Tag Archives: author_name|Ian Carlos Campbell

Kash Patel’s personal email account was accessed by hackers linked to Iran

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A hacking group called Handala has gained access to FBI Director Kash Patel's email account, Reuters reports. The group published content from Patel's email on their website as proof, including photos of Patel "sniffing and smoking cigars" and "making a face while taking a picture of himself in the mirror with a ​large bottle of rum."

TechCrunch was able to independently confirm that at least some of the emails Handala stole were from Patel's account by checking information used by mail delivery systems that’s stored in an email's header. Several stolen emails included a cryptographic signature that linked them to Patel's account. The FBI has also separately confirmed that the Director's account was hacked. "The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel's personal email information, and we have taken all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks associated with this activity," the Bureau told TechCrunch. "The information in question is historical in nature and involves no government information." 

The FBI is offering up to $10 million in rewards for more information about the hackers who targeted Patel's account. Handala presents as a pro-Palestinian hacking group online, but is believed to be one of several aliases used by cyberintelligence units working for the Iranian government, Reuters writes. Groups affiliated with Iran have targeted officials in the US before. In August 2024, the FBI shared that a separate group, APT42, was trying to gain access to both the Trump and Harris campaigns. Three men associated with APT42 were later charged that September.

Handala has appeared to become more active during the current conflict between the US, Israel and Iran. According to Reuters, the group claimed to be behind a cyber attack on Stryker, a medical devices company, earlier in March. Handala also said it accessed and published personal data from Lockheed Martin employees stationed in the Middle East.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/kash-patels-personal-email-account-was-accessed-by-hackers-linked-to-iran-212618474.html?src=rss

European Commission confirms data breach

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The European Commission has announced that it suffered a cyber attack that affected "cloud infrastructure hosting the Commission's web presence on the Europea.eu platform." While the attack has been contained, Bleeping Computer reports that the threat actor claiming to be behind it was able to take over 350GB of data before the Commission addressed the issue.

"Early findings of our ongoing investigation suggest that data have been taken from [Europa] websites," the European Commission says. "The Commission is duly notifying the Union entities who might have been affected by the incident."

The Commission's investigation is ongoing, and it has yet to disclose how its cloud infrastructure was breached. According to Bleeping Computer, the threat actor was able to access the Europa sites and employee data via one of the Commission's Amazon Web Services accounts. The Commission disclosed a breach that similarly impacted employee data in February.

Both breaches appear to be less severe than the Salt Typhoon hack that impacted US telecommunications companies in 2024. Hackers reportedly gained access to data from the smartphones of members of both the Trump and Harris campaigns, and other government officials. In January 2026, the European Commission introduced a new Cybersecurity Package designed to address similar issues, in part by outlining new ways for EU states to deal with potentially risky companies in their telecom supply chains.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/european-commission-confirms-data-breach-200000982.html?src=rss

If you live in Georgia, there’s a new exhibit you can visit celebrating Apple’s 50th anniversary

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The Mimms Museum of Technology and Art in Roswell, Georgia is debuting a new exhibit celebrating Apple's 50th anniversary. The exhibit, iNSPIRE: 50 Years of Innovation from Apple, is set to open on April 1, the date the company was founded, and includes "more than 2,000 artifacts across 20,000 square feet, making it the largest public display of Apple products in the world."

iNSPIRE is supposed to offer "a unique look" into Apple, by "highlighting early computers, rare prototypes, original documentation and immersive installations inspired by Apple’s most iconic products and campaigns." Based on photos shared from the exhibit's launch event, that includes displays of every model of key products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and an interactive installation that inserts you in the company's iconic iPod ads.

If you're based on the west coast of the US, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California is also displaying its own "Apple@50" exhibit, and running what it calls "Mactivations," scheduled demos where you can interact with a reproduction of an original Macintosh.

Apple's own celebrations have included a published letter from CEO Tim Cook ruminating on the company's mission, and live music events at the company's stores, offices and select landmarks around the world.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/if-you-live-in-georgia-theres-a-new-exhibit-you-can-visit-celebrating-apples-50th-anniversary-180940846.html?src=rss

Apple discontinues the Mac Pro

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Apple has confirmed to Engadget that the Mac Pro, the desktop tower-shaped computer that was last updated in 2023, has been discontinued. As 9to5Mac notes, the computer no longer appears in the lineup of Macs on Apple's website or in its storefront. That means at least for now, the Mac Studio is the Apple's top-of-the-line professional computer.

The current version of the Mac Pro was introduced in 2019, with a distinct cheese-grater design, Intel chips and a bevy of easily-accessible expansion slots. Apple released the computer as a make-good for several years of inadequately meeting the performance needs of professional Mac users, but its uncontested time at the top of the company's lineup was short-lived. A year later in 2020, Apple began transitioning to its custom M-series Arm chips, proving Macs could be more powerful and power-efficient by abandoning Intel entirely.

Apple eventually updated the Mac Pro to the M2 Ultra without updating the computer's design, but by then the writing was on the wall. The far smaller Mac Studio, introduced in 2022, also supported the new chip, and it's been updated since then while the Mac Pro has languished. Bloomberg reported Apple was planning to retire the Mac Pro in November 2025, so it's not all that surprising the company quietly pulled the plug only a few months later.

Apple’s effort to cater to professionals, creatives and anyone with a chunk of change to drop on a fast computer lives on through the Mac Studio, and the recently announced Studio Display XDR, itself a replacement for the Pro Display XDR Apple announced for the 2019 Mac Pro. Now all the company needs to do is update the Mac Studio with an M5 Max chip to make it the most “pro” computer Apple offers.

Update, March 26, 6:25PM ET: Added confirmation from Apple that the Mac Pro has been discontinued.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/apple-discontinues-the-mac-pro-221502339.html?src=rss

Ugh, Netflix is raising prices

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Netflix is raising prices across all of its subscription tiers, according to an updated "Plans and Pricing" page spotted by Android Authority. The company last raised prices in January 2025, when the cost of all of its tiers were jacked up by $1 or more.

 As of this latest price hike, Netflix's ad-supported Standard plan is going from $8 per month to $9 per month, while the ad-free version is rising from $18 to $20 per month. The company's Premium plan, meanwhile, which supports things like 4K streams, spatial audio and the ability to watch content on four devices at the same time, is jumping from $25 to $27 per month. Netflix is also making the cost of adding an extra member to your plan more expensive. Adding a member to an ad-supported plan now costs an additional $8 per month, while adding someone to an ad-free plan now costs $10 per month.

When asked to comment on the price changes, a Netflix spokesperson shared that the company is updating "prices in the U.S to reflect improvements to our wide range of entertainment and the quality of our service." The new prices will roll out to current subscribers in the coming weeks. "Existing members will be notified by email a month before the new prices are applied to them," the spokesperson said. "The exact timing will depend on the specific member’s billing cycle."

Netflix is not quite at the point where it's raising the cost of its subscription every year, but it's getting close. Prior to last year's price hike, the company last raised prices in 2023. The streaming service's growing subscription fees have helped Netflix to continue its push into streaming live events like sports and reality TV competitions, and to license new kinds of content like video podcasts. If Netflix hadn't dropped out in February, they also would have served as financial backing for the company's acquisition of Warner Bros. Even though Warner Bros. Discovery ultimately decided to take Paramount Skydance's offer, Netflix didn't leave the deal empty handed: Paramount paid the company $2.8 billion to formally end its acquisition of the historic film studio.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/ugh-netflix-is-raising-prices-again-202318277.html?src=rss

Judge tosses out X’s advertiser boycott lawsuit

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A US District Court Judge for the Northern District of Texas has dismissed X Corp.’s lawsuit against advertisers it claimed participated in an “illegal boycott” of X, Reuters reports. X originally filed its lawsuit in 2024 in response to advertisers pulling ads from the social media platform, a decision reportedly motivated by X's lax approach to moderating hate speech.

Judge Jane J. Boyle was not swayed by X’s claims that advertisers like Twitch, Shell, Nestlé and Lego pulling advertising amounted to an “antitrust injury.” The companies named in X’s lawsuit are members of the World Federation of Advertisers’ Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an organization used by advertisers to bargain for certain safety standards from the platforms they advertise on. Advertisers took issue with X's approach to moderation and responded accordingly, purchasing ad space on other social platforms instead. The decision hurt X's ad revenue, but as Boyle writes in the dismissal, the company made no claim that advertisers did so to benefit a competitor or to form their own competing platform. They also didn't prevent X from selling ad space to other companies not in GARM. "The very nature of the alleged conspiracy does not state an antitrust claim," Boyle writes, "and the Court therefore has no qualm dismissing with prejudice."

X’s lawsuit being "dismissed with prejudice" means the company will be unable to refile the lawsuit at a later date. Separately, Judge Boyle also denied X the ability to appeal her decision. The company's rancor for advertisers was apparent when owner Elon Musk compared X's lawsuit to going to war, but the vitriol appears to be all for naught. X claimed in January 2026 that nearly all its top advertisers had returned to buying ads on the platform. As a subsidiary of xAI, the social platform is now also facing new, even more pressing issues, like its AI assistant Grok's alleged willingness to generate sexually explicit imagery of minors.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/judge-tosses-out-xs-advertiser-boycott-lawsuit-184832071.html?src=rss

Webb and Hubble telescopes combine forces for a new view of Saturn

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The ESA, NASA and CSA have released new images of Saturn captured by the James Webb and Hubble space telescopes that offer an unprecedented view of the gas giant's atmosphere. Particularly, comparing shots captured with Hubble against an infrared view from Webb highlights details in the composition and movement of Saturn's outer layers.

The Hubble images were captured as part of the Outer Planet Atmosphere Legacy program in August 2024, while the Webb images were shot a few months later. "Both sense sunlight reflected from Saturn’s banded clouds and hazes," NASA says, "but where Hubble reveals subtle color variations across the planet, Webb’s infrared view senses clouds and chemicals at many different depths in the atmosphere, from the deep clouds to the tenuous upper atmosphere."

Hubble has historically been used to track storms on Saturn, and you can see bands of atmospheric clouds in the telescope's new photo. The infrared sensors on the Webb telescope are able to highlight even more detail, like the highly-reflective ice of Saturn's ring, which is practically white in the photo, and grey-green shading on the planet's poles. The different coloring in the Webb photo could be caused by a "a layer of high-altitude aerosols" scattering light across latitudes, or "charged molecules interacting with the planet’s magnetic field" and causing "auroral activity."

The visual information from both telescopes is valuable to scientists and should prove to be more valuable over time. "These 2024 observations, taken 14 weeks apart, show the planet moving from northern summer toward the 2025 equinox," NASA says. "As Saturn transitions into southern spring, and later southern summer in the 2030’s, Hubble and Webb will have progressively better views of that hemisphere."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/webb-and-hubble-telescopes-combine-forces-for-a-new-view-of-saturn-202526270.html?src=rss

Razer’s new Blade 16 has Intel’s latest chips and ultra-fast RAM

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After leaning into some questionable AI antics at CES 2026, Razer is making some altogether more practical updates to its 16-inch laptop by giving it newer chips and faster RAM. The new Razer Blade 16 features Intel's new Core Ultra chips and speedy LPDDR5X-9600 MHz RAM, and is available to order today for $3,500.

The Razer Blade 16 is designed to split the difference between the portable Razer Blade 14 and the monstrous Razer Blade 18, mostly by being thin but offering improved performance. Razer says the 2026 Blade 16 is 0.59 inches (14.9mm) at its thinnest point, which matches the thinness of the 2025 Blade 16. The laptop also has a similar 16-inch QHD+, 240Hz OLED screen to last year's model, though the company says it's 100 nits brighter than before. Port selection also remains respectable: the laptop includes three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, a Thunderbolt 4 port, a Thunderbolt 5 port, a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port and a UHS-II SD card reader.

A Razer Blade 16 laptop viewed from the front next to a monitor.
Razer

The real notable upgrade is Razer's switch from AMD Ryzen chips to new Intel Core Ultra 9 386H chips on the 2026 Razer Blade 16. The new Core Ultra chips are some of Intel's first processors made with its new 18A process and pitched as the company's comeback. Razer says the new chip es 16 cores and an integrated NPU that "provides up to 50 TOPS" for things like image generation and live translation, which the Razer Blade 16 supports natively as a Copilot+PC. The efficiency of the new chip also contributes to the laptop’s up to 15 hours of battery life. Of course, if you want power, the Razer Blade 16 has it: the laptop includes NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series Laptop GPUs and up to 64Gb of LPDDR5X-9600MHz RAM, which should give the Razer Blade 16 plenty of pep for games.

Hardware upgrades don't come cheap, and the higher $3,500 starting price of the Razer Blade 16 — which includes 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and a GeForce RTX 5080 GPU at a minimum — is likely reflective of the growing cost of memory and storage that's already negatively impacting the PC industry.

The Razer Blade 16 is available to purchase now through Razer’s website.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/laptops/razers-new-blade-16-has-intels-latest-chips-and-ultra-fast-ram-185858799.html?src=rss

Sony is reportedly shutting down Dark Outlaw Games, run by former Call of Duty director

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Sony is shutting down Dark Outlaw Games, a first-party game studio led by former Call of Duty producer Jason Blundell, Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports. Before leading Dark Outlaw Games, Blundell was the head of Deviation Games, which was an independent studio, but also happened to be developing a PlayStation game before it shut down, Schreier says.

Dark Outlaw Games had yet to announce what it was working on, but considering Blundell's experience with the Call of Duty franchise, it seems likely the studio was developing a multiplayer project for PlayStation. Blundell was a programmer and producer at Activision before making the jump to Treyarch to work on Call of Duty 3, and he contributed to multiple Call of Duty: Black Ops games after that, including serving as the director for the campaign and Zombies mode of Call of Duty: Black Ops III and the career and Zombies modes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

Engadget has contacted Sony for more information about the fate of Dark Outlaw Games. We'll update this article if we hear back.

The studio's shutdown is being paired with cuts to staff at PlayStation focused on mobile development, according to Schreier. Sony has made a habit of laying off staff and shutting down studios in the last year, seemingly as a way to retreat from an earlier investment in online, live-service multiplayer games. The company shut down Bluepoint Games in February following attempts to get a live-service God of War game off the ground. Sony also closed Firewalk Studios after the spectacular failure of multiplayer shooter Concord in October 2024. And a year before that, Naughty Dog officially abandoned work on a standalone multiplayer version of The Last of Us in December 2023.

That leaves Sony with at least two Horizon Zero Dawn spin-offs, a co-op game from original developer Guerilla Games and a MMO from developer NCSoft; Fairgame$, which is still in active development despite the departure of Haven Studios head Jade Raymond; Arrowhead Game Studios' Helldivers 2; Bungie's Destiny 2 and Marathon; and if you really want to stretch, Gran Turismo 7. Sony clearly hasn't given up on producing online multiplayer games, but it's not hard to characterize its attempt to expand into the space as a disaster.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/sony-is-reportedly-shutting-down-dark-outlaw-games-run-by-former-call-of-duty-director-215634410.html?src=rss

Zoox is bringing its robotaxi to new cities and expanding coverage in Las Vegas and San Francisco

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Zoox has announced plans to bring its robotaxi to Austin, Texas and Miami, Florida for the first time, along with offering expanded service in San Francisco and Las Vegas. The company formally launched its robotaxi service in September 2025, and shared earlier in March that it would begin testing in Dallas and Phoenix.

A "Zoox retrofitted testing fleet" has been operating in Austin and Miami since 2024, but offering rides with company's purpose-built robotaxi — designed to be more of a rolling social space with seats facing each other — is an important step towards Zoox running its full service in both cities. At least to start, rides will be available in a small part of both cities and only for "Zoox employees, their families and friends," but the company says it'll expand who can hail a ride as testing continues.

For anyone who lives in San Francisco or Las Vegas, Zoox's coverage area and options for pick-ups and drop-offs are also becoming more convenient. Zoox is now able to pick up riders from more locations in Las Vegas, including the Las Vegas Convention Center and "a majority of the major hotels along the Strip." The company will also provide limited service to high-traffic events at The Sphere and T-Mobile Arena, and eventually plans to send its robotaxi on trips to Harry Reid International Airport. Starting this spring, Zoox is also expanding where it will offer rides in the eastern half of San Francisco, covering "the Marina, North Beach, and Chinatown, as well as Pacific Heights and along the Embarcadero."

Besides being able to pick up riders in more places, Zoox is rolling out two product updates to improve the experience of riding in its robotaxis. "Find My Zoox" will let the company's robotaxis use "distinct lighting and sound cues," to signal to riders which robotaxi is theirs, and "Zooxcast" will let riders play their audio over Bluetooth while they're in a robotaxi.

In comparison to all the cities Waymo currently offers its robotaxis, Zoox is playing catch-up, but the company is also approaching its business a bit differently. Zoox is focused on using custom robotaxi for rides, while Waymo has expanded quickly on the back of cars retrofitted with the sensors that makes its Waymo Driver software work. Waymo plans to incorporate its own robotaxis co-developed with Geely into its fleet over time, but for now, rides with Zoox are a bit more bespoke.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/zoox-is-bringing-its-robotaxi-to-new-cities-and-expanding-coverage-in-las-vegas-and-san-francisco-195410391.html?src=rss