Connect with us
DAPA Banner
DAPA Coin
DAPA
COIN PAYMENT ASSET
PRIVACY · BLOCKDAG · HOMOMORPHIC ENCRYPTION · RUST
ElGamal Encrypted MINE DAPA
🚫 GENESIS SOLD OUT
DAPAPAY COMING

Tech

Who gives a Zuck? Seattle does, apparently: Meta CEO’s giant yacht brings gawkers to Lake Union

Published

on

Two people in a dinghy get a c loser look at Launchpad, the superyacht docked in Seattle on Lake Union on Wednesday. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

People saw it on Facebook. And they saw it on Instagram. But many had to come see it up close and in person.

Social media scrollers turned into real-life gawkers on Wednesday as a steady stream of onlookers paused along the western shore of Seattle’s Lake Union to take in Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s superyacht.

No one knew why the $300 million, 387-foot Launchpad was in Seattle. Some wished it wasn’t. Others were pretty thrilled to get a glimpse of the gleaming blue and white vessel, backed into a giant slip along Westlake Avenue North.

Seattle boat salesman Tony Witek grabs a selfie with Mark Zuckerberg’s superyacht in the background. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

“I’ve been selling boats here in Seattle on Lake Union for 35 years, and I believe this to be the biggest boat I think I’ve ever seen on the lake,” Tony Witek told GeekWire.

The biggest boat Witek has ever sold was about 90 feet long. He called Zuckerberg’s Dutch-built yacht a “personal cruise ship.” Asked how many boats he’d have to sell to afford one like Zuck’s, Witek laughed.

@media (max-width: 600px) {
aside.callout { float:none !important; max-width:100% !important; margin-left:0 !important; margin-right:0 !important; }
aside.callout .callout-img { display:none !important; }
}

“I think you’d only have to sell this one, and then you could easily go into retirement,” he said.

Advertisement

On a blue-sky May day at lunchtime, the bike and pedestrian trail along the lake was especially busy, and slowed to a pinch point as people stopped to stare, take selfies, FaceTime friends or just ask, “Whose boat is that?”

On the water, people got even closer in dinghies and kayaks — and were warned to stay back by a private security guard from land. A stand-up paddleboarder floated nearby to take pictures. The Argosy Cruises tour boat slowed during a pass by the yacht’s bow. Two electric rental boats did circles as passengers looked up at the towering Launchpad.

Walkers, runners, bikers and others pause and pass by the Launchpad superyacht as seen from the trail along Lake Union. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

The vessel arrived in Seattle Tuesday night, drawing a similar crowd as it passed through the Ballard Locks. The timing was called less than ideal by some, as Meta cut nearly 1,400 jobs in Washington state earlier in the day.

“The timing of it seems a little distasteful,” said Tim Peterson of Renton. “Probably should have kept it out there in the Sound a little bit longer.”

Peterson said he can’t afford a boat of his own and said he’d be lucky to be able to get a dinghy. He’s not on Facebook, but he is on Meta-owned Instagram.

Advertisement

“I helped pay for it a little bit,” he laughed. “I guess my taxes helped pay for it as well,” he added, lamenting the yacht as a glaring example of excess while many people lack food, housing and healthcare.

“If people have that, then by all means, get you a big old boat,” Peterson said.

A U-Haul box truck is unloaded by workers from the Launchpad superyacht moored on Lake Union on Wednesday. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

The yacht drew several employees from Meta’s nearby South Lake Union offices. Two engineers said it was interesting to get a sense of the scale of the ship, especially one owned by the head of their company.

“That’s what it’s like to work for a conglomerate,” one of the workers said. The two didn’t want to give their names for fear of being fired.

Steven Redpath, a former Boeing worker, said he used to come to Lake Union to see the aerospace company’s superyacht, Daedalus. The floating corporate entertainment venue was sold for approximately $13 million in 2020.

Advertisement

“Boeing has cleaned up their corporate image and got rid of the yacht,” said Redpath, who took a detour on his bike ride to get a glimpse of Launchpad.

“We bend over backwards for public transportation. We are always looking for solutions to the homeless crisis, and that doesn’t help with either one,” he said, pointing at the yacht. “I think capitalism is letting us down. This is not what our founding fathers were intending to do. This is run amok.”

A float plane takes off from Lake Union above the Launchpad superyacht. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Gurneet Takhar, an estate planning attorney in Seattle who spends her time analyzing the money moves of millionaires and billionaires, called the yacht “an interesting asset to own.”

A man piloting a dinghy nearby said he owned a boat on the lake and cruised over to get some size perspective, joking about how many of his boats would fit in the yacht. Another man made a comment about taxes while pointing out the yacht’s Marshall Islands flag, a common registry for large yachts.

And another onlooker, a real estate broker reflecting on the effect of tech layoffs on Seattle and the housing market, called the boat “ugly.”

Advertisement

Deckhands from the yacht could be seen unloading cardboard boxes from a U-Haul box truck parked on the dock. It was tough to tell what was in the boxes — supplies for the stay in Seattle, perhaps. Other workers, including one wiping down parts of the boat, could be seen on decks above.

There was no sign of Zuckerberg.

Ava Pappas shoots a video talking about the big boat behind her on Wednesday in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Ava Pappas stopped by after seeing a picture of the yacht in her aunt’s Instagram story.

Pappas leads a Seattle run club called Cool Down Running that runs from the Center for Wooden Boats in South Lake Union up to the Fremont Bridge and back on Wednesday nights.

She planned to make a stop with the group mid-run.

Advertisement

“It’s insane. Most people don’t understand the caliber of this megayacht,” Pappas said. “It’s definitely just a treat to be able to see it in person. It’s a beautiful boat, and I love just kind of looking at it in awe.”

Check out more GeekWire images:

A kayaker who owns a boat nearby said he cruised over to get a look at the superyacht on lake Union. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
A worker scrubs part of the superyacht while it’s docked on Lake Union on Wednesday. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
A sailboat in a neighboring marina is dwarfed by Launchpad. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
A paddleboarder floats near Launchpad taking close-up photos. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Source link

Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

Tech

Convoy co-founder Dan Lewis exits Microsoft to launch stealth startup aiming to reinvent AI supply chain

Published

on

Dan Lewis, co-founder and former CEO of Convoy, is launching a stealth AI startup after leaving Microsoft. (GeekWire File Photo)

Dan Lewis, co-founder and former CEO of the online freight marketplace Convoy, has left Microsoft to start a new company focused on one of the most expensive problems in artificial intelligence: the cost of running AI models.

The stealth startup is building “the supply chain for intelligence,” a computing platform designed to run AI models more efficiently, according to a recent update to Lewis’ LinkedIn profile. He acknowledged the new venture this week in response to a message from GeekWire but said it was too early to share details. 

It’s a new chapter for an entrepreneur who led Seattle-based Convoy from startup to nearly $4 billion in value before it shut down in 2023 amid a prolonged freight recession that battered the trucking industry. Flexport acquired Convoy’s technology, and Lewis joined as a technical advisor.

Lewis went to Microsoft in February 2025 as a chief product officer focused on enterprise AI, later rising to corporate vice president, according to his LinkedIn profile. He left this spring to launch the new venture, which his profile says he co-founded in May. 

In his LinkedIn description, Lewis elaborated on the “supply chain for intelligence” concept, saying the startup is building a platform that spans data centers, networking, computer chips, and the software that routes AI requests in real time. The focus is inference — running AI models versus training them — to improve speed and response time for heavy workloads. 

Advertisement

“Our mission is to be the best stewards of power to make AI efficient, abundant, and affordable for this next era,” the description concludes.

@media (max-width: 600px) {
aside.callout { float:none !important; max-width:100% !important; margin-left:0 !important; margin-right:0 !important; }
aside.callout .callout-img { display:none !important; }
}

It’s the latest chapter in a career that has blended AI, logistics, and efficiency. Lewis studied cognitive science at Yale, then was an executive at Wavii, a Seattle machine-learning startup that Google acquired in 2013, and later built AI-driven product personalization at Amazon. 

At Convoy, he and his colleagues built a digital marketplace that used machine learning to match truckers with shippers, set pricing, and fill empty trucks that would otherwise drive back without a load. A big part of the goal, as the company saw it, was reducing the waste and carbon emissions of trucks running empty — “deadhead” miles, as they’re known. 

At Microsoft, he worked on enterprise AI, helping companies build and run AI agents and workflows, and started an internal program called Camp AIR to accelerate AI-first teams.  

Advertisement

For now, details such as the name of the new startup and funding haven’t been confirmed. Lewis lists himself as CEO and co-founder, indicating that he’s not leading the company alone. Stay tuned for more on this one in the months ahead. 

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

New Super PAC Aims to Rally Tech Workers to Help Limit AI: ‘the Guardrails Alliance’

Published

on

“A grassroots movement is forming among everyday tech workers who are demanding their companies develop and deploy AI responsibly,” reports TechCrunch.

Hoping to leverage that discontent is a new super PAC called the Guardrails Alliance. The New York Times reports that it launched Thursday with backers that included tech employees and labor unions:

Guardrails positions itself as a populist political movement that runs on small donations from people in the trenches of the AI boom. The PAC has about $5 million at its disposal today and planGuardrails will buy ads to support Alex Bores, a New York congressional candidate who became Leading the Future’s first target and is running in the primaries next week. s to raise $15 million this cycle — small potatoes compared to deep-pocketed adversaries like Leading the Future, which has more than $100 million from tech leaders like OpenAI president Greg Brockman…

“This is not about matching [Leading the Future] dollar for dollar,” [said the super PAC’s co-founder, political operative Shaunna Thomas]. “What this vehicle is meant to do is be a political home for people who are concerned about the way the anti-regulation AI tech sector is trying to manipulate elections.”
Meanwhile a former Netflix and Warner Bros. executive has launched the Alliance for Responsible Innovation in the Arts & Media, reports Variety, calling it an AI-focused content coalition that says it’s dedicated to supporting “responsible and sustainable AI innovation and the importance of human creativity.”
The initial members of the coalition, announced Monday, include Disney, the New York Times, Adobe, Condé Nast, the Financial Times, ITV, Advance, BBC, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, U.K. publisher Reach and Wiley. Many of the coalition’s members have either struck deals with AI companies or are developing their own AI tools… The group plans to argue for legal and policy guardrails around AI’s usage, with its funding directed towards analyses, tools and services focused on advancing those initiatives…

Advertisement

One of the group’s launch advisers is Damian Collins, OBE, who previously served as the U.K. Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology under prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. “Using AI to break the law can never be an acceptable excuse,” he said in a statement. “Laws around personal safety, intellectual property and financial crime still apply in the age of AI. This is why ARIAM has been created and why I’m proud to working with this necessary initiative.”

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

BMPS 2026 Grand Finals Day 2 Recap: Gods Reign’s Comeback Shakes Up the Leaderboard

Published

on

If Day 1 of the BMPS 2026 Grand Finals belonged to Divine Gaming, Day 2 was all about Victoris Sumus and GodsReign. Both teams consistently found themselves in the late game across multiple matches and looked like one of the most complete squads on the battlefield. At the same time, teams like GodLike Esports mounted impressive comebacks, while iQOO SouL finally showed signs of life after a disastrous opening day. Here’s everything that happened on Day 2 of the BMPS 2026 Grand Finals.

Victoris Sumus Emerges as a Serious Title Contender

The biggest story of the day was undoubtedly Victoris Sumus. The squad started strong in the opening Rondo match and eventually secured a crucial chicken dinner after outlasting GodLike Esports in the final fight. That momentum continued throughout the day as they repeatedly put themselves in winning positions.

Match 2 saw Victoris Sumus pull off one of the most surprising endgames of the tournament. Despite being forced to rotate into the zone under pressure from GodLike, the team somehow survived without losing a player. Moments later, they eliminated GodLike and secured another chicken dinner. Even when they weren’t winning matches, Victoris Sumus remained a constant threat. Their positioning, rotations, and ability to capitalize on mistakes made them one of the most dangerous teams on the server.

BMPS Miramar match

After spending most of Day 1 near the bottom of the standings, iQOO SouL desperately needed a response. Unfortunately, the day didn’t start well. Genesis Esports eliminated SouL in the opening match, exposing the same coordination issues that had haunted the team throughout Day 1. Match 2 wasn’t much better, as TAG stunned the crowd by wiping SouL near Pochinki.

However, things finally clicked during the Miramar games. SouL looked far more coordinated, won several crucial engagements, and secured their first chicken dinner of the tournament in Match 5. The team followed that up with another solid performance in the final game, highlighted by a clutch play from Legit that helped eliminate GodLike during the closing stages. It wasn’t a perfect day, but it was exactly the kind of comeback SouL fans had been hoping for.

Advertisement

GodLike Esports entered Day 2 with plenty of ground to make up and looked significantly sharper throughout the day. The team consistently found itself in favorable late-game positions and finally converted one of those opportunities into a chicken dinner during Match 3. Their aggressive pushes and grenade usage were among the best we’ve seen so far in Jaipur. While they narrowly missed out on a few additional wins, GodLike’s Day 2 performance firmly placed them back into contention heading into the final day.

TAG Continues to Entertain, But Results Remain Elusive

No team generated more crowd reactions than Team Aryan x TMG. Whether it was aggressive early-game pushes, risky compound crashes, or unconventional strategies, TAG constantly found themselves in the middle of the action.

The team showed flashes of brilliance, including a memorable win over SouL and an impressive shotgun push against Genesis. Unfortunately, their aggressive playstyle often backfired, preventing them from converting strong starts into meaningful points. TAG remains one of the most entertaining teams to watch, but they’ll need a much cleaner Day 3 to climb the leaderboard.

God’s Reign Pulls Off the Biggest Comeback of the Day

While much of the attention was on Victoris Sumus, SouL, and GodLike, Gods Reign quietly put together one of the most impressive comeback stories of the tournament. After spending much of the event in the lower half of the standings, GDR consistently picked up crucial finish points throughout Day 2. Their biggest moment came in the final Miramar match, where they secured 19 points and a chicken dinner to cap off the day in style.

That massive haul propelled them all the way to second place in the overall standings, turning them from an outside contender into a genuine title threat heading into the final day. Check out the full standings after day 2 of the BMPS Grand Finals here.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

How Millions of Digital Home Devices Are Secretly Powering Cyberattacks

Published

on

The Wall Street Journal reports on internet-connected devices — and how every year millions of them “can contain a secret digital backdoor that opens up access to your home internet, so that anyone… can surf the web as if they were you.” (And this is especially true for “knockoffs that you buy online”…)

In a video report this week they tested two digital picture frames from Amazon and three streaming devices from Walmart “because we heard that they often ship with backdoor software used in cyberattacks. Security experts believe manufacturers are being paid to add this malware, but many people also get tricked into downloading the software onto their phones or computers… Within minutes of turning the devices on, there was a surge of internet traffic… Visits to gambling, porn, cryptocurrency and loads of other sketchy web sites started pouring in from users around the world.” (And remote visitors also tried to access Outlook and Gmail accounts…)

Residential proxy companies even rent out access to “tens of millions of home networks around the world,” according to the report. “But the problem is actually worse than that. Hackers figured out a way to seize control of these backdoors, and they started taking over these residential networks. Last month authorities arrested a 23-year-old Ottawa man, saying he’d taken control of more than a million devices to launch some of the largest cyberattacks anyone had ever seen..”

After a couple months the Journal’s reporter collected logs of all the traffic, and sent it to an investigator at Comcast, who said both were conducting DDoS attacks. But estimate for the number of infected devices are as low as tens of millions or as high 500 million-plus. “We’ve seen nation state attacks launched through these kind of endpoints, which means your device sitting in your house is part of a nation state attack against another nation state… We’ve seen ad fraud, we’ve seen ticket scalping, we’ve seen financial fraud.”

Advertisement

But more importantly, “We have seen some of the largest computer attacks — meaning computers attacking other computers at human request — ever recorded in our digital history in the last several months.” At cybersecurity conferences, some are warning “there are much larger ones on the horizon if we don’t get a hold of this problem.”

The company making the picture frame “couldn’t be reached for comment,” while Amazon said it’s been out of stock since last year. Both Amazon and Walmart said they take action when they confirm malware on a third-party product.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

Scientists made espresso with sound instead of heat, and most drinkers couldn’t tell the difference

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

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%.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Wooting 60HE v2: Peak Keyboard Perfection

Published

on

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.

Advertisement

Peak Repairability

Image may contain Computer Hardware Electronics Hardware Stereo and Amplifier

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.

Advertisement

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.

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

BMPS 2026 Grand Finals Day 3 Schedule & Format

Published

on

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

Rank Team WWCD Finish Points Position Points Total Points
1 DIVINE 2 83 47 130
2 GDR 1 65 28 93
3 VS 2 55 36 91
4 GODL 1 58 32 90
5 GENS 0 63 27 90
6 iQOOORGE 2 40 38 78
7 NBE 1 52 25 77
8 VASISTA 1 52 24 76
9 iQOOSOUL 1 46 23 69
10 iQOO8BIT 0 45 24 69
11 iQOOxTT 0 49 19 68
12 iQOORNTX 0 47 15 62
13 7GODS 1 35 20 55
14 iQOOxOG 0 37 17 54
15 TAG 0 45 2 47
16 MYTH 0 33 7 40

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

Forza Horizon 6 on a Wheel Finally Makes Sense Thanks to One Pro WRC Driver

Published

on

Forza Horizon 6 Pro WRC Driver Racing Sim
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.


Lenovo Legion Go S – 2025 – Mobile Gaming Console – AMD Radeon graphics – 8″ PureSight IPS Display…
  • ALL GAMES, ALL PLACES, ALL YOURS – Get ready to game on the 8″ 120Hz Lenovo PureSight display and launch any title using Legion Space. The AMD Ryzen…
  • SEE EVERY DETAIL – Make every scene pop with 500 nits of stunning brightness and 100% sRGB color accuracy. And with 10-point touch support, your…
  • PLAY YOUR WAY – Play hundreds of high-quality PC games with your complimentary 3 months of PC Game Pass and EA Play. With new games added all the…


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.

Forza Horizon 6 Pro WRC Driver Racing Sim
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.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Tech

Hackers hijacked Brazil’s emergency alert system and sent ‘misanthropy’ to millions of phones

Published

on

TL;DR

Brazil’s civil defense alert system was hacked, sending fake extreme alerts with the word “misantropi4” to millions of phones before the platform was shut down.

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

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.

Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answer and Help for June 21 #840- CNET

Published

on

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

Advertisement

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!

Advertisement

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

completed NYT Strands puzzle for June 21, 2026

The completed NYT Strands puzzle for June 21, 2026.

NYT/Screenshot by CNET

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement

Source link

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2025