from the seems-very-stable dept

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

Counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka is one of the most controversial figures in the Trump administration, a gate crasher in the buttoned-up world of national security. 

In a field where quiet professionalism is revered, Gorka is loud and mercurial. With a booming, British-accented voice, he describes U.S. operations turning suspected terrorists into “red mist” and stacking bodies “like cordwood.” He wears a lanyard inscribed with “WWFY & WWKY,” referencing a line from President Donald Trump: “We will find you and we will kill you.”

It is a testament to the frenzy of Trump’s first year back in office that even the colorful Gorka had faded into the background as the nation reeled from a mass deportation campaign and sweeping cuts to federal agencies. That changed this February with the launch of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, which heightened the risk of retaliatory attacks on American citizens and interests around the world. Overnight, there was renewed interest in who leads White House counterterrorism efforts.

My editors and I decided it was time to break out the Gorka files. For six months, I had monitored Gorka’s public remarks for clues about the status of his long-promised national counterterrorism strategy and updates on deadly U.S. strikes in Africa and the Middle East. It had started as old-fashioned beat reporting; I cover counterterrorism, and he’s the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

The trove of details I collected from months of Gorka’s public statements, along with interviews with more than two dozen current and former security officials, were woven into a ProPublica investigation published in April. It’s an in-depth look at Gorka and his role in the hollowed-out national security apparatus after a year of leadership turmoil and personnel loss as Trump shifted resources toward his immigration agenda.

ProPublica reached out to Gorka for comment in multiple ways. He never responded, instead lashing out at me via posts on X before the story published. He told his 1.8 million followers that I was anti-American and accused me of writing a “putrid piece of hackery.”

There went my hopes for a good-faith exchange. After discussion with my editors, ProPublica decided to note the insults in the story. It was another revealing layer to the combustible leader Trump had installed in a sensitive national security role. A former senior official noted the eruption was “Gorka being Gorka.”

Increasingly, journalists are pushing back against attacks on our credibility by “showing the work,” guiding readers through the reporting process to dispel myths and foster transparency. In that spirit, I wanted to take this opportunity to show how basic beat reporting — fact-checking the assertions of a powerful figure — led to a broader story about the state of the U.S. counterterrorism mission at a critical moment.

I’ve covered the post-9/11 counterterrorism apparatus for more than two decades, so Gorka was a familiar presence, an academic known mainly for a well-documented hostility toward Islam, which he has portrayed as inherently violent. Gorka has dismissed criticism of this portrayal as “absurd,” saying his focus is “the war inside Islam” between radicals and Western-aligned Muslim leaders. He also served as an adviser under the first Trump administration but was ousted after just seven months amid White House infighting. 

At the time, dozens of lawmakers had demanded his resignation, and investigative outlets detailed links — which Gorka denies — to the Hungarian far right. After the bruising exit, Gorka waited patiently as the Republican Party swung harder right in the Biden era and eventually returned Trump to office.

Gorka was appointed White House counterterrorism czar — he called it his dream job — in a new era without the “adults in the room,” as some officials referred to the more moderate advisers around Trump in the first term. Privately, national security personnel expressed alarm that intelligence about threats was in the hands of an official who reportedly struggled to get security clearance in the first Trump administration.

To me, Gorka was a weather vane for the administration’s national security thinking: Would his “war on terror” mindset clash with the more isolationist “America First” camp that wanted no more forever wars? How would a vast security apparatus built for the Islamist militant threat reorient toward a new focus on far-left “antifa” militants and Latin American drug cartels newly designated as terrorist organizations?

I was especially interested in the status of a national counterterrorism strategy Gorka had been promising since taking office; such documents typically lay out an administration’s approach to fighting the most urgent threats. Though Gorka had described his plan as “imminent” and “on the cusp” of release, months ticked by without any sign of it.

To glean clues about the strategy, I made it my mission to watch every news appearance, read every interview and listen to every podcast featuring Gorka since December 2024, the month before he entered the White House. It took some digging — he rails against the mainstream news media and prefers to appear (largely unchallenged) on niche pro-Trump news outlets and at conservative think tanks.

I developed a nightly ritual. After dinner with my family, I’d hole up to listen to Gorka, hunting for the scraps of news buried in his over-the-top vocabulary and graphic storytelling. Alongside my note categories for “Trump Anecdotes” and “Militant Death Tolls” was one for “Big Words.” For example, the president calls Joe Biden “sleepy”; Gorka prefers “somnambulant.”

Weeks into the reporting, in February 2026, I realized Gorka’s speech had burrowed into my brain when I watched a silly video and thought, in his voice, “Preposterous!” It was time for a break.

I reread my notes from hours of listening sessions. I interviewed counterterrorism analysts and national security watchdog groups about Gorka and his remit. Veteran national security personnel added context and analysis. Just as my editors and I were discussing how to turn the findings into a story, the Iran war began and the spotlight on Gorka grew brighter.

Much of the material on air strikes and the dismantling of guardrails was first incorporated into a story I reported about the Pentagon moving away from more robust civilian protections, a reversal highlighted by a deadly U.S. attack on a girls’ school in Iran. Other reporting ended up in the story about Gorka’s phoenixlike return to the White House and what it says about the Trump counterterrorism doctrine.

Gorka didn’t respond to requests for comment beyond the hostile posts on X. When I asked the White House for comment, spokesperson Anna Kelly praised Gorka’s “incredible job” but sidestepped questions about his approach. “Anyone attempting to smear him and the President’s national security team is only revealing that they haven’t been paying attention for the past year,” Kelly wrote, “as anyone with eyes can see that our homeland is more secure than ever.” 

As of writing, exactly two months into the Iran war, Gorka’s counterterrorism strategy has yet to appear.

Filed Under: counter terrorism, donald trump, journalism, national security, seb gorka

While major motor shows in Europe and the United States are being forced to downsize or change their format, those in China continue to expand.

With 1,451 vehicles on display, including 181 world premieres, the 2026 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition 2026 (also known as Auto China 2026) has become the largest auto show in history—and that’s in terms of both exhibition space and the number of vehicles on display.

This fact itself reflects a shift in the center of gravity of the automotive industry, but that’s not all. A much larger structural transformation is actually taking place in China today.

Previously, the focus was on low-priced electric vehicle models, but now price is no longer the primary point of competition. At the show, not only were there many high-end EVs and large SUVs from Chinese manufacturers equipped with advanced driver-assistance technologies and AI functions, but these technologies are also rapidly spreading to the lower price range.

Chinese manufacturers’ cars offer many technologically impressive features. Lidar sensors, which use lasers for advanced driver assistance, are now even being incorporated into EVs costing less than 100,000 yuan (approximately $14,500). Models featuring “drive-by-wire” technology, which replaces mechanical steering connections and hydraulic brake lines with electrical signals, are appearing prominently. Even Toyota’s local models are using Huawei’s powertrains and smart cockpit OS.

The simplistic dichotomy of “cheap Chinese cars versus high-end European cars” no longer holds weight. While staying competitive in the low-price market, Chinese manufacturers are also gaining leadership in areas such as AI, driver-assistance systems, in-car chips, smart cockpits, and high-performance EVs.

These 19 particularly noteworthy models from the 2026 Beijing Motor Show best embody this evolution.

XPeng GX

Courtesy of Xpeng

There is a fundamental difference between a car designed for autonomous driving and an existing car that’s had autonomous driving technology added to it. XPeng Motors’ GX is the former, a model in which sensors, computing infrastructure, and AI models with Level 4 autonomous driving in mind were designed first, then built into a new SUV bound for the commercial market.

Equipped with up to four proprietary AI chips, it boasts a total computing power of 3,000 tera operations per second—approximately 12 times the 254 TOPS that a single Nvidia Orin is capable of. The latest AI model in the vehicle can recognize spoken commands as well as the images captured by car’s cameras, and it can understanding and adapt to the current driving conditions.

Volkswagen has adopted XPeng’s AI chip and driver-assistance technology in its EVs, meaning XPeng is no longer just an EV manufacturer. It’s becoming a platform provider supplying the brains behind autonomous driving to Europe’s largest automaker. The price is 399,800 yuan (approximately $58,000).

from the bad-to-worse dept

Ah, Denuvo. It’s been several years since we checked in on this once vaunted DRM tool that billed itself as undefeatable. The end of PC gaming piracy was said to be at hand, at least for any title using Denuvo. Then, predictably, the cracking community saw the target the company had put on its own tool and got to work. They were first able to crack games using Denuvo in months, which turned into weeks, which turned into days, which eventually turned into it being cracked essentially on a game’s launch day.

So, how’s it been going for Denuvo since? Well, it’s essentially been rendered completely useless at this point.

As recently reported by Tom’s Hardware, on April 27, a large Reddit thread tracking which games using Denvuo DRM still needed to be cracked or bypassed officially hit zero. (This list tracks games that don’t require an online server connection, not MMORPGs and other games that do.)  What that means, effectively, is that according to Denuvo modders and hackers, the DRM tech is no longer able to stop pirates from downloading and installing games for free. This milestone for hackers is largely thanks to the MKDev collective and modder DenuvOwO. It was these people who created the hypervisor-based bypass (HVB) that installs a kernel-level driver to bypass Denuvo’s DRM checks.

Technically, Denuvo is still in the game, but it isn’t functioning as it should, and pirates can play without paying. And there is already some evidence that bypassing Denuvo has led to performance improvements in titles like Resident Evil Requiem, which might push some people to use the bypass even if they bought the game legally. We saw this in a previous Resident Evil game when hackers bypassed Denuvo in 2021.

This is always the life cycle of DRM in video games. Whatever audacious claims a DRM company might want to make early on with its product, the technology is eventually defeated to one degree or another and all that is left are the byproducts of the DRM that serve to do nothing other than annoy legitimate customers of a video game. If the technology is so intrusively bad that even legit buyers of a game want to crack it out of their games, and the pirates are completely unencumbered by it as well, then it’s a wonder why anyone would bother including it in their games to begin with.

DRM is pretty much always bad. The desire to protect a game from pirates is understandable, but ultimately pointless. There is almost never enough benefit in terms of generating more sales by trying to fight piracy to be worth pissing off your actual paying customers. And tactics such as what publisher 2K has decided to do in the wake of Denuvo’s complete failure aren’t any better.

2K Games has apparently begun adding 14-day online check-ins to some of its PC games. The check-in has apparently been added to NBA 2K25, NBA 2K26, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. These games now reportedly use a “fixed offline authorization token” that expires after two weeks. Once that happens, the game will not be playable until you connect to the internet and let the game ping Denvuo to get a new token. Pirat Nation and hackers are claiming this new countdown isn’t properly disclosed on the games’ Steam Store page or in each title’s respective EULA.

I’ll just add that pushing this new requirement out via an update to existing purchases is also a problem. Customers bought these games with the understanding of how they would work or not when offline. 2K suddenly changing the product in a meaningful way after it had already been purchased is a flatly anti-consumer move.

And I have no doubt that this online check requirement will be defeated by the same folks who defeated Denuvo. This arms race continues, but it shouldn’t. Why not focus on making great games and connecting with your paying customers to give them reasons to actually pay instead?

Filed Under: check ins, denuvo, drm, video games

Companies: 2k, denuvo

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,400 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today – or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc’s Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SOUNDPEATS has spent the past 16 years churning out wireless earbuds at a pace that would make most budget brands tap out, and the new Air6 HS aims squarely at a segment that usually disappoints. Most earbuds under $50 are the kind of last-minute “grab something at Wawa before the road trip” purchase; good enough to survive a commute, or to hand off to the kid who just launched your Apple AirPods out the car window. The Air6 HS tries to flip that script, combining all-day comfort, extended battery life, and support for hi-res and spatial audio at a price below $40.

All-Day Wearing Comfort

With so many wireless earbud options available, choosing the right pair comes down to a few core factors that matter regardless of price.

Comfort and fit should come first. If an earbud does not sit securely or becomes uncomfortable over time, it will not get much use. Sound quality follows, along with battery life, call performance, and connection stability. Features like spatial audio or advanced codecs can add value, but they are secondary to the basics that determine how the earbuds perform day to day.

With that in mind, SOUNDPEATS says the Air6 HS was developed using ergonomic data from more than 10,000 ear canal samples. Each earbud weighs just 4 grams, which helps reduce pressure during longer listening sessions.

The semi in-ear design splits the difference between traditional in-ear tips and open ear designs. It sits more securely than open earbuds and offers a more consistent seal, which can improve perceived sound quality and reduce how much audio leaks out in quieter environments like an office. At the same time, it avoids the plugged feeling that some listeners experience with fully sealed in-ear tips.

Driver Design & Tuning 

On the inside, the Air6 HS uses a 13mm dynamic driver with a PU biological composite diaphragm and a triple magnetic circuit. That combination is intended to deliver a balanced presentation with a focus on natural vocals, rather than pushing any one part of the frequency range too far forward.

That matters, because a lot of affordable earbuds tend to lean on boosted bass or elevated treble to create the impression of detail or impact. It can sound exciting at first, but it often becomes fatiguing over time. The approach here appears more restrained, aiming for a sound that holds up over longer listening sessions without the sharp edges that can creep into budget tuning.

For those who want to adjust things further, the SOUNDPEATS app on Android and iOS includes Dynamic EQ settings that allow some control over bass and overall tonal balance.

Hi-Res Audio Support and Spatial Audio

The Air6 HS carries Hi-Res Audio certification and supports LDAC for Android devices, allowing higher bitrate wireless playback without moving away from its lightweight, semi in ear design.

It supports SBC, AAC, and LDAC codecs, covering the most common use cases, but there is no support for aptX HD or aptX Lossless. For most users, that will not be a deal breaker, but it is worth noting for those already invested in Qualcomm based devices.

Spatial audio support is also included, adding a wider sense of space for movies and streaming content, rather than focusing strictly on music playback.

Battery Life That Keeps Up with Daily Use

The Air6 HS is rated for up to 9 hours of listening on a single charge, with the charging case extending total playback to around 45 hours. When time is limited, a quick 10 minute charge can provide up to 3 hours of playback, which is useful for getting through a commute or a few calls without needing a full recharge.

Bluetooth Connectivity, Call Quality, and Water Resistance

The Air6 HS incorporates Bluetooth 6.0 for stable, efficient wireless performance, including Bluetooth Multipoint connectivity.  This enables simultaneous pairing with two devices, allowing users to move between phone calls and laptop audio without needing to manually reconnect; a convenient feature for multitaskers and on-the-go commuters who don’t want to annoy the boss.

The Air6 HS uses a four microphone array with dual mic ENC processing to improve call clarity. That is not something you usually see at this price, and it should help voices come through more clearly in calls and virtual meetings, even in less than ideal environments.

SOUNDPEATS also gives the Air6 HS an IPX5 water-resistance rating, which is enough for sweat and light rain during workouts or daily use. That makes them a reasonable option for the gym, but they are not designed for full water exposure. Dropping them in a pool or the ocean is still a quick way to end the conversation.

Comparison

The Bottom Line 

The Air6 HS stands out by delivering a balanced feature set at a price where most earbuds cut corners. You get a large driver, LDAC support, a comfortable semi in-ear fit, and strong battery life for under $40, which is not common.

There are tradeoffs. The semi in-ear design means no active noise cancellation, and features like Dolby Atmos, head tracking, or advanced gaming modes are not part of the package.

This is aimed at everyday listeners who want something comfortable, reliable, and better than the usual budget options. It is not trying to replace higher end models, but it does offer a more complete experience than most wireless earbuds in this price range.

Price & Availability

The SOUNDPEATS Air6 HS are available now for $39.99 at Amazon.

Related Reading:

Cramming for finals is bad enough without the platform you use to do your schoolwork suddenly shutting down. Unfortunately for countless students across the US, that’s exactly what they faced on Thursday after Canvas went into “maintenance mode” following a ransomware attack on education tech firm Instructure. Hackers using the name ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach, and experts say the chaos they caused shows how far these actors will go to extort their victims.

Did you know that Google Chrome includes an automatic download of the Gemini Nano AI model? If not, you wouldn’t be alone. People who use Google’s wildly popular browser realized this week that Gemini Nano has been taking up 4 GB of space on their desktops since 2024, sparking annoyance and concerns over privacy. Fortunately, you can disable the AI model—but not without losing some helpful security features. Obviously, you can also just download a different browser for free.

Researchers this week revealed that thousands of vibe coded apps were left exposed on the open internet, revealing sensitive corporate and personal data. The security failings are a reminder: Just because you can vibe code something doesn’t necessarily mean you should.

The Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed Google in an attempt to obtain the location data and account activity of a Canadian man who criticized US immigration enforcement tactics following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis early this year. The American Civil Liberties Union this week filed a complaint against DHS on behalf of the man, who has not visited the US in more than 10 years.

Scammers, low-level hackers, and other cybercriminals have joined the ranks of humanity yearning to be free of AI slop, according to new research. Meta, meanwhile, is sprucing up its age-verification tech after a study found that kids are tricking online age checks using simple techniques—including one child hero who circumvented online age verification by drawing on a fake mustache. Finally, we detailed Russia’s effort to create a local competitor to Starlink satellite internet service—with all the privacy and security concerns that entails.

And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Most people hope that the 200-pound robot with blades in their backyard cannot be easily hacked. Unfortunately for the owners of Yarbo, a $5,000 lawn mower robot that can also work as a leaf blower, snowblower, and edger, that was not the case. The Verge reports that a security researcher found numerous vulnerabilities in the lawn bots that could allow hackers to remotely take over the machines (including their camera feeds,) as well as extract owners’ email addresses, Wi-Fi passwords, and home locations.

After a Yarbo spokesperson told The Verge that the robots’ “diagnostic environment is not publicly accessible,” the reporter and researcher demonstrated the security flaws and their potential consequences by nearly running over the reporter with a hijacked robot. The company has since reported that they are developing a fix to at least one of the flaws the researcher identified.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta has pulled support for end-to-end encrypted messages on Instagram, backtracking on its plans to protect people’s privacy by providing messaging the company could not snoop on. The company stopped offering encryption on Instagram on May 8, making it easier than before for the firm to technically access DMs.

After spending years building out the encryption systems needed to secure its chat apps, Meta said in 2023 that it had rolled out default encryption for Messenger. It also said it was introducing an opt-in version for Instagram, which it had planned would eventually become the default setting. However, that day never arrived with Meta deciding in March this year that not enough people had opted-in and it would remove the option to encrypt Instagram chats. The U-turn has infuriated privacy and security experts who fear the rollback could damage end-to-end encryption efforts around the world.

The Trump administration unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy, which President Donald Trump describes as a “return to common sense and Peace through Strength” in a foreword included in the document. The three biggest types of terror groups, according to the document, are cartels, Islamist terror groups, and “violent left wing extremists,” which the memo says includes anarchists and anti-fascists and have ideologies that are “anti-American” and “radically pro-transgender.”

The memo promises, “We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent.”

Good morning! Let’s play Connections, the NYT’s clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

What should you do once you’ve finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I’ve also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc’s Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.