In April, Microsoft will be rolling out a full-screen “Xbox mode” to all Windows 11 PCs, including laptops, desktops, and tablets. The move follows last week’s confirmation of its next-generation Xbox console, known internally as Project Helix, which will be capable of running both Xbox titles and PC games. The Verge reports: Technically, you’ve been able to try the Xbox Full Screen Experience (FSE) in preview since November 2025, if you were part of both the Windows Insider and Xbox Insider Programs. But it needed work, as well as a better name. When Microsoft originally shipped it on the Asus-designed Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X handhelds, we were clear: it didn’t meaningfully turn a PC experience into an easy-to-use Xbox one. But if Microsoft is putting its full weight behind PC as the future of Xbox gaming, perhaps that will change change.

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Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox isn’t an Xbox. Or it isn’t just an Xbox, anyway: While the rumored console will undoubtedly play Xbox games, “Project Helix,” as it’s codenamed, will reportedly also play PC titles. That’s huge news for gamers who usually have to decide whether to buy a console for the convenience, or a PC for the potential.

‘Xbox mode’ lets you access games on your PC with a controller

But while Project Helix is still a ways off (we won’t see it until 2027, at least), Microsoft is already doubling down on merging its two major gaming platforms. As reported by PCMag, Microsoft is giving PC gamers access to the Xbox Full Screen Experience, and rebranding it “Xbox mode.” Starting next month, every Windows 11 PC will be able to use Xbox mode—including laptops, desktops, and tablets. That means that at some point in April, your PC will kind of be an Xbox. And next year, the reverse will be true as well. (Well, assuming you buy the new Xbox, that is.)

PC gamers are likely quite comfortable already with accessing their games in their existing setups, so offering an “Xbox mode” may come across as a bit odd. The idea behind it, however, is to make your game library easier to access using a controller. It’s a bit more of a console experience in that way, which could make it a little easier to access your games on a PC connected to your TV. If you’re in Xbox mode, you can simply control the interface with your controller, rather than deal with a mouse and keyboard setup from the couch.

The feature has been in testing since last year

This won’t be a brand new feature for some Windows 11 users. Microsoft has been testing Xbox mode on PC thorough the Windows Insiders program since November. If you enroll your PC in the Insider program, you’re able to try out features before Microsoft officially launches them—so long as you’re okay taking on the risks of bugs and instability.

To that point, Xbox mode might still need some polishing. Certainly that was the case on mobile. In Michelle Ehrhardt’s review of the ROG Xbox Ally, she found the Xbox Full Screen Experience underbaked, ugly, and filled with ads. While she thought the experience should be Microsoft’s answer to SteamOS, in execution, it was the “the worst thing about this handheld.” We’ll have to see next month whether things have improved for the PC.

Researchers say they have uncovered a takedown-resistant botnet of 14,000 routers and other network devices—primarily made by Asus—that have been conscripted into a proxy network that anonymously carries traffic used for cybercrime.

The malware—dubbed KadNap—takes hold by exploiting vulnerabilities that have gone unpatched by their owners, Chris Formosa, a researcher at security firm Lumen’s Black Lotus Labs, told Ars. The high concentration of Asus routers is likely due to botnet operators acquiring a reliable exploit for vulnerabilities affecting those models. He said it’s unlikely that the attackers are using any zero-days in the operation.

A botnet that stands out among others

The number of infected routers averages about 14,000 per day, up from 10,000 last August, when Black Lotus discovered the botnet. Compromised devices are overwhelmingly located in the US, with smaller populations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Russia. One of the most salient features of KadNap is a sophisticated peer-to-peer design based on Kademlia, a network structure that uses distributed hash tables to conceal the IP addresses of command-and-control servers. The design makes the botnet resistant to detection and takedowns through traditional methods.

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Grammarly has disabled its Expert Review feature after backlash from writers whose names were used to present AI-generated feedback without their permission. Superhuman (formerly Grammarly) CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will disable Expert Review while they “reimagine” the feature: Back in August, we launched a Grammarly agent called Expert Review. The agent draws on publicly available information from third-party LLMs to surface writing suggestions inspired by the published work of influential voices.

Over the past week, we received valid critical feedback from experts who are concerned that the agent misrepresented their voices. This kind of scrutiny improves our products, and we take it seriously. As context, the agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans. We hear the feedback and recognize we fell short on this. I want to apologize and acknowledge that we’ll rethink our approach going forward.

After careful consideration, we have decided to disable Expert Review while we reimagine the feature to make it more useful for users, while giving experts real control over how they want to be represented — or not represented at all.

We deeply believe in our mission to solve the “last mile of AI” by bringing AI directly to where people work, and we see this as a significant opportunity for experts. For millions of users, Grammarly is a trusted writing sidekick — ever-present in every application, ready to help. We’re opening up this platform so anyone can build agents that work like Grammarly — expanding from one sidekick to a whole team. Imagine your professor sharpening your essay, your sales leader reshaping a customer pitch, a thoughtful critic challenging your arguments, or a leading expert elevating your proposal. For experts, this is a chance to build that same ubiquitous bond with users, much like Grammarly has. But in this world, experts choose to participate, shape how their knowledge is represented, and control their business model. That future excites me, and I hope to build it with experts who want to develop it alongside us.

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The key to working at a place like Ars Technica is solid news judgment. I’m talking about the kind of news judgment that knows whether a pet peeve is merely a pet peeve or whether it is, instead, a meaningful example of the Ways that Technology is Changing our World.

The difference between the two is one of degree: A pet peeve may drive me nuts but does not appear to impact anyone else. A Ways that Technology is Changing our World story must be about something that drives a lot of people nuts.

“But where is the threshold?” I hear you asking plaintively. “It’s extremely important that I know when something crosses the line from pet peeve to important, chin-stroking journalism topic!”

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When Asus and Microsoft launched the ROG Xbox Ally X last summer, it came with a bespoke controller-driven full-screen interface running on top of Windows 11. The handheld was still running Windows under the hood, and you could bring up the typical Windows desktop any time, but it defaulted to the full-screen gaming UI.

Then called either the “Xbox Experience for Handheld” or the “Xbox Full-Screen Experience (FSE)” depending on who you asked and when, Microsoft said it would be available on all Windows PCs at some point in 2026. That point has apparently arrived: Microsoft announced this week at the Game Developers Conference that other Windows 11 PCs “in select markets” would be getting what’s now being called “Xbox mode” starting in April.

Under the hood, a PC running in Xbox mode is still running regular-old Windows, with the same capabilities as any other PC. But there are system services and UI elements (like the standard Start menu and taskbar) that don’t launch when the system is in Xbox mode, something Microsoft claims can save a gigabyte or two of RAM while also allowing systems to use less energy. Users can return to Windows’ traditional desktop mode whenever they want, though.

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An advocacy group said its study of 10 artificial intelligence chatbots found that most of them gave at least some help to users planning violent attacks and that nearly all failed to discourage users from violence. Several chatbot makers say they have made changes to improve safety since the tests were conducted between November and December.

Of the 10 chatbots, “Character.AI was uniquely unsafe,” said the report published today by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which conducted research in collaboration with CNN reporters. Character.AI “encouraged users to carry out violent attacks,” with specific suggestions to “use a gun” on a health insurance CEO and to physically assault a politician, the CCDH wrote.

“No other chatbot tested explicitly encouraged violence in this way, even when providing practical assistance in planning a violent attack,” the report said.

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Superhuman has taken its writing assistant Grammarly on quite the merry-go-round ride regarding its approach to AI tools. In August, the company launched a feature called Expert Review that would offer feedback on your writing, offering AI-generated feedback that would appear to come from a famous writer or academic of note. These recreations were based on “publicly available information from third-party LLMs,” which sounds a lot like web crawlers of dubious legality were involved. 

The suggested experts would be based on the subject matter and could be anyone from great scientific minds to bestselling fiction authors to your friendly neighborhood tech bloggers. Living or dead, these writers’ names appeared on Grammarly without their permission or knowledge. “References to experts in this product are for informational purposes only and do not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities,” the company hedged in a disclaimer on the service. 

As one might imagine, once people took notice, a large number of the living contingent of those writers were none too pleased with Grammarly and Superhuman. The company initially attempted to address the complaints by allowing writers to opt out of the platform. Which I’m sure was a big relief to the deceased contingent and to those living ones who aren’t closely following AI news and might still not know they were being cited by the tool. 

Today, Superhuman CEO Shishir Mehrotra wrote in a LinkedIn post that the company will disable Expert Review while it reassesses the feature. “The agent was designed to help users discover influential perspectives and scholarship relevant to their work, while also providing meaningful ways for experts to build deeper relationships with their fans,” he said. Yes, Carl Sagan must be bemoaning the lack of deep relationships with his fans from the afterlife.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/grammarly-has-disabled-its-tool-offering-generative-ai-feedback-credited-to-real-writers-201614257.html?src=rss

A Swiss e-voting pilot was suspended after officials couldn’t decrypt 2,048 ballots because the USB keys needed to unlock them failed. “Three USB sticks were used, all with the correct code, but none of them worked,” spokesperson Marco Greiner told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation’s Swissinfo service. The canton government says it “deeply regrets” the incident and has launched an investigation with authorities. The Register reports: Basel-Stadt announced the problem with its e-voting pilot, open to about 10,300 locals living abroad and 30 people with disabilities, last Friday afternoon. It encouraged participants to deliver a paper vote to the town hall or use a polling station but admitted this would not be possible for many. By the close of polling on Sunday, its e-voting system had collected 2,048 votes, but Basel-Stadt officials were not able to decrypt them with the hardware provided, despite the involvement of IT experts. […]

The votes made up less than 4 percent of those cast in Basel-Stadt and would not have changed any results, but the canton is delaying confirmation of voting figures until March 21 and suspending its e-voting pilot until the end of December, while its public prosecutor’s office has started criminal proceedings. The country’s Federal Chancellery said e-voting in three other cantons — Thurgau, Graubunden, and St Gallen — along with the nationally used Swiss Post e-voting system, had not been affected.

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It probably comes as no surprise that government agencies have access to a lot of your data—in part because we hand some of it over to them directly, and in part because they are able to purchase it from data brokers that already exist to harvest, aggregate, and sell it to other companies. A recent report from 404 Media confirms that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is among those buying and using location data collected via ads to track users’ movements.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the FBI, and a handful of other federal agencies have also purchased location data from brokers in recent years, but the internal document from the Department of Homeland Security obtained by 404 Media confirms that CBP has sourced its location tracking in part from real-time bidding (RTB), which is behind every online ad you are served.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes how this process exposes your location data, which happens within milliseconds each time you open an ad-supported app or visit a website. The app or website pings an ad tech company to figure out which ads to serve, and that company puts together a “bid request” using your data, including your device’s advertising ID, IP address, demographic information, GPS coordinates, and more. That bid request goes out to thousands of advertisers, and the highest bidder is the one that ultimately gets displayed.

In the meantime, both ad tech companies and advertisers receive all of your data, and organizations that purchase this data can connect movements to specific devices, facilitating surveillance over a period of time.

How to protect your location data against tracking

As EFF points out, law enforcement agencies in almost every state can purchase location data from data brokers without first obtaining a warrant, so the onus is largely on users to protect themselves against location tracking. (It’s worth noting that Apple devices generally have more privacy-forward settings than Android, as apps running on iOS are required to request access to advertising IDs, allowing users to more easily opt out.)

All of this means that you can (and should) take a few steps to minimize how your location is tracked and shared.

Disable ad IDs on your device

To delete ad identifiers on Android, go to Settings > Security & privacy > Privacy controls > Ads and tap Delete advertising ID.

On iOS, disable the advertising ID globally under Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking and toggle off Allow Apps to Request to Track. Then, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Apple Advertising and disable Personalized Ads to eliminate internal tracking for Apple’s native services.

Audit which apps have access to location services

You need to know which apps are using your location data, and disable permissions where it is not essential for the app to function. Alternatively, allow apps to access your location only when in use and turn off precise location sharing (so only your approximate location is visible).

On iOS, this is under Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services, where you can select permissions and toggle off Precise Location for individual apps. On Android, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy Controls > Permission Manager.

Use airplane mode to stop real-time tracking

Airplane mode is a one-touch way to limit tracking—useful if you are headed to a protest or other sensitive location. Your device can still store and transmit this data later, but EFF notes that most apps aren’t that likely to do so.

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TCL is exploring making tech beyond QLED TVs, and the RayNeo Air 4 Pro AR/XR Smart Glasses are its latest project. These glasses project your phone, laptop, or gaming system into a 201-inch virtual display that only you can see. Amazon has them available for $249 (originally $299) when you use the on-page coupon. At $249, they would be at their lowest price since their recent release date, according to price-tracking tools.

RayNeo Air 4 Pro AR/XR Smart Glasses

201″ HDR10 Display, Bang & Olufsen Audio

$299.00
at Amazon

$299.00
at Amazon

The RayNeo Air 4 Pro just came out in late February, but they’re far from the only screen-mirroring wearable monitor you can buy on the market. The XReal One Pro are another pair that competes with the RayNeo Air 4 Pro. Senior Staff Writer Stephen Johnson tested both in case you want to see if one or the other fits your needs better. However, Stephen named the RayNeo Air 4 Pro the best value in AR right now, with a price that punches well above its weight by offering flagship features that more expensive competitors have.

You can watch more than movies or shows or scroll on your phone with these glasses. The 120Hz refresh rate means gaming looks good, too—you can connect a PS5, Xbox, Switch, or your phone to the virtual screen. There’s also a 3D feature that upgrades 2D media as long as it’s saved in your phone or laptop (no streaming).

The audio works with four speakers tuned with Bang & Olufsen using directional sound, very much like open-ear headphones, offering a surround sound and spatial audio feature that makes the viewing experience more immersive. Keep in mind that these won’t work for productivity if you want to use them as a second monitor, since it projects into wherever you’re looking; if you look at your laptop screen, the virtual projection will overlap your computer monitor.

Runna is one of the most talked-about training apps in running communities, and Strava’s acquisition of the platform earlier this year only cemented its status as the go-to tool for runners who want structure without hiring a coach. Recently, however, not all the buzz has been good. All over Reddit and TikTok, runners are blaming virtual coaches and algorithmic training programs for their shin splints, stress fractures, and various running injuries. Some blame Runna in particular for pushing runners too aggressively.

The thing is, Runna isn’t uniquely to blame. Running injuries are extremely common. Studies consistently estimate that somewhere between 27 and 52% percent of runners experience at least one injury per year, usually due to overuse. At the same time, there are real mistakes that people make when blindly trusting app-based training plans. Here’s what to know to avoid injury so you can stay running strong.

Understand the logic behind the training plan (and adjust as needed)

I’ve previously written about how to choose and trust a training plan, along with recommendations for resources that are completely free and widely trusted (like Hal Higdon’s here). Whenever I have a race on the horizon, I need to understand why my plan works the way it does. It’s important for me to understand the logic behind my mileage, so that I can always stay in touch with my body and make informed decisions as the weeks go by.

In this vein, I think the Runna app is genuinely good—it builds personalized training plans, adjusts to your fitness level, and makes structured training accessible to people who previously had no idea where to start. But if you follow an app’s training plan without listening to your body, the app will not stop you from pushing yourself too hard. That means you are always the last line of defense—and with any training plan, that responsibility doesn’t go away just because an all-knowing algorithm built your schedule. Across social media, this seems especially risky for two groups of runners:

• Beginners who don’t yet have the experience to recognize warning signs. When you’re new to structured training, it’s hard to distinguish between normal soreness and something more dangerous. The enthusiasm of having a plan can override the quieter signals your body is sending.

• Aspiring influencers and highly motivated runners who have built an identity around consistency and hitting their targets. For this group, rest days and missed sessions feel like failure. 

If you understand the reasoning behind your runs, you’ll be able to adapt your plan to your needs over time. My issue with programs like Runna is when individual runners aren’t bringing enough wisdom and skepticism into their relationship with the app.

Watch for these warning signs in any training plan

I will say, Runna’s default plans are not exactly conservative. They’re designed to get results, which typically means progressive overload—gradually increasing mileage and intensity week over week. For a runner who has built a solid base, this is fine. For a runner who has overstated their current fitness, or who is coming back from time off, the default settings could be way too aggressive. 

Specific things to watch for:

• Week-over-week mileage jumps that exceed 10%. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but in personal experience, it holds up. Generally speaking, you should never increase your mileage more than 10% from week to week. If a training plan is pushing you beyond that, pay extra close attention to how your body responds.

• Back-to-back hard sessions. If you’re not recovering well between tough workouts, that’s a signal worth acting on.

• Insufficient easy running. Many runners who use Runna—especially those who are newer to structured training—end up running too much of their mileage at moderate effort, rather than truly easy. Easy really does mean easy: You should be able to hold a full conversation. If your “easy” runs feel like honest work, slow down, even if the pace targets suggest otherwise.

Luckily, you can adjust the intensity of your plan in Runna. Open the “plan” tab of your app, head to “manage plan” and select “training preferences,” which Runna explains here.

Always pay attention to these signs of a running injury

This is the non-negotiable list. No plan—AI-generated or otherwise—is worth running through these:

• Sharp or localized pain during a run. Some soreness is normal, but a specific point of pain that gets worse as you run is not.

• Pain that changes your gait. If you’re limping, compensating, or noticeably favoring one side, your body is asking you to stop in the only language it has.

• Pain that is worse the morning after a hard session than it was during the run. Post-run soreness that peaks 24–48 hours later is typical. Pain that is sharper the next morning than it was mid-run could be a red flag.

• Bone pain on impact. Any pain that feels deep, localized to a bone (shin, foot, hip), and is triggered specifically by the impact of your foot striking the ground might warrant real medical attention. Stress fractures are terrible news and all too common in people who ramp mileage too fast.

• Persistent joint pain. Knees, hips, and ankles that hurt run after run, even on easy days, are telling you that your training load exceeds your current ability to recovery.

If any of these show up, the right move is not to finish the session and reassess. The right move is to stop, rest, and if the symptom persists, see someone.

This is the best way to use Runna

At the end of the day, think of Runna the way you’d think of a GPS: an excellent navigational tool that still requires a driver who’s paying attention to the road. Here’s a practical framework:

1. Be honest about your starting point. Runna can only work with the information you give it. If you overstate your current weekly mileage or recent race times, you will get a plan that assumes a fitness level you don’t have.

2. Treat the first two weeks as a test. Are the easy runs actually easy? Are you recovering between sessions? Is the total weekly volume a stretch but manageable, or is it immediately overwhelming? Adjust as you go.

3. Use those “training preferences” settings. If you’re struggling, dial it back.

4. Add recovery weeks deliberately. Good training plans include scheduled “down weeks” with reduced mileage to allow adaptation. Make sure your Runna plan includes these, and if you’re feeling beat up heading into one, treat it as mandatory, not optional.

5. Run your easy days truly easy. I’ll say it again and again: Most runners run their easy days too hard. Try to run slower than you think you should.

6. Take the rest days. It helps to remember that adaptation happens during recovery, not during the run itself.

The criticism that Runna has received for causing injuries is not entirely without basis, but it’s also not entirely fair. Injuries are common in running. If you think about it, any tool that helps people train harder will, statistically, correlate with more injuries. Good, hard training is inherently risky. However, the risk is totally manageable. Managing it requires you to stay in the driver’s seat, remaining a little skeptical of any one resource. You need to know how to be honest about your fitness, attentive to your body’s signals, and willing to adjust the plan rather than blindly execute it.

It must be 2017 because loot boxes are back in the news again. Two weeks after New York’s attorney general sued Valve over its use of the gimmick, the company has responded. In short, the Steam maker essentially said, “See you in court.”

New York’s lawsuit accuses Valve of promoting illegal gambling through its games. AG Letitia James called the loot boxes found in titles like Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 “addictive, harmful and illegal.” The state seeks to “permanently stop Valve from continuing to promote illegal gambling in its games” and pay relevant fines.

In its defense posted on Thursday, Valve likened its mystery boxes to kids buying packs of physical trading cards. “Players don’t have to open mystery boxes to play Valve games,” the company wrote. “In fact, most of you don’t open any boxes at all and just play the games — because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money.”

That last point, while applicable within the game itself, isn’t quite that cut and dry once you zoom out beyond that. As James pointed out, players can trade the cosmetic items they win from loot boxes on Steam’s marketplace or sell them on third-party marketplaces. Rarer ones can sometimes fetch lucrative sums.

DMarket

Here, too, Valve defended the profitable practice by rolling out the trading card comparison. “We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers — it gives a user the ability to sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else, in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokémon or baseball card,” the company wrote. “NYAG proposes to take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that.”

Valve is also facing a new class-action lawsuit over its loot boxes.

Some of Valve’s points land a bit more than its righteous defense of a gaming gimmick that, well, isn’t exactly beloved. The company accused the NYAG of proposing that Valve collect additional user information to prevent VPN use. In addition, the state allegedly “demanded that Valve collect more personal data about our users to do additional age verification.” Privacy experts have been sounding the alarm about the recent push for online age verification.

Valve also addressed James’s erroneous and outdated statement that video games encourage real-world violence. “Those extraneous comments are a distraction and a mischaracterization we’ve all heard before,” the company wrote. “Numerous studies throughout the years have concluded there is no link between media (movies, TV, books, comics, music and games) and real world violence. Indeed, many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games to users.”

The company says that, while it may have been cheaper to settle the suit, it deemed the NYAG’s demands user-hostile. “Ultimately, a court will decide whose position — ours or NYAG’s — is correct. In the meantime, we wanted to make sure you were aware of the potential impact to users in New York and elsewhere.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/valve-defends-loot-boxes-in-response-to-new-yorks-lawsuit-190655554.html?src=rss