I’ve been into cycling for decades—riding with grade-school buddies, kicking around in college, then city commuting in Boston, Paris, Barcelona, New York, and now Seattle. Somehow only in the last 10 years, when I became a volunteer mechanic at a bike-centric Seattle nonprofit, did I think about adjusting anything more than the seat height. Now I’m diligent about making sure I have the right bike and that it’s fit for my body and my riding style.
I wish I could have figured that stuff out sooner, so for this story, I wanted to gather expert advice on the basics of what people should look for and what questions to ask when buying a bike. (My colleague Michael Venutolo-Mantovani has more advice if you’re going that route.) After that, I’d take my own bike to a professional fitter and go deep into the nitty-gritty of bike fit to find out what it means to have a tailored ride.
I start with no bike at all. I walk to meet Rebekah Ko, the community resources director at Seattle’s Bike Works, the nonprofit where I volunteer. Ko previously ran the sales floor as general manager at the city’s Mend Bicycles, and for the purposes of this story we pretend like I am in the market for a bike that I’d use for transportation and general kicking-around fun. We make sure it’s unlike my own bike, so I won’t be comparing the two in the back of my mind.
Bike Works sells new bikes and refurbished older bikes, and after a round of questions about what I was looking for, particularly about how and how often I planned to use it, Ko wheels out a Trek Multitrack 7200, a sturdy hybrid likely from the late aughts. This Trek is upright and handsome and silver and blue, with a short wheelbase, flat bars, grip shifters, and a big, squishy seat, all of which are very different from what I’m used to.
“Hybrids are a soft landing ground for many people looking to get into cycling,” she explains.
She checks for about two inches of standover clearance between me and the top of the frame. She then has me put a thumb on top of my left hip and extend my hand out flat in the air next to it, setting the initial seat height just beneath it. With Ko bracing the bike, I hop on, so she can fine-tune the saddle height, making sure I have a slight bend in my knee with the pedal at its lowest point.
“That slight bend helps make sure we are engaging the larger muscles—the glutes and the thighs—where the power comes from,” she says. “It also helps keep pressure off of the knees.”
From there, it’s time to grab the bars, which can typically be raised, lowered, and pivoted. We then adjust the brake lever angle to make sure my hands rest on them in a relaxed position.
Ko makes sure I look comfortable, not overreached, without locked elbows or a pinched neck, not scrunched into what some call “meerkat position,” with a straight back and the wrists and elbows very bent like you’re peering over the top of them.
After these adjustments, it’s generally a good time for some preliminary stock-taking, as you’ll hopefully be spending a lot of time on this bike. So how’s your keister feel? If the saddle feels wonky, consider a different one. If it feels good, it’s time for a test drive.
I hop on the Trek and pedal around a parking lot, first noticing that giant squishy seat, which is kind of weird … but kinda fun! It fits the bike’s vibe, and I like it. The brakes are nice and grabby. The whole thing feels surprisingly nimble.
Spiders? Skeletons? Bad omens? My kind of party.
I almost don’t want to call Meshchera a match-three game because I fear that kind of undersells how captivating it is. But, it is a game you play within a six by six grid, in which you have to group matching tiles in clusters of three or more so they may merge and become other, higher value tiles, so that’s the description we’re working with. The atmosphere is off the charts, though, which isn’t something I’m used to finding in these types of games. It has gorgeously detailed artwork and background music that you can get completely lost in.
In Meshchera, you can choose to go for the high score or pick from several challenges that will dictate how you approach the round, like “kill five monsters” or “keep 10 monsters for 10 turns.” The gameboard is a dark marsh that will slowly become overrun with vegetation and creatures, unless you can stay ahead of creep by skillfully matching tiles to condense them into other things. Grasses become flowers, which become trees, campfires, houses, churches, etc. It is a uniquely complex matching game — you’re given next to no information about how the items work or how different elements on the board behave and interact, so you have to figure it out along the way and course-correct as you learn.
khvoshch
I’ve spent quite a bit of time playing Meshchera over the last week, but certain things still elude me. Take the “create and destroy a Monster” challenge. I have absolutely no idea how to create a monster, and that’s not for lack of trying. But, this gives me something to keep working toward even as my high scores nudge higher and higher. The game includes 10 challenges right now, and the developer says more are coming soon. Meshchera is really good, and feels like the kind of game you can revisit ad infinitum. It’s already found itself a home in my folder of “go-to” Playdate games.
Meshchera isn’t available in the Playdate Catalog (yet?), but don’t let that stop you from trying it out. It’s on itch.io at the moment, and sideloading games onto the Playdate is incredibly easy. Once you have the game file, you can just drag and drop it right into your library by signing into your Playdate account and going to the Sideload tab. This can also be done via USB. Panic has a detailed explanation of all the options, if you need some guidance.
Twelve AI labs have a combined valuation larger than Ford and GM. None of them sell anything. I call them the Virgin Unicorns — valued above a billion dollars, but innocent of product or revenue.
OpenAI proved that an AI research lab with the right product could become one of the most valuable companies on earth. A dozen other AI labs are trying to repeat the trick. They have raised more than $29 billion at a combined valuation approaching $130 billion, without shipping anything a customer can buy.
Two questions are worth asking:
.vu-table-wrapper {
overflow-x: auto;
margin: 1.5em 0;
height: auto !important;
min-height: 0 !important;
}
.vu-table {
border-collapse: collapse;
width: 100%;
font-size: 14px;
line-height: 1.4;
height: auto !important;
min-height: 0 !important;
}
.vu-table th,
.vu-table td {
border: 1px solid #ddd;
padding: 8px 10px;
text-align: left;
vertical-align: top;
}
.vu-table th {
background-color: #f4f4f4;
font-weight: 700;
}
.vu-table tr:nth-last-child(2) td {
font-weight: 700;
background-color: #f9f9f9;
}
| Company | Founded | Founders | Valuation | Raised | Lead Investors | Product |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project Prometheus | 2025 | Bezos, Bajaj | $38B | $16.2B | JPMorgan, BlackRock, Bezos | None |
| Safe Superintelligence | 2024 | Sutskever, Gross, Levy | $32B | $3B | Greenoaks, Sequoia, a16z, Lightspeed, DST, Alphabet, Nvidia | None |
| Thinking Machines Lab | 2025 | Murati, Schulman, Zoph, Weng | $12B | $2B | a16z, Nvidia, AMD, Cisco, Accel, Jane Street | Tinker* |
| Reflection AI | 2024 | Laskin, Antonoglou | $8B | $2.1B | Nvidia, Lightspeed, Sequoia, Schmidt, Citi, 1789 Capital | None |
| Physical Intelligence | 2024 | Levine, Finn, Hausman, Ichter, Groom | $5.6B | $1B+ | CapitalG, Lux, Thrive, Bezos, T. Rowe Price, Index | Demo |
| Ineffable Intelligence | 2025 | Silver, Czarnecki, Espeholt, Oh | $5.1B | $1.1B | Sequoia, Lightspeed, Nvidia, Google, UK Sovereign AI, Index | None |
| World Labs | 2024 | Li, Johnson, Mildenhall | $5B | $1.2B | a16z, NEA, Radical, Nvidia, AMD, Autodesk, Emerson Collective | Marble* |
| Recursive Superintelligence | 2025 | Socher, Rocktäschel, Tian, Clune, Tobin | $4.65B | $650M | GV, Greycroft, Nvidia, AMD | None |
| Unconventional AI | 2025 | Rao, Carbin, Achour, Lee | $4.5B | $475M | a16z, Lightspeed, Sequoia, Lux, DCVC, Bezos | None |
| Humans& | 2025 | Zelikman, Harik, Peng, He, Goodman, and others | $4.48B | $480M | SV Angel, Harik, Nvidia, Bezos, GV, Emerson Collective | None |
| Ricursive Intelligence | 2025 | Goldie, Mirhoseini | $4B | $335M | Lightspeed, Sequoia, DST, Nvidia, Felicis, Radical | None |
| AMI Labs | 2025 | LeCun, LeBrun | $3.5B | $1.03B | Cathay, Greycroft, Hiro, HV, Bezos Expeditions, Nvidia, Samsung, Temasek | None |
| Total | ~$127B | ~$30B | ||||
| * Limited research release. Tinker is a fine-tuning tool for researchers; Marble is a 3D-world-generation API in early partner access. Neither is a general-availability commercial product. Sources: company announcements, Bloomberg, Financial Times, TechCrunch, Crunchbase, and PitchBook reporting from 2024-2026. Valuations reflect the most recent confirmed round; figures for rounds in active negotiation are not included. |
||||||
To answer these questions, let’s identify four patterns across this cohort of companies.
Pattern 1: The pedigree premium. Every founder is a recognized leader in their field, and most come from a small set of institutions. Roughly four-fifths hold PhDs, mostly in computer science from a handful of universities — Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Toronto, Alberta, Cambridge, UCL — and most of the rest left PhDs at one of those programs to start their companies.
On the employer side, the concentration is tighter still. Four of the twelve companies are anchored by DeepMind alumni (Ineffable, Reflection, Ricursive, Recursive Superintelligence). Two are anchored by OpenAI alumni (Thinking Machines, Safe Superintelligence). AMI Labs traces back to Meta’s FAIR group, and Humans& draws its founders from across Anthropic, xAI, and Google. Stanford and Berkeley faculty appointments account for most of the rest (World Labs, Physical Intelligence, and Noah Goodman of Humans&).
Four institutions — DeepMind, OpenAI, Berkeley, and Stanford — have produced the founders of nearly every Virgin Unicorn in the table. Investors are pricing CVs, not products.
Pattern 2: Nvidia as kingmaker. Nine of the twelve companies in the table have Nvidia as an investor. The supplier of the picks and shovels is also an equity holder in the prospectors. Nvidia gets early visibility into the most ambitious AI bets, locks in compute commitments, and earns multiples on capital deployed at near-zero marginal cost. Selling the shovels was already a good business. Owning the mines too is unprecedented.
Pattern 3: The cap tables are unusually wide. Each round in the table includes a syndicate of ten to twenty investors — venture firms, corporate strategics, sovereign wealth funds, and individuals. Sequoia and a16z still lead. But the rounds are large enough that they require balance-sheet capital — from JPMorgan, BlackRock, Alphabet, the UK Sovereign AI Fund, Samsung, Temasek, ADIA, and Bezos personally — to fill out. That makes these rounds structurally different from classical venture financings.
Pattern 4: A post-LLM thesis. Every company is arguing, in some form, that the current paradigm isn’t enough — that scaling LLMs won’t reach AGI, and that something else (world models, reinforcement learning, agentic systems, AI scientists, novel chips, formal mathematical reasoning) is required. The thesis is the product. The product is a promise.
Others have dissected these unicorns:
The lottery-ticket framing is now conventional wisdom. But will this lottery pay out? One way to handicap the odds is to look to the past.
The closest historical parallel is not the dot-com era. Webvan, Pets.com, and Boo.com failed not because they were pre-product, but because they had products and bad business models. Those companies burned capital on infrastructure and marketing, not on research.
The closer cautionary tales are the celebrity-founder pre-product flops of the last fifteen years.
In each case, founder credentials raised the money. The product never justified the valuation.
The structurally closest analogy, though, is biotech. Roughly 80% of 2021 biotech IPOs were pre-revenue. The probability that a pre-clinical drug reaches commercialization is under 10%. Development takes a decade and costs $1 billion. Yet a Bentley University study of 319 biotech IPOs from 1997 to 2016 found that the cohort produced over $100 billion in net shareholder value despite a failure rate above 50%. The winners were large enough to carry the portfolio. And many of the most successful biotechs were acquired before reaching profitability.
The Virgin Unicorns are biotech-shaped businesses. Pre-revenue, science-driven, decade-long timelines, binary outcomes, acquisition as the usual exit. But they aren’t financed like biotechs. Biotech investors release capital in milestone tranches tied to specific scientific results, and they expect most candidates to fail. Virgin Unicorn investors release capital in one large round on the strength of a CV, and price for success. Same shape of business, opposite financing logic. That mismatch is where the disappointment will come from.
The OpenAI story counters the biotech analogy. From its 2015 founding to the ChatGPT launch in late 2022, OpenAI looked exactly like a Virgin Unicorn — pre-consumer-product for seven years, billions in capital, and only research to show for it. Then ChatGPT shipped and revenue went from zero to over $10 billion in three years. No biotech has ever scaled like that.
Sequoia and other investors writing checks to today’s Virgin Unicorns aren’t pricing for biotech outcomes. They’re pricing for the second coming of OpenAI.
@media (max-width: 600px) {
aside.callout { float:none !important; max-width:100% !important; margin-left:0 !important; margin-right:0 !important; }
aside.callout .callout-img { display:none !important; }
}
The table above makes the size of that bet legible. Early-stage venture investors aim for a 10x return. Most of these twelve will return zero, so the one winner has to carry the other eleven by itself. At a $127 billion aggregate marked-up value, that means the winner alone has to produce something like $1.3 trillion in value.
That is not a forecast — it is the bet the VCs have already placed. Sequoia and a16z made exactly this kind of bet on OpenAI and Anthropic, and the on-paper returns have already vindicated it many times over. Anthropic itself looked like a Virgin Unicorn in 2022 — and then it shipped Claude and built revenue.
The historical record suggests some skepticism. But bubbles have a way of producing the occasional Amazon or Google amid the wreckage. Identifying which Virgin Unicorn will become a trillion-dollar company — a “kilocorn,” a thousand unicorns in one — is tough. Which one would you bet on?
Science
Not all bad news: Crypto billionaire signs up for a mission to Mars
SpaceX called off the launch of its huge Starship rocket seconds before liftoff due to a ground equipment problem.
The countdown clock reached a planned hold at T-40 seconds after a relatively trouble-free process. Some iffy weather had cleared, and everything looked good for the twelfth Starship test flight – the first try-out for the latest generation of the vehicle and launchpad.
Alas, it was not to be. After repeatedly resetting the countdown clock to the T-40 second mark due to problems, which included warnings from sensors on the quick-disconnect arm on the launch pad and issues with the pad’s water diverter, SpaceX eventually threw in the towel and scrubbed the launch.
Boss man Elon Musk blamed the scrub on the ground equipment, and posted on X: “The hydraulic pin holding the tower arm in place did not retract.” Musk wrote that if the issue could be fixed, SpaceX will try again later today. The next window opens at 5:30 pm CT, according to the billionaire.
Considering that this was the first launch attempt from a new pad and the first of this vehicle’s iteration, the countdown problems are unsurprising. As such, getting to the T-40 second mark was an achievement in its own right. Sadly, the team had only a few minutes to deal with the problems, since the propellant loading was complete and the fuel temperature could not be maintained for long.
Expectations are high for this mission. Despite years of development and Musk’s promises, Starship is still non-operational, and its launches remain on suborbital trajectories during its test phase. The vehicle has quite a way to go before it can play a part in NASA’s goal of landing a crew on the Moon.
According to the company’s recent IPO filing, “We expect Starship to commence payload delivery to orbit in the second half of 2026.”
The second half of 2026 is only weeks away, so it’ll be an interesting few months.
The IPO filing also states that Musk’s performance-based restricted shares in SpaceX vest upon the establishment of a permanent human colony on Mars “with at least one million inhabitants.”
First, however, the SpaceX needs to get to Mars. During the scrubbed launch attempt, it announced that crypto billionaire Chun Wang, who commanded the Fram2 private human spaceflight mission in 2025, would be on the crew for a future flyby of the red planet.
Hopefully, Wang’s jaunt to Mars won’t end up canceled like the dearMoon project, a mission to the Moon financed by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. The project was unveiled in 2018, but was eventually canceled in 2024. Starship has yet to hit Earth orbit, let alone head to the Moon. ®
The annual tech showcase highlights next-gen AI, cloud, and future-ready ICT solutions while uniting ecosystem partners to build the foundation for the nation’s AI era
Partner Content ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a global leading provider of integrated information and communication technology solutions, held ZTE Day Indonesia 2026 in Jakarta, as its annual technology showcase event, bringing together industry leaders, technology partners, and digital ecosystem players to discuss the future of AI, intelligent infrastructure, and digital transformation in Indonesia.
As industries increasingly adopt AI, cloud technologies, and data-driven operations, the demand for smarter, adaptive, and future-ready digital infrastructure continues to accelerate. Responding to this momentum, ZTE Day Indonesia 2026 highlighted how AI, intelligent networks, cloud infrastructure, and next-generation connectivity are becoming key foundations for national digital competitiveness and future economic growth.
The event showcased a broad range of integrated ICT innovations spanning artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent computing, cloud infrastructure, optical transport, enterprise networking, Wi-Fi 7, and next-generation connectivity technologies designed to support enterprises, operators, and industries navigating the AI era.
Liu Sen, President Director of ZTE Indonesia, stated that Indonesia is currently entering an important phase of digital transformation, where progress will increasingly depend on strong collaboration between technology providers, infrastructure players, and partners across the digital ecosystem.
“Indonesia is currently entering an important phase of digital transformation, where AI, cloud technologies, and intelligent connectivity will become the key foundations of future digital economic growth. Through ZTE Day Indonesia 2026, we aim to demonstrate how technology innovation can be implemented to support the development of smarter, more efficient, and sustainable digital infrastructure. We believe that cross-industry collaboration will play a crucial role in building a strong digital foundation to support Indonesia’s vision of becoming a leading digital economy,” said Liu Sen.
Beyond showcasing technology innovations, ZTE Day Indonesia 2026 also emphasized the growing importance of ecosystem collaboration in supporting Indonesia’s AI-ready digital landscape.
During the exhibition showcase, ZTE presented a series of its latest innovations, including nubia’s latest AI smartphone, high-performance AI server solutions, optical transport technologies, AI-powered network management systems, and Wi-Fi 7 enterprise connectivity solutions.
ZTE also demonstrated its comprehensive end-to-end digital ecosystem capabilities through solutions covering RAN, microwave, transport network, core network, fixed network, and big video solutions. These innovations reflected the company’s commitment to supporting operators, enterprises, and industries in addressing the evolving demands of the digital era.
As part of ZTE Day Indonesia 2026, the ZTE Open Day Afternoon Session featured keynote presentations from Prof. Viciano Lee of Sertis Indonesia, Sami Muhammad Salman from Whale Cloud Technology Indonesia, Mohan Albert, Director of CTO Group at ZTE, and Chok Shin Lip, Partner Solution Architect Director at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
The keynote sessions explored the growing role of AI, cloud technologies, intelligent infrastructure, and ecosystem collaboration in supporting enterprise transformation and accelerating Indonesia’s digital economy development.
The event also hosted a panel discussion titled “Connecting the Ecosystem: Intelligent Connectivity for Enterprise Integration & Value Innovation”, featuring industry leaders including Eric Arianto, Chief Technology & Network Officer of Linknet, Irawan Delfi, Network Development Division Head of Fiberstar, and Sigit Dwi Cahyo, Head of Technology Planning and Product of Tower Bersama Group. The panel explored the importance of intelligent connectivity, fiber infrastructure readiness, and ecosystem integration in supporting enterprise digitalization, service innovation, and the growing demand for seamless digital experiences across industries.
Another panel discussion titled “Building the Foundation: Digital Infrastructure for Indonesia’s AI Era”, moderated by Vincent Han, featured industry leaders including Abieta Billy from DCI Indonesia, Muljadi Muhali from Fortress Digital Services, and Marlo Budiman from DSST Mas Gemilang. The second panel emphasized the importance of strengthening digital infrastructure readiness, enhancing data center capabilities, and fostering industry collaboration to support the growing adoption of AI technologies and Indonesia’s broader digital transformation agenda.
Through keynote sessions, panel discussions, interactive product demonstrations, and networking activities, ZTE Day Indonesia 2026 provided customers, partners, and industry stakeholders with deeper insights into AI implementation, intelligent digital infrastructure, and real-world applications of next-generation technologies across industries.
Contributed by ZTE.
Image Playground will generate images based on provided photos and other inputs, but the results leave a lot to be desired
Generative AI is not Apple’s strong suit, but Image Playground, the tool responsible for horrific AI avatar generation and Genmoji, should see significant improvements with the OS 27 cycle.
Apple announced Apple Intelligence features that had to be delayed in 2024, and one of them should have been Image Playground. While the other AI tools were of passable usefulness and quality, the image generation tool still leaves a lot to be desired.
According to the “Power On” newsletter from Bloomberg, the Image Playground app should see a “big boost” from Apple’s upgraded Apple Foundation Models. It’s an obvious statement given that Gemini is being distilled into Apple’s models, and one of Gemini’s specialties is image generation.
However, even as Apple’s image generation feature improves, its models will still likely lag behind competing options by some margin. Users that want more oomph behind their image generation in Image Playground will be able to use third-party models of their choosing.
While the results are often unfortunate, Image Playground is more of a proof-of-concept than a useful tool in its current form. Apple presented it as a way to turn your mom into an AI-slop superhero for what would be a simply terrible birthday message.
While no one on Earth should use Image Playground for that function, it can be somewhat entertaining the same way other gen AI models have been. Using it to see how it might interpret a specific person or prompt can be amusing, but the output isn’t something anyone could or should rely on for anything beyond a giggle in an iMessage group chat.
The only good thing about Image Playground output (when using Apple’s models) is that it’s either on device or in Private Cloud Compute servers that run on renewable energy. While generative slop is loaded with moral quandaries, that’s one area Image Playground doesn’t suffer from.
Genmoji is the true winner in Image Playground. While it isn’t a function I’ve used much, it has enough guardrails that it can make some decent results.
Even if Image Playground is able to one day achieve Pixar or Ghibli-level results with on-device AI, there’s the argument that all gen AI is bad for humanity. One area of image generation Apple will no doubt stay away from is the ability to produce photorealistic output, which can lead to problems like deepfakes.
iOS 27 is expected to make Genmoji more proactive in the system by suggesting premade options in the text suggestion box. Shared Genmoji become available to the people you send them to, so everyone can get some use out of that weed emoji.
Writing Tools are one of Apple’s better AI features
Apple’s weakest offerings in AI are its generative functions, however, they’re fully optional and easily ignored. There is no doubt Apple will continue to pursue better image generation, but if that’s something you want to do, you might want to stick to other apps.
That said, Image Playground could prove much better in OS 27 and earn its place as a useful toolset. The app itself is fine, but Image Playground also exists outside of the app as an extension interface in places like Notes and Freeform.
If Apple can make Image Playground a useful tool that can run on devices with Apple’s arguably somewhat ethical AI models, then I welcome it. Though improvements could mean turning the tool into a plagiarism machine, which will create a whole different set of issues.
People that want to perform these functions are going to seek out tools that offer them. If gen AI must exist to meet consumer expectations, then Apple should have a good offering.
These fake images that lack artistic ingenuity or integrity are getting created no matter what. So, if some of them can be made with ethically sourced AI, local models running on a device’s battery, or on private servers powered by renewable energy, I’d say it is a net positive.
The ability to choose third-party models for Image Playground through a system API will prove interesting. However, once you’ve sent your data to that third-party, all bets are off from an ethical and privacy-oriented standpoint.
At least you can make a plagiarized Ghibli avatar for social media instead of paying a human to make one for you, I guess.
Cisco has released security updates to address a maximum-severity Secure Workload vulnerability that allows attackers to gain Site Admin privileges.
Formerly known as Cisco Tetration, Cisco Secure Workload helps admins reduce their network’s attack surface through zero trust microsegmentation and stop lateral movement to keep business applications safe.
Tracked as CVE-2026-20223, the security flaw was found in Secure Workload’s internal REST APIs, and it enables unauthenticated attackers to access resources with the privileges of the Site Admin role.
“This vulnerability is due to insufficient validation and authentication when accessing REST API endpoints. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability if they are able to send a crafted API request to an affected endpoint,” Cisco explained in a Wednesday advisory.
“A successful exploit could allow the attacker to read sensitive information and make configuration changes across tenant boundaries with the privileges of the Site Admin user.”
Cisco says there are no workarounds for this security flaw, has released software updates to patch it for on-premises customers, and has already addressed it in the cloud-based Cisco Secure Workload SaaS deployment.
| Cisco Secure Workload Release | First Fixed Release |
|---|---|
| 3.9 and earlier | Migrate to a fixed release. |
| 3.10 | 3.10.8.3 |
| 4.0 | 4.0.3.17 |
The company also added that its Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) has not found evidence that the vulnerability has been exploited in the wild before publishing this week’s advisory.
Earlier this month, Cisco warned that another maximum severity authentication bypass vulnerability (CVE-2026-20182) affecting its Catalyst SD-WAN software-based networking platform was being actively exploited as a zero-day, allowing attackers to gain admin privileges.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added the CVE-2026-20182 flaw to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog on May 14 and ordered federal agencies to secure affected devices within three days, by May 17.
In early May, Cisco also released security updates for a denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability in Crosswork Network Controller (CNC) and Network Services Orchestrator (NSO), which requires manually rebooting targeted systems to recover.
Over the past five years, CISA has flagged 91 Cisco vulnerabilities as actively exploited, six of which have been used by various ransomware gangs.
Automated pentesting tools deliver real value, but they were built to answer one question: can an attacker move through the network? They were not built to test whether your controls block threats, your detection rules fire, or your cloud configs hold.
This guide covers the 6 surfaces you actually need to validate.
SaaS
CEO eyes margin gains by keeping headcount flat – bold for a company selling HR software to employers
Workday is hoping to boost its revenue
and margins by using AI agents instead of hiring
people, according to its CEO.
After announcing revenue growth, Aneel Bhusri – the company co-founder who was
reinstated as CEO in February – said his aspiration is to keep headcount
the same while sustaining growth and increasing margins by harnessing AI.
“I’d love to see us continue the growth
that we had in Q1, but keep headcount as close to flat for the year as possible
because we are getting the benefits of using our own products and other AI
tools. That’s where I’m hopeful and believe that we’re going to have additional
margin expansion as we get those benefits. That’s different than what my view
was coming in three months ago.”
In its Q1 results ended April 30, Workday recorded net profit of $222 million versus $68 million in the prior year, when the bottom line was hit by restructuring expenses. Revenue generated for the three months was $2.54 billion, up 13.5 percent year-on-year.
The results beat market expectations and Workday forecast higher margins for the rest of the year, sending its share price up 10 percent in
after-hours trading.
Bhusri’s aspiration to keep headcount flat
while increasing revenue and margins follows a roller-coaster ride of public statements on employment
plans.
In February 2025, Workday announced
an 8.5 percent cut to its global workforce – 1,750 positions – as it “intended to prioritize its investments and continue advancing Workday’s ongoing focus on durable growth,” an SEC
filing said.
In June 2025, CFO Zane
Rowe told an investment conference that the SaaS biz planned to rehire the same number
of people, although with different roles. “We will be hiring back. We wanted to
make sure everyone understood that this is not us reducing,” he said.
Nonetheless, in September 2025, then CEO
Carl Eschenbach seemingly reversed the plan, telling investors it was “consolidating
and streamlining the organization model” and did not “need more
headcount to drive the business forward.”
By February 2026, Eschenbach was out the door
as Workday said it would lay off about 2 percent of its staff in a bid to
align with its “highest priorities.”
Shareholders may be delighted that Workday
can now expand without having to increase the size of its workforce. But for a company that
relies on organizations hiring people to create demand for its HR software, it seems like a strange example to set. ®
A Chinese cyber-espionage campaign has been targeting telecommunications providers with newly discovered Linux and Windows malware dubbed Showboat and JFMBackdoor, respectively.
The operation has been active since at least mid-2022 and targeted organizations across the Asia Pacific and parts of the Middle East. It was attributed to the Calypso threat group, also tracked as Red Lamassu.
According to researchers at Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs and PwC Threat Intelligence, the threat actor set up and used multiple telecom-themed domains to impersonate their targets.
The Linux implant Calypso uses in these attacks, dubbed Showboat/kworker, is a modular post-exploitation framework built to for long-term persistence after initial compromise. The initial infection vector is unknown.
According to a report today from Black Lotus Labs, once Showboat is deployed on a target system, it starts collecting information about the host and sends it to a command-and-control (C2) server.
The malware can also upload or download files, hide its own process, and establish persistence via a new service.
“One notable feature is the ‘hide’ command, which enables a process to conceal itself on a host machine by retrieving code stored on external websites such as Pastebin or online forums for use as a ‘dead drop’, Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs researchers explain.
Its most notable function is acting as a SOCKS5 proxy and port-forwarding pivot point, serving as a foothold on compromised endpoints and enabling the attackers to move to other systems on the internal network.
Researchers at PwC Threat Intelligence analyzed Red Lamassu’s infection chain on Windows and noted that it starts with the execution of a batch script that drops payloads to stage a DLL-sideloading procedure (fltMC.exe + FLTLIB.dll). Ultimately, the final payload called JMFBackdoor is loaded.
According to the researchers, JFMBackdoor is a full-featured Windows espionage implant that has the following capabilities:
Infrastructure analysis suggests that the hackers follow a partially decentralized operational model, in which multiple clusters share similar certificate-generation patterns and tooling but target distinct victim sets.
Lumen concludes that the tooling is likely shared across multiple China-aligned threat groups, each targeting different regions and using the same malware ecosystem.
Automated pentesting tools deliver real value, but they were built to answer one question: can an attacker move through the network? They were not built to test whether your controls block threats, your detection rules fire, or your cloud configs hold.
This guide covers the 6 surfaces you actually need to validate.
In this week’s “Sunday Reboot,” Apple shoots soccer with iPhones, Epic Games misses the mark with its messaging, and Plex’s astounding price rise.
Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get the next week underway with a good first step.
This week, Apple faced protests over the closure of the Apple Towson Town Center store, the first unionized store. It also elected to continue the never-ending lawsuit with Epic Games via the Supreme Court, and it turns out some server schematics were stolen in the May cyberattack of Foxconn.
The lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple has been excruciatingly long, painfully expensive, and seems like it just won’t end. And yet, somehow, Epic has taken what should’ve been a happy promotional event and made it melodramatic.
Fortnite, the game that started the whole lawsuit shenanigans, is back in the App Store in most countries. That’s a big thing for Epic to go on about, and it did, complete with an Apple-like social media ad.
This is something we can expect from Epic Games. It’s a big song and (video-based) dance, promoting its moneymaker by shaking its moneymaker
This is great for gamers, but it is overshadowed by two things. First, that Australia is excluded from the revival due to cases still being processed in the country.
The second and more unfortunate thing, is the press release that Epic created. One that ominously says “The Final Battle Approaches.”
This is in reference to how the U.S. federal court will “force” Apple to be transparent over its App Store fees. Epic believes that regulators around the world “will not allow Apple junk fees to stand.”
It goes on to say it will continue to challenge Apple on its alleged anticompetitive practices, like banning alternative stores and payment systems.
It’s an astoundingly contrasting approach, depending on where you view it from. Gamers get a bright and colorful celebration, while simultaneously, there’s the highly corporate and completely stark threat.
If we’re talking from a Star Wars perspective (a property that is being incorporated into Fortnite at the time of publication,) Epic is somehow trying to be the Rebel Alliance and the Empire at the same time.
Separately, they work fine. Bring them together, and it all feels a bit off.
Epic could’ve just stuck with the jovial messaging and kept quiet about what it wanted to do in the courtroom for another time. And it should’ve.
Given Epic chief Tim Sweeney’s public posting habits, we would’ve inevitably heard something about that side of things eventually.
On May 21, it was announced that the iPhone 17 Pro would play a very important part in Apple TV‘s coverage of the LA Galaxy vs Houston Dynamo FC MLS game the following Saturday.
All shots from the game would be shot live on the iPhone 17 Pro, from team warmups to scoring goals. Apple said it would bring “dynamic new perspectives that bring viewers closer to the action,” because an iPhone is so much smaller than a regular camera.
Apple TV shot its first MLS game entirely on an iPhone – image credit: Apple
While this may sound like the usual broadcast crew were waving iPhones around, everyone knows deep down that there’s more to it than that. With its extensive use in commercial projects, you can count on the use of specialist rigs and lens setups to augment the capabilities of the iPhone.
The fact that the iPhone is being used for a live soccer match is also entirely unsurprising. It was an inevitability.
It’s been used for some coverage during Friday Night Baseball back in September 2025, so Apple TV’s team has some experience already.
Away from the pitch, there’s also feature film work, including the iPhone 15 Pro Max for the Danny Boyle horror “28 Years Later.”
It’s also been used in a few ways for live broadcasts. The BBC used them for livestreams during the 2024 UK General Election, while NBC used two iPhones and an iPad for the “Today Show” during COVID times.
Replacing every camera for a sports broadcast with iPhones is an interesting move. It’s also a big advertising play by Apple, since it shows others what the iPhone is capable of doing.
Even so, it’s something that we all knew would happen eventually.
Everyone is very aware that inflation is a thing. Over time, the cost of products and services trends upward, making things gradually more expensive.
Sometimes, those price rises are high but not too much to swallow. Other times, they can be beyond belief.
On May 19, Plex said that it was raising the price of its Lifetime Plex Pass from its current $249.99 price to $749.99. That’s a $500 increase, which is almost a MacBook Neo.
The lifetime Plex Pass is not great value at $749.99
That is a considerably massive increase, which Plex justified by saying it needs to sustain long-term development. The new price “reflects the real, ongoing value of the software we’re committed to building and maintaining for years to come.”
It almost sounds justifiable until you start working out the math.
The current Plex Pass costs $69.99 per year, ignoring any price rises that may apply to that plan in the future. You would have to be using Plex for more than ten years under the annual Plex Pass to pay the equivalent of the Lifetime Plex Pass cost, post rise on July 1.
Given that not a lot of software survives a decade of market forces anyway, it seems like a hard deal to really accept as a consumer. It’s questionable whether there will still be a Plex service available to use in ten years time.
Indeed, there’s more incentive for consumers to pay for the annual Plex Pass, simply because of choice. After five years, they could easily switch to another platform entirely, saving some $375 in the process from not having to pay Plex more.
What the sticker shock upgrade should do is give consumers the opportunity to think about their options.
A big one is Jellyfin, which requires a bit of effort and some knowledge to get up and running. It’s free and open-source, and what you pay with is your own sweat.
Of course, free is a very attractive price point, and extremely hard for Plex to compete against.
Plex may well have good intentions to keep the software development of its platform going for years to come. To a consumer, it probably seems insane.
Last week’s Sunday Reboot covered Liquid Glass getting an award, Tim Cook being taken to China one more time, and Cats and HomeKit.
What actually makes a good pair of budget earbuds? I’ll say it’s sound quality, mixed with simplicity, with a sprinkle of some useful features. In my years of reviewing tech, there has been just one brand that’s been following this recipe perfectly, and that’s OPPO. Their Enco earbuds, as people would say these days, hit the spot, and I’m a fan, so much so that I’m still daily driving the Enco Buds 3 Pro+ from the last review. A few days back, the Chinese maker announced the all-new Enco Air 5 Pro, promising even better 55dB ANC, Bluetooth 6.0 support, and LHDC 5.0.
As expected, OPPO sent over the 5 Pro a couple of weeks back. Since then, I’ve made them my primary set of earbuds, taking them to the gym every day, using them while working, and also on a short flight to Delhi to test their ANC capabilities. Spoiler alert: They are my new favorite pair of earbuds. Here’s why.
OPPO Enco Air 5 Pro Review
Summary
The OPPO Enco Air 5 Pro are probably the easiest-to-recommend earbuds I’ve ever tested, simply because they don’t put a foot wrong. The design has been refined to feel even more premium, and the case no longer picks up smudges. Comfort is top-tier across all ear sizes. The sound feels super balanced, with clear vocals and controlled mids and highs. Not to mention the awesome ANC, which can dampen any aircraft noise without issues, helping you zone out into the music. Controls are intuitive and easy to understand for just about everyone.
If you remember the previous Enco Air 3 Pro+, they were a pretty handy pair of earphones. They weren’t too big, and the matte finish looked pretty at first. But over the past few months, I’ve noticed permanent smudge marks on them that won’t go away. Very fortunately, that won’t be the case for the Enco 5 Pro. OPPO has redesigned almost every part, and I’m a fan. You still get the pill-shaped case, but OPPO has trimmed the dimensions. It’s now even more portable, which is great news.
Next on the redesign list is the finish. It’s a soft-touch black powder coat that feels really nice in the hand. It only picks up small smudges, and they can be wiped away with a wet towel in seconds. The opening/closing mechanism is still super satisfying, meaning I was using it as a fidget toy. Thankfully, OPPO hasn’t done away with the physical pairing button, so you won’t have to perform finger gymnastics to pair with a new phone.
Comfort has always been tricky for me. I have small ears, so anything that’s bulky just slips out after a few minutes. That’s exactly why I couldn’t daily drive the Noise Master Buds 2. Surprisingly, OPPO is the only brand that’s stayed in my ears just fine, and I’m glad to report the same about the Enco Air 5 Pro. They are lightweight and supremely comfortable, meaning I could wear them on a long flight without any hiccups and carry them out while doing my daily chores, forgetting they are in my ears.
OPPO has also bundled a couple of differently sized tips, so if the pre-applied ones feel small or large, you can experiment with others. The buds are IP55 certified, meaning they’ll withstand a sweaty gym session without a hitch, but submersion will be a problem; keep an eye out for that.
The OPPO Enco Air 5 Pro comes with 12mm Titanium-Coated Diaphragm drivers and support for LHDC 5.0, and Bluetooth 6.0. All my testing was done on the Ultimate Sound preset, but there are a couple of other presets available, along with a full equalizer, which we will talk about soon. To put the Enco 5 Pro through its paces, I started my listening session with Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and “Heartless” by The Weeknd. The earbuds are tuned to be balanced, irrespective of what song you listen to. The Hi-Fi vocals sound clear without distortion at higher volumes, and the background drums on Heartless have a little thump, which is always appreciated. The highs don’t screech your ears, and OPPO has even managed to hit the treble on point.
I also found that all the instruments have very good separation, but if you’d like them placed all around you, OPPO has its Live Audio feature. I’m not the biggest fan of this tech, but I’d be lying if I said the experience was bad. The Enco Air 5 Pro places different elements perfectly around you. For all my movie fanatics, I watched a couple of episodes of Better Call Saul with the earbuds connected to my Mac. The latency wasn’t an issue, as the dialogue was in sync with the lips and the audio quality was clean. Calls have been improved quite a bit compared to the predecessor, with crisper audio and better noise reduction.
As far as ANC is concerned, its biggest test is flights. That rumble of the jet engine can get annoying fast, and I absolutely don’t like it. Since I was due to attend an event in Delhi, I took the 5 Pro with me, and the experience did not disappoint. At 55dB of ANC, I’d say the buds canceled about 85% of the jet engine rumble, without any music on. That’s really good compared to the 3 Pro+, which were around the 40% mark. With any music on at around half volume, most engine noise disappears, and the experience is the same as if you were sitting in your living room. It is important to note that high-pitched noises, such as a couple arguing, will still make their way through.
OPPO claims about 13 hours of battery life on a single charge for the earbuds, and while my 8 hours is less than the claimed number, it’s still plenty good, especially with ANC turned on at all times. The case provides a couple of extra charges, so the total output should be around 24-25 hours, depending on your use case. Still, battery life is great overall.
Controls can, at least for me, make or break the experience. Thankfully, the Enco Air 5 Pro gets this right, which has some of the best controls I’ve tested so far. Headlining it all is the new volume adjustment settings, which lets you slide up/down on both earbuds to raise or lower the volume. It works super effectively and doesn’t mess up the fit much. Beyond that, you get the basics like double-tap to play/pause the music, triple-tap to skip forward/rewind, and tap and hold to turn on ANC. All of these are customizable to your liking.
The earbuds can be controlled via the HeyMelody app or directly from the Bluetooth settings page if you’re using an OPPO or OnePlus phone. The app is slick and responsive, and this time OPPO has debuted the new Spotify Tap feature. For those unaware, it connects to your Spotify app and plays a song according to your taste whenever you tap your earbuds. I’m an Apple Music user, but I do see the appeal. There’s also Sound Space, which includes different white noises, like waves crashing on the shore, morning sunshine, and night camping. All of which can help you better concentrate at work or sleep better. Last but not least, a full 10-band equalizer lets you tune the sound output precisely to your liking. I did try it, but since I’m no musician, I left it in OPPO’s hands with the different presets.
At ₹4,999, the OPPO Enco Air 5 Pro are probably the easiest-to-recommend earbuds I’ve ever tested, simply because they don’t put a foot wrong. The design has been refined to feel even more premium, and the case no longer picks up smudges. Comfort is top-tier across all ear sizes. The sound feels super balanced, with clear vocals and controlled mids and highs. Not to mention the awesome ANC, which can dampen any aircraft noise without issues, helping you zone out into the music. Controls are intuitive and easy to understand for just about everyone. They get a solid recommendation from me and should absolutely be on your radar.
Blockchain.com files with SEC for U.S. IPO
Holiday Weekend Open Thread – Corporette.com
Bitcoin Accumulation Weakens as BTC Realized Losses Hit $600M
Dell Technologies DELL Stock Surges 15% on AI Server Momentum and Analyst Upgrades in 2026
Space X IPO Is ‘Bad News’ for Tech Stocks: But What About Bitcoin?
Makerfield: a tale of two social-media histories
MicroStrategy’s Saylor Says Miners No Longer Set Bitcoin Price, Another Force Has Taken Over
Robinhood crypto COO Tanya Denisova exits
NYT Strands Answers May 24 2026 Revealed for Puzzle No. 812 Theme Summer Essentials
WhatsApp ads could make Irish debut after discussions with DPC
A 0.12% parameter add-on gives AI agents the working memory RAG can’t
AI infrastructure race heats up as IREN pitches full-stack strategy, WhiteFiber lands $160M deal
Trump Invests $1M-$5M in Kura Sushi USA Chain With 27 California Locations
You Can Now Add ChatGPT To PowerPoint
Revolut Launches Dogecoin Debit Card Across UK and EU
Charity run by Reform leader Malcolm Offord accused of ‘law breaking’ over Scottish registration
2026 CJ Cup Byron Nelson leaderboard: Brooks Koepka finds putting stroke in Round 1
Trump Media’s Bitcoin Stash Shrinks Again as 2,650 BTC Lands on Crypto.com
Goldman Sachs reinstates Ageas stock coverage with neutral rating
Exa Labs raises $250 million in funding led by a16z
You must be logged in to post a comment Login