Meta announced on Thursday that it will now notify parents if their teen discusses suicide or self-harm with the company’s Meta AI chatbot. Meta says it’s also working on the ability to contact emergency services if someone’s conversations suggest they may be at risk of self-harm.

These changes arrive as Meta and other tech companies face scrutiny from regulators and parents over how AI chatbots respond to users in crisis, particularly teenagers —a liability question that’s increasingly shaping how AI companies design and market their products.

Meta says it has built a dedicated AI system to identify conversations where a teen makes a clear reference to hurting themselves.

“We understand how distressing these alerts may be for a parent to receive,” Meta wrote in a blog post. “That’s why, as we continue to improve our detection, all chats flagged by our AI will be manually reviewed before an alert is sent. If a teen’s intent is ambiguous, we’ll err on the side of caution and alert the parent. While that means we may sometimes notify parents when there may not be real cause for concern, we feel this is the right starting point, and we’ll continue to monitor to help make sure we’re in the right place.”

These alerts are now live for parents using Instagram Parental Supervision in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada, and will roll out globally by the end of the year, Meta says.

This update builds on the alerts that Meta already sends to parents when their teen repeatedly searches for suicide or self-harm terms on Instagram. It also builds on a feature that allows parents to see the topics their teen discussed with Meta AI over the past week.

Meta also announced that its “Limited Content” setting—which lets parents place their teens in a more restrictive experience on Instagram—now applies to Meta AI as well. Meta AI is already trained to avoid sexual or romantic conversations or alcohol-related discussions with teens, and the Limited Content setting expands those safeguards by making the chatbot decline a broader range of prompts. Meta didn’t specify what those additional prompts include, but TechCrunch has asked for company for more information.

Additionally, Meta says it will contact emergency services if someone’s conversation with Meta AI, whether the user is an adult or a teen, suggests someone is at risk of suicide. It’s worth noting that Meta already takes this step when someone posts something on Facebook or Instagram that suggests they are at risk, so this extends that same practice to conversations with its chatbot.

OnePlus has confirmed that it will no longer operate in North America or Europe, and won’t launch any further phones in the regions following 2025’s OnePlus 15. 

OnePlus merged some of its operations with parent company Oppo in 2021, and going forward, all operations will now fall under the Oppo brand. OnePlus will continue operating in China, while Realme, another Oppo sub-brand, will exit the Chinese market but continue selling devices overseas.

“This was neither a case of Oppo instructing OnePlus nor a unilateral decision made by OnePlus,” a OnePlus spokesperson said in a briefing. “Together with Oppo, we spend a long time carefully evaluating what our users need from us most in 2026, because our users are at the heart of everything we do.”

The new strategy will better meet people’s needs by “letting the OnePlus spirit and capabilities continue through Oppo,” added the spokesperson.

It’s a tricky time for smartphone brands, with a combination of limited memory supply and record-high memory prices forcing phone-makers to increase prices across the board. Global smartphone shipments decreased year over year in the first quarter of 2026, according to IDC, breaking the growth streak the market had seen since mid-2023. This week, Counterpoint Research released data suggesting that smartphone shipments had fallen to the lowest level since 2013.

Despite these pressures, most smartphone brands have managed to navigate the market successfully so far. Still, casualties aren’t surprising, and OnePlus is the first major one under Oppo’s restructuring

OnePlus was founded in China in 2013 by Pete Lau and Carl Pei, and quickly grew a cult following with its limited-edition drops and maverick marketing strategy. It built a reputation for building high-quality phones that undercut competitor devices on price. Pei left the company in 2020 and moved to London. There, he founded tech startup Nothing, whose smartphones have developed a cult following, too.

“OnePlus appears to have lost the clarity that originally made it successful,” said Paolo Pescatore, analyst at PP Foresight. “It built its reputation as a disruptive ‘flagship killer,’ but higher prices, a broader portfolio and closer integration with Oppo left it looking increasingly like another premium Android brand in an already crowded market.”

It’s much harder and more expensive to stand out now than it once was due to supply chain pressures, rising marketing costs, regulatory requirements, software support, retail presence and after-sales service, added Pescatore. In Europe, OnePlus struggled due to fragmentation and an intensely competitive environment, whereas in the US, its lack of carrier relationships and retail visibility prevented it from gaining mainstream traction.

“OnePlus did not necessarily fail on product,” said Pescatore. “It struggled to maintain a distinctive identity while achieving the distribution, investment and scale required to compete sustainably.”

The OnePlus spokesperson said the company will continue to ensure existing user rights and service commitments remain unchanged. Here are some more answers to questions you may have about the company’s future.

What will happen to my OnePlus phone?

Those of you with a OnePlus phone that’s still within its support period (such as the OnePlus 13 or 15) will continue to receive software updates for the promised duration. However these will now come via Oppo and will mean your phone will be changed from OnePlus’s Oxygen OS to Oppo’s Color OS.

Don’t worry: These operating systems are extremely similar, with only a few minor aesthetic changes, so you likely won’t notice much of a difference. 

Is OnePlus dead globally?

OnePlus has a significant audience in other regions, especially India, and OnePlus made no comment on whether it also plans to shutter the brand beyond the North American and European markets. 

The brand name will continue to exist — specifically in its home territory of China — though the company stated that further regional information will be communicated when needed. So be on the lookout.

Will Oppo phones now be on sale in the US?

No — not yet, anyway. The company stated that “we do not have any product plans for North America but we are continually evaluating opportunities in markets around the world.” 

Oppo doesn’t officially sell any of its products in the US, meaning the wonderful Find X9 Ultra camera phone is only available in the UK and much of Europe. With OnePlus shutting down, Oppo has effectively lost its only presence in the US smartphone market.

A financially motivated Russian threat actor tracked as UAT-11795 is using trojanized software to steal credentials and cryptocurrency by deploying a new backdoor called Starland RAT.

Attacks have been occurring since at least June 2025 and have focused on users in the U.S., although victims in Germany, Romania, and Venezuela have been observed as well.

According to researchers at Cisco Talos, the threat actor distributes the payload via trojanized installers for legitimate software such as MobaXterm, WebEx, Zoom, DBeaver, and FaceIT.

Although the researchers could not confirm the infection vector, they speculate that the malicious files are likely pushed using the ClickFix method.

In an analysis published today, Cisco Talos says that the attack starts with an HTA file that retrieves a trojanized NSIS installer containing a Python loader disguised as a text file (LICENSE.txt).

The loader modifies the Windows Registry to establish persistence and then decrypts and loads the Starland remote access trojan (RAT).

When launched, Starland checks whether it is running in a sandbox environment, adds scheduled tasks and Startup folder items for persistence, and tries to increase its privileges.

The malware looks for the following types of data on the compromised system:

• Browser data and cryptocurrency wallet assets, including more than 40 desktop and browser-extension wallets
• System details, including the HWID, RAM, processor, operating system, computer name, region, public IP address, and installed antivirus products
• Active Directory information, including domain structure, domain controllers, and the victim’s domain privileges

StarlandRAT can also capture screenshots of the victim’s desktop, execute shell commands, inject 32- or 64-bit shellcode, and download additional payloads (EXEs, MSIs, DLLs, ZIPs).

In the observed attacks, the 64-bit shellcode chain delivers the CastleStealer info-stealer malware, while the 32-bit chain delivers the Remcos remote access trojan (RAT).

CastleStealer targets browser credentials, cryptocurrency wallet information, Discord and Telegram sessions, Steam credentials, and filesystem files.

Remcos RAT provides capabilities such as keylogging, webcam and screen capture, audio recording, clipboard monitoring, file management, and remote command execution.

Cisco Talos highlights that the malware’s command-and-control (C2) communication has a redundancy mechanism if reaching the hardcoded address fails, which involves querying a Polygon smart contract with an XOR-encrypted fallback domain.

Talos also discovered that UAT-11795 uses a previously undocumented PowerShell C2 framework called WLDR, which uses encrypted (PBKDF2-SHA256) beaconing and communications, operates entirely in memory, and binds payload delivery to each victim’s hardware identifier.

To defend against UAT-11795 attacks, organizations should use the indicators of compromise IoCs in the Cisco Talos report.

Users should avoid executing commands found online if they don’t understand what they do and should download software only from confirmed official vendor portals.

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.

Get the whitepaper

Media reports suggest that Hyundai is to deploy Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid robots at its factories in the US.

Hyundai Motor Group is to gain full control of Boston Dynamics by acquiring SoftBank’s stake in the US robotics company, according to various media reports.

Although terms of the deal have not been disclosed, Reuters reported that it would cost Hyundai around 500 billion ​won ($335m) for the Japanese investment company’s holdings of between 9pc and 10pc in Boston Dynamics.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that the deal would be worth around $325m, with Hyundai paying a “locked-in price” at a much lower valuation – around $3.3bn – than what the company is likely worth in 2026 – between $20bn and $100bn.

On completion of the deal, Hyundai and affiliates will fully own the US robotics company, having previously acquired around 80pc of shares in 2021 for $880m.

The move could help Hyundai to build an end-to-end AI robotics process by combining Boston Dynamics’ physical AI capabilities with the larger group’s capacity in manufacturing, mobility technologies and supply chain access.

Korean media reported that a Hyundai Motor Group official said: “As part of our long-term robotics strategy, we have been reviewing ways to expand our investment in Boston Dynamics. We will continue to strengthen the competitiveness of our robotics business and pursue greater synergies.”

Reports suggested that Hyundai is to deploy Boston Dynamics’ Atlas humanoid robots at various of its factories in the US.

Atlas is scheduled to begin parts-sequencing work in 2028, with its role expanding to component assembly from 2030 once the robot’s operational reliability has been established, according to the Korea Herald.

Hyundai aims to build annual production capacity for 30,000 robots by 2028 and deploy 25,000 units at Hyundai Motor and Kia plants before supplying outside customers, according to the publication.

In May, social media and tech giant Meta acquired US start-up Assured Robot Intelligence in aid of its plans to build humanoid technology. Its Big Tech rival Amazon, in March, cut a small number of jobs in its own robotics division.

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Update July 16, 2026 (3:00 am PT): OnePlus said that the company won’t launch new products in Europe and North America.

“After careful assessment, OnePlus will no longer launch new products in Europe and North America. All users’ rights and interests, including after-sales support and software updates, will remain fully guaranteed,” it said in a statement to TechCrunch.

Amid rising consumer electronics prices and slow demand for new purchases, Android phone maker OnePlus plans to wind down its U.S. and Europe operations this week, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The report cited a source saying that OnePlus’ shuttering of its U.S. and European shops is part of a corporate rejig at parent company Oppo. It also noted that OnePlus will wind down its operations in India, one of its biggest markets outside China.

OnePlus was started by Pete Lau and Carl Pei in 2013 to make affordable Android phones for tech enthusiasts. Over time, the company expanded the range of offerings and that created global demand for its products. Pei left the company in 2020 to start Nothing. As the price of the company’s flagship phones increased, OnePlus also ventured into more affordable phones with its Nord series.

Analytics firms like IDC and Counterpoint have predicted that smartphone shipments are going to decline by more than 13% in 2026 due to a limited supply of memory chips that’s been described as RAMageddon.

Oppo faced a double-digit shipment decline year-over-year for the second quarter of 2026, according to a report by Counterpoint. It noted that the company faced “softness across most of its key markets” because of weak demand.

The company plans to continue operating OnePlus in China and sell Realme phones abroad in areas like the Nordic region, where it has proved successful, according to the Bloomberg report.

Counterpoint said that the company’s shipments to other companies have dwindled in the last year. The firm said that its shipment share to U.S. dropped below 1% last year.

“OnePlus built its name as the “flagship killer” — high-end specs, mid-range price, and aggressive global expansion. That growth era’s over. The company is now doubling down on China and retreating from the rest of the world,” Counterpoint’s senior research analyst Maurice Klaehne told TechCrunch.

HANDS-ON Dortania’s OpenCore Legacy Patcher lets you run newer versions of macOS on unsupported Intel Macs. It’s handy, but there are a few things to beware of – including macOS Tahoe.

OpenCore Legacy Patcher brings Hackintosh techniques to genuine Mac hardware. It’s an inspired hack that helps you to install newer versions of Apple macOS on older Macs for which Apple has dropped support in recent versions of macOS. Its co-author, Mykola Grymalyuk, has a fascinating retrospective on its development.

We introduced OCLP a few years ago when it was still quite new. Our screenshot then showed version 1.01, but as the project’s GitHub page shows, it’s now up to version 2.4.1. It does still have one big drawback, though. At present, the newest macOS it can help with is version 15 “Sequoia,” whose release we covered back in 2024. In 2025, The Register warned that the forthcoming macOS 26 “Tahoe” would be the last version to have any support for x86 Macs. As we confirmed in September, it supports a mere four x86 Macs. This limited Intel support makes it a significant challenge for the OCLP development team, and nearly a year later, the latest OCLP still does not support Tahoe.

As we’ve mentioned a few times, the main desktop computer at the Irish Sea wing of Vulture Towers is a 27-inch Retina 5K iMac (late 2015). A couple of years ago, we maxed out this machine with a quad-core i7, 32 GB of RAM, a 1 TB NVMe SSD, and an 8 TB hard disk. It also drives a 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display. It’s a capable box, but the last supported OS was 2021’s macOS 12 “Monterey.” As we mentioned last month, this is now too old for the latest Raspberry Pi Imager. It was time.

Getting started with OCLP

Alongside OCLP’s own documentation, there are several how-to guides out there, such as the iFixit Guide and Greg Gant’s 10-step guide. We are not setting out to recreate them, just to point out the stumbling blocks we encountered.

Ever since OS X 10.9 “Mavericks” in 2013, macOS has been a free download. You can get it from Apple’s App Store, and the company even has a downloads page to help you find older versions.

When you download a version of macOS, what you get is a macOS application, called “Install macOS [Codename].” Buried inside this is a little command-line app to create a bootable USB key to reinstall a completely blank machine – for instance, if you fit a new empty SSD. You’ll need a fairly big, and ideally fast, key. The recommended minimum is 32 GB.

Then you boot off the key and install or upgrade macOS. However, OCLP can also patch a system disk to make it bootable on an unsupported Mac. It will even download various releases of macOS and create the installation USB key for you.

The basic way that OCLP works is by creating a standard macOS installer and adding a model-specific OpenCore configuration that bypasses Apple’s firmware checks. It may also apply post-install root patches for unsupported hardware. Intel Macs use EFI firmware, which means a small hidden partition containing the EFI bootloader, called the EFI System Partition, or ESP for short. OCLP adds a new entry to this, which shows a special “EFI Boot” entry, as shown in the manual. You must use this to start your newly created key.

OCLP does not build a generic modified macOS – it creates a model-specific OpenCore configuration for the Mac on which you run it. There is an option to bypass that and create a custom USB key for a different Mac, but watch out: by default, it creates one for the machine you run it on. For an easier life, you might want to keep a small partition with the last officially supported macOS for your machine – and if you’re installing on a blank disk, do that first, before continuing with the process. Even after it’s created a custom USB, you can’t boot this the normal way. You must use the custom “EFI Boot” entry it creates.

You will probably do a lot of rebooting. Don’t do this process with a wireless keyboard or mouse, even if they’re official Apple ones. Plug in plain old wired USB ones. If it’s a PC keyboard, make sure that you know which keys are which in Mac terms. If the instructions say “hold down the Option key,” that means Alt; if they say “press Cmd plus [some other key],” that means the Windows key. Our normal Das Keyboard is a USB 3 device, which might be why it doesn’t always register when the machine boots, so we needed to use an additional USB 2 as well.

To pick custom boot options, press the Option key (Alt) immediately after the power-on chime, and hold it down. Wait for all the options to appear, and pick EFI Boot, then in the following boot-device picker, choose the installer for your new version. Don’t worry: after it’s all installed, you don’t need to do this every time – only if you change the Startup Disk to an unpatched, supported version, then need to switch back again.

Once you’ve booted your new, customized macOS installer key, you can either do a clean install or upgrade an existing copy of macOS, just like normal. As a fallback measure, we used Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner to make a backup copy of our Monterey partition on another drive, just in case. This has been an essential Mac utility for decades, and it has a handy trick up its sleeve. Since 10.14 Mojave, macOS has defaulted to Apple’s proprietary APFS, and since 10.15 Catalina, it uses a system of container volumes to keep the core OS semi-immutable and safe. For an example, the Eclectic Light Company explains the Sequoia config. This limits how much a macOS volume can be shrunk, but Carbon Copy Cloner can image a volume onto any destination big enough to hold the data, which is very handy.

Post-install gotchas

Of all our apps, only one didn’t work. A couple of years ago, Broadcom made VMware Fusion freeware, but we couldn’t update past Fusion 13. With Sequoia, we could update to Fusion 26 – but it didn’t work. All VMs had a blank black display. No biggie: we have VirtualBox and the very capable UTM, and both work fine.

Our iMac came with a “Fusion drive” – a tiered storage volume combining a tiny 24 GB SSD and a 1 TB HDD. When we upgraded the drives, to keep life simple, we didn’t recombine them: it boots from the SSD, and we have a big HFS+ data volume on the hard disk that holds our home directory. Sequoia seems not to expect home directories on HFS+, and various settings would not save. It asked some of the same first-run questions every boot. To get around this, we had to move it back. You can’t move the home directory of a logged-in account, so we were glad of the standby “Administrator” user account we created years ago for emergencies.

Logging in as “Administrator,” we moved all the big data folders out of our home directory (Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music, Videos, and so on) elsewhere on the hard disk. Then we moved the home directory into its normal location in the boot volume on the SSD. Apple’s Library folder is huge, and this process took a long time – about five hours.

We didn’t really expect it to work, but we created aliases to the data folders in our newly relocated home directory. (Aliases are the macOS equivalent of symbolic links, and to make them by drag-and-drop, hold down Cmd and Opt – the mouse pointer gains a curved arrow emblem, much like Windows shortcut icons.) This worked perfectly, and all of our apps find the folders in their new location. With the whole home directory on SSD, the Mac runs much faster and apps load much quicker too. (The folders don’t have their usual icons, which is just cosmetic; also, Apple Music isn’t very happy – but we never use it: Foobar 2000 does all we want.)

Another snag is that once Sequoia was running smoothly, it started nagging us to upgrade to Tahoe. Don’t do this: OCLP doesn’t support macOS 26 yet, and while it might boot, USB doesn’t work – and no Mac is very useful without a keyboard and mouse. If you do this, just say no to Tahoe.

(If you only need some specific app then an older version of macOS may be all you need. Last year, we Hackintoshed a Dell Latitude to recover some data from a network Time Machine backup, and we found that macOS 11 Big Sur was much quicker than macOS 12 Monterey on that hardware. If an older version will do what you need, it may be easier or lighter-weight, but we decided to just go direct to the latest version on offer.)

Back in March, we looked at “Stop Tahoe Upgrade,” a tiny macOS policy file that you can install to make the nags go away. This worked perfectly on our M1 MacBook Air, but it didn’t on our iMac. Doing some further investigation, we found some additional steps that got it working. You need to manually create two UUIDs and add them to the scripts, then the profile worked on our Intel box. The comments on that article offer an alternative method, by opting into beta updates, but that resulted in us being offered a beta of the update to 15.7.8, which isn’t ideal.

Why not Linux, or even Windows?

We have considered using Boot Camp Assistant to see if we can crowbar Windows 10 LTSC onto this machine, but to be honest, we didn’t buy a Mac to run Windows on it. This vulture adopted Windows with 2.01 in 1988. We’ve done our time, served our sentence, and we don’t want to go back.

So why not Linux? This is, after all, The Reg FOSS desk. Well, we tried it. The main problem is the iMac’s dual displays. Its built-in screen is a massive 5,120 2,880, but the Thunderbolt display is a quarter of the resolution at just 2,560 x 1,440. Running two different dot-pitches currently means using Wayland, and that massively reduces the choice of desktops. First, we tried Pop!_OS 24.04 – we quite like its COSMIC desktop. This normally snappy distro took tens of minutes to boot and was almost totally unresponsive.

After some research, we disconnected the Thunderbolt display, and then it ran fine, but we couldn’t install it. As we reported back in 2021, the Pop!_OS installer expects an ESP of at least a gigabyte for its systemd-boot setup, while Apple, like Microsoft, typically creates one only a couple of hundred megabytes in size.

Next, as a control, we tried Ubuntu 26.04. With the second screen disconnected, Ubuntu worked fine: HiDPI screen, Wi-Fi, power management, everything. We installed it and updated it, and it ran very quickly indeed… until we connected the Thunderbolt screen, when it instantly fell over.

It seems that Linux’s Thunderbolt support is distinctly lacking. Back in 2022, we reported on the difficulties connecting this display via a USB-C to Thunderbolt adapter. The adapter won’t work at all on our company Dell Latitude 5420. Apparently, tenth-generation and later Intel processors can’t talk to Thunderbolt 1 anymore.

We had more luck on an older Dell, the 2025 FOSS desk testbed XPS 13. That can drive the display through an adapter, but only as a display. The 27-inch Thunderbolt display is also a docking station: it has Firewire, Ethernet, three USB-B 2 ports, a webcam, microphone, and stereo speakers, and can power an Apple laptop over MagSafe too. None of these ports work in Linux. It becomes just a big, hot, external screen.

For now, Linux’s hardware support just isn’t up to making the most of some Apple hardware, even an 11-year-old iMac.

After we moved the home directory onto the APFS boot drive, Sequoia runs very well on this machine. Thanks to having the home directory on SSD, it’s faster than ever. For a couple of days, it ran hot and slow while Spotlight re-indexed some three terabytes of files, but once that was done, it happily purrs along at 63ºC, the same as before.

If you have an older but well-specified Mac, OCLP can give it the gift of life. It doesn’t support all models, but it supports most from the last decade and a half. So long as current browsers are available, running a dated version of macOS is no big problem. It’s not trivial to install; you want as many backups as you can make, and once running, you must make very sure that it doesn’t try to update itself to macOS 26. We hope that the OCLP developers add support for that final x86 release soon. ®

This project is a custom and independent version of Firefox, with the primary goals of privacy, security and user freedom.

LibreWolf is designed to increase protection against tracking and fingerprinting techniques, while also including a few security improvements. This is achieved through our privacy and security oriented settings and patches. LibreWolf also aims to remove all the telemetry, data collection and annoyances, as well as disabling anti-freedom features like DRM.

Features

No Telemetry

No experiments, adware, annoyances, or unnecessary distractions.

Private Search

Privacy-conscious search providers: DuckDuckGo, Searx, Qwant and more.

Content Blocker Included

uBlock Origin is already included for your convenience.

Enhanced Privacy

Hardened to maximize privacy, without sacrificing usability.

Fast Updates

LibreWolf is always built from the latest Firefox stable source, for up-to-date security and features along with stability.

Open Source

Everyone can participate in the development of LibreWolf. Join us on Codeberg and Matrix.

Is LibreWolf the same as Firefox?

No, while LibreWolf is built from Firefox‘s source code, it disables telemetry, privacy-invasive features, and some Mozilla services, while enabling stricter security and privacy settings out of the box.

Does LibreWolf support Firefox extensions?

Yes, LibreWolf is compatible with most Firefox extensions available from the Mozilla Add-ons store, allowing users to customize the browser just like Firefox.

Can I sign in with a Firefox account in LibreWolf?

No, Firefox Sync is disabled by default in LibreWolf because it relies on Mozilla services. Users who need bookmark, history, and password synchronization may prefer standard Firefox.

Who should use LibreWolf?

LibreWolf is ideal for users who prioritize privacy and security over convenience. It offers a hardened browsing experience with minimal configuration, making it a good choice for those who want stronger privacy protections without relying on Chromium-based browsers.

How often is LibreWolf updated?

LibreWolf is based on the latest Firefox release and is typically updated within three days of Mozilla’s stable releases, often on the same day. Unlike Firefox, LibreWolf does not include an automatic updater, so updates must be installed through your operating system’s package manager or manually.

Can I use LibreWolf with Tor?

No, if you need the anonymity provided by the Tor network, you should use the Tor Browser instead. It is specifically designed to minimize browser fingerprinting and work safely over Tor. Using LibreWolf or any other browser with Tor can reduce your anonymity and is not recommended.

Does LibreWolf make any outgoing connections?

Yes, but only for essential, privacy-conscious features. LibreWolf connects to update filter lists for uBlock Origin, Tracking Protection, and certificate revocation, and maintains a WebSocket connection for website push notifications. The project aims to eliminate unnecessary connections while keeping the minimum required to balance privacy, security, and browser functionality.

What’s New

New

• Smart Window includes several enhancements:
• Select text on a page and get quick access to summarize, explain, and more using the built-in assistant. (Bug 2034921)
• Added a row of shortcuts to New Tab, making it easier to get back to sites. (Bug 2048338)
• Certain new Firefox features are released gradually. This means some users will see the feature before everyone does. This approach helps to get early feedback to catch bugs and improve behavior quickly, meaning more Firefox users overall have a better experience.

Fixed

• Fixed an issue that prevented email tracking protection from being disabled in the redesigned Firefox Settings. (Bug 2049331)
• Fixed a hang that could occur after using a file picker dialog on macOS 26. (Bug 2053177)
• Fixed the homepage not loading for some enterprise configurations that set it using a legacy autoconfig format. (Bug 2047962)
• Various security fixes.

But OnePlus’ exit comes at a time when smartphone shipments are showing steep declines due to the ongoing memory crisis—the lack of RAM, eaten up by data centers for the AI boom, has caused a global shortage. Research firm Counterpoint on Monday noted an 11 percent year-over-year decline in global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2026, the lowest level in that period in 13 years. Two companies saw growth—Apple and Samsung—whereas competitors like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo saw the sharpest declines. (Vivo is a part of the same conglomerate, BBK Electronics, that owns Oppo, OnePlus, and Realme.)

Last year, at the onset of president Donald Trump’s tariff war, OnePlus dramatically increased the price of its then new smartwatch from $330 to $500. In May 2026, the company hiked prices on its latest phones in India. The company has been dealing with a massive loss of smartphone market share in the US for several years.

Nabila Popal, a senior research director of Consumer Devices at the International Data Corporation, says OnePlus was never a leader in the US. Still, the company’s sales took a nosedive after T-Mobile dropped its partnership in 2023.

OnePlus went from 1 million smartphone shipments in the US in 2019 to just under 130,000 device shipments in 2025—roughly a 90 percent volume drop over six years. Smartphones are primarily sold through carriers in the US, which means phone makers that aren’t available at carrier stores often have a hard time cracking the market. Popal says carriers drive as much as 66 percent of the volume in the US, at least based on 2025 data. T-Mobile declined to comment on the OnePlus news.

The US represented around 22 percent of OnePlus’ shipments in 2021, with similar numbers from Europe, and only 18 percent from China. But Popal says by 2025, the numbers flipped with 56 percent of OnePlus’s volume coming from China, which likely explains Oppo’s statement that OnePlus’ China product road map is not changing. If you add Asia Pacific, that number jumps to 91 percent—a huge jump from 51 percent in 2021.

“In 2018, with the OnePlus 6, they had launched what they were calling very proudly a ‘flagship killer’ at the price of $529, with flagship specs,” Popal says. “And then, rather than staying at that price point, they replicated the premium market—trying to increase prices—and that made them similar to the competition.”

Popal says it’s a strategy often set by companies with razor-thin margins. The initial goal is to grab interest, then go up in price, a method to break into the market and gradually increase profitability. “But unfortunately, certain brands are not able to command a price beyond a certain point,” she says. “It’s really only been Apple and Samsung that have been able to operate very successfully.”

Chinese phone brands are often the first to introduce new technologies (like silicon-carbon batteries), and while there aren’t many Chinese players in the US, OnePlus was the outlier. The brand’s lack of a presence will mean one less choice for consumers, and Popal says the market is moving further into consolidation. OnePlus went from having 1.8 percent of the US market in 2021 to 0.1 percent in 2025, according to Popal; Apple and Samsung went from a combined 73 percent of the market in that same period to 80 percent in 2025.

“It’s a pity that US consumers do not have the choice of the number of brands that are available globally because there are some fascinating technologies and features,” Popal says. “But I don’t see that landscape changing.”

OnePlus now joins a growing list of companies that have either shut down operations, exited the mobile business, pivoted, or drastically scaled back their ambitions, including HTC, LG Mobile, Sony, Meizu, and HMD.

Disclaimer: Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed below belong solely to the author. Data sourced from Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower.

It’s this time of the year again, when Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower releases its latest salary data for over 420 common occupations in the domestic economy. Unfortunately, due to the scope of the task, there is a one-year lag in these statistics (they are accurate as of Jun 2025).

Though salaries do not change more than a few per cent over 12 months, so it remains pretty valid.

In 57 cases, the gross median annual pay has reached over S$100,000 per year, or S$8,333 per month. As a reminder, the median is the middle value. It means that half of the workers in a given profession make more than this figure and half make less.

Unsurprisingly, you’ll find these jobs in the two highest categories: Managers (26 jobs) and Professionals (31 jobs). In other words: those who manage people and organisations, and those who specialise in specific tasks, but not among the support staff and clerical workers.

Managers

It’s hardly a surprise that most of these managerial positions involve dealing with money: finance, sales and managing the entire business (in addition to a few more specialised roles).

You might be surprised to see CEOs or company directors ranked lower than CIOs or CTOs here, but you have to keep in mind that only big companies have these specialised roles, while virtually every business has a CEO.

This means that the number of data points for CEOs is much higher and their distribution is much broader, including many smaller businesses where the boss isn’t necessarily paid five figures per month. This brings those average figures down.

Professionals

This might be the list that interests more people, as it shows that you don’t have to aspire to “manage” anything to make really good money. You can simply be an expert in one of many diverse fields, enjoying your line of work and getting paid handsomely for your expertise.

It may, of course, involve a job in finance or insurance, but also being a doctor, or a veterinarian, lawyer, data scientist, engineer, press editor, designer, AI developer or a university lecturer.

You might be good with numbers or good with people (or even animals). You can fly a plane, teach or trade oil.

There are countless career opportunities that Singapore’s job market is willing to reward with a good salary, as long as you yourself acquire the skills and knowledge required.

Few people could complain that the city is too small to allow them have a good career. There are many avenues to follow even if you never set foot outside this small island.

• Read other articles we’ve written on Singapore’s job landscape here.

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