Landmark Admin, a third-party administrator (TPA) specializing in administrative support services for life insurance and annuity companies, has confirmed suffering a serious ransomware attack recently.
The company revealed the news in a filing with the Maine Office of the Attorney General, in which it said that people’s data was stolen in an attack which took place in mid-May 2024.
Following the breach, Landmark Admin shut down its IT systems and remote access to its network to contain the effects, and brought in third-party security experts, who found the personal information of 806,519 people had been stolen.
Identity theft
“The forensic investigation determined that data was encrypted and exfiltrated from Landmark’s system,” the company said. “However, there was insufficient evidence available to identify which files had been compromised. The unauthorized activity occurred between May 13, 2024, and June 17, 2024.”
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When the investigation concluded, the company understood that the information grabbed by the hackers included first name/initial and last name; address; Social Security number; tax identification number; driver’s license number/state-issued identification card; passport number; financial account number; medical information; date of birth; health insurance policy number; and life and annuity policy information.
“Please note that the information above varies for each potentially impacted individual. Affected individuals will be notified by mail of information that was impacted,” Landmark said.
So far, no threat actors assumed responsibility for the attack, so we don’t know if there were any ransom demands.
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Since the information stolen is highly sensitive, users are advised to be extra vigilant for potential phishing attacks, social engineering, or possible wire fraud. Landmark is offering credit monitoring and identity theft protection services through IDX, which include 12 months of credit and CyberScan monitoring, a $1,000,000 insurance reimbursement policy, and fully managed id theft recovery services.
Apple has long been rumored to be working on noninvasive blood glucose monitoring. Now, a Bloomberg report says the company tested an app that helps people with prediabetes better manage their condition.
Citing anonymous Apple sources, Bloomberg notes the app required Apple employees to validate they were prediabetic via a blood test. Employees then monitored their blood sugar using “various devices available on the market” and logged changes related to what food they were eating.
Prediabetes is a metabolic condition when blood sugar levels are higher than normal, and increases a person’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. And while there is no cure for diabetes, prediabetes can be reversed through diet and exercise interventions. The idea for an app like this would be to show people how different choices can impact blood sugar levels. For example, a carb-heavy meal might spike blood sugar, but pairing the same meal with protein can blunt the spike.
The report notes that the app was intended to investigate what tools Apple could develop using blood sugar data. However, Bloomberg also says that Apple has since paused work on the app to focus on other health features. Even so, it’s possible that Apple will use its findings in future health tech offerings.
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Dexcom’s Stelo OTC CGM is geared toward prediabetics and Type 2 diabetics who don’t use insulin.Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
On a larger scale, metabolic health tracking is a burgeoning wearable trend. Earlier this year, Dexcom and Abbott both released over-the-counter CGMs that were aimed at prediabetic, non-diabetics, and Type 2 diabetics who don’t use insulin. There are also continuous glucose monitor (CGM) startups, like Nutrisense and Levels, that use CGM data to help people lose weight, fuel for endurance sports, or learn about how certain foods impact their blood sugar levels.
Given all that, it’s not surprising to hear Apple is interested in exploring this area. For starters, it’s largely shied away from native food logging while also increasing third-party CGM integrations. Apple itself has reportedly spent roughly 15 years tinkering on how to noninvasively monitor blood glucose, though that project is still likely years away from completion.
Can you get excited about a microchip? If you’ve never chosen your phone based on the chip inside, that may be worth considering when Snapdragon 8 Elite phones start to arrive. Qualcomm is doing for the next generation of smartphones what it recently did for Windows laptops, and phones that realize its vision will be different from anything we’ve seen before.
Last year, Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon X Elite chipset, a powerful processor that uses the sort of low-power cores normally found in smartphones. The obvious benefit is incredible battery life, since mobile processors are made to sip juice, not gulp. That benefit is now coming to smartphones, and I’m expecting great battery life gains in the next generation. All-day battery life is going to be the rule, not a rarity.
With the Snapdragon X Elite, Qualcomm created an incredibly powerful new chipset that includes its Oryon processing core. The X Elite is truly supercharged. The result was the fastest Windows laptops you could buy, and the first Windows laptops in years that could outperform a premium MacBook Pro.
This year, Qualcomm flew TechRadar to Maui for its Snapdragon Summit, and to check out the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, which brings that Oryon core to smartphones. After all the speeches and bluster, I got to actually put the chips to work. Qualcomm provided a reference sample phone for benchmark comparisons – and the results completely blew me away.
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I’m not usually a benchmark guy, but… wow!
I don’t let benchmark scores influence my reviews – I rely on my real-world testing and experience – but benchmarks can be handy for quick comparison. Take these results with a dash of salt, but the difference between the Snapdragon 8 Elite and all of the other phones I’ve tested is dramatic.
I tested the new Snapdragon 8 Elite alongside a Galaxy S24 Ultra, an iPhone 16 Pro, and even a Google Pixel 9 Pro (for laughs, the Pixel is terrible at benchmarks). Of course the new Snapdragon beat the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the Galaxy, but could it beat the iPhone? The results weren’t even close.
Running the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test, the iPhone scored 4,086 while the Snapdragon turned in a whopping 7,019. On the GFX Manhattan 3.1 test, the iPhone drew 3,647 frames, while the Snapdragon produced 7,452 frames, more than twice as many. Again, these are only benchmarks, but those differences are stark.
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What’s much more interesting is how the Snapdragon 8 Elite compares to laptop chips. Compared to an Intel Core Ultra 7, the Snapdragon 8 Elite beat Intel’s laptop chip in Geekbench on single-core performance, and came very close on multi-core testing.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite beat a laptop chip – what does mean for the future of phones?
Qualcomm may have created a mobile chipset that performs as well as a PC. I can’t be sure until I’ve used a final, production handset with a Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, like the Asus ROG Phone 9; but for the first time ever, we may see comparable power from the best phones and best laptops.
App developers are bringing mobile apps closer in function to their desktop counterparts, but we may soon get identical versions of Adobe Lightroom or Microsoft Excel across Android and Windows, not to mention all the games we could finally play on a phone.
I’m very excited about what this means for a concept like Samsung’s DeX. With DeX, I plug my phone into a monitor and keyboard and I can use it like a desktop. If the next Galaxy S25 Ultra has a Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, DeX won’t just be a convenient way to write long emails and play mobile games on a big screen. With real PC power, my phone could replace the Surface Go laptop I use for work.
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With great power comes a great big price tag
The problem is that power is expensive. Qualcomm is driving hard to beat the competition with this latest chip, both in terms of processing performance as well as power management. Manufacturing the Snapdragon 8 Elite will be more expensive than producing previous chips, and rumors suggest it will cost a lot more than the last generation, for the phone makers that buy it.
If it costs Samsung or OnePlus $40 (US estimate) more per chip, I would expect that equates to a $100 / £100 / AU$200 price increase for the phone. The prices of many of the best Android phones went up this year, and that trend is likely to continue.
Would I pay $1,400 / £1,350 / AU$2,400 for a Galaxy S25 Ultra? Maybe, if the Ultra truly can replace a laptop computer.
I’m not sure if a phone/laptop hybrid would appeal to most folks, but I can imagine businesses deciding to buy one device instead of supplying employees with a phone and a laptop. If we see some good accessories that make it easy to use Snapdragon 8 Elite phones as a PC replacement, I think we’ll see phone makers selling devices with that purpose front and center.
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Everything about your smartphone is going to improve when you have a chip this fast inside, from browsing the web to playing games to getting things done. Your network connection will seem faster, because the phone will be able to process the data more quickly and load pages much faster than before.
Honestly, we don’t even know what the future will hold when phones are this powerful, because our imagination has limited this power to big, heavy machines with gigantic batteries and a keyboard attached. I’m hoping to see entirely new categories of games, and new app concepts that will make yesterday’s phone seem primitive. I’ll also be happy if I can rely on my next phone to last all day, like my laptop.
Microsoft’s chief executive Satya Nadella earned $79.1m (£61m) last year, a rise of 63% compared to his compensation the year before.
That was despite a request from Mr Nadella to reduce one element of his pay package because of cybersecurity flaws at the tech giant – which resulted in him getting $5m less than he otherwise would have.
In common with many tech firms, Microsoft has cut thousands of jobs this year, including many in its gaming division.
But in a proxy statement filed with the US financial regulator, the board said the company’s revenue grew by 16% in the year to 30 June 2024.
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“Mr. Nadella agreed that the Company’s performance was extremely strong,” Microsoft’s compensation committee wrote in a letter to shareholders.
It added he asked them “to consider departing from the established performance metrics and reduce his cash incentive to reflect his personal accountability” over a number of cyber attacks.
One such attack was reported in July 2023 by Microsoft, where hackers gained access to the email accounts of around 25 organisations, including government agencies.
Microsoft said the attack originated in China, though the Chinese embassy in London called this “disinformation”.
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The fiscal period runs up to 30 June 2024 – just weeks before the massive internet outage which affected Microsoft Windows PCs, causing chaos around the world.
While that was not a cyber attack, later in July Microsoft apologised for another outage which was caused by a cyber attack.
The compensation committee said it reduced Mr Nadella’s cash pay by more than half, to $5.2m.
That represents less than 7% of his total pay.
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The bulk of his pay, $71.2m, was made up of stock options.
High Pay Centre director Luke Hildyard said “superficially” the earnings made sense given Microsoft’s strong financial performance.
“However, we might also ask whether the extra $79 million on top of $49 million last year for someone who is already worth hundreds of millions, with more money than they could spent over multiple lifetimes of absolute luxury, is really necessary as a reward of incentive,” he told the BBC.
“None of Microsoft’s success would be possible without workers, customers and wider society so perhaps the proceeds of that success should be share a little more evenly,” he added.
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Elsewhere in big tech, Apple boss Tim Cook earned $63.2m in 2023, while the chief executive of the world’s most valuable company Nvidia, Jensen Huang, was paid $34.2m in the 2024 fiscal year.
But none of them come close to Tesla boss Elon Musk, whose pay packet could be worth up to $56bn.
Eighty days since they took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida onboard Boeing’s Starliner mission, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore will have to remain on the International Space Station (ISS) till February 2025. Their return journey to Earth ran into trouble because of issues plaguing the Boeing Starliner spacecraft.
With the Starliner suffering setbacks with helium leaks and thrusters, NASA on Saturday deemed it was too risky to bring the two astronauts back in the capsule. Instead, the space agency decided to turn to Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s workhorse Crew Dragon spacecraft.
NASA administrator Bill Nelson said NASA considered its extensive experience with spaceflight — both successful and unsuccessful — when they decided to opt for SpaceX. The agency also held a poll of its representatives from across its departments and oversight and development centres. He added that NASA lost two space shuttles “as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward.”
“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and even at its most routine. And a test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine,” he said.
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The starliner will fly home empty in early September.
SpaceX, which has been conducting astronauts to the ISS since 2020, has a routine mission scheduled in September, called Crew-9. This will now have to be reconfigured to carry Williams and Wilmore. It will have to scrap the initial plan to send a four-person crew and leave two seats for the duo. New Dragon spacesuits for the astronauts, along with other necessary supplies, will be brought to the station in the coming months. SpaceX will work with NASA to decide which astronauts will not fly to the ISS on Crew-9.
It was during 2020 that SpaceX’s Crew Dragon completed its first crewed test flight, thereby earning certification from NASA. The successful flights of SpaceX’s workhorse.
Over the last four years, it has carried a dozen crews to and from the ISS.
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SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell has shared that her company is ready to work with NASA to bring back astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
If you’re going to university or school, then you’ll probably want to aim for some solid budget laptops that are also pretty portable. Luckily, there are a lot of great options out there, and while you could absolutely aim for some of the best laptops on the market, you’re better off going for something that fits your needs and your budget. For example, there are a lot of great Chromebook deals you can take advantage of that are a lot cheaper than Windows laptops, although if you do need Windows, then there are a lot of great laptop deals for that, too.
The HP Laptop 14 is a popular choice among students because of its entry level price point. It’s specs aren’t going to blow anyone away, but they’re good value for the price and are plenty to get the job done. This build of the HP Laptop 14 has 4GB of RAM and a quad-core Intel Celeron processor. It does check in with just 128GB of storage space — this may not be enough for some users, but if you aren’t planning on loading your laptop up with media this is one that will accompany you well around campus.
The ASUS Vivobook 14-inch is a great study companion due to quirks that make it perfect for late-night usage. Like other ASUS laptops (just one reason ASUS is featured among the best budget laptops) it sports a quiet keyboard with slender-pressing keys. And, in this case, they’re also backlit, meaning you can find the right keys easily even in the dark of night. Its 180-degree hinge, when fully opened, means the ASUS Vivobook can lie flat, allowing for multiple comfortable positions for in-bed studying. The ASUS Vivobook 16-inch features 8GB of RAM, 126GB of SSD storage, and an Intel Core i3-1215U processor.
Fitting in as one of the best Chromebooks for students, the IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook runs on 8GB of memory and an Intel i3 processor. The 14-inch FHD screen has a 100% sRGB color gamut and sides of the keyboard contain speakers, making it a serviceable video lecture companion. The IdeaPad Slim 3’s WiFi 6 allows for quick downloads and a solid internet connection. This, combined with the laptop’s 13-hour battery life, solidify it as the perfect laptop to throw in your bag and take notes with at class. You can still watch (purely educational, of course) YouTube videos, but the machine isn’t designed to be overly distracting.
When we look at 15 inch laptops we shouldn’t ignore the IdeaPad Slim 3, which comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 7530U processor and Integrated AMD Radeon Graphics. Behind its 1080p, anti-glare screen is the 8GB of memory and a 512GB SSD storage drive. What makes the IdeaPad Slim 3 special is its tough exterior, made for withstanding harsh drops. This, along with its slim build, make it perfect to throw in the backpack and tug along with you wherever you go. Take even 15 minutes between classes for a charge session and you’ll get two full hours of usage out of your IdeaPad Slim 3, it is a truly versatile machine that is ready to go when you are.
If you’re willing to spend a little bit more, the HP Pavilion Laptop 15t really starts to ramp up the stats. The 8GB of RAM can be especially useful if you need to use advanced creative software, for example, and competes with the very best business laptops. Of course, the Intel Core i3-1315U processor won’t hurt either. Store you projects and PowerPoints locally on the 128GB SSD contained within, as you don’t want poor reception in the depths of the philosophy building keeping you from getting your points across. Overall, this is one of the best student laptop deals for those that need a little extra power but aren’t ready to break the bank on luxuries like an ultra-advanced display (the HP Pavilion Laptop 14t is 1080p).
When we think of the best Lenovo laptops, one line always comes to mind: ThinkPad. They have a reputation for high durability and good keyboards. While we’ve warned in the past that the latest laptop model isn’t always the best, there is something to be said about the ThinkPad E16 Gen 1 being a new arrival to the Lenovo store. It’s got the latest features that you’ll want for the long term, in abundance. For example its got both USB-C ports and WiFi 6, which are becoming increasingly useful. Furthermore, the ThinkPad E16 has a 16-inch 1920 x 1200p screen, 1 TB of storage, and a whopping 24 GB memory.
Consistently one of the best laptops around, the Dell XPS 14 is a dream in almost every way. The thinnest and lightest 14-inch XPS laptop yet, it’s powerful too. It has a Ultra 7 Processor 155H processor, 16GB of memory, and 512GB of SSD storage. Its 14.5-inch full HD+ display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution is a delight to look at with 500 nits of brightness ensuring it can handle all lighting situations too. An impressive battery life of up to 12 hours means it’ll handle the busiest days of classes while you can enjoy streaming your favorite shows in style later in the day thanks to the great display and bigger internal speakers than previous models.
Featured among our best HP laptop deals as well, the HP ENVY Laptop 17t is praised for its photo connectivity features. By using HP Palette, you can search through the images of your college memories with photo recognition software. (Yes, the guy you went to chemistry with was also the awful karaoke singer last night.) The HP ENVY Laptop 17t also has quick file sharing between connected devices. Another thing to note about this laptop is how bit it is. It has a 17.3-inch, 1080p screen, so be sure to check out our favorite 17-inch laptop bags if you pick up this offering, as your current one might not be able to handle it. And that big size won’t go to waste at all, as it will not only help you see your pictures better, but also see yourself better from its 5MP built-in webcam. The HP ENVY Laptop 17t uses an Intel Core i7 processor, gets 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.
Right now Amazon has an incredible deal on the Razer Universal Quick Charge stand for Xbox controllers that saves you quite a bit of money on the accessory. This charging stand will fit one controller and it normally retails for $40 to $50 depending on the style you pick. For instance, some styles like the Electric Volt are $40 at full price while the Forza Horizon 5 model is $50 at full price.
However, Amazon is knocking the price down on many of the available options to $20. So depending on the color or style you choose, you’re saving either 50% or 60%. This is easily the lowest price we’ve tracked for this accessory at any point and if you need an easy way to keep your wireless controller charged, this is a deal you don’t want to miss.
Now it is probably obvious but it needs to be said for clarification, this deal is only for Razer’s quick charge stand and it does not come with an Xbox wireless controller. The stand does come with the necessary USB cable to plug it into a power source though. You can sit your controller on the stand at any point and charge your wireless controller and it should be charged up in under a few hours.
The stand also serves as a nice place to store the controller when you’re not playing, which also looks nice. So it keeps things organized in your setup. In terms of the available colors/styles for this deal, Amazon is offering the $20 price on the Deep Pink, Electric Volt, Forza Horizon 5, Mineral Camo, Robot White, and Velocity Green variants.
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