Pluralsight’s Faye Ellis and Rain Alliance’s Aileen Ryan discuss advanced technologies, the transformation of the workplace and how far women in engineering careers have come.

This past Tuesday (23 June) was International Women in Engineering Day, which recognises the female engineers who have contributed significantly to the growth of the sector. 

For Faye Ellis, a principal training architect with Pluralsight, much has changed in the global engineering space since she first established herself professionally. She finds that inclusion and AI have had a lasting impact on careers in this field, leading to better opportunities and increased diversity of thought. 

She explained to SiliconRepublic.com that in 2024, women held roughly 32pc of global senior management and leadership roles within the technology sector, noting that while this is still lower than it should be, it is in fact a significant improvement from when she first began her career. 

Ellis said, “What has changed for women in the industry is visibility, with women running organisations, founding start-ups and serving on boards. This representation matters because it helps to normalise the idea that leadership is no longer defined by gender.  

 “Over the past few years, companies have become much more intentional about building inclusive cultures and investing in sponsorship and mentorship programmes. Conversations around diversity and inclusion are far more normalised than they used to be, and the tech sector is beginning to realise that diverse teams drive better outcomes.”

Faye Ellis, principal training architect for Pluralsight

Purposeful progress

This opinion is shared by Aileen Ryan, the CEO and president of Rain Alliance, who explained that almost 40 years ago, aged just 16, she was inspired by a ‘Year of Women in Engineering’ initiative in Ireland to learn how to make a computer that could ‘do something’. 

Ryan told SiliconRepublic.com, “I was one of just 12 girls in a cohort of 120 studying engineering at University College Cork, but after completing my bachelor of engineering, electrical followed by a master of science in computer science, I began my career in engineering and never looked back.”

She finds that progress has been made, particularly in relation to the number of women in the industry; however, “there is still a long way to go when it comes to bringing diverse perspectives into technology and engineering roles”, in her opinion. 

“This trend continues at the senior level – the number of female senior leaders and female-founded businesses are slowly but surely increasing, but it’s vital the industry maintains this momentum and continues to present itself as an attractive and exciting sector in which women can pursue a career,” Ryan said. 

“The World Economic Forum warns that economic downturns disproportionately affect women’s advancement, with the Covid-19 pandemic setting back progress made on global gender parity by a generation. This highlights the importance of a consistent and continued focus on gender parity to ensure opportunity is available for all.”

In a landscape where the problems facing modern-day engineers are becoming increasingly complex and the systems ever more connected, Ryan is of the opinion that diversity of thought is critical, as are solutions designed to serve a much wider range of people, industries and communities.  

“By continuing to attract and support people from different backgrounds across the engineering ecosystem, we can ensure their voice is heard and inspire the next generation of engineers to ensure that the technologies of tomorrow are more innovative, inclusive and impactful for everyone,” said Ryan. 

“Organisations need to move beyond just having good intentions and focus on creating systems which consistently support women’s growth and advancements”, said Ellis, who believes that this starts with giving women more opportunities from the get-go, not just as they edge towards senior leadership positions. 

“Organisations also need to examine their existing processes and challenge any barriers that may limit advancement. This includes looking at hiring practices, promotion criteria, pay equity and how leadership potential is identified and assessed,” she said.

“Fostering an inclusive culture is just as important, and businesses should provide flexibility and support for different life stages and responsibilities.” 

Aileen Ryan, the CEO and president of Rain Alliance

Advancing AI

But it isn’t only increased diversity and greater opportunity for others that have transformed the workplace. Both Ellis and Ryan find that advanced technologies have irrevocably changed how engineers engage with the profession and the wider ecosystem. And for Ellis, this comes with both positive and negative consequences.  

She said that, as with everything, there are pros and cons, “with the biggest positives being AI’s ability to automate time-consuming repetitive tasks, enabling engineers to focus on high-value work. But there are also significant challenges, with many organisations shrinking the number of roles available. 

“Entry-level roles are being reshaped, and the traditional pathways into engineering careers are changing rapidly. For established engineers, expertise built over many years remains valuable, but it must be continually refreshed and expanded to prevent falling behind as automation progresses.”

For young professionals, she explained, “AI can be an incredible learning tool and productivity enhancer, but can also change the nature of entry-level roles. Employers are looking for engineers of all levels who can work effectively with AI and continuously evolve alongside it, developing expertise in areas including AI systems, data, security and leadership.”

She added, “There is no doubt that some opportunities will disappear as automation advances, and adaptability is more important than ever when it comes to engineering skills.

“Engineers who invest in developing new skills and learn how to leverage AI as a force multiplier will continue to find opportunities and create value, while those who don’t will see their roles become increasingly disrupted.”  

She also finds that AI presents an ideal opportunity for women to reassign work of a lesser value to automated systems with the intention of then turning their attention to more meaningful or important tasks. 

“A shift towards automation enables female engineers to spend more time on higher-value tasks, like strategic thinking, innovation, architecture, leadership and decision-making, creating opportunities for women to focus on the skills that underpin senior and strategic roles, including leading teams and making complex decisions.  

“AI has the potential to improve diversity within leadership roles, but also to introduce new risks. Women are overrepresented in functions which include routine and administrative tasks, and these are the most likely to be automated, leaving women at a higher risk of redundancy than their male counterparts.”  

For Ryan, who has always been environmentally conscious, especially since experiencing motherhood, technological advancements have resulted in more opportunities to champion sustainability within her professional life, as she finds tech can drive sustainable and resource-efficient consumption.

She said, “I have also co-founded Preoptima, a generative AI company applying ‘carbon twins’ technology and real-time data to empower low-carbon design decisions and reduce whole-life carbon in the built environment.

“These initiatives reflect how technological innovation has a huge role to play in making the people and planet of the future more sustainable.”

Ryan concluded, “Working in tech and engineering is so much more than just a job. It gives us the opportunity to have a tangible impact on the world around us, championing the innovations that meet the needs of the people around us and helping build a connected, sustainable future.”

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Paul Meade, the Apple vice president in charge of the Vision Pro headset, is leaving the company to join OpenAI’s hardware team, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Meade also reportedly led the development of the AI-powered smart glasses that Apple plans to launch next year. The costly Vision Pro was not a hit, but Apple is hoping that more affordable smart glasses will help it compete with wearable devices from Meta.

Gurman frames this departure as a byproduct of John Ternus’ imminent elevation to Apple CEO, and of Ternus’ decision to shake up the hardware engineering team, which left some of the company’s vice presidents feeling like they’d been demoted.

OpenAI, meanwhile, is already working with Apple’s former chief design officer Jony Ive on an AI device that CEO Sam Altman has claimed will be more peaceful and calm than an iPhone, though reports last fall suggested the company was struggling to get the details right.

TechCrunch has reached out to Apple and OpenAI for comment.

Just a couple weeks ago, the European Commission put out its plan for “European tech sovereignty.” It’s not surprising that Europeans are looking at their internet platform options and seeing a choice between US companies and Chinese companies as something that isn’t that appealing. Of course, Europe has mostly itself to blame for this mess. As an Economist piece in April noted, the EU effectively regulated its own internet ambitions to death:

Here is an uncomfortable truth for hand-wringing policymakers in Paris, Berlin and beyond: Europe’s dependency on America Inc is in no small part Europe’s own fault. Decades of over-regulating the old continent’s economy left businesses there unable to compete with American firms, which went on to trounce European ones even in their own backyards. What Europeans could not build quickly for themselves, due to a thicket of regulations, they often imported just as quickly from abroad….

Tech is where the dependency seems most acute. Europe has few firms at the forefront of AI, space or high-end computing (one notable exception is ASML, a Dutch firm globally vital to chipmaking). Even governments often have little choice but to use the likes of Microsoft or Amazon for cloud services, Palantir to sift through data or SpaceX to launch military satellites. Quixotic attempts to shake off big tech abound, for example by having civil servants ditch Windows for some clunky substitute. Too often the European alternatives are lacking anyway. It turns out that boasting about regulating AI before the public had made their first ChatGPT query—as the European Union did in 2021—is not conducive to home-growing AI champions.

Yes, EU rules often applied to American firms, insofar as they wanted to offer their wares in the bloc. But regulation in practice hit European firms harder. The costs of administering complex data-protection rules, say, could easily be absorbed by a Google or OpenAI, with their hordes of compliance staff. Not so their European rivals, which have usually lacked scale (if only because the EU’s fragmented single market made it harder for them to grow beyond their home country). The EU thus generated barriers to entry that often ended up protecting American giants.

And so the EU is going back to the drawing board, once again thinking that it can technocrat its way to technical competence, and that seems unlikely. After all, weren’t the EU’s two biggest pieces of signature tech legislation — the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) — supposed to solve all of this already?

I’ve long been a critic of both laws that were in some ways too vague and in other ways too restrictive all along, but at the very least they were the product of a fairly lengthy process, in which EU regulators were made well aware of the tradeoffs of various approaches. And they chose to land where they landed. This new move by the European Commission isn’t quite an admission of failure, but it sure is a sign that what they insisted would create the right incentives for local competition hasn’t yet worked.

But, of course, none of that may matter if the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) — the highest court across the EU — continues to YOLO its way through internet law. Back in December we wrote about its deeply problematic ruling in the Russmedia case, which more or less ignored the fragile balance that the DSA had set forth regarding intermediary liability for third-party speech, by insisting that any platform operator must scan any user generated content for “sensitive personal data” about anyone else and block it. It effectively required full scanning of every piece of uploaded content, a ban on anonymous speech, and a requirement that “bad” posts somehow be blocked from anyone copying them.

And now it’s taken that up a notch in its new WebGroup ruling (full ruling currently only available in French, but Google translate works, at least while Google can still operate in the EU). While the headline regarding the ruling is that the CJEU says that age verification mandates are fine regarding pornographic content (matching the US Supreme Court on that one), the ruling goes even further, and suggests that any website that has algorithmic recommendations for content should take on liability for the content it recommends.

I recognize that some people are cheering this on because they hate “big tech” and think this will somehow damage it. That’s wrong. It will damage smaller tech players (such as the ones the EU is trying to encourage companies to build in the EU) way, way more. I’ve written before, in the US Section 230 context, why it’s a terrible idea to make recommendation algorithms liable for the content they recommend, and that reasoning applies equally in the EU.

Recommendation algorithms actually do, on the whole, make the internet experience much more bearable. I get that more and more internet users grew up in an era dominated by the algorithm, but it was not better before that. The internet was so filled with nonsense and junk that people begged for better algorithms. And in this new era, with the rise of AI slop, it would be even worse.

But, more to the point, a recommendation algorithm is simply stating an opinion of “this is what we think you should look at next.” We can debate the purpose of that opinion, and whether it is solely to extract more attention or money from users, or to actually provide them value. But that doesn’t matter. Nothing in “this is what we think you should look at next” is (by definition) a full-throated endorsement of the content. It’s literally “based on other stuff you’ve looked at, and our own weights and priorities, here’s what you should look at next.” It has no way of reviewing the actual quality of the content, determining if it’s helpful or not, factual or not, or nonsense or not.

That’s just not how any of this works.

But once you put liability just for recommending “this is what the algorithm thinks you should look at next” you make it ridiculously expensive to offer any sort of algorithm — even in situations like Bluesky where anyone can create and share their algorithms for others.

The end result is that the only companies who will be able to recommend content — which, by every possible measure in every possible study, we’ve seen the vast majority of internet users prefer — will be the largest companies in the world: Google, Meta, TikTok. All of the upstart competitors, all of the services the EU now says it wants to grow at home, would find it impossibly difficult to offer such a feature, because the risk of liability would be way too intense.

For all the many problems I had with the DSA, on this it mostly got the equation right, recognizing that pinning liability on platforms in this manner could have really negative effects. And while I still think the DSA should have gone much further in protecting intermediaries, the CJEU interpretation here basically takes a sledgehammer to the attempted balance within the DSA.

The mistake the CJEU is making here, as highlighted by expert Daphne Keller, is that in thinking that this will “make big tech more responsible” it actually empowers them, encourages them to engage in constant monitoring and surveillance, and basically appoints them as the speech police. What could go wrong?

Some of us have been making this point for years. And the results of earlier laws (like the GDPR) showed exactly how this would play out, entrenching the largest companies and leaving the EU once again flailing around demanding new laws to fix the situation their old laws created.

It’s understandable that the EU doesn’t like its tech platform choices. But it’s now in a loop of its own making. Fail to understand the technology, fall prey to a moral panic, over regulate… and then wonder why no one is building and the big American tech companies just get bigger. Rinse and repeat. The CJEU’s latest ruling undermines the attempt at balance laid out by the DSA and completely sabotages the “homegrown” sovereign competitors the Commission so desperately claims it wants to cultivate — while handing the surveillance infrastructure bill to the only players big enough to pay it. The Commission can call it tech sovereignty all it wants. The CJEU just made vassalage structural.

Filed Under: age verification, algorithmic recommendations, algorithms, cjeu, digital services act, dma, dsa, eu, eu commission, france, intermediary liability

Companies: webgroup

An agentic coding tool tasked with cloning and setting up a seemingly benign GitHub repository could execute a malicious payload that remains invisible to security scanners, AI agents, and human reviewers.

Researchers at Mozilla’s Zero Day Investigative Network (0DIN) AI security platform say that the compromise happens with “no exploit code, no warning, no suspicious command anyone had to approve.”

They demonstrated how an attacker could plant an interactive shell on a developer’s device by using Claude Code to run a cloned project without malicious code in the repository.

The new attack method relies on three components, which separately represent no threat and raise no suspicion:

1. A clean-looking GitHub repository with standard setup instructions, such as installing dependencies and initializing the project (e.g., pip3 install -r requirements.txt, python3 -m axiom init)
2. the Python package is intentionally designed to refuse execution until it has been initialized; it generates an error instructing the user to execute python3 -m axiom init. Claude Code treats this as a normal setup issue and automatically runs the suggested command while attempting to recover from the error
3. Executing python3 -m axiom init calls a shell script that retrieves the configuration value stored in a DNS TXT record controlled by the attacker, and is executed as a command

0DIN researchers explain that this approach requires no malicious component in the cloned repository, and the agent automates the entire attack chain, including a step that mimics a common user error.

If successful, the attacker would obtain a shell running with the developer’s privileges, giving them access to environment variables, API keys, local configuration files, and the opportunity to establish persistence.

“Claude Code never decided to open a shell. It decided to fix an error. The reverse shell is three indirection steps away from anything Claude Code actually evaluated: an error message it trusted, a script that fetched a value, and a DNS record it never saw,” 0DIN researchers say.

“The attacker now has an interactive shell running as the developer’s own user.”

While the attack method is currently just a concept, 0DIN warns that threat actors could easily distribute such GitHub repositories through fake job postings, tutorials, blog posts, or direct messages.

To prevent such exploitation, 0DIN suggests that AI agents should disclose the full execution chain of setup commands, including scripts and code fetched dynamically at runtime.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

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With AI undoubtedly revolutionizing the way many office jobs get done, the effects new technology is having on blue-collar jobs often flies under the radar.

But it is in these hands-on industries where AI can really make a difference, boosting not only productivity and efficiency, but also improving safety and worker welfare.

How long have we been hacking routers? To some of you who’ve been in the Hackaday audience for a while, the answer is “nearly forever”. In the early 2000s, they were one of the few consumer gadgets that had the trifecta of hackability: WiFi and networking built in, a user-friendly Linux operating system, and a few spare GPIOs that could control from the OS. Back when the Linksys WRT54GL was the king of the hill, we saw some pretty absurd hacks.

Take this example robot from October 2008. Link-rot hasn’t been kind to the original project, but from what we can tell, it used the GPIOs to drive servo motors hacked for continuous rotation, and features the equally anachronistic CD-ROM wheels. Where would you even get those today?

But the OS that this 18-year-old hack uses is still around: OpenWRT Linux. Although it still takes its name from the lovable purple router of old, it hasn’t supported that particular model in over a decade because of growing memory requirements. But it’s still the go-to distro for any modern router hacks, and it provides a lot more general-purpose Linux than you might expect on otherwise constrained platforms. As Tom pointed out in the podcast, if you see a used router for cheap, see if it’s supported by OpenWRT, and if it is, buy it.

While the project that got us thinking about routers again, Al’s recent networking hack, basically uses the router as a souped-up router, that’s by no means a given. OpenWRT is a real Linux OS, and can make use of most peripherals that your router find has available. Networking? Of course. USB? No problem. If you find a serial port and some GPIOs, you’re most of the way to a Linux SBC, although very likely a headless one.

There are a lot of hacks we see go in and out of style, and we see software projects come and go. But here we tip our hat to the router hacks, and to the plucky Linux OS that’s been ported to them all. Long may it keep old devices out of the landfill!

Featured image: My old baby, about a year or so before something in the radio modem finally gave up the ghost.

Amazon’s Kindle AI features help you read beyond the lines, so long as you have the right ereader.

Previously on Kindle . . .

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Your new AI reading assistant

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A controversial new feature

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Audio Advice is not merely adding another pin to its map. Following its acquisition of The Sound Room in St. Louis and plans for a new Las Vegas location, the Raleigh-based retailer has acquired Miami’s Sound Components, extending its reach into another affluent, design-conscious market where custom installation, serious two-channel audio, and luxury home theater can all coexist under the same very expensive roof.

Founded in 1978, Audio Advice has grown from a respected regional specialist into one of America’s most influential audio and home theater retailers, combining deep technical knowledge, award-winning showroom experiences, a substantial e-commerce operation, and its increasingly prominent Audio Advice Live Home Audio & Video Experience.

The strategy is becoming difficult to miss. Audio Advice is acquiring established retailers in markets with wealth, luxury real estate, population growth, and a customer base willing to invest in properly designed entertainment spaces rather than another soundbar mounted beneath an oversized television. St. Louis brings a respected Midwest foothold, Las Vegas offers access to one of the country’s most active luxury-development markets, and Miami places the company directly in the path of South Florida’s continuing appetite for high-end residential technology, along with its far friendlier tax environment.

Just as notable is where Audio Advice is not expanding: the Northeast. That is not an empty market, but it is a more mature and fragmented one, crowded with legacy dealers, entrenched relationships, and expensive suburbs. Miami, Las Vegas, and St. Louis offer a different kind of opportunity: recognizable local brands, room to scale, and markets where the next generation of high-end AV customers is still arriving.

The addition of Sound Components to its portfolio means another dealer and installation powerhouse has joined the growing Audio Advice “empire,” which now includes company stores in Raleigh, Charlotte, and Wilmington, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; and St. Louis, Missouri, formerly known as The Sound Room.

The Las Vegas location represents Audio Advice’s first move into the growing Southwest. With Phoenix and Scottsdale continuing to attract affluent residents and luxury development, can an Arizona location be far behind?

“For over five decades, Sound Components has delivered superb audio, video, and personalized service to our clients,” said Bill Petters, president of Sound Components. “I’ve known the Audio Advice team for decades. Their national reputation, customer service, software systems, and worldwide YouTube, social media, and website following are best in class. These resources and access to additional product lines will enable our team to bring even more value to our loyal customer base.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Sound Components into the Audio Advice family,” said Scott Newnam, CEO of Audio Advice. “I’ve admired Bill and the team at Sound Components since I met them nearly two decades ago. Our shared value of excellence and passion for delivering happiness make this a natural partnership. Together, we will continue to raise the bar for what customers can expect from an audio, video, and automation company.”

Sound Components will continue operating from its South Miami location, with its current team providing the same level of service and expertise, now under the Audio Advice umbrella. The showroom is expected to double in size, allowing customers to experience even more lighting, shades, audio, video, and home theater solutions firsthand. Customers will also gain access to Audio Advice’s nationwide team, award-winning online resources, design tools, and expanded product lines.

The Bottom Line 

Audio Advice’s acquisition of Sound Components matters because it signals that the high-end AV business is becoming more organized, better capitalized, and more geographically ambitious at a moment when affluent homeowners are spending heavily on custom installations, dedicated theaters, whole-home control, lighting, shading, and serious two-channel systems.

For customers in South Florida, the immediate benefit should be broader product access, a larger showroom, deeper technical resources, and the continuity of a local team that already understands the market. For manufacturers, it creates another powerful retail and installation partner with the scale to support complex demonstrations, dealer training, national marketing, and long-term customer service.

The broader industry impact is harder to ignore. Independent specialists remain essential to high-performance audio and custom integration, but the cost of operating a serious showroom, retaining capable installers, and supporting increasingly complicated smart-home ecosystems is not getting any cheaper. Audio Advice is building a larger platform around respected regional dealers rather than trying to replace their local expertise with a corporate logo and a call center.

Its growing footprint across the Southeast and Midwest, the forthcoming Las Vegas location, and the continued expansion of Audio Advice Live suggest a company looking well beyond Raleigh. Whether the next move is Phoenix, Scottsdale, or another luxury-growth market remains to be seen, but Audio Advice is clearly positioning itself as one of the most consequential brick-and-mortar high-end audio, home theater, and custom-installation retailers in America.

That expansion also raises a larger question: could Audio Advice Live eventually become a regional event platform rather than a single Raleigh-area destination? Florida already has an established audio show in Tampa, but South Florida is a very different market. A Miami, Fort Lauderdale, or Palm Beach-area event would sit far enough from Tampa to attract a large and affluent audience from Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade without merely duplicating what already exists on the Gulf Coast.

Las Vegas presents a similarly intriguing possibility, with the potential to draw customers and industry partners from Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Southern California. Audio Advice has announced no such plans, but its growing retail footprint makes the prospect more credible than idle trade-show speculation.

For more information, shop Audio Advice online now.

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The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is one of the best phones you can buy in 2026, and if you already own one, I have some positive news for you: Your phone can take better photos than it does right now.

Samsung added a larger aperture (on two sensors) and upgraded its camera processing to fare better against Apple’s iPhone 17 Pro this year. However, if you haven’t played around with the settings, you aren’t making the most of Samsung’s new upgrades.

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has a versatile camera system, but the default settings might not work for everyone. They didn’t for me. So I took a deep dive into the buried menus and found ways to improve the shutter speed, reduce compression and trigger the 24-megapixel processing pipeline, among other things. If you aren’t satisfied with the image quality on your Samsung phone right now, I recommend taking a look at these options in the Samsung Camera Assistant.

Locate the Camera Assistant settings

The Camera Assistant on Galaxy smartphones is a Good Lock module (essentially like a plugin). It adds additional settings to the default Camera app. For the longest time, Samsung didn’t preload these settings on its flagship phones, but things have changed with One UI 8.5 on the latest Samsung flagships. You can now find the Camera Assistant settings within the Camera app.

To find these additional settings:

1. Open the Camera app.
2. Tap on the four-dot icon to get the menu.
3. Tap on Settings.
4. Scroll to the Camera Assistant. Tap on it.
5. It’ll take you to the Samsung Galaxy Store with a pop-up for Camera Assistant. Tap on Install.

However, if it is not present here, you’ll need to install the Good Lock app through the Galaxy Store. Search for Camera Assistant and download the module from there.

Once located, you’re now ready to take control over the processing and camera performance. Several of these options aren’t objectively better than the other, but here’s what I recommend changing and which setting could fit in what scenario.

Use all those megapixels

The Galaxy S26 Ultra has a 200-megapixel main camera, but it defaults to 12-megapixel photos out of the box. While these photos are small in size, you won’t get the same amount of detail and clarity as higher-resolution modes. I don’t recommend capturing everything in 200-megapixel mode, either – it is slow and will eat up your storage quicker than anything else.

I’ve found the 24-megapixel mode to be the best of both worlds. It can take quick snaps and get sharp results simultaneously without having a large file size.

The best part is that Samsung upgraded its processing to capture 24-megapixel resolution photos even in digital zoom.

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For most of the other scenarios, 24-megapixel mode remains the sweet spot and here’s how you can make it the default resolution for your Galaxy S26 Ultra photos:

1. Go to the Camera Assistant.
2. Scroll down to find the Photos settings.
3. Tap on 24 MP resolution

4. You’ll see two settings: 24 MP in Photo mode and Keep 24 MP resolution. Turn on both of them.

While you’re at it, these are the settings to change under the Camera Assistant settings if:

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You want full control over lenses

You need to disable Auto Lens Switching. By default, the Galaxy S26 Ultra camera system automatically switches between the four rear cameras based on the lighting, the phone’s distance from the subject and zoom range.

It isn’t the smartest decision to rely on your phone’s smarts. For example, when you take the phone close to the subject for a macro shot, it takes a few seconds to land on a usable lens based on your distance. In this time, the moment could be lost.

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You can instead decide on the lens you want to use, get close to the subject and take the photo, without any automatic lens switching. All you need to do is turn off the Auto Lens Switching toggle under the Lens and Zoom option.

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Tinkering around with these settings has helped me make the most of the camera in my pocket. I hope they’ll improve your photo-taking experience on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, too. I also suggest exploring the filters present in the viewfinder and trying to create your own, according to your taste. It is fun!

Watch this: Which Phone Takes Better Photos? iPhone 17 Pro Max vs. Galaxy S26 Ultra

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