“It’s like a community, right? And it’s a global community that people really love and identify with.”

That’s how Bobby Kim, Global Creative Director at Disney Consumer Products, describes Star Wars fandom. And it’s a framing that feels especially fitting as another May the 4th is behind us and we’re weeks out from a big-screen debut.

Key takeaways:

• The Federal Communications Commission has banned the sale of new foreign-made routers in the US. The sweeping order applies to virtually every Wi-Fi router currently available in the US market.
• After speaking with seven industry experts, I recommend holding off on buying a new router if you can. 
• Under the current rules, banned routers will no longer receive essential security firmware and software updates after Jan. 1, 2029. 
• The FCC’s action has effectively frozen the entire market while router companies scramble to gain approval. 
• More specific information on which router companies will be subject to the ban is expected to become clearer within the next month or two. 

In my eight years of writing and reviewing broadband and routers, I’ve rarely seen news that I would describe as unprecedented. The FCC’s March 23 decision to ban foreign-made routers is absolutely unprecedented.

The sweeping order applies to any router in which any stage of “manufacturing, assembly, design and development” occurs outside the US — in other words, just about any router you can buy right now. The argument is that they pose “unacceptable risks” to national security. Ironically, the order also prevents existing foreign-made routers from receiving vital security updates after Jan. 1, 2029, an extension of the initial March 1, 2027, deadline.

The ban doesn’t apply to routers that were already authorized by the FCC — only new models that haven’t been approved yet. That means every router that was available before the order is still available today, and router companies can still restock them using their existing manufacturing processes. So far, both Eero and Netgear have received exemptions from the ban, and will be able to sell new models in the US going forward.

Essentially, the FCC is freezing the Wi-Fi router market. As William Budington, a technologist for the digital rights nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, put it to me, “This is using an extremely blunt instrument.”

Where previous FCC bans have been limited to specific companies, such as last year’s push to ban TP-Link routers, this one affects an entire industry. So where does that leave someone who needs a new Wi-Fi router? Should you buy a model you’ve had your eye on in case it sells out? Or is it better to wait and see which companies the FCC considers foreign-made?

I know what I would do, but I gut-checked my advice with four cybersecurity experts. Turns out, we agree. 

My advice: Hold off on buying a new router for now

When I first saw the FCC’s announcement, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much chaos this would introduce to the US router market. As I tried to tease out which manufacturers would count as “foreign-made,” it quickly became clear how deeply international the supply chains for routers are. 

Understanding the scope of the ban

Take Netgear. While it’s a US-founded and headquartered company, it manufactures routers in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan. According to a recent report from the trade group Global Electronics Association, “Virtually no consumer router is manufactured entirely within the United States.”

I don’t have any issues recommending routers that were manufactured abroad. After all, they’d already gone through the FCC’s authorization process, and I haven’t seen convincing evidence that any one router brand has more hardware vulnerabilities than another. 

Thomas Pace, CEO of cybersecurity firm NetRise, told me last year during an interview about the potential TP-Link ban: “We’ve analyzed an astonishing amount of TP-Link firmware. We find stuff, but we find stuff in everything.”

I just finished testing, reviewing and rating over 30 routers, and after years of resistance, I finally concluded that Wi-Fi 7 routers are worth the money for the speeds you get. While I stand by my recommendations, with this ban in place, the router you buy today may not be any good in a year. 

The future-looking security risk

Then I saw the FCC’s Public Notice on the ban, which specifies that manufacturers can continue providing software and firmware updates “at least until March 1, 2027,” which has since been extended to at least Jan. 1, 2029. That means if you own a foreign-made router — if you own any router, in other words — it won’t be able to get security patches after that deadline. 

That’s why I think the wise move here is to wait on buying one if you can. Keeping your router’s firmware up-to-date is an essential part of securing your home network. If you buy from a router company that doesn’t get an exemption from this ban, you risk having an unsecured device a year from now. 

It’s an ironic side effect of an order that is ostensibly designed to keep Americans safer: They may no longer be able to get the latest security fixes.  

“If you’re limiting the ability of people to get security updates, then you’re making the problem worse, not better,” Alan Butler, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told me. “A lot of those routers are going to turn into pumpkins in a year unless they extend this waiver.”

By saying you can update your firmware “at least until Jan. 1, 2029,” the FCC does leave some wiggle room for an extension, and the Commission has suggested it could remove the deadline entirely. But until we know more about which companies the FCC considers foreign-made and which will be exempt, I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending spending money on a new router right now. 

“The risk is very real,” said Rik Ferguson, vice president of security intelligence at cybersecurity company Forescout. “If you find yourself in a situation where that update pipeline has been switched off, then you definitely have to consider whether you want to keep using that device.”

“The risk just keeps going the longer time passes, because chances are that there will be new vulnerabilities being found that you cannot patch,” added Daniel Dos Santos, vice president of research at Forescout.

Advice for immediate router needs  

If your old router stopped working, I’m not going to tell you to wait for clarity from the FCC to get back on Wi-Fi — the timeline for concern is more in years than months. A good compromise might be to buy an older budget router rather than the latest Wi-Fi 7 model you’ve had your eye on. But if you can afford to wait a month or two, it’s worth exercising some caution. 

“I do think this is going to become a mess very quickly,” Butler said.

This is the messiest point in the process we’re likely to see. As the dust settles in the coming weeks, we’ll likely have better information on which routers will still be safe to use a year from now. 

What if you rent your router from your ISP?

Where does this order leave the 70% of Americans who rent their internet equipment from their internet service providers? The FCC’s ban will impact them, too, as they also rely heavily on foreign-made routers. 

Essentially, my advice is no different than it is for people who own their routers: Don’t panic, and wait to see how things shake out. If you haven’t upgraded your equipment in a few years, now might be a good time to call your ISP and ask them what options are available. But it’s not likely that they’ll proactively replace them on their own, says Doug Dawson, a veteran broadband analyst and author of the industry blog POTs and PANs.

“I don’t see any mass replacement of these things, because it’s just too much money,” Dawson told me. “I’d guess before any deadline on firmware updates, they’re going to issue those three days before that and then they’re going to cross their fingers that they don’t start seeing problems.”

Expert opinion: Is your current router still safe to use?

When I polled four cybersecurity experts, I was surprised to find that they were generally in favor of the FCC taking action to protect router security in theory, but critical of the execution. 

“It’s going to impact many harmless products in order to stem a real problem,” Budington said.  “It’s also not particularly well-targeted, since routers are only one part of the problem, along with IoT devices.”

The concern for national security risk 

The FCC says that routers produced abroad were “directly implicated” in the Volt, Flax and Salt Typhoon cyberattacks. These attacks aren’t necessarily targeting an average person’s data, but they can turn your router into a tool to be used in malicious attacks. 

“The individual user who owns the router probably doesn’t even know anything about it,” Butler said. “It’s happening in the background without their knowledge, and it’s not necessarily affecting them directly in any way that they can notice.” 

In the Salt Typhoon attack, hackers gained access to data from millions of people through their internet providers, aiming to gain access to information from court-authorized wiretaps. It was a particularly bold instance of a tried-and-true hacker approach called “spray and pray”: Find default login credentials and try them on as many connected devices as you can. 

“It can be only one router out of 5,000, but that one can be a bingo,” Sergey Shykevich, a threat intelligence manager at Check Point Research, told me about these types of attacks. “It’s mostly just easy. In many cases, you don’t have to be a very sophisticated actor, or even nation-state, in order to be successful.”

How you can secure your router right now 

It’s just as easy for hackers to gain access through a router’s default credentials as it is for you to change your own settings. Most routers have an app that lets you update your login credentials from there, but you can also type your router’s IP address into a URL. These are different from your Wi-Fi name and password, which should also be changed every six months or so. It’s also a good idea to keep your firmware updated, which you can do automatically in your router’s settings or by manually downloading updates in your router’s app or web portal.

When will we know more?

I wish I could point to another time when the FCC ordered a blanket ban on an entire category of consumer products, but nothing like this has happened before. Manufacturers can apply for “Conditional Approval,” and they are likely scrambling behind the scenes to make the cut. When I reached out to the FCC for more clarity on the order, I was referred to the commission’s “Covered List” FAQ page.

My best guess is that we’ll learn more specifics on which companies are banned in the next month or so — an estimate that was echoed by two industry observers I spoke with. But the wait could be even longer. Budington told me he thinks router companies might wait until the ban is lifted rather than hustle to try to move their entire supply chains to the US. 

No matter how it shakes out, we’ll likely look back on this as the most chaotic chapter of the router ban story. Unless you need a new router immediately, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to make a more informed decision a month from now. 

Makers will always be chasing a dream, a wild concept, and few of those ideas come close to producing results as this one. The YapStopper 3000 is a device that can detect what someone is saying from across the room, add a tiny bit of delay, then fire that precise audio back at them, to the point that their brain can’t seem to put two meaningful sentences together.

Delayed auditory feedback results in a slight mismatch between what a person says and what they hear a split second later. The brain expects instant input from its own speech, so when there is a delay, the timing is completely thrown off. People stumble over their words, resulting in protracted pauses and fractured thoughts. Typically, getting that effect to work requires some sort of special setup, such as wearing headphones or being in a carefully controlled environment, but our small construct skips all of that and beams the delayed voice directly at the individual who refuses to quiet speaking.

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You can thank the high-frequency sound for the accurate targeting. The YapStopper emits sound waves at 40 kilohertz, which are far beyond what human ears can detect, but those waves transmit the delayed speech as a type of ‘hidden message’, similar to how a radio station wraps music inside the carrier frequency. Since the wavelength is so short, the sound beam simply zooms in on its target rather of spreading out all over the place, which is made feasible by an array of ultrasonic transducers that basically work together to enhance the beam, resulting in an acoustic spotlight effect. You simply point the built-in laser, turn the switch, and the delayed audio is precisely on target while everyone else hears nothing.

To collect the original audio on the other end, a shotgun mic works well because it listens in from a distance, picks up the speaker’s words clearly, and sends them to the delay circuit. After it has been modified and delayed, the signal is sent out through the transducer array via the ultrasonic carrier. This is powered by a cordless drill battery, which is charged to 24 volts using a boost converter. All of the driver chips, MOSFETs, oscillators, and tuning bits and bobs are housed on a single custom circuit board that fits snugly inside this handy small box. You can adjust the delay and volume on the fly using simple knobs, or flip a switch to turn it on/off.

Months of careful assembly went into every detail. The maker spent five full months debugging, soldering, and replacing parts. Short circuits would sometimes emerge out of nowhere at the worst possible time. Despite all of these obstacles, the underlying principle continued to work. With a simple test using a phone app and some standard headphones, they demonstrated that only the delay may throw speech off track. But what they did with this hardware version was to make it function without the requirement for headphones on the target, which is a real-world feat. More distance testing is still needed, but the prototype demonstrates that directed delivery works in practice once all of the electronics are in sync.
[Source]

B&H is blowing out M4 MacBook Air inventory with prices as low as $829. But supply is limited for this flash deal.

The $829 blowout special applies to the closeout M4 13-inch MacBook Air with an 8-core GPU, 16GB of unified memory, and 256GB of storage when ordered in the Sky Blue finish.

Buy M4 MacBook Air for $829

According to B&H, the deal is scheduled to end on May 15 at 5:05 p.m. Pacific Time, but supply is limited at the reduced price, so the deal may sell out before then.

With other retailers sold out, B&H’s flash deal delivers the lowest price available on the closeout model. And if you’re looking for the lowest price on the M5 Air that was released in March 2026, it can be found for as low as $998, although you do get 512GB of storage with the entry model.

B&H is also running a sale on MacBook Pros and upgraded M5 MacBook Airs, which you can jump to via our deal coverage below.

Elon Musk’s xAI is running nearly 50 natural gas turbines at its Mississippi data center, power plants that the state is currently not regulating thanks to a loophole.

The power plants are considered “mobile” by the state of Mississippi because they are sitting on flatbed trailers, thus allowing them to dodge to air pollution regulations for one year. The NAACP, which has filed a lawsuit on behalf of residents in the area, says the unchecked emissions from the turbines is worsening air quality in an already polluted region. This week, it asked the court for an injunction against xAI.

At issue is the “mobile” nature of the turbines. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the NAACP, says the turbines are being operated in violation of federal law, which says that power plants mounted on a trailer can still be considered stationary and subject to air pollution regulations.

XAI has been granted permits for 15 of its turbines. A Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce press release previously said that “about half” of the 35 turbines in operation in May 2025 would remain on site. However, xAI has continued to install more. Currently, it’s operating 46, according to a local news report.

Instagram has never been shy about borrowing ideas, and its latest move makes that clearer than ever. The platform just globally launched Instants, a new feature that lets you share disappearing, unedited photos with your Close Friends or mutual followers.

The standalone Instants app is now available on iOS and Android, which opens directly to the camera when you log in with your Instagram account.

How does Instants actually work?

You can also access this tool directly from the Instagram inbox. Just tap the mini photo stack in the bottom right corner of your DM inbox to open the Instants camera.

Either way, you snap something in real time and send it instantly. No uploads from your photo gallery are allowed, and you cannot edit the image before sending. Recipients can react with emoji, reply, or fire back their own Instants.

No one can take screenshots on Instants, and photos vanish after being viewed once, and anything unopened disappears after 24 hours. In fact, anything unopened disappears after 24 hours.

If you accidentally send something, there is an undo button to take it back before anyone sees it. Your sent photos are saved in a private archive that only you can access for up to a year. You can also compile them into a recap to post to Stories later.

So which app did Instagram copy this time?

Honestly, take your pick. The disappearing photos and one-time viewing are straight out of Snapchat‘s playbook, which has offered ephemeral photo sharing since 2011. The no-edit, share-as-it-happens format is pure BeReal, an app that briefly took the world by storm by pushing users to post unfiltered photos at random times of the day.

Instants also draws comparisons to Locket, a widget-based app focused on sharing candid photos directly with close friends. But this isn’t new for Instagram because Stories was a direct lift from Snapchat, and Reels borrowed heavily from TikTok. Instants continues that tradition without much apology.

But here’s the thing – it might actually be useful

For all the eye-rolling the clone label deserves, Instants taps into something real. Instagram has spent years drifting toward influencer content, brand deals, and algorithmically pushed posts from strangers.

Instants pulls the app back toward what it was originally built for, sharing genuine moments with people you actually know. In a feed full of perfectly lit brand content, a little unfiltered reality is hard to argue with. Whether anyone actually needs it is another question, especially when BeReal never quite held on and Instagram Stories already does the job for most people.

Mary M Hausfeld of the University of Limerick explores how the process by which researchers receive credit for their work can be more complicated for women.

Scientific discoveries rarely happen alone. Modern research often involves teams spanning institutions and even countries. Yet when research is published in academic journals, credit is reduced to a list of names – a list that can shape careers.

Authorship is a key signal of expertise. It influences hiring, promotion and funding decisions. Despite this importance, the process for determining authorship is often far from transparent.

In principle, authorship should reflect intellectual contributions. In practice, decisions about who becomes an author and whose name appears in the most prized position – often first or last – are negotiated within research teams. My research with colleagues has found that women report more negative experiences around authorship decisions.

Norms vary widely across disciplines, and unclear standards combined with power dynamics can create problems, especially for women researchers.

One of these is ghost authorship: when researchers who meaningfully contribute do not receive authorship. Another is gift authorship: when individuals who do not meaningfully contribute are included as authors.

Deciding who gets credit for a research project is complicated, even when everyone has positive intentions. These collaborations can span years, and individual roles often shift over time. Students graduate, researchers move institutions and projects evolve. As a result, authorship decisions are often shaped not just by contributions, but by a set of informal or ‘hidden’ rules that are rarely made explicit.

These hidden rules can include power dynamics between senior and junior researchers. Junior researchers, such as PhD students and postdocs, often depend on supervisors for funding and future opportunities. This can make it difficult to raise concerns about authorship.

The standards for determining contributions may be ambiguous. While there’s recently been more discussion about the different ways someone can contribute to a project, authors may disagree about which contributions matter most. For example, how should writing the paper be weighed against collecting or analysing the data?

Fear of reputational harm could also discourage open discussion about credit. Because researchers are concerned about being labelled ‘difficult to work with’ they may avoid raising concerns about authorship, even when the stakes are high.

Gifts and ghosts

To see how these decisions play out in practice, my collaborators and I surveyed more than 3,500 researchers across 12 countries – one of the largest studies of its kind. We asked researchers about their experiences with disagreement about authorship, comfort discussing authorship in their teams and experiences with problematic authorship practices.

We found that questionable authorship practices are remarkably common. In our study, 68pc of researchers observed gift authorship, and 55pc of researchers observed ghost authorship.

While experiences of authorship were similar across researchers in the natural sciences and social sciences, another pattern emerged. Women researchers reported experiencing more problematic authorship practices in collaborations. They encountered more disagreements over authorship decisions and felt less comfortable raising authorship concerns.

This is especially concerning given what researchers call the “leaky pipeline” in academia – where women are more likely to leave the field or are less likely to progress to senior positions over time. These patterns suggest that the hidden rules of authorship affect women and men differently.

Why it matters

These numbers aren’t just statistics. They represent missed opportunities, strained collaborations and careers quietly knocked off course. Authorship plays a central role in research careers, and even small differences in recognition can accumulate over time. When credit is uneven, opportunities become uneven. This shapes who stays in academia and whose ideas define a field. Over time, this may also push talented researchers away from academic careers or worsen existing inequalities like the leaky pipeline.

Universities rely on collaborative environments that are not only productive, but also fair. Addressing issues with authorship and its hidden rules is essential to continue moving toward better science.

In a separate study of US PhD-granting universities, my colleagues and I found that fewer than 25pc had publicly available authorship policies. Even when policies did exist, they rarely offered guidance on how to handle concerns or resolve conflicts. Clearer institutional guidance and accessible dispute resolution procedures would provide researchers with a framework to more effectively navigate authorship.

In addition, authorship training can encourage earlier and more open conversations about authorship within research teams, particularly for junior researchers who may feel less comfortable raising these issues. Promoting more transparent documentation of individual contributions can help ensure that authorship reflects the work that was actually done, even as roles evolve over the course of a project. Training would clearly benefit early-career scholars, but would also be important for more senior academics who supervise doctoral students and help shape research norms.

When authorship is transparent and openly discussed, it can empower stronger research teams, more equitable career progression and greater trust in the scientific process. Science is a team effort, and our systems for giving credit should reflect that reality.

By Mary M Hausfeld

Mary M Hausfeld is an assistant professor in management, at the University of Limerick. Her research focuses on leadership, diversity at work and research methods. Hausfeld is especially interested in the conceptual and methodological gap between what leaders do and how they are evaluated. Her work has been published in outlets including Journal of Management and others. Before joining UL, Hausfeld served as a post-doctoral research associate and head of education at the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work at the University of Zurich. Hausfeld earned her PhD in organisational science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

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Xbox’s next-gen console might be going fully digital. And if the latest leaks are accurate, Microsoft could finally be preparing the move it almost made more than a decade ago… before the internet collectively lost its mind.

Could Xbox Project Helix completely ditch physical discs?

According to a new report from Windows Central, Xbox is reportedly working on something called “Project Saluki,” which appears to be a new Game Pass initiative designed specifically for the Chinese market. While details remain limited, the report suggests it could involve multiple regional Game Pass tiers and reward systems tailored around China’s unique gaming regulations, spending habits, and player preferences. Considering how important cloud gaming and subscription-based access have become in China, this could be part of a much bigger push for Xbox in the region.

That said, the more interesting part of the report revolves around references discovered inside the Xbox PC app pointing toward a mysterious “Positron” initiative tied to a possible Disc-to-Digital system. Naturally, this has sparked speculation that Microsoft’s upcoming next-gen console, currently known as Project Helix, could launch without a built-in disc drive altogether.

The leaked references suggest Microsoft may be exploring a way for physical game discs to be converted into digital licenses tied to a user’s Xbox account. If true, the idea seems aimed at easing players into an all-digital future without completely abandoning existing physical libraries overnight. Interestingly, Microsoft explored similar concepts during the Xbox One era, but backlash around digital ownership and always-online systems forced the company to back away at the time. The difference now is that the market has changed dramatically, with digital purchases and subscription gaming becoming the norm for a huge portion of console players.

And honestly, Microsoft has been building toward this for years anyway. The Xbox Series S launched as a fully digital console back in 2020, followed by the all-digital white Xbox Series X refresh in 2024. At this point, a disc-less Project Helix would feel less like a surprise and more like the next logical step in Xbox’s long-term Game Pass-focused strategy.

Project Helix may finally push Xbox into its all-digital era

Reports around Project Helix already suggest Microsoft is positioning the next Xbox more like a hybrid gaming platform, blending console simplicity with PC-style flexibility through support for Xbox libraries, Windows features, Steam, and cloud gaming. In that kind of ecosystem, physical discs start feeling increasingly outdated. Even PlayStation reportedly now sees most game sales happening digitally, while Xbox has spent years pushing Game Pass, Cloud Gaming, and Play Anywhere.

Ironically, Microsoft almost tried this exact shift back during the Xbox One era, when digital licenses and always-online requirements triggered massive backlash. But the market has changed dramatically since then. Today, most players already buy their games digitally, which makes a disc-less future feel far more realistic. It would not be surprising if both Xbox and Sony eventually ship fully digital next-gen consoles, potentially with optional external disc drives similar to the PS5 setup. The difference is that Sony benefits from Blu-ray ownership, while Xbox would still have to deal with licensing costs.

Of course, players are not exactly going to celebrate the death of physical games overnight. Going digital is easy for Microsoft. Convincing gamers that they are not losing ownership, flexibility, or preservation in the process is the harder part, especially at a time when Xbox is already trying to rebuild momentum against Sony. That said, these leaks are still very early, and even the original report suggests details are still being pieced together, so for now, this entire situation should be taken with a healthy amount of caution.