Healthcare technology company Veradigm disclosed a data breach after a cybersecurity incident at one of its third-party vendors exposed patients’ personal data.

The company says the incident did not cause operational disruptions but affected a small number of customers.

Formerly known as Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Veradigm is a Chicago-based healthcare technology company that supplies medical practices with electronic health records, e-prescribing, patient-engagement, practice-management, and revenue-cycle software.

Thousands of hospitals, clinics, and biopharmaceutical firms across the United States use its solutions.

The company says in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that an attacker obtained credentials from a vendor’s environment for a Veradigm API reserved for customer services. The threat actor then used their access to copy patient data.

Veradigm’s disclosure notes that the stolen data includes personal details and Social Security numbers (SSNs) for some of the patients. Clinical or medical information remained safe.

“The vendor’s compromised credentials provided access only through that limited interface and did not provide access to any other part of the Company’s environment, including the Company’s broader network, servers, databases, or other systems,” the company says in the SEC filing.

After discovering the breach, Veradigm initiated its incident-response procedures, notified law enforcement, and is currently investigating to determine the scope.

Affected customers and individuals are being notified, with credit-monitoring services offered where applicable.

The investigation is ongoing, but based on current information, Veradigm does not believe the incident is reasonably likely to materially affect its business, operations, financial condition, or results.

The Gentlemen ransomware claims the attack

Although Veradigm’s disclosure did not identify the attacker, The Gentlemen ransomware group has claimed the intrusion on September 5 and listed the company on its data leak site.

The threat actor alleges to be holding 3.5 million patient records that include full names, home addresses, SSNs, email addresses, phone numbers, and personally identifiable information or guarantors.

The ransomware actor threatens to leak the stolen data by Friday, September 11, if the company doesn’t engage in a ransom payment negotiation.

The Gentlemen threat actor emerged around mid-2025 and operates as a double-extortion group, combining data theft with data encryption on Windows, Linux, NAS, BSD, and ESXi systems.

On its data leak site, the gang listed more than 800 victims from 86 countries and various sectors, including manufacturing, technology, healthcare, transportation, and financial services, indicating opportunistic attacks that rely only on access availability.

In April 2026, Check Point reported that it discovered a SystemBC proxy malware botnet with more than 1,500 hosts and linked it to an affiliate of The Gentlemen ransomware gang.

In June 2026, ESET said that The Gentlemen was employing a new endpoint detection and response (EDR) killer called GentleKiller.

Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.

The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.

Get the report

from the phony-business dept

In addition to the $111 billion Paramount/Warner Bros merger just being foundationally bad for creatives, labor, and consumers, the Ellison family-owned company’s executives just keep demonstrating why they’re not really the kind of folks you want dominating the lion’s share of U.S. media.

That’s included calling deal critics “antisemitic,” cozying up to foreign authoritarians, constantly threatening to take Paramount out of California, or, more recently, using a fake consumer group (dubbed the “Neighbors for Strong Communities“) to try and create bogus public support for what’s a pretty broadly unpopular deal.

Neighbors for Strong Communities doesn’t disclose its funding donors and insists it’s not being “directly funded” by Paramount, but it has all the telltale signs of “astroturf,” or fake public interest advocacy. One of the things the group does is generate comments to California AG Rob Bonta urging him to drop the 12-state antitrust lawsuit against the merger. You know… for the children.

Rachel Antell at The Contrarian took a closer look at the Neighbors for Strong Communities website, and tried to fill out a letter to Rob Bonta opposing the merger, only to see something curious happen: The website’s AI-assisted letter system simply changed her writing to not only express support for the merger, but make up an entire fake backstory about her. This is not what she told it:

Antell notes the astroturf group’s letters leverage Influent, an AI vendor founded by a guy named Tanner Kelly, who registered as a California lobbyist last year. Antell herself is an archival producer who founded the Archival Producers Alliance and has crafted guidelines for the use of generative AI aimed at more transparently disclosing when it’s being used.

U.S. corporations have a very long history of flooding regulatory comment proceedings (or the press) with completely artificial support for what’s almost always bad policy few people actually support. You may recall how the telecom industry was caught using fake and dead people to support the Trump administration’s destruction of net neutrality rules and other consumer protections.

This stuff was bad before AI, now everything’s been taken to the next level. There’s no meaningful effort afoot to stop or identify it anywhere in the U.S. government. It exists as an effective way to drum out genuine public interest opinion and replace it with lazy cack that supports whatever shitty policy companies drum up (gaining merger approvals, gutting oversight).

In this case, that means creating fake workers who are super excited about a merger that’s going to result in thousands of layoffs as the bigger company’s executives offload their massive new debt obligations to labor and consumers. How do we know this? It’s what happens literally every time regulators rubber stamp more media consolidation — particularly when Warner Brothers is involved.

Filed Under: ai, antitrust, astroturf, consumers, david ellison, lawsuit, media consolidation, mergers

Companies: neighbors for strong communities, paramount, warner bros.

Gaming Comfort: Gaming chairs are often one of the most overlooked pieces of furniture in a gaming setup. While luxury “thrones” can be left to customers with truly deep pockets, most gamers should at least consider investing in a somewhat expensive chair to ease the discomfort that comes with long gaming sessions.

Corsair recently launched the TC80 Gaming Chair, a new armchair designed to provide a durable and comfortable seating option for PC-focused gaming setups. The Fremont-based corporation highlights how its new chair has undergone more than 30 durability and safety tests, suggesting that it should accommodate gamers with a wide range of body types.

The TC80 Gaming Chair meets the BIFMA X5.1 and EN 1335 standards for office chairs, Corsair said. The chair underwent a series of demanding durability, stability, and weight-load tests, with Corsair particularly proud of how its new product survived the onslaught.

These tests included dropping a 136kg load onto the center of the seat, applying a 1,001N load to the backrest for 60 seconds, and placing 13 heavy discs against the backrest. Furthermore, the chair survived 100,000 cycles of a 57kg weight falling onto the seat, 60,000 cycles of 400N being applied to each armrest, and 120,000 swivel-test cycles with 122kg placed on the seat at both its maximum and minimum height.

The TC80 Gaming Chair provides a “generously” wide and flat seat with plush padding, breathable fabric upholstery, and 100mm of adjustable seat height. There is even a detachable neck pillow for people who like to alternate between office work sessions and more relaxing activities. The chair’s stability comes from a steel five-star base, 50mm casters, and a Class 4 steel gas lift that should last for years.

Talking about comfort, Corsair’s new chair offers a recline range of 90° to 115°. Users can adjust and lock the chair at their preferred angle, so there is no need to settle for a fixed position straight out of the box.

Corsair is already selling the TC80 Gaming Chair through its own store and other major retailers. The chair costs $200 in the US, while customers in Europe and the UK can get it for €180 and £170, respectively. The company’s official announcement provides a full list of regional launch prices.

Corsair also highlights the TC80 as an entry-level product in its growing lineup of gaming chairs. The company already offers more expensive models, such as the TC100 Relaxed and the premium TC500 Luxe.

The TC500 comes with a €550 price tag in Europe, which is still a relatively affordable purchase compared with some truly expensive chairs, such as the obscenely priced Herman Miller x Logitech Embody. For now, I think I’ll stick with my cheap Songmics gaming chair.

Sonos is known for offering some of the best speakers and best soundbars on the market. With that in mind, we’re excited by the recent Beam Ultra launch.

Sonos promises that the Beam Ultra “represents a major step forward in size-defying sound”, but how does it measure up to the Beam (Gen 2)? Is it worth upgrading if you’re sporting the older soundbar?

We’ve compared the specs of the Sonos Beam Ultra to the Beam (Gen 2) and noted the key differences alongside their similarities below. Read on to see what’s new with the Beam Ultra and whether you think it’ll join our best soundbar guide. 

Price and Availability

The Sonos Beam Ultra is currently available for pre-order and will launch alongside the Sonos Ace Ultra at the end of September. The soundbar is available in a choice of two colours (Black and White) and has an RRP of £699.

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In comparison, the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) also comes in a choice between Black or White, but has a cheaper RRP of £499. Plus as it’s been around for a few years, you can also find the Beam (Gen 2) with a decent price cut too.

SQUIRREL_PLAYLIST_10208752

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Sonos Beam Ultra is fitted with nine drivers

While the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) is equipped with a total of five drivers, the Beam Ultra boasts nine drivers. Sonos explains it has added front-facing drivers to make for a “more powerful and dynamic sound in the left, right and centre channels” while the new upward-firing drivers “add height as a third dimension of sound”. 

That’s not to say the Beam (Gen 2) doesn’t sound great. In fact, we concluded that considering its small size, the Beam (Gem 2) sounds “exceptionally good”. Although there are some limitations with its surround sound and bass performance, these can be improved by adding extra Sonos components into the mix. 

However, that’s where the Sonos Beam Ultra takes the lead, as Sonos explains there’s “no need” to pair separate front speakers with the soundbar as it “generates spacious, precise audio”. With that in mind, the Beam Ultra looks set to be a more complete device than the Beam (Gen 2) – though remember we haven’t reviewed the soundbar ourselves, so we can’t verify this just yet.

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Sonos Beam Ultra is designed for mid-sized rooms

Sonos explains that the Beam Ultra is designed for mid-sized living rooms between 23 and 32.5 m2. In comparison, the Beam (Gen 2) is designed for rooms up to 250 square feet, which roughly equates to around 23m2 – putting it towards the smaller scale of the Beam Ultra.

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That means if you have a larger living room, then you’ll benefit from the Beam Ultra while smaller rooms do better with the more compact Beam (Gen 2). 

Sonos Beam Ultra creates a 7.1.2 surround sound experience

Thanks to its architecture, the Beam Ultra promises to create a genuine 7.1.2 surround sound experience that’s made up of seven crisp ear-level channels, one deep bass and two height channels. The result, according to Sonos, is a detailed and spacious listening experience that’s made possible with Dolby Atmos support.

However, we should disclaim that Dolby Atmos experiences require Dolby Atmos-encoded content and a compatible HDMI eARC connection. 

The Beam (Gen 2) on the other hand creates a 5.1.2 surround sound and also supports Dolby Atmos content too.

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Both weigh the same

Despite their prowess, both the Beam Ultra and Beam (Gen 2) weigh just 2.88kg. Both share a similar design too, however the Beam Ultra is slightly lower and 3.9-inches wider than the Gen 2. Plus, as it now sports upward-firing drivers, the Beam Ultra is equipped with an upper grille too.

Either way, both soundbars can either sit comfortably underneath a TV or can be wall mounted.

Early Verdict 

We’ll have to wait until we review the Sonos Beam Ultra to provide a conclusive verdict. However, with the inclusion of upward-firing and front-facing drivers, the Beam Ultra seems like a more complete soundbar that may not require any additional equipment. If you have a larger room and don’t want to splurge on more speakers, then the Sonos Beam Ultra looks like a better option than the Beam (Gen 2).

Having said that, the Beam (Gen 2) is a brilliant and more affordable way to improve your TV’s audio quality – especially if it’s in a smaller room.

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In an era where artificial intelligence promises to archive human culture at the touch of a button, Indigenous communities face a vital question: Who has the right to own, shape and digitize sacred knowledge? 

Long before AI became a headline in education, this question fundamentally reshaped my work as the instructional technology coordinator at Indian Community School. But understanding how to protect our community’s digital future didn’t start in a computer lab; it began in a quiet valley in Wisconsin, with my grandmother’s unfinished quilt and a ribbon skirt workshop that changed everything I knew about knowledge itself.

I grew up in a small rural village tucked into Wisconsin’s Driftless Area, where winding roads disappear between steep bluffs and deep valleys, and every hill seems to reveal another breathtaking view. It was a place shaped not by glaciers, but by time. A landscape as rugged as it was beautiful. 

It was also home to my grandmother — a strong cheesemaker’s wife who was, in some ways, the quintessential grandmother figure. She hosted Sunday family dinners, baked fresh bread, volunteered at the local food pantry and quilted with the other ladies from church twice a week. She also cursed like a sailor and wasn’t stingy with her love or hugs. 

In my teen years, she became my shelter — a quiet refuge from a chaotic home and a reminder that love exists even in the hardest seasons. When I went away to college, she sent me away with a quilt made just for me, a special gift we all only receive once. As an adult, she became the reason we visited the Driftless Area and was the glue that kept our families together. During that time, she showed that love to my children, who adored her. 

After a long stay in a nursing home and years of declining health, my grandmother passed away last year. After her passing, my twin sister and I discovered her last unfinished quilt tucked away in a forgotten storage bin. Her hands hadn’t been able to hold the material or work the sewing machine for a long time, and we thought all the quilts had been claimed. Finding one more, even unfinished, felt like a blessing. 

Around the same time, my twin sister and I both signed up for a staff ribbon skirt class where members of the Indigenous community would teach us not only how to make ribbon skirts, but also share teachings about how to wear them respectfully and as true allies. Carrying pieces of our grandmother’s unfinished quilt with us, we set out to create ribbon skirts in her honor. 

Before that class, I knew very little about ribbon skirts beyond seeing them worn at school celebrations and community events. I quickly learned they are not tied to a single tribe, but are worn by Indigenous women across many Nations, each with their own traditions, teachings and stories. I also learned that a ribbon skirt is much more than a beautiful piece of clothing. It represents identity, resilience, and the enduring strength of Indigenous women. 

Today, communities across North America celebrate Ribbon Skirt Day each January, recognizing not only the skirts themselves, but the right of Indigenous people to wear them with pride after generations of policies that sought to erase their cultures.

What surprised me most was that our class wasn’t really about making skirts. It was about learning the responsibility that comes with them. We learned when it was appropriate to wear a ribbon skirt, what it meant to wear one as an ally, and why those teachings mattered as much as the sewing itself. Anyone can buy a ribbon skirt online, but creating one alongside community members who generously shared their knowledge transformed it into something entirely different. Every stitch became part of a relationship built on trust, respect and a willingness to learn. 

That experience changed the way I thought about knowledge itself. I realized that some things are valuable not because they can be owned, bought, or preserved, but because they carry stories, relationships and responsibilities that extend far beyond any one individual. They belong to the communities that shaped them and to the generations who will inherit them.

The tension between owning knowledge and stewarding it sits at the very heart of my work as the instructional technology coordinator at Indian Community School. If knowledge is built on trust and community relationships, then technology cannot simply be an instrument to extract, scale, or monetize data. That conviction was tested in 2021, well before generative AI became a household conversation, when a company approached our language and culture department with an extraordinary proposal.

They offered innovation. A way to immortalize language and culture through “virtual ancestors” — artificial intelligence trained on the stories, voices, and wisdom of living tribal elders. As the instructional technology coordinator, I was initially excited about what an extraordinary opportunity it would be to place our school at the forefront of modern technology! 

However, the more my colleagues and I analyzed the pitch, the more our excitement gave way to deep alarm. The offer was riddled with deep red flags: vague promises around intellectual property, zero accountability for data privacy and a predatory push to extract sacred community knowledge. But recognizing those red flags was only half the battle. 

Facing a tool this complex also exposed the gaps in my own understanding of artificial intelligence at the time. I realized that properly vetting this proposal and ensuring our school’s technology program moved forward in a good, grounded way required more than just caution. It demanded that I build my own AI literacy so I could stand as an informed guardian for our community’s data.  

That 2021 proposal became the catalyst for a journey that has defined my work ever since. Recognizing gaps in my own understanding, I immersed myself in AI literacy, digital ethics and Indigenous data sovereignty frameworks. As we start the 2026-27 school year, AI is no longer a distant possibility; it is actively shaping how stories are told, how knowledge is created and how data is harvested. 

In response, my role has evolved from simply managing technology infrastructure to helping our school build an ethical digital sanctuary. We began facilitating professional development sessions that empower our teachers to critically evaluate AI tools through a lens of cultural safety and data privacy. In the classroom, we reaffirmed our dedication to active digital stewardship over passive consumption. 

Rather than allowing third-party algorithms to dictate or summarize Native experiences, our students now engage in hands-on digital storytelling, learning how to protect their personal and cultural data while using modern tools to amplify their authentic voices on their own terms.  

The core lesson I learned in that ribbon skirt class remains my guiding principle: technology, like knowledge, is only as valuable as the relationships and trust behind it. For educators, leaders, and communities navigating this fast-shifting landscape, maintaining agency over our stories requires asking hard questions before we ever sign a contract or adopt a tool:

• Who owns the data being used to train this system? In my school, we actively reject software platforms that do not explicitly provide full intellectual property rights to the school.

• Does this tool respect the sovereignty and living culture of the community it serves? I work with stakeholders to ensure that software and platforms do not train on student or staff data, and I prioritize tools with the least environmental impact.

• Are we adopting technology to enhance human relationships, or replace them? We prioritize tools that bring elders, teachers and students together in real-world dialogue, using technology as a bridge for connection rather than a substitute for human presence.

When my sister and I stitched pieces of our grandmother’s unfinished quilt into our ribbon skirts, we weren’t just preserving her memory; we were continuing a relationship rooted in love, honor and continuity. That is the true essence of stewardship. When we approach technological innovation not as a rush to extract the future, but as a solemn duty to protect what was handed down to us, we ensure that modern tools honor where we came from. In the age of AI, our responsibility remains unchanged: to stitch technology into the living fabric of our communities in a good way, ensuring our stories remain whole, authentic and undeniably our own.

It’s that time of year again. At Apple Park’s “Surprise and Shine” event in Cupertino, John Ternus took the stage to unveil two new flagship iPhones: the iPhone 18 Pro and the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

With the standard iPhone 18 not arriving until spring next year, the iPhone 18 Pro is left to cover the smaller end of Apple’s flagship lineup on its own, at least for now. The iPhone 18 Pro Max, meanwhile, is the larger, more battery-forward sibling, and now the most expensive non-folding iPhone Apple sells, unless you’ve got your eye on the new iPhone Duo, Apple’s first foray into foldables.

U.S. cybersecurity and intelligence agencies say that six Chinese AI companies conducted industrial-scale distillation attacks on American frontier AI models since at least late 2024.

A joint advisory from CISA, NSA, and the FBI  states that DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, Alibaba, MiniMax, StepFun, and Z.AI extracted billions of tokens through millions of requests from frontier AI models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and xAI.

The agencies assess that the scale and sophistication of the operations indicate Chinese government awareness, mentioning that this approach is likely a core development strategy for the offending firms.

AI model distillation is a legitimate technique in which a “student” model learns from the outputs of a well-trained model, helping researchers and developers reduce training costs and speed up AI deployment.

However, as Google warned in February, distillation attacks can occur outside these companies’ controlled environments, abusing API access to extract the knowledge and logic of powerful models and compete with them at a fraction of the training cost.

CISA’s advisory explains that Chinese firms distribute API requests across fraudulent or shared accounts, APIs, cloud services, aggregators, and “transfer station” proxies to bypass geographic restrictions, usage limits, and detection.

Some of the prompts used attempted to expose restricted chain-of-thought reasoning, while automated systems switched providers and checked whether defenders had degraded the responses.

“Advanced industrial-scale distillation tactics include chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning extraction, automated failover between pathways during blocking attempts, and sophisticated quality evaluation frameworks to detect defensive countermeasures,” the advisory explains.

“China-based AI companies that conduct industrial-scale distillation against U.S. AI models see significantly shorter AI development timelines and reduced financial expenditures in training a frontier model.”

DeepSeek and MoonShot AI were marked as the top offenders involved in distilling multiple Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Grok models, followed by MiniMax, which targeted Claude, Gemini, and GPT models.

Alibaba and StepFun are accused of targeting Claude and GPT models to improve their products, while Z.AI allegedly targeted GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.8.

The advisory recommends that AI companies improve behavioral and infrastructure-level detection, modify responses when distillation operations are suspected, and share intelligence about these campaigns with all stakeholders.

Potential indicators include new accounts immediately reaching maximum usage, continuous activity without normal human idle periods, shared accounts accessed from numerous IP addresses or user agents, identical prompts across multiple providers, unusually high subscription-to-usage ratios, and coordinated switching between access routes.

BleepingComputer has contacted all six Chinese AI firms for a statement, and we will add their statements if we get them.

Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.

The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.

Get the report

How would you follow up after making one of the most influential recordings in jazz history? If you were John Coltrane, you would confound all expectations, releasing one of the most challenging, complex pieces of music to date in his career one year after January 1965’s A Love Supreme.

His first “free jazz”-leaning release, February 1966’s Ascension, was far from an unstructured free-for-all, but it inevitably divided audiences. Add in the fact that Coltrane decided he preferred an earlier take, resulting in a remastered repress being rushed to market, and a wonderfully confusing legacy of jazz collecting and listening ensued.

My introduction to the free jazz universe was, in fact, through Ascension (and I thank one of my older brothers for turning me on to it and explaining how to listen to/appreciate it). It wasn’t until years later that I learned of the different versions. Thus far, I only own a very clean 2nd press from that initial rollout (with “Edition II” etched in the deadwax) and a pretty nice monaural pressing of “Edition I” (which has no etching in the deadwax at all!).

If all this sounds confusing, don’t worry: it is! But fortunately, there are fine liner notes by writer (and former professor of music at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ) Lewis Porter in the fine-sounding new 2LP “Verve Vault” edition of Ascension, which explain everything. Apparently, this is the first time both versions are being presented together on vinyl (a complete CD edition was released back in 2000, which I also own).

This is a good-sounding reissue, arguably better than my originals due to sympathetic remastering and quiet vinyl. It is an almost all-analog production, pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Optimal in Germany from new lacquers cut from original sources by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound. I used the term “almost” intentionally, as we learn from the liner notes that Side 2 of “Edition II” features a new digital reassembly of a key performance moment.

While the packaging features the original album art, it is not the same sort of laminated deluxe sleeve presentation that we’ve become accustomed to from Universal Music’s Acoustic Sounds and Tone Poet reissues. This flat, matte-style cover is nice but crafted in a simpler, more modern aesthetic, which no doubt helps keep costs down.

Do you need this new 2LP edition? If you are a “completist” collector who already owns Editions I and II on original vinyl, the answer is probably yes. If you always wanted both versions on vinyl but have grown weary of trying to find a reasonably priced, good-condition copy (the album doesn’t show up frequently in used stores), this is a perfectly fine reissue, which recreates the original labels (in not quite the right orange color, but that is a nitpick) and even includes an “Edition II” etching in the Disc 2 deadwax.

You can order then new 2LP edition of John Coltrane’s Ascension at Amazon for $37.99.

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Music

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound

★★★★★★★★★★ Packaging

Where to Buy

Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc.  You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.