By Varun Mirchandani AI-powered smart glasses are raising new concerns as users reportedly exploit them for exam cheating, alongside ongoing privacy fears.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Varun Mirchandani New research suggests AI can match average human creativity, but true originality and top-level creativity remain uniquely human.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Hisan Kidwai We’ve just witnessed a stellar BGIS Grand Finals tournament, filled with ups and downs for many…
The post BGIS Grand Finals Day 3 Highlights: Soul Crowned the Champions appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Hisan Kidwai BGIS Grand Finals just wrapped up, and we’ve had a nail-biting competition that went down to…
The post BGIS Grand Finals 2026 Standings After Day 3: Soul Wins the Championship appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Ana-Maria Stanciuc A week that spanned semiconductor physics, orbital logistics, defence interceptors, and carob-based chocolate tells you something about the breadth of European and European adjacent capital right now. The dominant thread is not a single sector but a single instinct: back the infrastructure layer, whether that means chip interconnects, satellite transfer vehicles, or the AI plumbing […] This story continues at The Next Web

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By Shikhar Mehrotra With FCC filings now surfacing for products codenamed Scriber and Blazer, Meta’s push into the prescription eyewear space looks less like a rumour and more like an imminent launch.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Varun Mirchandani New research reveals generative AI is making fraud faster and more scalable, turning cybercrime into a $400 billion global problem.

Source:: Digital Trends

By Alina Maria Stan Every co-founder Elon Musk recruited to build xAI has now reportedly left the company. Manuel Kroiss, who led the pretraining team, told people this month that he was departing. Ross Nordeen, described by Business Insider as Musk’s “right-hand operator,” left on Friday. They were the last two of eleven co-founders, all of whom have exited […] This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Allison Steffens Herrera Meta is preparing to launch two new Ray-Ban smart glasses models designed specifically for prescription wearers, according to a Bloomberg report published on Thursday. The models, codenamed Scriber and Blazer, were first spotted in Federal Communications Commission filings and are expected to reach consumers as early as next week. They do not represent a new […] This story continues at The Next Web

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By Hisan Kidwai Day 2 of the BGIS Grand Finals was chaotic in the best way possible. A variety…
The post BGIS Grand Finals Day 2 Highlights: Soul Finish Strong, Genesis Dominate appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Hisan Kidwai We said day two of the BGIS Grand Finals would be the day of comebacks. While…
The post BGIS Grand Finals 2026 Standings After Day 2 appeared first on Fossbytes.

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Microsoft is finally blocking a long-since retired program that it said led to “abuse and credential theft,” yet remained widely trusted for years.

Beginning in April, Redmond will remove trust for kernel drivers that haven’t been vetted through its Windows Hardware Compatibility Program (WHCP). The company is specifically targeting kernel drivers signed by the now defunct cross-signed root program. 

But while this closes a security hole, Microsoft acknowledges that it could impact some legacy applications and use cases. To balance security with compatibility, the company will initially roll out the policy in “evaluation mode” with its April 2026 Windows 11 and Server update. It will also provide some leeway for older, widely-used and reputable drivers, and admins in certain situations will have the ability to override the new policy altogether.

“Essentially, Microsoft is closing a 20-year-old critical security hole in its OS,” said David Shipley of Beauceron Security. “Device drivers get to touch the OS kernel and can abuse that supreme-level access to do fun things like disable anti-virus and endpoint monitoring tools.”

Program put platforms at risk

Microsoft introduced the cross-signed root program in the early 2000s to give driver providers Windows-trusted code signing certificates with, it said, “varying degrees of partner vetting.” But it offered zero assurances around the security and compatibility of that kernel code.

The program was administered by third parties who stored private keys associated with the certificates, which, Microsoft says, “led to abuse and credential theft that put our customers and their platforms at risk.”

As a result, the program was deprecated in 2021, and all certificates have since expired. However, third-party drivers signed by the program are still “broadly trusted,” Microsoft says.

The new kernel trust policy will apply to Windows 11 24H2, 25H2, 26H1, and Windows Server 2025, and all future versions will enforce it, because, Peter Waxman, a group program manager at Microsoft, writes in a blog post, “drivers are a critical part of the Windows ecosystem, and ensuring their integrity is essential to providing a secure and trustworthy environment.”

However, in its initial evaluation mode, Microsoft will monitor and audit driver loads to test for compatibility issues should cross-signed drivers be blocked. Systems will remain in evaluation mode until they meet specific runtime (100 hours) and boot-start (2-3 restarts) scenarios. If all drivers loaded during the evaluation period are trusted, the policy activates, but if any cross-signed drivers are audited that would not pass the new kernel trust policy, the system remains in evaluation mode until those drivers are no longer audited.

Once activated, the kernel trust policy will automatically block untrusted drivers. Only drivers that have been passed and signed by WHCP, which scans all driver submissions for malware and tests whether the device is compatible with Windows hardware and operating system, will be loaded by default. Those drivers are then trusted across the Windows ecosystem.

Microsoft calls the certification program a “rigorous driver signing process” that helps ensure its partners are “continuously vetted” and comply with its latest security and compliance requirements.

Workarounds in certain scenarios

Even as it enforces this new policy, Microsoft is taking steps to minimize disruption. The tech giant will maintain an explicit allow list so that the kernel can load old, but “widely-used and reputable drivers” previously vetted through the retired program. This exception list is based on two years of real-world data around enterprise use of older drivers.

Further, admins will have the ability to override the policy via Application Control for Business. This can be particularly useful in scenarios where enterprises are loading custom drivers built for internal use.

“This gives enterprises the ability to run privately-signed drivers on enrolled systems without degrading security,” Microsoft notes. However, these bypass policies must be granted specific authority in the device’s cryptographic key to ensure it is applicable only to a specific enterprise environment. 

It’s a win for security — but there are tradeoffs

On the whole, this is great news for security, analysts note.

“There seems to be no single breach, instance, law, or sudden trigger that is prompting this step,” said Thomas Randall, a research director at Info-Tech Research Group. “Instead, this is part of a long-running cleanup for avoidable security risks.”

But, noted Beauceron’s Shipley, with great security comes some “usability or convenience trade-offs.” For instance, disabling device drivers, even those whose certificates have expired, might render highly-customized internet of things (IoT) devices obsolete. This could also impact critical medical equipment like x-ray machines.

Microsoft is being smart by baking in the two safety valves during evaluation (the 100 driver loads and three restarts) to make sure “they don’t brick something vital,” said Shipley.

Does this add more friction to malware creators? Yes. Is it a silver bullet? No, he said. “Endpoint detection and response-killing malware is still going to happen, but the blast radius just got smaller, so that’s a win.”

What enterprises should keep in mind

While Microsoft does extend some exceptions to its new policy, enterprises taking advantage of them shouldn’t consider themselves immune to ultimate driver blockage.

“Even those permissible older drivers will be on borrowed time,” Randall said. “We can expect Microsoft to eventually phase those out, too.”

The main risk for organizations is that they may be using older drivers without realizing it, he noted. For instance, factories or medical facilities relying on older hardware, specialized equipment, long-running business systems, or internal tools that were built years ago but never fully updated are all at risk.

“The device may still work perfectly well, but it may rely on an older driver, and nobody had a strong reason to replace it until now,” said Randall. “If one of those older drivers is not on Microsoft’s allowed list and no replacement exists, a device or application may stop working properly once a machine begins enforcing the new rule.”

To prepare for the policy change, Randall advised enterprises to make a list of hardware and software that install Windows drivers, then test machines that are in heavy, day-to-day use, or that serve highly important functions (like emergency medical equipment); ask hardware and software providers whether they have a roadmap for updated drivers; and identify any internal-only drivers that may require company-managed exceptions.

Further, “organizations should not assume Microsoft’s exception list will save them, because Microsoft says that list will be limited,” Randall noted.

Source:: Computer World

Company establishes dominant position on world’s largest retail platform while building multi-channel distribution strategy Innovative Eyewear, Inc. (NASDAQ: LUCY) has emerged as the clear category leader in the rapidly growing smart safety glasses segment, capturing approximately 44% market share on Amazon.com according to recent market analysis. This dominant position on the world’s most popular retail […] This story continues at The Next Web

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There have been plenty of warnings about job losses due to AI, particularly in the world of IT and in the reduction of entry-level positions. Doom mongers’ claims that AI is going to eradicate all our jobs look to be exaggerated but there is little room for complacency as there are some roles most definitely at risk — and software engineers, in particular, should be looking over their shoulders.

Economists Luis Garicano, Jin Li, and Yanhui Wu, report in a new research paper that jobs that can be unbundled — with tasks AI can perform easily separated from those requiring human input — are at greater risk than jobs where the two kinds of tasks are indissociable. “The effect of AI depends on how costly it is to break the bundle,” they wrote. This means that “In strong-bundle occupations, where tasks are not independently reallocable, AI improves performance inside the job, but does not remove the human from the bundle,” consequently, protecting jobs.

Garicano et al don’t provide examples of such jobs, but point out that jobs cannot be unbundled when there is a high coordination cost to separating their tasks, such as when one person must assume liability for all the tasks, when performing one task improves performance at another, or when a shared context is needed to perform all the tasks.

Meanwhile, a US study by Digital Planet at Tufts University suggests that the activities that will see the greatest AI-driven job losses are writers and authors (57% of such jobs affected), computer programmers (55%), and web and digital interface designers (55%), while software developers, management analysts, and market research analysts will see the greatest total income losses.

This article first appeared on CIO.com.

Source:: Computer World

By Alina Maria Stan Meta disclosed in SEC filings on Tuesday that it had granted stock options to six of its most senior executives, the first such awards since the company’s 2012 IPO. Hours later, it laid off approximately 700 employees across Reality Labs, recruiting, sales, and Facebook. The options are worthless unless Meta’s market capitalisation reaches $9 trillion […] This story continues at The Next Web

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By Hisan Kidwai BGIS Grand Finals have just started, and it was exhilarating. We expected top performance from teams…
The post BGIS Grand Finals Day 1 Highlights: GodLike Dominate, Soul Shine appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Hisan Kidwai The first day of the BGIS final has just curtailed. Today, we saw some amazing battle…
The post BGIS Grand Finals 2026 Standings After Day 1 appeared first on Fossbytes.

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By Omair Khaliq Sultan Planar magnetic headphones used to be the kind of thing you’d spend $500 or more to get into. The HIFIMAN Ananda changed that conversation when it launched, and at $249, it moves that conversation further still. That’s $150 off its $399 list price for a full-size open-back planar magnetic headphone that competes with options costing […]

Source:: Digital Trends

By Vikhyaat Vivek Meta’s next-gen Ray-Ban AI glasses have surfaced in FCC filings, revealing two new models and possible hardware improvements.

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By Shikhar Mehrotra The Avata 360 marks DJI’s boldest camera drone move yet: a fully immersive 360° FPV experience backed by flagship-grade imaging, smart obstacle sensing, and a suite of cinematic tools that make the competition sweat.

Source:: Digital Trends