The takeaway: New research is challenging a basic assumption about espresso: that it has to be made with hot water. Instead of relying on near-boiling water, researchers have shown that high-frequency sound waves can produce an espresso-style shot with similar strength and taste – no heat required.

Developed by engineers and food scientists at UNSW Sydney, this new method is called “ultrasonic espresso” and replaces heat with mechanical energy. It runs at room temperature, using sound waves to pull flavor from finely ground coffee, and reaches espresso-level intensity in under three minutes despite the cold-water start.

The setup still begins with a standard espresso basket. A small metal transducer is mounted against its wall, and once activated, it emits ultrasound – sound waves above the range of human hearing – that travel through the water and coffee bed.

What happens next is the key step.

The sound waves trigger acoustic cavitation, a process where tiny bubbles form in the liquid and collapse in rapid succession. When those bubbles implode near coffee particles, they generate microscopic bursts of force that chip away at the grounds, speeding up the release of oils, flavor compounds, and caffeine into the water.

In effect, the system swaps heat for controlled agitation at a microscopic level, using pressure changes and localized mechanical action instead of temperature to drive extraction.

That distinction matters more at scale than it does on a kitchen counter. For a home user, skipping the heating step might not move the needle much. But in industrial settings – particularly ready-to-drink coffee production – energy consumption becomes a central concern, and the researchers estimate that eliminating the need to heat water could cut energy use by up to 75%.

The process also introduces some logistical flexibility. Because the coffee is produced at room temperature, it can go straight into bottled drinks or milk-based products, or be shipped as a concentrated liquid and diluted later, potentially simplifying production and distribution.

Ultrasound is not entirely new to coffee science. Earlier work from the same UNSW team explored its ability to speed up cold brewing, compressing what is typically a 12 to 24-hour process into a matter of minutes. But espresso presents a different challenge: it is not just about extracting caffeine or basic flavor, but about achieving a specific balance of bitterness, aroma, and body typically associated with high heat and pressure.

To hit that target, the researchers, led by Dr. Francisco Trujillo, fine-tuned several variables. Grind size played a clear role, with finer particles allowing faster extraction. The water-to-coffee ratio had to be carefully controlled to avoid under-extraction or dilution, and timing proved equally important, with the optimal window landing between two-and-a-half and three minutes of ultrasonic exposure.

Matching the chemistry of espresso is only part of the equation, though. The more practical question is whether people can actually taste the difference.

To test that, the team ran a blind evaluation with about 100 regular coffee drinkers, those findings are published in the Journal of Food Engineering. Participants sampled four coffees: traditional espresso, ultrasonic espresso, and both traditional and ultrasonic filter coffee, served at the same temperature and in random order.

The results were strikingly close. Participants couldn’t reliably distinguish between the traditional espresso and the ultrasonic version, with the two performing nearly identically across aroma, flavor, bitterness, and overall preference. In the filter category, the ultrasonic version was actually favored, with tasters describing its bitterness as more balanced.

The findings suggest that heat may not be as essential to espresso as long assumed. By using ultrasound to accelerate extraction, the process reproduces the defining characteristics of espresso while significantly reducing energy input. For an industry built around heat-driven methods, this opens up a different way of thinking about how coffee can be made.

Image credit: The Conversation

The most controversial feature is Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Direction (SOCD) customization. This allows one key to override another rather than registering both simultaneously, which is ideal for strafing in tactical shooters like Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant. The difference in reaction speed is immediately noticeable, making quick peeks far more consistent. However, because of the distinct advantage it provides, the feature has been banned in some competitive games because it reduces the delay between directional movement to near-zero levels without requiring any additional skills.

Testing these features across a variety of shooters and racing games, I was consistently impressed by the level of fine-tuning Wootility offers—something not possible on a traditional mechanical keyboard.

The gaming experience of this keyboard is simply impressive. The switches are incredibly smooth and consistent, offering granular control with near-instantaneous, low-latency inputs. While older Hall Effect keyboards from competitors like Keychron and Asus often lacked the tactile feel of traditional mechanical designs, Wooting’s Lekker switches easily bridge the gap.

The RGB lighting also looks great and is deeply customizable. Like most LEDs, it tends to lean slightly blue, but this is easily corrected in the software (I set mine to 203/192/180 for a true white). It is a minor quirk in an otherwise impressive lighting setup.

Peak Repairability

Photograph: Henri Robbins

The 60HE v2’s simple internal design makes repairs easy, allowing the keyboard to be disassembled in seconds. Despite this ease of access, Wooting’s solid construction ensures everything stays securely in place. Inside, you will find a plate, switches, a silicone layer, a PCB with rubber feet on the underside, your choice of sound dampening layer, and the case.

Switch compatibility is often a weak point for analog keyboards, but the 60HE v2 easily outpaces competitors from Keychron, Razer, and ROG, which typically only support two or three options. By adopting the widely used KS-20 design, the 60HE v2 works with switches from Gateron, Geon, and several other manufacturers, giving users a constantly growing range of options.

My only real complaint is the adherence to the standard GH60 form factor, which places the USB-C port directly on the left side of the PCB. While I would prefer a centered port on a separate daughterboard for convenience and repairability, I understand the choice. The benefits of standardization for both consumers and manufacturers ultimately outweigh this minor design gripe.

I’m impressed by how well this keyboard performs across every metric. The build quality is robust, the switches are smooth and consistent, and nearly every aspect can be tailored to the individual player. Aside from the lack of wireless connectivity, it leaves nothing to be desired.

The 60HE v2 is easily one of the best gaming keyboards available today. While it is currently backordered, if you are willing to be patient, it is absolutely worth the $240 price tag.

Day 2 of the BMPS Grand Finals was truly the day of comebacks, with teams like GDR and Victoris Summus making the largest leap, and occupying the second and third place in the rankings, respectively. While there was plenty of action from the bottom dwellers, Divine held their 30-point lead, thanks to clever strategies that put them in the top five of almost every match consistently. Here’s what the schedule will look like for day 3 of the BMPS Grand Finals.

BMPS 2026 Grand Finals Day 3 Schedule & Timing

The live broadcast will begin at 2:45 PM IST. Fans can catch the games like on Krafton’s YouTube channel in Hindi, English, and a few other regional languages. Or, if you want to support your team live, head over to the Jaipur Convention Center. Tickets are available on the District app. Maps for today will include:

• Match 1 — Rondo
• Match 2 — Erangel
• Match 3 — Erangel
• Match 4 — Erangel
• Match 5 — Miramar
• Match 6 — Miramar

A total of 18 matches will be played over the course of this weekend. And the format is pretty simple. Points are awarded for each finish, and also for how long a team survives. In the end, the team with the most total points (position + finish) will be the winners.

BMPS Grand Finals Standings After Day 2

British World Rally Championship (WRC) driver Louise Cook recently climbed into Forza Horizon 6 with an enthusiast-grade Direct Drive (DD) wheel setup, triple screen monitor rig, and a digital 1986 Audi Quattro rally car. She is most likely using dialed in custom force feedback values, before threading the car through narrow mountain roads, tunnels, and tight corners with pro racer precision.

Playground Games launched the latest installment in Japan, and the setting is better suited to the franchise than any previous location. The map covers a variety of biomes, including actual elevation fluctuations. You have snow-capped alpine passes rising over the verdant highlands and coastal highways, and then there’s Tokyo City, which is five times larger than anything they’ve done before, with distinct districts that change character as you walk around them. So you’ll be passing through cherry blossom tunnels one minute and neon-lit streets the next, before returning to peaceful (yet narrow) alleyways. The seasonal weather does a fantastic job of adjusting grip and visibility without making each drive difficult. They’ve also included a few vertical slopes and hairpin sequences to test your ability to use momentum rather than pure power.

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The game has approximately 550 cars, with the majority of them being Japanese vehicles, ranging from everyday icons like the Nissan Cedric to legends like the R32 Skyline, S15 Silvia, and Honda NSX. You also have some recent standouts, such as the Toyota Land Cruiser and the GR GT Prototype (on the cover). Of course, you’ll come across some barn treasures that will surprise you, like a vintage Toyota 2000GT hidden away on a dirt track. The tuning depth has also been increased, with engine swaps, aero options, and visual layers now available, and community-shared tunes and liveries provide an excellent way to skip some of the grind while still customizing cars for certain routes or events.

The handling has also been dramatically enhanced, with cars transmitting weight more convincingly around corners and steering inputs feeling noticeably sharper than in the last game. Drifting down the winding roads of the Highlands is no longer a source of frustration, but rather a delight. They’ve also introduced a new simulation steering mode to help prevent understeer in controller configurations. Wheel support has also been significantly improved, with more detailed force feedback and cockpit animations displaying a complete 540 degrees of rotation.

Hackers breached Brazil’s national civil defense alert system overnight, sending fake “Extreme Alert” notifications containing the word “misantropi4” to millions of mobile phones across at least seven states. The Civil Defense Alert platform was taken offline at 1:30 am on Saturday after the Ministry of Integration and Regional Development confirmed the intrusion.

The Federal Police has been activated to investigate. No timeframe has been given for when the platform will be restored.

The first unauthorized alert was registered around 11:40 pm on Friday, 19 June, in Paraná. Within hours, the same emergency sound, the type that bypasses silent mode and overrides whatever is on screen, reached phones in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Bahia, Pará, Mato Grosso do Sul, and Acre.

National Secretary of Protection and Civil Defense Wolnei Wolff told a press conference that 10 alerts were tracked across various Brazilian states, with most sent via Cell Broadcast and at least one via SMS. The total number of phones affected was not officially disclosed, though German outlet Ad-hoc-News reported an estimate of approximately 30 million people reached.

“It’s difficult to say whether one or more people participated in this criminal act,” Wolff said. He added that the incident was “very bad for the system, considering that we are dealing with people’s safety when we issue the alert.”

Phones displayed “Defesa Civil: misantropi4,” with the final letter “a” in the Portuguese word “misantropia” replaced by the number 4, a substitution common in leetspeak. Misantropia translates to misanthropy, meaning hatred or aversion to humanity.

No dangerous instructions accompanied the message, but the use of the most severe alert category, which is reserved for imminent natural disasters, caused widespread alarm. Recipients across seven states were jolted awake by the emergency sound.

Wolff confirmed that the attackers managed to regain access after an initial blocking attempt. The platform was ultimately shut down entirely at 1:30 am The system will remain suspended until all digital security conditions are re-established, according to the ministry.

Brazil’s Cell Broadcast system is relatively new. It was mandated by telecommunications regulator Anatel in 2022, piloted in 11 cities beginning in August 2024, and expanded to cover the entire national territory by October 2025.

The technology broadcasts alerts to all devices within a cell tower’s range without requiring phone numbers or prior registration. The four operators that deliver the service, Algar, Claro, TIM, and Vivo, were involved in the overnight response alongside Anatel.

The vulnerability exploited in the attack has not been publicly disclosed, and the investigation is ongoing. Security researchers have noted that Cell Broadcast systems globally lack cryptographic authentication, meaning devices cannot independently verify whether an alert was genuinely sent by civil defense authorities.

Academic research since 2019 has demonstrated that fake alerts can be transmitted using relatively inexpensive equipment, including software-defined radios. Whether the Brazilian attack exploited the central platform, as the government’s statement implies, or used a clandestine transmitter remains unclear.

A person claiming responsibility for the attack posted on X (formerly Twitter) before the posts were removed by the platform, according to Brazilian tech outlet TecMundo. The Federal Police has not confirmed whether this individual is a genuine suspect.

The incident echoes a pattern of critical infrastructure alert systems being compromised through surprisingly basic attack vectors. In Taiwan last month, a 23-year-old student triggered emergency braking on four high-speed trains using a laptop and a cheap software-defined radio, exploiting cryptographic keys that had not been changed in 19 years. The European Commission was breached in March through a poisoned open-source security tool, resulting in 92 gigabytes of stolen data.

The immediate concern for Brazil is the erosion of public trust. The Cell Broadcast system was built to save lives during floods, landslides, and severe weather events.

If citizens learn to associate the emergency sound with pranks rather than genuine warnings, they may ignore future alerts when a real disaster is unfolding. That risk, more than any technical vulnerability, is the lasting damage of a hack that woke up a country with a single strange word.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle was a bit challenging, but the words make sense once you figure out the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: That’s included!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: More than just a bed.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• FAST, FATS, FATE, HATE, SATE, RENT, TERN, TALE, THAT, LAST, LATS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• INTERNET, LAUNDRY, SAFE, FRIDGE, BREAKFAST

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is HOTELAMENITIES. To find it, start with the H that’s three letters down on the far-left vertical row, and wind down and over.

Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest.

#1: Dated slang. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT. 

#3: Off the hook. Again, it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.

security

Campaigners say tech is unable to reliably distinguish between kids and adults at the boundary where use is planned

More than 60 rights groups have told the UK government to scrap plans to use AI-powered facial age estimation on asylum-seeking children, warning the technology is biased, inaccurate, and potentially unlawful.

In an open letter sent to border security and asylum minister Alex Norris, 62 organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Liberty, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Foxglove, and the Open Rights Group, called on the Home Office to halt deployment of facial age estimation (FAE) technology, currently slated for rollout from 2027.

The intervention comes after the Home Office unveiled plans to use AI-powered facial age estimation to help immigration officers decide whether someone claiming to be a child is likely to be over or under 18. Ministers insist the technology will support, rather than replace, human decision-making.

But the coalition behind the letter is unconvinced.

“There are substantial and well-founded concerns about the bias of FAE,” the groups wrote, arguing that the technology has “baked-in failures and discrimination,” particularly affecting women and people of color.

The groups also highlighted an uncomfortable detail in the Home Office’s own guidance: the technology’s performance varies by ethnicity and skin tone. That makes it difficult to see why officials believe it will be reliable for assessing asylum-seeking children, who are predominantly people of color, they argued.

The organizations also took aim at what may be the technology’s biggest practical problem: age estimation systems are least precise around the exact boundary the Home Office wants them to assess.

“The Home Office admits FAE systems are imprecise at the crucial 16-to-18-year-old boundary,” the letter notes, citing government figures showing even the best-performing systems have an error margin of roughly 2.5 years in that range.

The groups argue that the technology may fare even worse on asylum-seeking children. Their letter says trauma, violence, malnutrition, dehydration, sleep deprivation, and long journeys can leave children looking older than they are, potentially skewing the results.

“As such… we can see no basis upon which the Home Office has concluded this technology will increase the accuracy of its decision making,” the groups wrote.

The coalition also raised questions about the data used to develop and test the systems and demanded details about the images and datasets used for training, arguing it is unclear how consent could lawfully have been obtained if asylum-seeking children were included.

The Register asked the Home Office to comment.

The Home Office has so far released only limited details about its testing program. The groups noted that officials have yet to publish detailed results, methodologies, or impact assessments that would allow independent scrutiny of the technology’s performance. The letter also noted that no Equality Impact Assessment or Data Protection Impact Assessment has been made public.

The groups have given the department 21 days to respond to a series of questions covering testing methods, training data, safeguards, appeal mechanisms, and how facial age estimates would ultimately influence asylum decisions.

The row also exposes a broader disagreement over age assessments. While the Home Office has emphasized cases involving adults claiming to be children, campaigners argue the greater risk is that vulnerable children end up being treated as adults.

Until then, the government’s AI age guesser remains a technology it says works, but has yet to fully show its workings. ®

The clock is ticking for Windows and Linux users to update cryptographic keys that protect their systems against firmware-based UEFI infections, a pernicious form of malware that loads before operating system and antimalware protections start.

Beginning June 24, three certificates that cryptographically verify that each piece of firmware and software that loads during system boot will expire. The Microsoft-signed certificates are the linchpins of Secure Boot, a Microsoft-designed chain of trust. Secure Boot checks the digital signatures of all firmware that loads during system startup to ensure it originates from a trusted provider, such as the manufacturer of the motherboard the system runs on.

Secure Boot is designed to thwart UEFI bootkits, a form of malware that alters the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, the successor to the BIOS, both of which begin the initial boot sequence. Because these bootkits load before the OS and most other code, they can be difficult to detect. Once installed, they typically load malware onto the OS that steals credentials, backdoors the system, or performs other malicious actions. Even when the OS is disinfected, the bootkit can reinfect the system. Bootkits survive OS reinstallations as well.

A Brief History of Bootkits

The genesis of bootkits dates back to the early 1980s with the creation of several pieces of malware that targeted Apple II machines during the boot process. They spread in the wild through floppy disks that ostensibly contained pirated games.

Windows bootkits gained notice in the early 2000s as proofs of concept developed by researchers of offensive security. BootRoot, a bootkit demonstrated at the 2005 Black Hat security conference, is likely the first such instance. The malware infected the Network Driver Interface, which streamlined communications between network protocol drivers enabling service such as TCP/IP network adapter drivers. In the years following, similar PoCs included Vbootkit, the Stoned Bootkit, and Mebroot. There were many more.

In 2012, a new form of bootkit was demonstrated. Instead of targeting machines through the BIOS or master boot record, one such bootkit attacked Mac OS X systems by infecting the EFI, a package of firmware that started the boot process. A second very primitive bootkit targeted Windows 8 machines by infecting the​​ UEFI bootkit, the predecessor to the UEFI. Around 2013, a researcher demonstrated a more advanced UEFI bootkit for Windows named Dreamboat.

The first known case of a real-world attack targeting the UEFI came in 2018 with the discovery of malware dubbed LoJax. A repurposed version of legitimate anti-theft software known as LoJack, it was created by the Kremlin-backed hacking group tracked under names including Sednit, Fancy Bear, and APT 28. The malware was installed remotely using malware tools that can read and overwrite parts of the UEFI firmware’s flash memory.

In 2020, researchers unearthed the second known instance of real-world malware attacking the UEFI. Each time an infected device rebooted, its UEFI checked whether a malicious file was present in the Windows startup folder and, if not, installed it. Researchers from Kaspersky, the security provider that discovered the malware, named it “MosaicRegressor.” Researchers have yet to determine how the compromised UEFIs became infected. Since then, a handful of new UEFI bootkits have come to light. They are tracked under names including ESpecter, FinSpy, and MoonBounce.

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

In response to the more menacing threat of UEFI bootkits, Microsoft worked with device makers to develop Secure Boot, an industry-wide standard that uses cryptographic signatures to ensure that each piece of firmware loaded during startup is trusted by a computer’s manufacturer. Secure Boot is designed to create a chain of trust that prevents attackers from replacing the intended bootup firmware with malicious firmware. If a single link in the startup chain isn’t recognized, Secure Boot will prevent the device from starting.

Then in 2023, researchers discovered LogoFail, a series of critical vulnerabilities found UEFIs booting up just about every Windows and Linux system in the world. An image-parsing bug in the software that presented hardware manufacturers’ logos during bootup allowed attackers to bypass Secure Boot and infect the UEFI with malicious firmware.

Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 heart rate sensor averaged 1.67% error compared to a medical-grade Polar H10 chest strap in testing by CNET Labs, making the earbuds the second most accurate consumer heart rate device the publication has measured. Only the Apple Watch Series 11 performed better, averaging 0.98% error in the same test protocol.

The results, published by CNET this week, place AirPods Pro 3 ahead of every smartwatch and fitness tracker the lab has tested except Apple’s own watch. CNET’s methodology used a four-lap track protocol with the Polar H10 as the gold standard reference, a setup consistent with how exercise physiology labs validate optical heart rate sensors.

The AirPods Pro 3 use a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor that fires infrared light at 256 times per second to detect blood volume changes in the ear canal. Apple says the sensor was trained on more than 50 million hours of data from the Apple Health Study, and the company describes it as the smallest heart rate sensor it has ever built.

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A peer-reviewed study published in PLOS Digital Health in April 2026 independently corroborates the accuracy claims. Researchers tested 40 adults across 16,735 paired heart rate measurements and found the AirPods Pro 3 averaged 2.02% deviation from a reference device. The study noted that the ear canal offers a more stable optical reading environment than the wrist because there is less ambient light interference and less motion artifact during exercise.

The PLOS study did flag wider epoch-to-epoch variability at higher exercise intensities, meaning individual readings became less consistent even as the overall average remained close to the reference. This is a known limitation of all optical heart rate sensors, including wrist-worn devices, and it means the AirPods are more reliable for steady-state activities than for interval training with rapid heart rate swings.

CNET’s testing has important caveats. The publication completed only two full AirPods runs in its protocol, a smaller sample than it typically uses for smartwatch reviews. CNET is also the primary source for the comparative ranking that places AirPods Pro 3 above other smartwatches, as no other lab has published equivalent side-by-side testing across this many devices using the same methodology.

The ear as a location for biometric sensing is not new in research, but Apple is the first company to ship it at mass-market scale in a consumer audio product. The ear canal’s vasculature sits closer to the skin surface than the wrist, which is why PPG sensors placed there can achieve comparable or better accuracy with a smaller sensor footprint. The trade-off is that health tracking is expanding beyond the wrist into ears, fingers, and other body locations, each with distinct physiological advantages.

At $250, the AirPods Pro 3 are $150 cheaper than the $400 Apple Watch Series 11, and they serve a primary function as earbuds. For users who want heart rate data during workouts but do not want a smartwatch, the accuracy gap between the two devices is small enough that the AirPods represent a credible alternative.

Apple does not position the AirPods as a medical device and the heart rate feature is not FDA-cleared for clinical use. The Apple Watch, by contrast, has FDA clearance for its ECG and irregular rhythm notification features, capabilities the AirPods lack entirely. The AirPods measure heart rate only, they do not detect arrhythmias, blood oxygen levels, or other clinical markers.

The broader trend is that health wearables are shrinking and diversifying in form factor. Oura’s Ring 5 measures heart rate, temperature, and respiratory rate from a finger. Whoop tracks recovery from a screenless wrist band, and Google’s Fitbit Air launched at $99 with AI health coaching.

Apple now has accurate heart rate sensing in both a watch and a pair of earbuds, giving it two data collection points on the same user.

The dual-device approach matters because heart rate data from two locations can improve accuracy through cross-referencing. Apple has not announced plans to fuse data from AirPods and Apple Watch in real time, but the infrastructure exists. The Apple Health app already aggregates heart rate data from multiple sources, and the company’s machine learning teams have published research on multi-sensor fusion.

For competitors, the AirPods result raises the bar. Samsung, Google, and Xiaomi all sell earbuds, and none currently offer heart rate monitoring that approaches the accuracy Apple has demonstrated. The PPG technology underlying all optical heart rate sensors is well understood, but Apple’s advantage appears to come from the training data volume and the sensor’s sampling rate rather than a fundamentally different approach.

Whether earbuds can eventually replace a smartwatch for health tracking depends on what users actually need. Heart rate is one metric. The Apple Watch also measures blood oxygen, skin temperature, and takes electrocardiograms.

AirPods cannot do any of those things today. But for the single most requested health metric, heart rate during exercise, the AirPods Pro 3 deliver results that are close enough to the Apple Watch to matter.