All but a few of our very youngest readers are surely familiar with music formats that rely on optical disks. When we say [RobDevBuilds] made a MOD tracker that uses an optical disk, then, you might be forgiven for thinking he stuck a bunch of MOD files onto a CD– MOD files being a format of electronic music that was conceived of on the Commodore Amiga that is still used to this day. A dedicated MOD-CD player might be a fun project, but it’s not what [Rob] did; his project is far more impressive and impractical, as he’s come up with a way to encode the MOD files on paper for optical playback. This way the Amiga’s legacy can be preserved longer than the paltry thousand years promised by the optical M-disk format.

Zooming way, way in on the disk reveals that he’s actually printing the patterns of the MOD file row by row, just like you’d see playing it in a ‘tracker’ program. A MOD file, you see, does not encode music like a WAV or MP3; rather, like with MIDI, it lists the notes the software reading the file– traditionally called a tracker–is to recreate. Unlike a MIDI file, though, you don’t have to store the same notes more than once: repeating sections are stored in patterns. So most of the disk is just a long list of hexadecimal numbers: several columns worth, one for each ‘voice’ or instrument playing in the song. Another difference with MIDI is that MOD files are self-contained in that they are supposed to contain the samples, which isn’t in evidence until you flip over the disk.

There’s no B-side to [Rob]’s album; instead a QR-code like series of barcodes is used to encode the samples used in each track on the disk, as well as other information needed to recreate the MOD file, including metadata like title and artist, and the sequencing of the patterns on the front. Of course this means he needs two cameras on his physical mod player, one on each side, and steppers to slide them across the disk like a linear tracking turntable. The front is read via OCR of his modified Amiga “Topaz” font, while the rear holds the first 1084 bytes of the MOD file in a QR-inspired format [Rob] produced specifically for this project.

Unlike the last time we saw someone store music in QR codes, the more modest size requirements of modfiles– something that led to their use in keygens— means this player can store the music’s 8-bit sound samples without the OPUS compression [Rob] is using affecting fidelity. He’s working on another video to give the details of the player– as he works out the bugs, right now it can’t jump betwixt patterns on the disk as fast as some modfiles need–but we’re willing to hazard a guess he’s got a Raspberry Pi in there, and that it’s probably not running the Amiga-inspired AROS operating system.

A critical vulnerability chain in the popular Avada theme for WordPress can be exploited by an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary PHP code on the server.

The exploit chains six security issues into a zero-click attack. The flaws are collectively tracked as CVE-2026-18431 and received a 9.8 critical severity score.

The attack comprises exploits for authorization, input-validation, trust-boundary, and file-handling weaknesses, which must be executed in a specific order to enable arbitrary PHP code execution on a target server.

Hackers who successfully exploit these vulnerabilities could fully compromise websites for malicious activities ranging from planting malware and accessing databases to redirecting visitors to malicious sites or adding rogue admin accounts.

CVE-2026-18431 affects Avada versions up to 7.16 and Fusion Builder plugin versions up to 3.16, researchers at Defiant’s Wordfence team say in a report on Tuesday.

While ThemeFusion, the developer behind Avada and Fusion Builder, fixed the vulnerability, Wordfence is not sharing complete technical details to give administrators sufficient time to install the latest updates and has only provided the following attack chain overview:

1. Exposing attacker-controlled input through a public request
2. Passing that input to functionality restricted from anonymous users
3. Invoking a privileged component outside its intended context
4. Using request data to influence trusted state
5. Accessing an insufficiently protected administrative operation
6. Bypassing file-handling restrictions on what could be written and where

Exploitation requires a vulnerable version of both the Avada theme and the Fusion Builder plugin to be active on the target website.

The Avada theme is quite popular, with more than 1 million sales, so CVE-2026-18431 threatens a sizable pool of sites.

“Fusion Builder is a required plugin for the Avada theme. Therefore all sites running the Avada theme will also be running the Fusion Builder plugin,” Wordfence told BleepingComputer.

“[That being said…] the prerequisites don’t narrow the pool of potential targets. Any site that has the Avada theme installed is going to be exploitable.”

Wordfence discovered the six-step vulnerability chain using an internal agentic framework called Argus, which also developed proof-of-concept exploit code, all in about two hours.

Argus found and successfully reproduced the flaw on July 30, and the researchers shared the full details to the vendor on August 5. ThemeFusion acknowledged the report on August 10 and released fixes in Avada 7.16.1 and Fusion Builder 3.16.1 yesterday.

Update 27/08 – Removed wrongful claim that the exploitable pool of sites is smaller than the total of Avada installations after receiving clarifications from the Wordfence team that the two plugins are automatically installed together.

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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A week ago, a mystery model called Ox Alpha showed up on OpenRouter — one more entrant among more than 400 models, with roughly 10 new ones launching every week. What made it stand out wasn’t just the free price tag; it was quietly good. Hobbyists and indie developers noticed fast, pushing several trillion tokens through it daily, with community estimates for the week ranging from single digits to over 20 trillion.

AI enthusiasts spent the next six days doing forensics and speculating who could have built it, and who could have the infrastructure to serve that many tokens for free. First the guess was a U.S. lab: the long-awaited Gemini, or Anthropic shipping a good-enough middle tier, or Elon sitting on so much capacity he dropped Ox Alpha (note the naming). People ran tokenizer traces and networking analysis. A real Sherlock Holmes mystery week.

On August 26, Z.ai put its name on it. Ox Alpha was GLM-5.3-Flash. They’d been running it on public traffic on purpose, but the real surprise was not how good the model was (it’s really good). It was served entirely on Chinese chips and infrastructure. List price is 15 cents / 50 cents per million tokens. OpenRouter’s launch promo is 50% off that, 7.5 cents / 25 cents, through September 9. The weights are open (MIT), and inference is hosted by Z.ai as well as GMI Cloud, Cloudflare, and other US-based inference providers.

Artificial Analysis put the model on their intelligence-versus-cost chart the same day. GLM-5.3-Flash lands at 57 on the index for about nine cents a task. A US mid-tier like GPT-5.6 Sol (max) sits around 59 at 67 cents, meaning for two points of intelligence you are paying about 7.4x more. Take it further and Grok 4.6 is at 61 at 94 cents a task, or about 10x for a four-point gain. At this point the token economics heavily influences the consumption calculus. At the top end the curve has flattened. If we take this open-weight bait, what happens to the heavy infrastructure circular investments we made that never accounted for a strong Chinese inference contender?

American enterprises are already feeling the cost pressure. Take Uber. CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga told The Information in April he was going “back to the drawing board because the budget I thought I would need is blown away already”: the company’s full-year 2026 coding budget gone in four months, with Naga personally burning $1,200 in a single two-hour demo. By June, Uber had put a $1,500-per-person-per-tool cap in place. The tools were useful — but usefulness and value aren’t the same thing. Uber’s COO, Andrew Macdonald, still couldn’t draw a line from those dashboards to “25% more useful consumer features.”

McKinsey’s 2026 State of AI survey says 80% of people say they’re faster, 37% of companies see some EBIT, and 32% skipped at least one software purchase because they could build that feature in-house with coding agents. Organizations want to cut the bill. They cannot afford to abandon AI. The task now is to optimize usage across the org.

We cannot avoid Chinese model makers like Zhipu, Qwen, DeepSeek, and the rest. Time and again they have brought their own ingenuity to challenge SOTA labs and cut costs. On OpenRouter, Chinese models passed US token share in early June, and the top of that board is still mostly Chinese labs. The indie developer world already looks like GLM Flash, DeepSeek Flash, MiniMax, Kimi, and sometimes Grok or Claude if they already paid for a heavy subscription. If you are already subscribed to Grok or OpenAI through your company, that is now a sunk cost. Finance will start asking whether those seats still make sense if pay-as-you-go gets this cheap.

So what choices remain? Consider your coding and agentic work in three buckets, split by share of tasks and tokens run through each tier — not dollars, since GLM-5.3-Flash’s much lower per-token price means an even dollar split would already send most of your volume there. At the very top you have Fable and Opus. If you need to analyze a complex strategy or write a detailed execution plan, the extra points of intelligence matter and you should spend top dollar, but only for those rare tasks you cannot skimp on — probably 5% of the task volume. The mid tier is Kimi K3, Gemini 3.7 Flash, GPT-5.6 Sol, and Grok 4.6, all sitting around 60 on the intelligence index. Kimi is a heavy hitter for coding and a fan favorite; then Grok 4.6 is a close second, though its smaller context window holds it back. Put about 50% of the volume here. For the last 45%, strongly consider GLM-5.3-Flash as the volume workhorse. Your harness, your mix (coding vs content vs marketing), and your evals will draw your own frontier. Chinese open-weight models will save you money — and they need to be in your cost calculus.

September is shaping up to be a deluge of new models — Google, xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepSeek all have releases expected. The Pareto frontier might move again. But the direction is set: more intelligence for less money. Labs that can’t get their serving costs down will lose the volume — and with it, the audience that volume creates.

Before September, some homework:

1. Count your tokens. Can you attribute spend to a top-line metric like customer or revenue growth? If not, at least development velocity or productivity? Without clear goals, it is going to be hard to defend the spend.

2. Build your AI budget again. Org by org, what is planned AI spend? Can those leaders come up with a proposal and defend it?

3. Define your model strategy by team. Write the three tiers. High for irreversible decisions and strategies. Mid for the paid seat and everyday coding. Low (GLM-5.3-Flash) for volume.

Next month the models get cheaper again. Your teams get hungrier. The companies that come out of this will place their bets intentionally, and they won’t let those agents think on Opus or Fable unless the task is really worth it.

Parvez Syed Mohamed is a product executive who has built API integration and agent platforms at Salesforce (MuleSoft), Oracle and at AgentPaaS.ai. He works on production agentic systems. Some of his thoughts on building software with Agents is here: https://github.com/parvezsyed

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After a series of GTA 6 leaks revealed everything from gameplay footage and the game’s Leonida map to Jason wandering into a nudist town, Rockstar Games has remained on track with its plans for a first-of-its-kind exclusive extended look on Netflix.

GTA 6: An Extended Look will premiere on Netflix on August 27 at 3pm ET / 8pm BST / August 28 at 5am AEST, giving Netflix members an extended look at Rockstar’s most anticipated game. While Rockstar hasn’t confirmed exactly what will be shown, there’s plenty of speculation that it could finally include official gameplay and even Trailer 3.

Your iPhone may not always deliver the audio quality you expect, especially if the sound becomes muffled or loses clarity. This could happen due to dust buildup on the speakers, your streaming service, or the audio format. It is simple to take steps that would improve your audio experience. You can change the audio settings, use Spatial Audio, or even use wired headphones.

Get Better Sound From Your iPhone Speakers

Start by checking the iPhone’s speakers if the audio sounds unclear or muffled. There may be dust and other particles in the speaker’s grille that are affecting its performance. You should clean it carefully with a soft-bristled toothbrush when the iPhone is turned off. You can also use a rubber air blower to remove loose debris. Avoid using anything that could push dirt further into the speaker.

Streaming settings can also affect music quality on your iPhone. Apple Music offers users options to enhance streaming quality over cellular networks. Spotify offers High and Very High qualities of streaming. You can also use the EQ settings in these applications to adjust the sound. Just pick the right preset for your needs, whether for bass or vocals.

Improve Audio Quality With Headphones

If you mostly use headphones, the iPhone introduces yet another feature to customize your sound settings. This feature, called Headphone Accommodations, helps you personalize the sound to your liking. This feature lets you run an audio test and choose from different samples to find the one that suits you best. This can make your headphones sound clearer and more balanced.

The sound may be further personalized through the EQ controls offered in certain music applications. The EQ affects the balance distribution among the bass, voice, and other audio components. You may choose to try various presets rather than apply the same setting to all kinds of music. This gives you more control over how your headphones sound.

Try Spatial Audio Or Wired Headphones

Spatial Audio is another option for people seeking an immersive experience. It can be used with compatible AirPods to create a three-dimensional effect. Fixed allows the user to hear the sound coming from a single position. Head Tracking allows the sound to follow the head’s movement.

You can also switch to wired headphones for better audio quality. This would be beneficial because the audio quality would not be affected by Bluetooth’s inherent compression. Recent iPhones have been able to use wired headphones via a USB-C-to-3.5 mm adapter. Some adapters also offer an extra USB-C port for charging your iPhone while listening.

Sometimes, software changes may not fix muffled audio on an iPhone. When there is no improvement in the situation despite following all the mentioned tips, it may indicate that the speaker component is the cause. In such a case, it is advisable to contact Apple Support or have the iPhone checked.

September is a big month for PlayStation owners, with Marvel’s Wolverine leading the pack when it comes out on Sept. 15. For PlayStation Plus subscribers, however, the monthly lineup is a little less exciting. Baseball fans should get plenty of mileage out of MLB The Show 26, while Sniper Elite: Resistance offers a solid option for players who enjoy slower, more methodical action. Wobbly Life and Chained Echoes round out the lineup, but despite having some worthwhile games, September 2026 isn’t exactly the most thrilling month to subscribe to PS Plus.

PS Plus, which is Sony’s version of Xbox Game Pass, offers a large, constantly expanding library of games. Subscribers can choose from the Essential, Extra and Premium tiers, each with unique perks and benefits. Starting at $11 per month, the plans give subscribers access to monthly games and rewards, and each month, all subscribers can access a handful of games at no additional charge.

If you subscribe to PlayStation Plus, here are the games you can play at no additional cost starting on Sept. 1.

Sniper Elite: Resistance

Built around precise sniping, stealth and tactical third-person combat, Sniper Elite: Resistance puts you behind the rifle of Harry Hawker as he infiltrates Nazi-occupied France. Open-ended missions let you scout enemy positions, find alternate routes, set traps and complete objectives your way, while realistic ballistics account for wind, gravity and heart rate. Customize weapons with new scopes, barrels and ammunition, then tackle the campaign cooperatively. Propaganda missions, Axis Invasion and competitive multiplayer add extra ways to test your skills.

MLB The Show 26

MLB The Show 26 delivers a deep and authentic baseball experience, with revamped hitting and pitching systems that give players more control in crucial moments. Build your career from high school and college to the majors and potentially the Hall of Fame in Road to the Show, or manage every aspect of a franchise with an overhauled trade system and smarter roster logic. For those looking for a longer-term challenge, Road to the Show lets you build a career from high school through college and the major leagues.

Wobbly Life

There isn’t much structure to Wobbly Life, and that’s exactly the point. You can roam its open world, pick up odd jobs, earn money and spend it on houses, vehicles, clothes and pets, or ignore all of that and just cause trouble either by yourself or with up to four players online or local co-op. The physics-based sandbox makes nearly everything interactive, so even simple activities can turn into ridiculous accidents. There’s also a surprising amount to uncover through story missions, puzzles, hidden secrets and mini-games.

Chained Echoes 

Chained Echoes blends old-school JRPG traditions with a few ideas of its own, following a group of heroes caught up in a war between three kingdoms. Battles are turn-based, but the Overdrive system skill use mechanic forces you to carefully manage your attacks and abilities to keep your party in a beneficial zone without overheating. Outside of combat, you can explore Valandis on foot, travel by airship and eventually climb into mech suits for both exploration and combat. With no random encounters, a deep equipment system and plenty of side content, it offers a modern take on the 16-bit RPG formula.

For more on PlayStation Plus, here’s what to know about the gaming service and a rundown of PS Plus Extra and Premium games added in August. You can also check out the latest and upcoming games on Xbox Game Pass.

Oscar Gonzalez

Contributing writer

Oscar Gonzalez is a Texas native who covered video games, conspiracy theories, misinformation and cryptocurrency.

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