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It took 127 blood-splattered minutes for 2024’s outrageously violent flick Deadpool & Wolverine to reach a kill count of 178. In my two-hour preview of Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine, I’m pretty sure it took even less time to match it.
The game starts with a delirious murder spree against the forces of human supremacist Bolivar Trask on the Asian island of Talenbang, who has taken Team X’s leader Nathaniel Essex captive.
I’m soon slicing arms off in brutal finishing moves and pummeling their insides into paste with barrage attacks. When I get to staggering foes into the blast radius of a nearby grenade, turning them into a mushy pile of goo, it’s abundantly clear this isn’t your friendly neighbourhood Wolverine.
It’s an impressively percussive, weighty combat system. With Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton in mind, I’d describe it as heavy metal combat.
Rip and tear(Image credit: Sony)At first, soldiers are summarily dispatched with a chain of light attacks and a heavy attack finisher. Later, in Canada, shield-bearing Reavers demand an initial kick before a five-knuckled skewer to the sternum. And the Hand, red-gowned ninjas recently spotted in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, come with longer blades of their own, sometimes left lodged in Wolverine’s body to impede him until it either falls out or he rips it out to furiously stab an enemy.
The environment plays an important role too, whether you’re knocking hapless enemies off a rooftop or slamming them into a wall to leave them vulnerable to a barrage attack sure to relieve them of their entrails. Those enemies often come prepared, with mutant power inhibitors locking Logan’s regeneration unless you target the machines first — either by stealth or all-out assault.
(Image credit: Sony)Wolverine’s slower speed meant I took a few more hits than I needed when I couldn’t cancel attacks to dodge an incoming blow or use a Hurricane move to clear my vicinity. But once I’d adjusted to the pace (and learned how crucial the leap attack is for staying in combat), I was stringing together brutal extended combos to the point that Devil May Cry’s style meter wouldn’t have gone amiss.
In my one-man blood donation campaign, I’m building up my rage meter. As it ascends through tiers, you first unlock the Last Stand recovery mechanic, next enhanced finishing moves, then, lastly, the ability to trigger all-out carnage.
All of a sudden, environments fade away into monochrome irrelevance. The bodies of enemies pulse bright and ripe for shredding. Instakills become available with one squeeze of the trigger buttons.
It’s a thrill of delirious violence, and delete-on-sight kills comparable to Ninja Gaiden 4’s immensely satisfying Berserk mechanic last year.
(Re)generating action(Image credit: Sony)Jess Reiner-Reed, Senior Project Director, tells me that turning players into frenzied berserkers was always the plan, but balancing that aggression with Wolverine’s rapid healing ability required some mechanics to shapeshift in a manner worthy of Mystique.
“When people think of Wolverine, they say, ‘How are you going to make a video game about a guy that doesn't die?’ We had some versions that didn't work very well — versions where we were incentivizing the player to hide and have their health regenerate, like an FPS mechanic. But then we really landed on this version where we're incentivizing you to be aggressive.”
After years producing family-friendly fare in the Spider-Man series and Ratchet & Clank, the exact degree of this aggression and its gratuitous violence surprised many. Reiner-Reed gleefully reminds me that Insomniac isn’t new to this after the M-rated Resistance series.
“In Spider-Man, we always had to make sure Spider-Man doesn't kill people, because that's not Peter Parker; he webs guys to the side of the building. In Marvel's Wolverine, we get to kill people in the face.”
(Image credit: Sony)Focusing up close rather than tearing through Manhattan at 60mph meant Insomniac can lavish attention on details that would pass in a blur for Spider-Man. The game’s richly detailed levels look fantastic, with a focus on satisfyingly physics-driven destructible objects.
One moment in the demo particularly looked like it could have come straight out of Ratchet & Clank, and not for the better. I was pitted against the Proto Sentinel, a giant armoured robot boss rooted in place and limited to pummelling fists, laser-eyes and missile launchers. The somewhat formulaic boss battle was bested by dodge rolls and sprinting from clearly telegraphed blast zones. Despite Team X’s occasional interventions to enliven the fight, it felt like a dated chore compared to more recent similar battles like Clive’s fights against Final Fantasy XVI’s Eikons.
I found the Nightmare Doors sequences similarly deflating. These are portals into Logan’s Canadian wilderness cabin, where he unlocks forgotten memories by navigating a timed obstacle course, scrambling up tree trunks and leaping from eerily suspended shipping containers. The two examples I saw felt like perfunctory diversions compared to the far superior storyline chases.
Wolverine can throw hands with the best of them, but does the unrelenting focus on its excellent close quarters have legs? With no weapon mixups, ranged abilities, or a wide suite of movement abilities evident so far, the variety must come from elsewhere.
Reiner-Reed reassures me that variety will be found through build variations created through the player’s chosen special moves and custom augmentations to shape their build, whether they want to focus on stealth or accelerate into a raging rampage.
Moment to moment, it certainly has the X-Factor you’d expect from the X-Men’s headline act; I catch my pulse racing at the end of my demo, and the Team X team-up attacks with the gigantic Sabertooth and Mystique have me itching to see what punchy combinations await.
But in the space of two hours, I was craving more movement options and could already feel the leap attacks become a crutch.
Downtime in Lowtown(Image credit: Sony)Insomniac has far more to offer than just Deadpool & Wolverine’s glib humour and sadistic mayhem, as much as Reiner-Reed relishes team meetings to discuss blood physics. Off duty in a trademark flannel shirt and a cowboy hat, as Wolverine, I got to visit Lowtown for some R&R in the lawless slums of Madripoor.
The sequence provided ample opportunities for Liam McIntyre to show his range between macho posturing with Sabretooth and self-effacingly confronting his inability to find a suitable gift for Jean Grey (despite the advantages he gets from sniffing out her trail).
But it was a simple yet artfully composed game of Never Have I Ever at the bar with Mystique that impressed me most. Logan confronts his misdeeds and inner demons through the bottom of a glass. As I choose to drink and not drink at some of Mystique’s revealingly probing interrogations, I can safely say this: never have I ever been so struck by just waiting to see if Logan’s hesitant outstretched arm raised the cup to his lips.
“I love Logan as a character and always have because I found him one of the most emotionally complex characters,” says Liam McIntyre, the gravel-voiced Aussie actor who’s demonstrating Logan’s unfettered rage and nuanced regret in even these quieter moments.
“He doesn't want to go and high-five people in New York City; that's not his deal. He wants to stay off and be remote and do what he has to do and not make a big deal out of it [...] He feels the most grounded of the superheroes to me.
McIntyre does such a fine job making Wolverine a character you want to spend time with; I was almost disappointed when The Hand’s intrusion brought this lull to an abrupt close. Although crossing blades with them on an exhilarating rooftop chase that closed out the demo soon banished any momentary disappointment. The single-minded narrative momentum I saw here can remove any fears Spider-Man’s open world would be missed.
Both McIntyre and Reiner-Reed point to the game's ending as the moment they're most looking forward to seeing players’ reactions. If it can top what I saw in the first act’s (unfortunately embargoed) rollercoaster climax, I’m eager to see how Marvel’s Wolverine can top it when it arrives on PlayStation 5 on September 15.
Who's ready for another episode of Ted Lasso season 4? I hope you raised your hand because, well, why else would you be here if you weren't?
Anyway, the Apple TV show's next chapter, titled 'Greyhounds' Day Off', will be available to stream very soon, so you'll want some firm details on its launch date and time. Well, don't delay — read on to see when the hit soccer comedy-drama's next installment will come out!
What is the launch time for Ted Lasso season 4 episode 4?What's got AFC Richmond Women's team bent out of shape? (Image credit: Apple TV)Episode 4 of Ted Lasso's fourth season will be released in the US and Canada at 6pm PT / 9pm ET on Tuesday, August 25.
As I've explained in other articles like this one, Apple had publicly indicated that new chapters would drop on one of the best streaming services worldwide every Wednesday. However, this season's first three entries have aired in North and South America on Tuesday evenings, so this week's installment is all but certain to do likewise.
Where the rest of the world is concerned, Ted Lasso season 4 episode 4 will arrive on Wednesday, August 26. Check out the list below to see what time it'll come out where you live:
- US — Tuesday, August 25 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
- Canada — Tuesday, August 25 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
- UK — Wednesday, August 26 at 2am BST
- India — Wednesday, August 26 at 6:30am IST
- Singapore — Wednesday, August 26 at 9am SGT
- Australia — Wednesday, August 26 at 11am AEST
- New Zealand — Wednesday, August 26 at 1pm NZST
Ted Lasso season 4 made its Apple TV debut in early August, and it'll run for 10 weeks, with new episodes dropping weekly until the season 4 finale airs in early October.
For a quick rundown of the all-important release dates you need to know about, read on:
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 1 — out now
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 2 — out now
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 3 — out now
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 4 — August 25/26
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 5 — September 1/2
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 6 — September 8/9
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 7 — September 15/16
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 8 — September 22/23
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 9 — September 29/30
- Ted Lasso season 4 episode 10 — October 6/7
- Anti-AI sentiment and data center opposition is rising, and communities are costing tech firms billions with their opposition
- Trump says communities opposed to data centers are "making a mistake", and calls fossil fuel burning generators "beautiful"
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says that AI data centers "basically dug their own grave", adding that "they got the backlash they deserve."
The US government has gone all in on AI, so it’s no surprise that President Trump doesn’t fully understand why so many Americans are opposed to their presence within their communities.
During an interview with his ally Michael Cohen, Trump said “Communities that don't take a data center, they're making a mistake,” adding that their presence adds “tremendous amounts of jobs and money” to communities.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently offered his own take on data centers, saying that “They basically dug their own grave for the problem that's been caused for them, and that's why they got the backlash they deserve.”
Red and blue states opposed to data centersAI data centers are requesting an unprecedented amount of energy from US electrical grids, prompting Trump to not only lift clean air restrictions on data centers, but also push forward one of the biggest repeals of environmental protections.
As a result, data centers are being built with enormous gas turbine plants that release pollutants and cause health issues for local residents. In his interview, Trump said, “They're making their own power plants. They're building the most beautiful, you've never seen power plants like this.”
Across the political spectrum in the US, there has been a singular, clear message. AI is making people very concerned. Outside of the environment, the main concern comes in the form of job replacement. The majority of Americans in a recent poll said the technology will lead to fewer jobs.
Young people are especially distrustful of those running AI companies, again arguing that the technology would lead to fewer jobs. Almost three quarters of Americans believe that the pace of AI is moving too quickly - and they may have a point. Regulations and governance on AI are quickly falling behind.
Representatives of red and blue states have been banding together to push for more restrictions on AI development and moratoriums on data center construction to give the US time to put together a plan on how best to not only build out AI capacity, but also create an AI ecosystem that benefits all Americans, not just those at the top.
But how does Trump’s argument that data centers are creating “tremendous amounts of jobs and money” hold up under scrutiny?
Are data centers creating jobs and money for local communities?The first thing to note is that while data centers do create short-term jobs while under construction, they only require a skeleton staff once operational. The companies hired for data center construction are often larger firms with the capability to handle large infrastructure projects who often aren’t local companies at all.
Where data centers do create jobs is further down the digital pipeline as the AI capacity is leveraged by existing industries. While some industries are seeing a rise in AI-related jobs creation, 2026 has been the worst year for AI layoffs with more than 176,000 people laid off for AI-related reasons.
On the money side of the equation, Meta has recently revealed that its 4,000-acre data center campus has led to local teachers receiving bonuses of as much as $50,000 due to tax revenues gained from the site.
But Meta received $3.3 billion in tax exemptions for the site. This is a common incentive to attract investment, but many states are quickly realizing the exemptions they have granted for AI data centers are quickly becoming unsustainable.
Ohio projected a revenue loss of $136 million when it granted tax exemptions for new data centers constructed in the state, but Ohio Governor Mike DeWine recently revealed that number has reached $1.6 billion. Now, states are quickly repealing or amending their tax exemptions.
Until the Trump administration recognizes that the American public wants AI to benefit everyone in a sustainable way, rather than just AI bosses and the super rich, they’ll likely continue facing widespread opposition to their AI agenda.
- Hackers exploited trusted software updates to deliver malware directly into car head units
- Kaspersky says this is the first campaign tailored specifically for vehicle head units
- The malware can run silently without showing drivers any visible interface
Car head units are now being drawn into a growing wave of Android malware campaigns built for connected vehicle systems, experts have warned.
A newly discovered malware campaign is infecting these head units directly, systems that combine multimedia functions with, in some models, vehicle control.
According to Kaspersky, this campaign marks the first documented case of malware built specifically for this type of infection chain.
Compromised update channels deliver malware straight into vehiclesResearchers believe the activity can likely be traced back to the MoYu Group, a threat actor closely tied to the well-known BadBox botnet, which spread through the legitimate update mechanisms built directly into the firmware of Android-based head units manufactured by DoFun.
The infection chain originates from TWCore, a legitimate system app that is normally responsible for collecting analytics and updating head unit software remotely.
Attackers hijacked this trusted update channel using a specialized dropper called JarService to deliver previously unknown malware directly onto a range of affected devices.
Once successfully installed, the malware operated quietly as a regular background application without ever displaying any visible user interface.
Kaspersky identified nine distinct remote commands built into the malware, capable of displaying unwanted ads and executing various forms of ad fraud.
The malware also actively collected sensitive device information, including display resolution, device model, Wi-Fi network identifier, and the device's MAC address.
Investigators found clear technical links between this campaign and prior attacks launched against TV set-top boxes tied to the same broader threat group.
The research team claims that the botnet's administration panel shares embedded URLs with residential proxy service websites PXYEDGE and ProxyForU.
BadBox itself operates as a large, sprawling network of hijacked Android devices, including streaming boxes, phones, and tablets that arrive pre-infected from the factory.
Kaspersky has already formally notified the vendor about this ongoing abuse of its legitimate software distribution channel and update infrastructure.
According to statements from DoFun, the underlying issue has since been resolved across most affected devices currently deployed in the field.
Head units present a growing and largely unprotected attack surfaceCar head units can arrive factory-installed directly from the manufacturer or get added later to older vehicles as aftermarket upgrades.
Manufacturers frequently rely heavily on the Android operating system because it simplifies interface customization and essential system integration work considerably.
This widespread industry reliance means most standard Android applications, along with most existing Android malware, can potentially run on these devices.
Head units rarely store sensitive personal data directly on board, which on the surface might suggest only limited appeal to attackers.
However, they typically include active SIM card slots and maintain constant internet connectivity for navigation services and routine software updates.
That particular combination of persistent connectivity and comparatively weak security oversight makes these systems a genuinely attractive prospect for attackers going forward.
The overall scale of this particular campaign remains genuinely unclear, and whether other head unit manufacturers face similar exposure is not yet known.
There's a long list of things to buy this school season, especially since my firstborn is off to kindergarten this year, and at the top of my list is Apple's best-selling AirTag.
• Shop more daily deals at Amazon
Apple's AirTag is a Bluetooth tracking device that works with your iPhone to locate an item that it's attached to. In my case, I'm attaching the AirTag to my child's backpack for peace of mind.
I bought the newly released AirTag for full price, but you can currently get the 2nd Generation Apple AirTag 4 Pack on sale for $79.99 (originally $99). That's a new record-low price, and each AirTag comes out to just $20, which is an absolute steal for what you get in return.
Get the Apple AirTag for its lowest price yetAirTag 4 Pack (2nd generation): was $99 now $79.99
You can get the best-selling Apple AirTag 4 Pack for $79.99, which is the lowest price we've ever seen. A great way to track a child's backpack or luggage, the AirTag can be attached to anything you don't want to lose, and your iPhone can locate it.View Deal
The 2026 Apple AirTag launched in January and is one of Amazon's top three best-selling gadgets. The AirTag isn't just for backpacks; you can attach the tracker to your keys, wallet, or luggage, or anything else you don't want to lose, and your iPhone will locate it. The 2nd Generation model offers a 50% longer Precision Finding range and a louder speaker with a higher-pitched chime. You can also now share your AirTag location with family and friends on shared items or airline partners for lost luggage.
Keep in mind, this is a limited-time offer and the lowest price we've ever seen for the 4 Pack Apple AirTag model. If you're not interested in a 4 Pack, you can grab a single Apple AirTag for $24.
- AMD says its rack-scale AI systems are now about four times more energy-efficient than its 2024 baseline, beating its own threefold interim target by 33%
- The company offers two alternative outcomes for that gain: the same compute in far fewer racks, or twenty times more compute for the same power, something that
- AMD's own figures can also be reverse-engineered to imply that each 2030 rack draws roughly 14.25x the power of a 2024 one
AMD has published a progress report on the efficiency goals it set in June 2025, revealing the numbers are already better than the company was aiming for.
Against a 2024 baseline, AMD says its rack-scale AI systems are now roughly four times more energy efficient, ahead of the three times it had projected for this point, a trend that, by its own calculations, represents more than double the historical industry trendline.
This aligns with a six-year commitment by the chip design giant, in which it has pledged to deliver a twenty-fold improvement in rack-scale energy efficiency for AI training and inference by 2030.
Efficiency gets center stage as AMD aims to secure more AI customersThis is not the first time AMD has set itself a performance and efficiency goal. Its previous target, internally known as 30x25, aimed at a thirtyfold node-level improvement between 2020 and 2025, and the chipmaker finished ahead of its projections, clocking in at 38x,
AMD's efficiency and performance gains, if they hold as intended at 20x, can be flipped two ways: one could consider sizing down to larger, but singular racks to get their job done versus legacy hardware.
The flipside is easy to make at a time when everyone from AI startups to hyperscalers is pushing to increase compute whenever possible. AMD's efficiency gains could, in principle, allow its latest offerings in 2030 to deliver 20x the compute for the same power draw.
At a time when nobody in the industry is trying to buy less compute, AMD's offerings might be particularly appealing thanks to their efficiency gains, as projections indicate global data center electricity demand will more than double by 2030 to around 945 terawatt-hours, roughly what Japan uses today as a nation.
AMD's gains come from its newest GPUs being an order of magnitude more efficient than their predecessors; the MI300X that anchors the baseline was a 750-watt part delivering up to 2.6 petaFLOPS of dense FP8.
For context, each current-generation MI455X in Helios offers between 7.7 and 15.4 times the floating-point performance, 2.25 times the HBM, 4.4 times the memory bandwidth, and four times the chip-to-chip interconnect bandwidth, while consuming three times the power.
Its chief sustainability officer, Justin Murrill, told Trellis that every AMD team carries efficiency-per-watt targets for new products and that progress is tied to company-wide bonuses.
For now, AMD is ahead of schedule on a real, well-documented engineering goal. Hitting it, however, will not reduce the amount of electricity the AI industry consumes, as the efficiency and performance gains it offers will only fuel more demand for AI hardware that can use the saved power, even as demand for AI compute power continues to soar.
- Sandisk's new NAS SSD lineup reaches a massive 7.68 TB capacity
- The flagship NAS 800 carries an unusually high 14 PBW endurance rating
- Sandisk offers SATA and PCIe 5.0 options for NAS systems
Sandisk has introduced two SSD families designed specifically for network-attached storage systems, with capacities reaching 7.68TB.
The company says the NAS 600 SATA and NAS 800 NVMe drives are designed for prosumers, creative professionals, and small businesses.
The NAS 600 reaches 4TB through SATA connectivity, while the NAS 800 uses PCIe 5.0 and extends capacity to 7.68TB.
Sandisk builds separate storage options for NAS workloadsThe NAS 600 uses a 2.5-inch, 7mm SATA design that fits compatible NAS systems supporting 2.5-inch solid-state drives, and comes in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, with sequential read speeds of up to 560 MB/s across the range.
Its endurance ratings range from 350 TBW on the 500GB model to 2,500 TBW on the 4TB version, and Sandisk also rates the NAS 600 at up to 2.25M hours MTTF, based on internal testing and statistical calculations.
On the other hand, the NAS 800 uses an M.2 2280 form factor with PCIe 5.0 connectivity for higher-performance NAS configurations.
Its available capacities are 960GB, 1.92TB, 3.84TB, and 7.68TB, with sequential read speeds up to 14,900 MB/s.
The 3.84TB version reaches 2.3M IOPS for random reads and 2M IOPS for random writes under Sandisk's testing conditions.
Sandisk lists databases, virtualization, content creation, storage tiering, caching, and agentic AI among potential NAS 800 workloads.
The company says both families were engineered for multi-user environments where storage systems can remain active continuously.
“The way users employ NAS has fundamentally changed,” said Anil Moolchandani, vice president, product management at Sandisk, announcing the products.
The endurance figures separate these drives from ordinary consumer SSDs, particularly where NAS systems continuously write and rewrite stored data.
Sandisk rates the 7.68TB NAS 800 at 14 PBW, equivalent to 14,000 TBW across the drive's stated endurance specification.
That rating corresponds to approximately 7.67 TB of writes each day over five years if the workload remains evenly distributed.
The NAS 800 also uses TLC 3D NAND, although the company has not disclosed its specific controller or detailed internal architecture.
Capacity and endurance come with substantial pricesSandisk prices the NAS 600 lineup at $179.99 for 500GB, $279.99 for 1TB, $499.99 for 2TB, and $999.99 for 4TB.
The NAS 800 series opens at $309.99 for 960GB, then rises to $559.99 for 1.92TB, $1,099.99 for 3.84TB, and $2,199.99 for 7.68TB.
At $2,199.99, the 7.68TB flagship model carries a price tag considerably steeper than typical consumer-oriented SSDs offering comparable storage capacity.
Both drives will become available in September and will be sold via Sandisk’s official website and other select e-commerce platforms globally.
The company claims that the NAS 600 offers an accessible upgrade path away from hard drives, with support for solid-state caching and storage tiering.
It also notes that compatibility with individual NAS systems can vary, particularly where drive bays or M.2 implementations differ significantly.
For buyers weighing hard drive alternatives, these caveats matter as much as the speed and endurance figures.
- Ultra Maritime pairs its Sea Spear passive sonar array with the AN/SSQ-125B active sonobuoy at the US Navy's Lanternfish 2026 exercise in a bid to detect underwater drones
- While neither sonar type is new, the distributed architecture that links both to Anduril's Seabed Sentry and the Navy's command systems generates usable, precise readings for unmanned underwater vehicles
- The chain detects and then alerts operators to the presence of potential hostile naval assets in the vicinity of sensors that work in tandem to generate more reliable information
The threat that keeps modern navies awake at night is no longer a single, quiet submarine that gave regular defenses the slip, but a plethora of cheap drones that come in all shapes and sizes and could target anything from a pier to an undersea cable or a pipeline, for example.
While modern navies use sonar to track larger submarines, small drones are much harder to track reliably, even as Ultra Maritime, a defense tech company, says it has an answer.
The company showed that a pairing of its Sea Spear, a deployable passive sonar array, with the AN/SSQ-125B, its active sonobuoy offering, could, when working in tandem, track unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) better.
Existing tech, paired, repurposed and integrated to deliver resultsIt is important to know that neither of the hardware solutions used, passive sonar arrays or active sonobuoys, is a new creation; they have been deployed for years by the US Navy and many of its counterparts across the world since World War II to detect and track submarines.
The underlying approaches are even older: Passive listening and active pinging are two of the oldest techniques in the business, and both have existed since the First World War.
The intriguing part is the integration at play here and why it is tactically sound: Passive sonar is quiet, and it gives up nothing for the information it collects, including the listener's position, but it does get a bearing on any potential craft it does detect. Active sonar can then be used to determine range and location; however, for modern naval units, it is a double-edged sword, as it essentially announces one's presence in the region.
The tech essentially figures out whether anything is worth detecting by leveraging the first, then turns to the second to determine its specific location when needed. The company's Ocean of Things concept extends that to a mesh of autonomous sensors seeded from crewed and uncrewed platforms.
Ultramarine's approach allowed it to detect and classify UUVs of various sizes and sophistication in the US Navy's 2026 Lanternfish exercise. It has also announced that its Sea Spear is working with Anduril's Seabed Sentry to detect the same.
The timing is excellent for its buyer: defense contractor Lockheed Martin recently agreed to purchase Ultra Maritime from its private equity owner Advent for $3.45 billion, essentially adding it to the former's Rotary and Mission Systems division.
With navies struggling to identify and stop underwater drones that pose a persistent threat to their operations and defensive capabilities, Ultra Maritime's two-pronged approach seems like an interesting play to adopt. It combines already-existing scalable seabed infrastructure with a mesh of cheap listening arrays and expendable pinging buoys to get the job done.
To achieve any level of competency, large language models (LLMs) need ample data for sufficient training. AI companies have looked to various sources to mine this information, including content publicly available on the internet, synthetic data generated from other AI models, and printed literature.
Reading difficultiesPrompted by news that AI companies were allegedly using books from pirate ebook sites to build their LLMs, writers, authors, and publishers publicly called out this deeply worrying process.
Quote of the dayThis 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.
The professional organization known as the Authors Guild responded to various stories about AI companies scanning books to train their AI models (both illegally and legally) with incredibly comprehensive guidelines on AI licensing.
This document covered the various manifestations of the use of published works by AI companies, including its legal perspective on the legitimacy of using such works. It also highlighted that the continued data harvesting processes would risk destroying the ecosystem for books that currently exists.
Book buyingThe use of books by AI companies is an ongoing concern. But in recent months the focus has pivoted to those that buy, scan – and destroy – books on an industrial scale.
For example, court documents revealed the existence of 'Project Panama' inside Anthropic. This is a scheme in which the company aims to "destructively scan all the books in the world" and used a codename because "we don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.".
To train Claude, Anthropic had to procure a large and high-quality dataset, so it set out to purchase books on an industrial scale because of the relatively high-quality nature of the writing compared with, say, writing found online.
- VK wants Apple to restore its apps or face millions in daily fines
- The Russian company is demanding 58 million rubles ($696,000) every day
- Apple removed several major VK apps following European Union sanctions
Russian firm VK has filed a lawsuit against Apple in a Moscow arbitration court, seeking restoration of several removed applications from the App Store.
Court records dated August 19 2026 show that the Russian technology company wants its applications restored to the platform without further delay.
Apple removed a range of VK-owned applications recently, including VKontakte, VK Messenger, VK Video, Odnoklassniki, Zen, Mail Cloud, Mail, Skillbox, and Youla, saying it was following sanctions imposed by the European Union against VK and its messaging subsidiary, Communication Platform LLC.
VK demands steep daily penalties for continued app removalVK is asking the court to impose penalties of 58 million rubles per day, equivalent to roughly $696,000, if Apple fails to comply.
That figure breaks down across three services, with VKontakte accounting for 50 million rubles, or about $600,000, in daily fines.
VK Music would carry a penalty of 5 million rubles, or nearly $60,000, while Odnoklassniki would draw 3 million rubles, close to $36,000 daily.
The lawsuit names three separate Apple entities as defendants, including Apple Rus LLC, Apple Inc., and Apple Distribution International Ltd.
VK has requested that the daily fines begin accruing six days after the court issues its complete and final ruling in this case.
The European Union's sanctions accused VK and its messaging subsidiary of enabling surveillance, censorship, and the identification of government critics inside Russia.
Apple removed the applications from the App Store following that designation, and the same titles later disappeared from Google Play as well.
Kremlin criticism adds to mounting pressure on AppleThe Kremlin responded sharply to Apple's decision, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov publicly demanding a formal explanation from the company itself.
Peskov argued that the removals called into question Apple's "reliability as a provider of commercial services" inside the Russian market.
The dispute unfolds against a broader pattern of legal friction between Western technology companies and Russian government authorities in recent years.
The Tagansky District Court recently fined Apple 500 thousand rubles (~$6,000) for a repeated violation of Russian federal legislation.
Similarly, a Moscow arbitration court ordered Google Ireland Limited to return more than $2.1 billion to Google's bankrupt Russian subsidiary.
That earlier ruling found the payments in question constituted unjust enrichment under Russian commercial law at the time of the case.
VK's case against Apple follows a similar legal strategy, relying on domestic courts to challenge decisions made by foreign firms.
Whether Moscow's arbitration system can meaningfully compel compliance from Apple, given its shrinking footprint in Russia, remains a genuinely open question.
Via United24media
- Samsung System LSI division uses Anthropic's Claude Code to reportedly slice working processes
- However the tool also apparently downgraded an error message instead of fixing it, rolling back unrelated finished work, and tried to edit code it was not authorized to touch
- Samsung's engineers currently review everything the tool produces before it is published elsewhere or affects existing chip designs
Samsung's System LSI division has reportedly used Anthropic's Claude Code to cut a month-long system-on-chip verification job to about two days.
While Samsung's division has about 6,000 employees, its main rival in mobile application processors, Qualcomm, has roughly 52,000 employees, and the former is apparently not above using AI to bridge the gap as a force multiplier.
A report from South Korean business outlet Chosun Biz (KR) claims System LSI leveraged Anthropic's Claude Code by offering it to its software developers in May 2026, then extended it to semiconductor design and verification work, a move which led to much faster progress on certain projects, while also producing interesting failures on other fronts.
A mix of triumphs and gaffesSamsung's approach, for the most part, makes an excellent case for future AI use, as one verification project expected to take more than a month was finished in about two days, something the company internally tracked as a 15x gain in efficiency.
More interestingly, a second-year engineer with no prior exposure to either the tool or USB communication standards built USB device models for an emulator and adapted an Android driver in a single day, work whichwas normally estimated to take about a month.
Samsung has also had an interesting interaction using Claude Code to verify the internal data connections of a custom system-on-chip. The job was complex in more ways than one: the customer wanted a new architecture, third-party design IP was involved, the documentation was nonstandard, and the RTL for the DRAM controller had not arrived on schedule, making for a perfect storm for Claude.
Claude built a virtual verification environment using placeholder blocks in place of the missing RTL, along with test scenarios, so that engineers could start catching errors before the real design existed.
On the other side of the equation, Claude Code did, in certain cases, try to operate outside the boundaries of its assignments, often resulting in incorrect output or an error, or, in one case, an attempt to modify RTL circuit code it had no authorization to touch. It also rolled back unrelated finished work and downgraded an error message instead of fixing it.
The former is particularly egregious because, unlike software updates, once silicon ships, it can rarely be repurposed or 'updated' to bypass design flaws. Samsung has responded by ensuring engineers manually inspect and verify the output of Anthropic's models before using it elsewhere.
More interestingly, Claude Code isn't the only tool in the building, even if it seems to get the most attention here; Samsung also uses Google Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT across research, manufacturing, marketing, and support.
Despite this, Samsung does not use either of the other models to check input from the former; trusted engineers on-site do that instead in an industry where errors that are not picked up during reviews could be costly for a company that is currently attempting to maximize efficiency, even as its System LSI has posted losses in its SoC business and its flagship Galaxy Z Fold 8 runs Qualcomm's silicon under the hood.
There is no such thing as a stupid idea in Stuart Fails to Save the Universe — and I'm starting to think that there's no such thing as a boring idea, either.
As the gang leave behind their tribal oasis from episode 5 — which, let's face it, they ruined — we're back in a familiar suburban setting this week. The difference? Everyone eats plants and grass as if they were a Happy Meal at McDonald's.
No fast food favoritism here, but you get the idea. So, when does Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 6 arrive on HBO Max?
What time can I watch Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 6 on HBO Max?For US viewers, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 6 will drop on Thursday, August 27 at 6pm PT/ 9pm ET.
Internationally, you're looking out for these timings:
- US – Thursday, August 27 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
- Canada – Thursday, August 27 at 6pm PT / 9pm ET
- UK – Friday, August 28 at 2am BST
- India – Friday, August 28 at 6:30am IST
- Singapore – Friday, August 28 at 9am SGT
- Australia – Friday, August 28 at 11am AEST
- New Zealand – Friday, August 28 at 1pm NZST
New episodes of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe will make landfall every Thursday in the US and on Fridays everywhere else. Here are the all-important dates you need to know about:
- Episode 1: out now
- Episode 2: out now
- Episode 3: out now
- Episode 4: out now
- Episode 5: out now
- Episode 6: August 27
- Episode 7: September 3
- Episode 8: September 10
- Episode 9: September 17
- Episode 10: September 24