The FCC has a track record of using its Covered List to squeeze Chinese tech out of American markets, and robots just became its newest target. Foreign-made humanoids, quadrupeds, and even robot vacuums now need to be mostly built in the U.S. to sell here (via Rest of World). 

So what does the new rule actually require?

The FCC added “advanced robotic devices” to its Covered List last month, the same national security roster that’s previously blocked devices from Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE. New models of foreign-made humanoids, quadrupeds, robot vacuums, and even lawn mowers are now barred from entering the U.S. market.

Only models assembled domestically and sourcing at least 65% of their component value from within the U.S. qualify. The threshold will climb to 75% by 2029. The policy doesn’t target any single country (or mention one), but it’s widely understood as aimed squarely at reducing Chinese imports.

The good news is that existing products (already on sale) aren’t affected. Robots imported purely for research and development (not for commercial sale) stay exempt from the rule for now.

How are startups actually reacting to this?

Founders say hitting 65% local sourcing threshold is nearly impossible right now. Plenty of motors, sensors, and actuators are either too expensive, too slow to source, or, the worst one of all, simply unavailable domestically. The issue is so severe that employees have reportedly flown parts over from China in their luggage just to keep prototypes moving. 

Michael Perry of Persona AI put it bluntly: “You need to provide the carrot as well as the stick.” Not everyone’s upset, though. Oregon-based Agility Robotics and San Francisco’s Nori Robotics both welcome the rule, stating that it will eventually shield them from cheaper Chinese competition. 

However, there’s no denying that the rule complicates sourcing for the immediate future. China didn’t end up controlling robotics manufacturing by accident. Decades of state investment, a deep engineering workforce, and a boom in electric-vehicle production carved out the kind of sensor, battery, and actuator supply chain robots also rely on. 

The result: Chinese-made humanoids account for nearly 90% of everything sold worldwide in 2025, according to research firm Omdia. 

Apple has released an update for iOS 26.6.1 for all users, with the usual inclusion of security fixes, making it a must-install for your iPhone.

While Apple is constantly beta-testing its 27-generation operating systems, it’s still shipping updates to its earlier releases. That includes the current-gen versions.

On Monday, as part of its swathe of releases, Apple issued its update for iOS 26.6.1. The update, which it rolled out as a release candidate on August 10, can be downloaded to an iPhone running iOS 26.6 or earlier.

It also brought out updates for its other operating systems:

• iOS 26.6.1 is build 23G83
• iPadOS 26.6.1 is build 23G83
• iOS 18.7.10 is build 22H374
• iPadOS 18.7.10 is build 22H374
• visionOS 26.6.1 is build 23O780
• macOS 26.6.2 is build 25G83

The updates include what Apple characterizes as security fixes, which is a regular item for granular updates such as this.

We are still waiting for Apple to share the list of updates in the release. The iOS 26.6 update had more than 75 security fixes, and with the persistent threat of AI-based discoveries, AppleInsider recommends installing it sooner rather than later.

A German competition authority said that Apple’s prompts favors its own apps versus third-party options.

If you’ve been putting off that macOS update sitting in your notifications, this is the week to stop and install it. 

Apple quietly patched a serious screen sharing flaw in macOS earlier this month. While that usually means the issue is resolved, new evidence shows hackers already broke into unpatched Macs, hijacked them, and used them for cryptocurrency mining before the fix shipped.

So what exactly went wrong with screen sharing?

The flaw lets bad actors access macOS screen sharing without the system’s valid login credentials. Once in, they could view a victim’s desktop and take control of the mouse and keyboard (remotely) without warning whoever was actually sitting at the machine.

Once attackers get root access, they reportedly install Monero crypto miners onto every compromised Mac spotted so far, quietly burning through users’ CPU cycles and electricity in the background; hackers value that over the local files.

Apple patched the issue on August 6 with macOS Tahoe 26.6.1, describing it as improved state management for the authentication process, along with matching updates for Sonoma and Sequoia.

What happens on a hacked Mac, and how do you stay safe?

However, the Netherlands’ National Cyber Security Center says it has since tracked real-world abuse of that bug on machines running unpatched or older macOS versions, where port 5900 (which screen sharing uses) was left accessible from the open internet.

Port 5900 has been a known soft spot in remote access tools for years. Apple’s macOS automatically opens that port the moment you enable screen sharing, with no separate warning that it’s now reachable from outside your network.

Because the bug bypasses authentication entirely, scanning bots can automatically gain root-level control of exposed machines and install a cryptocurrency miner. If your Mac relies on screen sharing over an open network connection, act immediately.

I’d recommend installing the latest macOS version immediately. Head to System Settings > General > Software Update, and install the update. If updating immediately isn’t an option, your safest short-term move is to disable the feature altogether by going to System Settings > General > Sharing and toggling screen sharing off.

The big picture: Speedrunners have been chipping away at Super Mario Bros. for decades, systematically lowering the time it takes to complete the classic 1985 side-scrolling platformer. A combination of frame-perfect maneuvers and strategies once thought to be impossible for humans to pull off has lowered the world record to 4:54.332 – or just .067 seconds off the theoretical fastest possible run. The end, it would seem, is imminent.

Two of the world’s best Mario speedrunners – LeKukie and Niftski – are publicly battling to be the first to achieve the perfect game. The competitors have been livestreaming their attempts and during a session on August 14, Niftski set a new world record with a time of 4:54.332. Just four frames now stand between humans and the perfect game of Super Mario Bros.

The finish line is in sight, and some in the speedrunning community aren’t quite sure how to react. On one hand, it is incredibly exciting to witness history in the making and watch elite players shine when the spotlight is the brightest. Conversely, a future in which there is no longer a new goal to strive for feels a bit hollow.

There’s always the possibility that someone could discover an entirely new strategy that could pave the way for an even faster time but considering how optimized the run is today, it could just be wishful thinking. It’s also entirely possibly that someone else could swoop in and pull off the first perfect game before either of these two do it.

I’ve been casually speedrunning the NES World Championship edition of SMB on my Switch Lite for about a year and a half. The two versions are a bit different in their ruleset, but it’s still fun to tinker with when I’ve got some time to kill. For comparison, my personal best is 5:12.61 – nowhere even close to what Niftski and LeKukie are capable of even on their worst days.

Found is a TechSpot feature where we share clever, funny or otherwise interesting stuff from around the web.

Bad news for those who get their updates through RSS feeds: Feedly, the largest standalone RSS reader worldwide, has experienced technical issues for over a week, and paying users are upset that the web app has been “unusably slow.” Some users have also reported that the company has ignored their support requests. Uh-oh.

Feedly, the heir to the market ceded by Google when it closed Google Reader in 2013, is today among the most successful RSS newsreaders globally with 15 million users, according to its website. That makes it larger than competitive products like the web-based Inoreader as well as various desktop apps like NetNewsWire, Reeder, and others.

And yet, the app is experiencing a number of ongoing issues that are affecting users and paying subscribers alike. The most critical problem is a significant slowdown on its web app, which has made browsing feeds quickly and efficiently very frustrating. Users on Reddit reported the app running “extremely” slow, making it “unusable.”

Further, users said that the company’s iOS app, including on iOS 27 beta, has not been working, and the classic version of Feedly’s mobile app (preferred by a small subset of customers) was shut down without warning weeks ago.

As most consumers now keep up with news through dedicated apps, like Apple News by browsing the web and sources like Google News, and through posts on social media, the market for RSS readers has always been relatively small. However, Feedly has been working to shift its focus to AI, offering businesses a way to track emerging threats and keep up with tailored intelligence through its app.

With the latest issues, it begs the question as of whether Feedly is still focused on its core RSS customers amid its pivot to AI, which is the product the company now advertises via its homepage.

TechCrunch reached out to Feedly for an update on these issues, given that multiple customers on Reddit said their requests for technical support had been ignored.

In response, Feedly CEO Edwin Khodabakchian reassured TechCrunch that RSS was still a focus.

“Despite the pivot to cyber threat intelligence, fixing the basic RSS functionality is still a priority because our CTI community uses the news-reading capability,” he said. “Our goal has been to maintain the Feedly News Reader as fast and streamlined as possible.”

In addition, the CEO said the company was aware of the issues with its web app, which were attributed to a bug, and said the front-end team had been testing a fix. Currently, the team believes the issue was related to using “Mark as Read” on accounts with a lot of folders, and a fix for that was released Friday. The company is still confirming whether this has resolved the problem for all users.

Khodabakchian also confirmed that the Feedly Classic app was “retired two weeks ago because it “no longer met some iOS and Android requirements,” though it had been removed from the App Store long before that. At the time, the app had only a few hundred active users, he noted. The team did not notify those existing users before its final shutdown.

In addition, Khodabakchian said he was not aware of the iOS app issues, which prevent the app from loading, but said Feedly would investigate. He also promised it would be fixed quickly, noting that the company still actively invests in its main iOS and Android app.

The first thing I learned at Defcon was that I apparently didn’t know what a badge was.

I already had one hanging around my neck: the press credential that got me through the door at the annual hacker convention in Las Vegas in early August. Yet everywhere I looked, people stood in long lines to buy more. When I asked what they were waiting for and heard “badges,” I glanced down at mine, confused.

I would soon learn that Defcon badges can be electronic puzzles, soldering projects, collectibles and signs of belonging to a culture I was experiencing for the first time. Those badges were my first indication of how much I had to learn.

Everyone else seemed to understand the schedule, the language and the unwritten rules. But me? I felt like I was back in high school and had somehow missed orientation.

Over the next few days, talking with professionals, hobbyists and other beginners made cybersecurity feel much more accessible. For the first time, I could see a path from playing around with hacking tools to actually understanding how they work.

I was a script kiddie before I knew what that meant

I wasn’t completely new to hacking. In college at UCLA, I spent more time than I probably should have in the library experimenting with Firesheep, a Firefox extension that demonstrated how exposed session cookies could be intercepted over shared Wi-Fi. Watching it work showed me how easily technology could be manipulated.

I didn’t build Firesheep or understand the code behind it. I knew how to install it and click around. In hacker terminology, that made me a script kiddie: someone who uses tools created by other people without fully understanding how they work.

Still, I loved testing technology’s limits and making it do things it wasn’t designed to do. I liked the feeling of opening a door everyone else assumed was locked. That curiosity stuck, even if my technical knowledge never caught up. 

Defcon was my chance to see whether it finally could.

Exploring Defcon

Defcon featured talks and scheduled events, but much of the convention was divided into villages dedicated to particular corners of hacking. There were villages for lock picking, artificial intelligence, aerospace, cars and even boats. Inside them, people were hacking devices, building things, competing in challenges or sitting around tables working on projects I couldn’t begin to identify.

Elsewhere, teams competed in capture the flag contests, or CTFs, where players solve cybersecurity puzzles to uncover hidden pieces of text known as flags. Some competitions were designed for experts. Others were specifically meant to help beginners learn. I wanted to try one, but never did. There was always another room to explore, another talk to catch or another unfamiliar object I needed someone to explain to me.

Mostly, I wandered.

That was how I ended up learning about Defcon badges. The official badge gets you into the convention, but villages, groups and independent creators also make their own. Many are small electronic devices with lights, screens, games or hidden puzzles. Some communicate with other badges. Others come as bare circuit boards that you have to assemble yourself. Collecting and hacking them is an entire subculture within Defcon.

Because I arrived late, many of the badges I heard people talking about had already sold out. But I managed to buy one from the Maritime Hacking Village, where hackers explore the technology used on boats and other maritime systems, as well as the Car Hacking Village.

I also sat down at a soldering station and made a small badge of my own.

I had always wanted to learn how to solder, but was intimidated by the idea of trying it alone. At Defcon, a young guy and a much older man — two people who seemed like complete opposites in almost every way — took turns guiding me through it.

They showed me how to heat each connection and apply just enough solder to hold the components in place. Once I got the hang of it, I was surprised by how naturally it came to me. When the badge lit up, I realized soldering had never been beyond me; I just needed someone to show me where to start.

A lot of it went over my head, obviously

The talks were a reminder of how much I don’t know. Speakers spoke through code and acronyms as if everyone in the room spoke the same language, which frustrated me at times. Sometimes I could follow the larger idea, but lost the technical details. Other times, I had almost no idea what was happening.

One project I could understand came from Billy Swearingen. He developed software that generates and tests visual patterns designed to confuse the AI systems used by surveillance cameras. His goal isn’t to make someone invisible, but rather to make it more difficult for a camera’s software to recognize a person or face.

A talk about cellular surveillance went the same way for me. I didn’t understand every detail about cellular networks, but I understood the problem. Police can use devices that pretend to be cellphone towers, and the people being monitored may never know. Rayhunter offered an inexpensive way to start looking for signs of that surveillance.

I quickly gave up on trying to understand every technical detail. I followed whatever interested me, bought a few devices to let me experiment in different areas of cybersecurity and filled my phone with terms to look up later. It was like a college curriculum I had given myself.

I found my village

Eventually, I wandered into Noob Village. For the first time all weekend, I knew immediately that I was in the right place.

Noob Village was built for people trying to enter cybersecurity without needing to understand everything. It offered beginner-focused talks, workshops, career advice and a place to ask basic questions without feeling stupid.

That was where I met Andrew Crotty, founder and president of the Ginger Hacker Initiative, a nonprofit that helps beginners, students, veterans and career changers find their way into cybersecurity through accessible education, mentorship and hands-on learning.

Crotty and I talked about my own attempt to move beyond using tools other people built and develop a more technical understanding of hacking. I told him that I grew up in a place where cybersecurity never felt accessible. Nobody around me talked about hacking as a skill you could learn or a career you could pursue. Even after I became interested in it, I didn’t know where to begin or who to ask for help.

After wandering through rooms organized around specialties I barely understood, I had finally found my village. Literally.

That didn’t mean I suddenly knew what I was doing. It meant I had found one place that catered to not knowing. I left with a better idea of where to begin, then walked back into the chaos to see what else Defcon had waiting for me.

Some of the best moments happened in line

One of the few things I had planned was getting a copy of The Cuckoo’s Egg signed by its author, Cliff Stoll. Jaron Bradley, director of Jamf Threat Labs, had recommended the book when I interviewed him at Black Hat as a good way for me to start learning about cybersecurity. I had never heard of Stoll, but at Defcon, his name carried a kind of celebrity.

Stoll was an astronomer working at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the 1980s when a 75-cent accounting discrepancy led him to discover a hacker inside the lab’s computer network. He spent the next year tracking the intruder, eventually uncovering an international espionage operation connected to the Soviet KGB. This story became The Cuckoo’s Egg, one of the foundational books of modern cybersecurity.

While I waited for Stoll, I started talking to the man in front of me. He had joined the military without a cybersecurity background, learned the technical skills and eventually turned them into a career in his 20s. We talked about where we came from, politics and the different paths that had brought us into the same line.

It wasn’t an interview. Neither of us was trying to impress the other or extract anything useful.

It was exactly the kind of unexpected conversation I had hoped to have when I came to Defcon alone: a chance to meet someone whose path into cybersecurity looked nothing like mine and to hear how he found his way in.

Then I met Stoll, who was every bit as strange, energetic and entertaining as his reputation suggested. He signed my book and shook my hand, wishing me luck on my journey in this strange new world.

The whole experience was another reminder of how wonderfully unpredictable Defcon could be.

Next year, I’m joining in

By the end of the weekend, I had learned to solder, solved a cryptography puzzle involving a Vigenère cipher and spent more money than expected on hacking tools. More importantly, the technical side of cybersecurity no longer felt as intimidating as it had when I arrived.

There was still plenty I didn’t try. I never attempted a CTF, even though several were designed for beginners. I had my laptop with me, but I mostly used it to take notes while watching other people hack. This year, I wanted to wander and understand what Defcon was. Next year, I want to participate.

I’ll have a better idea of which villages I want to visit, and I plan to commit to at least one beginner CTF — not because I think I’ll suddenly know what I’m doing, but because I’m no longer as afraid of not knowing.

One of my favorite things about Defcon was seeing how many parents had brought their children. They were being introduced to technology as something they could question and rebuild in their own vision. That gave me a little more courage.

I didn’t leave Defcon as a hacker, not that I was supposed to. I did leave with enough confidence to start figuring things out for myself.

At one point, I admitted to another attendee that I felt like I didn’t belong there. He told me something I kept thinking about for the rest of the weekend: “You don’t have to know what you’re doing most of the time,” he said. “You just have to want to find out.”

With more than a decade of experience, Nelson covers Apple and Google and writes about iPhone and Android features, privacy and security settings, and more.

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