News

The second most popular TV show on Netflix worldwide comes straight outta Scotland, and it's racking up rave reviews, making it one of the best Netflix shows. Dept. Q deserves every one of the five stars it's getting, because it's an absolute blast.Dept. Q has so far spent two weeks in the Netflix top ten for global TV, with 8.9 million views and 73,400,000 hours – so almost everyone who starts watching it keeps watching it.On the face of it, the show is just another cop drama. You know the type: maverick cop battling demons, a woman in peril at the hands of a sinister figure. But it's much more than that, which is why I pretty much inhaled every episode.What's so great about Dept. QThe show is based on Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Danish detective stories, but the action has been moved to Edinburgh in Scotland. Matthew Goode plays detective Carl Morck, and it's clear that the man is an insufferable ass who is rightly loathed by many of his colleagues, even after he survives a murderous event. That event has terrible consequences for his friend and partner, played by the always brilliant Jamie Sives, and it's clear that Monck is increasingly weighed dow by the guilt of that.Monck is given the job of investigating cold cases, and gets a team of fellow misfits: former Syrian police officer Akram Salim (Alexjev Manvelov), a lovely man with many secrets, and the well-meaning but traumatised cadet Rose (Leah Byrne). Together they focus on a single case: the disappearance of lawyer Merritt Linguard (Chloe Pirie).What follows is an extremely tense race against time to find and save Merritt, interwoven with the interpersonal dramas of Monck, his team, and his home life. It's often very funny, especially in the home bits, and the script is whip-smart and razor-sharp throughout. And the cast is brilliant, with fine performances throughout and the very welcome appearances of Mark Bonnar, Kelly Macdonald and Sanjeev Kholi.Without giving any spoilers I do need to warn you that the central disappearance teeters very much on the edge of voyeurism: I'm not a big fan of seeing women (or anyone else) undergoing terrible treatment and I think in a couple of instances the camera lingered a little too long on things in much the way that the Idris Elba show Luther sometimes did. But maybe I'm just easily upset.If like me you're a Scot there's also fun to be had nitpicking: why does everyone in Edinburgh have a Glasgow accent? Don't they know that pub is nowhere near that bit of town? Do Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives have to appear in everything (not that I'm complaining)? And it's interesting to compare what you can do with a Netflix budget compared to the much more modest means of Scotland's own broadcasters: I'm often excited by the arrival of a new homegrown drama only to be deeply disappointed. Whereas I loved this.Dept Q currently has 84% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics, and 94% from viewers. It's available to stream on Netflix now.You may also enjoyNew Netflix movies: every original film you can watch on the best streaming service in June 2025Stephen Graham's powerful drama Adolescence has performed so well for Netflix that it's beaten Stranger Things' streaming recordNetflix Tudum 2025: every announcement from Stranger Things, One Piece, Squid Game, Wednesday and more

New update for Windows 11 24H2 packing gaming fixes was paused for some PCsThose devices had a ‘compatibility issue’ meaning they needed a revised updateMicrosoft said this tweaked update should be out for all Windows 11 users by now, but some are still reporting that they don’t have the patchWindows 11’s latest update has arrived, packing important fixes for PC gamers running version 24H2 of the OS, but it’s suffered an unusual technical glitch that’s causing some confusion.Windows Latest noticed that Microsoft hit the pause button with the rollout of the June update (formally known as KB5060842), at least for some users after it started to be deployed yesterday.As Microsoft let us know via the Windows message center: “Note: This update is being gradually rolled out to devices running Windows 11, version 24H2 throughout the day. We’ve identified a compatibility issue affecting a limited set of these devices. If your device is affected, you’ll receive a revised update with all the June 2025 security improvements by the end of the day.”Microsoft didn’t specify what the compatibility problem is, but given the language used in terms of a ‘limited’ amount of devices being affected, the issue is being played down.However, looking at a couple of Reddit threads – primarily the official announcement of the patch from Jen Gentleman of the Windows engineering team – there are quite a number of confused Windows 11 users wondering where their update is. Also, there are people with multiple PCs indicating that one has received the June patch, but others haven’t.In theory, at the time of writing, yesterday ended a few hours ago (based on US Pacific Time, as used in Microsoft’s post on the message center) – and so everyone should have the patch by now. (Either the original, or tweaked update to resolve the compatibility wrinkle, which seemingly has a slightly different version number).However, there are comments on the above Reddit thread along the lines of: “Is it not past midnight now? Still no update yet. What’s going on with this ‘compatibility issue.’”Analysis: what’s going on – and what’s the big deal anyway?(Image credit: Future / Jasmine Mannan)Microsoft may have slipped with its deadline here. I’d hardly be surprised if this is the case, and it could just be a minor delay. However, what’s a bit more worrying is some scattered reports on Reddit of people ending up with broken operating systems (frozen on green screens or black screens) after applying this June update. There aren’t enough of those complaints to be truly concerned yet, but this is something to keep an eye on.Could those be folks who accidentally got the update through for a PC vulnerable to the compatibility bug, before Microsoft put the brakes on? Maybe, but that’s just guesswork. Still, if you are getting impatient – and gamers might be in particular – I’d strongly advise against manually installing the June update if it’s not being piped to your PC via Windows Update automatically. Mainly because you may not be receiving it for a good reason, and by forcing the upgrade through, you might encounter a showstopping problem.Gamers in particular will be keen for KB5060842 because this patch applies some crucial tweaks as mentioned at the outset. That includes the fix for problems with some PC games locking up in Windows 11 24H2 and improvements with stability for Nvidia GPUs (as well as a possible resolution for issues with mouse or keyboard lag). All this was seen in the preview version of this patch last month.Another new feature introduced with this patch is cross-device resume. This allows you to seamlessly resume working on OneDrive files between your PC and smartphone (and it’s going to evolve into a grander vision of this functionality eventually).There’s also a bunch of exclusive powers for Copilot+ PCs, including an Ask Copilot option for the Click to Do feature, and a change that has come in from left-field which wasn’t in the preview update in May. This is a limit of 60 days that has been imposed on system restore points, so from now on, restore points that are older than two months will vanish into the ether.For the uninitiated, system restore is a feature that allows you to take a snapshot of the current configuration of your PC in a working state, so that if some kind of bug wreaks havoc on your device, you can in theory (assuming you can access the desktop) rewind time back to that point. Not that there’s any guarantee it’ll work, mind, but it’s an option that’s worth trying when troubleshooting.This is a feature that Microsoft hasn’t touched in a long while, so why mess with it in this way now? That’s a good question, and I can’t think of a good answer, really. If I had to guess, maybe system restore just isn’t used so much these days, so it’s being scaled back.You might also like...macOS Tahoe 26 is official - here's everything you need to know about all the new featuresCan’t upgrade to Windows 11? This Linux project wants to save your old PC from the scrapheap when Windows 10 support endsWindows 11 is getting more AI shortcuts, but is Microsoft in danger of cluttering up the OS with AI creep?

Chinese police are preparing to monitor VPN and Telegram users with AI-powered toolsAI technology was a key element at the largest policing tech expo held in Beijing last MayPeople in China cannot access Telegram, the most popular social media app, and international news sites without a VPNWhen considering the future of policing, China reserves the spotlight for AI-powered surveillance – and VPN and Telegram users are among the targets.As reported by the South China Morning Post, AI technology was the key element throughout the 12th China International Exhibition on Police Equipment, the largest policing tech expo held in Beijing last May.Alongside DeepSeek-inspired LLM models that support criminal investigations and identify high-risk individuals, two tools are set to make the lives of millions of Chinese people who regularly use the best VPNs even harder.China's AI crackdown to online dissent and censorshipWhile it's difficult to estimate the number of people using a virtual private network (VPN) in China, we do know that the tool is crucial for accessing the likes of WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, as well as international and independent news sites – the South China Morning Post included.As Freedom House wrote in its latest report, "Chinese internet users have faced the world’s worst conditions for internet freedom for a decade."Severe legal repercussions for online activities and strict censorship, the report explains, are complemented by the work of authorities restricting access to anticensorship tools like VPNs.Today, only a handful of VPN services for China function under these adverse conditions. Despite this, however, China's law enforcement seeks to become even more effective at blocking them.This is, at least, what a technology company from Nanjing, a city in Eastern China, plans to do. During the event, the firm "showcased a tool capable of detecting such use [of VPNs]," the South China Morning Post reported.A VPN is security software that encrypts users' internet connections while spoofing their real IP address. The latter skill is exactly what lets people bypass strict content geo-restrictions in place in China. (Image credit: Getty Images)Most of the people using a VPN are likely to do so to access Telegram, among other things. The popular messaging app and its official website have been blocked since 2015 in China, following a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on its servers.If you cannot prevent it, you can control it, right? This is what the Third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security – the country's top police body – proposed to do with its new tools that, they say, can monitor Telegram.This surveillance software is said to be able to monitor all Telegram accounts with Chinese mobile phone numbers, as these include strict real-name requirements."To date, the tool has collected more than 30 billion messages and monitored 70 million Telegram accounts, as well as 390,000 public channels and groups," said the group, as per the South China Morning Post.Most crucially, however, this tool also seeks to target online dissent by scanning all Telegram messages related to politics and Hong Kong."The Institute cited the widespread use of Telegram by anti-government protesters in Hong Kong in 2019 as one of the reasons for developing the tool," wrote the South China Morning Post.You might also likeMillions of free VPN users have inadvertently sent their data to ChinaTelegram pledges to exit the market rather than "undermine encryption with backdoors"Is the future of censorship-resistant VPNs no VPNs?