AI-related changes to Notepad—yes, that Notepad—allowed attackers to execute arbitrary code on your computer. The vulnerability was related to Markdown support, which was added last year. Markdown is a simple way to add formatting, including links, to plaintext documents—and links were the source of the vulnerability.
“An attacker could trick a user into clicking a malicious link inside a Markdown file opened in Notepad, causing the application to launch unverified protocols that load and execute remote files,” according to the security response notice.
Markdown has long been popular in certain parts of the internet—anyone who occasionally comments on Reddit or chats using Discord is likely at least a little familiar with it. But the markup language has become even more important in the age of AI—most documents are converted to plain text Markdown files to train models.
Microsoft is patching more bugs than ever in Windows 11
Markdown support was added around the same time Copilot was integrated into Notepad, as part of a broader push to add AI to every corner of the operating system. And there’s an argument to be made that all these AI additions are adding up to new vulnerabilities. Microsoft patched 1,129 bugs in 2025 according to Krebs on Security, a prominent cybersecurity blog. That’s an 11.9% increase over the previous year, which was already unusually high. Microsoft itself admits that AI agents will open up new vulnerabilities, even as the company adds them to Windows.
This is all to say that installing security updates is likely more important now than ever. Sure, you could disable all AI features in Windows, but that’s unlikely to protect you from all the new vulnerabilities—installing Linux might, though.
How to patch this Notepad vulnerability
Credit: Justin Pot
Luckily for Windows users, this vulnerability was fixed in Microsoft’s February 2026 security update. To find out if you’ve installed it, open the Settings app, head to “Windows Update,” then check if an update labeled “2026-02 Security Update” is waiting to be installed. If so, click the “Restart Now” button to install the update.
With a new digital sovereignty assessment and an open framework, Red Hat is courting Europe’s policymakers and CIOs — but homegrown EU rivals and U.S. politics make it an uphill climb.
DNF 5.4 is out today as the latest release for this next-generation RPM package management solution used by Fedora, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and various other RPM-based Linux distributions…
Nerds of a certain vintage get real wistful about Unreal Tournament ’99, and rightfully so, but many will argue that it’s the later Unreal Engine 2-based games that truly defined Unreal Tournament’s identity. Unreal Tournament 2003 and the follow-up Unreal Tournament 2004 were among the first games to actively embrace the formalized concept
Nintendo Switch owners have been able to scoop up some nice gaming deals thanks to the President’s Day sale happening at the moment. Now, it’s time for PlayStation 5 owners to feast on some great deals of their own. Here are some of the best bargains we’ve spotted for those who own a PS5.
Texas is suing Wi-Fi router maker TP-Link for deceptively marketing the security of its products and allowing Chinese hacking groups to access Americans’ devices, Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced. Paxton originally started looking into TP-Link in October 2025. Texas Governor Greg Abbott later prohibited state employees from using TP-Link products in January of this year.
TP-Link is no longer owned by a Chinese company and its products are assembled in Vietnam, but Paxton’s lawsuit claims that because the company’s “ownership and supply-chain are tied to China” it’s subject to the country’s data laws, which require companies to comply with requests from Chinese intelligence agencies. The lawsuit also says that firmware vulnerabilities in TP-Link’s hardware have already “exposed millions of consumers to severe cybersecurity risks.”
Engadget has asked TP-Link to comment on the Texas lawsuit and Paxton’s claims. We’ll update this article if we hear back.
TP-Link was reportedly being investigated at the federal level in 2024 after its devices were connected to the massive “Salt Typhoon” hack that accessed data from multiple US telecom companies. Despite all signs pointing to the federal government getting ready to ban TP-Link in 2025, Reuters reports that the Trump administration paused plans to ban the company’s routers in early February, ahead of a meeting between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/texas-ag-sues-tp-link-over-purported-connection-to-china-193802258.html?src=rss
Britain has lost more than 14,000 pubs since 2009, a decline from roughly 54,000 registered public houses and bars to under 40,000 by 2022, according to a new analysis of UK business register data by data analyst Lauren Leek. The North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands lost 25 to 30% of their stock; London saw the smallest decline.
Leek trained a random forest model on 49,840 pubs and found spatial isolation — how far a pub stood from its nearest neighbour — was the single strongest predictor of closure. Median nearest-neighbour distance for surviving pubs is roughly 280 metres; for closed pubs, 640 metres. Each closure pushes remaining pubs further into isolation, a dynamic Leek calls a “spatial death spiral.”
Much of that isolation traces to ownership. Stonegate, Britain’s largest pub company and a holding of PE firm TDR Capital, carries over $4 billion in debt from its 2019 leveraged acquisition of Ei Group. PE-backed and overseas-owned companies now control roughly a quarter to a third of all British pubs.
The close_range system call for closing all file descriptors “FDs” in a given range should enjoy a nice speed boost with the in-development Linux 7.0 kernel…
The Zwift Games 2026 series began this week, with popular races on new routes! So I decided to join in the fun. This week’s stage is in Makuri Islands on the new Kaze Kicker route, which has just enough climbing to make the race hard and interesting without it feeling impossible for an “overmuscled cyclist” like me:
The “standard” race events alternate hourly between two different racing score range schemes:
With my racing score of 555, range 2 gives me the better chance at a win (since I’m only competing with riders up to a score of 569), while range 1 will probably give me a bigger challenge and a faster overall race time, since I’m competing with riders who have scores up to 650.
As it turned out, my schedule for the day meant I had to race range 1, like it or not. So I jumped in, warmed up, then joined the pens on my virtual Pinerallo Dogma F 2025 with DT Swiss 65 wheels. Let’s roll!
A Hard Start (Pain Cavern)
We rolled out of the Mech Isle start pens, the pack of 38 quickly dropping to 32 as we hammered up to speed.
The route begins with a short (3km) lead-in which (a bit of Zwift nerd trivia here) includes the Tidepool Sprint Reverse segment. It’s the only route in-game that traverses this segment, in fact, but this doesn’t really matter much, as nobody is going to attack a sprint segment on a scratch race, especially with a hard effort just up the road.
One thing worth noting, since some riders in my race clearly didn’t realize it: you only get one powerup for this entire race. Everyone is given a feather at the start, and you get to choose where to use it! Save it for the Pain Cavern climb, or even better, if you know you’ll survive Pain Cavern, save it for Mech Isle corkscrew near the end. (I must say, I do prefer the single powerup approach to the default random powerup approach that randomly gives some riders an advantage over others.)
The longest, hardest effort of the race begins in Pain Cavern at the 3.3km mark, when the road tilts up to 5%. The climb is 2.16km long, averaging 3%, and will take most riders 3.5-4.5 minutes to complete.
I’ve been dropped on this climb more times than I haven’t, and it usually happens somewhere in the figure 8 section midway through. So I saved my feather as long as possible, waiting until I was fully in the figure 8 before activating it. Several riders around me had the same idea!
The pack often stretches out as the climb slackens yet continues after the figure 8. Finding a strong wheel can be helpful as speeds increase and drafting becomes more of a factor, and that’s exactly what I did. We had two riders on a breakaway 5 seconds up the road, but I was sitting in the pack of 21, near the limit, as we finished the climb.
I had survived! I was still in the peloton, and discovered after the race that I had shattered my Strava Pain Cavern PR with a time of 3:45 (my previous best was 4:02). Let’s goooo!
The Easy Middle
From 5.5km to 15.3km you’re essentially on flat or downhill roads. This doesn’t mean your race will be easy, since riders may choose to push the pace on the front. But chances are, this bit will be the easiest part of the race.
As we exited Pain Cavern, I just tried to sit efficiently in the draft to grab a bit of recovery time. My heart rate dropped from 172 to 154 over the next 5 minutes, and the burning in my legs went away as I spun a higher cadence at tempo power. Around the northern part of Neokyo we went, the two riders off the front staying away but not increasing their gap in a meaningful way.
(Zwift’s HUD doesn’t do a great job of showing gaps to riders up the road, since you don’t see them in the rider list if you’re sitting in a group of any size. But I was running Sauce for Zwift, so I could see the gap. Gotta love that rider groups feature!)
Exiting Neokyo, we caught the two attackers off the front, then turned into the Slot Canyon for a long descent. Zwifter “MC Hammertime” was providing plenty of color commentary from the peloton, and announced that he was going to take a hard pull on the front. It’s always nice when riders announce their intentions, since it gives everyone time to grab their wheel, which helps the group’s pace stay high and improves our GC rankings (more on that below).
Mech Isle Kicker
At the 15.3km mark we crossed the wooden bridge and hit the final obstacle of the day: the Mech Isle corkscrew! This little bugger is short enough that I can typically survive it in the peloton, but stronger riders often attack and get a gap. And that’s exactly what happened! I steered to the inside of the turn to shave off precious meters, then one rider, two riders, three riders attacked hard.
I found myself sinking backward, dropping from 3rd to 5th to 7th, with a gap building up the road. I was on the limit in a strung-out group, my legs heavy and burning as we crossed the bridge at the top. And all I could do was watch the race ride away, despite attempting to give chase.
The Finish
After the short descent, there were several riders around me, but everyone had given up on chasing the six riders ahead:
Maybe I’m a nicer guy when I’m glycogen-depleted. Or maybe I’m just dumber? Certainly the latter. I decided to put in a hard pull on the front to try to reel in some riders.
Unfortunately, 40 seconds of hard work did nothing but make my legs hurt. I eased up when it was clear we wouldn’t catch anyone, and a few seconds later, it was time to sprint! I pushed hard for ~10 seconds, crossing the line in 8th.
ZwiftPower gave me a finishing place of 6th, thanks to two riders not being signed up. But does that even matter anymore? Not really, since Zwift Racing Score doesn’t care about ZwiftPower, and neither do the Zwift Games GC Rankings at zwift.com/racing/leagues/zwiftgames2026.
As I write this post (10am Tuesday, Feb 17), my ranking shows as 1646 out of 11298 riders for race 1, with a race time of 24:56. We’ll see how that changes as more riders participate.
This race bumped up my ZRS from 555 to 561, my first score change in two months, since I haven’t been racing scored races.
In terms of my actual performance, this was a decently challenging effort, giving me a new power curve PR for 2026 in the VO2max time window:
Could I have raced it smarter for a better result? I don’t think I had the legs to grab onto the riders who got away over the top of the Mech Isle corkscrew, so the only thing I could really change would be not taking that short pull near the end, to save my legs for the final sprint. This may have allowed me to outsprint the one rider in my group who finished ahead of me, improving my result by just one place.
Talk show host Stephen Colbert said CBS forbade him from interviewing Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico because of a Federal Communications Commission threat to enforce the equal-time rule on late-night and daytime talk shows.
Talarico “was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast,” Colbert said on last night’s episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “Then I was told in some uncertain terms that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on, and because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”
Colbert went on to describe some of the background Ars readers are already familiar with. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr recently issued a warning to late-night and daytime talk shows that they may no longer qualify for the bona fide news exemption to the equal-time rule, and subsequently opened an investigation into ABC’s The View after an interview with Talarico.
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TheBeats Powerbeats Pro have been on the market for years, and they remain a go-to option for people who work out and want earbuds that stay in place. At launch, they cost $249.95. Right now, they are $134.95 on Woot, and you can use code CNN2025 at checkout to take an extra $5 off. For comparison, refurbished units are selling for $149.97 on Amazon, which makes this new pair the better value. This deal runs for the next eight days or until stock runs out. Prime members get free standard shipping.
What has kept the Powerbeats Pro relevant since their 2019 release is how well they handle the basics. Each earbud has an adjustable ear hook that wraps around your ear, along with four sizes of silicone tips to help you find a secure seal. During runs, strength training, or cycling sessions, that over-ear design makes a difference. They are also rated IPX4 for sweat and water resistance, so sweat-heavy workouts and light splashes shouldn’t be a problem, but they are not designed to be submerged. Using them is straightforward: Controls are physical and mirrored on both sides, which means you can adjust volume, skip tracks, or take calls from either ear without fumbling through touch gestures mid-workout. Built-in sensors automatically pause music when you remove an earbud and resume when you put it back in.
As for battery life, you get up to nine hours of listening time on a single charge, with more than 24 additional hours from the charging case, notes this PCMag review. These earbuds do not offer active noise cancellation; instead, they rely on the passive noise isolation that comes from a snug in-ear seal. There’s also no customizable equalizer in the companion software. In other words, the sound profile is fixed out of the box, with the tuning leaning into the brand’s familiar presentation of strong bass and crisp highs.
Mark Fischbach, the YouTube creator known as Markiplier who has spent nearly 15 years building an audience of more than 38 million subscribers by playing indie-horror video games on camera, has pulled off something that most independent filmmakers never manage — a self-financed, self-distributed debut feature that has grossed more than $30 million domestically against a $3 million budget.
Iron Lung, a 127-minute sci-fi adaptation of a video game Fischbach wrote, directed, starred in, and edited himself, opened to $18.3 million in its first weekend and has since doubled that figure worldwide in just two weeks, nearly matching the $19.1 million debut of Send Help, a $40 million thriller from Disney-owned 20th Century Studios. Fischbach declined deals from traditional distributors and instead spent months booking theaters privately, encouraging fans to reserve tickets online; when prospective viewers found the film wasn’t screening in their city, they called local cinemas to request it, eventually landing Iron Lung on more than 3,000 screens across North America — all without a single paid media campaign.
More than two years after Broadcom took over VMware, the virtualization company’s customers are still grappling with higher prices, uncertainty, and the challenges of reducing vendor lock-in.
Today, CloudBolt Software released a report, “The Mass Exodus That Never Was: The Squeeze Is Just Beginning,” that provides insight into those struggles. CloudBolt is a hybrid cloud management platform provider that aims to identify VMware customers’ pain points so it can sell them relevant solutions. In the report, CloudBolt said it surveyed 302 IT decision-makers (director-level or higher) at North American companies with at least 1,000 employees in January. The survey is far from comprehensive, but it offers a look at the obstacles these users face.
Broadcom closed its VMware acquisition in November 2023, and last month, 88 percent of survey respondents still described the change as “disruptive.” Per the survey, the most cited drivers of disruption were price increases (named by 89 percent of respondents), followed by uncertainty about Broadcom’s plans (85 percent), support quality concerns (78 percent), Broadcom shifting VMware from perpetual licenses to subscriptions (72 percent), changes to VMware’s partner program (68 percent), and the forced bundling of products (65 percent).
One of the limitations of the AMDGPU Linux kernel graphics driver has been the lack of its support for HDMI 2.1 and later. AMD has wanted to support HDMI 2.1+ functionality under Linux but it’s been legally blocked by the HDMI Forum. But anxious independent users have been working on open-source patches for wiring up HDMI 2.1 into the AMDGPU driver outside of the realm of AMD and the HDMI Forum’s blessings…
Over the years, Apple Music has improved its algorithmic playlists. There’s now an AI DJ, and you can use ChatGPT to generate playlists. With iOS 26.4, which is currently in beta, Apple wants you to make playlists with its own AI tech. The upcoming update includes a feature called “Playlist Playground,” which lets you generate AI playlists directly in the Apple Music app—as long as you’re running iOS 26.4.
How to download and install iOS 26.4
I do not recommend installing and running beta versions of iOS on your primary iPhone. Beta software is unfinished, which means you could run into bugs and glitches that may impact how you use your iPhone, or even result in data loss. If you’re itching to try out new features, it’s best to ensure that you’ve taken a complete backup of your iPhone first. That way, you can always revert to an older installation in case something goes wrong. Even so, it’s safer to run test software on a backup iPhone as opposed to your daily driver.
With that said, if you’re sure you want to go ahead and install iOS 26.4 right now, you can go to Settings > General > Software Update on your iPhone. Select Beta Updates > iOS 26 Developer Beta. Now, go back to the Software Update page and wait until you see iOS 26.4 Beta 1 appear. You can now download and install the update to try this new Apple Music feature.
How to create AI-generated playlists in Apple Music
Once you’re on iOS 26.4, you can open the Music app to get started with this feature. Tap the Library tab in the bottom bar, and then select the New Playlist button in the top-right corner. You should see the Playlist Playground feature here. (Note that this feature may not appear on devices that don’t support Apple Intelligence, or if your Apple Account is from a region where Apple has restricted the rollout of AI features.)
Once you activate the feature, you’ll be able to generate playlists with AI. From here, you tell the AI what you want to listen to. You could get specific, with certain artists, songs, or genres, or ask for playlists that encompass a certain idea of mood. Apple has some pre-written prompts to get you started, such as “hip-hop party songs,” but you can use your own text prompts too. AI-generated playlists have 25 songs by default, and you do have the option to customize the playlist further after it’s created. You’ll also be able to edit the title, cover image, and the description of AI-generated playlists. These playlists can be shared with others or displayed on your Apple Music profile, just like other playlists you create on the streaming service. It’s similar in concept to other AI playlist generators on platforms like Spotify or YouTube Music.
Try AI-generated playlists without installing iOS 26.4
While Apple Music’s Playlist Playground feature is a good start, it’s not yet available to those of us who are unwilling to install developer beta versions of iOS 26. If that’s you, there are other options out there for AI generated Apple Music playlists. There’s the aforementioned ChatGPT integration, of course, but you could also use a third-party app, like PlaylistAI. It has many prompts for you to get started with, and can even generate playlists from music festival posters. The app does prompt you to get a subscription, but you can skip that prompt and use the free tier to generate a playlist quickly.
You probably already know that you can manually install a fresh copy of Windows using your own install media. You can create this install media using Microsoft’s tool, or you can use a tool like Rufus, which allows you to bypass the onerous and arbitrary system requirements of modern Windows versions. At least, you can do that as long as you
Imagine turning the key or pressing the start button of your car—and nothing happens. Not because the battery is dead or the engine is broken but because a server no longer answers. For a growing number of cars, that scenario isn’t hypothetical.
As vehicles become platforms for software and subscriptions, their longevity is increasingly tied to the survival of the companies behind their code. When those companies fail, the consequences ripple far beyond a bad app update and into the basic question of whether a car still functions as a car.
Over the years, automotive software has expanded from performing rudimentary engine management and onboard diagnostics to powering today’s interconnected, software-defined vehicles. Smartphone apps can now handle tasks like unlocking doors, flashing headlights, and preconditioning cabins—and some models won’t unlock at all unless a phone running the manufacturer’s app is within range.
Crowd Supply has featured the xSDR, a compact M.2 2230 A+E-key software-defined radio module that combines a Lime Microsystems LMS7002M RF transceiver with an AMD Artix-7 FPGA. Designed for direct integration into laptops, tablets, embedded PCs, and edge systems, it delivers 2×2 MIMO RX/TX operation across a 30 MHz to 3.8 GHz tuning range.
Netflix has been in the game adaptation business for a while now, but until recently most of its attention had been on adapting video games. That’s still very much happening, but the streaming giant is also now buying up rights for board game IP too, with the latest being Asmodee’s Ticket to Ride.
Netflix will look to greenlight a number of projects spanning TV, film and “additional formats,” it wrote in a press release. The first of these will be a feature film written by Ben Mekler and Chris Amick. Ticket to Ride creator Alan R. Moon will serve as an executive producer on the project, which will be the game’s first on-screen adaptation. Exactly what it will look like is not yet clear, but the internet already has plenty of theories.
Ticket to Ride is a train-themed turn-based strategy and route-building game first released over 20 years ago. Since then it has gone on to ship more than 20 million copies and has been translated into over 30 languages. It’s also been given the video game adaptation treatment before.
This is actually the second of Asmodee’s IP that Netflix has acquired the rights to, after announcing last year that Catanwill also be making its way to screens in various forms. And it isn’t just interested in scripted TV and movie opportunities. In early 2025, the company also signed a deal with Hasbro to adapt Monopolyinto a TV game show.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/netflix-is-adapting-the-board-game-ticket-to-ride-180505164.html?src=rss
An anonymous reader shares a report: A moderator on diyAudio set up an experiment to determine whether listeners could differentiate between audio run through pro audio copper wire, a banana, and wet mud. Spoiler alert: the results indicated that users were unable to accurately distinguish between these different ‘interfaces.’
Pano, the moderator who built the experiment, invited other members on the forum to listen to various sound clips with four different versions: one taken from the original CD file, with the three others recorded through 180cm of pro audio copper wire, via 20cm of wet mud, through 120cm of old microphone cable soldered to US pennies, and via a 13cm banana, and 120cm of the same setup as earlier.
Initial test results showed that it’s extremely difficult for listeners to correctly pick out which audio track used which wiring setup. “The amazing thing is how much alike these files sound. The mud should sound perfectly awful, but it doesn’t,” Pano said. “All of the re-recordings should be obvious, but they aren’t.”
