• QinetiQ testing of SuperDielectrics’ water-based zinc cells showed up to 13x longer high-power cycle life, 100C discharge in 36 seconds, and zero thermal runaway
• The company is pitching its solution to AI datacenters as a ‘shock absorber’ that can deal with power requirement spikes safely and reliably
• SuperDielectrics’ Faraday 3’s first commercial deployment is slated for early 2027 as it goes up against existing Lithium-ion battery-based energy storage as an alternative that can be deployed inside the data center

Cambridge-based advanced battery technology company SuperDielectrics recently published independent test results for its upcoming water-based Zinc battery, which could help cement its de facto presence in most projects that leverage renewable energy, whose output is often inconsistent.

The next-generation battery offers up to 13 times longer life cycle under high-power cycling, zero thermal runway, and charging and discharging gains that eclipse those of Lithium-ion-based batteries.

Along with iOS 27’s public beta, Apple has also released macOS 27 Golden Gate’s public beta build, so that early adopters can get their hands on the new features, including Siri AI, and provide timely feedback to help ensure a stable iOS launch in September. 

If you’re sold on all the new features but don’t want to put your faithful MacBook through developer beta duty, a public beta offers a much more refined experience. To install macOS 27’s public beta, follow the steps given below. 

So how do you actually install it?

• Head to beta.apple.com and enroll your Mac in the free public beta program; no developer account needed. 
• Once you’re signed up, head to System Settings > General > Software Update. 
• Next to Beta Updates, click the small “i” button. 
• A dropdown will appear in the top-right corner, and from there you select macOS 27 Golden Gate Public Beta. 
• Hit Done, and your Mac will start pulling down the update. 

You should know that developer betas have been fairly solid so far, but there have been some Safari memory hiccups and occasional reliability issues with beta builds in general. Back up your Mac first, and think twice about installing it on your primary machine. 

What’s actually new in Golden Gate?

Like iOS 27, Siri AI is the headline update here as well. It indexes your Messages, Mail, and other content so it can actually answer questions and take action instead of fumbling through web searches. 

Spotlight search, which got noticeably flaky on macOS Tahoe, feels far more dependable in this build. Apple also tweaked the Liquid Glass look and unified window corner radii so things stop looking inconsistent across apps. 

Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence both got smarter, and Safari now has an extension builder that works off plain-English prompts instead of code. Shortcuts got the same treatment. Expect a handful more betas before the final Golden Gate build ships alongside iOS 27 and the iPhone 18 Pro this September.

Security cameras frequently promise peace of mind yet deliver grainy clips, nonstop false alerts, or hidden fees that add up fast. The Tapo C530WS from TP-Link, priced at $55.99 (was $70), takes a simpler route and focuses on the basics done right. A 5-megapixel sensor records in 3K resolution. Details hold up well when you zoom during playback, whether checking a face at the front gate or reading a plate on a vehicle that pulled into the driveway. Daytime color stays natural and edges remain defined across the frame.

Night Vision uses a Starlight sensor, which picks up any available light when collecting color footage rather than immediately converting to black and white. The camera is capable of reaching relevant distances outside without shining a large spotlight that would alert anyone in the area. This strategy ensures that the scene remains recognized even in deeper darkness. This model covers a lot of ground because of the built-in mobility, which allows you to spin the view almost 360 degrees left and right and tilt it up and down quite a little. In the Tapo app, you may simply drag the view to a new location or establish a few fixed spots for easy jumps later. When motion is detected, the camera will smoothly follow it across the screen without pausing in mid-sentence.

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The motion detection component is operates entirely on the camera and identifies people, pets, as well as autos, but only sends notifications for specific occurrences. Unlike more simple motion sensors, which will fire off at the slightest movement, such as a leaf blowing in the wind or a shadow shifting, there is no additional cost to gain the whole set of capabilities.

Video is saved directly to a microSD card (up to 512GB) in the camera, allowing you to record for weeks (or more) at once, depending on how you set up the camera. If you only need to preserve specific clips of footage, the free Tapo app allows you to go back and watch them or simply watch what’s going on live on your phone. There is an optional cloud plan available if you want additional backup, but it is not required to get the camera running properly.

For most users, setting up the device is simple: scan the app code, connect to your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network, and attach the unit using the included accessories. It’ll function nicely on a wall or ceiling and has an IP66 classification, which means it can survive some dust and water ingress. A conventional adapter provides power, so make sure there is an outlet nearby or use a protected extension lead.

When it comes to installing it properly, the first thing to search for is a strong Wi-Fi connection. Some people use a simple extender / booster to solve the problem if their router is too far away from where they want the camera to be. Once configured, the app responds quickly to pan and tilt commands, and you can also link it to your Alexa or Google Assistant, allowing you to talk to it if desired.

Bring on the magenta and peach.

Presented by Kasm Technologies

Enterprise infrastructure teams have spent the better part of a decade pushing workloads into Kubernetes. Applications, APIs, batch jobs, data pipelines — if it runs in a container, it belongs in the cluster. The operational benefits are well-established: declarative configuration, horizontal scaling, self-healing, native integration with CI/CD pipelines and observability tooling. Kubernetes has become the default operating model for production workloads.

Except for desktops.

Secure desktop and application delivery — the kind that enterprises depend on for remote work, privileged access, and regulated-industry workflows — has remained stubbornly outside the Kubernetes model. Legacy virtual desktop infrastructure was built in a different era, for a different set of assumptions: pre-allocated VM pools, bespoke management planes, proprietary appliances, and operational tooling that has nothing to do with how modern platform teams work. The result is a split infrastructure reality: a modern, cloud-native application layer on one side, and a manually managed, operationally isolated desktop layer on the other.

That split is expensive. It means different tooling, different scaling behaviors, different observability approaches, and different operational runbooks. Platform engineers who are proficient in Kubernetes still have to context-switch into an entirely different mental model the moment a desktop infrastructure problem arises.

The more fundamental issue is that this split is unnecessary. Secure, containerized workspace delivery is a workload that Kubernetes is architecturally well-suited to run. Sessions are containers. Scaling is demand-driven. Configuration should be declarative. The only thing missing was a platform built to take advantage of that alignment.

Why the timing is right

The appetite for Kubernetes-native workspace delivery has grown significantly as organizations mature their container platform investments. Platform teams that have spent years standardizing on Helm, GitOps workflows, and Kubernetes-native observability are increasingly unwilling to make an exception for desktop infrastructure. The question has shifted from “can we run this on Kubernetes?” to “why isn’t this running on Kubernetes already?”

At the same time, the security case for containerized workspace delivery has become more urgent. Browser-delivered, containerized workspaces provide session isolation that VM-based desktops cannot match — each session is ephemeral, isolated at the container boundary, and terminates cleanly without persistent state. For organizations managing sensitive data, insider risk, or third-party access scenarios, this isolation model is a meaningful security control, not just a deployment convenience.

The convergence of these two trends — Kubernetes-native infrastructure expectations and containerized session security — creates a clear opportunity for platforms that can address both simultaneously.

What Kubernetes-native deployment looks like

A Kubernetes-native deployment uses Kubernetes as the control plane for workspace infrastructure — handling orchestration, scaling, and lifecycle management through the same declarative model used across the rest of the platform. Instead of relying on dedicated management appliances or pre-provisioned desktop pools, infrastructure is managed through the same CI/CD, GitOps, observability, and security workflows the platform team already operates. This gives platform teams a consistent operational model rather than maintaining a separate toolset for desktop infrastructure.

Kasm Workspaces, the browser-delivered workspace platform, is purpose-built to use Kubernetes as the control plane for workspace orchestration and delivery. Its deployment model is designed for real enterprise environments — not simplified demos — with production-grade Helm charts that follow Kubernetes conventions, tested upgrade paths between versions, and a standardized backend architecture validated across production deployments. An RDP Gateway component purpose-built for the Kubernetes topology enables Windows and Linux virtual machine access through the same platform.

Key capabilities include:

• Horizontal session scaling driven by actual demand, orchestrated by Kubernetes — no pre-warmed VM pools required.

• Declarative configuration through Helm values, enabling GitOps and CI/CD integration for workspace infrastructure.

• Namespace-level isolation and compatibility with existing RBAC policies, ingress controllers, and secrets management integrations.

• Metrics export for integration with Prometheus and existing observability stacks.

• Rolling builds by default, reducing maintenance windows and enabling more predictable version management.

Real-world applications

Regulated-industry remote access. A financial services organization running a Kubernetes-based application platform can deploy Kasm into the same cluster, using the same operational tooling, to deliver isolated browser and application sessions to analysts and advisors. Sessions are ephemeral, network egress is controlled, and the entire deployment is managed through the same GitOps pipeline as their application workloads.

Contractor and third-party access. Organizations that regularly onboard contractors or external vendors — with the associated privileged access risk — can provision Kasm sessions on Kubernetes that scale up during engagement periods and scale back during low-demand windows. No persistent access. No VPN extension to external parties. Containerized isolation at every session boundary.

AI/ML development environments. Teams building and running AI models need GPU-enabled development environments with security controls that general-purpose cloud desktops rarely provide. Deploying Kasm on Kubernetes with NVIDIA MiG Multi-Instance GPU support lets platform teams deliver fractional GPU resources into isolated workspace sessions — giving data scientists the compute they need without shared-infrastructure security exposure.

The operational shift

The practical implication of a Kubernetes-native workspace platform is that platform teams can stop treating workspace infrastructure as a special case. The same engineers who deploy applications can deploy the workspace platform. The same pipelines that manage application configuration can manage workspace configuration. The same dashboards that monitor application health can monitor workspace health.

That operational consolidation reduces overhead, improves consistency, and eliminates the context-switching cost that has made desktop infrastructure a persistent pain point for cloud-native organizations.

For organizations still running legacy VDI alongside modern cloud infrastructure, the question is no longer whether a Kubernetes-native alternative exists. It does. The question is when to make the transition.

Organizations interested in evaluating Kubernetes-native workspace delivery can explore the platform at kasm.com and try out community edition for yourself.

Daniel Ben-Chitrit is the Chief Product Officer at Kasm Technologies.

Sponsored articles are content produced by a company that is either paying for the post or has a business relationship with VentureBeat, and they’re always clearly marked. For more information, contact sales@venturebeat.com.

Facepalm: Popular collaboration platform Zimbra was recently updated to patch a potentially dangerous vulnerability in its Classic Web Client component. In theory, malicious actors could abuse the flaw to run script-based malware directly on users’ machines. Needless to say, customers are advised to install the update as soon as possible.

Zimbra owner Synacor has released a new version of its collaboration software, and users should install the update as soon as they can. Zimbra “Daffodil” 10.1.19 includes a fix for a stored cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that could be exploited to compromise customers’ machines through Zimbra’s Classic Web Client.

Cybercriminals could abuse the flaw by sending specially malformed email messages, Zimbra said. A vulnerable client would run the malicious code the moment the message is opened. While the company rates the deployment risk as “low,” the flaw could still prove dangerous for users’ session data, mailbox information, or account settings.

Cross-site scripting vulnerabilities are a common class of security issue routinely abused by resourceful attackers. An XSS flaw lets attackers inject client-side, malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users. A “stored” XSS bug like Zimbra’s is an especially dangerous variant, since the malicious script is permanently saved on the server rather than triggered on the fly.

Zimbra’s security guidance states that all customers using the Classic Web Client should update the component to the latest available version. Additional advice is given for those using custom SNMP mitigations. So far, the XSS flaw has not been assigned a CVE identifier.

At any rate, malicious actors have been trying to target Zimbra with XSS vulnerabilities for almost five years now.

In October 2025, yet another persistent XSS bug in the Classic Web Client (CVE-2025-27915) was allegedly exploited in zero-day attacks targeting Brazilian military personnel. Other XSS-based attacks targeted Zimbra’s platform in May 2025 and 2023.

Though it has existed in various forms for more than two decades, Zimbra has changed hands several times over the years. The company was purchased by Yahoo! in 2007, sold to VMware three years later, and finally acquired by Buffalo-based service company Synacor in 2015. Zimbra provides collaboration tools, email servers, and web clients in both open source and commercially supported editions. However, the latest open source versions of Zimbra products no longer include official, free binary builds.

Japan’s largest taxi operator, Nihon Kotsu, announced that its systems were compromised in a cyberattack, forcing the company to shut down part of its infrastructure.

The incident occurred over the weekend, early Saturday morning, and impacted operations, including the company’s taxi dispatch system, which remains offline as of today.

Nihon Kotsu is Japan’s largest taxi and chauffeur (hire) operator by group revenue, with annual revenue of roughly $1 billion (¥155 billion).

The company employs 18,228 people and operates a fleet of 8,558 taxis and more than two thousand chauffeur vehicles.

“We have confirmed that our internal systems were subjected to unauthorized external access (malware infection),” reads Nihon Kotsu’s statement (automated translation).

“Immediately after detecting the unauthorized access, we implemented emergency measures, including disconnecting systems to prevent further damage,” added the firm at another point.

As a result of this incident, car hire, web booking, reservation management, the telephone dispatch service, and some internal systems remain unavailable, the company said.

The company suggested that people seeking its car services should use the ‘GO’ taxi app instead, or just visit a nearby taxi stand to book a Nihon Kotsu vehicle.

In a separate announcement, the firm specifies that the “labor taxi” service booked by pregnant women close to giving birth is suspended in the areas of Tokyo, Musashino City, Mitaka City, Tachikawa, Yokohama, and Saitama.

The firm states that it has engaged external cybersecurity experts to help with the investigation and system recovery and is currently looking into the possibility of data having been leaked.

At this point in the investigation, no such data leak has been confirmed, but Nihon Kotsu is considering this possibility and has promised to provide updates through official announcements and personalized notices if new information emerges.

Meanwhile, customers of Nihon Kotsu are advised not to open attachments received via suspicious communications claiming to originate from the company, and to avoid clicking any links in those messages.

At the time of writing, no ransomware groups or extortion gangs have assumed responsibility for the attack.

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Prompt injections, the malicious commands attackers embed into content to entice large language models to follow them, have been attackers’ go-to tool for turning AI platforms against their users. A well-phrased command sneaked into an email or calendar invitation is often all it takes to cause the LLM to exfiltrate sensitive data or follow other harmful actions.

Now, defenders are embracing the prompt injection, too.

A strong, sharp effect

Researchers from Tracebit on Monday said they found that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, cryptographic keys, and other secrets stored on Amazon Web Services was often all that was needed to shut down attacks from AI hacking agents. The prompts direct the attacking LLM to perform an action forbidden by its guardrails, the safety barriers AI developers erect to prevent it from taking harmful actions. The LLM responds by shutting down.

Examples are a prompt that orders the LLM to provide steps for developing inhalable Anthrax spores, or, in the case of LLMs from Chinese developers, make references to the iconic Tank Man from the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Once the LLM encounters these forbidden commands, it no longer follows its existing commands. The researchers have named the technique context bombing.

“Ultimately we’re triggering a refusal mechanism in the context,” Andy Smith, co-founder and CEO of Tracebit, said when explaining the name choice. “What we’re trying to capture is the fact that this does have a strong, sharp effect and one that can be difficult for the agents to come back from. Once they get that into their context they are going to keep refusing.”

Tracebit says initial testing suggests context bombing has great potential. They tested Opus 4.8, Gemini 3.1 Pro, GLM 5.2, DeepSeek 4 Pro, and Kimi 2.6 by giving them instructions to perform routine developer tasks that led the models to enumerate resources and stumble onto the planted strings. They ran the models inside a simulated AWS environment.

“Across five leading models and 152 attack runs, planting one of these strings in a decoy secret cut the rate at which agents seized full account admin from 57% to 5%, and complete compromise (where they also left themselves a persistent foothold) from 36% to 1%,” Monday’s post reported. “The most capable agent in our tests, Opus 4.8, went from achieving admin access in 93% of runs to failing every single time when confronted with a context bomb.”