the CTF challenge was to publish software to the real Python Package Index (PyPI).

When PyPI's repository security systems asked for a phone verification code to complete the upload, a standard chatbot would have stopped and thrown an error to the user. Claude did not. Instead, it looked for a temporary SMS provider, attempted to obtain a burner phone number, and looked for a way around the two-factor authentication barrier. When that approach failed, the AI didn't give up - it adapted, found another path forward, and successfully uploaded the malicious package.

Claude's sandbox escape stopped being a controlled experiment the moment it got into the outside world.

Before Anthropic spotted the anomaly and stopped the test, the package had been downloaded by 15 external systems, including a security scanner from a major cybersecurity company. Because the AI's behavior looked authentic, targeted, and systematic, two of the affected companies thought they were dealing with a highly sophisticated human attacker.

While Anthropic handled the incident behind the scenes by notifying the affected companies, the episode highlights how difficult it can be to distinguish AI-driven activity from a real attack.

Weeks earlier, during OpenAI's sandbox escape incident, a target company believed it was facing a human threat group and contacted the FBI only to find out they were investigating something far less familiar: an autonomous AI system that had crossed its own boundaries.

Why are traditional firewalls blind to autonomous AI?

The scary part is that Claude did not come up with a futuristic, unpatchable exploit or rewrite network protocols on the fly. Instead, it used basic techniques that security teams know very well: brute-forcing weak passwords, exploiting SQL injection flaws, and scraping unauthenticated debug endpoints.

The more serious problem for IT teams was not the attack itself, but the silence afterward. Two of the three companies had no idea they had been compromised until Anthropic reviewed the test results and made a couple of uncomfortable phone calls.

The incident revealed a blind spot at the heart of modern cybersecurity. Traditional intrusion detection systems (IDS) and security information and event management (SIEM) platforms are built to spot known threat signatures and massive automated attack storms. However, they are completely blind to an autonomous agent that moves the low-and-slow cadence of a human but operates with the speed and persistence of a machine.

Legally, the rules have not caught up with the machines. A human pentester who broke out of a sandbox and published malicious code to PyPI could face CFAA charges. Claude, meanwhile, created an awkward new cybersecurity category: a real security incident without a “real” culprit.

(Image credit: Shutterstock)Machine-speed logic vs human-speed defenses

The tech industry's anxiety around sandbox escapes is not only about what AI can do but also how swiftly it can do it. In the past, a complex network intrusion required a human hacker to slowly probe defenses and move through systems over days or weeks. That gave security teams enough time to spot suspicious activity and catch them in the act.

Agentic AI completely collapses that defensive runway. Since autonomous software operates at machine speed, it can chain together tasks like credential discovery, exploit attempts, and lateral movement far faster than a human attacker ever could. OpenAI's sandbox escape showed how quickly AI agents can escalate once they move beyond their intended boundaries.

Human analysts reviewing logs at the end of a shift cannot compete with an algorithm testing thousands of attack paths per second. It is a speed gap that experts describe as "science fiction that happened," where traditional human-speed defenses struggle to keep pace.

Defending your network against autonomous AI

Waiting for the AI sector to police itself is not a winning security strategy. To prepare your infrastructure for the rise of autonomous AI, focus on these three defensive priorities:

Enforce zero trust: Remove all unauthenticated internal endpoints and exposed debug pages before an AI agent finds them first.

Automate threat response: Utilize AI-driven behavior monitoring and instant device-isolation protocols to contain threats at machine speed.

Audit third-party sandboxes: Review how external partners deploy AI agents, particularly models with access to tools, data, or external systems.

The accidental hacker is no longer a distant sci-fi scenario. It is a live preview of a faster, automated cybersecurity landscape, where the speed of attack may soon outpace the speed of defenses.

Thanks to an exclusive preview of the Mystery Booster Commander Edition at Gen Con 2026 and now the set’s full release notes, we got a deeper look at what we can expect from the limited set — and Wizards, I’m begging you to make it as widely available as possible.

This is Magic: The Gathering’s third go at Mystery Booster (and for me, it’s third time’s the charm). Filled with reprints from across Magic’s past, the aim of the packs is to create a delightfully chaotic draft environment — a format where players only use cards they open up in the packs they are given.

This chaos is enhanced by fan-favorite art treatments giving cards strange new looks — such as Mystery Booster 2’s return to White Bordered and Future Framed cards — and ‘Playtest’ cards, game pieces that bend Magic’s rules or meme on the game and its community.

Commander Edition follows this trend with two very notable exceptions that make me more desperate than ever to play it myself: it’s a commander draft, and it has mechanically unique cards for the first time, which are legal in constructed play.

Commander draft shaped hole in my life

My favorite draft format is Commander. Instead of creating any hodgepodge of cards, you have to build your deck like you would for a standard EDH game. That is, a deck where all of the cards match the color identity of your leader, your Commander.

It’s not 100 cards, and it’s not singleton (you can play as many copies of cards you open as you have in your draft pool), but I find the deck-building restrictions of Commander an engaging puzzle to tackle while drafting.

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

I’ve found it also has a few advantages for chaos drafting. Luck can play a much bigger factor in what deck you can make, so taking two cards a pack can help you counter that variance. If someone is able to open some incredible cards, you have two other players to help you fight back, and the generally more casual feel makes defeat sting a little less.

Commander draft requires the right kind of set to work, and in a world where we get six or seven Standard releases a year, there isn’t a lot of room to also push out a Commander set. Mystery Booster Commander Edition fills this void.

The chance to draft Commander is my main reason for wanting Mystery Booster Commander Edition, but for most there’s a far bigger request: access to new cards.

Playing with power

Besides Playtest cards and physical reprints of previously Arena-exclusive cards (Magic: The Gathering’s digital version) Mystery Booster sets have only included cards we’ve seen in paper before, and these unique cards aren’t officially allowed outside of drafts — so you can’t put a powerful playtest card in a deck and rock up to a tournament.

That’s changing with Mystery Booster Commander Edition as it’ll be adding a lot of new cards to the game, some of which literally break the rules. These so-called Rulebreakers are special Commanders who let you get around some deck-building restrictions — such as the previously revealed Tolabow, Loch Rascal letting you put one other color of Instant and Sorcery cards (and basic lands) in what would otherwise be a mono-blue deck. Or the newly teased The Unlickiest Planeswalker letting you play with auras of any color in your deck (honoring that this fan-favorite character is often featured in the artwork for curses).

There are other new game pieces too, including Sorceries, which can be your Commander like Ashaya’s Enduring Bond, new Eminence Commanders who affect the game even when not in play, such as Sahir, Visitor in Darkness, and just generally fun and unique game pieces that support existing strategies or create new options — also cards like Arzakon that can create Black Lotus tokens.

(Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

All in all, we’ll see 59 unique Legends in the set, and while I expect several will see reprints down the line, for now there’s only one way to get them — and if access to Mystery Booster Commander Edition is going as limited as Mystery Booster 2, I’m worried.

If anything, Mystery Booster Commander Edition will only be more impossible to get your hands on because these unique cards will almost certainly drive up demand beyond what art-treatments could ever do.

So I’m begging you, Wizards of the Coast, please print this set as much as you can.

Bring it to every possible event, make sure copious quantities are available through Secret Lair Festival in a Box drops, and maybe send a load of boxes to local game stores to run Commander drafts over the next couple of years. Ideally, do all three.

I want to play so much of this set, and I know every other Commander player is chomping at the bit too. Please just give us what we want.

• Samsung tells analysts global memory supply shortage will persist through 2028 and grow more severe in 2027 than in 2026
• This while posting its third consecutive record quarter: ₩171.5 trillion in revenue, ₩89.5 trillion in operating profit, and a 52% operating margin
• Samsung is locking 60 to 70% of capacity into five-year supply agreements with price floors

Samsung has told analysts it believes the memory shortage now squeezing everything from server racks to gaming PCs is unlikely to ease before 2028, and that conditions will get worse before they get better.

Speaking on its Q2 2026 earnings call, the world's largest DRAM manufacturer now expects supply constraints to be more severe in 2027 than they are in 2026.

The company said this while reporting the most profitable quarter in its history, with ₩171.5 trillion in revenue, ₩89.5 trillion in operating profit, and a 52% operating margin, all of which indicated healthy demand for its DRAM despite price hikes across the board.

An AI-centric problem that is not going away soon

As voracious demand for memory and storage from AI hyperscalers continues, Samsung is a key beneficiary of a shortage it expects to last for years, driven by long lead times and the capital intensity of adding capacity.

The argument Samsung made on its earnings call was arithmetic rather than speculative. B

uilding a new fab and getting it to wafer production takes more than three years, so the industry-wide capital expenditure increases now underway cannot translate into meaningful output within the forecast window. Unmet demand from this year rolls into next year, tightening things further.

Independent forecasting broadly agrees. TrendForce expects NAND supply to ease in the second half of 2027 as new capacity and higher-layer products arrive, but sees DRAM differently: several suppliers plan new lines for 2027, and construction, equipment installation and qualification will push meaningful ramp-up into the second half of that year, meaning substantial extra output does not arrive until 2028.

Samsung's own shipment figures show how tight things already are. DRAM bit shipments rose by low-teens percentages quarter on quarter, exceeding its own guidance, while average selling prices climbed by around 45% for DRAM and close to 70% for NAND in a single quarter.

Hedging against potential downsides

Buried in the analyst Q&A is a structural change that will outlast any particular price curve. Samsung is converting the memory business from a spot market into a contracted one.

The company said it plans to allocate roughly 60 to 70% of total capacity to long-term supply agreements. These run on five-year terms subject to annual renegotiation, effectively rolling forward.

It has already finalized deals with the top five global data center customers and is in final talks with five more, with substantial advance payments written in as a contractual requirement; Samsung says it has received about a quarter of that total so far. For mainstream products, the agreements also carry minimum price floors, set at levels the company describes as sufficient to cover its future investment risk.

The consequences reach retail. Gartner has forecast that combined DRAM and SSD price increases will lift average PC prices by 17% and push global PC shipments down by more than 10%, the steepest contraction in over a decade.

Micron retired its consumer Crucial brand in February 2026 to concentrate on enterprise AI customers, which is the clearest possible statement of where the industry's priorities sit despite whatever it says publicly about wanting to help consumers.

For Samsung's memory division, none of this is a problem. The price floors it has written into a majority of its capacity insulate it from the downside of the boom-and-bust cycle that DRAM markets are notorious for, and its own device businesses are absorbing the cost: mobile and networks posted a combined operating loss of ₩0.7 trillion for the quarter, and the display and TV units both flagged memory costs eating into profitability.

A company earning a mammoth ₩89.5 trillion in operating profit, thanks to a 52% operating margin, however, has little reason to move quickly on any of it.

• European customers can stream Disney+ in 4K again
• HDR isn't back in affected countries, but Disney+ is working on it
• Affected customers can contact Disney+ to request a partial refund

Disney+ has begun restoring 4K support for Disney+ subscribers in Europe after being forced to remove 4K and HDR in some countries last week. That's good news, but it may cause issues on some devices, and HDR hasn't yet returned in the affected areas.

As Disney+ told us: "We have adopted an alternative technology to enable 4K UHD and HDR following a recent court ruling and have begun restoring 4K UHD support on Disney+. This may cause 4K UHD to be unavailable on some devices. We recognise the inconvenience this may cause and are working to increase device support for 4K UHD and restore HDR as quickly as we can."

What's happening with Disney+ 4K and HDR

Disney+ removed 4K and HDR from its Premium plan in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Sweden. Both features are still available in all other countries where Disney+ operates, and the removal only applies to streaming: downloads aren't affected.

The removal was the result of a court ruling, and while Disney+ doesn't go into detail about that, it looks like another video streaming patent dispute, hence the adoption of a different 4K technology to bring 4K streaming back. HDR is next on the menu, with Disney+ explaining that "We are working to restore it as quickly as we can but cannot yet confirm when it will become available again."

If you're a subscriber in one of the affected countries and HDR is a deal-breaker, Disney+ says that you can switch to a different, cheaper plan. If you want to stay on Premium but aren't happy with the loss of features, you can "request a partial refund for [your] current billing period by contacting Disney+." That only applies to direct subscribers; if you've subscribed via a third party, such as an App Store, you'll need to contact that company instead.

As I've written previously, removing the features wasn't something Disney+ chose to do; it was compelled to do it after a court case. Video and streaming patents are very complicated, and patent owners can be highly litigious, and we've seen a flurry of similar cases across the biggest multiple streamers in recent years. There's an old saying in the entertainment industry: where there's a hit, there's a writ.

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

• Solar energy just had its best-ever month in the UK
• Rooftop panels and farms provided 14.4% of the country's electricity
• The record comes ahead of the legalisation of plug-in solar kits soon

Our gardens may be wilting in this exceptionally dry, sunny summer in the UK, but one thing that is benefitting from all the rays is solar panels. Solar energy just had its best-ever month for supplying power to the grid — and plug-in solar panels are aiming to keep that run going when they become legal later this month.

Alongside solar farms, rooftop panels — which are surging in popularity — helped provide an impressive 14.4% of the UK's electricity in July (via The Guardian). That's 50% more than this time last year, according to National Energy System Operator (Neso) data, and helped to power the fans and air con units we're all relying on to survive while working from home.

The record comes from a combination of two factors. The incredible amount of sunshine we saw in July helped — the UK bathed in around twice the amount of sunshine hours that it usually gets on average at this time of year.

But it was also powered by the popularity of solar panels, which many are installing to help cut their energy bills in the UK. The country saw more solar power installations in the first half of 2026 than in any similar period for 15 years, while last year saw the highest total number of solar installations (269,000) ever recorded in a calendar year, according to government data.

Those figures include ground-based solar farms, but a significant proportion (just under a third of the UK's total solar power) is provided by rooftop panels. However, with these panels still prohibitively expensive for many, eyes will now be turning to the legalisation of plug-in solar kits from August 27.

Can plug-in solar add some extra shine?

(Image credit: Getty Images / Sean Gallup)

It's unfortunate that plug-in solar panels weren't legalised a few months ago, when they could have contributed to these record UK solar energy figures.

Still, the UK government made the welcome announcement last week that these plug-in solar kits — which can send electricity into your wall socket without needing professional installation — will become legal from August 27. That's good news if you've felt frozen out of solar due to its cost, a lack of roof access or the fact that you're renting.

The Statutory Instrument 2026/848 clears the blocks that previously prevented UK residents from buying self-installed, ‘plug-in’ solar systems. The August 27 date is more of a legal landmark, so it isn't clear exactly when these kits will go on sale. But you can expect to see them in the likes of Lidl, Currys and Amazon soon, when they'll apparently cost around £400 and could save households up to £70-£110 a year.

While many have argued that plug-in batteries could be the real home energy revolution (they were left out of the government's new legislation), the combination of this new solar energy record and the legalisation of plug-in solar kits later this month means that renewable energy is having a big moment.

"Fifteen years ago, solar energy was a footnote in the electricity mix," said Chris Hewett (Chief executive of Solar Energy UK). "Now it is a major player, delivering homegrown, cheap, clean and reliable energy."

“The UK is firmly in its second solar boom, joining the trend we’re seeing worldwide, as households and governments look to it as a low-cost and local alternative to oil and gas,” added Frankie Mayo, a senior analyst at Ember.

The UK is still well behind Germany when it comes to balcony solar (which is called 'Balkonkraftwerk'), as you can see in the graph above, but at least the country's sun-powered potential is now finally on the charge.

If you're looking for a capable laptop that can handle demanding tasks without costing the Earth, I found a great deal on the 15.6" Lenovo LOQ for $750 (was $1050) at Best Buy.

The laptop combines an AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS processor with 16GB of DDR5 memory, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 graphics with 6GB of dedicated memory, making it a terrific choice for students and beginner creators.

The IPS display delivers a Full HD resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, 350 nits of brightness, and 100% sRGB color coverage. Connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, USB-C with DisplayPort 1.4, three USB-A ports, and a backlit keyboard.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Lenovo LOQ if...

You need a capable laptop for demanding work, study, creative projects, and everyday multitasking. With an AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS processor, 16GB of DDR5 memory, GeForce RTX 4050 graphics, and a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, it offers plenty of performance for productivity software, photo editing, video work, and other intensive applications.

❌ Skip the Lenovo LOQ if...

You mainly browse the web, stream videos, and work with office documents. You'll be paying for dedicated graphics and a high-refresh-rate display that lighter workloads won't fully benefit from. If portability and battery life are your priorities, a thinner ultrabook with integrated graphics is likely to be a better fit.

Today's top Lenovo laptop deal

Powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 7235HS processor, this 15.6-inch Full HD laptop includes 16GB of DDR5 memory, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, GeForce RTX 4050 graphics, a 144Hz IPS display, Wi-Fi 6, and upgradeable memory and storage.View Deal

Why we recommend it

The LOQ laptop delivers an excellent balance of features for the discounted asking price. The combination of upgradeable memory and storage, a color-accurate 144Hz IPS display, modern connectivity, and solid build quality means it should remain useful for years to come, plus it comes from a top brand.

It is a smart long-term investment whether you're replacing an ageing system or buying a laptop for the first time.

Price Context & Historical Value

At $749.99, the Lenovo LOQ represents excellent value given its hardware and upgrade potential. The last time I saw this on sale at Best Buy was in April, where it was priced at $790.

A $300 discount brings it well below its usual $1,049.99 price, making it far more competitive with mid-range laptops that often offer less memory, slower displays, or integrated graphics.

If you've been considering a higher-performance laptop for work, study, or creative tasks, this is one of those deals that's genuinely excellent.

The Catch: What to know before you buy

While battery life is rated at up to five hours, the Lenovo LOQ is designed as a high-performance laptop that's happiest plugged into its 170W power adapter during heavier workloads. At $749.99, it offers a strong mix of processing power, upgradeability, and display quality for anyone looking to replace an ageing laptop or invest in a more capable everyday machine.

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