The build quality isn’t terribly impressive, either. The plastic chassis is solid but doesn’t feel premium. Fortunately, the Double-shot PBT keycaps are much better, although their opaque legends don’t allow that aforementioned backlighting to shine through. Their Fn shortcuts aren’t labelled, either, unlike those installed in the best gaming keyboards.

However, the compact width of the Vibe99 is impressive, and thanks to the smart 1800 layout, you still get plenty of keys. What’s more, it also features an integrated screen. It may be a basic TFT affair with limited information displayed, but what it does show is useful, such as the time, date, and battery level. You can also upload GIFs to it if you so wish, but I wouldn’t advise that you do, given the screen’s small size and low fidelity.

Multiple extensions for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge delivered a malware framework that deployed modules to steal cryptocurrency, sensitive data, and browser history, and to inject ClickFix lures.

Researchers say all 19 malicious modules uncovered in the campaign serve distinct purposes and are designed to be “highly extensible.”

The operation was uncovered by application security company Socket, and the investigation indicates that it may have been active since early 2024.

Socket says that when initially published on the Chrome Web Store, many of the extensions provided the advertised functionality and contained no malware.

According to the researchers, five of the extensions were acquired from their original creators and injected with malware via updates delivered automatically.

One example is the “Enable Right Click & Copy — Smart Unlock + OCR” extension, which had a Chrome user base of at least 70,000 when it turned malicious. The number of installs on Edge was 10,000 at the time.

Google caught the threat early and removed the extension from its add-ons marketplace, but at the time of Socket publishing its report, the Edge version remained available.

Once installed, the malware establishes an encrypted WebSocket connection with command-and-control (C2) servers, downloads JavaScript modules, removes Content Security Policy (CSP) headers from every website visited, and injects malicious scripts into websites through hidden HTML elements.

Socket observed malware modules with the following capabilities:

• Draining EVM, Solana, and Tron wallets by hijacking legitimate “Connect Wallet” and “Swap” buttons
• Replacing Ledger and Trezor websites with convincing seed-phrase phishing pages
• Stealing sessions, tokens, account data, and balances from Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, OKX, MEXC, KuCoin, Bybit, and MetaMask
• Recording credentials and form entries across websites
• Harvesting Facebook and LinkedIn account information
• Exfiltrating browser history
• Displaying ClickFix-style fake browser updates that instruct victims to execute attacker-provided commands

Socket warns that the malicious framework may have more modules and that as the malware evolves over time, new payloads are expected to be deployed.

At the time of publishing, none of the malicious extensions are available in the Chrome Web Store.

Socket’s report provides the full list of extension IDs uncovered in the campaign along with the domains used for C2 communication.

Users who had any of the extensions installed should assume that their credentials have been compromised and change their login passwords.

Cryptocurrency holders potentially impacted by this campaign are recommended to move their assets to a newly created wallet as soon as possible.

Update [August 30]: Article edited to include the full list of malicious extensions discovered by Socket.

Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.

The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.

Get the report

Cheap online listings sell universal travel adapters that pack sliding American, British and European prongs plus two USB ports into one small plastic block for just over nine dollars. Brainiac75 bought one and started testing it before anyone would ever pack it for a trip.

Plugging just one plug into a live wall socket is enough to send more than 220 volts racing through the unused metal pins protruding out the other side. A simple resistance test revealed that those pins are indeed linked to the same conductors as the ones being utilized, rather than just sitting there all alone. Make no mistake: those exposed pins aren’t just ghost voltage with a modest current behind them; they’re directly connected to the grid.

Anker Nano Travel Adapter, 2 USB C Universal Charger, 20W, 1× 2-Pin AC

• Universal Plug Compatibility: Type A (US / Canada / Japan / China), Type C (EU), Type G (UK / Singapore), and Type I (Australia).
• Power 5 Devices at Once: Includes 1 AC outlet, 2 USB-A ports, and 2 USB-C ports. The USB ports support up to 20W total output or 15W max when shared…
• Exceptionally Compact: Measuring just 3.39 × 1.97 × 0.98 in (86 × 50 × 25 mm), it has a credit card-sized footprint and is 43% smaller than…

When you slide a retractable pin all the way back in, you’d expect the internal switch to disconnect it from the circuit, but that’s not the case. There is no rule requiring you to push every unused set back in before utilizing the adapter. This means that if you forget to plug in the British or American plug, it will still be live while the European plug is snug in the wall, and to make matters worse, that little red power light continues to glow for a while after you unplug the whole thing, though to give the manufacturer credit, the voltage on the pins does drop back down to safe levels pretty quickly.

Ripping open the cover gave us a good idea of why the pins reacted in this way. When you insert one of the prong sets, it presses down on these contacts, which connect to a huge central bus bar. It is a simple design with cheap manufacturing costs. Best of all, there are no restrictions on how many different plug types you can use at the same time; simply slot them all in and you’re good to go.

Those USB ports, on the other hand, were a bit of a surprise, as they were pumping out 5 volts despite the label stating 2.1 amps, and they got up to 2.4 amps on a load test before becoming unstable. Overall, not terrible, albeit they don’t provide any other charging protocols like some other adapters. After taking the device apart, he ended up removing the less useful American and British plug components and simply taping over the holes where they used to be. As a result, we have a USB charger that can accept a Schuko standard connector as well as random non-European plugs, which is more safer.
[Source]

In July and August, Washington tightened restrictions on foreign-made advanced robotic systems and imposed steep tariffs on imported drones and their components, both moves citing national-security concerns. The drone tariffs take effect in September, with additional component tariffs following in 2027.

These moves are part of a broader U.S. effort to restrict foreign technology in strategically important industries. The FCC’s Covered List, established in 2021, initially targeted telecommunications and surveillance equipment from companies including Huawei, ZTE and Hikvision before expanding to foreign-made drones and, most recently, to advanced robotic devices.

The latest move comes as Chinese manufacturers have built commanding positions in both drones and humanoid robots, often competing at prices U.S. and European rivals struggle to match.

Taken together, the restrictions are raising a bigger question for the global robotics industry: If Chinese drones and humanoids are increasingly shut out of the U.S., where does the competition move next?

The restrictions may protect parts of the American market, but they don’t directly address China’s global manufacturing scale and cost advantages.

Industry analysts and executives who spoke with TechCrunch said the result may be less a clean U.S.-China split than a more fragmented global market, with Chinese companies expanding elsewhere while U.S. and allied manufacturers compete in markets where security requirements matter more.

The Scale Gap

The U.S. and Chinese robotics industries remain deeply connected, but the two countries enter the competition with very different advantages. Unlike semiconductors, robotics does not hinge on a single technology that one country can easily control, said Ankur Saxena, an investment director at TDK Ventures.

China dominates global humanoid robot manufacturing, with global shipments hitting 22,000 units in the first half of this year — the vast majority from Chinese manufacturers — according to a report by Counterpoint. U.S. companies, by contrast, are operating at a far smaller scale, said Soumen Mandal, a principal analyst at Counterpoint Research.

The world’s five largest humanoid robot makers by shipments — AgiBot, Unitree, Galbot, UBTECH and Leju Robotics — were all Chinese and together accounted for 86% of global shipments in the first half of 2026, according to Counterpoint.

That advantage could compound. Lower prices allow Chinese manufacturers to put more robots into use, generating real-world data that can improve their technology. Higher production volumes, in turn, can drive costs down further, Saxena said.

Mandal said Chinese humanoid makers are also pushing costs down by bringing more of the technology stack in-house and drawing on China’s existing manufacturing base. Unitree, for example, is developing more components internally, while automakers such as XPeng can draw on their experience in chips and vehicle manufacturing as they move into robotics.

“The United States leads in frontier AI, software and semiconductor innovation,” Saxena told TechCrunch. “China leads in manufacturing scale, supply-chain depth and cost.”

That manufacturing edge has let Chinese companies cut humanoid prices faster than most U.S. competitors can match.

“You cannot sanction your way around a cost curve. You can only out-build it, and America has yet to begin making the decade-long investment that will require,” Saxena said.

Where Does China Go Next?

The answer may increasingly be outside the U.S. Even if Chinese robotics companies lose access to the American market, they still have a large domestic market and room to expand elsewhere, particularly in regions where demand for affordable automation is growing, Saxena said.

Chinese robotics companies are already targeting price-sensitive markets with severe labor shortages across Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, said Mandal.

Mandal expects humanoid makers to follow a path similar to Chinese electric-vehicle companies: build scale at home, expand into overseas markets, and eventually establish local production. Countries facing labor shortages and demographic decline could become early markets for humanoids, particularly in manufacturing, where robots can take on repetitive work.

The drone market offers an early glimpse of what that more fragmented robotics landscape could look like. The industry is increasingly splitting into two ecosystems: a U.S.-led market built around American-made, NDAA-compliant systems, and a China-led market focused on low-cost, high-volume production, said Bentzion Levinson, founder and CEO of Virginia-based drone maker Heven AeroTech.

Levinson said Western manufacturers are unlikely to beat Chinese companies in the low-end consumer drone market, where cost remains a major advantage. Instead, U.S. and allied companies could increasingly compete in long-range autonomous systems for defense and critical infrastructure, where security requirements carry more weight.

Levinson sees the next competitive frontier shifting from the drones themselves to the technology that powers them and the equipment they carry. “The next battleground is over who owns the next-gen energy and payload architecture,” he said, pointing to battery constraints in particular. As drones become more capable, he added, battery limitations could make power systems an increasingly important point of competition.

Agility Robotics welcomed the FCC’s decision in July, saying it could address security concerns around foreign-made advanced robots before they become deeply embedded in the U.S. market, as has happened in the drone industry. The company pointed to its Digit humanoid, which is designed and assembled in the U.S., while also calling for continued access to the tools and technologies needed to advance robotics research.

A More Regional Robotics Market

“The alternative to China isn’t a purely domestic U.S. supply chain; it’s a diversified allied one,” Saxena said.

That could create opportunities elsewhere in Asia. Japan has decades of experience in industrial robotics and precision manufacturing, South Korea brings strengths in electronics, batteries and automobiles, and Taiwan is a major player in semiconductors. But none can simply replace China, Saxena said, given how deeply Chinese components remain embedded across the global robotics industry.

Asian manufacturers could emerge as a middle ground between lower-cost Chinese robots and more expensive U.S. offerings, Mandal said. South Korea’s Hyundai, which owns Boston Dynamics, and Japan’s Toyota are among the automakers investing in robotics, drawing on their expertise in vehicles, manufacturing and autonomous systems as they move into humanoid robots.

Yang Fang of Beagle Technology, a California-based agtech startup that uses AI and robotics software to turn conventional farm equipment into autonomous machines, told TechCrunch that robotics is likely to become more regional as companies design machines for the labor needs, working conditions and customers in their home markets. Chinese robotics companies, for example, may focus on products suited to China and nearby markets, while U.S. companies are more likely to build for industries across North America, he said.

The result may not be two neatly separated U.S.- and China-led robotics industries. Instead, the restrictions could accelerate the emergence of regional markets: Chinese companies competing on cost and scale across much of the world, U.S. and allied manufacturers gaining ground where security requirements matter most, and manufacturers in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea trying to carve out space between the two.

An appeals court in California has resurrected a 2022 lawsuit over claims Apple convinced them not to use a third-party repair service to fix cracked iPhone screens.

In the last few years, Apple has been more open to enabling repairs of its hardware performed outside of its support ecosystem. While its position has relaxed a lot, it still has to deal with its policies from prior years.

A filing for the Court of Appeal for the State of California in August reveals a panel has reversed an earlier court’s ruling to quash a lawsuit over Apple’s repair policies. The three-judge appeals Sixth Appellate District panel has brought the lawsuit back to life.

In 2022, plaintiffs Jesse Granato and Janice Zarad said they were told by an Apple employee in 2021 that using a third-party repair service would void their warranty coverage. The Courthouse News Service reports the plaintiffs claim this encouraged them to pay for a screen repair through Apple itself.

The lawsuit accused Apple of inflating the cost of independent repairs in various ways, including withholding parts, manuals, and software. It also allegedly conditioned warranties on using authorized repair shops.

A Santa Clara Superior Court judge agreed with Apple’s response that the lawsuit lacked standing under the state’s unfair competition law. Something the Court of Appeal overturned in 2026.

Repairing the lawsuit

In the unanimous decision, the judges explain that, as pleaded, Apple’s practices at the time “substantially injure consumers by allowing Apple to extract inflated payments for repairs or to increase demand for new products by incentivizing replacement over repair.”

The plaintiffs also couldn’t identify any benefit to Apple’s repair policies that outweighed the harm they caused, wrote acting presiding Associate Justice Cynthia Lie.

The panel decided that the plaintiffs had adequately pleaded under the unfair competition claim.

The plaintiffs also attempted to claim that Apple had violated the California 2024 Right to Repair Act, which Apple actually backed. However, the panel pointed out that the law was enacted after the initial suit was filed.

There was also an alleged violation of the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, by Apple allegedly refusing and instructing authorized repair shops to refuse in-warranty services, if repairs were performed elsewhere outside of any warranty.

However, while Lie explains the plaintiffs hadn’t adequately managed to claim the violation of the law, it was ruled that the claims violated the spirit of the law.

The case, revived, has been remanded to a lower court.

In the very first moments of the universe, matter didn’t exist as we know today. A millionth of a second or so after the big bang, the universe was a dense, hot soup scientists call quark-gluon plasma (QGP). For several years, particle colliders—which smash molecules together at nearly the speed of light—have been able to replicate this state, but often using heavy elements like lead.

Now, a recent experiment by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN from its French acronym) has demonstrated this plasma can be produced by much smaller collisions. Since there’s no longer an accessible natural source of this primordial sludge, these micro big bangs can help reveal what happened in the first few minutes of our universe.

First, a little context. Quarks are what make up protons and neutrons, which, in turn, are the building blocks of atoms and thus all matter. Meanwhile, gluons—as their name suggests—stick quarks together.

During the first microseconds of the universe, quarks and gluons were not yet confined within protons and neutrons but instead formed an extremely hot plasma. As the universe expanded, the matter cooled, and the quarks condensed into larger particles.

After decades of studying QGP in large nuclear collisions, physicists are now trying to understand the limits of this strange state of matter. In particular, they are exploring just how much they can scale down a collision and still observe a collection of particles that behaves like a drop of fluid.

According to a recent article in Physical Review Letters, CERN and an international team of collaborators were able to generate the substance using oxygen-16 and neon-20. Both are less than a tenth of the weight of a lead atom, which was previously considered one of the lightest elements capable of generating QGP.

“We have pushed the boundary for how small the atomic nuclei can be while still re-creating this primordial matter—what you could call a ‘little big bang.’ We now know more about the fundamental conditions required for matter to transition into this extreme state,” You Zhou, a researcher at the Niels Bohr Institute in the Netherlands and a coauthor of the study, explained in a press release.

The scientists found that, despite the small size of the oxygen and neon nuclei, the collisions produced signals consistent with the behavior they expected to find in QGP. For an instant, the generated matter appeared to expand collectively like a fluid before cooling and reverting to particles.

“Hopefully, this will help us better understand how the plasma behaved during the first moments of the universe—and how it later evolved into the forms of matter that everything around us is made of,” Zhou added.

This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.

The Internet Archive has a habit of preserving unique things, ones that nobody else thought about, and its newest collection is the best example yet. I’d say it’s one that every AI historian should bookmark.

Curated under the title “Vintage Artificial Intelligence,” the collection contains decades of software that tried to convince people that they were talking to a thinking machine (though with wildly varying success).

So what exactly is in this new collection?

Created by Jason Scott, the new collection gathers emulated software from the 1970s through the 1990s. All of them are playable directly in a browser. While none of them actually think in any real sense, the idea is how convincing these decades-old programs can be at simulating the experience of talking to a real person. 

Out of all the entries in the collection, ELIZA anchors the set. Joseph Weizenbaum’s DOCTOR script, which was originally built to mimic a therapist, worked so well that early users reportedly opened up to it as if it were a real person, a trick that still deserves some credit even decades later. 

The software was rewritten so many times that the archive holds dozens of versions. Then there’s Racter, a commercial chatbot from 1985 that went well beyond conversation. It generated full passages of prose, and some of them were so strange that they ended up in published work. Consider it an eerie prequel to what LLMs can do today. 

How do you actually try it?

Beyond the chatbots, Activision’s Alter Ego walks you through simulated life stages as a psychologist-designed decision game. On the other hand, Little Computer People, built by Pitfall! creator David Crane, imagines what it would be like if tiny people were secretly living inside your machine. If you ask me, it was oddly ahead of its time. 

Suspended splits a cryogenically frozen player’s mind across six separate robots. Each one handles a different task alone, a structure that feels startlingly familiar today. The collection also pays homage to early autonomous agent games like Robot War, where players pre-programmed warriors to battle automatically.

If you’re curious, just poke around the collection directly on Internet Archive’s site right now. It doesn’t require any downloads or setup. Everything runs through in-browser emulation. It’s a genuinely fun way to trace how today’s AI conversations started decades before they got complicated, and well worth losing an afternoon to.