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.

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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.

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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.

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A judge has approved a $1.5 million penalty levied against Elon Musk that will settle a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit despite having “significant misgivings” about it.

U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan noted that her court would accept the settlement, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, which cited her court opinion.

Sooknanan’s approval settles a lawsuit filed by the SEC against Musk in early 2025 over how the billionaire handled his takeover of Twitter. The lawsuit, which was filed only days before Donald Trump took office, revolved around Musk’s failure to disclose to public investors, in a timely manner, his growing stake in the company in 2022.

The fact that Musk did not initially disclose his stake “ultimately saved him a whopping $150 million,” the SEC argued.

In May, Musk reached a settlement with the SEC that stipulated a trust in Musk’s name would be responsible for paying a $1.5 million penalty without admitting wrongdoing.

Sooknanan previously questioned whether Musk was receiving “special treatment” from the Trump administration. Musk helped to bankroll Trump’s campaign during the 2024 presidential race.

In her opinion, Sooknanan noted that her court was “limited to evaluating whether the proposed consent judgment meets minimum standards of fairness and reasonableness,” or whether it “make[s] a mockery of judicial power.”

“Although the Court has significant misgivings about the settlement reached in this case, it cannot say that
the settlement meets that high threshold,” Sooknanan wrote.

Even without previous smash hits “Severance” and “The Studio” airing episodes in the eligibility period, Apple TV has still gathered the most nominations it has ever earned across all of the major categories at the 78th annual Emmy Awards.

In 2025, Apple TV won a record-breaking 22 Emmy Awards, with “Severance” and “The Studio” leading the way. For 2026, neither of those shows were eligible, but a host of new Apple ones were and have been rewarded with nominations.

The Television Academy’s awards cover an enormous range of categories, with more technical ones split off into the Creative Arts Emmys, and the Engineering, Science & Technology ones. In all, Apple TV has scored 89 nominations, versus 79 in 2025.

Many of the nominations span the most prestigious acting categories. Apple’s shows are up for:

• Best Actor in a Comedy Series: Jason Segel for “Shrinking”
• Best Actor in a Comedy Series: Matthew Rhys for “Widow’s Bay”
• Best Actor in a Drama Series: Gary Oldman for “Slow Horses”
• Best Actress in a Comedy Series: Elle Fanning for “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”
• Best Actress in a Drama Series: Rhea Seehorn for “Pluribus”

On top of those, Apple TV shows have scored multiple nominations in the highest profile categories:

• Best Comedy Series: “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” “Shrinking,” and “Widow’s Bay”
• Best Drama Series: “Pluribus,” “Slow Horses,” and “Your Friends & Neighbours”

This is the first year that the Television Academy has announced all of its Emmy nominees at the same time. Previously the organization has separated the announcements for the main and Creative Arts Emmys.

The organizers say that this is so promotional campaigns, such as the famous “For Your Consideration,” can start immediately with all of the nominations.

As ever, though, the award winners will be announced separately. The Television Academy has confirmed that its main ceremony will be on September 14, 2026, and hosted by Mariska Hargitay.

Apple is not the leader in nominations. HBO Max gathered 122, and both Disney’s combined brands and Netflix accumulated 111 each. Amazon and MGM+ gathered 39, with Paramount+ and Showtime combined getting a total of two.

The Creative Arts Emmys will be announced over two nights, September 5, and September 6.

NATO is building a vast AI network along its eastern flank, designed to spot an attack early and strike back fast. The plan is called the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative, and internal documents name one adversary outright: Russia.

German tabloid BILD obtained the papers and shared them through the Axel Springer network, Business Insider reported.

The documents keep returning to one phrase: a “Kill Web”. It describes a tightly linked digital mesh that ties together satellites, reconnaissance drones, radar, ground sensors and cameras. If one node drops out, another takes over.

The network watches the whole border at once, from Finland down to Romania.

See first, decide first, strike first

The idea is to shrink the time between spotting a target and hitting it. In the past, a drone would flag a target to headquarters. Analysts checked it, then passed a firing order down the chain. That took time NATO no longer wants to lose.

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Under the new model, data from every member flows into one shared picture. Palantir’s Maven Smart System acts as the AI brain, sorting sensor feeds so commanders can decide faster. Other contractors plug in around it, including RTX, Rheinmetall, Saab, Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

NATO sums the loop up in six words: “See first. Decide first. Strike first.”

In practice, a drone might catch a Russian armoured column. The system cross-checks it against satellite images, radar and ground sensors at once. A commander then picks the weapon, be it a drone, artillery or a rocket launcher, by range and by the target’s value.

Machines take the first hit

The front line changes too. NATO wants uncrewed systems to meet an attacker before its soldiers do. A forward zone of drones, ground robots and sensors would absorb the first blow. The logic is cold but simple: machines, not troops, take the opening hit.

Tanks and jets do not go away. Leopard 2s, Abrams, HIMARS and F-35s stay the backbone. “EFDI does not replace tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, or soldiers,” said Maj. Matt Blubaugh, a spokesman for US Army Europe and Africa. “It is designed to help preserve their combat power and give commanders more time and decision advantage.”

Lessons from Ukraine

The concept comes straight from the war in Ukraine. Cheap drones, robots and sensors, fielded in their thousands, aim to offset Russia’s edge in sheer numbers and speed. It echoes the kill chains both sides built on that battlefield, now stretched across an entire alliance.

It also fits a wider European push. NATO has been funding defence startups and folding autonomous ground systems into its plans, even as who controls the underlying AI stays a live question.

Why it matters

NATO calls the strategy “deterrence by denial”. The aim is not just to repel Russia, but to make an attack look pointless before it starts. It marks a real shift, from holding ground with troops to contesting it first with software and machines. The hard part is trust: an alliance that hands early decisions to AI has to be sure the machines read the battlefield right.