As Apple prepares to launch its first smart glasses, the company is also wrestling with how to address consumer privacy concerns, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Gurman reports that Apple has pushed back the launch target from early 2027, with the glasses now set for unveiling at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2027 and actually becoming available by the end of the year. That delay allows Apple to work on the product itself, and on the messaging around privacy.
It sounds like the company has noticed the concerns around Meta’s smart glasses — sometimes decried as “pervert glasses” — being used to make non-consensual video recordings. That could be a bigger issue for Apple, which constantly emphasizes privacy in its marketing.
Among other things, Apple will reportedly try to emphasize privacy-friendly features like on-device processing, as well as the absence of facial recognition. The company will likely steer clear of using customer recordings to train AI models, and it’s unlikely to follow Meta’s reported practice of using contractors to review customer footage.
Optical cavities – two mirrors arranged to reflect light multiple times between them – form the basis of lasers and certain optical filters. Since any angle between the two mirrors results in light being scattered away, parallel alignment is essential, yet difficult to maintain. Nevertheless, [Timothy Giles] managed to 3D-print and align such an optical cavity, and used it to detect minute shifts in space and wavelength.
The cavity has two semi-transparent mirrors facing towards each other. One mirror is held in a 3D-printed mount, and the other is attached to the diaphragm of a speaker with a hole drilled through the center. The hole avoids the speaker coil, and allows light exiting the optical cavity through the semi-transparent mirror to appear on a paper target, which is monitored by a webcam. On the other side of the optical cavity, a laser diode coupled to a single-mode fiber shines in through the other mirror. Alignment is challenging, but the webcam makes it easier; as the mirrors tilt relative to each other, the pattern seen on the paper target changes, providing feedback for more precise adjustment.
Light reflected within the cavity can interfere constructively or destructively with incoming light, changing the brightness of the emitted beam. [Tim] used the speaker as a linear actuator to vary the cavity’s length, which, by counting the peaks in brightness, allowed him to measure the diaphragm’s displacement. This also demonstrated a laser diode’s wavelength instability: when the cavity was set to a constant length and the laser started up, the output brightness would cycle a few times. As the diode was warming up, its output wavelength was shifting, creating the same changing interference pattern.
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To get a Gaussian beam distribution, [Tim] used a fiber-coupled laser; if you’d like to build one, we’ve seen a coupling mechanism built before. Most lasers are built around an internal optical cavity, but some instead use an external cavity.
A U.S. district court “has dismissed Google’s case against SerpApi over that company’s scraping of search results to train AI models,” reports Computerworld. Google had claimed that it was protecting copyright holders — and that SerpApi’s actions breached America’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA):
[Google] made two claims: first, that no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title, and second that no person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, or component protected by the Act. SerpApi claimed that the URLs and other links that were being served by Google did not in themselves entail copyright and the judge agreed. In her judgment, she said that there was no indication that the copyright holders had authorized Google to take action against SerpApi.
The case is not completely over as the judge has given Google 21 days to amend its complaint to demonstrate that it was acting on behalf of the copyright owners. SerpApi’s CEO reacted to the court’s ruling as “a win not just for SerpApi, but for all who depend on an open internet. We’re pleased that the court rejected Google’s attempts to expand the DMCA to assert control over access to public pages. The internet’s founding principle — open access to usable information — is essential to driving innovation and ensuring everyone benefits from the promise of data. SerpApi will continue supporting developers, AI companies, researchers, and businesses that rely on access to public search information.”
Some analysis from Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber:
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I’ve come around on SerpApi in the last few months. My initial take was that it surely must be illegal for a company to scrape Google’s search results and offer access to that data as an API. But I’ve come around to the argument that what SerpApi is doing to obtain Google search results is, well, exactly how Google scrapes the rest of the entire web to build its search index. It’s all just scraping publicly accessible web pages. This December piece by Mike Masnick at Techdirt is what began to change my mind. In fact, Masnick wrote, Google “built its entire business on scraping the web without asking permission first. And now it wants to use one of the most abused provisions in copyright law to stop others from doing something functionally similar to what made Google a tech giant in the first place.”
Now Google is even getting heckled about the decision on social media. “If Google wants to refile the suit within the allowed 21 days, it has to admit that site owners have copyright protection of their work and THAT would open the door to them suing Google for scraping their content for AI Overviews.”
Travelers know the routine all too well. A laptop brick that eats half a bag, a phone charger that never quite keeps up, and a tablet adapter that somehow always gets left behind. Anker’s 715 Charger, priced at $19.99 (was $30), also called the Nano II 65W, collapses that pile into one small cube that still delivers serious speed.
This compact charger, measuring 1.65 inches by 1.42 inches by 1.74 inches and weighing just shy of 4 ounces, fits nicely in the palm of your hand or easily slides inside a pair of pants without causing any bulge. The foldable prongs keep the item very flat when you’re packing it away, so you don’t have to worry about it grabbing cords or scratching up any other gear you’ve brought along. Compared to a conventional 61-watt laptop charger, this one packs a punch in a considerably smaller compact, taking up approximately 58% less space while still providing enough power for most people’s on-the-go demands.
The Charger You Need: Say goodbye to your old power bricks. Anker 715 Charger (Nano II 65W) has the power you need to fast charge your phone, tablet…
Rapid and Effective Power Delivery: Experience the thrill of speed with the Anker 715 Charger. It boasts the ability to power a 2020 MacBook Air in…
Petite and Travel-ready Design: The Anker Nano II charger outshines traditional 61W USB-C chargers by being 58% smaller. Its foldable plug is a…
A single USB-C port delivers the full 65 watts. That’s more than enough to charge a MacBook Air from empty to full in under 2 hours, or a 13-inch MacBook Pro up to its maximum supported speed. It will charge tablets and phones juast as fast. When you charge an iPhone 17e, it will charge to 50% in about one-third the time it would take using Apple’s stock 5-watt charger. And if you’re using a recent Samsung flagship, you’ll enjoy Super Fast Charging as long as you have the proper cable. Android phones with a built-in Programmable Power Supply (PPS) provide more precise voltage management, allowing them to charge at the fastest possible rate.
Inside this small package is Anker’s GaN II technology. Gallium nitride components can switch far faster than conventional silicon components, allowing Anker to reduce the number of transformers and capacitors while still keeping things cool even when they’re being utilized hard. The end result is a thick, efficient package that remains calm even when pushed hard over an extended period of time.
It’ll work with all of the usual suspects: MacBook Air and Pro 13-inch models, Dell XPS 13 machines, ThinkPads, Microsoft Surface Book 2, recent iPads, iPhones from the 8 model onwards, Galaxy S and Note series, Google Pixels, and even the occasional Nintendo Switch, and with universal voltage input, you won’t have to buy a separate charger for international trips; simply get the right plug adapter and you’re good to go.
The “Jimothy” video game features Seattle’s beloved raccoon making his way through assorted challenges. (Image via Chris Pirillo)
Jimothy, the short-spined Seattle raccoon, has become a global sensation whose likeness has been immortalized in artwork, clothing, songs and tattoos — and now a video game created in the creature’s hometown.
Tech enthusiast and entrepreneur Chris Pirillo launched an 8-bit NES-style video game called “Jimothy” this weekend in which players can control the movements of the critter as he raids trash cans, crosses streets to the park, sneaks past the paparazzi, and climbs to the safety of a big tree.
Pirillo says the missions are pulled straight from Jimothy’s real life. No doubt the animal is busy these days trying to dodge curious onlookers who are hoping to capture the next photo or video that feeds the masses on social media.
The viral Jimothy sensation took off last week when Kiana Hall spotted the raccoon in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood and posted a video on Instagram — viewed by millions since — asking the question heard around the world: “What am I looking at?”
An earlier video of Jimothy, captured by a home security camera and posted on Reddit, ignited further curiosity and adoration, and now Reddit is flooded with sightings, memes, artwork, food, crafts, poetry and more. The Mariners put a Jimothy mascot in the Salmon Run. There’s even a Lego Jimothy.
Pirillo told GeekWire the game idea came to him on Saturday afternoon after seeing so many creatives flood his feeds with their own Jimothy fan art. He started to build a not-so-live tracker and realized it was a not-so-great idea. He hopes internet creativity is enough of a fix for the Jimothy-curious.
“This game is as close as any of us should ever get to him,” the game site states. “If you find yourself in his neighborhood: don’t go looking for him, don’t feed him, don’t try to touch him, and don’t crowd him for a photo.”
The game is easy enough to play, with challenges that are reminiscent of classic 1980s games “Frogger” and “Donkey Kong.”
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Pirillo’s “Vibe Arcade” is loaded with other games he’s created. Earlier this year he vibe-coded a Resume Analyzer app and a pre-rejection letter generator called Dear Applicant to channel his frustrations with searching for a job.
Pirillo credits AI with changing the speed and ease with which a moment can go viral and be captured in new and creative ways.
“I remember when every big moment had a video game. But by the time a studio could create a video game around a meme pre-AI, the meme’s energy would have dissipated,” he said. “We are now at a day and age (certainly with AI as a tool) where almost literally anybody of any age or tech experience level can bring full-fledged experiences to life in just a few hours. We can simply talk our solutions into existence. It’s astounding.”
Pirillo built the game as a single HTML page, pitting OpenAI GPT 5.6 against Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5. One of the bigger challenges was getting the look of Jimothy right, as multiple AI models kept returning regular-looking raccoons.
Jeff Bezos says stress comes from inaction and vanishes the moment you take the first step toward fixing a problem
Jeff Bezos, the founder of the company that just became the number one Fortune 500 business, says the cure for anxiety is not rest or meditation but action. Speaking at the Museum of Flight in Seattle in 2017, Bezos told an audience of students that stress is a signal from the body that something is being neglected, and that the feeling disappears the moment he starts working on whatever is causing it. “I find that the stress goes away the second I take the first step,” he said.
The comments, resurfaced by Fortune this week, offer a window into how the world’s fourth-richest person thinks about pressure. Bezos said he treats anxiety as diagnostic information rather than an emotional state to manage, and that the worst thing he can do is sit with a problem without acting on it. His preferred remedy is to recruit allies and turn the source of stress into a group exercise in invention.
“There’s nothing more fun than getting in a room with a group of inventors and saying: here’s the problem, let’s invent a solution to it,” Bezos said. “As soon as you start doing that, I find that it turns from something that might create stress into something that creates fun.” The philosophy is consistent with the leadership principles Bezos embedded at Amazon, where CEO Andy Jassy has described the company’s 16 codified principles as something employees must constantly work at.
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The advice lands in a complicated context. Amazon has cut more than 57,000 corporate jobs since 2022, and employees who survived the rounds of layoffs have reported rising workloads and deteriorating work-life balance as fewer people cover the same ground. The idea that stress is solved by working harder reads differently when the people hearing it are already stretched thin, and when the company’s own workforce has described burnout as a structural problem rather than a mindset one.
Bezos built Amazon from a rented garage in the mid-1990s, famously taking 60 meetings to raise the first million dollars in seed capital at a time when most investors had never heard of online retail. The company he founded now generates more than $700 billion in annual revenue and is investing tens of billions in AI infrastructure. Whether the same advice that helped a founder push through rejection in 1995 translates to a workforce navigating layoffs and AI displacement in 2026 is a question Bezos did not address.
Hackers are changing the DNS settings on Wi-Fi devices at hotels and conference centers to redirect users to fake Microsoft 365 login pages.
The campaign has been ongoing since at least June and impacts organizations in various sectors, including financial services, professional services, legal, health care, energy, and retail.
Cybersecurity company ReliaQuest identified compromised Wi-Fi gateways in multiple U.S. cities as well as other regions of the world, such as India and Saudi Arabia.
Since the devices serve corporate events, hijacking the Microsoft 365 accounts could give attackers access to sensitive business information, communications, and private documents.
“We observed traffic to these compromised gateways from organizations in a range of industries, including financial services, professional services, legal, health care, energy, and retail- confirming this isn’t sector-specific targeting, but a campaign that highly likely goes after traveling employees wherever they connect,” ReliaQuest says.
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The researchers believe this activity is similar to the FrostArmada router-based campaigns attributed to the Russian espionage group APT28 (a.k.a. Fancy Bear, Forest Blizzard).
Attack chain
It is unclear how initial access to the Wi-Fi appliances was gained, but ReliaQuest says the threat actor could have exploited weakly protected, exposed management interfaces (e.g., SSH, SNMP, web admin dashboards) or vulnerabilities.
Once the attacker gains administrator access, they can modify the gateway’s DNS settings to redirect connections to legitimate domains to infrastructure under the attacker’s control.
ReliaQuest says that the attacker registered at least four domains for setting up fake Microsoft login portals: m365-owa[.]com, owa-ms365[.]com, ms365-device[.]com, and ms365-live[.]com.
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With DNS settings changed, users trying to access legitimate Microsoft login portals would land on the hacker’s phishing pages and enter their credentials.
In some cases, the researchers observed a device-code authentication flow in which targets were redirected to a fake Microsoft page with a prompt.
“What the user can’t see is that approving the prompt authorizes a session initiated by the attacker,” ReliaQuest says. The researchers note that authorizing the attacker-initiated request causes a legitimate OAuth token to be issued to the attacker’s client.
This bypasses the multi-factor authentication (MFA) protection without stealing any credentials or intercepting access tokens.
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The attack steps Source: ReliaQuest
In roughly one-third of the investigated cases, the attackers also attempted to abuse Web Proxy Auto-Discovery (WPAD) by responding to Windows’ automatic WPAD lookup with a malicious proxy auto-configuration (PAC) file.
This theoretically would route traffic from Windows apps, including Chrome, through an attacker-controlled proxy, but ReliaQuest couldn’t confirm that these attacks were successful.
The researchers also emphasized that using public DNS servers such as Google’s 8.8.8.8 does not prevent this attack, as the gateway forges the plain-text requests before they reach the intended resolver.
ReliaQuest recommends using an always-on, full-tunnel VPN and encrypted DNS in strict mode as solid protection measures against these attacks.
Additionally, the cybersecurity company recommends disabling WPAD, reviewing logs for suspicious activity, and disabling Device Code authentication flow in Microsoft Entra ID when not needed.
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Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.
The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.
This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Seattle startup funding drops 40% in the first half of the year while AI money floods everywhere else. We dig into the implications for the region.
While drone warfare has been around for a long time, the widespread application of single-use combat drones has increased exponentially since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Countless drones have flown across borders to destroy key targets on both sides, and if there’s one thing that’s true of all of them, it’s that they’re difficult to defend against. This is due to several factors, but mostly, it’s the sheer volume of vehicles dedicated to a single target. Long gone are the days when a single interceptor missile can defend a strategic site from destruction.
Both Russia and Ukraine have increased drone defenses to counter ongoing strikes, and now Russia has developed specialized bullets to use in the war. These are called Mnogotochie cartridges, which can be fired from rifled automatic weapons, creating a potential problem for any would-be drone attackers. Unlike typical bullets, Mnogotochie cartridges split apart when fired, offering a wider spread without resorting to something like short-range buckshot from a shotgun.
The benefit of these new cartridges is their ability to be fired from any service rifle, so long as they shoot 5.45x39mm and 7.62x39mm cartridges. Once fired, the bullet splits into three parts right out of the barrel, delivering a higher-density assault on an airborne target. Essentially, instead of firing a single bullet at a drone, one round effectively becomes three, and anyone who’s ever gone waterfowl hunting knows the benefit of such a spread.
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Russia’s Mnogotochie cartridges are high-tech versions of old technology
Firing multiple projectiles in a single shot is nothing new, as the technology has been around in various forms for centuries. Cannons fired canister and grapeshot, while shotguns are well-known for spreading pellets at targets. Splitting rifle ammunition straight out of the barrel is a new take on that old idea, and it could prove effective in Russia’s defense against the many high-tech tools used in the Ukraine War.
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Russia’s High Precision Systems holding company is manufacturing the new rounds for use on the front lines. The bullets themselves are made up of three stacked projectiles that come apart once the round exits the barrel. It’s a pretty straightforward, if inventive, design. They have an effective range of up to 300 meters (984 feet), which is fairly standard for the size of bullets that are being made.
The efficacy of such a round is open to debate, and it’s unclear what, if any, successes Russia has had in using them. The biggest roadblock is actually hitting a fast-moving target like a drone — which can travel at speeds of up to 87 mph and cover close to 510 feet in only four seconds — which isn’t easy for any marksman. While the split shot of a Mnogotochie cartridge offers a greater opportunity to strike a moving target at range and speed, it’s still up to the individual shooter to acquire and successfully hit the target drone.
Northrop Grumman’s MRV launched with two satellite-servicing robotic arms
Mission Extension Pods can stretch a satellite’s working life by eight years
The spacecraft can inspect, refuel, tow, and relocate active orbital satellites or even destroy enemy satellites
Northrop Grumman has launched its first Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV), equipped with two robotic arms to inspect, repair, refuel, and relocate satellites already operating in orbit.
The spacecraft also carries three Mission Extension Pods (MEPs) that can extend a satellite’s operational life by as much as eight years after installation.
Although introduced as a commercial servicing platform, the spacecraft’s ability to operate alongside other satellites has already raised questions about possible military applications.
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Satellite servicing technology also enables close-proximity operations
The MRV launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, carrying MEPs intended for commercial satellites operated by Australia’s Optus and Luxembourg’s SES.
Northrop Grumman says the spacecraft can inspect satellites, install life-extension modules, tow spacecraft between orbital positions, and assist with clearing debris already circling Earth.
Those missions depend on two robotic arms that allow the vehicle to maneuver extremely close to other satellites without relying on direct physical contact.
The robotic arm system was developed through the Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites program led by DARPA together with the United States Naval Research Laboratory.
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Because those same capabilities allow precise movement around spacecraft, a future version could disable hostile satellites if governments requested such capabilities.
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“I will leave it up to the U.S. government to decide how that capability might fulfill mission objectives that they have in that regard,” said Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden.
“It’s our objective to offer our clients options for technology deployment, and for them to determine policy for when and how they might deploy that technology.”
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Military officials say orbital threats are already evolving
United States Space Force officials have repeatedly argued that rival nations already possess satellites capable of approaching and interacting with other spacecraft operating in orbit today.
The service says those developments require greater attention because several countries continue expanding technologies capable of operating near valuable military and civilian satellites.
“We’re basically responding to a warfighting domain where our adversaries have already put interceptors in space, and we want to make sure that we rebalance that in terms of deterrence,” said Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman.
A Space Force spokesperson later cited China’s Shi Jian 21 satellite, equipped with a robotic grappling arm, while explaining examples of orbital interceptor capabilities already available.
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Officials have also warned that close-proximity satellites could collect intelligence, interfere electronically, damage spacecraft components, or deliberately move another satellite from its assigned orbit.
Those evolving capabilities have prompted the Space Force to expand its focus on orbital warfare alongside traditional space operations.
The service’s Space Delta 9 unit develops tactics for both defensive and offensive missions in orbit as those threats continue evolving.
The military is also planning larger space-based defense networks through the proposed Golden Dome missile defense architecture.
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The Congressional Budget Office estimates the concept could require about 7,800 space-based interceptors if the program moves forward.
For now, the MRV remains a commercial tool, but how governments will apply comparable space security tech with AI tools and autonomous systems remains to be seen.
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