technology 24 for you

Saturday, June 20, 2026

War Taught this Ukrainian Entrepreneur the Value of Resilience

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-woman-sitting-with-her-face-turned-toward-the-camera.jpg?id=66957341&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C187%2C0%2C188"/> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikadzesalome" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Salome Mikadze-Struk</a> is no stranger to adversity. The daughter of refugees, she built a software-development business as an undergraduate at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and kept it running despite the outbreak of war in her native <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/tag/ukraine" target="_blank">Ukraine</a>. Now, she’s drawing on her experiences to mentor tech-startup founders and speak publicly about the importance of resilience in <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/thinking-like-an-entrepreneur" target="_blank">entrepreneurship</a>.Mikadze-Struk was studying at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C., when COVID-19 struck. Classes went online, and she moved back to Ukraine. In the midst of that disruption she saw an opportunity to develop her business idea, called <a href="https://movadex.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Movadex</a>, by tapping Ukraine’s pool of talented young engineers. Then Russia invaded in early 2022, during her final semester. Taking online classes from bomb shelters and helping employees evacuate to safer parts of the country was surreal, she says, but the team kept the company afloat and she graduated later that year.In 2023, Mikadze-Struk took a hiatus from her business to pursue an MBA at Stanford University, which she completed this year. In her precious spare time she’s been advising startups and giving talks, using her unique perspective to promote the need for resilience in entrepreneurship—something she thinks is increasingly important in the software industry as <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/best-ai-coding-tools" target="_blank">AI coding tools</a> upend old business models.“You need to be okay with risk, you need to be resilient. You need to be okay with disruption and okay with uncertainty,” she says, “because this is inevitably going to be part of this industry for the foreseeable future.”<h2>An Early Focus on Education </h2>Mikadze-Struk’s parents had settled in Ukraine after fleeing conflict in the Abkhazia region of Georgia in the early 1990s. “They left everything behind,” she says. “You can look on Google Maps and zoom in on where their houses were and it’s all rubble.”Despite this backstory, Mikadze-Struk says she and her sister had a conventional middle-class upbringing in Kyiv. Her father ran a small shop and her mother was a stay-at-home mom. Her parents placed an emphasis on education and encouraged her to study hard and take part in extracurricular programs such as Ukraine’s <a href="https://man.gov.ua/en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Junior Academy of Sciences</a>, which introduces students to research.“They weren’t rich, so they knew that our way to make it in life was not through investments, but through merit-based accomplishments,” she says.<h3></h3> <div class="rblad-ieee_in_content"></div>When Mikadze-Struk was 14, her family discovered the newly launched <a href="https://www.ugs.foundation/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Ukraine Global Scholars</a> program, a nonprofit that helps talented students secure scholarships abroad. The program helped her win a full scholarship to the Emma Willard School, a private girl’s school in Troy, N.Y.<h2>Discovering Tech </h2>After graduating high school in 2018, Mikadze-Struk was accepted to Georgetown to study business administration. But it was outside the classroom that her career direction began to take shape. She won a startup competition with a medical device she had developed for a school project and, while the business idea didn’t go anywhere, it sparked an interest in entrepreneurship.Ukraine’s software industry was booming, and she began attending startup events and competitions in her home country the summer before starting college. There she met her eventual cofounder <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/norrr/?originalSubdomain=ua" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nor Newman</a>.Despite both being just 18, they saw a gap in the market. The pair noticed many founders had strong ideas but lacked the technical expertise to realize them, while talented engineering students often struggled to <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/hands-on-projects-career-advice" target="_blank">gain real-world experience</a>. Newman had begun informally connecting startups with his college friends, but the pair soon saw commercial potential. “We realized we could actually create our own startup studio and help startups as a team, versus just connecting people,” says Mikadze-Struk.Then, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, halfway through her sophomore year, it brought both disruption and opportunity for Newman and Mikadze-Struk. While travel restrictions and lockdowns made life complicated, there was also a surge of companies looking to move their business online. “COVID really skyrocketed everything we were doing,” she says.Sensing an opportunity, Mikadze-Struk and Newman incorporated Movadex in Ukraine in early 2020. From the start, they decided to focus on not only providing engineering talent, but also helping startups with product development. Many times, says Mikadze-Struk, a founder’s vision for the software doesn’t line up with what users actually want. “What really helped us grow is not just the engineering or quality of code, but rather a holistic approach to creating a product and actually getting into the brain of the user,” she says.<h2>Navigating Adversity </h2>Back in Ukraine, Mikadze-Struk had to juggle this booming business with studying remotely—taking classes at night and working during the day. It was exhausting, she says, but it also allowed her to immediately apply what she learned in business classes to building her startup.Having successfully navigated the pandemic, Mikadze-Struk was dealt another wild card. In early 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine and her life was again turned upside down. It was particularly traumatic for her family, having already been forced from their home in Georgia once by war. <img alt="photo of woman in a light pink suit standing under an veranda with greenery" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ff5d8d6d9be15f786a57dfb2deadbc1e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" id="53b39" loading="lazy" src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/photo-of-woman-in-a-light-pink-suit-standing-under-an-veranda-with-greenery.jpg?id=66957358&width=980"/> In 2023, Mikadze-Struk took an extended leave from her company to pursue an MBA at Stanford.Christie Hemm Klok“For my parents to experience their daughters going through all the same things they had gone through was really heartbreaking,” she says. “But at the same time, because I’d heard so much about their story of resilience I had power in me to not fully break down.”On the day of the invasion the founders told employees to take the day off and emailed clients to warn of potential disruptions. The next couple of days were spent checking on staff and evacuating as many as possible to their headquarters in Lviv, in Western Ukraine.By the following Monday the business was back up and running. Soon afterward, they partnered with the <a href="https://itcluster.lviv.ua/en/" target="_blank">Lviv IT Cluster</a> business association’s nonprofit arm to help resettle refugees from the eastern part of Ukraine, where strikes were focused, and offer job placements. Throughout this period, Mikadze-Struk was also completing her final year at Georgetown remotely. “Half of my senior year was actually spent in bomb shelters,” she says.<h2>Promoting Resilience in Entrepreneurship </h2>That summer, Mikadze-Struk graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and learned she had been accepted onto Stanford University’s MBA program. In 2023, she took an extended leave from Movadex and moved to California. She also gave birth to her daughter in 2024.Balancing studies and parenthood was already a full-time job, but she continued to engage with the startup ecosystem by volunteering as a startup mentor and public speaker. Now, after graduating from Stanford, she is stepping back into a more active leadership role at Movadex, where she hopes to drive the company’s expansion into the United States. She also wants to develop a stronger focus on helping customers understand and implement AI in their businesses.While AI is undeniably disrupting the tech industry, Mikadze-Struk, now an IEEE Senior Member, is fundamentally optimistic about its impact. “The way AI democratized access to building software and to prototyping…is just mind blowing,” she says.But it will require a significant shift in mind-set for engineers, especially junior developers hunting for jobs. They need to “fall in love with AI” and embrace it as a powerful copilot, she says. As these tools increasingly take over the nuts-and-bolts work of coding, engineers also need to nurture higher-level skills like systems thinking and architectural design.Perhaps most importantly, given the rapid pace at which the technology is evolving, engineers need to nurture their adaptability and resilience. “It’s both exciting and scary, because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.” Reference: https://ift.tt/2KNxuit

Friday, June 19, 2026

IEEE Rolls Out Large Language Models Virtual Training Course

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-middle-aged-black-man-taking-a-virtual-coding-class-in-his-home-office.jpg?id=66951841&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C729%2C0%2C730"/> <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/recursive-self-improvement" target="_self">Large language models</a> have moved out of the research lab and into engineers’ daily workflow. LLMs serve as reasoning engines that can orchestrate complex tasks including identifying vulnerabilities in source code and transforming fragmented project discussions into rigorous technical specifications.While the general public uses AI tools to write email and plan vacations, technical professionals use LLMs as core architectural elements that are fundamentally changing how digital infrastructures are built and maintained. As the AI models move into mainstream engineering practice, the demand for technical expertise is rising.The LLM technology market is expected to grow by <a href="https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/large-language-model-llm-market-102137956.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">about 33 percent every year through 2030</a>, according to <a href="https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/AboutUs-8.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MarketsandMarkets</a>. The rapid expansion suggests that proficiency in implementing and securing the models is transitioning from a niche into a core requirement for technologists.<h2>More than just a better search engine</h2>To use LLMs effectively, technical professionals must move beyond treating them as conversational robots. At a fundamental level, the AI systems are built on the <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10245906" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">transformer architecture</a>, a framework that replaced the older method of processing data in a fixed, sequential order. Unlike earlier models that analyzed information one step at a time, transformers use self-attention mechanisms to ingest vast datasets simultaneously.For technical professionals, LLMs are core architectural elements that are fundamentally changing how digital infrastructures are built and maintained.Relying on such LLMs without understanding their internal logic creates a significant reliability risk. To build tools that work consistently, developers must understand the core principles that govern how the models process information and generate results. By mastering how a model processes information and how its internal settings influence the result, developers can move away from a trial-and-error approach toward a more precise one to ensure the AI tool handles complex data reliably.<h2>Four ways LLMs are changing jobs</h2>Here are areas that integrate large language models.Moving past basic prompts. Developers are using application program interfaces (APIs) to connect LLMs directly to their databases and software tools. Employing the APIs allows AI to perform work such as executing code or searching through internal repositories.Fixing the “hallucination” problem. LLMs are at risk of <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-agent-benchmarks" target="_self">hallucinations</a>, which are generated facts or code that looks correct but actually is wrong or broken. To fix the problem, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) forces AI to look up information in a trusted source such as a company’s database.Prioritizing data security. When using AI with proprietary code, <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/two-new-ai-ethics-certifications" target="_self">security</a> is a major concern. Engineers must learn how to set up “private” instances of the models to ensure that sensitive company data stays within a secure cloud environment and is not used to train public versions.The future of collaboration. By automating repetitive coding tasks and summarizing thousands of pages of documentation, LLMs let engineers spend more time on high-level designs and solving important issues.<h2>Online course program helps with mastering the tech</h2>The gap between people who use AI and those who understand how to build with it is growing wider. To help technical professionals stay ahead, IEEE offers a five-course online program, <a href="https://iln.ieee.org/public/contentdetails.aspx?id=B570F53B5DA44B258042A12AE5BD6846" target="_blank">Large Language Models Demystified</a>, available through the <a href="https://iln.ieee.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Learning Network</a>.The program, developed by <a href="https://ea.ieee.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Educational Activities</a> in partnership with the <a href="https://computer.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE Computer Society</a>, is built for people who want to understand the “how” and the “why” behind the technology. Rather than just teaching basic prompting, the curriculum dives into the engineering behind generative AI, including:<ul><li>Evolution, impact, and hands-on exercises: the shift from statistical methods to modern transformers, including hands-on model optimization.</li><li>Understanding transformer architectures: the mathematical core of self-attention and positional encoding, implemented in <a href="https://numpy.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NumPy</a> and <a href="https://www.python.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Python</a>.</li><li>Architectural analysis and implementation: advanced LLM design with practical model-building exercises.</li><li>Training and modeling with PyTorch: end-to-end pipelines in <a href="https://pytorch.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">PyTorch</a>, leveraging parameter-efficient techniques such as <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.09685" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">low-rank adaptation</a> and quantization.</li><li>Optimization, alignment, and deployment: performance scaling, <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/reinforcement-learning-from-human-feedback/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF)</a>, <a href="https://cameronrwolfe.substack.com/p/grpo" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">group-relative policy optimization</a>, RAG, and agentic AI.</li></ul>Upon completion of the program, participants earn professional development credits and a digital badge from IEEE to verify their expertise.<a href="https://iln.ieee.org/public/contentdetails.aspx?id=B570F53B5DA44B258042A12AE5BD6846" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Enroll in the course program</a> on the IEEE Learning Network.Organizations looking to prepare their teams to work on LLMs can connect with an <a href="https://forms1.ieee.org/Large-Language-Models-Demystified.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">IEEE content specialist</a> to discuss group enrollment and tailored training paths. Reference: https://ift.tt/sa1lgiw

What Amazon’s Astro Taught Me About Giving Robots a Soul

<img src="https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/cute-wheeled-home-robot-with-a-tablet-face-set-against-a-blue-heart-patterned-background.jpg?id=66906422&width=1200&height=400&coordinates=0%2C417%2C0%2C417"/> In 2018, Amazon brought me in as the lead UX Sound Designer for <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/amazon-astro-robot" target="_blank">Astro, their first consumer home robot</a>. Astro used cameras and other sensors to map and navigate your <a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-robots" target="_blank">home and workplace</a>, and could proactively patrol, check up on loved ones, and transport small items using its built-in cargo bin. While there was a well-defined feature set and form factor, initially there was no character direction. In fact, even before <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Amazon-Astro/dp/B078NSDFSB" target="_blank">Astro</a> had a name, there were two main questions—was it simply Alexa on wheels, or was it a robot with its own character?The Astro team was divided. One option was to focus on Alexa, and treat the mobile robot simply as an added utility. I argued for Astro to not focus on Alexa, along with the majority of the UX team. Our belief was that a thing that moves through your home and turns toward you with intent can never be just an appliance. People would ascribe character to whether we wanted them to or not, and so the only question was whether we shaped that character or let it happen by accident.Ultimately, <a href="https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/meet-astro-a-home-robot-unlike-any-other" target="_blank">Astro became Astro rather than Alexa</a>, and user testing backed up our decision. People didn’t see the robot as Alexa. They saw it as its own character, and that’s what they wanted it to be. Alexa on the device felt somewhat strange and creepy, but building Astro its own voice was too slow and expensive in 2018. So, we settled on Alexa as a supporting character that handled any actual talking, while Astro was the main character, communicating as much as it could without words, through sound, motion, and facial expressions.I had been brought on to the Astro team to define the robot’s sound design language and voice. But there was no one to flesh out the robot’s actual character. You cannot make a single real decision about a character without defining it first. Every choice about how Astro moved, sounded, paused, or reacted was a character choice, and those choices required all disciplines working together. As Sound Lead, I was weaving together sound, motion, and character, and how they played together inside each story moment. The animators, who programmed Astro’s motion and facial expressions, were extraordinary at what they did, but the emotional arc they were animating came from the sound (and therefore character) work first. So I stepped into that role, which is where my real work started. What I learned about building character for robots applies to nearly everything being built in embodied AI right now.<h2>Character Is a Design System</h2>Developing a character for Astro meant answering questions that had never been asked about a product at Amazon: What is the emotional range of this robot’s baseline state? How does this robot communicate uncertainty without eroding trust? Where is the line between being expressive and annoying? What are the vulnerabilities of this device’s character?These are design questions. They have real answers, and every team working on the product has to build from them. For example, Astro’s emotional range was designed to be relatively small at first. We never wanted Astro to get too sad or too angry. It could play sad, but would snap out of it quickly and end the reaction on a high note to keep things positive. <iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/r1eS3TitrHc?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe>Character leaks out of every seam and can create a disjointed experience if not defined correctly. Even if it’s just animation timing that’s slightly off, or a response that’s technically correct but contextually tone-deaf, users feel every one of these inconsistencies, even if they can’t name them. Watch what happens at the beginning and end of this Sing sequence: <iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HtePtQyiTDs?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe>Astro goes from nothing, into the emotional moment, and then lands back on nothing. No build up, no cool down, no sense that the feeling came from somewhere or had anywhere to go. I pushed hard for better character stitching, the transitions in and out of expressive moments that make a performance feel continuous rather than assembled, but it never got implemented. The moment itself works. But without the stitching, it reads as a clip playing on a robot rather than coming from within the robot character itself.<h2>Story and Sound at the Beginning</h2>We had decided that Astro would have no spoken dialogue, but it had something that functioned the same way: a vocabulary of sounds, tones, and rhythms that acted as its voice. This vocabulary became the leading output of the character’s personality. The robot’s motion and facial expressions were built around it.Astro’s wake-up sequence is a great example. Waking wasn’t just a boot animation on the screen; it was an entire performance. Slow and humble at first, the robot oriented itself quietly, then stretched its screen, checked its wheels, and finally, with an upward gesture toward its telescoping mast, it popped it up slightly, and did a little dance of joy. Sound, motion, and eyes hit every beat together in full choreography. <iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" lazy-loadable="true" scrolling="no" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/coPva7ltAgM?rel=0&start=261" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe>The character’s output in that sequence was first written as a story. Astro is waking up in its new home for the first time. Its main aspiration is to be part of a family, so this is the moment it has been waiting for, this is its purpose. Being the responsible character that it is, it wants to make sure everything is good to go before it introduces itself and starts learning its new home.This narrative came first because it drove every other decision that we made. After the story was written, sound gave that story a metaphorical voice: the excited tones, the pacing as it checked its wheels, and the bright melodic phrase as Astro looked up at its new family for the first time and introduced itself. Once the sound was laid down, animation did their thing with motion and facial expressions, taking cues from the emotional arc the sound had established. Motion didn’t lead—it followed the feeling of the story and the sounds, the same way an animator follows a recorded vocal take.That wake up sequence became one of the most-discussed moments in early user testing. People described it as “alive.” What they were responding to wasn’t any single element. It was all three channels (sound, motion, and facial expressions) expressing the same defined character in harmony.<h2>Context Is Where Character Becomes Real</h2>The most compelling characters are defined not by a fixed disposition but by how they respond to their environments and the people in them. They’re still recognizably themselves even as they adapt. This is what I call contextual character. A robot living in a home doesn’t occupy a single emotional state. It moves through rooms with different energy, encounters people in different moods, operates at different times of day, and responds to an endless range of social situations it was never explicitly designed for.We got close to a contextual character output with Astro’s sound. When a specific piece of environmental context was fed in, the system adapted beautifully, and Astro felt completely alive. But every state like this was still a prediction we made by hand—a situation we had to imagine in advance and design a response for. A random home throws more situations at a robot than anyone can possibly predict, so there was always a longer tail of moments the system was never prepared for.The difference between a product people describe as “smart” and one they describe as “aware” often comes down to this. Smartness is capability. Awareness is context. Presence is character. And character is always in reaction to the people around it, to its environment, to its own evolving state. That’s what makes it feel like something is emotionally present with you.This is where AI changes the game for character design in ways that go well beyond what was possible with Astro. AI-driven adaptation doesn’t require the contextual predictions that we relied on. It learns the specific rhythms, preferences, and emotional context of the people it lives and works with. The character doesn’t just respond to context. It grows into it.<h2>What Industry Is Missing</h2>The character and soul of the impending wave of embodied AI products appears to almost always be an afterthought. And character defined late is character defined by default. It becomes the sum of a thousand small decisions made by different people thinking about anything but character. People project character onto devices whether you plan for it or not, especially if those devices move—a robot that moves is already a character. If nobody has designed this character, the result will be products that feel like nothing, or worse, feel confusing and not trustworthy. Technically impressive, but lifeless.We did not get this fully right with Astro. So many things were moving in parallel that character was rarely treated as a utility, and it made sense why. When you are building a first-of-its-kind product, the things that are the loudest are the ones that break, the deadlines, the costs, the features a customer can point to on a box. Character is quieter than all of that. It’s easy to assume it can come later. On a team as large as the Amazon Astro team, it’s lucky to get any idea onto the roadmap when it is competing with a hundred others that all feel more urgent in the moment. None of this came from people not caring. It came from character being the kind of thing that is hard to prioritize until you see what its absence costs you.<h2>My Asks to Product Leaders</h2>If you are building a product that will share physical or conversational space with people, three things are worth considering:Define character before you define interactions. You need a defensible character with enough emotional logic to answer hard questions consistently. Find answers to character questions early, and have every discipline build from the same foundation.Build story and sound into the character pipeline, not the production pipeline. Story and sound developed alongside character definition has the chance to inform motion, expression, and interaction logic. This requires a different kind of collaboration, and a different kind of hire.Design for adaptation, not just consistency. A consistent character is necessary, but the products that will matter most in people’s lives are the ones that deepen through use. The infrastructure to support that is more and more accessible, but the design thinking to take advantage of it is still rare.<div class="horizontal-rule"></div>An unabridged version of this story can be read on <a href="https://medium.com/@mikeforstmusic/what-amazons-astro-taught-me-about-giving-ai-a-soul-989fcd9c45f4" target="_blank">Medium</a>. Reference: https://ift.tt/SUGdfWR

Thursday, June 18, 2026

Microsoft discovers new lightweight backdoor that steals cryptocurrency

Microsoft says it has detected new self-propagating malware that spreads through USB drives in search of cryptocurrency credentials, which it then sends to attacker-controlled servers. The company named the worm Crypto Clipper because it monitors the contents of device clipboards for patterns consistent with wallet addresses or seed phrases. When found, the malware also takes five screenshots over a 10-second period. Both the credentials and the screenshots are then sent to the attacker through Tor, a network protocol that provides anonymous routing by sending traffic through redundant nodes so logs can’t capture both the sending and receiving IP addresses. Crypto Clipper establishes the Tor connection by using a SOCKS5 proxy, a network protocol that sends traffic through a proxy server, which then forwards it to its final destination. <h2>A lightweight backdoor</h2> “The execution of this clipper is notable because it does not depend on a traditional installer or exposed IP-based C2 infrastructure,” Microsoft <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/06/17/crypto-clipper-uses-tor-worm-like-propagation-for-persistence-control/">said</a> Thursday. “Instead, it deploys a portable Tor client, routes traffic through a local SOCKS5 proxy, and blends data theft with remote code execution, turning a financially motivated stealer into a lightweight backdoor.”<a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/06/microsoft-spots-new-self-propagating-malware-for-stealing-cryptocurrency/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/06/microsoft-spots-new-self-propagating-malware-for-stealing-cryptocurrency/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/tXMK0SZ

Apple patches high-severity eavesdropping vulnerability in Beats Studio Buds

Apple has updated its Beats Studio Buds wireless earbuds to patch a high-severity vulnerability that could be exploited by nearby hackers to eavesdrop on users. The vulnerability, <a href="https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-20701">CVE-2025-20701</a>, allowed improper authentication in the firmware running on the Bluetooth-related chips, which made it possible for people within signal range to impersonate devices that had previously been paired with the earbuds. The researchers demonstrated this in a series of end-to-end attacks that allowed them to eavesdrop on conversations or sounds within earshot of the phone microphone. <h2>Apple joins the patch party</h2> “Impact: An attacker within Bluetooth range may be able to listen through the microphone of a device which is not yet paired and actively seeking pair requests,” Apple said in a Tuesday security <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/127557">advisory</a>. The fix is contained in Beats Firmware Update 1B211, which is delivered automatically while headphones are paired with and within Bluetooth range of a user’s iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Users can check their firmware version by going to Settings on their device, navigating to Bluetooth, and tapping the info button next to the headphones.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/apple/2026/06/apple-patches-high-severity-eavesdropping-vulnerability-in-beats-studio-buds/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/apple/2026/06/apple-patches-high-severity-eavesdropping-vulnerability-in-beats-studio-buds/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/CoadXKT

Before SpaceX IPO, investors in China secretly acquired stakes

A businessman with ties to Chinese military contractors was among the overseas investors who acquired stakes in SpaceX while it was still a private company. An entity linked to the Qatari royal family also took a stake. The new details come from a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28232877-jx-537-r/">private investor list</a> obtained by ProPublica that sheds light on a particularly delicate issue for Elon Musk’s rocket company: which people in countries like China bought into the company, and how. SpaceX built its business off sensitive US government work like making spy satellites for the Pentagon. While there is no ban on Chinese investment in US military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated. In a sign of its sensitivity to the concerns, SpaceX barred investors from China and Hong Kong from buying shares in its initial public offering last week due to “regulatory and compliance risks,” <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-05/chinese-hk-investors-banned-from-spacex-ipo-on-security-grounds">Bloomberg reported</a>. The US government alleges that China has a strategy of using investments in sensitive industries for espionage and to get access to cutting-edge technology.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/06/before-spacex-ipo-investors-in-china-secretly-acquired-stakes/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/06/before-spacex-ipo-investors-in-china-secretly-acquired-stakes/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/TOsxqRX

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Tesco moving 40,000 server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's “abusive conduct”

Tesco, a retail conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom, is moving 40,000 server workloads off of VMware amid "abusive conduct" from Broadcom, recent legal filings claim. Tesco filed a lawsuit in the UK’s High Court against Broadcom alleging breach of contract last year. According to a September report from <a href="https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/09/03/supermarket-giant-tesco-sues-vmware-for-breach-of-contract/1420651">The Register</a>, the lawsuit claimed that in January 2021, Tesco bought perpetual licenses for VMware’s vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation, a subscription to VMware Tanzu, plus support services until 2026, with the option to extend support for four additional years. But when <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/05/broadcom-will-pay-61-billion-to-become-the-latest-company-to-acquire-vmware/">Broadcom took over VMware</a> in November 2023, it would not honor the deal and instead tried to get Tesco to pay “excessive and inflated prices for virtualization software for which Tesco has already paid” and would not allow it to buy support services for its perpetually licensed software without buying “duplicative subscription-based licenses for those same Software products," the initial complaint read, <a href="https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/09/03/supermarket-giant-tesco-sues-vmware-for-breach-of-contract/1420651">The Register reported</a> at the time.<a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/06/tesco-moving-40000-server-workloads-off-vmware-amid-broadcoms-abusive-conduct/">Read full article</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/06/tesco-moving-40000-server-workloads-off-vmware-amid-broadcoms-abusive-conduct/#comments">Comments</a> Reference : https://ift.tt/2XABILx