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Call of Duty says its anti-cheat for Black Ops 7 has ‘one of the strongest detection systems we have ever built,’ and this week’s beta will help put it to the test
Game Reviews

Call of Duty says its anti-cheat for Black Ops 7 has ‘one of the strongest detection systems we have ever built,’ and this week’s beta will help put it to the test

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Ahead of this weekend’s beta test for Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Activision is reiterating its focus on anti-cheat to maintain the integrity of the game on PC.

Along with requiring Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 to even launch the game on PC, Activision says its RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system has evolved over the past year in Black Ops 6 to try and stay ahead of cheat-makers worldwide.

Image via Activision

“Over the last year, Team RICOCHET has trained advanced machine learning systems on millions of hours of gameplay,” Activision said in a new blog post. “These upgrades are smarter, faster, and more reliable than ever; built not just to catch cheaters, but to set the new standard for fair play and evolve with the game itself.”

With these changes, the company says RICOCHET now has “one of the strongest detection systems we have ever built, designed to separate natural aim from the precision patterns of an aimbot,” faster wall-hack detection, and a layered defense that “with constant and independent updates, makes it tougher for cheaters to adapt and easier for us to stay ahead.”

Call of Duty players have heard this all before in recent years as the hacking epidemic has grown with crossplay and free-to-play Warzone accounts, but the fact is anti-cheat is a never-ending battle against cheat providers who are always trying to stay one step ahead to make a quick buck by selling cheats. And Activision says it’s working to fight on that front, too.

“We’re striking cheat makers and sellers from every angle: in-game detections that stop them cold, and legal action that dismantles their operations,” Activision said. “And we’re not stopping there. Significant continued improvements to our systems are coming, including those that detect external hardware.”

The BO7 beta, which begins this Thursday, Oct. 2, is part of the process of ensuring that the anti-cheat systems are at work, Activision said, calling it “a critical test for the systems we have online under real player conditions” as players will inevitably try hacking in the beta test.

Image via Activision

“We are actively monitoring matches, gathering data across thousands of unique hardware setups, and removing cheaters in real time,” the company said. “The beta allows us to measure how our detection tools perform when faced with live attempts to cheat, and to fine-tune how quickly and effectively we strike back. Every report, every flag, and every removal during the beta feeds directly into stronger responses tomorrow.”

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Gaming Gear

California’s age verification bill for app stores and operating systems takes another step forward

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A California bill that would require operating system and app store providers to verify users’ ages before they can download apps has cleared the Assembly 58-0, and will now move on to Gov. Gavin Newsom, Politico reports. The Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), introduced by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, does not require photo identification for verification, but puts the onus on the platforms to provide tools for parents to indicate the user’s age during a device’s setup, and use this information steer kids toward age-appropriate content and screen time.

It comes after Utah and Texas both adopted app store age verification laws earlier this year that have been criticized as posing potential privacy risks, and faced opposition from the likes of Google and Apple. The California bill has been received more positively by Big Tech, with Google, Meta and others putting out statements in support of it in the leadup to a Senate vote on Friday. Kareem Ghanem, Google’s Senior Director of Government Affairs & Public Policy, called the bill “one of the most thoughtful approaches we’ve seen thus far to the challenges of keeping kids safe, recognizing that it’s a shared responsibility across the ecosystem.” Gov. Newsom now has until October 13 to sign or veto the bill, according to Politico.



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AI won’t replace you, but the rigid systems around it might
GameFi Guides

AI won’t replace you, but the rigid systems around it might

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Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial.

Every few weeks, headlines warn that artificial intelligence is coming for our jobs. The sentiment is everywhere — AI as the great disruptor, poised to reshape entire industries and render human labor obsolete. The fear is understandable, but it’s not the full picture.

Summary

  • The real issue isn’t AI vs. humans — it’s whether the systems we build enable people to thrive or reduce them to replaceable parts.
  • Efficiency-first models are brittle — built on industrial-era metrics, they optimize output but ignore adaptability, creativity, and human growth.
  • The safeguard isn’t just policy — resilient economies depend on systems that keep human adaptability at the center, letting people evolve with technology.
  • The future belongs to human-centered AI — modular, flexible systems that treat people as collaborators and co-creators, not just inputs to optimize away.

The question isn’t whether AI will replace humans. The better question is: what kinds of systems are we building, and do they allow people to thrive within them? 

Technologies don’t replace people on their own. Systems do. And the ones we’ve built so far are worryingly brittle. In our race to adopt automation, we’ve prioritized efficiency over adaptability, prediction over potential. The result is an ecosystem of tools that optimize for outputs rather than understanding the humans behind them. That’s the real threat — frameworks that don’t evolve with us, and platforms that don’t respond to who we are.

Ultimately, organizations that will lead in AI adoption are not those with the largest budgets or most advanced tools, but those that empower every employee to use AI safely and effectively. Until that foundation is in place, companies aren’t just underutilizing software; they’re leaving significant human potential untapped.

In many ways, we’re trying to solve tomorrow’s problems with yesterday’s design principles. Most current applications of AI are still framed around industrial-era thinking: reduce labor, minimize cost, increase scale. These metrics made sense when the work was physical, linear, and repetitive. But in a digital, cognitive economy, where value creation depends on adaptability, learning, and creativity, we need systems that do more than calculate. We need systems that can collaborate.

The future of work: context

This is where the conversation around the “future of work” often misses the point. It tends to swing between utopian promises of AI-enhanced lifestyles and dystopian fears of mass unemployment. But the real story is more grounded, and actually more urgent. It’s about designing systems that enable what I’d like to call human-centered growth: the ability for individuals to develop new skills, shift roles, and contribute meaningfully in evolving environments. Without that, we’re not just risking job displacement. We’re undermining the foundation of a resilient economy.

A recent reflection in the Harvard Gazette warns that if AI suddenly erodes the value of middle-class skills or displaces a significant portion of the workforce, the consequences could be catastrophic — not just economically, but politically and socially. Even well-intentioned policies may struggle to keep pace. Subsidies or tax incentives might soften the blow, but in a hyper-competitive global market, companies unencumbered by legacy labor costs will still outmaneuver those that are. This reality underscores an uncomfortable truth: we can’t policy-proof the future of work. The most durable safeguard isn’t defensive legislation alone — it’s designing systems that keep human adaptability at the center, so people can evolve alongside technology rather than be sidelined by it.

Ethical AI isn’t just about safeguards and bias audits. It’s about intention at the systems level. It’s about designing for dignity, not just productivity. When we think about AI as a collaborator instead of a replacement, the focus shifts. Suddenly, the goal isn’t to build machines that can think like us — it’s to build environments where our thinking is expanded, informed, and elevated by the tools we use.

Modular approach

To do that, we need infrastructure that is flexible, adaptive, and regenerative. That means systems that learn from people, not just about them. It means treating human potential as dynamic, not fixed. And it means moving beyond the outdated notion of one-size-fits-all platforms that try to prescribe outcomes from above. In practice, this calls for a modular approach to AI: one that integrates human data across work, learning, and well-being in a secure and user-sovereign way, while offering contextual support tailored to individual goals.

We need to move toward systems that don’t just process data, but sense and respond to the full complexity of human experience. That means nurturing growth, not just tracking it. Purpose-driven intelligence must be designed to guide individuals across life stages, recognizing emotional cues like burnout, disengagement, or the need for reinvention—not as anomalies, but as part of a natural human trajectory. 

This is the paradigm shift we should be aiming for: not just using AI to optimize performance, but to accelerate success on human terms.

This isn’t about rejecting progress. It’s about rethinking its direction. Automation is coming. AI will become embedded in nearly every tool and process we use. But the impact it has on society will depend almost entirely on how we choose to apply it. If we continue to treat people as variables to be optimized, we’ll build brittle systems and anxious workforces. If instead we design with the goal of helping people flourish, we’ll unlock a different kind of productivity, one rooted in trust, adaptability, and long-term value.

None of this is theoretical. The world is already changing. Roles are becoming more fluid. And now, skillsets are evolving faster than degrees can signal. People are no longer defined by a single job title or career path, and our — ideally contextual — systems need to start reflecting that. 

This next chapter of the digital economy will not be claimed by those who adopt AI with the greatest speed, but by those who harness it with the greatest discernment. It will belong to the builders who recognize that people are not mere inputs to be optimized away, but co-creators in the unfolding evolution of intelligence. AI itself is not our adversary; it is a mirror, reflecting the priorities we encode into the systems that surround it. And it is those systems — not the algorithms alone — that will decide whether we stand empowered in this new era, or find ourselves quietly erased by its momentum.

Sunil Raina

Sunil Raina is the CEO and founder of CereBree, a cognitive infrastructure platform designed to reshape skills ecosystems — how people and organizations engage with talent, capabilities, and workforce intelligence. With over 17 years of leading digital transformation across Fortune 500 companies, Sunil now focuses on building AI systems that are context-aware, ethically grounded, and designed to enhance — not replace — human decision-making. His work bridges enterprise strategy and agentic AI to create scalable, human-aligned infrastructure for lifelong growth.



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How China’s Propaganda and Surveillance Systems Really Operate
Gaming Gear

How China’s Propaganda and Surveillance Systems Really Operate

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A trove of internal documents leaked from a little-known Chinese company has pulled back the curtain on how digital censorship tools are being marketed and exported globally. Geedge Networks sells what amounts to a commercialized “Great Firewall” to at least four countries, including Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and Myanmar. The groundbreaking leak shows in granular detail the capabilities this company has to monitor, intercept, and hack internet traffic. Researchers who examined the files described it as “digital authoritarianism as a service.”

But I want to focus on another thing the documents demonstrate: While people often look at China’s Great Firewall as a single, all-powerful government system unique to China, the actual process of developing and maintaining it works the same way as surveillance technology in the West. Geedge collaborates with academic institutions on research and development, adapts its business strategy to fit different clients’ needs, and even repurposes leftover infrastructure from its competitors. In Pakistan, for example, Geedge landed a contract to work with and later replace gear made by the Canadian company Sandvine, the leaked files show.

Coincidentally, another leak from a different Chinese company published this week reinforces the same point. On Monday, researchers at Vanderbilt University made public a 399-page document from GoLaxy, a Chinese company that uses AI to analyze social media and generate propaganda materials. The leaked documents, which include internal pitch decks, business goals, and meeting notes, may have come from a disgruntled former employee—the last two pages accuse GoLaxy of mistreating workers by underpaying them and mandating long hours. The document had been sitting on the open internet for months before another researcher flagged it to Brett Goldstein, a research professor in the School of Engineering at Vanderbilt.

GoLaxy’s main business is different from Geedge’s: It collects open source information from social media, maps relationships among political figures and news organizations, and pushes targeted narratives online through synthetic social media profiles. In the leaked document, GoLaxy claims to be the “number one brand in intelligence big data analysis” in China, servicing three main customers: the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government, and the Chinese military. The included technology demos focus heavily on geopolitical issues like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and US elections. And unlike Geedge, GoLaxy seems to be targeting only domestic government entities as clients.

But there are also quite a few things that make the two companies comparable, particularly in terms of how their businesses function. Both Geedge and GoLaxy maintain close relationships with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the top government-affiliated research institution in the world, according to the Nature Index. And they both market their services to Chinese provincial-level government agencies, who have localized issues they want to monitor and budgets to spend on surveillance and propaganda tools.

GoLaxy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. In a previous response to The New York Times, the company denied collecting data targeting US officials and called the outlet’s reporting misinformation. Vanderbilt researchers say they witnessed the company remove pages from its website after the initial reporting.

Closer Than They Seem

In the West, when academic scholars see opportunities to commercialize their cutting-edge research, they often become startup founders or start side businesses. GoLaxy seems to be no exception. Many key researchers at the company, according to the leaked document, still occupy spots at CAS.

But there’s no guarantee that CAS researchers will get government grants—just like a public university professor in the US can’t bet on their startup winning federal contracts. Instead, they need to go after government agencies like any private company would go after clients. One document in the leak shows that GoLaxy assigned sales targets to five employees and was aiming to secure 42 million RMB (about $5.9 million) in contracts with Chinese government agencies in 2020. Another spreadsheet from around 2021 lists the company’s current clients, which include branches of the Chinese military, state security, and provincial police departments, as well as other potential customers it was targeting.



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Product Reviews

The best mesh Wi-Fi systems of 2025

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A Wi-Fi mesh system is one of the best upgrades you can make to improve your home’s internet coverage, especially if you’ve ever struggled with dead zones, buffering or dropped video calls. Unlike a single router that broadcasts from one central point, a mesh system uses multiple access points spread throughout your space to blanket your entire home with a strong, seamless Wi-Fi signal. Whether you’re working on multiple laptops, streaming 4K video in the living room or gaming online in the basement, a mesh setup helps ensure you get reliable Wi-Fi wherever you are.

These systems are designed to handle the demands of modern households, offering features like dual-band or even tri-band connectivity to balance your bandwidth across devices, and automatic updates to keep your firmware current. Many also support high-speed internet plans and include options for a wired connection if you need extra stability for gaming or work. With easy setup, smart app controls and long-term future-proofing, the best mesh Wi-Fi router systems can eliminate the need for clunky Wi-Fi extenders and give you fast, dependable Wi-Fi connections across your whole home.

Table of contents

Best mesh Wi-Fi systems for 2025

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

Wireless band count: 3 | Wireless speed rating: Up to 2,402 Mbps (6GHz band) | Ethernet ports: 3 | USB ports: 0 | Coverage area: Up to 7,200 sq. ft.

Read our full TP-Link Deco XE75 review

There’s no single glitzy feature that sets TP-Link’s Deco XE75 apart from its competition. Instead, it expertly balances raw power and user friendliness. If you’re looking for a no-fuss upgrade for your existing wireless router with faster speeds, this is the right option, especially for large homes. It’s not perfect, but my biggest gripes are nitpicks: The power cables are too short and the app could do with a polish. This tri-band mesh Wi-Fi system is the best for most people. In my spacious and wireless-hostile home, the $400 three-pack was almost overkill. If the $300 two-pack can cover your home’s square footage, then it’s a more wallet-friendly proposition than some of its rivals.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: TP-Link has a Chinese-owned parent company and, late last year, the US began asking if there was a potential national security risk. In a statement, TP-Link Systems said it was “no longer affiliated with China-based TP-Link Technologies” and that its products comply with “regional industry security standards and regulations.” It added the Chinese government does not have access to or control over “the design and production of our routers,” and that it is engaging with the US government to demonstrate its “security practices are fully in line with security standards.”

Pros

  • Excellent performance
  • Easy to set up and use
  • A good value for the money

Cons

  • App design lacks polish
  • Short power cable

$250 at Amazon

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

Wireless band count: 3 | Wireless speed rating: Up to 2,402 Mbps (6GHz band) | Ethernet ports: 2 | USB ports: 0 | Coverage area: Up to 6,600 sq. ft.

Read our full Google Nest Wi-Fi Pro review

Nest Wi-Fi Pro offers a simple experience for folks who want to set their network and then forget all about it. It’s not as powerful, or customizable, as its competitors, but it should be more than suitable for most of your needs, with reliable tri-band Wi-Fi for streaming and web browsing. It’s quite cheap, so while I have reservations about its long-term potential, it’s a great buy for the next few years.

If you’re already inside Google’s world, then the various integrations Assistant offers, as well as support for Matter and Thread-equipped smart home devices, is a bonus. Plus, Google promises regular software and security updates, letting you concentrate on enjoying the internet, rather than worrying about it.

Pros

  • Super simple to set up and use
  • Relatively affordable
  • Integrates nicely with Google services

Cons

  • Doesn’t offer as many customizations as some comeptitors

$294 at Amazon

Photo by Daniel Cooper / Engadget

Wireless band count: 3 | Wireless speed rating: Up to 4,804 Mbps (6GHz band) | Ethernet ports: 2 | USB ports: 0 | Coverage area: Up to 3,000 sq. ft.

ASUS’ ZenWiFi Pro ET12 is a “pro” piece of hardware inside and out, with the power (and price) to justify such a name. Each node has the power to cover your home in Wi-Fi, and those extra gigabit and 2.5 Gbps ethernet ports will let you add fast backhaul or a speedy NAS. I’d say pro users and gamers who need faster speeds will find plenty to love in this package. Hell, it’s good enough to support a medium-sized office without too much stress.

That’s before you get to ASUS’ AiMesh, which will let you add ASUS’ powerful standalone routers to the same network. You could pick up a ZenWiFi Pro now, and in a year or two bolt on one of its beefy Wi-Fi routers to really boost your speed. Power users will be better equipped to deal with some of its more idiosyncratic control options, and are more likely to take advantage of its support for the 160MHz band.

If I’m honest, I started using this and realized pretty quickly that this was simply too much gear for my needs. It’s like needing to buy a blender and coming back from the store with the Large Hadron Collider — lovely, but probably a little too much overkill for a single glass of kale smoothie.

Pros

  • Superb performance
  • Easy to expand system with additional nodes and routers

$370 at Amazon

What to look for in a mesh Wi-Fi system

Linksys’ CEO Jonathan Bettino told Engadget why mesh systems are an “advancement in Wi-Fi technology” over buying a single point router. With one transmitter, the signal can degrade the further away from the router you go, or the local environment isn’t ideal. “You can have a small [home], but there’s thick walls […] or things in the way that just interfere with your wireless signal,” he said.

Historically, the solution to a home’s Wi-Fi dead zone was to buy a Wi-Fi extender but Bettino said the hardware has both a “terrible user experience” and one of the highest return rates of any consumer electronics product. Mesh Wi-Fi, by comparison, offers “multiple nodes that can be placed anywhere in your home,” says Bettino, resulting in “ubiquitous Wi-Fi” that feels as if you have a “router in every room.”

Rather than having one main router in your home, having a “router in every room” is the biggest selling point for mesh Wi-Fi given how reliant we all are on the internet. Each node is in constant contact with each other, broadcasting a single, seamless network to all of your connected devices. There’s no separate network for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, just a single name that you connect to.

It’s a good time to buy a mesh Wi-Fi system since the latest standard, Wi-Fi 6E, represents a big leap in the technology. Matt MacPherson, Cisco’s Chief Technology Officer for Wireless, said Wi-Fi 6E is a big “inflection point,” using much more of the wireless spectrum than its predecessors. “If you’re using that spectrum with a Wi-Fi 6 [device],” he said, “you’re going to get significant gains [in speed.]”

MacPherson added Wi-Fi 6E will likely “carry you for a long time” thanks to the fact its “top throughputs now typically exceed what people can actually connect their home to.” In short, with a top theoretical per-stream speed of 1.2 Gbps, Wi-Fi 6E is fast enough to outrun all but the fastest internet service.

What do all these Wi-Fi numbers and letters mean?

I’m sorry folks, we need to get boringly technical for one paragraph, but I promise you it’s worth it.

Wi-Fi is governed by International Standard IEEE 802.11, and every few years a letter gets added onto that name when the technology evolves and improves. Until 2019, routers were sold under their IEEE name, leaving users to pick through the word soup of a product labeled 802.11 b/g/a/n/ac and so on.

Mercifully, wiser heads opted to rebrand the letters as numbers, so rather than 802.11 b/g/a/n/ac, we have Wi-Fi 1, 2, 3 4 and 5. Right now, we’re in the middle of one of those Wi-Fi generations, with most of the gear on sale right now supporting either Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E.

What’s the difference between Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E?

Wi-Fi uses chunks of the radio frequency spectrum, with Wi-Fi 6 using the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands to pump data around. In fact, back in the old days, it was likely your home router would offer you the choice of the 2.4GHz or the 5GHz network, as separate bands to access. These days, all of the spectrums are tied together as one thing, and Wi-Fi 6E has the added ability to use the 6GHz band as well. That’s a big chunk of extra wireless real estate that isn’t as cluttered up as the 2.4 and 5GHz bands.

You’re going to talk about wireless frequencies now, aren’t you.

Each Wi-Fi band had tradeoffs, because the slower radio frequencies have greater range but less speed. 2.4GHz signals will travel a long way in your home but aren’t quick, while 6GHz is blisteringly fast but can be defeated by a sturdy brick wall. A lot of Wi-Fi-enabled gear you own, like smart home products, only use the 2.4GHz band because the range is better and it’s a lot cheaper. But it means that the band is also overcrowded and slow, making it great for your doorbell and robovac, but lackluster for Twitch streaming.

So, what am I looking for?

Right now, the market is full of mature Wi-Fi 6 and 6E devices, and most new systems available to buy are capable of taking advantage of the faster speeds they offer. This guide focuses on Wi-Fi 6E gear since it’s what we think it’s more than enough to satisfy almost everyone’s at-home Wi-Fi needs.

What about Wi-Fi 7?

We’re now seeing the first generation of Wi-Fi 7 devices available to buy, but we don’t recommend you do so immediately. The Wi-Fi 7 standard is still so new that there’s little to no reason for you to rush out and buy one for your home. The hardware is tremendously expensive and while Wi-Fi 7 will, eventually, offer some great benefits over 6E, it’s not as transformative an upgrade as 6E. Not to mention, Wi-Fi 7 is so new that almost none of your home’s devices will be able to take advantage of its big-ticket features. I’d estimate you won’t need to worry about upgrading to Wi-Fi 7 for at least five years, if not longer.

Range and speed

All Wi-Fi routers boast a theoretical broadcast range and a theoretical top speed, and in some cases external antennas to boost signal directionality — but these figures don’t mean much. After all, manufacturers can’t control your ISP’s real speed, the materials and layout of your home or where you put your Wi-Fi gear. Raw speed isn’t everything, either, and you likely need a lot less than the internet speeds your provider is advertising. What matters more is how consistent your connection is between rooms and across devices.. After all, Netflix needs just 15 Mbps to push a single 4K video stream to your home. As cool as it is to say you’ve got all these hundreds of Mbps, factors like latency and reliability are far more crucial to a happy internet life. And unless you have Gigabit internet that can reach speeds of up to 1 Gbps, you won’t need a mesh router that offers that spec.

Backhaul

Mesh Wi-Fi systems work by connecting every hardware node to a single wireless network, letting them all communicate with each other. Imagine four people in a busy, noisy restaurant all trying to order their dinner from a weary staff member, all at once. Now imagine, while this is going on, that four more people at that same table are also trying to tell a funny anecdote. It’s no surprise that it might take a long time for the right information to reach its intended destination.

To combat this, higher-end mesh routers offer dedicated wireless backhaul; a slice of the spectrum for node-to-node communication. So rather than everyone talking at once in the same space, the conversations are essentially separated, reducing the invisible clutter in the air. Because there’s less confusing cross-chatter, everything moves faster, offering a significant performance boost to those systems.

Connectivity

These days, even your washing machine can have a wireless connection, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the joys of wired internet. No matter how fast Wi-Fi is, a hard line will always be faster, and some gear, like Philips’ Hue bridge, still needs an ethernet connection. Plenty of routers can also use these hard connections as backhaul, eliminating further wireless clutter.

It’s convenient for spread-out systems and power users, but it will mean running more wires through your home. The most common standard is Cat 5e, or gigabit ethernet which, unsurprisingly, has a top speed of 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps). Since Ethernet cables are backward compatible, you should be able to easily find one that works with your system. However, to get the most out of your mesh routers, it’s worth investing in an Ethernet cable that meets the standard your router uses — if it’s Cat 5e, use a Cat 5e cable. You can check your router’s specs via the manufacturer’s website to be sure.

Flexibility and scalability

Mesh routers enable you to add (or subtract) modules from your home network to suit your needs. D-Link’s Alan Jones said users should “check how scalable the prospective product is” before you buy. This sense of scale doesn’t just apply to the number of nodes on the network, but how many simultaneous connections it can handle.

It’s also worth looking at ASUS’ AiMesh products, which can combine mesh Wi-Fi gear and its standard “spider” Wi-Fi routers. If you’ve got a tricky part of your home, you can bolt on an ultra-power standalone Wi-Fi router to a compatible mesh.

Placement

Mesh networks replace one big piece of hardware with a series of identical nodes that you scatter around your home. You connect one to your modem (usually over ethernet), and then scatter the rest around the place for the best coverage. A good rule of thumb is to place each node no more than two rooms away from the last one, rather than sticking them at the far ends of your home.

Bear in mind, every physical obstacle between a Wi-Fi node, its siblings and your devices will hurt your overall performance. You should aim to place them, at the very least, at waist height on furniture in open air, without too many obstructions. The reason many mesh Wi-Fi products are designed to look like an inoffensive white doodad is so you don’t feel compelled to hide them behind your TV.

Other mesh Wi-Fi router systems we tested

Amazon Eero Pro 7

Eero built its reputation on easy to use yet powerful mesh systems that offer a lot of good in a relatively small and affordable package. Setup is effortless, the app running things is clean and simple, and you get the added benefit of backwards compatibility with older hardware. Sadly, the issue with every Eero system is that so many basic management features, like parental controls, are paywalled behind the company’s Eero Plus subscription for $100 a year.

Amazon Eero 6E

Eero Pro 6E is an “easy” device, the sort a total novice can set up on their own and thrive with for years on end. There’s little brainwork required to get things set up, and the app has a clean UI with plenty of hand-holding. But, as with the Eero Pro 7, the fact that so many basic management tools are paywalled irks me, especially since you can get plenty of them for free with Google’s rival offering.

Netgear Orbi 960

The Orbi 96T0 (RBKE963) is Netgear’s flagship mesh Wi-Fi product, which the company calls the “world’s most powerful Wi-Fi 6E system.” It’s also one of the most expensive consumer-level kits on the market, setting you back $1,499.99 for a three pack. It’s a fantastic piece of gear, but it’s worth saying that the subset of people who could, would or should buy it remains far smaller than you might expect. Ultimately, I feel that if you’re paying luxury prices, you should expect a luxury product. There were plenty of times during testing that I went looking for a feature that was either only available via the web client, or behind a paywall. While, yes, much of your cash is going to the superlative hardware, but for this sort of money, the fact you have to pay extra for some table-stakes features is insulting. If you’re looking for a new Wi-Fi system and aren’t prepared to spend almost $1,500, it’s worth considering our other top picks for the best Wi-Fi routers and mesh systems.

How we test Wi-Fi routers

My home covers around 2,200 square feet across three stories with the office on the third floor. It’s relatively long and thin, with the living room at the front of the house, the kitchen at the back and the three bedrooms on the first floor. Its age means there are a lot of solid brick walls, old-school lathe and plaster as well as aluminum foil-backed insulation boards to help with energy efficiency. There are two major Wi-Fi dead zones in the house: The bathroom and the third bedroom behind it, since there’s lots of old and new pipework in the walls and floors.

For mesh routers with two nodes, I place the first in my living room, connected via ethernet to my cable modem with the second on the first floor landing in the (ostensible) center of the house. For three-node sets, the third goes in my kitchen, which I’ve found is the optimal layout to get the bulk of my house covered in Wi-Fi. Fundamentally, my home poses enough challenges that if it succeeds here, it stands a very good chance of succeeding in your place.

Each mesh is judged on ease of setup, Wi-Fi coverage, reliability, speed and any additional features that it advertises. I look at how user-friendly each companion app is from the perspective of a novice rather than an expert given you shouldn’t need to be a network engineer to do this sort of thing. Tests I do include checking for dead zones, moving from room to room to measure consistency of connectivity and streaming multiple videos at once to replicate common usage patterns.

Mesh Wi-Fi system FAQs

This is the section of our mesh Wi-Fi buyer’s guide where we talk about the stuff that most people just glide past. If you’re not familiar with technology, it can be intimidating if people talk about these things as if you’re expected to already know. So here’s a very simple, very basic rundown of some of the stuff you might have missed in very basic terms.

What’s the difference between a Wi-Fi router and a mesh router?

A Wi-Fi router is a box that usually sits close to wherever the internet comes into your home and pumps out information over radio waves. A mesh router, meanwhile, is a set of smaller devices, one of which sits next to your internet connection while the rest are scattered around your home. A single Wi-Fi router is great if your home is small, your needs aren’t too demanding, or if your home doesn’t have many radio-blocking obstructions that mean those signals can’t reach every corner of your home. But, much like standing next to a radio transmitter and then walking away from it in a straight line, after a while, the signal will degrade.

That’s the problem a mesh system is designed to solve, since it will take the signal from your modem and pump to the other mesh devices, known as nodes, in your home. That way, instead of having one big router in one part of your home, you have several small ones that ensure you have good Wi-Fi connectivity all over. It also helps ensure that there’s no risk of dropping your connection as you move around — a mesh router system makes it easy to, for instance, walk from room to room watching Netflix and know you won’t miss a single frame.

What’s the difference between a Wi-Fi extender and a mesh system?

Oh boy. Wi-Fi extenders, or repeaters, are small devices designed to push Wi-Fi a little further than your Wi-Fi router can stretch. They’re cheap, compact and often come in the form of little boxes that sit on your plug sockets with the hope of pushing Wi-Fi to a signal-sparse corner of your home. They are, and I can’t put this delicately enough, often a big pile of rubbish and are often not worth your time. Especially since the price of mesh routers has fallen to within most people’s budgets.

What is a wireless backhaul?

As we explained above, mesh Wi-Fi systems work by connecting every hardware node to a single wireless network, letting them all communicate with each other. Imagine four people in a busy, noisy restaurant all trying to order their dinner from a weary staff member, all at once. Now imagine, while this is going on, that four more people at that same table are also trying to tell a funny anecdote. It’s no surprise that it might take a long time for the right information to reach its intended destination.

To combat this, higher-end mesh routers offer dedicated wireless backhaul; a slice of the spectrum for node-to-node communication. So rather than everyone talking at once in the same space, the conversations are essentially separated, reducing the invisible clutter in the air. Because there’s less confusing cross-chatter, everything moves faster, offering a significant performance boost to those systems.

Is it better to hard wire instead of using a mesh Wi-Fi system?

This is a great question that doesn’t have a simple answer.

It is (almost) always preferable to connect devices with a wire, in this case Ethernet, than to use Wi-Fi. The speeds are faster, it’s more reliable and your data is less vulnerable to the slings and arrows of the laws of physics. Hell, I spent about a year trying to work out how to build an iPhone to Ethernet connector back in the bad old days of Wi-Fi.

But your ability to do so depends on your level of DIY skills and / or how much money you want to spend on contractors. Wiring your home for Ethernet if you don’t have the infrastructure already can be a costly and time-consuming process. Particularly if you don’t want ugly wires running along your baseboards and under your carpets or across your hardwood floors.

If you’re building your own home or can do some serious DIY, then hard wiring is a fantastic thing to have. It goes wonderfully hand-in-glove with mesh networks too, since you’ll be able to hook up your nodes to the network for even better speeds.

But if I’m honest, advances in Wi-Fi technology mean I’d only go for hard wiring if I really believed I needed the sort of speed it offers. Unless you’re a Twitch streamer running your own 24/7 content studio, it’s probably overkill.

When we started renovating our 140-year-old home, I had Ethernet installed in the living room, the master and second bedroom and in my office, all at the front of the house. I can’t use it for my mesh since I’d need to put the wiring through the middle of the house. If I ever had the wiring done again, I would do so as I know I’ll instantly see a meaningful improvement in both my connection speed and reliability. But I wouldn’t spend several thousand pounds to have it done just for the sake of it.



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Credit cards payment being made through phone
Gaming Gear

Fraud fears are holding SMBs back from upgrading their payment systems

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  • Consumers don’t trust businesses that request bank transfers
  • UK SMEs lost £6.15bn directly, and £31.4bn indirectly, in 2024
  • Pay by Bank is secure, quick and helps prevent fraud

Open banking platform Tink says that SMEs in the UK alone lost £6.15 billion in direct sales last year because consumers don’t trust manual bank transfers, with a further £31.4 billion in indirect losses associated with customers not returning.

The news comes as Authorized Push Payment (APP) fraud – where customers are tricked into sending money from their account to a fraudster’s account – accounted for £450 million in losses throughout 2024.

Two in five (41%) consumers now admit to walking away when they’re asked to make a manual bank transfer, with nearly three in five (57%) not trusting businesses that request payments via transfer.


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Consumers are (rightly) concerned about bank transfers

The majority (86%) note feeling uneasy if the account name doesn’t match the business, with a similar number (84%) also concerned if businesses don’t offer multiple payment options.

“Manual bank transfers are often no longer fit for purpose and are holding the UK economy back,” said Ian Morrin, Head of Payments at Tink.

Despite widespread consumer concern, the majority (87%) of SMEs that accept manual bank transfers still rely on them regularly, or as their preferred payment method, highlighting a distinct need for modernization.

This is even more worrying considering that SMEs make up 99.9% of the UK’s business population, leading to billions in losses.

“Secure, recognised payment methods, whether that’s Pay by Bank, digital wallets or card payments, give customers the confidence to complete purchases while helping businesses improve conversion, reduce fraud risk, and meet rising expectations around payment experience,” Morrin added.

Pay by Bank, enabled by open banking, opens up banks and services to communicate with each other, so instead of entering card details, customers can click a link to send a payment directly from their account, approving it in the app.

Tink describes Pay by Bank as cost-effective for businesses, but it also helps to reduce fraud and losses. With payments also settling more quickly than legacy methods, it can speed up processes on ecommerce platforms and lead to higher levels of satisfaction.

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Product Reviews

OpenAI and Anthropic conducted safety evaluations of each other’s AI systems

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Most of the time, AI companies are locked in a race to the top, treating each other as rivals and competitors. Today, OpenAI and Anthropic revealed that they agreed to evaluate the alignment of each other’s publicly available systems and shared the results of their analyses. The full reports get pretty technical, but are worth a read for anyone who’s following the nuts and bolts of AI development. A broad summary showed some flaws with each company’s offerings, as well as revealing pointers for how to improve future safety tests.

Anthropic said it evaluated OpenAI models for “sycophancy, whistleblowing, self-preservation, and supporting human misuse, as well as capabilities related to undermining AI safety evaluations and oversight.” Its review found that o3 and o4-mini models from OpenAI fell in line with results for its own models, but raised concerns about possible misuse with the ​​GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 general-purpose models. The company also said sycophancy was an issue to some degree with all tested models except for o3.

Anthropic’s tests did not include OpenAI’s most recent release. GPT-5 has a feature called Safe Completions, which is meant to protect users and the public against potentially dangerous queries. OpenAI recently faced its first wrongful death lawsuit after a tragic case where a teenager discussed attempts and plans for suicide with ChatGPT for months before taking his own life.

On the flip side, OpenAI ran tests on Anthropic models for instruction hierarchy, jailbreaking, hallucinations and scheming. The Claude models generally performed well in instruction hierarchy tests, and had a high refusal rate in hallucination tests, meaning they were less likely to offer answers in cases where uncertainty meant their responses could be wrong.

The move for these companies to conduct a joint assessment is intriguing, particularly since OpenAI allegedly violated Anthropic’s terms of service by having programmers use Claude in the process of building new GPT models, which led to Anthropic barring OpenAI’s access to its tools earlier this month. But safety with AI tools has become a bigger issue as more critics and legal experts seek guidelines to protect users, particularly minors.



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Gaming Gear

Overwatch 2 will overhaul its progression systems to show more visual flair in matches

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The next season of Overwatch 2 will bring more than the usual new hero and battle pass to the team shooter. Blizzard announced that Season 18 will introduce a new take on the progression system. As they currently stand, the progression numbers feel pretty divorced from the gameplay; this revamp introduces new ways to display your prowess to teammates and foes in matches as well as some welcome changes to how you see and equip your rewards. 

The new Progression 2.0 system has overhauled the visual side. For starters, there will be new portrait frames that increase in fanciness every 20 levels, capping at level 60. These Ascended borders will be displayed when you pick your hero for a match. Between the different Ascended frames, players will unlock five tiers of hero badges that also display in Hero Select under your portrait. 

Overwatch 2 Hero Badges

(Blizzard)

In addition to the new flash, the Hero Select screen will show your allies a card with your top heroes on it. I doubt anyone will pay too much attention to cards in the Open Queue matches, so this seems like a Competitive-angled addition. It could help make it easy to build a team composition based on the whole group’s strengths, creating a test of your crew’s cooperation ability before the game even starts. Blizzard clarified that in Competitive, opponents won’t be able to see your portrait borders until 10-15 seconds after a match begins, and hero cards won’t be displayed to an enemy until one of you eliminates each other. That means nobody should be able to use your hero card against you in the ban phase.

I’ve almost never thought about the rewards I get for progression stats because it’s unclear when I’ve gotten a new item and I rarely bother searching for them in my cosmetics collections, so having a dedicated progression menu added should place a new focus on tracking how far you’ve gotten with a particular character. The hero-specific rewards on the horizon will be displayed on that page, and already-unlocked items can be equipped directly from that menu. Blizzard is also offering occasional Epic and Legendary loot box freebies as you rise through the ranks for each hero, which is always welcome. 

The progression levels will be rewarded retroactively when the season starts. For long-time fans, that means you can expect to see a whole bunch of rewards to browse through when you first log in during Season 18. For new players, there will be more credits and cosmetics available to unlock in the first 20 levels. That first set of 20 levels will also be scaled to be quicker to complete, while later levels will require more time.

The new season kicks off tomorrow, on August 26. Season 18 will also bring a new option for keyboard and mouse controls on console and the permanent addition of watery support hero Wuyang. 



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European Technology Sovereignty Watch
Gaming Gear

Europe’s silent tech crisis deepens as entire industries run on American systems while sovereignty slogans collapse under Washington’s shifting political winds and corporate dominance

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  • European firms are deeply locked into foreign office suites and systems
  • American platforms manage the communication backbones of Europe’s largest corporations
  • Reliance on external providers exposes utilities and healthcare to foreign oversight

For years, European governments and corporations leaned heavily on American technology offerings instead of nurturing local alternatives.

That choice now carries visible consequences, as sanctions and shifting trade rules brought in by the Trump administration drastically reshape the balance of power.

A recent analysis of business email domains across Europe by Proton shows a striking majority of publicly listed firms rely on American providers such as Google and Microsoft.


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Data reveals the depth of reliance

Behind the rhetoric of digital sovereignty, the reality is that much of Europe’s digital infrastructure rests on technology stacks that entities outside its borders control. This is not just about convenience software but also about essential systems that underpin finance, healthcare, and utilities.

Email may appear mundane, but it often serves as the gateway to office software, online collaboration platforms, and cloud-based storage.

When a company commits to a provider for email, it usually adopts the full suite, embedding foreign technology deep into its operations.

This trend is not limited to smaller economies but also includes the continent’s largest players, where dependence cuts across industries from energy and telecommunications to pharmaceuticals.

In countries like Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, over 90% of publicly listed companies rely on American services for email and related infrastructure.

However, the shocker is probably Ireland, which is at loggerheads with the US on several policies, but 93% of its businesses depend on American tech.

The UK, although mostly an ally of the US, has an alarming 88% of businesses relying on US tech, while other European heavyweights like Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland recorded 74%, 72%, and 68% of businesses relying on US tech, respectively.

Even France, which often champions its own autonomy, sees two out of three (66%) companies tied to US providers.

Eastern European countries like Bulgaria (16%) and Romania (39%) are the least dependent on American tech, and Russia is not even on the list of nations dependent on the US.

National security concerns emerge when utilities, transport systems, and healthcare facilities communicate through networks governed by foreign jurisdictions, but perhaps not when the network belongs to the US.

The reliance stretches far beyond convenience; it embeds itself in the very systems Europeans use every day – dependence on foreign technology does not just present a financial vulnerability; it raises questions about surveillance, geopolitical leverage, and the future of innovation.

AI training programs outside Europe’s control can sweep in sensitive business data, while reliance on external platforms exposes companies to warrantless legal demands.

This arrangement has also fostered a talent and capital drain, as engineers and investors direct their focus toward Silicon Valley rather than strengthening European ecosystems, whether through proprietary services or alternative Linux distros.

Some argue that American technology simply offers the best tools available, which may be true in terms of efficiency and global reach, yet the consequences of reliance are increasingly hard to ignore, since the US can turn off the switch at any time, and thousands of companies will be in crisis.

The fact that so many European firms cannot operate without American software demonstrates the fragile nature of Europe’s autonomy.

Rather than securing independence, Europe risks locking itself further into external dependencies at a moment when political winds in Washington are shifting.

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