M&S still not taking online orders, Spotify to raise prices outside US

Marks & Spencer (M&S) says it has stopped taking online orders as the company struggles to recover from a cyber attack. Customers began reporting problems last weekend, and on Tuesday the retailer confirmed it was facing a “cyber incident”. Now, M&S has entirely paused orders on its website and apps – including for food deliveries and clothes – and says it will refund orders placed by customers on Friday. The firm’s shares fell by 5% following the announcement, before recovering. Online orders remained paused on Saturday morning. “We are truly sorry for this inconvenience,” the retailer wrote in a post on X, external. BBC

Microsoft has good news for anyone with corner office ambitions. In the future we’re all going to be bosses – of AI employees. The tech company is predicting the rise of a new kind of business, called a “frontier firm”, where ultimately a human worker directs autonomous artificial intelligence agents to carry out tasks. Everyone, according to Microsoft, will become an agent boss. “As agents increasingly join the workforce, we’ll see the rise of the agent boss: someone who builds, delegates to and manages agents to amplify their impact and take control of their career in the age of AI,” wrote Jared Spataro, a Microsoft executive, in a blogpost this week.  Guardian 

Spotify will raise its subscription prices in dozens of countries around the world this summer, according to people familiar with the matter, as the music streaming leader prioritises profitability amid a soaring stock price. The group was planning to raise prices by the equivalent of €1 on individual subscriptions in countries across Europe and Latin America as early as June, these people said. Spotify would not raise prices in the US, its largest market, this summer, the people said. The streaming service increased its monthly price in the country in July 2024. Spotify declined to comment. FT.com

In addition to ending support for its oldest models, Google announced today that it will no longer launch new Nest thermostats in Europe. Google cites how “heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes.”  As such, the 4th gen Nest Learning Thermostat announced last year and any other future models are not launching in Europe. 9to5Google

Tap into the future. #TaptheNext #HuaweiLaunch #HUAWEIWatch5 pic.twitter.com/zBV1sm6KJP

— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) April 22, 2025

Only a few days have passed since Huawei confirmed it had a successor to the Watch 4 waiting in the wings. Initially, Huawei revealed very little about the Watch 5. Now though, the company has published a pair of short teaser videos online. Seemingly, the Watch 5 is set to arrive with a modernised design compared to the Watch 4 and last year’s Watch GT 5 (curr. $226 on Amazon). For example, the teaser videos paint the picture that the Watch 5 has a flat frame like many modern smartphones, as well as thin bezels surrounding its presumed OLED display. NotebookCheck

The secretive Russian satellite in space that U.S. officials believe is connected to a nuclear anti-satellite weapon program has appeared to be spinning uncontrollably, suggesting it may no longer be functioning in what could be a setback for Moscow’s space weapon efforts, according to U.S. analysts. The Cosmos 2553 satellite, launched by Russia weeks before invading Ukraine in 2022, has had various bouts of what appears to be errant spinning over the past year, according to Doppler radar data from space-tracking firm LeoLabs and optical data from Slingshot Aerospace shared with Reuters. MSN