Save Up to $1,500 When You Reserve a Galaxy Device From Samsung

Samsung is unleashing its legendary Unpacked event in July. To celebrate, they're offering $1,500 off when you reserve a new Galaxy device.

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Apple is rumored to be planning to add a new model to its line-up of the best AirPods: specifically, AirPods with infrared cameras installed, which can be paired with a Vision Pro headset and create a spatial audio experience that changes as you move your head.

This comes from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is right more often than not when it comes to Apple predictions. However, the IR-enabled AirPods aren't going to be available anytime soon, with mass production said to start in 2026.

It's worth noting that back in February, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman also reported that AirPods with cameras were being looked at by Apple. That's two good sources to back up this rumor, though of course Apple's plans can always change.

The camera system inside the AirPods will be similar to the tech used for Face ID on the iPhone, according to Kuo. They would be enough to detect when someone is turning their head – so certain sounds could be increased or decreased accordingly. If you're in a virtual 3D environment, that kind of audio trickery can be very effective.

What the future might hold

The Apple Vision Pro (Image credit: Apple)

Something else that the cameras might be able to detect are hand gestures, Kuo says. Gestures can already be used for actions inside the Vision Pro, but as our Apple Vision Pro review makes clear, there's absolutely room for improvement in this area.

While sales of the Vision Pro don't seem to have been particularly significant, Apple is said to be pressing ahead with a cheaper model – which coincidentally (or not?) is also said to be arriving on the consumer market at some point 2026.

When iOS 16 arrived in 2022 it brought with it a Personalized Spatial Audio feature for the AirPods, which worked with the help of an iPhone for the 3D scanning. These immersive experiences would seem to be something Apple is particularly interested in.

No doubt we'll hear more rumors and leaks about AirPods with cameras in the months ahead. In the meantime, the standard AirPods models are also supposed to be being refreshed this year or next, so we can apparently look forward to the 4th-gen standard AirPods and the Apple AirPods Pro 3 in the not-too-distant future.

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Save $36 With 3 Free Months of Kindle Unlimited Just Before Prime Day

Amazon's Kindle Unlimited is perfect for readers who want a relaxing way to enjoy their summer.

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The 4th of July sales and Amazon Prime Day coincide as two excellent opportunities to bag a mid-summer bargain. Generally speaking, both offer great deals and we always cover each at TechRadar. You may be wondering, however, what the differences are and what you should be shopping in each event.

Luckily I can help. I've been covering these events as deals editor on TechRadar for four years now so I've got plenty of tips, advice, and experience to share for our readers. If you've got your 4th of July shopping list ready but are wondering whether you should simply wait until Prime Day (or even Black Friday), then I'll tell you exactly what to expect in each sale. 

While you're here, I highly recommend bookmarking our 4th of July sales and Amazon Prime Day hub pages, which we'll be using to roundup all the best deals in each event. If you're looking for expert-picked deals, these pages should be your first port of call over the next month. 

The key differences, explained

The 4th of July sales are a 'traditional' sales event

The 4th of July sales are what I'd call a 'traditional' sales event - one where the deals are shared between online retailers and brick and mortar stores. Overall, it's a pretty similar setup to other federal holiday sales like Memorial Day and Labor Day, which are other seasonal sales that tend to feature similar types of deals.

Amazon Prime Day, on the other hand, is an online exclusive mega-sale at the world's biggest retailer. It's a two day event that's all about Amazon specifically and you'll need to be an active Amazon Prime member to get access to the exclusive deals on offer. 

It's worth noting that other retailers have started to try and muscle in on the action in recent years by offering their own 'anti-Prime Day' sales around the Amazon Prime Day period. In general, Prime Day has become a kind of mini-Black Friday event in July, although perhaps not quite as vast in content yet. 

What to buy at each event

(Image credit: Amazon)

• 4th of July sales for appliances, furniture, grills, mattresses.
• Amazon Prime Day for TVs, laptops, and electronics

I'd primarily recommend the 4th of July sales for appliances, furniture, grills, mattresses and so on - you know, the kind of things you'd buy in an outlet store. There are plenty of other deals (more on that later), but generally speaking these core categories are the best buys for 4th of July and other seasonal sales.

Amazon Prime Day, on the other hand, I'd recommend for electronics. TVs, laptops, headphones, and things along that vein. While the retailer's huge inventory covers a huge range of everyday essentials, it's usually the deals on electronics that we recommend people check out here at TechRadar - especially on own-brand devices like Echo Dots, Kindle, or Fire TV Sticks. We usually find Black Friday-level deals on models that we've personally tested and reviewed on-site so it's easy to recommend waiting until Prime Day to buy electronics.

It's not that simple, however

Yep - unfortunately not. While Amazon Prime Day remains the primo mid-Summer sales event, the 4th of July sales can sometimes have some superb hidden gems. It's not unusual to see decent price cuts on TVs, laptops, or other electronics earlier in the month at retailers like Dell, HP, Best Buy, and others. 

Right now, for example, the official HP Store is running its own 4th of July sale that's offering up to 55% off its range of Pavilion, Envy, and Spectre laptops - one of the better events we've seen from the retailer in recent months. Dell is also hosting a 'Summer Sale' right now with decent price cuts, although we could potentially see an even better 'Black Friday in July' sale at some point based on recent years. 

Because of this it's definitely worth at least checking out the 4th of July sales - even if you're shopping for electronics. In general we expect Amazon Prime Day to have better deals overall but there could be a few hidden gems here or there - which we'll of course be including in our 4th of July sales roundup.

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Struggling to Sleep During a Heat Wave? 12 Hacks to Combat Night Sweats

You aren't the only one tossing and turning during hot summer nights. Here are 12 expert tips for cooler, comfier sleep.

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Cybersecurity researchers from Outpost24’s KrakenLabs observed a new and quite unique malware campaign that seems to values quantity over quality.

Usually, when hackers compromise a device, they deploy a single piece of malware and try their best to remain unseen and persistent, as they use the computer for whatever end goal they have.

But this new campaign, dubbed Unfurling Hemlock, does the exact opposite, making it stand out in the world of cybercrime. The researchers are saying that once the victim triggers the malware executable - in this case called ‘EXTRACT.EXE’ - they receive a handful of different malware, infostealers, and botnet executables.

Malware cluster bomb

The chances of the malware being picked up by cybersecurity solutions is high, but the researchers believe the attackers are hoping at least some of the payloads will survive the purge. Among the things dropped on the devices are Redline (popular infostealer), RisePro (an upcoming infostealer), Mystic Stealer (infostealing malware-as-a-service), Amadey (loader), SmokeLoader (another loader), Protection Disabler (a utility that disables Windows Defender and other security features), Enigma Packer (obfuscation tool), Healer (anti-security solution), and Performance Checker (a utility that checks and logs the performance of malware execution).

This “malware cluster bomb” was first spotted in February 2024, the researchers said, claiming to have seen more than 50,000 cluster bomb files, all with unique characteristics that link them back to Unfurling Hemlock. 

KrakenLabs could not say with absolute certainty who the threat actors behind Unfurling Hemlock are, but they are fairly confident they are of Eastern European origin. Some of the evidence pointing in that direction is the use of Russian language in some of the samples, and the use of the Autonomous System 203727, related to a hosting service cybercrime groups in the region usually use. 

Luckily enough, the malware being pushed through this campaign is well-known and most reputable antivirus programs will flag it.

Via BleepingComputer

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Take Advantage of This Exclusive CNET Discount on One of Our Favorite Treadmills

Score big savings on the budget-friendly Horizon Fitness 7.0 AT treadmill with the exclusive CNET code CNETFIREWORK200.

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Anthropic has upgraded its Claude generative AI assistant to be more useful in the office. Claude Pro and Claude Team subscribers can now better organize and track their work with the AI assistant thanks to the new Projects and Artifacts features.

Projects are both a place for storing and interacting with data for tasks. Users can upload all their documents, code, and other relevant data into one place. Each project within Claude.ai includes a 200K context window, equivalent to a 500-page book. They can then ask Claude about it, and even set up custom instructions for how to respond in terms of tone or the context of who is asking and what they might need. The idea is to avoid what Anthropic calls "cold starts," where users must start from scratch each time they engage with the AI assistant. By having a knowledge base to draw from, Claude can respond to queries more quickly and accurately.

Office Artifacts

The Artifacts feature is a kind of flip of the Projects in that it can produce a wide range of content the way Projects can store them. Users can ask Claude to make text, code, and other 'artifacts.' Claude will share the output in a dedicated window alongside the chat, like a preview window of what it's composing. This setup enables users to see and interact with the generated content in real time, providing immediate feedback and adjustments where needed. An additional upgrade lets users share the best bits of conversations with Claude with their team in a shared project activity feed.

Both Projects and Artifacts are powered by Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Anthropic’s latest AI model. According to the company, Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms recently announced models like GPT-4o and Google's Gemini 1.5 on a variety of benchmarks.

"Our vision for Claude has always been to create AI systems that work alongside people and meaningfully enhance their workflows," Anthropic explained in a blog post. "With this new functionality, Claude can enable idea generation, more strategic decision-making, and exceptional results."

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Identity verification company AU10TIX kept a set of admin credentials exposed for more than a year, possibly allowing threat actors to steal its customers’ sensitive data.

AU10TIX verifies user identities on behalf of its clients, which include, among others, TikTok, X, and Uber, via selfie pictures and scans of people’s driver’s licenses. 

Cybersecurity researchers from spiderSilk were the first (among white hat researchers) to stumble upon the credentials. They claim that the login information grants access to a logging platform, where access to the identity documents is unabated. 

Stolen credentials

“My personal reading of this situation is that an ID Verification service provider was entrusted with people's identities and it failed to implement simple measures to protect people's identities and sensitive ID documents,” said Mossab Hussein, the chief security officer at spiderSilk. 

Unfortunately, it seems that malicious players beat spiderSilk to the punch, as account information was probably picked up by a piece of malware in December 2022, and shared via Telegram in March 2023. 

If someone did access this database (which AU10TIX claims was not abused in the wild), they would have gotten access to people’s names, birth dates, nationalities, ID numbers, and images of their faces. This is more than enough to run successful identity theft of phishing attacks. Such data is also quite expensive on the black market, too.

AU10TIX said it notified the affected customers and that it is replacing the current operating system with a new one, with more focus on security. 

It signed X as a client in September 2023, when we reported that the company had a clean rap sheet, without any public data breaches. As such, it was seen as a good choice for the social media behemoth. We did, however, said we’d remain skeptical given Musk’s controversial decisions in the past, and we were most definitely right.

Via 404 Media

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InspireSemi has announced the successful tapeout of the Thunderbird I Accelerated Computing chip for fabrication at TSMC. 

This highly differentiated "supercomputer cluster-on-a-chip" features 1,536 custom 64-bit RISC-V CPU cores, tailored for high-level scientific computing and complex data processing.

Thunderbird I is designed to cater to a wide array of compute-intensive applications, from AI and machine learning to graph analytics. Leveraging the open standard RISC-V CPU ISA, it allows easier development and integration into existing technology frameworks, with access to a solid ecosystem of software, libraries, and tools.

PCIe add-in card planned

The chip's architecture integrates a high-speed mesh network fabric that provides substantial bandwidth and minimal latency communication among cores, important for applications that rely on synchronized operations across multiple threads. This efficient network integration manages interactions within the chip's core array and memory systems, ensuring optimal performance without the common bottlenecks.

The upcoming product release will include a server PCIe add-in card hosting four Thunderbird chips, providing over 6,000 interconnected 64-bit CPU cores. This setup is equipped to handle double-precision math, essential for many high-performance computing applications in fields like climate science, medical research, and complex simulations.

Ron Van Dell, CEO of InspireSemi, said, “We are proud of the accomplishment of our engineering and operations team to finish the Thunderbird I design and submit it to our world-class supply chain partners, TSMC, ASE, and imec for production. We expect to begin customer deliveries in the fourth quarter.” There's no word on pricing yet, however.

InspireSemi also stresses Thunderbird I’s  energy efficiency, a carryover from its initial design for energy-sensitive blockchain computing applications. The company says this approach offers more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional data center GPUs.

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Medusa, an Android banking trojan that had been laying low for roughly a year now, has made a fresh appearance, experts have warned

A new, lightweight Medusa variant has been seen being used by multiple threat actors, and targeting victims in numerous countries around the world, noted cybersecurity researchers from Cleafy.

In their report, the researchers said they recently observed a surge in installations of a new app called “4K Sports”. Subsequent investigation determined the app to be an evolution of Medusa, with significant changes in its command infrastructure and capabilities.

Expanding targets

Most notably, the new variant requests fewer permissions, making it less detectable. It still asks for Accessibility Services, which should always be a red flag. Other notable mentions include Broadcasting SMS, Internet Foreground Service, and Package Management.

In total, 17 commands were nixed, and five new ones introduced, including setting a black screen overlay, taking screenshots, and more.

Five different botnets, each with unique operational goals and geographical targets, were identified using the new Medusa. These are called UNKN, AFETZEDE, ANAKONDA, PEMBE, and TONY, and their targets were mostly located in Canada, Spain, France, Italy, the UK, the US, and Turkey.

To distribute Medusa, the botnets are most likely using droppers, the researchers said. However, the droppers have not yet been found on the Google Play Store, which significantly reduces its reach. However, dedicated websites, social media channels, phishing, and other methods, are still viable and can still result in hundreds of thousands of downloads. 

Not to be confused with the ransomware, or the Mirai-based botnet of the same name, the Medusa banking trojan is a sophisticated piece of malware primarily designed to target financial institutions and facilitate banking fraud. It was first identified in 2020, targeting Turkish financial institutions. By 2022, Medusa had launched major campaigns in North America and Europe.

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It seems like every day, there is a new macOS Sequoia feature to look forward to, or some kind of improvement in Apple’s incoming OS, with a freshly spotted one opening up the doors to improved accessibility on the audio front.

MacRumors has been busy playing with the macOS 15 developer beta and discovered this new functionality in System Settings. Under Headphone Accommodations (in Accessibility > Audio), you can tweak the sound for your AirPods and some Beats headphones. 

The settings therein let you amplify softer sounds - to make them more easily heard - and change the audio output frequencies to make your music, phone calls, and more clearer sounding (or at least that’s the idea). From what we can tell, the new settings you run with will carry over when using your AirPods on devices other than your Mac. 

This could be a really useful feature for those who are hard of hearing to some degree, and it’s an ability that has been on iOS devices for some time. So, while it’s undoubtedly a very commendable step forward for accessibility with macOS, some folks out there are wondering why it took so long to bring this functionality across to the Mac.

Still, we’re glad to see it’s arriving, and in the run-up to the release of macOS Sequoia, we’re seeing a lot of new and interesting features and tweaks pop up that seem to be popular. 

A recent example is the fix for the annoying storage issue Mac users have to deal with when it comes to downloading apps, as well as the more anticipated changes like iPhone mirroring and a plethora of AI features powered by Apple Intelligence.

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Have Paramount Plus? Here's What the Upcoming Price Hike Means for You - CNET

Existing subscribers may or may not need to pay more soon.

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ASMedia recently demonstrated its USB4 v2 physical layer (PHY) chips at Computex 2024, which will allow external SSDs to reach speeds of up to 15GBps, potentially matching the performance of internal drives.

The USB4 Version 2.0 specification, released by the USB Implementers Forum in October 2022, introduces several advancements over the previous version. 

It incorporates the new PAM3 signal encoding format, which extends the USB4 bandwidth from 40Gbps to 80Gbps for peer-to-peer connections and allows for asymmetric speeds of 120Gbps/40Gbps.

FPGA-based USB4 Dock

ASMedia's presentation at Computex, titled "Incredible Speed, Exceeding the Limit," covered both USB4 and PCIe Gen5 technologies. The USB4 v2 presentation showed 80Gbps and 120Gbps physical layers, which are capable of dramatically improving the speed at which large data files and high-resolution videos can be transferred. USB4's backward compatibility also ensures seamless integration with existing USB devices.

The PCIe 5.0 PHY chip on show at the same event is tailored for the demanding needs of high-performance computing, big data, and - of course - AI servers. It is set to offer faster transmission speeds, reduced latency, and support for a broader range of high-performance devices. Details on this chip are scare right now, however.

Looking forward, the Taiwanese tech firm says it plans to sample multi-lane PCIe Gen4 Packet Switches by the end of 2024. It is also set to unveil an FPGA-based USB4 Dock at CES 2025.

This future dock, designed for multifunctional workstations, promises up to 40Gbps transmission speeds and up to 240W power delivery. The dock will also offer the usual array of ports including USB A and C, HDMI, DisplayPort, and Ethernet, enabling enhanced connectivity and charging capabilities for multiple devices. 

Pricing and availability of these new products will announced in due course.

(Image credit: ASMedia)

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Here's How to Buy Stamps Honoring Iconic Jeopardy! Host Alex Trebek - CNET

I'll take, "Best Postage Stamp News" for $500, Alex.

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