Apple has quietly raised the desktop’s starting price to $799 after demand from developers building local AI tools cleared its shelves. Tim Cook says it could take months to catch up.
For five years, the Mac mini has been the cheapest way into Apple’s desktop ecosystem. Since the M4 refresh in late 2024, that price has been $599, an unusually aggressive figure for Cupertino, and one that turned the small aluminium box into a sleeper hit.
It became the recommended starter Mac, the home-server-of-choice for tinkerers, and, increasingly, the go-to local machine for developers running AI models on their own hardware.
As of Friday, the $599 Mac mini no longer exists.
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Apple has discontinued the 256GB configuration of the M4 Mac mini and made the 512GB model, which sells for $799, the new starting point. Bloomberg reported the change first, citing Apple’s own product pages, with confirmations following from MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Macworld, and AppleInsider. The pricing on each specification has not changed; the entry rung has simply been removed.
In effect, the Mac mini is $200 more expensive to buy in its base form than it was a day earlier.
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Apple’s reasoning was made unusually explicit on this week’s Q2 earnings call. Tim Cook, the company’s chief executive, attributed shortages of both the Mac mini and the more powerful Mac Studio to demand that had outpaced internal forecasts, and tied that demand directly to AI workloads.
Both machines, he said, are “amazing platforms for AI and agentic tools, and the customer recognition of that is happening faster than what we had predicted.”
That recognition has a specific shape. The Mac mini and Mac Studio share a feature that has, in 2026, become unexpectedly valuable: large amounts of unified memory directly accessible to the GPU and Neural Engine on Apple’s M-series chips.
For developers running local large language models, agentic tools that orchestrate multi-step tasks on a single machine, or compact research setups that would otherwise require cloud GPUs, that memory architecture is a meaningful advantage. A 64GB Mac Studio costs less than the cheapest Nvidia H100, runs quietly on a desk, and does not bill by the hour.
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The result has been the kind of run on inventory that hardware companies usually associate with launches, not nine-month-old products. Many higher-RAM configurations on Apple’s online store are listed as currently unavailable. The 16GB, 512GB Mac mini, the new entry-level model, is, by some retail accounts, backordered into June.
Behind the consumer-facing story is a less visible one about supply. The same advanced memory chips that ship in Mac minis and Mac Studios are also a critical input for the AI server farms being built by hyperscalers, and the imbalance between data-centre demand and global memory production has been intensifying for more than a year.
DRAM prices have risen sharply, and analysts have begun warning that consumer electronics manufacturers will increasingly find themselves second in line behind cloud providers willing to pay above market.
Cook acknowledged the constraint on the call, telling investors that supply-demand balance for both machines is “several months” away. He stopped short of predicting further price changes, but Notebookcheck and others have noted that the pattern, AI demand absorbs memory, memory becomes scarcer, consumer prices rise, is unlikely to be unique to Apple.
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There is also a US manufacturing dimension to the story. The M4 Mac mini is one of the products Apple has begun assembling in part within the United States, and analysts at Technetbook and elsewhere have argued that some of the cost pressure on the entry tier reflects that shift rather than chip availability alone. Apple has not commented publicly on the relative weights of the two factors.
For most consumers, the change is a soft price rise dressed up as a product simplification. The 512GB Mac mini that used to be a $200 upgrade is now the floor. Anyone who would have bought the 256GB version, students, second-machine buyers, light office users, now pays more for storage they may not need.
For the segment Apple appears to be courting, the developer running Claude- or Llama-class models locally, the new entry tier is closer to a sensible minimum. 256GB of storage was always cramped for that workflow, and 512GB combined with 16GB of unified memory is a more honest starting point.
Either way, the broader signal is harder to miss. Apple, a company that historically holds prices steady through chip cycles, has just lifted a starting price by a third in response to AI-driven demand. The Mac mini is no longer a sleeper. It is, briefly and inconveniently, an AI workstation.
In 2021, Josh Wardle launched the wildly popular word game Wordle. Then in 2022 the New York Times bought the game. The rules to Wordle are pretty straightforward. You have to figure out a five-letter word in six or fewer guesses (we have a two-step strategy to help you solve the puzzle every time). After each guess, the game shows gray blocks for the wrong letters, yellow blocks for the right letters in the wrong spot and green blocks for the right letters in the correct spot.
CNET’s Gael Cooper has loads of tips and tricks to tackle each NY Times Wordle puzzle. If you’ve finished your daily Wordle and are still craving a good puzzle game, there are plenty to choose from.
Here are 10 other puzzle games you can play now.
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Connections
I know it’s old but I’m not even going to try to figure this out.
New York Times/CNET
Another New York Times-owned puzzle, Connections is a tricky word game. “Players must select four groups of four words without making more than four mistakes,” the New York Times wrote on X. There are also four color-coded difficulty levels for each game; yellow is the easiest, then green, then blue and finally purple. The game is also similar to the BBC quiz show Only Connect, and the show’s host took to X to point out the connection. See what I did there?
Strands is another New York Times-owned puzzle but this game resembles a word search more so than Wordle and Connections. This game presents a theme every day to help you find words in a grid. In Strands words can appear forward, backward, top-to-bottom or any number of ways in a traditional word search, and words can also form in the shape of an “L” or have a zigzag in them. When you find a word, tap the first letter and drag your finger to the other letters. Every letter in the puzzle is used, so if you still have letters that aren’t connected to words, you aren’t finished yet.
You can play Strands on any web browser but you need a New York Times subscription (again, $1 a week) to play.
Quartiles
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Apple/CNET
Quartiles is a new word game Apple News Plus subscribers can access on their iPhone or iPad that’s running iOS 17.5 or later. In this word game, you’re given 20 tiles with letters on them and you’re trying to put them together to form different words. The longest words are four tiles long, and these are called Quartiles. The game can be tough but finding just one of the Quartiles is as satisfying as remembering something that was just on the tip of your tongue.
You can play Quartiles on an iPhone or iPad but you need an Apple News subscription (which starts at $13 a month) to play.
Multiple Wordle spinoffs: Dordle, Quordle, Octordle and Sedecordle
Quordle has you solve four word puzzles at once, which sounds daunting.
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Are you up for a challenge? If you love Wordle and want puzzle games that take more brain power, you’ll want to check out either Dordle, Quordle, Octordle or Sedecordle. Each of these word games resembles Wordle, but they add more rows, columns and words to solve. Each game requires you to simultaneously solve a different number of words at once: Dordle has you solving two words, Quordle four at once, Octordle eight at once and Sedecordle a whopping 16. Good luck.
“Lewdle is a game about rude words,” this game’s content advisory reads. “If you’re likely to be offended by the use of profanity, vulgarity or obscenity, it likely isn’t for you.” Translation: It’s Wordle but with bad words. The words range from mild — like poopy — to words that would make a sailor blush. Thankfully, despite this game’s content warning, slurs are not included. Like Wordle, gray, yellow and green blocks are used in the same way and there’s only one puzzle per day. So go forth and let the bad words flow!
You can play Lewdle on any web browser. You can also download this game from Apple’s App Store or the Google Play store.
Antiwordle
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Not off to a great start with this Antiwordle puzzle.
Antiwordle/CNET
Tired of seeing those gray, yellow and green blocks plastered all over your social media feed? Give Antiwordle a try. While Wordle wants you to guess a word in as few tries as possible, Antiwordle wants you to avoid the word by guessing as many times as possible. When you guess, letters will turn gray, yellow or red. Gray means the letter isn’t in the word and can’t be used again, yellow means the letter is in the word and must be included in each subsequent guess and red means the letter is in the exact position within the word and is locked in place. If you can use every letter on the keyboard without getting the word correct, you win. Honestly, I’ve found this version of Wordle to be much harder than the original.
Absurdle bills itself as the “adversarial version” of Wordle. While Wordle nudges you in the right direction with each guess, Absurdle is trying to avoid giving you the correct answer. According to the game’s website, “With each guess, Absurdle reveals as little information as possible, changing the secret word if need be.” Absurdle doesn’t pick a word at the beginning of the game for the player to guess. Instead, it uses the player’s guesses to narrow its list of words down in an effort to make the game go as long as possible. The final word might not even include a yellow letter from one of your earlier guesses either. You can guess as many times as you want, which is helpful, and the best score you can get is four. Have fun!
iFi Audio is updating its entry-level wireless DAC lineup with the ZEN Air Blue 2, a $129 Bluetooth receiver designed to replace the original ZEN Air Blue while adding meaningful upgrades where it counts. The new model introduces Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Lossless alongside LDAC, LHDC/HWA, AAC, and SBC support, giving it broader high-resolution codec compatibility than most options at this price.
Rated for a 10-meter (approximately 30 feet) range, the ZEN Air Blue 2 also benefits from an improved antenna design for more stable connections at the edge of that distance, making it a practical way to add modern wireless streaming to amplifiers, AV receivers, or powered speakers via RCA outputs without changing the rest of the system.
IFi Zen Air Blue 2
The ZEN Air Blue 2 uses a dedicated three stage internal design built around a Qualcomm QCC3095 Bluetooth chipset, an ESS Sabre DAC reportedly the ES9023 for digital to analog conversion, and iFi AMR custom “OV” Operationsverstärker op amps to maintain signal integrity through the output stage.
It also supports a wide 5 to 12V DC input range, making it suitable for home systems as well as automotive, marine, or other battery powered setups. An automatic power on function is included for vehicle use, allowing the unit to start with the engine.
1x Zen Air Blue 2 1x USB to DC Cable 1x Quick Start Guide 1x Warranty Card 1x Short Antenna 1x Long Antenna
1x Zen Air Blue 1x USB to DC Cable 1x Quick Start Guide 1x Warranty Card
The Bottom Line
The iFi Audio ZEN Air Blue 2 succeeds by keeping things simple and focused. At $129, it delivers a rare combination at this price point: Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Lossless, broad codec support, and a stable wireless connection that makes it easy to bring modern streaming into older systems without replacing core components. That’s the angle—it’s not trying to be everything, just a clean bridge between your phone and your existing hi-fi.
What it doesn’t offer is just as clear. There’s no headphone output, no balanced connections, and no advanced control over DAC settings or outputs. If you want a more flexible desktop DAC or preamp, options like the Topping E50 II or Fosi Audio S3 give you more to work with for not a lot more money.
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The ZEN Air Blue 2 is for listeners who already have an amplifier, receiver, or powered speakers they like and just need a reliable, high quality Bluetooth front end. It also makes sense in secondary systems or even in a car or boat where its wide voltage support and auto power on are actually useful. If your goal is straightforward wireless playback with minimal fuss, it fits. If you want control and expandability, look elsewhere.
Motorola is practically a veteran when it comes to foldables, which makes the Razr Fold all the more surprising. When I got my hands on it at a Hollywood villa overlooking the Los Angeles skyline, it felt less like an iteration and more like a fresh take.
The phone-maker’s first book-style foldable incorporates all the know-how it gained from making clamshell foldables dating back to the first modern Razr in 2019 — a launch I also attended at a similar event in Los Angeles. As advanced as it felt back then to hold a smartphone that folded in half, the foldable niche has come a long way since. The Motorola Razr Fold shows the company has moved beyond the rookie missteps typical of first-generation book-style foldables. The Google Pixel Fold, for example, notoriously didn’t unfold completely flat — an issue the Razr Fold avoids and a clear advantage in this space.
My first impression of the Motorola Razr Fold, as I held it in my hand, was that it had the polish and heft of a book-style foldable refined over many iterations, such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. It’s not quite the thinnest folding phone around — measuring just over 5mm thick when unfolded and about 10mm when folded — but it’s reasonably trim and didn’t feel clunky at 8.6 ounces (243 grams).
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The Razr Fold is also unmistakably a Motorola phone, thanks to the design of its back, which is covered in a textured material that curves up to meet the camera bump, similar to the Moto G (2026). For the record, I find the textures classy, with a matte feel for the lily white color and cross-hatched nylon weave for the blackened blue hue.
The inner and outer screens have twice the maximum brightness of rival foldables.
David Lumb/CNET
Speaking of feel, the hinge and opening and closing of the Razr Fold feel satisfyingly sturdy — an odd but perhaps necessary reassurance that Motorola successfully translated its clamshell expertise to book-style foldables. Moreover, the Razr Fold is both well-specced and priced competitively against rival foldables: At $1,900, it lands right between the $2,000 Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the $1,800 Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold. The Motorola Razr Fold is available for preorder on Motorola.com and retailers on May 14 and will go on sale May 21.
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How the Razr Fold stacks up to other foldables
Watch this: Motorola’s Razr 2026 Phones Are Still Powerful in Your Pocket, Just Pricier
The specs under the hood
The Razr Fold is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, which is less powerful than the highest-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, according to NanoReview’s benchmarks. With 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the foldable is powerful on paper; we’re looking forward to seeing how its performance compares to Samsung’s and Google’s devices.
The Razr Fold’s 6.6-inch pOLED cover display is sharp and vivid, as is its 8.1-inch LTPO OLED inner display, both roughly the same size as screens on other foldables. What sets them apart is how bright they can get, with peak brightness rated at 6,200 nits for the main (unfolded) display and 6,000 nits for the external (folded) display — easily double that of many other phones, something I’m eager to test in harsh lighting conditions. That brightness could make the Razr Fold one of the best foldables for the beach or a park picnic, though it may also drain the battery faster.
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If that’s the case, it’s a good thing the Razr Fold packs a 6,000-mAh battery, offering more capacity than its rivals — and even the Galaxy Z TriFold. Better still, you can recharge the foldable with 80-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging, far faster than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 (25-watt wired) and Pixel 10 Pro Fold (30-watt wired). Based on our extensive battery testing, I’d expect those speeds to recharge most of the Razr Fold in about half an hour (though we’ll have to confirm that in our review). The foldable also supports 5-watt reverse wireless charging to share power with other devices.
The Razr Fold has some of the best cameras on any Motorola phone, featuring a triple 50-megapixel rear camera array (main, ultrawide and telephoto). The telephoto uses a periscope lens with 3x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom. The front display has a sharp 32-megapixel selfie camera, which makes sense, as book-style foldable owners use the cover screen more often. When they pop the Razr Fold open, they’ll find a 20-megapixel camera for video calls and similar tasks.
The Moto Pen ($100) stylus will work with the Motorola Razr Fold. This might be how my experience would’ve been if I’d gotten the pen to connect to the Razr Fold.
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Motorola
No book-style foldable would feel complete without a stylus — or so we thought until Samsung dropped S Pen support from the Galaxy Z Fold 7. I had a chance to handle Motorola’s Moto Pen, though I didn’t have time to pair it with the Razr Fold. Tucked neatly into its holster (which looks a bit like a vape), the Moto Pen pops out easily, and the brief writing I tested on the Fold’s screen felt smooth enough. I’m not surprised that the phone-maker behind the Moto G Stylus pulled off a sleek standalone digital pen, though I’m curious about how its physical buttons function.
I have a laundry list of questions left to answer when we get our hands on the Motorola Razr Fold, from performance to camera capability to recharging rates. It’s tough to get a full picture of a phone from just an hour meet-and-greet in a fancy Los Angeles event space. But I’m confident that Motorola’s first book-style foldable will be a great alternative for folks who haven’t yet been convinced to pick up one from Samsung or Google. We’ll just have to see if Motorola has enough time to make a splash with the Razr Fold when it goes on sale May 21 before Apple potentially steals the spotlight with its long-rumored foldable iPhone expected to make its debuted in September.
Motorola Razr Fold vs. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 vs. Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold
IP48/IP49 rating, 80-watt wired charging, 50-watt wireless charging, 5-watt reverse charging, dual stereo speakers (with Dolby Atmos, tuned by Bose), Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic cover display, 6,000 nits peak brightness on cover display, 6,200 nits peak brightness on main display, 5G (sub-6). hall sensor, proximity sensor, multi-spectral camera assistant sensor,
One UI 8, 25W wired charging speed, Qi wireless charging, 2,600-nit peak brightness, Galaxy AI, NFC, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, IP48 water resistance
IP68 rating, gearless hinge, cover and internal screen 3,000 nits peak brightnes, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 cover and back glass, Satellite SOS, ultra-wideband chip, Qi2-certified, free Google VPN. 7 years of OS, security and Pixel Drop updates
The solar system is kind of hard to observe in motion all at once. Sometimes, it’s nice to have a little model to look at, so you can see the relative motions of celestial bodies play out in front of you. Such a device is called an orrery, and [illusionmanager] has built rather a nice example of their own.
The build represents all the planets in the solar system, plus the sun and our very own Moon. An ESP32 lives at the heart of the build, running an astronomical simulation to calculate the proper positions of all the celestial objects. It then drives a small stepper motor via a TMC2209 driver, turning the mechanism back and forth until all the pieces are positioned correctly, using a reed switch and magnet to detect the initial zero position. The orrery is able to be driven by a single motor in this manner thanks to an ingenious mechanism, wherein the rings interlock with each other when turned in one direction, and not in the other. The Moon is controlled by a separate geared mechanism connected to the main rotation.
It’ s a nice decoration that also serves as a great conversation piece, particularly if you like talking about the heavens. We’ve featured some fine works from [illusionmanager] before, too, like this exquisite reverse sundial. Video after the break.
Every week we like to showcase the biggest stories on the TechRadar website over the previous seven days in our ‘In Case You Missed It’ (ICYMI) round-up — both to help you catch up with the news, and also because we’re proud of our work.
Once again, it’s been a really busy week in technology: we’ve got stories here covering new phones from Motorola, electric helicopters, Taylor Swift taking on AI, robots playing table tennis, the new Steam Controller, and more besides.
In short, there’s something for everyone here. Settle down and buckle up: these are the major stories that mattered on TechRadar this week.
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8. We were terrified by the first Resident Evil trailer
Resident Evil is returning to the big screen (Image credit: Sony Pictures Releasing)
Weapons director Zach Cregger is turning his attention to the Resident Evil movie franchise, describing his upcoming flick (premiering on September 18) as a “reinvention” of the series — one that isn’t tied to any of the video games or video game characters (a tactic that has worked well enough for the Prime Video TV show based on Fallout).
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The first trailer for the film has now arrived — and it’s a pretty terrifying affair. We won’t spoil any of the beats for you, but you can watch the teaser yourself via the link below, and we’re more hopeful for the future of Resident Evil on the big screen than we have been in a while (the least said about Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, the better really).
7. New York City’s first electric air taxi took off
An air taxi taking to the skies (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the new all-electric Joby Air Taxi, which is currently being tested in the skies of New York city — and TechRadar was there to watch the first demo. With its eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) technology, the flying machine has the potential to transform the way that New Yorkers get around their urban environment.
Able to climb and land like helicopters, and switch to a more airplane-like mode in between, these air taxis have been a long time coming (an early prototype was tested three years ago). With regulatory clearance now on the way and pilots in place, we’ve got a transportation system that’s much quieter and eco-friendly than existing options.
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6. A handy YouTube Premium feature came to free users
Non-paying YouTube users outside the US have a new feature to enjoy (Image credit: Getty Images / NurPhoto)
YouTube has rolled out a treat for free users who aren’t yet on a premium subscription: anyone can now activate picture-in-picture mode for YouTube on their phone, anywhere in the world (this was previously available for US users, but it’s now available globally). Just start a video, then head back to your phone’s home screen to choose another app.
It means you can keep your DIY tutorial videos, lo-fi chill-out mixes or celebrity interviews rolling while you get other stuff done on your phone. It’s a welcome boost for YouTubers on the free tier, as Google has been pushing YouTube Premium and Premium Lite quite a bit lately — not least through an excessive number of ads playing around videos.
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5. Sony’s table tennis robot blew our minds
The robots are getting better at table tennis (Image credit: Sony AI)
Robotics technology continues to improve and impress, and the mind boggles when it comes to what these machines will be able to do in 10 or 20 years. For now, the AI-powered robots that are part of the Sony Project Ace scheme have been beating some of the best players in the world at table tennis — a game that requires a lot of speed and dexterity.
These bots were shown mastering ball speeds of up to 70mph (plus plenty of spin), in a new video, and there are implications way beyond competing at sports. The systems put in place to track ball and bat movements here will be useful in many other areas too — helping robots to adjust on the fly whenever they’re met with unpredictable scenarios.
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4. Taylor Swift took on the AI deepfakes
Taylor Swift is taking a stand against AI (Image credit: Disney)
AI-made music is on the rise, and Taylor Swift is one of the flesh-and-blood artists taking a stand: she’s filed three trademark applications to protect her identity, and to make sure AI models can’t produce deepfakes based on her likeness or her tunes. If the applications are approved, it gives Swift some useful legal protection against any AI-based mimicry.
Given Taylor Swift’s profile, it’s difficult to imagine any AI prompter would get away with trying to rip off her creative output, but smaller artists aren’t as well protected. We know that AI music is flooding the music streaming platforms at the moment, and those platforms are still playing catch-up when it comes to working out how to deal with it.
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3. Android fans started a Google protest
The Galaxy S26 Ultra (Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
Changes are coming to Android, and many users aren’t happy: Google is pushing ahead with plans to get developers to verify their identities, which doesn’t sit right for those who choose Android because of its claims to be an open platform. It means Google will be able to more effectively block apps on the Play Store from developers who aren’t verified.
Disgruntled users have now set up a ‘Keep Android Open’ campaign online, arguing that the changes give Google the power to block apps it simply doesn’t like (or that governments tell them not to include). One privacy advocate has gone as far as labeling Google’s mobile OS ‘Darth Android’ because of the restrictions being applied in the coming months.
2. We tested the Valve Steam Controller
The new Steam Controller (Image credit: Future)
We’ve given the shiny new 2026 refresh of the Steam Controller a thorough testing, and the good news is that the improvements are real and noticeable: this is a significantly more polished and user-friendly device than its rather lackluster predecessor was. If you’re in the market for a gamepad upgrade, this could be the controller you’re looking for.
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Available for $99 / £85 / AU$149 from May 4, the Steam Controller (2026) is available direct from Steam, and is designed to work with games for PC, Mac, and mobile — either from the Steam Store or otherwise. With great battery life and a solid feel, it’s almost great enough to make us forget about the long time we’ve been waiting for the Steam Deck 2.
1. Motorola gave us some impressive new foldables
Shiny new Motorola phones (Image credit: Future)
We got news on no fewer than five new products from Motorola this week: three clamshell foldables, plus US availability updates on the Razr Fold and Moto Buds 2 Plus. The highlight is perhaps the Motorola Razr Ultra 2026, offering a 7-inch foldable screen, three 50MP cameras, and a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset running everything very capably.
Follow the link below for all the details on all of these gadgets, including the new silicon-carbon battery technology being used in the Razr Fold and the Razr Ultra 2026. The tech allows higher capacity batteries to fit into the same physical space, and as it rolls out to more manufacturers it has the potential to make a substantial difference to battery life.
If you have ambitions to further your career in the cyber space, consider one of the following 10 exciting organisations.
The cybersecurity sector is constantly evolving and more and more organisations are adding to their teams in order to meet increasing global demands. From penetration testing and incident response, to intelligence analysis and SOC management, there are a plethora of opportunities for professionals looking to advance their careers.
If this sounds good to you, keep reading to discover more about the companies based in Ireland currently in the process of cybersecurity recruitment.
Accenture
Irish technology consulting platform Accenture currently has three roles on offer for professionals available to work out of the Dublin premises. Vacant roles include a CyberArk associate manager, cyber incident responder and CyberArk specialist. Interested potential applicants can apply via the organisation’s careers page.
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Arctic Wolf
US cybersecurity company Arctic Wolf has three positions open to professionals based in Cork and remotely. There is a senior cybersecurity engineer role available, as well as opportunities for a triage security engineer with proficiency in German and a cybersecurity engineer 2.
BMS
US multinational pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb, or BMS, has a role that, while not strictly cybersecurity, requires someone with cybersecurity skills. There is currently an opening for a senior manager in AI operations at the company’s Dublin office. The successful candidate will have a range of duties that include work in security, compliance and governance – such as implementing security controls, supporting model governance workflows and collaborating with cybersecurity teams to maintain secure and compliant environments.
Centripetal
US cybersecurity platform Centripetal has its European headquarters in Galway, Ireland and is currently looking for a senior software engineer to join its security-based Intelligence Services team. This role is available at the Galway facility and in a hybrid capacity. There is also a senior software UI engineer role open on the Intelligence Services team in Galway.
Eli Lilly
US multinational pharmaceutical Eli Lilly has multiple job vacancies for jobseekers with cybersecurity skills and qualifications. Interested professionals should consider applying for roles such as cyber intelligence analyst, SecOps engineer and senior application security engineer. All the roles are based out of the company’s Cork facility.
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Google
Search engine Google is looking to add to its Ireland-based security personnel with a regional IoT operations and cybersecurity specialist, who would be situated at its Dublin facility. The Dublin team is also on the lookout for a security sales specialist for Google Cloud who can speak French fluently, as well as a senior policy escalation specialist for YouTube trust and safety.
Integrity360
Earlier this year, Irish cybersecurity company Integrity360 announced plans to acquire Canadian cybersecurity services and solutions provider Advantus360. There are plenty of roles open to qualified professionals globally and in Ireland specifically, Integrity360 is looking to recruit a penetration tester, senior penetration tester, SOC manager and an IAM architect.
PwC
Professional services firm PwC has a range of opportunities on offer to cybersecurity experts based in Ireland. In Dublin and Cork, open roles include jobs in cybersecurity security operations and crisis incident management, cybersecurity third-party risk management, and cybersecurity threat and vulnerability.
Smarttech247
Detection and response security platform Smarttech247 is looking for a few senior swimlane automation engineers and architects to join the team in remote, Ireland-based roles. The chosen professionals will lead the end-to-end design, implementation and deployment of security automation playbooks on the company’s swimlane platform.
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TCS
IT services, consulting and business solutions platform TCS has one role open to a professional in cybersecurity. Candidates can apply for a hybrid, Dublin-based role as an SAP SuccessFactors security consultant.
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Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory gathered around a special 26-foot vacuum chamber in February of last year to witness a prototype engine fire five times in a row. The temperature within that device skyrocketed, exceeding 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, with a center tungsten electrode burning a brilliant white and an outer nozzle spewing out an astounding crimson stream of lithium plasma into the void of space.
Those short bursts of fire boosted the engine to a clean 120 kilowatts, a level not even the most powerful US-built electric propulsion system had ever achieved. High voltage electric currents rip through lithium vapor inside the engine, interact with a magnetic field, and suddenly the plasma blasts out of the nozzle at a breakneck pace. It everything works together to provide you with a consistent thrust without any flames or explosions, just a smooth and continuous push that accumulates over months or even years in space. The lithium works so well for the job because it ionizes cleanly, can run on lower voltages than other choices, and allows the system to pack a big punch into a small space once everything is scaled up.
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Senior Research Scientist James Polk from JPL is the driving force behind the operation, with assistance from his colleagues at Princeton University and NASA’s Glenn Research Center. They spent a long two and a half years planning and building the monster with funds from the space nuke propulsion program. Polk described the test as a “big stride forward” because they not only demonstrated that the engine works but also achieved their target power exactly as expected. The data acquired throughout those five test cycles is now being used to plan the next releases.
NASA has already tried electric propulsion on missions with a lot lower power outputs, such as the Psyche spacecraft. This one revolutionary design can deliver 25+ times more power than those units while utilizing only a fraction of the prop required for a chemical rocket. In general, these techniques will reduce fuel requirements by up to 90%, allowing spacecraft to launch much lighter and carry far more cargo or crew supplies.
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Eventually, nuclear reactors will provide enough electricity to keep the thrusters going over extended distances. A mission to Mars, for example, will most certainly require 2-4 megawatts to get the entire crew there. Once this configuration is in place, the transits will be much shorter because the spaceship will be able to keep chugging along steadily for the entire journey rather than coasting for the majority of it.
Of course, before any of this can happen, the team must first conquer a number of hurdles. The components must be able to sustain heat for thousands of hours without failing, and the engines must be capable of producing at least 500 kilowatts, if not more. The testbed they’ve set up in the vacuum chamber at JPL provides a strong foundation for them to address those difficulties one by one.
After the Foucault pendulum at the Houston Museum of Natural Science stopped working a while back after maintenance on the building, workers set out to determine what was wrong with the mechanism that normally keeps it in motion. Fortunately, it turned out that all they had to do was fiddle with some knobs to get everything dialed back in proper-like.
When we previously covered this dire event, it was claimed that this was a one-off system, hacked together by some random bloke. But as can be seen in the video and further detailed in the comments to the video the reality is far more interesting.
This particular Foucault pendulum is one of many that were created by the California Academy of Sciences, with hundreds of them installed throughout the US and possibly elsewhere. That said, since a pendulum of any description will never be a perpetual motion device, the electromagnet installed near the top of the installation has to carefully add some kinetic energy back that was lost due to friction as the pendulum moves around.
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Sadly the video doesn’t go into much detail on what exactly was wrongly configured with this particular pendulum. Keeping a weight at the end of a long cable moving around at a set velocity is a tricky business, so it’s little wonder that getting some parameters wrong would engage and disengage the electromagnets at the wrong times and making the pendulum stop swinging.
Coatue, one of the biggest names in venture capital and hedge funds, has a new plan to generate bigger returns on AI beyond its sizable stakes in Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and data center companies like Singapore’s DayOne and CoreWeave.
It has launched a venture called Next Frontier to buy up land near large power sources with the goal of turning those parcels into data centers, the Wall Street Journal reports. Sources tell the WSJ that Next Frontier has already signed a joint venture with Fluidstack, a cloud infrastructure startup that penned a $50 billion deal to build data centers for Anthropic. (Coatue did not respond to a request for comment.)
Although the U.S. already has 3,000 data centers, more than 1,500 new ones are in various stages of being built, according to Pew Research, most of them in rural areas. The frenzy is enticing land speculation and data center financing projects from lots of players, ranging from Blackstone to Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank.”
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