Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.
The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.
Whenever I wear a smartwatch, I find that my anxiety increases — specifically, my health anxiety. Also known as hypochondria or illness anxiety disorder, this type of anxiety makes me worry that I am or may become ill even when I’m healthy.
What’s ironic is that part of my job involves testing health-monitoring wearables, including fitness trackers and smart rings. While I love exploring this technology and do think it can help you learn more about your body, I have to be careful about how I use it so my anxiety isn’t triggered. I know I’m not alone.
“Healthy adults and individuals with pre-existing medical conditions are increasingly using these devices to manage their health,” says Dr. Lindsey Rosman, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology and co-director of the Cardiovascular Device and Data Science Lab at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “Whether 24/7 access to health information from a wearable actually helps or potentially harms people is really unclear.”
When you add in the ability to search your symptoms online or ask an AI chatbot in your wearable’s app every health question under the sun, it becomes even more difficult to discern between what’s helpful and harmful.
To help myself and others with health anxiety navigate the world of wearables so we can either enjoy using them or know when it’s time to stop, I reached out to experts for their advice.
Rosman has observed clinically that it can be beneficial to either scale back or turn off the features that make you anxious. This can be especially helpful for people with pre-existing conditions that are already being treated, such as atrial fibrillation (AFib, an irregular heartbeat), as your wearable’s irregular heart rhythm notifications will only make you anxious and can prompt you to see your doctor when it’s not medically necessary.
Plus, certain medications can affect the accuracy of wearable sensors, provoking false alarms.
“We published a case report on a patient who performed over 900 EKGs [electrocardiograms or ECGs, which measure the heart’s electrical activity] on her smartwatch in a single year,” says Rosman. While most of the EKGs were normal, inconclusive alerts fueled her anxiety, leading to multiple ER visits, spousal conflict and the need for therapy to reclaim her daily life. The patient had no psychiatric history prior to getting a smartwatch.
When you get an unexpected health alert on your device, it can understandably cause panic.
Dr. Karen Cassiday, author of Freedom from Health Anxiety and owner and managing director of the Anxiety Treatment Center of Greater Chicago, says that even patients who don’t have health anxiety can find wearables to be intrusive when they get too many alerts. “They discover they want to be less aware of every moment of their body’s functioning,” she says.
Thankfully, most wearable health features can be turned off completely or customized.
For instance, Shyamal Patel, SVP of science at Oura, maker of the Oura Ring, shares that the device’s Personalized Activity Goals allow you to choose to see steps instead of calories, adjust your daily activity goal or hide calories completely, which can be necessary for anyone who finds calorie counting triggering or overly rigid.
Referring to a 2024 study she worked on that examined the impact of wearables on the psychological well-being of patients with AFib, Rosman says that about half of the participants were checking their heart rate every day out of habit, not because they felt symptoms.
Cassidy explains that while people with health anxiety may initially find wearables helpful, compulsively checking to make sure their vitals are normal can accidentally become a form of negative reinforcement that further propels the anxiety.
“Often when I work with anxious people, we try to cut back or eliminate the need to compulsively check for reassurance on their wearables, as well as with ChapGPT or other digital ‘doctors,’” says Cassiday.
When people refrain from compulsively checking, wearables can provide useful feedback that counters the false belief that something terrible will happen to their health.
If checking your health metrics causes anxiety, try reducing how often you view them on your device or in its app. Setting an alert to check weekly, at a minimum, could help — especially since it’ll give you a broader picture, making you less likely to hyperfocus on a single data point that seems off.
You should also avoid checking your wearable’s health information right after you wake up or before you go to bed, as this can set the tone for an anxious day or make it harder to fall asleep.
If having a screen on your wrist makes it difficult for you to stop checking, a screenless smart ring or fitness tracker such as the Whoop 5.0 may be a better option, since they rely on apps instead of screens.
A screenless smart ring may help you stop compusively checking your device.
“You choose how much or how little you engage with the app, which gives those who might be anxious about their health the option to limit the amount of time they spend with their data,” says Patel.
When I asked both Patel and Dr. Jacqueline Shreibati, head of clinical for platforms and devices at Google, how people who wear their devices can reduce health anxiety, they emphasized the importance of tracking trends — not individual metrics.
“We focus on long-term trends (rather than isolated metrics) to help users maintain a balanced relationship with their data,” says Shreibati. “What being healthy means differs for everyone, and we encourage users to consult their physician if they have any concerns.”
Patel points to the Tags and Trends features in the Oura app. Tags lets you tag lifestyle factors such as travel, alcohol, meditation or late meals, which you can then view in Trends to see how your behavior affects your recovery and sleep over weeks, rather than looking at a single score that may one day seem abnormal.
Instead of viewing a single sleep or stress score, consider looking at that data weekly or monthly.
“Most consumer wearables were originally developed as personal wellness devices, which are not required to demonstrate safety and efficacy like traditional medical devices (e.g., a blood pressure cuff or pacemaker),” Rosman explains.
Yet we’ve begun using these wearables to monitor our health, using metrics such as heart rate and rhythm, blood oxygen, stress, sleep and physical activity. Now, some of these devices have medical-grade sensors, software and algorithms approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to detect irregular heart rhythms, hypertension and sleep apnea.
Despite FDA approval, wearables are simply not doctors, and they cannot provide medical diagnoses or treatment. That’s why it’s essential to understand what your device actually measures.
The ECG feature on many smartwatches is just one example of this. FDA-cleared as it may be, a single-lead ECG that only uses one electrode to record your heart’s electrical activity from your wrist is not the same as the 12-lead, hospital-grade ECG a cardiologist would use.
While your wearable’s ECG can surface a potential symptom worth investigating with your doctor, it can’t replace a professional or their medical-grade equipment.
Performing an ECG on your smartwatch is not the same as having that same measurement taken in a doctor’s office.
The gap is even wider for features including stress and sleep scores, which haven’t been clinically validated because there’s no one single gold standard to validate against. These numerical scores are calculated from bodily signals such as heart rate, temperature, movement and heart rate variability, which tend to correlate with your stress and sleep states. But the translation from raw signal to “your stress score is 74” is more of an educated estimate.
“What you’re seeing is a rough indicator of how your nervous system is functioning, not a medical diagnosis,” Rosman emphasizes.
Patel adds that not all physiological stress is inherently negative. “Some forms of short-term physiological stress can be healthy and adaptive,” he says. “That’s why we aim to pair data with in-app context and insights, so members can better understand what they’re seeing rather than receiving that information in a vacuum.”
Nonetheless, when you don’t know exactly what your wearable is measuring, a “bad” stress or sleep score can seem scary when it isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm, but rather a sign that you may want to have a deeper conversation with your doctor.
Just like you should talk to your doctor before starting a new medication or diet, you should get their thoughts on whether you could benefit from using a wearable.
“Education is probably the most underused tool we have,” Rosman says.
When you don’t know what a healthy heart rate or ECG looks like, one seemingly atypical reading can send you into a panic. That’s why it’s essential to speak with your doctor so you understand your own baseline and if a wearable makes sense for your current health condition.
As a guide, Rosman provides the following questions you can ask your doctor:
“A fast heart rate after climbing stairs is not the same as a dangerous arrhythmia, but without that context, a notification can feel terrifying,” Rosman adds. “So much wearable-related anxiety comes not from the data itself, but from not knowing what to do with it.”
When asked when someone should consider parting with their wearable or seeing a professional for health anxiety, Cassiday says that it’s similar to what many notice when they keep checking their smartphone for the next text, TikTok or other digital data.
“If you find yourself interrupting pleasurable activities or your free time to check, or if you feel anxious about not checking, you have a problem,” Cassiday states.
For instance, if you only stop thinking that you’ll have a heart attack when you check your wearable and see your resting heart rate. Or, put simply, if you only feel at peace after someone or something, such as a wearable reassures you that you’re in good health, it’s time to get professional support.
If health anxiety is making it difficult for you to enjoy life, then it’s time to talk to a professional.
To find help, Cassiday recommends using the resources provided by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America or the International OCD Foundation, as health anxiety can be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder.
When you have health anxiety, the gold standard for care is cognitive behavioral therapy. It involves exposure to health-related worries without any form of reassurance and learning to accept the uncertainty that comes with not knowing our future health status, manner of death or time of death.
“People need to learn that all the vague symptoms that trigger their health anxiety are just normal variations of normal body functioning and aging,” Cassiday explains. “They have to reframe the symptoms they notice as nothing to examine, discuss or manage and instead trust the facts of their other evidence of good health.”
CBT can help you live in the present instead of spiraling into the anxiety-inducing “What if?” of the future.
Wearables can be great for people who like tracking their fitness to motivate them toward their goals, or for patients and their care teams when medically necessary. Though they usually cost hundreds of dollars, wearables can be less expensive than medical tests. Some are even HSA- or FSA-eligible.
“In AFib specifically, being able to correlate your symptoms with actual rhythm data can be genuinely empowering,” Rosman says. She’s observed that the patients who thrive with wearables are those who use the data as information — not as something to fear — and those who don’t participate in 24/7 surveillance.
In Rosman’s 2024 study, two-thirds of AFib patients said their wearable made them feel safer and more in control. Even so, there is still the risk of unintended consequences.
While they can be beneficial, wearables can also come with risks — especially since there isn’t enough research on the subject.
Just as doctors would never prescribe a medication without knowing the potential benefits, risks and how to manage them, wearables should be no different. “The technology has moved so much faster than the science, and we need the scientific evidence from clinical trials to catch up,” Rosman explains.
Since the evidence isn’t there yet, Rosman is hesitant to say anyone should categorically avoid wearables.
Despite that, people who are highly anxious about their heart or prone to obsessive symptom monitoring should approach with caution. The same goes for those with conditions involving unpredictable, abrupt symptoms, such as paroxysmal AFib and POTS, because the uncertainty of not knowing when the next episode will hit is stressful enough, and constant monitoring can make it worse.
Rosman has conducted research on the connection between wearables and anxiety, including a 2025 review describing the psychological effects of wearables on patients with cardiovascular disease and a 2024 study examining their impact on the psychological well-being of patients with AFib.
The 2025 review found that while wearables can help promote healthy behaviors and provide data for diagnosis and treatment, they also pose risks, such as adverse psychological reactions.
In the 2024 study, it was concluded that wearables were connected with higher rates of patients becoming preoccupied with their symptoms, being concerned about their treatments and using both formal and informal health care resources.
On the other hand, a 2021 study that analyzed the 2019 and 2020 US-based Health Information National Trends Survey found that using wearable devices for self-tracking can indirectly reduce psychological distress. Still, misinterpretation of wearable data may cause unnecessary panic and anxiety.
A 2020 qualitative interview study featuring patients with chronic heart disease also found that while wearables’ data may be a resource for self-care, it can create uncertainty, fear and anxiety.
Ultimately, more studies are needed.
“Honestly, we don’t have good scientific evidence in this area yet,” says Rosman. “Despite widespread use, there have been no clinical trials I’m aware of that have looked at the benefits and potential health risks of specific wearable health features.”
Rosman’s team plans to be the first to investigate this in patients with pre-existing heart conditions.
When wearables cause health anxiety, they can prompt healthy individuals to schedule unnecessary doctor’s appointments. This places a burden on our health care system, which is already experiencing shortages, making it difficult for people who actually require medical attention to access care.
Rosman’s 2024 study found that those using a wearable sent nearly twice as many patient portal messages to their doctors. Responding to these messages from patients takes time, isn’t reimbursed by insurance and can contribute to burnout.
When health anxiety caused by wearables prompts people to message their doctors, it can put a strain on the health care system.
As a result, Rosman believes we need better systems for managing wearable data in clinical settings before we scale it further: “Wearables are changing how we deliver care in ways we haven’t fully prepared for.”
Wearables can further widen health care inequity due to their cost.
“These devices are expensive, they were mostly designed and tested in young healthy people and they’re marketed toward higher-income consumers,” Rosman explains. “If we’re not thoughtful about access, wearables could actually widen health disparities rather than close them. That’s the opposite of what we want.”
While wearables have their benefits, there are also risks to consider, especially given the limited research on the subject.
If you purchase a wearable and it triggers health anxiety, you don’t have to use every available feature, wear it constantly or continue to wear it at all. Before you even buy that device, you can arm yourself with anxiety-reducing knowledge by getting your doctor’s expert opinion.
However, if health anxiety continues to take over your life, it may be time to remove your wearable and seek professional help.
As for me, writing this piece has been a necessary reminder that, while there’s a lot we can’t control in life, the power is in our hands (or on our wrists or fingers) when it comes to the technology we put on our bodies or invite into our homes. Just like an itchy sweater or a lumpy armchair, we can send the technology that doesn’t serve us packing.
Security software company Ivanti has released patches to address two critical vulnerabilities in its Sentry secure mobile gateway solution, including a maximum-severity flaw that enables remote attackers to execute code with root privileges.
Formerly known as MobileIron Sentry, Ivanti Sentry is a security gateway appliance that secures traffic between back-end corporate systems and remote mobile devices.
Tracked as CVE-2026-10520, the maximum-severity vulnerability stems from an OS command injection weakness. The second Sentry security flaw patched on Tuesday (tracked as CVE-2026-10523) is a critical authentication bypass that can be exploited remotely by unauthenticated attackers to create rogue administrative accounts and gain full administrative access.
Ivanti patched both security issues on Tuesday with the release of Sentry versions R10.5.2, R10.6.2, and R10.7.1.
Luckily, the company said it has no evidence that the two vulnerabilities are being exploited in the wild and advised admins to upgrade their systems to protect against potential attacks.
“We are not aware of any customers being exploited by these vulnerabilities at the time of disclosure,” Ivanti said. “Currently, there is no known public exploitation of this vulnerability that could be used to provide a list of indicators of compromise.”
In recent years, Ivanti vulnerabilities have often been targeted in attacks because they provide an easy way for cybercriminals to breach targets’ enterprise networks and steal sensitive corporate and customer data.
For instance, most recently, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) ordered U.S. federal agencies in May to patch their Ivanti devices after the company warned customers to immediately patch a high-severity remote code execution vulnerability in Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) that was exploited in zero-day attacks.
Multiple other Ivanti zero-days have been exploited in recent years to breach a wide range of targets, including government agencies worldwide, including two other critical EPMM vulnerabilities addressed by Ivanti in January after being exploited as zero-days in attacks against a “very limited number of customers.”
In total, CISA has tagged 34 vulnerabilities across various SolarWinds products as actively exploited in attacks over the past several years, with 12 of them also used in ransomware attacks.
Ivanti’s IT asset management solutions are used by over 40,000 clients worldwide and are supported by a network of over 7,000 partners and over 3,000 employees.
Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.
The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

Square Enix surprised players during the June 9 Nintendo Direct with the reveal of Final Fantasy Resonance, the first entry in the long-running series to use the HD-2D art style. The game launches worldwide on October 22, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC through Steam and the Microsoft Store.
The normal version is priced at $49.99. If you’re ready to pay a little more, you can get the Digital Deluxe Edition for $59.99, which includes a bunch of useful in-game goodies. If you want to go all-in, the Collector’s Edition ($209.99) includes the base game, digital goodies, a physical artbook, the soundtrack, and a unique Final Fantasy Trading Card Game card.The plot revolves around Rain, a Grandshelt knight, his adoptive brother Lasswell, and the mysterious Fina as they work to defend the world’s crystals from Veritas of the Dark. Their adventure takes them all over the Lapis world, via villages, optional dungeons, and shrines that unlock additional Visions and some extremely cool memory cutscenes, all set in a big open overworld region that you may explore for free.
The story is based on the first major arc of the mobile game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. Lancarse and Synthese have essentially recreated the entire thing from the ground up, rather than simply throwing it on a console and calling it good. The end result is a full-fledged console RPG that fits well into the series. When you need to travel, you can do so on foot, chocobo, or airship, and there are numerous destinations to visit across multiple continents.

You’ll solve dungeon puzzles and complete side missions to help fill out the world. The transition from the mobile version’s node-based map to full-fledged open world movement gives the game a nice big Final Fantasy vibe without losing sight of the fundamental crystal conflict plot.

Combat centers on a group of four, with a helpful timeline indicating when each character’s next move will happen. Do something big or make the right move, and you can move one of your characters’ turns a bit later down the line, so timing is essential. Each character has a Vision to use, which is a form of ghost fighter with strength from several Final Fantasy games, and these things level up on their own. The verified Visions include Warrior of Light, Terra, Cloud, Zidane, Shantotto, and Y’shtola, among others.

Enemies have a stagger meter that fills up faster when you strike them where it counts. A fully staggered foe takes more damage and gives the party extra turns. When every enemy on the field staggers at once, the equipped Visions trigger a coordinated Resonance Attack shown in a short CG sequence. Fina can also call Espers for powerful summon moves, while Limit Bursts deliver big individual damage once the meter fills.

The game also looks amazing, with realistic pixel sprites set against rich, layered backdrops that create a beautiful blend of old and new. Places feel deep and real, with proper lighting and shadow placement, and the overall experience makes you feel as if you’re actually there. The music has several familiar tracks from Brave Exvius as well as 33 brand new compositions created particularly for this game.
[Source]
I’ve had all manner of computer mice over the years, but by far my favorite is a travel mouse. They come in so many different shapes, sizes, and configurations. I fondly remember a promotional USB travel mouse, perhaps no bigger than my thumb, that featured a spring-loaded retractable cable. When that died after multiple road trips, I switched to a Microsoft Surface Arc Bluetooth travel mouse. It was darn near perfect. In travel mode, it was flat, and when you wanted to use it, you bent it to a perfect, palm-hugging curve. That one died after years of business travel.
So you can imagine my excitement when Logitech showed me its new Mobi Fold ($79.99 / $119.99CAD/€79.99 / £69.99). As the name suggests, it is a truly foldable Bluetooth travel mouse.
The company claims that while roughly 76% of us own mice, only 26% take them on the road. The palm-sized Mobi Fold is small enough to slip into almost any pocket and join you in your wanderlust.
When folded, the Logitech Mobile Fold resembles in size and shape a screenless Samsung Galaxy Z Flip. It unfolds to a roughly 60-degree curve that neatly fits under your palm. It has a pair of silent clickers — all the better to not annoy your fellow passengers — and between them is a wide touch-sensitive button that you can use to scroll through on-screen content quickly or a line at a time.
The body is covered in a soft rubber material that feels good against your skin, and Logitech claims that Mobi Fold is durable and ready to accompany you on the road for up to 15 years.
In the near-term, battery life is rated for 33 days on a charge, but if you’re in a pinch, a minute of charge can net you 22 hours of operation. You also don’t have to worry about the battery running down when the mouse is folded up in your backpack or pocket. It automatically powers on when unfolded and shuts off when folded up.
If you regularly switch between, say, a desktop, laptop, and tablet, you’ll be pleased with the Mobi Fold’s quick-switch capabilities for up to three devices. There’s also the Logitech Plus companion app that you can use to customize buttons to open certain apps, take screenshots, copy and paste, and perform other operations.
I got a chance to try the mouse with a few different systems and apps. It doesn’t need a special surface or mouse pad to work, and I found it comfortable and responsive. I folded and unfolded it repeatedly and noticed that the fold feels firm, not flimsy. There’s enough tension that you won’t worry about the two halves flopping about.
Yes, I even accidentally dropped the ultra-portable mouse, and it survived without issue.
Mobi Fold comes in four colors: Graphite, Off-white, Lilac, and Sand, and should start shipping this week.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.
After Independence Day, director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin could have easily kept feeding the multiplex more flag-waving alien carnage. Instead, with Robert Rodat’s Saving Private Ryan pedigree tempering the “U-S-A!” machinery, The Patriot became something more grounded, darker, and far better researched than anyone had reason to expect. It is still historical fiction with Hollywood fingerprints all over it, but compared to the glorious cheese fountain of ID4, this is a far more serious and satisfying story about American grit, personal loss, and the ugly cost of revolution.
Mel Gibson’s Benjamin Martin is not based on one specific individual but a composite of militia who fought so bravely to win our freedom from Great Britain some two-and-a-half centuries ago. As a veteran of the French and Indian War, specifically “the wilderness campaign,” he’s not only witnessed but perpetrated unspeakable horrors and is reluctant to see his people thrust into another bloody conflict. But when the war comes for him and his family, this expert in guerilla warfare answers the call and helps turn the tide. Beyond the relatively minor indignities such as the Tea Act Monopoly, the Stamp Act and the Writs of Assistance, we’re shown the atrocities visited upon the colonists by the British forces, a brutality born of arrogance, and it’s hard not to be invested in the struggle by the climactic battle.

A quick glance over my left shoulder at the shelf marked M through Z tells me that, damn, I must really like this movie. I’ve owned The Patriot on five different five-inch discs (see photo), and that was before Sony dropped its new and improved SteelBook 4K edition, once again serving up both the R-rated theatrical cut and the longer unrated version. On the 2018 UHD disc release, just the theatrical cut was in Atmos and 4K, but only in HDR10, with the unrated version in 1080p/5.1. This SteelBook set now offers both cuts each on its own BD-100 platter, in 4K, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, with breathtaking cover artwork by Paul Shipper.
Say what you like about ol’ Mad Max here, but he is one intense thespian, and his closeups convey his grief, his conviction, and the inner demons that fuel Martin’s resolve. Not every shot is razor-sharp, but nonetheless it looks like we’re watching the Revolutionary War, the roll-up and the aftermath through an immaculate window. A light, consistent layer of film grain accentuates the 2.39:1 image, and the high dynamic range delivers consummate detail in the many period-authentic low-light scenes, illuminated by candles, fireplaces or campfires. Even the glisten of a brocaded epaulet is preserved. Whether through the use of filters, magic hour scheduling or post-production wizardry, Caleb Deschanel’s Oscar-nominated cinematography has an enticing golden glow, and the colors are significantly upgraded from the 2018 4K, with only the slightest perceptible drop in picture and sound quality at the inserts within the unrated cut.

Subtle LFE for hoofbeats and fireworks early in the story lull us into false resignation, until the realities of warfare are fully unleashed. Showoff scenes don’t come much better than Gabriel’s rescue–this is the one I routinely use to test speakers, in particular my surrounds and sub–conveniently located at the start of Chapter 5 on the theatrical version, 36:42 into the film. Our vantage point shifts frequently amid the chaos but the hard placement of off-camera voices keeps us in the middle of the action, with frequent booming gunshots all around. (I plan to watch it again after this review publishes, just because.) The whiz and impact of cannonballs are also outstanding. The active overhead channels bring a wonderful sense of spaciousness throughout, and dialogue scenes that proved challenging on past editions are now crystal-clear. The Patriot boasts a John Wiliams score, lesser-known despite its Oscar nomination, and it amplifies the excitement exponentially.
The extras are all ported from past editions, some dating back almost 26 years, spread across the two platters. The theatrical version carries an enjoyable Emmerich/Devlin audio commentary in addition to brisk featurettes about the production and the historical fact. Interestingly, the comprehensive deleted scenes section–13 minutes total with optional commentary–is located on the unrated disc, even though most of that footage has been integrated back into the movie to create the longer cut. Also on this disc are vignettes devoted to the visual effects and concept art.

The timing of the new The Patriot 4K SteelBook is curious, too late for Memorial Day and too early for The Fourth, but take it from me: This one would make a terrific Father’s Day gift. (Father’s Day feature incoming, but this one deserved its own review.) With top scores for the movie, audio and video, this one gets our highest recommendation.
★★★★★★★★★★ Movie
★★★★★★★★★★ Picture
★★★★★★★★★★ Sound
★★★★★★★★★★ Extras
British consumer watchdog Which? has revealed many of the third-party phone chargers available to consumers could present “potentially lethal” risks – and they’re often hidden in plain sight.
Nine of the 15 chargers tested by Which? posed serious electric shock risks, while eight also presented potential fire or explosion hazards, but more worryingly, many were available from popular and trustworthy high-street and online retailers like Amazon, B&Q and Debenhams.
The timeliness is also of note, because the findings come seven whole years after Which? first warned about dangerous counterfeit and low-quality chargers, suggesting the problem remains widespread despite repeated warnings.
According to the report, many of the chargers tested failed basic testing because the internal electrical components were positioned too close together, insulation was inadequate, high-voltage stress tests caused failures and plug pins did not meet British Standards requirements.
The most prevalent concern, then, was that the defective products could cause electrical arcing, where electricity jumps between components, leading to electric component failures in the best-off cases, but electric shocks, overheating, fire and explosions in the most severe cases.
Among the examples given by the group was a counterfeit Apple USC-C 35W Power Adaptor sold for £11.99 – a not-at-all similar mock of Apple’s £59 charger. The researchers discovered arcing noises after just 10 seconds, and upon further investigation, found modelling clay inside the charger.
They believe it was added to make the device heavier, making it feel more ‘premium’. A second, separate model, sold via Debenhams, also included modelling clay within.
Besides suspiciously cheap chargers from Amazon (£2.99 and £3.99), eBay (£2.10 and £2.80) and AliExpress (£1.30 and £5.69), Which? also found that a more expensive £10.99 charger sold via B&Q was subject to fire, electric shock and explosion risks.
And even the chargers that passed safety tests, including models sold via Temu and Shein, weren’t fully legitimate. They still lacked the required markings and importer details, making them illegal in the UK.
“Badly designed electricals like these can have life-altering – even fatal – consequences,” Head of Consumer Protection Policy Sue Davies commented.
Which? argues that marketplace operators have now become a major route through which unsafe and illegal imports can reach UK consumers, because they often act as intermediaries for third-party sellers.
However, despite the implementation of the UK’s Product Regulation and Metrology Act in July 2025, the consumer group says implementation has been slow. Under the law, the government can place obligations on online marketplaces.
Which? is therefore advocating for stronger enforcement powers and greater accountability for third-party seller listings.
“By making online marketplaces legally responsible for unsafe products, the government can set a world-leading standard for product safety in the digital age,” Davies added.
As for consumers, they’re being advised to buy from recognized brands and be wary of very cheap big-brand chargers. UK citizens should also look for the CE or UKCA marks and importer details.
Looking ahead, Which? has presented UK Department of Business and Trade Minister Kate Dearden a petition, with 150,000 signatories, calling for the government to regulate online marketplaces and fine them for breaches.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Rivian engineers took everything they learned from the larger R1 models and applied it to a vehicle sized for more people and more driveways. The result is the R2, a two-row electric SUV that starts well below sixty thousand dollars for loaded early versions and dips into the mid-forties for simpler single-motor models arriving next year. That pricing alone sets it apart from bigger adventure-focused rivals while still delivering real capability.
The body looks just like you’d expect from a car with a specific function, with no unnecessary frills and a nice, boxy form that declares its intent without being too huge for its own good. At 186 inches long, it’s around the size of a Honda CR-V in terms of footprint, but its stretched-out wheelbase makes it feel a little longer. The ground clearance is 9.6 inches, and the approach and departure angles are adequate for off-road adventures.
Sale
Stepping inside, you get the idea that the cabin is a huge open space with useful touches all over. The back seats provide ample leg and headroom and are exceptionally comfortable even on extended trips. The materials used are an excellent mix of nice everyday goods and some very smart eco-friendly choices, such as birch trim created from repurposed birch and a headliner built from ocean-rescued plastic. There are also spacious door pockets for holding water bottles, and the rear liftgate glass lowers to make loading heavier items easier.
The controls are one of the car’s most noticeable elements. There is a large, wide touchscreen that handles all of the normal features like as navigation, media, and vehicle settings, and it responds rapidly. You also get two huge halo dials on the steering wheel that allow you to change the climate, radio, drive modes, mirrors, and other settings with a few twists, pushes, pulls, or tilts. This strategy immediately became popular among reviewers, who considered it more user-friendly than scrolling menus while driving. One thing they needed was smartphone mirroring, but the native apps fulfill the most of your demands, and the interface is constantly updated with new features.
Under the hood, there’s an 88-kilowatt-hour battery and some extremely efficient motors. The top dual-motor Performance model generates 656 horsepower and accelerates to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds flat. Acceleration is powerful and immediate, but never uncomfortable. With 350 horsepower, the single-motor rear-wheel-drive car is a great option for people seeking for something a little more efficient. If you’re curious about how far you’ll get on a charge, the car’s range can reach 345 miles on the most efficient settings, thanks to its extraordinarily light weight (about 5,000 pounds) and sophisticated aerodynamic architecture that decreases the drag coefficient to 0.3.
Charging is quite speedy, with up to 230 kilowatts charging the battery from 10% to 80% in around 29 minutes under optimum conditions. You can also do bidirectional charging of up to 11 kilowatts, which allows you to power tools or even transmit electricity back to your home when the power goes out. Production of these things has already begun at Rivian’s plant in Normal, Illinois, with the intention of delivering the higher trims to clients this summer first.
The custom APU at the core of Sony’s PlayStation 5 hasn’t just been quietly powering these game consoles, but also made their way onto cryptomining cards around 2023 which are called the BC-250. The APUs on these boards differ from the one found in the PS5 most notably by having two out of eight CPU cores disabled, along with many compute units (CUs) of the iGPU. Now apparently it seems that you can re-enable these CUs per instructions by [duggasco] if you’re feeling adventurous.

As stated in the project’s README, BC-250 boards come with only 24 out of 40 CUs enabled, but this is not a permanent (e-fuse) thing. Instead you can write to two hardware registers during the GPU driver initialization, something which can be added to for example the Linux kernel module parameters.
Since many of these APUs likely had cores and CUs disabled due to them failing QA during PS5 APU manufacturing, there’s a good chance that some of the CUs truly are bad. Yet as we saw with the AMD Phenom II X3 with a supposedly bad fourth core back in the day, sometimes demand for the ‘defective’ part is high enough that good parts get mixed in as well.
Thus people like [Lowest Logan] decided to give it a shot, demonstrating the use of the patch with Bazzite Linux on a BC-250 system. After a reboot the system does indeed list 40 CUs as being enabled, and running Furmark shows a big boost in performance without any glitches or fire. There is of course thermal throttling, but that is due to the default cooling solution not being designed for running it at full blast.
Incidentally the real PS5 has only 36 active CUs, so this technically makes these unlocked APUs more powerful. With the water cooling solution demonstrated by [Lowest Logan] the thermal throttling is also resolved, showing that you can get a pretty nice gaming system out of these old cryptomining boards if you happen to win the silicon lottery.
Even the most well-intentioned edtech can fall short if it does not meet students where they are. After several years studying the usability of edtech for teachers, the research team at ISTE+ASCD turned its attention to students — examining how the technical and pedagogical design of digital tools shapes their learning experiences.
In partnership with In Tandem and Sesame Workshop, researchers spoke with high school students across the United States to understand how they actually use edtech in real learning contexts. The findings identify five areas that matter most to students and offer guidance for educators and product designers seeking tools that are intuitive, meaningful and engaging.

A full framework and guidance for edtech buyers and product providers will be released in 2026.
This article was sponsored by ISTE+ASCD and produced by the Solutions Studio team.

Diorama111 released a fresh build just days ago that shows what happens when extreme miniaturization meets real remote control hardware. He started with an ordinary KATO 1/150 scale Toyota ProBox, the kind of plastic model that sits on N-gauge train layouts or display shelves. Most builders stop at painting and weathering. He kept going until the little van could roll under its own power, steer on command, and light up properly in both directions.
The finished model is only a few centimeters long, but at true scale, it is roughly 150th the size of a real Toyota ProBox. The exterior still looks like it just came off the production line, but everything inside had to be modified just to fit. This entailed designing new parts, modifying old ones, or just building them from scratch to allow for movement and electronics to fit within. Power is supplied by a tiny lithium-polymer cell measuring 9 by 9 by 4 millimeters. It sits on top of a custom control board and provides power to the complete arrangement. The duration is purposefully brief, just long enough to test it on a tabletop or in a diorama before it needs to be recharged quickly via the underside connectors.
A DC motor in the back propels the vehicle, and watch gears are used to slow it down significantly, allowing it to move at a suitable rate for its size. A brass-bushed axle is used to reduce friction, resulting in smooth acceleration and excellent control at low speeds. As a result, when observed from above, it looks to be moving steadily rather than bouncing about haphazardly.

Steering was a challenge because the conventional solution would not have worked. So a second DC motor was added to drive a lead screw, and a rod-and-linkage system was adapted to convert linear motion into front wheel spin. Two photoreflector sensors continuously monitor the motor shaft and screw, providing feedback to the controller so that it knows exactly where the wheels are and can give true proportional steering rather than just on/off. This all fits into the compact chassis, leaving room for the battery and receiver.

The radio signal is sent via infrared because a small surface-mount IR receiver module is contained within the body. The matching handheld transmitter contains two analog joysticks that provide you independent control over the throttle and steering. It appears delicate enough to execute figure-eights, smooth turns, and faultless parking on a cutting mat. Lighting only adds to the illusion, with a few tiny surface-mount LEDs concealed beneath the headlight and taillight lenses. A hair-thin magnet wire runs through the roof and body, transferring power without adding mass. The headlights turn on as you go forward. When you change into reverse, the rear lights brighten. Direction sensing guarantees that the lights function in the same way as a full-size car does.

Building this micro car required a great deal of patience because each stage required extreme focus. The interior was removed to provide way for the construction process, and each mechanical part had to be precisely positioned and tested before being altered repeatedly until everything fit together neatly while still leaving room for the batteries and cables. The underside of the chassis contains terminals for charging the battery and reprogramming the controller, making it possible to do so without disassembling anything.
[Source]

NTU researchers spent seven years building a magnetic robot just 4.4 millimeters long. The compact machine performs five surgical functions through external control alone. It travels across soft tissue, cuts when required, dispenses medicine, gathers samples, and creates localized heat. Work on the project took place in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering under Associate Professor Lum Guo Zhan.
Nicholas Yong Wei Foo, a PhD student, led the project’s hands-on development. Alumni and regulars, including Dr. Chelsea Shan Xian Ng and Yu Xuan Yeoh, made substantial contributions during the design and testing phases. The researchers published their findings in Advanced Materials after being funded by NTU funds, A*STAR, and the NHG Health group. NTUitive has received a technology disclosure and is poised to proceed. Almost every other magnetic robot of this size can only perform one or two tricks; this one can perform five, owing to a programmable core module.
Sale
The module’s magnetic state can be changed with a few external coils; just magnetize, demagnetize, or reverse the direction, and each condition corresponds to a specific tool or action. The innovative aspect is that zones in the body are designed to only illuminate active areas while leaving the rest dark. According to tests, a complete flip takes less than a second. Getting around is the first trick, but it is far from the only one. This robot can crawl on soft, uneven ground that replicates surfaces found deep within the body. It can also rotate along its long axis, which is important for achieving perfect alignment when things become tight or the surface starts to slope and fold. There’s also a blade that pops out for cutting, and in lab tests, it effortlessly sliced through chicken liver and gelatin models, or at least models designed to imitate the inside of a human.

When it comes to medicine delivery, the robot’s dispensing arm simulates drug delivery by using preloaded particles. The operator merely needs to maneuver it to the right spot and then press the release. The robot collects samples by utilizing a gripper to grab and secure tissue until it is ready for laboratory analysis. Test results showed that the gripper performed effectively on the models tested.

Then there’s heat generation, which is a different magnetic process that warms up a small region by creating high-frequency alternating fields that force the particles inside to warm up. The idea is that this might be used for targeted therapy, raising the temperature in a specific area without damaging the surrounding tissue.

The robot’s body is a clever combination of two flexible silicones, PDMS and Ecoflex, with magnetic particles that are barely five micrometers across. It has just enough give to bend and twist as needed while yet preserving enough shape to complete the task. Because there are no batteries, wires, or electronics inside the robot, all guidance and tool activation occurs from the outside. Because the robot is designed to be tiny and simple, all commands are given from the doctor’s control station.
Lab studies on actual biological samples showed that the design choices worked successfully. The robot completed all of the tasks on the samples, and subsequent tests comparing the materials to human skin cells found that more than 99% of the cells were still alive and active, which is optimistic for future development. According to Associate Professor Lum, most magnetic robots this size can only do one or two tasks.
[Source]
Weekend Open Thread: Evereve – Corporette.com
Jensen Huang Approves Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron for NVIDIA (NVDA) HBM4 Memory Supply
Anatomy of the June crypto crash: Fed, Iran, Saylor
The Best Mystery Series of All Time Is Surging on Streaming 30 Years After It Ended
Alexander Zverev wins the French Open to finally earn a 1st Grand Slam title
Suspicious Polyfill login prompts pop up on Toshiba, Muji websites
Senator Cynthia Lummis Calls CLARITY Act the Most Consequential Financial Legislation of This Generation
Microsoft launches MXC, an OS-level sandbox for AI agents, with OpenAI and Nvidia already on board
Microsoft unveils seven homegrown AI models in new bid for ‘long term self-sufficiency’
The Pain Points Taking a Fragile Tech Rally Down a Notch
LBank Surpasses 25 Million Users Worldwide as AFA Partnership Continues to Drive Global Growth
(VIDEO) Justin Bieber Delivers Surprise Happy Birthday Serenade to Diners at Los Angeles Mexican Restaurant
Trump’s AI Ownership Plan Could Benefit Anthropic at OpenAI’s Expense
Bangladesh beat Australia after 20 years in ODIs, register only their second win over six-time world champions | Cricket News
Meta steals a tactic from Tesla and builds data centers in tents
Von der Leyen’s AI envoy pick draws conflict-of-interest fire
Eli Lilly (LLY) Stock Surges 4% Following Breakthrough Sleep Apnea Trial Results
RCS Messages Between iPhone and Android Get End-to-End Encryption With iOS 26.5
Hackers now exploit SolarWinds Serv-U flaw to crash servers
Notion restores access to Anthropic after service disruption
You must be logged in to post a comment Login