Cybersecurity company ESET thought they’d discovered the first AI-powered ransomware in the wild, which they’d dubbed “PromptLock”. But it turned out to be the work of university security researchers…

“Unlike conventional malware, the prototype only requires natural language prompts embedded in the binary,” the researchers write in a research paper, calling it “Ransomware 3.0: Self-Composing and LLM-Orchestrated.” Their prototype “uses the gpt-oss:20b model from OpenAI locally” (using the Ollama API) to “generate malicious Lua scripts on the fly.” Tom’s Hardware said that would help PromptLock evade detection:

If they had to call an API on [OpenAI’s] servers every time they generate one of these scripts, the jig would be up. The pitfalls of vibe coding don’t really apply, either, since the scripts are running on someone else’s system.

The whole thing was actually an experiment by researchers at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. So “While it is the first to be AI-powered,” the school said in an announcement, “the ransomware prototype is a proof-of-concept that is non-functional outside of the contained lab environment.”

An NYU spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware a Ransomware 3.0 sample was uploaded to malware-analsys platform VirusTotal, and then picked up by the ESET researchers by mistake:

But the malware does work: NYU said “a simulation malicious AI system developed by the Tandon team carried out all four phases of ransomware attacks — mapping systems, identifying valuable files, stealing or encrypting data, and generating ransom notes — across personal computers, enterprise servers, and industrial control systems.” Is that worrisome? Absolutely. But there’s a significant difference between academic researchers demonstrating a proof-of-concept and legitimate hackers using that same technique in real-world attacks. Now the study will likely inspire the ne’er-do-wells to adopt similar approaches, especially since it seems to be remarkably affordable.
“The economic implications reveal how AI could reshape ransomware operations,” the NYU researchers said. “Traditional campaigns require skilled development teams, custom malware creation, and substantial infrastructure investments. The prototype consumed approximately 23,000 AI tokens per complete attack execution, equivalent to roughly $0.70 using commercial API services running flagship models.”
As if that weren’t enough, the researchers said that “open-source AI models eliminate these costs entirely,” so ransomware operators won’t even have to shell out the 70 cents needed to work with commercial LLM service providers…
“The study serves as an early warning to help defenders prepare countermeasures,” NYU said in an announcement, “before bad actors adopt these AI-powered techniques.”

ESET posted on Mastodon that “Nonetheless, our findings remain valid — the discovered samples represent the first known case of AI-powered ransomware.”

And the ESET researcher who’d mistakenly thought the ransomware was “in the wild” had warned that looking ahead, ransomware “will likely become more sophisticated, faster spreading, and harder to detect…. This makes cybersecurity awareness, regular backups, and stronger digital hygiene more important than ever.”

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At CES in January, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang “stood flanked by 14 humanoid robots from different companies,” remembers the Washington Post. But how close are we to real-world robot deployments?

Agility Robotics “says its factory is designed to eventually manufacture 10,000 robots a year,” the Post adds (with “some” of its robots “already at work in e-commerce warehouses and auto parts factories.”) Amazon even invested $150 million in the 10-year-old company (spun out from Oregon State University’s robotics lab) in 2022, according to the article, “and has tested the company’s robots in its warehouses.”
The e-commerce revolution has spawned sprawling warehouses across the country where products must be organized and customer orders assembled and shipped, but some human workers have said the repetitive work is low paid and leaves them prone to injury. Agility rents out its robots to warehouse owners it says have struggled to keep their human jobs filled, including logistics company GXO, which uses them at a warehouse for Spanx shapewear in Flowery Branch, Georgia, northeast of Atlanta. The robots pick up baskets of clothing from wheeled robots and walk them over to conveyor belts that take them to other parts of the facility.

Agility Chief Business Officer Daniel Diez said facilities like this represent a first step for humanoid robots into gainful employment. “This work gets paid, and we have eyes on large-scale deployments just doing this, and that’s what we’re focused on,” he said. German auto parts company Schaeffler uses Agility robots to load and unload equipment at a factory in Cheraw, South Carolina. Auto part plants have become a favored proving ground for humanoid robots, with Boston Dynamics, the company famous for its videos of back-flipping robots, doing tests with its majority owner, Hyundai.
But meanwhile, RoboForce makes a robot that has two arms on a base with four wheels, the article notes, “providing stability and making it possible to lift more weight than a bipedal robot.” Humanoid designs make sense “if it is so important to justify the trade-off and sacrifice of other things,” RoboForce CEO Leo Ma tells the Post. “Other than that, there is a great invention called wheels.”

Still, the article argues there’s “a new drive to make humanoid robots practical,” fueled by “the surge of investment in AI” combined with advancements in robotics that “make humanoid designs more capable and affordable.”

Years of steady progress have made legged robots better at balancing and stepping through tricky terrain. Improved batteries allow them to operate for longer without trailing industrial power cords. AI developers are adapting the innovations behind services like ChatGPT to help humanoids act more independently… The progress has triggered a frenzy of investment in humanoid robots and made them into a mascot for the idea that AI will soon reorder the world on the scale tech leaders have promised… Venture capitalists have invested over $5 billion in humanoid robotics start-ups since the beginning of 2024, according to financial data firm Pitchbook, and the largest tech corporations are also placing bets… Meta is working on integrating its own AI technology with humanoid robots, and Google researchers are collaborating with Austin-based humanoid robot start-up Apptronik… A host of humanoid robot companies has spawned in China, the world leader in complex manufacturing, where the government is subsidizing the industry. Six of the 14 robots that shared the stage with Nvidia’s Huang were made by Chinese companies; five were American.

“China’s Unitree sells a 77-pound humanoid that stands 4-foot-3 for $16,000…”

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You don’t necessarily have to break the bank to pick up a cordless vacuum and avoid the scourge of cables while you’re cleaning up debris from your floors. Our favorite budget cordless vacuum already delivered good value for money, and now it’s on sale, making it an even more enticing proposition. The Levoit LVAC-300 has dropped down to $270.

This cordless vacuum’s list price is $350, meaning that you’re getting a discount of $80 or 23 percent. It’s not quite a record-low price (we’ve seen it drop to $250 in the past), but it’s still a good deal.

The Levoit LVAC-300 is our pick for the best budget cordless vacuum. It offers good suction power for a model in this price range, and it has easier handling and a more polished design compared with our previous recommendation in that subcategory. It feels fairly smooth when you move it across your floors as well.

It’s easy to assemble and take apart the LVAC-300. Removing the battery is a cinch too (alas, there’s no charging dock for this one). You can turn on this vacuum with a single button press. Another button switches between Eco, Mid and Turbo modes. The latter of those can drain your battery quite rapidly if you use it a lot, though you can keep an eye on the battery level using the digital display. Levoit says the battery will run for up to 60 minutes on a single charge in Eco mode but just 12 minutes in Turbo mode.

At 0.75 liters, the bin size is pretty decent. The LVAC-300 has a HEPA filter and Levoit says it can capture “99.99 percent of particles as small as 0.3μm with air purifier-level efficiency.” In our testing, we felt that it did a solid job of vacuuming up dirt, dust bunnies, pet hair and coffee grounds. Overall, we reckon the LVAC-300 is a good, budget-friendly cordless vacuum that might be best suited for apartment dwellers and those with small- to medium-sized homes (or if you just want such a device on hand to take care of a quick clean up).

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/one-of-our-favorite-cordless-vacuums-is-23-percent-off-right-now-144255672.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shares a report: OpenAI recently had both good news and bad news for shareholders. Revenue growth from ChatGPT is accelerating at a more rapid rate than the company projected half a year ago. The bad news? The computing costs to develop artificial intelligence that powers the chatbot, and other data center-related expenses, will rise even faster.

As a result, OpenAI projected its cash burn this year through 2029 will rise even higher than previously thought, to a total of $115 billion. That’s about $80 billion higher than the company previously expected. The unprecedented projected cash burn, which would add to the roughly $2 billion it burned in the past two years, helps explain why the company is raising more capital than any private company in history.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Did you know you can customize Google to filter out garbage? Take these steps for better search results, including adding my work at Lifehacker as a preferred source.

AirPods Pro might just be Apple’s best accessory. They sound great, ship with intelligent features, and can often be found on sale. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem—even if you have just one or two other Apple products—they’re my go-to earbud recommendation.

However, they’re definitely not on the cutting edge: Apple hasn’t refreshed the AirPods Pro line since 2022, which means the earbuds you can buy today are the same you could’ve bought three years ago. Granted, the company has introduced new software features in that time, not least of which includes one that turns the earbuds into FDA-approved hearing aids, but the hardware is exactly the same. These things are due for a refresh.

And if rumors are to be believed, it’s coming during tomorrow’s “Awe Dropping” event. Alongside the iPhone 17 series, the company will likely showcase the AirPods Pro 3, the third-generation of the earbud line. While we’re probably not getting an upgrade to the AirPods Max (which were “updated” with USB-C last year), the newest AirPods Pro sound pretty cool, no pun intended.

Here’s what the leaks and rumors suggest we’re getting:

A new H3 chip

As you might expect with a refresh like this, the new AirPods Pro are likely going to include upgraded internals. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, that includes “a new chip,” and while he doesn’t confirm it, that’s almost certainly the H3. The “H-chip” is what powers Apple’s AirPods, and is responsible for intelligent features for enhancing audio, boosting the quality of your voice on calls, and Transparency Mode, to name a few. The current AirPods Pro use the H2, so it only makes sense that Apple would run with H3 for this newest pair of Pros.

Details surrounding the H3 are pretty slim, so it’s tough to say what hardware advantages this chip will have over the H2 until Apple spells them out in the keynote. That said, this H3 chip will likely power some of the new features rumored to be exclusive to the AirPods Pro 3.

Improved audio quality

This won’t come as a shock, but AirPods Pro 3 will likely sound better than AirPods Pro 2. We don’t have a ton of details on how much Apple improved the sound this time, but I imagine the H3 chip will play a big part in it. MacRumors also believes Apple is improving Active Noise Cancellation with the third-gen AirPods Pro, so the earbuds should work even better in loud environments.

Heart rate monitor

Back in February, Apple released the Beats-branded Powerbeats Pro 2. These earbuds are priced the same as the AirPods Pro 2, but come with some unique features. There are the “earhooks,” which help keep the buds in your ears when working out, but there’s also something a bit more technically impressive: heart rate monitors.

Apple outfitted these buds with sensors to track your heart rate while in use, as if you had tiny Apple Watches in your ears. It’s neat, and makes sense for a product designed for exercise. If you don’t use a fitness tracker, your earbuds can help you more accurately track your workouts.

Naturally, you’d expect Apple would bring such a technology to its flagship earbud line, and if the rumors are correct, they will: Back in December, Gurman reported Apple was working on building both heart rate and temperature sensors into AirPods Pro 3. Reportedly, the experience is still more accurate on Apple Watch, but “the earbuds aren’t terribly far off.”

A slight redesign

AirPods Pro 3 might not look that much different than AirPods Pro 2 at first glance, but rumors suggest they will be slightly different. One leaker suggests that the charging case could be smaller this go around, while the button on the back of the case could be replaced by a capacitive button on the front. That would mirror the same design as the AirPods 4, so I expect Apple will almost certainly follow through on this one.

Apple is still working on adding cameras and “air gestures”

It might sound farfetched, but it does seem like Apple is working on adding cameras to its earbuds. Gurman thinks the end goal is to help power some of the company’s AI features, a space Apple has struggled to compete in these past few years.

That said, Gurman doesn’t expect to see these cameras on AirPods Pro 3. In fact, he says the tech won’t hit AirPods for at least a couple more years, if at all. He’s slightly contradicted by a new rumor that suggests Apple will release two AirPods Pro 3 models: One without the cameras, which will drop this year, and another with the cameras, which will come out next year.

The rumor also says that Apple could replace the AirPods’ squeeze function with air gestures. Instead of pushing on the stem to pause music, for example, the cameras would look for your hand movements. I’m not so sure Apple will announce a second AirPods Pro 3, or mention camera integration at all at this point, but it is worth mentioning.

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Setting up a home theater doesn’t have to mean drilling into ceilings or investing in a giant flatscreen. If you’ve been toying with the idea of upgrading your movie nights, this refurbished LG CineBeam projector, on sale for $199 on StackSocial right now, might be the easiest way to go big. It’s a refurbished unit, but it comes with a Grade “A” rating, meaning it’s been inspected and verified to be in near-mint condition. It comes with the power cord included, works with a wide range of devices, and ships to the contiguous U.S.

The CineBeam delivers full HD (1920×1080) resolution with enough brightness (600 ANSI lumens) to project a crisp, colorful picture up to 100 inches across. It’s compact and lightweight at just over two pounds, which makes it easy to carry around, whether you want to watch a film in your bedroom or set up an outdoor screening in the backyard. Its portability is matched by its convenience: It runs on LG’s webOS platform, which means you can stream straight from Netflix, YouTube, and other supported apps without needing a separate device. And its built-in battery gives you up to 2.5 hours of cable-free playtime.

It supports both wifi and Bluetooth, so you can cast from your phone or pair wireless speakers to boost your audio setup. And if you prefer hard connections, it’s got two HDMI ports, a USB-A, and a USB-C input—handy for everything from gaming consoles to presentations. If you’re okay with going refurbished, this might be a great solution for casual streaming, travel-friendly projection, or adding a screen to a space where a TV just doesn’t fit. Plus, the LED lamp has a rated life of up to 30,000 hours, which makes this a long-haul purchase even if you’re using it regularly. For just $200, it might be worth the impulse buy.

Young Americans are abandoning traditional retirement planning for dividend-focused ETFs that promise immediate income and freedom from traditional employment. Income-generating ETFs captured one in six dollars flowing into equity ETFs in 2025, pushing the sector to $750 billion — with the most aggressive funds offering yields above 8% quadrupling to $160 billion over three years.

The r/dividends subreddit has grown tenfold to 780,000 members over five years, while YouTube channels and Discord servers dedicated to dividend investing proliferate. YieldMax’s MSTY fund, offering a 90% distribution rate through complex derivatives, has underperformed MicroStrategy stock by 120 percentage points since February 2024 when dividends are reinvested — nearly 200 points when payouts are withdrawn. Speaking to Bloomberg, finance professor Samuel Hartzmark identified this as the “free dividends fallacy,” where investors fail to recognize that dividends reduce share prices rather than creating additional wealth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.