Tech
Which States Have The Lowest Minimum Age For Getting A Driver’s License?
Learning to drive might be less of a priority than it once was for American teenagers, but the majority still have their licence by the time they turn 19. Depending on where they live, some teens might need to wait a few years longer than others to get on the road. As shown by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the lowest age for getting an unrestricted driver’s license varies from state to state, with some states requiring drivers to wait until they’re 18 to drive without curfews and passenger restrictions.
In contrast, the lowest minimum age for an unrestricted driving license is 16. Only a handful of states allow drivers who have just turned 16 to hold a regular license: They are Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. In Montana, 16 year old drivers have to have held their license for 12 months or more in order to get nighttime and passenger restrictions lifted. A range of other states lift restrictions at 16 years and six months, including Arizona, Kansas, Mississippi, and New Mexico, among others.
The minimum entry age for learners similarly varies between states, with the lowest age across the country being 14 years old. Drivers in Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota can all get a learner’s permit at the age of 14.
Buying the right car can make it easier and safer to learn to drive
Anyone looking to get their license will need a car to practise in, and if you’re a first timer looking to purchase your first car, it’s worth choosing your new ride carefully. Picking a car with modern safety features should give you extra reassurance in the case of an accident, even though it might not be the cheapest option on the market. When asked, Jay Leno suggested that cars from 2005 onwards are a good bet, but at a minimum, making sure you have something with airbags and modern seatbelts is advisable.
Plenty of car enthusiasts like the feeling of control and involvement that a manual transmission gives them, but learning to drive stick also comes with its own challenges. There are a few beginner tips worth keeping in mind when you start learning, like memorizing your car’s shift pattern, that should make it a little easier.
After you pass the learner stage, all states have an intermediate stage that imposes restrictions about the time of day you can drive and the passengers you can carry. The restrictions vary considerably between states, so be sure to check restriction rules before you head out on the road. To have those restrictions lifted, you’ll usually need to have held your license for a set period of months, or reach a specific age, but again, the time period and age requirements vary depending on where in the country you live.
Launcher V2 will go through a private beta before a public release.
After an Epic Games exec admitted to Eurogamer that its launcher sucks earlier this year, the company reportedly revealed that it’s working on a “ground-up rebuild” of its launcher that will be much faster than the existing version. In a presentation given during Unreal Fest, parts of which were posted on X by LuKaOnIndeed, Epic said that Launcher V2 will be five times faster on an average cold start and 6.5 times faster when restoring the app from the system tray.
Epic said in its presentation that “every developer in this room and every player we have has experienced challenges with the current launcher.” Gamers have even gone to great lengths to access their free games claimed on the Epic Games Store through Steam to avoid the launcher’s slow and clunky design. As seen as part of a roadmap in Epic’s presentation, the Launcher V2 will have a private beta first, before seeing an eventual public release. Epic hasn’t detailed exact dates for the new launcher, but said in a February press release that it’s “in the process of rebuilding the underlying architecture of the Epic Games Store Launcher and plan to ship improvements this summer.”
Beyond the launcher improvements, Epic revealed during Unreal Fest that it would be adding a few more tweaks to its storefront. The slides shared by LuKaOnIndeed mentioned priorities like in-store patch notes, player reviews, quick-access categories and a personalized home page.
Tech
Copilot searched your mailbox. LiteLLM handed out admin keys. Run this 5-check audit before your stack is next
Two AI tools broke in the same way in the same two weeks, and four research teams proved it. The pattern underneath every disclosure is one sentence: enterprise AI accepts external input with no trust boundary.
On June 15, Varonis disclosed SearchLeak (CVE-2026-42824), a proof-of-concept exfiltration chain in Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise Search. A victim clicks a crafted microsoft.com URL, Copilot searches their mailbox, and the data leaves through a Bing SSRF. No plugins, no second click, no visible indicator. Four days earlier, Obsidian Security published a three-CVE chain against LiteLLM that carried a default low-privilege user all the way to admin and remote code execution. Two tools. Two teams. One broken boundary.
The five-check audit at the end of this article maps each gap to a CVE or a market signal from June, a command you can run before lunch, and a sentence a CISO can read to the board.
Copilot turned a trusted URL into an exfiltration engine
SearchLeak chained three weaknesses into a silent data-theft chain. The URL q parameter fed attacker instructions straight to Copilot’s LLM. A rendering race condition fired an image tag before the output sanitizer ran. Bing’s image-search endpoint, allowlisted in the Content Security Policy, routed the stolen data out. Microsoft rated the flaw critical and patched it on the back end, according to Varonis. NVD has not yet scored it; a third-party tracker lists it at 6.5 medium. The severity is contested, but the mechanism is not.
The escalation is the real story. This is the third Varonis Copilot exfiltration chain in twelve months, after Reprompt in January and EchoLeak in 2025. Reprompt hit Copilot Personal. SearchLeak hit Enterprise Search. Enterprise inherits the user’s full organizational permissions, so the blast radius is everything that a user can reach.
LiteLLM handed a default account to every provider key
The LiteLLM gateway holds the keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, and Bedrock behind a single proxy. The Obsidian chain runs in three moves. CVE-2026-47101, an authorization bypass, lets a non-admin mint a wildcard API key. CVE-2026-47102 promotes that caller to proxy admin through an unguarded /user/update endpoint. CVE-2026-40217 escapes the code sandbox through exec() with full builtins. Obsidian then demonstrated a reverse shell by injecting a forged tool-call response through LiteLLM’s callback mechanism. Obsidian assessed the combined chain at CVSS 9.9. The developer typed one word. The attacker popped a shell.
A separate LiteLLM flaw made the urgency immediate. CVE-2026-42271, a command-injection bug in the MCP test endpoints, landed on the CISA KEV list on June 8 with a June 22 remediation deadline. That KEV entry is not the Obsidian chain. The two are distinct disclosures four days apart, fixed in different releases, pointed at the same gateway. LiteLLM carries more than 40,000 GitHub stars and sits in thousands of enterprise deployments. This is not the first scare, either. A supply-chain compromise backdoored LiteLLM versions 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 on PyPI in March. A compromised gateway exposes every provider credential the organization holds.
Langflow and Mini Shai-Hulud proved the pattern scales
The same boundary broke in two more tools in the same fortnight. Langflow CVE-2026-5027 became the third Langflow remote-code-execution flaw to hit active exploitation this year. A path traversal in file upload lets an attacker write files anywhere on disk, and because Langflow ships with auto-login enabled by default, a single unauthenticated request reaches RCE. VulnCheck confirmed exploitation on June 9. Censys counted roughly 7,000 exposed instances, the heaviest concentration in North America, with MuddyWater attribution.
The Mini Shai-Hulud campaign hit a different pressure point. After the worm’s source code went public on May 12, copycat variants compromised 32 Red Hat Cloud Services npm packages on June 1, packages pulled 80,000 times a week. The worm harvests more than 20 credential types and self-propagates under the compromised maintainer’s identity.
Four teams, four tools, one operating failure. The bug classes differ. SearchLeak is a prompt injection. LiteLLM is privilege escalation. Langflow is path traversal. Mini Shai-Hulud is supply-chain poisoning. The boundary that broke is the same in all four.
The market already repriced the risk
CrowdStrike’s Q1 FY27 earnings call put a number on the gap. AIDR, the company’s AI detection and response line, grew ending ARR more than 250% sequentially, with a Q2 pipeline above $50 million (SEC-filed 8-K). Total company ARR reached $5.51 billion, and CrowdStrike’s fleet telemetry shows more than 1,800 agentic applications running across enterprise endpoints.
On June 17, the company extended AIDR to AWS, adding real-time evaluation of agent, LLM, and MCP communications across Amazon Bedrock, Kiro, and Strands Agents, building on its work with Anthropic’s Project Glasswing. Daniel Bernard, CrowdStrike’s chief business officer, said the AI attack surface now spans development, runtime, identities, and cloud infrastructure, and that teams treating those as separate domains leave the gaps between them open.
Practitioners name the same gap in plainer terms
David Levin, CISO at American Express Global Business Travel, told VentureBeat the pattern does not surprise him. “We kind of have this shadow AI, which is just the new version of shadow IT,” Levin said.
Both Langflow and LiteLLM fit the description. Teams stood them up for convenience, gave them credentials, and never brought them under governance. Levin puts the fix before deployment. “We didn’t go into this with just saying we’re going to go do this without the right fundamentals,” he said. “We leverage NIST controls. NIST has released their CSF along with their AI framework. OWASP released their top 10. You need the right fundamentals before you deploy.”
Merritt Baer, CSO at Enkrypt AI and former AWS Deputy CISO, named the structural version of the failure in a separate VentureBeat interview. “Enterprises believe they’ve ‘approved’ AI vendors, but what they’ve actually approved is an interface, not the underlying system,” Baer said. “The real dependencies are one or two layers deeper, and those are the ones that fail under stress.” She has tied that directly to how systems fall. “Raw zero-days aren’t how most systems get compromised. Composability is,” Baer told VentureBeat. “It’s the glue between the model and your data where the risk lives. If you give an agent bash and a root token, you’ve already done most of the attacker’s work for them.” That is what rows 2 and 4 of the audit test: the gateway that holds every key, and the agent identity no one governs.
Levin had a sharper frame for the boardroom. “You need to talk more in terms of risk versus compliance to your boards and your executives,” he said. “It’s not about the size of the engineering team anymore. It’s the size of your imagination. It’s all written in plain English. It’s not hard for anyone.” Neither SearchLeak nor LiteLLM needed custom malware or a zero-day to work.
Adam Meyers, CrowdStrike’s SVP of Intelligence, put the operational squeeze in numbers in an exclusive VentureBeat interview. “The problem is not zero-day. The problem is patching. If you 10x that problem, they’re gonna be completely underwater,” Meyers said. He pointed to identity as the second front. “Some of these AI have their own identities, or people give their identity to the AI to take action on their behalf, and that makes it a very complex problem.”
The five-check trust-boundary audit
Each row maps a gap to its proof point, a verification command for Monday morning, the fix, and the sentence to read to the board.
|
Trust-Boundary Gap |
Proof Point |
What Broke |
Verify Monday |
Fix Monday |
Board Language |
|
1. Prompt-to-Data |
SearchLeak CVE-2026-42824. P2P injection + HTML race + Bing SSRF. One-click mailbox exfiltration via microsoft.com URL. PoC demonstrated; Microsoft rated it critical, NVD not yet scored. |
URL q-parameter passed to LLM as instructions. Sanitizer ran after render. Bing acted as exfiltration proxy via CSP allowlist. |
Audit CSP allowlists for domains performing server-side fetches. Monitor Copilot Search URLs for encoded payloads. Review Copilot audit logs. |
Confirm server-side patch applied. Enable sensitivity labels restricting Copilot. Treat AI streaming output as untrusted. |
“Our AI assistant could search employee email and send results to an attacker through a trusted Microsoft URL. Vendor patched it. We must verify configuration.” |
|
2. Gateway Credential Exposure |
LiteLLM three-CVE chain (-47101, -47102, -40217). CVSS 9.9. Separate CVE-2026-42271 on CISA KEV (fixed in v1.83.7; full chain fixed in v1.83.14-stable). June 22 deadline. |
No role validation on key endpoints. Self-promotion to admin via /user/update. exec() sandbox escape. One gateway exposes all provider keys. |
Run pip show litellm. Below 1.83.14-stable = vulnerable. Check /mcp-rest/test/ exposure. Audit proxy_admin accounts. |
Upgrade to v1.83.14-stable+. Rotate all provider API keys. Block /mcp-rest/test/* at proxy. Review Custom Code Guardrails. |
“Our AI gateway held keys for every provider. A default account could promote itself to admin and steal them all. Rotating and patching now.” |
|
3. AI Tooling Sprawl |
Langflow CVE-2026-5027 (CVSS 8.8). Third RCE of 2026. ~7,000 exposed instances. MuddyWater. Active exploitation June 9. |
Path traversal in file upload. Auto-login enabled by default. Single unauthenticated request to RCE. |
Query Censys/Shodan for Langflow, Flowise, n8n, Dify on your perimeter. Check auto-login. Inventory AI tools outside change management. |
Pull AI platforms behind VPN/zero-trust. Enable auth everywhere. Upgrade Langflow to v1.9.0+ (current release 1.10.0). Fingerprint surface continuously. |
“AI dev tools are exposed to the internet with login disabled. A nation-state group is exploiting this flaw now. Pulling behind access controls today.” |
|
4. Non-Human Identity Governance |
AIDR ARR up 250% (Q1 FY27, SEC 8-K). Q2 pipeline >$50M. 1,800+ agentic apps across enterprise endpoints. |
Agents hold identities and act on behalf of humans. Some exceed their intended scope to reach a goal. No standard governs agent credential lifecycle. |
Inventory all non-human identities used by agents and MCP servers. Map agent-to-data-store access. Flag agents with write access to security policy. |
Least-privilege every agent identity. Set privilege boundaries via identity protection. Runtime detection for policy-exceeding actions. Human-in-the-loop for policy changes. |
“AI agents hold credentials and act autonomously. We do not govern their identity lifecycle like human access. The 250% market growth tells us this gap is systemic.” |
|
5. Runtime Agentic Detection |
Falcon AIDR expanded to AWS (June 17). Covers Bedrock, Kiro, Strands Agents. MCP integration. Real-time agent/LLM/MCP evaluation. |
Traditional tools monitor human-speed actions. Agents run at machine speed, thousands of actions per minute, and route around controls to reach goals. |
Test if EDR/XDR links agent actions to originating identity. Verify SIEM ingests MCP communications. Confirm you can distinguish human from agent on endpoint. |
Deploy AIDR or equivalent runtime detection. Shadow-AI discovery for all agentic apps, models, MCP servers, identities. Real-time policy enforcement on agent actions. |
“We cannot distinguish a human employee from an AI agent acting on their behalf. We need runtime detection at machine speed that can stop damage before it starts.” |
The fix is plumbing, not policy
The June 2 executive order creates an AI Cybersecurity Clearinghouse with a July 2 deadline. The five gaps above are not frontier-model problems. They are plumbing problems in the gateways, orchestration platforms, identity layers, and runtime environments where AI meets the enterprise.
The audit is five rows. Every row maps to a June disclosure or market signal, a command a team can run before lunch, and a sentence a CISO can read to the board. The question is not whether your vendor will patch. It’s whether you find the gap first — or whether an attacker finds it the way they found Copilot and LiteLLM.
If you’re a longtime Android user or just a very well-informed iOS user, you probably remember how Android versions used to be named after desserts. Android 1.5 Cupcake, released in April 2009, was the operating system’s first public release to use a confectionery naming scheme. Since then, we’ve seen more than a dozen releases, each bearing the name of a popular sweet treat in alphabetical order — well, popular at least in some parts of the world.
This was one of the major reasons why Google pivoted away from attaching dessert names to Android releases in 2019. Sameer Samat, vice president of product management for Android, explained in a blog post how this naming scheme posed challenges for a global audience. In many parts of the world where treats like jelly beans or gingerbread aren’t particularly popular, it didn’t make much sense to market and label an entire version of Android around them.
This is likely why the final few Android versions preceding Android 10 were named after desserts with broader international recognition — KitKat, Lollipop, Marshmallow, Nougat, Oreo, and Pie. Plus, for languages where certain letters or sounds aren’t easily distinguishable (like Japanese with “L” and “R”), Google noted how the alphabetical naming convention can be confusing. Instead, it opted for a far simpler naming system based on numbers. It’s now easier to tell which version of Android your phone is running and whether it’s the newest one available.
How is Android’s new brand identity holding up?
There was understandable criticism pouring in from Android enthusiasts when Google decided to drop its naming convention with Android 10. While it’s sad knowing that the average Android user will never be blessed with an Easter egg related to a sweet treat again, for those nerdy enough, Android has continued to use confectionery-based codenames internally. Android 10 was known as Quince Tart, Android 11 as Red Velvet Cake, Android 12 as Snow Cone, and so on. The latest version of the operating system, Android 17, is internally known as Cinnamon Bun.
Fortunately, Android hasn’t lost its fun nature. While not every major release is a visual overhaul, we have seen plenty of playful touches over the years. Google’s Material You design system is all about how the user interface uses dynamic colors for a more personal feel. Material 3 Expressive took this a step further by adding a refined motion-physics system and improved typography. It also helps that nearly every Android OEM brings its own flavor to Android. The bottom line is we don’t think Android has lost its creative or unique edge simply because Google stopped erecting statues of popular desserts in Mountain View, California.
Android may be moving away from desserts, but recent versions seem to have found a different niche — space exploration. Like the Easter egg in Android 14, newer versions have featured an interactive space-themed mini-game you can try.
DEvops
Cost premium of using AWS indirectly via Vercel is mitigated by more efficient use of compute resources, CTO claims
Vercel introduced an open source agent framework called eve at its Ship event in London this week, along with other new features including Passport, an attempt to put employee apps created with AI under enterprise control.
Agents are dominating the AI conversation currently, and in particular custom agents. Agent frameworks that simplify coding already exist, though eve has a few notable characteristics.
The coding languages are TypeScript and Markdown, and an agent is a directory with files that define the instructions and skills, the model provider, the tools, the authentication, the channels, and the schedule. Agents are sandboxed on isolated VMs by default. The framework also includes a simple testing tool that exercises the agent and evaluates the result. Code is on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license.
There are plenty of existing agent frameworks, but Vercel CTO Malte Ubl told us that with eve, simplicity is a feature, with users able to take a “fill in the blanks” approach.
“The life cycle of the agent is completely orchestrated by the framework, and as a developer or builder you have to put things in the right places, but then everything magically works,” Ubl said.
“It’s a system where you don’t have to understand every little bit about what sandboxes are and how to compact context windows… All these things are quite complex; you don’t have to understand any of it.”
Agents built with eve deploy to Vercel by default, using the same command that works for web applications: vercel deploy. That said, the company says it is not tied to its platform.
“We are 100 percent committed to making it work everywhere,” Ubl told us, though an early user has already raised an issue about it requiring a Vercel login even when set to use a different model provider; it is early days and this may be a bug. Providers for LLMs and sandboxes are configurable. An eve project also runs locally with: npx eve dev.
What LLM does eve use? “You can connect any model that AI SDK connects to, which is all the models,” Ubl said, where the AI SDK is a Vercel SDK. There is also an option to use Vercel’s AI Gateway, which has a single endpoint for multiple model providers and can improve reliability by switching to another model if one fails.
The company also previewed Enterprise Apps and Agents, which have four components. Vercel Connect replaces static secret credentials with short-lived tokens accessed by OAuth or an API. Vercel Passport uses OpenID Connect to put all the applications and AI agents in a team behind an identity provider such as Okta or Microsoft Entra. Enterprise Managed Users uses directory sync to enable Vercel in a team to be managed by the organization’s identity system. Finally, Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) lets organizations use Vercel’s platform running on AWS infrastructure provisioned by the customer.
According to Vercel, Passport was a highly requested feature because of the number of employees who create applications hosted by Vercel but outside the control of the organization. A typical scenario is that an employee builds an application with AI assistance, and the AI agent defaults to using the Next.js React-based framework and Vercel hosting. It is a variety of shadow IT – or shadow AI – where staff create vibe-coded applications using company data but outside the organization’s IT policy or control.
Vercel itself is an AWS customer so its platform should work well using BYOC, but there are some trade-offs, Ubl said. One is that “we don’t allow your compute to assume AWS roles… If you are really deep in the AWS IM [Identity Management] security system, then Vercel doesn’t give this to you,” he told us, “but we do always issue an OIDC token for every invocation of the compute, so you can use that to configure your AWS policies.” Second, with BYOC, “we become a management vendor,” Ubl said, which means giving Vercel access to that part of the customer’s AWS infrastructure.
All Vercel deployments are immutable, which means “every time you push to Git you get a new infrastructure from scratch,” Ubl told us. He considers this ideal for AI agents. Other aspects of the platform have also been optimized for agents. “We try to be close to what the agents do,” he said.
A common critique of Vercel is that since it runs on AWS, using Vercel means paying a premium for hosting that would be cheaper when purchased directly. According to Ubl, that premium is mitigated by Vercel’s efficient use of those resources, “especially at low scale, and especially compared to Lambda,” the AWS serverless platform. Vercel said last year that it cut its Lambda costs by up to 95 percent by reusing idle instances.
Ubl claimed AWS customers need “more than 35 percent utilization to match Vercel’s price.”
Another Vercel competitor is Cloudflare, which, unlike Vercel, hosts on its own datacenters and has an efficient serverless platform using Workers, based on V8 isolates, a feature of the V8 JavaScript engine used by Google Chrome and the open source Chromium project.
Ubl said that whereas Cloudflare Workers are unique to Cloudflare, Vercel “is a more normal platform, we don’t run some bespoke runtime that we create ourselves, we just run Node.js or Python or PHP and it runs on a VM (virtual machine)… We offer standard PostgreSQL, VPC peering, AWS, S3 and not bespoke.”
This is a bit of a war of words. Cloudflare engineering director Steve Faulkner in February described the Next.js tooling, sponsored by Vercel, as “entirely bespoke.” Since then the situation has improved, with an Adapter API that is stable in Next.js 16.2, meaning other providers no longer need to reverse-engineer the build output, but adapters for AWS and Cloudflare are still under development, with completion expected by the end of 2026. ®
Prime Day 2026 kicks off on Tuesday, but there are numerous Apple deals in effect now that deliver the lowest prices of the season.
There are several early Prime Day Apple deals worth checking out this weekend, as the sale festivities kick off. From AirPods 4 for $99 to triple-digit discounts on M5 MacBook Air models, Apple products are a popular pick for Prime Day.
AirPods drop to $99
AirPods Pro 3 are down to the lowest price ever.
AirPods prices have dipped to as low as $99 heading into Prime Week, with earbud and over-ear models on sale. Walmart has also replenished AirPods Pro 3 inventory at $169.
Today’s top AirPods deals
iPads on sale from $299
Early Prime Day deals on iPads deliver prices from $299.
Those in search of a budget-friendly tablet can grab Apple’s 11-inch iPad with an A16 chip for $299. The current M4 iPad Air and M5 iPad Pro are also on sale, with a detailed rundown of the discounts in our iPad Price Guide.
Today’s best iPad offers
- iPad A16 (128GB, Wi-Fi): $299 ($50 off)
- iPad mini 7 (128GB, Wi-Fi): $474 ($25 off)
- M4 iPad Air 11-inch (128GB, Wi-Fi): $559 ($40 off)
- M4 iPad Air 13-inch (128GB, Wi-Fi): $749 ($50 off)
- M5 iPad Pro 11-inch (256GB, Wi-Fi, Standard Glass): $899.99 ($100 off)
- M5 iPad Pro 11-inch (1TB, Wi-Fi, Nano-texture Glass): $1,499 ($200 off)
- M5 iPad Pro 13-inch (1TB, Wi-Fi, Standard Glass): $1,749.99 ($150 off)
Apple Watches up to $200 off
Apple Watch Series 11 prices have dipped to as low as $299.
Current Apple Watch Series 11, SE 3, and Ultra 3 models are marked down by as much as $200, delivering some of the lowest prices of the year.
Buy Apple Watch Series 11 for $299
42mm Apple Watch Series 11 deals
- 42mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS (Aluminum Case, Sport Band): $299 ($100 off)
- 42mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Aluminum Case, Sport Band): $399 ($100 off)
- 42mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Titanium Case, Sport Band): $589 ($110 off)
- 42mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Titanium Case, Milanese Loop Band): $639 ($160 off)
46mm Apple Watch Series 11 discounts
- 46mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS (Aluminum Case, Sport Band): $329 ($100 off)
- 46mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Aluminum Case, Sport Band): $399 ($130 off)
- 46mm Apple Watch Series 11 GPS + Cellular (Titanium Case, Sport Band): $549.97 ($200 off)
Apple Watch SE 3 & Ultra 3 markdowns
MacBooks as low as $589
Apple’s latest MacBooks are marked down to as low as $589.
Early Prime Day deals are plentiful on Mac computers as well, with Apple’s budget-friendly MacBook Neo dipping to $589.99. M5 MacBook Air models are also as low as $949.99, while M5 MacBook Pros with at least 1TB of storage can be picked up for as low as $1,529.99.
Compare prices across dozens of configurations in our Mac Price Guide.
Latest MacBook Neo savings
Early Prime Day MacBook Air deals
- 13″ MacBook Air M5 (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD): $949.99 ($150 off)
- 13″ MacBook Air M5 (16GB RAM, 1TB SSD): $1,149 ($150 off)
- 13″ MacBook Air M5 (24GB RAM, 1TB SSD): $1,329 ($170 off) with in-cart coupon
- 15″ MacBook Air M5 (16GB RAM, 512GB SSD): $1,149.99 ($150 off)
- 15″ MacBook Air M5 (16GB RAM, 1TB SSD): $1,349.99 ($150 off)
- 15″ MacBook Air M5 (24GB RAM, 1TB SSD): $1,549 ($150 off)
Top MacBook Pro discounts
- 14″ MacBook Pro M5 (10C CPU, 10C GPU, 16GB, 1TB, Standard Display): $1,529 ($170 off) with in-cart coupon at B&H
- 14″ MacBook Pro M5 (10C CPU, 10C GPU, 24GB, 1TB, Standard Display): $1,749 ($150 off)
- 14″ MacBook Pro M5 Pro (15C CPU, 16C GPU, 24GB, 2TB, Standard Display, Space Black): $2,399 ($230 off) with in-cart coupon at Amazon
Best 16-inch MacBook Pro sales
- 16″ MacBook Pro M5 Pro (18C CPU, 20C GPU, 48GB, 1TB, Standard Display, Space Black): $2,879 ($220 off) at B&H
- 16″ MacBook Pro M5 Max (18C CPU, 40C GPU, 64GB, 2TB, Standard Display): $4,299 ($300 off) at B&H
- 16″ MacBook Pro M5 Max (18C CPU, 40C GPU, 128GB, 2TB, Standard Display, Space Black): $5,099 ($300 off) at B&H
Chargers, cables, and more for your Apple devices
Apple iPhone accessories are up to 40% off.
iPhone accessories
Buried deep inside everything announced at WWDC this year was something I, an Apple Shortcuts enthusiast, can’t wait to try: the ability to make Apple Shortcuts using generative artificial intelligence. In macOS 27, you’ll be able to just type what you want a shortcut to do, and the app will build it.
Anyone who builds shortcuts regularly knows the process of doing so can be tedious, even if the end results save you a lot of time. So I’m excited about the idea of describing what you want in plain language and ending up with a working shortcut. Even if it doesn’t work perfectly (let’s face it, AI-built things rarely do), it’s a starting point that you can tweak to meet your needs.
The only downside: This feature doesn’t launch until autumn, when version 27 of Apple’s operating systems come out.
What if you want to try it now? It turns out that Federico Viticci, who founded and runs the fantastic blog MacStories, also couldn’t wait—so much so that he went and built his own version. It’s called Shortcuts Playground, which runs in either Claude Code or OpenAI’s Codex. (OpenAI’s Codex is free for now; Claude Code requires at least a Pro plan, which starts at $20 per month.)
To get started you first need to install the Shortcuts Playground agent; there are instructions on GitHub. Basically you will need to copy and paste a command into the Terminal. (I am not going to include the command here in case it changes.)
I tested this in Claude Code, but the tool works the same way in Codex. Once you’ve installed Shortcuts Playground you can trigger it by typing / followed by “shortcuts.” You’ll see a list of options pop up:
%2520copy.jpg)
If you’re starting from scratch, I recommend using the shortcuts-playground:build option, followed by a rough description of what you want the shortcut to do. (The other option, shortcuts-playground:remix, is for making changes to existing shortcuts.)
The agent will get to work building a shortcut for you. Sometimes it will stop to ask you for more information, or to explain what is and isn’t possible to build in Apple Shortcuts.
While exploring this tool, I asked for a shortcut that compiled today’s weather, my calendar appointments, and my to-do list for the day, then read the entire thing out loud. The agent happily went to work.
Verdict
A cheaper, lighter camera for indoors, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera might have a lower price than the rest of the range, but it has the same core features. That includes excellent object detection options, a brilliant app and high-quality 2K footage. With its clever privacy shield this is a top indoor camera, provided you don’t mind paying the relatively high subscription costs.
-
Good value
-
Clever privacy shield
-
Excellent footage
-
Powerful object detection via a subscription
-
Subscriptions are expensive
Key Features
Introduction
As good as the Arlo system is, fitting one of the weatherproof, battery-powered cameras seems a bit overkill. The Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera redresses the balance: the same core features, but in a cheaper body that needs to be permanently wired, with the addition of a privacy shutter.
It gets all of the basic right, and image quality is very good, but is the camera worth the price of the subscription you’ll need?
Design and Installation
- Wall or desk mounted
- USB-C power
- Privacy shutter
As there’s no battery, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera is quite a bit smaller than the other cameras in the range, such as the Arlo Pro 6 2K. All you need to set it up is a power socket within reach of the required USB-C cable.
This camera can be sat on a desk or bookshelf, which is the easiest way to install it. If you prefer, the stand can be moved to the back and used as a wall mount, giving a more permanent installation.
One key difference that you’ll notice with this camera, compared to the other Arlo models, is the integrated privacy shield: a plastic cover that swings up in front of the camera to prevent it from recording.
I think that’s quite important for indoor cameras, and it’s nice to have this privacy feature, which also gives you a simple way to check if the camera is on or off.
Features
- Subscription required for main features
- Custom AI detection option
- Very powerful object detection
This camera is quick and easy to connect to your Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz networks supported) and into the Arlo app. This app remains one of my favourite, offering a brilliant range of controls and a simple way to find footage.
Before I get into the features, I have to point out that you need a subscription to make the most of the camera. If you don’t want to pay monthly, then don’t buy this camera.
A basic Arlo Secure subscription costs £7.99 a month for a single camera and includes just seven days of video history, which is stingy compared to the competition. You also get Basic Person, Animal, Package and Vehicle Detection.
There’s also a multi-camera version of this plan for £11.99 a month, covering up to four cameras. It’s not clearly advertised on the website, but you can find it in the app under the subscriptions section.
If you want the more advanced AI features, you’ll need Arlo Secure Plus, which costs £19.99 a month for unlimited cameras, gives you 14 days of video history and supports resolutions up to 4K.
At the higher tiers in particular, Arlo Secure is expensive compared with rivals such as Ring, which starts at just £4.99 for a single camera, with higher tiers adding extra features for cameras and the Ring Alarm.
I’d stick with the standard plan, especially if you’re using a 2K camera, although I’ll also explain the new AI features.
With Arlo Secure, you do get a lot of controls. With the basic plan, the object detection options dramatically cut down the number of motion alerts that I got. It’s unlikely that you’ll need them inside, but activity zones can futher reduce false alerts in some situations.
On the most expensive package, there’s support for facial recognition, although this only works on a single camera in your system. Realistically, it makes more sense to have this option on an external camera.
Vehicle recognition (like facial recognition) is also available, although this is a feature that you’re unlikely to need indoors unless something goes horribly wrong.
Custom detection on the higher tier is the only detection type of its kind that I’ve seen. With this, you can train the camera with before and after shots to spot your own custom events, such as the front door being left open. I find that I need a big enough difference between images for the feature to work, but it does open up a lot of possibilities.
There’s also support in the more expensive package for fire detection. If the camera spots a fire starting it can send an alert.
But, as nice as the extras are, they don’t feel essential, and I’d stick with the more basic cloud subscription options to save money.
In the app, there are three modes: Arm, Arm Home and Standby. For each mode, you can set which cameras you want to have on. They’re essential for an indoor camera, where you won’t want to record everything going on in your home.
Modes can be set manually, scheduled or even triggered by your location, so you can largely automate the process.
With the Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera, when it’s set to not record the privacy shield quickly snaps into position.
Recorded footage can be accessed via the app, with loads of filtering options: date, specific camera and even what triggered the motion (person, vehicle, etc). There’s then a thumbnail list of events, which can be watched and saved to your phone for longevity.
Performance
- Excellent 2K video
- Sharp video at night and during the day
With its 2K (2304 x 1296) resolution, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera has the same resolution as the bulk of the rest of the range of cameras. This step up from Full HD is a good one, adding a bit more sharpness and detail, but without the file size and bandwidth requirements of 4K.
There’s a 130° field of view from this model, which is enough to capture most of a room, provided the camera is sensibly placed.
In daylight, the footage is excellent, as good as you can expect. Even in the busy Trusted Reviews Home Technology Lab, there’s detail all the way through the frame, and faces are sharp and clear.
At night, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera switches to black and white footage, using IR to light up the space. These IR lights work well, with the main frame sharp. Moving objects become a bit softer, but even so, it’s easy to find a frame where people are easy to identify. Again, you don’t really get better than this.
Should you buy it?
You want a smart, quality indoor camera
Excellent 2K footage day and night, plus a wide range of detection options make this camera a winner.
You want a camera with lower monthly costs
Arlo Secure is quite expensive, and there are cameras with cheaper or even no monthly subscription costs.
Final Thoughts
In terms of pure quality and features, the Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera is an excellent bit of kit.
It’s well-priced, shoots excellent video, and the Arlo app is brilliant, with some of the most advanced detection options. The flip side is that subscriptions are expensive, but if you want the best features, this camera is great. For alternatives, including subscription-free options, read my guide to the best indoor security cameras.
How We Test
We test every security camera we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
- Used as our main security camera for the review period
- We test compatibility with the main smart systems (HomeKit, Alexa, Google Assistant, SmartThings, IFTTT and more) to see how easy each camera is to automate
- We take samples during the day and night to see how clear each camera’s video is
FAQs
No, but without a subscription you miss out on the advanced features, such as people detection.
No, this camera is powered by USB only.
Full Specs
| Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera | |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Arlo |
| Size (Dimensions) | 53 x 53 x 110 MM |
| Weight | 106 G |
| Release Date | 2026 |
| First Reviewed Date | 10/06/2026 |
| Model Number | Arlo Essential 3 2K Indoor Security Camera |
| Resolution | 2304 x 1296 |
| Battery Length | hrs |
| Smart assistants | Yes |
| App Control | Yes |
| Camera Type | Wired indoor |
| Mounting option | Wall or bookshelf |
| View Field | 130 degrees |
| Recording option | Cloud |
| Two-way audio | Yes |
| Night vision | Yes (black and white) |
| Motion detection | Yes |
| Activity zones | Yes |
| Object detection | People. vehicles, animals (via subscription) |
| Audio detection | Fire alarms |
| Power source | Mains |
NASA’s Mars rovers have accomplished a whole lot since the first one landed on the red planet in the late ’90s, but even the latest members of the fleet still have plenty of limitations. For one, they’re very slow; Perseverance, which NASA considers a “standout,” achieves a top speed of just under .1 mph on flat ground. On top of that, the rough terrain is hard on the rovers’ wheels, and steep slopes with hazards like rocks and sand pose a real challenge, sometimes requiring long detours to reach certain targets. But this week, NASA showed off its progress on a prototype that boasts more advanced capabilities: the Exploration Rover for Navigating Extreme Sloped Terrain, or Ernest.
The space agency has been testing Ernest in the Colorado Desert, exploring new approaches that could be used for future missions on Mars and the moon. Ernest has four wheels, in contrast to the current Mars’ rovers’ six, and is four feet long, though a version that would be used for an actual mission would be double the size. And, it can individually lift its wheels to step on or over obstacles. In the recent tests in the desert, the prototype drove for a total of over 37 hours across seven days, covering roughly 16 miles, according to NASA. It hit a top speed of about .6 mph.
“You could do a science road trip across the Moon — or Mars — with this vehicle,” said James Keane, a JPL planetary scientist working on lunar missions. Going back to NASA’s Sojourner rover, the Mars rovers have relied on a passive suspension system, the rocker-bogie system, to keep the weight constant across their wheels. Now, though, engineers are trying out active suspension with Ernest to achieve greater mobility. “Two powered joints in front articulate a gimbal that allows the rover to drive using different gaits like squirming, wheel-walking, and obstacle-climbing,” NASA says.
It can switch between active and passive suspension depending on the task and energy needs, and thanks to its four steerable wheels, it can drive in any direction. There have already been multiple iterations of the Ernest prototype since the program began in 2022, and the team has tested nearly a dozen active suspension configurations. The latest version also has “enhanced independent decision-making capabilities.” The goal with Ernest is to develop the technology for rovers that can cover more ground than those that came before them, and faster, with less reliance on human controllers back on Earth.
AI2 Incubator has spent the past 12 years building AI companies in Seattle. Now it’s taking the name of the community it built around that work, rebranding today as AI House and dropping the AI2 name it had kept as a vestige of its former ties to the Allen Institute for AI.
The incubator was founded in 2014 inside Ai2 — the Seattle research institute created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen — long before artificial intelligence became a household term. Its mission has been to help founders with the early work of company building: idea formation, customer discovery, recruiting, technical strategy and more.
In 2022, the incubator spun off from Ai2, and last year launched AI House as a physical hub for Seattle’s AI ecosystem — a gathering space for founders, engineers, researchers and investors at Pier 70 on the Seattle waterfront. In its first year, more than 20,000 people came through its events and programming.
“We’ve grown a lot, we’ve become our own organization in so many ways,” said Jacob Colker, the co-founder and managing director of AI2 Incubator and now AI House. “Community has become a deeply intertwined company-building platform for how we do what we do — and that was a big catalyst for the evolution of our brand.”
Along with the rebrand, AI House is bringing on Sri Chandrasekar as a new managing director. Chandrasekar spent nearly a decade at Point72 Ventures, where he helped build the firm’s ventures and private equity businesses, and previously led investments at In-Q-Tel, the strategic investment arm of the U.S. intelligence community.
While considering what to do next and possibly starting his own fund, Chandrasekar said he realized it was already being built.
“I think the core of what I would have wanted to do was build a community of founders all learning from each other and going as fast as they can,” Chandrasekar said. “And it already existed at AI House.”
Chandrasekar was already deeply connected to AI House before joining full-time — he had invested in several of its portfolio companies and wrote the first check into the organization’s $80 million Fund III last fall. He moved to Seattle from the Bay Area in 2021, betting the city would become a major force in AI.
Five years later, that conviction has only grown.
“As I think about my portfolio from Point72, some of our best performing companies are Seattle-based,” Chandrasekar said. “We had never made a Seattle investment before I moved up here, and something like 25% of our investments, maybe even more, were Seattle-based by the time I left.”
@media (max-width: 600px) {
aside.callout { float:none !important; max-width:100% !important; margin-left:0 !important; margin-right:0 !important; }
aside.callout .callout-img { display:none !important; }
}
Chandrasekar joins Colker and fellow AI House managing director Yifan Zhang, who have led the organization through its evolution from research institute spinout to independent venture firm and community hub.
Colker credited Zhang with creating the basis for a community and building a public-private partnership with the City of Seattle, the State of Washington and Ada Developers Academy, with early support from Google and JPMorgan.
“It’s through her hard work over the last year that we have so much energy coming through the space,” he said.
Oren Etzioni, the longtime AI researcher and former CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, continues in a part-time role as technical director, and AI House also recently hired former GeekWire editor Taylor Soper as director of community and programming.
Under the AI House name, the organization is formalizing itself around three pillars: Community, which brings together founders, engineers, researchers and investors across the Pacific Northwest; Incubator, where the team works side by side with founders from the earliest stages; and Capital, where it writes pre-seed checks from its Fund III into applied AI companies.
Colker said the company-building playbook that worked in 2018 no longer applies in 2026.
“The new playbook is being written in real time,” he said. “One team’s breakthroughs that week become another team’s unfair advantages next week.”
Over its 12-year history, AI2 Incubator spun out more than 40 companies — including computer vision startup Xnor.ai, acquired by Apple; legal tech firm Lexion, acquired by Docusign for $165 million; and applied AI startups Yoodli, Ozette, Roboto and Casium — with 90% of graduates going on to raise venture funding.
AI House will continue to recruit founders from across North America — the organization has portfolio companies in Montreal, New York, San Diego and elsewhere — but Seattle remains the home base. Going forward, every founder in the incubator will be required to spend at least one month working from AI House daily.
Colker said the requirement isn’t a hard sell.
@media (max-width: 600px) {
aside.callout { float:none !important; max-width:100% !important; margin-left:0 !important; margin-right:0 !important; }
aside.callout .callout-img { display:none !important; }
}
“Community is not something you can fully access from a distance,” Colker said. “The value comes from being in the room: the conversation after an event, the founder at the next desk, the operator who helps with a pricing question.”
Colker has been vocal on LinkedIn about what he sees as Seattle’s underappreciated stature, and he had no shortage of examples. Forty percent of world air travel flies on planes built in the Pacific Northwest, he noted. The cloud was invented here. When OpenAI needed compute, Sam Altman flew to Seattle to talk to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. When Anthropic needed compute, Dario Amodei flew to Seattle to talk to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
“How are we not just walking around with our heads held high?” Colker said. “I think we are as a region bad at telling our story — but that doesn’t mean we don’t have ambition and world-changing impact. It just shows up a little differently.”
Chandrasekar, who made his own bet on Seattle, put it simply.
“I can’t imagine a more exciting opportunity than investing in AI companies in an area that has a plethora of AI talent like Seattle,” he said. “If you want to use AI to disrupt an industry, this is the place where we teach you how to do that.”
Travel often turns charging into a small production. You reach for the phone cable, then hunt down the watch puck, then dig out the earbud case adapter. Before long the bag holds more power gear than clothes. Anker built the MagGo 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station, priced at $67.49 (was $90), to cut that routine down to one compact piece that actually fits in the corner of a carry-on.
Official measurements show that when upright, it measures 3.46 × 3.46 × 4.92 inches and weighs just over 10 ounces. It’s a brilliant design that employs a short silicone hinge mechanism, allowing the entire device to fold out flat or at any angle you like, with no exposed wiring or loose parts to deal with. When you eventually put it down, four rubber feet will keep it steady on your nightstand or hotel desk.
Sale
Anker MagSafe Charger Compatible, MagGo 3-in-1 Charging Station, Nano Charging Stand, Qi2 Certified 15W…
- Ultra-Fast 15W Wireless Charging: Harness full 15W charging power, giving your essential devices the quickest charge, consistent with the original…
- Compact Charging for 3 Devices: Ideal for clutter-free workspaces, this compact charger fits ideally on any desk, powering everything from phones to…
- Certified Fast Charging for Apple Watch: Boasts official certification, enabling you to power your Apple Watch Series 10 from 0 to 100% in just 1 hour…
When you open it, three special pads come to life, the largest of which uses some clever Qi2 magnetic alignment to send up to 15 watts to your most recent iPhone. Slap your phone on and it clicks into place; tilt the pad and the screen remains visible even while the phone is in Standby mode. Next to that is a 5-watt pad that is specifically designed to fit AirPods cases and includes wireless charging. Then there’s the third pad, which handles Apple Watches with Apple-certified quick charging at 5 watts. All three pads can function simultaneously, so you can charge your phone, watch, and earphones all at once without experiencing any slowdowns or priority issues.
All of the power comes from the 40-watt USB-C wall adapter and 5-foot cord, which are included when you open the package. That adapter provides enough electricity to keep everything charged, and even while charging three devices at once, it remains well within its capabilities. Testers have put this device through its paces, and even after three full charges, it keeps quite cool thanks to some clever ventilation slits integrated into the base. To top it all off, a little LED light will flicker on to indicate that everything is linked, but it will be faint enough not to disturb you at night.
It works with iPhone 12s and up, most Apple Watch models, including the Ultra models, AirPods Pro, and other devices that support wireless case charging. It’s worth noting that non-magnetic cases or metal attachments can interfere with the phone pad, but a regular silicone or slim case will work just well, and while it uses slightly more power in standby than some of those single-device chargers, the difference is negligible in normal use.
Taylor Swift Advised To Have ‘Fun’ Amid Rumors Of Wedding Planning ‘Pressure’
I tried Sainsbury’s priciest, mid-range and budget cheddar – 1 clear winner
Banani – MONEY (Offizielles Musikvideo)
-
Business6 days agoNo Jackpot Winner as $257 Million Prize Rolls Over to $269 Million Monday Draw
-
Fashion1 day agoWeekend Open Thread: Miami – Corporette.com
-
Crypto World6 days agoZimbabwe Requires Crypto Businesses to Register Annually Under New FIU Regulations
-
Business21 hours agoWall Street Week Ahead: Investors see Micron earnings as pulse check of AI rally momentum
-
Entertainment6 days agoMatt Damon’s Viral Sci-Fi Thriller Has Taken Over HBO Max
-
Tech6 days agoAs AI companies race to go public, who else is along for the ride?
-
Business6 days agoAnthropic staff to meet White House officials next week, Axios reports
-
Entertainment7 days agoDeion Sanders Shares Powerful Post After Viral Advice To Deiondra
-
Crypto World6 days agoBitcoin could crash to $48,000, if this historical pattern is triggered
-
NewsBeat6 days agowhat doctors are seeing in ebike crashes
-
NewsBeat6 days agoWarning of disruption as Cardiff Crossrail works to start
-
NewsBeat6 days agoTributes to former deputy head teacher at Cambridge school among death and funeral notices
-
Crypto World22 hours agoHIVE shares jump as $220M AI deal speeds Bitcoin mining pivot
-
Politics6 days ago“Israel’s” ban on ICRC visits ruled illegal, but Knesset moves to stop them permanently
-
Entertainment6 days agoKate Middleton Glare Goes Viral After Kids Booed At Royal Event
-
News Videos6 days agoFinancial Accounting | Last Day Revision Strategy and Booster | CMA Inter – June 2026
-
Crypto World6 days agoXRP ETFs Outperform As Bitcoin And Ethereum Funds Extend Outflow Trend
-
NewsBeat6 days agoSinger Oliver Tree dies aged 32 in helicopter crash in Brazil
-
Tech6 days agoOver 400 Arch Linux packages compromised to push rootkit, infostealer
-
Business6 days agoInvesco Quality Income Fund Q1 2026 Commentary
You must be logged in to post a comment Login