Starlink quietly released its latest V5 residential dish, and while it doesn’t boost data speeds, it offers several improvements. Compared to the previous V4 dish, the new model is smaller, lighter and more energy efficient, which should make it easier to install while also reducing your power bill. 

SpaceX confirmed in a post on X that the product will arrive today in the US in certain regions at first. It follows the V4 model that debuted in 2023 and will continue to be offered via the Starlink Residential plan.  “Starlink V5 has a smaller form factor, new lightweight design, greater power efficiency than the Starlink V4,” according to a support page that compares the two models. 

You may expect a speed boost with a new dish, but the V5 actually supports a slightly lower data rate of 375+ Mbps compared to 400+ Mbps for the V4. However, the new model is considerably smaller at 2.4 pounds rather than 6.5 pounds and is just 5.12 x 12.05 x 1.34 inches in size, compared to 23.4 x 15.1 x 1.5 inches for the V4. It also consumes less power at 35 to 50 watts compared to 75 to 100 watts for the previous model. 

It weighs nearly the same as the portable Starlink Mini, but unlike that model, the V5 isn’t designed for in-motion use, Starlink says. It will be bundled with the Router Mini and come with a “pipe adapter” for rooftop installation. 

One region offering the new dish, according to a Reddit post seen by PCMag, is Drummond, Montana. There, the V5 dish is offered only with the least expensive $55 per month 100Mbps Residential plan. The pricier Residential and Residential Max plans only support the V4 dish with the superior Router 3, for now. 

Elon Musk showed the new dish off recently in a video post on X, saying the new dish would be made in “much higher volume than the current terminals.” The company recently announced its next-gen Starlink Mobile network, set to launch in mid-2027, that would provide up to 150 Mbps speeds and “feel like you’re connected to a high-performing 5G terrestrial network.” Last year, the company also showed off a new $2,000 Performance dish designed to handle gigabit internet speeds. 

A judge has dismissed an attempted class action lawsuit against Apple, which accused the tech giant of failing to stop the storage of child sexual abuse material on iCloud.

A lawsuit from August 2024 that accused Apple of “privacy-washing” and failing to properly deal with the issue of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on iCloud has been dismissed.

In a ruling reported by Reuters on July 14, U.S. District Judge Noel Wise in San Jose, California, agreed with Apple’s argument that it was shielded from the claims by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This refers to a section that protects online platforms from liability for third-party content, namely that of its users.

Representing the plaintiffs, Attorney James Marsh said that an appeal was being considered, as well as other potential legal claims. The attorneys claimed that the class of 2680 people were entitled to compensatory damages of $32.8 billion in total.

Under the ruling, Wise added that there’s no federal law that would force Apple to create new tools or deploy existing technology to identify and report CSAM on iCloud.

“Lawmakers can fix this problem that is contributing to the exploitation of children,” the Judge wrote in the ruling. “This Court cannot.”

The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, so it cannot be refiled under the same claims by the plaintiffs.

A CSAM failure

The lawsuit arrived after Apple attempted to implement measures to help prevent the spread of CSAM. But, after considerable outcry, it abandoned its plans.

Back in 2021, Apple announced a suite of tools it wanted to release across its platforms. There were two chief areas, consisting of Communication Safety and CSAM detection in iCloud Photos.

Communication Safety, which is intended to help prevent children from seeing or sending objectionable material, is still being developed as a service. The most recent changes expanded from nudity to violence and gore detection.

The second, CSAM Detection in iCloud Photos, used cryptographic techniques to detect collections of that content, which would then be reported to NCMEC (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children). The technique wasn’t scanning actual images, but instead detected existing CSAM files using known hashes.

Apple received a lot of criticism, including complaints from experts at other tech companies, over privacy and security fears.

Apple ultimately killed off the iCloud CSAM scanning plan in December 2022. In August 2023, Apple provided a more detailed reasoning for abandoning the plan, after being pressed by a child safety group.

This included the potential creation of new threat vectors for data thieves to find and exploit. There were also fears it could result in unintended consequences, such as leading to bulk surveillance and more demand to search other encrypted messaging systems.

Damned either way

While Apple had basically given up on its CSAM detection plans, instead focusing on Communication Safety, the issue simply didn’t go away.

A July 2024 report from the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) accused Apple of vastly undercounting incidents of CSAM in its services.

Apple had made only 267 reports to NCMEC, as required by U.S. law, for incidents it detected globally in 2023. However, the NSPCC said that Apple was implicated in 337 offenses between April 2022 and March 2023 in England and Wales alone.

By comparison, Google reported over 1,470,958 cases in 2023, with Meta reporting 17,838,422 on Facebook and 11,430,007 on Instagram.

While Apple is not able to see the content of iMessage for CSAM scanning purposes, the NCMEC pointed out that Meta reported over a million suspected CSAM cases for the encrypted WhatsApp in 2023.

The now-dismissed lawsuit surfaced just one month later.

Aside from demanding damages, the lawsuit also wanted Apple to be forced to adopt CSAM measures. This included ways to prevent the storage and distribution of CSAM on iCloud, as well as making reporting more easily accessible and complying with quarterly third-party monitoring.

The US’s explosive diarrhea problem is worse than you think—and it’s about to get even messier.

The country is grappling with a large and fast-spreading outbreak of cyclosporiasis, a parasitic infection that causes extreme gastrointestinal distress. There are nearly 7,000 potential cases, more than 3,300 of which are in Michigan alone as of Tuesday, and state officials have identified tainted lettuce as the likely culprit.

The actual case count is almost certainly higher, though, because most people don’t seek medical care when they get diarrhea. And even when they do, labs don’t routinely test for cyclosporiasis, says Jeanne Marrazzo, CEO of Infectious Diseases Society of America. She estimates cases are at least double the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s numbers.

“That’s because of underdiagnosis and also because there are cases that are likely to be mild. Many people aren’t going to declare themselves and get counted,” she says. Cyclosporiasis isn’t as common as other foodborne illnesses, meaning it’s not included in standard panels that test for several types of gastrointestinal disease.

But for many folks who get sick, the effects are, let’s just say, not pleasant. “A lot of times with diarrhea, you have an episode and you feel better,” says Marrazzo. “With this, it just can kind of go on and on, and it really takes people out.”

Bad enough, yes. But about that whole getting worse thing.

Public health officials have urged people to thoroughly clean produce, and some restaurants have taken precautions. Notably, Taco Bell has said it had “voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure.” While that might help those trying to live mas avoid getting cyclosporiasis, it’s not the only part of the produce supply chain that can be affected.

Norman Beatty, associate professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases and global medicine at the University of Florida, says the cyclospora parasite has unique mechanisms that allow it to lodge into the crevices of other fruits and vegetables. It’s most commonly found in fresh, raw produce, particularly herbs, lettuce, and berries.

Unlike some of the more common foodborne pathogens, cyclospora is resistant to bleach and common sanitizers used by food manufacturers. “Despite the commercial approaches to washing the produce that ends up in our grocery stores, the oocysts can continue to stick,” says Beatty. (Oocysts are the infectious stage of the parasite.)

Cooking destroys the parasite, but because lettuce and berries are usually eaten raw, there’s no easy way to eliminate it before consumption.

Bill Marler, a lawyer who specializes in food poisoning cases, says that, historically, most cyclosporiasis cases have been linked to imported produce. But the last decade has seen the US’s first All-American cyclospora outbreaks, such as when bagged lettuce from a plant in Illinois sickened more than 700 people.

Marler described cyclospora as becoming “like pythons in the Everglades.” The invasive snakes have infamously taken over the wetlands of South Florida, outcompeting native fauna and inspiring a year-round python hunting season. Cyclospora threatens to do the same, using our guts as the host environment. As more people get cyclospora and poop it out, it becomes more likely that water gets infected. That in turn increases the risk of outbreaks.

“Likely what happens is, it gets into the water supply that’s utilized to irrigate crops,” Marler says. He adds that agricultural workers typically get blamed for outbreaks, but “this is unlikely to be one lone worker not washing his or her hands, or someone pooping in the field. Something has gotten a water supply contaminated, spreading over a larger amount of produce.”

The parasite is also resistant to chlorine, the primary disinfectant used in most municipal water and wastewater treatment systems.

Beatty says it’s likely that thousands more people around the country have been infected.

“This shows us how easily an organism can be distributed to one location within the United States to multiple locations pretty quickly through the networks that we have set up for food distribution,” he says. “This could end up being reported in all 50 states.”

Miles Wang, an OpenAI researcher whose work includes using AI to accelerate scientific and biological discovery, is leaving the ChatGPT maker to launch a new startup focused on developing AI models for drug discovery, according to four people with knowledge of his plans. Several other OpenAI researchers are expected to join the new company.  

Wang is in talks to raise about $200 million at a $2 billion valuation, two of the people said. Lightspeed is in discussions to lead the funding round, according to sources. Talks are ongoing, the deal may not be final and details could change.

Wang disputed the story’s funding figures and description of the company but did not specify the correct numbers or details. Lightspeed didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The funding discussions point to investor interest in applying AI to make breakthroughs in life sciences. Chai Discovery, a two-year-old startup developing AI models that can predict molecular interactions to identify new drugs, announced on Tuesday that it raised $400 million at a $3.8 billion valuation. (Co-founder Josh Meier also passed through OpenAI as a researcher.) Meanwhile, Google DeepMind spinout Isomorphic Labs, which also develops AI models for drug discovery, raised a $2.1 billion Series B in May.

Wang’s new startup may be working on AI models that will help find new uses for existing drugs and possibly those that previously failed in trials, a couple of sources told TechCrunch. Finding new uses for FDA-approved drugs can result in significantly faster time to revenue than developing new drugs from scratch, as these medicines have already been tested for safety.

Wang joined OpenAI in 2024 after dropping out from Harvard, where he was working on a bachelor’s degree in computer science. (In recent years, investors are once again comfortable betting on young founders who haven’t completed college.)

At OpenAI, he co-authored research papers, including evaluating how AI models can automate and accelerate scientific discovery.

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Further complicating the process, even the expiration of the Microsoft certificate that signed the shims, which took place late last month, isn’t enough to revoke the ones ESET identified.

A rogue’s gallery of defective shims

The shims identified by ESET authorize secondary components that are known to be vulnerable to various exploits. The Oracle shim, for instance, signs a binary vulnerable to CVE-2015-5381. Smolár said the skill required to exploit the vulnerability is low. Other vulnerable shims fail to support protections, such as MOK deny-list enforcement and SBAT enforcement, both of which came into effect after the affected shim was released. Still other identified shims contain vulnerabilities in their own code.

In the interest of brevity, many additional details included in Tuesday’s report are omitted from this article.

An unsettling prospect

As noted, these vulnerable shims can be used against Windows and Linux machines alike, although likely not Windows 11 Secured-core PCs in their default state. Any Windows user who has installed Microsoft’s June update batch is no longer vulnerable. Linux users should check the Linux Vendor Firmware Service or consult their distributor. Revocation statuses are available using the uefi-dbx-audit script.

The prospect that attackers have had the means to bypass Secure Boot for more than a decade through what amounts to hack-by-numbers scripts isn’t much of an endorsement of the mechanism proposed by Microsoft in partnership with hardware makers. As mentioned earlier, a key contributor to this debacle is its complexity.

“This is a solid rebuke of the entire secure boot model,” HD Moore, a firmware security expert, CEO and founder of runZero, and a long-time critic of Secure Boot, said in an interview. His complaints include Microsoft being the de facto root of trust for the entire UEFI platform, the inability of the protection to scale sufficiently, and the ability for components to boot even after top-level certificates expire.

“The end result is a huge number of unknown (to everyone but Microsoft) signed things that bypass Secure Boot—some of which can then be used to boot other things—and both have normal security bugs and other mistakes that mean they can be used to boot nearly anything,” Moore added. “The whole ecosystem is somewhat broken and needs a reboot.”

Wishful thinking: Microsoft is finally stripping the Windows search box down to what many users wanted from it all along: a simple way to quickly find apps, files, and settings without being distracted by additional content. In test builds now rolling out to Windows Insiders in the Experimental channel, the experience looks and behaves very differently from recent versions of Windows.

The change appears first on the search home screen. Instead of the old layout – with recently used apps on the left and tiles on the right asking “What day is it today?” or offering features such as “Daily quiz,” “Word of the day,” “Search trends,” and “Recommended games” – the new view is much cleaner.

The home screen now focuses on recent searches and local content rather than making the search box feel like a news or entertainment hub. For people who use search as a starting point, this shift is likely the first thing they will notice.

Beneath the simpler UI, Microsoft is putting more emphasis on helping users understand what they are about to click on. Search results now more clearly identify whether an item is an app, a setting, a file, a web result, or a Microsoft Store suggestion.

That sounds basic, but the search box has become a primary launch point for opening apps, finding files, changing settings, and getting quick answers from the web. Making the source and type of each result clearer is intended to help users choose the right option more easily.

The company is also removing promotional content from web results. In earlier versions of Windows 11, web results displayed in the search box could begin with product-related suggestions and other promotional material.

In the new experience, the focus is squarely on the answer itself. Web results are presented more directly, without layers of promotional content appearing above them. For users who rely on the search box to quickly find information, the change makes it feel less like an advertising space and more like a straightforward tool.

Another notable change is the level of control users have over how much online content appears in search results. A new setting under Settings > Privacy & Security > Search allows users to choose whether web and Microsoft Store suggestions appear alongside local results.

If that option is turned off, the search box behaves more like a local launcher and file finder rather than mixing in web and Store suggestions. The option is simple, but it acknowledges that not everyone wants online suggestions in a workflow focused primarily on opening content that is already stored on the machine.

Behind the scenes, Microsoft has adjusted how it ranks results to better support this local-first approach. Apps, settings, and files are now more likely to appear ahead of web and Store items when they are a strong match for a query.

Core system objects, such as This PC and Recycle Bin, now appear more reliably instead of getting lost among tiles and other content. The search engine is also more forgiving of app names, handling typos, extra letters, and partial queries – so something like “utlook” can still find Outlook.

File search has been improved as well. The updated search box can handle very short queries, including two-character strings, which is useful for users working with short codes or brief file names.

Microsoft has also improved how cloud and connected files are surfaced, bringing them into view when they appear to be a better match than local content. The goal is to help users move more quickly from entering a search term to opening the document, download, or folder they intended to find, whether it is stored on the device or in online storage.

Settings search is getting attention as well. The company has made an initial round of changes to how settings results are ranked, aiming to surface more relevant controls higher in the list.

More tuning is planned as Microsoft collects data and feedback from the Experimental channel, meaning this part of the experience is likely to evolve over time. The company is also working on improving reliability by reducing crashes and search-related loading issues, with additional work still underway.

As with many recent Windows changes, the rollout will be gradual. The new search box is being distributed through Microsoft’s Controlled Feature Rollout system, so even users in the Experimental channel may not see it immediately.

Some users may receive the update after a reboot, while others may need to enable it through feature flags. Broader availability will follow as Microsoft refines the feature based on performance data and user feedback. For users who have been asking for a faster, cleaner, and more predictable search experience, this redesign arriving in 2026 represents a significant shift in how Microsoft approaches one of Windows’ most visible features.