The court delivered a devastating judgment in January 2022. In a 1,700-page ruling, the judge found that Lynch had been “aware of improprieties in Autonomy’s accounting practices” and had been “dishonestly involved in manipulating the accounts.” The systematic accounting practices weren’t just aggressive. They were, the judge concluded, a deliberate scheme to mislead. American prosecutors, who had been waiting for the UK proceedings to conclude, now had the ammunition they needed. Extradition proceedings, already in motion, gained momentum.

VI. Against All Odds

Lynch’s forced travel to the United States in May 2023 marked the beginning of an extraordinary ordeal. Federal prosecutors in San Francisco charged him in a 16-count indictment that included conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy. If convicted on all counts, the 57-year-old faced up to 25 years in prison—effectively a life sentence.

Despite US prosecutors promising the English court that Lynch wouldn’t be incarcerated pretrial, Judge Charles Breyer immediately sent him to jail upon arrival, his lead attorney Reid Weingarten recalled. “That was probably the lowest moment.” He ended up in jail for only one day, though, after posting a $100 million bond. The mathematics of his situation became Lynch’s obsession. “What are the odds?” he would constantly ask his friends and lawyers, especially Weingarten, who found it maddening. “It was the stupidest question ever,” he would later recall. “There’s just too many variables.” At the same time, he respected Lynch’s genuine curiosity—“there was nothing he didn’t know about or didn’t want to know about,” from astrophysics to politics, culture, music, even American baseball.

The trial began in March 2024, with Lynch joined by his former VP of finance Stephen Chamberlain as codefendant. From the start, it was clear that Lynch’s team had it easier. Hussain’s conviction had taught them the playbook of US prosecutors, and they’d had years to ready a new defense. Each night, Lynch and his legal team would work out who the prosecution was going to bring the next day. They also hired a “shadow jury”—a barman and a clerk paid to sit through all 11 weeks of proceedings and register independent impressions.

Most white-collar defendants stay silent; Lynch insisted on taking the stand. He presented himself as a down-to-earth British entrepreneur who had been victimized by American corporate incompetence. He walked the jury through his working-class background, his academic achievements. When prosecutors pressed him on specific transactions, he deflected skillfully—these were matters for the finance team, he was focused on technology and strategy.

One of the most effective moments came when Lynch described the experience with HP. “I watched them take this beautiful company and just wreck it,” he told the jury, emotion creeping in. “And then they had the audacity to blame me for their incompetence.”

The verdict came on June 6, 2024. As the jury foreman read “not guilty” to all remaining charges, Lynch cried. So did his wife. Chamberlain was also acquitted on all counts. Speaking to journalists later, Lynch reflected on what he’d endured: “It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life,” he said. “The question is, what do you want to do with it?”

VII. The Celebration

As part of his recovery process, Lynch planned a long summer aboard the Bayesian, full of friends and celebration. For one particular outing in August, he invited along everyone who stayed close to him during the darkest period of his life. Christopher Morvillo, the Clifford Chance partner who had helped quarterback the US legal strategy, was there with his wife, Neda. Jonathan Bloomer, the Morgan Stanley international executive who had served as a character witness, had accepted the invitation along with his wife, Judy.

The yacht itself was a 56-meter sailing vessel with a dark blue hull and a minimalist ­Japanese-style interior, later referred to by The Times of London as a “masterpiece of engineering and opulence.” The yacht’s original name was Salute; Lynch rechristened it the Bayesian. The vessel was magnificent but also an anomaly: It had a single, towering aluminum mast.

The following account is drawn from official investigation reports, videos, photos, and people familiar with the accounts of the crew and survivors. The August sailing was planned as a leisurely tour of Sicily’s northern coast and Aeolian Islands. The group started in Milazzo, then spent four days exploring the volcanic archipelago. They anchored off Isola di Vulcano one day for a few hours to watch the active crater glow against the sky, visited Panarea, and enjoyed the crystal clear waters around Dattilo. It was exactly the kind of relaxed, intimate celebration Lynch had envisioned. It was also a sendoff for Hannah, an aspiring poet. The two loved to spar over meals, arguing about politics and world events, with Lynch playing the contrarian.

That weekend, Lynch received two devastating calls from Andy Kanter about Stephen Chamberlain, his Autonomy codefen­dant. The first call, on Saturday, Lynch answered with a happy hello—laughter and cheer audible in the background—before Kanter delivered what he called “the gravest news”: Chamberlain, a middle-aged soccer fan and avid runner, had been struck by a car while jogging and suffered a traumatic head injury. By Sunday’s call, the news was worse: The hospital was turning off life support. The group aboard the Bayesian lit a candle for Chamberlain in the church at Cefalù.

UK-based Google Cloud customers will no longer have to pay data transfer fees when shifting data between competing cloud environments, following the launch of the search engine giant’s Data Transfer Essentials service.

The launch, announced in a blog post by Jeanette Manfra, senior director of global risk and compliance at Google Cloud, comes several days ahead of the EU Data Act becoming applicable to all EU member states from 12 September 2025.

“Built in response to the principles of cloud interoperability and choice outlined in the EU Data Act, Data Transfer Essentials is a new, simple solution for data transfers between Google Cloud and other cloud service providers,” said Manfra. “Although the act allows cloud providers to pass through costs to customers, Data Transfer Essentials is available today at no cost to customers.” 

The EU Data Act is intended to reshape how the EU cloud services market operates by ensuring cloud providers remove any contractual, commercial, organisational and interoperability barriers that prevent customers from switching providers, for example. It will also introduce a requirement in January 2027 that prohibits providers from charging customers data egress or switching fees.

Incidentally, Google became the first cloud provider in January 2024 to stop charging customers egress fees when transferring their data out of its cloud when switching to a new provider. It described the move at the time as a show of its commitment to supporting the development of a “thriving cloud ecosystem” that is “open, secure and interoperable”.

While the UK is not directly affected by the introduction of the act, Google has said its Data Transfer Essentials service means customers in the UK and Europe will benefit from not having to pay data transfer fees when operating multicloud deployments.

For this reason, Manfra said the service will enable customers to expand their multi-cloud deployments by making it more cost-effective to shift data between multiple providers, and – in turn – boost the resiliency of their setups.

“The original promise of the cloud is one that is open, elastic and free from artificial lock-ins,” added Manfra. “Google Cloud continues to embrace this openness and the ability for customers to choose the cloud service provider that works best for their workload needs.”

When Google first announced that it was cutting egress fees for its cloud customers in January 2024, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that it was doing the same in March of that year.

One week after AWS confirmed its plans to scrap egress fees, Microsoft also followed suit by announcing the same deal for customers that wanted to exit its public cloud platform Azure.

This time around, however, it seems Google is the only one of the big three cloud providers that is opting to eliminate the fees associated with transferring data between its cloud platform and those offered by its competitors.

On this point, Microsoft published an article on its cloud billing and subscription pages on 9 September 2025 confirming that EU-based Azure users will now benefit from “at cost” pricing for data transfers between other “data processing service providers”.

Meanwhile, AWS has stipulated that EU customers “may request” reduced data transfer rates for eligible use cases in line with the European Data Act on its Amazon EC2 pricing page.

Ever since I was a child, I’ve despised answering the phone when an unknown number calls. Who could be on the other end? Literally anyone: an acquaintance, a telemarketer, a serial killer who’s menacingly breathing into the mouthpiece.

While Apple’s upcoming Liquid Glass refresh in iOS 26 is likely to be the most immediately noticeable aspect of the software update as it starts rolling out to the public on September 15, I believe a smaller addition in iOS 26 might even have a bigger impact on how iPhone owners use their devices.

The iPhone is finally getting call screening. Hallelujah. At launch, the feature will support calls coming in from nine different languages, including English, Spanish, and Japanese.

Once your iPhone updates to iOS 26, you can opt in and have the software automatically screen calls that come from unknown numbers. In this case, an unknown number is any phone number you haven’t interacted with before.

When your phone automatically picks up the call, a robotic voice asks the caller for their name as well as why they want to get in contact with you. Only after that information is collected, the iPhone will ring and show you these details in a notification bubble so you can decide whether to answer.

I was ecstatic to see this new option as I experimented with a beta version of iOS 26. I’m constantly getting calls from so many unknown numbers that I’ve completely given up answering the phone for anyone not saved in my contacts list.

With the imminent release of iOS 26, I can make informed decisions to ignore or answer these calls. And while most of the calls will still be ignored, I no longer have to wait until the caller starts leaving a voicemail and the live transcription appears on the screen to make a decision.

Call screening will be new for iPhones owners this fall, but users of some Android smartphones, like Google’s Pixel, have had a version of this tool, named Call Screen, available to them for years. Lyubov Farafonova, a product manager at Google, says in a statement emailed to WIRED that millions of Pixel users are using the feature in the US alone. “It is one of our fan favorite features,” she says.

Since its release of call screening in 2018, Google has worked to make the synthetic voice sound more natural for incoming callers. It’s also started showing relevant replies as tappable options while the screening is in progress so users can easily communicate with unknown callers without actually answering the phone. Further leaning into this feature, Google plans to roll out call screening to additional markets this fall.

“Pixel 10 owners in India can start experimenting with the beta version of manual Call Screen. This feature will be initially working in English and Hindi, with more languages and dialects on the way,” Farafonova says. “It will have a functionality to not only transcribe but also translate what the caller says to the Call Screen bot, to make life easier for those who don’t speak the same language as the caller.” Options for call screenings, manual or automatic, are coming soon to Pixel owners in Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the UK as well.