Smart glasses have become a recurring accessory amid the immigration crackdown.

Google is promising a better modem with the Pixel 11 series. The company claims its new MediaTek-made hardware is both faster and more power-efficient than the modems used in previous generations.

The switch is a notable one for Google’s Tensor chips, as earlier Pixel phones were criticised for modem performance. Previous generations of Tensor relied heavily on Samsung’s Exynos-based technology; however, the Pixel 11 marks a key change as the Tensor G6 moves to a MediaTek modem.

This partnership seemingly aims to bridge the gap with formidable rivals like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, which has long set the gold standard in the Android space for connectivity. For Google, finally securing a dependable, uncompromising cellular experience is crucial if the Pixel line is to truly compete at the premium end.

If you’ve spent any time down the gaming PC rabbit hole, you’ll have hit this fork in the road already: do you build the thing yourself, or do you let someone else do it for you? It’s one of those debates that never quite dies down and is always a matter of preference – some folks prefer to have the control of building their own system, configuring every element, while others want the experts to take the strain to make sure everything works as it should the first time the PC boots.

While this age-old debate hasn’t really shifted, what has changed, though, is the gaming PC market itself. Component choice has exploded, and folks have more choice now than ever before, making it perhaps easier than ever before to build or spec out a custom gaming PC for themselves. You no longer necessarily have to choose between “fully custom” and “convenient” — but to understand why that matters, it helps to look at both routes properly first.

The case for building your own PC

There’s a certain satisfaction in building a PC from scratch. You get to pick every component yourself and learn how it all fits together, not to mention the genuine sense of achievement when you hit the power button for the first time and everything boots. For PC enthusiasts and hobbyists, that process is half the fun, myself included.

However, it’s worth being honest about what it actually demands. Building a PC requires a decent grasp of compatibility, or how everything fits together. Motherboard sockets, RAM speeds, PSU wattage, case airflow, cooler clearance and more are all worth being mindful of. Getting any of that wrong can mean a system that underperforms, or worse, doesn’t work at all. Then there’s the time: sourcing parts, waiting on deliveries, the build itself, and the inevitable troubleshooting when something doesn’t quite play ball. 

Cable management, in particular, is a skill in its own right, and a messy build isn’t just an eyesore. Poor airflow from bad cable routing can quietly hurt your thermals and performance over time.

For first-time buyers or anyone switching over from console to a PC for the first time, that’s a lot to take on before you’ve even played a game. And if something does go wrong down the line, you’re generally on your own to diagnose it, since self-built systems don’t come with the kind of unified warranty support you’d get from a manufacturer or someone doing it on your behalf.

The case for buying a pre-built PC

It’s precisely here where pre-built systems earn their reputation. Buying from a specialist manufacturer such as CyberpowerPC means every component has already been tested for compatibility, the cable management is handled by people who do it for a living, and the whole system has been through quality assurance before it ever reaches your door to make sure everything will work as it should.

Warranty support is the other big one. A proper prebuilt gaming PC comes backed by a manufacturer who’ll stand behind the hardware, which matters enormously if a component fails outside of what you could diagnose yourself. For parents buying a system for a teenager, or for anyone who just wants a machine that works reliably from day one, that peace of mind is worth a lot.

The trade-off historically has been choice. Prebuilt used to mean picking from a handful of fixed configurations, often with compromises somewhere in the spec sheet. Manufacturers used to have a reputation for using no-name components where it mattered to keep costs down, although it’s become less common these days. That’s the bit of the market that’s changed the most.

The best of both worlds: configure your own with professional help

There is a third way, which is perhaps the best of both worlds – speccing out a custom PC from a reputable builder such as CyberPowerPC UK. Rather than forcing a choice between full customisation and professional reliability, CyberPowerPC UK’s custom gaming PC configurator lets you build a system to your exact spec — choosing from the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics cards, AMD Ryzen processors, and Intel Core processors to suit your needs and specific games you’re playing – and then hands the actual build over to people who do it for a living.

You get the tailored spec of a self-build, without taking on the risk of compatibility mistakes, botched cable runs, or a PSU that’s not quite up to the job. Every system is assembled, tested and quality-checked before it ships, and you’re covered by proper warranty and after-sales support if anything needs attention later. If you’d rather skip the configurator entirely, the prebuilt gaming PCs page has ready-to-go options for anyone who just wants a great system without the decision fatigue.

It’s a genuinely useful middle ground for a lot of the people currently weighing this decision up — first-time PC buyers who want guidance rather than a blank canvas, console gamers making the jump who don’t want to go the whole hog right out of the gate, and upgraders replacing an ageing system who don’t want to relearn PC building from scratch. Enthusiasts benefit too, since a configurator this deep still lets you get properly specific about the build without doing the assembly yourself.

It’s also worth noting that the PCs on offer from CyberpowerPC don’t just have to be for gaming.  The systems are also built with streaming and content creation in mind as well, so if you’re planning to start streaming your sessions or editing footage on the side, the hardware you choose through the configurator can be specced to handle it. 

Likewise, because these are proper, professionally built towers rather than more sealed-off options, there’s genuine headroom to upgrade down the line. Swap in a new GPU in a couple of years, add more storage or whatever it turns out you might need later down the line.

If you want a hand working out what’s right for you, CyberPowerPC UK’s team offers expert advice throughout the configuration process, and the support page is there for anything that comes up after your system arrives.

So, do you build or buy?

This is what it all comes down to. If you love the process of speccing out a custom unit, putting it together yourself and troubleshooting anything that crops up, the self-build route is rewarding.

However, there is something to be said for letting someone else take the majority of the strain, especially anyone buying their first gaming PC, switching from console, or upgrading without the time to relearn PC hardware from scratch. A configurable prebuilt system offers the best of both worlds: a machine built exactly to your spec, assembled and tested by people who know what they’re doing, and backed by warranty support if anything goes wrong.

To learn more and see the current range, head to the CyberPowerPC UK gaming PCs page to see the current range, or jump straight into the configurator to start building.

Garmin watches are some of the best fitness trackers you can get, but they aren’t exactly cheap—many of my favorite ones cost $500 or more. Thankfully, you can usually find a good Garmin watch deal with enough patience and a keen eye. Right now, some of my favorite models, including the Garmin Fenix 8, Garmin Vivoactive 5, and Garmin Forerunner 165, are over 20 percent off. If you’ve been thinking about trying out Garmin (or upgrading from an older model), now is a good time to buy.

For more wearable recommendations, check out our guides to the Best Smartwatches, Best Smart Rings, and Best Sleep Trackers.

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Garmin Fenix 8 for $750 ($250 off)

This is the fitness tracker that lives on my wrist, and considering I’ve tested dozens, that’s a big accomplishment. It’s the brand’s flagship watch, meaning it has all of the brand’s hardware and software bells and whistles—think built-in flashlight, speaker, and microphone, plus offline maps, diving profiles, and advanced running stats.

I love the Fenix 8 because it’s one of the only Garmin watches with premium features like offline navigation and a built-in two-tone flashlight that comes in multiple size options, including a small-ish 43 millimeters. Most other Garmin watches with these features (Garmin Forerunner 970, Garmin Enduro 3) come in one size (read: big) and dwarf my wrists.

Garmin Vivoactive 5 for $190 ($110 off)

The Vivoactive 5 is a great first Garmin watch, and it’s 37 percent off right now. It’s an older model (it launched in 2023), but you still have many of the brand’s best fitness and health features available, including in-depth fitness metrics, Body Battery (basically your energy score throughout the day), sleep coaching, and stress tracking. It’s also small, lightweight, and a little sleeker than some of the brand’s more outdoor-centric watches.

Garmin Instinct 3 AMOLED for $300 ($150 off)

While it isn’t matching its lowest price ever (that was $250 during Prime Day), 33 percent off is still an excellent discount for the Instinct 3. And compared to Garmin’s other outdoor watches (the Fenix 8 and Enduro 3), it’s a steal. It’s a chunky, durable, retro-looking watch with crucial adventure features like a touchscreen plus five-button control scheme, built-in white and red flashlight, and accurate dual-band GPS.

Garmin Forerunner 265 for $350 ($100 off)

The Forerunner 265 is an oldie but a goodie—it launched in 2023 and still strikes a great balance between advanced running features and price, undercutting the newer Forerunner 570 and Forerunner 970 by hundreds of dollars. It has advanced running metrics and, crucially, dual-band GPS, meaning more accurate pace and route details compared to more entry-level Garmin watches. It also comes in two sizes, 43 millimeters and 47 millimeters, so you can pick the one best suited to your wrist size.

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from the oh-no-techdirt’s-gone-slop dept

Over in our Insider Chat, someone recently pointed out a tiered “REAL Rating” five-tier scale designed to replace the fairly blunt and misleading question of “did you use AI on that?” with something a bit more nuanced. As someone who believes the discussion about AI could use a lot more nuance, I’m all for the premise. I ran my own usage through their wizard and came out with a “one” — the tier for automation. While this is technically accurate, it also tells you very little about how I actually use AI.

Which is why I thought it made sense to revisit the public discussion regarding my AI usage.

But going through that thought process reminded me that it’s been a little while since I last spoke about how I’m using these tools here, and given that some readers want more transparency, I thought I’d update you on the latest. I’ve written about it at length a few times before, starting in April of 2024, when I described how I used a tool called Lex to help me edit articles. The key was always that I’d write the articles myself, and then I had trained Lex on my own writing style to ask it how it might improve the article. Sometimes it would give good advice that would make me rewrite, and sometimes… it would give bad advice that I would skip or ignore. But all in all it was a useful forcing function.

In June of 2025, I wrote about how I had built a personal task management tool, using a vibe coding tool called Lovable, which I was using to keep track of various tasks, including what I wanted to write about each day. At the beginning of this year, mostly out of curiosity, I explored whether or not you could, with a ton of scaffolding and detailed instructions and effort, get AI tools to write a passable Techdirt article, and concluded no, you absolutely could not. Every attempt was still a weak facsimile of a Techdirt article with iffy language and clichéd phrases.

In the time since then I’ve run that test for myself a few times, and even as the models have improved, in my experience, my initial analysis stands. It cannot write Techdirt-style articles well, and even if I wanted to use it that way, the rewriting, changing, and fact-checking would take way more time than just… writing it myself. So, yes, I continue to write my own articles.

What’s changed in the last couple of years is that I’ve moved away from Lex (which has not received many updates in the past year or so as the team behind it appears to have moved on to other projects), and I ended up building my own editing tool, which is built directly into the task management tool I mentioned last year (which is now self-hosted and entirely within my control). The benefit now is that I can turn any task immediately into a writing project with a single click:

That was the task that turned into this article about Judge Andrew Oldham’s bizarrely out of context quote on mail-in ballots. From there I can go into the writing project which has a bunch of useful features. Within each writing project I can add sources, which turn out to be really useful during edits. I can upload PDFs, URLs, or just add text myself (and actually, as I was finishing up this article, I had it build a new feature that will automatically add all the sources I link to in a story, so the editor checks them even if I don’t add them manually, which is another example of realizing a potentially useful feature and having it created on the spot). I can also have the tool go out and research if there are other sources I should add, though I haven’t yet found that to be that useful as compared to just searching myself.

The tool is specifically trained on my writing, and has a detailed style guide regarding my voice and style, as well as a detailed system prompt of what I am looking for in editorial help vs. what I’m not looking for (e.g., yes, challenge my assumptions and facts, but no do not think you need to rewrite what I’ve written).

After I’ve written the full piece, there’s a button to open up the “AI review” tool (which lets me use any underlying LLM engine I choose, including local ones), which will give me a critical review and make general suggestions about what works and what doesn’t. I do switch up models from time to time to see how they work, but generally will default to either Claude Opus 5 or Sonnet 5. I am also using Gemma 4 locally and am increasingly trying to use that. It’s good on straightforward pieces, but less so once the argument gets more complicated. I’m hopeful that the next generation of local models will be more reliable.

For example here’s part of the initial review of my first draft on the Oldham ruling:

The only specific line edits tend to be suggestions on typos or confusing sections, such as here where it suggested a way to clean up and tighten a poorly drafted sentence in my initial draft:

You can also see that “Discuss” button in there, which I will frequently use to debate or discuss certain suggested edits if I think the suggestions miss the mark or are unnecessary. Or I’ll just reject them if I totally disagree.

Usually at that point I’ll do a more thorough rewrite based on my own reread of the article with an eye towards what it called out as problematic. For what it’s worth, this is where the inclusion of original sources is often quite helpful, because the AI will press me on things if its review felt that I’m not being completely fair and honest regarding the source material. Sometimes it calls me out for missing stuff and suggest I dig deeper (it’s not always correct, but often is, and pushes me to reread things even more carefully). Here’s one example, where the AI editor tool told me to go back and review the original documents more closely:

It also catches me when I start rambling, which often happens on a first draft when I’m trying to figure out the best way to nail down a certain point:

Again, I don’t always follow its suggestions, but it does make me revisit and look at rewriting sections to make them clearer and tighter.

Separately, I have a built in set of “sub-agents” that will check certain things, including suggesting better headlines (this is very hit or miss, but usually at least helps me think of something better than either my initial attempt or its suggestions) and one sub-agent whose whole job is to poke holes in the arguments in the piece (this one is fun, but annoying, as it’s basically trolling myself, but in a way that helps me make the arguments stronger):

You may notice that the features I appreciate the most here are the ones that in some sense make my life harder, by telling me to work harder, check my sources, and question my arguments. Considering how often we hear about the problem with these tools being how much smoke they blow up the asses of users, it’s certainly possible to set them up to deliberately challenge and provoke you. The parts I find most useful are the parts built to disagree, because it helps make my work stronger by stress testing it before it goes out in the world.

Anyway, once the piece is then written and edited, it’s a two-click process to import the final version into Techdirt’s WordPress system and hand it off to someone else on the team for a human review before it goes into the queue to get posted.

Compared to how I described the process two years ago, the actual writing process hasn’t changed — which is kind of the whole point. The human part (the thing that is central to what I do) doesn’t get automated away. What’s changed is the structure around it. I have total control over the tool now, it’s better trained and designed to help me write better.

There are a few other more experimental features, including one where after I’ve added all my sources to the writing project, I’ll also write a short paragraph (or two or three) about my focus on the article, and the system will ask me some questions based on the sources and how I want to frame the article. This is sometimes useful in testing some of my assumptions before diving into the writing. This has been most helpful when I’m a bit undecided on what the central backbone of a piece really should be. In the past I would just start writing, realize I went down the wrong path, and then start again. Using the “editorial interview” feature has helped me a few times to think deeper about which way I want to take the article before I get to the actual writing.

I also built in a tool to also write a potential outline of the article based on that “interview,” but I’ve only tried to use that a couple times, and neither time did I follow the outline, so I’ll likely just get rid of that feature. Once again, the benefit of having total control over the tool. For all the (reasonable! understandable!) complaints of big tech companies “shoving AI into everything,” with this tool, I decide what goes where, and if something doesn’t work, I can just remove it.

I’ve also built in a bunch of other features that are simply useful for organizing my day and focus. The same tool creates a morning and afternoon briefing based on my tasks, my email, my calendar, and a growing knowledge base about me and my work. It also texts me news stories it finds that might be interesting for Techdirt (based on search criteria I have provided), which I can turn into tasks/writing projects with one response. Just last week I received my Pebble Index 01 ring that I had mentioned last year, and one of the first things I did with it is hack it so that I can speak into it to create tasks. It can also research things and leave the notes in the task tool (and text me back quick facts if I need them).

In short, as I’ve suggested repeatedly, the power of AI tools is in empowering individuals to be able to accomplish what they want to do, rather than replacing humans or doing the fundamental work. Building very personalized tools that I can constantly update and tweak to meet my needs has made me less and less interested in using software that other people built for me. It’s shockingly empowering to look at a feature that doesn’t quite work the way you want, and to be able to just tell your tools “hey, make this work differently” and have it work properly.

As I mentioned up top, using the wizard on that REAL Ratings site, I came out with a score of “one,” noting that I used AI for automation. You could argue that it maybe should be somewhere between one and two, depending on how much you consider the “brainstorming” part of what the editor feature is doing. But I’d argue this is a long way from the assumption many have of “if you use AI you’re using it for slop.”

Either way, I’m still not writing articles with these tools, and I don’t plan to start. The assumption that any use of AI means you’ve handed your brain over to it misses the part I actually find interesting: building your own tools, on your own terms, and telling them what to do rather than the other way around.

Filed Under: ai, editing, editorial review, llms, writing

Companies: techdirt

By Sila Ozeren Hacioglu, Security Research Engineer at Picus Security.

A prevention score tells you what a control recognizes. It doesn’t tell you what that control stops.

Now in its fourth year, the Blue Report 2026 from Picus Labs measures how enterprise prevention and detection actually perform in production, across more than 338 million attack simulations run in real customer environments from January through June, 2026.

The headline is a genuine recovery, with a caveat: yes, prevention effectiveness rose from 62% to 69%, back to its 2024 peak.

But that number is a stack-wide average, and it masks a softer, more vulnerable interior.

The same controls that block a well-known attack tool let a quieter version of the same technique slip straight past your defenses. What decides the outcome isn’t the product in place, but how recognizable the attacker’s method is, and whether anyone tested for the quiet variant.

IOC-based and TTP-based security testing each measure different things

Whether a defense holds depends on which of two questions you put to it.

IOC-based testing asks whether a control recognizes known bad. Malware samples circulating in the wild are delivered as download attempts, and perimeter controls such as firewalls, web proxies, and secure email gateways either block them or don’t.

For this layer this is the right instrument: stopping known-bad content at the edge is what those controls are for.

Behavioral, TTP-based testing asks whether a control stops the action, by any route. Not “do you catch Mimikatz?” but “can a process on this host obtain credential material at all?”

That is the question endpoint and intrusion detection controls have to answer, because by the time they get involved, the adversary is almost always already executing. 

Artifacts are cheap to change; behavior is not.

Yes, you need both. And yes, you should challenge the finance folks who’ll say you don’t. 

The asymmetry is structural, and intentional.

Unfortunately, the edge is slipping too. 

In this year’s data, the IOC-based prevention rate for malware downloads fell to 50% across customer environments, from 60% last year and 71% in 2024. 

Even the layer that signatures cover best is giving way. And a passing score here says nothing about the behavior underneath, which is where the Mimikatz result comes in. Here’s a preview: it’s not good.

Change how Mimikatz dumps credentials, and prevention drops from 94% to 3%

With Picus Autonomous Penetration Testing, customer environments ran the same tool, Mimikatz, at the same objective three ways. The prevention scores were shocking, and could not have been further apart.

• Dumping credentials from LSASS process memory, the classic and heavily signatured path, was blocked in 94% of attempts. Good.

• Pulling RDP credentials from other memory locations with the same tool: 17%. Not good.

• Reading LSA Secrets from the local registry: 3%. Appalling.

All three are siblings under one parent technique, OS Credential Dumping (T1003), and all three end with the attacker holding your precious credential material.

The only variable was how conspicuous the route was. In this case, Mr. Spock’s classic “live long and prosper” has morphed into “slip in quietly and succeed.”

The mechanics explain the spread. 

The LSASS path is loud in a matchable way: a process opens a handle to lsass.exe and reads its memory, in other words, an event vendors have instrumented for years. Reading LSA Secrets never touches lsass; it runs as SYSTEM and reads a registry hive, indistinguishable from ordinary privileged activity. A control built around the first event has nothing to fire on for the second.

And even that 94% is thinner than it looks. It was measured against one known build of an open-source tool, whose recognizability lives in how it was compiled, not in what it does.

• Rename the strings a signature keys on, or recompile it, and the hash and telltale markers become new. 

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• Load it reflectively and the code never lands on disk to catch. 

• Or skip that build and take the same dump with a Microsoft-signed utility like ProcDump or comsvcs.dll, then parse it offline.

Each ends the same way, an attacker with your credentials in hand. The behavior never changes. Only the thing the signature was looking for does.

Inside the environment, prevention drops to 37%

Mimikatz is one behavior; the same split runs across the whole interior. The 69% overall Prevention Rate measures how well controls stop attacks at the boundary. Autonomous penetration testing measures something harder: what an attacker can actually accomplish once they’re inside as an “authenticated user.” Across the full set of those post-compromise actions, only 37% were blocked.

The perimeter stops two attacks in three; once inside, this falls to barely one in three.

Loud actions were caught: lateral movement was discovered around 90% of the time, UAC bypass around 85%, credential reuse and Active Directory abuse around 63%. 

Then, unfortunately, the floor drops out. 

Credential material read passively from memory and the registry: 22%, with local registry secret extraction blocked in? Less than 1%. Discovery and collection: 10%, SharpHound domain enumeration and local file collection run almost entirely unopposed.

That 22% is the registry variant at scale, and the 10% is the same profile: with nothing for an indicator to bind to, it’s full-on, unfettered progress toward the attacker’s objective.

Closing the gap

Run both, and read each for what it measures. 

Known-bad testing is the baseline for perimeter controls: firewalls, web proxies, WAFs, secure email gateways. They deliver known malicious samples as download attempts and check whether the edge blocks them, which tells you the perimeter is holding but nothing about the behavior underneath, and what happens inside.

Behavioral validation is the other half, and it belongs to the endpoint and detection layer: EDR, IDS, SIEM content. Proving credential access is covered means testing every route to it: LSASS memory, the registry, alternate memory locations, native tooling, recompiled builds.

Validate only the famous procedure and you close an item that’s actually still open, the most dangerously incorrect verdict a validation program can produce.

Doing that by hand doesn’t scale, which is where Picus Swarm comes in: the orchestration layer that runs the many behavioral variations of an attack across your environment and validates each against the controls you’ve deployed, so coverage is proven by the behavior, not by the one procedure a signature already recognizes.

Ready, finally, for some good news? None of this calls for a bigger stack. It calls for knowing which controls you already own will break the chain, so every exposure becomes a decision you can defend: Patch, Mitigate, Monitor, or Accept with Evidence.

Read the full report

The findings above represent just one thread in The Blue Report 2026, Picus Labs’ fourth annual study of how enterprise prevention and detection hold up in production, not in a lab.

There’s much more inside:

• How your industry and region actually scored this year.

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• The year’s most-exploited vulnerabilities, most stopped in under 25% of attempts.

• The threat groups and ransomware prevention lost the most ground to.

• The detection failures behind a 58% log score and a 14% alert rate.

Download the Blue Report 2026 to see how your industry scored and where to focus first.

Sponsored and written by Picus Security.

Media Player Classic – Home Cinema (MPC-HC) is a free and open-source video and audio player for Windows. MPC-HC is based on the original Guliverkli project and contains many additional features and bug fixes.

The player supports all common video and audio file formats available for playback. It has a built in DVD player with real-time zoom, support for AVI subtitles, built-in MPEG2/SVCD/DVD codec. Media Player Classic was created and is currently maintained by a programmer named “Gabest”. This is a mod of Media Player Classic design for home cinema usage.

Is MPC-HC still being developed?

The original MPC-HC project ended in July 2017 with version 1.7.13. However, a community fork maintained by “clsid2” on GitHub has continued development and is actively releasing new builds.

What is the difference between the original MPC-HC and the clsid2 fork?

The original team stopped due to a lack of developers. The clsid2 fork picked up the codebase and continues to maintain it. It focuses on bug fixes, updating internal libraries like LAV Filters and MediaInfo, and keeping compatibility with modern Windows versions.

How often is MPC-HC updated now?

The clsid2 fork is updated regularly with development builds and stable releases. These include codec updates (e.g., AV1, HEVC improvements), bug fixes, and minor feature improvements. Updates are less frequent than flashy media players, but they still occur several times a year.

Does MPC-HC support modern video formats?

Yes, MPC-HC comes bundled with LAV Filters, which allow playback of most modern formats, including H.264, HEVC, VP9, AV1, and high-resolution audio and video files without the need for additional codec packs.

Does MPC-HC support hardware acceleration?

Yes, MPC-HC supports GPU-accelerated decoding through DXVA2, D3D11, Intel QuickSync, and other APIs, helping reduce CPU usage during playback of high-definition or 4K video.

What are the main differences between MPC-BE and MPC-HC?

While both come from the same Media Player Classic codebase, MPC-BE features a modernized interface, more customization options, built-in dark themes, and broader codec support. MPC-HC is lighter and closer to the original classic design, while MPC-BE focuses on usability and new features, it can use a bit more resources due to extra features and UI elements.

Features

Play HDR video

• This requires using either MPC Video Renderer (MPCVR) or madVR.
• These renderers can be selected here:
• Options > Playback > Output
• With other video renderers, the colors will be wrong!
• MPCVR is now included and is the recommended renderer for modern systems. MadVR needs to be installed separately. MPCVR also supports Dolby Vision. MadVR does not.
• For optimal performance you should change the hardware decoder to D3D11 in LAV Video Decoder settings when using MPCVR on Windows 10/11, because this renderer uses DirectX11.

The installer of MPC-HC is very basic (and that will not change).

• I therefore recommend using K-Lite Codec Pack. That includes MPC-HC and other essential components. It has a very advanced installation that can automatically create file associations, and helps you with easy configuration of important MPC-HC settings.
• The Standard version should be sufficient for most people. Use Full version of you like to use MadVR.

Modern GUI Theme (Dark or Light)

• Options > Player > User Interface
• It is also possible to change the height of the seekbar and size of the toolbar buttons.

Video preview on the seekbar

• Options > Player > User Interface > Hover type

Ability to search for subtitles

• Press D for manual search.
• Or enable automatic search in: Options > Subtitles > Misc

Adjust playback speed

• Menu > Play > Playback rate
• The buttons in the player that control playback rate take a 2x step by default. This can be customized to smaller values (like 10%):
• Options > Playback > Speed step
• Adjusting playback speed works best with the internal audio renderer. This also has automatic pitch correction.
• Options > Playback > Output > Audio Renderer

MPC-HC can remember playback position, so you can resume from that point later
Options > Player > History

You can quickly seek through a video with Ctrl + Mouse Scrollwheel.

You can jump to next/previous file in a folder by pressing PageUp/PageDown.

You can perform automatic actions at end of file. For example to go to next file or close player.
Options > Playback > After Playback (permanent setting)
Menu > Play > After Playback (for current file only)

A-B repeat

• You can loop a segment of a video. Press [ and ] to set start and stop markers.

You can rotate/flip/mirror/stretch/zoom the video

• Menu > View > Pan&Scan
• This is also easily done with hotkeys (see below).

There are lots of keyboard hotkeys and mouse actions to control the player. They can be customized as well.

• Options > Player > Keys
• Tip: there is a search box above the table.

You can stream videos directly from Youtube and many other video websites

• Put yt-dlp.exe in the MPC-HC installation folder.
• Then you can open website URLs in the player: Menu > File > Open File/URL
• You can even download those videos: Menu > File > Save a copy
• Tip: to be able to download in best quality with yt-dlp, it is recommended to also put ffmpeg.exe in the MPC-HC folder.

Several YDL configuration options are found here: Options > Advanced
This includes an option to specify the location of yt-dlp.exe in case you don’t want to put it in MPC-HC folder.

• Note 1: You also need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)
• Note 2: yt-dlp nightly build (very latest version made daily)
• Note 3: yt-dlp win7 compatible build

Besides all these (new) features, there have also been many bugfixes and internal improvements in the player in the past years that give better performance and stability. It also has updated internal codecs. Support was added for CUE sheets, WebVTT subtitles, etc.

What’s New

Changes from 2.7.3 to 2.7.4:

Updates:

• Updated LAV Filters to version 0.82-4-gab7ca
• Updated MPC Video Renderer to version 0.10.6.2555

Changes/additions:

• MPC Video Renderer is now the by default renderer on the majority of systems. Previously EVR-CP was the default. MPCVR is a more advanced modern renderer with support for HDR video.
• MPC-HC will detect your GPU(s) (once) after updating to this new version and will adjust the video renderer and hardware decoding settings when it makes sense.
• Added an option to show the playback timer next to the seekbar instead of inside the statusbar. By default it is placed at the right side. There is an advanced option to place it at the left side. Tip: seekbar height can be adjusted in the options. Timer text size is scaled accordingly.
• Added a new customizable viewing preset (hotkey 4). By default this hides the menu and statusbar compared to the normal viewing preset (hotkey 3).
• Added an advanced option to specify the default viewing preset when starting the player. By default it remembers to last used
• viewing mode.
• Added a submenu to playlist context menu for adjusting the playlist location.

Fixes:

• A few crash fixes, bug fixes and small improvements.

OpenSubtitles download error 406

Subtitle downloads from OpenSubtitles may fail depending on time of day. This is due to our daily download quota being exceeded. Current amount of donations is barely enough to pay for the existing quota. So it is unlikely that quota can be increased and situation will get worse over time.
If you create an OpenSubtitles account and configure it in MPC-HC settings then you may be able to bypass the quota.
Options > Subtitles > Misc > Right-click on OpenSubtitles.com > Setup > Fill in username/password

Overview of features

A lot of people seem to be unaware of some of the awesome features that have been added to MPC-HC in the past years. Here is a list of useful options and features that everyone should know about:

• Play HDR video
• This requires using either MPC Video Renderer (MPCVR) or madVR.
• These renderers can be selected here:
• Options > Playback > Output
• With other video renderers, the colors will be wrong!
• MPCVR is now included and is the recommended renderer for modern systems. MadVR needs to be installed separately. MPCVR also supports Dolby Vision. MadVR does not.
• For optimal performance you should change the hardware decoder to D3D11 in LAV Video Decoder settings when using MPCVR on Windows 10/11, because this renderer uses DirectX11.
• (Automatic detection of GPU and configuration of the above settings is high on my ToDo list, so MPC-HC will have better default out-of-the-box settings on modern systems in the future.)
• The installer of MPC-HC is very basic (and that will not change).
• I therefore recommend using K-Lite Codec Pack. That includes MPC-HC and other essential components. It has a very advanced installation that can automatically create file associations, and helps you with easy configuration of important MPC-HC settings, such as preferred subtitle language. It also does automatic configuration of renderer and hardware decoding, for best performance and HDR support.
• The Standard version should be sufficient for most people. Use Full version of you like to use MadVR.
• Modern GUI Theme (Dark or Light) or the old classic theme
• Options > Player > User Interface
• It is also possible to change the height of the seekbar and size of the toolbar buttons.
• Plus there are options to show audio/video details in the statusbar, such as codec and resolution.

Customizable toolbar buttons

• You can add/remove/re-order the player buttons.
• There are also several different toolbar designs to choose from.
• Video preview on the seekbar
• Options > Player > User Interface > Hover type
• Ability to search for subtitles
• Press D for manual search.
• Or enable automatic search in: Options > Subtitles > Misc
• Adjust playback speed
• Menu > Play > Playback rate
• The buttons in the player that control playback rate take a 2x step by default. This can be customized to smaller values (like 10%):
• Options > Playback > Speed step
• Adjusting playback speed works best with the internal audio renderer. This also has automatic pitch correction.
• Options > Playback > Output > Audio Renderer

MPC-HC can remember recently played files and also their playback position, so you can resume playback from when you left
Options > Player > History

• You can quickly seek through a video with Ctrl + Mouse Scrollwheel.
• You can jump to next/previous file in a folder by pressing PageUp/PageDown.
• You can right-click on the framestep button to step backwards. Some other buttons also have right-click actions, such as closing file by right-clicking stop.
• You can perform automatic actions at end of file. For example to go to next file or close player.
• Options > Playback > After Playback (permanent setting)
• Menu > Play > After Playback (for current file only)

A-B repeat

• You can loop a segment of a video. Press [ and ] to set start and stop markers.
• You can rotate/flip/mirror/stretch/zoom the video
• Menu > View > Pan&Scan
• This is also easily done with hotkeys (see below).

There are lots of keyboard hotkeys and mouse actions to control the player. They can be customized as well.

• Options > Player > Keys
• Tip: there is a search box above the table.
• You can hide GUI elements even in windowed mode
• Options > User Interface > Hide Windowed Controls
• That hides most GUI elements during playback. To show them simply move your mouse to bottom of window.
• You can even hide everything except the video by pressing 1 (restore normal view with 3).

You can seek inside the playlist by simply typing text (when playlist window has the mouse focus).

• MPC-HC also supports Blu-ray playback.
• Only limitation is that you need to use a decrypting tool.
• And it also does not support Blu-ray menus, but you can use the navigate menu in the player to select the content to play.
• You can stream videos directly from Youtube and many other video websites
• Put yt-dlp.exe in the MPC-HC installation folder.
• Then you can open website URLs in the player: Menu > File > Open File/URL
• You can even download those videos: Menu > File > Save a copy
• Tip: to be able to download in best quality with yt-dlp, it is recommended to also put ffmpeg.exe in the MPC-HC folder.
• Several YDL configuration options are found here: Options > Advanced
• This includes an option to specify the location of yt-dlp.exe in case you don’t want to put it in MPC-HC folder.
• Note 1: You also need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)
• Note 2: For optimal Youtube support you may also need to put deno.exe in same folder as yt-dlp.
• Note 3: yt-dlp nightly build (very latest version made daily)
• Note 4: yt-dlp windows7 compatible build

Besides all these (new) features, there have also been many bugfixes and internal improvements in the player in the past years that give better performance and stability. It also has updated internal codecs. Support was added for CUE sheets, WebVTT subtitles, etc.

You should really take a few minutes to look through all the options pages if you are a new user or if you are upgrading from a very old version. Don’t forget the advanced options page.

The big picture: Park-outside recalls are becoming a bigger issue for automakers and drivers as vehicles add more electrical systems, battery technology, and software-controlled components. For drivers, the warnings can mean months of inconvenient parking habits while manufacturers work to provide repairs.

In the first seven months of 2026, the NHTSA issued 17 park-outside recall campaigns affecting about 1.7 million vehicles. Eight of those recalls were announced in June and July, including a warning covering 1 million Jeep vehicles with an electrical connection issue involving power-steering pumps.

The notices tell drivers not to park in garages or near buildings because a vehicle could catch fire after it has been turned off. In some cases, owners are also told not to charge their vehicles until repairs are available.

The problem is not limited to electric vehicles. Fire risks can involve high-voltage batteries in plug-in hybrids, but they can also come from wiring, starter relays, seat motors and other components that still carry electrical current after the engine is shut down.

“The engine is off, but the circuits are still hot, and they stay hot all the time,” Frank Borris, a former NHTSA investigator who now works as a safety consultant, told the Washington Post.

Credit: Washington Post

“There is a lot more electronics in vehicles today,” he added, “and that means more stuff can go wrong.”

NHTSA created the park-outside designation in 2015 to draw attention to recalls involving fire risks in or near buildings. In 2022, it added a park-outside warning box to its online recall listings to make the notices easier for consumers to spot.

Carfax estimates that about 3.2 million vehicles nationwide currently have an unresolved park-outside recall. The notices can leave owners in a difficult position because repairs and replacement parts may not be immediately available.

“For consumers, there seems to be no easy choices,” said Sean Kane, president of Safety Research and Strategies, an auto-safety analysis firm. “Where are you going to park it?”

That issue is especially difficult for people who live in apartments, condos or other buildings with enclosed parking. “What if you live in a condo with a parking garage? What are you going to do?” Kane said.

Credit: Washington Post

The Jeep plug-in hybrid recall shows how serious the risk can be. More than 320,000 Jeep Wrangler and Grand Cherokee plug-in hybrid vehicles were recalled because of a high-voltage battery fire risk. Owners were told to park outside, away from structures, and not charge their vehicles until the fix was completed.

Sarah Lammersen received the recall notice for her 2022 Jeep Wrangler plug-in hybrid late last year. She texted her dealership, “I hope the car doesn’t catch on fire while we wait to schedule an appointment.” According to a lawsuit, the Jeep caught fire days later while her daughter was driving it. No one was hurt, but the vehicle was destroyed.

In another case, a man in Fargo, North Dakota, found his parked Hyundai Santa Fe on fire in his garage in December. He later learned that the vehicle had been subject to a park-outside recall. NHTSA has said it is aware of several injuries in recent years that appeared to be tied to similar vehicle fires.

“It can be a giant disaster when cars catch fire and no one is there to see it,” said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety.

Some owners face another problem: security. Millions of Hyundai vehicles have received park-outside recalls in recent years, including some models that lacked anti-theft technology and were widely targeted by thieves.

Kane said owners have described the choice as difficult. “I don’t want my house to burn down,” he recalled them telling him. “But I don’t want my car to get stolen. What am I supposed to do?”

Just today, we covered news of AirPods Pro with a built-in camera, spotted through a demo video hidden inside the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate. Now, new leaks from that very same build are confirming two more details about how these AirPods will actually function.

What happens if your hair covers the camera?

Aaron from MacRumors shared the new findings in a post on X. If your hair happens to block the camera on your AirPods, you’ll get an error titled “Hair Detected.” The message reads, “To get the most accurate information about things in your environment, make sure AirPods are not covered.”

It’s a small detail, but it makes sense. Since the camera relies on a clear line of sight to feed information to Visual Intelligence, anything blocking it, including your own hair, would stop the feature from working properly. Apple seems to have thought this through so users aren’t left confused about why the camera suddenly isn’t picking anything up.

What is Secure Pairing all about?

The second detail is a feature called Secure Pairing. According to the string found in the build, it says, “Please put your AirPods in case to continue Secure Pairing.” While we don’t have the full picture of how this process works yet, it strongly suggests that setting up the camera feature will involve an added security step, likely to confirm you’re actually the owner before granting access to your surroundings.

Given that these AirPods will essentially be capturing and processing visual data from your environment, a dedicated secure pairing process makes a lot of sense from a privacy standpoint.

These two additions give us a clearer picture of how Apple is approaching both the usability and the security side of camera-equipped AirPods. With more details surfacing from the same macOS Tahoe 26.7 build, it looks like Apple is getting closer to making this feature official.