security

Gen Xers who feel triggered by this should remember to unplug the network cable and call the cops

Turns out the fastest way to get a company to consider paying a ransom isn’t calling the CEO – it’s targeting the 46-year-old IT manager.

That’s according to Zscaler, whose ThreatLabz researchers tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations caught up in a single ransomware campaign over the course of a month.

The data suggests today’s ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the average victim was a 46-year-old Gen Xer, and three-quarters worked in accounting and finance, sales, operations, HR, or marketing. Half worked in the industrial or IT sectors.

Rather than blasting the same extortion email across an organization, attackers are doing their homework first. Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company’s response.

“The ransomware landscape has shifted from indiscriminate attacks to highly targeted extortion campaigns,” the security outfit wrote. “Rather than targeting executives directly, attackers are increasingly focusing on managers and other key personnel with the authority or influence to accelerate payment decisions.”

That shift reflects what Zscaler calls “business privilege” rather than technical privilege. Security teams have traditionally focused on privileged users with administrator rights. Attackers, meanwhile, are after employees whose day jobs give them access to invoices, payment approvals, budgets, supplier contracts, customer accounts, HR records, or other sensitive business processes.

“The value of a compromised managerial account lies in the breadth of business access associated with the position,” the researchers wrote. “Managers may approve payments, oversee budgets and vendors, review contracts, access sensitive records, or coordinate work across business units.”

The Gen X skew is probably no coincidence either. Zscaler says many workers in their forties and fifties have reached established management positions, giving attackers access to valuable systems, sensitive information, and people with decision-making authority without needing to compromise the executive suite.

It also found more than a dozen organizations said multiple employees were  compromised during the campaign, suggesting attackers weren’t content with a single foothold once inside a network. Instead, they appeared to work their way through different business functions to increase the chances of reaching valuable data and the people capable of influencing a ransom payment.

The wider report points to a ransomware ecosystem that is becoming increasingly focused on extortion rather than encryption alone. Zscaler said ransomware attempts blocked across its cloud platform increased 146 percent over the past year, while public extortion cases rose 70 percent and the volume of data stolen from victims climbed 92 percent.

By the time the ransom note lands, the crooks may already know who approves invoices, who signs contracts, who runs HR, and who reports to whom. The encryption is just the bit that victims notice. ®

Kasquez just released a complete fan recreation of Donkey Kong Land that runs natively on Windows. The 1995 Game Boy original from Rare now exists as a standalone PC build with visuals, audio, and movement drawn straight from the style of Donkey Kong Country. Over thirty full-sized levels wait, along with the usual banana collecting, secret hunting, and a fresh trip to reclaim the hoard from King K. Rool.

Rare spent a lot of time converting the handheld game from the ground up rather than simply copying the Super Nintendo version, but let’s be honest, the hardware limitations meant the original game was always going to be a little rough, with shorter stages, only one Kong on screen at a time, fewer animal friends, and monochrome graphics that still managed to flex some impressive pre-rendered detail. Nonetheless, the game leaned into its new ideas and restrictions, so much so that levels relied on set pieces like cliff rockfalls and big ol’ tornado enemies, without losing that same basic roll-and-jump momentum that made the game so much fun, and even tho it was half the length, the game still clocked up nearly four million sales and received glowing reviews for squeezing so much personality out of its tiny green screen.

LEGO Super Mario Donkey Kong Arcade 72051

• BUILDABLE ARCADE CABINET – Relive the fun of playing an iconic arcade game with the LEGO Donkey Kong Arcade (72051) building set for adults ages…
• AUTHENTIC ARCADE GAME DETAILS – Create a Donkey Kong arcade level featuring Jumpman, Donkey Kong and Lady, including iconic details like the…
• WORKING JUMP AND DODGE PLAY – Pull the lever on the left side of the base to release one barrel at a time, then move Jumpman with the joystick and…

This new release effectively removes all of those limits. Stages can be as long as they need to be, leaving plenty of area for platforming sequences, hidden paths, and the vertical and horizontal exploration that seemed constrained in the original. Donkey Kong Country’s richer colors and sprite presence improve character and landscape art, making jungles, reefs, mountains, and the climactic pirate ship appear and feel more like the SNES game than a clone. Backgrounds are also given a nice polish, making them seem natural on current monitors. Music and sound effects follow suit, replacing the Game Boy’s limited sound with true, full-fat versions that can compete with vintage console tunes.

The controls are also smooth and tight, as they are built for gamepads or keyboards rather than the handheld’s two-button configuration, so movement remains quick and responsive. Rolling, jumping, and barrel-blasting all feel immediate, which is exactly what you need when the game opens up and demands precise timing over longer stretches. There are still plenty of secrets to find, bonus rooms, alternate paths, and collectibles that will entice you to return and explore every nook and cranny just like you did in 1995, but this time with a camera and resolution that actually allows you to see what’s going on.

It all delivers as a self-contained Unity package, so you won’t need the original ROM because all of the assets are included in the download. That’s a good convenience, but it opens the door to Nintendo’s proclivity to shut down ventures that leverage its intellectual property. So the Google Drive link may have a limited shelf life, as Kasquez has included a quick how-to video that talks you thru the setup and choices, and folks have already reported that it plays well and the physics are spot on for the console game.
[Source]

The French and British came marching into Raleigh this weekend, although thankfully nobody brought muskets, red coats or plans to retake the colonies. The city has survived British taxation, Sherman marching through North Carolina and generations of arguments over which barbecue sauce constitutes an act of treason.

Focal and Naim instead invaded Audio Advice Live 2026 with something considerably more dangerous to the average audiophile’s bank account: four very different systems spanning custom installation, immersive home audio and some of the most ambitious high-end loudspeakers either company has ever produced.

Now in its fifth year, the Raleigh event packed more than 60 experience rooms and over 10 immersive Dolby Atmos theater systems into the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel from August 7 through 9. More importantly, this is a consumer-facing show where people can actually hear the equipment, ask the people selling it why it costs what it does, and decide whether any of it belongs in their homes.

That matters even more with Audio Advice itself in expansion mode beyond its traditional North Carolina footprint, including its moves into St. Louis, Miami and Las Vegas. The Raleigh show increasingly feels less like an oversized dealer event and more like a very public statement about where the retailer thinks the premium A/V market is headed.

Focal and Naim apparently got the memo.

Rather than bringing one obscenely expensive system and calling it a weekend, the two brands demonstrated products ranging from the $5,597 Focal Omada/Naim CI system all the way to the $210,000 Diva Alta Utopia active wireless flagship.

That is quite a walk across the financial spectrum before you’ve even finished your sweet tea. Better bring a pitcher for Coach Brind’Amour. Rod the Bod just brought the Stanley Cup back to Raleigh, although judging by the man’s conditioning, he probably considers sugar a controlled substance.

Related Reading:

Focal Diva Alta Utopia: $210,000 and Almost Everything Is Inside

The unquestioned headliner was the Focal Diva Alta Utopia, launched on June 17 for $210,000 per pair. It is Focal’s flagship active wireless loudspeaker and arguably one of the more audacious products introduced in high-end audio this year.

Calling it a wireless loudspeaker does not really explain what Focal and Naim have built.

Each 235-pound loudspeaker uses a four-way architecture with seven drivers, including four 8-inch W-cone woofers in a push-push configuration, an M-profile W midrange driver and Focal’s new PRISM tweeter. Each enclosure also contains 600 watts of Naim Class AB amplification, along with the DAC, DSP and streaming electronics required to make the system essentially self-contained.

The two loudspeakers can communicate over Ultra Wideband wireless technology, while Focal supplies a wired high-resolution connection for users who want 24-bit/192 kHz communication between them. HDMI eARC, optical and analog inputs are also included, along with Wi-Fi 6, Ethernet and support for high-resolution streaming.

That is the real point of the Diva Alta Utopia. A conventional Focal Utopia/Naim system at this performance and price level normally involves loudspeakers, amplifiers, digital sources, racks, cabling and enough boxes to make your electrician wonder whether you are opening a small data center.

The Diva Alta Utopia puts almost all of it inside the loudspeakers.

At $210,000, simplicity has apparently become a luxury feature.

Focal Scala Utopia Evo M Makes Its North American Debut

The Focal Scala Utopia Evo M was arguably the more important traditional high-end demonstration because Audio Advice Live marked its North American debut.

Introduced July 2, the three-way bass-reflex floorstander represents a substantial evolution of one of Focal’s best-known Utopia models rather than a cosmetic refresh with a French accent.

The Scala Utopia Evo M incorporates the new PRISM inverted-dome tweeter, an M-profile W-cone midrange derived from Focal’s professional Utopia Main monitors, a redesigned 10.6-inch W-cone woofer with dual ferrite magnets, TMD suspension and Focal’s OPC+ crossover system. The loudspeaker is rated at 92 dB sensitivity with a 27 Hz to 40 kHz frequency response.

Pricing starts at $50,000 per pair for Black High Gloss, Off White High Gloss and Warm Taupe High Gloss. Light Walnut with an Off White front panel and Dark Walnut with a Sepia Brown front panel increase the price to $56,000 per pair.

Focal paired the Scala Utopia Evo M demonstration with Naim’s NSS 333 high-resolution streamer ($10,999), NSC 222 streaming preamplifier ($8,999) and two NAP 350 monoblock power amplifiers ($8,499 each).

Using the $50,000 Scala finish, that makes the demonstrated system $86,996, not including whatever cables and supporting furniture were used in the room. Select one of the wood finishes and the price rises to $92,996.

Nobody walking into this room accidentally bought one after lunch. Or did they?

Focal Mu-so Hekla Brings Dolby Atmos Without the Speaker Farm

Focal and Naim also demonstrated the $3,600 Mu-so Hekla, which might actually have been the most relevant product in the room for a much larger percentage of attendees.

Focal remains adamant that Hekla is not merely a soundbar, and after hearing it previously at CES and AXPONA, we understand why the company keeps making that distinction. It is a single-box immersive audio system built around 15 drivers, 660 watts of amplification and Dolby Atmos, with HDMI eARC and extensive network streaming support.

Hekla also uses Focal’s ADAPT room calibration system, which allows users to enter room dimensions and listening distances through the Focal & Naim app so the system can adjust its presentation for the space. Streaming support includes AirPlay 2, Chromecast, Qobuz, Spotify Connect, TIDAL Connect and UPnP, along with Dolby Atmos music support from compatible services.

You get immersive sound without running speaker wire through the ceiling, which in most homes means one fewer argument and considerably less drywall dust.

And no, Focal still doesn’t want us calling it a soundbar.

Fine. Raleigh has enough arguments about barbecue already.

The $5,297 Focal/Naim System Might Be the Most Important One

At the opposite end of the room from Utopia pricing was a combination that demonstrates why Focal and Naim’s strategy has become much broader than exotic two-channel audio.

The active demonstration paired the Focal Omada Nº3 floorstanding loudspeakers ($3,798/pair) with the Naim CI-Uniti 102 streamer amplifier ($1,799) for a complete system price of $5,597.

The CI-Uniti 102 combines network streaming and amplification in a compact integration-oriented chassis and can be configured using Focal & Naim Manager software with loudspeaker profiles for different installations. It also supports integration platforms including Crestron, Control4, RTI, Savant and Elan.

Focal says the Omada range is offered in the United States through participating ProSource dealers, which includes Audio Advice. Also on display in Raleigh were the Omada Nº1 ($1,398/pair), Omada Nº4 ($4,598/pair), Omada Center ($699) and matching Center Stand ($169), along with Naim’s CI-NAP 101 mono amplifier ($1,999) and CI-NAP 108 eight-channel power amplifier ($3,499).

That demonstration may lack the gravitational pull of a $210,000 pair of Utopias, but strategically it matters. Focal and Naim clearly want to be involved in more than dedicated audiophile rooms; they also want a larger piece of the integrated whole-home, media-room and custom-installation market. Naim specifically positions its CI range as the electronics counterpart to Focal’s integrated loudspeaker products.

The Bottom Line

What made Focal and Naim’s Audio Advice Live 2026 presentation work was not simply the price of the Diva Alta Utopia or the North American debut of the Scala Utopia Evo M. It was the enormous distance between those products and the $5,597 Omada/CI system sitting elsewhere in the same demonstration portfolio.

That is also why Audio Advice Live matters.

You could walk from a compact Naim-powered Focal system that a reasonably committed enthusiast might actually purchase, to Hekla’s single-box Dolby Atmos solution, to an $86,996 Scala Utopia Evo M system, and finally to a $210,000 pair of wireless active loudspeakers. More importantly, you could hear all of them rather than stare at photographs while someone explained that the magic really starts after 300 hours of break-in.

Focal and Naim brought four very different answers to the same question: how much equipment do you really want between yourself and the music?

In Raleigh, the answer ranged from almost none to please call my family office.

For more information: focal.com

Related Reading:

Anthropic’s chatbot can be very vocal, if you want it to be.

How to use Claude voice

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget

Voice mode is available through the Claude mobile (Android and iOS) and desktop apps, as well as through the web. Anthropic says the feature works best from your phone.

To use voice mode on mobile:

1. Open the Claude app.

2. Tap the black waveform icon in the lower right corner of the interface (not the microphone icon right next to it).

3. Grant the app microphone permissions if necessary.

4. Start talking. Claude will generate a response once you finish a prompt.

5. Claude will remain in voice mode until you tap Stop.

One thing to keep in mind is Claude’s voice mode uses a “turn-based” architecture, meaning the chatbot will listen to you before it generates a response. This is different from ChatGPT’s voice mode, which OpenAI recently updated to use a “duplex” architecture. That system gives its GPT-Live models the ability to simultaneously process speech and generate outputs.

In practice, that means voice mode sometimes confuses a brief pause for the end of a question or prompt. For that reason, Anthropic recommends asking multi-part questions one at a time instead of all at once.

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How to select different models

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget

You can change the model Claude will use to generate a response from the model picker at the bottom of the interface. See below for a list of available models, followed by a short description from Anthropic.

• Haiku: Fastest for quick answers

• Sonnet: Most efficient for everyday tasks

• Opus: For complex tasks. Only available to paid accounts.

How to use your connected apps

Like with text chat, voice mode can access apps and services you’ve connected to Claude, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Slack. For example, you can ask Claude to summarize your recent emails. Simply tell Claude the app you want it to use as part of a prompt. If you’re accessing a third-party app for the first time, you will need to grant Claude permission to use it.

How to change Claude’s voice and language

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget

Do you need a paid account to use Claude Voice?

Igor Bonifacic for Engadget

Despite its ferocious popularity, people still tend to swear off anime entirely. These are usually the people whose reference of the medium pertains to a certain stereotype or to the few seconds of anime they once saw on a computer somewhere in the early 2000s.

But Japan has been producing some of the most emotionally resonant and visually audacious storytelling in contemporary media for half a century, and a great deal of it looks nothing at all like the stereotype it holds.

So here’s a case for the uninitiated. Start with self-contained films you can knock out in a single evening before graduating to series worth committing wholly to. The common thread, if you’re keeping score, is that not one of these requires you to know anything about anime, or Japan for that matter, going in.

Note that many of these picks are available in both the original Japanese audio with subtitles or as “dubs” with dialog dubbed by English voice actors. Dive in however you’d like.

Solo Leveling

Between reviewing tech for a living and spending most of my day in front of a screen, free time is a luxury. Yet almost every evening, I somehow find myself queueing up for two or three ranked Valorant games. My peak rank is Ascendant 1, and while I’m far from going pro, competitive FPS titles are where I put hundreds of hours every year.

For the longest time, my trusty Logitech G502 X Plus LIGHTSPEED was always waiting on my desk. It wasn’t the lightest mouse around, but it felt dependable. I’d flirt with lightweight esports mice now and then, only to come crawling back a few days later. Most of them either felt too hollow, too small, or simply lacked the reassuring heft I had grown accustomed to. Then the Logitech PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE showed up, and for the first time, my G502 has been gathering dust.

Lightweight doesn’t have to feel… light

At around 61 grams, the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE couldn’t be more different from the G502. On paper, it sounds like exactly the kind of ultralight mouse I’d normally abandon after a week. Instead, it struck a balance I didn’t know I was looking for.

The shape fits naturally in my hand, making long Valorant sessions surprisingly comfortable, while the weight feels almost tailor-made for my low-DPI playstyle. Wide arm movements, quick flicks, and frequent mouse lifts require very little effort, but the mouse never feels flimsy or toy-like. There’s a surprising solidity to the chassis that makes it feel premium, even though it’s one of the lightest mice I’ve used. That’s probably the biggest reason it stuck around. It finally delivered the speed benefits of an ultralight mouse without making me feel like I was holding an empty plastic shell.

HITS made me relearn how to click

However, as much as I appreciate the weight and shape, they’re not why this mouse deserves attention. That credit goes to Logitech’s Haptic Inductive Trigger System, or HITS.

If there’s one comparison that immediately clicked in my head, it was Hall Effect keyboards like the Wooting. Just as those keyboards let gamers adjust actuation points and use features like Rapid Trigger, HITS applies the same philosophy to mouse buttons. Instead of relying on traditional mechanical or optical switches, the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE continuously tracks button movement using inductive sensing and recreates the click using haptic feedback. The actuation point, reset point, and even the strength of the tactile feedback can all be adjusted through software.

The first time I switched the mouse off, I genuinely thought something had broken. The buttons suddenly felt lifeless, with almost no tactile click to speak of. Turn it back on, though, and the haptics instantly trick your brain into believing there’s a physical switch underneath.

It’s weird. It’s clever. And for the first couple of days, it’s surprisingly difficult to trust.

Years of muscle memory had taught my fingers exactly how a mechanical switch should feel. HITS delivers a softer, more refined tactile pulse instead. It doesn’t try to imitate a traditional click perfectly, and honestly, I’m glad it doesn’t. It ends up creating its own identity rather than pretending to be something else.

Of course, the best part is that there’s plenty of customizability underneath too. While the Logitech G Hub isn’t the most lightweight application out there, I will give credit to it for seamlessly transitioning my profile from the G502 to the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE. That said, since it’s a new mouse in itself, I didn’t find my ideal settings immediately. After almost every ranked session, I’d tweak the actuation point by a notch, lower the haptic strength, play a few more matches, then change it all over again the next evening. It became part of my routine.

Eventually, I landed on a setup that felt completely natural. That’s when it hit me. We’ve spent years obsessing over DPI, polling rates, and sensor performance, yet the mouse click itself has remained surprisingly primitive. HITS finally changes that. Instead of adapting to a fixed switch, I was gradually shaping the mouse around the way I play.

No, it didn’t magically make me Radiant

Whenever new gaming hardware pushes input technology forward, the internet inevitably starts arguing about whether it’s “cheating.” We’ve seen it with Rapid Trigger keyboards, Snap Tap, SOCD discussions, and now HITS. Personally, I think that misses the point.

The PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE didn’t suddenly improve my aim or carry me through Ascendant lobbies. It didn’t start winning my Sheriff duels or fix my questionable decision-making when I inevitably dry peek an Operator. What it did change was how connected I felt to every click. Knowing I could fine-tune the actuation point instead of living with a fixed mechanical switch made the mouse feel uniquely mine. It wasn’t about finding an unfair advantage. It was about removing one more layer between my hand and what happened on screen.

The mouse that finally retired my G502

After more than a month of playing ranked Valorant almost every day, I can confidently say the PRO X2 SUPERSTRIKE is the first lightweight gaming mouse that has permanently replaced my G502 X Plus LIGHTSPEED. Not because it’s lighter. Not because it’s faster. And not because HITS suddenly transformed me into a better player.

It’s because, for the first time, I felt like the mouse adapted to me instead of the other way around. Once I stopped thinking about the technology and simply enjoyed playing, going back to a traditional mechanical switch started to feel strangely limiting. Mechanical switches aren’t disappearing anytime soon, and plenty of gamers will still prefer that familiar tactile snap. But after living with HITS for over a month, I’m convinced Logitech has stumbled onto something genuinely exciting.

It’s been a long time since a gaming mouse made me rethink something as fundamental as clicking. HITS did exactly that, and now every time I pick up a traditional mouse, a tiny part of me wonders why its clicks are still stuck in the past.

You’ve almost certainly heard of the Xerox Alto, the machine that pioneered the desktop-mouse-keyboard interface and inspired Steve Jobs to produce the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers. It wasn’t just having a desktop, though– so much of our modern computing paradigm was invented on these machines. Given that, why aren’t we all using Xerox clones instead of Apples or PCs descended from the IBM compatibles? [Ctrl+Alt+Fail] has a video that answers the question: whatever happened to the computer of tomorrow, anyway?

It goes through the whole story of the Alto, from its introduction at Xerox PARC in the 1970s to its demise. At the introduction, the engineers showed of the What You See Is What You Get word processor, networked the machines together to show off e-mail and that anyone could use the office laser printer. It all seems very familiar now, but at the time, it was a revolution. An expensive one. The monitor sitting on the desk wasn’t the computer, after all: that was a large filing-cabinet sized desk sitting underneath. Only about 2000 were ever built, so what happened?

It wasn’t just that the first units cost twelve grand USD to build in 1973 money– about 90 large today by CPI, or for the gold bugs that’s 96 oz or 2.7 kg. It wasn’t worth its weight in gold, but it was close. Still, that wasn’t the problem: later models would be cheaper. The problem was that Xerox refused to sell the thing in the 70s. They saw the potential of a paperless office, and it scared them. Sure, they could sell a computer, once. They wouldn’t get a monthly service fee, nor the cost of the toner, drums and other consumables the Alto wouldn’t need. So they sat on it, and let others like Steve Jobs who didn’t have an existing business empire to lose take their ideas and run with them.

It seems shortsighted, but Xerox had already lost millions on big iron computing around the same time the Alto came along, and every business decision after that was carefully weighed on its projected revenue. Compared to a copier that printed money for Xerox as surely as it printed paper, the Alto just didn’t look like it could pay for itself. It looked likely to lose them a lot of money, which, in fact the adoption of the personal computer ultimately did. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback and say these developments were inevitable and Xerox should have run out in front, but [Ctrl+Alt+Fail] does a good job of explaining the logic from the Xerox boards’ point of view, which makes the video very much worth a watch.

If you can’t get enough Alto, we can also point you to what it takes to restore one, what almost killed one, and why you shouldn’t mine bitcoin with one.

• Synology lowers NAS entry costs without removing future hardware upgrade flexibility
• Four new NAS models arrive with expandable memory and familiar hardware
• Lower default memory creates cheaper starting prices across the new lineup

Synology has introduced the DiskStation neo+ Series, a new lineup built to give buyers more flexibility over cost and performance from the outset.

The series includes four models — the DS1825neo+, the DS1525neo+, the DS925neo+, and the DS725neo+ — each sharing hardware with existing Plus units.