News

• Smart home brand Shelly announced its new security camera ahead of IFA 2026
• It lets you view and store footage to microSD cards with no additional subscription cost
• You can upgrade to Shelly Premium for cloud-based storage and other smart features

The early IFA 2026 product announcements have started, and home tech company Shelly has unveiled its new smart home security camera — and I think it has a shot at becoming the next cheap Ring alternative.

The new indoor Shelly Camera is the latest affordable smart home device designed for those who want similar features to those found in the best home security doorbells, but want to avoid the catch of additional subscription fees.

With a reasonable $49.99/£35 (approximately AU$65) price tag, the Shelly Camera sports all the basic features you need to ensure your home is covered to give you added peace of mind. Though the camera’s video quality isn’t as advanced as the Ring Outdoor Cam Pro’s 4K resolution (Shelly’s is limited to 1080P), its other features more than make up for it.

As well as 110-degree horizontal and 70-degree vertical fields of view, which should be enough to cover a single room, the Shelly Camera supports black-and-white night vision monitoring and is compatible with Alexa, Google Home, and Samsung SmartThings. It’s also built to slot easily into your existing Shelly smart home ecosystem, working with other devices to trigger automations and activate lighting when movement is detected.

While many leading smart-home brands require you to sign up to a subscription in order to use their devices to their full potential, that’s not the case with the Shelly Camera.

One of the best parts about this camera is that it packs a fair amount of features that aren’t locked behind a subscription paywall. This includes its resolution specs mentioned above, as well as automations and two-way audio — but its free video storage is what makes the camera a winner.

As well as simply viewing live footage from your smartphone without saving it, you can save recordings locally on microSD cards, and though you’ll have to purchase SD cards separately, it works out a whole lot cheaper than a monthly subscription fee.

For a $50 security camera that gives you access to basic tools and a way to store footage locally for free, you really can’t go wrong. And for those who aren’t too savvy about their smart-home tech, these features should be more than sufficient.

All that said, Shelly does offer a premium tier for additional smarts. At 3.99 euros a month ($4.40 / £3.40 / AU$6.50), Shelly Premium gives you access to cloud-based storage for one camera, and even smarter automation upgrades. This includes AI-powered object-detection capabilities, allowing your device to easily distinguish between faces, pets, and even vehicles to trigger specific alerts, which you can customize.

Having a Shelly Premium subscription opens the door to a handful of additional capabilities to enhance your home security ecosystem, but I don’t think you’re missing out on too much if you decide to stick with its free, basic tier.

For the most part, it’s the storage element that convinces users to cave into subscription models, and here that's not a factor if you're happy to go with the SD card option — and the camera comes with a free three-month trial of Shelly Premium, so you can try out those extra features before deciding whether or not you need the subscription.

• Dell has unveiled a new 14-inch laptop at IFA 2026
• The Dell 14S is aimed at students and comes in vibrant colors like the MacBook Neo
• Dell has yet to reveal the price tag, which is a crucial missing piece of info with a wallet-friendly laptop like this

Dell has revealed a new 14-inch laptop over at IFA 2026 — and it's clear that this is a Windows 11 take on Apple's MacBook Neo formula.

The Dell 14S is a smart-looking, compact laptop which is aimed at students, and it comes in a selection of vibrant colors. That includes a rather striking green (velvet green as it's dubbed), as well as a light pink (dusty rose), beige (linen) and light blue (washed denim).

It'll be no great surprise to learn that the 14S is powered by Intel's Core Series 3 (Wildcat Lake) CPUs, which are performant but affordable chips that do a good job on the power-efficiency front.

RAM and storage start at 8GB and 256GB, but a higher-tier model offers 16GB and a 512GB or 1TB SSD.

The pitch is essentially a lesser version of Dell's XPS 13 for 2026, so you don't get quite the same thinness or lightweight nature (though the 14S is still 13.5mm thin and 1.15kg, so pretty trim).

The screen on the Dell 14S isn't touch-enabled either — it's a more basic 1920 x 1200 resolution display with a 60Hz refresh rate and 300 nits of brightness (with the XPS 13 you get 120Hz VRR and 500 nits). There is a fancier screen, mind, on the upper-tier model of the Dell 14S, which sharpens the resolution to 2880 x 1800 and gives you 120Hz.

How much is the Dell 14S? Well, that's really the crucial question when it comes to a MacBook Neo rival like this, and the answer is: we don't know because Dell isn't saying yet.

It makes me a bit nervous that no official price is forthcoming with this IFA unveiling, but we have got a hint behind the scenes of how much the Dell 14S might cost. According to The Verge, Dell reps are saying that this laptop will be "close" to the starting price of the XPS 13 – which is $700 in the US – but "slightly more accessible", which makes sense given the student target market, of course.

Indeed, based on the spec downgrades, I would hope it's cheaper, but the use of the word 'slightly' suggests that there's not going to be much difference. Although to be fair to Dell, the XPS 13 is level with the MacBook Neo's price tag (since Apple hiked the price from the launch MSRP) over in the US. That said, in other regions, the XPS 13 can be a good bit pricier than the Neo – in the UK currently it's 10% more, and it has been a heftier premium than that in the past. We'll likely see a similar scenario with the Dell 14S.

What compounds this concern is the RAM crisis, which is really kicking up a gear, and is expected to make hardware more expensive as 2026 continues (and matters are likely to worsen in 2027). Is Dell keeping quiet on the MSRP of the 14S right now because it's expecting further price pressures to exert themselves by the time it comes to this laptop's launch? I don't think we can rule that out.

Maybe I'm overthinking this, granted, and I like the look of the Dell 14S and the general pitch of this notebook. It just makes me a touch suspicious when we have a product that's built around being wallet-friendly, yet we don't get an MSRP, which, for this category of laptop, is an absolutely key consideration.

Hopefully my fears will prove unfounded, and it's worth noting that Dell isn't alone at being shy about revealing prices, with manufacturers avoiding pinning a recommended price on their offerings at launch being something of a trend of late (one that was noticeable at Computex). This is a symptom of the RAM crisis, of course, and component inflation on various fronts, all of which is predicted to get more severe as this year rolls into next.

• Florida is removing Flock cameras from state highways
• At the same time Texas is freezing future funding for Flock systems
• There are concerns over privacy and misuse

It's not just regular citizens who are turning against the hundreds of thousands of Flock license plate reader cameras across the US — now state authorities are also pulling back on their use of the scanning technology.

First up is Florida (via Fox Business), which has pulled all license plate readers from state roads, and given agencies (including Flock) 30 days to comply with the order. Florida governor Ron DeSantis said in a news conference that while he can see the usefulness of these systems, he's also concerned about potential misuse.

"What we don't want in the state of Florida is to have a digital AI surveillance state where everything we're doing is being tracked at all times," DeSantis told reporters this week. "Where is this data going? They claim that the companies aren't going to misuse it, but no one's watching that."

In a memo, the Florida Department of Transportation called out "concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns, and surveillance schemes" as reasons for the move. Several investigations over the past year have found police officers using Flock systems outside of their allowed remit.

Over to Texas, where governor Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to pause funding for Flock cameras amid increasing scrutiny (via the Texas Tribune). Around 3,200 Flock license plate readers have been installed in Texas since 2023.

"[Flock cameras] are going to be required to be used responsibly if they’re used at all," Abbott said in a radio interview. At least six police departments and sheriff's offices across the state have announced that law enforcement officials are being placed on leave, criminally charged, or investigated for Flock camera misuse — in the last month alone.

Further reporting by the Texas Tribune has found that $30 million of taxpayer money has been put towards the Flock network in the state, with more public funding set to be added before the pause was announced. According to one Texas police chief, the cameras are essential for disrupting criminal networks.

For its part, Flock has been making moves to improve the security and privacy of its systems, including setting seven days as the default for deleting data that's not part of a criminal investigation — but the debate over whether the company's technology is useful or invasive looks set to continue for some time.

• Fitbit users are complaining about Google Health’s food tracking
• The AI tool has reportedly been logging inaccurate metrics
• One user described the mistakes as ‘almost dangerous’

If you’ve used any kind of artificial intelligence (AI) tool, chances are you might have seen it hallucinate wildly inaccurate answers to your simple questions. Most of the time the results are largely harmless, but what about when these problems start having the potential to affect your health and wellbeing? That’s what many Fitbit users have recently noticed, and it could have serious consequences if it carries on unchecked.

The issue centers on Google Health, an AI helper that has been integrated into many of the best Fitbit wearables. It’s designed to understand your health metrics and make helpful suggestions to improve your health. Unfortunately, many Fitbit users have noticed it is doing the exact opposite when it comes to logging their nutritional intake.

Posting on Reddit, for example, one user said that Google Health’s food logging was “so inaccurate it’s almost dangerous.” Describing their problem, they outlined how Google Health drastically overestimated the number of calories in a serving of eggs while simultaneously underreporting the calorific intake of a portion of Greek yogurt. “On what planet is this level of deviation acceptable for a health product?,” they asked, before adding: “To make matters worse, digging into the food database it is full of incorrect nutrition facts.”

They’re not alone in their irritation, as the Reddit thread is full of similarly frustrated Google Health users. “This is a neverending fight,” said one who lamented that the AI often neglects to add foods when asked, then does so inaccurately when it finally decides to log them.

Another frustrated user has given up on Google’s AI entirely, reporting that: “I have been trying SO HARD to give this the benefit of the doubt, but the hassle of getting nutrition right in the app finally broke me … It also randomly changes my workouts, imported data from other systems, etc. I’ve honestly never been more disappointed in a Google product in my life.”

Unfortunately, this is far from the only problem we’ve seen reported when it comes to Google Health. The switch from Fitbit’s previous health-tracking app to an AI-native alternative in the form of Google Health has brought with it a slew of complaints in a range of different areas.

That includes the AI giving users ‘unhinged’ fitness advice, telling ‘nonstop lies’ about their workout sessions, and simply being ‘unbelievably bad.’ The feature has received so much heat that even Google appears to have acknowledged its flaws, with a recent update allowing you to hide the AI tool completely.

It’s a serious reminder of the problems that can arise when an AI tool starts working in potentially damaging areas like health and nutrition. While the original poster’s example of eggs and yogurt may just result in some annoyingly inaccurate metrics, the problems could be a lot worse if their health depended on specific consumption levels or if allergens were involved.

If you have any kind of risk factors when it comes to food and nutrition, it might be a good idea to treat your Fitbit’s Google Health AI with a strong dose of skepticism — or to avoid it altogether for now.

• Aesto Health reported a December 2025 cyberattack breaching AWS infrastructure, affecting 9.5M patients
• Stolen data includes PII, SSNs, medical histories, billing, and insurance information across 20+ clients
• No dark web leaks confirmed; credit monitoring offered, marking 2nd‑largest healthcare breach of 2026

American healthcare technology company Aesto Health suffered the “second-largest confirmed healthcare data breach” of the year so far, having lost data on more than 9.5 million patients.

In mid-December last year, the company suffered a cyberattack. Now, more than half a year later, it reported the incident to the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights, detailing what was lost, from whom, and what the extent of the incident is.

Aesto Health is an Alabama-based healthcare technology business, whose core service is helping other healthcare firms manage medical data, change electronic health record systems, and similar. As per its announcement, the attack affected parts of its Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure, which unidentified threat actors managed to access between December 2 and December 18.

According to a report on HIPAA Journal, the August attack affected more than two dozen of its clients, including Village Practice Management, Everside Health, Together Women’s Health Medical Group, and many others.

In the attack, the company lost personally identifiable information (PII) of its’ clients’ patients, including full names, Social Security numbers (SSN), partial dates of birth, driver’s license numbers, state identification numbers, financial account numbers, taxpayer identification numbers, health records, medical histories, claims/billing information, and health insurance information.

This is more than enough information for cybercriminals to launch highly sophisticated phishing and vishing attacks, which can result in disruptive ransomware and millions of dollars in damages. Luckily, there is still no evidence the data leaked on the dark web, or that it was already used by other criminals.

Aesto Health is now offering credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to everyone affected by the breach.

This is now the second-largest healthcare data breach of the year so far, HIPAA Journal confirmed, the largest one being the hit on DentaQuest that exposed 15 million records.

Via HIPAA Journal

• CD Projekt Red's joint CEO Michal Nowakowski has confidence in game consoles coping with the RAM crisis
• Nowakowski is convinced consoles will 'weather the storm', as analysts expect shortages to continue through 2027
• Sony isn't just facing the RAM crisis, but also a major backlash over its decision to end physical game discs

The RAM crisis is continuing to cause havoc with the hardware market, affecting component prices, PC makers, and potentially delaying next-gen console launches. However, it's not so bleak as you might think, at least in the eyes of CD Projekt Red's boss.

As reported by IGN, CD Projekt Red's (CDPR) joint CEO Michal Nowakowski was interviewed by The Game Business and voiced his confidence that next-gen consoles will survive the RAM crisis despite the prospect of high pricing.

This comes amid concerns and projections from industry insiders and analysts that RAM shortages are going to get worse in 2027 and beyond. The big three memory chip makers — Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron — are expected to increase combined capital spending to nearly 340% from 2024 to 2027.

It doesn't look like RAM shortages and high hardware prices will die down anytime soon, but this doesn't faze Nowakowski, at least when it comes to ensuring CDPR delivers the best possible content.

"Consoles are still necessary to broaden the audience on the casual or semi-casual level. It's important to have easy to plug in and enjoy gaming," Nowakowski says.

"I'm a big believer that they're [consoles] going to weather the storm. Pricing is the objective challenge. And the rumors... we hear them about the next-gen being delayed. I don't know if they're true."

Besides the RAM crisis pushing up prices and causing potential console launch delays, Sony in particular may have an uphill battle ahead. Its recent decision to end production of physical game discs for PlayStation consoles, starting in January 2028, already has gamers in the ecosystem protesting and planning alternatives to escape the impending doom of discs.

An all-digital future means any form of game ownership will cease to exist, as digital content can theoretically be taken away from gamers at any time, and that has led to a loud (and justified, I think) reaction from the console community.

The Game Business didn't question Nowakowski directly about physical game ownership, but did probe further on the effect that delayed next-gen consoles might have, with Nowakowski making CDPR's stance very clear.

"If the next-gen gets delayed, it could be the case that some ideas [for games] are put on a shelf for the future. We'd have to adjust. We're not worried on the commercial side. Consoles are here to stay."

It's fair to say that Nowakowski's last statement is a realistic assessment. Even given Sony's dismissal of physical game discs, this isn't going to lead to a complete collapse in the popularity of consoles.

However, Sony may not make life easy for itself and publishers such as CDPR, as from 2028, when the discs are dumped with the PlayStation ecosystem, a hit to games sales is far from impossible — especially if the ongoing backlash from gamers is anything to go by.