DuckDuckGo has spent the past few months gaining fresh attention as more users look for alternatives to Google’s increasingly AI-heavy Search experience. Now, the privacy-focused company is adding a feature that could make its browser even more tempting for everyday use. DuckDuckGo says its browser can now block most video ads, including those on YouTube, when a video is playing inside the browser.

What’s happening?

DuckDuckGo says the new YouTube ad detection and blocking system is based on open-source community filter lists from uBlock Origin. The company may also apply its own rules to make the feature work better inside its browser.

The feature will be turned on by default for most DuckDuckGo users on iPhone, Windows, and Mac. Android users will get the same default treatment soon, but they can manually enable it from the browser settings menu for now. Users on all platforms can also turn YouTube ad blocking on or off from settings.

There is one limitation here. You need to watch YouTube inside the DuckDuckGo browser for the feature to work, because the browser obviously cannot block ads inside the official YouTube app.

Better timing than ever

DuckDuckGo is rolling out this feature at a useful moment. The company recently saw a jump in interest after Google announced major AI changes to Search, including AI Overviews and a more conversational AI Mode. DuckDuckGo has been pitching itself as the browser and search alternative that gives users more control over how much AI they want.

Video ad blocking gives DuckDuckGo a more direct everyday benefit. Brave has made that pitch for years by blocking ads by default across the web, including on YouTube, and the approach has clearly found an audience. The browser recently crossed 120 million monthly active users.

DuckDuckGo is now moving in a similar direction, although it is being upfront about the tradeoffs. The company warns that users may see longer buffering times, and some hiccups could still appear. Even so, for users tired of video ads and Google’s AI push, DuckDuckGo just became a much more attractive option.

As a tech journalist and gear reviewer, something that has frustrated me from time to time is weird performance anomalies in review gear. Sometimes lossless audio wouldn’t be passed from a TV to a soundbar or the 4K/HDR/Dolby Vision flag wouldn’t be delivered to a TV from a UHD Blu-ray Disc player or 4K media player. In some cases, it’s just a matter of adjusting some settings, but in other cases, unreliable HDMI cables have prevented the full bandwidth signal from being delivered from source to display or sound system. And with the constant disconnecting/reconnecting we do when reviewing A/V gear, cheap HDMI connectors don’t always hold up over time.

But this is not to say that you need to drop a C-note (or more) on an HDMI cable. As in the high-end audio world, snake oil runs rampant in the TV and video market as well. As long as you are using an ultra high-speed rated cable (48 GBPS) with solid construction and beefy connectors, you should be good to go with 4K or even 8K video and fully lossless audio streams like multichannel PCM, Dolby Atmos, Dolby True HD, DTS:X and DTS-HD Master Audio.

But how can you tell if your HDMI cable is “good enough?” You could take your chances with a no-name cable brand on Amazon or eBay, or pay a little extra (or a lot extra) for a premium brand for “peace of mind.” But neither solution is ideal.

Fellow tech reviewer Caleb Denison (a.k.a. “Mr. CalebRated”) has also been frustrated by unreliable cables and obscenely overpriced ones. But he decided to take matters into his own hands by designing his own ultra high speed HDMI cable. Caleb partnered up with Dipin Sehdev (CE Critic) and Alex Pasco to develop a new line of HDMI cables called “CableRated.” And when I say “line,” it’s basically just one HDMI cable (for now) available in three different lengths.

Starting at $29.99 for a 1-meter cable, CableRated HDMI cables are HDCP 2.3-compatible and HDMI 2.1-capable but fully backward compatible with HDMI 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 for existing gear. They’re ultra high speed certified (up to 48 Gbps) and rated for 3D, 4K and 8K video signals including all flavors of HDR, both static and dynamic, such as Dolby Vision and HDMI 10+. Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support eliminates screen tearing and stuttering, while Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) and Quick Frame Transport (QFT) ensure responsive, fluid gaming.

Quick Media Switching (QMS) support removes black screen delays when switching among devices. ARC (Audio Return Channel) and eARC (extended Audio Return Channel) support means your cable is ready for any type of sound, from basic 2-channel PCM to fully lossless multi-channel PCM, Dolby True HD, Dolby Atmos, DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS:X, MPEG-H, Eclipsa Audio, 360 Reality Audio and Auro-3D.

CableRated HDMI cables include gold-plated connectors encased in durable aluminum housings, a soft-touch aluminum-magnesium braided jacket, triple-layer shielding, and a low-EMI design to ensure long-term reliability.

According to Caleb, “We partnered with multiple manufacturers, ordered what felt like a sea of sample cables, and put them through the wringer — testing, routing, stressing, and even surgically dissecting them to separate meaningful engineering from empty promises. Signal integrity, construction quality, durability, connector design, flexibility, and long-term reliability were all part of our checklist.”

After months of testing, the final design and manufacturing partner were chosen and the cables were launched this week to consumers on the company’s web store. Caleb tells us he is exploring additional retail opportunities to help get the cables out to a wider audience. But for now, you can buy one (or three) for yourself at the company’s web site:

> CableRated.com

Note: eCoustics has no relationship to CableRated and earns no commission on sales through the above link.

The Bottom Line

In the early days of High Definition video, HDMI cables were all pretty much the same, but with the advent of 4K UHD video, VRR gaming, 8K video, HDR and lossless audio, all HDMI cables are no longer created equal. Today, the actual bandwidth of a cable can limit its performance and the construction of an HDMI cable actually matters, not only to its initial performance, but to its ability to hold up over time. But separating overpriced snake oil from solid, affordable high bandwidth cables can be tricky. With Caleb Denison’s track record for tech savviness and obvious commitment to quality and value, we’re optimistic that this new cable line will offer a solid value proposition and reliable performance. We plan on checking them out ourselves and will report back on our experience.

Related Reading:

Tech Reviewer Caleb Denison Says Goodbye to Digital Trends, Hello CalebRated

Best TVs of 2025? Podcast with Special Guest Caleb Denison of CalebRated

CalebRated Announces CableRated HDMI Cables (Substack)

AI and ML

With GPT-Live, talking, listening, and formulating answers all happen at once

OpenAI has released a new voice model that can produce human-sounding speech, or scour the web in response to spoken queries.

GPT-Live, according to the company, makes chatbot banter feel more like a real conversation, something of a bold move for a company battling multiple lawsuits alleging mental health harms because people took ChatGPT too seriously.

“During conversations, GPT‑Live can show it’s paying attention with phrases like ‘mhmm’ or ‘yeah’, engage in quick back-and-forth, or just stay quiet when you need a moment to think,” the company said in a blog post. “The result is a voice experience that is refreshingly easy to talk to.”

The company has published a video demonstrating this full duplex experience. It features three women of an age seldom seen at companies like OpenAI but often impacted by the kinds of scams AI technology enables.

OpenAI insists that it has expanded its safety testing regime to better assess native audio interactions. And it has published a system card to document its approach.

While OpenAI notes that it has policies and protections against voice cloning and impersonation, the company has not disavowed replicating a competing product from former CTO Mira Murati.

Murati’s company Thinking Machines in May talked up “interaction models” and how they can speak, listen, and search the web at the same time. Two months later, OpenAI has a similar offering.

If Apple were involved, we’d say Thinking Machines had been “Sherlocked,” a term from a time when copying a startup’s product stirred indignation. We’d suggest “Altmanned” as an alternative if it weren’t for the global shrug of indifference to frontier model companies capturing the world’s intellectual output, laundering it, and reselling it.

GPT-Live will delegate queries that require web search to a background model (GPT-5.5 presently) that processes the request while maintaining conversational flow with the user. The company’s hope is that this will allow voice interaction to drive more complicated, lengthy agentic workflows – which tend to inflate token usage and billing.

Whether an original idea, a parallel innovation, or a sincerely flattering imitation, GPT-Live’s full-duplex implementation represents an improvement in model architecture. “Instead of processing a sequence of separate messages, GPT‑Live continuously processes input while generating output,” OpenAI explains. “The model can therefore make interaction decisions many times per second: whether to speak, continue listening, pause, interrupt, or invoke a tool.”

It will be interesting to see whether security researchers find that this approach, of continuously processing input, allows for novel attack opportunities.

ChatGPT users can invoke GPT-Live by tapping the “Voice” button. OpenAI contends this experience will result in more natural conversations, better answers, improved listening, and visual feedback.

GPT-Live will appear in the iOS and Android ChatGPT apps, and on the web. A more capable version, GPT-Live-1, is the default for ChatGPT Voice for Go, Plus, and Pro users. Free-tier customers have to settle for GPT-Live-1 mini.

GPT-Live comes with a caveat – it has been optimized for popular languages and may not work all that well for “certain languages” yet. But now that the model has been made more responsive, any missteps should be noticeable a few milliseconds sooner. ®

The gaming headset category has become as bloody as your favorite FPS, with every brand now promising cinematic immersion, pinpoint positional audio, marathon battery life, and the kind of microphone clarity that allegedly turns chaos into strategy. FiiO has decided to enter that firefight with the new $69.99 FG3, an over-ear gaming headset that brings the company’s Hi-Fi audio background into the entry-level gaming space.

The timing is interesting. FiiO’s FG3 lands in the same week that Edifier introduced its own Hecate G5 MAX wireless gaming headset, giving gamers another reason to rethink what $150 and under can buy in 2026. The FG3 takes a different approach, built around a coaxial dual dynamic driver design with integrated DSP processing, virtual 7.1 surround sound, browser-based audio customization, and cross-platform support for PCs and consoles. Wireless gameplay is not part of the package here at the asking price.

FiiO is clearly betting that gamers are ready for headsets that sound less like plastic explosions in a shoebox and more like properly engineered audio products. The FG3 is designed to deliver accurate positional cues, cleaner voice communication, and a more customizable listening experience without forcing buyers into premium pricing territory.

Related Reviews:

Hi-Fi Engineering Meets Gaming

The FG3 is FiiO’s first dedicated gaming headset, and the company has not entered the category with a conventional single-driver design. Instead, the FG3 uses a coaxial dual dynamic driver arrangement that combines a 50 mm dynamic driver with a smaller 16 mm dynamic driver.

The goal is to have both drivers radiate from a more unified acoustic point, which can help preserve phase consistency and improve directionality. For gaming, that matters because positional cues are not just marketing language; hearing where footsteps, reloads, voices, and environmental effects are coming from can change how quickly players react.

FiiO uses an electronic two-way crossover to divide the workload between the two drivers. The 50 mm driver handles low and midrange frequencies, while the 16 mm driver is assigned to the higher frequencies. FiiO claims a frequency response of 10 Hz to 40 kHz, which places the FG3 well beyond the range of human hearing on paper, but the more relevant question is whether that driver arrangement delivers better clarity, separation, and spatial information in actual gameplay.

Dedicated DSP Processing

The FG3 also includes a dual-core DSP chip designed to manage gaming audio with low latency and fast signal processing. That matters because gaming headsets have to do more than play music loudly. They need to keep dialogue intelligible, effects clean, and positional information stable when the screen gets busy.

FiiO has also integrated a DAC that supports audio up to 192 kHz/24-bit, along with a built-in headphone amplifier rated at up to 80 mW of output power. Those specifications are unusual for an entry-level gaming headset and reflect FiiO’s attempt to bring more of its Hi-Fi hardware approach into a category that has not always prioritized sound quality.

The combination of DSP, DAC, amplifier, and dual-driver architecture is clearly intended to help the FG3 handle both competitive gaming and general media playback. Subtle environmental sounds, teammate voices, explosions, and soundtrack cues all place different demands on a headset. FiiO’s argument is that the FG3 can handle those demands with greater precision than most budget gaming headsets.

Virtual Surround Sound

The FG3 includes FiiO’s specially tuned virtual 7.1 surround sound processing, with two available modes: Cinema and Action. The goal is to create a more spacious 360-degree presentation that helps with directional awareness in games while adding more scale to films and other media.

Virtual surround sound is always implementation-dependent, and not every gamer wants extra processing layered over the original mix. But for players who want a larger soundfield and clearer directional cues without moving to a full speaker system, the FG3 gives them that option directly from the headset.

Clear Communication

FiiO has also fitted the FG3 with a detachable microphone that uses an Environmental Noise Cancellation algorithm to reduce background noise. That includes common desk-level distractions such as keyboard and mouse sounds, which can make online team communication harder than it needs to be.

The FG3 also supports hardware-based sidetone monitoring, allowing users to hear their own voice with low latency while speaking. Sidetone can be enabled or disabled through the web-based FiiO Control interface, and users can also adjust the monitoring level. That is a practical feature for longer gaming sessions, especially for anyone who dislikes the sealed-off feeling of closed-back headsets.

Browser-Based EQ

One of the more useful FG3 features is that it does not require dedicated desktop software for setup. Configuration is handled through FiiO Control WEB, a browser-based platform that allows users to create and save custom 10-band EQ settings directly to the headset.

That matters because gaming headset software is often where good intentions go to die. FiiO’s approach should make it easier to adjust the FG3 across different devices, create separate listening profiles, and avoid installing another bloated control app just to change EQ.

Designed for Every Platform

The FG3 is designed as a driver-free, plug-and-play gaming headset with support for Windows 7, 8, 10, and 11, along with smartphones and laptops. FiiO also lists adaptive UAC 1.0 and UAC 2.0 compatibility for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, and Nintendo Switch 2.

The headset uses a foldable design for easier transport, with breathable woven mesh ear pads, memory foam cushions, a closed-back acoustic structure, and a stainless steel headband. Inline controls provide quick access to volume, microphone mute, and audio mode selection without forcing players to leave the game or dig through menus.

Key Specifications Compared

The Bottom Line

The FiiO FG3 is not just another inexpensive gaming headset with RGB lights and a microphone attached as an afterthought. Its most unusual feature is the coaxial dual dynamic driver layout, which combines a 50 mm driver for bass and midrange with a 16 mm titanium-plated driver for higher frequencies. Add in dual-core DSP, 192 kHz/24-bit USB audio support, a built-in amplifier, browser-based 10-band EQ, virtual 7.1 surround, hardware sidetone, and a detachable ENC microphone, and FiiO is clearly trying to bring more of its Hi-Fi DNA into the entry-level gaming category.

At $69.99, the FG3 is aggressively priced. That is the story. FiiO is offering a wired gaming headset with more audio engineering behind it than most models at this level, especially for players who care about positional cues, dialogue clarity, EQ control, and a cleaner microphone setup.

What is missing? Wireless connectivity. There is no Bluetooth, no 2.4 GHz dongle, no battery life claim, and no active noise cancellation for listening. Compared to some newer rivals, including Edifier’s Hecate G5 MAX, the FG3 is less about all-day wireless convenience and more about wired stability, USB audio quality, and price-to-performance value. It also does not appear to offer the higher-end planar magnetic approach found in more expensive gaming headsets from brands like Audeze.

The FG3 is for gamers who want better sound without spending $150 to $300, PC and console users who do not mind a wired connection, and listeners who want EQ control without installing another bloated desktop app. It is not for players who want wireless freedom, ANC, or premium materials at any cost. FiiO has entered a very crowded category, but at this price, the FG3 gives budget gaming headsets something new to worry about.

Where to Buy:

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A Linux vulnerability that allows untrusted virtual machines to gain root access to host machines is one of two high-severity flaws to surface this week in the open source operating system.

The vulnerability resides in KVM, which is, in essence, a virtual machine app included in the kernel of many Linux distributions. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-53359, allows guest virtual machines—such as those used in cloud platforms to isolate one user’s instance from the host OS and other user instances—to break out of that container.

Januscape: A threat to cloud platforms

The vulnerability affects KVM running on both AMD and Intel processors. It exploits bugs residing in the KVM guest-side, the portion of the VM that consists of only resources like the OS or drivers present in the guest VM, rather than resources present on the host machine. The threat went unnoticed in the Linux kernel for 16 years.

“With guest-side actions alone, an attacker can compromise the host that runs their VM,” Hyunwoo Kim, the researcher who discovered the flaw, wrote. “For example, an attacker who has rented just a single instance on a public cloud could panic the host kernel to take down every other tenant VM on the same physical machine (DoS), or run code with root privilege on the host to take over the host and all the guests on it (RCE).”

Kim has named the vulnerability Januscape. The flaw is a use-after-free vulnerability—a form of memory corruption vulnerability that injects malicious code into recently freed regions of memory. The vulnerability resides in the shadow MMU emulation, a process that translates host memory addresses to hypervisor memory addresses and vice versa.

Exploits will trigger guest-side actions alone to corrupt the host kernel’s shadow page, a data structure in the host that assists in the address translation. Kim has released a proof-of-concept exploit that runs in the guest VM to trigger a crash on the host OS. He said an exploit that fully escapes the guest also exists but won’t be released until “the very distant future.”

The following guide may contain spoilers for the main Peaky Blinders series and the movie The Immortal Man.

Peaky Blinders will return to Netflix for a new sequel series, but so far little is known about the next installment.

Meta’s year so far hasn’t exactly been a picnic. But that didn’t stop one nut-loving creature from seeking some joy inside one of the company’s offices this week.

A squirrel apparently got loose inside a building in Bangkok, Thailand, where some of the tech giant’s regional teams are based. The critter spent at least 20 minutes darting past staff, according to an internal memo seen by WIRED. It noted that the squirrel minorly injured a janitor before finally being caught.

The rodent’s adventure in the office—while potentially terrifying to some—brought a moment of levity to Meta staff around the world who have been dispirited by recent restructurings, mass layoffs, and the launch of an initiative to train AI using employee data without their initial consent. Meta executives have acknowledged the current morale crisis and begun trying to lift the mood internally by funding boozy social outings and promising to improve office food, according to current employees and an internal memo.

In recent years, some Meta workers have complained about losing access to healthy office snacks, like nuts, which they said had been replaced with less nutritious options such as chips. Whether the animal marauder in Bangkok found anything to its liking couldn’t be learned.

The squirrel was delivered to the office inside a package, but it ended up escaping, according to the internal memo. A janitor from a cleaning company accepted the delivery. The reasoning behind the squirrel’s delivery and where it now resides weren’t mentioned in the memo, but some people keep the animals as pets or eat their meat.

Meta declined to comment on the incident.

The injured worker, who was scratched on the finger, received first aid and was later taken to the hospital for a medical examination, according to the memo. The janitor “responsible for bringing the animal onto the premises” formally acknowledged their misconduct and committed to adhering to office regulations to ensure “such an incident does not recur,” the memo added.

New York Times journalist Mike Isaac first reported the incident in a social media post on Tuesday, without specifying the location or the janitor’s role. “Employees are predictably having a field day with it internally,” he wrote. “One person created an AI-generated video mimicking an HR training course on squirrel-related office best practices.”

Squirrels looking for a suitable home in Meta’s empire might find better luck invading Hawaii, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal cattle dine on home-brewed beer and macadamia nuts.

Additional reporting by Lauren Goode.

A threat actor has been targeting organizations across multiple sectors with voice-based fake security requests that ask Microsoft 365 users to enroll a new Entra passkey.

The attacker is taking advantage of a new capability Microsoft opened to administrators in May, allowing them to run “passkey registration campaigns” to entice users to enrol passkeys for more secure authentication.

The campaign has been running since April and involves calling targeted users and trying to convince them to register a new passkey under the attacker’s control.

To mask the deception, the hacker directs victims to a phishing kit that imitates the legitimate Microsoft passkey enrollment process.

Cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) company Okta attributes the activity to an actor it tracks as O-UNC-066, which operates an extortion operation known as Pink.

Okta says that O-UNC-066 has been targeting users at organizations in the food and beverage, technology, healthcare, automotive, construction, and aviation industries.

The security upgrade ruse

During the campaign, targeted employees are contacted by phone under the pretext that they must enroll a new Microsoft Entra passkey for security reasons and are directed to phishing URLs that contain the word “passkey” in the domain name.

The malicious websites include the victim organization’s branding and mimic the real Entra passkey enrollment portal.

Unlike the more common adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) proxy, the kit is an operator-controlled PHP panel in which the attacker guides the victim through the phishing process in real time, adapting the flow based on the multi-factor authentication (MFA) method used.

“[The phishing kit] is an operator-controlled PHP panel in which a threat actor steers victims through various stages of authentication in close to real-time using a 1-second heartbeat polling mechanism,” explains Okta.

“The operator can use the kit to adapt the user experience to each victim’s MFA requirements (TOTP, push notification with number matching, SMS OTP) during the session.”

Credentials and MFA responses entered by the victim in the kit’s screens are relayed to the operator, who uses them to authenticate to the victim’s Microsoft account.

While the victim believes they are registering a new passkey on their accounts, the attacker is actually registering a passkey they control.

After gaining access, the phishing site presents the victim with fake Microsoft-branded passkey registration pages, prompting them to save a fake BIP-39 recovery phrase and confirm one word from it.

Okta notes that BIP-39 seed phrases don’t have any role in legitimate Microsoft Entra passkey enrollment, but could serve as a distraction for users who are unfamiliar with the process.

Pink extortion gang

According to Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, Pink is a new extortion brand affiliated with the decentralized threat network known as The Com (short for The Community).

The threat actor is known for using vishing (voice phishing) and IT impersonation to collect credentials and multi-factor authentication (MFA) codes, which are used in attacks that steal company data.

The Pink threat group launched an extortion site on May 31, where they publish samples of the stolen data to pressure compromised victims into paying a ransom.

Researchers say that after gaining access to a victim’s account, Pink moves quickly to exfiltrate data from SharePoint and OneDrive services.

Brad Duncan, Principal Threat Researcher at Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, noted in early June that some of the phishing domains used by Pink included the word “passkey.”

Okta recommends that organizations establish methods to better verify the identity of helpdesk personnel when contacting users, as well as deny requests from locations where the company does not offer services.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

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