OPPO has started rolling out its June 2026 ColorOS 16 update, bringing a handful of new features to make everyday smartphone use a little more convenient. The update introduces a new Sports Widget for football fans, Bluetooth audio sharing, improved security alerts, and several quality-of-life additions across the system. The rollout is scheduled between June 1 and June 30 for eligible OPPO smartphones, such as the Find X9.

Live Sports Updates and Shared Audio

One of the biggest additions in this release is the new Sports Widget. Football fans can now follow live scores, match schedules, and tournament updates directly from their home screen without opening a dedicated app. ColorOS 16 also uses AI Suggestions to surface upcoming matches on the Home Screen and Shelf, making it easier to keep tabs on your favorite teams throughout the day.

Another useful addition is Audio Sharing, which allows a single OPPO phone to stream audio to two pairs of Bluetooth earphones simultaneously. Whether you’re watching a movie with a friend or listening to music together, both users can enjoy the same audio without relying on a speaker or wired splitter.

Security and Everyday Features Get Some Attention Too

The June update also introduces Accessibility Security Alerts. If an app from an unknown source receives Accessibility Service permissions, a permission commonly abused by malicious apps, ColorOS will immediately notify the user. This makes it easier to review or revoke suspicious permissions before they become a security risk.

OPPO has also refreshed the Weather app with Moon Rise and Moon Set timings, along with live Moon Phase information. While these additions may not appeal to everyone, they can be useful for outdoor enthusiasts, photographers, and anyone planning activities around natural lighting conditions.

Outdoor Mode has also received a small but practical upgrade. Users can now pin up to four frequently used apps for quicker access, while navigation and location awareness have also been improved for people who spend a lot of time outdoors.

Gaming and Personalization Improvements

Beyond the headline features, OPPO has added a few smaller quality-of-life improvements across the system. Users can now record gameplay more easily, while a new App Suggestions feature in the app drawer recommends frequently used apps based on usage patterns. The idea is to reduce the time spent searching for apps and make everyday navigation feel a little more intuitive.

OPPO says the June ColorOS 16 update will continue rolling out to eligible devices throughout the month.

I’ve been scouting for Prime Day deals, but this one stopped me in my tracks. Currys is running an excellent summer sale on back-to-school and business laptops, but Amazon has absolutely crushed them on the price of the Asus Zenbook A14 for £500 (was £600) for Prime Day.

• Shop Amazon’s Prime Day deals

This 14-inch OLED laptop features a Snapdragon X X1-26-100 processor that’s engineered for day-to-day work and study tasks, alongside 16GB LPDDR5X memory, and a well-sized 1TB SSD. For general office and school tasks, that’s pitch-perfect for the price.

Over at Currys, however, the exact same model is priced at £599 (was £999) for the Snapdragon-powered machine with 16GB RAM and – wait for it – 512GB SSD. So, you’re getting twice as much SSD storage from Amazon at an even cheaper price. I wouldn’t even look twice at Currys for this specific model while this Prime Day deal is live.

For more savings, I’m live-tracking all the best Prime Day home office deals.

That’s not to say the Currys summer sale is bad. In fact, having charted all the deals, I found it a treasure trove of well-priced laptops for work and study. You can see my article on the top 4 laptop deals at Currys here.

But considering the massive price difference, and the improved SSD size, I’d go for the Amazon deal all-day long (or while it lasts, which might not be long as Prime Day ends tomorrow).

We were impressed with the A14 when we reviewed this laptop. Scoring it 4 stars and awarding it a TechRadar Recommends badge, we found this ultra-lightweight MacBook Air-style Windows laptop possessed “brilliant design, capable all-round performance, and an impressive battery life.”

As a budget-tier laptop, it’s got it faults, but we loved the “fabulously thin and light” design and performance are impressive. Perfect, then, for campus and the commute.

Amazon Prime Day 2026 is in full swing, and below you’ll find everything you need to know about the event, including important dates and our constantly updated live blog.

With Amazon’s Spring Deal Days being firmly in the rear-view mirror, the next major event on the consumer calendar is Amazon’s most famous sale of all: Prime Day.

Prime Day is Amazon’s annual mega-sale that brings big-name brands down to tempting prices, exclusively for Amazon Prime subscribers.

It’s the best chance before Black Friday to bag a bargain on the latest tech, so if you’re in the mood for a bit of summertime retail therapy, here’s everything you need to know about Prime Day 2026.

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Audio CDs were the ubiquitous audio format of the 1990s. Lesser known were the extensions to the format that packaged all kinds of interesting additional data into a musical release. Now, a new record from [Aizysse Baga] has brought back some of the most quirky and obscure CD features that time and industry long forgot.

[Aizysse Baga] worked with [Adelaide] on the Divacore record, which was to be released on a mini-CD. The original plan was to include additional CD+G data, featuring artwork to go with the music. CD+G, or CD+Graphics, was often used to display synchronized lyrics for karaoke releases, and stored data in formerly-unused subcodes next to the track start, track number, and running time data. This format allowed storing a slideshow of images with a resolution of 288 x 192 with a 16 color palette.

The duo got handy with art and some smart dithering to get great 16-bit artwork packed in to the audio CD release, with the aid of a custom Python encoder. CD-TEXT metadata was thrown in for good measure. Then, the existence of the more advanced CD+EG became apparent. This was a 256-color extension to the CD+G format that was backwards compatible to boot. It was a format that was barely ever implemented on any commercial releases, and very little hardware could even display it. Naturally, Divacore had to have it. Much work was done to understand the Red Book documentation on the standard and figure out how to implement even higher quality artwork for the record.

After so much work to understand and implement the CD+G and CD+EG data, the question was whether it would survive the CD reproduction process for the final release. Thankfully, the final discs came out perfectly, and the full 256-color CD+EG artwork can be seen in all its glory if you happen to play Divacore on a Sega Saturn or a super-obscure Victor VS-G2 or VS-G3. Throw it in a less-sophisticated karaoke machine or something like an Amiga CD32, and you’ll still get to see the 16-color versions for your trouble.

We love to see ancient formats brought back to life, particularly those that never got their time in the sun. If you’re working hard to resurrect something the mainstream media world has forgotten, let us know on the tipsline.

Three years after the 2023 strikes raised alarms about AI replacing entertainment workers, some of those same workers are now training the technology that worries them. As film and TV jobs grow harder to find, writers, editors, and executives across Hollywood are quietly taking gig work just to pay the bills. It’s called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), and it involves fine-tuning AI models.

Hollywood workers explain why they’re training AI models

According to The Hollywood Reporter, editor Gabe Sena turned to AI training after a stretch of unemployment, saying he wanted to understand the technology rather than simply fear it. Former HBO development executive Steven Woolworth had a similar motivation, calling the work a way to stay informed rather than bury his head in the sand while job hunting proved fruitless for over a year.

Both found gigs through a recruiting platform called Mercor, which pairs domain experts with AI companies needing human feedback. This trend lines up with a broader industry pattern, with Amazon also turning to AI to cut film and TV production costs through its own dedicated studio.

What the work actually looks like once you’re in it

Screenwriter Ruth Fowler described a far rougher experience in her own essay for Wired, detailing eight months and twenty contracts across five different platforms. The pay ranges from $16/hour for entry-level annotation work up to $150/hour for specialized writing tasks. She described abrupt project cancellations, shifting pay rates, and young, inexperienced managers overseeing workers decades into their careers.

A growing AI industry built on real legal and ethical tension

RLHF work has expanded rapidly regardless, with AI-related job postings within the arts nearly doubling between 2025 and 2026, even as lawsuits pile up alleging worker misclassification and unstable scheduling across the industry. Even Martin Scorsese has officially joined the AI camp, a sign of how far the acceptance of these tools has spread across the industry.

Critics of generative AI in Hollywood, like Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, say they understand why struggling workers take these gigs despite the contradictions involved. For many in Hollywood right now, training the machine has become less about curiosity and more about simply making rent.

The designation represents a significant step forward in improving the handling and escalation of reports relating to illegal online content, particularly in relation to children.

Coimisiún na Meán, under the European Union’s Digital Services Act, has declared the Irish Internet Hotline (IIH) a Trusted Flagger. This recognises IIH’s expertise and track record in the tracking and reporting of illegal content, such as intimate image abuse, financial scams, racism and child sexual abuse material (csam). 

Established in 1999 the IHH is Ireland’s national reporting centre, through which members of the public can securely and anonymously report suspected illegal or harmful content. The organisation is a member of the INHOPE network, the Irish Safer Internet Centre and works closely with An Garda Síochána, as well as international partners. 

In order to qualify for Trusted Flagger status, organisations must prove that they are independent from online platform providers, show significant subject-matter expertise and indicate a history of the consistent recording of accurate, diligent and objective reporting.

As a Trusted Flagger, notices submitted by the IHH will be prioritised and processed without undue delay, the group will be supported in the faster assessment and removal of illegal content, there will be strengthened cooperation between IIH, online platforms, regulators and other stakeholders and additional support for the sharing of insights and best practices on emerging online threats and systemic risks

Commenting on the announcement, Mick Moran, the CEO of Irish Internet Hotline said, “We’re delighted to have been granted Trusted Flagger status by Coimisiún na Meán. The designation reflects the expertise and experience our team has developed in identifying and reporting illegal content within our areas of competency. 

“We’re proud of the work we do and the standards we apply to it. Trusted Flagger status formalises an approach we’ve already been taking for nearly three decades and strengthens our ability to ensure that high-quality reports are prioritised and acted on appropriately. 

“We welcome the recognition of Irish Internet Hotline as a knowledge and skills-based expert in this area and look forward to partnership with Coimisiún na Meán in our shared mission to make the internet safer for all users, especially children.”

In early May Coimisiún na Meán also opened dual investigations into Meta to assess issues related to how its recommender systems promote content on Facebook and Instagram and whether it is in breach of the EU Digital Services Act. The watchdog announced that it is investigating concerns that Meta is preventing users from actively selecting the content that appears in their Instagram and Facebook feeds. 

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A malicious Microsoft Edge extension dubbed ‘Edgecution’ has been used in a ransomware attack to escape the browser sandbox and deploy a Python-based backdoor.

Access to the local system is obtained by leveraging the Chrome Native Messaging protocol that allows browser extensions to interact with native desktop applications, such as a password manager communicating with the extension to fill in web forms.

This allows the browser to launch the native application as a separate process and communicates with it over standard input/output data streams.

An Edgecution compromise begins with the attacker posing as IT support personnel on Microsoft Teams and directing employees to a fraudulent page under the pretense of installing a spam filter update.

Researchers at cloud security company Zscaler believe that Edgecution is deployed by an initial access broker (IAB) connected to the Payouts Kings ransomware operation.

In recent attacks using tactics previously associated with the IAB, the threat actor directed victims to a fake Microsoft “Outlook Updates Management Console” presenting download buttons for update packs or software verification.

However, the buttons downloaded malicious components, copied scripts to the clipboard, or launched forms requesting Microsoft 365 and Outlook passwords.

“These buttons offer the threat actor three different options (via an AutoHotKey script, Windows batch script, and PowerShell script) to deploy the Edgecution malware,” explains Zscaler.

“When the AutoHotKey script or clipboard content is executed, the commands will configure the environment, fix the encrypted ZIP file headers, extract relevant files, and create a scheduled task that executes Microsoft Edge.”

The malware components are fetched from the fake Microsoft update site in a ZIP archive fetched with malformed headers to prevent security products from recognizing it as a valid archive.

According to the researchers, the ZIP file contains an embedded Python version 3.13.3 and two directories named extension and native, providing a hint about the technique used in the attack.

The first malware component is the malicious Microsoft Edge extension disguised as an Edge Monitoring Agent. It connects to the attacker’s command-and-control (C2) endpoint, receives instructions for execution, and sends the results back to the operator.

The Edgecution malware runs in a headless Edge browser, making it invisible to the user, and uses Chrome’s Native Messaging protocol to talk to a local application.

The extension is limited to the browser’s sandbox, but the attacker overcomes this limitation through a second malware component, a Python-based backdoor that serves as the host-level executor. 

This component receives commands that are relayed from the malicious extension, and can potentially request the following jobs:

• Execute shell commands
• Run PowerShell
• Run arbitrary Python code
• Write files on the host
• Enumerate running processes
• Gather system information

The role of the scripts is to provide a way for the extension to launch the Python backdoor. This is achieved by creating in the native directory a batch file the extension can invoke.

Additionally, they create the required Chrome native messaging manifest that describes how the browser can connect to the native app.

Zscaler’s technical analyis notes that both malware components have some unused commands that could be activated in future versions.

The researchers warn that the method used by Edgecution “illustrates the evolving sophistication” of threat actors tied to ransomware operations, and allows them to establish persistence on compromised hosts.

They recommend that organizations strengthen monitoring of browser extensions and enforce strict controls over native messaging host configurations to reduce the risk of compromise.

ZScaler’s report provides a list of indicators of compromise (IoCs) that include command and control servers used by Edgecution, hashes for the malicious extension, and the Python backdoor.

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

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