Author: NCIJ NETWNCIJ NETWORK

As the generative AI boom drives steep demand for hardware components, Apple and other hardware makers are facing what outgoing CEO Tim Cook calls “a hundred-year flood [on] memory pricing,” which is severely impacting the cost of producing iPhones, MacBooks, and other devices. Apple described its recent earnings report as its “strongest June quarter ever,” with iPhone and Mac sales performing better than expected, growing 22% and 29%, respectively, year-over-year. Yet the company is bracing for memory shortages, known as RAMageddon, to get even worse. Apple’s biggest challenge is securing the advanced memory nodes used in its Apple silicon chips,…

Swati KhandelwalJul 30, 2026Vulnerability / Cloud Security A now-patched vulnerability in Azure Cosmos DB could have let an attacker escape the service’s Gremlin query sandbox and obtain full read and write access to databases across customer tenants, according to Wiz. Wiz, which codenamed the chain CosmosEscape, said the exploit chain began with a crafted query against a Gremlin database controlled by the attacker. From there, code execution on a multi-tenant gateway exposed a platform-wide signing secret and a regional account directory, allowing the researchers to locate a target and retrieve its primary account key. Microsoft blocked the vulnerable Gremlin entry…

UK-based Supernova Digital Assets has built a multimillion-pound crypto treasury, but its latest accounts expose the strategy’s less glamorous constraint: cash.An unfinished lender switch now stands between the company and further token sales, making its reported SOL position a test of whether it can secure cheaper funding without letting liquidity needs dictate its treasury strategy.Supernova reported just £3,000 of cash against £1.132 million of current liabilities, including £847,000 of interest-bearing borrowings. The Solana-focused treasury company said replacement financing is its preferred route to limit further crypto sales.The unaudited results released July 30 showed total assets of £2.944 million and equity…

The Galápagos Islands have long been one of the most important places in the study of evolution. When Charles Darwin visited the islands in 1835 aboard the HMS Beagle, he collected a variety of birds and returned with them to England. At first, he believed the specimens included sparrows, woodpeckers, finches — and a single tit. Scientists later determined that the birds were all closely related finches whose differently shaped beaks had evolved to suit different foods. The finches eventually became powerful evidence for Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. The theory explains how populations can gradually change as…

We should all applaud Andy Burnham’s commitment to end rough sleeping (‘It’s generations of decline’: can Andy Burnham really end rough sleeping?, 24 July). The ambition is right and overdue. But he set the same goal in Greater Manchester in 2017 and found, as anyone would, that you cannot clear people off the street faster than the system puts them there. Much of rough sleeping is manufactured upstream.Take prison. In 2024-25, around 1,000 people a month left prison in England and Wales homeless and went on to sleep rough. Homelessness feeds reoffending, reoffending feeds custody, and release feeds the street.…

China has cast itself as a champion of low-cost, open-source artificial intelligence technology that it says should be made widely available to the world. It has accused the United States of “A.I. hegemonism” as the Trump administration has debated regulating Chinese open-source A.I. models.Unlike closed systems such as ChatGPT and Claude, open models can be downloaded, modified and run by anyone, including with safeguards removed. The open approach, which is lower in cost, has won Chinese A.I. systems, made by companies like Alibaba and Moonshot, a start-up, millions of global converts, including Silicon Valley companies like Airbnb and DoorDash.But the…

Spain’s policy of legalizing migrants has proven hugely contentious, both domestically and at a European level. Meloni and Sánchez clashed over the issue during a meeting of European leaders last month. Spain, which like several other European countries is fighting deadly wildfires, now also finds itself under diplomatic attack on multiple fronts. Manfred Weber, president of the European Parliament’s largest political grouping, the center-right European People’s Party, has also called for tougher action on migration over the Ceuta crisis, writing on X: “This proves one thing: the Migration Pact and return regulation must be enforced today, not tomorrow.” European Migration Commissioner…

President Trump said on Thursday in a social media post that the Board of Peace, an organization the administration established to oversee a Gaza cease-fire, had reached an agreement for Hamas to begin disarming in the Gaza Strip.There was no immediate comment from Hamas or Israel, and it was not clear whether either had signed off on the plan after years of war and a fragile cease-fire.“This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people,” Mr. Trump said. “At…

The issue follows a separate incident on 24 July in which the PlayStation Network also suffered an outage for several hours.Both incidents have created unease about a so-called digital-only future in games and the questions over game ownership and licensing that come with it.In June, Rockstar Games announced that physical copies of GTA 6, perhaps one of the most hotly-anticipated games in history, would contain a code for a digital download for the game rather than a disc.Nintendo has also shifted further towards digital distribution in recent years with the introduction of Game-Key Cards – physical cartridges that act as…

Ravie LakshmananJul 30, 2026Hacking News / Cybersecurity News A lot of security still comes down to trusting the wrong screen. This week, that screen might be a login page, an install guide, a recruiter call, or a familiar service behaving slightly wrong. Behind it: reused credentials, exposed systems, quiet loaders, abused trust, and exploit paths that should have been harder. Some defenses improved. The loose parts still got found first. Anyway, here’s the mess. The threats change every week. Subscribe, and we’ll alert you when each new ThreatsDay Bulletin is out. Phishing delivers XWorm A cybercrime group known as xplogs22…