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Rush Fifty Something, The Pitt, and Abdullah Ibrahim | Editor’s Round Up
Billy Joel insisted that Vienna waits for you. HIGH END Vienna 2026 apparently did not get the memo. He just never had to cover a European hi-fi show that crammed four days of product launches, meetings, €100,000 loudspeakers, and breathless claims of “redefining the category” into an industrial conference center with the emotional warmth of airport security.
eCoustics came out of HIGH END Vienna 2026 with more than 55 articles and videos from the show floor and the increasingly chaotic world around it. Chris Boylan was a machine in Vienna and worked like a dog, covering the show from the inside while the rest of us held down the digital fort from afar.
Robert Silva and I kept the news and analysis moving remotely, chasing launches, press material, photos, pricing, and the inevitable claims that some very expensive box had finally delivered more pleasure than a properly pounded Wiener schnitzel and a cold Grüner Veltliner.
The summer calendar is apparently not interested in letting anyone recover. T.H.E. Show SoCal, CanJam London, and CanJam SoCal are still ahead, and there is more Vienna analysis to come once we separate the genuinely important launches from the usual expensive furniture with binding posts.
But first, a short trip across the border to Germany, because Rush Fifty Something has Anika Nilles behind the kit, and this is the sort of continental segue Basil Fawlty would have ruined before the first cymbal crash.
Rush Fifty Something: Beyond the Professor
Some people are going to hate Rush Fifty Something. Good. Grief is not a veto on the living.
Neil Peart died on January 7, 2020, at 67, after a private three-and-a-half-year battle with glioblastoma. He was not simply Rush’s drummer. He was its primary lyricist, its intellectual and spiritual center, and the man fans affectionately called The Professor. The idea of Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson returning to a stage without him once seemed unthinkable. For a lot of people, it probably still does.
My late Bubie and ZsaZsa were survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. In the family history passed down to me, their paths crossed with Geddy Lee’s parents during the war and again in the displaced-persons world that followed liberation. That was never some abstract footnote from another continent. It was part of the emotional geography of growing up Jewish in Toronto’s Bathurst Manor, where survival, silence, stubbornness, and starting over in Canada were not concepts.
Geddy’s parents had met in the forced-labor system around Starachowice before both were sent to Auschwitz. They were separated there. His mother was later transferred to Bergen-Belsen, while his father survived a succession of camps and went looking for her after liberation. He found her at the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp; they married there and eventually came to Canada. Their son grew up to become Geddy Lee.
So no, my attachment to Rush was never accidental. Canada’s greatest rock trio came from the same Toronto, the same postwar Jewish immigrant world, and the same understanding that survival was not the end of the story. It was the beginning of one.
That is why this tour matters. Rush Fifty Something is not an attempt to replace Neil Peart, because that would be both impossible and insulting. It is Geddy and Alex deciding that the music, the friendship, and the audience are still worth carrying forward. Anika Nilles has been handed one of the most impossible jobs in rock music: not becoming The Professor, but walking into a room full of people who still miss him and making the case for what comes next.
So how did she do? By every credible account so far, Anika Nilles exceeded expectations and then drove over them in a German-engineered Leopard tank.
For the inevitable haters: do you honestly believe Geddy and Lerxst, two men who have spent five decades obsessing over arrangements, tones, transitions, dynamics, and whether a single note is sitting correctly inside a 7/8 passage, would have picked just anyone to sit behind Neil Peart-inspired kit? This is Rush, not a casino tribute act with a guy named “Derek” who learned “Tom Sawyer” from YouTube between shifts at Guitar Center. Don’t let him date your sister.
Nilles had already played with Jeff Beck in 2022. That is not a participation trophy. Beck did not hire people because they could execute a flashy fill and look comfortable under stage lights. She walked into the Kia Forum in Inglewood, one of the most intimidating rooms in rock, facing a crowd that knows every ghost note, every fill, every cymbal placement, and every microscopic deviation from the gospel according to Peart.
And she crushed it.
The most impressive part was not that she could play the parts. Plenty of drummers can play the parts. She understood the feel, the tension, the odd little pushes and pulls that make Rush sound like Rush rather than a prog-rock transcription exercise. She did not try to impersonate Neil Peart, because that would have been embarrassing for everyone involved. She honored the architecture and brought her own power, confidence, and musical intelligence to it.
As for Gershon, let’s be honest. Geddy is still musically locked in. The bass playing remains ridiculous, the keyboard work is sharp, and the instincts are intact. But the voice is older, because Geddy Lee is older. There are moments where he has to work harder for the range and force that once came as naturally as breathing. That is not a betrayal. It is biology.
Nilles, by comparison, looked and sounded fearless. On the evidence of the opening shows, she was not merely good enough for Rush. She may have been the most startling thing on that stage.
The Pitt: Television Still Knows How to Hurt
The past few weeks have been a brutal mix of highs and lows.
On the high side, the eCoustics team did remarkable work covering HIGH END Vienna 2026.
The low has been far more personal. My father-in-law and my father, who has fought a long and courageous battle with Parkinson’s disease, have been in different hospitals in different parts of the country. One is doing better, though not completely out of the woods. The other has reached the point where the fight becomes something else entirely.
It has been a lot to carry behind the scenes. Parkinson’s is a vicious disease. It takes its time, strips away things in small increments, and asks families to keep adapting while pretending this is somehow a normal way to live. Watching it happen to someone you love feels profoundly unfair.
Which brings me to one piece of advice: never start a new television series on an iPad at an airport gate at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night, especially when that series is The Pitt.
Created by R. Scott Gemmill and starring Noah Wyle as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, The Pitt is set inside the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, where every episode covers roughly an hour of one punishing 15-hour emergency-room shift. That sounds like a clever formal device until you are five episodes in and realize the show has eliminated every escape hatch television usually provides.
There is no reset button. No comforting cut to the next day. No swelling score telling you exactly when to feel something. The alarms, overhead pages, clipped conversations, machines, blood, exhaustion, and occasional dead silence become the soundtrack.
Patients do not exist to teach a tidy lesson before the credits roll. They arrive scared, angry, dying, already dead, or simply caught in the machinery of an American healthcare system that appears designed by people who have never waited six hours under fluorescent lighting for someone to tell them whether a child is going to make it through the night.
That is why The Pitt feels so much more intense than most medical television, even if it is not a documentary. Family members who actually work in emergency rooms and operating rooms have pointed out that some of its largest, brightest, save-the-patient-now interventions are television medicine: in real life, an open craniotomy for a traumatic brain bleed is not something you casually perform under trauma-bay lights while somebody yells for more O-negative. When possible, that patient is headed upstairs to an operating room with an actual surgical team.
Those adjustments are television, not fraud. The show still understands the thing most medical dramas miss: the pace, the interruptions, the emotional whiplash, and the brutal requirement to move from one patient’s worst moment to the next person waiting for help.
It forces you to stay in the room. It makes you wait with families, listen to doctors explain things they do not want to explain, and watch nurses carry on because there are still twelve other people who need them. The cumulative amount of death is a lot to handle. Even for me. It is paperwork, exhaustion, panic, unfinished sentences, and the terrible realization that the rest of the world keeps moving while yours has stopped.
Abdullah Ibrahim Was South Africa’s Musical Soul
Abdullah Ibrahim was one of South Africa’s great musical souls: a pianist, composer, exile, survivor, and quiet revolutionary whose music carried Cape Town, District Six, church hymns, marabi, Ellington, Monk, and the long shadow of apartheid without ever turning into a lecture.
My love of his music comes from a deeper and somewhat inexplicable connection to South Africa: childhood friends, memories that stuck, and a strange, enduring longing for Cape Town that will never entirely go away. A plate filled with biltong that should never be consumed alone. Ibrahim’s music always felt like part of that pull. Not postcard South Africa. Something more complicated, bruised, beautiful, spiritual, and alive.
Born Adolph Johannes Brand in Cape Town in 1934 and first known internationally as Dollar Brand, Ibrahim helped shape modern South African jazz with the Jazz Epistles before leaving a country that made it very difficult for Black genius to breathe. Duke Ellington helped open the international door, but Ibrahim walked through it on his own terms. He died in Germany on June 15 at age 91, leaving South Africa without one of its most essential cultural voices.
His music could be spare, spiritual, defiant, tender, and deeply South African in ways that did not need translation. “Mannenberg” became an anti-apartheid anthem for a reason; it sounds like a people refusing to disappear. Start with Jazz Epistle Verse One, Duke Ellington Presents the Dollar Brand Trio, African Piano, Mannenberg Is Where It’s Happening, Water from an Ancient Well, Cape Town Flowers, and Senzo. That is not homework. That is a map.
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If there is a driving theme to The Java Story documentary, which debuted Friday on YouTube, it would be that even some of the most important and popular technologies come from humble beginnings. In this case, we’re talking about a language that started life as a failed attempt at set-top box dominance and required a massive rewrite just days before its big conference debut.
Today, Java consistently hovers near the top of the TIOBE programming language popularity index and remains widely used for large enterprise applications.
But at one point in 1994, Sun Microsystems was just about to abandon the effort. Tim Lindholm, who was hired to polish up a virtual machine runtime for what would become Java, told The Register, “I was one of the last people hired before the whole thing fell apart.”
It wouldn’t be the last time Java outlived its detractors.
Java chronicled
If the idea of a professionally produced documentary about a programming language sounds familiar, then you’ve probably seen the ones on C++, Python or React. These were the work of tech job site Honeypot.io, which funded the documentaries to build a user base.
In 2019, Honeypot was acquired by XING (which rebranded as New Work SE). However, founder Emma Tracey was more interested in the documentary side of things and bought the production shop back from New Work, reuniting the original gang and rebranding their efforts as Cult.Repo (short for Culture Repository). The Java Story is the first product of the newly liberated media company.
The documentary features many of Java’s prime movers, including creator James Gosling and senior Oracle Java architects Mark Reinhold and Brian Goetz.
While it may have taken a Hollywood-style effort to construct a Hero’s Journey around the plodding progress of Python, Java is a veritable Love Island of dramas, some of which were this documentary captured.
The project that almost wasn’t
Lindholm strayed into the computing field only as a result of the brutally cold winter of Minnesota, where he was living in a tent. He realized he would need someplace warmer and so scored an internship at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. There, he gained early experience with virtual machines thanks to the lab’s use of Prolog.
His goal was not to be a programmer, but a mathematician. “Computer science was for people who couldn’t be real mathematicians,” he said.
But he learned the craft of implementing Prolog.
“I learned to write to very high-quality virtual machines with things like garbage collection and embeddability,” he said. The VM experience led him to subsequent jobs at Xerox PARC and eventually Sun.
When Lindholm arrived 1994, it was to work for an experimental “spin-in” subsidiary called FirstPerson. At the time, Sun made bank selling high-end workstations to engineers, but it wanted to build software for devices outside the typical workstation and PC market.
FirstPerson’s chief concern was a bid from Time Warner to provide the interactive video-on-demand software for television set top boxes. Gosling wrote a language and runtime for the project, called Oak.
The contract ultimately went to late bidder Silicon Graphics – a Sun rival commonly known as SGI. In a lesson of not always getting what you want, the Time Warner project struggled for a few years before the plug was pulled in 1997, which didn’t do the already-struggling SGI any financial favors.
But at the time, Sun took the defeat hard, laying off most of the FirstPerson staff. Lindholm had been there for only a month and wasn’t overly invested in the set top box. “I’ll do whatever comes next,” he recalled.
Sun kept only 12 engineers to work on Oak, including Gosling and project manager Kim Polese. But for Lindholm, the future didn’t look promising.
“We were like refugees in a bombed-out bunker,” he said. Those who were laid off tossed their office gear out into the hallways. Lindholm felt like “dead meat” at the Sun office, just waiting to get laid off himself.
Pivot to the Web
It was purely serendipitous that the project moved to the then-nascent web. One of the surviving engineers had been playing with the recently released Mosaic browser and suggested the World Wide Web should be Oak’s next target. This was a year before Windows 95 brought the internet and web browsing to the masses.
The team built a Mosaic clone called WebRunner on Oak that would run animations. It would be the precursor to what would become Java applets.
After that, events moved quickly, Lindholm recalled. Oak was renamed Java in early 1995, supposedly as a nod to the engineering team’s coffee consumption. “It took off like a friggin’ rocket. It was just crazy. We were all stressed,” he said.
An early wave of web developers was rapidly discovering the limits of creating web pages using HTML, which, after all, is a markup language.
Lindholm said that his job, alongside , was
Gosling and the crew had assembled a rough prototype, but it fell to Lindholm, alongside fellow new hire and Lisp expert Frank Yellin “to make this thing actually work.” The pair were in charge of the commercial grade implementation, ensuring that the advanced concepts Gosling had outlined, such as threading and garbage collection, functioned in the real world. Lindholm and Yellin later co-authored the original JVM specification.
Threading at the time was particularly new. There were no libraries they could use to implement the idea, and Lindholm knew relatively little about the concept.
The company planned to introduce Java at the 1995 SunWorld convention, the precursor to JavaOne. But the runtime was crashing badly. After much sleuthing, Lindholm figured out Java’s threading model was “fundamentally broken. It was totally screwed up,” he said.
The problem was that system interrupts were being issued while the SPARC processor was executing an instruction. This proved disastrous because the system could not recover the state that had been flushed from memory and would therefore “die horribly.”
Lindholm realized you could only have the interrupts happen at certain points. So, three days before the conference, he rewrote the entire threads package. At the conference, when then Sun CEO Scott McNealy showed off Java, Lindholm sat in the audience dreading the worst. Thankfully, the rewrite worked.
Before open source
Lindholm was also in charge of the language’s first attempt at open source, years before Eric Raymond made the term common. The company offered the binary Java runtime as a free download, but the company gave away “the sources,” as Lindholm put it, to anyone who requested it. Thousands did.
The documentary retells a story that the Java Internet domain was getting so much traffic – more than Sun.com itself – that the Java team ran a pirate T3 line into the office. Such were the days before the cloud.
At the time, Lindholm viewed giving away the source as a good career move. Should he ever get the ax, perhaps some other company would pick up the code and run with it. They also found outsiders could fix bugs and even extend the software to other platforms.
The “source” program wasn’t formalized, however. Sun did have Richard Stallman come to talk, but he seemed “too radical” for the Sun execs, Lindholm recalled. Sun would not actually decide to officially release Java as open source for another decade.
Ironically enough, Java applets were only modestly adopted for the web, as other technologies such as ColdFusion and Netscape’s JavaScript project ended up doing the heavy lifting for Web programmers. But applets were a gateway to the real action, namely powering the back-end servers.
The evil empire
Then, Microsoft started paying attention. It saw the runtime as a potential threat to Windows itself, particularly for the fledgling Windows NT, which was starting to make headway into the enterprise.
For today’s younger generation of IT pros, it is hard to overstate how aggressive and hyper-competent Microsoft could be at that time. In 1996, the company licensed Java for Windows, but then added some additional APIs and declined to support a few others (Anyone remember Microsoft’s J++?). Sun alleged that Microsoft’s changes were intended to undermine Java’s cross-platform compatibility and steer developers toward Microsoft’s Windows-specific implementation.
The years-long court case zapped the development team’s energy, diverting resources away from Java.
“I spent days in deposition talking about this under oath,” Lindholm recalled. The disputes ended with Microsoft paying Sun nearly $2 billion through a series of settlements. “It was personal for us,” he said.
A wild ride
The documentary goes on to cover the following decades of the language’s growth through to the present day, including the over-engineered era of J2EE and Java EE 5, the glimmer of hope provided by the Spring framework, Sun’s implosion and subsequent acquisition by Oracle, and the flourishing of JVM languages following the release of OpenJDK.
Java continued to be a success for Sun, even as its chief business of selling SPARC-based Internet servers fizzled thanks to the influx of low-cost Linux x86 boxes. Lindholm noted that the Java team grew so large that it took over Sun’s headquarters and eventually had to move into the old Apple headquarters.
But Lindholm’s passion for Java evaporated by the early 2000s, swamped by the increasingly corporate environment, and so he left for Google, where he would spend the next 20 years until his retirement earlier this year.
Looking back to his early involvement, Lindholm admitted “it was kind of a random thing. You can never tell what parts of your life will end up being really significant for whatever reason.”
Others agreed that Java has been a wild ride.
As Java creator James Gosling said in the doc, “What excites me most about the future is the unknown. Lots of things happen, and mostly the interesting ones are the ones you could never predict.” ®
Public exploits have been released for the critical “wp2shell” remote code execution vulnerabilities affecting WordPress Core, making it imperative that administrators patch their sites immediately.
The wp2shell attack consists of two flaws, tracked as CVE-2026-63030 and CVE-2026-60137, that can be chained together to achieve pre-authentication remote code execution against WordPress installs running versions 6.9.x and 7.0.x.
The flaws were discovered by Adam Kues of Searchlight Cyber, which says an unauthenticated attacker can exploit them against a default WordPress installation.
“Searchlight Cyber’s security research team has discovered a pre-authentication RCE in WordPress Core,” explained Searchlight Cyber.
“The attack has no preconditions and can be exploited by an anonymous user in a stock install of WordPress with no plugins.”
Searchlight Cyber estimates that more than 500 million websites use WordPress, giving the vulnerability a potentially massive impact, especially now that public proof-of-concept exploits have been released.
Due to the severity of the vulnerabilities, the WordPress security team has enabled forced automatic security updates for supported installations running affected versions, urging site owners to update to WordPress 7.0.2 or 6.9.5 immediately.
“Because this is a security release, it is recommended that you update your sites immediately,” WordPress said in its security announcement.
“Due to the severity, the WordPress.org team have enabled forced updates via the auto-update system for sites running affected versions.”
The issue is not a single vulnerability but rather two independent flaws that can be combined into an unauthenticated remote code execution chain.
The first flaw, CVE-2026-63030, is a REST API batch-route confusion vulnerability introduced in WordPress 6.9. According to the GitHub advisory, the flaw can be combined with the SQL injection issue to achieve remote code execution.
The second vulnerability, CVE-2026-60137, is an SQL injection flaw in the ‘author__not_in‘ parameter of ‘WP_Query'. WordPress describes it as a high-severity SQL injection vulnerability affecting WordPress 6.8 and later.
According to the WordPress advisories, the complete RCE chain affects WordPress 6.9.0 through 6.9.4 and WordPress 7.0.0 through 7.0.1.
The SQL injection vulnerability also affects WordPress 6.8.0 through 6.8.5, but cannot be chained to remote code execution because the REST API batch-route confusion bug was added in WordPress 6.9.
The full wp2shell attack chain has been fixed in WordPress 6.9.5 and 7.0.2.
Searchlight Cyber is currently withholding technical details to give administrators time to patch, instead creating the wp2shell.com website, which allows admins to test whether their WordPress installations are vulnerable.
For organizations unable to immediately update, Searchlight Cyber recommends:
- Installing a plugin that blocks anonymous access to the REST API entirely; or
- Blocking
/wp-json/batch/v1and?rest_route=/batch/v1at a WAF level.
The company warns these mitigations should only be used as a temporary measure until systems can be updated.
Cloudflare also announced that it has deployed Web Application Firewall (WAF) protections for both vulnerabilities across all plans, including free accounts, that are proxied behind its platform.
According to Cloudflare, the rules block attempts to exploit both the SQL injection flaw (CVE-2026-60137) and the REST API batch-route confusion vulnerability (CVE-2026-63030).
“WAF protections reduce exposure while customers update, but they are not a substitute for patching,” Cloudflare said.
Public PoC exploits released
While Searchlight Cyber delayed releasing technical details to give administrators time to patch, multiple public proof-of-concept exploits have since been published on GitHub.
Some publicly available exploits combine the two vulnerabilities to extract WordPress password hashes via SQL injection, then crack an administrator password to log in, upload a malicious plugin, and execute commands.
However, other proof-of-concept exploits claim to achieve pre-authentication remote code execution without requiring administrator credentials, which is more in line with Searchlight Cyber’s description of the flaws.
BleepingComputer has contacted Searchlight Cyber to confirm that its attack chain does not require an administrator password.
Security firm watchTowr says it has already seen in-the-wild exploitation after the public exploits were released.
“WordPress gets a bad rap for security. But the reality is that a highly impactful, unauthenticated SQL injection or remote code execution vulnerability in WordPress core is actually fairly rare,” watchTowr CEO Benjamin Harris told BleepingComputer via email.
“That is exactly what makes this one different, and why everyone is scrambling to patch before widespread exploitation takes hold. The watchTowr team is already seeing PoC exploits in circulation, and we are beginning to see the first signs of in-the-wild exploitation.”
Given the availability of public proof-of-concept exploits and the first reported signs of in-the-wild exploitation, administrators should ensure their sites are updated to WordPress 7.0.2 or 6.9.5 as soon as possible.
It’s pretty clear that EVs and software defined vehicles (SDVs) go hand-in-hand these days, and while Tesla paved the way with the Model 3 back in 2017, Rivian, Lucid, and Chinese manufacturers quickly followed. The legacy car manufacturers are taking a while longer to get on board, but are finally catching up. Companies like Hyundai Motor Group, General Motors, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz are starting to launch full SDVs.
SDVs for the win
SDVs are cars with functions and features that are primarily enabled through software and can improve over time via over-the-air (OTA) software updates. I’m not just talking about updating navigation or infotainment, here. Thanks to their zonal architecture, full SDVs use a holistic approach to software updates where every hardware module can be updated OTA, which enables diagnostics and even recalls without a dealer visit.
The cynical view is that SDVs allow greedy car manufacturers to extract revenue from customers via needless subscriptions, but that’s short-term thinking. When done right, there are many benefits to SDVs. Companies like Rivian and Tesla issue free monthly OTA updates to fix bugs and add new features to their EVs, to the delight of their customers, while only charging an optional subscription for higher data connectivity and ADAS tiers.
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SDVs go beyond EVs
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What happens when you extend SDVs beyond EVs to hybrid and combustion vehicles? A few weeks back, I visited Mercedes’ factory near Tuscaloosa, AL, where the company manufactures most of its global SUVs, to get a first look at the refreshed GLE and GLS SUVs. Beyond more powerful engines and the usual mid-cycle cosmetic upgrades inside and out, these SUVs are Mercedes’ first hybrid and combustion SDVs. Well, almost.
Unlike their predecessors, the 2027 GLE and GLS run the company’s MB.OS across all four domains — infotainment, automated driving, body & comfort, and driving & charging — just like Mercedes’ first full SDVs, the all-electric CLA and GLC. Previously, MB.OS was only implemented for navigation and infotainment, like in the current E-Class sedan and wagon. As such, those cars weren’t SDVs. But there’s a catch.
Mercedes notes, however, that “while all of these vehicles leverage MB.OS principles and a domain-oriented software architecture, the underlying hardware, communication systems, software capabilities, and OTA deployment approaches vary by vehicle platform.” As such, the refreshed GLE and GLS, while only partial SDVs, are closer to full SDVs than any other hybrid or combustion car before them.
The 2027 GLE and GLS feature Mercedes’ pillar-to-pillar Superscreen as standard, which consists of three 12.3-inch displays (driver, center, and passenger) behind a single glass surface, and includes a selfie camera for video calls (when stopped) and for selfies, naturally. Video calls require apps like Zoom, which you can download from Mercedes’ own app store. A 3D instrument display and head-up display are available as an option.
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Like the all-electric CLA and GLC, the refreshed GLE and GLS feature a generative AI-powered voice assistant which uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT4o, Microsoft Bing Search, and Google Cloud’s Automotive AI Agent (for navigation) — depending on context. The MBUX Virtual Assistant can handle a whole range of natural language requests, from adjusting the climate and music to navigation and even general knowledge queries.
Mercedes’ MB.Drive Assist Pro, the company’s NVIDIA-powered point-to-point level 2+ advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), which launched on the all-electric CLA and GLC, is coming to the 2027 GLE and GLS, first in China, then in the US later this year. This ADAS is similar to Tesla’s ill-named full self-driving (FSD), but in addition to using ten cameras, it also uses five radar sensors and twelve ultrasonic sensors.
In all, the refreshed GLE and GLS show that drivetrain variations aside, it’s possible for all-electric, hybrid, and combustion vehicles to reach parity as SDVs when it comes to infotainment, navigation, comfort, and ADAS. Let’s hope that Mercedes fully embraces this exciting new technology and follows in Rivian and Tesla’s footsteps by releasing free monthly OTA updates to fix bugs and add new features to these new SDVs.
SDVs for all
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What’s even more important is that SDVs are starting to extend beyond EVs and luxury cars. Manufacturers like Hyundai Motor Group are launching more affordable hybrid and combustion vehicles that are SDVs. The zonal architecture used by SDVs makes cars inherently less expensive to manufacture since it requires fewer hardware modules and much simpler wiring harnesses (less copper means less cost and less weight).
The South Korean Grandeur sedan and Europe-bound IONIQ 3 SUV are Hyundai’s first proper SDVs. Both cars run the company’s new Android Automotive-based Pleos Connect navigation and infotainment platform, and include Hyundai’s App Market and large language model (LLM)-powered Gleo AI voice assistant. Pleos Connect, the App Market, and Gleo AI will also be coming to Hyundai Motor Group’s future Kia and Genesis cars.
…while I believe that the future is all-electric, hybrid and combustion vehicles will be sticking around a little while longer
Right now, most of the affordable full SDVs being developed outside of China are EVs. Ford is working on its Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) SDV platform which will initially underpin an all-electric small truck priced around $30,000. Volkswagen’s upcoming ID.1 city car, destined for Europe and priced below €20,000, is the company’s first SDV. Its zonal architecture and software stack are a direct result of VW’s partnership with Rivian.
Hopefully, these new EV-first platforms can also be adapted to manufacture more affordable hybrid and combustion SDVs. Because while I believe that the future is all-electric, hybrid and combustion vehicles will be sticking around a little while longer, at least here in the US. And considering the cost and feature benefits of SDVs, it would be a shame if manufacturers didn’t deploy this technology across all their upcoming vehicles.
My takeaway
Between 2018 and 2024, I owned two Tesla Model 3s, so I was able to enjoy the benefits of SDVs firsthand. There’s something utterly wonderful about finding an OTA software update waiting in your car every month, ready to deliver new functionality for free. Rivian aside, I have missed this on every other EV I’ve driven since, and because of this positive experience, I will forever associate SDVs with EVs.
But as Mercedes has shown with the refreshed GLE and GLS SUVs, the benefits of SDVs also extend to hybrid and combustion vehicles. SDVs allow the company to provide a consistent and modern user experience across its entire lineup, regardless of drivetrain. Not to mention, SDVs reduce costs and complexity for all manufacturers. As such, I’m looking forward to SDVs becoming the norm for more cars going forward.
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Kini is very reliable. I tested it in a drawer and a cabinet, and it always alerted me when they were opened. It also keeps a log with times listed. While alerts go via the cloud, maker Kinisium says it doesn’t collect data, and you can turn off logging entirely if you prefer. Kini also has a Stasis mode, so you can reverse it and have it alert you when there has been no movement for a set period. This makes it a versatile monitoring device, and you could use this mode to ensure an elderly relative opens their medicine cabinet each day or check what time your dog walker opened a door. Kini is also compatible with IFTTT for automation, and there’s even a webhook integration that can send notifications to a custom URL.
More Motion Sensors
There are loads of other motion sensors that can alert you to motion or presence in an area or room and trigger lighting, but the right one for you depends on your current smart-home setup.
I really like the Eve Motion Sensor, but if you want it to trigger alerts, you need a smart-home hub, and you must set up an automation. It’s a reliable sensor that works indoors or out. I tested it with a Google Home system.
The Aqara FP2 Presence Sensor ($83) has many features, including zonal and multiple person detection, and is compatible with all the major smart-home ecosystems, though it’s not always very accurate at identifying the number of people in the room. The more affordable Aqara FP300 ($50) is a good enough presence detector for most folks and can also track light, temperature, and humidity.
The Switchbot Presence Sensor ($30) is the most affordable sensor I tested and has a similar feature set, but you will need a Switchbot hub if you want alerts, and there’s a lag between it detecting and alerting.
The Philips Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor is excellent, but only if you already have a Hue setup, because it needs a Hue Bridge to connect to. I installed the sensor in my backyard and tested it with the Bridge Pro. It reliably detects people with few false positives. I configured my outdoor sensor to turn on a backyard light strip (not Hue) after sunset and send me a notification when triggered between specific hours (midnight and 6 am) using Google Gemini.
There’s also a Philips Hue Indoor Motion Sensor and a Contact Sensor ($40) for doors and windows. Both are very reliable and can be configured to trigger alerts.
Smart Light Sensing
As an interesting alternative to dedicated motion sensors, you can also use some smart lights for detect presence and motion indoors.
Wiz SpaceSense
If you have a few Wiz lights, you can try SpaceSense, which uses Wi-Fi to detect motion in rooms. I wasn’t that impressed when I tried SpaceSense, but how effectively it works depends on how many Wiz lights you have and where they are located. I was also testing it as a way to automatically turn lights on, and there’s some lag that limits its usefulness on that score. But as a security alert that can tell you when there’s motion in your home when you’re away, it could be very useful. If you already have Wiz lights, you may as well try it, as it doesn’t require a subscription.
Philips Hue MotionAware
Signify is the parent company of Wiz and Philips Hue, and MotionAware is very similar to SpaceSense, but it uses Zigbee, rather than Wi-Fi. Again, how well it works depends on the number of Philips Hue lights you have and their layout. Unfortunately, it does require a subscription if you want to receive alerts. MotionAware can trigger lights at no extra cost, but if you want motion alerts, you must pay $1 per month or $10 for the year. It is also included in Hue Secure subscriptions from $4 per month.
More Security System Alternatives
SimpliSafe
8-Piece Wireless Home Security System
You might consider a modular security system. We like the Simplisafe system, which offers a base station, keypad, and a range of sensors. You can also find modular systems from security stalwarts like ADT and Vivint, and security camera makers like Eufy and Arlo.
The Department of Justice says that federal employees can now download TikTok on their government devices, according to Reuters.
A 2022 law banned federal employees from using the short-form video app on those devices, but the DOJ reportedly says the law no longer applies, thanks to a deal transferring ownership of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a joint venture backed by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. (Oracle serves as the security partner for the new joint venture, while previous owner ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake.)
The DOJ memo reportedly says President Donald Trump has cleared “employees of Executive Branch agencies” to “download TikTok onto their official devices, subject to the agency’s discretion and consistent with all applicable workplace policies.”
Following the ban focused on government employees and devices, the app was banned more broadly across the United States. But just as the law took effect early last year, the app only went down briefly before Trump repeatedly delayed the move and urged service providers to restore access.
Kylian Mbappe is set to face Real Madrid team-mate Jude Bellingham as France take on England in the FIFA World Cup 2026 third place play-off in Miami — and you can live stream the game around the world for free.
Les Bleus were many people’s favourites to win the tournament, but a deeply disappointing 2-0 defeat by Spain in the semi-finals ended their hopes of lifting the World Cup for a third time. While a bronze medal would feel like scant consolation, France will nonetheless be motivated to triumph. Manager Didier Deschamps ends a hugely successful 14-year spell in charge of Les Bleus after this game and he will be keen to finish on a high, while captain Mbappe heads into the last weekend of the tournament level on eight goals with Lionel Messi in the race for the Golden Boot.
England’s semi-final defeat was even more crushing than their opponents’, as they conceded twice late on to lose 2-1 to bitter rivals Argentina. It means the Three Lions’ years of hurt will stretch beyond 60 after they fell short yet again, having reached at least the semi-finals in four of the past five major tournaments. England beat Norway in Miami in the quarter-finals seven days ago, and if they triumph here again it would represent their best showing at a World Cup other than when they lifted the trophy in 1966, having lost their previous two third-place games in 1990 and 2018.
So, read on as we show you exactly how to watch France vs England for free from anywhere in the FIFA World Cup 2026.
How to watch France vs England for free
France vs England is available to watch for free in multiple countries, including the UK, Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Switzerland and Turkey.
Abroad? Can’t access your free stream? Unblock your free World Cup stream with Norton VPN — more on that below.
Use a VPN to watch France vs England live streams
It’s the World Cup, and if you’re traveling, you might discover your usual France vs England stream is suddenly unavailable due to geo-restrictions.
Don’t worry, that’s exactly where a VPN can help. A virtual private network lets you connect to servers around the world so you can securely access your usual World Cup coverage as if you were back home.
We recommend Norton VPN. Here’s why:
How to watch France vs England in the US
US viewers can watch France vs England on Fox (English commentary) or Telemundo (Spanish commentary).
Fox and Telemundo are available on cord-cutters like YouTube TV (free trial), Hulu+Live TV, Sling (select markets), Fubo or DirecTV.
Those looking for a streaming service instead can watch France vs England on Fox One (3-day free trial). Telemundo is also available via Peacock ($10.99/month).
Visiting the US from the UK? You can still watch your World Cup stream for free thanks to Norton VPN (try for 60 days).
How to watch France vs England in the UK
UK customers are in luck as they can stream France vs England for free on BBC One. Live coverage is also available via BBC iPlayer.
You require a TV license and a valid UK postcode for an account (e.g. SE1 7PB).
Norton VPN can unlock your stream if you’re abroad today.
How to watch France vs England in Australia
France vs England will be shown for free in Australia on SBS On Demand.
The streaming platform has every game of the tournament for free, making it the perfect place for your World Cup viewing.
Traveling for work or on holiday? A VPN like Norton VPN can help unlock your free stream.
How to watch France vs England in Canada
In Canada, TSN will be broadcasting France vs England.
You can live stream via the TSN+ streaming platform, which costs CA$8 per month or CA$80 per year.
Outside of Canada? Use Norton VPN whilst you’re traveling away from home to unlock your stream.
How to watch France vs England in New Zealand
In New Zealand, France vs England will be broadcast on TVNZ+.
While some World Cup games are free on TVNZ+, this match requires the tournament pass (NZ$44.95).
France vs England: Match Information
What time does France vs England start?
France vs England kicks off at 10pm BST / 5pm ET on Saturday, July 18. That’s 7am AEST on Sunday, July 19 in Australia.
What are the squads for France vs England?
France
Goalkeepers: Mike Maignan (AC Milan), Robin Risser (Lens), Brice Samba (Rennes).
Defenders: Lucas Digne (Aston Villa), Malo Gusto (Chelsea), Lucas Hernandez (Paris St-Germain), Theo Hernandez (Al Hilal), Ibrahima Konate (Liverpool), Maxence Lacroix (Crystal Palace), Jules Kounde (Barcelona), William Saliba (Arsenal), Dayot Upamenaco (Bayern Munich).
Midfielders: N’Golo Kante (Fenerbache), Manu Kone (Roma), Adrien Rabiot (AC Milan), Aurelien Tchouameni (Real Madrid), Warren Zaire-Emery (Paris St-Germain).
Forwards: Maghnes Akliouche (Monaco), Bradley Barcola (Paris St-Germain), Rayan Cherki (Man City), Ousmane Dembele (Paris St-Germain), Desire Doue (Paris St-Germain), Michael Olise (Bayern Munich), Kylian Mbappe (Real Madrid), Jean-Phillipe Mateta (Crystal Palace), Marcus Thuram (Inter Milan).
England
Goalkeepers: Dean Henderson (Crystal Palace), Jordan Pickford (Everton), James Trafford (Manchester City).
Defenders: Dan Burn (Newcastle United), Trevoh Chalobah (Chelsea), Marc Guehi (Manchester City), Reece James (Chelsea), Ezri Konsa (Aston Villa), Nico O’Reilly (Manchester City), Jarell Quansah (Bayer Leverkusen), Djed Spence (Tottenham Hotspur), John Stones (Manchester City).
Midfielders: Elliot Anderson (Nottingham Forest), Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid), Eberechi Eze (Arsenal), Jordan Henderson (Brentford), Kobbie Mainoo (Manchester United), Declan Rice (Arsenal), Morgan Rogers (Aston Villa).
Forwards: Anthony Gordon (Barcelona), Harry Kane (Bayern Munich), Noni Madueke (Arsenal), Marcus Rashford (Manchester United), Bukayo Saka (Arsenal), Ivan Toney (Al-Ahli), Ollie Watkins (Aston Villa).
Swipe to scroll horizontally
|
Stage |
France |
England |
|
Group stage |
Group I: 1st, 9 points |
Group L: 1st, 7 points |
|
Last 32 |
Beat Sweden (3-0) |
Beat DR Congo (2-1) |
|
Last 16 |
Beat Paraguay (1-0) |
Beat Mexico (3-2) |
|
Quarter-finals |
Beat Morocco (2-0) |
Beat Norway (2-1 AET) |
|
Semi-finals |
Lost to Spain (2-0) |
Lost to Argentina (2-1) |
What is the weather for France vs England?
The temperature in Miami on Saturday is forecast to be around 86F (30C) at kick-off, although it is expected to feel like 88F (31C).
The humidity level is expected to range from 66-69 per cent during the game, which is considered high.
Can I watch France vs England on my mobile?
Of course, most broadcasters have streaming services that you can access through mobile apps or via your phone’s browser.
You can also stay up-to-date with all of the key World Cup moments on the official social media channels on X/Twitter (@FIFAWorldCup), Instagram (@FIFAWorldCup), TikTok (@FIFAWorldCup) and YouTube (@FIFA).
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
Hours of San Francisco Police Department drone video footage exposed on the open web illustrates a new era of incredibly granular—and consequential—urban surveillance. Meanwhile, the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office sent cease-and-desist letters to Apple and Google this week demanding that the tech giants delete 13 AI nudifying “face-swap” apps from their app stores that are almost exclusively used to target women and girls.
Since WIRED first reported in June about Meta’s NameTag face-recognition system, company executives have made opaque and conflicting comments about whether the feature even exists. We took a step back to lay out both the claims and the facts about the very real system.
In a speech on Thursday, President Donald Trump continued to push unsubstantiated and thoroughly debunked claims about interference in the 2020 US election. He even promised massive revelations in a trove of documents posted to the White House website, but the files did not prove his assertions—and in some cases actually contradicted Trump’s claims.
As adoption of AI tools rapidly expands and their capabilities increase, the tech giant Anthropic continued a push to get US states to regulate AI. Speaking about AI transparency requirements in California and New York from last year, Anthropic’s head of US state and local government relations, Cesar Fernandez, told WIRED this week, “The transparency-focused safety bills of 2025 were a really important start, but as the capabilities of AI systems continue to advance quickly—the policy responses need to match.”
And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
The astrology-themed period tracker Stardust sends users’ reproductive health details—birth control type, pregnancy status, moods, and symptoms as specific as tender breasts and stomach cramps—to a data firm not named in its privacy policy, according to the BBC, which first reported a Mozilla Foundation audit of six popular trackers produced in partnership with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center.
Stardust scored 2 out of 10, the worst of the group. Mozilla researcher Shoshana Wodinsky found the app pings third-party trackers from the moment it opens, before a user enters anything; the instant she logged a symptom, the details went to analytics firm RudderStack alongside a persistent user ID, with no in-app way to shut the sharing off. RudderStack is built to route data onward to destinations Mozilla couldn’t observe. Stardust also hands Facebook an ad identifier that ties in-app behavior to the platform’s existing profiles. The company told TechCrunch it has never received a legal demand for user data.
Euki, a nonprofit-run tracker, earned a perfect 10: no account required, health data never leaves the phone, and users can set a PIN, schedule automatic deletion, or pull up a decoy screen if someone forces the phone open. Its one soft spot is an in-app browser for educational pages that loads the usual web trackers, but it also resets identifiers between visits.
Russia’s FSB has long had a reputation for highly sophisticated cyberespionage, leaving disruptive cyberattacks to its fellow hackers in the country’s GRU military intelligence agency. But sanctions from the EU and UK this week, along with an advisory from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI, and the NSA, pinned a cyberattack against the Polish electric grid on Center 16 of the FSB, a rare example of the Kremlin agency carrying out a cyberattack that nearly caused outages in the country’s electric and water utilities. The attack, which the Polish government has said came “very close” to causing a blackout, was initially attributed by cybersecurity firms Dragos and ESET to Sandworm, also known as Unit 74455 of the GRU, a more usual suspect in infrastructure hacking given its active role in Russia’s long-running cyberwar against Ukraine. But the Polish computer emergency response team at the time disputed that finding and tied the attack to the FSB, a conclusion now supported by a wide consensus of Western governments. The incident suggests that the FSB may be taking on some of the reckless, highly aggressive tendencies—and targeting—of its GRU coworkers.
For years, the Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has been alleged to have ties to the Russian government, including by US officials who banned use of the company’s products within the US government and eventually by all American customers. Yet overt evidence of those connections has been scarce. Now Reuters reports that Denis Obrezko, a Russian man facing hacking charges in Boston and an alleged member of a hacker group known as Void Blizzard or Laundry Bear, spent two years working at Kaspersky. His stint at the company took place just before he joined another cybersecurity company, Yutek-NN, where he allegedly took part in the group’s hacking campaign that stole data and communications from numerous NATO governments and at least 11 US companies, according to US prosecutors. Prior to Kaspersky, Obrevko also allegedly worked at the FSB, neatly bookending his time at the company with apparent work for Russia’s intelligence services.
Obrevko has pleaded not guilty to the hacking charges. Kaspersky responded in a statement to Reuters that “the offenses charged cannot be related to the individual’s role or responsibilities during the employment at Kaspersky.”
In an incident that will induce anxiety in anyone responsible for assessing suspicious network activity, DHS officials ruled—twice—that signs of a hacker breach in its data-sharing Homeland Security Information Network platform were false positives when they were, in fact, signs of a very real intrusion. HSIN, used for sharing unclassified data between state, local, and federal agencies, as well as foreign partners, was breached by hackers two months ago, according to reporting from Nextgov/FCW. Analysts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency spotted signs of hacker activity in mid-May—altering files and code, hijacking a legitimate web server, and deleting logs of their behavior—but the findings were dismissed as a false positive.
In the weeks that followed, the hackers returned, were again detected, and were again dismissed as a mirage. It’s not clear why the signs of the breach were misjudged, but the incidents may represent federal analysts’ increasing challenges in detecting “living off the land” hacking techniques that use legitimate features of networks to access target assets on a network rather than planting more easily spotted malware. While the HSIN houses only unclassified data, the information is “highly sensitive,” Senate Intelligence Committee vice chair Mark Warner said in a statement following the report of the breach, and “its exposure risks national security.”
The AI music startup Suno scraped millions of songs, lyrics, and podcasts from YouTube Music, Deezer, Genius, and a string of stock-audio libraries to train its models, according to 404 Media, which reviewed internal data provided by a hacker who breached the company. The intrusion also exposed account information for hundreds of thousands of customers, including emails, phone numbers, and Stripe payment records.
Dataset notes in source code apparently from 2023 and 2024 tally 113,879 hours of YouTube Music audio alone, plus tens of thousands more from Pond5, Deezer, and other libraries—decades of music in total. Other files show Suno routing its YouTube scraping through Bright Data proxies and using PodcastIndex to target roughly 1 million hours of podcasts. The hacker, who goes by ellie.191, says they broke in by compromising an employee with the Shai-Hulud worm.
The files seemingly corroborate the record industry’s central allegation that Suno pulled songs directly from YouTube. The company, which argues that its training qualifies as fair use and settled with Warner Music Group last November, said the breach involved outdated code and no sensitive personal information—though customers whose data appeared in a sample shared with 404 Media said they were never notified.
The original lawsuit was filed in 2023 and claimed Twitter hosted thousands of cases of copyright infringement.
A three-years-long legal battle between X and major music publishers has quietly come to an end. In court documents filed by both X and a group of music publishers, both sides opted to dismiss their opposing lawsuits while not disclosing the terms of the settlement (via Reuters).
The feud began in 2023 when a group of music publishers led by the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) sued the social media platform, which was still known as Twitter at the time. The $250 million lawsuit claimed that Twitter allowed for rampant cases of copyright infringement from its users, while also not doing anything to stop it. Notably, Twitter was one of the only major social media platforms that didn’t have a licensing agreement with music publishers.
In response, Twitter, now known as X, countered with its own lawsuit nearly three years later, claiming that these music publishers engaged in anticompetitive practices that would force the platform to license their songs for higher rates. Even before the latest agreement to dismiss both suits, X requested as recently as last month that the court dismiss the case claiming it shouldn’t be held responsible for user piracy.
So far, neither side has offered any explanation for the dismissals. However, court documents show that X and the music publishers requested to dismiss both suits “with prejudice,” so that they’re permanently dismissed and won’t be refiled. We’ve reached out to NMPA for comment and will update the story if we hear back.
Tech
The Laifen T1 Pro is an electric shaver with an Apple-esque aesthetic that isn’t backed up by its performance
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We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Laifen T1 Pro: two-minute review
On first impressions, the Laifen T1 Pro wows. Open the box and you’re greeted with Apple-inspired packaging, while the shaver itself immediately looks the part. Its CNC-machined unibody aluminium body looks and feels genuinely premium and, if you’re used to cheaper shavers like the Philips OneBlade – my usual razor – it’s impossible not to grin at the magnetically attached shaving head, which somehow manages to feel genuinely futuristic.
Modern conveniences like USB-C charging, an aeroplane mode to stop the power button being pressed in your bag while travelling and IPX7 waterproofing all add to the premium feel. Based on the spec sheet and those first impressions, you’d be forgiven for thinking the Laifen T1 Pro was one of the best electric shavers on the market.
The problem is that, with a shaver, the only thing that really matters is the shave itself, and that’s where the Laifen T1 Po disappoints. I shave twice a week and have fairly coarse stubble, and despite repeated attempts the T1 Pro simply couldn’t deliver a comfortable shave and often snagged on my hairs, which was painful and left me with patchy stubble. You have to limit your expectations a bit with single-blade razors, but I’ve been getting an effective shave with my Philips OneBlade for years, and often I found myself reaching for it to finish up and get the hairs that survived the T1 Pro’s efforts.
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This leaves the Laifen T1 Pro in an awkward position. It’s beautifully designed and genuinely pleasant to use in every respect until it comes to shaving, but if I have to reach for a second razor to finish the job, the premium build and thoughtful features become little more than a nice distraction. I’d love to see Laifen revisit the shaving head in a future model because the engineering elsewhere is genuinely impressive, but as it stands I can’t recommend the T1 Pro.
Laifen T1 Pro: price and availability
- List price: $149 / £149 / AU$246
- Launched: September 2025
The Laifen T1 Pro launched in September 2025. Listing prices vary but are consistent with other premium shavers. In the US it’s currently selling for around $129, in the UK it’s £149 and in Australia it’s $239. However, it doesn’t come with a case, cleaning materials or anything else so it may feel steep in comparison
Laifen T1 Pro: design
- CNC-machined aluminum feels premium
- Magnetic head feels futuristic and makes cleaning a breeze
- USB-C means you’re just taking one cable away with you
The Laifen T1 Pro makes an excellent first impression. Unlike the plastic-bodied shavers that dominate the market, the T1 Pro is built around a CNC-machined unibody aluminium chassis that immediately feels more like a premium gadget than a bathroom appliance. The fit and finish are excellent, while the magnetically-attached shaving head snaps satisfyingly into place and makes cleaning refreshingly simple.
Laifen has also packed in plenty of thoughtful features. USB-C charging means one less proprietary cable to keep track of, an airplane mode prevents the power button from being accidentally pressed in your luggage, and the IPX7 waterproof rating means you can use the shaver wet or dry before simply rinsing it under the tap to clean it up.
The compact dimensions work in the T1 Pro’s favour. It’s comfortable to hold despite the lack of any rubberized grip, and the aluminum body never felt slippery during my testing, even during a heatwave when I was, perhaps a little sweatier than I’d like to admit. Its low weight, just 3.3oz / 93g, makes it easy to use precise movements in the tricky areas like the jawline and around the mouth — areas that can be difficult with larger, clunkier, shavers.
It’s a minor thing, but I found myself squeaking with joy each time I opened the little cap at the bottom of the razor to reveal the USB-C charging port. It’s a small thing, but the cap fits so neatly in and comes away so delicately it sparks joy every time I charged it.
In many ways, the T1 Pro feels like the product of a company obsessed with industrial design. From the premium materials to the magnetic shaving head and clean, minimalist aesthetic, there’s very little to criticize about the hardware itself.
Laifen T1 Pro: performance
- Foil snags on coarse hair, which is painful
- The shave is patchy and inconsistent
- Long-lasting battery means you’ll only need to charge occasionally
Ultimately, the Laifen T1 Pro lives or dies by the quality of its shave, and that’s where it struggles. I have fairly coarse facial hair and typically shave twice a week, which proved to be a challenge the T1 Pro never really overcame.
Rather than cutting cleanly through my stubble, the shaver frequently pulled at beard hairs, making each shave less comfortable than it should have been. It also struggled to achieve an even finish. Even after several passes, I was often left with patches of missed stubble that required further attention. The trimmer head was more prone to this snagging, but the shaver head didn’t eliminate the problem and also left my skin irritated.
The T1 Pro’s light weight makes it easier to use, but its small size means covering your face takes longer than with a larger foil shaver. As a result, multiple passes quickly became the norm, and each additional pass increased the likelihood of the shaver snagging on thicker patches of hair.
I repeatedly found myself reaching for another razor to finish the job. Not only did it clean up the areas the T1 Pro had missed, but it also did so more comfortably. That’s difficult to overlook given the T1 Pro’s premium price.
The 120-minute battery life is excellent and should last most people several weeks between charges.
Unfortunately, The Laifen T1 Pro looks and feels like a premium electric shaver, but in my experience it simply doesn’t deliver the shave the design promises, which makes it impossible to travel with because I also have to toss a second razor into my bag.
Should you buy the Laifen T1 Pro?
Swipe to scroll horizontally
|
Attribute |
Notes |
Score |
|---|---|---|
|
Value |
A disappointing shave that is often painful. |
2/5 |
|
Design |
Beautifully designed with some thoughtful choices. |
4/5 |
|
Performance |
A premium price backed up by the design but not the shave. |
1/5 |
Buy it if
Don’t buy it if
Laifen T1 Pro: also consider
First reviewed July 2026
Sometimes you see a project and immediately, before going into the details, your mind throws up the old refrain: “coulda used a 555” — well, [Hulk] actually agrees when it comes to his ESP32-based, 3D printed roulette wheel. The first version did use a 555, but then feature creep kicked in and the final project ended up with an ESP32 instead. We’ve all been there.
The roulette wheel circuit is retained from the 555 version, with the ESP32 providing clock pulses instead of the venerable oscillator chip — it uses a pair of decade counters to create the chase effect of the LED around the wheel. With a handsome printed enclosure, [Hulk] could have stopped there, but then he’d have to keep track of scoring and the like manually like some kind of dark age peasant. It’s the 21st century, we have computers to to that for us!
Now, even though the ESP32 is still driving the LED chase via the decade counters, it can keep track of where the “ball” of light lands, and reports that via WiFi or serial. While it would have been an option to run the whole game on the ESP32. [Hulk] just has those values put into an SQL database on a server, which also runs the game front-end via PHP. The resulting web page lets two players make their bets and track their wins and losses over time. You can see that in action in the video embedded below.
Overkill? Sure, but we suspect [Hulk] already had the equipment and experience to make this the fastest way to get a playable game. There are easy ways to serve web content from an ESP32, but the easiest tool to use is always the one in your back pocket, right?
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