king*jojo shares a report: Linux desktop darling KDE is weighing in on the controversy around the impending demise of Windows 10 support with a lurid “KDE for Windows 10 Exiles” campaign. KDE’s alarming “Exiles” page opens with the text “Your computer is toast” followed by a warning that Microsoft wants to turn computers running Windows 10 into junk from October 14.

“It may seem like it continues to work after that date for a bit, but when Microsoft stops support for Windows 10, your perfectly good computer will be officially obsolete.” Beneath a picture of a pile of tech junk, including a rotary telephone and some floppy drives, KDE proclaims: “Windows 10 will degrade as more and more bugs come to light. With nobody to correct them, you risk being hacked. Your data, identity, and control over your device could be stolen.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the years, scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls have analyzed the ancient parchments with various methods: for example, X-rays, multispectral imaging, “virtual unfolding,” and paleography, i.e., studying elements in their writing styles. The scrolls are believed to date back to between the third century BCE and the first century CE, but those dates rely largely on paleography, since only a handful of the scrolls have calendar dates written on them.

However, the traditional paleographic method is inherently subjective and based on a given scholar’s experience. A team of scientists has combined radiocarbon dating from 24 scroll samples and machine-learning-based handwriting analysis to create their own AI program—dubbed Enoch. The objective was to achieve more accurate date estimates, according to a new paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. Among the findings: Many of the scrolls are older than previously thought.

As reported earlier, these ancient Hebrew texts—roughly 900 full and partial scrolls in all, stored in clay jars—were first discovered scattered in various caves near what was once the settlement of Qumran, just north of the Dead Sea, by Bedouin shepherds in 1946–1947. (Apparently, a shepherd threw a rock while searching for a lost member of his flock and accidentally shattered one of the clay jars, leading to the discovery.) Qumran was destroyed by the Romans, circa 73 CE, and historians believe the scrolls were hidden in the caves by a sect called the Essenes to protect them from being destroyed. The natural limestone and conditions within the caves helped preserve the scrolls for millennia.

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No matter how locked down your identity information is, there’s probably a gaping hole in your security efforts: your car. Just like you, your car is linked to a few numbers. Unlike you, it rolls around with those numbers—your license plate number and the vehicle’s VIN—out in the open. Your car’s identity is even more vulnerable than yours, and that vulnerability can have a huge negative impact on you. Here’s what to know about car identity theft and how to protect your vehicle.

Plates and VINs

Your car’s public identity is tied to two things, its license plate number and vehicle identification number (VIN). The license plates are on display by law, making it easy to copy down—or just steal outright—and your car’s VIN is often displayed on the dashboard, or in other easily accessible locations on the car (as well as your title, registration, and insurance documentation).

With your license plates and VIN, criminals can do some real damage to your life by running a few basic scams:

• VIN swapping. Thieves can use your car’s VIN when they have a stolen or damaged car to sell. Swapping in your VIN for the real one can erase flood or accident damage or hide the fact that the car is stolen. After a private cash sale (usually on a platform like Facebook Marketplace), the thieves vanish and the new owner is stuck. For example, a couple in Ohio lost $33,000 when they unknowingly purchased a car with a swapped VIN via Facebook Marketplace.

• Hacking. VINs are useful for modern cars, because they can help hackers figure out everything they need to access the car’s software (you can see some of the information encoded in it here). Manufacturers use VINs to generate access codes, and the VINs encode information about where and when the car was built, which hackers can use to figure out what version of the software they’re dealing with—along with the known exploits and vulnerabilities.

• Stolen cars. Stolen license plates can be placed on stolen cars so the plate numbers don’t ping law enforcement at red light camera, speed cameras, or toll booths.

• Toll and ticket evasion. Stolen license plates can also be used to evade automatic tolls or to avoid paying tickets. A thief can brazenly rack up violations that accrue to your vehicle, leaving you holding the (expensive) bag.

• Identity theft. While your car’s license plate number can’t allow thieves to steal your identity directly, it can be used as part of an information-gathering scheme with the goal of stealing your identity. Your vehicle’s make and model, your home address, accident history, and other pieces of information can be accessed and used as breadcrumbs to discover even more information about you.

Protect your numbers

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can physically do to protect your car’s identity. You can’t legally obscure your license plates, and while you can likely get away with hiding the VIN if it’s embossed on the dashboard (by covering it with tape, a piece of paper, or a file folder) when the car is parked in a public place, you can usually look up a vehicle’s VIN if you have the license plate number, so this is only a partial deterrent.

What you can do is take basic precautions and pay attention:

• Check the VIN. You can check your VIN’s history at the National Insurance Crime Bureau’s website to see if it’s been involved in any fraud. You should do this regularly to make sure that no one’s using your car’s VIN for shady purposes. The sooner you’re aware, the less damage it will do.

• Park inside. Keeping your car off the street as much as possible can help make it more challenging for people to copy down your VIN or steal your license plates. If you have the option to keep your vehicle in a locked garage, that’s your best bet.

• Avoid sharing. There are many instances where you’ll need to provide the VIN (when selling the car, for example). You can ask if the full VIN is really needed, or if you can just give out the last few digits as you can with your Social Security number, thus keeping the full VIN out of as many records as possible. You can also offer to provide a vehicle history report from a reputable company that doesn’t include the VIN.

• Secure the plates. Use tamper-proof screws or an anti-theft license plate cover to make it difficult for thieves to steal the plates off your car.

Maybe you’ve camped out all night, or you’ve refreshed furiously at the risk of breaking your F5 key, but tomorrow you are finally getting your hands on the Nintendo Switch 2. After tearing it open and booting it up, you might quickly realize that the console’s functionality out of the box is basically non-existent. You have just purchased a very expensive paperweight.

This is all by design, as Nintendo wanted the console as locked down as possible in order to prevent leaks ahead of time. They didn’t even send review units to press ahead of launch this time around (it’s fine, I’m not bitter). Now that the Switch 2 is out in parts of the world where it’s already June 5, we’re getting our first look at the patch notes for the console’s day one update.

The Version 20.1.1 update for the Switch 2 basically turns the console on. The day one update enables support for Switch 1 games, virtual game cards, the Nintendo eShop and those Game-Key cards where the physical card you bought doesn’t actually contain the game, but allows you to download it. The patch notes themselves include some fairly important features like “use of Nintendo Switch Software” and “Nintendo Switch Online.” You can read the full patch notes at nintendolife.

Users will be prompted to update their consoles during initial setup, so it should be a seamless experience. I won’t give them the clicks by linking here, but suffice to say seeing leakers and hackers get their hands on the console early only to realize they can’t do much of anything was strangely satisfying.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendos-day-one-update-for-the-switch-2-is-just-a-big-on-switch-175136898.html?src=rss

Scammers are targeting travelers planning their vacations in a new campaign that spoofs popular online travel agency (OTA) Booking.com. The scheme, identified by Malwarebytes Labs, uses malicious CAPTCHA forms to gain remote access to victims’ devices, allowing threat actors to harvest personal and financial information.

How the Booking.com scam works

The campaign begins with links posted on social media and gaming sites, including sponsored ads, that redirect to websites posing as Booking.com—an OTA through which users can search and book flights, hotels, rental cars, and other travel experiences.

When users click the link, they’ll see a fake CAPTCHA pop-up with a checkbox, which gives permission to copy data to the clipboard. The next verification prompt will tell you to execute a Run command on your device with a combination of keystrokes. (FYI: This is never a legitimate CAPTCHA request.)

In the background, the malicious CAPTCHA has copied a powershell command to your clipboard. And if you follow the instructions, the command will download and execute a series of files that install a backdoor Remote Access Tool (RAT)—identified as Backdoor.AsyncRAT—giving threat actors the ability to remotely monitor and control your machine.

How to spot and avoid the Booking.com RAT attack

Check the URL

As Malwarebytes Labs notes, the domains and subdomains scammers are using to carry out this attack change frequently, and some look more more legitimate than others: (booking.)guestsalerts[.]com versus kvhandelregis[.]com, for example. To avoid falling victim to this campaign and those like it, don’t click links from ads or posts on social media, and go directly to the website you want to visit instead.

Head to the site directly

Know that using a general Google search for travel planning may make you more susceptible to malvertising, as cybercriminals can spoof websites to look like popular services—such as booking.com—and have them appear near the top of sponsored results. You should type URLs directly into the address bar or book with the airline or hotel itself.

Be wary of CAPTCHA forms from untrusted sources

You should also be wary of following instructions, such as executing commands, from websites, CAPTCHA forms, or social media videos, which can easily trick you into installing malware.

Finally, you can disable JavaScript in your browser, which will remove clipboard access, though this is likely to break other websites you visit.

Now that most of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards have been released, it’s clear that they give AMD and Intel their best opportunity this decade to claw back some market share and make the dedicated graphics card business a little less lopsided.

It’s not that the 50-series GPUs have been bad cards, but a focus on sometimes-useful, sometimes-not AI-generated frames and a lack of major manufacturing advancements relative to the 40-series have eroded Nvidia’s usual lead in performance and power efficiency.

That’s the advantage AMD is trying to press with the new Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics cards, which at $299 and $349 for 8GB and 16GB are both priced and configured to comprehensively undercut Nvidia’s RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti. As with the RX 9070 series earlier this year, the RDNA 4 architecture goes a long way toward addressing the RX 6000 and RX 7000-series’ lackluster ray-tracing performance and mediocre power efficiency, and a relatively affordable 16GB version will help insulate buyers from the RAM limitations that are slowly but surely becoming more of a problem for 8GB cards.

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As promised, Nintendo has updated a bunch of Switch games to support the Switch 2. Unlike Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, these don’t cost a dime. Just install them on your new console when it arrives, and enjoy next-gen enhancements.

The list includes Mario’s greatest hits from the Switch era. Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe are all there. Ditto for the top-down Zelda titles: Echoes of Wisdom and Link’s Awakening.

The Switch 2 versions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom may require a purchase. They’ll set you back $70 or $80 new, but if you already own the games, it’s only $10 each. (And Switch Online Expansion Pack members get the enhanced updates for free.) Regardless, at least you have a sharper-looking open world to explore for paying a second time.

Here’s the complete list of (free) updated games, which also includes Pokémon and Captain Toad.

• ARMS – visual upgrades (resolution, frame rates and HDR)

• Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain – GameShare (up to four players, local / online GameChat sharing)

• Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker – visual upgrades (resolution and HDR) and GameShare (two players in all courses, local / online GameChat sharing)

• Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics – GameShare (up to four players can play 34 games, local / online GameChat sharing)

• Game Builder Garage – visual upgrades (resolution), Joy-Con 2 mouse control

• New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe – visual upgrades (resolution)

• Pokémon Scarlet – visual upgrades (resolution, frame rates)

• Pokémon Violet – visual upgrades (resolution, frame rates)

• Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury – visual upgrades (resolution, frame rates and HDR), GameShare (up to four players in Super Mario 3D World, two players in Bowser’s Fury and local / online GameChat sharing)

• Super Mario Odyssey – visual upgrades (resolution, frame rates), GameShare (two players, local / online GameChat sharing)

• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – visual upgrades (resolution, HDR)

• The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening – visual upgrades (resolution, HDR)

The Switch 2 launches on Thursday. Here’s how to (maybe) still get one in time.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-rolls-out-switch-2-updates-for-super-mario-odyssey-and-other-switch-games-174202849.html?src=rss

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The Health Connect app is expanding its “sharing data” function, allowing Android users to sync up their health information across multiple apps. The announcement came during Google’s developer livestream at I/O 2025. Starting in June, Google says Health Connect will pick up Runna, Mi Fitness, and Garmin. Here’s what you need to know.

Wait, you couldn’t sync your health data to Garmin before?

Apparently not! My colleague Beth Skwarecki shared with me this screenshot of her Connected Apps screen in her Garmin settings on her iPhone, versus her husband’s Android. As you can see, Apple Health is connected to Garmin on the iPhone, but there’s no Health Connect for Garmin on the Android.

Apple Health is connected to Garmin on iPhones.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

There’s no Health Connect for Garmin on Androids.
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Until now, dual Garmin/Android users have been limited in their ability to consolidate fitness data across multiple services. In other words, this Health Connect update will address long-standing complaints about the ability to sync data.

Plus, the timing of Garmin integration couldn’t be better, given the launch of the long-awaited Forerunner 965 and Forerunner 970 watches.

What if I don’t want to sync?

As you can see in the screenshots above, connecting your device’s health app to your Garmin is fully optional. The Health Connect platform operates as a secure intermediary, storing all data locally on users’ devices rather than in the cloud. Users maintain complete control over their data sharing preferences, with all integrations disabled by default and requiring explicit approval before any information is synchronized between applications. You can easily manage permissions if you’d prefer to keep your data separate.

Garmin support should come later this month

The June rollout of Garmin support, alongside Runna and Mi Fitness integration, is long overdue for dual Android/Garmin users. The company’s historically closed ecosystem has meant that users wanting to share their Garmin-collected data with other health and fitness applications faced frustrating barriers or required workaround solutions. Now, the doors should be opened to get your workouts and other data in and out of your Garmin app much easier.

Beyond basic fitness metrics, Google emphasized that the integration will enable users to “read and write” more comprehensive health information, including allergies and immunizations data. The integration update is expected to go live sometime in June, though Google has not yet provided a specific launch date.

The internet is changing rapidly, and the (rather large) chunk of it devoted to adult entertainment is no exception. Porn sites in an increasing number of U.S. states must now verify that their users are adults by requiring them to submit a government-issued ID or some other suitable method of proving their identity. Understandably, this is not necessarily something everyone wants to do every time they visit an adult site.

In response, Pornhub, as well as other sites under its parent company Aylo, have gone dark in a lot of these states in protest. As such, many users across these states are now searching for the best VPNs (virtual private networks) to install on their devices so they can still access the site.

As of the start of June 2025, 19 states have put these age verification requirements in place: Louisiana, Utah, Mississippi, Virginia, Arkansas, Texas, Montana, North Carolina, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Indiana, Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri.

Another five states will join the club in the coming weeks and months, including Georgia, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Arizona. Bills are also pending in an additional 16 states: Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Maryland. State-level legislation aside, the federal SCREEN Act (2025) could bring in country-wide measures if it passes into law.

It’s a shifting landscape, as laws are proposed and appealed in each state, and the best resources for keeping up to date that I’ve found are from the Age Verification Providers Association (which is pro-age verification measures) and the Free Speech Coalition (which is against them).

On the one side is the argument that kids need to be protected from adult content online, and on the other is the argument that kids will find porn anyway—perhaps through sites that have fewer safeguards and rules around adult content than Pornhub.

The Louisiana exception

Pornhub can use LA Wallet in Louisiana.
Credit: Lifehacker

Pornhub owner Aylo’s issues with all of this legislation are that age verification systems are ineffective, and an invasion of privacy for those aged 18 or over. Instead, the company is calling for user ages to be verified at the device level, perhaps through the app stores managed by Apple and Google, for example. Lawmakers in Texas have already passed legislation requiring app stores to verify ages before users can download any apps, not just ones with age-restricted content.

Louisiana stands out as the one state where Aylo sites, including Pornhub, are cooperating with an age verification system to keep adult content available to users. That system is known as LA Wallet, the digital driver license app that’s already active in Louisiana, and which provides robust ID verification. One of the reasons Aylo has kept Pornhub open for business in Louisiana is that LA Wallet can work anonymously: It’s a bit like using a two-factor authentication code. Through this mechanism, Pornhub doesn’t know who you are, but does know you’ve been verified as an adult through LA Wallet.

For now, other states are lagging in introducing similar tech. They either don’t have digital ID systems like LA Wallet, or have systems that aren’t as simple to use for the purpose, or as respectful towards user privacy. And so the stand-off continues: Both state governments and Aylo want users to have to verify their age to access Pornhub, they just want to go about it in different ways.

How to watch Pornhub if it’s blocked in your state

Whatever your position on age verification laws, remember that the best VPNs can connect your computer to a server in a different part of the world—making it look like you’re located somewhere other than where you actually are. So wherever you are, if you want to access porn sites that are blocked, a VPN is your new best friend.

That’s just the start, though, when it comes to the benefits of installing a VPN. These software tools hide your browsing activity from governments, law enforcement agencies, and whoever is providing your internet connection. Generally, VPNs make it harder for companies to track you, and give you more security and privacy (though not total anonymity) online.

With that in mind, Lifehacker has covered the best free VPNs, the best paid VPNs, and the best free VPNs for Android in the past, but I’d like to highlight a couple of recommendations here—if you want more suggestions for your internet browsing needs (adult site-related or not), follow those links above.

The best free VPN: Proton VPN

Proton VPN doesn’t put any bandwidth restrictions on free accounts.
Credit: Proton

We’ve written in glowing terms before about how good the free Proton VPN is, and it’s a great pick if you don’t want to spend anything. Its appeal starts with Proton itself: It’s committed to privacy, was started by scientists in Switzerland, and is siloed from the big tech names (like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft). It’s a name you can trust.

There are also surprisingly few restrictions for a free VPN. The two main limitations are you can only connect from one device, and you don’t get to choose which country’s servers you connect to. That’s it—it’s not painfully slow, like a lot of free VPNs. If you do need more flexibility in your VPN connections and features, there are paid upgrades available too.

Add in the ease of use you get with Proton VPN, the support for a broad range of devices, and the reliability you get from servers around the world, and it’s difficult to beat in terms of a free VPN. Sign up here for a Proton account, if you don’t already have one.

The best paid VPN: NordVPN

You can connect to more than 100 different countries with NordVPN
Credit: NordVPN

You’ve got a lot of excellent options to pick from when it comes to paid VPNs, and there’s no app that’s far and away above the others—but we’re going to highlight NordVPN here, which we recently compared to ExpressVPN. It’s fast, it’s flexible, and the software it offers across multiple platforms is more polished and intuitive than with a lot of its rivals.

You get lots of features with NordVPN, from split tunneling to DNS customizations to support for the super-private Onion network. While you can easily use the software with just a couple of clicks (or taps), there are numerous advanced features available if you want to dig a bit deeper—you can even have a dedicated IP address (though it costs extra).

Pricing for NordVPN starts at $12.99 a month, but you can get some pretty significant discounts if you pay for a year (or two years) up front. That’s enough to get you up to six simultaneous connections, and you can sign up here to register and download the apps.

Researchers in Japan have developed a plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours, offering up a potential solution for a modern-day scourge polluting oceans and harming wildlife. From a report: While scientists have long experimented with biodegradable plastics, researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and the University of Tokyo say their new material breaks down much more quickly and leaves no residual trace.

At a lab in Wako city near Tokyo, the team demonstrated a small piece of plastic vanishing in a container of salt water after it was stirred up for about an hour. While the team has not yet detailed any plans for commercialisation, project lead Takuzo Aida said their research has attracted significant interest, including from those in the packaging sector.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Snapchat has been experimenting with generative AI-powered augmented reality lenses in its app for the last couple years. Now, the company is allowing users to make their own with a new standalone app for making AR effects.

Snap is introducing a new version of its Lens Studio software that allows anyone to create AR lenses through text prompts and other simple editing tools, and publish them directly to Snapchat. Up to now, Lens Studio has only been available as a desktop app meant for developers and AR professionals. And while the new iOS app and web version aren’t nearly as powerful, it offers a wide range of face-altering and body-morphing effects thanks to generative AI.

“These are experimental new tools that make it easier than ever to create, publish, and play with Snapchat Lenses made by you,” the company explains in a blog post. “Now, you can generate your own AI effects, add your dancing Bitmoji to the fun, and express yourself with Lenses that reflect your mood or an inside joke–whether you’re on the go or near your computer. “

Snap gave me an early look at the Lens Studio iOS app, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much flexibility it offered. There are AI-powered tools for transforming your face, body and background via detailed text prompts (the app also offers suggestions of the kinds of prompts that work well, like “detailed zombie head with big eyes and nose, lots of details.”)

There’s a bit of a learning curve to figuring out what works well for each type of effect, and some of the generative AI prompts can take up to 20 minutes to render. But the app also offers dozens of templates that you can use as a starting point and remix with your own ideas. You can also make simpler face-altering filters that don’t rely as heavily AI but take advantage of popular Snapchat effects like face cutouts or Bitmoji animations. (A few examples of my creations are below, both used AI to create a background I overlaid other effects onto.)

Screenshots via Snap

Snap already has hundreds of thousands of lens creators, some of whom have been making effects for the app for years. But I can easily see this new, simpler version of Lens Studio opening the door for many more. There could also be some upside for creators hoping to take advantage of Snapchat’s monetization programs: the company confirmed that users who publish lenses from the new app will be eligible to participate in its Lens Creator Rewards program, which pays creators who make popular AR effects.

A more accessible version of Lens Studio could also help Snap compete with Meta for AR talent. (Meta shut down Spark AR, its platform that allowed creators to make AR for Instagram last year.) In addition to Snapchat’s in-app effects, the company is now on its second generation of standalone AR glasses. More recently, Snap has focused on big-name developers to make glasses-ready effects, but the company has previously leaned on Lens Creators to come up with interesting use cases for AR glasses. Those types of integrations will likely require much more than what’s currently available in the new pared-down version of Lens Studio, but making AR creation more accessible (with the help of AI) raises some interesting possibilities for what might one day be possible for the company.

Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Engadget’s parent company Yahoo, joined the board of directors at Snap on September 12, 2024. No one outside of Engadget’s editorial team has any say in our coverage of the company.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snapchat-now-has-a-standalone-app-for-making-gen-ai-augmented-reality-effects-170036214.html?src=rss

If you’ve been online for longer than you care to admit, you undoubtedly have an account or two you don’t use anymore. My password manager is full of logins that I haven’t accessed in years, and I know I have accounts that I haven’t even thought about, let alone logged into, that never even made it to that password manager.

We all like to think that the internet is forever, and that these accounts will always be waiting for us should we ever wish to return. Unfortunately, the internet doesn’t work that way. Those accounts are hosted by companies that have financial and security interests that don’t align with holding onto inactive accounts forever. Sooner or later, companies start purging their inactive accounts. While active account holders will never know the difference, you might be upset to find that an account you’ve held for a decade is no more.

Samsung is deleting inactive accounts starting July 31

Such is the case with Samsung and its current crop of inactive accounts. As reported by SamMobile, Samsung is planning on deleting inactive accounts starting July 31. The company is targeting accounts that haven’t been accessed in 24 months, which means the first round of accounts will have been inactive since at least July 31, 2023.

If you’ve only ever had one Samsung account, and it’s the one you currently use on your devices, you have nothing to worry about. But if you’ve had multiple Samsung accounts in the past, or you ditched your Galaxy for a Pixel or iPhone and left your account behind in the process, you’ll want to make sure you log into it at your earliest convenience. Otherwise, Samsung will help you throw it away.

You don’t have to log into it this second, if you’re reading this post when it publishes: Just make sure you log into any Samsung accounts you haven’t accessed for two years (or more) before that July 31 deadline. Do that, and you’re set for another 24 months—or until Samsung changes the policy.