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Please, don't bring any live chickens -- or their jockeys -- to showings.

Pope Francis was laid to rest in a funeral ceremony over the weekend and next week the College of Cardinals will convene their conclave at the Vatican to choose his successor. In this episode we speak to one of those cardinals, who will attend his first papal conclave. And we go inside the room where it all happens, the Sistine Chapel famous for its ceiling of frescos by Michelangelo.

Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, one Seattle man embarks on a journey to a remote mountain in Laos where his father was last seen during a secret mission in the war.

• Browsers are the new frontline, but today’s DLP can’t see the real threats
• Data Splicing Attacks break through enterprise browser security
• Angry Magpie reveals how fragile the current DLP architecture is in a browser-first world

A newly uncovered data exfiltration technique known as Data Splicing Attacks could place thousands of businesses worldwide at significant risk, bypassing all leading data loss prevention (DLP) tools.

Attackers can split, encrypt, or encode data within the browser, transforming files into fragments that evade the detection logic used by both endpoint protection platforms (EPP) and network-based tools - before these pieces are then reassembled outside the protected environment.

By using alternative communication channels such as gRPC and WebRTC, or secure messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, threat actors can further obscure their tracks and avoid SSL-based inspections.

Threat actors now splice, encrypt, and vanish

The growing reliance on browsers as primary work tools has increased exposure. With more than 60% of enterprise data stored on cloud platforms accessed via browsers, the importance of a secure browser has never been greater.

Researchers demonstrated that proxy solutions used in many secure enterprise browsers simply cannot access the necessary context to recognize these attacks because they lack visibility into user interactions, DOM changes, and browser context.

Additionally, endpoint DLP systems struggle because they rely on APIs exposed by the browser, which do not offer identity context, extension awareness, or control over encrypted content.

These limitations create a blind spot that attackers can exploit without detection, undermining many enterprises’ ability to defend against insider threat scenarios.

What makes this discovery even more urgent is the ease with which these techniques can be adapted or modified. With new code, attackers can easily create variants, further widening the gap between evolving threats and outdated protections.

In response, the team introduced Angry Magpie, an open source toolkit designed to replicate these attacks. Security teams, red teams, and vendors can use the tool to evaluate their defenses.

Angry Magpie allows defenders to assess their systems’ exposure in realistic scenarios, helping identify blind spots in current implementations of even the best DLP solutions.

“We hope our research will serve as a call to action to acknowledge the significant risks browsers pose for data loss,” the team said.

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• Google DeepMind has enhanced and expanded access to its Music AI Sandbox
• The Sandbox now includes the Lyria 2 model and RealTime features to generate, extend, and edit music
• The music is watermarked with SynthID

Google DeepMind has brought some new and improved sounds to its Music AI Sandbox, which, despite sand being notoriously bad for musical instruments, is where Google hosts experimental tools for laying down tracks with the aid of AI models. The Sandbox now offers the new Lyria 2 AI model and the Lyria RealTime AI musical production tools.

Google has pitched the Music AI Sandbox as a way to spark ideas, generate soundscapes, and maybe help you finally finish that half-written verse you’ve been avoiding looking at all year. The Sandbox is aimed mainly at professional musical artists and producers, and access has been pretty restricted since its 2023 debut. But, Google is now opening up the platform to many more people in music production, including those looking to create soundtracks for films and games.

The new Lyria 2 AI music model is the rhythm section underlying the new Sandbox. The model is trained to produce high-fidelity audio outputs, with detailed and intricate compositions across any genre, from shoegaze to synthpop to whatever weird lo-fi banjo-core hybrid you’re cooking up in your bedroom studio.

The Lyria RealTime feature puts the AI's creation in a virtual studio that you can jam with. You can sit at your keyboard, and Lyria RealTime will help you mix ambient house beats with classic funk, performing and tweaking its sound on the fly.

Virtual music studio

The Sandbox offers three main tools for producing the tunes. Create, seen above, lets you describe the kind of sound you're aiming for in words. Then the AI whips up music samples you can use as jumping-off points. If you've already got a rough idea down but can’t figure out what happens after the second chorus, you can upload what you have and let the Extend feature come up with ways to continue the piece in the same style.

The third feature is called Edit, which, as the name suggests, remakes the music in a new style. You can ask for your tune to be reimagined in a different mood or genre, either by messing with the digital control board or through text prompts. For instance, you could ask for something as basic as "Turn this into a ballad," or something more complex like, "Make this sadder but still danceable," or see how weird you can get by asking the AI to "Score this EDM drop like it's all just an oboe section." You can hear an example below created by Isabella Kensington.

AI singalong

Everything generated by Lyria 2 and RealTime is watermarked using Google's SynthID technology. That means the AI-generated tracks can be identified even if someone tries to pass them off as the next lost Frank Ocean demo. It’s a smart move in an industry that’s already gearing up for heated debates about what counts as "real" music and what doesn’t.

These philosophical questions also decide the destination of a lot of money, so it's more than just abstract discussions about how to define creativity at stake. But, as with AI tools for producing text, images, and video, this isn't the death knell of traditional songwriting. Nor is it a magic source of the next chart-topping hit. AI could make a half-baked hum fall flat if poorly used. Happily, plenty of musical talents understand what AI can do, and what it can't, as Sidecar Tommy demonstrates below.

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• Beats is launching its Pill speaker in Blush Pink and Navy Blue
• It's also announced that the Pill is Beats best-selling speaker ever
• You'll still get bold sound and all-day battery life from the Pill

Last summer, Beats brought back its Pill speaker, and after testing it, we found it to be an impressive offering with robust sound and excellent bass. Further, in typical Beats fashion, it launched in a few different shades: Champagne Gold, Matte Black, and Statement Red.

Now, ahead of summer travel in 2025, Beats is expanding the selection of colors for the Pill, and both are stunners. Introducing the Beats Pill in ‘Blush Pink’ and ‘Navy Blue.’ Better yet, these don’t come with a price increase either.

You will need to track down each shade at a specific retailer, though. In the United States, fans of pink will need to visit Target, while those looking for blue will need to head to Walmart. Easier than heading out the door, though, is locking in an order online – both are priced at $149.95 and are shipping now.

(Image credit: Beats)

If you’re in the United Kingdom, you can get ‘Blush Pink’ from John Lewis for £149.99. Those in Canada can head to Walmart, with pricing to be confirmed at a later date.

Now, both of these shades look great, though the Blush Pink is a bit more fun in our opinion, offering a more summer-y shade in a very light shade of the color. Depending on how the light hits it, the speaker might pop even a bit more.

It’s also a full-color job on the rear and front, as well as the attached lanyard and buttons. The Navy Blue is a proper representation of the name, offering a deeper shade of the color.

Either route, ‘Navy Blue’ and ‘Blush Pink’ expand the color options, offering two fun shades alongside the original trio of Champagne Gold, Matte Black, and Statement Red.

Regardless of the color you get the Beats Pill in, you’re scoring what Beats is now confirming is “its bestselling speaker" ever, in that it's sold more of the new Beats Pill in the nine months it’s been out for compared to all past Pill launches.

(Image credit: Beats)

That's quite an accomplishment and speaks to why TechRadar gave it a full four out of five stars.

The excellent audio from the Pill is produced by a new racecourse drive that sits front and center, angled upward. You can also pair two of these speakers together for a stereo and more room-filling experience. You’ll also get up to 24 hours of battery life, and the Pill is quite durable, thanks to its IP67 rating.

Lastly, while you’ll recharge it using the USB-C port on the back, the Pill supports passthrough, allowing you to recharge another device by simply plugging it in.

Now, if you’re sold on Blush Pink or Navy Blue, you can get Pill for $149.99 from Target or Walmart right now. More importantly, though, if you’re okay with black, gold, or red, you can score it for just $129.95 (was $ 149.95) at Walmart right now.

You can get the Beats Pill in black, gold, or red at Walmart for just $129.95.View Deal

If you’re curious as to what else Beats has been up too, check out our first look at Beats Cables – yes USB-C to USB-C cables – here.

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• US bans Nvidia's H20 just as Huawei reveals its next-gen Ascend 920 AI chip
• Ascend 920 may fill China’s AI chip gap post restrictions
• Nvidia faces $5.5 billion hit as Huawei seizes opportunity

On April 9, 2025, the United States announced plans to further tighten restrictions on AI chip exports to China, including Nvidia's H20 processor, a reduced-performance chip which the company created to comply with earlier US export regulations while continuing sales in China.

Huawei, which has been positioning itself as China’s answer to Nvidia for some time, was likely waiting for the announcement because just one day later, at a partner conference, it revealed the Ascend 920, its next-generation AI chip.

Set to enter mass production in the second half of 2025, according to DigiTimes Asia, the chip is expected to be built on SMIC’s 6nm process and offer up to 900 TFLOPs of BF16 compute and 4000GB/s of memory bandwidth, supported by HBM3 memory modules. It will also support PCIe 5.0 and next-generation interconnect protocols to aid large-model training.

An effective alternative

With the Nvidia H20 now restricted in China, industry analysts believe Huawei’s new chip could bridge the gap.

Although real-world benchmarks are not yet available, the Ascend 920’s specifications suggest it could be an effective alternative to Nvidia's H20 and may be welcomed by Chinese companies like Tencent and ByteDance, which will now require substitutes for the restricted chip.

While the current Ascend 910C is estimated to deliver about 60% of the Nvidia H100’s inference performance, the Ascend 920 reportedly improves training efficiency by 30% to 40% and is tailored for Transformer and Mixture of Experts models.

Nvidia had been making strong sales in China through the H20, with sales reportedly growing 50% quarter over quarter before the ban. The new license requirement from the U.S. Department of Commerce effectively halts those sales, and Nvidia is expected to write off $5.5 billion in lost business as a result.

Huawei also announced its AI CloudMatrix 384 Supernode solution at the same event.

This rack-scale platform, described as a 'Nuclear-level product', reportedly exceeds the performance of Nvidia’s GB200 but consumes more power, something that is not seen as a major concern in China compared to the West.

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