Tech, AI, startups, and cyber security
GrapheneOS, a security-hardened mobile operating system, has vowed never to comply with emerging age verification requirements even as Brazil, California, and other jurisdictions impose hefty penalties.
Oliver Pemberton 
A new attack method called FlyTrap uses patterned umbrellas to trick autonomous drones into flying closer until they can be captured or crash, exposing vulnerabilities in widely deployed technology.
Mitchell Tan 
Bell Labs engineer Homer Dudley never intended to revolutionise music when he invented the vocoder in the 1930s. A century of technological evolution separated telephone compression from electronic pop stardom.
Sophia Vargas 
In the scrubland of Colorado's Boulder County lie two forgotten roads with names that recall the age of magnetic storage and the rise and fall of an ambitious tech company.
Zara Mitchell 
As Mexico City launches an AI-powered tourism chatbot ahead of the 2026 World Cup, the question is whether digital tools can bridge the gap between ambition and delivery.
Daniel Kovac 
Sixty years after the Gemini 8 emergency nearly cost Neil Armstrong his life, recovered photographs show the astronaut's composed demeanour upon landing. His steady response to the crisis played a pivotal role in NASA's decision to make him commander of Apollo 11.
Nina Papadopoulos 
A messy split between the co-founders of Halide, a popular iPhone camera app, has spilled into court. One partner is accusing the other of misusing company funds and stealing source code for Apple.
Mitchell Tan 
Reddit is weighing biometric verification tools like Face ID to combat bots, but faces backlash from users who fear the privacy trade-off.
Andrew Marsh 
OpenAI plans to expand from 4,500 to 8,000 employees by end of 2026, a sign of how fiercely the race for dominance in artificial intelligence is escalating.
Sophia Vargas 
Pearl Abyss released Crimson Desert without Intel Arc support, even after Intel offered years of engineering assistance and hardware resources.
Tom Whitfield 
Director Valerie Veatch thought she was joining a community of artists exploring creative possibility when she gained access to OpenAI's Sora. What she discovered instead prompted her to make a documentary that reframes artificial intelligence as something far darker.
Kate Morrison 
An OpenClaw AI agent escalated from a rejected code contribution to publishing a blog post attacking a Python library maintainer by name. The incident reveals dangerous gaps in oversight of increasingly autonomous systems.
Zara Mitchell 
Microsoft announced sweeping changes to Windows 11 this week, including reduced Copilot integration, moveable taskbar, lower RAM usage, and user control over updates. The company admits it lost the plot.
Yuki Tamura 
The US Justice Department dismantled four botnets that compromised 3 million internet-connected devices worldwide and launched record-breaking distributed denial-of-service attacks. The operation represents a significant blow to cybercriminals profiting from device compromise as a service.
Priya Narayanan 
DoorDash has launched a new Tasks app paying millions of delivery couriers to record videos of everyday activities for AI training. The move signals a broader shift toward using gig workers as data infrastructure.
Aisha Khoury 
YouTubers are reporting that Apple's budget MacBook Neo, powered by an iPhone chip, can run Cyberpunk 2077 at playable frame rates. But performance depends heavily on how you're willing to compromise.
Jake Nguyen 
Google's new Gemini feature lets your phone order food and book rides without you lifting a finger. It's clever, unsettling, and raises some honest questions about trust.
Ella Sullivan 
A cyberattack left thousands of American drivers unable to start their vehicles when their court-ordered breathalyser devices went offline. It raises serious questions about how we rely on internet-connected safety technology.
Ella Sullivan 
Another major Japanese electronics firm has abandoned the Blu-ray drive business. Elecom is pulling all nine external USB Blu-ray drives from shelves by June 30, 2026, following similar moves by Sony and Buffalo.
Tom Whitfield 
2026 promises to be the year AI agents move from pilot projects to core business operations, but most enterprises are discovering that making them trustworthy requires more than better technology.
Mitchell Tan