In brief: A Norwegian rescue helicopter and a small aircraft took off over Andøya in 2024, but the routes visible to satellite-navigation receivers told a different story. On tracking screens, the helicopter appeared to make a series of tight, overlapping turns. The plane seemed to trace sharp, unnatural patterns in the air. Neither display reflected the aircraft’s actual flight path.

The false tracks were created as part of Jammertest, an annual Norwegian exercise that examines how equipment responds when satellite-navigation signals are disrupted or manipulated.

Held on the island of Andøya, roughly 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, the event brings together engineers, public agencies, and companies that depend on Global Navigation Satellite Systems, or GNSS.

The exercise, scheduled for mid-September this year, has become more relevant as real-world satellite interference has intensified around Russia’s war in Ukraine. An RAF aircraft encountered GPS jamming near the Russian border in May. In September 2025, Sweden’s Transport Agency said it was dealing with interference every day. Experts also warned in June 2026 that Russian satellites had transmitted interference from orbit, briefly disrupting GPS signals across Europe.

Aviation offers the clearest example of the problem because the effects are visible immediately. But GNSS interference can extend far beyond a flight deck or a map display. Satellite networks such as GPS provide not only location data but also highly accurate time. That timing supports communications networks, power grids, transport systems, and financial markets, where systems must remain synchronized.

Jammertest is built around the possibility that a receiver may lose that signal or, more troublingly, accept a false one. Jamming overwhelms the signal so that a receiver cannot use it. Spoofing sends a stronger counterfeit signal that can make equipment report an incorrect position or time.

The difference is important for infrastructure operators. A sudden loss of satellite data may be detected quickly, allowing a system to switch to backup timing. Spoofing can be harder to catch. If equipment continues to receive what appears to be valid data, it may distribute inaccurate timing or location information before anyone recognizes the problem.

At the 2024 event, Harald Hauglin, chief engineer of time and frequency metrology at the Norwegian Metrology Service, and his team demonstrated that spoofing can be a slow-moving risk. They gradually increased the strength of a spoofing signal over about 40 minutes. As the decoy signal became more powerful, a map display shifted the test site’s reported location away from its real position and into the Norwegian Sea.

The positional error was easy to see. Measuring the effect on time required a different setup. The team compared a GNSS-synchronized clock exposed to interference with a reference clock connected by fiber-optic cable to a receiver beyond the test area. The difference between the two was tracked in nanoseconds, revealing how a manipulated signal can slowly move a clock away from the correct time.

That is a particular concern for systems that need a common clock to operate. A power grid or mobile network can continue operating for some time after losing GNSS, but its ability to do so depends on the quality of its backup equipment. Local clocks, atomic references, and fiber-optic links can maintain precise timing, though building and maintaining them adds cost.

The more difficult scenario is a spoofing event that goes unnoticed. Rather than forcing a system to use its backup, it could continue feeding the system bad data. Over time, that may cause a wider synchronization problem across connected networks.

Jammertest is intended to identify these weaknesses before they appear in an actual disruption. Participants test commercial and industrial receivers in an open setting, then share results with other attendees. That approach differs from more tightly controlled US military tests, where information from the exercises is more restricted.

Norway and other governments are considering how much redundancy is needed as GNSS interference becomes a more regular feature of the security environment. Fiber-based timing networks and atomic clocks are among the options. Hauglin’s White Rabbit patch refers to White Rabbit, a CERN-developed system that distributes time across fiber-optic networks with accuracy better than one nanosecond.

Such systems can reduce dependence on satellite signals, but they do not replicate every service GNSS provides. Dana Goward, co-founder of the Resilient Timing and Navigation Foundation, said the answer will require several layers of protection rather than one replacement technology. “There is no silver bullet, which is why you need a combination of systems,” he told the BBC.

ai AND ml

GPT-Live-1 makes speaking to AI models more fluid

OpenAI has launched a version of its latest real-time full-duplex voice model as an API, allowing software developers to implement more responsive voice-enabled apps and conversational workflows.

GPT-Live-1 debuted in July, offering a way to interact through spoken prompts and responses instead of through typed text. Initially available through the ChatGPT interface, the voice model can now be reached via API calls.

As a full-duplex model, GPT-Live-1 can listen and generate speech at the same time, which aids fluid communication. People often talk over one another and may find it frustrating to take turns speaking and listening as if using half-duplex handheld radios.

OpenAI says it has focused on allowing developers implementing GPT-Live-1 to customize how users of business apps experience voice interaction and associated workflows.

“A core GPT‑Live‑1 strength, smooth interruption handling, is already delivering business impact: in early evaluations, Speak found that GPT‑Live‑1 gave learners more time to think before the language tutor responded, cutting interruptions by almost 80 percent versus previous turn-based systems,” the company said.

GPT-Live-1 is designed to handle spoken conversation while a backend model (eg, GPT-6 Astra or a more affordable option for rote tasks) handles information lookup, tool usage, and task management.

It represents a step up from OpenAI’s Realtime API, which debuted in 2024. In the Tau3 voice-agent intelligence benchmark, which assesses spoken customer-service tasks relevant to airlines, retailers, and telecom companies, GPT-Live-1 scores 86.2 percent, compared to 45.7 percent for GPT-Realtime-2.1 and 42.4 percent for GPT-Realtime-2.

Citing its own evaluations, OpenAI said GPT-Live-1 performs 30 percent better than GPT-Realtime-2.1 in Full Duplex Bench performance, while also outperforming its predecessor in turn-taking latency and interactive behavior.

Yelp has been using GPT-Live-1 for the Yelp Host service, and has nice things to say about the technology as it applies to the company’s AI restaurant reservation system. 

“With GPT-Live-1, every call is more conversational and responsive,” said Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, chief product officer at Yelp, in a statement. “Yelp Host now gives restaurants an advanced voice AI that delivers exceptional guest experiences, captures revenue opportunities they may have otherwise missed, and helps staff focus on serving guests instead of answering the phone.”

Yelp does not address whether restaurant customers making reservations welcome the more free-flowing robo-banter or simply accept it because it’s better than waiting on hold to chat with a person.

GPT-Live-1 costs $0.05 per minute of usage, on top of whatever backend model is running. Custom voices can be negotiated with the OpenAI sales team. The voice model is also available through OpenAI Presence, the company’s enterprise agent platform. ®

A new Android malware strain called Mantax Otax combines ransomware and spyware capabilities to encrypt files, steal sensitive data, and spam and harass victims.

Indonesian operators distribute the malware through malicious APKs hosted outside Google Play, targeting users with phishing and social engineering messages.

After installation, the malware requests permission to use the Accessibility service, which gives it extensive control over compromised devices.

Next, it retrieves its command-and-control infrastructure (C2) domain from GitHub and sends back victim details such as location, carrier, Android version, and device ID. The C2 may send commands through Firebase or WebSockets for execution.

According to Zimperium, Indonesian operators distribute the malware through malicious APKs hosted outside Google Play, Android’s official app store, using phishing and social engineering messages to target victims.

Encrypting older Androids

According to mobile security company Zimperium, Mantax Otax encrypts devices running older Android versions. It searches shared storage and encrypts targeted file types using a victim-specific AES key obtained from the C2 server.

The malware then deletes the original files and adds the ‘.enc’ extension to the encrypted copies.

Mantax Otax also replaces local images with ransom notices and opens a full-screen Firebase-hosted chat to facilitate ransom payment negotiations.

Zimperium researchers were able to exploit a misconfiguration in the Firebase C2 server, which exposed the attackers’ chats with victims.

Mantax Otax’s ransomware module only runs against Android devices running version 9 or older, as the ‘Scoped Storage’ security and privacy feature in Android 10 and later significantly restricts the encryption capability to the external-files directory.

Spying, spamming, and harassing

Apart from ransomware, Mantax Otax includes spyware, remote control, and harassment features.

The researchers note that the malware can steal lock-screen PINs to maintain persistent access, read SMS and one-time passwords, access call logs, contacts, browsing history, app lists, Google account information, and location.

It can also extract WhatsApp profiles and messages, as well as Telegram chats, using simulated interactions via Accessibility services.

Additionally, it abuses Android’s MediaProjection API to capture screenshots, record MP4 videos, and stream the victim’s screen in near real time via the Catbox file hosting service.

Mantax Otax can also capture photographs using the infected device’s cameras and upload them to the operator.

Version 2 of the malware added harassment functions such as repeated dialog boxes, full-screen videos, rapid “jumpscare” image overlays, and remotely controlled text-to-speech messages played through the device speakers.

These additional features add an intimidation component to the attacks, which act as a pressure mechanism for the victim to pay the ransom.

Because Zimperium is a Google security partner via the App Defense Alliance (ADA), Mantax Otax is already detected and blocked by up-to-date Android devices with an active Play Protect service.

Users are generally advised not to install APKs from outside Google Play, not to give questionable apps Accessibility permissions, and to only trust reputable publishers.

Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.

Save your seat

They’re aimed at protecting minors, but the rules are not universally supported.

August was the planet’s hottest month ever recorded, capping a remarkably grim summer of heat records. With El Niño strengthening—and climate change continuing to heat things up—more records are likely in store well into next year.

Data from Copernicus, the European Union’s climate agency, shows that last month tied with July 2023 for Earth’s hottest month. (July is also usually the hottest month of the year.) This July also tied with July 2024 for the second-hottest July on record, while June 2026 was the second-hottest June ever recorded. The news comes on the heels of a separate announcement on Wednesday from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which declared this was the hottest summer for the US, beating a previous record set during the Dust Bowl.

The sweltering summer is a grim sign of how burning fossil fuels is pushing temperatures up around the globe while unleashing more intense and longer heat waves.

“August 2026 was a remarkable month in the global climate record,” Samantha Burgess, the strategic lead for climate at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, said in a statement. “Combined with record global sea surface temperatures and the warmest summer on record for Western Europe, these observations show how climate change is driving extremes across both the atmosphere and the oceans. The impacts of these conditions are increasingly being felt by communities, economies, and ecosystems across the world.”

The global average temperature for August was 1.65 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial average, according to Copernicus. While it was hot globally this summer, the impacts played out with dangerous and sometimes deadly results locally.

Photograph: Ufuk Celal Guzel/Getty Images

Researchers estimate that as many as 35,000 people died during heat waves in Germany, France, and Spain this summer. Record-breaking fires also raged across parts of Europe, unleashing the first documented fire cloud in France and threatening a key NASA observatory in Spain. In North America, wildfires in Canada and northern parts of the US filled areas across the Northeast with smoke.

Climate change has boosted background temperatures, but the El Niño roiling the eastern Pacific Ocean has piled on more heat. El Niños usually coincide with a temporary uptick in global temperature from 0.1 to 0.2 degrees Celsius. This year’s El Niño is forecast to reach record strength and upend weather around the globe. But the full impact on the planet’s temperature won’t be felt until next year, meaning that next summer may be even hotter than the one we just lived through.

Climate scientists have warned that the world needs to prevent long-term average warming from breaching 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. While temperatures above the threshold for a single month don’t represent a permanent breach of this temperature, they’re a sign that the world is getting closer to this benchmark.

Earlier this month, the UN warned in a report that the world is likely to cross the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold in a few years. To slow and eventually reverse the rise in global temperatures, the world needs to stop burning fossil fuels and lower carbon emissions.

“This summer’s scorching heat, raging wildfires, and deadly floods are a warning of what lies ahead,” UN Secretary-General Antőnio Guterres said in a statement. “We must make the overshoot above 1.5 degrees as small and short as possible. That demands an overshoot of ambition.”

Forever Physical: In a world where gaming giants are actively trying to kill optical discs and other physical media, GOG is doing its own thing. The retro gaming store is expanding its dedicated preservation efforts, giving customers a new way to enjoy their growing collection of digital purchases.

GOG recently announced the addition of a few more titles to its Preservation Program, which was introduced to improve support for some classic games sold on the store. The program is now welcoming five new titles, which also come with their own interactive 3D boxes scanned from original packaging.

GOG’s new wave of Preservation Program titles includes Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Armikrog, Descent, Hitman: Codename 47, and Myst. The five corresponding 3D dioramas were created after scanning the front, back, spine, and all the additional elements of the original boxes. GOG chose the GLB format to share the interactive 3D objects, which should be easy to view with native 3D viewers available on both Windows and macOS.

Furthermore, GOG entered into a partnership with Big Box Collection to offer flat, printable versions of the aforementioned 3D box art. Ideally, users should be able to print, cut, fold, and glue all the art’s elements together to create their own game box replicas. Big Box Collection is a “one-man show” started by a fan of boxed games in 2015. It now offers 3D replicas of around 890 physical games released on PC and other platforms.

As highlighted in GOG’s announcement, game boxes can be affected by the same durability and reliability issues that make optical discs, floppy disks, and other physical media so difficult to preserve. Providing printable scans of the original boxes should help game preservation from a different angle, pleasing people interested in “owning” fully tangible replicas of their favorite titles.

In fact, there is a whole community on the GOG forums that has been striving to add a “boxed” layer to the store’s digital offering since 2008. People have been designing custom “DVD covers” for GOG games for years, and the store is now contributing to this effort with its own “official” selection of printable boxes.

In 2025, I spent hundreds of euros on a brand-new Epson EcoTank ET-8500 printer just to bring my GOG collection to the shelves.

The GOG Preservation Program launched a couple of years ago to ensure that classic games would remain playable on modern systems even after their original developers had abandoned them. GOG is adding its own tweaks, mods, and compatibility improvements to the original releases. GOG has not provided any information about plans to add even more 3D and printable boxes for some of these “preserved” games.

What we know so far: OpenAI is working more closely with Samsung on chip development while also deploying ChatGPT within the South Korean company, adding another major technology partner as it builds out its AI infrastructure. Harrison Kim, general manager of OpenAI Korea, pointed to the companies’ work on chip manufacturing and research as a key part of their expanding relationship.

“One of the areas where we have made the most progress and gained the most recognition with Samsung Electronics is our joint production and research on the next-generation chips we are developing,” Kim said at a press conference in Seoul. Kim did not provide details on the chips or explain Samsung’s role.

Samsung said it could not confirm information related to customers.

The work comes after OpenAI’s June announcement of Jalapeno, its first custom AI chip. OpenAI designed the chip with Broadcom for AI inference, and TSMC is set to manufacture it.

OpenAI’s interest in Samsung also reflects memory’s growing importance in AI systems. Large models need substantial memory capacity and bandwidth to run quickly, particularly in data centers serving large numbers of users. Kim said demand for advanced memory will continue to rise as AI computing becomes faster and more complex.

Samsung and SK Hynix signed letters of intent last year to supply memory chips for OpenAI’s Stargate data center project. Kim said working with South Korean semiconductor suppliers is a priority for OpenAI’s local office.

Samsung is also one of OpenAI’s biggest enterprise users. Kim said it was “one of the largest-scale deployments of ChatGPT globally,” with employees in Korea and other markets using the tool for research and development, marketing, and sales.

The company has been opening access to several generative AI products internally. In June, Samsung said employees in its Device eXperience division, which oversees phones, televisions, and home appliances, would be allowed to use ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude for work.

OpenAI said adoption among South Korean businesses has increased sharply. The number of ChatGPT Enterprise users at companies and institutions in the country was about 28 times higher at the end of August than a year earlier. It did not disclose the total number of users.

The company said businesses are increasingly using AI across departments, including legal, sales, finance, marketing, and operations, instead of limiting the technology to individual assignments.

South Korea had the highest number of paying ChatGPT subscribers outside the United States as of late last year, OpenAI said.

OpenAI expects product use to grow now that GPT-6 Astra has launched. The company said the model offers better performance in computer use, professional work, science, coding, and cybersecurity.

For the first time in more than a decade, someone other than Tim Cook ran an Apple keynote yesterday, and John Ternus saved the biggest reveal for almost an hour in.

We watched it last evening so you didn’t have to – although Apple took its time before unveiling the marquee attraction.

This was the first Apple keynote in more than a decade where Tim Cook wasn’t the one walking us through the big reveals. That job now belongs to John Ternus, and yesterday was his big debut as CEO addressing its major product launch from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino.

Cook did pop up for a cameo, in what felt like a clear passing-of-the-torch moment, but this was Ternus’s show. He set out his stall up front, emphasising that privacy is at the heart of everything Apple does – this is “personal intelligence that’s actually personal”, and private, he insisted. Whether it runs on-device or in the private cloud, there is no ambiguity about where your data goes compared to “other players”, he said. It’s clearly the line Apple wants to be recognised for under this new leadership, and it set the tone for much of the keynote.

iPhone still at Apple’s core

Two new phones anchored the event line-up: the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. They keep the same design language as last year’s Pro models, though this time round Apple’s added four new finishes to choose from: black, light blue, glacier (a silvery tone) and burgundy.

Under the hood, both phones get the new A20 Pro chip, which is Apple’s first built on a 2-nanometre process. It packs a 6-core CPU, split between two performance cores and four efficiency cores, alongside a 7-core GPU that Apple says delivers 40pc faster graphics, plus a second Neural Engine, all in service of what the company is billing as its most AI-capable iPhone yet.

Battery life gets a bump too; the Pro now matches what the old Pro Max managed last year, while the new Pro Max stretches to a claimed 30 hours. On price, in the US, the 18 Pro starts at $1,199 for a 256GB model, and the Pro Max starts at $1,299, also for 256GB. European pricing is to follow.

‘Digital negative’ for the AI-sceptical era

As the whole world of photojournalism becomes fraught with doubts over the veracity of photos, it was interesting that Apple introduced a ‘Reference Image’ feature in its iOS 27, which Ternus described as akin to a “digital negative” of the original image. In practice, it works by attaching metadata to a photo to certify the image hasn’t been AI-generated or altered. This feature will not initally be available in Europe and China.

On the camera lens itself, photography enthusiasts will love that variable aperture was confirmed on the iPhone 18 Pro line (although not the case on the Duo). Ternus had teased the move yesterday morning with a cryptic post on X.

The new Apple Watch line-up leaned all-in on health this year, with the Series 12 and Ultra 4 both clearly built around that theme. New watch models can use microphones and other sensors to generate an AI recap of your day, and offer a ‘readiness’ reading of what you are ready to take on, in an echo of a prominent feature of another popular wearable, the Oura ring.

The slow reveal – the foldable

It was almost an hour into the presentation before the iPhone Duo even got a mention, long enough that commentators on social media started openly wondering whether it was going to happen at all. But then it dropped almost as an afterthought – the moment everyone had been waiting for, the long-awaited iPhone Duo, Apple’s shiny new foldable phone.

Open it up and, Apple says, you’re holding the thinnest iPhone it has ever made. It has two screens sharing the same aspect ratio, so that whatever you’re looking at scales between them without distortion.

Closed, the outer display measures 5.4 inches and covers 90pc of the screen area you’d get on an iPhone 18 Pro. Open it out and the inner display covers 7.6 inches. Both screens are Super Retina XDR with ProMotion, Always On and a peak outdoor brightness of 3,000 nits. The inner display has a nano-texture finish that cuts down on glare and makes the crease down the middle less noticeable.

The body is built from grade-five titanium, with Ceramic Shield protecting the back and the tougher Ceramic Shield 2 on the front, which Apple rates as three-times more scratch-resistant than the previous generation. It’s rated IP68 for splash, water and dust resistance.

Rather than Face ID, Touch ID is built into the side button, and you can also unlock the Duo with your Apple Watch. The hinge alone is made up of more than 100 components, and there’s no physical SIM tray anywhere – so it’s eSIM-only, wherever you buy it.

It runs on the same A20 Pro chip as the 18 Pro line, on that same 2-nanometre process, with a 6-core CPU that Apple says is up to 20pc faster than the A19 Pro, a 7-core GPU that’s up to 40pc faster, and a new dual 16-core Neural Engine offering double the on-device AI compute of the previous generation.

To keep all that cool, the Duo pairs the chip with a custom vapour chamber, and it runs on a dual-battery set-up with one battery on each side, working together as a single pool. Apple claims up to 31 hours of video playback if you’re mostly using the inner display, up to 44 hours on the outer display, and up to 24 hours if you’re using both about equally.

It also charges quickly, reaching 50pc in around 20 minutes over a cable, or about 30 minutes wirelessly with MagSafe or Qi2.

On the camera, there’s a 48MP main sensor with an integrated optical-quality 2x telephoto built in, so there’s no separate telephoto lens to speak of. It can shoot at the full 48MP or default to 24MP, and it’s paired with a 48MP ultra-wide sensor, as used on the 18 Pro. A new camera sits beneath the inner display to handle FaceTime calls.

There are also a few software tricks that only make sense because of the fold. Smart Take automatically captures a photo the moment everyone in frame is posing, Duo Preview puts a live preview on the outer screen so whoever’s being photographed can check their own framing, and Duo FaceTime lets someone else join a call from the outer display.

On the software side, it runs iOS 27 – specifically, version 27.1 adapted for the Duo, with the interface rearranged to make sense of the fold and a new Split View mode that lets two apps sit side by side on an iPhone for the first time.

Apple playbook

“The foldable launch is straight out of Apple’s playbook – wait for the product to work out its kinks and for the market to offer glimpses of viability, then enter and shape the category,” said Forrester vice-president and principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.

“Remember the Apple Watch? The difference is that foldables still represent a minuscule share of the smartphone market.

“The test of Apple’s ambition will be whether it can expand that niche into a meaningful new segment. Otherwise, the foldable risks becoming a premium-priced ornament in the portfolio, imparting badge value but not meaningful growth. The difference is that a foldable plugs directly into Apple’s extraordinarily well-established iPhone ecosystem, giving it a considerably better shot at commercial success.”

The Duo comes in two colours, ‘star white’ and ‘night sky’, and starts at €2,369. It will be available for pre-order on 16 October in 70 countries and regions including Ireland, the UK, the US, France and Germany.

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