Senso is one of those products that tries to turn something traditionally passive – in this case, plant care – into a more interactive, data-driven experience. It does that by blending environmental sensing with AI guidance and a layer of gamification.

At its core, Senso is a modular smart plant sensor that tracks soil moisture, temperature, and light in real time. We saw the product in person at Beyond Expo 2026 and it’s designed to support a wide range of setups, offering support for over 12,000 plant types. It also has expandable accessories that let users adapt it to different pots and growing conditions.

Alongside the sensor data, its companion app uses AI-driven analysis to turn raw readings into actionable care instructions. Instead of simply telling you that soil is dry, for example, it aims to interpret what that means for a specific plant species. Then, it can suggest targeted next steps before issues become serious. As an owner of several dramatic tropical houseplants, this honestly sounds like a game changer.

Meta announced new upcoming subscription plans for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp this week. Instagram isn’t going behind a paywall, no. Rather, users will now be able to pay $4 a month for extra features, like seeing who rewatched your story post or pinning more posts to the top of your profile. Instagram Plus, Facebook Plus ($4 a month), and WhatsApp Plus ($3 a month) will roll out globally sometime this summer.

These “Plus” plans are an attempt by Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to diversify how it makes money from users. Meta is also doing what Meta does best with this move: mimicking other social media platforms’ successes—specifically, Snapchat.

“Loving husband, father of four boys, VP Product @ Meta” reads Evan Spiegel’s tongue-in-cheek LinkedIn profile. Spiegel, the cofounder and CEO of Snap, has never actually worked at Meta, though his social media platform has directly inspired at least some existing features on Instagram. After Instagram launched Stories in 2016, then-CEO Kevin Systrom didn’t mince words about how his platform was sometimes iterating on Snapchat features, telling TechCrunch that “they deserve all the credit” for the format of Stories.

In 2017, Snap launched a “Maps” tool where users could opt in and see the pinpoint location of where all of their friends were based on when they last opened the app. Instagram launched a very similar “Maps” feature just last year, where users could track the location of friends who chose to share their GPS data.

And while IG’s recently launched “Instants” app, with its ephemeral, unfiltered snaps, is more like the once-popular BeReal than anything, disappearing photo messages are totally Snapchat’s main lane.

“As we shared earlier this year, we’re testing and scaling new subscriptions that provide deeper, more enhanced ways to use our apps and AI glasses,” says Maria Cubeta, a Meta spokesperson, over email. “So far, we’ve been testing subscription features for people to enhance how they express themselves and connect on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, like profile customization, stories insights, and super reactions.” She says this is just the start of the larger “Meta One” umbrella of subscription offerings, which will eventually include different, more expensive tiers catering toward businesses and creators as well as users who want extra access to Meta AI.

At launch, Instagram Plus will have the most extra features, from additional pins on your profile and unique bio fonts to creating siloed audiences for your Story posts and “Super Heart” reaction buttons. Facebook Plus will mainly allow you to control and customize your experience with Story posts, like rewatch insights. WhatsApp Plus will include more pinned chats, visual customizations, and premium stickers.

These subscription plans are simply history repeating itself. Snapchat dropped a $4 a month plan, called Snapchat+, back in 2022. It offered users access to exclusive features in the app and expanded over the few years, adding more options as well as AI tools. In February, Snapchat announced that this style of subscription plan helped the company achieve a “$1 billion annualized revenue run rate” in direct payments with over 25 million current subscribers around the world. (Despite being a font of feature inspiration, everything isn’t rosy at Snapchat, as the company struggles to turn a profit.)

So, even down to the Plus naming convention, Meta seems to be heavily inspired by Snapchat once again. I would expect nothing less from the company that renamed itself during the metaverse fad. Following trends is Meta’s modus operandi. Keep an eye out for what Snapchat does next for a sneak peek at what Meta might do in a few years.

The ongoing saga of Microsoft versus Nightmare Eclipse (aka Chaotic Eclipse), the disgruntled bug hunter with a deep understanding of Windows and an even deeper grudge against Microsoft, reached a fever pitch, with the researcher, who has thus far released six Windows zero-days, promising a “bone shattering” drop on July 14. 

Microsoft, for its part, finally responded to the security researcher and their weaponized Windows flaws with a blog post on (un)coordinated vulnerability disclosure about the now-public bugs: RedSun, UnDefend, BlueHammer, YellowKey, GreenPlasma, and MiniPlasma. Redmond says that none of these were reported via its official channels prior to being made public. 

Attackers began hammering three of the six – BlueHammer, RedSun, and UnDefend – soon after Nightmare published working proof-of-concept exploit code for each on now-banned GitHub (owned by Microsoft) and GitLab accounts. 

YellowKey, GreenPlasma, and MiniPlasma still don’t have fixes, and Microsoft has deemed “exploitation more likely” for YellowKey, aka CVE-2026-45585, citing a working POC.

“We remain firmly opposed to these actions, and any disclosure outside proper coordination that could harm our customers and the digital ecosystem,” Microsoft wrote in a Wednesday blog, and then seemingly threatened legal action against Nightmare:

“Uncoordinated disclosures that put proof-of-concept code for unpatched vulnerabilities into the hands of bad actors are never justifiable and have real-world consequences. Our security teams across the company work tirelessly tracking threat actors who look for weaknesses just like these to attack Microsoft and our customers. Our Digital Crimes Unit will continue bringing cases against these actors and those that enable their criminal activity – coordinating as needed with law enforcement around the world.”

Microsoft did not respond to The Register’s questions, including whether its legal team planned to sue Nightmare, whether the zero-day researcher is a current or former employee, and whether Microsoft axed Nightmare’s MSRC account, meaning that the bug hunter can’t disclose vulnerabilities to the Windows giant. 

Nightmare, in their latest anti-Microsoft missive, claims Microsoft did just that.

“When I actively asked you to communicate with me, you refused, humiliated me and made sure to insult me in front of people,” they wrote on Saturday. “You defame me in public with your CVE-2026-45585 advisory even though you literally deleted the Microsoft account I used to report bugs to you with and I got zero pennies from doing so and I still happily did like an idiot.”

Nightmare also noted that “Microsoft still has chains in my hands,” preventing them from releasing “documents” yet, or anytime in June, and then warned: “Mark this date July 14th, I will make sure your bones are shattered that day.”

Regardless of what does or does not happen on July 14, Nightmare has already caused chaos – and real enterprise-level damage, as systems engineer Muhammad Qasim Shahzad said on LinkedIn. 

“One person caused more enterprise-level damage in six weeks than most APT groups cause in a year,” Shahzad wrote. “The gap between disclosure and weaponization is now measured in hours, not days. Your patching window is shrinking fast.”

Zero Day Initiative’s bug hunter-in-chief Dustin Childs, who previously spent about seven years working for Microsoft security and has decades of experience on both sides of the coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) process, told The Register that Microsoft could have handled this better. And he wondered what happened between the two parties to get to this point.

“CVD is a two-way street,” he said. “The vendor has some responsibility as well, so to go out publicly stating this person violated CVD without showing any of the correspondence seems bold.”

Microsoft could also improve its communications to customers on “what the real risks from these bugs are and how they can defend themselves,” Childs added. “That clear direction seems to be missing.”

Microsoft’s ‘dumpster fire’

Luta Security founder and CEO Katie Moussouris, who pioneered Microsoft’s bug bounty program despite execs vowing never to pay researchers for bugs, said Redmond’s response to Nightmare sends “mixed messages.”

“It confusingly claims their program ‘ensures researchers are compensated and publicly acknowledged’ in a statement answering a researcher who says he got neither,” Moussouris told The Register. “The language choices are also not deescalating. Microsoft invoked the outdated term ‘responsible disclosure,’ which I retired years ago at Microsoft because it was subjective and judgy.”

This phrase, Moussouris added, “got in the way of coordination” when the two sides disagreed about how to best protect end users.

“The mention of the Digital Crimes Unit in a post discussing vulnerability disclosure makes the post vaguely threatening, which seems intentional, but then they wrap up the post saying they welcome reports regardless of disclosure history,” she said. “No one except the parties involved can know for sure what happened between this researcher and Microsoft. Whatever the facts, it’s hard to imagine why Microsoft would not try to deescalate, if for no other reason than avoiding the chilling effect on other researchers.”

Security sleuth Kevin Beaumont, in his blog on the ongoing Microsoft-Nightmare Eclipse saga, called it a “dumpster fire of [Microsoft’s] own making.” 

Beaumont also used to work at Microsoft, and he noted that the Windows company previously hired a hacker called SandboxEscaper after she published zero-day POC exploits for Microsoft products – something that Redmond’s blog now describes as criminal.

“If Microsoft’s tactic is to try to criminalise not following often arbitrary ‘responsible disclosure’ frameworks, good luck defending that in court – because there’s a whole clown car of prior decision making within Microsoft and facts which would emerge in that process,” Beaumont said.

To be clear: neither Beaumont nor the researchers that The Reg spoke to support Nightmare’s zero-day antics. Childs called the “July 14” post “troubling” and Moussouris said the date plus “incendiary language … doesn’t help organizations trying to make sense of the technical risk.” 

‘David and Goliath dynamic’ 

Moussouris did add that this latest missive, taken in context with the earlier blog posts, “paint[s] a picture of someone who believes they have been pushed to this extreme. It is the sound of someone who believes every legitimate channel was closed to them: GitHub account deleted, payments withheld, credit stripped, then publicly accused of violating CVD after Microsoft cut off their ability to coordinate. The researcher’s grievances are serious and specific.” 

Ultimately, “the bugs are Microsoft’s,” Moussouris said. “They wrote the code and they own the risk to customers. Often researchers who previously work with a vendor respond in the extreme only when they feel there is no other choice. The power they hold is not at all proportionate to the vendor. This is a David and Goliath dynamic we don’t like to see play out, especially since it’s users who lose when coordination negotiations fail.”

While it’s a very extreme – perhaps the most extreme – example of coordinated disclosure gone wrong, it’s not an isolated problem. Researchers have been complaining about CVD, and specifically Redmond’s bug disclosure habits, for years. 

“While some companies have improved, Microsoft has not,” Childs said. “If anything, they are seen as difficult to work with, especially if your bug is Moderate instead of Critical. I’ve had researchers tell me that they stopped looking at Microsoft altogether because they were too difficult to work with.”

Plus, these types of disagreements between researchers and bug bounty programs will likely increase, as AI-assisted bug reports become the norm and vulnerabilities skyrocket.

“We as an industry need to take a breath, remember there are real people involved, and that poor interactions could lead to real customer risk,” Childs said. “Real-world impact is lost far too often when disclosure goes wrong.” ®

The AI assistant had its personality stripped in pursuit of a more consistent experience.

While designing anything for operation in space has its challenges, there is at least one thing that is more of a problem for objects in Earth orbit than for deep-space probes: atomic oxygen. We like oxygen because we need it to live, but it is also highly reactive as a single atom. Luckily, on Earth, most of what we breathe is O₂. [Space Daily] talks about the challenges of the International Space Station dealing with the “space weather” of atomic oxygen in low Earth orbit.

Part of the problem is that even when we know better, we tend to think of the atmosphere coming to an abrupt end and space being a hard vacuum. But in reality, the atmosphere gradually dissipates, and at “only” 400 km above the Earth, the Space Station is really flying through a very thin atmosphere.

To compound the problem, this is above the ozone layer, so the Sun’s UV light rips O₂ into single oxygen atoms. Over time, these free oxygen atoms can affect many parts of a spacecraft exposed to them. Engineers first noticed that materials recovered from spacecraft had more damage and changes to material properties on the pieces facing the direction of travel. NASA has spent years testing different materials by mounting trays of different material samples outside the ISS.

Carbon-based polymers take a big hit from atomic oxygen exposure. Polymide film is frequently used, but it erodes with exposure. Carbon composites also lose mass. Other materials change in other ways. For example, an optical surface may roughen with exposure.

The usual answer is to over-design for mission objectives or to cover certain polymers with coatings like silicon dioxide or aluminum oxide, which are not as reactive to free oxygen. For a long-duration mission like the ISS, you may have to pay special attention to the materials in use. Very low satellites also need special care, as there is more oxygen in lower orbits.

There are other effects, too, such as extreme thermal cycles, debris strikes, and other indignities that space-traveling materials must withstand. But in deep space, atomic oxygen is a rare issue. Until, at least, we go somewhere else that has a lot of oxygen.

If you could buy a humanoid robot for less than a smartphone, would you? Would you buy several robots to handle cooking, cleaning, babysitting, and even your job?

This is the pitch being made by Zhou Yong, the 40-year-old founder and chief technology officer of LinkerBot, one of China’s leading manufacturers of dexterous humanoid hands. The startup’s hardware comes complete with five fingers and at least 11 joints and is sold for as little as $600 in China. LinkerBot’s hands can play piano, thread needles, tighten screws, and assemble electronics. In three to five years, Zhou predicts, the price for one will fall to just $200. Eventually, “everyone will own ten robots on average,” Zhou said in an exclusive interview with WIRED.

Marketing spectacles like the humanoid robot marathon in Beijing have drawn attention to robots’ legs, but the real frontier in humanoids is hands. “The hands are the majority of the engineering difficulty of the entire robot,” Elon Musk said at an event last fall. Founded in 2023, LinkerBot has quickly emerged as a market leader in the space. The company says it shipped 10,000 robotic hands last year, representing 80 percent of worldwide demand. Its clients include research labs, manufacturers, and other humanoid robot makers.

The startup is also a venture capital darling: It completed six rounds of fundraising in just 13 months from investors including the Chinese government, Alibaba’s Ant Group, and HongShan Capital, Sequoia Capital’s Chinese spinoff. LinkerBot is now seeking another round of financing at a $6 billion valuation, double what the company said it was worth only a few months ago. And it’s reportedly exploring going public in Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg. (Zhou declined to comment on the rumored plans.)

In 2019, after selling a previous startup focused on autonomous driving, Zhou turned his attention to robotics. He says he predicted the industry would begin booming around 2025, but was still taken aback by how quickly it grew. While OpenAI was once at the forefront of developing robotic hands, in recent years Chinese startups have taken the lead as many of their American counterparts shifted their focus toward large language models and other AI software.

For robotics companies, “the valuation gap between the Chinese and US primary markets has been basically erased,” Zhou says.

Zhou says his lifelong goal is to make a real-life version of Doraemon, the Japanese anime character that has an infinite supply of magical gadgets in its pocket. (His WeChat avatar is a picture of Doraemon.) He sees building a capable, dexterous hand as an instrumental step toward achieving that dream.

Selling Shovels to Miners

Successful companies, Zhou argues, focus on doing one thing well. That’s why LinkerBot zeroed in on hands, rather than trying to build the entire body of a humanoid. That also allows it to avoid directly competing with leading humanoid companies like Unitree or Tesla.

“When the humanoid robot industry size is so massive, specializing in making hands is like selling water or shovels [during the gold rush],” says Hong Shangguan, a veteran investor in China’s tech industry and a former partner at the Beijing-based fund Legend Capital.