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If you're of a certain age, you'll remember the frisson of excitement around the launch of Gmail back in 2004. The idea of getting 1GB of storage space completely free of charge seemed wild — and all of your messages could be got at in a simple web browser tab.

As someone who had become accustomed to deleting emails to save space, and painstakingly moving over message archives manually every time I got a computer upgrade, this sounded fantastic. So did being able to get at my emails from any device I wanted, instantly (that seems less appealing these days, somehow).

Something else Gmail has done really well down the years is act as a hub for other email accounts, letting you import and send messages from other accounts inside the Gmail interface — with all the benefits of powerful search, filtering, and spam flagging tools. Now though, most of that functionality is going away.

These are features that I've relied on for decades inside Gmail, and it's going to make my email experience much more frustrating and fragmented.

What's changing

Gmail is focusing on Google emails now (Image credit: Ascannio / Shutterstock)

Charting the gradual dismantling of these features inside Gmail is tricky, because the updates have largely come through emails to users and updates to support documentation — there aren't really any official blog post announcements to point to (it's not surprising Google wants to keep all of this quiet).

The most recent news is that the ability to send emails from other accounts through Gmail is going away, and will be switched off completely from January 2027. If you currently send your Outlook or Yahoo messages through Gmail, as I do, you're going to have to find another solution from the start of next year.

A couple of other features are also being killed off in January 2027 as well, though these changes are ones we've known about for a while. You'll no longer be able to import messages from other accounts via the old POP protocol — something I've relied on for years to get emails from all of my various accounts into the same place — and you won't be able to use the Gmailify feature that essentially adds a few Gmail features (like spam protection) to your third-party accounts.

As someone who primarily uses Gmail on the web, and has several email accounts feeding into it, these are significant changes — and I'm not the only one upset about them. My current setup means I can have separate emails for work, app sign-ups, newsletters, and so on, and keep them all in Gmail for searching, filtering, and labeling, and it's been a simple and reliable setup.

Now I'm going to have to go back to jumping between three or four different email apps to check everything. Different rules, different storage limits, different interfaces. It's an annoying set of changes, which Google hasn't really explained — presumably the idea is to keep users focused on Gmail, and to cut costs.

What to do next

You can still access other accounts in Gmail on mobile (Image credit: Google)

You do have a few options for trying to cling on to Gmail as a message hub, though none of them are ideal. You can get your third-party email account to auto-forward messages to Gmail — it means you'll have them in your Gmail archive for filtering and searching, though there's no 'send as' functionality.

This might cost you too: It's a paid-for extra for Yahoo Mail for example. That's particularly galling for me, because Yahoo is one of the accounts I feed into Gmail. I rely on it for newsletters, tickets, store accounts, general admin, and the like, and now I'm not going to be able to get at any of that inside Gmail.

Another option is to set up a desktop email client on Windows or macOS, which feels very old school. Gmail still supports the IMAP standard, and so do most other modern email services: all of your email will be together in one place, but you're only going to be able to access everything in one place from whatever desktop computer you set this up on.

Lastly, you can still add third-party accounts inside the Gmail app for Android or iOS. However, while this will let you view all your emails in one unified inbox, it won't actually move anything over to Gmail — if you open up the web app, your other accounts and all the messages inside them won't be there.

It's all a bit of a sorry mess, and I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do going forward. What's certain is that I'm not going to be able to carry on as I have been, and that Gmail is going to be a significantly less useful email hub for me in the future.

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• Researchers tested AI-generated patches on six CVEs with poor success rates
• Many fixes failed, altered behavior, or introduced new vulnerabilities
• Guidance improved outcomes, leading to FLAWED evaluation harness release

When using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) to fix vulnerabilities, security professionals are most of the time just robbing Peter to pay Paul, experts have warned.

Researchers from 1Passwords Off-by-1 Labs analyzed fixes proposed by two frontier models - ChatGPT 5.5 at “medium” effort, and Claude Opus 4.8 at “high” effort.

As an experiment, the researchers took six recently disclosed CVEs and produced 6,080 patches using two frontier, cyber-capable reasoning models. The results were underwhelming to say the least - of all the proposed patches, just a quarter (26%) fully resolved the issue.

FLAWED work?

This obviously leaves plenty to be desired, as half (49.3%) of the patches failed to fix at least one existing exploit path. A fifth (20.1%) fixed the original issue but changed application behavior, while 2.3% introduced new security issues. Funny enough, 2.2% failed to fix the vulnerability while also introducing additional exploit paths, as well.

Even among the patches that might be considered (26% of clean ones and 20.1% of those that changed app behavior), more than a third were fragile and not entirely addressing the underlying problem.

The researchers created an acronym for automated LLM patches: FLAWED (Fix-Like Artifacts With Embedded Defects), and warned against letting AI work without human oversight: "The expected value of a fully LLM-generated, non-human-reviewed patch is a net-negative by a considerable margin."

Results drastically improved when the AI was given better context, the researchers further explained. Before working on any patch, human developers are usually given initial guidance. When AI is given proper guidance, its success rate rises to 65%. Incorrect guidance, on the other hand, drops the success rate down to 15.2%. The difference between humans and AI is that humans are better at catching misleading information and poor guidance.

This doesn’t mean developers will, or should, abandon AI. Worst case scenario is that developers will spend more time reviewing AI-generated fixes which could increase cognitive load and still end up being net negative. Therefore, the researchers released a patch evaluation harness called FLAWED, which organizations can now use to determine the effectiveness of their AI-generated fixes.

Via The Register

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The Apple AirPods Pro 3 have just received a surprise price cut at Amazon, bringing the excellent premium earbuds down to just $189 (was $249) at the retailer.

That's the lowest price since the retailer's annual Prime Day mega-sale back in June, and likely the best deal we'll see for a while. Ever since Prime Day, these buds have stubbornly held at $199, which is the usual 'sales price' for Apple's premium buds.

Even though the record low is officially $169, the AirPods Pro 3 only hit that on one occasion over Prime Day, so today's price cut is definitely worth considering. Even at $189, the AirPods Pro 3 are an excellent buy for anyone looking for some high-end buds. Not only do they feature excellent noise cancellation, but they're packed with new features like heart rate monitoring and Live Translation.

The AirPods Pro 3 are cheaper today at Amazon

Amazon has dropped Apple's AirPods Pro 3 to $189.99, which is the best deal I've seen on these buds in well over a month. Upgrades to the AirPods Pro 3 include improved Active Noise Cancellation and audio, a new comfortable in-ear design, and new features such as live translation and the ability to track heart rate, workouts, and calories burned.View Deal

• See more: check out all of today's deals at Amazon

Are the latest AirPods Pro 3 worth it?

(Image credit: Jacob Krol/Future)

We awarded the buds an impressive four and a half stars out of five in our AirPods Pro 3 review, calling them 'near-perfect noise-cancelling earbuds' at the time. While not exactly cheap, they offer excellent noise cancellation and sound quality.

If we had to draw any criticisms, we'd mention that the AirPods Pro 3 don't have class-leading battery life (around 5.5 hours in our testing). You'll also need one of the latest iPhones to really take advantage of their full suite of features like Live Translation and personalized fitness insights. They're still great with older devices, but iPhone 15 and newer devices support Apple Intelligence, which is required for the newest bells and whistles.

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• Distillation sidesteps the logic of US export controls, which restrict the chips needed to train frontier models but cannot restrict the text those models produce
• Review of more than 80 Chinese papers and patents found PLA-linked researchers distilling outputs from OpenAI and Anthropic models into small systems they can run locally
• The Trump administration is increasingly critical of the approach and has claimed Chinese research lab-created Kimi K3 distilled Anthropic's Fable model

A new investigation has claimed Chinese military researchers have used outputs from American AI models built by OpenAI and Anthropic to train domestic systems intended to advance the country's defense capabilities.

The findings are based on a Reuters review of more than 80 Chinese academic papers and patents, incorporating research compiled by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation shared exclusively with the news agency.

Reuters says it independently verified the literature and found a further two dozen military-linked case studies of its own.

A distillation problem in an AI race that continues to heat up

The mechanism at issue is model distillation, in which the outputs of a large, capable system are used as training data for a smaller one. The smaller model inherits selected behaviors at a fraction of the compute cost and, crucially, can run on modest local hardware.

That is the strategic point. Washington's export controls are built to deny China the chips needed to train frontier models. Distillation does not need those chips, because the expensive part has already been paid for by someone else. It sits alongside Beijing's other route around the controls: substituting domestic silicon for American designs, a shift that carries its own long-term threat to Nvidia and AMD.

Sunny Cheung, the Jamestown fellow who analyzed more than 60 of the papers, frames the value as reasoning rather than answers. Getting a model to produce the right output is comparatively easy, he told Reuters, but "teaching it the reasoning behind the answer is much harder."

The papers, on his reading, show Chinese military-linked researchers trying to move that expensive proprietary reasoning into small systems they can control and deploy themselves.

There is an irony in the pattern. Beijing has been moving to restrict consumer access to Western AI models on security grounds, and has pushed its own labs away from US-designed chips, even as its military researchers mine the outputs of American systems.

The asymmetry points at what is wrong with the US instrument. Export controls regulate objects: chips, tools, hardware that crosses a border and can be counted. The thing being transferred here is text a model produced- which crosses no border in any customs sense and cannot be enumerated.

The White House has registered the problem at both the chip and distillation end, but registering it is not the same as having a lever. For now, the debate over whether distillation is theft or standard practice may matter less than the fact that neither answer offers a workable control.

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Latest Tech News

• Bitdefender reported Roblox players lured by a fake “undetected” Xeno Executor mod spreading malware
• Infection chain delivers a Java‑based RAT and infostealer stealing browser data, online accounts, payment info, and crypto wallets
• Malware also enables surveillance and remote control; campaign peaked in March 2026 and remains active against Roblox’s 82M players

Cybercriminals are targeting Roblox players with an infostealer and a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) malware that grants them full control over compromised computers, experts have warned.

Roblox is an online gaming platform, virtual universe, and game creation system where users play millions of games and user-generated mods. Among the mods is Xeno Executor, a utility that allows players to run scripts that automate certain actions or run custom code. Some players use Xeno Executor to run cheats, too.

Since it’s an unofficial script, Roblox does not allow it and blocks it whenever a new version is released. Now, security researchers Bitdefender have reported finding an “undetected” version being promoted on various gaming forums, Discord communities, and similar.

CornFlake and CocoShell

This version is advertised as “invisible” to Roblox’s anti-cheat systems, but in reality, all it does is trigger an infection chain that ends in a Java-based RAT and information stealer.

The malware grabs browser data such as passwords and cookies from some of the most popular browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi), as well as online accounts and payment data (Discord, Roblox, Minecraft, Microsoft Store tokens, and more).

It also steals cryptocurrency wallet data, particularly targeting the Exodus Wallet.

As for surveillance, it can log keys, track mouse movements, grab screenshots, stream whatever is on the desktop, and access the webcam. The crooks are also granted file upload and download, PowerShell command execution, and more.

The campaign was kicked off at the start of the year, reaching its peak in March, it was said. It has now stabilized and is still going relatively strong.

We don’t know exactly how many players fell victim to this campaign, but Roblox is an incredibly popular platform, so it is possible the campaign was rather successful, too.

According to Activeplayer, Roblox currently has more than 82 million active players.

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• European customers can stream Disney+ in 4K again
• HDR isn't back in affected countries, but Disney+ is working on it
• Affected customers can contact Disney+ to request a partial refund

Disney+ has begun restoring 4K support for Disney+ subscribers in Europe after being forced to remove 4K and HDR in some countries last week. That's good news, but it may cause issues on some devices, and HDR hasn't yet returned in the affected areas.

As Disney+ told us: "We have adopted an alternative technology to enable 4K UHD and HDR following a recent court ruling and have begun restoring 4K UHD support on Disney+. This may cause 4K UHD to be unavailable on some devices. We recognise the inconvenience this may cause and are working to increase device support for 4K UHD and restore HDR as quickly as we can."

What's happening with Disney+ 4K and HDR

Disney+ removed 4K and HDR from its Premium plan in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Sweden. Both features are still available in all other countries where Disney+ operates, and the removal only applies to streaming: downloads aren't affected.

The removal was the result of a court ruling, and while Disney+ doesn't go into detail about that, it looks like another video streaming patent dispute, hence the adoption of a different 4K technology to bring 4K streaming back. HDR is next on the menu, with Disney+ explaining that "We are working to restore it as quickly as we can but cannot yet confirm when it will become available again."

If you're a subscriber in one of the affected countries and HDR is a deal-breaker, Disney+ says that you can switch to a different, cheaper plan. If you want to stay on Premium but aren't happy with the loss of features, you can "request a partial refund for [your] current billing period by contacting Disney+." That only applies to direct subscribers; if you've subscribed via a third party, such as an App Store, you'll need to contact that company instead.

As I've written previously, removing the features wasn't something Disney+ chose to do; it was compelled to do it after a court case. Video and streaming patents are very complicated, and patent owners can be highly litigious, and we've seen a flurry of similar cases across the biggest multiple streamers in recent years. There's an old saying in the entertainment industry: where there's a hit, there's a writ.

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Latest Tech News

• Palantir moves AI computing from distant clouds directly into combat zones
• Containerized data centers process battlefield intelligence without permanent cloud connectivity
• Nvidia B300 accelerators power deployable AI systems for frontline operations

Palantir Technologies and its infrastructure partner Armada have begun deploying mobile data centers built inside standard shipping containers for combat zones.

Each unit carries its own computing hardware, storage arrays, networking gear, and cooling systems needed to run advanced artificial intelligence models.

The servers run on Nvidia's B300 AI accelerators, while Palantir's modular AIP platform links the models directly into operational workflows and other company tools.

Processing power without a constant cloud link

Chad Wahlquist, a Forward Deployed Architect at Palantir Technologies, appeared inside one containerised data center during the July 2026 announcement introducing the mobile computing platform.

Unlike conventional cloud-based systems, these containerized units can process information without maintaining any constant connection to public cloud infrastructure.

They can also be fully isolated from external networks whenever operational security requirements demand a stricter level of separation at all times.

The outcome is a self-contained computing node able to analyze intelligence and sensor data right at the point where it is collected.

Distributed computing also offers stronger resilience than depending entirely on one single, centralized data center to run every operation across a wide area.

Losing contact with the cloud, or even losing one mobile node entirely, would not necessarily shut down the whole system.

Other units could keep processing information locally, since the entire network does not depend on one central point of failure.

Bringing AI closer to the battlefield

For military users, the concept brings advanced artificial intelligence much closer to sensors, field commanders, and units already deployed on the ground.

This reduces dependence on communications links that remain vulnerable to jamming, interception, or outright physical destruction during active combat operations.

Instead of sending every piece of battlefield data back to a distant cloud, analysis can occur inside a deployable container placed close to the action.

Alex Karp, the billionaire co-founder and chief executive of Palantir, has praised Ukraine's wartime innovation cycle as instructive for allies.

He has argued that the war is exposing a widening gap between military theory and the reality of modern combat.

Karp credited Ukrainian engineers and soldiers with adapting battlefield technology at a pace unmatched by most peacetime institutions worldwide.

He suggested that this rapid development cycle is teaching the United States and Europe lessons unavailable in traditional laboratories or think tanks.

Whether these containerized AI systems truly perform as promised under sustained combat stress remains an open question.

As of the time of writing, there is no public independent verification of the technology's actual battlefield performance by Palantir, Armada, or any military partner.

Via United24Media

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