• Total War: Warhammer 40,000 battle product owner Dave Petry says it was important to implement player customization in the game
• He says it was a “big deal” to bring those customization options from the hobby forward to the game
• Petry adds that it was “awesome” to bring in the “core” features from the hobby

Total War: Warhammer 40,000 offers plenty of player customization options, which Creative Assembly has now revealed was an essential feature it wanted in the game from the start.

In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at Gamescom, battle product owner Dave Petry, alongside lead designer Joy Dey, said player customization in all aspects was always a “must-have,” as the studio wanted to simulate the same experience for fans of the tabletop Warhammer game and beloved hobby.

A black Volkswagen Jetta rolled through an Express Lane in Solano County with a blank bumper where a rear plate should have been. A California Highway Patrol cruiser in the next lane caught that empty space on dashcam, then saw the same car moments later with a full, readable California plate sitting in place. That change was the whole stop.

Officers stopped a Jetta, and there was just one driver inside. After speaking with the motorist, CHP Solano learned that the strange hardware on the bumper was intended to avoid paying Express Lane costs and Bay Area bridge tolls. The office later posted the encounter with a short line that has already traveled farther than the car did that day. “Now you see it, now you don’t.”

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On body camera footage, that hardware appears to be quite typical. An officer picked up a small remote that functions similarly to a key fob, hit a button, and a black shield swooped over the plate, erasing the numbers. With another squeeze, the cover fell back out, revealing a standard licence plate. In the video coverage, that panel is described as a sliding cover or a raised shield, which is basically the same type of motorized frame you can buy online as plate hiders, flippers, and curtains, and a driver can hide the tag on the way up to a bridge, then revert it before the cameras get a clear look.

Tolls in that section of the state do not require a person at a booth to check your plate because Express Lanes and Bay Area bridges combine FasTrak readers with overhead cameras. If the transponder does not respond, the camera captures a photo of the rear plate, and the agency sends the bill to the owner. Cover the plate for a few seconds, and the snapshot comes back empty. Pay by plate only works if you are prepared to display your plate, which is why there is a removable cover like this.

California has previously excluded the concept from the Vehicle Code. Section 5201.1 states that you are not permitted to operate a vehicle with a removable frame, flipper, or any other device designed to conceal a license plate from view or electronic readers. The base fine is $250, before the state and county add extra costs and take it from there. Section 5201 still requires plates to be properly attached, visible, and readable at all times. If you don’t pay your tolls, you’re also breaking another law, 23302(a)(1), which will result in civil penalties and a DMV hold, prohibiting you from renewing your registration. The same chapter was tightened in 2025 and 2026, including any goods that seek to peel or paint over a plate’s reflective coating, preventing cameras from locking on it.
[Source]

Scriptocalypse: Microsoft announced the deprecation of the VBScript environment a few years ago, asking companies and power users to switch to modern scripting systems. Now, the company is warning organizations that depend on VBScript that Windows activation might even become impossible after the language is gone.

Microsoft is asking organizations that rely on the Slmgr.vbs tool to switch to PowerShell, as the old script will soon stop working along with the rest of the VBScript language. Companies that use the script to manage Windows activation should act soon, as Microsoft is likely to accelerate VBScript deprecation in future Windows upgrades.

As explained in Microsoft’s own documentation, Slmgr.vbs is a Visual Basic Script included in Windows to manage OS activation from the command line. The script can install and change product keys, activate Windows, check the current activation or licensing status, and much more. The tool is specifically designed to provide enterprise organizations with a flexible way to manage multiple OS activations, which has nothing to do with KMS servers or other “unofficial” methods designed to achieve the same results without paying Microsoft a dime.

As the company first announced in 2023, VBScript will soon disappear from Windows after being part of the operating system’s convoluted lineage for almost 30 years. Modeled after the Visual Basic programming language, VBScript was designed as a powerful automation technology for programmers and users looking to exert greater control over the Windows operating environment.

According to Microsoft’s latest timeline for VBScript deprecation, the technology is now available as a Feature on Demand (FOD) on Windows and is enabled by default. At a later stage, VBScript’s FOD will no longer be enabled by default, and users will need to manually install the feature if they need it.

Finally, a future Windows release will completely remove VBScript. At that point, Slmgr.vbs and other automation solutions will stop working altogether.

Microsoft said that Slmgr.vbs can be easily replaced with PowerShell, where the OSLicense module provides the automation features currently available through VBScript. OSLicense requires Windows PowerShell 5.1 and can be used to manage activation information, invoke new licensing instances, and more.

One potential issue with adopting the OSLicense module is the version of Windows used by organizations. The PowerShell component is available in client versions of Windows 11 after installing the August 2026 Preview update (KB5120998) or later. Meanwhile, Windows Server will provide support for the new module with the next major release of the enterprise-focused operating system.

Either way, Redmond said organizations should start checking their scripts, command-line tools, and group policies right now. Companies using Slmgr.vbs and other VBScript-based “dependencies” are advised to thoroughly check their IT automation procedures so they can ease the pain that comes with changing decades-old conventions.

What you post online is only part of the story. A new review of research into social media privacy warns that platforms and third parties can potentially infer sensitive details about people from seemingly ordinary digital activity, including their political opinions, religious leanings and shopping habits.

The findings, as reported by Techxplore, published in the International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, point to a widening gap between the amount of personal information generated online and the legal and ethical protections designed to safeguard it. The researchers examined privacy breaches, regulatory frameworks, and the responsibilities of both social media companies and their users.

Your digital trail says more than your posts

The central concern is not necessarily what users deliberately share. Instead, researchers highlight what can be inferred from their activity after it has been collected, indexed, and analysed.

Every interaction can contribute to a broader “digital trail” containing information about activities, locations and interactions. According to the research review, this trail can potentially be searched and analysed by third parties or, at the very least, by the platforms themselves. Even mundane online behaviour can provide clues about personality traits, purchasing patterns, political opinions and religious affiliations.

That creates a privacy problem that is easy to overlook. You might never explicitly state a political preference, religious belief or particular consumer habit, yet your online behaviour could still provide enough signals for someone else to make an educated inference.

The researchers argue that privacy is therefore not simply about keeping secrets. It is about maintaining control over who can access and interpret information about you. They connect that control to personal autonomy, civil liberties and democratic participation.

Why stronger privacy rules may be needed

The findings matter because social media has transformed privacy from something people could largely manage themselves into something increasingly shaped by algorithms, platforms and data analysis. Not just this; last year the city of New York decided to start treating social media with warning labels, like cigarettes.

The review calls for greater legal accountability and transparency from social media companies, alongside better digital literacy so users can understand and manage the risks associated with sharing information online.

The familiar argument that people who have “nothing to hide” have little reason to worry about privacy also comes under scrutiny. The researchers frame privacy as a right to decide who gets to see into the personal aspects of our lives – not as a tool for concealing wrongdoing.

For users, the takeaway is straightforward: your social media profile is potentially more revealing than the information you consciously put on it. Likes, interactions, locations and other seemingly harmless activity can form a larger picture when analysed together.

What happens next will depend on how regulators, platforms and users respond. The researchers’ call for stronger accountability and transparency suggests that privacy protections may need to evolve alongside the increasingly sophisticated ways online behaviour can be analysed.

Larry Ellison has cancelled a trading plan that would have let him sell up to 50 million Oracle shares by 24 October, a day after the plan was disclosed and with no stock sold under it. The instrument is a Rule 10b5-1 plan, an American safe harbour with no European counterpart, because EU market abuse rules bar managers from dealing in the 30 calendar days before results instead.

Larry Ellison has cancelled the plan that would have let him sell up to 50 million Oracle shares, a day after it was disclosed, Bloomberg reported.

“No Oracle stock was sold under that plan, and he has no other plans to sell any of his Oracle stock,” the company said.

The plan was adopted on 22 June and would have run to 24 October. The shares were worth about $8.75B then and about $7.5B now, after a 16% fall. Oracle described it as a 10b5-1 plan in its statement.

Ellison controls about 40% of the company and is its executive chair and chief technology officer.

The timing was the problem. Oracle reported shrinking gross margins on Thursday, its shares fell 1.7% on Friday, and the same week it raised the cost of its job cuts to $2.8B.

A Rule 10b5-1 plan is a piece of American market plumbing with no European equivalent.

An executive who adopts one while not holding inside information can let trades execute later on a fixed schedule, including in periods when selling at their own discretion would draw questions. The rule dates from 2000, and the SEC tightened what has to be disclosed about these plans in 2022.

Europe closes the window instead.

Under the Market Abuse Regulation, a person discharging managerial responsibilities may not deal in the company’s shares during the 30 calendar days before an interim or year-end report.

There is no adopt-in-advance exemption from that.

Europe also discloses different things. It publishes transactions rather than intentions, within three working days of each deal, once EUR 5,000 has been reached in a calendar year. A plan that never traded would have left no trace at all.

None of which suggests Ellison did anything improper. No shares were sold, and the plan was disclosed exactly as American rules require, which is the only reason anybody knew about it.

But the two regimes would have produced different weeks. Europe would never have published a plan for the market to read, and would not have let one run through the results of a company sitting one notch above junk.

AI is constantly being shoved in our faces. From your laptop to your phone, every new gadget now ships with some features built around AI. Over the last couple of years, even Apple has tried to make Apple Intelligence sound like the next big thing on the iPhone.

With iOS 27, the argument finally became worth listening to. Siri AI is a great example of this. It can search through personal information and understand what is on your screen before answering specific or broader general questions. Visual Intelligence looks through your phone’s camera to understand what you’re seeing, and a lot more.

All of this is impressive, till you see what Apple has in store with the Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4. The way it approaches AI in the wearables is different. It isn’t just a smaller secondary screen with a language model, and that’s why it works.

The Apple Watch doesn’t waste time

An iPhone gives Apple plenty of space to demonstrate AI, which is not the case for the Watches. Its tiny screen actively discourages long interactions, and I think that limitation is forcing Apple toward more interesting ideas. Take the new Audio Intelligence suite, for example. Each of the new features under it serves to make the users’ lives easier.

Sound Recognition can identify important noises such as alarms, sirens, doorbells, or a crying baby and alert you. Automatic Shazam identifies music around you and surfaces the result in Smart Stack. Live Rewind can recover the previous 15 seconds of speech when you missed something someone said. Siri Recap can turn conversations into short summaries you can revisit later.

Live Rewind can be really useful… if you ignore the privacy concerns

Live Rewind is probably the best example. I can just double-press the Digital Crown and get the previous 15 seconds as text if I missed something important in the conversation. Adding to its functionality, you can even ask Siri about it or have it saved for later. On the iPhone side, there isn’t any such interaction. By the time I’ve taken my phone out, unlocked it, and started recording, it’s already too late.

A lot of the new AI gadgets are all about seamless, display-free interactions. And just like those devices, the new Apple Watch changes how we interact with AI thanks to its physical proximity. A wearable has access to situations an iPhone sitting in my pocket can’t interact with quite as naturally, and Apple is beginning to build intelligence around that advantage.

We made a similar argument about Siri Recap recently. The privacy implications of a smartwatch listening to conversations deserve scrutiny. Though Apple’s implementation avoids retaining raw recordings and processes audio inside a hardware-isolated Secure Exclave on the S11 chip. Live Rewind also gives people nearby an audible and visual indication when it has been activated.

Why an iPhone can’t match the Apple Watch

Fitness and health features are what make the Apple Watch so popular. It knows much more about what my body is doing at any particular moment. Workout Buddy uses Apple Intelligence to provide spoken motivation based on personal workout data, and watchOS 27 expands the information it can incorporate. It can now operate while you exercise without carrying your iPhone, even if Apple still requires a paired Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone and compatible Bluetooth audio hardware.

Series 12 and Ultra 4 also gather heart-rate measurements every five seconds and HRV as frequently as every five minutes through the new Health Sensing System. This data feeds Apple’s new Readiness experience, which combines activity, sleep, vitals, and training information into a score that updates as your condition changes throughout the day.

Apple’s redesigned Health app uses Apple Intelligence to interpret longer-term health information, while new vision-based AI assessments can combine the iPhone camera with Watch data to evaluate flexibility, strength, balance, movement mechanics, and VO2 max.

Siri AI on your wrist just works

Ironically, even Apple’s more conventional chatbot-style AI arguably gains something by being on the Watch. Siri AI brings the same personal-context understanding, conversational abilities, and broad knowledge available on the iPhone to watchOS 27. But on a phone, Siri is competing with other AI services like ChatGPT and Gemini.

With the Apple Watch, however, I can change an activity goal halfway through a run. Maybe even find something from my personal info or ask about my training without ever having to reach for my phone. Even watchOS 27’s smaller intelligence features play into this whole thing. The app grid can surface Siri-suggested apps based on usage, and something like Smart Stack recommendations can appear around context such as where you parked or someone’s birthday.

To be fair, the Apple Watch is more powerful than the iPhone. Features like Visual Intelligence bring some serious image-generation and editing tools. I just think the Watch is providing a better example of how AI can fit into an existing product without becoming the product.

I like the version of AI that’s all about making interactions feel more natural. It hears the thing you missed and recognizes the song playing nearby without needing any input. Nothing too intrusive, but still present enough to be handy in day-to-day use.