By Deepti Pathak Horror games have been a staple of the console experience, allowing players to sit back in…
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By Hisan Kidwai It’s no secret that the days of exchanging game discs with your friends to play new…
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By Thomas Macaulay Five standout scaleups from the UK have made it into TECH5 — the “Champions League of Technology.”  The selections complete the UK and Ireland regional round of the tournament, which will now crown Europe’s hottest scaleup. Both Ireland and the UK had no shortage of contenders. Each nation boasts impressive digital track records. The UK is often regarded as Europe’s leading tech hub. The country has a thriving ecosystem of startups, a strong investment landscape, and a world-class talent pool.  Last year, the country retained its position as the number one destination in Europe for tech investments, raising €17.5bn. London…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

A new survey by VPN provider Surfshark has found that Chrome collects the most information from users’ phones, while “TOR stands out as the most privacy-centric browser by collecting no data at all.”

The two were among 10 that researchers analyzed, after using AppMagic, a market intelligence tool, to select the most popular browser apps on Apple phones in the US in 2025, they said in a post outlining their findings.

The researchers noted, “Chrome is the most data-hungry, collecting 20 different data types across numerous categories. These include contact info, financial details, location, browsing history, search history, user content, identifiers, usage data, diagnostics, and other types of data. Chrome is the only browser that collects financial information, such as payment methods, card numbers, or bank account details.”

It is also, they stated, the only browser that collects a list of contacts from the user’s phone, address book, or social graph.

The researchers said that the remaining browsers each only collect an average of six data types, with Bing having the second-largest appetite, collecting 12 data types. Apple’s Safari browser collects eight.

Other findings revealed that:

40% of the analyzed browsers apps collect users’ locations. Safari, Chrome and Opera “collect coarse location, which refers to a user’s or device’s location with less precision than exact latitude and longitude. Bing is the only app that collects precise location data.”The report pointed out that 60% of the apps don’t collect any location information, suggesting that it is not necessary for a browser app to collect user location in order to function. “This raises concerns about why some browsers collect this data and how it is used,” the researchers wrote.

Only Opera, Bing, and Pi Browser ads collect data used for third-party advertising.

Pi Browser, Edge, and Bing collect data that is used to track an individual.

DuckDuckGo and Firefox fall into a moderate category in terms of data collection, the study found; they avoid collecting the most sensitive data. They do gather information such as user contact information, identifiers such as device ID, usage data, and diagnostics. “These browsers may suit users with moderate privacy concerns but still require robust browsing capabilities,” the researchers noted.

In terms of worldwide market share on Apple devices, Chrome and Safari account for 90% of the total.

When asked for his reaction to the findings, Forrester Senior Analyst Andrew Cornwall said, “If you’re interested in privacy, a mobile device is not your friend. Both Apple and Google learn a lot about you through your interactions with your phone. Android users expect some level of snooping in return for subsidized hardware and software. Apple users expect more privacy but leave a similar digital trail that Apple can follow.”

Most users, said Cornwall, “are willing to trade some privacy for ease of use. They like not having to enter passwords manually. They may be willing to let Chrome remember their credit card details if it means the browser will fill in the field for them when they’re paying bills online. They use Gmail as their email provider. However, users don’t realize how much information about them is collected.”

Safayat Moahamad, research director at Info-Tech Research Group, said, “mobile browsers are uniquely positioned to observe user behavior. Companies like Google and Microsoft use the data they collect (such as search terms, visited sites, and geolocation) to personalize services, improve features, and more crucially, power targeted advertising.”

The more granular the data, he said, the more valuable it becomes for ad revenue and product stickiness, as well as for inferences about user intent that drive business decisions. 

Asked if the current regulatory gaps allow browsers to collect data without adequate oversight, and could new laws change the game, he said that the answer is yes and no: “The recent Honda–CPPA settlement is a prime example. Regulators found that cookie consent practices lacked symmetry. Users weren’t given equal options to accept or reject tracking.”

This highlights a broader problem, said Moahamad “which is that many browsers enable tracking that circumvents true consent through dark patterns or deceptive settings. Despite laws like GDPR and CCPA setting important guardrails, new laws, like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and enforcement action such as US FTC’s settlement with Honda, aim to close these gaps and give users actionable control.”

What it all means, he said, is that there are “absolutely security risks for the users, and they’re growing. Browsers store session cookies that keep you logged in, and hackers are now stealing those cookies at scale, 17 billion and counting.”

According to Moahamad, “this lets attackers bypass passwords and even MFA, slipping silently into your accounts. Malware, rogue extensions, and phishing links are all entry points. Users may feel safe with 2FA, but if your browser is compromised, your defenses fall apart.”

When  it comes to the collection of personal data via browsers, said Cornwall, “there are no technical solutions, only mitigations. Deleting cookies, disabling location, and renewing location/advertising IDs on device can help, but Apple and Google still know your device ID.”

Strong data protection legislation, he said, “has been enacted in some jurisdictions, with financial penalties to enforce user privacy rights. However, that leaves opportunities for multinationals to hide amidst a patchwork of laws.”

Source:: Computer World

In a surprise to nobody, Apple is developing even more processors for use in its devices. It makes total sense. In case you hadn’t noticed, silicon is becoming a national and international strategic priority to governments everywhere that have identified, correctly, that computer chips are as essential as energy if you want to enter a new age of AI-driven digital efficiency. 

With that in mind, is it any wonder that America’s biggest beleaguered company, Apple (no, that’s not Microsoft anymore), is focusing the skill and power of its silicon development teams on designing and developing all the processors used across its systems?

Designed by Apple in California and beyond

Think about it and that’s not so surprising.

We know Apple’s team develops the A- and M-series processors used inside Apple iPhones, iPads, and Macs. 

We also know the company makes the C-series 5G modems it is beginning to put inside devices. 

It also makes S-series chips for Apple Watch, R1 chips for use in Vision Pro, T-series System Management chips used inside Intel Macs, W processors as used in wearables, H chips in AirPods, and U inside AirTags. 

Apple also makes/has made additional system components from time to time, such as the M-series motion co-processors the company made until about 2017. (The M-series was subsequently applied to Apple’s chips for iPads and Macs.) 

The ill-fated AirPower project also leaned into custom-designed chips, but not much is known about those.

That’s a lot of design, a lot of iteration, and a lot of silicon already coming out of the company. Making more of it is a no-brainer.

Made all over the place, really

Except Apple doesn’t really make anything. Apple doesn’t have its own factories churning out hardware or processors. Instead it gets manufacturing partners to make them to its design and on its behalf.

TSMC is the biggest Apple chip manufacturer at this time — Apple accounts for about a quarter of its business and is TSMC’s biggest customer. Those chips have until recently been manufactured at TSMC factories far away, but this is beginning to change as TSMC’s first US chip-making factory begins to churn out chips in Arizona. 

That factory was built in response to the first Trump administration’s push to bring manufacturing into the US and is now online popping processors out for Apple’s phones. Discussing that arrangement at the time, Apple COO Jeff Williams said: “Apple is deeply committed to the future of American manufacturing, and we’ll continue to expand our investment here in the United States.” 

What drove the US to try to persuade TSMC to do this wasn’t just to feed a desire to create a few hundred specialized jobs and flash a fanciful good news story to voters; instead it reflects the strategic importance of silicon design to the US economy. It’s hard for governments to ignore that the vast majority of chips used in any electronics device are made in the strategically sensitive Asia Pacific region. That’s even before grappling with the challenge of obtaining the rare earth and other materials used inside processors, which are — like wealth — unevenly distributed. 

Just like the vast majority of people on our planet have little or no money, most nations have little or no access to the rare earths used in silicon design. But designing the chips that make use of those materials is a big part of the story. As is recycling: reusing material that is already in the US makes total sense as companies seek to source rare materials elsewhere.

Advantage, Apple

Apple arguably has the best silicon development team in the world — at least, outside Arm. The chips used in iPhones and Macs lead the industry, generating performance per watt that no one out there can match. It’s a strategic advantage for Apple, which in itself can be seen as an advantage for the US on a national basis. A US company owns those designs, which seals one aspect of digital dominance. 

With that in mind, it’s inevitable that Apple will want to maintain its focus on processor design. Doing so gives the company a competitive advantage while also propping up national security, at least to some extent.

If that is the case, then it is interesting that one of the new processors it is making is suitable for use in wearable devices — for Apple, that’s the AR glasses it has hoped to develop for years as it competes against Meta. Apple is also developing next-generation chips for Macs and iPhones, which is no surprise at all, and processor chips for Apple Intelligence servers. To some extent, the only surprise there is that the company is building a new low-power, high-performance processor capable of delivering the tough tasks required for spatial computing in spectacles.

Furthur

Of course, once the company has made spatial computing systems that exist in wearable glasses, then the promise of visionOS becomes far greater. Even now we’re seeing visionOS devices used across a range of enterprises, from medical to law enforcement. Being able to wear a real computer (as opposed to a gaming and ads platform) like sunglasses will be of key importance across a range of industries of tomorrow. Surveillance-as-a-service firms will make billions. Which makes wearables strategically significant. 

Apple’s purpose in all of this matches an international drive toward discreet computing, or the minimization of computer interfaces. These agendas dovetail with Apple’s need to perpetually plan the future of its business, and, increasingly, also with US economic and military security. 

That’s quite a lot of food for thought in one slice of silicon.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

By Thomas Macaulay A year ago this week, a viral hit offered a glimpse into the future of AI music: “BBL Drizzy.” The song emerged during the feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. As the rappers traded disses, a New York-based comedian named Willonius Hatcher — aka King Willonious — brought his own track to the beef. Inspired by a dubious claim that Drake had a Brazilian butt lift, “BBL Drizzy” blended AI, comedy, pop culture, and music. The song swiftly went viral. It was later sampled in a beat by star producer Metro Boomin, which also went viral, and got rapped over…This story continues at The Next Web

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By Hisan Kidwai Anime Fighters Simulator is a super popular Roblox game that allows you to step into the…
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By Siôn Geschwindt The Danish Armed Forces are set to trial four autonomous sea drones that will patrol Northern Europe waters, looking for signs of criminal activity.  Powered by wind and solar, the uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs) will gather real-time data using sensors and cameras positioned both above and beneath the water. An onboard computer will stream this data to a machine learning algorithm that is trained to spot patterns and potential threats. The technology is designed to help the Danish defence forces identify threats such as enemy submarines, illegal fishing, drug smuggling, or tampering with undersea cables. The drones will also perform…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

Google’s recently released Agent2Agent protocol has emerged as a top contender to facilitate communication and collaboration between AI agents in models and enterprises.

Microsoft this week adopted the A2A protocol in Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry for developers to build shared agents that can interact with each other.

Introduced last month, Google’ open-source A2A protocol allows networks of agents to structurally set goals, reason, take action, and return results across clouds, enterprises, and data silos, said Yina Arenas, vice president of product for Azure AI Foundry, and Bas Brekelmans, chief technology officer of Copilot Studio, in a joint blog entry.

“As customers scale these systems, interoperability is no longer optional,” the blog authors said.

Like Microsoft, AI services company Glean, which provides AI-based collaborative tools, is in the process of implementing A2A, Steve Calvert, software engineer at Glean, told Computerworld.

“Many enterprises are still trying to adopt agents, and A2A is really laying the foundation for the next generation of AI-powered collaboration,” Calvert said.

Calvert said the A2A open protocol helps agents communicate and work together, regardless of which vendor or system they’re built on. Today’s agents are designed to handle specific or a class of tasks, but A2A will change that, he said.

“For example, a sales agent supporting prospecting work, or an engineering agent generating postmortems — in the future, customers will want those agents to talk to one another, so they can solve even more complex problems,” Calvert said.

A2A is emerging at a time Anthropic’s MCP (model context protocol), another agent-to-agent protocol, is gaining steam.

A2A enables the orchestration of multiple agents, while MCP gives agents access to tools, Calvert said.

In practice, this means that agents will work with one another using A2A and interact with other systems using MCP, Calvert said.

A2A and MCP don’t compete, as they fill different requirements and “kind of need each other for the agents to work together,” said Bob Parker, senior vice president at IDC.

AI agents need middleware to understand and contextualize data in complex large-scale deployments, which is where MCP fits in. A2A is “more of asynchronous communication between agents themselves” that is emerging as a default protocol in the AI industry, Parker said.

For example, agents within M365 can talk directly within apps or services using A2A, which is a “more immediate mechanism to benefit productivity,” Parker said.

“I think long term, the MCP is going to be perhaps more impactful when you get outside of what you have on your desktop. When you start to talk about enterprise applications… MCP will be important,” Parker said.

Salesforce, which developed the A2A standard with Google, is also moving forward with the technology.

The A2A standard “allows AI agents to work together seamlessly across Agentforce and other ecosystems to turn disconnected capabilities into orchestrated [implementations],” said Gary Lerhaupt, vice president of product architecture at Salesforce, in an email statement to Computerworld.

The development of A2A is being watched closely by Read.AI, which has products that integrate with productivity and process tools from Salesforce, Atlassian, Google, and Slack.

“There’s a lot of buzz around A2A — and MCP too, for that matter — and like so much of AI, these protocols are going to be transformative and the changes will happen fast,” Elliott Waldron, co-founder and vice president of data science at Read.AI, told Computerworld.

But it’s still early in terms of implementation for the company, Waldron said. “We require a tighter integration of different sources to achieve the highest level of fidelity for our products. So we’re not moving yet, but we are definitely paying close attention,” Waldron said.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt Britain requires a “colossal” overhaul of its cybersecurity systems to defend against future quantum computers, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) warned this week.  Speaking at the CYBERUK conference in Manchester, the body’s CTO Ollie Whitehouse urged organisations to start preparing now for a sweeping transformation in how digital security is built and maintained — warning of grave consequences if they don’t.   Quantum computers, once they reach a certain power threshold, could render current encryption methods obsolete. They could break security protocols that protect everything from financial transactions and medical records to military communications.  A critical part of preparing…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

In a stark warning to lawmakers, technology leaders from the nation’s biggest AI companies will testify Thursday that the US’ aging infrastructure is unprepared for the massive energy demands of AI, potentially jeopardizing US competitiveness in the rapidly evolving technology race.

US Senator Ted Cruz, who will lead the hearing, in a statement, emphasized the strategic importance of removing barriers to AI development, “Growth and development of new AI technologies will bolster our national security, create new jobs, and stimulate economic growth. This hearing will help us find ways to remove restraints on the AI supply chain and unleash American dominance in machine learning and next-generation computing.”

Source:: Computer World

By Deepti Pathak Thinking about getting a 3D printer but unsure what to buy in 2025? The world of…
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By Hisan Kidwai Tower defense games are a staple on Roblox, and one of the best right now is…
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By Nick Godt Mitsubishi re-enters the EV scene with an EV slated for 2026.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Nick Godt Zoox, Amazon’s robotaxi unit, issues a safety recall after a Las Vegas crash.

Source:: Digital Trends

After announcing in February that Skype would be discontinued, Microsoft has officially killed off the once-popular communications platform. Users accessing any of Skype’s services will now be encouraged to use Microsoft Teams instead.

Microsoft originally bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011 to replace its own Windows Live Messenger platform. Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Danish Janus Friis.

Skype quickly became known as the communications platform that popularized video calls. But after Microsoft’s purchase, the software slowly but surely lost users as video calls became increasingly available on more platforms.

Microsoft started to merge Skype with Teams in 2017, and the focus on Teams further accelerated when remote working became the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source:: Computer World

Should Apple have abandoned its lawsuit against Israeli mercenary spyware vendor NSO Group — the company it once described as, “21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery that invites routine and flagrant abuse.” Perhaps not, but it’s still heart-warming to learn NSO has been slammed with a huge $168 million fine for spying on WhatsApp.

Mercenaries in your machine

The NSO is one of the most renowned of a multitude of surveillance-as-a-service companies exploiting complex and expensive hacks to break into people’s digital devices and spy on them, frequently for oppressive governments.

That the spyware sector is thriving is a grim reflection of our deeply amoral age. Its existence should encourage everyone to invest in more security, rather than demand less, even at the encryption-eroding UK Home Office. But, I digress.

NSO Group broke into the mainstream in 2019 when reports emerged showing the extent to which its Pegasus spyware had been used against 1,400 WhatsApp messages in addition to attacks against iPhones. 

Pegasus was an insidious attack that, once installed, granted total access to compromised devices. It turned people’s phone records, emails, messages, video content, and location data into open books, and could even be used to activate cameras and microphones to engage in remote surveillance.

Litigation potentially raised the risk

Both Apple and Facebook began litigation against NSO Group, but Apple withdrew its attempt last year, arguing that continuing in the claim could undermine the systems it has built to secure its ecosystem. “While Apple continues to believe in the merits of its claims, it has also determined that proceeding further with this case has the potential to put vital security information at risk,” it told the court.

WhatsApp continued its case, which it has now won, winning what sounds like a lot: $168 million in compensation. 

Since then, NSO Group and others like it have been embroiled in numerous attacks against a huge range of targets, including human rights protectors, opposition parties, dissidents, journalists and others on behalf of a range of governments, including those with very poor human rights records. 

That’s not how the company sees itself, of course. “We firmly believe that our technology plays a critical role in preventing serious crime and terrorism and is deployed responsibly by authorized government agencies,” said NSO spokesman Gil Lainer via email. 

Is that right?

Meta claims NSO repeatedly targeted people involved in its case against the company, which undermines the claim to be on the right side of history. The legal defenses it put up in court were equally evasive.

The company delivers attacks that are complex, sophisticated, and cost a lot of money to mount, which means most people don’t need to worry about being attacked this way, while those that do should be using Apple’s Lockdown Mode. These attacks often require no user input whatsoever and can begin with a missed call or an unrequested message. 

With many thousands of people seemingly affected by these attacks, and with OS providers shouldering the additional cost of mitigating against such attacks, it’s pretty clear NSO Group will likely see the fine as a small tax on earnings. 

This fine is small change

The thing is, $168 million may well be peanuts to NSO Group. Six years ago, The New York Times reported that the market for digital espionage systems of this kind had already reached past $12 billion. Just last year, it was reported the company charged a “standard price” of $7 million for simultaneous access to hack 15 devices. 

Targeting individuals outside of national borders cost people $1 million or $2 million dollars a pop. (These exploits were widely used internationally — even the CIA and FBI used the software, paying more than $7 million for the privilege, before its use was banned.) 

But the company wasn’t just generating plenty of money in exchange for undermining digital security for one or two individuals, it’s been implicated in smashing the digital windows belonging to thousands of people. 

No one is safe until everyone is safe

For enterprise users, the implications are stark. It means that if you or your business is involved in some way with national security or possesses unique business secrets, you can no longer assume your data is at all safe. For as long as companies such as NSO Group exist, your data is just waiting for a competitor to pick up the phone, cough up the cash, and get some mercenary spyware company to break it out. This seems a very sub-optimal reality in digital transformation.

Rather than stopping the company in its tracks, the fine could just cause NSO to raise prices a little, I imagine. The risk remains and is real. And these attacks will trickle down.

You can follow me on social media! Join me on BlueSky,  LinkedIn, and Mastodon.

Source:: Computer World

By Thomas Macaulay Have you heard of the privacy paradox? It’s the contradiction between our claims to care about privacy — and our refusal to protect it. The paradox came to mind while working on the debut episode of our brand-new podcast: TNW Backstage. The show takes you behind the scenes of TNW Conference — and the tech shaping our world. Our first episode features a standout guest: Ron de Jesus, the world’s first Field Chief Privacy Officer. The conversation explores the evolution of privacy threats. One hot topic is Meta’s controversial “pay or consent” model, which gives users a stark choice: allow ad-tracking…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Siôn Geschwindt The beat just dropped on a new era of music, and it’s coming not from a recording studio but from the weird and wonderful realm of quantum physics. UK-based tech startup Moth has released the track “Recurse” in collaboration with British electronic artist ILĀ. It’s billed as the world’s first commercially available song created using “quantum-powered generative AI.” “Recurse” certainly sounds otherworldly — like the kind of music aliens might stream while drifting through deep space. Yet again, that is kind of ILĀ’s style. Give it a listen: https://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2025/05/ila_Recurse.mp3 You can listen to the track yourself on all major streaming…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Blair Marnell There’s one episode of Daredevil: Born Again that Charlie Cox really doesn’t like at all.

Source:: Digital Trends