Microsoft has confirmed that .NET Framework updates released as part of the August 2026 Patch Tuesday are breaking printing and PDF export in some applications.

In a Windows release health alert seen by BleepingComputer, Microsoft says this known issue affects only apps that use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) UI framework, an open-source graphical subsystem for building Windows desktop client applications.

“After installing the August 2026 .NET Framework cumulative update, some WPF applications may fail with a System.IO.FileFormatException when printing or generating PDF/XPS content that uses certain fonts, including Calibri,” Microsoft says.

The complete list of impacted platforms includes both Windows client releases (including the latest versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11) and Windows Server (from Windows Server 2012 up to Windows Server 2025).

Microsoft says it is still investigating the issue and, until it can ship a permanent solution, has provided a temporary fix to help affected users work around these printing problems.

This workaround requires enabling the Switch.MS.Internal.TtfDelta.DisableCmapAndSbitOverflowProtection AppContext switch in the application config file by adding the following:

However, the company warned that doing this will also disable protections introduced with the August 2026 .NET Framework update, exposing the system to attacks that could exploit vulnerabilities addressed by this month’s security updates.

“Microsoft recommends using this workaround only as a temporary measure and only when required to address this issue,” it warned.

Roughly five years ago, in February 2021, Microsoft addressed another known issue that caused WPF apps and Visual Studio to crash after installing Windows 10 cumulative updates.

On Friday, Microsoft also shared a temporary workaround for a known issue triggered by Windows 11 updates released during the August 2026 Patch Tuesday and causing games like ARC Raiders, MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and The Finals to crash and freeze.

Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.

The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.

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How do I touch you
across the ocean,
across cold depths
where light travels through glass.

Not copper—fibers. Optical.

Through liquid glass, through flickering light
that carries you in fragments. Light broken into pulses.

You say: it’s easier this way. What are we missing like this? You smile.
Safe distance.

I say: network.

Signals slide beneath the sea, through cables thinner than trust, faster than touch,
slower than longing.

We stand alone, together. Synchronous, yet apart. Icons replace skin, latency replaces breath.

This distance protects us. Silence that feels intentional.

Everything is under control as long as nothing truly hurts.

And we choose it
because it shields us
from what we might become if we actually met.

You are my counterpoint. My response.
My reflection
at a safe distance.

Beneath the ocean, nodes remember paths.

Packets shake hands without bodies.

If we get lost,
we resend everything, with error,
with noise,
with hope.

Even though I’ve been a bird-watcher most of my life, nothing prepared me for the experience of witnessing—on my phone—the entire process of birds being born in my own backyard.

I’ve maintained a regular “dumb” nest box for years, the birthplace of generations of black-capped chickadees. I’ve seen them going in and out, but I always wondered what was happening in there, especially the year I opened up the box in the fall and found five deceased fledglings at the bottom. How could this have happened? I wondered.

Thanks to the Birdfy Nest Duo smart nesting box and its built-in thermometer and hygrometer, I now at least have an educated guess. (The poor things likely overheated during an early season heat wave.) Being able to watch the entire nesting operation from all angles, starting with excavation and egg-laying and ending in hatching and fledging, has been one of the most educational and entertaining bird-watching experiences I have ever had, and something I’d recommend to anyone interested in birds, nature, or just life science in general.

Eye Spy

Birdfy makes three smart nest boxes in addition to the Duo. The original, the Birdfy Nest, has one camera—located inside the box—and can only hang from an eye hook screwed into the top. There’s also a version made out of solid fir in contrast to the others’ lightweight bamboo. I have also tested Birdfy’s artful Polygon, but persistent connection issues prevented me from using it this season.

I have not tested the first two single-camera versions, but I can’t imagine not having a second camera outside the hole to see who’s unexpectedly poking their head in. (At one point in my testing, it was a confused flicker; another, a curious starling—this is when I learned chickadees can hiss). It’s also critical to be able to pole-mount the box to keep it away from predators.

SCREENSHOT: Kat Merck

The Nest Duo is substantial—16 inches tall and about 8 pounds—with one 1080p HD camera facing the nest entry hole on the exterior and another tucked discreetly inside the nest box itself. There’s also an internal hygrometer (humidity) and thermometer (temperature) that show readings on the live view in Birdfy’s easy-to-use app. There are four easy-to-install, screw-on entry hole sizes for different species, from 0.9 inches for wrens up to 2 inches for starlings or bluebirds, along with corresponding metal predator guards to prevent chewing. The entire side of the box opens with a latch for easy cleaning and access.

In the app, each screen capture appears as a split-screen image, which you can tap to view 20-second videos (with audio) of both the inside and the outside of the box. The videos are immediately downloadable and shareable—no subscription is needed.

The screen captures work much like one of Birdfy’s smart bird feeders, but with images shunted to sections labeled “Prelude,” “Nesting,” “Brooding,” “Nestling,” “Fledgling,” and “End.” There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for what process the app thought was happening at the time (for example, if a nestling was simply turned around, the app asked if it should label it as “Fledgling”), but this story format was easy enough to ignore onscreen.

House Hunters

In March of this year, at the beginning of nesting season on the West Coast, I installed the Duo with the 1-inch entry hole on a pole stand and mounted the included solar panel below the box with hose clamps. Black-capped chickadees were consistently interested, popping in and looking around, but something was preventing them from staking a claim. It took me a while to realize they were looking askance at the holes on the metal tray “floor,” which is perforated for drainage. The idea is that this tray can be inserted into one of a series of slots to increase or decrease the nest cavity depth, depending on your local species’ preference.

Photograph: Kat Merck

In context: Most companies mark a major birthday with a press release and a photo of a cake in the break room. But Valve has done nothing of the sort so far for the big day. On August 24, 1996, thirty years ago today, Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington signed the paperwork on a company they registered as Valve, LLC.

Interestingly, both Newell and Harrington had just quit Microsoft before they started Valve. Newell had been there for thirteen years by that point, working on early versions of Windows. The job had also made him rich enough to fund a startup himself, since he left with more than a million dollars of his own money.

However, it was Harrington who suggested they spend it on games. The two had known each other since a birthday party in 1987, and once they agreed to go ahead, they set up shop in Kirkland, Washington. That put their new office about five miles down the road from the Microsoft campus in Redmond.

Their own savings did not cover the whole endeavor, though. A publisher in the same state, Sierra On-Line, agreed to back them with roughly a million dollars. In exchange, Sierra took 30% of the revenue and every scrap of intellectual property.

Even with that deal signed, the pair were still four million dollars short. Harrington sold his Microsoft shares to cover his side of the gap. Newell would not part with his, so he borrowed against them instead.

The bet paid off about two years later. Half-Life arrived in November 1998 and sold 2.5 million copies within twelve months. A lot of that came down to how it handled its story, which played out around you as you kept moving rather than pausing to show you a scene.

Steam came along five years later, and you’d be surprised to know that it started off as something far less ambitious. Valve built it just to deliver updates because patches for games like Counter-Strike kept breaking them for days at a stretch.

Eventually, Steam grew into a storefront also stocking everyone else’s games. Today, it’s where the bulk of Valve’s revenue comes from. The company takes a 30% cut of most titles sold through the store. They’re doing pretty well, too, with Alinea Analytics estimating that Steam grossed $11.1 billion in the first six months of this year.

Money on that scale is what let Valve start building its own machines. The Steam Deck handheld landed in 2022, and this June brought the Steam Machine, a compact living-room PC. It starts at $1,049 for the 512GB model, a number Valve settled on after a shortage of memory chips ruined its original pricing.

“URGENT: Immediate Action Required” blasts into my eyeballs as I scroll through the impossibly giant email inbox looming directly in front of my face.

I’m reclined way back in a chair, wearing a pair of Xreal smart glasses. Tethered to my laptop via a USB-C cord, these glasses mirror the laptop screen and project it into a virtual display. The virtual screen is gigantic, equivalent to a 170-inch TV that feels about a foot away from my nose. I’m the only one who can see it, and so I’ve got this massive display all to myself.

With this technological marvel, I conjure the most riveting view imaginable: five workplace training modules about business principles and cybersecurity that my boss has repeatedly reminded me are very overdue. The text on the screen is blurry, but I complete them all within my virtual display. It takes several hours. By the time I’m done, the glasses have overheated, my forehead is sweaty, and I’m still not sure I can actually recognize a phishing email.

Virtual display glasses are a much more niche category of mixed-reality smart glasses than the camera-equipped, AI-powered frames that have dominated the product market—namely, Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. Made by companies like Xreal, Viture, and Rokid, these glasses aim to bring a screen directly to your face. Like a portable monitor, plug the USB-C cable into the arm of the glasses, then stick the other end into the port of just about any laptop, phone, tablet, or handheld gaming console. Slap ’em on, and that screen mirrors in a holographic VR-style projection, right in your center of vision.

Wearing them, you can chill out in an airplane seat, lie prone, even dangle upside-down if you like, and the big screen stays right there with you. (No tech neck!) Yup, you’re basically cosplaying the lazy humans in Wall-E. Hooray.

The ROG Xreal R1.

Photograph: Courtesy of XREAL

Virtual display glasses don’t get the heat of privacy issues that Meta’s “pervert glasses” do. No cameras, no recording—just sweet, sweet content consumption beamed out an inch from your eye holes. If you’re feeling generous, the Xreal glasses could even be lauded for their privacy protections, at least for the user. Got sensitive documents or embarrassing videos you’re trying to watch on a plane? A virtual display is one only the wearer can see. (The Xreal glasses also have speakers in the frames that do leak sound, so be careful with your audible content consumption.)

If you’re someone who works out regularly, you’ll need a pair of of the best workout and sports headphones that can hold up to the intensity and duration of your workouts.

We’ve reviewed all types of headphones that could be classified as sports, running or workout headphones, and with this list we’ve tried to review and cover as many different types of pairs as we can. We’re always reviewing new pairs and update this list regularly.

And how do we know which headphones to choose as best workout headphones? We put them through their paces, taking them on runs, using them in the gym and listening to how good they sound. If they’re headphones for swimming, we jump into the pool. If they have ANC we’ll put that to the test in both outdoor and indoor situations, as well as see how durable they are to wear over longer periods of time.

No headphone exists in a void either, so we compare to similarly priced efforts to see how competitive they are in terms of performance.

It’s not only workout and sports headphones that we test. If you’re looking for another pair, have a look at our best headphones, best wireless headphones, best wireless earbuds and best noise-cancelling headphones pages.

August 2026 update:

Our best workout headphones have long been due an update, so we’ve refreshed and added several new entries. The Shokz OpenFit Pro serve as our best for open-ear users, the Powerbeats Pro 2 are our best noise-cancelling effort, while if you’re on a budget, our pick is the JLab Go Sport+.

For less than £200 / $200, it’s the Powerbeats Fit, and if you’re looking to save more money, then we’d recommend the JBL Endurance Peak 4.

Best running headphones at a glance

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