The Latest

Here’s an overview of some of last week’s most interesting news, articles, interviews and videos:

Week in review

Zero trust AI agents demand a different kind of security
In this interview, Chris Webber, VP, Product Marketing at Teleport, explains why zero trust principles need to change for AI agents. He covers how agents act fast, unpredictably, and continuously, and why old ideas like least privilege and point-in-time verification fall short.

AI-Infra-Guard: Open-source security scanner for AI systems
Tencent’s Zhuque Lab built AI-Infra-Guard, an open-source security scanner for AI systems. It fingerprints running services such as Ollama, vLLM and ComfyUI and checks them against more than 1,600 known CVEs, inspects MCP servers and agent skills across 14 categories of risk, and runs jailbreak evaluations against a target model.

Kevin Mandia joins the Amazon board with 30-plus years in cybersecurity
Amazon elected Kevin Mandia to its Board of Directors on September 8. Mandia founded Mandiant and served as its CEO before Google acquired the firm in September 2022, and he has worked against cyber threats in the public and private sectors for more than 30 years.

Getting a stranger’s phone kicked off the cellular network costs a few dollars
Researchers at Michigan State University and three partner schools bought a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, copied the identification number printed on the sealed box, and reported the phone to its carrier as lost. Then they opened the box and set the phone up the way a launch-day buyer would. It would not connect. The phone was new, unopened, and sitting on a lab bench the entire time. The team found six weaknesses in the system carriers use to shut off lost and stolen phones, spanning the devices themselves, the carrier systems that take the reports, and the machinery carriers use to share block lists.

Trezor customers hit with phishing calls and letters after shipping-partner breach
Roughly 67,000 more customers of SatoshiLabs, the maker of hardware crypto-wallet Trezor, are at heightened risk of phishing attacks after their names, email addresses, phone numbers, and shipping addresses were exposed.

“Zero-click” WeChat worm could hijack accounts and spread via a single call
Researchers with security company Calif have discovered, weaponized, and privately reported to Tencent a critical vulnerability that allowed them to create “WeWorm”, a worm that spreads via WeChat calls without any user interaction.

September 2026 Patch Tuesday: Record patch count, 2 zero-days, and a SigRed successor
September 2026 Patch Tuesday is here, with Microsoft delivering another record-breaking number of patches, including those for two vulnerabilities that have been exploited as zero-days.

Cisco FMC bugs exploited by nation-state and ransomware actors (CVE-2026-20079, CVE-2026-20316)
State-sponsored and financially-motivated attackers are actively exploiting CVE-2026-20079, a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center (FMC), which is used for centrally managing multiple Cisco Secure Firewall devices across a network.

What breach and attack simulation needs to become in the AI era
Breach and attack simulation (BAS) has always had a supply chain. Somebody has to read the threat report, pull out the techniques, and turn them into something that will actually run against your controls. That somebody has always been a human red team. Up until a few months ago, turning a major new threat into working simulation content within 24 hours counted as very fast.

Gartner: 70% of SOCs will pilot AI agents. Only 15% will see results
Gartner predicts that by 2028, 70% of large SOCs will pilot AI agents, but only 15% will see measurable gains without structured evaluation. The technology has already moved from Gartner’s Innovation Trigger to the Peak of Inflated Expectations. Prophet Security reports that 40% of security teams use AI daily, 56% are evaluating or piloting it, and just 4% have no plans to adopt.

Ransomware negotiation tactics have turned into a business process
In this Help Net Security video, Dave Ross, Senior Director of the Intelligence Fusion Team at Intel 471, explains what happens behind the scenes during ransomware negotiations.

Building a ransomware decision tree before the call comes in
In this Help Net Security video, Kerri Shafer-Page, VP of Incident Response at Arctic Wolf, walks through the ransomware decision tree in this video. She covers four areas where decisions need settling in advance, starting with containment.

18 ways to check whether data can be trusted for AI
ETSI has published TR 104 180, a technical report that defines 18 metrics for measuring data quality, giving companies a way to check whether their data is good enough for AI before they use it. The report defines each metric and includes the formulas needed to calculate it.

Attackers use rogue ScreenConnect clients to spread malware
A file transfer flaw in ScreenConnect Remote Access Support and Access sessions affects both Cloud and On-Premise deployments, ConnectWise confirmed. Until a fix is available, ConnectWise recommends that partners disable file transfers for technicians.

N-able patches critical N-central zero-day exploited in the wild (CVE-2026-86218)
N-able released an emergency hotfix for CVE-2026-86218, a remote code execution (RCE) flaw affecting N-central, its remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution popular with managed service providers (MSPs). In its release notes, N-able described CVE-2026-86218 as a “critical-CVSS-rated vulnerability that could allow for pre-authenticated remote code execution on the N-central server.”

Hackers exploit RouterOS flaws to hijack MikroTik devices without authentication
Attackers are exploiting a chain of RouterOS vulnerabilities to hijack MikroTik devices with SSH open to the internet, CERT Polska found. They have discovered six vulnerabilities in RouterOS and coordinated their disclosure with MikroTik. Among the six, two combined let an attacker take full control of a device without authentication, provided the device has SSH accessible from the internet. They named this exploit chain MikroTrick.

Mathspace breach exposes data on over a million students and parents
Mathspace has confirmed that attackers broke into its internal reporting system through an unpatched Metabase vulnerability and stole data belonging to more than a million students, parents, and school staff. The Sydney-based maths education company wrote in a blog post that the vulnerability, in its self-hosted installation of Metabase, allowed attackers to obtain administrator access to the system without a legitimate login.

IT help-desk vishing tricks executives into handing over Microsoft 365 access
IT help-desk vishing calls, stolen session tokens, and sign-ins routed through residential proxies are behind a wave of data theft and extortion against Microsoft 365 and other SaaS accounts, according to Arctic Wolf.

Threat actors are giving AI agents a bigger role in cyberattacks
AI agents are automating parts of cyberattacks with less human involvement, including vulnerability scanning, credential harvesting, and troubleshooting, according to Google Threat Intelligence Group’s Q3 2026 AI Threat Tracker.

Google fixes yet another actively exploited Chrome zero-day (CVE-2026-87491)
Google has fixed 230 vulnerabilities in Chrome, including a zero-day flaw, CVE-2026-87491, with an in-the-wild exploit. The fix has been shipped in Chrome 153.0.8010.36 and .37 for Windows and macOS and Chrome 153.0.8010.36 for Linux.

Hackers deploy Linux rootkit on F5 BIG-IP APM devices, hiding web shell in memory
A rootkit found on hacked F5 BIG-IP APM devices skips the usual step of writing a web shell to disk, hiding it in memory instead, according to Sophos. F5 BIG-IP APM provides access policy enforcement to secure access to apps, APIs, and data. It’s primarily used by enterprises, financial institutions, government agencies, and public sector organizations.

$245 million in stolen crypto funded racketeering crew’s lavish lifestyle
A 22-year-old man built his fortune by breaking into strangers’ digital wallets, then spent it on nightclub tabs, private jets, and a fleet of cars worth millions. Malone Lam, a Singapore citizen, pleaded guilty this week in a Washington D.C. federal court to running a racketeering conspiracy that stole and laundered more than $245 million in cryptocurrency.

OpenSSL’s new alpha build speeds up post-quantum crypto
The OpenSSL project released the first alpha of OpenSSL 4.1.0, giving developers an early look at a version built for encrypted communication over unreliable connections and faster post-quantum cryptography. This marks the opening test build for a version still months from general availability.

Cybercriminals are building phishing pages that exist only inside victims’ browsers
A phishing campaign routes victims through genuine Microsoft OAuth and Teams infrastructure before showing them a fake login page built entirely inside their own browser, according to researchers at Barracuda.

Fake GTA 6 download delivers malware-packed bundle to impatient gamers
Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) is still three months from release, but cybercriminals are not waiting for the launch date. Security firm Huntress found malware disguised as a leaked copy of the game, aimed at fans hoping to get their hands on it early.

Attackers call employees’ personal phones to break into Microsoft 365 accounts
Attackers are calling or texting employees on their personal phones, posing as internal IT staff, in a social engineering campaign that tricks them into handing over access to corporate cloud accounts. Once inside, they pull files and email from Microsoft 365 apps, SharePoint, OneDrive, and inboxes, for weeks at a time, according to Microsoft Security Research.

IDScan confirms breach after 153 million driver’s licenses leak on dark web
Days after reports linked IDScan to a dark web database holding more than 153 million driver’s license scans, the identity verification company has confirmed hackers accessed customer data stored on its cloud platform.

AI agents exploited PaperCut flaws to breach 395 organizations
A threat actor built a working exploit for PaperCut print management software, then handed the job of breaking into hundreds of organizations to AI agents that did most of the work on their own, according to GreyNoise.

ToolHive: The open-source way to run any MCP server securely
ToolHive is an open-source platform that runs Model Context Protocol servers inside containers. An MCP server is the connector that lets an AI client like Cursor or Claude Code reach an outside tool, and Stacklok ships ToolHive under Apache 2.0, so the runtime, the Kubernetes operator, and the registry cost nothing to self-host.

OpenAI just hit a milestone on the road to self-improving AI
OpenAI has announced that it has reached a goal set last fall of having an automated research intern by September 2026. The milestone means a system can carry out well-defined research tasks under human direction, including work that would take a skilled researcher several days. The company is also working toward creating an automated AI researcher by March 2028.

Microsoft’s Project Zenith puts large AI models directly on developer PCs
Microsoft’s Project Zenith is a ready-to-code Windows 11 experience for developer-class PCs capable of running AI models with more than 30 billion parameters locally without relying on metered cloud tokens. Designed for systems with at least 64 GB of unified memory and 250 GB/s or more of memory bandwidth, it pairs powerful hardware with a preconfigured software environment for coding, testing, and experimentation.

Jellyfin 12.0 security fixes arrive alongside the removal of legacy client logins
Jellyfin shipped version 12.0 of its media server. Several of the security fixes in it block requests built to reach files outside the folders the server is supposed to hand out. The rest of the security work touches first-run setup, plugin installs, parental controls, and the web interface.

BleachBit 6.0.4 fixes secure wiping that skipped clusters on Windows
The open source cleaner BleachBit reached version 6.0.4 this week, erasing caches, browser traces, and files on Windows, Linux, and now macOS. If you shredded a sensitive file on Windows with an earlier build, parts of it may still sit on the disk where the wipe missed. Fragmentation is the ordinary case, since Windows scatters a file across noncontiguous clusters whenever it cannot find one open run large enough to hold it.

AWS spent years rebuilding its routing control plane without taking the network down
Every AWS API call, CloudFront video stream, and Route 53 lookup crosses the same infrastructure, which AWS calls its border network. It now runs on a routing system rebuilt from scratch over several years.

Chinese AI firms are siphoning capabilities from American models, CISA warns
China-based AI companies are using large-scale knowledge distillation campaigns to copy capabilities from leading U.S. AI models, according to a joint cybersecurity advisory from the CISA, NSA, and FBI.

A new open standard locks AI weights to approved hardware
OPAQUE, a confidential computing company that runs AI workloads inside hardware-isolated environments so operators cannot inspect them, released an open standard that lets AI model builders decide when and where their weights can be decrypted once those weights leave the builder’s own servers. The standard, called Weight Custody Manifest, ships as a developer-preview specification, a Python SDK, and a public test suite covering 91 cases.

AI adoption brings new security headaches for already stretched CISOs
CISOs are taking on AI governance without a matching increase in resources or expertise, adding to an already broad remit spanning data protection, identity, resilience and compliance, according to Proofpoint’s 2026 Voice of the CISO report.

Apple is building photo verification for the people who need it most
Apple has introduced Apple Reference Image, an opt-in feature designed to verify the authenticity of photos taken with iPhone 18 Pro models. The company will also add support for the SynthID standard in a software update later this year, helping identify images generated or edited using AI.

WordPress adds automated security checks to block risky plugin releases
WordPress’ automated security review will now assess every plugin release before it is distributed through the WordPress.org update API. Releases considered a potential security risk will be blocked automatically.

Your passkeys can now move between password managers on Android
Google turned on a transfer feature in Android that moves passwords and passkeys straight from one password manager to another, with no file to download along the way. You start it from inside the app you are switching to, and Google says the data moves between the apps in a few seconds.

Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS release patches security bugs across ten flavors
Canonical shipped Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS, bundling security updates and fixes for high-severity bugs into new installation media for the “Noble Numbat” release. Anyone installing fresh now gets those corrections baked in from the start, cutting the batch of updates that would normally follow setup.

AI is changing what Salesforce security needs to govern
Existing security and governance practices have largely focused on identities, permissions, access, configurations and controls. WithSecure’s Navigating Trust in the Modern Salesforce Ecosystem paper says Salesforce environments also require organizations to understand what information they rely on, how trust extends across connected systems, what actions are performed and what outcomes those actions produce.

Companies may be measuring phishing resilience the wrong way
Companies that judge phishing simulation programs by how often employees click simulated attack emails may be overlooking more important indicators of cyber resilience, according to Pistachio’s Phishing Behaviour Report 2026.

Product showcase: Doppler secures secrets for humans, pipelines, and AI agents
AI agents have expanded the secrets management challenge. Coding agents, automated workflows, and MCP servers create more identities that need credentials, and more places those credentials can leak. Doppler centralizes credentials for engineers, pipelines, and AI agents in one easy-to-use control plane. It gives security teams a critical secrets management tool developers use, available in the cloud or on-prem.

Product showcase: GitGuardian Honeytoken catches credential theft as it happens
GitGuardian turns credential harvesting into an immediate, high-confidence detection signal. It deploys honeytokens across developer fleets so that when an infostealer scans a machine and validates a decoy, defenders know within seconds.

Cybersecurity jobs available right now: September 8, 2026
We’ve scoured the market to bring you a selection of roles that span various skill levels within the cybersecurity field. Check out this weekly selection of cybersecurity jobs available right now.

New infosec products of the week: September 11, 2026
Here’s a look at the most interesting products from the past week, featuring releases from Akeyless, Orchid Security, Scytale, and Securin.


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We expect fitness wearables to count our steps—an idea that Fitbit borrowed from pedometers forever ago. In recent years even Oura and Whoop have added step tracking. But the Apple Watch has never made it easy to see your step count, even though it’s been keeping track in the background all along. Apple is finally changing that. 

On the product pages for the Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra, Apple boasts that the new watches give you a more accurate step count—interesting, because step count hasn’t been a selling point in the past. And then comes the big news: “And now you can more easily check your step count, right from your watch face.” 

So far, it has been frustratingly difficult to get a step count on your watch. You would think you could easily add that number to a watch complication (a complication being a mini data field for the watch face), but nope—if you want a little counter of your steps on the watch face, you have to install a third-party app to provide that. 

I kind of understand why: Apple wanted to set itself apart from the Fitbits of the world. You’re supposed to close your rings, and rings are based on movement, exercise, and stand hours. I can imagine somebody at Apple saying “no, step counting is dumb” and they were arguably right. But the idea has stuck in the public consciousness; we now expect step counts, and Apple is finally going to deliver. 

How to get step count on your Apple Watch

First of all, the Apple Watch already counts your steps. You can see your step count by going to the Health app on your phone and searching for Steps. Scroll to the bottom of the Steps screen and tap Add to Pinned. Now it will be the first thing you see when you open the Health app. (Surprised the Health app can do this? You have no idea of the hidden gems in that thing.) 

To get a step count on your Apple Watch right now, without upgrading anything, you’ll need to install a step counter app. Duffy is a popular (free) one; there are plenty of others out there, so choose one you like. These apps typically provide a complication, so you can add your step count to your favorite watch face. 

But what about taking advantage of Apple’s new embrace of the step count? Apple says the feature will be available on the Series 12 and Ultra 4 watches. That said, this seems like a very simple software change, so I’d bet money that step count will become available in WatchOS 27, which is due out any day now, and which will run on Series 9 and newer, Ultra 2 and newer, and the SE 3. I’m currently using the WatchOS 27 public beta, and there’s no step count feature yet, but I’m watching for it.  

I also spied step counts in Apple’s screenshots of its upcoming redesign of the Health app. This is an app that lives on your phone, and in the screenshot there was a little tile with your Apple Watch rings, and underneath the rings, the step count. Apple says the Health app redesign will be available on devices that support Apple Intelligence, which means the iPhone 15 Pro and newer.

Once you have the feature on your watch, it looks like step counts will be available on the cards you see when you swipe up from the main watch face. Currently you can pin a card there with your step distance for the day (I’ve covered 0.65 miles between waking up and making my way to my home office) but steps aren’t available there yet. 


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Many portable projectors still need separate speakers or extra cables, but the ION Portable HD Outdoor Projector bundles a 720p projector with built-in speakers, Bluetooth, and even a microphone for karaoke, so you can set it up with minimal planning. It's meant for quick setups, like putting on a movie in your living room or taking it out to a terrace, and it's on sale for just $64.99 on StackSocial right now. You can stretch the image up to 150 inches, but the 1280 x 720 resolution and 100 ANSI lumens mean it looks best in a dim room or after sunset. Daytime viewing or bright spaces will wash out the picture.

Most small projectors struggle with sound, but this one puts real focus on audio. The built-in 70W stereo system gets surprisingly loud, with dual drivers and tweeters that can fill a medium room or a small outdoor gathering. You can also use it as a Bluetooth speaker, with Bluetooth 5.3 support and a range of about 100 feet. That makes it useful even when you are not projecting anything. The karaoke feature might not be for everyone, but it's easy to imagine it becoming the main attraction at a house party. You get two mic inputs, echo effects, and one wired microphone in the box. For video, it keeps things simple. Plug in a laptop, streaming stick, or console through HDMI, or use a USB drive for local files—there is no built-in smart platform here.

Battery life is where you need to be realistic. You get around two hours of video playback, which is just enough for a movie, or up to 100 hours if you are only using it as a speaker. All things considered, this ION Portable HD Outdoor Projector is a great deal.

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The iPhone Duo is both the most exciting (and expensive) product from Apple's September hardware event. The Duo is Apple's first foldable, equipped with new features not present in the company's other iPhones. On the flip side, designing a foldable smartphone comes with a bunch of compromises, which means that the iPhone Duo misses out on a lot of features when compared with the iPhone 18 Pro and the 18 Pro Max. Yes, even if you pay $1,999 (going all the way up to $3,199 for the 2TB variant) for an iPhone Duo, you won't be getting all the best new iPhone features this year. Here's every feature that the iPhone Duo misses out on.

The iPhone Duo doesn't have an Action button

Unlike the iPhone 18 Pro series (or any iPhone since the 15), the foldable iPhone doesn't get a programmable Action button. It doesn't even have a mute switch, which means that its only buttons are for volume control and power. The Action button can be mapped to simple tasks such as taking screenshots, or more complex automations of your choice, and it'll be missed on the foldable iPhone.

The iPhone Duo's selfie camera isn't as good as the iPhone 18 Pro

The iPhone Duo ships with a 12-megapixel Center Stage camera on the outer display, which is a lower-resolution sensor than the one on the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max. The two 18 Pro series phones ship with an 18-megapixel Center Stage camera for selfies. The iPhone Duo also has an under-display front camera, and since Apple hasn't disclosed its megapixel count, it's safe to say it's also less than the 18 Pros. However, by its nature, the Duo has an interesting advantage here: If you're taking selfies with the device unfolded, you get to use the far superior "rear" camera sensor, as the front display becomes your viewfinder. Anyone using the Duo for selfies this way will shoot better pictures than those using the front camera on an iPhone 18 Pro.

The iPhone Duo's rear cameras have fixed apertures

Variable aperture is one of the best new camera features of the iPhone 18 Pro series. The primary rear camera lets you control aperture, which opens up the possibility for better quality photos, enhanced depth of field effects, and more creative control over your photography. Unfortunately, the iPhone Duo misses out on this feature.

Pro Controls aren't coming to the iPhone Duo

By now the trend is pretty clear: iPhone Duo misses out on a slew of camera features. For the iPhone 18 Pro series, Apple announced "Pro Controls" for the Camera app, which lets you control aperture, shutter speed, and more variables. This will undoubtedly appeal to photography enthusiasts, but despite the Duo's inflated price tag, this is another feature that didn't make it to the foldable.

Apple Reference Image is limited to the 18 Pro series

Apple also announced a new standard to combat AI-morphed images. Apple Reference Image allows you to verify that an image was captured using an iPhone 18 Pro device, and that it wasn't generated by AI. For some reason, however, this feature isn't coming to the iPhone Duo.

There's no telephoto lens in the iPhone Duo

Apple decided to go with two rear cameras in the iPhone Duo, which means that the telephoto lens gets a miss. The iPhone 18 Pro series has 4x and 8x optical zoom options, both of which won't be available on the iPhone Duo. You'll be limited to a zoom range of 0.5x to 2x on the foldable iPhone, across both the ultrawide and Fusion cameras.

You won't get Spatial photos, videos, and ProRAW on the iPhone Duo

Spatial photos, Spatial videos, and ProRAW are all features targeted at professional photographers and videographers. These features are available in the iPhone 18 Pro series, but not on the iPhone Duo.

The iPhone 18 Pro has better mics for video recording than the iPhone Duo

Apple included a "studio-quality" four-mic array in the iPhone 18 Pro and the 18 Pro Max. The aim is to enhance audio quality when you're shooting video. The iPhone Duo misses out on this feature too.

iPhone Duo doesn't use Face ID

Apple chose to give the iPhone Duo Touch ID, which means that you can use your fingerprint to unlock the device. While the lack of Face ID may initially seem like a big miss, I think it makes perfect sense for a device that has multiple "front" cameras. Rather than placing the Face ID sensor near every camera, Apple opted for the more practical alternative. Plus, you can unlock your iPhone Duo with your Apple Watch, if you have one.

The iPhone Duo doesn't have a LiDAR scanner

LiDAR sensors measure distances between two objects, creating 3D scans of objects in the real world, and even mapping the layout of your home for 3D models. Your iPhone ships with an app called Measure, which works well with Pro series iPhones because those devices have a LiDAR scanner. The iPhone Duo misses out.

The Duo is available only in two colors

This year, Apple reserved all the fun iPhone colors for the 18 Pro and the 18 Pro Max, including the new Glacier and Burgundy color variants. I wish Apple had added at least one of those to the iPhone Duo, as the foldable iPhone is only available in "Night Sky" (dark blue) or white.

iPhone Duo is eSIM-only worldwide

The iPhone Duo is the first iPhone to ship with two eSIM slots globally. The iPhone 18 Pro devices will be eSIM-exclusive in 12 countries, but not in the rest of the world. The 18 Pro will ship with at least one physical SIM slot in most regions. An eSIM is great for those who never swap SIM cards or travel often, but having the option of a physical SIM is also useful. It allows you to use cheap prepaid travel SIMs when abroad, and offers you the flexibility to keep swapping SIMs quickly.


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Google turned on a transfer feature in Android that moves passwords and passkeys straight from one password manager to another, with no file to download along the way. You start it from inside the app you are switching to, and Google says the data moves between the apps in a few seconds.

“Historically, moving your passwords meant downloading them into an unencrypted text file, which left them unprotected on your device,” Google said. Passkeys, the sign-in credentials that stand in for a password and live inside the manager, could not be transferred between managers at all, by Google’s account, so a switch meant recreating each one across the sites and apps that used it.

How the transfer works

You open the new password manager, choose its option to import or copy from another provider, and the app hands the job to Android. Android then detects the password managers already on the device and shows you which ones it can pull from. Tap Continue and Android sends you back into the old manager to select, review, and authorize what moves.

Android password manager transfer

Which apps have it

Four managers support the flow today: Google Password Manager, 1Password, Bitwarden Password Manager, and Dashlane. Google says more partners will follow, without naming them or giving a date. It also does not say which Android versions carry the feature, or what protects the credentials while they pass between the two apps beyond calling the handoff secure.

If your manager is not one of those four, a switch still starts with the export button, and your passkeys stay where they are.


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Are we in a golden age for TV historical dramas? Once mostly limited to Sunday-night BBC imports on PBS, streaming has opened the doors for these journeys into the past, recent or otherwise. They're not all particularly faithful to historical fact (not a requirement), but each has the virtue of offering a brief escape from an increasingly obnoxious present.

One of the most recent successes is Netflix's My Brilliant Career, an adaptation of the seminal 1901 coming-of-age novel by author Miles Franklin. And once you've visited early 19th-century Australia with Sybylla Melvyn, you may well enjoy these 10 other stories of young women who'd just as soon you didn't try to tell them how to live their lives.

The Other Bennet Sister (2026 – )

A bit of a ratings blockbuster on the BBC, this miniseries revisits the events of Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of Lizzy Bennet's bookish, altogether dorkier sister Mary. Her ruddy complexion, penchant for grammatical correctness, and (gasp!) spectacles seem to make Mary entirely unsuitable for marriage and unfit for much other than genteel spinsterhood. That begins to change when Mary sets off to become a governess for the Gardiner family in London and manages to forge a life and a future for herself away from the parents and siblings who see her as not much more than a piece of furniture. Though in a different time and on a different continent, Sybella and Mary are similarly clever and forthright young women doing their best to find their place, expectations be damned. Stream The Other Bennet Sister on Britbox.

Little Women (2017)

Jo March is a young woman from a poor family who harbors both writerly ambitions and the talent to make her dreams come true—if only people can tolerate the independence of a young woman. She's also possessed of an elderly relative with the money to either help or hinder her. Any of this sounding familiar? Though overshadowed by the (excellent) Greta Gerwig film version's arrival two years later, this BBC adaptation is a bit more faithful to the text without ever feeling stuffy. Set in a Civil War-era New England in which women have largely been left behind by the men in their lives, the miniseries format does a fine job of capturing the passage of time that is so critical to the story. Maya Hawke (Stranger Things) is Jo, Emily Watson plays the stolid Marmee with an appropriate twinkle, and Angela Lansbury (in her final TV role) is perfect as the snide, snippy Aunt March. Stream Little Women on Peacock, Tubi, and Netflix.

Pachinko (2022 – )

Starting in 1915, this multigenerational saga follows one woman (played in different time periods by Youn Yuh-jung and Kim Min-ha) and her family, taking us from the Japanese occupation of Korea through the decades of the Korean diaspora. With her opportunities limited, Sunja leaves her home and family in Busan to pursue a life in Japan, even as racism and anti-immigrant sentiment are rampant amid the war. Like Sybella, she rejects the prospect of a practical marriage to a man of means in favor of independence, and refuses to let her circumstances limit her aspirations. In a parallel narrative that begins in 1989, we see what has and hasn't changed for Sunja and her family as part of a journey as personal as it is epic, with better location cinematography than most movies—and an all-time great opening credits sequence. Stream Pachinko on Apple TV.

The Buccaneers (2023 – )

A hyper-stylized period drama (Bridgerton was clearly an inspiration), this 1870s-set adaptation of an unfinished Edith Wharton novel takes liberties in terms of costuming and music while also upping the juicy drama. The buccaneers of the title are among the so-called dollar princesses of the era: Nan St. George (Kristine Froseth) and her friends are young women from upper-class American families on the make among the British aristocracy—the Americans get titles, and the English lords get to keep their frequently cash-poor estates running. Before long, true love complicates everything for the young women who aren't necessarily career-minded like Sybella, but who nonetheless have ambitions outside of their family and social obligations. Stream The Buccaneers on Apple TV.

Lark Rise to Candleford (2008 – 2011)

The marriage-pressure angle is less prominent here, but we're nevertheless following a young woman starting a new chapter by leaving home...or, at least, going down the road apiece, which was a big deal in 19th century Oxfordshire (the story is drawn from a series of semi-autobiographical novels by Flora Thompson). Country girl Laura Timmins (Olivia Hallinan) sets out to look for work in the wealthier, modestly more metropolitan neighboring town of Candleford. She finds a job at the post office and is befriended and mentored by her mother's cousin, Dorcas (Julia Sawalha). Not everyone in Candleford is so welcoming of the rube from the countryside, especially when Laura is forced to choose between the demands of her job and the needs of the family she left behind. Stream Lark Rise to Candleford on Peacock and Tubi.

Anne With an E (2017 – 2019)

Based on Lucy Maud Montgomery’s classic historical novel Anne of Green Gables, Anne With an E follows the titular heroine, a precocious girl growing up in a rural 19th-century setting as she's forced to carve a new life in a new place. As the series begins in 1896, a couple of elderly and unmarried siblings on Prince Edward Island, Canada, have sent away for an orphan boy to help on the farm, but instead find themselves with a girl: chatty Anne Shirley (Amybeth McNulty), who has to fight to prove herself to her prospective parents, as well as to others in the town who judge her alternately for being a useless girl and for being a poor orphan. The reboot revisits the novel and mines its text (and subtext) for new ideas without betraying its spirit. Stream Anne With an E on Netflix.

Three Little Birds (2023)

The time, place, and context are different, but this historical drama shares with My Brilliant Career themes of young women leaving home in order to defy expectations of their birth, only to find new opportunities and new obstacles where they wind up. Set in the 1950s among what's often referred to as the Windrush generation (for the ship that brought several hundred West Indian passengers to the UK in 1948), the series finds Leah Whittaker (Rochelle Neil) traveling to England to escape an abusive husband, joined by her sister Chantrelle (Saffron Coomber), who dreams of movie stardom; also along for the journey is religious do-gooder Hosanna Drake (Yazmin Belo), with a prospective marriage in the works to a man she's never met. Upon arrival, the women find opportunities, but also challenges they hadn't quite accounted for, including the overt and violent racism of their new home. The script is from actor Lenny Henry, who based much of it on stories from his parents and grandparents. Stream Three Little Birds on Britbox.

Dickinson (2019 – 2021)

Dickinson is so scrupulously weird that it gets points just for doing the unexpected. The most surprising thing about it, though, is that it's not merely idiosyncratic—it’s good. The show imagines the life of 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson (played by Hailee Steinfeld), with the true-feeling conceit that she didn’t fit especially well in her own time, a fact the show reflects through the casual use of anachronisms and more modern sensibilities. Think The Buccaneers or Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette for similar vibes—but neither of those is about a person nearly as haunting or mysterious as Dickinson, who is at war with her father throughout the series over her desire (need, really) to write. Bonus: It’s also beautifully filmed and acted. Stream Dickinson on Apple TV.

Sanditon (2019 – 2023)

Sanditon is based on Jane Austen's final, incomplete work, a fact that allows for plenty of creative leeway—it doesn't have the stylistic whimsy of Bridgerton, but serves as a purer distillation of the Regency-drama thrills that Austen bequeathed to us. Here, the wildly independent Charlotte Heywood (Rose Williams) sets out to reinvent herself after moving to the title's growing seaside resort town (based, probably, on the real-life Worthing). She discovers that commercial prospects have drawn schemers and chancers to the area, creating a unique and vibrant social scene, with all of the balls and fancy costumes you'd expect. Naturally, romantic complications ensue when Charlotte gets judgy about the entrepreneurial Parker family and finds herself at odds with, and then getting close to, the wild youngest son, Sidney (Theo James). Stream Sanditon on PBS Passport or buy it from Prime Video.

Miss Austen (2025)

Coming at Jane Austen a bit sideways, this rather masterful historical drama focuses on the famous writer's only sister, Cassandra, in the time shortly after Jane's death, and on the ways in which the lives of the two diverted from the romance-heavy plots of books like Pride and Prejudice. The author is on her way to the legendary status that she'd come to acquire, and the family is already battling over her legacy. Cassandra (Keeley Hawes) visits the home of dying family friend the Reverend Fowle with the intent of collecting and destroying personal letters between Jane and the Reverend's late wife, Eliza. Cassandra's unpleasant sister-in-law is also looking for the letters, planning to publish them for her own purposes. As Cassandra revisits her own past, the miniseries explores the separate paths she and Jane took toward independence (one through writing, the other through painting), while also placing Cassandra in the middle of Eliza's daughter's very Austen-esque quest to dodge a marriage she wants nothing to do with. Stream Sanditon on PBS Passport or buy it from Prime Video.


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During Apple’s big hardware announcement on Wednesday, the company placed a particular emphasis on the vapor chamber in the new iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max. The glossed-over explanation is that these new vapor chambers can improve performance and reduce heat generation. But how exactly? And what does that mean for the phones you’re planning to buy?

How vapor chambers work

On a very simple level, vapor chambers work similarly to liquid cooling in other electronics systems like some desktop PCs or server racks. The goal is to carry heat away from the processor to keep it cool, so it can do more work without overheating. A cooler processor is a more efficient processor, which means it runs better.

Except, unlike a PC or server rack, a phone is a tight, compact system. There’s not enough space to heat water and then pump it away to a different location to cool it down. Instead, a vapor chamber is a thin, hollow chamber, typically made of either copper or stainless steel, with a small amount of liquid inside. When the liquid inside heats up, it becomes a gas, which then expands outwards, dispersing the heat throughout the body of your phone, rather than keeping it all close to the processor. As it gets further away from the source of heat, the vapor cools back down and becomes a liquid again.

Since the chamber is sealed, the liquid can’t evaporate and escape, meaning that the fluid can theoretically keep cycling through the chamber indefinitely for the life of the phone. Most manufacturers also pair this with some form of heat sink, like thin sheets of graphite or copper. Or, in the case of the new iPhone 18 Pro, both.

Why vapor chambers matter for smartphones

Keeping your phone cool is a massive problem compared to other electronic devices you might have, simply because they’re so small, yet so powerful. A moderately powered laptop like a MacBook Air can get away with a combination of conductive heat sinks, a metal frame, and low heat-generating processors to stay functional, while high-powered gaming laptops have space to stuff in large, laborious fans.

Your phone, however, needs to fit in your pocket, and a huge chunk of the space inside needs to be devoted to the battery to make sure it lasts long enough to get through the day. Once you account for all the processors, sensors, and antennas that a phone needs, there’s scarcely any space left for heat dissipation. That’s a huge part of why phones generally don’t have as powerful processors as tablets or laptops. Physically, it’s not impossible to fit a high-powered chip in a pocketable device. But it would likely generate so much heat that it would destroy itself without proper heat dissipation, which would make your phone too big for a pocket.

This kind of heat dissipation matters even more if you happen to live in places with warm climates. For example, I live in Texas. Even when driving inside an air-conditioned car, if my phone is in the sunlight, it can start to overheat. When I previously had a Pixel 6 Pro, it would occasionally shut off (taking my navigation with it) simply because it wasn’t in the shade. After upgrading to a Pixel 9 Pro, which does have a vapor chamber, I never noticed this problem—though this is obviously anecdotal.

How to consider vapor chambers when buying a phone

Apple says the iPhone 18 Pro’s vapor chamber has three times the surface area of the previous generation, which theoretically should mean better cooling and, thus, better performance. But does that mean you need to decide what phone to buy based on how big a phone’s vapor chamber is, or whether it has one at all?

Well, yes and no. It turns out that outside the Apple ecosystem, Android phones have been using vapor chambers for years, and you might not have even noticed. The existence of vapor chambers is increasingly becoming standard, so unless you have an old phone that frequently overheats, or you’re looking to buy a phone a few generations behind, you probably don’t need to go out of your way to make sure your phone has one.

And whether bigger is necessarily better is also a bit of a gray area. All other things being equal, yes, a larger vapor chamber will dissipate heat better and keep your phone cooler. But all other things are rarely equal. A larger vapor chamber also means the manufacturer can put a more powerful processor inside and achieve the same thermal balance. So, a phone could theoretically be equally likely to overheat, but do more before it does.

Figuring out the right balance between processing power and heat dissipation is the kind of thing best left to the engineers and dedicated hobbyists. But there are a couple of things the average person can take away from this. First, if you live in a warm climate, better heat dissipation is always going to be better. Your phone isn’t running at full power all day, but the Texas sun is. So, if you’re worried about your environment causing overheating problems, check phone reviews for how well it handles heat. More importantly, consider the power needs you have for your device before you buy. If you just use your phone to scroll TikTok and reply to emails, you probably don’t need an overpowered processor, but if you plan to edit 4K videos or play graphically intense mobile games, then better thermal regulation could do you some good.


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