EdSurge announced six new members to its Advisory Board, among them a mix of experienced journalists and education leaders.
Todd Frankel, Patrick Harris II, Nneka McGee, Ramona Schindelheim, Avery Thrush and Manoush Zomorodi have joined the board, each bringing a wealth of experience and expertise. The board will serve as a vital resource for the EdSurge newsroom, offering strategic insights and industry perspectives across all areas of coverage.
“Partnering with such a talented, versatile group of journalists and educators is a huge win for EdSurge and our readers,” says Sarah McKibben, EdSurge Editor-in-Chief. “With their unmatched expertise, this board brings both national perspective and deep classroom understanding to our newsroom. They will help us tackle pressing challenges like AI policy while ensuring our early childhood and K-12 coverage remains relevant, cutting-edge, and grounded in real-world impact.”
Designed to maximize impact while respecting members’ time, the board acts as a strategic, high-level advisory body. In accordance with the Institute for Nonprofit News standards, board members provide strategic guidance while holding no editorial influence or veto power on published content.
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Meet the Advisory Board
Todd Frankel
Todd Frankel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Washington Post. The D.C. native has previously worked at newspapers in Missouri, Washington, West Virginia, Kentucky.
Frankel brings award-winning journalism experience to the board, particularly in the role of business and economics in all areas of life. He anchored the lead story in a series that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the AR-15 rifle’s role in mass shootings and American culture.
Patrick Harris II
Patrick Harris II is a storyteller and educator on a mission to ensure humanity is centered in the future of education. A former middle school teacher and dean of students in metro Detroit, Harris was named a 30 under 30 Honoree from the International Literacy Association in 2021 and an EdSurge Voices for Change Fellow in 2022-23. His book focusing on new educators, “The First Five: A Love Letter to Teachers,” was named a finalist for Best Professional Audiobook by the Audies. Harris is currently a doctoral student studying popular culture at Michigan State University.
Having previously written for EdSurge, Harris hopes to use his new involvement as a board member to support EdSurge’s efforts to highlight student and teacher innovation.
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“I deeply respect the work of EdSurge and its commitment to editorial independence,” Harris says. “I deeply appreciate the care EdSurge has for teachers and educators and how it comes through the compelling stories they report on and uplift.”
Nneka McGee
Nneka McGee is an educator and researcher who taught middle school mathematics and served as a district administrator. As part of her doctoral studies, McGee completed research on the impact of artificial intelligence in K-12 learning environments.
“I understand the importance of offering informative content that helps create a better understanding of an ever-changing landscape. The EdSurge Advisory Board provides an opportunity to be part of the conversation,” McGee says.
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Ramona Schindelheim
Ramona Schindelheim is an award-winning journalist and storyteller covering the future of work and pathways to economic mobility. She is a Top Voice on LinkedIn and her monthly newsletter, The Future of Work(ers), features reporting and interviews on the programs, initiatives and people helping American workers prepare for and find quality jobs and economic mobility. Ramona has worked in national and local news, including at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC and The Wall Street Journal.
Schindelheim brings unique perspective and expertise on work readiness and the need for educators to meet the moment. She decided to join the board “to help shape the narrative around the future of work and the role education must play in preparing learners and workers for the changing economy.”
Avery Thrush
Avery Thrush is an education policy analyst and writer, currently working as a LEE Fellow at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. After spending her early career as a sixth-grade science teacher, Thrush has led community organizing efforts and contributed to state-level policy initiatives related to artificial intelligence in education, school funding and strengthening career-connected education. She was selected as a 2022-23 EdSurge Voices of Change Fellow.
Thrush brings versatile expertise in the education field, from rural and Appalachian education to public schools as engines of democracy. She joins the board with the hope of elevating the voices and expertise of students and teachers, since they are the closest to the challenges facing education today.
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Manoush Zomorodi
Credit: Tory Williams
Manoush Zomorodi is an award-winning journalist, author, and host of NPR’s “TED Radio Hour,” whose work explores how technology is changing the way we think, work, learn and live. Her latest book, “Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being,” grew out of a groundbreaking NPR–Columbia University public health project involving more than 20,000 participants.
She is also the author of “Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self,” and her TED talks on the attention economy and the physical effects of technology on our bodies have been viewed more than 7 million times. Zomorodi hosts NPR’s “Body Electric” podcast, a six-part series on the physical toll of digital life and how to reclaim our bodies. A 2025 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center resident, Zomorodi has won two Gracie Awards and a Webby Award and was named one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business.”
Zomorodi brings her expertise in the effect of media and tech on behavior and health to EdSurge’s edtech coverage.
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“I respect the work of the group and its readers immensely and want to support them [as they] figure out this next chapter for education and tech,” Zomorodi says.
Google is giving students a free year of its Gemini subscription, although the exact plan students receive depends on where they live. US students can claim the more capable Gemini Pro plan, while students elsewhere can get Gemini Plus for 12 months.
For students outside the US, Gemini Plus normally costs €4.99 per month. The subscription includes access to Gemini Omni, twice the Gemini usage limit and 400GB of Google storage. US students, meanwhile, get Gemini Pro as part of the offer.
There is also a discounted option for students who don’t qualify for the free Pro offer. Gemini Pro is available for €5.49 per month rather than its usual €21.99 price.
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Google is also offering students the option to combine the subscription with YouTube Premium at a 70% discount. The bundle costs €10.99 per month, compared with the regular €21.99 price. Once the 12-month promotional period ends, the standard subscription prices will automatically apply.
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One of the more useful parts of the subscription for students is Google’s Study Notebooks feature, which launched in June. Students can upload study materials and notes to Gemini and use them to create personalised quizzes or get additional explanations based on their coursework.
Google is planning further upgrades to Study Notebooks over the coming weeks, including graphics and images in lessons. Gemini can also create functional 3D models for certain topics, such as a model of a DNA strand, which could make the feature particularly useful for visual learners.
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The main thing to remember is that this isn’t a permanently free Gemini subscription. Students who don’t want to start paying the standard price after the 12-month promotional period will need to cancel before the offer ends.
Privacy is shifting from a settings toggle to a core selling point across four software categories: browsers (Brave, DuckDuckGo, Firefox blocking trackers by default), messaging apps (WhatsApp view-once, Signal growth), VPNs (independent no-logs audits, RAM-only servers), and AI tools (on-device processing, client-side encryption). The common thread: users now demand verifiable proof, not promises.
For the longest time, the tech industry’s unofficial motto was “if the product is free, you are the product.” Most of us just accepted it. But after a decade of data scandals, tracking revelations, and privacy blunders, that logic is starting to feel dated.
We’ve hit a tipping point. A quiet but powerful shift is happening across the software landscape, and in 2026, privacy is no longer a dusty toggle buried in the settings menu. It’s becoming the main event, a core selling point that companies are building their reputations on.
So where is this privacy-first shift most obvious? These are the software categories where the change is easiest to spot, and the clearest signs that your data is finally getting a bit more respect.
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1. Browsers: Moving Beyond ‘Incognito’ Theater
Finally, a private window that’s actually more private.
Let’s be honest: everyone knew “Incognito mode” was limited. It never stopped your ISP, your employer, or the websites you visited from seeing what you were up to. Users are demanding more now, and browser makers are listening.
You’re seeing a surge in browsers like Brave and the DuckDuckGo browser, which block ads and trackers by default. Even the big players are changing course. Mozilla has kept expanding Firefox’s privacy tools, and the industry is exploring standards such as Private Access Tokens to verify legitimate users with less tracking. That’s a real step up from a feature that mostly hid your search history from whoever else used the same laptop.
2. Messaging Apps: Locking the Digital Diary
Your chats are increasingly for your eyes only.
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Remember when private messages could be scanned to sharpen ad targeting? Creepy, right? The backlash against that model came fast, and it fueled the growth of private platforms like Signal.
That pressure has pushed bigger platforms to adapt. WhatsApp has rolled out stronger privacy controls, including view-once messages, while continuing to lean on end-to-end encryption. With governments still debating whether companies should scan private messages, secure communication has gone from a nice-to-have to a necessity.
3. VPNs: The New Gold Standard for Trust
Putting the “private” back in Virtual Private Network.
The VPN industry has long had a trust problem. For every strong service, there are plenty of questionable ones with vague “no-logs” claims that fall apart under scrutiny. Reports of VPNs handing user data to police and free apps leaking user data have left people understandably skeptical.
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So how do you fix a trust problem? You stop saying and start proving. A new gold standard is emerging around verifiable evidence, and it’s pushing the market to clean up its act.
Top-tier providers are moving toward verifiable proof to regain user trust. Independent no-logs audits, such as those conducted for providers like IPVanish and ExpressVPN, are becoming mandatory baselines. At the same time, major services are actively transitioning to RAM-only server networks, where operational data is automatically erased upon every reboot rather than stored on persistent hard drives. Combined with regular transparency reports, this mix of third-party auditing and ephemeral infrastructure is becoming the benchmark users check when weighing up a secure VPN for privacy.
4. AI Tools: Personalization Without the Peeking
Smart assistants that don’t need your full life story.
With AI exploding, the next privacy battleground is already here. Can you get smart, personalized AI without it hoovering up every scrap of your personal data? A new wave of tools suggests the answer might be yes.
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There’s a growing push toward on-device processing, where AI models run locally on your phone or laptop, as seen in Apple’s recent OS updates. Private AI platforms like Jatter use client-side encryption to offer personalized responses without storing conversation histories on remote servers. It’s still early, but it’s a promising sign that privacy-focused thinking is spreading to the next generation of software.
So, what’s the takeaway?
The overarching message is clear: privacy has evolved from a regulatory hurdle into a core product strategy and a primary competitive advantage. The software platforms built on unchecked data collection are now forced to compete on verifiable trust and structural transparency. In 2026, protecting user data is no longer just ethical, it’s good business.
OLED has spent the past few years getting substantially brighter while Mini LED and the newer RGB backlit LCD technologies have attacked it from the other direction with enormous screens, extreme brightness and increasingly impressive color performance. LG Display apparently has no intention of letting that become a one-sided fight.
The company has unveiled FLiPP, short for FMM Less innovative Pixel Patterning, a new manufacturing process that eliminates the fine metal masks traditionally used to create red, green and blue OLED pixels. LG Display says the process can improve brightness, panel lifespan and power efficiency while also making OLED manufacturing more flexible and potentially less expensive.
Before anybody starts clearing wall space for a 100 inch FLiPP OLED, there is an important qualification: LG Display has not announced a FLiPP television or a commercial TV launch date. The company says the technology will initially target IT products including tablets and monitors before eventually expanding into everything from 1 inch wearable displays to ultra large TVs. So this is not your next LG OLED TV, but it could have a lot to do with what comes after it.
What Is FLiPP?
Conventional RGB OLED production commonly relies on a Fine Metal Mask, or FMM, during manufacturing. The easiest way to visualize it is as an extremely precise stencil: red, green and blue organic materials are deposited through microscopic openings in the mask so they land in the correct locations on the panel.
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That approach works, but it comes with some expensive baggage. Different panel sizes and resolutions can require different masks, and as those masks become larger, gravity becomes an engineering problem. The metal can sag toward the center, making precise alignment more difficult and potentially creating defects including unwanted color mixing.
FLiPP removes the metal mask entirely. Instead, LG Display applies and positions the RGB OLED materials and then uses photolithography with precision ultraviolet light to remove material from areas where it is not required. The result is more usable pixel area and fewer of the physical limitations imposed by FMM manufacturing.
LG Display says FLiPP improves the aperture ratio by approximately 55 percent compared with conventional FMM manufactured OLED panels. Aperture ratio refers to how much of the display’s available surface is actually occupied by active red, green and blue pixels. More active emitting area gives engineers considerably more room to balance brightness, efficiency and longevity.
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The Numbers Are Impressive, With an Asterisk
LG Display says FLiPP can enable OLED panels to deliver up to 1.6 times higher brightness, 2.4 times longer lifespan and 13 percent lower power consumption compared with panels produced using FMM under comparable conditions. Those are significant numbers, but they should not be interpreted as a promise that some future television will automatically be 60 percent brighter, last 140 percent longer and consume 13 percent less electricity simultaneously.
OLED panel designers can trade efficiency gains between brightness, power consumption and longevity depending on the product being developed. In other words, these are development and manufacturing advantages that give LG Display considerably more room to decide where that additional performance goes. That flexibility may ultimately matter more than any one headline specification.
Manufacturing May Be the Bigger Story
Brightness is going to grab the headline, but manufacturing efficiency could ultimately have a greater impact on consumers. LG Display says it has successfully produced FMM less OLED using an entire 8.5 generation mother glass substrate, rather than cutting the substrate into smaller sections to accommodate the physical limitations of metal masks.
For laptop sized OLED panels, LG says FLiPP can provide up to 64 percent higher mother glass utilization efficiency compared with FMM production or other FMM less methods that require divided substrates. That means less wasted material and potentially higher production output from the same basic sheet of glass.
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Lower manufacturing cost does not automatically mean lower retail prices. Anyone who has purchased a flagship television recently has probably noticed that manufacturers remain quite capable of finding somewhere else to spend the savings. But improved yields, fewer specialized masks, better substrate utilization and greater flexibility in panel size all create the conditions necessary for RGB OLED to scale more economically.
And scale has been one of OLED’s biggest problems.
Why This Matters for TVs
We recently looked at the increasingly complicated fight between OLED, Mini LED and RGB backlit LCD TVs, and 2026 has made one thing fairly obvious: premium LCD is not quietly going away. Hisense, Samsung, TCL, Sony and LG have all pushed RGB based backlighting as a way to extract higher brightness, broader color reproduction and very large screen sizes from LCD, while LG itself now sells Micro RGB evo televisions alongside its OLED lineup.
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Meanwhile, LG Display’s current Tandem WOLED technology has pushed OLED brightness significantly higher. Its latest Primary RGB Tandem 2.0 TV panel is rated by LG Display for peak brightness of up to 4,500 nits under its specified test conditions, while retaining OLED’s pixel level light control and perfect black capability.
FLiPP attacks a different problem. Rather than adding another layer or changing the television’s processing, it changes how RGB OLED panels can be manufactured in the first place. LG Display says the technology is theoretically scalable from approximately 1 inch to 100 inches, without being tied to the same FMM size and resolution restrictions.
That could eventually make large format RGB OLED far more practical, which is important because the premium television battle increasingly comes down to compromises. OLED still delivers exceptional black levels, pixel level illumination and wide viewing angles, while RGB Mini LED and Micro RGB LCD televisions can push brightness considerably harder and scale to enormous sizes, but still require an LCD layer and local dimming system.
A manufacturing process that allows RGB OLED to become brighter, more efficient, longer lasting and easier to manufacture at much larger sizes would change that equation. LG still has to prove FLiPP can deliver those advantages at commercial yields and consumer friendly prices, but the potential is substantial.
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What Happens Next?
LG Display demonstrated FLiPP at IMID 2026 in Busan, South Korea, where the company described it as a new OLED manufacturing platform rather than a single product technology. The first intended applications are tablets and monitors, with LG Display saying it plans to expand the process into additional display categories later, including wearables, VR and AR hardware and eventually ultra large televisions.
There is currently no announced FLiPP TV model, price or consumer availability date. That makes this considerably less exciting for anyone shopping for a television this weekend, but potentially far more important for where OLED goes over the next several years.
The Bottom Line
The television industry has spent the past two years making LCD technology behave more like OLED. RGB Mini LED and Micro RGB displays have dramatically improved color reproduction, brightness and local dimming while pushing screen sizes well beyond what most OLED buyers can currently afford.
FLiPP suggests OLED manufacturers may have another answer. By eliminating the Fine Metal Mask from RGB OLED production, LG Display believes it can improve usable pixel area, reduce manufacturing constraints and give panel designers significantly more flexibility with brightness, lifespan, power consumption and screen size.
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The technology still has to make the jump from impressive manufacturing demonstration to high volume consumer product, but if LG Display can make FLiPP work economically at television scale, the next battle between OLED and RGB backlit LCD may look very different. Just don’t postpone buying a television because somebody put “100 inch OLED” in a headline. We are not there yet.
Nintendo has just confirmed an official price rise on the Switch 2 is coming on September 1, upping the RRP on the console to £419. However, we’ve found to beat the rise.
Nintendo has officially confirmed that the Switch 2 will jump from £395.99 to £419.99 in the UK from 1st September 2026, part of a wider set of regional price increases the company announced back in May.
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That means buying now at £344.99 locks in a price that sits roughly £75 below where the console will officially retail from next month, turning what already looked like a solid discount into something closer to essential timing.
To give you more perspective, our tech expert Max Parker spent two weeks testing the Switch 2 across more than thirty games, both docked and on the move, and rated it a clear step up from the original console he still owns and uses regularly.
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He singled out the bigger 7.9-inch display as one of the console’s biggest wins, noting that the extra screen space makes handheld sessions feel genuinely more immersive and even makes dense menus in games like Cyberpunk 2077 easier to read.
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Parker also found the new Nvidia chip inside made a real difference in practice, with Mario Kart World running at a stable 60fps and even a demanding port like Cyberpunk 2077 holding up far better than anything the original Switch could manage.
The redesigned Joy-Con 2 controllers impressed him too, attaching with strong magnets instead of the old clip mechanism, which fixed the rattly, creaky feel that was one of his biggest complaints about the original console over the years.
Between a sharper screen, faster performance and a sturdier build that Parker praised as an easy win over the 2017 original, this is the kind of upgrade worth having before Nintendo’s own price rise erases the gap on 1st September.
At £344.99 rather than its usual £395.00, and with an official rise to £419.99 confirmed for next month, the Nintendo Switch 2 is about as good value as this console has been, or is ever likely to be again, according to Parker’s own verdict.
ASUS has expanded its desktop AiO lineup in India with the launch of the ASUS VM240 AiO, a new all-in-one PC designed for everyday work, learning, and entertainment. Priced at ₹66,990, the VM240 combines a 24-inch display, AMD Ryzen processors, and a space-saving design into a single desktop setup.
Alongside the VM240 AiO, ASUS has also introduced four new accessories in India: the Jelly75 mechanical keyboard, Wireless Mouse MD105, Marshmallow keyboard and mouse combo, and the ROG HDMI Cable LHR60.
ASUS VM240 AiO Specs
The ASUS VM240 is aimed at users who want a clutter-free desktop without sacrificing everyday performance. It features a 24-inch Full HD display with an adjustable tilt stand and a slim 22mm profile, making it suitable for home offices, classrooms, and entertainment setups.
Powered by up to an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, the desktop also includes up to 512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD storage for faster app launches and multitasking. ASUS says the Ryzen 5 variant will become available in mid-September, while the VM240 officially goes on sale from August 20. For video calls, the AiO includes a 1080p webcam with a physical privacy shutter, dual front-facing 2W speakers tuned with Dirac audio, and AI-powered noise cancellation for clearer meetings and online classes.
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Four New Accessories
The VM240 launch is accompanied by a refreshed accessories lineup covering productivity, portability, and gaming. The standout product is the ASUS Jelly75 KD201, a gasket-mounted mechanical keyboard with hot-swappable switches, USB-C charging, and support for Bluetooth, 2.4GHz wireless, and wired connectivity across up to five devices.
The Wireless Mouse MD105 supports Bluetooth 5.0 and 2.4GHz wireless, offers adjustable DPI settings up to 2400, and can pair with three devices simultaneously. For users looking for a lightweight setup, the Marshmallow CW200 bundles a compact keyboard and mouse with multi-device support and a dedicated Copilot key. Meanwhile, the ROG HDMI Cable LHR60 supports 48Gbps bandwidth, enabling 8K at 60Hz and 4K at 144Hz output for gaming PCs and current-generation consoles.
The ASUS VM240 AiO and accessories will be available through ASUS eShop, ASUS Exclusive Stores, Flipkart, Amazon, and other retail partners.
Our favorite physical media format, Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc, turned 10 years old this year. Happy birthday, UHDBD! 4K Blu-ray, as it is also known, remains the highest quality video disc format in consumer use. VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, and standard Blu-ray Disc were all followed by something better in the physical realm, and we love the way UHD Blu-rays make our favorite movies and shows look on our TVs and projection screens.
DVD arrived in 1996. Blu-ray Disc followed 10 years later in 2006, and UHD Blu-ray Disc hit the market another 10 years later in 2016. So, is 2026 the year of another major format upgrade? Probably not.
While it is technically possible to store 8K video on optical media, there does not appear to be much consumer demand for anything beyond 4K. There is currently no announced commercial 8K Blu-ray Disc format, and the Blu-ray Disc Association says it is not working on one.
In our not-so-humble opinion, there is also no persuasive reason for studios, hardware companies, or consumers to spend the money required to create an 8K physical media standard. Let’s explore why.
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The State of Physical Video Disc Formats
The existing Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc standard is the most advanced physical video disc format in consumer media history. It supports resolutions up to 3840 x 2160 pixels (4K), with multiple flavors of HDR (High Dynamic Range) and fully lossless multi-channel immersive audio. The format uses 66GB dual-layer or 100GB triple-layer Blu-Ray discs, with maximum video data rates of 108 Mbps and 128 Mbps, respectively.
Here is a comparison of the video disc formats currently in use. We’ll round up to whole numbers to avoid getting messy.
Disc Format
Ultra HD Blu-ray
Blu-ray Disc
DVD
Consumer Launch
2016
2006
1996
Resolution
3840 x 2160
1920 x 1080
720 x 480 NTSC / 720 x 576 PAL
Frame Rate
Up to 60 fps progressive (60p)
Commonly 24 fps or 25 fps (progressive) for film; up to 60 Hz/50 Hz (interlaced)
60 fps (NTSC) or 50 fps (PAL) in interlaced format, 24/25 fps progressive.
Color Depth
10-bit
8-bit
8-bit
Color Gamut
Rec.2020
Rec.709
SD/BT.601 colorimetry
HDR Support
HDR10 HDR10+ Dolby Vision
–
–
3D Support
–
Yes, on select titles
–
Video Compression
H.265 / HEVC
MPEG-2, MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), VC-1
MPEG-2
Maximum Video Bitrate
108 Mbps on 66GB discs / 128 Mbps on 100GB discs
40 Mbps
9.8 Mbps
Disc Capacity
66GB dual-layer / 100GB triple-layer
25GB single-layer / 50GB dual-layer
DVD-5: 4.7GB / DVD-9: 8.5GB / DVD-10: 9.4GB
Laser Wavelength
405 nm
405 nm
650 nm
Disc Size
120 mm optical disc
120 mm optical disc
120 mm optical disc
Audio Format Support
Lossless high-resolution and object-based immersive audio, including Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS-X and multi-channel PCM as well as legacy lossy formats
Linear PCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS Digital Surround, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby Atmos, DTS-X
Dolby Digital, DTS, PCM and MPEG2
Copy Protection
AACS 2.x and related protections
AACS, BD+ and Cinavia
CSS and other studio-specific protections
Display Requirements
4K display and compatible protected HDMI playback chain for full 4K/HDR output
HDTV and HDCP-compatible HDMI connection for HD playback
Compatible SD or higher-resolution display
Ultra HD Blu-ray officially supports 24, 25, 50 and 60 fps progressive video, while its 66GB and 100GB disc capacities and maximum video data rates are part of the existing BDA specification.
Here is a list of common video resolutions stated as the number of pixels displayed on a screen for HD (high definition) and above. Note that not all of these are supported within the current Blu-ray Disc specifications:
Resolution
Horizontal/Vertical Pixels
Total Pixels
8K UHD
7680 x 4320
33.2 million
4K UHD
3840 x 2160
8.3 million
2K Theatrical
2048 x 1080
2.21 million
1080p FHD
1920 x 1080
2.07 million
1366 x 768 HD
1366 x 768
1.05 million
720p HD
1280 x 720
921,600
NOTE: Many earlier TVs marketed as “720p” actually used 1366 × 768 panels. True 720p video resolution is 1280 × 720 pixels.
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NHK 8K TV Broadcasts in Japan
The lack of a commercial 8K disc format does not mean that 8K video has never been put on Blu-ray Disc media. After all, BD is also a raw storage medium like a magnetic or solid state hard drive or USB thumb drive. And, as such, Blu-ray Discs can store virtually any sort of data.
A representative from the Blu-ray Disc Association revealed the BDA has licensed a 4K/8K BD-based broadcast-recordable format in Japan since 2018 that allows consumers to record satellite 8K broadcasts, including NHK’s BS8K service, onto compatible BD-R and BD-RE media. The specification supports HEVC video up to 8K/60p resolution and HDR using Hybrid Log-Gamma. The system uses compatible “BDXL” recordable discs with a maximum capacity of 128GB across four layers.
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That system was developed for recording broadcast television and is not a formal 8K Hollywood-approved movie-disc format or a successor to commercial 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc.
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In practical terms, recording those broadcasts requires compatible Japanese BS/CS 8K receiving and recording hardware, the appropriate satellite reception system, and supported recordable Blu-ray Disc media. Recorded programs are captured on the recorder’s built-in HDD and can transferred to compatible BDXL optical media for long term storage.
The point is that 8K video on a Blu-ray-derived optical disc is already technically possible, but an 8K commercial or consumer disc standard is a completely different proposition.
Apple 8K Takes You Out to the Ball Game
Apple is taking a very different approach to 8K.
Beginning August 28, 2026, Apple will offer select live Major League Baseball games in Apple Immersive on Apple Vision Pro. According to Apple, the experience uses stereoscopic 3D video recorded in 8K with a 180-degree field of view. This is not simply the regular Apple TV baseball feed floating on an enormous virtual screen but a fully three dimensional VR type of experience designed to make the viewer truly feel like there are in the stadium (just without the $12 hot dogs and $20 beers).
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Apple is producing these immersive broadcasts with dedicated camera positions, bespoke commentary, dedicated replays and graphics that appear within the viewer’s space. Ambisonic microphones capture the stadium for Spatial Audio, while camera positions are intended to put viewers close to the batter, dugouts, outfield wall and other locations around the field. Just be careful when you go diving for that sacrifice fly.
Whether this application can eventually expand to other platforms or other programming is another story. More importantly for this discussion, Apple Immersive is not a physical format.
Why 8K Blu-ray Disc Is Unlikely
No 8K Movie Infrastructure
There is no end-to-end commercial movie distribution ecosystem built around 8K video.
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Some movies are captured at 6K, 8K or even higher resolutions, but capture resolution is only one part of the process. Editing, visual effects, digital intermediates, color grading, mastering, distribution and playback all have to be considered, and these are rarely done in 8K resolution.
Hollywood remains centered on 2K and 4K workflows for theatrical distribution, streaming and Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc. Digital Cinema Initiatives continues to support both 2K and 4K digital cinema packages, with most digital cinemas actually choosing 2K in order to save money on the hardware. And those choices should tell us something about how little urgency exists within the industry itself to jump to 8K distribution.
We’ve only just recently seen the first movie download platform and playback hardware to support 8K resolution. Kaleidescape launched the Strato K player with 8K video support in mid June. Now, two months later there is just a single short film available in the Kaleidescape movie store in 8K resolution. Meanwhile the company continues to grow its 4K and new enhanced 4K Cinematic catalog of both new release and classic catalog titles.
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Limited 8K TV Support
The consumer display market also shows no signs of an 8K revolution.
Samsung introduced consumer 8K televisions years ago, but adoption never developed as quickly as manufacturers hoped. By 2026, Samsung is effectively the last major television manufacturer still actively supporting the 8K TV category in the U.S., with products including the 85-inch Neo QLED 8K QN990H. It should tell you something when you realize that the company’s new flagship Micro RGB technology is only available in TVs with 4K resolution. Sony’s current U.S. television lineup is also centered on 4K models, while other major brands like LG and TCL have also pulled back from 8K TV development.
That is hardly the install base anyone would want before launching another physical movie format.
Samsung QN990F Neo QLED Glare-free 8K TV (2025 model)
Resolution Is Not the Sole Indicator of Image Quality
Video resolution is no longer the most obvious area where television image quality needs improvement. In fact, it’s not even in the top 3. According to the ISF (Imaging Science Foundation), the image qualities that make the most impact on a viewer’s actual enjoyment have more to do with color reproduction and contrast, which are already well-captured in the UHD Blu-ray Disc standard.
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ISF Imaging Hierarchy of Picture Quality Parameters:
Dynamic Range (Contrast)
Color Saturation (Richness of Color Reproduction)
Colorimetry (Accuracy of Color Reproduction)
Resolution (Detail)
The biggest recent improvement in consumer media quality has undoubtedly been the availability of HDR (High Dynamic Range). Movies and other content available on 4K BD in HDR can capture bright highlights and fine shadow detail. And a good display can display both specular highlights and dark details on screen at the same time. Add in wider color gamut, better tone mapping, higher brightness, improved black levels, superior video processing and more consistent mastering and you can capture some pretty incredible detail in 4K resolution from UHD Blu-ray Discs, even on the ginormous TV screens that are becoming more popular. The number of pixels ain’t the problem.
The arrival of RGB LED-backlit LCD televisions and other advances within the 4K ecosystem reinforce that point. Manufacturers are finding plenty of ways to improve picture quality without adding another 25 million pixels to the screen.
A New Production and Playback Chain Would Be Needed
A true 8K movie-disc format would require much more than adding “8K” to a box.
Studios would need authoring and mastering standards, as well as the hardware and software to support them. Replication facilities would need compatible production systems and (potentially) new disc technology, though the existing “BDXL” disc, with four layers and 128 GB of storage, would probably be up to the task of 8K resolution. In any case, manufacturers would need to build another generation of players, and consumers would need compatible displays.
The connection side is less of an obstacle. HDMI 2.1 already supports 8K/60 under appropriate configurations, while HDMI 2.2 expands bandwidth further and supports uncompressed 8K/60 with full chroma at higher bit depths. But having enough HDMI bandwidth does not magically create the content, discs or players required to use it.
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Economic Stress
Then there is the part Hollywood always notices: the money.
Studios would have to spend more creating, mastering and distributing 8K releases for a tiny install base. Hardware companies would have to develop new players for a physical-media category that is increasingly driven by enthusiasts and collectors rather than the mainstream market.
That is a difficult business case before anyone even asks whether consumers could see enough improvement to care.
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Why Hollywood Does Not Need 8K Blu-ray
The end-to-end production pipeline is one of the biggest obstacles to a commercial 8K disc format. Moving from 2K to 4K already increases processing, storage, rendering and mastering demands, and a true 8K workflow would multiply those requirements across the entire production chain. Hollywood can work in 8K, but the real question is whether the added cost and complexity are justified by a benefit most viewers may barely notice.
There is another wrinkle: some 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases are sourced from 2K digital intermediates and upscaled to 4K. That does not automatically make the resulting UHD disc pointless. Standard Blu-ray tops out at 1920 × 1080, while a 2K theatrical image is typically 2048 × 1080, and the UHD release can still benefit from HDR, wider color, 10-bit video and higher available bitrates. Again, it’s not just the number of pixels that matters.
In any case, Hollywood can still extract meaningful improvements from the existing 4K Ultra HD format without rebuilding the entire home-video ecosystem around 8K resolution.
If the demand is not there, Hollywood does not need the headache.
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Sit too far away, and you won’t see any difference between 4K and 8K.
Would Consumers Actually See the Difference?
Assuming a 4K Ultra HD disc has been mastered properly, the difference over standard Blu-ray can be meaningful, thanks not only to higher resolution but also HDR, wider color, better compression and improved mastering. Screen size and seating distance matter, but the jump from 4K to 8K is far less obvious. Having seen numerous 8K demonstrations, I have rarely found native 8K movie content dramatically better than high-quality 4K at normal viewing distances, which makes it difficult to justify asking consumers to replace their discs, players and televisions again.
Why 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Will Do Just Fine
Here is the more interesting contradiction: 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray can remain a viable format without ever appealing to the mass market.
Ultra HD Blu-ray already provides high video bitrates, lossless audio, immersive soundtracks, supplemental content, consistent playback quality and, most importantly for collectors, a physical copy that does not depend on a streaming catalog or studio license remaining unchanged.
Panasonic continues to sell the DP-UB820 and DP-UB9000, while Magnetar continues to manufacture and support premium universal disc players. Magnetar released upgraded versions of their disc players last fall and is still releasing firmware updates for its new and previous players as of August 2026 as this article goes to press.
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Physical media, however, is not experiencing a broad sales resurgence, despite all the attention surrounding collectors and younger buyers.
According to the DEG (Digital Entertainment Group), U.S. consumer spending on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-ray declined 8.4 percent in the first quarter of 2026 to $185 million. That was still better than the 13-percent-plus decline during the first quarter of 2025. More importantly for enthusiasts, Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-ray each declined by less than 5 percent during the quarter as collectors continued to support premium formats.
That is not a comeback. It is something potentially more sustainable: a shrinking category finding a committed audience willing to pay for premium releases.
Major studios continue releasing films on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, while boutique labels such as Arrow Video, Shout! Factory, and Blue Underground cater directly to enthusiasts with catalog titles, restored films, steelbooks and collector’s editions. MVD remains an important distributor and retailer for boutique releases, while GRUV is Universal Pictures Home Entertainment’s own retail operation rather than an independent label. It may be hard to find UHD Blu-rays in brick and mortar retailers, but there is a thriving online marketplace for this and other physical media.
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What Actually Will Replace the Disc?
If something eventually replaces physical discs for quality-focused home theater enthusiasts, the most plausible candidate may not be a new physical media format, nor even conventional streaming.
A high-bitrate, locally stored download platform offers some of the convenience of digital distribution without requiring the movie itself to be streamed in real time. Kaleidescape is the most developed example of that model.
Kaleidescape’s existing movie players support downloaded 4K titles with bitrates up to 110 Mbps, while the newer Strato K adds native 8K playback and the company’s higher-bitrate 4K Cinematic format. Movies are downloaded to local storage rather than streamed during playback, which virtually eliminates the buffering and compression artifacts inherent in most streaming services. Kaleidescape has even joined the 8K Association to help promote the technology and format. However, last we checked, the Kaleidescape store still only had a single 8K title available to purchase. Meanwhile the service continues to build out its 4K and 4K Cinematic library with both new releases and classic back catalog titles.
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Sony Pictures Core takes a different approach. It remains a streaming service, but its Pure Stream mode can operate between 30 and 80 Mbps on supported Sony devices, putting its highest-quality streams much closer to UHD Blu-ray territory than conventional streaming services.
Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs, along with standard Blu-ray Discs and DVDs, have one major advantage over either model: normal playback does not require the owner to maintain an active account, subscription, storefront relationship or internet connection. When you want to watch a movie, just get up off the couch and grab it.
Pro Tip: Some disc-based bonus content and interactive features may require internet access.
Downloaded movies offer convenience and potentially exceptional quality, but they still depend on compatible hardware, digital rights management, studio agreements and the continued operation of the platform. While Kaleidescape has been in business now for over 25 years, there is no guarantee about its continued operation. Though with all the well-heeled Kaleidescape customers out there who have collectively invested hundreds of millions of dollars in their movie libraries and associated hardware, we think it’s a safe bet that the Kaleidescape platform will continue to thrive for the foreseeable future. Still, with content that is never truly “owned” but “licensed,” it’s something worth considering.
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Hancock was one of the first 4K UHD releases in 2016 from Sony Pictures.
The Bottom Line
Based on all the signs, 8K content is not “right around the corner,” and it’s definitely not worth waiting for. There is no commercial 8K format in active development, no meaningful consumer demand for 8K media, no broad 8K display market to speak of, and little incentive for studios to absorb the higher production, mastering, replication, and hardware costs that would come along with 8K.
More importantly, 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc already delivers ample resolution, rich HDR capability, deep color gamut support, low compression, and lossless immersive audio that are sure to satisfy even the most critical viewers enjoying their favorite movies on today’s largest XXL flat panel TVs and projection screens.
And just because 8K isn’t currently on the table does not mean physical media is doomed. 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray has settled into a smaller but committed enthusiast and collector market, supported by major studios, boutique labels, hardware makers, and a 4K movie and TV show catalog that continues to grow. Discussions we’ve had with industry insiders also suggest that the UHD Blu-ray Disc specification will continue to expand, even if it doesn’t add a few million more useless pixels.
For movie fans who care about consistent playback quality, lossless immersive audio, bonus content, and having a physical copy that does not depend on a subscription, changing licensing agreement, or disappearing streaming catalog, UHD Blu-ray still offers a superior home viewing experience and a strong alternative or supplement to online streaming. For those who want the convenience of near instant downloads without the video and audio sacrifices of streaming, high quality download services like Kaleidescape offer another great option.
8K may not be right on the horizon, but maybe it doesn’t need to be.
Nv’s new chips need new datacenters, but you can’t have bit barns without power
Nvidia has made its fortune on the AI boom, but the company has a problem. It faces a growing number of roadblocks which, if left unchecked, could pop the bubble.
Thus, the AI arms dealer has been forced to play a game of Whac-a-Mole, shoring up the foundations of its empire by investing its spoils into ensuring its customers don’t stop buying.
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The latest example of this came Friday, when Nvidia announced it’d become a minority investor in Cloverleaf.
Founded in 2024, Cloverleaf specializes in laying the literal foundations – by which we mean the land and power – necessary to build bit barns so they can be leased by the cloud providers and model devs that actually pay the bills for Nvidia’s hardware.
Nvidia can only sell as many GPUs as there are datacenters to put them, and those datacenters can only be deployed where there’s adequate power to support them. And since its latest round of GPUs can’t just be dropped into any old bit barn, Nvidia is going to need a lot more datacenter capacity, and by extension a lot more power.
A new breed of datacenter
Up until 2024, the majority of Nvidia’s systems were air-cooled. Supercomputers, like those built by Cray and Eviden, were the exception to the rule. Unless you were deploying tens of thousands of GPUs, its accelerators could be deployed just about anywhere with minimal modification to the facility.
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That began to change with Nvidia’s Blackwell generation. You could still get air-cooled systems from Nvidia and its partners, and it certainly sold a lot of eight-way HGX B200 boxes, but deploying its most powerful NVL72 systems required liquid cooling that not every facility was capable of supplying.
Liquid-cooled facilities are harder to build than their air-cooled counterparts. Liquid-cooled racks tend to be more compute dense, and therefore heavier and power hungry to operate. That means in addition to larger UPS backups and beefier PDUs, these facilities now need a bunch of coolant distribution units (CDUs) to pump coolant around — about one for every one to three megawatts of compute capacity. Datacenters must be designed to support all this extra weight, and the problem is only going to get thornier as Nvidia transitions from roughly 250kW to 600kW racks starting next year.
With Nvidia’s Rubin generation of GPUs, air-cooled GPUs may as well be a thing of the past, at least in the HGX and NVL-style form factors that power the majority of AI training and inference deployments today. For the first time, Nvidia is offering the chips only in liquid-cooled varieties.
So, to sell its next-generation GPUs, Nvidia not only needs its customers to have adequate capacity, but also needs those facilities to offer the right mix of power and cooling.
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Right sizing for deployment
It’s well established that Nvidia prioritizes customers with datacenters ready to fill. However, many of the GPU-slinger’s biggest customers don’t actually own datacenters, but instead lease capacity from others. For example, Crusoe built OpenAI’s Stargate facility in Abilene, Texas, and Oracle runs it. Altman and crew are simply supplying the demand.
So, Nvidia has invested in model devs and neocloud partners by helping them get financing or even investing directly in their businesses. Nvidia’s investments in OpenAI, CoreWeave, and Nebius are just a few examples.
That works so long as the bit barns available for rent are the right size and shape for the hardware. But, as we noted earlier, many existing facilities aren’t.
To further reduce friction and make it easier for its customers to find space to deploy its kit, Nvidia introduced its DSX platform last fall and officially launched it this spring.
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In a nutshell, DSX is a set of blueprints outlining exactly how much power, cooling infrastructure, and space are needed to support a given amount of compute. It also provides tools to optimize that compute to minimize wasted capacity.
The power problem
But even designing to a spec won’t do bit barn builders any good if they can’t get their hands on enough power.
The proliferation of AI datacenters has begun to strain grid capacity, forcing many new ones to employ behind-the-meter power generation. For example, Nebius has begun using Bloom Energy’s natural gas fuel cells to power its datacenters, rather than relying entirely on existing grid infrastructure.
Nvidia’s investment in Cloverleaf is the latest example of how the GPU slinger is using the circular AI economy to its advantage. The terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but the benefits are obvious: Cloverleaf gets an influx of cash, while Nvidia gets greater control over the build process.
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As part of the deal, Cloverleaf is also embracing Nvidia’s DSX spec. In theory, this should enable bit barn builders to drop a DSX-compliant datacenter on a Cloverleaf-supplied site and be serving customers without delay.
For Cloverleaf, Nvidia’s spec includes a wealth of power-related capabilities, including DSX Flex, which allows datacenters to scale back their workloads in response to grid conditions. So if grid demand spikes during a heat wave because everyone’s AC just kicked on, datacenters know it’s probably not a good idea to kick off another training run. The tech can also be used to offload demand onto onsite power generation or storage systems, like batteries — all things a company tasked with supplying powered sites for datacenters might be interested in.
The deal is the latest example of how Nvidia is using its war chest to shore up cracks in the broader AI ecosystem before they become a problem. We wrote a few weeks ago about how the company was helping AI infrastructure startups secure financing in exchange for a share of the revenues, but it’s now clear Nvidia is attacking potential roadblocks from every angle. ®
At the local level, the robotaxi operator has outspent both Uber and Zoox in lobbying legislators in the District of Columbia. It has pressed local regulators to allow robotaxi services in the nation’s capital, including by inviting residents earlier this year to write in support of its rollout.
In New York state, Waymo has spent more than half a million dollars so far this year—more than double Uber’s lobbying spend—as it seeks a foothold in one of the largest taxi markets.
Its lobbying in the state intensified after Governor Kathy Hochul earlier this year walked back proposals that would have allowed autonomous vehicle companies to run services across most of the state.
Waymo offered to set up a $20 million fund to support drivers affected by the technology’s deployment, according to people familiar with the matter.
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In New Jersey, it has engaged lawmakers who are exploring a three-year pilot program to test deployments.
Waymo said in a statement that it was advocating for the rollout of autonomous vehicles and was not pursuing measures that would limit competitors or “prescribe” how the technology was deployed.
Uber, meanwhile, has been racing to make up lost ground in AVs after abandoning its in-house self-driving effort in 2020, committing more than $10 billion over the past year through equity stakes and robotaxi fleet agreements.
The ride-hailing group has warned several Democratic-led states against a carte blanche rollout and has instead lobbied for so-called hybrid networks that route rides to both human drivers and autonomous vehicles.
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In New Jersey, Uber lobbyists have proposed that any platform offering robotaxi services also use human drivers for at least 85 percent of all rides during a three-year pilot program.
Critics have accused Uber of seeking regulatory capture by attempting to keep rides flowing through its platform as it grapples with rising competition.
Uber has said it is false that they were “anti-AV or seeking to slow AV deployment.” It said hybrid networks “get the technology to consumers sooner while giving policymakers a practical framework to manage the transition.”
A former Starbucks cafe in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Starbucks is eliminating 224 more jobs at its Seattle headquarters, according to a new state filing. The coffee giant says the layoffs don’t represent a new round of cutbacks, but rather the lingering effect of restructuring work announced earlier this year.
About 120 of the 224 are employees who were offered roles in Starbucks’ new Nashville office and declined to relocate, according to the filing. Those roles are expected to be filled in Tennessee.
The remaining 104 in the notice filed Thursday stem from the restructuring that Starbucks announced in May, and fall largely within the group that designs, sites and builds its coffeehouses.
The reductions are part of the “Back to Starbucks” turnaround CEO Brian Niccol launched after taking over in September 2024 — an effort that has paired store-level technology upgrades and a simplified menu with a restructuring of the company’s corporate ranks.
Starbucks has now eliminated 537 corporate jobs tied to its Seattle headquarters this year, across three state filings: 61 tech roles in May, 252 support center jobs later that month, and the 224 disclosed this week across tech and store development positions.
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Starbucks is targeting $2 billion in cost reductions over two years under Niccol, and has shed more than 2,300 corporate jobs companywide since last year, according to Bloomberg.
At the same time, Starbucks is building out its Nashville office, a $100 million investment expected to house 2,000 support jobs within five years. The company has said the majority of its corporate teams will remain in Seattle.
The design and development cuts come later than the rest of the May restructuring because the executive who leads the group, Stephen Piacentini, joined Starbucks from Chipotle in April, and the organizational changes in his group weren’t finalized when the May restructuring was announced.
More than 9,300 Amazon Web Services (AWS) access keys publicly exposed between August 2022 and August 2026 are still active and valid.
Truffle Security has been tracking this exposure for the past four years and says that 817 of the exposed keys were linked to companies, 526 of them being AWS root keys.
According to the researchers, 242 of the keys are associated with Identity and Access Management (IAM) users with the AdministratorAccess policy. This role has full permissions to create, modify, delete, and view virtually all AWS services and resources within an account.
They note that each key of the 768 live keys in the two sets “full control of a company’s AWS account.”
The company found 431,875 AWS secrets across code repositories, Git history, datasets, Docker images, registries, and CI logs and extracted 64,024 unique AWS keys that corresponded to 50,654 AWS accounts after removing duplicates.
However, the subset for which the researchers had complete credentials that could be used for re-verification was 10,616 keys, and 88% of them continued to authenticate as of August 10.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon’s cloud-computing platform used by companies to host websites and applications, store data, run databases and servers, manage domains, and operate their online infrastructure.
Full control of a company’s AWS account could allow an attacker to access, exfiltrate, or wipe cloud-hosted data, take control of servers and applications, and create rogue admin accounts for persistent access
Threat actors could also use their access to deploy cryptominers, generating substantial charges for the company. Truffle Security says that only 262 of 2,754 readable accounts had a budget alert set up.
Hugging Face, a popular online platform where developers share AI models, datasets, and applications, was the largest single source of leaked AWS keys, accounting for 8,482 unique key exposures.
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Also, 17.9% of those keys were root, meaning the highest-privileged identity, which isn’t restricted by IAM permissions.
Roles of exposed AWS keys Source: Truffle Security
Truffle Security found that, for the 2,903 keys with available creation dates, the median age was 1,831 days (about five years), while the oldest had existed for 17.4 years.
Only 398 (13.7%) of those entries had a newer access key associated with the same user, suggesting most had never been rotated.
Age of exposed AWS keys Source: Truffle Security
To defend against potential abuse, the researchers recommend deleting all root access keys, reviewing IAM credentials by age, rotating or revoking exposed keys, and configuring budget alerts.
Also, any credential committed to a public source should be treated as compromised.
Truffle Security said its testing was limited to read-only metadata, and that it has notified all identifiable owners of the exposed credentials.
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Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.
The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.
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