A beautiful and customizable new tab page inspired by iOS, designed for a calm and focused browsing experience.

Bonjourr is a modern alternative to extensions like Momentum and Tabliss, blending iOS-inspired design with powerful customization tools to create a calm, functional new tab page experience you'll actually enjoy.

🏆 Featured in Google Chrome's Favorites of 2023

🌄 Beautiful and minimalist by default
- Dynamic 4K photos and video backgrounds that change according to the mood of the day
- Clean, iOS-inspired interface
- Smooth, fast and lightweight performance

⚡️ Powerful productivity tools when you need them
- Manage your bookmarks through Quick Links
- Search bar compatible with all search engines, including custom ones
- Markdown notes and checklists (to do)
- Pomodoro focus timer
- Weather forecast
- Daily inspirational quotes

🎨 Full customization
- Granular control over backgrounds, bookmarks and layout
- In-depth analog or digital clock customization
- Custom fonts and CSS styling
- Dark mode support
- Available in 43 languages

🔒 Privacy first
Bonjourr collects no data, requires no account or sign-in, and only requests minimal permissions. Backgrounds are made by humans and do not use generative AI. Fully open source and transparent.

👨‍💻 Independently made
Bonjourr is crafted by two independent developers who genuinely care about design, privacy and things well made, not by a company with a roadmap driven by ads or investors.

Whether you're looking for a minimalist start page, a personalized homepage, or a productivity-focused new tab page, Bonjourr brings everything together beautifully.

Your browser's new tab page is something you see countless times every day. Yet, for most people, it remains a fairly uninspiring collection of shortcuts, search boxes, and suggested content. Bonjourr wants to change that, offering a beautiful, customizable, and distraction-free start page without sacrificing useful functionality.

There is no shortage of browser extensions promising to improve productivity, but many end up adding more clutter than they remove. Bonjourr takes a different approach by combining an elegant, iOS-inspired interface with practical tools and extensive customization.

Available for both Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, Bonjourr has developed a strong reputation among users who want their browser to feel more personal, peaceful, and functional.

But is Bonjourr actually worth installing, or is it simply another attractive new tab replacement? We examined its features, developer documentation, and publicly available user reviews to find out.

What Is Bonjourr?

Bonjourr is a free, open-source browser extension developed by Victor Azevedo and Tahoe Beetschen. Its primary purpose is to replace the default new tab page with a cleaner, more customizable experience.

Rather than overwhelming users with news feeds, advertisements, and recommendations, Bonjourr focuses on the essentials: a clock, search functionality, frequently visited websites, and an attractive background.

Its design draws inspiration from Apple's iOS interface, emphasizing simplicity, transparency, and carefully arranged visual elements.

However, Bonjourr is more than a pretty wallpaper. Behind its minimalist appearance is a surprisingly extensive collection of customization and productivity features.

According to the developers, the extension is designed to remain lightweight, privacy-focused, and independent of advertising-driven business models. Its source code is publicly available on GitHub under the GPLv3 license.

Features: More Than Just a Pretty Start Page

Beautiful Dynamic Backgrounds

One of Bonjourr's most immediately noticeable features is its background system.

The extension supports high-resolution 4K photographs and video backgrounds, with images that can change according to the time or mood of the day.

Instead of opening your browser to the same static screen every morning, you can be greeted by a mountain landscape, a peaceful coastline, or another carefully selected photograph.

Users can also customize their backgrounds, making it possible to create a consistent visual theme that matches their preferences.

The result is a new tab page that feels less like a utility and more like a thoughtfully designed desktop environment.

Extensive Customization

While Bonjourr looks simple by default, its customization options are anything but limited.

Users can modify the appearance and behavior of several elements, including:

• Background images and videos

• Analog and digital clocks

• Fonts, typography, and layout

• Quick links and bookmarks

• Search engines, including custom providers

• Dark mode and visual styling

• Custom CSS for advanced personalization

Custom CSS support is particularly interesting for enthusiasts who enjoy tweaking their browser's appearance beyond what ordinary settings allow.

It also means that Bonjourr can appeal to two very different audiences: people who want something attractive without spending time configuring it, and those who enjoy customizing every pixel.

Productivity Tools Without the Clutter

Bonjourr also includes several practical features designed to help users stay organized.

The extension supports Markdown notes and checklists, allowing users to keep reminders or small to-do lists directly on their new tab page.

A built-in Pomodoro timer provides a simple way to structure focused work sessions, while weather information and daily inspirational quotes offer additional context without requiring separate extensions.

Quick links provide convenient access to frequently used websites, and the search bar supports multiple search engines.

Importantly, these features are optional. Users who prefer a completely minimal experience can avoid turning their start page into another dashboard.

That flexibility is one of Bonjourr's greatest strengths.

Privacy: A Refreshingly Different Approach

Privacy has become an increasingly important consideration when choosing browser extensions, particularly those that interact with bookmarks, browsing behavior, or search functionality.

Bonjourr makes privacy one of its central selling points.

According to its developers, the extension does not collect user data and does not require users to create an account.

Its open-source nature also provides additional transparency, allowing technically experienced users and independent contributors to inspect the code.

On Mozilla's extension listing, bookmark access and browsing-history access are identified as optional permissions.

Google's Chrome Web Store likewise states that the developer has disclosed that user data is not collected or used.

These are encouraging signals, although developer privacy declarations should not be confused with an independent security audit. Features that retrieve online backgrounds, weather, or other information may still involve external network requests.

For users concerned about the increasingly commercial nature of browser interfaces, Bonjourr's approach is particularly appealing.

What Do Users Think About Bonjourr?

• Firefox - 4.9/5 - 1,844 user reviews

• Chrome - 4.9/5 - Approximately 24,000 ratings

Public store ratings checked in October 2026. Figures change over time. Sources: Mozilla Add-ons and Chrome Web Store.

Bonjourr's user reception is overwhelmingly positive.

Its 4.9-star rating across both major browser extension stores is particularly impressive, considering the substantial number of ratings on Chrome.

The available reviews reveal several recurring themes.

What Users Like

The design is consistently praised. Reviewers appreciate the clean layout, attractive backgrounds, and ability to make the browser feel more personal without introducing unnecessary distractions.

Customization is another major advantage. One Firefox reviewer specifically praised the extensive customization options, simplicity, and background imagery. Other feedback highlights Bonjourr's appeal as a long-term replacement for conventional new tab pages.

Cross-browser familiarity also matters. Some users report having used Bonjourr for years in Chrome, demonstrating the appeal of maintaining a familiar start page across browsers.

These observations align closely with the extension's strongest advertised features.

What Users Dislike

Despite the excellent ratings, Bonjourr is not entirely without criticism.

One Firefox reviewer reported problems using the extension in Russia without a VPN, including difficulties importing local images. The developers responded that they could not reproduce the issue and invited the user to contact them for troubleshooting.

This is an individual report rather than evidence of a widespread problem, but it illustrates a potential concern: features that depend on remote services may behave differently under restricted network conditions.

There is also a broader trade-off to consider. Users seeking extensive built-in integrations, sophisticated task management, or a fully featured productivity workspace may find Bonjourr too lightweight.

Its focus on simplicity is both its defining advantage and a potential limitation.

Firefox vs. Chrome: Is There a Difference?

Bonjourr offers essentially the same core experience on both browsers.

There are some differences in how Firefox and Chrome manage extension permissions, browser settings, and new tab replacements, but Bonjourr's central feature set remains consistent.

For users who frequently switch between the two browsers, this is particularly convenient.

However, mobile support is more restricted. Chrome for Android does not support installing Bonjourr as a conventional extension, and Firefox for Android does not currently allow extensions to replace its start page in the way Bonjourr requires.

Performance: Does Bonjourr Slow Down Your Browser?

Performance is an important consideration for any extension that appears whenever a new tab is opened.

Bonjourr is built using TypeScript and CSS without relying on a large frontend framework, and its developers emphasize lightweight operation.

The Firefox listing reports an extension package size of approximately 1.4 MB, which is relatively compact.

However, the extension's actual resource usage will depend on the features enabled. High-resolution backgrounds, video wallpapers, and externally retrieved information can introduce additional network activity or rendering work.

While Bonjourr's architecture and lightweight design are encouraging, a proper performance comparison would require controlled benchmarks against Firefox's and Chrome's default new tab pages.

Consequently, it would be premature to claim that Bonjourr is faster than every competing extension.

The Pros and Cons of Bonjourr

Pros

• Beautiful and distraction-free design

• Extensive customization, including custom CSS

• Free and open-source

• No account required

• Useful productivity features

• Excellent public user ratings

• Works with both Firefox and Chrome

Cons

• Limited conventional mobile browser support

• Some features depend on external services

• Less suited to users wanting advanced productivity integrations

• Video and high-resolution backgrounds may increase resource usage

• Extensive customization can take time to explore

Our Verdict: Is Bonjourr Worth Installing?

EDITORIAL ASSESSMENT

9/10

Based on features, documentation, and public user feedback, not independent hands-on testing.

Highly recommended

Best for minimalist browsing

Bonjourr makes a compelling case for replacing the standard new tab experience.

Its greatest achievement is not necessarily any individual feature, but how it combines visual elegance, flexibility, and functionality without overwhelming the user.

There are extensions offering more sophisticated productivity features, and there are simpler start page replacements. Bonjourr finds an appealing middle ground.

The fact that it is free, open-source, and does not require an account makes the decision to try it considerably easier.

Its consistently excellent user ratings across Firefox and Chrome further reinforce the impression that the developers have created something people genuinely enjoy using.

For users who spend considerable time in their browser, Bonjourr is an easy recommendation, particularly if the default new tab page feels cluttered or uninspiring.

Final verdict: Bonjourr is one of the more appealing minimalist new tab extensions available for Firefox and Chrome. It offers enough customization to satisfy enthusiasts while remaining approachable for everyday users.

Sometimes improving your browsing experience doesn't require adding more features. It simply requires presenting the right ones beautifully.

Where to Download Bonjourr

Bonjourr is available through the official extension stores, and its source code can be inspected on GitHub.

• Bonjourr for Firefox

• Bonjourr for Chrome

• Official Bonjourr Website

Firefox Gets a Fresh Look With Project Nova

Mozilla officially released Firefox 157 on September 29, 2026, introducing a significant redesign developed under the name Project Nova.

The update refreshes nearly every major part of the browser's interface, including the toolbar, tabs, sidebar, menus, and several built-in features. The result is a cleaner and more consistent appearance that feels more contemporary while maintaining the familiar Firefox experience.

The new design features softer shapes, updated icons, refined spacing, and a refreshed color palette. Mozilla has also introduced new built-in themes with light and dark variations, allowing users to personalize their browsing experience without installing additional extensions.

Unlike a complete browser replacement, Project Nova builds upon Firefox's existing foundation. Mozilla continues to emphasize user choice, privacy, and its independent, open-source browser engine.

Compact Mode Makes a Welcome Return

One of the most practical additions to Firefox 157 is the return of Compact Mode, a feature that many users have wanted back.

Compact Mode reduces the spacing around tabs and toolbars, giving websites more room on the screen. This can be particularly useful for people working on laptops, smaller monitors, or with multiple browser windows positioned side by side.

For users who prefer functionality over oversized interface elements, this is a welcome change.

Mozilla's decision to restore Compact Mode also demonstrates that user feedback continues to influence Firefox's development. Rather than forcing everyone into a single interface layout, the company is offering greater flexibility over how much screen space the browser occupies.

New Themes and More Personalization

Firefox 157 expands the browser's customization options with new built-in themes and an easier way to change its appearance.

The updated customization experience includes new wallpapers, theme selection, and additional options for personalizing the New Tab page.

Users can choose between light and dark theme variants, making it easier to match Firefox with their operating system or personal preferences.

The changes are not purely cosmetic. Mozilla has also updated interface elements such as website dialogs, date selectors, color pickers, and form autocomplete menus to better respect a website's light or dark color scheme.

These smaller improvements help create a more consistent browsing experience, particularly for users who regularly switch between different themes.

Improved Video Calls and HDR Playback

Beyond the visual changes, Firefox 157 introduces several technical improvements that should benefit users who frequently watch videos or participate in online meetings.

One of the most notable additions is hardware-accelerated AV1 decoding for WebRTC video calls on compatible devices.

Previously, Firefox relied on software decoding for AV1 video in WebRTC calls. By allowing supported hardware to handle decoding, Firefox can potentially reduce processor usage and improve efficiency during compatible video calls.

Mozilla has also addressed several video-related issues:

• Fixed certain HDR videos appearing washed out or gray on Windows.

• Improved audio and video synchronization when repeatedly changing playback speed, including on YouTube.

• Fixed video from phones and tablets appearing sideways or upside down during WebRTC calls.

• Resolved an issue where the Windows taskbar remained visible over fullscreen videos.

These improvements may not be immediately noticeable to everyone, but they address everyday annoyances that can make a browser feel less polished.

Firefox Suggest Expands to More Countries

Firefox Suggest, Mozilla's address-bar suggestion feature, is expanding to additional European markets.

The expansion includes Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and several other countries.

Firefox Suggest provides suggestions directly within the address bar, helping users find relevant destinations while typing.

Users who prefer a simpler address bar can manage these suggestions through Firefox's settings.

This expansion is particularly relevant for European Firefox users who previously had more limited access to the feature.

A Redesigned Sidebar and Better Vertical Tabs

Firefox 157 enables the updated sidebar for all users, bringing a more unified experience for bookmarks, browsing tools, and vertical tabs.

The redesign improves consistency with the rest of Firefox's new interface. Mozilla has also corrected a problem that prevented the vertical-tabs sidebar from reappearing when moving the cursor toward the edge of the screen in fullscreen mode.

For users who dislike the updated sidebar, Mozilla currently provides a temporary way to restore the previous version.

By opening about:config and setting sidebar.revamp to false, users can return to the older sidebar layout. However, doing so also disables vertical tabs.

Mozilla states that this compatibility option will remain available until the end of 2027.

Amazon Removed as a Built-In Search Engine

Another interesting change is the removal of Amazon from Firefox's list of built-in search engines.

This does not prevent users from searching Amazon or visiting its website. Instead, Amazon is no longer included as a default search engine option.

Anyone who prefers searching Amazon directly from the address bar can still add it as a custom search engine through Firefox's settings.

Mozilla has also adjusted keyboard navigation within the address bar and search bar. Pressing Tab now moves directly to the text field rather than stopping at the search engine button first.

Important Security and Privacy Improvements

Security remains a major focus of Firefox 157.

According to Mozilla's security advisories, the update addresses numerous vulnerabilities, including several classified as high-impact. These fixes are important because browser vulnerabilities can potentially expose users to malicious websites, unauthorized data access, or other security threats.

Firefox 157 also introduces a warning when the browser has been configured to record its encryption keys.

Such recording can be useful in specialized debugging environments, but it can also allow other software on the computer to inspect encrypted web traffic.

Firefox now displays warnings in its settings and site information panel when this configuration is detected.

This is a useful transparency improvement, particularly for users concerned about their privacy and browser security.

New Features for Web Developers

Firefox 157 also introduces several improvements for web developers.

Among the additions is support for the CSS at-rule() function within @supports, allowing developers to detect whether a browser supports particular CSS at-rules.

The browser also adds support for the chain value in the CSS overscroll-behavior property, offering additional control over how scrolling behaves within nested elements.

Mozilla has additionally introduced support for WebGPU transient attachments, which can help reduce memory traffic and improve efficiency in certain graphics rendering scenarios.

These changes may be invisible to everyday users, but they help Firefox remain competitive as modern websites and web applications become increasingly sophisticated.

Firefox 157.0.1 Is Already Available

Mozilla followed the original release with Firefox 157.0.1 on October 6, 2026.

This smaller update addresses several problems discovered after the initial rollout, including:

• Downloads failing on macOS under certain folder-permission configurations.

• The sidebar becoming stuck on the Bookmarks or AI Chatbot panel.

• The Restore from Backup option not appearing during Windows onboarding.

• An additional security issue.

Users installing Firefox 157 should therefore make sure they receive the latest maintenance release rather than the original 157.0 build.

Is Firefox 157 Worth Updating To?

Firefox 157 is a meaningful update, especially for users who appreciate browser customization.

The new visual design gives Firefox a more modern identity, while the return of Compact Mode shows that Mozilla understands the importance of efficient screen usage.

The improvements to video playback, hardware decoding, sidebar behavior, and security make the update more than a simple cosmetic refresh.

Not everyone will appreciate the redesigned interface immediately. Longtime Firefox users may need some time to adjust, particularly if they have customized their browser extensively.

However, Firefox's continued emphasis on personalization and user control remains one of its strongest selling points.

In a browser market heavily influenced by Chromium-based alternatives, Firefox continues to offer something valuable: an independent browser with its own engine, substantial customization capabilities, and a strong focus on privacy.

Firefox 157 may be remembered primarily for its visual overhaul, but its combination of usability improvements, technical upgrades, and security fixes makes it a worthwhile release.

Users can download the latest version from the official Mozilla Firefox website or update an existing installation through Help → About Firefox.

Following the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, players have returned to the Continent in huge numbers. According to SteamDB, the game reached a new peak of 137,724 concurrent players on Steam on October 4, 2026, beating every previous record the RPG has set since its debut.

For an eleven-year-old single-player game, that is quite an achievement.

The Remaster Has Brought Geralt Back in Force

The sudden resurgence comes shortly after the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered on September 29.

The remastered edition gives CD Projekt Red's celebrated RPG a substantial visual upgrade alongside a number of gameplay improvements. Changes include enhancements to combat and other gameplay systems, giving returning players another reason to begin a fresh journey with Geralt of Rivia.

The effect was almost immediate.

Shortly after the remaster arrived, Steam player numbers climbed past 120,000 concurrent players, already enough to establish a new record. But the number continued rising over the following weekend.

On October 4, the game finally reached 137,724 simultaneous Steam players, according to SteamDB.

That represents the highest concurrent player count ever recorded for The Witcher 3 on Valve's platform.

Even Bigger Than the Netflix Boom

Perhaps the most impressive part of the new record is what it managed to beat.

The Witcher 3 has experienced several major waves of popularity during its long life.

When the game originally launched, it peaked at roughly 92,000 concurrent Steam players. Several years later, however, Geralt received another enormous popularity boost following the arrival of Netflix's The Witcher television series.

That renewed interest pushed The Witcher 3 to a previous Steam record of 103,329 concurrent players in January 2020.

For years, that remained the game's high point.

The Remastered release has now comfortably surpassed it, with the new 137,724-player peak representing an increase of more than 34,000 simultaneous players compared with the previous record.

An Extraordinary Second Life for The Witcher 3

Games receiving a temporary player boost after a major update is nothing unusual. What makes this particular case stand out is the age of the game.

The Witcher 3 originally arrived in 2015 and has already enjoyed multiple revivals. It received major expansions in the form of Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, benefited enormously from the Netflix adaptation and later received a substantial next-generation update.

Now, eleven years after release, it has broken its Steam record again.

It is another demonstration of just how much staying power CD Projekt Red's RPG continues to have.

The game remains widely praised for its enormous open world, memorable characters and quests that frequently blur the line between obvious good and evil choices. Even after hundreds of newer RPGs have entered the market, players continue to return to Geralt's adventure.

Good Timing for CD Projekt Red

The resurgence could hardly come at a better time for CD Projekt Red.

The studio is currently working on several projects connected to The Witcher universe, ensuring that Geralt's world will remain an important part of the company's future.

Keeping millions of players interested in the franchise while those projects are being developed is obviously valuable, and the success of the remaster shows that enthusiasm for The Witcher has hardly disappeared.

It may also introduce an entirely new generation of players to the series. Someone who was too young to play The Witcher 3 when it originally launched in 2015 can now experience a modernized version of the game more than a decade later.

The Path Is Crowded Again

There is something remarkable about seeing a single-player RPG reach its biggest Steam audience eleven years after launch.

The Witcher 3 has already survived changing console generations, new competitors and an enormous shift in the gaming industry. Yet players are once again riding through Velen, wandering the streets of Novigrad and inevitably getting distracted by another round of Gwent.

With 137,724 concurrent Steam players, The Witcher 3 has proven that Geralt's final major adventure still has plenty of life left in it.

The White Wolf may be getting older, but apparently the Path is busier than ever.

The agreement marks a significant step in Embark and parent company Nexon’s plans to turn the two games into larger entertainment franchises that can exist beyond their original interactive formats.

From Video Games to the Big and Small Screen

Chernin Entertainment has secured the rights to develop film and television projects based on both ARC Raiders and The Finals.

Exactly what those projects will look like remains unclear. Neither company has confirmed whether ARC Raiders will become a movie or television series, for example, or whether both properties could eventually receive adaptations in multiple formats.

There are also currently no announced directors, writers, cast members, broadcasters, streaming services or release dates attached to the projects.

According to reports, Chernin Entertainment won the rights after competing against several other production companies interested in adapting Embark’s games.

The company has considerable experience with major entertainment properties, making it an interesting partner as Embark attempts to transform its games into broader multimedia franchises.

ARC Raiders Feels Made for a Screen Adaptation

Of the two games, ARC Raiders may be the easiest to imagine as a traditional science-fiction movie or television series.

The extraction adventure takes place on a devastated future Earth where humanity has been driven underground by a mysterious mechanized threat known as ARC.

Players take on the role of Raiders who venture back to the dangerous surface in search of equipment and resources. The world is filled with abandoned settlements, enormous machines and other Raiders who may be just as dangerous as the robotic enemies roaming the landscape.

That setting provides plenty of room for stories that do not necessarily need to follow the events or characters players encounter directly in the game.

A television series could, for example, explore the collapse of civilization, the arrival of ARC or entirely new groups of survivors trying to live in this hostile world.

The Finals Offers Something Completely Different

The Finals could present an entirely different challenge for filmmakers.

Rather than the post-apocalyptic science fiction of ARC Raiders, The Finals revolves around contestants competing inside spectacular virtual arenas as part of an intense futuristic game show.

Its destructible environments are one of the defining characteristics of the game. Walls disappear, buildings collapse and arenas can change dramatically during a match.

Turning that concept into a television series or movie could result in something very different from most current video game adaptations.

The game-show structure also leaves plenty of room to explore the world surrounding the competition. An adaptation could potentially focus on contestants, sponsors, the people running the tournament or even what life outside the virtual arenas actually looks like.

For now, however, that remains speculation.

Embark Will Remain Involved

One encouraging part of the announcement is that Embark Studios won't simply hand over its creations and walk away.

Embark founder Patrick Söderlund says the developer’s creative teams will work closely with Chernin Entertainment throughout the process.

The goal is to make sure the creative identity behind ARC Raiders and The Finals survives the transition into completely different forms of entertainment.

Söderlund described the agreement as the next major step toward transforming both games into interconnected experiences reaching beyond gaming.

That involvement could prove important. Both titles rely heavily on atmosphere and visual identity, and those qualities will need to survive the move from interactive worlds to traditional storytelling.

Video Game Adaptations Continue to Grow

The announcement also arrives during a period when Hollywood's relationship with video games has changed considerably.

For decades, adaptations of popular games had a rather unfortunate reputation. More recently, successful movies and television productions have demonstrated that gaming properties can become major entertainment franchises when handled carefully.

ARC Raiders and The Finals are particularly interesting choices because neither started life as a decades-old gaming franchise.

Embark Studios was only founded in 2018, and The Finals launched in 2023. ARC Raiders followed in 2025. The fact that both properties are already attracting interest from major film and television producers demonstrates how quickly successful modern games can expand beyond their original medium.

Still Very Early Days

Anyone hoping to watch ARC Raiders on television next year should probably keep expectations under control.

The projects appear to be at a very early stage of development, and there are currently no confirmed production schedules or release windows.

What we do know is that Chernin Entertainment, Nexon and Embark Studios intend to bring both worlds beyond gaming.

And they certainly have interesting material to work with.

ARC Raiders offers a haunting science-fiction world filled with mysterious machines and struggling survivors, while The Finals provides a flashy dystopian game show built around spectacle and destruction.

Now comes the difficult part: turning those worlds into stories worth watching rather than simply games worth playing.

Source: FZ.se, with additional information from Embark Studios and reports surrounding the Chernin Entertainment and Nexon partnership.

Instead of asking whether a spell is too powerful from the beginning, developer Invoke Studios wants to make sure the abilities are fun first. If that means making the player ridiculously powerful for a while, so be it.

The balancing can come later.

"Make It OP First"

Invoke Studios general manager Dominic Guay recently discussed the philosophy behind the game's magic system. During development, the team apparently had a tendency to look at new abilities and immediately worry that they might be too powerful.

Eventually, the developers decided to turn that philosophy on its head.

Rather than restricting spells before they had even proven themselves enjoyable, the team began focusing on making abilities powerful and entertaining first. Once something worked and felt satisfying to use, the developers could begin figuring out how to balance it within the wider game.

It is an interesting approach, particularly for a game based on Dungeons & Dragons, where magic can become spectacularly powerful when players learn how different spells, environments and abilities interact.

Magic Is More Than Just Damage

One example discussed by the developers is Black Tentacles, a classic Dungeons & Dragons spell designed to restrain enemies while also dealing damage.

In Warlock, however, the usefulness of a spell can depend heavily on how the player chooses to use it.

Rather than simply throwing Black Tentacles directly at an ogre, for example, players could target the creature's weapon. The tentacles can pin the weapon to the ground, temporarily leaving the enemy vulnerable and creating an opportunity to attack.

Casting the same spell directly against the ogre may produce a different result, since a sufficiently powerful creature could break free relatively quickly.

That distinction reveals something important about Warlock. Magic isn't being designed purely as a collection of increasingly powerful attacks. Spells are intended to behave more like tools that players can creatively apply to combat, exploration and environmental puzzles.

The game's official website describes Kaatri's forbidden magic in similar terms, explaining that spells and rituals can open paths, create advantages and allow players to manipulate situations in creative ways.

No Traditional Spell Menu

Invoke Studios is also experimenting with how players actually cast their spells.

Instead of constantly selecting abilities from a conventional spell list, Warlock associates magic with different button combinations. With enough practice, players should therefore be able to cast spells without interrupting the flow of combat.

The idea is to allow melee attacks and magic to blend together naturally while giving players the ability to react quickly to whatever is happening around them.

That could also give the combat system a considerable learning curve.

Players won't simply unlock a spell, place it into an ability slot and press the corresponding button whenever its cooldown expires. They'll gradually learn how the game's unusual control system works and, eventually, how different spells can be chained together.

Interestingly, that learning process is supposed to mirror protagonist Kaatri's own journey.

Becoming a Warlock Alongside Kaatri

Kaatri is already an experienced warrior when the story begins, but becoming a warlock introduces an entirely different kind of power.

She makes a dangerous pact with the legendary witch Tasha while searching for someone she has lost, sending her into a dark realm where magical power comes with potentially serious consequences.

Players will gain additional spells relatively quickly during the adventure, but Invoke Studios wants mastering them to take considerably longer.

In other words, Kaatri is learning how to become a warlock at roughly the same time that the player is learning how to control one.

That could make progression feel less like simply watching numbers increase on a character sheet and more like genuinely becoming better at manipulating the game's systems.

Let Players Have Fun Before Reaching for the Nerf Hammer

The philosophy behind Warlock is particularly interesting in an era when balance can dominate discussions surrounding games.

Powerful weapons and abilities are frequently nerfed because developers worry they will overshadow other options. While balancing is obviously important, excessive caution can sometimes result in abilities that look spectacular but don't actually feel particularly powerful.

Invoke Studios appears willing to experiment with the opposite approach.

Make the spell exciting.

Make it powerful.

Let players discover ridiculous ways of using it.

Then figure out what limitations are necessary to prevent it from breaking the entire game.

If the studio manages to maintain that philosophy without eliminating all challenge, Warlock could deliver exactly the kind of fantasy that its name promises: not merely playing a character who supposedly possesses forbidden magical power, but actually feeling dangerously powerful when you use it.

Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons is currently scheduled for release in 2027 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

The rules could have significant implications for the modding community, particularly for creators who modify existing characters, missions and storylines.

Rockstar Draws a Line Around Its Stories and Characters

According to Rockstar’s newly published guidelines, modders are restricted from expanding or modifying Rockstar’s established stories, missions, characters and other elements that form part of the official continuity.

That could prove to be one of the more controversial parts of the policy.

Story mods have traditionally been one of the ways PC communities extend the lifespan of games. Modders regularly create new missions, alter characters or build scenarios using existing game worlds. Rockstar’s wording suggests that some of these projects could fall outside what the company considers acceptable use of its intellectual property.

The guidelines also prohibit creators from moving Rockstar content from one game into another. In other words, taking assets or other protected material from one Rockstar title and importing it into a different game would not comply with the company's rules.

Rockstar formally links its policies for single-player and Story Mode modifications to its new Mod Guidelines, alongside its Terms of Service and Creator Platform License Agreement.

No Cheating on Official Servers

Some restrictions are considerably less surprising.

Mods cannot be used to facilitate cheating or otherwise interfere with Rockstar's official online services. This is consistent with the company's existing approach to games such as GTA Online, where modifying the online experience or manipulating protected game data can result in account action.

Rockstar states that violations involving online modifications, exploits and other forms of abuse can lead to account suspensions or bans. Its current enforcement policy says penalties can restrict access to Rockstar's online services and may also result in characters, progress, property and inventory being reset.

The distinction between single-player modding and modifying Rockstar's official multiplayer environment therefore remains particularly important.

Don't Pretend Your Mod Is Official

Rockstar also doesn't want community projects creating the impression that they are officially produced, approved or endorsed by the company.

That's a fairly understandable restriction. Mods can become extraordinarily sophisticated, and the line between fan-made content and official material isn't necessarily obvious to every player.

Rockstar similarly maintains restrictions concerning unauthorized ports and the distribution or promotion of modifications that violate its intellectual-property rights. Its separate copyright policy specifically identifies moving existing game content to platforms or game engines where that content isn't officially available as something that can result in enforcement action.

Roleplay Servers Are Still Supported

The new guidelines shouldn't be interpreted as Rockstar turning its back on community-created experiences altogether.

Rockstar continues to officially permit roleplay servers through its Creator Platform as long as those servers follow the company's policies and guidelines. The company has specifically confirmed that authorized community servers using the Cfx.re ecosystem, which includes FiveM and RedM, remain supported.

There is an important distinction, however. Rockstar says that GTA Online and community servers supported through Cfx.re are its authorized GTA multiplayer options. Other unofficial GTA multiplayer services are considered unauthorized and could expose hosts or developers to enforcement by Take-Two, while players may face action against their Rockstar accounts.

What Does This Mean for the Modding Community?

The biggest question is how aggressively Rockstar intends to enforce the guidelines outside its own platforms.

Publishing rules is one thing. Policing the enormous PC modding ecosystem is something else entirely.

Grand Theft Auto V alone has developed a huge modding scene during its long life on PC, ranging from simple vehicle additions and visual upgrades to ambitious projects that substantially change the original game.

Rockstar can exercise much greater control over content distributed through services it operates or officially supports. Mods hosted independently elsewhere on the internet present a different practical challenge, although Rockstar and parent company Take-Two can still use copyright claims, platform policies or legal action in cases where they believe their intellectual property is being infringed.

The guidelines therefore give creators a much clearer indication of where Rockstar believes the boundaries should be, even if that doesn't necessarily mean every mod outside those boundaries will immediately disappear.

An Interesting Move Ahead of Rockstar's Future Games

The timing is noteworthy.

Rockstar's clarification of its modding policies gives PC creators a clearer framework for how the company wants its games and intellectual property to be used going forward. It also formalizes distinctions that matter greatly to the community: modifying a single-player experience is not the same thing as interfering with an official multiplayer service, while authorized community servers operate under their own set of requirements.

For modders, however, restrictions involving established characters, missions and story continuity may be the part that attracts the most attention. Those are precisely the areas where some of the most ambitious fan projects tend to venture.

Rockstar isn't closing the door on modding. But it is putting a noticeably clearer frame around that door, and creators will now have to decide how comfortably their projects fit through it.

Star Wars: Zero Company has reportedly passed an important milestone less than a month after launch. According to estimates from market intelligence firm Alinea Analytics, the turn-based tactical game has sold more than one million copies across PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S since its release on August 27. Alinea Analytics

The figure has not been officially confirmed by Electronic Arts or developer Bit Reactor, so it should be treated as an independent estimate rather than an official sales announcement. Nevertheless, the available numbers suggest that Zero Company has found a sizeable audience despite belonging to a genre that is considerably more niche than the action-focused Star Wars games we have seen in recent years.

PC Is Leading the Charge

Perhaps the most interesting part of Alinea Analytics' report is just how heavily the game's success appears to be driven by PC players.

According to the firm's estimates, approximately 69.9 percent of all copies have been sold through Steam. PlayStation accounts for another 19.9 percent, while Xbox, including purchases through the Xbox app on PC, represents roughly 10.2 percent. Alinea Analytics

That means roughly seven out of every ten copies were sold through Steam.

It is not particularly surprising considering the type of game Zero Company is. Turn-based tactical games have traditionally enjoyed a strong following on PC, and Bit Reactor itself includes developers with experience working on Firaxis' XCOM series.

The estimated sales have reportedly generated around $50 million in gross revenue since launch. That figure should not be confused with profit, however, as platform fees, development expenses, licensing costs and other expenses still have to be taken into account. Alinea Analytics

A Different Kind of Star Wars Game

Rather than attempting to compete directly with games such as Star Wars Jedi: Survivor or Star Wars Outlaws, Zero Company takes the franchise in a considerably more tactical direction.

Set during the final days of the Clone Wars, the game is a single-player turn-based tactical experience in which players command a squad through missions where positioning, abilities and strategic decisions are central to combat. Alinea Analytics

It is a formula that appears to have worked particularly well with critics.

Alinea notes that the game received an 86 Metacritic score, which it describes as the highest score achieved by a Star Wars game in 22 years. FZ was similarly enthusiastic, awarding the game its highest rating in its review. Alinea Analytics

Strong reviews and positive word of mouth appear to have helped Zero Company establish itself despite arriving during a crowded period for major game releases.

Success Comes at a Difficult Time for Bit Reactor

Unfortunately, the commercial story surrounding Zero Company has a much darker side.

Shortly before the game's release, reports emerged that Bit Reactor had furloughed a large portion of its workforce. Kotaku reported that as much as 80 percent of the studio's staff had been affected, leaving only a much smaller team actively working at the company. Kotaku

The timing made the situation particularly unusual. Developers who had spent years creating the game were reportedly furloughed just weeks before players and critics began praising their work.

Despite the estimated million-plus sales, it remains unclear whether Zero Company's performance will allow Bit Reactor to bring those employees back. As of the latest reports, the studio has not publicly confirmed the employment status of the affected developers. Gadgets 360

That uncertainty makes the game's apparent success somewhat bittersweet.

One Million Is Still an Impressive Beginning

Selling one million copies does not automatically make a modern AAA game profitable, particularly when development budgets, marketing expenses, licensing agreements and platform fees are considered. But context matters.

Zero Company is a single-player tactical strategy game rather than a conventional blockbuster action title, and Alinea describes its roughly $50 million in estimated revenue as respectable for the genre and the competitive release window. Alinea Analytics

The numbers also demonstrate that there is still considerable room for experimentation within the Star Wars gaming universe.

For years, Star Wars games have moved between shooters, action adventures, RPGs and multiplayer experiences. Zero Company shows that a comparatively specialised genre can also attract a substantial audience when combined with the right setting and execution.

Whether one million sales will ultimately be enough to secure Bit Reactor's future remains unanswered. But if Alinea Analytics' estimates are accurate, Star Wars: Zero Company has already achieved something significant: a new studio's debut game has convinced more than a million players to take a tactical trip to that galaxy far, far away.

SEO title: Star Wars: Zero Company Reportedly Sells Over 1 Million Copies

Meta description: Star Wars: Zero Company has reportedly sold more than one million copies in its first month, with Steam accounting for nearly 70 percent of sales.

The latest sign of life comes from Ubisoft writer Rik Godwin, who revealed that he has been working on Beyond Good & Evil 2 for the past few months in a support and consulting role. Godwin even noted that he had checked whether he was allowed to publicly share the information before doing so.

It may not be the major gameplay reveal fans have been waiting for, but after years of uncertainty surrounding the project, simply hearing that people are actively working on the game is noteworthy.

An Almost Unbelievable Development History

Beyond Good & Evil 2 was originally announced all the way back in 2008, making its development history almost old enough to vote.

The project then effectively vanished for years before Ubisoft brought it back into the spotlight at E3 2017 with an ambitious cinematic presentation. Ubisoft followed that with gameplay demonstrations in 2018, showing a huge science-fiction adventure involving planetary exploration, spaceships and seamless travel through an enormous world.

Then things went quiet again.

The game has undergone major changes behind the scenes over the years. Michel Ancel, creator of the original Beyond Good & Evil and one of the major creative forces behind the sequel, left Ubisoft and the video game industry in 2020. Creative director Emile Morel tragically died in 2023 at the age of 40, with Fawzi Mesmar later taking over creative leadership of the project.

The extraordinarily long development cycle has made Beyond Good & Evil 2 one of gaming's most infamous examples of development limbo.

Yet Ubisoft continues to insist that the project exists.

Ubisoft Is Still Hiring Developers for the Game

Perhaps the strongest evidence that Beyond Good & Evil 2 remains an active project isn't Godwin's comment at all.

Ubisoft is currently advertising development positions specifically for BGE2.

A Ubisoft recruitment listing for a Lead Level Designer describes Beyond Good & Evil 2 as an open-world action-adventure game and a direct prequel to the original 2003 title. The listing says the game is being built using Ubisoft's proprietary Voyager engine and is intended to provide seamless exploration and space piracy across an entire solar system.

Another current Ubisoft listing seeks a Gameplay Animation Director to work on the project alongside creative director Fawzi Mesmar. Interestingly, Ubisoft says candidates joining the studio may eventually get hands-on experience with the game during the recruitment process.

That suggests there is considerably more happening behind closed doors than Ubisoft's public silence might imply.

The Original Vision Appears to Remain

Ubisoft's official website also continues to maintain a dedicated page for Beyond Good & Evil 2.

According to the company, the game remains a prequel to the original Beyond Good & Evil, taking players to System 3 and allowing them to rise from an ordinary pirate to a legendary one.

Ubisoft still describes the game as an action-adventure RPG supporting both solo play and cooperative multiplayer, with exploration taking place across planets and space.

How closely the game currently in development resembles the enormous project Ubisoft demonstrated several years ago is much less clear.

After such a long development period, changes in leadership and years without a substantial public demonstration, it would be risky to assume everything shown in 2017 and 2018 remains representative of the final game.

It Even Survived Ubisoft's Restructuring

The project's continued existence is particularly interesting considering Ubisoft's recent restructuring and cancellation of several games.

Earlier in 2026, Ubisoft confirmed that Beyond Good & Evil 2 had survived a wider review of its development pipeline. The company described the game as remaining a priority within its strategy focused on open-world adventures.

That doesn't provide us with a release date, platforms or even a release window, but it does indicate that Ubisoft has not simply forgotten about the project.

Combined with the current recruitment listings and Godwin's confirmation that he has recently been working on the game, the evidence points toward active development continuing in 2026.

So When Will We Actually See It?

That's the question Ubisoft still isn't answering.

There has been no new release date and no major public gameplay presentation showing what the current incarnation of Beyond Good & Evil 2 actually looks like.

At this point, another spectacular trailer probably wouldn't be enough either. After almost two decades of announcements, changes and silence, players will likely want to see substantial gameplay from something resembling the version they might eventually be able to buy.

Still, for a game that has repeatedly looked destined to disappear into Ubisoft's archives, Beyond Good & Evil 2 continues to stubbornly survive.

Nearly 18 years after its original announcement, developers are working on it, Ubisoft is recruiting people specifically to build it, and the publisher continues to publicly list it as an upcoming project.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 may have spent an extraordinary amount of time floating through development space, but against all expectations, the ship apparently still has a crew.

Some of the people building the world's most powerful AI systems are calling for the industry to slow down and spend more time addressing safety. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is taking a very different position.

And he appears to have a powerful ally in U.S. President Donald Trump.

During the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on September 14, Huang was discussing AI when Trump unexpectedly called him. Huang put the president on speakerphone, turning what could have been a private conversation into a very public statement on the future of artificial intelligence.

Trump dismissed fears that increasingly powerful AI could eventually escape human control.

“The robots will not be taking over,” Trump said during the call, before describing the broader fears surrounding an AI takeover as a “hoax.”

Huang broadly agreed that AI development should continue rather than being deliberately slowed.

The exchange comes at an important moment for the technology industry, as several prominent AI researchers and executives are arguing that development of frontier AI systems may be moving faster than our ability to understand or control them.

Calls to slow down AI are growing

The controversy intensified after renewed warnings from researchers working on advanced artificial intelligence.

Executives and researchers associated with companies including Anthropic and OpenAI have argued that increasingly autonomous AI systems could create serious risks if capabilities advance faster than safety research.

Recent discussions have focused particularly on something called recursive self-improvement, where AI systems could potentially help design, train or improve future generations of AI.

That does not mean today's AI systems are capable of independently redesigning themselves without human infrastructure.

However, leading AI laboratories are increasingly using AI to automate portions of software engineering, research and model development. Some researchers believe that process could accelerate dramatically as systems become more capable.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been among those arguing that the industry should consider slowing development of the most powerful frontier models to give researchers more time to develop safeguards.

OpenAI and other AI figures have also discussed greater coordination around safety.

Huang isn't convinced.

Jensen Huang: the predictions aren't scientific

Huang has pushed back against some of the most extreme predictions surrounding AI.

During his appearance at the All-In Summit, he argued that estimates assigning specific probabilities to AI causing human extinction are not sufficiently grounded in science.

At the same time, Huang did not argue that AI safety should simply be ignored.

He has supported independent testing and evaluation of AI systems and said that safety concerns deserve serious consideration. His disagreement is primarily with the idea that the entire industry should collectively reduce the pace of AI development.

His position can essentially be summarized as: keep building, but build safely.

“America is able to lead and to do it safely,” Huang said.

That distinction is important.

The AI debate is increasingly portrayed as a battle between people who want unlimited development and people who want AI stopped entirely.

The reality is more complicated.

Many advocates of slowing frontier AI development are not asking for AI research to end. They are asking for stronger testing, independent oversight and more time to understand increasingly autonomous systems before significantly more powerful models are deployed.

Huang believes those safeguards can coexist with continued rapid development.

Trump goes considerably further

Trump's language has been much more dismissive.

During his call with Huang, Trump said efforts to slow AI could benefit America's competitors, particularly China.

He described AI as potentially “bigger than the internet” and argued that the United States should not handicap one of its most important emerging industries.

“The robots will not be taking over our country,” Trump said.

He later added that AI development should still proceed “prudently,” meaning even Trump's remarks did not amount to an argument for zero safety precautions.

What he strongly rejected was the idea that fears of an AI takeover should justify stopping or substantially slowing the industry.

Trump has also publicly described opposition to AI infrastructure and data centers as part of a “SICK conspiracy,” claiming restrictions could ultimately strengthen China.

That position broadly matches the direction of his administration's AI policies.

A June 2026 executive order said the United States should encourage AI innovation while avoiding what the administration considers overly burdensome regulation. The administration has simultaneously acknowledged that advanced AI creates national-security risks requiring safeguards and government coordination.

Nvidia has an enormous stake in the outcome

There is another unavoidable part of this story: Nvidia sits at the center of the AI boom.

Its graphics processors and specialized computing hardware power much of the infrastructure used to train and operate today's largest AI models.

Companies building increasingly powerful artificial intelligence require enormous amounts of computing capacity, which means continued AI investment represents an enormous market for Nvidia.

A broad slowdown in frontier AI development could therefore affect demand throughout the semiconductor and data-center industry.

That does not prove Huang's position is motivated by Nvidia's financial interests, but the company's commercial stake is relevant context when considering the debate.

Markets provided a small glimpse of that connection when semiconductor stocks fell sharply after renewed calls to slow AI development. Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom and other chip companies were among the stocks affected.

In other words, this is not merely a philosophical discussion about robots taking over the world.

Billions of dollars in infrastructure investment, semiconductor sales, electricity generation and data-center construction are tied to how quickly AI continues to advance.

The problem with calling AI risk a “hoax”

Trump's description of AI takeover fears as a “hoax” makes for an effective political soundbite, but the scientific question is considerably less settled.

Nobody currently knows whether artificial intelligence will ever develop the ability or motivation to operate beyond meaningful human control.

Researchers disagree sharply about the probability.

Some regard extinction scenarios as speculative and believe predictions assigning precise percentages to them create an illusion of scientific certainty.

Others argue that waiting until such risks can be conclusively demonstrated would be dangerous because sufficiently advanced AI could develop extremely quickly.

There is currently no scientific consensus establishing that artificial intelligence will destroy humanity.

There is also no scientific consensus proving that sufficiently advanced future AI systems could never pose such a threat.

That uncertainty is precisely why the argument has become so intense.

The AI race versus the AI safety problem

The disagreement ultimately comes down to two competing risks.

Slow AI development too aggressively and the United States could potentially surrender technological and economic advantages to competitors such as China.

Develop AI too aggressively and humanity could discover serious problems only after highly autonomous systems have already become deeply embedded in governments, businesses, military systems and critical infrastructure.

Neither scenario is trivial.

Huang believes technological progress and safety can move forward together without intentionally slowing development.

Trump has turned that argument into something much more politically forceful: America should keep moving because surrendering momentum could allow competitors to take the lead.

Others inside the AI industry increasingly argue that winning the race means very little if nobody fully understands where the finish line leads.

For now, there appears to be no industry consensus.

What is becoming clear is that the argument over artificial intelligence is moving beyond Silicon Valley laboratories.

It is becoming an economic issue, a national-security issue and increasingly a political one.

And with Nvidia supplying much of the machinery powering the AI revolution while the White House pushes for American technological dominance, the people arguing for a slower approach may find themselves fighting against an extraordinarily powerful combination of political and commercial momentum.

Now the conversation has taken a considerably darker turn.

In September 2026, former OpenAI and Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic while issuing an extraordinary warning: the companies building the world's most powerful AI systems were racing toward systems that could eventually become more intelligent than humans and potentially threaten humanity itself.

The most attention-grabbing version of that warning was simple:

AI could wipe out humanity by the end of the decade.

That gives us roughly four years.

It sounds like the opening scene of a science-fiction movie. But the people raising these concerns are not simply random internet prophets predicting robot Armageddon. Some work directly on the systems they are warning about.

At the same time, there is an equally important fact that often disappears beneath the headlines:

Nobody has demonstrated that today's AI is capable of wiping out humanity, and there is no scientific consensus that human extinction by 2030 is likely.

So what exactly are these researchers worried about?

Where the 2030 Claim Came From

The latest controversy was triggered by Jacob Coxon, who spent approximately three years working in AI research at OpenAI and Anthropic.

When announcing his resignation from Anthropic in September 2026, Coxon accused leading AI companies of racing toward increasingly autonomous and potentially self-improving systems without having solved the problem of reliably controlling them.

According to reports covering his resignation, Coxon argued that the industry could develop "superhuman systems" capable of posing an existential threat by the end of the decade.

His warning received additional attention when Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's Alignment Science Lead, publicly backed the broader concern.

Hubinger wrote that he personally estimated the probability of AI causing human extinction at greater than 10% within the next decade, while saying researchers still do not have a proven solution for aligning a future superintelligence with human goals.

That distinction matters.

Hubinger was not saying there is a 10% scientifically measured probability that humanity disappears in 2030.

It is a personal risk estimate about an uncertain future technology.

There is no dataset containing thousands of previous superintelligences from which scientists can calculate an extinction rate. These probabilities are ultimately expert judgments about something humanity has never built before.

This Concern Did Not Suddenly Appear in 2026

Warnings about existential AI risk have circulated for years.

In 2023, the Center for AI Safety published a remarkably short statement:

"Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war."

The statement was signed by prominent researchers and technology executives including Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.

That did not mean every signatory believed extinction was imminent.

It meant they believed the possibility was serious enough to deserve research and international attention.

The distinction between "this could happen" and "this will happen" is crucial.

How Would AI Actually Destroy Humanity?

The popular image involves armies of humanoid robots marching through burning cities.

Researchers discussing existential AI risk usually imagine something considerably less cinematic.

The central concern is loss of control.

Imagine a future AI system that becomes dramatically better than humans at programming, scientific research, persuasion, strategic planning and cybersecurity.

Now imagine that system can help design an improved version of itself.

That improved AI then helps create another version.

Then another.

This hypothetical process is sometimes called recursive self-improvement.

If improvements happened quickly enough, humans could potentially find themselves supervising something that had moved from extremely capable software to a system far beyond human expertise before institutions had time to react.

The problem would not necessarily require the AI to "hate humans."

A powerful system pursuing the wrong objective could be dangerous simply because human interests were not properly represented in its goals.

This is the famous AI alignment problem: how do we guarantee that a sufficiently powerful artificial intelligence continues doing what humanity actually wants?

Researchers do not currently have a universally accepted solution.

The Bioweapon Scenario

Another frequently discussed risk is AI-assisted biological weapons.

A sufficiently advanced system might theoretically help someone design pathogens, identify vulnerabilities or automate parts of biological research.

Cybersecurity creates similar concerns. Advanced autonomous agents could potentially search for vulnerabilities, write malicious software and attack digital infrastructure at a scale impossible for a human hacking team.

Financial systems, electrical grids, communications networks and military systems could theoretically become targets.

But there is an important caveat.

Critics point out that producing instructions is very different from producing a functioning biological weapon.

Real biological engineering requires laboratories, materials, equipment, expertise and numerous physical steps.

Researchers interviewed about recent AI extinction claims have argued that jumping directly from "AI can generate biological information" to "AI can exterminate humanity" ignores enormous real-world barriers.

The same limitation applies elsewhere.

Software lives in computers.

To influence the physical world, it needs humans, machines, networks or infrastructure willing or able to carry out its instructions.

The Biggest Assumption: Superintelligence

Almost every 2030 extinction scenario depends on something that does not currently exist:

Artificial superintelligence.

Modern AI systems can perform extraordinary tasks, but they also hallucinate information, misunderstand relatively simple instructions, make logical mistakes and fail unexpectedly.

Today's systems are powerful tools.

They are not omnipotent digital gods.

For an extinction scenario to occur within only a few years, several developments would need to happen rapidly.

AI would need to become dramatically more capable.

It would need substantially greater autonomy.

It might need the ability to improve AI research itself.

It would need access to important digital or physical systems.

And humans would have to fail to detect, control or stop the process.

None of those individual developments is impossible.

But stacking them together creates considerable uncertainty.

That is why saying "AI will kill humanity by 2030" would go far beyond the available evidence.

Some Researchers Strongly Disagree With the Doomsday Scenario

The AI research community is far from unanimous.

Critics argue that assigning precise percentages to hypothetical extinction events can create an illusion of scientific certainty where none exists.

Heidy Khlaaf, chief scientist at the AI Now Institute, has criticized numerical "probability of doom" estimates because the underlying claims cannot currently be experimentally verified or falsified in the normal scientific sense.

Other researchers argue that focusing too heavily on hypothetical superintelligence may distract society from problems AI is already creating.

Those include misinformation, deepfakes, automated cybercrime, surveillance, discrimination, employment disruption, concentrated corporate power and the enormous energy requirements associated with large AI systems.

Those risks do not require superintelligence.

They exist now.

But "Unproven" Does Not Mean "Impossible"

There is another mistake hiding at the opposite end of the debate.

Because researchers cannot prove that AI will cause an extinction-level catastrophe, it is tempting to conclude that the risk can simply be ignored.

That logic is also questionable.

Humanity routinely prepares for events that are unlikely but potentially catastrophic.

Nuclear safety exists because the consequences of failure are enormous.

Aircraft are subjected to extreme safety requirements even though catastrophic failures are rare.

Scientists monitor asteroids despite civilization-ending impacts being extraordinarily uncommon.

Risk is not determined only by probability.

It is generally understood as some combination of probability and consequence.

If there were even a genuinely small possibility that future AI could escape human control, the consequences would be so extraordinary that studying the problem would make sense.

That is effectively the argument made by researchers calling for stronger AI safety measures.

They do not necessarily need to prove that catastrophe will occur.

They argue that developers should prove sufficiently powerful systems are safe before giving them enormous autonomy.

The AI Race Makes the Problem Harder

One of the more convincing concerns has little to do with evil machines.

It is ordinary human competition.

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, xAI and other companies are competing to build increasingly powerful systems.

Countries are simultaneously treating AI as an economic and strategic technology.

That creates a dangerous incentive structure.

If one laboratory believes slowing development would allow a competitor to get ahead, it may continue developing more capable systems even if its own researchers would prefer additional safety testing.

Governments face exactly the same dilemma.

The United States may hesitate to slow development because it fears China gaining an advantage.

China has similar incentives.

Europe may worry about becoming technologically dependent on both.

The result could become something resembling a technological prisoner's dilemma: everyone might prefer a safer race, but nobody wants to slow down first.

We Should Also Question Who Benefits From AI Doom

There is another uncomfortable dimension to this debate.

Warnings that AI could become unimaginably powerful also happen to reinforce the idea that companies building AI possess unimaginably powerful technology.

Some critics have therefore suggested that apocalyptic AI rhetoric can unintentionally, or sometimes conveniently, become a form of marketing.

If a company tells the world:

"The technology we're developing might become so powerful that it could threaten civilization,"

investors and governments may hear:

"This company is building the most powerful technology ever created."

That does not mean researchers raising safety concerns are lying.

But it does mean their claims should be subjected to the same skepticism we would apply to claims from any enormously valuable industry.

AI companies should not be allowed to simultaneously argue that their technology may be civilization-threatening and then insist that they alone should decide how it is regulated.

So, Will AI Wipe Out Humanity by 2030?

There is currently no evidence strong enough to say that it will.

There is also no scientific consensus predicting human extinction by 2030.

The current controversy comes from researchers warning that rapid progress could create extremely powerful, potentially self-improving AI systems before humanity knows how to reliably control them.

That is a fundamentally different statement.

The most defensible conclusion lies between complacency and apocalypse.

AI extinction by 2030 remains a highly speculative scenario.

But the broader issue behind the headline is real.

We are building increasingly autonomous systems capable of programming computers, conducting research, manipulating information and interacting with digital infrastructure.

Their capabilities are improving rapidly.

Nobody knows precisely where that development curve ends.

The Real Question Is Not Whether 2030 Is the Deadline

Perhaps the obsession with a particular year is the wrong way to think about the problem.

Humanity does not need to decide whether an AI apocalypse arrives on December 31, 2030.

We need to decide what safety standards powerful AI systems should meet before they are trusted with critical infrastructure, scientific laboratories, military systems, financial networks and increasingly autonomous decision-making.

That means independent safety testing.

It means researchers being able to raise concerns without depending entirely on the companies developing the technology.

It means governments understanding the technology well enough to regulate genuine risks without freezing useful innovation.

And it probably means international cooperation, because an artificial superintelligence would not care very much about national borders.

The machines have not taken over.

There is no evidence that humanity has four years left.

But dismissing every warning because the most dramatic versions sound like science fiction would be equally foolish.

The most important lesson from the current controversy may therefore be considerably less spectacular than the headlines suggest.

AI does not have to destroy humanity to become dangerous. And we should probably work out how to control increasingly powerful systems before discovering the limits of that control the hard way.

Doctor. Teacher. Firefighter. Engineer. Carpenter. Nurse. Police officer. Scientist.

Today, another answer has become remarkably common: content creator.

YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch and other platforms have created an entirely new category of celebrity. Someone with a smartphone, an internet connection and the right combination of personality, timing and algorithmic luck can potentially build an audience of millions without ever passing through the traditional gates of television, radio or publishing.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Content creation can require creativity, entrepreneurship, editing skills, marketing knowledge and a tremendous amount of work.

But it has also created a strange economic and cultural contradiction.

A nurse can work a demanding shift caring for sick patients. A construction worker can spend an entire day building homes. A teacher can educate thirty children. A retail employee can spend eight hours on their feet dealing with customers.

Meanwhile, a successful creator can film themselves trying a new lipstick, reviewing a restaurant or reacting to somebody else's video and potentially earn far more.

When society financially rewards attention more aggressively than it rewards many forms of essential work, it is reasonable to ask what message we are sending to the next generation.

Young People Really Do Want to Become Creators, But the Picture Is More Complicated

The idea that large numbers of young people dream about becoming influencers isn't imaginary.

Pacsun's 2025 Youth Report, produced with GlobalData and based on more than 6,000 Americans aged 11 to 24, found that approximately 22% either wanted to pursue or were pursuing a career as a content creator or influencer. Among Gen Alpha respondents, the figure reached 28%.

That is an extraordinary percentage for a career that barely existed in its current form twenty years ago.

However, claims that this number is simply increasing every year need qualification.

The same survey conducted in 2026 found interest in influencer and creator careers falling to approximately 18.8%, while medical and healthcare careers narrowly moved ahead at 19%. The 2026 survey included 6,126 Americans aged 11 to 24. It also found that 62% considered having a stable job one of their major goals by age 35.

Another major survey points in the same direction. Pew Research Center reported in 2025 that 86% of American teenagers considered having a job or career they enjoy extremely or very important, while only 6% said becoming famous was highly important to them.

So this is not evidence of an entire generation deciding that work is beneath them.

The more interesting problem is subtler.

Young people are growing up inside an economy where they can see, every day, examples of individuals apparently earning enormous amounts of money doing something that looks considerably easier and more glamorous than conventional employment.

And they rarely see the thousands who tried the same thing and earned almost nothing.

The Creator Economy Has a Huge Winner Problem

Social media makes successful creators incredibly visible.

Unsuccessful creators are almost invisible.

That creates a distorted picture of what the profession actually looks like.

Goldman Sachs estimated that there were around 50 million creators globally, with the creator economy potentially approaching half a trillion dollars in value by 2027.

That sounds like an enormous opportunity.

But Goldman Sachs also estimated that only around 4% of creators qualify as professionals earning more than $100,000 per year. Brand partnerships account for roughly 70% of creator revenue.

Academic research suggests that earnings are extraordinarily unequal.

A 2026 study examining YouTube creators in Germany, Austria and Switzerland calculated a Gini coefficient of 0.89 for creator earnings, indicating extreme income inequality within the platform economy.

In other words, seeing successful influencers online is a little like watching professional football and concluding that playing football is an easy road to wealth.

You are mostly seeing the winners.

When Reviewing Makeup Can Pay More Than Building the World Around Us

Here is where the cultural contradiction becomes uncomfortable.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median full-time American worker earned $1,204 per week in 2025. Workers aged 16 to 24 earned considerably less, with median weekly earnings of $805 for young men and $725 for young women.

Many jobs that society depends upon pay even less. In May 2025, for example, the median annual wage for retail sales workers was approximately $36,320.

Successful influencers can exceed those amounts dramatically through sponsorships, advertising, affiliate commissions, subscriptions and merchandise.

There is nothing inherently immoral about that. Entertainment has always produced enormous financial rewards for a relatively small number of people.

The difference today is accessibility.

Movie stars used to appear on distant cinema screens. Influencers appear in your bedroom every night.

They talk directly into the camera. They film themselves eating breakfast. They answer comments. They show their homes. They tell viewers what they bought.

The lifestyle therefore feels attainable.

A teenager watching someone earn thousands of dollars promoting cosmetics may reasonably wonder why they should spend years studying to enter a difficult profession that offers less money, longer hours and considerably more responsibility.

That is not laziness.

It is an economic incentive.

And perhaps society should be asking why so many jobs that we describe as "essential" are compensated in ways that often make them financially less attractive than capturing attention online.

The Danger Is Not That Content Creation Isn't Work

It would be unfair to pretend successful creators simply sit on a sofa and occasionally press "record."

Many operate effectively as small businesses.

They negotiate contracts, edit videos, manage advertising, analyze statistics, communicate with audiences, maintain websites, pay contractors and constantly produce new material.

Burnout among creators is real, and income can disappear almost overnight if an algorithm changes, an account is suspended or an audience moves elsewhere.

The problem is therefore not that content creation is somehow fake work.

The problem is the perception of effort versus reward.

Social media overwhelmingly displays the rewards.

The holiday.

The expensive car.

The designer clothes.

The beautifully decorated apartment.

The free products.

The sponsorship.

It rarely displays years of failed videos, unstable income, tax bills, cancelled sponsorships or the creator refreshing an analytics page at 2 a.m. wondering why yesterday's video received 900,000 views and today's received 7,000.

Young viewers receive a heavily edited version of the economics.

We Are Also Monetizing Appearance

The consequences extend beyond careers.

Influencers don't merely sell products.

They sell lifestyles.

And increasingly, they sell appearances.

A large body of research has connected exposure to idealized social-media imagery with body dissatisfaction among young people.

A 2026 systematic review examining social media, body image and weight-related behavior among people aged 10 to 24 concluded that idealized standards of thinness and muscularity were associated with body dissatisfaction, restrictive eating, excessive exercise and use of questionable weight-loss products.

Another systematic review examining influencers specifically found that exposure to idealized influencer imagery produced negative effects on body image and mood in several studies, although the researchers also stressed that the overall evidence base has methodological limitations.

A 2025 meta-analysis of experimental research similarly found that exposure to idealized body content reduced body satisfaction among young women, while body-positive material could improve it.

That distinction matters.

Social media itself is not automatically harmful.

What matters enormously is what people repeatedly see.

When teenagers spend hours watching carefully lit, filtered, edited and sometimes digitally altered people presenting themselves as ordinary reality, the boundary between reality and advertising begins to dissolve.

Opinions Can Become Products

There is another issue that traditional media at least attempts to address through editors, fact-checkers and professional standards.

Influencers generally have no such obligation.

Anyone can accumulate millions of followers while having absolutely no professional expertise in the subjects they discuss.

A systematic review published in Social Science & Medicine found several concerns surrounding influencers and adolescent health information, including lack of expertise, commercial interests, unrealistic body imagery and inaccurate diagnosis or treatment advice.

This doesn't mean influencers are inherently unreliable.

Doctors can be influencers.

Scientists can be influencers.

Journalists, historians, engineers and educators can create excellent online content.

But social-media algorithms generally do not award attention according to qualifications.

They reward engagement.

A confident person saying something outrageous can therefore outperform an expert carefully explaining why reality is complicated.

The algorithm doesn't necessarily know the difference between credible and clickable.

It knows whether you watched.

Advertising Has Become Harder to Recognize

The business model complicates matters further.

When someone watches a conventional television advertisement, everyone understands what they are seeing.

Influencer marketing deliberately makes that boundary less obvious.

A creator might be talking casually about their skincare routine while simultaneously participating in a commercial relationship worth thousands of dollars.

This is precisely why regulators require disclosure.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission says influencers must clearly disclose financial or other material relationships with brands and warns that simply assuming followers understand that a recommendation is sponsored isn't sufficient. The FTC also explicitly states that influencers cannot make claims requiring evidence that an advertiser does not possess.

When advertising looks exactly like friendship, recommendation and everyday life, younger audiences in particular can have difficulty separating authentic opinion from commercial persuasion.

What Happens If Everyone Wants the Spotlight?

There is a tempting dystopian version of this argument: everyone becomes an influencer and eventually nobody is left to build houses, repair electrical systems, teach children, drive trucks or care for patients.

The evidence does not suggest that is happening.

Healthcare remained the most popular career category in the 2026 Pacsun/GlobalData survey, while skilled trades and hands-on work were selected by 13.7% of respondents. Young people continue to value stable employment.

But that doesn't mean there is nothing worth worrying about.

Societies need people willing to perform difficult, highly skilled and sometimes unpleasant jobs.

If those jobs offer relatively modest financial rewards while social media continuously advertises the possibility of extraordinary wealth through personal branding, society creates a peculiar incentive structure.

The answer should not be to tell young people to abandon their ambitions.

It should be to make reality clearer.

Being a creator can be a legitimate career.

But becoming a wealthy creator is statistically unusual.

Influencers can entertain, educate and contribute meaningfully to society.

But follower counts are not qualifications.

Social media can connect people and provide opportunities that previous generations could hardly imagine.

But an algorithmically perfected lifestyle should not become the measuring stick for a successful human life.

Perhaps We Are Asking the Wrong Question

The debate is often framed as:

Why don't young people want to work anymore?

The evidence doesn't really support that sweeping accusation.

A better question might be:

Why have we created an economy where some of society's most necessary workers can look financially unsuccessful next to someone whose primary economic asset is attention?

Young people are responding to the incentives placed in front of them.

If repairing infrastructure, caring for elderly people, teaching children and performing skilled trades require years of effort while offering limited financial security, we cannot be surprised when a teenager looks at a millionaire YouTuber and thinks:

Why wouldn't I try that instead?

The creator economy isn't necessarily the disease.

It may simply be exposing something uncomfortable about the economy surrounding it.

We have become remarkably good at placing a dollar value on attention.

Perhaps the bigger challenge for the next generation is figuring out how to place a fairer value on everything society cannot function without.

Released on September 14, macOS 27 introduces the completely rebuilt Siri AI, Visual Intelligence for the Mac, smarter Safari features, expanded Apple Intelligence tools, improved performance, better support for modern displays, and a surprisingly long list of smaller quality-of-life improvements.

There is also one major compatibility change: macOS 27 requires an Apple silicon Mac. Intel Macs have officially been left behind.

Siri AI is the headline feature

The biggest addition in macOS 27 is undoubtedly Siri AI, Apple's next-generation version of Siri.

Rather than behaving primarily as a voice assistant designed for short commands, Siri AI works much more like a conversational AI assistant. You can ask open-ended questions, brainstorm ideas, research topics and continue conversations naturally.

Siri is also integrated directly into Spotlight. Searching for something can now surface an Ask Siri option alongside traditional files, apps and system results.

More importantly, Siri can understand personal context.

For example, you can ask Siri to locate an email you vaguely remember receiving, find a photograph from an old trip or retrieve information stored somewhere inside your notes. Instead of forcing you to remember filenames or exact keywords, Siri can work with more natural descriptions.

Apple has also introduced a standalone Siri app. Conversations are stored and synchronized through iCloud, meaning a discussion started on one Apple device can later be continued on your Mac. Conversations can also be pinned for easier access.

At launch, Siri AI is rolling out in English, so language availability remains something to keep in mind depending on your region. Apple's Swedish macOS page confirms that Siri AI is available in English.

Visual Intelligence comes to the Mac

Another major addition is Visual Intelligence.

Using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Command + Space, you can select something visible on your screen and ask Siri questions about it.

That could be an image, information inside an application, part of a webpage or even a PDF. Siri can then analyze the selected content, explain what you are seeing or perform relevant actions.

For example, Visual Intelligence can recognize information about an upcoming event and help add it to Calendar without requiring you to manually copy the details.

It effectively turns the Mac screen itself into something Apple Intelligence can interact with.

Apple Intelligence spreads across macOS

Apple Intelligence is also becoming more deeply integrated into regular applications.

Siri AI can generate text almost anywhere you can type and provide feedback on existing writing. In applications such as Mail and Messages, Apple says the system can even attempt to match your usual writing style, punctuation and tone.

Image Playground has also been expanded and can now produce images in additional styles, including photorealistic imagery.

Apple is additionally introducing much more capable intelligent photo editing. Tools include Spatial Reframing, which can reposition the composition of an existing photograph, and Extend, which generates additional content outside the original boundaries of a photo.

The existing Clean Up tool is also becoming more capable at removing large objects and reconstructing complex backgrounds.

Apple notes that some of these photography features are arriving through a future macOS 27 software update rather than being available immediately.

Safari gets smarter

Safari receives several useful improvements in Golden Gate.

Tabs can now automatically be grouped according to topic, making it easier to manage large browsing sessions.

A particularly interesting addition is Notify Me.

Safari can monitor webpages for changes and notify you when something happens. Apple gives examples such as a product returning to stock or receiving a price reduction. Instead of constantly refreshing a store page, Safari can effectively keep watch for you.

Apple is also introducing Describe an Extension, allowing users to describe a small Safari extension using natural language rather than programming one manually.

Shortcuts becomes much easier

Apple's Shortcuts system has always been powerful, but building complicated automations can quickly resemble assembling digital IKEA furniture without the little Allen key.

macOS 27 attempts to solve that with Describe a Shortcut.

Instead of manually selecting actions, you can explain what you want the Shortcut to accomplish. Apple Intelligence then assembles the necessary actions automatically.

Apple's example involves describing a Shortcut that sends your partner a message when you leave work and automatically includes your estimated arrival time based on traffic.

This could make Shortcuts significantly more approachable for people who previously ignored the application.

Liquid Glass gets another refinement

Apple isn't abandoning Liquid Glass, but it has adjusted the interface following the introduction of the design language in macOS Tahoe.

macOS 27 improves contrast and readability while making refraction effects more consistent throughout the operating system.

Toolbars have become more uniform, sidebars extend further toward window edges and window shapes have been refined.

Most importantly, users now get a slider controlling how Liquid Glass appears, ranging from a highly transparent appearance to a much more tinted version.

It gives users considerably more control over how aggressive Apple's translucent interface looks.

Faster AirDrop, networking and Safari

Golden Gate isn't exclusively about artificial intelligence.

Apple says it has made several underlying performance improvements throughout macOS.

AirDrop transfers are faster, browsing network files should feel more responsive and Safari's start page loads content faster.

Mail has also received a new search ranking system designed to push the most relevant messages toward the top of search results, while Spotlight offers improved search suggestions.

None of these features will dominate Apple's marketing material, but they may ultimately be among the improvements users notice most during everyday Mac use.

Better ultrawide monitor support

Users with large external displays also get a welcome upgrade.

macOS 27 introduces support for higher resolutions and refresh rates on ultrawide monitors, including configurations such as 5K at 120Hz.

macOS also does a better job remembering monitor arrangements, so reconnecting an external display should restore its previous position rather than occasionally forcing users to rearrange everything again.

For Mac mini and Mac Studio users in particular, this is a genuinely useful improvement.

Shared Albums become friendlier outside Apple's ecosystem

iCloud Shared Albums are getting improved support for people who don't use Apple devices.

Android and Windows users can more easily participate through iCloud.com and contribute their own photographs.

Shared Albums also gain full-resolution sharing alongside additional filtering, reactions and invitation options.

That may sound relatively minor, but it removes one of the persistent annoyances of sharing large photo collections with mixed-device families and groups.

Accessibility improvements

Apple has expanded VoiceOver with richer descriptions of images and other onscreen content.

macOS 27 can also automatically generate synchronized captions for videos and translate existing captions into other languages.

These improvements continue Apple's broader effort to build accessibility functions directly into the operating system rather than treating them as separate tools.

New parental controls

Golden Gate also introduces significantly expanded parental controls.

A new Ask to Browse system can require children to request permission before opening previously unapproved websites in Safari.

Communication Safety now expands its protections beyond nudity and can intervene when children are about to encounter violent or graphic imagery.

Parents can also configure Time Allowances for categories such as games, entertainment and social media, while schedules determine which applications are available at particular times or on specific days.

Which Macs support macOS 27?

This is where Golden Gate marks an important turning point.

There are no supported Intel Macs.

macOS 27 requires Apple silicon and officially supports:

• MacBook Neo (2026)

• MacBook Air with Apple silicon from 2020 or newer

• MacBook Pro with Apple silicon from 2020 or newer

• iMac with Apple silicon from 2021 or newer

• Mac mini with Apple silicon from 2020 or newer

• Mac Studio from 2022 or newer

• Mac Pro with Apple silicon from 2023

Apple's transition away from Intel is now essentially complete at the operating-system level.

macOS 27 feels like the beginning of Apple's AI-era Mac

macOS 27 Golden Gate isn't defined by one radical redesign. Instead, Apple has taken the foundation introduced with Tahoe and filled it with substantially more intelligence.

Siri AI is clearly the centerpiece, but Visual Intelligence, natural-language Shortcuts, smarter Safari tools and deeper contextual awareness may ultimately be more important than the new assistant interface itself.

Meanwhile, practical improvements such as faster networking, improved search, better ultrawide display support and refinements to Liquid Glass help prevent Golden Gate from feeling like an operating system built entirely around AI.

For users with an Apple silicon Mac, macOS 27 is therefore less of a cosmetic revolution and more of a transformation happening underneath the familiar desktop.

And with Intel Macs finally removed from the compatibility list, Golden Gate also draws a very clear line between the Mac's past and whatever Apple has planned next.

Released on September 14, 2026, iPadOS 27 focuses heavily on the next generation of Apple Intelligence, a much more capable Siri, smarter built-in apps, performance improvements and refinements to the Liquid Glass design introduced with the previous generation.

For users with newer iPads, particularly models powered by Apple silicon, there is quite a lot to unpack.

Siri Gets Its Biggest Upgrade Yet

The headline feature of iPadOS 27 is Apple's new Siri AI.

Apple describes it as a much more conversational and capable version of Siri, combining personal context, onscreen awareness, app integration and broader general knowledge.

Instead of treating every command as an isolated request, Siri can now maintain conversations and understand follow-up questions.

For example, you can ask Siri about something displayed on your screen, continue asking questions about it and then potentially perform an action based on the information.

Apple has also introduced a dedicated Siri app, where previous Siri conversations can be revisited.

Conversations can privately sync through iCloud, meaning a conversation started on one Apple device can potentially be continued on another.

Siri also integrates directly into Spotlight, allowing users to quickly type questions without opening another interface.

There is, however, an important limitation.

Siri AI requires an Apple Intelligence-capable iPad, meaning an iPad mini with A17 Pro or an iPad powered by an M-series processor. Apple says Siri AI is initially rolling out in English and is not initially available in the European Union on iPadOS.

For European users, including those in Sweden, that means some of iPadOS 27's biggest headline features may arrive later.

Apple Intelligence Becomes Much More Useful

Apple Intelligence is moving beyond isolated AI tricks and becoming more deeply integrated throughout iPadOS.

One of the more useful additions is Write with Siri.

Siri can generate a first draft, rewrite existing text, provide feedback or alter the tone of something you have written.

In Messages and Mail, Apple says the system can even adapt its writing style depending on the person you are communicating with.

Apple Intelligence also appears throughout Notes, Photos, Safari, Shortcuts and other system apps.

In Notes, for example, Siri can work with typed or handwritten content.

A collection of handwritten lecture notes could potentially be transformed into a structured study guide, while a rough collection of bullet points could be reorganized into a formatted agenda.

Visual Intelligence Comes to the iPad

Visual Intelligence becomes significantly more powerful in iPadOS 27.

Users can ask Siri about almost anything displayed on the screen.

Take a screenshot and Siri can analyze its contents, while Apple Pencil users can circle or highlight a specific object before asking about it.

That could be particularly useful on the iPad, where large displays are often used for research, studying, creative work and browsing.

Instead of switching between apps to search for something you are looking at, Visual Intelligence attempts to make the content directly interactive.

Photos Gets Serious AI Editing Tools

The Photos app receives several interesting upgrades.

Spatial Reframing allows users to change the composition of a photograph after it has been taken, virtually shifting the camera perspective.

The new Extend tool can generate additional content beyond the original boundaries of an image. This can be useful when straightening a photograph, changing its aspect ratio or creating additional empty space around a subject.

Apple has also improved the existing Clean Up feature.

It can now handle larger objects and more complicated removals, with separate faster and higher-quality processing modes depending on the edit.

Shared Albums are improving as well, with full-resolution sharing, additional filtering options and new ways of reacting to photographs.

You can also save an individual frame from a video directly as a photograph.

Safari Gets Surprisingly Powerful

Safari receives several genuinely useful additions in iPadOS 27.

Apple Intelligence can automatically organize open tabs into related topics, potentially turning a chaotic pile of tabs into something slightly less terrifying.

A new Notify Me feature can monitor webpages for changes.

For example, Safari could watch a product page and notify you when an item returns to stock or when its price changes.

Even more interesting is Describe an Extension.

Users can describe what they want Safari to change on a webpage, and the system can create a custom extension based on those instructions.

It is an unusual feature that could make browser customization considerably more accessible to people who have never written an extension themselves.

Better Password Management

The Passwords app continues evolving into a more complete password manager.

iPadOS 27 can identify weak or compromised passwords and, on supported websites, help update those passwords with far less manual work.

Rather than warning users that a password has been leaked and leaving them to fix it themselves, Apple is increasingly trying to automate the tedious part.

Shortcuts Can Be Created Using Natural Language

Shortcuts has always been enormously powerful, but building complicated automations can be intimidating.

iPadOS 27 addresses that with Describe a Shortcut.

Instead of manually arranging actions, users can describe what they want to happen using normal language.

Apple's example includes asking the iPad to automatically enable windowed apps and arrange Safari and Notes side by side when a keyboard is connected.

For people who previously looked at Shortcuts and immediately closed it again, this could make automation considerably more approachable.

Windowed Multitasking Continues to Improve

The iPad's windowing system continues to evolve.

Users can operate multiple resizable app windows, move them freely around the display and minimize or maximize applications through familiar window controls.

Windowed Apps remains available alongside Stage Manager, giving users more flexibility over how they want the iPad to behave.

Apple has also added smaller usability improvements across the interface, including the option to keep the menu bar permanently visible.

Another welcome change is that iPhone apps running on the iPad can now be resized, making apps without dedicated iPad interfaces considerably less awkward to use.

Liquid Glass Gets Refined

Apple isn't abandoning Liquid Glass, but iPadOS 27 does address some of the complaints surrounding it.

The visual effect has been refined to improve contrast and readability.

A new customization slider also allows users to adjust the appearance of Liquid Glass, ranging from an extremely transparent appearance to a considerably more tinted interface.

Icons have been sharpened and redesigned in places as well.

Rather than another dramatic visual redesign, iPadOS 27 feels more like Apple polishing the design language it introduced previously.

Apple Claims Noticeably Better Performance

Some of the most interesting improvements in iPadOS 27 are hiding underneath the interface.

Apple says it has optimized several fundamental parts of the operating system, including CPU scheduling, memory management and display rendering.

App launches and AirDrop transfers should feel faster.

File transfers between an iPad and an external drive can, according to Apple, be up to five times faster in certain situations.

That is a particularly important upgrade for people increasingly using an iPad Pro as a laptop replacement for photography, video production or other workflows involving large files.

Search has also been improved throughout Spotlight, Mail and Photos.

Better Wi-Fi and Cellular Transitions

iPadOS 27 improves how the system switches between available networks.

The iPad can more seamlessly move between Wi-Fi and cellular connections while attempting to maintain whatever you are currently doing.

It isn't the kind of feature that appears spectacular in screenshots, but improvements such as these can have a much bigger impact on daily use than another new icon or animation.

Messages Sync Should Finally Be More Reliable

Apple has also improved synchronization in Messages.

Unread counts and missed-message notifications should synchronize faster when returning to an iPad after using another Apple device.

It sounds small, but anyone deeply embedded in Apple's ecosystem has probably encountered the occasional situation where an iPad insists several already-read messages are still waiting.

Big Improvements for Parents

Parental controls are receiving a substantial overhaul in iPadOS 27.

Parents can choose which applications children have access to during device setup, while redesigned Screen Time controls provide a clearer overview of usage.

New schedules allow different applications to be available at different times of the day or on different days of the week.

Apple has also introduced Time Allowances, allowing parents to establish limits across categories including games, entertainment and social media.

Safari's Ask to Browse feature lets children request access to websites that would otherwise be blocked.

Communication Safety has also been expanded to detect potentially sensitive imagery, including nudity as well as graphic or violent material.

Accessibility Improvements

Accessibility remains another major focus.

VoiceOver receives richer image descriptions, while a new captioning system can automatically generate synchronized subtitles for video.

Existing captions can also be translated into other languages in supported situations.

Magnifier receives additional tools designed to help people with low vision.

Which iPads Support iPadOS 27?

Apple supports a fairly broad collection of recent iPads.

Compatible models include:

• iPad 9th generation and newer

• iPad mini 6th generation and newer

• iPad Air 4th generation and newer

• iPad Pro 11-inch 2nd generation and newer

• iPad Pro 12.9-inch 4th generation and newer

• iPad Pro 13-inch models

Newer models including the A16 iPad, A17 Pro iPad mini and M-series iPads are naturally supported as well.

Not every feature works on every supported device.

The largest Apple Intelligence additions require an M-series iPad or iPad mini with A17 Pro, meaning older iPads can install iPadOS 27 but will not receive the complete feature set.

Is iPadOS 27 Worth Installing?

For most supported iPads, yes.

iPadOS 27 is less about rebuilding the operating system and more about making the iPad smarter, faster and more flexible.

The deeper integration of Apple Intelligence is clearly Apple's main focus, but some of the most valuable improvements may actually be the less glamorous ones: faster external storage transfers, better networking, improved search, resizable iPhone apps, stronger parental controls and countless refinements throughout the operating system.

The biggest question mark is Siri AI.

Apple is placing enormous emphasis on it, but availability depends heavily on hardware, language and region. European users may therefore experience a version of iPadOS 27 that feels somewhat different from the one Apple is marketing in the United States.

Even without Siri AI, however, iPadOS 27 contains enough system-wide improvements to make it a meaningful update.

And for owners of a recent M-series iPad, it provides the clearest indication yet of where Apple believes the platform is heading: less of a giant iPhone and increasingly a computer that can adapt itself around whatever you happen to be doing.

There is, however, one particularly important caveat for European users: Apple's headline new Siri AI experience is currently unavailable on iPhone and iPad in the European Union.

So what do you actually get when installing iOS 27? Here are the biggest changes.

iOS 27 is available now

Apple released iOS 27 on September 14, 2026.

The update supports an impressively long list of devices, stretching all the way back to the iPhone 11 series and the second-generation iPhone SE.

Supported models include:

• iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max

• iPhone 12 series

• iPhone 13 series, including iPhone 13 mini

• iPhone 14 series

• iPhone 15 series

• iPhone 16 series

• iPhone 17 series and iPhone Air

• iPhone 18 series

• iPhone Duo

• iPhone SE, second generation and newer

That means Apple is once again maintaining support for phones that are now several generations old.

Not every iOS 27 feature is available on every device, however. Apple Intelligence continues to have considerably higher hardware requirements.

Apple Intelligence becomes much more useful

Apple Intelligence has expanded throughout iOS 27 and is increasingly becoming part of ordinary apps rather than feeling like a separate collection of AI features.

One of the biggest areas of improvement is Photos.

New AI editing tools allow users to change the framing of images after they have been taken. Apple's new spatial reframing feature can intelligently adjust perspective, while an Expand tool can generate additional image content around the original photograph.

Clean Up has also been improved and can now remove larger objects from photographs.

Image Playground has received another major upgrade as well. Apple says it can generate higher-quality images across considerably more styles, including photorealistic imagery.

Apple Intelligence supports Swedish, alongside languages including Danish, Norwegian, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and several others.

Hardware support remains more limited than iOS itself. Apple Intelligence requires an iPhone 15 Pro or newer compatible model.

The big Siri AI upgrade is missing in the EU

The most heavily promoted part of iOS 27 internationally is Siri AI.

Apple has rebuilt Siri around its latest generation of Apple Intelligence, allowing users to have much more natural conversations, ask complicated questions and request help completing multi-step tasks.

Siri AI is also designed to understand information across apps and personal context.

There is even a dedicated Siri AI application for returning to previous conversations.

But there is a substantial catch.

Siri AI is not currently available in iOS 27 or iPadOS 27 within the European Union.

Apple says the delay is related to requirements under the EU's Digital Markets Act and claims it has not yet reached an acceptable implementation with European regulators.

There is currently no announced release date for Siri AI on iPhone in the EU.

This means users in countries such as Sweden receive iOS 27 without what Apple markets internationally as one of the operating system's flagship features.

Interestingly, Siri AI is available to European users on macOS 27 and visionOS 27, making the situation particularly unusual.

Photos gets powerful new AI editing tools

For users with supported hardware, the improvements to Photos may be among the most noticeable additions.

Spatial Reframing allows the composition of a photograph to be adjusted after it has already been taken.

The new Expand feature can effectively extend the borders of an image by generating appropriate surrounding content.

Clean Up has also become more capable and can remove larger unwanted objects from a photograph.

These tools push Apple's Photos app closer to the generative editing capabilities that have increasingly appeared in competing photo applications.

Liquid Glass gets refined

Apple isn't abandoning the Liquid Glass design language introduced in its previous generation of operating systems.

Instead, iOS 27 refines it.

Apple says the updated implementation improves readability through more consistent light refraction and greater contrast.

Icons have also been sharpened and contain additional detail.

Perhaps more importantly, Apple has added greater control over how Liquid Glass actually looks.

A new adjustment lets users change the appearance from highly transparent to considerably more tinted.

It is a relatively small addition, but it addresses one of the most common problems with heavily transparent interfaces: readability.

Apps can launch up to 30 percent faster

Some of the most interesting iOS 27 improvements aren't visible at all.

Apple has spent considerable effort optimizing the underlying operating system.

According to Apple, apps can launch up to 30 percent faster under certain conditions.

New photographs added to the photo library can appear up to 70 percent faster, while AirDrop transfers can be up to 80 percent faster.

Apple has also made lower-level changes to areas such as CPU scheduling and memory usage.

Individual results will naturally vary depending on the iPhone, app and workload, but these optimizations could make iOS 27 particularly interesting for owners of older supported devices.

AirDrop gets significantly faster

AirDrop has become one of those Apple features that quietly turns into something you miss the moment you use a non-Apple device.

In iOS 27, Apple says AirDrop transfers can be as much as 80 percent faster.

For users regularly transferring large videos, RAW photographs or other sizeable files between an iPhone, iPad and Mac, that could be a substantial improvement.

Smarter switching between Wi-Fi and mobile networks

iOS 27 also improves the way an iPhone transitions between Wi-Fi and cellular connections.

The system now attempts to select the best available connection more smoothly.

That sounds mundane, but it should help prevent those annoying moments where an iPhone stubbornly remains attached to a weak Wi-Fi signal while you are leaving a building.

It should also make transitions less disruptive during things such as FaceTime calls, navigation and streaming.

Safari can automatically organise your tabs

Safari receives several interesting improvements.

Tabs can now be automatically grouped according to their subject, helping users who routinely accumulate dozens of open pages.

Apple is also introducing a new Notify Me feature.

Safari can monitor a webpage and notify you when something changes, such as:

• A product returning to stock

• A price changing

• Information on a webpage being updated

Instead of repeatedly refreshing a store page waiting for a product to become available, Safari can effectively watch it for you.

It is one of those deceptively simple iOS 27 features that could become extremely useful.

Passwords can help change compromised passwords

Apple's Passwords app also becomes more proactive.

It can already warn users when passwords appear in known data breaches or when weak passwords are being reused.

In iOS 27, Passwords will eventually be able to help change eligible compromised passwords automatically.

Rather than simply telling you that a password should be replaced, the system can navigate the relevant account pages and assist with updating it.

Apple says this functionality will arrive in a later software update, so it is not part of the initial iOS 27 release.

Mail search gets smarter

Anyone who has tried finding a specific email from several years ago knows that searching an inbox can occasionally become digital archaeology.

Apple says iOS 27 introduces a new ranking system for Mail search.

Instead of primarily relying on chronology or exact keyword matches, Mail attempts to identify which messages are most relevant to your search.

The idea is to surface the email you're probably looking for even when it is buried deep inside your inbox.

Shared iCloud albums get better support for Android and Windows

Apple is also making shared photo albums friendlier to people who aren't completely embedded inside the Apple ecosystem.

Friends and family using Android or Windows can participate more easily through iCloud.com and contribute their own photographs.

Shared albums now support full-resolution sharing as well.

Apple has also added new filtering tools, reactions and additional ways of inviting people to an album.

For families where not everyone uses an iPhone, this could be one of the more welcome changes.

AirPods finally get a proper equalizer

iOS 27 adds more control over how compatible AirPods sound.

Users can adjust:

• Bass

• Midrange

• Treble

The controls appear directly inside AirPods settings.

Apple has historically preferred automatic audio processing rather than giving users extensive manual EQ controls, so this represents a welcome change for people who want to tune their listening experience.

Major new parental controls

Some of Apple's largest iOS 27 changes concern children and family accounts.

Screen Time has been redesigned to provide parents with a clearer overview of how children use their devices.

Parents can establish time limits covering categories such as:

• Games

• Social media

• Entertainment

• Other applications

Apple also provides age-based recommendations developed with guidance from child-development and health experts.

Schedules can determine which applications are available at particular times or on particular days.

Children can request access to websites

A particularly interesting addition is Ask to Browse.

Parents can restrict web access for a child's account while still allowing the child to request access to individual websites.

The request appears in Messages, where the parent can review the site before approving or rejecting access.

This provides something more flexible than simply choosing between unrestricted browsing and a heavily restricted whitelist.

Communication Safety expands beyond nudity

Apple's Communication Safety technology already attempted to protect children from receiving or sharing explicit imagery.

iOS 27 expands the system.

Communication Safety can now also detect shared photographs and videos containing graphic violence or blood.

The protection extends to services including Messages and FaceTime.

Apple's processing is designed around maintaining the child's privacy while providing warnings and protective measures when potentially harmful content is detected.

Accessibility receives major improvements

Accessibility continues to be an area where Apple makes substantial yearly improvements.

VoiceOver can provide more detailed descriptions of images and surroundings.

The Magnifier app receives additional visual assistance tools.

iOS 27 can also automatically generate synchronized captions for videos and, in some circumstances, translate existing subtitles into other languages.

These features can obviously be essential accessibility tools, but automatic caption generation and translation may also prove useful to a much wider audience.

HomeKit Secure Video moves to 4K

Apple's Home app receives several Apple Intelligence improvements.

Related smart-home notifications can be grouped together, reducing notification overload.

Apple Intelligence can also describe activity captured by supported HomeKit Secure Video cameras before you watch the recording.

Users can search recordings based on what happened in a clip rather than manually scrubbing through hours of footage.

Perhaps most importantly for security-camera owners, compatible HomeKit Secure Video cameras can now stream and record in 4K.

Health adds perimenopause support

Cycle Tracking inside the Health app gains additional functionality aimed at perimenopause and menopause.

The app can notify users when logged cycle patterns potentially indicate perimenopause.

Users can also track related symptoms and access relevant educational material.

GymKit comes to the iPhone

GymKit is expanding beyond the Apple Watch ecosystem.

With iOS 27 and compatible hardware, an iPhone and AirPods Pro 3 can connect directly to supported gym equipment.

This includes equipment such as:

• Treadmills

• Exercise bikes

• Elliptical machines

• Stair machines

Heart-rate and workout information can then be synchronized to provide more accurate real-time exercise data.

Apple Maps improves Flyover

Apple has also upgraded the Flyover experience in Maps.

The feature now combines aerial photography with visual-intelligence models to generate more detailed views of cities and landscapes.

Apple says this allows smaller details such as architecture and individual trees to be represented more accurately.

As always with Maps features, availability depends heavily on location.

iOS 27 feels more like refinement than reinvention

At first glance, iOS 27 can look like another AI-focused update.

Dig deeper, however, and there is considerably more happening.

Faster AirDrop, quicker app launches, improved network switching, automatic Safari organisation, better Mail searches, improved shared albums, AirPods EQ controls, accessibility enhancements and dramatically expanded parental controls could affect everyday iPhone use more frequently than some of the headline AI features.

For European users, the story is slightly different.

The absence of Siri AI means one of Apple's most heavily promoted iOS 27 features simply isn't there. Apple Intelligence itself continues to work on compatible devices and supports Swedish, but Apple's next-generation Siri remains unavailable on iPhone in the EU with no confirmed launch date.

Even without Siri AI, however, iOS 27 is far from an empty update.

Instead of reinventing the iPhone interface again, Apple appears to have concentrated on polishing the foundations: making things faster, smarter and slightly less annoying.

And sometimes those are the updates that end up mattering the most.

Instead, Xbox has stepped in.

According to Kojima, PlayStation Studios unexpectedly informed Kojima Productions in mid-June 2026 that it intended to cancel the Physint project. Rather than abandon the game, Kojima Productions spent the following three months looking for another partner capable of helping the studio bring its ambitious espionage project to life.

That search ultimately led to Microsoft and Xbox.

Sony and Kojima Had Originally Announced Physint Together

Physint was first announced in 2024 as a collaboration between Kojima Productions and Sony Interactive Entertainment.

At the time, Kojima described it as a next-generation action-espionage project. For longtime fans, the announcement immediately carried echoes of Metal Gear Solid, the franchise Kojima created during his decades at Konami.

Kojima no longer owns the Metal Gear intellectual property, which remains with Konami, meaning Physint was always intended to be something entirely new.

Still, the basic ingredients sounded familiar: cinematic storytelling, espionage, stealth and action, all filtered through Kojima’s famously unconventional approach to game design.

The project quickly became one of Kojima Productions’ most intriguing future games.

Development was never expected to be quick, however. Kojima previously suggested that Physint could still be five or six years away, placing a possible release somewhere around the end of the decade.

PlayStation Unexpectedly Pulled the Plug

That long development timeline now appears to have included a much bigger obstacle than anyone outside the companies realized.

Kojima says that PlayStation Studios unexpectedly informed his company in June that it wanted to cancel Physint.

Sony has publicly described its decision in softer terms, saying that it had decided to step away from collaborating with Kojima Productions on the project while maintaining that the relationship between the companies remained strong.

Kojima’s version makes the situation sound considerably more dramatic.

For Kojima Productions, abandoning the game apparently was not an option.

Kojima described Physint as an important project both personally and for the studio, prompting the company to immediately begin searching for someone else willing to support it.

Xbox Became the Natural Alternative

After roughly three months of discussions and negotiations, Kojima Productions found its new partner: Xbox.

In some ways, the deal makes perfect sense.

Kojima Productions already has an established relationship with Microsoft through OD, the mysterious horror project being developed with Xbox Game Studios.

The collaboration means Microsoft is now involved with both of Kojima Productions’ major announced projects beyond the Death Stranding series.

Kojima says Xbox shares the studio’s vision for the future and confirmed that development of Physint is continuing.

For Microsoft, acquiring the publishing rights to a major Kojima project is also a substantial win.

Few individual game developers carry Kojima’s level of name recognition, particularly when it comes to cinematic storytelling and stealth games. A new espionage title from the creator of Metal Gear Solid instantly gives Xbox another project capable of attracting global attention.

Physint Could Become Kojima’s Spiritual Return to Metal Gear

Details about the actual game remain extremely limited.

What Kojima has repeatedly emphasized, however, is that Physint will be an action-espionage title designed to push the genre forward.

That inevitably brings comparisons with Metal Gear Solid.

Kojima spent decades refining stealth-action games, turning Metal Gear into one of the most recognizable franchises in gaming. Physint therefore represents something fans have been requesting for years: Kojima returning to the type of game that made him famous, but without the creative restrictions of an existing franchise.

Whether Physint ends up resembling Metal Gear Solid closely or evolves into something entirely different remains to be seen.

Knowing Kojima, betting on “entirely predictable” would probably be unwise.

A Strange Loss for PlayStation

The situation also raises questions about Sony’s decision.

PlayStation and Kojima have maintained a close relationship for decades. After Kojima left Konami and founded an independent Kojima Productions, Sony published the original Death Stranding on PlayStation 4 and supported its development heavily.

Sony partnering with Kojima again for Physint therefore seemed almost inevitable.

Walking away from the project is much more surprising.

Without knowing the internal budgets, schedules or development targets involved, it is impossible to say exactly why PlayStation decided the project was no longer worth pursuing.

But from the outside, watching Sony give up a new espionage game from the creator of Metal Gear Solid, only for Xbox to immediately pick it up, is certainly unusual.

It could eventually become one of those industry decisions that looks perfectly reasonable internally but baffling to everyone else.

Physint Is Still Alive

For fans, the most important part of the story is simple: Physint has survived.

Sony may no longer be involved, but Kojima Productions clearly has no intention of abandoning the project.

Xbox has now taken over publishing responsibilities, and Kojima says development is continuing as the studio works toward what it hopes will become a genre-defining espionage game.

Considering how early Physint appears to be in development, there will probably be a long wait before we see meaningful gameplay.

But the strange journey behind the game has already become interesting in its own right.

A title originally announced as a major PlayStation collaboration was almost cancelled by PlayStation itself, rescued by its creator, and then picked up by Xbox.

For a game about espionage, shifting alliances and unexpected partners somehow feels strangely appropriate.

Ubisoft has begun testing a new system that removes the requirement to install and launch the full Ubisoft Connect PC application when playing certain Ubisoft titles through Steam. The experiment starts with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, and if everything works as intended, Ubisoft says the technology will gradually expand to additional games.

For anyone who has accumulated a small zoo of game launchers over the years, this could be a surprisingly meaningful quality-of-life improvement.

Goodbye Ubisoft Connect, Sort Of

Ubisoft is not abandoning its online infrastructure completely.

Instead, the company is introducing something called Ubisoft Connect Services, a smaller Steam-integrated system designed to handle many of the features previously provided by the standalone Ubisoft Connect launcher.

That includes functionality such as cross-progression, cross-play, challenges, rewards and player-safety features. The important difference is that players should no longer have to separately install or manually launch Ubisoft Connect before getting into their game. The services instead operate behind the scenes.

A Ubisoft account may therefore still be required for some games and online features, but the extra launcher window itself is being removed from the process.

It is a small technical distinction with a potentially large practical impact.

Prince of Persia Is the First Test

The first game receiving the new system is Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

Ubisoft describes this implementation as an initial version of the technology and says it intends to continue improving Ubisoft Connect Services before expanding it to more titles on Steam. The goal is to create what Ubisoft calls a smoother and more streamlined Steam experience.

That wording is important.

Ubisoft has not announced that every existing game on Steam will suddenly stop using Ubisoft Connect. There is also no confirmation yet that older titles such as Assassin's Creed, Far Cry or Tom Clancy games will automatically be updated to use the new system.

For now, this should be viewed as a test and the beginning of a potentially much larger transition.

The Extra Launcher Problem

PC gaming has accumulated an impressive number of launchers over the past decade.

Buying a game through Steam does not necessarily mean Steam is the only software involved. Depending on the publisher, starting a game can also trigger applications from Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Rockstar Games or other companies.

The result can occasionally resemble starting a chain reaction.

Click Play in Steam. Another launcher opens. That launcher checks for an update. Then it asks you to sign in again because apparently remembering a password for more than two weeks is forbidden by international launcher law.

Eventually, somewhere beneath the windows and login prompts, there is supposedly a video game.

Ubisoft Connect, previously known as Uplay, has long been one of the better-known examples of this practice. Players buying Ubisoft games through Steam could still find themselves dependent on Ubisoft's separate client.

Removing that extra visible layer makes the Steam version of Ubisoft games feel much more like native Steam releases.

Steam Deck and Linux Users Could Benefit Too

The change could be particularly useful for Linux and Steam Deck players.

Third-party launchers have historically added another potential failure point when running Windows games through compatibility technologies such as Proton. Launcher updates, login windows and background components can occasionally create problems even when the game itself runs perfectly well.

GamingOnLinux notes that Ubisoft Connect has been a recurring source of frustration for Linux and SteamOS users, making the move toward a smaller background service especially interesting for handheld PC gaming.

Ubisoft Connect Services does not eliminate Ubisoft's own technology from the equation, but simplifying it could reduce some of those headaches.

Why Is Ubisoft Doing This Now?

The most obvious explanation is also the simplest: players don't like unnecessary launchers.

Steam has spent years refining a largely unified library experience. When buying a game from Steam results in another store or launcher appearing on top of it, that convenience begins to unravel.

Ubisoft also has good reasons to make purchasing its games on Steam as painless as possible. After returning more aggressively to Valve's platform in recent years, reducing friction between Steam customers and Ubisoft games is a logical next step.

Instead of forcing players to choose between Steam and Ubisoft's infrastructure, Ubisoft Connect Services attempts to make the company's account features effectively invisible.

That is probably where those services should have been all along.

A Small Change That Could Make a Big Difference

Nobody is going to buy the next Assassin's Creed purely because one less launcher appears on their desktop.

But these annoyances accumulate.

Extra software, additional updates, forgotten passwords, background processes and launcher errors all create tiny barriers between pressing the Play button and actually playing the game.

Removing one of those barriers is unquestionably an improvement.

Ubisoft is currently only testing its new approach, and it remains to be seen how quickly Ubisoft Connect Services will spread across the publisher's catalogue. The company says more games will receive support progressively as the system evolves.

If the experiment succeeds, Ubisoft may finally reach the revolutionary conclusion PC gamers have been shouting from the rooftops for years:

When someone clicks Play, just launch the game.

Sometimes the best feature is the window that never appears.

Most popular from the user/community perspective: probably LibreWolf

There isn't a reliable global browser-market-share table specifically for Firefox forks, so nobody can credibly say "LibreWolf has X million active users and therefore wins." But community discussions consistently put LibreWolf among the most commonly recommended Firefox derivatives, especially when someone asks for "Firefox without Mozilla telemetry." Recent browser-community discussions continue to recommend it heavily.

Interestingly, Floorp currently has more GitHub stars than Waterfox, roughly 8.4k vs 6.1k, so Floorp has developed a very strong enthusiast following. GitHub stars aren't user numbers, though.

So I'd characterize things roughly as:

Privacy community: LibreWolf
Customization / enthusiast community: Floorp
Long-established mainstream fork: Waterfox

Best for privacy: LibreWolf

This one is much clearer.

LibreWolf's entire reason for existing is essentially:

Firefox, with the privacy knobs already turned to eleven.

It removes Firefox telemetry and data collection, includes uBlock Origin, enables Strict Tracking Protection, strips tracking parameters, enables Total Cookie Protection/dFPI, and enables Firefox's Resist Fingerprinting (RFP) protections by default.

Its privacy policy is refreshingly short too: LibreWolf says it does not collect user data through the browser or website, although some requests to Mozilla or other services can still occur.

That makes it much more privacy-hardened out of the box than standard Firefox.

Waterfox has become surprisingly privacy-focused

Waterfox deserves more credit than it sometimes gets.

Its August 2026 privacy documentation says telemetry, crash reporting, experiments and remote studies are disabled at build time. It also removes sponsored content, Pocket-style advertising features and several Mozilla network connections.

Waterfox also documents its automatic network connections unusually thoroughly.

The important difference is philosophy.

LibreWolf: minimize fingerprinting and tracking, even if websites occasionally behave strangely.

Waterfox: remove telemetry and unnecessary communication while staying comfortable for everyday Firefox users.

That makes Waterfox potentially the better choice for someone who wants 90% of LibreWolf's privacy philosophy without quite as much breakage or unusual behavior.

Floorp is what I'd choose for features

Floorp is less of a "harden Firefox until it squeaks" project and more of a Firefox equivalent to Vivaldi.

You get things like:

• workspaces

• vertical/customizable tabs

• split view

• web panels

• extensive UI customization

• container integration

• mouse gestures

Floorp disables Mozilla telemetry by default on desktop.

But Floorp explicitly frames its approach as "Privacy is your choice", whereas LibreWolf is essentially privacy by aggressive defaults.

There are also a few Floorp-specific network conveniences worth knowing about. For example, its privacy policy notes that missing shortcut/web-panel icons may be fetched through Google's favicon service.

So I would not put Floorp above LibreWolf in a strict privacy ranking.

My ranking

For maximum privacy without entering Tor territory:

1. LibreWolf

2. Mullvad Browser depending on threat model

3. Waterfox

4. Floorp

5. Firefox

There's a caveat with Mullvad Browser. For fingerprint resistance, I'd actually rank Mullvad Browser above LibreWolf. It's designed around giving large groups of users nearly identical browser fingerprints rather than letting everyone customize their browser into a unique snowflake.

But for normal everyday browsing, I wouldn't necessarily use Mullvad Browser as my only browser.

For best overall Firefox fork:

1. Floorp

2. LibreWolf

3. Waterfox

And if you asked me what I'd install on a Windows PC today:

LibreWolf if your priority is:

"Give me Firefox with sane privacy settings and don't phone home unnecessarily."

Floorp if your priority is:

"Give me Firefox, but make it ridiculously customizable."

Waterfox if your priority is:

"Give me familiar Firefox without most of Mozilla's telemetry and extras."

For what you've asked, I'd start with LibreWolf. It's probably the cleanest answer to "I like Firefox, but privacy is my first priority." 🦊🔒

Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur and investor who has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI since 2019.

The artificial intelligence revolution was supposed to arrive like a thunderclap.

When OpenAI released GPT-4 in 2023, many people in Silicon Valley expected businesses to transform almost immediately. Existing software companies would suddenly face existential competition. Entire categories of work would be automated. Small teams armed with artificial intelligence would compete with corporations employing thousands of people.

Three years later, AI is certainly everywhere, but the economic revolution predicted by some of its biggest advocates has unfolded much more slowly.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman now says he underestimated one surprisingly powerful obstacle: people simply do not change their habits very quickly.

In a recent conversation with podcaster David Senra, Altman admitted that his original expectations for the speed of the AI transition were too aggressive.

He had expected GPT-4 to trigger far more immediate disruption throughout the software industry.

Instead, something stubborn stood in the way.

Human behavior.

“People keep doing the same things they’re doing. They keep buying from the same company. They keep sort of wanting to use their tools in the same way.”

Altman described this resistance as economic “inertia,” arguing that even extremely powerful technology does not automatically convince people or companies to abandon the systems they already understand.

It is a fascinating admission from one of the most prominent architects of the AI boom.

But it also raises an uncomfortable question.

Is the public really slowing down the AI revolution, or has Silicon Valley underestimated how difficult it is to create technology that people actually want to reorganize their lives around?

The AI Revolution That Was Supposed to Happen Faster

After the arrival of ChatGPT and GPT-4, predictions about AI became increasingly dramatic.

Artificial intelligence would rewrite software development.

AI agents would replace conventional applications.

Companies could potentially operate with dramatically smaller workforces.

Entire industries might be rebuilt around language models capable of writing code, analyzing documents, answering questions and performing increasingly complex tasks.

Altman himself believed the software market would rapidly become more competitive.

Speaking with Senra, he recalled expecting that after GPT-4 arrived, significantly more software businesses would suddenly become vulnerable to AI-powered competitors.

That did not happen at the speed he expected.

Instead, companies continued renewing existing software contracts.

Employees continued opening the same applications.

Managers continued operating the same workflows.

People continued checking their email, copying information between applications and clicking through interfaces that AI could theoretically replace.

Altman's conclusion is surprisingly simple.

Technology can improve far faster than human behavior changes.

“I think we’ve all been too ambitious on timelines,” he said, adding that society and the economy will adapt more slowly than the underlying technology develops.

That statement represents a noticeable shift from some of the more explosive predictions surrounding generative AI only a few years ago.

The technology might still transform everything.

It might simply take longer.

The Blockbuster Problem

One analogy discussed during the interview perfectly illustrates Altman's argument.

Blockbuster.

When Netflix originally launched its DVD-by-mail business, customers could order movies without driving to a physical rental store.

From a purely technological or convenience perspective, Netflix appeared to offer an obvious advantage.

Yet millions of customers continued driving to Blockbuster.

Why?

Habit.

People already understood Blockbuster.

They knew where the store was.

They knew how renting a movie worked.

Saturday night might already involve driving there with the family and wandering between shelves looking for something to watch.

Technology had created a potentially better system, but human behavior had not immediately caught up.

Altman sees something similar happening with AI.

Even when AI can theoretically perform a task faster, people frequently continue doing things the familiar way.

The obstacle is not necessarily capability.

It is behavior.

Altman said changing behavior is considerably harder than people inside the technology industry sometimes realize.

And he has a rather awkward example.

Himself.

Even Sam Altman Isn't Fully Using the AI Revolution

Perhaps the most revealing moment in the conversation came when Altman discussed his own computer habits.

The CEO of OpenAI has access to some of the most sophisticated AI systems on Earth.

He has Codex.

He understands AI agents better than almost anyone.

Yet Altman admitted that much of the way he uses a computer has barely changed in roughly 20 years.

He still works through his inbox.

He still interacts with software in familiar ways.

He still performs tasks manually that an AI system could potentially automate.

That contradiction appears to have made him reconsider the problem.

If even the CEO of OpenAI struggles to reorganize his working habits around AI, perhaps expecting hundreds of millions of ordinary workers to immediately do so was unrealistic.

But Altman's conclusion was not simply that people are resistant to change.

He offered another explanation.

The products might not be good enough yet.

One account of the interview quotes Altman describing this as largely a “product failure.”

That distinction is important.

Because blaming customers for failing to adopt technology is easy.

Building technology compelling enough that customers willingly abandon old habits is much harder.

AI May Still Be Waiting for Its iPhone Moment

Altman compared today's AI industry to the smartphone market before the iPhone.

Before Apple's iPhone arrived in 2007, many of the individual technologies necessary for modern smartphones already existed.

There were mobile data connections.

Touchscreens existed.

Phones could run software.

Mobile email existed.

Web browsing existed.

Digital cameras were appearing in phones.

Yet those technologies had not been combined into a product that dramatically changed how ordinary people interacted with computers.

Then the iPhone arrived.

The important innovation was not necessarily the invention of every individual component.

It was packaging those technologies into something people immediately understood.

AI may still be waiting for that moment.

Today's chatbots are extraordinarily capable compared with software from only a few years ago, but most people still interact with them as separate destinations.

Open a chatbot. Type a question. Copy the answer. Paste it somewhere else. Return to another application.

The underlying AI may be revolutionary, but the workflow can still feel strangely old-fashioned.

The real AI revolution may arrive when people stop consciously “using AI” altogether.

Instead, intelligence could quietly become part of operating systems, applications, vehicles, workplaces and everyday devices.

At that point, AI adoption might accelerate dramatically because users would no longer need to change their behavior around the technology.

The technology would adapt to them.

But the Public Has Reasons to Be Cautious

There is another side to Altman's argument that Silicon Valley cannot simply dismiss as resistance to change.

A large portion of the public does not believe AI is moving too slowly.

They believe it is moving too quickly.

According to a 2026 Pew Research Center survey, 63 percent of American adults said AI was advancing too quickly.

Only 2 percent believed it was moving too slowly.

That is an extraordinary gap.

Another Pew survey conducted in June 2026 found that 52 percent of Americans were more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI, while only 9 percent were more excited than concerned.

The skepticism is not simply coming from older generations either.

Among Americans aged 18 to 29, 55 percent reported being more concerned than excited about AI in 2026.

That number has climbed substantially from 31 percent in 2021.

In other words, the resistance Altman describes may not simply be technological inertia.

Some of it is deliberate.

People are asking what happens to their jobs.

They are asking who controls AI systems.

They are asking how their personal information is being used.

They are questioning whether AI-generated content will damage creative industries.

And increasingly, communities are questioning the enormous infrastructure required to power artificial intelligence.

Data Centers Have Made AI Physical

For several years, artificial intelligence felt almost weightless.

You opened a website. Typed something. Received an answer.

Behind that seemingly simple interaction, however, sits one of the largest infrastructure expansions in the history of computing.

AI requires enormous data centers filled with specialized processors.

Those facilities require electricity, cooling systems, land, water and transmission infrastructure.

As AI infrastructure has expanded, the technology has become increasingly visible to communities that previously experienced AI primarily through software.

The reaction has not always been enthusiastic.

Local resistance to new data centers has become a significant political issue in the United States, with communities raising concerns about electricity prices, environmental impact, water consumption and whether the economic benefits justify the infrastructure being built around them.

This creates a strange collision between two worlds.

Silicon Valley sees compute.

Local communities see power lines, construction sites and utility bills.

Tech executives see infrastructure necessary for the next industrial revolution.

Residents may see an enormous building consuming resources while employing relatively few people.

That gap in perspective matters.

The Problem May Not Be the Public

It would therefore be misleading to summarize Altman's comments simply as “people are holding AI back.”

His argument is more interesting than that.

There are really several forces slowing the transition.

• Human habits are one.

• Corporate bureaucracy is another.

• Existing software contracts matter.

• Training workers takes time.

• Regulations matter.

• Trust matters.

• The quality of AI products matters.

• And public acceptance matters.

Technology companies frequently imagine technological progress as a straight line.

• Invent something better.

• Release it.

• Watch the world adopt it.

History rarely works that way.

Electricity took decades to reorganize factories.

The automobile required roads, fuel stations, traffic laws and entirely new cities.

The internet existed long before most businesses understood what to do with it.

Smartphones required an ecosystem of applications, wireless networks and payment systems before they became the universal computers we recognize today.

AI may follow the same pattern.

The breakthrough happens first.

The transformation comes later.

Slower Might Actually Be Better

Perhaps the most surprising part of Altman's comments is that he does not necessarily view slower adoption as a disaster.

He described economic inertia as “a positive in many ways.”

The slower transition may give society more time to adapt.

Businesses can experiment.

Workers can learn new skills.

Governments can develop regulations.

Schools can reconsider how they teach.

Companies can figure out where AI genuinely improves productivity instead of inserting it into products merely because investors expect them to.

And AI developers themselves get more time to improve reliability, safety and usability.

Altman said he is actually grateful that the transition may happen more smoothly and slowly than originally expected.

That is a significantly different message from the feverish atmosphere surrounding AI in 2023 and 2024.

The revolution is still coming, according to Altman.

The timetable has simply changed.

Silicon Valley's Biggest AI Challenge May Be Human

There is an amusing irony buried inside the entire discussion.

Artificial intelligence companies have spent billions of dollars building machines capable of understanding human language.

Their next challenge may be understanding humans.

People are complicated.

We form routines.

We distrust unfamiliar systems.

We become emotionally attached to tools that technically should have disappeared years ago.

Businesses operate with contracts, regulations, legacy databases and employees who cannot simply rebuild their workflows every six months because a new model received a benchmark upgrade.

From inside an AI laboratory, technological capability might look exponential.

Outside that laboratory, society moves at the speed of institutions, habits and trust.

Those two clocks are not synchronized.

And that might explain why the AI revolution simultaneously feels extraordinarily fast and strangely slow.

AI models are advancing at astonishing speed.

Yet most offices still contain spreadsheets.

People still answer email.

Companies still buy software from vendors they have used for decades.

And even Sam Altman apparently still uses his computer much like he did before the AI revolution began.

Perhaps the public is slowing AI down.

Or perhaps Silicon Valley simply discovered one of technology's oldest lessons:

Inventing the future is easier than convincing billions of people to live in it.

What always stood out to me was his voice, facial expressions, and sheer presence. He could be hilarious, sinister, charming, and completely over-the-top, sometimes all within the same performance.

He’s also had an enormous career in theatre, television, films, and voice acting. Few actors have managed to become such a recognizable part of so many different genres.

What’s your favorite Tim Curry role?

What initially looked like another collection of gaming leaks quickly became something much stranger.

Unreleased GTA VI gameplay appeared online. A manifesto attacked modern gaming business practices. A cryptocurrency became intertwined with the leaks. Take-Two Interactive began pursuing information about people distributing the material. Impostor accounts appeared. And shortly before Rockstar finally presented its official extended look at the game, Cyberleek was accused of cashing out roughly a quarter of a million dollars connected to its crypto operation.

At this point, Cyberleek is no longer simply a GTA leaker. It has become one of gaming's most unusual controversies of 2026.

Who is Cyberleek?

Nobody publicly knows.

The Cyberleek name began attracting widespread attention around August 18, 2026, when previously unseen Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay footage started appearing online. Reporting indicates that the material included numerous gameplay clips, screenshots and portions of the game's map.

The footage appeared convincing enough that Rockstar and parent company Take-Two began issuing copyright takedowns against copies circulating online.

Rockstar later publicly acknowledged the leaks, saying that seeing unfinished material released in this way was not how the company wanted players to experience the game after years of development.

Despite plenty of internet detective work, Cyberleek's real identity remains unverified.

There have also been several social-media accounts using variations of the Cyberleek name, making attribution increasingly messy. Some accounts targeted by Take-Two's legal requests may even have been impersonators rather than the original source.

That distinction matters. Claims circulating online about the supposed identity, nationality or employment history of Cyberleek should therefore be treated as speculation unless independently confirmed.

The GTA VI leaks

The biggest controversy is naturally the leaked game itself.

Cyberleek released footage apparently showing a playable development build of GTA VI, primarily featuring protagonist Jason.

Reported clips showed activities ranging from driving and basketball to interaction with NPCs and previously unseen areas of Leonida. One particularly notorious leak showed a nudist community containing completely uncensored NPCs.

Fans began examining every frame for information about Rockstar's enormous open world.

But an interesting theory emerged as more footage appeared.

Almost everything focused on Jason rather than Lucia. Repeated tutorial prompts, similar equipment and other recurring elements led some observers to speculate that Cyberleek might have access to a limited or specially configured build rather than the entire finished game.

Cyberleek, meanwhile, suggested it possessed much more.

Exactly how the material was obtained has still not been publicly established.

The "Cyberleek Edict"

Cyberleek attempted to position the campaign as something larger than leaking a highly anticipated video game.

Its website published what it called the Cyberleek Edict, attacking practices including digital-only ownership, digital preorders, content locked behind additional purchases and games becoming unusable when publishers shut down online infrastructure.

Its public messaging presented Cyberleek as an anti-corporate movement fighting what it considered increasingly anti-consumer behavior within the games industry.

Some of those subjects reflect legitimate debates within gaming.

The preservation of online games, ownership of digital purchases and publishers removing access to purchased products have generated serious discussion among players, developers and preservation organizations.

But Cyberleek's campaign soon collided with another subject entirely.

Money.

Enter the $CYBERLEEK cryptocurrency

Alongside the leaks came a Solana-based cryptocurrency associated with the Cyberleek name.

Promotional material connected the value of the token to future leaks, with QR codes reportedly appearing directly inside leaked GTA footage. Some messaging effectively encouraged supporters to increase the token's market capitalization in return for additional material.

That immediately complicated Cyberleek's anti-corporate message.

Was this activism?

A fundraising campaign?

A speculative crypto project?

Or an elaborate way to monetize stolen or unauthorized material?

Cyberleek's own website explicitly insisted that the operation was not a cash grab and claimed funding would support infrastructure and an unspecified future project.

Then came the biggest controversy yet.

The alleged $250,000 cash-out

Shortly before Rockstar's official August 27 GTA VI presentation, reports emerged that Cyberleek had extracted approximately $250,000 connected to the $CYBERLEEK token.

According to reporting cited by Tom's Hardware, the money appears to have come primarily from liquidity-provider trading fees rather than simply dumping a huge personal token allocation onto buyers.

After the withdrawal, the token's price collapsed sharply.

Funds were subsequently distributed across several wallets, with portions reportedly moving through services intended to make blockchain tracing more difficult and some cryptocurrency reaching KuCoin-linked infrastructure.

Predictably, the word "rug pull" spread rapidly across gaming and crypto communities.

There is an important distinction, however.

A dramatic token collapse and a creator withdrawing money do not automatically prove criminal fraud. Calling the operation a scam is therefore an allegation unless investigators or courts establish otherwise.

But the incident badly damaged Cyberleek's carefully constructed anti-corporate persona.

A movement declaring itself opposed to exploitative monetization had, somewhat spectacularly, become entangled with one of the internet's most notoriously speculative forms of monetization.

The irony practically writes itself.

Take-Two goes hunting

Take-Two has not simply been playing digital whack-a-mole with leaked videos.

The company has pursued DMCA subpoenas seeking identifying information connected to distribution of the leaked footage.

According to TorrentFreak, legal requests have involved services including Microsoft, Discord, X and YouTube. The requests are designed to identify accounts associated with alleged copyright infringement rather than constituting lawsuits against Cyberleek itself.

The situation also demonstrates one of the weaknesses of anonymous leak campaigns.

A leaker may conceal their personal IP address or identity, but every service involved can create another breadcrumb: account records, hosting information, login metadata, exchange activity, blockchain transactions or communications with other users.

Cyberleek appears to have made considerable efforts to distribute information through decentralized infrastructure, but decentralizing the files does not necessarily decentralize every piece of evidence surrounding the person distributing them.

Rockstar finally takes control of the conversation

On August 27, Rockstar released its official 26-minute Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look presentation.

The showcase revealed substantial gameplay involving both Jason and Lucia and provided fans with a far more polished look at Rockstar's vision for the game.

Ironically, the official presentation may have been one of the most damaging developments for Cyberleek.

Before August 27, unreleased gameplay was incredibly scarce.

After August 27, Rockstar itself had released nearly half an hour of professionally presented footage.

The information monopoly Cyberleek had briefly possessed suddenly became much less valuable.

Hacker, activist, marketer or opportunist?

That is ultimately what makes Cyberleek interesting.

The story contains several different identities layered on top of each other.

Cyberleek presents itself as a campaign against anti-consumer gaming practices.

To Rockstar and Take-Two, it is a source of unauthorized copyrighted material.

To GTA fans, it has alternated between forbidden information source, spoiler threat and internet spectacle.

And to cryptocurrency traders, Cyberleek became the face of another extremely volatile memecoin.

Whether this entire operation was primarily ideological, financial, attention-driven or some combination of all three remains impossible to establish without knowing who is actually behind it.

What can be established is that Cyberleek managed to turn a conventional videogame leak into something considerably larger.

Within less than two weeks, the name became associated with one of gaming's most anticipated releases, an anti-industry manifesto, decentralized hosting, a cryptocurrency frenzy, a six-figure cash-out controversy and a legal effort by one of the world's largest videogame publishers.

The GTA footage may eventually become little more than historical trivia once Grand Theft Auto VI launches on November 19, 2026.

The Cyberleek story, however, raises a more interesting question about modern leaks.

When anonymous leakers can combine stolen information, ideology, decentralized networks, social-media virality and cryptocurrency into one campaign, where exactly does whistleblowing or digital protest end and monetized spectacle begin?

Cyberleek may have started by leaking a game.

The controversy surrounding it has become a story about something much bigger.

Neill became a household name around the world through his portrayal of Dr. Alan Grant in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993). His performance as the intelligent and reluctant dinosaur expert helped define one of Hollywood's most successful franchises, and he later returned to the role in several sequels, including Jurassic World Dominion.

A Career Beyond Dinosaurs

Although many fans associate Neill with Jurassic Park, his body of work extended far beyond the prehistoric adventure series. Throughout his career he demonstrated remarkable versatility, appearing in dramas, thrillers, historical films, and television productions.

Among his notable credits were The Hunt for Red October, The Piano, Event Horizon, and the acclaimed television series Peaky Blinders. Whether playing heroes, villains, or morally complex characters, Neill earned a reputation as one of the industry's most dependable and respected actors.

A Beloved Figure in Sweden

Sam Neill also enjoyed a unique connection with Swedish audiences thanks to his role as Brian de Bois-Guilbert in the 1982 adaptation of Ivanhoe. The film became an annual New Year's Day television tradition in Sweden, introducing generations of viewers to one of his earliest memorable performances.

Over the years, Neill acknowledged the tradition with warmth and humor, often sharing greetings with Swedish fans as the annual broadcast approached.

His Health Battle

In 2023, Neill revealed that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. He openly discussed his treatment and his determination to continue working despite the diagnosis. Earlier this year, he shared encouraging news that his cancer was in remission, making the announcement of his death all the more unexpected.

An Enduring Legacy

With more than 100 film and television credits to his name, Sam Neill leaves behind an extraordinary legacy. His ability to bring intelligence, charm, and emotional depth to every role made him a favorite among audiences and filmmakers alike.

For many, he will forever be remembered as the scientist who faced dinosaurs with courage and wit. For others, he was a gifted performer whose career showcased remarkable range and consistency.

Though Sam Neill is gone, his performances will continue to entertain and inspire audiences for generations to come.

These aren't just funny glitches. They are the fatal symptoms of what experts call the "Dead Internet Theory" becoming a reality. In a world where nearly 50% of web traffic is bots, the search engine we once trusted has transformed into a closed-loop echo chamber.

Here is the breakdown of why Google is breaking and why it might be time to look for a new window to the digital world.

1. The Hallucination Problem: AI Over Search

In May 2024, Google introduced "AI Overviews." Instead of giving you a list of links to human-written articles, it now prioritizes an AI-generated summary at the very top.

The problem? These summaries often pull from the worst corners of the internet.

• The Pizza Glue Incident: Pulled from an 11-year-old Reddit troll post.

• The Rock-Eating Advice: Sourced from a satirical article on The Onion.

Because the AI can't distinguish between satire, trolling, and fact, it "hallucinates" answers that are presented as absolute truth.

2. The Death of Independent Websites

In March 2024, Google released a massive algorithm update intended to "clean up" the web. Instead, it acted like a digital sledgehammer for small, human-run sites.

• Traffic Collapse: Niche, human-tested review sites (like House Fresh) saw their traffic drop by as much as 91% almost overnight.

• The Walmart Effect: High-quality independent sites have been buried under "Parasite SEO", where big corporations use the authority of sites like LinkedIn or Medium to spam low-quality, AI-written content that ranks higher just because of the platform it's on.

3. The "Search Heist" and Zombie Pages

The internet is currently being "looted" by bot networks.

• Domain Heists: Marketers use AI to scrap entire competitor sitemaps and generate thousands of articles in minutes to "poach" millions of search hits.

• Zombie Pages: Bot networks buy up expired, dormant domains and pump them full of AI content to redirect traffic away from real businesses.

4. Model Collapse: The AI "Inbreeding" Crisis

Perhaps the scariest part of this shift is a phenomenon called Model Collapse.

This happens when AI models begin training on data produced by other AIs rather than human-generated content.

• The Cycle: As AI content floods the web, Google’s AI absorbs this synthetic, often flawed data.

• The Result: Like genetic inbreeding, the errors compound. The AI starts repeating its own mistakes, performance degrades, and specific, nuanced human knowledge is filtered out in favor of "majority" bot-speak.

5. You are the Training Data, Not the Customer

Google’s priority has shifted from being a "useful tool" to a "profitable behemoth."

• Zero-Click Searches: Over 58% of searches now result in "zero clicks". Google wants you to stay on their page, reading their AI summaries, so they can keep you in their advertising ecosystem.

• The Reddit Deal: Google recently paid $60 million to Reddit to use its human conversations to train Gemini AI. Your organic discussions are now the fuel for the very machine that is replacing the open web.

Is There a Way Out?

Europol warns that up to 90% of online content could be AI-generated by the end of 2026. If we want to save the human internet, we have to start looking elsewhere.

Some users are pivoting to "human-only" search engines like Kagi or Margelia, which prioritize non-commercial, organic content. Others are returning to "retro" communities and smaller, subscription-based platforms where you aren't the product.

The internet you grew up with is gone. The question is: are you going to keep feeding the machine, or is it time to find a new way to connect?

That is what the tech world calls a zero-day attack. Typically, security researchers discover these flaws, report them to the vendor privately, collect a reward, and the bug gets patched.

But over the last few weeks, the standard rulebook was thrown completely out the window. In what is turning out to be one of the most chaotic standoffs in cybersecurity history, a single disgruntled security researcher has gone completely scorched earth against Microsoft.

The Catalyst: Six Zero-Days Dropped Into the Wild

A researcher operating under the moniker Nightmare Eclipse recently shocked the industry by publicly releasing six unpatched zero-day vulnerabilities for Microsoft Windows.

Instead of reporting them through official channels, the researcher published them directly to GitHub (which ironially, is owned by Microsoft) and GitLab. Why? According to the researcher, they previously tried to report major bugs via the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) only to be allegedly humiliated, insulted, and left with "zero pennies" for their work.

Faced with a trillion-dollar company that refused to pay out a bug bounty, Nightmare Eclipse decided to become Microsoft’s worst nightmare.

"He would make more money doing the illegal, unethical thing than to do the right thing... It shows me that the security researcher actually cared about doing the right thing [initially]... Turns out [Microsoft] was just like 'Get out of here, we don't really care.'"

The Nasty Exploits: Bypassing BitLocker

Among the six disclosed vulnerabilities, a couple stand out as particularly dangerous cyber threats:

• The BitLocker Security Bypass: This exploit affects Windows 11 systems and allows an attacker to bypass BitLocker drive encryption. Typically, if your laptop is stolen, encryption prevents unauthorized users from pulling files off your hard drive. This zero-day completely evades that defense.

• The "Blue Hammer" Privilege Escalation: Another leaked zero-day allows a standard user account to instantly escalate its permissions to system-level control—the highest possible administrative access on a Windows machine.

Alarmingly, because these were dropped directly into the wild as a public proof-of-concept (PoC), cybersecurity firms have already noted that this code is actively being utilized by malicious actors online.

Accusations of Backdoors

The plot thickens with the BitLocker bypass. According to Nightmare Eclipse, the specific component triggering the exploit only exists within Windows Recovery Environment (winre) images on Windows 11, despite identical naming structures existing in standard installations without the triggering functionality.

The researcher raised heavy suspicions that this design choice feels far too convenient—fueling theories that the vulnerability may have intentionally acted as a "backdoor" for law enforcement or government entities to bypass standard warrants and access encrypted physical devices.

Microsoft’s Blunder and the "Streisand Effect"

In response to the leaks, Microsoft quickly banned Nightmare Eclipse’s GitHub account. When the researcher migrated to GitLab, those repositories were wiped as well.

However, trying to scrub data from the internet always triggers the Streisand Effect. By trying to censor the leaks, Microsoft only drew massive attention to them. Security communities immediately grabbed the code, ensuring it will float around the web forever.

Microsoft finally issued a public statement addressing the situation, heavily leaning on "coordinated vulnerability disclosure" and shifting the narrative to a "shared responsibility." Vaguely threatening, Microsoft also noted that their Digital Crimes Unit and law enforcement partners are building cases against those enabling this activity.

Industry veterans and founders of Microsoft's original bug bounty programs have actively criticized the tech giant's handling of the situation, calling it a "dumpster fire of Microsoft’s own making." Instead of simply paying the researcher to quietly fix a nuclear-level threat, Microsoft's rigid response effectively created its own corporate supervillain.

Looking Ahead: The July 14th Deadline

This internet battle is far from over. Nightmare Eclipse has publicly declared a looming deadline: July 14th.

The researcher claims to hold massive troves of internal documentation and potentially more exploits that they intend to drop on that date, promising to leave Microsoft's security reputation "shattered."

The Bottom Line: Whether the upcoming leak is a massive bluff or another wave of cyber warfare, the vulnerabilities already in the wild are very real. If you are a Windows user, keep your system strictly updated, exercise aggressive common sense online, and do not run untrusted software. Someone shot this researcher's proverbial dog, and they are out for corporate blood.

Matrix Website:
https://matrix.org

Our Matrix Space:
https://matrix.to/#/#madsens-crib-tog:matrix.org

In the world of online communication, platforms like Matrix and Discord have become go-to choices for various types of discussions. Whether it's for casual hangouts, gaming, or business collaboration, both platforms offer unique features and advantages. However, when it comes down to deciding which one to use, it's essential to consider their differences. In this blog post, we'll compare Matrix and Discord across several key areas such as usability, privacy, customization, and more to help you choose the one that best suits your needs. And of course, Matrix will not require your personal ID for age verification... Yet.

What is Matrix?

Matrix is an open-source, decentralized communication protocol that enables real-time communication through a variety of platforms and services. Unlike traditional chat apps, Matrix operates through a federated model, meaning no single entity owns the entire network. Matrix users can communicate across different Matrix servers (or homeservers), which provides an added layer of freedom and control over data.

• Open-Source: Matrix's protocol is open-source, allowing for community-driven development and transparency.

• Federated Network: Unlike centralized platforms, Matrix allows users to choose or create servers, offering decentralized control.

Matrix vs. Discord: Key Differences

1. Privacy and Data Ownership

Matrix:

One of Matrix’s main selling points is its commitment to privacy and data ownership. As an open-source, decentralized platform, Matrix allows users to control their data by hosting their own servers. This provides an additional layer of security, as personal data doesn't need to be shared with third parties.

• Pros: Complete control over your data; no centralized authority.

• Cons: More complex to set up and maintain your own server.

Discord:

Discord, on the other hand, is a centralized platform where all user data is hosted on Discord’s servers. While Discord has implemented end-to-end encryption for direct messages (DMs), much of the communication, such as messages in channels, is stored on their servers. Users need to trust Discord with their data. And you shouldn't considering they just recently had a big data breach.

• Pros: Simple to use; you don't need to worry about server maintenance.

• Cons: Your data is stored and controlled by Discord. Data breaches. Facial ID for age verification. They use third party vendors for their facial id which means Discord can say they don't store the information but the third parties might (and do according to their own information).

2. Ease of Use

Matrix:

Matrix's user experience can vary significantly depending on the client or application used to access it (e.g., Element, Synapse, or Riot). While the Matrix protocol is quite flexible, some clients can be clunky or difficult to navigate for newcomers.

• Pros: Flexible and customizable; various client options.

• Cons: The learning curve can be steep for new users; the interface can be inconsistent.

Discord:

Discord has a polished, user-friendly interface that appeals to a wide range of users, from gamers to professionals. It's easy to set up servers, join communities, and manage chats. Discord’s layout is intuitive, and it integrates voice, video, and text chat seamlessly.

• Pros: Very easy to use, intuitive interface; all-in-one platform for messaging, video, and voice.

• Cons: Limited customization compared to Matrix.

3. Customization and Flexibility

Matrix:

Because Matrix is open-source and federated, it offers greater customization and flexibility. You can create custom servers, bots, and integrations, allowing you to tailor the experience to your specific needs. However, customization can require more technical know-how.

• Pros: High degree of customization; choice of homeservers; full control over features and settings.

• Cons: Customization requires technical knowledge; server management can be complex.

Discord:

Discord offers some level of customization with things like bot integrations, custom emojis, and channel permissions. However, because it is a proprietary platform, customization options are limited compared to Matrix. You also can't create or manage the underlying infrastructure.

• Pros: Easy to set up bots and emojis; user-friendly moderation tools.

• Cons: Less flexibility for developers or power users; more rigid structure.

4. Community and Ecosystem

Matrix:

Matrix’s decentralized nature means that it has a more niche, fragmented community. While the protocol itself is widely used, the ecosystems of Matrix servers can vary, and you may find that not everyone uses the same server or client.

• Pros: A decentralized and community-driven ecosystem with diverse usage.

• Cons: Can feel less cohesive; a more fragmented user base.

Discord:

Discord has a massive, centralized community with a wide variety of servers, from gaming groups to business teams. Its ecosystem is easy to navigate, and it's simple to find servers based on specific interests.

• Pros: Large and active user base; easy to find like-minded communities.

• Cons: A centralized ecosystem means you are reliant on Discord's servers for uptime and reliability.

5. Security and Encryption

Matrix:

Matrix has built-in end-to-end encryption for private conversations and supports various security standards. Since you can control your own server, you can implement your own security measures as well. However, some parts of Matrix (e.g., public rooms) may not be fully encrypted.

• Pros: End-to-end encryption for private chats; customizable security features.

• Cons: Public rooms may not be encrypted; self-hosting requires security expertise.

Discord:

Discord uses encryption for data in transit, and DMs are end-to-end encrypted. However, since Discord is a centralized platform, it holds the keys to the data. In the event of a security breach, all user data could potentially be compromised.

• Pros: Strong security measures in place; end-to-end encryption for DMs.

• Cons: Centralized model means Discord controls the security of the platform.

6. Voice and Video Features

Matrix:

Matrix has integrated voice and video chat functionality, but it is not as polished as Discord’s offerings. There are third-party services that can be used for voice and video calls, but these integrations are often less seamless than Discord's built-in features.

• Pros: Decentralized voice and video options available.

• Cons: Features may not be as smooth or feature-rich as Discord's.

Discord:

Discord is widely regarded as having one of the best voice and video chat systems for group calls. It allows high-quality voice channels and streaming capabilities, making it ideal for gamers, team collaboration, or social events.

• Pros: Superior voice and video quality; low latency; easy screen sharing.

• Cons: Some features are locked behind Nitro (premium) subscriptions.

Conclusion: Which One Is Right for You?

The choice between Matrix and Discord depends largely on your priorities.

• Choose Matrix if you value privacy, data ownership, and the freedom of a decentralized network. If you have the technical skills to set up and manage your own server, Matrix offers the most control and customization options.

• Choose Discord if you’re OK with giving up your personal information, personal id, looking for a user-friendly, all-in-one platform with superior voice and video features. It’s ideal for people who want a simple setup without dealing with server management or technical complexities.

Ultimately, both Matrix and Discord are excellent tools for online communication, what matters most is which features align best with your needs. Whether you want decentralization or polished user experience, there’s a platform suited for every type of online community.

The mythical remake of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag can be released before the summer. According to Ubisoft's financial report, all upcoming games on the menu must be released before the end of March 2026. The report also mentions a title that has not yet been revealed and this may well be Ubisoft's pirate adventure.

As I said, the remake of Black Flag has not yet been officially unveiled, but there are many rumors pointing towards it. The voice actors in the game have hinted that a remake is coming and the French game site Jeuxvideo has had a lot of information about the development.

Reasonably, the game should be unveiled soon, one might think?