In 2023, scientists identified the compounds in the balms used to mummify the organs of an ancient Egyptian noblewoman, suggesting that the recipes were unusually complex and used ingredients not native to the region. The authors also partnered with a perfumer to re-create what co-author Barbara Huber (of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology and the University of Tübingen) dubbed “the scent of eternity.” Now Huber has collaborated with the curators of two museums to incorporate that eternal scent into exhibits on ancient Egypt to transform how visitors understand embalming.

As previously reported, Egyptian embalming is thought to have begun in the Predynastic Period or earlier, when people noticed that the arid desert heat tended to dry and preserve bodies buried in the desert. Eventually, the idea of preserving the body after death worked its way into Egyptian religious beliefs. When people began burying the dead in rock tombs, away from the desiccating sand, they used chemicals like natron salt and plant-based resins for embalming.

The procedure typically began by laying the corpse on a table and removing the internal organs—except for the heart. Per Herodotus, “They first draw out part of the brain through the nostrils with an iron hook, and inject certain drugs into the rest” to liquefy the remaining brain matter. Next, they washed out the body cavity with spices and palm wine, sewed the body back up, and left aromatic plants and spices inside, including bags of natron. The body was then allowed to dehydrate over 40 days. The dried organs were sealed in canopic jars (or sometimes put back into the body cavity). Then the body was wrapped in several layers of linen cloth, with amulets placed within those layers to protect the deceased from evil. The fully wrapped mummy was coated in resin to keep moisture out and placed in a coffin (also sealed with resin).

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Valve has pushed back the launch of its Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller hardware from its original Q1 2026 window to a vaguer “first half of the year” target, blaming the ongoing memory and storage shortage that has been squeezing the tech industry.

The company said in a post today that rising component prices and limited availability forced it to revisit both its shipping schedule and pricing plans. Valve had previously indicated the Steam Machine would be priced at the entry level of the PC space.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canon released its first PowerShot camera back in 1996 with a 0.5-megapixel sensor, helping kickstart the digital photo revolution. To celebrate that 30-year anniversary, the company has unveiled a Limited Edition version of its still-popular PowerShot G7 X III compact camera. It has a few unique touches but is otherwise the same as the original model released nearly seven years ago.

The limited edition model has a new “graphite” color with a knurled front ring designed to exude “luxury and quality,” Canon wrote. It also carries 30 year anniversary logo printed on the body “to create a special feeling suitable for limited edition models,” the company added in the most Canon-y way possible.

Canon

As a reminder, the G7 X III was one of the first cameras announced specifically as a model for vloggers, thanks to its ability to shoot vertical video for Instagram. It features a 20.1MP sensor, flip-up 3-inch touchscreen, 24-100mm f/1.8-2.8 zoom lens and a microphone input. It supports 4K 30 fps video with no cropping and can shoot 1080p at 120 fps. The piece de resistance is direct streaming to YouTube directly over Wi-Fi, then a new thing but now a common feature. It originally retailed for $749.

The G7 X III had been in short supply until recently, but used models became popular with influencers several years ago and started selling way above list price. Possibly because of that viral fame, Canon announced in August 2025 that it was increasing production and the G7 X III started returning to stock a few months later priced at $880.

Canon

The Limited Edition G7 X III is selling for a lot more than that at $1,299, though it does come with a limited edition Peak Design cuff wrist strap and 32GB SD card. If you want to one-up the influencers and grab one, shipping will start in April 2026.

Along with the camera, Canon announced a pair of interesting new RF-mount full-frame lenses. The first is the ultra wide angle RF 14mm f/1.4 L VCM prime model priced at $2,599, promising bright, high quality optics. The other is a very interesting $1,899 RF7-14mm f/2.8-3.5 L Fisheye STM zoom lens with up to a 190 degree perspective at the widest setting.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cameras/canon-unveils-a-limited-edition-version-of-its-popular-g7-x-iii-compact-camera-040000700.html?src=rss

BMW may have retreated from its controversial plan to charge monthly fees for heated seats, but the German automaker is pressing ahead with subscription-based vehicle features through its ConnectedDrive platform.

A company spokesperson told The Drive that BMW “remains fully committed” to ConnectedDrive as part of its global aftersales strategy. Features requiring data connectivity will likely carry recurring fees.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has finally delivered on its promise to integrate Sysmon — the long-standing system monitoring tool from its Sysinternals suite — directly into Windows, a move that should make life considerably easier for enterprise administrators who have struggled with deploying and managing the utility across thousands of endpoints.

The functionality landed this week in Windows Insider builds 26300.7733 (Dev channel) and 26220.7752 (Beta channel). Sysmon allows administrators to capture system events through custom configuration files, filter for specific activity, and pipe the data into standard Windows event logs for pickup by security tools and SIEM pipelines. Mark Russinovich, Microsoft technical fellow and Winternals co-founder, has previously noted the lack of official customer support for Sysmon in production environments — a gap this integration addresses. The feature ships disabled by default and requires PowerShell to enable. Microsoft notes that any existing Sysmon installation must be uninstalled before activating the built-in version.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Because who likes changing gears to make climbing hills easier anyways, this is a video of Sergii Gordieiev of Youtube channel The Q replacing a bicycle chain with a series of 3D printed gears, effectively making it a single speed. So is that an upgrade or a downgrade? I suppose that depends on who you ask, but if you ask me life is a lot like learning to ride a bike: you fall and get hurt a lot while your neighbors laugh and throw empty beer cans.

Russian-state hackers wasted no time exploiting a critical Microsoft Office vulnerability that allowed them to compromise the devices inside diplomatic, maritime, and transport organizations in more than half a dozen countries, researchers said Wednesday.

The threat group, tracked under names including APT28, Fancy Bear, Sednit, Forest Blizzard, and Sofacy, pounced on the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-21509, less than 48 hours after Microsoft released an urgent, unscheduled security update late last month, the researchers said. After reverse-engineering the patch, group members wrote an advanced exploit that installed one of two never-before-seen backdoor implants.

Stealth, speed, and precision

The entire campaign was designed to make the compromise undetectable to endpoint protection. Besides being novel, the exploits and payloads were encrypted and ran in memory, making their malice hard to spot. The initial infection vector came from previously compromised government accounts from multiple countries and were likely familiar to the targeted email holders. Command and control channels were hosted in legitimate cloud services that are typically allow-listed inside sensitive networks.

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has so far been unable to access data from a Washington Post reporter’s iPhone because it was protected by Apple’s Lockdown Mode when agents seized the device from the reporter’s home, the US government said in a court filing.

FBI agents were able to access the reporter’s work laptop by telling her to place her index finger on the MacBook Pro’s fingerprint reader, however. This occurred during the January 14 search at the Virginia home of reporter Hannah Natanson.

As previously reported, the FBI executed a search warrant at Natanson’s home as part of an investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of illegally leaking classified data. FBI agents seized an iPhone 13 owned by the Post, one MacBook Pro owned by the Post and another MacBook Pro owned by Natanson, a 1TB portable hard drive, a voice recorder, and a Garmin watch.

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Amazon announced Alexa+, its overhauled digital assistant with generative AI capabilities, about a year ago. Shortly thereafter, it kicked off an early access program allowing interested users to try it out free of charge. Unfortunately, that honeymoon period has come to an end: Alexa+ has now officially launched, and now you’ll need to pay to access its most useful features.

While certain features will still be free to use, the majority of the Alexa+ experience is now locked behind a paywall. True, you might already pay for that paywall—but if you don’t, it’s going to cost you quite a bit to keep the features you’ve been test driving for months. (Of course, the standard Alexa assistant still exists if you don’t care for the latest generative AI enhancement.)

What is Alexa+?

The new Alexa is much like the old one, but now behaves a bit more like other generative AI assistants, including ChatGPT. In addition to simple requests and questions, Alexa+ can handle more complex queries and understand context (meaning one complex question can be followed by another, without needing to repeat yourself). For all the hullabaloo around generative AI, contextual awareness is really one of the big improvements users will notice with their digital assistants.

Amazon has a big vision for Alexa+. It still wants you to use it to control smart home devices, run timers, check the weather, and catch up on the news, but it also wants users to take advantage of “agentic” tasks, or actions that the AI can handle on your behalf. In theory, agentic AI allows you to ask the AI to order dinner to-go, make reservations at restaurants, schedule an Uber, or book a home repair. I’m still not sold on the capabilities of agentic AI assistants, and I imagine most people will continue to use Alexa+ the way they used regular old Alexa, (e.g. asking “Is it cold today?” or telling it to “set a timer for 10 minutes,” or ordering it to “Play ‘Manchild’ by Sabrina Carpenter on repeat”), but what do I know? Maybe Alexa+ really will change the way people interact with their Echo devices.

How much Alexa+ will cost you

If you’re interested in Amazon’s newest AI assistant, there are three different ways to try it—one free, and two paid.

How to use Alexa+ for free

The most basic, Alexa+ chat, is totally free of charge. You can try it by heading to alexa.com or using the Alexa app for iOS or Android, where you can talk to Alexa in a chat window, ala ChatGPT. Amazon says users can get “quick answers, plan research, and explore new topics.”

But the thing is, you can’t use Alexa+ chat for any of the things you probably want to have Alexa+ do. It is solely a web-based chatbot experience, not something you can connect to your Alexa-enabled devices. If you’re interested in the full Alexa+ package, you’ll need to pay Amazon one way or another.

Prime Members get a free subscription

The good news is, you might have already paid Amazon for the privilege, even if you didn’t realize it: Currently, Amazon is offering all Prime members full access to Alexa+, including via the chatbot and through Alexa-enabled devices. Alexa+ also works with other Amazon services that come free with Prime, including Prime Video and Amazon Music. Seeing as over half the U.S. population has a Prime account, chances are good that if you’re at all interested, you already have access to Alexa+.

How to use Alexa+ without Prime

Maybe you’re one of the rare unicorns who doesn’t have a Prime account, but still wants to try Alexa+ on an Echo smart speaker. In that case, Amazon will offer you the full experience for a cool $19.99/month. That’s a slightly ridiculous price, seeing as a full Prime membership (with all the added benefits, from Prime Video to free shipping) will run you $14.99/month (or $139 per year). You definitely save money by subscribing to the latter, which is probably a big part of Amazon’s motivation here—Jeff Bezos will never truly rest until everyone uses Amazon to buy everything.

How to enable Alexa+

If you opt for either of the paid options, you can set up Alexa+ by simply telling your Alexa-enabled device, “Upgrade to Alexa+.” You can also use Alexa+ by logging into your Amazon account on alexa.com. And as noted above, you can certainly opt to keep the old Alexa assistant for the time being, whether whether you have Prime or not. While Amazon may do away with the legacy assistant in the future, it isn’t forcing anyone to switch just yet.