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Famous Former Hacker Kevin Mitnick Has Died Aged 59
Mitnick became a White Hat hacker after a long career of infiltrating corporate and government systems.
On July 16th, one of the world’s most wanted computer hackers, Kevin Mitnick, passed away at 59 years old. According to his obituary, Mitnick was battling pancreatic cancer for over a year while undergoing treatment at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“Much of his life reads like a fiction story,” the obituary reads, and it’s probably the perfect way to describe this enigmatic man’s journey. Mitnick first infiltrated a computer system way back in 1979, and was sentenced to a year in prison in 1988 for copying a company’s software.
In the 90s, Mitnick hacked into Pacific Bell’s voicemail computers while under supervised release and continued to hack into phone networks, corporate and government websites. The hacker eventually became a fugitive and wasn’t caught until 1995, when he was charged with computer fraud. Authorities believed that Mitnick had access to corporate trade secrets worth millions of dollars, though his fans claim he never stole from the general public.
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After spending five years in prison, Kevin Mitnick became a White Hat hacker and cybersecurity consultant for KnowBe4. He is survived by his wife, Kimberley, who is expecting his child.
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At I/O 2026, Sundar Pichai Concedes AI Must Deliver Real Value
Gemini 3.5, a personal agent called Spark, agentic shopping, and Android XR eyewear are all aimed at making AI feel useful, not just impressive.
Google’s annual I/O developer conference (I/O 2026) has recently become a status update on the same question: can the company turn its AI spending into products people use every day? This year, chief executive Sundar Pichai described Google as being in a phase of hyper progress, while conceding this is the part of the cycle where people want to see real value in the products they use on a day-to-day basis.
The strategy on display was to push agents — AI systems that act on a user’s behalf — into nearly every Google product at once. Search now has an “intelligent search box” that returns generated explainer videos alongside links. Gmail, Docs, YouTube and Maps are gaining their own agent layers, including a Docs Live feature that turns spoken instructions into drafted text with citations.
Two new models, Gemini 3.5 and a cheaper Gemini 3.5 Flash, arrived the same day. Google says 900 million people now use Gemini, and that more than 50 billion images have been generated with it. The pricing tier names are likely to confuse buyers: a new AI Ultra plan launches at $100 a month, while the older Gemini AI Ultra drops from $250 to $200.
The flashier announcements were Gemini Omni, a video generator pitched as a more realistic answer to OpenAI’s discontinued Sora 2, and Gemini Spark, a personal agent that handles recurring tasks across a user’s Google account. A new universal shopping cart lets agents complete purchases across multiple retailers from inside Google itself, placing the company between the merchant and the buyer, and also owning the checkout.
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Google also confirmed its Android XR eyewear, built with Samsung and frames from Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Audio-only glasses ship this autumn; a display-equipped version, which would superimpose live translations into the wearer’s field of view, is still in development. Both sets translate, however only the display version shows you the result.
What Pichai did not resolve is the bargain underneath all this. An agent is only useful to the degree it knows your calendar, your inbox, your shopping history and your physical surroundings. Google has now confirmed that, in time, the same context may carry advertising.
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