Y Combinator published its Summer 2026 Request for Startups in late April, just days before the application deadline. The document lists 15 categories of companies that YC’s partners want to fund. Eight of them require capital, hardware, or both. The list includes AI for low-pesticide agriculture, counter-swarm drone defence, inference chips for space, lunar manufacturing from molten regolith, and semiconductor supply chain software for a process that crosses a dozen countries and takes five months to complete.

Each category is written by a named partner, and each reads less like a startup prompt than a thesis on why the economics of a particular industry have just shifted. The most influential startup accelerator in the world, the institution that funded Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox, is telling founders that the next decade of billion-dollar outcomes will come not from building software but from using AI to enter the physical, regulated, and capital-intensive industries that software alone never touched.

The thesis

The RFS opens with Garry Tan, YC’s chief executive, writing about agriculture. AI can now identify individual weeds and pests in real time, he argues, and when combined with robotic precision treatments, the result is farming that uses dramatically less pesticide while improving yield. The category is not agtech in the way Silicon Valley has historically understood it, which meant software dashboards for farm management. It is agtech that involves building physical robots, training vision models on biological data, and deploying hardware in fields.

Tyler Bosmeny’s entry on counter-swarm defence compares the companies he wants to fund to Cloudflare rather than Raytheon, software-defined defence systems that neutralise drone swarms at a fraction of the cost of traditional missile systems. The United States Department of Defense proposed more than $70 billion for drone and counter-drone systems in its latest spending plan, and defence tech is experiencing its strongest investment cycle in decades. Adi Oltean asks for founders who will 3D-print structures from molten lunar regolith and extract raw materials including silicon, aluminium, iron, and titanium through electrolysis on the moon.

The hard-tech categories are not aspirational filler. They reflect a structural change in what venture capital is willing to fund. Defence tech startups raised a record $49.1 billion in 2025, nearly double the prior year. Anduril, the autonomous weapons company, raised $4 billion at a $60 billion valuation in March. SpaceX has demonstrated that hardware-intensive businesses can produce venture-scale returns. The old assumption that hardware could not generate the margins or the speed that venture capital requires has collapsed, and YC’s RFS is the clearest institutional acknowledgement that the collapse is permanent.

The software that remains

Seven of the 15 categories are software, but none of them resemble the SaaS playbook that defined the previous decade. The category YC calls Software for Agents asks founders to rebuild every major software category for a world where the next trillion users are not people but AI agents. That means APIs, machine-readable documentation, command-line interfaces, identity systems, permissions layers, and payment infrastructure designed for autonomous programmes rather than human beings. Google rebranded its entire AI platform around agents at Cloud Next 2026, consolidating Vertex AI into the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and launching a $750 million fund to finance agentic deployments. Gartner predicts that 40 per cent of enterprise applications will include task-specific AI agents by the end of this year, up from less than 5 per cent in 2025.

The Company Brain category asks for a system that pulls knowledge out of every fragmented source inside a company, structures it, keeps it current, and turns it into what YC calls an executable skills file for AI. This is not enterprise search. It is a living map of how a company works: how refunds are processed, how pricing exceptions are decided, how engineers respond to incidents. The Dynamic Software Interfaces category is its mirror image, asking founders to rebuild software so that agents can operate it natively rather than scraping interfaces built for humans.

The SaaS Challengers category names the targets explicitly: ERP, chip design software, industrial control systems, and supply chain management. These are the categories where incumbent vendors charge the most and innovate the least, and where AI-native replacements could capture enormous markets if they can clear the switching costs.

The physical turn

The RFS entry on semiconductor supply chains may be the most revealing. A single advanced AI chip goes through approximately 1,400 process steps, crosses a dozen countries, and takes five months to manufacture. That supply chain is managed, as the RFS puts it, with spreadsheets, SAP, and phone calls. Diana Hu, the YC partner who wrote the entry, is asking for founders who will replace that infrastructure with software that can track, optimise, and predict across the most complex manufacturing process on earth.

The category sits at the intersection of every force currently reshaping the technology industry: the US-China chip export controls, the reshoring of semiconductor fabrication, the explosion in AI chip demand, and the geopolitical fragility of supply lines that route critical components through Taiwan, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Japan.

The space categories are similarly grounded in economics rather than aspiration. Reusable rockets from SpaceX and Stoke Space are about to produce a massive increase in the capacity to put objects in orbit, which means an equally massive increase in demand for the electronics that operate there.

YC wants inference chips optimised for mass, thermal performance, and radiation hardness. SpaceX and Blue Origin are already racing to put data centres in orbit, and the AI hardware that runs inference workloads in terrestrial data centres does not survive the thermal and radiation environment of space. The market for space-rated inference silicon does not exist yet. YC is betting that it will.

What changed

Y Combinator’s Spring 2026 RFS, published just three months earlier, listed eight categories. The Summer edition nearly doubled that to 15. The Spring list included AI for product management, government AI, AI-native hedge funds, and stablecoins. Those are recognisably software businesses with AI bolted on. The Summer list includes lunar regolith manufacturing and counter-drone defence systems. The shift between the two documents is the most dramatic reorientation in YC’s public investment thesis since the accelerator began publishing requests for startups.

The change reflects what has happened to venture capital more broadly. In the first quarter of 2026, $297 billion flowed into startups globally, 2.5 times the prior quarter and the most venture funding ever recorded in a three-month period. Accel raised a $5 billion fund on the back of returns from Anthropic and Cursor.

Andreessen Horowitz raised $15 billion. Thrive Capital closed more than $10 billion. The money is not looking for the next enterprise SaaS dashboard. It is looking for the companies that will apply AI to the industries where the margins are highest, the incumbents are slowest, and the barriers to entry have historically been physical rather than digital. YC’s RFS is the most explicit version of that thesis because it names the industries by name: agriculture, defence, space, semiconductors, medicine, manufacturing.

The stablecoin category, one of the few holdovers from the Spring list, reveals a different kind of ambition. YC describes stablecoins as sitting between the regulated and unregulated worlds, creating room for services that combine the strengths of both: yield-bearing accounts, tokenised real-world assets, and infrastructure that moves money faster and cheaper across borders. The AI Personalised Medicine category asks for agents that analyse genomic data, electronic health records, and wearable output to generate patient-specific treatment protocols rather than population-level guidelines. Neither category requires building physical hardware. Both require operating in industries where regulation, liability, and institutional trust are the barriers, not code.

The signal

YC’s Request for Startups is not a prediction. It is a commitment. The partners who write the entries are the partners who will evaluate the applications, and the categories they describe are the companies they will fund. When Garry Tan writes about agriculture robots and Tyler Bosmeny writes about counter-drone systems and Adi Oltean writes about 3D-printing on the moon, they are telling founders what the next YC batch will look like. The document is the closest thing the startup ecosystem produces to a forward-looking investment mandate from its most influential institution.

The mandate says that software is now the substrate, not the moat. The models are commoditising. The infrastructure is scaling. The interfaces are being rebuilt for agents. What remains scarce is the ability to apply that substrate to the physical world: to build the robot that replaces the pesticide, the chip that survives the radiation, the defence system that costs less than the drone it destroys, the supply chain software that tracks 1,400 process steps across 12 countries, the molecular model that designs a drug for a target the industry called undruggable.

Y Combinator built its reputation by funding two founders in a garage writing code. Its Summer 2026 RFS is a document that says the garage is no longer enough. The founders it wants now are the ones who can write the code and then build the thing.

from the a-trump-created-scam-swarm dept

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

As an asylum-seeker living in the U.S., Jasmir Urbina worried as she watched violence break out amid the military-style immigration sweeps across the country. Then she read about legal residents being arrested at immigration court and wondered when federal agents would set their sights on her city.

Urbina had fled Nicaragua in 2022 and legally resided with her husband, a fellow asylum-seeker, in New Orleans while reporting to immigration agents for check-ins as she awaited her day in court. Finally, the date was approaching, in late November 2025. Days later, the Trump administration would flood the region with federal officers in “Operation Swamp Sweep.”

Urbina, 35, began searching for a Spanish speaker who could help her, and said she stumbled on a Facebook post advertising the services of Catholic Charities, a prominent aid organization whose services include assisting immigrants. After a few clicks, she connected via WhatsApp with “Susan Millan,” who claimed to have a law degree. The woman’s photo looked professional, showing a small library in the blurry background, according to a screenshot Urbina shared with ProPublica. The asylum-seeker said she discussed her predicament with the woman she thought was an attorney.

Millan told Urbina the ordeal could be settled over a virtual hearing with U.S. immigration authorities. Millan sprinkled in details about her own life — a sick husband, two kids, a supportive church — so Urbina felt comfortable. In an interview, Urbina said she completed paperwork to be sent to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, for a fee. Millan’s organization asked her for documentation, including five character references; for another fee, it would submit these up the line. Through the payment app Zelle, Urbina and her husband paid nearly $10,000, according to her financial records, money they had set aside to buy their first home.

On Nov. 21, Urbina made the case that a “credible fear” was keeping her from going home. In the virtual hearing, which lasted five minutes, she said she spoke to a man dressed in a green uniform, stitched with what looked like government insignia, seated in front of an American flag. A day later, via WhatsApp, Millan told her she “won residency.” Her documents would be in the mail.

In an instant, Urbina’s fears had been assuaged. She asked if she should still attend her court date, Nov. 24. “No, don’t worry,” she remembers the woman replying. “There’s no need.”

But when Urbina asked to speak with someone in a message to Millan’s phone number the next day, according to screenshots she shared with ProPublica, the WhatsApp chat fell silent. After two days, she suspected she’d been duped and wrote in anger: “God is with us and He fights for His children; today you messed with the wrong person and you will get your payment from the Most High, you cowards.”

There was no attorney named Susan Millan associated with Catholic Charities, and the deceit was just one example of hundreds that the group has become aware of when desperate immigrants eventually reach the real organization.

“There’s a reason why we have a good reputation,” said Chris Ross, vice president of migration and refugee resettlement services at Catholic Charities. “And so for someone to be trading on that goodwill with nefarious intent is very frustrating.”

Urbina had fallen prey to “notario fraud,” in which scammers provide legal advice, often by saying they’re public notaries or other legal professionals. In many Latin American countries, a public notary is the equivalent of a lawyer, and notario fraudsters rely on this mistranslation to fake credentials.

Urbina shared documents that detail how she was lured into the scam, and ProPublica corroborated her story with her husband and Catholic Charities. After Urbina told local and federal authorities she had been tricked out of her day in court, Immigration and Customs Enforcement switched her scheduled December virtual check-in to an in-person meeting. When she showed up, agents arrested her. In January, she said, officers shackled her hands and feet and loaded her on a plane to Nicaragua.

She’d been scammed, then deported.

A spokesperson with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to questions about Urbina’s case but said, “Anyone caught impersonating a federal immigration agent will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” New Orleans police did not answer ProPublica’s questions about a complaint she filed.

Scams like those that destroyed Urbina’s dreams are on the rise, federal data analyzed by ProPublica shows, as profiteers seize on the fear and confusion wrought by President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Complaints of immigration scams have doubled since Trump was elected, ProPublica found in analyzing more than 6,200 complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission by victims and advocates over the last five years.

From the start of 2021 through the election in fall of 2024, the FTC — the nation’s top consumer protection agency — fielded about 960 immigration complaints per year, such as reports of fake attorneys offering services or people impersonating federal officers. In 2025, the commission received nearly 2,000 complaints.

In all, at least $94.4 million was reported stolen in complaints to the FTC over five years. That number is certainly an undercount, as not all immigrants report wrongdoing for fear of deportation, and not every report included dollar amounts.

The spike in complaints is so severe that many states and legal organizations have alerted the public about them. California’s and North Carolina’s attorneys general released statements in late 2025, as did the American Bar Association and AARP. In June 2025, the New York City Council passed legislation increasing notario fraud penalties, and a similar law passed in Florida.

“Immigration scammers contribute to a lawless environment, undermining our immigration system,” said Zach Kahler, a spokesperson for Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency Urbina falsely thought had awarded her residency. Online, the agency provides guides on how to spot immigration fraud and warns consumers that it does not use WhatsApp. The agency tells people who think they’ve been scammed to complain to the FTC.

Old Problem, New Sophistication

Scams targeting those mired in the U.S. immigration system are not new, but advocates say predators have become more sophisticated, using technologies like artificial intelligence and targeted ads. At the same time, immigrants have become increasingly anxious about speedy mass deportations, creating a bonanza for those looking to cash in.

“I believe AI is being utilized in these scams pretty effectively. People think they’re talking to a real person, or the logos and stuff look pretty professional to the untrained eye,” said Ross, of Catholic Charities.

Many victims say they were duped by scammers who had professional-looking photos, wore immigration uniforms and staged realistic virtual hearings.

A review of the image of the person named Millan who was supposedly helping Urbina suggests that it was AI-generated.

Ross added: “The biggest thing is the desperation — that’s really what’s driving this.”

In San Diego, attorneys working for the city have been impersonated by scammers. City Attorney Heather Ferbert told ProPublica her office has forwarded these cases to the FBI and warned residents to be on the lookout for advertisements that promise a government official or lawyer can help with immigration proceedings. The FBI declined to comment.

“When you add the title and you add the government weight behind it — the city attorney’s office, the district attorney’s office, for example — the targets are sort of lulled,” Ferbert said. “We’ve heard stories where they promise that they can solve their immigration problems for them. No real lawyer is ever going to promise an outcome to you.”

Other scams extend beyond impersonating lawyers. The FTC complaints include a case in which people posing as Department of Homeland Security immigration officers received more than $600,000 from a family by claiming one of the relatives’ identities had been stolen and they needed to pay to protect it. In West Virginia, a “federal agent” threatened to deport a college student who was close to graduating unless they paid nearly $4,000 in gift cards.

“They claimed that if I did not comply immediately, I would be arrested, detained or deported,” wrote the student, who was legally residing in the U.S. on a student visa. The student, whose name was not disclosed in federal data, used prepaid Dollar General gift cards and then went broke and turned to family for help.

Immigrants from India and Bangladesh were told they had failed to update a necessary form and would be arrested and deported immediately unless they shared their Social Security numbers. Other scammers claimed the government had intercepted packages full of money and drugs addressed to immigrants, who were told to make a payment or face arrest.

“Well-Oiled Machine”

Most victims find the fake attorneys advertising on Facebook or TikTok. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has pledged to delete scam accounts and announced new tools to track them.

Charity Anastasio, practice and ethics counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the ads are often pay-per-click and targeted at Spanish-speaking users.

“They’ve designed such a well-oiled machine,” Anastasio said.

The ads appealed to those in deportation proceedings, clinging to any means to stay in the U.S., but also those who may have wanted to get their paperwork in order ahead of Trump’s crackdown, said Adonia Simpson, an attorney with the American Bar Association.

“A lot of people are trying to preemptively get representation to see what their options are,” Simpson told ProPublica. “The enforcement has been a big driver. It’s caused a lot of people to be very fearful.”

The White House declined to comment.

In October 2024, 56-year-old José Aguilar, who had been granted temporary protected status under George W. Bush’s administration, was in just that position when he came upon a Facebook ad. The advertiser claimed to work for Jorge Rivera, a well-known Miami immigration attorney, and promised Aguilar they could get him permanent residency. It would take $15,000. ProPublica sought comment from the real Rivera, who is not accused of wrongdoing; he did not respond.

A leather factory worker in Minnesota who had fled El Salvador, Aguilar cobbled together the money in installments through loans from friends and that year’s tax refund. Over several months, he had four video calls with the fake attorney and two calls with immigration agent impersonators. He was initially skeptical but became convinced when they sent him videos of residency cards with the Citizenship and Immigration Services logo.

“Don’t try to deceive me, because I’m borrowing money, I’m a man of faith, and I’m a person who has had a heart transplant, so I can’t get angry because it hurts me,” Aguilar remembered saying.

“No, don’t worry, sir,” Aguilar said the scammer responded. “This is real. It’s super real.”

During one of their last conversations, Aguilar says the scammer appealed to their shared Christian faith, thanking God for approving the paperwork and earning him residency.

By February 2025, the scammers had stopped responding. A month later, Aguilar realized he was probably never going to get the residency cards and contacted an attorney who confirmed he had been duped. Aguilar, who has two young daughters, says his family is subsisting on food banks and relies on donations for rent.

“It’s unforgivable,” Aguilar said. “Even bringing God into it.” 

Mother and Daughter Torn Apart

For Mariela, an undocumented Honduran mother of three, financial stress began long ago. In 2021, the father of her children headed for the U.S. along with one of their daughters, seeking construction work. Two years later, when she traveled 2,000 miles in blistering heat to join them, she broke her arm in three places after falling into the Rio Grande while crossing the border. ProPublica is withholding her last name because she fears being deported.

And then, in October 2025, immigration agents detained her 20-year-old daughter. Desperate, the mother reached out to what she thought was a Catholic Charities Facebook page.

She was pulled into a scheme involving a man who posed as a priest, another posing as an immigration judge, and another posing as Oscar Carrillo, an attorney licensed in Texas who practices tax law.

The real Carrillo told ProPublica he began getting calls from frustrated immigrants last spring, all of them Spanish speakers who claimed they had been referred by Catholic Charities. When he realized his name and photo were being misused, he alerted the FBI and FTC. The State Bar of Texas has posted a public warning on its webpage about Carrillo impersonators.

“Most of these clients, because of their immigration status, are afraid to report this to the police,” Carrillo said. “I feel sorry for these clients. We’re not talking about wealthy individuals.”

In January, after her daughter was deported, Mariela realized the fraudsters had cheated her out of more than $18,000 over three months.

She said she had borrowed $3,000 from an uncle in Honduras, another $1,500 from a cousin, a few thousand from her boss, and another $2,000 from a friend from her Honduran hometown who had also emigrated to the U.S. In addition, she burned through her savings and her daughter’s.

Public Alerts, Little Recourse

Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, local law enforcement, advocacy groups, state attorneys general and law firms have published notices warning immigrants about an uptick in scams.

“Our best advice is to make direct contact, outside of social media channels, with the organization you’re seeking help from,” said Kevin Brennan, vice president for media relations at Catholic Charities. “Call the organization on the phone or visit an office in person.”

Scammers show no signs of retreat.

In April, three months after her deportation to Nicaragua, Urbina received a call from someone claiming to be a lawyer. He said that he’d been referred to her by a bishop with Catholic Charities and that he’d help her obtain immigration papers.

The stress of being scammed and separated from her husband, who remains in the U.S., had taken a toll. “I’ve been through a lot of things, one right after the other,” Urbina said. She’s living with her mother in a remote village, afraid to step outside in a country where the government has ramped up surveillance of those who previously moved to the U.S.

Desperate, she gave the “lawyer” her personal information.

After earlier saying his help would be free, he then asked for money, she said.

“Where did you get my number?” she asked.

Intrigued but skeptical, Urbina followed up with WhatsApp messages, hoping he might really be an immigration attorney.

She never heard from him again.

Filed Under: donald trump, immigration, scammers

Far Far West is off to a strong start after it hit Steam in early access this week. The co-op shooter from Evil Raptor and publisher Fireshine Games sold more than 250,000 copies in its first 48 hours. It typically costs $20, but there’s a 10 percent launch discount until May 5.

As a robot cowboy, you can play solo or form a squad with up to three friends and go bounty hunting. You’ll hunt down elusive, dangerous targets in order to take them out and scoop up the rewards.

You’ll encounter undead enemies such as skeletons and vultures, as well as haunted mines and ghost trains. There’s an extraction element to this (you can try to complete extra objectives for better rewards), though it seems more along the lines of Helldivers 2 than a more survival-oriented experience like Arc Raiders. You can use your loot to upgrade your loadout with new guns, abilities and spells. You can customize your cowboy and steed too.

I really dig the pixel-art look of 2D hack-and-slash adventure SoulQuest. The animations (which are said to be frame-perfect) in the trailer are super slick, which makes sense given that combat is built around combos of light and heavy attacks. You’ll have magic powers and ultimates at your disposal too.

You play as Alys, a recently widowed warrior who refuses to accept her husband’s fate and sets out to reclaim his soul. A soul quest, if you will. It took the small team at SoulBlade Studio seven years to bring the game to fruition and seven seconds for me to add it to my wishlist.

SoulQuest is available on Steam (usually $20, though there’s a 20 percent discount until May 15). You can get a taste of what it has to offer by checking out the demo.

Gambonanza is a chess-based, Balatro-esque roguelite. It has some solid momentum, given that more than 170,000 people downloaded it during a recent Steam Next Fest event.

The aim in each round is to capture all of the opponent’s pieces on a small-scale chessboard. You’ll probably need to break the traditional rules of chess to do that. Helpfully, Gambonanza has more than 150 powerful “gambits” that modify your runs. These might make your pieces more powerful or force the enemy to skip a turn. Tiles on the board can also be modified (to, for instance, lock an enemy piece in place) and you can deploy extra pieces to turn rounds in your favor.

Along the way, you’ll face bosses. It seems like one of those is a machine named M2ch4gnus C4rls3n, obviously after real-life grandmaster and five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen. That alone has sold me on checking out this game.

Gambonanza — from solo developer Blukulélé and publishers Sidekick Publishing and Stray Fawn Studio — is out now. The Steam version runs on PC, macOS and Linux. It usually costs $15, but there’s a whopping 35 percent discount until May 15. You can also snap up the game on iOS and Android for $7.

As I started watching this trailer, I thought Bobo Bay looked like a cute, cozy creature collector. But then these Bobos started battling each other in a beat-’em-up mode, and one pulled out a gun to shoot an opponent. That didn’t feel quite as intense as seeing Palworld for the first time but it made the game more interesting than it seemed at first glance. “Think creature collecting meets cozy island life, with a surprising amount of depth under all that cuteness,” a press release stated. No kidding.

You can raise and evolve Bobos and combine their traits. You can customize them and get them to participate in races and other events. And shoot guns at each other, apparently.

Bobo Bay, from NewFutureKids, is out on Steam. It will usually cost $25, but there’s a 16 percent discount until May 6.

As a Ball x Pit sicko, I would be remiss not to mention the latest free update, which arrived this week. It added two new characters, 11 more superpowered balls, some passive abilities and a way for you to re-roll character upgrades that you previously opted for.

Alas, I’ve been too busy with another game to check out the new characters and balls just yet. I know that, as soon as I do, Ball x Pit is likely to have a hold on me for at least another dozen hours.

In 2021, Josh Wardle launched the wildly popular word game Wordle. Then in 2022 the New York Times bought the game. The rules to Wordle are pretty straightforward. You have to figure out a five-letter word in six or fewer guesses (we have a two-step strategy to help you solve the puzzle every time). After each guess, the game shows gray blocks for the wrong letters, yellow blocks for the right letters in the wrong spot and green blocks for the right letters in the correct spot. 

CNET’s Gael Cooper has loads of tips and tricks to tackle each NY Times Wordle puzzle. If you’ve finished your daily Wordle and are still craving a good puzzle game, there are plenty to choose from.

Here are 10 other puzzle games you can play now.

Connections

Another New York Times-owned puzzle, Connections is a tricky word game. “Players must select four groups of four words without making more than four mistakes,” the New York Times wrote on X. There are also four color-coded difficulty levels for each game; yellow is the easiest, then green, then blue and finally purple. The game is also similar to the BBC quiz show Only Connect, and the show’s host took to X to point out the connection. See what I did there?

You can play Connections on any web browser but you need a New York Times subscription (which starts at $1 a week) to play.

Strands

Strands is another New York Times-owned puzzle but this game resembles a word search more so than Wordle and Connections. This game presents a theme every day to help you find words in a grid. In Strands words can appear forward, backward, top-to-bottom or any number of ways in a traditional word search, and words can also form in the shape of an “L” or have a zigzag in them. When you find a word, tap the first letter and drag your finger to the other letters. Every letter in the puzzle is used, so if you still have letters that aren’t connected to words, you aren’t finished yet.

You can play Strands on any web browser but you need a New York Times subscription (again, $1 a week) to play.

Quartiles

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Quartiles is a new word game Apple News Plus subscribers can access on their iPhone or iPad that’s running iOS 17.5 or later. In this word game, you’re given 20 tiles with letters on them and you’re trying to put them together to form different words. The longest words are four tiles long, and these are called Quartiles. The game can be tough but finding just one of the Quartiles is as satisfying as remembering something that was just on the tip of your tongue.

You can play Quartiles on an iPhone or iPad but you need an Apple News subscription (which starts at $13 a month) to play.

Multiple Wordle spinoffs: Dordle, Quordle, Octordle and Sedecordle

Are you up for a challenge? If you love Wordle and want puzzle games that take more brain power, you’ll want to check out either Dordle, Quordle, Octordle or Sedecordle. Each of these word games resembles Wordle, but they add more rows, columns and words to solve. Each game requires you to simultaneously solve a different number of words at once: Dordle has you solving two words, Quordle four at once, Octordle eight at once and Sedecordle a whopping 16. Good luck.

You can play Dordle, Quordle, Octordle or Sedecordle on any web browser.

Lewdle

“Lewdle is a game about rude words,” this game’s content advisory reads. “If you’re likely to be offended by the use of profanity, vulgarity or obscenity, it likely isn’t for you.” Translation: It’s Wordle but with bad words. The words range from mild — like poopy — to words that would make a sailor blush. Thankfully, despite this game’s content warning, slurs are not included. Like Wordle, gray, yellow and green blocks are used in the same way and there’s only one puzzle per day. So go forth and let the bad words flow!

You can play Lewdle on any web browser. You can also download this game from Apple’s App Store or the Google Play store.

Antiwordle

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Tired of seeing those gray, yellow and green blocks plastered all over your social media feed? Give Antiwordle a try. While Wordle wants you to guess a word in as few tries as possible, Antiwordle wants you to avoid the word by guessing as many times as possible. When you guess, letters will turn gray, yellow or red. Gray means the letter isn’t in the word and can’t be used again, yellow means the letter is in the word and must be included in each subsequent guess and red means the letter is in the exact position within the word and is locked in place. If you can use every letter on the keyboard without getting the word correct, you win. Honestly, I’ve found this version of Wordle to be much harder than the original.

You can play Antiwordle on any web browser.

Absurdle

Absurdle bills itself as the “adversarial version” of Wordle. While Wordle nudges you in the right direction with each guess, Absurdle is trying to avoid giving you the correct answer. According to the game’s website, “With each guess, Absurdle reveals as little information as possible, changing the secret word if need be.” Absurdle doesn’t pick a word at the beginning of the game for the player to guess. Instead, it uses the player’s guesses to narrow its list of words down in an effort to make the game go as long as possible. The final word might not even include a yellow letter from one of your earlier guesses either. You can guess as many times as you want, which is helpful, and the best score you can get is four. Have fun!

You can play Absurdle on any web browser.

For more word game fun, check out CNET’s Wordle tips, the best Wordle jokes and everything you need to know about the word game. You can also check out what to know about the other New York Times-owned games, Connections and Strands.

Watch this: The Secrets to the Incredible Success of Critical Role and Dimension 20

13:50

iFi Audio is updating its entry-level wireless DAC lineup with the ZEN Air Blue 2, a $129 Bluetooth receiver designed to replace the original ZEN Air Blue while adding meaningful upgrades where it counts. The new model introduces Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Lossless alongside LDAC, LHDC/HWA, AAC, and SBC support, giving it broader high-resolution codec compatibility than most options at this price.

Rated for a 10-meter (approximately 30 feet) range, the ZEN Air Blue 2 also benefits from an improved antenna design for more stable connections at the edge of that distance, making it a practical way to add modern wireless streaming to amplifiers, AV receivers, or powered speakers via RCA outputs without changing the rest of the system.

The ZEN Air Blue 2 uses a dedicated three stage internal design built around a Qualcomm QCC3095 Bluetooth chipset, an ESS Sabre DAC reportedly the ES9023 for digital to analog conversion, and iFi AMR custom “OV” Operationsverstärker op amps to maintain signal integrity through the output stage.

It also supports a wide 5 to 12V DC input range, making it suitable for home systems as well as automotive, marine, or other battery powered setups. An automatic power on function is included for vehicle use, allowing the unit to start with the engine.

Comparison

The Bottom Line 

The iFi Audio ZEN Air Blue 2 succeeds by keeping things simple and focused. At $129, it delivers a rare combination at this price point: Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Lossless, broad codec support, and a stable wireless connection that makes it easy to bring modern streaming into older systems without replacing core components. That’s the angle—it’s not trying to be everything, just a clean bridge between your phone and your existing hi-fi.

What it doesn’t offer is just as clear. There’s no headphone output, no balanced connections, and no advanced control over DAC settings or outputs. If you want a more flexible desktop DAC or preamp, options like the Topping E50 II or Fosi Audio S3 give you more to work with for not a lot more money.

The ZEN Air Blue 2 is for listeners who already have an amplifier, receiver, or powered speakers they like and just need a reliable, high quality Bluetooth front end. It also makes sense in secondary systems or even in a car or boat where its wide voltage support and auto power on are actually useful. If your goal is straightforward wireless playback with minimal fuss, it fits. If you want control and expandability, look elsewhere.

Pricing & Availability

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Motorola is practically a veteran when it comes to foldables, which makes the Razr Fold all the more surprising. When I got my hands on it at a Hollywood villa overlooking the Los Angeles skyline, it felt less like an iteration and more like a fresh take.

The phone-maker’s first book-style foldable incorporates all the know-how it gained from making clamshell foldables dating back to the first modern Razr in 2019 — a launch I also attended at a similar event in Los Angeles. As advanced as it felt back then to hold a smartphone that folded in half, the foldable niche has come a long way since. The Motorola Razr Fold shows the company has moved beyond the rookie missteps typical of first-generation book-style foldables. The Google Pixel Fold, for example, notoriously didn’t unfold completely flat — an issue the Razr Fold avoids and a clear advantage in this space.

My first impression of the Motorola Razr Fold, as I held it in my hand, was that it had the polish and heft of a book-style foldable refined over many iterations, such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. It’s not quite the thinnest folding phone around — measuring just over 5mm thick when unfolded and about 10mm when folded — but it’s reasonably trim and didn’t feel clunky at 8.6 ounces (243 grams).

The Razr Fold is also unmistakably a Motorola phone, thanks to the design of its back, which is covered in a textured material that curves up to meet the camera bump, similar to the Moto G (2026). For the record, I find the textures classy, with a matte feel for the lily white color and cross-hatched nylon weave for the blackened blue hue.

Speaking of feel, the hinge and opening and closing of the Razr Fold feel satisfyingly sturdy — an odd but perhaps necessary reassurance that Motorola successfully translated its clamshell expertise to book-style foldables. Moreover, the Razr Fold is both well-specced and priced competitively against rival foldables: At $1,900, it lands right between the $2,000 Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the $1,800 Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold. The Motorola Razr Fold is available for preorder on Motorola.com and retailers on May 14 and will go on sale May 21.

Watch this: Motorola’s Razr 2026 Phones Are Still Powerful in Your Pocket, Just Pricier

02:35

The specs under the hood

The Razr Fold is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, which is less powerful than the highest-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, according to NanoReview’s benchmarks. With 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, the foldable is powerful on paper; we’re looking forward to seeing how its performance compares to Samsung’s and Google’s devices.

The Razr Fold’s 6.6-inch pOLED cover display is sharp and vivid, as is its 8.1-inch LTPO OLED inner display, both roughly the same size as screens on other foldables. What sets them apart is how bright they can get, with peak brightness rated at 6,200 nits for the main (unfolded) display and 6,000 nits for the external (folded) display — easily double that of many other phones, something I’m eager to test in harsh lighting conditions. That brightness could make the Razr Fold one of the best foldables for the beach or a park picnic, though it may also drain the battery faster.

If that’s the case, it’s a good thing the Razr Fold packs a 6,000-mAh battery, offering more capacity than its rivals — and even the Galaxy Z TriFold. Better still, you can recharge the foldable with 80-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging, far faster than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 (25-watt wired) and Pixel 10 Pro Fold (30-watt wired). Based on our extensive battery testing, I’d expect those speeds to recharge most of the Razr Fold in about half an hour (though we’ll have to confirm that in our review). The foldable also supports 5-watt reverse wireless charging to share power with other devices.

The Razr Fold has some of the best cameras on any Motorola phone, featuring a triple 50-megapixel rear camera array (main, ultrawide and telephoto). The telephoto uses a periscope lens with 3x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom. The front display has a sharp 32-megapixel selfie camera, which makes sense, as book-style foldable owners use the cover screen more often. When they pop the Razr Fold open, they’ll find a 20-megapixel camera for video calls and similar tasks.

No book-style foldable would feel complete without a stylus — or so we thought until Samsung dropped S Pen support from the Galaxy Z Fold 7. I had a chance to handle Motorola’s Moto Pen, though I didn’t have time to pair it with the Razr Fold. Tucked neatly into its holster (which looks a bit like a vape), the Moto Pen pops out easily, and the brief writing I tested on the Fold’s screen felt smooth enough. I’m not surprised that the phone-maker behind the Moto G Stylus pulled off a sleek standalone digital pen, though I’m curious about how its physical buttons function.

I have a laundry list of questions left to answer when we get our hands on the Motorola Razr Fold, from performance to camera capability to recharging rates. It’s tough to get a full picture of a phone from just an hour meet-and-greet in a fancy Los Angeles event space. But I’m confident that Motorola’s first book-style foldable will be a great alternative for folks who haven’t yet been convinced to pick up one from Samsung or Google. We’ll just have to see if Motorola has enough time to make a splash with the Razr Fold when it goes on sale May 21 before Apple potentially steals the spotlight with its long-rumored foldable iPhone expected to make its debuted in September.

Every week we like to showcase the biggest stories on the TechRadar website over the previous seven days in our ‘In Case You Missed It’ (ICYMI) round-up — both to help you catch up with the news, and also because we’re proud of our work.

Once again, it’s been a really busy week in technology: we’ve got stories here covering new phones from Motorola, electric helicopters, Taylor Swift taking on AI, robots playing table tennis, the new Steam Controller, and more besides.

If you have ambitions to further your career in the cyber space, consider one of the following 10 exciting organisations.

The cybersecurity sector is constantly evolving and more and more organisations are adding to their teams in order to meet increasing global demands. From penetration testing and incident response, to intelligence analysis and SOC management, there are a plethora of opportunities for professionals looking to advance their careers. 

If this sounds good to you, keep reading to discover more about the companies based in Ireland currently in the process of cybersecurity recruitment. 

Accenture

Irish technology consulting platform Accenture currently has three roles on offer for professionals available to work out of the Dublin premises. Vacant roles include a CyberArk associate manager, cyber incident responder and CyberArk specialist. Interested potential applicants can apply via the organisation’s careers page. 

Arctic Wolf

US cybersecurity company Arctic Wolf has three positions open to professionals based in Cork and remotely. There is a senior cybersecurity engineer role available, as well as opportunities for a triage security engineer with proficiency in German and a cybersecurity engineer 2. 

BMS

US multinational pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb, or BMS, has a role that, while not strictly cybersecurity, requires someone with cybersecurity skills. There is currently an opening for a senior manager in AI operations at the company’s Dublin office. The successful candidate will have a range of duties that include work in security, compliance and governance – such as implementing security controls, supporting model governance workflows and collaborating with cybersecurity teams to maintain secure and compliant environments.

Centripetal

US cybersecurity platform Centripetal has its European headquarters in Galway, Ireland and is currently looking for a senior software engineer to join its security-based Intelligence Services team. This role is available at the Galway facility and in a hybrid capacity. There is also a senior software UI engineer role open on the Intelligence Services team in Galway.  

Eli Lilly

US multinational pharmaceutical Eli Lilly has multiple job vacancies for jobseekers with cybersecurity skills and qualifications. Interested professionals should consider applying for roles such as cyber intelligence analyst, SecOps engineer and senior application security engineer. All the roles are based out of the company’s Cork facility.  

Google

Search engine Google is looking to add to its Ireland-based security personnel with a regional IoT operations and cybersecurity specialist, who would be situated at its Dublin facility. The Dublin team is also on the lookout for a security sales specialist for Google Cloud who can speak French fluently, as well as a senior policy escalation specialist for YouTube trust and safety.

Integrity360

Earlier this year, Irish cybersecurity company Integrity360 announced plans to acquire Canadian cybersecurity services and solutions provider Advantus360. There are plenty of roles open to qualified professionals globally and in Ireland specifically, Integrity360 is looking to recruit a penetration tester, senior penetration tester, SOC manager and an IAM architect. 

PwC

Professional services firm PwC has a range of opportunities on offer to cybersecurity experts based in Ireland. In Dublin and Cork, open roles include jobs in cybersecurity security operations and crisis incident management, cybersecurity third-party risk management, and cybersecurity threat and vulnerability. 

Smarttech247

Detection and response security platform Smarttech247 is looking for a few senior swimlane automation engineers and architects to join the team in remote, Ireland-based roles. The chosen professionals will lead the end-to-end design, implementation and deployment of security automation playbooks on the company’s swimlane platform. 

TCS

IT services, consulting and business solutions platform TCS has one role open to a professional in cybersecurity. Candidates can apply for a hybrid, Dublin-based role as an SAP SuccessFactors security consultant. 

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